Fallen by Ava Bloom

Author:Ava Bloom [Bloom, Ava]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-02-25T16:00:00+00:00

A day later, while Melody was taking an afternoon nap, I stepped into the bathroom and stood directly in front of the mirror. I looked wild. Deranged. It was no wonder Melody had been terrified the first time she’d seen me. I would have come at me with a wooden spoon, too.

My beard was unkempt and scraggly on the edges. And even though I’d been honest about only being thirty-one, there were very obvious gray strands working through my beard. It aged me up considerably. My hair was shaggy, hanging over my forehead and around my ears. I hadn’t realized how long it had gotten, but then I also couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a haircut, so it made sense.

I opened the bathroom cabinet and pulled out my dusty grooming kit. It was nothing fancy, just an electric razor and a few different-sized guards, but it would have to do. I started with the longest guard and buzzed my entire head, clumps of hair falling all over the counter and the floor. Then, I used a shorter guard and cleaned up around my ears and the back of my head. Lastly, I switched back and forth between two different guards, doing my best to blend the sides with the top the way my over-priced hairdresser used to do. I ran my hands through it a few times, and even if it wasn’t perfect, it felt way better. Lighter.

Next, the beard.

For that mangy beast, I didn’t hold back. I tossed the guards back in the grooming bag and went at my face with the bare metal trimmers, cutting off six to eight inches of facial hair in each pass through. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I’d felt air directly on my skin. A year? Longer? Based on the layer of dust over the grooming kit, a year was probably right.

When I was finished, the sink full of hair, I stood back and ran my hand across my head and down my chin. I’d shaved eight years off, at least. Perhaps, now, I looked my age.

I hadn’t made a run to the store since a few days before I’d found Melody, but my supplies were holding up pretty well, especially considering I’d been feeding two people when I’d only planned on feeding one. My dry foods and canned goods were holding solid, but I was tired of eating canned soup and sandwiches.

Hannah had a large cookbook collection, and when she’d moved out, she’d left a few behind. Two of them were vegetarian, which I didn’t care to experience, but the third was Basic Italian Cuisine. Using it and a few pantry staples, I made homemade noodles. They weren’t uniform or pretty, but it seemed like a step up from the off-brand canned pasta we’d been eating.

While the noodles laid out to dry, I cooked up chunks of beef I’d left to thaw in the fridge, adding in an onion from the greenhouse, minced garlic, beef stock, canned whole tomatoes, and a random assortment of other veggies.

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