Won't Roux Be My Neighbor

Local Flour Outage

In some ways, power outages held a type of charm.

For a moment, the busybodies hunkered down for warmth, the ever-present hum of appliances silenced, and it seemed like the whole world stood still. Which was fine when Louise wanted to sleep of course, but now it felt... lonely.

Gone were the days when her family bunkered in Mom and Dad's room under all the stale-smelling quilts they pulled out of the very back of their closets. Louise remembered how they huddled together, talking about nothing until Tina thrashed. She even kind of missed groaning at Gene for Dutch oven-ing the place up. Kind of.

Determined not to let that ache in her chest control her, she decided to make friends with the inanimate objects of her apartment. She wandered into the bathroom where the only movement came from her slowly leaking faucets.

"So. What's going on in here?" Louise asked the sink. "Still keeping the pipes from bursting?"

It did not respond, and she didn't have the energy to give it a funny little voice.

She watched the drip- drip- drip a while, oddly mesmerized by the rhythm. Despite the chill, she took off her glove and held her knuckles under the freezing water. It jolted her awake, and she regained enough sense to yank her hand back and cradle it.

Man. She really missed the internet.

The first day without power had been a breeze. Well-stocked in nonperishables with plenty of emergency supplies on hand, any survival worries rolled right off her back. If anything, Louise delighted at the mandatory day off and used at least fourteen hours to do nothing but sleep.

The second day, she realized that her phone's data sucked, which... still wasn't that bad. She had an apartment to herself, no coworkers and no clients to bug her or ugly office wall art to assault her eyes. Nope, she had her own perfectly curated, mismatched thrift store furniture to hold her attention. So she couldn't watch a movie to entertain her in the interim. Big deal, right?

As her bones began to ice over on the third day, she realized it was, in fact, a very big deal.

Now, moving into the fourth day, Louise noticed the frayed edges and fading vibrance of her perfectly curated furniture. Some of the weirder pieces of decor that didn't quite fit but held a special place in her heart now seemed dysfunctional together. Were those shades of green always that obnoxious?

While she wanted nothing more than to brave the dumb storm and make sure her dad actually closed the restaurant like he said he would (and maybe get a little free entertainment by watching whatever nutso thing her mom had no doubt cooked up to pass the time), she settled for succumbing to the stir craze and pacing around her apartment.

Again.

And again.

And ag-

An erratic knock at her door broke Louise's focus on the twelfth lap of her living room. Maybe Tina had come to make sure she was alive? That seemed very Tina-to do something stupid out of love.

Rather than a round-eyed worrier-warrior, she opened her door to a pathetic and soaking blond.

"Can m- motorcycles jumpstart cars?"

Processing Logan's request, she took in his wet hair but otherwise unfrozen form.

"Have you been sitting in the parking garage?" Louise asked, crossing her arms. "Isn't that how you get carbon monoxide poisoning?"

"Answer... the question-n," he demanded.

She opened her mouth, but her sight drifted to the bits of snow caught in his lashes. They looked so delicate on a man who was not. Reaching for his face to brush some of the ice off, she remembered herself suddenly and changed trajectories. Rather than a gentle brush, she grabbed roughly at Logan's coat to tug him inside.