Chapter 270: Back to the Boardwalk [2]

Walking through the Boardwalk’s territory felt different from every other part of Atlantic City we’d moved through since the outbreak. The streets were swept. Actual swept, the kind of clean that took daily effort to maintain, not the accidental cleanliness of a place nobody used anymore. People moved along the paths between buildings with purpose and without urgency, talking to each other, carrying things, doing the ordinary work of keeping a community running. Kids cut between adults’ legs and got called back. Someone was hanging laundry from a line strung between two lamp posts.

It was jarring in the best possible way.

"It barely looks like there was ever an apocalypse here," Cindy said, turning slowly as she walked, taking it all in. The impression on her face was genuine, not polite but actually impressed. "Like, at all."

Daisy was doing the same slow turn beside her, eyes moving from building to building, taking in the organized stalls and the cleared pathways and the general sense that these people had decided the world ending was not going to stop them from sweeping their street.

Maribel caught Cindy’s comment and something in her expression warmed — the quiet pride of someone who had put real work into a thing and was watching someone else notice.

"Everyone contributes," she said. "That’s the rule here. No exceptions. Everyone has something they do and they do it every day. That’s how it stays like this."

"What about you?" Cindy asked, falling into step alongside her with easy curiosity. "What’s your thing?"

"Fishing when the weather’s good," Maribel said. "Scavenging runs outside the perimeter when we need supplies. Security patrols — checking the outer blocks, making sure Callighan’s people aren’t pushing closer. Infected that get too near the perimeter." She shrugged. "Whatever needs doing, mostly."

"That’s..." Daisy searched for the word, her expression genuinely admiring. "That’s really impressive."

"She does more actual useful work than Brad and his two idiots combined," Cindy said, sighing with great feeling. "I genuinely don’t know whether to laugh or feel embarrassed about that."

"Brad?" Maribel glanced back.

"Three guys from our community," I said. "You might have seen them when the whole situation happened. Wanted to side with Callighan. Angry about it when they didn’t get their way."

Maribel thought about it for a second. "I don’t remember them."

"Nobody does," Cindy said. "That’s kind of their whole thing."

"Cindy..." Daisy’s voice carried the light nervous energy it always had when she thought someone was crossing a line. "That’s a bit mean to say behind their backs..."

"Daisy, those three spend half their time talking behind Ryan’s back," Cindy said, without breaking stride. "I’m just evening it out."

"They...talk behind Ryan’s back?" Daisy blinked.

"They hate him," Cindy said plainly.

I processed that for a second.

I mean....I wasn’t completely oblivious. I’d picked up on the hostility from Brad especially, the low-level antagonism that seemed to turn up whenever I was in the same space as him. But hate was a strong word. Hate implied something sustained and real.

"Hate me?" I said. "What did I actually do to them?"

I tried to think back through every interaction. I’d spoken sharply a few times but there were reasons every time, and in most cases they’d started it. Brad especially had been pushing from practically the first day we met, like he’d made a decision about me before I’d opened my mouth.

"It’s not complicated," Cindy said, with the tone of someone explaining something to a person who should already understand it. "You’re tall. You’re very good looking. And Rachel who Brad has been completely obsessed with since Jackson Township doesn’t give him the time of day and spends most of her time around you." She looked at me. "That’s it. That’s the whole reason."

"Brad likes Rachel?" Daisy turned to Cindy with wide eyes.

"How was that not obvious?" Cindy asked, genuinely baffled.

I’d noticed him gravitating toward Rachel, the conversations he kept finding excuses to start, the way he positioned himself near her when the group was together. I’d assumed it was straightforward interest. But the level of it, apparently, ran deeper than I’d clocked.

Still.

"That’s really enough to hate someone?" I asked.

Rachel wasn’t acting that close when we’re together in public. She was very professional, same way she was with Christopher. It’s not like she’s hanging off me in front of him.

"Ryan," Cindy said patiently. "Look around you right now. Just look."

I looked.

Several people had slowed their pace as we walked through — some subtle about it, some not even trying to be. A mix of ages, mostly around mine or older, and the attention was definitely not distributed equally across the three of us. A fair number of gazes, girls, were tracking me, and I felt them the way you feel eyes when you’ve spent enough time in survival situations to develop sensitivity to being watched.

But the attention on Cindy and Daisy was a completely different animal.

