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Ava nodded. “She crammed in whatever she could, then it was like flipping a switch. One minute she was talking about tomorrow, then… gone.”
Able to picture it clearly, I smiled. “Have you eaten?”
“Not yet.” She held my gaze for a moment. “I was waiting for you.”
The image of her sitting out here thinking about me, considering me, spread a warm feeling through my chest.
“All right then,” I said, dropping a cushion on the floor next to the coffee table, “let’s have some food.”
Ava grabbed another cushion, sitting opposite me as we grazed together. A cracker here, a bowl of microwaved soup there. We took our time picking through the stash as the afternoon passed us by. The food itself was just the basics, but handing snacks back and forth across the coffee table made me feel more myself than I had in a long time.
Occasional cars drove by outside while the two of us talked—about her apartment in Melbourne, her sister, and how they’d lost their parents a few years ago. I shared that I’d grown up as an only child to a single mother, keeping the details about having to leave her in Manchester vague enough that they wouldn’t trigger another wave of guilt and helplessness. Ava didn’t try to dig for more.
The light outside shifted, and shadows climbed the walls. At some point, we got up from the floor to close the curtains before we turned on the lamps. Ava grabbed blankets for us both, and we returned to our original spots on our separate couches.
As the conversation waned, neither of us hurried to fill the silence. The heater hummed above us, and the street outside eventually grew quiet, broken only by the groaning of the dead.
Ava shifted and tucked her feet under her, staring at the wall behind me where the family photos were on display.
When she didn’t have to track every little thing around her, the tension drained from her face, and I wondered if she’d looked like this before everything changed, back when our choices hadn’t been so life-and-death. The three of us would never know that side of each other.
Before I knew what I was doing, I rose from the couch and wandered over to her. We’d spent so many hours together that the distance between us felt too wide.
Her eyes followed me as I sank down beside her, landing close enough that our shoulders almost touched. She went still at first, her posture rigid while she processed our new positions.
I could have said something. Or left her alone. Neither option appealed to me. I reached out and took her hand, moving slowly so she had time to pull away.
Her breath hitched at the slide of my skin against hers, and a tremor ran through her before she relaxed.
We sat together in the warm room, with Kirby’s steady breathing across from us.
“We’re all staying out here together, right?” she confirmed.
There were three beds in the house, but Kirby had already made the decision for us by falling asleep on the couch. “Safety’s more important than comfort, so my vote’s yes.”
“I was thinking the same thing.” She shimmied deeper into the couch and settled in, pulling the blanket across our laps with her free hand.
We both went quiet, and at some point, her breathing changed. I turned my head and found her eyes partly closed in the lamplight.
When she finally let herself sleep, I closed my eyes, too.
The air was heavy with cold, and the rumble of the heater had gone now. The washed-out grey of early morning blanketed the room, and the lamps were off.
Kirby must have woken sometime during the night. A beanie from the department store was pulled low over her eyes now, and she’d wrapped herself back in the blanket, turning it into a cocoon—or a burrito.
With a yawn, I turned my head in Ava’s direction. She’d shuffled against me at some point and slipped her hand inside the front pocket of my hoodie, her fingers curled against my stomach. The chill seeped through the walls and windows, and I felt it through my socks, but having her tucked against me like I was her safe place made it all bearable.
By the end of today, she’d be reunited with her sister.
Kirby had a place to go, her parents waiting for her in her family home.
And I…
I let out a slow breath, careful not to move.
We’d shared the same goal until today. Keep moving. Stay alive. Don’t leave anyone behind.
I swallowed and looked around the room, at Ava and Kirby, and the family photos on the wall, just beginning to come to life again as the light grew stronger.
