Chapter Text
EVERYONE AT THIS PARTY ISN’T YOU
And I’m having these thoughts
Did we fuck it up or not?
Did we waste two years?
Everyone at this party isn’t you
I don’t’ wanna search for you in every room but I always do
The day he leaves for Vietnam he promises her that they would see each other again. “See you at the high school reunion in two years.” That’s what he says right before kissing her one last time and getting on the bus.
She hangs on to that promise for two years. Everyone tells her to just move on, but she wants to wait a little longer. Just a little longer.
That’s why she is reluctant to accept Lonnie Byers advances and she keeps it casual for months. She wants to see him again because a part of her still loves him, no matter how bad things ended between them before he left. She still has hope.
So when the fatal day of the reunion comes, she is over excited. And nervous. Is she going to see him again? Will he keep his promise? Does he still feel the same way she does?
She buys a nice dress and, as she puts it on, she can’t help imagining his reaction to seeing her like this. She tries to shake away these thoughts but they keep coming back. She misses him.
When she finally gets to the party she’s even more nervous. He’s not there yet but it’s still early, so she hangs out with some of her old classmates. And she drinks. Not enough to get drunk but just enough to quiet her nerves and prepare herself to see him again. Or for rejection. She’s still not sure which one.
As the night goes on she starts to lose hope. He’s not coming.
Maybe she really did waste two years of her life waiting for a man who doesn’t love her the way she loves him. Maybe she should have listened to everyone else and moved on with Lonnie. And yet she knows she would do it all over again because she loves him, and if there was just a small chance of having him back into her life she would take it. But she realises it’s too late now. It’s over. And her heart is broken. Again.
By the end of the night she’s drunk and she misses him more than ever.
She decides to call him - something she never would have done had she been sober. She gets to a phone booth and dials the number he’d given her for emergencies and that she’d memorised. He doesn’t answer. She’s silently breathing into the phone when the answering machine kicks in.
“Hey, did you realise you don’t need me?” She whispers.
Then she hangs up the phone, deleting the message.
A few months later she accepts Lonnie’s proposal and they get married at Hawkins town hall. Just three days before her wedding she discovers Hopper lives in New York with his girlfriend. She cries in the bathroom that night and then forces herself to move on with her life.
And she does. Until the day her little boy goes missing and she finds herself in Hopper’s office, begging the man she once loved to believe her. And he does.