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It’s after.
After Vecna is killed. After Steve opened his eyes and told Dustin and Max that El performed a miracle. After they all stumbled out of the Upside Down. After the gate closed behind them. After they all spent a shaky, disbelieving night in Steve’s house. Coughing. Broken.
Alive.
It’s after they bandage Eddie’s bat wounds back together with shaky hands. After Lucas hugged Max like he was coming back to his own body. After Steve and Eddie kissed in front of everyone again, soft, and sweet.
After.
Robin staggers downstairs in the morning and tells everyone she needs to go home, needs to see her mom before she literally freaks.
Steve nods, offers to drive anyone home who needs it. Nancy and Robin take him up on it.
*
They leave Robin off at the end of her drive.
Before she climbs out of the car, she leans over, pressing a gentle kiss to Steve’s cheek. He smiles, grabbing her hand and squeezing it. The two of them look at each other for a moment like they can’t help themselves, and Robin leans over the centre console and wraps her arms around Steve’s shoulders. They hug each other tight, Robin’s hand tugging gently through Steve’s hair.
“I’m, like, so glad you didn’t die,” she says.
Steve turns his face into her neck. He huffs a soft laugh, his palms flat against her spine.
“Aw, Rob. I knew you loved me.”
Nancy, sitting in the backseat, swallows down her own discomfort. Every interaction between Steve and Robin is laced with so much affection, she feels like an intruder just by existing in their proximity.
When they finally break the hug, Robin gets out, walking up the path to her house.
Steve doesn’t drive away. He stays, waiting until her keys are in the front door. He stays, waiting until Robin’s mom appears in the illuminated hallway. He stays, waiting until Robin is inside, the door closed behind her.
Nancy climbs into the now vacated front seat.
“You ready to go?” she asks.
There’s a long pause. Steve looks at her, then exhales slowly.
“Don't think I'll ever be ready to go," he says, smiling. "I'll take you home, though.”
He turns the car's engine back on, and they pull away from the Buckley’s house.
Nancy looks at her hands. There's so much she wants to say, so many things sitting in her chest. She finds she doesn't have the words to express any of it.
She wants to ask about Steve and Robin. Wants to understand how they orbit each other the way they do. How they can communicate so easily, so openly. They exist around each other like they don't care who's watching. All of the students on the paper had been convinced they were dating - girls giggling into their hands when Steve asked someone else out, but dropped Robin off to class the next day. Nancy had thought the same, at first; there’s a part of her that still can’t believe Steve and Robin aren’t dating.
Nancy has loved people passionately, intensely, but she’s never loved anyone with the same naked affection that Steve and Robin have for each other.
She doesn’t think she’s ever seen the sort of love that Steve and Robin have for each other between two people before.
Except – she saw Steve and Eddie together.
She saw Steve, floating in the air, while Eddie grabbed his hands and begged him to come back down to earth. She saw Steve folding his body into Eddie’s like it was the only place he ever belonged. She saw Steve, sending himself off to the Creel House to face down Vecna, kissing Eddie like he wanted it to be the last thing he ever did.
She saw Steve and Eddie together.
When she had dated Steve, Nancy had never been able to give Steve the kind of open, honest love he had showed her. He swept her into his arms and put his hands on her in public and grinned over the lens of his glasses, and she had cringed away from all of it - hidden herself from his loud, obvious affection.
She loved him – she did love him – but never in the right way. Never in the same way.
She’s glad he has people in his corner, now. Glad he has people who look after him. People who hug him. People who thank him for surviving.
Glad he has people to love him in the way she never could.
Still. Seeing Steve around his people makes her long for her own. She misses Jonathan. She's never had to go through anything Upside Down related without him before, and the lack of his presence this time around made everything feel like she was running through water; difficult, dragging. She's worried about him - worried about where they've been, how El was involved - the concern itches at the corners of her, constant and unavoidable. It's like a scar, healing against the palm of her hand.
She wants Jonathan to be safe. She wants it to be last year, their bodies curled up together in his bed at the Byers' old house. She wants to hear the muffled sound of Mrs. Byers and Will talking through the wall. She wants the familiar feeling of Jonathan's arms around her waist.
She wants to know that everyone's okay. She wants to see Mike's stupid face again, get confirmation that he's safe, alive. She needs to hear how they have all been doing, every step they took to help everyone here in Hawkins.
