We woke a little late the next morning; almost everyone did. Shy, awkward smiles all around were the order of the day as we made our way downstairs and were later joined by the previous night’s foursome. Shmi had started working on breakfast and seemed to be in a better mood. Ty had gone out back; I heard the ping of an aluminum bat hitting a ball every so often.

Kyle and Blake set the table that morning while I relaxed, looking through the Blu-ray collection and sorting out options for later. Heather put on some music, and Gina and Mari chatted on the couch about nothing in particular: the weather, some more background on our group, their jobs. It unnerved me, slightly, how quickly the two of them had meshed, but Mari had always been a social butterfly, and Gina seemed a kindred spirit. I tried to chalk it up to that.

As we ate, no one said anything specifically about the night before, although a certain mischievous energy passed between the two couples that had shared a bed, little smiles and friendly glances that could be interpreted in different ways, depending on one’s inclination. Those of us not directly involved in the previous evening’s festivities pretended to not notice, although when Tyler joined us, a bit of scowling from him joined the mix. The verbal tapdancing required to avoid the subject could only last so long, however. 

Talking around a mouthful of eggs, Tyler asked, “I’mma go swimming. Anyone else?”

Various grunted noises of assent followed from most of our friends, but I replied, “I think Shmi and I are gonna go for a hike. Mari, care to join us?”

My wife drowsily mumbled, “No, you guys go ahead. I’m way too sore to walk this morning.” 

The table fell silent for a few seconds, then the group collectively burst into raucous laughter, except for my wife, who turned bright red and tried her hardest to disappear from view. “That’s not what I meant! From traveling!” She pushed her plate aside and put her head down on the table, covering it with her arms and moaning, “Oh, my God…” as we roared with a new round of laughter.

Heather cackled, “I heard that a lot last night from you two! ‘Oh, my God! Oh, my God!’”

“Us?” I retorted. “What about you four? I wanted to call the cops and complain about the noise!”

Gina leaned over to Mari and stage whispered, “I’ll say it again: you’re a lucky woman.” Her eyes remained fixed on me the whole time, a hungry, almost predatory look in them. I, in turn, blushed, causing more laughter.

The collective ragging went on for a bit longer until Tyler angrily shoved himself away from the table without another word, tossed his plate in the sink, and went to change. We collectively shrugged, finished our food, and followed. 

Mari and I had a little more fun as we got ready, my fingers bringing her to an orgasm as she writhed on the bed and her hand, groping my cock. I was tempted to keep going, especially as hot as she looked in her bikini, but she giggled and danced away. “I am not going out there leaking your cum, mister! Now, go. Go! Talk with Shmi and make sure she’s okay. We’ll have plenty of time tonight to play, I promise.”

We made it out the door last, finding everyone but Lakshmi already either in the water or on the dock. The radio switched to a news bulletin, something about NATO forces and Russia, but before I could make out what, Tyler shouted, “Someone switch it to Bluetooth and put some music on! I’m sick of listening to that bullshit.”

Even if he hadn’t, though, I doubt I would have paid attention to the announcer’s voice. Gina bounded happily toward us, making me rather happy as well; Mari’s bikini couldn’t exactly be called modest, but Gina’s white floss-and-bandaids attire might as well not have been there at all. 

I didn’t drool, although by the way Gina fucked me with her eyes, drool was way down on the list of bodily fluids she wanted from me. “You sure you won’t join us?”

“Afraid not.” I hooked a thumb at Shmi. “Prior engagement.”

Gina pouted, but Mari kissed me on the cheek and took her new bosom buddy by the arm. They raced towards the end of the dock and past the tinny, blaring speakers, then leapt into the water. Moments later, my wife surfaced, yelling, “Cold! Fuck, that’s cold!”

Shmi and I laughed, heading off toward the former logging road, now just a larger-than-usual footpath. We passed the decrepit woodshed just before we reached it; I don’t think we’d used it even once on our visits. A few minutes later, we turned onto one of the smaller paths that branched out into the forest. 

