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Tap. Tap. Tap.
The rain hitting your window draws you from sleep slowly. Wrapped in warm blankets and the muffled quiet of your apartment, broken only by the sound of the rain. It takes several moments for you to realize the tapping is too rhythmic to actually be rain, your eyes finally cracking to see your dark room lit up by the silvery moonlight that filters in the curtains that hang on either side of your window, only drawn the first couple inches in.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Shadows move across your wall, finally coming into focus, taking shape. A person. Your gasp gets caught in your throat as you finally turn to see what the noise is, there’s someone outside your window. A familiar shape is crouched on the roof outside your apartment window and when they shift, the light finally hits the side of their face, Eddie Munson. Your eyes finally adjust to see there’s tear tracks shining down his cheeks and his brown eyes are blown wide with panic.
Eddie had started as just your weed dealer, it’s not like you had run in the same circles back when you were still in high school. Then all those moments out in the woods where he’d put on a show just to get you to smile, late nights in parking lots getting high and talking about anything and everything under the sun. Saturday’s spent plastered together on a couch, watching movie after movie as you passed a joint back and forth. Before you knew it, he had become a staple in your life and probably your best friend.
Even after all of that, you’d never seen him like this. Not even before he had moved in with his uncle and was practically homeless trying to be anywhere but in his house with his parents. Eddie had spent weeks either sleeping in his van or sneaking in your window to sleep on a pile of blankets on your floor and never let it bother him. At least he’d never let it show. It’s enough to shake the last remnants of sleep out of your body as you scramble to open the window. The moment it opens you can hear his breath hitch and he collapses onto your floor with a choked off cry.
“Eddie?” You breathe, closing the window behind him before running your hands over him in a desperate attempt to find whatever must be hurting him. “Eds, what’s wrong?”
“I left her, Jesus Christ , I left her .” Eddie’s words are tripping over one another and you can barely make them out between the panicked breathing that heaves from his chest. He’s on his knees on your carpeted floor, covered in sweat and shaking.
Your hands freeze on his shoulders, eyes still scanning him just to make certain he’s not hurt somewhere. It’s hard to make sense of what he’s saying, every noise tangled together into an incomprehensible mess, “What?”
“ She’s dead ,” He moans out, pushing himself up enough to launch at you, pushing you back onto the edge of your bed. Knelt in front of you like a desperate man in prayer. His arms wrap around your waist as he buries his face into your stomach and finally the sobs trapped in his chest come freely. “She’s dead and I didn’t know what to do, I ran. I ran and I left her there .”
His words send a chill down your spine, if it were anyone else you’d ask if they were joking. But his fear is tangible, in the trembling of his body and the whine in his voice. You shift back until you’re seated more firmly, holding yourself steady as he continues to push into you. “Eddie, who's dead?”
He mumbles into your shirt, voice muffled through the fabric and his crying, “Chrissy.”
“Chrissy… Chrissy Cunningham? The cheerleader?” Eddie chokes out a noise you take as an affirmation, his arms tightening around you as he dissolves into complete incoherence. You’re pretty sure he’s still talking, picking out bits and pieces of sobbed words.
I left her. I left her. She’s dead. I left her.
Eddie had told you about Chrissy, how surprised he had been when she sought him out, asking if it was true that he had weed. Neither of you had ever expected Chrissy Cunningham, head cheerleader, to be someone who smoked. Yet they’d meet at the table, your table, in the woods. You remember when he had laid on your floor next to you, both of you staring at the ceiling as he talked about how it had almost reminded him of you. The way he could tell something was going on in her life, his unshakeable desire to help, pushing him further into his new friendship with her.
“Eddie,” you whisper, hand carding through his hair, pulling tangles from the frizz that halos around his head. Eddie whimpers at your touch and you can feel your shirt soak with the tears that accompany his gasping breaths. It breaks your heart to see him like this, the shattered pieces of a man who you’d attributed with so much strength finally fall apart under your touch. “What happened?”
