Work Text:
This process has been stressful right from the beginning, when she confessed she wanted to try doing weed and Carol laughed right in her face so hard she almost started crying. She’d gotten such a kick out of it she’d completely forgotten why the topic of marijuanna came up in the first place, leaving Stevie just as weed-less and humiliated.
It should have ended there, but it got worse when she finally got her answer. Chrissy had visited her at work to get a coffee that, looking back, she probably hardly touched once she left. She didn’t say anything right away, this little chit chat of theirs while work was slow going just the same as all the others before it. The small chime of a bell eventually put an end to their impromptu kiki, but before they part ways Chrissy holds onto her arm.
“Hey,” she says, in that sweet voice of hers that makes it pretty much impossible to be mad at her. “Carol told me you were looking for something. Back in senior year, when my anxiety was really bad, I tried it.” She puts her receipt in Stevie’s hand, and when she looks at it she sees a phone number written down. No name. Real shady looking, Chris. “He’s a really nice guy, he’ll help you out.”
It was insomnia that had her seeking out self medication. Being plagued by nightmares is all well and good, but in her mid twenties her body doesn’t tolerate it quite as well anymore. She feels nauseous on and off all day, and her eyes feel like they’re melting without proper rest. Not to mention when she’s particularly sleep deprived, it makes her a massive bitch, rather than a casual one.
She watches highlights of Skins and Shameless before she texts the number, how pathetic is that? She doesn’t know what to say, what to ask for, the general protocol of it all. She nurses a glass of wine while she does her research. Wine usually makes the sleepless nights worse, but she thinks considering the matter at hand she’s looking at the metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel.
Stevie: hi
Is all she says. Awesome .
Unknown Number: hello
Is all she gets. Even more awesome.
She’d kind of been hoping he would somehow telepathically know who she is and what she wants. How does she ask for it? She can't ask if she has the right person, since she doesn’t know who the right person is. She doesn’t know about unspoken rules on drug purchasing etiquette.
Stevie: do you know Chrissy Cunningham
Is what she asks. Get a grip, bitch!
Unknown Number: who is messaging me about chrissy cunningham??
Stevie: someone who wants to buy weed
Unknown Number: oh
Unknown number: could have just said that
Stevie groans loudly and rolls over to hide her face in the couch cushion before she collects herself enough to proceed. Lock in.
Stevie: sorry
Unknown Number: nah ur good
Unknown Number: this ur first time or something
Stevie: it’s that obvious?
Unknown Number: what do you need
Stevie: uhh joints
Unknown Number: how many
Stevie: 3?
Unknown Number: i gotchu
Unknown Number: if you’re local i got time to drop it off rq rn. Otherwise it would have to be later tonight
Stevie: im local to Hawkins if that’s what you mean
Unknown Number: lol yea
Unknown Number: drop the addy
Addy . She feels like she’s trying to order lunch on a trip abroad. At least she’s keeping up with the context clues of this language.
He says he’ll be there in ten minutes, she’s still trying to process the fact that she texted him in the first place.
It’s almost spring break for the kids she finds herself hanging out with too much. All types of life- human, plant, and everything in between- are taking a collective sigh of relief now that spring has started. Key word started ; it’s not quite allergy season yet.
It’s gotten a little cooler since she was last out and the sun was higher in the sky. Her pajama pants and thin, unzipped sweater are just fine, but the hair on the back of her neck stands up when she first comes outside. If she keeps her arms crossed once he comes she won’t even have to worry about her braless nipples trying to make an appearance through her cami.
She hears the car before she sees it. Hears the roaring of an engine louder than her neighborhood is used to, music no one around here listens to. She unconsciously turns her nose up at it- moreso at the complaints she might get on his behalf rather than actually being bothered by it. He shows up in an old van. Old enough to be an antique instead of a jalopy. He drives too fast, and parks too carelessly. At least the streets here are wide.
Arms across her chest she jogs down the lawn to meet him at the passengers side door. She feels a little silly, but she isn’t sure why. His car smells even louder than it sounds.
It’s just dark enough that she can’t quite see all the details of his face, even when he leans over to the window he rolls down. She can see enough to get the idea, though.
“You got nosy neighbors?” he asks her. His voice is deep and a little gravely, but it doesn’t sound like it’s from smoking.
“Kind of.”
He reaches over a little more, and she notices the tattoos littered on his forearm before she notices he’s popping the door open for her to get in. “Just for a sec.”
Maybe she does have to worry about her braless nipples. Shit .
She feels awkward as she gets in, and hopes he’s preoccupied enough by turning on the overhead lights and rolling his window down, too. Probably doesn’t want her to feel trapped in there with him. But considering she’s wearing Barbie pajama pants- which she and her friends had bought as a joke for a sleepover only to find they were insanely comfortable- she can feel how much the bun her hair is tied up in is coming apart, and she’d just been eating sour cream and onion chips, she doesn’t think she has to worry about him wanting to linger.
“Do you know Chrissy Cunningham?” he mumbles to himself, followed by a small and breathy laugh.
“Huh?” She closes the door after her and pulls her sweater together before she looks at him.
It’s a good thing she’d closed the door, since she might have had the wind knocked out of her at the sight of him and slid out of her seat, falling lamely into the damp gutter.
On the other hand, she kind of wishes that’s exactly how it went, because she can’t deal with this right now.
“What you texted me before,” he clarifies. Smirks a little bit at the memory. “If I know Chrissy Cunningham.”
Shit fuck oh my god he’s so hot like properly beautiful he’s wearing jewlery his eyes are so pretty stop looking at me don’t look at me fuck nevermind I don’t want it I need to go inside I need to crawl in a hole and never come out I’m wearing the fucking Barbie pajamas and my tits are half out wait is his hair long?!
“Sorry- I didn’t really know what to say.”
He shakes his head a little, bottom lip jutting out ever so slightly. His lips are pretty so it’s hard to not notice. “It’s cool,” he tells her. You’re cool. You’re so cool. His eyes momentarily look past her and up at the house. “All by yourself your first time?”
You know what you’re doing saying it like that. She shrugs a shoulder, her sweater sags down. “I heard it helps with sleep. So it’s not like I’m doing anything fun.”
He doesn’t seem to expect this answer so he doesn’t really say anything. There’s no center console separating them, and what’s even worse is when he leans over and pops the glove box open and it bounces off her knees. Oh no stop stop go away I can see the veins on his arm through his tattoos I want to rip it apart like a chew toy his hand touched my knee to close the glove box I’m gonna drop dead. He pulls out a small plastic pouch for her with three joints and drops them on her lap as he leans back over to his side of the car. It lands right on her crotch, and if he did that on purpose he’s going to hell. “Here ya go,” he says, leaning back in the driver's seat a little bit. She wants to bury her face in his lap like the pillow she’ll be screaming into once she’s inside. “Do you want any, like, tips?”
“Yes please.”
