THE NEXT TIME I WOKE, it was morning, and I felt warm. No, I felt hot, stifling. I noted that the blanket was not wrapped around me, but there was a solid presence against my back. I opened my eyes slowly and looked over my shoulder, finding Ash pressed tightly against me, his chest rising and falling with each deep breath. He didn’t move, except to wrap his arm tighter around my waist. His hand was still intertwined with mine. I traced circles in his palm with the pad of my thumb. I was afraid to move or breathe. I didn’t want to break the spell that was cast over the two of us that made it okay for us to sleep like that.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d lain there before I heard a hitch in his breathing, and his grip loosened. I froze and then slowly looked over my shoulder again. Ash’s eyes were open, drowsy with sleep. He yawned widely and then looked down at me, his hand rested gently on my hip. His eyes widened when he realized how close we were, and he pulled away.
“Shit. Sorry, Zoey,” he said, pulling his hand away from my bare hip. Why the hell did I sleep in just a tank top and my undies? Why didn’t I exercise more restraint when having St. Joseph’s star quarterback in my bed? “I didn’t mean to…”
“It’s fine,” I said, stiffly, pulling the blanket up over my legs. “Can you maybe just…get out of my bed? Please?”
He ran a hand through his messy hair, and I saw the slight shadow along his chin and jawline. I suddenly had the urge to run my hands across it, to feel the roughness of his skin. I leaned forward, our faces so close. He looked surprised, his sleepy eyes wide. My hand lifted to his face as if it had a mind of its own, and I found myself cupping his cheek in my palm. Ash was incredibly still, waiting to see what I would do.
My entire body was shaking, and I moved myself closer, pressing my lips tight against his before pulling back, shocked at my own movements. Ash watched me in shock, his breath coming out quickly before he darted forward and captured me back in a forceful kiss, his hand wrapped tightly around the back of my neck. I gasped and fell backward, my arms out in a shield. “No, don’t…don’t do that,” I said, scrambling away from him.
Ash was still on the bed, his hair ruffled and his eyes wide from surprise, his lips red from the pressure. “Zoey…”
“No, just don’t…” I said, grabbing shorts from the drawer and pulling them over my underwear. “Don’t kiss me.”
He sat back, rubbing his brow, looking perplexed. “Okay, I won’t kiss you.”
I was still trembling. “Good. Great.” I spun on my heel and practically ran out of the room, doing the best I could to hide my flaming face as I went.
I spent the next few days avoiding both Ash and my mother in turn. When they entered a room I was already occupying, I found an excuse to leave it. I spent most of my time locked up in my room, reading. I knew I would eventually have to give in and focus on the survival of the three of us, but for now, I was ready to pout for hours alone in my bedroom.
On the fourth night that we were there, I woke again in the middle of the night in a cold shaking sweat, my sobs echoing in the silent room. I didn’t say a word as Ash climbed into the bed next to me, pulling the covers over both of us. His arms wrapped tightly around me, his fingertips gently on my arms as he soothed me back to sleep. It became an unspoken agreement between the two of us. Most nights he skipped the trundle bed altogether and climbed under the covers, and the nightmares became few and far between.
We had been at the house in Constance for a couple weeks, and I was beginning to go mad. My mom’s house was at least a mile or two outside the main center of town, and the only interactions I had were with Ash and my mom. Occasionally I kept company with my mom’s old horse Kismet and my pony Pumpkin.
But the humans were the main source of the stir craziness.
My mom was acting as if the world was carrying on, as if the US government hadn’t bombed several major cities into nonexistence, as if a third of the population wasn’t transformed into something nearly unrecognizable. She spent most of her days cleaning the already immaculate house, taking care of the horses or reading.
She also made everything difficult when it came to survival. She held my dad’s old gun as if it had offended her. Any attempts to teach her any sort of combat, even the most basic of self-defense, was contested until it was pointless to continue.
Ash wasn’t much help with this. In the relative safety that Constance and my mother’s house provided, he had gained an inflated sense of security. At night, he was sweet, though he never said a word as he climbed into bed to comfort me. During the day, he had returned to his normal self. His confidence was back, possibly borne of the consistent showers that had not been available to him. He joked often with my mom while they cleaned together, and he returned to teasing me.