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“Stop that,” hisses Nancy, the back of her hand striking quick and sudden against Jonathan’s bicep. Jonathan looks up at her with wide, surprised eyes, and immediately, his fingers still against the shirt button just below his navel, where the hem tucks into his jeans.
Nancy crosses her arms over her chest and does her level best to hide her own trembling fingers in the loose fabric of her blouse as she continues, “you look nice. Don’t be so nervous.”
Jonathan scoffs and rolls his eyes, nearly tripping over his own feet as he follows along at the breakneck pace Nancy’s set. The mall is crawling with people, school just having let out for the summer. Mothers congregate in groups in the food court, or bounce around like pinballs in an arcade from outlet store to outlet store, their children reeling in the sweet taste of unstructured time and lack of supervision.
“Easy for you to say,” Jonathan says, quiet as he can while still making himself heard over all the raucous activity. A kid no older than seven zooms across the mall aisle and nearly bodychecks him in the gut, and Jonathan does his best approximation of a pirouette to dodge the collision in time.
“Hey, watch where you’re going, seriously!” Nancy yells after the kid, one arm thrown out in exasperation, while Jonathan stumbles in place, taking a moment to find his footing again. The kid doesn’t so much as look back, and Nancy huffs loudly, shaking her head.
Jonathan leaves her a moment to stew in her annoyance before leaning in close to her ear and picking the conversation back up where they were cut off. “Steve already likes you,” he says.
“Liked me,” Nancy amends, her lips pulling down into a dissatisfied frown. “You’re not the one who called your relationship bullshit and then stomped all over his heart.”
When Jonathan doesn’t answer right away, Nancy glances over at him, and the soft, besotted smile she’s met with goes far toward melting the anxiety weighing down her chest. “It would take a lot more than that for me to fall out of love with you, Nancy Wheeler,” he tells her.
She shoves gently at his shoulder, face hot and flushed, with her gaze glued to her feet. “Shut up, Jonathan.”
When she looks up at him through her lashes a few seconds later, he’s still smiling at her, but he’s more sombre now, and Nancy’s mood shifts to match his.
“I know,” Nancy whispers, even though Jonathan hasn’t said anything. He doesn’t have to. The more time they spend together, the more in tune they become, reading the other’s every thought plain as day on their faces. “It’s not like anything’s gonna happen anyway. But even just to be his friend. I’ve missed him.”
And even though Steve never meant to Jonathan half of what he meant to Nancy, he still remembers the night they fought the demogorgon under the flickering lights in his childhood home every time he closes his eyes. He remembers Steve’s face. Remembers what if felt like to have him come back for them.
He wraps his arm comfortingly around Nancy’s shoulder, lets her lean into his side, press her nose into his collar and breathe deep.
“Me, too.”
“Welcome to Scoops Ahoy. Do you know what you want?”
Nancy fidgets nervously from foot to foot as subtly as she can, staring across the counter at the employee in her garish, blue sailor’s uniform, complete with the little hat. Her face is as bland and impassive as her voice, but her eyes are gorgeous and unmistakable. Nancy’s sure she remembers her from school, despite the fact that the name Robin engraved on her nametag does little to jog Nancy’s memory of specifically which classes.
“Um, is Steve around?” Nancy asks tentatively, trying for a smile, but only managing to twitch the corners of her lips spasmodically. Beside her, Jonathan waves once, short and curt, with the tips of his fingers, his other arm pressed closely to his chest. His smile is just as tight-lipped, but at least it stays in place.
Robin blinks, long and slow, then raises her eyebrows and shakes her head. “Why do I even work here?” she mutters. Then, just as Nancy’s about to try asking again, Robin turns on her heels and makes for the frosted glass window behind her.
“Hey, dingus,” she yells, smacking the glass with the flat of her palm until it rattles in the frame. Nancy flinches, and beside her, she feels Jonathan do the same. “It’s for you again.”
“Oh, no, no, no.”
Nancy hears the familiar voice before she even sees the first sign of movement from behind the frosted glass.
“I told those little shitheads not to get caught” – a shadow, then a monochromatic streak of blue in the shape of a man – “and then what do I hear from Dave from Panda Express?”
Finally, forcefully, the panes slide open, and whatever rant is poised on the tip of Steve’s tongue abruptly dies in his throat. He stares at them both, blinking owlishly, for a moment.
“Hey, Nance,” Steve says finally. He looks to her right, spies her company, then adds, hesitantly, “Jonathan.”
Jonathan nods to him, and Nancy waves, and Steve stares at them both, mouth working, until Robin hops up on the counter and pulls herself through the open frame.
“Well, this is lots of fun for me, but I’m going on my break now,” she provides, patting Steve on the shoulder on her way past, like she’s tagging him in. It takes Steve a second to get with the program, but when he does, he’s scuttling through the window himself and closing it shut behind.
“Hey,” Steve says again, like it’s as far as he’s been able to ride his train of thought since opening a window and finding his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend on the other side. Nancy can hardly blame him. She’s not doing much better.
“Hey,” she says back, but she takes it as a win, as Jonathan has yet to say anything.
“I, uh,” Steve tries, brows knitting under his mop of thick, touchable, brown hair. It looks a little ridiculous with the sailor’s hat perched on top, but Nancy almost forgot – ridiculous is a good look on him. “I wasn’t expecting to see you two here. Least of all looking for me.”
Conspiratorially, Steve looks around the ice cream parlour, then leans over the counter, palms braced on the cold vinyl surface, so he can whisper to them. “Is there something… upside-downy going on that I should know about?”
Nancy and Jonathan, who leaned in close to hear him, reel back at once. “No, no,” Jonathan assures him at the same time as Nancy firmly asserts, “absolutely not.”
