If the World Was Ending

1. Should I slap you?

Should I slap you?

Earthquake.

What? No. Really? Oh. Shit.

EARTHQUAKE!

It wasn’t Hunter’s first. In the four years he’d been living in Los Angeles, he’d been in three that he felt, and four that happened overnight that he slept through.

But this was different from the second it started.

Usually there was a moment of pause, where his brain snagged and he couldn’t figure out why he heard rattling or felt a little unsteady.

But this… this one tilted the generic tiled floor beneath him instantly and violently. This was… big.

He was in the chip aisle of Trader Joe’s because his easily distracted and overwhelmed brain had gotten sidetracked while trying to figure out what to make for dinner.

Usually, his girlfriend Leandra sent a list, since she had very specific things she would and wouldn’t eat.

But he was trying to surprise her tonight because they’d been in a bit of a rut, to put it mildly.

And now, they weren’t going to get out of the rut.

He’d be lucky if he got out of the chip aisle.

Every shelf, every bottle and jar in the store started to move.

A jar of salsa tumbled to the floor and cracked open.

A rack an aisle over tipped and Hunter’s heart lurched.

He scurried back into a wall. Was that the smart move?

Was he safe? People started to squeak and squeal in fear because it wasn’t stopping, it was getting worse.

There was the sound of breaking glass, something bigger than a jar of salsa.

He saw a short hallway next to him, with a bathroom sign above it, and he bolted for that as another set of shelves swayed violently in front of him and someone screamed.

It seemed like a good idea to be in a smaller space where there were no shelves to crush him.

He was sure he was the least quake-savvy person in Los Angeles, but he vaguely remembered something about hiding in a shower or bathtub.

Of course, there were no showers or bathtubs in a public restroom, which dawned on him as soon as he pushed open the door.

And besides, maybe that was a fire safety tip?

Oh fuck, was he going to die in a grocery store shitter?

“Get down! Fuck!” someone yelled, and then a hand grabbed his wrist, and he was yanked to the floor with a force that felt like it might dislocate his shoulder.

Suddenly, his face was buried in long, blond hair. It smelled like apple, he noted, before his back hit the cold, probably disgusting tile floor.

“Jesus Christ!” Hunter barked as the doors to the toilet stalls swung wildly.

“It’s okay. We’re okay,” the voice said, but Hunter couldn’t see anything but blond hair from the top of the guy’s head on his chest.

And then… Everything went still. Everything.

“Man, that was a big one!” The voice was low and male, and Hunter felt it in his chest because the guy was lying on top of him.

“What the actual fuck?” Hunter repeated without anger, just pure confusion.

The body rolled off of him and lay beside him on the tile floor.

He shifted his head to the right, and Hunter locked eyes with the stranger for the first time.

He had long, wavy blond hair, high wolfish cheekbones, and wide-set, round gray-blue eyes.

And a dimple in his left cheek, Hunter noted, as the guy flashed a sheepish smile. “Sorry for the tackle. You okay?”

Hunter blinked. “Yeah. I guess.”

“First time?” The blond looked like he belonged on a surfboard, not in a grocery store bathroom wearing one of their God-awful Hawaiian print staff shirts.

“At… Trader Joe’s?”

He blinked at Hunter, then grinned as if Hunter were absolutely delightful. “In an earthquake.”

“No. I mean… yeah, in public. I’ve been at home for the others.” Hunter took a stunted breath and sat up. “And that was definitely the biggest one I’ve been in.”

The guy pulled his phone from his shirt pocket and started tapping on the screen. Hunter got to his feet. He looked around the small, two-stall bathroom. It was empty except for them. He eyed the guy still sitting on the floor. “Why did you jump on top of me?”

“Safety,” the guy replied. “Wanted to protect you in case something fell.”

“But you don’t even know me,” Hunter said. That got the guy to look up from his phone. His thick, straight, pale brows pinched.

“Yeah. So? I don’t have to know you to want to keep you from getting crushed by a shitty fluorescent light.” He pointed up, and Hunter followed his finger and saw the long rectangular light fixture was still swaying, although softly now.

