Chapter Text
Glitter flakes to the ground, sticking to everything in its path—the toes of his sneakers, beneath his nails, the entire length of his index finger, still tacky with glue. Pink, red, and silver replace the darkening bruises on his knuckles, making them multicolored in a fun way as opposed to the real, embarrassing reason. He’d been wrong to think the bullying would stop after the disappearance of Bowers and his shithead friends, but awful bigots are always there to fill the void, he supposes.
Still, this is not about his most recent loss, which he still remembers with a vividness that startles him—maybe you never forget your first concussion, or the way your head cracked against the concrete—but rather, it’s about this heart not fitting through the slots of this locker and all the goddamn glitter falling off it.
All of his hard work will be for naught if he cannot get this where it needs to be; it is already covering the floor in an explosion of nauseating lovesickness.
He tries again, shoving a curve through first and slowly moving it, but he fears that will result in utter destruction and stops.
“What the hell happened to you?” Stan asks. He grips the strap of his backpack with a fist, quirking a brow at Richie, looking like an arts and crafts closet threw up on him.
“Art class,” Richie replies, though he’s not sure what he means by that. It was relatively easy today, but every day is easy because Richie does not follow the lesson plan.
They’re supposed to be drawing some landscape or another, recreating it in any way they choose, but while Constance Gallagher cried over incorrectly mixing the blue she needed for the deep sea and James Gregory fumbled his way through a jungle they all knew he couldn’t sketch, Richie spent the past three days making the perfect valentine. And this is perfect. Very symmetrical. The heart is probably the only thing he’s ever focused on with so much care.
No one needs to know it took him four sheets of construction paper and he accidentally cut into his thumb with a pair of very sharp scissors. No one needs to know that he’s basically a kindergartener. His battle scar throbs beneath the green band aid he’d wrapped around it as if reminding him of its existence. Stupid.
He looks away from Stan because Stan can see right through him and glares at the stupid metal door. His heart hangs out of it pathetically. “Did the lockers get smaller this year?”
“No,” Stan says. “This has been Eddie’s locker for years. Literally nothing has changed about it since he got it.”
“Then why can’t I—” Richie stops, grits his teeth, and shoves, but then thinks better of it. He doesn’t want to rip his masterpiece. “Why can’t I fit this stupid thing in here?”
Stan smirks, an infuriating twist of the mouth Richie witnesses from the corner of his eye, and shifts his backpack so he can lean up against the wall. “What is it?”
“My art project,” Richie says. “I’m giving it to him.”
“So just hand it to him,” Stan suggests.
“That defeats the—” Richie snaps his mouth shut, teeth clanking together and sending a sharp, shooting pain up the side of his face to his temple. “I can’t just give it to him, he needs to find it in his locker. That’s the point. I do this every year. I can’t just stop—”
Stan picks at a skateboard sticker pasted to the metal by his shoulder, digging his thumbnail beneath it, trying to rip it off in one fell swoop. He pulls it up, smooths it back down, and repeats. “You make Eddie a valentine every year?”
Richie looks at him, now not meeting his gaze, and wipes his sweaty palms on his pants. It’s not a valentine, he wants to say. It’s just a stupid heart. But his mouth and his tongue and his goddamn vocal cords are traitors to the crown, the crown being Richie’s head, and he says, out loud, “Yeah, since, like, ninth grade. You know this, Stan.”
“I wanna see.”
“No,” Richie says immediately. “It’s for Eddie.”
“Gotta make sure you aren’t embarrassing yourself too much, then.” Stan snatches it away from him, remarkably gentle for someone talking so much shit, and his eyes glitter with mischief as he reads it. Glitter sticks to him, too, almost in the same spots as Richie. On the matching puckered scars of their palms, red like blood but sparkling like something better. He snorts, Stan does. “How long did it take you to write this out?”
“Not long,” Richie lies. His fingers still feel cramped, stuck in the bent position he’d forced them into. His handwriting is shit, of course, so naturally he decided to teach himself calligraphy; it’s more roma—
No. Nope. Do not go there, Tozier.
His mind does, but he ignores it because it’s not. It’s nothing like that. He just likes to bother Eddie. Likes to tease him. They like to make fun of the same things, and one of those things is how fucking frazzled everyone gets around Valentine’s Day. There’s a goddamn bear sale in the lunchroom, Jesus Christ.
This is nothing, nothing, nothing, even if his heart beats wildly out of tune.
Stan is still busy scanning on the heart, missing out on the flurry of emotions Richie feels take over his face. “Your poetry skills are profound,” he decides. With a quick clearing of his throat, he drops his voice an octave: “Roses are red, violets are blue, Groundhog Day is playing at the Aladdin, I got tickets for two. Incredible.”
Heat rises to Richie’s cheeks, burns its way up his neck and to his ears, which feel like they’re on fire. It’s corny and stupid but he wasn’t going to dedicate the thing to Eddie’s eyes, was he? No. Of course not.
(Maybe.)
He coughs, rubbing at his face like he can get rid of the flush, and says, “Shut up, Stanley Urine. Give it back. There’s only seven minutes left of this period and I need to get this in here before Eddie—”
Stan sighs and shoves him out of the way, which is rude, impolite, entitled, and every other adjective Richie can think of—and he knows a lot, currently, because of the SATs he does not want to take and the thesaurus he all but memorized doing this project. He once thought he could be funny and deep, but that ended up with him getting too close, too real, too much.
“Hey,” he snaps at Stan, tripping over his laces, untied beneath his feet. He throws a hand out to keep himself from eating shit and watches, dumbfounded, as Stan twists Eddie’s combination into his lock. It clicks open at the last number (five). He tugs on it, pulls the door wide, and places Richie’s valentine amidst the neatly organized books, Eddie’s perfect handwriting labelling each. “What.”
Stan sticks his hand into a plastic bag towards the back, hidden behind Pride and Prejudice and a beat-up chemistry workbook. He emerges again with a packet of M&Ms before locking up. “I know everyone’s combinations,” he says. “You want?”
“Green, please,” Richie requests.
Stan shakes out three—none of them the color he’d wanted—and pops one into his own mouth. He chews thoughtfully, too long for one M&M, and considers Richie like he’s something particularly interesting, something he’s never seen, a bird he’s been following around for weeks. “You gonna tell him you like him ever, or—?”
“Who?”