She wants to know that the Upside Down doesn't stretch as far as California.
She needs to know whether she can sleep at night.
Nancy can’t relax around many people. Even before - before monsters in the walls and blood dripping down her hand - she wasn't able to calm down often. She spends a lot of time waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the next thing to go wrong. Before Barb, since Barb - Nancy has always felt a little bit like she's standing too close to the edge of an abyss.
Jonathan is one of the few people who's always understood that about her. He understands her, period. He's one of the few people who's seen all her sharp edges and managed to keep holding on to her regardless.
She leans her head against the glass of the car window, watches the familiar land unfurl around her. The distance between Hawkins and Lenora has never felt so gaping.
She wishes he was here. She wishes she was there.
Instead, she’s with Steve Harrington. Instead, she’s been tripped backwards in time, dragged back to the beginning of 1983. Instead, she's in the passenger seat of Steve’s BMW, listening to the familiar rumble of the engine beneath her.
How many times has she been here, before?
Steve’s still playing the a-ha tape; the same one he’s been listening to since his first Vecna possession. She watches his fingers tap along to the beat against the steering wheel, and for a moment, she’s fifteen again.
She’s fifteen and there's a swooping feeling in her stomach at the idea Steve Harrington has singled her out, noticed her. She’s fifteen and they’re driving to Lover’s Lake for a picnic, and everything feels new and exciting and real for the first time. She’s fifteen, looking at his hands spread across the steering wheel and thinking: maybe this is what I want. Maybe this is what I always wanted.
She looks at Steve, his side profile lit up by the spring sun. Then, she blinks. The feeling fades as quickly as it came.
She isn’t fifteen. Her and her fifteen-year-old self wouldn’t recognise each other. It’s been a long, gruelling few years since fifteen. Her fifteen-year-old self was burried alongside Barb. Her fifteen-year-old self was left to rot in the Upside Down, Jonathan unable to drag her out in time. The only trips she has to Lover's Lake these days end in diving into the water, vines pulling her through the void.
Everything is tinged with dust and dirt, stained with the blood of everyone they’ve lost.
She’s walked through alternate dimensions. She’s fought monsters. She’s broken laws. She’s killed. She’s made every decision she could based on what she thinks is right. She's scrambled, tooth and nail, gun and barrel just to be here. Just to still be alive.
She isn’t fifteen. She’s not prissy, or polished, or timid anymore. There's no question about what she wants now, and it isn’t Steve Harrington and his artfully coiffed hair.
Although - it seems almost cruel for Nancy to dismiss Steve like that. He isn't who he was back then, either.
This Steve has hands wrapped around his steering wheel that are dirty and scarred, knuckles swollen from days of punching and clawing and fighting his way back to life. This Steve has greasy hair and three-day-old stubble. This Steve has a crooked nose and a broken chest. This Steve wouldn’t be caught dead shotgunning beers with Tommy and Carol.
This Steve ruffles Dustin Henderson’s hair with affection. This Steve says I love you to Robin Buckley. This Steve kisses Eddie Munson like he has something to prove.
This Steve has a life outside of her, away from her. This Steve has filled out, grown up.
This Steve is haunted by something so much bigger than Nancy could ever understand.
*
Neither of them is talking. The music is still playing through the car speakers, louder than she would like, but she doesn’t say anything. Steve winces when he turns the car around corners, something in the vehicle’s movement tugging at his side, pulling where the bats clawed at him.
Steve’s eyes are locked on the road in front of him. It gives her time to study the furrow of his brows, the resolute clench to his jaw.
“Do you think it’s really over?” she asks. “This time, do you think it’s really over?”
Steve glances at her. She still doesn’t know how to read the expression on his face. She’s starting to think she never has.
He sighs. “I don’t know. I mean, I can't feel Vecna in my head anymore, so I’d like to think it’s over, but. Y’know – it hasn’t been over yet.”
“I – you told us. That, um. Eleven said.”
Steve snorts. “Nance. I’m tired. I’m starting to think I’ve been tired since 1983. I tried, like, pretending everything was normal the first time around, and look at where we all ended up. I figure, I don't know shit, yeah?”
“Is that why –” she cuts herself off.