My friend’s demeanor had changed since the night before, and even from earlier at breakfast. She whistled happily as we went, a pair of binoculars in one hand and her birding notebook in the other.

“You seem better today.”

She grinned at me. “I am. Much.”

“Did you talk to Olivia?”

A slight frown, then, as if she thought better of it, a bright, sincere smile. “Nope! Which is fine by me.” I stared at her, and she proudly proclaimed, “I’m getting a divorce!”

“What?” My voice came out louder than I intended, echoing through the trees.

“Shhh. You’re gonna scare the birds.” She shook her head. “I know. It seems sudden, but…” Shmi sighed. “It’s not. I wish it were. I mean, if it were sudden, I wouldn’t be talking divorce, right? It’s been a long time coming.”

I stopped in the middle of the trail. She took a couple of steps, then looked back before turning fully toward me. It didn’t make sense. Shmi adored Olivia, or at least I thought she did. “Why?”

Lakshmi nodded her head toward a fallen log and, after checking to make sure no creepy crawlies roamed its surface, we sat. “Because I never should have married her. I didn’t know it before, but…”  

She sighed again, not sad, just tired. “Liv does this thing, according to her friends, who, of course, didn’t fucking tell me before I married her. It’s a pattern, but no one warned me about it, because… Whatever. 

“The long and the short of it is that she really loves the pursuit. Liv chased me and chased me, wined and dined me, sent me flowers for no reason, the whole romantic wooing thing I’d always dreamed of. She made me feel like the only person on Earth.

“And then, once we were married… that was it. It all stopped. Not immediately, but within maybe six months, the little love notes and all the other stuff disappeared. Hell, she forgot my birthday the second year. I mean, I get that no one can keep up that kind of intensity forever, and I wasn’t expecting it, but…” 

Her head hung low, the sadness back again. “She’s barely touched me in months. I don’t know if she’s cheating, or if she just doesn’t give a shit about me. I don’t really care anymore, either. She promised me she’d come on this trip, that we’d take the time to reconnect and make things right again. Then she sends me out of town promising to follow the next day, which turns into ‘not going to make it,’ then ‘oops, super-secret meeting stuff,’ and radio silence since.”

I tentatively offered. “Maybe there’s really something going on? Like, when you guys couldn’t make it last year?”

Shmi chuckled mirthlessly. “If it was just the trip, maybe. But the trip… It’s just the cherry on top of a shit sundae. She skipped counseling appointments, missed dates for no good reason, just the whole list of ‘things to not do if you’re trying to keep your marriage together.’”

With a tired smile on her face, she said, “Last night, I had an epiphany. I was laying there in my bed, crying my eyes out over someone who doesn’t seem to love me while… well, while all of y’all were making all that noise, and it made me think. Like, really think. 

“I deserve to be happy like other people are. I’m not saying I want what any of the six of you have–I’m damn sure not down for swinging or whatever it is they were up to–but I see these three couples who are each just so into each other, and I’d spent most of my marriage fighting for what? Some scraps of affection? Even just the barest hint at what she’d promised when we got engaged?

“And that’s when it hit me: fuck this. Fuck Olivia and her love-bombing, and fuck her friends for not warning me, and fuck my loveless marriage, and fuck the shitty government job that I’m only staying in because I’m too scared to go do what I love. I’m done. I’m done living my life afraid of what could happen, because if the worst happens?” She chuckled. “How can it be worse than what already has? How can it be worse than the shitshow I’m living in?”

I sat, stunned for a few moments before I could get out, “Shmi… Hon, I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

Tears began to roll down her face, even as she still smiled. “I know! I know you didn’t. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to… I was supposed to be the smart one, you know? The one who had everything together, who had a plan for her life. And none of it worked out the way I wanted to, but you… I mean, um, all of you, not just you, looked at me like that. I just… I couldn’t handle looking like as much of a failure as I actually was.”

