Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Eddie flexes his fingers against the grooved steering wheel, wincing when his knuckles pop. God, it’s been a day, with a loading delay that put him on the road during Chicago’s miserable rush hour. As a result, he’s had to make up time—nearly seven hours without a piss break—and if he wants to reach Atlanta by noon, he won’t be able to swing more than four or five hours of sleep. There are regulations about rest, but rules fly out the window when his pay is on the line. 

It’s just past ten o’clock when he swings the rig into the lot of a truck stop outside Louisville, Kentucky. As stops go, this one isn’t bad, and Eddie’s in desperate need of a shave, a shit, and a shower. Not necessarily in that order. He’ll fuel up, fill up, and zonk out in his bunk by eleven, he hopes. If he’s back on the road by three, he’ll arrive in Atlanta bang on time. 

Eddie never was a planner, but his new life necessitates having some idea of where he’s going, and when he’ll get there. He’d like to think that makes him more mature, but he’s still flying by the seat of his pants when it comes to the big picture. Getting his CDL was a way to escape Hawkins. To see the country, even if he’s mostly seeing long, lonely stretches of interstate in between depots. 

There are bright spots. Hazy desert sunrises that make him want to write a sad song, and the occasional free evening to take in a show, meet some locals. Follow a pretty girl to her apartment if she’ll have him. 

Most of the time, though, life comprises shitty diner burgers and far too little sleep. Still, it beats dealing weed to dipshit teenagers, and besides, he’s not gonna do it forever. Driving is just a means to an end he hasn’t decided on yet.

Eddie parks at the furthest pump and goes through the motions to fill up her tanks—unhooking the hose, flipping the switch—then waits to see if the attendant will unlock the pump from within or if he’ll have to pay upfront. Seconds later, he hears the familiar ‘thunk’ and raises a salute to whoever’s working the counter before depressing the handle. Filling up takes a while, so he lights a cigarette (which, yes, it’s stupid to do at a gas station, but he’s careful, alright, and he needs it) and leans back against the cold metal of his cab, surveying the scene. 

The lot’s moderately crowded, and he notes the companies and the plates on the other rigs, scanning to see if there’s anything familiar. Not this time, but that’s okay—if he sees someone he knows, he’s liable to get talked into a drink at a local watering hole. One thing’ll lead to another, and he’ll stay up all night, which is dangerous when driving. 

The pump’s not the fastest he’s seen, and his bladder isn’t getting any less full. He does a little jig to keep himself distracted, counting the cars in the lot (six, including two pickup trucks, a mini-van, and a couple standard sedans) until he hears the ‘click.’ Quick as he can, he stubs out his cigarette and does what needs doing to get the rig from the pump to a parking spot, where he grabs his ratty duffel and sprints across the concrete. 

A bell rings above the door when Eddie pushes it open, and a shiver runs down his spine as the artificial warmth of the heated building cocoons him. Ought to enjoy it while he can—sleeping in the rig’s getting colder and colder, but he’s not splurging on a motel room for a few measly hours of rest. 

“Evening,” he says as he approaches the counter. “Pump twelve and a shower code.”

The woman working the till nods, her cigarette bobbing between her thin, cracked lips as she keys it into the register. “Cash or charge?” 

“Cash.” Eddie takes his wallet from his pocket and hands over the amount, then waits while she makes change. “Busy night?” 

“Not so bad.” She drops a five and some coins into his palm. “Showers are in the way back. Don’t use the last stall—hot water ain’t working worth a damn.” 

“Appreciate you,” Eddie says with a smile, shouldering his duffel bag and giving her a salute. The bag’s damned convenient to have on hand, containing his Dopp kit, a towel, and a few pairs of fresh shorts and socks. Laundry’s difficult to come by, but he doesn’t mind if his jeans get a little stale, so long as his pits and bits stay presentable.

Getting to the showers means a pass through the restaurant, where a couple of older guys are nursing coffees. Eddie’d bet money they belong to the rigs out back, while a family tucked into a booth belongs to the minivan with Tennessee plates. The parents look exhausted, and Eddie can’t help but smile—judging from how the kids are squabbling over some limp-looking French fries, home can’t come soon enough. 

“Excuse me, hon,” comes a brusque voice at his elbow. He looks down to find an older waitress holding a tray with a mug of coffee and a stack of waffles. “You eating or passing through?” 

“Sorry.” Eddie steps back to let her pass. “Showering first, but yeah. I’ll eat.” 

She nods, then scoots by. The pancakes go to a trucker, and the coffee to a woman sitting at a booth behind the family. A funny tension twists in Eddie’s gut at the sight of the woman’s high, strawberry-blonde ponytail. It’s embarrassing—like becoming a ghost of his awkward, pimply self, creeping on a similar ponytail from the back of his history class.

Eddie swallows thickly, then shakes his head. Stupid to even think the thought. Associating some random woman with—

Fucking Jesus, though. That’s definitely Chrissy Cunningham. 

Eddie would know her profile anywhere, and when she turns her head to thank the waitress, he feels his stomach turn to water, and he sprints for the showers, typing in his code with heavy fingers to unlock the door.

What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck?! 

Chrissy Cunningham. At a truck stop in Kentucky. Like some phantom come to life from one of a million wet dreams. 

“Shit,” he exhales as he hides in a stall, dragging the curtain shut behind him. 

He knows that his reaction is outsized. Shit, he and Chrissy never exchanged more than a couple of sentences in school. But the ones they had exchanged fueled Eddie’s crush from eighth grade through his three senior years. Chrissy, meanwhile? Yeah, not so much. She was nice and all, but Eddie’d never kidded himself that his obsession was anything other than one-sided.

And it’s not like he’s been pining for her. He can’t even remember the last time he saw her. It must have been graduation. Or…no. Not graduation. It had been a couple weeks later—he’d been driving down Main Street, and he’d seen her coming out of Melvald’s with Jason Carver, who’d been holding her tight while he laughed.

Chrissy hadn’t been laughing. Eddie remembers that. She’d had this look on her face, some private thing Jason couldn’t see, and her eyes had flicked up once. Settled on Eddie’s van for the briefest of seconds before cutting away. 

That had been that. Eddie had moved on. Except, clearly, he hasn’t, because two and a half years later the sight of her ponytail is enough to send him careening into a truck stop shower, feeling like an oliphaunt just landed on his chest.  

He’s being stupid, though. She won’t remember him. Why would she? She’d been popular. A sweetheart who smiled at Eddie sometimes, because she smiled at everyone. Freaks, jocks, and losers alike. Eddie always figured it was because she had a life untouched by stress or worry, and it made her better than them. Kinder than them.

The kind of girl who married her high school boyfriend. Yeah, Eddie knows all about that. Saw the announcement in the paper not six months after graduation. The idea of getting his CDL had been rolling around in his head before that, but something about the possibility of running into the married version of Chrissy had made him seek training that much faster.

Significant life changes being driven by the marital status of an old crush? Very normal, Munson.

There’s every chance her being here has a logical explanation. Most likely, she and fucking Jason are on a road trip, and the only reason Eddie didn’t see him is that he’s taking a piss. Eddie’ll shower and head back out, and they’ll be gone. Or maybe she was never there at all, and his mind saw what it wanted to. There are plenty of girls with strawberry-blonde hair and pointy chins in the world.

That’s gotta be it, he decides as he strips and tosses his clothes onto the floor outside the stall. It’s not Chrissy, just some lookalike pinging the primal part of his brain that’s never gonna get over the fantasy of the head cheerleader giving him the time of day. Giving him something better than that sweet, distant smile.

“Fuck.” He slaps one hand against the tile before turning on the water and dunking his head beneath the spray.

By the time he’s toweled off and dressed, Eddie’s convinced himself it was a fluke. Nothing like hallucinating his number one fantasy girl in the face of some random woman to convince him he ought to catch some shut-eye. Or jerk off. Probably he ought to jerk off first and get it out of his system.

With a sigh, Eddie runs a comb through his damp curls. Stares at himself in the mirror and tries not to be too self-deprecating about what’s staring back. That’s not Chrissy Cunningham out there, and whatever psychologically traumatic nonsense is happening in his head needs to stop. Right this second. 

Eddie’s over it. He’s over it! He hefts his bag and heads back out, telling himself she’ll be gone. That he made her up. That he’s seeing things and putting faces on people and…

Yeah, no. She’s still there, and she’s still Chrissy, and Eddie walks directly into a two-top when he sees her, sending the silverware scattering and a chair screeching along the floor.

Chrissy carefully selects four packets of sweetener and arranges them on the table in a line. She inhales, tapping each in turn. Holds her breath. Exhales and repeats the action. Does it again and again until her mind stops racing and her heart settles back into the confines of her chest.

The breathing technique is one she read about in a magazine. It’s meant to be used when someone is anxious, though Chrissy likes to tell herself she isn’t.

“One. Two. Three. Four.” She counts again, slim fingers shaking as she touches each packet with nails bitten nearly to the quick. Ugly, but she has so many ugly habits, it’s hard to keep track. 

“Equal makes your mouth taste like biting into an aspirin.” 

Chrissy jumps at the voice, then realizes it’s the waitress returning with her coffee.

“Oh, I wasn’t—“ 

“Here you go. I recommend the Sweet’n’Low if you don’t take sugar.” 

The coffee is placed on the table, and Chrissy’s cheeks redden at being caught doing something strange and self-soothing. She recovers quickly, turning to thank the woman. 

“You’re welcome. You sure you don’t want anything to eat?” 

There’s a display case of sweets not twenty feet away. It was the first thing Chrissy saw when she came in from the cold. Red velvet cake. Chocolate cream pie. Cookies the size of her head. Her mouth waters. “No, thank you. Do you—” She clears her throat. “The Greyhound to New Orleans stops here at midnight, right?”

“Mmm. Around then.” The waitress shifts her weight and rests the tray against her ample hip. “That’s where you’re headed?” 

“Yes,” Chrissy lies. “I’m going to see my cousin.” 

“Nice city, New Orleans. Good music.”

It’s clear the woman wants to talk, and Chrissy can be a good listener, even if she’s not interested in the topic. Experience has taught her to nod in all the right places. Smile appreciatively. Mold herself into whatever someone else might need. She’s always excelled at fitting into other people’s boxes.

The one-sided conversation comes to a halt when a man flags the waitress over. She gives Chrissy an apologetic smile, but Chrissy doesn’t mind. Things are easier when she’s alone. When life is quiet, she can focus on the plan. Her plan. The plan she’s been making for six months and executing for six hours. 

As plans go, it’s pretty simple. 

Step one, start running.

Step two, keep running.

Step three? She’ll figure it out, eventually.

It was hard to take that first step. Hard to make herself pick up the bag with three changes of clothes and four hundred eighty-seven dollars sewn into the lining. Hard to walk out the door. Get in her car. Drive.

Hard enough knowing he might already be following.

Chrissy shudders and wraps her shaking hands around the warm mug. Presses it to her chest and counts the sugar packets while she breathes.

She’s jolted from her reverie by a screeching sound, and she startles. Looks up to find a lanky man in a denim jacket stumbling over a chair. 

“Damn it,” he swears, and Chrissy’s heart stutters because she knows that voice, and that voice is not part of her plan. 

It takes a second for her brain to pull the right levers. For her to remember why she recognizes the wide brown eyes that stare back at her, panicked. 

When it clicks, Chrissy stands abruptly. Knocks over her coffee, which splatters on the sweetener packets and on the leg of her jeans. 

“Oh, shit.” The man—Eddie, her memories supply, high school Eddie—rushes forward, hands going a million miles an hour as he grabs napkins and starts sopping up the mess. Stringing together apologies as his ringed fingers curl around the sticky sludge. 

There’s too much happening. Too fast. Chrissy puts her hand on the back of the booth and sucks in a sharp breath, which makes Eddie’s head snap up. Dark eyes boring a hole in her. 

Three lines form on his brow, and he straightens, holding his sodden napkin in front of himself like a shield. “I’m so sorry.”

“You’re Eddie,” she says. 

His eyes crinkle at the corners. She can see him clearly now in the way he ducks his head. Smiles and gives her a funny half-bow. 

“I didn’t know if you’d remember me.” His hands have a vice grip on the napkin, which is dripping a steady stream of brown water back onto the table. “When I saw you—“ 

“I remember. You’re… it’s Eddie Munson, right?” 

His smile widens. “Got it in one, Chrissy Cunningham.” 

Chrissy nods, then feels like an imposter because that’s not her name anymore. But Eddie doesn’t know that, so in the right here and now, she can pretend. Take off Jason’s and slip her own back on. The name fits as poorly as the cheer skirts her mother had endlessly altered, but it’s hers, so she’ll wear it for the time being. Maybe find something that suits her better in a new life.

“It’s good to see you,” she says, her manners falling into place as the waitress approaches with a roll of paper towels. “I’m so sorry, I’ve made such a mess…” 

“Nothing I can’t handle, honey,” says the waitress as she unrolls a few sheets and passes them to Chrissy so she can dry her jeans. Eddie takes some, too, swiping at the mess on the table. It’s clear he feels bad for what happened, though he shouldn’t. Chrissy made her own chaos, and it’s not fair he’s cleaning it up. 

Eddie and the waitress make quick work of the spill despite Chrissy’s guilty conscience, and the woman disposes of the sodden paper towels before returning to the table. “You still eating?” she asks him. 

“Uh. Yes. Yeah.” Eddie glances at Chrissy, and it’s awkward, all of a sudden. There’s no entry in an Emily Post etiquette book for stumbling across the boy her husband bullied back when they’d been in school together. 

“How about you? You want more coffee?” 

Chrissy nods, and Eddie stammers a quick, “my treat.” 

There’s an opening there, and though part of Chrissy wants to demur—to hide in her car and wait for the Greyhound that’s going to steal her away—she’s not a rude person. She was raised better than that. “Please, sit,” she says, gesturing to the other side of the booth before looking at the waitress. “We’re old friends. Went to high school together.” 

Eddie makes a funny noise. Chrissy winces, because she understands why. There’s no way he would ever think of them as friends. From what she remembers, Eddie had plenty of those. There had always been a gaggle of people around him in the cafeteria, and she recalls him running some sort of club. There were rumors about him, too, some more substantiated than others. Jason’s friends used to buy weed from him, so she knows the drug dealer story was true. But the others—that his father had killed a guy, that Eddie was gay or had had a threesome (the details on that one varied by the day), that he worshipped the devil—she’s not sure about those. Either way, Eddie is more interesting than Chrissy could ever be, and her calling them ‘friends’ is a stretch. 

“That’s nice,” says the waitress as Eddie slides into the booth. “I’ll be right back with your coffee.” 

Chrissy thanks her, then joins him, despite the heat pooling in her cheeks.

Chapter Text

Chrissy Cunningham just called them friends. Eddie’s gonna go walk directly into the sea, and not like the ‘Straight Road to Valinor, baby’ sea, but the sea where he can float away, face-down, because none of this is actually happening. He is not being invited to slide into a booth with his high school obsession. Especially not after scaring the shit out of her and ruining the jeans that… look. Eddie’s no saint. Those jeans look like a pair she’d had in school that he’d spent a lot of time thinking about. Specifically, the way they hugged her ass when she bent over in English to pick up a dropped pencil. Jesus Christ. That one had played on a loop in his brain for weeks. 

These jeans aren’t so tight. Or maybe Chrissy’s just not filling them out as much. She’s lost weight, and as she slides into the booth, putting her purse on the seat beside her, Eddie can see her collarbones beneath the loose neck of her lavender sweatshirt pulling to one side. And not to be a total, actual creep show, but Eddie remembers Chrissy’s body pretty well. She’d never been big, but she’d been athletic. Toned. Gross that he knows that, sure, but shit, he’d been sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and she was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen in person. 

Now, though, she’s smaller. Avian, even, swallowed up by the clothes she wears.

It occurs to Eddie that maybe they are the same jeans. They just don’t fit her anymore. 

She’s looking at him, and he realizes he ought to say something. But all he can think about is that her hands are folded on the table, and while there’s no ring on her finger, he notes see the pale strip of skin where one used to be. 

He’s not gonna bring that up, though. 

“It, uh… so.” A bead of water trickles its way down his neck, beneath the frayed band of his Slayer shirt, and he wishes he’d spent more time toweling off. Wishes he wasn’t wearing the same goddamn tee and jeans he’d spent the past three days stinking up. “What brings you to Kentucky?” 

As opening volleys go, it’s pretty dumb. Chrissy just shrugs. “Passing through.” 

“On your way home?” 

She stills. “No. I’m… ” Her hands flex on the table, and the nail bed of her thumbnail is rubbed raw and red like she’s been picking at it. “What about you?” 

There’s something wrong. She’s too twitchy. Nervy. Dodging questions and not quite meeting his eyes. Eddie can roll with it, though. It’s not like he’s got any right to pry. “Oh, uh, Atlanta. I’m…” He gestures toward the plate-glass window, which faces the truck lot. “I got my CDL. I’m driving. You know. Uh. A big rig.” 

Suave. Cool. Chill and professional. She’ll be extremely impressed.

Chrissy glances out the window, then back down at her hands, which she turns over, covering her ragged thumbnail with the opposite palm. “That must be hard,” she says after a moment. “I think I’d be scared.” 

“It’s not so bad. Worst part’s reversing, and I’ve just about got a handle on it. Only killed like… six cats last week.”

That draws a startled laugh, to Eddie’s delight. “You did not.” 

“No, you’re right.” He pauses for effect. “It was eight.” 

“That’s not funny!” Except, maybe it is, because she’s leaning forward, and she’s looking right at him, lips twisted like she’s trying not to laugh again.  

Eddie doesn’t get the chance to keep teasing before the waitress returns with fresh coffee for Chrissy. He places his order—burger, fries—then points at her cup. “And her coffee’s on me, like I said. Plus, uh, anything else you want.” 

“Oh, no. I’m fine.” 

“Least I can do, considering I made you spill it.” 

Chrissy fixes him with a funny look. “No, you didn’t.” 

“Cause and effect.” He’d scared her, she’d stood, and the coffee had been the victim of his crime. “C’mon.” 

“I—alright. But just the coffee. I’m not hungry.” 

The waitress nods. Pockets her pad and leaves them to it.

“Thank you,” Chrissy says, looking down at her cup.

Eddie shrugs. Slumps in the booth to offer her a smile, only he can’t get her to catch his eye. “Sorry about your jeans.” 

“It’ll wash out.” She reaches into the square porcelain container of sugar packets and removes a pink one, which she rips open and shakes into her mug. “You said you were going to Atlanta?” 

“Uh-huh.” 

“Is that where you’re living, too?” 

“Oh, uh. No. I’m… home base is still Hawkins.” Specifically, the Forest Hills trailer park, same as it ever was. He’s gone for weeks at a time, so it makes sense to stay with Wayne. No point in paying rent on an apartment. 

“Oh.” Chrissy uses the small teaspoon to stir her drink, the metal clinking against the sides in a jittery rhythm. “I didn’t know that.” 

“Well, shit, why would you?” Eddie says before he can think better of it. “I mean… well, I just mean. We didn’t exactly hang out.” 

“No. We didn’t.” Chrissy stops stirring. Wipes the spoon on a napkin and places her fingertips on the table's edge. Christ, Eddie’s got to stop staring at her hands. “You were so intimidating.”

Eddie laughs, sharp and surprised, as if he hadn’t spent six years cultivating the image. It was funny, how quickly that desperate need to be on the counter-side of the culture faded once he finally had his diploma in hand. “Oh yeah?” 

“Sure.” Chrissy runs her nail along the metal rim. “I was scared of you.” 

That revelation hits Eddie like a punch to the gut, and he exhales another bark of laughter. “You… c’mon, Cunningham. Seriously?” Sure, he’d played up the fuck-off card with the jocks and the assholes, but he’d always had a soft spot for the cheerleaders. One in particular. And, you know, he likes to think he was a gentleman.

“Yes!” She looks up and meets his eyes at last, then leans in, all conspiratorial-like. “You dealt drugs.” 

The way she says it—with the awe of a Nancy Reagan after-school special—makes Eddie grin. “Well, sure. But—” 

“And Ja—” She stops, eyes flicking to the side, then back to him. “Some people said you were in a cult. A devil cult.” 

“Oh, that old chestnut.” He puffs out his chest. “It’s true, though. I am, in fact, in congress with the Beast.”

Chrissy’s eyes widen; Eddie goes for the kill.

“I’m in the senate with him, too.” 

It takes a moment for the joke to land, but when it does, Chrissy’s face splits into a grin—a real one, not the rictus pretense of politeness she’s been pasting on since he made her spill her coffee. “You’re making fun of me!”

Eddie clasps his hands above his heart, falling dramatically against the cracked plastic of the booth. “I would never.” 

“You are!”

He smiles. Sits up and puts his chin on his hand so he can study her. “Swear I’m not.” 

“Eddie…” 

“You know, I was scared of you, too.” 

Chrissy’s expression melts into one of genuine shock, and as her baby blues get even bigger than before, Eddie notices that she’s wearing makeup around just the left one. Not eyeshadow or anything, but the liquid stuff girls put on to cover up zits. Concealer, maybe? Yeah, that’s it. She’s wearing concealer, and he doesn’t know why, but it adds a disconcerting dimension to the picture he’s drawing about the who, what, why, when, and where of her situation. Detective Munson, reporting for duty, and this here sit-chee-a-shun ain’t passing the sniff test, see?

“Me?” she says, all breathy, as if she’s delighted by the suggestion that anyone could find her frightening. 

“Yeah, you.” He luxuriates in her enjoyment, tapping his fingers against his chin and waggling his eyebrows. “Terrifying.” 

She laughs, then, and brings both hands up to cover her face before peeking at him from between her fingers. Eddie thinks it might be the cutest thing he’s ever seen. “I didn’t mean to be.”

A wild urge to reach across the table and pull her hands down strikes Eddie square in the chest. To reassure her that she’s not scary, really. To kiss her palms. The tips of her fingers. Draw her hands to his heart and hold them there until she understands that his terror never came from what she did but who she was. And not even who she really was, only the person he’d made up when he thought about her. The girl in a cheer skirt running through his mind, taunting him by staying just out of reach. 

He doesn’t, though. Instead, he reaches into his pocket for his cigarettes because he needs something new to do with his hands. They’re not sitting in the smoking section, but there’s an ashtray on the table and he gets the sense nobody cares. “Don’t sweat it, Cunningham,” he says, aiming for nonchalant but ending up awkward. “You ran with a tough crowd.” 

Her hands curl into fists, and she drops them to the table. She’s not laughing anymore. “I’m sorry,” she says after a moment. “I know… I don’t think people were very nice to you.” 

True enough. People—specifically her people—hadn’t been very nice to Eddie at all. But he’d combated that by finding his own people. Founding his own club. Taking every opportunity he could to stay one step ahead of the bullying. To pretend he didn’t care or that it didn’t hurt. He got pretty good at it, too. Could almost convince himself their insults—queerjunkietrailertrashloserFREAK—never wormed their way beneath his skin. 

“Water under the bridge,” he says as he sticks a cigarette between his lips.

“If I ever did anything...”

Eddie laughs. He can’t help it, even if it compounds the frown furrowing Chrissy’s brow. “You, uh… no. You never did anything.” 

That, at least, is true. Chrissy had been no more and no less than someone who’d performed a cheerleading routine at a talent show. That she’d caught Eddie’s eye in the process was no fault of her own. Neither was the fact that she hadn’t known he existed beyond the same amiable smile in the hallway she gave to everyone. Because Chrissy Cunningham was a nice girl. A nice girl who’d broken Eddie’s heart a million times by simply existing. But that was his problem—the mental wounds inflicted by his sad fantasies were his own to lick. 

“I’m still sorry, if you really thought I was mean.” 

“I didn’t…” He exhales a cloud of smoke and offers her a smile. “I didn’t say that. I said you were scary.” 

“What’s the difference?” 

“You were… popular. Pretty. C’mon—you know every guy with a pulse noticed you.” 

Chrissy frowns. “That’s not true.” 

“It’s not not true,” he counters. 

That’s met with silence from the other side of the table. They’re saved by the waitress, who unceremoniously deposits Eddie’s burger and fries. The speed at which the food arrived tells him it was probably sitting under a warmer, but hey, it’s a distraction from the awkwardness that’s settled over their conversation. 

“Huh,” Eddie says once the waitress is gone, poking at the limp bun. “You think this is forty percent sawdust, or sixty?” 

It’s a soft volley, the topic shift. Chrissy seems grateful for it, though, as she peers across the table, forehead furrowing. “Ew, Eddie.” 

“I mean, it better be at least twenty percent beef for two bucks.” He lifts the bun to study the grey patty beneath. 

“What’s the other percent?”

“Hmm?” 

“If it’s forty-to-sixty percent sawdust, and twenty percent beef, what’s the other percent?” 

“Oh. Uh. Rats?” 

He’s going for a gross-out and gets what he’s after, with Chrissy squeaking another horrified little “ew, Eddie!” in response.

Grinning, he runs the cherry of his cigarette around the rim of the ashtray to break it off, then tucks the other half into the pack. Can’t be too economical in these trying times. “I’m just pointing out facts!”

“How can you eat it now?” 

“Oh, easy. Like this.” He takes a dramatic, messy bite, fully expecting another freakout.

Instead, she laughs, the freckles on her nose scrunching up as she pulls a face. “So dumb.”

He likes it when he can make her laugh. So he takes another bite, then another, wolfing down the burger just to see that smile.

“Eddie?” she says as he swallows his fourth mouthful. 

“Hmm?”

“Would it be… could you please maybe take me to Atlanta with you?” 

It’s a good thing he already swallowed, because that request definitely would have made him choke.

The question makes sense in Chrissy’s mind, but as soon as it leaves her mouth, it becomes something else. A confusing tangle of overstepped boundaries that fly across the table at Eddie. He freezes like they’re kids playing tag, and Chrissy thinks she’d like to reach out and snatch back the notion. Pretend she never asked. Play it off as a joke.

But if she does that… if she does that, then all the things she’s been thinking about since sitting down with Eddie Munson won’t come to pass. Instead, she will be wasting an opportunity to tuck herself away in an unexpected notion, where Jason won’t know to look for her. Won’t expect it of her. 

That, and Eddie makes her laugh. Makes her smile when she ought to fear the inevitable reprimand that’s coming when Jason discovers she’s gone.

So, Chrissy is changing the plan. She wants to disappear, and it’s easier to do that with Eddie than on a Greyhound full of strangers, any of whom might remember her. A driver who might talk if her husband comes poking around. 

Going with Eddie is safer. And maybe that’s crazy—she doesn’t know him, not really—but lately, Chrissy’s been feeling like she’s losing her mind, and talking to Eddie is the first time she’s felt sane in weeks. Months. Years, maybe.

“You—“ Eddie’s scrambling for words. “What?” 

“I want to go to Atlanta. Will you take me with you, please?” 

Eddie’s brow furrows into an almost comically hangdog look of consternation. “Why?” 

Chrissy folds her hands on the table, grinding the heel of the top one into the back of the bottom just to feel the disconcerting slide of bone on sinew. “Because I need a vacation,” she says, holding her gaze steady as he studies her. 

He sees it, she thinks, how she’s twisted out of shape inside. It ought to disconcert how he looks at her like he knows her well. But there’s no guile in his dark brown eyes. All she can see, in fact, is warmth.

They’d all assumed Eddie was stupid, back in school. A third-try senior by the time he was in Chrissy’s class. A running list of rumors rather than a living, breathing human being. He’d been a joke. A loser. A trailer trash wastoid who spent more time smoking up than studying and had the grades to prove it. 

Chrissy hadn’t questioned any of that too deeply. Hadn’t spent much time thinking about Eddie Munson at all. Certainly hadn’t ever thought about whether he was handsome (yes), kind (she hopes so), or funny (absolutely). He had been background noise. An extra playing his part in the soap opera that was her high school experience, where she’d been inadvertently cast as the lead. 

It all seems so silly now, sitting across from him, far away from the small town that formed them. They’re people. Two people. One asking for something from the other that’s far out of balance to any relationship they ever had. But Chrissy sees now that Eddie’s no slouch. That he understands what she’s really saying when she makes her request.

“What are you going to do when we get there?” he asks at last, which is its own sort of answer. 

“I guess go to a baseball game.” The only thing she knows about Atlanta is that their baseball team is called the Braves. 

Eddie’s mouth curves into a smile. “It’s November.” 

“Oh. Then maybe I’ll just buy a hat.” 

He laughs, but there’s no cruelty in it. “All the way to Atlanta to buy a hat?” 

“Sure.” 

“You’re a freak.” 

Warmth pools low in her belly, an ember stoked by the kindness in his tone. “Maybe. But you’ll take me?” 

“Yeah, alright.” He hesitates. “But—”

“Eddie, please,” she bites out before he can finish. If he asks her why, presses her for the story, it will spoil every good and magical thing about this moment that feels so safe and free and next door to normal. “Please.” 

He frowns, and her heart climbs its way into her throat. The fluorescent light above them seems to pulse brighter as she waits on the precipice of Eddie’s choice.

“I—sure, alright, Cunningham. Atlanta.”

They leave the unspoken things on the table with what’s left of Eddie’s fries. He pays, and they go to the parking lot, where the temperature has fallen by another few degrees. 

Chrissy’s car is parked in the spot furthest from the door, its Indiana plates a flashing neon sign in her mind. The Greyhound won’t be here for a couple hours; it’s better that she’s going now. Giving Jason no trail to follow.

She asks Eddie to wait. Pops the trunk and retrieves her pink checked jacket along with the single suitcase she’d been able to pack under her husband’s nose. It had been her father’s, once upon a time, and his monogram is embossed on the leather. 

The empty trunk looks like a mouth, screaming at her to be a good girl Chrissy and turn around Chrissy and go home Chrissy and take your medicine Chrissy. Hitching in a sharp breath, she throws her keys into the depths of that gaping maw and slams it shut. 

“There,” she breathes, squeezing her hands into fists. “So there.” 

Eddie’s hovering at a respectful distance. Chrissy looks at him, her heart pounding against her ribcage, expecting to find pity. Finds bemusement instead. But Eddie doesn’t press his curiosity. Doesn’t ask. Just offers to carry her bag across the lot to where his truck is waiting. 

“Oh, gosh,” Chrissy says as they approach the mass of metal. The cab is red and intimidatingly large up close, with chrome accents that shine under the floodlights. As for the rest of it—the load, maybe? She doesn’t know the term—it’s a million miles long, bright white, and an unfamiliar company name is stamped on the side. “What’s um… what’s in there?” 

“Primary metals.” Eddie unlocks the passenger side of the cab and winks at her. “As opposed to heavy.” 

She thinks that might be a joke. “I don’t know if you’re teasing me or not.”

Eddie laughs and hops onto the bottom running board. The truck is so big that getting in is like climbing a staircase, and Chrissy’s stomach gives a pleasant little swoop at the idea of sitting up so high. “It’s the stuff places use to manufacture other stuff. Ah—sorry about the mess. It’s the maid’s day off.” 

The interior doesn’t look so bad from where Chrissy’s standing—cluttered, maybe, but not gross. Eddie picks up some papers and a clipboard to put them into the glove compartment, then lifts a guitar case from the passenger seat and pushes it into the back. He does the same with her suitcase before hefting himself into the cab and turning around to offer her a hand. 

“Come on up. I’ll give you the grand tour.”

She takes his hand, which is warm and calloused, and steps into the truck. The interior is considerably warmer than the parking lot and smells like the pine air freshener hanging from one of the myriad knobs and buttons covering the dash. There’s a small wastepaper bin on the floor between the seats, and she can see several fast food wrappers in it, along with at least two packs of Lucky Strikes. 

Eddie shifts to the driver’s seat and gestures toward the space where he’d put her bag. It’s like a tiny bedroom back there, containing some closed storage compartments and a bunk covered by a colorful quilt. Color isn’t exactly what she expects from Eddie Munson, but she likes the contrast of its bright patchwork against the industrial quality of the surrounding fittings.

The quilt isn’t the only homey touch, though. Eddie’s taped a few pictures to the wall behind the bunk, though she can’t see well enough in the dim interior to tell what they are. Loose cassettes litter the area between the seats, and she spies a box full of them in a storage cubby beneath the bed.

“So, uh. You know. The second-floor guest room is getting renovated, and you can’t use the pool because it’s too cold, so this is really it. There’s a mini-fridge with water if you’re thirsty.” 

Eddie’s rambling. A running monologue for her benefit, as if he’s nervous. He has no reason to be nervous.

“I love it,” she says to set him at ease. “It’s like a hobbit house.” 

“I—oh.” The ramble stops mid-sentence. “You think so?” 

“Mmm hmm. Back there, anyway. You wouldn’t know from the outside that it’s cozy, but it is.”

“Cozy,” Eddie echoes, then ducks his head. “How uh… how do you know about hobbits?” 

“Because I read the book when I was little.”

“Oh. And you liked it?”

“Uh-huh.” She’d loved it, in fact. Reading about Bilbo and Gandalf and Beorn and Smaug, the dragon. But then, most of the books she’d cherished as a child had followed similar themes: setting out on an adventure. Escaping from normality and running to someplace new and fantastic. It didn’t matter if she was visiting Narnia through a wardrobe, entering Oz on the back of a tornado, or flying to Never Never Land. Little Chrissy simply wanted to disappear.

Somewhere along the way, though, she had stopped going on adventures with her friends and started tucking herself into tiny boxes instead.  

“That’s…” Eddie laughs. Bounces from his seat into the hobbit hole, where he opens a tall, slim door to reveal a closet that holds a leather jacket and a couple flannel shirts. He pushes the guitar case in, along with her suitcase, then shuts it tight. “Did you ever read the sequel? The Lord of the Rings?” 

“No. Should I?” 

“They’re my favorite books.” He hesitates. “But they’re kinda… different.” 

“Different how?” 

“Just different.” He swings himself into the driver’s seat, then gestures to her still-open door. “You ready?” 

Chrissy nods. Reaches out and grabs the handle, then uses all her strength to swing the heavy door shut.

Eddie turns the key, and the truck springs to life like Smaug shaking off his slumber. Chrissy nearly laughs as she buckles her seatbelt, watching Eddie check his mirrors before shifting into drive.  

Slowly, the dragon rolls forward. Chrissy turns her face to the window. Watches her car with its Indiana plates and its keys in the trunk until Eddie turns out of the lot, and she can’t see it anymore. 

She hopes she’ll never see it again.

She’s going on an adventure. 

Chapter Text

Eddie’s gotta stop looking over at the passenger seat, but Jesus, how can he? He’s driving through the inky darkness of a Tennessee night with Chrissy Cunningham curled into herself at his side, and he’s pretty sure if he doesn’t keep checking in, she might just disappear on him. 

And yet, every time he looks, there she is. Tucked into a ball with her legs pulled to her chest, little white sneakers poking out onto the worn fabric of the seat, and arms wrapped around her calves so she can lean her head on her knees. 

They’ve been on the road for a few hours now. At first, Eddie had leaned into his worst tendencies—he’d put on a show. Cracked stupid jokes. Gesticulated and pontificated and tried to impress her. Desperate to make her smile. And sure, she’d give him what he was after, but it was the same smile she’d had in the hallways of high school. Deferential to his antics in the way nice girls always are, because they get taught from a young age to let men think they’re funny. 

Eddie is funny sometimes, but he doesn’t want her smiling unless she means it. So he cools it. Starts talking to her like she’s a person. Asking her questions. Checking in about the music, the temperature, the comfort of her seat. 

Chrissy proves exceptionally easygoing. Or, at least, she’s pretending to be. Everything is “I’m fine,” or “whatever you want,” or “very comfortable,” even though Eddie knows for a fact that there’s nothing comfortable about hours spent dealing with his truck’s suspension.

Eventually, she asks him some questions in return. Polite ones about his driving. The gauges covering the console. How the trucking industry works. She’s quiet but curious, and Eddie’s self-conscious about answering at first—thinks she’s just being courteous again by asking—but she presses him for more. Asks follow-ups. Furrows her brow when he talks about how long he spends driving and wants to know whether it’s lonely. 

“Sure, sometimes.” Loneliness is a fact of life in this job, and he compensates by striking up conversations with strangers and getting to know the stories of everyone he comes across. Part of him wants to believe he’s making friends everywhere he goes, but it’s hard to say if the strangers he pesters feel the same way about him. Still, talking helps, even if nobody’s listening. “I’m used to it now.”

She tilts her head, the rolling lights of I-24 rhythmically casting her pretty face in shadow and light as she fidgets with the ends of her ponytail. “Do you like it?”

“It’s a job.” 

“But do you like it?” 

The question is one Eddie hasn’t bothered to consider. Jobs aren’t for enjoying. Jobs are for rent, food, and keeping the electricity on. “Some days, yes; some days, no. But the money’s good even on the bad days.”

“It would have to be, since you’re away from home for so long.” 

“Sure. I mean, I’m not missing anything back in Hawkins.” 

“No?” She shifts her weight, and Eddie pretends to be too much of a gentleman to notice the way the gaping neck of her too-big sweatshirt is showing off her collarbone. Which is, admittedly, one of his favorite places on a woman. Kissable, bitable, all sorts of -able. 

“Nope.” 

“Oh.” 

She gets quiet after that. Turns her head to face the window. Eddie, who’s never met a silence he couldn’t fill with inanity, keeps his mouth shut by sheer force of will. 

There is obviously something going on with her. He’d have to be blind to miss it, not least because she hitched a fucking ride with him out of a truck stop and threw her keys into the trunk of her car like they were burning her fingers. Whatever it is, it’s serious, but she’s dancing around it like one of her old cheerleading routines. Those things were ridiculous, with the little flippy skirts and the pom-poms. Eddie had pretended to be above it—had skipped every pep rally—but during football season, when he’d sold under the bleachers of their pitiful stadium, he’d been just about eye level with those sexy, pleated monstrosities.

Which had been… formative. Yep. Formative. But he’s not a creep, and Wayne raised him to be respectful. More than that, Wayne liked to remind him that women weren’t just a collection of pretty parts for him to ogle, which was a revolutionary concept to Eddie, whose father had always treated his girlfriends like so much wasted oxygen. And, yeah, he knows he’s not perfect—knows he’s attracted to her, still—but he won’t force her to talk, and he’s gonna do his best to compartmentalize how he feels about the memories of her that have imprinted on his mind. 

The thing is, though, with her getting quiet? It removes the one distraction that’s been keeping him awake. Of course, he’s a fool for driving straight through, but what were his other options? Invite Chrissy to sit and wait while he caught some Zs in the truck stop parking lot? 

And yet, Eddie is only human. So he probably should have done that. Probably needs to do that. Because if he drives them off the side of a cliff as they climb towards Monteagle, he will feel like a real asshole for murdering Chrissy. A dead asshole, sure, but an asshole all the same. 

So, yeah. It’s gonna be awkward, but he’s gotta stop for both their sakes.

“Hey, Chrissy?”

She lifts her head. “Hmm?” 

“Can you, uh… there’s an atlas in the glove box. Can you grab it and look something up for me?” 

She uncurls herself and fiddles with the catch on the compartment, then drags the massive Rand McNally tome from its proper place. He had inherited it from the last guy who drove this truck—a decent dude named Skip who’d been retiring—and he uses it to map his routes in advance. Ever a scribbler, Eddie’s littered nearly every page with notes—shit burger, good shower; NEVER AGAIN—and the book is falling to bits in places. 

“Thank you,” he says. “It uh… look, I know this is weird, but I haven’t slept since yesterday, and I can feel myself drifting off, which is… yeah. Don’t want that. I only need a couple hours, and I promise I’ll buy you breakfast in the morning to make up for stopping.” 

Chrissy looks confused. “You want me to find a motel?”

“Oh. No. The uh…” He kicks his thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll go back… or, you can go back there, actually. I’ll sleep here. I just need you to tell me how far we are from a rest area.” 

“Okay,” she says like she does it daily, flipping open the atlas. Eddie assumed he’d have to teach her how to use it, but she seems to have no trouble as her forefinger and thumb map distances. Her lips move a little, talking to herself when she’s concentrating, which he finds charming. 

“I think… um, ten miles, maybe?” She taps the page.

“Fantastic. Let’s just hope it’s accurate.” He’s been burned before, but mainly, the highways and byways haven’t changed much since the atlas was published.

The signs for the rest area appear a few minutes later, and he breathes a sigh of relief. This stop is for trucks only, though, which means the lot is likely to be full at this time of night. Fate is kind, however; as he heads onto the ramp toward the cluster of semis idling in the dark, a pair of headlights flare to life. 

“Thank you, buddy,” he says as his savior takes his leave, then angles his rig into the open spot through a complicated faux-parallel parking maneuver. 

As he finishes, Chrissy breathes, “wow. You’re so… I could never do that.” 

“Sure you could. Just takes a bit of practice.” 

“No. I couldn’t.” 

There’s a finality to her tone, so he drops it. Luxuriates in the oh-so-manly feeling of a cute girl being impressed by his derring-do instead. He’s only human. 

“So uh.” He clears his throat. “Like I said, you can take the bunk. I’ll be fine up here.” 

“Oh. No, that’s alright. I’m not very tired.” 

It’s pushing three in the morning, and he raises a brow. “You don’t have to be polite on my account, Cunningham.” 

A smile quirks her mouth when he calls her that. The same one from the restaurant. Eddie can’t help but think of the wedding announcement and wonders if she’d still be smiling if he called her Carver instead. 

“I’m not being polite, I promise. I just don’t feel like sleeping.” 

“What are you going to do?” 

“Um. Do you have any books?”

Eddie does. Some trade paperbacks he doesn’t care about—he’ll finish them and swap them for others at thrift stores—and a few pieces of his permanent collection. “Sure. They’re uh—” It occurs to him that the books are in the same storage cubby where he keeps his skin mags, because he’s twenty-two goddamn years old, and he’s spent the better part of two years keeping his own solitary company. Still, Chrissy’s not gonna be perusing the library if he has anything to say about it. “You know what? I’ll get them for you. How about the Lord of the Rings?” Her affinity for hobbits had surprised him, so he figures she might want to give it a shot. 

“You have that?” 

“Wouldn’t leave home without it.” 

She nods, so he unbuckles his seatbelt and dips into the cab to open the compartment of oh-so-classy lit-ra-choor. Where naturally, the first thing he sees is an issue of Triple Play with a fucking cheerleader on the cover. Swallowing hard, he shoves the magazine as far back as possible, grabs Fellowship, and slams the door. 

“Uh, here,” he says, fighting off a blush as he hands Chrissy the book, which means a lot to him for… yeah. A few reasons. It’s certainly seen better days—the cover is ripped, and he’s read it so many times that there are a few pages near the middle that have come away from the binding—but she takes it like it’s some treasured relic, which he appreciates. 

“Thank you.” 

“Sure. And I’ve got a… hang on.” He kneels on his bunk and rummages through the little storage net where he has various handy things, including a clip-on pen light.

Chrissy thanks him again. He nods, then sits on the edge of the bunk to contemplate his situation. Typically, he’d strip to his boxers without a second thought, but that’s not going to happen with Chrissy sitting mere inches away. So, he settles for tugging off his boots and socks, tucking both into the small space behind the driver’s seat. He can only hope his feet don’t stink—isn’t there some science thing about people not being able to smell themselves?—but he did just take a shower, so that’s gotta count for something. 

“Okay, so I’m just gonna… be here. Obviously. If you need anything, just shake me awake. Or if you want to sleep, we can switch places. And it’ll only be a couple of hours. But, uh, there can be weird people around, so don’t get out of the truck. Well, you can, but if you need to, please wake me up.” 

She’s looking at him with an inscrutable expression, half-twisted around in her seat. “Thank you, but I’m sure I’ll be alright.” 

“Right. But just in case—” 

“Eddie. Please get some sleep.” 

That settles that. Eddie peels back the quilt and rolls himself up in it, facing the wall. His jeans feel heavy and hot, but the situation is what it is.

At first, he worries he won’t be able to drift off, what with having her so close, his favorite book on her lap. 

Chrissy. Goddamn. Cunningham.

But she’s not that anymore, not really. She’s just Chrissy now, and though he doesn’t know this real version of her that well, he feels he might like her even more than the fake one in his head. Fake Chrissy never read Tolkien. Never asked him if he was lonely. 

Fake Chrissy was always out of reach. And real Chrissy? Shit, all he has to do is turn over.

Chrissy can tell when Eddie falls asleep. There is a distinct before and after when the rhythm of his breath turns from sporadic, interspersed with slight movements and twitches as he gets comfortable, into something slow, even, and easy. 

Over the years, she has perfected the art of listening to someone else sleep. Of staring at a ceiling in a dark room, counting the breaths. Waiting until she is sure Jason has dropped into a deep, snoring slumber before she sneaks away. Wanders to the living room. Flips through magazines and watches television with the sound turned down so low she can barely hear it, the flickering false faces friendlier than most real ones in her life.

This is nicer, she decides. Nicer to have freedom in a truck cab on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere than to be forced to lie still and silent, lest she disturb her husband’s rest. Nicer to read a book she’s never read within arm’s length of a man she hardly knows. Nicer to be with a man who believed her when she said she wasn’t sleepy. Didn’t roll his eyes and say come to bed, Chrissy, as if she were a child who needed to be minded. 

She does sleep, sometimes. Usually when her body chooses for her, and often inconveniently, at that. She has nodded off in church more than once, and Jason… Jason gets upset. Says she’s embarrassing him in that hushed whisper which means bad things are coming. But getting into bed, closing her eyes, and drifting into oblivion for eight, nine hours at a time? 

Yeah, Chrissy doesn’t do that. Hasn’t since she was a teenager, in fact. She can pinpoint the specific reason, though she tries not to think about that night. That party. The strange boy from another school. 

Ever since, though, she hasn’t felt comfortable being caught unawares. With dropping her guard. The problem only compounded after marrying Jason. 

There is nothing quite so awful as being roused from a fitful slumber with a fist. 

She studies the cover of Eddie’s book instead of letting her thoughts wander as she sits criss-cross applesauce on the seat that’s more comfortable than expected.

The Authorized Edition
Of the Famous Fantasy Trilogy
The Lord of the Rings
Newly Released with a Special Foreward by the author
J.R.R. Tolkien
Part One
The Fellowship of the Ring

It’s an auspicious start, with the large title boasting its credentials over an illustration of a divided tree set against a blue sky. In the distance, there is a hill with red-domed houses. A beast on a bridge. High mountains and a pair of strange birds. The bottom right corner has been torn and mended with care, clear tape covering the wound. 

Chrissy opens the book and finds an inscription inside. 

April 13, 1968

Eddie,

I hope one day these mean as much to you as they do to me. 

Love,
Mama

1968. That’s the year Chrissy was born. Eddie’s older by a couple of years, so he would have been a toddler. It doesn’t make sense to give a book like this to a baby unless—

Unless maybe the giver wouldn’t be around long enough to see the receiver enjoying it. 

“Oh,” she realizes, digging her crooked tooth into her bottom lip as she runs her finger over Mama. 

Behind her, Eddie shifts in his sleep. She holds her breath until he settles, then skips the foreword—she doesn’t like knowing what authors think because sometimes she disagrees with them—and finds herself at a prologue entitled ‘Concerning Hobbits.’

And then! And then, there he is! Her old, good friend, Bilbo Baggins. Right there, staring out at her from the very first page of the prologue. Holding out his hand to invite her through the open door as if she hadn’t been awfully rude to stay away from Hobbiton for so long. 

The prose is considerably denser than The Hobbit, but she likes it from the start. As she proceeds from the prologue to the first chapter—Bilbo is there again, and Gandalf, too!—she moves her mouth along with her eyes, silently forming the words. She likes the way they feel, these sentences. Melodic and precisely placed. Bilbo’s party speech is especially pleasant, and she takes her time, tasting Brandybucks, Grubbs, and Chubbs on her lips, teeth, and tongue. 

Her mother hates how she reads. Says it makes her look witless and slow. Or, she had said that when Chrissy was small. Then she would sneer. Reach over and clap her hand over Chrissy’s mouth. Pinch her lips together until they hurt. So, Chrissy learned. Trained herself to keep her tongue tucked behind her teeth whenever she read around her mother. Trips to her grandmother’s house in Pennsylvania had been especially torturous, as she had to concentrate on reading the way her mother preferred, and concentrating in the car made her puke. 

It’s a relief to be alone with Eddie’s book, where she can sound the words out in any manner she likes as she follows the winding story through the decades between Bilbo’s party and the beginning of Frodo’s journey. She gets as far as Sam and Frodo setting out from the Shire together when she notices the sun peeking out from the horizon and decides she ought to take a break because her neck is stiff and her back is sore.

Eddie hasn’t moved much—he sleeps hard, and she respects that. He’s lucky he can. But she also has to pee, and he said to wake her if she wanted to leave the truck. She’d feel guilty for doing it, though, because he’s only had maybe two-ish hours of sleep, and she thinks he might have had more if she hadn’t asked to come with him. Thinks perhaps he would have stayed at the truck stop outside Louisville. 

Conflicted, she swivels around to study the back of his dark head. His hair, which has gone from damp to frizzy, sticks out from the bundle of blankets, all puffed up and tangled. Her fingers itch with the want of combing it for him. She’s always loved playing with people’s hair. At slumber parties, she’d have girls lining up for her attention, and she did French braids for anyone who wanted them before cheer competitions.

She’s never played with a boy’s hair before. Well, a man’s hair, though she still sees the Eddie-that-was when she looks at him, because the boy who used to stand on tables is in there, too. She’d forgotten about that—how he was so dramatic—just like she’s forgotten minor details about most of her classmates. But now, memories are coming back. Little snippets of Eddie in the cafeteria. Eddie in class. Eddie slumping out of the principal’s office with a scowl. 

Jason never liked it when she touched his hair. Would shrug off her hand and tell her it was “fine, Chrissy, just leave it, c’mon.” 

Eddie would let her, she thinks, and she wonders if it’s as soft as her own. Which is… pretty dumb, actually. Hair is hair. Only he probably doesn’t use conditioner, which makes a difference. 

Chrissy sighs and sits on her hands. Ignores her bladder and digs her fingers into the fleshy parts of her thighs as the sun comes up around her. 

It’s maybe twenty minutes later when Eddie stirs. Groans. Cracks his neck and yawns. When he stiffens and clutches the blanket a little closer, she sees it—the moment he remembers she’s there. 

He turns slowly enough that it makes her smile, as he’s clearly taking pains to be quiet. When he finds her looking back at him, some tension ebbs from his shoulders.

“Hey,” he says, voice croaky and eyes squinting as he adjusts to the light. 

“Good morning.” 

“Did you sleep?” 

She shakes her head and taps the book, where she’s used an old receipt she found in her purse to mark her place. “Do ah… are there bathrooms here?” 

Eddie frowns, worming his arm out from his nest and checking his watch. “Oh, Jesus. I didn’t mean to be out that long—” 

Concern spikes through her, and she bites her lip. “I’m sorry. Should I have woken you? Are we running late?”

“No, no. It’s not that. We’ve got plenty of time. I just—how long have you been waiting?” 

She shrugs. “Not that long.” 

Eddie looks as if he doesn’t believe her, but one of the best things about Eddie so far is that he takes her at her word and doesn’t push against the little fibs she tells to get by.

“Alright,” he says, moving on like she’d hoped he would. “Just uh… lemme get out first.” 

He pulls on his boots with the quilt over his lap, then edges his way out of the bunk. She decides he’s being weird—keeping his body twisted to the side, not dropping the covers until he’s nearly out the door—and then realizes he likely has morning wood. Which is a thing that happens. A thing she’s aware of, even if Jason’s penis has always held very little interest for her. 

Eddie shouldn’t feel bad about it. It’s his truck; he’s allowed to have a hard-on.

However, she won’t tell him so because it would probably make things weird. 

Well, weirder.

She waits while he lights a cigarette before coming around to her side, then takes his hand to hop down. They walk to the toilet block, where there’s no gender split—not many women truckers, he explains, looking sweetly abashed about it—so he hands her his cigarette to hold and checks out the situation. 

He returns a few seconds later, glancing around like maybe ten mean, burly guys are on their way to abduct her in his absence. 

“All clear?” she asks, handing the cigarette over. 

“Yeah. I’ll just… wait out here. Make sure nobody bothers you.” 

Judging by the stillness of the morning, and that the only other person she can see is an older guy sitting at a picnic table by himself, Chrissy doesn’t think that will be a problem. But, clearly, Eddie cares, so she lets him stand guard while she pees, then washes her face and brushes her teeth with her finger because her toothbrush is in her suitcase. 

It takes maybe three minutes, and Eddie’s leaning against the red brick with his arms folded when she emerges.

“Should I watch out for you now?” she asks, looking up at him as her fingers hook into her belt loops, lest she does something foolish like brush his bangs out of his eyes. 

He laughs and arches a brow. “You think I need a lookout?” 

“Maybe. Don’t you have to go?” 

“Ah… don’t worry about it, Cunningham,” he says with a furtive glance at the scraggly bushes planted on the opposite side of the concrete sidewalk. There’s a wet patch of dirt beneath one of them.

Which… okay. He really doesn’t want her to be by herself out there. She should doubtless be concerned about why, but she can’t bring herself to care. No big, bad trucker could scare her half as much as the man she’s running from. Besides, if Eddie’s any indication of trucker temperament, she thinks she’d get along with some of them just fine.

“Sure,” she says. “Um. Thanks.” 

“Anytime.” He pushes himself off the wall and tosses his shaggy head toward the truck. “C’mon. I’m starving. Let’s go get something to eat.” 

Chapter Text

It takes twenty miles before they find an exit with a place to park the truck and a Denny’s, which Eddie deems “the only appropriate breakfast choice.” Chrissy can’t say she agrees—she can’t remember ever eating at Denny’s before—but she’s content to go along with what he likes since he’s the one doing the driving. 

The logistics of truck travel aren’t easy, she’s coming to realize. But when would she have thought much about it? During road trips with her family, the trucks were just passing scenery. Now that she’s sitting inside the dragon, she sees how much planning it takes for the simplest stops. 

Chrissy finds something soothing in the understanding that Eddie knows what he’s doing. That there won’t be any surprises.

The Denny’s has seen better days, but she likes it more than a shiny and pristine restaurant. As she slides into a booth across from Eddie, she touches the cracked vinyl, savoring the contrasting sensation of rough and slick. She wonders how many other people have sat here before her. Wonders how many more will sit here today. It’s nice to think she’s just a little mouse, running around with millions of other mice. Living with Jason had been like living as a lab rat. Under supervision. 

“Best guess is we’ll get to Atlanta by ten,” Eddie says as he folds himself into the booth opposite her. He’s been talking since they left the truck, while Chrissy has been mostly silent. She doesn’t mind. “I gotta unload, call into my dispatch, and figure out where I’m going next, and then I can get you wherever it is you… want to be.” 

Chrissy’s insides jam up like an incorrectly threaded sewing machine. She can hear the question in his voice. 

Eddie puts both hands on the table and leans forward. “Unless…?”

The thread around her vital organs pulls taut. “Mmm?” 

He hesitates, then shakes his head. “Nothing. Nevermind. Ah, g’morning.” 

That’s directed at the approaching waitress, who strolls up, pen in hand. She’s young—around Chrissy’s age—and pretty. Blonde, with her hair pulled into two French braids, full pink lips, and a polyester dress hugging her hourglass curves. Chrissy watches Eddie take her in. Watches him smile. 

She wonders, briefly, if the girl is Eddie’s type. But that’s stupid—she’s the type of girl who’s everyone’s type. 

“What can I get y’all?” she asks, and though Chrissy has spent little time in the south, she can’t believe that accent is authentic. The woman sounds like Ellie May Clampett. Looks like her, too. 

Chrissy digs her thumb into the seam of her jeans, scoring her fingernail against the fat of her thighs. 

Eddie, still smiling at Ellie May, orders a coffee, and the sirloin steak and eggs without looking at the menu. Chrissy takes longer, running her finger down the plastic until she finds a safe choice. “Coffee, please. And the fruit bowl. And the pancakes.” 

“The pancake breakfast?” 

“No. Just the pancakes, thank you.” 

The description promises a short stack—three in all—and she knows from experience that they’re one of the easiest foods in the world to pretend to eat. Cut, mash, and move around. Lift a forkful occasionally, then put it back down without taking a bite. If she’d just ordered fruit, Eddie might think that was weird, and she learned long ago that when she’s with normal people, she has to order normal things.

(And oh, yes, there is a world in which she takes herself to dives and diners in Indianapolis. Orders all the forbidden things to go. Takes them to the antiseptic apartment she shares with Jason and stuffs herself full to bursting before throwing it all back up. A world where she sits on the cold, tile floor of the bathroom she hates and makes herself small. Bites her fist until it bleeds, then cleans up the mess before her husband comes home.)

“Coming right up,” says Ellie May, whose name tag says Bonnie, but that’s not the point. 

Eddie yawns, making a big, barbarous yawp of it, stretching his arms up over his head and bouncing from side to side like he can’t stand to sit still. Chrissy laughs—he looks ridiculous—then covers her mouth when he arches a brow. 

“Something funny, Chris?” 

Chris. That’s new. She likes the way he says it; it’s different from how Jason does. Jason never calls her Chris directly, only when he’s referencing her in front of other people. Good old reliable Chris. 

Mostly, though, she’s Chrissy. Or Christina. Or Christina Elizabeth when she’s in trouble. 

“No! Just… I’m sorry if you’re tired because of me.” 

Eddie waves it off and drops his hands to the table, where they fiddle with his napkin, tearing off strips and balling them into pieces. He’s always moving. In the truck, he drums his fingers on the wheel, taps them against his leg, or fiddles with the radio dial. Chrissy thinks she remembers him getting in trouble for that in school—she and Eddie hadn’t shared many classes, but in all the ones they did, she recalls the teachers harping on him to quit fidgeting. To sit still. To quit tapping his foot. Drumming his desk. To quit being, it seemed to her, because Eddie wasn’t capable of containing himself.

“I’m always tired. Comes with the gig.” 

“But if I hadn’t been—” 

“Nope.” 

“You only got three hours!”

“So what?” 

“Eddie!”

“Jesus Christ, Cunningham, I didn’t realize we were taking a guilt trip to Atlanta. C’mon, knock it off.” 

Chrissy is struck dumb by the idiocy of the joke and the easy way he’d caught her in the midst of self-flagellation. She wants to protest, but he’s right, so she folds her arms across her chest. “You’ll sleep tonight?” 

“Depends,” he says and launches into an explanation of hours and drive time and dispatches.

At some point, Ellie May-slash-Bonnie shows up with their meals. Eddie thanks her and keeps going, jumping topics, animated as he speaks with his mouth… well, not full, because he swallows in between sentences. But the way he eats is uncouth and a little wild. She loves it. Loves listening to him as she cuts up her pancakes and nibbles at her fruit, content to enjoy The Eddie Show.

But then: “aren’t you hungry?” 

She stops short with her fork halfway to the plate, an aborted mouthful clinging to the tines. He’d seen right through her tried-and-true technique of asking a pressing question just as she was about to take a bite. “Um.” 

“It’s okay if you’re not. We can get a doggie bag, stick it in the mini-fridge.” 

Palms sweating, Chrissy shakes her head and quickly pushes the forkful past her teeth. Closes her lips around the pancake and pulls the metal free. 

Methodically, she chews and swallows, the weight of the indulgence sinking like a stone to her stomach. It tastes like everything that’s wrong with her. 

She makes herself smile. “I’m just kind of getting full. It’s so sweet, you know, the syrup?” Then, acting as a marionette of her mother, Chrissy slides her plate toward Eddie, who’s giving her a curious, inscrutable expression. “You want a bite?” 

He hesitates, so she presses her advantage. Curls her lip into a half-pout that makes him smile and breaks the weird tension.

“Yeah, sure.” 

“Take two,” she says, so he does. Down the hatch, and it’s over. Chrissy pulls the plate back and starts her cut-and-fake routine again. When Eddie goes to the bathroom, she steals a napkin from the empty table behind them and grabs a handful of pancakes. Crushes them into the paper and crushes the paper into a ball, and debates leaving it for Ellie May to find. 

Which is an odd, cruel desire, and not one Chrissy’s used to with other women. Generally, she likes them, even if she’s often intimidated by the beautiful ones, who seem to have it all together. Women like the other wives of the men in Jason’s Bible study group, who always bring the perfect dish to the potluck. Frowning, she overrides her first, mean instinct and shoves her bad behavior into the side pocket of her purse instead. 

Eddie returns, and Chrissy tries to pay for breakfast. He turns her down flat. Takes care of the check before they head back to the rig. 

She discreetly drops the pancake bundle into a garbage can. He doesn’t notice.

Two and a half hours later, they’re off the interstate and into the outskirts of Atlanta, where warehouses and chain-link fences line pockmarked streets. Chrissy has decided Eddie is crazy stupid, crazy brave, or crazy both. Driving the rig on the interstate was one thing, but driving it in the city? It’s terrifying, is what it is, and her knuckles are turning white from how hard she’s gripping the door handle.

Eddie remains unfazed. Sure, he’s sworn under his breath a few times, but he’s whistling as he navigates. There’s no consulting the atlas or anything. Just quiet, confident control. 

“Almost there,” he says after turning onto a street lined with fast-food joints. “You alright?” 

“Fine.” She uncurls her fingers and nods.

Eddie grins. “I’m not that bad a driver, am I?” 

“No! It’s not—it’s everyone else,” she says, fidgeting. “People are wild.” 

“I’ll give you that.” He points to a looming grey building in the distance. “That’s where we’re headed. But ah… I’m not exactly allowed to have passengers.”

“You’re not?” 

“Nope. It’s an insurance thing. So, uh.” He scratches his arm and offers a rueful smile. “Probably shoulda told you this before, huh?”

“Are you going to get in trouble?” She bites her lip and glances into the bunk. “Do you want me to hide?” 

He laughs at the notion. “It’s not quite that dire. I was gonna drop you at the Burger King up there, and I’ll find you when I’m done. You can take the book.” 

As ideas go, it makes more sense than hiding under his quilt.

Eddie drops her by the curb, and maybe she should feel nervous about being on her own, but she’d be halfway to New Orleans now if she followed the original plan. Being with him, even for a little while, has been much better. Besides, she ought to get used to being alone, considering he only ever promised to take her to Atlanta. 

He’s going to ask her where she wants to go, eventually. Soon, even. She doesn’t know what she’ll tell him.

She pushes that thought down as she enters Burger King, where she orders fries and a Diet Coke, after which she tucks herself into a hard plastic booth and reads. With the book in her hand, time passes quickly, and she even eats a fry or two. It’s difficult to hear her mother’s nagging voice over Tolkien’s melodic prose. 

A hand on her shoulder interrupts her peace. She jumps about a foot, twisting her body away from the touch, only to find Eddie standing by the table, eyes wide and hands held to his chest.

“Whoa, hey. I didn’t mean to scare you.” 

“I’m sorry!” she yelps, fighting to calm her racing heart. “I didn’t—I thought you said you’d be an hour?” 

Eddie raises a brow, and Chrissy glances at her watch. It’s been nearly ninety minutes. 

“Gosh, sorry,” she says, feeling like an idiot. “I got kind of caught up. It’s so good… exactly like you said it would be.” 

The infectious little boy grin lights Eddie’s face, and he’s bashful suddenly, drawing some hair across his cheek like he wants to hide behind it. “Well, obviously. Best book ever written. Anyway, I found out I don’t have to leave until tomorrow.”

Chrissy’s stomach plummets, though she forces herself to keep smiling. “Oh?” 

“Yeah. It’s a big one. Texas, then California. But since I’m here…” He holds out his hands, fingers spread, rings glinting under the fluorescents. “I was thinking, maybe, if you wanted to hang out for a while before you get where you’re, uh… where you’re going…?”

“Yes,” she says, heart leaping into her throat because she’ll take what she can get of his amiable company. 

“Awesome, yeah. Just, you know. I have a surprise for you.”  

The way Chrissy’s face lights up at the word surprise ought to be illegal. Blue eyes widening, and that smile—that big, toothy smile—that he’s seen once or twice since he started shamelessly flirting with her. Or, well, not flirting. She’s easy to talk to, and Eddie’s nothing if not a rambling sorta man. 

It’s a damn shame she doesn’t smile like that more often. He thinks maybe she used to, but then again, maybe not. He can’t recall ever catching her grin, or laugh, or do anything outlandish unless it involved the cheer squad. 

All those years spent staring at her, moon-eyed and smitten, yet he hadn’t been seeing her at all. 

Whatever’s going on—whatever brought her here—Eddie’s starting to believe he’d streak naked across the interstate if it would make her laugh.

Although, the idea of his naked body making her giggle is… disconcerting. Yeah. Call it that. He’s long since made peace with his lanky frame and funny face, but having her around makes him conscious of himself in a way he usually isn’t. 

Not that he minds. She’s quiet as a church mouse—a phrase he picked up from Wayne, who insists he picked it up from Eddie’s mother—and easy to get along with. He’s happy to spend what time he can with her. That, and he’s ninety percent sure that she’s got nowhere to go in Atlanta. 

What he can’t figure out is how to ask her to stick around without sounding like a creep. 

“A surprise?” She closes the book, and hoo boy, it sends Eddie’s insides on a real trip when she curls her fingers around the binding. 

“Uh-huh.” He rocks back and forth on his heels because he’s pretty fuckin’ proud of himself for the idea, and appreciates the guys in the depot who gave him directions. “C’mon. We gotta take a walk to get there.” 

Chrissy’s amenable, and soon, they’re on the sidewalk. Eddie doesn’t want to look uncool by checking his hastily scribbled notes, so he heads where he thinks he’s supposed to go and hopes for the best.

Turns out, his best is good enough, and they come to the right street just past the depot where his truck is currently sitting, locked and safe behind a barbed wire fence for the afternoon. 

(The evening, too, but he’s not thinking about that just yet. Not, not, not. Because Chrissy’s Chrissy, and she’s not necessarily gonna go for any dumb idea he might have, especially one that sounds like the setup for a bad porno.) 

“How far’d you get?” he asks as they stroll, reaching over to tap the book, which she still has clutched in her hand. 

“Tom… Bombadil?” she says as if she’s unsure of the pronunciation, glancing all that way up at him with her bottom lip caught between her teeth. 

God, she’s so little. Like, she barely comes up to his chest when they stand next to each other. He noticed it this morning when he walked her to the bathroom, but walking beside her now, he thinks she’s like a pocket person. It makes him want to do weird shit like pick her up and put her on his shoulders, which is definitely not cool. Honestly, it’s like… dehumanizing, or whatever, so he needs to stop letting his lower brain steer his monkey intellect in ludicrous directions. He’d read a book about that—and fuck his teachers for thinking he doesn’t read; he just doesn’t read boring shit. This book about, like, ids and egos and super-egos, though? Fascinating. 

So, anyway, his id wants to put Chrissy on his shoulders. Or maybe have her sit on his—nope, nope, nope brain! Fuck you! The woman’s trying to have a conversation about goddamn literature, and he’s like, “me, Tarzan, you, Jane” regarding the fact that basic human genetics make him statistically likely to be taller than her. 

Yeah, okay. Tom fuckin’ Bombadil. Eddie can focus.

“Oh? What’d you think of him?” 

The answer to this question is of vital importance because Eddie has always seen a lot of himself in ol’ Tom. How could he not? The dude’s a boisterous weirdo who serves no higher purpose in anyone’s story but is happy to sing songs and entertain and be mysterious and odd. Like, he gets why people skip the Bombadil chapters because it’s about a billion pages of nonsense that have no bearing on the larger plot, but they’re the parts he most often rereads when he needs some comfort. 

“He’s kind of strange. But I think… good?” 

“Definitely.” He jams his hands in his pockets like he might physically restrain himself from spouting all his weird Tom Bombadil theories at her. 

“He just took the hobbits home to meet his wife.” 

“Goldberry,” he says, and then, as if some distant, horrible evil has possessed his body, his hand snakes out of his pocket and tugs on Chrissy’s ponytail. Like they’re five. 

She squeaks and reaches back to swat him away. Eddie—who will be twenty-three years old in a month—stops short, cheeks flaming. “I uh—your hair. Because it’s gold.” 

For a moment, Chrissy looks absolutely affronted, and Eddie’s about ready to dive headfirst into a nearby sewer and let Pennywise have him. But then she giggles, covering her mouth with her hand, and even though he wishes she’d, like, show him her teeth, it’s still the best thing he’s heard all day. 

“You’re so weird, Eddie.” 

“Yeah, well…” He knocks the toe of his boot into the fence guarding the massive warehouse they’re currently passing. “Maybe so.” 

“Anyway, I’m not really like Goldberry.” 

“No?” 

“No.” 

He disagrees. Chrissy’s like… Goldberry and Galadriel and Celebrian combined into one perfect blonde being. And this is most definitely not the first time that particular thought has played into his fantasies. Shit, if Tolkien had described Arwen and Luthien as fair, he’d be throwing them in the mix, too. But saying so would probably weird Chrissy out. Hell, it would weird him out. “Who are you, then?” 

She shrugs, looking down at her little white kicks. “I don’t know yet,” she says, and clearly she does, but she’s not telling. 

“Okay. Well, you let me know when you figure it out, river daughter.” 

“Eddie!”

There’s a smile on her face when she admonishes him, and he takes that as a win. Starts their walk again, whistling an old Led Zeppelin tune to himself because it’s that sort of day. Soon enough, he sees the sign for the street they need, and the universe couldn’t have set up the reveal any better, as a four-story red brick building blocks the view until they turn.

They’re faced with a sea of parking lots and, in the distance, the Fulton County Stadium. Home of the Braves, or so Eddie has been told.

Chrissy squints. “Is that…?” 

“Sure is. As I recall, you were interested in acquiring a hat.” 

Chapter Text

Eddie’s grand gesture lasts as long as it takes for them to reach the stadium and discover that every gate is locked. Because it’s November, and while his sports knowledge is limited, he’s heard Wayne listening to the Cubs often enough to know they don’t play this late in the year. He’d told Chrissy as much when she first brought up the hat, but he’d also figured the team store would be open. Surely he isn’t the only poor schmuck trying to impress a chick? 

Or, actually, yeah. He probably is. Damn his sentimental soul.

“It’s alright,” she says as they finish their four-sided scouring of the stadium. Every turn brought more disappointment, with nary a fence, door, or passage open to them.  

He hooks his fingers into the diamond-patterned grates rolled across the entry. Rattles them hard, then rests his forehead against the rusting metal. “I’m sorry, Chris.” 

“It’s really fine.” She leans against the gate beside him, peering through a few wisps of hair that have escaped the confines of her ponytail. “The walk was nice.” 

Jesus Christ, this girl. Of course she’s polite after being taken on a tour of junkyards, warehouses, and parking lots. 

By no stretch of the imagination does Eddie think she’s actually pleased, but he gets the sense that Chrissy has, like, forty distinct faces, and she keeps her real one hidden. It’s like the hermit crab he found on the one occasion he and Wayne went on an actual trip. Eddie had been eight and living with Wayne for about a year when his uncle decided he should see the ocean. The ocean’s a big deal for Wayne—he was in the Navy—so he loaded them up into his old truck and set off on a Friday morning. Eddie’d mostly been glad to skip school, which was already going poorly for him, and to spend time with his uncle, who was still this strange, recent presence in his life. Someone who sort of liked him instead of merely tolerating him. 

They drove straight through, and when they got to the tiny beach town in Virginia, Wayne scoped out a secluded place to park, and they slept right there in the truck. Ironic, kinda. 

Eddie discovered the hermit crab in a pool of water left behind by the tide. He’d picked it up. Watched the little crab retreat inside its shell, then ran hollering to Wayne about how he’d found a pet. 

Wayne had been gentle about the situation, but Wayne was gentle about most things when Eddie was little. Still is, though he gives him more shit now that he’s older. Wayne had explained to him what the crab was and why he couldn’t keep it, then promised him they’d get a fish or something when they got home. 

Eddie had conceded and put the crab back where he found it, then stood and watched the water until the little guy poked himself out and started moving around the tide pool. 

So yeah, Chrissy. He’s just trying to give her space to poke her head out.  

“The walk,” he echoes. “Oh yeah, super scenic. I am… overwhelmed.” 

He punctuates the statement with a slapped palm to his beating heart, spinning away from the gate. She does that cover-her-mouth-and-giggle thing that makes him want to snatch her hand up and press five hundred kisses to her skin. Then he wants to count all her teeth—especially the crooked one—to ensure they’re all present and correct. Which is a chill and cool thought to have about a girl he’s been hanging out with for all of twelve hours. 

“I mean it! I—” 

“Hey! Can I help you?” 

Eddie’s hackles rise, and Chrissy shrinks back at the words barked by Some Authority on the other side of the barrier. It’s a security guard—of course it’s a goddamn security guard—in a white polo shirt and black slacks, with a walkie-talkie gripped in one hand and a bald patch like Principal Higgins. Eddie hates him instinctively, primarily for scaring Chrissy.  

“Aw, geez, man. Are we early for tryouts?” he says.

The guard narrows his eyes and gives them a once-over. And yeah, yeah, Eddie knows what he looks like—leather jacket over an Anthrax shirt he found at a thrift store in Houston, plus the jeans, the wallet, the boots, the chains. He paints a picture. An intentional picture, but a picture all the same. 

But then there’s Little Miss Chris in her white sneaky-sneaks, her stonewashed jeans (coffee! stained! jeans! Thank you, Edward), that baggy lavender sweatshirt, and her Pepto-Bismol colored jacket. Oh, she’s so gosh darn cute, officer. She’s just so gosh darn cute! 

Okay, yeah. Rent-a-pig’s probably thinking that this is a Patty Hearst situation. 

“Season’s over. Get out of here.” 

“I’m sorry?” Eddie sniffs and takes a step closer. “You mean to tell me we’ve come all this way for nothing? I’ll have you know, sir, I’m the… Notre Dame, uh, shortstop of the year.” He’s seventy-two percent sure that’s a thing. 

“Seriously, kid, this is private property.” 

Kid? He’s practically twenty-five. Three. Whatever. “Oh, no shit? I hadn’t noticed, considering you’re, you know, inside, and I’m out here, and—” 

The guard steps closer, hand on his walkie. “You got ten seconds to move.” 

“Um, I’m standing on a sidewalk, sir. You can’t...”

“I was just hoping I could get a hat,” Chrissy says, putting herself between Eddie, the gate, and the guard. She sounds sugar-sweet, with the same voice he’d heard her use with teachers a hundred times. “My Grampy brought me to a game here when I was a little girl, and he, um, passed last month. So I was feeling sentimental, and my friend… this is Eddie, and I’m Chrissy, by the way. Well, we thought the shop might be open, is all. We don’t mean to be any trouble.” 

Holy shit, the power of Chrissy Cunningham. Second-tier Serpico actually smiles at her. “Sorry, honey. You’re a couple months too late.” 

“Oh gosh, that’s alright.” She steps closer and threads her fingers through the grate. “You wouldn’t know where there’s a store around here that sells them, though, would you?” 

The guard hesitates. Looks at her while she looks back. Eddie can’t see her face, but he’d bet about fifty bucks she’s pouting. “Just ah…” He palms his walkie again. “Gimme a second, alright? Let me see what I can do.” 

“Sure!” She releases her hold and steps away while the guard walks down the concourse, radio in hand. 

Eddie gives her some room. “What was that?” 

“What was what?” 

“That… I mean. He was being a dick.”

“He was doing his job.”

“Yeah, but…” 

“Anyway, you were gonna do that thing.” 

“What thing?” 

“That thing you used to do in school.”

“You’ll have to enlighten me.”

She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. “Oh gosh, Eddie. That thing. During lunch, when you’d get all…” She flaps her hands. “Dramatic.” 

Eddie gives the lady what she’s after. Falls against the fence, which offers a resounding squeak, and claps his hands to his cheeks. “I never.” 

“You did! You did it all the time!” 

“I’m sorry, but I think you have me confused with somebody else.” 

“No, I remember. I forgot it was you, but… you’d get up on the table! Or you’d like… you used to stand really close to Ja—to some of the guys in line, and you’d breathe on their necks and then act like you didn’t. And you’d—” She stops herself short. “Hi, again!” 

That’s directed to the guard, who’s returned to the gate with a smile just for Chrissy. “Got some good news for you, honey. My boss says I can bring you up to the lost and found—plenty of hats there.”  

“Oh wow, thank you so much, Frank.” 

Frank? He doesn’t know where she got Frank from. Except it’s stitched on his shirt, and she can read. Catch up, Munson.

To Eddie’s shock, Frank proceeds to just… unlock the gate and let them in. As if it’s no big deal that Chrissy got him to flout the rules and open up the stadium in the off-season. (He gives Eddie the stink-eye as he sidles past, though. Which, yeah. Fair enough.)

Frank leads them to a set of double doors, through which lies a labyrinthine warren of administrative offices. They have to go up two flights of stairs to get where they’re going, which means Eddie gets to enjoy the full spectrum of the Chrissy Cunningham Variety Hour.

She starts off complimenting Frank’s uniform, telling him it looks so nicely pressed. He says his wife irons it for him, and Eddie bets she does. Chrissy admires the creases and asks him questions about his job. Murmurs sympathetic noises when he talks about how hard it can be and assures him she really has so much respect for men who put their safety on the line for other people.

And then—and then—she has the audacity to look over her shoulder at Eddie and wink. 

Minx! Conniver! She knows exactly what the fuck she’s doing! 

By the time they reach the lost and found, Eddie’s pretty sure he’s no longer a living, breathing human male. Instead, he’s become some horny cartoon with beating heart eyes. The kind he would watch on Saturday mornings before Wayne started working nights, and they’d sit in front of the TV with coffee and cereal. Well, Wayne had coffee. Eddie had juice out of a plastic barrel because those were cheaper than Hi-C. They had a deal—Eddie got to watch Bugs Bunny and Super Friends so long as they kept it on ABC because Lassie’s Rescue Rangers came on after, and Wayne remembered watching Lassie when he was a kid. Wayne talked a lot about getting a dog after the hermit crab incident, but then the crab-replacing goldfish died, and they had to flush him, so the idea fizzled.  

“This is us,” says Frank, whose cheeks are stained pink from Chrissy’s compliments, as he flips on the lights in a fusty storage room full of boxes. “Hats are… ah, yep. Right up front.” 

Frank pulls down a box that contains dozens of caps. Chrissy drops to her knees to examine its contents before God, Frank, and Eddie’s brittle heart, slim fingers pawing through to find her prize.

The first crate has nothing she wants (“these are all boy hats, Frank, I’m so sorry”). Eddie appreciates that she’s picky. Likes that she knows what she’s after. But then, she’d have to, wouldn’t she? For all that she’s tiny and polite and hiding in that shell, he thinks maybe his little hermit crab is more like a super friend. Wonder Woman, probably, with a spine of steel. Because whatever brought her here, it’s clear she chose to leave something behind. Shit, she'd be doing this herself if he hadn’t stumbled across her. She will be doing it herself, come tomorrow. And damn if that doesn’t make it even harder to let her go. 

“Oh, this one!” she exclaims when she’s about halfway through the second box, pulling out a white cap embroidered with the words, ‘I’m a Georgia Peach!’ alongside a plump peach that’s definitely meant to resemble an ass. Or maybe tits. It’s sexual, is all he’s saying. 

Eddie raises a brow, ignoring the way his ears are getting hot. “I thought you wanted a baseball cap.” 

“This is a baseball cap.” 

“Yeah, but for the Braves. And your... Grampy.” 

Chrissy gives him a mulish look, then turns to Frank, who’s already sliding the box onto the shelf. If he has any trouble with the rank bullshit that is her cover story, he’s not showing it. But then, by Eddie’s estimation, Frank’s about two coconuts short of a Pina colada. 

“You are, seriously, the best, Frank. Thank you!” 

“My pleasure, honey.” 

Cap in hand, Chrissy bounces to her feet and stands right up on her tip-toes to give Frank a kiss on the cheek. Which, okay, Eddie is not jealous of a forty-five-year-old fake cop. He’s not. But also: he one hundred percent is very jealous, and that makes him a bad person. 

The Chrissy Cunningham Variety Hour continues as they leave the lost and found behind, and she keeps up a steady prattle of nonsense questions for Frank all the way to the front gates. He seems happy enough to answer, and Eddie is once more struck by how good she is at fitting herself into whatever shell she needs. It makes him wonder how much she kept hidden in school—how much he missed—and if she was hurting then, too. 

“Y’all have a great day,” Frank says as he shuts the gates behind them.

“Bye. Thanks again!” Chrissy waggles her fingers for good measure, and then Frank’s gone. The fake smile fades from her face, replaced with a half-cocked smirk.

Eddie prefers the smirk, and he laughs as she flips the cap onto her head, then tugs her ponytail through the hole. 

“That was some show, Chris.” 

She shrugs and scuffs her toe into the concrete like she’s bashful. He doesn’t buy it for a second. “It’s just for fun. Besides, I wanted a hat.” 

“Uh-huh.” He reaches out to bop the brim of her prize, which makes her smile, even as she pushes it back up. “Nice work, Georgia peach. You better hope the previous owner didn’t have lice.” 

“Gross, Eddie!” 

“I’m saying!”

“You’re always saying,” she says, and then she smiles. A real one. And God, he doesn’t want to leave her yet. Doesn’t feel right. Not when he’s staying in the city overnight, and she’s… well, she’s doing whatever she’s doing. Still not breathing a damn word about where she plans on stopping. And, realistically, he knows it’s because she doesn’t know. Sure, she’s brave enough to wheedle her way into a free baseball cap, but that’s just for fun, apparently. Makes about as much sense as the fact that she’ll ask for a ride to Atlanta but won’t wake Eddie up so she can use the bathroom. 

She’s a study in contradictions, so he might as well ask about the overnight accommodations. The worst thing she can say is no, and then he’s no worse off than yesterday.

“Speaking of saying.” He clears his throat. “I was thinking of getting a motel room.” Shit. That came out way sleazier than he intended. “I mean. For me. Not… sorry, that sounds bad. But I’m staying in town tonight. Sometimes I do that.” Liar, liar pants on fire. It’s too expensive to get a room more than once in a blue moon—he sleeps in the truck—but needs must. “So if you wanted… and then tomorrow I’ll drop you wherever.” 

Chrissy is silent for a moment, and he’s convinced he can hear her thoughts. Pervert creepazoid ew I would never ever EVER, but then she shrugs. “Can I pay for it?” 

“Wh—no?” 

“Halfsies?” 

Halfsies. She’s gonna kill him. “If… yeah, if you insist.” 

“Okay. Thanks, Eddie.” 

They walk to the depot first. Eddie runs in while Chrissy waits at the gate. He retrieves his duffel and her suitcase, shoving a proper change of clothes in the former because he’s with a lady, god damn it. From there, it’s a couple blocks to the squat, two-story motel he spotted earlier. As depot-adjacent accommodations go, this one is pretty standard, and by standard, he means shitty. Their room is on the ground floor, near the vending machines, and he prays to a God he doesn’t believe in that nothing goes scurrying into a corner when he opens the door.

Mercifully, it’s fine. Smells mildewy, and a fine black fuzz covers the air conditioning unit, but he’ll take that over rats and roaches any day. 

Chrissy says nothing about the room quality. Puts her suitcase on the bed furthest from the door, which is the one Eddie’d want her to have, anyway, so that’s good. Not that he’ll be able to do much if masked vigilantes attack in the middle of the night, but at least maybe they’ll murder him first and give her a chance to escape.

“So…” He starts, just as she says, “I might take a shower.” 

“Oh. Uh, yeah. Definitely. I was gonna go grab some food. Do you want anything?” The vending machines looked well-stocked, and it’s too early for dinner.

She takes off her cap, setting it on the nightstand between their beds. “No, thank you. I’m full from lunch.” 

Eddie wasn’t with her for lunch, but they’ve walked approximately seventy-five miles since then, so he can’t resist a “you sure?” 

“I’m sure.” 

Yeah, okay. He’s gonna bring her some candy anyway. 

He leaves her to shower and heads to the desk clerk to change some dollars to quarters, then raids the vending machine for two Cokes, three Snickers, peanut M&M’s, Kit-Kats, and four bags of chips. He’ll probably die of a heart attack at thirty, but at least he’ll die happy.

Chrissy’s in the bathroom when he returns to the room, and he banishes that mental image to the darkest dungeon of his depraved mind before opening a coke and some Doritos and settling in to watch television. It’s all soap operas this time of day, but that’s fine. He might or might not follow General Hospital occasionally, and not just because the Laura chick was an early crush, back when her face was slapped on all the magazines in the grocery store, and he was an extremely horny fifteen-year-old. Sue him—she was blonde and sunny and looked sweet as apple pie. He’s got a fucking type, alright? 

Laura’s not in this episode, though, and it’s been a while since he caught one, so he’s not sure if she’s even on the show anymore. Instead, it’s something about a woman in a coma and another woman getting arrested for shooting her, and he’s so into the plot that he doesn’t notice the water turning off. He notices when the bathroom door opens, though, and glances over. 

Where, yup, Chrissy’s in a towel. Chrissy’s in a towel and nothing else. She’s looking at him with startled blue eyes, and he’s frozen with a Dorito halfway to his mouth. 

“Oh!” she says, clutching the towel a little tighter. 

“Shit. Hi.” He eats the chip because where the fuck else is he going to put it? 

“I thought you were getting food!”

He gestures to the candy. Chrissy’s eyes follow. 

“No, like actual food.” 

Which… yeah, okay. He can see how she might make that assumption and step out of the bathroom, thinking he won’t be back for a while. And he really ought to avert his gaze, but he can’t help clocking that there’s a handprint-shaped bruise on her left bicep.

“Shit, Chris,” he says, and when his eyes flick to her face, he spies fading purple around her eye. That explains the concealer. And sure, he’d been suspicious in the diner, but he’d stuffed his concern down deep because he didn’t want to believe it. Didn’t want to see what she wasn’t showing. 

“Could you please not look at me?” She says, voice trembling, and it’s not the coy playacting tone she used with Frank. No, this is the voice she probably puts on to placate the motherfucker who did this to her. Eddie is officially the world’s most gaping asshole.

“Sorry,” he mutters, cutting his eyes to the window, which has the curtain pulled across it because, duh, she was taking a shower and had plans to use the bedroom. Duh, duh, duh, Munson. “I uh—” 

“I won’t be a minute,” she says with that same faux-sweet politeness. 

He doesn’t look while she fumbles in her suitcase for clothes. Just sits there. Rubbing his jaw. Grinding his teeth. Waiting for her to retreat before thunking his skull against the headboard. Fuck, he should have figured it out. Asked her about it, maybe. Or, no. Not that. But he should have… should have looked away when she asked him to. That wasn’t fair of him, and it makes him feel slimy and gross because he’s not like the man who hurt her. Not like the man from two trailers down that Eddie used to hear when he was a kid. All that yelling. Screaming. Crying. Hitting. The woman—Connie, he thinks her name was—she left that asshole four or five times, but it never took, and eventually, they moved away. Eddie hopes the sixth time ended up being the charm, but he doubts it.

Chrissy comes out after a few minutes, and he glances over, just once, to check she’s respectable. She’s put on another oversized sweatshirt—this one white, with a big crimson C over the breast—and a pair of soft-looking flannel pajama bottoms that puddle at her feet. Covered from head to toe.

And, like, it’s November. This might explain his obliviousness to the way she’s dressing like she wants her clothes to swallow her whole. It’s a significant change. Back in school, she had always dressed… respectably, but with a hint toward Eddie’s fevered imagination. The cheer skirts. The tight sweaters. The flippy little dresses. The god damn knee socks. 

“It um—” she hugs her midsection, and he wants to punch himself in the teeth. “I’m really sorry. I thought you’d be out longer.” 

“You don’t—Jesus, Chrissy, you don’t need to apologize. I’m the one who’s sorry. For, you know. I mean… are you okay? What happened?” He chances another look at her, then finds he can’t look away.

She doesn’t answer at first. Just sits on the edge of her bed, facing him, wet hair hanging over her shoulder to drip onto that crimson C as she folds her hands in her lap. “What do you think happened, Eddie?”

Her gentle voice holds a note of contempt that forces him to reckon with the fact that he already knows. The truth is there in her mottled bruises, and he’d have to be a real dick to push for the lurid details simply to satisfy his perverse curiosity.

Carefully, he swings his legs off the bed and mirrors her position. Studies the remnants of her black eye and notes how faded it is, unlike the dark purple injuries on her arm. Which means they’re from at least two separate occasions. 

Eddie thinks maybe he’d like to flay open whoever put their fucking hands on her. Do a full blood eagle. Real Viking shit. It’s not as though he doesn’t know the name of the most likely suspect. 

“You don’t—” He starts, then takes a different tack. “I, uh, I got you some candy.” 

The worry lines furrowing her brow soften at the change in subject. “You did?” 

“Uh-huh.” He picks up the packet of peanut M&M’s and holds it out like a peace offering. “Your favorite.” 

She gives him a curious look, and he could kick himself, he really could. It is decidedly not normal that he knows they’re her favorite. The thing is, he used to watch her in Ms. Click’s homeroom during his third senior year (when he deigned to attend) because she sat one row over and two seats forward. This put him in prime viewing position for all her bouncy ponytails with their ribbons and scrunchies, and how she’d sometimes scratch the back of her neck with her pen, and how he wanted to kiss the little freckle below her right ear. 

The M&M’s thing came about because Becky H—another cheerleader who was cute, but not Chrissy cute—would come to class with a pack of peanut M&M’s at least twice a week. She’d offer Chrissy some, and Chrissy always took precisely four. She’d line them up in the pencil groove of her desk and, as homeroom progressed, work her way from left to right. One every fifteen minutes. And Eddie’d sit there like the perv he was, hoping to glimpse her pink tongue touching the hard shell. 

“Thank you,” she says, their fingers grazing when she takes the candy, which sends electricity crackling down Eddie’s spine. “What are you watching?” 

“General Hospital.” 

Chrissy’s eyes light at the common ground. “Did they arrest Anna?”

“Yeah, and Robert had to charge her because Olivia’s out of her coma and fingered her for the shooting.”

“Drama, drama, drama,” she says as she pushes back onto her bed, and whatever weird tension between them dissipates. 

They retreat to their corners, although Eddie keeps a weather eye on her as she rips open the candy and takes out exactly four damned M&M’s before putting the bag on the nightstand. After that, the afternoon passes in companionable silence, punctuated with occasional conversation. Eddie eats half of the junk food, and because he’s a bottomless pit (“got a hollow leg, kid,” per Wayne), he goes out to get a pizza for dinner.  

Chrissy asks for mushrooms, and he obliges, even though he hates them. He opens the door with gusto, proclaiming, “dinner is served!” only to wince when he sees she’s asleep. Curled on her side, facing the wall. Lucky for him, she doesn’t stir. Doesn’t even twitch. Which makes sense—it’s not like she caught any sleep last night. The selfish part of him’s kind of bummed because he’s still not sure what he wants to do in the morning, and he thought maybe they’d talk about it, but that voice is easily banished. He’s not about to begrudge her some rest.

He puts the pizza on his bed, then covers her with the blanket at the foot of her own. After that, he eats three slices, leaving the rest for her if she wakes, then showers and brushes his teeth. It’s still early when he slides between the sheets in sweats and a t-shirt—barely 8:30—but he’s staring down the barrel of a long day’s drive. That’s his fault—he could have gotten a head start, as the truck’s loaded and ready to roll, but he made his choice. Watching Chrissy charm her way into that damned hat is worth a rough ride tomorrow.

It’s just past nine when he drifts off, and the clock reads 2:23 when movement wakes him. He blinks into the dark, confused, as the covers lift and Chrissy’s slight body slips in beside him. She burrows close, the smell of motel soap filling his nostrils as she tucks her face against his chest.

“Chris?” he whispers, just to let her know he’s awake and to make sure he’s not dreaming.

She shivers, and her hand fists the fabric of his shirt against the small of his back, her fingers like tiny icicles sending a chill deep into his bones.

“I think—” she begins, then goes silent. Starts again. “Eddie, I think maybe I should go to California with you, please.” 

The request is rushed, her voice tiny. He can feel her shaky breath through the thin fabric of his shirt as she pokes her head out of that hard shell, hoping he won’t take advantage.

Eddie wraps an arm around her and presses a chaste kiss to her hair, feeling the knotty bumps of her spine as he rubs a circle between her shoulder blades. God help him, he might be a coward about a lot of things, but he’s not running away from this. 

“You know what, Chrissygirl? I think maybe you’re right.”

Chapter Text

Chrissy dozes when Eddie goes back to sleep. Clutching him, at first, inhaling the smell that’s so distant from Jason’s aftershave and sharp cologne. Eddie smells like the cigarettes he smokes. Like pizza. Like toothpaste and the same soap that’s on her skin. He must have taken a shower while she was asleep. 

When he shifts, she gives him space. Watches his silhouette turn in the dark, the halo of frizz that’s his hair outlined in the dim streetlight spilling around closed curtains as he rolls onto his stomach and mashes his face against a pillow, kicking the blankets toward his waist. 

His movement doesn’t frighten her. So, that’s new. 

Nothing about Eddie frightens her, actually. Yes, he’s capable of being loud and silly and puffing out his chest like some cawing crow, but that doesn’t make him scary. Maybe to some people, it does—it certainly gave him a reputation—but she’s learned, over the years, that genuine fear comes in the quiet moments. The calm between storms. 

Chrissy sighs, and her hand follows Eddie’s movement. Takes hold of his shirt as if possessed by some incurable need to make contact. To ground herself to him and reassure her fuzzy mind that yes, she asked. Yes, she’s going. Yes, he said yes, he said yes, he said yes.

It’s cowardly, the way she asked. Crawling into his bed when he was asleep and ambushing him when he hadn’t come out of the dark. But she used up all her bravery on a baseball cap, and that… that was only because Eddie wanted so badly for her to have one. She didn’t want to disappoint him, so she’d plucked up the courage of his convictions and turned on the rusty faucet of her charisma. 

Chrissy knows she can be charming. Knows how to get what she wants. But charm is just a game. The real stuff? That’s harder. That’s climbing into bed with a man who isn’t scary and manipulating him into taking her along for the ride. 

That’s staying in his bed, trusting he won’t take advantage because he’s not that sort of guy. 

Eddie really doesn’t strike her as that sort of guy. 

The thing about Chrissy is that everyone assumes Jason was her first. Which he was, and she was his in return. But also, he wasn’t her first at all, and that makes things complicated. 

When Chrissy was fourteen and a freshman, Steve Harrington hosted the first official boy-girl party of her high school career. Steve was a sophomore, and his parents wouldn’t be home, and only a select few freshmen—all girls—would be invited. Chrissy ended up on that list, along with her best friend, Amy C (not Amy B, who was in the chess club and the AV club, and God, she really used to care about this stuff, she really did). 

Attendance necessitated lying to Chrissy’s mother, who had barred her from dating until she was sixteen because she wanted her little porcelain doll sat on a shelf, and you know how boys are, Christine. Only Chrissy didn’t know, and she was desperate to go to that party and see what all the fuss was about. 

In the end, Amy solved the Laura Cunningham problem by living three doors down from Steve in the ritzy Loch Nora neighborhood that Chrissy’s mother coveted with the same clawing desperation she felt in every aspect of her not-quite-good-enough life. They had a reasonable house, but not a mansion. Two cars, but not three. A charge card at Sears, not Von Maur. A daughter who could stand to be five pounds slimmer and a son who preferred writing poetry to playing outdoors. 

All of this made Laura amenable to the idea of Chrissy spending the night at Amy’s house when Amy’s mother called to ask. So naturally, Laura spent fifteen minutes on the phone with the woman, trying desperately to force a friendship with someone who had no interest in knowing her beyond the casual acquaintanceship caused by their children. 

Chrissy went home with Amy after school that Friday, the two of them giggly and nervous, hiding their plans from Amy’s mother as they retreated to her room for their oh-so-fun slumber party. They planned their outfits, did three magazine quizzes, and then joined Amy’s parents for dinner before claiming they wanted to watch a movie. 

Amy’s parents were pretty good about leaving them to their own devices, which meant they could get dressed without fear of being caught. Of course, it wasn’t like Amy’s mom was cool or anything, but her room had a faux balcony that led to the roof of the porte-cochère, and from there, it was a hop, skip, and jump to the ground. 

Before that, though, they luxuriated in the untouchable magic of getting ready. The tiny rituals, performed together, felt like casting a spell over what was sure to be the perfect evening. Every possibility was open to them as they giggled their way through applying garish eyeshadow while changing outfits and trading compliments with the fervent adoration that only exists for fourteen-year-old girls who have known no greater love than each other. 

Amy was prettier than Chrissy, with dark brown curls and a B-cup. She’d blossomed over the summer and kissed two boys already, and sometimes Chrissy wasn’t sure whether she wanted to be friends with Amy or simply be her. So she hugged her a lot, laughed at all her jokes, and swallowed the tinge of jealousy she felt when Amy zipped herself into a tight dress that looked like it had been made for her.

Contrastingly, Chrissy couldn’t settle on an outfit until Amy suggested she wear her ballet leotard under a denim skirt, claiming that the leotard would give Chrissy cleavage. This wasn’t true—Chrissy had picked up a lot of tips from Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret—and though she did her bust-building exercises every night, she hadn’t seen even one inch of difference. She was still wearing training bras, for goodness sake.

But it was nice thing for Amy to say, so Chrissy put on her leotard, then held hands with Amy as they escaped, scurrying down the street to Steve Harrington’s unsupervised household. There were maybe twenty kids already present—and God, they were kids, not one of them past sixteen—mingling in a permissionless throng of hormones and the dregs of the Harringtons’ liquor cabinet. 

Chrissy and Amy, terrified but trying not to show it, clung to one another, taking drinks when they were passed over and gulping them down. Amy’s fingers dug into Chrissy’s arm when the booze burned, and it was sort of reassuring to realize that she wasn’t always the coolest girl in the room. 

The alcohol helped. Made them less self-conscious and, as they relaxed, loosened their tongues and their smiles. And that? That made Chrissy want to drink more, and more, and more.

At some point, she lost track of Amy, who said she was going to the bathroom but never returned. So she went looking and ran into the boy who’d given her a second drink earlier. Grey eyes. Dishwater-colored hair. Braces. A cluster of pimples on his grease-slick jaw. Derrick? David? 

Danny. His name was Danny.

Danny wasn’t that nice. He made jokes about Chrissy’s hair. Guided her to a couch and put a hand on her knee, even as she said she ought to find Amy. Told her not to worry about that and pressed another drink into her palm. 

From there, the evening became a series of blurry snapshots. Danny hauling her up from the couch. Stumbling outside to the pool. Falling on the concrete. Skinning her knees. Danny laughing. His arm around her. Stairs, and then it was dark. It was dark, and Chrissy was dizzy. She was lying on something soft that smelled like the same Old Spice her father wore, so she closed her eyes for a second. 

Time passed—she never knew how much—and light flooded in through those closed lids. 

Someone was shouting.

“—my room, dude!” 

Chrissy opened her eyes and saw Steve Harrington standing next to the bed. The bed where she was lying. How had she gotten in a bed? 

“M’sorry…” she mumbled, only Steve wasn’t looking at her, and when she lifted her spinning head, she realized he was glaring at Danny. Who was in bed. With her. 

“She wanted to lie down,” Danny said, and she tried to protest. To say that he was lying, actually. That she didn’t even like him. That she didn’t remember how she got here. But her tongue wasn’t working. Couldn’t form words.

“I don’t know you, man,” Steve snapped. 

Danny mumbled something about the Catholic boys’ school across town. About knowing Tommy H. Steve scoffed, then yelled at him again. Chrissy whimpered and covered her ears because the entire room was spinning. 

“Get out of my house before I do something about it,” Steve said, and then Chrissy lost time. The next thing she knew, Steve was helping her to sit up, and Danny was gone. Arm around her shoulders as he half-carried, half-dragged her to the ensuite bathroom. 

“Hey—hey, killer.” Steve was slurring, so he was drunk, too, but not like her. “Please don’t die at my party. Drink some water, okay?” 

Chrissy nodded. Sipped from the Dixie cup he was holding to her lips. The water tasted minty, and it was the best thing she’d ever had in her whole life. 

“Go slow. Hey, I don’t want you to puke.” 

She tried to follow his advice but ended up draining the cup. “Dizzy.” 

“No kidding. How much’d you drink?” 

A whine echoed against the stark white tile, and it took Chrissy a second to recognize that the noise was coming from her. “Don’t remember.” 

“Of course you don’t. It’s, uh, it’s Chrissy, right?” 

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. 

“Did you come here with someone?” 

“Amy. C. Not B.” 

“Amy C. Alright, c’mon, killer. Let’s see how good you’re walking.” 

Steve helped her up, his arm clutching her as they stumbled out of his room and down the staircase. It turned out that Amy was looking for her, too, and once Steve was sure they had one another, he returned to his party. 

They didn’t stay long after that. Back at Amy’s house, Chrissy couldn’t climb, so Amy had to go up, then let her in the back door.

The following day, Chrissy woke and lurched to the toilet. She puked, then stripped out of her leotard, which had a weird, crusted stain on the back she attributed to leaning against something sticky. 

Unlike other girls who went upstairs with strange boys, Chrissy’s reputation stayed intact for two simple reasons: Danny didn’t go to their school, and Steve Harrington never talked. Chrissy loved him for that. Nursed a crush for a couple years, in fact, though he never looked at her twice. 

When Steve started dating Nancy Wheeler during sophomore year, Chrissy cried herself to sleep three times before realizing that she wouldn’t ever be the girl a guy like Steve wanted. He deserved someone smart who could keep herself out of trouble. 

Chrissy moved on, and when she turned sixteen, Jason Carver bought her picnic basket as part of the spring cheer fundraiser, which she thought was sweet, so she agreed to go out with him. After that, they started dating and never really stopped.

It was during junior year, when Jason ejaculated on Chrissy’s jeans during a backseat fumble, that she came to the startled understanding that the stain on her leotard had been cum. The realization made her legs shake and her stomach churn. Made her hate herself for being so stupid as to put herself in that position because you know how boys are, Christine. 

So, yes, in many ways, Chrissy and Jason were each other’s firsts. But, in a more correct way, Chrissy’s virtue had been stolen from her by a rude boy with greasy skin at her very first high school party. 

Ever since then, she’s had trouble sharing beds. Trouble sleeping. Trouble being vulnerable around another person. 

Married life with Jason compounded that trouble. But Eddie…

It’s the fact that Chrissy got in bed with him of her own volition. Trusted herself to sleep two feet from him before that. And now, she’s the one touching him while he slumbers. Fingers clutching soft, worn fabric as she thinks well, how about that and closes her eyes once again. Drifts, because she can. Because she’s safe. Because Eddie makes her brave enough to ask for a baseball cap. Because if he’d wanted to, he could have taken advantage of her five hundred times, but he didn’t. He didn’t, and maybe that’s the lowest bar in the world to clear, but he’s limboed beneath it without breaking a sweat.

Chrissy drifts in and out. It’s 4:45 when the clock radio blares to life, stuck on the static between stations. She gasps, and Eddie jerks himself upright, groping in the dark and finding Chrissy’s face instead of the snooze button. 

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” he mutters. 

She giggles, even as he yanks his palm away, because it’s not quite five in the morning, and she’s in bed next to a boy who didn’t try to touch her. 

“I’ve got it.” She rolls over to click the button and turn on the light, wincing at the brightness.

“Uck,” Eddie says, and Chrissy turns to him, smiling at the sight of hair plastered to his cheek with saliva. The rest of his curls are… big, and she’s again struck by the urge to brush them for him. To wind locks around her finger the way she used to do with Amy C’s, making them perfect, shiny, and bouncy. 

“So, uh. Hey.” Eddie’s voice is a low croak, and he rubs his eyes like a little kid. 

“Hi.” Chrissy sits cross-legged, her knees brushing the outside of his sweatpants-clad thigh. Or, well, they had been sweatpants, maybe, once upon a time. Now, they’re a few stretched-out pieces of grey fabric held together by the scant, stringy threads that have remained through repeated manglings. 

“I shoulda warned you about the alarm before,” he says, scratching his stomach over his shirt and yawning. “Forgot.”

“That’s alright. I don’t mind.” 

He puts his hands on his legs and rubs his thighs. Glances at her and smiles as though he’s just now remembering what happened a couple of hours before. The quiet words they’d shared when he called her Chrissygirl and her heart took up residence in her throat because he’d been half-asleep, and she knows that’s where the truth lives.

“I’m gonna head to the depot and pick up the truck,” he explains through a yawn. “We won’t make Dallas today, but we can get close if we’re on the road by six. Sorry, I know it’s, uh… I mean, I have pretty crazy start times.” 

“I’m used to getting up early.” 

“Because you always fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon?” 

“I fall asleep all sorts of times.” 

Eddie grins. Reaches over like he’s going to pull her ponytail again, only she doesn’t have a ponytail this morning. Briefly, she wonders what her hair even looks like—it’s been years since she let it air dry—but then he drops his fingers to the place where her calves cross and squeezes before pulling away. 

“I gotta piss,” he says. 

She loves that he chooses words her mother would hate. Pee is uncouth in Laura Cunningham’s purview, so piss would be right out. 

(“What am I supposed to say, then?” Chrissy had asked once, in a fit of teenage pique. “Ladies say urinate,” Laura replied, which was so much worse.) 

“Okay.” 

“Cool. You think you can be ready to meet me in an hour?” 

Chrissy can be ready in two minutes if she needs to be, so she nods. He uses the facilities (“pisses” her mind supplies), and they briefly discuss logistics. He’ll pick her up across the street from the Burger King because it’s easier for him to drive the truck on the main drag. However, she’s not supposed to go there until five minutes before their agreed-upon meeting time, just in case. She’s not entirely sure what he thinks might happen to her in the lot of an empty office block, but he’s adamant that she not be there too long on her own. The concern makes her smile since it’s different from Jason’s patronizing police state—he worried about her in his own way, but mostly because he didn’t like other people touching his things. Eddie’s troubled as though he’s embarrassed to bring her to unsavory places, except she’s the one who asked to come. 

“I’ll be there,” she says, watching from the bed as he picks up his duffel and keys. The first goes over his shoulder, the second in his back pocket before he grabs a slice of pizza from the box on the tiny table. “Aren’t you worried about salmonella?” 

“It’s only been out a couple hours.” He takes a bite. “Rest is all yours.”

“I’ll probably just get something while I wait,” she lies. 

“Suit yourself. Don’t forget that cool hat, Cunningham.”

Then he’s gone. Out the door in his boots and his jeans and his leather jacket. Chrissy shoots out of bed. Runs to the window in bare feet and presses herself against the glass to watch him stride across the parking lot, head down. He wolfs down the rest of the pizza before reaching the intersection, and she curls her fingers toward him as he pulls out his cigarettes. 

She wishes she could come out of her skin and follow him like a ghost, just to discover what he does when he’s alone. The last thing she sees before he rounds the corner is him sticking his hands in his jacket pockets, and she finds she’s jealous of the next person who might lay eyes on him. Because she misses him, which is so stupid. She’s barely been with him for one whole day. But she does miss him! She can’t help it! 

The desire to run after him wraps around her brain stem, and she hugs her arms to her chest. Leans her forehead against the window and tamps down the want want want to jump on him from behind and bite through his jacket and into his shoulders. To mark him and claim him and tell him she chose to get into his bed and that he doesn’t scare her a bit. Doesn’t even scare her one little bit, and isn’t that something? Isn’t that just neat? 

It’s not a sex thing, the wanting and the claiming and the marking. Chrissy hates sex, so it can’t possibly be that. It’s… it’s an Eddie thing. Something about him is like a magnet, pulling her in, making her consider ridiculous, awful things like I think I’ve been waiting to know you my whole life, or sometimes when you look at me, I want to pull out individual eyelashes so I can see you better, or I ought to capture you like a June bug and keep you in a jar to observe what makes all the parts of you.

However, these are—by anyone’s standards—insane thoughts tripping across her cerebellum. And Chrissy is not an insane person. So she blinks back tears. Shoves her wrist past twisted teeth and bites down on salty skin instead of Eddie’s shoulders. 

When she turns from the window, her gaze catches on the brightly colored candy wrappers strewn across the bedside table. The salmonella pizza box with its bright red logo. 

Hardly aware of what she’s doing, Chrissy snatches. Grabs. Rips. Shoves and bites and chokes and forces the meat and cheese and cloying sweet down her throat. Half a pizza. All the M&M’s. The remnants of Eddie’s Snickers and the Kit-Kats and two bags of chips before she’s through. And then, oh, it’s waking from a fever dream. There is chocolate on her fingers and a sick sugar taste between her teeth. 

The monster gurgles in her gut, and Chrissy burns with the hate of it all as she drops to her knees and forces the shame right out. Leaves behind a sickly, candy-coated mess of food, acid, and bile in the bowl.

She feels better after. But that’s nothing new.

Chapter Text

Eddie’s on his fourth cigarette of the day by the time he gets off the phone with dispatch and decides to call Wayne. Early mornings are the only time they talk when he’s working, and life’s been so fucking trippy the past couple of days, he could use the normalcy only his uncle can bring. 

“Hello?” Wayne says like he doesn’t know it’s Eddie, even though Eddie’s the only person who’d be calling him at the asscrack of dawn. Come to think of it, he’s not sure what time it is in Indiana—the Eastern-Central line is weird, and he’s forever forgetting which side Atlanta falls on. Safest to assume Wayne’s up, either heading to bed or waking, depending on the day.

“Hey, old man.” 

“Hey, Eds, morning,” he says in that pleased, soft drawl he shares with Eddie’s father. Remnants of an upbringing further south than Hawkins. “Where you calling from?” 

“Atlanta, but only for a minute. Headed west for a drop and hook in Dallas, then out to California.” 

“Mmm. Your check came. It’s in the bank.” 

“So I’m not fired yet, I guess.” 

“Looks that way.” Wayne pauses, and Eddie can paint a picture of how he looks. Phone trapped between his ear and his shoulder, leaning against the wall next to where it hangs. A cup of tea in his Garfield mug—which he’ll never admit is his favorite because nobody ever expects a guy like Wayne to prefer tea over coffee—the morning paper waiting on the cracked tabletop. If he’s going to bed, he’ll read it until he’s sleepy. If he’s just waking up, he’ll use it as fodder for bitching down at the lunch counter he likes to frequent with some guys from the plant. A man of routine, that was Wayne. Eddie loved him for that stability when he was younger, though he’d sworn never to be so predictable. Normal. Average. Funny how quickly stuff like that changed when one finally clawed their way out of school. “Think you’ll be home soon?”

“Tough to say.” Normally, he can finagle his route—and sweet talk his favorite dispatcher—into giving him a few days off around an Indianapolis run at least once a month. Having Chrissy in the picture changes things, though. He gets the sense she doesn’t want to be anywhere near Indiana, and considering the complicated raft of feelings he’s currently clinging to, he’s happy to accommodate. “They really need me right now—holidays coming up and all.” 

Wayne grunts and Eddie feels a prickle of guilt in his gut. “Paying you overtime, I hope?”

“Ah… you know how it is.” 

“They’ll get you coming and going.” 

“How’re you? How’s Val?” Val being Wayne’s on-again, off-again fling, who lives in a trailer roughly identical to theirs across the park. Eddie’s always liked her. She’s a straight-shooter with a filthy mouth who drinks like a fish and sings like Loretta Lynn. Eddie’d picked up the guitar because of the nights she and Wayne would spend playing on the porch, and she’d been the one to give him his first stick-and-poke tattoo. Not quite an aunt and never a mother, she’s consistently been there, and sometimes he wishes they’d just make it official, but she says she prefers having her own place to go when Wayne pisses her off.

“Fine. I’ll see her Saturday.” 

“Don’t forget a rubber.” 

Wayne exhales sharply, which is as good as a laugh, and Eddie grins. The line’s the same one Wayne gave him every time he left the house as a teenager, and honestly, it had felt like a curse after a while. Don’t forget a rubber kid, even though you absolutely won’t need it. And it’s not as if Eddie was celibate—there’d been a few hand-and-mouth related activities leading up to the main event—but the actual virginity-losing hadn’t come until he was seventeen. Wayne had been trotting out the ‘rubber’ line for a solid three years before that. 

