Putting his mouth near Marie's ear, he said:
- Please take care of my little brother for me...
So he looked at Eric, shook his head, smiling, as he had just remembered a silly joke. That would have made Eric cry right there if he had had the chance. But he didn't. He finally went back to real life and realized all of that had happened in a second. He then looked into Marie's eyes, and just knew everything would be fine. She smiled at him, and that gave him all the courage he needed.
- What I'm about to say... it’s not going to be easy for me to say, or easy for you guys to listen to. But I have to...
… Yesterday, I've been blackmailed yesterday by a journalist, who found out a story about my past, back in Brazil, from almost seven years ago.
So, advised by a lawyer, Tom, and my dad, I decided to release this whole story myself and show I was blackmailed, so people can have a better understanding of my side of the story before things get out of hand.
This story is getting released in a couple of minutes, so I wanted to tell you guys first... - He took a deep breath - … I was sixteen when it happened. All my friends were way older than me: Isabella, Lucas, a guy name Samuel, a couple of other guys and one or two other girls... They were not angels, I was not an angel… but they were my friends.
Samuel, as I found out later, was a – He cleared his throat – part-time drug dealer, but eventually he got some people really angry at him.
One night we met some of these people in the street, in the middle of the night, and they had a pretty hard discussion during a... let's call business meeting.
All my friends were all pretty drunk, myself included, I'm not gonna lie... A hard fight started over money and over pride, and... It just got bad, like really bad... I actually think they were already thinking about killing my friend for a while... Anyways... Some of them had guns, people got shot, I got shot too, on the side of my left leg...
And... My friend was so drunk that he was basically killing one of theirs guys... beating him up to death... When I tried to stop him, Samuel was so drunk that he started beating me up too... He was that messed up. In the middle of all that, as Samuel was going to start to beat the kid again, he got shot pretty bad... The kid who shot was a teenager, probably not older than me, and he never shot me. I guess he considered it for a second, but he never did. Instead, he ran away, leaving me there with my dying friend and his severely injured brother... - Eric looked at Lucas -
My friend ended up dying in my arms minutes later....
And what happened next is that they never found the gun... the guy that didn't shoot me ended up appearing dead three days later... And... Because they were never able to prove much or... actually anything about what happened... that's pretty much what happened.
The police never concluded much: lack of proofs, I was a minor... It was something like that...and as I was the only surviving witness of the whole fight and deaths, because the rest of them had long run away... This journalist wants to make people think I killed them or that my parents interfered with the case or ...both, because Samuel's and Lucas family were also pretty wealthy and all. Anyways, you got the idea....
That's pretty much what's been happening... And I don't have much more than my word to prove my point, and she has all these police documents, that she is completely forbidden by law of having, because they're so old, and because involved me, a minor... So yeah... We're going to try to defend my side of the story by coming clean about everything that happened. - Eric took a deep breath.
Complete silence in the room.
- ... I'm really sorry I never told you guys that before – And somehow, he really meant it
The days after that were a mess. To everyone.
Obviously, the journalist version ended up being released too, probably just to put more fuel in the whole story. Some magazine took Jessica's side, publishing the story and putting more pressure on the demand for evidence of the blackmail. They would all eventually sue each other for that whole story.
She even had her fifteen minutes of fame: She was called to a couple of famous television shows in the States where she said she was “terribly shocked and very disappointed with Eric's accusations without any kind of proof” and that she was only trying to do her job in the most honorable way to bring the truth to the “American people” - Yeah, that was the level of her declarations.
She said everything she had access to were the documents she was legally allowed to: public available information from the police and newspapers. She confirmed that she had completely respected the Brazilian system of law and that she had a great respect for that country. She said that she was in Paris to meet Eric to give him a chance to tell his side of the story (because she was indeed a fair person) where he had tried to buy her silence, threaten her and had been extremely rude to her.
She personally didn't think Eric was a bad person, just someone with a difficult life, and that she respect him and understand what he was going through, but that he had to clarify certain points of his life to the “society that had received him with arms wide open and that had made him rich and famous” and so that kids (and their parents) in America knew who their idols truly were.
She hoped that the situation could one day be resolved in a friendly way and when asked, she made some poor acting, saying that “yes, I would really like to hear an apology from him one day”
“Yeah, right”
Once the story was out, the situation at the school became... intense. No one knew how to deal with what was going on.