The men, a cluster of three near a low wall on the left side, a couple more leaning outside what looked like a repurposed supply store on the right were not being subtle in the slightest. Their eyes dropped, came back up, and they exchanged comments between themselves at a volume they clearly weren’t concerned about. The kind of behavior that existed in a grey zone between rude and something worse, comfortable in it because they thought nobody was paying attention.

I was paying attention.

My enhanced hearing pulled the words out of the background noise easily and I didn’t particularly like what it gave me.

I didn’t say anything about it. There were men like that everywhere — before the outbreak and after it. As long as it stayed at looks and muttered comments, physically intervening wasn’t the right move. But I noticed, and the noticing left something uncomfortable sitting in my chest, especially when my eyes moved to Cindy.

Possessive was probably the accurate word for it, even if I didn’t love admitting that.

I slowed my pace by half a step, let Daisy come level with me on my left, and shifted position so my body was between her and the group of three on that side. It wasn’t dramatic about it, just a quiet repositioning that put a wall between her and their sightline.

She was clearly having a hardest time. Maybe she heard some very displeasing comments.

Daisy noticed within a few seconds. She glanced up at me, then briefly toward where the group had been, then back up.

"You okay?" I asked, keeping my voice low.

"Ah... yes," she said quietly. "Thank you, Ryan."

"You didn’t have to force yourself to wear that today," I said. "Just so you know."

"I wasn’t forced!" She straightened up immediately, more flustered than defensive. "Cindy didn’t make me...I chose it." She paused, fidgeting with the hem of the skirt for a second. Her voice dropped a little. "I...want to get better at this. Being more confident. Around people I don’t know."

That surprised me more than I expected.

She was looking up at me when she said it, cheeks already going pink, but she held the eye contact just long enough to make sure I’d heard it properly. For Daisy, that alone probably took more effort than anything physical she could have been asked to do today.

I knew that kind of effort. Not the same circumstances, but the same internal cost. I’d been significantly less outgoing than I let on these days — back before everything changed, social situations had been their own specific kind of exhausting that I’d never fully explained to anyone.

"I get it," I said, smiling. "And if there’s anything I can do to help with that, just ask. Seriously."

She blinked. Something settled in her expression, relieved, maybe just very happy.

"I’ll be the one helping with that," Cindy’s voice cut in sharply from my right, and her hand closed around my arm, pulling me sideways by a firm half-step.

She gave me a look that had a full sentence in it without needing any words.

"What?" I asked.

"Are you doing that on purpose?" Cindy asked, keeping her voice low enough that it wouldn’t carry forward to Daisy.

"Doing what?"

"Making her fall for you," she said plainly.

"I...what? No," I said, genuinely thrown. "I was just talking to her."

"That’s exactly what I mean," Cindy said, sighing. She glanced ahead at Daisy, who was walking slightly in front with her head down, cheeks still carrying color, lost somewhere in her own thoughts. "You do it without even noticing you’re doing it. That’s what makes it so effective and so completely unfair."

"I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about," I said.

"Before all this you were so closed off that it didn’t really show," she said quietly, watching the path ahead rather than me. "You kept people at arm’s length and that put walls up naturally. But somewhere between New York and right now you got confidence, and when you add that to the face you already had—" she paused, "—you became something women have a very hard time being sensible around. You don’t need that curing ability to get into anyone’s head. You just have to be yourself and show up."

"I’m not trying to get into anyone’s head," I said. "And I already have more than enough—"

"I know," she cut me off, dry but not unkind about it.

A short silence.

"Daisy’s fine," she said eventually, almost to herself, glancing ahead again. "Honestly. I don’t see her getting comfortable around any other man the way she does with you. Not anytime soon."

"What are you even suggesting right now?" I asked, my expression doing something involuntary.

"Nothing," she said, in the voice that meant something. "Just observing a likely future out loud."

"Sydney is genuinely rubbing off on you and not in a good way," I said grumbling.

"Sydney just says what everyone else is already thinking," Cindy replied, completely unbothered. "I’m at least trying to be tactful about it." She nudged her elbow lightly into my side, playful rather than pointed. "There’s a difference."

"Tactful," I repeated. "You just implied I should add Daisy to a list that shouldn’t exist in the first place."

She looked up at me with a smile that had no business being as warm as it was given what she’d just said. "You’re really cute when you’re flustered. Has anyone told you that?"