“You be safe, too, Eds,” Wayne says, and the transition is awkward, but the sentiment is sincere. Even with over two years of a near-perfect driving record under his belt, Eddie knows that Wayne still thinks he drives the truck the way he used to drive his van. “Call me when you can? See if you can’t send me some of that California sunshine.” 

“Will do, old man. Get some sleep.” 

They exchange a few more pleasantries before hanging up. Eddie cracks his knuckles and back, then fills up two cups of coffee in the break room, balancing them one-handed as he heads for the rig, the other holding a cigarette.

He spills about a third of both coffees before he gets them in the cup holders, swearing under his breath at the scald on his hand. It’s chilly for Atlanta, and he starts the truck, then gives her a minute to warm up before heading back into the world where, for once, he’s not going it alone.

There’s no stopping the smile that crosses his face when he sees Chrissy waiting by the curb with her suitcase at her feet, pink jacket clutched in her hands. The black eye is gone—hidden beneath another layer of concealer—and she’s got her hair pulled into a high-up ponytail, stuck through the back of her Georgia Peach hat. It clashes with the crimson-C sweatshirt she’s still sporting, and he wonders what the Chrissy of a few years ago would think about that. High school Chrissy was always… particular. Committed to whatever look she was giving the world that day. And, as someone pretty committed to his own look, Eddie had respected her for it. Not that it matters—whatever she’s wearing, she’s still the prettiest girl this side of the Mississippi, and come this afternoon, she’ll be the prettiest girl on the other side of it, too. 

Eddie slows the rig, his heart doing the same lub-dub-dub-dub it did every time she sashayed her way into a classroom. He stops, and is about to hop down to help her in when she grabs hold of the handle and yanks the door open, chucking her bag in first. Eddie takes it in stride, stowing it in the back while she gets settled by his side. 

If Chrissy were any other girl, and this was any other morning, he’d kiss her cheek. Turn on the charm that had gotten him into her bed the night before, flirt a little, like she ought to give him a second round. But Chrissy’s not a one-night stand, and he’s not passing time in her dorm room, or apartment, or the house she’s sharing with four other girls and one gay guy. 

“I got you a coffee,” he says as she buckles her seatbelt. “It’s swill, but—” 

“Thanks, Eddie.” She reaches for the cup, and he looks her over, frowning when he notices her bloodshot eyes, rimmed with red that the concealer can’t entirely cover.

“You alright?” He tries to keep it light, though his mind’s going a million miles an hour, mainly worried that he’s the one who inadvertently made her cry.

“I’m fine.” She sips her coffee. Makes a face. 

“Did you eat?” 

“Yes.” Another sip and she glances at him. Smiles, so maybe he’s not the one who upset her. Maybe nothing did, and he doesn’t feel it’s his place to pry. “Did you?” 

“Eh, enough. I had the pizza, and someone brought in Krispy Kreme at the depot.” Or, rather, there had been a single, stale donut left over from a box purchased the day before. Eddie had eaten it anyway. And sure, he knows his diet leaves a lot to be desired. His major food groups are burgers, grab-n-go gas station beef jerky, candy, chips, and a rare guilty apple. It’s not far off his teenage preferences of canned meat, boxed macaroni, and Mountain Dew. It’s all shit, and he’s aware that it’ll probably catch up with him in the end. He’s seen the truckers who look like they’re two seconds away from a coronary when they haul themselves into their rigs, and while he’s not some preening prig who’s screaming for a six-pack, he’s not ready to go to seed yet, either. “You ever try one?”

“No. Are they good?” 

“They’re the best,” he says and extolls the virtues of a hot, fresh Krispy Kreme (otherwise known as the opposite of what he’d had that morning, which was primarily stale dough and crusted sugar) as he pilots the rig through the city.

They’ve been on the road about twenty minutes when Chrissy—sitting with her legs pulled to her chest again, hugging them as if she might fold in on herself like some black hole collapse—says, “I’ve been thinking a lot about something important.” 

That sounds ominous. His fingers stiffen on the wheel. “Oh?”

“Yes. I’ve just been thinking—no, I’m deciding—that we have to do this normally, okay?” 

Eddie has no idea what she’s talking about, and to hazard a guess seems fraught with peril. “You want to do what normally?” 

“This!” She gestures around the cab. “All of this. I don’t want you doing things differently because I’m here. Just do it… just be normal. I want it to be normal.” 

Aha. Eddie takes a second to consider, like he’s not going to tell her exactly what she wants to hear. “We can do normal. But, you know, normal’s sometimes a fourteen-hour day. Like, today’s gonna be a long one.” 

“Okay.” 

“Normal’s sleeping in the truck.”

“I figured.” 

“Normal’s… you know. I don’t stop that much.” Truth be told, he’s pissed in a water bottle more than once, but he’s not about to share that factoid with Chrissy. Normal or no normal, he’s already anticipating additional bathroom stops in the future. “Just long enough to gas up. Fill the tires, maybe.” 

“Yup.” 

“And I sing to myself a lot. And I play really loud music to help me stay awake.”

Chrissy arches a brow, then unfolds her body and twists around so she can reach the rear cabin. That she can do it with her seatbelt on reminds Eddie that she’s always been pretty, um, flexible. Cheerleading and shit. Yeah. (Oh, fuck off, Munson. She told you to be normal.)

When she settles back into her seat, she’s holding the box of tapes Eddie stashes within easy reach. He started out with ten, and he’s been adding to the selection over the years. It’s a hodge-podge—mostly metal, but with a few other genres thrown in for kicks—and he keeps looking at her while she studies the collection, an accused man awaiting judgment. 

“This skeleton has your hair,” she says after a minute, pulling out Slayer’s Live Undead and holding it up for him.

Eddie grins. Does a little head-bang and shrugs. “Skeleton’s got good taste.” 

“Can we listen to it?” 

“Ah…that one’s a bit intense.” 

Her expression flattens into something steely, and she opens the case to pull out the cassette. “Maybe. But it’s normal.”

It is, and it isn’t. Eddie’s content to let her think she’s right, though. That he’s utterly unfazed by her tiny blonde presence as she sticks the tape in the deck and hits play. 

He wasn’t lying—Slayer is intense for a first time out—and Chrissy looks like she doesn’t quite know what to do with herself when the crowd screams and the band kicks into Black Magic. After a second, though, she reaches over and turns it up.

The album’s only twenty-five minutes long, so it doesn’t buy them much time, but she has another tape ready when it finishes. After a couple hours, she’s declared she “likes” Dio, which Eddie tries to play off like it’s no big deal. He thinks she buys his chill head nod and murmured, “yeah, cool,” though it’s hard to say for sure.  

His stomach growls near Tuscaloosa, and he turns down Ozzy. “Did you bring any of that candy from the motel room?” 

Chrissy, who’d been drumming her fingers on her thigh, stiffens like someone shoved a wooden dowel up her shirt. “Um. No. I forgot.” 

That’s disappointing, though her reaction seems outsized until he remembers the goddamn bruises littering her skin. “Hey, no worries. I have some shit stashed in the back—the mini-fridge is right behind your seat, and there are drawers above it with, you know. Stuff.”

“Sure,” she says, unbuckling her seatbelt. Eddie bites down the urge to mutter be careful as she swings herself around and onto the bunk, where she rummages through the drawers. “Okay. Um, you have, like… a lot of Slim Jims? And pork rinds. And… oh, ew. You used to have an apple.”

Pork rinds and a rotten apple. What a high-class motherfucker. Chrissy’s probably so impressed. He’s not embarrassed, exactly—eating on the road is eating on the road—but he can’t help recalling the way she’d sit in the cafeteria with her baby blue lunchbox, taking tiny bites of her sandwich (crusts cut off every day, and he remembers that, which is such a weird thing to recall), sectioning an orange. Nibbling a carrot stick. Everything about how she ate had been so… precise. Delicate. Controlled. 

So, yeah. He’s seventy-five percent sure she’s never eaten a pork rind. 

Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose and swears when some dick in a sports car cuts him off, and he’s forced to tap his brakes. Chrissy lets out a little “oh!” and braces her arm against the rear of her seat, and he debates running the Camaro off the road. 

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he says without thinking, then trips over his tongue, trying to cover the slip. “Peanuts? I think. That is, in the top drawer. I’m sure I have peanuts. And you can throw away the apple.” 

Chrissy finds the nuts, returns to the front seat, and passes the open container to him. He nestles it in his lap and pops a few nuts into his mouth, doing his best to act like he didn’t just bust out the term of endearment he used to call her in his fantasies. And that it’s not the same thing he calls his electric guitar. What an asshole. 

“You want any?” he asks, for the sake of normalcy.

“No, thank you.” She buckles up and folds her hands in her lap. “Do you ever play any games in here?” 

“Like what, chess?” 

“What? No!” She laughs, and if ‘sweetheart’ bothered her, she’s not letting on. “Like the license plate game or the alphabet game. I used to do those with my brother on road trips.” 

“Nah. I’d just play myself, which wouldn’t be fair because I’d always win.” That, and he doesn’t know how to play either of those games, since his childhood contained a dearth of both siblings and road trips. Hermit crab beach was nice, but a one-time thing.

“Guess you’ve got some competition now. It’s—oh, right there! A!” She points to a sign reading ‘Gas’ currently flying past the window at sixty-five miles per hour. 

“Uh, B?” he says, since one of the gas stations being advertised on the sign is a BP, and he’s making an educated guess. 

“Oh, you’re good.” She cranes her neck to look out his window. “You’ve got the advantage on the license plate game, though. Everyone passes your side.” 

“Uh-huh.” He’s still not sure what he’s looking for with the license plates.

Chrissy answers his question when a car slides in front of them, and she grins. “Okay. First state’s Alabama. Spotted by me.” 

Considering they’re driving through said state, it isn’t much of a find, but he picks up what she’s putting down. “How do I know when I beat you?” 

“We-ell… honestly, they’re more about passing the time than winning?” she admits. “So I was lying about the competition. But we can make up rules if you want.” 

She’s bored. She must be. It would be tough not to be—Eddie’s bored almost every day of his life, and he has the hard work of keeping the truck on the road to contend with. Spending hours trapped in a claustrophobic metal box will never be thrilling, but it’s the best he can offer her.

“I’m okay without the competition,” he says, which is accurate enough. For all his bluffing, he’s not someone who cares about winning. If he did, he wouldn’t have taken on the responsibility of DMing Hellfire. Playing had never mattered as much to him as making sure everyone else was having a good time. “You got any more games, or just those two?” 

“The only other ones I have are party games. Truth or dare, never have I ever. Stuff like that.” 

“I wouldn’t know. I never went to any parties.” 

It’s meant to be a joke, but Chrissy gives him a look like he ran over twenty puppies in novelty bow ties. “Eddie, yes, you did.” 

She’s so scandalized, and it makes him laugh. “I really, really didn’t.” Playing tabletop games and getting high in Gareth’s mom’s basement doesn’t count, nor do the handful of birthday parties he went to as a kid. Neither, for that matter, does dealing drugs at other people’s events, mainly because those assholes never let him get further than exchanging cash at the back door. “Don’t sweat it, though. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have had fun.” 

The furrow cutting her brow deepens, and she folds her arms. “It wasn’t about having fun…” She sighs. “Nevermind. What about twenty questions?”

That one, Eddie knows. “You first, Cunningham. Is it bigger than a breadbox?” 

Her expression lightens by degrees, and she’s giggling by the time Eddie asks his fifteenth question, which is his intent—he figured out she was thinking of the moldy apple, like, ten questions back.

They take turns as time slips by—the apple, a guitar, a cow, raindrops, Grover Cleveland (which, what the fuck, Chrissy?), Ozzy Osbourne—and the game transitions into a discussion about Ghostbusters. Eddie is delighted to find out that Chrissy has seen the film multiple times and that her pop culture interests have overlap with his own. 

When he tries a deeper cut into horror, however, she recoils. 

“My friends tried to show me at a sleepover,” she says in response to his question about Friday the Thirteenth. “But they gave up when I started crying.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I was fourteen! It was oogy!”

Oogy. Eddie adores her. “But you like Ghostbusters.” 

“Obviously. It’s funny, not scary.” 

“Debatable, but okay. What other horror movies have you tried?” 

“None. Because I don’t like them.” 

“How can you know whether you like them if you haven’t seen them?” 

“I saw one. I cried!”

“Because it was, what’d you say, oogy?”

“Yes. Because it was oogy.” 

“Jesus Christ, Cunningham.” 

“Okay, well, how many nice movies have you seen, Munson?” 

Eddie’s stomach takes a running leap out of his rectum when she calls him by his surname like they’re chums. Pals. Buddies. Which they are, kind of. Even though he called her sweetheart, and if this were any other situation, he definitely would have made fifty moves toward a kiss. “Define ‘nice.’”

“Romances.”

“Speaking of oogy.”

“Eddie! No! What about Sixteen Candles?” 

“Nope.” 

“Romancing the Stone?” 

“Definitely not.” 

“Splash?”

He mutters about a slow down ahead as he taps the brakes, hoping Shreveport’s traffic will get him out of answering the question.

Chrissy’s like a dog with a bone, though. “Um, hi. Have you seen Splash?” 

“Maybe once,” he mutters, which is forty lies in a clown car. Not only has he seen Splash, he’s seen Splash about as many times as she’s seen Ghostbusters. And, sure, he used his hard-earned cash to do so partially for Daryl Hannah’s ass, but also because she’s a fucking mermaid, and he’s a DnD freak with some weird kinks, specifically around fantastical creatures. 

“I knew it,” she says, kicking her feet onto the dash with a triumphant fist pump. 

“So? It doesn’t mean anything.” 

“No, I know. It’s just…” She studies her thumbnail, which is still rubbed raw. “If we go to the movies, we have to take turns picking.”

We, she says, like that’s a thing they are and a thing they’ll do. Eddie decides then and there that he's taking her the next time they’re stopped somewhere proximal to a theater. “Yeah, okay. You pick first.” 

“What a gentleman. It’s—oh, Kansas!” She squeaks, pointing at a car on the shoulder, which might be contributing to the slowdown.

It takes them half an hour to get through Shreveport, and Eddie’s flagging. He wants to make it at least partially into Texas tonight, but the rig needs gas, and he ought to check the tire pressure. So he pulls into a truck stop in the suburbs, strip malls sprawling in both directions. 

Chrissy hops out of the truck, stretching her arms over her head with a yawn. “Can I go walk around?” 

There’s no reason she shouldn’t. Eddie worries all the same. “Sure. Back here in forty-five?” It might take him that long to do what he needs to, and it might not, but she’s been a trooper all day, so he figures she wants a break from him. 

“I can do that.”

“We’ll get some more hours in tonight,” he says, already knowing he’s going to fudge the time in his logbook. “But then we’ll stop and settle in, okay?” 

“Okay,” she agrees, giving him a wave as she practically skips across the street, ponytail bouncing.  

Eddie watches her until she disappears around a corner, then pops the stiff joints of his spine and gets to work. There’s some reprieve in being on his own—not having to entertain her—but it’s short-lived. He enjoys having company, even under these strange circumstances, and it’s a relief when she returns, precisely forty-five minutes later, with a couple of shopping bags. 

“Hi,” she says. 

Sitting on the driver’s side steps, Eddie looks up and shields his eyes from the setting sun. “Hey. What’d you get?” 

As she rifles through a bag, it occurs to him he has no clue what her financial situation is. Evidently, she has some cash on hand—she insisted on paying for half the room yesterday—but he doesn’t imagine it’s an endless supply. And while he makes enough to support them both, he figures she’d be weird about it if he asked. Which makes sense, considering they still barely know each other. Or, well… no, they know each other fine now. It’s just that Eddie’s not great with confrontation with people he actually likes. Give him a brash fuck in a uniform—jock, cop, whatever—and he’ll hop on a table and get dramatic, as Chrissy put it. But poking at someone who might poke back? Tell him to lay off and leave her alone? Yeah, no goddamn thanks.

“Dinner.” Chrissy holds out a foil-wrapped log that turns out to be a ham sandwich. With lettuce. And tomato. So he’s staving off scurvy for one more day. Excellent. 

“Hey, nice one, Cunningham,” he says as he unwraps it, taking a bite for good measure.

“Can’t have you living on moldy apples, Munson,” she teases, and God, she’s gotta stop using his name like that, or he might spontaneously combust. “There was this deli with hot food, so there’s macaroni, too.”  

“My hero.” 

The corners of her mouth pull into a smile, and she puts the food bag on the step beside him. “There was also a store selling a bunch of old stuff.” 

“Like a thrift shop?”

“No, a pawnshop.” 

Oh, Jesus Christ. “You went into a pawnshop?” 

Her smile slips, and he realizes he’s stepped in it, as his tone wasn’t… ideal. “Yes. I did.” She thrusts her hand into the second back and produces two tapes. “For you, actually. This one had a weird cover, so I thought you might like it.” 

Well, now he feels like a real motherfucker, and his cheeks burn as he looks down at the recognizable illustration of a screaming, reddened face. “Oh, good pick. King Crimson.”

“Is that a band or a person?” 

“A band. They’re, well, my uncle’s really into them.”

“Do you like them?”

“Sure, yeah, they’re good. Prog rock. What’s the other one?” 

She hands him the second cassette, which has a simple cover. Two guys in black outfits, alongside the words Psychocandy and The Jesus and Mary Chain. He’s not sure which is the album and which is the band, as they’re both new to him. 

“I don’t know these guys.” It looks kind of New Wave, which means he will grit his fucking teeth and endure the synth because Chrissy bought it, and he’s starting to think he’d lie on a bed of nails if it made her smile. “Looks, um, modern.” 

“Maybe. I just…” She bites her lip, leaning closer. “I picked it because my mom would hate the band's name.” 

So, the album’s Psychocandy, then. Eddie grins. “You rebel, you.”

“I know it’s dumb.”

“It’s not dumb.” If anything, it’s cute. Chrissy Cunningham, the girl who ran away from home, blushing at the sight of a slightly sacrilegious cassette tape. Eddie can get on board with the ol’ Jesus and Mary Chain if it keeps her looking so furtive. “Sorry if I uh… offended you. I say shit like that a lot.”

“Oh, I don’t care about that.” 

“No?” 

“No. It’s… I’m not even sure if I believe in that stuff anymore.”

“What, Jesus?” 

“Not—not exactly.” She plucks the tape from his hands, turning it over and frowning at the cover. “I’m figuring some things out, is all.” 

“I mean, that’s cool. We all gotta—”

“Jesus Christ,” she says out of nowhere, like a kid swearing on a Sunday, the second word no more than a hushed whisper. “Oh, my gosh.” 

It’s the sweetest curse Eddie’s ever heard, and he fights the urge to laugh since it’s clearly a big deal for her. “Attagirl. How’d that feel?” 

A blush tinges her cheeks, but she’s smiling. “Fine, I guess.” 

“What else’d you get?” he asks because the bag in her hand is still bulging. 

“Oh, yeah!” She reaches in and pulls out a camera. Not some cheap point-and-shoot model, but a genuine Nikon, with a lens and everything. “It was only twenty dollars, but the man was so nice, he gave it to me for fifteen.” 

Eddie doesn’t have the heart to tell her that the camera probably has some major defects and that the oh-so-nice guy ripped her off. Not when she looks so pleased with herself. “That’s really cool, Chris.” 

“He didn’t have film, though. Do you think they have any here?” 

“Maybe.” He’s seen truck stops that sell squirrel traps and bear bells, so film isn’t beyond the realm of possibility. “If they don’t, we’ll find someplace that does. Do you know how to use it?” 

“Kind of. My dad was into photography when I was younger, so he taught me some stuff about, like… aperture and shutter speed.” She brings the camera to her eye, training it on Eddie and fiddling with the lens. “How hard can it be?” 

“For you? Easy.” 

She smiles. Clicks a few empty frames then hangs the strap around her neck before going for one last thing in the bag. It’s another baseball cap—this one navy blue, with a logo for The Texas Pacific Railway on the front. 

“Look at that. Are you starting a collection?” 

“Yup.” She replaces her peach hat with the new one, tossing the former into the truck behind him. “What do you think?”

And, okay, there’s no way for her to know that Wayne’s been collecting baseball caps (and coffee mugs) since before Eddie was born, but that doesn’t stop him from connecting some cosmic dots between the two. 

“I think you make it cuter,” he says, mouth unspooling words like some out-of-control kite string. 

Chrissy just smiles. Tugs the brim further down her forehead and taps her camera. “I’m going to see if they have film. You should eat your sandwich.” 

Eddie’s more than happy to oblige.

Chapter Text

Chrissy’s going stir-crazy by the time Eddie decides they’re done for the night. He apologizes for the long day as he pulls into another nondescript truck stop around ten o’clock, and she says she doesn’t mind, which is true, but also, she could use a change of scenery. 

The brief respite earlier had been good, and she’d enjoyed her walk. Stupid, after all that agonizing about Eddie at the motel, how easily she could leave him behind for an hour. But it was different, because in Atlanta, he might have left her. Wouldn’t have left her—not really—but her brain is a fickle thing. 

Spending the day with him has eased things, since she’s come to realize that they are actually, genuinely compatible in the stuffy, traditional sense. It’s a relief knowing she can just talk to him. Smile at him. Listen to King Crimson with him. Only, now that she’s realized how much she likes him, she finds she’s desperate to know more, and more, and more. To stuff herself full of facts about Eddie because it’s been such a long time since she had a new friend who was just hers and not some consolation prize given to her by virtue of her proximity to Jason and his classmates. 

Crossing the parking lot, she resists the urge to jump and spin. She’s stiff and sore, and the last few hours were unbearable. She doesn’t know how Eddie manages it, but then, he has more to do. It’s his job, and she’s just along for the ride. 

Which, naturally, tips the balance of the worry scales in her head right back into, oh Chrissy, you’re being a burden. Her index finger finds the bed of her thumbnail, and she picks at the skin as she quickens her pace. Is she putting him behind schedule? Is he tired of her and her car games, and is their compatibility simply his politeness clashing with her dimness? Was he just being nice about the tapes and the camera and the sandwich? 

Maybe. And that makes her stomach tighten and her head throb as she pushes open the door to the station, where a couple of older guys sit at the counter, nursing beers. 

Weird to have a beer at a truck stop. She wonders if Eddie’d join them if she weren’t there. Make conversation in that effortless way he does—the way she noticed with the waitress and the desk clerk at the motel. Not so much with the security guard at the stadium. 

One of the men glances at her. No doubt pegs her as out of place while his gaze sweeps over her body. Chrissy drops her eyes and beelines for the bathroom, where she pees, washes her hands, and stares at herself in the mirror until she can’t stand it anymore and splashes water on her face instead. 

Eddie’s standing near the door when she emerges, surveying the selection of corn nuts. 

“Oh, hi,” she says, like she’s surprised to see him. 

“Hey. They’ve got film.” He tosses his head toward the counter. “Did you see?” 

“Uh-uh.” That he checked on her behalf makes the under-skin static start up again. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I’m gonna hit the head. Meet you back at the truck?” 

She nods, then pauses, worrying the unraveling hem of her sweatshirt between two fingers. “You don’t have to. You can get a beer if you want. I might take a walk.” 

Eddie’s left eyebrow takes a speedy journey toward his hairline. “Chris, it’s like… eleven.” 

“I know. You never took a walk at night?” Safe or not, it’s what she does when Jason’s out late. They live in a boring little neighborhood with dull streets and friendly neighbors, but there’s still something magical about being in the world when everyone else is tucked indoors. Maybe it represents a certain freedom to someone who never had any, or maybe she’s overthinking it.

“Historically, I’m not much of a walker,” Eddie says.

That doesn’t even make sense because he walked to the stadium, and Chrissy rolls her eyes. Which is… something she hasn’t done in a very long time. She opens her mouth to apologize, habit overriding instinct, hoping if she makes herself very small and very meek, he might not think she’s the rudest person in the world. Might not be mad about it. 

But Eddie only laughs. Rolls his eyes right back, then points to the counter. “Go get your film and wait for me—we’ll take your walk, alright?”

A part of her wants to tell him no, thanks, she’ll just go herself. But it’s the part that’s still believing she’s a nuisance. And he’s offering. If she takes him up on that offer, she’ll get to know him better. To ask things in the dark she might not ask in the light because it’s easier to talk when she doesn’t have to see his face. 

“Thanks, Eddie,” she says, then buys her film from the sleepy-looking clerk. 

Ten minutes later finds them walking down a darkened interstate service road. Eddie’s smoking a cigarette and holding a flashlight because he said he wouldn’t end up as roadkill for some jackass in a jacked-up Ford.

It’s cold, and she’s grateful for her coat, even if it’s not her warmest. Unfortunately, there was only so much she could take, and they stored their winter coats at Jason’s parents’ house. Eddie, meanwhile, has swapped his denim jacket for a leather one that’s been beaten to hell—the cuffs are held together with crude chains, and she can’t tell if he’s done it for appearance’s sake or out of necessity. 

Either way, he looks cooler than she ever will, and she likes how his arm sometimes brushes against hers when he shifts his grip on the flashlight.

The occasional sweep of headlights from the adjacent interstate illuminates the grassy, tree-lined median. Beyond that, there’s not much else to see. If she had a book, she might be able to differentiate between Texas trees and Indiana trees, but they look sort of the same to her. Tall and swaying and bent this way and that, their branches painting craggly lines against the moonlit sky. 

“Oh, a park!” she exclaims, maybe a mile down the road when his flashlight swings across a rickety wooden sign. 

Eddie plants his feet and stares at the empty parking lot, which boasts a squat, square toilet block and a small information board in addition to the sign. 

“Absolutely not,” he declares. 

“Eddie.” She’s pushing her luck, but he’d thought her rolling her eyes was funny, which was such a novel sensation that she has to press that same button. See what happens the second time around. That, and she’s always loved the dark thrill of sneaking into forbidden places. She just hasn’t had a lot of opportunities to try. 

“Chrissy,” he says right back. “I’m not taking you into an abandoned park in the middle of the night in some hick town where they’ll never find our bodies.” 

“Where’s your sense of adventure? We don’t even have to go that far!” She’s wheedling—teasing—the same way she had the security guard in Atlanta. The difference is that she’s not sure it’ll work with Eddie. He’s made of sterner stuff. 

“No.” 

“Just… twenty feet in? I only want to see what it’s like.” 

“Chris…” 

“Please?” She employs the half-pout she hasn’t used since she was a teenager begging her dad for extra mall money.

Eddie groans. Pushes his hand through his hair. Mutters something about bears. Chrissy declares emphatically that there aren’t any bears in Texas, and he says are you sure? and she’s not, but it’s a moot point because he’s already walking past the sign and up to the information board. 

“Park hours. Dusk ’til dawn, Cunningham.” 

“Says the guy who flipped the bird at graduation. I guess your rebellious spirit ends at trespassing?” 

Eddie’s wide mouth twitches, and he points the flashlight down the path, illuminating a cluster of gazebos with picnic tables beneath them. “My rebellious spirit… Jesus Christ. C’mon.” 

The path isn’t paved, so they carefully pick their way over rocks and roots until they arrive at the gazebos, which aren’t far—she can still see and hear the interstate. Chrissy decides on a table and climbs onto its surface, then crosses her legs and looks at Eddie expectantly. 

“What, we’re loitering?” he teases. 

“Yes. Can you come up here, please?” Because it suddenly seems very important that he be there, with her, in the dark. It’s the same weird, wild feeling she had that morning just before she lost control, and she doesn’t want to do that again. She wants him there, solid, and with her. Not standing at the edge of the table where it’d be so easy for him to turn tail and run. 

Eddie gives her a funny look but stubs out his cigarette and mirrors her position. Taller, as always, so they’re not quite face-to-face, but their knees are almost touching, and that’s helping a lot, oddly enough. 

“Happy?” he asks as he gestures around with the flashlight, then sets it upright on the table, where it illuminates the tin roof of the gazebo like a makeshift lantern. 

“Can you turn that off?” 

“I mean, I can, but I don’t want to.” 

“Why?”

“Because there’s probably a rogue posse of Texas bears on their way right now.” 

“I really hope so. I’d like to meet one.” 

“Fuck’s sake,” he says, then switches off the flashlight.

It’s a relief; asking for the strange things that spring to mind is more manageable this way. She holds up both hands, spreading her fingers wide. “Do this, please.” 

Eddie laughs, and she catches the gleam of his smile in the distant light of a passing truck. He does as he’s told, lifting his hands to hers so she can bring their palms together to make a bridge. 

“Is this one of those clapping games?” he asks. “Down by the rollercoaster?”

“Oh! No. We’re not doing that.”

“Shame.” He flexes his fingers, and she shivers at the cold metal press of his rings against her skin. “Teach me sometime?”

“Yes. Sure. But right now, it’s just like… I think we need to fix your problem.” 

“My problem?” 

“About never playing party games in high school.” The thing is, it’s been bugging her, what he said about not going to any parties. Because Eddie’s a fun, interesting, thoughtful person, and she’s one of the close-minded idiots who looked right past him. She would have invited him if she’d known. Defended him. 

Well, maybe. She’s not sure she’s that brave.

Eddie groans. “All things considered, Cunningham, I’d rather learn the clapping stuff.” 

“Okay, but please?” 

And that’s all it takes. He relents with what she’s certain is another eye-roll, but she can’t tell in the dark. 

“Fine, alright. What are we playing?”

“Truth or truth,” she says, having already cataloged the various games they could play. Never Have I Ever needs more than two people, as does Suck-n-Blow. Truth or Dare is their best option, but the ‘dare’ part will be tricky in the dark. So she’s limited to the version she and her girlfriends would yawn through when they were too tired to get out of their sleeping bags at slumber parties and just wanted to gossip. 

“Truth or truth,” he echoes, bemused. 

“Yeah, it’s easy. I’ll ask you two questions, and you have to answer one of them. Except you get five vetoes if you really don’t want to.” The vetoes were never part of the game in her youth, but she’s adding them now because she wants to know Eddie better—crack his head open like an egg and figure out once and for all if he’s happy to have her there or just being nice—but she’s not ready to tell him some things. Not ready to see how he looks at her slip away into something pitying.

(And yes, she knows he knows—he saw the bruises on her skin, and he’s not stupid. But she hasn’t had to say it out loud, which helps her believe maybe she’ll never have to tell him. That she can have this new life and this new plan and never have to think about the fact that Eddie’s home base is still in Hawkins, actually, and she has no money, actually, and there’s gonna come a day when she has to make a choice about what and who she wants to be, actually.) 

“Uh-huh. And our hands are like this because… why, exactly?” 

“To count down the vetoes,” she says, then folds one finger, digging her knuckle into his palm before straightening it again. As plausible excuses go, it’s pretty crappy, but she’ll take what she can get in exorcising the feral bit of her brain that’s oh-so-desperate to touch him without leading him on.

The thing is, she one hundred percent has no interest in sleeping with him. In truth, she has no interest in sleeping with anybody ever again. That part of her life is over. But none of that changes the fact that, at least four times today, she wondered if maybe it wouldn’t be better if she sat on his lap while he was driving. Just to keep him focused. 

“I dunno, Chris, seems pretty complicated,” he says, and she thrills when she realizes he’s teasing her, all low-voiced and lilting vowels. “You ought to go first. Show me how it’s done.” 

Chrissy considers her options while luxuriating in his undivided attention. “Okay. Question one: what’s your favorite movie? Or question two: what’s your favorite ice cream?” 

“Can’t pick just one movie, so… butter pecan, I guess. Because my uncle likes it.” 

It’s an old man's flavor, so that makes sense. Chrissy respects it, though, because it’s the sort of flavor one can always find at the store. Not some fly-by-night novelty that’s here today, gone tomorrow. “I like that. Your turn.” 

“My turn. Ah… okay, what’s your favorite color, or do you think we’re alone in the universe?” 

Chrissy laughs, some tension ebbing as she shuffles closer, so their knees are touching. “Um. Blue. And no, I don’t think we’re alone. Oh, and if you want to, you can answer both questions.”

“Is that in the official rulebook, or are you bullshitting me here, kid?” 

“The latter.”

“Clearly. So you don’t think we’re alone—”

“Eddie, it’s not your turn, and no follow-ups.”

His index finger pokes against hers, and he snorts. “Geez, stickler. Sorry.” 

“Don’t do it again,” she says in her best gruff voice, though there’s no helping the giggle that escapes when she catches him pulling a face. She can see him better now—still fuzzy outlines, but her eyes are adjusting. “Eddie. Please. This is very serious.”

“Obviously. Far be it from me to disparage this game that’s absolutely real and not something you’re making up on the fly. Go ahead, ask away.” 

“Thank you. Okay, number one, do you think you’re smart? Or number two, how’d you first get into all that screaming music?” 

Eddie looks all around the place for an answer, and she assumes he’ll go for the second option. But he surprises her with, “honestly, I don’t think I’m dumb, but I didn’t like school.” 

“I don’t think you’re dumb, either.”

“Coming from the girl who wanted to walk into a park at night when there are bears afoot…” 

“Yeah, I guess I’m not the best judge of intelligence,” she says, and ha-ha, it’s a joke, but also, Eddie saw her bruises. 

“My turn?” 

“Yup,” she says, trying to ignore the heat creeping up the column of her spine. 

“Okay. So, first question, do you like dogs? Second question… what exactly was your plan if you hadn’t run into me?”

She recognizes that he’s giving her an easy out but chooses not to take it. “I figured I’d hop on the Greyhound that stops there on the way to New Orleans, but I was going to get out somewhere in Mississippi and either catch something else or hitch or… something. I don’t know, exactly. And um…” she thinks quickly, not meeting his eyes. “If you didn’t like school, how come you kept coming back instead of dropping out?” 

Eddie inhales but says nothing, and it takes her a moment to realize she forgot to ask a second question. 

“Sorry. What’s your favorite bug?” 

“My favorite bug,” he says and laughs a little. “I like ladybugs. And shit, man. I didn’t drop out because, I guess… I guess it freaked me out, thinking about leaving and having to figure my life out. So I stayed longer than I should have, and I’m still not sure that was the right choice.”

She wants to press him for more, but it’s not her turn. 

Eddie clears his throat. “Alright. Does anyone back home know where you are? Or, like—”

She cuts him off before he can ask another. “Nobody. Does that scare you?” 

“Not as much as it should.” He bites his lip. “Chris, did you marry Ja—”

“Veto.” She tucks her finger against the crook of his index and middle. “What’s your favorite kind of potato chip?” 

“What happened to two questions?”

“My game, my rules. I guess we’re adapting.” 

“Fritos. Even though they're made of corn. Are you okay for money?” 

“For now. Do you want to drive a truck forever?” 

He hesitates. “Not really, no.”

“Then what do you—”

“Veto. And it’s my turn.” He puts his finger down and hooks it around hers, locking their hands together. “Did you like cheerleading?” 

The question isn’t where she expects him to go, and she’s glad for the reprieve. “Sort of. I liked learning the routines and performing, but I hated the expectation that we had to act a certain way.” 

“Because your inner freak was always trying to get out.” 

“You think I’m a freak?” 

“That’s your question?” 

“Yes.” 

Eddie nods emphatically, then leans forward like he’s telling her a secret. “I think you’re a tiny little fuckin’ weirdo, Cunningham. Dragging my ass to a park in Podunk, Texas, running away from home, conning that poor man out of your peach hat…” 

“Eddie, stop,” she says, while her brain screams yes please do go on, Eddie, please.  

“You don’t agree?” 

“Is that your question?” 

“Sure.” 

“Then… then, I don’t know.”

“Bullshit answer.”

“It’s the truth!”

“No, it’s what you think you’re expected to say. What was the first thing that came to your mind when I called you a freak?” 

“It’s not your turn.” 

“Humor me.” 

She centers herself on the press of his finger against hers and closes her eyes. “That I like it. But I’m probably not supposed to.”  

“Says who?”

It’s still not his turn, but she doesn’t care. “I don’t know. Other people.” 

“Hell is other people, Chris. You’re a grown-up. Do what you want.” 

“I am.” She gestures with the hand not holding fingers, lest he forget where they are. “I’m just getting used to giving less of a crap.” 

“I bet you’re the only Hawkins cheerleader that could hack it out here.” 

Chrissy frowns because something about that doesn’t sit right with her. “That’s not true. They could if they wanted to. Anyway, they’re not—” She feels anxious, suddenly, and wants to make herself understood. “They’re just like me. They’re stuck under other people’s rules.” 

“But you got out.”

“It’s not the same thing.” She pulls her hands away, gut roiling. Getting out is making an informed choice to leave. It’s a divorce or a breakup. Running away is cowardly. It’s a frightened animal chewing off its leg to escape a trap. It’s not being brave enough for a clean break, leaving behind a trail of blood and sinew while limping off with a broken foot. “I ran, and running is different than getting out.” 

“How’s that?”

“It just is,” she says, and it comes out a snarl, which she regrets. Eddie’s not the one who laid the snare, but that doesn’t keep her from nursing the bloody stump she sustained from all those years spent trapped.

“Alright, Chris,” he says, then touches her knee. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t. It’s fine. Sorry. Whose turn is it?” 

“I forgot. But—”

The bushes behind them rustle. Chrissy nearly jumps out of her skin, and Eddie doesn’t fare much better. He flicks on the flashlight and swings the beam wide. It catches on the fat, waddling body of an animal that’s foreign to her. “What is that?” 

“Armadillo.” Eddie sounds a little freaked. “Shit. I’ve never seen one east of Dallas before. And even then, they’ve always been roadkill.” 

“It’s not dangerous, is it?” 

“No. But the stuff that wants to eat it can be.” 

“Texas bears?”

“Texas bears.”

“We should probably get back to the truck.”

“It’s like you’re reading my mind.” 

They head for the service road, any lingering tension dissipating as they walk. Eddie takes the outside, and Chrissy stays close. This time, he doesn’t light a cigarette, and their hands brush once, twice, three times before she thinks getting out is a choice and slides her palm against his. Squeezes his fingers as they head, hand-in-hand, toward the only safe place she’s got. 

Chapter Text

So, they’re holding hands now. They’re holding hands, and they’re playing games, and frankly, Eddie doesn’t know what to do with any of that. To date, he’s not been much for hand-holding. Or, no, correction: he hasn’t had many hand-holding opportunities. Now that he’s giving it the old college try, he finds he likes it fine. Especially the way Chrissy’s palm feels pressed to his own. The slight movements of her fingers when she’s saying something emphatically. The way she’ll squeeze, just a bit, every time a car roars by on the interstate beyond.

Eddie’s not a relationship guy. Never has been, though that’s through chance more than circumstance. A girl named Rina Haverman was his first kiss at the ripe age of fifteen. Rina was a legend in Forest Hills—a smart kid who’d gotten a scholarship to some private school on the east coast. She was going places, but she was also a pothead, meaning she and Eddie were tight. He wasn’t dealing then, but he knew Rick. Knew how to get his hands on something decent. So when she found out she got into that fancy college, she came over to the trailer, smoked a bowl, and surprised the shit out of him with a kiss when they were both pleasantly high. Eddie can’t remember the record playing, but he remembers Rina pulling back, a smile touching her pouting mouth. 

“Yeah, alright, Eddie,” she’d said. “Roll another one?”

And that had been that. 

Sex stuff came later. An opportunity in the form of Gareth’s visiting cousin from New Jersey, the summer between Eddie’s sophomore and junior years. She’d never given a blow job before, and Eddie’d never received one, so, like… yeah. Made sense they should each fix their problems, and it happened. 

Lotta teeth. Nice girl. Never saw her again. He asked Gareth about her once, and he said she’d had a kid kinda young.  

Losing his virginity hadn’t come until, embarrassingly, late in his junior year. A senior—Cindy Dawes—had gotten it into her head that Eddie was the closest thing Hawkins High had to a legit musician, which was laughable, even then. But she’d approached him one day while he was noodling with the acoustic in the rear of his van. Said she was planning on moving to New York City. Asked him if he gave lessons. Eddie wasn’t about to turn down money for practically nothing, so he’d had her over a half-dozen times. Taught her to finger-pick some Janis Joplin and Fleetwood Mac.

Cindy returned the favor the day after her graduation. Showed up at the trailer, declared she wasn’t moving away as a virgin, and… again. It happened. Fewer teeth. Not such a nice girl. 

Since then, especially on the road, sex has been sporadic and one-night-standish. Eddie doesn’t go for lot lizards or sleeper leapers, though he’s seen them hanging around. Instead, his preference is for local girls who aren’t attached to sad stories or—more than likely—STDs. Maybe that’s selfish of him; he hasn’t questioned it much. But he never promises more than he can give—all he offers is some company. Some time. And, if he does his job right, an orgasm or two for the price of breakfast in the morning. 

All of that, taken together, means that Eddie’s never been anyone’s sweetheart. Never held hands for the hell of it. Never had anyone parade him around like they’re proud and possessive. Never been introduced as my boyfriend, which isn’t even something he wants, necessarily, but it’d be nice to try it out. See if he likes it. 

Only he’s not Chrissy’s boyfriend, and the only things looking at them are the armadillos. Because Chrissy—well, shit, she’s married, isn’t she? To Jason fucking Carver. The way she vetoed the question tells Eddie everything he needs to know about that. But, you know. Jason’s not here.

So, fuck it. Fuck Jason. Eddie’s holding hands with a pretty girl, and he’s not gonna spend too much time making a morality play out of it. Chrissy’s head is in a fucked up place; there’s no missing that fact. It’s a place where sometimes she’s fine, and other times she’s jittery, and other times she wants to play games in a park. She’s walking some tiny tightrope that Eddie can’t see, so he figures his best bet is to catch her when and if she falls.

And as far as the hand-holding goes? Yeah, he’s letting her set the pace on whatever’s going on there. She’s clearly exorcising some Jason-shaped demon, using him as a port in a storm, and he’s sure, eventually, she’ll sail on out into the world again.

Doesn’t change the fact that they’re going to have to share the bunk tonight.

Chrissy solves part of the problem when they reach the rig by declaring she’ll stay up and read for a while. Eddie—who’s not sleeping in his jeans, but the truck stop’s gone dark, so he’s left with limited options—hides under the quilt and tries to shimmy out of his clothes. That’s easier said than done, and he’s pretty sure he kicks his dignity onto the floor next to his pants. 

It gets worse when he lays claim to his ratty sweatpants from the night before and has to pretend Chrissy’s not giggling to herself as he attempts to wriggle his way into them beneath the blanket. 

“Am I a joke to you, Cunningham?” he asks when her silent giggles start causing her to shake, and he barely has the sweats hitched to his calves. 

She bites her lip and shakes her head, but her cheeks are pink from suppressed laughter. “Not… well. Kind of. What are you doing?” 

“Changing.” 

“Do you usually change under the quilt?” 

“When I’ve got company.” 

“Can’t you just sleep in your shorts?” 

The question flummoxes him for a second, and he opens and shuts his mouth. “You’re sleeping here, too. I didn’t want to make it weird.” 

“Eddie. Be normal.”

Normal, she says. He takes her at her word and kicks the sweats to the bottom of the bunk, then turns off the lights in the back and faces the wall, so he won’t be disturbed by her reading light or the occasional sweep of headlights across the lot.

It’s been a long day, so sleep comes quickly, though that slumber is again broken by the novel sensation of Chrissy creeping into bed with him. She settles in against his back, bare legs resting against his own. Tiny, frigid feet tucked against his calves while her arm wraps around his midsection and her head rests between his shoulder blades. 

She fits, he thinks, then banishes such rank sentimentality to speak a quiet “hey.” 

“Hi. It’s freezing.” 

Eddie rubs her skin and debates turning over to wrap her up, then decides against it. “Yeah. I know.”

“You can warm me up.” 

She says it like a declaration, so he shifts to give her some additional quilt. Deprives himself of some comfort as he tries to transfer some warmth between them. Even so, he doesn’t turn. 

“I got to where Glorfindel gets Frodo across the river,” she says as she cuddles closer, and he can feel the puff of her breath through his shirt. “Are the black riders gone?” 

“Do you actually want me to tell you, or do you want to find out for yourself?”

“I really need to know,” she says, fingers pressing into his stomach, which is doing inevitable, biological things to him that he’s going to staunchly ignore.

“They, um. They come back. Sorry. They’re in the third book a lot.” 

“Oh. Ugh. That thing Strider says about how they attack when things are dark and lonely. I just… I hate that.” 

“Me, too.” 

“Eddie?” 

“Mmm?” 

She exhales, and it’s sharp as a Nazgul’s blade. “I did marry him. Jason.” 

It doesn’t take a genius to see the parallels Chrissy’s drawing, and he kinda wants to punch a hole in the truck at having his suspicions confirmed, because what the fuck, Carver? He’d always been a smug, selfish prick, but Eddie wouldn’t have pinned him for a wife-beater. 

Then again, Jason had also been quick to resort to physical attacks when the verbal ones rolled off Eddie’s back like so much water off a duck. 

“I, um, I thought you might have,” he says, fighting to keep his tone measured. “I remember seeing the engagement notice in the paper.” 

Her body goes stiff. “My mom did that. We—well, we ended up eloping.” 

“You did?” 

“You sound surprised.”

“I am, kinda. I figured, you know. Royal wedding and all.” 

“No.” She squeezes tighter, and her words are muffled. “That king and queen stuff was such crap. We never were… he was.” 

“You—” 

“Eddie, there’s something so, so wrong with him,” she says, and it’s a whisper in the dark. Like maybe Carver’s got listening devices planted, waiting for her to speak against him.

And, boy, that phrasing. There’s something so, so wrong with him. That’s sinister shit. Clinical, precise, and terrified.

Eddie’s in over his head, and he knows it. He ought to pull for the surface, but he can’t tell up from down, so he picks a direction and swims. “You don’t have to think about him or worry about him. He doesn’t know where you are.” 

“He’s looking, though,” she says with utmost certainty. 

Fuck it, Eddie decides and rolls onto his back. Finds her staring at him with wide eyes that he tells himself aren’t teary. “If he’s looking, it’s in all the wrong places. Nobody knows you’re here. You said it yourself.” 

Chrissy hums and adapts to the shift in position. Tucks her head against his bicep and rearranges the blanket so she can hug him again. “That’s probably true.” 

“Think about it. We move around all day, every day, and nobody—I mean, nobody’s gonna go talk to Frank the security guard, right?” 

She nods, slow and uncertain as if she wants to believe him but can’t quite bring herself to trust the facts of the matter. “He’ll find my car.” 

“Yeah, well. Crossroads of Kentucky. Greyhounds and truckers and God knows who else. You could be anywhere.” He lifts his arm in a tentative invitation and is rewarded by her moving closer, head on his chest. “I’ve got you, Chris. I swear it.” 

Chrissy grips his shirt in her fist and closes her eyes. “You didn’t ask for me.” 

“Yeah, well, I coulda turned you down.” 

“But you didn’t. Because you’re a nice guy.” 

“I’m not that nice,” he says to reassure her—and himself—that he wouldn’t do this for just anyone.

Chrissy sleeps. Really sleeps. Rests in something so deep and dreamless that it comes as a surprise to be woken. Not that the waker meant to do it—she opens her eyes to Eddie crawling over her like some oversized spider, arms and legs akimbo, muttering curses as he tries not to touch her.

She lets him believe he hasn’t until he’s sitting on the edge of the bunk. His t-shirt has ridden up his back to reveal two pale inches of skin, with three flat moles lined up perpendicular to his spine. Chrissy can’t help herself. She presses her fingers against the dark spots just to touch and see.

Eddie jumps. Twists like a dropped cat and looks at her with his frizzy hair haloed by the morning light. “Shit, sorry. I was trying not to wake you.” 

He doesn’t seem bothered by her touch. That’s a relief—last night was real, then—and it’s nice to know she has the option. Of course, part of her worries Eddie might think she’s asking for something that she’s not capable of wanting, but he’s been kind to this point, so it’s only a small voice that lives in the same place as her mother in the back of her head. 

Sleeping next to Eddie is the only common denominator in two nights of uninterrupted rest. She might develop a taste for it. 

“I don’t mind,” she says. “Besides, I want a shower if we’re leaving soon.” 

Eddie concedes the point, so they put themselves together (he turns away while she tugs on her jeans, and she does the same for him) and head inside the truck stop, which is quiet, the evening drinkers likely still in their bunks. 

Chrissy takes a shower. Stands under lukewarm water for as long as she can stand, then wraps herself in a towel and examines her bruises in the mirror. Even without makeup, her black eye is hardly visible anymore, while the handprint on her bicep has faded to a familiar yellow-fringed eggplant color. There are two more besides the ones Eddie saw, though—an mottled oval on her shoulder blade that’s the same dulled purple, and one on her lower back that’s sole-shaped. She hasn’t spent much time looking at that one, and it’s likely gone, anyway, since she no longer feels the painful press when she sits in a hard-backed chair. 

She opens her mouth. Checks her tongue. Brushes her teeth, then surveys the contents of her suitcase. 

Problem: she is running out of clean clothes. Solution: unknown.

She should have brought more, but she couldn’t stomach bringing anything Jason liked. Things like the carbon-copy Laura Ashley dresses and the twin sets that make her look like a pastor’s wife, which she is, or at least she will be. The florals and the ruffles and the pretty prim-and-proper modest monstrosities that cover the worst of what he does to her when he has a bad day.

Chrissy wipes her eyes. Inventories what she has. Three sweatshirts, three t-shirts, one sweater, two pairs of jeans, and seven pairs of underwear. 

After a moment’s deliberation, she picks the sweater, which is navy blue and white striped. A man’s sweater with an Eddie Bauer label. She’d picked it out herself at a church rummage sale, and it feels safe, with sleeves that trail off her hands and a hem that falls to the top of her thighs. 

The underwear is pair three of seven, topped with clean jeans. Another relic from high school hiding in her closet. Jason hadn’t liked her in pants, and while he’d never said she couldn’t wear them, after a while, she’d just stopped pushing that envelope.

She closes her suitcase and hopes Eddie will need to do laundry soon. She’s not about to inconvenience him by asking. 

They’re on the road by six and in Dallas by seven. Eddie hadn’t been joking when he said they were close. He leaves her at a diner to get her own breakfast (she doesn’t) while he does a drop’n’hook, which is apparently exactly what it sounds like because he picks her up at eight. Studies the atlas that she hands him and says something about cutting north to pick up 40.

“I want to make Albuquerque today,” he says as he traces the path of the interstate with his finger. 

“That’s New Mexico, right?” 

Eddie confirms, and then they’re off. Leaving Dallas behind as the tree-lined landscape transforms into something dusty, and flat. There are farms, sure, but it’s too late in the season for anything to grow, making the scenery monotonous and beige. 

They stop for lunch—and a bathroom—in Amarillo. Chrissy eats most of a garden salad, dressing on the side, while Eddie demolishes another burger. She asks him if he ever orders anything else, and he says, “sometimes,” and sticks his tongue out. There’s mustard decorating the corner of his mouth, and she passes him a napkin without comment. 

On the way out of Amarillo, Eddie points out the window and tells her they’re passing a place called the Cadillac Ranch. 

“It’s this art installation. I guess some hippies stuck a bunch of old Cadillacs in the ground. People bust ‘em up, paint ‘em.” 

Chrissy cranes her neck, and in the distance, she can see some brightly colored objects, but it’s hard to believe they were ever cars. “Have you been?”

“Never had the time.” He glances at her. “Sorry.” 

“It’s alright.” 

“Next go around, maybe we can stop,” he says, and suddenly the cars don’t seem so interesting. Eddie’s talking like she’ll be with him for a while, and that does some funny stuff to the muscles in her stomach. 

They leave Amarillo behind, and as the west greets them, Chrissy notices the subtle changes in the landscape. Places where the earth is pushed into low tabletops, as if a giant beneath the crust has pressed his fist against the ground, just so. They’re not mountains, or even hills, and when she asks Eddie, he says they’re mesas. Tells her they’re actually getting higher, albeit slowly, heading toward the sloping south end of the Rockies. 

“They’re more impressive further north,” he says. “But New Mexico’s pretty.” 

That’s an understatement. At first, Chrissy thinks her eyes are playing tricks on her. Making shapes in the sky. But as they roll closer, she realizes those shapes are the mountains in question. 

She’s been skiing before—Indiana has some slopes, and her mother saw it as a status thing—but they’re nothing compared to the vista before her now. And Eddie’d said these weren’t even the impressive ones. 

The view doesn’t last long, as it’s getting dark, but she watches every second of the sun’s slow descent from the horizon. They traverse the mountain roads in the black, and she doesn’t feel scared, not even once, because Eddie makes it look so easy.

Albuquerque burns bright and homey, but they don’t stop there; Eddie says he prefers not to stop in cities if he can help it. Harder to find a place to park. So they push through to the east of town, where he locates a rest stop to his liking.

Chrissy stays up to read again. Crawls into bed when she’s sure he’s asleep. Gets her third uninterrupted night of sleep in years and thinks it might be a miracle.

The following day, they’re up and out before dawn. Eddie says they could make San Diego today, but he doesn’t have to be there until tomorrow, so if she wants, they can stop in a town he likes that shares a border with Mexico.

She thinks that sounds fine and tells him so as they roll onto the on-ramp. 

They’re in Arizona when a tumbleweed blows across the interstate, maybe twenty meters in front of them. Chrissy gasps and Eddie laughs. 

“I thought those were just in the movies!” she says. 

“Nope.”

“It’s huge!”

“Yeah, I know. They don’t look that big on screen.” He slows as the car ahead brakes to avoid the blowing bracken. “I met a guy at a bar out here once, said he was with some environmental survey. I guess tumbleweeds are a problem—they’re an invasive species, and they can contribute to fires.”

“That’s what you talk about when you go to bars?” 

He grins. “I’m a naturally curious person, Cunningham.” 

“Do you do that a lot?”

“What, go to bars?” 

“Yes.” 

“I don’t know if I’d say a lot.” 

“But sometimes.” 

“Sure, yeah. If I have a night someplace where it’s easy to get to one.” 

She doesn’t like the idea of him giving up something he clearly enjoys for her sake. Wonders if this California town is a place he’d go out. Maybe… meet someone. He ought to still do that if he wants to. She’s a big girl; she can stay in the truck. “We’re supposed to be doing this normally.” 

Arching a brow, Eddie reaches over to nudge her shoulder. “You want me to take you to a bar, Chris?” 

“If that’s what you’d normally do.” 

He smiles with dimples, so she knows he means it. “Alright. Tonight, then. In Calexico.” 

Calexico. The name of the town. She says it to herself, allowing the syllables to trip silently off her tongue. It sounds magical. Elvish, maybe. The sort of word that would be good in Middle Earth. 

It’s only after saying it a few times she comes to understand it’s just a smashed-together version of California and Mexico. And, as it turns out, Calexico is a smashed-together town, with a fence separating it from its sister half—Mexicali—running right down the middle. 

Eddie says the food is better in Mexicali, and he offers to take her to see it, but she doesn’t have her passport.

“I have one,” she explains as he parks the truck in a lot owned by his company (apparently, Calexico is a hub, and the lot’s big and empty, so they don’t have to worry about someone seeing her). “But it’s back at home.” Locked in their bedroom safe, in fact, alongside her birth certificate.  

“That’s alright. Plenty of fun to be had on this side, too.” 

It’s too early for going out—the time zones are confusing, and it’s an hour earlier here than it had been in Albuquerque—so they walk from the lot to Calexico’s downtown instead. Mostly, it’s palm trees popping up between strip malls, but it’s a balmy day with a breeze, and there are people out and about. Most of the signs are in Spanish or some Spanish-English hybrid she doesn’t fully understand, so she’s window shopping as they wander. Camera around her neck, occasionally snapping a shot.

They’ve walked nearly four blocks when she spies a thrift store tucked between a restaurant and a dry cleaner. There’s a bright blue dress with puffy sleeves in the window, and she catches Eddie’s arm to ask if he minds stopping for a minute.

“Sure,” he says like it’s nothing. No groans, no eye-rolls, no complaints that she takes forever when she’s shopping. 

Once inside the cramped store, they split up, with Eddie eager to see what the men’s side offers. The women’s side is full to bursting, and she has to fight against closely crammed wire hangers to find anything worthwhile. It’s a novel experience, not knowing what’s there, unlike the neatly organized department stores she’s used to. In high school, some of her friends would go thrifting as a lark, but Laura was so adamantly against owning secondhand things that Chrissy never bothered. Even an Eddie Bauer sweater from a rummage sale would be gauche in Laura’s eyes.

She takes nearly ten minutes to find something she knows she can’t live without, and when she pulls her prize from the rack, her heart beats faster. A pale blue peasant skirt that will sweep the floor, broken into three ruffled tiers. But not ruffles like her mother’s ruffles. Those were pinking shears, taffeta, and rage, all wrapped up in a stiff package. These are… loose. Easy. Each tier is attached to the one below it with the perfect amount of swing and sway. Feminine, but not fussy. Another Elvish thing in an Elvish town. She could wear it to Rivendell. 

When she tries it on, she’s dismayed to discover that it’s about four inches too long. Made for elf proportions instead of hobbit. It’s a shame because it fits her perfectly everywhere else. 

She pulls back the shower curtain separating the dressing area from the store and steps out to look at herself in the cracked full-length mirror on the wall. Even rolling the hem won’t help, as it will ruin the line of the skirt. 

“That’s pretty,” says Eddie, taking her by surprise as he comes up behind her. He has a bunch of t-shirts draped over his arm, and the one on top sports a skull with roses in its eye sockets. 

“I love it. But it’s too long.” 

He takes a step back to size her up. “Yeah, but I can fix that.” 

“You can?” 

“Sure. I can’t guarantee perfection, but I’ve been altering my clothes since I was a kid. This shirt used to have short sleeves.” 

He holds out his arm for her to examine the work, and while she can spot some flaws on close inspection (there’s some odd puckering around the armpit), it looks like a solid effort. Not that she’s any expert judge—her mother had been obsessed with sewing and alterations, meaning Chrissy had done her best not to pick up a damn bit of knowledge about any of it. Instead, she’d gone so far as to take wood shop twice to avoid home economics. 

It makes sense that Eddie would know how, though. He’s an artistic sort of guy, even if that’s not immediately obvious, with his guitar and the way he dresses and even the way he talks, sometimes. He’s got an ear and an eye for things beyond the conformity that has always held Chrissy in its grip. 

The blue skirt isn’t exactly counter-culture, but it’s further afield than she’s gone before. 

“That would be really nice of you,” she says. “Maybe you can teach me?” 

“Sure, yeah.” 

“Just… please be careful with the ruffles?” 

Eddie puts a hand over his heart and laughs. “Scout’s honor, Chris. Your ruffles are safe in my hands.” 

And so, Chrissy gets her skirt, along with two blouses, and—when she discovers a pile near the cash register—an extra blanket for the truck. It’s cold at night, and Eddie might have the body heat of a boiler, but she doesn’t. 

All totaled, her purchases come to less than ten dollars, which wouldn’t even buy her a bra at the department store favored by her mother. 

The sun is low in the sky as they make their way back to the lot, and Chrissy takes his hand while they stroll. Just because.

“I want to pin your skirt while there’s still a little daylight,” Eddie says as they reach the parking lot. “Can you put it on?” 

“What, here?” 

“Over your clothes is fine.” 

Intrigued, she does as he asks while he hops into the cab and rustles around in the back. He returns a minute later, holding a wicker box that turns out to be his sewing kit. 

“Easier to mend shit on the road than wait until I get home,” he explains as he pulls out a box of pins. 

“Then how come your jeans have so many holes?” she asks, giving him a hard time because she knows it’ll make him laugh. 

“Those are for the aesthetic, Cunningham. The sewing kit’s for when I rip the ass pocket off them.” 

“Is that a common occurrence?” 

“Uh, I mean. It’s happened more than once. Hop up here, okay?” 

By ‘here,’ he means the first stair to the cab. It’s nearly a foot off the ground, and the height has the skirt fanning around her feet in a manner that makes her feel positively regal. 

With a nod, Eddie steps back to survey the situation. “Is it sitting right at your waist or too big?” 

“Everything’s fine but the length,” she says because she doesn’t want to talk about her waist. 

He just nods. Drops to his knees like he’s not in a parking lot. Shuffles forward, so his head is inches away from Chrissy’s thighs as he begins to gather and tuck the material of her hem. 

Chrissy freezes. Curls her hands into fists at her side and closes her eyes because he’s so near. Which is a stupid thing to think, considering they’ve spent the past three nights sharing a bed, but she’s thinking it all the same. How he’s on his knees for her. Doing something for her. 

Doing everything for her. 

“So I’m figuring,” he says as he works, and this is nothing like fitting sessions with her mother, where bony hands pinched any spare bit of flab and snarled all Chrissy’s failures into her ear. 

“Mmm?” 

“I’m figuring, if I can figure out how to deconstruct it, I can take a couple inches off the bottom ruffle, then a bit off the other two, and sew them back together. Keep them as even as I possibly can.” 

“That sounds like a lot more work than just hemming it.” 

Eddie shrugs, and his fingers brush the toe of her sneakers as he tugs on the fabric, presumably to check things are even. “You said the ruffles were important, and I don’t mind. Gives me something to do with my hands.” 

“Besides driving the truck?” 

“Yeah, that. I mean, at night. When I get bored.” 

Chrissy bites her lip. “Is that why you play the guitar? To have something to do with your hands?” 

He looks up at her, the setting sun giving the side of his face a golden glow. “Yeah, actually. Force of habit. My uncle gave me his old acoustic when I moved in with him. Which, in retrospect, was probably the easiest way of getting me out of his hair.” 

“When was that?” 

Eddie returns to work. Asks her to turn so he can pin the back before answering. “That’s complicated. My dad and I would crash with Wayne a lot when I was little, and sometimes dad would hit the bricks on a whim, and I’d end up staying with him for a couple of months. Then, when I was seven, some shit went down, and I was with him for almost three years. That was, uh… I mean, it was nice to be stable. But then my dad showed back up, and I ran around with him for a while. Then, um, he got busted.”

Chrissy startles without meaning to. She hadn’t realized. “Your dad’s in…?”

“Prison. Yup.” Eddie’s voice is tight. “That was when the state got involved, and Wayne had to prove up as a foster parent, which is so stupid. I’d already been living with him, you know? But anyway, it took some time, and I bounced around a couple of houses, but he got custody when I was twelve. And uh, that’s been me ever since.” 

“That must have been really hard.” 

“It is what it is,” he says, and there’s a finality to the statement. “Can you turn around again?” 

Chrissy can sense a topic teetering on the threshold of awkward, so she turns. Eddie’s hands move below her knees, starting on the second ruffle. 

As he works, her fingers ache with the want of touching his unruly mop of hair. So she folds her arms and studies it from a safe distance instead. The way his curls hug the crown of his head. The mess of frizz and flyaways. How his bangs never lie flat, kinking this direction and that. He’s more than likely never bothered with a blow dryer. Never thought about how to tame it because it’s meant to be wild. 

Her self-control lasts as long as it takes for him to pin the second ruffle. But when his hands brush her thighs as he starts the third. Finds a brave beast within herself as she pushes her fingers into his curls. 

It’s not a tentative touch, and Eddie jumps. Tips his head to look at her, mouth curled into a curious smile. 

“What’s up, kiddo?” 

There’s no answer she can give, so she shrugs. Twines a lock of hair around her finger and draws it down his cheek.

Eddie’s pupils are wide in the dim twilight, and he turns. Presses this tiny whisper of a kiss to the inside of her wrist. Something within her flickers to life, then dies as the moment passes, and he returns to work. Finishes her skirt even as she combs through his hair, smoothing out snares and snarls while discovering a few places where it appears he’s sheared off a chunk for no reason at all. It’s thicker than her own, and coarser, but she likes it that way. Likes feeling the ridges of his scalp. The bone beneath. The outline of another mole, maybe, just behind the shell of his left ear. 

When Eddie clears his throat and asks her to turn again, he sounds almost reluctant. Chrissy lets him go. Flexes her fingers in the fabric of her skirt as she does what he asks. Barely breathes as Eddie’s deft hands secure the last few pins. 

“Okay,” he says, and she turns around one final time as he gets to his feet.

The step eliminates the height difference, and she finds herself face-to-face with him. Close enough to see every spiky bit of stubble sprouting from his chin. The pink tinge of his cheeks. A small scar on his jaw. 

I could kiss you, she thinks, then doesn’t.

Eddie steps back, chivalrous and exaggerated, giving her a sly bow and a warm smile. “Normal trip? Normal bar? Let’s get going before the going’s gone.”

Chapter Text

Eddie takes her to a bar that’s also a restaurant, which he says has the finest tacos this side of the border. It’s a dive, and Chrissy feels immediately out of place in her new blouse and old jeans. Eddie fits in, though. Most of the men are in some similar combination of denim, leather, and t-shirt, while the women wear heels and jeans or short skirts or tight dresses. Their hair is teased to the heavens, and their faces are painted to accentuate their best features. Seeing them makes her miss the days when makeup was fun. As a teenager, it had been a small way for her to carve out self-expression under her mother’s overbearing thumb. Laura couldn’t see her bright blue eyeshadow if she put it on in the bathroom before first period and wiped it off before going home. 

With Jason, though, makeup was expected. And—if he forgot himself and put a mark where someone might see—necessary. Nothing garish, though. Even in high school, he’d said the blue made her look trampy. She’d played it off as a joke. It wasn’t. Once they were married, he’d cut the color out of her life, bit by bit. Neutrals were the easiest way to meet the diminished expectations he had of her when they went out with his classmates or—and she hated these the most—to dinner with one of his professors. 

“I know it’s not the Ritz,” Eddie says as he ushers her through the crowd to an empty table. There’s no hostess, but most people are standing around the bar, so they find a spot quickly enough. Eddie’s hand stays on her lower back as they navigate, but he’s not pushing. Just keeping her close if she wants to be close, and she can’t stop wondering what might have happened if she’d kissed him back at the truck. 

“I like it,” she says as he pulls out one of the mismatched plastic lawn chairs that flank the table. A gentleman, through and through, who was raised better than half the cretins in Hawkins, judging by the way he treats her. She ought to thank his uncle if she ever meets him. 

Eddie sits, and she thinks she can see another apology in the furrow of his brow. Maybe for the cheapness, or the sticky floor, or the scratched and dented table top. She doesn’t care. She likes the ambiance, with its closed-in amber glow, the sconces on the wall casting curious shadows across the crowd, while the smell of stale beer and spices permeates the air. 

“This is so cool,” she says before he speaks. “I’ve never been to a place like this.” 

He laughs like that’s obvious, then shrugs. “Yeah, well, I’ve never been to Enzo’s.”

She makes a face. The last time she went to Enzo’s was the night she and Jason told her parents they’d eloped. They’d picked it because of Chrissy’s mistaken belief that Laura wouldn’t cause a scene in public.

She’d thought wrong. Jason had been pissed about it, too. It was early days, but that night was one of the first times she saw the veneer crack. He screamed at her in the car and said they should have done it at their house. That she’d humiliated him. The vitriol of his words made her cry, and he’d softened. Apologized. 

Jason was always apologizing.

“Enzo’s overcooks their chicken,” she says. 

“Now you’re just trying to make me feel better, Cunningham.” He stands, glancing to his left. “I’m gonna order. What do you want to drink?” 

That’s an excellent question, considering she isn’t much of a drinker. It’s not that she doesn’t drink—if it’s offered, she’ll have a glass of wine on special occasions, then nurse it for hours—but she tends not to seek it out. Even in school, she didn’t like the idea of losing control. Or, well, not that, either. She liked the idea, but the imagined reality of what might happen always brought her back to that party freshman year, and the boy who took her into Steve Harrington’s bed.

Yet here, with Eddie, at a dive bar in a town a million miles from home, she feels safer than she has in years. Braver than ever, maybe, with all the people who’d been holding her leash left with nothing but frayed ends in Indiana. She chewed through the chain, so she might as well see what life is like without a collar.

“Um. White wine?” she asks, because it’s the only thing she can think of, other than a Manhattan, which is her dad’s drink of choice. 

“Oh. Ah… I really doubt they have wine, actually? They’re more a… beer and tequila shots establishment.”  

Beer makes you bloat, her mother’s nagging voice whispers. Chrissy sets her jaw. “Okay. Beer, then. You pick.” 

He salutes her and disappears into the crowd while she settles her chin on her hand, surveying the patrons. There’s a makeshift dance floor toward the rear of the building, where a lone couple is swaying to a song she recognizes, only sung in Spanish. They’re dancing close—not Dirty Dancing close—but with genuine, sweet familiarity. His hands are on her waist, hers are looped around his neck, and they’re smiling at each other with effortless grace. 

She could dance with Eddie like that. Or, if he doesn’t dance, she could show him. Put her arms around his neck and hope against hope that he might look at her with such affection. Which is crazy. They’ve been together all of, what, three days? Four? Doesn’t matter. God, she might be falling. Or maybe it’s simply gratitude for a helping hand when she’s running scared. 

She’s not sure, but for the first time in her life, she’s going to throw caution to the wind and go with whatever feels right. What can it hurt? She’s spent twenty years ignoring her instincts, following other people’s rules, which gave her nothing but a bad marriage and a broken heart. 

But taking time to listen to those splintered, heart-shaped pieces? That’s the only reason she’s here, sitting in a tiny bar in California, waiting for Eddie Munson to bring her a beer. 

“As promised,” Eddie says, sliding into his seat and dropping two cans on the table. He’s juggling them alongside his cigarette and a metal stand with the number 72 clipped on top. Chrissy arches a brow. “For the food. I ordered a bunch of tacos—that’s what they’re known for. You ever had one before?” 

“I’ve been to Taco Bell,” she replies, which is true. There weren’t any in Hawkins, but there’d been one near IU during Jason’s first semester of college, and he’d taken her once or twice. She never ate, but she’d watch him and his friends down a mountain of hard-shelled tacos that looked to be ninety percent iceberg lettuce and cheese. 

“Yeah, no,” he says, shaking his head. “You’ve never had a taco. The stuff here… look. I’m not some connoisseur, but this is better than anything you’re going to find in Indiana. Swear to God.” 

Chrissy believes him, and her stomach rumbles in anticipation. She presses a hand against it, glad that the music is loud. It occurs to her she hasn’t eaten a meal since the garden salad in Amarillo, and that’s alright, except that it isn’t. It’s just that not eating around Eddie is easy—more often than not, he takes meals in truck stops, or not at all, with a candy bar or bag of peanuts substituted for substance—and she can fake it. Say she got something in the stop, or she’s not hungry, or she ate during those occasions when he’s swapping out trailers, and she’s on her own. 

It’s not like she doesn’t get hungry—of course, she does—but the hunger is so ever-present that she’s learned to compartmentalize and ignore the pangs. Only, well, she can’t ignore the fact that he ordered food. Food he’s excited about. So she compromises with the niggling voice in her head and decides to eat a few bites, for his sake. One or two, so she can tell him it’s delicious.

Picking up her beer, she studies the can, then sips. It’s been a long time since she had one, and the flavor is… weird. It sort of tastes like stale crackers, only not in a bad way. Kind of salty and bitter, but with a bite that makes her want a second sip, even as she pulls a face. 

Eddie’s clearly trying not to laugh. “I’m guessing you’re just a white wine sort of girl?”

“No! I like it.” She takes another sip and finds the taste growing on her. “See?” 

“Uh-huh. That’s the expression of a woman who’s loving the experience.” 

“I’ve just never had this kind of beer before!”

He laughs and says she doesn’t have to finish it. The skepticism sparks some hard, flinty part of her. Narrowing her eyes, she tips the can and takes three long, burning swallows, then drops her fist to the table with a resounding clunk. 

“It’s so delicious, actually, thank you.”

Eddie lights up. Reaches over to grab her hand, which startles her, then makes her smile. Especially when he brings it to his lips and kisses her knuckles. 

“So delicious, actually,” he echoes. “Weirdo.” 

“Says you.”

“I can spot one a mile away.” He works his way from her index finger to her pinky, though he pauses to touch his thumb to the pale place where her wedding band once sat. He looks like he wants to say something, then doesn’t. Instead, he turns her hand over and lays it flat on the table so he can trace her palm. 

“Are you going to tell me my future?” she asks. 

“Yeah. You’re gonna get to the coast tomorrow, and someone’ll take one look at you and put you in a movie.” 

She giggles, then curls her fingers around his. “You’re not very good at reading palms. We’re going to San Diego, not Los Angeles. Besides, nobody’s gonna put a hobbit in a movie.” 

“Is that what you are?” he asks, grin spreading.

“I’m Sam,” she says like it’s obvious. Eddie called her Goldberry, but that was wrong from the start. 

“You’re…Sam?” 

“Well, okay, I’m not Sam yet… but I want to be. I think he’s a really good person.” 

“You’re already a really good person.” He touches her ring finger again as if drawn to the spot, and she sighs.

“You can ask about it,” she offers, because she trusts him more now than she did in the park, and that’s saying something. 

“I don’t… it’s nothing I haven’t already guessed, but Jason’s the one who hurts you, right?” 

“Mm-hmm.” 

“And… did it happen a lot, or once and you left, or—”

“It happened a lot.” 

Eddie swears, then takes her hand in both of his. Holds it fast and looks at her with such earnestness that it makes her stomach turn into a pile of maggots, all fighting for the last scrap. 

“I never would, alright?” he says.

That he feels the need to clarify is surprising; she hadn’t even entertained the thought that he could. “I know.” 

“I mean it. Whatever happens, I don’t want you to worry about that with me. I’m probably an asshole, but I’m not… I’m not that.” 

“I know,” she says again, squeezing his fingers. Eddie doesn’t scare her, and that’s the plain truth. But she worries she might be taking advantage of that good nature. Might be using him for what he can give her while knowing she can give him nothing in return. “I—”

“Number 72?” comes a voice from above before a platter of food descends from the heavens.

Saved by the server, and Chrissy can’t help but laugh. 

“Some tacos?” she asks, as Eddie gives a sheepish shrug.

It appears he’s ordered one of everything on the menu.

Eddie feels like a man possessed. Like his head’s gonna spin right round, Linda Blair style, because he’s lost his goddamn mind, kissing Chrissy’s knuckles as though that’s something he’s allowed to do. But, shit, she’s letting him, isn’t she? And he may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he’s not some dull motherfucker, either. Chrissy grooming him like he was her pet pony while he knelt at her feet was… yeah, that was something else, and now they’re on what might be termed a date, and he’s holding her hand, and talking about the heavy shit, and, and…

And then the waiter turns up with the food. Fuck. He has to calm down. Chill out. Eat some fucking tacos and remind himself that she’s been with him four days, and she’s running scared, so maybe pump the brakes, bud. 

“Oh my gosh, Eddie, this is so much!” she says, yanking him out of his existential crisis. 

“Well, yeah,” he says, releasing her hand so the waiter can set plate after plate of tacos between them. She’s right—he’s ordered one of almost everything on the menu, because he’s not in Calexico that often, and this place is a fucking goldmine. Tucked behind an auto parts store and a mini-mart, it serves the best Mexican food he’s ever eaten stateside, and while he’s not a picky guy, he knows what good tastes like. “This stuff is killer. Go on, you pick first.” 

“No way, you’re the one who paid,” she demurs.

Shitballs. She’s going to do the weird food stuff again. Eddie has no idea what to do about the weird food stuff. He’s not blind—he’s noticed that she pushes food around her plate and skips meals. Or, like, she’ll get him lunch, then watch him eat it while taking nothing for herself. She’s subtle, sure, but being in her company all day, he’d have to be an absolute moron not to pick up on some irregularities. Sleeping next to her the past couple of nights has brought to light just how frighteningly thin she is, and he doesn’t know if it’s some nervous condition, or an actual eating disorder, or some fucked up combination of the two. His knowledge of the latter is limited to a Very Special Episode of Diff’rent strokes, and he doesn’t think Chrissy throws up. But, shit, it’s not like he’s in the bathroom with her. Honestly, all he can think to do is put food in front of her and hope for the best, even while his hindbrain screams at him to feed her, feed her, feed her like he’s a caveman trying to spear a woolly mammoth to sustain her through the winter. 

That would be odd to say out loud, though, so he shrugs. Picks up a birria taco and takes a bite, then holds it out to her with his most beguiling grin. “C’mon, your turn.” 

“Oh, I couldn’t. It’s yours!” Her tone is wheedling, her smile as coy as the game she’s playing. And Christ, she’s good at that game. Disconcertingly good, in fact, to where he’s not even sure she knows she’s doing it anymore. 

“Please, Chris?” he says, because the game’s made for two players, and he’s in it to win it. “I got this one just for you…” 

Her expression softens, and she reluctantly takes the taco from him, allowing herself a minuscule bite before putting it back on the plate. 

That’s when he sees it. The hunger lingering on her lips. The way her tongue flicks out for a second taste of the sauce. 

“Good?” he asks.

“Really delicious, thank you,” she says, picking up her beer. 

He wants to push her to take another taste, but he doesn’t, worried she’ll snap back on herself like a rubber band pulled taut. So, he waits. Watches. Eats two tacos of his own while wishing he was Dear Abby or Ann Landers or some chick who’d know what the fuck to say or do about the situation. 

And the thing is, the food is so goddamn good. The tacos leave his hands slick and his mouth tingling, because they’re probably using someone’s great-grandmother’s recipes. He wants Chrissy to love it the way he does, but instead, she tears the taco she tried into smaller and smaller pieces before asking for a second beer. 

Eddie nods and urges her to try the carne asada before going to get them another round.

By the time he returns, Chrissy’s undoubtedly made the food look eaten, with bits strewn all over the plate. Which, honest to God, pisses him off, even if he gets that whatever’s going on with her is beyond some surface-level I-don’t-want-to stubbornness. Eddie spent his childhood unsure of where the next meal might come from, so it galls him when someone wastes food. 

“How was it?” he asks as she pops the tab on her beer. 

“It’s so good.” 

There’s that voice again. The pep rally voice, which she uses to sound like the girl she’s supposed to be rather than the woman he’s become acquainted with these past few days. She doesn’t use that voice when she crawls into his bed at night, and she sure as shit didn’t use it at the picnic table or when she was playing with his hair. 

So, fueled by his frustration, he calls her bluff. “Really? You definitely don’t want any more?” 

She frowns, and her index finger scratches at the bed of her thumbnail, which threatens to bloom raw and red once more. 

“Hey,” he says without thinking, reaching across the table to cover her hand with his own. “Chrissy. Don’t.” 

Her head snaps up, eyes bright, and he can see the hunger still hiding there. Crouched just behind the fear. God, he needs to be careful, but he can’t sit there and watch her play pretend. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, and that’s an unfamiliar voice. A third voice. 

He hates himself for giving it life and shakes his head. Squeezes her hand and sighs. “If you’re not hungry…” 

“It’s not that,” she says, tone imploring, but shaking, too. Like she’s scared that he’s mad at her, maybe, but more than that, like she’s scared to admit she’s starving. 

Eddie could spend all night interrogating her about the what and the why. Or, he could just like… give her permission to eat? Reassure her that she’s allowed to want, and that she doesn’t have to hide from him. Which, yeah, it sounds super patronizing in his head, but Chrissy’s brain seems like a pretty fucked up place to live, so what are the chances he makes a bad situation worse rather than better?

Preferring not to think about the odds, he takes one of the larger pieces from the plate. “Then, whatever it is, just… try this for me?”

The question is somewhere between an order and a request, and for a moment, he’s certain she’ll balk and throw the entire plate in his face for his troubles. 

But then, her eyes flick to the food, and she worries her lip between her teeth. “Do I have to?” 

Oh, fuck. Eddie’s a bad, bad man who really shouldn’t find the breathy way she asks so attractive. Never said he was a saint, though, so he nods. “Yes. You do.” 

Chrissy’s relief is palpable as she leans forward and takes the food from his fingertips. Nothing lascivious about it, but the energy between them is charged all the same, and he swallows hard. 

The expression on her face melts into one of bliss as she chews, then washes the bite down with some beer. He hopes it’s bliss, anyway; he doesn’t know what he’ll do if she’s still playing pretend.

“Uh…” he starts, then finds nothing to say. 

“Do you want me to have any more?” 

Fuck. Cool. Yeah. Doesn’t appear to be faking it, and hand-feeding Chrissy Cunningham tacos in a dive bar isn’t a scenario he envisioned in any high school fantasies, but he can’t deny that it’s sexy. Which is pervy of him, but Chrissy seems into the whole situation, and he’s never been one to soul search about what turns his crank. That way lies madness and Freudian psychoanalysis and someone telling him he wants to fuck his mother or whatever. Psychology’s fine and good for the day-to-day—and if he’s honest, Chrissy could use a good psychologist—but he’s not gonna worry too much about what the fuck’s happening between them, so long as she seems happy. 

“I do, actually,” he says. “Which one do you want next?” 

She wrinkles her nose and reaches for her beer with a petulant shrug.

So, okay. Doesn’t want choices. He can work with that and picks up a torn remnant of the birria she’d liked before. Which, miracle of miracles, she takes two whole bites of, declaring it “the best” and making him smile. 

“I think,” he says after returning the taco to its plate. “You should try something adventurous.” 

Her brow raises, but she doesn’t respond. Just waits and watches, blue eyes following his every move.

Eddie nearly laughs at her expression as he picks up a taco de lengua. “So. This is uh… tongue.” 

For a moment, she looks startled, but recovers quickly for a girl raised in the most boring town in Indiana. “Okay. If you want me to.” 

“One hundred percent, I do.” 

Her smile widens, and she takes a bigger bite than he’s expecting, forcing him to use both hands to keep the taco from falling to bits. 

“Oh, wow,” she says, eyes widening. 

“So fucking good, right?” 

“So good.” 

And then, to his great delight, she leans in again. And again. And again. Keeps going until the taco is gone, and she pauses for a swallow of beer. 

When she’s through, she studies him, one hand pressed to her abdomen. “Eddie?” 

“Mmm?” 

“I think I’m full.” 

She’s eaten a taco and a half, but considering the hobbit-size of her, and the fact that she doesn’t eat much at the best of times, Eddie believes her. For tonight, anyway. “Okay,” he says. “Then I guess you’re done.” 

She smiles. Runs her fingers around the rim of the can. “Would it be weird if I came to sit with you?” 

“Not weird, no.” 

Chrissy takes him at his word. Drains her beer, then stands and wobbles her way over to plop down in his lap with a breathy laugh.

Eddie catches her, surprised, because part of him had assumed she’d pull her chair around. But, nope. She’s sitting right on him, and Christ, he’s already sporting half a stiffy, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Or, if she notices, she doesn’t care. Instead, she fusses, arranging herself with one arm looped around his neck, the opposite hand on his chest, and her forehead leaning against his temple. 

“I think I’m a little drunk,” she says, her breath causing his hair to brush against his cheeks. 

“Two beers?” he teases, though he knows she’s right. Booze on an empty stomach at her size? That’s asking for trouble. “Wuss.” 

She smiles, fussing with the fraying collar of his t-shirt. “I don’t drink a lot.” 

“What, lately, or ever?” 

“Ever.” 

“Not even at your super cool parties?” 

She shakes her head and hugs him tighter. “No, not really.” 

“Huh. But you’re uh… okay with tonight, right? I’m not like peer pressuring you into baby’s first beer?” 

“I told you. It’s not my first beer.” She pulls back, biting her lip. “Besides. You never make me do anything I don’t want to do.” 

Eddie swallows and finds his mouth has gone dry. “That’s… good, Chris. I’m glad.” 

“Was that really a tongue taco?” 

“It definitely was,” he says, glad for the shift in tone as he undulates his tongue at her for emphasis.

“Ew, Eddie, gross!”

“You said you liked it.” 

“The taco, not your… I mean, your tongue’s probably fine, but… ew.” 

“Such a freak, Cunningham,” he says, then tugs her a little closer. 

“Takes one to know one,” she mumbles as she hugs him tight.  

Chapter Text

It’s midnight by the time they get back to the truck, and Chrissy is a mess. At some point, her two beers turned into three, although Eddie cautioned her against going for another. But he hadn’t stopped her when she insisted on paying, or running to the counter her very own self to ask for them. 

So, yes. Three beers, and now she’s sitting on the edge of the bunk while Eddie kneels at her feet for the second time that day. He’s unlacing her sneakers to slip them off, which is so, so nice of him. Just like him offering to alter her skirt had been so, so nice. Because he is so, so nice. A respectable, respectful young man, that’s Eddie Munson, boy howdy.

That makes her giggle, and she pats the top of his head. He tugs her left shoe off and looks at her with one eyebrow arched. “Can I help you?” 

“I was just thinking about how nice you are. And respectable.” 

“Ouch.” 

“No, seriously. You’re like… the most nicest guy.” 

“And you’re drunk.” 

That is true. She’s drunk, even though she ate, like, two whole tacos, which should theoretically be helping. That’s how drunk works, right? She’s not sure. All she knows is that her stomach is full to the point of her noticing, which hasn’t happened in years. She doesn’t feel bad about it, though. She doesn’t feel bad about anything, especially not the thing that Eddie wanted her to do. Told her to do. Made it okay to do. Because she wanted to be polite, only not polite like her mother wants her to be, or Jason wants her to be. Polite like… she wants to make Eddie happy polite. Which is its own special sort of polite, actually, and thank you for asking. 

“Respectable,” she whispers, needing to repeat the word because she likes how it tastes and finds that words have more flavor when she’s intoxicated.

“Okay, uh-huh.” He takes off her right shoe and sits back on his heels, which is hilarious because he’s wedged between the seats and looks like he’s about to pray. That sets her off, and she flops onto the bunk, giggling until her sides hurt, which is when she feels Eddie’s palms on her knees. 

“Hey, Chrissy?” 

“Um?” She lifts her head and looks down at him. 

“You know how you said I was respectable?” 

“Yup.” 

“Yeah. If you don’t want to sleep in your jeans, you gotta take them off yourself. I’m going for a smoke.” 

“Can you keep the door open?” 

“Sure,” he says, then leaves her to it. 

Chrissy doesn’t remember where her pajamas are, and she takes a couple of minutes to find them. Then, she has to thrash around on the bunk for a while, and she thinks if Eddie could see her, he would laugh at her, but not a mean laugh, just an Eddie laugh. 

“Okay,” she calls once she has her pajamas on and her clothes shoved behind the passenger seat because she doesn’t have the energy to put them in her suitcase the way she usually would. Her mother would snap at her for making a mess, but Chrissy doesn’t give a fu—fudge. 

“Hey, good job, kiddo,” he says as he clambers into the truck, the smell of his cigarette still wafting from him. 

She could roll herself up in that particular nickname, but that proves impossible, so she rolls herself up in the quilt instead. Eddie slams the door shut and flips off the light before getting in behind her. It’s the first time they’ve done this with her against the wall, and something in her full belly flutters at not having easy access to her escape route, but it settles soon enough. She’s warm and cozy with him pressed against her, and when she shuts her eyes, her head spins as though someone put a Weeble toy inside her skull and set it wobbling.

It’s not a terrible sensation. Nothing like the way she’d felt that night with the boy at Steve Harrington’s party. That had been terrifying, and she’d felt out of control like she couldn’t even move her body. This is just… nice. A little spinny, but that’s alright. When she sleeps, it’ll stop. 

Eddie mumbles something about her being a blanket thief, and she informs him there is a new blanket, actually. He sits up, and there’s a crinkling noise, and then he’s back with the thrift store blanket, which is big enough to cover both of them. It briefly occurs to her that maybe it should be washed first, but that ship has already sailed. 

“Night, Chris,” is the last thing she hears before she’s out cold, head filling with a dream more vivid than she’s had in years. 

In it, she’s with Gus-Gus, the cat she’d had as a little girl. Or, well, Gus was never really her cat—he’d been around before she was born—but she’d loved him all the same. He was named for the mouse in her mother’s favorite movie, and even when she was tiny, Chrissy had had trouble reconciling the mother she knew with someone who could love fairy tales and fantasy. Especially since Laura had spent Chrissy’s entire childhood admonishing Chrissy to be serious and get her head out of the clouds. But Gus-Gus had been proof that at some time before Chrissy and her brother came into the world, Laura Cunningham had possessed at least some minor whimsy. 

In the dream, she has Gus-Gus on her lap while she sits in her father’s recliner and watches daytime television. The cat’s purring, his warm, silky body pressed right to her abdomen. She can’t leave the chair—her dream self won’t let her—but there’s a nagging anxiety that she’s supposed to be somewhere right now. That she’ll be in trouble if she doesn’t go. At the same time, her conflicted dream mind knows she’s home from school sick because The Price is Right is playing on the screen, and someone just won a washer-dryer combination, and she’s wearing the same pajamas she had when she was seven. 

A loud bang shakes the house, and Gus-Gus leaps from her lap as Chrissy startles into the half-cocked place between sleeping and waking. She can still hear Bob Barker, but she can also hear the rumbling of Smaug beneath her because the truck is in motion.

Why is the truck in motion? 

She opens her eyes and finds she’s turned over in her sleep. The sun is unbearably bright, and she faces a complicated rigging of straps, presumably meant to keep her from flying out of the bunk should something happen. 

God, her head hurts. It’s a stabby pain at the base of her scalp and in her temples, and she groans, driving her thumbs against her eyelids and grinding them deep to try to alleviate the pressure. 

“Morning, Sleeping Beauty,” Eddie says from behind the wheel. 

“Cinderella,” she mumbles, shaking her head to knock the sleep from her eyes. “What’s…” 

“The truck’s set up for two drivers, working in shifts. I wanted to let you rest.” 

“Thanks.” 

“There’s coffee if you need it.” 

He must have gone to the truck stop in Calexico without her noticing. Which means she really was sleeping deeply, though not particularly restfully, judging from how she feels. She scowls her way through undoing the straps, then crawls into the passenger seat, where she buckles her seatbelt and grabs for the styrofoam cup in the holder. 

It’s lukewarm, but beggars very much cannot be choosers. 

The clock on the dash reads 8:30. “How long have we been driving?” 

“About half an hour.” He reaches for his aviators clipped on the visor. “Here.” 

“Thank you,” she says and slips them on. They take her headache from an eleven to an eight, which is a relief, and after another sip of coffee, she feels like a toad on a bump on a log instead of the bump itself. 

Eddie stays mercifully silent as she nurses her drink, and it’s only when she drains the cup that she manages a small, “the third beer really was a bad idea.” 

To his credit, he doesn’t gloat. He just shrugs and squeezes her shoulder. The intimacy of the touch brings forth a memory of her sitting on his lap in that bar. Which, oh, she had blocked that out. Most likely her brain trying to protect her from the effects of her own stupid decision-making. 

Embarrassed, she glances at Eddie, who’s staring straight ahead. He probably thinks she’s pathetic for being so needy. Like, he’s so nice and so sweet, but she’d wanted him to kiss her yesterday so badly, and he’d just stepped back as if it hadn’t crossed his mind. 

Smart of him, really. Why would he want to tangle himself up in the mess of her life any more than he already is? Besides, she shouldn’t even be… thinking about kissing him or any of that stuff. She’s imposing on him, and she’s got her own crap to deal with, and besides, she’s not looking to kiss anybody. 

But if she were looking, Eddie makes sense since she thinks she knows him better than she’s ever known anyone in her life, and it’s been less than a week. But he’s just… she just…

Ugh. Her head hurts. 

“Do you need a bathroom?” He asks when they pass a sign for a rest stop, and she wants to say no because they just got started, but her stomach feels funny, and she really has to pee, so she mumbles a “yes, please” while feeling guilty about causing him further delay. The distance he can travel in a day impacts how much he makes, and she’s messing him up. Which, yup, there’s that guilty gut again. Probably the tacos, and oh, God, she let Eddie feed her tacos from his hand last night. She has officially lost her mind, and her stomach becomes a squirmy pit of wriggling worms, nausea rising in her throat. 

She will not puke in Eddie’s truck, though, so she clamps her teeth together and swallows the bile threatening to spew. 

It takes ten minutes to reach the rest stop, then another couple to park. Chrissy bolts the moment Eddie stops and barely makes it to a bathroom stall before she pukes. It’s so, so gross, and also so different from the making herself puke that she’s used to. This is genuine, need-to-throw-up, hangover stuff she’s seen from Jason more than once. Her body rejecting her desire for that third beer and telling her to be more careful next time. 

Vomiting worsens her headache, and she rests her foreheads against the porcelain rim as her temples throb, and her body shakes. This, at least, is familiar, and she wraps some toilet paper around her hand to wipe her mouth. Eddie’s sunglasses are lying on the floor by the commode rather than in the bowl, which is a minor miracle. She picks them up and gets to her feet, then puts them in her pajama pants pocket before flushing the whole mess down the drain.

When she exits the stall, a thirty-something woman standing by the sink gives her a sympathetic look. Chrissy acknowledges her with a small, sheepish smile, then washes her hands. 

“Sorry, honey,” the woman says as she passes.

“Thanks,” she manages.

The woman leaves, and Chrissy splashes water on her face before heading outside, where she finds Eddie hovering near the door with her little toiletry kit in his hands. 

“I figured you might want this,” he says like he’s not even thinking about what they did last night, and how weird and needy and dumb she was. “Did you puke?” 

“Yes.” She takes the kit, cheeks heating. “I’m sorry about last night…” 

“What about it? I had fun.” 

He makes it sound so simple. It’s disconcerting. “But…” 

“But nothing. Oh, hey, got something for you.” With a flourish and a grin, he tugs a baseball cap out of his back pocket. It has ‘Calexico’ embroidered on it, and he lets her look before gently dropping it on her head. “Another one for the collection—I got it at the truck stop.” 

“I… thank you. You didn’t have to.” 

“Yeah, but I did. Take as long as you need to get ready. I’ll meet you back at the truck.” 

Chrissy barely manages a nod before fleeing into the bathroom to burst into tears at the sink. Like, full-on sobs that she only gets under control when another woman comes in a few minutes later. She sniffles. Stuffs a fist in her mouth when the woman enters a stall, biting down until she’s calm. Then, she washes her face, brushes her teeth, and feels eighty percent of the way to being a person. 

Eddie’s waiting by the truck, just like he said he would be, and frowns when he sees her. “What’s going on?”

“Huh?” 

“Your eyes are all red.” 

“I threw up again,” she lies, because he can’t argue with that. 

“Shit, I’m sorry.” 

She reaches into her pocket and slides the sunglasses back onto her face. “I’ll take it easy next time. Two beers, not three.”

“Attagirl.”

She forces a smile, then turns to climb into the cab, where she discovers a fresh cup of vending machine coffee in her holder, as well as a plastic-wrapped sticky bun in her seat. 

“Nothing cures a hangover like something sickly sweet,” Eddie says when he gets in on his side and notices her holding the bun. “Except for something hot and greasy, but we’re not getting that here. So, sugar.” 

“I’m not hungry,” she says.

“Bet that’s not true,” he replies, but he’s not mean about it. He’s stating a fact. “C’mon, Chrissy, I bought it for you.” 

He’s doing the same thing as last night, and just like last night, it makes her whole body tingle as if someone had walked over her grave. She bites her lip and squeezes the plastic, finding the way the bun compresses between her thumb and forefinger eminently enjoyable as the sugar mushes against the packaging to leave a greasy sheen behind. It does look good, but it’s not the sort of food she normally eats unless she’s bingeing. 

“I don’t know if I can finish the whole thing,” she says after a moment. 

Eddie shrugs and puts the truck in drive. “Eat half, then.” 

The way he says it doesn’t sound like a request, so she peels back the wrapper. It’s so strange how his demand scratches a tiny little itch in her brain that she didn’t even know she had. How he can treat this like it’s perfectly normal, and how much of a relief it is for her to realize she’s guaranteeing his happiness with something so simple. It removes the guesswork and quiets the usual cacophony of contradicting thoughts that ping back and forth in her head.

She takes a bite, and the cloying, artificial sweetness floods her tongue. The pastry is dense and gummy but good in the way cheap candy is good, so she has a second bite before she’s even swallowed the first. 

Eddie still isn’t looking at her. Doesn’t look at her, in fact, until he’s out of the parking lot and back onto the interstate. They’ve gone maybe three miles when he glances over, and that’s only because she’s finished exactly half the bun and the crinkly plastic makes a noise when she folds it over the remnants. 

“Good job, Chris,” is all he says about that. 

Eddie’s a real piece of work for thinking Chrissy’s cute when she’s hungover, but she is cute when she’s hungover. Staring out the window with his aviators still perched on her nose, hair a wreck, legs hugged to her chest, huffing breaths into her kneecaps like she’s not going to burp in front of him. Shit, she hasn’t even swapped out her pajamas for real clothes, and every time he looks over, he has to stop himself from following the curve of her ass with his eyes and wondering if there’s another layer under there.

Because—and this is the thing he’s trying so goddamn hard to remember—the whole situation is far, far above his pay grade. Mostly the food stuff, which was sexy and scary, and oh, Jesus, he’s probably making things worse, but she ate, didn’t she? It chilled her out, didn’t it? 

Still, maybe they should put a name to what they’re doing, if only to settle his heart palpitations. Because they are sitting in one another’s pockets without actually belonging to one another, and that makes him wary. He hasn’t belonged to many people, is all, and with Chrissy… yeah. It feels like something, but that something is new and fragile. Easy to lose sight of just how new when hours are like days and days like years in the truck. So while his heart believes they’ve been together for eons, his common sense remembers they haven’t.

Ergo, he needs to just let it be. Whisper words of wisdom, and all, say John, Paul, George, Ringo, and Wayne Munson, who instilled in him a respect for the musicality of the Beatles, if nothing else. Blackbird was the first song he taught himself, lying on the floor of the trailer, listening to the record on repeat. He’d played it for Wayne after his shift, and his uncle had ruffled his hair and said, “hell of a job,” which was the first time he could recall receiving unsolicited praise for anything that wasn’t illegal. (And his father’s praise for petty crimes and misdemeanors was always more of a Fagin vs. the Artful Dodger vibe, where he was never doing enough.) 

They reach San Diego around ten, and when Eddie pulls over near his drop-off spot, Chrissy unfolds herself and waves off his apologies for kicking her out. Says she wants to get dressed and take a walk, anyway. He averts his gaze while she changes and thinks he should tack up some curtains. One of these days, a passerby might get an eyeful. 

She takes off and leaves him to swap trailers. When they reconnect a couple hours later, she climbs into the cab, still wearing his shades, then hands him a new pair from a paper shopping bag. 

“I like yours,” she says. “But I’m not a thief.” 

He wants to reach across the distance between them and pull her into his lap. Press his fingers to the spot on her waist where her sweatshirt meets her jeans and tell her she looks better in them, anyway. 

But he doesn’t. Instead, he pokes the bag. “What else?” 

“This.” She pulls out a weathered San Diego Zoo cap and hands it to him. 

Smug over her not replacing the hat he bought her with this one, Eddie turns it over and smiles. “Cool.” 

“I liked the elephants. Oh, and I got this.” 

She produces a bobblehead wobbler figurine of a brown dog with droopy ears and a tongue lolling from its perpetually moving mouth. Eddie’s seen about a hundred million variations of the little fella in his travels across the country, but he never thought to buy one. Chrissy, meanwhile, peels back the sticky paper on the base, then places the dog on the dash, pressing down for a couple of seconds so he keeps his place. 

“Does he have a name?” 

She pulls her sunglasses down so she can peer over the top, and her eyes are still red-rimmed but clearer than before. “It’s a girl.” 

“Her name, then.” Far be it from him to question Chrissy’s innate understanding of canine bobblehead biology. 

“Liddy.” 

“Liddy. Any particular reason why?” 

“No. It’s just her name.” 

“Fair enough,” he says. “You ready to roll?” 

“Yup.” 

Eddie checks his mirrors before easing into traffic, and once on the interstate, he’s forced to navigate with a moron blocking his merge. By the time he’s finished swearing, Chrissy’s hiding laughter behind her hand. 

“Don’t mock me, kiddo,” he teases, reaching over to bop Liddy on the nose. 

“You’re just… it’s kind of cute.” 

He sighs, feigning aggravation. “I was hoping it’d be virile and aggressive.” 

“Not really.” She sticks her feet on the dash. “Did you have a dog growing up?” 

“Nope. I always wanted one, but it never made sense with Wayne’s schedule and my tendency to sleep away from home.” 

“Where were you sleeping?” 

“Couple places. Mostly the guy I bought weed from.” 

“Oh. Did you have a girlfriend?” 

Eddie laughs; he can’t help it. “Uh, no. Definitely not. Did you have a dog?” 

“No. We had a cat when I was tiny, but it died when I was small, so I only remember a few things about him. My mother—” she scores a line down the outer seam of her jeans with her thumbnail “—says dogs are dirty. That they smell up a whole house. My brother used to beg for one. Every year for Christmas and his birthday, it’d be the only thing on his list.” 

Eddie had honestly forgotten Chrissy has a brother, though she’s mentioned him before. It’s funny that they’re only getting to this stuff now—the first-date, met-you-in-a-bar conversations happening after the lap sitting, the bed-sharing, and whatever else is happening between them—but their circumstances are stranger than most. “How old is your brother?” 

“He just turned sixteen.” 

“What’s his name?” 

“Clark. Do you… I mean, I know you live with your uncle. But do you have any siblings, or does he have any kids?” 

“One and only, limited edition, as far as I know,” he says, though God knows there might be a half-sibling out there, given his father’s penchant for women and his tendency to never call them twice.

Chrissy taps Liddy with her toe. “When I have a house of my own, I’m going to have four dogs. Or five, maybe.” 

“Your mom will hate that.” 

Fingers curl into fists on her lap as she sets her jaw. “I don’t care if she does.”

“You guys aren’t close?” 

“No. We were, once. Or, at least, I wanted us to be.”

“I’m sorry,” he says at the exact moment she blurts, “this isn’t the first time I left Jason.” 

Eddie’s fingers tighten on the wheel, and he tries to stay neutral so she can say what needs saying. “No?” 

“No. The first time, I went home.” Her tone is clipped and precise. Eddie looks over and finds she’s nearly trembling, though not with fear. If he had to name it, it’d be rage. “Her home. She called him when I was sleeping. He came to get me that night. And he can… he can be very charming when he wants to be.” 

“That’s shit,” he says and covers her left fist with his hand for as long as he’s able. Luckily, they’re on a straight stretch of road, so he can hold her until she relaxes by millimeters, palm opening. He runs his calloused thumb across her skin, feeling the indentations her nails left behind. 

The truck gives him some trouble after that—ornery in a way she usually isn’t—so he calls it a day just north of Sacramento. If he had to guess, there’s a suspension issue, but he’s no mechanic, and it’s his own damn fault for not getting her properly looked at in Chicago. But then, if he’d wasted time on that, he never would have run into Chrissy in Kentucky.

They eat dinner in the truck stop restaurant, Eddie with his usual burger and fries, Chrissy with a Cobb salad and dressing on the side. Neither of them looks appetizing when the waitress drops them off—the lettuce is wilted on both dishes, and the eggs on Chrissy’s salad smell extra sulfurous—but he’s not picky, so he tucks in.

Chrissy, meanwhile, dips the tines of her fork into the dressing, coating maybe a quarter inch before nibbling on her lettuce like a rabbit. 

Eddie nudges her foot beneath the table. “Hey, c’mon.” 

Her face shutters. “No, thank you.” 

“Chris…” 

“I’m full.” She pushes the plate away, and she’s hardly touched it. He doesn’t know what to do; he’s ended up in the deep end of the pool, and no matter how much he scrabbles, he can’t find a place where his toes touch. 

“Are you sure?” He says, suddenly self-conscious about stuffing his face. 

“I’m going to go read for a while.” She pulls a five-dollar bill out of her purse, puts it on the table, and walks out.

So what the fuck? 

Eddie finishes his burger, which tastes like sawdust, before heading back to the truck. He dawdles, though, wanting to give her space, and by the time he gets there, she’s curled on her side in the bunk, Fellowship in hand. When he hauls himself into the cab, she scoots to make room, which is something, so he picks up his own book and gets in next to her, letting her use his bicep as a pillow while she reads. 

“Oh, I knew it,” she whispers after maybe twenty minutes have passed, eyes bright like she’s seconds away from tears. “I knew Frodo was going to be the one to volunteer to take the ring. It’s not fair!”

Eddie closes his book and shifts his weight to see her face. “Nope, it’s not.” 

“Frodo wasn’t the one who took the ring from Gollum in the first place! He’s just been doing what he thought was right this whole time, and now he’s trapped.” 

‘Trapped’ is an interesting choice of word, and not the one Eddie would have picked. “He doesn’t necessarily have to—nobody would blame him if he turned around and went back to the Shire.” 

“But he’s not the type of person to just walk away.” She marks her place and closes the book before rolling onto her back to stare at the ceiling. 

He gives her a minute, mainly because he needs time to think of what to say. It’s been years since he initially went to Middle Earth—he made an attempt at six, then got through the books at ten—and he’s long since forgotten the spiky emotions he felt during his first journey to Mordor. He’s pretty sure he never got so angry as Chrissy, though, considering she’s chewing on her lip like she might bite through it. “I think it ties back to that stuff Gandalf and Frodo talk about when he’s still in the Shire. How Frodo’s like… I wish Sauron wasn’t back, and I wasn’t involved, and Gandalf says, yeah, but you are, and everyone who lives through this stuff wishes they didn’t have to, but we all have to do our part when things are hard. Or at least do as much as we can while being as brave as we can be.” 

She’s quiet for a long time, then surprises him with, “I’m sorry I snapped at you.” 

If that’s what she considers snapping, he wonders what she looks like in a rage—maybe a request made without a please and thank you accompanying it? “You didn’t snap. I was just confused. Last night and this morning, you seemed into me, uh. Helping?” 

“I know. But right then, I didn’t want to.” She picks up his hand to fiddle with the obsidian ring, twisting it around and around with her gaze fixed on the metal. “I don’t know how to explain it. I wish I did. The thing is, there are all these rules.” 

Eddie, who is nearly always hungry, and whose relationship to food has been primarily transactional—open mouth, insert crap, chew, swallow, shit it out—can’t relate. Whatever Chrissy’s dealing with is like Janet Leigh in The Birds, only the birds are French fries flying around and taunting her with their deliciousness. 

“What kind of rules?”

“Growing up, we had prescribed mealtimes and no snacking in between. But the food was awful—my mother had been heavy, I guess, as a teenager. She went on a diet in her twenties and lost a lot of weight before she met my dad, so she was obsessed with not gaining it back. Which meant she fed us the same stuff she ate, which was…uck.” She wrinkles her nose. “In her mind, she was keeping me from suffering the bullying she’d suffered. But all it did was make me crazy. I’d go to sleepovers at friends’ houses and eat practically a whole pizza because I was so sick of steamed vegetables and boiled chicken.” 

“That’s pretty messed up.” 

“Is it? I don’t know.”

“Well, yeah. If she was that restrictive. What—” 

“I don’t really like to talk about it,” she says, cutting him off before he can press. “It’s just that I want you to understand that I’m not always going to be able to tell you when I can’t… when you can’t…” 

He thinks he understands what she’s saying, even if he’s getting that treading-water feeling again. “Alright. So. How about… I promise I won’t do anything that makes you feel worse. If you want to say no, you say no, and that’s cool. But I’m going to keep asking you to try. Deal?”

The offer settles over them, and she moves closer, dropping her head to his chest while not quite answering the question. “Last night, it was easy. Silly. This morning, it was like you were taking care of me. But just now, I don’t know. It felt wrong. I felt wrong. Like I was irritating you.” 

“You’re definitely not,” he says, the guilt thinning out, though not disappearing as he considers her words. “Maybe being drunk, or feeling shitty this morning, made it easier to, like… let go?”

“Maybe.” 

“So, okay. I’ll keep asking. You just let me know when you need help. No hard feelings if you don’t.” Unless you never do again, his brain supplies. At some point, she’s gotta eat. 

“No hard feelings,” she echoes, then pushes their fingers together. “We can try that.” 

“Cool. And I want to say that I know being together all the time is weird. So if you ever feel like I’m not being respectful…” He trails off with a half-shrug. She’d called him that last night, but it could have been the beer talking. 

“You are respectful. Everything just feels like a lot. Like I’m twisted into knots.” 

There’s the understatement of the century. Eddie sighs and squeezes her hand, the unspoken thing between them resting right next to her on his chest. 

“Then I’m here if you need me,” he says, which will get them through to morning.

Chapter Text

Smaug is rumbling, and Eddie’s grumbling. Probably because the rumble isn’t the nice, usual br-br-br of a sleeping dragon but the brap-brap-brap of a live one that’s just discovered a hobbit in its cave. 

“Son of a bitch,” Eddie mutters, fingers tight on the wheel. “She’s drifting.” 

“What does that mean?” she asks, peeling an orange she bought at the truck stop outside of Sacramento. They’re in Oregon now, and it occurs to her they never discussed whether his getting her to California had fulfilled his obligation. Seems like they both decided she was in it for the long haul. Pun intended.

“Means she’s fucked.” He smacks his hand against the steering wheel, which might freak her out if anyone else had done it. But Eddie’s not scary, so it just makes her laugh. 

He cuts his eyes at her, and she grins. “Sorry.” 

“Something funny, Cunningham?” 

“Yes,” she says, then pulls a face. “There’s too much pith on this.” 

“What’s pith?” 

“The white stuff.” 

“Oh. So pick it off.” 

“Okay,” she agrees and does just that. 

Smaug’s brap has turned into a true smoker’s hack by the time they arrive in Eugene, Oregon. Or, rather, a shipping yard on the outskirts of the city. The prospects for Chrissy’s usual meandering and shopping are bleak, so she hops out of the cab with her book in hand. She hasn’t exactly forgiven Mr. Tolkien for having Frodo take the ring, but she’s willing to see where things go. 

Eddie tells her he’ll pick her up at this corner, this corner right here when he’s finished with the drop. He always repeats the intersection twice, like it’s an incantation he must perform. No way they can miss each other if he says it twice, spits on the ground, and spins in a circle while throwing some salt over his shoulder. 

“I’ll be here,” she says, then wanders until she finds a tiny, tucked-away playground with a bench where she can sit and read, keeping one eye on her watch. 

At the appointed time, she heads to the intersection and is surprised when Eddie strolls up rather than drives. She takes a moment to appreciate the sight—she rarely gets to observe him from a distance, all lanky and purposeful, taking up space with his stride. 

“Hey,” he says when he reaches her. 

“Where’s Smaug?” 

His grin widens at her use of the name, and while he’s never said so, she thinks he’s pleased with her choice of moniker. “Smaug’s down for at least a day. Suspension’s fucked.” 

“Oh, no. Is it going to be okay?” 

“Sure. The lot’s got a guy. So I was thinking…” He splays his hands out, Fosse style, though she’d bet fifty dollars he doesn’t know who Fosse is. “You wanna go to the beach?” 

“There’s a beach here?” She hadn’t been paying much attention to the atlas, but she’s confident they’re not that close to the water. 

“Not here. We’ll have to drive. But we have time to kill, so I figured we can get a motel on the shore, see what there is to see. You can take some pictures.” 

“But how are we going to get there?” 

Eddie grins and reaches into his back pocket, producing a seat of keys. “I turned on the ol’ Chrissy Cunningham charm.” 

“And by that, you mean… ?” 

“It means you’re not the only person who can sweet talk your way into a freebie. One of the shippers heard me bitching about being grounded overnight, and he comes over, says he and his girlfriend are heading out of town in her car, and I can borrow his if I want.” 

“Really? That’s generous.” 

He rocks on his heels and sticks his hands in his pockets, all aw-shucks. “I’m a very nice person, you know. People respond to my magnetic personality and effortless grace.” 

“Eddie…” 

“Alright, alright. I traded him a couple issues of Fangoria and told him I’d get the car washed and gassed before I brought it back.” 

Chrissy grins and steps forward to hug him. “So we’re really going to the beach?” 

“We’re really going to the beach,” he says, then takes her hand to tug her toward the employee parking lot. 