He smiles, but it might be a smirk. It better not be. “Don’t smoke more than one tonight, okay? Do not, even if it never really hits. Just wait until tomorrow. Don’t watch anything sad or scary or whatever. You should probably try to lay down before it hits cause it’ll probably knock you out if you do. Well, it does for me. Don’t eat too much, if you do eat. It’s way harder to tell and you might make yourself sick by accident.”
God, who knew drugs were so complicated?
That’s probably why there’s people like her who’ve never even really thought about it before.
Before.
“Okay,” she says, looking down at the bag now in her hands. She’d been so concerned with the acquiring of the weed that she hadn’t really had the chance to focus on what would happen once she had it. Not about the details at least.
She wonders if she sounds uncertain. She must. “Hey, you can hit me up if you need to,” he tells her. “I’m not usually crazy about letting first timers smoke up alone, but since you’re just wanting to sleep…”
He seems genuinely concerned about the possibility of something going wrong for her. She needs him to be an insufferable asshole. She needs him to only be pretty until he opens his mouth.
“Oh. Yeah, no- I’ll be fine.” Why is she trying to convince him?
“I know,” he says, turning the same tone back at her. “But if it isn’t, let me know.”
He names his price, she coughs it up. Makes sure their fingers don’t touch in the passing of bills. He counts his earnings, and she escapes his den of sin and lust.
“Oh, hey!” he says just as she’s about to close the door. He leans over the long seat and she leans down so look inside. She forgets to keep her shirt against her chest, but she’ll remember it later and convince herself he noticed. “What’s your name again?”
“Stevie.”
“Eddie,” he says as an answer to an implied question. He holds his hand out, and when she takes it she thinks that surely she’s making a fool of herself and letting something very obvious go over her head. But his grip on her hand tightens and gives a strong shake the way she’s suspiciously expected it to. “Pleasure doing business with you.”
He’s dorky, too. What a disaster.
In the morning, before she’s even opened her eyes, she thinks that she must still be high. But no, she’d forgotten what it feels like to wake up after a full night's sleep. It makes her feel fused to her bed. Her body is heavy liquid. She has to wage a war to regain control enough to flip over and check her phone. It’s almost noon. Getting sold something laced seems more likely than simply sleeping in.
She’s not getting up anytime soon. She puts on something to listen to, brainstorms what she’ll eat when she eventually emerges. She checks her texts, since she’s sure she’ll have some complaints for not being reachable the way she is by now. She gets a few. She gets other texts, too.
Unknown Number: all good?
She puts his name into her phone. He’d texted her a bit more than an hour ago.
Stevie: hey. yeah. i just woke up haha
Eddie: really??
Stevie: yeah
Eddie: well then good morning sunshine lol
Eddie: glad it worked out
Stevie: thx (:
It was not a good morning. Her cheeks hurt from smiling and she feels a little feverish. She had a very terrible morning, thanks to him. Afternoon.
Two weeks and two joints later she knows she has to text him soon.
The days in between joints weren’t exactly a good night's sleep, but they were noticeably better than before. She’d started to wonder if the gorgeous man in a van had sold her a rolled up cure. But after her hours of shuteye had started to dwindle she endured an all nighter.
She wants that drunk off of sleep feeling. It hasn’t even been that long and she’s fiending for it. A feeling better than sex, she’s sure.
She’ll need to text Eddie. Which will excavate him from where she’s buried him in the back of her mind.
She doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to be stressing out over a guy and acting like a schoolgirl. She has more important things to do and worry about. Things like…
Feelings are somewhat of a foreign affair for her. Her general policy on men is look, don't touch. Exceptions are made, of course. For the ones with flaws fatal enough that she won’t want to stick around until morning no matter how much they look like Brad Pitt or something.
She would like very much to touch him, but she can only look. She can tell his pillow talk game is killer.
Stevie: hey sorry for the late text. was wondering if i could buy some more tomorrow
Stevie: or i guess later today
Stevie: when you wake up
Eddie: damn i could have swung by now if you caught me half an hour ago
It’s two in the morning and he texts her back in minutes. Which catches her off guard. His name in a notification startles her. She had mentally prepared to make first contact, not a conversation.
Stevie: it’s ok. There’s no rush
Eddie: cant sleep im guessing
Stevie: wow how’d you know
Eddie: it’s my sixth sense. I’m very insightful
Eddie: you gonna be home at 11?
She has to take the rugrats to the movies at noon, and it takes a while to corral them all into her car. But they’ll live if she flips the script last minute and schedules lunch for after the flick instead of before like usual. She has important business matters to attend to.
This time around when she approaches Eddie’s van, she knows she looks good. Not that she’d dressed up for him; really and truly. It doesn’t even occur to her until she realizes she doesn’t have to do any impromptu covering up. She doesn’t have much else better to do than wander around the rest of the mall while her gremlins nerd out at the movies. So she might as well look good doing it. She’s not exactly a ten out of ten, but at least she isn’t a one.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” His gaze looks over her before meeting hers. She does have real clothes , he’s probably thinking, good for her! Humiliating. He’s dressed similarly to last time; tight and ripped jeans, some band shirt under a flannel. His hair is down now and cascades past his shoulders in a mane of ringletts she doesn’t think she’d have the skill to tame if it was her head it was attached to. She wants the tips of his curls to tickle her face. “Welcome back.”
Like she’s just walked into a shop and not a van that raises eyebrows as it passes. “Sorry I texted you so late. I didn’t think you’d be awake. I just didn’t want to forget in the morning.”
“It’s cool- you can text me whenever. Worst case scenario I take a bit to get back to you, right?” Eddie leans over and pops the glove box open again. He smells like aftershave and breakfast. He takes out a black metal box this time instead of a baggie. “I didn’t have time to roll ‘em up for you first, you got a few minutes?”
For you? “Yeah, sure.”
As much as she’d love to describe what he’s doing in erotic detail, she feels a bit like she’s watching a scientist concocting the elixir of life. It’s all foreign to her. “I’m glad it helped. Insomnia’s a bitch.”
“Yeah,” she agrees lamely.
A new song on the speakers he’s turned down starts up with an abrupt instrumental roar and catches her attention. She leans forward and taps the screen of his phone to see what’s playing. The band is called Black Sabbath. The name is familiar, but the album cover isn’t. She also notices the backdrop of Eddie’s wallpaper; a picture of some people getting wasted in a messy room that would have gone viral on Tumblr in 2013.
“You like this song?” she hears him ask.
“Hm,” she answers in an undecided hum. It’s certainly a song, alright.
“Nosey.”
She looks over, and her eyes land on a truly unholy sight. He’s finished rolling the first joint, which he’s now holding it up to his mouth, licking the edge like an envelope. With his slutty looking tongue and slutty looking fingers. The bastard. His lips twitch up in a smirk while he’s still doing it, and she’s pretty sure it’s because he thinks he’s pressing her buttons.
He isn’t. But she’d certainly let him.
“I was just curious,” she corrects him.
