“I admit, I wanted to kill you at first, but now I’m really happy you’re here with me.” Aerin closes the gap between us and takes my free hand in hers, running her thumb over my wrist. “When I realized you were the president’s son, I didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t sure what kind of person you were. I’m actually kind of glad we were stuck in that shaft for a while.”
“You did that on purpose.”
“I didn’t know if I could trust you.” She rubs my wrist again. “Now I know that I can.”
“You think?” My voice cracks, and I stop speaking so I can clear my throat.
“Yeah, I think.”
I’m very aware of how close she is to me. If I were to lean forward, our bodies would touch. I swallow hard as I realize in my effort not to stare at her nipples, I’ve been staring at her lips instead. I look back to her eyes, hoping she didn’t notice my gaze, only to find her staring at my mouth.
Our eyes meet, and I feel my ears heat up. Aerin opens her mouth as if she’s about to say something but then closes it quickly as her cheeks redden. She takes a step back, releases my hand, and the air between us cools significantly.
“Are you tired?” she asks suddenly. She cringes and takes a deep breath, no longer keeping eye contact.
“Not really.”
“Me either.” She looks left and right and then left again. “Maybe I’ll, uh, read for a bit.” She practically throws herself toward the bookcase and grabs a book. “I haven’t read this one yet. Have you?”
She holds up the tattered paperback.
“I’ve never read any Stephen King books,” I tell her.
“Oh, you should. They’re scary as hell, but he does such a great job at building suspense, and his characters are fabulously flawed.”
“You have quite the book collection,” I say. “Did you steal them all?”
Aerin squares her shoulders and tilts her head up to look down her nose at me.
“I’d have more if someone hadn’t stopped me. That house had some Kurt Vonnegut books. I’ve always wanted to read those.”
“I’ve never been much of a reader,” I say. “Mom had a few that she liked at the house, and I had children’s books but never really read anything I didn’t have to read for school.”
“Books are a hobby of mine, I guess,” Aerin says. “My great-grandmother was an author back in the day. Apparently, she made a living off really steamy romance novels.”
“Steamy?” I grin and raise an eyebrow at her as I try to ignore my rising blood pressure at the thought.
“Graphically steamy,” Aerin says. “As in, something I don’t want to associate with great-grandparents.” She laughs. “I have never seen any of her writing though. She was mostly eBooks, I guess. All that has been lost.”
For the first time since I graduated, I want to read a book.
“Do you know how long it has been since someone had an actual book published and printed for regular people?” Aerin asks. “I don’t mean those reports handed out by the government. I mean an actual book of fiction, a story that only exists for the pleasure of the reader.”
“I never really thought about it.”
“The day of the eruption.” Aerin lays her book aside and looks at me. “No books, no movies—nothing of the sort. If it weren’t for the mountains here, no one would have survived. Even with that, do you realize how close we came to going completely extinct?”
“I know there was more impact than just to this continent,” I say. “Ripple effect or whatever. It’s not like we really know. We haven’t been able to communicate with anyone else since it happened.”
“For all we know, we’re the only humans left.”
“Seems unlikely. If our ancestors survived, others did, too.”
“Survive is all we do now,” Aerin says sadly as she runs her fingers over her book. “Who has time to think up stories when all we do is fight for our survival? Only the elite even know how to read.”
“Naughts still tell stories,” I say. “They can’t write them down, but there was a storyteller in one of the villages I traveled through years ago, before I settled in Plastictown.”
“When did you actually leave the capital?” Aerin asks.