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It was not that she was jealous. There was nothing—absolutely nothing!—to be jealous of. After all, they only became friends a few months ago. Actually, they hardly knew each other at all. So what if they saved the world together, and were definitely going to be saving it together again in the coming months? What kind of friends were together 24/7? Even best friends wouldn’t spend every waking minute together. And they weren’t even close to best friends, so. Who cares?
Even so. It didn’t exactly fill Nancy with joy when her offers to spend time together were turned down. Three times in a row. And all because someone else had already asked Robin out.
Well, not asked her out in that sense, of course. It was just Vickie; sweet, redhaired Vickie, who couldn’t seem to get enough of Robin Buckley these days. So Nancy knew she had nothing to worry about because this was just Robin branching out in her friendships, broadening her circles beyond Steve Harrington and Nancy herself. And she was happy for Robin, she was. It was good to have lots of friends, especially for someone like Robin, who Nancy was certain had never had the opportunity to enjoy a large community of her own before. And if it was actually a boy Robin was getting caught up with all of a sudden, wouldn’t that be a much greater cause for concern? Not to mention jealousy. Nancy knew what it was like to lose a friendship to a relationship; she’d been on both sides of such a problem before, and neither was particularly pretty.
But she also couldn’t deny that Robin had, sweetly, safely, never, ever showed even a granule of interest in men. Not in dating them nor even, beyond Steve and possibly Eddie and the kid posse, getting to know them particularly well. Nancy had already done the poking and prying around about Robin’s feelings for Steve, and had come to the conclusion if she hadn’t fallen for him at this point, the reason could only be that her standards for a boyfriend were sky high, and therefore far beyond the slim pickings Hawkins had to offer.
So, according to Nancy’s observations, a boy might actually have been less of a concern, in Robin’s very special case, since he would need to be God on earth for her to so much as glance his way, and therefore being dumped for his sake would actually make sense (unlike being dumped for Vickie, just as an example).
Not that Nancy was concerned. Just…put out. Mildly irritated. A touch exasperated, if anything. It would help if Robin was at all interested in ever picking up her phone, but she’d explained her irrational fear of extensive phone conversations to Nancy twice already. And school had been no good either; they only shared one class, and the teacher assigned seats based on alphabetical order front to back. Wheeler was cast in the second to last seat in the back row, while Buckley awkwardly contorted herself squarely in the middle of the front seats. Robin ate with her band friends and had practice after school, while Nancy was caught up with the newspaper at the same time. Robin had work on the weekends; Nancy was applying for scholarships and helping out with Holly. Life, simply put, had a funny way of keeping them apart, with hardly enough time for so much as a “Hey!” and a wave when passing each other in the hallway.
Plus, there was the vague, itchy feeling ever since graduation—and all those excuses became null and void what with the arrival of summer break—that Robin had been actively avoiding Nancy recently. A feeling that she was failing miserably at ignoring so far.
Right after Vecna—right after they’d dragged Eddie’s limp body back through the gate, Steve shaking, Dustin in tears, only for him to jerk back to life with a sudden gasp as soon as they were back in their home dimension—and as the town had begun to reassemble itself, Robin had been…there. Constantly. Nancy hadn’t needed to look over her shoulder to feel the shadow Robin cast over it, and she could be certain that at the drop of a hat she’d be nearby to provide some kind of quip or comment or offer a helping hand before Nancy could so much as open her mouth to ask. In the disastrous wake of everything, along with the Byers returning to town with El and Hopper in tow, Robin became the singular steady beacon in Nancy’s life, even as awkward and unsteady as she behaved at times. It meant a lot to Nancy, that was all. She hadn’t had someone like that in a long time—not since Jonathan left town, and maybe not even before that.