She crosses her arms and turns towards him a little bit. How much the seat will allow her to. He’s already sitting the same, his supplies laid out between them. Her heads on her shoulders more securely this time around- she knows how to look good dressed comfortably. Quaffed hair and jeans and a little bit of makeup has her feeling a bit more like herself. Take that misogynists who think women dress to impress them! She hadn’t even taken Eddie into account when she got ready that morning.
“How many did you need?” he asks once he puts that sinful thing back in his mouth.
She needs him to make her three. She wants to watch him make a dozen.
“Six,” is the answer that she gives him.
Eddie lets out a breath of a laugh and glances up at her house again. “Alright, Mommy Warbucks,” he says, like he’s impressed. “Wasn’t expecting the budget to go up so quickly.”
Someone kill her.
She watches him start on another and thinks about sucking on his fingers, so she has to pretend to answer a text.
“So,” he asks at some point, “how do you know Chrissy Cunningham?” He’s smirking like he’s told himself an inside joke. Maybe it was an even more embarrassing question than she’d realized.
“We did cheer together in school. I graduated before her, but we always hung out, still.”
“Cheer, huh,” he says. He says it like it’s very intriguing. “So, uh… where were you in the pyramid?”
She thinks he’s being suggestive. Or he’s just weird. This is, after all, a strange first question. So they’re one-for-one as far as that goes.
“The bottom.” She answers confidently, and he looks up at her from under shaggy bangs. He was almost definitely being suggestive. “I was usually the tallest on the team. Nowhere else for me to go.”
Something unidentifiable lights up in his eyes. She’s not sure why, but she thinks he really likes this answer. “Oh, yeah?” He sounds even more intrigued. His eyes quickly run over her, like he’s trying to guess how tall she is. He probably wouldn’t guess correctly. “You must be pretty strong then, too. Y’know, having to hold them all up like that.”
Stevie shrugs. “Yeah, I guess. I like working out. Not really for any reason, it’s not like I log how much I can lift over time like some guys. I just like feeling good after.”
He lifts an eyebrow at the sound of the same word. Sometimes, when she feels like disclosing that sort of thing, guys will try to compete with her. Tell her their workout routine just so she knows it’s better than hers. Whatever that means. Eddie just says ‘cool’ and sticks his tongue out again. She tries not to feel jealous of a piece of paper.
By the time she emerges from the van again it’s like she’s in heat or something.
Stevie: hey
Chrissy: hiii!!!
Stevie: i texted that guy you told me about
Chrissy: huh?
Chrissy: oh!!!! yeah, eddie. sorry! how’d it go??
Stevie: it was good. i bought some more this morning
Chrissy: omg yay!! are you finally getting your beauty sleep again (:
Stevie: yeah thanks for helping me out
Chrissy: you’re welcome (:
Stevie: how’d you meet this guy?
Chrissy: i just heard about him through the grapevine and found his instagram. i haven’t bought from him in a long time, but i still run into him in town sometimes. Why?
Stevie: nothing i was just feeling nosey
Chrissy: kk!
Stevie: he’s so hot. ugh
Chrissy: loll
Chrissy: yeah he’s pretty cute ig (:
Stevie: why didn’t you warn me???? what happened to girl code???
Chrissy: sorry!!!! i didn’t realize he was your type
Stevie: he’s not. he’s too nice
Chrissy: ahh okay. i got it
Stevie: i hate him
Chrissy: right
Stevie: he’s so hot. it’s so stupid
Chrissy: totally
Stevie: i wanna rip his clothes off with my teeth like a rabid animal
Chrissy: down girl
Stevie: bark bark
Robin’s birthday comes up. They all go to a club out of town.
She really wants to help Robin be the one that gets laid for once, but a guy starts to hit on her, and he’s so perfectly arrogant. He probably thinks she’s got a cute bunny looking sort of nose, but she’s just trying to keep herself from sneering at him when he talks about himself.
She doesn’t let him take her home, but she does let him take her to the backseat of his car. When he goes down on her she keeps her head thrown back and her eyes squeezed shut so she can imagine it’s a different face between her thighs.
When they’re done he says they should hang out again. She enthusiastically gives him a fake name and fake phone number. Yeah, totally!
She runs back inside and tells her friends they should find a different club cause this one is totally lame. She’s not sure if he’s coming back inside and be around to run into again, but she’d rather not find out the hard way.
Dustin’s mom needs to stay at work a little late, the girl taking over the hostess stand at one of the local diners can’t get her car to start and is having someone else take her. She just needs her ride to get there.
Stevie goes to pick Dustin up. He’ll do his homework at her house, and she’ll get them dinner and make sure there’s an extra plate for his mom. She says Stevie does too much for them. Stevie thinks Dustin’s dad doesn’t do enough.
He’s already outside when she pulls into the parking lot, talking to one of the cooks who’s taking a smoke break. The walk to the diner from school is shorter than the one to his house, but he doesn’t like hanging out there too long. Not when he has homework to focus on, or no one to bother. It gets boring for him quickly.
“Hey kiddo,” she calls when she gets out, finishing up a text to Robin.
“Stevie!” she hears him calling back. “Come here, I got my English test back.”
“Ooh! What’d you get?”
Whatever he says next- which sounds like a lot more than a number, so he probably has some commentary about it- is muffled like he’s one of the parents in Charlie Brown. A gravitational pull worthy of a black hole drags her gaze away from Dustin before she can even really look at him. How could she? She loves him to death, but why would she look at him when over his shoulder her drug dealer is leaning against the wall with his hair tied back, looking all sweaty. A smirk of recognition holds the cigarette in his lips and blows the smoke out.
“Hey,” he says simply. Smoothly. Cooly.
“Hi,” she says lamely. Weakly.
“You guys know each other?”
Dustin’s attitude is sour enough that she can break free from the spell she’d found herself under. “Uh, yeah. Kinda.” She’s holding the strap of her purse so hard her knuckles pale, even though it’s hair thin and barely holding anything up. She’s just paranoid about leaving it in the car. “I guess you do, too.”
“I’m his stepdad,” Eddie says before Dustin gets the chance to answer.
“Stop saying that!” Dustin whines incredulously. “It’s not funny.”
“No, it isn’t funny. It’s very serious,” he mumbles through another drag, and when he’s done he pushes the smoke out of only one side of his mouth so it doesn’t blow into Dustin’s face. “I care very deeply for my work wife. We’re exclusive, you know.”
“Gross.”
“You just don’t understand our love,” Eddie says dismissively and turns away from him a little bit. He’s trying not to smile, but he isn’t doing a very good job. At least Dustin is too annoyed to notice.
He turns his attention towards her like he’s trying to ignore a dog begging for table scraps. “You just come from the gym? I’m starving.”
Dustin knows she’s much more easily manipulated into agreeing to whatever he wants to eat after she’s worked out. Once all the endorphins wear off she becomes murderously hangry. “Totally,” she says in agreement to what he’s really asking. She doesn’t normally care about making stops or running errands before changing out of her gym clothes. Though she does start to worry how frizzy her hair is or sweaty her clothes are. She doesn’t think to worry that her bike shorts are basically glorified underwear and hardly go down further than the baggy shirt she has on, too. “How was school?”
