Until the World Stops - L.A. Witt Page 0,34

getting naked?” effect on me.

But thinking about it now, I had to admit that he also calmed me down in ways I’d never imagined Tristan doing. Even while I’d been stressed as fuck about being around him so much, I realized now that he calmed me down about everything else. I’d been running at about an eleven on the anxiety scale ever since the pandemic had really started to take hold, losing sleep as I doom-scrolled through social media and working myself into a near panic over the what-ifs.

Tristan, though—he kept his head together. He planned for contingencies and he took precautions, but he didn’t freak out. Not the way I probably would have if he and his calming presence hadn’t been here.

Thank God for this man. Seriously. Because I was exhausted. Being up at the crack of dawn was draining under the best of circumstances, but lately? Fuck. Just existing right now made me so tired it hurt. Sex? Even if Tinder had been an option right now, and even if Tristan dropped trou and asked, “You wanna?”, I didn’t have it in me. Not after all the stress and lost sleep.

While Tristan cooked, I pulled a bottle of Pepsi from the fridge and poured myself a glass. Might as well get enough caffeine and sugar to keep me from passing out early.

As I was putting away the bottle, Tristan said, “So, um… I did some more hunting around on job sites today.”

I leaned against the counter and sipped my drink. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s, uh…” Sighing, he put down the spatula, adjusted the heat on the burner, and faced me as he ran a hand through his hair. “I’m going to be straight with you—no one is hiring right now. Almost everywhere is shutting down, a lot of them are laying off, and…” He shook his head. “They’re not looking to hire at all. Not even online.”

Staring into my drink, I bit back my frustration. It wasn’t news and it also wasn’t his fault. None of this was.

The silence must have gone on longer than I realized, because he cleared his throat. “I’m gonna keep looking. I’m not gonna freeload or anything. I just… I just wanted to be on the up and up about the situation.”

“Yeah. I follow.” I put down my glass and looked at him. “I mean, it’s doable, you know?”

“Is it?”

“Sure. Money’s going to be tight, but we’re still holding on to the tax refund and it isn’t like either of us is using a lot of gas right now. We’re not going out.” I shrugged. “Aside from utilities here at home, we’ll probably be spending less money for a while with everything closed.”

“True.” His features were still tight, nerves written all over his face. God, did he think I was going to light into him or throw him out? Because he’d lost his job through no fault of his own during a pandemic? Hell. Maybe he did think that. I supposed I hadn’t given him much reason not to.

“Keep looking,” I said quietly. “But I mean, don’t sweat it. In fact, honestly, maybe this is for the better.”

His forehead creased.

I swallowed. “They say the best thing right now is to stay home as much as possible. Avoid going out and interacting with people. Maybe it’s better if only one of us is working.”

“Less exposure?”

I nodded as I picked up my Pepsi again. “It’s bad enough you’re going to the grocery store and things like that. If you keep handling errands, and I keep going to work, that minimizes the exposure for both of us.”

He chewed his lip. As he picked up the spatula and started nudging the sausage slices around again, he said, “That still leaves us kind of fucked for money.”

“We can make do.”

He glanced at me, more uncertainty on his face.

I took a swig of Pepsi and put the glass down again. “Look, it’s not ideal. But neither of us saw this shit coming when we got—when we agreed to do this. All we can really do is what we’ve been doing since it started—go with the flow and do what we can, and when it’s over, we’ll figure it out from there.”

He studied me, then nodded and fixed his attention on the frying pan again. “So I guess we’ll take it a day at a time.”

“Yep. And at least we’ve got plenty of food in the house.” Good thing one of us had been smart and thought to stock up before everything