"Was it you?" "Yes."
With bulging eyes, and
gasping, Dean said, "Get out of here!"
Noah got up and walked to the door and opened it to get out, and then closed it, laughed at Dean hysterically and sat down once again. Carla and Frankie laughed at them. "One can have fun with you guys without having to go to the club with you or having sex with you," said Frankie all of a sudden.
Carla laughed. "Hallelujah!" said Dean. "The silent one has spoken!"
They all laughed once again. "It's unbelievable, but it's true. Nicole and I were born to be together, but she's my mother in law’s little sister!" said Noah. "Damn!"
"So?" said Dean. "So, I can't have a
relationship with her."
Dean whispered in Noah's ear, "Yes you can. All you have to do is find a way to hide it and keep it hidden until you guys get married when she turns eighteen."
In a very low voice, and almost whispering, Noah said, "I wish it was that easy."
"It is," said Carla. "If you only knew all of the horrible things I'm hiding, you'd think that I'm narrating a horror novel to you."
Carla and Frankie laughed evilly and Noah and Dean looked at each other. "Frankie knows it all and she's not telling, are you, Frankie?"
Frankie yelled, "May God forbid! I don't want to be the new character in your horror novel, Carla," and they laughed evilly once again. The nurse thought that there were demons in the lab because they sounded like demons. She started to tremble as she took some blood samples to registration.
Amazed, Noah said, "How can you women take this so lightly? You're talking as if you had just shoplifted or intruded a car or a house. These are some serious crimes you're talking about," he then whispered.
They laughed. "You don't know who we are," said Frankie to Noah. "Do you want me to show you a side of us that no one has ever seen?" she French-kissed him all of a sudden. Carla and Dean laughed like hyenas watching them.
Carla tried to kiss him but he said, "No, not until I have the results you can kiss me."
"Ok," she said, "but I will kiss you no matter what they said, because your gums won't start bleeding until you go past the HIV stage."
"That's true," he said and cleared his throat.
Noah and Frankie let go and he said, "You know," and held her hands sweetly, "If I hadn't fallen in love with Nicole, and if destiny wasn't determined to unite us in love, I'd have a relationship with you."
Frankie shed tears and said, "Really?"
"I'd leave with you right now, but I can't do that knowing that I'm fixated with someone else."
"I appreciate your honesty," and read the gold chain that Jennifer had given him that had a medal with his name on it, printed very small, so that the medal wouldn't be so long, "Noah."
"You're probably in love or infatuated with someone, too," he said, and smiled, "and that's why you kissed me, because he hasn't kissed you."
She let her head down. "Umm..."
"Is that right?" he said. "Yes," she said and started
shedding tears, "that's right."
"Tell me who it is," said Noah. "If I don't know him, I can look up information on him on the Net. I'll find a way to get the two of you together. I promise." They hugged.
That hour passed by more quickly than they imagined, right under their noses. The nurse went out. "Mr. Dean Sterling, your results are ready. Come on in."
Dean started to cry bitterly once again and said, "Carla, help me!"
She hugged him and said, "It's going to be all right, it's going to be all right. There's treatment. You can live for many years."
Dean got up and went in. Carla prayed for the longest time that the results would turn out negative, "Even if he wasn't made to be mine," she whispered, "save him. Save him, God, please. I'll do anything you want, just save him."
Dean stood in front of the doctor. The doctor got up with the results in his hand, on the clipboard that held Dean's paperwork. "Here it is, Dean. It's the moment of truth."
Dean covered his hands with his face. He couldn't stop crying. The doctor opened the envelope and unfolded the document. "Dean Sterling," he said, "you're negative for Chlamydia, HPV, syphilis, gonorrhea, genital herpes, genital warts, and..." when he was about to read the results for the last and most important disease of all, the one that he came to be tested for, Dean cried uncontrollably and broke down.
The doctor walked around his desk, sat in Dean's chair, and caressed Dean's hair while Dean kneeled on the floor. "Wait a minute, wait a minute. The world hasn't ended. I haven't even read the results of the disease you got tested for yet."
"My life's over!" Dean screamed.
"No, it isn't," said the doctor. "You're also negative for HIV."
