Tomorrow came, and with it, more rain.

"And so it rained for forty days and forty nights," I muttered. Rain always made me think of Noah and the Ark; especially how my Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Barber, always told it. She used funny voices and made different sounds for each animal mentioned.

Is it strange that I'm relieved she'd died of a heart attack six years before the world ended? If it was, I didn't care.

I rolled up my bedding and stuffed it in my pack alongside Daryl's bedroll and the tarp. Daryl gathered the cans and fishing line, waited till I had my packs on, stored everything, and zipped me up. I dragged my ponytail out from under a strap where it'd gotten caught. "What's the plan? Go north still?"

"Walkers pushed us east yesterday." The rain, though a drizzle, was already soaking our clothes and heads, his long hair sticking to the back of his neck. "Let's keep north east and see what we can see."

"Sounds good. How long you think the rain will follow us?"

"Dunno."

"From the looks of the clouds, a good while."

"We best stay under the cover of the trees, then."

"Yup." I bit my lip. "And if we come across a town or a house, we're gonna stop, right?"

"Right."

"Have you ever had a girlfriend?" I asked Daryl when there hadn't been a walker to kill for a while, and nothing but greenery and the birds to keep us company. I'd tried and failed to begin a game of I Spy with him. We hadn't seen head nor tail of James' or his buddies, but I could tell Daryl was still on red alert, never once getting any closer than twenty yards close to the road. In the silence without motors, we could hear plenty of moans not far behind. Another herd was gathering; they'd caught the scent of fresh blood and had taken to it like hounds.

He sent me the weirdest, most annoyed look possible.

"Oh! Or, you know, I'm sorry I didn't mean to assume that you were—"

"Ain't got no sugar in my tank," Daryl grunted with a short chuckle, softening quickly. "And naw, I haven't."

"Oh." I knew my cheeks were the color of the wild rose bushes we were passing by at a molasses pace. "Sorry."

"Don't mean I ain't ever been with a woman."

I chewed at my inner cheek to keep from bursting into giggles. "Oh." That single word seemed to be the only response I could think of. "I've never been with anyone like, like that."

"Mmm," he grunted, seemingly unsurprised.

I toed at the dirt. Blood's metallic tang filled my mouth the longer I chewed on my cheek. "What's it like? Being with someone."

Daryl kept his trap shut for several saunters. Finally, he attempted to shrug his good shoulder.

"Ain't nothin' special."

"Really? There's movies completely dedicated to, well, that. How can it not be special?"

"Look, I ain't gone discuss that with some young girl."

I crossed my arms and hugged myself. "That's what Maggie said. 'You're way too young'. 'Mama will talk to you about it when you're older'. Yeah, guess what? I'm practically grown up here." I eyed the stiffness forming in his limbs. "So nothing special happened for you? Ever?"

No reply.

I huffed playfully, "For Heaven's sake! It's not like I'm askin' you to demonstrate."

Realizing what I said a minute too late after it left my lips, I skidded to a stop. Daryl's shoulder muscles had twisted into complete knots and he didn't stop with me, his boots making sucking noises as he trudged on through the mud ahead.

The blush that had tickled my face earlier went into full bloom. I hugged myself tighter and tighter until my ribcage throbbed in objection. All I could suddenly think about was what it would be like to have something special, so deep and intimate, with somebody—yet I was also thinking if Daryl's scruff would scratch terribly if I kissed him.

Shaking myself out of it, I hollered, "Daryl." He was getting smaller in the distance. "Daryl! Hey, wait up!"

As per usual, he didn't care to slow for me.

"Keep your voice down. C'mon. I think I see somethin," he called back.

"I said we were safer, not safe."

I squinted up at him. The midday, gloomy sunlight burned my retinas something fierce. The place Daryl had seen in the distance was an crumbling daycare facility, circumferenced by a rotting playground with ten foot high cement walls painted all over of smiling suns and puffy white clouds.

"This is still a lot better than being on the ground with James and a herd on our tails."

"Damn straight," Daryl muttered. He hopped down from his perch and strode over. "But we can't put all our faith into a few slabs of concrete and some wooden boards."

"So what should we do?"

"Stay put for a couple days. Scrounge up what we can in the surrounding area."

"You think it'll take the herd that long to pass through?"

"It's gettin' cold—they move slower."

I nodded, biting my tongue as I stacked firewood in Daryl's arms. We'd found a dead tree right outside the daycare's boundary and luckily enough, no one had touched the axe encased in glass next to the fire extinguisher. Since Daryl was out of commission, I was the one to take up the job.

"Seems like there's more of them out there lately."

"Yeah."

I raised the axe and hacked the stump of wood. "You think . . . you think there's not as many of, you know, humans out there now?"

He glanced around cautiously even though he knew we were currently fairly safe.

"Dunno."

