Page 12 of Doomsdate

Dammit, I’m so close to getting a man into my bed. I can’t afford to get spooked, either.

When Everett’s profile picture popped up in my messages, his rich hazel eyes sang to me with a siren’s intensity. So knowing, so kind, so alive, as though they were actually looking at me in that moment and seeing me. Liking me. His bio told me his age—seven years older—and his profession, and I was sold. A professor who could teach me what to do in bed, who was so hot I’d gladly learn…it’s all I’ve thought about since we set the date two days ago.

The real Everett is just as handsome, but he wears an air of sadness like a threadbare coat I didn’t see in his pictures. When I first walked in, he looked small at our table, as though his shoulders were heavy bags he was exhausted from carrying. Over the night, though, they seemed to broaden, to expand, and when he laughed, his whole being lifted. He’s probably just worried about the virus, too. Who wouldn’t be? I kept getting news alerts to my phone, the death tolls mounting, then reversing, then weirdly mounting again, until finally I turned it off. Gramps would chew me out proper if he knew, but Gramps isn’t on the most promising date of his life the night before the country surely shuts down.

I usher Everett through the vestibule, loving the way his height fills the small space, then into the staircase, up to my second-floor apartment. The hallway’s mercifully empty, but it’s not quiet. The old bros are blaring their favorite drinking song, Chumbawamba’s 1997 hit song “Tubthumping,” and somewhere, somebody’s screaming.

“Should we call 911?” Everett’s eyes are apprehensive as he glances around the hallway, pinpointing the screaming to my neighbors’ apartment.

“It’s just my neighbors—they’re probably having a party, like usual. You know frat boys, I mean frat men? Ha ha, they’re like twenty-seven at least.” I rush out the excuses in one long stream of words. Everett looks doubtful but doesn’t argue. A loud crash from next door makes us both jump. I fumble at the mix of locks on my door, my fingers grabbing the wrong keys, punching in the wrong numbers. I glance back at him to make sure he doesn’t bolt when the bio-ID scan initiates, so it fails, and I have to start all over again. When I finally get the door open, he frowns down at my locking system.

“That’s…the most intense set of door locks I’ve ever seen.”

My mouth opens, then shuts, then opens again. “Comes standard with the apartment.”

I feel zero remorse about lying to this hot normie. I’ve only managed to get this far on a potential hookup a few times, and it always goes to hell once they realize the wacky solar-powered car out front is mine, or that I installed a bio-ID scanner on my door, or that I’m provisioned enough to last years in the wild, assuming a good natural water source is handy, of course. There aren’t any prepper dating apps, but even if there were, I wouldn’t be interested. The male preppers I meet online are almost uniformly wannabe-alpha jerks with outrageous gun collections or Gramps’s age, usually both. But normal guys, like Everett?

I terrify them, as a rule.

The door swings open, and I grab Everett by the lapels of his navy peacoat and yank him inside. There’s been a lot of yanking so far, but Everett is more startled than put off by it, so I’m taking that as a win. There’s an awkward break in contact as we quietly strip off our coats and face masks, but then he’s there again, staring down at me as though he’s not quite sure I exist. I want to run my hand down the shadow of tawny stubble on his jaw, feel the scruff against my soft palm.

What would it feel like between my thighs?

I want the heaviness of his broad torso to weigh me down into my mattress as his groin settles between my legs, warm and hard. I want his wet mouth on my neck, his hands in my hair. I want a lot of things, and though I’ve seen some porn, I’m kind of hazy on the details. But I can’t seem to move. When his eyes flicker away from mine to glance around my bare, sad apartment, though, that breaks the spell. I back him against my front door with a thud, and standing on my tiptoes, I lace my fingers around his neck.

His hazel eyes, like sunlight filtering through the deep water of a pond, find mine again. He looks terrified. “Maisie, I—I’m not—what I’m trying to say is—I’m…” But he breaks off helplessly, gazing down at me with his full lips parted. They glisten, like he’s just licked them, and I’m not sure I care what he’s trying to say. He looks desperate and pleading, as if he’s waiting for me to help him make sense of this moment, to make the next move, to rescue him from his indecision.

I can do that.

“Close your eyes,” I command, my voice shaking, then add more softly, “please?” I’m not sure he’ll do it, but then, wonder of wonders, he does. It gives me my opening. As surreptitiously as I can, I reach down with one hand, groping for the side table until I find what I’m looking for.

Our lips are inches apart, my eyes still open, his closed.

Beep beep. B-b-b-b-eep.

His eyes fly open, momentarily crossing as he stares up at the infrared thermometer I have trained on his forehead.

“What the—”

“All clear!” I yelp, then toss the thermometer to the side and pull him down to my mouth, hard.

“Ow, ow!” Everett says after our front teeth clink against each other like canning jars in the dishwasher.

“Sorry!” I rear back in embarrassment. But something’s happened to his eyes—they’re looking at me with that same intensity from dinner, like I’m the most interesting problem in the world and he’s determined to figure me out.

“You’re pretty anxious, huh,” he says, but it’s not a judgment.

“I am but a rose.” The smile I give him is rueful, and I inch closer, my fingers wrapping around his neck once more, my chest almost touching his. “Can we try that again?”

And again, he looks at me with that burning, yearning expression, like I’m asking for the impossible but he wants to give it to me anyway. He just doesn’t know how. My cheeks are flushed and hot from his proximity. Touch me, dammit. Put your hands on me.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he says as if he heard my thoughts, his voice almost a whisper.

“Do you want to check my temperature, too?”

He huffs out a pained laugh. “It’s just…it’s been a long time for me. I don’t—”

“Know what you’re doing?”