Dean lifted his head and smiled. If it hadn't been for Carla's constant and passionate prayers, he would've turned out positive for the disease. Carla had done horrible things and God wanted to give her one last chance to turn her life around and do the right thing. She had taken Christ as her Savior, but she hadn't gone to church for years because people in church never treated her right. The religion they practiced was too strict. She was currently looking for a church that would take her in just the way she was and allow her to practice and show her passionate faith without restrictions and with the freedom to speak her mind. "Are you sure, Dr. Anderson?"
"I am 100% sure."
They hugged. "You've given me the best news in twenty years! Thank you!" and started kissing the doctor all over his face. "Thank you so much!" "Remember to come get tested every time that you have sex with someone different, whether you had protected or unprotected sex. Condoms break sometimes, so if you're going to keep living la Vida local, live it with responsibility."
"I have found someone to settle down with, even though I'm only twenty, so I won't have to worry about that," said Dean and got up.
"That's great," said Dr. Anderson. "I will see you later. Remember to ask your special someone if she's ever had unprotected sex."
"I will. Thank you." They shook hands and dean walked out of the office. Then, he walked the hallway out to the lobby with the brightest and most beautiful smile on his face, the smile that drove all girls wild.
Carla got up and said, "Don't tell me that what I'm thinking is true. It's too good to be true, Dean!"
Smiling, Dean said, "It's true!" and gave her the biggest hug she'd ever gotten. "I'm negative, for everything!"
The foursome walked out of the lab and went to Dean's car. Noah and Dean had gone to the lab in Dean's car because Noah didn't have his own car yet and he didn't dare to take any of Scott's Bentleys. The girls sat on the front and the guys sat on the back. The girls were twenty years old, both of them, and the guys wanted to see how good or bad they were drivers. They didn't want to sit on the back with any of the girls because they knew that one thing would lead to another and they'd start having sex right there in the backseat. The girls preferred to have sex at night because they thought it was more passionate and romantic. They would only have sex in the day time if they were committed to their partners. The girls hadn't had sex for two years. They'd slept with six guys before that, and they'd had so much sex that they got tired of it and started to abstain for a while. Carla nearly had a heart attack during a sexual encounter and she had to go to the hospital and get medical help urgently. Carla thought that sex was something that God had made for people to have fun, not for people to risk their lives or reputation for it. Sex wasn't meant to be something harmful for people and animals. It was meant to be something fun and enjoyable, and it was meant for reproduction and for pleasure, not for pain or suffering. It wasn't meant for people to use it to kill other people either, or for people to take away other people's chances to reproduce, like people that had sexually transmitted diseases did to other people.
Sometimes they did it because they were ignorant and they didn't know anything about the dark side of sex and the consequences it conveyed, and some people did it to infect other people, with the mentality that if this happened to them, their actual and future sex partners would have to pay for it. Finally, someone had to pay for it, but they'd always get revenge on the wrong people. Carla didn't want to risk that. She knew how many careless and frivolous men were running around, men that didn't care if they infected women or other men. She wanted to live a healthy life, and she didn't want something that she loved and found indispensable, as sex, to jeopardize her reputation and her life. She didn't want to be condemned to chastity for the rest of her life.
They arrived at the restaurant while Dr. Anderson called Dean's parents, Gisele and Devon. Dean was still my mother in law’s little sister and for this, Dr. Anderson couldn't keep something this important on the down low. He wanted them to know that Dean was living a risky sex life and they had to do something to stop him before he really got a disease and regretted it for the rest of his life.
For some strange reason, Dr. Anderson cared deeply about Dean, and he didn't want Dean's dreams to be shattered. The phone rang twenty times, but Dr. Anderson wouldn't give up. He had to tell either Devon or Gisele now or never. Gisele was just stepping out of the shower to go to work at Esq. Hamilton's law firm. She was Esq. Hamilton's secretary and she worked from eleven to seven. It was nine thirty now. Fortunately, the law firm office was only twenty minutes from her house. Esq.
Hamilton had bought her that house to diminish her chances of getting to work late. She'd been working for him for eight years. Hamilton bought her the house and then allowed Gisele and Devon to take over the loan. They were only three years from paying the loan completely, amazingly. Yes, this couple made this great money.
Their yearly income was $500,000. Ira met Gisele since they were little because their mothers were best friends since the eighth grade, and they always loved and treated one another as brother and sister. That's why Devon never saw Ira as his love rival. He trusted them completely. They wouldn't commit adultery together, ever, unless they were drunk or high on the most powerful illicit drug, and they had no control of their actions. Gisele picked up the phone, covering her entire body with a white towel, and holding the towel with her left hand. She held the phone with her right hand. "Hello."