“Max and Lucas were fighting at lunch.”
“It was a normal day, got it.”
“Hey,” Eddie says, and her attention snaps to him like it’s a command. She feels like she needs to willingly turn in her badge as a feminist. Borderline misandrist, some might say. But being a brainless bimbo and doing whatever she’s told might not be as bad as she had originally thought. “You still sleeping better?”
The weed is still having its desired effect. There’s been a night or two, where she doesn’t have to be up in the morning and saves the joints for better nights, where she had a little trouble sleeping. But then she thinks about Eddie, and his mouth, and his tongue sealing her joints, and passes out with her hand still halfway down her pants.
“Yeah.”
“Cool.” He drops his cigarette and hardly tries stomping it out. “See you around, princess.”
“What about my mom?” Dustin asks sarcastically as Eddie opens the door to go back inside.
“Nah,” he calls back. Barely bothers looking over his shoulder. “Claudia’s my queen, baby.”
Error 404: Stevie has malfunctioned. Try restarting, or smack the back of her head if that doesn’t work.
She finds Eddie’s instagram.
Well, she doesn’t seek it out. It’s presented to her. His phone number is linked to his account, and so is hers. Instagram knows they know each other, and knows she’d like to see more of him.
There isn’t much to it. Careless and random snapshots of his life rather than anything posed or planned. So nothing like hers. It’s a lot of pictures of friends and random things he must have found funny. But it does provide some insight into him. He draws a little bit. His nails are painted black on occasion. His ears are pierced. He plays guitar. That kind of makes her want to cry.
There aren’t really pictures of him. He’s occasionally caught partially in frame or in a reflection. The occasional group shot. His hand that’s holding whatever the subject of the picture is meant to be. There’s only one real picture of him she can find, and it’s two years old. He’s sitting on porch steps and there’s a scrapy looking cat in his lap. A kitten. He’s opening a can of food to give it. She reads the caption and laughs out loud alone in her car.
Mother is mothering. Is that what the kids are saying?
She doesn’t follow him because she’s so chill and doesn’t even really care at all that she found his profile in the first place. She doesn’t need to have instant access to photographic evidence of his existence. She doesn’t need to see how well liked he is by his friends, and all the things he loves. She doesn’t care, cause she’s super chill like that.
Barbie pants and Love is Blind on the couch that night, her phone buzzes. The girls are all watching the episode that just came out and texting each other on capslock.
@eddieisbanished has followed you!
@eddieisbanished liked 5 of your photos!
@eddieisbanished liked your story!
Oh, fuck off.
It’s Stevie’s dad’s birthday.
Not hearing from him is hard. But hearing from him would be harder.
She wields a wine bottle opener like a weapon, but finds herself simply staring at her conquest rather than cracking it open. If she has some then she’s having it all. She knows it and feels the ghostly premonition of a migraine the next morning as her punishment.
She calls Eddie. She does not text him. It’s not like he’s ever taken particularly long to text her back, but she needs to know how she’ll be numbing her brain tonight, and she needs to know now .
“Yeah, hello!” A voice she doesn’t recognize shouts into the speakers, and sounds fried as it painfully penetrates her eardrum. The background is noisy, and he’s yelling like he has no idea if she can hear him or not. She absolutely can. “Hey, hey. He’s coming, one sec.”
“Okay,” she says pointlessly. Out of habit.
Twenty seconds feels like a very long time. Added to the general chaos is the sound of movement before someone’s talking again. “Yeah?”
“Eddie. Hey.”
“Shit- hold on. Let me go outside. Sorry.” Noise again. She hears him tell someone to fucking move out of his way. The loud creak of a door. “Hey, sorry. Who’s this?”
“Stevie.”
“Stevie,” he says back to her. Like he’s happy about it. Like it’s a welcome surprise. “What’s up?”
“Sorry it’s kind of last minute. I was just wondering if you had time to stop by.” A pause. “I guess not, don’t worry about it.”
“Well, wait,” he says a little quickly like she might have hung up without waiting for a response. “If you wanted to pick it up, that’s cool too. I’m just at home, so I got all my stuff.”
Her stomach does backflips. “No, I don’t wanna interrupt or anything.”
He scoffs at this. “Shit, interrupt . You’re not. Come over.”
“Okay.” How’s she supposed to argue with this? “Drop the addy.”
She’s never said this before, and probably never will again, but it makes her laugh when she hangs up, and she needed that. She could just leave now, sad girl clothes be damned. But she also needs to look good right now, and she needs a hot guy to see it.
She puts on a dress- it’s loose and softer than her bedsheets, and looks too good on her for it to be as comfortable as it is. Lazy hair, lazy makeup. She just wants to look cute, she doesn’t have it in her to pull off much more than that.
She checks her texts to see where he’s going and finds he’s sent her two messages.
Eddie: 1 Attachment
Eddie: you can stay and hang out too. if you want to
The address takes her to a trailer, and as she drives down the gravel road of the park she can feel the views of her parents that had been shoved down her throat begin to stir. She turns up the radio to snuff them out. She’s not like them, she’s not like him . That’s the whole reason she’d called Eddie in the first place.
Matter of fact, she has half a mind to beg Eddie to blow him just so she can send her dad a home movie for his birthday. But that would require a direct interaction with him, so she’ll pass.
It feels like there’s a million cars outside, and there’s enough people inside that some have leaked out into the yard. One of them being Eddie. He must have been waiting for her, since the moment he notices her pulling up he walks away from who he’s talking to and meets her at her car just before she parks it.
“Hi,” she says as she’s getting out. Once she does she realizes what she hadn’t before in front of the diner cause he was just far enough away and standing on a curb. She’s almost as tall as him. Which is definitely not uncommon, and he still is noticeably taller. Just not by very much at all.
She sees him notice, too. Sometimes she can tell it makes guys feel insecure. Sometimes she can tell they’re just surprised. But Eddie’s eyes rake over her, just slow enough that it’s unmistakably deliberate instead of a simple observation of her. What’s worse, what’s better , is that he bites his lip while he’s looking at her. His tongue darts out first, and he bites his fucking lip at her. He’s looking at her like a christmas present, but she thinks he isn’t patting himself on the back that she’d dressed up like this for him. That’s something she’s seen before. This is more like I knew you looked this good, it’s about time you actually showed me. “You look cute.”
He just says it. Says it just like that, like it’s nothing. Like it’s true and easy to say. Like it won’t haunt her.
She opens her mouth, closes it, and opens it again with a face much more flushed. “Well, I would have tried a little harder if I knew you were having a party.”
“What? Oh.” He glances behind him dismissively. “My place is always like this.”
“You must be very popular.”
