Past This Point Read online

  Past This Point

  Red Adept Publishing, LLC

  104 Bugenfield Court

  Garner, NC 27529

  http://RedAdeptPublishing.com/

  Copyright © 2019 by Nicole Mabry. All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: August 2019

  Cover Art by Streetlight Graphics

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 | December 10th

  Chapter 2 | December 11th

  Chapter 3 | December 11th

  Chapter 4 | December 12th

  Chapter 5 | December 14th

  Chapter 6 | December 17th

  Chapter 7 | December 18th

  Chapter 8 | December 20th

  Chapter 9 | December 24th

  Chapter 10 | December 26th

  Chapter 11 | December 30th

  Chapter 12 | January 2nd

  Chapter 13 | January 12th

  Chapter 14 | January13th

  Chapter 15 | January17th

  Chapter 16 | January 19th

  Chapter 17 | January 31st

  Chapter 18 | February 10th

  Chapter 19 | February 13th

  Chapter 20 | February 17th

  Chapter 21 | February 24th

  Chapter 22 | February 25th

  Chapter 23 | February 27th

  Chapter 24 | March 1st, 1:30 a.m.

  Chapter 25 | March 2nd

  Chapter 26 | March 5th

  Chapter 27 | March 9th

  Chapter 28 | March17th

  Chapter 29 | March 28th

  Chapter 30 | March 30th

  Chapter 31 | March 31st

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  For Zeke

  Chapter 1

  December 10th

  Charlotte from accounting was patient zero at my office. She had come in just after Thanksgiving with a bright-red nose and spent half the day coughing into a tissue before her boss told her to go home. The next day, three others coughed and sneezed until they, too, were sent home. Within a week, half of my coworkers were gone, and many of those who remained were sick.

  My medicine cabinet was full of immune-system supplements because I’d always been a slight hypochondriac. But news reports on the virus were coming in from all across the Eastern states, saying it was a vicious flu strain they hadn’t seen before and that it was resistant to all medications and vaccinations. People were just going to have to ride this one out, they said.

  As a project manager at Burke & Davis, a big graphic design firm in Midtown, I was one of the lucky few to have my own office, so I barricaded myself behind its glass walls. I kept my door closed to discourage drop-ins and frequently used the hand sanitizer stations outside of every elevator bank and bathroom. Instead of ordering lunch, I brought food from home so I wouldn’t have to venture outside my disinfected sanctuary. Every time I heard someone cough, I squirted sanitizer into my hands from the jumbo-sized bottle on my desk.

  I tracked my remaining coworkers’ movements throughout the day, tensing any time someone came near my door. As I was finishing up a few loose ends before heading home, my boss wandered over to chat with my team, and I feared a breach was imminent. He glanced at me through the glass while talking to Lance, my coordinator. My fingers shook over the keyboard as I distractedly responded to an email, one eye still on my boss. He turned and walked toward my door. My body stiffened. I silently prayed he would hang a left back to his own office. Instead, he walked straight to mine and opened the door.

  I tried to calm my nerves as he spent twenty minutes pacing the room, complaining about a client and scattering his germs all over. Every time he came near my desk, I leaned away from him, trying to make it look casual.

  “Do you agree, Karis?”

  Frantically, I reviewed what he’d just said. Something about adjusting the estimate to accommodate the client’s demands?

  “Well?” he asked impatiently.

  “Sorry. Yes, I completely agree. I’ll send you a new estimate to approve by tomorrow. Doug, I wanted to ask—with this flu outbreak, maybe it’s better if I work from home? I really can’t afford to get sick right now.”

  His face scrunched into a frown. “If you aren’t sick, we need you in the office.”

  My hopes dashed, I replied, “Of course.”

  He nodded then sneezed twice into his hand as he turned to leave. I watched in horror as he turned my doorknob with that same hand and walked out, not bothering to close the door. I jumped up and cleaned the handle with Lysol, sprayed some in the air for good measure, then quickly shut the door. On the other side of the glass, Lance gave me an odd look. Ignoring him, I reached into my top drawer for an Airborne lozenge, imagining invisible flu molecules flying through the air. My mind was already buzzing with which supplements I’d take when I got home.

  I waited an extra fifteen minutes for the cluster of coworkers around the elevator to thin out before I left. In my twenties, I’d found crowds exhilarating and fed off the collective energy. It was a large part of why I moved to New York City. But lately, I’d come to hate crowds and avoided them as much as I possibly could. It was no easy task in the city. We were on top of each other in the streets, elevators, and stores. We breathed in the exhalations of those around us on the subway, passing germs around like rumors. One was never truly alone in the city, and I’d begun to feel anger that bordered on rage if someone even slightly encroached on the ten inches of space I’d staked claim on in the train. I felt my anticipatory irritation pressing up from my stomach the moment I pushed the down button on the elevator.

