It’s what he calls me when my hair is particularly poufy, but he hasn’t said it in years. A cracked laugh escapes my lips. “Really?”
“Yes, really.” He pulls me to him, arms snug around my shoulders. “Your hair’s looking extremely poodle-riffic today.”
“It’s still wet, jerk. Do you actually want me to forgive you?”
His warm laugh vibrates from his chest to mine. This is familiar, but it doesn’t feel right the way it once did. I don’t feel right. I feel trapped once again, and it’s worse than ever because I was free. That tells me more than I want to know, so I attempt to force it from my consciousness. I can love Ethan the way I loved him before, if only I try hard enough.
42
Tom
A ten by ten room isn’t very large. Not large enough for two grown men who aren’t imprisoned, anyway. I’m sure I could’ve gotten my own room had I asked, but part of me doesn’t want to be alone even if it means being cramped.
Sam finishes making up his cot while I survey my own. Ethan found me a better one than the camping special in the pile, with a real foam mattress instead of taut canvas stretched over an aluminum frame. I’ve been sleeping on a couch, but this seems worse somehow. The couch was impermanent. It’s only been a matter of hours, but this cot seems to say: Welcome to your lonely future, Tom.
I set one of the solar lanterns beside it, then straighten out my blanket—a comforter with the Care Bears on one side. Clara handed it to me as a joke, and when I hugged it to my chest and refused to give it up, she laughed her ass off. She hasn’t laughed that hard at one of my jokes since the age when she loved Care Bears, which makes using the damn thing more than worth it.
Sam moves to the center of our space and rummages in his pack. “Have to say, the bed at the house was more comfortable.”
“Tell me about it,” I mutter. “Why are we here?”
“I follow Rose and the kids. Seems like maybe you do, too.”
I look his way, certain Sam has somehow heard my earlier thoughts, but the man’s face is impassive. “Clara does, and I follow her.”
“Barry seems to think we’ll be good in another month or two. I’m thinking…”
“Fat chance of that?” I offer.
Sam winks. “I knew I liked you.”
The curtains move, and Rose sticks in her head. The rest of her follows, wearing jeans, a black tank top, and her sheath on her belt. It’s warm in the building, and I heard her huffing and puffing while she made her bed on the other side of the curtain. I purposely don’t look at her creamy cleavage, instead studying the tattoo that covers her shoulder and upper arm—a spill of flowers that I admired (silently, of course) when I first saw it years ago. I also try not to remember what she said about Ethan. How happy she seemed without him and how she’s gone quieter since his appearance.
“This is small for two big boys like yourselves.” Rose moves the pole on my side of the room six inches into her space. She does the same with the back corner and then uses her knees to shove my cot that way. She takes in her changes with a nod, then flops down on the Care Bears.
“We’re fine,” I say. “Don’t take space from you and Ethan.”
“How much space do we need?” The Care Bears comforter wrinkles. She twists onto her side, messing up the smooth lines I perfected only minutes ago. This might be a source of irritation except for the fact that Rose lies in my bed, and I can’t find much fault with that. “This is comfortable, Daddy. Better than my air mattress.”
Sam lowers himself to his cot, eyes twinkling. “You might want to ask Tom before you take a nap in his bed.”
Rose covers her mouth. “This is your bed? I thought it was my dad’s, and here I am getting all comfy in it. Why didn’t you say something?” She jumps up and straightens the covers. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I say, though I can’t resist pulling one corner to smooth out a wrinkle.
“I like your comforter.”
“Me, too.”
She laughs, then walks to the curtain and stands with her hands clasped at her waist. “It’s time for dinner. The kids said they’d meet us there. Ethan is I don’t know where, and Mitch went to explore but said to go if she wasn’t back. Are you guys ready?”
“I’m not hungry, baby doll,” Sam says. “But you go ahead.”
Rose blinks and twists her hands together. “Tom?”
“Sure.” I’m not very hungry, but it’s clear she wants company. “Let’s go.”
