Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

i'm like the water when your ship rolled in that night
rough on the surface but you cut through like a knife

i.
welcome to hellfire

Dustin was first out of the truck the morning Eddie pulled up to the building that was about to be the new home of Hellfire Ink. Lucas killed the ignition on the U-Haul and Eddie watched, amused, as Dustin practically danced from the passenger side to the back, bouncing on the balls of his feet at the padlock on the roll-up door.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,” he clapped his hands three times.

“You know you aren’t living here, right?” Erica asked, getting out of her own car, and shaking her head at Dustin. “It’s just Hellfire downstairs and just Eddie upstairs.”

“Just Eddie?” the man in question repeated with a laugh. “Is that what you guys call me when I’m not around?” He waited for a second while Lucas caught Dustin’s contagious grin. “What a lame nickname! I was hoping for something like Awesome Eddie or Eddie the Fearless or even—”

“How ‘bout Eddie the Time Waster?” Erica suggested, crossing her arms over her chest. Her tone was flat, but he caught a sparkle of amusement in her eyes before she glanced to the lock again. “Let’s roll. The sooner we’re set up the sooner the money goes back to flowing in the right direction in my bank account.”

Eddie’s head tipped to one side in consideration as three more cars arrived. Steve’s car pulled up directly behind his, followed by the Wheelers and Byers, sharing Nancy’s car, and Elle and her dad bringing up the rear. Robin caught his eye as she clumsily attempted to untangle herself from Steve’s automatic seatbelt, a pink frosted donut clutched between her teeth, and offered him two thumbs up. “The lady makes an excellent point,” Eddie said and pulled the key from his pocket. “Let the heavy lifting commence.”

The moving bargain was always the same: an early down-payment of coffee and donuts at the start of the day and a final installment of pizza and beer once the last box had been unloaded.

By the time Uncle Wayne arrived with a stack of pies and two cases of Coors, Eddie was beginning to regret having forgotten where he packed his sneakers. He’d lost track of how many times he’d climbed the seventeen stairs to his new apartment in his unforgiving combat boots and his back was starting to ache in a way that reminded him he was much closer to thirty than twenty.

While they all slowly filtered into the living room and flopped on his thrift store furniture, Eddie heard a strange noise. A clunk followed by a rush of water. He stopped from where he and Mike were pushing boxes towards one another to make another table and stood up. “What is that?”

“I hope you don’t mind!” Joyce’s head popped around the side of the folding door in the hallway. “I found a garbage bag of sheets and towels, so I just threw them in your washer to freshen them up.” She stepped away from the machines and closed the doors again, slightly muffling the sound of the water running.

“Aw, Mama B,” he shook his head fondly and crossed the room to grab her in a hug on her way to the kitchen. “Thanks for mothering.”

He kissed the side of her head with a loud smack that had her laughing as she swatted his arm and returned to her search for paper towels. “I can’t help it.”

They ate their pizza scattered and slumped around the room like toys someone had forgotten to put away. The early May humidity had put a heavy dent in the likelihood of any of them catching a second wind and helping him unpack.

That was fine. He didn’t know where he was going to put anything yet anyway.

Across the room, Steve and Gareth were studying the back of his television. “When’s the cable getting hooked up?” Steve asked, shoving his hair away from his sweaty brow.

Eddie shook his head. “Harrington, you know I don’t pay for that shit.”

Steve’s shoulders slumped. “Guess I’m not watching the game here.”

“Thus, continuing a twelve-year tradition,” Robin chirped succinctly before she folded her slice of red pepper and pineapple and took a huge bite. Not bothering to swallow first, she looked at Eddie. “Eds, can we get a tour?”

“You guys just spent all day roaming around this place,” he reminded with a laugh. “What more is there to tour?”

“Well yeah, but we just put everything for the shop downstairs in a big pile,” Mike reminded him. “We don’t know where anything is going to, like, go, or how it’s set up or going to look.”

“Yeah,” Robin agreed, not moving when Steve nudged her legs, forcing him to step over her with an aggrieved sigh. “And I mean, this a big deal. You’ve been running Hellfire out of the back of Uncle Wayne’s shop forever.”

“What’s wrong with my shop?” Wayne asked with mock hurt and genuine defensiveness of his tool and die shop where, until a few weeks ago, an unstable labyrinth of privacy curtains and temporary walls had served as the headquarters of Hellfire Ink.

“Nothing,” Robin assured him with a grin. “I love it there. But Eddie, now you have this whole beautiful place to yourself and we,” she shrugged, “y’know, we want to see what your vision is.”

“And they’re nosy,” Elle put in from where she was quietly eating her pizza in the corner.

“And we’re nosy,” Steve agreed. “Not to mention I’ve been schlepping flowers across the street for way too long, waiting for someone to buy this place and it’s pretty exciting that—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Eddie held up a hand. “Rented,” he corrected. “I rented this place.”

“Rented with an option to buy after three years,” Dustin added, pointing from the stool next to the kitchen counter.

“Yeah, alright,” he rolled his eyes and tiredly got to his feet. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” He cleared his throat. “Anyone who wants a tour, follow me. Henderson,” he pointed back to his favorite enthusiastic mop-top. “Come tell everyone about your vision.”

He’d been trying to play it cool when Robin brought it up, but if he was honest, Eddie was excited. Robin was right—it was a big deal to finally have his own space to look and function like a legitimate business. Dustin had been mapping and organizing the whole space since they took the first tour with the landlord three months ago.

“So, we’re going to clean this case out and put the shelves back in,” he said, leading the group through the front of the shop. “The flash posters and flippy display frame things up on the side walls so people can look while they’re waiting. And then I’m thinking we can put the jewelry on one half, maybe some like, after-care products over here,” he motioned to the left side of the main display case. “And if Eddie ever lets me expand into merchandising—”

“One step at a time,” Eddie called over the heads of their friends. “Let’s make it through the first year, then we can talk about screen printing.”

“I’m telling you,” Dustin said, repeating himself for the hundredth time. “It would be a windfall.”

“Keep walkin’, nerd,” Erica interrupted with a laugh. “I want to see where you’re going to have me set up.”

“And me,” Elle chimed in.

“Alright, alright,” he groused and led the group through the open doorway and into the back of the shop. “Okay, so now that we actually have walls—”

“And doors!” Eddie chimed in. “They’re in the basement, I’ve just got to bring them up.”

“Walls and doors,” Dustin corrected himself. “Talk about that windfall! We’ve got the piercing station over here,” he pointed to the small room to the right with a half-wall dividing the space. “Where Erica and Elle can punch holes in whoever asks.”

“Gonna be holey as hell in here,” Lucas said with a grin in his sister’s direction.

His stupid joke drew a laugh from Will, Mike, and Dustin before Erica frowned back. “You are so lame,” she stated plainly.

“Moving right along,” Dustin said quickly. “The other two rooms are for the main event. Will,” he pointed to Hellfire’s first apprentice tattoo artist. “You get this room here,” he motioned to the first small room to the left. “Which comes with the cabinets with the doors that don’t stay shut and a lovely view of the neighboring brick wall.”

Will grinned. “Just what I always wanted.”

“You’re living the dream now, bud,” his brother squeezed his shoulders encouragingly.

“And finally,” Dustin cleared his throat, “where all the magic really happens.” They stopped at the last room in the small hallway. It was larger than the other two and unlike in Will’s space, Eddie had already replaced the wooden cabinets with stainless steel and installed a new stainless countertop. “Eddie’s studio.”

The walls needed to be painted and decorated with art, the client chair wasn’t where he’d like it, and his rolling stool was somewhere out front in the mess of boxes and furniture, but Eddie’s heart still swelled with pride at the sight of his new little studio.

***

Three days later, the warm fuzzies were starting to wear off as the work of settling and unpacking both a home and a business was starting to get under his skin.

“Dustin!” Eddie called, blindly making his way to the top of the basement stairs with a stack of boxes in his hands. He was met with a silence that had him rolling his eyes. “Goddamnit,” he muttered under his breath, squishing his face to the side of the box to be able to peer down at his boots as they neared the top step. “Henderson, where the hell are you? And why did you put the gloves all the way in basement?”

Something from the front of the shop caught his ear. The bell above the door—the one he hadn’t decided if he’s keeping yet. Even more frustrated that he’d just been yelling to an empty shop, Eddie kept hold of the boxes of rubber gloves and stalked to the front of the building. “Henderson, if you’re going to go out can you at least tell me so I’m not talking to myself like an asshole?”

He dropped the boxes and stopped short. A petite redhead stood in the center of his shop. Narrow shoulders dusted with freckles peeked out from the sleeves of her green sundress; she had her hair pulled up in a high ponytail and secured with a scrunchie, and a nervous smile on her face. She was holding a large vase full of daisies and sunflowers and broad, green leaves.

Eddie blinked. “Uh. Hi.”

She shifted the vase to one hand and waved. “Hi,” she said before her teeth found her bottom lip.

“You, uh.” He blinked again. “You aren’t…Dustin.”

“No,” she smiled and shook her head. “I’m Chrissy.” Her smile was the kind that made him want to give her one in return. “Chrissy Cunningham. I work—” she motioned with her free hand to the street, “over at Tiger Lily’s? The um, the flower shop? Across the street.”

