Like a Love Story

Set in New York City beginning in September 1989, the novel follows three teenagers whose lives become entangled against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis. The story, told in alternating perspectives, traces the characters from senior year of high school through a brief epilogue set in 2016.

Reza is a 17-year-old Iranian boy who has just moved from Toronto after his mother, Mina, married Abbas, a wealthy Iranian-American man. Reza's biological father had an alcohol addiction and supported the Iranian Revolution; Mina left the marriage and moved the family to Canada, and Reza's father later died of liver failure. Since age 11, Reza has been haunted by a Time magazine cover about AIDS, connecting his secret attraction to boys with the disease and believing his sexuality is a death sentence. The night before senior year, he rips out his own braces in a desperate bid to reinvent himself.

His stepbrother, Saadi, casually mentions that Art Grant is the school's only openly gay student. Reza finds Art's yearbook photo and is captivated by his defiant image. He fantasizes about Art, then is consumed by self-loathing.

Art, the son of wealthy parents who respond to his homosexuality with denial and silence, finds community at meetings of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. He attends with his best friend, Judy Bowman, whose uncle Stephen has AIDS. Stephen, a former immigration lawyer who lost his partner to the disease, keeps a pot of jelly beans, one for each friend who dies; he plans to eat them all before his own death. Art volunteers for ACT UP's infiltration of the New York Stock Exchange, targeting the pharmaceutical company that makes AZT, the primary AIDS drug, prohibitively expensive.

Judy, an aspiring fashion designer from a financially modest family, meets Reza at school and is immediately attracted to him. Uncle Stephen named her after Judy Garland. When she tells Reza she is heterosexual, he responds, "Me too," establishing the pretense that defines their relationship.

When Art visits Reza's home as Saadi's biology partner, he enters Reza's room and plays Madonna's Like a Prayer album for him. The music is a revelation. Art accidentally leaves his backpack, which contains 131 handwritten notecards: a queer history primer Stephen created. Reza reads the cards, inhales Art's scent from the clothes inside, and feels simultaneously alive and guilty.

At the Stock Exchange protest, activists chain themselves to the trading floor balcony and unfurl a banner demanding lower drug prices. Art photographs the action, flees when police arrive, and spots Reza in the crowd outside. They later bond over Madonna records in a nearby store, and Art realizes he has feelings for Reza, which torments him because Judy has a crush on the same boy.

When Reza accepts Judy's invitation to Stephen's Sunday movie night, Art picks him up first. On the subway, their fingers touch. Outside Stephen's apartment, Art presents Reza with a pink rose, having read signs of mutual attraction. Reza, terrified of what the gesture represents, rejects Art. They agree never to tell Judy. At Stephen's door, Reza surprises everyone by asking to take Judy out alone, presenting her with yellow roses. On their date, they share stories and buy matching fish pins. Judy impulsively kisses Reza.

As the relationship progresses, Reza grows conflicted. He steals money from Abbas to fund a Madonna obsession that serves as both refuge and coded expression of identity. Judy designs a shirt for him inspired by Persian textiles, and he recognizes he is unworthy of her devotion. Saadi corners Judy and insinuates Reza is gay; Judy insists otherwise but is rattled. Meanwhile, Art scouts Saint Patrick's Cathedral with Stephen, planning a protest against Cardinal O'Connor's anti-condom and anti-gay policies.

The relationship breaks in December. Judy designs lingerie inspired by Madonna, planning to seduce Reza, but he cannot respond. He confesses that Art gave him a flower and that he thinks he likes men. Judy is devastated and orders him to leave. Reza's older sister, Tara, newly arrived from Toronto, tells him she has always known he was gay and supports him.

On the day of the cathedral protest, Reza walks through thousands of demonstrators and enters the church, where activists perform a die-in, lying motionless in the nave. He finds Art in a pew. As police swarm the building, Art grabs a newscaster's microphone and demands the church stop its complicity in killing gay people. When the camera turns to Reza, he hides his face. Both are briefly detained. As Art is pulled away, Reza screams, "Art! I came here for you."

After their release, Reza comes out to his mother and Abbas. Mina cries, calls it a phase, and asks him not to tell anyone. Abbas remains calm and supportive. Art goes to Judy's apartment, where she unleashes months of anger, not just about Reza but about deeper imbalances in their friendship, including Art's wealth and self-centeredness. They part without reconciliation. Art's parents also confront him; his mother tearfully asks if she could have loved him more to prevent his homosexuality. That night, Art takes Reza to the Rockefeller Center ice rink, where Madonna's "Santa Baby" plays. Reza falls on the ice; Art catches him and kisses him for the first time.

In the months that follow, Judy builds a social life independent of Art, befriending Annabel de la Roche, a popular classmate. Stephen's health declines sharply; he is hospitalized with toxoplasmosis, a dangerous opportunistic infection, and insists on going home. He orchestrates one final gift: tickets to Madonna's Blond Ambition Tour in Maryland, timed to an ACT UP protest at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Too ill to travel, he sends the tickets through his friend Jimmy, who is also living with AIDS.

At the concert, Art, Judy, and Reza hold hands during the finale and sing along, reunited as Stephen planned. The next day, they join the NIH protest demanding the inclusion of women and people of color in clinical trials.

Back in New York, Stephen's condition worsens. He eats the remaining jelly beans, each representing a friend lost to AIDS, and tells Art, Judy, and Reza not to forget him or the community. "They won't teach it in schools," he says. "They don't want us to have a history." He dies holding his sister's hand, surrounded by the people he loves.

In the aftermath, Reza overcomes his fear of physical intimacy. He purchases condoms, and he and Art have sex for the first time at Tara's apartment. Before leaving home, Reza confesses to Abbas that he has been stealing from his wallet; Abbas reveals he has known all along and tells Reza he is proud of him.

Art announces he will leave for San Francisco, rejecting both Yale and Berkeley, unable to remain in a city haunted by Stephen's absence and his parents' rejection. Before his flight, the friends photocopy Stephen's 131 notecards and scatter one set around the city, leaving cards in restaurant booths, on car windshields, and in strangers' hands. At the airport, Art and Judy reconcile fully. They place the final notecard, #75 Love, among plastic Statue of Liberty figurines in a gift shop.

In an epilogue set in June 2016, Art, now HIV-positive but healthy thanks to modern medication, reflects on the 26 years since Stephen's death. Reza teaches college in Connecticut and has a husband and children. Judy is a successful designer. Jimmy survived long enough for protease inhibitors, a class of drugs that transformed HIV treatment, and lives in Paris. Every June, the friends reunite in New York. On this night, while dancing at a club, they learn of the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, where 49 people are killed. Art closes with an appeal to seek out queer elders and listen to their stories, because "there's no future without a past."