Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I

It's entirely her fault, like most things are, but Stevie has completely forgotten how unbearably hot Indiana is in the summer.

Flashes of the most miserable summers of her youth pass through her mind; brief snapshots of evenings with people she'd rather forget and mornings with those she don’t even remember the names of. Tommy Hagan at the forefront of it all and, God, she hasn't so much as thought that name in years, even before she left Hawkins to chase her dreams and some in New York. 

And now she's crawling back, because life sucks, and everything is Stevie's fault.

"Stephanie, are you alive? If you've died while I'm on the phone I hope you know I am never going to forgive you."

"Oh calm your fucking tits, Buckley."

Her half-laugh, half-derisive snort crackles through the phone speakers, "Who the fuck even says 'calm your tits' anymore? What are you, 35?"

"Har har. I didn’t know I was talking to Miss Comedian of the Year here. Are you still  picking me up or not?"

"Of course I am,” she says, and Stevie could almost hear the eye roll from where she’s standing. “I'm five minutes away. Got held up by traffic. Don't die in the meantime."

"Aw, fuck you so much, Bee," Steve croons before hanging up, Robin only halfway through a yelled-out response. 

Stevie sits by the bend, thankful to all fuck that she'd foregone the skirt and wore sensible linen pants instead. There's a guy around the corner leering at her and she could just about feel his stare boring holes through her shirt, and, really, Robin should make it quick before Stevie gets arrested for aggravated assault not even an hour into her return to her home town.

She busies herself with her purse instead, staring at the sad mess of sticks of gum, earphone cords, and her jewelry that she swiped from her table some hours ago now as if something interesting was going to reveal itself to her in the next couple of minutes. Sweat begins to drip from her temple down to her chin, and she only briefly considers the fact that Robin is definitely going to yell at her when she sees her before she grabs a cigarette and lights it, blowing smoke in front of her face and adding more warmth to her already overheated body.

The pavement is definitely melting, she thinks. Or maybe it just feels that way—like the world is caving under the heat and softening at the edges. The asphalt ahead of her glimmers, a shimmer of warped light rising in lazy waves. Stevie squints at it through the curl of the smoke, pulling her knees up to her chest, one arm slung over them, the other loose at her side with the cigarette dangling from her fingers. The filter has gone bitter between her lips, but she takes another drag anyway, lets it sear the back of her throat.

Another one of those things she’d forgotten: how much Hawkins smells in the summer. Burnt rubber. Dust. Freshly cut grass and diesel. Everything is sticky and too bright. Too much. 

Five years, damn, she thinks. Long enough for the town to feel impossibly smaller than it already is. Long enough to pretend she’d never come back. She exhales, slow, tracing the smoke as it curls towards the sky, disappearing before it reaches anything worth touching. Her duffel bag sits beside her, the fabric bleached and fraying, a badge of the miles she’s put between herself and here. Inside are clothes she doesn’t remember liking, a toothbrush that’s seen better days, a few CDs. Modeling photographs—the ones she didn’t sell right beside the ones she couldn’t.

She stubs the cigarette out on the curb, smears the ash with the edge of her heels, and then lights another. Stevie’s really not supposed to smoke anymore—lungs, stress, whatever—but the silence is louder without the sound of the flame.

Somewhere down the road, a car honks twice, and she jerks her head up.

The blue Volkswagen pulls into the lot like it’s rolling out of a memory—dusty, scracthed, and the same shade of sky she used to dream about when she couldn’t sleep. Robin leans halfway out the window, hair tied up messily, sunglasses crooked on her nose.

“Jesus, Harrington,” Robin calls out, grin wide. “You trying to bake yourself alive out here?”

Stevie flicks ash off her cigarette. “Thought about it.”

Robin parks crookedly, kills the engine, and hops out. She doesn’t hesitate—just walks up and pulls Stevie into a hug that smells like sunscreen and old vinyl seats. Home, she thinks. I’m home. For a second, Stevie doesn’t move. Then she does, slow and tentative, remembering the shape of someone she intimately knows. Robin’s hair tickles her cheek. 

“You look like shit,” Robin says when she pulls back, grinning still. Her hand doesn’t leave Stevie’s face. 

“Aw, you always know how to make a girl feel welcome, Buckley,” she drawls out, though privately she agrees. It’s probably why Robin hasn’t said jack shit about her smoking yet.

“Hey, I missed you, you know?” Robin nudges her shoulder. “I know we’ve only been apart for six months, but that’s a very long time to be apart. You didn’t even write to me. I thought maybe you got abducted by aliens.”

“Write to y—Robin, we texted and called each other the whole time. Why would I ever even write. Who even writes these days? What are you, 60?” Stevie snarks, throwing Robin’s words back at her. 

“Yeah, aliens are never abducting you. You’re too much of a bitch for them to handle.”

“Damn right,” she sniffs. “Fuck, can we get out of here already?”

“Yeah, yeah. Honestly, I don’t even know why you’re back here.”

“Have I not told you?”

“No, Stevie,” she deadpans. “You have not told me. Fuck, your duffel is heavy. Did you bring your entire apartment or something?”

“Maybe I missed Hawkins,” Stevie  mutters, ignoring Robin’s remark. “Maybe I just wanted to see if it still felt like home.”

“Philosophical today, are we?”

“Leave me alone.”

“Okay, but does it? Feel like home?”

Stevie hesitates, the words caught somewhere in her throat. She looks around—at the empty lot, a broken sign in the distance, the long stretch of dry nothing that’s been waiting for her since she left. The cigarette burns low between her fingers.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Ask me when the sun goes down.”

Robin studies her for a beat, then grins, soft and familiar. “You’re so fucking dramatic.”

“Occupational hazard. You knew this when you approached me all those years ago for that group project instead of Tammy Thompson.”

Robin gestures toward the car. “Come on, drama queen. The air conditioner’s temporarily busted, but I’ve got cold Coke in the glove compartment and a mixtape that’ll make you hate me.”

“That’s impossible, but challenge accepted,” she says, throwing the remains of her cigarette to the side and opening the car door. As she climbs into the passenger seat, the leather sears the backs of her thighs, burning her through her pants. She hisses.

Robin laughs, because she’s a bitch who relishes in Stevie’s misery. “Welcome home, Harrington.”

The words linger longer than the smoke ever could.

As they pull out of the lot, Stevie glances at the passing trees—the same ones she used to race past on her bike, the same ones that never seemed to move no matter how far she went. The road hums beneath them.

She rests her head against the window, eyes half-closed, the heat pressing against her skin.

True to her warning, the air conditioning in Robin’s car doesn’t fully work. It hums, loud and empty, pushing around the heat like it’s doing her a favor instead of an insult. Stevie leans her forehead further against the glass, watching Hawkins slide by in slow, sunburned motion—the same laundromat, same diner, same faded “Go Tigers!” mural on the brick wall by the corner store. If she focuses hard enough, she could swear that she still smells the fry oil from it, like grease ghosts never left.

She tells herself it’s not nostalgia—it’s recognition. A difference she’s invented to survive things.

Robin’s talking about something—her mom maybe, or the drive from Hawkins to Indy—and Stevie’s nodding, laughing in the right places, but her brain keeps skipping. The road blurs, a long black tongue under the weight of the sun, and all she can think is God, it really has gotten smaller. Like the town shrank the moment she left, folded in on itself out of spite.

When they pull into Robin’s driveway, it’s like stepping into a photo that someone left in the sun too long. The color’s all wrong—too bright, too warm, too still. There’s a tire swing that wasn’t there before. The porch paint is peeling, curling up like old scabs. The iron bench they used to sit on to make mean comments about Old Man Dick from across the road is gone.

“Home sweet midwestern hell,” Robin says cheerfully, grabbing Stevie’s bag from the trunk. “Your hotel for the weekend, milady.”

Stevie snorts. “It’s still got character.”

“Yeah. That’s one word for mildew.”

Inside, the air smells faintly of lemon cleaner and something sad—not decay exactly, but the residue of absence. The living room’s neat, like someone’s been trying too hard to make it look fine. Stevie recognizes the type—she stares at it in the mirror every single day.

Stevie sets her duffel by the couch, tries not to notice the framed photos on the mantel. Robin as a kid with gap teeth. Robin and her dad, grinning, matching smiles. Robin and Stevie in high school, hair too big, eyeliner too thick, holding up graduation caps like they actually worked hard for it. Or, well, Robin did. Stevie certainly dicked around too much; she wasn’t even sure she was going to graduate.

And then, halfway along the wall and tucked in among the rest of the family portraits, Stevie sees it.

She can still see the day clearly, in her mind. The four of them—Robin, Nancy, Stevie… Eddie. Crowded together at Lover’s Lake, matching smiles on their faces. Eddie’s arm is thrown lazily around Stevie’s shoulders; Nancy’s got that cautious smile that says she’s half judging, half fond; Robin’s grinning so hard her eyes are squinting shut. Stevie herself looks—different. Lighter. Hair sun-bleached and wild, her grin wide, unguarded, full of something she doesn’t have anymore.

For a second, it feels like the air goes thin.

Stevie steps closer without meaning to. Her reflection glints faintly in the glass, layered over their younger faces. It’s almost cruel, how time does that—puts you side by side with the ghosts of your own better days.

“Your mom okay?” Stevie asks when Robin re-enters the living room, voice smaller than she means it to be.

Robin shrugs, the motion tight. “Getting there. She watches game shows like it’s her job now. You're staying in the guest room—it’s clean, promise. Mom said we’re too grown to be sharing a room. I told her she was insane, but you know I could never win against that woman.”

“Yeah, well, she never really did get our bond.”

The room is clean. Too clean. Sheets stiff with starch. A dresser that smells like mothballs. A window overlooking the backyard, where cicadas hum like static.

Stevie sits on the edge of the bed. She’s still wearing her sunglasses, which feels stupid inside, but taking them off feels like losing a layer of protection that she’s not quite willing to shed just yet. Her phone buzzes in her pocket—probably spam, or her mother pretending to check in when she’s really just making sure Stevie hasn’t “fallen into old habits.”

She doesn’t answer. Her heart isn’t really in it; or anything, for that matter. Instead, she lies on the bed, staring at the ceiling fan spinning slow circles overhead. Her chest feels tight—not sad, exactly, just full. Stevie has spent years pretending that she left Hawkins to find something bigger, something better. But sitting here, in a too-clean room, sweating through her shirt, she can’t help thinking she also left because she couldn’t bear to watch everything she loved turn small without her.

She closes her eyes. Tries not to think about his laugh. Fails miserably like she does with everything else.

Stevie is nineteen, wearing cutoffs and Eddie’s flannel, half-buttoned and revealing too much skin. It’s August, late, and they’re parked at the Quarry in his truck with the busted radio. The air tastes like beer and smoke and Eddie’s cologne—which was really just sweat and motor oil and something wild she could never name.

“Tell me again what you’re gonna do in New York,” he says, eyes on her mouth. Stevie laughs and acts like it doesn’t fluster her. She throws her head back against the seat.

“God, I don’t know,” she starts. “Something. Anything. I’ll work in a bar or a bookstore or maybe become a poet. I don’t know.”

Eddie grins, slow and teasing. “You? A poet? What’s your muse, Stephanie? Existential dread?”

She scrunches her nose at her full name. “Maybe you,” she shoots back, half-smiling,  half-annoyed.

He leans over, brushing a calloused thumb against her jaw. “Yeah, I’ll give you material. You’ll write about the guy who plays guitar and worships you.”

She rolls her eyes. “You don’t worship me.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmurs, close enough that his breath warms her ear. Stevie feels like a sick freak for chasing the feeling. “You have no idea.”

The windows fog. Outside, the cicadas scream. She doesn’t remember who kissed who first, only that it felt inevitable—like gravity, like punishment, all laws of nature and then some.

Stevie goes through the motions of unpacking, then sets out to help Robin and her mom prepare for the evening. Melissa is lovely as ever, though Steve could see the lingering sadness in her motions. Dinner is a quiet affair, and Steve tries very hard with all the midwestern politeness instilled in her by her own mother not to stare at the empty seat to her left. 

Later, Robin falls asleep watching TV in the living room. Stevie wanders into the kitchen, barefoot, hair messy, wearing an old band tee she didn’t even realize she packed. The floorboards creak like they’re gossiping about her. Outside, the air is heavy, humming with the summer heat. The crickets are loud. She leans against the counter, drinks water straight from the faucet, and stares out the window at the street.

And there—across the dark stretch of road, behind the line of trees—she swears she sees a flicker of light. Like someone’s still awake at the garage down the road.

For a second, her heart stutters. It’s stupid. He’s not out there. Not because of her. He doesn’t even live on Robin’s street—Forest Hills is way out there on the other side of town.

Still, she can almost hear it: a guitar riff, faint and low, threading through the night air.

She doesn’t open the window. But she doesn’t walk away, either.

It’s two in the morning. Eddie is shirtless, grease-streaked, a cigarette dangling from his lips while he works under the hood of a car. She’s sitting cross-legged on the counter, stealing sips from his beer, pretending to read a magazine. 

He’s humming something—half a melody, unfinished. When he notices her watching, he smirks. “You checking me out or judging my work ethic?”

“Both. You know I love objectifying you, babe,” she rolls her eyes. “Also, you look ridiculous.”

“You like ridiculous.”

“Unfortunately.”

Eddie wipes his face with a towel before walking over, setting his wrench down beside her, eyes never leaving her face. “You ever think about what you’d do if you didn’t have to leave?”

Stevie laughs, proud of herself when it doesn’t come out tinged with desperation. “You mean if I stayed here forever? Hawkins’ most promising underachiever?’

Eddie grins. “Could be worse.”

She looks at him for a long time—the curls plastered to his forehead, the sweat glistening on his collarbone, the way he makes everything feel too alive, even the dead thing inside her—and says, softly, “Yeah. Could be.”

The light outside her window blinks out. Just like that.

Stevie presses her palms flat to the counter, grounding herself. The faucet drips once, twice. The sound is deafening in the quiet.

She whispers, to no one: “God, I really do hate this town.”

II

By the time Robin finds her shoes, the afternoon light has turned syrupy, slow. Hawkins feels like it’s been pickled in that same gold for the last five years—unmoved, unchanged, stubborn as ever. Stevie slides into the passenger seat of the car, her legs sticking to the cracked vinyl, and the first thing she says is, “I know I keep saying it but I genuinely can’t believe this piece of shit car is still alive.”

Robin laughs, then snorts out an ugly sound that makes Steve laugh too. “It’s barely alive, please. I had to duct-tape the muffler last week before I picked you up.”

“God, that’s comforting,” Stevie says, rolling the window down and getting frustrated when it only opens halfway. “Oh, Jesus.”

They drive aimlessly, no real destination in mind, just the rhythm of the wheels and the wind blowing outside. The radio’s on low, some country song neither of them recognize, static fading in and out like the past trying to muscle its way through. The world blurs around them, inviting Stevie into a mood she’s not entirely sure she wants to unpack but feels compelled to, because this is Robin and her car has always been a judgment-free zone.

“Feels smaller,” Stevie finally says. Robin glances over at her, says nothing for a while, before she purses her lips.

“The car?”

“The town.”

“You just got bigger. We both did, I think.”

“Don’t make it sound like growth. I’m not sure it was that.”

Robin huffs. “New York will do that. Eat you up, spit you out.”

Stevie watches the storefronts crawl by—the hardware store, the pharmacy, the same blinking neon OPEN sign above the diner window. “Yeah,” she murmurs. “Something like that.”

The town is both too familiar and wrong in tiny ways. The flower shop has a new name, and apparently run by a florist that Stevie does not recognize. The movie theater that used to smell like old popcorn and sweat is now a vape shop with dark windows and an LED sign that says “HIT DIFFERENT.” Even the high school looks washed out—the bleachers rusted, the football field more dirt than grass. Five years, she thinks, and it all plays out in her mind up until the buildings turn into trees, I’ve only been gone for five years.

They pass Lover’s Lake. The water flashes in the sunlight, still and impossible. Stevie looks away fast.

It’s late. The kind of late where the air hums and the moon hangs swollen above the trees. The crickets are louder than they should be. The water in Lover’s Lake catches the light like it’s holding a secret.

Eddie is already waist-deep when he calls out, “You’re missing it, Harrington!” He says her name like a challenge, like he’s daring her not to come closer.

Stevie stands on the dock, barefoot, cutoffs frayed at the hem, hair pulled up messily. She’s trying to look unimpressed, but her arms are crossed too tight. The air smells like gasoline and pine needles. There’s a six-pack of cheap beer sweating on the wood beside her.

“You know,” she calls back, “normal people go swimming during the day.”

“Normal’s boring!” Eddie laughs—that wild, bright laugh that comes from deep in his chest. “Come on, Stevie! The water’s perfect.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Eddie dunks himself under. When he surfaces again, his curls are plastered to his forehead, moonlight dripping off them like silver threads. “You’re no fun,” he says.

“I’m plenty fun,” she murmurs.

He grins and starts wading toward her. “Prove it.”

“Eddie, don’t you dare—”

He grabs her by the wrist before she can finish, yanking her toward the edge. Her scream splits the night as they crash into the water together—cold, shocking, perfect. Stevie surfaces sputtering, furious, her own hair plastered across her face.

“You’re such an asshole,” she gasps, laughing despite herself. “Oh God. Fuck you!”

He’s laughing too, trying to push his wet hair out of his eyes. “You should’ve seen your face—oh my God—

“Don’t,” she warns, splashing him. He splashes back, harder.

It turns into war—wild and messy, both of them shrieking with laughter that echoes across the lake. Eventually, they tire. They float on their backs, side by side, staring up at the stars. The water is cool silk around them.

Eddie says, softly, “You ever think about just… leaving?”

Stevie turns her head toward him. “Leaving Hawkins?”

He hums. “Yeah. Just driving until we run out of road. Start somewhere new. Somewhere that doesn’t know what we were like here.”

There’s a long silence. The kind that only exists when two people are trying not to break something fragile.

Finally, Stevie says, “You’d hate it.”

He laughs quietly. “How do you know?”

“Because you’d miss it here. The noise, the people, the chaos. You like being the big fish in a small pond.”

Eddie hums again, eyes closed. “Maybe. But sometimes I just… I don’t know. It feels like the walls here are getting closer, you know? Like I blink and everyone else’s life is already decided.”

She’s quiet for a long time before answering. “You’ll figure it out. You always do.”

“Yeah?” he asks, tilting his head toward her. “You really think that?”

“Yeah,” she says softly. “I do.”

And there it is—the moment they’ll both carry, whether they know it or not. The lake, the stars, the half-drunk laughter floating somewhere between them.

The night breathes around them. The faint hum of the world that keeps on spinning.

See, when Stevie left, she was genuinely operating on what she believed to be a truth: that she’d never see Hawkins ever again. Not its cracked sidewalks, not its ungodly heat that clings to the skin like something awful. Certainly never that goddamn lake again. And yet here she is, a mere five years later, staring out the window like a tourist in the ruins of her own life.

“So,” Robin says carefully. “Are you gonna call him?”

Stevie knows exactly who she means, but she still plays dumb, cause she’s an asshole like that. “Who?”

“Eddie.”

Stevie exhales. “What makes you think I’d do that?”

Robin gives her a look. “Come on. You’ve been back for, what, a week? And you already paused outside the auto shop when we passed it three days ago.”

“That was curiosity. Not nostalgia.”

“Sure,” Robin says, her tone dry enough to sand wood. “And the way your hands started shaking was just a nicotine deficiency?”

Stevie doesn’t answer. She stares at the road instead.

Truth be told, she really doesn’t want to think about Eddie Munson. Doesn’t want to picture the way he used to grin at her from the driver’s seat, one hand on the wheel with his hair catching the wind and the other hand drawing circles on top of Stevie’s thigh, or how his voice used to sound when he sang to her—low, lazy, slightly off-key for someone who seriously thinks his band is going to make it big.

God, his hands. She really doesn’t want to think about his hands; the ones that used to fix engines and trace the line of her spine like both were built from the same mystery.

But memory is cruel that way. It slips in through the cracks whether you invite it or not. Stevie’s memory, in particular, is just as big of a bitch as her and often walks in uninvited, unpacking shit that doesn’t even need to be looked at anymore.

Robin keeps on driving, finally turning down Main Street again after a brief battle with the potholes that, to this day, Mayor junior-Kline refuses to fix. The late afternoon light hits the brick facades just right and, for a second, Stevie swears she can almost see the ghosts: her and Eddie on the sidewalk, Robin and Nancy laughing by the window, everyone young and impossibly certain that they had forever to figure the rest of their shitty lives out.

When they reach the edge of town, Robin slows down in front of the small auto shop tucked behind a gas station—a place Stevie knows like the back of her hand. The sign in front reads MUNSON’S AUTO REPAIR, the letters sun-bleached and chipped, yet proud all the same. Stevie still remembers the last time: Wayne repainting while Stevie and Eddie stare at him and laugh unhelpfully. There’s a beat-up van parked out front, the kind of vehicle that looks like it’s survived wars and breakups and too many winters. The open bay door hums with the sound of a running engine, and Stevie feels something in her chest seize.

Robin doesn’t say anything at first. Then, gently, “You gonna say hi?”

Stevie keeps her eyes on the road ahead. “No reason to.”

Robin hums in that infuriating way that says she knows better, and she probably does  but Stevie’s not gonna give her the satisfaction of an admission. “Uh-huh. Sure.” 

But Stevie’s heart is already betraying her—pounding like she’s sixteen again, like she’s about to be caught doing something stupid and alive. She stares straight ahead, but out of the corner of her eye she can see the shape of him, just barely—someone moving inside the shop, tall, broad-shouldered, familiar in the worst possible way.

Briefly, she wonders if he’d even recognize her now. If she looks too polished, too citified, too far removed from the girl who used to sit barefoot on the hood of his truck with a can of warm beer in her hand, daring the world to get in her way. She rubs her fingers against her temple, as if that could steady her, as if that could make her immune to memory.

It doesn’t. What a drag.

Robin takes pity on her, because she finally starts the car up again, crawling steadily until they turn down another street, and then another, until the shop disappears behind them. The silence in the car stretches thin, taut as wire.

Finally, Stevie says, “You ever think about how weird it is? How we all just… left? Like one by one.”

Robin shrugs. “Hawkins does that to people. It makes you leave. Then it makes you come back.”

“That’s ominous.”

“It’s true, though. This place doesn’t let you go easy. It’s evil, in a way, but at least you know there’s always a place to return to at the end of it all.”

Stevie doesn’t answer. She stares out at the passing fields—rows of corn, a rusted silo, an old farmhouse sagging into itself. The same old Midwest graveyard of dreams. She thinks about New York, about the noise and the lights and the anonymity. How she thought she’d go there and become someone else, someone sharper and freer. But all she really did was build a different kind of cage. A prettier one, maybe. One with skyline views.

Is this how Mom felt, she thinks to herself, when Dad plucked her out from California and then imprisoned her here? She ought to ask, the next time they talk.

They eventually pull back into Robin’s driveway. The sun has started to dip low, staining everything in burnt orange and deep golds. The night breeze carries with it the sound of crickets. Stevie takes a deep breath, before turning off the radio. The silence rushes in fast to fill the space.

Robin gets out first, stretches, then yawns. “You coming?”

“In a sec,” Stevie says.

She stays in the passenger seat, fingers curled around the steering wheel that isn’t hers. She stays until she feels more like herself, and then leaves when she feels nothing at all.

III

The phone rings for so long that Stevie almost hangs up.

She’s sitting cross-legged on Robin’s childhood bed, the ceiling fan doing little more than stirring the heat around the room. A bead of sweat rolls down her neck, disappearing into the collar of her polo. Outside, the street is filled with the noise of children; a children’s party across the road that has spilled into the rest of the block.

When the line finally clicks, her mother’s voice comes through—soft, a little winded.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Mom,” she says, leaning back against the headboard. “Sorry. It’s Stevie. Did I wake you?”

“Oh, Stevie, darling. I was just watering the plants, really. Do you know that big fern by the window?”

“Fernie?”

“Yep. Almost lost her last week.” There’s a faint laugh, the kind that sounds like it’s covering something else. “You forget to water things one day and they never forgive you.”

Stevie smiles faintly. “Yeah. I get that.”

There’s a pause—one that makes Stevie hyper aware of every unspoken thing between them. “How’s Hawkins?” her mom asks finally. “You settling in?”

“I guess.” Stevie glances around the room—the floral curtains, the bookshelf still full of Robin’s old paperbacks. “It’s weird. Everything looks smaller.”

“That’s what happens when you leave for too long. The world grows, but home stays the same size. I used to feel the same for every vacation I took. Imagine seeing the Coliseum and then coming back to Hawkins next week to see the same old Melvald’s down the corner.”

Stevie hums in agreement. The fan squeaks above her, rhythmic and tired. “It’s hot as hell,” she says. “Feels like the air’s boiling.”

Martha laughs softly. “Some things never change.”

The silence that follows isn’t unfriendly, just heavy—like both of them are tiptoeing around the subject they actually want to talk about.

Her mother breaks it first. “How long are you staying this time?”

Stevie picks at the hem of her shirt. “I don’t know. A few weeks, maybe.”

“You said that last time,” her mom says gently. “And then you didn’t come back for five years.”

Stevie winces, not because her mother’s wrong, but because she’s right in that calm, surgical way that leaves no room for defense. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

“I know you are. But it doesn’t really change anything, doesn’t it?”

The Friday night lights have long burned out, leaving only the faint glow from the parking lot and the buzz of a lone moth circling the bulb above the field. The grass is wet from the sprinkler system, and the metal bleachers are slick under Stevie’s bare legs.

Eddie is stretched out beside her, one arm thrown behind his head, boots still muddy from the woods. He smells like smoke and spearmint gum and boy. He’s supposed to be driving her home, but instead they’ve ended up here, hiding from nothing in particular.

Stevie’s picking at the label on her soda bottle, the condensation slipping down her wrist. “You know this is technically trespassing,” she says.

“Technically, yeah,” Eddie grins. “But also, who’s gonna arrest us? Coach Melrose? He can’t even run ten feet without his lungs staging a protest.”

She snorts, trying to keep a straight face, and fails. “You’re terrible.”

“I’m honest,” he says. “You should try it sometime, Little Miss Princess”

Stevie rolls her eyes, but the corner of her mouth betrays her. “I’m honest all the time.”

“Oh yeah?” He props himself up on one elbow, studying her. “Then tell me something true.”

Stevie hesitates. The question sounds simple, but his eyes are daring her. The air feels too thick to breathe. “Something true,” she repeats.

“Yeah. Something real. No bullshit.”

