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The driveway is quiet when Nancy pulls up. Dirt and gravel crunch quietly under the tires of her mom’s old station wagon, dappled light spilling through the gaps in the trees and rolling across the windshield. She shifts into park but hesitates before turning the car off, deliberating on whether or not she should stay in here and wait or go up to the front door and knock—unsure which would be the least awkward thing to do.
It’s not like it really matters—it doesn’t matter at all, actually—but she’s never even seen Robin’s house before, let alone stepped inside of it. Knocking on the door would mean potentially meeting one of her parents, and Nancy’s good with parents, sure, but she doesn’t really want to meet Robin’s parents right now. And it’s not like she’s picking her up for a date or anything. They’re not going to prom . It’s just—they’re just—
“Nance!” comes a friendly call from the dingy little front porch. Nancy jerks her head up, and Robin is there kicking the screen door shut behind her, an off-white bucket hat squished onto her head and a striped beach towel shoved under her arm. She grins, giving Nancy a dorky little wave, then calls something to her parents through the door before swiftly making her way down the front steps, flip-flops smacking against the ground. When she makes it to Nancy’s car, she props her elbows in the open passenger window and ducks down, her hair wild and frizzy where it sticks out from under her ridiculous hat. “You got here fast.”
Still gripping the steering wheel, Nancy tries for an easy smile. “You lived a lot closer than I thought.”
“Guess so. You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Sick.” Robin tosses her towel into the footwell through the window, then pulls open the car door and ungracefully plops into the passenger seat, all lanky limbs. She’s wearing bright red board shorts and one of her signature patterned button ups, short-sleeved, exposing the freckled expanse of her arms and legs that Nancy has to pointedly look away from, checking her rearview mirror. Robin shuts the door. “Let’s get this show on the road!”
“Let’s,” Nancy agrees, and then she shifts into reverse and begins to back out of the driveway. The minute they’re back on the street, Robin leans forward and starts fiddling with the knobs on the radio, static crackling through the dashboard speakers. Once she finds a station she’s satisfied with, she turns up the volume and leans back in the seat, pulling up one leg and making herself comfortable.
“So, how far is this place again?” she asks, propping her arm on the windowsill as the warm summer breeze spills in from outside.
“Not too far,” Nancy says as they turn off of Robin’s dead-end street. It’s a part of Hawkins Nancy hasn’t frequented, with smaller houses and half-brown lawns and scuffed up Westfalias parked along the unmarked sidewalks. “I think it’s about half an hour from here. You invited Steve, right?”
“He’s working until four, but he said he could meet us later tonight. Eddie, too.” Robin pops the sun visor down and inspects herself in the tiny little mirror, fixing a bit of eye makeup smudged along her bottom lashes. “He said you guys used to come out here together?”
“We’ve gone a few times, yeah,” Nancy confirms, keeping her eyes on the road.
“How’d you find out about it?”
She shrugs. “Completely by accident. I took a wrong turn when I was trying to drive into Indy and just sort of stumbled upon it.”
“Wicked,” Robin says. Then she pops the visor back in place and turns up the radio, filling the silence that inevitably stretches out between them as Nancy drives.
The thing is, this was all Nancy’s idea. To get out of Hawkins for a day and go visit the old gorge she’d found years ago, tucked in the woody backlands of Roane County, isolated enough that they’d have the entire place to themselves. Nancy had known about it first; she and Steve had gone on a couple dates there early in their relationship, spreading out a picnic blanket and skipping stones over the crystal-blue water, digging their feet into the sun-warmed sand. But later on, it became a kind of refuge for Nancy when things started getting bad—a place further than the quarry and less crowded than Lover’s Lake for her to just be. No people, no expectations, no interdimensional monsters lurking at the edge of the treeline. Nothing but peace and quiet.
But, these days, being alone is just about one of the worst things imaginable, which is fucking saying something given all they’ve gone through. The arrival of summer made things easier, at first—let Nancy focus on volunteering with the town relief effort, let her focus on packing for Boston, let her focus period —but the warmer it got, the busier the people around her got, and the more she found herself alone.
Jonathan went back to California with his family to re-pack up their life for the second time in two years, and the day before they’d left Nancy had driven out to the gorge, alone, and floated in the river on her back for what felt like hours, watching the sun slowly dip below the trees until the entire landscape was swathed in darkness and she felt numb from head to toe. She’d driven home in a daze, past the abandoned buildings and over the makeshift bridges built between the gaping ravines, and pulled into her driveway to find Jonathan sitting on her front steps, eyes glassy with tears.
“I’m sorry,” is the first thing he said when she stepped out, her hair still wet and plastered to the back of her neck. “I’m sorry, Nancy.”
Nancy, guilty that she wasn’t more heartbroken over him, just said quietly, “I know. It’s okay.”
They’d hugged for a while—Jonathan’s arms circled around her waist, her nails digging into his shoulders, faces buried in each other’s necks—but there were certainly worse ways for things to end.
“You’ll always have me, okay?” Nancy told him softly, pressing their scarred palms together. “Even if we’re not…”
“Yeah,” Jonathan agreed. “Me too. You’ll always have me.”
