While Sebastian spent his morning at the doctor's office, Penny spent her morning screaming into her pillow.

"Gahh! What is wrong with me!"

The memory of kissing Sebastian's cheek had played over and over in her mind all night. What was she thinking! Of all the half-witted, impulsive, embarrassing things she had done and said in her life, this took the cake.

She had to move. She had to flee the country. Maybe she had a fifth cousin thrice-removed in the Gotoro Empire she could live with. Would that be treason?

At least this current calamity distracted her from thinking about Sam and Maru, which had consumed her over the last week. Were they already dating? She hadn't asked them or heard anything about it; maybe they hadn't realized their feelings yet themselves.

She'd expected to see them at the movies, but neither of them had made it, thank Yoba. Maybe Penny had lost her marbles with Sebastian because she was so glad not to have to watch them on a movie date.

"Penny? Are you alright?" Her mom was knocking on the door.

"I'm fine!" She got out of bed and smoothed her hair before opening the door.

"Aren't you tutoring today, kid?" her mom asked. Pam didn't usually keep up with Penny's schedule, but it was a stroke of good luck that she did this time.

"Oh! The picnic!" Penny shut the door again and hurried to get dressed. Then she rushed out to start packing the basket. She'd done most of the preparations the day before, or else she'd be screwed.

It wasn't until Penny reached Vincent's house to pick him up that she started worrying about running into Sam and Sebastian. And though it was for very different reasons, seeing either of them would be unbearable. When Vincent had trouble tying his shoelaces, Penny thought she might lose her mind standing there waiting for him.

Finally, they left for Cindersap forest. She picked a nice spot for the blanket and sent Jas and Vincent off with jars and plastic baggies to collect 'scientific specimens' while she set up the food. Tomorrow they were going to bring their discoveries to Gunther at the museum to learn about them.

"Vincent! Don't get your shoes wet!" she called, though it was a lost cause.

"Miss Penny, Miss Penny, look!" Vincent came running back, with his hand outstretched.

"Wow, that's a really neat snail, Vincent. Let's look it up in the book." She opened up a big encyclopedia of animals and turned to the snail section.

"Miss Penny, what's this?" Jas ran over with a glass jar full of murky water.

Penny held it up to the light. "I think it's a crawfish, but I think it might be dead."

"Eww," Jas and Vincent said together.

They sat down to eat, and the kids finished quickly and were off again to collect more samples. Penny took the chance to look over some of their classwork while keeping an eye on them. Before long it was time for the kids to go home, so they packed up some of their samples and walked into town. Penny let them go on ahead while she cleaned up the rest of the picnic.

But it was a lovely day, and Penny was considerably more relaxed than she'd been in the morning. She had nowhere to be, so she decided to stay a while. She stretched out in the sun and closed her eyes.

"It's a little late for a picnic, don't you think?"

Penny blinked. She must have drifted off; the sun was setting. She sat up to see who had spoken.

"Sebastian!" she gasped, her face draining of color. There was no one in the world she would less like to see.

"I was taking a walk and saw you. I thought I should wake you up," Sebastian said.

He didn't seem disturbed to see her. If anything, he looked glad. Maybe he found it all funny.

Penny smoothed her hair with her fingers and tucked it behind her ears. She tucked her knees underneath herself so she was kneeling and started to organize her things purposefully, but ineffectively.

"Can I join you?" Sebastian asked.

"Um, I was just leaving." She kept putting things away, but he flopped down on the picnic blanket and stretched out his legs. Penny felt the heat rise in her face. Yesterday she would have welcomed him, but today...

He was just sitting there looking at her like nothing had happened!

She couldn't help herself. She stammered, "Look, um, I'm really sorry about yesterday. I didn't mean, I mean I don't..."

"I know, Penny," Sebastian said.

"What?"

"It's okay, I know you didn't mean anything by it." He grinned and leaned back on his elbow. "You know, it's okay to be a little reckless once in a while. It's okay to do things you regret."

Penny couldn't say anything; she felt so unbelievably awkward.

Sebastian smirked at her. "I'm not going to stop talking to you just because you kissed me."

"Don't—don't say it like that." Penny covered her face in her hands.

"What, 'kiss'?" Sebastian broke into laughter, friendly and inviting.

Eventually Penny dropped her hands and let herself smile a little.

"Now, are you going to give me one of those cookies or not?" He pointed behind her at the tupperware that she'd shuffled around earlier.

She opened it and held it out toward him. He took a cookie and bit into it. "Wow, these are amazing. Did you make these?"

She wished she had. "No, Mrs. Mullner made them for us. I made those." She pointed at another container. "Lemon poppyseed muffins."

Sebastian grabbed one and took a hearty bite. His eyes widened.

"What do you think?" Penny asked. "You can be honest."

"Really? Honestly?" He looked at her intently after he finished chewing.

She nodded.

"It's, uh, it's not great, Penny." He bit back a smile.

"Oh, I knew it!" she cried, and Sebastian let his laugh escape. "Everyone always says my cooking is good but I can always tell they don't mean it!"

Sebastian's laughter was contagious, and soon she was laughing so hard she was close to tears. He took another bite. With his mouth full, he said, "Actually it's kind of growing on me."

