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In the first few weeks after the zombie virus started to spread, nobody wanted to believe it. That's why the casualties were so high: people just couldn't admit to themselves that Mom or Grandpa or sweet Aunt Bertha were no longer Mom or Grandpa or sweet Aunt Bertha, but a slavering, hungry fiend determined to rend the flesh from their bones. They'd try to talk to their zombiefied loved ones, to reason with them, to reach the real person they just knew was still in there somewhere. It never ended well.
Rule #11: Denial is not your friend.
Why am bringing this up now? Because lately I've been thinking that the rules for surviving Zombieland might actually work pretty well as rules for surviving, well, life. After all, if you can make it through the zombie apocalypse, you can make it through anything, right?
What Rule 11 really says is, it doesn't matter if the unpleasant truth is shambling after you with bits of human flesh between its teeth, or worming its way inside your head at three A.M. in a motel room north of Victorville. You still have to face it.
After we left Pacific Playland, we headed north on the I-15 and stopped at a Best Western for the night. It wasn't bad, as far as post-apocalyptic motel rooms went. The electricity and hot water were still on, the vending machine in the lobby was stocked with tasty snacks (though not Twinkies), and there were only two zombies at the front desk. Tallahassee killed them with a machete and stuck their heads on the giant fiberglass cactus in the parking lot.
Tallahassee and I each took rooms across the hall from each other, and the girls took the one adjacent to mine. But Wichita gave me this long, thoughtful look before she shut the door behind her, and I was pretty sure that the sleeping arrangements were going to get rearranged before the night was over. Tallahassee must've thought so too, because he punched me in the arm and said, "Go for it, you sly dawg," before cackling like a maniac and disappearing into his own room.
I showered, brushed my teeth, rinsed my mouth twice with one of those little plastic bottles of motel mouthwash, unlocked the door to the adjoining room, and sat down on the bed to wait. Minutes ticked by, and Wichita didn't appear, so I passed the time by trying to envision what would happen when she finally did show up.
And that was when Rule 11 kicked, in big time.
In my fantasy, the door swung open and Wichita was standing there in a cropped t-shirt and pink cotton panties, barefoot (in my fantasy, the Best Western carpeting was soft and fresh-smelling and totally devoid of suspicious-looking dark stains). Her hair hung down over her shoulders, all tousled and soft-looking. I imagined her smiling at me as I reached out and tucked one long, silky strand behind her ear...
And that was as far as I could get.
Despite what some people who shall remain Tallahassee might assume, I'm not completely ignorant when it comes to sexual matters. I knew how sex worked, the whole "tab A into slot B" part. I knew what I was supposed to be imagining. It was just that my mind didn't seem to want to go there.
I thought back to when Wichita kissed me, right after I rescued her and Little Rock at Pacific Playland, and how it made me feel. I felt so brave at that moment. So heroic. So manly and impressive and really, really proud of myself. What I didn't feel, not even when Wichita's mouth was on mine, was horny.
So I sat there alone in that motel room, feeling not-horny, and I finally admitted to myself something that I'd been refusing to admit for a long time. The truth was, in all my life before and after puberty, I had never actually had a sexual fantasy about a woman. Aside from that whole hair-behind-the-ear thing, all my female-centric fantasies centered around taking a beautiful girl home to meet my parents. Because if I did that, then somehow my parents would transform themselves from the paranoid hypochondriac hermits I knew and loved into the perfect parents straight out of a 50s sitcom. My mother would vacuum the house in high heels and pearls and learn how to make the perfect meatloaf. My father would wear tasteful sweater vests and dispense warm parental wisdom while smoking a pipe. They would love my girl, and my girl would love them, and we would all be a happy, functional family together in a lovely suburban home with a white picket fence.
Only that was never going to happen now. My parents were dead, and I hated meatloaf, and all the white picket fences in the country were rotting away from lack of upkeep because zombies suck at yard work. It was time to face the unpleasant truth. I liked girls. I liked talking to them and killing zombies with them and being made to feel manly and heroic by them. I just... didn't like them that way.
