“How much cold medicine did you take?”

“Stop trying to change the subject.” I sneezed. “Excuse me. Stuff came out. Gross. Wow, that almost looks alive—”

Otter groaned. “I take it back. I’m never coming home.”

“Bullshit,” I’d said with a sniff. “You love me. That’s why you wrecked the home and seduced me and ruined me for anyone else.”

“I pretty much did all that, didn’t I?”

“You don’t get to sound all smug about that. I contributed to the wrecking.”

He’d sounded like he was smiling when he’d said, “It all worked out in the end.”

“Ugh. You’re getting sappy. Go away.”

“I’ll call you later.”

“Yeah, yeah. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

And then I’d shut down, the TV squawking in the background, waiting for that one specific moment when my nose would clear and I’d be able to breathe again. I was convinced it would be the greatest thing I’d ever experienced, and I’d—

The doorbell rang.

I opened my eyes, unsure of what the hell had just happened.

It rang again a moment later.

“I don’t want any!” I shouted at the door. “I’m dying, so I wouldn’t even be able to taste your Girl Scout cookies or hear you talk about your lord and savior Jesus Christ!”

The doorbell rang again.

Fucking persistent Girl Scouts and/or lovers of Christ.

Or maybe it was a robber. With a knife.

Had I remembered to lock the door?

I didn’t know.

I was going to get stabbed by a robber.

They’d find my body, snot on my upper lip, used tissues on the ground, and say, “Well, he looks gross.”

Otter and the Kid would be sad for a little bit, sure. Maybe they’d cry at the funeral, but they’d both move on. Otter would get married to the Martha Stewart reject and they’d have kids with perfectly coiffed hair, and Tyson would get hired on by PETA and eventually stage a military coup and force vegetarianism on everyone else.

“I can’t let that happen,” I muttered. “I can’t get stabbed and die.” I tried to get up, but that turned out to be a bad idea, so I sat back down with a groan. “Okay. Fine. Come in. You can kill me. Just make it quick. And tell Otter that when he gets remarried to Phinneus Van der Woods the fourth, he’s not allowed to have his engagement announcement in the New York Times say anything about how the happy couple likes to go yachting in their spare time, because that’s just fucking stupid. Seriously. Yachting? They might as well also play croquet using mallets made out of wood repurposed from the old Summer House that had been built by Jebediah Van der Woods in the late 1800s.”

“Wow,” a voice I didn’t recognize said. “That was… specific.”