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The day after Manousos had finally succeeded in reversing the joining, sending out a signal-disrupting force standing atop the local Albuquerque radio tower that Carol still didn’t entirely understand, she let herself exhale for perhaps the first time in the months since she had acquired that atom bomb. While Manousos had fiddled with his hand-held radio and the physics books he got from God knows where, Carol gripped her landline, day after day, willing herself not to crack and press zero, just to see Zosia’s face one more time. During the nights, she wouldn’t sleep, visions of Zosia’s affected stare as Carol left her in that damn helicopter haunting her dreams. She would wake up in a sweat and, more often than not, ended up crouching in front of her alcohol cabinet, foregoing the idea of a glass and reaching straight for a bottle. If it was the end of the world, she might as well be allowed to spend it in a drunken stupor.
Before she knew it, Manousos had “figured it out, Carol Esturka! I am going to save the world!” and she was still on her couch, Dorothy and Blanche keeping her barely distracted enough to keep her hovering thumb from closing the space between it and the now worn button on her phone. She was happy, really, she was, for the sake of human kind at the very least. But what was left for her? The ghost of her dead wife haunting her from her backyard and the visions of Zosia's deep brown gaze terrorizing her every time she dared to close her eyes? She almost preferred the quiet dread of the end of human kind to having to fully wake up to her new reality, almost.
And so, as she stood on the pavement outside the radio station as Manousos saved the world, typical man, Carol was filled with dread. She let him drive them back to her house in the car they technically stole from a nearby rental place (at least until Manousos paid back the note of debt he left lodged in the front door of the business) and they each settled into her modern house, which they decided they would share after the un-joining. The Mitchells couldn’t very well come back to see a random man in their home when they did eventually open their front door once more, whenever that would be. Manousos assured her that the arrangement would be temporary and that he was eager to go back to Paraguay and the way things used to be, but Carol had a sneaking suspicion that he wouldn’t leave as soon as he pretended to promise. She noticed the way he winced every time she reached for one of the many bottles now scattered haphazardly around her house: whiskey on the kitchen counter, vodka on the coffee table, and her favorite gin on her bedside table. To his credit, he never tried to stage an intervention or nary voice a comment, but his concerned glances were enough. Why couldn’t he just leave her alone, she was fine. Sure, she woke up with a pounding headache and bags under her eyes each morning, but she was just fine.
Sleep didn’t come to Carol any easier after the reversal of the joining. What with not being able to close her eyes until survival necessity took over, forcing her to pass out for half an hour, when she would wake shaking, still aware of the nothingness that awaited her outside of the four walls of her living room, or bedroom, or on one occasion, her bathroom, where she had found herself scrunched up on the scratchy cream carpet after a particularly rough day that bleeded into an even worse night. Sunlight bleeded into darkness, Albuquerque slowly began to come back to life, even the Mitchells had moved back in, and Carol still ached for the peace that she felt during the thirteen days that she spent with Zosia. From watching Zosia swim from the poolside, not really reading, to sitting next to her on a ski-lift, watching the tranquil scene of the snowy tree tops pass them by, Carol had perhaps never felt so relaxed. She was with her Zosia, no matter how twisted the complications were, and she no longer had to hide her sexuality now that the literal global hivemind that had taken over the planet was aware that she was attracted to women. (Which, Carol assumed everyone still knew, if they cared. She imagined the entire history of the universe was a lot to remember, and everyone would try to keep only what was really important. Some stuff probably stuck, she would reason to herself in the middle of the night, but a sip of scotch and the reminder that they already knew anyway would allow her to think of some other dilemma for a change. Not that it really mattered if she was never going to interact with the world outside her house ever again.)
The world was saved, her goal since the day everyone fell into a shared consciousness had been achieved, and here she was worrying about the same old wounds she had since Freedom Falls, and missed the warm and all encompassing embrace of the very hivemind she swore to destroy. (Or, not the very same. Zosia was different. She was sure of it.) What was wrong with her?
The first time she stepped outside since the aliens had uninhabited the Earth had been at Manousos’ insistence. He came out of the guestroom to see her still on the couch from the evening before, bottle of scotch in her right hand, the other using the TV remote to press “Next Episode” on the sixth season of The Golden Girls, barely paying attention anymore as she mumbled the memorized lines of each woman under her breath. He ripped the stale blankets off of her, throwing them onto the floor. “Get up, Carol. It’s not, how do you say… saludable? Healthy. It’s not healthy.”
