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i.
Eddie Munson had always had a soft spot for pretty things. Not nice things or expensive things and not even beautiful things. No.
Just pretty things.
(He thinks back to the ring that’s stored in his bedroom drawer, his mother’s ring he reminds himself, a ring that conveys more than the promise of the undying love of his parents.
A ring he puts sometimes on his fingers just to appreciate its beauty. Just to feel the weight of something important in his hands.
The weight of love.
Or something corny like that.
Yeah.)
ii.
But the thing about pretty things is that, ever since he was born, he’s been told that they were not for him.
iii.
It’s a Monday morning. His most hated day of the week. And, right now, his most hated class of the day. AP Calculus. God, he does really hate maths, why can’t it be like dnd?
Fuck me, he thinks when he sits down, saved just for a few seconds from getting late. Strange, he thinks, here’s no one yet in the seat next to him. Not that people fight to get to sit next to him, more like the contrary, but this is class is rarely empty, not when Mr. Mundy scolds every single time someone misses one of his classes.
(He’d learned it the hard way. After three fucking seniors years he has done the mental preparation to get up early in the morning, although, it only works for this particular class.
But, at least, it works right?
And listen, Eddie Munson may be many things but he’s not a morning person, he thrives in the night, in the darkness. He sleeps late and wakes even later and sees the sunrise with a cigarette rolled up in his hand.
So, the fact that he is here, right now, is a fucking miracle.)
“Everyone listen.” Ms. Mundy says, taking him out of his thoughts.
He yawns, not even trying to hide it. God he does hate mornings. He leans back on the table, dropping his head on his left arm. He’s got a pen on his right hand and he starts to drum his arm with it. When is this fucking class going to be over?
Someone knocks on the door. He doesn’t make the effort to look at the poor fucker who’s going to be on the other of Mundy’s rant. For once it’s not going to be him,
“Oh, Miss Cunningham.” He says with a soft voice. “We were just starting the class, go sit down where you can.”
Eddie huffs. Of course, when he turns out late for class he gets a full lecture with threats of subtracting points in the exam, but when Chrissy Cunningham does it, she gets a smile, of fucking course.
Fucking prep kids, he thinks.
He looks at her through the gaps in his bangs. Chrissy makes her way through the class, approaching him at an alarming rate. She’s not going to sit next to him, is she?
He sits straight in the chair and takes a peek at any free sits nearby him. There’s none. Fuck. Chrissy stands in front of him, looking at him before placing her pink backpack in the floor. She sits next to him, taking out her pink pouch and her pink pens.
Fuck indeed.
“Hi.” She greets him, a warm smile spreading on her lips.
He looks around him. There’s no way she’s talking to him, right?
“Are you talking to me?” He asks.
“Of course.” She replies, confused. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Well, I thought it’s pretty evident.” He gestures between the two of them.
Chrissy frowns, her lips tight. It should be a menacing face, he thinks, but the only thing that comes to his mind when he sees her like that is cute.
“I don’t follow.” She whispers.
“C’mon Cunningham, you are the local queen of Hawkins and I’m the freak. A match made in hell.”
She fucking snorts and scrunches her nose in an awkwardly kind of way. And God, maybe, he gets now why Mundy didn’t say anything at her. Because he can’t help but stare at her like a goddam idiot when she says:
“I don’t really care about those things.”
God.
iv.
Chrissy leaves the class in the exactly way she came in. Quietly and quick.
She’s out the door before he can even register that the class is over. So much for not caring about those things, uh?
He began to pack his things, not that he had much out of his backpack in the first place, but he has, at least, to maintain the image of not-a-fuck-up. People talk about the next class they have, and he discovers he has no fucking idea of where his next class is and—
There’s a splash of green in his desk, he sees out of the corner of his eye.
A green scrunchie, he thinks.
Chrissy’s scrunchie, he recognizes.
He looks around but there’s no one in the class with him. A side effect of being the freak. He takes the scrunchie with his fingers and god it is soft. He stretches it, testing the rubber band. It looks strange, so soft and nice and colourful, in his hands, rough and full of rings.
(It makes up for a nice metaphor, he thinks, although he’s not really sure which one. After all, poetry has never been one of his strengths.
And because he’s failing English, again.)
He plays absentmindedly with it, again. Pretty, he thinks.
And that’s how everything starts.
v.
Because the thing about Chrissy Cunningham, he realizes, is that she’s undoubtedly pretty.
But she’s also a cheerleader, and the queen of Hawkins High. And Jason asshole Carver’s girlfriend. Of course.
(Pretty things were never meant for you.
Pretty families.
Pretty houses.
Pretty girlfriends.
None of that would ever belong to you.)
vi.
He doesn’t know what possesses him to keep Chrissy’s scrunchie, he really doesn’t, but he keeps it in the back of his jeans, in the same exact pocket where he stashes his favourite sweets —black liquorice and mint candy.