She doesn’t need to know why Vecna cursed him. She doesn’t need to know the details of what he’s carrying. She hasn’t been assigned to write this story; she isn’t investigating Steve’s life. Sometimes, there are some mysteries she should leave unsolved.
Steve huffs out a laugh, like he knows what she was going to ask anyway.
“Vecna didn’t curse me because I was tired. You know that.”
“I’m not sure I did know, Steve.”
In Eddie’s trailer – when Steve’s eyes were white and clouded, when Robin was pacing, and Nancy was frozen, and Dustin’s breathing was ragged with panic – the only person who didn't seem completely shocked by Steve being cursed was Eddie. Maybe that says something. Maybe they all need to pay better attention to each other.
“Well, you should, know, Nance," Steve says. "You heard from Max what Vecna was looking for. He targeted my guilt, all the shitty feelings I have about myself."
His brows are pulled together, his mouth pinched. Neither of them grew up in houses where talking about feelings was encouraged. Steve keeps pausing between words, like he's really thinking about what to say next.
“Vecna wanted me because a lot of the time, I don’t want myself. C’mon, Nance. It’s not like I’m smart like you guys are. I don’t, like, really have a future. I mean, in Hawkins, or generally. A lot of the time, I felt like I was just – I don’t know – the best person to go first. Y’know? Like, if I’m gonna do anything, it should at least be this one thing.”
It feels like someone’s punched a hole into Nancy’s stomach.
Steve, oblivious, is still talking.
“Besides, I’ve done a lot of shit I regret. I’m – I mean – I’m sure you know that more than anyone. I wasn’t a great boyfriend to you, or, like. A great guy in general.”
Nancy swallows around the tightness in her throat. She doesn't want to be having this conversation.
She thinks of Steve, who came to Jonathan’s house to apologise for losing a fight. Steve, who ran back inside to fight the Demogorgon with them. Steve, who went to all those dinners with Barb’s parents. Steve, who drove Dustin to the Snow Ball and smiled and said nothing when she went off with Jonathan and Steve who makes the kids laugh louder than Nancy ever could, and.
Steve, who thinks he should regret it all.
She realizes then that a part of her has always been blaming him for the way he behaved when Barb first went missing. A part of her has always been waiting for him to blow everything off, treat it like it was nothing. A part of her has always been waiting for him to pretend everything’s normal.
She closes her eyes. It's almost ridiculous, her and Steve. Ridiculous they ever met. Ridiculous they ever got dragged into this mess together. Ridiculous that even now, all these years later, they've never been on the same page.
The whole year they were together after Barb died, a part of Nancy resented Steve. She had hated his wide smiles, his easy laugh. She resented the fact he never talked about it, that he pushed it all down, away. She hated his gentle touch, his role as her doting, perfect boyfriend. She didn't know how to exist in a world where they never spoke about the monsters.
She had never even considered that not talking about it was Steve clinging to normality. She had never even realised that he might have been clinging to the past out of the same desperation that led her to reject it.
When he had been possessed, when Vecna had his hands in Steve's brain, Nancy had been forced to re-evaluate him. She'd been confronted with the reality that Steve never returned to normal, as much as he'd tried to claim he had. Here was proof he was damaged. Here was proof he carried the guilt around with him like a weight. Here was the proof the Upside Down had touched them all in ways they could never recover from. Here was proof he was just as fucked up as her.
Maybe even more fucked up than her.
She swallows. Shaking her head. She doesn't want to hear anymore about this. She doesn't want to be confronted with all the aspects of Steve she missed, before.
“Are you and Eddie okay now?” she asks. A pathetic attempt to change the subject. “I know. Um, I know you guys have had some problems. Given that, um."
"That we were broken up before?" Steve says, raising his eyebrows.
"Yeah."
Steve smiles. It’s a small, quiet thing, but it looks good on him. She doesn't think she sees him smile often, these days - usually they only spend time together in the midst of the world ending. It makes her wish, again, that she and Jonathan hadn't let the rift between them and Steve chasm quite so widely.
“It’s – um. We’re going to be okay. We’ve talked, and, like, I’m gonna go see his uncle soon, with him. Think he’s going to try and explain some stuff.”
“The NDA’s,” she says.
Steve frowns. “I mean, I don't have to say anything, and they haven’t technically made Eddie sign anything yet. Whatever those suits are up to at the minute, they’re fucking around. ‘Sides, Eddie’s got the whole of Hawkins trying to hunt him down, right now. The least the government can do is let him tell his uncle where he’s been for the past week.”
