Reawakening (24 page)

“Oh God yes, Jamie, Jamie!”

She knew it was obvious she was coming even without the shouting. She could feel herself clenching too tight around him, could feel every muscle in her body tensing and tensing. It came close to too much, all those waves of sensation pushing through her. And she could tell it did for him, too, because for once he couldn’t speak. She could feel the breaths behind the sounds he wasn’t making against the side of her face—all those gasps then finally, finally, such a guttural shout of pleasure.

It was delicious. It was more than delicious. It was life and love and everything good in the world, it was, it was. If this was it until the end of the world, well that was all right by her.

It’d be all right by anyone, she reckoned.

* * * *

When she woke, Blake was gone. She knew it immediately—the same way a person might realize that they’d lost an arm in the middle of a sleep. Jamie was there—solid and heavy against her back, hard again in a way that made her want to giggle—but when she stretched out her arms the bed was empty of Blake.

And, of course, it could have been that he’d woken up thirsty and decided to get a drink. Or maybe he’d gotten a cramp and taken himself off for a stroll. But somehow, she didn’t think so. Her mind turned to the way she’d clung to Jamie and how Blake had laid such careful eyes on her and everything else, and she just couldn’t think so.

Though really, it was the words that clinched it. The ones that Jamie had mouthed at her. Had Blake seen them, those words? Had he assumed that maybe she’d mouthed them back? She didn’t know and even if she had it was impossible to tell if they’d had an effect on him.

After all, it wasn’t as though she was some great prize. Maybe he didn’t care that she might have told Jamie she loved him, in silence, in secret. He was far too busy with other concerns, like getting up in the middle of the night to leave her with her heart’s true desire.

She winced, in spite of herself. It sounded like bullshit in her head—the idea that it was Jamie and only Jamie she cared for—but it didn’t sound like bullshit when she put the words in Blake’s mouth. It sounded totally reasonable and sane and the more she thought about it the more the Blake in her head became casual and dismissive.

Oh yeah
, the Blake in her head said.
I don’t give a crap if you love him and not me. I’m off now on a boat to find some babe who’ll fuck me like they’re hanging on to a rock in a storm.

She didn’t know what was worse about fake-Blake. That he might care enough to sound that defensive or that he wanted a babe and she wasn’t it. Though admittedly, that last notion made her wince even harder than the heart’s true desire thought had. How self-absorbed, to be concerned that the third corner of your ménage might want another person all to himself.

She tried not to hate herself too hard for thinking it. Unfortunately, it was really tough going.

She slid out of bed as carefully as she could. When Jamie slept, he slept heavy—but there was no sense in testing that theory. Let him sleep on in peace, while she dealt with whatever this was.

And it was something. Blake wasn’t even anywhere in the house—he’d gone all the way out and onto the porch and though she hesitated to open the front door when it was so dark and creepy in the woods with no lights, she had to go to him. People didn’t sit on a porch at night in the backend of autumn because they felt good and happy. They did it because they probably wanted zombies to come out of the woods and eat them.

Or because they wanted to do some of the odd, private things she almost caught them doing, sometimes. Like Blake with the little wooden horses he seemed to like witling. Badly. And Jamie with his guitar and his collection of weird, acoustic pop songs. She swore she’d almost come across him playing
Girls Just Want To Have Fun,
the other day.

“I’ve got absolutely no clue how you can sit out here staring at the woods when it’s so dark the trees could be anything,” she said, by way of some kind of opener. She probably needed to say something much more serious, like
don’t leave our bed like that in the middle of the night
, but replacing one scary thing with another felt much more comfortable.

And it continued to do so even after he’d jumped about a mile, as though she’d terrified the life right out of him.

“Jesus, June. Don’t sneak up on someone during the zombie apocalypse—I almost shit my pants.”

He had a hand on his chest and it made her mind go over all of those times she’d jumped in just that way. All those times when her heart had almost busted right out of her.

“You’d think I’d know better, huh? I once almost blew someone’s head off for sneaking up on me,” she said, but he just shook his head.

“Yeah, but things are different here. I don’t even
have
a gun.”

“Fatal error, if that oak over there turns out to be a raving cannibal.”

He paused then. He’d put on that sweatshirt he had—the one with some college on the front. It looked worn, and she wondered for the hundredth time if he’d somehow had it with him, when Jamie had picked him up. Was that what he’d been wearing when the world ended? There was a suit amongst the otherwise very relaxed wardrobe they had—really nice, Prada—and she’d always assumed he’d been wearing that when his car broke down and he found the gas station. But maybe not. Maybe not.

“Do you always think that way now, June? Like everything is going to turn out to be one of them?”

His voice was so soft sometimes—it made even difficult questions easy. Strange, really, that such a masculine man could make his voice so careful and soothing.

“Always. I spend most of my time thinking that one of you is going to change into one of them.”

He turned to look at her on that note. Face as handsome as the day was long. Longer than that even. As handsome as a thousand years were long. She wondered if he knew that the little hint of sadness in his eyes only made him more so, and doubted it. He probably thought he was handsome in Prada suits and civilization, and little else.

“We’re not, you know.”

“Yeah? Could you tell my subconscious that? Because it wants to have nightly dreams about you dying horribly.”

“Is that why you’re up? Bad dreams?”

“No. They don’t come as frequently, anymore.”

“Then why?”

“You know why. I wake up at six am because that’s when Jamie gets up. I wake up in the night if one of you turns over. You can’t just get out of bed at three am and not have me wonder where you are.”