Her smile practically blinds me. Rose retrieves a hoodie from her room and zips it up as we walk through the open loading door toward the tent in the lot. She’s silent for a few feet, then she says, “I guess you’re wondering about me and Ethan. He swore he’s been clean and asked for one more chance. I’m either an optimist or an idiot. Or maybe an optimistic idiot. But I felt like I had to.”
“He’s your husband,” I say evenly.
Rose nods and tucks a curl behind her ear. The rest of her hair sways down her back. A few tendrils blow in the breeze. I’ve stood beside her for years, hardly thinking of her hair, and now it’s begging me to touch it. I stick my hands in my pockets.
“I brought my phone,” she says out of nowhere. “Once it’s charged, we can listen to music, if you still want to. Or you can borrow it. You don’t have to listen with me. It’s not a package deal or anything.”
She keeps her focus on the tent while the words spill from her mouth, and I sense a deeper question: Are you still my friend? The fact she’d worry about that lifts my spirits an unreasonable amount. “Can we listen together without headphones?” I ask. “I don’t think they’ll like us making noise.”
I know they won’t. It’s on the list of rules that seems a mile long. Stay relatively quiet, no fighting, showers every four days, charging electronics every three, privileges revoked for infractions, be prompt for your meal hours, sign up for work or risk no meal hour. I’m always ready to do my share—more than my share—but I hate to be ordered around like a child, and a dumb one at that.
“I have earbuds,” Rose says. “We’ll stick one in your ear and the other in mine. Mitch and I did that all the time in high school.”
“Okay.”
I try to sound casual, am sure I fail. Though Rose doesn’t look at me, I see how her cheek curves with a smile. “Okay.”
Maybe what I feel for Rose is gratitude. Gratitude, along with the loss of Sheila, has me all mixed up. Of course I want a partner. I’m human. But Rose and I are only friends, though there’s no only about it. For two decades, my friends were people Sheila gathered and kept in touch with, who showed up at our house when she invited them. They were nice enough, but I never connected with them the way I did in my younger years. Rose is my first real friend since before college, and I’ll do my best to keep her that way.
She slows as we approach the tent, hand shielding her eyes from the sun. Once inside, where the noise of people talking turns to a clamor, she inches close enough for me to smell lavender.
“Should we get food or wait for everyone?” I ask.
“I guess…get food? Do you see where to go?” Her gaze roves the tent’s interior, darting place to place until it settles on the far wall.
“Are you all right?”
“Of course,” she says.
But her discomfort is obvious, and I realize the woman who leapt a fence into zombies and told me off pretty spectacularly is terrified of the regular old people sitting in this tent eating dinner. I shouldn’t be surprised; like me, Rose sticks to the corners when out in the world. I do it because I can’t be bothered, but she does it because she’s overwhelmed.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” I ask.
“Countless horrors.” Rose shrugs as though embarrassed. “I don’t like not knowing where to go or what to do. And I don’t like big groups of people. Especially if I’m alone.”
“You’re not alone. I’m sure, if we put our minds together, we can figure out how to ge
t a plate of food without the world crashing down around us.”
“It already crashed, so we’re good there,” she says, eyes crinkling at the corners. They’re bright blue, and her lips are so pink in contrast. I’ve never denied Rose is pretty, but it’s always been a cerebral acknowledgment. This isn’t cerebral; this is wanting to taste those lips, grab a handful of curls, bury my face in her scent.
I scrub the thought from my mind, somewhat horrified at its appearance. It has to be this place. I was fine at the house, never thinking of Rose in this way. At least I thought I didn’t, but I can’t deny I wait for her to wake every morning, that she brightens my day with her jokes and easy way. Maybe deep down I imagined a future where I’d be ready for more, and Ethan’s presence has brought it into consciousness, forced my hand. The more I learn about Rose, the more I want to get to know her, and the chance for that to unfold was plucked from my future by a fifteen-minute ride to the fairgrounds.
Mitch strolls up. “Ready to eat? There are empty tables out back by the food.”