He levels him with a look, hitting the side of his fist against the locker. “You know.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Richie says, “or what makes you think that I… that I would. We’re just—we’re friends.”
“Mhm,” Stan hums back, “but you make him a valentine every year.” He ducks his head, makes a big ordeal of searching the bag for an M&M, and hands Richie over a green one. “You don’t make me a valentine. You don’t take me out on a ridiculous date on Valentine’s Day.”
“It’s not a date,” Richie says immediately. He sucks on the chocolate, slow as to savor it. As to collect his thoughts. “I can make you a valentine. I can take you to the movies. What do you want to see?”
Stan makes a face, pinched around his mouth. “Nothing. I don’t want to be treated like Eddie.”
“I don’t treat him any different,” Richie retorts. “We hang out like any ordinary day. It’s not like—it’s not a—I’m not—” He runs his tongue over his teeth, jittery and nervous and kind of mad, stomach churning. “It’s nothing.”
“Yeah,” Stan says. “Of course.”
“It isn’t,” Richie insists, hot and itchy and feeling like his hands are too big for his arms. He hates the look on Stan’s face, the disbelief, the sincerity, and hates that for once he’s suddenly being seen when he’s spent his whole life practically invisible unless he was getting the shit kicked out of him. He was seen then, too, and it never ended well. “It’s… it’s funny. We’ve thought it was funny for years. I just make him a valentine and we go to the movies. We… we… we make fun of everyone who thinks this dumb Hallmark holiday matters. We make fun of Bill and Bev!”
Stan presses his lips into a tight line, stares at him in that unblinking, all-knowing way of his. “My apologies,” he drawls. “I forgot making fun of Bill and Bev, who did not even date before she moved, is still funny four years later.”
Richie whacks at him with the heel of his palm. “You’re an asshole, Stanley.”
“Takes one to know one,” Stan replies. “You made me this way. Your friendship corrupted me. I used to be so nice.”
“You shoved sand down the back of my shirt in kindergarten,” Richie says flatly. “You’ve never needed me to be a monster.”
Stan cocks his head to the side. “Maybe,” he allows, “but I’ve had to keep up with you, so. You’re complicit.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Stan pours another couple of chocolates into his hand and offers them up; Richie snags the greens. “But somehow you’re my best friend,” he says, nakedly honest. He clears his throat, looks away, and tells the SAY NO TO DRUGS poster behind Richie’s head, “You can tell me anything, you know. Contrary to popular belief, I will not judge you.”
Richie bites his M&M in two, feels the sugar coat his teeth. I think you already know, he can imagine himself saying, giving Stan the same courtesy he gave him, a moment of authenticity, but Richie is almost seventeen and doesn’t like to dwell too much on feelings that don’t make sense. That he’s never voiced aloud before. The moment is too charged for him to ignore Stan’s statement, though, so he says, “Well, I do have something important to tell you.”
Stan blinks back at him, curious.
I like, Richie thinks, and his mouth announces, “I think the earth is flat.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Stan lobs a candy at him and gets him right in the forehead, a small, startingly painful sensation. Richie tries to catch it before it hits the ground. “You’re such a fucking prick, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told,” Richie answers. He shows off the M&M. “Five second rule still applies, right?”
Stan wrinkles his nose and slaps his hand, making Richie drop it again. It skitters away.
Richie’s jaw drops comically and he presses a hand to his chest. “I can’t believe you would do that, Stanley! There are people that are starving. Don’t you know we’re not supposed to waste food?”
“I think they’ll be okay if you don’t eat the M&M you picked up off the fucking floor,” Stan retorts. “Don’t you ever do that again. You don’t know when they’ve cleaned these halls last.”
“You got it, Dad,” Richie teases. He leans forward and musses Stan’s hair up, turning it into a chaotic mess of curls not unlike Richie’s. “Thanks, though,” he says, quieter. Subdued. “If I ever have anything important to say, you’ll be the first to know.”
“I better,” Stan grumbles.
“Such a nosy little gossip,” Richie coos, pinching his cheek.
Stan swats him away. “Not a gossip,” he snaps, which is a lie. “A friend.”
“Yes,” Richie sing-songs. “A gossipy friend.”
Eddie appears when Stan grapples Richie into a headlock, disagreeing vehemently with him, trying to squeeze his head so hard it pops, or explodes, or something. Richie’s peals of laughter and pathetic attempts to get him off him have them both missing the ringing of the bell and the filling of the hall.
“Hello,” Eddie says, perplexed. He ducks under the space they’ve left between them, and twists his combination into his lock, hardly batting an eye at Stan and Richie’s antics. “What are you guys arguing about and does it have to happen in front of my locker?”
Then, after a beat: “Stan, did you take my candy again?”
“I left you three bags,” Stan answers, panting. “Richie is being an asshole.”
“Just admit you like gossiping,” Richie shoots back. He shifts away from him, closer to Eddie, so he’s able to whisper in his ear. “He likes knowing things.”
Stan scoffs loudly. “So do you!” he says back. “Or am I imagining how invested you’ve gotten in Greta’s relationship?”
“She is a villain and that kid on the basketball team is too nice for her,” he replies. “Oh, and don’t tell me you’re not as curious about the rumor that she and Sally are lesbians, because that would be a fucking lie—”
“Wait, what?” Eddie asks, lifting his head back to look at Richie. His eyes are so brown in the fluorescent light.
Richie swallows, overcome by this realization, flicks his gaze to his nose, and smiles easily. “People are saying they’re only using Nice Boy From The Basketball Team as a cover for their illicit love affair because Greta never once spoke to him before they were suddenly dating and—”
“And I’m the gossip?” Stan demands, though he’s amused. “You’ve got it all wrong anyway. The rumor is they were caught in a very compromising situation behind the bleachers, but my source isn’t credible enough for that to be true without further investigation.”
“No,” Eddie breathes out. “When?”
Stan shrugs. “I don’t know. Last month, maybe. They don’t seem too affected by it, so it’s unclear if it’s even on their radar.”
“Huh,” Eddie muses. “It wouldn’t be that surprising, would it? They’re really good friends.” He drops his backpack between his feet and turns to face Richie. He flinches at the sudden coldness of Eddie’s touch on his cheeks. His fingers are always cold. “You have glitter all over your face, by the way.”
“Do I?”
Stan snorts.
