Chapter 5
After that mess, I went to the Community Center.
Demetrius was still near the fountain, watching me with that unreadable look of his.
I tried not to think about it.
“Eric?”
I turned. Penny was sitting on the bench near the entrance. She smiled when she saw me—soft, practiced, a little tired.
“Guess you take days off?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” she said. “Maru told me she comes here just to let time pass. I think I understand why.”
I glanced around. The place was quiet. Summer cicadas. Wind through broken windows.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s peaceful.”
She shook her head slightly.
“Maru comes here to decompress,” she said. “To relax. I come here to think.”
There was something tight in her voice.
I sat beside her.
“About what?”
She hesitated, fingers folding together in her lap.
“I used to think my life was… fine,” she said. “That I didn’t need to change anything. That wanting more was selfish.”
She swallowed. “Then you showed up.”
I felt my chest tighten.
“You work so hard,” she continued, faster now, like if she slowed down she’d stop. “You fix things. You don’t wait for permission. And I realized—this isn’t what I want. This can’t be all there is.”
Her eyes flicked to me, searching, almost pleading.
I tried to ground the conversation.
“But you seem happy,” I said. “At the museum. With Vincent and Jas. With Maru. With Sam.”
She laughed quietly. It wasn’t amused.
“That’s what scares me,” she said. “I do everything right. I smile. I teach. I help. And I still go home to a trailer that smells like alcohol and old regrets.”
Her hands tightened.
“I keep telling myself to be patient. To endure. But I don’t want to endure anymore.”
There it was—not resolve, not clarity. Desperation thinly held together.
I didn’t know what to say.
“So, what are you going to do?” I asked, mostly because silence felt dangerous.
She exhaled, shaky.
“I’m saving. Tutoring helps. Gunther pays me decently. Mom even gives me some of her unemployment money.”
She looked away. “I don’t know if that makes me grateful or ashamed.”
“Money controls everything,” I muttered.
I thought of my crops.
Pierre.
How fast my situation had flipped.
Then she asked, “What about you? Going back to the mines?”
“No,” I said. “I’m heading into the Community Center. I’ve got offerings to finish. Might even get the Boiler Room restored.”
Her face lit up, too quickly.
“Can I come with you?”
I blinked. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“No,” she said immediately. “I mean—after this I’ll just go home. This might be the only chance I get to spend time with you today.”
I hesitated. I noticed Sebastian lingering nearby. Demetrius, still watching.
“Alright,” I said. “You can come.”
Inside, Penny stared at the damage like she was seeing it for the first time.
“Oh my…” she whispered. “I never realized how bad it was.”
“It’s been decaying for years,” I said. “Lewis said Joja wanted to turn it into a warehouse.”
Her jaw set.
“I’m glad you won’t give them anything,” she said.
“I won’t,” I replied. “I’ve bought Joja Cola for requests. That’s it. Cheap. Empty. Fits them.”
She flushed at that, color rising to her cheeks.
“You talk like you mean things,” she said softly. “I like that.”
I shrugged. “My grandfather was mayor here, supposedly.”
Her eyes widened.
“I didn’t know that.”
“No one ever tells me anything,” I said. “They say he was loved, but nobody explains why.”
“I don’t know much either,” she admitted.
We reached the Boiler Room. I made the offerings—bars, monster parts, crystals.
I was missing one thing.
“So close,” I muttered.
Penny smiled faintly, but there was something fragile in it.
“That always happens,” she said. “You get near what you want… and something small stops you.”
I glanced at her.
There was weight behind that. More than the words should’ve carried.
A vault shifted open nearby, faint scripts forming across its surface. Penny leaned in to read them.
Too close.
“You’ve done so much in one month,” she said. “It’s incredible.”
I shifted slightly.
“Penny… you’re really close.”
She pulled back immediately, face flushing deeper.
“Oh—sorry.”
But the distance didn’t really return.
Something in the air stayed… off.
I turned back toward the bundles, trying to focus. Summer foraging. Still incomplete.
