Page 64 of The Last Man on Earth
His footsteps get further and further away, finally disappearing into the trees. I sure hope he’s safe out there. And that I’m safe here. I don’t have the strength to fight off a fly right now, much less anything bigger.
I close my eyes again. The memory of last night is vivid behind my eyelids, too vivid for my comfort. It’s like a movie I can feel…his hands on me, his lips on my ear, his hard length inside of me. He slipped out of me just before sunrise, I remember, but before then, we were one. Joined. Part of each other.
I’ve never been the other woman.
I want to feel ashamed about this, but I don’t. What we did was natural. Primal. Adam and Eve, but black, though. The Blue Lagoon. We don’t have the luxury of morality here. There’s no room for guiltorrestraint. We’re trying to fucking survive, the last two people in the world, it feels like.
Maybe they’ll understand, Luca and whatshername. Maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll never find out.
Maybe it'll be our little secret.
Deny, deny, deny.
Chapter 29
Vincent
I swear to God,this fuckin’ forest is tilting when I walk.
Every step I take, it turns a different direction. My head feels heavy and light at the same damn time. I lowkey don’t even feel like I’m walking. I feel like I’m dragging my legs behind me.
This shit is my fault, though. Ari told me yesterday, and I brushed that shit off. She said her pee was brown, but I thought she was mistaken. How she even know what color it is out here in the dirt?
I should have done something then. I shoulda came looking. Instead, I sat there hoping it would rain, staring up at the empty sky like a fuckin’ idiot.
My daddy used to saya man takes care of business. That’s all he did, really.Sayshit. But that stuck with me. Most of the time I handle shit. That’s all I do back home. Handle shit. My auntie’s car needing new tires. My aunt and uncle needing a new roof on the house. Shemari needing to go shopping. Jahir’s tuition. JR’s, too. Boy ain’t even two years old and already in private school.Studio time for Tek. Crown’s mortgage and car note. I always, always handle shit.
But not yesterday.
Now I’m stumbling through the trees trying to fix it when it might be too late.
I ain’t been this out of it since Crown’s thirtieth birthday party when I took too much molly.
The air is thick out here. My shirt sticks to my skin. Every breath I take, I feel like I’m being waterboarded. I tie the shirt strips on branches while I go, just like I did last time, but it feels so much harder now than it did then.
I tell myself I’m walking in a straight line, but it’s hard to tell anymore. The trees all look the same, blurring together, greens and browns and flashes of light.
My throat hurts.
I stop and lean against a trunk, chest heaving. Sweat trickles into my eyes.
“Come on,” I say to myself. “Keep moving.”
I push off, dragging my feet through leaves and dirt. My muscles twitch. My vision doubles, then clears, then blurs, then doubles again. I don’t even know if I’m awake anymore. Feels like I’m walking through a dream that doesn’t make sense.
Every now and then, I see flashes of colors. Orange. Blue. White. Could be my eyes playing tricks. Or my brain.
Fuck. I can’t die out here. That ain’t no kinda death for a rapper. I’m supposed to die in a hail of gunfire or from a drug overdose, not from fuckin’ dehydration. Pussy ass death. Nah. I gotta focus. I gotta keep going.
I don’t know how long I’ve been walking. Feels like hours. The sun is still high, still beating down on me through the trees. My backpack feels heavier with every step, even though it’s almost empty.
Then I hear it.
A faint sound, buried under the noise of the forest. It ain’t wind. It ain’t the waves. It’s steady. Soft.
I freeze.
Tilt my head.
