Chapter Text
Chrissy wanted to go to beauty school.
Eddie found this out one afternoon over ice cream. He had no idea how they went from a drug deal in the drug store parking lot to ice cream on a bench at the edge of Smithy Park. But honestly, he should have expected that by now. Every time he saw Chrissy, business would turn to pleasure in less than ten minutes, and it wasn't even his doing this time.
She’d shoved the dime bag into her monogrammed backpack and somehow moved on to how the drug store they were behind secretly had the best ice cream in town, and how had Eddie never been before? Hadn't he lived here for a while?
“Only like ten years.”
“Thats long enough for this to be embarrassing for you,” she teased. She’d been teasing him more lately, easing up around him. He had no idea what he had done to deserve a nice thing like that.
So now he was demolishing a cone of rocky road that was dripping down his wrist, and she was plowing through a cup of cotton candy.
But the plow slowed to a crawl, and eventually Eddie realized he was the only one eating, and Chrissy was sort of just stirring her now-soupy ice cream over and over. She did stuff like that sometimes; would give up eating a thing halfway. Maybe she just had a tiny ass stomach capacity. But with all the backflips and shit cheerleaders did, Eddie thought she’d have more of an appetite than the bag of trail mix (no M&Ms) he knew lived in her backpack.
“Want me to wrap this up?” Eddie gestured to his cone.
“Hm?” Chirssy looked up, thoughts interrupted.
“If you’re not gonna eat anymore.” Eddie pointed to her cup of sugary sludge.
“Oh,” Chrissy looked away, blushing like she’d been caught, but in a bad way. “Um, no take your time.”
Eddie was pretty crap with girls, usually they thought he was kind of creepy. Which to be fair, he kind of was. But creepy in a Halloween way, and not a Charles Manson way.
Despite this, he sensed he’d said something wrong, and tried to change the subject.
“Your ice cream matches your eyeshadow.” He said, and immediately realized how stupid that sounded. Goddamn luddite.
But as luck would have it, Chrissy touched manicured fingertips to the corner of her eye, and smiled small. “Thanks.”
“Yeah,” Now that he started this, he might as well try to follow through. “You’re pretty good at like, makeup and stuff.”
Chrissy smiled for real now, perfect lips and crooked teeth. God, she was pretty.
“Thank you.” Her posture relaxed. “You know, I’m planning on going to beauty school after high school.”
“That's sick. Like, to open a salon?”
“Actually,” She became ever so slightly bashful. “I want to be a celebrity makeup artist. Like, for musicians.”
It was Eddie's turn to light up. “Like, for rockstars and shit?”
She nodded.
“No fuckin’ way.”
“Yes fucking way.” She said, seemingly surprised that she still had the ability to curse.
“Thats awesome, Chris.” Then, “you could always practice on me. If you wanted. I’m a bit of a rockstar myself, as you know.”
Mostly he’d meant it to be like, self aggrandizing, but-
“Oh my god I’d love to.”
Eddie’s stomach flipped over.
“Would you want to come to my place after school tomorrow? Normally I wouldn't offer to host cause, well, my mom,” she looked nervous just thinking about it. “But she’s got bridge Thursdays, and all my makeup stuff is at mine.”
Never in his life had Eddie been invited to a girl’s house. Not since 6th grade birthday parties, anyway. He hardly knew how to respond.
“Uh, yeah. Sure.”
He got another glimpse of that toothy smile.
-
Chrissy had her own car, so the next day she offered to drive him. At first he thought this was only because she didn't want the van parked in front of her pristine god-fearing household, but when he made a joke about it;
“Oh get over yourself,” she laughed.
So he did.
Her house wasn't nearly as imposing as he feared, but still he felt that no matter how many times he wiped his boots on the welcome mat, they'd never be clean enough to touch the cream-colored carpet.
Chrissy excused herself to get changed when they got to her room at the far end of the house, and Eddie was alone in her bedroom. It might have been a nice room; fancy bed frame, a large window with heavy, expensive-looking curtains, but Chrissy had to be one of the messiest people Eddie had ever known. Laundry on the floor, textbooks piled on one end of a bed so unmade that the fitted sheet had popped off one side, a skyscraper of stacked unwashed cups.
The most unexpected thing though, was the unicorns.
Unicorn sheets, unicorn posters, and a wide array of unicorn figures and plushies arranged precariously on a shelf above the headboard.
Eddie had leaned over the mound of pillows to get a closer look at said shelf when Chrissy walked back in.
One of them probably should have said something, but they just stood there staring at each other.
Eddie had never seen Chrissy so… casual. Her hair was down, falling loosely to her shoulders. She had on an old Hawkins High Cheer sweatshirt that was a few sizes too big, and gym shorts that looked like something he would own. But her pristine makeup and dangly earrings stayed. She looked comfy. It made her breathtaking.
