Angel
Page 56
“What?”
“People… they assume you’re different—something’s wrong with you?”
“Oh.” He paused to think about it. “Not very often, really.”
Paul wasn’t entirely convinced.
“Seriously,” Ian said. “Every once in a while there’s something. There was my mom…. But you choose your friends, you know? You okay?”
“It’s just new to me.”
“Yeah,” Ian said. He dragged the mop back to the bucket and let it rest in the dirty sock water.
“Have you…,” Paul started to ask.
“What?”
“I mean, have you… been tested?”
Ian burst out laughing. He placed a palm on his forehead, shook his head, then ran the hand over his face until it stopped over his mouth.
“What are you laughing at?”
“I’m sorry. Sorry. Serious. Yes. I have. At rehab. I’m fine. We’re fine.”
“What’s so funny?”
“It’s just, as a rule, I think you’re supposed to ask that before you have sex with somebody, not after you’ve been living together for, like, half a year.”
“You didn’t ask me.”
“You were a virgin.”
“I was not a virgin.”
“You were a guy virgin. I popped your cherry.”
Paul rolled his eyes.
“Come on, say it. I lost my virginity to Ian Finnerty.”
“I’m not going to say that.”
“Say it: ‘Ian took my virginity’.”
“No.”
“‘Ian made me a man’.”
“Are you going to shut up if I don’t say it?”
“No.”
“Fine. Ia
n Finnerty took my virginity.”
“‘Ian made me a man’.”