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Chrissy drove past the dilapidated ‘Welcome to Hawkins’ sign with a lead weight in her stomach. She hadn’t been back in so long that she had forgotten how the town itself made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. If she had her own way she wouldn’t have returned at all but her brother, Matt, had begged her. She hadn’t seen him since his wedding two years prior. Luckily his wife wanted to get married in her hometown so Chrissy only had to deal with her parents rather than the entire town.
She left pretty much immediately after graduation, dumping Jason and escaping to a college in Washington where she studied psychology, eventually becoming a therapist. It had been her dream ever since she first sat down in front of Mrs Kelly. Her mother had always said that therapy was a pseudoscience, that therapists were tricking people into handing over money when they really needed to spend more time speaking to God. It had taken her months to build up the courage to even approach Mrs Kelly but just talking through her feelings really helped. Mrs Kelly was the one who encouraged her to follow her dreams, despite her mothers insistence that she didn’t need to go to college. It had been agreed for over a year that Jason would propose to her after graduation, they would get married before the next semester started and Chrissy would just wait around for the four years it would take for him to complete his business degree. After that he would join his family business and Chrissy would begin pushing out golden haired children.
No one had ever asked Chrissy what she wanted. It was assumed she would be elated to fulfil the role of perfect housewife for Jason’s domestic fantasy. It was all way too much for her.
During the championship game in her senior year Jason had made a big speech where he used the tragedy of the StarMall fire to amp up morale and then professed his love for her in front of everyone. Chrissy cringed but kept her perfected plastic smile plastered to her face.
After the game had been won Chrissy was ready with her rehearsed excuses for why she couldn’t go to the party at Bennys but when Jason began a tirade on how the freshman who had taken the winning shot should have remembered his place, ignoring that the game wouldn’t have been won in Sinclair hadn’t taken the risk, she just lost it.
‘Oh would you just shut up Jason!’ Chrissy had screamed, making all the cheerleaders around her gape at her with disbelief in their eyes.
Jason had tried to calm her, his face full of rage, but she just couldn’t take it anymore. She broke up with him then, in front of everyone. She couldn’t stop the laughter that spilled out of her when both the basketball team and the cheerleading squad drove away, no doubt gossiping wildly about her.
Eddie Munson had approached her then, slowly as though if he moved too fast it would spook her like she was a wild animal. They had agreed to meet after the game so she could buy from him.
That had been the beginning of a friendship that Chrissy hadn’t realised she needed. When spring break had ended the rest of her squad had all but excommunicated her. Eddie’s friends had accepted her with open arms, clearing a space for her at their lunch table, and even introducing her to a couple girls in her grade that she had never spoken to. Robin and Nancy ended up being good friends as well, both of them encouraging her to accept the scholarship she had been offered across the country.
Even with these new friends, Chrissy spent a huge amount of time with Eddie. Her long forgotten crush resurfaced everytime he called her Sweetheart and by the end of summer she was dreading her move away.
On her last day in town she was laying on Eddie’s bed, a cloud of smoke around them both. She rolled onto her side to look at him.
‘You should come with me’
‘Come with you where?’
‘To Washington’ Chrissy smiled, high on the weed he refused to let her pay for and the idea of him going with her, ‘My parents have got me an apartment near college’
‘I can’t do that Chris, Wayne needs me here’ Eddie turned to face her, ‘Your going to do amazing on your own, I know that’
Chrissy didn’t need Eddie to go with her but the idea of not seeing him again had her eyes watering. Still, she left the next day and began her life 500 miles away from him.
She had every intention of coming back, to see him again but she had been offered an internship after she graduated and then a permanent job just a year later. By then she had realised just how much her mother had controlled her life and couldn't imagine going home to deal with her again. It hurt to move on with her life without him but she knew he meant it when he said that he believed in her.
Which led her to now, ten long years had passed and she doubted Eddie even thought of her anymore. She doubted he even lived in town, he had been so eager to leave. His band were good, as far as Chrissy could tell, metal wasn’t exactly her thing, but she thought they could at least get big enough to move to the city.
It helped ease the guilt she felt by imagining that he was living happily in the big city, groupies under each arm and not a single thought spared for a girl he had never even kissed. The guilt she felt for abandoning her brother was harder to smother but that too passed when Matt also moved away for college, met the love of his life and made a large group of friends.
Her brother rarely even visited their parents but two months prior his wife had given birth to a little girl and he promised to take her to meet her grandparents for christmas. Chrissy hadn’t met baby Elizabeth either and after several pleading calls from her brother she agreed to suffer through Christmas with their parents so she could meet her niece.
Chrissy practised the grounding techniques she hadn’t used in so long before she pulled the keys out of the ignition. She painted a wide smile to her cheeks and makes her way into her childhood home.