The glare of the sun hurt her eyes so that she had to block the sight with her hands. She stood there at her front door, and gazed out onto her front lawn, the asphalt where she had pathetically begged the hive to come back, and the atom bomb that still sat uninterrupted in her driveway. Jesus, someone should really have taken that away from her by now. Wasn’t the President, or whoever was the President now, back in power? Surely it wasn’t wise to leave an A-bomb on the premises of an alcoholic, at best, mentally unstable, at worst, woman’s house, in Albuquerque of all places. She couldn’t imagine the Department of Energy hadn’t noticed an Earth-ending bomb missing from their inventory. But, after all, she supposed they were already living in the reality after the end of the world. What was a loose atom bomb?
At any rate, the sight of the bomb next to her mailbox was a much more welcoming prospect than the only thing she really wanted to, and absolutely could not, do. She had fallen out of the habit of carrying around her landline since dialing zero did little more than displaying the digit on the LCD display, but the urge to hear her voice, just one more time, remained. Carol figured that, by now, Zosia was probably thousands of miles away back in Morocco, doing whatever the fuck there was to do there.
Despite her best efforts not to, Carol imagined her in a hundred different post-hive mind realities. Maybe she was a philosophy professor at a local university debating the ethics of Socrates or whatever numbskulls had nothing better to do than sit around and think about the purpose of their existence. Maybe she was utilizing her new flight skills to become a pilot, lending a hand to the recovery efforts the governments of the globe had begun to enact. It would be just like her to do so, or at least the image of the Zosia she thought she knew. Or maybe, just maybe, she was on the other side of the world, alone, wondering how Carol was doing. Wondering where she was. Missing her. Carol shook her head violently from side to side. Best not to think those thoughts, it only ever made her ever-present headache worse.
Having gotten her fix of fresh air for the day, Carol headed back inside, ignoring the lone tear that managed to escape her eye and was now running down her face, staining her cheek. No use in going back to the couch where Manousos could see her from the kitchen where he was currently making breakfast, she climbed up the stairs to her bedroom. She set the bottle she was still holding onto her nightstand and went into the adjoining bathroom. The left side of the double vanity remained the same way it had been since the world changed overnight, then did so again. Helen’s favorite Aesop hand wash, the citrusy Resurrection, still lay half empty next to her designated faucet. (The first time Carol realized the irony of the name, she collapsed right there and then, screaming until her throat was on fire and crying until her tears ran dry before she passed out, almost lifeless on the floor. She kept the soap, but had since turned the label to face the back wall.)
Carol looked up at her reflection in the mirror on the front of the medicine cabinet hanging over her side of the vanity. Her eyes were positively blood shot, and she was certain that just six months ago, she would not have recognized the person whose reflection stared back at her. Not even at her lowest points when she hated herself after long nights of drinking followed by screaming matches with Helen over her destructive habit, followed by even more drinking. Averting her own gaze, Carol opened the cabinet and grabbed the bottle of melatonin along with the Advil, and walked back into her bedroom. She sat on the side of her bed, opened the melatonin first and shook out a handful of pills, swallowing them two by two with swings from the recently abandoned bottle of scotch. She then shook out a few Advils and took those as well, for her headache, she reasoned, even though she couldn’t remember the last time the drug actually gave her any semblance of relief.
Already feeling the effects of active ingredients swirling with the alcohol in her stomach, combined with the sure exhaustion that already plagued her after a full night without so much as a nap, Carol whispered up a quiet message to whatever spirit could hear her, “I promise I wasn’t that bad, really, I promise.”
***
“Carol! Carol! Wake up! Dios mío, ayúdame, por favor!” Carol woke to Manousos screaming over her, shaking her by the shoulders violently. Her head throbbed like she had never felt before, making the pain she felt before feel minor in comparison. Her mouth was dry, and she could barely open her eyes before needing to shut them again, the light arresting her vision, and the effort too much to bear. When Manousos noticed the black of her pupils come into view slightly from behind her lids, he let out a mangled cry, “Carol, Gracias a Dios. I thought you had died, for certain.”
“I wish you had let me die,” she wanted to say, but she couldn’t find the strength to connect her vocal chords to the muscles in her mouth, so she just closed her eyes once more, hoping that it would be the last time.
“Mierda!” Manousos hissed as he shook her with an increased fervor, pushing her into an upright position. “You will not give up Carol Sturka.”
