It's Complicated: A Zombie Romance Novel

Riding in Cars with Boys

I'd waited too long. There was no where to run. All the buses were gone. Somewhere, I wasn't privy to where, Lee Ann was traveling to a party with my stuff. She had everything I owned and I didn't have bus fare to get back to her house.

I sat on the curb, my options grim. Someone stood next to me. Gideon. The guy I'd just pushed away. The zombie guy that just bit me. This would not go well. 

'You're just going to walk away from that?' I asked myself. The taste of his lips still clung to me, like static after a lightning storm.

"You still want to go?" he asked.

"Well, I don't really have that option anymore do I?" I retorted. I wasn't happy in this moment, but death appeared better than being left behind. So what if my graduating class was dead? I just wanted to be with Lee Ann to cry. Gideon sat down beside me. I didn't have the energy to move so I glared at him instead.

"Mae, if you want to go I can take you," he said. "You were just so vocal about not wanting to go."

"In what universe?" I asked, "The buses are gone with Lee Ann on them. I don't even know the location of the party."

"I do," he stated.

"You do?" I was stunned. I shouldn't be, though. He was class president and valedictorian. Of course he'd be in the know. In fact, he probably helped pick the location.

"So you could get us there?" He nodded. 

"But I need you to answer a question first." I waited. He looked at me intently. He paused for a long time before he asked, "Are you in love with Lee Ann?" 

"What?!" I stood up fast. Fast enough to feel a rush to my head. The world started to spin. 

 "Where did that come from?" I asked. 

"Well, you two are super close," he said. "Inseparable. You aren't like that with anyone else. You spend all your time together, sleep over at each other's house." 

'Did he have this list pre-thought up in his head?' I thought as he continued to name things Lee Ann and I did as friends. Must have, because he was still ticking off more fingers. I decided to interject.

"That's all normal friend stuff," I said. 

'Wasn't it?' I asked myself. I'd never looked at our relationship through any lens but friendship. Gideon forced me into taking a different look. Why couldn't girls just be friends anymore? Somehow it had become an expectation that we had to defend platonic relationships. 

"What the two of you do is not normal," Gideon assured me. He ran his hand through his hair. "She's always talking about kissing you and you never say no."

"I've never kissed Lee Ann!" I said indignantly.

"Maybe," he said, standing up next to me. He brushed off his jeans. The curb was pretty gross, but I didn't really care. I let the grim cling to my angry butt. 

"Lee Ann is into boys," I said. "I think."

He shook his head. "You don't see the way she looks at you," he said. "Or you at her."

'I am into you,' I retorted back in my head. On the outside I threw up my hands in aggravation. I'd really never thought about anyone but Gideon, ever.

"So it's true. You like her."

'No, no, no!' I screamed in my head. I couldn't believe it. The guy I'd had a crush on my entire High School career thought that I was dating my best friend. It was laughable. So that's what I did. I broke out into an uncontrollable laughing fit.