“What about his mother? They’re close.”
“No one’s that close to their mother,” said Ryan. “My mother still thinks I’m a virgin and I’m 22!”
“Are you?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Did you have sex with your stepsister?” I joked.
“How did you know?” he joked. “No. Only weirdos do that.”
“Oh, God, you do think I’m a weirdo. I’m never gonna live this down.”
“No one can possibly find out.”
“How do you know that?”
“Look, Phil can’t tell your dad, he won’t tell his mom. He’ll tell his friends, but he’ll lie and said it was sex with some girl who moved to Canada or something. He’s never going to advertise he slept with his own stepsister. No one would!”
“So you do think it’s weird?”
“I’m saying, there is a lot of daylight between telling your friends you got laid and telling them who you banged. I mean, it’s not like he has a picture of you or anything. He won’t show that even if he did, he can’t let anyone find out it was you!”
“I guess that’s true. I just wish we could get past it somehow,” I replied. “Why does sex have to complicate everything.”
“That’s part of it’s magic!” joked Ryan. “Look, maybe in a few months, it won’t matter. The lockdown has to be over by then and then you can move on with your life.”
“I feel like it will be hanging over me forever.”
“It probably won’t.”
I continued to chat with Ryan for a few hours. It was nice to meet someone new and I was finally able to unburden my soul.Chapter Fifteen - TracianneWe’d been locked up for almost a month and the virus just kept getting worse. The president insisted we’d be back to normal soon, but it didn’t seem that way. The governor was talking about keeping the state locked down past June and July. Maybe nothing would open until August and there might even be a second wave.
All sorts of conflicting information was pouring in. The Internet had one set of information (well, several sets really) and the TV had another. They had been wrong about the masks. At first they wanted us not to wear them. Now they demanded we do so. Wear them or grandma was gonna die or something.
At the same time, they were putting recovering patients into nursing homes, even though the old people were at the greatest risk. It was like someone was purposely trying to make this as bad as possible.
What the hell were people thinking? It’s a good thing I didn’t listen to much of the TV news anymore. Still, the conflicting reports made me stressed out and dad didn’t seem to happy.
Daphene was, as always, on the verge of falling to pieces. The woman was as weak as a piece of straw blowing in the wind. How did she survive a divorce? My God, every time I looked in her direction, I swear she seemed to be on the verge of tears.
Fortunately, even though life in the house was pretty miserable for us, I had made a new friend with Ryan. We talked all the time. It wasn’t anything sexual, but he was engaging and funny.
“It’s so lame, everything coming out of the news,” I texted. “Wear a mask, don’t wear a mask…”
“No one’s wearing a mask here,” texted Ryan. “There’s only like 400 people in my town. There are rarely more than ten of us together.”
“So, no one you know has the virus?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “People in state do have it, but it’s a pretty low number. It’s mostly in the cities. Maybe 300 cases? No less than that.”
“Wow, it’s everywhere here,” I replied. “You’re so lucky.”
“Not really. There’s nothing much to do here. I go for long walks.”
“I like to go for walks, but I generally stick to a few block radius now. People are weird during the virus. They’re afraid to pass you on the street. Sometimes, they’re more afraid of you when you have the mask on, than off.”
“Strange. Is this world falling apart?”
“Maybe. I know a lot of people are out of work. I don’t see how everyone can survive very long like this, with or without being infected.”
“They should come out here to Alaska. We have work!”
“I can imagine. You must be shoveling snow constantly.”
“That’s not really work,” Ryan assured. “That’s just something you do to get to your car every morning. That is, if you have anywhere to go.”
“Well, you work, right?”
“No, I’m a student.”
“Me too. My classes were canceled.”
“Mine were canceled and the state is barely on lockdown here. It’s so weird.”
Ryan seemed more like a mental fit for me. God, what was I thinking, having sex with Phil? Guess I was just emotional and needy. Who knows? Maybe I just wanted to have sex and he was the nearest person. He was pretty good at it and had a nice body.