Dating Brent was a whirlwind of private beaches and parties and movie premieres. He had a lot of friends, and yes, they were all exes, but it was a huge incestuous group that had all dated each other and sometimes still hooked up. Brent owned a cherry red convertible with a car phone, and lived in a loft apartment off-campus with his best friend Todd, who wore pastel-colored polo shirts and had feathery blond hair.

After just one date, I knew I could never bring Brent over to my place. My apartment, maybe, because it was pretty close to campus and Lisa was good at decorating. But never my house out in Reseda, where I had shared a room with two cousins, and my aunt and uncle lived with us, along with my grandmother.

So far, Brent had been more than willing to pay for things, or else pay half. But now, sitting in a restaurant so fancy I'd had to borrow a sports jacket from Brent to fit their dress code, I twisted the napkin in my lap and wondered how I'd ever be able to afford anything on the menu. Especially since the menu didn't show the prices.

When I ordered a salad and a water, Brent looked at me with concern. "Are you okay?" he asked, after the waiter left.

"Not feeling very hungry," I said.

"You sure?" Brent had ordered a steak.

I nodded.

"I should have ordered a bottle of wine for the table," Brent said. He raised his hand and snapped for the waiter's attention. And got it, immediately. I didn't know how a person did something like that.

The waiter hurried over. I had a feeling Brent's father was someone well-connected, and those connections were how Brent had gotten us a table here. "Joan Collins eats there," he'd told me. "And my father said he saw John Travolta last summer."

After Brent ordered a bottle of wine, and the waiter had brought it over in a bucket of ice and poured it for us while telling us all about the wine's "oaky bouquet" and its "legs," we clinked glasses and I tried to relax. I found myself looking around and noticing how few non-white people were there. Most of the non-white people were either Asian or on the waitstaff.

"I can't believe we've been dating for a month already," Brent said. "This is my longest relationship."

"Really?" I asked.

Brent laughed. "You sound surprised. You've met, like, fifty of my exes."

"I have, haven't I? I don't know, it just seems weird. Because you're also my longest relationship. But I've never been in a relationship, unless you count my high school girlfriend. Which I don't."

"Why don't you count it? Because you never had sex?" Brett swirled his wine around.

I shrugged. "No. It just... once I knew I was gay, it didn't feel like it counted. And now Lisa and I are best friends, and roommates, and it doesn't feel like we ever dated. It was more like we were hanging out."

"And sometimes kissing?"

"Yeah, we kissed sometimes," I said laughing. "It's weird to think about now."

Brent nodded. "I might have to meet this Lisa."

"She's cool. She'd love to meet you."

"She should come to Clay's Halloween party! It's gonna be amazing, his mom works as a makeup artist for Universal – she helped do the makeup for American Werewolf in London."

I nodded, because the special effects on that movie had been pretty awesome. But this was the first I was hearing about a Halloween party.

"Yeah, and obviously, you're coming with me. I have this amazing idea for a costume. For both of us."

Grimacing, I asked, "It's not something where I'll be the back end of a horse or something, right?"

Brent burst out laughing. "No, no, nothing like that. Togas, that's what I'm going for." He leaned in, and said in a low voice, "You know all the ancient Greeks were gay, right?"

My elbow slipped off the table and I set down my glass of wine. "What?"

"Yeah. Achilles was totally gay for Patroclus."

The thought of Brent wearing a toga made me blush a bit. He would look every bit the Greek god. I'd probably look more John Belushi in Animal House.

In the end, the money thing didn't matter, because Brent took out his credit card before I could even look at the bill, and said, "My dad's paying for this one."

"Oh," I said, surprised. I hadn't met his father yet. "Does he know about me?"

Brent gave a harsh laugh. "No."

I wasn't sure what to make of that, other than my own experiences. "I'm not out to my family yet, either."

"It isn't just that," Brent said. "He's constantly making comments about all the homos. Every time I see them, he has another comment to make about how AIDS is God's plan to wipe out the gays."

I'd heard that before, out of the mouth of the president, no less. "The gay plague," was what he called it.

"I know he thinks I'm gay. He's always complaining about how I don't have a girlfriend. Who's going to give me grandkids, he says. My mom, too. I'm just like, let me graduate college first."

This was a fight I'd be having with my parents soon, too. They loved Lisa and thought we were going to get back together. But my parents were also excited for me to be the first one in my family to graduate college.

At the time, I thought it would be later rather than sooner, but when I went back home for Thanksgiving, my abuela kept asking if I'd met any pretty girls at school. And even my father said I shouldn't study too hard, I had to get out and have fun, too. Thanksgiving break was short, and I was all too happy to get back to school, where I didn't have to sneak the phone into my room to call Brent.

Winter break was a month, and I was dreading it. Brent and I saw each other every day at school. I spent most nights at his place. "This month is gonna be hell," Brent agreed when we said good-bye and I gave him my home phone number.

"Call me if you need to get away. Just remember, my abuela doesn't speak much English, so if she answers, just hang up."

"You want me to hang up on your grandmother?"

"Okay, just say my name a bunch of times. My full name."