“I don’t know .” Eddie gasps, finally lifting his head to meet your eyes. His brown eyes, not their usual pools of warmth, broken and red under whatever he’d seen. His fingers grip your shirt, knuckles white at the force, like you’ll disappear if he doesn’t hold you down.
“ She– She asked if I had anything stronger, I figured she was just going through something more serious than I had originally thought–” He hiccups and takes a moment to pull in a steadying breath before continuing, “I stepped into my room for a minute. Just a minute– I swear, it was just a minute . I came back and she was… Oh God .”
“It’s like she was in a trance, I tried to wake her up, I tried everything. Next thing I knew she was in the air, just hanging there and her bones started to snap and I ran, I just ran. I was so scared, I ran and I left her there, I just left her. Why did I leave her ?”
Eddie’s voice cracks and the tears are back, streaming down his face. He’s not here, no longer in the room with you, no longer even in your apartment. The far-away look in his eye is telling enough. In his head he’s across town, scared and alone, watching Chrissy Cunningham die in his trailer. All over again, and again.
You’re desperate for any way to comfort him, any way to ease this pain he keeps reliving. Cupping his face in your hands, your thumbs trace back and forth to wipe the tears from his cheeks. “It’s gonna be okay Eddie, I promise.”
Eddie pulls his face from your hands, rolling his eyes and finally sitting up, moving several feet away from you. He puts the usual venom in his words, the way he does when he’s trying to hide his real feelings. You’ve heard this voice before, just never been on the receiving end of it. “Yeah, right, you probably don’t even believe me.”
“I do believe you–”
“Don’t bullshit me!” Eddie suddenly shouts, eyes on his hands that still shake, held clasped together in his lap. His whole body tenses, like he’s getting ready to run, all the fear of an animal caught in a trap. It’s too much and he pushes himself to his feet, pacing across your floor with trembling steps. You flinch at the sudden noise and all of the fight drains out of him, face turned back to the window. His voice is quiet when he finishes his thought. “I know how this sounds. I wouldn’t believe me either.”
You wait for a moment, letting him work some of his panic out as you climb back on your bed to lean against the headrest. He turns to finally face you as you pat the spot next to you, reading the clear hesitation on his face. Eddie lifts his head enough to look at you, to see the small smile pulling at your lips and he can’t help it. His need for closeness overpowers the poisonous weeds of fear that have been winding around him. Kicking off his shoes, he crawls into your bed sitting next to you with a sigh.
You rest your hand on his shoulder, watching the last of his resolve crumble until he twists to hide his face in your shirt again. The tears are quieter, the crying of a man who’s given up, who’s accepted his fate as being as fucked as he thinks it is. You run your hands up and down his spine until his breathing finally evens out, syncing up with yours unconsciously.
“You’re a lot of things Eddie Munson.” Your voice is soft and thoughtful and he lifts his head to meet your eyes. The look you give him just solidifies that he made the right choice, the right out of his mind panicked choice that he didn’t even realize he’d made until he was turning onto your street. His body mindlessly pulling him to you for comfort. You lock eyes with him and the intensity in your stare sends a shiver down his spine.
“A liar is not one of them.”
The remaining tension that he holds in his body finally fizzles out and Eddie leans into you, tucking his head into the crook of your shoulder and wrapping his arm around your waist again. New tears hit your skin, but this time it’s relief. In the mumbled repeated mantra of his thanks, pressed into your skin. You go back to running your hands through his hair as moonlight shifts through your window to shine onto the both of you.
“I won’t lie, I have no idea what this all means. But I believe you, I’ll always believe you Eddie .” It never occured to you to do anything but believe him and yet you hear the strangled noise in his throat at your words. The continued disbelief that there is actually someone who is finally in his corner, on his side, through thick and thin and even the craziest of nights that he’s just had. There’s a smothered sniffle that comes from him and you hold him to you even tighter, one of your arms sliding around his shoulders. “We’ll get through this together, I won’t leave you .”