Eddie offered his hand, pleased when she didn’t hesitate to shake it. “Hi, Chrissy Cunningham from Tiger Lily’s across the street. I’m Eddie Munson. I work—” he glanced around. “Here. Welcome to Hellfire Ink.”

She beamed and squeezed his hand once more before she let it go and held out the vase of daisies and sunflowers. “Welcome to the neighborhood, Eddie Munson.”

He blinked again and looked at the vase. “These are…for me?”

She nodded and looked at him expectantly until he reached out and took them from her. “Hellfire Ink,” she repeated, glancing around the still-unsettled front room. “You’re a…tattoo parlor?”

“No,” he shook his head. “We specialize in Satanic calligraphy.”

 Chrissy stared at him for a long beat before she snorted and covered her mouth to hide a laugh. Suddenly, Eddie wanted to make her do that again. And again. “Satanic calligraphy,” she repeated, shaking her head. “That’ll definitely get you featured on the front of the chamber of business’ monthly newsletter.”

Eddie brought a fist down in front of his face. “Validation at last.”

The bell jingled again and Dustin shuffled in Mike, Will, and Lucas close behind. They all held white Styrofoam cups and were sucking on straws. Dustin brightened as soon as he saw them. “Hey!”

“Hey!” Eddie echoed. “Where were you guys?”

The four of them stopped like guilty teenagers just inside the door. Dustin held up his cup, looking innocent. “Smoothies.”

He resisted the urge to sigh, not feeling like playing the part of the long-suffering babysitter quite so soon after meeting the cutest flower delivery woman he’d ever seen. “Could you uh—“ he coughed turned around to set the vase on the empty glass case. “Could you maybe tell me next time before you just wander off? I was calling up and and down the stairs like an idiot.”

“We left you a note,” Mike said, crossing the room to the space just beside the cash register. He held up a small yellow square of paper that simply read Smoothies in Dustin’s messy handwriting.

“And we got you one,” Lucas added, holding out another cup.  He glanced from Eddie to Chrissy and his smile brightened to something a little more charming. “You’re from Tiger Lily’s right?”

Chrissy grinned. “I am! You must be Lucas.”

Eddie watched, confused, as Lucas straightened up taller. “Did Max tell you that I work here?”

“Work?” he coughed.

No one paid him any attention.

Chrissy shook her head, her nose did a little scrunch of confusion. “No, Steve did.” Lucas’ shoulders dropped. “How do you know Max?”

“Oh Jesus,” Dustin muttered, turning away to return to the box of steel studs he must have been unpacking when the urge for a smoothie hit.

“Don’t ask,” Will pleaded under his breath.

“Never mind,” Lucas said, defeated. He pushed the other cup into Eddie’s hands and went to help Dustin at the counter.

Chrissy watched as the quartet crowded around the jewelry case and looked back at Eddie with a bemused half-smile. “They all work for you?”

“No,” he shook his head once and dropped his voice. “I hired one of them to help out with scheduling a few days a week and they all just started showing up every day.” He let out a quick sigh. “That was four years ago.”

She laughed again. A quick, bubbling delight that made Eddie feel like he needed to fight for a breath. “Okay, well I should get back to the shop. I just wanted to drop those off and welcome you to the neighborhood and tell you that if you ever…uh…” her teeth found her bottom lip again and she bit back a quiet laugh. “I don’t know. Have a burning desire for hydrangeas or something.”

“Oh,” he nodded and schooled his features to look serious. “Absolutely. Top of my list for that very specific need.”

She started backing up toward the door, slowly. “Okay,” she laughed again. “Um. I’ll see you around, I guess.” She put her hand on the door and slipped out without another word.

When the bell jingled this time, Eddie decided he liked the sound.

***

Eddie spent his next few days with his head buried in the remaining work of getting unpacked and set up. He forced himself to get up early and stay up late, making sure everything was set and pristine and ready for inspection at the beginning of next week.

Once the shop was settled, awaiting a gold star from the county, Eddie turned his productivity to the small apartment upstairs.

He’d never been a neat freak, but there was something to be said about starting fresh in a new place. Making his bed, keeping the laundry in the basket and not on the floor in front of the basket, ensuring the floors were swept more than once a presidential term.

He was pushing the little roller vac around the short, dense carpet in the living room when he noticed movement through the front window.

If he craned his neck a little too hard to the right, he could see the front of Tiger Lily’s. He watched, curious, as a man with blonde hair in a practiced Tom Cruise-backcomb walked to the front of the store and held open the door. A minute later, Chrissy crossed the storefront and paused in the doorway.

Eddie kept watching, feeling only slightly voyeuristic as they spoke for a minute. Chrissy shook her head and jerked her thumb back toward the inside of the shop. Another minute of conversation and the Tom Cruise devotee leaned in and brushed his lips to hers.

From across the street, Eddie felt an unpleasant twist in his gut and considered stepping back from the window.

But he didn’t. He kept watching as Wannabe Tom tapped the tip of Chrissy’s nose and then left her to close the door behind him. She waited a moment before she turned all the locks on the door and picked up a broom beside the counter.

She swept for only a few seconds before she stopped and looked around the shop. Her lips turned downward in a thoughtful frown. Eddie’s insides twisted in a different direction. He stepped away and continued with his own cleaning while his own troubling thoughts chased themselves around in a circle.

He didn't know her at all, he reminded himself on one of the go-rounds. But it still didn’t seem right that a woman so bright and delightful around others could look so sad and lost when she was alone.

Chapter Text

and if it was an open-shut case
i never would've known from that look on your face
lost in your current like a priceless wine

ii.
eowyn

“Max, come on,” Steve was whining when Chrissy hung up the phone. “You can’t just keep expecting us to split time with you and Lucas like we’re the children of a broken home.”

From where she was sorting delivery invoices, Max looked up and narrowed her eyes across the small storefront. “Children of a broken home?”  she repeated in disbelief. “Where are you even getting this stuff? The Young and the Restless?”

Chrissy smirked and did her best to smother a smile between her lips. Steve turned to her. “C, please, tell her that she needs to suck it up and come to Robin’s birthday party this weekend.”

“Oh,” Chrissy shook her head. “I’m not getting in the middle of any of that,” she assured them both. It earned her a smile from Max and a heavy sigh from Steve. “But Max, you do need to start doing local deliveries at some point,” she added. “I know you don’t want to accidentally cross paths with Lucas, but you may have to bite the bullet once wedding season heats up.”

The smile disappeared from Max’s face, and she scowled. “Did Eddie really have to rent the only place in the city that I can see directly into from anywhere I stand in this store?”

Chrissy watched as Steve frowned and came from behind the counter to stand in the center of the shop. He squinted through the main windows. “How hard are you looking?” he asked, trying another angle from a few feet to the right. “Because I can’t really see into—”

“I mean, shouldn’t there be some kind of voting system or…I don’t know, neighborhood poll that we could take and vote on whether or not a new business is allowed to just set up shop right across the street?” Max continued as if Steve hadn’t spoken.

“No,” Chrissy said at the same time as Steve.

Max scowled again. “Well, why not?”

“Because it’s against a shit load of really…good…laws,” Steve argued, standing in a third spot, squinting across the street. “Like. A lot of them. Really?” he turned to look at her again. “You can’t think of a single reason why that might be a huge problem?”

Max rolled her eyes. “Okay, obviously you wouldn’t be allowed to vote people out of a neighborhood for gross, racist, bigoted reasons—"

“Anyway, they’re not hurting anybody,” Chrissy cut in to remind her with a bounce of her shoulders. “And they mostly keep off hours.”

Not that she was paying attention, she planned to say if either of them asked. Not that she’d found herself looking out the front window a little more in the last three weeks since she’d delivered her welcome bouquet and tried not to make an idiot of herself in front of her new neighbor.

She didn’t mention that her mother actually had petitioned the city already and asked if they could do anything to force Hellfire Ink to relocate. She’d claimed the mere presence of a tattoo parlor on their quiet little pedestrian byway was deteriorating the moral fiber of the neighborhood.

Chrissy had pretended she hadn’t heard the city council’s administrator laughing through the phone before Laura Cunningham had slammed the receiver down in a huff.

“And seriously, what is the deal with you two, anyway?” Steve asked, interrupting her train of thought. Before Chrissy could address the sudden rush of panic that came out of nowhere and had no place spiking at the front of her mind the way it had, Steve continued. “Why does he think you’re on a break if you think you’re broken up?”

“I don’t think we’re broken up,” Max said, repeating herself for at least the tenth time in the last month. “I’m a hundred percent sure that I knew what I was saying when I said, ‘Lucas, I need to break up with you.'”

Steve dropped his elbows to the counter and shook his head. “I don’t even know why I care so much. Or at all.”

“Because you’ve been hanging out with the same losers for most of your life and despite your best efforts,” Max let out a grievous sigh, “the gravitational pull is unrelenting.”

The phone rang before anyone could comment on Max’s self-deprecation and she reached over and snatched it off the hook. “Tiger Lily’s, this is Max. How can I help you today?”

Steve shifted his focus from Max and over to Chrissy. “Do you want to come to Robin’s birthday party this weekend?”

She felt her lip purse in thought. “Maybe,” she said, even though she really meant yes. “When is it? And what’s the plan?”

“Bowling,” he said, sounding as though he’d rather be getting his teeth pulled. “And if I know Robin, also a dinner of soft pretzels, spicy mustard, and Zima because she is gross.”

