Page 18 of Trade (After the End #7)

I stargaze for hours while Dalton watches me. When I can’t hold my eyes open anymore, I crawl onto the blanket next to him, and he draws me to his chest, wrapping me in his heavy arms.

“Why are you always watching me?” I ask him as the fire crackles, the faint traces of rosemary, lavender, and cedar blending with the fresh scent of the gathering dew.

“I lived twenty-three years before I first saw you. You think I’m wasting a second now?”

“The novelty will wear off.” I don’t intend to be bitter, not after marveling at the cosmos, but it slips out anyway.

He tightens his arms around me. “Go to sleep, Glory,” he says, taking no offense, offering no argument.

How can it be so easy? If I wasn’t the model of graciousness when Bennett said something nice, it would be World War III, yet more evidence of how I can never just be appreciative. I always have to be critical, always looking for the rain cloud inside the silver lining.

But then again, Bennett never said anything nice unless he was mending fences, buttering me up, or heading me off at the pass when I wanted to hash an issue out.

He was very strategic with his sweetness.

I didn’t really see that clearly before, but I intuited it.

That’s why in recent years, whenever he made an effort to be sweet, it vaguely pissed me off.

I don’t want to be the kind of person who’s suspicious of good things. I wasn’t that person when I was young. That kid was entranced by pictures in books, fascinated by the trees and plants and old bones and artifacts in our collections.

That’s who I am. My default isn’t bitter and wary and defensive. It’s awed and delighted.

I wriggle, snuggling closer to Dalton. I can tell from his breath he’s still awake. Seconds later, something hard pokes my butt cheek.

“I watch you, too,” I say softly.

“I noticed.” I can hear his smile in his voice.

“Go to sleep, Dalton.”

He drops a kiss to the crook of my neck. “Okay, Partridgeberry. See you in the morning.”

“Okay. Good night, Ragwort,” I say through a yawn.

“Sleep tight, Loblolly.”

I fall asleep trying to remember the word stinkweed.

* * *

We reach the lake around noon the next day. We had to pick our way through a thick wood, so we lost sight of it for a few hours until all of a sudden, we caught glimpses of silver-gray through the trees, and then its there, laid out in front of us, spreading all the way to the horizon.

The shore is a gentle slope of small, smooth stones lapped by the gentlest waves.

I know there are oceans and lakes in the Outside, but my brain cannot compute this much water.

In the bunker, we get two pints per day of drinking water and two gallons of unfiltered a week for washing.

This is thousands of years’ worth of water.

A feeling almost like hysteria fills my chest. There is just so much of it.

I’ve been worrying about water my whole life.

When I was a kid, I was constantly scolded for being injudicious with my rations and finishing my water before dinner.

When I was a teenager, I begged and schemed for credits so I could buy a little more to wash my hair.

And then as an adult, how many times have I had to fight for AP’s water allotment, how much time have I spent plotting and planning and worrying about our collection?

And here, the whole time, was this. More than enough for everyone.

Dalton drops the pack and peels off his shirt. It was hotter today than the past two, and the damp fabric clings as he pulls it over his head.

“Coming?” he asks as he unstraps his machete.

I don’t have to be asked twice. I’m grubbier than a dirty dish towel. I untie my boots and kick them off, unzip my coveralls and let them lay where they fall. As fast as I am, Dalton is ahead of me, splashing into the water, his perfect bare ass flexing in the sunshine.

About a yard from shore, he disappears under the water, emerging several feet away, bursting from the surface like a god, shaking out his wet hair, droplets streaming down his sculpted chest.

“Scared?” He grins wickedly.

I’m still picking my way across the pebbled beach.

The stones may be smooth, but they’re hard on my tender soles.

I reach the water and stop, letting a wave crest over my feet.

It’s cold. Bracing. Despite the sunshine, my body breaks out in goose bumps.

I take a few more steps until the water laps my ankles.

“It’s too cold,” I call.

“Just dive in. You’ll warm up quicker.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Trust me, Glory.”

I take a single step forward, huddling my arms to my chest for warmth. Dalton combs his arms through the water, watching me like I’m the funniest thing he’s ever seen. Are my feet getting accustomed to the temperature? Or are they just numb?

I take another step toward Dalton and then another, but I can’t close the distance because each time I move forward, he floats farther away. I submerge myself to my knees. My thighs. My waist. My skin is rubber. My teeth are chattering.

