Eve flung herself into her friend’s arms, elated by her words, hugging her tight.
“There will never be a time that I will not want you here,” she said, straightening herself. “Although, you know we will have to rethink the sleeping arrangements when you and Loui get married. I mean, I love you and all, but I don’t want to be woken in the middle of the night to the two of you…you know.”
Eve ducked as a down feather pillow came flying at her head. The second one caught her right across the forehead as she was straightening back up. She was about to retaliate when Wendy knocked on the door.
“Yes?” Eve called out.
“Uh. Eve.” The other girl’s voice was soft and low.
“You can come in, Wendy.”
“Uh. Wes just radioed in,” the girl almost whispered, opening the door and barely coming into the room. “He said they were about twenty minutes away. He was going to shower and would be here in an hour and a half to pick you up.”
“Oh shit. I have to hurry. Which of these two shirts should I wear?” she asked displaying the two she had picked out up for both girls to see.
“I like the red,” Wendy whispered so low that if Eve hadn’t been walking by her, heading to the floor to ceiling mirror that was hanging on the wall by the door, she wouldn’t have heard her.
“Red huh? Vera?”
“The red, definitely.”
“All right then. Red it is. Okay, Vera I’m going to shower. When I get out, I want you to work your magic. Remember casual, not street walker.”
“Hey, I only did that to you once and it was funny. Where did you hide those pictures at anyway?”
“Not on your life.” The two woman laughed at the inside joke, while Wendy stood in the doorway watching them.
Right at an hour later, Eve was ready for her date and waiting in the family room, coloring in a Diego coloring book with Caleb. Now that he was five, coloring with him was much easier. He was more focused and was getting better by the week about coloring inside the lines. For a long while, she didn’t know if she would have the patience to color with him. He constantly wanted to flip back and forth throughout the book, making one little mark on a page, then getting bored with the page and turning to the next, not giving her anytime to color her own page.
Finally, she decided it would work out better if they had their own separate books, but Caleb didn’t like it that she wouldn’t color in his book. He kept picking his up and putting it on top of hers. She did her best to explain to him that his book was his and for him to color in and hers was hers. She prayed he would learn by watching her. It took a long time, but he finally did.
They were playing a connect-the-dots game that would eventually take the form of Boots and Dora when Wes knocked on the door. Eve looked up at the sound and was about to put Caleb down beside her when Vera came running down the stairs, heading straight for the door. Eve laughed at her and pointed down at the next dot for him to trace his line to.
“She’s in the family room with Caleb,” announced Vera in a loud voice, as if Eve hadn’t known who it was that was at the door.
Eve looked up toward the doorway when she heard the two of them come into the room. Relief flooded her. He was dressed in light amber khakis, a button up hunter green Ralph Lauren dress shirt, and he had a black leather jacket swung over one arm. Casual, yet nice. Her internal argument about whether or not she was over or under dressed, sighed with relief; she was dressed perfectly to match him.
Eve smiled brightly up at him for a moment. Vera caught the two of them looking deeply into each other’s eyes and knew just how deep their feelings were going to get for them. She crossed in front of Wes and went into the room to get Caleb from Eve. This caused the two of them to break eye contact.
“What are you two doing?” Wes asked, nodding to the book in Caleb’s lap.
“Coloring,” Caleb told him, holding the book out to show him.
“Cool. Caleb, do you mind if I have your Aunt Eve for a little while?”
Eve’s spine tingled at the word “have.” A bad thought crossed her mind. She looked up to see a sneaky grin on Vera’s face. She knew the other woman had been thinking roughly the same thing.
“Why?” Caleb asked, letting Vera pick him up.
“I want to talk to her for a little while.” He hadn’t been prepared for that question. He had figured Caleb would say “yes” or the very least shrug as if he didn’t care. It was grown up stuff, which he assumed Caleb would have no interest.
“About what?”
“Uh?” Wes looked to Eve for help.
She just looked back at him, waiting on his answer. When it didn’t seem as if he had one, she said, “Caleb, why don’t you go upstairs with Aunt Vera and get ready for bed.”
“Okay.” He instantly forgot about the conversation they were just having.
“Here, give me a kiss, in case you are already asleep when I get back.”
He hugged her tightly, kissed her on the cheek, said his goodnights, and followed Vera up the stairs.
“He is growing up too fast,” she said, getting up from the sofa and putting the book and the crayons back on the shelf. “So, where are we going?”
“You’ll see soon enough. Are you hungry?” Wes replied.
“Yes, very much so.” Eve pulled a long black sweater jacket from the coat rack in the hall, and they stepped outside.
“Good.”
“Wow.” The car parked at the curb wasn’t his usual Volkswagen Golf GTI. This VW was much more beautiful and stylish.
“You like?”
“Very much. What is it?”
“It’s a Volkswagen.”
“I know that. I can see the emblem. What kind of V.W.? I have never seen you drive this.” Wes wasn’t a connoisseur of VW’s, but they tended to be the only type of car he would drive.
