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The first time El hears the word gay, she’s thirteen and sitting in Mike’s basement with the rest of the party as most of them watch, and very poorly dance to MTV music videos.
“Why does Troy always call you a ‘fairy’?” El asks Will innocently as she plops down beside him on the sofa. Lucas and Dustin stop dancing to listen in on the conversation and when Max notices, she stops dancing too.
“Why do you want to know all of a sudden?” Will asks and El can tell he’s trying his best not to look bothered by her pestering. She briefly wonders if she should stop, but it’s been bothering her lately. She doesn’t quite understand social interactions yet and always feels as if there’s a puzzle piece missing from the bigger picture. If she doesn’t pester, will she ever truly understand? She doesn’t know. So she pesters away.
“He makes you sad because of it,” El says. Will looks down at his hands and sighs.
“It’s kind of complicated.”
“I can handle it, I’m in school now.” She holds her chin high, proudly. It’s true. And although she is practically eons away from the others, she’s advancing quickly – or so her tutor says. Will hesitates before adjusting to face El fully.
“Fairy means gay and gay is… bad. ” He tells her.
“What does… gay mean?” At this point, everyone else is just watching the conversation like they would any argument or tennis match, moving their heads, right to left, each time someone speaks so they don’t miss a thing. Behind Will, El can see Mike on the La-Z-Boy, practically burning holes in the back of Will’s head.
“It means you like someone the same gender as you,” Will explains. El’s nose crinkles in confusion.
“What’s… bad about that?” She wonders aloud. Lucas likes Max and Joyce likes Hopper, how would it be any different if Hopper and Lucas were also girls?
“It’s not… common, I guess? And people don’t like anyone different from them.” Will says. He is patient with El and El admires this.
“Like Lucas?” El asks. She understands that Troy and Billy are racist towards the boy and she knows she doesn’t like it, it’s one of those things that was easier for her to get a grip on socially. She didn’t understand why they did it, but she understood it was wrong, so she figured she didn’t need to understand why.
Will looks up at Lucas, who now stands next to the TV, slouching with his arms crossed over himself, staring at his feet, shrinking himself.
“Yeah, like Lucas.”
“So… not bad. Just… not the same?”
“Yeah. Just… not the same.” Will confirms.
“ Are you gay?” El asks.
“No, but I wouldn’t be a different person if I were.”
“Oh, I just thought…” El realizes in that moment, how hard it might be to tell people if people really think it’s bad. “I mean, you’d look… cute , with a boyfriend,” she offers a kind smile and Will looks at his hands again, playing with the hem of his shirt as he responds with a shaky voice.
“Uh… thanks,” he laughs nervously.
And just like that, the subject drops. Once El starts to bop her head to the sound of the TV, everyone realizes that it is still on and the world is still spinning, even if their minds still can’t process the rotation of it all.
The second time El hears the word gay, she is fifteen and with Will on a Ferris Wheel in late July.
It is dark and warm, and from where they sit, they can see the entirety of Hawkins through the glow of street lights and carnival games. The Ferris wheel stops and the people sitting at the bottom get off. El watches Will as he wipes his palms on his shorts.
“Scared?” El asks, teasingly.
“A little,” Will says lightly and pauses, before adding, “El, can you keep a secret?”
“A secret? But friends-” She begins but Will cuts her off.
“I know, but it’s… it’s something I don’t want anyone else to know.” With that, El’s face grows serious, she knows these types of secrets. The ones that are better to keep than to tell, for the owner’s sake. She places her hand on his.
“I promise,” her voice is like honey, sweet and she gives a small smile of reassurance.
“Thank you.” El watches as relief floods over Will’s face and he half-smiles.
El waits as Will opens and closes his mouth several times over a period of several minutes. Ever since Will returned from the Upside Down, the two have a sort of… connection– one almost like that of twins. She can feel his emotions, and she knows she has to be patient to hear his words. And eventually, Will takes a deep breath and El feels him jump off the mental cliff in his brain, without even thinking, so that he can’t overthink the leap.
“I’m gay.” His eyes are threatening to spill over already and he knows she heard it, he knows there is no going back. He did it, and he isn’t sure whether to celebrate or cry. Both seem sufficient.
El smiles, her honey-sweet smile, and Will realizes she never let go of his hand.
“You deserve happiness,” she tells him, her eyes watering, too, “please don’t cry, different is good. You are good. Whoever you love, as long as you do love, is good. You are not bad. I know bad, Will. You’re not it. Gay isn’t it.”
The third time El hears the word gay is the day Will comes out to Mike.
