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“So, guys…” With only hearing the tone on Beverly’s voice, Eddie felt a chill running down his spine. Judging by the way Stan was looking towards the redhead, he felt the same. “Tell me, how’ve you been?”
The question seemed so harmless that Eddie was about to answer it without really thinking. Thankfully, he had a lot of years of knowing Beverly that had trained him just enough to survive that kind of situation, at least for a little bit longer. Instead, he pretended to watch something really interesting across the room, just like he did in high school when the teacher asked a particularly hard question. In front of him, Beverly giggled, definitively enjoying everyone’s reactions.
“Easy there, I just want to know how you’ve been. Nothing out of normal” She said between laughter that eventually died down, but she never stopped smiling. “We haven’t seen each other for a long time, you know? At least not for talking”
Eddie frowned.
“But we gathered last week”
Beverly’s smile changed to something more… dangerous. Eddie knew that, in that moment, he had done something wrong.
“Well, yeah, but it has been so long since we talked, like, talk” She got her elbows on her knees just as she was speaking, making emphasis in the last bit of the sentence. She seemed to have them just where she liked, and it was just a matter of time to fall in her sweet smelling trap. He felt an itch in the palm of his hands, a sensation that urged him to grab his inhaler like a first defense. He was lucky, though, since he wasn’t her first victim. “Stan, how’s Patty?”
The change of tone was unbelievable. Without the little scene before, he would be defenseless against that sweet and charming tone that screamed innocence everywhere. Stan seemed to think the same as him, again, since he straightened in place, standing his ground.
Although, maybe, he was overreacting.
“Everything’s fine” Stan smiled, and his cheeks seemed to gain color. “In fact, everything’s really fine”.
“Oh!” Beverly chorused, visibly delighted. Eddie didn’t know Patty that well, but he knew that Stan was taking the relationship very seriously, and it had lasted longer than all the previous ones. The excitement the redhead was feeling was understandable, even himself was feeling a warm feeling of happiness for his friend. “You should invite her over next time”
“I don’t want to scare her, Bev”
Everyone laughed, with a nice silence afterward. Next to him, with that smile on his face, Stan seemed younger, like all of his worries were slowly fading away and taking the wrinkles with them. It was an image he always thought Stan lacked, so calm and smiling, forgetting his responsibilities just a bit.
(And he only thought of her…)
“So… you think she’s the one?” Beverly asked softly, getting Eddie out of his head. She looked like a kid again, excited for things that were not even for her. Although, looking at Ben sitting beside her, he was not sure about that last part.
Stan shrugged, but in his eyes Eddie understood: “Maybe, Beverly, maybe. I would like it to be, I have hope that it’d be, but I don’t want to say it aloud or else I’ll jinx it-“
Or something like that.
“How do you even know that stuff?” He asked instead. In front of him, Beverly straightened. She appeared to think the question really carefully, just like she did on math exams. Ben looked at her, curious.
“Well, it depends on the person, right?” Eddie arched his eyebrow. She had a finger on her mouth and looked to be answering the question at the same time she was still thinking it over. “Maybe someone just suddenly knows, but I believe there’s a moment when you realize”
“Like when you are oblivious to it happening until it’s too late?” Ben asked, speaking for the first time. He lowered his gaze, and it looked like he talked without knowing he had until it happened. Beverly nodded, with affection and tenderness in her whole face. For an instance, Eddie understood.
“Yeah” Her tone was so incredibly soft it got Eddie out of guard. It was full of a fondness she never used with Stan or Eddie or Mike. It was special, made just for Ben. “I’m one of those people, the ones that realize a little too late”
“How did you realize?” Eddie heard himself ask.
Beverly looked at him with a smile, and he saw that raw affection that seemed impossible. It left him astonished. She laughed a little, seemingly knowing that question was coming.
“Well, it was a few years ago, when we weren’t together yet.” She started telling her story with a carefree manner. Next to her, Ben jumped in his place a little and Eddie tried not to laugh. “It was October, when we celebrated Halloween together. We gathered a lot of crappy movies and a bunch of scary ones in Richie’s house, since his parents weren’t around for the night. We said we were kinda old to dress up and go trick or treating, but I think we just wanted to be together, free of homework and other things. I remember that we moved the screen to the living room, moved around a lot of furniture and made a pillow fort with all the sheets and pillows we could find to spend the night. We were ready for anything.”