And that was that. They left the next morning before dawn, quietly as they’d come, and Nancy was alone again. Of course, there was Steve, and Mike, and Dustin, and Lucas and Erica, and there was Max in the hospital and Eddie a few doors down from her. And there was Robin.
There was Robin.
Robin, who Nancy was half-afraid of, half-annoyed by, and wholly enamored with. Robin, who wasn’t dating Steve, but had become his closest friend in a matter of months. Robin, who called Nancy’s house phone sometimes in the middle of the night just to make sure she was still alive, just to hear her voice. Robin, who was endlessly neurotic and anxious, who bit her fingernails and pulled at loose threads on the hems of her t-shirts, who read books by Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde and sometimes left them on the prep table at the food drive, highlighted and underlined to the point of destruction, post-it’s spilling out from the pages. Robin, who got so caught up in her own head sometimes that it was like she was in an entirely different universe.
Like right now. Staring out at the rolling green and yellow hills, chin in hand, Robin’s gaze is fixed out of the window, hair fluttering around her ears, knees bruised, a band-aid with dinosaurs covering one of them. Nancy is right there next to her, but she is lightyears away.
And maybe that’s why Nancy had trouble with her, at first. It wasn’t jealousy, whatever Robin thought—certainly not jealousy over Steve. It was just… an inability to access her. A sense of being locked out. A key that only Steve, of all people, managed to possess.
Nancy’s not good with riddles. She’s a problem solver and a planner, but she’s never been good with riddles. And Robin Buckley is one hell of a riddle.
The sun is high and bright when they eventually pull off the main road and up the small dirt path that leads to the gorge, stopping just as the grass gives way to rocky sand. Before Nancy can even put it into park, Robin throws herself out the door, whooping, and hurtles like a meteor toward the shore. “Holy shit, Wheeler, this is awesome!”
Nancy follows her out at a slower pace, closing the driver’s door behind her and pushing her sunglasses up, probably messing up her bangs. It is awesome—a beautiful stretch of river crowded in by tall, tree-lined cliffs, jagged outcrops of granite lining the shore like giant stepping stones. Robin is already kicking off her flip-flops and unbuttoning her shirt, dropping it carelessly in the sand before shooting off into the water. She’s not wearing a swimsuit—just a black sports bra and those red board shorts, the line of her back long and pale in the sun. She stops immediately as her feet hit the water, arms windmilling as she tries to regain her balance.
“ Jesus fuck, that’s cold,” she hisses, then twists to look back at Nancy over her shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me it was cold?”
“I was going to, but you were too fast,” Nancy calls after her, dropping her own towel and netted beach bag where Robin had left all her stuff. Gritting her teeth, Robin gingerly makes her way back onto the shore, sand sticking to her now-wet feet. Nancy gives her an apologetic smile. “It’ll get warmer once the sun has been out for a while. I was thinking we could eat first?”
“Oh, sure.” Robin stops in front of her, hands on her bare hips. She has a long torso—something that Nancy wouldn’t normally notice about a person, but when she’s standing there in nothing but a sports bra, it’s kind of hard not to notice. “What’d you bring?”
“Um,” Nancy blinks, snapping herself out of it. “Uh—the cooler’s in the back.” She nods back towards the car.
“I can help,” Robin offers with a dorky smile, picking up her previously discarded shirt and shaking the sand out of it before slipping it back over her shoulders. She doesn’t button it up again, which makes something strange flutter in Nancy’s stomach.
“Yeah, thanks.”
They start back towards the car together, Robin forgoing her shoes, and Nancy unlocks the trunk and heaves it up to reveal the old ice cooler her dad had leant her for the day and a couple rolled-up picnic blankets. Nancy grabs one end of the cooler while Robin takes the other, and together they heave it out of the car and shuffle together back towards their little spot, half-shaded by the trees.
Robin plops down in the sand and crosses her legs while Nancy spreads out another blanket, lowering herself down and smoothing out the white cotton skirt of her beach dress. She undoes the latches on the cooler, then reaches in and cracks open a strawberry daiquiri-flavored wine cooler. Robin raises an eyebrow at her.
“I’m not supposed to be driving us home, am I?”
Nancy smiles a bit, raising the wine cooler to her lips. “Don’t worry. I won’t have more than one an hour.”
“Nance, you’re like the lightest lightweight I’ve ever met,” Robin points out.
“We’ve been drunk in front of each other one time. And that was vodka.”
“Once was enough,” Robin says gravely. Then she leans over to peek into the cooler. "Did you bring any Capri Suns?"
Now it’s Nancy’s turn to raise her eyebrow. “Aren’t you a little old for juice boxes?”
"Okay, first of all, it's a juice pouch," Robin corrects importantly. "And second of all, there is no age restriction on flavor. Steve always brings Capri Suns when we go swimming."
"Steve exclusively hangs out with twelve year olds."
"And you don’t?” Robin challenges. Then, continuing as if Nancy hadn’t said anything, “And third of all, if drinking a juice pouch and/or box is wrong, I don't want to be right. Give me juice or give me death."
“Does lemonade count as juice?” Nancy reaches into the cooler and pulls out a slim glass bottle of sparkling lemonade.
