Free Love & Decay, Episode 11 by Rachel Higginson

was guiding me toward the hallway.
    “Two hours is plenty of time to get cleaned up and meet back here.” I wasn’t sure if I was flirting with him or just trying to get a reaction out of him but suddenly a nervous chill racked my body.
    “If that’s what we were doing, you would be right,” Hendrix agreed.
    I cleared my throat and dug deep for courage, “Um, what are we doing?”
    I could hear the seductive smile in his voice even in the almost pitch-dark hallway, “We’re going to find that locked door and dark place now. We have promises to keep to each other.”
     

Chapter Four
     
    Nervous insecurity warred with excited anticipation in my body and I was ninety-nine percent sure I was going to stroke-out before we even got to our destination.
    First things first, I hadn’t really been alone with Hendrix since our first kiss and that was still outside in the open where any Feeder could have stumbled upon us or Page could have walked in on our very amorous admission of feelings. If Hendrix could pull it off, we were going someplace alone, with a door that locked. I mean, was that even possible? Did those places even exist anymore?
    God, I hoped so.
    And also kind of hoped they didn’t.
    Because now was the perfect time for me to start feeling like a girl with insecurities and body issues and doubt. Awesome.
    I needed a little preparation before I went into this kind of thing. There were rituals to be done, steps that needed to be taken so that when- and if- my clothes came off Hendrix could identify me as a woman!
    Oh, no! When was the last time I shaved my pits? It had been like…. Way. Too. Long.
    I winced thinking about the other places of my body that needed trimming. Holy hell, Hendrix was going to get eaten by my crotch that had evolved into a man-eating gorilla sometime over the last two years!
    Why hadn’t I invested in laser hair removal before I graduated high school?
    I hadn’t even been able to give my girly bits a good, sufficient scrubbing since we met up with the Parkers since we’d all been enjoying communal bathing with most of our clothes still on. It wasn’t like I could just turn around and loofa!
    Oh my gosh, this was so the end of everything I had built with Hendrix.
    Sex was clearly out of the question.
    And not just because there might possibly be mold growing on my va-jay-jay… No, that was only a small piece of the puzzle.
    One I would seriously fix immediately. Next bath down by the river, I was going to make a serious statement about feminine hygiene. I just hoped I didn’t traumatize anyone for life.
    I mean, Zombies were one thing. Asking almost complete strangers and one innocent little Page to witness an attack on my vaginasaurous was an entirely other thing to ask of humanity.
    No, sex was still out of the question because everything with Hendrix was still new. Even though we’d known each other for over three months and even though my feelings for him were concrete and potentially eternal, why didn’t I get to hold on to the one thing I had left to give to a man? It wasn’t that I didn’t think it would inevitably be Hendrix. I did think that. I believed that with everything inside of me.
    But there were still things that deserved to be special. Even in the Zombie Apocalypse, there were still parts of my life that could be given a higher standard.
    This was my first time. And once I gave it away, it could not be ungiven. There wasn’t this moral issue I had with it, nothing like that. But it was just that my virginity was mine- maybe the only thing I had left that nobody had any part in… uh, yet. And I wanted it to be special. I wanted it to stay with me when the world was bleak and crumbling around me. I wanted it to fill me with hope and joy and intimate moments that I would hold against my heart and not even share with Haley. I wanted it to remind me there was more to life than killing and nearly dying. I wanted it to represent this love I shared with Hendrix,