Reawakening (16 page)

Oh Lord yes, how she knew that his heart was eating at him and understood why he had to walk away with his hands in his hair.

Because it was the way she felt, too.

Chapter Seven

He wouldn’t talk to her for a long, long while. Not on the ride back. Not after she’d cleaned herself up. She sat down to eat, and he left the table and disappeared upstairs.

At least Blake’s expression was sympathetic. And he added a
he’ll come around
, just for good measure.

“You just scared him, June. He doesn’t deal well with things that scare him. I wasn’t even sure anything could make him scared, until he got a Spidey-sense tingle and demanded to know where you’d gone.”

She gave him a hug for that Spidey-sense comment. One-armed, leaning in. Intending it to be casual and like a thank you until Blake suddenly gripped the back of her t-shirt and pressed his face into her hair.

Then it just made her fiercely love him and want to cry all at the same time. God, she would never have gone to the gas station alone if she’d known this would happen. It wasn’t even the zombie attack, really. She suspected they’d have reacted the same way if nothing had happened at all.

It was just the idea of someone disappearing. Of being there one moment and not the next. Do it for long enough and you start to think you’re a mental case who’s just imagined that girl who came into your life a few months ago.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and meant it. Because he was shaking and obviously as strung out as Jamie. Just in a different way. “I swear, I won’t ever do anything like that again.”

“Don’t be sorry. We should be sorry for wanting you attached to our hips when you can clearly take care—”

She cut him off. That was worse than the fury, hearing him try to explain or not be a chauvinist or some other dumb thing. As though she wouldn’t have done the same if they’d disappeared on her!

“Stop, Blake. It’s okay for you to be worried about me. It’s okay. It’s more than okay. Just don’t…don’t apologize for that.”

He nodded against the side of her face and the death grip he had on her relaxed, somewhat.

“He’s mad at himself too, you know. You should go talk to him.”

She rolled those words over in her head.
Mad at himself.
Over what? Over getting so afraid for her? He shouldn’t be, he just shouldn’t be—she had to go and talk to him. It had been a need before, but now it was a pressing urge.

“Okay, okay,” she said then he let her go. Though he seemed to appreciate the little stroke of her hand through his hair before she left the kitchen and climbed the stairs of doom.

He was in the bathroom but both doors were shut. The one that led from the hall and the one that led from the bedroom. Usually he left at least one of them partially open—though it didn’t matter anyway ‘cause you could always tell he was in there. With Jamie, there was no danger of accidentally walking in on him—he always sang in the shower or hummed to himself while shaving or shouted that Kanye West had a new album out from the john.

She loved his never-ending stack of old newspapers. She loved him for pretending they’d only been printed that morning, instead of years ago.

But now the doors were shut and locked, and he wasn’t singing or talking about the oil spill in Nicaragua or anything like it. She thought about all of those pills in the medicine cabinet and went a little crazy, briefly.

“Jamie?”

Saying his name like that—it made her wonder. Was it really Jamie or had it started off James or Jimmy or maybe a surname like Jameson? Maybe his actual first name didn’t have anything to do with the letter J at all. Maybe it was Clyde. Clyde Jameson.

Though really, all of these thoughts were only there to distract her from the lack of answer. She knew it. Anybody would know it. She sounded desperate and wavery and not like herself.

“Jamie, I…uh…”

“I don’t wanna talk right now, June,” he said, which stung. But at least there were words. At least he was still breathing.

“I know. I know, it’s just…I wanted to say that I was sorry. For going off like that. I won’t ever do it again, okay? Because…because I know how much it would fuck with my mind if one of you wandered off somewhere, you know? So I understand. Why you’re mad, I mean.”

Silence, then. A long, long silence. So long, in fact, that she almost went to say something new, until he cut in with—

“I’m not mad, June-bug.”

That was good, right? And if so, then why did it sound kind of bad?

“I’m just…fucked up. Yeah. That’s what I am. Fucked up.”

Oh, right. That was why.

“Just…open the door, okay? Lemme talk to you.”

“I can’t right now, June. I’m just…I’m just not like you.”

That froze her, a little. What did he mean by that? That she was cold and unfeeling? It sounded like it but she pressed to know more, even so. It was better to know if the guy you were apparently in love with thought you were a stone cold bitch.

“And what am I like?”

The answer came back quick. Not even a pause to consider or form a lie or anything like it.

“Amazing.”

And it was so startling, too! She almost jumped at the sound of it, then simply didn’t know what to say on any level. They kept using that word. She didn’t think it meant what they thought it meant.

“That’s what Blake said,” she replied, and that didn’t really seem like the kind of thing an amazing person would mention. It sounded like something a dunderhead would say when they couldn’t think of anything else to bring up.

“He did? Wow. Well, we talked about it. Never thought he’d actually tell you to your face.”

“Why…why not?”

“Come on, June. You know what Blake’s like. Never using three words when he could use one.”

Yeah, she knew. Although sometimes that didn’t seem as true as when she’d first thought it. He could blurt things out with the best of them.

“Well, I’m not. Amazing, I mean. I don’t know why you guys think it, when I do shit like—”

“We think it—
I
think it—because you’re functioning, honey. You’ve come out of all of this functioning.”

For some reason, the words stopped her throat. He was clearly waiting for her to say something in response to that, but nothing made its way out. All this time, she’d thought of herself as this…mess. Unable to sleep, unable to talk, unable to even do something simple like kiss either of them…and that’s what they thought?

“Barely,” she said, finally, but he had a response for that, too.

