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Eddie Munson is the prettiest boy in Indiana, but he must not know it.
He doesn’t carry himself like someone who knows he’s pretty. There’s a discernible obliviousness in his gait; confident and sure only for the habitual lead of his body over his mind, zipping and skidding around on restless autopilot like he always has while his brain cycles through thoughts like a reel of film. You can tell just from looking at him that he’s in twenty places all at once, and that not a single one of them has anything to do with how lovely he is to look at.
You’ve tried to tell him before, awkward and pulse-pounding with the brittle honesty of it, but you’re always met with some form of careful roughhousing in retaliation, when he assumes as always that you’re poking fun at him—not at all unwelcome, but frustrating nonetheless. What the hell does he see when he looks in the mirror, if not the only diamond tucked away in the shittiest town in the midwest?
Across the room, Eddie clips his thigh against the corner of a table while speeding past it at about twenty miles per hour and curses like a sailor, pausing and scrunching his face up to let the ache subside before continuing to make the rounds, collecting empty glasses. He catches your eye before you can bite down a smile at his expense and inclines his head towards you in a comically miffed glare. Only smiling wider, you turn back around to face the bar as penance, resting your chin on your hand.
Lately, you’ve been thinking about telling him the truth.
Actually, it’s almost all that you’ve thought about since the new year rang in. Nineteen eighty-nine; the closing chapter of a decade that began with your first honest acknowledgement of the most obvious thing in the world. The realization of the gravity of it, that the sunflower in your chest would only ever point in his direction, and that you can’t imagine wanting it any other way.
It’s been a long time coming, to put it mildly.
Loving Eddie was never difficult. He arrived in your life at a time when no one else particularly wanted to be there. You weren’t always shy, but being in the company of other kids your age taught you a swift and brutal lesson—that you were peculiar, an off-putting wallflower; nearly mute and woefully unpretty. Hardly anyone wanted to look at you, let alone to be your friend.
Until the year you shared a class with Eddie. You noticed immediately that he wasn’t liked much, either. In fact, while you were mostly ignored, deliberately or otherwise, Eddie found himself actively despised by teachers and students alike. He was loud and disruptive, bouncing off the walls, lashing out in grief or boredom, and prone to leaving casualties in his wake. But he talked to you when no one else would, and you never soured on him, even if he stepped on your toes or yanked too hard at your hair.
He was never too much for you, and you were always enough for him. It was the most beautiful thing that ever happened to you. Growing up beside him, watching him find himself, find his confidence; growing closer, spending endless days and nights together, and still getting to see that same gleaming, dimpled smile he gave you on the playground when you agreed to be his friend, like you were the only person in the entire world that mattered. You aren’t really sure how you couldn’t have fallen in love with him.
A tap on your left shoulder pulls you from your thoughts. Your head twitches automatically in the same direction, then snaps to the other side with a click of your tongue to find Eddie sliding behind the bar.
“Christ, you’re off your game tonight,” he says, shaking his head in disappointment. A harsh, layered clink sounds out as he drops his bin into the sink with a little too much force. “That’s like, the third time that’s worked on you. It’s shameful.”
“Why are you preying on the perpetually distracted in the first place?” you complain.
He gives you a smirk, pushing his fallen sleeves back above his elbows. “To keep you on your toes, obviously. I didn’t raise you to be a slacker.”
Your eyes linger along the contours of the puppet master on his forearm. Your snort comes out belatedly. “...Yeah, well I didn’t raise you to be a total dweeb, so I guess we’re both disappointed.”
“Why, you…”
Jokingly incensed, he reaches over the bar to flick you right in the middle of the forehead. You let your head whip backwards with a grunt, and then drop it heavily into your arms on top of the bar.
“Sorry, I forgot you were a delicate waif,” he jokes. “I didn’t bust your skull open, did I?”
The splash of water crashing into the metal sink makes your head pop back up, shamefully eager to watch him work. He wets a bar rag, stuffs it into a glass and twists back and forth, tendons shifting in his forearm. Despite having barely started, he’s already splashed water up to elbows, soaking the dark sleeves of his KISS sweatshirt even darker. It takes your mind to places you’ve already imagined a hundred times before—two names on a property deed, wrapping your arms around his middle.
“You okay?” he asks. Your eyes snap up to the bemused little smile on his face. “...You’re totally zoning out on me.”
“I’m alright.” You rest your chin on top of your crossed arms. “Just tired.”
He cocks his head at you. “You don’t always have to wait for me to get off, y’know.”
“You know damn well you’re my ride.” A yawn distorts the latter half of your sentence.
“Yeah, I do,” he says around a laugh, “but Jeff would’ve taken you home. Just because I’m dying of boredom doesn’t mean you have to waste an entire weeknight in solidarity.”
“I’m not wasting it,” you argue, watching him shift from cleaning to drying. “I like hanging out with you.”
He gives you a big, cheesy smile, crinkling his eyes in the corners. “Well, aren’t you a sweetheart?”
Your heart always picks up a little when he calls you that, like it’s startled by how much you enjoy it. Even if he is making fun of you.
“...Can I sleep at your place tonight?” you ask, for no real reason other than stealing every chance you can to lay down beside him.
Eddie scoffs, amused by the question. “Why?”
“Your bed is comfier than mine.”
“You mean my lumpy sack of rocks and springs that we barely even fit on anymore?” he says, eyebrows raised skeptically.