It isn’t a metaphor. It’s really not.
(That’s exactly what he would say if he knew what a fucking metaphor is, which he doesn’t.
Does he?
Fucking english class.)
vii.
He takes the scrunchie with him the next time they have class together, which is the next day, of course. He can’t escape from the torture that is AP Calculus apparently.
(Nor can he escape from her presence, although that’s not the same kind of torture.
Or is it?)
When he arrives, she’s already seated on the same spot as yesterday. It surprises him, in a delightful kind of way. Of all the others free seats, she decided to sit there, next to him.
(God, it shouldn’t make his insides all gooey, it shouldn’t make him want to jump in his seat. Not when he’s Eddie fucking Munson. The local freak. A known metalhead. A drug-dealer.
He can’t let a pretty girl affect him like that, not when the only thing she has done so far is not be mean to him.
God he is really pathetic, isn’t he?)
“You forgot this in my desk yesterday.” He says before taking his usual seat.
He takes the scrunchie out of his back pocket, extending his hand towards her. She looks at him, first at his eyes and then at his hand. She has the hair down, he notes, it suits her better. She takes the scrunchie from his hand, fingers brushings slightly. Chrissy’s cheeks turn red.
“Uh, yeah, sorry.” She says, her gaze on her own fingers.
“No problem.” He replies.
He leaves the backpack on the ground with a thud, startling her, and take out a few things. A pen. A blank page. And a hoodie. Chrissy looks at him again, curiosity clearly in her eyes.
He arranges the hoodie to make a pillow. Nice. He shouldn’t sleep in class, at least no in math class, but last night he had a dnd game to plan and—
(Whatever. He doesn’t need a reason to take a tiny little nap.
A miniscule nap, if you will.)
So, he puts his head in his hoodie, God bringing his softest hoodie is the best fucking idea he’s ever had, and he closes his eyes and sighs. That’s until a soft tap in his shoulder wakes him up.
“Hey.” He hears Chrissy say.
He turns his head to look at her, opening his eyes.
“Sup.” He says, a smile playing on his lips.
“Are you okay?” She asks, her voice so quiet he hardly hears it.
Maybe, he reasons, he has not heard her correctly, because there’s absolutely no way Chrissy Cunningham is talking to him. But she’s looking at him, her brow furrowed and her lips tight and he decides that maybe she is asking about his wellbeing.
“Yeah.” He replies. “Why?”
“I… I saw you sleeping in your desk so I thought you weren’t feeling alright and… I don’t know, I wanted to check on you.” She rambles.
He lets out a dry laugh, so loud the teacher scowls at them, but he finds he does not mind that, not even a bit, not when she’s looking at him like he’s somehow funny or something like that.
(It’s probably the something, something like him being weird in an endearing kind of way.
If that exist of course.)
“Are you worried about me Cunningham?”
“Maybe.”
“You are a freak.”
Her cheeks turn red, again, but this time she’s smiling like he just complimented her. And maybe, he thinks, he did—
(It shouldn’t feel like a victory, he knows that by now, but it does because it’s not everyday he makes a pretty girl smile.
It’s not everyday he makes Chrissy smile.)
viii.
“Hey Eddie.” Chrissy calls him.
He turns to look at her. They are still on the class, although it’s over. She’s bouncing on her feet, nervous. Right there, standing, he’s almost a head taller than her.
“Oh hey.” He replies, lazily.
Her eyes travel from her hands to his eyes, in a quick succession of glances. It would be funny, he thinks, if she didn’t look so fucking distresses.
“Do you still sell…?” She asks, looking everywhere.
Oh, he thinks, she wants to buy drugs.
“Drugs?” He supplies.
Chrissy nods.
“Well, yeah.”
(Listen, he knows he could make everything easier for her. He could tell her exactly what she wants to hear, he could sell it right there whatever she wants. But he’s not sure she really wants to do this.
And, he may be many things, but he would never be labelled as inconsiderate. Even if that means losing a couple of bucks.
Especially, Chrissy’s bucks.)
“Could you maybe sell me some?” She asks, her eyes big and full of something he cannot quite place.
(Fuck, he thinks, she’s so fucking pretty.
And what could go wrong if he sells her a bit of weed?
At least he’ll give her the good stuff, not the kind of shit he sells to her boyfriend.
It’s not like he can say no to her, not when she’s looking at him like that and—
fuck.
He is pathetic.)
ix.
(“Have you ever felt like you’re losing your mind?” She asks, twisting her hands in her lap.
“Just every day.”)
x.
He takes notes in his head on the scene in front of him, trying to get as much detail as he can.
Chrissy red eyed in his trailer, his t-shirt hanging from her shoulders, smoking with him. She’s barefoot, something he had recommended her not to do, but still done it anyways. She’s sprawled on his couch, her face glossy and her lips in a permanent smile.