As I wrapped her in my arms, Shmi began to cry in earnest. Not tears of sorrow, though; my friend cried the kind of deep, gut-wrenching sobs that come with release, of holding onto something painful for too long before finally letting it go. “Shh, it’s okay, hon. I never would have thought that about you. I love you, Shmi. We all do. None of us would have judged you.”

She hugged me tighter, speaking as the sobs died away. “I know that. I know. But knowing and being brave aren’t the same thing. I know ghosts aren’t real, but in the middle of the night, by myself, after watching a scary movie, I still rush to the light switch, you know? Same deal. Did I think people would judge me? Maybe. Not you, for sure. But did I fear it anyway? Yeah.”

“I wish I’d known.”

“I do, too. I wish that I had said something. I wasn’t afraid of telling you. I knew you wouldn’t judge. But you’d tell Mari, and…” She sighed. “I’m not trying to run her down, but…”

Quietly laughing, I said, “I get it. She’s a gossip. But you could have told me to not tell her. I wouldn't have.”

Shmi shook her head violently. “No. No way. I wasn’t going to let my shitty marriage drive a wedge into yours. Keeping secrets… No. That’s not healthy. And even if I had asked you to…” She pulled back and looked up at me with a rueful smile. “I know you would have tried, but c’mon. You’ve always been…”

With a roll of my eyes, I tried to finish the thought, “A stick in the mud. A goody two-shoes. I know. Mari’s always joking about–”

“No!” Shmi pushed me away, angry, but not at me. “No! That is not what I was going to say! At all! I was going to say…” She stared, seemingly pained. “I can’t believe Mari would say that about you. You’re… Okay, you’re not a party animal like the others, but that’s a good thing.”

Biting her lip, she paused, then nodded to herself before continuing. “Before you came into the group, I was ready to leave, honestly. I didn’t bring you to that party to introduce you around; I did it to see what you were like.”

“Like?”

Shmi picked her words carefully. “Blake, Kyle, Heather, all of them… They’re not bad people. I wouldn’t have stayed friends with them if they were. Back then, though, before you, things were different. Worse, really, at least for me. I had fun with them, but almost in spite of myself.

“Blake can be…magnetic. He’s a leader, but like a politician that listens to his polls. Tyler, he’s just pure id. Kyle is a decent person, but he’s always had that lawyer brain, the kind that can talk itself into or out of whatever it wants to. Heather was the ‘mom’ back then, but like… a doting one. Overly permissive. And Mari… Well, you really leveled her out.

“What I was going to say is that you’re a good guy. Not a goody-two-shoes or a stick in the mud, but… just, like, thoroughly decent. I’ve always thought of you as the conscience of the group. Like that phrase, ‘Character is what you are in the dark.’ That’s you, in a nutshell. If Tyler’s the gas, and Blake is the steering, you’re the brakes. Not to stop us entirely, but to keep us from going off the road in the curves.”

“Huh. I… I can kinda see that. So, what does that make you?”

Shmi looked away, sad again. “The passenger that’s too afraid to speak up. Just like I’ve been everywhere in my life.” I hugged her once more, pulling her in tight. She didn’t cry this time, instead laying her head on my shoulder and sighing. “God, it feels good to get all of that out. Thank you for listening to me rant. You’re, ah, you’re probably going to hear more of that from now on.”

“Feel free. God knows you listened to me bitch enough back in college.”

She chuckled. “I didn’t mind. It was… I was…” Shmi looked away. I waited, but she didn’t finish the thought, instead shaking her head and rising to her feet. “Anyways. Enough of that.” She brandished her binoculars and pad. “Let’s go look at some tits!”

The corny joke got a good laugh out of me, and we set off down the path, her occasionally stopping and shushing me, looking through her binoculars, then jotting something down. I didn’t mind. While I could still just barely hear the strains of a random selection of party hits from a decade ago, distance and the sounds of nature pushed it to the back of my consciousness. I was glad for it; this was one of my favorite parts of our trips to the lake house, the long walks in the woods where those of us with a quieter nature would bond. I’d miss it.

