Something to Die For by Kaye Blue

Twenty-Two

Angel

“Stop staring at me.”

My words were quiet, but inside I felt rage, white-hot, boiling.

But I didn’t let it come out.

Couldn’t let it come out.

It would be easy to let that rage take over, take it out on him, but it wouldn’t change anything.

My mother would still be dead.

At that deflating thought, I froze, breathed out deep.

I glanced over at him and saw that he was still staring.

He’d been doing that for what felt like forever, as I buried her, later, when I cleaned up.

He was probably worried.

I was worried.

I felt like I was holding it together, but maybe I wasn’t.

Maybe the turmoil I felt inside was more evident than I had hoped.

“Did you find what you needed?”

I tried to change the subject, desperate for anything to take my mind off this.

“Yeah. The pants and shirts are little short, but the boots work,” he said.

“Good. They would want to make sure that stuff didn’t go to waste.”

We were still sitting in the kitchen, my mother’s favorite gingham tablecloth on the table.

The salt and pepper shakers shaped like mice sitting there too.

The ever-present stack of napkins in the napkin holder.

It could have been any day.

But it wasn’t.

“He died four years ago. Cancer. She never could bring herself to get rid of all of his things, though. So they came in handy,” I said.

I snapped my mouth closed quickly, feeling like a babbling idiot.

He gave no reaction, and for once I was grateful.

I was stuck here with him, but at the very least he didn’t seem to want to rub my emotions in my face.

“Maybe you’re not as bad as I think,” I said, again clamming up when I realized that I’d said that out loud.

“No, I’m way worse,” he responded, his voice deadpan.

For some reason, I laughed, the sound bubbling out of me.

“I’m sorry,” I said as I looked at him, tears streaming down my face. “You’re not funny. It’s just…”

“I get it,” he said.

“You get it?”

“Yeah. I was ten when my mom died,” he whispered.

Again there was no emotion, but I felt like he was trying to reach out.

And I hated it.

“Let me guess, you had to stab her in the brain with a scalpel,” I said, the scorn, the anger that I had just promised to keep at bay coming out full force.

“No. Cancer, like your father. But that thing you stabbed. That wasn’t your mother,” he said.

He shifted ever so slightly, his large frame almost comical in the vintage chairs that my mother had painstakingly restored.

“I know,” I said, again deflating, the anger that had been there receding, if only for the moment. “But…”

I trailed off, unable to make the words come out.

He narrowed his eyes at me, something like anger in his expression. “Look, I’m not good at this shit. I’m not going to be able to say anything to make you feel better. And from what I’ve seen of you, you don’t need that kind of coddling. You did what had to be done. You’re probably going to have to do it again. So, yeah, grieve for your mother. Then let that shit go.”

“Yeah,” I said, not able to argue, not wanting to.

“You want some more food?” I asked, gesturing at the plate that sat in front of him.

“No,” he said.

He looked at my plate and added, “And you should eat yours.”

For some reason, his words seemed to unleash something in me.

Before he spoke, I hadn’t been hungry, didn’t think that I would ever be hungry again, but for some reason I was suddenly ravenous.

I’d found meatloaf in the fridge, put some green beans with it. I’d eaten the same meal countless times before, but this time it was different.

There was a finality to it, knowledge that I would never taste her meatloaf again, would never be able to make it quite the way she did.

As I ate the meatloaf, which tasted slightly more salty than usual, probably because of my tears, I thought about those times before, when I had sat in this very seat and watched her as she moved around the kitchen. Stood next to her as she tried to teach me her favorite recipes.

Saw my entire life pass before my eyes.

Wondered what would come now.

“Why don’t you want to eat more?” I asked once I pushed the plate away.

He had watched me the entire time, his eyes never wavering.

“Don’t know when there will be more,” he responded.

“Right,” I said a moment later.

I hadn’t thought about that, hadn’t really thought about anything, but Lucas was right that I needed to get my head back into things.

Apparently, while I had been cleaning up and crying, after I buried my mother’s body, he had been scrounging and had found the old weather radio that my father always insisted we keep.