She’s looking pretty, of course, she’s always doing that. But she’s looking more human than he has ever seen her do, calmer, less fidgety. If he’d were another kind of person, he thinks, he’d be writing poetry about her.
(But the reality is that he doesn’t fucking know what a fucking metaphor is and he has no idea of what the rules of poetry are, nor does he know how to find a rhyme scheme.
And what does fucking pentameter mean?)
“Do you think of the people who lived here before us?” She asks, startling him out of his thoughs.
“My uncle?”
She shakes her head and looks at him with a look on her eyes he’s not quite ready to decipher. It looks something like fondness, he thinks.
(Fondness, a big word for something so irrelevant.
Fondness, a nice word, for something so casual.
Yeah.)
“I don’t mean here in the literal sense, it’s more like, in general.” She takes a drag from the joint in her hands, passing it to him. “In Hawkins. In America. In the world.”
He takes the joint, playing with it.
“I’m afraid I can’t say I have.” He says. “Think about it, I mean. What have you thought about?”
Chrissy squints her eyes, her mouth curving in a disappointed grimace.
“Leave it, you probably thing I’m being weird.” She replies, shrinking back on herself.
He places a hand on her leg. It’s soft, he realizes, although it does not come as a surprise. Not when Chrissy
“Oh, c´mon, I don’t think I’m the right person to judge weirdness princes.”
She giggles.
“It’s stupid.” She starts. “But I’d like to think that memories change the spaces we live on. Like, when you leave a house, you take everything you own right?, but you leave the memories.”
“And, sometimes.” She continues. “I imagine how maybe those memories slip through ours, and maybe that’s why we fall in love at first sight and form connections with people we haven’t even met.”
He looks at her and god it’s like he’s seeing her for the first time. Chrissy’s eyes turn to him, with a look on them that says I’m not fucking crazy please believe me. And he, well, he fucking smiles and lift his hand to touch hers.
She smiles in return, slowly like she’s savouring it. And, he thinks, maybe she’s doing that. Maybe she’s tasting the memories they’re making right now. The memories they’re about to make and the ones they won’t make.
Here, in his coach, she makes him think about memories and connections and—
He wants to kiss her. He really does.
But he doesn’t do it.
xi.
They establish a routine. Well, it’s more like it establishes itself using them as tools.
Chrissy sits next to him in class and helps him with math, and then they hang out at his trailer and they smoke weed and she helps him with English. She insists on paying him for the weed and he insist that she’s tutoring him for free, sharing the best of the best with her is the least thing he should do. And then Chrissy scrunches her nose and giggles and god he’s so fucking in love with her it hurts.
It’s going well, it’s going peachy.
(Or, at least that’s what he tells himself.
It turns out, he’s pretty damm good at lying to himself.)
xii.
“Are you even listening to us?”
Eddie shakes his head coming back to reality and looks at Wheeler.
“What?” Eddie asks, confused.
He huffs.
“Dude you’ve been staring at her nonstop, it’s becoming weird.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about, Wheeler, care to explain more?” He says in the coldest tone he can muster.
He sees Henderson swallow. Good. But fucking Wheeler just rolls his fucking eyes.
“Chrissy Cunningham. The cheerleader.” He takes a bite of bread, hatred dripping from his tone. “I don’t get it, aren’t we supposed to hate the popular kids?
“Chrissy is not like the rest.”
“Yeah, because she’s pretty and she talks to you.”
And, listen, he knows he’s older than him, he knows that he should be mature or, at least, more mature than the rest of them. He knows all these things and that’s exactly why he choses to flip him off instead of throwing something at him.
“Fuck you, Wheeler.” He barks. “You are so dead next time we play Vecna’s curse.”
And listen, he is pissed off, he really is. But it so happens that when he turns to look at her again, she’s looking at him.
And she smiles and raises her hand to wave at him. He smiles in return, saluting her with two fingers. He watches her giggle from the distance, and the corners of his lips just goes up and up and god he’s looking like a goddam fool.
He looks at his hands, breaking eye contact with Chrissy, and he finds that he can’t remember why was he pissed off in the first place.
Wheeler makes gagging noises in the back.
(And now he remembers.
Yup, he’s definitely going to kill the kid in the next game.)
xii.
He thinks about what Wheeler said. More specifically, he thinks about what Wheeler said about Chrissy. About her being pretty.
Because he too once had believed Chrissy Cunningham was only pretty. He’d been wrong. But the thing is, Chrissy is not only pretty.
She’s kind and interesting and nice and intelligent.
She’s also pretty. There’s no one who could deny that. Really fucking pretty. And that’s the point, isn’t it?
Because God he does know many things, but what he does not know is how to starve himself.
Maybe that’s why he can’t say no to her. Not now, not ever.