The door opened and Wichita was standing there, in jeans and a flannel shirt and tennis shoes. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail.
"Hi," she said, looking at me with a worried little frown. "Can I come in?"
My first instinct was to say no, but then I thought what the hell, might as well get it out in the open right now. Not fair to lead a girl on, after all. So I let her in, and she sat down on the other side of the bed from me and sort of fidgeted a little, picking at loose threads in the bedspread.
"Look," she said after a while, "Columbus. I like you."
"Yeah," I said. "I like you too."
"You're... sweet, you know. And brave. And you saved our lives, for which I'll owe you forever."
"That's okay," I said. She just kept fidgeting, and talking as if she hadn't heard me.
"But I just don't think it would work out. You and me, I mean. I know I kissed you and all, but--"
"I agree," I said.
"--It's like I said, you'd just saved our lives, and I had all that adrenalin going, and--"
"I agree," I repeated, a little louder.
"It was kind of a spur of--" Wichita broke off and finally looked straight at me, wide-eyed. "You do?"
"Yeah." I nodded emphatically. "You're great and all, but I've just figured out that I don't actually..." I couldn't finish that sentence. I just couldn't. I flapped my mouth like a fish, and made some strangled noises, and finally stuck out my hand at her. "Friends?"
"Friends." She looked deeply relieved as she shook my hand, then leaned forward and gave me a quick, sisterly peck on the cheek. "You're a great guy, Columbus. Thanks." And then she was gone, shutting the door behind her before I could finish saying "you're welcome."
I sat there and stared at the closed door for a few seconds, feeling kind of empty and alone and doomed to spend the rest of my life celibate. But seeing how I was already doomed to spend the rest of my life running from zombies, maybe the celibacy wasn't all that important in the great scheme of things. I kept telling myself that as I crawled into bed and pulled the covers over my head.
Rule # 27: Know your limits.
Don't fire at a target you can't hit; you'll just waste ammo. Don't try for a beheading blow if you don't have the upper-body strength to pull it off. If a zombie looks really athletic, don't try to outrun it unless you've spent a lot of time following Rule 1. A zombie apocalypse is not the time to be showing off.
Also, when imbibing hard liquor for the first time, be sure to take your body weight and lack of previous drinking experience into account.
"So how'd it go?" Tallahassee smirked and poked me in the arm again, in exactly the same spot as the day before. I was going to have a bruise there if he didn't stop. "Didya score?"
"Uhm." In retrospect, maybe I should've lied, but at the time it just didn't occur to me. "Not exactly."
"You're shittin' me." Tallahassee stared at me as if I was some sort of pointy-eared alien freak. "Tell me you at least got to third base."
"It's not like that." I just knew he wasn't going to understand. "Wichita and I talked, and we just decided it wasn't going to work between us, that's all. It's... complicated."
"Complicated. Right." Tallahassee threw his head back and laughed so hard, his hat nearly came off. "Holy fuck, Columbus, you're that one loser all the other losers joke about, ain't you? The one who couldn't get laid if you were the last man on earth. That's fuckin' sad, man."
I wanted to point out that I wasn't actually the last man on earth, because he was around, and that he wasn't getting laid any more than me, but I was kind of afraid he'd hit me. So I said nothing, and I think I must've looked pretty miserable about it, because Tallahassee abruptly stopped laughing and clapped me on the shoulder.
"Aw, c'mon, it's not that bad. Follow me, I know just the thing to cheer you up."
There was a supermarket in the strip mall across the street from the motel. The automatic doors didn't work anymore, but Tallahassee just blasted the glass with his shotgun and led the way to the wine and liquor section in the back. The good stuff was all in a separate cabinet with a padlock on the door. Tallahassee smashed the lock with the but of his gun and sorted through the bottles inside.
"Here ya go." He peeled the foil from the neck of a bottle of Jonnie Walker Blue, opened the bottle, and took a swig before holding it out to me. "If you can't get laid, this is the next best thing."
