I don’t think I want to be married. I just want someone else. I want someone to listen to me because they want to hear me. I want someone to miss me when I’m gone and to be excited to hear about everything I’d done since we last saw each other.
I live on the third floor of an apartment building. I think all of the apartments on my floor are single bedrooms and since the decimation, I’ve met my neighbor who shares a wall with me. I didn’t realize anyone lived there, the man is very quiet. When I met him, I was surprised that he was younger than me, taller and stronger, but obviously younger. It was maybe Night Fifteen or so, I had just made it back from a food run and I was all bloody from the fights I made my way through in the streets. I collapsed in front of my door and my neighbor took me inside and locked the doors behind himself as he left me inside. When I was feeling better, I knocked on his door and he answered it with a bat.
“I just wanted to thank you,” I told him, and he shut the door in my face.
It took a few more nights before we actually talked and got to know one another, and I was happy to have someone to talk to. He had lost everyone to the decimation, his parents, siblings, even his girlfriend.
“It’s easier this way, I guess.”
His name was Manuel and I recognized him from my other life, where are friends and partners.
“It’s easier not to have anybody. Then you can fight with all that anger and not care if you win. That’s how we surviving.”
Manuel was bleak, but he seemed determined to survive. He seemed determined to make someone pay for all the hurt he had suffered.
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