Page 53 of Doomsdate

“I wasn’t the person messaging you. It was Sandeep, my friend from the window? He created a dating profile for me to force me into dating again. He thought you were perfect for me, so he chatted you up, set the date, then showed up at my house about twenty minutes before and told me what he’d done.” I finally breathe out. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before now.”

“You catfished me!” Maisie scoots off the bed, still clutching her robe closed. “I knew it was a possibility, that you were too good to be true, and you really did it. You fucking catfished me!”

“Technically, Sandeep catfished you, and I felt too bad about it to cancel on you last minute.” My stomach twists with regret. “I’m so sorry.”

“Was any of it true? What you—what he said about you?”

“It was all true, more or less.” I wince. “Except for the working-out part.”

Maisie covers her face with her hands. “I feel so embarrassed.”

“Please don’t. This is why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to feel bad.” The words rush out of me, and I long to jump out of this bed and go to her, hold her to my chest. I’m pretty sure if I did, though, I’d get kicked in the face.

“Well, I do feel bad,” Maisie says, her voice thick. “Whenever I did or said something weird, I kept thinking, at least you chose me, too. You liked me enough to meet me, too. You liked how I looked, too.” She sounds so small when she adds, “But you didn’t. You didn’t choose me at all.”

“Jesus, Maisie.” I breathe out a laugh as I pull my hair tightly. “I do. I really, really like you, how you look, all of it. Even your mace!”

“Don’t laugh at me!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry—I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at how one minute into our lesson, I was already absolutely ruined with wanting you.” I ease off the bed and take a step toward her. She doesn’t run or reach for her machete propped up against the wall, so that’s a good sign. I swallow. “The night we met, I was so sure going out would be a mistake. I had already made up my mind to explain what Sandeep had done and leave as soon as I could. But then you walked in, and god, Maisie. You’re so damn pretty.” I stop in front of her and reach for her hand. She lets me take it, and I run my thumb gently over her knuckles, back and forth, willing her to feel all my regret at how this has gone down.

“I couldn’t leave.” I huff, the sound of a beaten man, resigned to laying all his feelings on the table. “I told myself at the time it was because I didn’t want to hurt you, but the truth is, I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”

Her ice-blue eyes are even bluer when she cries. Like piercing sky when all I deserve are clouds.

“Then you started talking, and—”

“—you realized I’m a huge weirdo.” She wipes her eyes furiously with the back of her hand.

“No. I realized you’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met.”

Maisie blinks at me. “Based on what—me passing off reality-TV-show speeches as my own, or the part where I admitted I have no life?”

“Your perspective, the way you talked, the way you listened…most of all, how brave you were about trying to live your life, when that’s what I’d fully given up doing myself.” My chest aches with the truth of it, of saying it out loud. “I admired you, Maisie. You made me want to stay when nothing, and I mean nothing, has made me want to do anything in years.”

Her tears have stopped, her breathing quiet, almost hushed now. “How am I supposed to believe any of that?”

I brush the same lock of hair behind her ear and trace her cheekbone with my thumb just as I’d done before. She seems to remember the sensory experience of it at the same time I do, and her eyes flutter shut, as if she can’t help herself. Renewed want surges through me.

“You’re a woman of science,” I breathe, low and husky into her ear. “Consider the data available to you.” I run my knuckles down her long, slender neck, relishing the way her skin pebbles beneath my touch. My other hand brushes down her ribs, drawing her to me, until our bodies are pressed close together. “I want you, Maisie.” I bring my forehead to hers. “And I think you know just how bad.”

Her eyes blink open as if the spell over us both has broken, and she pulls away. “I—can’t. I just can’t.”

She untangles herself from my arms, grabs her machete, and disappears into the bedroom next door. I start to follow, but the unmistakable click of the door locking behind her stops me in my tracks.

Fuck.

Maisie

“CQ, CQ, CQ, Gramps, this is Maisie-girl, come in.” I twist the dial by tiny degrees to eliminate the swirls of static on our frequency, just to have something to do. This is the most stressful moment of my day—the time between me reaching out first thing in the morning and Gramps answering the call. He’s an old, crotchety hermit with myriad health problems and a fast-food habit that was really more a way of life before GI-27 started to spread. He immediately drove out to his bunker to hole up when the first whispers of a new virus hit the conspiracy-theorist networks, and I have to believe that’s what’s saved his life. As contagious as GI-27 is, there’s no way Everett and I haven’t already been exposed to the pathogen. Whatever immunity we might have, what are the odds that Gramps has it, too? What if the virus gets into the water supply? What if Gramps ventures outside? What if looters find him? A hundred different things could go wrong before I get there, and I worry about each one.

The radio’s speakers sizzle and pop, then “CQ, CQ, CQ, Maisie-girl! This is Gramps. Oh, it’s good to hear your voice, sweetheart.”

I exhale a long, shaky breath. “You, too, Gramps. How are you?”

“I’m fine, and I’ll be a hundred percent as soon as you get here.” Gramps sighs wistfully. “I sure wish I had my Bo, though. It’s lonely without him.”

Bo was Gramps’s old hound dog, a gentle giant with a heart of gold. I never met him, of course, but I did hear his wobbly, crooning bays over the airwaves from time to time, usually when he caught sight of a squirrel, or if Gramps was a few minutes late in feeding him supper.