Drown #7.1: the preparations

February 2085. Stephanie Day is 25, Justin Kim is 24. Alice Nova is 63, Jeremy Nova is 69. 

* briefly NSFW


Stephanie couldn't stop thinking about her wedding ring. She wondered what purpose it even served, since it clearly wasn't a magical force field that would protect her marriage. Justin took off his wedding ring three months ago, he cried for a minute or two, and he hasn't mentioned it since. He didn't seem the least bit bothered by it anymore, although she caught him sometimes staring at her ring and resigning himself to it with a soft sigh. She looked at her ring now, doubtfully, regretfully, and then she slipped it off her finger in one smooth motion. It came off as haphazardly as it went on in the first place.

It felt weird at first, although not entirely different. She slipped it back on, and then off again. She didn't own a jewelry box, so she tucked it into her sock drawer with what few pieces of jewelry she kept in a tiny wooden pillbox.


She walked around the house that day with her wedding ring off. She picked up her daughter, she hugged her mom, she did the dishes. The whole day, nobody noticed.


That night, she needed to try something. She giggled to herself, going to sit down and then not, feeling naughty and daring and, at the same time, a little bit shy.

"Why are you acting so weird?" Justin asked her.

"I'm not," she said, finally sitting down. "You feel like giving that magazine a little break?"


She wondered if it would feel weird to kiss him without her wedding ring on. It didn't. His lips and his hands and his breath felt exactly the same.


She took him upstairs. Making love to him didn't feel any different, either. It felt like it always did—perfect.

Then she knew that marriage didn’t happen in a ring or even in a ceremony. It happened in that tiny box in her heart that she never gave to her husband because it was already promised and kept for someone else. Nothing felt different because nothing was different. Justin had all of her now like he had all of her always, whether he ever knew it or not.

Stephanie put her wedding ring back on. For now.

***

That winter, Stephanie's parents needed to come home. Her father was already retired, but her mother was laid off for the semester because she had no classes to teach. The university had suspended most of the spring semester classes because not enough kids were enrolling. They all went back home to Ohio and Missouri and Kentucky to be with their families.

"Do you want me to leave?" Justin asked her.

"No, don’t leave," Stephanie said.

"But do they know? Do I need to stop kissing you? What will they think?"


Stephanie guessed that her parents knew most of it. Every time they visited, Justin was here. But they tried to be discreet about it anyway. They hid in empty corners to steal kisses.


They hugged in empty rooms that didn't always stay empty for long. But Justin still wouldn't kiss her in front of her parents to start. Not yet. So they started with hugs, and they clearly shared a bed at night, although Justin waited until her parents had gone to sleep to go up with her. She suspected that her mother had the better idea about it, and that she'd probably told her father although he would never mention it in a million years. Stephanie still felt like it should be said out loud.


"I need to say something," Stephanie said to her mother one afternoon.

"Oh, Stephanie, what did you do?"

"It’s not bad… or well, it’s mostly not bad. So you know Justin stays here most of the time. Okay, all of the time."

"Yes, we know, sweetie."

"But that’s not all. I, um, I had…"

She wondered how she should she say this, because "affair" sounded so dirty. She wondered if there was a nicer, cleaner word for cheating on one’s husband. Because you don’t just have a little affair with your best childhood friend of seventeen years. There must be another word for the gravity of what she'd just gotten herself into, but she couldn't think of one.


In the end, she took a deep breath and said, "I love him."

Then her mother grinned the most gracious smile Stephanie had ever seen on her face. "Please tell me you’re leaving Jeremiah! Can it really be true? I’m so happy for you, sweetheart."

You would have to know Stephanie's mother, how prim and proper she was, to understand the hilarity of how excited she was about her daughter's dirty affair, or maybe it was the magnitude of hatred she held for her daughter's husband. Either way, Stephanie was amused.

"Well, I mean, I haven’t quite gotten as far as leaving him yet," Stephanie said.

"But you will. All in good time."

