Mystery Guy's name really was Ender, and according to his Grindr profile, he was two years older than I was, which was great because I didn't want people getting the wrong idea about us and calling me a cougar when I went around introducing him to my friends. But I doubted I was going to have to worry about that with the meteor about to turn the earth into pudding.

"Oh, geez. If I'd known you were actually going to show up, then I would have put on a clean shirt." Ender admits, peeling off his baseball cap to reveal even more waves of long blonde hair. 

"So, you didn't think I was going to show up, but you showed up anyway?" I ask him, somewhat miffed, "New York's practically a war zone. Do you know how long it took me to get out of there? I'm pretty sure I ran a guy stealing a TV over with my car, but I didn't stop to check. They deserved what they got anyway."

"Was it a nice TV, at least?" Ender replies in his sleepy voice. 

"I don't know. Not really?" I reply, "It looked like something my grandma had sitting on her nightstand for ten years."

Ender bobs his head a little and says, "Nice."

This guy had to have been stoned out of his mind. He certainly looked like he'd crawled out of every stoner movie known to man, and he talked like everything was exhausting to him. 

I guess that's what I got for meeting someone on Grindr who had a profile picture of a carrot with eyes instead of an actual profile picture, but I couldn't say I was disappointed, either. In my heart of hearts, maybe I had always secretly hoped to meet the biggest freak known to man, so when the big bang finally happened, the few days that I had left on Earth would be worth it.

See, all the TV shows and books always made out the apocalypse as this big thing that the hero could escape from if they ran far enough away or killed the bad guy at the end. But nobody ever talked about the strangers left behind in the empty parking lot of an old motel, trying to scrape together some sort of life when they had nothing to live for. 

"Do you want to go inside? Maybe we can find something to eat and have dinner like we originally planned." Ender tells me when he sees me staring up at the Roxbury. "The owners left for Colorado yesterday, so we're the only ones here. I tried calling to make a reservation, but they basically told me to burn the place down for all they cared; they aren't coming back."

"Hold on, let me grab my stuff," I tell him, and I go open my car door and lean inside to grab my earbuds and suitcase from the backseat. But as I'm doing so, I see the handle of my gun poking out from in between the cupholder and driver's side, fully loaded and ready to go. 

"Your Grindr said you were asexual," Ender says conversationally as I'm fishing out my things. "I kinda' consider myself asexual, too."

I practically brain myself when I slam my head into the roof of the car. "What?" I demand, and quickly scramble backward on my hands and knees and climb out of the car. "I don't remember reading that on your profile," I reply, and I start to regret meeting this guy all over again.

"I mean, I haven't done it that much, so I'm not an expert, but I've tried it," Ender replies simply. 

"What the hell are you talking about?" I ask him, and I consider grabbing my gun from the front seat just in case he tried any weird shit with me. 

"Asexual--Anal Sexual?" Ender clarifies, "It's like people who exclusively take it up the ass."

I stare at him for a full five seconds, and then I bust out laughing because I think he's joking. But then I look at him again, and his face is still all droopy and tired-looking, and I realize he's not kidding. This guy really thought the A in asexual stood for anal, which just ended me on the spot.

I finish pulling my suitcase from the backseat and slam my car door closed.

"You're an idiot," I tell Ender when I turn back to him. "But I kind of like that about you."

---

Ender and I have dinner that night in the Roxbury Motel's empty dining room, which has to be among the strangest places I've ever been. They had designed the whole room to look like a coconut cream pie, so the trim around the top was a tan pie crust, and the ceiling was made of this swirly, textured foam, giving me the distinct impression that I was sitting inside a gigantic pie, unable to escape. 

I'm waiting in the pie room for Ender to bring us food and looking out the window at the parking lot below. The motel sat on a slightly slanted hill, and there were some trees and stuff around the edge where the concrete stopped, so it was a pretty nice view. 

But that's not what made it weird.

I notice this gross, skin-headed guy wandering around in some of the bushes, completely naked. He stumbles, falls, and then picks himself up before pausing to stare at the Roxbury. This wasn't the craziest thing I'd seen since learning that a meteor was going to kill us all, so I'm not too freaked out enough to tell Ender about it.

Instead, I stand up to quickly close the curtains.

Shit. Had he seen me? 

A door slams, and I jump a little and whirl around in time to see Ender wheeling a metal cart into the room with two white candles lit on it and everything. "I hope you like pasta," he tells me. "They looted everything in the kitchen except a couple of cans that rolled onto the floor."

I watch him lift the metal lid off the tray, revealing two dishes brimming to the top with Spaghetti-O's garnished with little sprigs of wilted parsley. 

I forget about Skinhead wandering outside as I sit back down with Ender Calloway to have dinner with him for the first time. It wasn't at all what I had imagined when I drove down here, but I soon found myself wanting to know more about this strange person sitting across from me.

"Do you still think the A in asexual stands for anal?" I ask him after a moment of silence passes between us.

"Nah," Ender replies, a spoonful of Spaghetti-O's in one hand, "I looked it up when I was in the kitchen. I'm still not 100 percent clear on what it means, but I think I got the general idea."

I sink down a little in my seat. "I don't actually know what I am, but that sounded like the closest thing that felt like me," I admit. "I don't really like labeling it. I've had a lot of bad experiences trying to explain myself to people."

"People don't have labels," Ender replies, studying me from across the table, "Groceries have labels. You shouldn't have to call yourself anything if you don't want to."

As Kay approaches Earth, a day away—two days, if we are lucky—fire pours down slowly from the sky outside the Roxbury Motel. Despite this, I’m not concerned, and I'm not scared anymore. 

I had found the person I wanted to die next to during the apocalypse.