He shrugs a little bit, like he doesn’t think so but wouldn’t argue against it. “I think it’s the open door policy that’s popular.” Eddie looks at her for one, calculated beat. “Wanna come in?”
She’s forgotten about her shitty parents and her shitty dad and his shitty birthday. She forgets it for the rest of the night. Forgets she’d even been sad in the first place.
“Yeah.”
Though no one inside knows her name they all greet her like they’re already friends. It occurs to her that, if she’s getting the right impression, it’s so hard to tell who they have and haven’t met at his house that it’s just easier to be instant friends with everyone. It’s nice, but it makes her feel very shy.
It’s reasonably packed inside, but his place is small so it feels like there’s at least fifty people squeezed in view of the TV playing a movie. Too many people on a couch likely made for three, sitting on the floor like it’s the most comfortable option.
The only available spot is also the only single seat in the room. A recliner large enough to sleep on, and worn enough that it probably has been. She figures this must be his spot. He proves her right by stepping over people to get to it. She follows him, drifting automatically behind him like a shadow. But him sitting down breaks the spell, and then she’s the only one standing and looking around for somewhere to go like it’s her first day on earth.
He takes her arm and pulls her down onto the arm of the chair, gently enough that it’s an offer rather than a demand. She can find somewhere else to sit if she wants to. He’s just letting her know she doesn’t have to if she doesn’t want to.
She doesn’t, so she doesn’t.
It’s comfortable enough to be a real seat. But he’s sunk down a little into the chair, and she’s already tall, so she feels huge in a little room with little people. She takes up too much space, and it’s hard not to squirm. She will focus on the movie that looks too scary for her if she could actually keep up with it, until she gaslights herself into thinking she’s small enough and easily digestible.
It helps that Eddie’s hands are always on her. He’s not exploring, he’s not trying to see what she’d let him get away with. (Good, it would be too much). His hand is on her back as if he’s ready to keep her from slipping off at any moment. His arm is around her waist when he leans forward to talk to someone. He slips his leg under one of hers like it’s nothing; his right knee nestled under her left and their feet falling so perfectly into the ideal position for footsie.
It’s all so much to take in that when someone offers her a joint she feels like she just sat down. Eddie sits up when she takes it, watching her curiously like he wants to know what she looks like smoking it.
The energy in the trailer is electric, and the smoke is so thick that even that feeling is mellow. It’s what she imagined staying home with friends and a drink was always like when she was too young to really get it.
She feels good, she feels high , and figures she’d never been awake this long to really feel what it’s like. Having a body feels soft and light rather than a constant burden. Everyone around her is so cool looking.
She half notices her posture sliding down, but doesn’t care enough. Apparently Eddie notices. His hands are on her waist and he’s practically pulling her into his lap. She melts into him without room for insecurity, her back against his chest and his shoulder at the base of her neck. His hands on her waist only move to wrap around her. They rest open palmed on her stomach, which she normally doesn’t like. She doesn’t think about it right now.
“Is this okay?” he asks. His mouth is close enough to her ear already for him to whisper. He sounds gentle. A nod and hum of agreement is the only thing she can manage at the moment, and she feels his head settle a little closer to hers.
She’s only looking at the TV, not really watching what’s on it, and the same seems to go for him. They have their own whispered conversations. In this crowded room it’s somehow just them. She sees a few people notice them, and feels like they know something she doesn’t. He wants to hear her talk about fitness, and she wants to hear him talk about music. Her fingers drag across the back of his hands, he moves her hair to one side and plays with the ends. They’re cuddling in front of everyone like that like they’re in love.
She thinks that this is what it’s like to meditate successfully, since for once she’s just existing . Fully content. Eddie presses a kiss on her shoulder, and she barely even reacts. Because yeah, why would he not? Stupid question. He’s pressing kisses on her shoulder and his forehead against her neck and nuzzling up to her like it’s exactly what the doctor ordered.
“I’m glad it’s been helping,” he tells her while they’re holding hands. Up and palms facing, their fingers are slow dancing. “You look better.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You know what I meant.” Eddie is not amused by the implication of him thinking she’s ugly. “You look like you feel better.”
“Yeah, I do feel better.” I feel so good right now. “Thanks.”
They’re kissing, and it’s unceremonious, and lazy, and soft. And so normal. They do this all the time, what’s the big deal? He’s mumbling words in her mouth, but he’s asking about her job and about the kids and her favorite colors. He says he likes her chapstick. His hair tickles her face and she tells him how much she likes it, and he lets her play with it.
He’s playing with her necklace while they whisper to each other, and his arm is accidentally pulling down the front of her dress. Which she doesn’t notice until the chain on his wrist is too cold too low and startles her. It’s very obviously an accident, since he startles even more.
“Oh shit, I’m sorry,” he says quickly. He’s pulling her dress up higher than it would normally rest, and looks a little flustered that it won’t stay where he thinks it should. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” It’s so okay. Everything is okay, and everything has always been okay.
Eddie looks down at her chest like he’s seeking out insight, looks back up at her still a little uncertain. She should reassure him, but she just wants to look at him forever. He’s so pretty. His hand moves to her side under her arm, and he makes it look so effortless when his thumb finds just the right spot on her dress. His eyes are a little wide, and he’s probably noticed she isn’t wearing a bra (if he asks her about it, she will lie to him). But she can only imagine the look on her face.
He’s groping her- gently, cautiously- right there in front of everyone, but it’s like no one even sees they’re there at all. She’s squirming a little and trying to not make any noise, and she wants to take the thumb he’s rubbing on her through her shirt with and stick it in her mouth. He gives an experimental pinch, and she lets out a needy whine. Quietly, she doubts anyone would have heard even if they cared to. But there’s a hundred throw blankets in the room, and sometime earlier they’d ended up with one too, and she wants to cover her flaming face in it.
“Was that okay?” he asks her. Her face hurts from blushing so hard and twisted up in a needy expression, and her lips are sealed shut since she doesn’t trust herself. Doesn’t trust herself to answer with anything more than a nod. But this is apparently not good enough. “What’d you say?”
“M… mhm.”
He has mercy on her and doesn’t try to make her form words. His hands stay on her like he already knows exactly what she likes, holding her close so she doesn’t go anywhere while she squirms under his touch. He tells her he likes her dress, the color looks good on her, asks if she wears florals a lot. She wishes he’d just rip the damn thing off her, already.
He kisses her everywhere her dress isn’t covering her, leaving goosebumps in his wake while she’s holding onto him for dear life. She worries that she’s hurting him, as much as her lustful high will allow her to. But for a moment her nails accidentally sink into the back of his neck harder than she’d ever do deliberately, but she thinks the sick fucker is a masochist as well as a sadist of sarcasm when he moans against her throat.
“C'mere baby,” he says a little bit later.
She’s so limply relaxed that it might as well be a ragdoll he’s moving in his lap. Though to his credit he’s very strong for a skinny guy that’s not very tall at all. He pulls her closer like it’s nothing, facing forward and pressed back against him as much as possible. He’s sitting up more than the first time he pulled her close, though. Which means they’re much closer. She’d like to think she can feel him up against her, but he could also very well be wearing a belt.
