Liminal Space | A Stardew Valley FanFiction

Chapter 8

"To Thomas Edison!" Sam proclaimed with a goofy grin on his face, raising his shot towards the ceiling.

"To—dude, what?" Sebastian replied, his glass stopped midway in the air.

"Thomas Edison, man," Sam scoffed. "The creator of the lightbulb?"

"Yeah, I know who Thomas Edison is, idiot. What's he got to do with anything?"

"The power is back on," Sam said, lowering his hand and tapping his foot impatiently. "Without Thomas Edison, we would have had to live in the dark, like, forever. I'm staying grateful—not forgetting where I came from. You wouldn't understand."

Abigail and I exchanged a knowing glance, rolling our eyes at the pure stupidity unfolding before us.

"Can we drink now, or not?" Abigail groaned.

"I second that," Sebastian echoed. I looked down as they locked eyes, refusing to read into it. I swallowed the tequila and the uneasiness in a less-than-graceful swig, silently signaling Sam to get pouring.

While Sam's toast may have been mildly bizarre, the message remained true: the power was back. The storm still raged outside, rendering Sam and Abigail stranded alongside me in The Basement, but there was something comforting about celebrating the tiny victories.

"Mm," Robin hummed, swishing her rosé around the base of her glass, gently holding the stem, and taking a sip. "If Thomas Edison is who I have to thank for the fridge being up and running, so be it. I was damn tired of room temperature wine."

"No shot for you?" Sam questioned, wiggling his eyebrows and pushing one of the liquor bottles towards her.

"I outgrew shitty vodka a long time ago," Robin chuckled, sliding it back. "And don't even try to offer me that tequila. Bad memories."

I laughed as she shuddered at the sight of it, Sam placing a second, rather generous shot between Sebastian's fingers and following suit for the rest of us. As he opened his mouth to speak, Sebastian cut him off, "how about no toast for this one?"

"Whatever you say, big man," Sam agreed, clinking the base of the glass against the table and shooting his head backwards.

The evening disappeared to a dizzying haze, each drink going down easier than its predecessor. Abby, bubbly beside me, matched my pace and descended into drunkenness with me; together, we sat at the kitchen table, on top of the world.

Robin barely outlasted her first glass of wine, rinsing it out and heading towards her and Demetrius's bedroom before ten o'clock. Sam—renowned for overdoing it—finished half of a bottle, bobbing along with Abigail and I and receiving sideways glances from Sebastian, who, per usual, seemed eerily sober. He sipped on a mystery drink and watched us—Abby, mainly; I watched him watch her and resented him for it.

I tried to ignore it. I tried to ignore the lust in their eyes and the prospect of...them. The longer I dwelled on it, the more entangled in their web I became; no matter what I did, the time would pass, and the prophecy would fulfill itself. Sebastian and Abigail were inevitable, it felt—more and more so with each fleeting second—that people like them were meant to find one another. The always around but never together trope, the picture-perfect grumpy boy falls for the sunshine girl; every single cliché that I thought could never happen to real people was happening, in real time, in front of me.

I hated it.

I wondered which of my decisions put the final nail in the coffin. Probably the renovation, I decided. I couldn't really afford it anyway, and now the farmhouse was ruined, and I had to stay here, and that's why Abby came up here to begin with, which is why she's stuck here, and now she's thinking about him in that way and God, if I'd never done that, maybe things would be different. The words bled together in my brain—which only half worked at this point—and forced themselves into every crevice—every nook and cranny—of my being.