Chapter Nine

This time waking up was a nightmare. As in there was a period of ... an hour? A minute? Fifteen seconds? There was a block of time in which I remembered being cold, and hot, and in pain, and in awe, and then I felt like falling, even though I knew I was standing still.

Except in reality I was lying in a couchnest of quilts in Orion Broderick's mountain cabin. Which I did realize almost immediately, even though my thoughts were still basically made of treacle.

My stomach lurched, and I closed my eyes again to take stock. So. Couchnest: could be worse. Warm was good. Dry was good. Head actively seemed to be self-destructing: not great. Had I somehow acquired a skull-size bulldozer, and was it currently running back and forth over my cranium, or was that still the nightmare?

Also whoa, very nauseous. But there was nothing in my stomach, a fact my body was also not best pleased about. Sorry, sorry, tried for eggs, failed.

I slowed my breathing and kept my eyes closed.

Beneath the grinding agony of the headache ( no coffee, right, forgot to ask, couldn't ask, need to ask ), other parts of my body were regaining awareness. Arms had decided to just subtract themselves into numbness, which didn't seem ideal. Legs ... as I thought about my legs, my lower back started twitching. At first it was merely odd. Then it grew distracting. Then, like my brain had decided I was ready, I began to feel the ache.

Right, okay. So. On top of a very bad day, lousy couch-addled sleep, a failed attempt at breakfast, and no coffee, I had tried to single-handedly shovel my car down a very long driveway, only to have it start snowing on me again. At which point I'd cried in front of a man who detested me and gone back to bed.

Taking stock of one's situation was beginning to feel way overrated. So now I had "taken stock" and ... I was even more depressed than I'd been when I was ignorant of the so-called stock. Where did that phrase even come from? Stocking stores? Stocking farms? Was it related to livestock? Was there such a thing as deadstock?

That was my arms: deadstock.

I shifted experimentally and very softly squealed just a little as the muscles in my back protested, and the muscles of my front joined in.

"Snow shoveling is hard work," observed the ever-neutral Orion Broderick. Or at least his voice. Coming from the direction of his armchair. Which I could see, except I'd have to move my head and I thought I might throw up. "You should eat some oatmeal. I'll reheat it."

Reheated porridge. I mean. Really? "Coffee," I tried to say, but it came out funky.

"What?"

This time I licked my lips first. "Do you have coffee?"

"Oh. No."

Fuck. I was going to cry again. It seemed like such a dumb thing, but this headache wasn't going to quit if I couldn't caffeinate it into submission. Oh god. I closed my eyes more tightly and tried not to look like I was crying.

"Oh, the caffeine." He sounded very, very slightly sympathetic. "You should really get off that. Caffeine addiction is still addiction."

I tried not to moan.

"There might be a few bags of black tea around here." He wasn't totally offering, but he wasn't not-offering.

"Please," I whimpered pathetically. Black tea. Did he have milk? He had cream . Fuck. Please find me some tea, please find me some tea. It seemed like that should make me feel less like crying, except that tea was so charged with memory and emotion and fuck, what if it was goddamn Lipton or something? I mean, I'd drink it, I'd drink anything right now to get rid of this headache, but nothing could make Lipton drinkable.

Or some hipster tea brand that came in its own biodegradable packaging. It would definitely not be loose leaf, but beggars couldn't be choosers, and fuck, I'd beg, I'd do anything right now if it meant caffeine. I didn't feel like I could even exist inside my skin without caffeine.

"I've got ... something." Orion's voice from the kitchen.

This time, driven by physical need, I managed to convince my entire body to get upright. And then, with some cajoling, to get up. On my feet. Which didn't hurt nearly as much as every other part of me, though it was the headache that felt aggressively painful, as if it was attempting to murder me from within.

Was that a weird thought? Would I normally think the line murder me from within , or was the headache actively messing with my mind?

I straightened up as well as I could to preserve what was left of my dignity. Even odds he had only found an old tin of chamomile, which wouldn't help me at all.

Orion was in the kitchen staring down at a dusty box.

Lipton. The "sheep piss that every bloody American thinks is tea," according to my father. I'd grown up disdaining the red-and-yellow box more than almost anything, though years later I realized it was, actually, British.

And yet I fell upon it now. "Thank god," I mumbled.

"It may not taste very good," Orion said dubiously. "I think it's from before I lived here. It legitimately might not be that safe to—"

"It's fine. Sheep's piss. Doesn't matter. Do you have a way to boil water?"