Once they did go back to school (with much smaller classes and two-thirds of the staff from before the “earthquake”) things had stayed much the same, to Nancy’s surprise and delight. She alone wouldn’t have been able to broach the question of whether or not they would ever be anything more than “disaster buddies,” if it would be better to just let the friendship fade away into congenial greetings every once in a while, preserved in their memories as life returned to normal. Yes, they had said they were official friends, but a lot of people say a lot of things in the heat of disastrous moments. Nancy still wanted to know; to be sure. And it wasn’t that Robin was the one to ask that question, but rather, that she was the one who answered. Or perhaps she just didn’t get the memo that it wouldn’t have been so strange for them to stop being friends once the apocalypse went on hiatus. Either way, her steady presence took on new forms in Nancy’s life once things calmed down a little. She waited for her after her classes and offered to carry her books for her, and it wasn’t condescending, just sweet. She insisted on eating “At least a little bit!” of her lunch with Nancy every day and always reminded her that she would let her take home movies from Family Video free of charge (“As long as you do give them back eventually, all right, because I really do need to keep this job?”). Nancy didn’t have time to watch movies, but she wished she did just so she had an excuse to take Robin up on her offer, since she knew it would make Robin far happier than it would her.
Yes, she dropped at least one book between classes on a daily basis, and she got so excited sometimes that Nancy had to try to shush her even while she was laughing so hard she could barely speak. But that was all just Robin, for better or worse; and nothing about Robin could qualify in the category of worse in Nancy’s eyes.
It felt like the start of something good. Really good, finally. It was a good friendship then, and, Nancy could only hope, it still was now. Even if she was going through a little bit of an irritable phase, especially considering that it was not, by any means, her fault for doing so.
But then she broke up with Jonathan two weeks before graduation, and things seemed to begin spiraling, or, to be precise, crashing and burning in the way of all things Robin Buckley in Nancy’s life.
Actually, Nancy had originally intended cutting out Jonathan’s presence in her day-to-day would make things better between her and Robin. She didn’t break up with him for Robin, that would have been…something, indeed, but she wasn’t exactly blind to Robin’s feelings about Jonathan either. Namely, the fact that none of them seemed to be positive in the slightest. Whenever Nancy brought him up, Robin’s entire face got tight, and maintaining any semblance of a conversation about him was like towing a car without the tow truck. She never spoke a word against him outright, but she also didn’t need to, because she wore her heart painted in bright red on her freckled cheek.
Even so, if everything was perfect between Nancy and Jonathan then Robin’s dislike for him wouldn’t have been an issue. But things weren’t perfect; not even remotely close to it. So Nancy ended it, and she hadn’t spoken to Jonathan since.
The tempering factor to the sense of loss that came with any relationship ending was Robin; if she had Robin to rely on, she knew one way or another she would figure out how to pick up the pieces of her future and reassemble them into something new and (hopefully) better.
But then Robin seemed to decide that she had better things to do than spend time with Nancy, and no reason to tell her why, so instead of being there like always she seemed to evaporate without so much as a hint of warning. Suddenly they weren’t waiting for each other after class anymore; suddenly band became a haven of friendship that couldn’t spare Robin for even a moment during lunch or after school; suddenly working at a video rental shop was Robin’s loftiest ambition in life, so she couldn’t possibly drop a single shift on a lazy Sunday afternoon to let Nancy help her with her homework like she’d been doing since the Upside Down.
And suddenly Vickie, of all the lovely little gingers Hawkins had to offer, had become the most interesting person in the world, and it became impossible for Robin to keep away from her. Apparently. If Nancy had had any say in the matter, she would have asked Robin to at least dump her for someone a little more worthy of her time. It was hard to think of anyone worth Robin’s time in the near vicinity, but Nancy was still sure there were heaps better people to wile away movie nights and coffee dates with than Vickie .
It was easier to hide it during the school year, but it was summer now. Even if Robin was working nearly every day, trying to save up a little before making her way off to college, there was no reason that every single free hour of her life should be spent with someone other than Nancy by any means possible.
If there was one thing Nancy Wheeler was not, it was a coward. She’d dealt with friends who’d left her in the dust before, friends who stabbed her in the back, and friends who never even really liked her in the first place. If her relationship with Robin Buckley was going to go up in flames, she was going to be the one holding the torch, by God.
Just go in there and ask her what the hell her problem is, she told herself. The sun was just beginning to turn Hawkins a hazy orange; the video shop was empty of any customers, just at the cusp of the evening bustle in which families and couples would fill the place seeking out their films of choice for the night. The outside of the shop was plastered in posters of new additions to the video collection, all ones Nancy had heard of but would probably never get around to actually watching. She could just see one or two figures shifting where the edges of the posters met.