She thinks for a moment. The hum of the stadium lights, the smell of wet grass, the sound of her heart too loud in her own ears. Then she says, “I hate the sound of my alarm clock.”

Eddie blinks. “That’s it?”

“It’s a start,” she replies defensively. “It’s like—this awful beeping noise that makes me feel like I’m dying every morning.”

“Deep stuff, Harrington,” he nods sagely in response.

“Fine,” Stevie scoffs, turning to face him fully now. “Your turn, philosopher.”

“Okay.” He scratches his chin, pretending to think hard. “Something true: I think pickles are the devil’s snack food.”

That makes her laugh—really laugh, the kind that spills out of her before she can stop it. “What? That’s your truth?”

“Yeah. Don’t trust ‘em. They squeak when you bite ‘em. Food shouldn’t squeak. It’s unnatural.”

Stevie just laughs harder, clutching her stomach. He watches her with that open, pleased kind of expression—like her laughter is the whole point of being alive. It’s unnerving. Stevie craves it like air.

“Okay, my turn again,” she says when she can finally breathe. “Something true: I think you’d be a terrible boyfriend.”

That catches him off guard. His eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah,” she says, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. “You’d forget birthdays. You’d be late all the time. You’d write a song about your girlfriend and accidentally play it for another girl.”

Eddie gasps in mock outrage. “Excuse you, I’m a man of loyalty and integrity.”

“You’re a man of chaos and guitar solos at the Hideout.”

He grins. “That’s fair. And true. But for the record, if I was your boyfriend—hypothetically—I’d remember your birthday.”

“Oh yeah? When is it then?”

Eddie doesn’t even pause. “May 24th.”

She blinks. “How did you—”

He shrugs. “You mentioned it once. Freshman year; I overheard a conversation. You were mad your dad forgot.”

The smile slides off her face, just a little. She looks down at her hands. “You remember that?”

“Yeah,” he says, voice softer now. “I remember a lot of things. Mostly, I remember you.”

There’s a pause. A moth flutters past, hitting the bleachers with a soft thud. The quiet stretches, a little too long. Stevie’s heartbeat fills the space between them. Then she says, almost whispering, “You’d still be a terrible boyfriend.”

“Maybe,” he says, leaning in closer, his breath warm against her cheek. “But you’d still fall for me.”

And she hates that he’s right—that she already has, without meaning to, without realizing it until just now.

The silence that follows is fragile. Electric. His fingers find the edge of her jaw, and before she can talk herself out of it, she kisses him first. It’s clumsy and sweet and charged with everything they’re not saying.

When they finally pull apart, she’s breathless. “You taste like sugar and trouble,” she says. “And an ash tray. Quit smoking before you kiss ladies, Munson.”

He laughs, low and easy. “That’s just my cologne.”

“Oh, well, remind me never to wear it.”

“Too late,” he says, and kisses her again. “You’re already in too deep.”

“Your father called last month, you know.”

That catches Stevie off guard, and she stops twirling the wire between her fingers. “He did?”

“Mm-hmm. Said he’s doing fine. Said Arizona suits him.” A beat. “He asked about you.”

Stevie snorts, even though it comes out quieter than she means it to. “What’d you tell him?”

“That you’re still figuring things out.” Martha pauses, then adds, “He said he’s doing the same.”

Stevie stares at the phone cord wrapped around her fingers, twisting it until it bites into her skin.

“I don’t know what that means,” she says. “And, what the hell. What does he mean by he’s figuring himself out? He should have done that years ago.”

“It means he still thinks about you,” Martha says simply, ignoring the latter half of Stevie’s tirade. “We both do. As awful as he was, he still is your father. He cares about you, even when he doesn’t really know what to do about it.”

Stevie doesn’t reply. She presses her thumb to the chipped paint on the wall beside the bed, flaking it off piece by piece. It’s easier than saying ‘I think about him too’ or ‘I’m so afraid of being here in  Hawkins because every corner I turn feels like I’m encountering a ghost.’

Her mother’s voice drops low, almost conspiratorial. “You sound tired, sweetheart,” she says, even though Stevie hasn’t really said anything.

“I am,” she admits after a pause. “But it’s not that kind of tired.”

“No,” Martha says quietly. “It never is, with you.”

There’s another long silence. Stevie can hear the faint hum of her mother’s ceiling fan on the other end, the creak of a chair, the sound of someone moving through a house she can picture perfectly even with her eyes closed.

“Mom?” she says finally.

“Mm?”

“Do you think people can outgrow where they come from?”

Martha exhales. It’s a long, thoughtful sound. “Maybe,” she says. “But I think it’s more like… you grow around it. Like tree roots. You stretch out, but it’s still part of you. Even when you think it’s not.”

Stevie doesn’t say anything. Her throat feels tight, like the air’s too thick to swallow. She wants to ask about California—her mom’s childhood, meeting Stevie’s dad, and being plucked from the life she knew and being thrust into a quiet life she wasn’t sure she wanted until, years later, when she finally wanted out, but there’s already a kid dependent on her and a town expecting her to be every bit the perfect mother her husband promised she’d be.

She’s a coward, though, so she says nothing.

Her mother allows the lull in the conversation before she adds, quietly, “You’re not lost, Stevie. You’re just in between.”

The words hit something deep—not quite comfort, not quite ache. She wipes her face, though she’s not sure when it got wet.

“Yeah,” Stevie says finally, voice small. “That sounds about right.”

Martha hums, and Stevie can hear the smile in her tone. “Promise you’ll call again soon?”

“I will,” Stevie says. “Soon.”

They linger a moment longer—both unwilling to be the one to hang up first—until finally, Stevie whispers, “Love you.”

“Love you too, baby.”

The line clicks, and the quiet that follows feels too loud. Stevie stares at the phone for a long time before setting it back in its cradle.

IV

The bleachers are mostly empty by the time Stevie wanders out to the field, her bag slung over one shoulder, the late-afternoon sun melting into everything. She’s not supposed to be there—school’s long over and the night guard is about to start making his rounds—but Hawkins High feels a lot less claustrophobic when it’s quiet.

Someone’s sitting on the lowest bench, half in shadow. She almost turns around when she realizes who it is.

They don’t share the same circles. Not really. Stevie hangs around Nancy and Robin most of the time, and for the rest of that she hangs out with the girls in her softball team. Eddie Munson only exists, to Stevie, in the brief moments that they’d share in the hallway whenever a class ends and she needs to get to the next one. But Stevie knows him. Of him, of course. His reputation, at the very least, precedes him—on purpose, because he’s a loud motherfucker—and Stevie has heard a thing or two from all her friends who have something to say about Eddie Munson.

He’s got his guitar on his lap and a cigarette burning down to the filter, his boots kicked out in front of him. There’s a notebook open beside him, filled with messy scribbles—lyrics, probably. Or sketches. He looks up when he hears her footsteps.

“Didn’t peg you for the type to stick around after hours, Harrington.”

“Didn’t peg you for the type to hang out in the open,” she says, nodding toward the field. “Figured you’d be in the woods or something. Like a troll. Don’t you have your own table there? Robin says that’s where you spend most of lunch.”

“Buckley should mind her fucking business,” he smiles, showcasing all of his teeth. It reminds Stevie of a really happy dog. “And, sunlight’s bad for my complexion, so maybe I am a troll.”

There’s no invitation to hang, or even to sit, but Stevie drops her bag from the bench across from him anyway. “What are you doing?”

“Writing.”

“Writing what?”

Eddie glances at the notebook, then flips it closed with a little shrug. “Just noise.”

“You don’t write noise,” she says before she can stop herself. “You write music.”

That earns her a look—wary, surprised. “You been spying on me?”

“Just heard you once. At the spring fair.”

“That was a disaster.”

“It wasn’t,” she says, unwarrantedly defensive on his behalf. “You were good.”

Eddie stares at her like he doesn’t quite know what to do with that. Compliments, for Eddie Munson, evidently aren’t currency he knows how to trade.

“You’re weird, Harrington,” he settles on saying, though the words lack the bite she knows he meant to put in.

“I get that a lot.”

A beat. Then he asks, “Why are you even here?”

She shrugs, picking at a chip of rust on the bleachers. “Didn’t feel like going home.”

“Trouble in paradise?”

“There’s no paradise,” she says, dryly. “Just my mom and her fourth bottle of chardonnay and my dad acting like it’s normal to be on the phone with your secretary for hours on end in a locked room.”

He nods, not pitying, just understanding. “Yeah. Home sucks.”

She glances at him. “Yours too?”

“Worse now that my dad’s back. But, hey.” He holds up his guitar. “At least it’s loud. Plus, I don’t think my old man is lasting long.”

“Why not?”

Eddie snorts. “Oh, I don’t know. Something in my heart tells me that six-time criminal Al Munson is bound to see the inside of a jail cell again soon.”

She laughs, the sound carrying through the empty field. It startles Eddie who, after a few moments, laughs along with her. For a second, everything feels suspended—like the air between them could tip into something new if either of them dared. 

Stevie lets it happen. Breathes, then lets it go.

It’s a Saturday, two weeks since Stevie arrived in Hawkins, and she’s already re-familiarized herself with all of Hawkins’… peculiarities, she settles with, for the lack of a better term. The way the horizon ends too soon, and the sun somehow feels heavier. How the air seems old, thick with the stories of people who never really left. 

She’s walking back from Melvald’s, halfway across the parking lot when she hears it—a laugh that cuts through everything, low and worn at the edges but still, unmistakably, him.

The thing is, in the years since she left, it wasn’t often that Stevie thought about seeing Eddie Munson again. There were moments—quiet ones—when he’d slip in. Nights in her tiny New York apartment when the streetlight leaked through the blinds just so, or when a song came on that used to play all the time on his busted stereo. But mostly, she’d learned not to think of him, the same way one would learn not to pick at an old bruise. Because what’s the point? You tell yourself the past is just a room you moved out of, and whatever you left behind—love, anger, confusion—is still sitting there, gathering dust, waiting for a version of you that doesn’t exist anymore.

And, privately, when she cared to admit, she also thought that she’d never see him again. That he would just be a relic from her past, all their shared friends notwithstanding.

But now, with the sound of that laugh—that stupid, careless, familiar sound—it’s like someone’s cracked open that room again, all warning signs not to set aside. Stevie can almost see it: the blur of headlights on the road out of town, her hand out the window, the summer air whipping through her hair as she promised herself she wouldn’t go back. And yet, here she is, standing in a parking lot that smells like asphalt and old cigarettes, heart beating too fast, body remembering something her mind worked years to forget. Inevitably and undeniably back despite promises to the contrary.

For a second, she doesn’t move. She just listens. And then, with a sinking kind of clarity, she realizes that maybe Robin is right. Maybe you can fucking leave Hawkins, but that doesn’t mean that shit ever left you.

Fuck. Just fuck it. Stevie turns, and there he is.

Eddie Munson, standing by his dented truck with one boot propped on the bumper, cigarette between his fingers. The sun catches on the edge of his jaw—sharper now, older. His hair’s still a little long, just enough to curl behind his ears, but certainly no longer at the wild length it used to be when they were younger. He’s wearing a faded shirt that looks like it’s survived a war and a decade of laundry indifference. And his arms—Jesus, man, what the hell—are tan and lined with tattoos that weren’t there before.

It’s really unfair, she complains privately. People shouldn’t get hotter with age. Not men like Eddie, who already looked like he belonged in a music video the first time she saw him.

And, fuck, okay, Stevie hates that her first though isn’t even ‘oh, wow, he looks happy’ or ‘I wonder how he’s been all these years?’ No. Fuck that. It’s ‘he’s still stupidly hot and I’m still that same stupid girl that annoyed him into becoming my friend all those years ago’.

Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s the way Stevie’s presence has always demanded that it be noticed. Either way, the cigarette smoke curls around Eddie’s head like punctuation, and he notices her. For a split second, half a heartbeat, there’s recognition. And then Eddie’s face cycles through every emotion, all at once, before it settles into something that looks a lot like disbelief.

“Well,” he says, voice deeper than she remembers, roughened by time and probably all that nicotine he—both of us, her mind whispers unhelpfully, both of us—still consumes. “Look who crawled back to Hawkins.”

And, yeah. That. 

Stevie blinks, caught between laughter and nausea. “Hey, Eddie.”

That’s what she lands on. Hey Eddie. Real fucking poetic. Five years, and that’s all she’s got.

Eddie smirks—not kindly, but not cruelly either. Just the way he always did, like he’s letting her know she’s the punchline of the joke, but that he’s laughing with her and not at her. “Didn’t think I’d see you ‘round these parts again, you know? Figured you were too good for the land of strip malls and existential dread.”

That last bit does not fly by Stevie’s head without notice. She adjusts the paper bag in her arms. “Guess you figured wrong.”

He hums, takes another drag, lets the smoke curl out through his nose. “So, what, you’re just visiting? Passing through?”

Stevie hesitates. Every version of the truth feels too complicated—too open and too vulnerable. Either way, none of them feel right. None of them feel like anything Eddie would even remotely accept. So she just shrugs and says, “I just want to be here. You don’t own this town.”

Her tone earns her a raised eyebrow and a flash of teeth. “Touché,” he says, not rising to the bait. “Still got that mouth on you.”

“Still asking for it,” she says before she can stop herself, and then instantly regrets it. Stop thinking about Lover’s Lake. Stop thinking about Lover’s Lake. Stop thinking—and then her face warms because, God, why does her mouth still do that around him?

But Eddie just grins, warm, like he too has forgotten that he was supposed to be mad at her. “Good to know some things don’t change.”

He looks her over then—not in a cruel way, but with the easy confidence of someone who’s trying to figure out what time has done to you. It’s a lot less leery than all the other boys they grew up with that she’s met again since the moment she stepped foot in Hawkins, but Stevie resists the urge to squirm anyway. Eddie may have been a gentleman to her, Nancy, and Robin, but he’s also seen her naked more times than she can even remember.

“You look…” he pauses, lips twitching like he’s trying to fight back a smile. “The same.”

“You don’t,” she shoots back automatically.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You really shouldn’t.”

That gets him to laugh again, the same that she heard across the parking lot that cracked the dam open. It sounds rougher now, like gravel and memory. Stevie wants to say something else—something more clever, something that would make her sound like she hasn’t been mentally combusting for the past minute—but her thoughts are all static. The truth is, she can’t stop looking at him. Eddie Munson, older, sure, but not tired. Grounded. Like he figured something out while she was gone, and she’s not sure if she likes that or hates it.

He throws the cigarette to the ground and stubs it out under his boot, then kicks at the gravel. “So… what are you really doing here, Harrington? Hawkins isn’t exactly the comeback capital of the world.”

“I told you,” she breathes out, just a little too sharply. “I wanted to.”

Eddie tilts his head, smiles thin. “You always were bad at answering questions.”

“And you were always bad at minding your own business.”

That lands between them, sharp and a little too real. For a moment, he almost looks sorry. Almost.

“Guess some things really don’t change,” he says quietly.

“Guess not.”

The silence that follows is heavy but not empty. The unbearable heat pressing down on them fills it. Somewhere a car door slams, a dog barks. The world keeps going, doesn’t care.

Stevie shifts her weight, suddenly aware of how long she’s been standing there. “You still driving that thing?” she asks, nodding toward the truck. 

“Yeah,” he sighs, patting the hood. “Stil runs better than you old car, I bet.”

“I don’t have it anymore.”

“Guess money doesn’t fix everything, huh?”

The jab lands softer than it should. Stevie knows he means nothing by it. She flinches anyway.

Eddie notices, because there’s never anything about her that he doesn’t, and looks away quickly, scuffing his boot on the asphalt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“It’s fine,” she says, a little too fast. 

He doesn’t say anything back, and then they’re both quiet again for a while. Two awkward ghosts caught between what they were and, well, whatever this is now.

Eddie must get tired of it, eventually, because he opens the van door, one hand on the frame, and then says over his shoulder, “Well. Good luck with… whatever you’re doing here.”

“Yeah, you too,” she murmurs, only belatedly realizing how stupid she sounds.

He hesitates, just for a second, before he says “Didn’t think you’d actually come back, you know?”

“I didn’t think you’d still be here.”

His mouth twitches, half a smile and half a grimace. “Guess we’re both full of surprises.”

And then he gets in, starts the engine, and drives away. The truck coughs up a plume of dust, leaving her standing in the heavy heat, holding a grocery bag that’s now damp with sweat. Stevie watches until he’s gone, until the chattering of people are all she can hear again.

V

There really is something about Hawkins that makes one feel like they’re being watched. Maybe it’s the way the streets all curve back into each other, or the way the same old houses keep their same old curtains. Stevie isn’t superstitious—she’s too tired for all that—but ever since she saw Eddie again, it’s like the air itself has changed texture. 

Or she might  be crazy. But she swears to God and to her father that she’s seeing him everywhere.

Not in a stalker way—not yet, she hasn’t quite hit rock bottom—but in the ordinary, maddening way that the human brain plays tricks on itself. The truck pulling into the grocery store lot—rusted, dented, loud enough to rattle her teeth—her heart leaps every time. Every single laugh that echoes from behind her in the hardware store, low and familiar, she glances back, just in case it’s him. Every man with shoulder-length curls and a dark shirt becomes, for just a second, him.

It’s ridiculous. It’s pathetic. It’s very on brand for Stevie’s life. It’s like that meeting kickstarted something in the universe, and now she’s stuck in a weird Rube-Goldberg that seems intent on edging her by having every almost-Eddie she encounters in the wild not actually be Eddie.

What’s worse is that it’s working on her again. Hawkins. This stupid town and its stupid heat and the whole nostalgia trap of half-remembered summers and half-broken promises. Fuck, she thinks. I really should have just gone to Oregon with Mama.

She’s walking to the post office, because Robin’s car has been making a weird rattling sound and she doesn’t trust herself to handle it. Or Robin, for that matter. The streets smell like asphalt and honeysuckle. The cicadas sound like static. Sweat runs down her back in lazy rivers. Stevie tells herself she’s fine, that she’s acclimating, and her small-town paranoia will pass fully once she adjusts to the rhythm of things again.

Except she hasn’t really adjusted, hasn’t she? If anything, she feels like she’s regressed. Like she’s a dumb teenager again, stuck in a loop of boredom and too much thinking.

Stevie passes the gas station, something catches her eye, and then she laughs, because the ice freezer outside still has that crooked sign that she and Robin once graffitied a heart on. The faint outline of it is still visible: S & R 4ever. Then, as if on cue, her phone buzzes in her pocket.

Robin: Don’t 4get abt dinner tonight. Mom’s making lasagna. Bring wine if ur still feeling like impressing her. IDK why when you’ve known each other since high school.

On it. Also, I’ll always want to impress Melissa, and that’s because she hates me less than Karen

Robin: Pls. That woman is too grown for half her bull.

Stevie snorts. She puts her phone away, turns her head just a bit to the side, and then—as if the universe noticed that she was laughing and decided to make her miserable again—she catches sight of Eddie.

At least, she thinks it’s him. Across the street, outside the café. The sun hits metal—a car’s bumper, maybe—and for one dizzy second, she sees his silhouette. The way he leans on one leg, the curve of his shoulders, the fall of his hair.

Her breath catches like an idiot’s.

But when she blinks, he’s gone—or maybe he was never there.

“Jesus, Harrington,” she mutters under her breath, “get a grip.”

It’s not like she didn’t expect this. Hawkins is the kind of small where you can’t avoid anyone, no matter how much you want to. She tells herself it’s just geography. Topography. Some cruel, local version of fate.

But still.

There’s something in the air lately—that pull between familiarity and dread that makes her feel like the walls of this town have eyes, and all of them are judging her.

It happens sometime in late spring, after months of finding each other by accident and then pretending it was coincidence.

Stevie Harrington doesn’t do coincidences. She’s a planner—or she used to be. But lately, she’s been showing up at places she didn’t used to: the record store on Tuesdays, the gas station near Maple Street where Eddie always stops for smokes, even the corner booth at Benny’s where he and his friends from Hellfire hang out after rehearsals.

Every time, he looks up, smirks, and says, “Fancy seeing you here, Harrington,” like they’re both in on some secret joke that keeps getting funnier. Or, at least, it’s funny to him.

So when she shows up at Forest Hills one Saturday night, it’s not impulsive anymore. It’s… expected.

There’s a light drizzle falling—the kind that slicks the air and makes the pavement glimmer like oil. The trailer park hums with low TVs and porch radios, and Stevie stands awkwardly under a streetlamp, her curls sticking to her cheeks. She’s holding a milkshake she grabbed on the way over, because somehow showing up empty-handed felt worse than showing up at all.

Eddie spots her immediately. He’s out by the swings again—two rusted seats clinging to life beside the woods, behind the line of trailers. He’s sitting sideways, guitar in hand, playing something soft and lazy. The glow of his cigarette flares, fading as he exhales.

“You’re getting predictable, Harrington,” he calls out.

“Me?” she shoots back, walking toward him. “You’re the one who’s always here.”

“Yeah, well,” he says, strumming a few notes, “I live here. And some of us aren’t out painting the town in silk blouses and convertible cars.”

“Convertible’s busted,” she says, deadpan. “And it’s not silk. It’s rayon.”

“Ah, yes, rayon,” he says solemnly. “Very punk rock.”

Stevie laughs, shaking her head, and hands him the milkshake. “Brought you something. Vanilla. You look like a vanilla guy.”

He takes it, grinning. “Insulting, yet simultaneously generous. I’m touched.”

“You should be,” she says, sitting down on the swing beside him. “I don’t share milkshakes with just anyone.”

“Noted,” he says, sipping it. “This your way of marking territory?”

She tilts her head. “Would it work?”

Eddie chokes on the milkshake, and she bursts out laughing—bright and unguarded.

It’s easy between them now. Easier than it should be. Somewhere between their first real meeting and now, between shared cigarettes outside the gym and those late-night calls that start with, ‘You awake? I need to run something by you’, they stopped pretending they were on opposite sides of anything.

“You sure this is safe?” she asks, gesturing vaguely at the swing set that looks one good breeze away from collapse.

“Safe? Hell no,” he says, grinning, placing the milkshake down on the grass. “But it’s got charm.”

“Yeah,” she deadpans, sitting down on one of the swings. “That’s what I always say about tetanus.”

He huffs out a laugh, then drops his cigarette, crushing it under his boot. “I know you’re here all the time now, but some part of me is still in disbelief that I’m actually seeing you in Forest Hills.”

She glances at him. “Why not?”

“Dunno. You just… fit better somewhere else.”

There’s something about the way he says it—not cruel, not bitter, just factual. It stings anyway.

“Well,” she says, “maybe I wanted to see what I was missing.”

Eddie smirks. “You’re not missing much, princess. Rent’s cheap, plumbing’s bad, and the air smells like boiled catfish when it rains.”

“Sounds like home,” she says softly. She’s not sure why.

They swing for a while in silence. The metal creaks, the wind shifts, the stars blink through the haze. Every once in a while, their feet brush the same patch of dirt, and the static of it catches in her chest. Stevie watches him from the corner of her eye—the way his hair keeps falling into his face, the curve of his mouth when he’s concentrating. He looks different tonight. Not softer, exactly, but quieter. Like he’s trying not to ruin the moment.

“What?” he says after a while, catching her looking. “I got something on my face?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

She snorts. “Just—” She hesitates, then blurts it out. “You’re… kind of annoying, you know that?”

Eddie laughs, low and surprised. “That’s what you were staring at me for? To deliver constructive criticism?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Damn. Here I thought you were gonna confess your undying love or something.”

She rolls her eyes, but her face feels hot. “In your dreams, Munson.”

Eddie tilts his head, studying her. “Maybe.”

There’s something in his tone that makes her pulse skip.

The silence stretches again, and she can feel the air shifting—heavier, slower, electric. Her swing rocks gently, the rusted chain squealing. She feels like she’s teetering on the edge of something stupid and irreversible.

He’s looking at her now—not teasing, not smug, just looking.

And she doesn’t know what to do with that.

It’s ridiculous how aware she is of everything—the smell of smoke and grass, the warmth of the night, the way the stars look like they’re leaning in to watch.

“Stevie,” he says quietly.

“Yeah?”

Eddie doesn’t answer at first. Just leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, fingers twitching like he wants to touch something but isn’t sure what.

“You ever think,” he says slowly, “that we’re both gonna look back on this and laugh at how weird it was?”

Stevie raises an eyebrow. “This?”

He gestures between them. “Whatever this is.”

“Maybe,” she says. “Or maybe we won’t.”

The air between them feels thinner now.

And when she looks at him again, she knows she’s gone. She knows she’s going to do something she’ll regret—not because it’s wrong, but because it’s him.

Eddie stands first, his swing scraping to a stop. Stevie follows without meaning to. They meet in the middle—halfway between the swings, halfway between all the things they should and shouldn’t do. He’s close enough now that she can see the freckles on his nose, the scar on his chin. His breath smells like cigarettes and vanilla.

“This is a bad idea,” she whispers. “The worst, I think.”

“Yeah,” he says, eyes flicking to her mouth. “I’m kind of counting on that.”

And then—before she can think, before she can talk herself out of it—he kisses her.

It’s messy and too fast and exactly right. The kind of kiss that feels like it’s been waiting in the air for months. His hands are hesitant, almost gentle, like he’s afraid she’ll vanish if he touches her too much.

But Stevie doesn’t. No. She stays, instead. And when she pulls back, breathing hard, she starts to laugh—partly because it’s absurd, partly because it’s perfect, and partly because she knows that from now on, she’s fucking screwed.

Eddie grins, that stupid half-dare, half-prayer expression of his. “Told you the swings had charm.”

“Shut up,” she says, smiling, trying to hide the tremor in her voice. “God, Munson, shut the fuck up.” And then she pulls him back in.

The lights are still flickering, the air still thick and alive around them. When she finally sits back down, the swing chain creaks again—like the night itself sighing, knowing this was the start of something neither of them could ever walk away from clean.

But Eddie’s hand is tight in hers, so Stevie can’t really bring herself to care.

Stevie’s mindless walking ends up with her sitting outside the diner, staring at the condensation sliding down her iced coffee glass, thinking about how much she hates it here and how much she missed it. Both things are true. Both things are impossible to admit out loud. And as she sits there, she starts to think—in that spiraling, lazy-summer way—about how weird it is that you can spend years pretending you’ve moved on, and then one afternoon can undo all the work.

Really, she used to picture Eddie as something distant; a chapter closed, a road she’d driven past too fast to turn back. In New York, he was just a ghost of a life that felt small, naïve, unsustainable. A cautionary memory.

Now, back here, he’s everywhere. And she resents that there’s a small part of her that doesn’t really mind it.

When the waitress comes to refill her coffee, Stevie smiles politely and tips too much, because that’s just what you do when you feel guilty for something you can’t name—you tip like absolution.