"‘Sheep's piss'?"

I waved a hand. "Pot?"

"I'll get it." He didn't seem to want me cooking in his kitchen again, even if it was only to boil water.

Thankfully, I was too messed up to care.

It was not the worst thing I'd ever tasted. I'd once dated a smoker who used savory toothpaste. The toothpaste was the worst, worse even than the smoking. Unpopular opinion: I didn't care if other people smoked. I was an above-average judger of other people, but smoking just wasn't on my radar for whatever reason.

Kissing a smoker: objectively better than drinking ancient Lipton with heavy cream.

But it was already working. It started working the second I smelled it, which wasn't until the water hit, because it was really fucking stale. My brain didn't care how stale it was; caffeine, incoming was the message. Unless—

Oh no.

I locked eyes with Orion, and I could tell I looked half-mad. His solid neutrality rippled for a second. But I could only say, "What if it loses caffeine? What if it's not enough?"

"It doesn't. Caffeine doesn't work like that. The only real way to lower it is overroasting. I mean, in coffee. I'm sure they don't overroast tea." He frowned again.

Steep faster. I stared intensely down into my mug, then looked back at the frowning Orion. "You know a lot about coffee for someone who doesn't consume caffeine."

"Well, yeah. There's a reason I take it seriously. We used to drink espresso before a really nuts training session ..." He trailed off. "Never mind. Just, I didn't like the way it made me feel anymore."

"I can't relate. I fucking love it ." I inhaled the steam, trying to catch some hint of a good flavor lying dormant. But no. Just the newsprint-thin impression that once there might have been, in some distant past, perhaps in the last century, a tea leaf behind this beverage.

And I did love caffeine. The way it hit, the way it made me feel awake and alive and connected , like I was part of the world. But I belatedly realized that he'd said something about training , as in, training with the team, and all my rusty reporter's instincts had been more focused on chemical necessity than following up a story. I glanced at him again, but the second I looked at him, he smoothed out his expression back to bland, with a little hint of defensiveness. But before he'd masked it, had I detected ... envy? Or some near cousin of envy? Did Orion Broderick envy my unhealthy relationship with caffeine? Surely not.

I didn't care. Couldn't care. The tea tasted terrible and also miraculous. The cream helped give it a little bit of body, a little substance, but it hardly mattered. I drank it as quickly as my brain would allow me to consume something that hot and then made another cup.

Orion watched all this rather grimly. "It's nice not to be so dependent on caffeine, you know."

"If this is where you lecture me on the horrors of chemical dependency, don't. My dad was a drunk, my mom has more prescriptions than your local pharmacy, and if the worst I do is caffeine, I'm on a good path, all right?" I said all this as I stirred the tea bag, urging it to release more of its properties into the boiled water.

"That's fair enough," he said after a pause.

"Thank you so much ," I replied in my best David-from- Schitt's-Creek voice.

"It's not my business."

"No. Though you seem to know a lot about it for a guy so pure and uncaffeinated."

This time he almost smiled. It was so close. He tamped it down before it escaped, but I saw it. The hint of a smile. "Well, yeah. I've gone through phases where I partied pretty hard when I wasn't actively training, but nothing I did then compared to trying to ease off on caffeine."

"So it's a sore spot," I suggested, still stirring, even though stirring tea as it steeped was A) not actually helping and B) just making it colder faster. But the headache was beginning to loosen its grip just the smallest bit, and my brain fog was showing signs of maybe someday lifting.

"I don't know if it's a sore spot ..."

I raised my eyebrows at my tea, carefully not looking up, reflecting on that flash of almost-envy.

"Well, okay, maybe it's a sore spot. I did consider throwing away that tea the last time I discovered it, but some voice in the back of my mind thought I might someday need it, which doesn't make me feel great, to be honest."

This time I did look at him. "Why? I mean. It's fossilized tea. It's not, like, a bag of heroin."

"It doesn't feel that different to me," Orion said, and I could tell that he was being serious, so I valiantly did not mock him for this batshit statement. "Because either way, it's a form of dependency, like you said."

"I'm not sure heroin and caffeine are the same."

"No. But if I wake up in the morning and my brain is full of mush until I consume something to make it work, that's not what I want, so I quit."

Which ... "Fair enough," I echoed, and began sucking down my second cup.