He rested against the building's side, waiting for me to give him the remainder of the wood. As I chopped, I daydreamed away. The cement walls and iron gates blocked the moans and the scratching noises well enough that I could tune it out without much concentration.

"Daryl?"

"What?"

I licked my lips and swallowed, hoping I sounded convincing.

"We should live here."

He looked up only to look away again quickly. "We are."

"No. I mean stay here. Find more people. Good people. Bring them back here, start a good place. Maybe we could find Rick and Maggie—"

I stopped hacking the wood. He was glaring at me like I had cussed him out and stomped on his mama's grave.

"How many times I gotta tell you, Beth?"

"It's just that—"

Daryl pushed off the wall and bent to start grabbing what wood I'd cut seconds before. "We can't and we ain't stayin' nowhere for longer than we got to. Better to keep movin'."

"Why?"

"Because."

"Because of what?"

"Because I said so."

"Who said you were in charge in the first place?"

He tossed the wood into my empty arms. "I ain't in charge."

"Sounds like you think you are."

"I ain't in charge. And neither are you. We're the same."

"Sure don't seem like it."

This brought on the pointed fingers, the locked jaw, and the signature scowl I always knew came along with a confrontation against Daryl Dixon. His nose got so close to mine I could smell the drying blood on his bandages.

"Well if someone didn't man up and make the hard decisions we woulda been long gone by now."

"What 'hard decisions'?" I challenged.

He growled, "Decisions like not stopping at every damn house or possible refuge along the way to see if your sister was there or not."

"I didn't want to stop at every house—"

"Slowin' us down from actually gettin' to safety ourselves—that's all we need to be worried about, Beth, ourselves."

"So you're tellin' me you haven't once wondered if we passed right by our group because you made a 'hard decision' and kept movin'?"

"No! 'Cuz I won't gonna waste my time bein' concerned over people who're already dead!"

"Why? Why would you say that?"

"What's it matter?"

"They're our family!"

"They were our family!"

"Why can't you ever just have a lick of hope? All you say is that they're dead, they're gone, they ain't never comin' back!"

"Cuz they ain't!"

"Then how come you aren't as broken up about it as me?!"

"I ain't like you!"

"You mean because I think it's okay to actually mourn those we lost?"

"Naw I mean 'cuz I don't blubber about stupid shit all the freakin' time!"

The cut wood in my arms tumbled to the cement between us and that's when I realized Daryl had backed me against the wall. Tears and snot clotted on my face; I wanted to smack him, I wanted to punch him clear across the jaw until he was unconscious, I wanted to screw my fingernail into that healing wound until he took back everything he'd said.

I shoved at his chest until I had enough room to get away.

"Hey—" His voice wasn't remorseful at all. It was irritated, pleading for me to see eye to eye with him.

"Know what, Mr. Dixon? You can go screw yourself for all I care."

The handprints were each a different shade, though you could tell pink was a famous color among the little girls. I traced each little finger with my index nail, reading the names like they were sacred—which, in this world, they were. No telling what happened to these sweet children.

"Jenna," I read off. "Emma. Caroline. Maya. Hope."

I hated his habit of sneaking up on me, yet I knew it was one he would never break.

"What do you want, Mr. Dixon?"

Attempting not to seethe each word wasn't an easy task.

He strolled over and met me at the wall in the 2-4 year old's room. The air was so frigid in this room, without sunlight to warm the atmosphere, I could see his every breath.

"What're doin'?"

I snatched my hand off the wall and crossed my arms defensively.

"Just readin'."

"Beth."

"What?"

He looked at me. Just looked at me. My pulse stopped and started again; hours ago, I was wondering what it would be like to kiss him. Thirty minutes ago I'd wanted to kick him in the jewels and stomp away like a brat—which I actually had done the last part. Searching my conscience, I realized there was no way or form of malice there for Daryl. I'd forgiven him almost instantly. My childish side just loved to hold a grudge.

Untwisting my arms, I took his hand in mine and with my opposite hand, I brushed the dirt and blood crusted hair from his eyes, relishing in the fact that I had made him practically paralyzed—yet it terrified me how much I loved that feeling.

When my lips touched his cheek I suspected him to jolt out of his skin and skitter from the room—he didn't. I lowered back to my true height and said, "I forgive you."

He dipped his chin in acceptance.

"I—uh, came in here to tell you dinner's ready," he said.

Good Lord please stop my cheeks from turning into embers.

God didn't listen to my pleas; I could feel the fire rage from the apples to my hairline.

"Oh," I breathed meekly, willing my hand to release his; my fingers had turned to stubborn steel and my brain was helpless to make them move.

Luckily, Daryl hadn't lost control like I had. He wiggled out of my hold and put some space between my lips and his cheek.

"But thanks," he mumbled. "I guess."