“Hello again.” She said finally. Then she looked to where Eddie was leaning.
“Oh, god, the unicorns.” She waved him away. “Sorry it’s like, super childish.”
“No, no I thought it was cool-”
“Okay, no need to make fun-”
“No,” Eddie laughed a little. “I’m serious, man. You know I love high fantasy.”
Chrissy took a fallen plushie of a fat, blue unicorn with a gold horn, a little older looking than the others, off her bed to set back in its place on the shelf. “Yeah, well. So do I.”
“You probably died when The Last Unicorn came out,” he offered.
She rolled her eyes. “I’ve only seen it fourteen times. Read the book even more than that.”
“There's a book?”
Chrissy teased him for knowing less about a fantasy subgenre than her. He said she should try having the entire lexicon of Dungeons and Dragons books memorized.
Eventually, she dragged a chair from across the room to sit next to her vanity- which was just as disastrously messy as the rest of her room. She made him sit down, touched his shoulders. That was butterfly-inflicting.
Then she went about explaining what all the various instruments at her table were. Eddie liked the eyelash curler best, since it looked like a torture device.
“You could pry someone's fingernails off with this thing.” He wiggled the handle.
Then she said he could pick colors for him to work with. He chose black.
“You have to pick a contrast color, too,” she admonished him.
So he picked black and red. And she set to work.
Eddie realized how uneven his breathing was when she touched his face. Her hands were warm and steady; clearly she knew what she was doing. And having her face that close to his- her breath was sweet. He realized it still smelled like ice cream.
“It's nice you're cool with this kind of thing.” She said after a bit of focused silence. “I mean, Jason never let me before…”
“Well I’m not Jason.”
“Thank god for that.” She smiled. “But, you know. I just thought maybe you'd think it was too girly.”
“Why?” He made a face, then remembered she’d said not to move his face too much, and tried to look neutral.
“You're a boy.”
“I'm almost twenty.”
“Fine, you’re a man .”
Eddie almost flinched at the word. “Gross.” He said, then immediately regretted it.
But Chrissy just giggled. “Gross?”
“Yeah, men are gross, dude.”
“I mean, I agree. But it’s funny that you would say that.”
Eddie felt like he should backtrack. “Just reminds me of my dad, the word ‘man.’” Ah yes, because emotional vulnerability was definitely backtracking. Great job, Ed. “Or like, the president. Or cavemen. King Kong.” Eddie mimicked beating his chest in a parody of masculinity.
Chrissy hummed to indicate she was listening.
“I’d rather be like… a formless eldritch being.”
“That makes sense for you.” She pulled back. “Okay, want to look?”
Eddie turned toward the mirror, and looked.
He almost didn't recognize himself. I mean, he did. But whatever Chrissy had done had almost erased his acne scars, made his nose look straighter, and his eyes… His eyes look so cool. Black to red making his eyelashes look longer, his pupils shine, almost glow.
“You like it?” Chrissy chewed her bottom lip, clearly nervous.
“Like it?” Eddie grinned. “I look like David Bowie. This is awesome.” He leaned closer to the mirror, then looked back at Chrissy. “You’ve got a real talent.”
Eddie made a show of applauding and she did a small mock-bow.
“Thank you, thank you.” She laughed. Eddie threw an invisible rose, and she caught it. “You’re too kind.”
She kept laughing though, small and wonderful joy barely contained, and again they found themselves sitting across from each other, silent and smiling.
Eddie’s ripped-jean-clad knees knocked into her bare, ruddy ones. Everything about her was so pretty, and so easily that way. Eddie almost couldn't pick apart the crush from… well, from the jealousy.
Almost as if she read his thoughts, Chrissy smiled and tilted her head to say, “You know, you look really pretty. Like this.”
Eddie smiled, “Hey, not so bad yourself.”
He thought about trying to kiss her, then thought better of it.
Then she kissed him.
Chrissy and her nervous smile. Chrissy and her ice-cream breath. Chrissy and her unicorn obsession and messy room and dream of being a makeup artist and soft shiny hair and weird laugh kissed him on the lips. Then kissed him deeper. Then moved to sit on his lap before there came the sound of a doorbell and the two of them shot apart. Then they realized the doorbell had been for the neighbor’s house. Then they both dissolved into laughter. Easy, ugly, wonderful laughter.
Chrissy told Eddie he should leave before her mom got back, and he washed his face in her bathroom.
-
The next day at school, Chrissy found a little novelty tub of cotton candy in her locker. She’d given Eddie the combination for drop offs.
She flipped it over to check the nutritional facts by force of habit, but to her surprise, they'd been scribbled out. Next to where the ‘total sugars’ used to be, was a small doodle of a unicorn.