Read Bleeder for Free Online Page B

eat out at a Mexican restaurant, talking and laughing like old times. And after dinner, we stroll the campus, hold hands beneath the southern stars, and kiss beside a Jeffersonian column as the blush of winter rubs deep roses into our cheeks. We easily fall into our old roles—she my girlfriend, I her boyfriend. It is as it was before. We kiss and hold one another as if this is the only thing to do in the world.
     
    When we return to her dorm, she distracts the night-watch while I tiptoe past to her room, my bag in hand, slipping in undetected. Ana follows and shuts the door behind us.
     
    “I missed you,” she says clasping my hands, touching my lips with hers.
     
    “I missed you, too.”
     
    She removes her shirt. I mine. And we move to her bed.
     
    “I don’t want to go too far tonight,” she says.
     
    “Me, either.”
     
    So, we tease one another’s desire with our hands, our mouths, our burning breath. Ana leans over me and covers me under her sheet. She runs her hands across my bare chest, my skinny legs, my strong spirit. We indulge in the petting of young lovers.
     
    “Oh, we have to stop,” Ana says, retracting. “This is going too far.”
     
    She pushes away from me, letting out a rush of air as she falls into the mattress. Our breathing calms and my drumming heart quiets.
     
    “I’m so glad you came to see me,” Ana says, playing her hands along my thin bone. “I was hoping you’d call if I sent that card. I wasn’t sure how else to get your attention.” She wets her lips and gingerly kisses me before pulling away with a strange look on her face. “Shelby,” she says, changing her tone. “I think you’re bleeding.”
     
    Startled and embarrassed, I check myself in Ana’s mirror and see that I have a bleeding razor cut.
     
    “Dammit,” I say. “You did this . . . All that wrestling underneath the covers has done this.” I press a Kleenex to the cut.
     
    “Looks like a shaving accident to me. But I’ll take part of the blame. Do you want a Band-Aid?”
     
    “Yes. I don’t want to bleed on your pillow.”
     
    She rises from her bed, goes to a small box above her sink and then comes toward me with the Band-Aid. “Here. Let me put that on for you.”
     
    I freeze. Think of my blood, of HIV.
     
    “No. I can do it. I need to take care of my own problems. I’m a big college boy, now. I need to do this myself.”
     
    “Fine. But I’m buying you an electric razor.”
     
    Ana relinquishes the Band-Aid, which I secure over the cut; then I slip back into bed where Ana nuzzles against me.
     
    “It’s nice to not be lonely anymore,” she whispers into the night as we fall asleep.
     
     
    Another weekend as I drive to see Ana, my truck’s odometer measures the real distance of our love. I crack my window and the breeze chills me while the wind drones out the Stone Roses album straining from my tiny dashboard speakers. The asphalt clips underneath my tires, and the city lights dance neon rainbows as I streak through winter twilight.
     
    When I arrive, Ana’s dorm is quiet. The thrall and hum of young scholars has been replaced by the hollow echo of a few pattering steps and the distant sound of faceless voices.
     
    I call Ana’s name down the hallway toward her room. She soon answers back.
     
    “It’s so quiet here,” I tell her when she greets me.
     
    “They’ve all left for some party. My roommate, also, has left for the night. We’ll be all alone.”
     
    I smile. Ana smiles back.
     
    We go to a movie; then we return to her silent dorm, slinking down the vacant hallway in the giddy embrace of young lovers. Ana playfully kicks open her door and flips on a lamp in the corner that casts her room in a romantic glow. She stands by her bedside, rubs her hand across its coverlet.
     
    “What should we do now?” she asks. My skin prickles. My heart flutters.
     
    “What should we do?” I repeat, playing the game Ana has begun. And yet, my mind is nettled by