“Yep.”
He gives you a squint. “...Don’t you have work in the morning? You’re gonna wake me up at like six a.m. trying to leave, and I’m gonna have to strangle you.”
Unbidden, your brain decides to linger on how his hands would feel cupping your neck, pulling you in. “...No, you won’t. You sleep like a log. You’ll probably wake me up with your snoring.”
“Then why do you wanna sleep over?”
With no other recourse, you poke your bottom lip out at him like a toddler. Eddie rolls his eyes.
“Fine, you spoiled brat. You’ll get your slumber party. But bedtime is at twelve o’clock flat, no ‘if’s ‘and’s or ‘but’s.”
“Okay, Dad,” you groan with teenage drama.
“Oh, you want ‘dad’? Cause I can give you ‘dad,’” he threatens with a frightening smile, tossing the towel over his shoulder.
“Oh, God, no. I do not want dad.”
Eddie’s already sliding around the bar, stretching his arms out. “Come here, sport,” he says in his best suburban father voice.
You slide off of your stool to flee, but Eddie’s legs are longer than yours, and you’re never really trying to get away. He catches you easily, hooking his arm around the side of your neck, and you cry out in whiny “nooo!” as he scrubs his knuckles into your head and giggles at your halfhearted struggle.
He lets you go with a gentle push on the back and you whine again, clutching your abused scalp as you turn back around to frown at him. He’s already making his way back behind the bar.
“You’re a fucking animal,” you accuse.
“Yeah, and you’re the sicko that sticks around.”
Your pout melts into a smile, and Eddie smiles back like the little devil he is, and you decide right then and there that you’re going to tell him. You have to tell him. He’s all you’ve ever dreamt about, and you’ve pushed your luck far enough by waiting this long in the first place.
Later, as you walk across the parking lot to his van, Eddie throws an obnoxious arm around your shoulders and drops enough weight on you to wreck your balance, laughing as both of you sway and stumble until you adjust to it. You groan like you always do, artificially annoyed, wishing on the inside that he’d take it even further.
Once, in a dream, he’d spread out on top of you, squishing you into the carpet like a 170 pound blanket, and you’ve been longing for it ever since. It’d probably be the best sleep of your life.
…
It’s a Sunday, the twelfth of February when you’re finally prepared to go through with it. The one day of the week that neither of you typically work, it’s a frequent contender for lazing around and dozing off, smoking and stuffing your care-free faces until the sun goes down.
Eddie knows you’re coming. He just doesn’t know what you’re bringing with you.
The door is unlocked, as it usually is when you’re expected. Eddie, stretched all the way across the couch on his side, calls you by your last name in exuberant greeting. Just the sight of him makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
“You took your sweet time, didn’t you?” he gibes. “...I was starting to think I’d been stood up.”
“Hey,” you say, trying not to sound off, and probably sounding twice as off because of it. Eddie’s hand, rustling in a bag of chips, pauses as he watches you. “...Where’s Wayne?”
“Hardware store,” he says, but his eyes are too inquisitive. “We’ve got a leaky window emergency.” Thank fucking God. “…Are you good?”
“Yeah, I’m good.” But you’re still just standing there, barely one step into the living room, wondering how you ever could’ve thought this was a good idea.
When Eddie notices the envelope in your hands, his eyes get stuck on it. “Whatcha got there?”
A compulsive, airy laugh gusts between your dry lips. “Um… It’s for you, actually.”
“For me?” he asks, lips twitching into a smile as he pulls himself upright, then stands to his feet. “What’s the occasion?”
“I guess it’s sort of an…early Valentine’s Day gift.”
His brow furrows as he steps around the table, and he looks like he thinks you’re fucking with him. It’s not like you’ve ever bought each other anything for Valentine’s Day before.
“Okay,” he says, drawn out with uncertainty. “...Why?”
Your face starts burning like a radiator. “Well, um…”
The rushing currents of your blood are roaring in your ears, your heart squeezing so persistently that it feels a little concerning. You’ve never, ever felt so scared when you were with Eddie, and that in itself makes it all so much scarier.
He’s lost you, zoning out somewhere in the realm of his sternum. Eddie stoops down, waving one hand, trying to catch your eye with worry written all over him. He stretches his arms out, brushing against each of your shoulders as if prepared to steady you. “...Hey, sweetheart, are you sure you’re alright? Cause you look like you’re gonna blow chunks.”
He doesn’t mean to, of course, but he makes you smile. You blink yourself back to earth and, before you can seize up again in terror, you all but shove the envelope into his hands.
Eddie’s concern recedes back into perplexed amusement as he examines the blank envelope, front and back, and then rips the corny heart-shaped sticker in half to open the flap, but as he goes instantly to tug the letter out, your arm whips out in a panic to stop him.
“No, it’s— Look inside first,” you explain urgently, almost breathless, startling his eyes wide open. “Then read the letter.”
“Whatever you say,” he assures you easily. “Just…keep breathing, alright? You wanna sit down?”
“No, I’m fine.”
He stares at you, but relents with a sigh. You take a deep, dizzy breath as he changes trajectory, fighting desperately to get your breathing back in rhythm. He thumbs the envelope open until he finds the two smaller pieces of paper slotted in front of the card, and when he digs them out for a closer look, he goes rigid. As soon as he processes the names written across them, his eyes snap back to yours and go wide as saucers.
“You’re fucking kidding,” he accuses lowly.
