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It’s El’s expectation that the letters will stop, now that she is back in Hawkins. More often than not, Mike is there to see what happens in her days – he plays the starring role, in fact. There is no need to inscribe these events on pages for his review, when he already knows how they unfold.
But while El neglects their correspondence, Mike keeps it up. His letters are not as long as they once were, nor as detailed. There is no need for that when they share a town again. The letters are reduced to sweet messages of love.
In his reluctance to write that he loved her, Mike offered the sentiment in disguise, with compliments and poems. Everything he writes contains the same meaning: El is so beautiful she mesmerises him and so precious she terrifies him. Holding her is all he wants, losing her is all he dreads. However often Mike conveys his feelings to her, El’s breath is taken away.
Poetry has so many rules that El is impressed Mike would even try to follow them. She’s even more impressed by the beauty of his writing. She tries to tell him so, but he’s quick to scoff in that sweet self-deprecating way he has.
“It’s bad poetry,” he assures her. “Real amateur hour stuff. They’d even reject me from a poetry slam, I’m pretty sure.”
El doesn’t always know what Mike is talking about. But she knows he’s trying to make her laugh when he speaks in that tone, when his eyes glimmer, and she’s so fond of him that she finds it easy to spill with giggles.
“Poetry slam?” she has to ask.
“You know about stand-up comedians, right? People who tell jokes on stage in front of a crowd?” Mike asks, patiently. “It’s like that, but instead of telling jokes, you read poetry. The poetry isn’t that good.”
“You would get in,” El declares. “You’d be the exception, because your poetry is good. It’s beautiful. It’s the best thing I’ve ever read, every time.”
She means that she counts every poem in this bracket, and she thinks that Mike understands. But it’s a pitiful demonstration of love to make for the boy who writes her love letters. He gives her notes to tell her she is pretty, smart, funny, brave. He writes short stories led by girls with brown hair and brown eyes, with timid dispositions and fierce hearts. Versions of El with bejewelled armour and golden tiaras, versions she likes better than herself.
“I love you,” El says.
She relies on those words. They’re the most important in the world, she’s been told, the ones that mean the most. For all that the phrase is worth, it’s possible that she says it too much. Joyce tells her not, that it doesn’t have a limit on how much it should be said.
Mike agrees; he told her he loved her nine times when she was in the pizza dough freezer, and she’s lost count of how many more times he’s said it in the months since then. He tells her when he says goodnight now.
He says it with his voice and he says it with his art.
El can only thank him. She has nothing more to offer.
There’s so much of it, is the thing. Width and depth and variety. When El thinks of what Mike is to her, of all the layers of his goodness, she is overwhelmed. Maybe Mike has it easy, she muses. He loves such a little person. A person easy to wrap in poetry. But then, she knows better, she knows that her past makes it complicated to love her. His poems are a testament to the abundance of his feelings; he hasn’t been able to capture every nuance across all the pages kept safe in her Mike box.
Once, just once, El tries to write herself. She spends a lot of time staring at the white paper, the blue lines, before she decides to jot down the words that remind her of Mike. Love. Home. Favourite. Most. Held.
Thank you for always holding me. I love you the most in the world. You are my favourite person. You are my home. Would putting it that way be enough?
Of course not. She hasn’t mentioned how gentle and patient he is. She hasn’t mentioned his handsome face, or how she likes to hold his hand. The fact that lying quietly in his arms erases every strife she’s ever faced.
You give meaning to my suffering. You give meaning to everything , she adds in her wobbly handwriting.
It still doesn’t feel like enough. And she’s only talking about herself, about the things he does for her - she loves him outside of herself. She loves that he doesn’t resist hugging his mother, that he pretends not to like the fuzzy sweaters he wears all the time, that he hates to get rid of his toys. She loves that he tries so hard in school, that he gets so invested when watching a movie, that he cares so much about his friends. She loves everything about Mike.
She loves him beyond words. But words are so important to Mike. There’s no excuse to deprive him of the love he best recognises, and there’s no substitution.
