Sky on Fire

And in another dream I saw the guy with the pallet loader. I saw all the details I hadn’t taken in while enraged. The look of fear in his grey eyes. The way he’d called for mercy.

And the two scenes got muddied up and it was Astrid I was cutting open and it was the guy with the loader who was in Astrid’s belly.

And then Astrid was whispering on my neck.

‘Wake up,’ she said.

She was in my berth.

I shook my head awake.

I wasn’t dreaming it – she was really there.

‘What is it?’ I asked. My heart was hammering wildly. Was it the wall? Jesus, we should have been watching the wall!

‘I just want to talk to you,’ she told me.

She had a pen-size flashlight pointed at the floor.

I saw she was wearing pink pajamas and had bare feet. She was shivering and she looked so beautiful I thought my heart might stop.

We went out to the Kitchen to talk.

I grabbed a fleece for myself, and for her a sweater I’d worn a few times.

We sat down at a two-top in the Pizza Shack.

I saw the brass fire pit Astrid had set up. It was shiny new and filled with a couple Duraflame logs. Somehow the sight of it made me sad. It looked so shiny and hopeful.

‘Astrid, I feel so bad about what happened,’ I blurted out. ‘It was wrong and if I had been stronger it never would have happened.’

‘No,’ she said with a wry set to her mouth. ‘I knew you’d be feeling all guilty. Look, we didn’t mean to do what we did but it’s not bad or wrong. It’s not even our fault. Jake and I had an open kind of thing – no commitment. We are free to do whatever we want.’

‘Oh,’ I said. I sat back in my chair. ‘Okay.’

‘The only thing I regret about what we did is that I think Jake saw us and I am worried about him. What you said about him committing suicide… I don’t know. We need to watch him.’

She chewed on her lip for a moment.

Then she looked at me and smiled, glancing away. I think she was sort of blushing, even.

‘But as for this afternoon? I thought it was… awesome.’

My heart had some kind of a seizure.

‘But I… I feel like I forced you. Did I force you?’ I said.

Now she looked shocked.

‘No!’ she exclaimed. ‘Did I force you?’

‘No, I mean, I wanted to do what we did. Very, very much. It’s just…’

I didn’t know what to say.

‘Dean, can I ask you something?’

I blew out a big breath of air. I knew what she was going to ask.

‘Was it your first time?’

The blush that hit me could have melted paint. I think I started stammering.

Astrid reached out and grabbed my arm.

‘It’s okay!’ She laughed. ‘Everyone has a first time.’

I tried to laugh, but I still felt really embarrassed.

‘It’s just not everyone who has a first time under the influence of a deadly chemical warfare compound,’ she added drily.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It’s gonna be hard to top it, frankly.’

We both laughed.

I scratched my head. I think even my scalp was beet red.

Then Astrid leaned over and kissed me.

It was a soft kiss. Her lips parted just a bit as she pressed them against mine.

I kissed back, my mouth feeling strong pushing against hers. She was answering me with her mouth and it was a quiet, sweet yes.

And then she pulled back gently.

‘That should have been our first kiss,’ she said quietly.

I sat for a moment, taking it all in.

‘There’s no reason why it can’t be our first kiss,’ I answered her. ‘This could be, I don’t know, the official start of Us.’

‘Dean—’ she started to protest.

‘Astrid, you know how I feel about you. I’m crazy about you—’

‘Dean, no. Not now.’

‘Why? I’m good for you. You said it yourself, I’m a good guy. I would never leave you like Jake did—’

‘Dean! Listen to me. If Jake confronts us, I’m going to say it was a huge mistake. I’m going to say it was just the compounds.’

‘But why?’

‘Look, maybe I have a little crush on you right now. But Jake’s the father of my baby. And he’s in really bad shape. He needs me. You said it yourself, he’s depressed. He could be suicidally depressed! He probably needs the promise of… of being with me, if he’s going to make it through this disaster.’

‘That doesn’t make sense.’

‘It does to me,’ she said.

‘It’s not fair!’ I protested, probably sounding like a dumb kid.

She laughed bitterly. ‘What about any of this is fair, Dean?’

Then she squeezed my hand.

‘I’m sorry.’

And she rose to walk away.

I sat back in my chair.

‘That’s it? End of discussion?’

‘For now,’ she said.

It seemed outrageously unfair. When he was the king of the hill – the most popular, the most handsome – Jake got to be with Astrid. And now he was going to get to be with her because he was a pathetic mess.

When she liked me.

Me.

I stood up and headed back toward the berths.

No way was he going to win this one. I didn’t know how it would play out, but I wasn’t letting Jake get Astrid without a fight. And you know what, it felt good to have something to fight for, besides the old garden variety survival.

I couldn’t get back to sleep so I made everyone a big breakfast.

A little crush on me.

Astrid had a little crush on me.

Was it wrong to feel a heart-spike of happiness in the middle of the Apocalypse?

I carried the food over to the Kitchen, and lit the fire in Astrid’s fire pit.

The kids were excited when they saw the fire pit. It was something new.

They had stopped asking us about being rescued, I’d noticed. I’d stopped even thinking about being rescued. We all just stayed in the moment.