“Yeah.” Eddie tries to pick the pieces off, scratching at his skin, and Richie clears his throat. He bites down on his lip to keep from laughing—uncomfortably and because he’s apparently ticklish on his goddamn face—or saying something remarkably stupid like—
He avoids Eddie’s gaze, the way his brow is furrowed intently, and how he’s so singularly focused on Richie and Richie alone. He is so close, when did he get so close? Why are his hands so soft? Why is he so—He smells of the lotion and hand sanitizer he’s no doubt slathered all over his hands, sweet and sharp.
Richie looks at Stan instead, no doubt frazzled, his own eyes wide behind his glasses, which already make him look crazy, and blinks. “Oh my god,” he blurts.
“Yup,” Stan agrees, following along as Richie unravels. They’re always on the same wavelength. Always sharing the same brain.
“No, it’s fine,” Eddie says eventually, dropping his hand. He looks up at Richie—why is Eddie so short? Why is he the perfect height for him?—his lashes dark and long and fluttering. “It’ll come off at some point, but I wouldn’t worry about it. They’re like colorful freckles. It’s cute.”
Richie can’t feel his tongue, too large and too dry, but he manages to say, “Nah, that’s you, Spagheds.” The nickname feels like it’s been torn from his throat, cracked and dry.
Eddie’s face scrunches up—he hates that nickname more than the rest—and he shakes his head, disrupting the hair he’s carefully brushed from his face, the Sonia Kaspbrak Approved hairstyle he’s been sporting for years. A wave falls against his forehead, right between his eyes; he blows it out of the way, but it only floats a bit before settling back down. Richie watches this, feels heat and want and the crackling energy of something else, something fond settle somewhere in his belly. It spreads, makes him warm, and he finds himself clenching his hand, crossing his fingers. He will not touch. He does not want to touch.
Not. Not. Not.
“I think you win today,” Eddie disagrees, easy and smooth, like Richie’s world isn’t crumbling to pieces around him.
Stan’s laugh is a loud bark behind them, and Richie can’t find it in himself to react, still staring at the planes of Eddie’s face.
“Stan,” Richie says frantically, grabbing his hood as he exits his last class. He’d stood out there for fifteen minutes, hands sweaty and heart pounding, peeking through the little window on the door, zeroing in on Stan’s face.
He’s spent more time waiting around in hallways than he had in class today, but that’s beside the point.
Stan squawks. “What the fu—”
“Stan,” he says again, voice rising an octave, high and squeaky, “is this a date?”
Richie emerges from the school, blinded by the intensity of the winter sun, bright and bouncing off leftover mounds of snow, and he immediately wants to turn back around.
Eddie is sitting on the trunk of Richie’s car, squinting at the book from his locker. Pride and Prejudice, Richie thinks it was. He’s lit up so nicely from the light that’s making it hard for him to see, soft and golden and alive in the dwindling daylight that makes everything else seem dull and dead in comparison.
He hasn’t seen him yet. He can still turn around and run, but his feet propel him forward, weaving between the leftover cars and bodies until he’s standing right in front of him. He flicks him in the ear, eliciting a squeak, and moves past him to unlock his backseat, where he throws his backpack.
Eddie shoves his book back in his own bag and asks, “What took you so long? S’cold out.”
“Had to talk to my physics teacher,” Richie lies—because he can’t exactly say I had a crisis in the bathroom and Stan had to talk me out of leaving my car here and running home from the back entrance.
He can still hear him, actually, kind of condescending but mainly gentle. You’re really going to walk to school Monday because of Eddie?
The answer is no, obviously, he’s not. Eddie is his favorite person and it’s that reason that makes his palms sweat.
It’s just…
He thought he was over this, done with it. Carved it out, packed it up, put it away for safe-keeping. Only to be dusted off when he was feeling particularly self-deprecating and miserable.
He’d been doing it. He’d been convincing himself that all of this was just what really good friends do, and what’s the point of friends, anyway, if you weren’t kind of in love with them?
But then Eddie has to touch his face, and say things like that wouldn’t be surprising, and call him cute. Him! Richie, who goes out of his way to make sure Eddie hears him call him that at least once a day because Eddie’s face turns this really pleasant shade of red and he gets so flustered and—
Shit.
Those walls he built? The barriers? Gone. Destroyed. Donezo. They may have never existed in the first place, his feelings so strong they became malleable, twisting into other things but always present.
And now maybe Richie gets why Eddie works himself up when Richie calls him cute, or cutie, or tries to pinch his cheeks. It’s jarring. Overwhelming. Is it a compliment? What does it mean? Richie’s been mulling over it all day, decided it was, and focused on how Eddie looked at him, touched him, how his own heart exploded into a million pieces only to put itself back together in a shape that is very reminiscent to the one that belonged to a thirteen year old boy carving initials into a wooden bridge.
“You know this one door doesn’t lock correctly,” Richie says finally. “You coulda sat in here and waited.”
“Still would’ve been cold,” Eddie replies. He’s wearing his winter hat, the beanie that’s a little too big for his head; it covers his ears. “Anyway, are you…” He lightly taps on Richie’s wrist, curls his fingers around his sleeve. A wave of heat floods excitedly through his bloodstream. His pulse beats erratically.
Stop, Richie thinks at it, at his body.
Eddie peers up at him like he’s cataloging Richie’s face, scanning it for injuries or signs of maladies. All he’ll find is this kind of painful zit by his ear that Richie knows he shouldn’t scratch even if he wants to. “Are you okay?” Eddie asks. “You seem, I don’t know, paler than usual.”
“It’s winter,” Richie replies. “Not all of us can look as cute as you with your little flushed cheeks.”
As if on command, the slightly pink skin of Eddie’s face reddens more, dramatically, even, at Richie’s words. Eddie clears his throat, tucks his hair beneath his hat. “I know,” he says. “I’m, like, a baby or whatever.”
“A cherub,” Richie corrects, “but close enough.”
“Aren’t cherubs babies?”
“They’re pretty little boys,” Richie explains, though he thinks they could be babies, too, but he’s no art historian. “And that’s what you are, with those cheeks.” He reaches out to pinch them, feels how heated they are, and finds the movements of his fingers begin to jerk around, changing course. He rubs his thumb along the apple, where the color is highest, soft and gentle, and cups the rest of his face at the jaw, holding him in place.
