𝙒𝙖𝙧𝙢 𝘽𝙤𝙙𝙞𝙚𝙨

Chapter Seventeen

Y/N

Jennie and I spent several hours using up all of the paint tins that I've collected from the nearby hardware store.

There's no pattern or sense to our painting, we just splash colours on the walls. Jennie draws childish pictures on the walls, suns and flowers and stick-figure animals. I can't manage quite such precision with my zombie-fingers so my painting is really nothing more than swirls of colour in between her pictures.

Also she took the paintbrush so I've been painting with my hands. We cover the entire front wall of the shop with orange and yellow and blue - and a fair bit of brown that happens when the paints mix.

"I like it," Jennie says, stepping back to examine the wall as a whole. "It looks nice."

"Colourrrful," I agree, wiping my hands on my jeans. I glance sideways at Jennie; she's beaming, a spot of blue paint on her cheek bringing out the colour of her eyes. "Beautiful."

"Not too bad for an afternoon's work," she says with a nod. She sets the paintbrush down and rubs her palms against her jeans. She looks up at me and grins. "You're staring again, Y/N."

"You h-have," I point at my cheek, trying to signal the spot where she's got paint.

"Paint?" Jennie asks and scrubs her palm against the wrong cheek.

"Here." I step forward and swipe my thumb across her cheekbone. I unfortunately forgot that my hands are currently covered in paint, so all I manage to do is swipe a rainbow of blue and orange and yellow across the left side of her face. I frown. "Th-that's worse."

Jennie laughs, rubbing cheek against the sleeve of her jacket. Her skin turns a muddy brown but she gets the majority of the paint off. "It was a nice try anyway," she says and shrugs, continuing to scrub at her face with the heel of her hand. "Thanks."

I gesture at the wall and say, "Thank-ks you."

"Don't worry about it, it was fun," she says. "I'm hungry, but when I'm done you wanna read another book? You've got this really sweet collection of poetry and I've got a soft spot for Whitman. It looked like it was missing a couple pages but it should be okay."

I'm tired so I simply nod. I follow her over to her nest where she settles down with a can of more squishy fruit - pale green this time.

"Pears?" Jennie offers after she wedges the lid off.

Wrinkling up my nose, I shake my head.

"Still recovering from the peaches, huh?" she asks and this time I nod. "I don't blame you. I never liked pears before all this, you know? But the zombie apocalypse kind of makes you appreciate things you always took for granted before. I never thought I'd be grateful for fruit. Although you know what food I'd kill for?"

"P-pizz-zza," I answer.

Jennie giggles through a mouthful of pears. "You remember? I'm impressed."

I pick paint off my fingers. "I try."

"I haven't had a pizza since way back at the beginning of the apocalypse," she says. "Jisoo and I found some frozen pizzas in a supermarket not long after we met, it was so good."