Jittery and bubbling with anxious energy, you smile ridiculously wide and nod. He reads them over a second time, awestruck down to his goddamn socks, then holds them up to you, gravely serious.
“How the hell did you get these?”
Two tickets to see Poison and Tesla at Market Square Arena on February nineteenth. About three weeks back, you took a day off work and drove almost an hour to the nearest Karma Records at the asscrack of dawn to go wait in line for them in the freezing cold. Anything less than that, and you wouldn’t have had the guts to throw in the second part of your “gift.”
You shrug, but you’re definitely too twitchy to seem authentically coy. “I’ll never tell.”
“No, for real. Tell me you didn’t do something crazy to get these.”
Your brow furrows in thought. “Define crazy.”
“Oh, Jesus,” he says, expression twisting even more dire. “Please tell me you didn’t blow someone for these tickets. The guilt will eat me alive.”
An incredulous laugh pops out of you a little too easy. “You’re the one that’s crazy. Don’t you know better than to look a gift horse in the mouth?”
“Oh my God,” he groans, face falling into his hands, and you laugh even louder.
“No, you geek. I acquired the tickets through legal and wholly non-blowjob-related means, so relax.”
You can see his smile growing before he even drops his hands. When he does, he surges into you like a bullet to wrap his arms around you in a huge, obnoxious hug, slightly awkward from the papers he still holds in his hands.
“You are the best fucking best friend ever. You’re a goddamn marvel. I could fucking kiss you right now. Scratch that, I’m going to, and you can’t stop me.”
He tilts his face to smack a noisy, extravagant kiss into the side of your head, and you giggle like you’re already high as a kite from the affection alone. Smothered into his chest like this, held tight and snug like something precious, you could probably die spontaneously from the heart attack you kind of feel like you’ve been having all day, and be totally and thoroughly at peace with it.
When he retreats, he shines a beaming smile at you, shaking his head in disbelief as he tucks the tickets back into the envelope.
As soon as his fingers grab onto the letter, your insides start wriggling like a pit of angry worms. If you weren’t manually ushering each breath, you wouldn’t be breathing at all. He looks at the cover first—hand-doodled, a clumsy collage of things he loves, very embarrassing. The way he smiles at it makes your already steaming face burn even hotter.
“You drew this?” he asks softly, and you try to stifle a pout as you nod. His pretty eyes crinkle at you. “Very cute.”
He opens it and starts reading. It’ll take him a minute to get through it—you poured an entire lifetime onto that paper; crumpled it up, tossed it away, and restarted it more times than you can count. You have to clasp your hands together, hold them tight to suppress the urge to just yank the thing out of his hands and rip it to shreds at his feet.
You watch in heart-aching terror as the easy smile on his face inches smaller and smaller, replaced first with confusion, brows pulling together like he isn’t quite fluent in the language it’s written in, and then entirely, nauseatingly blank. He must read it all two or more times for how long he keeps his eyes on it, dragging slowly from side to side, beginning to end to beginning again, stretching out the agonizing wait for all that it’s worth.
Finally, he glances up at you, back down to the confession, and then closes and lowers the card.
“I, uh…” He puffs out a breathy laugh, awkward and stilted. “...I don’t know what to say.”
…That’s really all he says. When maybe ten seconds pass, a tense laugh of your own tumbles out. Squeezing your hands together isn’t enough to stop them trembling anymore.
“...Well, you have to say something, Eds.”
He swallows. “This is, um… This is serious?” he asks, cautiously scanning your face. “You aren’t, like…pulling my leg here, right?”
“No,” you say, sharper than you mean to. You don’t know how he could even consider that after reading what you wrote.
He nods a couple times, like he knew the answer anyway. His eyes flicker around, anywhere but on you, undoubtedly trying to wrangle a thousand different thought fragments into something he can actually voice.
Eddie licks his lips, and his brows pull together again as he lands back on your face. “Sweetheart, I…”
The tone of his voice alone makes your abdomen clench up. Your teeth grind together, your galloping heart drops into the well of your stomach with an icy splash. If he felt the same as you do, even if only slightly, it wouldn’t be this hard to admit it.
“I’m…really fucking flattered,” he continues carefully. “I mean, shit, I— I don’t think anyone’s ever written something this…sweet for me, or—about me. I mean it. But…I think we should stay friends.”
You blink at him for a while, eyes flickering over his face while you process. Mind whirling, heart sinking even lower. Eddie’s brow furrows tighter.
“...Why?” It sounds like a child’s voice, humiliatingly small. You only barely prevent it from getting distorted by your constricting throat.
Eddie takes a deep breath in and lets out a sigh. He transfers your gifts into one hand so the other can gently take up one of yours, his thumb rubbing over your knuckles.
“I don’t think…” He tilts his head as he thinks about it, sticks his tongue in his cheek, changes his mind. “I just…don’t wanna change anything. You’re my best friend and I…fucking love you, you know that, but…that’s exactly why I don’t want to risk it by trying to be anything…more than that, I guess. …Well, not more, but…you know what I mean. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
There’s nothing you can say to that. Every inch of you seems to be quaking, mortified and erupting with it, and you just hope it isn’t as obvious as it feels.
Eddie stoops down again, trying to catch your downcast gaze. “...S’that okay?”
If you stop biting down on your lip, you’re probably going to cry. You nod, or at least you try to.
