The Final Female

Chapter Twenty

Flickers of swirling orange fade across the wall, melting around the nooks and crannies like Salvador Dali's, 'Persistence of Memory.' 

It's funny how now TV was gone, I could spend hours staring at a candle making a world within the flame that I could curl up and live in. 

I missed books. 

A chill ran over my toes and I realised a hole had finally torn it's way through the socks I had been wearing for almost two weeks. Wiggling and stretching them, I dared to make the hole bigger. 

"We haven't got any socks in storage love. Better to not test the boundaries there."

My head whipped up to the new presence in the hut. Jay walked over, squatted, perching beside me, our backs pressed against the wall, our shoulders a hairs width apart. We faced forward a while. Do we acknowledge each other? 

"We're all dying anyway. May as well feel the grass below our feet."

Silence. 

The giddy lingerings of a new crush was still etching its way around us, except now it seemed silly to approach. Like it was something needing to be conquered, not felt slowly, elapsed out beautifully and timidly. 

There was no time for timid advances anymore. Now there soon might be nothing but coldness within a burning world. We were both very aware we were avoiding the topic.

"You called me love." I said, facing the candle across the hut still, unwavering from my position. 

"Is that okay?" I knew he was looking at me, his head tilted, full attention on me. His back still stuck to the wall, body mirroring mine. 

"Yes. Just caught me off guard. It wasn't in Spanish." A smirk, a small little smirk amongst all the pain. 

He mirrored me once more and I decided at last to tilt my head too. If only to at least see his own little smile. 

"You are quite extraordinary. You know that right?" 

His eyes trailed my jaw, moving up the bridge of my nose and across the lids of my eyes. 

I could've stayed looking at him like this for eternity. 

"You only say that as I'm all that's left." The hair comes loose behind my head when I tilt back forward, gazing at the dancing on the opposite wall. 

"No... Digo esto porque eres la mujer más valiente y exasperantemente brillante que he conocido. Incluso antes de este nuevo mundo."

"I took French in college." 

"I'll write it down for you later." His smile overwhelmed the flame. 

"There's no paper." The whisper left my lips. His head seemed closer. 

Flashes of the party room in the cinema entered my mind. The feeling of want I felt in that room was something I had never experienced before. It burnt within me, deep in my core, and those same feelings surfaced as we leant our heads against the wall now, facing each other, so close, letting our breathing mingle. Allowing ourselves to accept the fate awaiting us outside this hut. I wanted to live in this hut forever. Just keep this moment everlasting. 

I thought he might say something. He seemed to ponder it too, but then instead his arm lifted delicately. His index finger lightly touched the top of my neck, just below my ear. Despite only being seconds, it felt like five minutes had passed as he trailed softly down my neck. His arm lifted again and he used the same finger to trace across my forehead, sweeping a curl away from my eyes and behind my ear. 

We didn't need to talk. Instead we explored. 

Lifting my own arm, I trailed a single finger down the bridge of his nose. His head tilted up slightly as I did it, angling so my finger would fall off his nose like a cliff and fall onto the red below. His lips were dry, and the second I pulled my hand away his tongue quickly pulled them in causing a glisten to swarm. 

I realised he was nervous. The way his eyes followed my every move. The way he kept biting on the corner of his bottom lip. 

It was a new realisation. The men I had known never expressed nerves. They were warriors. Bludgeoners. 

Did he feel more deeply than they did? Did I miss something in the other men? Did they simply hide it better? 

I decided his nerves comforted me. I wasn't inferior in this situation. We were simply equals. Investigating something in a time of distress and wonder and silence. 

When our lips did touch, it was sweet. It wasn't a rush of need like the stars had witnessed in the cinema. He moved slowly. His stubble grazing roughly, contrasting the softness of his actions. 

His curls wrapped around my fingers like a lifeline as I leant back, causing him to chase, chase, chase. 

The mat below met my back. Jay hovered above me, trying to disperse his weight. Gripping him, I pulled him on top of me in an embrace, his nose finding the crook of my neck. I liked the feeling of his full weight enveloping me. Crushing me. I never thought it would be a feeling I would welcome. 

The hours passed as we lay there. Every so often Jay would let his lips feather across my neck, and then he would simply go back to breathing me in. 

I decided this was better than sex could ever be. 

The candle danced as we lay, and the long and dark night stretched, leaving behind the sorrow of the day before, and of what we would need to face tomorrow. And eventually, we slept. 

Blinding light woke me before the bells did the next morning. A frown crept its way in when I couldn't feel warmth and decided last night must have been in my head. The stories within the flame becoming more real than they should have. 

But then I looked up... and I smiled. Smiling had become something natural to me again since arriving at The Vivo. 

A pair of pure white socks sat upon the small makeshift table. So in tact I thought for a moment they might even smell like fresh laundry. Next to them, a small piece of paper. Ripped, dirty and rare. But his earlier misunderstood words stood clear. 

"I say this because you are the bravest and most infuriatingly brilliant woman I have ever known. Even before this new world."