The guy showed Hunter his phone screen. “No signal, so yeah, it was big. Takes a lot for the cell service to implode.”

The guy raised his hand, not holding the phone, and locked eyes with Hunter.

It took a second for Hunter to realize he was asking for help.

Normally Hunter wouldn’t touch a stranger, let alone lock hands with one, but this guy did try to save his life or whatever, so…

Hunter reached down, clasped hands with the guy, and yanked him to his feet.

“Thanks.” Handsome Surfer Dude didn’t let go of Hunter, instead adjusting his grip until they were shaking hands. “Colby. Hey.”

“Hey. I’m…” Hunter swallowed. This guy was super good-looking. It was an intrusive thought that struck his consciousness with the force of a baseball bat, making Hunter forget his own name. “I’m…”

“In shock?” Colby finished for him. His blue-gray eyes got serious as they flew over Hunter’s body, searching for something. “Shit. If you’re in actual shock, you’d be cold. Do you feel cold? Do you want water? A blanket? Should I slap you?”

“Please don’t,” Hunter replied, panicked. “I’m fine. And also, Hunter. I’m Hunter. Hey.”

“Hey Hunter.” Colby stared at him, and Hunter had no idea what he was thinking, but he wished he did. “I work here.”

“I can tell.”

Colby nodded. “I mean not full-time. Or forever. I hope. I’m a musician.”

“I’m an actor,” Hunter said and paused. “Who waits tables.”

And then they both smiled. Because of course they were.

That’s who everyone in Hollywood was—someone trying to do something other than what they were actually doing.

Hunter laughed, it was nervous energy expelling itself from his six-foot frame.

Colby grinned again, but his eyes still seemed concerned. “Are you okay? Seriously?”

“Yeah. I’m fine. How are you?”

“You know… The same as before the earthquake, so…” Colby shrugged. Then, after a moment of locking eyes again, he jerked his thumb to the door. “I guess I should go see how I can help. Store must be a mess.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

And then Colby, the musician, left.

Hunter stared at himself in the bathroom mirror before he left the restroom.

Moments later, he made his way out of the messy store.

He looked for Colby but didn’t see him. He walked directly home, which thankfully wasn’t far—two blocks east on Sunset, two blocks down Hayworth, just past Fountain.

He was freaking out internally about encountering downed power lines or impending aftershocks, but all was fine.

Los Angeles seemed to be carrying on like it was no big deal.

Traffic was bustling, dogs were barking, the sun was shining, and a wind had started to move the palm trees. It was warm. Absurdly so.

His phone pinged as he unlocked the front door and surveyed the courtyard from their open-air hallway.

A few potted plants in front of his downstairs neighbor’s door had tipped over, and the dollar store plastic No Diving sign that was usually hanging on the wrought iron fence was in the bottom of the deep end, but other than that, the old nineteen-fifties building seemed unfazed.

He stepped into his apartment, took off his shoes, and walked through the small space, checking for damage.

Luckily, he and Leandra couldn’t afford expensive stuff like wall art, so nothing had crashed or broken in their place except the shampoo bottle, which had tumbled to the shower stall floor from its perch on the tiled nook in the wall.

He picked it up, put it back where it belonged, and headed into the bedroom.

His phone pinged. He glanced at it as he reclined on the bed.

Leandra

Please say you felt that?

It hit him with a wave of panic that she was in Malibu and that she would be swallowed by a tsunami if this quake triggered one. Yeah, his anxiety was at level ten today.

Are you ok? Is the ocean calm? Should you drive inland?

Leandra

I’m fine. Working. Can’t drive anywhere. So you’re fine?

Yeah. I was at TJ’s when it hit. Thought I was gonna die.

Leandra

Did you remember to get salsa? The Authentica one?

Hunter blinked.

I got nothing. It hit before I could shop and it was chaos after.

Leandra

Hunter! We need groceries! I wanted salsa and stuff for fajitas. And we need oat milk.

Hunter sighed.

Can you pick it up on your way home?

Leandra took so long to answer he double-checked that he actually hit send on the text.

Leandra:

Sure. I can do everything.