Nancy isn’t sure what to say to that. She looks at her hands, traces the scar Jonathan’s knife left there.
“You're not worried they're going to try and pin Eddie as the murderer to save face?”
Steve looks haunted.
"I hadn't thought of that," he says.
"We just. I mean, I don't trust them, Steve."
Steve's jaw clenches. "Me neither. I swear, Nance, if they show up and ask me to sign shit, then they better do so with the promise they're going to get everyone to back off Eddie. He's a fucking hero, and we killed another one of their fucking problems. They owe us that much."
Nancy nods. "They say anything to either of you, let me know. We'll find a way to make sure it's all in our favour, okay? Like I did with Barb. There'll be a way for the truth to get out."
Steve’s shoulders relax a little, and he flashes her a quick smile.
“If anyone could, it would be you, Nance.”
“I mean it. You - and Eddie - you helped us. You should be okay. I um. I mean, I want Eddie to be able to exist in Hawkins without an angry mob. I’d like to get to know you two, together."
“Hah, well. I’m sure you will. Me and Eddie have, like, a lot of stuff to talk about, but we know where we stand with each other. Turns out the one good thing about nearly dying, is that it puts the rest of your relationship issues into perspective.” He glances at her, smile wry. “Don’t suppose you and Jonathan would know anything about that?”
“He was supposed to be here,” she says. “This week, I mean. He was supposed to come back to Hawkins when Mike went to California.”
“Maybe he, like, didn't have the money to come?” Steve asks. He shrugs. “Or, like, maybe it was something else? I know me and Jonathan haven’t been super close, these past few years, but I've seen him in crisis enough times to say that I could judge his character well enough, right? I’m sure he had his reasons for staying. Y’know, the same way you had your reasons for not going with Mike to Cali.”
Nancy looks out the window, watching the familiar streets of Hawkins roll past them. She doesn't want to acknowledge how reasonable Steve is being. She doesn’t want to be the immature one.
“I wasn’t nice to him when we spoke last. He wanted to stay with Will, El, and Joyce over spring break. He's worried about them, which I get, but I don't see why he couldn't just leave them for the one week."
Steve shakes his head, looking amused. “Nance. You of all people should understand why Jonathan couldn’t leave. You two are, like, the most dedicated people I know. I mean, I doubt he would ever expect you to leave something you feel responsible for. I mean, why didn't you go to California?"
"I had a lot going on. With the paper, and school, and everything. I didn't want to fall behind."
Steve snorts. "See? I’m sure he, like, thought you would know where he was coming from.”
Nancy purses her lips. She knows Steve is right.
“I think sometimes I can be a bit of a - I don’t know. A bit cruel.”
“Sure,” Steve says. “But, Nance. Who isn’t a bit cruel, sometimes? You know how much of a jerk I used to be. We’ve been talking about how much of a jerk I used to be.”
She shakes her head. “That isn’t the same thing. I'm being a jerk now. I haven’t been listening to Jonathan.”
Steve shrugs. Nancy watches the sidewalk wind its way past them.
“If you haven’t been listening to him, then start,” Steve says. “El killed Vecna. You guys torched the body, and I saw her there, when I was in the vision while you guys were in the Upside Down. I don’t know, like, exactly what El, Mike, Jonathan and Will have been doing, but it’s pretty obvious they’ve been just as tied up in this as we have. I mean, Mike is due back to Hawkins soon. I wouldn't be surprised if Jonathan and Will came with him. I'm sure you'll all be able to talk things through then.”
"Yeah,” she says.
The a-ha tape ends, suddenly, and Steve jumps at the silence. She reaches over, ejecting it and flipping it back to Side A. He nods at her in thanks.
“I don’t want to be negative, Nance,” he says. He’s looking at the tape. “It’s just - if you want to say something to Jonathan, you should. There's no time like the present. Just in case –”
He trails off, leaves the sentence unfinished.
She knows what he was going to say anyway: just in case it really isn’t over.
“It’s over,” she says, forcing her voice to sound surer than she feels. “You said Eleven killed Henry. Robin and I got his body, too. Besides, the gates aren't visible anymore. There’s not even a crack. It has to be over.”
"Yeah," Steve replies.
She knows neither of them believes it.