Now that irritated her. Who was this man to call her a quitter? He didn’t know her at all. Typical of a man to barge in and claim he knew everything. Just because he saved the world from certain doom did not mean he knew Carol Sturka. She did not give up when she was sent off to Freedom Falls when her mother found her secret stash of magazines of scantily clothed women hidden under her mattress. She did not give up on writing when she realized Wycaro was the only way she would make it as a writer in this lifetime. She did not give up when Helen died, convulsing in front of her before going completely still. Purely out of spite, she gathered the energy of the person she used to be and shoved Manousos’ hands off of her. (From an outsider’s perspective, Carol’s slight movement of her arms probably shocked Manousos so much that he let go of her in surprise, but the particulars didn’t matter to Carol.)
She opened her eyes to barely more than a squint and managed to swing her legs over the side of her bed. The sight of the man in front of her disgusted her, and she tried to stand and leave the room. Barely placing her feet on the ground, she immediately became overwhelmed with dizziness, her head spinning, and threw up all over Manousos’ shoes. “It’s okay Carol, it’s going to be okay,” she heard as he rubbed circles around her back before she faded back out of consciousness.
***
This time, when she woke up again, there was no one else in the room. A different blanket had been placed on top of her than the one she had passed out under, and when she turned to the side, she saw a glass of water sitting on her nightstand. Suddenly overcome with thirst, she sat up quickly, too quickly, and her vision became littered with stars. She took a deep breath and sat still until her vision cleared, then reached for the glass and chugged down the cool liquid. The water cleared her head slightly, and she realized her headache felt more like an afterthought than the full-frontal attack it had the last time she woke up. When was the last time she woke up? Placing the glass back onto the bedside table, she stood up slowly, careful not to repeat her last mistake. She noticed the sun shone softly through her half closed blinds, and decided that it must be early morning, meaning Manousos was probably in front of the stove, frying up some eggs.
She stepped softly, carefully through the hallway and down the stairs until she reached the kitchen. Hearing her, Manousos’ head shot up and he ran over to her, pan on the stove forgotten. He tried to steady her with a supportive grasp, but she shrugged off his arms. To his credit, Manousos took her offense in stride and only gleaned at her pityingly for a moment before returning back to the stove. Cursing under his breath, he rushed to grab a plate from the cupboard and slid two fried eggs off the stainless steel as she made her way over to the kitchen island and sat down at one of the barstools. He placed the eggs in front of her, crisp at the edges. Then he grabbed a fork from the drawer, putting it next to the porcelain dish. “Eat.”
She shook her head, “It’s your breakfast.”
“Carol, eat.” He turned around and retrieved the styrofoam carton from the fridge before cracking two more eggs into the hot pan.
She ate slowly, chewing each bite in her mouth until it turned to a smooth paste, reminding herself of the way her mother always used to tell her to eat her food. Pushing away the unwelcome thought, she looked up towards Manousos, calmly watching his eggs cooking, hands resting on either side of the oven, supporting his body weight. Her breathing felt easier than it had in days, and for once, her heart wasn’t tight from an overload of alcohol. She’d likely be dead if not for the man standing in front of her. She didn’t know what to make of that.
When she finished eating, she put her plate and fork in the sink, leaving the kitchen, but not before whispering a hushed “Thank you,” so quiet that she’s not even sure Manousos heard it.
Once she reached the living room, she rifled around the couch cushions and various weighted blankets until she found her phone behind the throw pillows by the left arm. Powering it on, Carol read the date, April seventh. Three months after the hive mind woke up and three days since she gulped down her numbing melatonin-advil-alcohol mixture. She started to pick up the scattered blankets, walking towards the sitting room behind the kitchen, intending to fold them and put them back in their proper place in the basket by the console. Walking with more assurance over her balance now that she had some food in her, she folded the blankets on the coffee table before putting them away. As an afterthought, she remembered she probably should have placed them in the wash instead, but she reasoned that a start was a start. Glancing up, her gaze fell on the O’Keefe still hanging on the wall. (That’s two things now that really should not be in her possession, but whatever.)
The O’Keefe looks good in here, Zosia had said. The day when they played board games all afternoon, when Zosia told her the history of Spit before her whole face lit up when she won, and Carol had woken up the next morning lying next to her on a sleeping bag in the rec center. Carol could feel her chest constrict, her breathing getting quicker. But she wasn’t going to give up. She was going to piece herself back together. But first, she needed a drink.