“It’s no Capri Sun, but it’s better than nothing.” Robin takes the bottle from her and spins the cap off, not bothering to pour it into one of the little solo cups Nancy had packed, just tilting her head back and waterfalling it directly into her mouth. She gargles a bit, and Nancy feels her lips twist into a little smile.
“So you are twelve.”
“Shut up,” Robin gurgles through the mouthful of juice. She swallows, then wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and raises the lemonade bottle up to Nancy in a toast. “Cheers to getting the fuck out of Hawkins?”
“I’ll drink to that,” Nancy agrees, and she clinks her wine cooler against the bottle. Robin’s lips twitch up, but she quickly looks away to take another swig, her cheeks turning a pale shade of pink. Which reminds Nancy; “Did you put on sunscreen?”
“Oh,” Robin blinks. “No, I don’t think so. I’m terrible at remembering to do stuff like that. Did you?”
“I brought some,” Nancy says, pulling a fresh tube out of her beach bag. She flips the cap open and squirts a little into her palm, then passes it over to Robin. They get their arms and legs, the backs of their necks, but then—
“Could you get my back?” Robin holds the sunscreen back out to Nancy, who freezes.
“Oh—yeah, sure. Of course.”
“Thanks.”
Robin scoots around in the sand so her back is facing Nancy, and then she’s taking off her button-up again, letting it pool around her waist. Nancy clears her throat and moves closer, too, squirting another dollop into her hands and rubbing them together. She really should’ve brought the spray kind.
Straightening her back, Robin reaches around and brushes some of the hair off her neck so Nancy has easier access to the bare skin there. It’s clear that Robin forgets sunscreen more often than not, as her shoulders are painted with dark freckles and there are faded razor-back tan lines peeking over the edges of her sports bra, the untouched skin a milky shade of white that Nancy feels almost guilty touching.
She spreads her fingers over Robin’s back, rubbing the lotion into her shoulders, around the dip of her shoulder blades, and then down the middle of her back where she wouldn’t be able to reach herself. She has to squeeze out two more handfuls of sunscreen to cover all of it, trying not to blush as she kneeds it into Robin’s skin, warm to the touch. It shouldn’t be weird. It’s not weird, because they’re friends, and friends do this stuff all the time. Hell, Nancy does this for her mom all the time. But something about it doesn’t feel quite right. Another piece of the Robin Buckley Puzzle that Nancy has yet to parse through.
“All done,” Nancy tells her once the lotion has been suitably rubbed in, sitting back and brushing her hands off on the towel. Robin turns and smiles.
“Thanks. Want me to do you?”
Nancy goes still again—something about that choice of words. Get it together, Wheeler. She resists the urge to clear her throat again, managing out, “If you could, yeah. Please.”
“No problemo.” Robin makes a little spinning motion with her hand, instructing Nancy to turn around. Nancy does, passing the tube of sunscreen back and doing what Robin had done—brushing her hair away from her neck and holding it off to the side, arms slightly raised. But then Robin plucks one of the straps of her white dress like a guitar string. “You gonna wear this into the river?”
“Oh. Right.” Leaning forward a bit, Nancy swallows hard and slips the straps of her dress over her shoulders, letting the fabric slide off her arms and settle around her waist so her back and shoulders are entirely exposed. She’s wearing an old swimsuit—a light blue two-piece, gingham-patterned—and suddenly feels all sorts of insecure sitting there hunched over in front of Robin, all pale and scrawny. She’d inherited her dad’s genes from the Swedish side of the family, making her prone to burning and virtually unable to tan. She doesn’t want to think about how Robin can probably count her ribs one by one, can probably see her bluish veins through her paper-white skin.
But, all Robin says is, “Cute suit.”
And then her hands are on Nancy’s shoulders, cold and soothing, fingers slipping up the sides of her neck to work the lotion into her skin. Nancy lets go of the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, straightening her spine a bit.
“I haven’t worn it in forever,” she admits, trying to imagine for a moment that Robin is Barb, because she and Barb talked about this stuff all the time. This is how normal friends talk to each other.
“Please, the last time I bought a bathing suit was back in elementary school. Pretty sure it was a polka-dot tankini.” Robin snorts. Her hands pull away for a moment, probably getting more sunscreen, and then they’re back, dipping under the straps of Nancy’s bathing suit then down her sides for full coverage. “Don’t tell Steve, but I stole these shorts from him like a year ago. Can you believe his ass is bigger than mine?”
That startles a laugh out of Nancy. “Um,” she says, and she hears Robin clap a hand over her mouth.
“Oh shit, I forgot! Of course you believe me, you’ve seen his ass before.”
“Oh my god.” Nancy buries her face in her hands, feeling heat spread all the way up to her ears and down her neck. Robin laughs louder.
“Sorry, Jesus, was that weird of me to say? I know you guys like, totally aren’t into each other anymore even though you had that whole will-they-won’t-they thing back during spring break, but sorry if that was weird. I’m being weird.”
“No, no, it’s fine.” Nancy lifts her head a bit, peeking back over her shoulder at Robin. “It was a little weird.”
“Noted,” Robin says affirmatively, capping the sunscreen and scooching away from Nancy. “Steve’s ass can remain strictly off-topic. Strike it from the record.”
