Tiffany laid her hand on my arm, giving it a light squeeze. She smiled sadly.
Josh sighed and rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. Stop your freakin’ whining.”
“Don’t pay attention to him, Eva,” Aidan said. “We all know how messed up things can get in just a day.”
Katie picked up the Scrabble board, placed it in its box, and then stood on tiptoe to place the box on the top shelf, out of sight. “Boggle?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah, Boggle sounds great,” I whispered.
David walked toward the table, and I said a little prayer that he’d keep walking. I never had been very lucky. “Do you need a fourth?”
“Sure, Dav—”
“Nope. Boggle doesn’t require teams. The three of us are just fine. Thank you very much.”
Tiffany’s eyebrows rose at my tone. Katie, who’d been grabbing a pen and paper for David, froze and looked at me.
“Eva, can I talk with you for a minute?”
“I’m busy.”
“Tiffany and Katie won’t mind. They can play a game while we’re talking.”
“I don’t mind,” Tiffany agreed with a smirk. I kicked her under the table. I hadn’t told her about David’s kiss, but she’d guessed.
“Fine.” I tromped down the hall toward our bedroom, where I could yell at him without the whole POD hearing. He followed close behind.
Halfway down the hall he reached out and grabbed my wrist, jerking me to a stop. I whirled around to face him. His free hand grabbed my other wrist, holding my hands above my head, pinning them to the wall behind me. He leaned forward and kissed me hard, his tongue gliding between my lips.
I turned my head—intending to yell, tell him all the reasons we shouldn’t do what we were doing, all the reasons I didn’t want to—but his lips followed mine and, instead of telling him all the things I’d rehearsed, I kissed him back.
He let go of my wrists, but kept his hands against the wall on either side of me. I knew I could push him away if I wanted. My brain told me I should leave. His kiss told me to stay. Instead of pushing him away, my hands gripped his shirt and pulled him to me.
He groaned deep in his throat when I sigh I wantedop my facel fed in pleasure. I wrapped one hand in his shirt and threaded the other one into his hair. He let his hands drop from the wall to frame my face.
“Oh!” Jai Li gasped.
Startled, I tried to pull away from David, but he wrapped his arm around my waist and held me to him.
“Kiss,” she said in her heavy accent.
“Yes, Jai Li, ‘kiss,’” I whispered. My breathing was heavy and I felt my heart beating a staccato against my ribs.
“Love.” She grinned.
I opened my mouth to answer. I’m not sure exactly what I would’ve said.
David answered before I had a chance. “Yes.” He looked into my eyes, his thumb moving gently over my bottom lip. “I think it is.”
I forgot how to breathe. “I—”
“Goodbye,” Jai Li said. I’d forgotten she was there. “Kiss, kiss,” she said, waving her hands, telling us to finish what she’d interrupted.
“David—”
“Don’t. Don’t say anything. I don’t want you to say it until you know for sure. Just because I said it—well, Jai Li said it for me,” he chuckled, “doesn’t mean I want you to say it back to be polite. And I definitely don’t want to hear you deny it.”
The room seemed to tilt to one side and then the other, like I’d been twirling around in circles and was dizzy. I opened my mouth to say something, but couldn’t seem to put a coherent thought together.
Did David just tell me he loves me? He loves me? David…loves me. David, Greek-god handsome…no…underwear-model sexy…no…Greek-god underwear-model sexy David loves me. Oh wow. There is going to be so much kissing!
A warmth started building in my chest and spread throughout my body; even though I was warm, my skin was covered in goosebumps.
I had to concentrate on what David was saying, “I know what you said about a relationship down here not being a good idea—”
Yeah, I take that all back. I think a relationship down here is a great idea.
“—and you’re probably right. But I don’t give a damn about the POD. I don’t care where we are or where we end up. I just want you to be mine. I don’t want to wait until we’re out of here.”
My heart twirled and did a nosedive into my toes before springing back into place. I could hardly breathe. I had to remind myself how. I pulled him to me and kissed him slowly, exploring his mouth, tracing his lips with the tip of my tongue, losing myself in his taste, in his smell. Our lips never leaving each other’s, we stumbled into the bedroom. David kicked the door closed with his foot before we fell across my bed. I lifted his pullover, running my fingers over his bare skin. He ground out a curse between his teeth. He unbuttoned my shirt, his fingers shaking so violently he ripped the last two open. He skimmed the tips of his fingers over my skin, dipping just below the lacy edges of my bra. I shivered and felt more warmth growing in the pit of my stomach.
“Eva,” he whispered and rolled over on his back next to me. He threw his arm over his eyes.
“I know. We aren’t alone.”
“No, we aren’t.” He let out a long breath. Standing, he opened the drawer under my bed and pulled out the purple hoodie. “Here, put this on. You can’t go out there with two buttons torn off your shirt. It looks like something you’d read about in a racy romance novel. The bodice-ripping rogue out to defile the innocent damsel…or something like that,” he said, laughing.