Students were staring at Eric, even teachers. Anyone who would recognize him would stare at him. Anyone who didn't quite know him was showing a very clear and almost palpable doubt in their eyes:
Was Eric a murderer, trouble maker since he was a kid, a former drug dealer, protected by his powerful parents?
Or was he friends with people like that, involved in a fight where two people ended up dead and one stuck in a wheelchair? He were indeed there that night, among all those punks, racist skinheads and drug dealers, right?
Not only the accusation or doubts on people's eyes were bothering him: Pity or compassion were killing him. To deal with his friends and family giving those kinds of looks … It was worse than anything he had ever felt, and he was just feeling that he couldn't stay near anyone anymore.
Eric didn't know how to deal with any of those things: He didn't know how to be sociable or how to deal with those people. He didn't know how to handle that huge amount of journalists that were after him.
He was feeling powerless and he was actually jealous of Tom or even Mike, two people who would have been able to deal with that situation way better than him, and who were actually doing way more for Eric's reputation those days than he could've ever done by himself.
Curious people were showing up at the school; journalists, photographers, youngsters. Some students abandoned the school, for not believing Eric's side or just because they couldn't handle being in the middle of that hurricane of people always coming and going, cameras, screams and crowd.
Also, not even the closest people to him knew how to handle that situation well, only Tom and Alice, the few people that already knew about that story for a while. They were the only people Eric could barely handle having around at that moment.
The situation at the school got to a point where Eric realized that he probably should stay away from there, otherwise he would kill that place, in that moment that Mike needed to, somehow,
put it back on its feet again. He just stopped going there, hoping it wouldn't have to be like that forever.
Anytime Tom and Alice could they would meet to talk or just to make some company to Eric, or he would spend a good time at the bookstore where Alice worked: days after days passed like that, each one worse than the last one, longer and more realistic, and Eric had the feeling that that whole thing would never go away. He didn't know what to do with himself. He didn't know what to do with everyone trying to comfort him, all of them at the same time. Isa, Mike, Marie, Gustavo, Jan, Liam, Jack. They were all trying too hard, and that was getting to him too.
Eric thought he would've been able to handle his relationship with Marie in a better way. Accept her presence, her love, her understanding and her help. But he was feeling so awkward around her. So small, so ashamed, so hurtful. He didn't want to put her through that: She deserved better. And in any case, she was so busy at school during those days that they were barely seeing each other during anyways.
She was still living with him, but their communication was just dying (especially because of him) Somewhat of a uncomfortable silence and embarrassment was growing bigger every time they would ended up seeing each other, alone, in the same room, to share the same bed. He tried to be okay with her hugs, with her trying to get closer to him, to let her in, with her trying to talk to him, trying to see how he has, how he was feeling. But he would always make things worse by shutting himself off, looking away, and going away.
Eric knew he had to say something... he was just failing beautifully at doing that.
As talking to Marie was getting harder and harder each day, he was spending more and more time with Alice and Tom, (but specially with Alice, because Tom was somewhat getting a bit distant) and less and less he could stand to get closer to Mike's school or even their place.
He was, once again, floating around Paris, this time because he didn't want to see anyone; he didn't know what to do or who to talk to. He could've run through the streets of Paris and he still wouldn't be able to change the feeling that nothing or no one would be able to make him feel better. Some very very hard and dark days.
- ... They just need a bit more of time to process everything that's happening. Everyone believes in you, Eric. - Tom, trying to cheer him up – Besides, soon we'll have everything we need to finally prove she blackmailed you... Just hang on in there. We already leaked her pictures, people are starting to side with you, Eric...
‘Great’
‘Sure’
'Whatever'
- You know what, Tom?
- Yeah...?
- Can I come and work out with you?
Tom smiled
- Ha, sure...
Tom, as I already mentioned, was a guy that would work out a lot, for several years, without stop.
Eric, although having a good genetic and a reasonably healthy diet, almost never made physic activities: His routine with his band had always taken him to the limit anyways.
As well as the routine before the festival.
Something inside of him however, made him curious about getting a healthier routine.
Maybe, unconsciously he wanted to have the same energy or discipline as Tom. Maybe it was to get away from everything that was happening around him. Maybe it was because he was jealous of how Tom could so easily call attention from every people he had ever met. Or probably because he was bored and didn't know what else to do with his time.
For whichever reason, Eric did it.
In the weeks and months that passed, he never thought he would hurt so bad and would swear so much for one little decision in his life.
In some way, Eric was also doing that as some sort of self-punishment: He wanted to punish himself for everything that was happening around him, because he just wasn't being strong enough. He wasn't being able to do anything to help anyone, not even himself.
