He glances at my clenched fists. “I’m afraid if I tell you the truth, you’ll deck me.”
“I might deck you anyway. Talk.”
He debates it for a moment, inhales a breath for courage, then blurts the words out in one long breathless rush. “Because nothing is one hundred percent effective there’s always a chance you can pick up something bad even if you use protection and I was scared I might pass something on to you so I got tested a lot to make sure I was clean so you wouldn’t catch anything.”
He stops for a breath, bracing himself for a hit, but my head is spinning too fast for me to take a swing at him.
“You’re telling me you were trying to protect me?”
He nods.
“From getting a sexually transmitted disease that you might unknowingly have had?”
He nods again, but has to think about it f