“Okay, bodice-ripper, but that’s not what I want.” I smiled and took the hoodie from him. I threw it back in the drawer and pulled my shirt closed, covering myself. Crossing to his bedroom, I opened the drawer under his bunk.
“What are you doing?”
I pulled out his U of M sweatshirt. I pushed the shirt I was wearing off my shoulders and let it pool around me on the bed. David cleared his throat and turned his back to me.
“What?”
“I’m just…giving you some privacy.” His voice sounded strained.
“David, two minutes ago you had your hands all over me. Seeing me slip out of one shirt and into another isn’t a big deal.”
“Yeah, well, you aren’t
Chapter 12:
Josh
Month Seven
“Do you two have to do that now?” Josh snapped. He glared at us over the screen of his laptop.
David and I were each walking on treadmills, talking and laughing. By that point, we were eating together, doing homework together, exercising together. He even tolerated playing Wii Bowling with me. Inseparable.
“What?” David asked.
“Giggle like that. You sound ridiculous, and the treadmills squeak.”
“Are we bothering you, George?” David called.
George sat in his beanbag in the corner of the room studying. “Not bothering me.”
“You’re the only one with a problem, Josh. Besides, you’re just sitting there making a nuisance of yourself online. You can go in the other room and do that.” David didn’t look at him.
Tiffany came in, the baby in her arms. “Hey, has anyone heard anything about the villages?”
“No, what—” I took a breath. “What about them?” Trying to keep up with David’s pace was making me winded. David hadn’t even broken a sweat.
“There’s a rumor online that the government is setting up villages throughout the country; when we get out of here we’ll be assigned to villages.”
“I haven’t heard anything, Tiff. I thought we’d all be in one area.” I lowered the setting on my treadmill to extra, extra slow.
“Geez, you people are stupid. Of course they’ll be separating people into villages,” Josh snapped.
I took another deep breath. “I hate to ask you this, but why?”
Josh huffed and rolled his eyes. “They have to make villages near resources. The resour
ces we need aren’t all in one area. We’ll need to disperse and set up communities according to the resources available.”
“There aren’t that many of us. They can’t spread us out too much.” Tiffany bounced baby Faith on her shoulder.
“They’ll do whatever they want to.”
I frowned. Josh had a point. We were at the mercy of the government.
“Now take your lovebird crap to another room; you’re making me sick.” He flicked his hand toward David and me.
“Stop eating in the living area, Josh! Geez, you’re a slob. Look at the crumbs you’re getting everywhere,” Tiffany said.
“Well you’re a—”
George turned a page in his te toward the bedroom.d right steel fence favorite moviextbook, not looking up. “Choose your next words very carefully.”
“Whatever,” Josh took another huge bite, intentionally dribbling bits of food. Crumbs landed on his t-shirt and the strip of hairy belly that was exposed where it rode up. I shook my head. If anyone needed to be on the treadmill, it was Josh.
“Where’d you hear about the villages, Tiffany?” I asked.
“Oh, people online are talking about it.”
“Well, there are about seventy thousand survivors in the POD system. If they made one village in every state, that would only be villages of roughly… um,” I tried to figure out the math.
“Fourteen hundred people, give or take a few,” David said, working through the problem in his head. He bumped up the speed on his treadmill to a jog.
“Show-off,” I said, smiling.
He shrugged and grinned at me.
“Ick,” Josh scowled as he stomped to the bedroom.
“Great. Now we’ll have crumbs all over our carpeting,” George muttered.
David laughed. “Small communities,” he said.
“Yeah, I doubt they’ll spread us out at all, but if they do they’ll keep the communities large enough to sustain themselves.” I switched off my treadmill and stepped down.
“I guess we’ll find out in a few months,” Tiffany said, patting Faith’s back and going back into the bedroom.
Month Eight
I was folding laundry in the bedroom when I heard someone behind me. I turned and groaned.
“What do you want, Josh?”
He didn’t answer as he came toward me, his face hard. I took a step back, bumping into the wall behind me.
Grabbing me by the wrist, he leaned his face so close to me I could smell his ever-present body odor and see the flecks of dandruff in his hair. I wrinkled my nose, trying to block out the offending stench.
“What are you doing?” I shook his hand off my wrist. He placed his hands on the wall on either side of my face.
“I didn’t think you wanted a POD romance, Eva.”
“I didn’t.”
“And David?”
“Is none of your business.” I tried to push past him. He leaned in closer.
“Does David share?” he whispered.
“What?”
He leaned his head forward, tilting it, lowering his lips toward mine. I clamped my lips together and put my hand over my mouth, as I pushed off the wall and tried to duck under his arm. He grabbed me around the waist. Not even if Josh were the last guy on Earth…
“What’s going on?” David’s voice came from behind Josh.
Josh flinched. “A misunderstanding,” he said with a shrug. “Isn’t that right, Eva?”
I looked into Josh’s pale blue eyes and wanted nothing more than to give David permission to hit Josh—I knew that’s what h blood checkad might beoue was waiting for. But I didn’t.
“Yeah. A big misunderstanding.”
