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have a white Christmas,” Mom says.
     
    “Maybe,” Dad says, pulling his napkin up to wipe his mustache. “Stranger things have happened.”
     
    “I’d love a white Christmas. That would be perfect,” Anne says as she, too, gazes out to the snow piling in our yard.
     

ANA
     
    J ANUARY 1991. A NA WAS MY FIRST, MY ONLY. I T HAPPENED IN A musky garage where beetles scuttled across concrete walls to tango with the cobwebs, where musical instruments lay strewn and disregarded, where dust motes floated in the phantom evening light from outside. My high school friends and the band we jammed in long since retired for the night, Ana and I reclined on a mattress, on a sultry night in June—my birthday.
     
    “Are you ready?” she whispered, coiling her shaven leg around mine, knowing this was my first time.
     
    I unrolled the condom just as my more experienced friend had shown me.
     
    “I’m ready.”
     
    I kissed her. We pressed our bodies together. I was in. I was out. I was done.
     
    Afterwards, Ana and I sprawled in the lavender twilight, whispered endearing words of foreverness, and snugged our naked bodies against each other. I knew nothing of love, and yet I said I did as I held her tightly. We kissed more. We played our hands together, and we began again. And I had no idea then of our danger.
     
    These thoughts return to me as I again read the Christmas card Ana has mailed. It says she thinks about me often, and naturally, I think of her, feeling an inordinate responsibility to her. Dr. Trum had asked about my sexual relations, but I assured him that I had retained my virginity all my highschool years. I was the minority statistic, I had quipped. And he did not press me, but asked that I be forthcoming when I began having sex. Often, I have thought of Ana and have retraced our actions, scrutinizing them for any slip—a split condom perhaps, or a time we pressed forward without protection, but I can recall none. It seems our fear of pregnancy kept us safe from so much other than that.
     
    Yet still, I must confide in Ana and warn her that our le sport was not as carefree as we thought. But how can a man as young as me be expected to have a conversation such as this? How can any man?
     
    When I return to campus after winter break, I call her. I will be as an old boyfriend calling his once-girlfriend, I say to myself as the phone rings.
     
    Ana sounds excited and says she is glad to hear from me, and soon we fall into a lengthy conversation about our lives since we parted. I am swept away by her easy laughter and her voice’s soft cadence. I can’t remember why we broke up. One year, we were high school juniors dating, having sex; then we were seniors parting for separate colleges, and ending the relationship seemed the thing to do.
     
    “Why don’t you visit sometime?” Ana asks during a pause.
     
    “Okay. When’s a good time?”
     
    “How about next weekend? My roommate’s out of town.”
     
    “Okay. Next weekend.”
     
    And when we hang up, I feel happier than I’ve felt in months. My body is warm. My breath easy. Yet HIV is there to remind me of sadness. I bury it. For now.
     
     
    When Friday comes, I speed along Interstate 40, closing the distance between Wilmington and Greensboro, Ana and me. I’m so excited to see her that I arrive almost an hour early and kill the extra time by napping in my cab as twilight becomes night, but yet my stomach roils when I think of HIV.
     
    Later, from the dorm’s front desk, the R.A. pages Ana, who soon skips down the hallway and rushes me with a hug. Her hair tickles my chin and smells like fresh spring flowers. She presses her pink and full cheeks again my slender neck, and she holds me with arms that are warm andnourishing like freshly baked bread. Ana says she can’t believe I came, squeezes me, says again how she can’t believe I came and tells me how good it is to see me.
     
    She rushes off to her room to gather her things and then we