"Um, thanks, Mom."


"Justin makes you so happy," Alice said. "I can tell. He always did, sweetie."

Hearing it said out loud made Stephanie's heart break wide open, but in a good way this time. If only they knew back then what everyone seemed to know now, but she tried to stop worrying about what they didn't know then. Maybe all that mattered was that they knew it now.


In a month, Stephanie will have been married for five years and her husband had been gone for half of it. She tried to remember what their marriage had been like for the couple short years they were together. They were going to see the world together. That was what he promised. Instead they never really left their cabin. Then they came back home, she had Willow, he went to war, and that was the end of it.

She remembered the beginning mostly, the cabin, the snow, the sex, the charm. She remembered that he was happy there when it was just the two of them, just the way he loved it, when she was all his. She remembered that he made her feel very wanted and necessary—I need you, Stephanie. I don't like the man I am without you. He promised her that he would be all she ever needed. And at a time when she couldn’t have the man she really wanted, this didn’t feel like a terrible consolation life. But of course, they couldn't stay there forever.

When they came home to stay with her parents, who hated him and were hated back in Jeremiah's careful and potent way, she saw another side of her husband that she was convinced she'd never seen before. Jeremiah was sharp and snappy sometimes. He had to share her again and he didn’t like it. There was rage in him sometimes, hot and cold, love and fury. It was just the stress, she told herself. It was just an adjustment. People have a way of needing to believe the things they believe until they cannot believe them anymore.

Of course, she had seen it before, though. The first time she saw it, they were still at the cabin, still newlyweds. It was an ordinary day, but she had done something that displeased him—she couldn't even remember now what that something was—and he raised up his hand in front of her face. He didn't hit her that day. She only stared at his hand like it was the strangest and most curious thing she'd ever seen, a hand held palm forward, cocked and loaded. Stephanie's parents never hit her, she was a timid girl and had never gotten into any schoolyard brawls, and as the youngest of her family she'd never even had a scuffle with her siblings. She didn’t even cower, because she didn’t know any better what to do in front of a raised hand. But then he moved the hand, he choreographed it and its arm to lift up and reach for the back of his own neck instead, and he scowled at her, like she shouldn't have thought she saw what she did.

He said, "You're being dramatic. It offends me, Stephanie. It's like you don't even believe how much I love you."

Jeremiah's love made her feel so wanted, but so very small.

But he was right, she thought that day. They were newlyweds and living in a perfect icy bubble in the mountains. He made her feel wanted at a time in her life when she’d felt so unwanted. How could she have seen what she thought she saw? She was being dramatic, she decided, and their bubble went on until it couldn't anymore.

***

Keri was selected for that translation course she wanted, although she still had to work on the Europa transcripts full time. She didn't mind it though. She read very interesting things in the Europa transcripts. She mastered one alien language and two more human ones while everyone else played cards in the common room. She drank a lot of coffee and slept a strict six hours a night, just enough to be alert, not too much to waste time. She remembered waking up one morning in her final year of college finally understanding what discipline was. She earned a spot on the honor roll for the first time in her life that semester. It all felt like preparation for something so much bigger and now she thought she understood why.

It wasn't motherhood, she knew now, even though she loved her daughter very much. And she was grateful to Justin for picking up everything she left behind. She didn't know how she could ever repay him besides not holding a grudge, even if that meant not holding a grudge against Stephanie too. As hard as that was, Keri would try.


When she called Justin to check in, he asked her, "Is it true, what people are saying? Are they coming?"

Keri wasn't allowed to say it was true, but how could she know it and not tell him? He was taking care of her baby. She chose her words carefully. She could tell him a lot with the right words. "Hey, be careful, okay? If those things come, it could get crazy down here. I know you don’t think you’re a fighter, but you might not have a choice. Take care of my baby, okay? Take care of yourself. And if I give you a list of things to look for, can you maybe just write them down and not ask any questions?"