Chrissy grinned. “That sounds like fun,” she admitted before asking again. “When’s her birthday?”

“Thursday,” Steve said, and her hopes rose for a second before he continued. “But we’re all going out on Saturday.”

Her smile dropped. “I can’t on Saturday,” she sighed. “It’s Jason’s cousin’s baby shower and I promised I’d help his mom.” If she was honest, Chrissy couldn’t recall if she had said she’d help his mom. Or if someone else had said it for her. If she combed her memory, she was fairly sure she’d find the answer.  “But would you bring a card for me, if I give it to you before the weekend?”

“Yeah, of course,” Steve smiled as Max ended her call and punched the Off button with her thumb.

She set the cordless phone on the counter. “Uh, Chrissy, that was your mom—”

The front door opened, and two older women entered the shop. Steve straightened immediately and turned on his bright, charming smile. “Good afternoon, ladies,” he said smoothly, racing to greet them at a light jog.

Chrissy felt her pulse spike again as Max came around to her side of the counter. “Did she say what she wanted?”

“She said she’s coming down at closing,” Max said, keeping her voice low. “To meet you and Jason—”

She closed her eyes and let out a steady exhale. “Right,” she nodded once. “Dinner.” With her mother and Jason and Jason’s parents. Where her mother would watch every single bite of food that went into her daughter’s mouth. Where she’d proudly list Chrissy’s younger brother’s most recent accomplishments at Northwestern and call him Doctor Kyle even though he was only in his junior year of undergrad.

Where there would be talk about Jason’s work, and little league team he coached, his nieces and nephews, and a not-so-subtle nudge that Mr. and Mrs. Carver expected their youngest son to provide them with the same bushel of grandbabies as his older brothers.

At the feeling of Max’s hand on her wrist, Chrissy opened her eyes to see her friend offering a sympathetic smile. “Y’know, I was going to offer to take that delivery for Tim Huang’s wife, for their anniversary? But you can totally have it if you want an excuse to get out of the shop for a half hour before we close.”

Chrissy felt herself mirror Max’s smile. “You definitely weren’t going to offer to take that delivery.”

“Okay,” Max shrugged. “But I was going to make Steve take it.”

Her grin widened. “I can take it,” she assured her and flipped her wrist to clasp Max’s hand in hers. “Thanks.”

Steve had made his sale by the time Chrissy had gathered the bouquet of orange and white roses for Lucy Huang. He held open the door for her while, from inside the shop, and prompted by absolutely nothing, Max declared, “Ugh, fine, I’ll go bowling with you guys.”

***

She didn’t have a sweater. The chill she made up—the one that required the sweater she didn’t have and didn’t leave at the shop—made little sense six days before Memorial Day. But nobody questioned her when she said she was cold and wanted to grab her sweater before she went home after dinner.

Jason offered to wait for her and drive her the rest of the way back to her apartment, but she turned him down, claiming she’d rather walk.

That part was true. She always liked to walk after these dinners—it helped her clear her head and resettle her nerves. And with her small apartment being only a few blocks away, it was a nice distance to ensure she felt a little less like crawling out of her skin by the time she got home.

Even though there was nothing she needed inside, Chrissy had unlocked the door and gone inside to maintain her charade before Jason pulled away. She waited in the back office for a safe five minutes to ensure he was gone before she left the shop and locked up again. She was about to dig for her pepper spray and start her walk home when a strange sound stopped her.

A meow.

Chrissy stilled and looked up from her purse as she heard it again. A curious sounding meow that started with a trilling little purr and ended like a question. She looked around, surprised to find a chubby gray and white tabby sitting a few feet away, studying her with large green eyes. She brightened and bent down, holding out a hand. “Hey there,” she said quietly. “Where did you come from?”

To her surprise, the cat trotted right over and smashed its head against her outstretched palm. A deep, happy purr revved up immediately and intensified as Chrissy scratched her nails between its ears. There was a small chunk taken out of one of them and up close, she could see patches missing from the animal’s otherwise smooth coat. “Bit of brawler, huh?” she asked, receiving another purr in response. It wasn’t until the tabby stretched its head up and harder into her hand that Chrissy saw the collar on its neck. A band of black leather with silver circular studs. She had to laugh. “Look at you, tough girl,” she commented before a sound startled them both and she looked across the street to see Eddie locking up his own front door.

Chancing a scratch, Chrissy reached out and scooped up the cat, acting on a hunch. There was no struggle, just a snuggle under her chin and a squeeze of sharpened paws against her arm. “Hey!” she called, getting his attention. “Is this your cat?”

Eddie looked surprised for a moment before his eyes dropped to the animal in her arms and a wide, bright smile split across his face. Chrissy had started to cross the street before she realized it and met him on his sidewalk, close enough to see the deep dimples she’d caught herself thinking about since the first time she’d met him. Eddie reached out and took the cat from her. “Nah, this little hellraiser belongs to no one but herself,” he said, cuddling her to his chest with one arm. He dropped his chin and kissed her between her ears while he dug for his key again. “But since it keeps her outta the slammer, I occasionally claim her as my cat.”

Chrissy giggled. “And you bought her matching accessories,” she commented with a nod to the studded cuff he wore on his right wrist.

He grinned again. “This is the general manager of Hellfire Ink. She has to wear the uniform,” he said. “Eowyn Munson, meet Chrissy Cunningham.”

As if reading from a script, Eowyn let out another quiet trilling purr when Chrissy reached out to pet her again. “Eowyn,” she echoed. “That’s fitting. It seems like she’s a fighter.” Eddie’s eyebrows lifted just slightly, and she laughed again, feeling slightly self-conscious. “It’s from The Lord of the Rings, right?”

He glanced down for a second before he found his key and unlocked the tattoo parlor’s deadbolt. “Uh, yeah,” he said, propping the door open with his narrow hip just a few inches. He kissed Eowyn’s head again and set her gently on the black sofa Chrissy had watched him wrestle into the shop the day before it had opened. “Be good,” he said quietly. “No more sneaking out.” He pulled the door closed again and twisted the locks before he looked back to Chrissy and finished answering her question. “Yeah, it is from The Lord of the Rings,” he said. “Most people don’t recognize it right off the bat like that.”

“Well, I thought The Hobbit was a little better, but—”

Eddie drew a quick, sharp inhale through his teeth and then coughed before he shook his head like he was shaking off a thought. “So, aside from returning wayward felines, what brings you to my side of the street?”

“Oh,” she looked down and felt her nose scrunch. “I was just out, and I forgot something at the shop. And…then…thought I’d say hi and see how you’re doing.”  

She didn’t know why she felt so nervous. Why it sounded like she’d made up an excuse to come over and talk to him. It might have had something to do with the way Eddie was studying her; looking at her with an active curiosity that made her want to put her hands over her face. “Well,” he said slowly, after a moment had passed. “Right now, I’m hungry. I don’t have any food in my house, so I was just going to—”

“Go grocery shopping?” she guessed.

He smiled again. “Not exactly,” he answered and glanced toward the end of the block and the neon, slice of pizza rotating slowly above the entrance to Palace Pizza. “You can join me if you want.” He waited for another second while she hesitated and added, “No pressure. I don’t mind eating alone.” He cleared his throat. “All by myself. With no one to talk to. And no one to explain why they would ever admit something as controversial as thinking The Hobbit was the better of Tolkien’s work—”

“I just liked the story better!” she exclaimed, thinking if she knew him better, she would have reached out and given him a light smack. “But, um, no thank you,” she heard herself say as she glanced down at their shoes again. “I just got back from dinner and—” The rest of her sentence died as her stomach let out a loud, low growl of hunger. She clamped a useless hand to her mid-section and felt her cheeks burn.

When she looked up again, Eddie was smothering a smile between his lips. “Sorry,” he asked, tilting his head to one side. “What were you lying?”

Chrissy felt herself laugh again and shook her head. “Pizza sounds really good,” she admitted. “If you really don’t mind the company.”

For someone so skinny, Eddie ate a lot. He sat across from her with three huge slices, all with different toppings, while she worked on taking tiny bites of the single slice of cheese she’d purchased. He eyed her choice while shaking red pepper flakes on a slice of sausage and mushroom. “Are you sure that’s going to be enough?” he asked.

She nodded. “I’ll be fine,” she assured him. “I actually was out to dinner earlier. This isn’t all I’ve eaten today.”

“Okay,” he accepted her answer with a bounce of his shoulders. “Where’d you go?”

“Enzo’s,” she answered, unable to keep a sigh from wrapping around the word before it left her mouth.

Eddie lifted his eyebrows. “That good, huh?”

For a second, she considered lying and saying it was great, that she was just tired, that there was nothing to read into. But Eddie’s eyes were still curious and beneath that curiosity, she saw kindness and a little concern. “It wasn’t the dinner,” she admitted quietly. “It was the company.” She ripped off a tiny piece of flour-dusted crust and popped it into her mouth. “My mom likes to organize these family dinners with my boyfriend and his parents? It’s…” she shook her head. “It’s a lot.”

Across the table, Eddie chewed thoughtfully before he swallowed. “You don’t like them? They don’t like you?”

