Chapter One #3
“That’s right, Jessica—scientists are divided on how the virus spreads, but you can’t be too safe. And maybe do your business at home, if you know what I mean!”
Jessica’s polite laughter echoes around my prep room when a bright red news ribbon starts scrolling across her jiggling breasts, catching my eye. Her laughter stops abruptly. She clutches her hidden earpiece closer, her eyes transforming to the flat, dead color of iron.
“This just in—the first death has been reported due to GI-27.”
T Minus Two Hours and Thirty Minutes
Until Shit Hits the Fan
Everett
There’s a special kind of desolation that results from scrolling on Netflix for forty-five minutes and finding nothing you want to watch.
I’ve been lying motionless on my couch for so long, Chicken has evolved into her truest form, a furry gray meatloaf purring on my chest. I’ve had to rest the arm holding the remote control three times.
I am motivationally bankrupt. Spiritually aloof.
And when you’re a film professor who stopped caring about the art form you’ve dedicated your career to studying… well.
Add professionally fucked to that list, too.
Two perfunctory knocks and a sudden twist of metal unlocking metal, and my front door is thrown open with a bang. Sandeep peers inside, sniffing once warily, before stepping fully into my house.
Chicken and I don’t even look up.
Sandeep marches to the couch and stands over me, hands on his hips, mouth quirked into his crooked smile. “Hey, man.”
“Oh, no.” My eyes widen as I cower behind Chicken’s butt. “Whatever you want, the answer is no.”
“What are you talking about?” His tone is innocent, even though the intent is certainly malevolent.
“That’s your up-to-shit smile, Sandeep, and I don’t want any part of it. Chicken and I are enjoying a quiet night in, memorizing the Netflix menu, so if you could kindly go back to the home for meddlesome boys from whence you came, that’d be great.”
“Have you showered recently?” Sandeep eyes my hair in frank judgment. “Why do I even bother asking? Go shower.”
“Sandeep—”
“I won’t leave until you shower.” He sits in my armchair and crosses his legs at the knee, smiling patiently. He sps-sps-spses, and Chicken hops off of me and trots over to the better-smelling newcomer.
Little trollop.
When I exit the shower ten minutes later, feeling slightly better though I’d never admit it, I find an outfit laid out on my bed.
The pants have a zipper.
Alarm balloons in my chest.
I stomp over to my pajama drawer to dress in protest, but it’s empty. “Sandeep!” I roar. “What did you do with my jammies?”
“Get dressed and I’ll tell you,” he calls from the living room, sounding unbearably cheerful, and my god, I want to murder my best friend.
When I reappear in the living room wearing the cursed going-out clothes, he greets me with that crooked smile from the armchair, his fingertips pressed together in a pyramid of villainous scheming. “It’s time, my friend.”
“Time for you to give back my sweatpants? Or time for you to leave?”
“Time for you to get back out there.” He does little jazz hands as he says “out there,” and I throw my head back and caw out a single, incredulous laugh.
“You think you can just show up to my house on a Friday night, make me shower, and then, what? Take me to a bar? Force me to get a woman’s number?” I cross my arms and narrow my eyes. “I won’t do it, and you can’t make me.”
“Everett, Everett! Of course I wouldn’t do that.” Sandeep pets Chicken in long, luxuriant strokes, and I’m forced to admit he would make an incredible villain. “I skipped all those parts. Your date begins in twenty minutes.”
“What?!” The room tilts beneath me for a second, and I have to grab the doorframe for support.
“Her name is Maisie Bennett, she’s a twenty-nine-year-old actuarial analyst who enjoys mixed martial arts and eats unprocessed whole foods exclusively, and she’s nice.” Sandeep waggles his eyebrows at me. “Very pretty, too.”
“No! Tell her I can’t make it!” Am I hyperventilating? I think I am.
“Tell her yourself.” Sandeep holds his phone out to me. A dating app is pulled up, and oh, god, that’s my face on the profile picture. My name.
“You catfished her?!”
“Is it really catfishing if I’m not the one going on the date?” Sandeep muses, tilting his chin to the side. “More of a Cyrano situation. My nose is iconic.” He shakes the phone at me. “Better hurry up and cancel. Maisie’s probably already left her house for your big first date together.”
I groan at the ceiling and yank the phone from his hand. “This really crossed a line, and now you’re making me do the dirty work of canceling, too? Ugh.”
He shrugs, still holding my cat. “I made a promise to Louise, and I intend to keep it if it’s the last thing I do.”
I close my eyes and take a deep, shaky breath in.
Before, a casual drop of her name would collapse the insides of my chest, crushing the architecture of my heart and lungs into a wet, bleeding ruin.
But it’s been three years, and the pain has lost its gusto.
All I feel now is an old, cold ache where it used to be. A chest packed with ice.
I’m doing fine.
“Louise wouldn’t want this, Everett,” he says softly. “She passed away, but you didn’t. You haven’t. Not yet. Meeting someone new will be good for you. Hell, doing anything new would be good for you. Remember when you used to live life for the story of it?”
I open my eyes and release the breath, then pull up the messages in the app. “I feel nothing, Sandeep. I want nothing. I can’t even pick a movie anymore. How is it fair to put that on anyone?”
I scroll back through to the oldest messages, sent a week ago, with this Maisie person.
He’s chatted with her every day, pretending to be me like the pushy, boundary-abusing best friend he is.
Only Sandeep was charming and funny, which I haven’t managed to be in years, and she was kind, reserved, and quietly receptive to meeting.
Maybe even eager? When Sandeep finally asked if she’d like to get together, she opted for an immediate date instead of waiting until the virus scare had passed. The last message on the app reads:
Maisie-girl: Can’t wait for tonight :)
“She sounds lonely,” I murmur.
“I think she is,” he agrees, then glances at my clock. “You really going to leave her hanging?”
My phone dings in my pocket. I check the notification screen instead of answering him.
Unknown Number: Your pre-scheduled Lyft ride has arrived!
Please meet your driver Jaxon at the designated location.
“I cannot believe you.” I look up at him, but his smirk is gone, replaced by a sad smile. He places Chicken gently on the floor, then stands.
“I’d take you myself, but I’m feeling a little dodgy.” He runs a hand over his stomach and grimaces. “Plus, I figured you’d have a harder time demanding a stranger turn around than me.”
He’s not wrong. My thumb hovers over the cancel-ride button.
“Come on, Everett. I want my best friend back.” Sandeep holds my coat out to me. “His story isn’t done.”
Unknown Number: Your driver Jaxon is waiting.
Do you need to cancel ride? Y/N.
I sigh and take my coat, and Sandeep grabs me up into a long, tight hug.