Love in an Undead Age, A.M. Geever [best contemporary novels txt] 📗

it a squeeze. He didn’t say anything, just moved his thumb back and forth across the palm of her hand. She felt so comforted by the simple gesture, but also like she was standing on a precipice. His sly grin was gone, eyes gentle instead of teasing. And he still held her hand, long after most people would have let go.

Mario released her hand and smiled sheepishly. “I’ll go see what’s happened to our girl.”

Miranda watched his ramrod-straight form that somehow moved liked water work its way into the crowd. What had just happened? She had not known it herself—the Farm, what it meant—until she heard him say it. How could he have known what she didn’t know herself? She had scurried off, not wanting to be there when he got back.

Miranda ran her thumb along the edge of the picture. Then Em got pregnant and that was that.

They became more accustomed to the “new normal.” Getting the Farm underway kept Miranda busy, but she still went on missions. She developed a reputation as an expedition leader, regaling her friends with tales of derring-do. Her skill at killing zombies was second to none, yet Mario urged her to be more cautious.

“You don’t have to sign on for every dangerous thing that comes down the pike,” he would tell her.

“And if I don’t, who will?” she would always reply.

Miranda smiled as she remembered how, after a while, he began to preempt her by adding, “And I don’t care who will if you don’t.”

Mario worried about her, but he was a worrywart. Anyone still in their right mind worried when a friend went outside the walls, and Mario had become one of Miranda’s best friends. Maybe he worried a little more than he should, but best friends worry more. That’s why they’re best.

He almost always managed to be there when she rolled home, always on his way somewhere else but long enough to see that she was back in one piece. Sometimes the look of relief on his face unnerved her. She was happier he was there than she had a right to. She tried not to be. She told herself she shouldn’t look forward to seeing him so much, but it did not make any difference. She couldn’t stop feeling that way. She gave up in favor of trying not to let it show, even as his smiles grew tighter and his hugs more fierce.

And so it went, until the night he offered to walk her home from The Hut. Emily had canceled the sitter and stayed home with Michael, who was almost two and running a temperature. Karen had departed before them with the latest Asshole du Jour. Doug, who had not yet felt God’s tap on the shoulder, waved them on. He was busy chatting up a girl and told Miranda he’d never get lucky while she was around muddying the waters.

They set out from the bar, but as was becoming their custom more and more when they were alone, they ended up in the St. Clare Garden. The garden was a relic from when SCU had only been a university. It was the length of a football field from the bar, and its small square space offered nothing in the way of privacy. There were two benches on one side. Herbs, succulents, and flowers filled the rest, planted around a statue of the community’s patroness.

“I hate that statue,” Mario said as he sat down. “She looks sad and worried. Saints should look serene.”

“You’d look worried if your kid was being nailed to a cross—oh, no, that’s Mary. You can’t even see her face from this side,” Miranda countered, as if the thought had just occurred to her rather than their banter being the same as the last time and the time before that. She gave Mario a nudge as she sat down. “Budge over so I can stretch out.”

The warm night air felt soft against Miranda’s skin. She lay down so that the top of her head almost touched Mario’s thigh, then extended her right leg over the arm of the bench to elevate it.

“How’s your leg?”

“Doc says I’m fit as a fiddle, but it feels better if I set it up for a bit when I’ve been standing.”

Mario began to tickle her nose with the ends of her ponytail. “I almost had a heart attack when I saw you brought in on that stretcher. Your broken leg took years off my life.”

“Stop that,” she said, batting the hair in his fingers away. She felt a little dizzy, with just enough of a buzz that she would not feel it tomorrow. “You always go straight to the disaster scenario. Tickle fights happen all the time when you’re waiting to clear medical, and Doug is a sadist, I swear. Never occurred to me I’d thrash my way off the damn truck.”

“I wish you’d quit doing expeditions,” Mario said, his voice unhappy.

Miranda sighed. They’d had this conversation a million times.