Eddie remembered that night too. They had spent more than an hour moving the furniture until it was just right and everyone got a place to sleep. It was especially tiring, but at the end, it was one of the best nights of his life.
“I dunno why the hell you all went out, probably looking for something, but I cannot remember what” She laughed a little. “But Ben and I stayed alone in Richie’s living room for a few minutes. It’s nothing extravagant, but I recall talking about everything and anything, stupid things probably. Suddenly, that’s when I realized, all wrapped up like a burrito, and with Ben in front of me in a house that was not even mine. I realized that I didn’t mind being like that with him, at all. It was nice, and I caught myself thinking that I would like to do it again”
Her gaze was lost in front of her, absorbed in her memories. It was a moment so fragile and intimate that Eddie got scared of breaking with his breathing. She then smiled, and slowly, looked at Ben with that smile full of love, affection and everything good in the world. Ben gasped, with his eyes fixed on her too and Eddie turned his gaze away when he felt he was intruding. Next to him, Stan did the same.
“Wow…” He whispered.
“I know…”
A burst of laughter broke the silence. Beverly had a red face and her eyes were teary, with a smile so big it reached her eyes like the cherry on the pie. She was beautiful. Beside her, Ben hold her hands between his own and his skin was so flushed it matched her hair, but he seemed about to explode with happiness.
“Now I’d like to know what you have to say” She looked over to Stan. “Did it ever happen to you?”
Stan opened his mouth, closed it, thought the question over and then opened it again.
“It’ll sound cliché, surely.” He started with a mocking tone. “But I believe it was when we met each other, on the college club party. I was an exchange student from New York. I can remember her blue dress perfectly, just as our first chat. After the party, I was convinced she’d be my girlfriend”
And Stan was right, it was so cliché and typical it sounded straight out of a movie, just the kind that Eddie almost never watched because he prefered action movies, especially the ones with fancy cars. Beverly looked delighted.
“Surely she felt the same, right? Then she wouldn’t have said yes.”
Stan shrugged again.
“Maybe” He looked entertained with the whole situation, just a little bit flushed. He resembled a tipsy guy when they were only drinking soda. The beer would come next, with dinner and with everyone else. “What about you, Ben?”
Eddie felt like he dodged a bullet by miracle, his soul returning to his body. He turned to poor Ben, who had passed from a relaxed position to look like he had been caught doing something very wrong.
What did he do wrong? Being there, not talking first, fall in love…
“Well…” He shrank a little, probably wishing the Earth to swallow him whole, or to everyone to come back. Someone screaming “Murder!” would have work, too. “If the question is if I have had that moment…”
Everyone waited on the verge of the seat.
“… The answer is yes. Yes, of course”
Ben raised his gaze, and Eddie felt the same he did with Beverly. A shiver run down his spine and the hair on his nape stood on end. They seemed to release something special, some kind of energy that he didn’t know whether to admire or fear, especially when they were together. Sometimes, he needed to step back or to look away in case he went blind.
“If I remember correctly,” Ben said even when nobody asked his explanation. There was no problem, of course, but now Eddie felt like he couldn’t be the only one not telling anything about those moments. “It was when we were in school. It was not a specific moment, more like the total of those moments. Every time Bev spoke to me or touched me just by accident. Sometimes we got together for a project. At the end of the year, I was head over heels for her.”
There was a deafening silence.
“When you said was that?”
“Ah, I dunno. Probably in fourth or fifth grade” Ben said like it was nothing.
Stan whistled quietly.
“That’s compromise” Eddie whispered, Ben gasped, Stan nodded and Beverly sighed. She kissed her partner’s cheek and smiled against his skin. Eddie looked away again, feeling like an intruder.
“Oh my god, there are other people in the room.” He said when it was too much, making Beverly laugh.
“Then what about you, Eddie? How is everything going with our favorite buffoon?” Beverly attacked, and it was that exact moment he wanted to avoid with all the force in the world. Damn his mouth. He narrowed his eyes at her, but it just got her laughing again. She was red all over the face, but Eddie didn’t know if it was for her never ending laughter or if it was for her previous actions. Nevertheless, it bothered him a lot.