In the far reaches of her mind, she wondered what Robin would be wearing; something cool, probably, a Pink Floyd band tee and plenty of pins on her employee uniform to make her stand out from the rest. Her hair had gotten a little longer since Vecna but remained as unkempt and soft as usual, falling around her face like the floppy ears of a puppy dog. Nancy could see her so clearly in her mind’s eye that for a moment it felt like Robin really was in front of her, and suddenly she wanted nothing more than to turn on her heel and run away from the video shop, even if only to prolong the seemingly inevitable demise of their relationship. Friendship.
You’re not a coward, Nancy Wheeler, she told herself again, and with a sharp inhale of courage she set her shoulders and pushed the door to the shop wide open, marching in with all the power her kitten heels could muster. She held her head high as she passed the displays and the aisles one by one, glancing surreptitiously from side to side to see if Robin was restocking or entertaining a customer—no sign of her, let alone any customers that might be disturbed by the conversation she was determined to have. The only sound in the entire store was thin Top 40 pop playing through the speakers and a faint rustling from the storage room and employee area behind the counter. She reached the empty checkout counter and tapped the bell twice, hard.
The rustling behind the Employees Only entrance stopped abruptly; Nancy frowned and took her hand back from the bell, and just as quickly as it had stopped the noise started again, only louder and more distinctly made up of two hushed voices and the sound of something falling over, or possibly being set right again.
Hearing the skid of someone definitely putting their shirt back on, Nancy’s heart suddenly leaped into her throat. She felt truly lightheaded, like the shop had suddenly half-fallen into a sinkhole and she’d lost all sense of balance. The voices were too faint to make out, but as far as she knew this shop only had two employees—two employees she both knew, and who had both promised her, sworn to her time and time again that she had absolutely nothing to worry about because they were just “friends,” and yet, here she was, cold sweat gathering in her palms, listening to the sound of two people who had most definitely just been—
It was at this point that Eddie Munson pushed his way through the beaded curtain separating shop floor from storage area and exclaimed, “Well, if it isn’t Nancy Wheeler in the flesh!”
The sight of him (him? How could he be here? When did he start working here?) in a ratty shirt emblazoned with the logo of some niche metal band, hair in what must have been a ponytail at some point during the day, was just surprising enough to reel Nancy in from the heel-stomping fit she would have thrown if Robin or Steve had been the one to show their face at this moment. However, it was not nearly surprising enough to freezeframe her brain; instead, it threw her cognition into high gear, sending it chasing after a dozen questions, all of which seemed determined to win the race to reach her lips first.
Eddie let her stand there for a good while longer, staring and trying very hard not to sputter, before following up on his initial greeting with, “…Is there anything I can do for you, Nancy, my dear? Sell you a movie, perhaps?” This, accompanied by a grand sweeping gesture towards the left half of the video shop. He looked incredibly, vexingly relaxed, the arm that wasn’t sweeping leaning against the counter as if he owned the place. Something about his expression indicated a shit-eating grin barely contained beneath his not-quite polite exterior that made Nancy want to smack him upside.
She thought for a moment, looking up and down what of him she could see, then replied crisply, “This is a rental shop, actually, which means you couldn’t sell me a movie even if I wanted you to. That, plus the fact that you aren’t wearing a uniform vest, tells me you aren’t an employee here. Or you’re a pretty irresponsible one,” with a tight smile, “Though I still think the former possibility is a little more likely, especially considering your recent controversies. All that is to say: what the hell are you doing here, exactly?”
“Recent controversies,” Eddie scoffed. All things considered, he didn’t look particularly put out by or even interested in her analysis. He pushed himself upright and away from the counter, letting his head loll to the right without breaking eye contact. “Sure must be one hell of a brainiac if you put all that together in only a few seconds. Well, what can I say? Guess I’ve formed an affinity for the movies as of late.”
From behind the beaded curtain came a noise that sounded like a cross between someone choking and laughing, and Eddie let out a belated cough in an unsuccessful attempt to cover it up. He flared his eyelids at Nancy and shrugged, curling his lips downwards as if to say, “What can you do?”