“Consider it struck,” Nancy replies, slipping her dress back on and turning back around on the picnic blanket. Robin gives her a guilty smile, tucking a loose piece of hair behind her ear.
“Sorry,” she says again, achingly earnest.
“It’s fine,” Nancy insists. Then she reaches back into the cooler and pulls out an unopened carton of mixed fruit, offering it out to Robin. “Strawberry?”
Robin’s smile slips into something brighter, something that reaches her eyes. She leans forward and plucks the carton out of Nancy’s grasp. “Don’t mind if I do.”
They snack for a little while, grazing on the various fruits, cheeses, and crackers that Nancy ransacked from her kitchen that morning. Steve was in charge of dinner—according to Robin, he was going to bring stuff to grill shish-kebabs over a campfire—so Nancy hadn’t bothered with any substantial food, just bits and pieces to keep them tied over for the afternoon. Once the sun has settled more firmly in the sky, Robin unfolds her legs and jumps to her feet, dropping her bucket hat onto the ground.
“Hey, Wheeler,” she says, and Nancy looks up. Robin holds her gaze for a long moment, then grins. “Race you to the water.”
Before she even has a chance to get up, Robin tears off towards the water. “Hey!” Nancy protests, scrambling to her feet as Robin goes splashing in, water spraying everywhere. “You’re going to get cramps!”
“Urban legend!” Robin yells back, and then she’s slicing into the river, diving under as soon as she’s to put distance between her and the shore. Nancy, fueled by that competitive streak of hers, quickly strips out of her dress and takes off towards the water, feet pounding against the sand until she’s up to her waist in cold water, goosebumps skimming up her arms and legs.
Robin resurfaces a good yard or two away from her, bangs plastered to her forehead with a dopey grin on her face. She raises her fingers in the shape of an ‘L’ and holds them to her forehead, sticking her tongue out.
“You are a child, ” Nancy calls, hands on her hips as the disrupted water rocks around her, rippling out from Robin’s splashing.
"You're just mad because you lost," Robin sings, leaning back in the water and sweeping her arms forward, propelling her even further out.
"Because you cheated!”
"What was that?" Robin cups a hand around her ear. "Sounded like something a loser would say."
“You gave yourself a head start,” Nancy argues, wading in further so the water is up to her shoulders. Robin just grins even wider, floating on her back.
“Here in the real world, people cheat, and that's why we win. Nice guys finish last. That's you, Nance. You're the nice guy. You finished last. Because you're nice."
Nancy splutters. "I am not!"
"You're like the nicest person I know," says Robin, backing up a little further, pedaling her arms. “I mean, you’re also probably the scariest person I know, and the smartest, and you literally own guns , but you’re totally nice. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you bitch about someone before.”
“Not bitchy doesn’t automatically equal nice,” Nancy points out, wading in even deeper until her feet no longer touch the ground. “And I can be bitchy. I’ve been bitchy.”
“That so?”
“I was a bitch to you when we first met,” Nancy says, but Robin just shrugs.
“I don’t really blame you for that. Historically speaking I’m not great with first impressions.”
“But that was wrong of me.” Nancy stops a foot or so away from Robin now, legs paddling to keep her upright. “I’ve always meant to apologize about that, I just—didn’t really know how.”
At that, Robin cracks a soft smile. “That’s okay, Nance. Even if we weren’t before, we’re good now. Friends, right?”
“Right,” Nancy agrees, but it comes out weaker than she means it to. “I just—I need you to know that I know it was wrong. And I’m sorry.”
Now, Robin looks at her—just looks—her gaze searching Nancy’s, before telling her, “I forgive you.”
“You don’t have to,” Nancy says. Robin shakes her head.
“But I do. So take that.” Then, she splashes a bit of water in Nancy’s direction. “And stop bringing the mood down with all your sad shit. We’re here to enjoy summer!”
“Sorry,” Nancy says again, shaking the water out of her eyes. Robin just splashes her again.
“And no more apologizing.”
Nancy opens her mouth to say sorry again, but Robin gives her a look. So, sinking a bit into the water, she says, “Okay, fine.” Then in one swift movement she darts forward in the water and grabs one of Robin’s ankles, pulling her down under the water.
“Augh!” Robin splutters, water going everywhere as she scrabbles at Nancy, water shooting out of her nose as Nancy begins to laugh. Once she lets go of Robin’s ankle, Robin bursts back up and spews out a stream of water, hair completely soaked through and dripping into her eyes. “You fucker,” she gasps, shaking her head like a dog to get the water out of her hair, droplets flying everywhere. “You absolutely evil woman—you—!”
Now Nancy is full-on laughing, high and bright, covering her stomach with her arms as she propels backwards in the water, out of Robin’s reach. "Told you I wasn't nice."
“Fucker,” Robin says again, though there’s no malice to it. “You owe me a drink.” She runs a hand through her wet hair, slicking it back from her face, and Nancy definitely doesn’t watch the ripple of the tendon in her neck when she leans her head back. She doesn’t. What she does do is dip under the water and blow out a bubbly sigh, letting the cool sensation of the water against her bare skin cradle her.
