Until the End of the World (Book 2): And After

  Well, that definitely wasn’t helpful. I shake my head and say, “I don’t want to die. I want to see Bits grow up. I want to kiss Penny’s baby.”

  I want both of those things a lot. A light warmth blossoms in my chest. It almost feels like happiness.

  “I want things,” Dan says. “But there’s no guarantee. I try to remind myself of that, so I’m not disappointed.”

  “Hence, the flask,” I say, and sit up. He gives me a small smile. “So, what do you want?”

  I hold out my cup, and he fills it silently. At first I don’t think he’s going to answer, but then he raises his eyes to mine and his Adam’s apple bobs. “Right now I want to kiss you.”

  The heat that floods my stomach has nothing to do with the mead. I want him to kiss me. I don’t want him to. I freeze, cup in the air, until he makes the decision and leans forward. He tastes like maple and smells of lake and leather. I consider pretending he’s Adrian, but I think about Adrian enough. I want to feel something real.

  Dan pulls back and his eyes flicker between mine uncertainly. “Are y—”

  I cut him off with another kiss. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want anything gentle. I don’t want the spell broken because I know I’ll leave, and I don’t want to leave. I pull off his shirt and move my teeth to the smattering of freckles on his shoulder. When I look again, I’m glad to see the softness in his eyes is gone.

  He unhooks my bra one-handed faster than I could. Dan’s unhooked a lot of bras in his life, I’ll bet. I run my tongue along his bottom lip, still sweet from the mead, and trail my hand down his chest to the button of his jeans. He pants into my mouth and sweeps me onto the floor.

  The weight of his body is good. It anchors me, keeps me from feeling the way I have—like one of those helium balloons on a strand of curling ribbon I’d get as a kid. It always seemed that they slipped away so easily. I’d watch them after they escaped, becoming a smaller and smaller dot against the blue of the sky, until they were too tiny to see. I’ve been afraid that’s where I was headed, up to where no one could see me or reach me. But right now the ribbon is tied around Dan’s wrist. I’m tethered to the earth.

  And then there’s nothing but the two of us. There’s not even room for Adrian. There’s only this tent and Dan and the slippery nylon of the sleeping bag under me, all glowing in the golden light of the lantern.

  CHAPTER 51

  Dan is asleep, arm draped over my chest, but I still struggle for air after I’ve laid it back by his side. I wish I could take last night back, but all I can do is leave and pretend it didn’t happen. Pretend I’m not the kind of person who sleeps with someone mere months after her fiancé has died. I pull on my clothes and slip out of the tent. The sun is rising and mist swirls along the lake’s shore. I walk to a tree and lean my forehead against the bark. Once my breathing steadies, my stomach revolts. It could be the mead, I guess, but I know it’s not.

  I walk toward the stone house, hoping to pretend I spent the night there and am already up for the day, and almost turn in mid-stride at the sight of someone on the deck. I brave a look and sag with relief to find it’s Peter. He’s at the table, bent over a backpacking stove. I walk up the steps and plop into the chair next to his.

  “Hey,” he says.

  I duck my head. Peter doesn’t say anything more, only places his steaming mug of coffee in front of me. I don’t like coffee, but I need to wash the taste of last night out of my mouth. I take a sip to find it’s a latte, loaded with sugar.

  I lift my head in awe. “Don’t even tell me this place has a Starbucks.”

  The last latte I had was the day before we left the city, over a year ago. He pulls out a tiny stovetop espresso maker from near his feet.

  “I wanted to try it out and knew you’d want one,” he says, and raises a finger to his lips. “But it’s a secret. If everyone knew they’d be ordering drinks like I was a barista.”

  “They totally would.” I laugh and take another sip. “This is so good. Thank you, Petey. I’ve been dying for a double-tall, caramel macchiato, ex—”

  “Extra hot, extra caramel,” Peter finishes.

  “How do you remember that?” I ask. “I guess you bought me enough of them, huh?”

  He used to bring me one whenever he came to my house, or have one waiting at his place. They were too rich for my blood to buy every day.