On her way home, she drives past the auto shop. The garage door’s open, and she sees him. And it’s definitely him this time. He’s bent over the hood of a truck, a smudge of oil under his cheekbone, the strap of his overalls hanging loose.

Her pulse stutters. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. 

Stevie tells herself not to look. She tells herself she’s just passing through. She tells herself she’s not some tragic ex-girlfriend driving slow past her own mistakes like a tourist. But it's rare for her to listen to herself, so she looks anyway.

Aw, man, she thinks mournfully. What the fuck. 

Suddenly, as if some invisible force alerted him to her presence, he straightens up, eyes flicking toward her car. Stevie averts her eyes immediately, panics and then drives faster. Too fast. Like if she outruns the block, she can outrun the look on his face.

By the time she reaches Robin’s place, she’s shaking her head, laughing under her breath.

“Jesus Christ, Harrington,” she mutters. “Please fucking pull it together.”

But even as she kills the engine, her heart’s still pounding like it used to in the high school parking lot, when she’d sneak glances at Eddie from across the crowd, pretending she wasn’t looking at all.

And that’s when she realizes—with the kind of clarity that hurts—that seeing him again hasn’t ruined her peace of mind. It reminded her she never had any.

VI

By the time Stevie turns onto Cherry, the sky is so blindingly blue it feels like an insult. 

It’s the kind of day that should be reserved for good moods and fresh starts, not the kind where your best friend’s car is coughing black smoke and you’re driving straight into a place owned by your ex-boyfriend and his uncle who treated you like his own kid because of how much you hung out by their place when you were dating his nephew.

But anyway. That’s not the point. Though ex-boyfriend really isn’t an apt word for whatever Eddie is. It all feels too tidy. Ex-boyfriend sounds like they had a clean ending; that it was a mutual decision, and they’re both people who know how and when to move on. Eddie was more like an orbit, really, if she’s truly thinking about it—a pull that started slow and swallowed her whole and wrecked them both.

Again, that’s not the point. 

Stevie parks Robin’s car in front of the shop and kills the engine. For a second, she just sits there, fingers on the steering wheel, watching the shimmer of heat ripple off the asphalt. MUNSON’S AUTO REPAIR looms over her like an omen. Up close, she can see that the paint off the letter A in repair has chipped off entirely, so it just says REP IR, which somehow feels appropriate. Her traitorous brain supplies that it’s the kind of thing that Eddie would find completely hilarious. 

Shit. Stevie really should have just told Robin to find someone else. Or made up an excuse. 

“You’re a big fucking girl,” Stevie mutters instead, grabbing her sunglasses. “A grown woman.”

The air outside the shop smells like oil and metal. She wipes the sweat off her neck and squints through the open garage door. Inside, an ancient fan on its last leg hums lazily. Eddie’s bent over the hood of a car, his back to her. He’s wearing a sleeveless shirt, his shoulders browned from the sun, hair tied back in a loose bun. He’s humming along to the radio, a song that borders on familiar before the memory slips from her mind again.

Stevie has a brief, irrational thought that she should leave before he notices her. Pretend she went to the wrong shop. Just reverse out of there and never speak of it again. But then it’s too late; Eddie straightens, wipes his hands on a rag, and turns around.

“Oh,” he says, almost smiling. “It’s you again.”

Stevie swallows, pushing her sunglasses higher up her nose like they might hide the flush creeping up her cheeks. “Yeah. Me again.”

“You stalking me, Harrington? Still haven’t changed from high school, I see.”

She snorts. “Relax, Munson. I’m just here for a car.”

“That’s what they all say.”

Eddie leans against the car, watching her with a lopsided grin that looks the same as it did back in high school, only now it’s heavier—like the years between then and now have folded something new into it. She hates that it still makes her pulse pick up.

Quit it, she thinks. Get a grip.

“Robin’s car’s been making this noise,” she says, gesturing vaguely toward the street where the car is parked. “Kind of like it’s dying? I told her I’d bring it in because she can’t. Her aunt’s in for a visit and....” she trails off, not really knowing what else to say.

“Noise, huh?” Eddie asks. “Can you describe the noise?”

Stevie gives him a flat look. “It’s a car noise, Munson. Go figure.”

“Helpful.”

“It’s like—” she waves her hands, “—a dying walrus or something. Like, wheeeeee-uhhrrrghhh.”

Eddie actually laughs, short and surprised. “A dying walrus.”

“I don’t know, Eddie,” she says defensively. “You’re the car whisperer, not me.”

He shakes his head, smiling to himself as he grabs a rag and starts toward the street. “Show me the patient, then, Dr. Harrington.”

Stevie follows him, trying not to stare at the way his shirt sticks to his back or how grease has smudged across his forearm like paint. He crouches to inspect the car, running a hand along the bumper. She leans on the passenger door, pretending to check her phone and not his ass.

“So,” he says after a moment of looking over the car, “how’s it feel being back?”

She shrugs, even though he’s not looking. “Same old Hawkins.”

“That bad?”

“Maybe worse.”

Eddie glances up, squinting against the sunlight. “You get tired of big city life already?”

“Didn’t say that.”

“Didn’t have to.” He stands, wiping his hands on the rag again. “You left for a reason, Harrington. People don’t usually circle back unless something’s gone wrong.”

Something in her bristles—pride, maybe, or defensiveness dressed as humor. “You always this friendly with customers?”

Eddie smirks. “Only the ones who used to break my heart.”

The air between them thickens. Stevie laughs, but it comes out brittle. “I didn’t break your heart.”

Eddie’s eyes meet hers—calm, direct, unreadable. “Sure you didn’t.”

She opens her mouth to say something sharp, but the words get tangled somewhere between her throat and the heat. She looks away instead, focusing on the cracked pavement, the weeds growing between the concrete.

He finally sighs, leaning back against the car. “Look, I’m not trying to fight. It’s just… weird. You being here, okay?”

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “I know.”

“And you really can’t blame me. Even you can admit that.”

“I know, Eddie,” she sighs. “Believe me, I know.”

For a minute, the only sound is the low hum of a car engine from down the road. Then, trying to lighten the air, Stevie says, “You’ve got a good setup here, though, yeah? The shop really looks legit. Are you running this all by yourself or is Wayne still kicking around?”

Eddie nods. “Mostly me. Wayne’s a full time stay at home uncle now. Got a couple of guys who help out here part-time, mostly kids who need work and extra money for the summer. But yeah. Really built  it up last year.”

“It suits you,” she says before she can stop herself, and then finds that she genuinely means it.

He looks at her again, one eyebrow raised. “That supposed to be a compliment or an insult?”

“A compliment,” she says quickly. “Believe it or not. You always had a knack for cars. It’s why Nancy, Robin, and I never spent money back then for repairs.

He grins. “You always were bad at those.”

“At repairs?”

“No, jeez. Compliments.”

“Hey!” She bites, indignant. “I like to think I’ve improved.”

“Uh-huh.” Eddie turns back toward the car. “Well, Dr. Harrington, official diagnosis is a busted belt and a leak in the coolant line. I’ll keep her overnight, maybe two days.”

“Okay.”

“You need a ride back?”

The offer throws her off more than it should. “What, like you’ll drop me off at Robin’s?”

“No, I’ll drive you out to the city limit and then drop you there. Yes I’ll drop you off at Robin’s.”

“Smartass. You don’t have to, really.”

He shrugs. “It’s fine. I got a truck, and you’re not exactly walking distance from anywhere.”

Stevie hesitates. She could call Robin. She could walk, sweat it out, prove a point. But she doesn’t want to. She wants to say yes, wants to sit beside him again and pretend it’s normal. She glances up at him, pushing her hair behind her ear. “Fine. But if your truck still smells like a wet dog, I’m walking.”

Eddie chuckles. “Guess you’ll find out.”

The sun sinks low behind the treeline, bleeding orange into the soft blue haze of early evening. The trailer park hums with life, like it always does—a screen door slams in the distance, someone’s TV crackles with a game show, and the sound of a barking dog echoes faintly from down the gravel road.

Stevie sits on the rough wooden picnic table near the edge of the lot, her legs swinging absently. The air smells like gasoline and dry grass. Eddie leans against the railing beside her, cigarette dangling between his fingers, smoke curling lazily around his head.

“So,” he says, tilting his head toward her. “When’s Queen Stevie’s coronation again? Or is that, like, a quarterly event?”

She rolls her eyes. “You’ve been calling me that for months, Munson. You think it’s still funny?”

“Funnier every time.”

“I’m not even—” she waves her Coke bottle vaguely toward him—“that person anymore.”

“Oh sure. Totally believable. Popular, charming, hair commercial for a head, but no, you’re not that person.”

“Shut up,” she says, but she’s smiling. She kicks a loose rock near her foot, watching it skip across the dirt. “You’re one to talk. You still pretend you hate everyone but secretly love the attention.”

“Bold of you to assume I get any attention.”

“You literally stood on a cafeteria table last week and announced that Hawkins High was full of cowards.”

“Yeah,” he says easily, flicking ash toward the dirt, “and?”

“And you liked it.”

Eddie grins, teeth catching the last bit of sunlight. “You know, you’ve got me all figured out, Harrington.”

“I do,” she says, eyes narrowing playfully. “It’s a gift.”

The sky deepens to pink and then purple, and the faint buzz of streetlights begins to hum around them. Somewhere, a radio plays Fleetwood Mac, faint through the buzz of static.

He’s watching her now—really watching. Not with that half-smirk he usually wears, but with a quiet curiosity that makes her chest feel too tight.

“Do you ever get tired of it?” he asks suddenly.

“Of what?”

“The act. The one where you always have it together.”

Stevie lets out a small, shaky laugh. “Who says it’s an act?”

Eddie exhales, the smoke catching in the fading light. “You’re talking to the guy who performs daily, sweetheart. I can recognize a fellow actor.”

She looks down at her sneakers, scuffed and dirty, pretending to trace something in the dust. “Maybe I just like neat things. Predictable.”

“Neat’s overrated.”

“Spoken like someone whose locker looks like a crime scene.”

“Hey,” he says, mock-offended, “that’s organized chaos. Big difference.”

“Sure,” she mutters, “you’d say that about your entire life.”

“Exactly,” he says, grin widening. “Chaos has style.”

That makes Stevie laugh—sharp and real this time. “You’re ridiculous.”

“I’m right, though.”

“Maybe.”

Their knees bump—once, then again—and neither of them moves.

“So what’s the plan, then?” she asks. “You gonna graduate and take over the world?”

He smirks, flicking his cigarette butt into the dirt. “Hell no. Gonna form a band, live in a van, write songs that scare the shit out of PTA moms.”

“Wow. Lofty goals.”

“Better than being Hawkins’ next real estate heir.”

“Please,” she says, rolling her eyes. “My dad would die. A girl selling real estate? He’d start wishing I was still a boy and I’m really trying to avoid that.”

“What?”

“Girls are only good for one thing,” Stevie puffs out her chest. “Get married to a good family, then get your husband to invest in your family’s business.”

Eddie laughs—really laughs—and it bursts open something warm inside her. “What an asshole, shit.”

“Yeah,” Stevie sighs. “And to think I have to live with that man for his whole life.”

When the sound of laughter fades, he’s still looking at her, softer now. “You know,” he says, voice low, “you’re really not what I thought you’d be.”

She tilts her head. “What did you think I’d be?”

He smirks, lips already formed around the insult. “A nightmare.”

“Aw, has anybody ever told you how utterly charming you were?”

“I mean it. You’ve got this whole shiny, perfect thing going on. I figured there had to be nothing underneath it but glass.”

“And?”

Eddie exhales slowly. “Turns out there’s something else. Something that sticks.”

She swallows, unsure what to do with the heat crawling up her neck. “Don’t say things like that,” she says, trying for lightness.

“Why not?”

“Because you say them like you mean them.”

He grins again—not teasing, not cruel, just him. “That’s because I do.”

And maybe that’s why she doesn’t move when he leans in. The space between them closes in small, suspended breaths. His hand finds the edge of the bench beside her, close enough that her fingers twitch toward his without her meaning to. His hair catches the last of the daylight, haloed in gold.

She’s still laughing under her breath when their mouths meet—quick, surprised, clumsy. He tastes like smoke and Coke and something very sweet that leaves a mark.

When they pull apart, he looks at her like she’s just rewritten the entire world. And Stevie, for once, doesn’t have a single clever thing to say.

The drive back to Robin’s feels like being caught between two radio stations—the air buzzing with something unspoken.Eddie’s truck is still loud and incredibly ancient, rattling dangerously every time he hits a bump. There’s a stack of old cassettes on the dash, a pack of cigarettes half-crushed beside them. Stevie traces the cracked leather of the seat with her fingertips, trying not to look at him.

He drives with one hand on the wheel, the other resting lazily on the gearshift. His rings catch the light. Stevie, briefly, has the weird thought that she’d like to see them over her skin again.

Control. Yourself. Fucking get a grip, woman.

“So,” she says finally, needing to fill the silence, “how’s the metal scene in Hawkins these days?”

Eddie snorts. “Dead. But that’s not new.”

“Do you still play at the Hideout?”

“Sometimes. Mostly when the shop’s empty.”

Stevie nods. “You were good.”

“Were?”

“Are,” she corrects quickly. “You’re good.”

Eddie glances sideways at her, something flickering behind his eyes. “You used to come to every gig, remember that?”

“Yeah,” she says softly. “You always said you could tell when I was there. That I threw off your rhythm.”

“You did,” he says. “Still do.”

The words land like a stone in her stomach. She doesn’t answer. She looks out the window instead, watches the fields blur by.

When they pull into Robin’s driveway, she unbuckles her seatbelt too fast. “Thanks for the ride.”

“Anytime,” he says, and he means it, she thinks.

She steps out, but before she can close the door, he says her name—“Stevie”—in that same low, hesitant way that makes her feel seventeen again.

She looks back. “Yeah?”

“Don’t wait too long to pick up the car,” he says, tone lighter now, almost teasing. “Wouldn’t want me thinking you’re using it as an excuse.”

Stevie’s smile comes out crooked. “Who says it’s not?”

He laughs—that laugh—and she shuts the door before she can say anything else, because if she doesn’t, she might actually stay.

“Yeah,” she sighs, thumping her head against the door. “I’m fucked.”

Chapter Text

I

It starts small. Dust-motes in the air kind of small.

Stevie spots Eddie first at the grocery store, of all places—the one on Main with the flickering O in Food Mart that the owner has refused and refuses to fix. He’s by the produce section, arms crossed, frowning at a bin of tomatoes like they’ve personally insulted him. There’s a smear of oil along his forearm, and he’s wearing a shirt from the auto shop with the sleeves rolled up.

She freezes near the entrance, momentarily, her fingers tightening on the handle of her shopping basket. I could still turn around, she thinks. No one would ever know.

Except, she would know. And she’s not gonna live her life being afraid of Eddie Munson, thank you very much, so she walks towards him instead. Because she’s Stephanie Harrington and she’s brave, and her mom didn’t raise a bitch. And, well, she’s also apparently a big fucking idiot with a teenage, hormone-addled brain.

“Hey,” she says, voice light and deceptively normal. She’s almost proud of the way her tone remained even with no cracks. Eddie glances up, mildly startled, then smirks.

“Well, well,” he starts, voice slipping easily to that tone he takes when he’s made his mind up about pissing somebody off. “Hawkins royalty, twice in one week. What did I do to deserve this honor?”

Stevie raises an eyebrow. “I genuinely—I—you cannot seriously still be on that bullshit.”

Eddie shrugs. “I’m nothing if not consistent.”

“Consistent’s one word for it,” she mutters, pretending to inspect a cucumber and trying very hard to ignore the fact that he’s standing awfully close. “A pest, more like. You know, you used to like seeing me.” Fuck.

If Eddie notices the way she slightly freezes up, he doesn’t mention it. Instead, he just keeps his grin. “Yeah, well. I used to like a couple of things.”

The words are soft, but they land quite hard, hitting Stevie right in the chest where she’d rather it be empty instead of holding a heart. She swallows roughly, pasting on a blank smile. “Still a fucking asshole, aren’t you, Munson?”

“Hey,” he replies, raising his hands. “Like I said, consistency is a virtue. You should try it sometimes.”

“Oh please,” she snorts. She inspects a bag of spinach like it holds the answers to the secrets of the universe, if only so she could avoid looking Eddie in the face. “I’m the same as I’ve always been.”

She chances a brief glance, and notices that Eddie looks at her then—really looks—and then he says, “That’s kind of the problem, isn’t it?”

Stevie blinks, completely thrown off balance now. “Woah, okay. Deep thoughts at the produce aisle. Careful, Eddie, one might think you have a brain beneath all that hair.”

He laughs in response, shaking his head. “I guess I just missed the sound of you trying to win arguments.”

“And I guess I missed winning them,” she fires back automatically, equal parts annoyed and honest. Her pulse refuses to settle.

They leave the grocery at the same time, because of course they do. And because Stevie’s life is one big cosmic joke, Robin’s car is parked right beside his beat-up truck.

“You know, that reminds me,” he says, leaning against his truck’s door. “Do you still drive like you’re late to prom?”

“It’s genuinely painful to me that you think you’re funny. Also, I was late to prom that one time, so please cut me some slack and just forget about that singular thing that happened close to a decade ago, alright?”

“Oh, I think I’m hilarious, Stevie,” he grins, completely unbothered. “Also, I’m never letting you live that down. I could still remember the Chief’s face in the school parking lot while you explained to him that the reason you hit three mailboxes on the way is because you were doing your makeup in your car.”

Stevie glares at him harder. The heat is thick between them, getting heavier and more oppressive the closer it gets to the end of July. Neither moves to leave first, and Stevie can see the emotions warring on Eddie’s face until, finally, he breaks and decides to ask, “How long are you actually back for?”

“Not sure yet,” she replies, biting the corner of her lip. She tries to ignore the way Eddie’s eyes seem to fixate on that action. 

“You’re not just visiting, are you?”

“Maybe I am. It’s only been a couple of weeks.”

“Hmm. But maybe you’re not.”

Something flickers in his eyes, something she doesn’t want to put a name to, at the risk of giving herself hope that shouldn’t exist. So Stevie just opens her car’s door, dumps her groceries in the back seat, and then turns to Eddie to say, “Again, like I said before, you don’t own this town, Munson, so I can do whatever I want and be here whenever I want.”

“I wouldn’t want to own this shit hole at all, but thanks for that consideration.”

“Good,” she says, entering the car and turning the ignition on. She rolls the window down, leaning forward so Eddie could hear her better. “You do a terrible job keeping Hawkins interesting.”

The remark earns her a real laugh—full belly, like he’s never heard anything funnier. There’s new crinkles around his eyes now, and Stevie suppresses the want boiling within her to trace them with her fingers. “There she is,” he says. “Knew she was still in there somewhere.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she mutters, rolling the windows back up before he can reply. Eddie’s still laughing when she drives away, a hunched over figure disappearing slowly from her rear view mirror, and she hates that the sound of it follows her home.

A few days pass with nothing interesting happening. Stevie has thoroughly convinced herself that it was just a coincidence, really. Hawkins is small—of course she’d run into him again.

But then it happens again; Saturday, late morning, and Stevie is leaving Melvald’s with a box of lightbulbs when she hears it—low and teasing: “Following me, Harrington?”

Stevie doesn’t have to turn to know it’s him. “In your dreams, Munson.”

“Careful,” he says, falling into step beside her. “You’re making it sound like you’ve had them.”

“Ugh, gross. Do you always have to be such a boy all the time?”

“Hey, I’m just being honest,” he counters, flashing that grin again, the one that used to get him out of trouble.

She rolls her eyes. “Still working that charm angle?”

“It’s not an angle if it’s natural.”

“Natural disaster, maybe.”

He laughs, and she hates that it sounds exactly the same as when they were young—loud, alive, unfiltered. Stevie, impossibly and perhaps all too predictably, wants to bottle the sound up to replay it over and over again when she’s alone.

“You’re impossible,” she says.

“And yet,” he says, “you keep running into me.”

“Statistical anomaly. It’s a small town.”

“Fate.”

She snorts. “God, you wish.”

Eddie leans closer, his voice dipping. “Sometimes.”

The air goes strange then, quiet but charged. She wants to walk away, but her feet won’t move. She wants to say something cutting, but her throat’s tight. So she does what she’s always done in situations like this—she smiles like it doesn’t matter.

“Yeah, sure. See you around, Munson.”

“You always do,” he calls after her.

And—

Fuck, okay,  maybe it’s him who is stalking her. It’s almost funny by the third time, sitting on a park bench at dusk, half-drunk on pink lemonade and boredom, when she hears the familiar growl of his truck pulling up behind her.

“Oh Stevie, my Stevie, art thou waiting for a bus that doesn’t exist?”

Stevie groans, but she doesn’t turn around. “Have you considered that maybe I liked the view?”

“Sure,” he calls out, “nothing more majestic than the parking lot of Hawkins Community Park.”

“Don’t mock my process.”

She hears him turn off his truck, the thumping of his boots against the asphalt,  until he finally steps into view, holding two cans of coke. He offers her one, and Stevie takes it from his hand with extra care so as not to let their fingers touch, because she honestly doesn’t know what she’d do when she feels his skin again. “You look like you could use this,” he says, a sheepish grin on his face. Stevie squints at him.

“You know, I seriously think you’re stalking me now.”

“Nah. That’s the universe doing all the work.”

“Okay, well, what’s your excuse for being here, then?”

“Had a client nearby,” he says, tilting his chin to the side. “Car trouble. Fixed it. All in a day’s work.”

“Yeah, well…”

Eddie glances at her, then says nothing. The moment hangs, fragile as glass.

And then—

It really seems like they can’t stop running into each other anymore. Once or twice a week, then three times, until the pattern stops feeling accidental. 

Matter of fact, Stevie has begun to time her errands differently—half-conscious, half not. She tells herself she’d do better avoiding him, but their little meet-ups happen anyway. It happens so often and, more times than not, so out of the public view that it’s starting to remind her of the time early into their relationship when they used to sneak around because they haven’t told anyone about them yet.

They’d talk, sometimes. There are days where they just nod to each other in passing—whether because they’re too busy to talk or they just don’t want to. But every single time, the space between them feels a little smaller, a little easier. 

Then, one sweltering afternoon, his truck slows beside her as she’s walking down Loch Nora, carrying a grocery bag that’s already cutting into her fingers. Eddie leans out the window, sunglasses pushed up his hair.

“You planning to walk all the way back to New York like that, Harrington?”

Stevie glares at him through the heat. “You offering me a ride or a critique? You have three seconds to make up your mind before I start ignoring you.”

“Telling you would ruin the mystery, but I can promise you that both offers come with free air-conditioning.”

And, well. Stevie shouldn’t. Really, she shouldn’t. But the sun is brutal, he’s looking at her with that beautiful half-smile that still feels like trouble, and she’s always been known for making dumb decisions so, “Fine,” she groans, yanking the passenger door open. “I don’t know how you fixed the air-conditioning in this decrepit little thing but if it explodes, I’m going to haunt you for the rest of your life.”

“Please,” he murmurs, like she’s not supposed to hear him. “You already do.”

The inside of the van is a museum of chaos, just as bad as when she first entered it three weeks ago—coffee cups, band stickers, the cracked dashboard that smells faintly of pine and smoke. They don’t talk for a while. Hawkins passes by in slow motion—houses with peeling paint, the water tower, the field where the fair used to be set up.

Finally, Stevie says, “You ever think about leaving?”

Eddie smirks. “Didn’t you get that part covered?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Didn’t really stick, though.”

He drums his fingers against the steering wheel. “Most people don’t.” There’s something about the way he says it—matter-of-fact, not accusing—that makes her chest tighten.

“I didn’t come back for nostalgia,” she says after a beat, apropos of nothing.

“Good,” he says. “Town’s fresh out.”

She snorts. “Still funny, huh?”

“Still bitter?”

“Working on it.”

Eddie glances over, and there’s that old glint again, the one that always meant ‘I see right through you.’

“Could’ve fooled me,” he says lightly.

Stevie looks out the window, jaw clenched tight. She wants to say something smart and maybe slightly mean, something that puts the distance back, but all she can think about is the way the sunlight hits his profile—the soft edge of it, the calm that wasn’t there when they were young and wild and burning too bright. Eddie hums along to a song on the radio. Old country. Something about wanting and staying and screwing both up. Or not. Maybe Stevie’s mind is making half of  it up.

When they pull up outside Robin’s old house, Stevie takes a long breath before opening the door.

“Thanks,” she says, trying to sound casual.

He tilts his head. “For the ride or the existential crisis?”

“Both,” she says, managing a smile.

He chuckles, but it’s quieter now. “Anytime, Harrington.”

She steps out, closing the door behind her. The van rumbles away down the street, leaving the faint smell of gasoline and dust in its wake. And for a second—just a second—she thinks she hears the echo of her seventeen-year-old self laughing somewhere in the sound.

II

Stevie’s living room looks like something out of a coming-of-age movie she’d pretend not to like but secretly rewatches when she can’t sleep. The lamp by the couch glows faintly. The pizza box on the floor is still open, and there’s an empty beer can dangerously close to being kicked over by a socked foot. The air feels soft and warm, like it’s holding its breath.

It’s her birthday. Twenty, technically, though it doesn’t feel like any of the milestones people promise it will. No wild party, no glitter, no blurry photos she’ll cringe at later. Just her, her half-eaten pizza, and Eddie Munson sprawled on her carpet like he belongs there. Which, if she’s being honest, he kind of does.

He’s been acting weird for the past half hour—fidgety and distracted, like there’s a thought crawling around his brain he doesn’t know how to say out loud. He keeps glancing at his guitar leaning against the couch, and Stevie keeps pretending not to notice.

“You’re acting weird,” she says eventually, sipping from her can, because where would Eddie be if she didn’t call his weirdness out? “Weirder than usual, I mean.”

Eddie glances up at her, all false innocence and twitchy grin. “Weird? Nah. I’m a pillar of normalcy, me.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You’ve been staring at that guitar for twenty minutes. I feel like I’m about to witness a crime.”

He smirks. “Maybe you are.”

“Eddie,” she says flatly. “If you set something on fire in my living room, swear to God, I’m calling the cops.”

That makes him laugh—that bright, reckless sound that gets under her skin every single time. “Relax, sweetheart. It’s not arson.”

“That’s not comforting.”

He’s quiet for a moment. Then, with the kind of deliberate calm that immediately alarms her, he stands up and says, “All right. Stay right there.”

“Eddie.”

“No, seriously. Don’t move.”

She blinks. “Are you—what are you doing?”

And then he starts unbuttoning his shirt.

