The last time

23: Her

I can't keep going like this. This isn't the story I planned on writing. I knew when I started that there would be bumps in the road, it had never been easy for us, after all, but this is too much. I want to go back. Back to an old bump in the road that was scary but somehow way easier to handle than this. Looking back, I don't know how the hell this was easier than me kissing someone. I guess we were stronger back then. I want to go back to the first day Danny and I were supposed to just hang out together in the summer of 2019. This was only three months into us officially dating, but more importantly, it was the first month that I was home from school and only a half hour drive from Danny's house which was two hours from my college. They say that if a couple can do long distance, they can do anything. This isn't true. As it turned out, long distance was the only thing we could do. This was day Danny and I went to two hospitals and spent over 8 hours in those waiting rooms. I'm taking us back to the day I found out the boy I loved gave me an STI. I never thought it would be me. I was never the girl to sleep around with boys I didn't know. To me, sex was always a physical way to show someone you loved them. It was special, and I dated boys who felt the same way.
You already know that Danny and I slept with each other well before I was ever his girlfriend, which was undoubtedly a change of pace for me, but Danny was always different to me. When we slept together, STIs were the last thing on my mind. I was about to be with the boy I'd known and loved, in one form or another, since I was 15.
That night in the hospital around 11 pm, well after our phones had died, we'd raided the vending machines, and delirium had set in, the doctor asked if it was okay to go ahead and give Danny his diagnosis in front of me.
We were in love and he said yes, and because he wasn't looking at me but at the doctor when she gave the news, he didn't see the fear that set in when she said the word chlamydia.
In spite of that being one of the scariest things I've ever heard, when the doctor left and Danny turned to me all I could do was open up my arms and wrap them around him. I knew he was scared and confused. I knew he never thought he'd hear those words either. What he didn't know, and what I desperately needed him to know, was that I didn't care. Nothing was going to change. I loved him all the same and we'd get through this.
There were nights in the next ten days while Danny was taking his medication that he would cry and apologize and seem to be falling apart right before my eyes. This was a man who never cried much at all before me and every time I saw tears come down his face, I was reminded of this fact. Each time he broke down, I pulled him close and told him I didn't see him any differently. The man he was to me hadn't changed. I told him this because it was true. I didn't think I'd ever see Danny differently. He'd always be home.