“No,” she shook her head. “It’s nothing like that. They’re…lovely,” she said, catching the way Eddie smiled and mouthed the word lovely to himself before he took another bite. “They are,” she insisted. “They just…I don’t know. Between them and my mom and Jason—”

“Mmm,” Eddie made a sound to interrupt. “Jason,” he said when he’d swallowed again. “That’s the Ken doll boyfriend?”

Chrissy giggled before she could stop herself and shook her head. “I’m…not agreeing with that.”

“Yeah, but you’re not disagreeing with that,” he noted, making her giggle again. “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding genuine. “I interrupted. Keep going.”

“It’s fine,” she assured him. “It’s just…I don’t know. I know everyone’s parents pressure them in one way or another. So, it’s probably just that when we all have dinner together, all those expectations sort of…” she mimed stacking blocks on top of one another. “Compound. I guess.”

Eddie was studying her again. He took his time finishing the last bite of one of his slices before he asked, “What kind of expectations?” while he reached for a napkin from the chrome dispenser.

She shook her head. “Nothing crazy. They all just really like everything the way it is and expect that it’s…just…” she let out a joyless laugh. “Never ever going to change, I guess. Like I’m going to run the shop forever and Jason and I are going to get married and have a dozen kids and everything’s just going to be…” she looked up from where she’d been pressing the tips of her fingers together so hard that her nailbeds were turning white. She relaxed her hands. “Perfect.” Eddie only had time to consider this for a second before the reality of what she’d just said—to a total stranger, no less—caught up with her. “I’m sorry,” she blurted out. “This is nothing you want to hear about after working all day.”

“No, no,” he disagreed quickly. “This is good. I mean—” he stopped and corrected himself. “Not that you had a bad night. That’s not good. But this kind of conversation,” he motioned to the space between them with a pointer finger sporting a heavy silver skull ring. “This is good. I hate small talk; gimme the heavy shit.”

“The heavy shit,” she echoed with a quiet laugh before she nodded. “I hate small talk, too.”

Eddie smiled again and she felt an inconvenient and unfamiliar swoop of her stomach. She forced herself to take another bite—a real bite that she had to concentrate on chewing and swallowing—to pull her gaze away from his kind, dark eyes.

“So, what would you do?” he asked once she’d swallowed and sipped at her Diet Coke. “Instead of running a flower shop,” he clarified. “What would you want to do instead?”

“Oh,” she frowned. “I don’t know. It’s not like there’s anything wrong with running a successful flower shop,” she reminded herself. “I’ve been doing it since I was twelve. I don’t even know if I’d know how to do anything else.”

“Okay,” he nodded with a smile. “But that’s not what I asked.” He waited a beat before he ducked his chin slightly and forced her to meet his eyes. “What does Chrissy Cunningham want to be when she grows up?”

She opened her mouth to answer before she realized that no words were forming on her tongue. Her mind was totally blank; she closed her mouth again. She let out a shocked little laugh and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that before.”

Eddie grinned. “Well now someone has,” he shrugged. “Call it a starting point.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly, hoping he could tell that she meant it.

“See what you would have missed if I believed your lies about not being hungry?” he asked, making her giggle again before a thought appeared in his expression. “Hey, speaking of you lying—”

“What?” she squeaked. “You say that like I’m some kind of—”

“Liar?” he finished for her, amused. “A lying liar who lies, for instance?”

“What else did I lie about?” she demanded lightly.

“When you came to the shop the other day,” he said, reaching for the parmesan cheese. “To drop off those flowers.”

“Uh-huh…”

“And Lucas asked you if Max told you about him…” Chrissy dropped her eyes and pursed her lips into a straight line. Eddie snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “I knew it.”

“I promised her I wouldn’t tell Lucas she talked about him,” she insisted as a blush colored her cheeks again. She covered her face and shook her head. “How did you know I was lying?” she asked when she looked up. No one else ever does, she nearly added.

To her surprise, it was Eddie’s turn to look self-conscious. He dropped his gaze and became a little too interested in the cheese shaker. “You, uh, you do this thing with your nose.”

She squinted. “What thing?”

He looked up and motioned to his own face. “You kinda…wrinkle it, I guess. Or scrunch it up.”

“No I don’t,” she insisted.

He pointed again with a grin. “See? You just did it again.” Chrissy sighed and gave in, letting her whole face scrunch in shame. “No, it’s okay,” he insisted easily. “I prefer to be able to tell when people are lying to me. It makes it easier to know who I can trust.”

Her mouth felt dry and her nervous habit of wetting her lips didn’t help. “Well,” she said slowly, choosing her words carefully. “If you promise not to tell Lucas that Max still talks about him all the time,” she reached for her soda again. “Then I will do my best to otherwise keep the lying to a minimum.”

Eddie grinned and picked up his own glass, offering it to her in a toast. “I think that sounds fair,” he assured her when she tapped the edge of her glass to his. “Your secrets are safe with me, Chrissy.”

She hid her smile in her glass. There was something about the way Eddie spoke that had her believing he meant every word.

Chapter Text

the more that you say, the less i know
wherever you stray, i follow
i’m begging for you to take my hand
wreck my plans

iv.

Eddie’s client tucked his wallet away and offered him a hand to shake. “Thanks, man,” he said with a bright smile that Eddie had to imagine he didn’t reveal too often. “Looks awesome. What do you think?” he asked of the progressing full sleeve currently wrapped in plastic on his left arm. “One more session? Or two?”

Eddie shook his head. “No, we can get it done in one. Henderson’ll get you booked. Tell him we need about three hours.”

“Righteous.”

He stood from his stool while the other man made his way out to the front. He stretched his arms overhead and the swung them across his body to pop the tension that had coiled in his shoulders. After he’d tidied up his studio, and tossed the paper towels and rubber gloves into the trash, Eddie returned to the waiting room and leaned in the doorway.

Will was standing behind the counter, watching two girls with matching long blonde hair as they slowly flipped through one of the flash albums. “Could you do like, the Chinese symbols for best friends on the back of both our necks?” The girl on the left asked, looking up from a page of different varieties of flames.

“Uh, yeah,” Will said and then, after a moment’s hesitation, asked, “Are either of you…Chinese? Or read or speak Chinese?”

The blonde-haired, blue-eyed duo both looked at him like he’d asked if they had three heads. “No?” The one on the right said. “Is that a requirement?”

Will shot him a quick glance and Eddie jumped up, clearing his throat. “No,” he said, coming to stand next to his apprentice. “No, of course not. Obviously, we can tattoo whatever you want—”

“Except we don’t do Nazi or skinhead stuff,” Will added quietly.

“We just always ask when we do something in a language neither of us speaks,” Eddie continued. “Because, y’know, we have those symbols in the book,” he flipped to the previous page where a handful of the most common requests for Chinese characters lived. “But that’s just what the guy at the ‘89 tattoo expo told me they mean.” He paused for a second. “Do you see what I’m saying? We don’t have any actual idea if these mean what the book says they mean. Because none of us speak or write Chinese.” He waited for another beat and continued. “There might be translation issues or dialect stuff that we don’t know anything about…” His advice was met with glazed eyes. He coughed again. “Plus, I’ve never been to China, but I feel like there’s probably not a lot of girls walking around with Olde English words tattooed on the backs of their necks.”

“We just want to make sure you’re getting something meaningful,” Will added, seeming a little more at ease now that the main point had been made. “To you. That you can read and understand.”

“Oh,” the girl on the right said with an understanding nod. “Yeah. Okay. That makes sense.” She turned to her friend for a moment of silent deliberation before she turned back to Will. “Can you do Care Bears?”

Eddie smiled and gave Will’s shoulders a squeeze. “He does fantastic Care Bears.” 

Dustin watched with a side-eye as Will led the two girls back to his studio. He shook his head. “We should just tear that page out of the book,” he commented.

“I would,” Eddie agreed. “But there’s some pretty popular tribal stuff on the other side and you know how it is—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dustin waved a hand. “Tribal bands and barbed wire. That’s what pays the bills around here.”

“You got it,” he said with a smile and ruffled Dustin’s unruly curls as he walked past. He stopped and looked at the bag his store manager was unpacking. “What is all this?”

“Oh,” Dustin looked up from the stack of used books and smiled. “The library was doing their annual sale. I got you a present.”

“A bag of books?” Eddie asked. “What are you? My great aunt from Oregon?”

“Uh, I wish I was as cool as Aunt Ruby,” Dustin countered without hesitation. “And so do you, don’t lie.” He cleared his throat and began stacking the books—large coffee table and reference books from the looks of it, on top of one another. “Here,” he picked them up and deposited them into Eddie’s open hands. “For the reference section.”

Eddie set the pile right back down on the counter and flipped them up against his chest one at a time. “The Treasury of Flowers…Redoute's Fairest Flowers…Flowering Trees and Shrubs of the Midwest…” he looked up. “I’m noticing a theme.”

“No theme!” Henderson insisted, his voice jumping an octave. He coughed to return it to normal. “No theme. I just…y’know. I read recently that there’s a shift of people wanting tattoos of flowers and trees, and I thought maybe you might want to consider adding some…more…natural stuff to the library. Or if you find yourself in need of a conversation starter with…y’know…someone. Who like, knows a lot about flowers—”

“Henderson?”

“What?”

“You’re on the verge of doing that thing.”

“That thing?”

“That thing that you do…that thing that I hate…” he lifted his eyebrows expectantly before giving another hint. “Starts with an ‘M’—”

“Meddling,” Dustin said with a nod. “I know. I am. And I know you hate it.”

