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Linking my arm with his, I slipped towards the diminutive brick building surrounded by nothing but forest on one side and a highway on the other. A few cars drove by as I watched, each one rapidly approaching 100 on the speedometer. There would be no cops to stop them.
“I missed you,” I said to Ryder absently. He nearly tripped over the curve at my confession.
“I’ve been here,” he said.
“Yeah, but you’ve been so quiet. I know you probably don’t want to talk about whatever had upset you, but I just want you to know that I’m here for you. Whenever - if ever - you would like to talk about it.”
He glanced down at me, eyes inscrutable. His teeth gnawed at his bottom lip, as they often did when he was in deep thought.
“It’s nothing bad,” he admitted at last. He cast a quick look over his shoulder, towards where the guys were discussing plans, before turning back to me. “I just realized something.”
“Would you like to talk about it?” I didn’t know what else to ask him. I didn’t want to demand information from him despite my concern. He would choose to tell me if and when he was ready, and I wouldn’t force him.
His smile was dull on his handsome face.
“It’s not something I can talk about,” he admitted at last. “It’s something that I need to stop thinking about, though I’m beginning to believe that it’s impossible.”
I blinked at his cryptic words but didn’t ask him to elaborate. Whatever realization he had come to made him sad. Pensive. And though a part of me wanted to shake him until he revealed all of his secrets, another part of me understood his need for privacy.
Changing the subject, I blurted the first thing that came to mind. “I need tampons.”
Because I was just that smooth.
Ryder stared at me before breaking into roaring laughter.
“It’s not funny!” I huffed, slapping him across the chest. “I bleed!”
That, of course, only made him laugh harder. “You’re not a girl, so you wouldn’t understand.”
My cheeks flaming with embarrassment, I practically ran into the women’s bathroom. I could still hear Ryder’s laughter echoing from the lobby.
I used the bathroom quickly, pleasantly surprised when the water actually ran, before drying my hands on paper towel.
I frowned at my reflection in the mirror. God, I was a mess. Hair greasy, eyes shadowed, dirt smeared across every available swath of skin. Ugh. How was one supposed to remain beautiful and perky and all of that during a freaking zombie invasion? That was one thing movies got really wrong.
A girl walked into the bathroom and flashed me a smile.
She was pretty with long, dark hair braided back from her face. For some reason, I thought she looked slightly familiar, though that could’ve been because she had one of those faces. You know, one of those girls that looked like everyone else so it’s nearly impossible to discern one from the next.
Yeah. One of those.
“Rough day?” she asked, moving to splash water on her face.
“You could say that.”
She was silent as grabbed paper towel and scrubbed the invisible dirt from her body. Seriously, she made me look like I took a mud bath and then decided to roll around in shit for a little extra fun. Stupid pretty girls and their pretty faces.
“Did you see the guys outside?” the girl said, attempting conversation no doubt. “They’re hot.”
Something twisted inside of me at her description of the guys. They were hot, yes, but I didn’t want her to notice it. My possessiveness and jealousy surprised even me. What the hell was happening?
Without responding, and probably appearing to be a psycho bitch off her meds, I hurried from the bathroom.
I couldn’t understand why my stomach ached so badly at the thought of her checking out the guys...or the thought of them looking at her back. I knew that it was inevitable that they would find a girl, but for a while, I enjoyed it being just us. Of me being their girl, and of them being my guys. Did that make me selfish?
I couldn’t say.
Correction, I didn’t want to say. If I looked at it closely, if I tore apart the motives behind my actions, then I would have an answer.