Shmi saw my frown and asked, “Dale? Everything okay?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah. Just… I think you and I were right about this being the last weekend here, at least for a long time. I could see us doing it again in like five or ten years, maybe, but… Well, I don’t think we’re all going to be here.”

She shrugged indifferently. “That’s… Honestly, it’s probably not a bad thing. For a last hurrah, this one’s already off to a hell of a start. And, frankly… Well, it’s like I said, I only stuck around because of you and Mari, and mostly you. If I never see Tyler again… Ugh. Is it just me, or has he gotten worse?”

I pondered that for a few moments. “It’s hard to tell. I think it’s more that he didn’t get any better, and if you add on the fact that he and Gina don’t get along at all…”

“Yeah. God, I wish… what the hell was her name? The chick at the dock?”

“I can’t remember, either. I’ve just been thinking of her as ‘Candy.’”

“It fits.” Shmi slapped at a mosquito that made the mistake of alighting on her too long. “I wish Candy had stuck around to distract him. He was a miserable shit even before last night, and I thought he was going to start breathing fire this morning. Hell, I wish he wasn’t here at all.”

“Why? Were you hoping for a shot at Gina, too?” I grinned, and she slapped my arm.

“No!” A quick duck of her head and roll of her eyes. “Okay, well, maybe. Goddamn, that girl is hot. But no, not…” A shadow passed over her face. “Not until after I’ve sorted everything. If she weren’t here, either, I’d be happy, too. She’s fun, and she seems nice, but… I dunno. I think Blake’s made a mistake there.”

I chewed on that and said, “Yeah, me too. He went back to the type of girls he chased in college, and… Yeah. Maybe not the best choice.” We walked a few more yards, and I quietly said, “I don’t like how quickly she got close to Mari. It didn’t bother me at first, but the longer I’ve had to think about it, the more nervous she makes me. Did you know Mari asked me if I’d think about swapping with her and Blake last night?”

Shmi’s jaw dropped. “What? No!” Her expression turned contemplative. “Well, actually… I can sort of believe it. She was wild back before you. Like, I wasn’t super close with her until after you started hanging out with us, but I’d heard stories.”

“Stories?”

“I’m not saying she was a cheater or a slut or anything, but…” She shrugged. “Well, I guess maybe I am saying that last bit. When she was with a guy, she was solid. But when she wasn’t… Whew.”

“You’re not making me feel better.” In the silence that followed that statement, I noticed something: the silence. Not the stillness of the forest, but the lack of even a hint of sound from the lake. That absence, along with the conversation we’d been having, made me feel nervous, as if that silence indicated the group had perhaps moved to an activity I might not approve of. “I don’t hear the radio anymore. You want to…” I jerked my head back the way we came.

“Sure.” As we started back, she said, “Hey, don’t worry about it. Mari loves you. There’s no way she’d do anything. She knows you wouldn’t put up with it.”

“I thought I made that clear last night, but…” In the absence of anything more definitive than a nagging doubt, I sighed, then fell silent, quickening my pace a touch. Shmi said nothing; that concerned me, too. I’d always been able to rely on her as a sounding board. Her silence meant she saw something as well, something too nebulous to elucidate but solid enough for concern.

As we neared the lake, sounds of laughter and play began to filter through the trees once more, which eased my fears somewhat. Eased them enough to make me feel foolish, if I’m honest, as though I’d expected to come upon an orgy on the dock. Instead, as Shmi and I rounded the corner of the house, we found everyone in the lake and the radio missing.

“Hey!” Mari bounded up out of the water and toward us, throwing her arms around me and soaking me in the process. I didn’t mind, especially once she gave me a deep kiss to go with the hug. “We were about to send out a search party.”