  “Thanks for all those, by the way,” I say. “I know you were incredibly wealthy and all, but it was still nice of you.”

  I hold the cup out, but he nudges it back. “It’s yours. Maybe one day I’ll surprise you with some caramel sauce.”

  I toast him with my cup. If anyone in the apocalypse could make caramel sauce, it’d be Peter. “Oh man, if you do that, I’ll love you forever.”

  “So, Dan?” Peter asks, and puts on more espresso.

  “So, I’m a horrible person.” The latte sloshes in my stomach. “What was I thinking? Adrian…”

  Peter looks up. “Adrian would want you to be happy.”

  I watch the flame hiss under the coffee pot. He’s probably right; if Adrian’s watching me, he knows how much I miss him. How much I wanted to join him. He would only smile and wipe my tears away. Maybe that’s the worst part: that someone like that is gone.

  “I just needed—I don’t know—someone? Something?” I wrap my arms around my knees and watch the ripples on the lake where the fish have come up for their bug breakfast buffet. “It’s nice to have someone who really loves you, inside and out, you know? Who appreciates the weird things you do, even if they’re slightly crazy-making.”

  “I know all about the crazy-making,” Peter says.

  I laugh at his long-suffering expression. “Yes, yes you do. More than most. I mean little stuff. Like how Adrian would throw or drop the last bite of food onto his plate, as if it were a grenade about to go off. Most people save the best bite for last, but he’d eat until the last bite and then—BOOM!—done. It killed me every time because who does that?”

  “So that’s why you always ate his last bite,” Peter says. “I wondered.”

  “You thought I was pilfering his food, didn’t you? What do you people think of me?” I shake my head at his laugh and continue. “And about four times a year, he’d fold all my socks and underwear and arrange them in my drawer in these orderly rows. He’d show it to me like it was this amazing feat and then get all irritated when I wasn’t impressed. But I thought it was sweet how excited he got over that dumb drawer, even though I knew it was going to lead to a lecture on the importance of organization.

  “And it used to drive him crazy how I’d get out of his car. He said I used my foot to push the door open. I’d try not to, but I’d forget and there’d be a footprint on the door. He was always like, ‘My car’s already a piece of shit, you don’t have to kick it.’ ”

  “I know all about that, too,” Peter says. “You have no idea how many times I wiped your shoeprint off my door.”

  I cover my mouth when a huge laugh escapes. “Really? Except your car wasn’t a piece of shit.”

  “It was a beautiful piece of German engineering.”

  “I’ll get you another. I can afford it now. I’ll trade you for caramel sauce.”

  Peter watches me, waiting for more. Now that I’ve opened the floodgates, I can’t stop talking.

  “And I miss the silly things. We had an ongoing game where we’d sing an awful song, just to make the other person get it stuck in their head. And we’d act super annoyingly in love, even when we were alone, just to amuse ourselves. It all comes up and smacks me in the back of the head when I least expect it. There are all the big parts of missing someone, but there are a million little parts.”

  “I know,” Peter says, and I know he does. He’s spent his whole life missing people. “It’s okay to want that again. It doesn’t take away from what you had with Adrian.”

  “It won’t happen again.”

  “What won’t happen again? What you had, or last nigh
t?”

  “Both.”

  “Does Dan know that?” Peter asks.

  I laugh despite myself. “Do you think I really need to tell Dan it was a one night stand? Dan is a one night stand.”

  “I think he likes you.”

  “Dan likes everyone. Name one girl Dan doesn’t at least partially like.”

  “You don’t know how easy you are to love,” Peter says with a shake of his head.

  “Oh, please. What does that even mean?”

  “There’re no games, no craziness. You’re just you. You’re easy to be around.”

  Nelly once said everyone’s entitled to one crackup in their lifetime. I’d already used mine, and here I’ve gone and had another. The first was three years. At least this time I’ve whittled it down to around three months. A personal best.

  “I’d say I’ve been pretty crazy and difficult to be around.”

  “Why must you argue when someone says something nice about you? It’s really annoying.” I hide my smile because that’s another thing that drove Adrian crazy, and Peter’s eyebrows are up at his hairline. “It means that you make it easy to love you. Speaking as someone who was once in love with you, I can attest to that fact.”