"Cristofero," Brent said, rolling the r the way I'd taught him. Then I had to kiss him one last time, because I loved when he said my name.

He lasted only two days. On Christmas night, while the adults were drunk on rompope and the kids were playing with their new toys, the phone rang, and of course Abuela hurried to answer it. The long pauses made me sit up a little, and then she came in and said, "Cristofero, it is your amigo Brent, from the college."

"I'll take it in my room," I said, unhooking the entire phone from the wall so the extra-long cord could stretch.

"Cristofero, it is Christmas," my mother scolded.

"You take your phone call right there. And make it fast. Today is for family," my father said.

I sighed and did as I was told, but I hid around the corner in the kitchen and kept my voice low.

"Brent, hi," I said.

"Chris," he said, and his voice sounded so broken.

"What happened?"

"I just... I need to get out of here. Can I come pick you up?"

I paused. My parents would be angry if I went out on Christmas night. And Brent would have to find my house. See where I lived.

But the way he sounded, I couldn't refuse him. I gave him my address and told him to wait until after ten. I could pretend I was tired and go to bed, then sneak out my window. I'd never done that before, but my room was on the first floor.

After we hung up, I had a hard time focusing on conversation. All I could do was imagine the awful things Brent's father might have done. What if Brent's dad had found out Brent was gay, and hit him? Or kicked him out of the house?

I drank more rompope than I probably should have, and by the time ten o'clock crawled around I easily pretended to be too tired. Abuela had already gone to bed, along with the kids, so no one minded. A few extra clothes shoved under my blankets made it look like I was there, and then I pushed up the screen on my window and dropped to the ground outside. If it hadn't been December, the windows would have been open and someone would have heard me for sure, but I was lucky. I slid my window down most of the way and hurried out to the street, where Brent's cherry red convertible was waiting with the headlights off.

He started driving before I'd even fully shut the door, and before he'd turned his lights back on. I knew then that whatever had happened was bad. I clicked on my seatbelt and waited for him to slow down and talk to me.

He wound through the streets until he found his way back to the highway, and then we were on the oceanview roads winding around the canyons. Seemingly at random, he pulled into a scenic overlook and turned the car off.

I turned to him. He took a deep breath, still gripping the wheel, then released it and looked over at me.

No bruises, so that filled me with some relief. "What happened?" I asked, reaching for his hand.

The cicadas buzzed in the night. He sniffed and wiped his nose, then said, "My friend Patrick, he... called me today. He was going to come over this afternoon, after all the Christmas shit. At least, I thought he'd come over, because his family came over. His parents, and his little sisters. And when I asked about Patrick, my dad hauled me aside and told me not to talk about him. 'Don't ever say his name in this house again,' were his exact words. 'Gary doesn't have a son anymore, got it?'

"I knew something had gone down, so I called Patrick from the private line in my room. I tried his house phone, and then his car phone. That's where I got a hold of him. He's been living in his car."

"Wow," I said, because this didn't seem like something Brent would be so upset over. Brent had money. He could invite Patrick to live in his apartment with him, rather than be homeless.

"Yeah, his dad kicked him out. Because Patrick told him... Patrick told him..." Brent gulped at the air. "Patrick has AIDS," Brent finally choked out.

My words came out as a whisper. "Oh god."

"He's dying, Chris," Brent said, the tears spilling over. "He's dying and they won't even help him at the hospital. He has these... sores, like, on his face."

"You saw him?" I asked.

"Yeah. I had to. I had to do something. I got, like, a thousand dollars from Christmas. I figured it could help him find someplace to stay."

"What about your apartment?" I asked, stupidly.

"My apartment? Chris, he has AIDS." Brent whooshed out another breath. "That sounds terrible. I mean, I want to help him, but I know Todd wouldn't be cool with it. He's okay with me being gay, but the whole AIDS thing..."

I mulled over this in my head. "Uh... is Patrick one of your exes?"

Brent shot me a sharp look. "I haven't fucked every single guy in my life."

"I'm just saying..."

"I know what you're saying. You're saying you think I have it."

"It isn't what I'm saying! But there's a test. Probably you should get tested."

"Patrick and I dated, but we never had sex," Brent said. His voice could have cut skin. "We dated back in high school. You think Patrick had AIDS in high school?"

"I don't know, Brent! Nobody knows anything about this disease or where it came from. There's a test now, is all I'm saying."

The rage rolling off Brent's expression had me shrinking back in my seat. Then it broke, and instead of screaming, Brent was sobbing against the steering wheel.

"I probably do have it," he gasped. "I probably fucking have it and I gave it to you."

"Brent," I said, and because I couldn't think of anything else to say, I put my arms around him.

I wanted him to get tested because I was worried for him, not for me. We'd always been safe. As safe as we could be. Could AIDS be spread through kissing, or oral sex? There was so little information out there. I'd read an article about testing in the New York Times back at the beginning of the school year, but other than a few things here and there that encouraged gays not to have sex at all to prevent the risk of spreading it, most discussions were political. I'd read more about how hospitals needed to screen donated blood for transfusions than what the symptoms were.

I held Brent until he stopped crying, which wasn't for a good long while.