When she comes back up, Robin is paddling back towards shore, Steve’s red shorts clinging to her thighs as she wades out of the river. Nancy follows her, but stays floating in the water, having finally adjusted to its cool temperature. She watches Robin walk back to their picnic setup and lean over the cooler, the line of her spine visible in the sun, and then she straightens up with one of Nancy’s wine coolers in hand. She pops the cap off using the edge of the cooler—a party trick Nancy has yet to perfect—and then takes a long gulp of it, not quite downing the entire thing, but close enough.
“Save some for the guys whenever they get here!” Nancy calls, propping her arms on a nearby rock. Robin shoots her a thumbs up, then wedges the half-empty wine cooler into the sand so it doesn’t tip over.
“Hey,” she says, her face lighting up. “Dare me to jump off that cliff into the water.”
“What cliff?” Nancy looks around, and Robin points to a ledge near the very top of the gorge.
"That one."
"Absolutely not. You'll die.”
"Will not!”
"You will," Nancy says. "And then everyone will know you got wasted on—” she glances back towards Robin’s drink “—half of a Bartles and died jumping off a cliff in your drunken delusion of invincibility."
"I love it when you talk fancy," Robin says with a grin, hands on her hips. "But I'm still gonna do it."
"'Here Lies Robin Buckley,'" Nancy announces, brandishing a hand in the air. "'Got underage drunk and jumped off a cliff like a total idiot.'"
“You’re the one who brought the alcohol,” Robin points out, and Nancy rolls her eyes.
"Just jump off the one over there.” She points to a significantly lower ledge that juts out farther than the one Robin chose. "Then you'll only probably die, instead of definitely."
"Hmm.” Robin taps her chin. "Better odds. But how will I maintain my reputation as a roguish daredevil?"
“Is that your reputation? I wasn’t aware.”
“It will be once I do a flip off that cliff,” Robin insists.
"You're doing a flip now?" Nancy asks. "You just went from ‘will probably die' to 'will definitely die' again."
“I could totally do a flip and not die! I’ve been kidnapped by evil Soviets and attacked by demon-bats with penis faces and I’m still alive.” Robin brandishes her arms to prove it.
“Penis faces?” Nancy repeats, quirking an eyebrow.
“You saw them!”
“I think I was too busy ripping them in half to get a good look at their faces.”
“Whatever,” Robin says, waving her off. “I’m going to go jump off that cliff now.”
“Wait!” Nancy says quickly, swimming a little closer to shore so she can talk to Robin at a normal volume. “Just—do a cannonball or something. I really don’t think I can handle another near-death situation having to do with water.”
Something softens in Robin’s expression at that, a flicker of sadness in her gaze. She was friends with Barb, too—Nancy knows that much. “Okay,” she agrees. “Cannonball off the lower ledge like a wimp, fine. Only ‘cause I care about you."
“Thank you.” Nancy leans back in the water again, pushing away from the shoreline. Robin lifts her chin and determinedly struts off into the woody trails that lead up to the cliffs, disappearing into the trees as the sun begins to creep lower towards the horizon line.
Nancy floats on her back for a while, listening to the birds chirp and chatter overhead. Robin seems to be taking her sweet time—knowing her, she probably managed to get lost on the way up—so Nancy decides to lazily make her way back to shore, water dripping down her back in ringlets as she steps out. She plants herself back on the picnic blanket and wraps herself in a towel, keeping her eyes fixed on the ledge of the cliff.
Finally, just as she’s begun to wonder if Robin has been mauled by a bear or something, she emerges on the cliff and looks around until she sees Nancy down below. Nancy gives her a little wave and Robin salutes, then backs up and takes a running leap off of the cliff and into the water, clutching her knees to her chest, hollering like a caveman.
The half-yodeling shriek is enough to startle a flock of birds from the canopy of trees, squawking in indignation. From Nancy’s spot on the sand, Robin looks mostly like a white blob hurtling towards the water. The splash is fairly impressive, enough so that when Robin’s head emerges, hair dark and curly from the water, Nancy gives her a little golf clap.
Robin throws up her hands in triumph, which makes her dip slightly under the surface of the water again. Nancy bites down on a smile.
“Told you I wouldn’t die!” Robin yells as she makes her way back to shore. She pulls herself out on a slippery slab of rock, the lean muscles in her arms and abdomen visibly twinging.
“Uh-huh,” Nancy replies sardonically, leaning back and digging her toes into the warm sand. As Robin gets closer, Nancy can’t help but notice that her skin is red from where she’d hit the water, board shorts hanging low around her hips and exposing the light trail of hair that dips below her belly button.
“Lemonade?” Robin requests when she finally reaches the picnic blanket, holding out her open hand. Nancy passes the half-empty thing of lemonade up to her, not watching as she leans her head back and parts her lips, waterfalling straight from the bottle again. When she finishes, she hunkers back down onto the blanket and pulls her own beach towel around her shoulders. It has little green and blue turtles on it. “This is nice,” she says, leaning back next to Nancy and crossing her ankles. “Like, really nice. We should do this more often.”
“We should,” Nancy agrees, gazing up at the sky and trees around them. There’s a beat of silence, a slight breeze skating over them. Then:
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Nancy blinks and looks over. “Sorry?”
Robin is leaning back on her elbows and looking at Nancy with wide, cautious eyes. “I mean—about why you called me yesterday. Freaking out and waking people up in the middle of the night is kinda my thing, you know?”
