The A-Game (new version)

Chapter 18.

Myrtle found the wrapper on the floor of the girl's bathroom, carelessly abandoned as if it were an empty candy wrapper. But it wasn't. She knew the moment she laid eyes on it what it was, when she saw the red wrapper ripped open and the contents inside missing. Thornton knew better not to use the condoms. He had watched her prick every single one of them with a pin. Who could it have been? She swore at herself now as she looked at it on the floor. Why had she poked holes in them again? Sentimental reasons? Because they were products used to prevent pregnancy when it was all she had ever wanted? A baby? But looking at floor, at the unwrapped, red wrapper alerted something inside her. It was that now of all times, during the apocalypse, was a time of all times to use condoms during intercourse, and she had probably gotten someone pregnant with her carelessness.

She couldn't stuff the guilt down this time. She was able to do it when she stole the badge from the cop, and she was able to do it after she killed the man at the lamp post, but she couldn't do it now. Though she herself had not "participated" in the act, she could be responsible for the creation of a life. The thought was nauseating when she looked out the store's doors to see the wendigoes roaming, those cursed creatures who fed on humans. You couldn't have a baby during that. What had Myrtle done?

As Myrtle was on her way to the front room, she heard a noise coming from her far right, in another room that Myrtle had never cared to enter. Being wary as to remaining stealth, Myrtle crept around the corner till she was stooping near the door of the office from which the sounds were coming.

"-telling me, that you didn't have an ounce of feelings for me, when you took my virginity..." It was the girl, Myrtle noted. A twinge of unease crept down her spine.

"No. I told you. It was a mistake. It shouldn't have happened," the teenage boy countered. Myrtle chewed on the edge of her thumb-nail, a habit she had spent years to break only for it to be awakened now. The boy and his adopted sister? Together? The family would not be happy about that when they found out, and surely they would once the girl started to show...NO! Myrtle reminded herself that there was every possibility the girl wasn't pregnant just as there was a possibility that she was. She couldn't afford to get ahead of herself.

"Well it did happen and you're telling me you felt nothing throughout?"

"No. I told you. It was a simple act of pleasing each other, for the good of forgetting everything else."

"for the good of forgetting everything else?" the girl asked blandly.

"Seriously, Misty! You didn't think that at all when I was kissing you? When it started happening?"

"Oh you mean when we had sex? For the love of God, Leo. We had sex in an apocalypse. Of course I thought that, but it doesn't mean I didn't think there were other things at play too. I...I love you. That's the truth of it, and I'm certain you love me too. You just won't admit it."

"My rationality was clouded over with lust, and don't get me wrong I don't regret it. The sex was surprisingly good..."

"For you" she interrupted.

"But I don't love you," Leo finished.

"You don't love me?" Her voice was controlled and shaking with anger.

"No. I'm fifteen years old. You can't be in love when you're fifteen."

"Right, because you know, it's not like I love you or anything. After all, I'm fifteen."

"Misty, I seriously believe that you think you love me, just because we did something that most people do when they're in love. You want to love me, because that would justify your actions-"