After the End

by Alex Kidwell

  God, I was so messed up.

  “Get out of here, you two,” Tracy said, grinning at us, leaning her shoulder against Annabeth’s.

  Her wife smiled as well, long fingers cradling her coffee mug. “We’re going to hit the market anyway. Brady, are you still coming for dinner tomorrow? I’m making squash ravioli.”

  “Like I can resist your cooking,” Brady said, standing and leaning across the table to bus a kiss across both women’s cheeks. “Besides, I’m in charge of dessert.” With a glance at Tracy, he turned to me, smile turning slightly more hopeful. “I make a mean flan, Quinn. You could join us? Make it a foursome? You know how these two can gang up on you.” Clasping my hand to his chest, he fluttered his eyelashes, overly dramatic. “Help me, darling. You’re my only hope.”

  I couldn’t help it. He was just so ridiculous with the messy blond waves and the brown eyes and how he’d swooned just to make me smile. I laughed, loudly, the sound startling me a bit. Twice in a short period of time, when it felt it’d been… God, forever since I’d just laughed.

  “Oh, fine,” I grumped, but I was grinning as Brady tucked my hand in his elbow, and Tracy gave us a look like she’d single-handedly invented human emotions and tight pants and sweaters that set off deep, chocolate brown eyes.

  IT WAS chilly by the river this time of year, but I just wrapped myself further in my corduroy jacket and long scarf, tugged on knitted gloves as my fingers got too cold. Brady walked next to me, silent most of the time, our breaths twin ghosts against the still air.

  “I love autumn,” he said, grinning as he reached up to pluck a just-turning leaf from a maple tree. He twirled the scarlet-trimmed green in his fingers before tucking it into the buttonhole of my jacket pocket. “Just the way the air smells and everything crackles. Also, I look damn good in boots.”

  Barking out a quick laugh, I cut a sideways glance at him. “You’re….”

  As I trailed off, he filled in for me with a mischievous grin. “Charming? Irresistible? Cute as a button?”

  “Surprising.”

  Completely the opposite of Aaron. Of the tall, booming man who’d moved through life like it was a river to ford, like it was a battle he’d already won. He laughed and the whole world lit up; he smiled and it’d been like the sun rose just to see it. I’d lived in his arms, in his eyes, in the breadth and span of his passion, of his wit and gentleness, for so long that when it’d been taken from me, I’d felt like I was only part of a person. All the goodness in me, all the possibilities, they’d been put in the casket with Aaron, buried in dark earth and hidden under a stone marker.

  Brady was nothing like my Aaron. He was slim and golden—instead of a lion, he was a prince. The only cardigans he owned were probably bought ironically, and I doubted he owned a single broadsword or cared at all about the War of the Roses. He was so utterly separate from Aaron, so unlike, it was nearly impossible for me to reconcile myself with either of them. Like night and day, I wasn’t sure how I could thrive in one when I’d learned to crave the other.

  “That seems to be our particular theme.” Brady smoothed his fingers along my cheek, and I shuddered out a breath, eyes closing briefly. How long had it been? Not just since this—not just since the soft slide of skin along my own, since the hot exhale of someone’s breath stirred across my face—but since the closeness that had nothing to do with our bodies. It was Brady pressing inside that quiet bubble I called my own, inside the walls everyone kept up around themselves. He was looking at me, seeing me, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe for how incredibly long it had been.

  “I can’t.” The words came out of me like they were pulled, like I’d ripped them off of the scars I’d thought were so well hidden. “Brady, it’s not that I don’t want to.” Scared and lost, my eyes blinked open and found his, those ridiculously kind brown depths holding my gaze. “I do, I just… I don’t think I’m ready. I don’t think I can. It’s everything, all at once, and I feel like I can’t breathe.”

  “You keep jumping to the end.” The tone was slightly scolding, though the sympathetic twist to his lips eased the shot of prickle-sick guilt I got at the recrimination. “Which I get, Quinn. I mean, shit, you lost your whole life all at once, didn’t you? You’re still in that headspace of twin rockers on a porch, his-and-his towels, forever kind of stuff. But when I look at you?” He rubbed his thumb lightly along my cheek. “I see an interesting guy I just met. Someone I’d really like to get to know. Just because I kissed you, doesn’t mean we’re at the big, grand declarations stage. Okay? We’ll go slow. Iceberg slow.” Brady’s smile spread into a teasing grin. “An afternoon watching golf slow. We’re not at the end yet. We’re at the walks in the park, meeting for coffee part. You can enjoy that. It’s okay.”