Dalton grins and reaches for me. “Come on, Glory. Grab my hands.”

“No. You’ll pull me over.”

“I won’t,” he promises, his brown eyes glittering.

I see what he means. The coldest part of me is where the water laps. The part of me that’s totally submerged is actually warmer.

I wanted to know what it feels like to be weightless in water. I’m one small choice away from knowing. I hold my breath, sink down to my neck, and squeal. “Oh my God, oh my God, it’s cold!”

Dalton laughs and stalks toward me, a young Poseidon with water sluicing down his golden skin. “Come here, Glory.”

He gathers me to his chest, and I wind my arms around his neck while he backs away from the shore. The water rises higher and higher. I hold on tight.

My legs rise, floating to the surface of their own accord. Dalton unclasps my hands, and still holding them tight, he lets me drift away. Now I’m floating like Superman or Wonder Woman or a cloud in the sky.

I giggle. My chin grazes the water, and the sun beats on my bare back and butt.

I understand Archimedes’ principle and buoyancy and all of that, but the science doesn’t explain the sensation of everything that weighs you down disappearing or how your limbs glide through water like planets must sail through space.

“Let me turn you over,” Dalton says.

“No!” I squeeze his hands, searching for the bottom with my feet.

“It isn’t over your head yet,” he says. “Trust me. I’ve got you.”

My feet find the muddy bottom. Yuck. I pluck them back up and kick them clean. Dalton chuckles and slowly turns me, like we’re dancing, until my back is to his front. “I’m going to hold you like this.” He rests his palms under my shoulder blades. “Give me your weight and let your legs float up.”

I twist my neck to squint at him. “You won’t let me go?”

“Never.”

I lean back.

“Relax,” he murmurs.

I let my legs rise. He extends his arms so the back of my head is in the water.

I spread my arms out to the side, and I’m floating.

Now, the sun shines on my front. Fleeting thoughts of the faint silver stretch marks on my hips and padding on the belly that used to be taut flits across my mind, but they’re almost instantly chased away by the softness of the breeze and blueness of the sky so far above our heads.

“Trust me,” Dalton murmurs again, and I feel his body come unmoored as he draws my back against his chest. He wraps an arm lightly around my ribs and uses the other to glide us through the water.

If I freak out, if I think too hard, I know I’ll tip us over, so I imagine my body is a cooked noodle and let Dalton swim us farther and farther out.

He rests the bottom of his chin on the top of my head and strokes the underside of my breast with the thumb of the hand anchoring me to his chest. His hard dick pokes me in the spine.

We’re adrift.

We’re so far out that I can’t hear anything but the gentle shush of Dalton’s arm slicing the water—not the chatter of birds or rustle of leaves or snap of twigs.

There’s no one in the world but me and him, and he’s almost a stranger except I’ve never been closer to a person than I am to him in this moment, alone in the midst of this vast, impossible bounty.

“Thank you,” I murmur. The words aren’t nearly enough to say what I mean.

“For what?”

“Bringing me here.”

“Oh. You’re welcome.” We float along a little farther, and he says, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For asking.” He nuzzles my temple with his scratchy cheek. His facial hair grows slowly, but he’s got some significant stubble now. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, Glory.”

“Why?” I risk tilting my head to see his expression, but all I can see is his chin and chiseled jaw.

“Your face when it’s happy is the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.

” From any other man, it’d be a line. Even from Bennett, when we were young and I think he probably did love me, it would’ve been flattery.

Dalton says it like it’s simple fact. Whatever life he’s lived out here, he never learned to dissemble. Or that he’s supposed to.

What would that be like? To say exactly what I mean all the time instead of “perhaps we should consider” or “may I suggest that” or “I can’t help but suspect”? To not twist my words into pretzels trying to make my ideas palatable to men who will do what they want at the end of the day anyway?

Who give me just enough power and authority to make me think I have control over my life so that when they rip it away, they take the foundation of who I am, too?

My whole life, I’ve been an ostrich, and now that I’ve been forced to take my head out of the sand, I don’t know what to do next. How to be.

Dalton breathes steadily in my ear, sending shivers down my neck. I guess I could take a cue from him. Say the simple facts.

“I’m terrified.”

He hums, unalarmed. Listening.

“I’m ashamed of myself.”

He keeps listening.

“I don’t want to ever go back.”

His arm tightens around me.