Emma went back to the police station in the morning to be reassigned to a new job.
She was tempted, for a moment, to get Chase to go with her, but she made herself leave the house before she gave into it. Chase was worried about her, but that didn’t mean he was suddenly okay with what she was doing. He might try to talk her out of going, and she feared he might actually succeed, so she was leaving before he even woke up.
The walk to the station was decidedly more grim than it was before. For one, no one bothered her on the way, and she kept thinking about what she would do if they gave her the same list again. She didn’t want to admit to one failure already.
It was less crowded than it had been the day before, and she found an officer to help her much quicker. She gave her name and intent and mentioned she'd been by the day before, but that was as much detail as she would give.
She breathed a quiet sigh of relief when she wasn’t asked for more detail.
"Would you be able to go to a neighboring town and see how they're doing?"
She nodded. "What exactly would I be looking for?"
"The other towns must be in better shape, since half of our own town was destroyed in the plane crash. We need a lot of resources coming in, so try to offer services for food in the other town—they have the largest supermarket in the surrounding area and are better set up for the incoming food crisis."
Negotiation.
She'd never attempted anything like that. If this bigger town had more food, they'd be hard pressed to offer it up. But they'd need a lot more than just food, wouldn’t they? Still, getting them to part with any of it wasn’t going to be easy.
But it was another way to help the town, and it should be easier than anything she's already dealt with. She'd have to think up a plan and hope it worked.
"I can go and try to talk to the mayor if I can. I'll think of some ideas of how the people in town can make themselves useful to the neighbors."
The most important thing she needed to worry about was transportation. She knew the town the officer was talking about, there was only one area with a big supermarket, but it was a fair bit of distance away. She had her parents' bikes... but she didn’t want to use them. She wasn’t sure they'd even be safe after constant use that cut off for ten years. Maybe she was just making excuses, but anyway, she didn’t want to have to go back home to get it, because then she'd come across Chase and he might insist on following her.
Going with someone might be a good idea, but she needed to learn to stop using Chase as a crutch. He wasn’t always going to be there to help her out forever.
"Um, could I borrow a bike from somewhere?" she asked tentatively when it looked like the officer was about to turn to other business. "I had one before, two actually, but I went out with them and they got stolen."
He glanced at her before looking away and called someone else over. The other officer hurried over and they spoke for a moment. Then the other officer turned to her with a nod.
"We'll get two bikes ready." And he was off again.
She frowned after him, before turning back to the man in front of her. Two? "Am I going to be accompanied by someone?"
Before he could reply, someone appeared from another room, looking ready to go. Emma looked up, and wanted to curse when she realized that someone was Brian.
Of all the people... Chase would have been better.
She was tempted to decline, say she could do it herself, or say she already had a partner, if they could just let her go call him. Bothering Chase was so much better than having to deal with Brian again. After the last conversation they'd had, the last thing she wanted was to be stuck with him for hours.
There was no way she could back out, though. The officer she'd been speaking to had already turned to someone else. Brian himself looked uncomfortable, before steeling himself and moving to stand beside her, but not too close.
"We need to get going soon," was all he said.
His eyes were cautious, like he knew she wanted to refuse. She realized he probably felt the same, but he was prepared to go ahead anyway.
She sighed and clenched her fists. You're not going out for a joyride. Maybe it won't be so bad. She didn’t exactly agree with her thoughts, but she agreed with Brian, reluctantly.
"Yeah."
Despite the awkwardness, when the other officer came back to show them off to their bikes, they went off together by silent agreement.
They set off in silence. Emma didn’t think it would last, the town was a bit of a distance away, and if they were quiet the whole way it was going to drive her insane. She hadn't thought much about Brian after he'd walked off on her before, but now he was all she could think about, because of the close proximity.
She kept thinking back to the time since they met, to when the affair started and the time in between that and the current state. She hadn't seen any emotions in the relationship, and somehow she didn’t think she was wrong. Brian had insisted on having feelings for her, but he hadn't explained what kind of feelings. She didn’t want to ask about it, though.
It was hard to tell without a watch, but she knew she didn’t last long before she broke and talked first.
"So..." she murmured, shooting him a look in the corner of her eye.
He just faced forward and continued pedaling. She was surprised he was even keeping pace with her, she knew he worked out so he could go a lot faster if he wanted.
"How have the kids been?"
The words fell awkwardly out of her mouth, sounding so much like the small talk they'd engage in right before they slept together. He didn’t answer anyway, and she wracked her brain for more words to say.
"What task did you get to do yesterday? Was it hard?"
She waited... but Brian didn’t take the bait. She glared ahead, getting a little annoyed herself. If it were anyone else she wouldn’t be pushing for this, but this was a man she'd known for years, whether or not she really knew him. If it were Chase, any silence between them would be comfortable, because just his presence was comforting for Emma.