I'm not much of a drinker, really. In fact, I had never had anything stronger than beer or wine before, and for a college student in Texas that's pretty major accomplishment. But hey, if figuring out your homosexuality in the middle of a zombie apocalypse isn't cause enough to hit the hard stuff, then what is? I grabbed the bottle and took a swig.
It burned like a son of a bitch going down, and I coughed and sputtered a lot while Tallahassee laughed his head off. But then my throat and chest to feel all warm, and my head got kind of light and woozy, and I decided it was actually kind of nice. The second swig didn't make me cough nearly as much, and the third one went down totally smooth.
"Don't hog it all now." Tallahassee grabbed the bottle from me and too a few gulps himself before handing it back. "Come on, let's see what else this place has got."
The food aisles had been looted at some point, so there wasn't much left besides some crushed ramen packets, dented cans, and dairy products past their expiration date. In the snack food aisle, Tallahassee stared at the bare shelves in outrage.
"No Twinkies? How can an entire fucking supermarket not have a single Twinkie in it?"
"You're still looking?" I said. "I thought you'd be satisfied once you actually got one."
"No way." He shook his head. "Having that one taste just gave me an appetite for more."
Funny, I was thinking the exact same thing about the whisky.
We sat on the floor in the candy aisle and passed the bottle back and forth between us. I was feeling warmer and warmer, and my head got lighter and lighter. At one point I kind of started toppling over sideways, but Tallahassee was there, and it was a little like leaning against a really big boulder, or maybe a brick wall. Something strong and solid that wouldn't let you fall, anyhow.
"Listen," he said, "I know you must feel pretty bad right now, but trust me, it's not the end of the w--" He broke off and tilted his head to one side for a bit, thoughtful. "Okay, so maybe it is. But if the four of us have survived, maybe others have too. You'll meet another non-zombie woman somewhere."
I was genuinely touched. I knew it went against his basic nature, yet Tallahassee was genuinely trying to comfort me. Sure, he was commiserating over the wrong problem, but he didn't know that, did he? He was trying to be kind, and it made my eyes tear up and my nose go runny just thinking about it. I actually hiccupped a couple of times from all the emotion, and took another big gulp of whisky.
"You're a good friend, Tallahassee," I slurred at him.
"Don't go all mushy on me now, you little spitfuck. Just 'cause you're drunk -- which, by the way is pathetic, seeing as how the bottle ain't even half gone yet -- that don't mean you have an excuse."
"Sorry."
"Just don't do it again."
But he didn't take the bottle back from me again. And after a few more minutes of drinking, when I maybe kinda-sorta pressed my face against his shoulder and maybe kinda-sorta sniffled a little, he didn't say anything.
I don't actually remember getting back to the motel afterwards. One moment I was in the supermarket, drowning my sorrows and getting snot on Tallahassee's shirt, and the next thing I knew I was waking up in my room at the Best Western, curled up under the covers with my shoes and socks off but the rest of my clothes still on. My mouth felt like something had died and decomposed in it, and my head was pounding. When I tried to sit up, the whole room kind of tilted from side to side and spun around, and my stomach to turn itself inside out.
Tallahassee must've heard me retching into the wastebasket next to the bed, because he came in, swearing under his breath, grabbed me by the back of my t-shirt, and hauled me into the bathroom.
"I swear to God, Columbus," he muttered, "you're the biggest fucking lightweight I've ever met. I bet Little Rock could out-drink you.
I didn't argue, because he was probably right, and also because I was too busy upchucking into the toilet and remembering exactly why I've always avoided hard liquor in the past. My skull wanted to split apart. My arms and legs felt like overcooked noodles. Even squatting felt like too much effort, and I think I might've faceplanted right into the toilet bowl full of my own vomit, except that Tallahassee was still holding on to me. He kept holding until I finished, then dragged me over to the sink, made me rinse my mouth with water and some of the leftover mouthwash, and put me back into bed again.
When I woke up for the second time, I felt a little bit less likely to spontaneously turn into a zombie. There was a bottle of water on the table next to the bed, and one of those single-dose packets of Alka-Seltzer that they sell in motel shops. I suppose it was theoretically possible that Wichita or Little Rock had put them there, but I was pretty sure it wasn't them.