"Is this Mrs. Sterling, mother of Dean Sterling?"
"Yes, it is," said Gisele, freaked. She never thought a total stranger would call her to talk to her about her son. "How can I help you?"
"I have to tell you something about your son. It's good and bad news at the same time. I will tell you and you'll figure out how it's bad news, ok?"
"You're freaking me out!" "I'm Dr. Noah Anderson,
and I'm calling from Littrell Laboratories, the lab thirty miles away from your home."
"Your name is Noah, just like Dean's best friend."
"Yeah, well, from now on I'll have people call me by my middle name if I'm hanging out with the other Noah," said Anderson and laughed. "Well, let's get to the point. Your son was negative for all STD's, most important of all, HIV."
Gisele gasped, started to cry, and said, "Oh, my God, my son's been having sex with infected people!"
"He told me that the only sexual partner that he knew for sure that had an STD, HIV, was his most recent one, and she was a total stranger to him."
"Oh, my God..." said Gisele, crying bitterly.
"He told me that he didn't know she was infected until he woke up the morning after having sex with her and found a note that said, "I have AIDS," written in blood."
"What? Oh, Jesus, she is one evil woman!"
"He told me the name of this woman. He said that he didn't rat her out to do her harm, but to try to save the lives of her next victims. I know it's too late to save the actual and previous victims.
Hopefully, Dean was the only minor she slept with." "Did Dean tell you if this woman was his first?"
"He told me that he lost his virginity when he was fourteen."
"I have to talk to Dean. He never told me anything about his sex life."
"He doesn't know how you feel about sex. He might think that his sexual encounters will offend you."
"I should've talked to my sons about sex a long time ago.
Thank you, doctor," she said and hung up.
Gisele arrived at the building ninety minutes later. She ran in so that the secretaries of Hamilton's colleagues wouldn't notice that she was crying. She had her head down the whole time, until she went into her office, which was right next to Ira's, and closed the door with a slight slam. Ira heard the slam and noticed something was wrong faster than a comet went up the skies. She'd never slammed the door before.
Something was wrong. The secretaries were worried about her. They hoped that it was nothing that would harm this prestigious law firm or its reputation. Ira got up and walked to Gisele's office. He knocked. "Come in!" she said, thinking it was another secretary.
Ira would never dedicate his time to her while they were working, or so she thought. She gasped when she saw him open the door and go in.
He sat on the chair right in front of her. "Hello, Ira."
Ira crossed his legs to make himself comfortable and said, "What's the matter, Gisele?"
Gisele wiped some tears away and said, "Ira, I don't want my personal life to interfere with my professional life."
Ira leaned closer to her to look into her eyes and replied, "It is already affecting your professional life when you're coming in here, crying. Yesenia, Lyudmila, Arianna and Evan, they're worried. They think that it has something to do with the firm, but now that you tell me that it's personal... they're not listening to this conversation, though, so they're very upset. I can tell when people are upset, so they can't pretend not to be in front of me, like they did just now."
"When we're done talking, please go tell them that it's nothing to do with the firm, that it's my personal problem. It's not personal for you because you're my very best friend."
Ira smiled and said, "Thanks for reaffirming me that our friendship gives us total openness. Let's hear it. What's eating Gisele Sterling?" and laughed.
Gisele couldn't help but to laugh. "It's about my sons."
"Oh." Ira picked up his Motorola Razor phone and lifted the top and dialed Yesenia's office number, with the extension for the last four numbers. The phone rang only once and Yesenia answered it. "Littrell, Hamilton, Moffett and Rodriguez, Attorneys at Law, this is Yesenia Gonzalez speaking."
"Yesenia, this is Esq.
Hamilton. I just wanted to tell you that Gisele's problem is purely personal and it has nothing to do with us."
Yesenia smiled and said, "Thanks, Attorney Hamilton," and hung up and told the other girls, "Gisele's vexation is personal. It has nothing to do with us. Hamilton said so."
The girls each gave a sigh in relief. Arianna said, "Oh, good."
Gisele said to Ira, "My sons are having sex with total strangers behind my back. I thought that just because they didn't have girlfriends, they weren't having sex. How stupid of me!" she said, holding her head.