Shmi held up her notebook by way of explanation. “Spotted a whole bunch of birds.” Our friend’s eyes were puffy and red-rimmed; while Mari noticed, she also didn’t bring attention to it.

I looked around Mari to the others. “What happened to the music?”

Louder than necessary, Mari answered, “Tyler knocked it into the water roughhousing with Kyle.”

“I said I was sorry!” came a petulant shout.

Mari rolled her eyes but smiled. “You two want to get changed and come for a dip? Water’s nice, once you get used to it.”

I shook my head. “I’m going to take a shower. Feeling kind of grimy, and by the time I change, everyone’ll be ready to get out.”

“Same,” Shmi said with a nod.

“Spoilsports. Tomorrow, okay?” We agreed, and, after one more kiss, Mari turned and ran back to the water.

I really needed the shower. The warm, soapy water felt amazing; Mari wasn’t the only one who was sore after the previous day’s trip. I grinned, thinking about the night before, trying to decide how much of her soreness came from our travels and how much from our enthusiastic lovemaking. I doubted we’d be able to manage a repeat of the previous night that weekend, but it was fun remembering.

So stuck in my own reminiscence was I, in fact, that I missed the door to the bathroom opening. When I slid the shower curtain aside, I found Gina in the room, and pulled it back closed with a yelp. 

“I’m not gonna bite,” she laughed. “I just needed to take a pee, and the rest of the bathrooms are occupied.”

Bullshit. There were more than enough toilets to go around unless everyone came out of the lake needing to piss like a racehorse. Even if they didn’t, why would Gina be in there with me instead of Mari?

The toilet flushed, and Gina ran the tap. “Almost done.” I peeked out of the curtain; she smiled at me while washing her hands. “Sorry for scaring you, but, ah, thanks for the view. That’ll keep me warm at night.”

“I thought you had Blake for that.”

“I do, but a girl can’t get too warm some nights,” she teased. “He and I don’t have the same rules that Heather and Kyle do, you know. We’re, mmm, a bit more freeform. There’s nothing that says that just because one of us wants to play with a couple, the other has to be invited.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I already told Mari ‘no.’”

Gina reached behind her neck and plucked at the tie of her top. The thin strip of material fell away, exposing what I’d spent a good portion of the trip trying to not stare at. “But you didn’t say ‘no’ to me.” She stepped toward the shower. “Can I say or…” Her hand reached for the curtain. “...do anything to convince you to change your mind? I can be awfully persuasive, you know.” 

My rapidly hardening erection throbbed at both her near-nakedness and her aggressive display. Teenaged Dale yelled in frustration at me from the previous decade as dry-mouthed, I insisted, “No. Absolutely not.” 

Her hand ran up the outside of the curtain, brushing the thin fabric against my cock. She leaned in close enough to kiss and breathed, “Pity. I promise we’d have had a lot of fun.” Then, pulling back with a sigh, “Still, I understand; not everyone’s wired the same way. 

“Although, I will say, some folks that say they are… Well, it’s just a question of circumstances. I had to try; seeing what you have there, I can understand why Mari’s so cheerful all the time.” After fastening her top again, she moved to the door, looked back over her shoulder at me, swayed her hips one last time with a giggle, and walked out.

Under my breath, I muttered, “Goddamn.”

Once my erection subsided and I’d changed, I went in search of my wife; I found her chatting with Kyle on the porch about some TV show they both watched. When she saw me, her expression speed-ran the transition from animated to happy to worried, before settling on afraid as I growled, “We need to talk.”

“Honey, Kyle and I were–”

“Now.” I turned my back without waiting for her to respond, stalking into the house and up the stairs to our bedroom. She followed me through the door maybe ten steps behind, leaving it ajar. I presumed that she hoped to keep me quiet in order to avoid embarrassment. My stomping past her and slamming it loudly put paid to that hope.

“Mari, What. The. Fuck! What was that about?” I snarled at her, almost, but not quite in her face. “Did you think you could send Blake’s little slut in and get me to change my mind?”