  Taking a breath, I nodded, the twisting fear in my stomach easing a bit. This was big—sure, it was. Moving on, those dreaded two words, was never going to be easy. But Brady was right—rushing ahead, second guessing myself, assuming; that was just going to give me an ulcer. Or drive me to drink. Maybe both. A drinking ulcer.

  “So,” I said, lifting my hand to gently curl my fingers around his, letting our joined hands drop between us as we resumed walking. “Are we at the movie stage? Because there’s a new one out I thought sounded interesting, but I hate going alone.”

  The breeze from the river ruffled his hair, the artful waves becoming something more unruly. I liked it like that, I thought, watching as he wrinkled his nose at the sharp wind. I liked the look of him, less refined than the perfect aura he projected with his skinny jeans tucked into his boots, his cashmere scarf, and his manicured hands. One of those hands was now easily holding mine; the fingers were laced with my own as we walked, as his hair turned messy and his cheeks turned red from the cold. All in all, he looked more like the kind of guy who’d go see a thoroughly irredeemable action movie with me just because it was fun.

  “You don’t strike me as the type to care about soloing it,” he admitted, cutting me a glance.

  I shrugged and shivered a little in my coat, free hand wrapping my scarf more tightly around my neck. “It’s not the actual movie-watching part I don’t like,” I tried to explain. “It’s the after. I always want to talk about it with someone, to discuss what I liked, what I didn’t, to make fun of the bad parts. To, you know, cry over the really sad bits or laugh so hard it hurts. If I can’t mull it over with someone else, it’s kind of a letdown. It’s so unsatisfying, after, if I’m by myself. No one to share the experience with.”

  He was smiling at me. Brady was smiling, not just in general, but at me, and for some reason that one simple expression took my whole heart and made it ache. Casually, he tugged off his scarf and wrapped it around me, adding another layer. Then his arm followed suit, curving around my shoulders, tugging me into his side. “The movies,” he agreed. “Coffee and pie after. We’ll mull over peach pie à la mode and you can pretend not to notice when I eat all the crust and leave the peaches.”

  “That’s okay,” I assured him, a little bewildered by how warm and, as stupid as it sounded, safe I felt walking so close to him. Hesitantly, I stole my own arm around his waist in turn. “I leave the crust behind every time. The filling’s my favorite.”

  “Well, who says opposites don’t attract?” He was teasing me, but there was something good in his eyes, something more solid than mere talk of pie and movies. I liked that look, even as some distant part of me was afraid of what it meant.

  Aaron had been my solid. My good. My future and my past and the person who ate the crusts of my pie. It was strange and terrifying to think of anyone else filling that role, even casually. Even as just a nice guy who was going with me to a movie. In mute horror, I wanted to scream, to throw myself away from Brady, because Aaron was gone. Because the only reason I was there, walking with Brady, talking about pie was because Aaron wasn’t ever coming home. How could I possibly have something good if Aaron wasn’t there to share it?

  Maybe Brady read my mood
shift, maybe he was just cold, but either way, he was guiding us back to the café, to our separate paths, to the rest of our day. “Tonight?” he said and I nodded, giving him a slight smile. I did want to go. I just hated myself, a little, for that want.

  Our hands clasped and Brady leaned in, brushing a kiss across my cheek. Then he was gone and I was stumbling the two blocks home. I was fumbling for my keys, shoulders beginning to shake, a sick, bitter retch in my throat. I barely made it inside, shoving my door closed to collapse in front of it, before I was heaving sobs, before the acrid taste of grief was cloying in the back of my mouth.

  It had hit me all over, just then, with a stunning clarity, that Aaron would never see another movie with me. Never tease me for my terrible taste in them. Never sigh and fuss as I stole all the gummy bears or pretend I put too much butter in the popcorn only to eat most of it himself. Never would we walk out the door after, laughing or crying or somber or over the moon at how wonderful it was. Never would he listen to me babble about my favorites.