“It is a Scirocco. I got it off the dealer’s lot in Kingston. What do you think of the color?”
“I love it.” Eve was a fan of the color green, and the small two-door sports car parked in front of her house was a two-toned electric green and yellow.
“Shall we?”
“Can I drive?”
“You don’t know where you are going.”
“You could give me directions.”
“Stop trying to cheat.” He opened the passenger’s side door for her. She pretended to pout.
“I’ll let you drive home.”
“Okay.” She replaced her fake frown with a real smile and buckled her seat belt.
In the downtown area of Richardson, Wes and a few others had cleaned up a building that had once been a small Italian Restaurant. It hadn’t taken them long. The restaurant was privately owned; therefore, the moment the owners had gotten sick, they closed their doors. They didn’t have a big corporation forcing them to keep their doors open. Their stock of food had been cleaned out in March of the first year of the sickness because the owners had given the military permission to take what was edible, disperse it, and get rid of the rest. The fact that they didn’t have anything anyone wanted had saved them, for the most part, from vandalism.
Eve was pleasantly surprised, though very confused when they pulled up in front of the tiny restaurant. She decided not to ask any more questions and try to patiently enjoy the evening. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach. She hadn’t been on a real date since Doyle.
He got out of the car and walked over to her door. Opening it, he held out his hand for her to take. A wide smile spread across his lips, as he saw the look on her face. She was trying to figure it all out. Restaurants didn’t exist anymore, so she couldn’t understand why they were here. He offered nothing to help guide her to a conclusion.
In the dark of night, the café-sized bar and grill didn’t look any different than any other building on the block, but when he opened the door she could see a faint bit of light coming from the interior. She glanced up at him; he smiled back down at her and motioned for her to enter. Strand after strand o
f white icicle Christmas lights were the source of the light. Wes and Antonio had strung them along the counter and up the circling banister that led to a small seating area upstairs. They emitted about as much light as candles would have in the building because of the near pitch-black darkness that surrounded them.
He guided her up the stairs to one of the three small tables that occupied the balcony seating area. On the two other tables were small arrangements of finger foods, a large bowl of fettuccine alfredo, two bottles of wine, and a pitcher of ice water.
“That is a lot of food,” Eve said, eyeing the array of fresh vegetables and canned fruit.
“I’m a hardy eater,” he joked. “No, I’m not sure how well the pasta turned out. Everything is made from scratch and since none of us, not even Antonio who is by blood Italian, has ever made noodles by hand, I wanted to have some alternatives.”
“It looks wonderful. Did you make it all by yourself?” She took the seat he pulled out for her.
He was being everything a man should be on a first date. They never stayed that way, she had thought. Oh, occasionally they will remember their girlfriends or wives are with them and hold the door open for them or wait for them to sit before taking their own seat, but usually first date sort of stuff went away around two to six months into the relationship and didn’t come back except for on special occasions or if he had gone without sex for a while. Eve wasn’t a cynical woman, she hadn’t dated enough people to be, but she did understand how this game was played. She wouldn’t ruin the night’s fun, though, by dwelling on such things.
“No. Lydia helped me make the noodles and cut up the veggies. We used a premixed mixture to make the fettuccine sauce. That is why I’m not sure. Lydia tasted it and said she thought it was fine. I hope you like it.”
“I’m sure I will.”
They ate slowly, spending most of their time in conversation. The noodles were a little grainy and the sauce had lost some of its flavor, but for the most part everything was perfect.
After a quick clean up when they finished, Wes escorted her to the door and asked if she was ready for the next thing on their agenda.
“There’s more?” Eve asked, shocked.
“Of course. You didn’t think this was all I could come up with, did you?”
Their second destination was only a five-minute drive to the south side of town. Eve knew immediately where she was. How could she not, the giant screen reached so far into the sky she had seen it from a good distance away. They pulled in on the left side of the screen, and took the gravel road around past where the ticket booth had been and past the backside of the concession stand. Wes pulled the Scirocco into the middle spot of the next to the last row.
“Give me just a few minutes, all right. I have to go set some things up. I didn’t have any help with this one, so things aren’t quite together,” he said, getting out of the car.
“You’re fine. Take all of the time you need. I will stay right here where it is warm.”
Within five minutes, Wes had set up the projector and checked the speaker system for the hundredth time. He had come on his own time to clear the lot and the area surrounding it, cleaning up a bit, and checking the speaker system. It had been an easy job since the drive-in had only been open among the summer months and the sickness had come during the winter, but there was still a small mess to clear out.
He made Eve jump clear out of her seat and hit her head on the roof of the car by tapping on her window when he finally came back. He nearly bowed over onto the ground laughing at the expression on her face.
“That wasn’t funny. You scared the shit out of me,” she said, trying to hold back her own laughter as she hit the button to roll down the window.
“I know. It was great.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I just wanted to feed this speaker through your window. I had no intention of scaring you.”
“Oh.” She eyed him suspiciously. He laughed at her some more and handed her the speaker.