His lips and chin are pressed against the side of her shoulder, and he looks up at her like he’s severely dehydrated and she’s iced water already making the glass sweat. His eyes are a brown much darker than her own, which makes it even more striking how well she can see his blown out pupils, and he’s flushed such a pretty shade of pink she wants to crush it up and press it in a compact.
He pulls away from her more than he’s been in what feels like hours, and drags one of his hands softly over her shoulders. “You have so many of these,” he mumbles. Her beauty marks. Birthmarks. Moles. Whatever. She doesn’t not like them, she just doesn’t like any of the words they’re usually called. “They’re so cute.”
This makes her giggle. Gross.
The way that they’re sitting one of his legs in between hers, and she swears he’s trying to press it up against her. If he is, she lets him, and maybe speeds the process up for him just a little bit. She’s not exactly sure what she expected the goal would be, or if there is one at all, but his hands are on her thighs and his skin feels like fire on hers.
“What’s wrong?” he asks her, and she realizes she’s trembling against him. She’s mostly surprised she hadn’t been already, since she’s so turned on it hurts, and shakes her head. “You sure?”
“Mhm,” he hums with a nod.
“You gonna be quiet?”
This she doesn’t react to. Normally she’d be annoyed at the question- at a guy thinking he’s good enough to make her lose control of her vocal chords like that. But her stomach twists into an unpleasant knot when he asks it because she does not know.
“You can do it,” he says dismissively, unconcerned with her not being so sure.
And, well, she really wants to prove him right.
His hand slots between her thighs, and his rings once again startle her. Moreso this time, since she’s already on the verge of falling apart, and she doesn’t think she’s ever felt anything cold there. She all but convulses from it, because it does feel good, but Eddie’s hand that isn’t in her legs is under her stomach, and his hold on her instantly tightens to keep her exactly in place.
Her hands clamp down on his arm wrapped around her, nails digging into inked skin, which makes him his, and she's pretty sure he’s not wearing a belt. Even with a thin layer separating, when he finally touches her she feels like she could die. A lot of that definitely has to do with the person said hands are attached to, but some of it definitely has to do with the weed. It’s not that she’s never felt like this, she didn’t think feeling like this would be possible.
“Oh my god,” she squeaked out. She can’t believe she isn’t screaming.
“Oh my god,” he groans into her shoulder. Fair enough, she’s probably humiliatingly wet.
He bypasses the cotton, and swipes a curious finger through her, and it’s a miracle that her bones aren’t chattering together with the way that she’s trembling. If anyone notices, if anyone points it out, she’ll die. Until then Eddie’s practically growling against her back, and now it’s her who wants to be his chew toy. Rip her apart with his pretty mouth.
He’s touching her like he’s memorizing her when he has no reason to, she’d let him refresh his memory any time he’d like. He’s whispering sweet nothings into her ear, but he’s dragging his fingers over her clit, so there’s no way in hell she understands a word he’s saying. His voice sounds like warm honey, so it’s not like she’s missing out much.
Only for a minute or so he moves the arm wrapped around her and takes a handful of her hair. He’s holding it so tight, but he isn’t pulling it, and she thinks she likes that better. Instead of yanking her, she couldn’t move if she wanted to.
He’s touching her soft, and slow, and a little lazy. They still have all the time in the world, after all. Thankfully he hasn’t completely fried her brain, once his fingers find something of a pattern she’s able to think real words and hear the ones he’s saying again.
“You’re so pretty like this,” he tells her. He sounds almost desperate; he needs to tell her this. “You’re so pretty, baby,”
Baby . She wants to be his baby. Stevie from last month would be so disappointed in her. But Stevie from last month can read it and weep. She’s basically weeping right now, she’s trying so hard to be quiet that if she lets herself make any noise she might just start sobbing.
Eddie’s leg moves to push hers apart just a little bit more, and she catches on just in time to turn and hide her face in his hair before he pushes a finger inside of her. It’s hard to not arch her back against him and scream out his name, really hard. But for as much as the weed is obviously making her more sensitive, she’s pretty sure it’s also the only reason she’s actually been quiet.
Plus at least she doesn’t think she’s the only one struggling with it. She can feel his chest moving with heavy breaths against her, and when he’s in her up until his ring he bites down on her shoulder. Probably hard enough to make up for the scratches she’s leaving all up his arm. His groan reverberates through her skin, shoots right down to where she ends and he begins, and she thinks he might have been able to feel it.
He unclamps his teeth and instead starts sucking a hickey a little closer to her neck. Normally this is the kind of thing a guy would get shooed away for. Visible remnants of some dude on her even the next day? No thank you! But it feels good when Eddie does it, and it’s in a spot easy to cover up, so he can suck on her until she bleeds for all she cares.
“Fuck, princess,” he mumbles against her skin. “You’re so good, princess.”
Princess.
This name has been tossed at her in the past, but usually condescendingly or not since high school. So it’s only ever earned an eye roll from her.
She’ll be his fucking princess. She’ll be his anything so long as he keeps making her feel like this.
Now it’s definitely not just the weed, or who it is. He’s dragging in and out of her agonizingly slowly, and she thinks he might be teasing her. That he just wants her to beg for it. Good thing she’s wrong. She would have jumped off of his lap and knelt at his feet.
Once he gets a second finger inside of her, shifts them just a little bit so she can push them in even further, and switches from fucking her with them to keeping nestled inside of her as far as he can and curling his fingers. It really is a shame there’s no way she could watch, because she has no idea what the fuck he’s doing. Not that she needs to. He very clearly doesn’t need any guidance. It’s like he’s playing guitar riffs against her g spot, and the thought alone could send her spiraling.
“Eddie,” she says, sounds like she’s asking him something because of the pitch of her voice.
“Stevie,” he says back in a similar way, but almost mockingly so. Asshole. She’s a blushing mess.
They could be there like that for ten hours, or they could be there for ten minutes. She’d never know. He’s ruining this for her with anyone but him. Any sorry guy clumsily feeling her up and asking her if it feels good when he’s not even in the right spot will leave her missing Eddie and wishing she was back on this recliner in this smokey trailer.
She hates him a little for it.
He puts a third finger in her and drags his thumb over her clit again in the process, and her knees come together and she squeezes her eyes shut so tight it scrunches up her whole face.
She loves him a little for it.
She’s writhing from it, which only makes his thumb bump against her clit more. Grabbing desperately onto his arm like she’s about to freefall. Which she kind of is. And isn’t that insane?
“Eddie.” This time it’s more of a warning. Even though he’s pretty fucking aware.
His arm around her waist tightens like she might catapult across the room if he doesn’t hold onto her. She hopes she finds finger shaped bruises on her hip later. He’s fucking attacking her g spot like it’s personally wronged him. She’s gotta figure out a way for it to do it again.