“As well as it can go with someone that makes stupid voices and has ventriloquism tendencies”
“So that bad, eh?” Stan mocked, and Eddie tried to kill him with his gaze.
“C’mon, Eddie. Don’t be like that. Everyone else said our Moment. What’s yours, Eddie?”
What’s your Moment, Eddie?
“I… don’t have a moment” He said, crossing his arms and falling onto the cushion pillows. Stan arched an eyebrow, challenging him, and Beverly sighed. Just as she was going to say that was a lie, and why it was a lie, the door opened with a loud sound.
“Honey, I’m home!”
“Speaking of the devil…” Whispered Stan.
“Ah? Were you talking about me? I know I’m everyone’s gossip but at least wait until I’m present.”
“So it gets to your head? No thanks” Someone said behind Richie. Mike entered the room with a bag full of plastic containers. At last was Bill, with even more containers and the keys at hand.
“I a-guh-guh-gree with Mike on this o-one. “He said, locking the door and heading to the kitchen to leave everything there.
“Ouch”
“Me too.” Eddie said.
“Double ouch”
After that, everything became a chaos of laughter and talking. Stan and Ben left the couch to help the new guests with the food. Richie left with them, with a bag of soda in one hand and a six pack on the other. Eddie watched him go until he disappeared behind the kitchen door and he could only hear his voice.
“Are you sure you don’t have a moment?” He raised his head after hearing Beverly’s soft voice. They seemed to share a secret, and for a moment, Eddie felt like he was in middle school, sharing secrets between recesses. He smiled at her and laid a hand on her shoulder, but didn’t answer her question.
“Better be going with everyone else, before there’s nothing left.” He said and raised from his place, extending a hand to Beverly, who didn’t need it but still took it. They walked to the kitchen, and in the way he could almost hear her thoughts. The problem was that he wasn’t ready to talk about it with such ease like Ben, Stan or Beverly. Just thinking about made him want his inhaler in hand.
Eddie Kaspbrak, in fact, had a “moment”. It wasn’t a very far away memory like Ben’s or a close one like Stan’s. It wasn’t simple like Beverly’s either, but it was his. And he probably would never tell it, not even to Richie in his deathbed, but if he were to tell the story, he surely would start telling that they were young, living the moment before it was too late.
“I was a fool. But Richie was even fooler, even more than before as unbelievable as it sounds. He had his head on fantasies and dreams to come true, while I had mine on a textbook almost every night, and waited impatiently the end of the year, and with that, the end of college. “ He would say with a nice and funny voice, and for an instant, he felt like he was telling the story to his children, or his grandchildren. Hallucinations, surely, he was still young to think about that kind of things.
“Looks like you’ve still got that head of yours in that book, Eds” Richie had said that night when they were still in college. Almost every day, at night time, Richie used to go to his house without further notice and climb through his window. Sometimes to talk, sometimes to bother him. Eddie was grateful when it was to talk since he could forget his duties for a moment, and liked it even more when he invited Eddie somewhere. He normally declined, because he couldn’t afford an attitude so relaxed so close to finals.
That time, be it by destiny or Richie’s insistence, he said yes.
They had walked down the street, leaving the car a few blocks before, just talking about everything and anything, enjoying the nice weather, and ended on the Kissing Bridge, again by destiny or any of Richie’s doing. Thinking about it now, though, it was ironic they ended up there, especially because that night was everything but romantic.
“Just worried about the exams, that’s all.” He said and looked back, thinking about going home and study for three more hours before going to bed. Some pills would help him sleep, maybe. “And you should, too”
Richie shrugged. Under the dim light of a lamp post he seemed even taller. Maybe even creepy.
“I firmly believe that you should have trust in your knowledge, Eds. I’m not really into stressing the hell out of me the night before a test. I don’t wanna grow old so fast” Richie said. If he was another person, Eddie wouldn’t have believed any of it but a nonsense, and that he was just fooling around and never doing anything. Sadly, Richie Tozier still was Richie Tozier, but just for a more mature audience: he still got A’s and B’s without a seemingly amount of effort.
