“I had a feeling you’d like PJ Harvey.”
Stricken, she listened, memories flooding in of campfires and lovers. Marshmallows and making out in their tent. The ground shaking to this exact song when the world ended as she climaxed from some extremely satisfying sixty-nineing.
But the ground kept shaking, and the camping party figured it had to be Mt. Saint Helen.
Not nuclear war.
There was cell signal enough to listen to the screams of newscasters as more cities blew apart. And then there was the quiet of the woods.
Which were not quiet at all. They were deafeningly loud.
Her entire family was gone, and they wouldn’t have wanted their brilliant daughter braving radiation to pick through garbage for their corpses.
Not pragmatic Mom and Dad. He worked for NASA; she was a brain surgeon.
And this was the last song Eugenia heard when almost everyone who mattered to her was obliterated in radioactive ash. The song—had the world not shaken with such force that they were knocked apart—she suspected Li Wei intended to propose to her once they’d caught their breaths and shared a long kiss.
She’d seen the ring in his pack. The simple band and inset diamonds—exactly to her taste. Something she could wear under surgical gloves. He knew her so well, treated her with respect.
Was willing to move against his family’s hesitations despite the fact that she was not Chinese.
Eugenia was ecstatic to accept. All of their future planned out after graduation. He’d run a family practice. She’d further her education until ready to specialize in pediatric surgery.
But his beloved family was in one direction and hers was in another.
And everyone died.
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea.
And how did the bastard Captain know the power of this song?
How could he be so cruel?
Playing that warbling, beautiful, aggressive songstress. Eugenia’s guts would have spilled out all over the floor. Fortunately, they were held tight by a conservative, cotton summer dress.
Steering her toward a set of damask sofas, facing one another as if they were on the fucking Titanic, the captain offered, “There’s wine.”
“Yeah.” Wine would be good, a whole fucking bottle.
Li Wei had been so handsome, so smart, so kind. Suave yet funny. Perfect. A sharp dresser yet not pretentious like his parents… or hers.
Sitting on that couch, Eugenia swallowed the full cup of Bordeaux in three gulps.
All of this witnessed by the man mirroring her seat on the opposite couch. A man to whom she’d never lied, and who had never lied to her.
A man waiting for an explanation for the look on her face.
“I would have said yes… to this song. I would have said yes, had a wedding, saved children’s lives on the operating table, maybe even had one of my own. But the ground started shaking, and he forgot to ask in the chaos. I don’t know what happened to the ring. Maybe still at the campsite?”
“Did you want a boy or a girl?”
This was too much to bear. Grief hard enough, and anger far more comforting. “Why the fuck are you playing PJ Harvey?”
“Because you hum her songs while you work.”
“I do not!” Humming was for suckers and fools who thought there was a happy ending in this shit place.
“Alecia, play Arcade Fire.”
And the torture ended, the captain refilling her glass.
She sipped the second round, accepting that every last survivor had some kind of PTSD, and unfortunately hers had been witnessed by someone who’d use it against her.
A man she knew hated small talk during his scheduled sex sessions. So small talk it would be. “I saw Arcade Fire live when I was seventeen. Lied to my parents and snuck out. Got a wristband to buy beer and sat on the shoulders of some bruiser whose name I don’t remember. Small venue, but the best show I’d ever seen.”
Lifting his glass, the captain saluted her. “My favorite was MUSE, the Simulation Theory tour.”
“Oh… that was a good one.” No argument there.
Li Wei had stood at her back, cuddling as they rocked to the music. As they marveled at the monster when it burst out over the stage. Both of them drunk on Goose IPA.
“What was his name?”
“None of your business.” Truly and deeply. Abso-fucking-lutely none of his business.
“So you weren’t looking for the one. You already had him.”
“The fact that you think I might reduce my happiness to the outdated concept of the one goes to show how little you know me.”
That earned a smirk. “Did you just call me old?”
“You are old.” Maybe not old enough to have fathered her, but still old.
“And you are very young.” Followed with another raised glass and a devilish grin.
“But I won’t be your brand of young in ten years, assuming I fuck one of your men every night.”
“You never answered. Boy or girl?”
Okay, maybe small talk wasn’t working.
Standing, wine glass in hand, she left the couch and the game of twenty questions to poke around his room—touching everything in an effort to annoy him. To feel. To remember regular things.
There were so many colors.
She had not realized how her blank walls and pale sheets were so lacking.
Reds, purples, the green of living plants that were no more.
Fortifying herself with another sip of honest to God wine, she turned, feeling a real skirt swish around her knees, and decided to wrap it up. “Where are you going to do it?”
How indulged he looked. Every bit the pirate king on his stolen throne. “Do what, Eugenia?”
“Rub my feet. As per our agreement.”
And he laughed again, understanding he’d lost her word game. Setting down his glass on a pristine coffee table, standing to remind her how much larger he was.
The jaw, the cheekbones, the lips, the hair.
Rouge pirate through and through.
“Anywhere you want it.”
Considering all the fun she might have at his expense if he played along, she batted her eyelashes. “Anywhere?”
Yet he was already there, toying with curls Joan had spent ages battling into submission for Eugenia’s special night. “Right here will do.”
“You said I got to pick.” It was a half-complaint as he brought them both down to soft carpet.
Thumb pads to her insoles, he said, “You took too long.”
Jesus Christ was he either gifted with fingers from the gods, or she was literally that in need of human touch. Groaning, her head fell back.
For an hour, she endured the best foot rub known to womankind. Utterly brazen in her groans, happy enough to fall asleep on soft, clean carpet.
Distraught to wake in a strange bed, the arm and leg of a man she hated weighing her down.
Breaking his own rules, because where their feet tangled, her skin was bare.
Since the sun was up, her duty was done, and she didn’t have to stand for this. Moving out of his arms, she scampered for the door—the unlocked door—like a complete coward.
***
“Did he do that tongue thing?”
Noodles today. Handmade by Chloe, the same woman who struck up a conversation all the other women must have all shared in the past.
“No.” Eugenia didn’t have a thing for the rugged, evil type who traded in human currency.