“What? No!” She seemed aghast at the suggestion. “I… We… No, it was about… I wasn’t trying to–”

“Stop!” Her mouth clamped shut. I took a deep breath, then exhaled, shaking as I let it out. In a quieter, less overtly hostile tone, I said, “Start again.”

Still pale, Mari stammered, “I- I wasn’t…” She mirrored my effort to calm myself. “She and I talked about last night while you were hiking. I told her that we’d, ah, discussed a swap, and you were completely against it. Then she asked me if what you said was true, that I’d be jealous if I saw you with another woman. I told her… I told her that, maybe, yeah, but…” She sighed. “But maybe not. Not if I knew it was just sex.”

Mari sat on the edge of the bed. “When I said that, she told me more about her and Blake’s arrangement. She said it could just be… just be the two of us making you feel good. That’s how she put it. She wants you, and I thought…” My wife smiled wanly. “Well, it’s not like I never had a threesome in college, and you hadn’t, so I thought…” She shrugged.

Snarkily, I filled the rest in. “‘How about some infidelity, honey? You know, as a treat?’ Christ, Mari.”

“You told me you watched videos about it when you jacked off! I thought… I thought maybe I could make a fantasy come true for you.”

I sneered, “Yeah, and then maybe I could make a fantasy come true for you, too? ‘See, honey, it wasn’t so bad for me! Now go sit over in that chair like a good little cuck and–’”

“Goddammit, Dale! Why do you have to be so narrow-minded? So suspicious? I was trying to do something nice for you.” Mari threw her hands in the air, returning my snark in kind. “‘Gee, honey, I’m real sorry that I tried to let you fuck a fashion model while she ate me out. What a goddamned monster I am.’ Is that what you want me to say?”

Our voices had grown louder again. “I am not narrow-minded! If people want to swap like Kyle and Heather or bang whoever they want, like Blake and Gina, great! Different strokes for different folks! Not me, though. At all. Ever.

“And as far as fantasies, that’s all they are for me: fantasies. If I were single and ran into two women at a bar who were up for it, would I fuck them together? Yeah, sure. But do I want that in my marriage? Hell no! Is that what you want? To go back to acting like you did before we met in college?”

“No!” Mari looked away. “No, not really. But we’re here, and she’s willing, and… You were right. This is going to be our last hurrah here, and then we’re gonna try to have kids and…” She shook her head. “I thought maybe I could do one last wild thing, but this time we could do it together. Just you and me and her.”

I snorted. “And Blake.”

“Not if it would upset you. She and Blake already talked about it, before she went to… see you. He’s got no problem with it.”

“Well, I do. I told you I did last night. You said…” I narrowed my eyes. “Oh, fuck you. Last night, you said you wouldn’t mention it to me again, so you had her do it.” She wouldn’t look at me, confirming I’d hit the mark. “And then, once we’d screwed her tonight, you and Blake–”

“No! I won’t. It was just…” She sighed. “It was just me trying to make up for pushing last night. That’s all. The three of us talked about it, and he said–they both said–that some guys are like that, that they don’t want another dick in the room, but another woman is fine. I thought that with the type of porn you liked, maybe that was true.”

“It’s not. I mean, I don’t want another guy in the room, either, but…” She chuckled at that, and I did, too. It helped dissolve the tension a little. 

I didn’t entirely trust her motives, but she seemed sincere enough that I was willing to scale back my irritation. “I understand what you’re–” The word ‘claiming’ almost slipped out. “–saying, but… God, can you blame me for being suspicious? Playing games with your words, talking to other people behind my back, giving her the okay to seduce me? Christ, Mari, there are guys that would already be talking divorce just for what you tried to pull.”

Her eyes went wide. “Don’t say that! Please, I wasn’t… I promise you, I won’t bring it up again, and I’ll make sure no one else does, either. I just thought…” She sighed. “Like I said, one last wild time. You don’t want that, and it’s not just about not wanting to share me with another guy. I didn’t get that before, but I do now. I’m sorry.” She reached out for me. “Please, Dale? I love you. Don’t be mad.”