  My office building housed countless other companies, and as I rode the elevator down to the lobby, the small carpeted space filled up with men in suits and women in high heels. They towered over me since I was only five foot one and had given up on wearing heels in my first month. I felt claustrophobically hemmed in. The urge to scream was overwhelming. When the doors opened, I joined the short line of people at the exit door, each holding it open for the person behind them to catch as they walked through. I tucked my shoulder-length brown hair behind my ears and pulled on a cream-colored wool beanie. A cold snap from the north had swept in the night before and made my eyes water and my nose run that morning on my way to work. When the man in front of me got to the door, he rushed through the opening before it closed and didn’t bother holding the edge for me. The glass door slammed shut in my face. My simmering annoyance turned into full-fledged, boiling fury.

  I yelled through the glass, “Seriously?!”

  The man glanced back and shrugged as he merged into traffic. I wrenched the door open and marched to the sidewalk. My hands were shaking. The man was just three feet away, moving in the opposite direction from where I was headed. I feared if I did nothing, I would be seething all night.

  I waited until he again stole another look in my direction. His eyes met mine, and I screamed, “Asshole!”

  It came out louder than I’d intended, and everyone in the area flashed a confused look at me. The man raised his arm in the air and flipped me off before the undertow of the crowd swallowed him. I shook m
y head and clenched my hands over and over in an effort to curtail my anger. After taking several deep breaths, I adopted my long-perfected linebacker stance, clasping my handbag under my chest with each arm rigidly forming a V on either side of my body. Being adjacent to Times Square meant that the short distance from my office to the train was packed with oblivious tourists who hadn’t bothered to learn the common courtesy rule—stay to the right—that seasoned New Yorkers knew was imperative for smooth flow of traffic on the sidewalks. I plowed through the crowd, knocking several bodies with my stubborn elbows along the way. They turned to me with shocked faces and outraged comebacks that died on their lips. I’d never had a resting bitch face, but over the last few months, I was sure one had set up residence in my eyes and on my mouth, obviously causing most to rethink challenging me. I’d made a conscious effort to appear pleasant to my coworkers, but I no longer garnered that perfunctory closed-lip half smile and nod from the strangers I passed in the hallways.

  As I waited on the subway platform, more E-train straphangers gathered around me, but not as many as I’d come to expect. Usually, the platform was jam-packed during rush hour, but the crowd was only three people deep. When the train finally came, the doors opened, revealing a large woman with a stroller blocking the entrance to the car. The people around me grumbled and walked to another set of doors to board the train. On any other day, I might have followed suit. But not today. With my hackles already up, I felt emboldened.

  I looked at the woman and said curtly, “Could you move your stroller? This is an entrance.”

  The woman shot me a dirty look, rolled her eyes, and sighed loudly before angling the stroller slightly to the right, creating only a few inches of space. I stepped onto the train and, using my knee, scooted the stroller several more inches. The woman whispered, “Bitch,” as I walked by. I decided to let that one go, which proved incredibly difficult. In my mind, I came up with several good retorts. The desire to snap back at her was strong, but I’d already had one confrontation since leaving my office, so I tried to rein it in.

  After finding a spacious spot against the opposite doors, I noticed that some people had surgical masks over their faces. I pulled my thick wool scarf up over my mouth and nose in an effort to join that bandwagon. No one in my car seemed to be sick, but the first symptom was a fever, so I couldn’t be certain.

  At the next stop a man got on and coughed as he sat down two rows away. I moved farther down the car, grabbing the poles with my gloved hands as I went. When I got to the end, I turned and saw several others had followed me. We glanced at each other in understanding. The guy coughed again, and two more people joined us. The mass exodus left the man alone on the other side. His chin dropped to his chest, and his shoulders slumped in dejection. I know how you feel.

  While the train muscled through the tunnel from Manhattan to Queens, I unintentionally locked eyes with a woman standing across from me, and I saw familiar heartbreak and solitude on her face. In that moment of shared scrutiny, we passed miserable details of our lives to each other. I held her gaze in a momentary game of chicken, wondering whose life was more depressing. As I suspected, she looked away first.

  My last boyfriend, Brian, had dumped me three months before. A solid eight years of looking for love in the city, online and otherwise, had completely dashed any hopes of finding the right guy, and I had stopped bothering altogether when Brian entered the scene. He sent me a message on a dating site I hardly checked anymore, and something about his sincere tone—as opposed to the mindless “Hey, Sexy Lady!” messages I usually received—made me want to meet him.

  On our first date, he took me to Menkui Tei, his favorite ramen place, and we talked over glasses of sake and bowls of pork noodle soup. Even though the date went well, he didn’t move in for a kiss at the end. To my surprise, he texted me the next day to set up another date. Six months later, we were still going strong, and when he told me he was falling in love with me, I said it back, surprised that I actually meant it. I hadn’t realized how strong my feelings were until that moment.