She’s sixteen and still has nightmares regularly. So bad that when she stands up to walk herself to the kitchen for a glass of water, she still feels shakey and almost as if she’s stood up too fast. And so it’s no surprise that when she walks past Will’s room and hears a small, “I’m gay”, she assumes she just imagined it. Because sure, she’s played his coming out to her in her head like a mantra lately, so maybe she just has his voice etched into her brain at this point. Or maybe not. Because the next thing she hears, just a foot from his door, is “You are?”. She stops in her tracks and thinks for a moment. That was definitely Mike’s voice. So, she turns around and steps closer to Will’s door, enough to hear a small “Yeah,” from Will.
El knows enough by now, socially anyway, to know that standing by Will’s door as he comes out to Mike, a boy whom he’s probably had a crush on forever, is not just wrong but also an extreme invasion of privacy. So, as soon as she hears Mike’s voice again, she turns her heel and makes a beeline to the kitchen without a second thought.
When she passes Will’s room again, she hears snoring. Impossibly loud snoring. She smiles to herself. Will doesn’t snore.
The fourth time El hears the word gay she is still sixteen, with Max reading teen magazines in her room. Max on the floor, El on the bed.
It’s about fifteen minutes into their flipping that Max flops over and sighs loudly. El ignores her and keeps reading the latest dumb teen star drama. Max sighs loudly again. El rolls her eyes, giving in and closing her magazine. She gives Max a pointed look.
“Don’t you ever get bored looking at the same old shit?” Max asks. El looks at her funny.
“They’re not old,” she insists. It’s true. She spent all of her fast-food-job money on magazine subscriptions specifically so they wouldn’t have this issue. It’s a routine for the two girls: every Saturday afternoon they spend their time sifting through the latest gossip and relationship advice Teen Vogue was willing to give them (and Teen Beat, Just Seventeen, Bop, etc.). And honestly, it’s true they’ve sort of grown out of the habit. Neither of them has been in a relationship for at least a year and they don’t actually care about celeb gossip. But, boy do old habits die hard, and celeb gossip is just so damn fun to make fun of.
“It’s the same shit every issue. I just don’t get why we even still do it anymore.” El adjusts herself so she’s sitting up. She doesn’t really understand where Max is coming from all of a sudden. Because yeah, she doesn’t really care for the whole activity anymore either, but it’s something that they’ve always done and it can be so damn entertaining sometimes. It’s a tradition as far as El is concerned and she’s always thought she and Max were on the same page about it.
“I don’t know, isn’t it fun to just… laugh about it together?” El questions and Max sits up now, too. Still on the floor, she leans closer to El.
“El, when was the last time you even cared about this stuff?” Her voice is soft and something in El’s stomach flips. And it’s weird because Max’s face looks serious and… concerned? And her eyes are searching El’s. For what, El isn’t sure.
“I don’t but… I don’t know,” She shrugs. Max sighs and leans back to herself. She reopens the magazine she’d previously held, seemingly looking for something.
“‘In other news, Princess Diana shakes hands with dying AIDS/HIV patients in a display of support for the gay community. Diana has never been a favorite of the crown and she surely isn’t starting now… no one will be surprised when she is kicked out of the royal family by the Queen herself,’” Max reads then looks up at El. “It’s just..” she throws her head back in annoyance and groans, “This used to be fun! But now… we can’t laugh at this because it isn’t funny. It’s bullshit and I can’t put up with it anymore.”
Oh. So that’s what this is about. El watches as Max shoves the magazine into the small trash can in the corner of her room and then looks down at her own. She’s noticed it too. The subtle remarks and sometimes blatant homophobia in the pages of her favorite gossip panels. She’s tried to ignore it, but it’s becoming more frequent lately and she can’t lie and say it doesn’t get under her skin. Will is gay and Mike is gay and that should be just fine with everyone else, but apparently, everyone cares way too much about people they don’t even know.
“You’re right,” El sighs, handing over her magazine to Max to throw away. “I just.. like our Saturdays.” Max takes it from her and shoves it in the trash with all the others.
“We can still have Saturdays,” she offers with a smirk. El smiles.
El realizes she’s gay when she’s hanging out with Max on a Saturday afternoon, approximately three weeks after the changing of their Saturday tradition.
Their new Saturday tradition is going to the movies. And if El’s being honest, she likes this much better than reading teen magazines. Spending her fast-food-job money on two slushies, a large popcorn, and two movie tickets has probably been her best investment yet.
This Saturday is Max’s pick, and she chose The Lost Boys, and El knows, she just knows that she’s gonna be spending the entire two hours with her head buried in her best friend’s shoulder. Given her past, anything even slightly scary makes her want to run in the other direction.