“And yet…”

“But you’re not just going to act like you don’t want to have a reason to talk to Chrissy Cunningham, again, right?”

From where she’d been sleeping beside the cash register, Eowyn stood and stretched in a perfect arch before she lazily padded over the counter and settled directly on the stack of new books. Before Eddie could formulate a response that he hoped wouldn’t reveal how his pulse spiked every time someone said the name ‘Chrissy’, the bell jingled as Mike and Lucas shuffled in.

“Hey guys,” he greeted with a nod, grateful for the interruption.

Mike looked at his watch—the face looked huge on his knobby wrist—and frowned. “Are you still open?” he asked. “I thought you closed at ten on Thursdays.”

“We do,” Dustin answered as he returned his attention to restocking bottles of brightening cream. “Will the Wise just took back the last walk-ins.” He looked up and watched as his friends’ shoulders slumped. “It’s only going to take like, an hour. Ninety minutes tops. If you wanna go, I’ll wait for him, and we’ll just meet you.”

Eddie reached back and pulled his hair out of the low ponytail he’d worn while working on his last client and scratched his nails over his scalp. Unwittingly, his gaze strayed across the street to Tiger Lily’s darkened storefront where, a few hours ago, he’d watched Chrissy and Max maneuvering a huge arrangement into the back of a white delivery van. Where he’d definitely not watched Chrissy lean against the side of the van and blot at her forehead with the back of her wrist and laugh at something Max said before they slapped a high five and she’d climbed behind the wheel of the van—leaving Max alone in the late afternoon sun and leaving him with a deeply inconvenient feeling twisting in his chest.

A hand waved in front of his face, startling his thoughts back to the present. “What?”

“I asked if you’re coming,” Mike said. “Benny’s? Dollar burgers? Cheap pitchers?”

“Uh, yeah,” he blinked. “Sure. If you guys want to get a head start,” he added, suddenly wanting a minute alone before spending the rest of the night in a loud, crowded bar. “I can wait for Will. We can walk over together.”

Dustin grinned. “Gonna catch up on your reading while you wait?”

“Yeah,” he reached over and gave the back of Dustin’s head a light swat. “I might.”

They waited another minute for Elle and Erica before heading back out into the humid night. Eddie locked the door behind them and returned to the counter, settling on the stool once he heard the familiar buzz of Will’s machine. Eowyn stood and stretched again, she bumped her head into his chin with a deep purr. He smiled and gave her a scratch. “Hey trouble,” he said fondly. “How are the books?” She offered him another headbutt and stepped off the pile. “Any good?”

The cat didn’t answer; she was distracted by a fly that had snuck in and turned effortlessly from sleepy shop cat to fierce huntress as she jumped down from the display case.

Eddie looked at his watch and rubbed his eyes. “Alright,” he muttered to himself and pushed the stack of books so they fanned out on the glass case like a deck of cards. “Why not?”

***

Benny’s was always a gamble. Either it was a ghost town with just a few regulars bellied up to the bar and complaining loudly about what was on the televisions mounted in the corner, or it was packed, and getting through the throng at the bar was an hour-long event and everything with the cramped four walls smelled like cheap beer and sweat and pickles.

Eddie was full of regrets. Currently, he regretted that he offered to grab two more pitchers from the bar—a foolish decision that buried him in this cluster of people six-deep away from his quarry. But on a deeper level, he was beginning to think he regretted agreeing to come at all.

He was tired. And the music was terrible tonight. And he was hungry but trying to flag a server down in all the chaos of Dollar Burger night was only guaranteeing he’d have to wait at least another hour before he ate anything.

If Buckley still had any fries left, he’d steal those, he decided as he inched forward in this sham of a line. Maybe once he did, he wouldn’t feel like such a grumpy old man, out past his bedtime.

But if Eddie was honest with himself—not something he loved to be, but it happened on occasion—he knew his bad mood had very little to do with the music, or the heat, or the crowd.

Not the whole crowd, at least.

It was really just the one table. Closer to the door. Full of people who looked exceptionally out of place in a bar with floors this sticky. Lots of shiny blonde hair and polo shirts with little dudes stitched on the chest.

And one familiar pair of blue eyes trying to catch his from somewhere in the center of the group.

Eddie told himself he wasn’t avoiding her on purpose. The sight of Chrissy’s sunny smile had disarmed him when she’d caught his attention earlier. He’d been inching his way through the sweaty masses on his way back to his friends after a disappointing spin through the jukebox. She was in the center of her own crowded booth, listening with a furrowed brow and a look of concentration to a woman with a big pile of blonde curls. Chrissy’s attention had shifted for just a second—just enough to catch him looking at her before he could turn away and slip back into the crowd undetected.

Her eyes had widened in surprise before her smile had cut across the room like a beacon. She’d waved, attracting the attention of the owner of the arm slung around her shoulders. Eddie recognized the Tom Cruise stand-in from his spying a few weeks ago and offered them both a small, tight smile and a brief wave in response to the appraising look Chrissy’s boyfriend gave him through the smoky haze of the bar.

She had started to motion to him, something that might have been an invitation to come over, but the blond boyfriend had started talking right in her ear, pulling her attention back to him.

And giving Eddie the opportunity to slink back to his own group of friends where no one was actively campaigning to make it hard to breathe.

Like a fucking coward, he thought and made a note to berate himself later. But first, he figured he still had at least an hour before he could make an excuse to squeeze out the door for longer than a cigarette break.

He acquired the pitchers and returned a hero to the table, refilling everyone’s glass and securing the last of Robin’s fries and one of Will’s mozzarella sticks as payment for his suffering. He was right—with a little food in his stomach, he felt better, less on edge.

But he was still ready to leave.

And he was still entirely unprepared for the appearance of Chrissy Cunningham at his side when he was finally able to settle his tab, back at the bar, an hour later.

“Hey,” she said, the word coming out like an assertive huff rather than a greeting.

He jumped in surprise, his signature going wild on the credit card slip before he turned to his right. “Hey,” he echoed.

“I saw you earlier.”

“I know,” he said uneasily. “I waved.”

“Why didn’t you come over and say hi?”

Eddie shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he tucked his credit card back into his wallet and dug for a few bills for a tip. “What are you even doing here, anyway?” he asked. “No offense,” he added. “I just didn’t take you for a Benny’s kind of girl.” He glanced around to miss acknowledging the little crease of confusion that appeared between her eyebrows. “This place is kind of a dive.”

“We come here all the time,” she said, eyeing him with suspicion that made his gut twist again. “Usually for trivia on Tuesdays—”

“Ah,” he cut her off with a nod. “That’s why I’ve never seen you.”

She lifted her brow. “You have standing Tuesday plans somewhere else?”

“My band. That’s our weekly gig at The Hideout,” he rolled a shoulder, still trying to avoid that stare of hers. “Actually, you should come check it out some time,” he offered. “Speaking of dive bars. If you’re into that kind of th—”

“Why are you dodging my question?”

“What?” He felt his eyes go wide for a second before he regained control of his face. “I’m…not,” he fumbled and cleared his throat. “You just seemed busy with your friends,” he vaguely motioned to where they’d been sitting. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

Chrissy’s eyes narrowed further, and her mouth twisted into the cutest scowl he’d ever seen. “That’s bullshit.”

He laughed. “Okay?”

“No,” she insisted. “Not okay. Not okay the way you just said that. Like we’re in 10^th grade and you don’t want to be seen talking to the popular kids at lunch—”

“Wait,” he frowned. “Why do you get to be the popular kids in this metaphor?”

“Shut up,” she huffed. But Eddie caught the hint of a grin that was fighting her glower. “I just meant.” She let out a heavy exhale that plumped and pouted her lips and made it difficult to focus on anything else in the room. “I thought we were friends.”

He blinked at the implication. “We are,” he assured her, hoping she could tell he meant it. “We are friends.”

That smile tugged harder at the corner of her mouth. “Good,” she said with a definitive nod and poked him in the chest. “Then don’t act like you’re embarrassed to be seen with me in public.”

“No,” he shook his head and placed a hand on his heart, “I promise. That’s the last thing I was trying to do.”

“Good,” she said again.

“Good,” he echoed, pleased when he was rewarded with a real, full smile that showed off her slightly crooked teeth. And even more pleased that she didn’t press him to tell her the truth about what actually kept him from stopping over at her table. Or make him admit it was pretty much exactly what she’d guessed and have to confess that there was something about her that made him feel like he was sixteen again.

She opened her mouth to say something else, but a voice called out her name over the din. They both looked over her shoulder to see Jason wave to her and jerk his head toward the door. “Better go,” Eddie said after another quick cough to clear his dry throat. “Don’t want to keep your Ken doll waiting.”

Chrissy snorted and forced her lips into another straight line as she shook her head. “You have to stop calling him that…”

“I would,” he grinned. “But that’s the second time you’ve laughed when I’ve done it.”

She giggled again and rolled her eyes. “Goodnight, Eddie.”

“Goodnight, Chrissy,” he replied, mimicking her pointed emphasis.

Jason was quick to throw his arm back around her small shoulders as soon as she was in grabbing range. He looked back once, giving Eddie a look with a Back Off message as clear as a billboard.

Eddie puckered his lips and blew Jason a kiss.