I rolled my eyes.

"I’m just saying," she said, "that I am almost certainly not your last complication. That’s all. Purely an observation."

"What a wonderful observation."

Cindy giggled.

"Alright, stop now," I said quickly.

Daisy was still somewhere in her own world a few steps ahead, which was a mercy. Maribel was further forward, moving at a steady pace, apparently absorbed in whatever was directly in front of her.

"Where are you taking us, actually?" Cindy called ahead to Maribel, her voice switching back to easy and light without any transition. "While we wait for Marlon."

Maribel half-turned, gesturing ahead without slowing down. "The beach. You can wait there. It’s comfortable enough and Marlon will come find you when he’s ready."

I looked past her toward the Boardwalk’s edge. Beyond the wooden walkway, the sand stretched out in a long clean strip, and I could already see a handful of people down there — some lying flat on towels, some sitting close to the waterline with their feet toward the waves. The Atlantic glittered hard under the August sun.

With the heat doing what it was doing today, I couldn’t blame them in the slightest.

"Perfect," Cindy said immediately, and without any warning grabbed Daisy’s wrist.

"Ah! Cindy—"

"Come on, beach, now—"

"Wait, I’m not! Cindy, my skirt—!"

But she was already gone, pulling Daisy forward at a pace that left no room for objection, Daisy’s protests trailing behind them as they disappeared toward the sand.

I watched them go and felt something loosen in my chest a little. If getting Daisy out into sun and salt air and forcing her to exist somewhere new helped her build even a fraction of the confidence she was working toward, I’d take her out more often. We’d all take turns. She shouldn’t have to figure that out by herself.

"So."

I turned.

Maribel had slowed and was walking beside me now, eyes forward, hands in her pockets.

"Is she your girlfriend?" She asked.

My expression froze mid-whatever it had been doing.

I looked left, then right, dumbly thinking maybe she wasn’t asking me.

"I’m asking you," Maribel said, glancing sideways at me and rolling her eyes. "Obviously."

"What makes you think that?" I asked.

"The way you two were moving around each other back there," she said. "And I caught something she said, something about your women. Plural."

"She was just talking about the women around here looking at me," I said, keeping my voice completely level. "That’s all she meant."

Maribel looked at me for a second longer than was comfortable, then shrugged and looked forward again. "Lucky you, then."

"Are you lesbian?" I asked her.

Her head snapped toward me so fast I almost felt the air move.

"W...what?!"

"You were looking at Cindy a lot," I said.

"She was saying weird things, of course I was looking at her!" Maribel said, her voice climbing. "What kind of question—"

"I have nothing against it either way," I added quickly. "Genuinely."

She stared at me with an expression that cycled through several things rapidly.

I watched her process it and caught the exact moment she started wondering what Cindy had been saying that I was now this anxious to redirect from. Which meant the technique was working but also backfiring, so I needed to commit.

"I’m not lesbian," she said, with a hard gaze.

"Alright," I said. "My mistake."

"Not the first time someone’s assumed," she added, her voice dropping back to something flatter and more controlled but with an edge still in it. "Just because I wear what I want and don’t sit around being decorative, suddenly everyone thinks—" She stopped. Exhaled through her nose. "Forget it."

"I didn’t say any of that," I said. "I wasn’t thinking any of that either."

"That’s what it amounts to," she said.

"It really isn’t." I looked at her directly. "I find women like you genuinely appealing, for what it’s worth. Assertive, capable, someone who can clearly handle themselves, that’s not a criticism. That’s the opposite of a criticism."

It came out before I’d fully planned it. True, but unfiltered, the Sydney comparison sitting in the back of my mind, the fact that I’d always found that particular combination of qualities more interesting than anything else. I meant it.

I loved Sydney for what she was.

Maribel was another kind of tomboyish maybe but all the same in the end.

While thinking that I noticed Maribel had stopped walking.

I stopped too, half a step later, and looked at her.

Her mouth had opened slightly. She was staring at me with an expression I couldn’t fully map, somewhere between surprised and something that hadn’t decided what it was yet. A faint color had appeared along her jaw that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

"What?" I asked her.

She closed her mouth.

"Nothing," she said and turned sharply. Started walking again, both hands curled into loose fists at her sides.

I watched her back for a second.

Then I followed, deciding very firmly not to smile.