“Jesus Christ, Eddie—”

He ignores her, still grinning. “Gotta set the mood.”

“The mood for what? Sex?”

He doesn’t answer, just keeps going—the shirt falls to the floor, then the jeans, then the socks.

“Eddie!” she shrieks, covering her face with both hands and peeking through her fingers. “What the hell!”

He’s laughing now, full-body laughter, like her outrage is exactly what he wanted. “Relax, it’s performance art.”

“Performance art?!”

“Yep. Pure, unfiltered emotion. I’m going for vulnerability here.”

“You’re going for jail time. I—what—I haven't closed the curtains, oh my God! We’re in the living room!”

“Come on, Stevie. You’ve seen worse.”

“I absolutely have not.”

Eddie grabs his guitar, sits down cross-legged on the carpet, and slings it across his lap. “See? Perfectly decent. Strategically covered. You’re welcome.”

She’s torn between wanting to die on the spot and wanting to throw something at him. “You’re insane.”

“Maybe. But I’m your birthday present, so you have to at least pretend to be flattered.”

“Eddie, if you play me ‘Happy Birthday’ right now, I swear—”

He strums a chord. It’s off-key. It buzzes through the room like an inside joke.

“Don’t you dare,” she warns.

But then he looks up at her—hair falling into his eyes, grin softening just a little—and says, “Stevie Harrington, this one’s for you.”

“Oh my god,” she mutters, sinking back against the couch.

The first few notes wobble, like the song’s trying to remember itself. His voice is low and scratchy, and he keeps laughing under his breath, half-singing and half-rambling verses that make no sense. Lines about her laugh, her eyeliner, the way she rolls her eyes like she’s allergic to sincerity. How she never lets him win an argument even when he’s right, which he admits in the same breath is incredibly rare.

It’s ridiculous. It’s him.

And somewhere between verse two and three, she stops laughing.

Because there’s something in his voice that feels like the truth. Something raw and stupidly honest. He’s naked in her living room with a guitar and he means every single word.

Her chest feels tight. It’s embarrassing how much it does.

Eddie finishes with a clumsy flourish and looks at her, waiting. “Well?” he says. “Too much?”

Stevie stares at him for a long moment. “You’re such an idiot.”

He grins. “You keep saying that like it’s news. Everyone already knows that.”

She laughs, despite herself—a loud, helpless kind of laugh that tumbles out before she can stop it. “You are so dumb.”

“Maybe. But you’re smiling.”

She hates that he’s right.

For a second, the air between them changes—something quieter, more careful. The laugh dies on her lips, but the warmth doesn’t go away. He’s looking at her like she’s the only person in the world who exists right now, and it’s almost too much.

“You really did that,” she says, voice low.

“Yeah, well, seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Still kinda worth it.”

“It is.”

“Besides, all I gave you was a brand new pair of socks, and I promise I’m genuinely not that shitty of a boyfriend but—”

She doesn’t even think about it before she lunges and kisses him.

It’s messy and warm and tastes like cheap beer and nerves. He freezes for half a second, then kisses her back—slow at first, then hungrier. The guitar clatters to the floor somewhere between them.

When she pulls away, they’re both breathing hard, forehead to forehead.

“You’re never allowed to top that,” she says quietly. “I’m serious, Munson. This is the best that it’s going to get, as far as birthday presents go.”

He chuckles against her skin. “Guess I won’t try.”

The night goes on around them. The air smells like pizza and smoke and something else, and for a moment, she thinks—stupidly, hopefully—that maybe this could be it. Maybe love is just this. A ridiculous boy with a guitar and a grin and the courage to be naked in the living room of the girl he loves.

And maybe she’s already gone for him, and there’s no taking it back.

“No.”

“Please, come on,” Robin groans, throwing her head back like this whole thing is the greatest injustice of her life. “It’s just Nancy and Eddie! Nancy isn’t gonna be here again until Christmas and who knows whether you’d still be here or not?”

“Absolutely fucking not.”

“Please, Stevie?”

“I’m genuinely begging you to understand why I don’t wanna be there.” Stevie’s pacing in Robin's kitchen, waving her hands like the words themselves are going to make Robin finally see sense. “There’s nothing casual about going out with your best friends and your ex-boyfriend. It’s like a social suicide note.”

Robin, leaning on the counter, squints at her. “Oh, come on. It’s the old gang. We’re all friends. We were all friends first. Besides, you’ve been seeing Eddie around a lot lately. You should be fine!”

“Seeing around is a whole other thing,” Stevie replies, whirling around. “Also, are you forgetting the part where he is my ex-boyfriend?”

Robin holds up two fingers. “Okay, first of all, I told you not to date that clown. Begged you, in fact. Second, you had a crush on Nancy and it’s never awkward between you two.”

Stevie blinks, deadpan. “That’s because Nancy has never seen me naked. She’s never been inside m—”

Robin throws up both hands, horrified. “TMI! Oh my god, why? Why would you say that out loud?”

Stevie crosses her arms. “I’m making a point.”

“Point made! Loudly!” Robin groans, rubbing her temples. “Please, come on, Stevie. Just tonight. We’ll have a drink, catch up, and if it’s weird, we’ll leave early. I promise.”

Stevie hesitates, chewing on her lip. There’s something about the word just—how easy it sounds, how harmless. Just tonight. Just old friends. Just one drink. Just Eddie.

“Ugh, fine,” she mutters. “Fuck. Fine.”

Robin cheers quietly, fist in the air. “Yes! You won’t regret it.”

“I already do,” Stevie says.

The bar downtown hasn’t changed much. Maybe a new neon sign, a coat of paint that didn’t need to happen. Same jukebox in the corner, same cracked leather booths, same heavy scent of fried food and spilled beer. It’s Friday night, and the air hums with typical small-town noise—laughter, glasses clinking, someone yelling for another round and being ignored by all the other patrons.

Nancy’s already there when they walk in, sitting in a booth near the back. She looks good—crisp blouse, hair pulled back, still that quiet, composed way about her that makes Stevie feel both fond and like she should stand up straighter.

And then, next to her, is Eddie.

He’s laughing at something Nancy said, his head tipped back, the line of his throat catching the light. His hair’s tied back low, a few strands escaping, and there’s that same ring on his finger he’s been wearing since high school.

Stevie’s stomach drops. Fuck. 

“Stevie!” Nancy stands to hug her, smiling warmly. “You look great! It’s been forever.”

“Hey, Nance,” Stevie says, hugging her back. It feels good, actually—familiar in a way that hurts a little.

Eddie’s slower to look up. When he does, his grin is lazy, practiced. “Harrington.”

“Munson.”

“Still alive? Surprised Buckley hasn’t killed you yet.”

“Barely.”

Robin slides in beside Nancy, already reaching for the drinks menu. “God, it’s like nothing’s changed,” she says, half-laughing.

“Except we’re all more disappointing now,” Stevie mutters.

Eddie snorts. “Speak for yourself. I’ve achieved total enlightenment. I own three functioning lighters and a truck that only breaks down once a week.”

Nancy laughs—the sound neat and pretty—and it feels like a punch and a hug all at once.

They order drinks. Conversation starts clumsy, but the old rhythm creeps back in around the edges. Nancy talks about her Masters—how she’s finishing her thesis, something about corruption in local media compared to the bigwig conglomerates. She says it so easily, so sure of herself, that Stevie wants to crawl under the table and live there. It doesn’t help that Robin immediately starts talking about her sabbatical and how she’s been helping her mom out for now, but she’s got a job opportunity already waiting for her once she gets back.

“If I take it,” she says. “Still deciding if I’m emotionally stable enough for management.”

Nancy grins. “You’ll crush it.”

Then it’s Eddie’s turn. He leans back, nursing his beer, eyes flicking from one of them to the other. “I did a cross-country trip last year,” he says. “Me and the guys from Corroded Coffin. Just the van, a couple of gigs, a whole lot of gas station burritos. Got a scar on my leg from Kansas and a lifetime’s supply of tinnitus.”

Robin whistles. “That actually sounds kind of amazing.”

He shrugs, smiling faintly. “It was. For a while.”

And then, inevitably, they all look at Stevie.

Her stomach twists.

She forces a small smile, running a thumb along her glass. “Oh, you know. I bartended for a bit. Tried modeling for a while—not, like, real modeling, just test shots, catalog stuff. It didn’t pan out.” She laughs, too quickly. “Then I thought about going back to school. For, like, a semester. But I never got around to it.”

There’s a beat of silence. “It’s nothing, really,” she adds, tone deceptively light. “I mean, you guys have done so much!”

Nancy’s kind. She always is. “That still sounds like you’ve done a lot.”

Stevie shrugs, eyes fixed on the condensation sliding down her glass. “Yeah. Sure.”

The conversation moves on—Robin says something funny about her job interview, Eddie teases her, Nancy chimes in—but Stevie barely hears any of it. The laughter feels distant, like she’s underwater.

She excuses herself before anyone can stop her.

Outside, the night air hits her like a cold hand. She breathes it in, steadying herself. The streetlights blur a little. It’s not sadness exactly, more like the weight of everything she thought she’d be by now pressing against her ribs. The memory of her insistence on leaving; the way she was so sure something big was waiting for her out there, juxtaposed against the fact that nothing really stuck for her to do. It sucks. She’s made her peace with it, mostly, sure, but it doesn’t suck any less.

Through the bar window, she can see them still laughing—Nancy, bright and confident; Robin, animated; Eddie, head thrown back, beautiful, all things she wants but can’t have.

Stevie leans against the wall, lights another cigarette, and whispers to herself, “What the hell am I doing here?”

She stays outside for a while.

The night is cool, the kind of cold that seeps through fabric, not sharp enough to hurt but persistent. The hum of the bar fades behind her—the muted laughter, the bassline of some song from the jukebox—until all that’s left is the sound of her cigarette burning down. She watches the smoke curl up into the night, pale and fragile against the dark.

It’s easier to breathe out here. Easier not to talk, not to fill the space with explanations she doesn’t owe anyone, except, maybe, them. The people who know her best.

The streetlights throw long shadows across the pavement, and she traces them absently with her shoe. Somewhere down the street, a car door slams and a dog barks in response. Not for the first time, Hawkins feels both too small and too endless all at once.

The door opens behind her with a low creak.

She doesn’t turn right away—she doesn’t need to. There’s only one person who walks like that, like he’s both hesitant and certain at once.

“Hey,” Eddie says quietly.

Stevie exhales, smoke drifting from her lips. “Hey.”

When she finally looks, he’s standing there, hands shoved into his pockets, his jacket slung over one arm. His hair’s looser now, a few curls falling around his face, and there’s that same faint half-smile—like he’s unsure if he’s allowed to be there.

He didn’t used to be like that, she thinks. You made that happen.

Eddie steps closer, wordless, and drapes the jacket over her shoulders. It’s warm—smells faintly of leather and soap, still the same one he used way back then. “You’ll catch a cold,” he says.

She huffs a small laugh, not looking at him. “You still say that like you’re my mom.”

“Maybe your mom and I share a concern for your general well-being.”

“Sure. That’s definitely what this is.”

He chuckles softly, and for a second, it almost feels normal—like all is supposed to be as it is and the world hasn’t shifted beneath them.

They stand in silence after that, awkward and unbreaking. Stevie stares at the glowing tip of her cigarette, feeling the heat near her fingertips.

Eddie tries to fill the air. “So… uh, still smoking the same brand.”

“Yeah.”

He nods, shifting his weight. “Cool. Consistency, right? I feel like I keep circling back to that.”

She lets out a quiet sigh. “Eddie, I’m really not in the mood.”

“Yeah.” He says it gently, no edge in his voice. “I figured.”

He looks at her then—not the kind of look that searches, but the kind that sees. There’s something soft in it, something that used to undo her. Still does.

“You’re gonna be okay, you know,” he says, gentle, like he’s talking to a scared animal. “I mean it. You don’t have to have everything figured out right now. You don’t have to… impress anyone. You being here is enough. They’re your friends, Stevie. They don’t care about what you have or haven’t done.”

“Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Do you care about what I have or haven’t done? You said they don’t, but do you?”

“Of course not,” he breathes out,  no hesitation. “Never. I won’t ever care, Stevie. I’m… I  mean, I was your friend too, right?”

Her throat tightens a little. She doesn’t know what to say, so she keeps quiet.

Eddie nods like he understands anyway. He hesitates for a beat, then steps back. “Alright, then,” he murmurs. “I’ll keep saving you a seat.”

He slips inside, the door closing behind him, and just like that, the cold fills the space he left behind.

Stevie stays. She smokes the rest of her cigarette down to the filter, watching it burn. The night feels quieter now, emptier, but lighter somehow too.

She flicks the butt into the street, exhales one last time, and pulls his jacket tighter around herself before turning back toward the door.

Inside, the bar’s glow hits her like a wave—laughter, music, the thrum of familiarity. Robin waves her over, grinning. Nancy’s talking animatedly, Eddie pretending to listen but clearly half-distracted, eyes flitting over to where Stevie is.

Stevie takes a slow breath, squares her shoulders, and walks back to them.

III

Stevie balances the phone between her ear and shoulder as she rinses out a mug in the sink. It’s late, quiet, and it feels like Robin’s house has exhaled for the night. She waves goodnight to Melissa who is climbing up the stairs, and Stevie taps her nails against the linoleum of the cabinets until she hears the line crackle faintly from the other side, her mother’s voice humming through, soft and light.

“So,” she asks almost immediately, in the tone that means she’s about to pry Stevie as gently as she can with a crowbar. “How’s Hawkins treating my baby girl?”

Stevie snorts. “Oh, you know. Same old, same old. Nothing much changes here except the shade of the rust on the water tower.”

“That’s not true,” Martha says, and Stevie can hear the smile. “I bet you’ve seen a few familiar faces.”

“Maybe. Some less familiar ones, but there’s been a lot of… well. It’s not like a lot of people have left within five years.”

A pause, weighted just enough.

“Are any of them ‘Eddie Munson’ familiar?”

“Mom!” Stevie groans, leaning against the counter. “You’ve been talking to Robin again, haven’t you?”

“Robin didn’t have to tell me anything,” her mother says lightly. “A mother knows these things.”

“Right,” Stevie mutters. “You also ‘knew’ I was going to marry Tommy Hagan in sophomore year.”

“Well, I wasn’t wrong about you sneaking out to meet that Munson boy, was I?”

Stevie freezes mid-motion. “I—are you—excuse me?”

“Oh, please,” Martha laughs, and Stevie thinks, un-fucking-believable. “Did you really think I didn’t notice? You’d tiptoe out like a spy, shoes in your hands, thinking you were so stealthy. Honey, Eddie’s truck could be heard from a mile away. That engine sounded like a dying lawnmower. Does it still sound like one?”

Stevie presses her hand to her forehead, mortified. “Oh my god. No. You’re kidding.”

“I am not. Every night I’d hear that awful thing pull up, and I’d think, ‘There my only daughter goes again, off to cause trouble with that sweet boy with too much hair.’”

“Sweet boy?” Stevie echoes, half laughing. “You grounded me for staying out past midnight with him once!”

“Of course I did! I didn’t say he wasn’t trouble. I just said he was sweet.”

Stevie can’t help but grin. “You used to find it endearing, didn’t you?”

“Oh, absolutely. It was adorable. You could’ve just asked me, you know. You didn’t need to sneak out.”

“I didn’t think you’d let me,” she sighs. “It used to be a joke between the four of us, you know? How no mom would have ever let Eddie Munson take their daughter out on a date.”

“I wouldn’t have,” Martha says cheerfully. “But that’s beside the point. And I would have let you date him. In fact, I did, right?”

Stevie laughs, shaking her head. “You’re impossible.”

“I learned from the best.”

There’s a quiet moment after that, nothing but the sound of the clock behind her ticking along with the hum of the refrigerator.

“Darling,” her mom says after a while, voice just as soft as ever. “I’ve been meaning to ask. When are you coming back to New York?”

The question lands like a pebble in a still pond—tiny, but the ripples spread far. Stevie stills, her fingers still slightly damp from washing up, watching the remaining suds glistening on the sink as they go down the drain. There’s a stray bubble clinging to her skin, reflecting the kitchen light, and for some reason, she stares at it like it might tell her the truth.

“I don’t know,” she says finally, the words catching somewhere in her throat. “I… I really don’t know, Mom, honest to God. It’s not like there’s anything there for me.”

The admission sounds small. It wasn’t supposed to sound small.

“Oh, honey,” Martha murmurs, in that tone that says she’s smiling but worried. “That’s not true.”

“It kind of is,” Stevie says, even quieter now, because saying it out loud makes it real. “I mean, I tried bartending for a while, remember? And I wasn’t particularly good at that but it helped pay the bills. And then that whole modeling thing that didn’t exactly work out. And now I’m here, what, pretending I came back for fresh air? I mean, Christ, the only reason I managed to survive for so long in New York was because of you and Dad. I’d have crawled back to Hawkins sooner if that weren’t the case.”

Martha sighs gently, the way only a mother can; the sound of resignation wrapped in love. “Maybe you don’t have to pretend, darling. Maybe you just… needed to come home for a while.”

Home. The word makes something twist inside her chest. Home used to mean a place she was desperate to escape, then it became a city she tried to conquer, and now it’s just a word that doesn’t fit right anywhere, just like Stevie.

Stevie traces her thumb along the rim of the mug. “Maybe.”

“Use this time,” Martha says. “You don’t have to have it all figured out yet. Just… figure out what you want, sweetheart. Not what you think you’re supposed to want.”

“You know, Eddie said the same thing the other night.”

“Wise boy. I always liked him.”

There’s silence for a beat. Long enough for Stevie to hear her own pulse, to wonder if wanting something that doesn’t make sense—something that doesn’t fit in a five-year plan or an Instagram caption—counts as a real want.

She swallows. “Mom?”

“Yes, baby.”

“How did you feel when Dad took you from California to Indiana?”

The question surprises even her. She doesn’t know why she’s asking it now—maybe because lately she’s been thinking too much about leaving and staying, about all the ways a person can be torn between two places and not really belong to either.

The question hangs there, fragile as a bubble.

Martha doesn’t answer right away. When she does, her voice is steady, thoughtful. “Honestly? I didn’t like it. I missed the ocean. The noise. The people. I missed feeling like the world was big.”

Stevie presses the phone closer to her ear, eyes unfocused. She imagines her mother at twenty-three, standing on some California pier, watching the water move endlessly, not knowing she’d end up landlocked and raising a daughter who’d spend her whole life trying to outrun that same restlessness.

“But,” Martha continues, “the thing about life is you make do with the lot you’re given. You try to make the best out of it. And somewhere along the way, if you’re lucky, you find little things that make it worth it. Friends. Family. Love.”

Stevie smiles faintly. “You sound like a Hallmark card.”

Martha laughs, bright and unoffended. “You’re just mad I’m right.”

“Maybe,” Stevie says, smiling into the receiver.

“You know, it didn’t exactly end well for your dad and I.”

“I know.”

“But I’m happy. And he’s happy. And everything else aside, oh, darling, we really tried, you know?”

“I know, Mom. I know.”

“Now, promise me you’ll think about what I said.”

“I will,” Stevie murmurs, even though she doesn’t know if she means it.

“And call me before you do something stupid, alright?”

“No promises,” Stevie says with a grin that feels real this time. “Might go around and relive my entire youth here.”

Martha’s laugh crackles through the speaker, warm and familiar. “That’s my girl.”

When the line clicks off, Stevie stands there for a long moment, her hand still resting on the counter. She exhales slowly, once, twice, until she feels her feet land on the ground again.

The Hideout is packed in that particular way small-town bars get packed—not because the band’s famous, but because there’s nowhere else to go. Lotus is for the normal crowd; Jen’s is boring; the Hideout is where the more hardcore of the bunch—well, as hardcore as one can get in small town Indiana—go to unwind.

It smells like stale beer and cheap perfume, the floor tacky underfoot, the air too thick to breathe properly. The walls sweat cigarette smoke. The lights are dim, washed amber and red, and Corroded Coffin on stage is loud enough to make her ribs hum.

Eddie’s at the front, hair wild, guitar slung low. He’s half in the shadows, half in the glow of the stage light, his mouth pressed to the mic as he sings something loud and raw, voice cracking in that way she secretly loves—unpolished, real. His rings flash when he plays, and the veins in his hands stand out, and it hits her—that familiar, stupid rush—that she’s his.

God, she’s so fucking screwed. She doesn’t give a shit.

Stevie’s standing near the bar, trying not to grin like an idiot, but it’s impossible. Every time he glances her way, she feels electricity crawling under her skin. The girls near the stage are watching him like he’s something they could take home, and for some reason that makes her blood hum hotter.

Nothing against them, really. She gets the appeal.

He’s sweating through his shirt by the time they finish, grinning that wide, reckless grin of his. When the final chord fades and the crowd whoops and whistles, Stevie’s clapping too—loud, proud, entirely unashamed. He spots her through the haze and gives her that look. The one that’s half invitation, half dare.

She rolls her eyes, but her heart does that stupid thing—the little leap, the skip.

Eddie disappears behind the stage after the set, and she waits maybe thirty seconds before she follows.

Behind the Hideout, the night smells like asphalt and beer, still, but with something much sweeter— honeysuckle, maybe, from the bushes that grow wild behind the dumpsters. The sky’s bruised with stars. Eddie’s there, leaning against his truck, wiping sweat off his forehead with the bottom of his shirt. The movement flashes a strip of skin, the sharp edge of his hip bone, and Stevie’s suddenly aware of how hot it still is outside.

“There’s my little stalker” he drawls, a smirk tugging at his mouth. His voice is still rough from the performance. “You like being a creep?”

“I was hardly being one,” she replies, crossing her arms. “I was just making sure you didn’t pass out from dehydration.”

“Oh, so you do care.”

She rolls her eyes again. “Don’t push it, Munson.”

He grins, wide and boyish, and tosses his phone into the back of the truck. “What’d you think?”

“Of what? The noise?”

“The music, sweetheart.”

Stevie pretends to think. “It was alright.”

“Alright?” He takes a step closer, mock-annoyed. “I poured my soul into that.”

“Yeah, your soul and at least two broken guitar strings.”

Eddie laughs—really laughs, head thrown back, the sound filling the empty lot. It’s too much, too easy, too him.

And maybe that’s why she doesn’t stop herself when she closes the distance between them.

She grabs the front of his shirt, tugging him down before he can say anything else, and kisses him.

It’s messy and hungry, all teeth and heat, like they’ve both been waiting for it. His hands find her waist instantly, like he’s known where to go all along, and her back hits the side of his truck with a soft thud. The metal’s hot against her skin even through her shirt. She barely resists moaning when one of his hands slips beneath her shirt, his thumb drawing circles on the skin of her waist.

He pulls back, breathless. “What was that for?”

“For making me watch you flirt with every girl in Hawkins,” she says, breath still shaky. “Or, well, the ones crazy enough to be in the Hideout.”

Eddie blinks, then laughs again, softer this time. “You jealous, Harrington?”

“Not even a little.”

He grins, presses his forehead to hers. “You sure about that?”

Her reply comes out as a whisper. “Shut up.”

Eddie kisses her again—slower now, deeper. The kind of kiss that feels like a promise she doesn’t know how to keep. His other hand slides to the back of her neck, fingers threading through her hair, and she feels that ache again—that stupid, impossible warmth that always hits her right behind the ribs.

This is what they do—fight, flirt, burn. Over and over. It’s dizzying. It’s stupid. It’s them.

When he finally pulls back, they’re both breathing hard. He studies her, eyes dark and soft all at once. “You know, you could’ve just said you liked the set.”

“I don’t like anything,” she lies. “You were shit. Your voice cracked towards the end of the song and it’s honestly very embarrassing for you. You’re never going to recover.”

He grins. “Yeah, right.”

The crickets hum in the trees. Somewhere, a car passes, its headlights flashing briefly across the lot. She feels the pulse of the night in her chest—all heartbeat and heat and the electric hum of wanting something that’s right there in front of you.

Eddie turns and leans against the truck again, pulling her between his legs. She grinds against him, feeling the way he’s bricked up and hardening in his pants. God, she’s so going to eat him alive. “You’re gonna have to admit it eventually.”

“What, that I have terrible taste in men?”

He snorts. “That you like me, sweetheart.”

She looks up at him—at his stupid grin, the sweat still glistening at his temple, the way his curls stick to his neck. He looks like every kind of trouble she ever wanted.

“Don’t hold your breath,” she says.

He pretends to pout. “Guess I’ll just have to keep convincing you.”

“You’re impossible.”

“Yeah, but you’re still here.”

That’s the thing that gets her—because he’s right. She is.

Stevie presses her palms against his chest, feels his heart beating hard beneath her hands. She wonders if he can feel hers, too—if he knows what it means that she hasn’t walked away yet.

Eddie reaches out and brushes his thumb across her cheekbone, soft now, careful in a way that makes her stomach flip. “You drive me crazy, Harrington.”

“Good,” she says, smiling. “Now we’re even.”

He kisses her again, and she lets herself get lost in it—the taste of smoke and sweat and midsummer nights, the way his hair tickles her face, the sound of his quiet laugh against her mouth.

Later, when he pulls back just enough to speak, he says, “You know, if I ever make it big, I’m dedicating my first album to you.”

“Don’t do that,” she murmurs. “I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Too late,” he says, grinning. “You’re my muse.”

She groans, but it’s useless—she’s smiling too wide, all giddy and warm inside. “You’re so full of shit.”

“I am,” he admits, kissing her again, “but I have it on good authority that you like me that way.”

And maybe she does, because right then, in the heat and noise of a Hawkins summer night, with the faint buzz of neon bleeding through the trees and the taste of him still on her tongue, it feels like there’s nowhere else in the world she’d rather be.

IV

The airport isn’t big, but it feels enormous in the way that endings do.

Nancy’s flight leaves in forty minutes, and the four of them—Stevie, Eddie, Robin, and Nancy—stand in the terminal pretending this is all normal. The air smells faintly like stale coffee and carpet cleaner. People drift by with rolling suitcases, the kind of people who look like they have somewhere important to be. Stevie’s trying not to fidget, but her fingers won’t stop worrying the hem of her shirt.

Nancy looks good. Happy, even. The best and brightest of all four of them, leaving Hawkins and their friend group until the next time they all see each other again which, to be honest, Stevie doesn’t really know when. She is happy for her. But there’s a quiet ache under it too, something small and heavy that’s hard to name.

“Call us when you land,” Robin says, pulling Nancy in for a hug that lingers just a second too long. “And text me when you get to your place, okay? I mean it.”

“I will,” Nancy promises, laughing softly. “You sound like my mom.”

“Yeah, well, someone’s gotta make sure you don’t starve to death out there in the big city.”