What wood we didn't use for our fires we made into more efficient barricades on the exits. We stayed quiet during the day, working quietly alongside one another and taking turns to go on runs. It had taken a lot of begging but Daryl had finally consented to let me go outside the daycare's walls without him. His shoulder was taking far longer than it should to heal—which worried me into thinking he had an infection. I cleaned out nearly every place with a lick of medicine in the surrounding areas, feeding him pills no matter how he felt about it. I had to get him better. I had to.

"We've been here too long," he up and said one day when I was readying for another run. Though I'd taken the stitches out days before, I still demanded he keep his arm in the makeshift sling and not jolt it too much if he could help it. Which equalled him staying still which equalled a constantly pissy Daryl. He sulked around the premises like an offended cat.

"What makes you think that?"

"It's frosted twice. When we got here, summer was endin'. Now we're smack dab in the middle of autumn."

"So?"

"So we agreed we wouldn't stick 'round."

I was so over arguing with him on this subject it actually made me nauseous when he brought it up. Tightening my lips into an unbreakable line, I finished pulling on my boots and sweater and got up off the rickety bench.

"I need you completely better first," I allowed to slip out. Things had been slightly awkward since I kissed him on the cheek, yet not so much as to us never communicating as we had before that again.

"I am." To prove his point, he snatched off his sling and tossed it aside. Swinging his arm around, he tugged at the neck of his shirt to expose the angry, blistered, half-opened line of skin a few inches from the base of his neck. "See?"

It took even more control than I naturally possessed to halt myself from retrieving the sling and putting it back on him. I blew the stray wisps of hair out of my eyes with a huff.

"Would it make you happy to come on this run with me?"

"Yeah."

"Would you do everything I asked?"

He snorted. "No guarantees."

I considered it before I replied.

"Then, no."

"What? Why?"

"I ain't gonna have you out there messin' up all the work I've done on your shoulder, and jeopardizing your health." I rested my fists on my sides. "It's infected. Badly."

"There ain't never been no good kinda infection."

"We can't go anywhere till you get better. Last time, you were runnin' off adrenaline and shock. And fumes for that matter."

Daryl locked eyes with me, engaging me, and when I rose to that challenge, a smirk curled the edge of his lips. He threw his hands up in surrender.

"Fine, mama bear. Whatever you say."

My heartbeat roared in my ears like a tsunami pounding the shore. "Thank you." I would never adjust to his mood swings or lack of emotion at all sometimes. Picking up his crossbow—he'd allowed me to take it up since he couldn't and he had been training me some since the prison fell—I strapped it across my shoulders. Daryl followed me to the gate, let me out, and secured it swiftly behind me, leaving me alone with the dead and the gray, dying woods housing them.

I'd been taking the same route west, however, I switched paths and took east today. I knew there were several houses I'd already scoured through for supplies, but today I wasn't just on the hunt for medicine and food. Today I was looking for a few things a little less vital, a little more specific, and a little more frilly.

Whenever I walked I wished for my iPod. I'd had a Shuffle. It had been a big deal; Daddy, of course, wasn't in favor of technology that wasn't absolutely necessary. I only knew a computer existed because we had ancient ones at school. The iPod had been a gift for my eighteenth birthday. Mama told me that night when we had parked ourselves on the porch swing with our second slices of homemade lemon pound cake how hard it had been to convince Daddy to consent on the iPod. "Sweet pea, if I hadn't been there, he wouldn't have known what in the world it looked like," she'd said, laughing. "He thought it was one of those laptop thingies. That salesman probably had himself a good ole' giggle when we left."

I knew I was supposed to be careful, but I couldn't help myself. The silence killed me. "O, my love is like a red, red rose, That's newly sprung in June: O, my love is like the melodie, That's sweetly play'd in tune," I sung under my breath as I stepped carefully over a series of risen tree roots. "As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in love am I. And I will love thee still, my dear, Till a' the seas gang dry."

I'd finished the tune by the time I set foot in the first house: a two story colonial that seemed misplaced in such a secluded region. I'd spun the tale of the family that used to live here upon my first visit. A mother, a father, and three darling girls. One with dark hair, one with blond, and one with a mix of brunette and strawberry. They grabbed their things and left in a flurry of panic, hoping to be saved by a refugee camp. I always hoped they did make it.

Normally, I went for the pantry and cupboards, instead, today, I went for the china cabinet. Rummaging around in the magazine basket by the armchair, I plucked several newspapers and set to work wrapping the dishes and stashing them in my pack carefully. When I finished there, I found the master bedroom and shuffled through a few drawers before I found what I was looking for.

"Perfect," I commented aloud. "He'll love it."

I hope.

I started the Scottish tune over again on my way back to our slice of paradise, not able to resist the smile beaming across my face even when I ran into a walker that could've quite possibly been the mother in my imaginary tale.

I had a birthday party to plan.