I couldn’t promise that; I was mad, and, in my opinion, I had every right to be. I did love her, though, and she seemed sincere. When I grudgingly moved next to her, Mari’s hands worked at my belt, but I gently pushed them away with a sigh. “No. Not now. I’m hurt, Mari, and a blowjob isn’t going to fix that.”

This was uncharted territory for her. I know that I’m a simple man, and there were few troubles that Mari’s oral skills couldn’t soothe. This was one of them, though, and I think she finally had some inkling of just how badly she’d fucked up. Instead of persisting, Marissa hugged me, her face pressed against my stomach. “Oh, baby. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I really thought I was giving you something you wanted.” I heard the quavering in her voice, as if she might cry at any moment.

We stayed that way for a little while, me smoothing her hair and trying to soothe her. In retrospect, maybe I should have wondered how we got from me angry enough to spit nails to her needing to be comforted. At the time, though, it seemed normal; Mari sometimes made bad, selfish decisions, and I had always been there to help her back up after she fell. 

That’s just how we operated as a couple: she lavished love on me, and I forgave her occasional idiocy. In our defense, we were young, and she’d never made the same mistake twice. 

Eventually, I pulled her up into my arms. She apologized one more time, then changed into shorts and a T-shirt. We went out to watch the end of the day together, standing on the porch with our friends and marveling at the beauty of the lake at sunset. 

Tyler handed beers to Lakshmi and me, and we all clinked the necks together. Gina, now also in shorts and a T-shirt, gave me a look as if to say, ‘Are we good?’ I grudgingly nodded, which brought a smile to her face. Mari and Heather, still in her swimwear, leaned against the railing, arms around each other’s waist, staring out across the water. Shmi had changed from her hiking togs into a skirt and short-sleeved shirt; she seemed comfortable for the first time that weekend, too, although her change in mood had little to do with her clothing. Together, we all wound down the afternoon and welcomed the evening, laughing and joking together like we used to.

The sun finished its descent, and the overhead light at the end of the dock flickered to life. Kyle called from inside that dinner was just about ready. We each made our way toward the door. When we entered, though, a strange but familiar sound confronted us, a muffled series of long beeps from the phones in Shmi’s hand and Heather’s purse. 

Lakshmi, still laughing at something Tyler had said, brought her phone up to dismiss the alert. Instead, though, she froze, eyes scanning the screen over and over again. Her expression grew more panicked with each pass, hand covering her mouth as she breathed out, “Oh my God. Oh my God. No. No!”

While Heather grabbed her purse off the couch and started to dig through it for her own phone, Tyler loomed over Shmi’s shoulder for a closer look before flatly declaring, “Oh fuck,” repeating it again as a fearful, “Oh fuck!”

“What?” I moved to stand next to Shmi, and she buried her face in my side before I could even see what had so upset my friends. Heather’s wordless cry split the air as I finally read the screen in Lakshmi’s shaking hand:

BALLISTIC MISSILES INBOUND TO THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A TEST.

Taking the phone from Shmi’s unresisting hand, I set to work trying to find info on its web browser, social media apps, chat programs, anything that might shed more light on what I fervently prayed was a mistake. Each app provided only a spinner, a loading bar, or a cryptic error message, each amounting to the same thing: no internet access.

“Why is this not fucking working? We’ve got bars!” Kyle’s frustrated cursing told me he’d had no more luck than me with his attempts to call out on Heather’s phone.

I mumbled, “Tower’s probably jammed up. Everyone’s trying to do what we’re doing, and nothing’s getting through.” Thinking quickly, I manually switched the phone from the 5G to the LTE network, as that signal often had less traffic; it yielded no better results.

The others had crowded around the two devices. “Maybe…” Voice trembling, Gina suggested, “Maybe it’s like that thing in Hawaii a few years back? The false alarm?”