  “No, you were not.”

  “Yeah, I was.” He looks at me intently and then places a cup under the espresso spout. “And you thought I was oblivious.”

  I shift in my chair. Maybe he once loved me, but that was a different Peter. For a moment, I wonder what would’ve happened if he’d been this Peter when we met, if there’d been no Adrian, and I can’t say for certain that I wouldn’t have loved him back. But that was a long time ago. I love Peter with all my heart, but it’s the way I love Nelly.

  He snorts at what I can only imagine is my deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression. “Don’t worry, I’m not anymore.”

  “You totally freaked me out.”

  “Sorry. More than sleeping with Dan?”

  “No. That’s in the number one freak-out spot.” I sigh. “Thanks for the pep talk, Petey. But as much as I’d love to discuss the wonder that is me, I need to go brush my teeth and get my life together.”

  “In that order?” he asks.

  “Of course.”

  Ana strolls onto the porch and perches on the edge of the table. She yawns and looks at me with interest. “Good morning, Cass. So, how was Dan? I hear he’s really good in bed.”

  I kick her from my chair, but she’s undeterred. “Please don’t talk about it. I’m an awful person.”

  Peter puts a tiny pot of milk on the stove and waits for it to heat. “No, you’re not. Time is different now. We don’t know how much we have. We never did, but we could pretend. Now we know, and we don’t have the luxury of mourning the way we used to.”

  “Yeah,” Ana says. “I’d want Peter to hook up with someone. I wouldn’t even make him wait two months.”

  “So, how long do I have to wait?” Peter asks.

  “You do whatever you want, baby,” she says with a grin. “But I’m waiting a month, tops.”

  “You could find out about Dan for yourself,” Peter says. “No more wondering.”

  Ana licks her lips. “Good point. So, maybe a week.” I love to see them tease, but it also makes my heart hurt. Another thing to miss.

  “You have nothing to feel guilty about,” Ana says.

  I try to believe her. We enjoy our lattes as the sun rises, and by the time the mist has burned off I’m feeling better than I did.

  CHAPTER 52

  We’re eating eggs when Dan finally appears. I make a split second of eye contact and give him a quick smile. I’m not good at this kind of stuff; I’m already sweaty and my eggs are stuck in the back of my throat.

  “Good morning,” he says to the table and pulls out a chair. “How was the party?”

  Shawn groans and rests his head in his giant hands. “I probably could’ve done without the last nine drinks.”

  “You’re such a lightweight,” says a bright-eyed Jamie, despite the fact that she’s a third of his size and, from what I hear, drank just as much. She turns to Dan. “So what’d you do? I can’t believe you didn’t come.”

  “I read a little and went to sleep,” Dan says, and takes a bite of eggs.

  “Dan? Is that you?” Jamie teases. “How old are you again—sixty? I thought you were thirty-three.”

  Dan chews his eggs and doesn’t take the bait. No one asks why I didn’t go, at least. I guess I’ve been so antisocial that it’s not suspicious.

  By the time Shawn’s fixed a problem with the trailer hitch and we’ve said goodbye to Quebec, it’s late morning. We pull out, girls in the van, guys in the truck. It was Ana’s idea, and I know she suggested it to spare me an awkward drive.

  We find a truck full of what’s probably a year’s worth of sugar at the Ben and Jerry’s factory in Waterbury, after killing the few Lexers in the parking lot. We take as many sacks as we can fit, but we’ll have to make another trip to get it all. It’s late afternoon by the time we’ve stocked up on gas and made our way into Stowe.

  The quaint stores look the same as they ever did—except for the broken glass, garbage and human remains that litter the streets. The weather has worn the bodies down to bone covered with scraps of fabric. Liz tries to weave around the bodies, but the crunching is unavoidable.

  “Stop for a sec?” Ana asks. Her sights are locked on a yellow clapboard store, and she opens the van’s door. “We’re going shopping.”