The car in question turns out to be a Jeep. Seeing it makes Chrissy’s stomach cramp, and her hands shake as a thousand unwanted memories flood her mind. Just touch it just lick it just the tip, baby, please? Jason’s hand on her head. Her arm. His anger was evident then in smaller ways. Ways she could brush under the rug as a boy being a boy.

But this Jeep is older, its paint blue, not black, and Eddie’s so excited. She swallows around the tightness in her throat and follows him over, climbing in the passenger side when he opens the door for her. This Jeep probably has its original windows. The one in Jason’s has been replaced. That was her fault, he said. Didn’t want to drive with a crack in it, like she’d been stupid enough to do the damage, rather than the one who’d sat there crying when he struck the glass.

His class ring had been the biggest problem, both for the Jeep and for Chrissy, who bore the brunt when he stopped punching inanimate objects and started punching her instead. 

Eddie’s in too good a mood to burden with something so sad, so she plasters a smile on her face when he says he’s going to grab their stuff out of the truck. Scratches the bed of her thumbnail with her index finger while he’s gone, the skin still so tender and new that it doesn’t take much before it’s bleeding, just a little. 

She needs to get over it, though. 

“Alright, navigator,” Eddie says after throwing their bags in the back and hopping in next to her. 

“I’m navigating?” 

“Sure.” He passes her the atlas from the truck and smiles. “Where are we going?” 

Chrissy opens the book, hiding her bleeding finger in her fist and doing the best she can one-handed, staring at the wiggly lines. “Looks like if we get on highway 126 east, that’s a direct route to the nearest town on the coast.” 

“Got it. Thanks.” He puts on the sunglasses she bought him and starts the Jeep, which sounds different from Jason’s when it flares to life. So that’s something, at least. 

They exit the lot, and Eddie follows signs for 126. It begins as a flat road, but as they leave Eugene behind and begin to climb, it becomes something wilder. A passage through a dense, dark forest with an occasional patch of blue sky overhead, and it’s different, being in something other than Smaug. Different, watching Eddie drive faster and freer with a pleased little grin on his face as he drums his fingers against the wheel in time with the beat of the song on the radio. 

They’re over an hour in when things flatten out again, and soon enough, they’re in the town Chrissy saw on the map. Florence, which ostensibly has a beach somewhere, but they can’t see it from the car, and this town makes her itchy. It’s a big small town, which isn’t an oxymoron so much as a concept that only requires sense in her head. She wants some quiet place. Fewer tourists and things to do. So she studies the map until she finds something further north that she likes the literal sound of. 

“Yah-chats,” she says. “I want to go there.” 

“Sure,” says Eddie, always easy. Turning when she tells him to turn, so they’re climbing out of Florence and into new dreamy, winding woods that follow the coastline. 

They pass a sign maybe twenty minutes up the road, and she does a double-take. Surely not? Only—she checks the map and nearly squeals—she’s right. She saw what she thought she saw, marked in tiny grey letters like the mapmaker preferred not to let many people in on the secret.

Eddie didn’t see the sign, so she tucks the knowledge of what she spied into herself like a secret. It’ll be a tomorrow project. A surprise for him when they’re exploring because he does so much for her. 

The woods wind their way toward the glittering remnants of daylight, and when they emerge from the canopy, they’re practically on the edge of a cliff, with the whole of the Pacific Ocean one steep drop to their left. 

It’s stunning, and she can only manage a whispered, “oh, wow,” as she shields her eyes against the setting sun. 

Eddie reaches over to squeeze her knee, then shifts gears because the road is as challenging to drive as it is awe-inspiring, sporting hairpin turns around sheer cliffs with houses perched precariously on the hillsides. Chrissy has never seen a shoreline like this, where the rocks and hills practically tumble into the water. Family vacations to Virginia or the Carolinas or the gulf seem tame in comparison. 

Yachats is a town tucked between those bulging hills and rocky shores. It’s tiny, with weatherbeaten houses standing against the wind and surf, and as Eddie cruises down the main drag, she spies a road sign for a motel down a side street. 

“There!” she points, and he turns. 

The motel is on the water, with peeling blue paint and a vacancy sign advertising cheap rooms, laundry, and color television. Inside, the clerk welcomes them to Yachats, which Chrissy realizes is pronounced Yah-hats, not Yah-chats, and that’s somehow even better. 

The clerk asks how many beds, and Chrissy takes Eddie’s arm and says, “just one, thanks,” because she’s sure it’s cheaper, and she sleeps best with him next to her. 

Eddie kisses the top of her head while the clerk gets their keys, and she smiles. Turns her body and leans into him, breathing in cigarette smoke and coffee and a tinge of something sharp since he hasn’t showered in a couple days, and neither has she. And gosh, isn’t it so nice that he wants to touch her, anyway? 

Keys in hand, they go back to the Jeep and move it outside their room, then retrieve their stuff. She stops him on the sidewalk, not quite meeting his eyes. 

“I feel bad that you’re paying for all of this,” she says, addressing the worry that’s been niggling at her brain since he pulled out his wallet in the office. 

He tugs on a lock of her limp hair and shrugs. “Don’t.” 

“You say don’t, but I do…” 

“Yeah, but… you know. Don’t.” He puts his hands on her shoulders. Rubs them over her upper arms, then once more kisses the crown of her no-doubt greasy head. “This job pays really well, Chris. Guys support families on what I make.” 

But I’m not your family, she thinks. Doesn’t say. Just mumbles an “oh,” followed by, “but I’m still… ugh.” 

“You’re my navigator. That’s gotta be worth a motel room or a real bed once in a while.” 

Chrissy nods, though she doesn’t feel they’ve settled the issue. Her cash reserves are diminished, but it still feels like taking advantage. Everything, in fact, feels like taking advantage. But what else can she do? Her options are, to put it mildly, limited. 

At least she has the surprise for tomorrow. That’s something. Not money, but a gift in its own right. 

“Thanks,” she says as he steps back and opens the lock. “If you ever get tired of it…” 

“I won’t.” He flicks on a light and tosses his duffel onto the bed. “You want the first shower?” 

“There!”

Eddie hits the brakes, and Chrissy practically vibrates out of her seat with the same wild energy she’s had since waking up at seven this morning. Dragging him out of bed and into the nearest breakfast joint, where she ate—unprompted!—a whole goddamn plate of scrambled eggs and hot sauce while he inhaled his weight in bacon. She’s been bouncing all morning, telling him they’re going somewhere important, to not ask questions, to just get in the Jeep and drive, please. Please, please, please. 

And don’t get him wrong, he’s digging the hell out of it, but Chrissy operating at a twelve is a lot when he’s used to having her at a six or seven. This one… yeah, this is maybe the feral little cat that could’ve come out of her cheerleader self if she’d dropped the mask and started screaming move, motherfucker, when one of those numbnuts made some dumb sports mistake. 

He’d have paid a lot of money to see that, actually. Maybe gone to some games instead of lurking beneath the bleachers during pep rallies. 

Tapping the brakes, he glances at her. “There? Where’s there?”

“Right by that van.” 

As soon as she says it, he sees it, a parking lot that’s more of a lay-by. Eddie angles the jeep into a gravel-marked spot and cuts the engine, Chrissy grinning away. She’s out the door seconds later, running around to his side of the car and grabbing his arm. 

“Look!” she says, pointing across the highway at a pair of tiny, unobtrusive signs tacked to a tree. 

Heceta Lighthouse -1.5 miles

Hobbit Beach - .5 miles

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which of the two has had Chrissy skipping around like a deranged pixie. 

“Oh, shit,” he says. “What makes it a hobbit beach?” 

“No idea. I saw it when we drove by yesterday, and I wanted to surprise you.” She threads her arms around him, attaching herself to his side like a barnacle. That’s been happening more and more since Calexico; he could get used to it. 

“I mean, considering you’re a hobbit…” He can’t resist a tug on her ponytail, which is sticking out the back of her Texas Railway hat.  

She makes a sound like a rusty lawn chair, swatting his hand away. “I know I am. C’mon, let’s go.” 

They look both ways, then cross the quiet highway to the trailhead, which really is the most unobtrusive, hidden-away secret. The sort of thing Eddie’d never see in the truck because this isn’t the sort of road he can travel. Too narrow, too winding, too interesting. Interstates are safe, and interstates are sleepy. When he first started driving, he told himself he’d use his downtime to explore. To see shit that most of the sleepy fucks in Hawkins would never seek out. 

But, yeah. The job’s tough, and typically, when he gets a day off through scheduling or circumstances, he spends it catching up on sleep. And it bugs him a little because he used to be a person who did things, you know? Nothing thrilling, but he had the band. The club. Friends. Getting out of Hawkins wasn’t meant to kill that; it was meant to expand it, and yet graduation lives in his head like a light switch that got flipped from kid to adult. 

Adults get jobs and get the fuck out of their uncle’s hair. And he’d genuinely believed he did that in a way that opened the world up, only he’s limited himself since. Turned the world into something about four lanes wide. 

Shit, he’s been with Chrissy for a week, and he’s seen more in that time than the entire two years prior. 

“Okay,” she says, studying a small, faded map tacked behind clear plastic on an information board just beyond the signs. The plastic has gone filmy with age, and water’s leaked onto the map, but it’s legible enough for a short trail. “We’re following the white blazes.”

With that, she marches forward with the determination of a woman who’s been on several strenuous hikes in her life. Eddie, meanwhile, has never been one for structured outdoor activities.

Unstructured and unplanned, though? Well, yeah. He’d raised Cain in his time, from tin can firecrackers to shooting Wayne’s B.B. gun at any piece of garbage unlucky enough to cross his path. Of course, that was mostly Wayne’s doing—he said Eddie had energy to burn, so he’d kick him out the door and tell him not to come back until he was tired. So Eddie would march, and he’d yell, and he’d cause a bit of mayhem, sometimes with other kids, sometimes by himself, but always, always, always at the top of his lungs. 

A few years later, he’d gained other outdoor experiences, starting with the picnic table behind Hawkins High. Then there was Rick. Fucking dumbass Rick and fucking dumber-ass Eddie, who’d agreed to join him in meeting his supplier one night when he’d been new to dealing and too stupid to know better. There’d been a raid, and he’d run for his life through the woods on the outskirts of town. Some kid had built a makeshift fort out of branches and tarps, and he’d hunkered in there for hours. 

Rick, meanwhile, went down for six months, and Eddie never again agreed to meet with the middlemen out of Indianapolis. 

All that to say, within a minute, Chrissy’s picking her way around rocks and roots like some nymph-ish woodland creature while he’s galumphing behind her with a cigarette in his mouth. 

“Oh my gosh,” she says as she rounds a bend, stopping short.

He catches up, and yeah. He can get on board with her exclamation over this new vista. To the left, they’re flanked by a steep hill covered with contorted, wind-swept trees, their roots exposed by the eroded ground. Gnarled and hunched, they poke through the fern-scattered earth and create a forbidding tapestry, lit by sunlight filtering through the evergreen branches above, casting everything in a misty, muddled green. 

It’s haunting and ethereal all at once, and Chrissy pulls her camera out, crouching low to capture the scene from a different angle. 

“How do they even stay alive with their roots like that?” she asks, depressing the shutter. 

“Maybe it’s like an iceberg, and the real roots are even deeper.” 

“Maybe.” She takes another picture, then bumps her forehead against his thigh before standing and offering her hand. Lets her drag him up the incline that switchbacks around the rolling trees. The hill’s murder, and he’s winded as they round the bend. 

“Hang on,” he says, using the need to crush his cigarette butt beneath his boot as an excuse to stop. 

“Mmm.” Chrissy crouches, plucks the remnant from the forest floor, and hands it to him. “Leave only footprints.” 

“What?” 

“Take only photographs, leave only footprints. You never heard that before?” 

“Uh, no.” 

“My troop leader would say it when we went camping.” 

That explains how she’s so goddamn good at hiking. “You were a Girl Scout?” 

“For a little while. Until middle school, actually. That was when my mom wanted me to try out for cheer.” 

“Is that not what you wanted?” 

Another shrug, and she takes his hand to tug him forward while he tucks the butt into his pocket. “I don’t know. I was taking dance and gymnastics, so it made sense to put that to some use. But I really liked scouts, too. I missed earning badges and camping. Plus, I lost some friends when I quit. But…” She trails off like he’s supposed to fill in the blanks. 

“Gotta enlighten me, Cunningham.” 

“Just, um… a lot of the girls who stayed in scouts were kind of… not the most cool?”

He appreciates her diplomacy. “Like who?”

“Okay, like, Barb Holland. She actually got her Gold Award senior year.” 

The name rings a bell, but he had so many classmates over his three years as a senior that he can’t picture her face. “Well, God forbid you be anything less than the most cool…” 

“I wasn’t even cool! I was just popular.” 

“I don’t see the difference.” 

A furrow appears between her eyebrows, and she shrugs, mask slipping into place. Which, yeah, that’s not gonna work, so Eddie does a soft shoe and a slide back to something that feels safe. 

“What’s a Gold Award?” 

The furrow smooths slightly. “It’s like this service project thing—kind of the equivalent of being an Eagle Scout if you’re a guy. And it’s a huge deal. You can get scholarships and stuff. Barb did. I remember they put it in the senior newsletter.” She starts walking again, and he matches her pace. “I saw her on campus once, at IU. I was meeting Jason for lunch before he—” She stops short, and while he wants to know more, he doesn’t push. At least she’ll mention Carver by name now. Dripping little pieces of their life together from the stagnant, rusty faucet in her head where he lives. Eddie’d love to turn that faucet literal and maybe cram it right up Carver’s pisshole. Or whatever. “Anyway, Barb was out with some friends, and she was laughing, and I remember thinking she looked so happy. Which made me sad because, you know, I had done everything I was supposed to do, and I still wasn’t really having a good time. But Barb—there she was, being her own total person.”

“Chris…” He touches her back. “You’re your own total person. You know that, right?” 

“I’m working on it. Let’s go, okay?” 

They pick up their pace, leaving the discomfort tangled in a tree root. The trail continues around the other side of that hill, the ground beneath their feet growing sandy. Another corner turned brings another staggering view, stopping them short once more. 

Below them, the path descends and narrows to a tunnel with earthen walls, roots and branches twining together over the top to form a canopy. 

“Hobbits,” Chrissy whispers, a hushed magic to her tone.

For once in his life, Eddie has nothing to add and simply follows her down the slope. 

At hobbit height, Chrissy doesn’t have to duck, while he’s forced into a stoop-shouldered slump to navigate the tunnel, which is narrow enough to make him claustrophobic. The further they go, the tighter it gets, but then, just as he’s beginning to feel overwhelmed, the canopy opens to reveal the cloudy grey sky speckled with patchy blue, and he finds he can breathe again. 

“I hear the water!” Chrissy says, reaching back for his hand. 

She leads them around the last bend, where they stumble down a dune and onto a white sand beach that sprawls half a mile in both directions before being bisected by knife cuts of pine-covered, rocky slope. It might be the loveliest place Eddie’s ever seen, and his eyes go a little misty because, Christ, he never would have known it existed without her. 

That’s some mawkishly sentimental nonsense, though, so he lifts his head to the peeping sun, blinking twice to clear his vision. 

Chrissy, meanwhile, plunks herself down on a dead log and unlaces her sneakers, setting them on the ground, followed by her socks, which she tucks neatly within each shoe. Eddie follows her lead, doing the same with his boots, and they leave them right by the log to retrieve when they’re through. 

“Last one to the water’s a rotten egg,” she declares when he’s still sitting, breaking for the beach with a giggle. 

Eddie’s not a competitive guy—for all his bluster, he always got a kick when the Hellfire kids won their campaigns—but he takes off after her, laughing when she reaches the shore, and a wave soaks her to the shins, making her shriek. 

“What’d you think was going to happen?” he calls over the sound of the water. 

Chrissy turns, a little girl grin breaking across her face, and God, he can imagine her younger, loose-toothed and giggling for a yearbook photo somewhere, sometime before her mother got so deep in her head, and Carver came along to fuck up what she left behind. 

“Smile!” she says, lifting her camera to snap a shot of him striding across the sand. 

“Hey, no!” He puts a hand up to cover his face. “I’m a private citizen.” 

She takes the picture anyway, then closes the gap between them. Looks up at him and says with the utmost solemnity, “nobody else has ever been to this beach before. This is just for us, okay?” 

The other car in the parking lot would argue otherwise, but considering that person’s nowhere to be seen, well, far be it from him to introduce objectivity to her declaration. 

“Yup. We discovered it,” he says as she approaches the sea and lifts the camera again. 

They stand in the surf for a minute while Chrissy composes her shots, after which she decides they’re going to walk all the way to the rocks that mark the end of the beach because she wants to “take some pictures close-up.” 

Those rocks turn out to be further away than they seem, and it takes nearly fifteen minutes to get there. Worth it, though, as they find tide pools aplenty tucked into the nooks and crannies. Eddie tells her the story of his hermit crab adventure while she crouches low, aiming the camera at the shimmering water and—occasionally—taking a snap. She’s doling out the film like a prisoner might dole out rations, but that shit’s not cheap, so he gets it. 

“This lens doesn’t do good close-ups,” she says, standing. “Everything’s going to be blurry.” 

“Bummer.” 

“I just… I want to remember the tiny things.” 

The wind has blown some strands loose from her ponytail, and they whip across her mouth. Eddie brushes them away from her frown, then crouches to examine the starfish clinging to the sides of the pool with their fat, floppy legs. “We gotta find a lens that can do that, then.” 

“That’d be nice. I wish I had a book, or a manual, or something.” 

“We can probably find a book,” he says, wondering if Yachats might have a used bookshop. Or, hell, even a brand-spanking new one. He’d pay full price for her any day. 

“Thanks, Eddie. I want to climb up a little higher, see if I can get the whole pool from above.” 

He casts a wary eye at the rocks overhead. They aren’t exactly climb-worthy, with few places that a hand or foot might fit. Plus, they’re slimy, slick with whatever detritus Poseidon splashed onto them when the tide was high. But, shit, Chrissy’s a big girl, and she’s had an entire lifetime of people telling her what she ought to be doing, so he just nods. Steps back to spot her while she studies the stone, picks her angle, and climbs.

At first, it’s fine. She’s small, and she finds the world’s tiniest ledge to balance on, about four feet up, then twists her body so she can aim the camera straight down. She takes a second to find what she wants, but she’s smiling when she presses the shutter. 

“Got it!” she says, which is right about when she loses her footing.

Time kicks into that awful slowfast pace that Eddie remembers from his few run-ins with the Hawkins PD. Where everything happens before he can stop it, but also, he’s forced to watch every excruciating second in slow motion.

Reflexes kicking in, Chrissy twists and launches herself from the rock rather than falling straight down, like a dropped cat finding its feet. It’s not for safety, though—it’s avoiding the tide pool, meaning she lands on the jagged grey rocks instead of in the water. Eddie winces when he hears the muffled thud of her knees hitting stone, and Jesus, she used her hands to cradle the camera instead of breaking her fall. 

No sense of self-preservation, that one.

Rubbery legs propel him across the distance to kneel at her side, with a muttered, “fuck, Chrissy,” exhaled on a shaky breath.

When she looks up, her face does the strangest thing. It’s evident that she’s in pain, but instead of crying or yelling about it, she twists her features into a singular expression of misery that lasts for all of two seconds before flattening into something placid yet stoic, and totally fake. 

“I’m alright,” she says, and she’s lying, betrayed by her fingers, which grip the camera so tightly he thinks she might bend the casing. “Is my camera okay?” 

“I don’t give a shit about the camera. Are you okay?” 

“Honestly, I’m…” She hisses, and Eddie sighs. Touches her shoulder and eases her onto her ass so she can stretch out her legs. When he presses his fingers against her ankle, she gives a whine so soft it’s nearly lost in the wind, and he frowns, pushing her jeans up to see how bad things are.

The joint doesn’t look broken, but she clearly twisted it on impact, and when he tries to move it for her, she jerks back with a sharp don’t. 

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” Every inch of common sense is screaming at him to do more, do it faster, do it better, but he won’t go against her expressed wishes.

Chrissy inhales. Closes her eyes and points her toes as red spots bloom on the denim covering her left knee. Eddie can see the jagged edge of the rock where she landed; clearly, the left side took the brunt. 

“It’s fine,” she says, then flexes her ankle, which makes her face seize into that rictus mask again. “Oh, God…” 

“Chrissy, c’mon.” His hands hover inches above her leg, and he’s not touching, but he’s itching to. “You’re not fine. You’re bleeding. Just let me look?”

Her nails dig into the damp rock at her sides, and she studies him for a second, then nods. 

Eddie takes that as tacit permission and scoots further down her lower half, lifting her ankle onto his lap. He folds back her cuff to ease it up her leg, glad (for once) that the jeans fit so poorly. It gives him room to work.

A fine, downy fuzz covers her calf, alongside coarser, stubbled brown hair, which startles him, though it shouldn’t. It’s just that the fake-Chrissy that still occasionally takes up space in his head has always been picture-perfect, running around in her uniform, squeaky clean and wholesome, right down to the smooth, shaved legs. 

Real-Chrissy has been running around, too, only without a razor or a plan or a need to be anything but an actual person. 

It’s sexy, honestly. Not the hair—he can go either way on that—but the reality of her understanding that she doesn’t have to give a shit around him. Realizing that he won’t judge her. Doesn’t care. 

When he reaches her knee, he gingerly pushes the fabric past her cut and finds two gashes, long but not deep, meaning they’ll be able to avoid a trip to the ER. Still, they’re bleeding like crazy, and Chrissy mutters a quiet “oh, no,” when she sees the mess.

“It’s okay, we just have to get you back to the… fuck.”

“What?” 

“The truck has a first aid kit. And the truck’s in Eugene.” 

“Oh.” 

“Yeah.” He tugs his bandana from his back pocket and uses a corner to wipe some blood away. “I can get some shit once we’re at the motel.”

She winces, then grits out, “it’s really not that bad, though.” 

“Man, they picked the wrong guy to put on the cross, Cunningham. Out here suffering for my sins.” 

She presses her lips together like she’s not supposed to think that’s funny, but she does anyway. Eddie grins and gets to work. His skills are rudimentary, but everyone who ran a school club had to take a dumb first aid workshop to get funding (in case one of the sheepies got a paper cut), so he knows that pressure is important. After cleaning the wound as best he’s able, he folds his bandana into a long rectangle, then ties it tight around her knee. She whimpers when he pulls it taut, but when he’s done, she says, “thanks, Eddie,” like she’s grateful. 

“You’re welcome. Should we try putting some weight on that ankle?” 

She agrees, but it becomes immediately apparent that while she might limp along a flat road, she can’t handle a sandy beach followed by a half-mile of gnarled trail. But, because she’s Chrissy, she tries. Holds onto his arm, hopping forward as her good leg wobbles on the sand like, oh, yeah, she can do this. She can do this, no problem. 

“Nothing doing, kiddo,” he declares after they’ve gone maybe ten feet. “We gotta call in the choppah.”

The line is wasted on Chrissy, who just looks panicked. “Wait, like an ambulance? Eddie, that’s crazy. I’m walking fine!”

“It’s from a movie. Anyway, you can’t bullshit a bullshitter. You look like a gazelle after the lions get hold of it.” 

“Eddie…” 

He rolls his eyes, stepping in front of her and crouching. “Hop on.” 

“No. There’s no way,” she says with the conviction of someone who actually does want help but can’t ask for it. Good thing Eddie’s such a persuasive guy. 

“Chris, you weigh twelve pounds soaking wet, and I’ve lifted truck tires.” This is a bald-faced lie, but as far as she’s concerned, he’s a fucking Terminator. “Get up here.” 

It comes out as an order, and he’s about to apologize for his tone when she sighs, swings the camera to her back, and does as she’s told. He stands, and her legs wrap around his waist, allowing him to hitch a palm under each thigh. The position can’t be comfortable with her ankle and knee, but it’s the best they’ve got, so they’ll make it work. 

The trek back to the log where they left their shoes takes twice as long as the original journey, because while Chrissy doesn’t weigh enough, she weighs something, and that extra burden makes traversing the slipping sand that much harder. He’s fighting for every inch, which leaves him sweaty and panting by the time he sets her down to retrieve her shoes. 

“Sorry,” he says, doubled over, hands on his knees. “I’m good. I’m fine. Just… fuckin’ sand.” 

A couple of seconds later, Chrissy’s bright pink Scrunchie appears in his line of sight. “Here. Pull your hair back.” 

It’s a kind gesture, and he scrapes his curls into a low ponytail, which gives psychological relief, if not physical. He’s still sweating. “Thanks, Chris.” 

“You’re welcome.” She picks up her sneakers, knots the laces together, then throws them over her shoulders alongside the camera. 

Eddie dawdles while tying his boots to ensure firm footing and buy himself more recovery time. Once set, he picks her up, grits his teeth, and starts the long, shaky climb into the dense forest. The hobbit tunnel isn’t fun with Chrissy on his back, forcing him to crouch low, ensuring she doesn’t smack her head on the branches. The weird claustrophobia returns, plus it’s killing his knees, so his calves are quaking when they emerge from the overgrowth. 

“Do you need another break?” she asks. 

So much for being the Terminator. “Nah, I’m alright,” he says like his lungs aren’t burning with the memory of a hundred thousand cigarettes. He takes a few steps onto solid ground, redistributing her weight with a quick heft-and-wriggle. “You ever ride a horse?”

“Sure. Girl Scout, remember?” 

Yeah, he can just about imagine her in those little black boots. A cowboy hat. And a riding crop. Or maybe… nope, that was in a magazine. “I never have.” 

“You should. It’s fun.” 

“Maybe someday. How do you make ‘em move?”

“What do you mean?” 

“An animal that big, they just listen to you?” 

“Um, you kind of… kick them?” 

“And they don’t get pissed off about that?” 

“You don’t kick them hard. You sort of nudge your ankles into their sides, and they walk. And then you do it again if you want them to go faster.” 

“What about if you need them to turn?”

“You pull the reins to the left or right.” 

“And stop?” 

“Pull back and say whoa.” 

The ‘whoa’ is a low purr, breath ghosting the shell of his ear, and he definitely shouldn’t find that attractive, but his libido is a wild… well, not stallion. Maybe just one of those chill, calm horses he’s seen in a hundred fields he’s whipped by at sixty-five miles an hour. He can handle this situation with grace and aplomb, goddamnit. 

“There’s horse people in the book,” he says to distract himself. “Not Fellowship, but Two Towers. The Rohirrim.” 

“Oh. Cool. I’m slipping.”

Yes, she is, and he hoists her higher, sweaty palms digging into her thighs in a way he hopes doesn’t hurt. She leans back a bit, and he can’t figure out why until, upon approaching the next bend, she tugs his ponytail in the appropriate direction. 

Eddie would laugh, but he doesn’t have oxygen to spare. “Asshole move, Chris.” 

“You wouldn’t have asked about horses if you weren’t feeling like one.” 

Fair. He makes the turn and glances over his shoulder. “Giddy-up.” 

The next bit of the trail is steeper, removing his ability to talk. She keeps up the ponytail pulling all the way through. Guiding him around every turn. It’s weird, but then, she’s weird, and he’s into it. Like, the wires connecting his brain to his dick are getting crossed, and he’s probably gonna jerk off about it later. 

After what feels like maybe twenty years, they reach the car, and Eddie’s never been so happy to see a parking lot. He jogs across the highway and sets Chrissy down, letting her lean against the Jeep while he unlocks the back door. 

“I figure you ought to stretch out in the back—I think you’re supposed to keep your ankle elevated?” 

“Is that your medical opinion?” 

“Obviously.” 

“Help me up?” 

“Definitely.” 

He settles his hands on her waist and picks her up, putting her on the seat. She’s strong enough to wriggle herself from there, and while she does, he fetches a folded tarp from the back to put beneath her bad ankle. 

“Thanks,” she says, and her voice is strained like maybe he hurt her when he was futzing with her foot. “I can’t really get to my seatbelt from this angle. Can you help?” 

Eddie nods and wedges himself between the bench seat and the floor, inching toward her while still catching his breath. Once he’s near enough, he helps her lean forward so he can grab her seatbelt. Unfortunately, there’s no leverage from his current angle, so he moves closer, practically leaning on her torso to pull the belt free. 

“Sorry,” he mutters, overly conscious of the sweat dripping from his brow. He must look like a maniac, all red-faced and panting, one hand on her waist as he twists the belt around her body.

“You’re okay,” she says, her slim hand pressing against his chest. 

“I’m—“ 

“Eddie?” 

“Mmm?” 

She smiles, fingers curling into a fist against his jacket before pulling him into a kiss. 

Chapter Text

Chrissy kisses Eddie while her knee stings and her ankle throbs in time with her heart. There are tears in her eyes and sweat on his brow. 

It is the only kiss she’s ever taken for herself.

The first kiss taken from her was with a boy named Caleb, who’d cornered her by the lockers, planting one on her while her friends all giggled, having dared him to do it. 

Then, there was Michael, who’d wriggled his way around her mother’s no-dating rule by kissing her behind the church during Vacation Bible School one summer when she’d just been trying to have a conversation.

Finally, there was Jason. The best of a bad bunch. He’d brought flowers to their first date, charming her parents and chauffeuring her to the spring fling. When she let him kiss her at the end of the night, it was mostly because she felt she should and liked him the best. Still, he took first.

And now? She’s the one who’s taking. Kissing Eddie because he cared for her when she was hurt instead of being the one to hurt her. Because he wrapped a bandana around her leg and carried her a million miles to the car. Because she trusts him. Because she couldn’t imagine letting the moment pass without pressing her lips to his in gratitude.

As for the actual kiss, it’s awkward. Eddie hadn’t been expecting it, meaning their teeth clack and their noses bump, and he huffs out this weird little “huh!” before getting down to it. The angle has to be bad for him, half on the seat and half on the floor, twisted at the waist while he’s already panting and exhausted.

He smells like cigarettes and sweat. He smells like the sea. 

Chrissy fists her hands by her side as he brings one of his own to her cheek. Cups her jaw and presses his thumb against the center of her chin before pulling away. Smiling, yes, but with concern etched across his brow. 

“Thank you for carrying me,” she says, and the concern deepens. “Not that I kissed you to thank you. That was just part of it. But, mostly, I wanted to kiss you.” 

He studies her, and since his hand is still on her cheek, she turns to whisper another kiss to the center of his palm. 

“Good,” he says, nudging her head back toward himself, thumb moving to her bottom lip. Indenting it slightly. “I didn’t kiss you back to say you’re welcome.” 

He takes his hand away. Chrissy touches her tongue to the spot; tastes the salt of his skin. “It’s complicated, I guess.” 

Eddie busies himself with her seatbelt. Manipulates her body as gently as he’s able to tug the strap around her, clicking it into place by her hip. “I’m learning,” he says as he sits back and smiles. “Most things are with you, Chrissygirl.” 

The statement would be insulting coming from anyone else. From Eddie, though, it’s everything. His words aren’t meant to belittle her. To tell her to be smaller, simpler, or better. He’s simply stating a fact: she is a person who is complicated, and that’s alright. Chrissygirls are allowed to be complicated. Must be complicated, in fact. Above all that, it tells her that he likes her because of those complication, not in spite of them, and isn’t that something? Isn’t that better? 

“We can talk about it if you want,” she offers.

“Later.” He pats her uninjured knee and begins wriggling out of his wedged spot. “Once I’m sure you’re not gonna end up with gangrene.”

That’s fair. Her leg hurts a lot, though her knee’s worse than her ankle. 

Eddie drives them back to Yachats without saying much, but that’s alright. Chrissy closes her eyes and rests, glad for the relative peace of the car when dealing with a sore body and soon-to-be-aching head. Better than having to assuage the sensitive ego of someone who’d put her in a position of pain. 

That is to say, injuries are easier to handle when self-inflicted. 

“You know,” Eddie says, glancing at her in the rearview mirror as they reach the main strip of the tiny town. “As of tonight, we’ve been hanging out a whole week.” 

That doesn’t seem right, and Chrissy frowns. “Just a week?” Surely they’ve been together for at least a month. Or a year. Perhaps an epoch? 

“Yup.” 

“Feels like longer.” 

“I’ll try not to take that as an insult,” he says while he turns the Jeep into the motel parking lot.

“It’s not meant to be!”

He swings wide into an open spot outside their room, then turns off the engine. “I know. I’m kidding. Anyway, you’re right. I feel like I’ve known you forever.” 

“You kind of have.” 

“Yeah, but I never really knew you.”

Leaving her to ponder that statement's fifteen or sixteen unspoken layers, he hops out and comes to the door she’s propped against. Opens it and helps her out in a maneuver involving grabbing her by her armpits and pulling. Dignified, it’s not, but that’s alright—respectability drowned in a shallow tide pool back on Hobbit Beach.

Once they’re in the room, he settles her on the bed and declares he’s going out in search of something to clean the cuts. She is left behind with the clicker and Fellowship, and she tries to read; she really does. But being alone has occasionally been a recipe for disaster, so is it any wonder that the pernicious little voice that is her conscience pipes up no more than ten minutes after Eddie’s departure? Whispering into the deep recesses of her skull that she’s leading him on, Christine. You know what boys are like. 

Chrissy closes the book and digs the heels of her palms into her eyes. Presses until it hurts more than her ankle or her knee and lets out a frustrated groan because the thing is, the thing is, the voice is shitty and tiny and mean, but it’s not wrong. Kissing Eddie is like opening Pandora’s box, only instead of bad things flying out, it’s expectations she can’t possibly live up to. Because kissing… kissing has implications. Kissing has expectations. And Eddie’s only human. A really excellent human, maybe, but he’s probably thinking about how soon they’ll reach the inevitable conclusion, and she’s not ready for that. Not now, not ever, not sure.

By the time he returns, she’s worked herself into a full lather. The bed of her thumbnail is raw and bleeding, and there’s nothing she can do to fix it because she can’t even walk. So, he’s going to see what she did, but maybe that’s not the worst thing. Maybe it’s better he finds out just how screwed up she is so that he can decide kissing is off the table, and she won’t have to worry about it anymore.

“Just call me Doctor Feelgood,” he trills as he swings through the door, a couple of paper bags in hand. 

Chrissy folds her thumb into her fist and forces a smile. “Did you find stuff?” 

“Did I find stuff?” His fingers grip the top of the door, and he sags against it. “Chrissy, please. I’m a physician. A healer. A real Doctor Demento.” 

“I thought you said Doctor Feelgood?” she says, and she shouldn’t joke. Not when bile is rising in her throat. 

“I’m a man of many talents.” He grins, closing the door and tossing the bags onto the bed. Kneeling next to her, he shimmies to kiss her forehead, and she thinks she might puke. “Ta-da!” 

He upends the first bag, and out falls a spray bottle of Bactine, boxes of cotton balls and Band-aids, and the familiar beige tone of an Ace Bandage.

“Oh, wow.” 

“And that’s not all…” He opens the second bag to pull out a tiny bottle of detergent. “I found the laundry room off the breezeway, so I think we can save your jeans from ruin. Speaking of—” Tugging out a bright blue piece of clothing, he holds it up to his skinny hips to model. “For the lady’s modesty.” 

“Is that a skort?” 

“I guess. They were selling it at one of the beach shops, and I figured you’d want to wear something that wouldn’t fuck with your knee while we’re doing laundry.” 

The skort is, to put it mildly, the ugliest thing she’s ever seen; she’ll probably ask to be buried in it. “Oh, my gosh…” she manages, then she’s tearing up and sniffling while panic spreads across Eddie’s face.

“Uh. Or, you know, you can just wear your pajamas if you hate it?” 

“No, no, it’s so great,” she says through a little whimper, and this is humiliating, but at least the crying has lessened the need to vomit. It’s so stupid—she’s spent the better part of two years figuring out how to stay stoic around Jason, and a week with Eddie has turned her into a circus clown. “I’m sorry, I’m just exhausted. And my head hurts.” 

“Don’t be sorry.” He moves closer, putting his weight on one arm while he studies her face. “You said we could talk. Let’s talk.” 

The request sets her on a tightrope, leaving her with few choices. She can fall to the left and pretend she’s fine when she hits the net, fall to the right and break her neck, or keep putting one damned foot in front of the other. 

She takes a deep breath and steps forward. Uncurls her fist to show him the damage she’s done to her thumb. “Sometimes I get worried.” 

He lets out a low whistle and takes her hand, then sits back on his heels so he can pull it into his lap. “No kidding.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t be. Just uh… what’s got you so worked up, kiddo?” 

He leaves her hand resting against the divot between his thighs. Reaches for the Bactine while she formulates an answer. 

“I guess I’m worried that I’m using you.” 

“Oh. Well.” He opens the Bactine can and shakes it. “This is going to sting.” 

“I know,” she says, then hisses anyway when he sprays it. False advertising—it says no sting on the bottle, but that’s a lie. “Ow.” 

“Told you.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He uses a cotton ball to wipe up the excess, along with the blood. “Anyway, I don’t see why that’s so worrying. You are using me.” 

The response is so unexpected that her first instinct is to laugh. “What? Eddie—” 

“I’m serious,” he says, cutting her off as he picks up the box of Band-aids. “You’re using me to run away from Jason. I get that. And I’m not an unwilling participant in being used.”

“But that’s not… that doesn’t make it a good thing.”

“Doesn’t make it a bad one, either. It’s like… okay, so you know how I grew up with my uncle?” 

“Yes.” 

He tears the paper covering the bandage and holds her thumb at an angle so he can apply the pad to the worst of the damage. “Right, so, when I moved in with him, I was mentally in a pretty shit place. My dad was in prison, and I’d been in this god-awful group home for months while Wayne fought for custody. But that didn’t stop me from being a little punk asshole when I started living with him. I was mad, and I was using him to, like… figure out that it was okay to be mad. That he wasn’t gonna kick me out because of it and that I’d still have someplace safe to sleep at night.”

The idea of that makes Chrissy’s stomach ache. “It isn’t the same thing. You were a kid. People are supposed to take care of kids.” 

“People are supposed to take care of people, and sometimes you need another person to use for a while. So I figure, you know, you use me now. Maybe I’ll use you later. That’s friendship, right?” 

“Yes.”

“And we’re friends?” 

She hesitates, thinking back to the car. The kiss. The conflict and her conscience. “Yes. Good friends, I’d say.” 

“Such good friends.” He grins and taps her hand. “You’re all done. But, hey, can I tell you a secret?” 

“You have a secret?” 

“Oh, yeah. And this is embarrassing for me to admit, Cunningham, but I’ve got a big crush on one of my good friends.” 

The admission is so sweetly reminiscent of middle school dances and do you like me check yes/no notes that it makes her grin despite herself. “Oh. Do I know this friend?” 

“Yeah. She’s this super cool chick, and I always act like a total chump around her. Like, I spent twenty minutes in the beach shop debating whether she’d want a blue skirt or a red one.” 

“Blue. Definitely blue.” 

“See, that’s what I thought, but then I had a crisis because I figured buying her a skirt at all would make me look like a creep.” 

“Why would it make you look like a creep?” 

“Because I kept thinking how, you know, to get my good friend into this skirt—”

“—skort.” 

“Right. Skort. To get my good friend into this skort, she’d have to take her jeans off first. And she’s in kind of a tough spot. So would she need my help, is what I kept thinking while being a creep and deciding between red and blue.” 

Chrissy hadn’t even considered the undressing aspect; she’d assumed he would take care of her knee by pushing the fabric up and out of the way again. But he mentioned laundry, her clothing options are limited, and she wants to wash the blood from her jeans. Ergo, a swap is in order. 

“Um. I think…” she swallows hard. “I think she can probably do that part herself.” 

“Sure, yeah. Got it. Creep standing down, over and out.” 

“No, it’s not—” She leans forward and takes his hand, pushing their fingers together. “It’s just that, um… this friend you like? She likes you, too. But she maybe wants to stick to kissing for a while?” 

There. It’s out. Not quite the whole truth—the never, ever, ever, ever letting someone touch her again truth—but enough that he can make an informed choice when deciding against the idea of future kissing.

He just blinks, though, before his face splits into a grin. “Oh. Well, yeah, Chris. I wasn’t… uh. Well. I wasn’t expecting my friend to like… want to do anything except kiss? I’m mostly happy to know she likes me back.” 

His ease with the topic somewhat soothes the vicious little voice in her head, even if she knows it’s not a permanent fix to the larger problem. “Oh. Okay. Good. Thank you. Just… if you can turn around, I’ll let you know if I get stuck?” 

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, turning his back while she wriggles out of her jeans and into the skort. Doing so hurts her ankle, but she’s survived worse. 

“Okay,” she says, a little breathless.

Eddie rounds on her with a grin. “Hey, how’s it fit?” 

Poorly, but then, when has a skort ever fit well in the history of humanity? “It’s really comfy.” 

“Good deal. Let’s work on cleaning up that knee, huh?” 

Chrissy agrees, and once again, the worst part is the Bactine. Eddie’s sweet about it, though. Blows a line of cool air across the sting before lining up a row of four Band-aids to cover the worst of the cuts. Finally, he takes care of her ankle, winding the Ace bandage around the joint with remarkable dexterity.

“I think you’ve done this before,” she says. 

“My uncle had a sprain a few years ago. Workman’s comp and everything. I had to help him out.” He uses the silver clip to snug the elastic, then surveys his work. “I dunno, Chris. I think you’ll live, but it’s been touch and go.” 

She smiles, and while her head still hurts, it’s not as bad as it was when she was alone. Touch and go, indeed. “Thank you, Eddie.” 

“You’re welcome.” He picks up the detergent, along with her jeans. “I’m gonna get a load started. I assume you’ve got other stuff you want me to toss in?” 

She glances at her suitcase and shrugs. “Yeah, but… maybe you should bring me with you. For company.” 

His eyes flick to her thumb, just once, and he nods. “Sure. Yeah. Gotta have a crowd.”

If Eddie ever gets his mitts on Doc Brown’s Delorean, he knows exactly where he’ll go. But, before heading to that final destination, he’ll make a pit stop in September 1985. Grab the triple senior version of himself by the shoulders and whisper, “three years, dude. Three years, and you’re gonna be touching Chrissy Cunningham’s panties.” 

Granted, 1985-Eddie would likely assume the panty-touching came within a specific context, but that kid was a loudmouthed prick.

And, alright, Eddie’s not so much fondling Chrissy’s delicates as he is pretending not to notice they’re in the heap of dirty clothing he just lifted out of her suitcase. Still, the panties are visibly there, and he can’t help clocking them as he chucks the bundle into the coin-operated washing machine. Aiming for casual like he does it every day. Like there’s not a bra strap brushing against his pinky. Like her underwear isn’t a combination of blue striped and pink checked, which isn’t what he expects, but that’s because he’s a perv who’s always pictured her in white cotton with a bow. Some schoolgirl fantasy stepping out of a magazine. 

And hello, McFly? That’s not how life works. Life is less sexy and more utilitarian, but that doesn’t stop him from briefly wondering what it’d be like to peel those blue stripes off her body. Not that he’s—look, it’s just that she kissed him, which set specific biological triggers into motion. Sure, she only wants to kiss for now, and he gets it. She’s in a bad place, and he’s not gonna force the issue. But while his dick is endowed with many things, common sense isn’t among them. It’s like the science stuff about the guy with the dogs. Pedro or Peter or Pavlov, whoever that dude was. Where, if the mutts got conditioned the right way, they’d drool at the sound of a bell, even if old Peabody wasn’t about to feed them. 

Slap a collar on him and call him Fido, alright? He’ll be jerking off in the shower for the foreseeable future. No big deal. 

Mostly, he’s thrilled she kissed him at all. Made the move of her own goddamn volition, then smiled so big and so pretty that his heart just about melted out of his asshole. 

And, sure, she had a little breakdown about it later—ripped up her thumb the way he’’s secretly suspected she might be doing. It’s hard to get confirmation on that without hard evidence, though, and now that he has proof, it’s difficult not to feel like he’s the one who caused the meltdown. Only, you know, Eddie’s not stupid. He can connect the dots from Chrissy’s worry to the fucked up brain shit she lives with and on to the two people most responsible for implanting that shit there. Not him. Not today, anyway.

“Pass me the detergent?” he asks as he bids goodbye to the tangle of clothing that smells like her. It’d be weird if he stuck his head in the machine for one last whiff, right? Weirder still if he singled out the blue striped panties and Jesus Christ, don’t think about it, Eddie. Shut it the fuck down.

Chrissy, who’s sitting on a table meant for folding, bad ankle propped on a stack of magazines, hands him the bottle. He pops the cap, pours a healthy glug into the machine, and—after debating with himself for a millisecond—whips off the raglan shirt he’s sporting to toss on top. Needs must, since he doesn’t do laundry often; if she weren’t with him, he’d sit around in his boxers. 

After starting the load, he turns to find Chrissy observing him with a half-cocked smile, head tipped to the side. Her eyes drop to his chest, and for a second, he thinks she’s checking out the goods (well, the adequates, if he’s honest), but then she points at the demon on his pec and says, “what’s that?” 

“Oh. Uh. A tattoo.” 

“Obviously. I mean, what is it?” 

The demon is Eddie’s least favorite tattoo and the first one he plans to have modified into something else once he figures out what that something else ought to be. He has no excuse for how bad it is other than being a pissed-off kid who wanted to shock the masses when forced to take his shirt off for gym class. At the ripe old age of twenty-two, though, he wishes he’d created a design that’s less… fucking stupid? Something meaningful, like most of his other ink. 

“It’s… I dunno. A demon.” 

“Does he have a name?” 

“Cletus,” he improvises, leaning against the empty dryer and glancing down at ol’ Clete, who, until now, he’s only ever referred to as ‘ugly motherfucker.’ 

Chrissy purses her lips and swings around so her legs dangle from the table. Eddie wants to tell her to keep her foot up, but also, the sprain seems like more of a weird twist (it’s not swelling much), and she’s pretty cute in her skort. “You’re lying.” 

“I’m not! He’s, you know. He’s Cletus.” 

“Why not Beelzebub?” 

“Because he’s Cletus.” 

“Oh, my gosh.” She points to the marionette on his arm. “That one?” 

“That one’s nameless.” Flexing his forearm, he steps closer and holds it out to her. “I got this the day after I heard Master of Puppets for the first time.” 

“Is that a band?” 

“Is that a…” He slaps his other hand against his chest and staggers. “Chrissy!”

She giggles his favorite sort of giggle and curls her fingers around the table’s edge, leaning forward. “Eddie, stop! I don’t know this stuff!”

“It’s a song. By Metallica. Which we’re listening to, like, the second we’re back in the truck. Jesus Christ, what do they teach you kids in school?” 

“Oh, Metaaaaaaaallica,” she says. “I must have missed that one.” 

“Yeah, well, you’d need to clear time in your busy… I dunno. Duran Duran schedule.” 

“I don’t like Duran Duran.” 

“What do you like, then?” 

“I don’t know. Things that sound good. Graham Parker.” 

Eddie does a double take because while that’s not a super deep cut, it’s deeper than he expects from her. “You’re into Graham Parker?” 

“Sure. My cousin gave me a couple of his albums. I think he’s cool. What’s that one?” 

She points to another tattoo on his chest, just below his right pec. It’s close enough to his ribcage that getting it had hurt like a motherfucker, but he’d wanted it near to his heart. “Elvish. Quenyan, specifically.” 

“Sure, yes,” she says with a measured nod while Eddie tries not to swoon over the fact that she understands that reference. “What does it mean?” 

“Literally, it means gift. But it’s pronounced like ‘anna.’” That was what he’d decided, anyway, after hours of research on the subject. “Which uh. Anna was my mom’s name.” 

Chrissy sits up straighter. “Oh wow, right. I, um, I saw what she wrote you in the book.” 

He huffs a laugh like he hadn’t run his fingers over the words a hundred million times in his youth, less so once he noticed the ink fading. “Yeah, she was obsessed.”

“It’s cool you have her copies. Um, how old were you when she died?” 

He appreciates her frankness, as his life has been filled with grown-ups using euphemisms in a misguided attempt to soften the blow. As if he’s not keenly aware of death’s meaning. “Almost four.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“It’s alright. I don’t remember much about her, you know?” 

A soft ‘hmm’ escapes as Chrissy holds out her hand. Eddie takes it. Lets her pull him between her parted thighs so she can hug him around the waist, warm cheek pressed to bare chest. “Tell me something you do remember, then.” 

He drops his chin to her head, hand stroking the back of her neck because it’s easier to talk when he’s touching her. “I remember this one day, but it’s all pretty fuzzy. We lived in a total shitstack of an apartment in Indianapolis, and my dad was at work. He still worked back then, and I guess she was already sick because she was home with me a lot. Anyway, I have this vivid picture in my mind of her making me macaroni and cheese in a yellow bowl. We were eating, and she asked me what other things I saw in the room that were yellow. I remember looking around and just… getting it? Getting colors? I pointed to the curtains and said, you know. Those are yellow. And she got so excited and told me I was such a smart kid.” Which—not to get all mawkish or anything—was one of the few times he’d ever gotten that reinforcement from an authority figure. “Anyway. That’s it.” 

“That’s a great memory. Do you have any pictures of her?” 

“Some, yeah. They’re at home, though.” He’d debated bringing a few along, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if something happened to them. 

Chrissy’s lips brush against the Elvish tattoo, which sends a shiver to the tips of his toes. She tilts her head to look up at him, chin on his sternum. “You know what I think?” 

“No, what?” 

“I think we should get macaroni and cheese for dinner.” 

Eddie’s chest, quite literally, aches, and he manages a nod and a swallow. Chrissy is the first girl he’s ever talked to about his mother. The first person, really, outside of an occasional guidance counselor or social worker. Wayne tells him stories about her, sometimes, but mainly she exists as an unhealed wound at the heart of him. A place he resists poking because it hurts too goddamn much. 

“That ah,” he says around a cough. “That shouldn’t be too hard to source.” 

That statement turns out to be categorically false, so Eddie supposes a career as a clairvoyant is out of the question. Macaroni and cheese proves a rarity among the restaurants that populate the tiny towns along Oregon’s otherwise-magnificent coast, and he spends nearly ninety minutes searching. Meanwhile, Chrissy remains in the motel room, insisting on sorting and folding the laundry. Which, yeah, she’s gonna see the threadbare state of his boxer shorts, but he’s lived through worse.

(He does, before he leaves her, pick up her hand and kiss the band-aid before telling her, in all seriousness, not to worry. She promises she won’t. He hopes that’s true.) 

Just as he’s about to give up and look for a grocery store to buy the boxed stuff as a gag, he discovers a diner with macaroni as a side dish. He orders four servings and heads back to Yachats, where Chrissy’s still sitting on the bed, surrounded by neatly folded piles of clothing, Fellowship open on her lap. 

She looks up when he comes in, and he hates that he missed the sight of her mouthing the words, which might rank near the top of all the things he likes about her.

“Victory,” he declares, holding the bag aloft like a knight returning triumphant. 

“Yum,” she replies, followed by, “good timing. They just reached the mines of Moria.” 

Well, shit. He’s suddenly glad he didn’t need to drive any further to source dinner because if she’d been by herself when reaching the Gandalf stuff… ugh. Bad news bears. 

“Have you gotten to the wolves?”

“They just fought them off,” she says, making grabby hands at the bag. 

“Good job, Legolas.” He begins clearing the clothes from the bed before sitting next to her. She passes him a container along with one of the flimsy plastic spoons the diner had charged extra for. He turns on the television, flicking through the channels until Chrissy says stop. It’s a Facts of Life episode, and while he’s never seen the show, she says she loves it, which is endorsement enough. 

As the episode plays, he’s a little lost on the characters, but the plot’s simple enough—one girl makes up a rating system for boys, and there’s drama about another girl dating a 2, while the original ranks her boyfriend a 10. 

“Did you guys do shit like that?” he asks during the commercials. 

Chrissy pauses with the spoon halfway to her mouth—it’s not a trick; she’s eaten a decent bit of food—and raises a brow. “Did we do what?” 

“You know. Rate us. Make lists. Whatever.” 

She hesitates, which is answer enough. “… some people did.” 

“People like you?” 

“Not… I mean. I contributed.”

“Lemme guess. Zeroes across the board?” Not that he cares; he’s just… curious. 

“It was more like a ranking, and I’m pretty sure you weren’t on the bottom.” 

“Then where was I?” 

“Honestly, I don’t remember. Mostly it was the girls fighting about whose boyfriend should be in the top five.” 

“Ah. But you were above such petty squabbling?”

She shakes her head, looking down at her lap. “I didn’t have to fight.” 

“Why—” He stops as soon as he starts. Chrissy didn’t have to fight for Jason’s placement because Jason was automatically in the top spot. She was head cheerleader, and he was captain of the only decent team Hawkins ever fielded; in the high school hierarchy, they were untouchable. 

“Mmm hmm.” She fiddles with the bandage on her thumb, then puts her macaroni on the nightstand. “We should watch something else.” 

Without waiting for his response, she grabs the clicker and changes the channel. The Lucy Show is on, which is one he knows, and while it’s not quite Lucille Ball in her prime, it’s still funny.

They watch until they’re sleepy—Chrissy ends up finishing her macaroni—and he cleans up the mess before climbing into bed with her and turning out the light. She catches him in another unexpected kiss as he settles against the pillow. Holds him in it long enough that he chances parting his lips and feels her smile against his mouth before doing the same. 

“The thing is,” she murmurs after a moment, pulling back to rest their foreheads together. “The thing is, Eddie, you’re a twelve.” 

Chapter Text

It’s a rare morning that Eddie doesn’t have to be up before the ass-crack of dawn, so he’s damn well going to luxuriate in the slow shifting into awareness the motel in Yachats affords him. He yawns, sighs, and stretches into the scant light filtering around the cracks in the still-pulled curtains, hoping to find Chrissy and kiss her, maybe, because he can do that now. 

Only she’s already awake. Curled like a roly-poly beside him, face pressed to her knees, legs hugged to her chest. 

Fellowship is lying on the bed between them. 

“Oh, Chris,” he says, and he doesn’t need her to say it, but she does anyway, lifting her head and looking at him with red-rimmed eyes. 

“Gandalf.” 

“I’m sorry.” He touches her shoulder, which is as stiff and unyielding as marble. “Have you been awake for a while?” 

“A couple hours. My ankle feels so much better—I made it to the bathroom.” Her lower lip wobbles. “It’s such shit, Eddie. I was mad at him, but he didn’t deserve to die.” 

He sits up, brushing some hair from her shoulder and ignoring his bladder for now. “I cried the first time I read that part.” 

“Because you were sad?” 

“Uh, yes?” 

“Well, I’m not sad. I’m still mad.” 

That makes Gandalf’s death the second time she’s reacted to something in the book with fury instead of sorrow. Eddie doesn’t get it, but he’s also not trying to legislate her experience. It’s just kinda wild how she can turn herself into this fierce, flinty little boulder of rage at the drop of a hat. Kinda sad, too, that she tucks herself away lest someone catch her expressing an emotion.

She’d opened up to him yesterday, though. The kiss and the shit with her finger and the… yeah. He’ll take what he can get, even if he can’t get it often. 

“Mad,” he echoes, then pulls her close with an arm around her shoulders. When she doesn’t resist, he tucks her against his chest in one piece, arms, legs, and all, and while he isn’t sure how to comfort her, he figures that just being there might help her work through whatever’s going on in her head. 

“Okay,” she exhales after a couple minutes of stony silence. “Okay, thank you. I’m taking a break.” 

“From the book?” he asks, trying not to let his voice quake at the thought she might not love the novel the way he does.

“Mmm. For a little while.” She uncurls her legs and frowns. “Do you need the bathroom? I want a shower.” 

So, they’re done with talking about Gandalf. Or, well, not talking about Gandalf. That’s cool. Besides, he still has to pee, so he takes care of that before she showers. On the plus side, she’s walking with a minimal limp, and she swears up and down her ankle feels a lot better, so that’s something. Even if part of him is slightly bummed out that he won’t have to carry her everywhere. (And yeah, it’s primal. Sue him. Tarzan, meet Jane. Fuck off.) 

Post-showers, they pack up and head out, leaving Yachats behind. They make it as far as Florence before Eddie’s stomach insists on stopping. At the diner they find, Chrissy does the pushing-food-around thing, so he casually loads his fork with scrambled eggs and holds it out, waiting to see what sort of mood she’s in. 

She stills. Thinks momentarily, then leans forward to close her lips around the tines. Chews, swallows, and repeats when he offers her a second bite. 

And isn’t it just so interesting, actually, that she eats nearly half of her oatmeal after that? 

“Eddie?” she asks on the way back to the Jeep. 

“Mmm?” 

“Sometimes I think… I think I used to be a cat.” 

That’s certainly a thought, and he laughs, stopping in the parking lot to study her. “How’s that, exactly?” 

“Like when I’m being annoying, you could pick me up by the scruff of my neck.” 

As reasoning goes, that’s pretty odd. Doesn’t stop Eddie from grabbing her hand. Tugging her closer so he can part her hair and grip the back of her neck, just to see what she’ll do. 

“You’re not annoying,” he says, then squeezes. 

Chrissy stills, her eyes fluttering shut like she’s about to have some revelation right there in the goddamn parking lot. “More, please,” she whispers. 

You have no idea what you’re doing here, asshole, his brain screams even as he tightens his grasp and steps closer to her. “Say you’re not annoying.” 

“Okay, but more first?” 

Eddie does as she asks, though when she lets out a whine of discomfort, he eases his hold with a mumbled, “sorry, sorry—” 

“No!” she bites out. “It’s good. I like it.” 

“Chrissy, I’m not gonna hurt you.” 

“You’re not.” She puts her hand atop his, bearing down with all her might, and he can feel the rough-edged band-aid on her thumb against his skin. “It doesn’t hurt, I swear. I just… I feel like I’m gonna fall today, so I need you to just… do that for a minute? So maybe I won’t?” 

He doesn’t understand, but when has he ever gotten more than sixty percent of what she’s laying down? All he knows is that he doesn’t care for the word ‘fall’ and doesn’t want to know what she means by it. So, he holds her. Digs his fingers into the elegant curve of her pretty neck and hopes she’s getting what she needs from it, standing there with her fists clenched and her eyes closed.

A couple of middle-aged women crossing the lot give them a curious, bothered glance, and he wants to shout she asked me to! because yeah, alright, it’s not a great look. To an outsider, it probably seems like he’s some domineering asshole, but he’s not. Chrissy’s just being Chrissy, and he never knows what that’s gonna entail. 

“Alright,” she says after a few minutes have elapsed. 

“Alright?” He eases his grip and brushes a hand through her hair. “Can you say it?” 

“Say what?” 

“That you’re not annoying.” 

“Yes.” She rocks onto her tip-toes to kiss his cheek, then his mouth. “I’m not annoying. I guess. Sorry.” 

“You don’t have to apologize. Are you sure you’re, uh… not gonna fall?” 

“Not falling.” She kisses him again. “My ankle’s acting up, though. Can you piggyback me?” 

No sane man would turn that down, so he acquiesces, though they both know her ankle is fine. 

Once in the car, she navigates the short distance to the highway, and they make decent time to Eugene. Eddie retrieves the truck, then picks her up outside the depot. 

When she climbs into the cab, she acts like Smaug’s returned from the war, cooing and sighing and giving Liddy, the dashboard dog, a few gentle pats. Eddie gets it; there’s a relief in knowing his rig’s in good shape and that someone’s gone over her with a fine-toothed comb. Sure, she’s only a few years old, but there’s a limit to how long she can go without damage, considering the tens of thousands of miles she rolls through in a year. 

Schedule-wise, however, the maintenance break has screwed him over, meaning they’re dead-heading to Los Angeles to get the next trailer. Dispatch apologizes about the dry run, but he understands that Eugene’s a small city, and the early bird catches the worm. Still, part of him had hoped to pick up a load that would take them north into Washington, then maybe east so he could show Chrissy Montana before the snow gets bad and it becomes treacherous to drive. 

Chrissy’s fascinated by the concept of dead-heading, and when they stop for gas, she climbs all over the unhooked cab and declares that it looks like a guillotine sliced off Smaug’s head. Eddie gets it, but he doesn’t find it quite so interesting or romantic, mainly because traveling without a trailer is terrible for his wallet. 

It’s good for other things, though, like the fact that he can take a more scenic route if he wants. Go a little faster than he might otherwise. Make Chrissy laugh when he honks for a school bus full of middle schoolers with their arms hanging out the windows, pumping desperately to get his attention. 

“Is that why you blow the horn so much?” she asks, still giggling. 

Eddie, who has never met a minivan with pleading kids he hasn’t beeped for, nods. “I thought you knew that’s what I was doing.” 

“No. I just thought you liked honking.” 

That makes some sense—from her vantage point, she can’t see the cars as they pass, while the school bus is on their level—but the fact that she’s just been sitting there, thinking he’s nuts, is hilarious. “And you didn’t think that was strange?” 

“Sure, a little. But, like, takes one to know one?” 

He laughs, then reaches over to mess with her hair.

“Eddie, don’t.” She swats his hand away, but she’s still laughing.

A few hours down the road, he’s bopping his head to Dio, and she’s staring out the window, forehead against the glass.

“Oh, my gosh,” she says out of nowhere, sitting up straight and pointing. “Is that town really called Weed?” 

The town in question is only a name on a control city sign, and Eddie shrugs, more concerned with the jackass in the conversion van attempting to cut in at a distance that’s too close for comfort. “I guess.” 

“Like, after the drug?”

“I… doubt it?” The van makes the pass, and he looks to the right to find her waiting, once again, for him to know everything. Confusing, considering he’s barely squelched his way out of the primordial ooze when it comes to knowing anything. Somewhere along the line, though, she got it in her head that he's a helpful guy, which turns most conversations into a rambling stream of consciousness bordering on bullshit. “It’s probably named after a person. Mr. Hiram Weed, Esquire. Lawyer and town founder in, like, 1873.”

“Oh, totally. Makes sense.” She points again. “What’s that mountain?”

“Mount Shasta,” he replies since he actually does know that. “It—” 

“Do you still smoke pot?” 

A patented Chrissy curveball. Eddie smiles. “Not as much as I used to.” 

“Why?”

“Because I don’t like traveling with it, and it's hard to source when I’m on the road.” That, and there have been rumblings at the company level about some corporate urine testing policy, which sounds insane. Still, he saw an article in the paper about the military using it, so who the fuck knows. 

“Oh.” 

She’s pushing at the edges of something, doing that thing where she hints at what she wants without asking. 

“You know,” he says, so he can make it seem like it’s his idea. “Weed’s pretty relaxing. You don’t want to smoke too much or anything, but yeah. Really mellows you out, kind of clears your head.” 

“I heard it makes you hungry.” 

Of course that would be what she gravitates toward. “Well, yeah, sometimes. Not always. You really never tried it before?”

“Nope.” 

“Do you want to?” 

“You said you don’t keep it in the truck.” 

“I don’t. But we’re in California. I can find some, I promise.”

She slumps in her seat and puts her feet on the dash. Fiddles with the band-aid on her thumb and goes into what he’s started thinking of as deliberation mode, where Real Chrissy fights prolonged battles with Fake Chrissy to escape the dungeon that is the soupy mess of her illogical mind. “Will you… if I do it, could you not do it?” 

“I guess. Any particular reason why?” 

“Just…” She squirms, and he can see her calf muscles tensing and loosening as she flexes her feet against the faux-wood trim. “I would feel better if I did it and you were there to make sure I didn’t do anything bad.” 

It’s sweet that she believes that’s a remote possibility. He agrees, though, and determines to find her some weed. Which, it turns out, isn’t that hard to do. 

They break for the night just south of Sacramento, pulling into a truck stop in a town full of what Eddie hopes are hippie degenerates holding mountains of weed. His luck holds, and as they walk across the parking lot of the diner recommended to them by the truck stop attendant, he smells a familiar, skunky sharpness. 

“Bingo,” he says, leaving Chrissy on a bench outside the building while he jogs over to a suspiciously smoky station wagon. Inside are four dippy kids, one a dead ringer for Mike Wheeler, all of whom are happy to let Eddie overpay for a pre-rolled joint. Mostly he thinks they’re relieved he’s not some undercover cop coming to bust up their fun.

“Cool shirt, man,” says not-Wheeler as Eddie hands over a ten, knowing he’s getting scammed and not minding a bit. 

“Yeah, thanks.” He salutes, then heads to where Chrissy’s watching his every move, eagle-eyed. “Got some. You want to smoke first or eat first?” 

“Smoke,” she says, and since he’s not about to spark her first joint in full view of every Tom, Dick, and Harry who might show up, he takes her around back to where an overflowing dumpster stands next to a rusted picnic table. 

He sticks the joint between his lips, alongside a cigarette, and lights both with the Zippo he inherited from Wayne, who’d had it in ’Nam. 

“Alright, kiddo,” he says as he plucks the joint from his mouth, then holds it out to her. “You’ve smoked a cigarette before, yes?” 

She makes a face. “Not really, but I tried other people’s a couple of times.” 

“It’s the same principle. You inhale the smoke, and then you sort of, uh… I don’t know how to describe it exactly, but it’s like you open your throat and inhale again? It’ll burn a little, but you gotta hold it to get the high. Couple seconds, then you let it out.” 

As explanations go, that one sucks, but smoking’s more an art than a science. He’d offer to smoke her up, but there’s a non-zero chance he’ll inhale, and he’s being a good boy. If she wants him sober, then sober he’ll be. 

(And, God, if he’d said that to the geeky little goober that was thirteen-year-old Eddie, with his shaved head and stars in his eyes over his first hit of the ol’ Devil’s Lettuce, he’d have screeched something about being a fucking sellout, man, but whatever. That kid was a shit, and it’s not selling out when you do what a pretty girl wants you to do. Grown Eddie knows that, whereas Shithead Eddie had yet to learn the lesson. Probably why no girls ever talked to him. Well, that and the acne.)

“So you suck it twice?” she asks, touching the joint to her lips. 

“Sort of. You’ll figure it out.” 

Chrissy inhales, nearly going cross-eyed with the effort, and maybe he should have been more explicit about taking it slow because two seconds later, she’s hacking out one hell of a cough, eyes watering as she gasps for air. 

“Oh, my God,” she croaks, doubling over. 

Eddie puts a hand on her back, caught between sympathy and laughter. “It’s okay. It happens.” 

“My throat,” she says. “You said it burned a little.” 

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t expecting you to suck down half the joint in one go.” 

She straightens, blue eyes blazing, and at first, he thinks she’s going to flick the bud in his face. But, instead, she takes another hit with her jaw set and spine stiff. He can see the fight in how she clamps her lips shut around the smoke. Forces it deep even as tears rim her view, and her body shudders against the razor blades ripping across her throat. 

When she exhales, it’s with a gasp and—yep—another wretched cough. Still, this one’s not so bad as the first, as if she’s determined to master smoking ganja the way she’s mastered other things. Like pom-poms and flippy skirts and being a certifiable weirdo. Head Pothead, meet Head Cheerleader. 

Eddie gets that mentality, even if his teachers would probably disagree. But his obsessions were his own thing—never about impressing anyone else—and he’d spend hours learning a new song or memorizing every tiny detail about a campaign. Even when he’d started Hellfire, it was more about having an outlet than showing off. His fascinations were itches he couldn’t scratch, is all. Things that kept him up at night, where he couldn’t sit still unless he was obsessing about something that needled him.

He’s still like that, but he infatuates himself with different things these days. Picking up brochures, talking to strangers, making sure he knows the names of all those enormous mountains he passes, or why tumbleweeds are an ecological hazard. That might explain why she’s started treating him like he has all the answers. 

Except, the shit he knows is useless. Always has been. His only practical skill is driving a truck, which isn’t exactly inspiring. 

“Okay,” Chrissy says upon recovering from her second drag. “Again.” 

“You don’t have to.” 

“If I’m going to smoke pot, I’m going to smoke pot,” she declares, then lifts the joint to her lips for a third hit. A fourth, a fifth. (A minor chord, a major lift. A baffled Chris consuming marijuana. Which is fucking funny, actually. Weird Al, eat your heart out.)

When she’s about halfway done with the joint, he cuts her off, plucking it from her fingers and shaking his head as he ashes it against the wall, preserving the remains. “You can have more later if you want to. Let’s see how this sits with you.” 

Chrissy agrees, and she’s already looking a bit distant, which isn’t surprising. It’s her first time smoking, and in Eddie’s experience, California weed is potent. Sure, the full effect won’t hit her for another fifteen minutes or so, but things are clearly a-brewin’. 

“Let’s get dinner,” he says, tucking the joint into the pocket of his flannel shirt. 

“Okay,” she agrees, slipping her hand into his and letting him lead her to the diner, where a teenage girl with giant glasses shows them to a booth in the smoking section.

Chrissy’s quiet as she slides in, but Eddie’s observant, and he immediately notices how she fingers the slick plastic menu, which has a very appealing sheen. 

“Hungry, Chris?” he asks like it’s not a big deal. 

“I…” she begins, then furrows her brow. Maybe it’s a placebo effect, or maybe the pot is already hitting her, but watching her raise her head with the utmost solemnity to declare, “I think I would like a chocolate milkshake,” might be the cutest thing he’s ever seen her do, and that’s saying something. 

“Chocolate milkshake, you got it.” 

“Are you going to get a burger?” 

Damn it. That had been the plan, but not now that she’s pointing out his predictability. “No.” 

“Oh. But I wanted some fries.” 

“Order a side of fries, then.” 

“I only want them if they’re yours.”

“Logic, thy name is Cunningham,” he says as their server appears. Honest to God, the kid can’t be more than twelve, and Eddie briefly wonders if they’ve stopped in some town where grown-ups are dead, and teenagers run the roost. “Uh, hey. Can I get the meatloaf with a side of fries?” 

Chrissy tucks a smile into the corner of her mouth, and when the waiter turns to her, she says, “could I please have a chocolate milkshake with whipped cream and no cherry, and also a grilled cheese sandwich, please?” 

“Yeah, totally,” he says, looking at Chrissy like she’s the prettiest girl he’s ever seen. Makes sense because she probably is, and that makes Eddie smug, if he’s honest. “Do you want fries, too?” 

“No. I’m eating my friend’s fries,” she says like that should be obvious.

The waiter walks away, befuddled, and Eddie starts to laugh. Chrissy doesn’t pay him much mind, though, as she turns her attention to the napkin dispenser and pulls out three in quick succession. 

Eddie lights a fresh cigarette, watching as she spreads each napkin out, running her finger across the nubbly white paper. Looks like the pot’s making her hypersensitive to touch and texture, which is… not a road he’s allowing himself to walk down. He can separate his base urges from his lived reality, is all. 

“These feel so weird,” she says, folding each corner in on itself to make a smaller square. 

“Yeah, napkins can be trippy.” 

She nods, not paying attention to him as she fixates on the napkin, flipping it over before folding the corners in again. “It’s not going to work,” she says. 

“What’s not?” 

“The cootie catcher.” She shakes out the flimsy material, then rolls it into a long tube. Which, yeah. Cootie catchers and napkin origami. Whatever, Chris. Go for it. He’s perfectly content to entertain himself just watching her. 

The server returns with water, and Chrissy sucks on her straw, looking up at him from an angle that’s… a lot. Fodder for later shower masturbation, and like, fuck him, right? 

“How come you started selling drugs?” she asks out of nowhere.

He laughs, startled, and ashes his cigarette into the tinfoil tray while he figures out how to answer. “Uh, it’s kind of dumb. I was smoking a lot of weed, and I couldn’t always pay the guy who dealt it. But he was about ten years out of school at that point, and he said he was starting to look like a creep, hanging around and selling to kids. So, if I took over the juvenile delinquent beat, he said he’d give me a discount.” 

“Didn’t you worry about it being illegal?” 

“Not really.” In fact, when he’d started dealing, it seemed like another step down the fucked up path that would inevitably lead him to the same destination as his father. 

“So you never made money, you just got free weed?” 

“Oh, uh. No. I made money. I was selling a lot, and Rick—that’s my supplier…” He takes a drag and drums his fingers on the table, the topic turning him restless. “I wasn’t big time or anything. Mostly, I just handled pot. Sometimes pills, if he had any.”

“Then why did you quit? I mean, if you were making money.” 

Eddie assumed the answer was obvious, but then, she’s stoned. “Uh, I was the high school guy, and I graduated. Rick found someone else to do what I’d been doing, and I wasn’t… when push came to shove, I wasn’t interested in making a career out of it. Besides, I’d be horning in on his territory if I did that. He was selling to half of Hawkins.” 

“Really?” 

“Oh, yeah. You know the police chief?” 

“No,” she says. Which is fair enough; why would she? Jim Hopper’s probably never given her a second glance, whereas he knows Eddie by name and reputation. 

“Well, anyway, he’s uh… I mean, more pills than weed, but that’s how Rick gets away with it. His shit only gets stirred when he goes to Indiana on supply runs, and he’s been busted a couple of times. If I’m honest—” He stubs out the remnants of his cigarette and shrugs. “—if I’m honest, I didn’t want to end up like my dad, but more than that, I didn’t want to disappoint Wayne. He was always pushing me to try harder and do better and… I dunno, he’s probably why I kept going for my diploma, even though I didn’t have to.” 

“I’m really glad you had him, then.” 

“Me, too.” He stretches an arm across the laminate table and squeezes her hand as her foot brushes against the hem of his jeans. “You playing footsie, Cunningham?” 

“I just like the way it feels,” she says. “What happened to the money?” 

“The money?” 

“You said you made some. What happened to it?” 

“Oh. Uh, well, it wasn’t like… I was fine, but I wasn’t rolling in it. And I used most of it to fix some shit around the house—we had a mold issue. Doesn’t matter. The rest of it I used for my CDL certification. So…” He waggles his hand like a half-assed ringmaster. “Ta-da.” 

“Huh. How practical.” She hesitates and looks down, where her fingers have begun stroking the soft fabric of his well-worn flannel. “Gosh, Eddie, I think I might be high.” 

“You know what, Chrissy? I think you might be right.” 

The experience of being high is not what Chrissy expects. All her life, she’s assumed that smoking pot would be roughly equivalent to when the dentist had given her laughing gas while filling a cavity or the time when she was eight, and she broke her wrist, and the doctor had to sedate her so he could pop the growth cap on her bone back into place. 

Sure, those had been weird sensations, but this experience is very different. To begin with, neither the gas nor the sedative made her so cognizant of time’s passage, or left her at such odds with it. When she speaks now, it’s as though her brain isn’t aware she’s formed phrases and let them float away until several seconds have passed. At the same time, however, she seems to know precisely what she was already going to have said. Or something. Like, her head makes the words, her mouth utters them, and then she’s astounded to find she’s done so. 

So, yeah, weird. But also nice not having to second guess her thoughts, even as she fixates on her surroundings. The light over their table is too bright, but the tabletop is pleasantly cool, and she likes the way Eddie’s foot feels, pressed atop hers where nobody can see it. 

It’s grounding; he’s grounding. Watching her and smiling at her and touching her. 

The touching is good. Twice now, she’s caught herself stroking something—the table's ridged rim, the booth's vinyl—without realizing it. Pot apparently makes her tactile, and right now, the only thing in the world that seems important is handling the shiny metal glittering on Eddie’s fingers. 

“Can I see your rings?” she asks. 

He holds his hands out, and there’s a bloom of mirth on his face, but not a cruel or teasing one. He’s just… enjoying her, she thinks, and that’s alright.

She tugs the cross ring from his index finger and is surprised to find electrical tape wound around the inside, because it’s too big for him. That’s something she never noticed before, and it gives her such a squiggly feeling of delight to know there are still so many things she gets to learn about him. 

When she pulls the ring free, Eddie laughs and says, “oh, literally?” 

She shrugs and starts on the pig. “I need to see them.” 

He makes a noise that might be a snort but lets her take each ring off and line them up on the table. She folds her hands on the laminate and drops her chin atop her entwined fingers, studying the jewelry. It’s all fairly cheap stuff—dented, with the silver plating flaking off in places—and the stone in the one he wears on his right hand looks loose in its setting.

“This one,” she says, pointing to the ring with the stone. “All the others are kind of crazy, but not this one. Why?” 

“What do you mean, why?” 

“These three…” She nods toward them. “They’re meant to send the message that you’re scary. Right?” 

His little boy smile threatens to show up, and he ducks his head. “Maybe.” 

“Yes, actually. But this one’s different.” 

“It’s not that different,” he says with a shrug. “I got the crazy ones—and I kinda disagree, by the way—I got them at a pawn shop. The uh, the other one’s from Melvald’s. It used to be a mood ring, but I popped out the original stone and replaced it with one I liked better.” 

“Where did you get the new stone?” 

“It was in a box of my mom’s stuff.” He shifts his weight, and for a second, Chrissy wishes she could take the question back. It’s the second time in as many days she’s tripped her way into asking about his mother, and the topic clearly makes him uncomfortable. 

It’s a funny thing, not having a mother but wishing you did. Chrissy has imagined not having a mother so many times—dreams of what life might be like if Laura simply wasn’t. Not dead, just gone. A different, easier, kinder mother in her place. But her sinful wish is Eddie’s reality, and there’s no small amount of guilt attached to her latent desires when she sees the grief he holds for a woman whom time never allowed him to know. 

“Like… you took it from her engagement ring or something?” she asks, finding that steering the conversation is simpler when she doesn’t second-guess every word. 

“No. That’d be… first of all, Wayne has my grandma’s ring, and I’m pretty sure if dad ever proposed, he’d have used that. But, uh, they weren’t married? She was just into, you know, tarot cards and witchy shit. White magic, or whatever. She had some books about it, and from what Wayne’s told me, it was mostly to scare her parents. She grew up, uh…” He laughs and taps a fresh cigarette into his palm. “She grew up kinda like you. Country club set. But then she met my dad and… yeah. Anyway, she had this bag of little stones with her magic stuff. This one fit, and I liked that it was black, so I stuck it in, and there we are. Kinda dumb, right?” 

“No. Not dumb.” 

“It’s a little dumb.” He lights up before speaking again. “She was just a kid, playing with toys. I’m older now than she was when she had me.” 

“How old are you?” she asks because she’s never been entirely certain. She knows he repeated senior year at least once, but she isn’t sure whether the school system ever held him back during his tumultuous childhood. 

“Twenty-three next month,” he says, which is such a braggy-kid thing to say. Five and a half, seven and three quarters, twenty-three next month.

“When?” 

“The fifth.” 

Chrissy commits the date to memory—hopes she’ll still be with him then—as the waiter arrives with a tray of food and Eddie puts his rings back on. 

The milkshake is, hands down, the most extraordinary decadence to ever pass her lips. A creamy, frigid sweetness covers her tongue, and she stares down at her glass, fascinated by the slow decline of liquid and the way the thick shake coats the sides while the whipped cream disintegrates into the whirlpool, white swirls eddying into nothing. 

When she comes up for air, she’s unsure how much time has passed, only that her shake is half-finished and Eddie’s barely touched his meatloaf. Instead, he’s staring at her, mouth open, which would typically disconcert, but tonight, she doesn’t care. Doesn’t care about anything, truthfully, and yes, it’s probably the pot, but isn’t that the point? 

“What?” she asks, playing demure as she tucks some hair behind her ear. 

Eddie exhales and drops his gaze. “Nothing.” 

“No, what?” 

“No, nothing!”

That’s not fair, and she hooks her ankle around his, jerking his foot forward. “Don’t fib.” 

A blush stains his cheeks, and he stabs his fork into the meatloaf twice before muttering, “you’re gonna think I’m an asshole.” 

“No, I won’t. What is it?” 

“Just… you. With the straw. You keep… it’s intense, is all.” 

It takes a moment to realize what he’s implying, and she shouldn’t be shocked, but she is. Because Eddie is so respectful of her—careful of her—that she forgets, sometimes, that he’s also attracted to her. And while she might not understand that attraction, he’s been forthright with the fact that it’s there. 

It’s just that lately she’s been noticing him, too. Little things, like the way his forearms flex when he’s been holding the steering wheel for a while. The long line of him when he walks with a purpose, so confident he knows where he’s going. His smile when it’s shy. The way his eyes have no color at all when it’s dark in the bunk and all she wants to do is stare. 

She doesn’t know what to do with all those new noticings, though, so she puts them away as best she can and tries not to think about what it might feel like to want him back. 

“I’m sorry,” she says because she feels she owes him that.

“Don’t—no, c’mon.” He reaches for her hand. “Don’t apologize, alright? I’m just being an idiot.” 

That’s wrong, but she can’t tell him so. Marijuana might help her speak without second-guessing, but it can’t give her the right words when she doesn’t know them. So, she squeezes his hand, then pulls it to her lips to kiss his knuckles, the same as he’s done for her a half-dozen times. 

“You’re not an asshole. You’re allowed to think things about me.” 

“Chris…” 

“The thing is, though,” she starts, then stops. They’ve had this conversation before, and she wants a different one. Wants to see another side of him, where she can be the one looking. “The thing is, could you maybe play the guitar for me later?” 

“What?” He laughs, and that’s good. That means she’s fixing it. 

“You were watching me do something. I want to watch you do something. That’s only fair.” 

“You’re interesting when you’re high,” he says, then pushes his plate toward her. “Eat your fries.” 

“Eat your fries,” she echoes, and then she does. She eats the fries, finishes her milkshake, and chews through half her grilled cheese. The part of her that knows precisely how many calories she’s ingested is screaming at her through the locked, hazy door made of pot smoke, and those screams are getting louder. Ergo, she needs to shut them up, and as they leave the diner, she asks Eddie if she can have the rest of her joint.

He agrees, and she feels like an extraordinarily cool and metal kid while standing beside the smelly dumpster, sucking in smoke to fortify her mental defenses. Just Say No, indeed. 

Once she’s through, he chucks the joint into the trash, then throws an arm around her shoulders to lead her back to the truck stop. It’s nice because her ankle’s nearly good as new, but still twinges occasionally, and leaning on him makes things easier. 

When they reach Smaug, Eddie retrieves the worn black guitar case from its compartment and sets it on the bunk. It’s funny how much of a presence that case has been, welcoming her on her journey like some talisman. She hasn’t seen the guitar yet, though, because she hasn’t asked for it, and he hasn’t offered.

Eddie opens the latches and lifts out what he terms his ‘first baby,’ settling it in his arms so she can read the messy, deliberate message painted on the wood. 

This Machine Slays Dragons! it informs her, and she smiles.

“Why did you paint that?” she asks from her spot all twisted around in the passenger seat, because she wants to leave him room to play, and also, the faux leather feels good when she rubs against it. 

“Oh, uh. It’s a send-up of what Woody Guthrie did to his guitar,” he says, strumming a chord and making a face before his fingers find their way to the shiny silver knobs. “Out of fucking tune.” 

“I don’t know who that is.” 

He picks at the littlest string while fiddling with its associated knob. “Woody’s a folk singer, but not like… howdy-doody folk. He pissed people off because he was a socialist who stood up to fascists. Mostly, he wrote a lot of songs that spoke truth to corrupted power.” 

“So he was like you,” she says. “Like when you’d argue about getting detention.” 

“Oh, yeah, I was totally fighting the Man.” His fingers move to the next string, and he shakes his head. “No, I wasn’t… Woody had a point, is the thing. Wayne loves him. Introduced me to him, actually, and he, uh—this is Wayne’s guitar. He gave it to me when I was little, and I decided that I wanted to paint it like Woody painted his. Except for how Woody’s slayed fascists, and mine’s just my failed attempt at wit.” 

“I like it. Anyway, it’s true. You do slay dragons.” 

He shrugs, though he looks pleased as he coaxes the remaining strings into tune, then strums a chord to check. “Good. You ready?” 

“Yes, please.” 

He nods, clears his throat, and picks out a few notes. When he sings along, his voice isn’t what she expects. Cracked and worn, like some old cowboy, he stays on pitch, but barely, with a higher tone than she might have guessed. Pretty, though, and she smiles as he works his way through the chorus of a familiar song.

“This land is your land, this land is my land…” 

“Oh, I know that one!” 

He grins. “Everybody knows that one. They just don’t know it’s Woody.” 

“But it’s so patriotic. I thought you said he was a socialist.” 

“Patriotism doesn’t mean… yeah, I mean, he was. People just hear what they want to hear, I guess. The song’s not about, like, blind devotion to America, or whatever. It’s about the land being for everyone, freaks included.” 

“Oh. I guess that is like socialism, then.”

“You could look at it that way.”

“Are you a socialist?” 

“Sometimes, yeah,” he says, and that strikes her as profoundly thrilling because socialism and communism were both interchangeable dirty words in her house. Yet there Eddie is, saying the scary part out loud. “I used to call myself an anarchist, but now… I dunno. My interests align with whoever in power might do something for me and mine—take care of my uncle, fight for the unions, that kinda stuff. So, basically anybody but Ronald fucking Reagan.” 

Chrissy’s never heard anyone criticize the president with language like that, and it gives her the same gut-grinding guilty feeling as swearing in church. But, of course, that’s possibly because her parents are Republicans, and the last time a Democrat was in office, she was much younger and not paying attention to any critiques they might have had. Jason likes Reagan, too. Says it’s a shame he couldn’t run for a third term, and that while George Bush is a decent option, Michael Dukakis is a grade-A putz. 

Jason talks a lot about politics. Chrissy’s learned not to listen, though she’s not sure she does like Ronald Reagan. It just hasn’t occurred to her to have any other opinion. “You really don’t go for Reagan, huh?” 

“Nope.” Eddie strums a stark chord. “Don’t go for Bush, either. You know he won, right?” 

She does, but only through the papers she’s seen on newsstands in truck stops. For her, Election Day had been a suitable cover for leaving Jason—he’d had plans to be out canvassing for Bush all day, and she knew he’d be at a results party that night, so she’d taken advantage. Taken her car. Taken the road south and the rest… the rest is all Eddie’s doing. “I saw it in the paper.”

“Four more years of workers getting fucked because they weren’t lucky enough to be born middle class,” he says, making a face. “This fucking country.” 

“I didn’t know you were so political.”

“I’m not, really. Just… when it hits the people you like, right? My uncle’s been through some shit the past few years, and I’m so sick of patronizing politicians saying it’s for his own good, and… anyway.” He sighs and clears his throat. “You want a different song?” 

She nods because while she wouldn’t mind continuing the discussion, she’s also high, and she might be foolish about politics, which is embarrassing. It’s not that she couldn’t know more, it’s just that she’s never thought much about it beyond what she hears from Jason, her parents, or the people they go to church with. Maybe she should try to learn, though, for Eddie’s sake. 

“Alright. This one’s not Woody,” he says, grinning as his fingers fly over the strings, glancing at her before singing, “one Saturday, I took a walk to Zipperhead…” 

Chrissy startles; his voice is completely different now—sneering and nasal and silly as he dances around nonsense lyrics—like he’s a mimic. Picking up the stylings of whoever he needs to give her a show.

“I met a girl there, and she almost knocked me dead… punk rock girl, please look at me! Punk rock girl, her name’s Chrissy…” 

A squeak escapes before she can stop it. “You made that up!” 

Still plucking at strings, Eddie shakes his head. “Just that line, I swear… let’s travel round the world, just you and me, punk rock girl.” 

“You did make it up! That’s about us!”

“I swear to God, I didn’t. I can’t help that someone wrote a song about you, Chris.” 

“Prove it. Play the whole thing,” she demands, wrapping her arms around the seat so she can get as close as possible.

Eddie grins and does as she asks, launching into a full performance. As songs go, it’s peculiar, and she’s not entirely sure he’s telling the truth about someone else writing it because it sounds like he’s just improvising the lines. There are lyrics about Minnie Pearl, going to restaurants and jumping on tables, and the Beach Boys. There’s even a part where the punk rock girl takes the singer home to meet her parents, and her mom freaks out. Chrissy likes that line, and she grins as Eddie rounds the bend into what’s clearly the homestretch of the song, hardly coming up for air. 

“Just you and me, eat fudge banana swirl. Just you and me, we’ll travel round the world. Just you… and… me, punk rock girl!” he sings, his voice a strangled gasp, dragging the last word out until he’s choking for breath and Chrissy can’t stop giggling. 

It’s the dumbest song she’s ever heard, and no matter what he says, she’ll believe he wrote it for her until the day she dies. 

Applauding wildly, she launches herself into the bunk, mindful of the guitar as she presses her lips to his. “Thanks for writing about me,” she says when she pulls back.

“Chris, the Dead Mi—”

“No. Eddie. Whatever you’re about to say is wrong. Because you wrote that song about me. For me. Right?” 

He grins. Rolls his eyes and bumps their foreheads together. “Yeah, right. Just for you, kiddo. But, uh, do me a favor and never repeat that in Philadelphia.” 

Chapter Text

Los Angeles is unseasonably warm, so it’s a relief when dispatch offers Eddie a route to Denver. The West Coast has been good to him this time around, but he wants to see mountains and wants Chrissy to see them, too. 

He tells her where they’re going over McDonald’s fries, and she seems happy enough about it—says she’s excited to go someplace new—and asks if they’re spending the night in LA. 

“We could,” he says, holding out a fry to her, which she eats without question because she’s in that sort of mood. “Or we could get a couple hours under our belts and head east to Las Vegas.”

Chrissy lights up. “Yes, please!”

That settles that, though Las Vegas doesn’t rank high on Eddie’s list of favorite cities. The sleaze and artificiality between the thin veneer of glitter reminds him of growing up with his dad, and the cons he’d pull while out of work. Taking advantage of anyone stupid enough to be charmed by him, and always looking for his next hustle. 

Shit, even in prison, his old man likely has fifty scams on the go. Running smokes or drugs or God knows what else. Still, if Eddie had to put money on it, he’d bet that Al Munson’s still no better than a henchman. That was what got him in trouble in the first place—being in hock to a bunch of bigger, tougher dudes who took advantage of the fact that, sure, he’s slick, but he’s not that smart, making him a classic fucking fall guy.

Whatever. No great loss.

“Can we see where Elvis played?” Chrissy asks on their way back to the truck.

“Sure, yeah. We can see anything you want. I didn’t take you for an Elvis fan.” 

“Isn’t everyone?” 

“Uh, nope.” 

“You like popular things sometimes.”

“No, I don’t.” 

“You like the Stones.” 

“Number one, I tolerate the Stones. Number two, Elvis and the Stones have nothing in common.” 

She sniffs, stopping on the sidewalk with her nose in the air and this imperious look in her eyes. It’s adorable. Eddie grins. Wraps his arms around her and kisses the top of her head because it’s hard to keep his hands off her when she’s the cutest thing alive. 

“You’re a snob, Eddie,” she says, her voice muffled against his shirt. 

“Yes, I am. However, I will concede” — he tugs on her ponytail, laughing when she squirms — “that they have some of the same influences. But what they did with those influences… I mean, Elvis with all that schlocky gospel. Blech.” 

“I like gospel.”

“Seriously?” 

“Yes. Some of those songs are really pretty if you don’t think about the God part. Anyway, you’re not like… the king of taste.” 

“Never said I was.” 

“Yes, you do, all the time! You just said you were a snob!”

“I am. But that doesn’t mean I can’t see that other people have different, incorrect opinions.”

She steps back and points a finger at him. He has to resist the urge to lean over and bite it. “I like Bruce Springsteen. And you made fun when he came on the radio.” 

He loves that she’s arguing with him; that the passive girl who agreed with everything he said just because he said it has given way to this funny, stubborn little person with opinions. Even wrong ones. “Because it’s a terrible song.” 

“See!” She throws her hands up, but she’s giggling. “Jerk.” 

Clasping his hands over his heart, Eddie falls against a telephone pole. “Ouch, Chris. Right to the chest.” 

“You big baby.” 

“Yeah, well, you’ll probably love Vegas,” he says, pushing himself up and slinging an arm around her shoulders. “Elvis impersonators everywhere, and all the music’s total shit. Why do you think I wanted to take you?” 

When she bites his hand, he laughs. He had it coming.

They leave Los Angeles in the rearview, driving across the long stretch of desert in the twilight, then the dark. The interstate is moderately busy, with early weekend gamblers heading to Sin City, and when they reach the outskirts, there are plenty of truck stops to choose from. Eddie picks a well-lit place to park the rig, then uses a payphone to call a taxi since the strip is miles away. It’s a bummer that it’s dark—for all the ugliness of Vegas itself, the scenery surrounding the city is something to behold, with fire-colored peaks ringing the valley—but she’ll have time in the morning to take it all in. And shit, it’s not like she’ll be hurting for mountains over the next few days. 

“I’ll be right back,” she says when he informs her the taxi will arrive in about twenty minutes. She heads inside the truck stop, and when she returns, she’s put on a shirt she bought in Calexico—blue, with mid-length sleeves and a lacy collar, which isn’t exactly form-fitting, but it’s a step up from sweatshirts—and jeans. 

She’s also wearing makeup, which is new. Or old, depending on how you look at it. Nothing like the wild colors she’d sported in high school, but pretty enough. Eddie doesn’t know much about the stuff but thinks there’s some blush and mascara, maybe some eyeshadow. Her hair’s wavy, too, thanks to the braid she’s been sporting all day, and he has a sudden urge to run his hands through it. Mess it up even more.

“You look nice,” he says, not wanting to make a big thing out of it as he pulls her in for a hug. 

She shrugs. “It’s Vegas. I’m going to put my stuff in the truck.” 

“Sure,” he says and lets her go. 

The cab arrives soon after, and they clamber in, saying hello to the driver, who asks a lot of questions about where they’re from and where they’ve been. Eddie answers them all and requests that they be taken to the “Elvis Hotel,” which the driver tells them is now the Las Vegas Hilton. 

Chrissy presses her palms flat to the window as they near the strip, and while he can’t see her expression, he’d bet her eyes are wild and wide, drinking in the lights and the people and the absolute carnival of it all. 

The Hilton is at the far end of a couple of darkened casino fronts, since Vegas has been hit as hard as anywhere else by a shitty economy. The hotel looks nice enough—standard issue, with a casino and a show, like every other hotel lucky enough to still operate. 

Chrissy’s enthralled, though. Waits for him to pay the driver, then drags him inside, where she takes in the lobby and the casino floor with a slack-jaw, squeezing his hand. He gets it. He’d been overwhelmed, too, the first time he’d come to Vegas. Sure, he’s been in his fair share of disreputable places, but this city is something else, with dead-eyed zombies at slot machines taking their free drinks from cocktail waitresses wearing next-to-nothing. 

“You want to play any of the games?” he asks, keeping a hand on her back. He’s not a possessive guy—at least, that’s what he tells himself—but Chrissy’s a good-looking girl, and there are a lot of assholes here who’d take advantage of that. And, yes, probably it’s sexist of him to think she can’t take care of herself. Gloria Steinem would read him the riot act or whatever, but shit, he’s not clubbing her and dragging her to his cave. He’s just… doing gorilla stuff. Puffing his chest out and glaring at anyone who gives her a second glance. 

“Um, not really,” she says, turning toward him and slipping an arm around his waist. He squeezes her side, and she smiles at him, suddenly shy. “Sorry. It’s loud in here.” 

“I know.” 

“But I feel like I’m really getting the essence.” 

“The essence?” 

“Of Elvis.” 

“Oh, right. And how does one do that?” Besides kicking it on the shitter, that is. Which he doesn’t say because he’s not trying to ruin her night. 

Chrissy takes the question seriously and closes her eyes briefly before giving a determined nod. “He stood here. I can tell.” 

“No shit?” 

“Yes, and” — she points, ushering Eddie toward the elevator bank — “I’m sure he used these elevators.” 

“Totally,” he says. “Definitely.” And in no way is he going to bring up the idea of there being a separate, private service elevator for someone of Elvis’s caliber. 

“We have to go up,” she says, pressing the button. 

There’s an attendant in the car when it arrives, and he asks to see their room key. Chrissy lies with the ease of a professional huckster—maybe she is cut out for Vegas—and tells him they’re meeting a friend on the twenty-eighth floor. 

And, because she is a damn smooth liar, the guy believes her. Takes them right up and lets them out onto a floor full of closed doors and one magnificent view at the end of the hall. Well, magnificent if you’re into Vegas, which Chrissy appears to be, pressing herself flat against the glass so she can check out the flashing neon below. 

“This is where he stayed. This floor,” she says, and Eddie doesn’t know who she thinks she’s fooling—the man clearly stayed in the penthouse—but whatever. They’re having fun. 

“Yup. Probably that room there,” he says, pointing to a random door. 

“Yes!” She grins, then pushes him right against that door before leaning on her toes to kiss him. He laughs, slumping to meet her, and when she nips at his bottom lip, he gives her hair a tug.

“All essenced up, sweetheart?” 

“I think so.” She places her palm against the number plate and inhales like Elvis’s soul might be entering her body. “Yes. I’m good.” 

“Glad to hear it. What should we do now?” 

“Let’s just walk around for a while?” 

They leave Elvis—and one confused elevator attendant—in the building as they head onto the strip. The desert air has dropped a few degrees, and Chrissy hasn’t dressed for the occasion, so Eddie slips his coat off and drapes it over her shoulders. 

She smiles, sticking her arms in the sleeves before kissing his cheek. “My hero.” 

“You’re welcome.”

“It’s weird,” she says after they’ve gone maybe half a mile, wandering toward some of the older casinos. “I thought it would be shinier. Everything’s kind of run down.” 

“Yeah, well. Movies make everything look glamorous.” 

“You—oh, hello.” 

The ‘hello’ is for a man shoving a flyer in their direction. When Chrissy greets him, he grins and gives her a once-over, which makes Eddie pull her a little closer. Because, hey. Caveman shit. It is what it is. 

The man smirks, then presses the paper to Eddie’s chest with a muttered, “take your girl, man,” before scooting off to his next mark. Eddie has no intention of taking Chrissy anywhere that dude suggests, but she plucks the paper from his fingers before he can crumple it up. 

“Huh. What’s a… gentleman’s club?” she asks. 

“Oh, Jesus.” He reads the flyer over her shoulder and snorts. “I guess that’s what they’re calling it now.” 

“Calling what?” 

“A strip joint.” He points to the oh-so-descriptive Girls! Girls! Girls! line. “See?” 

“Oh. Well, I want to go.” 

It’s good that his tongue is anchored to something because Eddie nearly swallows it whole. “Uh. You… can we… you want to go to a strip club?” 

“Yes, I do.” 

“Bu—why?” 

“Because I need to understand what all the fuss is about.” 

“What? Because you’ve been denied entry to the finest establishments in Indianapolis?”

She rolls her eyes. “No, duh. Because Jason and all the guys he was in school with were always railing against… sin and vice and strippers and… all of it.” 

This isn’t the only time she’s mentioned Jason in conjunction with some high-and-mighty moral crusade. Eddie thinks that’s rich, considering that don’t fucking hit your wife is probably one of the Ten Commandments. Or, if it’s not, then God ought to consider a second edition. 

“The guys he was in school with,” he echoes. “I bet they were all going to strip clubs on the weekend.” 

She considers that, then shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t know. If they were, they were most likely proselytizing to the patrons. Or… actually, I bet they were trying to save the women’s souls.” 

“Gross.” 

“So, can we go?”

“Far be it from me to deny your vices,” he says, resolutely ignoring that he’s just agreed to put himself in a room with Chrissy Cunningham alongside dozens of naked women. It’s no big deal. He’s capable of controlling himself, and anyway, no girl there’s gonna measure up to the one on his arm. 

“Thanks, Eddie,” she says as he checks out the address on the flyer. 

The club isn’t on the main drag, he’s pretty sure, which means he’ll have to ask the sleaze bag how to get there, so he turns and jogs back to the guy. Asks a couple of questions, including whether Chrissy will actually be welcome, before returning to her side. 

“He says it’s a fifteen-minute walk that way,” he informs her, steering them down a cross street. The half-assed glamour of the strip falls away the further they go, and by the time they reach the squat, windowless building with a flashing neon sign, he wishes he’d offered to find them some showgirl revue instead. 

“You sure about this, Chris?” he asks as they cross the parking lot, which is surrounded by a security fence topped with barbed wire. And, look, he’s been in plenty of shady places—grew up in them, if he’s honest—but he feels weird about being there with her. Not because he thinks she can’t handle it, though. She was married to an asshole, so God knows she gets how bad people can be. No, it’s more that he’s… embarrassed, kinda. Yeah, there it is. That’s the word. He loves Wayne, and he likes his life fine, but a part of him will always be a little ashamed of wearing the hand-me-downs and eating the free lunch. Not that Chrissy would judge him, but that won’t stop him from judging himself, or seeing his world through her eyes. 

“I’m sure,” she says, which settles that.

There’s a bouncer the size of Smaug at the door, who gives them a once over. For a weird, backward moment, Eddie thinks the dude’s about to tell them to take a hike. But then Chrissy turns on one of her I’m-just-an-actual-angel smiles, and the guy grins back, then opens the door like they’re old friends. 

“No charge for the lady,” he says, then looks at Eddie. “You, five bucks.” 

“Dude.” 

“Five bucks.” 

Deciding it’s not worth the fight, Eddie forks over a five and follows Chrissy inside. It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dark, narrow hallway, lit by a black light that makes the lacy fringes of her shirt glow. She grins at him, and her teeth are gleaming purple. 

“You look like a carnival,” he says, laughing. 

“So do you,” she replies, then takes his hand and leads him toward the pounding beat pulsing through the walls.

The hallway opens into a large, windowless room where a sea of neon, chrome, and skin is set before them like a feast. As strip clubs go, this one feels particularly low rent, with the smell of cologne, booze, and cheap beef permeating the air. The sound system is terrible, featuring a thumping bass blowing out some shitty subwoofer with an insistent, staticky braaaaaap, while a smoky haze settles over everything from the booths to the buffet to the stage.

On that stage, a brunette with a Bettie Page body is currently topless, working her way to bottomless, though she’s not the only naked woman on display. All the waitresses have their tits out, and while Eddie knows it’s meant to be arousing—and maybe under other circumstances it would be—with Chrissy by his die, he feels like a sleaze bag for staring. So he looks at her instead, expecting revulsion, only to find her wide-eyed and grinning. 

“Oh my gosh,” she says, attention fixed on Bettie. “She’s so pretty. Don’t you think she’s pretty?” 

“Uh, yeah,” he replies, nudging her shoulder. “You want to sit down?” 

When she nods, he tries valiantly to steer her to a table near the back, but she shrugs off his touch and marches toward the stage. Mercifully, she doesn’t take a booth next to the catwalk, but settles in the second row instead. Still too close for comfort, but he can work with it, and he follows her, resolutely not making eye contact with any of the other dudes in the room.

The booth is a curved number, and Chrissy sits on one edge, shrugging off his coat. Eddie scoots all the way around to sit beside her, then lights a cigarette and fixes his attention on the back of her neck, which is a very nice neck, thanks so much. No need for tits or ass here, no, sir. 

Bettie finishes to mild applause a few minutes later. Or, well, mild from most of the audience—Chrissy claps like someone might amputate her hands if she doesn’t, then turns to Eddie with a laugh. “She was so good.” 

“Definitely.”

“I wonder if she made her outfit or bought it somewhere.” 

What outfit? he doesn’t say as she leans against him, and he wraps his free arm around her waist. Not for the first time, he wishes he could dive inside her head for a while and get a sense of what’s happening in her curious little brain, which thinks things that are wilder and weirder than anything he’d ever imagined for himself when he’d fantasize about them being together. If she talked at all during those fever dreams, it was mostly to tell him he was cute, or she was horny, or she wanted to suck him off. Worthy endeavors, all, but none that could hold a candle to the lived reality of hearing her offbeat thoughts, all day, every day. 

“So,” he says, “is this what you imagined it would be like?” 

“Kind of. I didn’t think it would smell so weird.” 

“That’s the buffet.” 

“There’s a buffet?” She cranes her neck, then makes a face. “Oh, ew. It looks… steamy.” 

“It is.” 

“Can we just get drinks?” 

As if prompted, a buxom blonde waitress in a short skirt, stockings, and heels comes around the corner to take their order. Eddie focuses on her face rather than her chest, which is a Herculean effort because he might be with the best girl in the world, but also… tits are tits, and he hasn’t had sex in a month and a half. 

“Hi,” says the waitress. “How’re you guys?” 

“We’re good. I really like your necklace,” Chrissy says. 

Eddie hadn’t noticed the woman was wearing one, and he shifts in his seat and takes a long drag of his cigarette. 

“Thanks, hon. What’s your poison?” 

“Do you have everything or just beer?” 

“It’s a full bar.” 

“Then I would like a Manhattan, please,” she says, straight out of some 1950s screwball comedy. 

“Sure. What about you, handsome?” 

Eddie bets she says that to all the guys and doesn’t take it to heart as he orders a whiskey soda. 

The waitress leaves, and Chrissy turns around with a grin. “Handsome!”

“Oh, yeah. Harrison Ford, watch out.” 

“You don’t look like Harrison Ford.” 

“I know. That’s the joke.” 

“Why’s it a joke?” 

“Because he’s a movie star, and I’m—”

“Handsome.” 

“Eh.” 

“Eddie.” She takes his chin between her thumb and forefinger, then pecks his lips. “Handsome.” 

He doesn’t get the chance to disagree because the music kicks up, and the emcee announces the next dancer. Meaning that he’s forced to sit there, cheeks burning, and accept Chrissy’s full-throated compliment. 

Ridiculous. Hates it. Wouldn’t mind hearing it again. 

“I love this song!” she squeals over the opening bars of fucking Whitesnake as a girl who could double for Tawny Kitaen takes the stage. 

There’s no accounting for goddamn taste, he supposes. 

Chrissy is once more enthralled, so he figures it’s okay if he watches the show. Which is… fine. Not exactly sexy, though that’s nothing to do with the dancer and everything to do with the men who surround the stage. Tongues practically lolling out of their mouths as they lean in, believing they deserve oh-so-much of her individualized attention just because of the greasy ones they’re holding in their sweaty palms. Eddie knows the type—probably a fair few wedding rings on those fingers—and while he gets that the girls have to make money, and they’re choosing to be there, he still feels sorta weird about the whole thing. 

Faux-Tawny finishes up, gathering her clothes and cash before another girl takes her place. The waitress returns with their drinks about halfway through that act, and Chrissy tries one sip of her Manhattan before making a face. 

“Uck.” 

“No good?”

She shakes her head, nose wrinkled, which makes him laugh.

“Why’d you order it, then?” 

Putting her lips to his ear, she tells him, the whisper of her words sending a shiver down his spine. “It’s my dad’s favorite drink, and it’s the only one I knew.” 

“Ah. Well…” He points to his glass. “Try mine?” 

Chrissy does and declares it delicious, which is how Eddie ends up nursing a shitty Manhattan instead of something he actually likes. Maybe that makes him a sucker, but he’d rather be a sucker for the prettiest girl in Las Vegas than a slobbering creep in a loosened tie, pretending the woman being paid to take her clothes off has any genuine interest in knowing him. 

The act finishes, and the emcee comes over the loudspeaker, announcing the lineup and reminding patrons that private dances are available from performers only. Not the waitresses. So quit asking.

“Is a private dance like that Tina Turner song?” Chrissy asks, turning to him like he ought to know.

“I don’t know a lot about Tina Turner.” 

“Oh. It goes, um… I’m your private dancer, dancer for money; I’ll do what you want me to do?” 

He can’t focus on the fact that she’s cute and off-key when she sings, only on the content of the lyrics. “Oh. Yeah. That. It’s that.” 

“So they have sex?” 

“What? No. I mean, not unless it’s a shitty club or a front for something. It’s more like you go into another room, and the girl, uh, dances for you. Exclusively.”  

“Oh. That’s all?” 

“Yes?” 

“Have you had one?” 

“Uh, I have not, no.” 

“Then how do you know there’s no sex?” 

“Because I just… I don’t think that’s how that works, Chris.” 

“Isn’t prostitution legal in Vegas?” 

“It is, but who told you about that?” 

“I can’t remember. My pastor was probably mad about it. Or Jason, or one of his friends. Anyway, doesn’t matter. It might just be different rules here than in Indiana, right?” 

“I doubt it, kiddo. I’m pretty sure you have to have a license to run a brothel.” That might be true, or it might not be. He’s talking out of his ass, and this place is grody enough that maybe some shady things are happening behind closed doors. 

“Huh. Okay. Do you know how much they cost?” 

“A prostitute or a private dance?” 

“The dance.” 

“Like… ten or fifteen?” The lawless strip club in Indianapolis that he was dragged to for a buddy’s eighteenth birthday had been charging five, but there’s doubtless a premium in Vegas.

“That’s really cheap for seeing someone naked.”

“I guess.” 

“I wouldn’t have sex for fifteen dollars, so you’re probably right that they’re not doing that.” 

Eddie will not think about how much he’d pay for the privilege of having sex with her. He won’t. He’s just gonna keep playing his cards right until he gets it for free. “Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt.” 

“You’re welcome. How’s my drink?” 

“Tastes like a lifetime in suburbia with two kids and a shitty commute.” 

She giggles. “Oh, yeah. That sounds like my dad.” 

“How’s mine?” 

“Tastes like you.” 

His cheeks warm, and he wants to ask what she means, but he can’t because the emcee pipes up to announce the next dancer. When she comes out, Eddie briefly contemplates how hard it would be to crawl inside the springs and stuffing of the booth. Because the girl is sporting every pervert’s version of a cheerleading uniform, including a pleated skirt cut high enough to show the swell of her ass and a torso-baring top with cleavage to spare. She bounces onto the stage, shaking her sparkling silver pom-poms before throwing them down and turning a cartwheel. 

Chrissy leans forward, gripping Eddie’s hand like her life depends on it. He tries not to look, but how’s he not gonna look when Little Miss Rah-Rah bears a passing resemblance to his own personal favorite cheerleader? She’s blonde, for a start, with a girl-next-door face and a goddamn ribbon tied around her ponytail, which is bouncing all over the place as she executes a half-cheer, half-dance routine to the beat. 

Eddie collapses against the booth when her top comes off. He likes to think he’s a good dude, but if Chrissy turned to him right now and gave him the okay, he’d have her on his lap in two seconds flat. Spectators be damned. Because he wants her. He wants her in every filthy, sexy, depraved way he can get her, and while he wasn’t lying when he said he’d wait, he also hopes to God she won’t make him wait forever. 

Chrissy squeezes his fingers, and he takes a deep breath, then digs the heel of his hand against his hardening dick before lighting another cigarette. The action eases the worst of the pressure, but his arousal’s going nowhere. It’s not the first time he’s gotten a boner around her—morning wood’s a thing, and they share a bunk—though she typically looks the other way, and he hopes she’ll continue to tonight.

The cheerleader struts to the end of the catwalk and then does the splits. Chrissy sits up straighter, digging in her bag. After finding what she wants, she rushes to the stage with some crumpled bills in hand. The men sitting in the front row notice her, of course, and when the dancer bends to take the cash (with her tits inches from Chrissy’s fingers and God, she could touch her and Eddie would die, but he’d die happy), she kisses Chrissy’s cheek in thanks, which gets the dudes hooting and hollering.

The leering quenches some of Eddie’s flickering flames of desire, and he grinds his fingertips into the booth, eyes narrowed. He has no problem scrapping with an asshole, should the situation warrant it, but Chrissy seems oblivious to their interest. Instead, she whispers in the cheerleader’s ear. The girl’s gaze flicks briefly to Eddie before she nods and says something to Chrissy in return. 

To say he’s desperate to know what they talked about is an understatement, but Chrissy doesn’t return until the song is through, staying near the stage for the rest of the act. When she perches beside him, she looks pleased with herself, a coy half-smile on her face. 

“Wasn’t she amazing?” she asks like Eddie’s not about to explode from anticipation. Among other things. “You can tell she actually did cheer and stuff.” 

Fuck subtlety; he needs to know. “Is that what you asked about?” 

“Oh, no. I asked if I could have a private dance.” 

“You…” His soul floats away from his body, and he surveys the scene from above because he is probably dead. “Uh. You what? Why?” 

“Why not?” She reaches for her drink. “You were right, by the way. It’s ten dollars, plus a tip. I’m supposed to go over and talk to that guy.” 

‘That guy’ is a bouncer twice the size of the one out front, standing by a velvet curtain, reading a magazine. Eddie’s balls shrink at the sight of him. 

“Do you, uh, want me to come with you?” 