Dully, Shmi replied, “There were... We were briefed on that. They put safeguards in place after Hawaii. Extra checks before an alert should go out.” She sank down into the nearest chair, legs giving way as if she had the energy to speak or to stand, but not both. “Oh, God. Oh, God, the chatter!”

“What?” Blake asked.

“Liv… She told me the reason she couldn’t come was that there was more chatter than usual. She didn’t say anything specific, and I thought she was just trying to avoid the trip, but…” Lakshmi put her head in her hands and moaned instead of finishing the sentence.

“Fuck!” Tyler slammed his fist into a wall, putting a good-sized hole in it, then stalked off to the liquor cabinet and yanked open its doors. 

Blake barked, “This is not the time for—“

“Fuck you! It’s the perfect goddamned time.” Ty grabbed a full bottle and cracked it open before taking a long pull of its amber contents. “Either we’re all about to fucking die, or we’re all about to have a huge goddamned party because we didn’t fucking die. Either way, get the fuck off my back.” Blake fumed but said nothing.

Mari asked, “Do we have anything besides the phones? Maybe the TV?”

“No receiver,” Blake replied. “Stereo doesn’t have one, either.” He glared at Tyler. “If someone hadn’t knocked the radio into the lake, maybe we would–”

“For fuck’s sake! I said I was sorry!”

Gina shouted, “That doesn’t do us much good now, does it?”

“Stop!” The three of them jumped at my voice. “This isn’t helping.” Tyler opened his mouth, but I glared, and he shut up. 

Everyone was staring at me except for Heather, who had wrested the phone back from her husband and been sending out text after text to a system that had ceased to respond, all while muttering, “please, please, please” under her breath. Her skin had gone pale, and her breathing shallow.

“Heather. Heather!” I gently raised my voice, and she looked up at me. Her blown pupils confirmed what I’d feared: she was panicking. Maybe even going into shock. “Heather, we need your help. I thought I saw an emergency supply box in the kitchen. Do you know where it is?” 

“Um. Uh.” She nodded slowly. “Y- Yeah, I th- think so.”

“Gina, can you help her go get it? Maybe there’s a windup radio in there we can use.”

Taking her by the hand, Gina led Heather out of the room; I heard them rummaging around under the sink. Once they were occupied, I quietly said to Kyle, “Okay. If it’s not a false alarm, how fucked are we?”

Kyle had always loved history and military trivia, and he followed global politics like Tyler followed our alma mater’s football games. “I don’t know. It depends on…” He sighed. “We don’t know who’s shooting at us. If it said there was a single missile inbound, that might be Korea or Iran, and we’d probably be okay. The GMD’s designed to knock down a few missiles in the case of a limited exchange. They’d take a swing at us, we’d probably respond with conventional arms, and that would be it, at least in the near term.

“If it’s more than that, all bets are off. They didn’t design the system to handle a medium-scale or full-scale attack, and the defenses will likely try to knock down missiles headed for cities. And if that’s the case… I can’t be 100% sure, but we’d almost certainly retaliate with launches of our own. If we launch back, China or Russia will probably respond, and then…” He fell silent.

Blake asked, “We’re in the middle of the woods, though! Who’s going to nuke us out here?”

Kyle smiled ruefully. “Back in the 60s, the government decided to designate a few sacrificial states, ones with lower populations and fewer cities. The idea was that they wanted the Russians to target those, so they put almost all the ICBM silos there.” He looked out the window at the pristine lake and the expansive forest surrounding it. “This is one of them.”

“So how the fuck are we supposed to know whether we’re fucked?” Tyler asked.

Shmi spoke up. “The power. The grid… it can take some hits. It’s designed to be decentralized and redundant, but there’s only so much it can stand. Beyond that, the EMP by itself might fry the more delicate parts, even if a nuke doesn’t land nearby.”

Kyle nodded. “I agree. If the power goes out–”

As if on cue, the lights flickered, then died.