Rule #34: Keep moving.
With Pacific Playland behind us and all of Zombieland ahead, we decided to go traveling. After all, America was full of cool and beautiful places we hadn't seen, and some of them were still worth seeing. So we all made a list of our favorite landmarks and hit the road.
We hit Las Vegas first, because it was only a few hours away and also because we figured it was best to do it before the electricity ran out. It was weird to see the Strip all lit up in neon while the casinos stood empty and silent. Apparently, zombies don't gamble.
We drove down the Strip at ten miles an hour, with the windows down and our shotguns out, tempting zombies to run after us, then blasting them in the face. The zombie Elvis impersonators were totally the best. Tallahassee swore that one of them was the real thing, but I think he was just fucking with my head.
When the zombie-blasting got boring, we went and played slots at Caesar's Palace. That was fun for a while. All the flashing lights and jingling bells were amusing, and any time we ran out of tokens we just ran out and got some more. Little Rock actually won a $10,000 payoff at one of the poker machines, and we all laughed and gave each other high-fives as if we still lived in a world where money had any meaning.
Afterwards, we stole some designer swimwear and a couple of bottles of champagne from the Forum shops, and snagged ourselves one of the huge luxury suites with king-sized beds and marble bathrooms. There was a sauna and a full bar, and a giant spa tub in front of a picture window overlooking the Strip. We all put on our stolen bathing suits and sat in the tub, drinking Dom Pérignon straight out of the bottle. Wichita had grabbed a couple of jars of caviar too, which turned out to be kind of salty and gross, but we ate it anyway just because we could.
"See," Wichita said, "Zombieland's not so awful. If there were still people around, there's now way in hell we'd ever get to do something like this."
"True," I said. "No people, no society, no arbitrary class distinctions. Nothing to keep the likes of us out of luxury hotel suites."
"'Arbitrary class distinctions'?" Tallahassee stared at me as if I'd just announced that I'd taken a crap in the tub. "Just what kind of pinko commie bullshit were you studying at college, anyhow?"
I might've said something about how I'd been studying computer science, and also how the odds of studying anything "pinko commie" at a school in Texas were pretty much zero, but I never got the chance. Because, as luck would have it, that was the moment when the doors to the suite burst open and a pair of zombiefied bellboys busted in, making growly noises and dribbling blood down their chins.
No matter how long you've lived in Zombieland, it's still difficult to switch over to combat mode when you've just spent half an hour relaxing in chest deep in a hot spa bath and drowning your battle reflexes in $300-a-bottle champagne. Difficult, that is, unless you're Tallahassee. He was out of the spa bath and making a flying leap for the guns we'd left on the nearest lounge chair while the rest of us were still screaming and splashing like a bunch of disposable extras in an 80s slasher flick. The zombies were maybe halfway across the suite when he came up on his feet with a shotgun in each hand and blasted them right in their flabby undead midsections.
"There's your arbitrary class distinctions for you!" Tallahassee hollered as he stood over the fallen zombies and fired a follow-up volley into their faces in accordance with Rule 2. "No zombies allowed!"
I looked up at him standing there, in nothing but a pair of black Speedos and his hat, water streaming down his broad chest and his thick biceps and his long, muscular legs, and I was suddenly very, very glad for all the swirling, foamy water concealing my crotch from view. Because in all my (admittedly short and until recently quite-boring) life, I had never been as thoroughly turned on as I was at that moment.
Oh, hell, I thought, as Rule 11 kicked in again.
Rule #5: No attachments
Yeah. That one wasn't working out so well.
After Vegas we went to the Grand Canyon, then to New Orleans, then to Memphis to visit Graceland. In between, we stopped at any small-time roadside attraction we happened to spot from the Hummer's windows. Abandoned country fairs. The world's largest rubber-band ball. Museums devoted to farm machinery, or beer can sculptures, or Jell-o. Amazing country, America. What's left of it.
