Page 98 of Dating After the End of the World
“Thank you both for standing up with me.” Molly beams at us, tears in her eyes. We grab her hand and squeeze it, creating a little sisterhood circle of our own.
Tessa and I have donned old dresses I found in the back of my closet. A sequined one I bought my senior year, when I thought Blake would ask me to homecoming. It was unworn until today. And a pink bridesmaid’s dress from a wedding I stood up in my freshman year of college. We look rather ridiculous, but it doesn’t matter.
A knock on the door interrupts us. “Can I come in?” Blake’s voice calls from the other side, instantly giving me butterflies.
“Of course!” Molly blurts out, excited for someone else to see her in the dress.
Blake walks in wearing his navy dress attire. It was the only formal outfit he could find, but he wears it well, and it appears I like a man in uniform.
“Molly, you look beautiful!” he says, giving her a hug.
“Thanks, Blake.”
He turns to Tessa and me, all smiles. “And so do both of you.”
“Don’t lie to me, Blake,” Tessa says, trying to flatten out her puffy, pink dress. “I look like a cake topper for a little girl’s birthday party.”
“But a beautiful cake topper,” I tease.
Blake smiles and steps to me, kissing my cheek and resting his hand on my waist to pull me into him. “And you look like you should be on top of something else,” he whispers, biting the tip of my earlobe. I giggle, giving him a smoldering look as I pull away.
“You two are disgustingly cute,” Tessa says with a smirk.
“Yeah, you’re like a younger Greg and me, our puppy love growing into a full dog.” Molly cups her hands together over her heart.
I furrow my brow. “I’m, like, a decade older than you, and I’ve known Blake since I was thirteen.”
“Love works in mysterious ways.” She beams.
“We’re all set out there,” Blake says with an amused look on his face. “Are you ready, Molly?”
She nods, the ringlets in her hair bouncing like springs. “I’ve been ready since that first night I spent with Greg, when he brought me back to his dorm and—”
“All right, let’s get you hitched then,” I interrupt before she goes into more detail.
Outside on the front lawn, people are seated in a hodgepodge of chairs, overturned buckets, and stumps set up in rows. Several carpet runners serve as the aisle, with red and white rose petals strewn over them. Aunt Julie stands at the end of the passage of rugs, under a makeshift altar made of two-by-fours and adorned with wildflowers. She has tears in her eyes as she holds her head high, waiting to officiate this special occasion. Greg stands to the right of her, dressed in one of my dad’s old suits. It’s a size too big, but with his raised shoulders and puffed-out chest, it’s barely noticeable.
Over the last six months, we’ve taken in a dozen people, so there are many new faces gathered before us. After our successful mission to the hospital, we got a little bolder with our scavenge runs, confident that we could handle ourselves, even in places filled with biters. We explored more hospitals, gated homes, and government buildings, but the jackpot was a secured warehouse. We found enough grains and canned goods to feed everyone here for years. So when we discovered stragglers in need of saving, we welcomed them into the fold.
We’ve built several new cabins, made the dummy house livable again, and fortified our perimeter even more, raising the height of the barbed wire and adding a day shift for patrolling. We vowed to never allow an attack like we suffered to befall us again, or at least we’ll do everything in our power to stop it from happening again.
Standing off to the side from Aunt Julie is Terrance with a harmonica in hand, ready to play the wedding procession down the aisle. He’s a large man in his late fifties with dark skin, a barrel-size chest, and a thick beard. Terrance is one of the new faces who joined us during a scavenging raid. Near the end of a run, we were loading up the truck, and in a moment of brief silence, we heard a sound that none of us had heard in a verylong time. Music. Sitting on the roof of a house with a rifle resting on his lap was Terrance, playing his harmonica without a care in the world. He had barricaded the first floor of the house, coming and going through a second-story window with the use of a rope ladder he could retract back into itself with a hidden pull cord. Blake and I struck up a conversation with him, like neighbors greeting one another while out on a walk. We got along well, and it felt like the old normal. He’s been with us ever since. Terrance is one tough sonofabitch, but not the toughest sonofabitch I’ve ever known. He reminds me a lot of my dad, and I think the two of them would have been fast friends.
“Don’t you clean up nice,” a voice calls from behind me. I turn to see Elaine, smiling from ear to ear.
“Same to you,” I say, pointing at her floral dress, which she made out of an old sheet. We embrace one another in a tight hug.
“All those months ago. Greg avoiding her like the plague. Did you ever think this day would come?” she asks.
I turn back to look at Molly, hiding behind a tree out of Greg’s sight, a grin plastered across her face. I haven’t seen someone that happy since ... maybe ever. And despite everything, her bubbly nature and optimism for this fallen world have never faltered.
“Yes. Yes, I did,” I say with a smile.
“May I walk you to your seat, madam?” JJ asks, arm extended with his elbow bent, waiting for Elaine’s hand.
“Aren’t you about to walk up the aisle? You can’t be seen so soon,” Elaine protests.
“I don’t think it’s that formal of a crowd.” JJ smirks.
