Chapter 42: First Friend
The sound of crying was the only thing filling the quiet room, echoing off the pale walls like a sad, broken melody. It was soft at first, more like a whimper than a wail, but it built steadily, rising and falling in waves that refused to be ignored.
Anita sat across from her. Her hands were folded on her chest as her back leaned on the chair, watching Tessa bawl her eyes out – shoulders shaking with every sob, her breath coming in jagged little bursts like a record skipping on a painful song.
Anita exhaled quietly, her heart aching with a tired kind of sympathy. Not pity, never that, but the ache of someone who had once cried in the same silence, in the same way.
She reached for the tissues. Again. A heap of used tissues sat on the table like a defeated army, damp and crumpled.
"Here," she said quietly, sliding another fresh wipe across the coffee table. "At this point, we might as well invest in a tissue company."
"I–it hurts s–so much," she hiccuped between words, her trembling hand reaching forward to take the tissue.
Anita didn’t speak. She just watched quietly as Tessa blew her nose, sniffing again.
"Wh–what do I tell my family, my friends?" she covered her face with her palms, "Everyone’s going to stay away from me. They’re going to look at me as a HIV patient. They’re going to be more cautious and, and—" she couldn’t even finish it. Imagining how her life would become after this, Tessa wanted to just...die.
Anita leaned forward just slightly, her expression steady, voice low and even. "They’ll look at you the way you teach them to."
"What?" Tessa slowly lowered her hands, eyes rimmed red and glistening with tears as she focused her attention on Anita.
Anita met her gaze. "You’re still you, Tessa. This... doesn’t erase the person you were yesterday. It doesn’t define your worth. It changes some things, yes. But it doesn’t change everything."