Eddie makes a low, sympathetic little noise that nearly pushes you over the edge, your brow wrinkling pitifully. “Can I give you a hug?”
Another nod, and Eddie holds you. Never completely still, he sways you lightly side to side, his free hand rubbing strong over your back. This time, he sort of smells like he needs a shower, and for some reason, a zap of guilt passes through you just for having noticed. When you sniffle, he crushes you in even tighter, almost bruising in strength, before pushing you back far enough to see your face.
“You alright?” he checks with a diagnostic look. “Still wanna hang out?”
“...Yeah,” you manage, thick and teary. It’s hard to look him in the face. “...Could you tell?”
His eyes flare wider in shock. “No,” he assures you. “...God, no, I…really had no idea.”
You believe him. Eddie’s cautious expression shifts into a quiet smile, and he gives your arm a consoling squeeze.
“...Now,” he begins, holding up the envelope, “I’m gonna put this away for safekeeping, and as soon as I get back, we’re gonna get baked out of our fucking minds, put on The Dark Crystal, and see which one of us shits our pants first, okay?”
Eddie gets what he wants—a soggy, feeble little laugh from you—and smiles even wider. As he turns and makes his way back to his room, you clear your throat, fighting to get some volume to your voice.
“Don’t lose it, Eddie.”
“I won’t, I swear,” he calls back. “Jeez. When have I ever lost something?”
He does a three-sixty just to show you his goofy smile. Once he disappears behind the door, it’s the loneliest you’ve ever felt inside the walls of the Munson trailer.
A question leaps gracelessly off of your tongue as he returns to the living room, weed paraphernalia in hand.
“Are you busy on Tuesday night?” you mutter as he goes to place it on the coffee table. “Just to— I thought we could hang out.”
Eddie freezes for a moment, caught between two expressions. “...Uh, shit. I…kinda have plans already.”
“...Okay.”
He scratches the back of his neck. “How about Wednesday or Thursday?”
“Aren’t you working?”
“Well—yeah, but you can still hang out.”
“...It’s okay,” you sigh, rubbing at your sinuses. “...Next weekend, then, for the show.”
He gives you a frown. “You sure?”
You are.
A couple hours later, you start to think it might be alright. That you haven’t changed anything for the worse, that your relationship is too deep-rooted to be thrown out of whack by the weight of your lopsided feelings. Eddie touches and teases and bothers you with typical shamelessness, says your name and all its stand-ins without unease or hesitation. He’s exactly the same as he always is.
…Well, mostly. Even spread loose and stoned, when you lean into his side to rest your head on his shoulder like you’ve done countless times before, you can’t shake the feeling that he’s gone stiff as a board beneath you.
…
On Valentine’s Day, you work from ten to six, and spend almost every moment of it trying not to feel sorry for yourself.
You shouldn't have gotten your hopes up as much as you did, you know that. Dreaming for weeks about spending not just Sunday with him but today as well, and maybe a little bit of every other day leading up to the concert, changing what should change and leaving alone what shouldn’t, reteaching yourself how to love and hold each other. Kissing the rosy lips that have colored your daydreams for a decade.
You spent most of your lunch break crying in the bathroom, quivering and choking and wishing you had never confessed to him at all, rather than feel like this, but you know that you’ll be alright. It could’ve gone much, much worse than it did, and you’ll only have to bear the brunt of this grief until Sunday. Then you’ll hit the road together, sing along to all his favorite tapes, and it’ll be like none of this ever happened. Maybe he’ll tease you for it once in a while, and maybe you’ll even be okay with that, but you’ve known each other for way too long for an embarrassing, unrequited confession to fuck things up between you. Even if you can’t have him the ways you’ve dreamt about, you’ll still have him the way you already do.
But in the meantime, no one can blame you for seeking out a little comfort.
Harper’s Creamery in Downtown Hawkins is the best ice cream parlor for twenty miles. Its untouched 50’s decor and incurably jolly owner make it a reliably nostalgic comfort. Sometimes, as kids, you and Eddie would beg your mom with all you had to let you stop by after school before dropping him off at home, and more often than not, she would let you. Now, it’s more of a rare treat—a strategic consolation you deploy only for serious miseries, so as not to wear out its childhood magic.
All you can think about on the drive over is a hot fudge sundae with your name written all over it, but what you get when you arrive is an instant eyeful of your best friend in the world.
Your heart stutters in your chest at first—a happy coincidence, maybe?—but swiftly freezes over as you realize that he isn’t alone. He’s sitting in a booth near the back, across from a girl. A blonde girl.
You wish you could doubt that it’s really him, if only for one short moment of alleviating delusion, but you can’t. You’d recognize the back of his head from any distance, upside down and blindfolded.
…At least he wasn’t lying when he said he had plans tonight.
You know what you’re seeing because you’re not an idiot, but you need to get a closer look anyway. To see who she is, to see the look on his face—if there’s even an ounce of shame in it. To make him look at yours. To show him that you know, and you doubt you’ll ever be able to forget it.
Two days. Two short days, and you might as well not exist.
The bell chimes above your head as you open the door, but no one looks up. There’s already a pack of teens at the counter, excitedly relaying the most complicated and indulgent orders they can think of in a noisy clamor, so neither Harper himself nor the frantic teen on shift beside him have the wherewithal to notice your entrance. You drift by them all like a ghost.