“Damn,” I muttered. “I’ll have to come back later.”
Silence.
Then—her hand.
Light at first. Then firmer, holding onto my arm like she needed something to stay in place.
“Penny?” I asked. “You okay?”
No answer.
Just that grip, tightening slightly.
I eased my arm free—not forcefully, just enough—and started toward the door. She followed a step behind me.
When I reached the threshold—
“Eric.”
I stopped.
Something in her voice made it impossible not to.
I turned halfway. “Penny?”
She didn’t look up.
For a moment, I thought—hoped—she might let it go.
That she’d laugh it off. Step back. Pretend this never happened.
Instead, she took a step forward.
Then another.
Her hands rose.
And I knew.
Not guessed. Not suspected.
Knew.
Everything in me tensed.
I thought of Emily.
Of Sam.
Of how quickly things could break once this line was crossed.
“This shouldn’t be happening,” I said, my voice coming out quieter than I meant. “Not here. Not now.”
She shook her head, just slightly.
“If I walk away now…” she said, voice trembling, “I go back to that life.”
That stopped me.
Not because it made sense. Because it didn’t. Because I didn’t know how to answer it.
I could’ve stepped back. I could’ve stopped her. I could’ve said no.
Instead, I stood there— caught between hurting her now or hurting everyone else later.
And I chose nothing.
I froze.
Her hands touched my face.
Warm. Unsteady. Too certain.
“Never again.” She said.
And then she closed the distance and kissed me.
Everything tilted.
Afterward, the room felt wrong—too quiet, too close. Like something had shifted and refused to shift back.
I didn’t remember moving. Didn’t remember deciding anything.
Only that when it was over, the distance between us felt… irreversible.
Something had been crossed.
Not broken.
Crossed.
And I couldn’t uncross it.
The door opened.
I didn’t notice at first.
Not until the air changed.
A shift—subtle, but wrong.
I looked up.
Sebastian stood in the doorway.
Still.
Completely still.
For a moment, he didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t even blink.
His eyes were locked on us—wide, unfocused, like his brain hadn’t caught up to what it was seeing.
Like it refused to.
“...”
The silence stretched.
Too long.
Then—
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
His voice was quiet.
Not angry.
That made it worse.
I pushed myself upright too quickly, the room still spinning.
“Wha—what?” I said, the words falling out without meaning.
Penny stood just as fast beside me, already bracing.
Sebastian let out a short breath. It almost sounded like a laugh—but there was nothing behind it.
“You both have better partners,” he said. “And this is what you do?”
Penny stepped forward immediately.
“You don’t understand,” she said, too fast, too loud. “Sam barely has time to breathe. He works at Joja, he practices with you, he’s holding his family together with duct tape. I see him maybe a few days a week—”
Sebastian flinched. Not at her volume.
At the
words.
“And I’m running out of time too,” she continued, voice unraveling now. “I teach. I tutor. I clean. I go home and hope my mom doesn’t implode. The only people I can talk to honestly are Sam, Eric—and Maru.”
That name landed.
Hard.
Sebastian’s hands curled into fists at his sides.
“If—” he started, then stopped, like he had to force the words out past something in his throat. “If you drag Maru into this…”
Penny’s gaze dropped.
“I’ve been trying not to,” she said quietly. “But she’s not someone you can protect forever. You know that.”
Sebastian ran a hand through his hair, pacing once, like the room had suddenly become too small.
“Sweet Yoba…” he muttered. “Abigail. Sam. Maru…”
He looked up at me then.
Not past me.
At me.
“How many people have to get pulled into this before it stops?”
I didn’t have an answer.
I didn’t even understand the full shape of the question.
“We can’t stop,” Penny said softly. “We can only move forward.”
That did it.
Something in him just… gave way.
Not louder. Not bigger.
Colder.
She turned to me.
“Goodbye, Eric,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”
And then she walked past him.
Sebastian didn’t move to stop her.
