I step over to mine, feeling the exhaustion from the past two days events wash over me, pulling me down, but as I look at my door, a pang of sadness hits me as I can’t help but feel a name is missing that should be right there next to mine.
With a lump in my chest, I continue down the hallway, away from my girl and to the exit of the stadium.
‘You alright, pal?’ Kit asks, perched on watch. ‘You goin oot again?’
‘Aye, lad. Need to blow off some steam.’
‘Yer going to get yerself in trouble.’
Too right I am, but I couldn’t give a shit right now. I need to be away from the agony of feeling so alone that comes with being in that empty room. How can a man sleep well when his family is holed up on a sofa bed all alone?
I wave Kit off, needing him to open the gates and be done with it.
‘How long?’ He asks.
The kids got a good heart and is a hard worker so I try to push down my frustration with everything. It’s not his fault the universe is fucking with me by showing the woman of mydreams — who is pregnant with my child — having late-night chats with my best mate, who seems pretty fucking pally with her. They have history, I know it and it terrifies me.
I shrug, cracking my knuckles. ‘A while.’
The night air is cool on my skin, its winter bite still lingering into spring.
It has nothing on the winter just gone — now that was a bitch. The piles of snow would have been beautiful if the image hadn’t brought utter terror with it every time I saw what it could mean.
All those restless nights I spent wondering what had happened to Isla. The worry I felt was that she would be lying hurt or worse. Fuck. Not knowing almost destroyed me. But now I feel a different sort of heartache. A strange one I can’t quite figure out. I’m relieved she is here, that I have finally found her, but conflicted because well… she doesn’t seem to feel the same.
I need to be patient. That is all.
The moon is high above me, lighting the way as I turn down the street. Behind me, I feel the gaping hole of the subway entrance watching me, beckoning me closer, but I ignore it — best to leave that fight for another day.
Instead, I walk with no particular aim in mind. I’d heard whispers of a street fight location around Govan somewhere, maybe today's the day I find it.
And of course, like a moth drawn to a flame, I do.
Chapter eighteen
Isla
‘So we didn’t actually smell that badly is what you’re telling me,’ Luna says as she lies half-on-half-off my bed. Her head hanging over the edge as she lies upside down with one of my pregnancy books in her hands — one of the ones that Liam brought me.
‘We smelt like shit,’ Liz responds as she also flicks through a book with a pregnant lady on the front. Something's different about her recently, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
‘Isla has super pregnancy smell,’ Luna backwards rolls off the bed and onto her feet. ‘Which means we didn’t smell as bad as she said we did.’
One of my pregnancy symptoms earlier on was the fact that I could not stand the smell of all of us. We smelt like death and B.O. mixed together and my insides wanted to crawl away from the smell every time someone moved and I was hit with a wall of their death scent.
‘You smelt the worst, Lunz.’ I joke, and the others laugh as her mouth hangs open.
Thank everything in existence that all of us have had multiple showers since arriving here over a week ago. I swear I’ve spent at least an hour a day in there since I got in here. And an hour still doesn’t feel like enough.
From reading through these books I’ve realised my symptoms are pretty mild and I could have gotten it far worse. Yes, being pregnant in the apocalypse is not exactly ideal, but fuck some of the side effects that some women can get. I’m baffled why anyone would want to do this.
‘Eww,’ Fauna gags from her perch on the bunkbed. ‘I’m sorry Isla but this shit is disgusting.’
She flips the book open for us to see and we collectively groan.
‘Put it away, I’m too innocent to be seeing pain like that.’ Luna covers her eyes with the palms of her hands, her wild pink hair swirling around her as she mentally shakes away the image.
‘Haven’t you cut a man's balls off before?’ I question, distinctly remembering her threatening a guy who was bothering us whilst we were making our way through the Midlands.