About halfway to their booth, you recognize her, and your nails dig fiercely into your palms. Your heart starts pounding as you catch the sound of his voice, murmuring sweet and low for her ears only. The sight of his hand loosely holding hers over the table, fidgeting with her flamingo pink manicure, makes your body tense up almost painfully, everything inside you stretched beyond its limit. By the time you arrive, you feel like you’ve left yourself entirely—too battered and bloody to survive this awful moment, watching your vengeful, unwanted body confront them on its own.
“Hey, Eds,” you mutter as you come to a stop.
Eddie almost jumps out of his seat, and then freezes entirely as his wide eyes land on you properly. You might’ve found it cute if your heart hadn’t been punted to the next county.
Between them is a glass dish with a double serving of ice cream. Three heaping scoops of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry, topped off with fudge, peanuts, whipped cream. About half of it, including the cherry on top, has already been eaten—a tongue-tied stem on the table between them, one of Eddie’s party tricks.
“Shit,” he breathes, trying to blink back his surprise, awkwardly retracting his hand from hers. “Uh, hi. What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here?”
He blinks at you. You turn your head, shift your empty eyes to the girl.
“Who’s this?” you ask flatly.
“...Uh, this is Rachel,” Eddie explains stiffly. Rachel Webber. “...Y’know, from high school?”
Oh, you couldn’t forget her if you tried. Her and Eddie were lab partners in 10th grade Biology. She spent over a month pretending to be nice to him and eventually invited him to hang out at the bowling alley after school, just for the cruel pleasure of laughing at him with all of her friends when he was dumb enough to actually show up. She looks about half as alarmed as Eddie does, but twice as confused.
“It’s…good to see you again,” she says politely. Her pink lip gloss is worn out in the middle, swallowed down with spoonfuls of ice cream. Blonde hair cascading in perfect, artificial curls. She’s a thin little barbie doll with hazel eyes and a mole on her chin.
“Really?” you ask, falsely intrigued. “...What’s my name?”
She gapes at you, a pink-pleated deer in headlights, but Eddie calls it out immediately in her place, scolding and pleading all at once. It takes a long, resentful moment before you can flick your eyes back to him.
“Can we talk about this later, maybe?” he asks pointedly. One of his legs bounces like a jackhammer under the table. “Some other time?”
“Talk?” You smile so hard your cheeks ache. “What’s there to talk about?”
His brow furrows at the look on your face, licking his lips like he’s about to say something else, but you aren’t done yet.
“I never would’ve guessed that this was your type,” you say, eyes dragging to the right again. You shake your head at her, your bitter smile going thin. “...I mean, wow, Eddie. Bitchy and boring. You sure know how to pick ‘em.”
Eddie spits your name again, this time in outrage. You’re still just looking at Rachel, scanning the face he apparently finds so preferable to your own.
She looks straight back at you, so utterly, insultingly clueless that it makes you want to do something she probably doesn’t deserve. “What… What is this?” She looks to Eddie, and you roll your eyes to the stratosphere. “What’s going on?”
Eddie is standing now, tugging at your shoulder, turning you towards him until you’re forced to rip your eyes off of her.
“Hey,” he spits. You’ve never seen him this angry at you—not seriously. Lips pursed, face tense and turning red, brown eyes blazing like he doesn’t even recognize you. You aren’t completely sure who you’re looking at, either. “Are you out of your mind? Get pissed at me if you want, but she hasn’t done shit to you.”
“No,” you agree sorely, “she’s done shit to you.”
He almost huffs; your grudge on his behalf evidently an inconvenience. “It was almost a fucking decade ago,” he whispers harshly, leaning further into your space. “People change, alright? I’m over it. So apologize.”
Your smile springs back in full force. “Apologize?” you cry out at full volume, making his face twitch.
“I’m serious,” he grits out. And then he stares at you, waiting, jaw clenched about as tight as your chest feels right now. You’ve had nightmares more rational and pleasant than this.
“...Sure, fine, I’ll apologize,” you relent, yanking your shoulder out of his grasp so you can turn back to the girl with a mockingly sympathetic look. “Rachel, I am…so sincerely sorry that your date tonight is a fucking jackass. I’d say you deserve better, but I’m not really sure if you do.”
Rachel purses her lips and gathers her things. “Okay, um—I think I should go.”
Eddie starts and pushes around you, trying to tend to her somehow—shield her from the vicious beast. “No, you don’t have to— Why don’t we both leave, yeah? We can go—”
“That’s alright, Eddie,” she says. Such a slap across the face that it turns your smile genuine. “...I’ll just…see you around, okay? Goodnight.”
Eddie doesn’t say anything as she turns and speeds away. He watches her go until the bell chimes and the door closes behind her (while everyone else in the parlor stares at the two of you) and then slowly turns back around to face you.
Wide eyed and incredulous, he jerks his head in a shake, heaves his arms open; completely at a loss. “...What the hell is your problem?”
“What’s my problem?” You can’t even smile ironically anymore. It feels like a scene from a movie playing out in front of you, not your real life—not something that could ever happen to you, and definitely not because of Eddie. “I…spill my goddamn soul out to you, and in two fucking days, you’re on a date with some other girl?”
His face scrunches up, irate and baffled. “What? It’s not my fault you decided to— I told you I had plans! And it wasn’t a date, we’re just…hanging out. We were.”
“Right,” you say. He must think you’re stupid. “You and Rachel fucking Webber. Just hanging out, sharing a sundae like friends do.”