***

Friday afternoons were always slow, especially in the summer, but the following day felt like it was never going to end.

Henderson wasn’t helping.

“Okay, Suzie, I should probably go,” he was saying when Eddie returned with another box of rubber gloves from the basement. At the counter, Erica and Elle were sitting with their heads bent over something, occasionally exchanging rolling eyes or exaggerated gags while Dustin poured the sugar straight down the phone line.

“I love you,” he said, so sweetly and with such a big, stupid grin, that even Eddie couldn’t help but smile as he walked past them on his way to the hallway supply closet. “No, I love you more,” he assured his girlfriend all the way at MIT. “No,” he shook his head when she inevitably countered. “I love you more.” They had gone three more rounds by the time the gloves were restocked.

Eddie returned to the front of the shop just in time to see Erica get up from her stool and cross to where Dustin was standing. From behind him, she grabbed the cordless phone out of his hand and punched the ‘End’ button. She stared at him when he turned around, stunned. “Suzie loves you more today,” she said, setting the phone back in its cradle. “Get over it.”

Dustin opened his mouth, let out a wordless squeak, and closed it again.

Eddie looked over at Elle, smashing her lips together to hide her amusement, and noticed her fingers smoothing out a crease in a small, blue sheet of paper. He frowned in curiosity and looked over her shoulder. “What are you guys doing?”

“It’s that paper folding thing,” Dustin answered before Elle could. “Organ—”

“Origami,” Elle corrected quietly. Eddie watched as she flipped the paper in her hands a few times, creasing and folding it this way and that until she flipped it back upright and presented a paper crane sailing along the palm of her hand. “It’s relaxing,” she added with one of her small, shy smiles. “Erica taught me.”

“That’s cool,” Eddie assessed. “That’s really cool.”

She shrugged. “That’s nothing. Erica’s got a whole vase of paper roses in our studio.” She held it out to him with another smile. “Here. You can put it on your side.”

He grinned and accepted her small gift. “Thank you.” Carefully, he set it on the counter right beside the cash register where the most people could admire it. “Sinclair,” he pulled her attention from where she was standing between Dustin and the phone, looking like she might bite him if he tried to use it to call Suzie again. “Bring your arts and crafts out here. I want to see.”

Erica gave Dustin a heavy side-eye on her way past, but returned from the piercing suite with a small vase full of paper flowers balancing on twisted wire stems. They were beautifully intricate and came in all kinds of colors and shapes. “These are awesome,” Eddie said. An idea tapped him squarely between the eyes and he slowly reached for one. “Can I…maybe…have one of them?”

She folded her arms over her chest. “For a price.”

He smiled. Should have expected that. “What’s your asking?”

“For the cookout tomorrow,” she said, coming up with something much quicker than he would have anticipated. “You have to tell Jeff that he does not know how to make ceviche and we’re all done being his guinea pigs.”

“Yes, please do that,” Elle put in quietly with her solemn eyes wide as she nodded.

Eddie’s fingers closed around the blue wire stem of one of the bigger, red roses. “Is that all?” he asked with a laugh.

“And give me the 5^th of July off to recover from my annual star-spangled hangover,” she added.

“Done.”

“Take it,” she nodded before she brightened into a sweet smile. “And since I know you’re taking it across the street to your new little honey lamb? While you’re there, tell Max she better be coming tomorrow night, or my brother is going to be a mopey-ass mess for the rest of the weekend, and I, for one, am not psychologically equipped to deal with him in that state right now.”

“I will relay that mess—” Eddie stopped and frowned. “Did you just call Chrissy my little honey lamb?”

Erica stared back. “I think you know that I did.”

“She’s not—” he sputtered indignantly. “We’re friends. That’s all.”

“Well then you better put that red paper rose back and take a yellow one,” she suggested.

“Why?”

“Because yellow roses signify friendship,” Dustin said from the other end of the counter. “Red roses signify love or passion.” He pointedly cleared his throat. “Which you would know if you read the books I got you.”

“You literally just gave them to me last night,” Eddie reminded and looked down at the flower in his hand. “And is that public knowledge? I like this one better.”

Erica sighed and reached over to pluck it from his hand. She swapped him the best of the yellow roses in the vase. “If you don’t think the owner of a flower shop knows what colors mean what when it comes to roses, then you’re way dumber than you look.”

“Okay, good point,” he relented and offered another smile. “Thanks, Sinclair.”

“July 5^th,” she said. “And no ceviche.”

“July 5^th,” he repeated. “I’ll see what I can do about the ceviche.”

Tiger Lily’s had a bell on the door as well. It chimed differently than the one on his own when Eddie slipped into the little shop a few minutes later. He stopped and admired the space—the wall-to-wall coolers packed with flowers behind the counters, the big books of arrangement and decorating ideas. He smiled. “It smells good in here,” he said with a nod when Steve noticed him and waved him in.

Harrington smiled. “It’s a flower shop, dude. What’d you think it would smell like?”

“No, I thought it’d be all the flowers at once,” he admitted. “And that it would give me a headache.”

“Steve, are you—” the door to the back room swung open and Chrissy stopped short at the sight of him. “Eddie.”

He smiled, feeling an unfamiliar wave of nervousness. “Present.”

“No,” Steve interrupted. “I am not Eddie, but I can try and help anyway.”

Chrissy blinked and a faint flush colored her cheeks. “Sorry,” she shook her head. “I was just asking if you were with a customer.”

“Not exactly,” Eddie stepped up closer to the counter. “I uh, actually came over to talk to you.”

“Oh?” she raised her eyebrows. Without needing a nudge, Steve invented a reason to cross the shop. Steve was a solid guy like that. “What’s up?” Chrissy asked once he’d gone.

“I feel bad,” Eddie admitted. “About yesterday.”

To his surprise, her blush deepened. “Don’t,” she insisted, shaking her head. “I was…kind of drunk and I get a little stupid and defensive sometimes—”

“No, no, you weren’t stupid,” he promised. “But I, uh, I wanted to bring you this.” There it was again, that feeling of being a teenager again, terrified to tell a girl you like—like-like, not just like—her. He pushed the feeling away and held out Erica’s origami creation and twirled the wire between his thumb and forefinger, so the flower spun between them.

Chrissy’s eyes lit up and any fear he had that she’d think his gift was stupid or not understand what he was doing there faded. “For me?” she asked, her voice just above a delighted whisper.

He felt his own smile widen to ridiculous proportions. “I know you have a million flowers here,” he added, catching up with his own realization that maybe bringing a flower to the owner of a flower shop really was a stupid idea. “But, y’know. I thought it might be a nice change to have one that isn’t going to die.”

She took the flower by its wire stem and bit her bottom lip. Subconsciously, she touched the paper to the tip of her nose. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “Nobody ever brings me flowers.”

For the first time since he was ten years old, Eddie found himself fighting the urge to giggle. He settled for another shrug like it was nothing—it actually was nothing, he reminded himself. He had done almost nothing to deserve those big blue eyes looking up at him like he was the only person in the world. “Well, in the spirit of friendship,” he continued, clearing his throat. “That little gift also comes with an invitation.”

She blinked and her expression turned curious while she continued twirling the flower between her fingers the way he had a moment ago. “You’re…having a party?”

“More of a barbecue,” he said. “Tomorrow night, after we close. Around nine? The landlord said we can use the grill and picnic table that’s up on the roof,” he motioned to his building behind him. “So long as it doesn’t get too crazy.”

Chrissy smiled. “And you don’t think it’s going to get too crazy?”

“Not if you’re there,” he said with what he hoped was a winning smile. “You seem like a mellowing influence.”

She laughed. “Is that a nice way of saying you think I’m boring?”

“Absolutely not,” he assured her. “I actually think you’re probably so crazy, everyone else is going to dial it down because they’re scared to compete with you.”

Her laugh was a snort this time and she blushed again before she covered her mouth and nose. She nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “I’ll, um, I’ll think about it.”

“Okay,” he agreed. “No sweat if you can’t make it.”

“Nine o’clock?”

“Nine o’clock.” Just behind her, Eddie noticed that Max had appeared at some point, and seemed to have been watching their whole conversation with a familiar bored look on her face. “Max,” Eddie raised his voice to address her. “Sinclair wants me to make sure you’re going to be there, too.”

Max rolled her eyes. “Oh really?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. This wasn’t technically a lie. A Sinclair did want to make sure Max was going to be there. “I’m, uh, not really supposed to be so direct about it though,” he added. If Max decided to come over because she thought Lucas wanted her to come, well, then Eddie could convince himself he’d done a good deed in pushing those two idiots back together.

“And this is you,” she pointed to him. “Not being direct about it?”

Chrissy giggled again and Eddie shrugged. “Guess so.”

Max shook her head, totally deadpan. “You’re doing amazing, sweetie.”

Chapter Text

head on the pillow, i could feel you sneaking in
as if you were a mythical thing
like you were a trophy or a champion ring

iv.

It was official: Chrissy hated every piece of clothing she owned. “It’s just a stupid barbecue,” she said to her closet, turning away from the graveyard of discarded outfits on her bed. “Who even cares what you wear?”

She looked down at herself, denim shorts cinched near her waist and a bra. The most she’d managed to not despise on sight in almost an hour.

Before she could second-guess her shorts, three things happened at once. The phone started ringing just as the timer went off on the oven, and there was a knock at the door. Chrissy dropped her head back with a groan and sprang into action.