Unfortunately, Manousos was still in the house, and for some inexplicable reason, Carol couldn’t bear the thought of him seeing her reach into the alcohol cabinet again. So, she shuffled back up the stairs and back into her bedroom, this time heading towards her closet. She pulled out a gray t-shirt and a pair of jeans, peeling off her soiled pajama shirt and sweat pants before putting on her change of clothes. Glancing towards the far end of the closet, she saw Helen’s clothes still hanging there, untouched, and took a deep breath. The pain in her chest at the thought of her wife had faded to a numb pang, and she looked upon the rows of hangers much the same as she did at the painted flowers adorning her grave. Sometime between the moment she buried Helen and when she woke up from her self-induced sleep, Carol had accepted that Helen wasn’t coming back. She wouldn’t go on tour with her for Wycaro again, would never again nag her about her drinking problem, for better or worse. And most damning of all, thoughts of Helen gave way to thoughts of Zosia, no longer as the desperate emotional replacement that she had been at first, but more like the ease and serenity she felt sitting next to her in front of the crackling fire, softly socked feet atop the coffee table in front of her, not a care in the world but about how soon she would be able to kiss Zosia again, feel the warmth of her lips against hers. Of course, that was mere moments before she realized Zosia, they, it, whatever, was hijacking her genetic information to turn her into one of them. God, she really needed a drink.
Quietly, Carol made her way downstairs and out the door and into the “rented” car she really hoped Manousos had paid for by now. She grabbed the keys from the center console, turning them in the ignition, and reversed out of her driveway, starting down the road to the bar she frequented before the joining. Driving through town, she was shocked by how normal everything looked. The world had moved on without her. It was almost too much to bear as she saw the familiar buildings that she was so used to seeing abandoned, from the gas station to her favorite Sprouts, bustling with people, and she decided that she couldn’t handle seeing a familiar face right now. Much less interacting with someone that might recognize her, not that she had been friendly with many people in her neighborhood, but the bar was a different story altogether and if the bartender and the regulars didn’t know her name, they would at least recognize her face.
Taking a left turn instead of a right at the intersection, she headed towards the bar on the outskirts of town instead of her preferred spot on the main street. Pulling into the parking lot, Carol moved the gear shift into park before stepping outside and locking the car. She looked to the sky for a second, taking a breath to glance at the sky. The knowledge that there was no satellite watching her from above made her feel emboldened, yet helpless at the same time. There was no one monitoring her every need and she hadn’t heard her name eerily spoken to her in what felt like forever. She would have to get through the aftermath of the apocalypse alone. (Or at least, alone plus Manousos.)
Stepping into the bar, it took her a second to adjust to the low lighting. There were more people than she was used to in the early afternoon in the middle of the week, but she could have anticipated that, everyone coming to terms with having been part of a global hive mind collective and all. Before she fully made her way over to a bar stool, she saw her. The woman who possessed her dreams since she flew off into the sky and abandoned Carol was now just five feet in front of her, nursing an old fashioned. She could recognize that annoyingly straight posture and soft wave of brown hair, now cut into a short bob, anywhere. Carol froze, not willing to put one foot in front of the other. She wasn’t sure whether to punch her, embrace her, or run away altogether. Go right back out the door and drive until she was back in her driveway, with the atom bomb that she would rather face than the woman sitting all too close to her right now. Feelings of betrayal and devotion fought for dominance inside of her mind.
As she stood there frozen, a bumbling man staggered towards her, the smell of alcohol reeking off of him. He headed for the exit behind her but instead checked Carol in the shoulder, hard. “Hey, watch it, pal!” she snapped, arms up in offense. The man, almost too drunk to even acknowledge Carol, whispered a lewd “Bitch.” under his breath before finally walking out the door. Carol watched him leave, dumbfounded at his insolence, as a sliver of the sunlight came in from outside for a brief minute, encompassing her frame.
From behind her came a quiet voice, soft yet accusatory, “Carol?” Carol turned around slowly, eyes glued to the ground where she could now begin to see Zosia’s knees pointing towards her. The voice came again, stronger this time in its disdain, “Carol.” She looked up, forcing herself to meet the deep brown eyes that haunted her every waking moment. Zosia’s gaze was dark now, harsher than Carol had ever seen her look at her. Between the split second it took for Carol to nod her confirmation at Zosia’s suspicion and for Zosia’s entire body to thrust her to the ground brutally, Carol noticed that they shared the very same dark circles rimming their eyes.