“We have shared a million fucking sundaes,” he reminds you incredulously.
As if that isn’t half the insult. “On Valentine's Day.”
Eddie shrugs, frustrated and overwrought. “She asked me,” he says. Like it’s really that simple.
“And you said yes.”
“Yeah, I said yes, Jesus Christ!” he hisses, dragging harsh fingers down his face, flaring his fiery eyes at you. “What, just because you have a crush on me, I’m not allowed to hang out with any girls that are prettier than you?”
It hits your crumbling remains at just the right angle to shatter every last part of you to dust. Eddie’s face tenses up belatedly, his brain, as always, moving slower than his tongue, and you can see the dread building up in his eyes, the angry blood draining from his face.
He’s already shaking his head before he opens his mouth again. “...No, shit, that’s not— I didn’t mean—”
“No, I got it,” you cut him off. Your voice is dim, quiet, trembling even worse than before you handed him your heart in a letter. “I know exactly what you mean, Eddie.”
When you turn to leave, he must panic—his hand wraps strong around your elbow, burning you like a brand.
“Let go,” you tell him. Your voice sounds thicker already, muffled by the grief in your throat. Everyone’s staring at you, you’re sure they are, but your vision has gone blurry from the water building up in your eyes.
“Wait a second,” he says, breathing your name like it finally matters to him again. “Let’s just— Can we talk? Please? Let’s just sit down, and—”
“Let go of me, Eddie!” you shout.
Eddie does what you ask, snatching his hand back out of shock more than anything. You can’t remember ever wanting him to take his hands off of you before; not even in school, when he’d tug on your braids to focus himself in class, pulling and twirling mindlessly until your scalp went sore. Even when it hurt, you could always take it, but you can’t take this.
You cut a path to the exit in long, sorrowful strides. Eddie calls your name weakly, somehow disbelieving. As if all he’d done was trample over your toes on the blacktop.
…
You’ve never been hurt like this before. It’s not a feeling you could ever have imagined without suffering it firsthand; a hollow, gushing, endless humiliation, bigger, wider, and nearer than the sky. Every piece of you is cold and petrified, failing to see the point in anything, the meaning in a present so cruel. The wild, vindictive fury of being doomed to such an unloveable form, and all your tender longing rendered less than useless because of it.
If Eddie can’t look past the surface to love you—Eddie, who knows you better and deeper than anyone on this planet—then who else ever could? And what does it even matter when it’s only him you’ve ever wanted, only his face you could picture clearly in the murky haze of your future?
Every thought and feeling you’ve ever had has been turned ruthlessly on its head. For years, for your entire goddamn life, Eddie was like a prince to you. Sweet and misunderstood, rough around the edges but kind to a fault, saving you from the sting of unwantedness. The restless and fidgety boy on the playground who would babble at you interminably during recess and make you laugh in the middle of class, the only other kid that ever truly wanted to be your friend, and was delighted that you wanted to be his, too.
That boy would never have treated you like this—lying to you, avoiding you, shouting at you for the crime of being too homely to dream of having him—so maybe you were wrong from the beginning. Maybe you’ve been looking at him with a child’s eyes all along, too enamored by having been chosen and kept all those years ago to ever notice what he really thought of you. Too perpetually lost in his sweet and gentle eyes to ever notice the revulsion just beneath the surface.
Every day, throughout the day, he tries calling, and each time, you throw out some excuse to whichever parent answered the phone—you aren’t home, you’re asleep, you don’t want to talk to him, stop fucking calling.
On Friday night, he gets lucky. You hear the commotion just before it approaches your bedroom, and you open the door just in time for Eddie to nearly run into it, bewildered and heaving, his hair damp and frizzy with rainwater. As soon as he sees you, he goes stock still.
Your mother blazes a trail right behind him, quiet outrage all over her face—he must have pushed his way past her.
“You want me to go get your father?” she calls bitterly around him. It’s unsettling as much as it is comforting. Just one week ago, she loved Eddie almost as much as you did.
Eddie’s giant, heartwrenching eyes pull into a pleading look. You’re too exhausted to hold any expression on your face as you suffer it, nor as you flick your stare back to your mom.
“...It’s alright,” you decide, and Eddie deflates in relief. His expressiveness is more of an irritant than a charm right now.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, it’s fine.” If he’s desperate enough to force his way into your home, he’d better have something to say worth hearing.
Your mom stomps off, undoubtedly to go inform your dad of the situation anyway and wait together on standby until it's time for Eddie to leave, so you drag your dead eyes back to him.
He glances behind you, into your room. “...Can I come in?”
The answer is no, but you step back to let him in anyway to prevent your parents from eavesdropping. Your lips pull into a sneer as you notice the muddy water he brings in with him, sullying the carpet under his boots.
“Don’t you have work?” you ask.
Eddie blinks at you, lightly disoriented, like that’s the furthest thing from his mind right now. “I called out.”
“How’s Rachel?”
Eddie’s face pulls taut, strained. “Can we please just talk about us?”
You don’t say anything. You could point out that you aren’t really sure what “us” means, if there really is an “us” and if there ever truly has been, but you’d rather he just spit out whatever it is he needs to say and then leave you alone.
“...I’m sorry,” he says. “I should never have said that to you, I can’t believe I would— I mean, fuck. That was…so shitty, and stupid, and I’m sorry. I wish I could take it back.”