"Don't eat that, it's terrible!" Penny tried to grab the muffin from his hands, but he managed to take another bite before she could wrestle it from him. He attempted to steal it back, so Penny panicked and tossed it in the lake.

But the muffin fell short, landing in the grass. Sebastian said something, or tried to with his mouth full of lemon poppyseed. Then, suddenly, Sebastian jumped up and ran after the thrown muffin. Penny chased after him, laughing and shouting, "Stop! Don't eat that!"

Sebastian reached the muffin first, but Penny grabbed him around the waist and tried unsuccessfully to pull him away. He held the muffin up in the air so she had to jump to try and reach it. (Of course by now, the muffin was basically a clump of grass and smushed crumbs, completely unfit for human consumption.)

He pretended like he was about to take a bite, but Penny managed to knock it out of his hands and pick it up from the ground. She started toward the lake, but Sebastian caught her around the middle and lifted her off the ground.

She could hardly manage it with all her laughter, but Penny tossed the muffin toward the lake again, and this time it plopped into the water.

Sebastian set her down gently and finished swallowing his mouthful. He shook his head. "Waste of a perfectly good muffin."

Then his eyes flicked toward the blanket and the container with the rest of the batch. Penny saw, and in an instant they were racing back to the blanket. Sebastian scooped up the container and tucked it under his arm.

"These are mine now, I'm confiscating them. You don't deserve these poppyseed—what were they?—lemon poppyseed muffins," he announced indignantly.

Penny was out of breath but couldn't stop smiling. "Alright, you win this time. Your prize is some really awful baked goods. Congratulations." She sat back down on the blanket, brushing off some of the crumbs that had gotten everywhere. "You're a mess," she said when he sat back down beside her, and brushed some more crumbs off of his hoodie.

"So what made you want to hang out in the middle of the woods today?" Sebastian asked as he picked crumbs off himself. He gave up and just pulled the hoodie off and shook it out. Penny was so used to seeing him in all black that seeing him in a white undershirt felt like an invasion of privacy.

"I was here with Vincent and Jas. For science." She held up one of the jars the kids had left behind, filled with algae and some sort of green ooze.

"Ah, looks like some very important research."

"Absolutely," Penny played along.

"Do you like tutoring them?" Sebastian asked.

She nodded. "They're really good kids. It's just sad I won't be able to do it forever."

"Why not?"

Penny laughed softly. "Well, they won't be kids forever. Their families will definitely want to send them to a real high school, and maybe even sooner, for middle school."

"Oh, right. What will you do then?"

She shook her head. "To be honest, I have no idea. I don't have any kind of college education, or even a teaching certificate. I wouldn't even know where to start." It embarrassed Penny a bit to talk about, but Sebastian had seen so many embarrassing parts of her life that it hardly mattered.

He nodded solemnly and watched the sun slip behind the hills. "Well, you never know when someone in town might have kids. Then you can tutor them, too," he said, trying to lighten the mood.

"You think? All the couples in Pelican Town have kids that are already grown up, and everyone else is single. I don't think the early childhood education market is exactly booming."

"Hey, it could happen," Sebastian said playfully. "You know, I always thought Dr. Harvey and Emily from the saloon would make a good couple."

"Really?" Penny couldn't imagine it.

He shrugged. "Yeah, why not? They get along, and they both like to dance."

"But they're so...different. She's a free spirit, and he's..."

"Dorky? Boring?"

"Well, no, I wouldn't have put it in those words, but..."

"I don't know, maybe I'm wrong," Sebastian said. "I just think that life might be more exciting when you spend time with people that are different from you."

"That's awfully...insightful of you," Penny teased. "Are you usually this wise?

Sebastian stretched and put his hands behind his head. "Well, I am in a particularly good mood today. This cute girl kissed me on the bus yesterday, and—"

"I'm gonna kill you!" Penny yelled. "I swear to Yoba, Sebastian!"

"Ooh, violent Penny's got some teeth, I like it!"

She shoved him, albeit gently.

"Was that a gentle breeze?" Sebastian asked.

"You are the worst, do you know that?" Penny said, but she couldn't stop a smile from forming.

"Come on," Sebastian said, getting to his feet and offering her his hand. "Let's get all this stuff back to town before it gets too dark." He picked up another jar and eyed the muddy water inside suspiciously.

Together they packed up all the food and specimens and carried it back to town, past the bustling saloon and up to Penny's trailer. She let him in so he could put down what he was carrying in the kitchen.

"Can I help you put it away?" he asked.

"No, it'll just take a second. Thanks, though."

"Oops, I almost left these behind." Sebastian pulled the box of muffins out of the basket.

"Seriously?" Penny shook her head. "Fine, but at least leave one for my mom; she asked me to save her one."

Sebastian pouted. "Does she like them as much as I do?"

"Clearly that's impossible. But she does a pretty convincing job of pretending to like my cooking." Penny held out a plate, and Sebastian sacrificed two of his precious muffins, and Penny wrapped the plate in plastic wrap.

He took one out for the road and tucked the tupperware under his arm as he left. Penny watched him walk out of town, and he took a big bite as he waved goodbye.