The Final Countdown - Season I

Episode I: Part 3: I'm Scared of Coffee

This day was fraught...FRAUGHT...with tough decisions.

Confronting Eddie about the toothbrush had been a tough decision. He always had compelling arguments for everything, even the time he tried to convince her that rain was really just old dinosaur pee, but enough was enough.

Leaving had been a tough decision. He was nuts, but maybe he wasn't the worst thing that had ever happened to her. 

Now, Val was toe-to-toe with yet another impossible choice.

What to get at the coffee shop. 

"Come on!" Her best friend, Anna-Lynn, was buying. "We haven't gone for coffee in five years, and you don't know what to get?"

"It's him." She shook her head. The chalk letters of the coffee shop's endless offerings swam in front of her, blending into a giant pastel mess of scones, iced lattes, and tea made out of flowers she was pretty sure were poisonous.

"What?" Anna-Lynn's round face was framed by a wild mane of red curls. It made her look like a particularly angry sun, and when she got mad, it wasn't too big of a stretch of the imagination to think she might burst into flames. "He didn't let you come?! You never told me that!"

"No, no, nothing like that."

A scone? A tea? Dare she get...no, too risky.

"Then what?" Anna-Lynn wasn't letting it go. "Hurry up, you got a line behind you."

She glanced at the cashier. The plastered-on smile, the tight ponytail fraying at the edges, and the milk-encrusted apron gave the girl the thin veneer of someone who would gleefully murder the next customer that tested her patience.

"He read a thing."

"A thing."

"Yeah, a thing. He read a thing where they found that coffee companies genetically modified the beans. They infused each bean's DNA with pure cocaine, so that people got hooked even faster."

Anna-Lynn burst into peals of laughter.

"You're scared of coffee?"

She ordered a green tea. The homicidal cashier punched in the order and took her money.

"I'm scared of coffee." 

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