“Also, I have a few books about gardening and some about the Navy.” He stood and moved to a shelf. “There are also some fiction books, but you may not want to read them. I like to read horror, and those books can be shocking if you’re not used to it.”
“Oh, shocking how?”
“They have a lot of gory stuff in them. It’s not something you should read if you haven’t read scary books as a child.”
She bit her lower lip, thinking of the stories they told her as a child. “I grew up hearing stories about how the rest of humanity was eaten by zombies and how we would be too if we left the community.”
He took her hand and squeezed. “You are so brave, leaving like you did.”
She shrugged. “I was more afraid of what Jebediah would do to me. Many of the women have bruises all the time. I knew he would be violent at first. Most newly married women have their legs beaten so badly they can’t walk for the first month.”
His eyes narrowed and he shook his head. “What?”
“It keeps them dependent on their husband. It’s a way of teaching women to never leave.”
“Fuck. That is disgusting. I’m sorry you had to live through that. I wish we knew exactly where they were so we could send the police.”
“I don’t know that they could do anything. It’s not like the women would say anything bad about the elders or their husbands. I was always the odd one, the one who didn’t conform like the other women. I wasn’t awful on the outside, but I was always thinking of being somewhere else, and then I learned about the beatings and other things the elders did to women.”
“I’m so sorry you had to live through that.”
Q pulled her into a hug, and she rested her head on his shoulder. She breathed in, realizing that she was breathing in his scent. He smelled clean but had a bit of outdoor smell on him. There was something else, too, something warm that brought a tickle to the back of her throat.
Warmth spread through her, and an odd feeling worked through her. What was going on? Since leaving the community and finding Q, everything inside had been shaken. She didn’t know how she was supposed to feel about Q. Was it wrong to want something from him?
She leaned back and met his gaze. Maybe that was the wrong thing to do because now the feelings inside were growing. She wanted to press her body closer to his. The swirl inside her mind had her feeling things she’d never experienced before. She wanted to find out what would happen next, but Q stepped back and wiped his hand over his face.
“Okay, so I think we should talk about how to wash clothes. Let me show you the washer.”
The let-down feeling almost overwhelmed her, but she tried for a smile as she followed him through the kitchen. She’d been washing clothes since she was a child and knew how to do it, but the contraption he showed her was something she’d never seen before.
“Wait, I don’t have to scrub the clothes first?”
He shook his head. “No, this does all the scrubbing.”
“How?”
“The soap helps, but the washer also turns with water inside, and it gets the clothes clean.”
She shook her head. “So what does that machine next to it do?”
“It’s the dryer. You put the clothes in and pick a setting. I do almost everything on normal with medium heat and it dries the clothes.”
“Is that why you don’t have a clothesline?”
He chuckled. “Yes. I don’t need one. Also, I don’t have time for one.”
“What am I going to do all day if I’m not cooking or cleaning?”
He shrugged. “You’re going to read and learn some information about the world you didn’t know existed.”
She shook her head, trying not to lean into the overwhelm threatening her. She could do this because Q thought she could. “It’s all so weird.”
“I’m sure it feels like you’re on another planet.”
Shock filled her. “Wait, are there other planets?”
He smiled and nodded. “But none with humans living on them. At least nothing close by. If there is another solar system with humanoid-type people living there, we don’t know about them.”