Eddie stares, pupils wide, and Richie stares back, mesmerized by the multitude of colors one face can have. He’s particularly enraptured by Eddie’s irises, how they aren’t just brown, and how brown isn’t an ugly color at all, like people think. He’s got little flecks of green in there, of gold maybe, and for some reason, Richie, who doesn’t take art class seriously at all, wants to go back to that stuffy room and ask if he can just—if he can draw eyes instead of the dumb mountains and treetops his classmates are slaving over.
He thinks he’d be able to do this justice. To make it good. He’d care more, at least.
“I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not, so.” Eddie clears his throat. “Are we going to the diner before or after the movie?”
“After,” Richie answers. He thinks at Eddie, It’s a compliment, idiot, learn how to take one. “The movie is at three-fifty.”
“Okay.” Eddie checks his watch, moving out of Richie’s hold. “Let’s go, slowpoke. I didn’t know how badly I needed to see Bill Murray in a romantic comedy until three hours ago.”
“I can’t promise it’ll be any good,” Richie warns. Eddie’s got a habit of blaming him for all the bad movies they see, like Richie’s made them all specifically to spite him.
Eddie pinches him; it feels more affectionate than it does annoyed. He says, “It’ll be good because I’m with you. Just like how everything we do together is.”
Richie’s heart beats double time in his chest, mimicking a drum beat that’s both somehow wild and knowing. He takes a moment here to breathe—in and out, in and out, like he’s having a panic attack, but in a good way. He’s overwhelmed by the thought of Eddie just… of Eddie genuinely having a good time with him, of wanting to be with him, maybe, regardless of what they’re doing.
And Richie’s gone out of his way to pick some shitty titles at Blockbuster.
He coughs, breathes out shakily, and drags his hands down his face. He’s probably got more glitter there now. He thinks he can taste it on his tongue, but it won’t come off until later, and he can’t do anything about it, so he slides into the driver’s seat and starts the engine. He fiddles with his fucked up radio, twisting the dial this way and that, looking for a station that plays more than just static.
The closest he gets is a station that plays sporadically, the signal too far or too weak for him to get a clear sound. He thinks it’s Silly Love Songs, but he can’t be sure.
“Tapes are in the glove compartment,” he tells Eddie, hovering his hand over the vents, waiting for the hot air to kick in.
It doesn’t take that long to get to the theater, but the silence that could accompany them there… it’d give Richie time to think, to maybe say something he shouldn’t. Something stupid. It would be potent and palpable and easy to cut like tension sometimes is, and Richie doesn’t need that today. Not ever. With nothing to distract him, he has the ability to fuck it all up—fuck them all up—and that’s something he’d never want, whatever that means to him. To them.
“Do you have—”
“Yes.”
“I never said wh—”
“If you like it, I have it.” Richie puts the car in reverse, does that thing he’s only ever seen people in movies and his mom do, and grips the back of Eddie’s seat as he turns to check if the coast is clear.
Eddie hums, looking through the extensive tape collection—it’s the only thing in the compartment—and eventually pulls one out. If Richie knows him as well as he does, in about seven seconds, he’s going to play—
Oh! I wanna dance with somebody
I wanna feel the heat with somebody
Richie sings the next line and cuts Greta Bowie off, swerving into the street. He snorts at her incessant honking, which serves her right, even if she is somehow accidentally a gay icon. She’s a fucking bitch who picks on Stan for no reason, like she’s never met a Jewish person before. There are plenty in Derry, but everyone goes after Stan because it’s a really big part of who he is, being the rabbi’s son and all. Like Stan isn’t the fucking greatest. What the fuck ever, Greta, choke on a dick.
She deserves it, right, and Eddie doesn’t call him out on his reckless driving, so he thinks it’s okay.
Whitney Houston plays for a bit, the only sound in the car besides the rattle of his air vents.
At a red light, Eddie finally speaks, pulling a hastily torn paper from his bag and thrusting it at Richie. “Here.”
Richie glances at him, holds his hand out, and puts his eyes back on the road. The paper slices through the skin between his index and middle fingers, stinging. He ignores it, aware of everything and nothing: of his foot on the brake and Eddie’s heated gaze and the February chill seeping through the back window, which he’s left cracked open. “What is it?”
“I made it in math” is all Eddie says. He looks away from him, chin in his hand, elbow on the cup holder in his door. He’s too relaxed for it to be real. Richie notices how stiff his spine looks.
“Is it your polynomials test?” Richie asks. “Do you want me to put it on my fridge?”
“No, it’s not my test,” Eddie says, “but I did pass, so thanks. It’s something else.”
Richie measures the time he has between light changes and drops his gaze to his hand, where he’s holding the thing with such a tight grip that two of his knuckles have turned white with the strain.
The thickness of the paper is due to it being covered in graph lines, no doubt pulled from Eddie’s math book. It’s covered in a large, lopsided heart, the left side bigger than the right. It’s colored in so meticulously, so painstakingly, it makes Richie smile—Eddie’s such a perfectionist—though it is not as intense as Richie’s glittering masterpiece, which is on another level of artistic expression, he thinks.
Eddie’s handwriting underneath it is a little hasty, quick like he was nervous about it but needed to do it. Let u = the area of the shaded region, it says, and Richie has always had a terrible relationship with stress and anxiety and vomiting, so he feels very much like he’s going to upchuck right here. But when he does that this time, he’s going to be spitting up, like, flowers, or confetti, or maybe the anatomically correct heart in his chest, which no longer belongs to him. It doesn’t even beat correctly, just occasionally and painfully, like it knows how to work but doesn’t want to. Like it doesn’t listen to him anymore.
Fondness grows inside of him starting at his feet, twisting its way up, and up, and up, until he’s nothing but a warm, tender body of flesh without any control over himself.
He lays it down in his lap, afraid to wrinkle it, and puts his hands tightly at ten and two, something he hasn’t done since he passed his driver’s test. “This is so lame, Eds,” he says, throat tight.
“Well, you’re pretty lame,” Eddie retorts, “so I thought it was fitting.”
It weighs him down, this little thing, feels like there’s three hundred pounds on his thighs right now, and Richie sniffs and raises the volume of the song. Whitney’s singing about needing a change of heart now; Eddie’s leg jiggles in time with the beat, fingers twitching at his knee, and Richie watches the motions for a second, wondering what it would be like to lean over and—
A horn honks behind them, two irritated taps and then a longer blast, the driver holding down on it as if that will express their mood efficiently.
Richie checks his rearview mirror, sees that Greta is scowling at him, and flips her off.