“You know I can’t do that. There are so many things we still need that help your research. The sewers aren’t going to keep working unless we get out there and take care of them. If they don’t work then we’ve got cholera, and typhoid, and–”

“I know,” he interrupted. “I just wish you weren’t doing it.”

Miranda closed her eyes and listened to the symphony of crickets. She turned her head toward the center of the garden, felt Mario’s hand brush against her head as he fidgeted. He did that when he was unhappy.

They had been doing this for months, hanging out like this. Fifteen minutes here, an hour there, never doing anything she couldn’t tell Emily all about, but she felt guilty anyway.

“If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll sign a ‘No Dying’ contract,” she offered, trying to sound lighthearted. “We can even get it notarized.”

She could feel his frustration in the long pause before he said, “That’s not funny, Miranda.”

“I was just kidding,” she huffed, annoyed.

“No, you weren’t. Whenever I try to talk to you about anything real, you make it into a joke to shut me up.”

Miranda sat up and turned to face him. “That’s not fair!”

“For Christ’s sake, Miranda. At least have the courtesy not to insult me.”

Mario hadn’t raised his voice. It wasn’t even tight or angry, but it felt like he had slapped her across the face. The garden wasn’t lit well, but it was not completely dark, either. His face was stamped with longing and fear and something that looked very much like hunger.

“You’re the only thing I think about,” he said, his voice pitched low. “I know I shouldn’t. I know it’s not right, but God help me it’s true. Knowing I’ll see you is what gets me out of bed every day. You’re the first thing I think of when I wake up and the last at night, and every damn minute in between. And I think you know it.”

Panic and excitement seized her. “You shouldn’t—” she whispered, but then he flung himself headlong into the void where she hid all the feelings she worked so hard to deny.

“I can’t stand the thought of losing you, Miri, and I cannot pretend for another second that you’re just a friend. I’ve tried to ignore this, pretend it’s not real, but I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t pretend anymore.”

Miranda tried to speak. She should say something to save them from doing what could not be undone, but instead she leaned into him. They both hesitated when his lips brushed hers, as if to gauge, would the other change their mind? And then they were kissing, a tangle of tongues and lips. The reservoir of pent-up longing she had denied for so long blazed and exploded like a solar flare.

Mario held her tight in a hungry embrace. His lips moved to her forehead, her eyelids, the hollow of her throat. She felt the air slip past her scalp when he inhaled, greedy even for the scent of her hair.

“This will kill her,” Miranda whispered. “If she ever finds out…”

His hands settled on either side of her face. “If I can’t feel you, be with you, I’m going to lose my mind.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know… The only thing I know for sure is that I love you.”

Her heart soared to hear him say it. She wasn’t carrying a lonely torch. It wasn’t her imagination. Mario loved her like she loved him. The rest didn’t—couldn’t—matter.

They started for Swig without a word. The two-minute walk seemed to take forever. They sauntered through the lobby with exaggerated nonchalance, never looked at one another in the deafening silence of the elevator as it groaned its way to the top floor. Miranda fumbled with her keys outside her apartment, cursing the lock before it finally gave way.

As soon as the door shut behind them, the facade slipped away.

“I’ve wanted you for so long,” he said, pulling her to him.

Miranda could not catch her breath to answer. Eventually they made their way to her bed. Their naked bodies intertwined on the soft, worn blanket. He entered her with a gasp, and then they moved as one. Climbing and rising, riding a wild desire filled with longing and need, desperation and joy, until his cries of release had mingled with hers.

Miranda put the picture back, drowning in sweet melancholy for a thing so rare and so irretrievably lost. They had been so innocent then, as they tumbled from grace to answer love’s heady imperative. Another Miranda, another Mario, another lifetime ago.

“You can’t still miss me, you can’t still care. You can’t still love me. You can’t,” she whispered. Tears blurred her vision. The smiling faces of the photograph warped and ran together. “Even I wouldn’t wish that on you.”