Which didn’t surprise me in the least seeing as his whole personality seemed loud.
“Remember parties?” he asked, shaking his head at the screen as they argued over caviar.
“Not really. I wasn’t much of a party person,” I admitted. “Which, I guess, made this transition to solitary life easier. You must have struggled,” I said.
“I think the key is to find ways to not lose your mind in the solitude,” he said, shrugging.
“Hence the indoor slip-and-slide. And the redecorating. And the silent rave in the graveyard.”
“Exactly,” he agreed. “Gotta keep things interesting. And once the power went out, it killed the fun I had at the local carnival.”
“You did not. Didn’t you see that movie? With the guys and the zombies at the carnival?”
“I did. It sounded fun,” Caleb said, making me shake my head.
“I think our ideas of fun are very different.”
“I think maybe you didn’t know how to have fun even before the brain-eaters made the clubs risky.”
“Ouch,” I said, grimacing. But because of how right he was.
“But now you have me,” Caleb insisted. “To show you the lighter side of life.”
I shouldn’t have wanted that.
To have a friend in the apocalypse.
Friends were risky.
They made you care.
They made it so you weren’t only ever focused on yourself and your survival, because you cared about them and theirs as well.
It was how you got bitten and became a brain-eater as well.
“Come onnnn,” Caleb said. “You know you wanna.”
“You know, I was warned incessantly about peer pressure growing up. Somehow, no one ever told me that it would come from a stranger I met in a graveyard after the end of the world.”
“I mean, if you want that kind of peer pressure, I have mushrooms,” he said, making a laugh bubble up and burst out.
“You do not.”
“I do. I tripped balls for a few weeks at the beginning when shit was too ugly to wander out into,” he said. And for just a brief moment, there was a hauntedness in his gaze, a piece of who was truly underneath all that lightheartedness. “How’d you stay sane through that?” he asked, seeming to genuinely want an answer.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “I think I kept myself busy, focusing on the next step in my plan not to die. And, I mean, the wine helped,” I admitted.
“Yeah, I bet it did. I don’t think anyone could have made it through those first few weeks stone-cold sober. Not with their sanity intact anyway.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Did you… were you with your family or friends when it all happened?” I asked.
“I was with some buddies,” he told me, and again, his eyes went dark, lost in the trauma for a moment. “You?”
“No. I was by myself. And, I guess, that was for the best. I probably would have tried to save my loved ones.”
“Except that cheating ex of yours,” Caleb said, smirking.
“Yeah, well, him… I mean… I wouldn’t havepushed himin front of a zombie or anything, but I don’t know if I’d have opened the door to save him from one either.”