And that’s exactly how it starts– El’s head pushed into Max’s shoulder, El grabbing a handful of Max’s sweatshirt to pull herself into her best friend.
“I’ll let you know when it’s over,” Max whispers. El just nods and waits. Max reaches up with her other hand– the one that’s not holding her head– and holds El’s, reassuring her. All El can think about is the feeling of Max’s hand on hers, how her entire body feels electrified by it, and almost misses Max telling her that she can look now, just catching the tail-end of her words.
She jumps at the realization and almost head-butts Max when she does. In the dark of the theater, Max stares at her like she’s grown a third head. El stares back, the phantom feeling of Max’s hand on hers– and all that’s running through her head is Will’s voice over and over, the same thing, “ I’m gay. ”
A beat passes before El, in one swift motion, stands up and speed-walks out of the theater. Her heart is racing a million miles per minute, and she stretches the hand Max touched while using the other to open the theater door.
She’s had a suspicion for a while that she might like Max. A tiny little voice in the back of her head every time they get a little too close for comfort, every time Max smiles at her with a weird twinkle in her eye, every time Max mentions that if she’d let any girl ‘do her’, it would be Phoebe Cates. A tiny little voice that tells her she likes all of these things a little too much.
El finds her way to the women’s restroom and thankfully finds herself alone. She steps to the sink and stares at herself in the mirror. She looks the same as she did the day before, long brown hair, brown eyes, and slight freckles littering her cheeks. She looks the same as when she left her house about an hour ago, but now she knows. She knows for sure; she likes Max. Maybe she’s even in love with her, it doesn’t really matter. She is gay for her best friend, and she’s not sure she can take it any longer. How did Will last so long? Part of her knows he didn’t. It ate away at him for a long time.
Max steps into the view of the mirror, and El feels too pre-occupied to react.
“You okay?” Max asks, her hand finding El’s shoulder. El spins to face her. They are probably all but six inches apart. Concern is written all over Max’s face.
“Look, I won’t lie and say I haven’t noticed you’ve been acting different lately– not even lately, more like over the last… year and a half or so. I’m worried about you,” she says when El doesn’t say anything. All El can think is that Max has no idea. She probably thinks El has been acting this way because of trauma resurfacing or something. Tears start spilling over, and she doesn’t realize until a sob escapes her mouth.
Max’s eyes widen, and she quickly brings her best friend in for a hug. “It’s okay, we can go home and talk about it,” she whispers. El breaks their hug, removing her tear-stained face from Max’s shoulder.
Her face is hot, she has no doubt she looks a mess, and the embarrassment of it all feels overwhelming.
“It’s not even that serious,” she says, her voice shaky.
“El, you’re crying,” Max reminds her. El shakes her head.
“You don’t get it.” Max grabs her hands and stands her ground.
“Make me get it,” her eyes search El’s, just like that Saturday three weeks before. El takes a few deep breaths, her eyes never leaving Max’s, before stepping forward and kissing her like she can’t take it anymore (because she really can’t).
Her hands hold the back of Max’s head perfectly, and her fingers are threaded through her hair. At first, El only kisses her with her lips, but then, Max opens her mouth and starts kissing back. Then, there’s tongue, and all El can taste is blue raspberry and butter. And she starts smiling halfway through, purely at how good Max tastes. She feels when Max starts to smile, too, and soon they’re both laughing in between breaths.
Max breaks the kiss first, and El is half-tempted to bring her in for more, but stops when she realizes they should probably talk.
“How long?” Max asks, and El smiles.
“I used to fucking hate you,” is all she says. The cursing is new– foreign on her tongue– and the way she says it shows. Max laughs at the ridiculousness of it. She takes El’s head in her hands again, bringing their foreheads together.
“God, you’re perfect,” and El smiles before Max kisses her again, just as urgently. Just like it was the first time all over.
When they are lying in bed together, that night at El’s house, she spends a good half hour before she falls asleep just combing her fingers through Max’s hair. When she starts, Max is awake, but by the time she falls asleep, Max has been well into hers. El thinks of when they met, how she hated Max because she thought she was going to take Mike from her. How now, she’s not even sure she ever liked Mike; maybe she just liked that she was being loved for the first time. She doesn’t know, but she also doesn’t care, because she knows love now.
Love is a girl. A girl with red hair and blue eyes, and the most freckles El has ever seen. A girl who snores all night and kicks in her sleep, who will probably wake up in the morning and spend an hour asking for ‘five more minutes’. She has horrible morning breath and an even worse temper. She is beautiful and she is flawed, and El is in love with her all the same; it just took her forever to realize it.
Her last thought– before falling asleep entirely– is that she hopes she spends forever realizing it all over again.