She grabbed the cordless phone from the hallway wall mount and turned off the oven before she peered through the peephole and untwisted her locks, waved Max inside as she pressed the button on the phone and put it to her ear. “Hello?”

“Hey babe,” Jason’s voice immediately dropped a hot coal of guilt into her stomach.

“Hey,” she said, forcing a smile into her voice as she closed the door behind Max. “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” he said easily. “I just wanted to call and make sure you didn’t change your mind about coming to Justin’s tonight.” Max followed her into the kitchen and wordlessly offered to take the pans out of the oven when she saw Chrissy reaching for an oven mitt. “It’d be a shame for you to miss it; I know how much you love baseball bloopers.”

“Uh, no,” Chrissy said, her face twisting into a frown. “I do,” she promised. “I do love baseball bloopers.” Max rolled her eyes so hard that Chrissy was almost surprised they came back. “But I really think I should spend some time with Max.” This was met with a double thumbs up from the girl in question. “Y’know. Just have some girl time. Do our nails. Watch some chick flicks—”

“Yikes,” Jason laughed. “Count me out.”

She laughed too. A forced laugh. Even she could hear she didn’t mean it. But if Jason noticed, he didn’t say anything. “Yeah, definitely not your kind of night. But, um, you have fun with your friends. And if you want to rent that blooper reel again next time we have a movie night, I’ll happily watch it with you.”

“Aw, man, who’s better than you?” Jason asked, sounding so genuinely pleased with her promise that she nearly changed her whole plan and told him she’d be right over. “I love you, babe.”

“Me too,” she echoed quietly.

“Have fun with Max,” he added. “Don’t go too crazy with the junk food.”

She forced another laugh. “I promise.”

They said their goodbyes and she placed the phone back on the receiver, turning to see Max in her hallway, hands on hips. “That was a lie, right? The thing about us having a girls' night?”

“Um, yes,” Chrissy said with a single nod.

“Because you don’t want to tell him what you’re really doing so you’re acting like I’m still moping over Lucas and need you to be my surrogate big sister and ease me through my pain?”

“Well, I just didn’t feel like going into—”

“Yes or no answers only,” Max clipped, a half-smile on her face.

“Then yes,” Chrissy sighed. “That’s what I did.”

“Okay good. I just like to be made aware when I’m someone’s alibi.”

“Alibi?” she repeated with a shocked laugh. “I’d hardly call you my alibi.”

“Scapegoat, then?”

“The cookies didn’t burn, did they?” she asked, returning them both to the kitchen and the stack of snickerdoodles Max had graciously transferred to the cooling rack. She had nothing to feel guilty about, she told herself for the tenth time. She was going to hang out with some new friends and she and Jason didn’t have to have all the same friends. Plenty of couples had their own sets of friends.

“Which cookies?” her companion asked, pulling her out of her spiral. “The ones I just took out of the oven? Or the seven thousand other cookies you have all over this kitchen?”

Chrissy followed Max’s disbelieving gaze around the kitchen where she could not deny that there were almost two hundred other freshly baked cookies in a rainbow of variety. “Well, I…” her bottom lip worked its way between her teeth. “I didn’t…know what everyone liked,” she admitted.

Max raised one eyebrow. “You know they’re all usually at least a little bit stoned, right?” she asked. “They’ll eat anything you put in front of them.” She paused and let her head fall to one side in consideration. “What did Eddie say when you asked him what to bring?”

Chrissy chewed her lips some more.

Max sighed. “Okay, so you didn’t ask him?” She shook her head. “Because…you…didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that you don’t really know anyone who’s coming to this thing except for me and Steve…and so you just started to…psychotically bake to deal with your nerves?”

“Well, I was just going to make some regular chocolate chip,” she began, motioning to the four dozen that had pushed this snowball down the hill around three o’clock that afternoon. “But then I thought…what if someone’s allergic to chocolate? So, then I made those peanut butter ones, over there,” she pointed to the counter where another four dozen cross-hatched peanut butter cookies lay on two tea towels.

“And somehow that didn’t feel like enough?” Max asked, sounding mystified as she helped herself to one of the chocolate chips.

“Well, I was taking these out of the oven, and I thought, ‘What am I doing?’”

“An excellent question.”

“I have Grandma Frannie’s thumbprint recipe sitting right there in the recipe box, which is practically world-famous—”

“Oh boy.”

“And what better way to make a good first impression than with the recipe that won first prize at the Indiana State Fair in 1936 and in 1972?”

“Certainly, none that I can think of,” Max agreed with a mouthful of cookie. She swallowed thickly and then looked down at the pans she’d just taken from the oven. “So, where’d the snickerdoodles come from?”

Chrissy bit her lip again. “Good Housekeeping said everyone likes snickerdoodles,” she shrugged with a glance toward the magazine her mother kept sending to her doorstep every month.

Max pursed her lips and blew out a heavy breath. “Well, at least you know your outfit will be a big hit with all the boys.”

She frowned and looked down. “Oh, Jesus,” she squeaked and darted back to her room to find a top. Max followed, but if she noticed evidence that Chrissy had changed her clothes ten times already, she didn’t mention it.

Max really was a good friend.

If anyone thought that a hundred and ninety cookies were too many to bring to a party with less than twenty people, they kept that thought to themselves. Dustin greeted them at the door with glassy eyes, his usual big, welcoming smile, and tight hugs.

He pointed Chrissy down the hall and told her the kitchen was on the right before he looked at Max. “Did you bring anything?”

“Aside from my sparkling personality?” Max asked, fanning out her hands and wiggling her fingers. She and Chrissy exchanged a glance before she shrugged. “Just pretend like, forty of those cookies are from me.”

Dustin rolled his eyes and pointed to the stairwell again. “Pretty much everyone is up on the roof.”

Max reached out and grabbed her hand. “You want me to wait for you?”

“No,” she shook her head, grateful enough just to have the offer. “I’ll be right behind you.”

She followed Dustin’s simple instructions and found a small U-shaped kitchen, occupied by two men. One she knew. Eddie’s smile was bright and immediate when he looked up and noticed her in the doorway. “Hey!” he crossed over and surprised her with a quick hug. “I’m glad you decided to come.”

Chrissy felt a silly headrush she’d blame on the night’s heat and humidity. “I, uh,” she let out a breathless laugh. “I baked way too many cookies,” she admitted, holding up the shopping bag of Tupperware.

Eddie took it from her, still grinning. “No such thing. These’ll be gone in an hour,” he promised and motioned for her to step into the kitchen with him as he tapped the other man on the shoulder. This one was much older than the rest of the partygoers, Chrissy noticed right away. Short, cropped hair that was thinning on top, and a gray beard that went with the lines around his eyes and mouth. “Uh, Uncle Wayne,” Eddie cleared his throat. “This is Chrissy, she runs the flower shop across the street.”

His hand was rough when he offered it to her. “Wayne Munson,” he said in a quiet, gruff tone. “Pleasure to meet you.”

She shook his hand with a smile. “Chrissy Cunningham,” she echoed his formal introduction. “Nice to meet you too.”

To her surprise, Wayne smiled when he let go of her hand and glanced at Eddie. “So, you’re the one who brought my nephew those pretty flowers he’s still keeping alive in his studio?”

She glanced up and to her left, even more surprised to see Eddie blush beneath the overhead lights. She couldn’t help her laugh. “I just thought they’d brighten the place up.”

“Oh, they did that,” Wayne chuckled, his gruff exterior falling away a little more each second. “You should keep doing it,” he suggested. “They could use some more color downstairs.”

“We can, uh,” Eddie coughed again. “We can go upstairs if you want.” He set the bag on the counter and picked up the fullest of the containers inside.

“It was really nice meeting you, Mr. Munson,” she said as Eddie’s uncle laughed quietly and shook his head.

“You too, sweetheart,” Wayne assured her with another smile. He and his nephew had the same dimples. “But you call me Wayne, or Uncle Wayne like everyone else, alright?”

She nodded. “Deal.” She waited until they were back in the hallway, heading for the stairwell before she looked back up at Eddie with a grin. “You managed to keep those sunflowers alive for a whole month?”

“Uh, no,” he said quickly, shaking his head and not looking at her. “He’s...really old and senile,” he said, pushing open the door that led to the roof. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

She let out an unattractive snort of a laugh. “He looks like he’s maybe fifty—at the most.”

“Well, he’s…older than that.” Eddie finally looked at her as he held open the door and let her walk past. “The Munson men,” he added with a small smile. “We’ve got great genes, y’know? We age much slower than most people.”

Chrissy stopped on the first stair and turned around so they were nearly the same height. “Is this where you tell me you’re all secretly vampires?”

His grin widened. “Wouldn’t be much of a secret if I did that, would it?”

She wasn’t sure she’d ever stood this close to him before. Close enough to see that he had the very beginnings of smile lines, from where his eyes crinkled at the sides. And close enough to notice just the hint of stubble on his face, making her wonder if he’d shaved that day. And close enough to appreciate that his lips were a very pleasant dusty pink color and looked full and much softer than she would have thought—

The door to the roof opened above them and Chrissy blinked, taking another step up, away from Eddie. “Hey!” It was Lucas, calling down to them from the open door. “Max said Chrissy baked like, five hundred cookies. Are you bringing them up?”

