Sequins and Shots - Book Three of the Café Latte Trilogy

Part One: Chapter 8

Hi everyone! COVID got me again, which sucks as I'm still being very cautious and protecting my immune system at every opportunity.

In this chapter, Harper deals with the fact that he drinks too much - I wouldn't say it explores alcoholism much, but Harper does have a tendency to use various things throughout his life to avoid his emotions, and Ross absolutely has an alcohol dependency, so please be aware the subject will come up!

Love, Cam

♡

Chapter Eight

Harper

I blindly stumbled through the street, my vision semi-obscured by tears gathering in my eyes. This couldn't be happening. It wasn't happening. I couldn't face it.

I bashed into a stranger and muttered an apology. The stranger caught sight of my face and probably concluded I was having a mental breakdown, because they didn't say anything in response. I barely knew where I was going, I just let my feet take me down a route I knew well enough to do it half-blind.

Reaching the door to the apartment building in relief, I pressed Raven's flat number and numbly waited for her to answer.

"Yeah?"

"It's me," I said, my voice sounding strangely loud.

"Oh, hey," she said, surprised, and there was a buzz as the door release activated. "Come on up."

I did, managing somehow to navigate the building and find Raven's flat. The corridors seemed to stretch forever, but I found her front door, and she was already waiting by it, ushering me in.

"Jesus, you look like shit," was her very sympathetic response to seeing me. She planted me on the sofa and I gripped the material of the sofa arm as though it was the only thing anchoring me to reality. "Harper, what happened? What's wrong?"

I had no idea why I felt alright with spilling it to Raven. I had come here because it was the closest place, and I wouldn't have had to rely on public transport or getting through town without a panic attack. I did feel obligated to let her know why I was imploding on her sofa, but that wasn't all of it. I wanted to tell someone, and I did not want to tell anyone else. Ross would likely do something self-destructive. Lucie would worry. Jenny would go into fix-it mode.

And Ed... God, what would Ed say?

"Harper," Raven said firmly, kneeling in front of me. She pushed a cup of tea into my hands. I had no idea when she'd even made tea. I looked at her helplessly and she sighed. "Sweetheart, I get that you're freaking out right now. But it won't do to just sit there silently and expect things to get better. You've got to tell me what's happening."

I nodded, gripping my cup, and said, "My CD4 cells went down."

"Alright," she said, nodding and sitting back, crossing her legs calmly and picking up her own cup of tea from the coffee table. "What's the count?"

"Three fifty," I replied. "Roughly."

"Alright," she nodded. "Down from?"

"Four fifty," I answered.

Raven considered this, and nodded. "That must be deeply unpleasant."

I relaxed almost immediately. It was something I could genuinely feel, a loosening of a tight band around my chest, because of what she said. She hadn't told me that 350 was perfectly fine for a CD4 cell count. She hadn't told me that really, the CD4 cell count doesn't matter much when your viral load is undetectable. She hadn't parroted anything Dr Branner had said to try and be reassuring to me.