“I really didn’t want Eddie to know about all this, y’know?” Steve says, after a pause.
He indicates right, driving down a side street. He’s taking a swerving, complicated route back to her house, but she doesn’t call him out on the way he’s delaying.
“I have these, like, horrible nightmares – I’m sure you get it. When we first started hooking up, and Eddie was, like, staying over, I’d wake him up in the middle of the night, y’know, freaking out. He was always so nice about it, but, like, he was worried, y’know? He wanted to know what was going on with me, but I didn’t want to say. The second you know about this shit; you get dragged right into the middle of it all. I mean, look at Robin and Erica. Look at Max!”
Steve’s shoulders droop.
“Eddie’s injured. He saw two people fucking die in front of him, and the entire town wants him for murder, and he had to get Lucas and Erica out of the Upside Down, and I just keep thinking, like, maybe if we never met –”
“If you and Eddie never met, Henry would have succeeded in cursing you,” Nancy says. She reaches out, putting a hand on Steve’s knee. “None of us knew your favourite song, just him."
Steve bites the inside of his cheek, but he says nothing.
“Also, even if you and Eddie had never met, he still would have been involved with the Upside Down this time, because Chrissy died in his trailer. Even if you two hadn’t been together before this, Dustin would have sought him out no matter what. They were friends as well.”
“I mean, I guess,” Steve says. It sounds reluctant.
“Look, I’m not saying that this is something that anyone should get dragged into, Steve, but Erica, Max, Robin, Eddie – it isn’t your fault they’re involved. You only found out about everything because of me! Do you blame me for that?"
"Barb died in my pool," Steve says.
Nancy grits her teeth, closes her eyes. She doesn't know if she's ever heard Steve say it, before.
"I know," she says. "But the government were the ones who tried to cover that up. You wouldn't have known about the Demogorgon if you hadn't come to Jonathan's, that night. Do you blame me or Jonathan for your involvement?"
Steve blinks, looking surprised.
"No," he says.
"Exactly. It's not our fault that any one of us has gotten involved in this mess. It’s the government’s fault for not doing enough to stop it. It’s Henry’s fault for creating the Upside Down to begin with. It’s the lab’s fault for trying to mess with things that they don’t understand, for hurting El, for taking Henry.”
Steve shakes his head. "Okay, but you can’t act like I didn’t have any part in their involvement. I’m always going to be responsible for some of what happened. Especially Erica. I mean, I should have gone into that fucking elevator on my own. I should never have risked her, risked Robin.”
“You didn’t know what was down there,” she says.
“I should have known something was up. Fuck, if Dustin and Erica hadn’t found us in time – Nance, I know we’ve had some close calls, but I really thought me and Rob were toast. Like, they had the fucking tools in their hands, and – God.” He shudders. “Y’know, for months afterwards, Rob would sneak over to mine just so we could sleep back-to-back. We’d both lie there, in the same fucking position we were tied up in, just focusing on each other’s breathing.”
He laughs, drags a hand down his face. “It’s messed up, I know, but I – I sleep much better when I know she’s there. When she isn’t, I have these awful nightmares they succeeded in, like, cutting out her tongue, or pulling off her fingers, or – I don’t know. Something worse. That was the first vision Vecna gave me; seeing Robin with her tongue cut out, trying to speak, but the blood just -”
He stops, shaking his head again, like he can shake the thoughts away. Nancy swallows, looking away.
She feels horrified.
She heard Dustin’s abridged version of what the Scoops Troop did last summer, but they didn’t have time for a full play-by-play. Afterwards, neither she or Steve called when everything settled down again. She saw him briefly at Hop’s funeral, but he teary-eyed and was shoulder-to-shoulder with Robin, then. It hadn't felt like her place to go over, to speak to him.
Now, hearing what Steve described makes her feel sick. She can’t believe she never reached out, never asked if he was okay. Of course their experience down in the bunker hadn’t been as glittering and as exciting as Dustin made it seem. Of course Steve and Robin experienced something awful and serious.
Something human. Something sinister and adult and fucking terrifying.
She saw Steve’s swollen face. She saw the crusted blood, the matted hair, the way the doctor spent a long time checking him over for a concussion. She saw it, and she chose to say nothing. She chose to remain ignorant.
Nancy is starting to think she’s been ignorant when it comes to Steve Harrington for far too long.