Didn’t even look at her as she passed.
He just stood there, staring ahead like if he moved, something else might break.
The door closed behind her.
The sound echoed.
Only then did he look back at me.
Whatever had been there before—shock, anger, confusion—was gone.
Replaced with something quieter. Sharper.
“You keep trusting the wrong people.” he said.
No heat. No hesitation.
“First Pierre, now this.”
I swallowed, but nothing came out.
“When are you going to learn to say no?”
That hit harder than anything else he’d said.
Because I had known.
And I hadn’t.
He exhaled through his nose, shaking his head once.
Not dramatic.
Just… done.
“Whatever,” he said. “I’m done.”
He turned and walked out.
No slam.
No final word.
Just absence.
And somehow, that felt worse.
I hadn’t noticed him at first.
Which meant he’d been there longer than I realized.
“You doing alright, Eric?”
His voice was calm.
Too calm.
I flinched slightly, my body only just catching up to everything that had already happened. My hands still felt unsteady. My thoughts—worse.
“I—I don’t know what just happened,” I said. “I just wanted to show Penny around, and then—”
“She overwhelmed you,” Demetrius said gently.
He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t ask.
Just… decided.
I looked at him, thrown off by how quickly he’d reduced it to something simple.
“She didn’t mean to,” he continued, stepping just close enough to feel present—but not enough to feel intrusive. “People rarely do. Emotion has a way of bypassing restraint.”
His tone wasn’t comforting.
It was… instructional.
Like he was explaining a result.
“You froze,” he added, watching me carefully. “That happens when the mind detects conflict it can’t resolve fast enough.”
My chest tightened.
That was exactly what it felt like.
I hadn’t moved.
Not forward. Not away.
Just… stuck.
“I’ve seen it before,” Demetrius said. “In others. In myself.”
He exhaled lightly, like he was recalling something clinical rather than personal.
“Robin has always been… impulsive with affection,” he added. “Passion can be difficult to regulate when it builds without structure.”
That shouldn’t have made me feel better.
But it did.
Because it made it sound… normal.
Explainable.
Something that followed rules.
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
“Love tends to destabilize people,” he continued. “Though I wouldn’t rush to classify what happened here as love.”
That word—
love—felt wrong now.
Too heavy. Too distorted.
“H-how is Maru going to feel about this?” I asked.
For just a second—barely a second—something shifted in his expression.
Then it was gone.
“Maru prefers clarity,” he said. “Ambiguity creates stress responses. But Penny is one of her closest friends.”
A pause.
“She will adapt.”
Not
cope.
Not
process.
Adapt.
Like this was inevitable.
Like people were variables.
He shifted slightly, already disengaging.
“Don’t let my stepson’s reaction define your behavior,” he said. “He tends to interpret emotionally rather than structurally.”
That stung more than it should have.
“You’re under pressure,” Demetrius continued. “But you’re adjusting remarkably well.”
He smiled.
Small. Measured. Like he was confirming a hypothesis.
“Try not to internalize this as failure,” he added. “It’s data.”
Data.
That word settled somewhere deep—and wrong.
“See you later, Eric.”
And then he walked past me.
Just like that.
Like nothing had happened.
I stood there alone.
My hands steadier now.
My breathing slower.
My thoughts… quieter.
And that was the part that scared me.
Not what happened with Penny.
Not Sebastian seeing.
Not even what this would do to everything else.
But how easily—
how
cleanly—
Demetrius had taken something messy and made it make sense.
I didn’t feel better.
I felt… organized.
And I didn’t know if that was worse.
I stumbled into the Saloon feeling hollow.
Not tired.
Not even upset.
Just… emptied out. Like whatever part of me made decisions had shut down and left everything else behind to deal with it.
“Ah! Eric!” Gus called. “Have a seat.”
Pam, Shane, and Emily were already there. Their voices blurred together for a second before settling into something I could follow.
I sat.
“I heard about Pierre,” Gus said quietly. “That’s… a new low. Even for him.”