I follow the two while berating myself. Sheila deserves better than to have me lusting after every woman in close proximity less than two months after she died. A bothersome voice in my head declares there are other women here—I saw plenty when Ethan showed us around—but only one holds my interest, and she’s Ethan’s wife. And, the voice continues, as long as we’re on that subject, Ethan’s wife doesn’t seem to like him very much. She said so herself, as a matter of fact.
I tell the voice to shut the hell up.
Outside the rear of the tent, steam billows from the food trucks. Long tables are set up under a smaller tent, behind which people serve food to a line of diners holding plates. There are old folks and kids and a slew of thirty- and forty-something adults. Rose waves at Holly, Jesse, and Clara when we pass a round table. They sit with a few people their age, including Nora.
“Don’t they look like babies?” Rose asks. “I felt so old in my early twenties, but I probably looked like that. Thankfully, they don’t have two kids to raise.”
“I don’t know how anyone our age could date someone that young,” Mitch says. “The only thing I want from a twenty-year-old is for him to move my furniture and weed my lawn.”
I chuckle along with Rose. “There’s something to be said for experience.”
“Ooh, Tom,” Mitch says, hand to her chest. “That sounded vaguely risqué.” My face warms a bit, and I’m thankful a blush doesn’t show on me the way it does on Rose.
Rose narrows her eyes, though she’s smiling. “Oh, please. Next you’ll say that wrinkles are a sign of character and you like a little meat on the bones.”
Both are true. The thought of being with a twenty-something-year-old—Clara’s age, for God’s sake—both exhausts and disturbs me. And I’ve always been a fan of naked ladies of all shapes and sizes. The things Sheila harped on—her thighs, her stomach—were things I didn’t examine with a magnifying glass the way she did. They were warm and pliable, and they shuddered under my touch. That’s the biggest turn-on there is.
“Is there any way I can answer that without damning myself?” I ask.
Rose and Mitch laugh as we get in line. Both say, “Nope.”
“Then I plead the Fifth.”
Ethan walks our way, nodding and waving to people, and I recall how he was always out in the center of the room. When he reaches us, he smiles like he wants in on the joke. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing worth repeating,” Rose says. “The kids seem happy.”
“There are a bunch of people their age here. I’m glad they found each other already.”
Ethan puts his arm around Rose’s shoulder. She stiffens briefly before she relaxes, then steps out from under his arm as the line moves. The arm returns, and a minute later she bends to retrieve a stray piece of paper and walks it to a garbage can. Mitch watches her and turns to find me doing the same. Her raised eyebrow is cynical before her eyes flick to Ethan and away. It’s immoral that Mitch’s thoughts on this subject please me. It’s appalling, really. I smile anyway.
The food is unappetizing: a ladleful of rice, topped with canned vegetables and potatoes in a pool of brown liquid they call stew but is actually meatless, salty gravy. The four of us eat at one of the round tables. Or three of us eat; Rose appears to be forcing down her food by taking tiny bites with big sips of water.
“No good?” I ask her.
She wrinkles her nose. “Why do people dump stuff over rice so that you can’t taste the rice?”
“Because ninety-nine percent of the world likes it that way,” Ethan says.
“Then I’m a one-percenter. Rice belongs on the side so you can mix it together at will, depending on your desired level of sauce-ocity. That way everyone’s happy.”
“You should see her at a restaurant,” Ethan says to me. “Everything on the side or not mixed together. And God forbid you buy her blended yogurt.”
“Blended yogurt is an atrocity.” Rose shivers and points her fork at Ethan. “An atrocity. And anyone who likes gloppy rice is crazy.”
I examine my rice, which is even less appealing now that I’ve realized she’s right. Barry materializes and draws up a chair. “How’s it going? What do you think of the place?”
“Honest answer?” Mitch asks. Barry nods. “The food is terrible and the beds suck. But I guess it’s better than being eaten by zombies.”
“Ouch.” Barry winks. “That review will hurt our Michelin rating for sure.” Mitch sniffs in amusement and returns to her food.
“It can’t be easy to feed all these people,” Rose says. “How much food do you go through a day?”