“No. It’s a private dance,” she says like that should be obvious. 

“Right. Yeah. Have… a nice time?” He sounds idiotic, but what else can he say? He’s certainly not going to stop her; that’s Jason Carver crap, and she’s a grown adult. Making choices for herself. Even the peculiar ones. 

“I’ll try. See you in a minute.” She finishes her drink, kisses his cheek, and crosses the room. The bouncer softens at her approach, and she talks to him for a second or two before he sweeps the curtain aside, allowing her into the sanctum sanctorum. 

Eddie, meanwhile, at least has his hard-on to keep him company, and that’s some small comfort.

Chapter Text

The velvet curtain is threadbare in places, the patina shiny and worn from the touch of a thousand hands pulling it aside. Chrissy steps through it with her heart beating high in her throat, thrilled at the thought of whatever licentiousness lies beyond. The act isn’t the bravest thing she’s ever done, or even the strangest, but it feels the most willfully defiant. A middle finger to her mother and Jason and the strictures by which they live their lives.

But she’s not doing it to spite them. Nor is she doing it for Eddie, whose confusion was clear when she told him her plan. Honestly, saying it out loud was scarier than doing it because a part of her worried he might try to stop her. But that was a silly part, because of course, he hadn’t, and there’s a relief in knowing that this person she trusts so much returns that trust twenty times over. 

Still, he’s got to be curious. Maybe a little freaked out when she picked the cheerleader, and she gets it. Gets that it might be a thing for him, given the way he’s mentioned the fact that she used to do cheer, like, six hundred and forty-seven times. But she’s not trying to make it weird or anything. She just thinks the girl is pretty and wants to talk to her, and… yes. She can’t quite pinpoint why her brain suddenly got all itchy over it, but there she is. On the other side of the velvet, faced with a long hallway lit by two parallel strips of neon blue lights running along the ceiling. There are curtains every few feet, some open, others shut. Behind the closed ones, she senses movement. Hears music. 

Another giant security man stands at the far end of the hall, and he catches Chrissy’s eye. She smiles at him in a way that she hopes conveys her confidence and counts six curtains on the left, which is the room she’s been told to take. 

Stepping inside, she finds a small, square cubicle adorned with an oversized leather chair that reminds her disconcertingly of her father’s old recliner. 

“Okay, then,” she says, crossing the tiny space to perch on the edge of the chair, where she folds her hands in her lap like she’s waiting for a church service to begin.

She doesn’t have to wait long. Maybe a minute later, the curtain swishes open, and the cheerleader steps through. Only she’s not a cheerleader anymore, which would disappoint Eddie if he were here. But he’s not, and Chrissy thinks she looks really pretty in a short black robe and towering heels.

“Um, hi,” she says as the woman shuts the curtain. 

“Hey. Where’s your boyfriend?” 

“My boyfriend?” 

“The booth you came from, you were sitting with a guy?” 

Chrissy’s cheeks heat as she understands that this girl thought she was buying a dance for Eddie, not for herself, which makes some weird sense and also makes her feel sort of stupid. “Oh. No. He’s not my boyfriend. Or, well, he kind of is. But it doesn’t matter.” 

“So… you want the dance, then?” She offers Chrissy a curious look, folding her arms and leaning against one flimsy wall, which bows even under her scant weight. 

“No. I mean, you’re really good, but that’s not…” 

“Then what? You want an application? Because I’m not the person you need to talk to.” 

Oh no, I could never is on the tip of her tongue when she decides it would sound rude, so she just says, “oh, no. Not that, either. I’m only in town tonight.” 

“So…?” 

“Sorry, but what’s your name?” 

Bemused, the woman shrugs. “They announced it.” 

“I wasn’t paying attention. I’m sorry.” 

She laughs like Chrissy’s a puzzle she’s trying to solve. It’s a pleasant way of being perceived, and Chrissy wants to catch it in a net and study it under a microscope to dissect its thrills. “I’m Cherry.” 

That’s a fake name; she’s not surprised. “Chrissy. Hi. Sorry, okay, so I wanted to ask you, like… you trained as a dancer, right? Or you actually did cheer?” 

“Oh, ah… yes, I did.” Cherry raises a brow. “Honestly, darlin’, I’m not sure what you’re looking for here…” 

“Nothing, I swear. I only wanted to talk to you.”  

A scowl darkens Cherry’s features, and she folds her arms, drawing her short robe higher on her thighs to reveal lacy black panties. Chrissy can see the strip of pubic hair she noticed onstage pressed against the gusset. She doesn’t know why it makes her want to squirm, but she squirms all the same. 

“Fuck,” Cherry says, startling her back from staring. “Is this some religious thing? Are you gonna ask about Jesus?” 

“Oh my gosh, no. I’m… no, it’s not about that.” 

“Then what’s your deal?” She takes a step closer, bringing with her the scent of perfume and cigarettes mingled with her physicality. A tinge of sweat and sex and the desperation of every man who believes he’s entitled to her time or her attention. 

“It’s… okay. So, I’m not trying to sell you on Jesus, I swear. But my husband’s religious. Like weird religious. He’s gonna be a pastor.” 

Cherry stops mid-eye roll and frowns. “That dude you’re with?” 

“Oh, no. That’s Eddie. He’s… I’m traveling with him.” 

“And where’s your husband?” 

“At home.” 

“Now that sounds like a story.” 

“Not… just. Maybe. But, okay. My husband would hate this place, and he’d judge everyone who’s here. Including me. Which is so dumb because it’s just dancing, right? And the thing is…” She takes a deep breath, the pertinent question tip-toeing to the forefront of her mind. “I just wanted to know how you can do that. Like… how do you like the way you look enough to let other people look at you?” 

Cherry inhales sharply, and then, to Chrissy’s surprise, she laughs a low, confused chuckle. “Church mouse, you’re killing me. You sure you don’t want a dance?” 

“No, thank you.” 

“Course not.” Her fingers twitch and tap against her opposite arm, which is something Eddie does when he’s desperate for a smoke. So, Chrissy takes a chance. 

“You need a cigarette?” she offers. “I don’t care if you smoke in here.” 

“Thanks. But my cigarettes are in the dressing room.” 

“Oh.” 

She gives Chrissy a once-over, then laughs again. “Ah, fuck it. You wanna see?” 

Chrissy absolutely wants to see, and she nods and bounces to her feet the second Cherry finishes the question. They leave the cubicle and head toward the big bouncer, who opens the door he’s guarding. She finds herself in yet another long hallway, though this one stands in stark contrast to the rest of the club, with flickering fluorescents overhead and plain cinderblocks on both sides. There’s a half-open door about halfway down on the right, and through it, she can hear the low murmur of conversation even over the bass that reverberates through the walls from the main stage. 

Cherry pushes the door open, leading Chrissy into a dressing room of half-naked (fully naked in a couple of cases) women. The nostalgia of it all nearly bowls her over. Perfume and soap overlaying an undercurrent of body odor, giggles and gasps punctuating conversations, makeup-strewn countertops, and clothes thrown absolutely everywhere. It’s the funhouse mirror version of every locker room she’d shared with her squad, and God, she misses that. The nonsense camaraderie that came about when they could let their guards down around one another because nobody—no boy—was there watching and judging whether they were performing womanhood the way they were supposed to. Sure, there had always been petty rivalries and bitter divides between them, but things had been simpler behind the scenes. Sweeter. Funnier, too. Cliqued and clueless, they’d share magazines, gossip, makeup, and secrets. The best nights were game nights, though, when there was the crackle of what-might-be electrifying them and uniting them as they put on their war paint and went to whip the crowd into a frenzy. 

There’s a spark of that here, albeit of a different variety. Chrissy waits by the door, drinking it in as Cherry crosses to the vanity that’s evidently hers, judging from the cast-off cheerleading uniform flung across its surface. A fringed leather bag hangs from her chair, and she rifles through it for her cigarettes. 

A couple of the women glance in Chrissy’s direction, but most don’t notice or care about the stranger in their midst. Of course, it’d be different if she was a man; men have a way of changing spaces and breaking spells. Even the best ones. 

“Alright, c’mon, church mouse,” Cherry says, tucking the cigarettes into the pocket of a trench coat she grabs off the rack near the door. 

“Where are we going?”

“Monique has asthma, so we smoke outside when she’s working.” 

“That’s considerate,” she says, following Cherry to a door marked ‘Exit’ propped open with a brick. 

“Yeah, well, she’s a real bitch about it,” she says, ushering Chrissy into the chilly night air.

She finds herself in a gravel parking lot ringed by a tall fence topped with barbed wire loops. The lights of the strip are visible in the distance, but the lot itself is dimly lit and sparsely populated, with two women leaning against the side of the building, cigarettes in hand. Chrissy shivers, and while she appreciates the opportunity to escape the windowless club and return to the real world, she wishes she’d brought Eddie’s jacket with her. 

“Shit,” says the woman nearest the door—the girl who’d been dancing when she and Eddie walked in—before crushing her cigarette beneath her incredibly high heel. “If you’re out here, it must be about time for me to head up there. Is it any livelier?” 

“The usual crowd.” Cherry belts her trench before tapping a cigarette into her palm. 

“Cheap asses,” the woman mutters. “See you on the other side.” 

Cherry nods as the woman pushes past and heads back inside, then turns to Chrissy and offers her a smoke. “You want one?” 

“No, thank you.” 

“Suit yourself.” 

“You making friends, C?” asks the other woman—a blonde—who Chrissy now sees is smoking a joint rather than a cigarette. “Who’s this?” 

“Uh…” Cherry squints like she’s trying to remember. “Christine, right?” 

“Chrissy. Hi.” 

“Right, yeah. Chrissy. Chrissy, this is Bambi.” 

Like the deer? She extends her hands for Bambi to shake. “Hi.” 

“Hi.” Bambi exhales, and Chrissy wants to ask for a hit but doesn’t feel like pressing her luck. “You new?” 

That both of them thought she could be new or looking for a job is almost flattering, and she shrugs. “No.” 

“She told me she wanted a dance, but it turns out she just wants to talk,” Cherry says, smirking.

Bambi doesn’t smile, though. In fact, her eyes narrow. “You in trouble or something, honey?” 

The immediate, pressing intensity of the question takes Chrissy aback, but before she can respond, Cherry says, “maybe. She’s here with some guy.” 

“If you need us to call you a taxi, it wouldn’t be the first time. There are places you can go.” 

The implication clicks into place, and Chrissy shakes her head. “Oh wow, no. Sorry. I’m not… I’m not scared of Eddie. I really did just want to talk.” 

“Eddie, huh?” 

“Says he’s not her boyfriend.” 

“He’s not. He’s… my best friend.” It’s the first time she’s referred to him that way, but as soon as she says so, she knows it to be true. Eddie might be her boyfriend one day, and she might sleep with him eventually, and she might even fall in love with him before all is said and done. But above any of that, he’s her best friend—the person she trusts the most in the whole world—and she didn’t even know it until right this second. 

“Your best friend, huh?” Cherry says. “So you had a husband, and now you’ve got Eddie. Busy girl.” 

“And he’s alright to you?” Bambi presses. 

“He’s the best. He’s—okay, so with my husband… I mean, he wasn’t alright to me,” she says, mostly because she can’t have anyone besmirching Eddie. Not even two women she’ll probably never see again. “But Eddie’s a great guy.” 

“You still married?” Cherry asks. 

“Technically. I left him, though. Ran away after he—I mean, it wasn’t the first time—but Eddie… I knew him in high school. And he helped me get out. He’s a trucker, and we’re just traveling, you know? So I guess I’m still sort of running, but he hasn’t caught me, and I figure if I just keep moving, he’s never going to.” 

Bambi exhales a cloud of smoke and frowns. “He hit you, yeah? Your husband?”

“Ah, yes,” she says, and it still hurts to admit it. “How did you know?”

“You’ve got the look. Where is he now?” 

“Indiana.” 

“Huh. You really are a long way from home.” 

“And this guy took you in out of the goodness of his heart?” Cherry says, disbelief coloring her tone. 

“Yes,” Chrissy says, and she doesn’t know how to explain that Eddie doesn’t deserve her cynicism. 

“Nothing wrong with needing some help,” Bambi counters. “I was married to a son of a bitch once, too.” 

“You were?” She shouldn’t sound so incredulous, but it’s difficult to look at someone so tall and blunt and beautiful and think they could be just as duped and dutiful as she’d been. But then, most people wouldn’t look at Jason and see the asshole beneath the all-American, nor would they look at Eddie and see the goodness hiding behind the grunge. 

“Sure.” Bambi rolls the sleeve of her coat up and reveals six faded circular scars on her forearm. 

Cigarette burns, covered with concealer. Chrissy takes hold of Bambi’s wrist before she can think better of it, studying her skin. “I’m so sorry.” 

“We got war stories, you and me,” she says, then tugs her arm away and shakes her sleeve back into place. “How many times did you try running before it took?” 

“Too many.” The first time, she went to her mother. The second, a motel. The third, the police. None of them did her a damn bit of good until Eddie. 

“Took me six and moving across the country.” She drops the remnants of the joint onto the gravel. “I used to live in Florida.” 

“Gosh. You’re a long way from home, too.” 

“Gosh,” Bambi echoes, looking at Cherry, who’s leaning against the wall with a cigarette gripped tight between her fingers. “You’re a funny one.” 

“Thanks, I think.” 

“And this Eddie of yours, you’re really alright?” 

That Bambi keeps pressing the issue is oddly comforting. Like she actually gives a shit, despite their having just met. Comrades in arms, in a battle neither of them asked to fight. War stories, indeed. “Yes.” 

“You said you went to high school together?” Cherry asks. 

“Uh-huh. But I didn’t know him then. Not like I know him now.” 

“But he’s not your boyfriend,” Bambi presses. 

“I—no. Well, maybe.” She chews her lower lip, and her index finger is itching to find its way to her thumbnail, but Eddie hates it when she does that, so she scratches a pattern on her thigh instead. “We’re not sleeping together or anything. We’re just figuring it out.”

“What’s to figure?” says Cherry. “You like him; he likes you.”

“Well… okay, but that’s why I wanted to meet you? To talk through the stuff I was asking about before.”

“Like, how come I’m so cool with taking my clothes off?”

“Yes. Among other things.”

“Like what?” 

“I don’t know how to say it.” 

“Helps if you stop trying to be polite about it, church mouse.” 

That sounds like a challenge, and Chrissy scowls. “Mostly it’s that I don’t get why people are so obsessed with sex—or even why they want it so much—and I figured you might have some insight.” 

Cherry nearly chokes on an inhale, and Bambi laughs out loud. “She’s got you there, C.” 

“Fuck off,” Cherry says, but she’s laughing, too. “Jesus, what makes you think I’d know anything about that?” 

“I don’t know. Mostly because you’re comfortable being, you know. Naked. So I thought you probably knew what people… enjoyed about it.” 

“Getting naked for a bunch of horned-up dudes isn’t the same as fucking someone.” 

“No, but I get what she’s saying,” Bambi says. “Can I make an educated guess about you, Chrissy?” 

“Um, sure.” 

“Did someone raise you to believe that Jesus was watching out for your virginity like Santa watches for the naughty kids?” 

“… is it that obvious?” 

“I mean. Yeah. You look like the type who freaked out about popping the proverbial cherry before you tied the knot.” 

“Sure, but I did it anyway.” 

“Baby, we all did it anyway. The issue isn’t the doing. It’s the guilt that God and your parents and your boyfriend put on you about it afterward. Like you’re the goddamn problem. How are you gonna have fun when you’re worried everything you do is another stop on the road to hell?” 

“But that’s the thing,” she says, frustration creeping in. “Everyone says it’s supposed to be fun, but it never was for me. Ever. Not one time.” 

“Like you never had an orgasm?” 

“Like I don’t think I even can. All I ever did was lie there and let him… do that. And it hurt so much every time. Like, this burning pressure and pain, and it just… it sucked, and I only ever wanted it to be over.” 

“Sounds like your ex is a lousy lay,” Cherry snorts.

Bambi arches a brow. “Shut up, C. Hang on, you’re telling me it hurt like the first time, every time?”

“Yes! I mean, maybe not quite as bad, but pretty close. And it’s so annoying because when I left him this time, I made this promise to myself that I was never, ever going to sleep with anyone again. But then I found Eddie and—” She inhales sharply, attempting to make something of the muddled stew of wants and fears swirling in her head. “I want to be with him all the time. Like, I can’t stop touching him or thinking about him, you know? And things between us are… they’re charged, or whatever. But when I think about what it would be like to sleep with him, all I can imagine is him on top of me, making it hurt the way Ja—my ex made it hurt. And I can’t… I can’t let that happen. It would ruin everything.” 

Bambi pulls her into a hug without hesitation. Wraps her in a haze of perfume and marijuana and something sharp and bitter beneath. “Oh, baby,” she says. “He made a mess out of you, huh?” 

Tears spring to Chrissy’s eyes, which is so stupid, because what right does she have to cry? “I’m sorry. I’m just bugging you guys.” 

“Jesus Christ,” says Cherry, who puts a hand on her shoulder and tugs her back from Bambi’s embrace. “Real talk, church mouse? It’s not supposed to hurt. Not if he’s doing it right. And they all… man, if I was getting fucked by someone who beat the shit out of me, I’d be dry as a bone, too. No wonder you’re freaked.” 

Chrissy’s not entirely oblivious to the mechanics of her own body, so she understands what Cherry means. But that doesn’t change the facts of her experience—it hurt every time, and she’s never gotten to orgasm. She’s not entirely sure it’s possible, if she’s honest. When other girls talked about theirs, or she read about them in a magazine, she assumed they were lying or she was broken. 

“C,” Bambi says with a note of caution. “Lay off.” 

“I’m just saying, if she can’t have a good time to spite him, then the dickhead’s still winning. What’s that thing… living well is the best revenge? Maybe fucking well is even better.” 

The idea of that makes Chrissy laugh despite her shame. “Even if it is, I’m not… I wouldn’t know where to start.” 

“How do you mean?” Bambi asks. 

“Like, Eddie’s… I’m not stupid. I know he’s been with other people, and he’s… I don’t want to be a disappointment.” 

“Trust me. You won’t be,” Cherry says, ashing her cigarette against the wall. “You’re cute. You just gotta… loosen up.” 

“If it were that easy, she’d have done it already,” Bambi says, rolling her eyes. “Look, there’s no shame in needing a little help. You ever think about using some lube?” 

The word is unfamiliar, and she frowns. “Some what?” 

“Like lubrication? You can get it at, you know. Adult places. He can put some on his dick to make it go in without hurting. Or, if he’s fingering you. It just eases things up.” 

“Oh, no,” she manages, because the notion of having a conversation with Eddie about her problems—or going into a store and asking for something like that—makes her want to crawl into the dumpster across the parking lot and never come out. “I can’t.” 

“Why not? You’re not gonna have good sex unless you talk about it.” 

“But it’s—I can’t.” 

“You’re talking to us about it.” 

“That’s different. You understand.” 

“Bullshit,” says Cherry. “If this guy’s as decent as you say he is, I guarantee he’ll be up for the conversation.” 

“C’s right. And, I mean… look, you’re sharing space with him, right? I bet he has skin mags stashed somewhere in the truck.” 

“Oh, I’m not sure. I don’t think so?” Though, honestly, she hasn’t looked. Mostly because she wants to respect Eddie’s privacy regarding all the closed compartments, and also because it hasn’t occurred to her until this very moment that he might have a collection. 

“He does,” Cherry says with a laugh. “I guarantee it.” 

“Well, what if he does?” she replies, frowning. 

“It’s good. It’s a window into what he likes. So see if you can find one,” Bambi says. “Or, better yet—ask him if he’ll show you one.” 

The bottom drops out of Chrissy’s stomach again, and she shakes her head. “No way.” 

“So, what, you’re just gonna… not fuck him forever, or let him hurt you without him realizing that’s what he’s doing?” Cherry folds her arms. “Because I gotta tell you, church mouse, if I’m him and you’re letting me fuck you without telling me the deal? I’d be pretty damn pissed about it.” 

Hearing it phrased that way certainly puts things into perspective. The last thing Chrissy wants to do is hurt Eddie, and while the idea of having a frank conversation makes her queasy, the idea of him being upset because of her omission might kill her. “I never thought about it that way.” 

“Yeah, well, call me a romantic, but you smile like an idiot when you talk about him, and it’s like I said before: if you let your ex’s shit fuck things up with him, then that’s giving him control over your life in a different way. You get what I’m saying?” 

“I get it,” she says. “I… I’ll try to figure out how to talk to him.” 

“It’s not as hard as you think it is, I promise,” Bambi says. “Otherwise, you’re both fumbling around in the dark, which would be a shame since he sounds like a keeper. I mean, shit, y’all got all the way here from Indiana, and he hasn’t put the moves on you? He’s either a eunuch or a saint.” 

“He’s not a eunuch,” she says, heat rising in her cheeks because while she’s not oblivious to Eddie’s occasional erections in her presence, she is pretty good at ignoring them. 

“I figured. He did bring you here, after all.” 

“He didn’t. I asked to come.” 

Cherry grins. “Shit. You really are a strange one, church mouse.” 

“I guess. I dunno.” 

“No, you are. You don’t look it, but—” She taps the side of her head “—fucked. Anyway, I’m freezing my tits off. C’mon, let’s go in. Prince Charming’s probably wondering where you are.” 

Cherry’s right—it’s been nearly twenty minutes since Chrissy went for her lap dance, and even American Pie doesn’t last that long. “Oh, my gosh.” 

“Again with the gosh,” Bambi says, then wraps an arm around Chrissy’s shoulders. “You’re killing me with that good girl shit. I bet your dude digs it, too. Come on.” 

They troop back to the dressing room, where Chrissy reaches for her purse, but Cherry shakes her head. 

“You’re not paying for something you didn’t get,” she says. “Besides, you’re in a tough spot.” 

“But—” 

“I mean it. You don’t owe me shit.” She looks at Bambi. “You got your notebook?” 

“I do,” Bambi says, then walks to a neatly kept station with an acoustic guitar case propped beside it and starts rifling through a bag. 

“She’s a songwriter,” Cherry says. “Real fucking talented.” 

“Eddie’s a musician, too. Are you sure I can’t pay?” 

“Jesus. I said no.” She rolls her eyes as Bambi returns with the notebook and a pen. Cherry takes it, then flips to an empty page and scrawls something down before passing it to Bambi to do the same. When they’re done, Bambi rips the page and hands it to Chrissy, who scans it.

Lisa (C): 702-555-0137

Beverly (B): 702-555-2262

Cherry clears her throat, and when Chrissy looks up, she’s offering a half-smile. “Just in case Prince Charming ever turns into a frog.” 

Chrissy disappearing into the bowels of a seedy strip club does wonders for Eddie’s boner. Like, faded at ten minutes, flaccid at fifteen, and practically inverted by twenty. He’s just about to march over and make sure she’s not getting sold as a drug mule when the curtain swings open, and there she is, pink-cheeked and pleased with herself as she crosses the room, a half-smile on her flushed face. 

“Hi,” she says, and her skin is cold when he touches her arm. 

“How’d it go?” he asks like he hasn’t been watching the doorway instead of the dancers since the moment she left him.

“So good.” She kneels on the edge of the booth, at eye level, and kisses him. Holds him in it for a few seconds, then pulls away and says, “you know I’m crazy about you, don’t you?” 

That’s unexpected, and Eddie smiles, chasing her lips for a second kiss, arms snaking around her waist as he hugs her tight. When he breaks it a moment later, he rests his forehead against hers and presses his fingers to the small of her back. “You know it’s mutual, don’t you?” 

“Working on believing it, yeah,” she says, chewing on her lower lip. 

“Good dance?”

“I didn’t get a dance.” 

“Oh, no?” he asks, and that answer does nothing to quench the flames of his curiosity. 

“Nope. We just hung out for a while.” 

“Just hung out for a while,” he echoes. God damn. Chrissy Cunningham just hanging out with a stripper in Vegas and Eddie without a shred of proof. “Is that what took so long?” 

“Yeah.” 

“I wish you had your camera so I could commemorate it.” 

She shrugs and picks up his jacket. “I told you. I want pictures of the little things. This is big.” 

“Oh. Right.”

“Anyway, can we go? The smoke’s kind of making my eyes itch.” 

Eddie’s more than happy to get out of there, and they leave the chrome and neon behind, the pounding beat of Def Leppard thumping in their ears as they cross the parking lot to the sidewalk and head toward the strip. Chrissy reaches for his hand, threading their fingers together as they stroll. The evening has hit the tipping point between sobriety and sin, meaning that the crowds are bigger, drunker, and rowdier, with a charged, nearly angry energy in the air.

If she notices, though, she doesn’t say. Instead, she steps around people and problems like they’re nothing before stopping short when they turn a corner. 

“Oh, yay,” she says at the sight of a small, metal food cart advertising cheap eats. “Hot dogs.” 

“Two for a dollar,” Eddie reads, watching as the guy behind the cart hands a stale-looking dog to a college kid in a UCLA sweatshirt. “You want one?” 

She shakes her head. Turns. Presses her face to his chest, tucking herself beneath his chin, so he’s forced to kiss her scalp since it’s only natural. He can’t help that she’s exactly the right height. “I can’t.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because… because hot dogs are definitely against the rules.”

Her nose is pressed to his breastbone, breath warming his skin, and yeah, that’s the voice she uses when she’s up to something. When the game is on her mind, maybe, and she’s actually fucking starving. 

Eddie can work with that. 

“Huh.” He brings his hand to the back of her neck and squeezes. “Whose rules? My rules?” 

She squirms against him, and yep, there’s his dick, returning from its retreat because he’s a fool holding onto a pretty girl who wants to play. 

When maybe ten seconds have passed, and she hasn’t answered, he applies more pressure. “Chrissy. C’mon.” 

“Shoot. Um, her rules,” she whispers.

“Oh. Well.” He digs his thumb into the divot at the base of her skull, which gets him a funny look from a passing Elvis impersonator, but like, fuck off, Elvis. His not-girlfriend is into some surprisingly kinky shit despite not wanting to have sex, and honestly, Eddie’d lick the grime off the sidewalk if he thought it was gonna do it for her. 

“Eddie,” she says, and it comes out a whine, which really shouldn’t be so attractive, but he starts imagining her saying his name that way in a different context. One where she’s sitting on his face, maybe, or he’s inside her and… 

Yeah.

He clears his throat and leans close to whisper in her ear. “I don’t give a shit about your mom’s rules, Chrissygirl.” 

She shudders—visibly shudders—and he has never felt more potent or virile in his short, foolish life. 

“You don’t?” she asks, voice muffled. 

“Nope. In fact, I think she’s a real fucking moron, your mom. She doesn’t know what’s good for you. Not like me. I get you, right?” 

He’s rewarded with an enormous sigh, little arms circling his waist to hold him tight. “Yes.” 

“And when I make the rules, the rules say you have to eat a hot dog, right here, right now.” 

She squirms again, and if she was in one of those old cartoons he used to watch with Wayne-or-maybe-his-dad-sometimes, she’d have a devil on her left shoulder and an angel on her right. He gives her a second to make her choice and hopes that, in this scenario, he’s the devil drawing her into the dark. 

“Okay, Eddie,” she agrees, solemn and sweet as she pulls back to look at him. “If you say I have to, then I do.” 

“Good girl,” he replies, and what the shit? Where had that come from? Maybe some repressed jerk-off session to Heavy Metal when he was sixteen, or the first time he saw Princess Leia in the metal bikini and realized he was kind of into control and a bit of bondage, but also, like, gross and good for her for killing that sack of shit. 

(But also also maybe sometimes she and Han played rogue smuggler and kidnapped princess, and she got a little mouthy, and Han liked it, and everyone had a good time and… yeah. Maybe that.)

Chrissy lights up like the sun, smile widening. She leans on her toes to kiss him, so he takes it as a win and leads her to the cart, where they get two dogs, each with mustard and ketchup because she doesn’t like relish and Eddie doesn’t like vegetables.

They walk while they eat, and Chrissy doesn’t have to be told twice to enjoy her food. Sure, she takes delicate bites, but she takes them often, and he’s proud of her. It can’t be easy to overcome years of conditioning from her family and Carver and whoever the fuck else in her life has ever made her believe she ought to be anything less than herself. 

 “How was it?” he asks, maybe half a mile later when she finally finishes. (His dog had disappeared in three gigantic bites about ten feet from the stand.) 

“Kind of gross, and the bun was stale,” she admits, which makes him even prouder that she finished. 

“If we ever make it to Chicago, I’ll get you a good one.” 

“Okay,” she says, then yawns. 

“Tired, sweetheart?” 

“Mmm hmm. Can we go back?” 

“We can.” He’ll take a bit of quiet with her in the bunk over the harsh noise of the strip any day. 

They step into the nearest hotel and take advantage of the concierge desk, and once the cab is called, they go outside to wait. Chrissy tucks herself against him once again, and while it’s stupidly sentimental to believe they were made to fit together, he thinks it all the same. 

When they reach the truck stop, she declares she wants a shower, so he takes one as well. Twenty minutes later, they’re both damp as they climb into the bunk, but that’s alright. He doesn’t even mind when her wet hair soaks through his t-shirt because it means she’s got her head on his chest, and that’s never gonna get old.

“Eddie?” she asks after a couple of minutes.

“What’s up?” 

“Do you still think I’m a freak?” 

“Every goddamn day, Cunningham.” 

“Okay, good.” She shifts herself so they’re face-to-face, fingers tracing the pattern of the Anthrax logo on his shirt. “The dancers were really nice to me.” 

“Dancers? You had two?” 

“Yeah. Cherry and Bambi.” 

“Which one was the uh… the cheerleader?” he asks, aiming for casually interested and failing. 

“Cherry. Bambi was her friend. We hung out for a while.” 

“Cool. Uh. What’d you talk about?” 

“You.” 

Warmth floods his face, though he laughs like he doesn’t care. “No shit?” 

“Yes, shit,” she says, and damn it, he loves it when she swears. “They said I smile a lot when I talk about you.” 

Ego swelling to Hutt-esque girth, Eddie tamps down a smile. “That so?”

“Yes. And they said that you sound like a keeper. Which you are.” Her palm flattens against his chest. “I’m going to keep you.” 

Eddie exhales, dropping a hand to her waist and drawing her close. “Yeah, kiddo. Likewise.” 

Chapter Text

The rising sun is a sliver of light silhouetting the mountains as they leave Vegas. Eddie watches the road, but he also watches Chrissy, who’s sitting with her feet on the dash, Fellowship open on her lap. She’s been quiet since they woke, but not in a way he finds concerning. Just… quiet. Like she’s percolating about something. If he had to guess, he’d say it has something to do with whatever she talked about with the strippers. Plural. Which is a thing he still has a hard time believing happened. 

Denver is a day-and-a-half drive, and while it’s not so bad mileage-wise, the mountains mean he has to pay attention in a way he doesn’t when he’s in the Midwest. They make it as far as Green River, Utah, before he calls them done for the day, his back sore from sitting so damn straight. 

That sore back answers for him when Chrissy asks if they can take a walk after dinner, and he’s grateful for the opportunity to stretch his legs as they stroll down the westward highway toward the setting sun. 

Chrissy’s still not saying much, and when they’re maybe a mile from the truck stop, he nudges her shoulder. “You alright?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah,” she says, and it’s genuine. “Sorry. Just thinking.” 

“Sure. Anything you want to—”

“If I asked you to go back to the truck and have sex with me, would you?” 

Eddie freezes like a piece of soon-to-be-roadkill and sucks in a sharp breath. Where the fuck had that come from? The question doesn’t feel like a trap, yet he is pinned in place as he considers his answer. “Uh. Okay,” he says after a moment. “I mean, no. I wouldn’t. But it’s not because I don’t want you.”

Her expression stays neutral. “So, no?”

“No. Because I uh… I don’t know exactly what’s happening with you in that whole arena, but I know you told me you wanted to go slowly. And I respect that.” There. He feels reasonably confident that’s the right answer, if a right answer exists at all.

“Okay. Thank you.” She fiddles with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. He puts a hand on her arm. “It’s not actually that complicated. My stuff.”

“No?” 

“No. It’s just Jason. What else is new?” 

Eddie grits his teeth instinctively. “Jason. Right. You know you can talk to me about that stuff, don’t you?” 

She shrugs, and though she doesn’t meet his eyes, she does take his hand. “I’m trying. That’s kind of… I want to tell you, but I don’t know how to say it.” 

“Maybe we keep walking?” 

“Maybe.” She keeps a tight hold of his fingers and walks forward. He matches her pace, and it’s another minute before she speaks. “Have you ever slept with someone who… it was their first time?” 

The question isn’t what he expects, but he manages a reasonably relaxed “sure.” 

“And did she like it?” 

“I don’t know. Neither of us knew what we were doing. But I did my best.” 

“Everyone knows it hurts the first time.”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I tried not to hurt her.” He sighs and reaches into his back pocket for his cigarettes. “I was a virgin, too.” 

“Oh.” She squeezes his hand. “I can’t picture that.” 

He laughs and shakes a cigarette free, using his teeth to pull it from the pack. “Thanks, I think.” 

“For me, it hurt a lot. I hated it.” 

Fucking Carver. “I’m sorry, Chris.” 

“It’s alright. I guess I kind of expected it to suck. But then, after, whenever we did it again, it hurt just as much. And even when it wasn’t that bad, it’s not like I ever had an or—an, um, an orgasm. I don’t even know what’s supposed to happen.” She trips over the O-word, her voice dropping to the hushed register she uses on the rare occasions she swears. 

He flicks his lighter open, frowning. “Jesus Christ. That’s some bullshit.” 

“It’s not his… how was he supposed to know it was bad? I never told him.” 

He hates that she’ll still make excuses for Jason, even now. “Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean he didn’t know. Trust me—it's pretty obvious if a girl’s not having fun.” 

“It is?” 

“Yeah. If something hurts, most people are gonna pull a face, or tense up, or just, I dunno, if you’re connected to someone, you can tell.” 

“I was good at hiding it.” 

“Maybe, but I bet you weren’t turned on.” Heat creeps up the back of his neck, but he refuses to be embarrassed. Sex is weird and dumb and occasionally wonderful, and if he ever wants to have it with Chrissy, he’s gotta hold his own during the conversation where she’s baring her soul. “Were you, you know. Wet?” 

“Um. No. That’s not… I don’t think I can do that, either.” 

The answer is depressing but not shocking. He exhales a puff of smoke, eyes fixed on the horizon, and tries not to focus on how good he wants to make it for her. “I bet that’s not true. What about when you’re going solo?”

“I don’t really do that.” 

“What, never?” Though he shouldn’t be surprised, considering her history.

“Maybe a couple of times when I was younger. But I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“Why’d you stop trying?” 

She kicks a rock. “Church. My mom.” 

She’s gone stiff beside him, so he stops her. Hugs her close and kisses the top of her head. “I’m fucking sorry, dude. That sucks.” 

“Eddie, don’t,” she says, squirming. “I have to get it out, and if you’re nice, I can’t.” 

He reluctantly releases his hold, and they resume their walk, where she threads her fingers through his before speaking. “I’m not trying to make you feel sorry for me. I just want you to know my limitations.” 

The word doesn’t sit right with him. “I appreciate that. But I also reject the premise that you can’t get off. Carver sucks, and I’m not the most experienced guy, but I’m seventy-nine percent sure I can make you come.” 

She actually laughs at that. “Seventy-nine percent, huh?” 

“I mean, yeah. Eighty on a good day.” 

“You’re already a better kisser.”

He bites back a grin. If he hates it when she defends Jason, he loves it ten times as much when she shits on him. “Yeah, no kidding.” 

“Can I tell you something else?” 

“Always.” 

“After we got married, when he started getting angry and, um…” She gestures with her fist, and Eddie wants to run Carver over with his truck. Grind him into a fine meat paste beneath the wheels and all. “He’d always want to do it after he apologized. To prove I wasn’t mad at him, I guess. But that just compounded the problem.”

A fine meat paste isn’t good enough; Eddie spent a lot of time researching medieval torture methods for D&D campaigns. He can get real creative. “Fuck, Chris.” 

“It’s fine. I just wanted you to understand why… why I’m probably not going to be that much fun when we do it.” 

He can’t handle her beating herself up, so he draws her close again. This time, she relaxes against him, so maybe she’s said all the tough things she needs to say. 

“I think you’re fun,” he says. “And I’m glad you told me all this shit.”

“You’re welcome.” 

“Can I tell you some stuff now?” 

“If you want to.” 

“I think your ex is a lousy lay and a piece of shit, but we already knew that. Him sucking in the sack has nothing to do with you.”

“But—” 

“Hang on a second, okay? I just… I mean, I look at you, and you’ve probably had people breathing down your neck your whole life about sex, right?” Between Jesus, her mother, and Jason, she’s spent her twenty years on the planet receiving a lot of mixed messages; that’s enough to fuck with anyone’s head. “You said you knew the first time hurts, so it was like… of course it did. And your brain punishes you because you’re having sex before you’re married or whatever. Which, no love lost between me and Carver, but he got the same shit about God, right?” 

She pulls back from the hug but not away from the conversation, meeting his eyes and nodding emphatically. “We were supposed to wait for marriage, but then… everyone was doing it. So we did it. But it was this badge of honor for Jason, and I felt like I had to hide it. Like people were going to think I was a slut.” 

“So then you got married to make Jesus feel better, and the sex still sucked. Throw in him hitting you and using fucking as an apology and just…” He laughs. He can’t help it; the whole thing is a shitshow with Chrissy as the main attraction. “That’d screw anyone up, Chris. But I don’t think a lousy start means you’re doomed to shitty sex forever. If uh… if that’s what you want.” 

A smile touches her lips, and she shrugs. “I’m seventy-nine percent sure I do. Maybe eighty. I’m just afraid that if we do it, and it’s bad, or I freak out, it’ll mess things up with you, too.” 

“Nothing as stupid as sex is going to mess things up with me. Besides, I’m not going to let it be bad.” He moves closer and feels remarkably sure of himself when he cups her cheek and bends to kiss her. “Whenever you’re ready, I’m going to make it so good for you.” 

“Eddie, I—”

“I’m serious. We’ll figure this out. Sex is supposed to be ridiculous, you know. It’s just this dumb thing we do, and we’re meant to enjoy it.”  

Her mouth twists into a frown, then a smile, then something halfway between the two before she asks, “do you have porn in the truck?” 

Eddie nearly swallows his tongue. “Uh. What?”

“Like skin magazines?” 

The way she says magazines—like she’s at some high society tea—makes him laugh, even as his brain plays catch up. He doesn’t know why she’s so focused on sex suddenly, although if he had to put money on it, he’d pin her newfound interest on whatever she found beyond that cheap velvet curtain in Vegas. “Well, yes. I have some, err… literature of an adult persuasion in my collection.” 

“Can I look at it?” 

He should have seen that coming. “Yeah, sure.”

“Will you look at it with me?” 

“Uh. I guess. Can I ask why?”

“Because I want to know what you like.” 

His ears feel like they’re burning. Thank fuck for the dwindling sunlight, which is hopefully keeping his red face from being too visible. “Oh. Well, it’s not all stuff I’m into. Some of it’s magazines I’ve picked up because I like some things in it, but not all of them.” 

“It’s okay. I just want to look. And it’s not like I’ve never seen porn before. My cousin showed me a Playboy she stole from her dad.” 

Eddie doesn’t know how to explain that Playboy is practically a country club cotillion compared to his personal periodicals. “Uh. That’s cool. My stuff’s a little less professional.” 

“That’s fine. I’m pretty sure I can handle it. I went to the strip club, didn’t I?”

He can’t argue with that and lets her take his hand and lead him back toward the truck. Now that she has permission, she’s like a dog with a bone. Because whether it’s conning a baseball cap out of a security guard, falling off a rock face to capture a photo of a tide pool, or visiting a strip club in Vegas, Chrissy Cunningham is nothing if not persistent when she gets an idea in her pretty head. 

“Alright,” she says the moment he shuts the door to the cab. “Let’s see them.” 

“Jesus Christ, Cunningham. Let a man take his boots off.”

“Fi-ine.” She flings herself onto the bunk and waits. Eddie takes his time unlacing his shoes, pretending that his heart isn’t thumping out of his chest. Because while he’s not ashamed of the stuff he likes, it’s not mainstream. (And, honestly, even if it was the most mundane T&A in the universe, he’d still be scared shitless to show her.) 

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” she says, practically reading his mind as she follows his lead and kicks her sneakers off. “If it’s too weird.” 

He recognizes that she’s giving him an out, and a piece of him wants to take it. But she was vulnerable with him on the road, baring the private shame she carries about her sexuality, so how can he not show her more of himself? It’s just porn, and if it helps her, it’s worth whatever slight humiliation he might feel at the prospect. 

“Nah, I’m being a putz.” He hefts himself into the living quarters, then opens the cubby that holds all his reading material. “Just remember that I’m not into all of this, yeah?” 

“Got it. I’ll make my questions really specific.” 

“Jesus Christ,” he says with a laugh as he grabs a handful of flimsy magazines. For a moment, he considers curating the selection, but that’ll look like he’s trying to hide something, and if he knows Chrissy, she’ll notice. Plus, it’s not as though there’s much to curate—he only has about six magazines going at any one time because the truck has limited space, and he gets bored. 

He tosses the stack onto the bed as casually as he can, only to blanch when he realizes the issue of Triple Play with the cheerleader has landed on top of the pile.

Motherfucker. 

“It uh—” He licks his lips. “It’s not like—”

“Is she giving him a blow job?” Chrissy squeaks, and she’s not even looking at the cheerleader. Nope, she’s pushing that one out of the way for the Private Issue beneath. The cover is a close-up of a girl’s open mouth. And that open mouth happens to be filled with an erect penis. And that penis happens to have trailed cum across her cheek and chin. (Only Eddie’s willing to bet it’s icing or something that photographs better than actual jizz.)

Whatever. It’s a doozy, and Playboy doesn’t have blowjobs on the cover. 

“Uh. Sorry,” he says. “That one’s—” 

“I didn’t know you could just put that on the cover of a magazine.” 

“Depends on the state,” he mutters. “Anyway, it’s not like you can get it at a regular store.” 

She picks up Private Issue, flips it open, then pats the bunk beside her. Eddie aims for casual as he sits down, ignoring the ad for phone escorts on the page before him.

“Where do you get them, then?” 

“Adult stores. Or, sometimes, I’ll trade with someone.” 

“Oh. What appealed about this one?” 

He takes a deep breath. Obviously, there’s a reason she’s asked to peruse his porn collection, and that reason is sex. Or potential sex. With him. At some point in the near or distant future. So although the topic of sex with Chrissy’s something he steadfastly tries to avoid thinking about when they’re kissing or even touching, he figures he’s going to have to engage a little if he wants to get laid before he shrivels up and dies. Besides, if he’s going to live up to that eighty percent confidence promise, he needs to see what turns her crank.

The only trouble is that navigating Chrissy’s weird little brain is like traveling across a foreign country without a map. 

“Ah, well, I thought the cover model was pretty,” he says as she turns another page to reveal a photograph of that same girl, legs spread, naked and staring straight into the camera. “And the blow job.” 

“So you like those?” 

“I mean. Yeah. I’m…” God, he’s going to get hard, and there’s no stopping it. “Yes. I like blow jobs.” 

“Jason used to make me do that a lot.” 

“Oh. Well, you’re not, you know, obligated to ever do that for me.” 

“Maybe I’d like it with you.” 

Eddie dies a little at the notion, while Chrissy turns three pages at once. The next shoot has a different model kneeling on a bed in a pose that would be tasteful, save for the fact that she’s straddling a dude who has his cock inside her. Eddie’s jerked off to that image more than once because the model is blonde, blue-eyed, and having a good time. Pretty much his three favorite things for getting off. “Wow. Do you like this one, too?”

“Uh. Yeah.” 

“Why?” 

“Because the chick looks like she’s having a blast.” 

A smile blooms across her face, and she kisses his cheek before turning the page. Same couple, different position. The girl is on all fours, and the guy’s behind her with a hand fisted in her long hair. She still seems to be having a great time, though, and Eddie’s cock thickens against his thigh at the brief picture his mind paints of Chrissy posed like that for him. 

“What about this one?” she prompts. 

He manages a shrug. “Yeah, this one’s good, too.” 

“Do you think about me like that?” 

He exhales and counts to three before wrapping an arm around her shoulders and throwing caution to the wind. “Yes. Of course I do. I think about doing all sorts of things with you.” 

She points to the man’s hand and the way he’s pulling the woman’s hair. “I like that. Is that weird after what happened to me?” 

“Nothing anyone likes is weird,” he says, which he believes wholeheartedly. If nobody’s getting hurt and everyone wants to be there, then people should do whatever the fuck they want. “Besides, it can feel kinda good when someone pulls your hair all at once.” 

One corner of her mouth curls into a smirk. “Firsthand experience?” 

He laughs, and it breaks some of the tension in the air. “Some girls are really into my hair.”

“Some girls are,” she agrees, then tugs on a curl before reaching for Triple Play. “You have a thing for cheerleaders.” 

“No, I don’t.” 

“Yes, you do. I saw how you looked at Cherry back at the club.” 

“Can you blame me? You imprinted on me, running around in that stupid, swishy skirt…” 

“I did not!”

“Heart wants what it wants, Cunningham. Besides, you were the one who got a lap dance from uh… Cherry, or whatever.” 

“Number one. I didn’t get a lap dance. Number two, her uniform wasn’t regulation.” 

“Oh, well, that makes a difference.” 

“It does, actually.” She opens the magazine and flicks through a few pages. It’s mostly more of the same—naked women, hairy men—and she huffs. 

“What’s up?” 

“Nothing. Only, I wanted to figure out what you really like, but all of this is just, you know. Sex.” 

“Oh, fuck. You figured out my secret—I like sex.” 

“No, but that’s not—” She frowns and runs a finger along the edge of a page. “Nevermind.” 

“C’mon, Chrissy.” 

“No, it’s nothing.” Then, glancing down at his lap, the outline of his dick clearly visible against his jeans, she startles a bit. “Oh. You’re hard.” 

The matter-of-fact way she says it has his dick twitching, and he nearly laughs. “Uh. Yes. I am.” 

“Because of the porn?”

“Because of the experience of looking at porn with my girlfriend, yes.” It’s the first time he’s used that word—not just for her, but for anyone—and it feels right. Even if his girlfriend still has a husband, that’s a mere technicality. “What were you going to say before?”

“Nothing.” 

“Chrissy.” 

She drops a hand to his lower thigh, and his brain relocates to his cock. “I was going to say that maybe it would be easier if you told me I had to do it. Like when I don’t want to eat.” 

That—that, that, that—is so very much to process with her hand on his leg and a naked woman looking at him from her lap. “Um.” He swallows, fighting through the soupy stew of hormones he’s swimming in. “Yeah. We can try that. But same rules, alright? You say no, or you’re not feeling it, and we’re done.” 

“Sure.” 

“I mean it, Chris. I won’t do what he did to you, and if you don’t tell me when you stop having fun… I can’t… I mean. I won’t be that guy, so you have to be honest with me.” He squeezes her hand to emphasize his point; he’ll run himself over if he hurts her, and she’s not so good at advocating for herself, which means he’s gonna have to be triple fucking sure she’s into whatever they do.

“I know.” She looks at him, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. “Do you want to do anything right now?” 

“Yes. But first, I want to say that I think it’s a shame that you’ve had it so bad, when it can be so good. It bums me out.” 

“I’m a professional bummer,” she says, which makes him smile. 

“You’re not, actually. You got a raw deal, and we’re going to work on it. So let’s fool around a little and see what happens.”

The voice that lives in Chrissy’s head sometimes sounds like her mother and sometimes sounds like Jason and sometimes just sounds like herself. Currently, it sounds like a mix of all three. Freaked and terrified and rattling the bars of its cage.

Chrissy is ignoring the voice. She is kissing her boyfriend—and she can call him that because he said she was his girlfriend, so it’s logical—and suppressing every nagging reprimand. Pushing them down deep into the dark places of her skull because the only voice that matters is Eddie’s.

Not that he has much to say. Mostly, he’s just kissing her with one hand on her jaw and the other on her waist. The latter makes her nervous, with his thumb pressing against the curve of her stomach.

She sucks in. Eddie pulls away. Looks at her up-close and nearly cross-eyed before squeezing her side. Curling his fingers into the fleshy parts she hates so much, and gosh, the voice is mad, mad, mad, but she’s not supposed to listen. 

“You want to try something different?” he asks. 

“If you say I do.” 

“Then you do.” He projects calm confidence as he maneuvers her, so she’s straddling his lap. That’s not to say the movement is graceful—the bunk is small, she nearly hits her head on a shelf, and he has to toss the magazines they were looking at to one end of the mattress—but he positions her with such certainty that it’s easy to go with the flow. 

“Alright?” He asks once she’s settled, his thumb brushing the bare skin of her lower back. Her shirt hasn’t ridden up; instead, he’s pushed the fabric out of place. Chosen to touch her in a way he hasn’t dared to before. 

His choice, not hers. That helps.

“Yes, I promise.” She kisses him again. Parts her lips and lets him in, the territory familiar but the position foreign. Her ass resting against his skinny thighs. Her hands on his chest. She likes how it feels to have him beneath her. Likes how it makes her taller. Bolder. Braver. 

Eddie laughs when she pulls his hair. Breaks the kiss and tugs on her ponytail in return. Chrissy takes it as an invitation, tipping her head in that direction to expose her neck. He picks up what she’s putting down and leans in, pressing his lips to her throat. 

A shiver rockets down her spine; she has always liked being kissed on the neck, even when she didn’t like the person doing the kissing. His lips trail a path from her nape to her earlobe, and when he bites lightly, she sighs. Molds herself against his body while he kisses his way down to the collar of the same lavender sweatshirt she’d been wearing the night she met him. 

“God.” He pulls the fabric to the side, nosing along her collarbone. “I thought about this so much.” 

“About kissing me?” 

“About kissing you right here,” he says, and then he does. Lips grazing every inch of exposed skin. “Even back when I first picked you up. You were so… I didn’t know you. Not really. But I kept thinking about this spot.” Another kiss. “Right.” Again. “Here.” 

He bites her again, and she makes a puppy noise because his teeth have hit a nerve connected to approximately fifty million pleasant places within her. Reflexively, her hips roll forward, and with their bodies pressed flush, there’s no mistaking his interest. Especially not when he meets her with a movement of his own.

She startles when she first feels the hard line of his erection. Instinct tells her to shy away, and she stiffens, then tries to relax, hoping he hasn’t noticed.

He has, of course. Beats a hasty retreat from her neck and says, strangled, “we can stop.” 

“No. I don’t want to stop.” 

“Okay, yeah. Tell me what you do want, then.” 

That’s wrong, and she shakes her head. “No. You have to tell me.” 

Eddie half-groans, his hands dropping to her hips, where he squeezes. “Then I want to keep kissing. Doing… doing what feels good, huh?”

“It does feel good. I can, um… feel you, too?” 

“Oh. Yeah. Well, that’s not going away. C’mere.” He kisses the tip of her nose, then shifts his weight and leans back against the bunk, bringing her with him. “Hair,” he says, which doesn’t make any sense, but then he’s tugging her scrunchie and letting her hair fall like a curtain around their faces, so she gets it. “God, I dream about this fucking hair.” 

“Eddie…” She rolls her eyes. 

“What? I do.” He kisses her once more, and she settles into the simplicity of knowing she can give him what he wants by doing something that feels so simple. His hands drop to her waist, and when his tongue finds its way into her mouth, she parts her thighs. Likes the burn of the stretch as she rolls her hips against him to feel his hardness again. 

“Jesus,” he mutters and puts some pressure on her hips. Keeps her there while he moves his lower half side-to-side so she can feel it when he shudders. “Fuck, Chrissy.”

Something inside her seizes up, and she waits for when he’ll decide he’s done being gentle. When he will flip her over or stick a hand down her jeans or ask her for the thing she’s not ready to give. Her brain readies an emergency flare—not that it’s ever done her much good; when things like that happen, she’s learned to lie there. Take it. Endure. But then he just kisses her again. Grinds against her, sure, but nothing more. It’s not far off the dry-humping she and Jason used to do in the back of his Jeep, only it’s not like that at all because Eddie’s not treating it like a competition.

That’s what it had always been with Jason. Some fierce battle to prove to his friends—or maybe just to himself—that he was clearing the hurdles of sex faster than them. Kissing was never good enough. His hand would be up her shirt, squeezing too hard when she was barely used to the sensation of his tongue in her mouth. Making out with Jason was always too much, too fast, and she never felt as though she’d gotten the hang of the how, or learned to differentiate what she liked from what she merely tolerated. So was it any wonder that by the time they rounded the last bend in the proverbial track, Jason sprinting toward the finish line, she was limping behind on a broken ankle? Dragged, unwillingly, by her teammate, who spent the final stretch complaining that she was slowing him down. 

She shudders. Eddie stops. Breaks the kiss as his hips still. “What’s up?” 

“Nothing. I’m good. Sorry.” 

“Mmm. Kinda seems like you went somewhere else.” 

“No, I’m good. I was just… I was just thinking.” 

“Good thinking?”

“Not really.” Which is scary to admit, but she can trust him. “I was thinking about how Jason never wanted to make out like this. Kissing was this obstacle in the way of getting to the next thing, even if I didn’t necessarily want to move on.” 

“Idiot. Who the fuck doesn’t like kissing?”

“No, but that’s not—I’m not explaining it right. I feel like I never learned how to kiss. So I’m sorry if I kind of suck at it.” 

Eddie laughs, then brings his hand to cup her jaw. “You don’t suck at kissing.” 

“I don’t?” 

“No. But it does suck when you get in your head about it. I’d rather have you here with me.” 

“I’m here,” she says, and she is; brought back from the fuzzy place by Eddie’s staid practicality. “I’m sorry.” 

“Yeah, no. Not letting you apologize. Look at me, huh?” 

It’s not a request, which makes it easy, and she meets his eyes while biting her bottom lip with her crooked tooth. “Sorry.” 

“Chrissy!”

“I’m sorry!” 

Eddie grabs her hand and bites her finger, sending a wave of giggles through her. “No. Apologizing.” 

“I can’t help it.”

“Yes, you can. Every time you want to apologize, just say… oh, Eddie, you have such good taste in music.”

She snorts, then yelps when he licks her palm. “Ew!”

“Say it.” 

“No!” 

“Because it’s not true?” 

“Because sometimes people need to apologize!”

“Yeah, and sometimes Chrissygirls apologize all the fucking time, and it loses all meaning. So, no more apologies. Especially when we’re making out. No buts, no exceptions.” 

“What if I accidentally poke you in the eye?” 

“What, with these oh-so-deadly tiny fingers?” He kisses each one in order, and she finds herself once more on the verge of a giggle. 

“Maybe.” 

“These puny little things?” He pretends to take a bite of her pinkie. “These fingers can’t do shit, Cunningham, and if you poke me in the eye, I’ll probably thank you for it.” 

“You’re so full of crap, Eddie.” 

“I’m serious. No apologies. Even if you, like, cause me to spontaneously combust from how fucking good you are at kissing. They should have let you teach a class on making out in school because maybe I’d have had enough credits to graduate my second time out.” 

Chrissy kisses him to shut him up, and he laughs against her mouth. It makes her laugh, too, because everything is okay. She’s not sorry, and he’s not mad.

The laughter leads to something deeper, and soon their bodies have resumed that slow, tentative grind. Instead of straddling both his legs, she shifts to straddle one. Luxuriates in the length of him pressed against her body as she rocks forward, avoiding the pitfall of bad memories and focusing on how she feels, surprised to find a pleasurable pressure and heat at the apex of her thighs. The sensation isn’t new; it reminds her of how she’d felt at eleven, twelve, thirteen when she rubbed against pillows, teddy bears, and anything else she could find. Back before she came to understand that those things were what bad girls did.

Being with Eddie links the heat and pressure to more than curiosity, though. With Eddie, they’re tied to desire. To want. And that wanting is a green, growing place. A heady, breathy desperation threatening to send rationality running for the hills, replaced with something wanton. A single-minded need to hold him. To touch him. To take that want and watch it spread like some mossy carpet within her mind. So she groans. Grinds herself down, pulls his hair, and can’t even catch her breath until he grunts. Puts his hands on her hips to slow her frantic movements.

“Okay, okay… shit, hang on a second, sweetheart,” he says, twitching beneath her. 

Chrissy emerges from the haze of desire to find herself sitting beside reality and its ever-present friend, shame. “Sor—shoot. Um. You have good taste in music?” 

He laughs, though it’s strained. “No need for the compliment. I just don’t want to mess up my jeans, and I’m pretty close.” 

“Oh.” She can’t help but feel proud of that. “You are?” 

“Uh-huh.” He shifts her backward, so she’s sitting on his lower thigh instead of his dick, then drops his hands to the top of her legs, rubbing circles against the denim. 

"What about...?" Those aren’t the right words, so she tries again. “Doesn’t it hurt?” 

“Doesn’t what hurt?” 

“Not, um, finishing?” 

He raises a brow. “Does not finishing hurt?” 

“Like… like blue balls,” she whispers, as though someone might be listening. 

“Oh, Jesus. That’s not a thing.” 

“It’s not?” That’s news to her, considering all the horror stories she’s heard from her girlfriends or the complaints she got from Jason before he married her and told her she’d lost the right to protest.

“Well, it’s a thing, but I’m not gonna die.” 

“But it does hurt?” 

“Not… no? It’s not super fun to be this, uh, worked up for a long time without, you know, getting off? But no. It doesn’t really hurt.” 

“What does it feel like?” 

“Ah…” He laughs and pushes a hand through his hair. “It feels heavy, I guess? An ache, but not that sharp.” 

“Oh.” She frowns. “Jason used to act like I was killing him.” 

“Yeah, well, Jason’s a barely sentient puss boil that got cut off a plague victim, so I wouldn’t trust what he says about anything. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna awkwardly limp inside and grab a shower token.” 

“Oh, sure.” She gets off his lap and gives him room to maneuver. Which he does. Slowly. And with a quick, crotch-level adjustment. “I’ll, um, hang out here?” 

“Good. Stay just like that because I need a mental image.” He holds a pretend camera to his eye and takes a pretend photo, then laughs. “Perfect. Thanks, Chris.”

He heads for the truck stop, leaving her with the sight of his silhouette and the assurance of his thoughts about her. Just her. Not the cheerleader on the magazine cover or the woman giving the blow job. 

The idea of that sends another little pulse southward, and it occurs to her that the sensations Eddie described—the aching, the heaviness—aren’t dissimilar to those she’s feeling. Curious, she leans against the wall, then presses the heel of her hand against her sex. The sensation isn’t so intense when she does it herself, but it’s there, and after a moment’s guilty deliberation, she unbuttons her jeans and slips two fingers beneath the waistband of her panties. 

She’s wet. Like, actually wet. Not as wet as the woman in the photo staring up at her from the foot of the bed, whose vagina glistens with arousal, but a tiny bit. Intrigued, she reaches for the flimsy magazine, needing a closer inspection, then touches herself on the same spot the woman is touching. And that spot? That’s the spot she remembers from her pubescent explorations. The same spot that would—occasionally and entirely inadvertently—receive brief stimulation from Jason’s groping fingers. 

“Oh…” she exhales, circling the sensitive skin as she searches for the name but doesn’t find it. They’d had sex-ed sophomore year, and one of the PE coaches had hurriedly walked them through the contours of their own anatomy like they ought to be ashamed to have it. It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t need a name; she just needs to touch. 

The heavy feeling returns after a few seconds of rubbing herself, and while she can’t quite pinpoint how she feels, the word “building” keeps coming to mind. Building intensity, building desire, building heat. Building toward something bigger.

When that heavy ache becomes so much that it’s almost too much, she yanks her hand out of her panties and cradles it against her chest instead of chasing her want to where it’s leading. She catches her breath and squeezes her thighs together until the pangs subside, and she can breathe again, feeling like she’s missed out on something important. 

Frowning, she studies her fingers, which are slick and smell weird. Not a bad weird, just a weird-weird. Still, Eddie might notice, so she grabs two McDonald’s napkins from the center console. Wipes her hand clean, then opens the door to air things out while she jogs across the parking lot to toss the napkins in the nearest trash can. She returns to the truck and leaves the door open while she cleans up the magazines and straightens the blankets. By the time Eddie returns, she’s stretched out and reading Fellowship, where the party is leaving Lorien. 

“Fucking freezing in here,” he says, shivering as he shuts the door behind himself. 

She marks her place in the book and reaches for him. “I was hot.” 

“Freak.” He takes her hands in his and blows on her palms; if he smells anything, he doesn’t let on. “Move over.” 

Chrissy lets him settle beside her, even though they’ll both need to get up when she wants to put on her pajamas. 

“Hi,” he says once they’re face-to-face. “You good?” 

“Yes. How’s um… how are you?” 

“Better now.” He kisses her, then brushes some hair from her eyes. “You had fun?” 

“So much fun. Let’s do it again sometime.”

“Anytime, Cunningham,” he says, and kisses the tip of her nose.

Chapter Text

There’s a suburb of Denver called Broomfield, which contains three strip malls, four apartment complexes, a couple manufacturing hubs, and a hell of a view of the Rockies in the distance. They arrive just past noon, and Eddie drops Chrissy at a curb near a bus depot, allowing her to stretch her legs. Every inch of her legs. Inches Eddie appreciates more than ever, given that they were wrapped around him last night. And, alright, he didn’t get laid, but he feels like he got laid, you know? She didn’t even touch him, but he still came harder in his own hand than he has in months. Years, maybe. She’s going to be the death of him, is all, and when they actually fuck, he might pull a Jesus Christ and roll back the fucking stone to tell the world about his miracle.

Not that sleeping with Chrissy’s a miracle. Clearly, they’ll get there—he believes that now more than before—but Carver sure as shit did a number on her about sex, same as he did with everything else. Another steaming pile for Eddie to add to his official list of Punchable Things. Murder-able Things. 

“Okay, bye,” Chrissy says from the ground, shouldering her bag and shielding her eyes from the sun glinting off the cab as she looks up at him. God, she’s being adorable today, having spent the morning with her nose pressed to the window, marveling at the sheer scale of the mountains as they drove through them, with a constant refrain of “Eddie, look!” on her lips. Like if she didn’t tell him, he might miss the snow-capped peaks or the russet-colored valleys spread below them, half the trees having lost their leaves, the other half clinging on. 

“That’s our house,” she’d said at one point while they were passing a cabin perched precariously on a cliff-side. 

“You sure?” he said, and at her defiant glare, he’d clarified. “It’s just kinda close to the interstate, you know? Noisy.” 

“Oh, right. Well, okay. I want a house like that, but really far away from everything.” 

“Like The Shining?” 

She’d blinked, reminding him that one of these days, he had to get her to a place with a VCR. “Is that good or bad?” 

“We should probably be a little closer to civilization.” 

“Sure. You can be our supply runner.” 

Eddie can live with that. He’ll gladly spend the rest of his life as her errand boy if she’ll let him. 

Stretching across the seats, the gear shift digging into his stomach, he grins down at her. “Wait a second.” 

“What?” 

“C’mere and give me a kiss.” Which is a thing he can ask now. Lucky motherfucker.

“Oh my gosh,” she says but steps back up anyway. Presses her lips to his briefly, then hops down. “Bye, Eddie. Be good.” 

“You first, man,” he says as she shuts the door.

An hour and a half later, he’s finished with his drop and has a new destination. Chrissy waits for him on the same street corner, and once she’s settled in the truck, she shows him her haul—sandwiches, a couple fresh rolls of film, and a Denver Broncos baseball cap, which she plunks on her head. 

Eddie takes a sandwich and unwraps it, while Chrissy does the same, taking a bite before he can prompt her to. He doesn’t make a big deal out of that, though, as he pulls away from the curb and heads for the interstate. 

“Where are we headed?” she asks once they’ve merged. 

“Kansas City.” 

“That’s kind of far, right?” 

“Pretty far. We’ll get there tomorrow, overnight somewhere in between.” 

They make good time out of Colorado because the long, flat, stretching nothingness of farms and fields is easier to drive than any twisting mountain path. It is also, he has discovered over the years, deadly dull. Having company helps, but even Chrissy’s eyes glaze over from the monotony of the rolling terrain. Eastern Colorado is dire, as is western Kansas. Dorothy might have wanted to go back home, but Eddie has always found Oz infinitely more appealing, wicked witches and all. 

By the time they reach a nowhere town called Lincoln, he’s yawning every two seconds and ready to call it for the day. Chrissy’s been dozing intermittently, for which he can’t blame her. Prairies are prairies are prairies are prairies, and that’s that. 

And, yeah, there’s a part of him that stops a bit earlier than he might have otherwise because he wants to crawl into the back of the cab with her. Kiss her, touch her, and see about a repeat performance of the previous evening. Maybe he’ll get his hand a little further up her shirt this time. Ease her anxieties by showing her that there’s nothing wrong with anything she does—or doesn’t—want to do. It’s funny, all that shit she said about never learning to do it right; he’s not sure that was ever a concern for him. He just charged in, face—tongue?—first, and figured if the girl he was with didn’t punch him or bite him, he was doing something right. Chrissy’s a different sort of person, though. She frets. Overthinks, if he’s honest, and while he loves the way her brain works, he also doesn’t mind shouldering the burden of helping her turn down the volume every once in a while. 

“You wanna nap?” he offers, all nonchalant. 

“Not if I want to sleep later,” she says, throwing cold water on his prurient desires. “Let’s go out. There’s a bar over there.” 

There is, indeed, a bar. A squat, grey, windowless building with a smattering of cars in the parking lot and a neon sign advertising cold beer. Which, if he can’t inch his way toward touching Chrissy’s breasts, will be some small comfort. 

They cross the road, and he opens the battered metal door for her. Through it is an establishment that reminds him of the Hideout, otherwise known as the only place in Hawkins where his band could get a gig. Cracked high-top tables support the weight of men in flannel shirts slumped against them, nursing beers against the difficulty of their days. Farmers, most likely. Or truckers like himself. It’s that sort of place. 

There’s a band playing, too. Pumping out a half-decent Creedence cover, which isn’t exactly Eddie’s jam, but he respects that you gotta play to the crowd when you have a crowd to play to. Corroded Coffin never learned that lesson—probably why they never made it further as a bar band than the only bar in town owned by Gareth’s cousin’s father-in-law. 

Jesus, Gareth. He ought to check in on him next time he’s home. Check in on all of them, actually. Gareth’s gotta be in his third year of college now, and Jeff, well, Jeff joined the military, and he wasn’t the only dude in their graduating class to have done so. Limited options and all. As for Grant, he’d flunked his senior year, following in Eddie’s not-so-illustrious footsteps. Eddie never found out if he made it through on the second attempt, but he’s gonna look him up. 

Chrissy squeezes his hand and tugs him toward the bar, where they each get a PBR. Eddie lights a cigarette and pulls her against his chest, wrapping an arm around her from behind, forearm resting against her sternum as they watch the band. It’s a little possessive, but his girl’s pretty cute, and he doesn’t need any skeezoid getting ideas. This might make him meathead-adjacent, but he’s only thinking about it, not saying it, and besides, she’s leaning back against him and playing with the rings on his fingers, so fuck it, right? 

“I used to play at a bar like this,” he says into her ear, sounding like some wizened old grandpa rather than a dude waxing nostalgic about something that happened two years prior. 

“You did?” she asked. “I didn’t know that.” 

“Yeah, well, I’m an enigma, Cunningham.” He ashes his cigarette and reaches for his beer, one-handed.

“Just you or a band?” 

“A band. Uh, I don’t know if you remember. Corroded Coffin? We put up a lot of flyers.” 

She shakes her head, then stops. “Yes! You played in the talent show! In middle school!”

“Oh, God. Yeah. That was the, uh… original lineup. Jesus.”

“I never realized that was you. Or, maybe I did. You were older.” 

“Break my heart. I remember you guys. Doing that little cheer dance to, what was it? Fuckin’ Grease, right?” 

Chrissy groans, covering her face and laughing. “It wasn’t my idea!” 

“No, you were funny. All the little… ramalama dingadoos.” 

“Shut up.” 

“I’m serious!”

“Hmph.” She dips her head to mouth at the side of his wrist, not quite a kiss, but affection all the same. “I’m sorry I wasn’t paying attention to you. And I’m sorry I never came to see your band.” 

“Yeah, well, you had popular kid shit to do. Besides, we weren’t that good, and people tore down the flyers.” 

“Eddie. I’ve heard you play. You’re really talented.” 

“Yet as a group, we were depressingly mediocre.”

The band wraps up an Allman Brothers cover, then slides into Lynyrd Skynyrd because that’s the sort of place this is. Chrissy shuffles them forward, beer in hand, swaying to the beat as she steers them toward an empty high-top table. The sticky surface looks like it hasn’t been wiped down since Skynyrd wrote Simple Man, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Just wriggles out of his hold onto a tall stool, which makes Eddie laugh because she looks like a hobbit scaling Mount Doom. 

“Don’t make fun of me,” she says when she notices him grinning. 

He hugs her from behind again, not bothering with a seat, as he always prefers close proximity. “I can’t help that you’re so fucking short, man.” 

“I take back the nice things I said about you playing the guitar.” 

“Ouch,” he says with a smirk, settling in for the show. 

The band heads into their fourth and fifth covers, meant to appeal to guys ten or twenty years older than Eddie, while the bar fills up. He gets them both a second round after a few songs, and once finished with it, he has to piss, but he’s going to deny it until his bladder threatens to burst open and give him sepsis, or whatever happens when bladders explode. It’s stupid—back to that grunting caveman shit—but he doesn’t like being out of Chrissy’s sightline in places like this. Not that he thinks she’ll get kidnapped or anything dumb like that. And he’s sure as hell not worried about her taking off with someone else. No, it’s more that… yeah, okay, so any time she’s ever mentioned a dude around him, save for her brother, that dude has been a real shithead. Mostly he’s worried that someone will hit on her and upset her; undo what progress she’s made toward becoming exactly who she’s meant to be, and send her spiraling right back into that hard little shell they’ve been working to crack.

However, pissing his jeans might ruin their evening, so when he can’t stand it any longer, he kisses her neck and murmurs that he’ll be back. She waves him off, and he beelines for the bathroom. Turns out that the men’s room is closed—and if a bar shitter is closed for maintenance, he knows it has to be foul inside—so he’s stuck waiting with a couple of women for the alternative, which is a single-stall affair. 

The second woman takes an eternity, and by the time Eddie relieves himself and gets back to their table, he finds it occupied by another group, with Chrissy nowhere in sight. 

Eddie’s heart takes a swan dive onto the dirty floor, skittering along, propelled by blood and phlegm and fear. He whips around and scans the room, sure he’ll see her dodging the advances of some Kansan Neanderthal. With a mullet. Named Dale. Eddie’s gonna beat the shit out of Dale.

In the end, Chrissy finds him before he can find her. She pushes through the crowd to grab his hand while he searches the other direction. He jumps about twenty feet, and God, nobody’s ever had such a hold on him before.

“Hey!” she says. 

Taking her arm, he tugs her to him, hoping she can’t feel his heart hammering in his chest as he tries to play it cool. “Uh… hey. We lost the table.” 

“I know. I had to talk to the band. Come on, come with me.” 

She says it so matter-of-factly that Eddie wonders if he missed something and ponders that while he runs a hand down her spine, counting every vertebra on the way.

“Eddie!” She wriggles against him when he doesn’t immediately follow her lead, and God, she’s okay. She’s been okay, and he’s acting like she’s two instead of twenty. “Come on, I’m serious.” 

“Where are we going?” 

“I told you. I talked to the band, and they said you can play a song with them.” 

“… they what?”

“Yeah. I told them that you were a professional. That they had to play with you. Come on.” 

She yanks him by the crook of his elbow, leaving him no choice but to stumble along behind as they weave a path to the stage, where the guys in the band are gearing up to begin their next set. 

“Hi, Rob,” Chrissy says to the lead singer, presumably named Rob. “This is Eddie.” 

“Hey, man,” says Rob, extending his hand. “Your girl says you wanna play?” 

“Yeah, he does. He’s the best,” she says before Eddie can raise a protest. 

“Cool.” Rob tosses his head toward his own guitar, which is lying on an amp. Decent Fender. Not quite as badass as Eddie’s baby, but she calls to him all the same. “You good using mine?” 

“Uh-huh,” he says, still not entirely caught up on what he’s being volunteered for. There’s no way these guys are letting this happen; Chrissy must have done something. Or… shit, it’s possible she just did that Chrissy thing, where she’s so goddamn persuasive that men, women, and children fall to their knees to do as she asks. 

“You got a song in mind?” Rob says. 

Eddie doesn’t, but he knows enough to know that Venom and Anthrax aren’t going to fly with this crowd. Instead, he rifles through the Wayne songbook, picking a favorite they can both agree on. “La Grange?”

“Yeah, we can do that. You’re good with lead?” 

He nods—he can rip through the riff in his sleep—and climbs onstage, feeling like he’s in one of those dreams where you end up in a play without knowing any lines. At least this is a part he’s played before, though. He nods to the other guys and swings Rob’s strap over his shoulders, adjusting the positioning until he has a feel for the guitar in his hands. Bulkier than Sweetheart’s sleek angles, it puts him in mind of the first electric Wayne ever bought him. Probably he’ll fuck up a time or two, considering, but it’s a hick bar in Kansas. If he screws up, who’s gonna remember?

“So, uh, let’s just knock this out,” Rob says, exchanging a glance with the bassist, the drummer, and the rhythm guitarist. “La Grange. Let him kick it off, Scotty. You pick up and get us back on the beat if you have to.” 

Yeah, they definitely all think he’s going to suck, and they’re doing this out of some Chrissy-inspired pity. That’s alright, though. He’ll either prove them wrong or bomb his way off the stage. Whatever happens, he thinks he might be having fun. 

“Go ahead, man,” Rob says, nodding at Eddie. 

Eddie’s fingers find the grooves between the frets, and he takes a deep breath before kicking the song into gear. Picks out that drumbeat blues rhythm that John Lee Hooker birthed and Dusty Hill breathed new life into, finding the beat and driving it home as he falls in love with all six strings of Rob’s sweetheart. 

The drummer kicks in during the second run through the riff, and Eddie grins. Just like riding a fucking bike, once the pedals start turning, it’s easy to find his balance. Pedaling forward as the notes of the song glide beneath his tires. 

“Shit, dude,” Rob says with a laugh. “Your girl wasn’t lying.” 

Eddie doesn’t have time to say thanks before Rob grabs the mic and hits the first line with a sharp growl that’d make any ZZ Top fan proud. 

It’s only when they kick the song into high gear that Eddie looks into the crowd and finds Chrissy standing at the edge of the stage, her face lit with a grin that puts sunlight in shadow. When he catches her eye, she cups her hands around her mouth and lets out a whoop that could only come from a girl who once compelled a football stadium-sized crowd to get on its feet.

He laughs. Steps forward to show off a little, noting how her eyes track his fingers as they slide along the frets. Fuck, he’d forgotten how good this felt. The electric current flowing beneath his hands when he performs, connecting him to the rhythm and the band as they give and take from each other. Building something with a few simple chords. 

And, shit, it’s a fantastic fucking song. Sure, he’d been mentally ripping on these dudes for playing Wayne-rock covers, but there’s a reason people like those songs. Shit, Eddie likes those songs. Some of them. If nothing else, he can agree that they’re feel-good, and with La Grange, they leave a lot of room for interpretation. Improvising and screwing around, and Jesus, these guys get it. They know their shit, and when Eddie starts riffing right after Rob throws out the first “haw, haw, haw, haw,” things click into a new groove, and he goes to the place where he doesn’t second-guess his choices. 

So, you know, Chrissy’s right. He is good at this. And when Rob tosses a nod in his direction, he takes the guitar solo with the confidence of a dude who knows he doesn’t suck. Walks to the front of the stage to plant his legs, rocking forward to the rhythm as people surge toward him. It’s tribal, how humans can’t help throwing themselves at a familiar refrain.

The bassist steps closer, leaning into Eddie’s shoulder, which puts them in danger of a collision, but they never quite get there. Rhythms syncopated, they grin, both sweating and laughing, and yeah, yeah, sex is good, but people really ought to try preening in front of a crowd. Absolutely fucking orgasmic. 

Nothing lasts forever, though, but Eddie milks it to the end. Takes a few extra measures before letting the drummer close out with a big, bombastic run that gets the room hooting and hollering.

Nobody’s hollering louder than Chrissy, who’s looking at him with stars in her eyes. And Eddie? Yeah, he’s gonna indulge in a little bit of wish-fulfillment. He swings the guitar around to his back, then leans down to kiss her like he used to imagine doing in high school. Desperate, crush-fueled fantasies where she’d magically turn up to see his show made a reality as she laughs. Throws her arms around his neck and holds him in her embrace for a second before tugging on his hair and letting him go. 

Eddie nips her lip before straightening and taking off Rob’s guitar. 

“Wow,” Rob says as Eddie hands the instrument over. “That was awesome. You hanging out a minute?” 

“Sure.” 

“Yeah, cool. I’m gonna buy you a drink.” 

Eddie promises he won’t go anywhere before hopping down from the stage. Chrissy practically jumps him, pressing another half-dozen kisses to his cheeks while telling him he was “so, so amazing!” 

They head to the bar with Eddie still riding high, thrumming with a bright energy that’s bolstered every time someone compliments him as they pass. When they reach the bar, they order a couple of beers, and Chrissy wraps an arm around his waist, squeezing tight. 

“I didn’t know you could do that!” she says over the sound of the band starting the next song. “Just… start playing with them!”

“You’re the one who volunteered me!”

“Yeah, but I thought you’d pick something really easy? Or they’d let you do a solo. I don’t know how it works.”

“And yet, you asked.” He pulls her in close. “Why’d you ask?” 

“Because you looked sort of wistful about your old band.” 

“Wistful, huh?” 

“Yes. And I figured you’d just say no if you didn’t want to.” 

“I didn’t want to say no.” 

“I kind of figured that, too.” 

“I can’t believe you told them I was a professional.” 

“It was the fastest way to convince them you could do it. Besides, you pretty much are.” 

“How do you figure?” 

“Because I said so.” 

“Yeah, well, thank you. For asking.” 

She ducks her head, picking up her newly arrived beer from the bar. “It was selfish, I promise. I had to see what I missed out on.” 

“Oh, of course,” he says and kisses her again. 

The band plays their last set, wrapping up after a few more songs. Afterward, there’s not much in the way of breakdown—a couple amps, plus the drum kit—though Eddie still doesn’t envy them the task. Hauling that shit back and forth from his van was always his least favorite part of any gig, especially on rainy, snowy, or otherwise shitty nights. 

Once everything’s loaded out, the guys from the band make their way to the bar, where Rob spots Eddie and grins. They do introductions—the bassist is Ben, the drummer is Scott, the rhythm guitarist is Frank—and all seems normal enough until Chrissy pipes up. 

“Thanks for taking a chance on this guy,” she says to Rob. 

“No worries. What’d you say your name was again?” 

“Sam,” she says, extending her hand. 

Eddie blinks twice, but Chrissy just keeps talking.

“We’re headed to Nashville,” she continues, and she must be feeling the beers because she’s just chatting away. Lying through her teeth. “We started out in LA. Eddie was in a band out there, but we heard Nashville was better if you wanted to make a career out of it, you know? More, um, opportunities?” 

“Yeah, Nashville’s alright if you like country music,” Ben agrees. 

“Who doesn’t? I mean, Eddie likes everything. But it’s not even about the type of music. He wants to, um… what’s that thing, baby? The thing where you want to play on records?” 

This level of truth-twisting is Chrissy using her grandfather’s memory to score a baseball cap from an unwitting security guard turned up to eleven. Eddie doesn’t know what to do with her, and he’s torn between thinking it’s funny (it is) and wishing he didn’t have to tap-dance to keep up with the yarn she’s spinning. “Uh. Yeah. I’m looking for session work.” 

“Session work! That’s it. He wants to be a session work person.” 

“I can dig that steady paycheck,” Rob says while flagging down the bartender. “You drink whiskey? Jack?” 

“When I’m feeling fancy,” Eddie says. 

“Shots, then. You want one, too, Sam?” 

Chrissy nods, though her fingers dig into Eddie’s waist, and he can’t help but smile, leaning in close to whisper in her ear, “you’ve never done a shot, huh, Sam?” 

God, the way she squirms at that. Shaking her head and tucking her face against his chest for half a second before putting her bravado back on. 

“Follow my lead,” he says, nipping at her earlobe as the shots appear on the bar. 

Eddie takes his first, and Chrissy follows, looking like she’s been doing it all her life. The slightest of grimaces graces her pretty face, though she hides it by turning to hug him again. He cradles the back of her skull and nearly laughs when she bites his chest through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. 

“What the fuck’s got into you tonight?” he asks, low so only she can hear it. 

“You,” she says, his little wild thing, before turning around and smiling at the band. “So, how do you guys know each other?” 

Turns out, they’re townies who’ve been friends since high school. They’re older than Eddie—Rob’s the youngest at twenty-four—and they have a good rapport. Eddie finds himself at ease with them soon enough, even if Chrissy keeps digging the hole of their lies a little deeper every time she opens her mouth. 

“Two years,” she says when Scott asks her how long they’ve been together. “I wanted to be an actress, so I moved to LA after high school. But, you know, easier said than done, and I was waitressing. He came into my restaurant one night after a show with his… that was your first band, right, baby?” 

Eddie just nods and sips his freshly delivered beer. “Uh-huh.” 

“Anyway, it was this crazy busy night, but I thought he was so funny. He made jokes every time I stopped by the table, but he wasn’t being gross or hitting me. So when he wrote his number on the receipt, I don’t know. I figured, what the heck, right? I called him, and he took me bowling and let me win, so I kept him.” 

“Man,” Ben complains around his half-smoked cigarette. “Cute waitresses never wanna go out with me.” 

“Because you do hit on them, you creep.” Rob gives a long-suffering sigh. “Chicks don’t think you’re cool.” 

“Dude,” Ben grumbles but doesn’t argue. 

“What about you guys?” Chrissy asks the rest of them. “Girlfriends?” 

“Yeah,” says Rob.

“Nope,” says Frank.

“Wife,” says Scott. 

Chrissy’s eyes light up, and she turns her full attention toward Scott. “Where is she?” 

“She’s a nurse. Works nights. Plus, she’s sick of this bar.” 

“How long have you been married?” 

“Ah, a little over three years?” 

“And you like it? Being married?” 

Scott says he does—says it beats trawling bars and hitting on waitresses like Ben—and Chrissy follows up with a half-dozen more queries. Everything from where they live to what Scott does for a living to whether or not they’re going to have kids. 

“Man, you better be picking up what she’s putting down,” Rob says eventually, glancing at Eddie, who’s more than pleasantly buzzed. 

“Huh?”

“A girl asks that many questions about marriage, she’s gotta be angling for a ring.” 

Chrissy gives Rob an appraising look, then shrugs. “I mean eventually. We’ve talked about it a lot, but we make decisions together, and we decided to wait until we got to Nashville and settled in. Right, babe?” 

“Yeah,” Eddie says, tightening his hold and following her lead. “We’re practically engaged. Just gotta figure out the logistics.” Such as their lived reality in which Chrissy—not Sam—is still married to a psychopath. “But, you know. I’d marry her tomorrow. Tonight, even.” 

Chrissy’s lower half wriggles, which he can only tell because of how close she’s pressed. He hopes it’s a good sign and kisses her head before murmuring into her ear, “all good?” 

She nods. Flashes him a smile before turning to Frank and asking him about the dog he’d mentioned earlier. The conversation drifts from Chrissy’s bald-faced lies while the drinks keep flowing, and soon enough, it’s half an hour past midnight. Chrissy can’t stop yawning, and she’s practically asleep on Eddie’s chest, which he figures is as good a reason as any to get them out of there. 

Rob wishes them luck in Nashville, then fishes in his pocket for a twenty-dollar bill, which he passes to Chrissy without comment. 

She grins and pockets the cash. “I told you. Didn’t I tell you?” 

“You told me. And hey, Eddie, happy birthday, man.” 

Eddie doesn’t correct him, not wanting to contradict any of Chrissy’s lies. They say goodnight before heading into the frigid night, crossing the nearly deserted highway at a quick jog. 

“Birthday, huh?” he says once they reach the parking lot. 

“That was the only way they’d let you play. I mean, the money, mostly. I said he could keep it if you sucked and that I was trying to do something sweet for your birthday.” 

“You’re so full of shit, Sam.” 

“I know.” She grins, then stumbles over a crack in the sidewalk and giggles. “Drunk, too.” 

“Yeah, no kidding.” Eddie unlocks Smaug, then boosts her into the passenger seat. She shuffles her way into the bunk and he follows her, shutting the door against the wind and waiting for her to settle. 

“Why’d you tell them all that stuff?” he asks once she’s under the covers and he’s sitting beside her, playing with her hair. 

“I dunno. Maybe I wanted to see what it’d be like if we were normal.” 

“Normal.” 

“Uh-huh. Met normally, dated normally. Like we were just regular people.” 

“How’d it feel?” 

“Different.” She yawns and cups a hand over her mouth. “You said we were going to get married.” 

“I did,” he agrees, unsure if now’s the time for that conversation. 

“Hmm.” A smile settles on her face, and she blows him a kiss. “Okay. Goodnight.” 

“Night, sweetheart,” he says, relieved; she’ll most likely forget it by the morning. Which is both good and bad; he wants to probe more and figure out what was so appealing to her about the lying. What, exactly, she means by “normal.” At the same time, though, he understands there might not be an answer. That whatever prompted it is just her, and trying to analyze it will only lead to self-conscious ruin.

He sits with her until she drifts off, then stretches out beside her. Only, he can’t sleep. Because, alright, the thing is? Drunk Chrissy snores. Not big, honking snuffles, but delicate little inhales that make her sound like a squeaky dog toy. Which, don’t get him wrong, is adorable. But also, it’s driving him crazy. So, he gets up. Opens a compartment to retrieve a notebook he hasn’t touched in at least six months. Poems, sketches, and half-baked song ideas litter the pages, with the first entry dated back to August 1986. Right around when he sat for his CDL exam, and got out on the road.

He’d been writing a lot then. A font of inspiration, hardly able to breathe without getting something out on paper, as he made his inaugural trip across the country. The entries have gotten significantly more sporadic since then, though. What was once wondrous has faded into grinding monotony, and yeah, he’s lost himself a little. He can admit that. Marvel at the fact that Chrissy even saw it before he did, and finagled him a spot on that stage.

Behind him, she turns over. Blows out a breath and mumbles something incomprehensible.

Eddie smiles, sticks his feet on the dash, and starts to write.

Chapter Text

Dawn is breaking when Chrissy opens her eyes, and the bunk is freezing. She jerks a hand, squinting against the light. Reaches for the blanket and the boy in the blanket, only to realize the boy isn’t there.

She startles at his absence. Sits too quickly, which makes her head spin. Last night… God. The bar. The band. Eddie onstage. Peacocking. 

He’s asleep in the passenger seat. Skinny legs tangled on the dash with his neck twisted at an angle that can’t be comfortable. A notebook is open on his lap, and his pencil has fallen to the floor. 

Slowly, not wanting to wake him, Chrissy shimmies to the edge of the bunk. Temples throbbing, mouth tasting of old sneakers, she searches for her shoes. Still in last night’s clothes, she needs to pee. Needs water. Needs to brush her teeth and comb her hair and—

There is a drawing of her in Eddie’s notebook.

Frowning, she leans closer, sure she’s wrong. But no, it’s her. Unmistakably her. Sleeping in the bunk. One hand curled into a fist, resting beside her open mouth. 

It’s a good likeness, even if Eddie’s sketched her softer and prettier than reality tells her she is. She wonders if that’s how he sees her. Wonders how blinded he is to the truth of the pus and ooze and goo that make up all her inside parts, since he’s drawn someone so peaches and cream. 

A car horn blares, and Eddie twitches. Chrissy cuts her eyes away from her better self and clears her throat before forcing a yawn. 

“Fuck,” Eddie mutters, greeting the dawn with his customary grace. The notebook falls to the floor, overturned, so she can no longer see herself the way he sees her. 

“Hi,” she says. 

He turns, and his face contorts into a grimace. “Oh, god damn it. My neck… Jesus Christ.” 

Making a noise of concern, she brushes some hair off his shoulder and squeezes the muscle beneath. “It’s bad?” 

“Pretty bad, yeah.” 

“Go take a shower.”

“Is that a hint, Cunningham?” 

“We both smell like a bar.” 

He grins. Kisses her stale-mouthed and sticky, then bumps their foreheads together. “You hungover?” 

“Not that bad. Just sort of blech-y.” She drank more last night than she had at the bar in Calexico that made her feel so crappy, so maybe it’s a tolerance thing. Or maybe she just got lucky. “I really have to pee.” 

“Am I stopping you?” He yawns, and his breath smells like their kiss tasted, so she can’t help but make a face. He laughs, then kisses her again, and they do that for a minute—grossness and all—before going their separate ways in the truck stop.

Chrissy showers and dries her hair as best she can with the underpowered blow dryer attached to the wall. Then, on her way back to Smaug, she buys a generic ‘Kansas’ hat from the lady behind the counter. It’s important to commemorate the magic places, and last night had been magic because she’d seen a side of Eddie that he kept hidden beneath a thin veneer of playing-pretend maturity. 

He’d been the best of himself up on that stage. Not the loudmouth kid jumping on tables, but a showman commanding a room of people who wanted to listen.  

There’s an irony to her falling for Eddie, who can so easily charm a crowd, while leaving Jason, who so desperately desires praise and attention that he dropped out of IU as a failure and started attending Bible college instead. Sheep do love their shepherds and all. 

The memory of Jason with a Bible clutched to his chest makes her shiver, so she pays for her cap and a cup of coffee before quick-marching across the parking lot. It’s so, so cold in Kansas—frost on the grass that covers the median and a bite to the wind that blows through endless fields—and she doesn’t have her jacket. 

Eddie’s waiting for her in the truck because he probably didn’t spend fifteen minutes cataloging flaws in the bathroom mirror. Chrissy, on the other hand, hates the way she looks but has a hard time looking away from her reflection. Every pore, every pockmark, every pound of flesh. She's done it for as long as she can remember. 

Her mother used to call her a narcissist. Said she was obsessed with appearances, which was unbecoming in a young woman. As though her mother wasn’t the person driving that obsession with every cutting remark. Besides, Chrissy had looked up narcissism in the dictionary, then Narcissus in an encyclopedia, and found the comparison wanting. Narcissus stared because he liked what he saw. She stares because she doesn’t. 

“Where’s your coat, kiddo?” Eddie asks when she shuts the door behind her. He’s sitting on the bunk, picking through his wet curls with a comb, using the technique she taught him—start from the bottom and work up to the roots, easing tangles as he goes—rather than just yanking a brush through the snarled mess. 

“Forgot,” she says, and her teeth are chattering. 

“I’ll get the truck warming up in a second.” He opens his mouth, pops his jaw, then turns his head up and to the right with a wince. 

“The shower didn’t help?” 

“Maybe a little.” 

Chrissy can do better than a little, so she wriggles past him to the other side of the bunk, then parts the curtain of his hair to massage the meat of his neck. There’s a lot of tension, and she can feel one particularly nasty knot as she probes.

“Oh, fuck,” he says with a groan, hands falling to his lap as she works. Digs her fingers in and holds until she feels some release, then finds a different tightness and does it again. “You’re fucking great at that.” 

“I’m alright. We used to do massages sometimes.” 

“Who’s ‘we’?” 

“Just my friends. If we were bored after practice, or at a sleepover, or wherever. We’d like… sit in a line, or a circle if we were trying to be fair and there were enough people.” 

Eddie grins, then groans again when her probing fingers press down. “Massage train. Shit. Girls are great. We didn’t do anything like that when we’d hang out.” 

“What did you do?” 

“Uh. Smoked pot. Talked shit. Tried to gross each other out.” 

“Like how?” 

“Mostly by eating weird stuff. I always won.” 

“That’s an accomplishment?” 

“One time we mixed every liquid in Gareth’s fridge together, and he bet me ten bucks I wouldn’t drink it.” 

“What was in it?” 

“Mmm… milk, orange juice, hot sauce… oh, fuck, that’s good. Uh, some caramel ice cream topping. And pickle juice, I remember that. And his mom had cottage cheese, so we put that in because it was chunky.” 

Chrissy’s gut roils. Cottage cheese is a texture that’s extremely familiar to her, given it was one of about three acceptable foods on her mother’s list. “Oh, my gosh.” 

“And there was, okay, you know when you buy hamburger meat and there’s like… juice in the package?” 

“Eddie!” 

“I needed the money! Anyway. I chugged it, and then I puked. Almost instantly. On his kitchen floor. Because revenge is a bitch.” 

“Revenge for… ?” 

“Thinking I couldn’t do it.” 

Chrissy rolls her eyes, digging into another tight spot. “Boys are disgusting.” 

“Mostly. Fuck, that’s sore. Thank you, sweetheart.” 

“You’re welcome. What else did you guys do?” 

“Told a lot of fart jokes. Looked at dirty magazines. Watched Monty Python.” He drops his chin to his chest, shying away from an especially sensitive knot. “That hurts.” 

“It’s supposed to.” The way he’s running away from her fingers is charming, and she takes the opportunity to lean down and bite him to hold him in place.

“Jesus!” His shoulders tense, then relax, and he laughs. “Vampire. Do it harder.” 

Chrissy grins. Sinks her teeth into the nape of his neck where she can taste the salt of his skin and the soap of his shower. She hauls him back against her chest, and they land in a heap. The weight of him ought to make her nervous, maybe, but it doesn’t. She slings both arms around his torso, then squeezes so tightly that he grunts.

“Eddie?” she says, studying the impression her teeth have left against the pale skin of his neck. “I wish I’d had sleepovers with you.” 

He exhales, and his fingers close over her wrist. They tighten, then release, before he turns his head back at an awkward angle to kiss her cheek. “Me, too. Glad we have them now.” 

“I’d never make you chug anything gross.” 

“Meanwhile, I get all the benefits of the massage circle.” 

“So your neck feels better?” 

“Healed. Refreshed. Renewed. The girl has miracle fingers, ladies and gentlemen.” He smacks his lips against her cheek again, repeating the action until she giggles. “We gotta hit the road, though. Ready?” 

“Ready,” she says and lets him go.

Eddie starts Smaug, and they spend hours trekking across plains and prairies. It’s mid-afternoon when they reach Kansas City, which is not in Kansas. Or, well, it’s on both sides of a state line, but their destination is firmly in Missouri. 

While Eddie’s making the drop, Chrissy finds a used bookshop, where she discovers a book on nature photography and one about Ansel Adams. She buys both and a novelty item near the checkout that she might want to give Eddie for his birthday, which is rapidly approaching. 

The clerk is an older man who asks her if she’s interested in photography, so she tells him she’s actually a photographer for a paper in St. Louis and that she’s here with a reporter who’s on the trail of a corrupt politician. 

“Watch the papers,” she says as she pockets her change and leaves the store.

The lying puts a pep in her step, and she heads for a nearby Burger King, hoping to read her book and eat some fries. As far as she’s concerned, her little fibs don’t hurt anyone. They’re like tall tales, rolling across the country as she traverses it, which is as much her birthright as any other American girl. Hyperbole is in her blood, though perhaps she’s given to it more than most. 

The truth is, Chrissy has always been a liar. Beginning in childhood, when her mother would needle her with question after question about what she was or wasn’t doing, and Chrissy learned that a simple lie was safer than a complex truth. Lies kept things calm. Kept her mother’s hands at her side instead of striking her face or pinching her arms, and God, was it any wonder that she hadn’t thought twice when Jason did the same things? 

Of course, the problem with lying was that sometimes the truth came out anyway. Then, the retribution was swift and cruel. None of that changed that Chrissy’s first instinct was always to obfuscate and hide. 

She’d lied to Eddie a couple of times early in their acquaintance. Little, typical fibs about not being hungry, or not needing the bathroom, or being fine when she wasn’t. He saw—sees—right through them. Because he sees things about her other people don’t, knows her better than other people do, and lets her play games with anyone but him. 

By the time she eats her fries and finishes a chapter—nearly done now, so she’s reading slowly, savoring every word—it’s time to meet Eddie. The sun is setting when she steps outside, and she shivers, buttoning her coat. 

He’s already waiting at the far corner when she rounds the block, a cigarette in his mouth, leaning against a lamppost. He doesn’t see her at first, so she stops. Looks. Admires. Wishes she had her camera to preserve the way the dimming golden light catches his flyaway hairs. 

The moment passes, and he turns his head. Smiles when he sees her and lopes forward to wrap her in a hug. 

“Hi. Where’s Smaug?” she asks.

“Maintenance. I don’t need another Oregon. So I figure we’ll kill a couple hours, get dinner, then go back when nobody’s around.” 

Speaking of lying—she knows Eddie’s doing it by omission to the company he works for her by not telling them she’s there. She wonders how much trouble he’d be in if they found out, but she doesn’t want to ask. Doesn’t want to think about the consequences. 

“What’d you buy this time?” he asks, tugging at her shopping bag.

She shows him her books, concealing the maybe-gift. He offers to carry them for her, then declares that they can’t go to dinner in Kansas City unless they’re getting barbecue. Chrissy’s fries still weigh heavily in her stomach, but he’s excited, so she agrees. 

The restaurant he chooses is about a half mile away—he says he got a recommendation from a guy at the depot—and they walk as fast as they can to keep warm.

Inside, they’re shown to a table and greeted by a plump, pleasant waitress whose name tag reads Dorothy. Chrissy can’t help but wish they were still in Kansas, considering. 

The menu is expansive, and she doesn’t have much familiarity with barbecue. Eddie seems to know what’s what, though, so she lets him order for them both. Most of the meal, anyway.

“Can we also get two steamed vegetable sides and a house salad?” Chrissy asks before Dorothy can depart. 

“Sure, hon,” she says, scribbling it on her pad and walking away.

Eddie’s lip is curled in distaste, and his expression makes Chrissy laugh. 

“You have to eat vegetables sometimes, you know,” she says. 

“I eat vegetables.” 

“Tomato on a burger doesn’t count. You’re going to get, like… what’s that thing sailors used to get? Scurvy?” 

“I will not get scurvy!” He scoffs, knocking their feet together beneath the table. 

“You might,” she says, knocking his boots right back. “Four pieces of broccoli and six bites of salad. No croutons. Non-negotiable.” 

He folds his arms across his chest. “And if it kills me?” 

Rather than dignify that nonsense with a response, she rips half the paper off a straw and blows the other half at his face. He bats it away, then does the same to her, and they reach a broccoli detente. 

When the food arrives, it’s on a literal platter. Meat overflows on both sides, while the vegetables provide little more than a garnish. Eddie’s drooling like Wile E. Coyote chasing after the roadrunner, and while Chrissy can’t understand the appeal of so much meat in one place, she likes seeing him happy. 

She asks him to fix her a plate, which he does, telling her about burnt ends and baby back ribs before setting them in front of her and swearing she’ll love them both. 

“I’m sure I will,” she says, then pushes the salad bowl toward him. 

Reluctantly, he takes half, then impresses her with three whole bites before digging into his barbecue. She does the same, and she has to admit that the burnt ends are pretty darn delicious. 

“So, uh,” Eddie says after a couple minutes. “You know, Thanksgiving’s coming up.” 

That is, in fact, something Chrissy knows in the abstract. In reality, she’s not entirely sure what day of the week it is, which is a curiously freeing experience. She has always lived by other people’s schedules, and while she technically lives by Eddie’s now, it never feels that way. “Sure, I know.” 

“Dispatch asked me if I wanted to swing north, head home for the holiday.” 

A spike of panic stabs hard into Chrissy’s stomach, and her throat goes dry. “Oh?” 

“Uh-huh. But I told ‘em I’d prefer to pick up some extra hours and not to worry about it. So they’re sending us through Nashville, then up the east coast.” 

“Oh,” she repeats. That ought to comfort her, but her body’s not listening. “That’s… that’s good.” 

Eddie spears a piece of broccoli but doesn’t eat it, twirling his fork around like he’s picking up pasta. “Yeah. I mean. Sort of good. Sucks for my uncle.” 

She doesn’t know what to say to that, and once again, she starts with “oh” followed by, “I know that’s not, um. Ideal? For you?”

“It’s fine. But…” He won’t meet her eyes, and the broccoli falls off his fork. “I can’t miss Christmas? I have to go home for that.” 

The spike stabs harder, right into her spine, and she straightens, shaking her head, then nodding as her heart claws its way into her throat. “Of course. Yes. You do. You can drop me… or I can… you could pick me up later, or… ” 

“Hey, hang on. It’s not for another month. We’ve got time to talk about it. And, listen, I’m not pushing you or anything, but it’s obvious this is freaking you out. I just wanna know what you’re thinking.” 

“What I’m thinking?” she echoes, and it comes out wrong, all high-pitched and breathy, the way she used to talk to Jason and her mother when she was dancing delicately around a touchy subject. 

Eddie reaches across the table for her limp, useless hand. Pushes their fingers together and squeezes. “If you want to stay riding in my cab forever, I’m cool with that. But, you know. I live in Hawkins. That’s still home.” 

“I mean, obviously,” she says, the calm she’s forcing into her tone making her sound crazier as she inches her toes to the front of her shoes and presses her tongue to the roof of her mouth. “Obviously, you have to go home.” 

Spiders crawl up her spine when he cradles her hand. Kisses her palm before speaking again. “That’s not what I’m trying to ask, though, sweetheart. I’m just… I mean, have you thought about your plans?” 

“My plans?” The word nearly chokes her. “I’m… Eddie…” 

“Chrissy, I’m not trying to scare you.” 

His voice sounds like he’s talking to her underwater. She shakes her head and swallows around the spiders, which have settled in her throat. A rough tickle and a burn. “You’re not. I’m fine.” 

“Kind of feels like I am, though.” 

You are, says the quiet part. I hate it, says the quiet part. Stop it, says the quiet part.

“You’re not,” says the loud part, even as she yanks her hand away from his and slips it beneath the table to meet its twin, desperate to scratch, pick, and pull blood to the surface of her skin. 

Eddie frowns, eyes flicking down like he has X-ray vision, and maybe he does because he knows what she’s doing, sure as she does. “There’s no wrong answer. It’s just what you’re feeling. Okay?” 

He’s being nice—he’s always nice—but he’s not being honest. Chrissy shakes her head. Twitches when someone two tables over lets loose a raucous laugh. “I’m not feeling anything. I don’t want to talk about it.” 

There. That’s an answer, isn’t it? 

Eddie studies her closely, and she doesn’t like the look in his eyes. That X-ray look. Knowing, measured. He sees exactly what trick she’s playing and is weighing whether to play along. Nobody else in her life has ever looked at her like that, but Eddie does it all the time. To her mother, she’s a problem to be solved. To Jason, a trophy for display. To Eddie, she’s a living, breathing, misshapen mass of bones and guts and blood and issues she can’t discuss that he shouldn’t have to solve. 

She pushes her plate away. Presses her lips into a thin line. Picks at her thumb. 

“Why don’t we talk about it some other time?” Eddie says. 

A concession, but not absolution. She shrugs. Nods. Looks down at the table. 

“Not hungry?” he asks after a moment. 

“No. I ate fries before.” 

He sighs but doesn’t press her. Doesn’t tell her to try something. Doesn’t make it a game, which is sensible, considering, but still makes heat prickle her spine and tears spring to her eyes. She hates that it’s so easy for her to fall back into this. Hates that Eddie might be disappointed. Hates that she’s weak. 

Driving her fists into her thighs with enough pressure to bruise, she takes a deep breath, then pushes up from the booth. “I’m going to take a walk,” she says. “I can’t breathe in here.” 

She can’t see Eddie’s response because she’s resolutely not looking at him. There’s resignation in his tone when he speaks, though. “Whatever you want, Chrissy. You know how to get back to the depot?”

“Uh-huh.” 

“Truck’s parked in the back corner. I’ll meet you there?” 

“Yes. That’s fine.” 

“Be careful,” he says, but he doesn’t stop her. He trusts her. Worries and watches, yes, but never stops her. Never pushes her or pulls her in the direction he’s going unless she asks to be led. 

Dusk turns toward dark as she reaches the parking lot, and the tears that threatened make good on their promise and slip down her cheeks.

There’s nobody to impress, so she lets them come, crossing the painted white lines at a diagonal. One spot holds a car with the same make and model as the one she left behind in Kentucky. Different color, though. Hers had been a wedding present from Jason’s parents, and has undoubtedly been reported lost or stolen. She assumes Jason has figured out she made it as far as that truck stop before her trail went cold. She’s not stupid, she knows he’s looking, but he’s also not dumb enough to risk some wild manhunt.

Chrissy understands Jason. Loved him once upon a time. And the one thing she understands above all else is that he will never, ever, ever put himself or his reputation in jeopardy when it comes to her. He is a charismatic flim-flam man who talks a good game but would never risk the carefully curated life he’s creating falling to bits because his wife outed him as a monster behind closed doors. 

She can see his monstrous parts more clearly now that she’s spent so much time with someone who possesses no guile or pretense. No false faces or mercurial moods. Eddie is always Eddie, and she loves him for that. 

That love only lives in her head, not out loud, so it’s okay to let it linger. To play with the notion of being in love with someone good. Someone who gets her, warts and all. Someone with whom she wants to build something new instead of focusing on what has been. 

Someone who wants to go home for Christmas. 

Taking a deep breath, and keeping that love tucked close to her heart, Chrissy lets herself think about what that might mean as one foot falls in front of the other on the grassy median. 

She's not afraid of seeing Jason again. Not really. That’s the first clear thought in her head. 

The Jason that scares her is the before-Jason. The Jason who held her money, her freedom, and her sanity in his fist. The after-Jason, though? She doesn’t know the after-Jason. He is a figment. A person she has never met. A person she doesn’t intend to engage with beyond a lawyer and some paperwork and…

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? That paperwork. That lawyer. That plan she can’t commit to, or articulate to Eddie. The reason her throat closes when she thinks about returning to Indiana.

It’s not the thought of Jason but the thought of reality that crushes her. Family, friends, lawyers, papers, divorce. Shunning. Shaming. Made the villain in someone else’s story. Failure. Fallen. Freak.

But then, so what? It would be bad for a while, and then there would be a fresh scandal. A new rumor. And through it all, she would have Eddie. Not as her protector—she’s not even sure he could take Jason in a fight—but as her refuge. The person who’ll crack a joke, make her laugh, let her cry, and hold her when it’s hard. 

That, and on the other side of bad, they could have a future. Some distant landscape where she’s not the secret in his passenger seat. 

God, she’s an idiot. She’s been walking for ages, and she’s two miles from anywhere, and all she wants to see is Eddie’s face. 

Turning, she backtracks. Runs some of the way to get to the lot faster and stops short when she finds Eddie sitting on her side of the truck, door open, her blue skirt spread out on his lap, and a needle between his fingers. 

The overhead light sends her shadow as an emissary, and he looks up when he catches movement. 

“Hi,” she offers. 

“Hey.” 

He sounds wary, and for a good reason. She climbs onto the first step, then wedges herself in, sitting on the third to lean her temple against his knee. “I’m sorry I freaked out.” 

He says nothing at first, just drops a hand to her head and strokes her hair. “You’re alright. I shouldn’t have brought it up.” 

“Yes, you should have. But I don’t know what I want to do.” For all her imaginings, the thought of going back to Indiana still terrifies her. “I’ll think about it, though, okay? About going home with you.” 

He scratches her scalp just above her ear, and she can hear him swallow. “Thanks, kiddo.” 

“You want to hear something dumb?” 

“Always.” 

She turns her head, pressing her nose to the crinkled seam of his jeans. “I think what scares me the most about going back is bursting this bubble we’re in. Like, if we go home, we won’t be as good anymore.” 

“That’s not dumb. I think about that, too.” 

“You do?” 

“Mmm. Sometimes. But then I remind myself that this thing we’re doing is… I dunno. It feels pretty real, doesn’t it?” 

“Yes,” she says, the love dancing on the tip of her tongue. She swallows it, then lifts her head and smiles at him. “So, so real.” 

“Then we’ll figure it out. Home, or no home. And, uh, thanks for apologizing.”

“Sure. I’m mostly sorry I ruined dinner.”

“I got you a doggie bag. And I ate my vegetables. How was your walk?” 

“It was fine. How’s my skirt?” 

He shows her his work, and it’s clear he’s taken his time to do a better job with the skirt than his own clothing, hemming with precision in neat, even stitches. “You might be able to wear it out in Nashville if I can get a little more done tonight.” 

“Then I’ll leave you to it,” she says, getting to her feet and kissing his forehead as she squeezes by. “I’m going to read.” 

Any lingering tension from their not-quite-fight dissipates as she settles into the bunk with Fellowship. She alternates reading and dozing, unsure how much time has passed when Eddie calls her over to try on her skirt. Hopping out of the cab, she tugs it on over her jeans and finds that it just skims the tops of her feet. Maybe it’s the tiniest bit lopsided if she squints, but who’s going to notice when it’s so swishy and romantic? The perfect piece of clothing, and one she picked for herself. It makes her think of Lothlorien, which she hadn’t even known existed when she found the skirt in that thrift store. 

“It’s so pretty,” she says, twirling a little. 

“You’re so pretty in it,” Eddie counters, leaning against the cab with his arms folded. 

“Ugh,” she says without thinking.

“What? Don’t ‘ugh’ that. I’m allowed to think you’re pretty.” 

But I’m not, she wants to say, followed by a laundry list of her faults, as though she can litigate his incorrect opinion. She can make herself pretty, but that doesn’t mean she is pretty. There’s a difference. However, they’ve had one squabble already, and she doesn’t want a second, so she just shrugs. “You can think whatever you want.” 

“Golly gosh, thanks,” he says, reaching for a cigarette. “I remember the first time I thought you were cute, you know.” 

“What? No, you don’t.” 

“Yes, I do. My original senior year, so you would have been a sophomore, and you guys did that thing where you decorated the team’s lockers. Which, can I just say for the record, is sexist bullshit.” 

“It was a tradition. Like… wishing the players good luck.” And, in retrospect, it was a tradition far more lopsided than her skirt. Each cheerleader was assigned several players per team, and on game days, they were expected to decorate their players’ lockers and provide them with baked goods. The assumptions were explicit—homemade was appropriate, store-bought was not—and the girls in the squad constantly competed to outdo one another with their slavering displays of devotion. Chrissy had stayed up countless nights, losing sleep over untold batches of cupcakes before showing up at school an hour early so she could cover a locker with the perfect mix of paper, pennants, and puff paint. 

The boys would scarf the treats, rarely say thank you, and scoff at the silliness of the decorations while demanding the girls endure the ribbing with a practiced giggle and good grace.

Sexist nonsense, now that she thinks about it, but she’d never questioned it. 

“Uh-huh. Bullshit tradition,” Eddie says. “Considering all our teams sucked ass, right?” 

“Mostly. Senior year was decent for basketball.” 

“Yeah, because of Lucas Sinclair.” 

That’s a blast from the past—Lucas Sinclair, the sweet freshman who’d been immortalized as a Hawkins basketball legend for scoring the winning point in a championship game—and it makes her smile. “How do you know that? You didn’t care about sports.” 

“Lucas was one of my Hellfire kids, and I cared about that. He missed a huge campaign that night.” 

“Lucas was in your club? I never knew that.” Not that she’d been particularly close with Lucas, but still, he’d been around, and she’d known him a little.

“He didn’t share it much. But, hey, you’re distracting from the story. I’m talking about how cute you were.”

“Oh, pardon me for the clarifying question.”

“You’re pardoned.” His mouth twitches. “Anyway, I had morning detention because Higgins is a son of a bitch, and I was late, so I’m rushing in, and you’re kneeling on the floor, decorating some dude’s locker. And you had these little… braids in your hair? But not like braids how you do it now. Like…” He puts his hands in his hair and holds it close to his head, making her laugh. 