Pierre.
Right.
That was supposed to be the worst part of my day.
Pam barked out a laugh, loud enough to turn a few heads.
“This is the guy you’re trusting?” she scoffed. “He’s a snake, just like the rest of them.”
She leaned back in her chair, grinning like she’d just proven something.
“You really think you’re gonna take down Joja with
him? That’s cute.”
I didn’t answer.
Not because I disagreed, but because I couldn’t seem to hold onto the thought long enough to respond.
Pam kept going anyway.
“Whole town runs on people like that,” she said. “They smile, they take, they lie—then they call it business. You think you’re different? You think you’re gonna fix it?”
Her eyes locked onto mine.
“Kid, you’re not the first person to think they can outplay the system.”
Gus shifted uncomfortably behind the counter. Emily looked down at her drink.
Shane didn’t laugh, agree or interrupt.
But I felt his eyes on me. Watching. Like he was trying to line something up that didn’t quite fit.
I wondered, briefly, if he could see it—how off I felt.
How something in me hadn’t settled right since the Community Center.
Since Demetrius spoke to me a few days ago.
Since—
I cut the thought off before it could finish.
“Eric,” Emily said gently.
Her voice didn’t cut through the noise. It softened it.
“Did you know bees and butterflies are my best friends?”
I blinked, the shift catching me off guard.
“N-no?”
She smiled, warm and steady.
“You should build a beehouse,” she said. “They’re easy to make. You’d have them all over your farm.”
Something small. Something simple. Something that didn’t spiral.
I grabbed onto it without thinking.
“That… actually sounds nice,” I said. “I’d just need some maple syrup.”
Emily brightened. “Tappers. They take forever.”
“Still worth it,” I said automatically. “Honey sells well. Especially with flowers. I could keep it going until winter.”
She tilted her head, just slightly.
“Eric,” she said softly, “not everything has to be about money.”
The words landed gently, yet they still hit harder than Pam’s did.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just… trying to keep things from falling apart today.”
That was the closest I could get to the truth without saying it.
Emily nodded, like she understood more than I’d actually said.
“I’m glad you came here,” she said.
Clint pushed through the door a few minutes later, shoulders tight, eyes flicking around before settling on us.
“Hey, Eric,” he said. “You uh… holding up after the Pierre thing?”
Everyone’s too busy talking about Pierre.
No one said anything about the Community Center.
About Demetrius.
About Penny.
Pam doesn’t even know what happened.
Would it break her?
“I’ll manage,” I said.
The words felt rehearsed.
Like something I was supposed to say.
“Oh, sure you will,” Pam snorted. “That’s what they all say.”
She took another drink, shaking her head.
“Then one day they wake up and realize the system already swallowed them whole.”
There was a beat of silence after that.
Shane shifted slightly beside me.
“Lay off,” he muttered—not looking at her, not looking at me either.
It wasn’t defense. More like… discomfort.
Like he didn’t like how close she was getting to something neither of us had said out loud.
He glanced at me again.
Longer this time.
Like he wanted to ask something.
Whatever he was seeing, he wasn’t ready to name it either.
And somehow that made it worse.
“I… should go,” I said.
The room felt too small suddenly.
Too loud. Too aware.
Emily stood immediately.
“Then I will too.”
No hesitation. No questions.
She just made the decision like it was obvious.
“Come on.”
I hesitated—just for a second.
Then I stood and followed her out.
I walked her home.
Neither of us spoke at first. The night felt quieter than usual—like it was waiting.
When we reached her door, Emily rested her hand lightly against the frame, but didn’t go in.
She turned to me.
“Eric,” she asked gently, “is something wrong?”
I almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because I didn’t even know where to start.
“I could say no,” I said. “And maybe part of me would even believe it.”
My voice cracked anyway.
Her expression softened immediately. She didn’t rush me. Didn’t fill the silence.
So I started talking.
Not in order.
Not clean.
Just… whatever came up.