She rubs her lip, frowns at Steve. “You didn’t know the Russians were trying to open the gate. I mean, for all Dustin found that code being broadcasted, how were you supposed to predict there was an entire Russian base under Starcourt at all?”
“There’s always something,” Steve says, darkly.
Nancy sighs. “Well, as much as you didn’t want him involved, Eddie is involved now. He’s been inside the Upside Down for as long as you have.”
“Yeah. If you don’t count the tunnels,” Steve agrees.
Nancy exhales slowly. After his Russian bombshell, she can’t handle asking about what he means by the tunnels right now.
“My point is,” she says. “Eddie getting involved will be good. He'll understand your nightmares a little. You can at least talk to him properly about everything, now. I’m pretty sure the past three NDA’s are pointless in the face of everything you’ve both been through.”
Steve chews his lip. “Maybe.”
The BMW is turning onto her street, Steve’s meandering journey finally coming to an end.
Her home - her house - looms in the distance. Nancy clenches her jaw at the thought of the clean walls inside, the sterile distance between her parents. She doesn’t want to go inside.
Steve pulls the car into park some way up the road from her drive, much further than he was from Robin's. She knows he's trying to give her the space to reunite with her parents in privacy. It’s a small gesture, but one she appreciates.
The BMW's engine cuts out, the tape along with it. The silence is very loud.
“I want you to know, I wasn’t lying when I said I loved you in Eddie’s trailer,” she says. “I don’t remember exactly what I said to you at Tina’s party – I mean, um. When we broke up. I am sorry I ended things between us the way I did, though. I'm sorry for not dealing with things properly back then; you deserved an actual conversation.”
Steve looks surprised. “It’s okay,” he says.
Nancy puts a hand on his arm, waits for him to meet her eyes.
“It wasn’t okay,” she says. “It isn’t okay. We’ve covered the fact I can be a bit cruel, and I was cruel to you. I just – I want you to know, with Barb –”
She feels the tears pool, hot and unexpected in her eyes. She wipes them away.
“I want you to know with Barb, it wasn’t your fault, the same way it’s not your fault Max, Erica, Robin, or Eddie got involved in all this. They all made their choices, same as you made yours.”
She looks at him, fiercely, wills him to hear that she’s telling the truth.
“Steve,” she says. “You didn’t have to, but you came back into Jonathan’s house to fight the Demogorgon that night. You probably saved my life. Jonathan’s life, too. You looked after the kids during the Demodogs. I don’t know what you and Robin went through with Starcourt, but you both made it out of that. You saved my life again when you hit Billy with your car. You did all of that, and you held off Vecna so the rest of us could kill him. You’ve done so much good for everyone here in Hawkins, okay? You’re so much more than you seem to think, and I’m sorry I never thanked you, before.”
Steve’s eyes are wide. The tears in his eyes are clear, even in the thin, evening light.
“Thanks, Nance,” he says. There’s only a slight wobble to his voice. “I think maybe, I needed to hear that.”
He looks over to her house. The porch light is on, the shadow of figures behind the blinds. Her mom is probably pacing in the living room, worried about her. Her dad probably hasn’t noticed she’s been gone.
“I, uh.” He grips tighter on the steering wheel, fingers flexing. “I’d love to keep talking but - you should probably get home.”
“Yeah,” she agrees.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? I’m picking Robin up first thing, I’ll drive over here, too? It’s good, I think, to spend time together, after everything.”
“Yeah,” she agrees. “Is Eddie coming?”
“He’s staying at mine, tonight,” Steve says. “Reckon he’ll probably be staying there a while.”
When he looks at her, he seems calmer; steadier than he’s been in days.
“It’ll be good. To keep spending time with everyone,” Nancy says.
Steve nods. “Yeah. I, uh. I hope so. I want Eddie to feel, like, normal, or whatever.”
“That’s nice,” she says. She smiles at him. “I’m glad I met you, Steve Harrington.”
He runs a hand through his hair and looks at her, almost coy.
“I’m glad I met you too, Nancy Wheeler.”
The soft smile on his face makes him look younger. For a moment, she sees it all over again – him at sixteen, suave and ridiculous and half in love with her.
Then she blinks, and they’re adults once more – in love with different people – and all the better for it.
She climbs out the car. She’ll see him tomorrow.