Stevie cums just from his fingers, sitting in his lap in front of all his friends and none of them care, and he brings her up so high that now that it’s all crashing down over her she’s almost dizzy. She whines again when he pulls out his digits, shivers at his absence. But she doesn’t get to miss him for long. He hooks the same hand under her knees and pulls her up. She’s curled up in his lap like a little kid, and it’s exactly what she needs from him, which is very annoying.
Her eyes won’t stay open so matter how much she wants to gauge his expression, if he got from her what he’d wanted, and her head falls lamely into his neck. At least she can hear he’s panting about the same as she is.
One of his hands cradles her head and he peppers kisses as they both catch their breath. “Fuck, that was so good Stevie,” he breathes out. “Such a good girl.”
She’s transcending.
He doesn’t call. He doesn’t text. She doesn’t hear from him at all.
Not like she expected anything. Not like she ever has, or ever wanted to. In a lot of ways it’s the kind of thing she always does with guys. But not with guys who look at her like they can’t believe she’s real, and not with guys who are kind of her friend.
She’s disappointed, and maybe she’s a little sad. Mostly she just wants him to tell her it’s all good. She’d dove head first into uncharted territory and really needs him to take the lead here.
She eats at the diner alone for the first time. Dustin is at school, and she knows Eddie’s working. She has her sources. She sits at the bar, where she knows it’s only a matter of time until he spots her. She just wants to get this over with. She’ll have to see him again, and it’ll probably be at least a little awkward, so it seems best to just rip off the bandaid.
It takes him a bit to notice her, but she doesn’t mind. She likes watching him when he doesn’t know he’s being watched. Likes seeing him when he isn’t trying to get a reaction out of her.
She doesn’t get to see him see her, she’s too busy picking at some fries from Caludia’s lunch she won’t finish and was happy to hand off. She doesn’t get to see how he comes over to her, if he jogs over a little like he can’t get to her fast enough.
“Hey! Fancy seeing you here.” He’s happy to see her. Maybe not quite as happy as she might have wished. But again- probably a little awkward. “To what do I owe this pleasant surprise?”
She shrugs a shoulder and eats a fry. “I was in the neighborhood,” she says coyly. Cause she’s so chill and casual like that. Yeah, she stopped by to see him. What’s the big deal?
He hums a little bit and steals from her plate. Not that it’s really hers, and not like he couldn’t possibly have been the one who made them. “Lucky me.” He leans his elbows on the counter, lower than she is on the stool. He’s got puppy eyes when looking at her while she’slooking up. He’s so stupid. “I’m glad you came over the other day.”
She blushes. She swipes a fry through ketchup so she doesn’t have to look at him. “I’m glad you invited me.”
“You won’t need another one to stop by,” he says. “Just saying.”
“Okay.”
“For future reference.”
There’s butterflies in her stomach, and her heart is starting to pound. Ripping off a bandaid. “I thought about texting you.”
She can feel his eyes on her. “Why didn’t you?”
She shrugs again a little bit. “Just didn’t wanna be awkward, I guess.”
He snorts. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
She half heartedly glares at him, and he smiles at her like she’s a proper fucking comedian. “I wanted to make sure we’re cool.”
“Yeah, we’re cool.” He says it like he’s not even sure why she’d be asking him in the first place. But she sees a small light go off in his head. “Oh, wait. I probably should have texted you then, huh?”
“That would have been ideal, but we can’t always get what we want.”
“Sorry,” he says, wearing a pouty frown. “I didn’t think it was that serious.”
There it is. This is what she came for.
Not this specifically, but any definitive information at all.
And this is fine. It really is, because it’s never been that serious with anyone for Stevie. She doesn’t want a boyfriend; that's, like, part of her core identity. She doesn’t need one. Boys are pretty and fun and some of them know how to make her feel really good. But she doesn’t want two toothbrushes in her bathroom and someone else's clothes at her place, she doesn’t want a picture of some dude as her phone lockscreen, and she doesn’t want to tell someone no you hang up at one in the morning.
She has a lot of men in her life, a lot that are really good friends. All the others are just some fucking guys. There’s no room in her life for a boyfriend.
There may have been room for Eddie, but she’s not gonna move stuff around to let him in if he doesn’t even wanna be there in the first place.
And all that is well and good, but Stevie is furious. Not at him; he’s done nothing. At herself for not realizing how many of her own unwritten rules she had broken and putting herself in this position at all.
She hears ocean waves crashing in her ears. Maybe it’s just her own pulse. Her world as she knows it is crumbling because she’d let herself be wooed. It’s not really about him; it’s about what she’d let him put her through.
He must hear the implosion, feel the earth begin to shake as it cracks open under her feet. “That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s fine,” she says with a small shake of her head. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Well wait- it came out wrong.”
“I said it’s fine.” She’s very stern, and it’s nice to be the one rendering him speechless for once. “I just wanted to confirm it is all, right?”
“Confirm,” he slowly repeats back to her.
The plate is empty now. Maybe god is real. “Yeah, that we’re good.” She grabs her bag and stands, and she does not let it look hasty. “Sorry, I gotta dip. Busy girl. I just wanted to check in real quick. See you soon?”
“Wh- uh…” he stands up straight. She thinks he might ask her to stay. Suggest she stop by later. Simply send her off insisting she’s got it all wrong. He just sucks on his teeth instead. “Yeah, okay. Text me?”
“I will!”
She will not.
She goes home and cries her fucking eyes out. About why she is the way she is, and why she doesn’t know how to be someone better. Why she can’t call any of her friends that would happily cheer her up, and why knowing she cares about a guy- any guy at all- feels like the world is ending.
She cries that it’s Eddie who’s the catalyst, cause she does really like him. As a person, not just a piece of meat. She thinks they could be really close friends. But she can’t be near him without her hormones firing on all cylinders, so she can’t be near him at all. She’ll be okay, but she’s mad that she’s not okay about it in the first place.
She ran out of weed. She can’t bear to get it any other way. She wants his DNA on her joint or nothing at all.
She stops sleeping again. This has nothing to do with Eddie, but he is why she can’t just buy some more smokable sleep.
She’s tired. It fucks with her appetite and makes her muscles ache like she’s aged twenty years. She spends way too much time laying down for someone who sleeps for so little of it. She’s being a massive bitch. She can feel it, and doesn’t know how to stop it other than to not have anyone around to be bitchy to.
She feels like she’s becoming a gloomy rain cloud passing by and dampening the mood to all her friends. Which makes her feel like her dad. Which makes her want to die.
Someone knocks on her door. She ignores it.
They knock again. She ignores it again.
She’s close enough that she can hear someone trying the broken doorbell. Assaulting it repeatedly. Damn. Whatever food delivery driver that has the wrong house is about to be really sorry, because she can feel herself sneering already.
“Yeah!” she shouts, louder than she needs to, when they knock again as she’s walking over. She rips the chain lock free and yanks the door open. She’s probably about to make some poor minimum wage worker cry. Sorry about it.