“You don’t want to know. We have a lot in reserve, and we send out teams to find more. Now that we’ve cleared out the largest groups of Lexers, it should get easier unless more come. We have some places we can hit.”
“Need any help?” I ask. I already want out. A chance to clear my head. Things were good at the house. I knew where I fit in, but now I’m back to square one. Worse than square one.
“Maybe at some point. We lost a team the other day, so know what you’re getting into.”
“How could we not know?” Mitch asks.
“You can never be too careful in today’s litigious society, but we’re out of waivers.” Barry seems pleased when Mitch’s stern countenance cracks at his joke, and Rose’s gaze pings between the two of them before she smiles to herself.
“I’ll go.” Ethan runs his fingers through Rose’s hair and pushes it behind her ear. “I don’t want you out there.”
She ducks from his hand, patting her hair carefully. “I can go if we need to. I lived out there.”
Ethan covers his frown with a smile he sends our way. “I forgot there’s no touching the merchandise, especially if it’s still damp. If you do, the curls frizz and you never hear the end of it.”
I nod, glad I never touched it, though I still want to. “Where do you guys get the food?” I ask Barry.
“Anywhere we can find. If you know of any place we may have missed, chime in. We have a map in the Events Center if it’ll help jog your memory.”
Mitch pauses in her eating. Rose seeks me out across the table but doesn’t speak. Always Ready is there for the taking, but I’m as reluctant as them to give it up. We might need it.
“I assume you’ve hit up WinCo,” Rose says. “They have tons of bulk foods.”
“It’s on our list, but it’s been surrounded since the beginning,” Barry says. “Not sure there’s anything left anyway.”
Rose nods. “It’s the first place I would’ve gone. How about Crest Mills? It’s on the way to Junction City. They have flour and beans and other stuff.”
Barry pulls a small pad and pen from his coat pocket, then writes it down. “Great idea. Thanks.”
“Hummingbird Wholesale?” Rose continues. “They have everything from pasta to nut butter. There’s Glory Bee—you can get all kinds of oils there, since they supply soapmaker
s. And honey, of course. Mountain Rose herbs probably doesn’t have that much food, but they do have oils and natural medicines. And Grain Millers, by the highway? It’s only a few avenues away.”
“We have Hummingbird but haven’t been able to get over there yet. I don’t know why we didn’t think of Glory Bee. And Grain Millers was a bust. We thought there’d be a ton, but there was almost nothing.”
“Oh, you know what? I read that they bought a big warehouse on Bertelsen Road a while ago. Maybe most of it’s there?”
She gives him the approximate address, then lists a few wholesalers I’ve never heard of. Barry finishes writing on his pad and breaks into a grin. “Ethan, you didn’t tell me Rose was a walking encyclopedia of out-of-the-way food stores.”
“She’s amazing,” Ethan says. I want to find fault, but his expression is transparently adoring, and the knife of jealousy twists a little in my gut. I have to let this go. Will let it go right now. Now. Done.
“It’s my job to know what’s where,” Rose says. “Real estate.”
“And a realtor will save them all.” Barry gets to his feet and sticks the pad in his pocket. “This is helpful. Thanks.”
“Sure. I’ll let you know if I think of more.”
“See you all later,” Barry says. He nods at Mitch before his big frame makes its way through the tables.
“He seems nice,” Rose says.
Ethan eats his last bite of food and pushes his plate away. “He is.”
Rose nudges Mitch. “I said, he seems nice.”
Mitch lifts her head, inhaling noisily. “Please don’t start. If you’d seen the shower tent, you’d know this is not the time for intimate relations.”
“What’s wrong with the showers?”
“We get camping showers. Lukewarm water in a rubber bag with a hose. You get a bag’s worth every four days. Otherwise, it’s cold water city.”
Rose lifts a forkful of sodden rice, inspects it, and drops it onto her plate. I consider offering to get her a scoop of plain rice, but it seems overly familiar and too much like something Ethan should do. “It’s not that different from the RV shower,” she says. “At least the cold water runs, and we brought deodorant. Just skip over third base and slide straight into home.”
The Cascadia Series (Book 1): World Departed Page 40