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Chapter 18
Gen’s fingers fumbled with the cap of the aspirin bottle as she tried desperately to line up the arrows, attempting to focus through eyes that had reset their default setting to “blurry.”
“God damn it, why do they make these bottles so freaking difficult to open,” she muttered under her breath. “Don’t they know that you wouldn’t need the stuff if you were actually in any kind of state to be capable of figuring it out?”
The muscle exertion of making her eyes try to focus only sharpened the blades driving themselves into her brain from all angles.
She struggled to do the math in her head. Was the extra percentage of pain caused by trying to get the medicine out of the bottle worth the possible potential relief that the elusive medication might provide?
But, again. Straining her brain only made it hurt more.
Finally, she decided to give up and just go get some coffee. Hell, wasn’t aspirin roughly seventy-five percent caffeine anyway? It was basically the same stuff when you boiled it down.
Yeah, even in her near-paralyzing hangover haze, she knew that statistic was bullshit but clinging to it made her feel better anyway, and her motto was any port in a throbbing headache storm would do.
She stumbled down to the break room with her mug and poured coffee into it. She then carried the mug over to the condiment station.
Normally, she took her coffee black. Not because she liked the taste. It was bitter and wouldn’t have been her first choice. She just liked telling people that she took it black. She thought it fit in with her “fierce, independent, ball-busting female professional” image.
Well, this morning she didn’t care. She was going to pour so much damn sugar into this hot bean juice that people might think she was about to bake a cake. Hell, her “fierce, independent, ball-busting female professional” image had been under siege from so many angles, both external and internal, since Gavin had returned, anyway. It had taken so many shots already that she seriously doubted a little bit of sugar in her coffee was going to make a whole lot of difference one way or the other.
“Apparently, you have a very bright future ahead of you.”
Oh, lord. Gen recognized that voice, and it was just about the last person she wanted to deal with at the moment.
She turned her head as slightly as she could possibly get away with. Her neck was killing her and Bernice Baxter just wasn’t worth the effort.
It wasn’t that Bernice was a bad person. Far from it. She was just annoyingly, unrelentingly cheerful. In a very in-your-face sort of way. And Gen just wasn’t up for it. Not even close.
“Good morning, Bernice.”
“It is, isn’t it? Just a gorgeous, sunny morning where the world seems full of nothing but beauty and possibility!”
If I turned around and strangled her right now, I think I’d probably get off. There’s no way a jury of my peers would convict me.
“Hmmm.” The small murmur of semi-agreement was all she could manage.
“Especially for you. I mean, with your future being so bright and all.”
Oh, God. She’s hitting that phrase hard. She’s clearly fishing for me to ask about it.
Gen tried to make her voice as pleasant as possible. “What do you mean, my future being so bright?”
Bernice gestured at her face and Gen raised her hand up to see what she might be referring to. Had she sprung a giant mole overnight? Did she have something green and gross in her teeth? What?
Her fingers bumped into plastic and she suddenly remembered– her sunglasses. That’s right. She was still wearing them. The fluorescent glare of the overhead lights had proved too much for her eyes to handle when she’d tried to take them off this morning so she’d just decided to leave them on.
The lyrics of a cheesy eighties’ song wormed their way into Gen’s consciousness. Something about the future being bright and having to wear shades. That must’ve been the joke her co-worker was going for.
So, now, in addition to cotton-mouth, nausea, and a pounding headache– she’d have an unshakable earworm to deal with all day.
Great.
She finished pouring the virtual snowfall of sugar into her coffee and picked up the cup. “Well, nice seeing you, Bernice,” she said, and attempted to move past the woman and out the break room door.
Bernice, though, apparently had other plans. She moved slightly, so that she was subtly, yet still quite effectively, blocking the exit that led out to the main office. AKA, Genevieve’s escape route.
Gen pressed a hand to her forehead. She was losing patience. Which was weird because she hadn’t realized that she’d had any to lose.