Eddie’s the one that’s standing there, and she almost slams the door in his face because she just can’t do this. But the sight of him has rendered her paralyzed, which is probably the more polite of the two responses.
“Hi.” He isn’t smiling, and he sounds really nervous. She must not have ever seen him nervous before, since it’s weird. “I heard you might need this.”
He’s fussing with a baggie filled with easily two weeks worth of joints. An eyebrow rises on its own accord. “I don’t have that much cash on me right now.”
“‘S on the house.” He holds it out for her. She doesn’t want to take it. But he doesn’t move, and he looks just a little bit like a kid who wants you to eat something they just burnt to a crisp. So just as she would then, she takes it. “Chrissy’s really worried about you.”
“She knows I’ll be fine. She worries about everyone.”
His bangs look a little long, but she can still see through them how tightly his eyebrows are pulled together. Like his brain is working in overdrive trying to solve a complicated equation. “Can I ask you something?”
“Just did,” she says half-heartedly.
She wishes he would laugh at it, even though it isn’t funny at all. But he doesn’t, he’s still thinking very hard. “Are you, like… emotionally interested in me?”
She blinks at him. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Man, I don’t know! I don’t know what I’m doing here.” He shoves his hands in his pockets, takes them out to play with the drawstring for his hood, messes with his rings. “Okay. Look, I didn’t text you, because I didn’t think it was that serious, because I didn’t think you’d want it to be. I didn’t think it would matter to you if I texted or not.”
“Seriously?” She tosses the baggie onto the table where she keeps her keys so she can be angry with both hands. “You fingered me in front of all your friends. Are you a fucking idiot?”
“Yeah, we all do that! All the time! Well, okay, not all of us all the time.” He adds this quickly when she glares so hard at him her eyes hurt. “Hooking up is well and good and all, but that’s kind of all anyone usually wants from me. I don’t know how to tell it was different.”
“You’re so full of shit,” she scoffs at him. “I wasn’t even mad at you. But coming all the way over to try and tell me you can’t get bitches is gonna really piss me off.”
She thinks about shutting the door before, on top of everything else, he makes her hate him. But he must be some kind of psychic since he slams his hand against the door before she can even reach for the doorknob. Then they stare at each other. “You gonna let me in, or what?”
She’s still his mindless arm candy. She doesn’t even say anything, just steps out of his way and closes the door behind him. He looks around at her house. She doesn’t let guys into her house. Not any that she’s thought about kissing. She doesn’t like it- this is her domain, why is she so nervous?
He looks at a framed picture on her coffee table; herself, Chrissy, Robin, Vicky, Tammy, Nancy, and a lot of her other girl friends whose names all apparently end in a “y.” It’s from her twenty-first birthday, which is probably the last time she pulled out all the stops to treat herself. Yeah you better be looking at that , she thinks, I’ve never looked more hot in my life.
… but Chrissy is hugging her in the picture, and she looks pretty all the time. Not to mention she’s way nicer than Stevie is on her best day.
“Okay, you’re inside,” she says when she suddenly doesn’t want him looking at it anymore. So he looks at her instead, which is hard in its own way. She’s not used to him being totally serious. “Keep trying to tell me you can’t get bitches so we can get this over with.”
Eddie scoffs at this. “I can get bitches,” he says smugly. And it infuriates her that he has every right to be smug about it. He’s probably fighting them off with a stick. “That’s not the problem. It’s what’s supposed to come after.”
She waves her hand in a circle. “Go on.”
He narrows his eyes at her then sucks on his teeth and she thinks that, dare she say it, he’s about to be vulnerable with her. In her house. Eugh! She’s totally not waiting with baited breath to hear what it is that’s leaving him so uncertain. “I’m not… I don’t think anyone’s ever liked me. Or that if some sucker has they never said anything to me about it.”
For a moment, while she stares at him wordlessly, her heart breaks just a little bit for him. But then she comes to her senses. “Bullshit.”
“It’s not, Stevie.” He’s annoyed now.
“Look, I appreciate that you wanna make me feel better and everything. But I’m not mad at you. I might be if you’re gonna try ‘you’re the only one’ on me, though.” She wraps her arms around herself and shrugs. “I’m pissed at myself, okay? This isn’t usually how this shit goes for me, and I’m annoyed I broke some of my own rules. That’s all.”
“So…” he looks confused, thinking for a few moments about what she’s just said. “So if you’re freaking out ‘cause this isn’t what you’re used to, why are you mad at me for trying to tell you the same thing?”
Oh.
Well.
When he puts it like that…
Well, now she just feels like a bitch.
And now they’re just standing there staring at each other. It’s almost like they’re playing chicken, in a way. Two people who have no idea what they’re doing, waiting to see who will fold first and say this was all a mistake, because that might be easier than moving forward. At least that would be familiar. At least that would be quick. Unlike this silence, standing on opposite ends of her living room, which seems to stretch out unbearably long.
Eddie breaks first; in that he looks down and sighs a little bit like he’s tired. “I don’t wanna not see you again,” he says. He sounds sad. He sounds really fucking sad about it. From where she stands she can see that he’s chewing the inside of his cheek. He still is when he looks at her again. “Come here.”
Despite her resolution that the best thing for her is to stay away from him, despite how much she’d just been annoyed with him, her mind goes blank and her body drifts over to him to fulfill his command. She doesn’t even hesitate, the idiot that she is.
Her best guess at what he wants with her is some kind of climactic crashing of lips, him pushing everything off her kitchen counters and fucking her for however long she can handle it, since her only insight into this sort of thing is movies she doesn’t even really like that much.
But once she’s in front of him he just kind of looks at her. His lips slowly start to smile, and she’s mesmerized by it. “Fuck,” he breathes out with something like a laugh. “You’re so pretty, Stevie.”
Don’t you forget it, is what she would normally say to this sort of thing. But this sort of thing is usually said to her to get in her pants, not like a truth that’s so fantastical it’s hard to believe in spite of its truth. “Really?” she asks instead, and it’s so goddamn pathetic of her, and sounds like it too. But she thinks that maybe being a little pathetic for someone might not be so bad, so long as they handle her with care.
“Ridiculously so,” he says. And isn’t that just the nicest thing she’s ever heard. “I really like you.”
“I like you, too,” she blurts out before she can think about it, because it’s all she’s thought about for two weeks. There’s still a dozen things about what this agreement of theirs means, but she’s very clearly more scared of not saying it.
Eddie kisses her, slowly and gently in a way she can’t believe is familiar, but once his hand is on the back of her neck and her arms are wrapped around his she can feel that he’s shaking. Only a little bit. Nowhere near the same as she had been the last time they were kissing. Far less noticeably, but she can feel that he’s tense, almost like he’s scared. Terrified to have come here and put his heart in her hands and see what she’ll do with it.
She grabs onto his collar and pulls him towards her while she takes a step back, both in the direction of the couch. “C’’ere baby.”