Page 99 of Mother Parker
Not that it had stopped the first three times.
Three times!
So stupid, Hwanchan.
“Do you think we’ll get them?” I asked.
Parker moved his hand from my thigh to the back of my head, and I turned toward him. He slid his hand forward until he was cupping my face. My heart skipped a beat. And another. And I stared into those wonderful dark eyes that seemed only able to see me.
“Iwill,” he said.
I knew I should have been upset that he stressed the I as if to say I was to have no part in it, but I wasn’t because I recognized it for what it was.
A promise.
A promise to move hell and high water until he did, and I believed him because I knew he would.
“Thank you,” I whispered, breathing down his wrist and forearm and watching as goosebumps formed.
“You don’t have to thank me,” he whispered back, closing in on my face until his eyes were the only thing I could see.
“But I want to.”
I closed the distance between us and let him claim my lips as if for the first time.
He’d been so good today. The way he’d treated me, the way he’d treated Halmeoni.
In fact, he’d been good since the day I met him, even if it’d all been covered by the tough facade he’d had on.
A facade that never fooled me, but I thought it had fooled him.
I knew he still didn’t know what was going on with himself. We hadn’t really talked more about it, and every time I’d tried to steer the conversation there, he’d direct it back to just us. And I understood, for the most part. Identity wasn’t something you found from one day to the other—or that you only found once.
But whatever had come before had somehow convinced him he wasn’t worthy of being happy or that there was only one way to be, and he’d been doing it wrong.
So I was glad he finally felt comfortable enough to show more of the person underneath, the person he’d secreted away since God knew when.
“Should…we…go…up…” I mumbled as we kissed, and then he pulled away and got out of the car, practically removing me from my car and carrying me upstairs.
“You know,” he started as he pulled my top off, threw it behind him, and proceeded to undo my jeans. “I got a message earlier.”
I swallowed and lifted his shirt off.
“Oh yeah? What kind of message?”
I kissed along his neck before finding solace in his hairy muscular chest, and we collapsed on the couch, me on top of him, free from most of our clothes, our erections rigid against each other.
“From the sex clinic. I’m clean,” he said.
I pulled away and looked him in the eyes.
“You know what? I got the same message. Oh, and we don’t say clean anymore. We say negative.”
“Really? Since when?” he asked.
He grabbed my neck and bit my ear. His rough breathing affected mine, making me pant without even doing anything.
“Since the connotation was created that having HIV meant you’re not clean. So we don’t say that anymore, so we don’t further the stigma,” I said, biting back the groan his tongue on my neck was edging out of me.
