He nods. “He started saying weird things and I just wanted to jet. He sat on my legs and it was almost like funny, because he was this scrawny little dude. But I froze up. I said no. But he just kept going and then it was like I wasn’t even there.”
“You dissociated,” his mom says.
He shrugs.
“People dissociate sometimes in situations like that. It’s not your fault, mijo. Not your fault.” She sits close to him and hugs him from the side, hard. Tears fall down his cheeks some more.
“It just happened and then it was like, I stayed? I think maybe I felt too dirty.” He shakes his head. “I’m so stupid. How do you sleep in someone’s bed after that?”
“Did he … penetrate you?”
Max averts his eyes to the floor. Finally he nods.
“Did he use protection?”
He shakes his head, and his mother exhales.
“Dios mío,” she mutters.
More tears from Max, and then she starts to cry, and I feel numb and distant sitting across from them, so I tentatively move to Max’s other side, aware he might go nuts again. He doesn’t. I put my head on his shoulder and this makes him cry harder.
“Sorry,” I say, looking into Rosa’s eyes and pulling my head away.
“No, no,” she says, and she motions me back. “That’s what he needs right now. Please do.”
I put my head back, my cheek and ear resting on his large shoulder, and I watch the tears fall from this weird side view that’s almost surreal. And it is a bit surreal.
I never thought of Max as even possibly being a victim. And I have questions. Like how does a person freeze up in a situation like that? But thinking that just makes me feel bad because I know it’s a real thing. I just haven’t experienced it. So I turn and kiss his shoulder many times like an apology for thinking a terrible thought like that.
Rosa, meanwhile, is holding onto him tight from the other side, squeezing and purring in his ear warm assurances that it’s all going to be okay. That she loves him and she doesn’t blame him and she will be by his side through all of this.
I have this incredible, awful, sad realization. That if this was me, if I’d been raped, and this was my mom, I’d be hugging and consoling her. She would make this all about her. No question in my mind. That makes me need to close my eyes because it’s like a dagger stabbing at my chest from the inside.
“We need to go to the police,” Rosa says.
Max shakes his head. “No. Nope. No.”
“Why not, mijo? The boy committed a crime.”
“I can’t. I won’t. Nope.”
She sighs again. “We’ll revisit that. But what we really have to do is go to the ER right now and get you an HIV test. All the STIs. You had unsafe sex.”
My body goes numb. What? I want to rewind. All of this. To have gone to my house, not his, where there is no pool. Where none of this would be so. I want an alternate universe where this nightmare isn’t. Back further, beyond that. Before this happened to Max.
But in that alternate universe, we never meet like we did. We never run the food truck like we did. He’s not my boyfriend. This is inconceivable to me.
Which would be better? Max avoiding this and us not meeting? Or him having the pain and us meeting? My head spins. Unanswerable question.
It’s 3:18 a.m. as Max’s mom gets in the driver’s seat of her Ford Focus, I get in the back, and Max gets in the passenger seat. We drive in silence to Banner Desert Medical Center, the strip malls appearing and disappearing like a terrible mirage.
What if Max has HIV? Could he really?
No. No damn way.
Or of course damn way. Because life has always been shit and why wouldn’t this happen? Maybe it’s happening to him because my shit life has bled onto him. I should never have come into his life. I’m bad luck. It’s my fault.
This thought makes me laugh a little. Max and his mom turn back, a little surprised by the outburst.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m amazing myself by making this about me even a little bit. I am truly the worst human being.”
Max’s mom reaches back and scruffs my knee. “Hardly,” she says. “This is hard for you too. For me, also. I want to batter that asshole’s brain in.”
I’ve never heard little Rosa curse before, and I realize I really like her. Max has told me enough so that I know her foibles, but to me, she’s really what a mom should be. Warm, kind, in charge, real.
We sit in the waiting room, the three of us, after Rosa and Max check in. Then they take Max back, and Rosa and I sit there in silence for a bit. She reaches for my hand and holds it. Her hand is warm and slightly damp.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Thank you. I’m so glad you came and got me. This is too much for you to deal with on your own. Max is gonna need some help. A counselor, probably. Get some of the anger out.”
“I didn’t even realize,” I say, and a tear falls again. “I’m so wrapped up in me that I somehow didn’t notice —”
She shushes me. “Enough of that,” she says. “You’re a person. You did your best and it was plenty. I’m so happy Max has you.”
This makes me smile. I blurt out, “Will you be my mom?” And then I shrink back, because I love my mom, and I don’t mean that.
She smiles wider and laughs a bit. “Not so good on the home front, huh?”
“My mom’s okay,” I say, my shoulders automatically tensing.
Rosa smiles at me but I can tell her mind is elsewhere, as it should be. “You need anything, you just let me know, okay?”
I nod. I’m fine. We’re fine. Somehow it’ll all be okay.
The doctor comes out and calls Max’s mom in. I am left alone to think about all of these things.
What if Max has HIV? Would I stay with him?
Yes, I realize. I would. I’d take care of him if I had to.
What if Max doesn’t really like me and he was just in a weird place because of the rape?
That I couldn’t handle, I don’t think.
By the time they come out, hand in hand, it’s 5:14 on Saturday morning and I’m a mess. I’ve decided Max is going to break up with me because he doesn’t really like me. And I know. I’m making this about me. But I don’t know how to not do that.
Until I see his face, and then it all goes away, and I stand and I hug him hard, and he hugs me back, hard.
In the car, Max explains to me what’s up.
No he probably doesn’t have HIV, which causes AIDS, but it’s not impossible. The window period to be sure is three months, but after one month, which it’s almost been, it’s 95 percent. That test was negative. I breathe a huge sigh of relief.
Thanks to his mom, who insisted he get vaccinated, he doesn’t have HPV. He may have any number of other STIs, and those tests will come back soon. Anything he has would be curable, though. Or at least manageable.
“I’m here for you,” I say, and I glance up and see his mom’s mouth curl into a weak smile. “Whatever you need, I’m in. Okay?”
“Thanks,” Max says. “That means a lot to me.”
His hand is wrapped pretty tight with ACE bandages. Not broken, he explains. It might impact his cooking for a week or so, but we’re not gonna be cooking much this week anyway, since the truck is still in the shop.
“I want to get you in to see a counselor who deals with sexual assault,” Rosa says.
Max shrugs. “We’ll see.”
“No ‘we’ll see’ about it,” she says. “Required.”
“Maybe,” he says.
Rosa shakes her head. “I’d say you got that from your dad, but maybe that’s just a man thing? I remember your uncle Guillermo did the same thing when I tried to get him to see a counselor. What is it with you men and not talking?”
Max turns to me like I’ll be on his side. I am on his side. Just not about this. “I think it’s a good idea,” I say. “You punched a pool tile. A perfectly innocent pool tile.”
This makes him laugh a bit. Then he stops laughing. “Can I be real?”
“Yes,” Rosa and I say, simultaneously.
“Half of me doesn’t believe I was raped. Like, I get about consent and all, but I was … I don’t know.” He runs his hands through his hair.
“Were what?” Rosa asks.
“I can’t do this,” he says, his voice exhausted. “Talk about this.”
“Mijo? You have to. Really. Me and your beautiful friend back there? We’re gonna be on you to talk about it.”