She honks again, knuckles smashed into the wheel, and Eddie snorts when Richie deliberately goes much, much slower than the speed limit.
There may be a heart in his lap and another wriggling its way into Eddie’s hands, but this, at least, remains the same.
Eddie’s got a bony elbow, and he shoves it hard into Richie’s side, making him grunt and kind of, sort of feel like he’s getting shanked. All the air escapes him, gives Eddie the room to surge forward and try to pay for the literal fucking bucket of popcorn they’ve drenched in butter.
He pinches him at the back of his neck, where his jacket’s slid down, but Eddie doesn’t budge, used to these kinds of physical assaults from Richie. He bats his hand away, snaps, “I’m paying,” and tries to hand the movie theater employee a twenty.
Richie karate chops his arm. “No, I am.”
“You always pay—”
“—because I have a job—”
“—okay, and so do I—”
“—just because you and Mike have very similar pouty puppy dog eyes and manipulated his grandfather into having you help at the farm doesn’t mean—”
“—it’s a very strenuous job, do you know much I have to lift to—”
“—strenuous, my ass—”
“—could punch you in the face and break both your nose and your glasses—”
“—anyone can do that, nothing special there—”
“—okay, asshole, go on, feel my fucking arm, then—”
“—not going to feel your arm—”
Eddie shoves into Richie again, and maybe Richie really does want to touch him, he doesn’t know, but his hand wraps around Eddie’s bicep. “I only feel your jacket.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Eddie grumbles, tugging at his coat until it’s hanging off of one side of him. “Do it now.”
“Just let me pay,” Richie begs, circling back to the matter at hand. He doesn’t have to touch him to know Eddie’s filled out significantly since A) he stopped listening to his mother and dropped every single one of his medications and B) he started spending more time with Mike. He’s watched. He’s seen. He is aware with a capital A.
“No, let me,” Eddie insists, and he looks ridiculous, glaring up at Richie with those perfect eyes of his, mussed and righteous like he’s in the middle of having a tantrum. Like he’s five and Richie said he couldn’t have ice cream before dinner.
Richie squares his jaw. “You can pay next time.”
“Yeah, right,” Eddie retorts, “like you’ll remember you said that.”
The bored concession worker snaps her gum, pink against her teeth. “You know,” she starts, resting an elbow on the glass counter, “every time the two of you are here, you argue about this.”
“We do not,” Eddie snaps. Pauses. Reads her nametag. “Sally.”
Sally shares a glance with the guy behind her, the one who made their popcorn, and he snorts. “You do,” she says. “You”—she points at Richie—“always pay, even though you claim he can next time, and you”—her finger moves to Eddie—“complain about it like it’s the end of the world. I would kill to have someone pay for everything for me, but nooooo.” She shoots the dude a look again and he stares back at her, nonplussed.
Richie blinks.
Eddie opens his mouth, closes it.
“Whatever,” Sally decides. “Which one of you losers is going to pay? I don’t have time for your domestic squabble today.”
“Me,” Richie and Eddie say at the same time.
Richie shoves him out of the way and thrusts the money he’s been fisting into Sally’s waiting hands. Eddie rights himself just before he can knock over the candy display, winds up, and punches Richie in the arm.
“The fuck,” Richie blurts. “Why are you full of so much violence but so small?”
“I am not small,” Eddie returns.
“Itty bitty,” Richie proclaims, holding up his fingers and squinting. “The tiniest.”
Eddie moves to shove him again, but Richie is ready this time and ducks out of the way.
Sally saves their popcorn before it can spill all over her, a few pieces littering the counter space. “I won’t give you another one if you drop it,” she warns.
“I won’t,” Richie promises. “Can I have my change?” He grins over at Eddie as she presses coins and dollar bills into his hand, waggling his eyebrows like he’s won some sort of battle here.
And he has. It’s always worth it to see Eddie all worked up like this.
“Fuck off,” Eddie says, “or I’ll drop the popcorn on purpose and not share when I buy my own.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Richie replies, knowing Eddie is all talk and no action when it comes to shit like this. If Richie asks for food, he’ll give it to him, simple as that. He won’t give it to anyone else.
Eddie snatches his box of Sno-Caps, tears the rest of his jacket off, and says, “You’re right. I wouldn’t.”
Richie beams.
“Your flirting is nauseating,” Sandy says. “You’re pink.”
“Oh, we’re not—”
“Please go,” she orders, sliding another box of Eddie’s candy his way, almost like a bribe. “There’s an entire line of people behind you who do not find your not-flirting with your boyfriend as utterly precious as I do.”
Her face says otherwise and a wave of embarrassment, or shame, or something floods over Richie, drenching him. Date, Stan called this. Flirting, said Sally. Boyfriend.
It’s not. He’s not. They’re not.
The thing is—Richie can’t tell if the things people say are jokes anymore. Are meant to be mean. He doesn’t know when he’d started noticing it either; it’s not like his behaviors changed. He’s just… he’s being made aware of them now, over and over on this one day, on this romantic day, and he feels seen, reflecting off the annoyed glint in Sally’s eyes.
Sally, who hasn’t said anything derogatory.
Sally, who is just annoyed they’re keeping her from doing her job, which she doesn’t seem to like anyway.
“You don’t mean that at all,” Eddie says cheerfully, calling her on her bluff. She hates this. She hates them. They’re always here when she is and she fuckin’ sighed when she saw them. “You don’t even like us.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Sally replies. “Go. Enjoy your dumb movie.”
“We will,” Eddie declares, grabbing Richie’s hand. It’s cold still, the chill from outside clinging to his skin, and Richie’s fingers slide between his, intent on warming him up. Eddie squeezes, stuffs both things of Sno-Caps in his pockets, and does not at all seem perturbed to be walking through the packed movie theater, their clasped hands on display.
Richie stares at them, the way his engulfs Eddie’s, makes him look small, and swallows. He accidentally catches Sally’s eye, his own widening in sheer fucking panic, and she offers him up a small smile, the corner of her mouth lifting and dropping all in the span of a second. Then she barks, “Next,” at them, ushering them away.
Eddie leads them through the theater and does not let go.
Eddie hands their tickets over, finds two seats together, balances the popcorn between his knees, and does not let go.
Eddie watches the trailers, tells Richie he wants to see some action flick Richie didn’t pay attention to, watches the opening of the movie—Bill Murray on the set of the news show he works for—and does not let go.