“Is Robin the one you’re trying to cover for back there?” Nancy spat before she knew what she was doing. As soon as the words were out she could hear their unintentional impact, see it in the way Eddie’s brow jerked upwards in surprise, but the problem was that as soon as she let a little anger slip, the rest of it became more than happy to follow suit. She took a threatening step forward and pointed towards the counter. “Is she the one you were with just now? You guys are together, or something? And doing that in the storage room of her workplace, of all places? I mean, I might have expected this of you, but not of her, she has an idea of what responsibility is, or at least I thought she did. For the love of—would you stop staring at me already and just answer the question?”
She was breathing hard and felt like an idiot. Or perhaps not an idiot, actually, but her mother at least, throwing a fit because the waiter had delivered her the wrong order on an absolutely packed Friday night in the most popular restaurant in Hawkins. Nancy was acutely aware of the shrillness of her voice; the puffiness of her hair; the severe line of her modest clothing, and it all felt so embarrassing all of a sudden, being here yelling at Eddie Munson, of all people, because Robin didn’t want to be her friend anymore.
“Uh…which one should I answer first?” Eddie replied, and he had the decency to drop the teasing tone for once. Unfortunately, he sounded so decent that it made Nancy feel even worse, and now she felt certain that if he said so much as one more mildly considerate thing to her she might very well cry.
“Just,” she choked out, pausing to steady herself on the counter, “Tell me if Robin is back there. Or anywhere in the shop. Please.”
Eddie was already shaking his head hard enough that some of the loose curls on his head smacked him in the mouth. Grimacing, he replied clearly, firmly, “No way in hell. Haven’t seen Robin all day, wouldn’t be interested in getting in any sort of funny business with her in back rooms even if I had. I swear on my guitar, Wheeler, you’ve got nothing to worry about from me. Not for her sake, at least.” With a wink and one of his usually slightly off-kilter grins.
The relief that overcame Nancy as soon as the words left his mouth was so palpable, so all-consuming, the only thing she could think to compare it to was a waterfall comparable to Niagara Falls. She felt weak in the knees—so weak that, upon scanning the shop to make sure there really were no customers and no handy chairs to fall into, she let herself turn her back towards the counter and slide down till she was sat firmly, safely on the linoleum flooring.
“Whoa—easy there!” Came a dismayed cry from Eddie, but it seemed like he was calling to her from underwater. The sounds were there, but wide and vapid, too much so for her to give them any real thought. Her own thought process was taking up far too much brainpower even if she had cared what he was saying.
This was, undoubtedly, very good news. Eddie and Robin would be terrible together, that was certain, and since Nancy (still currently) considered both of them to fall somewhere on the spectrum of friendship she was glad they hadn’t gotten themselves caught up in a relationship that was doomed from the start. And this also meant Robin and Steve weren’t lying to her about their relationship status—yet another goal scored for Team Wheeler.
Only, this relief. This unimpeded, incomparable swelling of happiness rising in her chest at the fact that Robin Buckley was (most likely) still single felt a little…wrong.
Perhaps wrong was the wrong word. Confusing. Unnatural. Or far too natural. An acute sensation that something she’d always ignored was bubbling to the surface, clawing its way up the lining of her ribcage to wrap like a viper around her heart.
She’d always told herself that Robin had no time for men, that she had no interest in dating while in Hawkins. But perhaps that wasn’t true at all, and the reality of Nancy’s own assumptions had hit her like a boulder to the face moments ago in the midst of her all-consuming fear. Perhaps Robin had been seeing people this whole time and never told Nancy. And what was wrong with that? Friends weren’t obligated to tell each other everything. Robin only mentioned previous plans with Vickie because she was being polite. Nancy had hidden dates with Jonathan from her, not because she felt that they were shameful but because they weren’t important enough to bring up with Robin. And Robin was well within her rights to treat Nancy exactly the same way.
But for some reason, the thought of Robin seeing anyone—really seeing them, touching them, god forbid embracing them—made Nancy want to curl into herself till she’d shut out all the light and unforgiving feelings in the world, and could no longer so much as remember her own name.
