Tooth and Nail (Draft In Progress - Book One)

Chapter 22 - Paint It Red

The first thing we did was pick up everything off the floors and put them on a surface. We swept, dusted, moved furniture, vacuumed until the power cut off at noon, and closed every window. The house looked less sad with the floor clear. If you could walk down the hall, you felt at home, and not in an episode of Hoarders. Cade took to the living room first, and I at the front of the house. We shouted back and forth to each other, happy to once again be in a safe place, warm and shielded.

That was all I wanted for Cade, for him to be safe. He had stayed up so many nights before all of this with me while I cried, consoling me and helping me get to sleep. I felt so safe, curled up with my stuffed animals listening to him talk. He would call me, I would put my earbuds in, and he would just talk and talk until I fell asleep listening to the low and luxurious rhythm of his words.

He stayed up until two with me, once. I'd fallen asleep on a video call with the camera still propped up in my hand pointing at my face. He stayed up just watching my nose twitch and my eyelashes flutter, but I'd had a bad dream and woke up to him looking at me. I think that's why people like falling in love and getting married and sleeping together. So when they have bad dreams, they don't wake up alone. I hate being alone.

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Lori looked beautiful, silhouetted against the bright white light shining through the bamboo straw blinds in the front room. So much light pouring in onto her and her delicate frame. Lori was not a delicate person, but she had a delicate body. She did gymnastics from the moment she could walk to the summer before high school. She was so strong and lean and beautiful. She still was beautiful. But now her muscles were disappearing and her hair was getting thinner and her face was getting softer. It was like watching a picture fade, but she only gets more perfect the more she settles in to the woman she'll be for the rest of her - of our - lives.

I wish I could hold her. I wish I could lay beside her and fall asleep and be there when she wakes up in a cold sweat from another one of her awful bad dreams. But here I am, stuck two doors down from her still, even after the apocalypse starts. She won't have me in her bed. It's a loyalty thing, I guess. Even though Ellis is dead, she doesn't want me with her. I get it. I understand. I wouldn't want her with me if I was still with Jezebel.

Is that the same thing, though? Jezebel and I had had a whirlwind adventure in five months that I can only describe as something she wouldn't journal about. That jackass Allen had hurt her, and I was the first one to her door when she called an Emergency Movie Night with our friends. I brought her flowers and a stack of Hershey's bars from the corner store. She fell onto me off of the porch step and hugged me so tightly I thought she was going to tell me she was dying. And I hugged her back for those five minutes before Lori and Tamerlyn and Lauren and Avery arrived in Kate's dad's white SUV with "Don't Stop Believing" blasting out the skylight window and movie watching essentials, including sleeping bags. It was the first time we expressed interest in each other at all. It was the first time we cuddled during one of her famous movie nights. It was the first time I slept with her - or anyone - and I woke up with her still wrapped in my arms and wearing my black Selina sweatshirt. I didn't want to move and risk waking her up, risk her regretting giving herself to me.

She suffered a pretty bad concussion a week later. I don't think she remembers how we began, but I know she remembers how it ended. She walked into rehearsal ten minutes early and I was making out with Kate in the dressing room. Don't even ask me why - that's the thing that I can't remember. So we each have our memories. And between us, it's quite a story to tell. I'm glad we stayed friends, though. I couldn't bear to have to go without Jezebel. She had a magnetism... She was magnetic.

But Lori. Oh, Lori. When Jezebel said goodbye to me and ran back to Allen, begging to know what she had ever done wrong to warrant his leaving her (because she genuinely didn't know, after all), easily winning him back with her sly smile and twirling her hair around her finger, Lori was the first and only one in our group who was on my side. And they never broke up again, Jessie and Al. Allebel. Jezen. Whatever they are. That was two years ago.