“French braids?” 

“Yeah, maybe. I think so. And, okay, there was this spot you couldn’t reach, so you got up, and your skirt flipped a little and, not to be a creep, or whatever, but it wasn’t a bad view, and then you turned around, and I saw your face, and I remember thinking, like… Jesus Christ, this girl’s too pretty for seven in the morning.” 

“You did not!” 

“I did. And then I realized you were the little cheery-bop from the talent show, only now you were, uh…” He holds his hands up to his chest and is more than generous with her cup size. 

“Eddie!” 

“I’m just saying I noticed them. But mostly, I was focused on your smile. And your legs.” 

“I don’t remember that at all.” 

“Of course you don’t. I was down the hall, and you weren’t looking in my direction. But I just… I noticed you. And I dug you.” 

She steps closer to him, fingering the fabric of her blue skirt before blurting, “I saw the drawing you did of me. From this morning.” 

“No kidding?” He doesn’t seem upset at her admission. In fact, he holds his arms out to her, and she lets him pull her close. “What’d you think?” 

“That’s not really how you see me, is it?” 

“Jesus, was it that bad?” 

“No! It was great! But you drew me like I was sort of, you know? Nice?” 

He laughs, his fingers skimming her sides in a way that makes her shiver. “Newsflash, Cunningham, you are nice.” 

“But I’m not, actually.” 

“No?” 

“No. I’m…” She flaps her hands and scowls. “I’m so… I feel like this big blerg, most of the time.”  

His fingers press into her lower back. “I don’t know what that means, and anyway, feeling one way doesn’t stop you from being nice, or whatever. You’re gorgeous and sweet and weird as shit, and I could spend the next ten years listing all the things I like about you.” 

“Please don’t.” 

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to.” 

“Good.” 

“You are.” 

Certain she’s misheard, she frowns. “What?” 

“You’re gonna do it. Five things you like about yourself. And I’m not talking about your personality because I already know that’s stellar. I want, like, physical attributes that you enjoy about yourself. Total shallowness.” 

Chrissy wonders what he would do if she army crawled under Smaug and hid there until morning. Or, she could let him run over her like roadkill because that would be easier than what he’s asking. 

“No, thank you,” she says. “I can’t do that.” 

“Oh, okay. Then I guess you don’t want your skirt. Because I only take payment in Chrissy-related compliments, and I don’t work for free. So if you’re not gonna be nice, then I’ll keep it and wear it myself.” 

“Eddie, that’s not fair. I can’t!” 

“You absolutely can. Here, I’ll start. I’m Chrissy, and I’m super into my fantastic fucking legs. Now you go.” 

Half-mortified and half-annoyed, she figures she might get by on a technicality. “Fine. I like my earlobes.” 

“Oh, shit, me too. Here, hang on a second…” He holds her at arm’s length before leaning in to kiss one earlobe, then the other, which makes her laugh despite herself. “You’ve got those ones that attach to your head. Very sexy. Compact. I dig it. What else?” 

She squirms, grateful that he’s not making her look at him. “Uh. I guess my eyes don’t suck, even if they’re sort of big.” 

“No caveats. You gotta own it, or it doesn’t count.” 

“Fine. I like my eyes.” 

“Good job. Close ‘em.” 

When she does, he tips her head back and kisses each closed eyelid.  “Perfectly sized eyes, good lids, nice lashes,” he says. “Go on.” 

“Oh, my gosh. I don’t know. The second knuckle on my left hand.” 

It’s a bullcrap answer. Eddie snorts and kisses her knuckle anyway. “Okay, why this one? What’s special about it?” 

“It’s just the best knuckle I’ve got.” 

“Unreal. I love it. That’s three. Two more, and the skirt’s yours.” 

“Fine. I just adore my armpits.” This is an easy enough trap, as she can’t imagine Eddie will be as gung-ho about the area as he was about her earlobes. 

However, Eddie is Eddie, so he lifts her arm and burrows into her left side, inhaling deeply. “Yup. Excellent armpit. Fuckin’ ambrosia.” 

“Yuck!” She tries to pull back, but he grabs her around the waist and holds her steady. 

“What? Where are you going?” He grins, nosing his way down her neck. “You said they’re sexy. I happen to agree. We’re both stupendously into your pits, dude.” 

“I didn’t think you were going to smell them!”

“Uh, semantics, Cunningham. I only smelled one. Lemme get in on that other side?” 

“No!”

“Chrissy. It’s important. I need to know, for research.” 

“You’re awful,” she says, but lets him do it anyway, squeaking when he tickles her side as he takes a whiff. 

“God. Intoxicating. I’m drunk on the smell of your deodorant. Or maybe that’s all-natural. Eau de Chrissy.” He kisses his fingers like some fancy chef and grins. “Gorgeous.” 

“Are we done?” 

“No. That’s only four things.” 

“I have two armpits!” 

“Two eyes and two earlobes, too. Doesn’t count. C’mon.” 

“Uh. I like… I have a scar that I like.” 

“Where?” 

“On my right thigh.” She reaches back to touch the fabric covering the rough-edged, oblong indent a few inches below the crease of her butt. 

“What happened?” 

“We were doing a pyramid at practice. I was on top, and one girl on the bottom swayed, so the whole thing went down. Bridget Barca was underneath me, and her braces ripped a literal hole in my leg when I landed on her. It tore out this huge chunk of my thigh, and I was bleeding everywhere. Frannie Pike threw up.” 

“Jesus, that’s metal as fuck.” 

“I know! It was so crazy, and I had to get stitches, and now I have this divot scar from where everything scabbed over and fell off. I think it’s cool. I don’t know why.” 

“You don’t have to know why. The point is that you dig it.” His hand covers hers, fingers probing the scar. He probably can’t feel much, considering that her jeans and skirt are in the way, but it’s the closest he’s come to her ass since they started getting even a little bit physical. She doesn’t hate it. “I won’t ask to kiss it, but is it weird if I say I’m looking forward to eventually making its acquaintance?” 

“It is weird,” she says with a smile. “But I don’t mind.” 

“Cool. Until we meet again, badass leg scar. Come on, let’s go inside. I brought you back some pecan pie, and I want to make sure I got all the pins out of your skirt.” 

s

Chapter Text

They slip back across the Mississippi at six in the morning. The river is no more or less a landmark than anything else Eddie’s seen, but crossing it always feels portentous. Some delineation between the two Americas, where the West is still that little bit wild. 

Then again, if there are two Americas, there are fifty Americas. One for each state, and then some, with the south its own country. A subtle shift in temperament as they pass from Illinois to Kentucky, leaving Superman’s Metropolis for Paducah. And yeah, alright, he’s feeling kind of poetic this morning. Probably needs to write some shit down, because if he’s honest, he’s still a little freaked about Chrissy walking away from him the evening before. 

He can’t articulate why he’s bothered. Not because he has anything to hide but because he can’t quite put his finger on what set him buzzing on the inside. Though, that line about them being in a bubble and the bubble bursting probably has something to do with feeling so unsettled. Sure, he’d said the right, reassuring shit to her in the moment—I’m fine, you’re fine, we’re all fine—but that doesn’t change the fact that Chrissy might be correct. That going home could burst the fragile membrane surrounding them, exposing them to whatever slings and arrows the world wants to throw their way.

Eddie’s no stranger to the cuts and bruises inflicted by reality. Sometimes it’s better to live in the bubble.

“Does this route go by the truck stop where you picked me up?” Chrissy asks, shaking him from his melancholy.

“It does, yeah.” They’re on I-24 and will be for a while, cutting a line down Kentucky and into Tennessee. Just outside Louisville, there’s that tiny truck stop. Nothing to it save for some shitty showers, yet he thinks he could turn it into a half-dozen songs. Immortalize the burnt coffee and the sticky floors and the slow roll of the universe’s dice that saw fit to put her in his path. 

“Let’s not go there, okay?” 

Eddie frowns; once again, they’re out of sync. He’s romanticizing the place where they started this grand adventure while she’s desperate to avoid it. “Oh, uh, sure. We won’t.” 

“Thank you. It’s just… it’s the one location he can still link me to, you know?” 

Dumbass. That’s a bucket of cold water on Eddie’s imaginings, mainly because it hadn’t occurred to him that Carver would have gotten that far in pursuing a lead. But, of course, now that it’s on his mind, he rides a few paranoid trains of thought to their logical conclusions. “You uh, you don’t think he’s got you on some Patty Hearst, America’s Most Wanted watchlist, do you?” 

Chrissy snorts, which is reassuring. “No. He’s not that stupid.” 

“Debatable.” 

“I’m serious. He’s smart enough to realize why I ran away—it’s not like it was the first time—and he’s not about to risk me ending up some big story and then, you know, spilling my guts to Oprah.” 

“Who’s Oprah?” 

Chrissy gives him a look. “She has a talk show. She’s great. I watched her a lot when I was stuck in the apartment.” 

“Oh. Well… okay. So he’s not gonna put your face on a milk carton.” 

“No, probably not.”

“You’re sure about that?” 

“Mostly sure.” She fiddles with the place where the mark from her rings is faintly visible. “The thing is, Jason’s always going to take the easy way out. Or, like, the way where he looks the best. Like… okay, so, did I tell you he flunked out of college?” 

“No.” Or, at least, she’s never done more than allude to it. Hearing it confirmed gives Eddie a perverse sense of satisfaction, though, and maybe that makes him a dick, but he’ll never be as much of a dick as Jason Carver, so he can live with that. 

“Yeah. So, the summer after high school, we eloped and moved into married housing at IU. He started classes, but like… at Hawkins, a lot of times he got passing grades because he was an athlete, and he was cute, and he didn’t take classes that ever challenged him. So all of a sudden, he’s in this environment where he’s hitting resistance, and his teachers don’t care if he smiles at them. Which is when he got really weird… I mean, weirder than he already was. He’d come home and start ranting at me about how his professors were against him, failing him on purpose, stuff like that.” 

“Tough life.” 

“It was, I think. For him, anyway. His dad was paying for his tuition, and it wasn’t as though he was a good enough basketball player to have a scholarship, so he was getting a lot of crap from home, too. Which, you know, he took out on me. Don’t get me wrong, he’d always had a temper and yelled at me and grabbed me and stuff, but the… really hurting me was new.” She clears her throat and pulls her legs onto the seat, hugging her calves. “He and his dad had this screaming fight over Christmas break his first year, and after that, he transferred to this creepy little Bible college outside the city. He kept saying it was his choice, that he’d felt a calling from God to be a preacher. But, yeah, he basically transferred before he flunked out. And it’s so… it’s so typical, right? Instead of making an effort or changing his major or even dropping out and doing something where he didn’t need college, he spun his failure into some like, spiritual telegram from Jesus.” 

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” he says, fingers tightening on the wheel. Jason Carver had been a cult of personality in high school, and it made sense that when he went from being a big fish in a little pond to a little fish in a big one, he’d hated the experience. 

“Anyway. With the transfer, we had to move to a different apartment near that school, and all the people I’d gotten to know were gone. Suddenly he had these new friends, and they were these weird, intense men who’d come over for Bible study with their deferential wives. I was supposed to be just like them, even though, looking back, I don’t know that any of us were happy. Those guys got Jason really into the whole… Biblical marriage thing, where the man is the head of the household. And I know this sounds crazy, but I could handle him hitting me better than I could handle him telling me what to wear and how to act around his friends.”

“Well, yeah. That shit sounds like your mom,” he offers.

“Huh.” She curls into herself further. “I never thought about it like that. But, I just… when it started, all the Godly marriage stuff, I would still argue and push back against it a bit. But then we had this dinner party, and I made a joke, and after all his friends were gone, he broke my wrist—” 

“He fucking what?” That’s a new level of bullshit, and Eddie nearly drives off the highway. “You never told me that.” 

“It’s not that big a deal.”

“The fuck it isn’t. I’m gonna… I swear to God, Chrissy. I swear to God.” He doesn’t know what he’s swearing about other than that if he ever has the misfortune of seeing Jason Carver’s face again, he will murder him and go to prison for the rest of his life. 

Only if he did that, Chrissy would probably be upset, and he won’t be able to kiss her whenever he wants. So, okay. Less murder and more slow, painful torture. Cutting off Carver’s tongue would be a start. Hands, too. Titus Andronicus-style, so he can’t tell anyone that Eddie’s the dude who did it.

“Eddie, seriously, it’s fine. It was just a hairline fracture,” she says, downplaying it the way she’s wont to do. “It’s… in retrospect, it’s almost good.” 

“How is him breaking your wrist in any way good?” 

“Because it was the only time he put me in the hospital, which means there’s a record of the injury.” She puts a hand on his arm and briefly squeezes before wrapping herself up again. “There was this nurse that kept asking me how it happened. I told her I slipped on the steps, and Jason tried to save me, except it was a weird angle, and that’s how come I had bruises, but she—I mean, at the time, I didn’t get it, but now I think she knew I was lying. Because at some point, they pulled Jason away to deal with some insurance forms, and another woman came in and spoke with me. She said she was the hospital’s social worker, and she wanted to verify some stuff about my injury. Said it was procedure. I lied again, for him, but… I think between her and the nurse, they knew. And I kind of wonder if they wrote their assumptions down.” 

“They should have had him arrested.” 

“Maybe. But… honestly, I probably would have defended him. I mean, I was still in love with him. Only, that’s not the point. The point is that Jason doesn’t like it when people see him as anything other than what he wants them to see. Whenever I tried to leave, he was most angry about what everyone would think if they knew we were having problems. So the fact that I’ve been gone so long and that he can’t find me… I think it’s really freaking him out, and that he’s caught between being pissed, and hoping I’ll keep my mouth shut. Mostly, I believe he’s biding his time and waiting for me to run out of money and come to my senses. And I’m trying to be smart—I don’t want to go to that truck stop—but I also don’t think the FBI’s out searching for me. He might hire a private detective or something like that, but even then, he’d need money from his dad to do it, and his dad would want to understand why I left. Plus, like, he has no idea that I ran into you. That I have you.” 

Eddie can’t help but smile at that. “Yeah, you fucking do.” 

“Exactly. So, you know. I’m done talking about him for the day, alright? Let’s talk about Nashville instead.” 

“Sure,” he says, mollified but not entirely over the knowledge that Jason once broke her goddamn wrist. “What do you want to talk about?” 

“Did you ever see the movie Coal Miner’s Daughter?” 

“Uh, no. It’s about Loretta Lynn, right?” 

“Mm-hmm. And there’s this scene where she and her husband get to Nashville, and she plays at the Grand Ole Opry, and I’ve been obsessed with it because my grandmother used to get that station on her radio, and she’d play it for us when we visited her. So, anyway, she plays this show while her husband gets a drink at a bar across the street, so that’s what I want to do.” 

“You want to play the Opry?” 

“No! I want to get a drink at that bar. Or any bar, really. Downtown.” 

“I think we can figure that out,” he says, then lets her regale him with Loretta Lynn lore while they creep toward their destination. 

A traffic jam outside Clarksville holds them up for an hour, so it’s dark when they reach the shipping yard where he’s dropping the trailer. Sketchy, too, in an isolated area on the city's outskirts comprising empty lots and darkened warehouses. So, for the first time since they started, he asks Chrissy to stay in the truck instead of waiting for him on a street corner. 

She hides in the bunk with her book, and nobody notices her—the guys in the depot are more concerned with swapping the trailer than what he might have in his cab. Probably he’s being overly paranoid by dropping her off every time they stop, but he appreciates her little adventures and seeing what she’ll find when she’s off on her own. Plus, it’s good for them to spend ten seconds apart once in a while. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, and all. 

While he waits, he calls dispatch, which gives him a route to North Carolina. It’s so close it’s nearly short-haul, and they’ll be able to sleep in a little. They could almost make it overnight, but Chrissy wants to go out, so out they’ll go.

After a fresh trailer is hitched, they leave the lot to find a truck stop closer to the city. Chrissy climbs into her seat once they’re past the fence surrounding the depot, buckling herself in with a sigh. 

“I finished the book.” 

Considering how angrily she’d lost her shit over Gandalf, Eddie’s surprised to see how stoic she’s being about the cliffhanger. “What’d you think?” 

“It stinks that Frodo can’t trust any of them anymore. I get why he left, and I get why Boromir tried to take the ring. But it makes me sad.” 

“At least Frodo’s got Sam, right?” 

“Yes,” she says, brightening considerably. He doesn’t know if she still thinks of herself as that stalwart companion, but he won’t argue if she does.

“I’ll get out the second one whenever you’re ready to start it.” 

“Thanks, Eddie.” 

He smiles at her, then concentrates on the road. Nashville is a shitshow—three significant interstates merge across the city, and not one of them is consistent. As a result, he has to change lanes about eight times, which is no easy feat in a car, much less a semi. 

There’s a truck stop he’s used before just east of town, though, off I-40, and he’s relieved to find it’s still there. Rundown and grimy, yes, but there. Finding a spot, he pulls into a pump and kills the engine. Chrissy heads to the bathroom to change while he fills up and parks the rig in the back of the lot. 

When she returns, she’s in her blue skirt and a white blouse, looking California pretty in a Tennessee town. 

“Hey there, Stevie Nicks,” he says. 

“Really?” She spins, the skirt flaring once before swishing around her bare legs, and Eddie grins. 

“Yeah.” 

“Cool,” she says, then pulls him in for a kiss.

They catch a cab and head downtown. What they find is one-tenth the size of Vegas, with twice the sleaze. Honky-tonks, adult bookstores, and pawn shops line Broadway, most with bars on the windows, looking like they’d let you sell your soul for a buck if you needed the money. 

There’s decent music floating out of the honky-tonks, though, technically speaking. And while country music has never been Eddie’s thing—that’s Wayne’s department—he picks one randomly to avoid the bitter wind being whipped up the street from the river. 

Inside, Chrissy asks about the Grand Ole Opry, only to discover that it’s no longer broadcast from the venue where Loretta played. Instead, the show has been moved to a suburb, where a new, shiny building has been erected between a theme park and a television studio. She’s disappointed, he can tell, but she perks up when he buys her a drink, and they go to watch the band.

Which, Jesus Christ, what a fucking band. The fictional Eddie that Chrissy invented in Kansas City would be lucky to lick these guys’ shoes, much less get session work in this town. Like, they’re a fucking bar band, and they’re as good or better than any professional musician he’s ever heard. So, yeah, wishful thinking on that dream. Better to stay where it’s safe behind the wheel of his truck. 

“How’s your drink?” Chrissy asks. 

“Watered down. Yours?” 

“Same.” She makes a face. “At least they were cheap?” 

“Says the girl who’s not paying. You want to try a different bar?” 

“I’ll pay next round. Oh, look!” She points to a couple who’ve moved arm-in-arm in front of the band, dancing a two-step beside the amplifier. They’re smooth—practiced—him leading and her following, and Eddie might have rhythm, but he sure as shit can’t do that. 

Chrissy looks hungry about it, though, and he’s come to know her hunger pangs well. 

“They’re good, huh?” he says. 

“Hm? Oh, yes. Very good.” 

“We should join them.” The words are out of his mouth before he can think better of them. Chrissy gets what Chrissy wants, and what Chrissy appears to want is to boogie in a honky-tonk. No matter that Eddie’s experience with actual dancing is limited to gym class shuffles and one ill-fated attempt at attending a junior high soiree. Sure, he can bump his way across a stage without falling over, but that’s different. 

“Wait, you want to?” she asks. 

Want is relative, so he offers his hand instead. Leads her to the makeshift dance floor, avoiding the space cleared by the double-step duo. 

The band kicks up the beat, turning the slow swing into a staccato number that makes him sweat. Unsure, he pulls Chrissy close and drops a hand to her waist while hers moves to his neck, where she toys with the collar of his denim jacket. 

He sways—swaying seems safe—and she rocks with him as he turns them in a circle, counting a beat in his head. 

“You gotta loosen up, Munson,” she says with a giggle. 

“That bad, huh?” 

She gives a full-body wriggle, then laughs again before taking his arm and ducking under it, forcing him to spin her. The angle’s weird, and she yanks at his hand, lifting it because—oh—she wants to spin him, too. He can work with that and executes an exaggerated turn before tugging her into a kiss. 

“How’s that?” he asks. 

“Better. Just pretend you’re onstage!” 

He’s about to say that, at least onstage, he’s only responsible for himself when one half of the other couple—a woman with a ginger bouffant—taps Chrissy’s shoulder. 

“Mind if I cut in?” says Ginger, wearing stacked heels that put her about eye-level with Chrissy in her sneakers.

“Oh, sure,” Chrissy says, switching partners with ease, while Eddie is left to stare down Ginger, who’s maybe in her forties, and looking at him with a half-concerned, half-pitying smile. He watches helplessly as Chrissy falls into lockstep with Mr. Ginger, who’s just showing off as he spins and dips her. God, Eddie’d stick a fork in a socket if it meant making her laugh like that. 

“Your girl’s a dancer,” Ginger says, touching Eddie’s shoulders. “You’re not.” 

“You noticed, huh?” 

“Let me show you some stuff—knock her socks off.” 

Eddie can take a lesson, and he lets the woman arrange his arms and lead him in another simple circle. She’s not all that nice about it—kicks his feet with a sadistic grin—but she clearly knows what she’s doing. As they sway, she tells him that her name is Mamie and her husband is Connie, and that Eddie’s “stiff as a poker and skinny as one, too.” 

“That doesn’t sound like a compliment,” he says as she shakes his shoulders, echoing Chrissy’s earlier sentiment about loosening up. 

“Depends, I guess.” She pokes him in the sternum, then laughs. “You really ain’t much of a dancer.” 

“Not much.” 

“Cute, though. You must like her a lot, giving it a shot. Got those moon eyes.” Her gaze tracks Chrissy and Connie, who are cutting a rug. “Here’s a tip—you don’t have to be great at it to make her happy, but you can at least pretend to have a little fun.”

Eddie takes her point and lets her lead him through two more songs, where his stiff-as-a-board beginnings morph into something like a dried spaghetti noodle hitting boiling water. He’s not good, but he’s trying, and maybe that’s enough. Maybe he ought to get over the red-faced inadequacy that threatens to creep in when he faces a feat he can’t immediately master. That shit poisoned him in high school—set him raging against dozens of imaginary enemies who excelled at sports, science, Spanish, and all the other stuff he sucked at. 

Because of that, there’s always gonna be a part of him that worries he’s not good enough for Chrissy. That, ultimately, his being poor, or smart-but-not-school-smart, or blue-collar when she comes from a world of starched white ones will be what bursts their bubble. They’ll go home, and she’ll remember the life she should be leading. Not one with Jason, but not one with him, either. She’ll be gone, and the niggling voice in his head will remind him nobody sticks and nobody stays. 

“Where’d you go just now?” Mamie pokes his arm. “You turned into a statue again.” 

“Sorry, yeah—” He forces a smile, banishing the voice and the worry. Because Wayne stuck and Wayne stayed, so who’s to say that Chrissy won’t? And if she doesn’t, it isn’t going to be because he couldn’t dance a goddamn two-step. “Let’s, uh, let’s give it another shot.” 

Mamie smiles and teaches him how to dip her. 

After that, the band takes a break, and Chrissy and Connie rejoin them. Chrissy grips Eddie’s arm, her flushed face beaming as she greets Mamie and thanks Connie for the dance. 

“Sure thing,” says Connie. “You two from around here, or just visiting?” 

“Passing through,” says Chrissy. Eddie braces himself for another tall tale, but then she says, “he’s a trucker, and I’m riding with him.” 

“Too bad y’all aren’t in town a little longer. We use these places as advertisements—dance lessons, y’see.” Mamie winks at Eddie, who doesn’t mind that he’s been used as a shuffling billboard for their business. “If y’all are interested, there’s line dancing a couple doors down at Layla’s.” 

“Oh, that sounds fun.” Chrissy looks up at Eddie with a smile. “Should we?” 

“Don’t see why not.” 

They go as a foursome, with Chrissy and Mamie leading the charge. Connie and Eddie follow behind, with Connie asking Eddie about trucking and Eddie asking Connie about plumbing. It’s the sort of conversation he’s heard Wayne have a hundred times, and it makes him feel grown-up in a weird, itchy way. 

Layla’s isn’t as crowded as the first bar, though it’s narrower. The lines of dancers are only about seven abreast, and Chrissy and Eddie inch past them to the bar, where they order a couple of beers, having learned their lesson on the watered-down drinks. Mamie and Connie don’t bother with booze and hop into the nearest line. Now that he sees it up close, Eddie realizes that this sort of dancing doesn’t require a partner, making his participation optional. And, frankly, he’s happy to opt-out, considering this sort of dancing looks a damn sight more complicated.

“You were so cute back there with Mamie,” Chrissy says, leaning on her toes to kiss his chin. 

“Yeah, yeah. I think line dancing ought to be a spectator sport for me.” 

“Aw, come on. You were having fun!” 

“Seriously,” he says, passing her the beer the bartender hands him. “You go on. I’m still recovering from my humiliation.” 

“Oh my gosh, Eddie, you’re fine.” She takes a long swallow, then studies him closely. “You sure you don’t want to?” 

“I’ll hold your drink.” 

He tells himself he’s imagining the brief flash of disappointment in her eyes before she goes. She finds a spot in a row near Mamie, and she’s easy to keep track of, what with the blue skirt swirling around her ankles. Blonde hair, big smile, laughter on her lips as she effortlessly picks up the steps.

Her fluid movements look like being onstage feels. More than that, she seems happy. In her element. He’s glad that she can have that here. Only, she keeps cutting her eyes toward the bar. Looking at him, then away, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out she’s a little bummed that he’s not dancing with her. 

And who is he, really, to deny her? An asshole, that’s who. Once again caught up in caring about what people will think of his poor performance. He hates that he even gives the slightest shit about what anyone sees when they look at him. For all that Chrissy makes fun of his propensity for jumping on tables in the cafeteria, he knows every bit of it was just him shouting at the world to cover up his insecurities about being too skinny, too weird, too poor, too dumb. 

The thing is, they’re still there, all those thoughts. Little wounds and scratches to start, but if you cut the same place often enough, it’s gonna leave a scar. 

Dance with me, her eyes say, and he worries everyone’s watching him for all the wrong reasons. The reasons he can’t control rather than the ones he can. It’s only okay when he invites attention, yet there’s his girl. Asking. While he’s standing at the bar feeling sorry for himself.

He’s an idiot.

So, he drains his drink. Leaves hers behind—he’ll buy her another—and walks over to tap her on the shoulder. 

Her face lights up when she sees him, and she scoots over to make room. From then, he’s in it. Two left feet, and he keeps turning the wrong way, but that just makes her laugh, and her laughter makes everything worth it. So, he aims for ridiculous on purpose. Flails and fucks up like a reanimated corpse, all rictus arms and knobby knees until she’s losing it. 

“Eddie!” she exclaims. “Turn left.” 

“This is left!” He turns right. 

“Oh my gosh,” she says, then grabs his hand and spins him the other way. 

The song changes—lyrics wax and wane about a Honky Tonk Moon—and Eddie keeps at it. Picks up the beat as best he can, and alright, he’s never going to win a prize, but he’s entertaining her, and after a while, he’s not tripping over his feet every two steps, so that’s something. 

“You’ve got it!” Chrissy says, bumping her hip against his. “Look at you!” 

“Don’t distract me,” he replies. “Walking and chewing gum, fuckin’ A.” 

“Sorry,” she giggles, and now he’s lost his place while she doesn’t miss a beat. 

When the song finishes, she grabs him around the waist and kisses along his jaw. Says she’s thirsty, so he takes her to the bar and buys her another drink.

“You’re handsy, Cunningham.” She’s hanging all over him, in fact, slipping her fingers into his belt loops and leaning her head on his chest. Maybe his shitty dancing’s an aphrodisiac or something? 

“You’re funny,” she replies. “And you’re not a terrible dancer.” 

“And yet, you’re a terrible liar.”

“Stop! You’re just learning, is all.” 

“I’ll take that. You’re an excellent teacher.” 

“Mamie did most of the work. Do you want to go again?” 

“Sure,” he lies, then chugs his beer.

Five songs later, he’s trodden on ten people’s toes, turned the wrong way more often than not, and clapped when nobody else was clapping at least a hundred thousand times. Yet, he is also enjoying himself. Sweaty, yes, with his curls stuck to his forehead and an ever-present apology on his lips for everyone unfortunate enough to be near him, but a little giddy and punch-drunk all the same. 

The music’s shit, of course, but he can endure an evening of cruddy country covers if it means Chrissy’s happy, which—judging by the smile on her red-cheeked face—she absolutely is. (Still, would it kill them to throw in a Johnny Cash or Waylon Jennings tune to break up the mediocrity once in a while?) 

“Okay,” she says the next time the band breaks. “I’m done.” 

That’s surprising; he figured she’d want to close the place down. “You sure? I don’t mind staying.” 

“Yes. I have other plans.” 

“You do, huh? Where are we going?” 

“I’ve got something I need to take care of at the truck.” 

She doesn’t elaborate further, and Eddie’s not in the business of questioning her whims. Plus, he’s sweaty, half-drunk, and tired.

They say goodnight to Mamie and Connie, who are still going strong, and it doesn’t take long to find a taxi, which gets them back to the rig in short order. 

Once inside, Chrissy perches on the bunk and takes her shoes off while Eddie sits swiveled to the side in the passenger seat to do the same. It’s become routine, the places they go when they’re done for the day, and the familiarity of that routine makes him smile. 

Until that is, Chrissy opens her mouth. “I was thinking I want to watch you, um. You know. Jerk off?” 

She says it like she doesn’t know if she’s phrasing it right, and for a second, Eddie doesn’t even register what she’s asking because she sounds so cute in her hesitation. But then, the rusty gears of his brain whir into motion, and he blinks. “Uh. What?” 

“You don’t have to,” she says, holding her hands up in surrender. “Nevermind.” 

“No, hang on.” He can just about see Fake Chrissy slamming shut the drawbridge to the Fortress of uh… Sexual Solitude? Which, no way. Not gonna happen. He’s the fucking Superman of this situation. “You caught me by surprise, is all.”

“Really?” 

“Well, yeah. How long has it been on your mind?” 

“A while. But I kept thinking about it when we were dancing.” 

That she’d been pondering the notion while he’d been ponderously plodding his way through a line dance definitely does it for him, and he doesn’t bother hiding his delight. “No shit?” 

“Is that dumb?” 

“It’s the opposite of dumb.” 

“You were just trying so hard, and I know it wasn’t like… I know it’s not your number one choice of activity. But you did it, and you’re always doing stuff for me, and I never do anything for you.” 

“Chrissy—” 

“No, wait. I’m serious. I want to take care of you, too. So I figured that maybe seeing what you liked would make me feel more confident about… trying it myself. Eventually.” 

That is pure, uncut Chrissy-logic, yet he can see exactly where she’s coming from. “Well… yeah, alright, sweetheart.” 

“Really?” 

“I mean, I’ve already embarrassed myself once tonight, and I’ve spent much more time in my life dicking around than dancing.” Though, all of his solo pursuits have been legitimately solo. This will be the first time he’s masturbated for someone, and not just someone, but Chrissy. Not that he thinks she has high expectations—Carver set the bar on the floor, then dug six feet down and buried it—but still. He’s gonna try not to suck. “Where do you want me?” 

She pats the mattress at her side, and he joins her on the bunk. Once he’s settled, she curls against him so he can wrap an arm around her, and she can drop her head to his chest. It’s quite the viewing angle, but he likes the idea of her next to him rather than across the bunk, observing. 

“Just do what you would always do,” she says, which is cute. Always is a crusty magazine and a bottle of lotion. A sock or a shower. A quick pull in a bathroom stall between stops. Never is Chrissy beside him, one hand on his chest, eyes fixed on the crotch of his jeans when he pops the button. 

“Always,” he echoes, then slides the zipper down. 

His first and immediate wish is that he’d taken a second to put some music on before getting started. Without that, every sound is amplified to the point where he swears he can hear each individual tooth popping. Figuring he can either pussyfoot around or grow a pair and give the lady what she wants, he lifts his hips enough to push his jeans and boxers to his thighs. It’s ridiculous-looking, but then again, so’s almost everything about sex, and this is Chrissy. His Chrissy. Who has never once in her life had any sort of sex that wasn’t shameful or painful. So, mission one: he won’t make this awkward.

Still, it’s bullshit that he’s not quite hard yet. A few drinks, a long night, and nerves have combined to leave him loose-limbed and limp-dicked, and while it’s understandable, he feels the need to apologize. 

“For what?” she asks, her voice a whisper. 

“Uh. You know. Being sort of… nervous?” 

“Oh.” She cuddles closer, and though the cabin's light is dim, he knows where she’s looking. “I’m not. Just do whatever you have to do.” 

Eddie takes a deep breath and wraps a hand around his dick. Which, shock of all shocks, feels pretty good. He inhales the scent of her shampoo, and a brief, pervy thought about how easy it’d be for her to suck him off at that angle enters his head.

Obviously, she won’t be doing that, but the image sticks. He licks his lips and moves his fist, slowly at first, while she grips his shirt like a vice, and he can feel her breath puffing through the fabric. 

It’s strange to fantasize about her while she’s right there with him, but shit, what’s the point of fantasy if not to put a little gas in the tank? He pictures her naked, dragging to the forefront of his mind the porno reel that’s always running in the background. Some Frankenstein-Chrissy creation with the bits of her he hasn’t seen filled in with models and other girls, but that’s alright. They’ll get there. One of these days, he’s going to see her naked and waiting and spread out beneath him and…

“Oh, fuck,” he mumbles as his dick jumps in his hand. They’re getting somewhere. Learning and growing together, and God, he’s stupid when he’s horny, but the harder he gets, the less he cares about the dumb stuff that leaps from the wings and onto the stage of the fantastic little peep show his brain’s playing at the pleasure-dome. 

And, like, not to brag, but Eddie’s a fucking champ at jerking off. Shit, he’s been doing it almost daily since he was thirteen, and back then, he could do it three, four, five times in an afternoon. Lesson learned about friction burns there, though—he’d hurt himself badly enough that he couldn’t do it for a week and after that experience, had invested in the world’s cheapest lotion, so it never happened again. 

The memory of that furtive trip to Melvald’s makes him laugh—like the woman working at the cashier counter didn’t know exactly the reason for his furtive purchase—and Chrissy looks up. 

“What’s funny?” 

“Uh…” God she’s pretty look at her face she’s got such a good face just the actual best face around. “I was thinking about the lady who works at Melvald’s.” 

Her mouth drops open. “What?” 

“Not… not in a sexy way. But uh. When I was thirteen, I jerked off so much I practically gave myself, like… blisters. So I had to go in and buy lotion, and she fucking… I bet she fucking knew.” 

“Oh. That is funny. Kind of. But is that really what you think about when you do this?” 

The incredulity in her voice makes him laugh again, and he ducks his head to kiss her nose. “No. Mostly, I was focusing on you. So you, uh, wanna do me a favor and get me some lotion?” 

She looks like she doesn’t believe the thinking about you part, but she shrugs and gestures to the bank of cabinets. “Which one’s it in?” 

“With the... where the porn is.” 

She smiles at that, then crawls over him to reach the cabinet. The angle gives him a superb view of her ass under that skirt, and he resists the primal urge to grab a handful. 

“Jesus, you look good,” he says instead. 

“Is it in the back?” She opens the door and ignores the compliment. 

“Uh-huh. There’s a bottle.”

She rummages for a second, then tosses the bottle onto the bed before rejoining him. It’s almost domestic and definitely homey, the way she cuddles up to him. So much so that he can’t quite believe he’s also casually jerking off for her edification. 

The lubrication helps, and it’s not long before Eddie’s hard enough to hammer nails. However, the lotion also makes things… louder. Slicker. Squelchier. He times his rhythm to his breathing, and he’s getting overheated, despite the cool of the cab. 

“You okay, kiddo?” he says when she shifts a little. She’s being awfully quiet, and he can’t figure out if that’s good or bad.

“Uh-huh.” 

“I never did this in front of anyone before.” 

“Really?” 

“Nah. Kinda… okay. Shit, you’re so fucking pretty. Your hair smells amazing. Can you…” He swipes his thumb across the head of his cock and shudders. 

“Can I what?” 

Eddie can’t remember. There’s not a coherent thought in his goddamn head. “Uh. God… just. You’re so fucking pretty.” 

Chrissy giggles, and it’s the best sound in the world because it tells him everything he needs to know. “You keep saying that.” 

“Do I?” he asks, even as his heart rate kicks up and his balls tighten, not quite there, but kinda there. Close enough for government work, as Wayne would say, and Jesus, he doesn’t need to be thinking about Wayne right this second. 

“Yes, you do.” She lays kisses across his cheek, and her hand slides down. Not far and not fast, but she ruches his shirt up on the way. Reveals the curve of his stomach and the trail of hair leading to his weeping cock and fuck, if she’d just touch him there, he thinks he’d shoot a load and die happy, all at once. 

“Sorry. God. It’s so hot in here,” he pants.  

“Don’t say sorry. Should I move?” 

“No. Uh-uh. Just… okay. Fuck. Can you like…?” He doesn’t know how to ask for what he wants without sounding gross, so he goes for it. “Can you touch my, like… move your hand down? Not my dick. Just like the area right above? Sorry.” 

It’s an odd request, but she acquiesces. Slides her hand until it’s resting against the bare skin of his stomach, which quivers at the contact. “Like this?” 

“Yeah,” he mumbles as his brain fully shorts out, and he blurts, “Can I please touch your tits?” 

Chrissy stiffens, and Eddie is confident he’s blown the entire encounter when she surprises him and says says, “over my shirt is okay.” He doesn’t have time to dwell on the monumental-ness of her progress, though, because he has boobs to touch. Gently—as gently as he can, anyway—he uses the hand attached to the arm around her shoulder to cup her breast. She’s wearing one of those dumb, padded bras, so he can’t feel much. He squeezes, mindful, and of course, he wants it to be good for her, but mostly he needs something to fucking hold onto as the warmth in him turns to molten heat. Pressure building, muscles contracting, and then it’s over and anti-climactic, and he’s shooting white across his fingers, his stomach, her fingers… 

Her fingers. Shitfuck. He shudders through the last vestiges of orgasm, and now he’s definitely groping her too hard, and he sucks at this, he really does, and she’s never gonna want to see his dick again, but then she giggles, and that’s good, that’s good, that’s… goddamn, he needs a minute. Needs to catch his breath and screw his head on straight and figure out how much he might have screwed up. 

“Okay, wow,” Chrissy says, and he thinks maybe she sounds delighted instead of pissed, but he can’t be sure because he’s got jizz-induced hearing loss which is a thing that’s definitely real, and he didn’t just make up. “That’s… you got that everywhere.” 

“Sorry,” he mumbles. 

“You know, for someone who doesn’t want me to apologize about sexy stuff, you sure do it a lot.” 

Eddie huffs, and as his blood cools, he manages a kiss to her temple. “I have really good taste in music.” 

“Try again.” 

“But that would be lying.” 

“Eddie!”

“Fine, fine. Chrissy, you have really good taste in music.” 

“I know. Can you have any tissues?” 

“Uh-huh.” He leans to the side, groping for the stack of tissues he might or might not keep tucked into the seat's back pocket for this exact reason. Movement from behind catches his eye, and he turns in time to see her pulling her hand away from her mouth. “Uh.” He blinks, and she freezes. “Did you… ?” 

“I just wanted to see if it tasted the same,” she says, eyes wide and panicked so he can tell that she’s shutting down, which isn’t allowed to happen. Grabbing her hand, he licks a stripe up her palm. It’s highly effective, and she shrieks, then laughs, then wrinkles her nose. “Eddie!”

“What?” It’s not the first time he’s tasted his own cum, and it probably won’t be the last. He waves a tissue at her like it’s a white flag, and she plucks it from his fingers. 

“Nothing,” she says with a secret little smile. “Thanks.” 

“Sure. But uh. Was it the same?” he asks, and hates that he has to know. 

“No. It’s different.” 

He has several follow-up questions to which he’s not sure he wants the answer, so he focuses on the spunk that’s already gumming up his pubes. Unfortunately, the knock-off Kleenex disintegrates with the effort, and he grunts, balling it up. “Fuck.” 

“You need baby wipes.” 

“Probably.” He chucks the tissue onto the floor and puts his hands on his knees, exhaling. 

“Are you okay?” 

“I’m great,” he says, which isn’t a lie. Mostly. Sure, he feels kind of strange and jittery and like he did something wrong, even though she seems fine. But, also, maybe she’s not fine. She’s Chrissy, and she’s good at pretending. 

“Eddie?” She inches closer, hooking her chin over his shoulder. “I really liked that.” 

That sounds sincere, and he exhales a shaky breath. “Yeah? I didn’t grab you too hard?” 

“No, that was fine. You were so… I just thought you were so sweet.” 

Sweet isn’t sexy, suave, or any word he might have hoped for, but at least it’s a net positive. “Thanks, kiddo.” 

“Sure. These tissues are terrible.” 

“I know. I might go take a shower.” 

“Take a shower in the morning.” She wraps her arms around his waist. “Take your pants off now.” 

The request makes him laugh, and he kicks his way out of his jeans. Balls out in a black t-shirt is historically not an impressive look, so he drags a blanket across his lap as he leans back against the wall. 

“You should take your shirt off, too,” she says, oh-so-casually. 

Eddie doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t even blink before he’s whipping it off, so he’s one hundred percent naked, and she’s one hundred percent clothed.

Chrissy surprises him, though. Kisses his cheek and undoes the buttons on her blouse to slip it off her shoulders, revealing a plain, white bra. 

“Shit,” he breathes because it’s low-cut, and he can see the swell of her breasts and maybe the hint of a nipple, even beneath all that padding. “You’re gorgeous.” 

She shrugs and reaches for his t-shirt, which she pulls over her head. He’s a skinny guy, but she’s swimming in it, the collar hanging from one shoulder as she pulls her arms inside like a turtle retreating into its shell. A shimmy or two later and her bra appears in the left sleeve hole, followed by her hand. She tosses it atop his jeans, then grins. 

“Neat trick,” he says, though he’s seen girls do it before. 

“Thanks.” She gets on her knees, then tugs her skirt down. Nothing to see there—the shirt hits her mid-thigh, and she’s being deliberate about her modesty—but he’s grateful for every fresh glimpse of skin he can get.

The skirt doesn’t get tossed onto the pile. Instead, she folds it carefully and drapes it over the passenger seat before scooting in beside him, bare legs and all. She must have shaved them at some point, which makes his stomach flop because she’d only do so for his benefit. Maybe. Or maybe she just wanted to; he shouldn’t assume. 

“I’m cold,” she says, peeling back the comforter so she can stick those damned smooth stems of hers beneath it, pressing right against his hairy ones, and God, she’s gonna kill him, but he’ll die a satisfied man.

“Here, hang on,” he says, reaching for the extra blanket she bought, which he has folded in a drawer under the bunk. He shakes it over both of them, and they move down, heads on pillows, before Eddie turns off the overhead light with the push of a button. 

“Thank you.” She assumes her favorite position with her head on his pec and an arm across his torso. God, but he’s aware of his nakedness now. Vulnerable in a way he’s unused to as he shifts to accommodate her. 

“I should probably be the one saying thanks,” he says.

“Yeah, but… I don’t know. Was that weird?” 

“If it was, it was our kind of weird.” 

“Mmm. I guess so.” 

Headlights sweep across the windshield, briefly illuminating them before fading away. “Y’know, I’ve never slept naked in here.” 

“Never?”

“Nope.”

“Are you nervous?” 

“Not particularly. It’s just… new.” 

“Don’t worry,” she says around a yawn. “If anybody breaks in, I’ll defend your honor.” 

A mental picture of Chrissy leaping onto an attacker like a rabid squirrel springs to mind, and he grins. “I’d pay good money for that show.” 

She scratches his stomach, and his dick gives a brief twitch, previewing what they’ll no doubt wake to in the morning. “No show. You’ll be too busy putting your pants on.” 

“And then I’m on my own?” 

“Pretty much?” 

He digs his fingers into her side, making her squirm. “Some guard dog you are, Cunningham.” 

“M’not a guard dog. I’m a guard… possum.” 

“A possum? I was thinking squirrel, maybe…” 

“No, possum. When I’m scared, I just roll over and play dead.” 

He bumps his chin against the top of her head. “Disagree, actually. You’re not a dog or a squirrel or a possum, now that I think about it.” 

“Then what am I?” 

“You’re one of those wildcats that look like pets, but they’re actually little shitbirds.” 

“Really?” She hugs him tighter so he knows he’s hit on a winner. 

“Uh-huh. Real feral. Except, like… there’s maybe one person who can tame you.” He squeezes the back of her neck to prove his point, putting pressure on the spot she likes so much. 

“Doubtful,” she says, then nips at his collarbone. “But maybe. Okay. G’night, Eddie.” 

“G’night, shitbird.”

Chapter Text

“Hey, Punk Rock Girl. You up for a trip to Philly?” 

Eddie hopes the answer is yes, considering they have little choice. They’d woken up in Nashville that morning—naked in Nashville, what a world!—and had made it to Greensboro, North Carolina, in a day. Now, dispatch wants to send him north and strand him there for Thanksgiving. Typically, Eddie avoids the northeast corridor like the plague, as there are too many angry drivers and snarled streets, but he’s shown Chrissy the south, the west, and some of the east, so there’s nothing for it. They have to go. 

“Sure,” she says as she hauls herself into the truck, a bag of grease in her hands. Eddie’s never heard of Mrs. Winners before, but judging by the slick leaking through the brown paper, he’s going to enjoy whatever’s inside. “That’s Philadelphia, right?” 

“That’s Philadelphia,” he says, taking the food when she hands it to him. “We can eat a cheesesteak. And I was thinking, I get a couple days for Thanksgiving, so… you want to take Manhattan?” 

He could have worked through the holiday, but he won’t tell her that. Philly to New York is an easy jump, and he’d rather hop a train to Manhattan than haul the goddamn rig into New Jersey. 

“Like, New York Manhattan?” 

“No, the other Manhattan.”

“Don’t be funny,” she says, reaching over and into the bag to pull out a biscuit, which has his mouth watering. 

“You make it too easy. Anyway, yeah? On the taking of Manhattan?” 

“Sure, let’s do it. Like the Muppets.” 

“Huh?” 

“You never saw that movie?” 

“Is that the one where Kermit rides a bike?” 

“Oh, Eddie.” Disappointment takes a flying leap across the seats. “One day, I’m going to show you all my movies.”

“Likewise, kid,” he says. “Especially the oogy ones.” 

She rolls her eyes and turns up the music as he balances a biscuit on his lap and pulls into traffic. Their soundtrack is her choice today, and she’s picked a Fleetwood Mac tape she bought at a truck stop back in Colorado. Not Eddie’s favorite by a long shot, but Chrissy’s cuteness more than makes up for his aversion, what with the way she’s mouthing the words and weaving a braid into her hair. She picks at her food as they go, but mostly eats it without his prompting, and he likes that better. Prefers prompting her for other stuff like kisses and hugs, and yeah, alright, licking his jizz off her fingers last night, which he hadn’t asked for, but she did anyway, and no, he’s still not fucking over it. Might never, ever get over it because it was just… cool, is what it was. It was a very cool situation, and waking up next to her was also a very cool situation. His morning boner less so, but she’d been chill about it, and that’s all that matters. Things don’t seem all that different after the jerk-off, which had been his biggest worry. She woke up like normal, kissed him like normal. Pretended she wasn’t watching while he pulled on his boxers normal. Just a totally average day, save for the crusted spunk on his skin. 

She’s wearing the jeans she bled through in Oregon—there’s still a faint rusty stain around the knee—and the same lavender sweatshirt she’d sported the night he picked her up. Only, she was tiny then. Not tiny in a physical sense, but a relative one. The slightest little blip in the universe, all hunched shoulders and hushed words, close to folding in on herself and disappearing entirely. Or so he’d thought; he knows better now. It was a protective thing, is all. Keeping herself small because if the world that owned her had seen her light—how fucking bright she can be—it’d hurt her. Kill her. Reduce her to dust. 

Now, she shines all the time. Not always with the full force of her sun, but there’s a flicker wherever she goes.

Eddie’s not going to give himself any credit for that, but it’s been a privilege to watch her unfold and grow tall and pink-cheeked, lighting up every room she enters. And, Jesus, when she turns that light on him? Chooses him when she could have anyone? There’s nothing better in the world.

He’s stupid in love with her, and the thought sticks with him as Stevie Nicks carries them out of North Carolina and into Virginia, where they stop for the night. As they settle in, Chrissy asks him to take his shirt off, so she can sleep in it instead. Nothing happens beyond that, other than some kissing, but he could get used to her in his clothes.

The next day, they hit traffic outside DC—there’s always goddamn traffic outside DC—so they’re late into Philly, and he’s fighting a shitty mood, choosing to blame Ronald Reagan’s fucking motorcade for his problems. 

The depot is on the city's outskirts, and he leaves Chrissy at a nearby strip mall before dropping off Smaug and going to find her, overnight bags in hand. Unsurprisingly, she’s poking through the racks in a funky little thrift store, a healthy stack of clothing in her arms. She doesn’t notice him at first, which gives him another opportunity to observe her in the wild. Bitten nails swiftly shuttling wire hangers, occasionally pausing so she can assess a piece. Add it to the pile, move on. She is calm and efficient and has a new hat on her head, presumably to be purchased. Go, Eagles. 

“Hey, pretty girl,” he says before she catches him peeping. 

She looks up with a smile that has him all goofed up inside. “Hi.” 

“Good haul?” 

“Maybe. I wanted to get stuff I can wear in New York.” 

“They don’t have a dress code.” 

She fixes him with a peevish look, and God, she’s fun to tease when she gives as good as she gets. “Eddie.” 

“Okay, right, yeah. Get stuff you can walk around in. I thought we’d try to catch some of the Macy’s parade tomorrow morning.” He doesn’t know if that’s possible or if it’s a ticketed thing, but he figures they can find a place to rubberneck at the balloons from a distance, if nothing else. 

“I forgot that happened in New York. Do you think we can see the balloons up close?” 

“I think they’ll be tough to miss. But uh, I think a lot of other stuff will be closed, at least tomorrow.” 

“Isn’t New York… what’s that thing? It never sleeps?” 

“True. There’s gotta be a bar open, anyway.” 

“Probably. Okay, I’m going to try things on. I won’t be long.” 

Eddie doesn’t believe that, judging by the size of the pile she brings in to the dressing room with her, but that’s fine. He passes the time in the book section, where he picks up a Stephen King paperback he hasn’t read before and a Fantastic Four he remembers from a few years back. Chrissy finds him there, her pile of options diminished, and they have a friendly squabble over who’s going to pay. Eddie wins by pointing out that she’s bought the last few lunches, as he’s learned that reminding her she is contributing tends to mollify her money worries. Which she doesn’t need to think about—he’s flush since he had Wayne wire him some cash back in Kansas City.

“Thank you,” she says for the fourth time once they’re outside. 

“You’re welcome.” 

She crouches on the sidewalk and opens her suitcase to put her new clothes inside, retrieving her camera. Eddie bops the brim of her Eagles cap when she stands, so she bites his finger, and he resists the urge to throw her over his shoulder and carry her around for a while. 

Philly’s a big city, but not a gigantic one, and they ask a passerby for directions to the train station. It’s a couple miles to walk, which isn’t fun with their bags, but they'll have to make it work unless they want to figure out the subway.

They stop for the promised cheesesteak a mile in. Chrissy eats half of hers and says she’s full, which means Eddie gets one and a half cheesesteaks, and that’s no bad thing. His jeans are tight when they stroll up to 30th Street Station, but the deliciousness is worth the discomfort. 

Their train departs just after five, overcrowded with holiday travelers. Luckily, Eddie’s an asshole, so he secures them two seats together with their bags on the overhead rack. Chrissy takes the window and, as they pull out of the station and leave the rail yard behind, leans her forehead against it to take in the city, the outskirts, and, eventually, the backyards of southern New Jersey. 

“Is it weird that I really love being able to glimpse someone else’s life, just for a second?” she asks.

Eddie looks up from his book and shrugs. “No. Those people probably fucking hate having a train in their backyard, though.” 

“Well, yeah. I wouldn’t want to live there. But I can’t help thinking about, like, oh, I wonder what’s going on. Are they eating dinner, or did a kid just get home from football practice, or do they already have family in town for Thanksgiving?” 

“Maybe they’re having a big fucking fight because Uncle Pete forgot to flush the john.” 

“Don’t be such a pessimist, Munson.”

He grins and kisses her temple. “I can’t help it. Shit happens. Literally.” 

“Gross.” 

“Yup. But uh, I like that you can still see… the opportunity for the nice things.” 

“It’s probably because I’ve always assumed that everyone else is having a better time than I am.” 

“Ah, Chrissy…” 

“Not these days, though,” she says before putting his arm around her shoulders. 

The train squeals and groans along the tracks for the remainder of the journey, and by the time they reach Penn Station (one Penn to another; Eddie has to imagine that’s messed up some drunk motherfuckers), he’s maybe, like, ten percent worried that they’re going to be sleeping on the streets, considering the sheer volume of holiday travelers. But, hey, that’s what information desks are for, so they head for the nearest one in the station.

The woman behind the desk proves especially helpful and points them toward a few downtown locations that she says are both cheap and not disgusting—a low bar, but one Eddie’d like cleared—then gives them subway instructions, to boot. Eddie’s only been to New York twice before, but he knows that public transit is what they’ll have to rely on; taxis aren’t exactly reasonably priced. Chrissy seems to be operating under the mistaken assumption that Eddie has any clue what the fuck he’s doing, so he does his best to project confidence as he leads them from the station to the subway entrance. (And Jesus, if that doesn’t seem like a missed opportunity. Why walk aboveground when everything could just be tucked away subterraneously?) 

They descend the steps and buy some tokens, then Eddie tries not to look too obviously confused as he studies the signs. Once he’s ninety-seven percent sure he’s picked the right platform, he leads Chrissy in that direction, and they hang out with maybe fifty other people waiting for the train.

“Oh, wow, that’s huge,” she says, pointing to a rat scurrying down the tracks. Not scared, exactly, but not thrilled, either.

Eddie doesn’t bother telling her about the rat he saw on the way down the stairs, which had been feasting on a half-eaten piece of pizza wedged inside a trash can. 

A train arrives within a few minutes (good luck, track rat), and they squish in alongside a load of commuters. The woman at the information desk told them to get out at Delancey Street, which they do, albeit with a bit of effort, as people are trying to get on as they’re trying to get off, and yeah, Eddie snaps at a guy but who wouldn’t, in his situation? 

“Oh my gosh,” Chrissy says as they emerge into the evening. “It smells so much better up here.” 

That’s saying something, considering the pile of garbage stacked on the curb not fifteen feet away.

They ask a lady who looks harmless enough for directions to the hotel that seemed the most promising from its description, and she points them toward Avenue A, which is apparently what the creative geniuses behind the city’s grid called the north-south streets beyond 1st. 

Chrissy spots the sign advertising cheap rooms a couple blocks north, and though that sign is cracked and peeling, the building’s vestibule is warm and smells like bread baking. An auspicious beginning, Eddie decides, ringing the bell at the front desk. 

An older man with a comb-over pops out of a door down the hall and chats away as he books them into a room on the fourth floor. They’re lucky—apparently, the building was fully booked, but they had a cancellation that afternoon—but not too lucky, as the elevator’s out of service. 

So, they hoof it up precisely one billion stairs and find themselves in a hotel room roughly the size of a broom closet. Inside is a double bed with six inches of space on either side. Beyond that, there’s a tiny dresser shoved into a corner and a clothing rack with four rusty hangers squeezed in beside it. The bathroom is shared with the other rooms on this floor, and the man at the desk had warned them the hot water was spotty.  

Naturally, it costs three times as much as the practical palace they’d had in Yachats. 

“If my mother were here, she’d hate everything about this place,” Chrissy says as she flops onto the mattress with a yawn. 

“Good.” He drops their bags atop the dresser, which is a little lopsided, but doesn’t collapse under the weight, then falls down beside her. “Because I hate your mom.” 

“No kidding? You’ve never told me that before.” 

“Sarcasm’s an excellent color on you, Cunningham. Can you imagine if she’d seen the subway rat?” 

“We had a mouse in the pantry once, when I was a kid. She was like… what’s that word? Apoplectic? My dad wanted to put out these humane traps, and she wanted to get medieval about it.” 

“Who won?” 

“My mom. She always wins.” 

“Not always…” He trails a hand down her arm. “Wanna make out for a while?” 

“Yes, please.” 

“Cool. We can get some pizza after.” 

It’s as solid a plan as any, and after some light-to-heavy petting, they venture into the wild. Chrissy declares the three bites she eats of their shared pizza as “the best, ever.” Eddie agrees, even if she had insisted on a slice with vegetables. 

They get back to the hotel around ten and fall asleep in short order. The following day, they’re up by six for the parade. The hotel offers nothing so luxurious as coffee, but there’s a cart on the corner, and Eddie can see the appeal of New York’s immediate-availability culture in the cup of sludge and sesame seed bagel they pass back and forth as they take the subway north toward what he hopes to God is the right stop.

They’re not the only people in this giant, overflowing sea of humanity who want to see the country’s most famous Thanksgiving Day tradition up close. When they arrive on the scene, throngs of people are already lining the street, so they walk until the crowd thins out a little and wedge themselves between a family of four and an older couple sharing a plaid Thermos of coffee. 

Chrissy settles against Eddie, her back to his chest, camera hanging from her neck, and he wraps an arm around her, glad for the shared body heat. 

“Every time I look up, I get surprised all over again,” she says, lifting her eyes to the skyline. “It’s just so much.” 

“Could you live here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. But not forever.” 

“Where’s forever, then?” 

“I’ll tell you when I figure it out.” 

A horn blats in the distance as some marching band or another prepares to take their turn. Eddie’s seen the parade on TV a bunch—Wayne’s always insisted on some semblance of Thanksgiving—and while he typically finds it treacly and ridiculous, being there in person is pretty cool. Even if it sparks a twinge of guilt for standing there with her instead of going home to Hawkins with his uncle, who still has no fucking clue why Eddie’s ditching him this year. 

Things kick into high gear around nine o’clock, and it’s worth the wait to hear Chrissy squeak with delight as the first bands march past. There’s no way to tell where they’re from without the helpful TV announcers, but some kids look older, others younger, so he has to assume a mix of high school and college. Some bands are accompanied by color guards or cheerleaders, with Chrissy craning her neck to catch a glimpse. It’s funny, Eddie’d always assumed that cheering—any sport, really—was a thing people did because they had to in order to preserve their place in the social hierarchy. An idiotic notion, actually. It’s clear that Chrissy holds a lot of space in her heart for the memories of her cheerleading days, just as much as he has fond recollections of Hellfire and the band. 

“Our coach always applied for stuff like this,” she says as a squad of tinsel-clad high schoolers goes past in green Santa outfits, shaking their silver pompoms. “But we weren’t ever going to be good enough. We never placed in a single competition.” 

“Clearly, they weren’t looking at you, Cunningham, or you’d have won every fucking time.” 

“Yeah, but where were you looking, Munson?” she teases. 

“Right up your skirt, kiddo.” 

It’s a line he wouldn’t have tried even two weeks ago, and while he can’t see her face, he catches the essence of her reaction when she bumps her hips against his. “Look, Big Bird!” 

It is, indeed. Giant, yellow, and floating a hundred feet off the ground, followed by Snoopy, Charlie Brown, the Pink Panther, and a distressingly deflating Baby Shamu. 

“Um, I think that whale’s having some problems,” Chrissy says as the balloon passes overhead while wranglers run frantically along the street below. “Do you think we’d die if it collapsed on us?” 

“Uh. Maybe.” Shamu lists to one side, and Eddie takes a step back, bringing Chrissy with him. “Definitely.”  

“It’d be a cool way to go. Very um… very metal.” 

That’s the best thing he’s heard all day, even if it means the not-inconsiderable threat of being suffocated by a giant orca. “Totally metal.” 

Once all the balloons have passed, people start drifting away from the parade route. Chrissy says she doesn’t care about seeing Santa, so they do the same, wandering through a city that, while not asleep, is dozing for the holiday. Finally, they find an open Chinese restaurant, and Eddie has the best lo mein of his life while Chrissy picks at her first beef and broccoli ever. Like, ever ever, because it turns out that Chinese food was another thing Laura Cunningham refused to feed her family, insisting that MSG would make them fat, or bloated, or some bullshit. 

Sounds pretty dumb and kind of racist, if Eddie’s honest. But, hey, that’s Laura. Never met the woman, but if he does… man, he likes to think he’d keep it together for Chrissy’s sake, but probably that’s a pipe dream. 

After lunch, they walk again, following the grid first to Central Park, where their wanderings take them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Unfortunately, the museum is closed, but Chrissy likes the steps, so she takes a photograph of Eddie sprawled across them, playing dead, then another of a flock of pigeons fighting over a hot dog bun. 

Townhouses undoubtedly beyond any sane person’s price point line the streets around the museum. They spy a half-dozen Thanksgiving dinners in progress as they ramble, though eventually, the rich neighborhood-y vibe gives way to a commercial one, with tall buildings and closed storefronts stretching as far as the eye can see. 

“You know what I’ve always wanted to visit?” Chrissy asks as they turn left onto Madison Avenue. “The Brooklyn Bridge. I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn when I was younger, and… yeah.” 

“Well, shit, Cunningham. When in Rome, right?” 

“Right,” she says, and they stop the next person they see for directions. 

The bridge itself is easy to spot once they reach lower Manhattan. Finding their way onto it proves more challenging. Still, they’re intrepid explorers, and soon enough, they’re standing in the center of an architectural marvel, with the Statue of Liberty visible in the hazy distance. 

Chrissy leans over the railing just enough to make Eddie want to put a hand on her back and hold her shirt, though he doesn’t. She points her camera at the cars rushing below the walkway and waits. For what, he couldn’t say, but she takes nearly a full minute to actually press the shutter. When she stands, she’s smiling, evidently having caught what she wanted. 

“Should we go all the way over?” He tosses his head in that direction, wishing he had something to hold his hair back as the wind whips his curls in front of his mouth. A building on the Brooklyn side has a giant digital clock on the top, informing them it’s nearly five o’clock. Somehow, the day’s gone by, and it feels like they just woke up. 

“No. I only wanted to see it.” She kisses him once, twice, three times before spitting out a mouthful of his hair and laughing. “Let’s go back to the hotel?” 

The choice made, they head into the maze of un-gridded streets crisscrossing the lower third of the city. Eddie has a subway map in his pocket, but it’s not much use in navigation, so they make their way vaguely north until they hit the steady rigidity of avenues and parallel streets that make it simple to find their hotel.

They stop for another slice of pizza on the way, and once they’re tucked inside their tiny room, Chrissy declares she wants a nap. Eddie reads for a while, then joins her, and sleeps longer than he means to. By the time he wakes, the cracked digital alarm clock on the windowsill says 9:57, and Chrissy’s letting herself back into the room from the hallway and, presumably, the bathroom, where she’s gotten ready for an evening Eddie didn’t know they were having.

She’s changed into clothes he recognizes from the pile in her arms at the Philadelphia thrift shop. A black velvet dress hits her mid-thigh, the top tight and the skirt flippy in a way that makes his heart rattle in its cage. She’s paired it with black tights, a studded dark grey denim jacket with a rainbow patch on the pocket, and a gauzy, shimmery blue scarf serving as a makeshift headband for her hair, which is loose around her shoulders. Tousled like she’s been running her fingers through it, which makes him want to do the same. 

She looks sexy as shit, and when he sees the ensemble is capped off with a pair of cracked leather combat boots, he almost groans. It’s like she’s the love child of Cyndi Lauper and Carole King, and yeah, yeah, she’s gorgeous every day, but her current vibe is hitting some very particular chords. 

“God, look at you,” he says, rubbing his eyes and stifling a yawn. 

“You think?” She pats her hair and fusses with the scarf. “It feels like a costume. It’s not too much?” 

He doesn’t know what “too much” is, considering they haven’t made plans. But could anything with her ever be too much? So he shakes his head and reaches out a hand, pulling her to the edge of the bed and scooting over to bump his forehead against her velvet-covered stomach, smiling when she threads her fingers into his rat’s nest of hair. 

“Not too much,” he says. “You look really cool.” 

“Cool, wow.” She scratches his scalp. “If you say it, it must be true.” 

He brings his hands to her hips, feeling the jut of bone beneath his fingers, and presses down. “I do say. Extremely cool. And you smell good, too.” 

“I smell like that store,” she says. True, but Eddie’s always dug the grungy thrift store aroma. Plus, that place had had patchouli incense going somewhere, and he’s got a whiff of that coming off her, too. 

“Lemme test,” he says and goes for her armpit, which is a guaranteed shriek of horror mingled with delight. He hopes she never lets that one go. “Nope. Fresh as a fuckin’ daisy.” 

“You’re ridiculous. Go get dressed. I want to go out.” 

“I am dressed.” 

“Eddie!”

“Alright, alright.” He rolls out of bed and rummages through his duffel. She has more options than he does for looking cool, so he ends up swapping one black band shirt for another featuring a slightly more obscure group, then throwing a flannel over that, and topping the whole look with his leather jacket and the white sneakers he reserves for special occasions. Such as, you know, inevitably scuffing them up in New York City. 

He’s grateful for the leather as they leave the hotel and discover the temperature outside has plunged. Chrissy shivers, but when he asks her if she’s cold, she says she’s fine, which is probably bullshit, but she won’t die from it, so he lets it go. 

They walk with no destination in mind, following anyone who looks like they might know where to find a good time. Despite being a holiday, the city has plenty of orphans and freaks wandering the streets and a critical mass heading for one bar in particular. 

Eddie can see why. The bar in question is a rathole of the highest order. Dark, smelly, dank, and overcrowded, the tabletops gunked with years—maybe decades—worth of beer, gin, and humanity. Every second overhead light is burnt out, and though there’s a plate-glass window facing the street, the whole place somehow gives the aura of being hidden from the outside world. There are probably people slumped over tables in the back who died in the late sixties, and nobody bothered poking them for signs of life. 

So, yeah, he loves it immediately. Worms his way through the crowd with Chrissy at his side to secure them a spot at a long plank of wood nailed to the wall opposite the bar. The plank’s not much, but it serves as a makeshift table or a place to set a drink. 

“This is so busy!” she exclaims as they wedge themselves in by the window. “I mean, for Thanksgiving!”

“Lonely people, I guess. What do you want?” 

“Whatever you’re having,” she says, less trusting him to decide and more continuing her refusal to learn the name of any beer she likes. 

He leaves her to hold their places, and by the time he returns, she’s got the giggles. “What’s so funny?” he asks as he hands her a Pabst, natch, and takes a swig of his own. 

“A man just walked by the window wearing a bear suit!”

Eddie cranes his neck, forehead nearly pressed to the glass. “What? Where?” 

“You missed him. He went around the corner. But it was a full bear suit! He was carrying the head under his arm.” 

“Huh. Maybe he was in the parade?” 

“That’s a long time to stay in costume.” 

“Maybe he’s one of those Marlon Brando actors? Like, he gets super in character.”

“As a parade bear?” 

“As a parade bear.”

“I didn’t even see any parade bears, though.” 

“Because you were too distracted by Baby Shamu.” 

The topic of Shamu’s sad deflation leads them into a discussion of what might happen if, say, the Kermit balloon was to go rogue and terrorize the city. Eddie brings up Ghostbusters as a comparison, and they get into a heated debate about whether Kermit’s lanky frog legs would be more or less terrifying than the plump horror of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

“Look. Look.” Chrissy downs the last of her beer and points a finger. “My point is, Eddie, that when the Ghostbusters blew him up, the worst thing that happened is everyone got covered in goo, and they probably had to make a lot of s’mores to clean it up. Burnt-up Kermit would smell so bad.” 

“Kermit’s a muppet. He’d smell like… what does it smell like when you use a hot glue gun on fabric?”

“I feel like the Ghostbusters version of Kermit would be a real frog, though.” 

“Like, not a muppet?”

“No, he’s still a muppet.” 

“A real muppet frog running around the city?” 

“Hopping.” 

“Hopping. Jesus Christ. Okay, counterpoint: when Stay-Puft explodes, it’s not just marshmallow; it’s burning marshmallow. As in, sugar. As in, molten fucking lava raining down on the people outside that building.” 

“No, it wasn’t! Nobody got burnt up in the movie.” 

“They can’t show that shit on screen. It happened, though.” 

“You’re so full of crap, Eddie.” 

“Superior logic, sweetheart.” 

“Smug. So freaking smug. Do you want another drink?” 

“Are you offering?”

“You bought all my clothes in Philadelphia.” 

“Then I guess you can get the next round.” 

“Good. I’ll be right back.” 

Only she’s not. Eddie watches her disappear into the crowd, and a few minutes later, he sees her return with cans in hand. Halfway back to their table, though, some prick in a polo shirt accosts her. Full-on grabs her raised arm as she passes the table where he’s sitting with two buddies who could be his clones. 

Eddie doesn’t hesitate, instinct running the show as he pushes toward her. The bar is small, but it’s like the walls close in to make it smaller as he fights his way through. Time slows, panic creeps up his spine because he can see her trying to pull her arm away, beer sloshing onto her wrist, lips forming the words “please don’t” while the douchebag just laughs.  

“Hey!” Eddie shouts when he’s close enough to be heard over the din. “You got a problem, asshole?” 

The guy turns and gives Eddie a once-over. Takes in the leather and the hair and the rings on his fingers, but doesn’t release Chrissy’s elbow. “I saw her first.” 

“She’s my fucking girlfriend,” he snaps. “Let her go.” 

“Oh, shit.” Asshole releases his hold, and Chrissy steps away from them both. “Sorry, man. I didn’t know she was taken.”

“Does it matter?” Eddie moves closer and gives the guy a push in the chest. “Don’t put your fucking hands on people.” 

“Take your own advice, shithead,” says the dude before shoving back.

And then, well, it’s a fight. Not much of one, what with the overcrowding, but they manage two failed punches in quick succession. The guy lashes out first and flails a glancing blow to Eddie’s jaw. Eddie’s return lands on his ear, sending the dickhead stumbling against the table, causing their plastic pitcher of beer to skid off the surface and onto the floor. 

“Fuck you, buddy!” he snarls, holding the side of his head. “I said I was sorry!”

“Say it again!” 

“Eddie, stop!” That’s Chrissy, hand on his arm. “Just forget it.” 

“Hang on, Chrissy, alright? I gotta—” 

A second punch catches Eddie on the temple, and that one hurts. Eddie sneers, ready to throw the dude over the table because while he’s more a lover than a fighter, he’s sure as shit capable of holding his own in a scrap, thanks to his father.

But then Chrissy huffs out a disgusted, “Oh my God, Eddie,” and shoves her way past him and into the gathering throng of onlookers. 

So, either he can stay here and bare his teeth at this fraternity fucknut like some territorial mongrel, or he can go after his girlfriend. 

Eddie leaves the fucknut in the dust and follows Chrissy into the crowd. She doesn’t respond when he calls her name, as she’s busy pushing her way outside, where she leans against the building, squeezing the beer cans hard enough that the content overflows the sides. She’s crying a little, and he feels like a real dumbshit about the whole thing. 

“Sorry, that was stupid—” He reaches for her, only to have her bat him away, sloshing suds onto her arm. 

“Don’t!” Her glare bores into him, wild and furious. “Shit! Just… fuck that guy!” 

Anger pours off her in waves, and while it’s usually cute when she dares to throw out a bit of profanity, there’s nothing funny about it now. Eyes bright, body rigid, every inch of her shivering with rage as she takes aim at the side of the building, kicking it as hard as she can before throwing a can at the bricks. 

“Chrissy…” He touches her elbow, only to be rebuffed once again.

“Don’t touch me!” She throws the second can, then releases a sob that’s nearly a howl. “It doesn’t matter if I’m taken, Eddie! I’m not… I’m a fucking… I’m a fucking person, and I told him not to, and he did it anyway!” She punches the brick. Hard. Lets out a strangled shriek of surprise as she pulls her hand away, knuckles ragged and blood rising to the surface. “Ow!”

“Fuck, sweetheart.” He holds a hand out, and once more, she steps back, fire burning in her eyes as she cradles her arm to her chest. 

“I’m not sweet! I’m not a nice girl.” 

“I never said you were, but your hand’s bleeding, Chrissy. Let me take a look, please?” 

She twists away. Steps into the swiftly spreading puddle of beer, then hits the wall again, the dull thud making him wince. “Fuck! I don’t want to be nice! I don’t want… I don’t want people thinking I owe them anything!” 

“Nobody’s saying you do.” There are trickles of blood on three of her fingers, and he worries she’ll do it again.  “I really just want to look at your hand.” 

“Well, you can’t.” 

“Chrissy…” Penance or punishment, he couldn’t say. He just wants her to stop.

“You belong to me, too, you know,” she snaps, eyes brimming with wrath. “If I’m taken, then so are you.” 

“I… yes?” He has no clue why he’s become the enemy in this situation, considering he wasn’t the one who grabbed her. “Obviously?” 

“He didn’t think so! He just figured you owned me. And you… she’s my fucking girlfriend.” 

“But you are my girlfriend!” 

“I don’t have to be anyone’s girlfriend to not want some asshole grabbing me in a bar!” She sucks in a lungful of air and exhales a desperate, heaving sob. “I’m so fucking tired of people telling me who I am, Eddie.” 

“Okay, well, why don’t you let me see your hand while you figure it out?” 

Her eyes flash. “You think I don’t know?” 

Suddenly, Eddie’s standing in a minefield of his own making. Turn left, explode. Turn right, explode. Stay still, shrapnel incoming. Any movement, it’s a fight. “Uh. I’m not… sure what you mean?” 

“Do you think? That I don’t know? Who I am?” 

Well, damn it. Defcon-something over here. “I… I think you’re working on it. But I think you’ve also spent most of your life letting other people, like, set expectations for you?” 

“That’s not the same thing.”

“It kind of is.” He pushes a hand through his hair, frustration crackling to his fingertips. “All I mean is that it’s gonna take longer than a few weeks for you to unlearn that shit.” 

“What shit?” 

“The shit that fucked you up.” 

“You think I’m fucked up?” 

Eddie feels the click of the landmine beneath his foot. But, hey, she’s clearly picking a fight for a reason. So, fuck it. Easier to give her what she’s after and risk the detonation. “Chrissy, you know you are.” 

She freezes, eyes wide, and he regrets every choice he’s ever made. He’s sure she’s about to leave him standing on the sidewalk, and he’ll never see her again while she goes off to conquer the Bronx. And Staten Island, too. 

“I didn’t mean…” he starts, only to shut up when a tiny smile cracks the corner of her mouth, followed by a wellspring of laughter bubbling from within her still-rigid body. 

So, yeah. Probably he’s never going to figure her out. 

“Fuck you, man,” she says through her giggles. “That’s an asshole thing to say.” 

And then, Eddie’s laughing, too. A tired, cracked, desperate sort of chuckle because there’s blood on her fist, and he loves her and doesn’t understand her and just wants to hug her close for a while. “Fuck you, man,” he echoes because he can’t think of a better retort.  

Her smile widens, and she steps nearer. “Say that again.” 

“Say what, fuck you?”

“Yeah. That.” 

“Fuck you, Cunningham. You’re killing me with this shit.” 

She kicks her toe against the sidewalk, and beer spatters against her boot. “Are you mad at me?” 

“I don’t know how to answer that.”

“That means you’re mad.” 

“No, it means I’m confused. Because I still don’t get why you’re pissed at me and picking a fight because some other dude grabbed you.” 

“I’m not pissed at you. And we’re not fighting. I just didn’t like it when you… I wanted him to let go because he shouldn’t have touched me, not because I’m someone else’s property.” 

“So, next time, I should say, hey, man, the lady owns herself. Back off.” 

“Yes. Except, there’s not going to be a next time.” She makes a little finger gun and cocks it at him.

“That so?” 

“Uh-huh. I’m Annie Oakley.” 

“Calamity Christine, more like. You’re a freak, which is all that I meatn by fucked up, by the way.”

“I know. That’s why it’s funny. Besides, I’d rather be a freak than a doormat.” 

Eddie reaches for his cigarettes, needing a nicotine hit to calm the still-fraying nerves their near-fight has set fizzling. “You’re not a doormat. You’re just figuring your shit out, like I said. And you’re getting there, you know? I’m kind of obsessed with the whole… person of you.” 

“The whole person of me.” She snorts, then points at his Luckies. “Can I have one of those?” 

“You won’t—” He cuts himself off, as he’d been about to tell her she wouldn’t like it, which feels like the wrong move, considering her mood. “Yeah, sure. Give it a shot.” 

She eases a cigarette from the pack and puts it between her lips, letting him light it for her, which feels like progress. The flame illuminates the tear tracks on her cheeks, mascara smudged beneath her shining eyes, and there’s a brittle pretty to her anger. A strength in her rage. 

“My mom used to try to get me to smoke,” she says as she takes a drag. “Because it might suppress my appetite.” She exhales, then coughs and shakes her head. “Bitch.” 

“Another banner year at the Cunningham house.” 

She smiles and picks up what he’s putting down, giving a half-decent fist pump. “That’s why I never started smoking,” she continues. “It felt like this one acceptable thing to push back on because good girls don’t smoke, even if she secretly thought it’d be beneficial. How messed up is that?” 

“Pretty messed up.” 

“You’re not wrong about me not knowing who I am. I’ve lived my whole life as a reaction to other people, so I got mad when you pointed it out. But these past few weeks with you, I’ve felt like this is what it’s like to live the way I want to, and do what I want to do. Only a part of me worries that I’m only doing all this stuff to rebel against what my mom or Jason would want. Like, reacting the opposite way, but still using them as the guidepost.” 

Eddie’s only half picking up what she’s putting down. “Like how?” 

“Like, am I enjoying this band, or do I just like that my mom would hate them? Or am I smoking weed because I want to, or just because I know it would horrify Jason?” 

“Huh.” Eddie taps his cigarette twice to ash it, considering. “You like your blue skirt, though.”

Her expression softens. “I love my blue skirt.” 

“And you didn’t pick it out because your mother or Jason would hate it?” 

“No. I just knew it was going to be mine.” 

“Well, there you go. You liked it, and you knew it was going to be yours. That’s real. That’s you.” 

She exhales a cloud of smoke, and there’s blood on the cigarette, which makes him wince. “How do I know what else is real?” 

“Who knows? Half the shit I’m into is tied to other people’s assumptions about me. Like, do I really love Tolkien for myself, or am I automatically gonna love it because my mom did? That’s life, you know? We’re all fitting ourselves into someone else’s boxes.” 

Her mouth curls into a smile. “So, you’re saying I’m not special?” 

“Nope. You’re standard issue, Cunningham.” 

“Fuck you, man,” she says again, barely getting it out around another giggle. 

“Fuck you, man. Can I please look at your dumb, bleeding hand?” 

“Oh, sure,” she says, glancing down like she’s surprised she still has one. 

Any lingering tension dissipates as she lets him study her bloody, soon-to-be-bruised fist. The scrapes aren’t deep, so he uses the bandana tucked into his pocket to clean the worst of the mess before blowing cool air across her raw skin. 

“Better?” he asks. 

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you want to head back to the hotel?” 

“No. I want…” She points to a nearby lamppost, onto which someone has stapled a mimeographed flyer advertising an anti-Thanksgiving punk show for the outcasts and the misfits of Alphabet City. “I want to go there.” 

“You do?” 

“Yes. It feels like a blue skirt.” 

There’s no arguing with that, so he offers her his hand. She makes him wait, though, while she picks up the cans of beer she threw and tosses them in a nearby trash can. And he thinks that’s who you are, Cunningham, but doesn’t say so because before he can, a voice pipes up from behind them. 

“Oi, Blondie. You want to learn how to throw a punch?”

Chapter Text

“Oi, Blondie. You want to learn how to throw a punch?”

At first, Chrissy doesn’t associate herself with the comment. But then Eddie turns, so she does, too, and finds herself facing a bullish woman with a son-of-a-bitch smile on her unlovely face. She’s smoking a cigarette, fierce red lipstick on the filter to match the jagged line of it swiped across her mouth. One side of her head is shaved—all the better to show off the staggering amount of metal covering her ear—while the other has dark hair cut along the line of her jaw in a sharp diagonal, so it gets shorter the further back it goes. 

It’s hard to guess her age. Thirties, for sure. Maybe forties? She’s short—not as short as Chrissy, but nearly—and squat, and she’s looking at Chrissy like she might want to make a meal out of her.

“To… me?” Chrissy says. 

“Yeah, you. Blondie. I saw what happened. Saw you chuck those cans.” The woman tosses her head at Eddie and grins. “Saw you reading Stringbean the riot act.” 

“Stringbean?” Eddie echoes. 

“Gloria,” says the woman, like Eddie hasn’t said a thing, extending her hand to Chrissy with a grin. 

“Chrissy.” She shakes Gloria’s fine-boned fingers and finds her grip is more delicate than her leather jacket and ripped jeans might suggest. Strong, though, which feels like a contradiction but makes sense in the context of the tiny punk pixie person before her. 

“Hey, Chrissy.” 

“He’s Eddie.” 

“Hey,” Eddie says, sounding kind of sullen about it. He’s also standing pretty close, and while he doesn’t have a hand on Chrissy’s shoulder or anything, she can feel him wanting to touch. 

Gloria acknowledges him with a grunt, but it’s clear he’s not the one she wants to have a conversation with. And, okay, Eddie’s the best person in the world, and Chrissy adores him and all, but there’s something thrilling about the way Gloria doesn’t immediately kowtow to him just because he’s there and he’s a guy.

“So, Chrissy,” Gloria says. “You never answered my question. Do you want to learn how to hit someone?” 

“Sure.” 

“Fantastic.” She crushes her cigarette beneath her shoe, then gives Eddie some consideration. “We’ll start with something simple. You wanna be a dummy, Stringbean?” 

Eddie steps up, and Chrissy notes the tension in his shoulders accompanied by a gritted, “if she wants me to.”

“Good answer,” Gloria says. “Grab her arm. Sleazy—like you’re some creep in a dive bar.” 

The jab is pointed. Eddie rolls his eyes, and Chrissy feels the need to defend him a little, because he’s clearly fighting to keep his mouth shut for her sake. “Eddie’s not… I mean, he’s actually my boyfriend,” she says. “He’s not like that guy.” 

“Uh-huh.” Gloria doesn’t seem to care, but Eddie squeezes her shoulder. “Arm, Stringbean.”

“Jesus Christ.” Eddie takes her offered arm, holding it gently.

“Put some pressure on her,” Gloria prompts.

“No fucking way,” he shoots back. 

“It’s okay,” Chrissy says. “I mean, just a little more. That’s fine.” 

Eddie sighs but acquiesces, his grip tightening so that she’d have to fight to get out of his hold, all the while knowing he’d let her go. It’s not scary, like in the bar, but it reminds her that even Eddie, for all that he never would hurt her, absolutely could.

“Alright, so Chrissy, you reach over with your opposite hand, real sweet, and act like you’re giving him some validation. Get your index and middle fingers around his pinky—uh-huh, just like that. You’re stroking his ego, holding his hand, and lining your thumb up along his nail. Good, exactly.” 

“Then what?” 

“Depends. Are you trying to break his finger?” 

“No!”

Gloria grins. “Just checking. So, real world, you’d wrench up and around like you were turning a key in a car ignition, yeah? Try it slowly.” 

Chrissy does, and it’s awkward, but she can feel Eddie twitch, then grimace as she twists his pinky finger up and out. 

“Shit,” he says, and like a magic trick, he’s forced to release his grip when the torsion gets past a certain point. “That’d hurt like hell if you were putting any force to it.” 

“That’s the point.” Gloria runs a hand down Chrissy’s arm. “Keep a hold of him, and you’re going to use the momentum to spin him around and shove him forward. As long as you’ve got his pinky, there’s a limit to what he can do without breaking his own finger.” 

It’s surprisingly easy to maneuver Eddie where she wants him, and while Chrissy knows it wouldn’t be so simple in reality, there’s still a trembling pride that comes from knowing she has some power, even if it’s just the power to snap one or two tiny bones. 

“How you doing, Stringbean?” 

“Like maybe next time I’ll let her take care of herself,” he says, flexing his fingers and smiling over his shoulder. “You want to try that again? A little faster?” 

The fact that he offers softens Gloria by, like, one percentage point, though she still treats Eddie like a practice dummy as they run through the movement four more times, until Chrissy feels confident that she could do it on her own if she had to.

“As for the punching,” Gloria says. “Show me a fist. Yup, good. Thumb on the outside, and you’re gonna—okay, so you’re pretty short. Your center of gravity is lower. And in a fight with a motherfucker, you’re not trying to beat him. You’re trying to surprise him enough that it gives you the chance to run.”

The chance to run. It sounds so simple. Obvious. Like there’ll always be a place to run to, or someone who’ll believe her when she arrives. Though, now’s not before, when running brought her to her parents’ house or a police station, where nobody listened to her before they sent her packing. Now is Eddie, who’s not about to tell her she’s lying, or it’s not that bad, or you’re married now, Christine, so grow up. 

“What you’re aiming to do is take him down. Literally. Top to bottom. Nose, groin, knees, toes.” 

Chrissy can’t help but hear the list of body parts in the style of a song she’d sung in preschool, which makes her laugh. “So, punch him in the nose to start?” 

“Better to jam it. Use the heel of your palm, and shove up. Try to break it, or at least get it bleeding.”

“Oh, okay. Got it.” 

“If he’s holding you from behind, and he’s short enough, slam your head back against his nose. If he’s tall and you can get your hands behind you, go for the balls. Just slam ‘em. If he’s got your arms, though, you’ll have to use your legs. Here, Stringbean, hold her arms behind her.” 

“I’m not sure…” 

Gloria rolls her eyes. “Because you’re too good a guy, right?” 

“He is,” Chrissy says. “I swear. I know we were fighting, but he—” 

“Maybe. But he won’t be there every minute of every day,” she counters. “So if he’s as good as you say he is, then he won’t mind giving you some practice. Yeah, Stringbean?” 

Eddie grunts his acquiescence, and Chrissy loves him for it as she lets him pull her arms back, pinning her wrists with one hand while Gloria instructs him to wrap his forearm around her chest to hold her against him. 

“So, this way, there’s not much you can do with your upper half. But, again, all you’re looking for is the opportunity to bolt. You’re going to shin-scrape him. Just drag the side of your foot down the front of his shin, hard as you can. There’s no padding there, so it hurts like a son of a bitch. Do it fast, and use the momentum to stomp on his foot like you want to obliterate every little bird bone in there. With any luck, the pain’ll surprise him, so he’ll ease up, and you can nail him in the nuts or the nose.” 

“And then I run?” 

“You run at the first available opportunity. Every time. And you keep running until you’re safe. Staying alive is how you win. You understand?”

“I think so. How did you learn to do all this stuff?” 

Gloria’s half-smile turns to a rueful one. “Lived experience. Same as the rest of us. Something shitty happens, so you learn. I got most of this shit from an ex-girlfriend. She was a cop.”

It hasn’t occurred to Chrissy that Gloria is a lesbian, but it makes sense. Sort of. She looks a little like the image of one Chrissy’s built in her head from a thousand rumors passed around locker rooms. Only she’s different from those expectations, too. Not that Chrissy has some massive basis for comparison. She’s never met a lesbian before. Even in church, most of the preaching had been around gay men, while lesbians were relegated to whispers, like some mythical creature nobody could be entirely sure even existed. Sure, maybe they were out there, but they were women, and women—even homosexual ones—weren’t worth the outrage of a man taking up with another man. Which was ridiculous! Weren’t lesbians deserving of the same level of condemnation? To be vilified as sinners, if not sodomites? Even immoral women weren’t worth much in the eyes of the church Chrissy’d grown up in, and was it any wonder Jason had seen her as nothing more than a broodmare to take his abuse?

“Thanks for teaching me,” she says to Gloria, hoping her initial shock hasn’t registered on her face. 

“It’s a community service. I, ah, also teach classes at the YWCA. You should come—we get in a lot more practical experience.” 

“We’re only in town tonight.” She reaches for Eddie’s hand, and he squeezes her fingers. “But I’ll practice. I promise.” 

“You’d better. Don’t let Stringbean fight all your fights, yeah?” 

Eddie’s grip tightens, and Chrissy knocks her boot against his instep before responding, “I won’t.” 

“You’re tougher than you think you are, Blondie. You just have to own it.” 

That’s hard to believe, mainly because Chrissy has never felt particularly powerful. Her mother's cutting remarks and sideways glances stripped away any strength she ever experienced when she was younger, whether at the top of a pyramid or returning home after running for miles. Then, with Jason, she lost not only that fledgling foundation but any semblance of herself along with it. 

But maybe Gloria’s not wrong. Maybe there’s something left. Some dull material at the core of her, slowly forming into something new under pressure.

“Thank you,” she says, and there are tears in her eyes as she reaches for Gloria’s hand, then tugs her into a brief hug. “Um. Happy Thanksgiving?” 

Gloria laughs and stares at her, unblinking, for a few seconds before heading back into the bar. Chrissy watches her go, then turns to Eddie, who wraps an arm around her and pulls her against his chest. 

“Interesting lady,” he offers after a moment. 

“You didn’t like her.” 

“I never said that.” 

“You didn’t have to.” She picks up his hand and kisses his wrist, then his palm. “I think she’s maybe just, like, wary around men? I can understand that.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Sure.” She plays with his sleeve, frowning. “I think every woman is, to an extent. It’s bullshit, but it’s there. And some of me can’t even figure out the difference between that wariness and what’s like… what some people think is normal. My whole life, I’ve been this person who random men get to touch, or flirt with, or say gross things around, and I have to accept it because I don’t want them to think I’m a bitch. Like you thought Gloria was a bitch.” 

“I didn’t—” 

“Yes, you did. A little bit,” she says, and though her earlier anger has cooled, she’s still touchy. “You’re used to turning your Eddie-ness on and having people think you’re charming, or weird, or scary, or whatever. And some of that is like, you know, women are going to respond to it because we get trained to make men comfortable, because we don’t want them getting mad, and I think she doesn’t do that, and it bugged you a little.” 

“So I’m some chauvinist pig now?” 

“No! You’re, like, normal? But even normal is, well... there’s a difference. And it’s not your fault! It’s not… it’s crappy. For both of us, but it’s more crappy for me because I have to worry about placating every man’s feelings in case they’re not as nice as you, and there’s no way you can understand how that changes the way a person lives in the world.” 

“I don’t want you to do that around me.” 

“I don’t. Or, I don’t think I do. Maybe I did, a little, when we first met. But now you’re just… Eddie. Anyway, all I mean is that we navigate the world differently, and Gloria’s right, you’re not going to be with me all the time. You can’t. So I have to… I want to stop living my life around other people’s reactions.” 

“You—” 

“I never hit Jason back, you know. Not one time. And I should have.” She balls her free hand into a fist, digging it into the hollow beneath her ribs and pressing in until it aches. “And it’s not because I thought I deserved what he was doing to me. From the start, I knew better than that. But I guess I always believed that I wouldn’t win the fight, so it was simpler to just take it because then it would be over, and he’d be sweet again, for a while.” 

Eddie’s voice drops into the register he only uses when Jason becomes a conversational topic. “There’s no shame in that. He could have killed you if you’d fought back.” 

“He could have killed me either way. You could kill me. Not—I mean, you wouldn’t. Obviously. But you could. You’re bigger and stronger, and honestly, it’s like I’m a gazelle that lives in a lion’s den and just hopes they’ve already eaten their fill. And that makes me mad. So I want to stop talking about it, and I want to go to that show because I think it’ll be a convenient place to be pissed off.” 

Eddie agrees, even if she’s not entirely sure he’s taken her point, so they drop the topic and leave the bar behind.

The club isn’t far—maybe a quarter mile—and they nearly miss it at first. The only clue to its location is the guy with a mohawk standing out front, and a tiny neon sign above the door bearing a symbolic representation of the club’s name rather than the name itself. 

The mohawk man charges them five dollars each for a cover, and they head inside to find a long, narrow room with a bar on one side and a stage at the far end. On the stage, a guy in a studded leather vest is screaming into a microphone for a twitching, twisting knot of humanity thrashing against itself that she’s suddenly desperate to be a part of. 

“You want a drink?” Eddie asks, and she shakes her head. 

“No, thank you.” She lets go of his hand and heads straight for the writhing bodies. 

The best thing about Eddie is that he doesn’t stop her. He never tries to stop her. And sometimes—this time—he comes with her. Plunges headfirst into the fray, where he keeps hold of her as they bounce off the crush of hands and arms and legs and teeth. Male, mostly, but not entirely. 

This isn’t dancing like she knows dancing. This is primal. Smoke and sweat, bass and beat, gnashing and gnawing. Eddie behind her, hands on her hips. Someone bashes into them from the side. Flips them the bird. Chrissy gives back as good as she gets, and Eddie laughs and tells her she’s a badass.

She feels like a badass. Feels free. Feels the pulsing wave of anger and community and loneliness and togetherness and feels her power, too. A low thrumming, deep in her stomach, brought forth by her proximity to these prickly wildcats and werewolves, all howling together, and the evening she’s endured.

Time passes. The beat changes. The singer screams himself raw, song bleeding into song as the crowd pulses like some black, beating heart. She turns in Eddie’s arms. Looks at his sweat-damp grin and the jut of his jaw and thinks yes, now. 

She grabs him by the hand. Leads him toward the back, where there are two single-stall bathrooms tucked into the far corner. 

As they approach, one graffiti-covered wooden door opens, and a glassy-eyed man in a fishnet shirt emerges, rubbing his nose. Chrissy takes little notice of him as she pulls Eddie with her into the tiny space, which sports a sink and a toilet and an overflowing wastepaper basket that’s doing nothing to contain the paper towels and toilet paper and other detritus strewn across the concrete floor.

Doesn’t smell as bad as it could, though, considering.

“Uh, hi,” Eddie says as she slides the flimsy deadbolt into place. 

A smile tugs the corners of Chrissy’s mouth, and she goes full shitbird, full Chrissygirl as she rounds on him. Nudges him so he’s leaning against the sink, then rocks onto her tip-toes to kiss him, biting his lip hard enough to make him twitch. 

His hands fall to her waist—his favorite place, she thinks—and he squeezes. He’s making her crazy. Making her dangerous. She slips her tongue past his teeth and reaches for his belt. Fumbles with the buckle but ultimately prevails as she pops the button, then rests her hand on his stomach.

Eddie’s inhale is sharp, and she needs him to know she means it, so she gives the sparse trail of hair a tug.

“Jesus Christ,” he says. 

“Is this okay?” She thinks it probably is, but he always asks, and she figures she owes him the same consideration.

He nods. Quickly—frantically—so she continues. Although, it’s not like she has any idea what she’s doing. She’s simply driven by a desire to touch him. To tease him. To bring him pleasure by taking her power. And, God, that power is easily found in the simple act of possession. In dragging her nails against his skin. In walking them beneath the waistband of his boxers to find him half-hard and rising. 

She ghosts her fingers across his shaft, and he shudders. 

Eddie’s is only the second penis she’s touched in her whole life, but having had an object lesson in Nashville, she’s reasonably confident in her next move and uses her free hand to push his clothing down enough that she has room to play. 

“Fuck, that’s cold,” he says when his bare ass hits the sink, which makes them both laugh. And isn’t it just the best, coolest, funnest thing that she can giggle about something silly while holding her boyfriend’s dick? It’s so much better than the performative, macho nonsense Jason pulled out whenever they were together.

“Poor Eddie,” she teases, loosely curling her palm around him and giving an experimental pump. “Should we stop?” 

“I’ll warm up,” he says through a shudder, fingers tightening against her hips. 

Confidence boosted, she intensifies her grip, feeling the sting of the cuts on her knuckles. She finds her rhythm in the buzzy thump of bass reverberating through the thin walls, though after a minute, she realizes that the lack of lubrication might be a problem. With nothing to ease the friction between them, she pulls back—acting on instinct and a long-buried tip from a friend who’d been allowed to read Cosmopolitan—and spits into the center of her palm. That gets another “Jesus Christ” from Eddie, who’s looking at her like she might be the alien who hung the moon in the sky. 

Driven by a wild whim, she brings her spit-slick hand to his mouth and smiles, all sweetness and light. “Care to make a contribution?” she asks, forcing her lips into a pout.

Eddie makes a half-groan, half-chuckling noise she’s never heard before, and then he spits. 

It’s disgusting. She loves it. She wants him to do it a hundred more times and is struck by the overwhelming urge to grab him by the hair and stand on the sink so she can spit down his throat. 

Can’t do that, though. Probably that’s crazy. 

So, she jerks him off instead. Takes hold of him and sets a pace that says everything she can’t articulate. Things about her anger. Her power. Her fear. Her hope. The ways she hates who she used to be and loves who she’s becoming. That what Eddie said during their fight is wrong; that a person can change in three weeks if the need is substantial. The pressure—again, that pressure—so intense that there’s nothing for it but to emerge a diamond. Not a pretty one, but a sharp, unpolished gem.

Eddie’s hands bunch her skirt against her waist, and a bead of sweat runs down the back of her neck. It’s hot in this tiny, smells-of-bleach cubicle, and she buries her face against his jaw to smell him instead. He’s panting, his lower half moving in time with her strokes. Emboldened, she swipes her thumb across the tip of his cock, just like he’d done for himself, and is delighted by his response. Hips stuttering forward, then back, the sink hardly bearing his weight as he yelps. 

“Fucking… God, Chrissy. Faster, a little, please?” 

Chrissy slows. Extricates her hand and holds it up to him, the stuttering yellow bulb casting her palm's sticky, slick sheen into sharp relief.

“More help, please,” she requests.

Eddie spits, locking eyes with her, then does it again. No hesitating, no questioning. It’s overwhelming to know he’d do anything she asked of him. Get down on his knees. Beg her. Hold her. Love her. All because of simple human desire.

She wonders if this is how he feels when they play their games. This swirl of intoxicating terror wherein she holds his pleasure—quite literally—in the palm of her hand. It’s awful. Wonderful. Heady and scary, the way he’s looking at her. 

Sweet, and a little mean, she leans up to kiss him before murmuring, “Ask me nicely.” 

Eddie doesn’t hesitate. “Please.” 

“Please, what?” She plays the ingenue, which makes him laugh. God, she loves his laugh. Loves that they both know they’re only playing. 

“Please have mercy on me, kiddo,” he says, expression twisted into something approximating sorrow. “Pity, pretty girl.” 

“But I’m pitiless,” she says, even as she takes hold of him again, the length of him pulsing against her skin. 

“Pitiless.” He slots his mouth just above hers, hovering, breath hot against her skin. “Merciless.” 

“Merciless.” She squeezes harder than she ought to, and he gasps. Bites her lip, which makes her want to bite back, figuratively, so she maintains the pressure and picks up speed. 

“Baby,” he says, choking on the second syllable. “Baby…” 

The desperation in his voice drives Chrissy to fierceness, the sound of skin on skin filling the stall, barely audible over the bass and beat coming angry and intense to surround them. She takes him apart, piece by piece, until, at last, his hips judder forward and his body tenses, and he makes that same lovely, silly noise from the truck. Warmth coats her skin, and she kisses him through the shuddering end before pulling away to look down. 

Eddie slumps, breathless and boneless, against the porcelain, then gently guides her hand away from his softening shaft. Chrissy is grateful for the reprieve as she takes a step back, then takes stock of herself. Heart? Pounding. Stomach? Twisted. Desire? Thrumming politely between her thighs.

She bites her lip. Presses her legs together to quell that curious ache because this wasn’t about that at all. 

“What the fuck, Cunningham?” Eddie asks, and his voice is hoarse, but there’s a smile on his face as he reaches for her.

Chrissy allows herself to be pulled. Rests her forehead against his and shrugs. “I just needed to. That’s all.” 

“Just all of a sudden, huh?” 

“Yup.” 

He laughs, then gives her a leisurely kiss. “We made a mess.” 

“Mostly you did.” 

“I think you helped. Can you—” His eyes fall on the empty toilet paper holder, and he groans. “Fuck.” 

There are no paper towels, either, save for the ones on the floor. They make do, washing their hands beneath the faucet, which rids them of the spit and spend, at least. Eddie can’t do much about what’s coating his stomach, but he splashes some water there, then does his best to mop up the excess with his shirt. 

By the time he’s through, his flannel is soaked, and the crotch of his jeans isn’t faring much better. 

“I look like I pissed myself,” he says as he surveys himself in the dingy mirror. 

“Nobody’ll notice.” She wraps her arms around him from behind, pressing her palms to the damp fabric of his shirt. “Sorry, though.” 

He catches her eye and snorts. “Liar.” 

“I’m a little bit sorry. Was it worth it?” 

“Was it… uh, yeah. Anytime you get the urge to drag me into a bathroom stall, consider me up for the effort.” 

Chrissy grins and sinks her teeth into his leather-covered bicep. “Good. Because I’m pitiless.” 

“Merciless.” 

“And you’re mine.”

Chapter Text

They’re ninety miles from Los Angeles when Chrissy asks, “Can we go to Hollywood this time?”

“Totally. Any particular reason?” 

“Just to say I saw it, I guess.” She scoots further down in her seat, which causes her denim skirt to ride a few inches up her thighs. And, sure, she’s wearing leggings, but Eddie appreciates the shapeliness of the legs beneath the thin fabric.

There have been more skirts than jeans since New York City. Short skirts and long, paired with shirts and sweaters that run the gamut from hippie punk to princess, fueled by a thrift store addiction that’s bordering on obsessive. Eddie couldn’t pinpoint her style if he tried. All he knows is it’s a million miles away from the preppy shit she’d sported in high school. Which, according to her, she’d only worn because of the unspoken rules governing her friend group, where anything outside the mandates of Seventeen magazine felt like a betrayal. 

Her new look is hers and hers alone, which he appreciates. Even if she sometimes picks out things that baffle him—a sweatshirt covered with airbrushed kittens in Kansas, for some godforsaken reason—he enjoys being baffled. That’s the whole fucking point of a look, right? He’s been baffling assholes for years. 

And then there’s the fact that, again, she’s been showing more skin of late. Wearing things that conform to her curves instead of canceling them. Kissing him in public instead of just in private, and yeah, sure, that has fuck-all to do with her clothing, but maybe there’s a correlation. Who the hell knows? He’s not a scientist. All he can say with certainty is that a dividing line exists between the before of the punk club bathroom jerk-off, and the after.

The after is a beautiful place to be. Eddie has received no fewer than six handjobs on their journey back across the country, and the novelty has yet to wear off. Sometimes she tells him not to touch her or not to talk. Other times, she wants his hand on top of hers, helping, or telling her exactly how it feels for him. Two nights ago, she licked her fingers clean, and he swears he saw God on the tip of her tongue.

Hyperbole, yeah. But Jesus. She’s insatiable.

Insatiable and, admittedly, one-sided (handed?). For all her eagerness to play, she’s still not allowing much in the way of reciprocation. And it’s not as though he hasn’t tried! He tries all the time to middling success. Twice, he’s gotten a hand up her skirt, only she maneuvers the blanket like a shield to keep him from seeing a scant inch of bare skin. Once, he felt the elastic of her panties before she squirmed and shot a “no, thank you” toward his wandering fingers. 

It’s frustrating, sort of. She asked him for help, and he wants to give it to her, but he’s not gonna force the issue. Because he’s a respectful guy, he likes to think. Wayne’s given him hell about how to treat women a few times, and he saw enough of the shit his dad pulled with girlfriends to know there’s a right way and a wrong way to be with someone. 

But also, Chrissy knows that about him, and sometimes he wonders if she takes advantage of that respectfulness in reinforcing her defenses. The handjobs are fun, sure, but they might be a new tool in her quest to keep him satisfied while deflecting his attention.

Not that she’s not enjoying herself—she seems to be—but keeping the focus on him is an amplified version of her “push a meal around the plate” game. She’s so damn good at manipulating people into seeing what she wants them to see, and while Eddie’s not blind to her tricks with food, it bugs him a little that it’s taken him this long to realize she’s trying it with sex, too. 

Only—and this is the thing about Chrissy—it’s more likely that she’s doing it without thinking and has no idea how coercive her actions can be. 

He should talk to her about it, maybe. Probably. Not today, though. Not when she’s so eager to see Hollywood. 

“Anything in particular you want to check out?” he asks as some dickhead in a moving van overtakes him at speed, then cuts in and forces him to tap his brakes. “Mothercunter.” 

“All of it? I don’t know! Aren’t there, like, handprints on the sidewalk?” 

“Yeah, I think so. I’ve never been.” 

“Then why do you sound like you know what you’re talking about?”

“Because I am, as always, talking out of my ass, sweetheart.” 

“I’ll say.” She reaches over to tug his hair, so he catches her hand and pretends to bite her fingers. “Eddie, no!” 

“Quit being a distraction, then.” He releases her and feigns a disappointed sigh. “I can’t take you anywhere, shitbird.” 

“Except Hollywood. You can take me there.” 

“Oh, right. Forgot about that.” 

They reach the outskirts of LA around three, and Eddie switches out his freight, then parks at the far edge of the lot so he can sneak Chrissy in later. When they’d first started out, he’d have found a different lot to park in, but time has taught him that most of the depots don’t care, and that nobody is paying that much attention. Still, better safe than sorry. 

Chrissy’s waiting at the nearest corner, without a shopping bag, for once. Instead, she lifts her camera when he comes walking toward her. She’s probably shot ten rolls of film since she bought the thing, and hasn’t developed a single one. He’s itchy to see the pictures, but it’s not like they’ve run into a myriad of one-hour-photo joints on the road. 

“Smile,” she says, and he does, cheesing for the lens as the shutter clicks. 

“What’s that for?” 

“Just because you look nice today.” 

Eddie doesn’t know what to do when she drops little unsolicited compliments on him. Mainly because there’s a part of him still in disbelief over the fact that Chrissy Cunningham is the girl slinging kindness in his direction. Probably that part will always be there, so he leans into it. Plays the schmuck, as usual. 

“I figure maybe I’ll get scouted,” he says, striking another pose. “Eat your heart out, Emilio Estevez.” 

“God, we can only hope.” She holds up crossed fingers, then tosses her head. “There’s a pay phone on the next block if we want to call a cab.” 

“Yeah, let’s kick it, kiddo,” he agrees, reaching for her hand. 

An hour later—seriously, LA traffic’s a bitch—they’re officially in Hollywood. In front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater, in fact, which is a thing Eddie never knew existed. A big, red, ostentatious building, right out of some bygone era, stuck between the fading concrete facades of bigger, blockier buildings. The entire street feels like a tourist trap of the highest order, with signs advertising Maps! To! The! Stars!, or the chance to tour a celebrity graveyard. Which, he has to admit, is really taking advantage of the whole circle of life dealio. Gawk at ‘em while they’re living, and get a grave rubbing once they’re dead. Movie stars! They’re products!

Chrissy is undeterred by the kitsch. Instead, she seems inspired by it, grabbing Eddie’s hand and dragging him down the sidewalk, pointing out the stars beneath their feet. There are some names he doesn’t recognize that she gets super psyched about, so after a while, he plays up his ignorance over every single star, even the obvious ones. She’s adorable when she’s indignant, standing there with her hands on her hips, asking him how the heck he doesn’t know about Judy Garland, for gosh’s sake. 

“Who?” he says when she points to the sidewalk. 

“We’ve talked about her before!”

“Can’t recall.”

“Oh my God, she was so famous! She’s Dorothy!” 

“Dorothy?” 

“Eddie!” She grabs his arm and yanks it down, like if she pulls it out of its socket, it might jog his memory. “From the Wizard of Oz!”

He blinks as if confused. As if he hadn’t watched that shit every time NBC or CBS broadcast it, provided they were staying someplace with a television. “The one with the munchkins?” 

“Yes! How do you not know—” 

He hooks an arm around her to haul her in, pressing his lips to her ear and croaking out, “weeee represent… the Lollipop Guild…” before letting her go.

She shrieks, which is exactly the reaction he wanted. “That’s so creepy!” she says before her eyes narrow. “You’re full of shit!” 

She’s been swearing more since her meltdown in New York. He loves it, but he hopes she never totally loses her goshes and gollys, either. “Of course I know who Judy Garland is, dude. Everybody does!” 

“You didn’t know Ava Gardner.” 

“Yeah, well.” He kisses her again, then grins. “You don’t know who Betsy Palmer is, do you?” 

“No.” 

“And this is why we’re gonna watch so many movies together.” 

Chrissy rolls her eyes but keeps his arm around her as they approach the forecourt of Grauman’s, where a bunch of celebrities have put their hand (or shoe) prints into concrete blocks for all the world to see. As memorials go, it’s cooler than the stars on the sidewalk. 

“Look!” she exclaims as they stroll. “Marilyn Monroe! Do you think my hands are bigger than hers?” 

That’s an extremely Chrissy question, and Eddie laughs. “Maybe. You are known for your freakishly huge hands.” 

“Don’t be a jerk,” she says, then squeezes him before kneeling by the concrete and hovering her hands above Marilyn’s imprints. “What do you think?” 

“I think they look about the same, but I bet your feet are daintier. I heard Marilyn Monroe had Bozo feet.” 

“Ugh, Bozo,” she says as she stands, then hovers a foot out and over Marilyn’s heel prints. “Oh, hey, they are smaller.” 

“Congratulations. Your little fairy feet are gonna get you cast in something.” 

“I actually used to want to be an actress,” she says, leaning against him. It’s not the first time she’s mentioned that. Or, rather, she inserted it into the story she told the band guys in Kansas. “Not that I could have been—I’d probably be terrible. But I would read these magazines where all these girls were my age, and they looked so happy.” 

“Like who?” 

“Like Brooke Shields. She seemed so nice and normal, and like everything was just perfect for her. Or Melissa Gilbert. I loved Little House, and then she dated Rob Lowe, and I thought she was so lucky because he seemed really sweet.” 

Rob Lowe has always struck Eddie as a primo asshole, but whatever. It’s not his fantasy. “So you wanna go find an audition? Make yourself a star?” 

A faint smile crosses her face, and she shakes her head. “I think that was just when I was younger. And it wasn’t even about the job, it was about how it looked to be famous and have everyone like you. How they seemed happy. But I know they’re probably not. They’re just good at acting.” 

She’s doing that thing where she tap-dances around a topic, and Eddie knows not to push. There’s nothing Chrissy does better than clamming up when she’s not ready to talk. So he just kisses her temple and holds her tight. “For what it’s worth, I actually do think you’d be good at it.” 

“You do?” 

“Sure. I mean, look at all the ways you bullshit people. Like the security dude in Atlanta—you lied through your teeth to get that hat.” 

“That’s different. That’s just a game.” 

“So’s acting.” 

“Is that your professional opinion?” 

“Yeah, asshole. I didn’t run the lighting board for four productions of Our Town for my health, you know.” 

She laughs, then hesitates, chewing on a hangnail, which is a damn sight better than picking at her nailbed. That hasn’t been happening as much, and while Eddie isn’t so naive as to think she’s cured, he appreciates she doesn’t feel the urge to hurt herself so often. “I guess. But like I said, it wasn’t really about being an actress. I just liked the idea of not having to be myself.” 

He thinks that over as they leave Marilyn behind and wander closer to the building. “But, okay, if we’re talking about like… selves, or whatever, I reject the premise that you were acting like yourself at all.”

“What’s that mean?” 

“Back then, you were being what everyone else thought you should be. Which is like playing a part, right?” 

That’s fucking profound. He ought to go back to school and learn to be a headshrinker, what with the fount of wisdom bubbling beneath the surface of his skull, ready to spring forth and cover the world with his understanding.

Chrissy just shrugs, though. Pulls away from his embrace and says, “I want to find Betty Grable.” 

So, okay. Maybe he’s speaking directly out of his asshole.

He follows Chrissy’s lead as they source Betty, then Judy (again), then a couple more celebrities he’s never heard of. He’s honestly a little bored, although it’s a trip to see Shirley Jones’ handprints, and Chrissy waits patiently while he rambles about the Partridge Family not actually sucking as a family band, at least when compared with The Brady Bunch. 