“You, you, you-” Zosia raved between each hit of her fists into a different part of Carol’s unguarded frame, as if she couldn’t settle on what to call her. Carol could only imagine the terms running through Zosia’s mind as she struck her chest, shoulders, temples; Anywhere Zosia’s flying fists could come into contact with. For a fleeting moment, Carol just lay there, letting Zosia wind her of her breath, letting her mark her body with bruises. When Zosia let loose a particularly rough blow to her nose, she heard a quick “snap,” then felt the warm trickle of blood running down into her mouth that lay open, trying to let in any air it could find before Zosia knocked it right back out of her. “Abuser!” she screamed, face red with effort as her jabs started to lose power. Carol knew she deserved that, but it still hurt somewhere deep inside of her, more than the hits to her lungs, more than her surely misshapen nose.
Having had enough, Carol thrusted Zosia off of her, forcing her onto her backside, sitting in front of her, breathing hard, hair disheveled, knuckles painted with streaks of Carol’s blood. Only then did Carol notice the other patrons, some alarmed and standing over them, others watching from the safety of their seats.
“I think it’s best that you two leave,” the bartender said from his place behind the bar, arms crossed, stern expression across his face. Carol nodded, getting up slowly and brushing herself off. She reached for a napkin from a dispenser on the nearest table to wipe the blood off of her face before looking towards Zosia. She was standing too, staring at the backs of her hands before she passed Carol to leave the bar. Carol watched for a second as she left, in every daydream where she would imagine seeing Zosia again, she had never pictured anything like this. In her most fantastical dreams, Zosia would run into her arms, embracing her with tears in her eyes. At her lowest points, Zosia would catch a glimpse of Carol before turning back in the opposite direction, leaving Carol again, but this time of her own volition.
Stuffing the soiled paper into her back pocket, Carol ran after her, swinging the door back open and stepping out into the sunlight, looking wildly around the parking lot.
“Carol.” Zosia’s voice called out to her from across the lot. She was leaning against a red sedan parked under a short Douglas Fir, taking a slow drag from the cigarette between her lips. Carol approached her cautiously, not taking her eyes off the woman who she wasn’t sure she knew anymore. Gradually, she reached within arms-length of Zosia, so close that she could inhale the smoke that she exhaled. Zosia looked at her for a moment, a contemplative look in her eyes. Then, all of a sudden, she lunged upon her, fingernails digging into her biceps, lips latching onto hers hungrily. Carol almost pushed Zosia away in self-defense before she realized that Zosia was kissing her. Her warm mouth encompassed Carol’s sucking her in before breaking to moan, “Fuck, that’s it,” then returning to greedily suck on Carol’s lower lip.
Lost in her touch, Carol allowed Zosia to devour her. She couldn’t pay attention to anything but the woody scent of her, the taste of the Old Fashioned still lingering in her mouth, the feel of being helpless in her rough grasp. Just as suddenly as she kissed her, Zosia pulled away. Her face was flushed and her pupils were blown wide. “Where’s your car?”
Carol looked at her, confused. “What?”
Zosia let out a huff. “Where’s your car?” she repeated.
“Right there,” she pointed towards the hatchback still by the entrance to the bar, “Why?”
“You’re driving me to your house, and you’re going to fuck me into your mattress until I forget every wrong you’ve ever done to me.” Zosia stared Carol down, a challenge in her eyes. And who was Carol to say no to that?
***
Carol had never driven faster than she did on the way back to her cul-de-sac, heart racing with anticipation. Not even when she was the only car on the road as far as her eyes could see. Zosia was on her from the moment they entered the front door, hands pulling roughly at her hair, slamming her into the walls leading towards the stairs. Faintly, Carol thought she heard a surprised “Qué?” from Manousos in the living room, before a series of quick footsteps and the definite creak and subsequent shutting of the front door. “Do you want to save the world or go get the girl?” he had asked her, before. Now, they had saved the world.
In her bedroom, Zosia sat down on her bed, forcefully pushing Carol to remain standing in front of her. “Get the strap.” Carol complied, rifling through her bed side table before finding the harness. She shucked off her pants before reaching for her button-up. “Keep your shirt on,” Zosia ordered her, pants now similarly off and thrown in some corner of the room. Carol obeyed, moving her hands from the linen and towards the nylon of the strap, securing it around her hips. She positioned herself between Zosia’s legs as Zosia laid back, hair strewn across the mattress, legs lifting into the air.
“We missed you, Carol,” Zosia mocked, a smug grin spread across Zosia’s face, her pupils still blown. A glimpse of their first time flashed across Carol’s mind, a memory that was now twinged with as much regret as it used to be imbued with bliss.
