Sure, the world had ended and zombies had taken over—but I was safe, and I had three boyfriends who made me happier than I had been before the apocalypse.
12
TORI
“It’s always the one you don’t expect,” I grumbled, flipping the page of the book and reading the scene with palpable tension.
The wife wasn’t murdered by her husband like I’d expected,no. It was her neighbor. The nice lady who she had become fast friends with after she moved next dooronly two months prior.She’d been fast to comfort the husband, and I had truly thought she was just being neighborly, but that wasn’t her intention.
No.She wanted the husband all to herself, and she didn’t care what she had to do as long as she got what she wanted in the end.
A bitter taste rose on my tongue as I read on, only feeling slightly better when she confessed everything and tried to kill the husband when the cops had been in the next room without her knowing.
I slammed the book shut with a huff and sat it back in the box.
“Not a good ending?” Micah’s brow rose from next to me.
He, Nathan, and Calix sat in the living room with me, and aside from their side conversations, they’d pretty much beenstaring at me. I had read through the entire novel since that morning, and the sun had already started to set.
“Something like that,” I murmured as I wrinkled my nose.
A dull orange slipped through the window, and Micah got up and lit the two candles in the room to give some more light.
“The zombies have almost passed through.” Nathan stretched his arms over his head before settling back against the sofa.
“When do you think we’ll be able to go down?” I asked, watching the flick of the flame on the candle next to me.
“Probably tomorrow.” Calix got up and went to his room only to return a few seconds later with the board game they’d been playing. He placed a pillow down for himself and sat down.
“Ready to get your ass beat again?” Nathan snickered as he slid off the couch and pulled me down with him.
Micah came down too, and we all moved to one side of the board.
“It’s really cool how well you guys play this game. Like you already know which player you are and which side you want.” I grinned as I took the last little tin game piece in the shape of a horse.
“And now we have you with us,” Calix murmured, his eyes glistening as he stared at me. “My mom used to play as the horse. It’s really good to see you using it.”
My lips quirked into a smile as I placed the horse at the start block with the rest of them. “She sounds fun.”
“She was, but she didn’t let herself have fun any other time. Only when we played this game.” He went quiet and handed everyone a small pack of two dice. “She’s why there are so many precautions in place for it. These baggies make sure everyone has their own dice. Mine are the green, Micah’s are the red, Nathan’s the blue, and yours is the yellow now.”
I nodded, slipping the dice out of the baggie and into my palm. “Thank you. That’s really nifty.”
“My mom was diagnosed with mysophobia—being afraid of germs—a few months after she had me. She’d been diagnosed with OCD a few years before she met my father.” He scrunched his nose in disgust at mentioning his father and rolled his dice.
The dice hit the board with two thumps, and he moved his piece onto a property that he bought, paying thebanker,which was Nathan.
“What caused the onset of mysophobia?” I asked as Micah took his turn, paying for a property and taking the deed.
“She had an emergency c-section with me, and it was considered a traumatic birth for reasons she never disclosed to me.” His eyes were trained on the board as he talked, and his voice wobbled. “Her sutures got severely infected, and she was admitted into the hospital for a week. After that, she couldn’t stand any germs. My father lasted two months after she came home before up and leaving us both without so much as a goodbye.”
“I’m so sorry that happened, Calix. He sounds like an awful person. I know that was probably hard to talk about, so thank you for telling me.”
He shrugged, and Nathan took his turn only to land on the property Micah had just bought.
“No! Come on! It’s my first turn.” Nathan pouted, shooting Micah puppy dog eyes.
“Pay up,” Micah grumbled, holding his hand out for the money, which made Nathan whimper like a hurt animal as he stared at his money.