***

On the ground, people were talking. Whatever it was those little shits were doing with Jupiter, some of them seemed to have finished. They broke away, some of them in the direction of Earth. Nobody knew for sure that they were coming here. Keri wouldn't say it was true, but then she gave Justin a list of things to go look for. Very specific things.

It made Stephanie scared for him to go to work every day. But people still went to work, people still had jobs. Stephanie still watched four children in the days while their parents still went to their jobs.

Other people were starting to loot some of the larger, fancier homes on the lakeshore. They were big and spacious and had large gaping windows to be broken into. Nobody blamed Justin for not sleeping at his house anymore, although he still went every few days to make sure it wasn’t broken into or burnt down. Keri asked him not to bring Lily back there. Here in the suburbs, everyone on their street looked out for each other, and when they met each other out on the sidewalks while they walked their dogs and strollers, there was talk of keeping a rotation of guards at the front entrance to the main road.

Justin fitted the house with security cameras and motion-detecting lights.

He kept bringing things home. Cans and bottled water, powdered milk, electronic fixtures for all parts of the house, solar chargers and batteries, air filters, and a large barrel with hazard signs on it. His diligence made Stephanie scared. He never took anything seriously and he was taking this very seriously. He left a shelf in the closet for birth certificates and passports. "Legal documents and a little bit of emergency cash," he said. "Keep them all together and ready to go."

"But where are we going?"

"Nowhere. But in case we ever need to. We need to be prepared."


"And what is that thing?" She pointed to the large gray barrel.

"Keri told me to buy it. It’s an oxygen tank."

"Why do we need it?"

"She couldn’t say why, she just said to buy it. So I bought it."

He took her to the utility closet where the air conditioner was.


"It goes with this. That thing on the side would filter and supplement the air in the house instead of bringing in air from outside. And the duct tape and plastic sheeting for the ducts and windows."

"Are we going to get bombed or something?"

"No. I mean, she couldn’t say any more about it."


"Are we going to die?"

"No," he said. "Not soon, anyway. We'll die when we're old. Really old."

"Maybe you shouldn’t go to work tomorrow."

"It’s too soon for that. If there’s ever a day I don’t think I should go to work, I won’t go."

"Okay," she said.

"Don’t be scared. That’s why we’re doing this now, so we don’t have to be scared."

"Okay," she said.

"Are you okay?"

Stephanie took short quick breaths and felt her lips tremble. "I’m fine," she said.

"No, you’re not," he said. "But I know what you need."

"What?"


"A dance party at the end of the world?"

She laughed. "Yes, please," she said.

So they turned the music up loud and they danced until they felt better.




"Hey, Justin?"

"Hey what?"


"Would you do something for me?"

"Sure, anything."


Then she stalled. She thought of freshman year in college, that day she almost thought for a minute that he might ask her out on a date. But in the end, he was only asking for Keri. Stephanie tagged along that night like a third wheel, feeling stupid and embarrassed when he and Keri started making out in the hot tub, and so she went to use the dance sphere and fell out of it with her bathing suit riding up her butt crack.

"Never mind, it was probably dumb."


"What is it, Steph? I'm sure it's not dumb. Tell me."

She never asked him out back then. She wanted to ask him so badly, it was all she ever thought about, but she never did it. Now she wondered if he wouldn't have been so opposed to the idea, and then how would their lives have turned out? Maybe just like this, hopelessly in love and dancing together in her living room at the end of the world. The world doesn't stop ending while you wait to decide.


"It's just that we’ve never been out on a real date before," she said. "Would you take me on a date before the end of the world?"


"I’d love to," he said.

—

outtakes: random winter cuteness // being (not) discreet

and a note on name revisions: I did change Stephanie's mom's name to Alice, in case you remembered it being something different (it used to be Jasmine), and I revised it for all of the old entries as well. I never felt like that name suited her, but then Alice came to mind and I thought "OMG she is so an Alice!" I need to revise all of these J-names for the book version anyway. Justin is the only one who gets to definitely keep his J-name, but for the others, all bets are off!