“Oh,” Nancy says, voice faltering. “Right.”
“We don’t have to talk about it.”
“No, it’s okay.” Nancy looks down at her feet. Digs her toes into the sand even deeper, hoping the sensation will ground her to reality. “I know it was out of the blue, but I just—I couldn’t sleep for some reason, and I was sitting up, awake, feeling like I wanted to crawl out of my own skin, and usually I would just call Jonathan, or Barb, or even Steve, but—I don’t know. I wanted to talk to you instead.”
“Oh,” Robin says lightly, but there’s a slight waver in her voice.
“I come out here a lot,” Nancy admits, gazing up at the rocky cliffs of the gorge, the rays of sun splicing through the trees. “When things get… bad. In my head. I like to come out here. And normally I don’t bring people with me, but…”
“But you invited me,” Robin finishes, and Nancy nods. “Can I ask why?”
She can, but Nancy’s not sure she really has an answer.
“I don’t know. It just—I think it helps to have you around.”
Robin blinks at her, her blue eyes impossibly clear, eyelashes spidery and dark from the water. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Nancy admits quietly. She looks away and curls her hands into the sand, letting it sift gently through her fingers. “You’re a good friend, Robin.”
“Friend,” Robin repeats. “Right.”
Things go quiet again, for a little while. It’s starting to get later in the afternoon, which means Steve and Eddie should be here soon. Letting the towel drop from her shoulders, Nancy stands up and brushes the sand off her hands.
“I’m going to get back in the water,” she says.
Robin doesn’t say anything—just nods distractedly, looking lost in thought. Nancy leaves her to it, slipping back into the brisk river. She swims out freestyle until she gets about chest deep, then turns on her back and floats, staring up at the sky like she’d been doing earlier. Her head feels muggy and heavy, a million different thoughts clogging up the drain, and she takes a deep breath. Exhales.
There aren't many clouds today but the sky isn't the rich sapphire blue it gets on really nice days; it looks washed out, like it's given up on being vibrant and is sticking to pale until it has a good reason to pretty itself up again. Nancy imagines telling the sky to respect itself more, that feeling blue is no excuse for failing to be blue, and laughs at herself a little.
There's a tug at her foot. She stops floating, letting herself stand up straight in the water and looking at Robin with an eyebrow raised.
"Are you annoyed with me?" she blurts.
"What?" Nancy says. "No, of course not. Why?"
Robin looks down, her fingers make tiny ripples in the water. "You seem like you're annoyed."
"I'm not.”
"Then why do you keep avoiding me?"
Frowning, Nancy tries to work out what Robin means by that. "We hang out all the time," she says. "We're hanging out right now. I just told you why I invited you here."
"But you do it when we're hanging out," Robin says, bringing one hand out of the water to tug at her hair. "You—I don’t know. You do this thing where you kind of back away and shut down.”
“I’m not shutting down,” Nancy says, stung.
“Okay,” Robin says, backing up a little bit. “Sorry. I just thought—nevermind.”
“What?” Nancy asks, swimming closer. Robin presses her lips into a line, then looks away.
“I just—I don’t have a lot of friends who are girls, so I’m pretty bad at this kind of stuff. Sorry.”
“What kind of stuff?” Nancy asks, softer.
“I don’t know,” Robin admits with a breathy little laugh, sounding stressed. “Talking, I guess? I’ve told you before that I’m not great with social cues, like, really not great, and being friends with guys like Steve is nice because he’ll just tell me things straight up, like when I’m being annoying or pushy or whatever, but it’s different with girls. They’re harder for me to figure out.” She sucks in an audible breath. “You’re hard to figure out.”
“Me,” Nancy says.
“Yeah,” Robin breathes. “And I really wish you weren’t, because there are some things that I can’t talk about with Steve, because he either wouldn’t understand or it would break his poor fragile little heart. Like, I certainly can’t talk to him about how I have this big stupid crush on his ex-girlfriend, of all people—“
And then Robin goes completely still. Her face crumples.
“Shit,” she says sharply, like a stone dropped in water. “Nancy, I—”
“What?”
“Nothing. Forget it.” Robin backs away even more, dragging a hand over her face. “Jesus, I’m an idiot. Please, just forget I said anything—”
“Robin,” Nancy stops her with a hand on her wrist. “Slow down.”
She freezes, looking at Nancy like a deer in headlights. Her skin is warm, warm, warm where Nancy’s fingers are wrapped around her wrist. She looks like a spooked animal, ready to run.
“No shutting down,” Nancy says then, loosening her grip. “That’s my thing, remember?”
Weakly, Robin nods. “Okay.” Nancy doesn’t let go of her wrist.
“You left your copy of Dream of a Common Language at the food drive the other day,” Nancy says slowly, stepping forward in the water. The rocks and sand are soft beneath her bare feet. “You had post-it notes in it.”
Robin blinks, wide and afraid. “You read Adrienne Rich?”
“I read a lot of things,” Nancy grants. “But yeah. I do.”
“Oh,” Robin practically squeaks.
“Robin,” Nancy says again, weighing the name on her tongue, letting it roll off gently, like velvet. “Can I say something?”