  He’d never again. Never anything.

  God, I missed him.

  HOW many times, over the course of the day, my fingers stole up to touch the leaf, still tucked into my buttonhole, or the extra scarf wound around my neck, I couldn’t have said. But every time, a little thrill of warmth curled into my gut. Every time, I felt that on-the-balls-of-your-feet anticipation about that evening. Even though Aaron hung over my shoulder, a specter that dug guilt and hesitance into every thought, I still wanted to go. I still wanted to see Brady. I just wished, sometimes, I’d never had to meet him.

  Maybe I needed therapy. Or more alcohol on a more regular basis. Either way, I was going to the movies for the first time since Aaron had gotten too ill to leave the house. That had to mean something, or nothing, or everything. Really, I was just trying to focus on which shirt to wear and forget the rest.

  My day passed in a blur of working the books, making phone calls to suppliers, and arranging a few signing events. Running my own comic book store maybe seemed a bit Peter Pan, but I enjoyed it. Before, when I’d still had all the pieces of my life in a neat, ordered row, there’d been more to me than just someone who kept shop. Still, I made my own hours, and I got to spend time with enthusiasts and artists alike, so I couldn’t really complain. Aaron had loved this shop. Graphic novelists, he’d told me somberly but with that dry twinkle in his eye, were the modern historians. The tale-tellers and the cave painters. We were the ones who recorded modern myths for the next thousand years to read. I wasn’t sure how much of that was an old romantic notion and how much was truth, but it did give my quiet life a rather grand façade.

  Once upon a time, I’d been one of the cave painters. Now, though, I’d lost whatever spark was necessary to make ink and color more than flat blobs on a page. There was no romance left in my work, no soul. Instead of telling the tales, I sold them. It was a good life, though. A good existence. This store had been part of my salvation, afterward. It was distinctly difficult to drown yourself in grief and sorrow when there were bills to pay, when people depended on you to open the doors. When your day was spent discussing superheroes and archvillains and radioactive insects.

  Finally, though, I slipped away and walked the few blocks to my apartment, absently trying to make a list of the number of times I’d been more nervous. It was a short list. I tugged my phone out of my pocket and listened to it ring as I fumbled with my keys and shoved open the creaky old door.

  “Quinn? Everything okay?”

  Annabeth’s voice did nothing to calm me, even though the woman probably made monks feel inadequate. She was Zen personified. I could use a little Zen. “I don’t know what to wear.” There was not enough money in the world to make me admit how much my voice cracked.

  To Annabeth’s credit, there was only a moment of hesitation, a very quiet hum as I heard the rustle of her sitting down. “Start at the beginning.”

  “Brady. Movies. Me and Brady and movies, and Anna, I don’t know if I’m ready for this and who goes to the movies on a date anymore?” I spun in a circle, looking around the cramped studio apartment and glaring at every corner, as if the fault for this current predicament resided somewhere within. “Oh, my God. I’m going on a date. Like, a date date. Not a date I go on to make Tracy stop bothering me about my cat eating my face.”

  “Breathe,” Anna advised me. “It’s okay, Quinn. It’s just the movies. People go to the movies all the time. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that, right?”

  I nodded, closing my eyes and pinching the bridge of my nose. “Right. Just a movie. And pie and coffee after. That’s… that’s not a big deal.”

  “Absolutely not,” she agreed, voice dryly patient. “Wear that blue sweater and your nice jeans.”

  Okay. Okay, I could do that. “Anna…,” I started. But she seemed to understand, sighing softly.

  “I know, Quinn. Just take it as slow as you need to. Brady’s a good guy. At the very least, it’s nice to have a friend.”

  Friends. Yeah. We were friends. We were getting to know one another. That was all. Never mind that my hand was clutching the scarf he’d wrapped around my neck, that I hadn’t taken that stupid leaf out of my jacket all day. Brady and I were friends. Not even dating.

  Oddly, that made the nervous knots in my stomach ease even while an ache settled in my throat. It was a good thing, to go slow. I needed to go slow. I needed to not overthink every damn thing I did.