It was all a good time, really, except for the part where I was apparently gay and in love with Tallahassee. That part was no fun at all.
Late one night, in an abandoned bed-and-breakfast in North Carolina, I sat alone under a frilly lace-edged quilt, surrounded by porcelain knick-knacks and the scent of stale potpourri, and debated the merits of throwing caution to the wind and just going for it. After all, who knew? I'd been wrong about my own sexuality; maybe I had his backwards, too.
On the one hand, Tallahassee had had a kid once, which meant that at some point in life he must've done more with a woman than just tuck her hair behind her ear. And he hit me when I put cologne on his neck. On the other hand, he admitted to crying at Titanic, and had a long-standing obsession with putting spongy cream-filled logs into his mouth.
On the third hand, I was thinking of Twinkies as a sexual metaphor, which was probably a good sign that my judgment and sanity were completely shot. So I decided to play it safe. Not say anything. Pretend everything was normal.
Problem was, I'm apparently a horrible actor. The more I pretended that everything was hunky-dory, the more Tallahassee was sure that something was wrong with me, and that this "something" had to do with me getting rejected by Wichita. He kept trying to cheer me up with booze and zombie hunts and visits to places he thought I'd enjoy, like the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress. And he kept talking about getting me laid, which fortunately remained nothing but talk due to the total lack of non-zombified humans we encountered everywhere we went. I'm not sure what I would've done if he'd tried to set me up with an actual live woman, but I'm sure it wouldn't have been pretty.
My great fear was that he'd try confront Wichita about it, but he mostly settled for just ignoring her whenever he could and giving her dirty looks from time to time. Wichita didn't seem to either notice or care; I think she just put it all down to Tallahassee being his normal asshole self. I was glad. The four of us where family now, and family fights are never fun.
When we got to Florida, I thought Tallahassee would want to stop at, well, Tallahassee, but he just kept us moving south until, six hours later, we found ourselves chasing zombies in mechanics' overalls around the track at the Daytona 500 raceway.
Afterwards, Tallahassee made us all write our names on the checkered finish line, then dragged us to one of the buildings in the back to look at what seemed like miles and miles of NASCAR memorabilia.
"There," he said reverently, and tapped the glass over a framed photo of a balding guy with a bushy mustache and mirrored sunglasses. "That's him. The Intimidator."
"Is that like the Terminator?" Little Rock asked. Tallahassee looked as if he was seriously considering shooting her.
"That's Dale Earnhardt, you ignorant little pipsqueak! What the fuck do they teach kids in school these days?"
I was glad that Little Rock was there to ask these questions, because I had no clue who Dale Earnhardt was, either.
"He's got a '3' painted on his car," I said. "Is that why you always paint a '3' on all your cars?"
"Damn right." Tallahassee grinned and draped his arm around my shoulders. "I'm the Intimidator now. The zombies shit their pants and run when they see me coming."
He laughed. Little Rock and Wichita rolled their eyes. Me, I just stood there and basked in the warm, solid feeling of Tallahassee's arm across my shoulders.
Rule 36: Take your chances where you find them.
Okay, I just made that one up. But it's a good one.
After Daytona we went to Cape Canaveral, which I think was another one of Tallahassee's attempts to cheer me up. And yeah, the Kennedy Space Center was pretty cool, even if it was a little sad to see the space shuttle sit forlornly on its launching pad and to know that no one was ever going to fly it again. Most of the equipment was smashed, but we did find one whole bank of untouched Unix workstations, still plugged in and running. When I sat down in front of one and brought up Firefox, I actually got an internet connection.
"Are you going to surf for porn?" Tallahassee snickered over my left shoulder. "I keep telling you, sooner or later we'll find you a real--"
"Yes," I said quickly, "I am going to surf for porn. And I'd rather not have you standing over me when I do it, so please go away."
Tallahassee seemed excessively amused by the idea of me looking at dirty pictures on the internet, but at least he did go away. Better still, he took the girls with him, which gave me plenty of time alone to look up the information I wanted. And no, it wasn't porn.
