Coffee and Spice | Harvey | Stardew Valley

-19-

I continue to drink with Shane by the river each night. These encounters are only fragmented by a few meaningless words shared between us upon my arrival before we lapse back into silence. I can't say that the silence is necessarily comfortable, but it feels complete somehow. Natural. Like we're planets orbiting each other on a preordained path, wholly separate and alien to each other despite being part of the same arbitrary system. I sometimes forget he's even there next to me until he wordlessly gets up and walks away in his habitual inclination towards abruptness.

We keep to the territory of our own minds. He doesn't volunteer any more insight into the reasoning behind his renewed fixation with alcohol and I don't pry. After that first night, he had sealed a door between us that did not even allow light to pierce underneath. Though he doesn't show it, I sense he is wrestling with troubled thoughts on his side of the door, just as I am on mine.

There's no one else. There could never be anyone else besides you.

Harvey's words echo in my thoughts. And, having nowhere else to go, they just bounce off the walls of my mind and resound back to me again and again.

Days pass by me in a blur. Or rather, I pass through them. There, but not - like a ghost.

After nearly a week of this, familiar anger returns to me once more. I give in to it, let the numbness and confusion fall away to make room for this default emotion that seems to be the only one that makes sense. I don't go to mine and Shane's drinking spot that night. Instead, I stay home, simmering in my own thoughts until long after the moon has engulfed the sky. When I can't stand it any longer, I head resolutely towards town. I'm going to confront him. I'm going to tell him that we need to just forget about each other and act like we'd never met. That we're better off that way.

The walk feels short. Once I reach the clinic, I bang on the door, not caring who is around to hear. I wield my anger like a weapon, pushing all of my other emotions far out of reach. I don't even wait long enough to get an answer. I barge in the door, ready to let my words fly like arrows and land where they may. Someone is standing in the small waiting room, but it's not Harvey. It's Marnie. Tears are streaking down her round face. My anger shrivels up instantly.

"What happened?" I choke out.

Marnie's face crumples at my question and her crying morphs into terrible sobs that shake her entire body. My skin prickles with alarm.

"What happened?" I ask again, more forcefully this time. I wouldn't usually be this brusque, but fear is sinking into me right down to the bone. My eyes shoot around the room, trying to make sense of the circumstances. Only about half of the lights are switched on and there's no sound beyond the closed door that leads into the hallway of examination rooms. No Maru. No Harvey.

Just as I'm about to start investigating myself, the door leading into the hallway opens and - even more absurdly - it's Willy that steps out to greet us.

"Harvey says he's gonna be okay," he reports before either of us can get a question in. "But he'll have to stay overnight."

"Thank Yoba," Marnie gasps, taking the offered tissue Willy has snagged from a box on the receptionist desk. "I'll never be able to repay you for finding him when you did, Willy."

Willy shakes his head with his characteristic kind smile, though it doesn't lift his eyes at the corners the way it usually does. "No need to repay me, I'm just glad I found 'em when I did. You should head back home and try to get some shut-eye. It's been a long night."

Marnie pulls in a shuddering breath, still mopping her eyes. "Thank you, Willy. Thank you so m-much. I can't...I don't even know what I'm going to do."

"It'll all work out," Willy says, patting her arm. "It always does. You've got a lot of folks that care about you and your family here."