After three entire cups of stale Lipton, I could think clearly enough to realize I had to ration my tea bags. Though not having a timeline made that difficult. I glanced out the window at the world, which had gone white again. It was snowing steadily, the way it had started out yesterday, when I, in my ignorance, didn't think it would be an issue. I reflexively pulled out my phone to check the weather, but of course, I couldn't. I did notice that it was four p.m. somehow, which explained why my headache was so horrific. I hadn't gone without caffeine until the afternoon since college, when my regular wake-up time was noon.

"Uh, so, when is it supposed to stop snowing?"

"I caught the weather report on the radio earlier." Back to perfect neutrality, so the news could not be good. He wanted to get rid of me almost as much as I wanted to get out of there. "They think we'll only get twelve inches by tomorrow morning, but the storm warning has moved out another day."

"What ... does that mean? In layman's terms."

"That the storm was supposed to hit hard and be over quickly. Now it's hitting slightly less hard and lasting longer."

"Does that mean no plowing?" I asked after a moment, thinking, Plow, I need a plow, please plow, damn you people in charge of plowing .

"They might plow lower down, where there won't be as much snow, but it's less likely up here."

I threw up my hands. "I don't get this. What happens if someone needs the hospital? Or a house catches fire? Or any number of other things where people have to, like, get out of here?"

He shook his head. "It's all trade-offs. People who live up here, for the most part, are willing to accept those limitations because aside from dire emergencies in the middle of an intense spring storm, the advantages make it worthwhile. And during winter, they'll keep the plows pretty accessible. Most of them will be stored for spring now, so that probably complicates things."

The way he said it, like it was all totally normal, was impossible for me to wrap my head around. How was this normal? How did people just accept it , like not being able to leave your house was okay? "But what about food? Groceries? Won't people starve if they can't get to town?"

He blinked. "What, if they're stuck at home for four or five days? No. And it was on the weather report, so folks stocked up. No one starves in five days."

" You didn't stock up," I said accusingly.

"I made an entire quiche. I had more than enough food for me. I just didn't expect some flatlander jackass to back his car into my Princess."

"I didn't! Only the door! Princess is fine. A little trapped, but totally healthy."

This time he actually did smile, miracle of miracles. "Yeah, I looked too. I just meant that if I needed to get out of here under normal circumstances, I could put chains on and go. Not that I'd need to because I have more than enough food to get through a few days of snow. Even with you here."

I begged to differ, but I could hardly say so now. I took a deep breath and refocused. "Okay, but there are ... seven tea bags left. How many days do I need them to last me?" Then I cringed in anticipation of his answer.

"I don't think it's likely they'll plow until maybe day after tomorrow. It could be the day after that."

"Shit." That was way too many days. And I still had a massive headache. When you're used to drinking cup after cup of coffee every day just to push through and then all you've got are three cups of ancient Lipton, it's not enough to eradicate the old caffeine headache. Just enough to take the murderous edge off.

Seven bags for three more days. At least.

"I used to keep a pound of whole bean in my freezer," he admitted after a period of silence in which I again considered walking to town through a blizzard. "I thought, you know, it was frozen, it was whole bean and I didn't have a grinder; I'd have to be so desperate I was willing to bust up the beans with a hammer to get a cup of coffee."

"What happened?" I asked when he didn't continue.

"I had a bad day."

"But . . ."

He shrugged. "It's actually kind of a mess, grinding coffee by pounding it with a hammer. The coffee wasn't even good after that. So I got rid of it."

The man had been so starved for caffeine he'd hammered his coffee beans for a taste, and what he took from that wasn't "Maybe I should get a coffee grinder" but "I should throw this away so next time I just have to suffer ." Not that I was surprised a professional athlete had some degree of masochism to his makeup, but just that it was astonishing he still lived by that degree of discipline.

Did I admire it? A little? I couldn't decide. Either it was admirable or it was totally bananas and he should seek help. It didn't seem like there was much room for gray area there.

"Wow," I said belatedly.

"Yeah, well. Anyway." He looked at his watch-slash-fitness-tracker-thing and said, "Your oatmeal is cold again, but you should probably eat it. Dinner in an hour and a half?"

"Sure."

He nodded and went to the door, where he pulled on a pair of boots. The newest-looking pair in the closet, so I'd picked right in picking the older ones.

"You're not going out there?" I asked, feeling an unwelcome wave of concern. You're not leaving me alone?

"Gotta chop some wood. It's pretty likely we'll lose power at some point, and I want to make sure we have enough wood to keep the stove burning when we do." Like this was a totally normal thing to announce, he tugged his coat on and went outside.

" When we lose power?" I asked the empty cabin. "When?"

The cabin did not answer back.