“There was something in the sewers,” I said. “With the kids. I don’t even know what it was, but it talked. And it knew things it shouldn’t.”
I let out a breath, shaky.
“Pierre lied about my crops. Took credit for them like it was nothing.”
I rubbed my face.
“I saw Alex and Haley together. I don’t even know why that stuck with me, but it did.”
My thoughts kept jumping.
“Jodi found out about Pierre. Caroline snapped. It just—everything fell apart all at once.”
Emily stayed quiet.
Not distant.
Present.
Like she was holding the space open for me to keep going.
“And then…” I swallowed. “I ran into Penny.”
Something in her expression lifted—just a little.
“What happened?” she asked softly.
“She wasn’t just sitting there,” I said. “Not really. I thought she was lonely, but…” I shook my head. “She wasn’t lonely. She was… running out of room to breathe.”
Emily’s focus sharpened, but she didn’t interrupt.
“She talked about leaving,” I continued. “About how this isn’t the life she wants. About how she’s tired of just… enduring it.”
I hesitated.
“I showed her the Community Center. I don’t know why. I just—” I exhaled. “I wanted someone to see it the way I do.”
A beat.
“I wish it had been you.”
Something flickered in her eyes.
But she didn’t stop me.
“She kept getting closer,” I said. “And I kept telling myself it would stop. That she’d stop.”
My hands curled slightly.
“I knew something was wrong. I just didn’t… act.”
My throat tightened.
“She kissed me.”
The words landed between us, heavy and final.
“Sebastian saw,” I added quickly. “Demetrius too. If this gets out—”
I stopped.
Because that wasn’t the part that mattered.
“I didn’t stop her,” I said instead, quieter. “I could’ve. I think I could’ve.”
I looked down.
“I just… froze.”
Saying it out loud made it feel real in a way it hadn’t before.
“I wasn’t thinking about what I wanted,” I said. “I was thinking about what would happen if I pushed her away. How much it would hurt her.”
I let out a hollow breath.
“And somehow that still made it worse.”
Silence settled again.
But this time, it wasn’t empty.
It was… steady.
“I thought I understood what love was,” I said. “when I met you.”
I glanced at her, then away.
“And now I don’t even know what I’m supposed to feel anymore.”
I told her everything after that.
Not just Penny.
Everything.
The burnout. The leaving. The constant feeling of trying to hold things together before they fell apart.
By the time I stopped, I felt wrung out.
Emily didn’t cry.
She stepped forward instead and wrapped her arms around me.
No hesitation. No questions.
I leaned into her before I could stop myself.
I needed that more than I wanted to admit.
“Penny is in a lot of pain,” she said softly. “I can understand why she would reach for you.”
She didn’t defend or excuse it. She just… understood it.
She pulled back slightly, just enough to meet my eyes.
“But you didn’t choose that moment,” she said. “You were trying to hold too many things at once.”
Her voice stayed gentle—but there was something firm underneath it.
“You don’t want that.”
Something in my chest loosened.
Just a little.
“I know you care for her,” Emily continued. “but what you feel for her isn’t steady.
She hesitated, searching for the right word.
“It’s… reactive,” she said. “you’re responding to her pain but not building something with her.”
That felt… right.
In a way I hadn’t been able to say.
“Sometimes love heals.” she said softly. “And sometimes it reopens unhealed wounds.”
I exhaled slowly.
Breathing felt easier.
“I don’t hate her,” Emily added. “I just worry about her. When someone holds on that tightly… they can hurt themselves without realizing it.”
She stepped closer again, resting her forehead lightly against mine.
“I trust you,” she said. “Even when things get complicated.”
That landed deeper than anything else she’d said.
Then she stepped back.
“Get some rest,” she added gently. “Tomorrow feels… different.”
She went inside, with the door closed softly behind her.
I stood there for a while, staring at it.
Trying to hold onto that feeling—that brief, quiet sense that maybe everything wasn’t collapsing at once.
Eventually, I turned and headed home.