She couldn’t be friends with Vickie, because being friends with Vickie was a way of avoiding Nancy, replacing the singular spot Nancy believed herself capable of holding in Robin’s heart. And she was not, under any circumstances, supposed to want to be anything with a boy, because wanting anything with a boy would mean…
It’d mean she didn’t want to be anything with me, Nancy thought, and saw stars bursting at the corners of her line of sight.
“Nancy? Hey, Nancy Wheeler? That still you in there?” Eddie called out with audible trepidation in his voice. He’d hastily made his way around the counter and now stood a step or two away from Nancy, hands half-outstretched like he wasn’t sure whether to help her stand or take her by the shoulders and shake her conscious.
All Nancy could think about was how jealous she’d been of Eddie, and how excruciatingly envious she still was of Vickie. And now that she knew why she’d felt the first way, the second way didn’t feel so very different after all. If she was in love with Robin Buckley—which she very much was, apparently—then Vickie, the little twit, could very well share a similar interest, couldn’t she? Nancy thought of the way Vickie had smiled at Robin during the one band practice she’d ever sat in on. Her stomach twisted into thorny knots.
She looked up at Eddie’s round, concerned eyes and stated matter-of-factly, despite her torn-up innards, “I think I have feelings for Robin.”
It was so fresh and so present in her head that even if she’d wanted to say anything else she doubted she would’ve been able to. It was only belatedly, with a sharp twist of panic in the pit of her stomach and Eddie’s entire face blanking, his posture shifting from one of concern to frozen shock, that she realized confessing such a thing to a small-town metalhead from Indiana may not have been in her best interest.
Nancy grabbed her purse from where she’d dropped it on the ground and hooked it over her shoulder, brushing down her skirt with her eyes desperately seeking anything in the shop that wasn’t Eddie Munson. She cleared her throat and said, “Sorry, um. Don’t know what I just said, don’t worry about it, I just got a little dizzy or something, so if you could just—”
“Nancy. Nancy!” Eddie interrupted, shaking his hands like they were Magic 8-Balls. She stopped, mid-way to climbing to her feet, and pretended to be transfixed by a copy of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off on a distant display. “Easy there, go-getter. I’m not about to hate crime you or something. Just didn’t think you’d be a queer is all.”
Nancy’s gaze snapped towards him, her mouth twisting like she’d eaten something sour and was looking to spit it out on his shoes; but his eyes were light, and he gave her a hands-up gesture. “From one queer to another, that is.”
Nancy promptly sat back down on the floor with a whump of skirt billowing around her, because that was just about enough of shocking news she could take for one evening.
Eddie seemed to make up his mind about something, then closed the distance between them and joined her, back to the counter. He stretched his legs out and knocked the toes of his heavy boots open and close intermittently. The soft clunking became something like a rhythm and the late afternoon sun coming through the windows was very gentle. His shoulder was pressed against hers, and he felt warm and solid. Way back when, Nancy had been happy that despite all the odds had survived the Upside Down—but, she thought, not nearly as much then as she was now.
She bit her lip, then looked at his profile and asked, “What do I do?”
It was rare for her to ask anyone for help, and even rarer for her to ask for help from someone who was practically a stranger. Nancy had always told herself that she’d learned an important lesson after since Barb stopped being alive; that no one was under any obligation to help her or the people she cared about, and if there was something she wanted to do more than anything then it was her job and no one else’s to make it happen. Just asking the question felt like inviting something foreign into herself. The second it was out, she wanted to take it back.
But then she thought of Robin. Robin with Vickie, Robin with a faceless but probably ridiculously good-looking and interesting boy. Robin, with her clumsy kindness and her big loud laugh. And all her flaws and her goodness. All the parts of her Nancy had yet to discover and all the ones she felt as though she’d known for a lifetime.
“Dude,” Eddie said, “You gotta tell her how you feel?”
Nancy let out a cough of laughter that nearly turned into a choking fit.
Eddie slapped her on the back—which didn’t help—and continued, “No, no, hey! I’m being dead serious right now, Wheeler. Tell her. As soon as you can. Right now. Being completely straight with you on this…get it?”