“Big ci—Robin, it’s Boston, and I’ve lived there for three years.”

Eddie grins, slinging an arm around Robin’s shoulders. “Don’t worry, Wheeler. We’ll take good care of each other here in the land of mediocrity and awful drive through spots.”

Nancy laughs again, that light, melodic sound that still makes Stevie’s chest twist sometimes in ways she doesn’t like to think about. She steps forward to hug Eddie, then Robin again. When she turns to Stevie, there’s a flicker of something in her eyes—nostalgia, maybe, or something else.

“Take care of yourself, Stevie,” Nancy says quietly.

Stevie swallows. “You too.”

They hug—quick, but full of love. Nancy wipes her eyes, smiles, and then she turns; walks until she’s gone, rolling her suitcase toward security, waving once before she disappears into the crowd—just a dot now among a sea of people. The silence that follows after she leaves is both heavy and oddly gentle.

Robin exhales. “God, I hate goodbyes.”

Eddie shifts on his feet, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah, they suck.” He glances at the two of them. “So… what now? Are we going to drown our sorrows in greasy diner food? Or we could hit the arcade, make total fools of ourselves. My treat.”

Robin hesitates, biting her lip. “I actually can’t. Sorry, Eddie. I promised my mom I’d help clear out the attic today.”

Eddie groans. “Boooooring.”

“She said she’s been putting it off for months,” Robin says, laughing. “There’s probably a family of raccoons living up there by now. If I don’t help, she’ll get herself bitten or something.”

He points dramatically at her. “You value safety over friendship. Tragic.”

“You know, I never particularly liked you.” Robin grins, unbothered. “So you’ll just have to survive.”

“If it was Stevie asking you’d ditch your mom right away.”

“I’d kill anyone for Stevie. We’re soulmates, you won’t get it.”

“Ugh.” Eddie turns to Stevie. “What about you, Harrington? You up for it?”

Stevie opens her mouth before she can think better of it. “Can’t. I told Robin I’d help.”

Robin blinks at her. “What? No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did,” Stevie insists, but Robin’s expression makes it clear she’s not buying it. “Right, soulmate?”

Robin sighs. “Stevie. I love you. But you really don’t have to dig through my mom’s old Halloween decorations and my childhood garbage. Go.”

“Go where?”

Robin tilts her head toward Eddie. “With him.”

Eddie raises both eyebrows, looking like someone just handed him a Christmas present he wasn’t sure he deserved. “Wait—seriously?”

Stevie frowns. “I don’t know. It’s been a long week, and—”

“And you’re going,” Robin interrupts cheerfully, patting her on the shoulder. “I mean it. You’ve been holed up half the time since you got back. All you do for “fun” is jog, buy groceries, and then stare at your laptop like some maudlin creature.”

“I am not maudl—”

“Go do something fun! You used to love the arcade.”

Stevie hesitates. She can feel Eddie trying to play it cool beside her—shifting his weight, pretending to check his watch like it’s no big deal either way. But she sees the tiniest flicker of hope in his expression, the way his mouth tilts just slightly upward when Robin mentions the arcade. Something wild settles and softens just beneath her ribs.

She hates how easily it happens, how just standing next to him again makes her remember what it used to feel like. The warmth. The noise. The stupid jokes. The nights that stretched too long because neither of them wanted to be the first to leave.

Okay, yeah, maybe she does miss that. And maybe—even though the idea makes her stomach twist—she wants to test the restraint of the girl inside her who still wants to see if they can get some of it back.

“You know what,” she says finally. “Yeah. Sure. The arcade sounds fine.”

Eddie’s head snaps up. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He grins, and the way it looks on his face hits her square in the chest. For a moment she forgets how to breathe. He looks so genuinely happy that it almost hurts.

“Cool,” he says, trying to sound casual, but his voice comes out brighter than he probably intends. “Cool. You won’t regret it, Harrington.”

“You know I already do,” she mutters, but she’s smiling when she says it.

The drive to the arcade is short, but the silence between them stretches. Not in a bad way—more like they’re both trying to remember how to fill it again. Eddie hums along to the radio, tapping the steering wheel in rhythm. Stevie watches the road signs flick past, the sun spilling a light yellow gold across the dashboard.

It feels weirdly like being sixteen again. The windows down, the summer air rushing in, Eddie’s curls whipping wildly in the wind. For a second she lets herself imagine it’s all still that simple. That they never lost touch. That time didn’t wedge its heavy, complicated weight between them. That Stevie wasn't a major fuck up who let a good thing slip between her fingers because she was afraid of making her life any more complicated than it already was.

When they pull into the parking lot, the sun’s starting to dip. The arcade glows in neon, throwing color onto Eddie’s face—pink, blue, purple. He turns to her, eyes bright. “Ready to lose spectacularly?”

“Please,” Stevie says. “I used to mop the floor with you at air hockey.”

He laughs. “Yeah, yeah, talk’s cheap, Harrington. Let’s see if the legend still holds.”

Inside, the air smells like popcorn and lime freshener, a smell that used to make Stevie sick until she got used to it. Machines beep and whirr, and the floor vibrates with the low thrum of electronic music. A kid brushes past them carrying a giant stuffed Pikachu, nearly knocking into Eddie, who steps aside with mock dignity.

“Your future prize,” he says, pointing after the kid. “Except, y’know, something cooler.”

“Like what? A stuffed bat?”

His grin widens. “Now that’s a prize worthy of the great Stephanie Harrington.”

Stevie rolls her eyes, but she’s laughing, and he looks like he’s basking in it.

They play everything. Air hockey first, of course. He wins the first round by luck; she annihilates him in the next two. Then skee-ball, then one of those motorcycle racing games that leaves them both half-shouting over the engine noises.

It’s easy. Way easier than she expected.

Somewhere between the second and third game, she realizes she’s actually having fun.

It’s been years since she’s laughed like this—full-bodied, breathless, stupid laughter that makes her sides ache. She catches herself glancing over at him between rounds, taking in the details she forgot she missed: the way his eyes disappear into slits when he smiles, the way he talks with his hands, all so animated, even when it’s just the two of them.

When she moved away, she thought she’d grow out of this—whatever strange gravitational pull he’s always had. But sitting here, watching him squint at a pinball machine like it’s a matter of life and death, she knows she never really did.

“Okay, okay,” Eddie says finally, dragging her toward one of those basketball machines where you have to shoot as many hoops as possible in thirty seconds. “Final round. Winner takes all.”

“All of what?”

He shrugs. “Bragging rights. Eternal glory. My undying respect.”

Stevie smirks. “You already owe me all three.”

“Not after this, sweetheart.” He picks up a ball, spinning it theatrically on one finger. “This one’s for you.”

She groans. “Oh my God, don’t you dare—”

He shoots. The ball arcs beautifully—and misses by a good two feet.

There’s a beat of silence. Then Stevie bursts out laughing.

Eddie groans, clutching his chest in mock agony. “My pride! My reputation!”

“Your aim,” she says between giggles. “You look like you’ve never touched a basketball in your life.”

“I was going for dramatic effect!” he protests. “You ruined my moment.”

“Sure, Munson. Keep telling yourself that.”

Eddie grins at her, sheepish and endearing. “You laughing at my pain, Harrington?”

“Always.”

They end up side by side, taking turns trying—and mostly failing—to get the hang of the game. Eddie cheers every time she scores, dramatically booing himself when he misses. The air between them buzzes, charged and light.

After a few rounds, he leans against the machine, breathless from laughing. “Man, I forgot how much fun this was.”

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “Me too.”

He glances at her, that grin softening into something more careful. “It’s really good seeing you again, Stevie.”

She feels the words settle somewhere deep, tugging at something she doesn’t want to name. “You too, Eddie.”

For a moment, the noise of the arcade fades. It’s just the two of them, caught between what was and what could be.

And she realizes—in a quiet, aching way—how much she’s missed this. Missed him. Not just the jokes or the teasing, but the way he makes the world feel a little less heavy.

She thought coming back to Hawkins would feel like a step backward. Like reopening something that was better left closed. But standing here, watching him try to win her a cheap keychain from a claw machine, she feels something unexpected—hope.

Eddie finally manages to grab a small stuffed alien, triumphantly holding it up. “For you, m’lady.”

She rolls her eyes, but her throat feels tight. “Wow. My hero.”

“Hey, don’t mock the alien. He’s sensitive.”

Stevie laughs again, softer this time. “Thanks, Eddie.”

He blinks. “For what?”

“For this.” She gestures around them—the lights, the noise, the absurdity of it all. “For… you know. Making it not weird.”

He looks at her for a long moment. Then he says, quietly, “It doesn’t have to be weird, you know. Not unless we make it.”

Stevie nods, though she’s not sure she believes him. Some things are always going to be a little bit weird—the history, the what-ifs, the unspoken things that hover like ghosts between them. But maybe that’s okay. Maybe weird doesn’t have to mean broken.

When they leave the arcade, the sun’s gone down. The night air is cool, smelling faintly of rain. Eddie’s still talking about how he totally could’ve made that shot if she hadn’t distracted him. She pretends to argue, but she’s barely listening.

Because for the first time in a long time, she feels lighter.

She glances at him, at the way he’s gesturing with his hands, and thinks, maybe this was worth it after all.

The first thing Stevie notices about the Munson trailer is that it’s smaller than she expected—smaller, but somehow warmer too

The walls are lined with faded photographs and a few crooked frames. There’s a faint noise from the TV left on low volume in the corner, and the smell of something savory—onions and beef—fills the air. It’s a little messy, but lived-in, the kind of place that feels like it’s carried the same laughter for decades.

Eddie holds the door open for her with an exaggerated bow. “Welcome to Casa de Munson,” he says, voice bright and teasing, though Stevie can sense the undercurrent of worry beneath. “Five-star establishment. Michelin refuses to recognize our genius, but that’s their loss, not ours.”

She laughs, brushing past him. “Do I get turndown service?”

“Only if you behave.”

The sound that comes out of her is half a scoff, half a smile. She doesn’t tell him that she’s nervous as well—that she spent the whole afternoon overthinking this. That she’d stood in front of her mirror trying to decide whether jeans and a sweater were too casual, or not casual enough. That she’s not sure if she’s supposed to bring something to dinner, or if that would’ve made it weird.

Now that she’s here, though, it doesn’t feel weird. Just… small. Real.

“Wayne!” Eddie calls out, kicking off his boots near the door. “She’s here!”

“Do you really just yell out his name like that?” She whispers, mildly teasing. “Have shame. And respect.”

“Oh, please, that man knew what he signed up for when he took me in.”

There’s a shuffling sound from down the hall, and then a man steps out from what must be the kitchen. He’s older, face lined from work and life, eyes steady but kind. His blue coveralls are half-unzipped, a flannel shirt underneath.

“So this is the infamous Stevie,” Wayne says, wiping his hands on a dish towel. “Didn’t think she was real for a while. Thought Ed made her up to sound impressive.”

Eddie groans. “Uncle Wayne, come on—”

Stevie laughs, offering her hand. “Nice to finally meet you, Mr. Munson. I’m Stephanie Harrington, but you can just call me Stevie.”

Wayne shakes it firmly, a warm smile on his face. “Just Wayne’s fine, Stevie. You’re too polite for this household.”

“I can fix that,” Eddie mutters, and Wayne smacks the back of his head gently as he passes.

They eat at the small kitchen table. The plates don’t match. There’s a single bulb above them that flickers faintly every few seconds. But the food—homemade meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and corn—is good in that hearty, no-nonsense way only old family recipes manage to be.

Wayne asks her questions between bites. Not probing ones—just the kind that say ‘I’m trying to know you, not judge you.’

“So, Stevie,” he says, cutting into his meatloaf. “Your folks been in Hawkins long?”

“A while,” she says. “My parents moved here when my Mom was pregnant with me. I think my great grandfather was born here? I’m not entirely sure. All I know is that Mom still complains about the winters.”

“Can’t say I blame her. Indiana snow’s a different breed.”

“Yeah, it’s… definitely something.”

Wayne nods, sipping his iced tea. “And what do you do? School? Work?”

“Um, both. Senior year, and I work part-time at that little bookstore downtown. Mostly just shelving stuff and ringing people up. I work with one of our other friends, Robin Buckley.”

“Ah, yeah. Melissa’s kid. Melissa and I were classmates way back.” Wayne’s mouth quirks. “And the bookstore, huh? You a reader, then? No wonder Eddie likes you.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “You’re embarrassing me, man.”

“I’m just stating facts.”

“Not much. I’m honestly a very boring person. I work at the bookstore because the job is repetitive and I like it.” Stevie grins into her glass. “What about you, Mr. Mun—uh, Wayne? Eddie says you work nights?”

He nods. “At the plant. Maintenance shift. Keeps me out of trouble.”

Eddie snorts. “Out of trouble? You’re the most responsible person I know.”

“Low bar, son,” Wayne says dryly.

Dinner passes in an easy rhythm. Stevie finds herself relaxing more than she expected—laughing when Eddie makes stupid jokes, listening when Wayne talks about his shift rotations or his fishing trips. There’s something comforting about the way they talk to each other: rough around the edges but full of care. Stevie finds herself fonder the more she looks, especially when she catches that glint off Wayne’s eyes that tells her he really loves his nephew just the way he is.

It’s different from the polished, careful way her own parents used to talk. There’s no performance here, no pretending. Just two people who understand each other, who’ve survived enough to know that kindness doesn’t need to be dressed up.

After dinner, Wayne stands, stretching his shoulders. “Well. That’s my cue. I’ve got an early shift tonight.”

Eddie groans theatrically. “You sure you don’t want to stay and chaperone? We could use a good third wheel.”

Wayne grabs his jacket from the hook. “You two behave,” he says, giving Eddie a look that’s half stern but entirely amused.

“Always,” Eddie says.

Wayne turns to Stevie. “It was really nice meeting you, Stevie. Don’t let him talk you into anything dumb.”

“I’ll try,” she says, smiling.

He chuckles. “That’s all anyone can do.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a full time job for me. Stay safe, Wayne.”

When the door shuts behind him, the trailer goes quiet. Eddie exhales, leaning against the counter. “Well. That wasn’t too painful.”

“No,” Stevie admits. “He’s nice. I like him.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says softly. “He’s the best.”

Something flickers in his expression—a mix of affection and gratitude. It makes her chest ache a little, though she can’t quite say why.

Eddie turns, clearing the plates from the table. “You wanna hang out for a bit? I promise not to serenade you this time.”

“Depends,” she says, teasing. “What’s the entertainment lineup tonight?”

He grins. “Quality programming. Music. Snacks. Maybe a little Tolkien if you’re lucky.”

“Oh God,” she groans. “You’re not gonna try to convert me again, are you?”

“Not try. Succeed.”

She rolls her eyes, but she follows him to his room anyway, giggling as they bump into the things that line the short hallway.

Eddie’s room looks exactly like she expected and nothing like she expected all at once. There are band posters everywhere—Metallica, Dio, Black Sabbath—peeling slightly at the corners. A Dungeons & Dragons manual sits open on the desk, surrounded by scribbled notes. A half-strung guitar leans against the bed frame.

It’s messy, but not in a careless way. More like a room full of motion—as if everything in it is in the middle of becoming something else. Eddie sits cross-legged on the bed, patting the spot beside him. “Welcome to my lair, fair maiden.”

She smirks, courtesies to play along, before sitting down carefully. “Does your lair always smell like Cheetos and guitar strings?”

“Hey. That’s the scent of creativity.”

“Sure. And I’m the Queen of England.”

They talk for a while. About school. About bands. About everything and nothing. Eddie gestures a lot when he talks, and his eyes light up in that way she always forgets to brace herself for.

It’s easy to fall into it—the rhythm of him. The noise. The warmth. At some point, his hand brushes hers on the bedspread. Neither of them move away.

It’s nothing at first—just a touch, a quiet recognition. Then she turns her hand over, fingers catching his, and it’s like the world narrows. When Eddie leans in, it’s unhurried. Careful, almost reverent.

The first kiss is soft, testing. The second is less so.

He tastes like the cherry soda they shared after dinner and something faintly electric—like the start of summer, like trouble waiting to happen. Stevie’s hand finds the back of his neck, thumb tracing the edge of his jaw. The thing with Eddie is that he kisses her like he’s been waiting to do it for years. Maybe he has.

When they break apart, she’s breathless. “Your uncle told us not to do anything dumb, and you’re notoriously terrible at restraint.”

He grins against her skin. “You love it.”

“Maybe. Or maybe I have brain damage. Gosh, who knows.”

Eddie snorts before pulling her back in, and they keep kissing like it’s the only thing worth doing. The world tilts and folds in around them—the glow of the lamp, the whisper of their breathing. His hands are gentle but certain, sliding up her sides, resting just beneath her ribs.

For a moment, everything else disappears.

It’s just them. The way his laugh rumbles against her chest, the way her fingers catch in his hair. The small, unsteady sound she makes when he murmurs her name like it’s something sacred.

Eventually, she pulls back, flushed and dizzy. “If your uncle comes home early—”

“He won’t,” Eddie says quickly, then grins. “But if he does, at least I’ll die happy.”

Stevie swats him lightly, laughing despite herself. “You’re such an idiot.”

“And yet you’re still here.”

He says it like it’s a joke, but there’s a note in his voice—low, unsure—that makes her pause. She looks at him, really looks. The earnestness. The way he’s still catching his breath. Stevie melts, softens, means it when she says “Yeah,” all quiet, like she’s whispering into the dark. “I’m still here.”

Eddie smiles, and it’s smaller this time. Realer.

After that, he grabs the worn paperback from his nightstand—The Fellowship of the Ring, spine cracked and held together by tape.

“Oh, please no.”

“Please yes. Come on, Stevie!”

“Let’s just go back to making out. Let’s do literally anything.”

“This is because you still can’t tell Frodo from Sam, can you?” he teases, flipping it open. “Admit it.”

“Not a clue.”

“Tragic. Alright, time for your remedial fantasy education.”

Eddie settles back against the headboard, voice low and rhythmic as he reads. She curls beside him, head resting on his shoulder. The words roll over her—strange names, old places, quests she can’t quite follow. But his voice makes them beautiful anyway.

Outside, the crickets start up. The trailer creaks faintly as it cools in the night air. At some point, her eyelids start to drift. She feels his hand brush her arm, the book lowering slightly.

“Hey,” he whispers. “Are you falling asleep on me, Harrington?”

“Mmh,” she murmurs. “Just resting my eyes.”

“Sure you are,” he mocks,  but she can hear the smile in his voice.

He keeps reading anyway, softer now, until his words blur into the quiet hum of the night.

Stevie dreams—not of elves or dragons or wizards, but of Eddie’s voice, and the way it wraps around her like something safe.

“Hey,” Eddie asks, glancing at her from the driver’s seat. “I know it’s like, ridiculously late—”

“You say that like I have a curfew.”

“Shut up. So, it’s late, but are you hungry? ‘Cause I am, and I think I’m going to cry if I don’t get real food in my stomach right now.”

Stevie groans “Yes please. Pepsi and popcorn do not make for a good dinner.”

The diner’s half-empty when they slide into a booth, which always smells faintly of mayonnaise and fried onions no matter the time of day. There’s a radio humming low in the corner, crooning some forgotten tune about country highways.

Eddie slides into the opposite seat in front of Stevie, drumming his fingers on the table. His hair’s still damp from sweat, curls sticking to his neck. Stevie catches herself looking—not for long, but long enough to remember how easy it used to be for him to rile her up.

“So,” she says, reaching for the laminated menu mostly to have something to do with her hands, “what’s new with you, Munson?”

“Really, Stevie? That’s the angle you’re going for?”

“Humor me, come on.”

Eddie huffs out a laugh. “Okay, well, where do I start? You know I took a cross-country trip with the guys last summer, right?”

“Ah yeah, the one you mentioned to Nancy.” ‘Right before I walked out and made a fool of myself’ goes unspoken. Eddie gives her dignity by not bringing it up.

“Big, dumb idea, but… kind of the best one we ever had.”

She perks up. “Really? Where’d you go?”

“All over,” he says, gesturing vaguely, eyes lighting up as he talks. “We took Wayne’s old van—the thing shouldn’t have survived Illinois, but somehow it made it to Nevada. Slept in parking lots, camped by a lake in Colorado, nearly froze our asses off in Wyoming. It was—” He pauses, searching for the word. “Messy. Loud. Perfect.”

Stevie smiles, watching the way his hands move when he talks. She can picture it—Eddie laughing too loud in the driver’s seat, window rolled down, the sun hitting his eyes in a way that makes them look less like muddy pools of brown and more like they're molten gold. There’s a pang in her chest that feels suspiciously like longing.

“Sounds like you had fun,” she says.

“Yeah,” he admits, voice softening. “We didn’t know what the hell we were doing, but I think that was the point. It felt like being young again, you know? Before life got all… complicated.”

She hums in agreement, tracing the rim of her glass. “Yeah. I know the feeling.”

The waitress drops off two milkshakes—chocolate for him, vanilla for her—and a basket of fries between them.

Eddie dips one into his shake. “Still gross, right?”

“Absolutely disgusting,” Stevie says, stealing the one he’s holding anyway.

They eat for a while in easy silence, one that stretches without strain. Outside, a soft drizzle has started up and begins to tap softly against the window.

Eddie breaks the quiet first. “So what about you? New York treating you alright?”

Stevie’s fingers stop still on her straw. She’s half-tempted to make a joke, but his tone is too gentle for deflection.

“I guess so,” she says finally. “It was… loud. Fast. Kind of lonely, sometimes. Especially those first few months. I… well, it was my fault, really, but I had no one to talk to.”

He nods, waiting.

“I worked at this bar for a couple years. Nothing fancy, just a dive near Union Square. Made okay tips. Met all sorts of people.”

Eddie leans forward, elbows on the table, listening the way he always used to—like every word that spilled from Stevie’s lips mattered.

“There was this guy who came in every Friday night,” she continues, smiling faintly. “He’d always order gin and tonic, always asking how my night was going. Never hit on me, though. Just… talked. About his job, his dog, the weather. I think he just needed someone to listen.”

“Sounds familiar,” Eddie says quietly.

She huffs a laugh. “Yeah, maybe I have a type.”

He smirks. “What, tragic conversationalists?”

“Something like that.”

The conversation drifts. They talk mostly about Hawkins—how nothing ever changes and yet somehow everything does. Eddie tells her about Wayne’s new obsession with crossword puzzles, about how he patched up a hole in the roof of their house, about how Jeff started teaching guitar to kids on weekends and is in the process of roping Eddie into doing the same.

Stevie listens, smiling more than she realizes. There’s something comforting about it—this tiny pocket of time where they can just exist, unhurried, unguarded.

At some point, she glances at the clock behind the counter and blinks. “Shit,” she mutters. “It’s past two.”

Eddie follows her gaze, then he whistles in disbelief. “Damn… I guess we got carried away.”

“Guess so.”

He throws a couple of bills onto the table before she can protest. “Come on, I’ll drive you back.”

Outside, the rain’s stopped, but the ground still glistens under the streetlights. They walk to the van, the air cool and damp. When he opens her door, she hesitates for a split second—not because she needs help, but because the gesture is so him.

“Thanks,” she says, voice softer than she intends.

“Anytime,” he replies, shutting the door behind her.

The drive back to Robin’s place is quiet. It’s the kind of quiet that feels like a lullaby, almost. It certainly lulls Stevie into comfort, and she’s in a sort of half-asleep haze as she watches the lights streak by through the window, her reflection faint in the glass. She feels so young; so much like she was a teenager again—tired and happy and a little bit terrified but feeling like everything will work out anyway.

When the van rolls to a stop in front of the house, she doesn’t move at first. Eddie’s already out, rounding to open her door again.

Stevie steps down, the night air biting just enough to make her shiver. He drapes his jacket over her shoulders without a word, a repeat gesture from that night at the bar.

They walk up to the porch together, their footsteps the only sound. It feels absurdly like a scene out of a teenage movie—the boy walking the girl home, both pretending it’s no big deal.

Except it is.

“Well,” she says, turning to face him, “thanks for tonight. I had fun.”

Eddie’s smile is small but real. “Me too.”

There’s a pause—one of those delicate moments where the air is heavy with things unsaid. Stevie shifts her weight, fingers twitching at her sides. Then, before she can overthink it, she steps forward and hugs him.

Eddie freezes for a heartbeat, then melts into it—warm, solid, familiar. She feels his breath near her temple, then the lightest press of lips against her skin. It’s barely there, but it sends a ripple through her.

When they pull apart, neither of them quite knows what to say.

“Goodnight, Stevie,” he says finally, voice low.

“Goodnight, Eddie.”

Stevie opens the door, steps inside, and doesn’t turn around until she hears the quiet rumble of his truck starting. Only then does she exhale—slow, uneven—and press her hand against the doorframe as if to steady herself.

Outside, Eddie’s taillights fade into the dark.

Chapter Text

I

The night had a peculiar glow to it, the kind that only the tail end of summer could bring. Too warm to need a jacket, too soft to feel real. The crickets are quieter now, cold-blooded creatures that they are, so all that’s left for the evenings is the sound of the wind weaving through the leaves of the tree. It’s one of those evenings that didn’t belong to the clock. The kind where time moves long and molasses-slow, until everything stopped mattering.

Stevie and Eddie had ended up at the lake almost by accident. Almost. It was Eddie’s idea, of course, because most stupid things are. It had started as a joke, something one of them had thrown off-handedly in the parking lot of the Hideout then somehow turned into a truth neither of them wanted to let go of.

“Come on, Harrington,” he’d said, eyes bright in the dim streetlight. “You ever seen the stars from out by Lover’s Lake?”

“Yeah,” she’d said. “In high school. Usually from the  backseat.”

Eddie had grinned, wild and reckless. “Then this’ll be nostalgic as hell.”

Now, an hour later, they were parked near the shore, Eddie’s truck angled crookedly off the dirt path. His headlights were off, because the moon is somehow brighter than usual, but the radio was on—a low, lazy drift of guitar and rasping vocals into the night air. The lake shimmered in the dark, catching the moonlight like glass. 

Stevie leaned against the truck, barefoot in the cool dirt, a beer bottle sweating in her hand. She’d stopped counting after her third, though her head had that pleasant, cotton-edged buzz that made everything funny even when none of it was. Eddie, for his part, was dancing. Or, he’s trying to, anyway. Somewhere between Stevie and the truck and the faint reflection of himself on the water. His hair caught the light each time he moved. That ridiculous, endearing mess of curls in his head.

“Come on, Harrington,” he calls out, spinning badly but grinning wide. “You’re missing out on my incredible rhythm.”

“Ah, on the contrary,” she says, tipping back her beer. “I’m doing the world a favor.”

