Zach shakes his head. “No luck. I’ll have to call work, tell them I can’t come in. I mean, I wouldn’t be able to anyway, you know, the hospital’s on pretty strict instructions to self-isolate if you think you’ve been exposed to the virus, but—”
“Zach.”
“Right. Yeah, so, we can’t go to work. Mr. Harris said we can’t even go out for groceries. He said we can get a delivery, but he wants to make sure everything gets sanitized and cleaned properly before it comes into the building.”
“What, so he’s going to stand outside spraying Dettol on our cereal and bread before we can have it?”
“I don’t know, Rena.”
“Well, did you ask him?”
“I was a bit busy trying to get my head around it all. We’re in full lockdown until next Sunday, he said. You’ll have to call the office in the morning. Shall I place a food order? Where’s your iPad?”
He follows me into the kitchen, stopping to stare, wide-eyed at all the food I’ve emptied out of the cupboards while he was downstairs.
“What are you doing?”
“Seeing if we’ve got enough food to get us through a week.”
He laughs, coming close enough to wrap his arms around me from behind, planting a noisy kiss on the side of my face. One of my hands automatically reaches up to hold his arm, my thumb brushing back and forth. “I’ll get my ration book ready for stamps, shall I?”
“Oh, shut up. We might have to live on pasta and pesto for three days straight, but I think we’ll survive. We definitely do need more toilet paper, though. And we’ve got absolutely nothing for breakfast—we’ll run out of bread tomorrow, and there’s only enough cereal left for one bowl.”
Zach’s face scrunches in a curious frown and he peels away, reaching over my head for a cupboard. “I thought we bought some Cheerios on sale a few weeks ago?”
“Yeah, and I’m telling you we’re almost out.”
“No, no, I’m sure we bought more.”
“I literally just looked in there, Zach. This is what happens when you come in from shift at all hours and eat a bowl of cereal before you do anything else. We run out, and we need more.”
He gives up looking, conceding the argument with a small grunt.
“Better get started on that online order then,” he says, clapping his hands together. He goes off in search of my iPad to get started while I tidy up the kitchen. The note the building’s caretaker left under our door at some point today is on the counter, and my heart leaps into my throat at the sight of it.
With the news around the pandemic gradually ramping up and the hospital Zach works at trying to prepare for the worst, it’s not as though I thought we’d just skate by totally unscathed, but . . . I guess I wasn’t expecting to be put on house arrest in our apartment for an entire week, not this soon. And I hadn’t even stocked up on extra toilet paper!
Still, I remind myself again, at least if I have to be put on lockdown, I don’t have to go through it alone. At least I’ve got Zach by my side.
APARTMENT #15 – ISLA
Chapter Four
"Stay,” I tell him, leaning in for another kiss.
I cling to Danny’s jacket as though I might physically be able to keep him here. As though he’s not about a foot taller than me, with those big broad shoulders, and like I don’t have to shop in the petite section half the time. Me, the girl who doesn’t use the top shelves in the kitchen cupboards because she can’t reach them, versus the guy who used to play rugby at university.
But he lingers, laughing that deep, rich laugh that makes my stomach fill with butterflies, letting his bag drop to the floor in favor of wrapping his arms around me again. He kisses me on my nose, cheeks, forehead, lips, and I sigh into him.
Is it bad how much I don’t want him to leave?
Is it bad how quickly I’m falling for him?
Danny and I have only been dating a few weeks—a month, last Wednesday, actually. I’d been with a friend for her birthday on Wednesday, though, so he’d come over on Friday after work to spend the weekend. We’d had plans to go out and celebrate, except . . .
Well.
They hadn’t been firm plans—it wasn’t like we’d had tickets to anything, or reservations, so . . .
Plus, why would we ever need to go out for a fancy meal, when Danny was such a good cook? And why would I ever want to suggest getting out of bed to go somewhere, when I had my very lovely, very sexy, very wonderful boyfriend right there with me?
And, you know, I hadn’t spent all that money on lingerie for nothing. It was our one-month anniversary. I had to make at least some effort. (Although, in hindsight, I guess I made a little too much effort, considering we never got around to leaving the apartment.
And by too much, I mean the perfect amount.) I know Danny has to go home, and he can’t stay any longer because he has to do the food shop before everywhere closes for the day, but . . .
“Just a couple more minutes,” I wheedle. I pout, which I know must look silly, but I can’t help it. “I don’t know when I’ll get to see you again if all this gets worse.”
“All this” meaning the apparently super contagious virus that has become not just the main, but the only topic on the news recently.
Forget snow days taking over everything. Now, you turn on the TV, even the weatherman is saying, “It’s a good day to stay inside!”
I’m really, really, hoping it won’t turn into something more, that everything will stay at least fairly normal, but this past week, it’s been impossible to escape the fact that the tone of the news has gone from fine to borderline sinister. It’s kind of hard to hold out hope for everything staying normal when the tone has changed so quickly.
A sensible person right now might be worrying about their sup-plies of tinned food and hand sanitizer, and if they have enough tea bags to last a quarantine period.
It’s not that I’m not sensible, but I am in the rosy glow of a new relationship, so honestly, my biggest concern when I’ve been seeing the news alerts is: If they are going to make us stay inside, who knows when I’ll get to see Danny next? What if we have to go an entire week—or longer!—without seeing each other? I don’t think I could handle it.
I know I’m falling for him. How could I not? He’s so bloody perfect.
He’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a boyfriend. And judging by the way he looks at me sometimes, despite us not having been together for that long, I’m sure he feels the same way.
But, well, what if he doesn’t? What if that’s just the new-relationship, lots-of-sex-and-spontaneous-romantic-moments glow? And what if, if “all this” does get worse and we can’t see each other for a while, he forgets about me? What if easy conversation and cute dates can’t translate into drinks over Zoom and texting? We’d been spending at least a few nights a week together since we started dating. What if all that suddenly goes away?
Everything could change like that.
In an instant we could go from this warm, fuzzy glow and not being able to stop thinking about each other, to being total strangers who just . . . drifted apart.