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Late afternoon sun bleeds orange through the blinds, dust floating lazily in the air. Bernardo Fink’s apartment shines with the luxury he was born into, placed on the top floor of the building. The light reflects onto the warm wooden floor, mingling with the smoke floating up into the air.
On the floor in a sun spot, Bernardo lies on his back with an arm folded behind his head, staring up at the slow-spinning ceiling fan as he takes a drag from the blunt between his fingers. Near his head, Savannah sits criss-crossed with a planner and some highlighters, pen clutched between her teeth.
On the couch behind them, Brody strums Bernardo’s guitar, humming gently to a Nirvana song. Beside him, Gracie sits with her legs crossed, painting her nails a bright blue. Bernardo exhales slowly, smoke curling toward the fan like it’s being personally invited upstairs. “You know,” he says lazily, voice half-muffled by the haze, “this feels like the kind of day people talk about after everything goes to hell.”
Savannah hums around the pen, eyes scanning her planner. She pulls it from her mouth long enough to reply, “Please don’t narrate our lives like we’re in a cautionary tale.” She drags a highlighter across a block of text with surgical precision. “Some of us are trying to keep the future intact.”
Brody’s fingers falter on the strings just long enough for the note to wobble. “Bold of you to assume the future can be scheduled,” he says, then slips right back into the riff, softer now, like he’s playing just for the room.
Gracie glances up from her nails, inspecting Brody over the rim of the tiny bottle. “If the future can’t be scheduled,” she says, “then why does your calendar say ‘existential crisis’ every Thursday?”
Brody grins without missing a beat. “Consistency.” Bernardo laughs, the sound loose and warm, and lifts the blunt slightly in Gracie’s direction. “You want?” She wrinkles her nose. “Absolutely not. I like my anxiety raw.”
Savannah finally looks up, blinking as if she’s been pulled out of another world entirely. “Bernardo, you double-booked yourself on Saturday.” He squints at the ceiling fan like it’s personally responsible. “I did?”
“Yes,” she says, tapping the page. “Brunch with your mother and… underground poker?”
“Okay, first of all,” he says, sitting up on his elbows, “it’s not underground. It’s just… private.” Gracie caps her nail polish with a sharp click. “That’s exactly what ‘underground’ means.” The fan creaks overhead. Outside, a car horn blares and then fades, the city carrying on in its oblivious rhythm. For a moment, no one speaks. Brody’s humming fills the space instead, foot tapping on the floor in pace with the song.
Still strumming, Brody stops humming, turning his head to face Gracie. “Which one of us do you think would die first in the apocalypse?” Savannah doesn’t hesitate, pen still in her mouth. “Bernardo.”
“Wow,” Bernardo says, offended. “No thought? No debate?”
“You’d try to help someone who was already gone,” she replies. “You’re too nice.” Gracie nods in agreement. “You’d hesitate.” Bernardo opens his mouth, then closes it. “…Okay, maybe. But I’d still be useful. I can run.” Brody points at him. “You trip over air.”
“That was one time.”
Gracie blows gently on her nails, then tilts her head, considering. “Brody would think he’s immune,” she says. “Like, convinced. He’d walk straight up to a zombie and say something stupid.” Brody scoffs, still strumming. “I would not.”
“I think he’d sacrifice himself,” Savannah says. “There’s a heart in there somewhere, Brody.” Brody’s fingers still on the strings this time, the chord buzzing softly under his touch. He doesn’t look at Savannah when he speaks. “I don’t know if I’d call it sacrifice,” he says. “More like… bad timing.”
Bernardo snorts. “That’s the same thing but with worse PR.” Gracie smiles faintly, twisting the cap back onto her polish. “Still counts.”
Brody finally glances over at them, shrugging one shoulder. “Someone’s gotta distract the monsters while you three argue about the best plan.” Savannah softens at that, pen lowering to the page. “You’d do it without telling us,” she says. Silence settles again, thicker now, but not uncomfortable. The song fades out under Brody’s hands, replaced by the quiet click of the fan and the distant pulse of the city below.
Bernardo leans back, stretching his arms overhead. “Okay, fine. Hypothetically, apocalypse happens. We stick together. None of this solo hero nonsense.” Gracie nods. “Agreed.” Brody smirks. “Even if it’s dramatically appropriate?”
“Especially then,” Savannah says, finally smiling. “No one gets to be poetic about it.” Bernardo lifts the blunt in a lazy salute. “To being unremarkable survivors.”
Brody lets his fingers rest on the guitar strings, the last chord still faintly alive beneath his palm, vibrating like it doesn’t want to be let go of just yet. He adjusts his grip and idly plucks a single string, testing the sound, then another, building something quiet and aimless. Not a song. Just noise meant to fill space.
Savannah lowers her planner fully now, setting it beside her knee. The pages flutter slightly in the breeze from the fan, neon highlights flashing like little warnings she refuses to acknowledge. She watches them for a second before pressing her palm down to keep the book closed. “Unremarkable survivors,” she repeats, thoughtful. “I could live with that.”
