It's Over When It's Over

I woke up to Daniel poking my face. “Aunt Lora,” Daniel whispered. “Uncle Daryl and I traded places, and this new job is boring. Do you want to play cards?” I rubbed my eyes. I was still tired but I didn’t want to turn him down. He didn’t have Carl to play with and I guess Jack was off helping the others so I was the only one left.
“Sure. But what was this new job?”
“Making sure you don’t ride off with a stranger on a horse.” Daniel said with a side smile. I laughed. Of course Daryl would give him that job. I guess Daryl went off looking for Sophia without me. “Can we play poker?”
“I ain’t have a clue how to play that. Grandpa (my dad) didn’t show me how. How about Slap Jack?” Daniel looked at me funny. “When your dad and I were kids I’d love playing this game with him because every time there was a Jack and he’d take it before me, I’d slap him. I was following the rules of the game.” We laughed. Daniel handed me the cards and I started shuffling them. I didn’t know any tricks so I couldn’t making the shuffling entertaining. I gave him half the deck, and we started playing. I was being nice and letting Daniel have ¾ of the Jacks. As I was shuffling for a new round I heard screaming. I ran out of the tent and told Daniel to zip it up and stay there. I looked around and saw the group all on the ground as Glenn yelled for help. I ran to them as fast as my tired body could and grabbed the rope to hell pull him back up out of the well. After we got Glenn I asked, “What’s going on?”
“We’re trying to get that walker out of the well.” Dale said. I walked over to the well to see the walker. “Back to the drawing board.”
Glenn stood up panting, grabbing the rope, “Says you.” Glenn had gotten the walker by the rope like I had seen. We all grabbed the rope to try and pull the walker up and out of the well. T-Dog and Shane yelled at all of us to pull. We had gotten the walker out half way but its pants must have gotten stuck. Its eyes were popping out of its head and we all pulled together and boom. The walker split in half. His blood and guts where everywhere as his lower half of his body fell back into the well. All that hard work for nothing. The walker didn’t even notice his body was tarred apart and he continued to reach at us. T-Dog then began smashing its head in. After all that we went back to camp. Shane, Carol, and Andrea all went back to the highway to check for Sophia. Jack and Daniel went to play catch so I went into Hershel’s house to ask if he had any books to read. I didn’t really enjoy any of Dale’s selections.
“Have you read The Fault in Our Stars?” Beth asked me.
“Um no I haven’t.” Beth told me one second and ran upstairs. A second later she came back down with a blue book with no cover in her hands.
“You’ll love it. It’s written by my favorite author John Green. It’s about a teenage girl Hazel who has cancer and she meets this guy Augustus and she likes him a lot. I won’t spoil the rest for you.” She said with a smile on her face the whole time she talked.
“Thanks. I’ll head back and start reading.” I smiled. I got back to my tent and began reading. This book was really good and funny, but sad at times. When Hazel (narrator) was describing how Augustus looked it sort of reminded me of Daryl. I loved the fact that Augustus always called Hazel by Hazel Grace.
A few hours went by and everyone had made their way back to camp. I had already gotten pretty far in the book so I thought I’d stop and put the book away for now. I walked out the tent and saw Daryl walk into the RV. As I was about to walk in I heard him telling Carol about the Cherokee rose. I walked by the window to continue listening. Daryl had told me this story hundreds of times and I never got tired of hearing it. It’s a story about how the mothers were crying so much about their children gone missing, so the elders said a prayer asking for a sigh to uplift the mothers’ spirits. The next day a rose started growing right where the mothers’ tears fell. It was a good story to tell Carol. Daryl told her that he believed that the rose he had found grew for Sophia. I smiled. Daryl walked out of the RV and saw me.
“Hey did Daniel do his job?” Daryl asked.
I smiled, “Yes he did.”
“Good.” Daryl and I had gotten back into the tent and he saw the book on the pillow. He grabbed it and looked through it. “What’s the title of this?”
“The Fault in Our Stars.”
“Ain’t that like Shakespeare shit or something?”
“Yeah.” I was really surprised Daryl caught that, matter of fact I was surprised Daryl even knew that was Shakespeare related. That’s what I love about Daryl and I’s relationship is that we’re always learning something new about each other. Daryl is a really smart guy and sadly not enough people see that. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.” I quoted Shakespeare. I only knew that quote from the chapter of The Fault in Our Stars I had just read.
“Shakespeare makes no goddamn sense.” Daryl said. We both looked at each other for a second before laughing.
___
It was dark and everyone had gone to bed. I was kind of bored and I knew Daryl was still awake even though his eyes were shut. I put my hand thru the gap in his button up shirt rubbing his chest. I slowly started to un-button his shirt before moving my way down to his package. I started to rub him and I could feel him breathing faster.
“You sure you wanna do this here?” Daryl asked.
“We can go out if you want?”
Daryl nodded. We got up and snuck out our tent. I felt like a teenager sneaking out at night to go be with my man. I’ve been in the mood for a while now so I was really looking forward to this. Daryl grabbed his crossbow and a flashlight so we can find our way. I then ran back inside the tent to get a blanket.
“I know where to go.” Daryl whispered as he grabbed my hand walking in the direction he wanted to go. He turned on the flash light and we started running. It was nice enjoying ourselves. Hard to now a days. We ran for a while and made our way to a pond. It was really romantic. The moon reflected off the water and the stars filled the sky. You never realize how beautiful the world is until it’s taken away from you. I wish we didn’t have to live this way. Everything we do is a risk to our lives, even making love.