Eddie presses a hand to his  heart like he’s been wounded. “Your words hurt me, my lady.”

“Your lady?” She teases. “I’m no one’s lady, Munson.”

“Well, you are mine,” he replies, shrugging. “In almost every sense of the word.”

Stevie laughs, shaking her head. “You’re ridiculous.”

And yet, when Eddie holds out a hand—a silent challenge, palm open and waiting—she finds herself setting her beer down and taking it.

The ground is uneven, soft with grass and sand and made worse by the fact that she’s three beers in and maybe just the slightest bit tipsy. The music from his truck plays low—some scratchy CD from one of the guys in Eddie’s band with tracks that skip. It’s the perfect soundtrack to nights that feel like this. Eddie moves clumsily, two beats off the rhythm, but he doesn’t care and neither does she.

Stevie’s hand fits easily in his, the calluses of his fingers from guitar playing rough when they brush against her skin. Eddie spins her once, badly, and she nearly trips, laughing so hard she has to lean into him to keep from falling.

“There it is,” he says, grinning. “That’s the sound I was going for.”

“What, me laughing at you?”

“Exactly. It’s my best track.”

They sway in the dark, barefoot, half-drunk, and happy in the easy way that only comes from forgetting that the rest of the world exists. The air smells like lake water and pine, and Stevie doesn’t think it could be more perfect than this. The track skips, and they don’t stop moving. The silence between songs feels too heavy, too full, and so Eddie just starts humming, low and tuneless. Stevie rests her head against his shoulder, and for a second, the whole night seems to mold itself around them, creating a bubble that distances them from everything else that exists.

It might stay that way—slow, steady, quiet—if Eddie doesn’t suddenly pull back, eyes glinting with mischief.

“What?”

He’s grinning, and that grin always spells trouble for them both. “You ever gone swimming at night?”

“Eddie.”

“It’s just a question!”

“Yes,” she replies flatly, already disliking where the conversation is going.

“With clothes on?”

Stevie narrows her eyes. “Mostly.”

He holds her gaze for a moment, and then—before she can stop him—he bolts towards the water, kicking up dirt and laughter in his wake.

“Edward Munson!” she shouts, stumbling after him. 

“Oh, the full government name,” he cackles, though he does not slow down. His boots hit the shallows, splashing loudly against the glassy surface of the water. He whoops, bending to splash water in her direction.

“Are you fucking insane?” 

“You say that like it’s your first time meeting me.”

It must be the beer, she thinks. It’s the beer making her reckless. Or maybe it’s not the beer at all; maybe it’s just him, because Eddie from track record seems to be the only person who could ever get Stevie to do things that are way beyond her comfort zone. Whatever it is, Stevie is compelled to kick off the last of her hesitation along with her jeans, pushing her to wade in after him. She yelps, the first touch of water shocking her system.

Eddie laughs, so open and loud that it makes something in her chest ache. In the good way. “See? Not so bad, right?”

“You’re out of your mind,” she says, though there’s no heat to it. She pushes water at him, aiming for his face. Eddie splashes back, then ducks, surfacing a few feet away, his hair plastered to his face, grin lopsided and bright even in the dark.

The moonlight spills pale light across the surface of the lake, the disturbance from movement making it seem as though there’s glimmering diamonds around Stevie. The water barely reaches her waist, warm in patches, cool in others. She tilts her head back, eyes tracing the scattered constellations.

It feels unreal. All of it. Eddie watching her like she’s the only thing in the world worth looking at. Like she’s the only thing that makes sense to him.

“You’re staring,” she says, face turned to the side so he doesn’t notice the red in her cheeks too much.

Eddie doesn’t deny the accusation. “Can you blame me?”

“You’re drunk.”

“So are you.”

The quiet that follows isn’t silence. It’s everything. The soft slap of water against skin, her pulse in her ears. Eddie moves closer, slow and uncertain. His hand brushes the water, sending small ripples out between them. “Do you remember that time you told me I was trouble?”

“Which time?” she asks, trying to sound light, though her voice comes out too soft. 

Eddie stops an arm’s length away, moonlight turning his eyes to silver. “You were right.”

Stevie wants to say something back, something teasing, something that would take the tension away, but her throat won’t work. The air feels thick, heavy with all the unnamed and unmentioned things they’ve been doing for months. 

When he touches her—just a finger tracing along her wrist, up to her elbow—Stevie doesn’t move away.

“Stevie,” he says, voice barely above the sound of the water. Stevie thinks she’d never get tired of hearing her name from his lips.

She meets his eyes, and the world around them seems to fall away. “Yes?”

And then Eddie kisses her. 

It isn’t like the other kisses they’ve shared before, back when they were more reckless and sneaking into each other’s rooms, all teeth and laughter and heat. This one is slower, more careful—there’s a kind of reverence to it. Eddie’s hand cups her jaw, and she feels the tremor of his breath against her cheek. The taste of lake water clings to his lips, cool and sweet, and she leans into it, into him, until there’s no space left to fill.

“Stevie,” he whispers, and the world narrows down. To skin, to warmth, to the faint sound of her laughter breaking the surface in between kisses. Eddie holds her like he’s remembering something he’s afraid to lose. When they finally break apart, it’s quiet. Eddie rests his forehead against hers, his thumb tracing patterns on her shoulder. “I’m in trouble again,” he says softly.

Stevie smiles, eyes closed. “Yeah,” she whispers. “Me too.”

Stevie is halfway up the stairs when she hears it.

“Finally,” Robin says from the guest room doorway, arms crossed and hair a mess. “Thought you’d gotten abducted or something. I was imagining the headlines already: New York Transplant Goes Missing After Night Out With Local Satanist.”

“He’s not a satanist,” Stevie blinks, caught-mid step. “And, Jesus, you scared me.”

Robin grins, leaning against the doorframe in pajama shorts and an old Hawkins High sweatshirt that Stevie is about ninety percent sure used to belong to her. “You didn’t answer any of my texts, Harrington.”

Stevie huffs out a laugh. “I didn’t even check my phone.”

“Uh-huh, right.” Robin arches an eyebrow. “You know, that’s usually what people say after they’ve been on a date.”

Stevie rolls her eyes and walks past her into the guest room, dumping her bag on the bedside drawer and moving to take off her jewelry. “It wasn’t a date.”

“Sure,” Robin says, dragging the word out. She trails after Stevie, climbing into the bed and sitting cross-legged like a cat ready to pounce. “So, what do you call staying out until past-two in the morning with your ex-boyfriend who just so happens to look at you like you personally hung the moon and the stars in the night sky for him.”

“Shut up!” Stevie groans, tossing a pillow at her. Robin catches it, the prick. 

“So, that’s a yes?”

“It’s not,” she replies, sitting on the edge of the bed and untying her hair. “We just… hung out. Talked. Played stupid games—”

“Won stupid prizes, I bet.”

“—Ate fries. Listened to music. That’s literally it.”

Robin hums. “Mmm. Sounds extremely romantic, Stephanie.”

“Robin.”

“Stevie.”

They stare at each other for a beat, neither one of them willing to back down, before Robin starts laughing—all breath and teeth. Stevie tries very hard to glare at her, but like most of the annoyance she feels for Robin it doesn’t stick; she ends up laughing too, quiet and helpless.

“Okay, okay. Fine,” Robin says in between snickers. “If it wasn’t a date, then what was it?”

Stevie takes a deep breath, shrugging. She tries for casual but, hearing how thin her voice sounds, fails miserably. “I don’t know. Just… catching up, I guess? I mean, he did invite us both at first. Seemed like a friend group thing. A friend thing.”

“Didn’t seem to bother him too much when I declined. And then he looked sad as hell when he felt like you’d say no too.”

“Thanks for that, by the way,” she mumbles, glaring weakly at Robin for her earlier betrayal. “It was nice, I guess. It’s… He’s—” she hesitates, the words catching in her throat. He’s what? My friend? Amazing? The love of my life? “—he’s still Eddie.”

Robin nods like she gets it, then flops back onto the bed, her blonde hair splaying everywhere. “That’s not helpful, Harrington. You’ve gotta give me something to work with here.”

Steve lies back too, side by side, the ceiling faintly glowing in the spill of the hallway light. For a second, it feels like high school again—those late nights they’d spend talking about everything and nothing, limbs tangled together and no one can tell where Stevie ended and where Robin began, the world shrinking to accommodate itself to the small orbit of their friendship.

God, it used to be so easy. She didn’t used to be the way she was.

“I had fun,” Stevie settles on saying, soft and tentative. “Like, actually. I haven’t—I don’t think I’ve laughed like that in… Gosh, I don’t even know how long. Too long, maybe.”

Robin turns her head, studying her. “You sound surprised.”

“I mean, I kind of am, honestly,” Stevie smiles faintly. “I didn’t… I mean, it never really dawned on me how much I missed it. Missed him.”

“Did you?’

“Of course I did,” Stevie snorts, ignoring the pang of longing that’s starting to grow in her heart as she thinks of those last days they had together before she left. “Felt like I was missing a limb for a while. There was a time, for a long while, where something would happen to me and I’d move to text him. And then my finger would kind of just… hover over his number. And then I’d feel awful, because what right did I have?”

Robin’s voice is gentle when she speaks. “I feel that. If it helps, he missed you too. So much. Especially after you left.”

“He told you that?” Stevie asks, her breath catching behind her teeth. 

“Not in words. You could barely pry sentimentality from Eddie on a good day. But… you know… you could tell. I could tell,” Robin rolls to her side fully, propping her head up to look Stevie in the eyes. “He’d come by Pens, pretend he was looking for some obscure book. Then he’d linger for a while by the counter, making small talk, and then he’d end up asking if you’d called or written or whatever. Any communication at all. I think…” she trails off, biting her lip.

“What?”

“I mean, I guess he really thought you would, you know? Even if things ended badly, I think he was still… hoping. There was hope there, yeah. That you’d at least patch things up.”

Stevie stares at the ceiling. The guilt lands heavy, quiet, like rain on the roof. “I wanted to,” she says finally. “Believe me, I wanted to. I just… didn’t. I was so glad to be out of Hawkins, I didn’t want to look back. I packed him away—like a box I didn’t want to open.”

Robin’s expression softens. “Yeah, well. That’s fair. You needed space.”

“And then got too much of it,” Stevie murmurs. “Besides, he didn’t call either. It’s a two-way street, and I figured that if he didn’t, then maybe he didn’t want me to reach out either.”

The silence sticks for a while this time around—not uncomfortably, but still in a way that lets itself be known. Stevie twirls the strands of her hair between her fingers, staring at the sheets and trying not to spiral.

Robin breaks the silence eventually, sighing softly to catch Stevie’s attention. “You know, he’s good for you.”

Stevie blinks. “What do you mean?’

“I mean…” Robin gestures vaguely. “You’re lighter when you’re around him. You joke more. You smile more. You look… I don’t know. Sometimes, when I look at you, you’re so sad. And then he comes around and you’d start looking like you remember what joy feels like.”

Stevie feels the words sink into her, warm and cutting all at once. “You make it sound like I forgot.”

“Well,” Robin gives her a half-smile. “Maybe you did. Just a little.”

Stevie turns on her side, facing her. The dim light softens everything—the line of Robin’s nose, the freckles dusted across her cheekbones, and the scar on her lip from the accident in Scoops back in high school. “Damn. When did you get so wise, Buckley?”

“I’ve always been wise,” Robin says, deadpan. “You just refuse to listen to me.”

Stevie laughs quietly. “That’s probably true.”

They don’t talk for a while. The sound of the night seeps into the room—crickets, a far-off car, the hum of the old ceiling fan above them. Stevie lets her thoughts drift, unspooling slowly. She sees flashes of the night again—the way Eddie’s smile looked in the neon arcade lights, the sound of his laughter cutting through the noise of the crowd, the weight of his arms draped over her shoulders. 

Mostly, Stevie remembers the way he looked at her—not in the way he used to, but not entirely different either. Like he was remembering something, too. The ache starts up again, small and dangerous. The one she’s been pretending she doesn’t feel, but is getting harder and harder to ignore.

Robin shifts beside her, voice low. “You’re thinking about him.”

It’s an instinct to deny it, but Stevie’s mouth moves faster than her brain. “Yeah.”

“You don’t have to be so afraid of it, you know?”

“I know.”

“Do you really?”

Stevie groans, turning face down into the pillow, her voice muffled. “I just… I feel like I’m going to mess up again. I keep messing things up with him, and I don’t want to. I hurt him once. Am I really going to do it again?”

“Hey, don’t get ahead of yourself.” Robin hums. “Maybe you will, sure, but there’s also the possibility that you won’t.”

Stevie doesn’t answer. The truth is, she doesn’t know what she wants yet, not really. The night had been fun, yes, and something had cracked open inside her, but she’s still scared of what might happen if she lets it go any further. Deep down, she’s still the stupid girl who left for New York. That same stupid girl that crawled back to Hawkins. She can’t have changed so much in a few months, no matter how much faith Robin has in her. She sighs. “You think I’m being stupid, don’t you?”

Robin laughs softly. “A little bit. But that’s kind of your charm.”

Stevie elbows her lightly. “Thanks.”

“I mean it,” Robin says, smiling into the dark. “You overthink everything, but when you actually let yourself be in something—a friendship, a feeling, a moment—you’re all in. You love big, Stevie. That’s rare, you know?”

Stevie swallows. Her chest feels full, like there’s too much in it. “Sometimes it doesn’t feel like a good thing.”

“It is,” Robin insists. “It just hurts sometimes,  but that’s the deal you make for love.”

They fall quiet again. The moonlight spills across the bed in a slant, catching on the pale fabric of Stevie’s sleeve.

She feels the weight of the years settling on her now—the laughter, the dancing, the water, the thousand ways in which Eddie’s voice says her name. It’s all too much and not enough at the same time.

“Robin?” she whispers.

“Mm?”

“Do you ever think about what would’ve happened if we’d stayed?”

Robin yawns, stretching. “In Hawkins?”

“Yeah.”

“I try not to.”

“Why?”

“Because then I start making up versions of my life that don’t exist.” Robin rolls onto her back again, eyes half-shut. “That’s not… I mean, you can’t live in the maybes, Stevie. You’ll drown.”

Stevie lets out a small laugh. “You’re really on a roll tonight.”

“I’m wise, remember?”

“Right.”

The fan creaks overhead. The air smells faintly of lavender from the detergent Robin’s mom uses. Stevie stares at the ceiling until her eyes go soft around the edges.

“You think I should see him again?” she asks finally. “Like, just us two?”

Robin smiles sleepily. “I think you already decided you want to.”

Stevie blushes, though it’s dark enough that Robin, thankfully, can’t see. “Maybe.”

“Then don’t overthink it. Just… let it happen, Stevie. You’re allowed to be happy, you know.”

Stevie nods slowly, more to herself than anything. “Yeah.”

For a while, there’s just the sound of their breathing, steady and soft. Robin’s already half-asleep when Stevie whispers, almost to the dark itself, “I missed him. I really, really did.”

Robin hums something incoherent, but Stevie keeps going, voice small. “When I left, I thought I was done with all of it—with Hawkins, with him, with everything. And then tonight, I don’t know, it was like… it was all still there. Just waiting.”

Robin’s voice drifts back, drowsy. “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. You said you boxed him up—maybe it’s time to bring him out from the attic, you know?

Stevie smiles faintly. “Yeah. Maybe.”

She rolls onto her back, eyes tracing the faint shadows dancing on the ceiling. Outside, a breeze stirs the trees, and somewhere down the street, a car passes by—not Eddie’s, she’s sure of that. But she imagines him still out there anyway, driving the quiet roads of Hawkins, windows down, music playing low, his beautiful smile on his face.

II

The sun’s already high by the time they hit the open road.

Eddie’s truck hums along the highway, the windows rolled down, the air rushing through thick with the smell of the fading summer. Stevie’s got her hair up, sunglasses slipping down her nose, one bare foot on the dash despite Eddie grumbling about it twice already. The radio’s crackling between stations, spitting out fragments of guitars and static. They’ve been driving for an hour, maybe more. The miles roll past like they don’t quite matter.

Eddie drums his fingers against the steering wheel, glancing at her every now and then. “You know,” he says, loud enough to beat the wind, “I could’ve just ordered those records.”

Stevie smirks, watching the trees blur by. “Ah, but then you wouldn’t get to complain about the drive.”

He shoots her a grin. “Oh, I’d still find something to complain about. It’s a gift.”

“Yeah, that’s one word for it.”

“Hey, I’m letting you ride in luxury,” he says, knocking the dashboard affectionately. “You should be grateful.”

Stevie huffs. “Luxury? Eddie, the passenger door handle is taped together.”

“Industrial-grade tape, thank you very much.”

“Uh-huh.”

Eddie laughs, full and bright, and she feels it ripple through her chest before she can help it. She turns her face toward the window so he won’t see her smile too wide.

For a while, it’s just the sound of the truck and the wind. Hawkins has long disappeared in the rearview mirror, replaced by stretches of road and pale summer fields. It’s easy—almost too easy, if she has anything to say about it. They talk about nothing and everything: what they’ve been listening to lately, the weird food trucks parked by the edge of town, how Robin tried to organize the VHS tapes in her house by vibes instead of genre and getting chewed out by Melissa afterwards. Eddie laughs so hard that he nearly swerves into the next lane.

And then Stevie starts laughing too—one of those messy, uncontrollable laughs that comes from deep in her stomach, the kind that steals her breath and crumples her face. She’s laughing so hard she starts snorting in the way that used to make her mom roll her eyes.

Eddie glances at her, and then bursts out laughing himself. “Oh my God. Harrington, you still do that?!”

“What?” she gasps, clutching her chest and holding herself together. Eddie reaches over to flick her in the ear. “Keep your hands on the wheel, what the fuck?”

“The snort!” He says, slapping the steering wheel once, gleeful. “I  missed that. I missed you doing that.”

It makes her stop for a second. The air between them stills, heavy but not unpleasant. Stevie turns her head, studying him in profile—the sunlight bouncing off his hair, how his grin melts into something softer when he catches her looking.

“I missed you too,” she says, unthinking and quiet. Eddie’s fingers tap against the wheel again.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” The admission feels lighter than she expects, like exhaling after holding her breath in for too long. Eddie nods, once, and then he turns his eyes back on the road. There’s a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, lingering for a while in the way that warmth always does.

No words pass between them for a while. They drive past a sign that says INDIANAPOLIS 40 MILES. The radio finally catches onto a steady signal, playing an old rock ballad that Stevie only vaguely recognizes as Bryan Adams. 

After a while, Eddie’s voice cuts through.”You ever date anyone in New York?”

Stevie’s heart stutters minutely, caught off guard. She blinks, clears her throat, and then says, “Wow. Has anyone ever told you that you’re the King of subtlety?”

Eddie smiles, but he doesn’t look at her. “What? It’s a normal question.”

“Sure it is.”

“So?”

She sighs, sinking back against the seat. “I mean… I tried. At first.”

“Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“That tone,” he says, grinning. “That’s the ‘prepare for disaster’ tone.”

She laughs softly. “Not a disaster. Just—nothing worked out. I think I went on a couple dates. A few flings. Mostly people who liked the idea of me being from a small town. They thought it was ‘charming’ and ‘quaint’. Yuck.”

Eddie raises an eyebrow. “You are charming,” he says, matter of factly, and then, “quaint… maybe not so much.”

She gives him a look. “You know what I mean.”

He does. He always does.

Stevie looks out the window, the sunlight flickering like diamonds through the trees. “After a while, I just stopped trying. It wasn’t worth the effort. Everyone felt… temporary, I guess. Like I was just wasting my time.”

Eddie hums, thoughtful. “Yeah. City people.”

“It’s not just them,” she says. “A huge part of it was me too. I didn’t know what I wanted. Maybe I still don’t.”

He doesn’t say anything right away. The road continues to hum beneath the tires. She can feel him thinking.

Then, lightly, he asks, “Did you ever think about coming back here sooner?”

Stevie looks over, meeting his eyes for a heartbeat before she looks away again. “Sometimes. But then I’d think about what I’d be coming back to and… I don’t know. It got to a point where it felt easier to keep running, even when I didn’t know what I was running towards.”

Eddie nods once, quietly. “Yeah, I get that.”

“Really?”

He smiles, then slumps slightly. He reaches up and pretends to fix the rearview mirror as he speaks. “I spent years trying to run out of Hawkins. You, uh, just beat me to it.”

Stevie smiles slightly. “Have you ever managed to? Like, fully?”

“Well, no. Not really.”

“Not even once in the five years I was gone?”

Eddie shakes his head. “Nah. The closest I got was that cross-country. Loading up the van and driving without any plan. Just a bunch of idiots chasing the high of freedom.”

“I mean, like I said before, it must have been fun.” Stevie closes her eyes and she can almost see it—the version of Eddie out on the open road, loud and unmoored, laughing loudly in the wind.

“Yeah, well… And then we got back to Hawkins and, well,” he shrugs. “Everything was the same. Hawkins was still Hawkins, except I was different.”

Stevie looks at him, really looks at him, then nods, feeling the truth of his words in her bones. They’re both different now, she supposes. Entirely changed by the lives they led the moment that Stevie left. But maybe something in them still recognizes the other—like a chord that still resonates even after years of silence. 

“So what about you?” she asks after a moment. “You ever date anyone after me?”

Eddie’s lips twitch. “Nope.”

“No?”

He snorts “Had a few… near things, maybe. But it never stuck. I think Wayne started betting against me after the third one.”

Stevie laughs softly. “Smart man.”

Eddie grins. “He’s got instincts.”

They both fall quiet again after that. The truck rolls along, the road unwinding like a slow melody. The silence isn’t awkward—just full of unspoken things. Stevie watches the sunlight flicker through the windshield, the way the horizon glows faintly gold. There’s a weight in her chest that feels complicated, but it doesn’t bother her as much as it probably should.

Part of her feels bad for feeling a small flicker of happiness that Eddie hasn’t dated anyone. It’s not fair, she knows that. But the other part—the evil one that she’s been trying not to listen to—can’t help the tiny spark that lights in her chest at the thought.

Eddie clears his throat after a while. “Speaking of Wayne, he’s been asking about you, by the way.”

That startles her. “He has? Really?”

“Oh yeah. Keeps saying, ‘When’s that nice Harrington girl coming around to visit us again?’” Eddie’s tone turns teasing, mimicking Wayne’s deep grunt but failing so he just sounds ridiculous. “I think he misses you more than he misses me.”

“Okay, well, he sees you everyday so I don’t think you count.” Stevie smiles, a little shy. “And he was always sweet to me, so I don’t mind being his favorite.”

“He still is. Sweet, I mean. He, uh, actually told me to invite you to dinner sometime.”

Her eyebrows lift. “Dinner?”

Eddie nods, glancing at her quickly before focusing back on the road. “Yeah. He said to tell you he’s gonna try making his famous meatloaf. That or a classic barbecue. Which, for the record, is actually pretty good.”

“I know, Munson, I’ve tasted it.” Stevie laughs. “What I want to know is if it was Wayne who invited me or you did.”

Eddie grins. “Does it matter?”

“Maybe.”

He chuckles. “Fine. Both of us. Consider it a joint invitation from Casa de Munson.”

Stevie pretends to think it over. “Hmm. Well, if it’s meatloaf…”

He shoots her a playful side-eye. “That’s a yes, right?”

“That’s a maybe leaning toward yes.”

“You know what? I’ll take it.”

The mood lightens again, and for a while, it’s all sunlight and motion. Stevie props her elbow against the window, resting her chin on her hand. Eddie’s still talking—something about a different record store he found online that looks like a fire hazard—but her mind drifts.

The way he looks at her, the rhythm of his voice, the way his laughter fills the truck and all the corners of her heart—it all feels too familiar. Like muscle memory. Like a song she knows all the words to, still, even after years of not hearing it.

She wonders if he feels it too.

When she glances at him, he’s already looking her way, just for a second, before his eyes flick back to the road. It makes her heart skip in that old, dangerous way she’s been trying not to notice.

They drive the rest of the way in easy rhythm—talking about the worst bands they’ve ever seen live, arguing over whether pineapple belongs on pizza, and ranking the top five road-trip snacks of all time. Eddie insists on beef jerky and gas station donuts. Stevie mocks him mercilessly. It’s all mind-numbingly mundane. Stevie feels like she could pierce the sky with how light she feels.

By the time they reach Indianapolis, the sun’s dipping lower, painting everything in gold. The city hums around them—traffic lights, faint music from open apartment windows, the smell of something fried in the air.

Eddie parks near a row of small shops, the record store tucked between a pawn shop and a café with neon pink lettering. He looks proud, like he’s showing her something he built himself.

“Told you it was worth the drive,” he says.

Stevie smiles, unbuckling her seatbelt. “You haven’t even bought the records yet.”

“Minor detail.”

“Can you imagine if we drove all this way and there’s no record left?”

“Don’t say that to me. Don’t even joke about that.”

Stevie just laughs and follows him out of the truck, the late sunlight painting an orange streak on his face. For a moment, she forgets to move, just watching the easy way he moves through the world now—still restless, but much smoother and softer around the edges. Her Eddie, all grown up.

He turns back, holding the shop door open for her. “You coming, Harrington?”

“Yeah,” she says, catching up. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

He grins, and the look they share feels like a thread pulling tight—something small, something old, something real. A language only the two of them could ever understand.

It’s June, and Hawkins is hot enough that the heat actually feels like it’s physically beating Stevie around. The air buzzes, alive with noise and heavy with sunlight. People mill around in the trees beyond the football field, fathers smoking and children chasing each other while the program ahead goes on.

Stevie stands off to the side of the crowd, half-squinting against the glare and watching Eddie Munson in his crimson cap and gown grin like he’s just pulled off the biggest heist in town history.

Maybe he has, because the idiot finally did it.

After years of detentions, summer school, near-misses, and a general refusal to play Hawkins High’s game, Eddie finally graduated. And he looks so damn proud of himself that Stevie feels it like a punch to the gut—a warm, stupid, fuzzy one that spreads all the way to her chest.

Robin spots her first. “There you are!” she says, bounding over with Nancy in tow. “Eddie’s about to throw his hat like a total maniac. You don’t wanna miss that.”

“Oh, trust me, I already saw the first one,” Stevie says, smiling despite herself. “Almost took down Principal Higgins.”

“Tragic,” Nancy mutters, but there’s a fond look in her eyes as she watches Eddie waving his diploma at Wayne, who stands a few feet away looking quietly emotional. The old man’s clapping, his face creased with a pride that is almost too tender to look at. “It’s a good thing they can’t revoke his graduation.”

