Until the World Stops - L.A. Witt Page 0,15

taken his name, and now I was Tristan Parker, and maybe someday I would get used to that.

I shook myself and continued into the virtual classroom.

While I was reading today’s chapter, Tilly joined me on the couch and noisily licked her butthole. I glared at her. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to concentrate on” —I glanced at my book—“whatever this bullshit is while you’re doing that?”

The look she gave me suggested she gave precisely no fucks.

I rolled my eyes and went back to reading while she went back to bathing. I’d made it all of half a page before my phone pinged. “Oh come on.” I put the book down. “Now what?”

It turned out to be a text informing me that a deposit had been made to my checking account. Ooh, I’d gotten paid. Sweet. I switched apps and logged into my bank account, but the balance made my stomach lurch. My most recent paycheck had deposited, and after Uncle Sam had taken his chunk out of my hide, there hadn’t been much left. I’d only worked about sixteen hours last pay period, and I’d logged maybe six on the current period. And last time I looked at the schedule…

Shit. Maybe I should check on that, because it didn’t do me any good to have a job if I never worked. So, I called my boss, Kyle. When he answered, I said, “Hey, it’s Tristan. Just wanted to check in about the schedule for this week and next.”

Kyle sighed, and he sounded grim. “It’s not looking good.”

My heart sank. “It isn’t?”

“I talked to the operations manager, and…” He blew out a breath. “They’ve been getting calls left and right from event organizers who want to know if they can cancel without losing their deposits.” He grumbled something I didn’t catch, then, “This is stupid, I’ll tell you that. It’s the fucking flu. Since when do we close everything down for the flu?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got friends stationed in Naples and Gaeta, and it sounds like shit’s getting real over there. The bases are locked down, and the hospitals are getting overrun with—”

“Pfft. That’s Italy. And besides, it’s just old people. Quarantine them and move on with our lives.”

I chewed my lip. My buddy in Gaeta knew someone in Rome whose brother—a marathon runner in his late thirties—was in the hospital, and it wasn’t looking good.

I was too worried right now to argue with my boss, though, so I politely ended the call, and then stared at the homework I suddenly couldn’t concentrate well enough to do.

Maybe shutting down big events like that was a good idea. It hurt my paycheck, but even with the insurance I was getting from the Navy via Casey, I didn’t like the idea of volunteering to find out how bad this virus really was. I’d had pneumonia a couple of times, and especially after the last time, it seemed like anything respiratory knocked me on my ass and had me hacking like a lifelong smoker for weeks afterward. Maybe COVID-19 wouldn’t kill me, but it didn’t sound fun.

Given that my job meant standing at the entrance, searching people’s bags and wanding their persons and/or patting them down if they set off the metal detector, and I had literally hundreds of people passing well within my comfort zone on a given night… Hell, maybe it wasn’t so bad that my hours were getting cut. I didn’t like depending on Casey more than I already did, but it was better than seeing exactly how good that health insurance coverage really was.

I drummed my fingers beside the touchpad on my laptop. Horror stories had been trickling in from Italy via my friends who lived over there, not to mention the news. And I’d read a thing yesterday that what was going down in Italy was a preview of what was coming to the US in a couple of weeks. It didn’t seem like people here were taking it all that seriously, though.

And Casey was still going out and hooking up with people?

I shuddered. Maybe he wasn’t as worried. Maybe I was overreacting. I’d deactivated my Tinder and Grindr profiles a few days ago, though; couldn’t be too careful.

But what if my husband-slash-roommate keeps going out and meeting people, and he brings it home?

Just thinking about it made my stomach twist. Casey and I kept our distance from each other at home as a general rule. Would he notice if I started getting extra