Dopamine: Take Only as Directed
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AfterThe Mystery of Nevermore
POV: Sebastian Snow
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“You’ve got the flu, boss,” Max said.
I lay facedown on the bed, my cell on speaker beside my head. “It’s not the flu,” I weakly protested.
“You have a fever?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Chills?”
“I guess.”
“Have you barfed?”
“Max—”
“How many times?” he demanded.
“I don’t know. Do dry heaves count?”
“I’m calling your dad.”
“Do not call my father,” I said, doing my best to sound authoritative, but even I could hear that particular note of pathetic in my tone.
To be honest, it probablywasthe flu. It was January—well, it’d be January in about fifteen hours—the season of illness. And don’t doctors say stress can weaken your immune system? In the last two weeks, I’d broken up with my boyfriend of four years, found my former boss murdered, gained a stalker, and was shot at. Oh, and had fallen head over heels for an older, newly out-of-the-closet cop who I’d heard very little from since Christmas.
That all might have had something to do with these sniffles.
I shifted in bed and stared at the nightstand. I had a full fucking pharmacy in action: a half-empty bottle of cough syrup, torn-open packages of a few different cold medications I’d been using over the last twenty-four hours, tissues everywhere….
“—run the Emporium myself,” Max was saying.
I raised my head from the mattress. “What? No.”
“Ican, Seb.”
“I know you can, but you don’t have a security code or even any petty cash. Take the day off. Don’t worry, I’ll pay you.”
“Sure, but—”
“Happy New Year,” I interrupted.
“Fine. I know when I’m not wanted,” Max concluded. “But promise if you get any worse, you’ll call your dad or Calvin, yeah? It’s hard to pick up a paycheck when you’re in the city morgue.”
I laid my head down again, frowning at the mere suggestion that Calvin Winter and I were now close enough that he’d be in my Top Three Contacts to whine to when I felt like human excrement. I mean, sure, I had this roller-coaster sensation in my gut whenever I saw him. The indescribable feeling that the personification of home was smiling at me. And he’d spent Christmas with me and Pop too, which I had assumed at the time meant…something. Confirmation that he felt about me the way I did him, I guess. Honestly, though, for someone who identified as a guy and had been exclusively into other men his entire life, I really didn’t seem to understand jackshit about them.
“Uh-huh,” I agreed. “I’m hanging up now.”
“Get some rest.”