Bernardo exhales another slow stream of smoke, this one thinner, less theatrical. It drifts toward the window and thins out in the sunlight before it ever reaches the fan. “Honestly,” he says, “that’s the dream. No statues. No tragic monologues.”
Gracie hums in agreement, stretching her legs out in front of her and wiggling her toes to avoid smudging the fresh polish. The blue catches the light every time she moves, bright and defiant against the warm tones of the room. “I refuse to be remembered as a lesson,” she says. “Or worse, a metaphor.”
Brody chuckles softly at that, finally setting the guitar down beside him. The wood gives a dull, familiar knock against the couch cushion. “Imagine surviving the apocalypse just to get turned into a poorly written anecdote.”
Savannah snorts. “Someone would absolutely say, ‘They never saw it coming,’ like they personally knew us.”
Bernardo groans. “I hate that sentence.”
The apartment settles again, the way it does when everyone exhales at once without realizing it. The city below continues on– car doors slamming, distant voices drifting upward, a siren wailing far enough away to be background noise instead of a warning. Life, uninterrupted.
Gracie leans back on her hands and tilts her head toward the ceiling fan, watching the shadows of the blades sweep across the walls in slow, lazy arcs. “If it did happen,” she says casually, “I think this is what I’d miss the most, besides my dad.”
“The drugs?” Brody asks.
“The quiet,” she replies. “The nothing-happening of it all.”
Savannah nods. “The ability to waste time.” Bernardo smiles faintly at that, eyes half-lidded. “Luxury,” he says. “The real kind.” Brody reaches for his soda, popping the tab with a sharp click that feels louder than it should. “Okay,” he says, raising it slightly. “If we’re sticking together, we need rules.” Gracie arches an eyebrow. “You just said no plans.”
“I said no schedules,” he counters. “There’s a difference.” Savannah can’t help herself, so she reaches for her pen again, twirling it between her fingers. “Fine,” she says. “Rule one?”
“No abandoning the group for a ‘gut feeling,’” Bernardo says. “Unless everyone agrees it’s a good gut.” Brody nods solemnly. “Rule two, no heroic sacrifices.”
“Rule three,” Gracie adds, “if someone gets bitten, we don’t pretend it’s ‘just a stomach ache’ or something.”
They all laugh, the sound overlapping in the small space. The summer before sophomore year of college is a limbo, too short but too long. There’s so much to do, but no one wants to let go of the small bubble they’ve made here.
“I bet you guys would survive. Savannah has all of the planning covered, you’d just have to follow her, Gracie.” Brody snorts as he says it, propping the guitar against the side of the couch now. Savannah nods enthusiastically. “I would have everything under control, you’d just have to tell me what to do!”
Gracie laughs at that, a short, surprised sound, and shakes her head. “That’s the most backwards thing you could’ve said,” she tells Savannah. “You’d be the one telling us what to do.” Savannah grins, unabashed. “I thrive under pressure.” Bernardo turns his head toward her, squinting like he’s trying to picture it. “You’d be terrifying,” he says fondly. “Clipboard energy in the apocalypse.”
“I’d laminate the plans,” she replies without missing a beat. Brody raises his soda in surrender. “See? We wouldn’t stand a chance against her.”
The light outside shifts again, orange deepening toward amber as the sun sinks lower. The city sounds change pitch, rush-hour traffic swelling, voices sharper, more hurried. Up here, though, it still feels insulated, like the top floor exists slightly out of sync with the rest of the world.
Bernardo rolls onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow so he can see all of them at once. Smoke curls from his fingers in lazy spirals. “Sophomore year’s gonna be weird,” he says suddenly.
Gracie hums in agreement. “Everything after the summer is weird.” Savannah tilts her head. “We’ll still hang out like this,” she says, like she’s reassuring herself. “Just… with more responsibilities.”
“Ugh,” Brody groans. “Don’t say it like that.”
“But it’s true,” she insists. “Schedules change. People get busy.” Bernardo shrugs. “This place isn’t going anywhere.” None of them say the obvious, that places don’t have to disappear for things to change. That sometimes it’s people who drift, quietly, without warning.
Gracie reaches for her phone, checking the time, then closes it again like she doesn’t want it reminding her of anything. “I like thinking we’ll be fine,” she says. “Not doomed. Just… fine.” Brody nods slowly. “Fine sounds nice.”
The fan clicks as it rotates, the faintest hitch in its rhythm. Savannah watches it for a moment, then gathers her planner and tucks it into her bag, finally, decisively. “Okay,” she says. “No more future talk.”
Bernardo smirks. “You sure?”
“For at least ten minutes,” she amends.
Brody reaches for the guitar again, this time playing something lighter, less melancholy. Gracie scoots closer to the couch arm, resting her chin on her knee. Bernardo closes his eyes, letting the sound wash over him.
For a little while, they don’t talk at all. The city hums on below them. The fan keeps turning. The light keeps bleeding orange.