Brian, though, she couldn’t help feeling guilty about the whole situation. They were something that should never have happened, and though she would have liked to blame it all on him, she was as much to blame. She knew what she was doing the first time she slept with him. She stayed away from him for a while but eventually went looking for him again, and the pattern continued for too long.
She needed an outlet and he was convenient, safer. She used him, remorseful maybe, but it didn’t change the facts just because she was sorry.
"Look, Brian." She chewed on her lip and shot a glance at him again, before taking in a deep breath and saying what she wanted to, what she should have before.
"About yesterday, I'm sorry. If I seemed a little harsh cutting off our relationship, it's because I've wanted to end it for a while. It was wrong when it started, it never should have started, and it was eating me up every time I let myself think about it. Especially when I talked to Kellen, because she caught me leaving for work in the morning, knowing what I was doing behind her back. But... I hadn't realized it meant something to you, and I am so sorry."
He didn’t give a response immediately, and this time, she didn’t try to prompt him. She'd said what she wanted to, if he didn’t speak they were going to last in awkward silence until they made it to their destination. She'd just have to bear with it and hope it didn’t leave her nerves too frazzled to talk to the Mayor they were going to see.
But then after a while, she heard him sigh. She resisted the urge to glance over at him, waiting for him to speak to her. Eventually, he did.
"You don’t have to be sorry. It's not all your fault, I do know that."
She bit her lip to stop herself from snapping back at him. Couldn’t he have been this reasonable before? She'd felt bad for hurting him, even knowing it was necessary. She'd forgotten all about it, only to remember when she saw him at the station.
Not to mention she'd been feeling guilty, and now he was telling her she didn’t have to.
"You already know this—that I only married Kellen because I got her pregnant. I care for her, that's pretty much all I've ever felt for her and she probably knows that. She was the one that insisted on marriage, and I couldn’t say no, because I was the one that acted like a careless idiot."
Yeah, Emma knew. It was more than she'd ever wanted to know about her neighbors. She was pretty sure Kellen had no idea that she knew, she also wondered plenty of times if Kellen really loved her husband and family, or if it was just possessiveness. It hadn't been her business, and until the affair, she'd done her best to keep herself out of it. It had made it so much easier, though, to continue, knowing the details of their marriage. Not that it excused either of them for what they did.
Brian wasn’t finished, though.
"I know I can't break up my family and leave my kids without a father figure. I'm the one that's spent the most time with them. Brianna hates being left alone with her mother. The bonding time is good for them, but if I left, that little girl would never forgive either of us, and I don’t want to be responsible for ruining her future. I don’t love Kellen."
Even if he hadn't confessed, she would have guessed by this point. His next words did surprise her, though.
"I don’t love you either, Emma."
She didn’t fall, and she was pretty sure it was only because of her experience on bikes, though she hadn't used one in a long time, besides her short trip to Chase's place. She wanted to screech as him, ask what the hell the drama had been yesterday if he knew he didn’t actually feel anything for her. But she bit her lip and waited for him to continue. She'd had her time to speak already. Instead of arguing, it would be better if they both just closed that chapter of their lives.
"I don’t love you either, but you were my only respite form a loveless marriage. I thought about leaving so many times, and I knew she wouldn't make it easy for me. I couldn’t have left with Brianna, even if I'd wanted to, before the new baby was even born. You, and our whole affair, were convenient."
She glanced at him the same time he looked her way, and he smiled sadly when their eyes met.
"I'm not angry at you," he admitted. "But rather at myself for my past mistakes. I'm a grown up and I should be acting like one. So, I took up the volunteering thing to get some space away from home to think. But just so you know, I'm a little relieved you ended the affair. I was always worried about what Kellen would do if she found out."
Now Emma just felt ashamed of herself, if only a little. She hadn't realized he thought so much about this, had figured it was just her because Brian had never shown any unease when they met. She really didn’t know him, not as much as she'd convinced herself she did, painting him as the bad guy in the whole story.
He didn’t say anything else, and she left him to his thoughts as they rode. The atmosphere between them had calmed down enough she didn’t think she would suffer in the silence. Besides, she had her own thoughts to occupy her.
Emma wondered if she and Brian were in the same boat. In a way, she supposed they were. He was escaping his family, but he hadn't said anything about leaving them, and she didn’t think he would. She was doing more or less the same.
The thought of going back home to her grandmother's illness and Merry's madness wasn’t a happy one. It made her a horrible person, but being out of the house was another way to get away from it. She'd been doing it for so long, taking long hours at school, only being at home early morning or late evening and partly for the weekend. Even staying busy throughout the school breaks. The thought of staying at home, twenty four seven kind of scared her. She was used to working to keep her distracted from what went on at home.
She wondered if volunteering was a good way to escape it all.
