I shrugged. “Not if you don’t. But, he’s a good shot. And he’s smart. And I’d rather have him ducking into a house first than you.”
Bryce glanced up at me from under his brow, fighting a smile. “I love you, you know that?”
I wrapped my arms around his waist as he towered over me. “You should. I’m fairly awesome. Or so I’ve been told.”
He laughed once. “That was probably me. Actually I’m sure it was me. I’m your biggest fan.”
“My tallest fan,” I said with a smile, reaching up on the balls of my feet to kiss him as he leaned down. His soft lips touched mine, reminding me of better days. Normal days.
Bryce pulled me over to the box springs, and we lied together on the bumpy springs and wood covered by a thin layer of fabric. He unzipped my jacket, and I kissed him, silently agreeing to his equally silent request.
“We might as well christen the zombie apocalypse,” he whispered in my ear.
“You’re so romantic,” I said, watching him with a smile as he pulled my jeans down over my hips and knees, and finally my ankles.
Bryce stood at my feet, unbuckling his belt and then unbuttoning his jeans. He used the toes on his right foot to pull off his left sneaker, and then repeated the action on the other side before kicking it aside. He pulled his cream Henley over his head and tossed it on top of a growing pile of his clothing.
I reached down to the sides of my panties and lifted my hips and pushed down the fabric at the same time. It had stopped being romantic for him to undress me over a year ago, and that was one thing that hadn’t changed in the last few days. My feet fluttered back and forth a few times before my panties catapulted to a dark corner of the room, and then Bryce reached down to pull off my socks at the same time. We were smiling, relaxed and comfortable; our sexcapades had graduated from trying to be sexy or feeling uneasy long before that evening.
After pushing down his jeans and stepping out of them, he lowered himself on top of me, kissing the corner of my mouth. To my surprise, he kept kissing me without advancing to any other part of my body. Just before I asked him if everything was okay, his head slumped and he buried his face in my neck.
“I can’t.”
“You . . . can’t?”
He fell onto his back next to me on the mattress, staring at the ceiling. “I think I’m too stressed. Or tired. Or both.”
“Oh. Oh.” I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Sometimes before a basketball game he couldn’t get it up, either. The end of the world definitely qualified as a source of anxiety. I guess knowing it had been over a week made me assume he would be beyond capable. “It’s okay,” I said, snuggling closer to his chest. “I like just being like this, too.”
Bryce took a deep breath and blew it out, making my hair tickle my face. “We’re going to be at your dad’s tomorrow. We may never have sex again. It’s not okay.”
I giggled. “We’ve been sneaky before.”
Bryce wrapped both of his arms around me, and kissed my temple. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, you know. I’m glad it happened this way.”
“Yeah?”
“I might have gone crazy worrying about you otherwise.”
I closed my eyes and listened to Bryce’s breath as he inhaled and exhaled. He fidgeted more than usual, still restless for any number of reasons. I fantasized again about the look on Dad’s face as we pulled up into the drive, and wondered what his reaction would be to Nathan and Zoe. He wouldn’t turn Zoe away, but desperate times made people do weird things.
“Bullshit!” Cooper said from the living room.
Bryce and I stood up quickly and got dressed, both awkwardly reentering the world, feeling like everyone knew what we were supposed to be doing but weren’t. My fingers knotted in my hair as I twisted it up into a messy bun and sat on the floor with my sister. She sat next to Cooper, and Joey was standing by the window, peeking intermittently through the crack.
Joey managed a small, amused smile. “No, I’m completely serious.”
“About what?” I asked, noting that Bryce already wore an unimpressed expression.
Cooper crossed his ankles and leaned back against the couch and Ashley simultaneously. “He’s telling us war stories.”
“It’s classified,” Joey joked.
“Picnic?” I asked, noting the small, empty bags of potato chips on the floor, along with a few empty cans of soda.
“What we need is popcorn,” Ashley said. “Joey is quite the storyteller.”
Joey made an airy sound with his lips in protest, and then glanced out the window.
“Anything out there?” Bryce asked.
Joey nodded. “One crossed the intersection earlier. Probably just turned and is making her way to the highway.”
I shuddered. Whoever she was must have been bitten, otherwise she would have already been on the highway. “I wonder why it’s different.”
“What’s different?” Joey asked.
“How long it takes them to turn. For some it takes days. Some just hours.”
Ashley chewed on her thumbnail. “Jill didn’t die right away after she was attacked, right?”
“But she got really sick,” I pointed out.
“Maybe they . . . reanimate after a certain amount of time after they die,” she said. “How long had Jill been dead?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “What about that woman upstairs? Anabeth? Ana . . . something.”
“Annabelle,” Cooper said, staring at the floor.
“It’s different for everybody,” Joey said, all joking stolen from his tone. “They said on the radio just before they stopped broadcasting that it had to do with the flu vaccine. Those who had it were turning more quickly.”
“What about the girl you were with?” Bryce asked.
“She’s dead,” Joey said, matter-of-fact.
Bryce didn’t push the subject. Instead, he went to the food stash and picked through it until he found what he was looking for. After a few minutes, he brought over twin peanut-butter sandwiches and two lukewarm cans of Sprite.
“I love you,” I said, biting into the sandwich. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until a whiff of peanut butter hit my nose as I was bringing the sandwich to my mouth.
“Enjoy it,” Bryce said between bites. “Who knows if we’ll eat bread again after this loaf is gone.”