“Okay,” Steve says, long and slow, nodding gently to himself as the crease in his brow only gets deeper. “I mean, did you want specifically my opinion on the ice cream flavours? Because Robin could have just given you some samples. We have, like, millions of these little plastic shovels, and it’s not like we really care how many of them you–”
“Steve,” Nancy says, cutting Steve off mid-ramble.
Steve stops dead, mouth open in a loose O shape. Nancy chuckles softly, then reaches across the counter to place a reassuring hand over Steve’s knuckles. She regrets it the second she does it. Steve draws his hand back like she’s burned him and casts furtive glances back and forth between Jonathan and the counter.
“Ah,” Nancy tries again with a short, awkward chuckle that drops some of the tension from Steve’s shoulders. Jonathan is stiff as a board beside her, but she can feel, every so often, his muscles trying to unclench before tensing up again.
“Do you guys wanna split a sundae?” Steve asks suddenly, sudden enough that Nancy and Jonathan both jump. “That’s a big hit with, uh– with couples when they come in.”
Nancy opens her mouth to reply, but doesn’t get a polite refusal out before Steve soldiers on. “On the house,” he offers. “Who’s gonna notice a few missing bananas, right?”
“You don’t have to give us free food, Steve,” Nancy protests.
“Okay, right, yeah,” Steve says, but he sounds less and less like he’s agreeing by the second. “No, sorry, I’m just not exactly following, I guess. If you’re not looking for the Monster Hunter Union Rate, what exactly am I doing for you?”
“Cocoon.”
“Huh?” Steve asks, his face a mask of confusion, and honestly, looking at him over her shoulder, Nancy thinks Jonathan looks just as surprised by his own outburst.
“Have you…” Jonathan trails off, his words escaping him for a moment until he’s able to wrangle them back into place. “Have you seen it, yet? It’s still playing here.”
“The one with the old people and the swimming pool?” Steve asks.
Jonathan nods. “You’ve seen it, then?”
Nancy can hear the disappointment in his tone.
Steve, though, shakes his head. “Nah, man,” he replies. “But we get enough people who come in after the movies let out that I’ve gotten the cliffs notes version of every freaking thing that’s been playing since I started.”
“Would you still wanna see it?” Nancy asks, trying to keep her tone casual.
Steve cocks his head sideways and screws up his face. “What’s the question, here?” he wonders. “Like, after hearing about the basics of the plot, do I still think it’s a worthwhile movie to watch, or–”
“Or would you like to watch it with us?”
Jonathan surprises Nancy, being the one to actually ask. She glances at him out of the corner of her eye and sees he’s white as a sheet. Not that she blames him. Butterflies turn to knots in her stomach that pull and twist uncomfortably every time she breathes.
“Oh,” Steve says, and it’s quiet and weighty and makes Nancy squirm all the more.
“Listen,” he resumes. “You guys. It’s really nice of you to go out of your way to offer up an olive branch, and I appreciate it, I do. But you don’t have to let me crash your date because you feel weird about how everything went down between us.”
Just to hear Steve say the words between us sets a fire in Nancy’s belly, even though she knows, in the logical part of her brain, that he doesn’t mean between us the way she and Jonathan wish he did.
“I’m a big boy,” Steve continues. “And anyway, I’m over it.”
The assurance doesn’t reach his eyes, or at least, Nancy doesn’t think it does. Her own wishful thinking makes Steve harder to read, but she doesn’t think, at least, that he really wants to let things go so soon.
“You wouldn’t be crashing,” Nancy promises. “Plus, it’s not St. Elmo’s Fire. It’s a comedy. Harmless, right?”
To posit it as harmless means, to a certain degree, acknowledging they’re playing with matches, but Nancy hopes Steve won’t examine it that deep. Or at the very least, not have the courage to question her.
She should know him better.
“And what kind of harm exactly are you imagining, Nancy?” Steve asks.
They’re quiet for a moment, Steve staring the couple down, and them examining him in turn, each trying to complete the puzzle laid out before them without all the pieces.
“Come to the dumb movie with us, Steve,” Nancy says finally, unwilling to let the staring match continue any longer. “We have survived far worse things than trying to get along with each other.”
Steve scrunches his nose. “I’m not worried about getting along with you,” he admits, and it feels precarious, so when he says nothing more, Nancy doesn’t push.
“Well, good,” Nancy huffs, puffing out her chest and doing her best approximation of a person who knows what they’re getting themselves into. “Because we aren’t worried about that, either.”
“Byers?” Steve questions.
Jonathan’s been quiet, but his eyes flick quickly to meet Steve’s when he’s called upon, and, with steel in his spine, he holds that gaze as he replies, “what Nancy said.”
“So,” Nancy says firmly, crossing her arms over her chest and holding her head high to get as close to looking at Steve straight on as she can manage. “When are you done your shift so we know how much time to kill at JCPenney?”
Steve smirks in a way that feels so familiar, all of Nancy’s knots uncurl into butterflies again. “Give me an hour and I’ll meet you at the concession stand.”
“You’re buying the popcorn,” Jonathan says, matter-of-factly, and Steve balks.
“I make three dollars an hour!”
“We’re interns,” Jonathan and Nancy reply in tandem, and Steve scoffs and shakes his head.
“New plan,” he says. “We meet back here in forty-five. Then at least the ice cream’s free.”
Nancy rolls her eyes. “How chivalrous of you.”
“Look,” Steve sighs. “Any chivalry I had, if that was even any at all, I already gave to you. Now all that’s left is just Steve, alright?”
Jonathan smiles. “I guess Just Steve is okay.”
Steve smiles right back. “Oh, well, as long as guess so.”