“Shut the fuck up.” With that, Carol moved the fabric covering her center roughly to the side and began fucking into her. Strong thrusts from the start, with no mercy. Through the pounding of her heartbeat into her ears, Carol could hear Zosia’s strangled moaning reverberating from the walls.
Her screams propelled Carol to slam her hips with more force into Zosia, digging her nails into her thighs so that she could induce the same marks Zosia had littered her arms with less than an hour before. Zosia’s eyes were screwed shut as Carol continued her pace, and she could see beads of sweat appearing across her brow. This was different to the times they had had sex before, tangled up under sheets, Carol on the bottom with Zosia towering over her, commanding yet gentle at all times. But, the roughness that Zosia demanded from the minute she laid her hands on her in that parking lot helped Carol forget her sins. If this was how the real Zosia liked her, obedient, complacent, under her control, then that was what she was going to give her. She could almost laugh at the role reversal, if it didn’t send a shot through her chest that felt too akin to a heart attack.
Carol felt intoxicated from the now breathy sounds Zosia was making, the way her scent was now everywhere engulfing Carol, the way Zosia clenched around her, the muscles of her core contracting in that familiar tension. Carol reached for her covered chest, eager to feel more of her, any way that she could. “Stop,” Zosia breathed constrainedly between groans, “Keep your hands to yourself.”
Again, Carol complied. This time moving her hands to the mattress, shifting their angle slightly so that she could thrust even deeper. Zosia's center became impossibly tighter around her as Carol moved with more difficulty, the tension on her clit growing with each propelling of her hips.
“Fuck. I’m coming,” Zosia went still for a second, her whole body tense, “I’m gonna come.”
And with that her back arched, reaching up towards Carol, then suddenly released as she shattered into her orgasm, screaming shamelessly, so loud that Carol was sure the Mitchells could hear from next door. Carol’s thighs shook with effort as she helped Zosia ride through her aftershocks, slick dripping from her center and onto the sheets.
When she came back from her high, Zosia opened her eyes, looking into Carol’s own. “Get out,” she commanded, gesturing towards the space between their hips where they were still linked. With a herculean effort, Carol retreated, moving to lie next to Zosia on the bed after she stepped out of the harness.
“Don’t even think about touching yourself,” Zosia said from beside her, cold, unattached tone in her voice.
“Zosia!” Carol whined, looking to the other woman to see if she was serious. As she did so, Zosia began getting up, eyes searching for her hastily discarded pants. Forgetting about her unreached climax, she looked towards Zosia with disbelief and pushed herself up. “Where are you going?”
“Back to the emergency shelter for ‘those affected by the former hive mind and left with nowhere else to go’,” Zosia replied, making air quotes with her hands before pulling on her trousers.
Hesitantly, Carol looked towards the woman she had longed for for months on end. The only person who made her feel at peace for the first time since the certain end of the world, even when she treated her like an obstacle to punch her way through. Gathering the courage to express the ridiculous thought that came to her mind, she whispered softly, “You could stay here, you know.”
At first, Zosia continued to fiddle with the button on her pants, as if she hadn’t heard Carol at all. But then she looked up, meeting Carol’s hesitant gaze, and neither of them could have ignored the lone tear that escaped from the corner of Zosia’s eye.
“I have a guest room. Manousos can sleep on the couch, he’ll be fine. And I promise I won’t bother you, I swear. Just… stay. There’s no need for you to sleep on the floor of some dingy shelter with a bunch of creeps.”
And maybe it was the affected tone of Carol’s voice, how her words caught in her throat at the thought of Zosia cold and alone in the middle of the night. Maybe she had decided that Carol’s pained expression convinced her that she felt guilt for the sins she committed towards her.
Or maybe it was the way Zosia hadn’t felt like the version of herself she was still trying to piece together after the reversal of the joining until her skin made contact with Carol’s again. Memories of them together flooded her mind as her stare bore into Carol’s, moments when Zosia could swear that she could feel a semblance of her consciousness seeping through and creating a divide between her and the rest of the world’s collective.
“Fine. But don’t think this is going to happen again,” Zosia said gruffly, walls rebuilt in her gaze where just seconds ago Carol could see through the inky irises to the truth that Zosia was trying to conceal.
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” she replied readily, not daring to take her eyes off of Zosia’s expression. With a tight nod, Zosia turned around and reached for the door knob, but not before Carol could see her shoulders drop slightly, and a small smile, almost imperceptible, tug at the corner of her lips.