At twenty-five, Hunter wasn’t the most experienced with women. Leandra was only his second real girlfriend, but he knew that wasn’t a good response. He thought about what to say to defuse the situation. It seemed like lately, no matter what he did, Leandra wasn’t thrilled.

After almost half an hour, he finally wrote her back.

Sorry babe. I’ll make it up to you.

She didn’t respond.

The day didn’t get better after that. His agent called and told him he didn’t get a call back for a two-episode guest role.

According to the show, he wasn’t ethnically diverse enough, which made Hunter want to punch a wall.

Hunter had been adopted, so his parents’ ethnicity—which was French Canadian and Swedish for his dad and Scottish and Korean for his mom—didn’t apply to him.

But he had done one of those ancestry swab tests when he’d turned eighteen and found out he was a quarter Japanese, sixty percent British, five percent Jamaican, and ten percent Norwegian.

He was the fucking United Nations of ethnicity, and yet casting agents constantly told him he wasn’t enough of something or too much of something else.

Leandra came home at seven, and her mood was just as salty as it was in their text conversation. She dropped the groceries on the counter in the kitchen and muttered, “I need a shower. Estelle had a particularly rough day. I blame the earthquakes and the winds.”

Leandra was a nurse who had recently left her hospital job to become a private nurse for an eighty-six-year-old former actress with dementia.

She rotated shifts with two other nurses hired by Estelle’s son.

She also taught yoga at a West Hollywood gym on weekends.

Hunter thanked her for the groceries, then silently cooked the fajitas as Leandra showered and changed.

When she re-entered the kitchen, her damp light brown hair was twisted in a top knot, and her face was free of makeup. She didn’t make eye contact with Hunter.

“Warm the tortillas,” she muttered and then took the wooden spatula from him and began shoving the vegetables around in the skillet as if they had personally wronged her.

“Look, you need more shifts at the restaurant,” Leandra told him as they ate at their small high-top table in the dining room. She tucked a wayward stand of hair behind her ear and glared at him. “The roles aren’t coming.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Hunter said, trying not to sound defensive. “I’ll ask for more shifts.”

“Day shifts. Aren’t they always hurting for waiters for day shifts?”

Hunter tried not to frown. “Yeah, but I need my days free for auditions.”

“Auditions for roles you aren’t getting?” Leandra said. Ouch. Hunter felt that like a slap. Her eyes softened just a little. “Okay, look. Can you take some day shifts just for this month? We’re behind on bills. Just take a few until we catch up. I’m working my ass off.”

She was, he knew it. But Leandra told him she loved yoga and caring for Estelle was a much more rewarding job than the grueling shifts at the hospital.

She said she liked Estelle’s son, who also lived in the Malibu house, and Estelle was delightful in her lucid moments.

It was tough work, but Leandra was doing what she loved.

But Hunter didn’t dream of being a waiter. Still, he mumbled, “Fine. Yeah.”

Then he shoved the fajita into his mouth to avoid saying anything else.

Leandra nodded, and Hunter assumed she was content with that answer, but she stared at him as she chewed, and suddenly Hunter wasn’t sure what she was thinking.

He was, in general, horrible at reading people.

His anxiety created this white noise in his brain that blocked out rational thought sometimes—not to mention the ability to assess a situation clearly.

He had a prescription for meds but no insurance or money to fill it.

So, he’d been raw dogging it since he graduated from the Acting Program at UCLA Extension two years ago.

“Cass invited me over tonight. Girls’ night.”

“Oh. Okay.” What else was he going to say? Stay here and watch TV with me? Let’s doomscroll Instagram together? Because even though they hadn’t seen each other much in the last month, he hadn’t planned anything more than dinner for tonight.

“I won’t be late.”

“No worries.”

He watched silently as Leandra grabbed their now empty plates, along with her phone that had been on the table, before disappearing into the kitchen.

At one in the morning, Hunter woke up on the couch, a rerun of Law & Order playing on the TV, and realized Leandra’s version of “not late” and his were apparently not the same… anymore.

He debated calling her to check in when he heard a loud crack outside, followed by a hideous crunching sound.