She’s saved from his spiel by a redheaded woman approaching them with a stack of papers, zeroing in on Chrissy with a harried smile. 

“Hi, hon. Do you like Melanie Griffith?” the woman asks. 

“Um.” Chrissy blinks, then looks to Eddie, who shrugs. This doesn’t feel like a scam, but who knows, these days. “I guess so?” 

“Harrison Ford?” 

“Oh, sure.” 

The woman takes a piece of paper from the stack and hands it to her. “They’ve got a new movie opening in a few weeks—just in time for Christmas—and there’s a test screening tonight, so we’re scouting for an audience.” 

“What, here?” Chrissy glances up at Grauman’s. “Like a premiere?” 

“God, no,” the woman says like they’re the dumbest country rubes who ever rolled off a prairie. “It’s a test screening. They’ll ask you what you thought of the movie afterward, is all.” She gives Eddie an appraising glance. “The pass is good for two. You like Alien?” 

“…yes?” 

“Sigourney Weaver’s in it. You’ll be thrilled. The theater’s about three-quarters of a mile up the street, and the movie starts in half an hour. Just show them that flyer at the door.” 

With that, she’s off to the next person, and Eddie eyes the flyer suspiciously. A free movie seems too good to be true, but Chrissy looks intrigued. The paper says the film is called Working Girl, which makes it sound like it’s about prostitutes. And, okay, he’s not not interested in that. Melanie Griffith is cute, and Sigourney Weaver is... yeah. Like, Eddie prefers blondes, but he’d have to be blind not to want her. Alien was formative in a lot of ways, is all. 

“Should we go?” He asks. “It could be bullshit.” 

“Might as well try, right? You promised to take me to the movies sometime.” 

“I did do that, didn’t I?” He puts his arm back around her shoulders. “I appreciate you being such a cheap date, Cunningham.” 

The walk to the theater doesn’t take long, and they arrive about ten minutes before the movie is due to start. Quite a few people have gotten passes, so they’re forced to squeeze into two seats near the back. They settle in, Eddie on the aisle, while Chrissy keeps looking around, bobbing her head like a prairie dog coming out of its hole. 

“Expecting someone, kiddo?” 

“No.” She hesitates. “Well, maybe. What if Harrison Ford secretly sneaks in to see if we like his movie?” 

“If he’s here, don’t you think he’d be in disguise?” 

“Obviously. That’s why I’m checking out every guy. To see if I can spot him. Like, that dude in the baseball cap.” 

She points, and Eddie looks to find a man who might be Harrison Ford, if Harrison Ford was five feet tall and in his sixties. “Oh, sure. Why don’t you go ask him and get him to donate his hat to your collection?” 

“Now there’s an idea.” 

“They don’t call me Big Brain Munson for nothing.” 

“Is that what they’re calling big about you?” She pokes him in the side, grinning like she didn’t just come spectacularly close to making a dick joke.

“So fucking funny, Cunningham.” 

“Thanks.” She reaches for his hand and squeezes. “You give me so much material.” 

He rolls his eyes and smiles, just as a man in a short-sleeved button-down and tie approaches the screen, a clipboard in hand. Meanwhile, a half-dozen kids around their age—college students, judging by their sweatshirts—begin passing out printed index cards and tiny pencils. The man explains that they’re comment cards and to please rate and review the movie once it’s finished. 

“God, homework,” Eddie groans. 

“It’s free!” Chrissy says around a giggle, thanking the student who stops at their aisle. 

The lights dim, and the screen comes to life with an image of New York City. It doesn’t take long for Eddie to figure out that the title Working Girl has nothing to do with prostitution and everything to do with Melanie Griffith playing a secretary with ambitions to become a… stockbroker or something? Whatever, not important. The plot revolves around her climbing the career ladder by impersonating her boss after said boss has a skiing accident, and while it’s not his preferred genre, the price of admission is right, and it’s kind of funny. 

Chrissy’s not laughing, though. Or, at least, she’s not laughing much. By the time Melanie Griffith pretends to be Sigourney Weaver around Harrison Ford, she’s downright tense, shrugging off Eddie’s arm and sitting forward, elbows on her knees. 

“What’s up?” he asks, touching her spine and leaning over. 

“Shh,” she says without breaking eye contact with the screen.

So, alright, she’s into the movie. That’s cool. Long as she’s not hating it. 

Chrissy stays like that for the rest of the flick, eyes wide and body thrumming with tension. In the end, things work out for Melanie Griffith, which is about what Eddie expects, but he likes the way it happens, so he says as much on his comment card while the credits roll. 

It’s only after he’s finished giving four out of five stars that he notices Chrissy’s crying, which makes him feel like a real shithead. He puts a hand on her shoulder, turning her to better see her face. “Hey, sweetheart. What is it?” 

Her eyes are bright and bloodshot, but she doesn’t answer. Just clamps her lips together and blinks a few times.

“Okay,” he says since she’s apparently not up to talking. “Okay, yeah. You want to fill out your card?” 

That gets a shake of her head, which is fine. Eddie doesn’t get the sense they’re about to break kneecaps over comment cards. He reaches for her hand, tugging her into the aisle and handing his card to one of the kids on the way out.

She’s weirdly pliant as they walk through the lobby, letting him move her. It’s bugging him that she’s not talking, but also, in the pantheon of weird-shit-Chrissy-does, this falls somewhere in the realm of normal rather than self-destructive. He can handle that. 

“You hungry?” No answer, but they haven’t eaten since noon, and that was a vending machine stop. “Well, I am. Come on, let’s find something.” 

Chrissy nods, and to his great relief, she slips an arm around him, fingers weaving into his belt loops. 

They find a diner about three blocks from the theater. Clearly catering to tourists, it has not a whiff of California cool. Instead, headshots litter every available surface, most of them signed, and they’ve set up a glass case of t-shirts, caps, and pins beside the register. Most likely, the food will be shitty and overpriced, but it’s fine. It’s something to do while Chrissy comes down from whatever the movie did to her. 

A life-size cardboard cutout of James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause is directly above their booth, attached to the wall with a giant staple through James’ forehead. That feels about right, and Eddie steers Chrissy into her seat before sitting across from her. 

They’re greeted by a waitress in a uniform straight out of what Happy Days wanted everyone to think about the fifties, who asks what they want to drink. Eddie orders a beer, then nudges Chrissy’s foot. 

“Um. Lemonade,” she says, and he’d bet she’s already turning the paper napkin on her lap to shreds. “Thank you.” 

“Sure,” says the waitress and leaves them to it. 

Eddie lights a cigarette, watching Chrissy, whose brow is furrowed so deeply it’s about to split her skull in two. 

“Will you order for me?” she asks, voice small. “I can’t—I can, but I don’t want to.” 

“Sure. You’re going to eat it, right?” 

“If you say I have to.” She brings up a tiny strip of napkin from beneath the table and starts rolling it into a ball. “Did you like the movie?” 

“It was interesting,” he says, not wanting to land on a definitive good or bad, since she’s having some sort of breakdown about it. “Did you?” 

“Yes. I loved it.” 

That’s something, and he leans forward, ready to ask a follow-up when she speaks again. 

“That was me, you know? In the movie. Tess was so much like me.” 

Eddie closes his mouth and sits back against the squishy vinyl. “Oh, yeah?” 

“Mm-hmm. She wanted a different life, so she went out and got it.” 

He hadn’t thought about it that way, but he understands what she means. “Sure, yeah. You’re both badasses.” 

“Not… no, not that. Because she did it deliberately, but I just started running and never stopped.” She puts the napkin on the table, then rips off a corner and bends it in half. 

Eddie can’t stand the way she’s nearly shaking, so he stubs out his cigarette and scoots around to her side of the booth, relieved when she folds herself against him instead of shying away. For all his bluster, he’s still never totally sure what to do with her when she’s like this. Plus, it’s more complicated now that they’re closer. Back in those early days in the truck, when she was muted and down, he could just treat her normally. Show her some kindness. Act like she wasn’t freaking him out and move on to the next hurdle.

Now? Yeah, now he’s gone and fallen in love with her, and that makes it a damn sight more difficult to keep his reactions from veering into panicked or impulsive when she’s standing on the other side of a pitfall that exists only in her head. 

“You ran for a reason, Chrissygirl,” he says, covering her napkin-massacring hand with his own. 

“But without a plan. She’s smarter than I am.” 

“I disagree.” 

“No, but like, she is. She knew what she wanted and was smart enough to get it for herself. She figured out how to be this whole other person, but the whole other person was who she was supposed to be the entire time. That was her real self.” 

There it is again: Chrissy and personhood. Being herself, or not being herself, or making up a lie to become someone else. She’s focused on it today, sure, but she talks about it often enough that it’s clear she’s consistently fixated on the topic. “Alright. But the person she was at the beginning was still her, right? She had to be that girl first, to get to where she ended up.” 

She sighs like he doesn’t understand, just as the waitress shows up with their drinks. Eddie thanks her for them, then orders a burger and fries for himself, plus a Cobb salad and a chocolate milkshake with extra whipped cream for Chrissy.

The waitress looks at him as though he’s a total Neanderthal, but if he has to explain their weird food games to every Tom, Dick, and Harriet they meet, he’ll get nothing done. 

Once she’s gone, he nudges Chrissy’s shoulder, not wanting her to clam up again. “You’ve always been you, kiddo. You know that, right?” 

Beneath his hand, her fingers twitch, and she reaches for her straw, ripping off the paper with her teeth before plunging it into her lemonade. “That’s not what you said before. You said I was acting.”

Shit. “Well, yeah. On the surface. But you were still you underneath.”

“I wasn’t, though. Not entirely. My whole life, my mom treated me like I was this little doll she got to play with or punish. Like, every Sunday, I’d have to wear these ridiculous dresses to church, and then I’d have to stay in them all day, and if I got messy, she’d yell at me, or pinch me, or smack me. I have this vivid memory of being in church when I was maybe four? And I had to pee so badly, so I told her, but she kept shushing me. Which, you know, I was four. And I had an accident. When she realized what happened, she grabbed my arm so hard I had a bruise.” She moves a hand to the arm Eddie’s holding and grazes a spot on the back. “She dragged me out of there and into the bathroom, where she said if I cried, she’d put all my toys in the dumpster.”

“Jesus.”

“And I’m not totally sure, but I think she must have been pregnant because I remember that she said something about how I wasn’t the only one who had to hold it, and that she was uncomfortable, too, but she wasn’t a dirty little pig like me.” She splits the napkin in two with one, swift rip. “It’s weird, but that was the first time I felt like… oh, I can’t, you know, be anything around her. I just need to figure out what makes her happy, and do that, so she doesn’t hurt me or scream at me or call me names. Which is what I did. And after a while, I started believing it was better that way.” 

Eddie has plenty of hate in his heart for Jason Carver, but he can always scoop out a special place for Laura, too. It’s kind of a wonder Chrissy’s as well-adjusted as she is, considering, and that’s coming from a guy whose father taught him to hot-wire cars when he was seven. “Like you thought you were happier?” 

“No. It was more like I believed that there was only one way to act that would make everyone around me happy, rather than believing I could be happy, too. So I stopped having opinions, or needs, or anything, really. I just did what she told me most of the time, and I learned to be sneaky or lie when I couldn’t.” She clears her throat, then reaches for her lemonade. “Sorry. That’s… that was a lot.” 

“Never apologize for that,” he says instinctively. 

Chrissy actually smiles, sipping her drink. “Eddie, you have such exceptional taste in music.” 

That’s something; she’s still with him, even if she’s with them, too. “Good girl,” he says, then hesitates. “Is it weird when I say that? I don’t want to sound like I’m talking down to you.” 

“It doesn’t. I like it.” She takes another sip, then leans her head against his shoulder. “You know how sometimes I make stuff up?” 

Eddie winds a lock of her hair around his finger and strokes her arm, wanting to tread lightly over the unmapped ground. “Sure.” 

“That’s like Tess, too, right? She puts on the persona of someone she thinks of as bigger and braver, and in her case, it’s a real person, but in my case, it’s like… well, sometimes it’s real people, and sometimes it’s a mix. But I like trying things on for size. Seeing how people respond when I tell them stories and having them look at me like I’m someone else.” 

“Sure,” he says, and her explanation makes sense, given her history. “But for the record, I like you, yourself, and only you. No tall tales necessary.” 

She smiles at that, bumping her nose against his sleeve. “I know that. And I want to make it so I’m alright with being me. It’s just… hard sometimes.” 

“I know. But I see you, and—”

“The other day in Colorado, I made myself throw up,” she says, fingers turning up beneath his so she can push their hands together. “At the Burger King. And all I could think when it was happening was, oh, you stupid ass, I thought we were past this stuff. I don’t even know what made me want to do it other than the chicken tasted funny, and my jeans felt tight, and a guy had looked at me weird at the gas station. So it was just a reflex, you know? Like, the only way I can get all the ooze out is to barf it up, and I can’t predict when I’ll need to do that. Don’t get me wrong, things are better with you—they’re so much better with you—but that stuff’s not gone. It might never be gone.” 

“It’d be hard to kill the habit of a lifetime in a month,” he says, ready to kick himself for not noticing. She’d been a little off in Colorado, but he’d chalked it up to a bad day, and maybe that’s all it was. But Christ, he should have realized. Should have noticed.

“Half a lifetime, yeah. I was eleven the first time I made myself vomit. I’d had this really gross stomach flu, and my mom kept saying, well, sure, I was sick, and that was no fun, but the benefit of being sick was that I’d probably lose a pound or two by the end. She’d laugh about it like it was just a nifty tidbit to drop in while I was crying on the bathroom floor. My brain must have made a connection between the throwing up and getting her off my back about sneaking food, though, so I learned how to make myself do it. Then I realized that the more I did it, the more she tolerated me, and that there were other things I could do, like not eating at all. I could control her reactions by controlling myself. And then, with Jason, it got worse because I couldn’t control anything else.” She sighs, scrunching what’s left of her napkin into a ball. “I know you’ve heard all this before.” 

That’s not true; she’s never been this explicit before, and Eddie’s halfway between horrified and hoping he doesn’t fuck up his response. “You should talk about it as much as you need to.” 

She nods, falling silent as the waitress returns with plates of food that look edible, if not especially appetizing. 

“You know what’s so dumb?” she asks, spearing a piece of lettuce and holding it up so the specks of ranch catch the light. “When you ordered this, I knew you didn’t ask for the dressing on the side. But seeing it is still doing a number on me. All I can think is… oh, my gosh, dressing goes straight to the hips! You might as well just rub it on like lotion. All these rules, as though there’s a moral weight attached to a stupid salad.” 

“Which there isn’t.” 

“No. There is not.” She eats the lettuce, then pops a crouton into her mouth. Chews. Swallows. Sets her fork down and closes her eyes briefly. “Okay. Yes, okay. So, Eddie.” 

“Chrissy.” 

“I’m ready to be a serious person.” 

The way she says shit kills him, sometimes, and he tamps down a smile while he brushes some hair off her shoulder. “You are a serious person, kiddo. Or, actually, you’re a serious freak.” 

“A serious freak.” She reaches for one of his fries and bites it in half. “That’s almost true. But I can’t be anything, or everything, or even fully myself, until I’m not Jason’s anymore. So, um, the next time you get the chance to go home, I want you to take it. I think I’m ready to go back to Indiana.”

“You…” 

“I want my passport. And I want my birth certificate. And I want a divorce.”

Chapter Text

“You ever wonder how many strains of fungus are growing in bowling shoes?” 

Eddie’s breath tickles Chrissy’s ear as he drops his chin to her shoulder, and she squirms, looking down at the dingy, well-worn shoes in her hands. 

“I don’t want to think about it,” she says. 

“Hope you’re wearing thick socks, dude.”

Chrissy is not wearing thick socks. She is wearing thin cotton socks with a small hole fraying away the heel of the left one. This will be the seventh time in her entire life she’s been bowling, and she sort of forgot about the special-shoes part until Eddie reminded her to bring a pair of socks along. 

Yuck. 

All around them, the rolling thunder of heavy balls spinning down slick lanes fills the air, mingling with the steel-tinged odor of hot dogs broiling on a metal tray and nacho cheese piped out of an industrial-sized tub of goo.

It is Monday, December 5th, in Nowhere, Arizona, and they’re on a date. Not just any date, though. An Eddie’s-birthday-date, which Chrissy had insisted upon when she found out from the truck stop attendant that there was a bowling alley less than a mile away. 

Bowling has been her first choice on the list of acceptable birthday activities for a while. Her backup plan was roller skating, or an arcade, depending on where they ended up, but the fact that this little town has an alley feels like a good omen. Not a natural athlete, Eddie once mentioned bowling being the only vaguely sports-y thing he enjoys, which she tucked away in the mental filing cabinet of Stuff She Knows About Her Boyfriend. 

A hoot and holler go up from the next lane over—four men, drunk and decent at the game—and Chrissy stares into the smelly abyss of her bowling shoe, harboring a few regrets.

But, when in Arizona, right? Taking a deep breath, she puts on her shoes. The overly-smooth sensation of socked feet slipping against the greasy sole makes her tongue itch, but that’s alright. She’s doing this for Eddie. Everything about tonight is for Eddie, actually, because he’s done so much for her. She even got dressed up in a lavender dress with an eyelet fabric bodice she found in a yard sale across the street from a truck stop in Virginia.

The dress is shorter than anything she’s worn in a while, and she didn’t bother with tights. Both things give her occasional ants-crawling-in-her-ear shivers, but Eddie keeps looking at her legs like it’s Christmas morning, making the discomfort worth bearing. 

“You should open your presents before we bowl,” she says once they’ve tied their shoes. 

“Already?” 

“Yes. You’ll see why.” 

Eddie’s response isn’t proportionate to the quality of the gifts. He has to know she can’t afford much, yet he lights up like a neon sign, grinning and grabby the moment she produces the two newspaper-wrapped packages from her new-old tote bag. (It’s embroidered with someone else’s initials—MAW—and she’d lied to the thrift store clerk about what a fun coincidence it was that she found a tote with her identical monogram: Maude Annabelle Wittgenstein. It was a miracle she’d gotten the name out with a straight face, and she’d cackled when recounting the clerk’s expression to Eddie.) 

She hands over the smaller of the presents, which Eddie rips open, revealing a box. Inside is an oversized button featuring a bright blue dinosaur holding three balloons with a confident “I am 3!” lettered beneath in bold, black font. Above the three, Chrissy has drawn a caret and written Twenty! in block letters. 

“Fuck, yeah!” Eddie holds the button aloft, a grin spreading. “I’m gonna wear this for the whole year.” 

“Don’t put it on yet!”  

“Why not?” 

“Because there’s a part two.” 

“God, I love a theme.” He takes the second package, this one lumpier and larger, to reveal a mint green bowling shirt Chrissy picked up in Philadelphia. Right under his nose, in fact, and she’s hugely proud of sneaking it by him. It’s from the fifties or sixties, with black accents and a team name—the Lane Lads—embroidered on the back in fancy script. 

The important part, however, is what’s on the front: Eddie has been hand-stitched over the left breast pocket, and the embroidery is in remarkable shape save for some fraying on the second D. 

Eddie shakes out the shirt, then jumps to his feet with a yelped, “holy shit, Cunningham!” that has heads swiveling across the alley. 

“It won’t even fit you. The original Eddie must have been a big boy.” 

“I’m a big boy,” he says, only half-listening as he takes off his flannel and tugs on the shirt, buttoning the middle button. It hangs off him like a bedsheet, but because he’s Eddie, he makes it look intentional. Stylish, almost. Greaser meets Metalhead, and she wishes she had pomade to see just how badly she could screw up his hair. “How’s it look?” 

“Like you should be smoking your way through a night out with the T-Birds at the sock hop.” 

“Shit, yeah, I should.” He pins his birthday button on the right side and strikes a pose. “There. Perfect.” 

When he bends to kiss her, the button-up gapes at the collar, so she ducks down and kisses his neck, instead, sinking her teeth into the skin above the worn fabric of his t-shirt. Metallica today—the same shirt she slept in last night. That’s not unusual; Eddie doesn’t differentiate between clean and dirty, so he’ll often wear whatever she wore to bed the next day. The practice is both gross and sexy. Grexy? 

So many things about living on the road are grexy. 

“There’s one more gift,” she says as she pulls away, hooking a finger into his belt loop and glancing down with a pointed smirk. “Back at the truck.” 

Eddie’s breath stutters at the implication, and Chrissy allows herself two seconds of smug satisfaction. She’s still not very good at offering and worse at actually doing, but Eddie seems contented with her confidence level and the hand jobs that come with it. She likes to believe she’s improving at both. Desire remains a novelty, but one she’s becoming better acquainted with daily.

“You’re gonna kill me, kiddo,” Eddie says before kissing her forehead and sitting down. “You want to get us some food, or should I?” 

“I’ll do it. You can figure out the machine.” 

Their lane has one of those automated computer things, which Chrissy’s only seen once before, at an alley in Indianapolis that Jason took her to when he was still attending IU. They’d gone with friends—his friends—and he’d lost. Badly. Later, he blamed her for his performance. Said she’d been laughing too loud. Distracting him. Annoying him. 

Lesson learned. 

With Eddie, she laughs. Giggles at his wrinkled nose and his nonsense smile. Grins when he grabs her around the waist as she stands, pressing his forehead to her hip and rubbing her back through the dress. 

“Actual food, okay?” he says, using the voice that means he’s going to tell her what to do, and she’ll do it, not because she has to, but because she wants to. “Not just popcorn.” 

“I don’t like nachos,” she shoots back, which is a new thing she’s been trying. Pushing. Testing. She does it just to see what happens, because Eddie won’t be mean. Won’t be scary.

“Did I say nachos?” He digs his fingertips into the base of her spine. 

“No…” She squirms against the shivers he’s eliciting, a smile twitching her lips. 

“Get three things your mom would hate. And beer. Plus something sweet that’d make her pass out.” 

“Okay.” She presses her palm to the crown of his head. “Eddie?” 

“What’s up?” 

“On the machine, can you make my initials CEM?” 

Eddie grins and lets her go. “You got it, sweetheart. See you in a minute.” 

Chrissy heads for the concession stand, a pleasant hum buzzing beneath her skin. It’s silly, she knows, to derive so much pleasure from playing pretend. As though they have the option of running to the county clerk in any town they pass through, tying the knot right then and there. They don’t—can’t—and they both know it. 

That doesn’t stop her from spending significant time daydreaming about what it would be like to be married to Eddie. All the ways it would differ from being married to Jason. 

She’s not a skilled cook, but she’ll try for him. Nothing like the bland, boiled chicken her mother would make, oh no, Chrissy will seek new flavors and experiences. Cook meals that remind Eddie of being on the road, like tongue tacos and Szechuan shrimp. 

Those meals—those reminders—will be necessary, because in the life Chrissy’s living inside her head, Eddie isn’t on the road anymore. In that life, they stay home, more often than not. They’ll have something small to start. An apartment, maybe. One bedroom, with a pull-out couch they’ll make up whenever Eddie’s uncle comes to stay. Obviously, they’ll give Wayne the bed because they’re young, and the sofa isn’t so bad, even if Eddie will probably complain about the center bar poking into his back. 

They will have window boxes and a bird feeder. Eddie’s acoustic guitar will stay propped in one corner of the living room, and sometimes he’ll play it for her and write songs about the goldfish they keep in an oversized aquarium. And—this is important—Chrissy will learn to macrame specifically to make one of those plant hangers that her mother dismissed as ugly beneath her breath when she saw Jonathan Byers’ mom buying one at a swap meet. She’ll make ten of them. Twenty. Send them to everyone in her family as Christmas presents just to set Laura squirming.

The thing is, though, Chrissy doesn’t know how to reconcile the life she and Eddie are living with the future she’s planning. She wants a home. Eight dogs. Magnets on the refrigerator and placemats on the table. She wants daybreak through gauzy curtains and lazy mornings kissing beneath a comforter. A whole day with nothing to do but be. 

There is no life where she stays on the road with him forever, but she can’t ask him to give up his work. In truth, she doesn’t think he likes the monotony of the journey—he’s insinuated as much a half-dozen times—but she knows he appreciates the security of the job. The safety. The steadiness denied him for most of his childhood, coming through as a regular paycheck. 

So, for now, the home-shaped fantasies remain what they are. A hazy future, so far out she can’t yet see the road she’ll be traveling to get there. 

In the cavernous reality of the bowling alley, however, she has a job to do. She orders two hot dogs, two soft pretzels, chicken wings, and mozzarella sticks. That’s four things her mother would hate—Eddie will call her an overachiever—plus beer, and she caps the order off with a brownie because it’s sweet, and they can pretend it’s a birthday cake. 

The man behind the counter fetches everything, filling one of the flimsy red trays to capacity. Chrissy wobbles on her way back to the lane, beer sloshing over the sides of their plastic cups as she navigates the steps. 

“Fucking A, Cunningham. You buy the whole menu?” Eddie takes the tray from her and sets it on their tiny table.

“You asked for three things. I got four.” 

“Overachiever,” he says, just like she wanted him to. 

Eddie picks up a beer and a pretzel, taking a massive bite of the latter, followed by a long swallow of the former. It’s kind of disgusting but also attractive, which is the paradox of Eddie Munson all over. Totally grexy. 

“Is it my turn?” she asks after picking up her drink to take a far more demure sip. 

“Yeah. I already went. And I hope you brought your game face, Cunningham, because I knocked down four of those motherfuckers.” 

“Uh-oh,” she manages around a laugh as she heads for the rack, selecting a ten-pound ball (nine seems wussy, and twelve seems like a lot) and stepping up to the line. 

Immediate gutter ball. Typical.

On her second try, though, she picks up a spare. Eddie yelps like he’s upset, then hugs her like he couldn’t be prouder before taking his turn and hitting a split that makes the pins look like a mouth with missing front teeth.

He gutter balls his second attempt and falls to the wooden floor in a petulant heap, hands clasped to his stomach, groaning like his appendix just burst. 

The game continues in that vein, with Eddie picking up a pin or two on his turns but never closing the deal on a strike or spare. Chrissy, meanwhile, delivers either a perfect strike or nothing at all. As the evening wears on, they get sillier. Eddie improvises a story about the pin-setting machine being a behind-the-scenes monster that feeds on pins, bowling balls, and the occasional lost child. He’s a talented storyteller, and Chrissy can’t help giving the munching metal a wary glance every time it chomps down. 

“I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight,” she protests after bowling the last ball of her final frame. She’s won, with eighty-two whole points, but she won’t brag about that.

Eddie, sitting pretty on a final score of sixty-seven, already has his sneakers on. “Eh. We’d hear it coming. Chomping through all the trucks in the lot…” 

“Stoooo-op!” She drains the last of her second beer, then sits to swap shoes. “You should write that stuff down, though.” 

“What?” 

“Your story. It’s creepy.” 

“Huh,” he says and lights a cigarette. 

They return their shoes and head into the brisk desert evening. Eddie slings an arm around her shoulders, neither saying much as they walk. It takes them twenty minutes to get back to Smaug, and Eddie fiddles with his keys, hesitating for a moment before unlocking the door. “So, uh, I was thinking. It being my birthday and all…” 

“Mmm?” 

“Yeah. So. There’s actually one other thing I want. To celebrate.”

He opens the door, and Chrissy climbs into the cab, grateful for a break from the wind. 

“Oh?” she says, sliding toward the bunk so he has room to climb in. “What’s that?” 

“Well.” He slams the door shut, then turns to her with a half-smile. “The thing I really want for my birthday this year is to fail at giving you an orgasm.” 

Chrissy stops short with her shoe in her hand, sure she’s misheard, and stares at him.

Eddie stares back, wearing an expression that says he knows she heard him, and he’s going to let her stew in her own juices for a second. Make her own decision about how she wants to respond. 

She sets one shoe on the ground, then the other, then puts her hands on her knees. “I don’t know what that means.” 

“You don’t know what failing to give you an orgasm means?” 

“I—” Her cheeks heat, and she shrugs. “Can you be more specific?” 

“Sure. The way I see it, you’re going to have a hard time relaxing enough to come, right?” 

That fact has never been up for debate, so she nods. For all her progress, she’s still terrified that she’s like… fundamentally incapable of achieving orgasm. 

“Okay, so that’s the logic,” Eddie continues, drumming his fingers on his thigh like they’re talking about whether ghosts are real (which they’d spent twenty minutes on two days before. Consensus: Chrissy, no. Eddie, yes. But he doesn’t believe in Bigfoot.) 

“The logic?” 

“My thinking is, if we both go in knowing that you’re not going to come, we can just work on making you feel good. See what you like. There’s no pressure to perform. You get me?” 

Chrissy swallows around her heart, which has climbed into her throat and is living uncomfortably close to her larynx. “How… um. Make me feel good, how?” 

Eddie waggles his fingers as well as an eyebrow, grinning. 

“Right. Um. Okay. I don’t… maybe… but…” 

“Why don’t you take a second and think about it?” He says like she’s not being a giant baby weirdo. “I’m gonna hit the head.” 

That’s a lie. He doesn’t need to pee because he just went at the alley. Meaning he’s doing that thing where he’s decent and kind and puts up with so much bullcrap nonsense from her all the time. 

She waits until he shuts the door, then flops onto the bunk and closes her eyes. Eddie’s request has brought forth a complicated swirl of wants, desires, and fears, which she’ll need to file into the not-always-clear categories of ‘real’ versus ‘not real.’ 

Real: Eddie won’t hurt her intentionally. 

Real: Eddie will stop if she asks him to. 

Real: Whatever he does will probably feel better than Jason’s strained, clumsy attempts at getting her off with his fingers, which invariably felt like a detour on the way to his final destination.

As for the not real? Well, there’s the unfounded worry that Eddie will reject her once he gets his hands on her. Tell her she’s too frigid, too tight, too distant. That she’s not worth his time. That if she were a normal girl, she wouldn’t have so many problems. 

The not-real is the only ghost Chrissy believes in, while the real is waiting inside a truck stop, pretending to pee. 

“So, okay,” she says, then repeats herself when Eddie returns, shutting the door and settling in the passenger seat. “Okay. Let’s try.” 

“Yeah?” Nonchalant, he takes off his boots, then joins her in the bunk, where she’s sitting with her hands in her lap, fisting the fabric of her skirt. 

Eddie laughs, then puts a hand atop her clenched fist. “You look like you’re waiting for me to give you a root canal or something.” 

“Sorry, I—” 

“Chrissy.” 

“I know, I know. Don’t say sorry. Just, I don’t… I don’t want you to feel bad if it doesn’t work.” 

“I won’t. Besides, it’s not gonna work. We already decided. And if you want to stop, just say stop, okay?” 

“Yes.” 

“Good girl.” 

He makes a big production of taking his rings off and putting them in the cupholder, then asks her to lie down close to the wall. 

“Right-handed,” he explains as he stretches out beside her on his left side. 

Chrissy nods, licks her lips, and exhales. Eddie kisses her. Holds her in that for a minute before dropping his hand to her knee. 

“Sit up a little, pretty,” he says, so she does, and he shifts her so he can cradle her against his chest with his arm around her shoulders. It’s nice, actually, the position, because she can hide if she wants to. Ignore everything happening below her waist.

Of course, she could look, too. But she won’t. 

Eddie ducks his head, kissing her again, and he spends a long time doing just that. So much so that when his hand finally starts climbing its way up her thigh, she hardly notices. Until, that is, he reaches the hem of her skirt. 

“You’re okay,” Eddie says against her mouth when she tenses.

“I’m okay,” she echoes and chooses to believe it. Tells herself she’s fine. She doesn’t want him to stop. He’s done this a million times, so what’s one more? 

When his fingers brush against the gusset of the plain, peach-pink cotton panties she’d picked without thinking, she squirms at the idea of him seeing how old and worn they are. How decidedly unsexy. 

Eddie’s not looking down, though. Instead, he kisses her again, distracting her while his index and middle fingers rub against the fabric with ever-so-slightly increasing pressure. 

The action is enough to light the fire in the furnace that fuels the throb between her thighs. Chrissy shivers, and when her legs part instinctively—just a couple inches—she freezes, mouth going slack against his. 

“Uh-oh,” he says, tapping a finger against her, which makes her breath hitch. “Please, please don’t tell me that felt good, Chrissygirl. I’m trying so hard to screw this up.” 

She laughs, she can’t help it, and the paralysis breaks. “It’s… um. It’s just okay.” 

“Oh. Well. Thank you very much.” He taps again, then rubs, and his grin widens when she twitches. “Fuck! Chrissy! Quit!” 

The Chrissybrain-machine is officially malfunctioning. How can he be touching her but also talking to her and laughing with her and treating her like having his hand between her legs is this totally chill, totally cool behavior? It’s monumental. It’s epic. It’s a defining moment in the short time they’ve been together. And… and also? 

Also, Eddie’s one hundred percent correct. This can be chill. Cool. A thing people do, and Chrissy is people. 

She offers him a half smile, sucking her bottom lip between her teeth. “I can’t help it.” 

“See, I knew this would be your problem, Cunningham. But here’s the thing—I told you I’m not getting you off tonight. Abject failure, that’s my goal. So you’d better quit enjoying yourself, you understand? I’m not gonna tell you again.” 

The faux threat combined with the press of his fingers has her shuddering, and this time when the pulse of arousal settles on her, it brings that damp, slick sensation. A letting down and a small release—her body’s way of acknowledging that yes, she likes this, and yes, she wants more. 

Eddie covers her mouth with his own, then hooks his thumb into the waistband of her panties, pulling them down enough that he can slip his hand between the fabric and her skin. 

The swap startles her, and she bites his lip in surprise. He laughs, though, and tells her she’s a vampire before curling the same two fingers against her mound.

The sensation is entirely different without the muffling layer of cotton. Chrissy jumps. Gasps. Tucks her face against his chest, even as her bottom half betrays her with a shudder and a tensing in her thighs. 

“You’re okay,” Eddie repeats like a mantra.

“I’m okay,” she agrees again, her hand finding the hem of his shirt and moving beneath so she can rest it against the bare skin of his stomach. “Feels nice.” 

“Such a shame,” he says, then begins to move. Just those two fingers, same as before, circling slowly to start. Chrissy fights with herself about how much to squirm, then goes rigid when Eddie’s touch trails further south, and she feels the blunt tip of his finger near her entrance. 

“Sorry,” he says immediately. “Just, uh, exploring. You don’t want anything inside of you, right?” 

Chrissy shakes her head, heart thumping, and she knows, she knows, she knows Eddie won’t, but the terror doesn’t know, and the terror is stronger than her rational thoughts. 

“I won’t, I promise. It’s just that you’re um, there’s more, like… you’re wetter here? So I was gonna use it to, you know. Help.” 

That her body can do anything remotely helpful is news to Chrissy, whose bafflement at that overwhelms any shame she might feel as she chokes out a laugh. 

“Which, come to think of it,” Eddie continues. “I shouldn’t even be helping you out because you’re not supposed to enjoy yourself here, Cunningham. So I don’t know why you’re getting all worked up about my shitty…” 

“Eddie, oh my gosh,” she says, then leans up to kiss him. 

Things get easier after that. At least, for a while. Eddie uses the…stuff—and honestly, what do people even call that stuff?—between her legs to ease his movements, and there’s a weird, awful ookiness to the slick, squishy sensation. It’s pressure and heat and a growing low, slow ache that has the can’t and won’t which hold the line in her head, ceding ground to the must and have to. 

Can’t and won’t fight their fight, though. Snaking their way through her thoughts every time she feels the urge to make a sound, or ask for more, or grab Eddie by the wrist and force his fingers to go faster. Whenever she thinks too much about what she’s doing, she freezes. Panics. Pulls back from the kisses he never stops giving. 

“I’m sorry,” she says after the fifth time her body betrays her, mind dragging her into no-man's-land and away from the safety of his touch. 

“I’m not.” He stills his hand and kisses her nose. “Besides, you’re not allowed to apologize.” 

“Except I actually am sorry. I keep… it’s like I can’t stop thinking about everything.” 

“What’s everything?” 

She sighs and puts a hand over her eyes. “I can’t ask for what I want, or do what I want, because I keep worrying about what you’ll think if I do.” 

He hums, then touches his finger to the center of her and makes her shudder. “Would it help if I told you what I was thinking?” 

That actually might, so she nods. At least then she’ll know, because she trusts him to be honest. Truth over platitudes and all. 

“I’m thinking,” he says, and moves again, drawing slow, tantalizing circles around the spot that wants to turn her ferocious. “That I hope this feels as good for you as it does for me. Because I’m having, like, the best time. But when I feel you tense up or pull away, I worry that you hate it and I’m making you do something you’re not ready for.” 

“You’re—” 

“But then there’s this other part,” he continues, picking up speed. “That’s totally focused on the fact that I’m touching you, and you’re wet, and you keep squirming, and you just might kill me. Which I hope is true, yeah?” 

“True,” she says with a hitching breath. “It feels… it’s so much better than when I do it.” 

“Good. It’s supposed to. And, the thing is, you’re so fucking hot like this, shitbird. You’ve got no idea.”

Cheeks flaming, Chrissy shakes her head, happy to keep hiding behind her hand. 

“No, yeah, look at me for a second.” He takes hold of her fingers, the angle awkward but the intent obvious, peeling them back so she’s forced to either close her eyes or meet his. She chooses the latter. “Good girl. Hi. Listen, there’s nothing you can do that will turn me off, except for the stuff that makes you, like… check out because you’re more worried about how you look or how I feel than how it’s going for you. Got me?” 

It is an odd concept that Eddie's experience is directly tied to hers. Or, well, not odd—it makes sense, once she thinks about it—but not something she’s considered, given her past. Jason took what she didn’t necessarily want to give, and her enjoyment was secondary to his own. However, on those rare occasions when some satisfaction came through, it was usually because she felt connected to him. Like, he’d look at her or kiss her or remind her he loved her and, okay, she doesn’t want to think about Jason while she’s in bed with Eddie, but the fact remains that Eddie’s probably right, and the only thing her overthinking can accomplish is driving a wedge between them and spoiling this moment.

Eddie keeps moving while she chews on the notion, and when his fingers strum a new chord, she takes him at his word and whimpers. 

The sound fills the cab. Reverberates off the hard plastic of the cabinets. Floats back to her on a cloud that might be shame, asking her to look, see, and hear what she did. How ridiculous she is.

“Fuck, dude,” Eddie says before kissing her so the shame has nowhere to go but up, up, up, and out into the expanse of sky and stars, dissipating into the nothingness it ought to be. “Do that again.” 

Chrissy exhales as he pulls back, her eyes fixed on his face. His jaw. The stubble he’s sporting after two days without a shave. “Make me.” 

Eddie makes her. Draws a million more whimpers from the place inside her where they’ve been hiding. The throb between her legs grows to an ache, and when the urge to lift her hips comes, she doesn’t hesitate.

Eddie grins. Increases his speed until, to her surprise, he stops altogether. (How much time? Hard to say. She’s been in that bunk for years.) She blinks, confused, and for a second, she’s sure she did something wrong.

“Sorry, kiddo,” he says, lifting his hand and making a fist. “I’m cramping up.” 

The light filtering in from outside makes the stuff—her stuff—coating his fingers shine. She wants to lick it and see if it tastes the same on his skin as on hers, but also, she registers that cramping is bad and she should say something supportive despite the general fuzziness that’s settled over her consciousness. “Um. Okay. We can stop.” 

“No way.” He spreads his palm wide, then closes it again. “Just need a breather.” 

Chrissy frowns, thinking perhaps she ought to insist. Technically, he has given her what he promised, in that he has not given her an orgasm. But to tell him that she’s satisfied with what they’ve done would be a lie, and she doesn’t lie to Eddie. “Maybe you could use your other hand?” 

A peacocking grin spreads across his face, and he shakes his hand out, floppy-wristed, as he often does when they’re driving and he’s been holding the steering wheel too long. “Nah. M’good.” 

“Are you su—” 

He answers her question by putting his resilient hand back under her dress. There’s no hesitation before he touches her, fingers settling into a familiar pattern. Only, soon enough, it’s not so familiar because his brief retreat has caused some chemistry to be rewritten in Chrissy’s brain. It’s like she’s a rubber band that’s been pulled a skosh too taut, and if she doesn’t snap back, she’ll split. 

“I need…” she starts, then shakes her head. 

Eddie, an actual, literal monster, stops his movements altogether. “Need what, pretty?” 

“Ugh. Harder?” She turns her face into his neck. “And faster? Please?” 

“Yeah, for sure.” 

Chrissy moans. Arches her back and lifts her hips higher than before, desperate to chase his fingers to some far-off horizon. “Sor—” she starts, then shuts herself up.

Eddie laughs. Kisses her cheek. Alters his rhythm again to one that’s even faster. Messier. Squishier. The sounds filling the cab are filthy, and God, she ought to care, she ought to care, but she can’t care because nothing has ever, ever, ever felt so good in her entire life. 

“Eddie…Eddie…” 

His fingers keep time in syncopation with her heartbeat as he leans low. Presses his lips to her ear and murmurs, “you’d better not be thinking about coming, Chrissygirl.” 

“Won’t!” she says and takes hold of his wrist. “But please, can you… can you… your finger? Try. I want—just try?” 

“Gotta use more words, sweetheart.” Eddie shifts his weight, and she can feel the length of his erection pressed to the outside of her thigh because he’s enjoying this, too, which makes it easier to ask for what she wants. 

“Put one in me.” 

His hand stills, and she is going to bite his throat out; only then he couldn’t touch her anymore, so, ugh, choices. “Chrissy…” 

“I asked, though! It’s okay because I asked!” 

He huffs out a breath that might be a laugh. Slides his hand low, and for the second time that evening, she feels his finger press against her entrance. 

“Please,” she whines, and she doesn’t care if it hurts because she needs him inside her. Filling her up and giving relief to the mounting pressure and ache and pulsing desire. 

Eddie slips past her defenses, and she braces for discomfort, only it doesn’t come. There’s a twinge, just for a second. An instinctive tension that passes as quickly as it arrived. And then he’s there. Inside of her. Dragging his finger in and out in a slow, deliberate movement while his thumb circles the bright white spot that’s turning her into a crazy, desperate, needy thing. 

Chrissy digs her nails into his wrist. Rolls her hips. Begs. Slays monsters on her quest to chase desire to its destination. 

“Don’t you do it, shitbird,” Eddie mumbles against her ear, and he’s moving, too. Body rubbing against her side as he holds her in the palm of his hand. “Don’t you dare. I’m gonna know if you do. I’m—” 

Chrissy comes. Crests the hill and tumbles down the other side, gasping Eddie’s name as she trips and falls into the unknown. This wild, virgin country that has her squirming and fighting and riding his fingers with the abandon of a girl who has never, ever, ever once cared what anyone thought of her. 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Eddie says, and she’d echo the sentiment if she could only find her voice. “Did you…?” 

“Too… too…” she manages, hoarse and desperate because as quickly as she discovers it, the good, green place turns thorny and overmuch, and she pushes him away before his touch can make her scream. “Can’t… please?” 

“Shit, yeah, you did.” He kisses her temple and pulls his hand free, resting it on her leg as she clamps her thighs together and rocks from side to side, the overwhelm of the sensation still fluttering. Still aching, but it’s a different ache. A satisfied comedown rather than a desperate climb. Too much to bear when he was touching her, but pleasant enough now that she’s alone with the feeling.

“I did,” she mumbles, turning to hide against his neck. There’s something wet between them, and she can’t decide if it’s his sweat or her tears. Maybe both? Whatever. Doesn’t matter. It’s good, they’re good, she’s good. “You told me not to.” 

“Rebel, rebel.” 

His slick hand rests on her stomach, which brings her back to reality. Her dress has ridden up well past her hips, meaning he can see everything from the waist down rather than a hint. Instinct tells her to suck in, which she does—stupid, considering what he just did for her—but she doesn’t pull her dress down. Doesn’t even hate the way her thighs look from this angle.

“Sorry I ruined your birthday present,” she says, stroking her fingers up his forearm, focusing on that rather than where his eyes might be fixed.

“Yeah, you should be sorry. I specifically told you that I wanted to fail, you know? Some girlfriend.” 

“It’s hard to take you seriously when you sound so smug.” 

“Ah, well…” He trails off, then uses his other arm to move her back onto the pillows before propping himself on an elbow. “Honest to God, I didn’t think it’d happen the first time. I just wanted to kickstart the process.” 

“I guess you underestimated your skill.” 

“Nah. I’m pretty sure I underestimated how fucking needy you are.” 

“Eddie!”

“You are, though! You’re like… shit, twenty years without coming. I’d be needy, too. And now that we know you’re not an anti-orgasmic anomaly, we gotta get you off. A lot. All the time. So get ready.” 

“Oh, my gosh. Just because, I mean, it might not work every time.” 

“I’m willing to make an effort.” 

She tries to hide her smile, then glances down. “And what about you?” 

“What about me?” 

“You want me to take care of our mutual friend?” 

Eddie snorts and drums on her stomach, which is awesome and terrifying and she’s just going to pretend it’s not happening. “Obviously. But let’s give it a minute. I’m basking in your afterglow.” 

That’s the stupidest thing she’s ever heard, and she loves him for saying it. “Am I glowing?” 

“Like a beacon.” He leans down to kiss her, nipping at her bottom lip. “Can I tell you a secret?” 

“Uh-huh.” 

“I never believed you when you said you couldn’t come. And I always knew I’d eventually get you off. I just didn’t want to sound cocky. However, now…” 

Chrissy snorts, pointing her toes to ease some of the tension in her things. “So humble. I’m really lucky to have you.” 

“You really are.” His smile fades slightly, showboating giving way to his softer side. “Was it okay, though? You actually liked it?”

That he’s asking is a surprise, and she frowns, squeezing his arm. “I mean. I came. So, yes, I loved it.” 

“But the uh, with my finger at the end, that definitely didn’t hurt?” 

“No. It didn’t hurt. It’s funny, I was sure it would, but I decided I wanted it anyway, and then it didn’t.” 

“Fuck. Good. I mean, you seemed fine, but… you know. Just checking.” 

“Thanks for checking.” She brushes a hand through his tangled curls, tugging on a runaway near the top of his head. “I still feel all tingly. And right after was kind of weird. It was like I couldn’t stand the thought of you touching me anymore.”

“Yeah, that happens. Not always, but sometimes. It can be fun to fuck with.” 

“How?” 

“Just, like… pushing limits? Seeing how long someone can tolerate it. Overstimulation, I guess.”

“I was definitely extremely stimulated,” she says, mouth twitching as she suppresses a giggle. 

“You’re gonna inflate my ego, Cunningham.” 

She snorts, touching his shoulder and walking her fingers down his arm, then across to his torso, where his bowling shirt is riding up. “Speaking of inflated... how about that last birthday present?” 

“God, your jokes.” 

“That’s not an answer.” 

“You don’t—” 

“You said to give you a minute. It’s been a minute.” She tugs on his belt loop and smiles. “Besides, I want to say thank you.” 

“It’s not a quid pro—”

“Jesus, Munson, would you just take your pants off?”

Chapter Text

They come to Indianapolis from the west, which Chrissy finds easier to swallow. Hawkins sits an hour southeast of the city, and she’s used to seeing the skyline from a different angle. All those weekend outings when they’d drive here to spend money on credit they didn’t have, to see an occasional touring production of a Broadway show, or to visit her grandfather at his office, back when he was still working and looking down on her dad for not being quite good enough for his daughter. 

Chrissy’s mother’s father died the year her own father was promoted to management. She thinks there’s an irony there, but she’s not dwelling on it. She has more important things to focus on, like entering Indianapolis from the west. 

As they reach the city's outskirts, she sees a sign for this year’s performance of the Nutcracker by the Indianapolis Ballet. The sign makes her shiver. Tuck her legs tight to her chest and glance at Eddie to see if he notices. 

He does. Turns his head and offers her a half-smile. “You alright?” 

“Mmm. We used to go to that. The Nutcracker.” 

“Oh. Cool.” 

“Eh.” She waggles a hand in front of herself. “My mom was kind of crazy about the ballerinas. How skinny they were.” 

Eddie scoffs, which is what he usually does regarding Chrissy’s mother. It’s nice that he doesn’t feel the need to pretend he has any respect or regard for the woman. Helps Chrissy remember that she no longer has to hold herself to Laura’s standards. 

A cramp wracks her body when they pass the sign, and she sighs, worming her fingers into the space between her legs and torso to press them against her abdomen. She’s on the third day of her period, which started the afternoon after Eddie’s birthday. Not a monumental occurrence for most women, but she hadn’t had one for nearly six months prior. 

Part of her wants to believe the orgasm had cracked open a dam holding back the proverbial floodwaters, but she knows that’s dumb. Her periods have stopped before when her food crap has gotten really bad, that’s all. And now? Well, now she’s eating. Maybe not a lot, but over the month and change since she’s been with Eddie, that food has made a difference. 

She wishes it would have improved her complexion or hair before returning her period, but when has her body ever done what she wanted it to? 

So, it’s fine. She’s dealing with it. There wasn’t much blood on the pad at the last rest stop, and she’s taking Pamprin for the worst of the cramps. Oh, and she hasn’t let Eddie touch her down there since she started.

Eddie’d said he didn’t care, that he’d do it anyway. She had said she did, and he’d left it alone, even though it’s more than that. Because now there is something to be had, and something to be lost, and something within her screaming to be touched, teased, broken open, over and over and over again. 

Chrissy has been hungry for more than just food these past few days. 

“Ten minutes,” Eddie says as he switches lanes, heading for an exit that will undoubtedly lead them into the rabbit warren of warehouses and industrial buildings that every city seems to have. “It won’t take me long to wrap shit up.” 

“Cool,” she says and returns to fretting, repeatedly running the plan (such as it is) in her head.

Eddie has three days off, which gives them time to accomplish a few specific goals. Namely, tomorrow morning, Chrissy is going back to the apartment where she lived with Jason. She knows when he has class and knows he will be out for at least two and a half hours, which will give her a chance to do what she needs to do. 

If it works, he’ll never even know she was there. Or maybe he’ll suspect, and that’s alright. She’s through hiding; whatever happens is what’s going to happen. 

Eddie lets her out a couple blocks from Smaug’s final destination. Chrissy pets Liddy, the dashboard dog, grabs her suitcase and the paper grocery bag full of baseball caps she’s taking with her, then slips out of the cab and sets foot in Indiana for the first time since what she’d genuinely believed would be the last time. 

It’s cold, and she waves Eddie off before zipping her coat and pulling the woolen hat he’d bought her in Utah down over her ears. This one isn’t a baseball cap but a ridiculous neon pink and blue monstrosity with a matching pom-pom adorning the crown. It’s fit for a five-year-old, and Chrissy adores it mostly because Eddie’d seemed so pleased with himself when he gave it to her. Declared that he was tired of her ears turning red from the cold, which is the kind of thoughtful Eddie-thing he does that makes her want to pull her hair out and also jump on him, and if this is what people mean by horny, then Chrissy is in trouble. 

Fifteen minutes later, she is huddled in her coat when a van sputters down the street, squeaking to a juddering stop at her corner. Seeing it sparks a memory from school—of walking through the parking lot after practice one night. Eddie was there with another guy whose name she can’t recall, and the van was nose-to-nose with an old Ford. They’d been fighting, maybe over the correct way to attach jumper cables? She remembers feeling cowed by Eddie, as his vehement confidence in his correctness had manifested in yelling, which always freaked her out. Still does, actually. At the time, she’d scooted by them to where her mother sat idling in the far corner of the lot, and hadn’t looked back when Laura drove them away. 

It’s so strange to think about a time when Eddie ever scared her.

“Hop in,” Eddie says as she opens the door, reaching for her bags and tossing them into the back.

“I remember this van,” she replies, hauling herself onto the nubby velveteen seats. Age has worn them through in places, foam poking past fabric, while the springs squeak indignantly under her weight. 

“No shit?” He waits for her to settle, then hits the accelerator. 

“Uh-huh. It was in the parking lot.” She rubs her reddened nose, then sniffs. A faint, familiar skunky odor permeates the space, which feels about right. “You were jumping someone, or they were jumping you, and you guys were fighting about it.” 

“Yep. I had to kickstart this girl every other day when I first got her. I couldn’t afford to replace the battery.” 

“You guys sounded pretty mad. And my mom was picking me up, so it was before Jason was around. Maybe my sophomore year?”

“Sure, makes sense. I bought her my first senior year, so that was probably Lou. He was a buddy, sort of. We both played D&D, but…” He glances over with a grin. “He was a lousy DM. A know-it-all.”

“And then he graduated, and you took over?” 

“Exactly.” 

“That must have been hard for you.” 

“What, taking over?”

“No. Seeing all your friends graduate ahead of you.” 

Eddie’s quiet as he takes the turn leading them to the interstate, shoulders creeping toward his ears. “I dunno. Maybe. Mostly, it was weird. And, like, I stopped making friends after a while? I had a couple of guys, and then it was… minions or whatever with everyone else.” 

“You cut yourself off.” 

“I guess.” He drums his fingers on the steering wheel, and the van whines when he speeds up for a merge. “I kept telling myself that this year was the year that I was gonna do better. Then I’d get into a classroom and start feeling like my brain was leaking out of my fucking ears.” 

“You couldn’t sit still.” 

“Exactly. The stupidest part is that I coulda gotten my GED and fucked off, but I kept going back.” 

“For your uncle, right?” 

“Mostly. Although he was never on my ass about graduation or anything. He just said he wouldn’t mind seeing me in a cap and gown once or twice, and he’s not a guy who asks for a lot, you know?” 

“So what else was it that made you keep coming back?” 

Eddie shrugs and doesn’t appear prepared to explain.

“Maybe…” Chrissy starts, then stops herself. “Nevermind.” 

“No, what?” 

“Well. Okay. You got moved around when you were little, right? But you were probably always in school wherever you went.” 

“…most of the time, yeah.” 

“So maybe school became this place that you didn’t really like, but it was predictable. You knew what you were getting, even if it wasn’t all that fun.”

“That’s a theory, doc.” 

“It’s dumb.” 

“Didn’t say dumb. Just not something I’ve spent a ton of time on. I’m done, you know? I moved on.” 

Chrissy nods. Yes, he’s moved on and into a job that, when broken down, has similar patterns of predictability. Sure, there’s some freedom of movement, but at the end of the day, Eddie still has someone else telling him where he’s going. This stands in direct contrast to all the stuff she knows that he loves, or loved—writing, drawing, even the Dungeons and Dragons club—where he’s in control. Directing the story and the outcome, and, okay, she’s officially in too deep. Treading water in territory that Eddie doesn’t want plumbed. 

“And it’s not like I’m… I mean…” He pushes a hand through his hair, twitchy, then fumbles for a cigarette. “I just wanted to finish something.” 

“Or maybe you had a crush on Mrs. O’Donnell,” she offers, giving him an out if he wants to take it. 

“Fuck, that’s it. The blue hair and the support hose…” 

“Eddie!”

“What?” He grins. “I think they’re sexy. You should get some. Lemme take ‘em off you…” 

“Oh my gosh,” she says as he launches into a ramble about the sensuality of geriatric fashion. 

They make decent time, the van trundling along with an occasional dyspeptic wheeze. When Chrissy asks, Eddie tells her it’s a 1971 Chevy with over a hundred thousand miles. He bought it for a song from a friend of Wayne’s and has kept it in working order since. Probably, he says, he could afford something better now that he’s got a steady gig. But he has a sentimental attachment to the old girl, and besides, if it ain’t broke, why should he need to fix it?

They leave the interstate behind about forty-five minutes into the drive, exiting onto a familiar highway. The tension in Chrissy’s stomach mounts with every billboard they pass. Every landmark. The body shop, the check cashing place. All the shabby stores on Main Street.

Hawkins never changes. Ever. A few years back, there’d been a rumble about them maybe getting a mall, but the funding had fallen through, ultimately costing their mayor his reelection—something about campaign finance violations? Chrissy had paid little attention, but she remembers Jason’s father being extremely pro-mall, vocally complaining about the protests from the small business community. 

All that to say, there’s nothing unfamiliar until Eddie passes the turn that would take them to the middle-class neighborhood she grew up in and the road to Loch Nora, where wealthier kids like Jason spent their summers in private pools. 

God, Chrissy had wasted so much of her life assuaging her mother’s fussing concerns about how best the Cunninghams could strive their way into that sort of company. 

It would horrify Laura to see Chrissy in that rusting van. To see her with Eddie, who she’d call trailer trash with a sniff and grimace. In the past, Chrissy’d never thought anything about it when Laura cast dismissive judgments on their fellow citizens like she had any right to proclaim her superiority. The comments had been so much white noise in Chrissy’s preoccupied ears, which spent way more time concerning themselves with petty classroom gossip than her mother’s disdain for anyone who wasn’t on the upper side of the middle class. 

There’s nothing saintly about being rich or about being poor. People are just people, and the longer Chrissy spends on the road, the more she realizes that everyone’s doing the best they can, most of the time.

Eddie eventually turns down a long, wooded stretch of road. He’s singing along with a song she doesn’t know, and he keeps doing that thing where he flexes his fingers, releases, then flexes again.

He’s nervous, she realizes. It’s a rare look on him, and she frowns, reaching over to rest her hand atop his on his thigh, lacing their fingers together. 

“Sorry,” he says without missing a beat, picking up what she’s putting down, the same as he always does. “Am I driving you nuts?” 

“No. You just seem kind of… high-strung?” 

“Oh. Yeah. It’s, you know. Wayne.” 

That isn’t the answer she’s expecting. Eddie’s descriptions of his uncle have left her with a picture of someone who is even-keeled and adaptable. Muted, controlled, and a wholly different sort of parent than the ones she’s used to. “You think he’s going to be mad you’re bringing me home?” 

“Not mad. But it’s uh… it’s a surprise.” 

“Right.” She squeezes his hand and frowns. “Are you thinking you should have given him a heads up?” 

“No. He’ll be cool. I think.” 

The tiny pit of anxiety buried in her gut grows more substantial. “Okay, but maybe I should get a motel room or something? I could come over later, and you could introduce me—” 

“What? No. No way. I just gotta explain it to him. He’ll like you. It’s fine.” 

With that, he lifts her hand and presses a kiss to the back before releasing her so he can slow to take a turn down a dirt road littered with the remnants of grey snow ringing pockets of mud. Chrissy has passed this trailer park maybe two dozen times in her life—it’s on the wrong side of town for her to visit often—and never paid much attention to anything beyond the sign with peeling paint and her mother’s sniff of disapproval. 

Now, she takes it in with eyes that aren’t her mother’s and finds the sprawling complex isn’t quite what she expects. Yes, there are saggy, neglected trailers with rusted sides and cars parked haphazardly on their patchy brown lawns. But there are also meticulously maintained homes—crisp corners and fresh paint, holding firm against the stereotypes thrust upon them. A woman is standing outside one of that latter sort, a bunch of Christmas lights in her hands, dragging a step stool along the length of her navy blue porch. 

As they pass, the woman turns, shielding her eyes from the midday sun and squinting at the van. Her lined face breaks into a smile, and she waves. Eddie waves back, so Chrissy does, too, and she wishes she could tell the woman how much she likes her green plaid coat. 

“Who’s that?” Chrissy asks. 

“Val. Wayne’s sometimes-girlfriend.” 

“Just sometimes?” 

“They don’t want to move in together.”

Chrissy cranes her neck for another look at Val, but there’s a bend in the road, so she can’t. The trailer park is bigger than she realized, sprawling across acres of land like a leaf with veins branching into little warrens and dead-ends. 

Eddie takes a vein toward the back, where three trailers are loosely arranged around an awning-covered picnic table and some rusted playground equipment. Of the three, one home is entirely derelict, the other two shabby but lived-in. Chrissy makes a guess that the furthest-away residence belongs to the Munsons, given that the other decent option currently has a teenage boy and girl sitting on the front stoop, passing a Walkman back and forth.

“This is us,” Eddie says, confirming her suspicions as he pulls up to the third trailer, parking beside a grey truck that’s seen better days.

“Great,” she says, still fixated on the teenagers and leaning over Eddie for a clearer view of the disconcertingly familiar boy. “Is that Lucas Sinclair?” 

Eddie cuts the engine and nudges her away. “Jesus with the elbows, Cunningham.” 

“Oops.” She sits back. “But is it?” 

“Lucas? Yeah. He’s friends with the girl who lives there.” 

The way Eddie says ‘friends’ makes Chrissy think it might be something more than that. She figures she’ll find out soon enough, as the kids are already making their way over when they hop out of the van. Hand-in-hand, so. Yup. 

The girl is beautiful—a true redhead, rather than Chrissy’s pitiful claim to strawberry blonde—and staring at Chrissy with naked curiosity. Then there’s Lucas. Who is… not Jason’s friend, exactly, but a teammate. Someone who’d looked up to Jason as a leader. Someone who might still know him. Might talk.

Chrissy always liked Lucas—thought he had a brain in his head, unlike some of Jason’s other buddies—but seeing him here, now, so soon after returning to Hawkins? Terrifying. No two ways about it. 

“Hey, Munson,” calls the redhead.

“Hey, Red,” Eddie shouts back as he opens the side door to grab their bags, though he chooses to leave the hats behind for now. 

“Where’ve you been? You were gone forever,” she says, dropping Lucas’s hand and leaning against the van.

Lucas has grown since Chrissy last saw him, towering over Eddie by at least two inches. Handsome, too, with a bright smile and kind eyes, and, God, she hopes he’s not still in touch with Jason. She doesn’t think they are—Jason cut out a lot of his old contacts when he swapped schools—but there’s no way to know without asking, and she won’t do that. 

“I’ve been working. Hey, Sinclair.” 

“Munson,” Lucas replies before they do that awkward thing boys do where they don’t quite hug. A bumping of bodies, carefully angled, and so, so silly to behold. “How’ve you been?”

“Can’t complain. How’s your sister?” 

“I mean, she’s Erica, right?”

“Right,” Eddie grins.

“You ever pay her what you owe her?” 

“Man, I don’t have that kind of cash.” 

“She says she’s adding interest.” 

“Yeah, I’ll bet.” Eddie slings an arm around Chrissy’s shoulders, pulling her into the conversation like it’s nothing. “You remember Chrissy?” 

Lucas, properly clocking Chrissy’s presence, nods. He’s a half-decent actor, but there’s no missing the slight widening of his eyes when he recognizes her. There’s a comfort in the fact that it takes him a minute, though. Proof she’s changed, perhaps. “Yeah, totally. Hey, Chrissy.” 

“Hi, Lucas,” she says, forcing herself to stay calm. Casual. Like it’s normal for her to be here with Eddie instead of with her husband in Indianapolis. “How are you?” 

“I’m uh. Good. Sorry. You—” 

“I’m Max, by the way,” says Red, elbowing Lucas’s side. “Since nobody wants to introduce us. Hi. I remember you.”

“Oh, hi. I um… it’s nice to meet you,” Chrissy offers. 

“Yeah, likewise. Lucas, what’s wrong with your face?” 

“What? Nothing!”

“You look like you saw a ghost.” 

“No, I don’t. Jesus, Max. Just…” 

“Okay, so,” Eddie says, tightening his grip on Chrissy’s shoulders. “We’re not trying to make a big deal out of my being home. So don’t go telling Henderson or Wheeler and bringing the whole cavalry down here, huh?” 

“Right.” Lucas looks between them again, then nods. “Got it. It’s uh… it’s good to see you, though, Chrissy.” 

“You, too,” she says, hoping that’s enough. Has to believe it is because she can’t just ask him not to tell; can’t start sharing state secrets with the first familiar face she sees.

They exchange awkward pleasantries before the kids return to Max’s front stoop, while Eddie and Chrissy head for the Munson trailer. The front door is unlocked, and Eddie mutters something about Wayne getting robbed blind before holding out a hand to usher her in. 

Chrissy takes a deep breath, then steps past him and into the house, where she’s hit by warm, dry, artificial heat, starkly contrasting the blustery wind outside. She doesn’t have time to look around much—not even at the fabled collection of baseball caps adorning every wall—because there’s a man with a hangdog look that reminds her of Eddie when he wants something sitting on a faded sofa. Surprise registers on his worn face as he shoots to his feet, mannered in the presence of a stranger, despite his confusion. 

“Hey, Wayne,” Eddie says, shutting the door and dropping their bags. “Uh…” 

“Eddie.” Wayne’s sharp gaze shuttles between the two of them. “And a friend.” 

“This is Chrissy.” Eddie slips an arm around her waist since apparently touching her is how he’s choosing to signal to the world that she’s his girl. She doesn’t hate it. “She’s, uh, staying with us. With me. If that’s cool?” 

Wayne studies them, and she can see so much of Eddie in the warmth of his eyes, if not his features. Undoubtedly, Wayne has questions—millions of them, she’s sure—but he doesn’t ask. Instead, he jerks his head toward a narrow hallway leading to the rest of the trailer. “Don’t need my permission,” he says in an accent that wouldn’t sound out of place in Tennessee or Kentucky. “S’your house, too.” 

“I’m so sorry to spring it on you, Mr. Munson,” Chrissy says, the politeness bred into her by her mother kicking in as she steps forward. “I really appreciate it, and um… it’s so good to finally meet you. Eddie’s told me a lot about you.” 

“Ah.” Wayne fixes Eddie with a hard stare. “Glad to know he’s capable.” 

Eddie clears his throat. “It’s kind of a thing. Sorry. Uh. We uh…” He scratches the back of his neck with one hand while the other tightens against Chrissy’s side, fingers digging into her waist. “We can talk about it?” 

That’s an unfamiliar tone of voice. An unfamiliar Eddie. No longer her guide, her goofball, her hero, but a nephew. A son. A little kid seeking approval, all the while pretending he has no need for it. 

 “Suppose we will,” Wayne agrees. “You two hungry?” 

“We can feed ourselves,” Eddie says immediately. “Do you work tonight?” 

“Mmhmm.” 

“You got groceries? I can run to the store or—”

“I got plenty,” Wayne says, and a flicker of amusement dances in the corners of his mouth. “Go on, bring your bags in.” 

“Oh, uh… sure, yeah,” Eddie agrees. “We’ll be right back.” 

“Thank you again,” Chrissy says as she picks up her suitcase. 

“You’re welcome. Chrissy, was it?” 

“Uh-huh.” 

“Well, you’re welcome, Chrissy. Eds, your sheets are clean.” 

“Thanks, Wayne.” 

Eddie grabs Chrissy by the hand and drags her down the hall into a bedroom that overwhelms her with its sheer, ridiculous Eddie-ness. Cluttered with posters, instruments, knick-knacks, and nonsense, the essence of him has seeped into every corner of the space, right down to the air she’s breathing, which carries a whiff of his essence. That same smell lurking beneath the soap and deodorant and sweat on his skin. This room is Eddie as he was, as he is, and as he could be. Chrissy loves it in an instant. 

“It’s messy, I know,” he says, putting his duffel on a long shelf along one wall. “Sorry about Wayne. He’s okay. We surprised him, is all. And uh, he likes you already. I’m pretty sure. I don’t—” 

“Eddie.” She takes a step closer and puts her arms around his waist. “You need to talk to him. Without me.” 

“But—” 

“I’m tired. I really want a nap. And he has questions he won’t ask if I’m there.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“Uh-huh. You can tell him whatever you need to, okay?” 

“Even…?” 

“You trust him, right?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Then yes. Even that.” 

“Okay. That’s… definitely. It’ll be easier without you there.” 

“Literally what I said, Munson.” 

“Are you really going to take a nap?” 

“Maybe. Or maybe I want privacy to root around for your high school porn collection.” 

Eddie grins. “It’s not that robust.”

“Cheerleaders on Parade? Squads in Short Skirts?” 

“What? No!” 

“Uh-huh.” She pecks his lips once more for good measure before letting him go. “I’ll see you in a minute.” 

“Okay.” He moves past her toward the door, then hesitates. “Just… bottom dresser drawer. Under the T-shirts. If you really need to know.” 

Eddie, still nursing thoughts about whether or not Chrissy’s actually looking for his porn, swallows hard when he sees Wayne waiting on the sofa, two cups of coffee on the table in front of him. God, he hadn’t thought it’d be this awkward, and maybe that was naive. Desperate. Stupid. Something. But it is what it is, and he’s gonna have to deal with it like a grown-up.

“So,” Wayne says as Eddie settles into the recliner that no longer reclines. 

“So.” Eddie stretches over to take a mug, fixing his uncle with a look that aims at nonchalance and fails. “It uh… thanks for the coffee.” 

“Mmhmm.” 

Clearly, Wayne is waiting for answers to the big questions that haven’t been asked. Which, yeah. Fair enough. “So. Chrissy,” Eddie says. “It’s a long story.” 

“I’ll bet. She been with you a minute?” 

“About a month. Little more.” 

Wayne’s fingers tighten against his mug, brow furrowing. “Shit, Eds. You coulda given me a heads up.” 

“I know. But I didn’t want to do it over the phone, and then… I dunno. After a while, it got weird that I hadn’t told you, and explaining why I’d left you out of it felt like it’d go better in person, and so, yeah. Here we are.” 

“Here we are. You gonna start at the start?”

“Yeah. Well, sort of. The start’s uh… we went to high school together.” 

“No kidding?” 

“I kinda had a thing for her back then.” Eddie had mostly kept his crushes quiet, in contrast to his intensity in all other matters. That rule held especially true for Chrissy, who’d been untouchable in a way other girls weren’t. And sure, he’d had dates over to the trailer, and there’d been one disastrous interruption of coitus on the living room sofa when Wayne got off early from work, but for the most part, they’d avoided the topic of their love lives. 

“You kept in touch?” 

“No, not at all. I ran into her in Kentucky. In a truck stop. Total coincidence. She ah, she’d left her husband and ended up there, figuring out her next move.”

Wayne’s eyebrow arches. “Small world.” 

“Tell me about it. And she was just… ah, Wayne, she was fucked up, you know? Her husband—piece of shit—I knew him, too. But she needed help, and it was like I couldn’t get out of my own way. Like she was this magnet, and I was metal, and then suddenly I’m taking her to Atlanta, and then we’re in California, and then we’re just… we’re just together.” 

Wayne slides his cigarettes out of his pocket and taps one into his palm. He rarely smokes in the house, usually only when he has a problem to contemplate, so Eddie knows he’s thinking. “She still married?” 

“Yeah. But she’s back here to get a divorce. Figure it out. I mean, he hurt her. Hit her.” 

“I figured it might be something like that.” He frowns as he lights the cigarette. “You’re not gonna do anything stupid, are you?” 

“Like what?” 

“Maybe try and mete out a little justice?”

“No. Uh. Not that I haven’t thought about it, but she’s pretty adamant about getting out of things clean. Moving on. So I’m working on not punching a wall whenever I think about that fucker.” 

“Sensible on her part.” 

“She’s a smart girl.” 

“Guess this explains why you didn’t come home for Thanksgiving.” 

“Oh, right. It was… she didn’t feel safe coming back here.” 

“On account of the husband.” 

“Right.” 

“What changed?” 

“Dunno. She changed her mind. Wants to end it and… I mean. We’re talking about the future, I guess.”

“Hell, Eds.” Wayne takes a long drag and shakes his head. “You got yourself a pile of shit to pick up, huh?” 

“Yeah,” he says, and there’s a relief in admitting it out loud to someone uninvolved with the situation. Eddie spends a lot of time worrying about what Chrissy is or isn’t thinking at any given moment, which doesn’t leave much room for parsing his own worries on the various matters of concern. Being around Wayne helps, and maybe that’s not fair—maybe that’s putting the same crap on his uncle that he always has, albeit by a different name—but Eddie’s tired, and he’s home, and he’s trying. “I love her. A lot.” 

It’s the first time he’s admitted that out loud to anyone, and as the words leave his lips, he finds he can’t help grinning like a maniac. 

Wayne’s mouth tics up, a solid positive on the Wayne scale of lightly expressed emotions. “Figured as much. You wanna tell me about her?” 

That’s the best idea Eddie’s heard in a while, but for all that he is a loquacious motherfucker when he aspires to be, right this second, he can’t find the words to convey what Chrissy means to him. What’s he gonna say? That she’s funny? Crazy? Weird in a fashion that lines up cosmically with his own oddities? Not a mirror but like… 

Hey, now. That’s something.

“You ever read Plato?” he offers. 

Bemused, Wayne leans back against the couch. “Did you?” 

“Yeah. Sort of. Last year, I was stuck in Denver while the truck was getting repaired, and there was this bookshelf in the motel's lobby, so I took out this book—The Symposium. I’ve still got it somewhere. I figure some college kid left it behind because it had notes everywhere, so I got really into figuring out what the fuck the dude was talking about. And, like, there’s this one part about love, right? Plato’s whole thing was that every human used to have four legs and two heads. Only we pissed Zeus off, so he split us in half to punish us, which is why we’re all wandering around, looking for our other half. And when I read it, I didn’t get it. I thought it was pretty dumb, actually, because I didn’t mind being on my own. Or, you know, I wasn’t looking to settle down, even when I got lonely. But now…” 

“You see the appeal?” 

“Yeah. Chrissy… she’s the other half. My other half.” 

Wayne tuts, but his earlier threatening smile has made itself known. “Known each other a damn month. Well, alright, then.” 

In Wayne-speak, ‘alright, then’ is about as ringing an endorsement as Eddie’s likely to get. Hell, it’s the equivalent of his uncle hiring a skywriter to scrawl She’s Okay With Me across the wild, blue yonder. 

“How long y’all staying?” Wayne asks, and that’s that. The matter is settled, and Eddie’s so goddamn grateful he could give the old man a hug, but they rarely go in for that sort of thing. 

“A few days. I have to get back on Friday.” 

“Mmm.” Wayne fixes him with a stern look. “I’m gonna stretch out on a limb and guess your employer don’t know she’s riding around with you?” 

“They do not, no.” 

“You at all worried about that?” 

“I’m being careful.” 

“Hope so.” Leaning forward, Wayne ashes his cigarette into a novelty ashtray that’s been in the family since before Eddie was born. “You want me to call my lawyer for her?” 

“You have a lawyer?” 

Scoffing lightly, Wayne reaches for his coffee. “Sure. How’d you think I got custody of you?” 

In all the years Eddie has been living with his uncle, it never occurred to him that legal help had been a necessary part of making that happen. Granted, he’s successfully blocked out a lot of that time—the group home, the social worker who squeezed his arm too hard, the temporary school, and the fights he’d gotten into during his brief attendance—but his assumption has been that despite the vagaries of the system, reason and common sense prevailed over bureaucratic bullshit. Wayne got to take Eddie home because, well, he’s Wayne. Who wouldn’t look at him and immediately see how fucking fit he is as a parent? 

In retrospect, that is idiotic. Of course, Wayne used a lawyer. Because for all that Wayne’s a Standup Guy, he’s also a man with a record, the same as Eddie’s dad. Sure, the charges are from when he was younger and dumber, before he joined the army and figured his shit out, but that doesn’t change the fact that the charges exist. The legal system cares little for nuance, in Eddie’s experience. They see a slab of meat with ‘guilty’ stamped on its packaging, and that’s all they’ll ever see. Plus, there’s the fact that on paper, Wayne doesn’t come across so great. He’s poor, unmarried, uninsured, and has nothing to recommend him as a caretaker other than that he’s a fucking fantastic caretaker. A better dad than Eddie deserves, given all the shit he put him through when he first arrived. 

“I, uh, I didn’t know you used a lawyer for that,” he says with a stammer. 

“Well, now you do.”

“And he does divorces?” 

“Not sure—think he’s just family law, but I guess he might know someone to help your girl out.” 

“I’ll talk to her about it, but… yeah. That’d probably be good.” 

“He ain’t free,” Wayne cautions, which is another punch to the dick. How much of his uncle’s bank account had been spent on getting Eddie out of a shitty situation? 

“It uh… yeah, that’s fine. I have money.” His savings won’t stretch infinitely, but he’s willing to pay whatever it takes to get Chrissy clear of Jason as quickly and painlessly as possible. 

“I know you do. Just be smart about it, huh?”

“Sure.” 

Wayne rubs his hands on his jeans and nods. “I’m gonna make some food. Y’all eating?” 

“I can do it…” 

“Guess I can feed three as well as one, Eds. Besides, I already cut up the onion.” 

“Oh, well, if the onion’s already cut…” 

“Don’t be a smartass,” he says as he pushes himself up with a grunt, knees popping when he goes. 

“Takes one to know one, old man. How’s work?” 

“Shit’s shit.” 

“How’s your back?” 

Wayne cuts a wry smile in his direction. “Shit’s shit, kiddo.” 

“How’s Val?” 

That gets a taciturn “hmph” with which Eddie can’t converse, so he changes the subject to Smaug. Only, Wayne doesn’t call it Smaug, he calls it the rig, and he loves nothing more than discussing said rig’s health (or lack thereof). That leads them to bitching about Eddie’s company, then Wayne’s, and by the time they’ve vented their spleens against the world, Eddie’s stomach is grumbling, and Wayne’s dishing up his version of chili, which starts with the canned stuff and gets supplemented with fresh onions and peppers. 

Eddie goes to get Chrissy, fully expecting to find her buried beneath an array of pornography. Instead, she’s curled up beneath his comforter with her eyes closed, The Two Towers open on her chest. (There is, however, a single issue of Chic magazine on the bed beside her, turned to a two-page spread of a girl in a green and yellow cheerleading outfit sucking off a football player. So, yeah, that seems about right.)

God, but it’s magic to see her in his bed. Blonde hair fanning the faded blue stripes of the sheets Wayne bought at Goodwill for a song. Lips parted, hand splayed against her stomach, one foot poking from beneath the comforter. 

Eddie can’t stand not touching her, so he transfers the book to his nightstand before stretching himself out along the length of her body. The movement wakes her, and she smiles when she sees him, blinking sleep out of her eyes. 

“Hey, Chrissygirl.” 

“Hi.” She wriggles her arms free and wraps them around his waist. “How long was I sleeping?” 

“Little while. By the way, I love you,” he says like it’s easy, because it is. Besides, now that he’s told Wayne, it seems only fitting Chrissy should be given the same courtesy.

Chrissy, naturally, has a minor panic over the revelation. Her fingers tighten against his spine as she takes the expressed sentiment into herself and runs it through the six-to-seven hundred layers of fucked-up that her brain operates on with every thought. Every decision. Every tilt of her head and turn of her screw.

After what feels like forever but is actually about five seconds, she says, “you do?” 

“Yup.” 

That gets a full body squirm out of her, and God, love isn’t even the right word. Plato really was on to something with that ‘two halves of a whole’ myth. 

“Okay,” she says in what he’s come to think of as her Business Voice. “Thank you, Eddie.” 

“Anytime, kiddo.” He kisses the top of her head, burying deep the smidgen of disappointment he feels over her not saying it back. Love’s not supposed to be tit-for-tat, he’s pretty sure, because if it was, then it wouldn’t be worth much. Besides, the list of people he loves is so goddamn short, there’s no point pretending his feelings for her should be some big, stupid secret. 

“I think…” she starts, stops, then tries again. “I’ve loved you since you gave me a piggyback ride in Oregon.” 

Yeah, alright, so Eddie’s heart’s gonna swell up like a balloon and pop out of his chest and cover her in rib bones and blood, but that’s okay because she loves him. Bones and blood are to be expected in that sort of situation. “Well, I’ve loved you since Atlanta.” 

“Bullcrap. I’ve loved you since Kentucky.” 

“I’ve loved you since high school, Cunningham, so fuck right off.” 

“Liar. You just loved my skirt.” 

Chapter Text

“Are you one hundred thousand percent sure you don’t want me to come up with you?”

This is not the first time Eddie has asked that question, and the percentages have been growing all morning. Chrissy bites back a smile as she fusses with the fabric of the empty duffel bag on her lap. It’s Wayne’s, borrowed without asking because Eddie says he won’t mind, and it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission for any action taken that might wake him after a night shift. 

Chrissy is taking Eddie’s word for it, though Wayne seems to have developed a grudging tolerance for her. Or, at least, he made them food and indulged her when she asked about his accent over dinner. (Eddie’s people, it turns out, are from Tennessee on his father’s side.) But Wayne is a hard man to get a proper read on. He’s quiet and deliberate, and while his baseball caps and coffee mugs suggest a sense of whimsy, she hasn’t seen him crack a single smile. 

“I’m one hundred thousand percent sure,” she replies. 

“And you are eight billion percent sure he’ll be out of the house?” 

“He has a class at ten and Bible study at eleven thirty, and he won’t have time to come home in between,” she says for the umpteenth time. “Plus, we can check for his car in the lot.” 

Eddie makes a noise like an indignant guinea pig—Chrissy would know; she used to have one—and drums his fingers on the wheel. He doesn’t like the plan; doesn’t want her anywhere near her old apartment. However, he also won’t tell her she can’t do it. She loves him for that. Sure, he’ll raise concerns and cut worried glances in her direction, but her choices are her choices with him, and they always will be. 

Today, her choice is to step back into that miserable beige box to claim the things Jason has no right to. That’s all. Easy in, easy out. 

Or, well, not so easy in. Her grand plan had hit a roadblock this morning when she had a minor meltdown over realizing that her oh-so-rebellious decision to chuck her keys into the trunk of her car when she abandoned it in Kentucky meant she didn’t have a way into the damned apartment. 

Eddie had hidden a smile when she’d whined about it, not-so-secretly thrilled that the plan would have to be dropped. But Chrissy, undeterred, has decided to try anyway. They used to keep a spare key tucked atop the doorframe—not exactly secure, but it was a pretty safe area—and she’s assuming that Jason has either forgotten about it, or hasn’t bothered to change things up. 

“That’s it,” she says, a few minutes after they turn onto the road that runs by the complex. “Percy Park.” 

“Who’s Percy?” Eddie mutters as he turns. 

Chrissy’s only half-listening, eyes fixed on the green and white painted wooden sign she’d thought was pretty the first time she and Jason toured a unit. “Hmm?” 

“Percy Park. Who’s Percy?” 

“Oh. I don’t know. It wasn’t in the brochure.” 

Whoever Percy was, he knew how to build a solid apartment, even if seeing the putty-colored siding makes her queasy. Each block of units stands three stories tall, with four apartments on each floor, bisected by an open-air breezeway with a concrete staircase. The complex is new—built within the last five years—which appealed to Jason, who abhors used things. The apartments are upmarket, but not outrageously so, spacious and spartan, with beige walls, beige carpet, and white popcorn ceilings. 

Chrissy would have preferred something with more character, but her preferences were never considered. 

“There, building E,” she says, pointing as Eddie slows the van in front of one of three blocks that backs up to the woods. There’s a greenway trail accessible down a narrow dirt path; she used to run on it sometimes. Jason would complain that she was asking to get kidnapped, but Jason also left her alone for eight, ten, twelve hours a day. Plus, what could a kidnapper do that was worse than what her husband doled out regularly? 

She scans the cars parked in front of the building. Their unit has two assigned parking spaces, one of which is empty. No Jeep, just as she hoped, though her sedan is there, unloved and untouched, with what looks like a flat tire. 

“Oh, see, that’s my car!” She's desperate to know how Jason found it. Did he report it stolen or report her missing? When the car was discovered, did someone call him, or was the whole thing more of a cosmic joke at his expense? An abandoned sedan with keys in the trunk, clearly belonging to someone who wanted to rid herself of him. 

“Uh-huh.” Eddie nods, and she can see the muscles in his neck straining from the tension of keeping his opinion to himself. She hates that she’s the cause of his stress, so she reaches over to tug the ponytail he’s sporting. Part of her wants to tell him she thinks it’s sexy, but maybe now’s not the time for that. Still, that she can think something is sexy while simultaneously being scared shitless about running into her ex-husband tells her everything she needs to know about how far she’s come. “I remember.” 

“Park in the one next to it, okay? That’s Jason’s—I told you, the Jeep’s gone.” 

Eddie grunts, then maneuvers the van into the Jeep’s spot so its front end is poking out, ready to run if needed. The parking job gives Chrissy a prime view of her old unit, with its bare balcony standing in stark contrast to the potted plants of their neighbors, and she points it out to Eddie when he asks. 

“Left side, third floor, facing the parking lot,” she says.

“Okay. Yeah.” Eddie squints and frowns. “Ten minutes, right? In and out, or I’m coming up.” 

“I know,” she says. “And you’re watching for Jason.” 

“For the Jeep.” 

“Yup. And if it shows up, you honk like crazy, which I’ll hear because I’m keeping the door open.” 

Eddie sighs. “What if he has a new car?” 

“He doesn’t.” 

“But what if he does?” 

“Then he’s going to be mad you’re parked in his spot, and you’ll see coming.” 

“Jesus Christ. Fine. Ten minutes. And do me a favor, yeah? Knock first before you just barge in. And even if he doesn’t answer, call out before you go all the way inside. If he’s there, just… just fucking run, alright? Get back here, and we’ll go and figure something else out.” 

As he speaks, his hands drum an anxious pattern on his thighs, sweat beading on his forehead. She reaches for him, turning his face toward hers for a kiss on the nose.

“I’ll be so careful,” she says solemnly. “But he’s not there.” 

“I just wish you’d let me come with you.” 

“But then, who’d be the lookout?” She squeezes his thigh and pulls away. “It’ll be alright. I’ll be back in a jiff.” 

“Jiff,” he scoffs, then lets her go. 

Chrissy crosses the lot with an eye to her left and right, just in case some phantom Jeep comes charging her down like a Nazgul. There’s nothing, though, and she makes it to the breezeway unscathed. Her footsteps echo on the metal-and-concrete stairs, and it’s so strange to have been on such an epic journey only to return and find both Mrs. Booth’s “Wipe Your Paws!” doormat and the faux-sunflower wreath adorning the Powells’ front entrance right where she left them. 

One thing has changed, though: the last time she was here, the unit across from hers and Jason’s was empty. Now, a set of Christmas lights has been wrapped around the doorway, and a television blares within. 

It is disconcerting, that little change, and her stomach twists with the hard truth she’s been shoving down all morning. There is every chance Jason is home. That he’s stopped going to class again. That he’s sold the Jeep, or it’s in the shop, and he’s driving a loaner which he’s parked in an unfamiliar spot. That he’s lying in wait like a snake, ready to strike the moment she opens the door. 

“So stupid,” she mumbles to herself, then stands on her very tip-toes and uses an errant chopstick plucked from the takeaway utensil drawer in Wayne and Eddie’s kitchen to run along the top of the doorframe. 

The spare key clatters to the ground. Chrissy inhales sharply at the noise, then crouches to retrieve it, dropping the chopstick in the process. 

“Shit,” she says as it rolls out of her reach. 

Not worth retrieving now that she has the key. Remembering Eddie’s request, though, she steps back and knocks first. Counts to ten and glances at the parking lot, where she can see one side of the van. 

No answer.

She might barf.

She’s not allowed to barf. 

“Okay. Okay, come on,” she says as she puts the key in the bottom lock, then the top, feeling the deadbolt slide to the side. 

Chrissy opens the door. Stands back and calls out a tentative, “hello?”

Again, no answer. The apartment is quiet, and she steps across the threshold where the stench of a fridge gone sour, mingled with Jason’s expensive cologne, hits her like a brick. 

“Oh, my God,” she says, the smell coating her throat and nearly making her choke. “Jason?” 

She half-expects his name to summon him like some demon, flying out of the bedroom with blood on his teeth. 

It doesn’t, though. The only sound in the unit comes from the warm air wafting from a floor vent and the white-noise rumble of the refrigerator motor. 

The apartment is a square box, with the living room, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom fitted together like building blocks. To her left, clothes, books, and blankets are strewn across every surface of the living room. On the couch, a pink and white crocheted blanket has been shoved into a corner, and Chrissy winces. It’s hers—a gift from her grandmother when she was ten—and she’d forgotten it when she ran. Looks like Jason’s forgotten it, too, as it hasn’t been touched since she left, save for being crushed beneath the nest he’s built for himself on their sofa. 

“I’m sorry,” she says to the blanket as she pulls it free, shaking off potato chip crumbs before tucking it into her duffel and surveying the rest of the clutter. 

The carpet hasn’t seen a vacuum in ages, and while Jason is evidently still living there, he’s not living. Not taking care of himself or his things. But then, it’s not as though he knows how. He grew up with a housekeeper and a deferential mother before moving on to a deferential wife. And gosh, why should she resent his ineptitude? He’s at school all day, bettering himself, and he’s such a busy boy, and isn’t it her job to take care of him? 

Only, Chrissy supposes, she has always assumed that if she weren’t around for whatever reason, Jason could prove himself capable of emptying a garbage can, folding his laundry, or rinsing a dish.

Speaking of dishes, she follows her nose to the kitchen, which is a pigsty of the highest order. The plates and bowls that haven’t been left in the living room are piled in the sink, crusted and stinking, with pools of filmy, standing water in several of the cereal bowls. If it were summer, there’d undoubtedly be a haze of fruit flies hovering. 

Frowning, Chrissy opens the fridge, gags, and shuts it again. Sour milk, for sure, and something organic that’s rotted. 

“Pathetic, actually,” she declares.

That’s the best word for the state of things: pathetic. Jason is pathetic. This apartment is pathetic. Her whole marriage was pathetic.

It was just that she couldn’t see it, then. Couldn’t see how ridiculous it was to be married to a grown man incapable of washing a fucking dish. 

Eddie does his own damn laundry, rinses out his own damn coffee cups, and can scrub his own damn toilet. Wayne taught him how. 

She can’t remember how the topic came up, but Eddie’d told her the story of his chore-based education on an overnight run through the midwest, driving down a lonely highway. They were late for a drop, and he’d wanted to make up time, so she’d stayed awake with him, and they’d talked for hours. Per Eddie, upon first arriving at Wayne’s humble abode, he’d treated the trailer the way he’d seen his father treat the shitholes they lived in over the years. Wayne had cured him of that habit by sticking a toilet brush in his hand and telling him to figure it out. 

“He told me we might not have much, but we didn’t have to meet anyone else’s poor opinions,” Eddie had said, laughing. “And that I was in charge of the dishes if he cooked, and vice versa, if I did.” 

“I think my dad would spontaneously combust if my mother asked him to do anything beyond loading the dishwasher,” Chrissy replied.

“Shit, you had a dishwasher, Cunningham? Fucking Queen Elizabeth over here.” 

Chrissy’d blushed at the teasing, and the conversation moved on. 

Now, standing amid Jason’s ineptitude, Chrissy is suddenly so, so much more in love with Eddie, and grateful that he’s waiting in the van outside. 

Leaving the kitchen to rot, she heads for the bedroom, which is as bad as everywhere else. Their comforter is on the floor, the fitted sheet has come off the mattress corners, and clothes have been thrown across every spare patch of carpet. 

There are also at least seven glasses of water on Jason’s nightstand, all in various states of evaporation. 

“God, it’s not that hard, Jason,” she says, kicking laundry out of the way so she can open the closet door. 

Inside, her clothes haven’t been touched. Ugly, conservative dresses in fussy florals which politely ask the world to turn away. Not to look. Not to see. She pushes them to the side and opens the top drawer of the dresser they’d awkwardly wedged beneath the hanging bar. 

The dresser day had been a good day—and there had been good days—with the two of them maneuvering the furniture from Jason’s childhood bedroom up three flights of stairs by themselves. Chrissy had bashed her thumb on a doorframe when taking a corner, and Jason had fallen all over himself to kiss it better. 

But that was the hypocrisy of life with Jason. So sweet and solicitous when she hurt herself, but when he was the one causing the hurt…

Chrissy bites down hard on her bottom lip as she shoves underwear and socks into the duffel, followed by a few sentimental items she forgot the first time around. Jason might notice they’re gone the next time he grabs an undershirt, but he might not be that observant. Oh, and also, she doesn’t care if he knows she was there. She’s done running. 

Once she has the clothes she wants, she drops the duffel on the bed and retrieves the key for their fireproof safe from Jason’s nightstand. The safe—an oh-so-practical wedding present from his oh-so-practical parents—is on the other side of the closet, and when she forces the louvered panel door open, it pops out of the top runner rail to hang at an awkward angle. 

The damn door has been broken since the day they moved in. Jason’s not handy enough to fix it. 

“So fucking useless,” she mutters as she kneels by the safe, the swear reverberating through the room like some protective talisman, reminding her of Eddie and shielding her from the worst of her memories in this place. 

The first thing she sees atop the pile of documents is their marriage certificate, which she pushes past quickly. It doesn’t take her long to find the manila envelope labeled ‘Christine.’ Her parents had handed over all her documents—birth certificate, social security card, passport—after she and Jason had eloped, sniffing that she was old enough now to handle her own business.

Ironically, they were right.

She puts the envelope in the duffel and the key back in the drawer, then takes a minute to shut the closet doors in a way that won’t raise immediate suspicion. The far door is still off the rail, but whatever. Not her problem.

After kicking dirty clothes over the cleared patches of carpet, she checks her watch. She’s been in there for six minutes—Eddie is probably having a heart attack—and she’s not done yet. So, she moves quickly to finish up, sweeping the bathroom for some favored cosmetics, and stopping at their shelf of VHS tapes to steal the only two from their collection that belong solely to her. 

With that, she takes another look around and finds nothing of note. Nothing else she needs. There’s something tragic about the fact that she can fit her entire life with Jason into a single duffel bag. But then, their marriage was, in fact, a tragedy. 

The sharp December air tastes like a fresh spring breeze after the stuffy, cloying putrefaction of the apartment. She takes a deep breath, then shuts and locks up behind herself. 

As she turns, the door across the breezeway opens, and a little girl, maybe five or six years old, stands in the doorway, looking at her with solemn brown eyes. 

“Oh, hi,” Chrissy says, heart pounding in her chest at being confronted with another human being, even a tiny one with a bowl cut sporting a t-shirt of a cartoon turtle in an orange mask. 

“Hi. I’m Amelia.” 

“Hi, Amelia.” 

“Do you live there?” 

“I used to,” she says, keeping a weather eye on the parking lot lest Eddie make his valiant charge. It’s got to have been at least ten minutes by now. “But I’ve been away.” 

“Were you on a business trip?” 

“Uh. Yes.” 

“My dad goes on a lot of business trips. I—” She is cut off by a woman’s voice from within the apartment, asking her who she’s talking to, and oh, my gosh, Amelia, you’re not supposed to have the front door open!

“Sorry, mommy.” Amelia swings the door wide, revealing a brunette in jeans and a sweatshirt with a Santa Claus apron over the top. 

“Hi,” Chrissy says, swallowing hard around the lump in her throat because this is not part of the plan, and she hates it, because she doesn’t want to be memorable, and oh, God, she just wants to go. “Sorry, I’m—” 

“She lives there.” Amelia points. 

“Right. Sort of. I um—” 

“Are you Jason’s wife?” 

“Yes,” she says without thinking, as being Jason’s wife was her entire identity for the better part of two years, and also, she’s panicking.

“Oh, great! He mentioned you were visiting family—we just love Jason. Had him over for dinner last weekend. We moved in a few weeks ago, and we’ve been dying to meet you.” 

That is a lot to unpack, but the only thing Chrissy can focus on is visiting family. As in, Jason hasn’t been driving some massive manhunt or handing out flyers related to her disappearance. Instead, he has been lying. To this woman, at least, and likely to others, too.

He could have said he was single. Could have taken the lie that far. But he didn’t—he playacted that everything was fine, and Chrissy knows him well enough to understand that it’s because, in his mind, everything will be. 

Life works out for Jason Carver; if it doesn’t, he will reshape reality into one where he comes out on top. 

“Oh, ah, no,” she says, squeezing the duffel handles before inserting some truth into the situation. She’s tired of lying. “We’re… we’re separated, actually. It’s not—” 

The woman’s eyes flick to Chrissy’s bare hand, and she blanches. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry. He said…” 

“I know. It’s complicated. Um, it’s nice to meet you, but I really have to go.” 

It is a brusque end to an awkward conversation, and she’s sure it would horrify her mother that she isn’t sticking around to smooth things over. She’s through covering for Jason’s crap, though, and as she turns and walks away, she tamps down the guilt that wants to overwhelm her. 

When she reaches the stairs, she sprints. Takes them two at a time, bursting forth from the breezeway and running toward the van. And sure, if Amelia and her mother are watching, they probably think she’s crazy, but maybe she is crazy. Maybe that’s alright. All she knows is that she hates everything about this place and never wants to return. 

Eddie hops out as she reaches the van, wrapping her in a tight hug, and yes, okay, she’s crying a little, or a lot, nose running and eyes watering as he rocks her back and forth in broad daylight. 

When he realizes she’s lost it, he pulls away and holds her at arm’s length. “Shit, what happened? Was he there? Are you okay?” 

“No, no, he wasn’t… it’s not…” She flaps a hand in front of her face like that’ll help. “I just want to go. Please, can we go?” 

“Yeah, sweetheart. Let’s kick it.” 

They return to the van, where Chrissy clutches the full duffel against her midsection as the audacity of what she just did rolls over her like a series of waves, each one larger than the last, knocking her down so she can’t catch her breath or find her way to the surface. 

“Whoa, Chrissygirl,” Eddie says, touching her nape. “Hey, uh, you gotta… you gotta take a deep breath for me, okay?” 

Chrissy tries. She really does. Forces air into her lungs through the thin straw that is her closing throat as the tips of her fingers go fuzzy, and she is caught between wanting to vomit and wanting to scream. “Please… go?” 

Eddie hesitates, but ultimately puts the van in gear and peels out of the parking spot. 

Heart fluttering high in her chest, a fresh set of tears course down Chrissy’s cheeks as they leave the complex behind. She will never come here again. Ever. They can burn it to the ground and salt the ashes for all she cares, because she is done. She has what she needs—who she needs—and she isn’t looking back. 

They make it maybe a mile down the road before Eddie pulls into the curb and turns his attention to her and her shallow, rapid breathing. 

“Chrissy, look at me,” he says, sounding extremely freaked. “Are you having an asthma attack or something?” 

Shaking her head, she reaches out to grab his leg, squeezing hard. “No. Panic?” 

She’s had episodes like this before, but this is the first one since marrying Jason. Being with him taught her to turn terror into something small and internal, but here and now, it can be enormous, loud, and honest. 

“What should I do?” Eddie asks.

Chrissy shrugs, then shoves the duffel at him before leaning over to put her head between her knees. She inhales a rattling breath, then exhales on a sob. Does that again, and again, and again. A dozen times until she returns to herself. Eddie rubs her back, his fingers tense and tight through her coat and sweater. But she’s grateful for him. Needs him there just as much as she needs to get herself through this. 

“Oh, wow,” she says eventually, sitting up and blinking fresh tears out of her eyes.

Eddie’s staring at her, wide-eyed, and moves his hand to rest atop hers on her thigh. “Jesus, kiddo. What happened?” 

“Nothing. Just… the apartment. It’s so disgusting.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean that it’s literally disgusting,” she clarifies, around a high-pitched squeak that comes out of nowhere. Grinning, she claps a hand over her mouth, voice muffled. “He’s living like… like I don’t even think he’s cleaned anything since I left, and the sink is gross, and the food is rotting and… and…” Another giggle leaks from behind her fingers, bordering on hysterical, as she digs her nails into her cheek. “I got everything I wanted. I never have to go there again.” 

“Of course, you don’t.” Eddie sounds baffled, and she can’t blame him. She feels like a crazy person, so she can only imagine how she looks. “But you’re just… did something happen?” 

Another bout of laughter bursts forth from some deep well of horrified mirth, and she shakes her head around a snort. “Uh-uh!”

“You’re crying.” 

“I’m laughing!”

“Kinda both, actually?” 

“I love that you know how to do your laundry,” she blurts, turning to him and taking both of his hands in hers. “Did you know that? I love it. I love you. I just… God, I’m so much better off with you, Eddie.” 

With that, she officially breaks down once more, laughing and crying in equal measure. Eddie hauls her across the console and into his lap, where he cocoons her in his arms and his smell and his everything, holding her tight even when her elbow bumps the horn, which blats a protest into the woods running along the shoulder of the highway. 

“Sorry. God. I can’t stop,” she says around a snorted hiccough. 

“You’re fine, Chrissygirl.” He kisses her bicep. Her shoulder. Her neck. Brushes away the hair that’s fallen from her ponytail and tucks his face against her skin. “You’re so fucking brave. You know that?” 

Chrissy, never one to take a compliment without a fight, tries on something new for size. “I… yes. You’re right. I am brave.” 

“I’d have shit my shorts, probably.” 

“Oh, ew,” she says, and then she’s laughing again.

Eddie laughs, too, and they stay that way until her heart rate slows and the adrenaline driving her to insanity ebbs enough that she can blink without inviting a fresh volley of tears to course down her cheeks. 

“Oh, God. I think I lost my mind for a minute,” she says, wiping her eyes. “I’m good. Honestly. We can go. I want to go.” 

It takes a second to extricate herself from his embrace, but soon she’s buckled in on the passenger side, and Eddie’s taking the on-ramp to the interstate. 

“I got some movies for us to watch,” she says once they merge, eager to move on from her meltdown. 

Eddie cracks an incredulous grin. “Ten minutes to grab your shit, and you got movies?” 

“They’re mine, and I wanted them.” She unzips the duffel to show him her double tape edition of The Sound of Music, as well as a copy of Splash, which she’d had to hide from her mother after purchasing it for herself in high school. 

Eddie clocks the covers, then makes a face at Julie Andrews. “Isn’t that a musical?” 

“Yes.” 

“Chrissy…” 

“Okay, well, if you want to show me your movies, you have to watch some of mine.” 

He thinks about that for a second, then nods. “Fine. I’ll trade you The Shining and Evil Dead for that whole musical.” 

“That’s not fair—that’s two oogy ones!” she protests, sort of loving that it’s so easy to fall back into normalcy with him after such a scary thing. 

“Yeah, well you’ve got two tapes of people busting into song, Cunningham. Them’s the breaks.” 

“Oh my gosh, Eddie.” 

His fingers drum the wheel, and she can just about hear him grinding his teeth. “Fine. You get half tonight, and half tomorrow, and we watch The Shining in between.” 

“That’s fair.” 

“Cool. We gotta stop at the video store, though. We can’t all afford our own copies.”

Chapter Text

Eddie could use a joint and a couple hours of blissful mundanity.

He’s not usually someone who smokes because he needs it, but he’s had a fucking morning waiting in that van while Chrissy disappeared up the stairs to her apartment, so something to take the edge off wouldn’t go amiss. 

Maybe when they get home, which is a place they’re going because she did it, and she’s fine, and he should stop playing the mental reel of all the bad things he’d convinced himself would happen. Jason being there, Jason grabbing her, Jason blocking the van, Jason shooting Eddie, and dragging Chrissy off by the hair to live in his cave forever. 

Nope. Not thinking about that shit. Not freaking out. Eddie’s not allowed to freak out because if he does, he can’t be there for Chrissy when she freaks out. So he’s gonna stay chiller than chill, grab some movies with her, and go the fuck home. 

Anyway, she seems better. The breakdown after leaving the apartment complex had scared the shit out of him, but she stopped crying a while ago. Now she’s sitting, staring out the window, the stuffed duffel clutched on her lap like she’s just finished robbing a bank and fears losing her loot. 

They make good time back to Hawkins, and it’s just past noon when Eddie pulls into the strip mall that houses the town’s one and only video rental joint. A trade is a trade, and showing Chrissy scary movies sounds fun and relaxing, all things considered.

The lot is nearly empty, save for Steve Harrington’s BMW parked in the far corner. Eddie wouldn’t have recognized it as Steve’s car when they were in school. Shit, Eddie barely noticed him back then—Steve had been smarmy, yeah, and cocksure, but more an average jock-strap than a raging asshole. A run-of-the-mill motherfucker until he’d started dating a girl named Nancy Wheeler, whose little brother, Mike, was in Hellfire. 

Steve and Nancy would pick the kids up sometimes, and while Eddie’d always assumed that Steve was only there to placate his girlfriend (or get in her pants) they’d shared a couple smokes. Had a couple conversations. Steve had graduated by then—another name on the ever-growing list of people leaving Eddie behind—but he’d stuck around town, just as Eddie was expecting to do at the time. 

With shared loser townie DNA, and Steve having a job at the video store, it made sense that the two of them struck up an acquaintanceship during the summer after Eddie’s graduation, when he was at his most aimless. Not friends, but they could shoot the shit about movies, and they’d gotten high at the trailer one time, Eddie listening while Steve complained about Nancy dumping him for another Hellfire kid’s older brother. 

It sounded like a lot of drama to Eddie, who’d just wanted to smoke up and watch Fast Times. Still, Steve’d been so goddamn mournful that Eddie’d realized Harrington had always been a sensitive little dude beneath the King Shit persona, which was a facade not much different from Eddie’s own.

Or maybe Nancy Wheeler’d changed him for the better before dumping him. It was hard to say. 

Eddie parks, and they hop out of the van. Chrissy looks like she’s been crying, with red-rimmed eyes and puffy cheeks. He hugs her as the engine pings softly behind them, though the embrace is more for him than for her.

“Okay,” she says, twitching like a cat in a bag. “I’m okay. Please don’t make me cry again.” 

“Sure, kiddo.” He offers his hand. She takes it, and they cross the parking lot, where he holds the door for her while the bell above dings their arrival.

Steve is behind the counter alongside a cute brunette Eddie vaguely remembers working there in high school. Robin, maybe? He’s pretty sure it’s Robin, who is not so much behind said counter as she is sitting on it cross-legged while the two of them work through a carton of fresh tapes, ripping off the shrink wrap before transferring the cassette to a hard-shelled plastic box and putting a styrofoam insert into the original packaging. 

They both look up at the sound of the bell, and Steve lifts his hand in greeting. 

“Hey, Munson. Been a minute.” 

“Yeah, hey.”

Robin’s gaze goes to Chrissy and Eddie’s intertwined hands before returning to Chrissy’s face. “Hey, Chrissy,” she says, which is when Harrington does an honest-to-God double take. 

“Chrissy?” he says.

“Hi?” Chrissy’s voice is smaller than usual and still cloudy from tears. 

“Robin,” says Robin, hooking her thumbs toward her chest. “Band?” 

“No, of course, I remember.” Chrissy’s such a good liar that Eddie’s not sure whether she actually does or she’s just being polite. “You played the um, the um…” She mimes a flute, maybe? That must be close enough because Robin’s face lights up like Chrissy’s the goddamn queen of England remembering her name. 

Not lying, then, but it took her a minute to place Robin amongst the plebs of Hawkins High. Eddie forgets, sometimes, that his girl is deposed royalty. 

“I totally did,” Robin says. “Still do. The trumpet, I mean. Uh, how are you?” 

“Oh, I’m good. Fine. You?” 

“Wait. Are you guys—?” Steve starts, only to be cut off by Robin knocking the box of tapes to the floor and, presumably, onto his foot, judging by the sharp yelp he lets out. “Jesus, Buckley!”

“Oopsie.” Robin hops off the counter, customer-side, and offers Chrissy another smile. “Are you home for break? Where’d you end up, anyway?” 

“Um. No, I didn’t… are you on break?” she deflects. 

“Yeah. I’m at Butler. Finished the semester early. No exams, just essays—crushed ‘em.” 

“Picking up shifts?” Eddie asks to make conversation. 

“Scholarship doesn’t cover drinking money,” she says around a grin, just as Steve snaps an irritated, “A little help, dude?” from behind the counter. 

“Yup,” Robin agrees, popping the ‘p.’ “That’s a good color on you, by the way. Brings out your eyes.”

“Thanks?” Chrissy says with a confused little laugh.  

“Robin!”

“Coming, boss,” she trills and heads his way.

Eddie doesn’t know if Steve’s the manager these days or Robin’s simply giving him shit. Probably the latter, what with the muttered “dingus” she shoots him as she slides across the counter.

Leaving them to the mess, Eddie tugs Chrissy to the horror section and scans for ‘S.’ It’s only when he sees Jack Torrance’s leering mug on the box, however, that he hesitates. “Actually…” 

“What?” Chrissy asks, half-interested, looking back at the desk where Steve and Robin are squabbling. 

“I just realized this movie might not be the best choice?” 

“I could have told you that.” 

“Not because it’s uh… oogy,” he says, smiling involuntarily as his lips form her word. “It’s because the guy’s kinda… threatening? To his wife?” 

This is, to be fair, an understatement. 

Wendy? Darling? Light of my life. I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just going to bash your brains in.

Eddie is an idiot. 

“What, like he hits her?” Chrissy asks, turning her attention back to Eddie.

“Sort of. I mean, he’s possessed. But the movie version paints him as more of a natural shithead than the book.”

“It’s a book, too?” 

“Yeah. Stephen King?” Eddie likes King—he’s read most of his stuff, in fact—and while nothing Kubrick put on screen is as batshit terrifying as the scene in the novel where Danny’s trapped in the playground pipe, he appreciates the movie for what it is. “He’s an asshole to his family, and—” 

“I don’t care.” 

“You don’t?” 

“No. It’s not real, and scary’s scary, right?” 

“Yeah. I guess. I just don’t wanna like…” He trails off, not quite knowing where that sentence was headed. 

Chrissy plucks the tape from the shelf with a shrug. “It’s a movie. He’s an actor. I won’t spend the rest of my life hiding from things that might upset me.” 

That’s sound logic, and of the two of them, she’s the one who climbed into the lion’s den this morning. “Just promise me you’ll say if you want to stop watching.”

“Oh, my gosh, Eddie.” She puts a hand on her hip, cocking it and raising a pointed eyebrow. “I don’t want to watch it at all! But if you’re going to insist on scaring the pants off me, then that’s it. This is the one.” 

“Is this a stubborn thing, or a making me feel guilty thing?” 

“Both.” 

“Shitbird.” 

She smiles, stepping forward. “Yes. Correct. How do you know Steve Harrington?” 

“Oh. Uh. His girlfriend’s little brother was in Hellfire. We hung out a couple times.” 

Her brow furrows. “Nancy Wheeler?” 

“Yup.” 

“I remember when they broke up,” she says, attention returning to Steve as she touches her hair, fussing so a few tendrils fall around her face.

Eddie knows that look; he knows all her looks. Doe-eyed, coy, and one he’s had turned on himself enough times to recognize it for what it is. And while the tiniest flicker of jealousy sparks in his gut at the realization, it’s a fleeting fizzle. He’s not worried about the competition, but he is curious about the circumstances. 

Plus, Chrissy’s fun to tease. 

“Spend a lot of time keeping track of Harrington, did we?” 

“Huh? I’m… oh, stop it,” she says upon spying the smirk on his face. “I might have had a thing for him when I was a freshman.” 

“And yet, you’re blushing, Cunningham. Should I be worried?” 

“You’re so funny, Eddie.” She bumps his hip and rolls her eyes. “He was nice to me after I had a bad night. That’s all.” 

Eddie’s hackles rise. “A bad night?” 

“I got in over my head at a party, and some guy was being a creep. Steve got rid of him.” 

“Some guy?” 

“It wasn’t Jason. Just some random jerk. Can we go check out, please?” 

“Yeah. Is it a jerk I know?” He asks as they head for the counter, one hand on the small of her back.

“No, he’s not even a jerk I know.” 

“Hmph,” he says, handing over the cassette for Robin to scan.

“You in town long?” Steve asks from where he’s stacking the new releases on a cart. 

“A few days,” Eddie says. “Then I’m back for Christmas.” 

“Cool. You, uh… I didn’t know you two were, uh. Hanging out.” 

Robin shoots him a look. “Dude.” 

“What? I’m allowed to ask,” he says in a way that makes Eddie think that the hidden question in Harrington’s brain is she married Carver, though, didn’t she?

“It’s new,” offers Chrissy. 

“That’s a buck fifty,” Robin says. 

Eddie takes out his wallet and slides a couple dollars onto the counter. “Yeah. It’s new,” he echoes. “Not uh…” 

“Thanks, Robin.” Chrissy cuts him off, taking the change when Robin hands it over. 

“Sure. It’s due back the day after tomorrow. We check the last drop at nine.” 