"Now," said Ira, "don't say that. It's not your fault that your boys don't trust you."
Gisele started crying once again. "I know that they're boys," Ira got up and walked around her desk and gave her a big hug, "not girls, but I think that promiscuity is wrong for both sexes, and I condemn it harshly. I support both sexes the same one hundred percent, and just like women are judged for their promiscuity, men should be judged, too. It's just the same. They should be treated the same."
"So you're not one of those women that think that neither men nor women should be judged for this, or that only men should be judged, like some extremists out there."
"No, I think it's wrong for both genders. I mean, I am not Christian, and I support sexual freedom, but I condemn promiscuity because it's because of promiscuity that STD's are ruined people's lives." She got up all of a sudden. "Damn it, it's because of promiscuity that Dean, my younger son, my baby, he got tested for HIV today!"
As she walked back and forth around the office, Ira went after her and did the same thing on the opposite direction to get her attention and make her calm down and said, "Oh, so that's what's happening."
She laughed hysterically and said, "I hate you! You always do that to me!"
They sat down. "Making you laugh or doing something to annoy you is the only way to get you to calm down and take things easily. You're only thirty-one years old, woman. Live life like a thirty- one-year-old! Eliminate the stress! It's slowly becoming the number one killer in the U. S.!"
She took a deep breath, exhaled and said, "You're right. Just because I grew up too quickly and became a wife and mother at fourteen, like most women did in the beginning of the twentieth century, it doesn't mean that I'm an old and bitter woman and that I should live like one."
"That's right. Even if you had gotten married at ten, and even though you lost your youth, it doesn't mean that you're old. You're only thirty-one."
"I'm exaggerating. All that I have to do is go home and talk to my boys."
"I'm sure that as soon as your boys learn your point of view on men, women, and sex, they'll stop putting their lives on the line."
"I hope it is so, Ira."
Chapter 9
Rob was at work that morning. He was a real-estate agent, although he was only twenty-one years old. A woman
came in all of a sudden. She needed a house urgently and because of someone else, her credit was ruined. This person had opened false accounts on this woman's name, and she couldn't do anything. She had nothing. All that she had was debt. She couldn't get a house, she couldn't get a car---she couldn't even have bank accounts, not because of her credit, because this person would always find out about them and ransack them. It was another woman that had horrible credit also, and she couldn't get anything unless she stole other people's identities. The woman went into Rob's office. Rob was ecstatic. He thought he would sell yet another house. Rob sold more houses than any other agents in the company. The others didn't have his power of persuasion, and although they didn't hate him for it, they always wondered what it was that he did, so that they could do it also, and sell as much as he did.
The woman was crying. Rob got up with a face of deep preoccupation when he saw her like that. She sat down. He gave her a handkerchief. "Wow," he said. "I thought you were coming to buy a house."
"I can't buy a house. I'm having serious credit problems and I'm hoping you can help me or hook me up with someone that can help me."
"What are those problems due to, credit card debt, identity theft...?"
"It's credit card debt and identity theft."
Rob was astonished. "Wait, let me get this straight. Someone got a bunch of credit cards in your name and went way past the limit on each one of them."
"Exactly," said the woman and pulled a file out of her purse and gave it to Rob. "Those are my recent credit reports from the last three months."
Rob took his time and examined all of the credit reports. He found names of credit cards that weren't even recognized, credit cards from grocery stores, department stores, gas, renowned credit cards, and catalogue cards. "Wow," he said. "This is a mess."
"I know," she said, crying. "There is a way to clear up
all of this within the next thirty days. All that we have to do is that you didn't ask for these things, you didn't request these credit cards, and you certainly didn't buy these things with them."
The woman smiled and said, "This can be cleared up in thirty days? Are you serious?"
Rob leaned forward, looked her in the eyes and said, "I'm not a creditor or an agent from a credit counseling service, but I have done this for at least 300 people. We are authorized to do this."
Smiling, the woman said, "That's great. When that time's up and my credit's cleaned up, can I buy a house?"
"Yes, you can," he said and then whispered, "but I strongly suggest that when you clear up your credit, you change your name legally and get a new social security number."
"When I do that, will my credit be the same?"
"Yes, it's exactly the same thing, except that under a new name and a new number, you'll be able to live your life freely without the fear of this person tracking you down and mounting up false accounts again. When you change your information, your actual information is eliminated and this person will think that you don't exist. Thousands of people have done that, either to keep their credit clear or to escape someone that's hurting them." They smiled at each other.