You wish you were surprised that all he thinks he’s done wrong is call you unpretty. The only acknowledgement you give his apology is a shrug. “...Is that all?”
He purses his lips, dissatisfied. Then, he pulls something out of his coat and holds it up—a white envelope with a torn red heart in the middle. It feels like a curt strike against your cheek.
“...I still wanna go with you,” he says. “But if you don’t wanna take me anymore, I get it. You should have them, either way.”
As if you’d take anyone else but him. He tries to hold the envelope out to you, but all you do is stare at it. You want desperately to take it from him, to check to see if the letter you wrote is still in there, too, but if it is, you don’t think you’ll survive it. Your heart will probably fossilize in your chest.
“You want to go?” you ask.
He furrows his brow. “Of course I do.”
“Are you sure I’m not too hideous to be seen with you in public?”
It makes him cringe, but not as hard as you hoped. “I don't think you're ugly.”
“No, of course not,” you bite. “Just too ugly to date, right?”
He says your name, pleading; shrinking in the corner you’ve pushed him into. “That’s not— That isn’t what any of this is about.”
“What is it, Eds? Is it my nose?”
He recoils from the question. “What?”
“Or my chin? Maybe it’s just my whole face.”
“No, it’s not— Why are you—?”
“Am I too fat for you, then, is that it?” you ask even louder. “I didn’t think you were that shallow—”
He nearly yells your name, trying to make you stop, but you barrel right on through it.
“—but if you really do like little blonde bitches that you could snap like a fucking twig—”
“Stop it!” Eddie shouts, wide-eyed and agitated. His cold, wet hands land heavily on your shoulders and shake. “Jesus fucking Christ, what’s the matter with you? Why are you acting like this?”
The both of you heave a couple breaths to calm down, staring each other dead in the eye. Watching you warily, Eddie’s arms fall slowly back to his sides, one hand jumping back up to wrench through his wet hair in stress.
“...I just don’t understand what you see in her,” you mutter in a small voice, staring dimly at his mouth. “She’s so boring, I could puke. I figured you’d want someone who has more in common with you.”
His face settles, shoulders slumping. “You mean, you?”
Another red-hot pin through your ribcage. “...I don’t know. I just thought… I mean, we have…fucking everything in common, and—”
“Yeah, we do,” he says, a little harsher, “because you base your entire goddamn personality around me. Have you noticed that? Because I have.”
Your eyes whip back up to his, wide and unbelieving. A burst of frost ripples over your skin, raising hairs along your spine, down your arms. “...What?”
Eddie looks at you like your alarm must be fabricated. “Everything that I like, you like. You only ever wanna do what I wanna do, you act like— like a little kid, following me around. You barely even have any other friends. It’s not normal.”
You can hear it again, the blood rushing in your head, every other sound growing distant and unreal. “...I thought ‘not normal’ was kind of your whole thing.”
Eddie sighs. “It’s not healthy, I mean. It was fine when we were kids, maybe, but… Shit, you’re twenty-three years old, and it’s like you don’t even want to try to be your own person.”
You might be smiling, somehow—your face is numb. “I don’t know if you’ve ever…been in love with someone, Eddie, but…it sort of makes them your entire world.”
“Not like this, sweetheart.” That name makes you sick to your stomach. “...I’m not trying to be an asshole, alright? I’m saying this because I care about you.”
You blink and blink, waiting for the water that should surely be filling up your waterline to spill over, but it doesn’t come. You’ve been drained dry.
“...So, all this time,” you say, scratchy from the tightness of your throat, “you’ve thought I was…weird, and ‘unhealthy,’ and you wait until it gets between you and some other girl to say anything?”
Eddie’s mouth drops open, stumbling over confused syllables. “...No, I mean, I was gonna—”
“It sounds like you were fine with me being…clingy, or obsessed with you before you found out why. When it just made you feel special and interesting, and didn’t cockblock you from girls that treated you like dirt in high school.”
He hesitates—stunned, processing, just as insultingly clueless as Rachel had been at the creamery. Maybe vaguely offended.
You shake your head. “I don’t think you’d find it weird at all if I wasn’t ugly.”
Eddie snaps back into focus, groaning your name in desperation. “I don’t think you’re—!”
“Just grow up and be honest with me!” you shout over him. “Okay? Don’t fucking worry about…hurting my feelings, cause we’re well past that. Just tell me the truth, Eddie. Don’t I deserve that?”
He looks pained. Thoroughly, viscerally uncomfortable, reluctant down to his bones. “...I don’t think you’re ugly,” he repeats quietly. “...I promise you that I don’t, but… I just…don’t see you that way. I never really have, and I don’t think I ever will. I’m sorry. Is that what you wanna hear?”
It’s what you needed to hear. You nod to yourself, letting it wash over you and sink in; rewire your neurons towards a truth that repaints every scene in a friendship that has colored more than half of your life. As the pigment drains out, wrung dry by harsh reality, the lung-collapsing hurt in your chest slowly begins to numb.
“...I want you to leave,” you tell him.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything. You aren’t looking at the expression on his face.
“I don’t wanna talk to you anymore,” you repeat lowly. “…Keep the fucking tickets, take Rachel for all I care. I didn’t wait out there for nothing. Have a nice life, Eddie.”
He startles down to his boots. “...Have a nice life? Is that a joke?”
