Life After Love (and After the Apocalypse)

by ClareDeVee

Summary:

Sex and the City meets The Last of Us—because even the end of the world can’t stop a woman from writing about bad sex, worse men, and the one older guy she absolutely shouldn’t be thinking about this much.

Evie Hendersson used to write about Manhattan brunches, emotionally unavailable finance bros, and blowjobs disguised as intimacy. Now she pours moonshine in Jackson, Wyoming and anonymously drops a scandalous column on the town board every Monday morning. No one knows it’s her. Not officially.

The Tipsy Bison is her reluctant stage. The gossip writes itself. And Joel Miller? He’s the kind of man Evie knows better than to fall for—older, unreadable, and built like her next terrible idea. But when looks linger too long and tension starts simmering beneath bar-top small talk, she begins to wonder:

Is it just chemistry in a post-collapse world, or something even more dangerous—like actual feelings?

Chapter 1: Prologue – Life After Love (and After the Apocalypse)

Before the world ended, I wrote about men who ghosted after three dates and whether texting back within five minutes meant you were in love or just bored.

Now I pour moonshine for men who’ve survived worse than heartbreak—
and flirt like it’s just another form of first aid.

I’m not a therapist. Not a counselor. Not even especially nice.
But I am a bartender.
And in Jackson, that’s basically a licensed observer of human chaos.

Every night, I watch people try to fall in love with whoever’s still breathing and emotionally available enough to grunt in their direction.
I watch hands linger too long, smiles say too little, and silences say way too much.
And then I go home and write it all down.

Not because I’m nosy.
Because I’m trying to figure out why we still do it—why we still want, when we’ve learned again and again how easily we lose.

I used to write about love, sex, and heartbreak like it was the end of the world.
Now it’s just another Thursday.

And I can’t help but wonder…

If love is supposed to save us—
why does it so often look like something we have to survive?

—Your Unreliable Witness