The hottest foursome in town, Carla, Dean, Noah and Frankie, they were eating breakfast at a delicious, but affordable restaurant. They were laughing together. Each one was almost done eating. "Frankie," said Noah, "may I ask you an indiscrete question?" Smiling, Frankie replied, "You certainly can, but only if you allow me to ask you one afterwards."
Noah smiled and said, "Ok, here we go. How many sexual partners have you had?"
Frankie said, rolling her eyes, "I think that is an indiscreet question for some, but it isn't to others, and frankly, it isn't indiscreet to me. I thought you'd ask me something far more intimate. I've had sex with six guys."
Dean gasped and looked at her with bulging eyes. "What was the time frame?"
"In two years, three guys per year, but I haven't had sex in two years."
The guys gasped and looked at one another, and the girls laughed just to see the looks on their faces, and looked back at the guys, smiling. "You're kidding, right?" Carla was smiling like an evil hyena.
"No," said Frankie. "I know that most twenty-year-old girls have..."
Noah interrupted her and asked, "You've had only six guys at age twenty?"
"Like I said," she said, finishing her thought, "I know that most girls my age have had at least 200 sex partners, but I want to be different. I want to stand out, and so does Carla."
Dean yelled, with bulging eyes and gasping, "Carla, too?"
The girls looked at one another and laughed again. This time, they laughed loudly. "Well, yes. What's the problem?"
Dean replied, looking at Noah with rolling eyes, and Noah laughed, hysterically, "That's not a problem. On the contrary, that's awesome. I'm about to have a formal relationship with a virgin!" he said, standing up and with both arms high on the air, as if he'd just won a boxing match, and with a big smile on his face, looking around at everyone, and everyone was smiling back at him. Some people were laughing.
"Well," said Carla, blushing, and scratching her head, not understanding this sudden outburst of happiness, "I'm not a virgin, but..."
Dean sat back down, interrupted her and replied, "You are to me," and held and kissed her hands.
"I feel like I'm getting engaged," she said with her head down.
However, to her surprise, Dean had gotten engaged to another girl two years before. His parents had no idea about this.
They were engaged for a year, and then she destroyed everything by cheating on him with his best friend. Since he was only fourteen at the time, and he couldn't afford another ring, he took it from her and kept it, just as if he had just bought it. He'd spent two years worth of savings from his part time job, amount that he had accumulated since he was eleven. Dean and Devon had always worked together. Since Dean was a genius and he was always taking advanced-level classes, his dad would take him to work to help him with the stock reports and computer documents and then take him back home and help him with his homework. This way, Dean would do his homework in record time, and he'd never get behind on his work and lower his grades. Dean always got 'A's' on his tests without studying. He carried the engagement ring in the pockets of his pants everywhere he went.
Although he was only twenty, he was ready to have a serious relationship and get married, just like Noah did, except nothing would oblige him, like a baby did in Noah's case. Noah Spears felt that a baby was a bond that united his parents forever. Every time that Jen got pregnant with his baby, he felt more and more tied to her, by his own decision. His parents had taught them the importance of family values, and Noah had passed all of that on to Dean while their friendship lasted and while they were together. When Noah was twenty and Dean was only six, Noah would talk to Dean about things that nobody even thought of. It wasn't because of his former sexual partners that Dean discovered sex, or because of his parents, but because of Noah. Noah told him everything that he knew about sex, everything in the book, without taking away his innocence. He told him when a boy and a girl knew for sure that they were ready to have sex, and all of the negative consequences of this fun and alluring activity. To this time, it wasn't known how much the ring cost Dean. Not even Dean remembered. All of a sudden, he said, "Do you really feel like you're getting engaged?" smiling.
"Yes," said Carla smiling, "I do, really. I'm not exaggerating, Dean. You're treating me with so much love and so much delicateness that---"
Dean interrupted her by pulling a beautiful red box out of his pocket. He liked the color red for a romantic thing because he’d always heard that red was the color that represented love. He opened the box and asked, "Well, how would you like to be engaged for real?"
She covered her face with both hands all of a sudden as her beautiful emerald-green eyes were inundated with tears. She couldn't fathom that a total stranger was proposing to her. This was a story of the news around the world, thus it seldom happened. "Oh, my!" she said.
Carla?"