But there hadn’t been any reports. Nothing but static.

Proof, as much as anything, that whatever was happening was far-reaching, worse than we could have thought.

Which was saying something, because I thought it was pretty fucking bad.

“Well, I guess we’d better rest,” I said.

Somehow, the day, which felt like it had only started moments ago, was fading into night.

While we had a generator, it was only for backup, and Lucas and I had decided to use it sparingly.

Which meant the only light, save the last few rays of sun, were some candles that I had set up around the kitchen table.

“Yeah. We ought to rest.”

“There’s a guest bedroom on the other side of the house. I’ll set up here the living room.”

“You don’t have a room here?”

“No,” I said, laughing. “Not more than two weeks after I left for college, Mama turned my room into her craft area. Since then, it’s been the guest room or sofa for me.”

I smiled, but the little ache in my chest was impossible to ignore.

I could have slept in the guest room, could have slept in my parents’ bedroom, but the thought was overwhelming.

“We should stay close to each other,” he said.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” I said, again reminded that I wasn’t paying attention, that I wasn’t thinking.

“Let me gather some things while there’s still light, and then we can settle in.”

I went through the house, gathering towels, blankets, a few extra changes of clothes, not that I would need all that stuff, at least not today. But I might as well have it on hand, be prepared, or as prepared as I could be.

I saw that Lucas had the same thought.

When I returned to the kitchen, I was carrying a bag.

“My dad had a shotgun, so there’s that and a couple of boxes of shells. And I think he has an old revolver somewhere,” I said.

“We can look for that tomorrow,” he said.

I looked at him, really looked at him.

Saw that intensity that had always been there, the overwhelming masculinity, the handsomeness that I had always forced myself to overlook.

But what I saw mostly was calm.

“Why aren’t you freaking out?”

“What would freaking out get me?” he asked, though he didn’t glance up from looking through the stuff we’d gathered.

At first glance, his posture seemed casual. As did the way he was counting up his ammo.

There was nothing casual about him. He was acutely aware of everything, and I suspected, most of all, me.

“Again, one of your patented nonanswer answers,” I said.

“What are you asking me?” he said.

He stilled, put the shotgun down, then locked eyes with mine. His dark gaze was so intense that it made my heart stutter, and I wondered why I had pressed the issue. But even more, I was happy for the distraction.

My own thoughts were a place I didn’t want to go, and to have something to focus on, even at the risk of angering him, might be worth it.

So I didn’t try to step the conversation back, apologize, try to pretend that I wasn’t prying.

“I don’t know if you noticed, but there are dead people walking around. You seem pretty fucking chill,” I said.

“You seem pretty fucking chill yourself, Angel.”

“Bullshit. We both know I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And besides, we aren’t talking about me. We’re talking about you.”

He looked at me, his jaw ticking ever so slightly.

At first, I took it as a sign of anger but then realized that he was thinking.

“So I’m some racist piece of shit criminal, right?”

“So the story goes,” I said.

“Even more than that, I’m the son of a very paranoid, very mentally ill man. One who has drilled bullshit about the end of days into me from the moment I was born.”

“Your father thought there was going to be a zombie apocalypse?” I titled my head, confused and surprised by the confession.

“Zombies, aliens, disease, civil war. He didn’t care about means, just the results. The fall of man. Talked about it every day, told me that I was going to survive it, rebuild the world in his image. That’s why shit like the ‘law’ didn’t matter.”

His voice didn’t change, but I sensed emotion in him, emotion that I felt myself responding to.

“I take it you weren’t a true believer.”

“No, but he wasn’t a big fan of opinions, especially not mine. So yeah, I did his drills, did his training, learned all the skills he thought I would need. Turns out the bastard was right,” he said, his humorless chuckle low in the kitchen.

“Looks like he was,” I said.

I wanted to probe further, but one look at him and I could see that the topic was closed.

His eyes practically dared me to ask another question, and my courage had been used for the day.

“Let’s get settled for the night.”