She rolled her eyes with a vehemence and cocked her head to the side, forcing him to meet her expression dead-on. “Eddie. You can’t be serious right now, I mean, god!” Her hands threw up in the air in frustration. “She’s a girl. I’m a girl. This is Hawkins, Indiana? And we’re not all ‘cool, outsider’ rebels like you. I can’t even imagine what my parents would think, let alone hers. Let alone Robin. We’re basically not even friends anymore, anyway.”
She could feel herself pouting, and she hated it, but she also couldn’t help it. Images of Vickie and Robin giggling together over a platter of cheese and grapes, draped in suspiciously sheer robes against a dreamy garden backdrop, filled her mind; and it definitely hadn’t been the first time she’d pictured such a thing, now that she thought about it, which made her want to bury her head in a ditch for as long a time as she could get away with. Forever, ideally.
Just how long have I been thinking about my own friend like this? Nancy thought to herself. The rest of her brain was silent in reply—the feeling had no roots. One day, it had simply arrived, without her even having the self-awareness to notice it on her own.
Eddie put his hand over hers abruptly, leading her away from the spiral of her own thoughts. He was watching her without a trace of the usual wildfire he carried behind his eyes, instead looking almost pensive with his mouth pulled tight and low.
Once he seemed certain she was paying attention, he leaned forward slightly and said, “Nancy Wheeler. Smartest girl I know, probably the smartest girl in all of Hawkins—how can you be so blind?”
Nancy’s heart began creeping up into her throat.
“Robin Buckley is a lesbian,” Eddie stated, squeezing her hand once for emphasis before letting it go.
Hope, Nancy knew, was a ridiculously dangerous thing. Hope had compelled her to journey into a hell dimension because, hell, maybe there was still a chance Barb would make it. Hope had urged her to give loving Steve Harrington another try even when her gut told her there was no chance in hell she could ever feel the same way about him she once had. Hope had failed her at her internship; it had failed her with Jonathan; it had failed her when, time and time again, the gates to that hell called the Upside Down opened up, and were a little bit harder to close every single battle round.
But even so. Even so.
“She told you that?” Nancy asked. Eddie rolled his eyes and all but guffawed.
“She didn’t have to, Wheeler,” he replied. “I may not have picked up on—” he flapped a hand in her general direction, “—your whole thing, but I’m sure as hell not that blind. And…well. I may not like women either, but I sure as hell know a catch when I see one. So does Robin, from what I can tell.”
Nancy frowned. Took a moment to absorb. Her excitement had deflated, but was now being replaced by a balloon of confusion.
“So, you’re saying…what, that you can just tell that she likes girls and has feelings for me too?” she asked, and didn’t try very hard to keep the skepticism out of her voice. Eddie offered her a crooked grin that reeked of gossip and tipped his head in confirmation. “No. No! It’s nice of you to try and make me feel better, or whatever, but this is just. That’s—there’s no way! Even if she is a lesbian, she’s clearly more interested in Vickie than she’s ever been in me.”
Eddie let out a groan and hiked his knees up to his chest, draping one arm across each. “Fat chance! I mean, Vickie’s great, or whatever, but she’s a little…” he trailed off and tapped a finger vaguely against his head, narrowing his eyes in mock concern.
“Right? Thank you!” Nancy exclaimed. She jerked upright in excitement at the prospect of someone in this tiny town not foaming at the mouth at the mere thought of that redhead—then saw the teasing glint in Eddie’s dark eyes and caught herself. But his smile was small and kind, and she found herself smiling back, despite all the woes she was collecting left and right.
“Thank you. For real, this time,” she said after a small pause. Eddie inclined his head but didn’t speak, still just watching her. Waiting for something from her; she wasn’t sure if it was cowardice or courage. She couldn’t be certain which feeling was stronger in her, either. For the first time in years, Nancy felt as though she were genuinely unequipped to deal with the problem in front of her. No amount of research or necessary violence could solve the Robin Buckley dilemma.
But, she thought, looking out the shop’s clear front doors and into the amber-colored street, I came here at first fully prepared to blow up our friendship, if that’s what it took. Confront her about what I thought was the issue. So I guess I was always ready to get my heart broken. I’ve fought demons and dogs and bats from hell. I dumped Steve Harrington. And Robin is just a girl.
“She’s just a girl, right?” Nancy voiced aloud, half to convince herself and half to get Eddie’s reassurance. He grinned and echoed, “Just another girl.”
