Forever and Always

Fights and Deaths

Stevan had found his way into the hearts of everyone in the prison. There was only one person who he couldn't persuade to like him.

Carl.

Whenever he told a joke, Carl would glare at him. He would talk to someone and Carl would roll his eyes.

I thought that I was the only one who noticed it, but one day Steven snapped at him.

"What the hell is your problem?"

At first Carl had ignored him and continued with the game of poker that he, Daryl, Maggie, and I were playing. Then I saw a glint in his eyes and he slammed his cards on the table.

"What's my problem? I don't know. Maybe it's the fact that you haven't been pulling your weight around here. Maybe because you spend more time looking in the mirror and fixing your hair than you do looking for food and helping out. Why don't you grow a pair and actually kill some damn Walkers?"

Beth, Daryl, and I all screamed,"Carl!" at the same time.

He turned to face us,"You guys can't say it isn't true."

I thought about it. Carl was right. Stevan would go out on runs with us, but he wouldn't find a single thing or bring a single bag back to the prison. Maggie had tried to teach him how to care for the babies, but he could never do it right. When Beth offered to take the time to help him learn, he refused and sat in his cot. He would take a half hour in the shower and waste the little supply of water that we did have. Whenever we saw Walkers, Stevan would run and hide until Carl and I got rid of them. Every last thing that Carl had said was true, but nobody would have ever said what he said to Stevan because it was mean and Stevan helped everyone out by making them laugh even when they didn't want to.

I didn't respond to Carl's little dig and instead, grabbed the boy's arm and pulled him to our cell.

"What is wrong with you?" I whisper-screamed.

"What's wrong with you?" he said with a disappointed look on his face.

"Why are you giving me that look? I should be doing that to you. What you just said to Stevan wasn't cool. Are you jealous or something?"

He scoffed,

"Don't do that. If you have something to say, say it."

"He likes you. More than likes you. He looks at you the way that I do."

I stared at him in bewilderment. What he was saying was that the boy that was one of my best friends still had feelings for me. Before the apocalypse, I had read a few books where something like this would happen. Not once had I ever thought that it would happen to me. I had always dismissed the storied by telling myself that it wasn't real and nothing like that could ever happen. But now that I was thinking about it, it had to happen to someone out there, right? Someone had to experience this to get the idea to write about it.

"We went through this already. I don't like him like that."

"Yeah, but you could start to. You did once before."

I squinted my eyes,"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You guys used to date. You had feelings for each other. You fell for him. You could do it again."

I was angry now,"Is there something that you want to get off your chest?"

"He's blonde, tall, an athlete. He has eyes that are an aqua color. Why would you stick with the person with the brown hair and blue eyes?"

"Maybe because I love him. I told you that I didn't have feelings like that for Stevan and apparently you can't get that through you damn thick skull, Jack Ass."