  When he’d invited me to a picnic in Central Park, a gesture that was unlike him, I’d been hopeful that our relationship was moving forward. I had to admit that part of my happiness with Brian was the intense relief I felt at finally being in a solid relationship. But the minute I saw him waiting for me at the Sixty-Sixth Street east-side entrance to the park, I knew something had gone terribly wrong. He had no basket of food, no wine, and no blanket, just a worried look on his face. I stood rooted to the concrete, causing people to bump past me, lost in their own dramas while I contemplated running in the other direction. I watched Brian force one foot in front of the other, my eyes never leaving his guilty face. I could have warmed my expression, smiled, or looked away, but I didn’t. It was too late for that.

  I was no stranger to the ending of a relationship. For men, dating in New York City seemed like a veritable paradise with endless available options. For women, however, it was a nightmare, at least if the goal was a real relationship. At thirty-eight, I’d been on too many dates to count, most ending with one or both of us not interested. Worse was the guy pretending to be interested. That usually began with him telling me how much he liked me, how we should go do this or that together, or how he was going to lend me his favorite book, and it ended with the stock “I had a great time. Let’s do this again. I’ll text you.” Spoiler: he wouldn’t.

  When Brian stopped in front of me, it was written all over his face that it was over. His hands were thrust deeply into his pockets, and he kept nodding to people as they walked by as if grateful for any reason not to look at me.

  I squared my shoulders in an effort to brace myself for what was about to come. “Someone steal your basket?” I asked, my eyes narrowed.

  “Listen, Karis,” he said nervously, “you’re an amazing woman, better than I deserve, actually. You should be the perfect woman for me, but...” He paused, his eyes straying from mine.

  I vaguely heard him move on to some variation of “it’s not you, it’s me,” and it was as if he was reciting a poem that we both already knew by heart, “Ode to Dissolution.”

  “I don’t know what I want or who I am right now. I don’t even know what I’m doing with my life.”

  “But what about everything you said about this being the best relationship you’ve ever been in? About how you could really see us going the distance? You said you were in love with me. You’re forty years old, never been married, no kids. Shouldn’t you have some of this figured out by now?”

  “You’re right. I should. But I haven’t, and that worries me. I need to go figure out my life before committing to a relationship, and I need to do that alone. I did mean all of those things at the time, but... I guess I don’t anymore,” he finished lamely, his eyes pleading with me to act like a good dumpee and feign understanding.

  I just stared and watched him squirm in my silence. He’d clearly run out of words, so I turned and walked away, pushing past a group of teenagers arguing about who was the best dancer. I heard him call my name once, but I didn’t look back. I ran to the train and hopped onto the first car that came. I felt the burden of despair wash over me, its force pulling me down as though it carried a few extra ounces of gravity. Another promising relationship was down the drain. As I bitterly eyed all the happy couples, part of a private club whose ranks now excluded me, I made a resolution. Past this point, I was done dating, done hoping for someone who was never going to come. That was the first day of the rest of my officially single life.

  I snapped out of my reverie when the automated tone sounded with the train’s opening doors. I stopped at the grocery store on my way home. Over the past two days, while the outbreak progressed, I’d been stockpiling supplies and dog food. I couldn’t really say if it was irrational or not but figured there was no harm if it was, and no one would ever know anyway. My dog, Zeke, was overjoyed by all this added food. He seemed to be wondering when he’d be able to get his paws on i
t and did an occasional drive-by, sniffing the bags of food and looking longingly in my direction, though that look could’ve also been worry that his once semi-sane owner had officially gone nuts. He might have had a point.

  First, I headed to the pasta-and-rice aisle to stock up on dry goods. With my basket half full, I walked over to the snack aisle, veering around a man picking out soup from an endcap display of sale items. After I passed him, he sniffed. He didn’t appear sick, but I watched him for a minute anyway.

  I was so lost in my suspicious stalking that I didn’t notice a woman coming up behind me until she said, “Excuse me!”

  Startled, I glanced back and mumbled, “Sorry.”

  I moved to the side, and when she squeezed by me, I got a look into her basket. Hers was filled with dry goods, too, almost all the way to the top. She looked in my basket, then her eyes traveled up to mine. The annoyance was replaced with a look of understanding and a quick smile as if we were in on something together.

  The man pushed his cart past our aisle and sneezed into a tissue, interrupting our silent conversation. Our heads whipped toward him. I gave the woman a quick nod and followed her farther down the aisle, distancing myself from the man. We tossed crackers, chips, and Little Debbie snacks into our baskets then hurried to the checkout area.

  While the cashier loaded my groceries into doubled plastic bags, she cleared her throat. When she was done, she held out the receipt. Her nails had been bitten down to the quick, the skin around them red and inflamed. I stared at the receipt, my eyes conjuring up glowing germs flickering around the paper.

  “Ma’am?” she asked, thrusting the strip of paper at me impatiently.

  “Can you just throw it away?” I asked.

  She frowned before dropping the receipt into the trash. I scowled back and strode toward the exit. Before I walked through the sliding doors, I glanced back while adjusting the bags in my hands. The woman from the aisle was watching me. We smiled at each other, and I turned to go home.