Eventually I wandered back outside and found the others at the gift shop. The girls were inside stocking up on astronaut ice cream and cans of Moon Soup, while Tallahassee was out by the car counting our ammo.
"I've been thinking," he said as I came closer, "we should try the Keys next. They're pretty isolated, only one road in and out. If anyone could've held out against the zombies, it's those crazy conchs down in Key West."
"Actually--" I said.
"It's a pretty cool place, too." Tallahassee went on as if I hadn't spoken. "You ever been? I used to go bar hopping on Duval Street from time to time. There was this one place near the pier--"
"Actually," I said again, a little bit louder this time, "I want to go to Chicago."
"Chicago? Tallahassee looked up from his ammo count to give me an annoyed glare. "Gonna freeze our asses off in Chicago this time of year."
"Only for a few days," I said. "And we can go to the Keys afterwards."
"What's in Chicago?"
I did my best to keep a straight face. "It's a surprise."
Tallahassee narrowed his eyes. For a moment he looked as if he was going to argue, but then he just shrugged and slammed the trunk shut.
"Fine, screw it. Chicago it is."
It wasn't all that cold when we rolled into Chicago three days later, but it was rainy and windy and gray. Neither Tallahassee nor the girls said anything, but I could tell from their expressions that everyone except me would rather be in Key West.
"It's only for one day," I reminded them, and looked down at the Google Maps directions I'd printed out in Cape Canaveral before we left. "Turn left at that next intersection."
"Are we even in Chicago anymore?" Wichita complained from the back seat. "We passed downtown ages ago. This is a dump."
"She has a point." Tallahassee turned the windshield wipers to higher speed as he took the turn, spraying muddy water all over the empty sidewalks. "I don't know what you're hoping to find in this shithole. Even the zombies don't want to hang out around here."
True, the grimy industrial park we were driving through didn't look particularly inviting. But I had a plan and I was going to stick to it.
"Just keep going straight," I said, "we're almost... there. Pull into that parking lot on the right."
"Ooookay." Tallahassee pulled the car over, rolled down the window, and stuck his head out into the rain to peer at the logo painted on the side of the box-shaped building in front of us. "Continental Baking Company? What the fuck is that?"
"Continental Baking Company, Incorporated," I corrected him. "It's a subsidiary of the Interstate Bakeries Corporation, largest distributor of baked goods in the United States. Once, it used to supply pre-zombie America with Wonder Bread, Dolly Madison cakes... and Hostess products."
Tallahassee's jaw dropped open, and his eyes went round and huge. "You're shittin' me."
"Nope." I confess, I couldn't help but sound a little smug. "You are looking at the world's one and only Twinkie factory."
"Holy shit!" Tallahassee was out of the car and sprinting for the factory door in such a rush, he barely paused long enough to grab a gun. I turned toward the back seat to find both girls grinning at me.
"That was really nice of you," Little Rock said.
I shrugged. "It's no big deal. Want to come in?"
"Nah," Wichita said. "You two manly men go have fun with your Twinkies. We'll wait in the car."
I found Tallahassee in the huge store room at the back of the factory, the one where they put the boxed-up Twinkies before shipping them out in the trucks. The place was maybe half-full, but even half-full meant hundreds and hundreds of cardboard boxes stacked against the walls, with dozens of smaller Twinkie cartons inside each box. For Tallahassee, it was cream-filled, artificially-flavored, food-colored heaven. By the time I came in, he already had one box open and two Twinkie wrappers lying crumpled at his feet while he chowed down on a third.
"Columbus!" He yelled as I walked through the door. Actually, with his mouth full, it came out more like "Cowumphush!" but I got the general idea. "You are a fucking genius! How did you ever find this place?"
"Google," I said. "So what do you think? Will this be enough for you? We can load up the car before we head to the Keys."
"Hell, yes." Tallahassee gulped down the last bite of his Twinkie, leaned back against the stack of boxes behind him, and patted his belly. "I am one happy zombie-Intimidator right now."