Eddie uses his free hand to eat popcorn, makes a discouraging sound when Bill Murray’s character is particularly uncouth, shifts in his seat so his shoulder presses against Richie’s arm, and does not let go.
Richie tries to untangle them, but Eddie merely squeezes his fingers, a sure message if he’s ever sent one. He leaves them, loosening his grip a bit in case Eddie can feel how much he wants to keep holding his hand even if he acts like he doesn’t.
Eddie offers him up a bunch of chocolates, eyes straight ahead, palm lifted in the general vicinity of Richie’s mouth. It’s a very un-Eddie thing to do, not asking if he wants any or dropping them into his own palm, and Richie doesn’t know why he does it—later, if asked, he’ll say he wanted to see how far he could push him—but he licks them off, tongue wet against Eddie’s dry, warm skin. He can feel the stuttering vibration of Eddie’s heartbeat in his wrist, intensifying as he closes his teeth around one of the nonpareils, and pulls away, crunching down on them.
The sugar explodes in his mouth, a nice addition to the butter from the popcorn, and Richie makes a decision.
Onscreen, Bill Murray attempts to woo Andie MacDowell over and over.
In the second to last row of the Aladdin movie theater, Richie breathes in for two and out for three, unlatches his hand from Eddie’s, and leans his arm against the top of Eddie’s seat.
Andie MacDowell slaps Bill Murray at the end of each of their so-called dates.
Richie swallows a mouthful of sweet and salty saliva and slides his arm down to rest around Eddie’s shoulder. He feels his heart in his ass.
Eddie shoves another handful of popcorn in his mouth, wriggles a bit, and moves, leaning his head against Richie’s chest. He grabs his hand, shakes out some more Sno-Caps, and stays there for the rest of the movie.
Andie MacDowell wakes up with Bill Murray on February third.
Richie does not breathe the entire time.
The diner is playing Bryan Adams’ (Everything I Do) I Do It For You when Richie pushes the door open. The little bell jingles overhead, hardly audible over the chorus of the song, and the entire place looks like the Valentine’s Day aisle at the local drugstore threw up on it. The walls are covered in pinks, purples, and reds, hearts and Cupids with their arrows notched, and paper cut-outs of puckered lips. It smells of freshly baked cookies, coffee, and—that’s probably fries, greasy and salty.
Richie’s stomach grumbles.
His hand is empty, but he can feel Eddie’s fingers between his like ghosts. Can still smell Eddie’s hair, clean and kind of fruity, his shirt soaking up his shampoo like an eager sponge.
They wait, the two of them, for the hostess to recognize them, and they do not speak, and Eddie’s gaze burns into Richie’s cheek. He is staring. Just—staring.
That’s it.
Not that he hasn’t stared at him before—in annoyance, disbelief, humor—and not that Richie hasn’t been caught doing the same, but it makes him kind of itchy. Very, very warm, but that could also be the heater they’re standing under. He’s convinced he looks just like the rest of this place: vibrant, and red, and obvious.
Eddie finally says, “I don’t think I like Bill Murray’s character. He was the worst. If I had to live the same day over and over again, I wouldn’t do half the shit he did.”
Richie replies, “You don’t have a lesson to learn, Eds. You rarely do anything for your own self-interests. That’s the difference.”
“Is it?” Eddie asks. “How do we know if he changes at all? What if he’s just the same awful person he was when he started out?”
“I think maybe having to live the same day all that time would change him,” Richie offers. “He learns there are consequences for his actions and cannot just magically have all the answers. What’s-her-face did not like when everything was perfect, right? It only worked out when it wasn’t her.”
“I guess,” Eddie says.
“It matters,” Richie continues, “when the person does. There are no secret advantages, right, and no one wants a literal picture-perfect relationship. You have to work for it. You have to get there. That’s when it counts.”
Eddie squints a bit, peering up at him, and then he smiles. Richie hates (read: loves) the way it transforms his face, plumping his cheeks, showing off his dimple. “Kind of like us,” Eddie mumbles.
“What?” Richie blurts.
They’re beckoned farther into the restaurant and Eddie follows dutifully, talking over his shoulder. “We had to work for this, didn’t we? To be able to hang out without trying to kill each other? You used to annoy the shit out of me, but now…” He stops, considers something, and the next thing out of his mouth is kind of awkward, like it wasn’t what he’d initially wanted to say. “We’re together all the time. We don’t need a buffer like we used to and I like all your jokes, even if they’re stupid, and you haven’t made one about my mom in ages.”
Not since ninth grade when one of them brought you to literal tears, Richie thinks, but I’m not keeping track and watching my mouth, no sir.
He parrots himself, sounds idiotic and high-pitched when he says, “What,” again.
Eddie slides into his seat, smiles at the woman who hands them their menus. “I mean, just, like, working for it is kind of the best part, right? Wanting to make those sacrifices and really get to know someone because you want to. We had to do that, and now you’re, like—you’re my—” He freezes there, like he’s embarrassed, and ducks his head to peruse the specials, even though Richie knows exactly what he’ll order.
“I’m like what?” Richie asks, following his lead. Maybe he’ll order the halibut.
(He won’t.)
(He’ll get what he always gets, if he even eats. He feels inexplicably nauseous.)
Eddie clicks his tongue and shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says, the voice of someone who does. “I want to say my best friend, but.” He pauses here, looks up at Richie from underneath his dark, long lashes. They cast fuckin’ shadows on his cheeks, goddamn. “I don’t think that’s right.”
“Well, yeah,” Richie replies. “Isn’t Bill your best friend anyway?”
Eddie hums, tapping his fingers against the plastic cover of the menu. “I’ve been telling you more things than him lately, but yeah,” he says. “I wasn’t going to say that though. I don’t think it’s right. I think… is there a name for someone who is—who is like a best friend but different? More?”
“I don’t know, dude,” Richie says, and the dude sounds so forced. So fake. His stomach churns. “I never thought about it.”
“I have,” Eddie replies. He makes direct eye contact now, face flushed so pink he blends right in with the décor. “I’ve thought about it a lot, actually.”
“Why?” Richie’s mind spins, thoughts stuck on Eddie’s face, on the faded freckles, on those frickin’ lashes. He’s so pretty. So, so pretty. He belongs in a museum, that’s how beautiful he is—in the art museum located in Richie’s heart because he doesn’t want to share. Once the rest of the world figures it out, it’s over for him, all lanky limbs and knotty hair and stupidly big glasses.