“Then…I think I have someplace to be.” This time, Nancy really did get up, Eddie following suit shortly after. As she was dusting off her skirt, she said, a little apologetically, “Thank you, again. I don’t know how many times I’m going to need to say that to you, but probably a lot more than this. And, um. Sorry for interrupting too, I guess.”
Eddie threw his head back and laughed. He reached out and slapped her on the shoulder, and even though it probably should have hurt she could tell he’d purposefully lightened the blow for her sake. “No problem at all, Wheeler. If you ever need another shrink session you know where to find me, yeah?” He twiddled a hand by his ear in the shape of a phone and she nodded, more grateful than she felt comfortable letting on.
Just before she pushed the video shop door open, she sat back on her heel and added as an afterthought, “I can see why Mike looks up to you, you know. You’re actually a pretty good person, shockingly enough.”
“That’s me—full of surprises!” Eddie replied, and offered a little bow as she exited the shop.
Once she was gone, he leaned over the counter and called, “You get any of that?”
Clearly put out, his hair a bird’s nest, Steve poked his head through the beaded curtain and asked crossly, “Any of what?”
Nancy was halfway to Robin’s house before she realized she probably wouldn’t be home yet; not if she’d really spent all day with Vickie. It wasn’t even five PM. The thought of them really having a good enough time (gossiping, sharing food, maybe flirting or more) to spend that much of the day together made Nancy more than a little sick to her stomach. But it was now or never. It had to be now or never.
That didn’t mean she didn’t question, regret, and otherwise try to deny everything that had happened in the last half hour and would possibly happen in the next the entire walk to Robin’s quaint one-story on the edge of one of Hawkins’ smaller neighborhoods. She was so deeply inside her own head that when she looked up to see Buckley 8499 on the mailbox in front of her, she realized she didn’t even remember how she’d gotten there. Apparently, she’d memorized the path to Robin’s house at some point, though she’d only actually been here a few times.
The windows were dark. There was no car in the driveway, which more than anything was what clued Nancy into the likelihood of Robin’s parents not being home. Probably at yet another town meeting to try and decide how to keep Hawkins afloat, what with the recent natural disasters and a severe shortage of actual people to inhabit the place nowadays. Because there was no one around to see her, she marched through the front gate (carefully shutting it behind her) and sat down on the small concrete step that served as a front porch. Demurely, she tucked her skirt up beneath her knees and cupped her chin with her hands.
And I’ll sit here, she thought, until either Robin gets back, or her parents do, and kick me off of their stoop.
Her inner voice sounded almost confident, which provided Nancy a little bit of comfort. But her heart remained a mess, no matter how deeply she breathed or looked at the stunning sunset or tried to recall what errands her mother had asked her to complete while she was out. Her ribcage felt like the inside of a giant church bell and her heart was the clapper, and Robin was the nun half out of her mind ringing the entire contraption with abandon. When she tried to picture Robin’s face, instead she saw a thousand memories overlaying one another. Colorful ones, bright ones, ones that were grimy and dark; and even in those, Robin was holding her hand.
Nancy felt like she was praying there on those steps; her entire soul consisted only of the word please, put to an emotion bigger than anything she’d ever felt before.
“Nance?” Came a familiar light, throaty voice from a dozen steps away.
She was standing before she’d heard the end of her nickname from those lips, upright so quickly she felt horribly dizzy for a moment. She put a hand to her forehead and heard again, “Nance, are you okay? What the hell are you doing here?” Soft, padding footfalls, the thud of familiar combat boots on pavement, and suddenly her elbow was encased in a familiar warm palm.
Nancy opened her eyes into the sunlight and saw her there; the bane of her existence and the girl of her dreams all in one.
“Hey, Robin,” she said, weakly and numbly, because by god if Robin didn’t look like an angel at that moment, her hair hanging softly around her face with all the loose strands illuminated by the sun behind her.
Robin smiled with furrowed brows and tightened her grip on Nancy’s arm. “Hey, Nance,” she replied softly, “Are you—okay, yeah, are you all right? What are you doing here? Not that you can’t be here, just, you know, I wasn’t expecting you, and it’s a little odd that you showed up at my house totally unannounced on the verge of fainting and all.”