And you'd never believe how many times Tom made Eric almost literally kiss the floor in the process.
In the beginning, he couldn't do twenty push-ups. Maybe three to five pull-ups and was able to run for maybe...maybe fifteen minutes.
After the first day, where he was able to work out for a bit more than forty minutes, he thought he wouldn't be able to get out of bed the next day. Everything was hurting, everything seemed to be sore, burning. For a whole day he felt his body judging him for his decision, and for the whole day he wasn't able to do much.
He showed up on the next day to work out again, and he had no idea how he had been able to do so.
In the first month, it would be three times a week, then it would go up to five. And above all, Tom made Eric promise he would go walking the way between their houses, what meant forty extra minutes of walking every day.
Also as already mentioned, Tom was extremely eclectic when it came to working out: He switched between le parkour, yoga, swimming, running, weightlifting and of course, dancing and a circus technics work out.
Eric, with the exception of dancing and the circus exercises, was starting the same way and soon he noticed he was going to have to take protein and vitamins because his diet simply wasn't enough. Without being able to do twenty push-ups, Tom was making him do five series of seven in the beginning. It might not seem much, but Eric suffered way more than what he would've liked to admit. His muscles were failing several times, shaking.
And then squats, weight lifting, running, obstacle jumping. He was sweating until he was completely wet and in the beginning he was getting trouble even to play guitar because of all of that.
“It will get better, just suck it up”
He was having to sleep ten hours a night to recover – the only benefit that Eric noticed about working out is that he was actually being able to sleep well again in the middle of that shitty moment.
The second month was the hardest, because suddenly Eric started to work out five times a week and because he was feeling stupid for not getting any better at all.
- Man, you started six weeks ago. You don't turn into an iron man in a month. You're just being a fool, you'll get better if you keep working out right. That's it. No shortcuts, no secrets.
- I know, I just wanted to feel better about it, I don’t know... Shouldn't I be feeling a bit better about it?
Tom only smiled, as Eric smiled back.
- You promised, Eric. Six months
Eric slowly agreed.
- Seven more push-ups. Go.
Tom would work out three times longer than Eric and ten times more intensively, and Eric just couldn't understand how.
- 4... 5...
Silence
- I'm waiting, Eric...
-.......siiiix...
Eric was shaking
- Oh come on, dude, one more!
He slowly and deeply breathed several times, with sweat dropping from his nose, and eyebrows
- Seeee....ve...en! Good!
Eric fell on the floor, completely exhausted. Less than a minute later, Tom said:
- Up, man, Getup
- What?
- You're not done yet
- Holy fuck...
And just like that, the third month started and Eric was starting to feel one minimal improvement: He was making five series of eight push-ups now. And the journalists had finally given him a bre
ak after two months and something. It had been days he hadn't spoken to anyone else rather than Tom.
But his live was still there.
There were so many things on the air those days: Things that no one was willing to talk about or even daring to comment about, because it felt like the world could fall apart by only mentioning it.
Mike's debt, Eric's whole situation, Tom who was clearly not ok and was not sure of what he was going to do with his life after his last disappointment with Katherine (Although no one, apart from Marie, knew about it), Marie who was each day more and more distant from Eric and everyone else, probably because she was getting hurt with the whole “being avoided” situation... And even Isa and Gustavo seemed to have created this mental distance from everyone and from all of these problems. Eric had also realized that Isa and Mike's relationship was not perfect those days anymore. Jan was now working as a bartender/waiter on a pub in buttfuck nowhere and was almost never seeing them anymore (He was living super far away from them now). Alice had gotten an internship in a cultural magazine – finally her French had allowed her – and was trying to take some side courses around the city. Eric's parents, too busy with their company, hadn't showed up in Paris for more than two months at that point, and when they had last tried, it was an embarrassed silence that reigned over them.
Even though everyone was there for everyone, it seemed like it would have been easier to have a dinner with the Queen of England than to get all those people back together again. Let alone to try to have some fun.
Isadora had made other friends and every day she seemed to be busy with school or with her other friends. Alice also made new friends, especially after she had started her internship, and was having a hard time trying to balance her time between all her commitments and her new boyfriend, a French guy. Yeah, in the middle of all that, Alice started dating a French guy.
Eric was truly happy for his friend's happiness, but he was missing like crazy having all the time in the world to talk to her, and now it seemed like she, too, was just too distant from him. To get even better, it was in the middle of the winter. A hard one for Paris.