Eddie felt like a sellout. He was carrying his amp and guitar up the stairs of his rundown apartment building after playing background music at some high end christmas party. It pained him to play WHAM! on his beloved electric guitar but he had to pay the bills somehow and bartending and fixing up cars wasn’t making ends meet. He’d even started dealing again, just so he had enough money to fund his nonexistent music career.
If you had asked him at twenty one where he would be once he got into his thirties he’d have waxed poetic about being a world famous rockstar and how he could have finally repaid Wayne for everything he had done for him. He had been so naive to believe that it could really happen, for fuck sake it had taken him three years to graduate from high school, of course he was never going to be someone.
He didn’t even have a band anymore, Jeff and Gareth had both moved away for college and gotten grown up jobs and Doug was still around but he worked as a teacher at Hawkins Middle now. Corroded Coffin was no more, he was just another small town freak who sent off demo’s to every record company he could find, praying that this one would finally be his big break.
He would still be living in his uncle's trailer if Wayne hadn’t basically kicked him out a few years ago.
‘You’re never going to fly if I don’t push you out the nest Ed’ Wayne had grumbled, thrusting an envelope of cash at him. ‘There’s enough for a deposit here’
His uncle had a habit of speaking in these strange metaphors but Eddie knew what he was saying, and he was right, and he so often was.
On the days when Eddie was feeling really sorry for himself his chest would fill with regret that he hadn’t taken Chrissy up on her offer. Would he have been famous if he had? Probably not, but at least he wouldn’t still be here.
He startled when he got to his floor. There was a figure curled up on the linoleum outside his door. It took him a few seconds to recognise the person but he had never forgotten the peachy tone to her strawberry blonde hair or the pretty green eyes that filled with tears when they looked up at him.
‘Chrissy?’ He dropped his amp, wincing at the loud clunk it made, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m so sorry Eddie’ She rambled through sobs, ‘I had a huge fight with my mum and I didn’t know where to go and your uncle said you’d be here and I know its so weird to just sit here waiting for you like some crazed stalker’
‘Hey! Chris, it’s fine!’ He pulled her onto her feet and into a hug that soothed her soul, ‘Come in and I’ll make you a drink’
He led her in and settled her on his sofa, blushing when she regarded the pile of laundry he had in one corner and his unmade bed that was pushed up against the opposite wall. It was a bit embarrassing, he was sure that she had some beautiful house wherever she ended up and here he was in a studio apartment in the shitty end of Hawkins.
‘Uh, I have water, coffee, beer, I think Nancy left some schnapps around here’ Eddie started opening random cupboard doors in hopes of finding the peach liqueur.
‘A glass of water would be great’ Chrissy giggled sightly, her voice still wet.
Eddie ran the tap for a few seconds, kicking himself for being so weird. They had been friends once, close friends, why was he acting like such a freak? He shook his head once and threw himself down next to his old friend, a feral grin spread across his cheeks.
‘Your water, your majesty’ Eddie recalled the long running gag they had about her being the Queen of Hawkins High.
‘Why, thank you, kind sir’ Her tears had dried leaving tracks through her make up.
‘So what brings you to my humble abode?’ Eddie wasn’t going to ask, that had always been the unspoken rule before, but he couldn’t help it.
Chrissy detailed how she had been invited back by her brother, gushed over how adorable her baby niece was, how her sister in law had tried to play mediator inbetween her and her mother but ultimately it hadn’t worked.
‘She was so horrible Eddie’ She leant against his shoulder, ‘I thought maybe she would have changed’
‘I don’t think an eternity in hell would change your mum Chris’
She giggled slightly but sombered quickly.
‘I am really sorry for just turning up here’ She took a deep breath, ‘and I’m sorry for just disappearing on you. You didn’t deserve that.’
‘Chris, you didn’t disappear on me, you were living your life! There is no need to apologise’
‘I guess I was a little hurt that you didn’t want to come with me, then by the time I had realised I was being unfair to you, it had been so long I assumed you hated me!’
‘I could never hate you’ He lifted her head off his shoulder so he could look into her eyes, ‘You have no idea how proud I am of you’
‘Proud?’ Disbelief coloured her words, ‘of me?’
‘Of course! Do you know how many times I said I was out of his town the second I graduated, and look, ten years later I’m still here, but you knew that you wanted more than Hawkins could offer and you went out and made the world your bitch!’
‘You don’t even know what I’ve been doing since you last saw me’
‘I don’t need to’ He places his hands on either side of her face, squishing her cheeks slightly, ‘you, Chrissy Cunningham, are a marvel and there is no way that you arent the best at whatever you do’
‘I could be a stripper for all you know’ Her words were distorted by his hold on her.
‘And you would be the best damn stripper across all fifty states’
‘You are an idiot’ Chrissy shook his hands from her face, a snort escaping her.
Eddie was content to be an idiot for her. He thought that he had grown in the last ten years but it seems as though things don’t ever really change.