Eddie spots them then, as if hearing Nancy talk shit about him, and then immediately jogs over, gown flapping, tassel bouncing against his chin. “Ladies,” he greets, sweeping into an exaggerated bow. “Did you come to witness history?”

“History is a strong word,” Robin teases. “Miracle’s more like it. Hawkins has been waiting for this day for a long, long time.”

Eddie grins. “You wound me, Buckley.”

“Someone’s gotta keep you humble,” Nancy says, and he shrugs like he’ll allow it.

Stevie’s been quiet, smiling faintly, but when he turns to her, something in his expression softens.

“Well?” he says. “You proud of me, Harrington?”

Stevie crosses her arms, trying for nonchalance. “Maybe a little.”

“Only a little?”

“You did almost take Higgins out with your hat.”

“Collateral damage,” he says, his grin widening. “Totally worth it.”

Wayne ambles over then, still in his work clothes—a plaid shirt rolled to the elbows, jeans smudged with dust. He claps Eddie on the shoulder and says, “Knew you had it in you, son.”

Eddie ducks his head, uncharacteristically bashful. “Told you I’d get there eventually.”

Wayne chuckles. “‘Eventually’ took a couple extra laps, but I ain’t complainin’.”

They all laugh, and someone—probably Robin—insists on photos. So they line up, sweaty and laughing, the summer light spilling light gold across their faces. Stevie watches as Wayne stands next to Eddie, his arm around his nephew’s shoulders, both of them squinting into the sun. For a second, she wishes she had her Polaroid. It feels like something she’d want to remember later.

After a while, Robin and Nancy start gathering their things. “We’re gonna grab lunch,” Nancy says, smiling at Eddie. “You and Stevie coming?”

Stevie shakes her head before Eddie can answer. “Actually, we’ve got plans.”

Eddie blinks owlishly. “We do?”

Robin lifts an eyebrow. “Oh, plans, huh?”

“It’s not what you think,” Stevie says quickly, though her ears are already going red. “I—it’s—shut up. It’s not. It’s not.”

Robin grins. “Sure, sure. Enjoy your plans.”

Nancy, bless her, tugs Robin away before she can tease more. “Bye, Stevie. Bye, Eddie. Congratulations again.”

“Thanks, Wheeler!” Eddie calls after them, then turns to Stevie, eyes narrowed in mock suspicion. “Okay, Harrington, what’s this about? Plans?”

“You’ll see.”

“Not even a hint?”

“Nope.”

He groans dramatically. “You’re killin’ me, babe.”

“Good.”

The drive out of Hawkins is lazy, the outside world settling in a kind of golden afternoon that feels like an old record should be playing around them. Eddie’s still in his gown, half unzipped, a tassel dangling from the rearview mirror like a trophy. He’s sprawled in the passenger seat of Stevie’s car, dirty boots on the dash despite her glare. “You gonna tell me where we’re goin’ or do I gotta start guessing?”

“Guessing’s fun,” she says, tapping the steering wheel. “Entertain yourself.”

“Alright. Let’s see…” Eddie squints out the window. “You’re taking me to a secret government lab where they’ve successfully cloned Kirk Hammett, and you’ve arranged a private concert.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Or maybe—” he leans closer, conspiratorial “—you’re finally gonna confess your undying love for me.”

Stevie snorts. “Dream on, Munson.”

He clutches his heart. “Ouch. You wound me.”

“Get used to it.”

“So mean. I graduated and this is the thanks I get?”

“Yup, this is the thanks you get.”

He tilts his head, curious. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning,” Stevie says, eyes on the road, “you’ll see when we get there, and you need to stop pestering me while I drive.”

When the trees start to thin and the fields stretch wide, Eddie sort of figures it out.

“Weathertop,” he says, leaning forward, grin tugging at his mouth. “You’re taking me to Weathertop?”

“Maybe,” Stevie says, smiling to herself.

He laughs, that bright, boyish sound that always gets under her skin. “Of course you are. God, I haven’t been up there since—” He stops, glancing at Stevie sideways. “Since that one time I tried to show the freshmen where to find good weed and we got chased off by a raccoon the size of a dog.”

“Sounds like karma.”

“Sounds like you’re just jealous you missed it.”

“Oh yeah, I’m totally devastated.”

The hill comes into view, sloping gently up from the tall grass, bathed in late-day light. It’s beautiful in a way that makes Stevie’s chest ache—the kind of view that feels like a secret even though it’s right there, open to anyone who bothers to look.

Eddie’s still talking, something about how his gown’s too hot and he’s convinced it’s melting into his skin. Stevie just laughs and tells him to take it off. He wiggles his eyebrows, and she rolls her eyes.

“Not like that. You’re so gross.”

“Sure,” he says, smirking, but he shrugs out of it anyway, tossing the gown into the backseat.

When they reach the top, Eddie lets out a low whistle. A checkered blanket’s already spread out, anchored by a picnic basket and two bottles of Coke glinting in the sun.

“Well, well,” he says. “Fancy.”

“I had help,” she admits.

“Let me guess—the gremlins?”

“Dustin and Max,” she corrects, setting the basket down. “Everyone else was busy, and I didn’t want to ask Mike because  he’d be annoying about it.”

Eddie grins. “How much did you pay ’em to play delivery crew?”

“Not telling.”

“That much, huh?”

She tosses him a look, and he raises his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. Point taken. This is… actually really nice, Stevie.”

Stevie shrugs, a little embarrassed. “You only graduate once.”

“In my case, you can try twice,” he says, then laughs. “But I’ll take it.”

They sit down. The grass sways around them, bees drifting lazily between the wildflowers. Stevie unpacks sandwiches, chips, and the cookies she baked that morning. Eddie immediately grabs one, bites in, and groans. “Okay, these are amazing. You’re wasted on Hawkins.”

“I’ll put that on my résumé,” she says.

He grins, crumbs on his lip. “I’m serious. ‘Stevie Harrington: Queen of Cookies, Slayer of Demons in D&D, and General Badass.’”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Yeah,” he says softly. “But I think you like me like that, even if you try to deny it all the time.”

The words hang there, half-joking, half-true. Stevie looks at him, the wind ruffling his hair, sunlight painting him gold, and feels that same slow warmth she’s been pretending not to notice for months.

She looks away first. “Eat your sandwich, Munson.”

They talk for hours. About everything and nothing. Music, movies, what it’s like to finally pass senior year and overcome the hurdle that is Mrs. Click. Eddie tells her he’s thinking about taking the band a little more seriously now, maybe even recording something. Stevie teases him about becoming famous and forgetting all the little people.

Eddie just laughs, tosses a chip at her. “Are you kidding? I’d drag you on tour just to hear you heckle me from the side of the stage.”

“Tempting offer.”

“Thought so.”

After a while, the conversation turns quieter. The sun’s lower now, spilling long shadows across the field. The air smells like grass and summer and something faintly electric—that feeling of being young and on the edge of something you can’t quite name. The town starts lighting up beyond them, the night life of Hawkins starting to come alive. It’d be busy, Stevie thinks, what with the graduates celebrating still well into the evening.

“So,” Eddie says, lying back on the blanket. “What about you, Harrington? You graduated last year. What’s next for the great and powerful Stevie?”

Stevie stares up at the sky, fingers twisting a blade of grass. “Honestly? No idea.”

“No plans?”

“Mom keeps dropping hints,” she admits. “None of them feel right though.  Nothing feels like… well, me.”

Eddie props himself up on one elbow, studying her. “Then what is you?”

She hesitates. “I don’t know yet.”

Eddie nods, quiet for once. “That’s okay. You’ll figure it out.”

“You sound sure.”

“I am.” He smiles. “You always do.”

There’s something in his voice—faith, simple and steady—that makes her throat tighten. She glances over, meeting his eyes, and the look there knocks the breath out of her.

The world goes still for a beat; then Stevie leans forward and kisses him.

It’s soft at first, but Eddie responds like he’s been waiting for it forever—careful, reverent, his hand finding her cheek, thumb tracing a path that makes her heart stutter. The grass rustles around them. Somewhere far below, Hawkins continues to breathe with its quiet little life. Up here, it feels like they’re the only two people in the world.

When they finally pull apart, Eddie exhales a shaky laugh. “Well,” he says, voice low, “guess that answers my question.”

“What question?”

“Whether or not you like me anyway.”

Stevie smiles, brushing her thumb against his jaw. “Maybe a little.”

“Only a little?”

“Don’t push it.”

He grins. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

They lie there until the light has mostly faded, the sky turning soft pink and violet, the air cooling just enough to raise goosebumps on Stevie’s arms. Eddie talks about the future in that big, rambling way he has—about music and stories and places he’s never seen. Stevie listens, her head on his shoulder, thinking maybe the world isn’t as small as she thought.

When the first stars come out, Eddie sighs. “You ever think about how weird it is that everything’s changing? Like, one day we’re just gonna… not be here anymore?”

Stevie tilts her head toward him. “Not in Hawkins?”

“Yeah.”

She’s quiet a moment, then says, “Maybe that’s okay. Maybe we’re supposed to leave.”

“Guess so.”

“Hey, you don’t have to worry about it.” Stevie smiles. “You’ll do fine.”

“So will you.”

They fall quiet again, and the silence feels like something gentle, something whole.

Later, when they pack up and head down the hill, Eddie insists on carrying everything, pretending to struggle until Stevie swats him. He laughs, a bright, boyish sound echoing through the trees.

And when they reach the car, the night thick with crickets and summer wind, Stevie glances back at the field and thinks—this is what she’ll remember. This night and his laughter. The way he looked at her like she was already part of his next adventure; a given, a constant.

She doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. All she knows tonight is that Eddie Munson graduated, and the world feels wide open, and the stars look close enough to touch.

And that when he reaches over to take her hand—sun-warmed, alive—she doesn’t pull away.

The drive back to Hawkins is quiet in the best way.

It’s dark by the time they leave Indianapolis behind them, the outside world a hazy blur of dark trees and yellow highway lines, streaked faintly by Eddie’s headlights. The air smells much, much sweeter—like warm vinyl and old cigarettes, with a ghost of the cake they shared from earlier. Eddie’s got one hand on the wheel, the other drumming along to a Bee Gees song. 

Stevie sits angled toward him, leaning against the window and completely shameless in the way she stares. She should be looking out, but she’s not. She’s looking at him.

The curve of his jaw every time the light hits, the smile playing softly across his lips while he glances at the road ahead, the stray curls framing his cheekbones in a way that makes him look younger. Eddie hasn’t noticed, or maybe he’s pretending not to. It’s likely the latter. Either way, she doesn’t look away, and he does nothing to deter her.

Stevie shifts slightly, tucking her legs up on the seat into something more comfortable. She’s still watching him. Eddie glances over once, and he hums under his breath, low and rough in a way that makes something flutter through her ribs. Their eyes meet, briefly, just long enough for her heart to trip up a little. 

Then he looks back at the road, a faint and knowing smile painted on his face, like he heard the little bastard fuck up in her chest. Still, neither of them speak. Maybe they don’t need to. Maybe there just aren’t any words left.

III

Stevie is elbow-deep in Robin’s closet when Robin finally says, “You know, he’s not the King of England.”

Stevie groans into a pile of mismatched hangers. “You don’t get it. It’s Wayne.”

Robin lies sprawled across her bed, propped up by an embarrassing number of pillows, a book open but clearly forgotten in favor of making fun of Stevie. God, she should never have asked her for help. “Yes, Wayne,” she drawls. “Sweet, kind, probably-going-to-feed-you Wayne. What’s the worst that can happen? He’s going to judge you for breaking his nephew’s heart five years ago?”

Stevie turns sharply, a jacket half-sliding off its hanger. “Exactly. That’s exactly it, Robin. Great job pinpointing what I’m worried about. You’re such a great friend.”

Robin throws her hands up. “Oh my God, you’re being impossible.”

“I’m being realistic!” Stevie protests, sifting through another stack of shirts and, Gosh, does Robin not have anything that isn’t ugly? “He’s Eddie’s uncle. Eddie, as in my ex-boyfriend.”

Robin bites back a grin. “Oh, wow, you two dated? I didn’t know about that.”

Stevie shoots her a glare over her shoulder. “You’re so funny. Like, so fucking funny.”

“I try.” Robin replies dryly, propping her chin on her hand and watching Stevie pull out a faded denim jacket, then reject it. “You’ve been doing this for, what, forty minutes now? Just pick something! It’s dinner, not a courtroom.”

“I just—” Stevie sighs, pressing her lips together. “I want him to like me. Again.”

Robin softens a little at that. “Wayne already likes you,” she says. “He never stopped. He used to ask about you all the time, you know? Maybe just as much as Eddie did.”

Stevie goes still, fingers tugging absently at a shirt sleeve. “He did?”

Robin nods. “Every time he ran into me or Nance. Wanted to know if you were doing okay. He’s… I don’t know, he’s just one of those people who doesn’t give up on folks easily.”

Stevie’s chest tightens. She remembers Wayne’s quiet warmth, his steady voice. The smell of coffee and cigarettes that always clung to his flannel shirts. The way he’d smile at her like she belonged there, with him and Eddie, even when she wasn’t sure she did. She swallows. “Still. I don’t want to show up looking like—” She waves vaguely at herself, at her rumpled T-shirt and sweat shorts.

“Like a normal person?” Robin offers dryly.

“Like someone who hasn’t figured out what to do with her life.”

“Newsflash,” Robin says, flipping a page without really looking at it. “Nobody has. Especially not here.”

Stevie huffs, but there’s a ghost of a smile on her face. She finally pulls out a soft white button-up and a pair of high-waisted jeans that actually fit her. Robin raises an eyebrow.

“There. Perfect. Casual. Approachable. Not too ‘I regret breaking your nephew’s heart but also maybe I still like him,’” Robin says, voice syrupy with teasing.

Stevie rolls her eyes, tossing a scrunchie at her. “You’re evil.”

“Only because I care.”

They lapse into a comfortable silence as Stevie changes. Outside, the sky’s sliding toward gold, the summer light thick and honeyed through Robin’s bedroom window. Stevie’s hair falls in soft waves over her shoulders; she buttons her shirt halfway, rolls the sleeves, stares at herself in the mirror. She looks older, but she doesn’t much feel it.

Robin notices her expression. “You’re spiraling.”

“I’m not.”

“You are,” Robin says. “And before you start—he invited you. Remember that.”

Stevie nods slowly, like she’s trying to convince herself of it. “Right. He invited me.”

She’s about to grab her shoes when a sharp honk echoes from outside. They both freeze, then dart to the window.

Eddie’s truck sits at the curb, its paint sun-bleached and its metal still as dented as it was last week, and all the weeks before that. And there he is—leaning against the hood, hands shoved in his pockets, hair curling wild around his face. When he spots them, he waves.

Robin elbows Stevie. “Oh my God, Stephanie, he’s doing the movie wave.”

Stevie makes a strangled noise. “Shut up, no he’s not.”

“He totally is! That’s, like, a leading man move. Oh, he’s going to sweep you off your damn feet so hard you’re going to feel it until the next year.”

“Robin.”

She grins, unbothered. “Okay, but seriously—he looks good, loathe as I am to admit that. And kind of smitten, which is good news for you.”

Stevie ignores her, heart thudding like it’s trying to punch its way out. “He’s just being nice.”

“Sure,” Robin says, stretching the word out into a tease.

Stevie ties her shoes too quickly, nearly tripping as she heads for the stairs, bounds down, and opens the door. “You know what, I’m leaving before you make it worse.”

“Too late! Tell Wayne I said hi! And Eddie—bring her back before curfew! She’s an upstanding young woman with class. Don’t be a dick. Wear protection!” Robin calls.

Stevie groans audibly as she slams the front door behind her. “Oh my God, please kill me.”

Eddie’s grin widens when he sees her coming down the porch steps. “Hey there, Harrington.”

“Don’t start,” Stevie warns, fighting a smile.

He holds up his hands in mock surrender. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to,” she says, brushing a stray hair from her face. “I could see it on your stupid face.”

Eddie gestures toward the passenger door. “You ready?”

She nods, and he opens the door for her, just like he always used to. It’s such an old, reflexive gesture that it makes something small and tender bloom in her chest.

Once they’re on the road, the familiar rumbling of the truck fills the space between them. Hawkins rolls past in soft blurs of sky and trees, all green and blue and gold.

Eddie glances sideways at her. “So, remind me again why you’re acting like you’re meeting the Pope?”

Stevie shoots him a look. “Because I’m about to have dinner with your uncle. The man who used to make me grilled cheese and pasta when you forgot to feed me.”

He snorts. “Wayne’s gonna be thrilled to see you, Stevie. He’s the one who invited you, remember?”

“I know,” she says, staring out the window. “But still. It’s been a long time.”

“Yeah, five  years,” he says quietly. “Give or take.”

The number sits heavy in her chest. Five years. Whole lifetimes seemed to have happened in that half a decade—and somehow, here they are again, driving down the same roads like no time’s passed at all. Like they’re still the Stevie and Eddie from before: young, stupid, and so in love it hurts.

She clears her throat and gets rid of the feeling. “When did you guys move out of Forest Hills again?”

Eddie taps his fingers against the steering wheel. “A little over a year after you left. Wayne got a deal on a place closer to town. Said the trailer was gettin’ too damn cold in the winters.”

“I liked that place,” Stevie says softly.

He glances at her, a flicker of surprise crossing his face. “Yeah? Thought you hated how loud it was.”

“I didn’t hate it. I hated how thin the walls were and how you always tried something whenever Wayne was there just to rile me up” She smiles faintly. “But I kind of loved it, you know?. It was… homey.”

Eddie smiles too, small and crooked. “Yeah. It was that. I missed it a lot too until I got used to the new place.”

They lapse into silence for a bit. The sun’s starting to dip lower now, painting everything in long orange light.

“Hey, Stevie, don’t be nervous,” he says finally, breaking the quiet. “Wayne’s probably more nervous than you are.”

Stevie scoffs. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not,” he insists, eyes twinkling. “You know, he’s been cleaning since yesterday. Said something about needing the house to be perfect. I told him it’s just dinner, but he said, and I quote, ‘You hush. That girl was always too good for your mess.’”

Stevie laughs, surprised by the warmth that floods her chest. “He did not say that.”

“Oh, he did,” Eddie says. “Like I said before, that man likes you better than me. Always has.”

She shakes her head, smiling out the window, trying to hide the flush creeping up her neck. “That’s not true.”

“Sure it is. He still has that picture of you two from the senior dance on the fridge.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Oh yeah,” Eddie says, grinning now. “You, looking like a movie star. Me, looking like a lost roadie. Classic.”

She laughs—real, bright laughter that makes her stomach ache. Eddie glances at her, that smile softening.

“Fuck,” he whispers, shameless and open. “—that’s still adorable.”

“What, me laughing?” She rolls her eyes but can’t stop smiling. Stevie’s sure there’s a faint flush across her cheeks. “You’re impossible.”

“Still funny, though.”

“Debatable.”

He grins, waggling his brows. “You used to say that, too. And yet…”

Stevie looks at him, the corners of her mouth still curved into a smile. “Yeah. I guess I did.”

The road winds, the trees thinning as the houses grow fewer. The scent of summer grass drifts in through the open window. By the time they pull into the gravel drive of the new Munson house, the sky’s gone that soft, dusky blue that means the day’s officially starting to fade.

Wayne’s already outside, sitting on the porch steps with a glass of iced tea. He stands when the truck comes to a stop, the porch light spilling yellow over his face.

Eddie cuts the engine, leans back in his seat. “See? He’s smiling. Told you he’d be happy.”

Stevie swallows hard, nerves bubbling back up. She smooths her shirt, wipes her palms against her jeans. “Okay. Okay. I can do this.”

Eddie’s mouth tilts, gentle. “You’ve got this, Stephanie-Annie.”

She shoots him a look. “If you call me that one more time, I’m turning this truck around myself.”

“Noted,” he says, grin widening.

When she steps out, the gravel crunches beneath her shoes. The air smells faintly of freshly cut grass and barbecue.

“Wayne,” she says, a little breathless as she walks toward him. “Hi.” 

The man is already smiling by the time she reaches the porch. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he says warmly, pulling her straight into a warm hug. “If it isn’t Stevie Harrington.”

Stevie laughs, surprised, melting into the embrace. She takes a deep breath and finds that he still smells the same—laundry detergent and coffee, cigarettes and that faint trace of motor oil that clings no matter how much he washes.

“It’s so good to see you,” she says.

“You too, sweetheart,” Wayne replies, pulling back just enough to look at her. “You look good. Different, but good.”

“That’s polite code for older,” she jokes.

“Nah,” he says, eyes kind. “Just… more you.”

Something in her chest stutters. She doesn’t know what to do with that, so she just smiles.

Eddie’s watching from behind Wayne, leaning against the railing with that lazy smirk that means he’s hiding something softer.

“Well,” Wayne says, clapping his hands together. “Come on in, you two.”

The air outside still smells like rain.

It’s late—close to midnight—when Stevie pulls into Forest Hills, headlights sweeping across the damp gravel. The storm has just passed, leaving everything slick and shining under the sodium lamps. Her hands are trembling on the steering wheel, and she’s been biting the inside of her cheek for so long it’s raw and starting to taste like blood. The engine ticks softly when she kills it. She sits there for a moment, staring at the faint light glowing through the curtains of the Munson trailer.

She hadn’t planned to drive here. Not really. 

But the words from her dad are still echoing, sharp and mean, louder than the thunder had been an hour ago. Something about wasting potential, something about Eddie Munson not being the kind of boy you build a life with, something about disappointment and on and on and on.

Stevie, already tired and brittle, had finally snapped back. She’d said things she shouldn’t have. Maybe he had too. By the time she grabbed her keys, her hands were shaking and not even her mom yelling at her to stay could stop her.

Now, in the quiet of the trailer park, everything feels too still. Her embarrassment is louder than the sounds outside, the chorus of it rising and falling within her. Outside, the puddles on the pavement reflect the stars in shaky fragments.

She finally gets out of the car. Her sneakers splash as she crosses the drive. The porch light flickers when she knocks, hesitant, three quick raps before she can change her mind.

It takes only a few seconds.

The door opens, and there he is—Eddie, hair damp and half-tied, wearing a faded Dio shirt that looks older than both of them. His eyes widen when he sees her.

“Stevie?”

Her throat closes. “Hey.”

He looks her over quickly—mismatched socks, wet jeans, the tremor in her fingers. His voice softens. “You okay?”

She tries to nod, fails halfway. Two stray droplets of tears run down her cheek. “Can I—just—will you let me stay here for a while?”

Eddie doesn’t hesitate. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.” He steps aside and gestures her in. “Come on.”

The warmth of the trailer hits her immediately, thick with the faint smell of candles and something roasted. Wayne’s boots are by the door, the TV low in the background—a rerun of MASH* humming softly. Wayne looks up from the recliner when he sees her, one brow raised.

Eddie clears his throat. “Uh, she’s just—uh—she had a rough night.”

Wayne studies her for a second, then nods once, slow and gentle. “You hungry, kid?”

Stevie’s voice barely makes it out. “No, sir. Thank you.”

He nods again, then reaches for the remote. “Alright. I’m headin’ to bed anyway. You two keep it down.”

When he disappears down the hall, Eddie exhales quietly, like he’s been holding it. He glances at her again. “You wanna sit in my room?”

Stevie does. He leads her to his room, his hand tight and warm in hers. The bed sinks under her, soft and familiar. She watches his flickering TV, but the words don’t make sense. Her eyes sting. Eddie kneels on the floor in front of her, trying to catch her gaze.

“Hey, baby, what happened?”

“Nothing.” The word breaks halfway through. “I just—Dad and I fought again.”

He tilts his head. “Bad?”

“Bad enough.”

Eddie nods, not pushing. “You wanna talk about it?”

She shakes her head quickly. “Not right now.”

“Okay.” Eddie sits beside her, arms resting on his knees. “Then we don’t have to.”

They sit like that for a while, the low drone of the TV filling the silence. The trailer creaks softly in the wind. Stevie wipes at her face when she thinks he isn’t looking, but of course he notices.

Eddie leans back and nudges her shoulder gently with his own. “You know, my old man used to say that fights are just words dressed up like grenades.”

She snorts quietly despite herself. “That sounds like something Al would say.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says dryly. “And he was usually the idiot throwing them.”

There’s a small pause, then Stevie laughs—quiet, real, but thick with tears. It comes out shaky but honest, and Eddie grins, proud of himself.

“There she is,” he murmurs. “Thought I lost my favorite girl for a sec.”

“You didn’t.” She sighs, leaning her head back against the headboard. “I think she just needed a second to remember how to breathe.”

He nods, eyes soft. “That I get.”

The rain starts again, a light patter against the roof. Eddie gets up and disappears into the kitchen. She hears the clatter of a mug, the hum of the kettle. When he returns, he hands her a cup of tea—one of Wayne’s mismatched mugs, the one with a faded ‘World’s Okayest Mechanic’ logo.

She wraps her hands around it, grateful for the warmth. “You didn’t have to.”

“Yeah, I did.” He sits back down beside her, folding one leg beneath him. “It’s the law. Guest cries, host makes tea.”

“That’s not a law.”

“Sure it is. Section three of the Official Munson Hospitality Act. I should know—Wayne made me draft the thing when I was thirteen and started bringing friends over.”

Stevie gives him a look, and he grins, pleased that she’s smiling again.

They sip in silence for a bit. The tea is too sweet, but she doesn’t tell him that. Eddie fiddles with a loose thread on his shirt, glancing sideways at her every now and then like he’s checking she’s still breathing.

After a while, he says, “You know, I could punch him.”

“What?”

“Your dad. I could. Just one solid hit to the jaw.” He flexes his hand dramatically. “I’d probably break my own wrist, but I’d look cool doing it.”

“You and your puny arms?”

“Again, it’d look cool.”

She laughs—an actual laugh this time, bubbling out before she can stop it. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Correct. But effective.” He shrugs. “If it made you smile, I’ll take the bruise.”

Stevie’s smile lingers, longer than the last one. She sets her cup down and pulls her knees up under her chin. “Thanks, Eddie.”

He shrugs again, softer this time. “Anytime.”

The silence that follows isn’t heavy. It’s the kind that fills a room like a blanket, comfortable and warm. The TV hums quietly, a laugh track echoing distantly. Outside, the rain keeps falling.

Stevie turns her head, watching Eddie’s profile in the flickering lamp light. His hair is still damp at the edges and his lashes cast faint shadows on his cheeks. Stevie has never said it out loud, but he always looked a little untamed. And yet, despite that, at this moment, he’s currently the most stable presence in her life.

“Hey,” she says after a while, voice low. “Thanks for not asking me to go home.”

Eddie glances at her. “You don’t ever have to thank me for that.”