"I'm glad," I told him. And I was. It was good to see Tallahassee happy, and to know that I had a hand in creating that happiness. It felt kind of like... well, like that time in Pacific Playland, when I had saved Wichita and Little Rock from the zombie horde and Wichita had kissed me. Tallahassee wasn't about to kiss me, of course, but the way he was looking at me just then gave me that same feeling of being somebody's hero. It felt so good that all my common sense and my list of rules and my natural-born paranoia abandoned me all at once.
I walked right up to him until we were standing inches apart, put my hands on either side of Tallahassee's face, and kissed him.
For a moment, we both sort of froze. I think I was as shocked as Tallahassee was. After all, I'm not the sort of guy who normally does dangerous things on impulse. Rule 17 is very important to me. And yet, there I was with my lips pressed against Tallahassee's, tasting vanilla cream and fake butter flavor, and thinking that if I died in the next ten seconds -- which was a distinct possibility -- it might just be worth it.
Then Tallahassee made a noise kind of like a duck being strangled, and shoved me back.
"What the fuck, man?"
"I'm sorry!" I blurted out. "Please don't hit me."
He didn't hit me. He just stood there and stared at me with this blank, stunned look oh his face until I began to seriously consider hitting myself.
"I'm sorry," I said again. "I swear, I didn't bring you here just to hit on you. It's just that I've been thinking about kissing you for weeks now, and you look so, so good when you're happy, and I kind of-- never mind. I'll go now. Uhm. Bye." I began to edge backwards toward the door.
"Oh no you don't!" Tallahassee lunged forward, and I had about half a second to think oh fuck he's gonna kill me! before he grabbed my arms and pulled me forward and--
He was kissing me. Tallahassee was kissing me. And he had big strong arms, and huge shoulders, and his waist was really nice to hold on to, and he kissed amazingly well. Like, melt-your-spine and go-weak-in-the-knees well. Not that I have a huge basis for comparison or anything, but I'm willing to say with confidence that this was a way better than average kiss.
"Whoa," I said when we came up for air. "I didn't actually think you liked guys."
"Who says I like you?" he smirked, and kissed me again.
Since he didn't seem inclined to beat me up anytime soon, I took a chance and shuffled forward a little until my belly pressed up against his crotch.
Oh, yeah. He liked me.
"Hah!" Little Rock said from the doorway. "You owe me half your chocolate stash."
"Shit!" Tallahassee spit out as we jumped back from each other. I turned toward the door to see the girls standing there watching us. Little Rock looked smug, Wichita annoyed.
"Damn," Wichita said. "I was sure you guys would take at least another two weeks to get your shit together."
"Wait," I said, "you were taking bets on us?"
She shrugged. "Hey, if you don't want people to speculate, you gotta be less obvious about it. The way you two kept making goofy eyes at each other..."
"I do not make goofy eyes!" Tallahassee snarled.
"Yeah," I said, "he totally doesn't."
"Oh, please." Little Rock rolled her eyes. "Even I could see it, and I'm twelve!"
"And if you wanna be thirteen," Tallahassee growled, "you'll take your sister and get both your scrawny asses back outside. Go on." He waved his shotgun at them. "Git."
"Yeah, yeah, we're going." Wichita grabbed hold of her sister's sleeve and pulled her away from the door. "Come on, let's leave the lovebirds alone." They both giggled behind their hands as they walked away, and Wichita looked over her shoulder and waved at us. "Have fun, you two!" she called out.
"Thanks!" I waved back at her. "We will." Then it occurred to me that I was kind of presuming stuff, so I gave Tallahassee a quick sideways glance. "Uhm. We will, right? Have fun?"
"Only if you shut up." He grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled me to him again. Only he pulled a little too hard, or maybe I was just being more clumsy then usual, because my feet sort of went out form under me and somehow we both ended up toppling over.
"Oops," I said, "I think we've squashed some of the Twinkie boxes."
"I'll forgive you just this once," Tallahassee said, and stuck his hand down the front of my pants.
Rule #1: Cardio.
Rule #18: Limber up.
Rule #37: Real men aren't afraid to cuddle.
Okay, I just made that last one up too. It's totally true, though.