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It's foolish. She knows it is. Yet, here she is, sitting at the table in the middle Enzo's watching the door as if he's just running a little late.
Caught up with work, that'd be his excuse. Kids running wild on a farm out by the quarry, or Mike, oh, God, Mike. Wrangling the boy out of El's bedroom with a red face and voice too loud and too fast to ever meet the softly-softly-catchy-monkey approach they'd talked about with their heart-to-heart. He had never been one to go quietly or with any sense of dignity.
But, still, she sits at the table in the middle of the restaurant - their table, so it's become known - drinking their cheapest wine (once it was something a little more expensive, pocket money she'd saved on the off chance that he might walk through those doors and she could crack open a celebratory bottle) and eating their bread sticks and sinking lower and lower in her chair.
The sting of forty eyes on the back of her head never goes away. They never leave you, the whispers of a small town, no matter how far away you move.
She comes here once a week, on Saturday after her morning shift, drives the two hours back to Hawkins through the wheat fields waning in the Winter air and little red farms, with little red roofs and little red tractors out front. They could be quaint if Joyce didn't know the secrets lurking just a few miles south; the Upside Down tainted so much more than her home, and her family, and her town. The closer she gets to Hawkins, the more sullied things look. Like a black sheen drifted across them, a sepia tone, everything plunged into a throbbing, decrepit grey.
It makes her head hurt.
She feels the same sting of rejection she always does. The large clock on the wall ticks past 7.30 and Joyce has eaten two baskets of bread sticks and drank half a bottle of wine.
"Will you be ordering tonight, ma'am?" the waiter asks, and she wonders if it's the same waiter that served him. The same waiter that watched him walk out of there alone and, likely, angry. The same waiter that's always there. Every single night.
Joyce shakes her head. "No. Thank you." Tonight she musters a smile, the corners of her mouth curling into something that doesn't quite resemble happiness, but is better than the one she puts on for the customers at Walmart. Hawkins is a different breed, that much is for sure. Indianapolis residents don't hold a candle to them.
At least they didn't. But, she doesn't drive through the centre of town much anymore. Too many bad memories, eyes scanning every car, heart leaping in her throat when she sees the square tail lights of a truck only to realise it's not even the right colour.
He's in too many ghosts. She thought it was bad enough, seeing Bob everywhere, but this? She feels like she's fifteen again, standing in threadbare clothes, waiting in the hallway for a glimpse of blonde hair bobbing by. She didn't like him. Not like that, anyway. That was what she had always told herself as she picked at the frayed holes in the knees of her jeans, yet always wanting to see that sweep of dirty blond hair approaching her mother’s front door.
There was always something about James Hopper that made her want.
He sat on his car, leaning back with his leg up on bumper with a pack of Camels in his front pocket and a cigarette drooping from between his lips. Joyce never much cared for his devil-may-care-James-Dean attitude, but the way he cocks his head and gives her a smile every time he sees her makes something uncomfortable squirm in the base of her belly.
He's the first person she goes to when Will is missing all those years later. Her hands shaking, despite her need to keep it together. James Dean is dead, replaced by a shell that she doesn't recognise - she knows, Lord, she knows, but doesn't recognise - and all she needs is for him to believe her. It goes both ways, she supposed, the nights after El spent in low light, drinking shitty wine and sat a little too close on her ratty couch, her forehead pressed against his bicep as she laughs, and laughs, and laughs.
She stays at Motel 6, listening to couples having sex through the wall and consider whether she's truly, finally, absolutely losing her mind. The wine is really doing a number on her tonight. She's punch drunk. She misses him something rotten.
Just like high school, she wants. She wants, and wants, and wants, enough to grab the pillow, to put her face against it, enough to scream until her throat is raw and the couple next door have paid their dues and driven off in separate cars.
She goes back every Saturday night, wearing the same little black dress, the one she's not worn for years that comes to her knees and makes her feel pretty. She tucks her hair behind her ear, putting lipstick on in the rear mirror of her car and El asks her where she's going with big, curious eyes. "Is it about Dad?" and it breaks Joyce's heart every time when she gives her a liar's smile and says, "no, sweetheart, not about Dad."
She sits at the middle table in Enzo's because she can't quite believe anything anymore. Because she closed her eyes, because Dr. Owens told her with a firm hand on her shoulder that they never found his body. Because if she truly believes it then a part of her, a small part, dies with him.
It's wholly selfish. But, for once in her life, she deserves to be selfish - doesn't she?
Joyce pulls a face as the cheap wine - a Pinot Noir, the waiter said, but she's not sure whether she believes him or not - leaves a bitter taste at the back of her throat. The breadsticks are stale. Her dress is coming apart at the bottom seam and her tights laddered as she got out of her car. It's the last time, Joyce thinks, the last time. Her pocket money has dwindled, the house is full and her heart is starting to heal beneath the band aid she haphazardly stuck there.
Over the rim of the glass she watches the door; her stomach no longer plummets every time it opens. Happy couples, arm in arm, maybe she should be jealous but that kind of normalcy makes her sick. She remembers sitting alone, eating leftover lasagne in front of the TV and wishes she'd said yes. Will told her about the butterfly effect; she thinks on it sometimes on her breaks, standing out back with a cigarette trembling between her fingers. Don't do it to yourself, Dr. Owens tells her, yet she ruminates on memories that never happened. A dinner between friends, a shared look, a bottle of wine half drunk. If they'd eaten together that night, would anything have changed? Would he still be alive?
Joyce catches herself before she hits the ground and swallows, picking the napkin up from her lap and tossing it onto the table with a sigh.
You throwing in the towel early, Horowitz?
Her gaze lifts to the doorway. A shadow hovers out on the street. She frowns.
Slowly, Joyce stands from the table, placing a few bills under her untouched plate and grabs her bag, making her way through the gaggle of tourists crowded around the bar, not taking her eyes off the shadow and the way it looks at her. Her hand flat against the door, she pushes it open, feeling a wall of September heat hit her like a freight train.
In the darkness, there, is a man.
Her breath catches in the back of her throat as the door swings shut behind her.
“Hopper?”