She watched his mouth turn into something like a smile. He didn’t really pull it off, however. As though her saying that she worried about him partway pleased him, but only partway.

It made the question swell up inside her, as though at any second her mouth was going to get around to forming the words
did it upset you, that
I love you
? Did you feel cut out in some way, or is that just the fevered imaginings of my stupid brain?

She couldn’t tell. And he didn’t say. Unless she counted
you and Jamie have something special
followed by a wistful smile, which she totally and absolutely did not. No way. Not even if it made her feel bad and weird inside and like she should do more. Say more.

Especially when she thought of his dying light eyes and all those
amazings
forced right out of him and how charming he must have been, once. Before zombies and strange threesomes and Prada suits at the bottom of drawers.

“Blake?” she started, but he cut her off at the pass.

“You don’t have to worry about me, you know, June. I mean, this isn’t the way things have to be.”

She thought of him with his hat turned backwards like Jamie’s, when he slung a basketball around the court. The smell of him when he’d carried her.

But it came out as a ridiculous, blurted—
you’re stupid, you know that? Just stupid.
Because he was, and she couldn’t believe that she had to be right on this nonsense, instead of anything good or happy like
we’re going to be safe, now
.
We’re okay, now.

“And how are things, Blake?”

She didn’t mean it to sound defensive but it came out that way, even so. It was probably the dark woods making her antsy. She kept her back to them and leaned against the porch rail, but that only really made things worse. She couldn’t see what the woods were doing then, and every so often the wind would rustle through the leftover leaves and make her brain crazy.

As though zombies rustled when they moved! No, no, no. These zombies
squelched
when they moved.

“Honey—I know you love him more than anything you feel for me. And that’s okay.”

She started to protest, because really wasn’t it stupid to talk about things like love so soon? It probably was. Even though Jamie had mouthed them as clear as anything, so she couldn’t even mistake them for other words like
elephant
or
hi huffed Hugh.
Even though she felt it back, oh God she felt it back like some inescapable flood pouring over her incapacitated body.

“I don’t—”

“Yes you do. You know how I know? Because I love him more than me, too.”

Her immediate response to that was instinctual. She could no more help it than she could have helped something equally as embarrassing, like a burp. Her eyebrows went up and her mind went automatically to them alone for two years. Playing endless games of Scrabble to mask the homoerotic subtext before hugging each other in a totally manly way about the hundreds of hot women they’d failed to save.

But Blake was onto her game.

“Oh for God’s sake—not in
that
way, all right? Was your mind always in the gutter or have we just put it there?”

She felt her face heat, but strangely enough the embarrassment didn’t hit too hard. He was highly amused and that was better than the way he’d been before. Anything—even assumptions about their manly fun time before she’d arrived—was better than the way he’d been before. She could practically see him relaxing and that was awesome.

“Don’t worry. You’re really not to blame. Not so long ago, I was having wild erotic dreams about both of you.”

His grin was genuine this time.

“You had
sex
dreams about us? About me too?”

“Noooo. By both, I meant me and Jamie and the dying fern from the living room. What do you think I meant?”

He laughed but she could see him still puzzling through something as he did so. At the very least, however, he uncrossed his arms from his chest and put his hands on the bench he’d sat himself on. Leaned toward her, as though it was safe to do so, now.

“How come you haven’t told Jamie this? He’d about die if you did.”

“How do you know I haven’t?” she asked, but he came back quick as a flash.

“He’d have told me.” The words
bro talk
flashed up behind her eyes before he continued. Though oddly, it didn’t make her feel uneasy. And especially not when Blake said things like—“You wanna know why I love him so much? Because he’d have said you’d dreamt about me, too, even if that wasn’t the case.”

She remembered him telling Blake about his handsome hair. The way he never scored a basket past Blake, on the court—not even when she felt pretty sure he could have done. And he’d been so casual and relaxed when Blake had turned up at the bedroom door! Yeah. Yeah. She could see that about Jamie, all right.

“He doesn’t know what kind of person he is. Not at all. He thinks he’s some nutjob loser who’s lucky to have someone that wants to talk to him, never mind a friend. Never mind a lover. He doesn’t get it—that he’s the kindest, funniest, most amazing guy that—”

This time, he cut himself off. Blew out an embarrassed breath.

“You can see why I don’t rattle on the way he does, right? When I do all this…sentimental nonsense seems to want to come out of me.”

She wanted to tell him to look up from the ground so he could see that her eyes were stupidly wet. But who knew, really? Maybe that would just make things more awkward.

“It doesn’t sound like nonsense to me.”

“No, no. I know I’m not great at the talking thing. Funny—I always thought I was. But I guess it was all just bullshit, back then. You know? When it’s real, it’s harder. It’s hard, here, to be smooth. Guys like me aren’t going to be able to coast on our looks anymore.”

He meant it to be funny, she knew he did. But somehow it wasn’t.

“I think you’re too tough on yourself,” she said, but he wasn’t done yet. Oh, not by a long shot. She could feel her heart pounding away in her chest, suddenly, and knew something was coming. Something bad.

“I’m really not. I did a job that now means absolutely nothing, and I lived a certain rich, superficial sort of life that means even less. And then one day it all disappeared. And sometimes I wonder if the person I was had any substance whatsoever—if it was even the real me. Because all I’m left with is this.”

Still, it hit more strongly than she’d expected it to. She’d expected some harsh comment about himself that made her feel a little queasy. Not the verbal equivalent of a sucker punch to the chest. She felt as though he’d tried to restart her heart, the violent way. She felt as though she’d collapsed and he’d gotten the paddles to zap her with.