Because, after all, Chrissy Cunningham is so goddam pretty and pretty things are not for him but he can’t help but want.
xiii.
It’s a fucking Monday morning. Again.
It seems like the calendar doesn’t run out of Mondays, unfortunately.
Chrissy missed the first class, something unusual in her, and he hasn’t seen her in school yet. It makes him itchy, it makes him worry. He knows about the kind of problems she faces in her house and, well, that only makes him worry a lot more.
He walks down the halls, trying to find his next class, was it fucking English or economy, when he hears a familiar name being mentioned.
“Have you heard what Chrissy did?” Says one girl.
He looks at her, from a distance. She’s a cheerleader, although it’s not one he’s familiar with.
(Not that he’s familiar with more cheerleaders apart from Chrissy, of course, it’s just that, well, maybe he’s starting to notice which are Chrissy’s friends.
That’s what a good friend will do right?
Notice things about his friend.
Yup.)
“No, what?” Asks in reply another girl. Other cheerleader, he notices.
“She dumped Jason.”
“No way!”
And, he knows he should stay a bit more to test the veracity of those girls’ words but he’s fucking late and god, Chrissy dumping Jason is the best fucking news anyone could give him.
Maybe and only maybe, that Monday morning is not so bad.
xiv.
He arrives earlier at their usual meeting point, the picnic area next to the school. She’s there already and he can’t help but feel a weight on his stomach. She looks sadder.
Fucking Carver, he thinks.
“Problems in paradise princess?” He asks, letting her know he’s there.
She turns her head to look at him, a smile breaking on her lips.
God is impossible to not be in love with her, he thinks, not when she looks at him like he hung the moon and the stars in the fucking sky.
“Oh, hi Eddie.” She says.
He slouches in the space next to her. His knee bumps her thighs. Although the bench is big enough for the both of them, he feels the absurd necessity to touch her in any possible way to make sure she’s not a product of his fantasies.
(God I’m so fucking pathetic.
Yeah, he really is.)
“Heard you and Carver broke up.” He says as nonchalantly as he can.
“Yeah.” She starts, her legs bouncing. “Rumours spreads fast uh?”
“Well, it’s not every day the local high school queen rejects the king. A truly sad day for him, not so much for me.”
Her eyes open, surprised. Fuck, he’s said too much.
“Is that so?” She asks, carefully.
Fuck.
He needs to think of something quick.
“I… yeah, one of my friends not dating an asshole anymore is always a win for me.” He says, mustering his best smile.
Chrissy looks at him and he can tell there’s disappointment in her eyes.
(Disappointment? He wonders.
Maybe he’s read it all wrong, there’s no way she could be disappointed by something like that.
Is it?)
“Oh. Right.” She sighs.
He waits for her to add anything, but she remains in silence. Weird, he thinks.
“And why did you break up with him?” He asks after a while, trying to lift up the mood. “Did he finally lost so many braincells he shat himself?”
She laughs, but it sounds fake on her lips.
“No, that wasn’t why we broke up.” She looks at him and bites her lips. “I kind of fell in love with another person.”
“Oh.” He replies, his heart beating fast in his chest. “And do you think you have any chance with this person?”
“I… I don’t know. Sometimes I think I do. I thought you could help me figure it out.” She says, and she does not look at him.
Instead, she twists her hands in her laps and bites her lips. God, she must be desperate if she’s asking for his help in something like this.
“How would I tell you if I don’t know who he is.”
And Chrissy she just lets a loud laugh. Or a cry. He’s not sure.
“Fuck Eddie.” She says and he tries not to think how the combination of those exact words makes his blood run hot in his veins. “I mean you. I like you.”
(This isn’t happening, is it?
There’s no way. He must have died or something.
Because Chrissy fucking Cunningham, the prettiest girl in the entire fucking world is not saying she’s in love with him.
No way.
Not fucking way.)
She blinks a few times, mistaking his silence for something it’s not. She twists her hands in her lap and he can’t help but reach to take her hands in his. She raises her gaze, startled, and looks at him with the saddest look she’s ever given him and god he’s the fucking worst.
“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t feel the same way, of course, we could just ignore what I’ve said and…” She starts.
“I love you.” He interrupts her.
Chrissy looks at him for a moment, startled, and then, after a few seconds, smiles at him in a way he has never seen before. Her eyes are watery, a remnant of before and he wonders if she’s upset at him for being so fucking dense.
But then she throws her arms around him and touches his face and kisses him, tender but slowly and—
Fuck.
The softness of her lips is something he could really get used to.
xv.
Eddie Munson may still not know a fucking thing about metaphors but he does know that he had always had a soft spot for pretty things.
And Chrissy Cunningham?
Well, she’s the prettiest thing he has ever laid eyes on.
Both inside and outside.
Yeah.