Swallow it Down - Addison Cain Page 0,18

she’d heard it all. His sexual preferences—hard, fast, from behind. His tendencies to brood if he wasn’t in the mood or the girl talked too much. Captain’s competitiveness at games and the way he refused to touch after sex.

The women were allowed to sleep on the bed, at a distance, but most chose the couch after it was over.

And he never, ever ejaculated inside. Same rules on the deck. The ol’ pull out and pray method.

Despite Eugenia’s lack of interest, they had given her a primer on the animal.

Manus dickus assholeus.

The music though…

“Hold on for a moment, eh?” Her smile dropped as he pulled her inside. Eugenia had not heard pre-bomb music in so long it felt like stepping on the moon.

“I had a feeling you’d like PJ Harvey.”

Stricken, she listened, memories flooding in of campfires and lovers. Marshmallows and making out in their tent. The ground shaking to this exact song when the world ended as she climaxed from some extremely satisfying sixty-nineing.

But the ground kept shaking, and the camping party figured it had to be Mt. Saint Helen.

Not nuclear war.

There was cell signal enough to listen to the screams of newscasters as more cities blew apart. And then there was the quiet of the woods.

Which were not quiet at all. They were deafeningly loud.

Her entire family was gone, and they wouldn’t have wanted their brilliant daughter braving radiation to pick through garbage for their corpses.

Not pragmatic Mom and Dad. He worked for NASA; she was a brain surgeon.

And this was the last song Eugenia heard when almost everyone who mattered to her was obliterated in radioactive ash. The song—had the world not shaken with such force that they were knocked apart—she suspected Li Wei intended to propose to her once they’d caught their breaths and shared a long kiss.

She’d seen the ring in his pack. The simple band and inset diamonds—exactly to her taste. Something she could wear under surgical gloves. He knew her so well, treated her with respect.

Was willing to move against his family’s hesitations despite the fact that she was not Chinese.

Eugenia was ecstatic to accept. All of their future planned out after graduation. He’d run a family practice. She’d further her education until ready to specialize in pediatric surgery.

But his beloved family was in one direction and hers was in another.

And everyone died.

Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea.

And how did the bastard Captain know the power of this song?

How could he be so cruel?

Playing that warbling, beautiful, aggressive songstress. Eugenia’s guts would have spilled out all over the floor. Fortunately, they were held tight by a conservative, cotton summer dress.

Steering her toward a set of damask sofas, facing one another as if they were on the fucking Titanic, the captain offered, “There’s wine.”

“Yeah.” Wine would be good, a whole fucking bottle.

Li Wei had been so handsome, so smart, so kind. Suave yet funny. Perfect. A sharp dresser yet not pretentious like his parents… or hers.

Sitting on that couch, Eugenia swallowed the full cup of Bordeaux in three gulps.

All of this witnessed by the man mirroring her seat on the opposite couch. A man to whom she’d never lied, and who had never lied to her.

A man waiting for an explanation for the look on her face.

“I would have said yes… to this song. I would have said yes, had a wedding, saved children’s lives on the operating table, maybe even had one of my own. But the ground started shaking, and he forgot to ask in the chaos. I don’t know what happened to the ring. Maybe still at the campsite?”

“Did you want a boy or a girl?”

This was too much to bear. Grief hard enough, and anger far more comforting. “Why the fuck are you playing PJ Harvey?”

“Because you hum her songs while you work.”

“I do not!” Humming was for suckers and fools who thought there was a happy ending in this shit place.

“Alecia, play Arcade Fire.”

And the torture ended, the captain refilling her glass.

She sipped the second round, accepting that every last survivor had some kind of PTSD, and unfortunately hers had been witnessed by someone who’d use it against her.

A man she knew hated small talk during his scheduled sex sessions. So small talk it would be. “I saw Arcade Fire live when I was seventeen. Lied to my parents and snuck out. Got a wristband to buy beer and sat on the shoulders of some bruiser whose name I don’t remember. Small venue, but the best show I’d