Still, she tries.
On a walk, she demands that he close his eyes and wait for a surprise. He whines about his curiosity for the time she spends dashing around him, gathering blue flowers for his bouquet. It occurs to her late, after she’s prodded him back to attention, that it’s a girly gift she’s put together. She can hardly feel disheartened, when Mike makes a fuss over thanking her.
“One hundred per cent blue, because it’s my undisputed favourite!” he says, beaming.
Which does dishearten her, because she realises she’s copied him. In turn, she realises that Mike was better at saying he loved her even before he could use the words. Her frown makes Mike’s smile disappear.
“Hey, what is it?” Mike asks.
“I copied you,” El says, meekly.
“What? No, you didn’t. Picking flowers is a universal romantic gesture, it can’t really be copied.”
He’s so earnest with her, so kind. Everybody in the party calls Mike a jerk and El knows what they mean because she sees it firsthand, but he’s different when he’s addressing her. He becomes the gentlest being in the world. Nothing like the brusque creature that strikes back at Max and Hopper.
He’s so good to her. He’s too good for her.
Mike is calling her name, but El can’t look at him. She stares at the grass, at the daisies brushing her sneakers.
“El, what’s wrong?”
She wants to tell him, but she finds it difficult to even explain her predicament.
“I can’t explain,” she says. “I can’t say it like you do.”
“Say what?” Mike asks. He sounds frantic now, worried about his inability to help, about how long it is taking for him to understand.
“How I feel,” El says. “That I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Mike says automatically. “I’m sorry, El, I don’t understand… You said it before I could.”
“But I don’t write you poetry. I don’t have the words.”
“Oh, El…”
Mike looks remorseful. Love shines through his sad face, with determination that El scolds herself for being surprised by – of course Mike is galvanised and not shaken by this revelation. When has he ever failed her before?
“I don’t need you to write me poetry to know how you feel about me,” he tells her. “I know every time you smile at me, or hold my hand, or draw me a picture. There are lots of ways to tell someone you love them - words are only one way.”
“Words are the best way.”
“Not necessarily,” Mike assures her. “Kissing is pretty good, right?”
He’s grinning, now, knowingly. Despite herself, El giggles, feeling her cheeks colour.
“Kissing is good,” she agrees. “But it isn’t everything. I want to give you everything, like you give me everything.”
Mike splutters with surprise. “I don’t think I really do all that much - “
“But you do! It’s all so easy for you,” El protests.
“El, are you kidding? It’s the hardest thing in the world.”
It’s the very last thing El expects to hear. She looks at him, her eyes wide with shock. She thinks she can see the sun in his eyes, though the day is mild, though his eyes are dark. In his poetry, she is sunshine and he is moonlight, but El thinks the reverse is true. He’s what keeps her warm and offers light and nourishment; he’s always been a sunshine boy to her.
“You know how much I struggled saying it, at first,” Mike goes on. “I have more love than I know what to do with. Trying to put it into words is impossible - there aren’t any words good enough for you.”
El has the bizarre urge to seize him by the hand and exclaim, I know! I know! That’s how I feel! Instead, she grows quiet. She remembers what he said: You were wearing that yellow Benny’s Burgers T-shirt, and it was so big it almost swallowed you whole. And I knew right then, in that moment, that I loved you. And I’ve loved you every day since. I love you on your good days, I love you on your bad days. I love you with your powers, I love you without your powers. I love you for exactly who you are.
Of all his love confessions, this was his least refined. Still, it means as much to El as every other does. Still, it saved the world.
“I think your words are good enough,” El tells him.
“Well, I think yours are, too,” Mike says.
She trusts that he means it as much as she does.
Last week, he found a pebble in the pocket of his jeans. El had picked it up on a walk around the cabin, the year before. She gave Mike the stone, a gesture of love, and he held onto it, a second gesture of love. Perhaps not as clear as speaking it, perhaps not as artful as writing it, but every bit as true.
Every bit as good.