“You’re sure?” David looked at me, his brows raised in question. I nodded. “Let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again, or the outcome may be different.” David slapped Josh on the back and smiled.
“Most definitely.” Josh left the room.
“Why’d you lie for him, Eva?” David asked, turning toward me and looking annoyed.
“Fighting won’t do any good with him, David. Besides, nothing happened. He’s all talk. I’m going to take a quick shower. Don’t do anything—I’m fine. I don’t want you going out there and starting anything while I’m in the shower. Promise me.”
He nodded.
I only used my allotted four minutes of showering water, but it never got more than lukewarm. I dried off and slipped into a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. David was leaning against the wall across from the bathroom when I opened the door.
“Have you been standing there the entire time?”
“Mm-hmm. You told me not to go out there.”
I laughed. “That isn’t exactly what I said, David.” He pushed off the wall and guided me backward until we were both standing in the bathroom. Reaching behind him, he closed and locked the door. He never took his eyes off my face.
He dipped his head and kissed me, rubbing his hands up and down my arms. “You’re freezing. You need to warm up. Sit down.”
I sat at the little counter wedged between the linen closet and the bathtub. It looked like it had been put there as an afterthought. David plugged the hair dryer into the socket. He made a face, turning the dryer around, looking for the power switch.
“It’s on the bottom of the handle.”
He smiled. “I knew that. I was just making sure you were paying attention. How do you do this? Do you brush and dry, or just blow it around?”
I laughed. “Give it here, I’ll do it.” I reached for the hair dryer, and he lifted it over his head.
“No.”
I stared at him before shrugging. “Okay…just brush it straight and dry it.”
He flipped the power on and ran the brush through my hair, blowing the warm air across it. I watched him in the mirror. His brow was furrowed, the same look he made when he was really concentrating on his coursework or on his art. He worked slowly, brushing my hair with gentle strokes. I closed my eyes and let the feeling relax me. I was disappointed when I realized I needed him to stop.
Standing up, I pulled the plug out of the wall. Looking at him in the mirror, I shook my head, trying to find the words to express the feelings, physical and emotional, I had. I wasn’t sure what they meant, so how was I supposed to communicate them to him?
“David, I…”
He took me by the shoulders and turned me around to face him. He lowered his lips, moving them over mine. Dropping the hair dryer on the floor, he reached around my waist and lifted me on top of the vanity, our lips never leaving one another’s.
Our breathing increased. I could feel his heart hammering against his chest, and a small portion of my brain gloated of my index fingerororGeorgel f that his physical response to me was as great as mine to him. I pushed my hands under his shirt, running my fingernails across his skin. He grabbed the hem of my t-shirt and pulled it up—and I pushed it down, jerking away.
“David, I can’t.”
He didn’t answer. His hands gripped the counter on either side of me. His head bowed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t say that.” Tears pressed the back of my eyes, pushing their way out. One ran down my cheek. I swiped it away angrily. I didn’t want to cry.
“What?”
“Don’t say you’re sorry. Think it, but please don’t say it. I’m not.”
“Geez, Eva. Can’t you see? I’m not sorry about that. I’m sorry our living arrangement isn’t different. That I can’t take you out on a real date. Instead, I maul you in the bathroom.” He ran his hand down his face in frustration. “I’m not sorry I kissed you.”
“Are you guys coming out or what? It’s the only bathroom in this thing, you know,” Aidan yelled outside the door.
I smiled. David groaned.
David opened the door and elbowed Aidan in the ribs. “You’re a moron.”
“What? I have to go.” Aidan smirked as he closed the door behind him.
David sat on my bed, his bac
k against the headboard, his legs stretched out in front of him. I was lying sideways, cur at him. I did
Chapter 13:
Electricity
Month Nine
“You want to go on a picnic?” David asked me.
“Yes. Can you break us out of here?”
“No, but I can manage a picnic, and maybe even some alone time.” He grabbed the quilt off his bed.
Threading his fingers through mine, he pulled me behind him to the storage room, where he pulled his wet clothes out of the washer and stuffed them into the dryer before turning it on.
“I didn’t know we were doing laundry,” I teased.
He gave me a smile. “Hush.”
David turned on the washer, stuffed it full of clothes, and dumped detergent in the tub.
What the heck is he doing?
Then he spread his quilt on the floor, grabbed our MREs off the shelf and laid them on the blanket with two bottles of water. After shoving the rubber doorstop under the door—making it next to impossible for anyone to push it open from the other side—he plopped down on the quilt and looked at me expectantly.
“Sit down, Eva.” He patted a spot next to him.
“Okay.” I lowered myself down next to him and watched him open our MREs, laying them out in front of us on the quilt like a gourmet feast.
“There. How’s this?”
“As far as picnics go? It’s definitely a first for me.”
“Yeah, the laundry area probably isn’t the most romantic place to have a picnic, but it has three things that make it the best room in the house…or POD, whatever.”
“And what are they?”
“First, it’s my laundry day, so no one will be in here. Second, the washer and dryer drown out the noise of the others, so we can talk without them interrupting or hearing everything we say.”
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