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Steve took the long way home from dropping Dustin off at the Snow Ball dance. Not like there was anything urgent waiting for him at home. Or anything at all really.
It rained and Steve liked that. It suited his mood as thoughts and feelings chased themselves through his brain.
He couldn't focus on any one of them more than another. They fell faster than the raindrops cascading over his front window.
It wasn’t that Nancy left him. It wasn’t that she left him for Jonathan freaking Byers, who always made Steve feel that he was looking right through him and didn't like what he saw every time they interacted. It wasn't even the grief in Nancy’s big eyes, the wavering chin, the fear, of monsters, the dark, her heartbreak over Barb. He could have taken all of that, he'd wanted to. It wasn't that he had no one left, even though he had no one left.
It was the distance in her eyes every time she looked at him that killed him. Like she couldn't really see him. It went all fuzzy, like there was a disconnect.
It didn’t use to be that way. The way she looked at him was always one of his favorite things about her. The wide-eyed surprise, the faux anger that couldn’t hide the smile breaking through underneath, the fear and the hope in his bedroom. Even the “not now Steve, I have work to do” look she would give him, trying so hard to be so severe.
Now it was like he couldn't reach her.
It would be different if Nancy had chosen to leave him with clear eyes and her whole heart. If he wasn’t what she wanted, well, she should have what she wanted. And if it wasn’t him, he understood.
He thought that that was where his head had been when he’d said “it’s okay, Nance.” When he’d called himself a shitty boyfriend.
But looking back now, in the truest aftermath of it all, that’s not what it was. It was just that her drifting away had made her unable to finish a sentence when she talked to him, her helpless gaze asking him to finish it for her, to put together the words she couldn’t say. To help her leave him.
That was what she'd wanted so he’d given it to her.
And that was what killed him now.
But it left him with only with her broken, drunken phrases ringing through his heart. It left him watching her drift away farther and farther until her voice and face were utterly out of reach.
Was this really how it ended? He guessed so.
He pulled over to the side of the road a mile from home, strumming the steering wheel to the beat of his favorite song just to feel something.
He got out to look at the moon beginning to break through shreds of clouds. It seemed bigger than usual tonight. Steve never used to look at the moon, he had had other things to do.
Now it was as good as anything else. He knew what he had to do. Which was nothing. Except pick up the broken pieces of his life and keep going.
Be of help where he could if people let him.
He hoped Dustin was having a nice time.
He got in his car and drove home.