  Ana saunters back to the truck and points at the signs, one of which says Boutique. But she’s purposely picked a boutique-slash-gourmet foods store, so there’s a reason to go inside besides clothes. A Lexer rounds the corner and heads for the voices that argue behind us. Jamie beats me to the sidewalk, slices her machete into its head and uses what looks to be an abandoned jacket to wipe her blade. The street is quiet after that. The good thing about pods is that it seems you’re less likely to run into smaller groups. The bad thing about pods is everything else.

  “We’re going,” I hear Ana say. “Send Caleb and Toby down while we’re in there.” She strides to the boutique’s door and stops with a hand on the knob. “C’mon!”

  The brass bell dings when we enter. It’s completely untouched. The walls are lined with handmade soaps, gourmet goodies and Vermont souvenirs. Jamie slides behind the long counter on the back wall. The wooden shelves behind her are loaded with jars of jam and chutney. Some have burst from the cold, but many are intact. In front of her are large glass jars of candy.

  “Help you ladies with something?” she asks.

  It all looks so delicious that I don’t know where to begin. The gummy worms are rock hard, but they taste perfect. Jamie unwraps a tube of Smarties and lets the entire row of round candies fall into her mouth. I follow her lead and then cram a Mary Jane in after them.

  “This is awesome,” Jamie says. “We need to take all of it.”

  My teeth are glued together with peanutty goodness, so I nod. The kids are going to scream with pleasure when they see this haul. Zeke will kill us, or at least bore us to death with lectures on tooth decay, but I don’t care. The joy on Bits’s face will be worth it.

  “You have to see this!” Ana calls from an opening off to the side.

  I tear myself away from the candy and step into a room full of clothes. The walls are lined with gauzy shirts and skirts, and the racks hold spring dresses.

  Ana closes her eyes while she glides her hand along the fabrics. She’d just started her career as a fashion buyer before the world ended. Saying she likes clothes is a bit of an understatement.

  “Look at this one!” she says.

  The dress is light orange with gold embroidery on the skirt. She pulls a black and white-striped dress off the rack and holds it under my chin. It looks like it’s from another world—a world where you don’t have to wear elbow-length leather gloves and boots. A world where you can skip down the street on a beautiful summer’s day and never once have t
o glance behind you.

  “This would look great on you,” Ana says.

  It could be from the 60’s, with off the shoulder sleeves that form a deep V-neck and a gathered skirt. Ana slings dresses over her arm. When the clothes are higher than her head, she leaves for the van. Jamie and I bag up the soaps and what’s left of the food, followed by every last scrap of candy, while Ana makes a return trip to the children’s section.

  The front door is open, and we listen to the guys argue with Ana about the necessity of the clothes. I’m inclined to agree with them, but I don’t know why they bother—she’s going to get her way. Sure enough, when Jamie and I step outside, the clothes are in the van and Ana wears a triumphant smile. We lug our bags across the lot.

  Shawn opens the van’s door with a resigned sigh. “More clothes?”

  “No,” Jamie says. “Food, soap and candy. There are more bags inside.”

  The word candy elicits a response not unlike when a Lexer spots a human. Dan, Peter and Shawn dig through the bags. We’re not much better than the kids. Dan bites off the end of a candy stick and winks at me. The heat of the sun is nothing compared to the flames in my cheeks, and I escape to get the rest of the bags while I try not to think about last night. Whenever I do, I’m filled with a mixture of guilt and desire to do it again. The guilt is winning, but it’s a close race.

  Toby and Caleb pull alongside the van. Toby leans out the window. “We found a fully-loaded RV. All gassed up, keys in the ignition, generator, hot water—all still working. We should camp tonight and hit the other stores in the morning.”

  It’s an hour’s drive to the solar power company that, as of last summer, had plenty of equipment we need. The sun’s still up, but it’s early evening. Traveling at night with a heavy trailer and no idea of what’s ahead of us is a lot less appealing than hot showers and beds.

  CHAPTER 53

  We park the RV in an open field surrounded by barbed wire. I emerge from the shower to find Ana sitting on the bed, holding my clothes hostage. The orange dress she wears makes her skin glow and catches the gold highlights in her hair and eyes.