Page 85 of Doomsdate

“Maisie.” His voice is tender, his eyes concerned. “You’re crying, sweetheart.”

I huff, startled, then bring my hands up to my face and find tracks of warm, salty tears. I wipe them away quickly, my face burning in mortification. “I’m sorry—I don’t know why. I don’t feel sad.” But even as I say the words, my throat thickens, and more tears replace the ones I just wiped away.

Everett gently pulls my arm until I lie down in the crook of his body, my cheek resting on his chest. His heart is a reassuring thump-thump in my ear, and that scares me, too, how much I’ve come to rely on his presence for comfort.

“Maybe because it’s the end of an era you knew,” Everett says into my hair. “And the beginning of one you don’t.”

“Maybe,” I breathe in agreement, knowing full well that’s exactly what it is. Who is this Maisie, lying in a beautiful man’s arms, happy to nestle here for the rest of her life instead of furiously scrabbling for safety? I don’t know her. I don’t understand her. And I don’t know or understand how I became her.

But here I am, changed, and I wouldn’t go back to how I was before even if I could.

It’s funny—when I asked for lessons, I thought I’d learn how to give a blow job, collecting it like a life skill that could serve me in the right situation, like small talk or knitting. I’d finally solve the mystery of whether sex is as great as American society has made it out to be while beating my personal deadline to have it, albeit through a loophole where I exchanged survival knowledge for sex lessons. Instead, I learned how good the right person can make you feel. But I never imagined that it’d feel like this, where my mind and body and heart, three parts of my sum that have never worked peacefully together, would join over the same driving want. Pushing me forward. Leading me into unknown territory.

And more than anything, I’ve learned I never want to let him go.

Chapter Nineteen

Everett

I am, as they say, cooked.

We lie in the bed I made for us, the soft flannel surrounding us skin-warm. Inside these covers, we’re protected against the cold, biting air of this fairy-tale tower, where this time, the princess woke me with a kiss from my eternal slumber.

But now that I’m awake, I don’t know what to do.

It’s our last night together. We’re only three hours away from West Point. While that could easily stretch to eight hours of travel, depending on the roads, the rig’s battery levels, any psychopathic cults trying to kidnap us, or other apocalyptic mayhem, we’ll likely reach West Point tomorrow, and the proverbial end of our road together. Maisie will leave me with my family, and then she’ll disappear into the Pennsylvania wilderness, never to be seen again.

I hold her tighter to my chest, the weight of her head against my heart a comfort. An anchor, tethering me to her in this wild storm of a world. I’d been drifting for so long before she found me, tossed about and half drowned, floating through the remaining years of my life unattached to anyone or anything. But she holds me still. Brings me back into my body. Reminds me that I am still alive, that I have more to give.

And maybe, that I am useful, after all.

I don’t want her to cut me loose.

She sighs, pensive and warm against my neck, and wraps a lock of my hair languidly around her finger. “Tell me about New York City.”

I breathe in deeply enough that our bodies rise together. It feels precious, this harmony. “Would you like to know facts? Or the feelings of the place?”

“Feelings, I think,” Maisie replies after a second. “What does it feel like?”

“Big and small, all at the same time. A thousand different realities per block. The size is finite, you can walk Manhattan end to end in one day, but it’s endlessly packed with people and all the things they carry, the things they’ve built, all the things they’re going to do.” I run my thumb down the smooth skin of her arm, trying to get this right for her. “Eight million stories going on at once, all around you. It creates an energy. Like a cosmic noise that’s louder than anything you’ve ever heard. It’s overwhelming to some people.”

“To you?”

“No,” I say into her hair. “I loved it. I went there to learn who I am, and I did.”

“Funny.” Maisie’s throat bobs, the movement light against my ribs. “That’s what I was going there to do, too.”

“The trip you had booked before the virus?”

She nods. “I would have arrived tomorrow, actually, on my birthday.”

“Tomorrow’s your birthday?” I jostle her closer to me. “Maisie, oh my god!” We’re quiet for a second as we stare up at the ceiling of this lighthouse. “Wow. What a terrible time for a birthday.”

She laughs softly. “Yeah. Well. I don’t celebrate it usually, so the apocalypse hasn’t ruined much in that department at least.”

“Not even with cake?”

“I made my own carrot cake once.” Maisie’s lips twitch into a smile. “It was disgusting.”