Nancy bit her lip and shook her head, looking down at her shoes. Get it together, Wheeler, she thought to herself.
“I just,” she began, clueless as to where she was going with her mouth, “I wanted to see you because, well. Frankly, Robin, you’ve turned me down the last three times I asked if you wanted to hang out, which is a little hurtful and a little confusing considering I thought we were ‘official’ friends since the whole alternate dimension stuff.” She sounded petty, she realized with unabashed horror, and stumbled over her words continuing, “I-I mean, even before this you’ve been avoiding me and acting weird, I’m not stupid, I could tell you didn’t want to be around me anymore ever since I broke up with Jonathan. Which is a little hurtful because I didn’t not break up with him for you. Kind of. Not that I’m saying it’s your fault!”
Her entire brain was an alarm system going off at once. All she could see were blaring red WARNING signs and Robin was square in the middle of them, looking at her with what was clearly concern and a healthy dose of confusion to go along with it.
“I just!” She shouted in more of an attempt to make herself shut up than anything. She bit her tongue and stared at Robin, Robin staring back, before continuing in a much smaller voice. “I just wish you wouldn’t… leave me. I’m in the dust here, Robin, while you’re going off with people and Vickie and everyone else except for me. It’s actually infuriating, you should know.”
She felt incredibly warm once she stopped speaking. Extraordinarily tired. The sun beat down on them even as low as it hung in the sky now, and her mouth was dry. Robin kept staring.
“What?” Nancy asked eventually, unable to make herself elaborate. Her arm was getting tired held halfway up in Robin’s grasp, but she didn’t move away. And it was because she didn’t move away that she realized, in the silence between them, that Robin’s fingers were trembling.
“I didn’t know how to tell you,” Robin blurted out, reeling Nancy away from the sensation of her shaking hands. Her eyebrows were curved upwards in obvious distress; her shoulders had never looked tenser. “I thought it was all right if you had Jonathan, because that would mean at least no one else had a chance with you, and no, I didn’t really like him but that’s no one’s business but mine, right? But then—then you actually did dump him, and I couldn’t stop asking myself why. Like, couldn’t-get-any-sleep couldn’t stop. It all became so real all of a sudden, and we were suddenly spending way more time together, like way too much, and I thought if this kept happening one way or another it’d all come out from someone else, or I’d tell you in the wrong way, and then it’d all be over, boom.” She clicked her fingers. “Just like that. So I thought maybe I should just end it all myself instead. Maybe…maybe it wouldn’t hurt so bad that way.”
She looks like a kicked puppy, Nancy thought, even as her heart was suddenly pounding so hard she could hear it. When Robin moved her hand away, Nancy reached out and grabbed it in hers without thinking. But that was quite all right with her even when she did realize what she’d done. Nancy Wheeler was finished with thinking things through for the day.
“Robin, I—” she began, and she could’ve said a hundred things at that moment, a gazillion, and none of them would’ve been able to contain her hope and her fear and all her love.
But Robin beat her to it.
“It’s like this, Nance,” she interrupted, looking glum and so beautiful in Nancy’s eyes. “I’m pretty much crazy about you. Romantically, that is.”
Nancy had never kissed a girl before. It wasn’t for a lack of curiosity, but rather a lack of courage, perhaps, in retrospect. But she had, after all, faced demons and dogs and bats, and beaten them all one way or another. And even if Robin was a girl, she could never be as scary as any of that.
Her lips were soft and shy and exhilarating to the touch. Her arms came around Nancy like they were sculpted to hold her waist by the deity of your choice, and her nape felt like home against Nancy’s palms. The noises of suburbia entering evening faded away, and it was only the two of them against the beating heart of the summer sky.
When they inevitably had to pull apart, Nancy kept Robin’s head low, forehead against hers, and murmured firmly, “Don’t do that with anyone else, okay, Robin Buckley? Especially not Vickie.”
Robin let out a kind of startled, possibly delighted laugh, and was probably on the verge of asking a lot of questions; but answering those would have required more thinking, and Nancy had already established her disinterest in doing any more of that for the day. So when Robin opened her mouth to speak, Nancy just smiled and pulled her close once more.