Eddie swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing nervously, but does not look away from him. “Because,” he says slowly, like he’s savoring it, like having it leave his mouth means something. “Because I think about you all the time.”
The silence that surrounds them is heavy, weighted, and so very thick. It rings in his ears, loud and vibrating, a real tangible thing that threatens to swallow him whole. He can break it, but he doesn’t know how, everything he wants to say, could say—it’s lodged in his throat, stuck like glue.
He doesn’t even hear their waitress arrive, her greeting swallowed up by everything that meant and everything it didn’t. The music swells, chaotic and vicious. Her pink heart pin glares at him, sparkling too much in the low light.
Eddie smiles at her, bright like the goddamn sun, and his mouth moves, but nothing registers. Just I think about you all the time, and What does that mean, and How do you think about me, and Is it how I think about you?
She looks at Richie, pleased as punch, and falters when Richie just stares at her blankly. He can assume what she wants from him, but he’s got nothing for her.
I think about you all the time.
Does she know what that means?
“Chicken fingers,” Eddie answers, his voice breaking through the haze. “Extra honey mustard. Right?” He kicks him in the shin.
Richie nods, coughs, and adds, “Can we get those hot chocolates, too?” His voice is a croak. He sounds old. He sounds sick. He sounds like his entire world got turned upside down.
“With or without marshmallows?”
“With,” Richie answers. “They’re his favorite part.”
She smiles at him and collects the menus. “You got, hon.” She winks at them. “Comin’ right up.”
Once she’s turned the corner, out of ear shot, Richie leans forward, knocking over the pepper, which he rights with a shaky hand. “Are you fucking with me?” he demands, which is not what he wanted to ask at all.
“No,” Eddie replies. “Why would you think that?”
“Because… because…” Richie grapples for words for his insecurity, for how much he’d never let himself believe Eddie could ever feel the same way, for how much he’d repressed it so he’d never have to get his feelings hurt. He comes up short. There’s no way to express it—he’s never allowed himself to think it, to dwell on it. That meant he’d think about Eddie, and that meant he’d get all sad, and discouraged, and confused, and that’s never a road he wants to go down, even though Eddie’s always a road he wants to go down. “Because,” he forces out, almost through gritted teeth, “because there’s no way you’d—you can’t—all the time, Eddie? You think about me—”
Eddie drags his tongue over lip, digs his two front teeth into the flesh. He lets it go, managing to make it pinker than before, and Richie stares. He stares. He’s not even subtle about it.
“Is that… is that a crime?” Eddie asks. “Should I not? Do you…” His confidence falters there, just a bit, but he pulls the brave face back up, masking it. “Do you not think about me?”
“No, I do,” Richie blurts out. It’s a little too loud. The family in the booth across from them stops their own conversation to look at him curiously. He fiddles with his glasses, gets half a thumb print on the left lens by his nose. “I do,” he repeats. “I think about you, like, a lot. A lot of the time. Especially that time when you wore that yellow sweater. You look good in yellow. What the fuck, why am I saying this, I—” He snaps his mouth shut, gritting his teeth so hard his jaw hurts.
Eddie is smiling at him when he gets the courage to look up from the sticky, shiny surface of the table. It’s that tiny, unsure one; he hits Richie with that more often than not, but he doesn’t know that Richie thinks the tentative way his mouth curls is just as great as his normal smile.
“If I had to relive any day,” Eddie starts, “I’d hope it’d be one of the days I’ve spent with you.”
All of the snacks Richie’s consumed today seem to be on their way back up. “Why?” he asks, struggling. He can taste pennies in his mouth. He drinks water.
“Because those are the days I wouldn’t change,” Eddie replies, and Richie wonders when he became such a fucking Casanova. How does he know how to say this shit?
He could follow along. He could say Me too. He could do a number of things that would wipe the slightly terrified look off Eddie’s face, that would quell his own beating heart, that would flip the switch and change everything.
Instead, he says, “Eddie,” and he’s not even sure how it sounds. His ears have powered down.
They sit in silence like that, just staring at each other, and the air is so charged with possibility, with something that Richie wants to get up and hide in the bathroom again, but the waitress brings their hot chocolates over, and he’d never want to miss the look on Eddie’s face.
Eddie loves hot chocolate but his mother refuses to stock the house with it, claiming it’s got too many artificial sweeteners and chemicals. It’s a bunch of horseshit given that she fills their freezer with frozen dinners she just pops in the microwave, but Richie’s not ready to have that argument with her. Or any discussion, really.
The diner hot chocolates are massive, topped with dollops of whipped cream and pink sprinkles that match the heart-shaped marshmallows floating beneath. Eddie is fucking delighted, and when he takes a sip, he gets it all over his lip, on his nose.
Eddie looks at Richie as he licks it off, which feels like a personal attack. Richie watches him, though, the slow movement of it all, and for the first time in a long while, he does not push down the desire to kiss him. He imagines it, leaning across the table or even walking around and huddling him against the window, pressing his mouth to his. He knows exactly what he’d taste like, and he makes up the rest—the softness of his lips, the way they’d part beneath him, the sounds he’d probably make.
He lets himself want.
He lets himself wonder what it’d be like to be wanted back and thinks maybe, maybe, he doesn’t have wonder at all.
He sits on his hands, but hooks his ankle around Eddie’s under the table.
Despite it being a little past eight on a Friday night, the houses on Eddie’s street are dark. Streetlights illuminate the road in patches, yellow and eerie, and in some windows televisions flicker, casting a glow in otherwise dim rooms. It’s always felt like no one’s lived here, like Sonia Kaspbrak managed to scare away all of the neighborhood children and their families, keeping Eddie all to herself.
“Make sure you kill the lights before you pull up,” Eddie warns. “If my mom sees, she’ll—”
Richie swallows around a sigh, but does what he says. “It’s been years,” he replies. “She hardly ever sees me and when she does I make sure I am nothing but polite. She still doesn’t like me?”
“She doesn’t like anyone,” Eddie says. “Not even Bill.”
Yeah, he knows that; he’s heard what she thinks about him and his parents. Careless for losing their son the way they did.
“She hates me the most. You can say it.”
Eddie winces, rolling his lip between his teeth. “She thinks you’re a bad influence on me.”
“I literally tutored you in math,” Richie retorts. “You went from barely passing to—to wherever you are now. You never told me.”