Wordlessly, Robin nods. Her hair is still dripping wet, water curling down her neck and over the dip of her collarbones.
“I think you’re pretty,” Nancy says, and there it is. There it finally fucking is. “Actually, I think you’re incredibly pretty. And dorky. And, like, stupid hot. And I think I’d like to kiss you.”
“You…” Robin gapes at her. “Nance. Don’t play with me.”
“I’m not playing with you.” Now, Nancy takes Robin’s other hand so they’re facing each other, water rippling around their waists. “Can I kiss you?”
A million different emotions ripple across Robin’s face, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, until she finally lands on, “Shit, yes. ”
It's enough for Nancy to finally cave and close the space between them. Robin is taller than her by a few inches, meaning that Nancy has to lean up, but she’s used to that. Her lips are warm and salty and soft, and her hands are still until Nancy’s grip finally goes slack and she frees them, flying up to cradle Nancy’s face. Robin pulls her closer, their knees knocking together under the water, and Nancy’s mouth parts to let out a small giggle. Her own hands slip up to card through Robin’s short wet hair. Sparks fizzle in her belly, skin hot in every place Robin is touching her. She feels dizzy, displaced, dazed.
Slowly, Robin pulls back. Nancy’s eyes slide open to find Robin looking at her, worry and questions warring in those blue eyes of hers. “I’m not dreaming, right?” she asks, and Nancy’s smile stretches even wider.
“I certainly hope not.”
“Jesus,” Robin breathes, her thumbs pressing against Nancy’s cheeks. “You’re so— god, Wheeler. Are you really…?”
“Yes,” Nancy confirms, and Robin goes even pinker.
“How long have you known?”
Nancy’s hands fall to Robin’s waist, holding her there. Her skin is red, either from the sun or from Nancy’s burning touch. “Since Barb, I think,” she admits softly, and Robin’s eyes seem to glaze over.
“Wow,” she says, awestruck. “I am so going to lord this over Steve’s head.”
At that, Nancy starts to laugh again. It’s low at first, but it turns loud and bright as soon as Robin joins in, and then they’re leaning on each other, bent at the waist, properly doubled over with laughter. Even half in the water, Nancy feels warm from head to toe.
Then—speak of the goddamn devil—the sound of a car pulling up through the trees breaks them apart. They both whip their heads around to see Steve’s BMW stalling at the edge of the clearing, next to Nancy’s car, windows rolled down and music blasting through the speakers.
“Afternoon, ladies!” Eddie calls as he leans precariously out of the passenger window, giving them a twiddly wave. “Are we interrupting anything?”
Robin raises her hand and defiantly flips him the bird, one hand still planted on Nancy’s waist. Nancy’s heart dips with fear at the thought of either Eddie or Steve seeing them— how much did they see, exactly? —but then Steve is getting out of the car and kicking the door shut with his heel, flicking Eddie on the nose as he rounds the front.
“Way to be subtle, dude,” he sighs in his signature Steve way, and then he’s opening the back door and unloading yet another cooler, likely filled with their fixings for dinner. Eddie just grins at them, all toothy and shit-eating, and hops out of the car with more agility than someone who got out of the hospital barely three weeks ago should have.
“Not my fault they were frenching in public,” Eddie says, lifting his hands innocently.
“True,” Steve concedes, heaving the cooler up with his knee and bringing it over to their picnic setup. When he sets it down, he shoots Robin a knowing grin. “Way to finally hit first base, Buckley.”
“Oh my god,” Robin moans, burying her head in Nancy’s shoulder. Nancy, who’s still dealing with the shock that these guys aren’t more shocked, just stands there and stares.
“Frenching is not first base,” Eddie argues, a fold-out camping chair under each arm.
“Uh, yes it is,” Steve says. “Frenching, groping, oral, sex."
"Oral is sex."
"Says who?"
"Says literally anyone who doesn’t have a dick,” Eddie declares, unfolding one of the chairs and plopping directly into it, limbs going everywhere. “It's right there in the name. Oral sex. "
“Eddie’s right,” Nancy calls, and Robin makes another tiny squeaking noise into her shoulder. She lifts her head, meeting Nancy’s gaze, and Nancy smiles down at her.
"Whatever, man,” Steve grouches. "When you're not in high school, sex-baseball stops being relevant."
“Oh, fuck you. Nance, you bring any alcohol?”
“In the cooler,” Nancy tells him, pulling at Robin’s arm so they can wade back to shore. Robin follows slowly, still looking a little dazed and a lot sunburnt.
“Righteous.” Eddie flips the lid open and pulls out the pack of wine coolers, cracking the pina colada-flavored one open for himself before passing it over to Steve.
“Is the water nice?” Steve asks when Nancy and Robin make it back to them, wrapping towels around their shoulders as the early evening breeze starts to set in.
“Very,” Robin tells him, and then she collapses onto the picnic blanket, invisible stars spinning around her head. Nancy, still smiling to herself, sits down a couple feet away.
Eddie sits up suddenly. “Steve,” he says, wiping some pina colada from his mouth and pointing. “Dare me to jump off of that cliff.”
“What? Dude, no way.”
“Okay, then I dare you to jump off that cliff with me.” He stands up, abandoning his drink in favor of grabbing Steve roughly by the arm.