Still refusing to look at him, you step aside to pick up another envelope from on top of your dresser. You figured he’d stop by at some point, that you wouldn’t be able to ice him out for very long. You’ve had it prepared since Tuesday night. Eddie knows it must be something damning—he’s very reluctant to take it from you, even slower to open it.
“No,” he spits as soon as he recognizes what it is, shaking his head profusely, eyes caught between horror and fury. “No! What the fuck is this? What are you doing to me?”
His head jerks around, scanning your room, finally realizing what’s missing. Countless pictures and polaroids taken down from your walls, pulled out of frames, tear stained and hidden away, too risky to dwell on any longer. When his eyes land back on your face, he looks shaken to his core.
“...So that’s it? Fifteen fucking years, and we’re just done? You’re not even gonna try to fix this?”
You shake your head. In time—a lot of time—you probably could, for the most part. You’ve hardly ever been mad at him in the past, and even when you were, all he had to do was flash his puppy dog eyes at you, and you couldn’t forgive him fast enough. But you realize now that it’s not going to work.
Even if you forgave him like always, even if you managed to regain some semblance of how things were, it won't last. You’re always going to want him, and he’s never going to want you in the same way. Trying to live with that will just make both of you miserable. The end of this road seemed impossible, unbearable to think of, but when it rose quietly on the horizon, simple and undemanding in the middle of the night, it was the only thing that’d made any sense to you all week.
“Seriously?” Eddie’s voice is starting to shake. “You’re just— You’re letting a girl get between us?”
You almost have it in you to laugh. “Oh, so now it’s her fault? Anyone’s fault but your own, right?”
“I’m not the one trying to throw it all away!”
“You’ve made it more than clear what you really think of me, Eddie. If I’m such a goddamn nuisance to you, then I’m probably doing us both a favor.”
He scoffs at you, and you can see the turmoil churning in his mind as he tries to make sense of this, contrasting emotions fighting to breach the surface. “...This is ridiculous. You know this is ridiculous. We can’t even be friends anymore cause— cause I don’t wanna sleep with you?”
Your eyes fling wide open, well past appalled. “Who the hell said anything about sleeping with me?”
“That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it?” he spits with a bitter smile. “You want me to be attracted to you, and you’re ready to blow up our entire friendship because I’m not. It’s fucking immature.”
“What friendship, Eddie?” you spit right back. “What fucking friendship? I’d rather gouge my own eyes out than say to you even half of the shit you’ve said to me in the last week, and you don't even care!”
He digs a finger into his chest. “I came here to apologize!”
“You came here to make yourself feel better,” you jeer, unimpressed. “To prove to me that you’re right, and I’m wrong, and it’s all some big misunderstanding, so you can wrap me back around your fucking finger and drag me to that stupid fucking concert. Not because you realize what you’ve done. You fucking gutted me, Eddie. You still are.”
Finally, he’s at a loss. Brown eyes burning, flitting around your face; chest heaving in anxiety, hands twitching helplessly. He doesn’t know what to say.
“...I could learn to deal with you not being attracted to me,” you tell him. “But I can’t deal with you being a complete, self-centered fucking asshole about it.”
Eddie rubs his shaky hands over his face, back and forth, again and again. By the time they fall, he’s wilted. Limp and tender like a dying flower.
“...What do you want me to do, then?” he asks, barely louder than a whisper. “What can I do? Huh? How can I fix this?”
“You can’t.”
“You want me to lie?” he says, taking a step closer. “To— to pretend? Because…I can do that, if you really want me to.”
Your face twists, baffled and repulsed. How pathetic does he think you are? “I don’t, Eddie. I want you to leave.”
“I could kiss you,” he goes on as if he didn’t hear you; not a shred of respect for you or himself, just rubbing salt in both of your wounds. “I could kiss you, right now.”
He reaches out as if to cup your face, or pull you in, and you have to shove his arm away.
“Stop,” you hiss, and bat away another attempt to grab you. “Jesus, stop it! Are you fucking crazy?”
He says your name again, desperate, but you don’t wanna hear it. “Seriously, just tell me—”
“Get out of my room.”
“Please, I just— Can we talk about it? I—”
“I’m done talking to you, Eddie! Just leave.”
He’s dragging himself upsettingly close to tears. “...You said you loved me. You said you’ve never loved anyone the way that—”
“I know,” you drop sharply. “And I meant it when I wrote it. But I guess I never knew you as well as I thought I did.”
It crushes him. Bleary eyed, pitiful, he opens his mouth again, but it’s your voice that calls out.
“Dad!”
His time is up. Frantic now, he shakes his head, tries to keep begging, to hold you, even, but your parents are there just as fast, your father bursting into the room to wrap a tight hand around Eddie’s arm, pulling him away with a gruff “it’s time to go, son.”
All the way to the front door, you can hear Eddie still calling for you, trying to bargain, to apologize, to lie to you. In the struggle that is removing him from your house, one single picture falls out of the still-open envelope, carving a bowed line to the carpet. You pick it up, give it one last look—both of you together on the night of Eddie’s graduation. As soon as he noticed Gareth preparing to take a picture, he’d slung his arm around your neck and dragged his tongue up the side of your face, much to your cartoonish dismay. As gross as it was, the thought of it—the vulgarity of it—had you blushing for days, swooning beneath your bedsheets. You take a breath, and with steady hands, you rip the picture in half. Once, twice, three times.
Eddie Munson is the prettiest boy you’ve ever seen, but he was never going to be yours. And for the first time in your life, you think you might be better off for it.