“She doesn’t know about that,” Eddie admits, “and if she did, she wouldn’t believe me.”
“I’m actually smart,” Richie grumbles, which is not a thing he often says out loud. “Like. I’m good at school.”
“I know that, and I appreciate you,” Eddie says, “but I don’t think it would matter if she knew anyway.”
Richie runs his finger along the groove of the car’s company logo on his steering wheel. “I’d like to, I don’t know, hang out with you without wondering if she’s going to murder me,” he says. “Is that too much to ask?”
“With my mom? Yeah.” Eddie tilts his head towards him, hair falling into his face, and studies him with a keen eye. Richie doesn’t know what Eddie sees, but he knows what he does. Shadows fall over the cut of his jaw, making him look dark, and handsome, and like Richie’s ultimate dream boy. “But it doesn’t matter if my mom likes you. It matters that I do.”
Richie holds his gaze, thinks maybe they’re having a whole conversation without speaking, by just looking, and blurts out, “You look really pretty in the moonlight like this.”
Eddie blinks. “Joke?”
“Nothing I ever say about you is a joke,” Richie murmurs.
“Nothing?”
“No,” says Richie. “Truth. All of it.”
Eddie exhales, loud and shaky, pulls his sleeve over his knuckles, and surges forward. Richie is ready for it, but he isn’t, and he whimpers when Eddie tugs at him, one hand at his neck, and the other cupping his cheek. The fabric of his sweater is soft against his face, and his mouth is even softer, pressed to his in a short, shy kiss that lasts less than thirty seconds. It leaves Richie breathless. It sends a thrill of excitement through his body.
It’s perfect.
Eddie’s brown eyes stare at him worriedly, like he isn’t sure he did it right. He’s so close their noses touch, so close Richie can see every individual eyelash, even in the dark. So close their combined breaths are fogging up his glasses.
“Was that okay?” he whispers.
“Yeah,” Richie replies, “was it okay for you?”
Eddie nods. “Yeah,” he copies. “Yeah, it was—I want to—” He grabs Richie by the cheeks again, leans forward, and slants his mouth over his.
Richie slides his palms up his back, beneath his jacket, pressing him closer, and follows his lead. Stops when Eddie stops. Does not try to go any farther, does not deepen the kiss even if he wants to. He nips at him, tiny little kisses with no real heat or length, and only goes as far as biting down on his lip, tugging it into his mouth and sucking—and only because he’d seen Eddie do it so many times tonight he’d wanted to do it himself.
Eddie shivers. Richie blindly turns the heat up, and Eddie mumbles no under his breath, wriggling out of his jacket with such intensity he almost shifts them out of park. He pushes himself onto his knees, slides his fingers into Richie’s hair, and when Richie’s mouth presses against his again, he keeps him there, swipes his tongue over him, and opens up beneath him.
It’s messy, and it’s wet, and it’s so sloppy it can hardly be called a kiss in the first place, but Richie wouldn’t change it for anything.
His neck cricks from the angle, still belted into his seat, and he unclips himself, frees his body, twists—
And Eddie clamors over the center console, elbows the window, and makes himself at home in Richie’s lap. His knee digs into the muscle of Richie’s thigh.
Eddie takes Richie by the chin, pushes his glasses up, and kisses him so thoroughly he feels it in his toes.
He jerks forward, craning upwards, and presses Eddie back against the steering wheel, creating purchase, ridding Eddie of his hovering, looming control. It’s the most uncomfortable thing, kissing in the driver’s seat of his car, but he makes it work, digs his heels into the ground, glad he can’t accidentally send them flying forward. He doesn’t know how long they stay like that, but he dances his fingers along the hem of Eddie’s shirt and slips beneath it, skin to hot, flushed skin. His hand splays out against his lower back, amassing the entire width of it, it feels like, and Eddie shudders, inching forward, closer, and closer, and closer.
One of his bony limbs hits the horn and stays there, filling the silence with a loud, unpleasant, uninterrupted BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP when Richie pulls away and drags his mouth down the length of Eddie’s neck, salty with sweat. He focuses on the skin of the right side, licking at it, teething at it—sucking it into his mouth over and over. Eddie tastes—he tastes—
There’s never been a flavor more intoxicating.
Eddie lets out a string of nonsensical words, gibberish, really, curling his fingers into the hair at the back of Richie’s head and pulling.
Richie bites a bit too hard, maybe, and Eddie pants, fingernails digging into his scalp, and then goes rigid. Richie’s kept his eyes open, watching every movement of Eddie’s face, his neck, his body, and sees the insistence in which the porch light at Eddie’s house goes on and off.
Dark. Bright. Dark. Bright. Dark. Bright.
Get in now. Get in now. Get in now.
“Fuck,” Eddie whispers, broken and miserable and—wanting, a tone that swills in Richie’s belly, that meets his own yearning, the pining he’s kept under lock and key for months, and years, and lifetimes.
Richie presses a wet, open-mouthed kiss to the underside of Eddie’s jaw, feels his thighs tighten around his own. Feels him cling. And then he’s crawling off him, back into the passenger seat, where he bundles his coat up in his arms and lingers, just a bit.
“Go,” Richie says, watching the curtains sway as Sonia lets go of them, disappearing back into the house. “I’ll…” What do I do after this? Where do we go from here? “I’ll call you later.”
“Wait until she’s asleep,” Eddie suggests. “I’ll smuggle the phone into my room somehow.”
“Okay,” Richie agrees. “You better be awake at midnight, though.”
“Always,” Eddie replies, “if you’re the one calling.”
Much to Richie’s surprise, he leans forward and kisses him again, soft on his cheek. He’s gone before Richie can respond, and he feels like every girl in every romantic movie he’s ever seen, lifting his hand and brushing it gently where Eddie’s lips had been.
He waits until Eddie’s front door shuts behind him before flicking the headlights back on and putting his car in drive.
It’s early, still. Not all of them have intense curfews like Eddie, and he could hang out with any one of the Losers if he wishes, kill the time between now and twelve.
Richie turns off this road and onto the next, turns around completely, and heads towards Stan’s.
Stan opens the door, already in his pajamas (lame) and asks, “How’d the date go, idiot?”
Richie waits until twelve-oh-eight to dial Eddie’s number, fingers trembling and making him fuck up twice, even though he’s had this memorized since the sixth grade.
The call does not go through. The number, apparently, is not in service.