“Great. It was good to see you guys,” she says with a quick glance at Steve before grabbing Eddie’s hand to lead him out. 

There’s a third car in the parking lot, and as they head for the van, a man in a baseball cap emerges from it. 

Chrissy stops short with a muttered “shit.” 

“What?” 

“Put your arm around me.” 

Eddie does what he’s told, and she tucks herself against his side as they pass the guy, who strikes Eddie as vaguely familiar, though he doesn’t know why. 

Chrissy puts on some speed, and he’s forced to keep up. They’re maybe ten, fifteen feet from the man, who glances at them once before heading for the store.

Only when they reach the van does she exhale while he fumbles his keys out of his pocket and unlocks the door. 

“Damn it,” she says as she settles into the passenger seat. 

“What?” he follows her gaze to find the guy standing on the sidewalk, squinting at them. “Who—?” 

The name comes to him suddenly. Andy. One of Jason’s more moronic hangers-on, a sneering, smug sycophant who skirted around Carver’s ankles with his tongue lolling out of his mouth like an obedient dog, waiting for the master to throw him a bone. 

“Shit.” 

“Go?” she asks.

“Yeah. Gone.” He sprints to the driver’s side, though Andy's already inside Family Video by the time he gets in, and Chrissy is picking at her nail bed. 

The van turns over on the first try. Eddie pulls out, and neither speaks until they’re safely on the road. 

“Oh, damn it,” she repeats as they pick up speed. “Damn it.” 

“That guy… it’s Andy, right?” 

“Uh-huh. Jason still talks to him. We got dinner with him and his girlfriend a couple months ago.” 

Damn, indeed. “He doesn’t know anything. He might not have even recognized you.” 

“He knows. He saw. I saw him see.” She digs at her cuticle, and if she’s not careful, there’ll be blood.

“Chrissy.” He takes her hand, capturing her picking fingers before they can do more harm. “Please don’t do that.” 

“Okay,” she says, and when he releases her to switch gears, she sits on her hands instead. 

Chrissy never much liked Andy. Of all Jason’s friends, he’d been the most thoughtless. The most casually cruel. The first one to follow along with someone else’s bad idea, motivated solely by loyalty to an alpha and his proximity to power. 

Patrick had been Jason’s best man at the wedding, while Andy was just an onlooker. But Patrick faded from their lives the past few years, and Andy stayed ingratiated through the worst of Jason’s troubles. 

She wonders if he’s calling Jason right now on the payphone outside Family Video, or if he’ll wait until he gets home. Wonders if he recognized Eddie, too, then realizes that’s a stupid question. Eddie isn’t easily forgettable, and he looks almost the same as he did in high school.

Unlike the other people from school they’ve encountered, Andy knows she and Eddie aren’t supposed to be together. Knows she’s still married because the last time he saw her, she was playing Suzie Homemaker and covering her bruises. 

Her stomach turns over, and she nearly asks Eddie to pull to the shoulder so she can puke. But he’s already looking at her with that soft-forehead frown, so she sits on the bile and the bullshit just as she’s sitting on her hands because she can’t even soothe herself the way she wants to. All the black parts of her psyche are doing more harm than good as she closes her eyes against a drowning wave of bright, spiking panic. 

Forcing herself to breathe, she repeats what she knows to be true on a loop. 

She has done nothing wrong. It is not illegal to leave a husband. Not amoral to fall in love with someone else. Jason lost her when he hurt her, and she doesn’t owe him a thing. 

She has her birth certificate. 

She has her passport.

She has options.

She has Eddie. 

That last remembrance holds weight. It is a solid shape she can carve from the cold clay of uncertainty, and she reaches for him. Grips his thigh beneath her twitching fingers and says, “I love you. I’m freaking out.” 

“Oh, sweetheart.” He picks up her hand like he’s done a hundred, maybe a thousand times before. Kisses the back, her palm, the stinging place on her thumb and says, “I love you, too.” 

“Seeing Andy—it’s like a guarantee. And… and now Jason’s gonna know about you, too.” 

Eddie places her hand back on his lap so he can turn into the trailer park. “Don’t worry about me, alright? I’m not scared of him. What’s he gonna do? Have me arrested?” 

Maybe, her brain spits, which is a ridiculous notion. Jason could show up, sure. He could kick and scream and shout. He could threaten, bribe, cajole. Make her promises. Tell her lies. 

But Jason has shown who he is in her long absence. A coward, lying to any and everyone about her whereabouts. What has he told his family? His classmates? Their wives? What has he told her family, for that matter? They don’t see her parents often—the Cunninghams washed their hands of the Carvers after the elopement—but Thanksgiving is an exception, and … God, he’s had to navigate Thanksgiving without her. 

The thought of that amount of squirming on Jason’s part makes her smile, which is cruel, but so is he. 

She can’t presume to know why he’s lying—maybe he thinks she’ll come back still, or he’s feeling shame about the situation? More likely to be the former, which means the news about Eddie will force him to reckon with the fact that she’s not planning to return. That she’s moved on. That she’s standing on her own two feet, even if those feet are firmly planted atop Eddie’s boots. 

They park beside Wayne’s truck, and Eddie asks her to wait a second before hopping out.

Chrissy waits, studying the movement of his shoulder blades beneath his shirt. The long, lanky lines of him as he lopes to her side and opens the door. 

“What—” she says while he reaches over to undo her seatbelt. 

He shrugs, then puts his hands on her knees and swings her to face him, short legs dangling. He nudges those legs apart so he can stand between them, her thighs bracketing his ribcage. Clearly, he’s come to comfort her. However, his warmth sends a mixed signal through her overstimulated system, and as he squeezes her hips and tugs her slightly forward, that signal coalesces into a throb of want. 

“Fucking day,” he says, tipping his head up slightly because, for once, she has the high ground. “Hey.” 

“Hi.” 

An impulse drives her to close her ankles behind his torso and bring her hands to rest on his shoulders, keeping him close. There’s a freshly scabbed nick on his chin that wasn’t there yesterday, and her gaze travels from the wound down the line of his jaw to his throat, where his Adam’s apple bobs and time stills to nothing.

It’s very inconvenient, this wanting. Desire doesn’t remove her anxiety, her fear, her muddled emotions, or her mixed feelings about the morning. Instead, it adds. Complicates. Sets her neck prickling as she pushes Eddie’s coat to the side and catches the front of his shirt, twisting it up and dragging her thumbs over the exposed skin of his stomach. 

“Eddie…” she says as he shudders. Rocks his forehead against hers, lips tantalizingly close. 

“You want me to carry your bag?” he mumbles, his head leaning against hers, hot breath tickling her lips. 

Chrissy presses both palms flat against his belly, the pinky finger of her left hand dipping below his waistband. “Yeah. Please.” 

“Anytime.” He exhales into a kiss, mouths slotting together. Overeager, and their teeth hit as they settle in, but that’s alright because awkward makes it real, and she can give as much as she takes, body shifting forward, nearly off the seat now so he’s holding her up and she can’t catch a breath.

The trailer door slams, and he startles. Pulls back from the kiss, then glances over her shoulder and goes red. 

“Wayne,” he says, clearing his throat. 

Chrissy squirms into her seat, wondering how much Wayne saw from that vantage as Eddie picks up her duffel. Her heart is beating triple-time, and she is struck by the overwhelming desire to reach down and touch herself to relieve the low-slung ache that’s opened in Eddie’s absence. “Oh.”

Wayne greets them with a taciturn nod as they come around the side of the van, a fresh cigarette poked between his lips. “Y’all alright?” 

“Yeah, good,” Eddie says, shouldering her bag. “You?” 

“Mmm.” 

The noise is neither good nor bad, and Chrissy once again wishes she could read his thoughts about the entire situation. It’s not that Wayne’s judging her; it’s just that he’s so important to Eddie that his approval means something, and she desperately wants it. 

“We got some movies,” Eddie offers. “The Shining.” 

Wayne takes a drag. Nods. “Y’hungry?” 

Chrissy isn’t—that churny, pukey feeling hasn’t retreated, and when she thinks about eating, she keeps picturing the dirty dishes stacked in Jason’s sink—but Eddie says he is, and Wayne offers to heat leftovers for them. This makes her feel trapped, and she is suddenly over-conscious of her body and the way the nubbly fabric of her sweatshirt feels as it rubs against her skin. 

They leave Wayne to his cigarette and head inside, where she continues feeling a bit like an unraveling scarf. A bitten-through pen. An insect being pinned, twitching, to a board. 

She’s going to cut off a finger. 

“I’ll be right back,” she says, and Eddie raises a brow, or maybe she’s imagining that. She’s having a hard time looking directly at his face.

She retreats to his room. Slithers beneath the sheets and creates a cocoon for herself, inhaling him over and over and over again. For the second time that day, she struggles for a breath that will fill her lungs completely. Hates herself for it as she digs her fingers into the curve of her stomach. Feels it expand until she has enough flesh to pinch, shocking her into a gasp.

Even proper breathing has been taken from her. All her life, she’s been told to suck in, be mindful of her posture, and aren’t those jeans too tight, honey? 

In junior year, she had to take an arts credit and chose choir. There, she learned that inhalation was meant to fill the stomach and exhalation to empty. At first, Chrissy physically couldn’t manage it, her body rebelling against her efforts. The teacher had placed a hand on her torso to show her, and the anger she’d felt at being touched so intimately was incandescent. But she’d sat meekly by and let it happen, pulling back from the reality of her body. Nodded and thanked her for the lesson before going to lunch, where she’d picked at her salad before indulging in two slices of the too-sweet strawberry shortcake the cafeteria had always served on Tuesdays. 

“You’re so lucky, Chrissy,” someone had said. “You can eat whatever you want.” 

Ten minutes later, she’d been wedged into a bathroom stall. Heaving. Weightless. Sucking in to hollow herself out but giving the air nowhere to go. No belly to fill. There was a perverse satisfaction in robbing herself of something so simple. 

Now, she inhales. Gnaws on the comforter and pinches herself as she stuffs her body with stale, heavy air.

Tears are trickling down her temples, though she can’t recall starting to cry. She’s not making a meal of it or anything, but the sniffles keep coming. The damp pools on the pillow beside her as she unbuttons her jeans because she suddenly can’t stand wearing them. She fights her way out, kicking them off and to the floor, then breathes. In and out and in and out, the rushing water sound filling her ears so she doesn’t hear Eddie when he opens the door. Doesn’t know he’s there until his weight settles atop her twisting torso. Pinning her like that bug on a board, only it’s not so bad when he does it. A humane captor, giving her substance even as she grunts because her fingers are trapped against her soft places, itching to break through the surface to the pink places beneath.

“What’s up, Chrissygirl?” he asks.

“Some stuff.” 

“Yeah? Kinda figured.” 

“I thought I was okay, but then I wasn’t okay, but then I was, and now I’m not again.” It’s the most succinct explanation she has of the swooping gut-punch that has been her day, in which she has oscillated like a wobbling top between two emotional extremes. Is it any wonder she can’t stop spinning?

“Who said you had to be okay?” 

That is an intriguing question; she doesn’t know how to answer.

“Chrissy?” 

“Yes?”

“Who said?” 

“Nobody.” 

“Weird how that works. You want to come be shitty with us for a little while instead of hiding in here?” 

She thinks it over and finds that she does, with a caveat. “Can you help me?” 

“Definitely. What do you need?” 

“Tell me what to do.” 

The bulk of him shifts, giving her room, and she frowns. It would be better if he stayed; better if he weighed a literal ton so he could squish her completely.

Instead, his hands hook against the top of his comforter, and he drags it down, exposing her face to the light of midday. “You have to get up right now and come watch your dumb musical.” 

“Do I have to bring the blanket?” 

He smiles, brushing away a tear pooled in the corner of her eye. “Yeah. And you have to eat something.” 

She wrinkles her nose. “I don’t know if I can. I feel pretty sick.” 

“Like, sick-sick?” 

“Like I might barf sick, yeah.” 

“What if I make you toast?” 

“That might be okay,” she concedes. “I’ll try.” 

“Good girl.” He stands and tugs at the blanket, throwing it over his shoulder before taking in her bare legs and laughing. “Uh, where’d your pants go?” 

“Off.” She points her toe toward the foot of the bed. “Can I wear your boxers?” 

“Can you wear my… honestly, you don’t have to ask.” He goes to the tiny dresser on which his turntable sits alongside an incense burner, wrestling a pair of blue-checked shorts free of their cramped confines before tossing them to her. “Don’t drown.” 

Chrissy wriggles the boxers up her thighs, then uses her scrunchie to tie off the waistband so nothing falls down in front of Wayne. “Right,” she says, clambering to her feet. “Movie.” 

“Movie.” 

Eddie settles her in front of the television while he and Wayne putter around the kitchen. She knows she looks a mess—knows Wayne probably asked Eddie what happened while she was hiding—but neither of them is making a big deal out of whatever’s going on. Eddie brings her buttered toast, then worms beside her with a plate of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Green beans, too, which he ignores until Chrissy gives him a pointed look about halfway through the song about the nuns having a real damned problem with Maria. 

Wayne sits with them until Maria’s finished teaching Do-Re-Mi to the VonTrapp kids, then declares he needs a shower and heads to his bedroom, which is a a broom-closet-sized alcove wedged between the bathroom and the back wall of the kitchen. Chrissy has only caught a glimpse, but it’s barely big enough for a twin bed, clearly meant for a kid. She’d asked Eddie about it the night before, and he’d explained that it used to be his, but when Wayne started working nights once Eddie got old enough to be left on his own, they swapped, both because Eddie was leaving his shit all over the living room, and because Wayne preferred having the smaller space with fewer windows. 

By the time the first tape finishes, Wayne has showered and left for the plant. Eddie waves off her suggestion of The Shining, and they move to the second tape instead. It’s hard to say if his interest is feigned or genuine, but he’s not making her watch something scary, so she’ll take it. 

As Maria and Captain VonTrapp grow closer, however, she finds herself distracted once more by that buzzy, needy sensation that plagued her earlier in the van. 

When it comes, that neediness is always, actually, and everywhere. Wanting is very inconvenient. 

She squirms. Swings her legs over his lap before scooting forward so she can cup a hand against his groin the same way she’s done a dozen times, at least, since that first time in New York. 

“Jesus, hi,” he says. 

“Hi.” She pops the button on his jeans. “Oops.” 

“Nnn, it’s… I thought you wanted to watch the movie?” 

“I did. But now I want to do this.” 

“I’m not compl—” 

She kisses him to stop him from talking. Takes him in hand and works him into a lather, breathing him in as he shifts, needy and twitching against her palm. 

“I was thinking about Atlanta,” she mumbles against his lips as his fingers ruck her shirt up in the back, hot hands on bare skin. 

“Yeah?”

“That first morning, I watched you walk away and wished I could be a ghost. Something invisible that could go with you because I didn’t want to be alone.” 

“Fuck, Chrissy—”

“That was an awful morning. I ate all that candy, and I threw up, and I didn’t tell you and…” She twists her wrist, and his hips stutter, making her laugh. “Eddie.” 

“Picked a h-hell of a time for a soliloquy, Cunningham.” 

“All I’m saying is that I don’t have to be a ghost anymore because now I get to see you like you’re mine.”

He smiles. Touches his lips to hers in a not-quite-kiss, open-mouthed and panting. “I am yours, kiddo.” 

“And I want you.” 

“Right here, sweetheart.” 

“No. Eddie. I want to.” 

It’s no miracle, turning wanting into asking. There’s nothing so very different from what she’s done before. She wants to have sex with her boyfriend, and she’s asking. Simple enough.

“Want to what?” 

She squeezes him, thumb pressed to what she’s come to think of as the squishy part because she doesn’t have a better name for it. “Do you have condoms?”

“Fuck.” He meets her eyes, jaw hanging slack, and nods. “Yeah. Definitely. Are you—”

“If you ask me if I’m sure, I’m going to scream.” 

Eddie grins. Wraps his warm hand around her neck and squeezes the way she likes. “Not asking, sweetheart. Except, uh, here, or…?” 

“Bed.” 

“Shit, totally. Okay.” He extricates himself from the tangle of her body and stands, ridiculous, with his jeans undone and his penis jutting out like it’s just happy to be there. She loves him for not caring about that. Loves him for the eager-dog grin on his face and the way he bends to haul her right off the couch and into his arms so she’s forced to wrap her legs around his waist.

“Eddie!” she squeaks. “Put me down!”

“Nope.” 

“You’ll fall,” she says.

“No, I won’t.” 

He’s halfway down the hall when her words turn prophetic. It’s inevitable, what with his pants tangling at his ankles. When he trips, he has time to mutter a brief “god damn it” before Chrissy’s on her back, head conked on the carpet, and oh, she’s laughing. Giggling at the ludicrousness of him while his fingers span her waist, and his face is eye-level with her belly button, and his mouth is... is…

Chrissy stops laughing when Eddie presses his lips to her borrowed boxers. Inhales on a groan and tugs with his teeth, even as she tenses. 

“Please, Chrissy?” he asks, and she finds she can’t refuse him. Part of her doesn’t want to; wants to let him do this, to see if it’s possible. To see how far her bravery can carry the day. 

“Alright,” she acquiesces. 

Eddie’s quick. Hands tugging her shorts down her hips. Over her legs and onto the floor. Long fingers pushing her panties to the side to kiss what he finds there. Only, not just kiss. His tongue—his tongue—and she shakes her head, already wanting it to be over. 

“I didn’t shower,” she says, desperate for the slap of cold water that is reality. “Eddie…” 

“I don’t care about that.” He touches her again. The flat of his tongue against the center of her, and she jolts. Arches her back. Thinks she might like it, but it’s hard to be sure when the bit of her that hates everything is screaming that she doesn’t, she doesn’t, she doesn’t like it at all. 

That cruel tormentor wins in the end. Filling her with worry over how she smells, how she tastes, if he hates it, if he likes it, what he’s doing, what he’ll do, and if she’s doing it all wrong.

So, she puts her hand on his head. Pushes him away with a firmness and tugs down her shirt to cover herself. 

“I don’t want to,” she says on a shaky exhale. 

Eddie frowns. Studies her like he’s trying to turn her inside out while rubbing a circle on her knee. “Okay,” he says, as if it’s that simple. “You still want to do the other thing?” 

Chrissy nods, finding words a burden as she sits up against the wall. “Yes. Sorry.” 

“You’re right. I do have fucking great taste in music,” Eddie says as he shimmies the rest of the way out of his jeans, leaving them on the floor with his shorts and her shorts, standing there half-naked like it’s nothing, and oh, she adores him for being weird and un-selfconscious and comfortable in a way she’s not sure she ever can be, but she’s trying. She’ll keep trying, for him. 

He offers her a hand, and they go to his room, where he directs her to her bed and tells her to wait while he gets her a present. 

“What is it?” She asks, leaning back on her elbows as he goes to his as-yet-unpacked bag and bends over, giving her a show, which she thinks is meant to make her laugh, so she does. 

Rummaging in a side pocket, he soon stands, holding a small tube out to her wiith a flourish. “Ta-da!”

Chrissy squints at the fine print, where the words ‘personal lubricant’ jump out. “That’s… oh, wow.” 

“I figured we might want some,” he says, dropping the tube on the nightstand and tugging his shirt over his head. 

He’s so handsome. She’s seen him naked a few times now, but it’s different to see him all at once rather than the bits and pieces she’s glimpsed in the truck. Long lines and sinewy muscle. Soft places, too, like his stomach, and isn’t it strange how she can find the gentle curve of his torso so appealing when she finds her own so abhorrent? 

“Where’d you find it?” she asks as he retrieves a condom from his bedside table. 

“LA,” he says. “There was a drugstore that carried it. I thought I might have to special order, but… uh. West Hollywood, man.” 

“Why does that matter?” 

“Lotta gay dudes.” 

“Wh—oh!” It takes her a moment to understand, and her cheeks burn hot at the realization. “How’d you know about that?” 

Eddie laughs, dropping a condom next to the lube with a shrug. “I dunno. Talked to a guy at a bar one time.” 

“You—” Chrissy bites her lip, reminded once again that Eddie’s experiences were vast and varied well before she came along. “Gosh.” 

“Lucky I did, right?” He stretches out beside her. “Just in case.” 

“And it really will help?” 

“I hope so. But if it doesn’t, we’ll stop, yeah?” 

“I’m not going to. I want this.” 

Eddie turns on his side, close enough that she can count the stray sprouting hairs on his chin. “I know you do, but that doesn’t mean it’ll work. And you gotta promise me you’ll tell me if I’m hurting you.” 

“But—” 

“No buts. Out there with the…” He tosses his head toward the hallway, then licks a V between his fingers that actually makes her laugh. “You coulda just let me do that because you knew I wanted to. But you didn’t, and I’m proud of you.” 

“I—” 

“Only I’m wondering if you could sorta… tell me why it wasn’t working?” 

That question brings her up short. For the first time in her life, she has put a firm end to someone wanting something of her sexually that she isn’t willing to give, and she needs a second to pick that apart.

“It was um,” she starts, then clears her throat. “It was like I knew I couldn’t be totally there, in my head? Like, I was too worried about everything that was happening, and I couldn’t relax, and I realized it wouldn’t get any better, and I thought… I thought that probably wasn’t fair to you, or to me.” 

Eddie’s hand falls to her hip, and he squeezes. “Yeah, that makes sense. Not that we won’t try again sometime. But uh, thanks for telling me to fuck off, Cunningham.” 

“I didn’t say that.” 

“Not in those exact words, but if you did it before, you can do it again, right?” 

“Right,” she says, and having him proud of her eases the sting of her earlier failure. 

“Good girl.” His thumb slips below the elastic of her panties, teasing the cotton away from her skin. “Can I take these off?” 

Chrissy nods, brain gone fuzzy at his praise. It ought to feel condescending, being spoken to in the language of childhood, but it doesn’t. Whenever he tells her she’s good, he activates a pinball machine inside her head. Bells, whistles, and flashing lights reinforce that she’s very, very good, and not just good, but good for him. 

Eddie encourages her to lift her hips before sliding her underwear down and off, and she can’t help going stiff. He’ll take off her shirt next, she’s sure, but then he doesn’t. Instead, he crawls up her body and kisses her like he has nowhere else to be. Nothing else to do. It’s an age before he makes his move, and when it comes, it’s something she’s already used to. His coaxing fingers part her thighs, stroking along her sex to draw a shuddery moan from deep within her. 

“There you are,” Eddie murmurs against her mouth. “Open up a little, huh?” 

Chrissy opens. Sighs. Tangles her hands in his hair as he trails kisses from her lips to her neck to her collarbone, where he chomps at her through the thin shirt, and she whines out his name. 

Lifting his head, Eddie cocks a brow. “Hmm? You need something?” 

Two can play at that game, so Chrissy worms her fingers down to take hold of him. It's not so simple at that angle, but she’s stubborn, and he’s driving her crazy. “Can I put the condom on you?” she asks before pulling a trick out of his playbook and running her thumb across the head of his dick. 

“Jesus Christ,” he says with a laugh. “Yeah, sure. You know how?” 

“No,” she admits, and she’s not going to get into the whole thing where Jason was weird about her touching his penis, sometimes, and how he didn’t always use condoms, anyway, and how it’s a minor miracle she didn’t end up pregnant at nineteen. “But I can figure it out.” 

“Give it a whirl.” 

Eddie has to help her with some of the finer points of condom application, like how to pinch the tip. Oh, and she tries it upside down the first time. Little stupid things that might have mortified her with someone else, but make him laugh, and that’s fine. It’s good. It’s normal. 

“Can I ask you a personal question?” Eddie asks once the condom is affixed. 

“No,” she says, still giggling. 

“Uh-huh.” He reaches for the lube, then uncaps it and fusses with the foil. “Seriously, though.” 

“Seriously, what?” 

“Are there uh… like, with uh, with him, were there positions that sucked less?” 

Chrissy considers the question as he squirts a glob of translucent jelly onto his fingers. “Ew.” 

“What?” 

“It looks like Vaseline.” 

“Pretty sure it’s in the same vein,” he says, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. “I’ve never used it before.” 

“You haven’t?” She tries not to sound bothered. Somehow, it doesn’t seem fair that Eddie’s been with plenty of normal girls in his life, and now he’s stuck with her and her dysfunctions. 

“Nah, but how hard can it be? Just gotta… grease the engine?” There’s no missing what he means by the metaphor as he wraps his lube-slick hand around himself and gives a stroke. “Holy shit, that feels amazing. It uh… cool, yeah. So, positions?” 

She shakes her head. “Not really. They were all bad in different ways. But, um, if you’re asking what I want, then I want to see you.”

“So, maybe missionary? Keep it simple?” 

Chrissy nods, and he leans down to kiss her, soothing the anxiety she hadn’t realized the conversation was rebuilding. The great, heavy familiarity of Jason’s millstone around her neck.

When he touches her knee, she parts her legs for him. Wraps an ankle behind his thigh to draw him close. He deepens the kiss, one hand cradling her skull while the other dips low to adjust himself before returning to her body, brushing what lube he didn’t use on himself against her entrance. 

Chrissy shifts, feeling the press of his length against her as his fingers shift to her hip. The tension returns with a vengeance. Body corpsifying as the voice in her head complains that there’s no reason for this, Christine.

“Hey,” he says, retreating from the kiss and resting their foreheads together. “You good?” 

“No.” She won’t lie to him, not now, not ever again. “But I will be. I just want to try, okay?” 

“Chrissy…” 

“It’s never going to be the right moment, Eddie. I’m never going to… it’s always going to be too much. So please just try?”

He frowns but acquiesces. Reaches between them to line himself up while she tries to accommodate. To lie back and close her eyes, opening herself and hoping to God it works because if it doesn’t, she really might vomit. 

There is an ache when he enters her. A minuscule rearranging of the cosmos as the panicked, animal part of her tenses, ready for the sharp, stabbing sensation of a trap closing around its leg. 

That trap never springs. Chrissy opens her eyes. Eddie holds himself up, hair falling like a curtain, a shield, as he pauses, both within her and without her. “Okay?” 

“Okay,” she says. “Keep going?” 

He presses forward. Sinks into her, inch by inch, while she waits for when it will all go wrong; when her body will clench, and the familiar spasming misery will win. 

Only, it doesn’t happen. There is a low, throbbing discomfort, and while she wouldn’t call it pleasurable, it’s nothing like the rough rasp of sandpaper against her walls. The knife-sharp cut that would come when Jason forced his way in despite her body’s attempts to keep him out. 

“God,” she says when she finally feels Eddie’s hips press against her skin. 

“Jesus,” he agrees like they’ve decided to name deities for fun. “I’m uh… congratulations?” 

Chrissy laughs, the sound unexpected and shocking as it ricochets around the room and returns to envelop them both. Eddie smiles. Kisses her as best he can, and when he pulls away, she finds she needs to blink back tears. 

“Oh, fuck,” he says, and she can’t help feeling a little sorry for him because this is at least the third time today he’s had to deal with her overwhelm. “Hey…” 

“No, no, it’s not…” She laughs again, and this one comes with a snort because the whole thing is so ludicrous. Sex is so ludicrous, with Eddie on top of her and inside her and all over her, and, God, she’s been so scared of something so silly when it’s done under circumstances that aren’t fraught with fear. “This is so stupid.” 

“Wha… uh, what’s stupid?”

“Everything! I built it up so much, and all I needed… we just needed… ” She can’t say what she means, and she’s laughing again. Turning her face against his neck with a grin. 

“But you’re good, though?” 

He’s so worried. So earnest. She tips her head up to study him, then winds a curl around her finger, using it as a snare to draw him down for a kiss. 

“I’m very good,” she says and lets him go. “How are you?” 

Eddie laughs, too, then. Catches her lip between his teeth and nips her skin. “Eh, you know, alright?” 

“Cool.” Experimentally, she lifts her lower half, delighted when he shudders. “You should move, I think.” 

“Should I?” He puts both hands on her waist, causing the t-shirt to ride up a bit, though he still makes no move to undress her. 

That’s good; she thinks she might not laugh so much if she were naked. 

“Yes, please.” 

Eddie moves. Away and against her, again and again. He keeps his strokes shallow to start, and she likes that. Likes the weight of him, the way he continues kissing her, fingers digging into her skin without bruising, while his desire burns insistent but not overwhelming. 

He talks a lot, too. Tells her she’s pretty, tells her she’s good, tells her she’s sweet, and he loves her, and she’s tight, which isn’t something she’d been concerned about, but it’s nice to know she’s making him happy. 

For her part, she doesn’t have many words. Instead, she shows him she loves him in the roll of her hips. The clasping of her hands against his shoulder blades, drawing him to her. Stroking his hair behind the shell of his ear. Wiping a trickle of sweat when it streaks down his forehead. 

A minor miracle occurs as Chrissy’s body slowly comes to understand that there is nothing to fear. That there might one day be pleasure in this. The low, familiar need builds at her core, and while it’s not so bright as what she feels when Eddie uses his fingers on her, or even when she has her hands on herself, it’s a beacon. A pulse showing the connection between them, his actions knocking at the door of her nascent arousal.

Chrissy slips a hand between them to touch herself. When he realizes what she’s doing, his eyes widen, and he slows his strokes, looking down and grinning. 

“You think you can…?” he asks. 

“I don’t know. Probably not,” she admits, pressing her fingers against her core, which feels good, but not as good as she’s used to. 

Still, she finds she wants to match him. Touch herself in time with his thrusts, especially when he picks up speed, shivering and sweat-soaked, aching toward his ending. 

“Can I move you?” he asks around a panting breath, his smile verging on shy. 

Chrissy nods, so he puts a hand beneath each of her thighs. Lifts her so she’s bent, not quite double while shifting to his knees and pumping again. It’s not a position she’s used to, and she hates that he’s no longer near enough to kiss, but it’s worth the slight discomfort to see the gone-feral look in his eyes. 

“I’m close,” he says, though she doesn’t need to be told. Chrissy knows what close looks like with him. The way his mouth twists to the left side and his nose wrinkles right into his brow; the way his shoulders hunch and his breath hitches, and the muscles of his neck strain as he curls in on himself.

His fingers dig into her hips, and he jerks forward, gasping an “Oh, fuck, Chrissy” when he comes. 

She grips his forearms. Runs her thumbs over taut muscle as he moves against her, milking the moment, and as his movements slow she turns her head to sink her teeth into his arm, for no other reason than that she wants to. 

“Ow, shitbird!” he yelps, half-laughing, half-pained, all shivering, as he rides the high of his orgasm to its end. 

Chrissy releases the twitching muscle, pleased to see marks left behind as she sinks back to the pillows. “Kiss me?” she asks as he settles his hips against hers, spent but not satisfied to slip out. 

He nods. Lowers himself to press dry lips together. She swears she can feel him softening inside her, which is ludicrous, but it doesn’t stop her from tightening herself around him just to see what happens. 

“God, you’re kinda mean,” he mumbles against her mouth, a shudder passing through him. 

“Maybe.”

He smiles, and his fingers frame her face. “You’re really alright?” 

“Yes,” she says and means it, even if the sentiment might not hold true in the dawn. But she’ll deal with those thoughts when they come, and that’s enough to soothe her. 

“You didn’t, uh…?” He glances down, flushed cheeks going redder.

“I think that’d be asking a lot.” 

“Can I?” He holds up a hand, waggling his fingers to make her laugh. 

“Yes, please,” she says, so he does. Slips out of her and stretches at her side before using those waggling fingers to finish what she started. Helping her ride the wave in so she can join him on the shore of that bright, breezy sea. 

“Good girl,” he mumbles when she’s through, breath hot against her earlobe. 

“I’m not bad,” she agrees, brushing some hair from his damp forehead. “Eddie?” 

“Mmm?” 

“I love you a lot.” 

He nods an acknowledgment as he shifts southward, cheek resting against her chest while he draws a pattern on her thigh. “You know, that’s honestly pretty goddamn convenient.”

Chapter Text

They clean up afterward. Eddie takes care of the condom, and Chrissy uses the bathroom, where she looks at herself in the mirror for a while. Turns to the side, lifts her shirt. Runs a hand down her abdomen and her thighs. Gives her breasts a thorough once-over and debates, briefly, going back to bed naked. 

Maybe next time, she decides, and tugs the shirt down. 

Maybe not.

She feels fine, though. Nice, even. She keeps waiting for the other shoe, but it’s not dropping, and she returns to Eddie with a smile.

He’s already in bed, so she joins him. Presses her back to his front and pulls his arm over her torso, then closes her eyes and luxuriates in the novelty of being safe at home. 

The trailer is over-warm, unlike the truck, and Eddie sleeps hot, even without his comforter. She squirms out of his embrace at two in the morning. Tosses and turns for a while. Wakes again at three. Four. Has to pee at four-thirty, so she gets up and stumbles over their clothing in the hallway. She should have picked them up earlier but didn’t. Having them there is convenient, though—she pulls on the same boxers she’d been wearing before, along with Eddie’s warm socks, then balls everything else into a pile and tosses it into the bedroom for Eddie to deal with later. 

Figuring she’s up for the day, she heads to the kitchen for a glass of water, then sits on the sofa with The Two Towers on her lap. The blanket is still there from earlier, and she wraps herself up in it to follow Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli on their search for Merry and Pippin.

The trio has just reached Fangorn Forest when the front door swings open, making her jump. 

Wayne jumps, too. Settles quickly, though, and gives her a nod as he steps inside after stamping his boots on the stoop. “Morning.” 

“Hi.” She wonders if she ought to beat a retreat; head back to Eddie because this is Wayne’s house and Wayne’s routine, and she’s just the interloper screwing his surrogate son. “I—” 

“Want some coffee?” He asks as he puts his keys on a small hook and shrugs out of his heavy, camel-colored coat. 

“If… if you’re having some.” 

Wayne nods. Hangs his coat on the tiny rack near the door, where Chrissy and Eddie’s are already crammed. A bit more of his space chipped away, though he doesn’t seem bothered. Just wedges his in beside Eddie’s and goes to the kitchen, where he sets a pot of coffee percolating. 

“Half and half?” He asks, leaning over the half-wall to look down at her. 

Usually, Chrissy takes her coffee black or with a splash of fat-free milk if she’s feeling brave. It’s a Laura thing—an endless refrain of what has calories versus what doesn’t, and how things like half and half in coffee are indulgent. You might as well drink a gallon of whipping cream, Christine. “Yes, please,” she says. 

A couple minutes later, Wayne’s handing her a cup of caramel-colored coffee before settling into his armchair. 

“Thank you,” she says. 

“Mm-hmm. Hand me the clicker?” 

The clicker in question is wedged between the couch cushions, lost during the previous evening’s make-out session. The recollection makes her blush as she digs out the remote and passes it to Wayne, who is oblivious to her discomfort. He flicks on the television, which is still on the VCR channel. She doesn’t understand any of that machine stuff—the VCR she and Jason had worked differently than the Munsons, which works like the one she’d grown up with but not the one her parents have now. 

It’s ridiculous that she doesn’t know how something so simple operates. That she can’t watch a movie without the assistance of a man. That she’s spent her whole life operating under the assumption that men simply know technical things while she’s too female-brained to figure it out. Her father, Jason, Eddie, Wayne. All capable of clicking a series of buttons in a specified order while she sits pretty, waiting to be entertained. 

“Sorry, but um…” She clears her throat. “Why is the VCR on that specific channel? How come you can’t just put a tape in and hit play, and it overrides the TV?” 

Wayne considers the question, a tiny furrow in his brow. “Don’t know, precisely. As far as I can recall, when we set this up, you gotta have a channel with nothing on it because the machine’s actin’ like another antenna or some such thing.” 

It’s reassuring to hear that he doesn’t understand how it works, either. He’s just learned the routine. “My VCR worked differently where I was living before.” 

“Well, this is an old set. Still plays tapes fine, though.” 

“It does. It’s good.”

With the matter settled, she relaxes against the arm of the couch, pulling the blanket to her chest as Wayne toggles between NBC and CBS, then decides on the former. 

They sit in an easy silence, watching yesterday’s news play out. A woman is suing a wrestler for sexual harassment, and something is happening with Israel that she doesn’t really understand. Another province of men she’d like to know more about, honestly. She ought to subscribe to a newspaper. 

Locally, there’s been a string of burglaries in a wealthy Indianapolis neighborhood, and the anchors do a lot of handwringing about ruined Christmases. Finally, there is fluffy nonsense about a dog in a Santa Hat and a review of Dustin Hoffman’s new movie with Tom Cruise. 

The local reviewer has just given the film four stars when a knock sounds at the front door, heavy enough to startle them both. 

Chrissy’s heart seizes when the knock comes again, only seconds later. Jason, her mind supplies. Wayne must suspect the same because he casts her an unreadable look before muttering, “Six-thirty in the goddamn morning,” and getting to his feet, knees popping. 

The third knock is more insistent than the first two combined, and Wayne mutters that he’s coming before glancing at Chrissy. “You see trouble? You go in the bedroom, get Eddie.” 

She doesn’t have time to respond before he swings the door open. 

It’s not Jason. It’s a police officer in a khaki uniform with a hat on his head, a five o’clock shadow, and an aggrieved expression on his careworn face as he peers past Wayne and locks eyes with her and her blanket and her bedhead. 

“Chief,” says Wayne with the resigned cadence of a man who’s entertained this visitor more than once. “Little early for a house call, hmm?” 

“You’re telling me,” says the cop—Chief, apparently—still studying her from beneath the brim of his hat. “I got a call this morning from someone who says his son’s wife’s been missing for a couple of days. Young woman. Twenty.” 

A couple of days! Chrissy nearly laughs, but restrains herself. Oh, but Jason has been lying, and lying, and lying, and she can’t help wondering if he’s had his dad in on it the whole time or if he’s only now looping Daddy Dearest in on his troubles. 

Wayne puts a hand on the doorframe and shrugs. “Wouldn’t know anything about that.” 

The cop scoffs, then gestures like he wants Wayne to move, only Wayne’s not moving. Chrissy can see this playing out badly; turning into something more than it needs to be. So, she rises, keeping the blanket wrapped around herself as she takes a few steps forward. 

“I’m not missing,” she says, possessed by some preternatural calm that she assumes has been imbued in her by the absurdity of the situation. “I left. If you’d like to have a conversation about why, I’m happy to tell you.” 

The cop looks her over, then gives a curt nod and takes one step down. “Put some shoes on first. It’s freezing out here.” 

Chrissy doesn’t roll her eyes, which is very diplomatic of her. Also hilarious that she’d even have the urge because Jason’s Chrissy would already be crying and kowtowing and apologizing for crimes she hasn’t committed. Chrissy’s Chrissy, however, just sticks her bare feet into her shoes and reaches for the knob. 

Wayne hovers his hand over hers, shaking his head. “Hang on. You want me to come?”

“No,” she says because while part of her does, a larger part says that she needs to deal with this on her own. That it’s her problem to solve. “Thank you. I’ll be fine. Just ah… if Eddie wakes up, don’t let him come storming out? He’s… well. You know how he is about cops.” 

The corner of Wayne’s mouth twitches, and he nods. “I’ll do my best. Why don’t you take my coat with you, huh?” 

The Carhartt coat hangs to her thighs, and Chrissy’s grateful for it as she steps outside to find the cop smoking a cigarette beneath the picnic table awning that sits catty-corner to the trailer. It’s still pitch black, with the only light coming from the single streetlamp casting a watery pool across Eddie’s van and Wayne’s truck. 

“So, someone called you about me?” she says when she reaches the table. 

The cop takes in her appearance, and she can see in his eyes that he’s no slouch. “You’re Christine Carver?” 

“Mm-hmm. And you are?” 

“Jim Hopper,” he says, and she’s slightly mollified by the fact that he didn’t use his title, and that he extends a hand for her to shake. 

“Chief Hopper.” She returns the handshake.

“As for your question.” He leans against the table and takes a drag of his cigarette. “We’ll call it a welfare check. Certain people in this town have my goddamn personal number, and they like picking inopportune moments to use it.” 

There’s no doubt he means Jack Carver—Jason’s father is influential, knows the mayor, and runs the Rotary Club—but she has to check. “Would that be my father-in-law or my husband?” 

“The former on behalf of the latter.” 

“Ah.” 

“According to him, you’ve been missing a few days, your husband’s getting worried, and a friend of his spotted you here in town.” 

Andy, of course. She’s less than surprised. “Mmm. Interesting.” 

“So naturally, I asked if he’d filed a report, put anything in with the Indianapolis PD—that sort of thing.” 

“I’m guessing not?” 

“Apparently, this isn’t the first time you’ve run off.”

“No, it isn’t,” she agrees. “The first couple of times, I actually went to your counterparts. They weren’t much help.” 

Hopper’s eyebrow arches slightly, but not like he’s surprised. It's more like she’s confirming a suspicion. “He told me Jason said you’d had a fight. Got upset and walked out.” 

“Sure. That happened. About a month ago.” 

“A month?” 

“Yes. Only I didn’t walk out because of a fight. I walked out because he beat me up. And I didn’t leave right away. I waited until I had a chance and ran. I haven’t seen him since election night.”

At that, Hopper pulls a pad of paper and a pencil from his left breast pocket, scribbling something down. “Mmm.” 

“Is six in the morning typical for this sort of thing, by the way?” she asks as he finishes writing because it’s bugging her that this ought-to-be pleasant morning with Wayne has been spoiled, and now she’s standing outside in boxer shorts while the temperature barely hovers above freezing.

“People tend to be more talkative when you get ‘em out of bed.” 

“Lucky for you, I was already up.” 

“Uh-huh.” He glances at the trailer. “You leave with Munson a month ago?” 

“No. I left on my own. Eddie’s… that was later. He has nothing to do with this. I’m assuming you’re here because Andy—that’s who saw us, I’ll bet—anyway, because he told Jason, who freaked out and called his dad, who sent you because… I don’t know, actually. Although—” She cuts herself off, smiling a little and shaking her head. 

“What?” 

“Considering the track record of your colleagues in Indianapolis when I went to them for the same problem, there’s every chance Jason figured you wouldn’t believe me anyway. Drag me back because his dad’s important, and I’m nothing, you know?” 

Hopper exhales, stubbing his cigarette on the table’s raw edge. “I’m not in the business of dragging. Just trying to get some stories straight.” 

“Jason’s lying. He’s wasting your time, and I want to go back inside. There’s your story.” 

“You—” 

“I went by my old apartment yesterday. You should probably know I did that, I guess. I wanted my birth certificate and my passport since I forgot to take them when I left. You can check with the neighbor if you want. She saw me.” 

He makes a note of that, then looks her up and down. “So you left because he hit you.” 

“More than once.” 

“How long have you been married?” 

“A little over two years.” 

“And how many…?”

“I don’t know. Got hard to keep track of the everyday stuff, but the bad ones… maybe a dozen times?” 

Hopper’s brow furrows. “Mmm.” 

She squeezes her hands into fists, then flexes them, fighting to keep calm in front of this stranger. “I have no idea if the cops in Indianapolis kept a record of me. I waited a day or two to go to them, and they basically said that there was no way to prove where my bruises came from, so they couldn’t help me. The guy I talked to called me hysterical, actually. Told me I was getting all worked up over a newlywed squabble.” 

Another frown, but Hopper doesn’t say anything. Maybe that’s a cop trick—keep quiet, so the suspect spills the beans—but she doesn’t care because she has done nothing wrong and, for once in her life, she has a few things to say. 

“It’s not like he would hurt me and walk away so I could go tell someone,” she says. “He’d hang all over me for hours, or a day, or as long as it took for me to calm down and the bruises to settle and for my story to seem less plausible. So when nobody was listening to me, I figured I had to run. Go. And I did. I ran, and I met Eddie, who’s the first person who ever believed me about any of it.” 

Hopper studies her, then glances briefly at the trailer, where she suspects Eddie is awake and watching their conversation. “You’ve been with him the whole time?” 

That’s a tougher question since she knows that, technically, she’s not supposed to be in the truck. “This is home base,” she says after a second. “With him and Wayne.” 

“And you’re not in any danger? Not being coerced?” 

“No,” she says through gritted teeth.

“I have to ask. But there’s nothing criminal about leaving your husband or taking up with someone else.” 

“I’m aware.” 

“Probably best to make a cleaner break of it than this, though.” 

“I’m working on that. Hence the birth certificate.” 

Hopper nods, then reaches into his breast pocket for his pack of Marlboro Reds, tapping a fresh one into his palm. “As it happens, I think you got a raw deal, and I’m sorry if nobody listened to you before. The way I see it, a guy whose girl goes missing—really goes missing, for as long as you say you’ve been gone—he’s tearing his hair out. Calling us, reporters…shit, a guy with the clout Carver’s dad’s got is getting on the phone to the FBI. Unless…” He lights the cigarette. “That guy knows what his wife’s likely to say when they find her. That guy’s gonna get squirrelly. He knows why she left, sure, and he wants her back because he’s used to getting what he wants. So when he hears she’s been seen around his old hometown, well, that guy calls his dad to send in someone like me. Some local yokel who knows from experience that a call to Forest Hills is rarely anything good, and’ll treat you accordingly.” 

The explanation is close enough to the one that Chrissy’s rationalized for herself a dozen times that she breathes a sigh of relief. “I’m not going back.” 

“No, you’re not. That includes visiting that apartment, whether or not your husband’s there.” He gives her a hard stare. “That wasn’t a smart move.” 

“It worked.” 

“You got lucky. Munson go with you?” 

She nods and looks to the trailer, where a tilted Venetian blind suddenly snaps into place. 

“Good,” Hopper says. “Heard he wasn’t dealing to kids anymore.” 

“He drives a truck. Long haul,” she replies, neither confirming nor denying the allegations.

“Huh. Well, he never was a complete idiot. Just most of one.” 

That sounds almost like a compliment, and Chrissy smiles. “He’s the best.” 

“Long as he’s not making you want to run away, too.” Hopper narrows his eyes at her, then cocks his head. “You’re Laura Porter’s kid, aren’t you?” 

Startled, she nods. 

“I remember her,” he says. “My sister was—anyway. Doesn’t matter. Don’t go over to your old place again. The best thing you can do now is get yourself a lawyer, and if you need anything from your ex, do it through them.” 

“That’s the plan.” 

“And, listen, I used to work in the city—I’ll call a couple of contacts to see if they have a record of when you stopped by.” 

“I doubt it.” 

“So do I. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.” 

“Me, too.” 

Hopper reaches for his hat and puts it on, straightening up and sighing. “Your husband’s a coward, and I think you’ve scared him. But scared animals bite.” 

“Yes, well, I’ve been bitten before,” she says. “But thank you for the advice.” 

“Sure. Give Eddie my best, huh?” 

The sarcasm coloring his tone makes Chrissy laugh in spite of herself. “He told me he never got caught.” 

“Little shit knew how to hide,” he says, tugging on the keychain clipped to his belt. “And he could keep a story straight, unlike the shithead who sold him his supply.”

“Ah. Got it. Drive safe, Chief. And, um, Merry Christmas?” 

Hopper actually smiles at that, tipping his hat to her. “You too, Miss Carver.” 

“Cunningham.” She hesitates, frowning. “Or, no, not that, either.” 

“You’ll figure it out,” he says and heads for his truck.

No sooner has that truck rolled out of sight than Eddie bursts from the trailer in his boxers and a t-shirt, barefoot and making a beeline straight for her. 

“I’m okay!” she manages in the seconds before he crushes her against his chest like a bug on a windscreen. “I’m fine, Eddie, seriously!”

“Motherfucker.” He squeezes her tightly, then holds her at arm’s length, studying her as though she’s been replaced by a Stepford Wife by virtue of her proximity to authority. “What’d he say?” 

“He was alright. He asked me what was going on, and I told him, and he believed me.” 

Eddie snorts. “Yeah. Okay. Hopper’s a dick.” 

“He wasn’t that bad. Jason’s dad called him—said I’d been missing a couple days.” 

“A couple... wait, really?” 

“Jason hasn’t been telling people I’m gone,” she says. “Though I can’t figure out why.” 

“So, what, you were supposed to just hop in the car and go back home with Hopper?” 

“I guess? Or, maybe he thought seeing a cop would scare me. But it didn’t. At all. I’m not sure that’d have been true even a few weeks ago.” 

“You weren’t a shitbird a few weeks ago.” 

“No, I wasn’t,” she says, straightening and rubbing her hands up and down his arms. “I hate it here. This town. Knowing everyone who knows everything about who I’ve been and nothing about who I am.” 

He nods, all anxious energy as he bounces on the balls of his feet. “Yeah, fuck it. Good thing we’re leaving soon.”

“Mmm,” she agrees, picking up his hand to kiss the center of his palm. It is good; she misses Smaug. Misses the road. Misses early morning sunrises and late nights in the bunk. More than that, though, she misses the freedom of knowing it’s just her, Eddie, and whatever strangers they find along the way. No history, only a future. “You’re shivering. Let’s go inside.”

“I’m fine,” he says through clenched teeth. 

“Uh-huh.” She takes his hand and brokers no nonsense, leading him to where Wayne waits for them both. 

“Y’alright?” Wayne asks from his armchair, though he’s not exactly settled into it. More like perching the way a man might if he’d only recently sat down after peeking out a window. 

“Yes. He’s not coming back.” She unzips Wayne’s coat and hangs it on its hook. “My ex’s father called him—he’s kind of… I guess he’s important enough that he can do that.” 

“Sending in a cop,” Wayne tuts. “Brave.” 

“I wish he’d come himself,” Eddie says, pacing by the door, a live wire sparking. 

“You really want to have that fight, Eds?” 

Eddie shrugs. Kicks his toe into the carpet and scrubs a hand across his nose, which has started running. “I want him to own his shit. Own what he did.” 

“I don’t,” Chrissy says, feeling as though her voice ought to carry some weight in the discussion. “Jason’s always been good at getting other people to do his dirty work, and at this point, I don’t care if he gets his comeuppance. I just want to do what I have to do to get him out of my life.” 

Eddie scoffs and clearly disagrees, but what good would it do for them to fight? Sure, Eddie’s a scrapper, but beating Jason up won’t change the fact that Jason isn’t the sort to feel remorse for his actions. He’ll justify it, make himself the victim. Meanwhile, Eddie will end up in trouble on her behalf, which she refuses to let happen. 

Anger radiates off him in waves, though, and he scowls. “Whatever. We’re going. Today.”

“Today?” Wayne echoes, voice sharp, and Chrissy mirrors his surprise with a raised eyebrow as she turns to Eddie, who has hunched his shoulders and isn’t quite meeting his uncle’s eyes. 

“I know it’s supposed to be another night, but I’m not… we’re not…” He shakes his head. “I’m gonna start packing.” 

He stalks down the hallway, all sound and fury, and Chrissy sighs. Looks to Wayne, who takes a sip of his coffee and says nothing. 

“I won’t let him do anything stupid,” she offers around the awkward pause. 

“Guess you two’ll do what you need to do.” 

That’s an admonishment if she’s ever heard one, and her cheeks grow warm. Picking up her now-cold coffee, she murmurs something about checking on Eddie before heading to the bedroom, which smells like the sex they’d had only a few hours ago, though it feels like an eon. Way back, during the time before Jason thrust himself, unwanted, into what should have been a quiet morning. 

Eddie is shoving shit into a bag, occasionally sniffing a shirt to see if it’s clean. He’s tossed Chrissy’s duffel onto the bed, unzipped and waiting for her to pack it full so they can run from all those mounting problems. 

And they are running, that’s the thing. Back to something simple. Familiar. Something that tucks them away from the world rather than forcing them to face the truth of their situation.

Her situation.

Eddie’s only there by proxy, and nothing is getting resolved from the cab of a truck.

“Wayne’s only pissed because he wanted to take us to dinner,” Eddie says as she sits on the edge of the bed, doing the thing where he rambles to cover up what’s bugging him. “That’s why… but, I mean, we should just go. We gotta. I don’t want you stressing out, and that fucker could come back.” 

“I don’t think he’s coming back.”

“We can get out of here in an hour, yeah? Get breakfast in the city, kill some time, and get the truck to start early. Or we could stay in a motel. I don’t know. Whatever you want.” 

“I want you to come here and lie down with me for a second.” The rush of anxious exhilaration that had powered her through her conversation with Hopper has worn off, and she has too much on her mind to worry about packing a bag, breakfast, or where they’ll stay tonight. 

“You…? Yeah. Sure. Alright. For a minute.” 

Eddie’s twitchy as he stretches out beside her, but she molds herself to him all the same, tangling their legs and tucking her head beneath his chin before pulling the blanket over them both. This is the morning they deserved, how they should have woken up, and she’ll have it, damn it, if only for a few minutes. 

It takes some time, but Eddie settles. Rubs her back the way she likes as the air in their tiny cave grows sour and hot and smelling of stale coffee. Chrissy squirms and breathes him in. Memorizes the smell of him as she makes a decision she hopes she won’t regret. 

“I think maybe…” she starts, only it’s not a maybe, it’s a certainty. A strong shout from her blue-skirt voice that’s been guiding her since she first stepped outside with Chief Hopper. 

“Maybe what?” he asks, his fingers digging into her spine, and she wonders if he already knows what’s coming. If he needs her to say the hard part out loud.

After all he’s done for her, she can do that for him. 

“I’m sorry, Eddie. But I have to stay behind and fix it.”

Chapter Text

Eddie startles awake to an icy hand sliding across his bare stomach. It’s early; still dark, but dark in the way that means two or three, not five or six. He’s gotten good at telling the difference, what with all the nights he’s spent driving toward an inky sky or a hinting sunrise.

“Sorry,” Chrissy whispers as she clambers into bed. 

He hadn’t realized she’d left, and he pulls her closer, mumbling a “s’alright,” content to sleep next to her for as long as he’s allowed, considering it’s the last opportunity he’ll have for nearly two weeks. 

After that, he’ll be back. Home for Christmas and New Year, almost an entire week with her. Then… then, yeah. He doesn’t know what, then. 

Ignoring the persistent press of that weighty thought, he kisses her head. Only, she’s not settling. Not sleeping. She’s wriggling, and even in his half-awake haze, there’s no missing what she’s after when she pushes his hand back and straddles his torso instead. 

Eddie shakes off the shackles of sleep the second he realizes the boxers she’d worn to bed have been discarded, and he can feel the warmth of her body against his skin. He’s barely recovered from that when she drops the tube of KY on his chest.

“It’s okay,” she says, like he’d had any concerns, and reaches behind herself to palm him over his shorts. 

Awake—he’s so fucking awake—he shudders and takes her arm to draw her down for a kiss instead. Chrissy, apparently not-so-satisfied with that, slides her body down so the heat is transferred through the thin fabric of his boxers, and God, how could he have ever thought about going back to sleep?

“You sure?” he mumbles, though that feels like a formality when she’s wresting herself out of his hold to shove his shorts down. 

“Uh-huh.” She lifts enough to take his hand and put it between her legs, where he discovers she’s more than ready for him. The pieces click into place—she’d gotten up to use the bathroom, and had taken the lube, and boy, howdy, he’s really thankful for gay dudes in West Hollywood.

They’re going to need more eventually, though; maybe he can source some on the road.

Leaving his fingers where they are, Eddie presses the heel of his hand against her pussy, pleased when she shivers and squeezes her thighs tight to his torso. There’s no guarantee of orgasm with her, but the angle is one he’s learning she likes. 

“Good girl,” he says, and she preens, rocking her hips against his palm, eyes fluttering closed as her head falls back. 

In his heart of hearts, he’d love to turn on the lamp and see her better. Strip her out of his old Hellfire shirt and run his hands over every inch of her body. However, he’s bided his time on so many things that a few more won’t kill him. It’s not like he’s settling for a consolation prize in the dim glow of the red light of his amp, buzzing on the shelf alongside his duffel, which is half-packed and ready to leave her behind. 

There’s a surreality to the notion that she’s not traveling with him. That in a few hours, he’ll be back on the highway, putting miles beneath the tires without her at his side, asking him questions about where they’re going or where they’ve been. Without her umpteenth iteration of the license plate game (“now only look for ones with the letter Z”). Without the press of her frigid little feet against his calves at night or the smile that breaks across her sleepy face when he brings her coffee in the morning. 

Without the opportunity to kiss her whenever he needs the reassurance that she’s there. 

Eddie used to think he preferred the solitude; now he knows he’d only been passing the time until she arrived. 

Chrissy’s touch draws him out of his head. A slow stroke up his shaft that pulls a groan from his throat, back arching as his toes curl. “Jesus, sweetheart.” 

She grins, white teeth catching a hint of that red glow. “You’re welcome.” 

He loves it when she gets smug. Loves that she knows she can. Rewards it by pressing his thumb against her clit, fluctuating the pressure until she whines. “You were saying, shitbird?” 

Her thigh tenses below his other palm, corded muscles squeezing as she hitches a breath. “You’re welcome…” she repeats, leaning forward, bracing both hands on his chest. “Eddie…” 

“I’m welcome. Gimme a kiss, huh?” 

She drops her forehead to his, grinding their bones with bullheaded aggression. Unfortunately, that causes her hand to leave his dick, as the angle would be challenging from that new position.

Speaking of said position, he kisses her nose, then makes an offer he hopes she can’t refuse. “You want to stay there?” 

Chrissy swallows hard enough that it’s audible, then nods. 

Which, okay, this could be a fun game, and Eddie’s not averse to trying something new. “Sorry, what was that? Couldn’t hear you.” 

An indignant little huff, followed by another “Eddie,” tinged with a pout. 

The thing is, though, he knows that voice. That’s her make me voice. He shifts so he’s rubbing a circle around her clit, not quite touching, and shrugs. “Guess I’ll flip us over.” 

“No, thank you.” 

It’s a start. “So what, then?” 

“God,” she says, and he loves the blasphemy as she mashes her nose against his neck, voice muffled against the hair plastered to his skin. “I want to stay on top, please.” 

“Sure,” he says, easy as pie, no longer teasing as he moves his hand. “You make yourself comfortable, kiddo. Take as much time as you need.” 

Using his chest for leverage, she pushes back a few inches, her hair a tangled fog shrouding them both. “So, I have to?” 

“Yeah, well, you asked, didn’t you?” 

She chews on her lip, and while he knows she knows they’re only playing, he still bites down the urge to offer her an out. Doing that would rob her of whatever hat trick her brain executes when he wrests control from its typical out-of-tune symphony and starts conducting the orchestra the way he prefers music. 

In this, he’s not sure he’s making her better, but he’s semi-confident he’s not making her worse. 

Chrissy hangs there, breathing, studying him, then leans over to grab a condom from the nightstand. This time, he doesn’t help. Just lays. Waits. Tries not to make any sudden movements while she slips it on. Worth it for the grin she gives him upon succeeding, and he laughs, drumming his fingers against her hip. 

“Good job,” he offers.

She smiles. Scoots back up, then bites her lip in consternation as she’s forced to reckon with the entry angle. It’s a struggle, and after she uses the lube on him, she finds that her newly slick palm has trouble with purchase as she tries to position herself. 

Eddie fights the impulse to help. Instead, he drives her to distraction with his hand between her legs while placing the other behind his head. Casual. Aloof. Absolutely full of shit, sure, but it keeps him still and placid as she solves her own problems. 

In the end, she gets there. Gets him there, actually. Holding the base of his dick in the circle of her thumb and forefinger, she eases herself back, and oh, Jesus, the moment she captures him. Takes him inch by agonizing inch, face twisted the way it was the first time, as if she’s expecting a gut punch that’s not coming. 

“Fuck, sweetheart,” he says, drinking in the sight of her as she sinks down on him. 

Chrissy tenses, which shoots a bolt of pleasure through to the top of his spine. “Am I doing it right?” 

“Yeah. Such a good girl.” 

She hums, pleased, and takes him deeper. Holds herself still when she needs to, her mouth forming words she won’t say as she digs her nails into his chest. Eddie twitches and grins when her body settles against his pelvis. Strokes her clit as praise falls from his lips, and she laughs. Tells him he’s being too nice before lifting her hips up, then sinking down, and God, he loves her. 

There’s no finesse to her movement. No natural rhythm as she sets a hesitant pace, awkward and unsure, clearly more concerned with how he feels about it than her own pleasure. Like hell he’ll point that out, though—she’ll get in her damn head about it—so he does what he can to get her off instead. Two fingers in his mouth, then pressed to her body, rubbing in time with a song only he can hear, hoping the rhythm allows her to match him. 

To his surprise, it works. Her body picks up his beat, and they move together, chasing twin outcomes as her self-consciousness dissipates. It’s hard to say what’s going on behind closed eyes and parted lips, of course, but judging by how she lets herself go—head falling back, hips rolling swift and steady—he thinks she’s probably good. Maybe even getting there, allowing him to relax a second and enjoy that he’s close and she’s close, although not quite close enough. Needs more friction, more heat, more of something he’s not sure he can get with her running the show.

“I gotta move, Chrissy, okay?” 

“Sure,” she says, voice breathier than usual, that pipsqueak chirp of hers driving him to distraction. 

Shifting his weight, Eddie plants his feet, thrusting up while she’s grinding down. A lot of effort, but worth it when his body responds in kind, flinging him ever closer to his climax. 

It doesn’t take long to get there after that, and he drags Chrissy’s hand over his mouth to bite her palm when he comes, mindful that Wayne is sleeping one wall away. 

Chrissy giggles when he bites her. Fucking giggles because she’s a secret vampire, maybe, and has no compunctions about taking a chunk out of him whenever she wants. And, hey, turnabout’s fair play, baby, so he licks the salt on her skin as he slumps against the bed, spent and satisfied.

Only, not totally satisfied, because she hasn’t come yet. He fights through the post-orgasmic bliss and resumes his ministrations. Only she stops him. Pushes his hand away and says, “Don’t, Eddie.” 

“Ah, c’mon. You’re close, aren’t you?” His voice is an insistent slur, and he kisses the center of her bitten palm. 

“Yes, but I don’t want to.” Keeping a firm hold of his wrist, she pins his arm to his stomach and stretches her torso over his. 

He’s still inside her, making a discussion somewhat tricky for his addled brain. Orgasms have a tendency to turn him stupid. “Don’t want to?” He echoes, dull and confused, as his fingers twitch against his abdomen, cocooned in their prison of cotton and skin. 

“Well. No. I do want to.” 

That doesn’t help a bit, and he lets loose a grunt of frustration. “Chrissygirl…” 

“I want one, but I want to wait until you come back. I want to save it up.” 

Eddie blinks. Frowns. Brushes some hair from her shoulder, then cups her cheek. “It’s uh… they’re not a finite resource.” 

Chrissy rolls her eyes, which is one of her five cutest faces. Maybe top three. “I know that.” 

“Then why?” 

“Because. Can you make a rule about it?” 

That shouldn’t be as hot as it is, but every time she asks him to set a boundary, something primal and terrible starts dancing around the campfire in the caveman settlement of his subconscious. He’s a pig for that, probably, but he’s her pig, and he’s not forcing it on her. She’s asking. “You want me to tell you that you can’t come?” 

“Yes. Like I’m not allowed. Like you did on your birthday.” 

Jesus Christ. Eddie swallows. “Okay. So, uh, you’re not allowed to get off until I come home.” 

The words sound chauvinistic enough to make him inwardly cringe, but Chrissy just smiles. Kisses him and asks, “Can I touch myself, though?” 

Eddie’s soul has temporarily vacated its earthly husk, leaving him no moral compass, so he picks a direction and goes for it. “Yeah. That’s a rule, too. Every night until you’re almost there, but you can’t get off. Okay?” 

She shivers, and his poor, softening dick gives a twitch. He’ll fold like a house of cards if she says no, but she just shrugs and studies him before saying, “Are you going to jerk off while you’re gone?” 

Another tricky question, and she presses her face to the crook of his neck before he can get a read on what she wants. “Uh. No?” 

“Actually, you have to,” she mumbles, and the surety of her response sets him laughing. 

He tugs his hand free, wrapping both arms around her, rocking from side to side until she laughs, too. 

“I have to, huh?” He kisses the side of her scalp. “Who’s making the rules here, anyway?” 

She lifts her head like he’s being irrational. “Eddie. Be serious.” 

“Okay, okay,” he says, crossing his eyes as un-seriously as possible. “I guess I’ll jerk off every night, only I get to finish.” 

“Yes.” Her nails dig into the jowls of the monster she hates on his left pec, hard enough to leave crescent moons behind. “That’s exactly what has to happen.” 

“Has to, huh?” 

“It’s important.” 

Bugs fucking Bunny scheming in her head, he swears to God, but if it’ll make her happy, well, call him Elmer Fudd. “If it’s important. But listen, when I come home, you’re getting an orgasm every night. No matter how hard we have to work. Even if you want me to stop.” 

She squirms, and his poor dick gives another abortive pulse. He could fall asleep that way, he really could. Wake up stuck to her in the morning. Knowing Chrissy, she’d love how gross that feeling can be. “Even if I really, really can’t?” 

“Yeah. Especially if you really, really can’t,” he says, as though that’s anything more than an idle threat. 

“Okay. Yes. I have to.” 

“Attagirl.” 

He tightens his hold, and there’s silence for a moment. Her breathing evens, and he assumes she’s fallen asleep when she breathes an “Eddie?” 

“Mmm?” 

“Do you think your uncle heard us?” 

She says it as though it’s only recently become a consideration, and while Eddie won’t lie to her, he’s not above fibbing for the sake of her sanity. Besides, it’s not like Wayne and Val haven’t been audible once or twice in the years Eddie’s been occupying the trailer. 

“Nah, kiddo. He’s a really heavy sleeper.” 

They need to leave by eleven to make it to Indianapolis in time for Eddie to put some miles under his tires before nightfall. Dispatch has him headed to Pennsylvania, and Chrissy wants to punch a wall when she hears it. Whose stupid idea was it for her to stay behind, anyway? 

Right. Hers. Her stupid idea. The actual worst one she’s ever had, save maybe for marrying Jason. 

Eddie’s packing while she sits on the bed, cross-legged in his shirt and her jeans, cupping the lukewarm mug of coffee she’s been nursing since Wayne made a pot around eight. He didn’t look at her funny when she took it from him, which she hopes means he heard nothing untoward during the night. It would be awful if he had, considering he’d taken them out to eat the evening before, and even paid. She wouldn’t be so concerned if Eddie were around to run interference, but she and Wayne will be cohabitating the trailer for the next couple of weeks, and she really doesn’t want to upset that apple cart. 

Picking up a t-shirt from the floor, Eddie sniffs it, then sticks it in his duffel. They never got around to doing all their laundry. A few days go by fast when raiding apartments and talking to the cops. 

“You can leave your dirty stuff,” she says. “I can take it to the laundromat.”

“If I left all my dirty stuff, I’d be driving naked.” 

“That’d be alright. Or, no. Nevermind. Only if I’m there.” 

He grins and bends down to kiss her, which marks approximately the three hundredth such kiss since getting up. She doesn’t mind; they both need to build a strategic reserve of affection. “Noted. Can I have something of yours to take with me?” 

“Um, I guess? Why?” 

“I dunno. Call it a token.” 

It’s a sweet request, and she spins out a few ideas as he wrestles with the stuck top drawer of his bureau. 

“Like, something sexy?” She needs to narrow it down so her offer can win the prize for an A+, gold star girlfriend who definitely isn’t messing up her boyfriend’s life by staying behind to battle the dark while he goes on an adventure without her. 

Eddie says it won’t be an adventure—says he’ll be bored and missing her—but she can’t help feeling nostalgic for things that haven’t even happened to him yet. 

“If you want me to have something sexy, then yeah.” He tugs a t-shirt out of the drawer and holds it up. “What do you think?” 

The shirt is four sizes too small, with the logo for Hawkins Junior High on the breast. 

“Why do you have that?” 

“Dunno. Forgot, honestly.” He tosses it to her, and she can either drop the coffee or let it hit her in the head. She chooses the latter. “My gift to you.” 

“Gee, thanks.” She puts the shirt beside her, then scrunches up her nose. “You… can have my peach hat.” 

“No shit?” 

“No shit. Here—” She sets down her mug and goes to the shopping bag where she’d stuffed the things that wouldn’t fit in her suitcase. The peach hat is near the bottom, alongside some undeveloped film canisters, and when her fingers graze the black plastic, she gets a thought. 

“Badass,” he says when she hands the hat to him, tugging it over his curls. He looks ridiculous; she hopes he wears it every day. 

She holds up the film. “Can we drop these off on the way?” 

“Yeah, totally. There’s a place near the… oh, hey. Idea.”

“What idea?” 

“Surprise. Related surprise.” 

“Eddie!”

“Dude, wait an hour. Have you seen my deodorant?” 

“Um. It’s… yes. Shelf behind the toilet. I used it after my shower.” 

“Whoa.” He’s on her in an instant, even as she clamps her arms to her side. “Lemme smell.” 

“What? No!” she squeaks, then lets him do it anyway.

She’s weirdly going to miss his dumb armpit thing, too.

Post-sniff, he returns to packing, after which he takes his bag to the van. Wayne’s waiting to say goodbye, and while Chrissy knows this is neither the first nor last time Eddie has left his uncle, she still feels strange about intruding on their moment. She makes herself scarce, hopping into the passenger side while they talk in low tones, heads bowed as they smoke their respective cigarettes on the screened porch. 

Soon enough, though, there’s a brief, one-armed hug, and Eddie’s getting in on his side of the van while Wayne hangs out near the window. 

“See you in a couple weeks, old man,” he says before they go.

Eddie’s said some variation of that phrase about a dozen times since she decided to stay. Only a couple of weeks. Like it’s a mantra, and his coming home for Christmas is a talisman warding off the truth: life will continue beyond his holiday break. At some point, he will have to go back on the road, and there’s no guarantee Chrissy can go with him. They don’t know what the lawyer will say, what Jason will do, or what unseen potholes lie in wait to send them veering onto the shoulder. 

Plus, Chrissy’s not so sure she likes this life made of hellos and goodbyes. Not so sure Eddie does, either, but can’t push him yet. She wants to have the conversation—needs to—but a part of her is still afraid of coming to an impasse. 

The photo place is in a strip mall beside the studio where the Cunninghams used to have their Christmas card photos done. Sears wasn’t classy enough for her mother, so every July, they’d stuff themselves into itchy, matching sweaters and pose like marionettes, forced to sweat under hot lights for an hour while Laura berated them for not looking happy enough.

The result was always perfectly pleasant—fine for friends and family—but the unhappiness beneath those puppeteered grins would bleed black if anyone sliced it through.

Eddie parks, and they go in, where Chrissy deposits all her film on the counter. The clerk doesn’t bat an eye at the volume but says there’s no way he can get them all done in an hour. 

“That’s okay.” She eyes the board listing fees. An hour’s too expensive, anyway. “A couple days?” 

“Sure.” He sweeps the film into a bin and then hands her a claim slip to fill out. 

“Do we pay now?” Eddie asks as the clerk rips the slip in half, giving Chrissy her portion. 

“On pickup.” 

“Ah.” He drops a hand to the small of Chrissy’s back and keeps it there as they head into the sunshine, which feels incongruous against the gloom settling on her with every passing minute. “I, uh, you should know I left you some money.” 

She frowns, squirming worms poking their way into her gut. “Eddie…” 

“No, stop. I mean, I love you, but no. It’s a couple hundred bucks in my sock drawer. You need gas, food, whatever, use it. And uh, with the lawyer… Wayne’s got my checkbook.”

They haven’t talked much about the lawyer, only that Wayne knows a guy who knows a guy who’d be willing to talk to Chrissy about her case. She didn’t expect the conversation to come in a parking lot with her rubbing her freezing hands against her jeans, wishing she’d worn gloves, but there they are. 

“Eddie, that’s too much.” 

“It’s not. Besides, you don’t have a ton of other options, from where I’m standing.” 

She squeezes her lips together, tears sparking bright behind her eyes, though she blinks them back. He’s right, of course. Lawyers cost money, and without his help, she’d have no way of caring for herself. Much as she loves him, that doesn’t sit well. She never again wants to be in a position where her only choice is to rely on the man in her life. 

“Thank you. But I’m going to pay you back.” 

“You don’t have to.” 

“Yes, I do.” 

He considers her, then nods, hugging her against his side. “Sure, sweetheart. Whenever you can. C’mon, though, we got another stop to make.” 

“We do?”

He takes her by the hand, tugging her across the parking lot, then the street, to the video game arcade, a place she’s never been and never wanted to be. When Eddie leads her in, she instantly understands that her instincts were correct. It’s awful—loud, chaotic, blinking and blaring, like biting down on tinfoil. 

Eddie is a man on a mission, though, and drags her through row upon row of slack-jawed kids staring at screens, into the rear corner where a small, red-curtained booth awaits. There’s a similar one at the mall, and she laughs when she sees it. 

“I don’t have any photos of you,” he says, pulling back the curtain. “This is the quickest way to get some. Go on.” 

“What? Not by myself.” She yanks on his hand to pull him with her. “No way. Get in here.” 

“Gross, no, I’m not jerking off to myself for—” 

“God, Eddie.” She gives his thigh a swat, which makes him laugh his dumbest laugh as he slides onto the bench beside her. “You’re ridiculous.” 

“I’m saying!”

“Put your thumb over your face or something,” she says as primly as she can manage before her giggles get the better of her. 

“Perv,” he shoots back, then pushes a button on the machine and fishes in his wallet for a couple of dollars, which seems extortionate for a few photos. 

The screen comes to life, the camera trained on them, and there they are. Eddie and Chrissy. It’s the first time she’s seen them together from an impartial, outside view, and the sight of his slight bedhead and her makeup-less face is startling, but she doesn’t completely hate it. 

“Huh,” she says as a five-second countdown begins. 

“What?” 

“Nothing. Come here.” 

The first flash illuminates the booth as she kisses him. For the second, she turns forward while he smooches her cheek. The third, funny ears. The fourth, funny faces. As for the fifth? Well, that’s just nice. Smiles and a hug, and God, she’s really going to miss him so much. 

“Let’s do another,” she says as soon as the machine switches off. “I want one, too.” 

“There’s a million photos of me on the film that dude’s developing.” 

“That’s you, not us.”

She can’t spell out why it’s important to have both, but it doesn’t matter. Eddie pays for a second set without further explanation, and they collect both strips from the tray outside the booth. Chrissy only glances, and that’s almost too much. The look Eddie’s giving her in the cheek-kiss picture is enough that she might not let him leave after all.

That wouldn’t be fair, though, so she puts one foot in front of the other. Gets into the van and spends her time looking out the window to avoid studying Eddie as they head for the city. Traffic is light, to her dismay, and as they pull into the depot and park three rows away from Smaug (Smaug! God, she misses the truck), Eddie says he thinks it might snow soon. 

“If it does, don’t drive until they salt the roads,” he says as he cuts the engine. “Wayne can help you with snow tires if it gets bad. But uh, she’s a bitch, so if you can avoid driving her any more than you have to, you’ll be happier.” 

Chrissy doesn’t care about the van; it’s a vehicle like any other. “Okay, sure. Can I come over and see Smaug?” 

Eddie obliges, and they cross the parking lot to where the truck is waiting. Trailer-less, he looks cold and lonely, his flat glass windows asking where they’ve been, and it’s so silly, but she feels as though she owes him an apology for not joining this part of the journey. 

“Hi,” she says, placing her palm against the metal. “Be good for Eddie, huh?” 

“She’s always good,” he says. “Until she’s not.” 

Chrissy refuses to spend the few minutes they have left together debating Smaug’s gender (besides, Eddie is wrong), so she turns, leaning on the door he’s making no move to unlock. “Can I have one of your magazines?” 

“Th—uh, the porn?” 

“Yes.” 

He grins, then nudges her out of the way to open the musty cab, which smells mostly like him, but there’s some of her there, too. Once she’s in, she pats Liddy, the dashboard dog, who watches her with shiny, black eyes, saddened by her impending absence, she’s sure. 

Debating between the bunk and the passenger seat, she decides on the latter, as lying down feels like an invitation, and if she takes it, she might not get up again. 

“You leave anything back here you want?” he asks from the cabin. 

“Uh-uh. Everything’s at the house.” This isn’t one hundred percent true—there are things she’d like eventually—but she figures Eddie could use the extra blanket, at least. 

“Cool.” He rummages while she pulls her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around her legs, blinking rapidly because she is a grown-up making a grown-up choice so she doesn’t get to cry and make him feel like shit about it. “Here.” 

He hands her the cheerleader magazine, which is creased from where she rolled onto it while they were kissing. That’s followed by his copies of Fellowship and Return of the King, which he holds out like an offering. “I figure you’ll need these. Or, well, you’re gonna need the last one, and I don’t like having them separated.” 

It’s sound logic, but she can’t bring herself to take the books from him. “They’re yours… I don’t—your mom…” 

“They’re meant to be read. And I’ll be back soon, Chrissygirl,” he says like he’s convincing himself, leaning against the passenger seat and balancing the pile atop her knees. “There. Now you have to rescue them.” 

Chrissy straightens, placing the books on her lap, and bites her lip. “Thank you.” 

“Sure.” He takes a deep breath. “Fuck.” 

“Yeah. Fuck.” She hugs him around the waist, squishing her face into the soft parts of his torso. “I love you. You have to go. You can’t…” 

“I know.” He runs both hands through her hair, then tips her head so she’s looking up at him. “I’ll call you tonight, okay?” 

“Yes, please.” 

“And you’re going to take care of Wayne for me?” 

She laughs. Sniffs. Banishes her tears to the burning place. “Okay.” 

“Can I walk you to the van?” 

It would be easy to say yes, but she doesn’t think she can stand it, so she shakes her head. Tucks her prizes under her arm and forces a smile. “Just walk me out?” 

Eddie nods. Follows her out of the truck and hugs her so tight she can’t breathe. Long arms linked behind her back, holding her against his chest. “It’ll be good, shitbird,” he says after a few quick breaths, his fingers toying with the ends of her hair. “You’re sick of me, yeah?” 

“You’re sick of me.” 

“No way.” He kisses her forehead. Her nose. The place to the left of her mouth. “You got cash on you?” 

“Um… maybe?” She has loose change from various truck stops, but that doesn’t amount to much.

He relinquishes his hold to tug out his wallet, then tucks a twenty into the back pocket of her jeans. When she protests, he shakes his head and squeezes her hip. “Just in case the bitch causes trouble on the drive home.” 

“Thank you.” She fiddles with the hem of his shirt, and now that they’ve come to the last moment, she doesn’t know how to walk away. “I, ah…” 

“I know,” he says, so she doesn’t have to. “I’ll see you in ten days.” 

Ten days sounds better than two weeks, and she smiles. Nods. Touches his collar. Brushes her lips against his in an approximation of a kiss because a real one might be the end of her. “Okay. I’m gonna go. I’m…yeah.” 

He catches her hand as she turns. Squeezes hard, then pulls her around, bending so they’re at eye level. “Don’t let anyone tell you who you are, alright? You tell them.” 

She laughs, a bright peal that bounces off Smaug’s shiny red paint and back toward her. “I won’t. I promise.” 

“Good girl.” He straightens, then tucks some hair behind her ear. “See you, sweetheart.” 

“Bye,” she says and makes it so. Crosses the lot, marching double time, terrified to look back. 

When she reaches the van, she lets herself in and starts the engine, which sputters like an old man with emphysema before rumbling to life. Only then does she turn toward the truck to find Eddie gone. Inside the cab, presumably, and she understands instinctively why neither of them wants to wave the other off. 

She puts the bitch in gear and rolls forward, getting a feel for her as she leaves the lot without a backward glance. 

She’s halfway back to Hawkins when reality hits her, bringing a tsunami of tears. 

“God,” she manages around a choked wheeze, pulling the van onto the shoulder of the mercifully quiet highway before scrambling across the console and out the passenger door.

When she pukes, it’s on asphalt, with mere seconds to spare. And while it’s not self-induced, she’s spent years conditioning her body to respond to stress and anger with vomit and bile. Training herself to purge away pain, so there she is, sprawled on grit that’s grinding into her palms as she half-chokes, half-sobs her way through the misery of missing him and the terror of being on her own.

That’s what it is, really. Terror. Terror at being left, terror at being home, terror at kicking off the security blanket she’s found in Eddie’s presence.

But isn’t that the point? Isn’t that why she asked to stay behind? Not to snivel on the side of the road but to stand and face the monsters that made her. 

Eddie would hug her. Cajole her. Call her Chrissygirl, sweetheart, kiddo, and coax her to her feet. 

Chrissy’s not nearly so considerate with herself. 

“You’re being ridiculous,” she says, standing on legs of quivering goo. “It’s fine. He’s calling you tonight.” 

Of that, she is sure. He will call, and they’ll talk, and while it will be hard to hang up, they’ll manage. Then, not tomorrow, but the next day, she’ll meet the lawyer, with whom she’ll speak her piece. Ask for what she wants while giving Jason the nothing he deserves.

Not long after that, Eddie will come home, and she’ll need to tell him about everything she’s accomplished in his absence.

Chapter Text

A glass sculpture of a bird sits on the sill of the window behind the lawyer’s desk. Its feathers catch the light, filtering it into rainbows. One of those rainbows is shimmering, gossamer and fleeting, on Chrissy’s thumb. She turns her hand so it slips across each knuckle, thinking it might be nice to live like that bird for a while, instead of on this side of the desk.

The lawyer is perfectly pleasant, though. He introduced himself as Bill, asked a few questions, and now he’s getting a second cup of coffee for Wayne while Chrissy plays with rainbows.

She can’t quite believe Wayne has come with her. Isn’t entirely sure how it happened. All she knows is that his quiet insistence on accompanying her had been so polite, so stoic, that she hadn’t fully realized what she was agreeing to until she was sitting in the passenger seat of his truck while an old Waylon Jennings song played on the radio. 

“I’ve met Bill before,” was the first reason he gave. 

“Makes sense for me to be there since I’ve got the checkbook,” was his second.

“No need for you to wrestle that damned van. Might get icy,” was his third. 

So there Wayne sits, in his worn jeans and flannel shirt, at ten o’clock in the morning on the day Chrissy plans to file for divorce. Has to file because she intends to tell Eddie that she’s done so when he calls, and she prefers having a plan for their increasingly awkward conversations.

He has called her every night since he left, and she’d swear his voice sounds tinnier each time. It’s irrational—far away is far away—but some part of her genuinely believes that the further he goes, the less she can hear him. 

“Alright,” says Bill, handing Wayne his coffee and settling behind the desk. “Let’s get this going.” 

Bill doesn’t look like any TV lawyer or even her parents’ lawyer. Rather than a suit and tie, he’s wearing a long-sleeved grey sweater with jeans and sneakers. He has a comb-over, a weak chin, and a kind smile. Age-wise, he’s probably on par with Wayne, give or take a few years, and while he’s not the family lawyer who helped with Eddie’s custody case, he’s a friend. Went to law school with the family guy, apparently. 

Unlike that lawyer, though, Bill specializes in divorce, so today, he specializes in Chrissy.

After studying a page in the open folder on his desk, Bill folds his hands and looks at her. “Right, so. The good news for you is that Indiana’s a no-fault state. When we file, I’m guessing our best option is to say that your differences were irreconcilable.” 

Irreconcilable differences. Chrissy has heard that phrase somewhere before. On television or in a movie. That’s certainly one way of putting it. “Do I have to be more specific?” 

“Not particularly.” Bill taps the paper. “It’s a short form. Things get more complicated with a lot of assets, and they get downright difficult with kids, but you two haven’t been married long, and you’re still young. It’s cut-and-dry.”

Cut-and-dry. Another laughable phrase. Bill ought to be a comedian because he’s inadvertently coming close to cracking her up. “Oh. Good. How um… how long will it take?” 

“Once he signs, there’s a ninety-day waiting period in case you change your mind. So the sooner we can get him the papers—” 

“What if he doesn’t sign?” Her index finger brushes her thumb, but she doesn’t dig in. Doesn’t scratch. Doesn’t want Eddie coming home to a mess of raw meat where her nailbed ought to be. 

“Is that a concern?” 

“Yes. He’s not… he doesn’t like being embarrassed.” 

“Well, now, that makes things thornier but not impossible. If he refuses to sign, we’ll get a preliminary hearing before a judge. That’ll get us a court order, which forces him to comply. If he still wants to play games, that puts him in contempt, which is a bag of cats I guarantee you he won’t want to wrestle.” 

That all sounds lengthy. Expensive. Chrissy’s left temple throbs, and her eyes flick to the rainbow before she clears her throat. “How long would that take?” 

“Depends on the case. Believe me, though—it’s gonna be in his best interest to sign and move on with his life. Any decent lawyer he talks to will advise the same.” Bill makes a note on the form, then taps his pen against it. “No shared property?” 

“No. His father was paying our rent.” 

“Debts?” 

“I don’t think so. He…his dad…” 

“Sure, he was bankrolling things. Car payment, anything like that?” 

“No. His dad bought my car, too.” She stops short, frowning. The car is hers—one of the few things she owns of actual value, with the title in her name and everything. Sure, she feels bad about dumping it at a Kentucky truck stop, but she wouldn’t mind having her own mode of transportation. “Actually, can I ask for the car?” 

“You can. Might complicate things.” 

“I’m pretty sure his name isn’t on the title.”

“Huh.” Bill scribbles something down. “We’ll see. Is it a deal breaker?” 

“Not… no.” But maybe, says the blue skirt voice. 

“You share a bank account with him?” 

“Sort of, but I never had a checkbook or anything. He’d just give me cash.” 

He lets out a low whistle. “And when’d you leave?” 

“Um, early November.” 

“And you’ve been in Indiana since you left?” 

Chrissy almost says no, but self-preservation kicks in, and she dodges the question instead. “Does it matter?” 

“Yes, and no—best if you’re residing in the state where you want the divorce.” 

“She’s been staying with us,” Wayne says as he sets his mug on the desk. “She and my nephew went to school together. Stayed pretty good friends these past few years.” 

The lie is so clean that Chrissy almost believes it. Why yes, of course, she’s been living in the trailer since early November. No, she hasn’t been crossing every single state line. There’s no wishy-washiness to be had because Wayne will vouch for her. 

“Great,” says Bill. “Let me get that address.” 

Wayne gives it while she studies him from the corner of her eye. Upon first meeting him, she had difficulty seeing the family resemblance. He’s quiet where Eddie is verbose, solemn where Eddie is sunshine, calm where Eddie is a cacophony. But she sees what binds them now—their loyalty. Their solidity. Their surety in what is right and what they’re willing to stick their necks out for. 

This man doesn’t know her, not really, only that she is someone important to someone he loves. That’s enough to drive him to protect her.

She can see why Eddie adores him so much. 

“And you’re sure you only want the car?” Bill asks once he has the address. “We could get you support. Alimony..” 

“I don’t want his money. I just want out. As quickly as possible.” 

“Lucky for you, this is the most open and shut case I’ve had in a minute. I can get this wrapped up and”—he studies her, eyes narrowed, then nods—“I’m gonna go ahead and guess you’d rather I have him served, as opposed to bringing the papers to him yourself.” 

“Served?” she echoes. 

“Means I hire someone to bring him the documentation and verify he got it. It’s a way of guaranteeing that he can’t claim he never saw things later, if we have to go to court.” 

“Oh. Yes. Do that.” A small, petty part of her likes the idea of taking Jason by surprise. Ruining his day with a knock on the door, the same way he ruined so many of hers with a knock to her jaw. Sure, he knows she’s back in town, but she doesn’t think he’ll see this coming. Doesn’t think he has the imagination to fathom the thought that she might ask for what she wants. 

“With any luck, we’ll have this whole thing wrapped up by Christmas, and all you’ll have to do is grit your teeth and get through the waiting period.” 

The idea of still being technically married to Jason for three months makes her want to pull her fingernails out by the roots. It’s hard to say whether that’s because of the Jason of it all, or the Eddie-less-ness that the wait will necessitate. Bill’s warning about residency has scared her; she knows she can’t go on the road until things are final. Settled. Eddie, meanwhile, has to work, meaning that the gaping maw of a wound carved within her by his absence will get infected. Rot away. Kill her, maybe. 

“So she could be done and dusted by April?” Wayne asks, snapping her back to the here and now.

“Provided he signs quickly, yes.” 

Chrissy doesn’t know whether or not Jason will sign. Likely, he’ll run to his father, who will consult his own lawyer. Hopefully, that lawyer will have the sense to say that life will be simpler if Jason agrees to her sole demand rather than turn it into a fight. After all, the more fuss he makes, the more chance there is of scandal. Judgement. 

If he signs the papers, Jason can tell his own story. If he fights her, Chrissy has every intention of telling hers. 

“Thank you,” she says around the lump forming in her throat. “For explaining everything to me and… and taking the case.” 

“Like I said, open and shut, Ms. Carver. Here’s hoping the biggest hassle you’ll have is dealing with the state in changing your name back.” 

The notion that she might want Cunningham back, legally, startles her. Getting rid of it had been the best part of her marriage, and the only positive connection she has with the name is that Eddie has claimed it as one of her million and five rotating nicknames. She doesn’t mind it when he says it; she can almost remove it from its origins. Still, she has no desire to be officially tied to it, either. C-surnames have historically done nothing for her, so maybe she’ll just stick with Carver until the day she swaps it for an M on her monogram. 

Bill has a few more questions to ask, and she has some things to sign, but soon, she and Wayne are stepping into the bright, blustery afternoon, leaving the nondescript office block behind them. 

“Y’alright?” Wayne asks as they cross to the parking lot. 

“Yes, thank you.” The meeting wasn’t half so scary as she expected, and the process is straightforward enough that she can understand it, which helps, considering ignorance was driving most of her fear.

He gives her a taciturn nod, fishing his cigarettes from his coat pocket. Eddie must have learned how to smoke from watching him, with two taps of the pack, a cigarette between the index and middle fingers, hunching at a specific angle to light it out of the wind, with one quick, aggrieved drag to get things going. 

“Would you mind stopping at the photo lab on the way back?” she asks once they’re in the truck, rubbing her hands together to warm them as Wayne starts the engine. She ought to invest in some gloves. “Won’t be five minutes—I’m just picking up.” 

“Mm-hmm.” He fiddles with the radio, then reverses. “Where’s that, now?” 

She tells him, and soon enough, she’s paying for a giant stack of envelopes containing every photo she’s taken in a month and a half, which feels like enough for a lifetime.

“Those’re all yours?” Wayne asks when she returns to the truck.

“They are. I bought a camera at a thrift store—figured I ought to document the experience.” 

“Huh.” 

Chrissy is growing comfortable with Wayne’s muted responses; he simply speaks when he has something to say. 

At the trailer, Wayne retreats to his tiny bedroom while she goes to Eddie’s, settling in front of the long, built-in counter along the back wall. She leaves the door open a crack in case the phone rings, then opens the topmost envelope and pulls out a stack of photographs.

Every single one is a ghostly ruin, with white light bleeding in at the edges. Some have faded to a pinkish red, others a purple-blue. None have been spared, and as she flips through photo after photo, she realizes that her thrift store bargain was too good to be true.

This explains why the clerk in the photo place had given her a discount; she’d thought he was just being nice. 

Instead of being upset, however, Chrissy is enamored of the curious, cloudy impressions her broken camera has captured. Rather than spoiling the photos, the light leaks have made them far more interesting than any simple snapshot. There’s a depth to them, a story. Places and people blurred and tucked behind the scattered orbs. 

Working through the stack, she makes two piles: the little things, and Eddie.

Eddie on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum, his body obscured by a blue-white flash while a group of pigeons waddle around his feet.

Eddie on a street corner, mugging at her with his eyes bugged out and his tongue lolling from his slack-jawed mouth. 

Eddie in the driver’s seat, scowling, a cigarette hanging from his lips while the light from the windshield is distorted and blown out, making it look as though he’s driving into the center of the sun. If Chrissy recalls, his mood was related to a traffic jam they’d been stuck in for nearly an hour, causing them to arrive late at their day’s destination, costing him money and time. 

God, she misses those moments like the fragments of a half-forgotten dream. 

Wayne knocks on the bedroom door not long after she finishes her stacks. Turning, she finds him hovering with a cardboard box in his hands.

“Hi. Um. Come in?” 

Inviting him into a room in his own home feels odd, but he seems to expect it, stepping in and setting the box on Eddie’s bed. 

“How’d your pictures turn out?” 

“Oh…” She gestures at the piles. “The camera’s broken, but I like how they look.” 

He stands over her shoulder and studies the topmost photos. “Hmm. Well, I brought, ah… ” He indicates the box. “Figured you might want to fuss around.” 

Curious, Chrissy crosses to the bed. Inside the box is an old Nikon camera, two lenses, and a bag to hold them all. She doesn’t consider herself a photography expert by any stretch of the imagination, but she has that book, so she knows Nikon is a good brand, and any camera with removable lenses is an upgrade from the fixed lens she possesses. 

“Oh, wow.” She lifts the heavy metal body from the box and studies it. “You don’t mind?” 

“Ain’t messed with it in a dog’s age.” 

“But you used to?” Turning the camera over in her hands, she finds his initials scratched neatly into the casing. 

“Mmm.” 

“Do you still have any of your photographs?” 

Wayne hesitates, his expression inscrutable, then nods. 

“No kidding? I’d love to take a look.” 

Eddie desperately needs to invest in warmer gloves. Full-on can’t feel his fingers as he steps back into the warmth of an Iowa truck stop, stamping his snow-covered boots on the mat and blowing on his hands. 

Smaug—God, he can’t believe he’s calling the truck that, too—has been gassed and parked in a far corner, and he’s in search of dinner before he calls it a night. First, though, he needs quarters and company, and approaches the clerk with a five-dollar bill. 

That gets him three dollars in change, which is not enough for the conversation he’d like to have with Chrissy, but it’s what he has to work with. Taking the money, he wedges between the flimsy panels constituting privacy dividers for the payphones lining the far wall. 

At least the phones are inside here. That wasn’t the case last night.

Eddie deposits a quarter, then dials, thumping his foot against the floor while it rings. 

“Eddie?” 

Chrissy’s voice is breathless, which makes sense since hearing her gives him the goddamn breath of life. Which, alright, that’s sappy motherfucker shit, but he misses the hell out of her, so sue him.

“Hey, sweetheart.” He rests his forehead against his forearm on the metal box, grinning. “How’d it go?” 

“Good!”

“Good, like… it’s done?” 

Her voice crackles when she answers, a warble reminding him just how far apart they are. “—yer’s really nice. He’s going to have someone serve Jason the papers, which is good, I think? But I signed everything, so once he does, too, that’s pretty much it.” 

“No shit? It’ll be done?” 

“Well, sort of. There’s a waiting period in case we change our minds.” 

“That’s dumb. How long?” 

She tells him, and Eddie kicks the wall. Three fucking months, and for what? Some bullshit about the state of Indiana deciding a woman might decide that golly, no, she does want to be with that fucklehead, and it’s best not to rush the little lady, and Jesus Christ, Eddie wants her out. Not for his own sake, even—he has no plans to pop the question, or, at least, not right away—but to see her free of the millstone that’s been around her neck since high school. 

“That’s okay,” he says instead of those things. “Not so bad.” 

“Yeah, I—” 

An automated voice tells Eddie to deposit more money. They’re fucking price gouging; he hates it. Drops two more quarters into the slot anyway, obviously. “Sorry, kiddo. I missed that.” 

“I was just saying his office had a lot of rainbows.” 

That makes little to no sense, but then, it’s Chrissy, so he’s learned to roll with it. “No kidding? And he was nice to you?” 

“Yes. Wayne went with me, which helped.” 

“Good. He said he might.” Or, rather, he and Eddie had agreed he would while saying goodbye a few days before.  

“Did you know he used to be a photographer?” 

“Oh, shit. Yeah, actually. He did it for the army during the war, I think.” Eddie hasn’t seen the camera in years, but he vaguely recalls Wayne snapping photos during events at Grandma Munson’s house, back when she and his mom were around. Before his dad became a complete shithead, when Eddie still felt he could claim something resembling a family.

“He showed me a bunch of pictures of you when you were little, and some from before you were born,” she says, as though reading his mind. “You were a cute baby.” 

“I looked like one of those troll dolls.”

“No, you didn’t!”

“My hair stood straight up, and my head was squished like a football.” 

Chrissy huffs. “A cute football. You have your dad’s nose.” 

The comment isn’t meant to be a gut punch, but it lands like one. Because yeah, of course his dad is in the photographs. There’s even a shot Eddie likes, where he’s about two, and Al’s got him on his lap, and his mom’s half in the frame, half-out, with a brightly wrapped box in her hands. He can’t remember what the gift was—doesn’t even know if it was for him—but the photo proves there was at least one decent day during the long years of his fucked up foundation.

“Eh, maybe. I dunno.” Overall, he looks more like his mother. Same curls, same eyes, same smile. Packaged a little differently, sure, but he’s glad he favors her. Wishes he had her temperament, too, instead of the million-miles-an-hour, scattered, impulsive Al-brain he’s inherited.

“No, you do. And I saw some of his earlier stuff, too. The um… like you said, when he was in Vietnam?” 

The fact that Wayne showed Chrissy those pictures is surprising; Eddie’s seen them, of course, but it’s not a part of his past that Wayne shares with many people. “Wow, yeah. He doesn’t bust those out a lot.”

Chrissy gets quiet, and he wonders where, precisely, in the trailer she’s standing. Being on the phone means she’s tied to the area between the living room and the kitchen, but they have a long cord. She could be sitting on the stool with the shortened third leg or the other one with a shabby, knitted cover. Or maybe she’s stretched the cord really far, reclining on the couch, toes pointed at the arm, one hand on her stomach. Wearing the t-shirt he gave her, he hopes, though that’s just wishful thinking.

“He saw a lot of bad stuff, huh?” she says. 

“I think so.” 

Another silence, and he can hear her breathing. “I bet he has other photos he didn’t show me.” 

“Most likely, yeah.” 

“He, um, he said I could keep the camera. Play with it. Mine’s… it’s broken.” 

“Oh, fuck. How’d that happen?” 

“Sorry, no, I meant that it’s been broken the whole time. I got the pictures back, and they’re totally blown out, like light leaked in around the edges.” 

She sounds less sorry than Eddie feels about it, and there’s no point stating what he’s always believed—that the camera was cheap for a reason, and she was lining herself up for disappointment. “That’s a fucking bummer, kiddo.” 

“It’s fine. I actually like how they look, but with Wayne’s camera, I can really practice. Get better. I’m going to buy some film tomorrow.” 

“Yeah?” Eddie wants nothing more than to buy film with her. Wants to hop in Smaug and drive through the night to surprise her in the morning. He’s not even that far away—zigging and zagging across the Midwest in some fucked-up Odyssey where dispatch only has runs that bounce him between Kansas and Kentucky. 

Honest to God, he hadn’t thought it would be this hard to be apart. Figured that sure, they’d miss each other, but they’d talk at night, and that would be enough.

It’s not enough. It’s never going to be enough. He misses her like every drop of water in the ocean misses the shore. 

The phone clicks, and the placid voice instructs him to deposit another quarter. 

“Are you there?” she asks. 

“Uh-huh. Sorry. The fucking”—he fumbles with the change and drops a coin into the slot—“the thing wanted a quarter.” 

He realizes he sounds short. Snappish. Irritated. But not with her, never with her, and he hates she might think he could be, as her voice is smaller the next time she speaks. 

“How’s Smaug?” 

“Good,” he says, not bothering to tell her that the transmission’s being shitty again. “Liddy says hi.” 

“Hi, Liddy.” Her tone blooms brighter, and he can almost hear a smile. “I’ve been reading a lot. Everyone’s hanging out at Helm’s Deep. Or, well, not everyone. Gandalf went somewhere else. Which I really wish he wouldn’t do because I just got him back.” 

Eddie smiles, shifting forward as a burly guy in a flannel shirt passes behind him. Chrissy’s been remarkably chill about Gandalf’s return, save for an initial outburst of tears that had her dampening the front of Eddie’s favorite Metallica shirt. (Not that he minded.)

“Anyway,” she continues. “I’m not sure I like their king. I get he was being brainwashed, or whatever, but… I don’t know. He’s new. I don’t trust him yet.” 

“Gandalf likes him.” 

“That’s true, I guess,” she replies, then launches into a list of her reasons for being so unsure about King Théoden. This leads to her thoughts on the Ents, her musings on the meaning of Gandalf’s being sent back, and her curiosities about Eowyn. 

Eddie feeds quarters to the phone as she chats, asking her questions just so he can listen to her responses. She sounds sleepy enough that he’s decided she must be curled on the sofa, and he’d give anything to be there with her. To read her face instead of trying to decipher her tone.

“Fuck,” he says, interrupting her when the voice implores him for the umpteenth time. “I’m out of quarters, sweetheart.” 

“Oh. Shoot. Can you get more?” 

“The clerk only had a few bucks’ worth. I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” she says, though the tremor in her tone tells him it isn’t. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow?” 

“Definitely, yes. I’m really proud of you, shitbird. I know today was hard.” 

“Thank you. I’m not—”

The goddamn voice cuts her off to warn him he has ten seconds. Eddie curls his fingers around the divider and rocks it side to side, pouring his frustration into the flimsy veneer instead of his tone. “Hey, Chrissy, it’s gonna hang up. I love you. I’ll call when I can.” 

“Oh. Okay. I lo—” 

The receiver thunks, and she’s gone. 

Chapter Text

Chrissy angles the van into the curb in front of a house she knows better than the back of her hand. The front of her hand, too, come to think of it. She knows this place the way she knows every freckle on her face, mole on her arms, and roll of skin that dared show itself over the top of a too-tight cheer skirt. 

This is the house she grew up in, and today is the last time she plans on going home. 

She’s aware that she’s asking for trouble, showing up in Eddie’s van in her high tops, jeans, and a green sweatshirt she deliberately picked because it is tacky and gauche. She found it at a truck stop near Plano, and she loves it for how much her mother will hate it, given that it clashes with the red of Eddie’s flannel that she’s using as a coat, making her look like some demented Christmas tree.

Demented is the right word for what she’s doing, actually. What she’s feeling. Coming here hadn’t been part of the plan, but after meeting with the lawyer followed by three long days of nothing, she’s ready to rip off her skin and has decided this is a healthier form of self-abuse. At least here, she’ll get some catharsis. 

Or, if not catharsis, she’ll get what she wants, which has nothing to do with closure and everything to do with the fact that Eddie will be home in four nights and five days, and she has a surprise planned to celebrate his return. 

She checks her makeup-less face in the mirror before sliding out and shutting the door behind her. Their neighbor, Mrs. Edwards, is standing at her mailbox with a suspicious squint furrowing her lined forehead. Chrissy offers her a cheery wave. 

Mrs. Edwards waves back, still unsure, until recognition dawns. 

“Chrissy?” 

“Hi, Mrs. E,” she says. “Nice to see you.” 

Mrs. Edwards is a total Gladys Kravitz and will have informed the neighbors of Chrissy’s disheveled appearance within hours. Good. 

Chrissy retrieves the duffel she’s borrowed from Wayne from the back of the van, then strides across the lawn, snow wetting the bottom of her sneakers. Her house keys are long gone—confiscated during the elopement debacle—so she knocks, waits five seconds, rings the bell, then knocks again. 

Footsteps, and then her mother opens the door.

It reminds her of a stand-off in one of those old Westerns or something, with Laura in jeans and a Christmas sweater, curls freshly coiffed, and Chrissy in her thrift store best, brandishing her bag like a weapon. 

“Chrissy?” Laura says, and there’s no missing the way her eyes flick to the van. Appearances, appearances—she’s probably worried a photographer is lying just past the tree line, ready to splash news of the Cunningham family conflicts across the front page of the Hawkins Post. 

Laura is always the main character in her personal soap opera, which is ironic since there is nothing remarkable about her save her cruelty. 

“For heaven’s sake, get inside,” Laura says, stepping back to usher her in. 

No hello. No how are you. No gosh, Chrissy, we haven’t heard from you in months. Are you alright?

Chrissy wasn’t expecting a warm reception, but she feels the sting of rejection all the same as she steps across the threshold and into a house that seems smaller and darker than she recalls. 

It’s been almost nine months since her last visit, a tense Easter Sunday lunch which Jason had insisted they attend to “smooth things over” after the “business with your mother.” 

The business in question had been Chrissy’s first attempt at leaving him. The one where she’d run home to hide, only to be returned with a curt dismissal and told that if she was a big enough girl to get married, then she was a big enough girl to manage her own problems. 

“What on earth are you wearing?” Laura asks, shutting the door. 

“Clothes, I guess. Good to see you, too, Mom.” 

“Oh, I knew it. I knew it, I knew it!” Taking her by the arm, Laura shakes her once, roughly, manicured fingernails digging into her skin through two layers. 

“You knew what? Honestly, I just need to pick up some—” 

“Are you showing? You’ve gained so much weight already.” She moves fast, pressing her palm to Chrissy’s abdomen. “When you didn’t come for Thanksgiving or even call, I realized…” 

Several bits of Laura’s perceived reality stitch together in Chrissy’s brain, and she blinks. “Oh.” 

“I hope you’re not here to beg for help,” Laura continues, hand still on Chrissy’s belly, the sensation of which is distressingly familiar, making her want to barf, only that wouldn’t do much to discredit Laura’s current insane theory about the status of her womb. “Your father and I assumed this would happen, of course. As soon as you married him, we knew. And Jason… well, I’ve been calling and calling, and he won’t even put you on the phone! Says you’ve been ill, and I said I would come over, and he said I wasn’t welcome. Wasn’t welcome! So I told him…” 

Chrissy isn’t sure, but she thinks that if she had a daughter whose husband wouldn’t let her come to the phone, she’d go over, anyway. Maybe check on her flesh and blood, especially if that flesh and blood had once told her that said husband hits her.

But then, Chrissy’s not a monster. Crazy, yes. Messed up, for sure. But monstrous? Not so much, despite what this woman has led her to believe. 

“Mom, I’m not pregnant,” she says, pushing her mother’s hand away and cutting off her rant. 

Laura’s rabbiting mouth snaps shut. “You’re not?” 

“No. I’m not even… I, um, I haven’t been on the phone because I’m not living there. I left Jason. I’m just here to get some of my stuff.” 

“You…” Laura gapes like a guppy, thin lips trembling, and Chrissy suddenly finds herself trying not to laugh. “You left him?” 

“Oh, come on. You know it wasn’t the first time.” 

This is, by far, the snippiest thing she’s ever said to her mother. Laura’s face reddens, and Chrissy knows a slap won’t be far behind, so she moves quickly toward the stairs, leaving Laura to process the cognitive dissonance of both wanting Chrissy not to be married and hating the idea that there might be a divorce as a blight on the family. 

The Cunninghams don’t believe in divorce, which is funny since both her parents would be happier alone. 

By the time Chrissy reaches the fourth step, Laura has recovered enough to bleat out, “But you’re not really leaving him, are you?” 

“Yes, I am,” she says, continuing to climb and fighting the urge to turn back and continue the discussion. She promised herself that she would not engage, justify, or explain her choices. All she wants is her stuff. 

“But why?” 

It takes every ounce of self-control Chrissy possesses to respond with a placid, “You know why,” as she reaches the landing and turns toward her childhood bedroom. 

Inside the room is a museum. A shrine to the girl she once was, with photographs, trophies, dolls, and unhappy memories left right where she’d had no choice but to put them. Nothing in this room had ever really been hers, except for the few things she’d squirreled away beneath the mattress and behind a loose skirting board in her closet. Even her diary had been written in code. 

She heads to the closet first, with Laura pounding up the stairs and into the bedroom behind her. “Christine, stop it.” 

Christine doesn’t stop. She finds that the thing she wants most is hanging on the rack, covered in a plastic dry cleaning bag. That goes into the duffel, along with her old cheer hoodie, a white sweatshirt signed by everyone on the squad, and a monogrammed sweater her grandmother knitted for her tenth birthday. It doesn’t fit anymore, but her grandmother is one of the few people in her family she regards affectionately, and she wants it the way she wanted the blanket from her old apartment. 

“Christine!” Laura spits again. Chrissy ignores her and instead pries the skirting board from the wall. Behind it are two notebooks, an old issue of Cosmopolitan that she’d stolen from Heather Holloway for the blowjob tips (hadn’t helped, but she wouldn’t mind a reread, for Eddie’s sake), and the one and only detention slip she’d ever gotten for skipping school to try on prom dresses. 

If Laura had found out about that, there would have been hell to pay, so Chrissy had hidden the slip away. She did things like that a lot as a kid—hid and lied because lying was easier than the truth coming out. Only sometimes the truth came out eventually, and she got punished for both the original transgression, and the lie. Still, statistically, the fib was worth the risk if the secret stayed secret four times out of five. 

The detention slip is something she ought to have trashed the day after she served her time, but playing hooky had been a point of pride, and she hadn’t wanted to let go of the proof that she had once been a rebel. 

She’s done a lot of rebellious things since then, but she tucks the flimsy paper into her bag all the same. She’ll tell Eddie about it when he calls later because the story will soften him up after she tells him about the whole… visiting Laura thing. She hasn’t mentioned this to him or Wayne because she knows they’d be worried, and there’s no need to worry. It’s just something that has to be done. Besides, Eddie’s already stressed enough—he’d even asked her to call the lawyer and clarify her residence situation, which had turned out to be no big deal so long as she hadn’t actually moved to another state.

“Where are you living, Christine?” Laura asks as Chrissy pushes the skirting board back into place and stands. “A shelter? What… you can’t just come in here and… Christine Elizabeth, you look at me when I’m talking to you!” 

The admonition comes with an arm grab, Laura’s talons gripping hard and yanking her around. Chrissy flinches—she can’t help it—giving Laura the upper hand. Gives her a chance to shove Chrissy toward the back wall of her closet, ponytail tangling in the bare hangers. 

“You can’t come here and steal from us,” Laura hisses, their faces inches apart. 

The little girl part of Chrissy wants to cry. To cower. To submit. 

Shitbird, though? Shitbird wants to laugh, so shitbird does. A giggle at first, then a full-on guffaw as she uses the wall for leverage and shoves her mother back. Not hard, but enough that Laura has to release her grip and hold the doorframe for balance instead. 

She makes a production of it, of course, stumbling and staggering and letting loose a performative shriek. 

“God, Mom,” Chrissy says as she steps past her and into the bedroom. “You think I haven’t bought and paid for this shit?” 

The swear has its intended effect, and Laura looks damn near shell-shocked. Taking advantage of that blessed silence, Chrissy continues.

“You made my life miserable, you know that? I married Jason to get out of this house, and instead—” She takes a deep breath. Shakes her head. “Doesn’t matter.” 

Hurrying now, she goes to her bed, lifting the mattress to reveal some long-since expired peanut M&M’s and another journal, this one only half-finished. She can’t even remember what’s in it, but she wants it simply so Laura can’t have it and sweeps it into the bag before tugging the zipper closed. 

“Everything we did for you!” Laura says, having found her voice.

“Uh-huh. Sure. You know, I used to think it was just tough love. Or that you were… that you were just strict. But what’s so funny is that the other day, it occurred to me that the first time Jason hit me, it felt familiar. Like something I deserved. I have you to thank for that. So… yeah. Bye, mom.” 

Laura lunges. Of course, Laura lunges. However, Chrissy’s reflexes are honed, and she jumps back, out of reach. Sure, that puts her mother between her and the door, but she’s willing to endure a slap or two to get away from this house forever. 

“You won’t get a dime,” Laura says, mouth twisted into something mulish and hard. “Your father and I had been speaking about it. We were willing to help you with the baby if you came to us…” 

“Guess that won’t be a problem, considering I’m not pregnant.”

“Divorces aren’t cheap,” she spits back and lands a nasty little smack on Chrissy’s arm when she tries to move around her. “Stop that!” 

“Oh, my God, mom.” She takes a step to the side. The truth of Eddie, Wayne, and her current living situation is off-limits to anyone who might use it against her, but she’ll tip-toe right up to the line to piss off her mother. “I’m actually fine, thanks. I’m really, really so happy now.” 

Another performative yelp rends the air, and honestly, Chrissy is bored. She’s been in the audience of this play her entire life, and it’s all histrionics. No plot. She’s tired of listening, so she does what needs to be done and pushes past her mother, ignoring the threats and accusations, and when Laura tries to hit her, Chrissy hits back. Bats her hand out of the way with a sharp, shocking swiftness and watches her mother’s eyes widen.