“Put that on the dash, pull the cord a little, and roll the window back up.”
“Gladly.” She glared at him but there was a smile on her lips. The situation had been funny, but it had mortified her.
“Aw. Don’t be that way,” he said as she hit the window “up” button. For a second she was scared the glass would snap the cord, instead it took the cord up into the window frame with it. He laughed at her again and walked around to his side of the car.
Images of dancing food were flashing across the big screen by the time he had himself situated. The images brought back a flood of memories of the last time she had been here. Her grandfather had brought her here to see The Hunger Games. The movie had been a double feature with something else that she couldn’t remember.
Her grandfather hadn’t cared what was playing; he only cared that she not miss the experience of the drive-in. The fact that her parents had never taken her to one appalled him. She hadn’t thought she had been missing anything; she had been to a theater many times in her life and had seen hundreds of movies on the big screen. She didn’t think there would be a big difference.
There really hadn’t been, to her at least. Saying so to her grandfather would have been out of the question though. She understood that this was a childhood memory thing for him. He had spent the entire car ride over telling her about the first time he had been to the drive-in to see a couple of old horror movies with her grandmother. Some of her friends had thought she was weird for going with her grandfather, but they didn’t understand that she was closer to him than she was to most of them.
Thinking of the most inspirational man in her life made her desperately wish that he was there, not there in the car with her on her date because that would be awkward, but there as in alive. She would give anything for him to still be alive so that he could run the city, tell these people what to do, to make all of the hard decisions.
She was so caught up picturing the look on her grandfather’s face that she forgot to pay attention to what was playing in front of her. Luckily, she hadn’t missed much, because the sounds of Primrose’s scream echoing through the speakers jerked her to life.
“You didn’t?” she asked, shocked that he had been able to get a film reel of her favorite movie.
“Yep.”
“How?”
“I found it the last time we went to California.”
“Where?”
“Some theater was doing a screening of this version of the movie to get people geared up for the remake.”
“This is so awesome.”
She sat in total silence for the next two and a half hours, her eyes glued to the screen. Once or twice, Wes tried to strike up a conversation, but she never heard a word he said. He found her obsession too sweet to find the silence annoying.
“If I had known you would be that engrossed I would have picked another movie,” he told her as the end credits ran.
“Sorry.” She turned to look at him, giving him her full attention for the first time since the movie started.
“Don’t be. It was great watching your facial expressions,” he said, smiling at her with amusement.
“Didn’t you watch the movie?” She nodded toward the screen.
“Not really, I’ve seen this one too many times.”
“Why did you choose this one?”
“I knew it was one of your favorites, plus Vera told me about the first time you ever saw the movie.”
“Thank you for sitting through it even though it must have been boring for you.”
“This was fine. Although, I may make you sit through something more gruesome on our next date,” he said slyly.
“Next date, huh. What makes you think you did well enough on this one to be eligible for a next one?”
They were getting out of the car now. Wes needed to turn off the projector and lock up the booth, and Eve was so caught up in the conversation that she followed him.
“Oh, I rocked this date. I did s
o well on this date I will be up to second base by the third one.” He laughed to ensure that she knew he was joking even though he was secretly hoping.
“Really. See I didn’t think it went that well. I’m thinking that second base is at least fifty dates from now. If you’re lucky.”
“Fifty. Man. This is going to take forever.”
“Yeah, but I’m worth it.” Eve was pretending to be arrogant.
He didn’t reply to this. In one quick movement he reached down, put one arm around her middle, lifted her up to his height, cupped his other hand around her cheek, bent slow, and kissed her with such emotion that she felt her body relax and her mind spin as if she was on one of those tea cup rides at the fair, but without the nausea. With every passing second, it progressed in style and intensity.
When the need for oxygen overwhelmed them, they separated but only slightly. He held her tightly to him. Her hands gripped his arms but the strength in them wasn’t strong enough to hold him in any way. Slowly, reluctantly, he lowered her to her feet.
“Okay. Maybe you will get to second on the fortieth date,” she joked, breaking the intensity of the situation. She didn’t want to, but she knew if he kissed her that way one more time they would slide right on passed second and third base, slamming into home with such force they would break the plate, and she couldn’t allow that, not right now. Her hormones wanted more of a reason not to, but she couldn’t reason well enough to give them one.
“I only get ten dates for that. Man, that is a kick to the ego. That kiss was so worth at least thirty dates.”
The joking continued and the strength came back to Eve’s body.
The night ended shortly after the kiss. Vera was waiting up for her to hear every detail of the night. She knew most of the general details from what Loui told her, but she wanted to hear it all from her.
IV – Rebels
In the months following Eve and Wes’ first date a few more people joined Eve’s little community of survivors. While on a flight to a small town in Oklahoma, the small flight team found two more survivors. They were driving through Cache, a small town just south of the Wichita Mountains National Park and west of Lawton. They had flown into a small airfield early that Monday morning and drove into Cache. The roads were clear and the town was nearly spotless. They worked on cleaning most of the mess the first few days they were there.
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