  But he’d given me his scarf.

  I got ready. I even gave into an extremely silly urge and put the leaf in a bud vase on my coffee table. I lived in a small apartment now. Most of my things were in storage. After Aaron, I couldn’t go home anymore. I couldn’t bear to walk into the house we’d bought, the rooms we’d decorated, the bedroom we’d painted together and loved in and lived in so completely. Aaron was in the bones of that house, in the breath of each room, in the dings and the odd creaks of the floor, the way the rain sounded on the roof. He haunted it, just like he haunted me. So I’d left, in some desperate attempt to try and become whole again.

  All that had happened was I now lived in one room and my furniture was hidden in a storage unit. I couldn’t leave him behind so easily.

  So. On to the movies. The streets were filled, the chill in the air not deterring the flitter of people pressing around me. There were lights and smells spilling out onto the sidewalks from restaurants, music seeping from under the doors of clubs and bars, and the movie theater beckoned me, marquee ablaze. Like a moth, I followed the glow.

  Brady was waiting for me. His easy grin warmed me more than a thousand scarves, and he reached out to take my mitten-clad hands, drawing me in to brush a kiss against my cheek. “Hey,” he murmured, squeezing my fingers gently before letting me go. “You look great.”

  “You too.” We got in line, bought tickets, and negotiated popcorn—Brady insisted we get the large bucket with extra butter and I was easily persuaded—and then we were in the theater. I stripped off my layers, hesitating before I unwound the borrowed scarf and offered it back to him.

  “You look better in it,” he told me with a smile, reaching out to touch his fingertips to the back of my hand. “Why don’t you hang onto it for a while? It gives me an excuse to keep seeing you if you have it.”

  It was impossibly cheesy, yes, but I found myself smiling a bit in return. “How very Jane Austen of you,” I murmured, but I’d admit to a bit of contentment as I tucked the scarf back around my neck.

  “It’s no glove left behind, but I do what I can.” The previews were starting, but he didn’t settle back right away. Instead he reached down and took my hand in his own. Achingly slowly, our fingers slid together, the warm press of his palm against my own making something tight clench in my gut.

  “Is this okay?” he asked me in a whisper. I nodded, heat pricking the backs of my eyes, but I squeezed his hand tight.

  It was. It really was okay. I liked the feel of him holding my hand. I liked the
strength of his shoulder next to mine. And not just, I thought, because it was someone there where now I had no one. It was Brady, who was turning out to be kind and gentle and sweet. I might not know him well, yet, but yeah, him holding my hand was okay.

  And I felt guilty as hell that it was.

  The movie was good. Well, no, the movie was terrible, in that wonderful kind of way. There were explosions and aliens and overly buff men who went shirtless for no reason other than our enjoyment. In the end, right prevailed, as it always did, and no one important died. Even the dog lived. It was good. We walked out of the theater, still hand in hand, laughing over how awful the acting was. I was smiling, he was smiling, and for a moment, everything was perfect.

  “Pie?” Brady asked, tugging my hand lightly. “Come on, I know this great diner. The coffee is strong enough to hold up a spoon.”

  “Sounds like my kind of place.” Our steps matched as we wound our way through the evening crowd. “So, this is kind of embarrassing, but other than the fact you’re a party planner who hates overly fussy cocktails and enjoys fried cheese—”

  “Which, by the way, is what makes America great,” he interjected with an impish grin.

  I huffed out a laugh and nudged his shoulder with my own. “Fine. Besides the fact you’re a good American cheese-loving man, I don’t know much about you.”

  He opened the door for me, a bell chiming lightly to announce our entrance. There were tables scattered around a long counter, the clank of dishes and hum of quiet conversation, and the delicious aroma of coffee. We got seated, and I ordered the promised peach pie, Brady adding a scoop of ice cream to his order.

  “Well,” Brady said, sprawled out on his side of the booth, looking good in his tight black sweater. Not that he wasn’t perfectly aware of how he looked. His deep brown eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled at me, and he drummed his fingers on the back of his seat. “I’m a middle child. I went to school for biology for three semesters before I realized I couldn’t stand it, dropped out, and started working catering.”