Milan truly believed ignorance was bliss.  Not intellectual ignorance, but ignorance from her reality.  When she got bills in the mail she just didn't open them because not seeing the amount due meant she didn't have to pay, which she couldn't afford to do anyway.  She used ignorance to cope with reality.

 It was 10:40 pm on December 1.  She sat in her dorm room alone streaming music.  That day she had taken an HIV test as part of the campuses World Aids Day.  After a year of simply not wanting to know and several months of conceiving every possible reason it couldn't happen to her, she finally conceded to doing what was right for her.  The days it would take for the results to come back would be tough. Fear of a positive test had already begun to set in.

 Her phone vibrated on her lap, causing her to startling her out of her thoughts.  Darren had sent her a text. She wasn't in the mood for his cheap imitation of conversation leading up to his real purpose, sex.  She told him in a quick text.

She'd dated Darren for about three months until giving up on a relationship about six months ago.  He still texted her every now and then. In her weaker and lonelier moments, she texted him too. Holding out hope for a renewed ex during bouts of loneliness was common. Each conversation reminded her why they were ex-boyfriends.  No one reminded her more of those reasons than Darren.

  He was a mistake from the beginning.  She met him one day on her way to work.  She was walking in the sun, wearing a floral dress that fit tightly on her hips and butt and exposed one of her slender, shapely legs through a front split.  He was driving along when he saw her. At the red light, he asked, through the window, if she needed a ride. Feeling adventurous that day, she got in the car.

  Some nights she regretted that decision.  Those were usually the weekends when she was sitting alone in her room while he was out having fun, not answering her calls after she’d skip a party because they had a date and he’d stood her up. Those nights didn't come until about a month of them seriously dating.  

In the beginning, he was one of the nicest guys she’d ever gone out with.  He often volunteered to pick her up from work on nights she worked late. Darren would call from work just to see how Milan was doing.  He would make sure she wasn't hungry and that they were doing something at least one night of the weekend. She was willing to accept all his faults because he was so, well so nice.  He had begun to restore her faith in men, especially black men.

  That was before they'd had sex.  After that, he added validity to her sentiment it's not a matter of if the man will mess up, but when.  All his faults were less acceptable without the nice guy she’d fallen for. The fact that he was twenty-eight, nine years older than her nineteen was kind of creepy. He’d confided in her he’d been judged by others for having four kids by four different women, but she was special because she didn’t. She should have, especially because two of those children were born days apart. She was so enamored by someone wanted her as much as he did she’d been okay with him having been incarcerated for attempted murder. When she’d admitted she’d had sex with five guys since losing her virginity at seventeen, he’d tried to comfort her by telling her that was a low number because he’d had sex with over one-hundred women. She’d accepted that because she thought she’d be the last. Not only was it not acceptable, it was frightening because she realized how risky it was they had only used proper protection about ninety-eight percent of the time.

  Darren was a mistake.  Milan fell asleep praying that mistake wouldn't be a death sentence.

Hello Loves,

How does this end?! Was her HIV test positive or negative?! I wish I knew. I should know because I'm the author, but I don't. This is the beginning of a novel. There were some notes about meeting a nerdy guy and not wanting to date him until she got the results but they didn't include the test results.

This was written when I was in college in the 90s. I did update a few things from the original writing like she's not listening to CDs and the results of her HIV tests takes less time. This isn't a true story, but it does borrow heavily from the truth. I also used to walk to work and would get catcalls from cars slowing down. I would never get in the car like she did, but I did date my share of guys I shouldn't have including a guy who served time for attempted murder.

The importance of this story hasn't changed since it was written because HIV testing is just as important now as it was then. The open ending, though accidental, works because it leads a reader open to get tested and answer with their own results.

Love,

Lena