She looks down at her hands. “I just—sometimes I feel like I’m stuck in between things, you know? Like I’m not really where I should be.”

Eddie nods slowly. “Yeah. I get that.”

“You do?”

“Hell yeah.” He leans back, arms stretched along the top of the couch. “Feels like everyone else got a map, and I’m out here wandering around with a broken compass.”

Stevie smiles, soft and wry at the same time. “That’s exactly it. It doesn’t help that it feels like… I don’t know. I feel like I’ve disappointed him somehow because I’m not living up to this image he has of me in his head.”

“Whenever you start feeling like that, just come to me,” Eddie whispers. “Or Robin, or Nancy. I promise you, Stevie, you could never disappoint any of us.”

They sit there, side by side, both staring at nothing. The rain softens to a drizzle. Somewhere down the street, a dog barks once and goes quiet.

Eddie shifts, turning slightly toward her. “You can stay here tonight if you want. Wayne won’t care.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You know, he always says you’re ‘polite but with backbone.’ Which is like the highest praise a Munson can give.”

She huffs a quiet laugh. “That’s weirdly flattering.”

Eddie grins. “You should be flattered. He doesn’t hand out that compliment to just anyone.”

She hesitates, then nods. “Okay. I’ll stay.”

“Cool.” He stands, stretching. “Well, you can take my bed. I’ll crash on the couch.”

“No way,” she says immediately. “I’m not kicking you out of your bed.”

“Stevie, it’s fine, you need the space—”

“I’ll just take the floor.”

Eddie gives her a look. “You’re not sleeping on the floor.”

“Then we’ll share,” she says, too tired to be embarrassed. “We’ve shared worse.”

He freezes for a second, caught off guard, then recovers with a crooked grin. “You make a compelling argument.”

They lie down facing opposite directions at first, the room dim except for the faint glow from the lamp and the hallway that spills from the gap between the door and the floor. Stevie listens to the pitter patter of the rain again, steady and rhythmic. Her body is starting to unclench, tension bleeding out by degrees.

After a few minutes, Eddie says quietly, “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Liar.”

She exhales, a half-laugh. “Maybe.”

He rolls onto his back. “For what it’s worth, your dad doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”

“Eddie—”

“No, seriously. You’re one of the best people I know. You could do anything you put your mind to.”

She turns to look at him. “You don’t have to say that.”

“I know.” Eddie’s eyes find hers in the dim light. “But I mean it anyway.”

Something in her chest loosens. She doesn’t answer, just nods, barely visible.

He smiles faintly. “Sleep, Stevie. I’ll be right here.”

“I know.”

For a long while, neither of them moves. The rain fades to a whisper. Stevie’s eyes grow heavy. She listens to the quiet rhythm of his breathing beside her, steady and safe. When she drifts off, Eddie’s still awake, staring at the ceiling, tracing constellations in the shadows. He doesn’t touch her, doesn’t say anything else—just keeps still, a quiet sentinel beside her. Stevie sleeps without dreaming.

Stevie sits on the back porch, next to Wayne, watching as Eddie tries—and fails—to rescue a bright blue kite from the tangle of branches in the old oak tree at the edge of the yard. The string dangles limply, the plastic tail flapping in the wind.

“You’d think,” Wayne says, voice gravelly with amusement, “he’d have learned from the last time. He plays with that damn kite like he’s eight and not a full grown man.”

Stevie smiles, elbow resting on her knee. “You remember that time he got stuck in a tree at the high school and he broke his wrist?”

“Mm,” Wayne hums, leaning back and glaring at his nephew trying to maneuver higher into the branches. “Seems like he’s forgotten that.”

She can hear Eddie muttering from where she’s sat, one hand gripping a lower branch and the other finally clutching the string. He’s barefoot, his jeans streaked with dirt and the front of his shirt already stained with tree bark and sap. He looks feral but entirely himself, laughing and swearing at the kite, determined to get it down. Stevie watches him, warmth blooming in her chest that feels equal parts fondness and ache.

“He’s still the same, you know?” She starts, glancing at Wayne. “I… I don’t know. I had this strange thought in my head that he’d be different. That I won’t recognize him at all when I see him again.”

Wayne glances at her, the ghost of a smile beneath his mustache. “Well, he’s not entirely the same. He’s a lot less angry these days.”

She turns toward him. “Yeah?”

He nods, eyes still on Eddie. “Boy’s been happier. Past couple of weeks especially.”

Her throat goes tight. She looks down at her hands, fingers worrying the edge of her shirt. The sound of Eddie laughing drifts across the yard—bright and unguarded—and it tugs at something deep in her.

“Well, I can’t take all the credit,” she says quietly.

Wayne makes a small sound that might be a chuckle. “Didn’t say you should. But I’ll tell you this—he didn’t start acting like that till after you came back.”

Stevie feels her cheeks warm. “That’s… nice of you to say.”

“Not bein’ nice,” Wayne says mildly. “Just observin’.”

They fall quiet again, listening to the low hum of crickets starting up in the brush. The sun’s dropping lower now, gold light spilling through the trees, casting long shadows across the yard. The house behind them creaks softly, as if exhaling from the day’s heat.

Eddie finally manages to get a good grip on the branch. He tugs the kite free with a triumphant shout—“Victory!”—and then promptly loses his balance.

“Shit—”

There’s a thud, a grunt, and then the sound of laughter.

Wayne snorts. “He’s fine. He’s built from stronger stuff nowadays, what with working all day in the shop.”

Stevie can’t help laughing, pressing a hand over her mouth. “Ah, but he’s going to have bruises tomorrow and then he’ll complain non-stop about them.”

“Wouldn’t be my nephew if he didn’t,” Wayne says.

Eddie pushes himself up, brushing dirt off his jeans. He looks toward the porch, eyes finding Stevie’s almost instinctively. When he spots her laughing, he grins wide, exaggeratedly triumphant, holding up the mangled kite like a trophy.

“Got it!” he calls out. “Told you I would!”

“Yeah, but at what cost?” she yells back.

Eddie cups a hand around his mouth. “Just my dignity!”

Stevie shakes her head, smiling so hard her cheeks hurt. Eddie drops the kite by the steps and disappears around the side of the house, humming under his breath.

When he’s gone, Wayne chuckles softly. “He missed you, you know.”

Stevie’s smile falters a little. “Yeah. I missed him too.”

Wayne gives her a sidelong look, the kind that sees right through her. “You've been gone a long time.”

“I know.” Her voice drops, almost lost to the breeze. “But… I’m back, I guess. I don’t know. It hasn’t been easy.”

“Never easy,” Wayne says simply. “Comin’ back, I mean. Folks like us, we get itchy feet. You think you’re runnin’ toward somethin’, and it turns out you’re just runnin’ away.”

She glances at him, surprised. “That’s exactly what it felt like.”

He smiles faintly. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that. Sometimes you gotta leave to figure out what you’re missin’.”

Stevie doesn’t answer right away. The sky is deepening now, streaks of violet and coral spreading across the horizon. The crickets are louder. Somewhere in the distance, a screen door slams, and Eddie curses.

“But what if I haven’t figured it out yet?” She says, softly, “I don’t really know what I’m doing, Wayne. I don’t know what comes next.”

He nods, as if he’s been waiting for her to say that. “Don’t think anyone ever really does, kid.”

“I just feel… stuck.”

“Stuck ain’t always bad.”

She frowns lightly. “No?”

“Nah.” He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Means you’re still figurin’ it out. Means you ain’t settled for somethin’ that don’t fit.”

Stevie looks down. “It doesn’t feel like that. It feels like I did all that running for so long for nothing, and I’ve wasted so much time.”

Wayne shakes his head. “Time’s funny that way. Ain’t really wasted if you learned somethin’ from it.” He pauses, glancing at her again. “You learn somethin’, didn’t you?”

She thinks about the years she spent in New York—the endless nights behind a bar counter, the noise, the blur of faces, the slow burn of loneliness she pretended was independence. And then she thinks of now—of the warmth of this place, of Eddie’s laugh in the yard, of the way the world feels just a little bit softer lately.

“Yeah,” she says finally. “I think I did. Something, at least.”

Wayne nods, satisfied. “Then there you go.”

Stevie smiles, faint but genuine. “You always make it sound so simple.”

He shrugs, a small, amused tilt of his shoulders. “Doesn’t mean it is. But simple don’t always mean easy.”

They sit in companionable silence for a while. The sky goes darker by degrees, fireflies beginning to spark in the tall grass. The air is warm, the kind of heavy summer heat that sticks to skin but feels alive.

Wayne reaches into his shirt pocket, pulls out a pack of cigarettes. He lights one, takes a drag, then offers another one to her without a word.

Stevie hesitates, then takes it, helping herself to his lighter and then watching as the cigarette begins to glow faintly between her fingers. She inhales, exhales, watches the smoke curl into the dimming light.

“You ever think about what you’d do,” she says after a while, “if you could start over?”

Wayne chuckles. “You kiddin’? I’d make the same dumb mistakes, just faster.”

That makes her laugh—a quiet, surprised sound.

He grins, pleased. “You don’t need a clean slate, Stevie. You just need to keep movin’ forward.”

She nods slowly, looking out at the yard. Eddie has returned, hair damp from a quick rinse at the outdoor tap, a towel slung over his shoulder. He’s whistling softly, barefoot, the light catching on the edge of his smile.

Wayne follows her gaze. “That boy’s got his own bruises. But he’s tougher than he looks. So are you.”

Stevie doesn’t answer. She just watches Eddie cross the yard, shaking water out of his hair. There’s something about the way he moves. Just… something. Stevie can’t bring herself to look away.

Wayne stands after a moment, stretching his back. “I’m gonna go check on the potatoes.”

Stevie looks up at him. “You’re cooking potatoes? You finally got the hang of them?”

“Don’t look so shocked,” he says, smirking. “I was feedin’ that fool long before you started kissin’ him.”

“Wayne!” she groans, mortified.

He just chuckles, heading inside. “Glad you’re back, Stevie.”

“Yeah?”

He pauses at the door, looking back at her. “Yeah. Whatever happens, I’m glad you’re back.”

For a long moment, she doesn’t know what to say. Finally, she manages, “Thanks, Wayne.”

He nods once, a small, knowing gesture, and disappears into the trailer. Stevie stays on the porch, finishing the last of the cigarette. The sky is almost indigo now, the first stars blinking faintly above the trees. Eddie’s setting the mangled kite on the porch steps, squinting at it like he can will it back into shape.

He glances up, catching her looking. “You think it’s salvageable?”

“Not a chance.”

“Harsh.”

“Honest.”

He grins, tossing it aside. “It’s only been a few hours and you’re starting to sound like Wayne.”

She laughs softly. “That’s a compliment to me.”

Eddie climbs the steps and sits beside her, close enough that their shoulders brush. The night hums around them, warm and quiet. He leans back, looking up at the stars.

“Man, the sky really looks good out here,” he says. “You ever get this in New York?”

Stevie follows his gaze. “No. No, I didn’t.”

For a while, neither of them speaks. The porch light buzzes softly, moths dancing near it. Somewhere inside, Wayne hums tunelessly as he moves around the kitchen.

Stevie glances sideways at Eddie. There’s a tiny scratch on his forearm from the tree, a smudge of dirt still on his neck. He’s grinning faintly, eyes half-lidded, relaxed in a way she hasn’t seen in years.

And in that moment, she realizes what Wayne meant—about Eddie being happier, about herself, about coming back. The world feels smaller, simpler. It doesn’t scare her as much as it should.

Eddie catches her looking and tilts his head. “What?”

“Nothing.” She smiles. “Just—glad you didn’t break your wrist again.”

“Man, I can’t believe you remember that.” He laughs, low and warm. “Me too, Stevie. Me too.”

Stevie exhales, smiling into the dark.

IV

The first call comes in the middle of the afternoon, when Stevie’s sprawled across the couch with her phone balanced on her stomach, Robin sitting cross-legged beside her, flipping through a battered magazine and pretending not to eavesdrop on the conversation her mother is having by the window.

Stevie’s scrolling mindlessly when her phone starts vibrating, Eddie’s name flashing on the screen. She doesn’t even get a “hello” out before Eddie asks, a little breathless, “How fast can you pack a bag?”

“What?” Stevie blinks, pushing up onto her elbows.

“We’re going camping.” His voice is a grin she can hear. “Lover’s Lake. Old-school. We’ve got Max, Lucas, and Dustin coming in from California—they just landed. I’m picking them up now.”

Stevie sits up straight, a smile starting to form in her face. “Camping? Also, what? Why didn’t they tell me?”

Robin looks over her magazine. “Camping where?”

“Camping at Lover’s Lake!” Eddie repeats, loud enough for Robin to hear. “I’m telling you, Henderson’s already threatening to bring out an air mattress.”

Stevie can hear muffled cheering in the background—Dustin’s voice, for sure, yelling something like, “Yeah! Tell her she’s coming!” Then another voice—Max, probably—goes, “She’s not gonna say no if you ask nicely, Munson!”

“Eddie,” Stevie starts, already laughing, “I haven’t been camping since—”

“Since what? Since you abandoned Hawkins for the city of overpriced pizza and loud taxi cabs?”

“Hey!”

“Come on, Harrington,” Eddie says, tone softening. “We’ll build a fire. Play dumb games. Henderson’ll probably burn a marshmallow. It'll be fun. Please?”

There’s so much hope tucked in those few words that Stevie can’t bring herself to say no.

She sighs. “Ugh. Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Yes, fine. But if we die of mosquito bites, so help me God, Eddie, I’m haunting the fuck out of you.”

Eddie whoops so loudly she has to pull her phone away. “You heard that, Henderson? She’s in!”

Stevie ends the call before Eddie could rope her into something stupider than camping. Melissa smiles at her before walking away, continuing her conversation somewhere else. Robin shakes her head, smirking. “Oh, man. You’re so fucking whipped.”

Stevie throws a cushion at her.

They’re parked by the lake a few hours later, old trees throwing long shadows across the clearing and stretching way into the shore. The air smells like pine and charcoal. It’s cool, a hallmark of the late summer before it gives way to autumn. 

Eddie’s already halfway through setting up a tent with Lucas, both of them arguing about where the poles should go and how they’re supposed to fit. Robin crouches nearby, trying to untangle a second tent from what looks like a hopeless knot of nylon and string.

Dustin jogs over to Stevie, breathless and winded. He’s waving two sticks in his hands. “Look what I found! Kindling!”

“Wow,” Max replies dryly, “you discovered wood in a forest. Great job.”

Stevie tries not to laugh openly as she unloads the cooler from Robin’s trunk. “You know, if we all die out here, incompetent campers that you guys are, I’m genuinely going to blame Munson.”

“Stevie, please,” Eddie says, not even looking up. “I’m a professional. Let me handle this.”

“Professional what?” Robin calls out. “Menace?”

“Survivor.” He straightens, holding two mismatched poles like weapons. “Of chaos and nature. I was a scout, you know?”

“Liar, you weren’t!”

Stevie just shakes her head at their argument, smiling despite herself.

By the time they get the tents up—crooked, unfortunately, but standing—the sun has begun its slow descent over the horizon. The light goes gold and soft, making their campsite look more forgiving and cosier than it actually is. Max and Lucas wander into the woods to gather more sticks for the fire. Stevie tags along, if only to get away from Dustin’s dramatic retelling of the last time he “nearly died” in California traffic.

The forest floor is damp and springy underfoot. Birds flit overhead.

“I’m surprised Mike couldn’t make it out.”

“Yeah, he’s a little behind on his thesis, so he can’t really go. He’ll be back here for Christmas though, so…”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Max kicks at a fallen branch. “So,” she says casually, “how long are you staying around for?”

Stevie freezes mid-step. “In Hawkins?”

“Well, yeah.” Max glances up, face unreadable. “You’ve been back, what, a few months? Are you thinking of heading out again or is this more permanent?”

Stevie turns a twig over with her foot, pretending to examine it. “I don’t know.”

“Not even a little?”

She shrugs. “Guess I haven’t really thought about it.” Which is half true. She has thought about it—just not in any way that feels productive. She doesn’t tell Max that it’s hard to be productive when Eddie’s been around to distract her from the rest of her life. Stevie clears her throat. “How about you? How’s school?”

Max raises an eyebrow. “Smooth.”

“What?”

“You’re deflecting.”

“Deflecting implies intent,” Stevie says, tossing a branch onto the growing pile. “I’m genuinely interested in your psychology classes.”

Max narrows her eyes, then smirks. “It’s good. I like it. My professor’s obsessed with cognitive dissonance, though. Which, I don’t know—maybe explains half the people I know.”

Stevie laughs. “You calling me out?”

“If the shoe fits.”

They grin at each other, and the tension dissolves, soft as dust. Lucas, up ahead, trips over his own feet, making them both laugh and startling a few birds out of their perch on the branches above them.

When they return, the fire’s already crackling, Robin and Dustin bickering over marshmallow logistics while Dustin is testing out his portable speaker like he’s running a tech demo.

Eddie looks up from where he’s crouched by the flames, a smudge of soot across his cheek. “There you are! I was about to send out a search party.”

“With who?” Stevie asks. “Your wilderness crew?”

“Exactly. Henderson was gonna build a flare gun out of a lighter and pure determination.”

“Still could,” Dustin mutters. “I don’t know when you became so boring.”

Stevie laughs, the sound bubbling up and out of her lips before she can catch it. Eddie’s grin widens at the sound, and she feels warmth crawl up her neck. Max shoots her a look that says everything and nothing at once. Stevie tries her hardest to ignore her.

The sound of sneakers slapping against the cracked sidewalk trails behind Stevie like a familiar chorus. Four voices, loud and overlapping, call out to her as she walks toward the park. She’s smiling before she even turns around.

“Stevie, hey. Stevie. Ste—Mom! Wait up!” Dustin’s voice carries the farthest, wheezing slightly. His cap is askew, backpack bouncing against his back.

“I told you not to call me that,” Stevie calls over her shoulder, trying and failing to sound stern. “It’s Stevie. You’ll make people think I’m your mother.”

“You act like one,” Max pipes up, grinning as she coasts past the others on her skateboard, kicking up dust. “Even if you’re not old enough to look like one.”

“Yeah, I guess I’m the cool kind of Mom, right?” Stevie shoots back, hands on her hips. “The kind that gets you ice cream for breakfast and lets you swear at least once a week.”

“You let us swear?” Lucas asks, eyebrows raised.

“Depends,” Stevie says. “If it’s at your campaign monsters or homework, then yeah.”

Then, from the parking lot, she hears the familiar rumble of a truck and turns just as it rolls up beside them. Eddie Munson leans out the driver’s side window, curls a little wild in the breeze, grin lazy as ever. “Well, well, if it isn’t the babysitter of the year.”

“Hey,” Stevie says, smiling despite herself. “You’re early.”

“Wayne kicked me out,” Eddie shrugs. “Apparently, blasting Metallica at these hours is a bad influence on the neighbors.”

Dustin lights up like a Christmas tree. “You listen to Metallica?”

Eddie’s grin widens. “You know Metallica?”

“Oh my god,” Stevie mutters, already sensing the trouble brewing. “Please don’t encourage him.”

It’s too late, though. Dustin is already halfway to the truck, Lucas close behind. Max and Mike hang back a little, skeptical but curious, watching Eddie as if he’s some rare creature that crawled out of the woods. Stevie crosses her arms and rolls her eyes, already regretting introducing them all to each other. “Okay, before everyone loses their minds—this is Eddie. Eddie, these are the shitheads.”

“I’m not a shithead,” Lucas says immediately.

“You absolutely are,” Stevie replies. “You’re just more subtle about it.

Eddie hops out of the van, wiping his hands on his jeans. “So these are the infamous kids you’re always talking about, huh?”

“Infamous?” Dustin echoes, beaming. “That’s a cool word.”

“Means trouble,” Max says dryly.

“Correct,” Stevie says. “And you all fit the description.”

Eddie crouches a little to their level, eyes bright with interest. “So, I hear you guys play Dungeons & Dragons.”

Immediately, it’s chaos.

“You play too?” to “What’s your character?” to “Do you DM?” to “Can you do voices?”

Stevie watches the way Eddie’s grin grows with each question. He’s in his element now—hands moving, eyes alive, throwing words back like he’s been waiting his whole life for this kind of captive audience.

“Oh, I don’t just play,” he tells them, dramatic as ever. “I lead a campaign. Full of monsters, chaos, and very questionable moral decisions.”

Max leans on her bike, unimpressed. “Sounds like Hawkins.”

Eddie barks a laugh. “You’re not wrong.”

They talk for a few minutes—or rather, Eddie and the kids do. Stevie just watches. She’s standing a few feet away, watching as the sunlight slides through the trees and hits the side of Eddie’s face. He looks like he belongs there, like he always should have been part of this messy, ridiculous group.

When Dustin starts explaining his character’s stats—loudly, passionately, and with hand gestures—Stevie catches Eddie’s eye. He gives her a helpless little shrug, equal parts ‘what did you get me into?’ and ‘this is kind of amazing’.

Stevie just grins. She steps closer, leans in, and presses a quick kiss to his cheek. His skin is warm from the sun. He freezes for just a second, eyes wide.

“They’re your shared problem now,” Stevie whispers, just loud enough for him to hear.

Eddie blinks, mock horror dawning on his face. “Wait—what?”

But Stevie’s already walking away, waving over her shoulder as Dustin starts begging Eddie to teach him how to roll better perception checks.

By nightfall, they’ve roasted a tragic number of marshmallows and burned through every ghost story worth telling.

The air cools just enough to make the fire comforting. Someone’s phone plays a quiet, scratchy song—The Cranberries, so it’s probably Robin’s doing—and the six of them fall into that easy, in-between quiet that only happens with people who’ve known one another too long to need to fill the silence.

Stevie leans back against a log, nursing a can of cheap beer. Firelight flickers over Eddie’s profile, sharp and soft all at once, his laugh low and unhurried.

For a moment, she lets herself watch him—the slope of his nose, the way his fingers tap against his thigh like he’s playing invisible strings.

It’s funny. Stevie used to know every single one of his gestures, having meticulously organized them in her head when they were younger. Now, she’s learning them again, and it doesn’t feel as hard as she expected it to be.

“Hey,” he says suddenly, catching her eye. “You look like you’re thinking too hard.”

“I always think too hard.”

“Maybe try thinking less.”

“You volunteering to teach me?”

He grins. “I’m a terrible teacher.”

“That’s true,” Robin calls out. “Remember when you tried to teach Dustin how to drive?”

Dustin sputters. “Hey, I did fine!”

“You hit a trash can!”

“I avoided the dog!”

Everyone bursts out laughing. Eddie throws up his hands in mock offense. “See? This is why I don’t help people. My generosity is unappreciated.”

“Your recklessness is unappreciated,” Lucas corrects.

Stevie just shakes her head, smiling into her drink, offering nothing in Dustin’s defense.

The hours crawl by fast until, one by one, people start turning in. Max and Lucas go first, still arguing about whose sleeping bag is warmer. Robin goes next, yawning dramatically and mumbling something about early-onset old age. Dustin tries his best to linger, but Stevie gives him a look that says bedtime, and then off he goes, groaning his way into the tent he’s sharing with Max and Lucas.

Just like that, the noise fades. The night settles into something softer, with only the pop and crackle of the fire and the soft lapping of the waves by the shore breaking the silence. Eddie sits still by the fire, cross-legged, a beer beside him and his guitar resting on his lap.

Stevie only hesitates a bit before joining him, sitting close enough to feel the warmth radiating from the flames—and from him.

Eddie glances up. “Hey. Didn’t think you’d still be awake.”

“I could say the same about you.”

“I’m the host. Gotta make sure none of the campers burn the place down.”

Stevie smirks. “You’re doing great at that.”

He chuckles, strumming lightly—nothing polished, just fragments, the kind of playing that sounds like thinking out loud.

“You still play so well” she says after a while. “You know, I used to be so jealous? I wished I could play guitar for so long until I found out you get calluses. And then that desire went away completely.”

He shrugs. “Yeah, well. It keeps me sane. You want a song?”

“Depends,” she teases. “Is it going to be something that makes me cry?”

“Depends,” he fires back. “Are you gonna listen?”

“You know I will.” Stevie folds her arms, feigning exasperation. “Fine. Play, rockstar.”

Eddie smiles—slow, a little shy—and then starts.

The melody is simple, aching in that way only some songs can be. The chords morph into something more familiar. Stevie smiles when she recognizes the song, something wild inside her settling into something quieter. His voice, when it comes, is softer than she remembers, low and unguarded. The sound fills the clearing, rippling through the trees, echoing faintly over the water.

Stevie’s throat tightens.

Eddie looks up at her mid-verse, and for a second, it’s just the two of them, caught in the hush of firelight and music.

When the song ends, neither of them says anything. The silence after feels heavy, but not uncomfortable. Just... full.

“Eddie,” Stevie says finally, voice barely above a whisper.

He sets the guitar aside, eyes still on her. “Yeah?”

“I really, really missed you.”

He smiles, small and knowing. “Me too.”

The words hang between them, soft as smoke.

Stevie’s heart thuds painfully. She doesn’t even realize she’s leaning in until she sees the flicker of surprise in his eyes—and then something else entirely.

Eddie meets her halfway, like he always does.

The kiss is slow, tentative at first, like neither of them wants to risk breaking the moment. Then it deepens—warmth and familiarity and something that feels like every almost they’ve ever had.

Stevie feels the roughness of his palm against her cheek, the faint taste of smoke and beer, the hum of the night all around them. She turns her head, briefly, and something in her chest catches when Eddie chases her lips with his. She plants one on his jaw before their lips meet again. Eddie pulls her closer—much closer. Like if he tries hard enough, he could fuse them both into one.

It’s dizzying and grounding all at once. The catch and then the fall.

When they finally part, for good this time, Eddie’s breathing a little unevenly.

He looks at her like he’s trying to memorize her. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that again.”

Stevie swallows, heart still racing. All the years. All the seconds. “Yeah,” she says softly. “I think I do.”

He smiles—that same lopsided, stupidly beautiful grin—and, oh, how did Stevie ever live without this? And she can’t help but laugh, quiet and breathless.

“Come on,” he murmurs. “You’re freezing.”

He reaches for the blanket draped nearby and wraps it around her shoulders. Stevie tugs half of it over him, and they sit like that for a while, close enough that their knees touch, the firelight dancing across their faces.

Somewhere behind them, someone snores. The lake hums quietly. Stevie leans her head against his shoulder and closes her eyes. She feels Eddie press a soft kiss against her hair.

For once, she doesn’t think about where she’s supposed to be, or what comes next.

Just this. The slow, steady beat of something finding its way back.