“Are you trying to pop a stitch?” Steve asks, but Eddie is already dragging him off towards the woods despite his protests, leaving Robin and Nancy to exchange a look and start giggling at each other all over again.
While they’re gone, Nancy stretches out and steals a swig of Eddie’s pina colada. Robin raises an eyebrow at her.
“If you get a DUI because you got drunk off of one and a half wine coolers, I swear to god,” she warns.
“One drink an hour,” Nancy reminds her, but sets down the drink anyway in favor of scooting a little closer to her. She’s put her shirt back on, which is disappointing in a way that Nancy wouldn’t have understood before, but now she’s pretty confident why. Robin gives her a shy smile, one of her fingers twisting into the checkered fabric of the picnic blanket.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hey,” Nancy replies, smiling back.
“So.”
“So…”
“God.” Robin presses her forehead into her pulled-up knees momentarily, then lifts her head back up again. “I can’t even, with you.”
Nancy’s lips twitch. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re just so—” Robin flaps a hand at her. “God, words. I hate words.”
“Words are the worst,” Nancy agrees, and Robin just flushes even harder and looks back at the ground.
“So,” she starts again after taking a breath. “If I’m really not dreaming, and we really just… did that. Does this mean that we can, like, be something?”
Nancy’s heart has relocated itself firmly to her throat. "I don't know," she says softly. "What do you want?"
"I want to be a thing," Robin says immediately, then seems to shrink down with how fast it comes out. "I mean—if you want. I know we can’t be like, public about it, but—I’d like to take you on a date. If you wanted."
"I..." Nancy says, trailing off. She wanted a lot of things, most of which she couldn’t usually voice without having a lot more to drink. But this is Robin. It’s just Robin.
Moving slowly, Robin presses her shoulder against Nancy’s. "I want to be with you," she says, quieter. "I’m a little scared, though."
Nancy breathes out. "Yeah. Me too."
"Do you… not want to be with me?" Robin asks, blinking, and Nancy shakes her head.
"I want..." she says, and then, quieter, "I do. I’d like that."
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I just—I don't want to screw it up with you, like I did with Steve and Jonathan. That would be—" unbearable "—it would suck. So..."
"Nance," Robin says softly, and Nancy looks over at her. She looks trusting, vulnerable. “You didn’t screw those things up. They just didn’t work out.”
“I sort of screwed them up,” Nancy says, because there’s no use in denying it. But, “I like you, Robin. A lot.”
“I like you too," Robin says, and it’s like a breath of fresh air to hear. I like you too. "I think it would be a mistake not to try. If we don't try... isn't that worse than screwing it up later?"
It hurts more to lose something after you've had it, Nancy thinks. But she wants it so badly that her chest aches. She wants to wake up with Robin next to her, to come home to her, maybe even to get a dog or a cat with her, whatever she’s not allergic to. Nancy’s throat is tight and her pulse is racing, but despite everything, there's a part of her saying that everything will be okay as long as Robin is there. And that’s the problem, really: if she lost Robin, she doesn't know what she'd do. She’s basically the only person Nancy has left.
Everything I touch rots, she thinks, and she closes her eyes tightly, because she knows that’s not true. It can’t be true, no matter how many times she’s thought it. It’s not true, because she’s here, sitting by this river with Robin, and she’s warm, and Hawkins isn’t anywhere near fixed, but it’s not shattered quite yet.
And Robin is telling her that she can have her; have what she’s unconsciously wanted for years, what she never thought she could have.
So she opens her eyes. "We can try."
Robin exhales what must be all the air in her lungs, her whole body slumping in relief. "Oh, thank God.”
"Wow," Nancy says. "You really wanted to date me, didn't you."
"I really did," she admits, and then she starts to smile. Nancy does, too, because it’s hard not to smile when Robin’s looking at her like that.
“Good thing we are, then.”
And Robin’s cheeks go bright red. "Dope," she murmurs, and then she’s leaning her head on Nancy’s shoulder.
They stay at the beach well beyond sunset, watching Eddie and Steve make fools of themselves as they jump from cliffs of various heights and eventually come back to shore red all-over and soaking wet to start up dinner. They start a makeshift fire with old newspaper clippings and firewood that Steve now routinely carries in the back of his car, roasting sheathes of vegetables and meat over the open flame as sparks flutter into the darkening sky. Robin crowds close to Nancy and shares her towel with her, wrapping it around both of their shoulders, and Nancy thinks she looks achingly beautiful in the flickering light of the fire.
Nancy’s sober on the drive back, thanks to Robin’s constant monitoring, but she feels floaty and warm all the same, windows rolled down and warm air spilling into her car from all sides. Robin is curled up in the passenger’s seat, nodding along to some Patti Smith song on the radio as they pull up to her driveway. And even though her parents could probably see them if they peeked through the curtains of their living room window, Nancy can’t resist leaning across the console and kissing Robin again, simply because she’s allowed to. After that, Robin stumbles a little on her way out of the car and flips Nancy off when she laughs at her. On the drive back home, Nancy can't seem to stop smiling.
The next day, when she gets to the high school gym to help with the Sunday food drive, Robin’s cheeks are badly sunburnt, and Nancy only feels a little guilty.