“No, not barely. I was barely. I know what barely is. They committed me to a psych ward, for barely. And that was just ‘cause a mine took out three of my buddies. Not ‘cause zombies ate my family or some unendurable shit like that.”

She blurted it out before she could get a hold of it.

“I knew. I knew, you know.”

“Knew what?”

“That something had happened to you, before. That something made you this way.”

“What way?”

He sounded nervous, like he was just waiting for the awful verdict. But he didn’t need to be. No, God—he didn’t need to be. They were the two best things about him, really. They made him who he was, and she loved him for it.

“Reckless. Wired,” she said, because that summed him up. That was it—the thing she loved.

And he laughed, once it was out.

“Aw, well. Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s how I am. Better than what I thought you’d go with.”

“And what did you think I’d go with?”

“Nuts.”

It made her laugh too, to hear it. It was almost a bummer to have to go back to something serious. But it had pulled at her long enough and now was the time to talk about it.

“Did you know, Jamie? That this was coming?” She paused, waiting for the world to end because she’d finally asked. But, of course, the world had already ended. What other bad thing could possibly happen? “I don’t mind if you did. I just…want to know everything now. Like—what you did in the army, and how all of this happened, and—”

“Is that what you were hoping? That I’d have answers?”

She closed her eyes. Yeah. Yeah, she supposed that was kind of what she’d been hoping. In amongst the resenting of him for possibly knowing that this was coming, she’d found some time for hope. Explanations would have been so welcome.

“Baby, you’re crazy. How could anyone have seen this insanity was about to hit? You’d go insane knowing it was coming down the pipe at you!”

But of course, of course. She’d known there’d never be any explanations. Though at the very least she got some relief from hearing the incredulity in his voice. From understanding, finally, that he hadn’t had some crazy inside information.

“Is that what you thought all this time, June? That I built this place ‘cause I knew the zombie apocalypse was coming?”

She winced, then. Braced herself for some anger or resentment from him, that she’d thought he was that kind of person.

So when he barked out a laugh, it actually did make her jump this time.

“How could anyone have known it’d be goddamned zombies? They’re not even fuckin’ zombies, really—people just went crazy, you know they did. Probably, like, some mutated rabies virus or some shit like that. And I bet it weren’t even a bomb or some kind of chemical warfare. I bet it was something fuckin’ ridiculous, like GM crops or a new kind of Aspirin.”

She appreciated the kick of mordant humor in his voice. It made the whole thing sound more true—inescapably true. That was what had happened. Just an accident. Just something no one had really expected to happen.

“You know, it’s funny. I built this place ‘cause I wanted a home. And yeah, maybe I thought I’d need it one day. Maybe I saw a little too much of how people treat each other, and reckoned one day we’d all blow ourselves to kingdom come. And boy, did we ever! Oh man, did we ever fuck ourselves up—just not in the way I’d ever imagined. Zombies! Ha!”

He had such a way of making everything all right, even when talking about the most depressing things. Did he know that? She wanted him to know that.

“Open the door, hon,” she said and he did.

Only she couldn’t quite bring herself to hug him the way she’d intended to, because…well. He…she…she couldn’t…

He seemed to have removed most of his clothes. Most of his clothes were off. He was standing at the sink, with a half a face of shaving cream and only a pair of trousers on his nearly totally naked body.

She almost did something very stupid. But it couldn’t be helped! The urge just came on her, like some remnant of polite social etiquette that didn’t really apply now—you walk in on someone in the bathroom, you step away and apologize. The words
oh sorry
even flashed up behind her eyes and she came within an inch of stepping to one side. To putting him out of view and giving him the privacy he obviously didn’t give a shit about.

Why would he give a shit, for God’s sake? He’d had a hand inside her panties. Being stripped to the waist seemed very tame by comparison.

But it was just so…
there
. That was the thing. Suddenly he was a man with a half-naked body, the way Blake had been on that first day. It was arresting and weird and not something she was used to seeing outside the context of bloated zombie carcasses.

Plus, it couldn’t be denied. He looked
damn
good. Damn good in a different way to Blake, but still. Oh so hot. Everything on him seemed lean and rangy and like he’d just been fighting in a pit with seven other men. That was the image that came to mind. Pit fighting. Or maybe surviving in a forest somewhere, with nothing but a pair of trousers and a pocket knife to keep him company.

Yeah. That was what he looked like. As though he actually really used every muscle he had for tough things she couldn’t understand. Plus he had scars—one long one down the lean curve of his back. Another down one ropey arm that ended in an ugly twist just past his elbow.

She almost felt ashamed for drooling when this was clearly the body of some horrific future war survivor. Her mind went to Michael Biehn prancing around half-naked in The Terminator and it just made her feel even worse.

Especially when he seemed to guess what her eyeballs couldn’t get enough of.

“You want me to put some clothes on?”

All she could think was—
dear God
no
.
He wasn’t even joking either or mocking her drooling. He sounded totally sincere.

“It’s…fine,” she said then felt her cheeks heat. Oh, how high her voice had sounded. “I’m just not…I’ve barely seen a naked man in, like, three years.”

“I’ll put some clothes on.”

“No! No. We did that…stuff. It’s cool. You should be naked often. I want you to be naked.” She swallowed, thickly. Largely around her own mortification. Had she just said
you should be naked often?
Like what? Like a continuous around the clock sort of thing? “Oh, boy. I’m saying a lot of words. A lot, a lot. Let’s just…breeze right by them.”