Eddie snorted.
“I don’t like it when you call me Eds, y’know it, I don’t know why you keep doing it”
“Nah, you love it” Richie shrugged. He got on the railing of the bridge and sit down like it was the most comfortable place in the world. Eddie got a mini heart attack right there, thinking he would fall off. But since nothing happened, he got closer to the railing and laid on it beside Richie’s legs.
“Of course not” He claimed, but it only tasted like half a truth. When he looked over at Richie, next to him and with the dim light over their heads, he felt a tug in his stomach. It wasn’t romantic, it was ridiculous and even kind of scary, since Richie resembled a gargoyle with that position. But he still felt it.
He looked down, not without seeing Richie’s cocky smile.
A silence fell afterward, and Eddie would treasure it for a lot of years. Those moments were weird with someone like Richie, and it felt special. It wasn’t awkward, it was nice and neither of them felt like breaking it. However, when he sensed a hand in his hair, he broke that silence with a little sigh. Richie gasped, like his reaction was the most interesting thing in the world.
He closed his eyes with a slight tremble all over his body. He pressed the railing with a lot of force, until he got white knuckles, and waited. And kept waiting, for something, anything, but it never came. Instead, he only heard a scream and a series of mix-up curses.
He opened his eyes, and this time he got a heart attack.
“Richie!” He screamed with the force his lungs could muster and looked over the railing. Down, just where the water and the dirt mushed together, Richie was sprawled and not moving. At all
“I’m gonna kill him,” He thought while going down in a hurry to his dying friend. “This time I’m gonna kill him”
Eddie kneeled beside him, getting mud on his pants. Richie seemed to have an unbelievable luck, though, as his head hadn’t hit any rock just by centimeters. Still, the water was getting dyed of a gross red and Eddie was getting panicked. He cradled his head with his right hand on his lap,
He jumped, though, surprised and relieved when Richie opened his eyes with his glasses crooked.
“I defeated Raleigh” Richie said with a raspy and deep voice. It was like he was doing one of his voices, one Eddie didn’t recognize. “I found the greatest treasure of them all.” Then he raised one of his hand and touch Eddie’s cheek with a soft stroke, and he fainted.
“Such idiot…” Eddie whispered, blushing furiously. He felt like his lungs were no longer working and that he was the one who fell from the Kissing Bridge. But now was not the moment to feel like a head over heels high schooler, since he needed to take Richie to the hospital, something that seemed very hard with the car so far away.
At the end, he was able to do it, even though he surely left behind a lung on the way. The path to the hospital was quiet until Richie woke up. He was half conscious, wet, and sprawled all over the backseat of the car. He grunted and held his head. Eddie immediately felt bad, but he was still mad at him for doing such a stupid thing to do like sitting on the Kissing Bridge’s railing in the middle of the night.
“You wouldn’t have a ciggie on you, right?” Richie asked and Eddie denied with his head without looking away from the road. He vaguely heard Richie slowly moving stuff around in the backseat, and then finally a lighter. He was pretty curious about where the fuck Richie got a lighter and a cigarette, but didn’t say anything about it.
However, when they were about to reach the hospital, he looked through the rearview one last time. He only looked over two seconds, maximum, but in those two seconds he felt a stab in his heart and an affection he didn’t know he could feel. He could easily tell the pain Richie was feeling, but he noticed his stance with detail, with his legs almost not fitting in the car and the way his wet clothes clung to his body in a way that could only be uncomfortable. He even noted the way he smoked the fucking cigarette, how his lips-
He gasped, and Richie didn’t hear him, thankfully. After that, his gaze never left the road, they had had enough accidents tonight. He only felt like breathing again until they reached the hospital, although he never used his inhaler.
Richie didn’t know, but that was an especial moment for Eddie. Maybe it wasn’t the moment he fell for the guy, like Ben or Bev or Stan, but it was the moment he was sure he could do it. He could give himself to this boy who loves making obnoxious jokes and didn’t know when to shut up, that had puppets too creepy for Eddie’s liking and his biggest dream was to be famous and in the show-business.
And he wouldn’t regret a single bit.