“I should have done that years ago,” she says, then shoulders her duffel and heads for the stairs.

Laura follows her to the front door, playacting the wounded parent as she trembles in the hallway, wide-eyed and horrified. For all Chrissy knows, it’s genuine—the woman truly believes herself to be a martyr—but the current of her mother’s love has been unpredictable for years, and she is through trying to avoid the sucking whirlpool.

“How will I know you’re safe?” Laura asks when she steps onto the stoop. 

“You won’t. But I will be.” 

That’s as much as she can give to this woman who gave her life but never let her live it. She will be safer with Eddie than she ever was when her mother knew the precise street address of where she was being taken apart, piece by piece, day by day. 

“Christine…” Laura says, fear in her voice. 

Chrissy turns. Puts a hand on her mother’s shoulder and squeezes, just once, before leaving her behind. 

When she turns the key in the van’s ignition, it roars to life on the first try, which is a small triumph but a triumph all the same, and she holds her head high as she trundles out of her old neighborhood for what she’s decided will be the very last time. 

Wayne’s awake when she gets back to the trailer, perched on the picnic table where she had her conversation with Chief Hopper a few days before. She’d told him the other day that it was too cold for him to smoke outside, and she wouldn’t mind if he did it in the trailer, but he says he’s trying to quit and that freezing his ass off every time he wants a cigarette reminds him to try harder. 

(Chrissy’s pretty sure he had almost said nuts instead of ass, and the fact that he censored himself for her makes her want to laugh and cry simultaneously.) 

“Hi,” she says, crossing the gravel to him after leaving her duffel on the front steps. 

“Afternoon. You hungry? There’s stew.” 

Wayne, much like his nephew, is a caretaker. Only, unlike Eddie, the caretaking mostly comes as food, which has always been a tricky territory for Chrissy. Wayne is constantly asking if she’s hungry, if she’s eaten, or if he can make her something. At first, she’d found the questions discomfiting, as though there existed a correct answer she was expected to know. However, she’s come to realize there isn’t. Wayne asks because it’s normal for people to get hungry and eat, so there’s always food if she wants it. Sometimes she does, and sometimes she doesn’t, but he has yet to make her feel small for her answer.

She hasn’t thrown up once in the trailer’s tiny bathroom; she hopes to keep that streak up indefinitely. 

“Maybe later. Did Eddie call?” 

“Nope, but Bill did.” 

Mouth suddenly gone dry, Chrissy straightens her shoulders. “Oh?” 

“Mmm. Says to tell you they served your husband those papers this morning.” 

Wayne says it so casually, as though it’s a thing that happens every day. The wheels of bureaucracy grinding forward, churning up mud and dust along the way. Chrissy wants to make him repeat the words. Wants to confirm that yes, actually, she did sign her name to that form and declare to the world that she very much would like to divorce her husband. 

“Oh, wow.” She points to the open pack of cigarettes on the table. “Can I have one of those, please?” 

Wordlessly, Wayne hands her the pack. She takes one out, then borrows his lighter. Inhales. Exhales. Feels a little better when she does, even though she coughs like a hacking mule on her second attempt. 

“Y’alright?” 

“Didn’t…” She waves the smoke away. “I don’t smoke.” 

“No foolin’?” 

He’s teasing her, but there’s no malice in it. Just a half-smile as he flicks his ash. 

Chrissy takes another drag and leans against the pole holding up the awning. “That was fast,” she says after a second. “Do you think it’s usually that fast?” 

“Couldn’t say. Never been divorced. Bill said he’d move on it, though, so I guess this is him moving.” 

“I guess so. I don’t know. It feels surreal.” 

“Mmm. Law moves fast, then slow, in my experience.” His eyes flick to the trailer, and he shrugs. “Real slow, sometimes.” 

“Like with Eddie?” she asks because that’s a story she knows most of, but only from the other side. “He was in a group home for a while, right?” 

Wayne nods, and Chrissy figures that’ll be all he gives her on the matter, so she smokes her cigarette and studies Max Mayfield’s trailer, which has had a mass of green tinsel wrapped around the staircase railing since she saw it this morning. 

“Kid that age,” Wayne continues after a moment, surprising her. “That’s a tough age. He’d lived here before—my brother’d drop him off when he needed to—so I figured he could live here again easily enough, but with Al facing trial… well, they wouldn’t give him to me.” 

That might be the most words she’s ever heard from Wayne at one time, and she stays silent, hoping he’ll say more. 

“Goddamn state says I’m no fit father.” He stabs his cigarette out against the rough end of a table plank. “So I made myself fit, but while I did that, he was…” Trailing off, he sighs. “Well.” 

“He was what?” She doesn’t mean to pry, but there they are, and she’s curious. Eddie won’t talk much about this stuff; she has to get him in the right mood, and he’ll still deflect after a minute. 

“He had some trouble. School and the like. But he settled down once he got here.” He smiles, almost laughs, then shrugs. “He was always a good kid. Just an angry one. Lotta that… mmm, well. We grow up.” 

“We do.” She taps her cigarette against the post. “You think driving sobered him up?” 

“Ah, it sure as shit stopped him dealing pot out of his goddamn lunchbox. Still, he’s not… well, none of my business.” 

Chrissy would argue that Eddie’s state of mind is precisely Wayne’s business, but she doesn’t want to push. “Do you think he likes it? The job?” 

Wayne shrugs. “Well enough, before.” 

“Before?” 

He smiles at her, then glances at his watch. “Shit. Later than I thought. I’m gonna hop in the shower. Can I put your bag in your room?” 

That he says your isn’t lost on her, nor is his chivalry. Nor, for that matter, is his dodging of her question. “Sure. Thank you.” 

He nods and starts off, and is about halfway across the road when he pauses and turns back. “Whatever you’re thinking, for what it’s worth, he likes you more than any of it.”

Chrissy doesn’t have the chance to respond before he’s gone, loping toward the trailer like some nocturnal creature accidentally exposing itself to the light. 

Taking a drag of her cigarette, she rolls his words over. She knows Eddie likes her more than driving, but more than stability? More than freedom? Hard to say. It’s… God. It’s so much to ask for, but she refuses to live a half-life that revolves around a telephone, so she’s going to have to figure out how. 

The Mayfield’s front door opens while she’s musing, and Max bursts forth, followed by Lucas, who’s holding a tangled mess of Christmas lights. Chrissy lifts her hand in a wave, then stubs out her cigarette. 

“Do you guys have a ladder?” Max calls. Evidently, they are in the business of decorating, and neither one of them looks thrilled. 

Chrissy likes that Max asks as though knowing whether the Munsons have a ladder is information she’d have ready access to. She lives there, ergo she must know the complete inventory of their belongings, and honestly, she’s got to stop reading so much into tiny moments, but it’s hard not to marvel at the mundanity. 

“Um. I don’t know—there’s a stepstool, I think?”

“Shit.” 

“What if I put you on my shoulders?” Lucas asks.

“I’m not trying to die today, Sinclair,” Max says with a glare of such withering derision that Chrissy almost laughs. “This wouldn’t be a problem if your mom hadn’t grounded you from the car.” 

Lucas throws his hands into the air. “Erica sold me out!” 

“Erica is the only reason your house is still standing. You and Mike are idiots.” 

“Oh, come on…” 

Biting her lip to keep the giggles at bay, Chrissy watches them fight as the saga of the non-ladder emerges. Lucas’s parents have a ladder, but it’s too big for their car, and anyway, Lucas doesn’t have the car—the aforementioned grounding—but Will has a smaller ladder (Chrissy has no idea who Will is) that might fit except, once again, there is no car. Max really hammers home the car thing, while Lucas feigns exasperation but is, Chrissy thinks, enjoying himself.

It is all terribly, terribly sixteen, and she loves every second of their silliness because it’s the sort of thing she never had with Jason at that age, when she’d been so careful and good and afraid to speak up lest he find her wanting. Lucas and Max have something sweet and honest, snarky and shitty, and while she doubts it’ll last beyond high school, they’ll most likely look back on each other fondly when it’s over. 

“I can drive you to um… Will’s?” she offers when there’s a break in their bickering. 

They both turn to her like they’ve forgotten she’s there. “Really?” Lucas asks. 

“Sure.”

Problem solved, they stop squabbling, and Chrissy coaxes the Bitch’s engine into turning over before driving them to Jonathan Byers’s house, only she doesn’t realize it’s Jonathan’s house until he answers the door. Apparently, her old classmate and ladder-having Will are brothers. Jonathan also has company in the form of Nancy Wheeler, sitting on the couch in an Emerson sweatshirt with a suspicious amount of lipstick smudged around her mouth. 

Chrissy never paid Jonathan or Nancy much mind in school. Nancy was smart-girl popular, a distinct class from Chrissy’s sports-girl popular, and Jonathan had been an artsy weirdo who’d slipped beneath her radar entirely. Eddie, at least, had been loud and visible. Jonathan was… well, she’d always thought of him like a ghost. Hardly there. She remembers him being Nancy’s rebound boy after Steve Harrington, but even that recollection is fuzzy.

However, Nancy and Jonathan are kind to her despite her cool indifference to them in school, and the three of them exchange typical pleasantries about what they’re doing now while the kids search for the ladder. Jonathan took a year off after graduation to work, and he’s about to head into his final semester at Central Indiana Community College, after which he’s hopeful he can transfer to IU. Meanwhile, Nancy is halfway through her junior year at Emerson, a school in Massachusetts that Chrissy’s never heard of before. 

It's interesting that they’re separated by several states when there’s still some spark between them. They’re doing something long-distance, she supposes, or just using the opportunity of winter break to reconnect. If it’s the former, she doesn’t envy them. Less than a week without Eddie, and she’s climbing the walls.

When the line of questioning turns to what Chrissy’s been up to, she answers honestly, but with a few notable omissions—namely, Jason—telling them she’s been traveling, hasn’t figured out what she’s doing yet, and that she’s dating Eddie Munson these days. 

That last one gets a raised brow from Nancy. “Didn’t you get married, though?” 

Gosh, but Chrissy would love for that not to be the first thing most people in this town remember about her. But, she supposes, eloping the summer after high school has a tendency to raise eyebrows. “It didn’t work out,” she says. 

To her surprise, they let the subject drop, and Nancy asks her about her travels instead. Chrissy tells them about Hobbit Beach, and she and Jonathan end up talking cameras. It’s nice, she finds, to speak to people who have no preconceived notions about her beyond the ones they might have formed in school. They have more in common than she’d thought possible, and it doesn’t bother her that the trio in the backyard takes the better part of an hour to “find” the ladder. (Which, she suspects, has less to do with the ladder and more to do with some shrieks she’s choosing to ignore because, frankly, she’s nobody’s mother.) 

Before they leave, Jonathan and Nancy mention that there’s going to be a New Year’s party at Nancy’s house—“something small”—which is when Will interjects that there will also be a Dungeons and Dragons component in the basement, and so could she please ask Eddie in case maybe he wants to sit in.

“I’ll ask him,” she says as they head for the van. “See if he wants to go.” 

“You don’t need his permission,” Max says with a lemon-suck expression as she climbs into the passenger seat (Lucas is riding in the back because Max has once again claimed she refuses to die today).

The face makes Chrissy laugh, and she waits until they’ve said goodbye to Will before responding. “I know I don’t need his permission, but I’m also not spending New Year’s Eve without him.” 

“God, he’s so boring now,” Max shoots back as she fastens her seatbelt. 

“Eddie is?” Chrissy turns the key, and the ignition sputters. Rolling her eyes, she tries again. Then again. Then wonders if Jonathan has jumper cables because… oh, no. It’s fine. Fourth time’s the charm. 

“Yeah, Eddie. He used to hang out with us.” 

“When we were in school,” Lucas says.

“He told me about Hellfire,” Chrissy replies.

“No, not Hellfire,” Max corrects. “The summer after he graduated, too, when we got the bottle rocket stuck in Mrs. Riley’s window, and she threatened to call the cops.” 

“Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.” 

“Then he started talking about his… EDL or whatever, and he got his license, and now when he comes back, all he wants to do is sleep and be boring.” Max studies Chrissy as they roll down the drive. “You’re the most interesting thing he’s done in a year.” 

“Max!” Lucas yelps. 

Chrissy loves this girl. Wants to put her under glass and study her to figure out how to move through life with genuine confidence. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” she says. 

Later, when Eddie calls from a truck stop outside Topeka, Chrissy opens the conversation with, “Max Mayfield thinks you’re boring.” 

“Hello to you, too, shitbird.” 

“And I think we should go to Nancy Wheeler’s house for New Year’s.” 

“We… what?” 

“Oh, and I saw my mother today.” 

“Jesus Christ, Chrissy. I’m gonna need more quarters.”

Chapter Text

The problem with Eddie’s notion of driving overnight and arriving in Indianapolis a full twelve hours earlier than planned is that he has failed to consider the fact that he no longer has a van waiting in the depot’s parking lot to ferry him home. Like, grade-A moron material, because that shit doesn’t even dawn on him until he’s pulling Smaug into the nearly deserted lot at four in the morning, desperate to drop his cargo and get to Chrissy so they can spend what’s left of 1988 in each other’s arms. 

“Fuck,” he says upon realizing his predicament, which leaves him with two choices: call Chrissy or call Wayne. Considering his plan for days has been to surprise the former, the latter seems a better bet. So, after the trailer’s unhitched and he’s officially off duty, he heads for the phone on the wall beside his locker, dialing a number he hasn’t had to use for a few years. Not since the oven spontaneously combusted and nearly burned down the trailer, though that wasn’t Eddie’s fault.

The guy who answers is gruff, but Eddie can handle gruff. He hollers for Wayne, who—miraculously—hasn’t left for home yet, even though his shift ended ten minutes prior. 

It is to Wayne’s immense credit that he doesn’t kick up a fuss over being asked to drive an hour out of his way to pick Eddie up. Says he’ll be there in forty-five, so Eddie nurses a cup of coffee in the break room and shoots the shit with a couple of the overnight guys. When Wayne arrives, he slings his bag into the truck bed and hops in, rubbing his gloved hands together in the full-blast heat belching from the vents. The sky is spitting sleety snow, and considering tomorrow’s Christmas Day, the little kid part of him hopes for a white one. 

“Doing alright?” Wayne asks as he takes the left turn out of the lot.

“Sure. Thanks for coming. I, uh, I kind of forgot Chrissy has the van.” 

Wayne makes a noise that’s half-snort, half-sigh, and speeds up. “Old habits. What was plan B?” 

“Theoretically? Seeing how much a taxi to Hawkins would cost.” 

“More’n you’d want to spend. You hungry? McDonald’s coming up.” 

“No, I’m good. I just want to get home.” 

Wayne cuts a bemused glance his way, nodding. “Sure.” 

Usually, when he’s on the road, Eddie calls Wayne at least once every couple of days. This time, though, he’s spent all his money on Chrissy and can’t help wondering how his uncle’s been faring with the new situation. “So,” he says once they’re on the interstate. “How’ve things been? With uh, with Chrissy?” 

“Fine. She’s a nice girl.” 

“Yeah, she is. And shit with the lawyer was okay? She said it was, but you were there.” 

“He was okay.” 

“Has there been any news?” 

“She tell you there was?” 

“Nope.” 

“Then I guess there’s no news.” Reaching over, Wayne fusses with the vent, angling it so the stale air isn’t hitting him full blast. “It’s gonna take time, s’all.” 

“I know.” 

“Couple months with that waiting period.” 

Eddie’s ears go hot at the reminder. “Yeah.” 

Another moment of silence, and this time, Wayne breaks it. “Remind me how long you’re home for?” 

“I leave again on the second,” he says. “I had vacation banked, and I never use it, so…” 

“Good. It’ll be nice having you around a minute.” 

“It’s—” 

“You know, she can’t go back out with you come January.” 

The statement is blunt and uncharacteristic, coming from Wayne, who mostly speaks in half-sentences, grunts, and insinuations. 

Eddie frowns, and his neck prickles as he thumps his thigh. “The lawyer said it was fine for her to travel.” 

“And what?” he says. “She’s just gonna live in your passenger seat?” 

“No.” It comes out sullen. 

“Mmm.” Wayne reaches into his pocket for his cigarettes, offering Eddie the pack. “But you aren’t thinking much past that, are you?” 

Snatching the pack with grudging frustration, Eddie taps two cigarettes into his palm, lighting them both before passing one over. “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“Means what it means. How was it out there?” 

“Fine,” he mutters because if Wayne wants to be taciturn, he can be too.

“Alright, then,” he says and turns his attention back to the road. 

Eddie faces the window, dropping his forehead against the frigid glass. The snow is falling thicker now, fat, wet flakes against the ground, and he can picture Chrissy curled beneath his comforter, warding off the not-so-great heating of the trailer. She’s no stranger to the cold—they’d had plenty of chilly nights in the truck—and she’d never complained. Just snuggled under her blanket and pressed her icicle toes against his calf. 

God, he’s really missed the fuck out of her. Won’t be happy until he sees her again. And then? Ten whole days of her. Him. Them. Christmas, New Year, the timeless, hazy space between. A real vacation. 

After that, though, he’ll have to leave. Drive that goddamn truck out of the goddamn lot and spend every day counting the miles and the minutes until he can talk to her. Wondering what she’s doing, where she’s going. Worrying about her, too. Thinking thoughts that get downright unsettling. Thoughts about Jason, sure, but other, less tangible things, like what happens when she tires of having a boyfriend who travels twenty-five days out of thirty? 

It seemed so simple when she was sitting beside him, but Wayne’s right. He’s not considering much past wanting her to sit there again, but that’s no life. Not for either of them, if he’s honest. And while he’s confident they love each other, love doesn’t do so well under duress, and his job’s liable to put plenty on them. 

“Wayne,” he asks as they pass a sign for Hawkins. “I uh. Do you think it’d be crazy for me to consider stepping back from long-haul?” 

It sounds foolish when he says it. Long-haul pays better than anything else he could do, and God knows he’s enjoying the stability. Steady pay, steady benefits, and the ability to take care of himself by doing something legitimate for the first time in his life, which was all well and good until she showed up. And he doesn’t resent her—he doesn’t—but it was simpler to be a ghost in his own story. 

“Not crazy.” Wayne rolls down his window to flick his cigarette onto the road. “That on your mind?” 

“Kinda, yeah. I was thinking I could pick up something regional. Local. Shit, drive a school bus. I don’t know.” 

“Drive a school bus,” he says, chuffing out one of his strange, creaking laughs. “You wouldn’t last a goddamn day, kiddo.” 

Eddie laughs, too, the tension dissipating like so much smoke out the window. “True. There’s options, though.” 

“Sure. Work for the county, maybe. Salt the roads.” 

“Yeah. God. Upstanding citizen.” 

“Never thought I’d live to see it.” Wayne flicks on his blinker, taking the exit for Hawkins. “You talk about any of this with Chrissy?” 

It’s the first time Eddie can recall his uncle using her name, and he likes how it sounds. Like she’s family. 

“Uh, no,” he admits. “She’s got her own shit going on, and I don’t want her to feel like I’m asking her to choose for me.” 

“That ain’t how it works. It’s a fulcrum.” Wayne holds his hand out, see-sawing it back and forth. “You tip, she tips, but you gotta balance.” 

His uncle’s not much for analogies, but Eddie picks up what he’s putting down. “Yeah, I know.” 

“Besides, you think she’s not already got it on her mind? She buzzes around that goddamn phone like a bee, waiting for it to ring.” 

“Oh?” 

“Mmm.” He grips the steering wheel tighter, and Eddie can feel the tires struggling to grip the ground. They’re not going anywhere for the rest of the day, and a white Christmas is looking more and more likely by the minute. “You do what you like, but… something to consider.” 

“Consider it considered.” 

“That’s fine, then. And, ah, while you’re considering, you still good to head up to Pendleton the day after tomorrow?” 

Pendleton, Indiana, home of the prison where his father’s serving year twelve of his fifteen-to-twenty-year sentence. Eddie’s visits have been few and far between, but the day after Christmas and Al’s birthday have become rituals. A few hours of awkward small talk and pretending his father isn’t an irrevocable asshole. “Yeah. Sure. You uh, you think we should bring Chrissy?” 

“Up to you. Y’know he’s up for parole in March?” 

“Huh. All that good behavior paying off?” 

“Mmm, well.” 

“Well,” he agrees as they turn toward home.

It’s still dark when Wayne glides the truck next to the van. Eddie hops out, grabs his stuff from the back, and heads inside, practically vibrating with excitement. The little signs of Chrissy strewn across the living room fill him with some sugar-sweet syrupy rush of goop—her coat on a hook by the door, a magazine on a side table, her sneakers lined up beside Wayne’s boots—and he grins like an idiot when he sees them. He’d been worried that she’d retreat into the hard-shelled Chrissy in his absence. Make herself small in an effort not to bother Wayne. 

Instead, she’s thriving. Living. Thank fuck for that. 

Eddie leaves his shoes in the line-up, then heads for his bedroom as quietly as possible. The fucking door creaks, but Chrissy doesn’t stir. Doesn’t even twitch, that little lump beneath the blanket. 

He unbuttons his jeans, sliding them down, then tugs his shirt over his head. The room is frigid, as ever, because the heat only works well in the living room, a concentrated furnace blast that’ll have them sweating in the evenings before freezing their balls off when going to sleep. Shivering, he pulls back the covers to kneel on the edge of the mattress, attempting to get in behind her without waking her up. 

But, like, he’s a full-size human being crawling into bed with a skittish hobbit, so Chrissy jerks awake the moment his hand spans her hip. 

“Wh—don’t,” she says, sleep-slurred. 

“You sure?” 

That rouses her, and she twists, hair a cloud of tangles framing her blinking bleary face. “Eddie?” 

“Hi.” 

“You—” Cognitive function not quite kicking on, she blinks. “How?” 

“Drove all night. Wayne picked me up.” 

Sunshine parts the clouds of confusion, and she squeaks. Grins. Wraps her arms around him to drag him down beside her, and he goes, a willing prisoner, laughing as she buries her face against his chest and breathes him in. 

“What’re you doing?” he asks after her fourth huff. 

“You smell like the truck. I missed you so much.” 

That, right there, is pure, uncut Chrissy. The good kush that can’t be conveyed in a phone call. Eddie squeezes her hip. Kisses the crown of her head. Inhales her, too. “Yeah, well, Merry Christmas.” 

“Merry Christmas,” she echoes, tangling her legs with his. “Your feet are cold.” 

“Hi, I’m pot. Have you met kettle?” 

She pokes his ankle with her big toe, fingers tracing his spine. “You made Wayne drive all the way to Indianapolis?” 

“Uh-huh.” 

“He didn’t tell me.”

“He didn’t know until this morning.” 

“Oh, wow. We gotta”—a yawn—“make that up to him.” 

“We will.” Her open-mouthed gawp is contagious, and he yawns, too.

“You drove all night?” 

“Mmm.” 

“You’re so sleepy, huh?” 

He wants to say no, he’s fine, that he can rally to the occasion. Kiss her, touch her, be with her now that being is possible. But he’s just driven for twenty-six hours straight, and he is exhausted. Plus, Wayne’s home, and while they could have weird, quiet, missionary sex, he doesn’t want to run even the slightest risk of being overheard. 

“So sleepy,” he concurs.

“Let’s sleep then.” She kisses his sternum, then his neck, then rolls over so they can both get comfortable. “I gotta give you your first Christmas present later.” 

Eddie’s mind churns with possibilities, but he drifts off all the same, exhaustion overwhelming intrigue. 

When he wakes, it’s because of the oh-so-elegant ballet of Chrissy attempting to clamber over him without waking him, which is cute, and he catches her around the waist to prevent her escape.

“Eddie, don’t,” she says through a giggle. “I have to pee.” 

“Oops. My hand slipped.” 

“Eddie.” She squirms, a V of consternation furrowing itself into the place between her brows. He relents, and it smooths into a smile. God, but he’s missed all her weird little faces. “Thank you.” 

“Sure. What time is it?” 

“Ten.” 

That’s three whole hours of sleep, which is totally respectable. “Cool. I’ll be up in a minute.” 

He means that, too, and only intends to close his eyes for a moment once she’s out the door. He’s out within seconds, though, only to be roused half an hour later by the smell of something sweet. Chrissy’s not in bed, so he throws on some clothes and follows his nose to the kitchen, where he finds her flipping pancakes in a pair of pajama pants and one of his t-shirts. 

“Whoa. Pancakes,” he says, because stating the obvious is his favorite pastime. 

“Aw, shoot. I was going to bring you breakfast in bed.” She gestures to a plate piled high with about fifteen lopsided golden discs. 

“You were gonna bring me forty breakfasts in bed. What’s the special occasion?” 

That gets the ‘oh, Eddie’ face, which is one of his favorites, and he takes two steps into the cramped kitchen and hugs her from behind, chin settling on her head as she says, “It’s Christmas.” 

“Christmas Eve.” 

“Don’t be pedantic. There’s coffee.” 

He sings the theme song to the Greatest American Hero while he fixes himself a mug, then leans against the doorframe while she works through the rest of the batter. The stack of pancakes grows from fifteen to twenty to twenty-five, and he can’t fathom whose army she thinks she’s feeding, but she looks pleased with herself and the assembly line she has running, so he doesn’t tease her. Just enjoys the quiet domesticity of the moment. 

“So, uh, I wanted to ask you something,” he says as she scrapes the last of the batter into one behemoth of a final pancake. “Me and Wayne usually visit my dad the day after Christmas.”

“Oh?” 

“Yeah. You don’t have to go or anything, but I wanted to—” 

“I’ll go,” she says without pausing, setting the bowl in the sink. “As long as you want me to.” 

“Want is relative. It’s… you’re important, and he’s my dad, so I need him to—he’s the world’s biggest chump, but you’re still my girlfriend, and I’ve never had one of those to bring around, and it feels like maybe you should meet him?” 

Chrissy retrieves a plate and loads it up with pancakes. “Then yes, sure. ” 

“Cool, yeah. He’s a dick, but… eh, it’ll be alright. He’s nice to new people.” A snake oil salesman with a penchant for pretty women, more like, but whatever. 

“I’m sure he’ll be fine.” She hands him his plate, then points him to the syrup and butter waiting on the counter, the former of which is an item he and Wayne don’t often stock. “Eat.” 

“Did you shop for me or something?” he asks as he syrups his stack.

“I went shopping for Christmas. Yesterday. And I used the money you left me, so you basically bought this stuff.” 

The mental image of her pushing a cart through the aisles of the Big Buy sends a thrummy, weird ping to his brain because she’d probably been thinking about him. Them. What he’d like, what he’d want, and fuck, yeah, he doesn’t know how he’s going back to work in less than two weeks. 

“Eddie?” she asks, her voice a sing-song as she stands beside him. 

“What’s up?” 

“How many pancakes am I having?” 

He turns to find her watching him, hand on her hip, lips quirked to the left. Domesticity be damned; this girl contains goddamn multitudes. 

“Six,” he replies, because they’re small, and she’s made approximately seven thousand and forty-two of them. “With butter and syrup.” 

“Six,” she echoes and doesn’t argue, just fixes her plate.

They eat at the cramped-close table since Chrissy’s worried about getting the sofa tacky. That ship sailed years ago—they keep flipping the cushions and hoping for the best—but Eddie agrees, and they’re playing footsie when Wayne comes out of his room, bleary-eyed and shuffling. A bad back morning, apparently, though he masks it well, thanking Chrissy for breakfast before eating a short stack with them. 

As they’re finishing up, Wayne declares he’s going to Val’s, and he’ll bring her over for dinner—which he’s cooking—around six. He’s weirdly declarative about the time, and Eddie can’t figure out why until he’s halfway out the door. Like, duh, he’s giving them space because Eddie just got home after not seeing his girlfriend for two weeks. 

So, that’s nice. And weird. But mostly nice.

Eddie sees him out and turns away from the door with a smile, only to find Chrissy clearing the table. He swoops in, hugging her around the middle to physically block her from the kitchen. “No. You cook, I clean. Wayne rule.” 

Her mouth twitches. “But you just got home. You’re tired.”

“Don’t give a shit. Drop the dishes.” 

“Threat or a promise?” 

“Both.” He tickles her side, and she squeaks.

“Fine! Do you want that Christmas present?” 

“Uh.” Laughing, he lets her go. “You sure you don’t want to wait?” 

“I can’t give you this one with Wayne around.” 

His brain short-circuits at that, mainly from the sly, flirty smile she’s shooting him. “Then yes, obviously.” 

She tosses her head toward the bedroom. “I’m going to get ready. Knock first.” 

Eddie’s mind swims with possibilities as he takes the dishes from her hands. God, but he hates the frying pan. The sticky plates. The juice glasses and the syrup that someone trailed along the counter. Because while he can’t predict precisely what she has planned, he knows the look in her eye. It’s the same devious gleam she had when she dragged him into that bathroom stall in New York and went backstage at a Vegas strip club. 

The trailer lacks soundproofing, and he can hear Chrissy moving around in his room. His imagination trips through several increasingly debauched scenarios while he frantically scrubs gooey crumbs off Wayne’s plate, then loads everything into the drying rack.

Scooting down the hall, he remembers to knock, but just barely, rocking back on his heels to await permission.

“Wait!” she calls, and his fingers twitch near the knob for maybe thirty seconds until, “Okay, come in!”

Eddie opens the door and immediately understands that none of his dish-scrubbing imaginings could come close to the reality of finding Chrissy standing with her hands on her cocked hips and a smile on her face, sporting the cheerleading uniform that has featured in so many of his fantasies. 

“Holy fucking shit,” he manages because she has gone all out. White socks, sneakers, and her hair pulled into a high ponytail and secured with a green scrunchie. 

“Hi.” A faint blush stains her cheeks. “I found my pompoms, too.” 

“You…” 

“They were in the bottom of the garment bag. When I went to see my mom, I took the whole thing. Um…” She takes a step forward. “I hope it’s okay.” 

“… yeah.” All the blood in his body has rushed southward, and he’s having a hard time finding words. Which is, on the surface, stupid—it’s still Chrissy; she’s just wearing different clothes, but his hindbrain can’t parse nuance while it’s busy thumping its leg like a cartoon dog. “You look so pretty.” 

Her blush deepens, but she doesn’t refuse the compliment as she twists to and fro, then scuffs her toe into the carpet. “I didn’t, um… while you were gone. I didn’t do what we talked about.” 

Eddie fights through the red haze of desire to focus on her words. “Didn’t what, sweetheart?” he prompts because he wants her to say it. 

“Didn’t… get off.” 

“But you touched yourself, huh? Drove yourself a little crazy, like I told you to?” 

She nods, and a full-body wriggle overtakes her because she is his fucking dream girl, standing there in pleats and pouts. 

“Did you want to?” He takes a step closer. “Did you get really, really close?” 

Another nod, and he can’t not touch her, so he wraps his arms around her shoulders and pulls her against his chest. 

“One time, I almost did, but I stopped.” 

“Such a good girl,” he says and feels the tension ebb from her frame at the praise. “Can I tell you a secret?” 

“Yes, please.” 

“Whenever you’d flash that skirt at me in the hallway, all I could think about was getting underneath it.” At the time, the fantasy had been tied to a general cheerleader mania, and he’d had that thought about almost every girl on the squad, but whatever. Chrissy topped the list. 

“Lucky you,” she says, fingers stroking down his spine. 

“Can I?” 

“Can you what?” 

“Eat you out?” 

The last time he’d tried, it hadn’t gone so well, but that was then, and this is now. And sure, the tension’s returning to her shoulders with a vengeance, but he can work with that. Work with her. 

“Honest to fuck, kiddo,” he says before she can protest. “I really, really want to. Like, favorite thing, swear to God. And the idea of doing it while you’re wearing this is just… Jesus.” 

She hesitates, shifting her weight from side to side. “It’s not that I don’t believe you. But before…” 

“What happened then, exactly?” 

She shrugs and takes a minute but finds the words. “It was like I was too aware of my body. It felt good, but I couldn’t relax. I was thinking too much about what you were thinking, I guess.” 

Eddie weighs his options because while he understands that Chrissy-brain is going to Chrissy-brain, he’s also desperate to go down on her. “Maybe you should get high? That got you out of your head before, didn’t it?” 

She laughs a little, hands slipping under his shirt to press against his skin. “True. Um, okay. We can try that. But you’ll stop if I hate it?” 

“I’ll stop if you hate it.” 

Decision made, Eddie retrieves his stash from the box in the far corner of the closet while Chrissy sits on the bed. He doesn’t have much on hand anymore—he’s home so rarely, and now that he’s not dealing, he doesn’t need a massive supply—but a fair bit remains of an indica blend Rick recommended. Very relaxing, in Eddie’s experience, with an excellent, mellow high that’ll hopefully get her where she needs to be. 

He sparks a bowl, then shows her how to use it, and she takes a few hits before passing it back so he can do the same. Knowing it will take a few minutes to kick in, he puts on music, lights what remains of the incense he’d thought was cool when he was nineteen, and makes her laugh. The laughing’s essential since he needs her to chill out so she can enjoy something he’s eighty-three percent sure she’ll love if she can just get out of her head. 

Kissing helps, too, so he tries that for a while, dropping a hand to her waist to pull her close. Holding her until she’s sighing and squirming and her fingers are rubbing a pattern against the sweatpants he’s sporting, resplendent with a hole in the crotch and everything. 

“So soft,” she mumbles against his lips. 

Eddie pulls back to find her smiling, glassy-eyed and dopey. “Oh, hi. You good?” 

She nods, and he hopes that’s true. He’s been with her through scarier things than oral sex, but the fact that this freaked her out so badly before weighs heavy on him as he kisses her once, twice, three times more before working his way down. 

In school, he’d always assumed the uniforms would be silky soft, but in reality, the fabric is polyester, stiff, and heavier than it looks. Chrissy in it, though? That’s still the fucking fantasy. When he reaches eye-level with her navel, he nudges her back, figuring it’ll be easier if she’s not looking down at herself. It's not necessarily his preferred positioning but a sacrifice he’ll make. She leans onto her elbows, so he puts a hand on her chest, encouraging her to recline all the way onto the mattress. 

“I’ll take care of you, alright?” he says, and she nods. Taking that as a good sign, he moves to the floor, then grips her waist and tugs her forward until her legs dangle off the edge of the bed. The carpet’s gonna be murder on his knees, he knows, so he grabs the closest available piece of clothing to stick beneath them, since he intends to be down there for a while.

She’s remarkably pliant, so either the weed is working wonders, or she’s doing that thing she does, where she decides she’s going to endure something even if it kills her. Eddie can work with both options, so long as the latter turns into genuine enjoyment, and he runs his hands along the outside of her thighs to push her skirt up, then shuffles forward, nudging her knees apart to discover she’s not wearing a goddamn stitch underneath those green and gold pleats. Au naturel, baby, and while he’s been up close and personal with the area before, this feels different.

He can’t resist teasing, nipping at the skin on the inside of her knee before tutting, “Pretty sure that’s not regulation, Cunningham.” 

She shifts above him, thigh muscles clenching and releasing. “I didn’t think I’d need any.” 

“Oh, you definitely don’t.” 

Stripping away the opportunity to second-guess, Eddie moves in for the kill. Closes his mouth over her mound and flicks his tongue against her slit while his arms slip beneath her thighs to spread her open, hold her fast, and remind her he’s there, she’s there, and they’re in this thing together.

Like last time, she stiffens at the touch, sparking like a live wire. She doesn’t tell him to stop, though, and that’s progress. So, he presses on. Maps the territory, luxuriating in the warmth, the taste, the smell of her. 

Eddie genuinely enjoys this, and he’s not so sure Chrissy understands that. But he’s had a fetish for it since the very first time a girl pressed him into service, so to speak. It’s kind of a power thing, having someone at his mercy, forcing them to fall apart under his ministrations. A lot of dudes would argue that blow jobs accomplish that in spades, but he disagrees. Any moron can get their dick sucked. 

He hums against the center of her, and she twitches, hips shifting and a breathy sigh brushing past her lips. Figuring he’s onto a winning move, he does it again, then seeks her clit, just to find out what she’ll do.

“Oh!” 

That, apparently. He kisses the spot. Waits to see if a protest or a “stop” will arrive. When it doesn’t, he gets back to work, drawing a moan and—oh, yes, please—more tension in her thighs, which press inward against his neck. 

Power-schmower; she should smother him. 

Hoping to prolong things, he shifts south, enjoying every inch of her. The faucet is on, metaphorically speaking, and thank fuck for that. Arousal’s a tricky bitch, and while she’s not as wet as he’d like, it’s not nothing. Plus, she tastes incredible. Earthy and sharp, salty and bitter on his tongue as he laps at her, greedy.

Her heel thumps against his back, and it’s hard to say if she intended to do it or not. He hopes she didn’t—that she’s losing herself to the sensation a little—but he rewards her all the same, traveling up to focus on her clit once more.

A desperate whine and Eddie laughs. Next time, he’ll use his fingers, too. Really fuck with her. Unfortunately, he might be running on borrowed time. Any second, she could get overwhelmed, decide it’s too much, and stop him before he reaches the logical conclusion. So, he focuses on the job at hand, determined to give her the orgasm she’s been denying herself in his absence.

Spelling out the alphabet with his tongue is a cliche for a reason—a tip passed to him from a friend who’d learned it from his older brother—and it works every time. Or, well, almost every time. There was that one girl in Poughkeepsie. Practically wrote War and Peace on her clit, and she still took forever to come. (Not that he minded.) Chrissy, though? Yeah, within a few minutes, she’s dropping all her inhibitions, lifting her hips in a clear cry for more. 

Eddie increases the intensity. The speed. Waits until he hears the same moan she made in the truck when he fingered her the first time, then takes full advantage, relentless in his drive to push her to climax. 

When her orgasm comes, it’s on a trilling series of gasps and one bitten-back oh-oh-oh. Her whole body convulses, and she kicks him again, then drops her hand to his head and pushes him away so she can clamp her thighs shut and roll onto her side, curling into a tiny ball of green-and-gold overstimulation. 

One of these days, he’s gonna inch past that reflex. Gentle her through coming, then push for a second. A third. Fourth, if he’s feeling ambitious. 

Today, though, he’s more than happy with one, a goofy-ass grin on his face as he sits beside her, stroking her arm, her hip, her hair as she comes down from her high. 

At last, she rolls onto her back, looking up at him with wide eyes and pink cheeks. “Gosh,” she says, and he loves her so fucking much he might die from it. 

“Told you it wasn’t that bad.” 

“No, it was… God.” 

“Nah, just me.” 

She takes a second to pick up on his shitty joke, then laughs harder than it deserves. But then, she’s high, so pity laughter is expected. 

He leans down to kiss her, which is when she reaches for his waistband and says, “Now you.” Eddie’s not stupid enough to look a gift horse in the mouth, and it doesn’t take long for him to fumble on a condom and slip inside her warmth, rolling against her sweet and slow until he can no longer hold back how much he wants her, taking what he’s been craving for the better part of two weeks. 

When he comes, she holds him through it, and after, he’s content to stay within her as he softens, so long as she’s content to have him. 

Dopey from both the pot and the orgasm, the noise in Eddie’s brain has quieted to a dull roar, and he yawns, absently tracing the letters embroidered on her chest. He’s fucking hungry, too. Cold pancakes would be great, but he can’t muster up the energy to move. 

“Good present?” she asks on his second journey around the megaphone. 

“The best.” 

“Good. And um… thank you. For… doing that. For me.” 

“You’re so fucking welcome, Cunningham.” 

She brushes some hair from his shoulder and kisses him there. “It’s not totally altruistic. The present, I mean.” 

“No?” 

“No. I want some… I need something from you. Call it a gift.” 

“What’s that?” 

“You know that Elvish dictionary thing?” 

Eddie does, in fact, know that Elvish dictionary thing, though he hasn’t thought about it in a while. Purchased from an advertisement in the back of a fan-made magazine, it’s an unofficial guide to Elvish tongues self-published by some nerd in England, featuring a deep dive into world-building, the difference between all the languages (particular emphasis on Sindarin and Quenya, sure, but everything from Telerin to Valarin gets their turn), and how to interpret the text to create words.

There's no shame in the investment, but it’s geekery of epic proportions, and he can’t believe Chrissy even noticed it gathering dust on his shelf. He hasn’t used it in ages—not since poring through it to ensure he got the symbol for his mother’s tattoo perfect—and he’s surprised she found it buried beneath his old D&D guides. 

“What about it?” he asks, looping some hair around his finger. 

“I want you to use it to design a tattoo for me, like you did for yours. That’s what I want for Christmas.” 

“No shit?” He pushes up on his forearms, studying her face. “Where you gonna put it?” 

“Right here.” She points to a spot on her left hip, just above the jutting bone. 

“Yeah, cool. Absolutely. What do you want me to translate?” 

“You choose. That’s part of it.” 

Well, shit. That’s a lot of responsibility, and he swallows hard, lowering himself back down. “Uh, yeah. I can… I mean, are you sure? We could probably write to the dude who wrote the book, ask him to do it…”

“No. It has to be you.” 

No pressure or anything. He’ll be fine. “Right. Absolutely. I’ll… I’ll work on it today, and we can go get it done before I leave. We’ll have to hit up this place I know in Illinois, but we can make a day of it or whatever.”

“Why Illinois?” 

“Because it’s not legal in Indiana.”  

She makes a face like that’s the dumbest thing she’s ever heard; Eddie doesn’t disagree. “Ugh. Can’t you just do it for me? You said you did your bats.”

“Yeah, no.” He kisses her, laughing a little. “You’re getting the gold star treatment, shitbird. Sanitized needles and everything.” 

“Ugh,” she repeats. Looks pleased, though, even as she shifts her weight and wrinkles her nose. “I’m so sweaty. This stupid thing doesn’t breathe.” 

The ‘thing’ in question is the uniform, so Eddie pulls back, slipping from her in a way that feels both gross and incredible, and he could do it every day for the rest of his life and die happy, probably. “You want to shower? I’m going to sketch some ideas.” 

Chrissy smooths down her skirt and sits up. “Yes, please. Thank you.” 

“Anytime.” 

She leans over to press a kiss to his cheek. “And, um, the other thing… we can do that again, right?” 

Eddie grins and wraps an arm around her waist, repeating himself with vigor. “Genuinely, sweetheart, anytime.”

Chapter Text

“Sorry,” Eddie says, not for the first time that morning. Maybe the tenth? Twentieth? Chrissy’s not sure—she’s stopped counting. 

The first apology had come during breakfast, where they’d eaten leftover cinnamon buns from Christmas, and he had apologized for them being cold in the middle. Several more followed while they dressed in the cold dark of his bedroom and headed for the door. Then, after she’d squished between Eddie and Wayne in the front seat of Wayne’s truck for the drive to Pendleton, he’d apologized for putting her in the middle. And for the heat not working. And for his anxiety-driven foot-tapping.

The latest apology comes on the heels of her being none-too-gently patted down by a female guard, which isn’t even close to his fault, and she’s sort of wishing he’d get over it because she can handle herself fine. Sure, she hasn’t spent much time thinking about prison thanks to her well-heeled upbringing—minimum and maximum security are words she’s heard on television from news anchors, delivering stories about criminals who exist in an orbit that never touches hers—but she’s perfectly capable of dealing with a bit of discomfort for Eddie’s sake.

Or, at least, she thinks it’s Eddie’s sake. Standing on the other side of the metal detector, flanked by him and Wayne, she’s not so sure. He’s stiff, unsmiling, and though she’s brushed her fingers against his a time or two, he won’t take her hand. 

She takes his instead. Presses their palms together as they step forward with the other families because it’s the day after Christmas and people have clearly left celebrations behind to bring what holiday cheer they can to the cinderblock monotony. The mood, while subdued, is friendly amongst the visitors, and though the hallway they walk down is grim and grey, someone has gone to the trouble of stringing colored lights around the doorway of the visiting area to which they are ushered. 

Inside, the room isn’t quite what Chrissy expects. Movies and her unquestioning acceptance of them have led her to believe she’ll face a bank of telephones and plexiglass separating them from the inmates. Instead, the room is open, almost spacious, with about ten round tables sporting attached benches and a play area boasting a dilapidated Fisher-Price princess castle that looks identical to the one she had as a little girl. 

A closer look reveals that the tables are bolted to the ground, though, and while sunlight streams in from the large windows set high on the opposite wall, there’s steel mesh covering the glass and filtering the light into a thousand tiny shafts that speckle the floor. 

On the far side of the room is a heavy door with the same steel obscuring its small window, and the three of them have barely settled at a table when a buzzer sounds, and the door swings open. 

“Daddy!” comes a shriek from one of the kids, who rushes forward and into the arms of a heavyset man with a neat white beard and a tattoo on his cheek.

Eddie drops her hand. Stiffens. She puts a palm on his leg and squeezes instead. 

“Sorry,” he says for the umpteenth time, skipping like a vinyl record. 

“You’re good,” she replies as maybe a dozen men enter the room. 

One of them is familiar, and it’s the oddest thing to recognize someone she’s never met. But there’s no missing that Al Munson walks like his son, approaching their table with slouch-shouldered ease, sporting the same ill-fitting jeans and denim shirt as the rest of the inmates. Unlike the young man in Wayne’s photographs, though, this version of Al is grey around the temples and lined around the eyes, which flick to her just once before returning to Eddie. 

“Al,” says Wayne, clearing his throat and getting to his feet, where it seems that the two men might hug, but they end up shaking hands instead. 

“Wayne.” Al studies Eddie, whose thigh has gone hard as marble beneath her palm. “Hey, son.” 

“Hi.” Eddie sniffs, fingers twitching on the table. “This is, uh, this is Chrissy.” 

“Sure, Chrissy,” Al echoes as he sits across from them, giving her a once-over. “Damned if you don’t look like a Chrissy, too, honey.” 

“I don’t know what a Chrissy looks like,” she says, extending her hand because it’s the polite thing to do and because his utter lack of surprise at her presence gives her a sneaking suspicion that Wayne has primed the pump. “But it’s nice to finally meet you, Mr. Munson.” 

A grin spreads across Al’s face, and while Eddie has his mother’s mouth, she can see something of him in his father’s sly smile as he leans forward to take her hand and squeeze it, putting his opposite palm over the top to envelop her in his rough grip. “Call me Al, huh?” 

“Al, then,” she says as he releases his hold. 

When she puts her hand back under the table, Eddie snatches it up, holding it against his stomach. 

“How’ve you been?” Wayne asks, since Eddie doesn’t seem capable of speech.

“Shit’s shit, big brother,” Al says, sounding so much like Wayne that Chrissy nearly laughs. “Y’all?” 

“Shit’s shit,” Wayne echoes. “You get the stuff we sent?” 

“Yep. Socks and books—keeps me in cigarettes.” 

Eddie makes a grunting noise, which is possibly the least subtle thing Chrissy’s ever heard, so it’s no wonder Al latches onto it, fixing his attention on his son like a bloodhound on the trail of something tasty. 

“So,” Al says. “How’d you land such a looker, Ed?” 

“God.” 

Al grins. “Just asking questions. You’re not blind, are you, honey?” 

His tone is teasing, but with a cutting edge that has her sitting up straighter while Eddie folds himself into a brittle, defensive bundle of nerves. Which, honestly, makes sense because what little he has told her about his father has always involved the fact that Al is a picker and a poker who enjoys getting under people’s skin. 

And Eddie? Eddie’s a prime target. Chrissy, on the other hand, is a born liar, and if she can throw her shields up to deflect the attention, well, there’s nothing he can say that will hurt her more than the slings and arrows she’s already suffered. So, she kisses Eddie’s shoulder, then rests her cheek against it before smiling at Al and chirping, “I see him just fine. He picked me up in LA, you know. I’m an actress.” 

“That so?” Al puts his arms on the table and leans forward. “You make any movies I mighta seen?” 

“Maybe. What kind of movies do you like?” 

“The dirty ones.” 

“Dad!” 

As jokes go, it’s not exactly lewd and crude, but Eddie’s seething anger gives Al another opportunity to provoke, so she swoops in before he can. 

“Actually, he found me in Utah. Salt Lake City. I’m a Mormon.” 

“No shit?” 

“Yes, shit,” she says with a laugh. “We hooked up in Vegas. I’m the world’s shortest showgirl.” 

The line isn’t even that good, but it makes Wayne laugh, while Al cracks another grin. Eddie, naturally, stays stone-faced. 

“Funny girl,” says Al. “You gonna tell me the truth, or am I gonna have to keep guessing?” 

“Oh, I never tell the truth.” She extricates her hand from Eddie’s grip and rests her elbow on the table before leaning her chin on her palm. “How about you?” 

“Not if I can help it,” he replies with a matching grin. 

“We went to high school together,” Eddie says through gritted teeth. “That’s it.” 

“Well, shit, spoil our fun.” Al tuts and leans back. “Wayne already told me that.” 

Eddie grunts and drops a hand to Chrissy’s knee. She can’t see his face but imagines he’s rolling his eyes. “Okay.” 

“He’s always had a thing for blondes,” Al says conspiratorially. “Just like his old man.” 

“Lucky me. I’ve got a thing for him.” 

“He been taking you around in that rig of his?” 

“A little.” 

“I taught him how to drive, y’know.” 

“Drive it like you stole it,” Eddie mutters.

Something hard, mean, and hurt flashes across Al’s face before it smooths into a placid smirk once more. “Not like you took that lesson to heart.” 

“Al—” Wayne cautions. 

“How’s the year been, Dad? You punch anyone since the last time you were written up?” Eddie snaps, cutting Wayne off. “I heard you got a parole hearing soon.” 

“Eddie!”

It’s the first time Chrissy’s ever heard Wayne raise his voice, the bark causing a fair few heads to turn in their direction. 

“What?” Eddie bites right back, sharp and splintered. “He started it.” 

“Jesus Christ,” Al grunts, and the thread of tension and resentment between them is almost visible, pulled taut to the point of snapping. “I got a new lawyer this time, actually. Keeping my nose clean.” 

“Glad to hear it,” says Wayne, still looking at Eddie like he doesn’t recognize him, which leads Chrissy to conclude that these visits don’t always go this poorly. Likely, this means she’s the unstable element—flashes of high school chemistry—introducing uncertainty into a semi-stable situation with unpredictable results. 

Gently, she loops her hand around Eddie’s elbow and hugs his arm against her side. “I hope it works out,” she offers because she is well-versed in diffusing tense situations by pretending that nothing strange is happening. “We, um… Wayne showed me some photographs of you guys when Eddie was little.” 

“No kidding?” Al throws Wayne a smile. “You know this guy was gonna shoot for Life?” 

Wayne rolls his eyes. “Never aimed that high.” 

“I didn’t know you still had that camera.” 

“He’s letting me borrow it,” Chrissy says, and while she’s faintly aware of Eddie twitching and seething beside her, she can only focus on one ticking time bomb at a time. “He’s teaching me a lot.” 

“Yeah? You a His Gal Friday kinda girl?” 

She doesn’t know what that is, so she shrugs, playing it off. “Maybe. I might go to school for it.” That’s the first time she’s articulated the vague notion she’s been swirling in her head, and Eddie twitches like she’s jabbed a cattle prod into his thigh. “Or for something else.” 

“Sure,” says Al before making a crack about modeling school, which is both the obvious joke and dumb enough to make Eddie grunt. 

Still, it’s easy for the stilted conversation to continue around Eddie’s monosyllabic contributions. Whatever’s going on with him—and Chrissy has a few theories—won’t be solved in front of his uncle, his father, and a bunch of strangers. 

They’ve been feigning normalcy for nearly forty-five minutes when Santa arrives. Or, rather, a man in a Santa suit with a belly that looks suspiciously like a pillow strides into the room from the visitor’s side, and no fewer than six of the kids shriek in delight. 

“What in the world?” Chrissy asks. 

“For the kiddos,” Al says with an eye roll that belies something softer behind the cynicism. She wouldn’t go so far as to call it sentiment, but she notes how his eyes cut briefly to Eddie, a shadow of not-quite regret crossing his face. 

Eddie doesn’t notice as he scoffs over Chrissy’s shoulder, watching a young woman in an elf hat setting up a Polaroid camera on a tripod. “They do this every year. It’s dumb.” 

“I think it’s nice.” She turns and finds his mouth set in a flinty line. “You don’t want a picture?” 

“Jesus, no.” 

“That’s too bad. I do.” She glances at Wayne. “You think there’s an age limit?” 

His lip curls into a half-smile. “Maybe we let the kids go first.” 

Chrissy can get on board with that, and she watches as the first children in line approach Santa, the toddler towing her father by the hand. He’s a skinny guy in a knit cap with scarring on both cheeks, but he has a smile that makes Chrissy want to smile back when he picks up his little girl to hold her for the shot. 

The photoshoot continues apace, with the kids giving a fifty-fifty split between abject terror and adoration when faced with the prospect of sitting on Santa’s knee. Halfway through, though, a little boy in a too-short coat loudly asks Santa why he didn’t bring any toys to their house this year, and Eddie mutters something about that being relatable. 

Chrissy strokes his palm while Santa stammers through an answer, and the elf-girl hands the boy a candy cane along with his Polaroid.

As the line of kids dwindles, she glances at Eddie, meeting his surly scowl with as much calm as she can muster. “I really want a photo with you in it.” 

It has never been in Eddie’s nature to deny her, and maybe it’s a cheat to take advantage of that as his expression melts into one of a kicked puppy that doesn’t understand what it did wrong. “Why?” 

“I’ll explain it later.” She stands and pulls him up with her, then nods to Wayne and Al, all business. “You two, let’s go.” 

The brothers Munson wear twin faces of bemused resignation as they rise and shuffle to where Santa is waiting, also befuddled. Chrissy doesn’t give anyone a chance to question her choices as she directs Wayne, Al, and Eddie into positions flanking the man in the chintzy red suit. Once satisfied, she takes her place next to Edie, who instinctively puts an arm around her shoulders. 

“Say Christmas,” says the elf-girl.

“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” says Chrissy. 

Nothing, say the Munsons.

The camera flashes, and she hears the familiar click-wheeze of the Polaroid as it slides out the front slot. 

“Don’t shake it,” warns the elf as she hands the photo to Chrissy. 

They return to their table, where the photo takes a few minutes to develop, revealing a stone-faced Eddie, Al and Wayne with identical half-smiles, and Chrissy with a wobbly grin. It’s awful, and as their faces emerge from the grey fuzz, she finds herself endeared to it, fingers stroking the white frame. 

“We ought to head,” Wayne says after more tepid small talk. “I got a shift tonight.” 

“Sure,” Al replies, and while he’s smiling, it’s clear he was hoping they’d stay longer. 

Chrissy slides the photo across the table. “Here. For you.” 

The suave facade fades for a moment, leaving behind a vulnerability that reminds her of Eddie when he lets his guard down. “No shit?” 

“I want it back when you get out.” 

Eddie snorts, and Al’s shoulders rise. “Sure, honey. You gonna be here when I do?” 

“Absolutely, I am. That’s a family portrait.” She taps the frame. “First of many.” 

Al laughs, then tucks the photo in his front pocket. “I bet you got a nice family of your own, though.” 

“Not so much.” She leans forward. “Which means I’m counting on this one to work out. So maybe figure out that parole thing. Let’s do this in Hawkins next year.” 

“Huh.” He looks at Eddie. “You can visit more, you know. Birthday and Christmas ain’t much…” 

“Tit for fucking tat,” Eddie snaps, shooting to his feet. “I need a cigarette. Dad… yeah. Bye.” 

With that, he turns and stalks out of the room, neck bowed and spine rigid. 

The invisible thread connecting Chrissy to him tugs at her gut, and she turns to Al with a shrug. “It was nice meeting you,” she says, which is half-true. “I’m sure we’ll see you soon.” 

Leaving Wayne to wrap things up, she follows Eddie outside, where she discovers him pacing the visitor lot, his shaking fingers holding his lighter as the wind extinguishes flame after flame. 

“Motherfucker,” he snarls at the wide, grey sky.

“Eddie?” 

He turns, eyes bright and angry. “What?” 

It’s harsh. Short. Mean. 

Startled, she takes a step forward and reaches for the lighter. Cups her palm around the flame and holds it up so he can light his cigarette, even as the heat kisses her fingers. 

He inhales. Holds the smoke inside and lets go on a guttural cough. “Fuck.” 

“I’m sorry about the picture,” she says, moving to wrap her arms around his waist. “I just wanted to give him something.” 

“You didn’t…” he sighs, and his hand falls to her shoulder. “He’s such a fucking asshole.” 

Chrissy didn’t necessarily get that impression, but then, she’s known Al Munson for an hour while Eddie’s had a lifetime to form an opinion. The man inside those cinderblock walls just seemed sad, though. A little pathetic. Brought low from whatever dizzying highs had once caused him to neglect his kid and do something stupid enough to get caught. And while she understands Eddie’s anger, and doesn’t forgive Al for how he treated the person she loves, she feels sorry for the guy all the same. 

For once in his life, Eddie has nothing to say, standing stiff as a statue, smoking his cigarette until Wayne emerges, hands in his pockets and a frown on his face. 

“Don’t,” Eddie says when Wayne approaches, grabbing Chrissy’s hand and tugging her toward the truck. 

If Wayne’s hurt, he keeps it to himself, and the ride back to Hawkins is painfully silent, save for the Christmas carols Chrissy finds playing on a staticky station that sticks with them through most of the trip.  

They’re ten minutes out when Wayne addresses the elephant in the room, switching lanes and turning down the volume before glancing at Eddie. 

“He’s trying,” he offers.

Eddie grunts. “Heard that before.” 

“Taking classes,” Wayne continues, like Eddie hasn’t spoken. “Working on his GED.” 

“Okay.” Eddie kicks his toe against the floorboard, and the hand holding Chrissy’s bears down like she’s the only thing keeping him from executing a flying death leap onto the interstate. “Still an asshole, though.” 

“Mmm.” Signaling for their exit, Wayne navigates the loop that takes them to the highway just north of Hawkins. “If he gets out, he’ll stay with us, y’know.” 

“Yeah, but he won’t get out.” 

“Might.” 

“Won’t,” he repeats, jaw tight as he faces the window. “He’ll fuck it up at the last minute. That’s what he always does.” 

Wayne huffs and says nothing. Chrissy sighs, fussing with the ring that holds the stone from Eddie’s mother and dropping her head to his shoulder.

He lets her do it but doesn’t reciprocate. Just sits like a petulant lump of a person who is younger and angrier than the even-keeled Eddie she knows and loves. This is an Eddie from before the truck. An Eddie from before graduation. Honestly, it's an Eddie from before the hair and the rings and the screaming skeleton music. This is the Eddie who sat alone in empty apartments, wondering when his dad was coming home. The Eddie who’s been starving and shivering in the cold beneath the trappings of maturity and stability that he wears so well. Masking the damaged little kid hiding from the monsters under the bed. 

So, Chrissy can like Al Munson fine, but she also understands why Eddie doesn’t, and no amount of smoothing over on her part will fix that. In the grand scheme of things, she’s on Team Eddie, all day, every day. Even if Team Eddie today is a grunting, grumbling mess that shoots from the truck the moment Wayne parks, stalking into the trailer, where he slams his bedroom door shut with a bang so loud, it reverberates all the way to where Chrissy and Wayne have just arrived on the stoop. 

“Shit,” Wayne says, which about sums it up.

“I should have let you guys go on your own,” she offers as she hangs up her coat. “I made it worse.”

“You think that was worse?” Wayne half-chuckles and latches the door as he disabuses her of her earlier unstable element theory. “Shit, that was better’n his birthday.” 

“Why does he even go, then?” 

Shrugging, Wayne bends to untie his laces. “Guess maybe a part of him wants to remind Al he’s angry. That he exists.” 

“Sure.” 

“I’m gonna shower, head out. You alright, though?” 

“I’m fine.” She offers him a smile before going to tap on the bedroom door, which earns her a grunt from Eddie.

Taking that as invitation enough, she enters to find him curled on his side, facing the wall. She sits next to him, dropping a hand to his hip. “Eddie.” 

Another grunt, and while she is more than willing to extend him buckets of grace, considering the oceans of it that he’s gifted her through their time together, she also knows him well enough to know a pity party when she sees one. 

“Are you hungry?” she offers. 

“No. Got a fucking headache.” 

That may or may not be true, but she’ll allow the lie. “Want me to rub your neck?” 

“No. I just want to sleep.” 

“Alright. Aspirin?” 

“Yeah, whatever, I guess.” 

“I’ll go get you one. Here—” Scooting down, she unlaces his sneakers and tugs them off, lining them up on the floor and pulling a blanket over his brittle body. She tucks him in, then kisses his temple for good measure. “I’m sorry you feel bad.” 

“I’m sorry today sucked.” 

“It didn’t. I’m going to get you a pill.” 

Unfortunately, the bottle of aspirin Wayne keeps in the corner kitchen cabinet for his back pain is missing, and when he emerges from his bedroom a few minutes later, he tells her he finished it yesterday and planned to swing by the drugstore on his way to work. 

“Don’t worry about that. I can run to the mini-mart,” she says. Considering the day's stress, she could use the walk, and the store is only a half-mile if she cuts across back lots. Part grocery, part gas station, part general store, the mini-mart is the closest thing Forest Hills has to convenience, with a small first-aid section that boasts off-brand Band-Aids, painkillers, and rubbing alcohol. “You need anything?” 

“Nah. You want a lift, though?” 

“It’s not that far.”

She puts on her shoes, then heads in to tell Eddie where she’s going, only to find him asleep and drooling on the pillow.

The walk to the store is short and brisk, with an icy north wind cutting her to the quick even through the new, heavy coat that had been a Christmas present from Wayne. It’s not stylish, but it’s practical, and she loves him for thinking of it for her. 

She comes to the convenience store from the rear, going around the ice machine and the locked bathrooms to the cracked sidewalk along the front. A few cars are parked between fading lines, while others are pulled up to the pumps. A green station wagon. A Volvo. A rust bucket without a rear bumper. A black Jeep. 

A black—

The bell dings as the door swings open.

And then, just like that, there’s Jason.

Chapter Text

Chrissy is in the Jeep. 

She doesn’t recall how she ended up there. 

A fugue state. A grey cloud descending. Tongue locking behind her teeth.

They’re driving. Her hands are shaking, so she shoves them between her knees. Inhales on a knife’s edge as he barrels down the highway at breakneck speed, and she can’t, she can’t, she can’t remember, only—

Only he had stopped short. Outside the gas station. Jason had come out the door, and he had stopped short.

He spoke her name like a pastor spits sin.

She remembers him taking her arm. Fingers closing around her elbow so she could feel their possession through her coat and her blouse all the way to her skin and below as if he was branding himself on her bones. 

She had been useless. Frozen. Didn’t scream. Didn’t fight. Just stood, shell-shocked, as he smiled. Tutted. Said, “alright, honey. Time to go home,” like people were watching, but no people were watching. Nobody noticed a thing when he marched her to the Jeep. Put her inside. Locked the door.

She remembers trying to open that door. Frozen fingers scrabbling at the handle while he approached the driver’s side. Only she had been slow. Stupid. Shaking so much she couldn’t find purchase on the plastic. 

“Don’t do that, Chris,” he had said when he got in, and then taken her by the wrist like he’d done that time before, so she didn’t do that. Didn’t do anything. Sat, instead, while the cloud descended on her and took her someplace else, and all the while he was taking her someplace else, and now they are ten minutes from Hawkins. Fifteen. Twenty. 

Jason hasn’t said a word since peeling out of the parking lot, though his fingers are clutching the wheel so tight that his knuckles have gone fish-belly white as the speedometer climbs to eighty. eighty-five. Ninety. 

They pass a sign for Indianapolis, and Chrissy considers jumping. Thinks it would be better to be red sludge on the road over this and puts her hand on the handle again. Debates pulling up the lock. 

“Quit doing that,” Jason says, and he’s fast. Palm on her thigh, squeezing so she drops the handle and tries to push him away instead. 

Mistake. He swerves into the shoulder. Rolls his eyes when she gasps. 

“Don’t be a baby.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

The response is instinctive. Protective. He laughs. Digs his thumb into the white-hot place on the side of her kneecap, then pats her leg like she’s so, so silly. “You’ll be alright when we get home.”

“Jason—” 

“What?”

“I—could you please just slow down?” 

He speeds up instead. Chrissy bites the inside of her cheek until she tastes blood, and when he moves his hand to change lanes, she touches the spot he gripped. 

It’ll bruise. It always bruises.

“I thought Andy was crazy,” Jason says, and she thinks she’s lost time in her numb terror because they’re further down the road than she realized. Two exits away. “When he first called me, I mean. Told me he saw you with Eddie Munson, and I said no, there’s no way. That’s not true.” 

It is, she wants to say but can’t say, because to say would be to rile and to rile would not be in her best interest. 

“But then I kept thinking, what if it is true? What if you”—he jabs a finger into her arm—“were that dumb. So I called my dad again. Do you know what that felt like? Having to beg him to call in another favor, getting someone to check and make sure you weren’t that stupid? Calling off the guy in Kentucky, and then—then I get told nah, nothing doing. She is that stupid, and she wants to stay there, and—” 

He’s drifting again, and the Jeep tips into the next lane with the car behind blaring a warning. She yelps—she can’t help it—and he shoves her hard enough for her head to smack the glass as he jerks the steering wheel to the right and slows down to brake-check their follower. Chrissy hopes that person slams into them. Hopes there’s a big, awful crash that forces Jason to stop and someone with authority to come so she can tell them she doesn’t want to be here, and could they help her go home? 

“Asshole,” Jason snaps, then sighs. Turns to her like he didn’t just make her see stars. “It’s alright. Everything will be better when we get you home.” 

Her head hurts, and for a moment, she confuses his words with her desire and nods. “Yes, it’s—” 

“I thought it was going to be such a hassle, coming to get you, but then there you were—God has a plan, you know?” 

A switch flips. Lightbulb illumination of a plan that should have been obvious from the jump. Jason wasn’t at that gas station by coincidence. He had been coming for her. Had stopped at the mini-mart to fuel up in anticipation of a speedy getaway. Because he’d been anticipating a fight with Eddie. With Wayne, even.

Part of her is so grateful, suddenly, that she went to the store. It’s just her now, at least. He can’t get to them, and if nothing else, she knows Jason’s moods. His mercurial shifts in tone and intensity. The things to say that sometimes calm him down. 

“I’m sorry, Jase,” she says, treading carefully across the minefield. 

It doesn’t work. His temper ratchets, and he huffs. Slams his foot on the gas pedal and snaps, “Did you really think I was just going to sign those papers? They came to our home, Chrissy. Knocked on the door, handed me a folder, and said I’d been served. And then I had to sit in my parents’ house at Christmas, everyone asking where you were, so dad and I have to keep making up lies. Do you know how humiliating that was? How am I supposed to tell my mother? And leaving today…” He trails off. Shakes his head and jerks the Jeep over two lanes, earning himself another beeped warning as he exits the interstate. “I decided I wasn’t going home without you.” 

The way he says it—so calm, so matter-of-fact—is worse than if he’d yelled, and Chrissy blinks back the tears sparking behind her eyes. “It wasn’t my intention to embarrass you,” she says, voice tremulous.

“Of course it wasn’t.” He gives her a look of such patronizing condescension that she’d laugh if fear didn’t have such a firm grip on her higher functions. “That’s why I needed to find you. To get you away from his… manipulations.” 

“Wh—Eddie?” 

Landmine. Jason slams on the brakes, and she shoots forward, the seatbelt snapping against her chest as she braces her hands against the console. He comes to a full stop, right there on the exit ramp, and grabs her arm, squeezing hard enough to bruise before he shoves her again. “Don’t say his name like you know him.” 

Jason’s rants have never been all that coherent, but this is something new. This one goes beyond the angry bleatings of a boy who had been thrust into the real world and told he was nothing special. A boy who’d failed college and convinced himself his professors were out to get him. A boy who’d turned to God as a weapon and Jesus as a justification. 

This is a Jason who has faced an actual consequence for the first time in his life and has responded in kind. 

“I’m sorry,” she says for the third time, and he relaxes his hold but doesn’t let her go entirely until the car is in motion again. 

Once they’ve merged onto the main road, he clears his throat and drums his fingers against the steering wheel in a gesture so eerily reminiscent of Eddie that it makes her want to scream until her voice is gone. 

“What I don’t understand,” he says, slow and even, too calm for her liking, “is how you even hooked up with him. We found your car in Kentucky. Dad had a guy there, asking around.” 

“I was there,” she says, and while her brain is still cloudy, the lies come quickly enough, thanks to all the practice she’s had. Vague on the details, but plausible. “But I ran out of money, and the car was… there was something wrong with it. You know I don’t know about that stuff. So, um, I took a bus back up here and thought maybe I could stay with my parents, but I ended up running into Eddie downtown, and we started talking.” 

“So, you went with him instead of going to your mother?” 

Careful comes a cautious voice from within. “Not with him,” she corrects, shaking her head. “He works out of town a lot, and his uncle was renting their extra room, which was really cheap, so… so I said yes, and I moved in with them, and I’ve been… babysitting and stuff, to earn some money.” 

The whiff of bullshit is strong with the entire story, but Jason’s clearly not looking for plausibility. “But you don’t know him.” 

“I do, a little. We worked on an English project together, back in school. He’s… he’s okay.” 

He scowls. “You coulda called me…talked about it…” 

“I assumed you were, um, mad at me? I was trying to make it easier by—”

“Mad? Chris, I was so worried.” His tone shifts to conciliatory, almost kind. “I felt awful about our fight and then to get home and find you missing... God, when they found the car, I figured the worst, but it turns out you were right here. Right under my nose.” 

That he would believe she was dead before considering that she’d succeeded in leaving speaks volumes, and she presses her lips together, fury churning in her gut.

“Right under my nose,” he repeats. “I’m sure he made you think—well, he is who he is. I remember him, too. All that crap he did in school. Of course, he’d make it easy on you. Take advantage of a vulnerable state. That’s my fault, upsetting you like I did. But we’re gonna fix it. Put it behind us. You get that, right?” 

Jason has always been good at kidding himself, but this is next level—casting Eddie as the convenient villain in whatever morality play he’s scripting for himself, in which he’s the hero triumphant, and she’s the prize he has to retrieve. A trophy in the shape of a person.

It makes her angry, but what’s anger going to do when she’s trapped inside a moving vehicle? She needs to start being smart instead. So she pushes down the tears that threaten to brim over because Jason doesn’t like tears, and she’s gotten too lax with herself these past couple of months. Too emotional. All her self-preservation wilted beneath the warmth of Eddie’s smile, and, oh, she’d give anything to see his van barreling down the road behind them. 

In all likelihood, though, he doesn’t even realize she’s gone. How long will it take him and Wayne to realize something’s wrong? Half an hour? Forty-five minutes? Even when they do, they won’t know what happened. Won’t know where to go. Where to look. 

Moments later, they arrive at the apartment complex Chrissy had vowed to leave behind. Jason’s still talking, telling her that Eddie’s possessed, a tool of the devil, a temptation. That she’s a stupid girl, letting herself be manipulated by him, and that he won’t be signing any papers. It’s funny, actually, that while this shit-spewing has a different aroma than his usual steaming rants, it’s still a pile of crap. 

God, he’s so boring. He’s always been so boring.  

When he pulls the Jeep into the parking spot where Eddie’s van had been only a couple weeks before. Chrissy reaches for the handle. Nothing doing—he’s fast. Mean. Reaches over to grip her by the jaw and yank her head around, squeezing her cheeks so hard she nearly screams.

“Hey, baby? Quit touching the goddamn door.” 

She yanks her hand back like she’s been burned. “I didn’t—I’m sorry.” 

“We’re not done talking. I just need to know… were you sleeping with him?” His voice is gentle, coaxing, as if all she has to do is admit her sins, then this can be over, and they’ll be fine, and none of this will be a problem anymore.

“N-no,” she says. “It wasn’t like that.” 

“Don’t lie to me, honey.” His grip tightens, and she wonders how much pressure it would take to break her jaw.

“I swear, Jason, it wasn’t like that. It was—” 

He hits her. A slap she’s not braced for, his class ring catching her lip as her head whips to the side, and she whimpers.

There’s no time to recover before he grabs her face again. Shakes her so hard that her brain rattles against her skull. “You must think I’m stupid, Chris. Andy told me you two looked pretty cozy. I didn’t want to believe it until that useless cop told us you wanted to stay.”

“We never did that,” she whispers. “We were… I promise, Jase. I never, ever let him do that.” 

He studies her, eyes narrowed, then runs his thumb across her bottom lip. When he pulls away, he has red on his finger, and she realizes with some astonishment that, yes, there’s a dull, familiar throb in her mouth, masked by the adrenaline coursing through every inch of her body. 

“I don’t believe you,” he says evenly, wiping his hand on his jeans. “But we’ll talk about it inside.” 

With that, he pats her cheek, unlocks only his door, and comes to her side of the car. 

The five seconds he takes aren’t enough time to run. Not when he’s that much bigger than her. Stronger. Faster. 

This isn’t the moment, she decides, and stays placid when he grabs her by the elbow and steers her toward the building. 

As they climb the stairs, the voice that told her to be careful grows louder. 

If you go in, there’s no telling when you’ll come out, Chrissygirl it cautions while Jason attempts to retrieve his keys while keeping a hold on her, distracted as they reach the top landing.

You’re tougher than you think you are, Blondie. 

That’s Gloria, bringing the memory of New York to the forefront of Chrissy’s mind. How she twisted Eddie’s arm behind his back while that tiny force of nature told her to try harder. Fight smarter. 

What would Gloria do? What about Cherry and Bambi? That hardscrabble waitress in Wichita and the bartender who’d slipped her a free drink in Boise? Any number of women who—

Jason fumbles the keys. Releases his grip on her for a half-second and she doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t think, just moves. Slams the heel of her hand into his nose so hard she hears something crunch, and when he stumbles, she goes for his crotch. Knee up, sure and certain, making brutal contact with that most vulnerable place before she scrapes her foot down the front of his shin and stomps as hard as she can on his toes. 

The pain doubles him up, and he yelps, grabbing his nose and his groin. She dances back. Teeters on the edge of the stairs, hovering on the precipice of balance and freedom and—

you run

you keep running until you’re safe

staying alive is how you win

—she runs. Takes the stairs two at a time, three at a time, reaching the breezeway while Jason bellows above her. 

She doesn’t know if he’s following, and she’s not looking back to find out.

Safety looms down the overgrown path that leads to the greenway trail behind their complex. The place she used to run sometimes, simply to get out of the house. Now, it’s a sanctuary, with the surrounding woods and their thick snarl of bare branches providing some cover as she sprints, breathless, faster than she’s ever run before. Sobbing, choking on those sobs, her legs pumping like pistons, animal instinct driving her forward until she comes to the trailhead, and she can’t tell if she’s been running for two minutes or ten, but she can’t hear anyone behind her. Can’t—

She stops. Turns. Puts her hands on her knees and sucks in a lungful of air while her brain continues to sprint. Solving problems. Figuring out how to get her home.

She needs a phone. A ride. Eddie. 

Close to the trailhead, there’s a strip mall off a side road. She used to go there after her runs sometimes because there’s a bookshop with friendly people and a laundromat with tables where she could sit and read in the sanctity of that humid, soapy warmth. 

Leaving the trail puts her in danger, though—she’ll be exposed, and she has no doubt Jason’s out there looking. He doesn’t remember about the trail, though, which is why he didn’t follow her. Never listened when she told him about her runs. But he knows the surrounding area, and he has the Jeep.

Still, being seen is a risk she’s willing to take for the use of the payphone bolted to the front of the building. 

Besides, there will be people. Witnesses. 

Winded and sore, she moves quickly, sticking to the shoulder until she reaches the parking lot and bolts across the asphalt to the phone. Mercifully, she has loose change in her pockets—the money she was going to use for Eddie’s aspirin, which feels like twenty years ago now. 

She feeds a few quarters into the phone with fluttering fingers and dials the number she’s so glad she took the time to memorize. 

It rings once, twice, three times, and—

“Hello?” 

“Wayne?” 

“Jesus, Chrissy! Where are you?” 

He sounds panicked, which means they’ve realized she’s missing. “Indianapolis. Near my old apartment. Jason—” 

“We know about—wait, Eddie’s not with you?” 

That makes no sense, and Chrissy frowns at the receiver before returning it to her ear. “No. I’m…why would Eddie…?” 

“That little redheaded girl and her boyfriend came pounding on the door. Said they saw you get grabbed.” 

A dull panic asserts itself in her gut as she does some quick calculations. “And Eddie’s coming here?” 

“Left not quite an hour ago. I was hoping you were him.” 

Chrissy’s mouth goes dry, and she thinks she might throw up. If Eddie left Hawkins an hour ago, his arrival here is imminent. Except not here. He doesn’t know about here. All he knows is the apartment, and she has no way of reaching him to tell him she’s not there, but Jason might be and that it is a very, very bad place for Eddie to go. “Okay,” she says, cutting Wayne off mid-sentence. “Okay. Thank you. I’ll go… I’ll… I’ll fix it.” 

Dropping the phone into its cradle, she leans her head against the frigid metal of the casing and takes three deep breaths. 

Then, for the second time that day, Chrissy runs.

Chapter Text

Eddie can’t will himself to sleep but refuses to leave his room. Leaving means slumping his way into another prickly conversation with Wayne while Chrissy watches them volley the point back and forth, and he’s already had enough of that for one day, watching her around his dad. 

Which, yeah, he knows he’s being an asshole. Like, he gets that. He’s not unaware of his failings when it comes to his tenuous relationship with his father. He also realizes he’s being shitty to his girlfriend and that he’s soundly rejected the peace offering she made maybe fifteen, twenty minutes ago when she came in to talk. 

The water stain in the corner is getting bigger again, he thinks, as he rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling. Fucking trailer never stops being a problem. One more thing to add to the list of shit he needs to look at while he’s home, and okay, okay, okay, it’s not really his problem anymore. It’s Wayne’s problem, but Wayne’s pissing him off, and that’s not anybody’s fault but—

But! His dad, man. His fucking dad. Eddie had hoped that with Chrissy by his side, he’d act tougher. More grown-up when his father started being smirky and shitty. Capable of staring down the slights and snide asides with ease because he had her to back him up. 

Only that hadn’t happened. Instead, Al had flirted with Chrissy the way he’s flirted with every pretty woman within a hundred-foot radius throughout Eddie’s childhood. And it’s not like Chrissy rose to the occasion, but she was nice to him. Laughed at his stupid jokes. Talked to him as though he wasn’t just a collection of assholes stitched into human form. 

It’s ludicrous for Eddie to be angry. Chrissy loves him, so of course, she would put her best foot forward when meeting his father. Naturally she’d try to sell herself as a believable member of the family because she’s made no bones about the fact that she’s in this thing for as long as Eddie’ll have her. And, shit, that’s awesome. It’s just that seeing her and Al getting along dropped a bucket into the deep, murky well of resentment that lives within him, where stone walls echo with the babyish tears he’d shed on those nights the shithead never came home, drawing up a poisonous sludge of rage and loneliness and the hungry stomach he’d wrapped his arms around time and again. 

But Chrissy doesn’t know all of that. He hasn’t told her the worst of it, so it’s not her fault he’s angry. Yet there he is, staring at the stained ceiling while she and Wayne get on with their days. 

Time passes—he’s not sure how long—and he grunts when a knock comes at the door. Rolls onto his stomach and pulls the blanket over his head. 

Ten seconds later, the door opens.

“Eddie,” Wayne says, voice sharp. “Get up.” 

The urge to be a shit remains, and Eddie groans. Flings his arms out wide to force the blanket down as he rolls over and sees the look on Wayne’s face. 

It’s the same look he’d had the day Al got sentenced, and he was the one who had to break the news to Eddie, who’d been stuck in the latest foster situation, unable to join him in the courtroom. 

“What is it?” he asks, sitting up, the gloom cloud hanging around his head dissipating in seconds. 

“Get up,” Wayne repeats. “We got company.” 

Eddie moves fast, and when he stumbles into the living room, he finds the front door open and Max Mayfield standing on the stoop, Lucas at her side, his arm around her shoulders while she hugs herself, bottom lip worried between her teeth. 

“Tell him what you told me,” Wayne says as he steers Eddie to the door.

“I saw Chrissy at the gas station,” she says. “She was—” 

His heart drops toward his toes at her tone. “What? Where is she?” 

“She needed aspirin,” says Wayne, and goddamn if that isn’t a gut punch since Eddie’d been the one lying about a headache.

“We were inside—” Max continues.

“Kind of in the back,” Lucas pipes up.

Max glowers. “Kind of, yeah. Anyway, Jason Carver was there—you remember Jason?” 

The bottom falls out of Eddie’s stomach like a fiery ball of molten lead, and he nods. “She… she was with Jason?” 

“Yeah. I saw them talking, and it’s like… maybe it’s nothing. But he kind of grabbed her arm. Said something to her, and then they got in his car. Except, I don’t know. She looked…” She twists the end of a braid, and Lucas squeezes her shoulder. “She looked scared. And I figured you’d want to know rather than not know. If I’m just stirring shit up, I’m sorry, but like…”

Eddie doesn’t wait to hear how she’s going to finish that sentence. He scrabbles for his keys on the hook next to the door and pushes past the kids without a backward glance. When he reaches the van, he wrenches open the driver’s side door and leaps in to twist the key in the ignition, which sputters. Revs-revs-revs-revs, but doesn’t turn over. 

He tries again. Again. Again. Punctuates each failure with a punch to the steering wheel and a yelped, “fuck!” only to be interrupted by Wayne knocking on the window and holding up the keys to his truck. 

“Use mine,” he says as Eddie exits the van. “Hey, slow down. It needs gas, and you need to take a second.” 

“I don’t have a second.” He snatches the keyring, mouth gone dry as blood pounds at his temples. “I’m gonna fucking… fucking…” 

“Eddie.” Wayne pushes him flat against the frigid metal of the truck with enough force to hurt, the shock jostling him from the red fog that’s slipped into the driver’s seat of his sanity. “Be smart about this, huh?” 

“He fucking took her.” 

“I know he did. Where’s he going, then?” 

“That goddamn apartment, or his parents, or…” 

“Or you don’t know, exactly. So, let’s be strategic before you shoot off to get yourself in trouble. It’s not gonna do her a damned bit of good if you end up cooling your heels in county, you understand?” He gives Eddie’s shoulder a rough shake, calloused fingers digging into what’s left of the sinew and bone holding him together as the rest of him threatens to fall apart at the seams. “Their old place seems most likely to me, so you go on there, and I’ll worry about things here.” 

“You—” 

“Go. But don’t do any more or any less than you need to get her back. Don’t make it into anything more than that.” 

“I—” He exhales. Nudges Wayne away with a grunt. “Yeah, I know.” 

“I mean it, Eddie.” 

“I get it!” And the thing is, he does get it—nobody’s gonna be on his side if he walks up and smacks Jason stupid with the tire iron Wayne keeps in the truck—but talking about hypotheticals is wasting time Chrissy might not have.

“Soon as you know whether she’s there, you call. Understand?” 

“Yeah.” 

Wayne tuts. Releases his hold and gives him room to maneuver. “Alright, then.” 

Seconds later, he’s peeling out of Wayne’s parking spot before he has the door shut, shooting across the trailer park like a clanking, rusted rocket and onto the road, where he is obliged to stop for gas at the same goddamn place where Jason…

Where Jason… 

Eddie pukes into a trash can beside the pump and then forgoes getting his change on the twenty he’d shoved toward the clerk. Every passing second feels like an epoch, and his bright spark of imagination becomes a cursed flame as he conjures vivid scenarios of what, precisely, could be happening to Chrissy at any given moment. 

And then, of course, there’s a goddamn pile-up on the interstate. As the traffic slows to a standstill, he swears and takes the first exit he crawls to onto a side road instead, picking his way through a winding tangle of rural roads. Directionless, he attempts to follow the line of unmoving cars on his left but loses considerable time searching for an on-ramp once he’s past the accident. 

A part of him wants to loop back. Pass the crash from the other side and ensure the hazard isn’t some maniac-manned Jeep crushed in a fit of pique, but he doesn’t. Can’t. Presses on, instead.

Whatever lead Jason had—fifteen minutes, twenty, maybe?—has grown considerably by the time Eddie peels off at the exit on the outskirts of Indianapolis. Getting to the apartment without Chrissy giving directions isn’t as easy as he’d hoped, but he drives a truck for a living, and his sense of direction and recall isn’t half-bad, so he only makes a couple of wrong turns. 

Still, every misstep is a wriggling worm of worry eating holes in his head, and when he finally spies the complex, he nearly tips the truck on two wheels turning into the lot. He can’t remember her building number but knows it’s in the rear, backing up to the woods. There’s reserved parking, and—yes! Chrissy’s old car is still there.

No Jeep, though.

Which, yeah. There’s every chance Jason just dragged her back to his parents’ house to play happy families for what remains of the holidays. Only him doing that doesn’t make much sense. All signs have been pointing to the fact that Jason is bullshitting about the state of his marriage to everyone except, maybe, his father. Hauling an unwilling Chrissy to some family function would run counter to the living lie he’s concocted. Ergo, they have to be here. 

Two options, then: they haven’t arrived yet—and Eddie cannot begin to fathom how that could be, lest he lose his everfucking mind, which is floating back to that accident on the interstate—or Jason parked elsewhere. 

Either way, he can only head to the apartment, knock—maybe bust the door down—and see what fresh hell heads his way. 

Erring on the side of caution, he parks in front of Jason’s empty, reserved spot and leaves the truck running before hopping out and grabbing Wayne’s tire iron from the box in the bed. He has no intention of getting arrested, but if push comes to shove, he’s not going down easy, and he’s not leaving without Chrissy. 

Clutching the metal against his sweating palm, he sets his mouth in a grim line and starts across the lot. His vision narrows as he moves, everything in his body focusing on what’s directly ahead with no peripheral, no sense of anyone or anything beyond the task at hand. 

Is it any wonder, then, that he doesn’t see the blonde blur coming at him as he approaches the breezeway? The blur takes him by surprise, knocking him to the side like a rag doll, and oh, fuck, it’s her, it’s her, it’s her! Familiar arms winding around his waist as she whimpers, “Don’t go up there, don’t, don’t, okay? I’m here, here I am!” 

The sing-song arrives on a sob, and when he looks at her face, he finds blood on her cheek, tears in her eyes, and dirt on her nose. So, alright, Wayne’s advice can get fucked because Eddie’s going to kill Jason. 

“Eddie,” she says, holding onto him so tightly his ribs hurt. “Let’s go, we have to go.” 

“Where the fuck is he?” 

The voice that comes out of him is unrecognizable, welling up from the sick, slimy place he doesn’t like to visit. 

“I don’t know,” she says, nimble little fingers pawing at him like some anxious animal. “I don’t… I ran, but I hit him so hard, Eddie, and then I ran so fast, and I called Wayne, but he said you were here, so I came back, and he was gone, so I hid in the bushes, and I waited, and I saw you, and I just want to go, so please take me home, okay? Let’s just go home.” 

Her plea is so plaintive that it cracks through the inferno of his anger, and he stops. Squints. Looks her over properly—the mussed hair, the split lip, the red skin indicative of soon-to-be-risen bruises—and realizes that she’s not scared for herself but for him. For what he might do. For the weapon in his hand and the rage seeping out of every pore. 

“I—you hit him?” 

She nods, and through the blood and the tears, he catches sight of her fury. A steely resolve in the set of her jaw and the brightness of her eyes.

There’s no fucking with a woman like that, and Eddie’s not about to deny her anything. 

“Yeah, Chrissygirl,” he relents, shouldering her weight. “Let’s go home. Here, take this.” 

He hands her the tire iron, which she wields like a cudgel. They cross the lot, tense and wary, and Eddie waits while she climbs in first, then shuts the door behind her before going around to his side. 

No sooner has he put the truck in gear than the Jeep turns the corner, bearing down like some demented destrier, foaming at the mouth as it readies itself to charge. Chrissy makes a low, awful sound, and Eddie reaches for her. Grips her knee and gets out, “Duck down, lock the door,” as Jason screeches to a halt. 

From there, Eddie doesn’t think. Doesn’t hesitate. Just hits the gas, shooting off and swinging wide of the Jeep at the exact moment Jason emerges, face twisted into something apoplectic and raw, with blood caked from his nose to his chin. 

They make eye contact just once, Jason’s snarl turning into shock when he realizes who he’s looking at. Eddie floors the gas pedal and shoots the length of the lot in seconds, leaving that motherfucker and his bloody nose behind. He doesn’t even pause at the stop sign marking the entrance to the complex, launching onto the nearly empty road and gunning toward the highway at sixty miles an hour. He’d go faster, but the last thing he wants is to catch a cop with Chrissy bloody and battered in the seat beside him. 

“Holy shit,” he says, speaking only once he’s sure Jason’s not following, his breath coming in sharp bursts. “I think you broke his fucking nose.” 

Chrissy’s still bent double, and it’s only at the sound of his voice that she straightens, turning to look out the rear window, where the only car in sight is the maroon sedan Eddie passed a few seconds earlier. “Maybe. I tried to. Oh, my God.” 

“You’re alright,” he says, though she’s clearly not. 

“I kicked him in the balls. Like Gloria said to. I… I… I…” Her sentence breaks into a series of hiccupy sobs, and Eddie’s fingers itch to hold her but can’t until he’s put more distance between them and Jason, which is just another motherfuck in a day full of them. 

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” He moves his hand across the bench seat and touches her thigh. “Can you come over here?” 

She nods. Slides over while tucking her legs behind her to avoid the gearshift, making herself small as she leans against him. He can’t do enough from there, but he can turn his head. Kiss hers. Keep her close as they make their way home. 

Neither talks much on the drive, though Chrissy cries the whole time. Pent-up fear, probably. Adrenaline. He doesn’t know, but the tears keep coming, ebbing and flowing as they put miles between them and the shambling carcass of the Bad Thing that Almost Happened. 

“Here we are,” he says, just to have something to say as they turn into Forest Hills, heading for the familiarity of their back lot. 

There’s a squad car outside the trailer and a cop talking to Wayne while Max and Lucas hover on the periphery of the conversation. Chrissy shudders when she takes in the scene, putting a hand over her mouth. “Eddie, I can’t… he called them again…” 

“No, he didn’t. Wayne did. We weren’t sure where you were, so…” 

“God, Wayne’s supposed to be at work,” she says, setting off a fresh volley of tears. 

“It’s fine. Chrissy, honestly. Do you want me to go talk to him first?” 

She nods, so he does, introducing himself to the cop—Officer Powell, who’s sort of familiar in the way a lot of Hawkins cops are to Eddie—and briefly explaining what happened.

“He’s fucking crazy, her ex,” he finishes flatly, arms folded across his chest. “I don’t doubt he’ll show up again—shit, he might already be following us.” 

Powell nods like he doesn’t disagree with Eddie’s theory. “We’ve got a report floating around about him—Chief read us in. But if your friend doesn’t want to talk, there’s nothing I can do except tell you to call us if he shows up again.” 

“And if she does? Want to talk, I mean.” 

“Then we have some options, considering our witnesses.” At that, he glances at Max and Lucas, who’ve moved to the rickety picnic table across the way. 

“Let me talk to her,” Eddie offers, then heads to the opposite side of the truck so they can have a little privacy for the discussion. Chrissy opens the door for him, turning so her legs dangle. If they were in Smaug, he’d step right up on the running board to hold her. Tease her. Kiss her. The best he can do today is both hands on her knees while explaining that Powell just wants to talk, and Max and Lucas already gave their statements. 

“So he can file it away somewhere?” she says, balling one hand into a fist on her lap. “Ignore it?” 

“He thinks you could press charges, maybe.” 

Wearily, she shakes her head, offering a rueful smile. “Nothing’ll stick to him. It’s all bullshit.” 

“Will you at least come over? You know I’m not the biggest fan of cops, but he seems… he doesn’t seem like a total dickhead.” 

“Coming from you, that must make him a saint,” she says, then allows him to help her down. 

Powell’s as gentle with her as he can be, considering the circumstances. He asks her what happened, gets her side of the story, and then points to the cut on her cheek. 

“He do that?” 

“No. A branch did when I was running. He did this, though.” She lifts her jaw to show off an unmistakably swollen lip, and Eddie fights the urge to put his fist through the flaking siding of the trailer, anger swelling anew at the crust of dried blood on her chin. 

“Mmm.” Powell makes a note. “Anything else?” 

Chrissy hesitates, glancing at Wayne, who takes the hint and excuses himself. After that, she grips Eddie’s hand and breathes deeply, just once, before reciting a litany of grievances that ends with, “he’s done worse, though. This was kid stuff.” 

Powell scribbles her words down, a frown marring his features. “I’m sure. Still, we can work with this. Help you get a restraining order if you want one. Maybe we call over to his local precinct and have some officers in the city sit him down for a chat.” 

“Or, like, arrest him?” Eddie snaps. 

That gets a shrug and a sigh. “Yeah, well… that’d be a bit more complicated.” 

“He fucking kidnapped her.” 

“Look, I’m not saying what happened wasn’t bad. I’m just saying that there’s a limit to your legal recourse, considering the marital status—” 

“I told you,” Chrissy interjects, voice shaky. “What’d I say? We’re married, so he can do what he wants.” 

“That’s part of it,” Powell agrees. “And I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s how the law sees these things a lot of the time. But if you’re willing to cooperate, we’ve got something to go on here. The statements from Ms. Mayfield and Mr. Sinclair, to start, plus the mini-mart has a camera on their pumps. I can’t say the footage’ll be usable, but it’s not nothing. If you come to the station with me now, let us take some photographs of your injuries, even better. Anything we can use to prove this wasn’t just some domestic squabble.” 

“Domestic—” Eddie starts, only to be cut off when Chrissy heaves a sigh that feels like the fight draining out of her. Which, sure. She’s standing on the precipice of something less than victorious, and she is tired. Bloody and bruised. Swaying on her feet and God, Eddie can’t win this one for her, but he can offer her a soft place to land and nurse her wounds when the battle is through. “It… okay, what if I come with you? I’ll be there the whole time.” 

Chrissy closes her eyes. Squeezes Eddie’s fingers and takes a deep breath. “All I want is for Jason to leave me alone. That’s it. I don’t care what happens to him, I just… never want to see him, or deal with him, or worry about him again.” 

“Give us something to work with, and I promise you we’ll do what we can to make that happen.” 

She sets her jaw and gives a curt nod. “Alright, then. Let’s go downtown.”

Chapter Text

By the time they’re done at the police station, it’s dark. Cold. Sleeting, too. Tiny spats of frigid slush peppering Chrissy’s face as she steps into a temperature that has to be below freezing. Eddie puts his arm around her shoulders, and her heart lodges in her throat with a short, sharp shove. 

She doesn’t want to talk right now; she is so tired of talking. Has spent the past two hours talking, and repeating, and waiting while they recorded her story in notebooks and on cassette tapes and in the memories of everyone who listened. Maybe. If they listened. 

They took photographs, too. A camera click recording every rising bruise and inch of reddened skin. Eddie had stayed with her for all of it, of course, but that part… that part, she sort of wishes he’d gone to get a cup of coffee or something. Wishes he hadn’t been there to witness her when she pushed up her sleeves to reveal the outline of a handprint on her forearm.

Eddie had gone rigid beside her at that. Some coiled, angry thing within him that doesn’t scare her but hurts her all the same because, above all else, she wants to turn back the clock and return to yesterday, when none of this had happened, and try today again with the knowledge that she ought not to be stupid enough to go off on her own. 

But then, who’s to say Jason wouldn’t be waiting around some other corner on some other day? 

God, the thought of that exhausts her. 

“You hungry or anything?” Eddie asks once they’re safe in the van and he’s cranked the heater on full blast. 

She could eat, but doesn’t trust herself to keep it down, so she shakes her head. He briefly eyes her, then nods before pulling out of the lot. 

Wayne’s still home when they get back. Still skipping his damn shift, which makes her feel sicker than she already is because she’s costing him money and goodwill and maybe ruining someone else’s day who has to cover for him. She owes him an apology for that, but when she tries to give it to him, he cuts her off before she can get the words out. Tells her that his back’s been hurting him, anyway, and he was more than likely going to call out regardless, so she’d best stop fussing on his account.

It’s the worst lie she’s ever heard, but she hugs him and closes her eyes when he pats her back and says, “Alright, then, honey,” before letting her go. 

Eddie’s bed seems the logical destination after that, so she retreats to the bunker. Curls herself tight as a fist beneath his comforter while Eddie stays behind in the living room to debrief Wayne on how things went at the station. There’s not much to tell, though, really. Yes, she’s asking for a temporary restraining order, with a permanent one to follow if she’s lucky, but she still hasn’t decided whether she’s pressing charges. 

Everyone seems to want her to do that. Eddie, most likely Wayne. Definitely the cop who took the pictures. But to press charges would tie her to Jason legally yet again, albeit in a different venue. It would draw their battle out for years instead of months and limit her freedom in a way that has the static fuzz of her feelings turned up to eleven, and she needs to grab a pillow and scream. 

Chief Hopper had come in while they were there, and he’d taken her aside to ask her what she wanted. She repeated what she told Powell—she wants it all to go away. She wants him to go away, and she wants to live the life she spends too much time daydreaming about rather than being yoked to her ex for an eternity. 

Hopper had taken her at her word and sent her back to Eddie, who’d wanted to know what he’d said, and Chrissy—peevish by then—had snapped that he could go ask if he was so interested.

She’d felt bad instantly, but Eddie’d just laughed. Said, “You’re right, shitbird,” and kissed the top of her head and rubbed her arms, and God, she misses him now. Wishes he’d get done with Wayne and come find her, please. 

As if hearing her thoughts, he opens the door to his room, and seconds later has her wrapped up, his belly to her back, wide palm splayed against her ribs, which are sore, along with the rest of her. 

“Hey,” he breathes into her hair after a while. “I, uh, didn’t say it before. But I’m sorry.” 

“You couldn’t have done anything.” 

“No, not—I mean, the whole thing happened because I was being a dick about my dad.” 

It’s a testament to the eternity of the day that Chrissy has to wade through her initial confusion to remember that, yes, it was only this morning that they saw Eddie’s father. “Oh, that’s… it’s… it’s fine. I’m not even thinking about that.” 

He shifts his weight, knees hooking beneath her thighs so he can curl around her. “Still, I was being an asshole, and you went to the store for me, so…” 

“Please don’t do that,” she says, surprising herself with the strength of that conviction. “He was coming here, and I happened to meet him there. It could have been worse.” 

“If he’d come here, Wayne and I could have handled it, and you wouldn’t have gotten hurt.” 

“So then maybe you’d be hurt, or in jail.” She digs her nails into his hand to feel the sinew and bone shift, grounding herself in his body. “It happened the way it happened. We can’t change that.” 

He huffs out a breath. “I was still a dick.” 

“Maybe so.” She rolls onto her back, which forces him to loosen his hold. “I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“But—”

“No, that’s not true. I don’t want to talk about it here. Can we go for a drive?” The notion arrives with such swift-footed surety it’s shocking she’s only now realizing there’s just one place she’d like to be. “I want to go see Smaug.” 

Eddie’s eyes flick across her face, and he does that thing where, for the briefest of moments, he looks as though he might protest but then acquiesces. They leave his bed behind and bundle up, telling Wayne where they’re going before stepping out into the sleet. It’s pushing ten o’clock when they roll up to the guard post of Eddie’s company lot, where a night watchman sits dozing in the dim glow of five tiny black and white camera feeds. He startles awake at Eddie’s knock on the window, and Eddie greets him by name—Ralph—then says he left something in his truck, and they could be a minute. Ralph seems unbothered, cheerfully opening the gate to allow them through and wishing them a happy new year as they pass. 

Smaug waits alone in the back of the lot, his cherry red finish turned grey in the dim and the dark. A tug of sentimentality rolls through Chrissy’s stomach as she bolts from the van to the truck, stroking the door, the mirror, the place where the paint is chipped that she and Eddie have decided is the bare patch of skin where Bard will eventually take down the dragon. 

Eddie unlocks the door, and she follows him inside, where things look the same. Smell the same. Feel different, though. Smaller, somehow. She bumps her head on the ceiling and her hip against the gearshift, and as Eddie starts the engine for warmth, she takes her spot on the bunk, which feels more cramped. 

Still, it’s Smaug, and she smiles as she pushes herself against the back wall, studying Eddie in the flickering fluorescents that cast strange shadows through the windshield, illuminating his jaw, now his nose, now his halo of curls as he comes to join her. 

She kisses him to prove she can and to show him that while today might have turned her brittle, it’s a temporary ailment. Nothing is broken, only bruised.

Eddie returns the kiss, his hand dropping to her hip as he looms over her, catching her in the trap she’s laid for herself. 

When she starts to take his clothes off, he allows it, and when he does the same to her, she lets him lay her bare. For the first time, she doesn’t care what he sees because she’s done hiding from him. Done pretending that if she keeps parts of herself covered, he might not notice all the tiny things that make her human. 

They kiss again, and he rolls her over. Asks her if she wants to, and when she says she does, he sheepishly produces something to help ease the passage and to keep them protected, both of which he admits he bought “just in case.” 

It’s nice. Like he’s been waiting for her to come for a visit. 

When he sinks into her, it’s with a groan that’s more shudder than noise, his hand gripping her waist and squeezing all her soft places.

For a moment, she worries he’s going to say something sentimental. Tell her she’s safe, she’s home, that he was so worried, or any number of sweet nothings that would ruin her desperate enjoyment of this exact second. So, she kisses him hard and bites his lip, rocking her hips to show him that she’s tough, she’s his, and she’s a shitbird, still. 

“God, you asshole,” he says, and then he laughs, trying to pull back, only his lip is still caught between her teeth. She licks, then releases, and giggles at the face he pulls because that means it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine between them now. 

Once they start laughing, it’s hard to stop. Both of them lost to it in this tiny, perfect cave they’ve carved for themselves. 

“I love you,” she says once she’s caught hold of herself. 

“I love you, too,” he replies and moves in her.

The sex isn’t mind-blowing, but then, why should it be, considering the day they’ve had? Ultimately, when he comes apart above her, she realizes this is another kind of intimacy. A kind she’s never known—a joining together borne of the need for closeness and connection rather than desire. Sex that’s neither good nor bad, simply a way to be for a while.

Afterward, he lights a cigarette while she stretches out against him, head on his chest as he leans against the side wall. The gentle rumble of Smaug’s engine lures her into a half-doze, and its familiarity is a comfort, even if it makes her sad, too. 

“It’s different,” she says eventually. “Being here, I mean.” 

“Is it?” 

“Mmm. When I first came out with you, everything here felt like the only safe place. We were always moving, always keeping one step ahead of the bad stuff that could catch up with me. And now, I don’t know. I think the world is full of safe places. I just have to find them.” 

He makes a soft, surprised noise and smooths some hair from her temples. “Even after today?” 

“Sure. It’s weird, but seeing him again… he’s only a person, you know? Just another asshole. And I hate what he did, but he lost, and I beat him, and that’s something, right?” 

“That’s something.” He traces the curve of her ear, then drops his hand to her forearm, running his fingers up and down her skin. “So what does that make being here now, if it’s not the only thing that makes you feel safe?” 

“Just another place that feels like you.”

“Feels like me,” he echoes. “Feels like you, too, when I’m out here. This last trip, man, all I wanted to do was get back home. And maybe that’s bullshit, but it got me thinking about some stuff. Like, today with my dad, I guess I owe you an explanation for that, if you feel like talking about it now.”

“You don’t, but we can.” 

“Considering what it led to, yeah, we absolutely do. It’s just, like, okay. My whole life, I’ve been freaked out by the idea that he and I are the same, deep down. He’s always got one eye on the exit, ready to run, and I worry I do, too. So when you guys started getting along so well, I panicked. And I was a dick.” 

Chrissy can’t quite grasp the connective tissue of that logic, and she frowns. “Because you wanted to run?” 

“No, not… no. It was more like, shit, if I’m like him, and you like him, then maybe I’m gonna fuck things up the way he did, one of these days. Ruin your life the way he ruined my mom’s.” 

“Eddie…” She rubs his thigh, then rolls to her back so she can see his face. “I was just being nice, that’s all. I don’t know him, really. But I know he’s not you, and you’re not him. If anything, you’re more like Wayne in ways I think you don’t see. And for what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re looking for a way out of this, and I have no plans to let you ruin my life. I’m done with life-ruiners.” 

He smiles and rests his forehead against hers, forcing her cross-eyed when she focuses on him. “I’ll do my best, Cunningham. Anything potentially ruinous on your mind?” 

“One thing, actually,” she says, and the words catch because once they’re out, she can’t take them back, and that’s scarier than fighting off a half-dozen monsters in the shape of her ex-husband. “I, um, I’m not sure I can do life with you on the road, long-term.” 

There it is. Out there. The declaration is almost visible if she squints, a little ball of crackling blue tension hovering above them, snapping and pulsing. 

Eddie’s fingers close against her nape, thumb stroking the hollow below her ear. “Funny. I’ve been mulling that over, too.” 

The tension dissipates, only Chrissy’s so braced for his protest that she stutters “but…” before thinking better of it.

“But what?” he asks, pulling back a few inches. 

“But… but really?” 

“Yeah, really. It sucked being on the road without you, and I’m not—like, okay, the money’s good, and the work’s simple enough, and maybe if you’d never come along, I’d have just kept moving. Kept taking the next load, and the next, and never really thinking about what I might be missing.”

“You’d have met someone, eventually. Some girl at a truck stop, or… or, I don’t know. That girl who gave you the tattoo before she moved away.” 

He smiles, the hand on her neck sliding to her shoulder, then down her arm to grip her fingers, drawing them to his lips for a kiss. “Nah. I figured I wasn’t a settle-down sort of guy. Like I was always going to be the second choice, you know?” 

“No, I don’t. What does that mean?” 

“Take my dad and Wayne. They’re both…” He waves a hand. “They’re relationship short-timers.” 

“What about your mom? They were together a while, right?” 

“Few years, yeah. But she died before he could leave her. He would have ditched her sooner or later, though. He left every girlfriend he ever had when I was a kid. I told you, one eye on the exit. That’s his thing. And Wayne’s not—I mean, he and Val are whatever, but they’re not exactly in each other’s pockets.” 

“Yeah, but they’re in love,” she says, surprised he can’t see the deep affection Wayne feels for his girlfriend. It was one of the first things Chrissy noticed when Val came over for dinner. Nothing obvious or demonstrative about it, but there in subtle ways.

Eddie scoffs, though. “Then why doesn’t he nut up and ask her to move in?” 

“Oh, my God, a million different reasons. Maybe because he works nights, and she doesn’t? Maybe because the house is small, and you’re home sometimes, and Val likes her space? I love you, but I also really loved those afternoons when you’d be swapping out the trailer, and I’d get to go off and do stuff on my own. So whatever Val and Wayne have going, that doesn’t mean they’re not crazy about each other. And besides…” She sighs, the point she was trying to make having gotten lost in the meander. “You’re more like Wayne than your dad, but you’re not either of them. You’re just you, and you can be a—how’d you put it? A settle-down sort of guy? You can be that if you want to be.” 

“Well, yeah. That was what I was saying. That I could be that type of guy with you.” 

“You could be with anyone you loved.” 

“Well, that’s a theoretical equation I’m not solving, shitbird, because I plan on exclusively loving you until I’m worm food.” 

She rolls her eyes but can’t help smiling. “Okay, fine. Be my settle-down guy.” 

“Working on it,” he says. “The trouble is, I have no idea what I ought to do if I’m not driving long-haul. The best I can figure is that I’ll drive something local for a while—municipal. Your friendly, neighborhood garbage man, maybe.” 

There is a perverse place within Chrissy that relishes the idea of Eddie taking a job that might kill her mother, and she kisses him twice instead of acknowledging that out loud. “Whatever you want. And I’ll get a job as um… I don’t know. I can probably answer a phone as well as anyone else, so I can be a receptionist.” 

“Perfect. Only I’m not quitting anything until you’re out of the woods with the divorce, okay? I want the money steady until everything’s done and dusted.” 

That’s a fair trade, much as she hates to admit it. “Yes. Deal. But I’m still going to pay you back someday.” 

“Doesn’t matter,” he replies, then bumps their foreheads together. “Gonna miss Smaug when he’s gone?” 

“Why would I…” She trails off, walloped by the realization that Smaug isn’t owned by Eddie, and won’t follow them into their settle-down life. “Oh. Shit.” 

“Yeah.” 

“I’ll take a lot of pictures,” she says after a moment, once she’s sure her voice won’t shake. “To remember.” 

“Of course you will. And it’s not like it’s happening tomorrow. We’ve got time.” 

“We do,” she says, then reaches for the blanket to draw it tighter around them. “If we stay here tonight, can we go to Illinois in the morning and find a tattoo place?” 

“Oh, shit, your Christmas present. Yeah, we absolutely can.” 

They’re talking as if things are normal again, she realizes. Planning the next day like today’s awfulness is already in the past, and it’s a relief. A blessing. She tucks her head under his chin and runs a hand over his chest, then wriggles her fingers close to his armpit for extra warmth. “You have the design with you?” 

“In my wallet. I was planning a trip, but… today happened, and it kinda… but I was always going to take you tomorrow. You sure you don’t want to check it out first? Make sure you don’t hate it?” He’d spent most of Christmas Eve heads down with the Elvish dictionary, working diligently, and asked her no fewer than five times if she wanted to take a peek. 

“No,” she says with a firm shake of her head. “I don’t want to see it until it’s on me.” 

“That’s a lot of faith, kiddo.” 

“Yours is perfect, so mine will be, too.” 

He preens at the praise, holding her tight as they drift to sleep in Smaug’s rumbling belly. When Chrissy wakes, there’s frost on the windshield and sheets of sparse snow blustering their way across the parking lot. She dresses and crawls into the passenger seat, pulling her knees to her chest, watching the wind create patterns in the powder until Eddie rejoins the land of the living, and they trade the truck for the van. 

Chrissy desperately needs a change of clothes and a shower, but they’re not going back to Hawkins to get them. So, they go to a gas station where she buys a brand new white sweatshirt with ‘Indiana’ embroidered in maroon across the chest before sponging off in the sink. 

Her bruises are really blooming, she notes, as she turns this way and that in the bathroom mirror, using paper towels to dry her skin. She presses her thumb hard against the darkest spot on her arm, the pain making her wince as tears spring to her eyes. 

“Fuck you, Jason,” she says to her reflection, then pulls the sweatshirt over her head and heads out to meet Eddie by the van. 

Traffic isn’t terrible, but it still takes them a good portion of the morning to reach the tattoo place Eddie knows on the outskirts of Chicago. Apparently, it’s where he took his friend Gareth for his first ink. While Chrissy has yet to make Gareth’s acquaintance, and doesn’t remember him well from school, the picture Eddie paints has her imagining a giant teddy bear weeping openly as the needle dots his skin. 

“So, you’re saying I’m going to cry?” she asks as they sit in the parking lot, sipping the coffees they bought from the diner across the way, waiting for the tattoo parlor to open. 

“Nah. Well, maybe, but you’re tougher than Gareth.” 

Around noon, a woman with an entire arm of art arrives and unlocks the door. They wait until the neon sign in the window flickers to life, then go inside. Eddie presents the artist—Rose, who’s in her thirties and has the bluest eyes Chrissy’s ever seen—with his design, and the two of them have a private consultation while Chrissy wanders the store, studying the rows upon rows of options lining the walls. 

Rose calls her over after a while to ask her where she wants the tattoo, and Chrissy shows her the patch of skin she’s picked out. Then, there’s some paperwork and preparation, and soon enough, Chrissy finds herself on a padded bench behind a flimsy screen, holding Eddie’s hand while Rose gets her instruments in order. 

Due to the fact that she never thought she’d get a tattoo before meeting Eddie, Chrissy hasn’t spent a lot of time thinking about what getting one entails. Turns out, it’s more complicated than she thought, with Rose first stenciling the design on the spot just above her left hip, then asking Eddie to look and make sure it’s not crooked.