She felt her cheeks burn again as Eddie laughed—if he’d felt as rooted in place as she had a moment ago, he was doing a better job of hiding it—and held up the container. “Keep your shirt on, Sinclair. First round is right here.” He looked back at her and offered another smile, motioning to the stairs. “After you.”

The roof had more than just a grill. The residents of Hellfire Ink had brought up an array of lawn chairs to join the picnic table and strung a perimeter of lights—the kind with the big, heavy bulbs in primary colors like her parents used to wrap around the shrubs in the front yard every December.

A man with thick, curly hair and a baby face who introduced himself as Gareth pulled Eddie away only a minute after he’d followed her through the door. Chrissy’s nerves only had a moment to buzz with the usual current that came with a new room full of people she didn’t know before Robin caught her eye and she danced over from where she’d been keeping Steve company at the grill.

“Hey lady!” she called when she was only a few feet away. She grabbed Chrissy’s hand and pulled her lightly across the gravel rooftop. “Come tell Steve he’s burning these burgers.”

“I am not burning anything!” Steve snapped immediately before Chrissy could even consider telling him otherwise.

In between a few bites of Erica’s potato salad and a quarter of a slightly-charred cheeseburger, Chrissy learned quickly that these were people who liked to dance. She lost track of how many songs she was pulled to her feet for. Bouncing from Robin to Steve, then Lucas and Dustin, then to Max and finally to sweet, clumsy Will before she needed a break.

She was sweating a little bit, under her bangs and at the back of her neck, and she was breathless and flushed when she let Will spin her away and she crashed directly into another body.

“Oh, jeez,” she laughed and stopped herself when a familiar ring-heavy hand reached out to keep her from falling over.

Eddie grinned down at her when she looked up. “Sorry,” he let go of her elbow and held his hands up. “Didn’t mean to throw off your groove.”

Chrissy laughed again and shook her head. “No, no it’s okay. I needed to sit down anyway.”

Eddie glanced behind him and then bobbed his head backward. “It’s a little cooler over here,” he promised. She followed him with a nod and allowed him to lead her closer to the edge of the building where he motioned for her to sit on a concrete ledge beside the HVAC installation. He was right. The breeze cut right through this particular spot and Chrissy blew out a heavy sigh of relief. “You want a beer?”

She wet her lips and considered lying and saying yes for just a second before she wrinkled her nose. “Do you have something that isn’t beer?”

Eddie only smiled and nodded slightly. “Let me see what I can do.”

It took a little longer than she expected, but when he returned, he held out a green bottle with a familiar white label. “Oh my God,” she said, accepting it with a laugh.

“Fair warning,” Eddie pushed back his hair and sat down beside her. “That’s been in my fridge for a minute.” She opened it cautiously and put it to her lips. The fizzy white wine and cranberry hit her tongue and brought with it a strong wave of nostalgia. She licked her lips again, aware of Eddie’s eyes on her as she swallowed. He raised his eyebrows. “Taste okay?”

She grinned. “Tastes like high school,” she admitted, turning the Bartles & Jaymes bottle in her hand to admire the label. “I had a friend whose mom used to let us drink these after football games.” She shook her head, remembering how she’d had one too many after homecoming her junior year and spent most of the evening throwing up in Connie Perkins’ rhododendrons. “We thought we were so cool.”

Eddie laughed. “Was she the neighborhood Cool Mom?”

“Uh, she thought she was,” Chrissy said, stealing another sip. “My mom didn’t like her very much.” She glanced over and tested her curiosity. “Did your neighborhood have a resident Cool Mom?”

His smile dimmed slightly. “Not really. I grew up in a…” he coughed. “Well, I believe the new term is something along the lines of ‘community of manufactured homes.’ But regardless, most of the trailer park moms were too busy working two jobs to care what their kids were doing.”

“Oh,” she said quietly. Her thumbnail slipped beneath the paper wrapper and made a small tear. “Your mom worked a lot too when you were little?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “She did. But uh, I lived with Uncle Wayne when I had all my formative trailer park experiences.” He motioned with his thumb across the roof to where Wayne was sitting with Jonathan and Nancy, nodding with interest and a half-smile of amusement while Nancy spoke with big, animated gestures, waving her hands a lot to accompany her story. Eddie coughed again, clearing his throat. “My mom died when I was ten, and my dad’s upstate so—”

“Upstate?” she repeated.

“New Castle Correctional Facility,” he supplied. She felt her stomach drop.

“Oh,” she said again. “How, um,” she paused, her lip between her teeth again. Was she allowed to ask that?

“How long’s he been there?” Eddie asked for her. She nodded. “Uh…I think I was…six? When he went in.” He squinted, doing math in his head. “I don’t think he’ll be up for parole for another…” he shook his head. “I don’t know. Five years, maybe. We don’t exactly keep in touch.”

She felt torn between wanting to know more and assuring him he didn’t have to say anything else if he didn’t want to. More than anything, she wished she had a time machine to wind the clock back ten minutes and pick another topic. It wasn’t like her own family was the best place to start with small talk. “I’m sorry,” she said, offering him a small smile when he looked over. “That’s not fair.”

He mirrored her tight smile and nodded. “Yeah, it isn’t,” he agreed. “But I got pretty lucky,” he looked across the way to his uncle again. “As far as guardians go, Wayne’s top shelf.”

She felt her smile widen. “He seems like a good egg, as my grandma would have said.”

This made Eddie chuckle and eased the knot that had twisted in her stomach. “He likes you too,” he admitted. “That’s the most I’ve heard him say in one sitting in about three years.”

“Of course, he likes me,” she joked with a scoff. “I’m pretty likable.”

“I never said you weren’t,” he said with another easy laugh. The tension from a moment ago disappeared like the smoke from the cigarette he was lighting. He glanced over with the stick between his lips. “Does this bother you?”

“No,” she shook her head. “Not outside, at least.”

He nodded once and inhaled. The end of the cigarette burned bright orange before he exhaled, careful to blow the smoke away from her. “Noted.”

“Speaking of notes,” she said, changing the subject. “I saw the one on the door when we were coming up.” Closed next Saturday, it read in bold, black magic marker, for Indy Pride. The letters in ‘Pride’ were each a different bright color, followed by the promise that normal business hours would resume on Monday, in black ink again. “What’s Pride?”

“Indianapolis Gay Pride Celebration,” he said as he tucked his lighter back into his pocket. “We go every year.”

Chrissy blinked. “Gay Pride?” she repeated, just making sure she’d heard him correctly. He nodded and she willed a blush not to stain her cheeks again. “I didn’t realize…” she said quietly, glancing over her shoulder at the small gathering. “Is everyone here—”

“What?” Eddie asked, studying her. “Gay?” When she nodded once, he smiled again, treating her to a glimpse of those deep dimples. “No,” he laughed lightly. “No, of course not. We just go to show our support.” He paused. “You know you don’t…” he paused, tilting his head for a better angle of his curious gaze. “You know you don’t have to be gay to go to the Pride celebration, right?”

“No,” she laughed nervously. “I obviously didn’t know that.” She took another sip of her wine cooler, suddenly feeling exactly like the sheltered little WASP her mother had worked so hard to ensure she’d grow up to be. She moved her shoulders in a shrug. “I’ve never even known anyone who’s gay before.”

That wasn’t entirely true. She knew her father had worked with a man who they all thought was gay. She remembered her parents talking about him in low tones after a company picnic. Something about how he went everywhere with his roommate and never seemed interested in the women in the office. But then her father had stopped working there—had stopped working anywhere –and when a bouquet of flowers had arrived at the hospital with a card from Matt and Theo, her mother had asked the nurse to throw them away.

Eddie smiled. “I promise you have,” he said quietly and glanced over his shoulder at his friends again.

“Well what do you do there?” she asked as her curiosity took hold again. “At a Pride celebration?”

Eddie moved a shoulder and took another drag from his cigarette. “It’s a lot like any other big celebration,” he admitted. “There’s a parade and some speeches and live music—it’s a really fun day,” he added. “And it’s an easy way to make sure our people know we love them and support them, no matter what.”

“And you’re not worried about the sign on the door?” she asked, thinking about her mother again and how anything that even hinted at something other than the traditional nuclear family values she clung to was cause for a boycott or outright elimination. “That people won’t want to do business with you?”

He shrugged again. “I don’t want people in my shop who don’t think my friends deserve the same treatment as the rest of the world,” he said easily. “And more than that, I want people to know that Hellfire’s a safe place if they need it.” He glanced over and offered her another look. Though this one, she could tell, felt a little more guarded. Like he was just on the edge of challenging her to say something he could argue with. “That’s why I put the little rainbow in the corner of the front window,” he added.

Chrissy hadn’t noticed the rainbow, and she made a note to look at it when she was on the sidewalk. She chewed her lips in contemplation, tearing another strip of paper off the bottle in her hand. “So, you said you don’t have to be gay to go to Pride…” she said slowly, turning the idea over in her head a few times, willing herself not to chicken out.

“That’s right,” he nodded. “Allies are always welcome.”

“Do…you think that…maybe I could come?”

Eddie sat up a little straighter. She could tell he hadn’t been expecting that. He looked over at her, eyebrows lifted again. “With us?” he asked. “To Indianapolis next weekend?” She nodded, a little flutter of excitement in her belly. Eddie straightened up all the way and turned back to the party. “Hey, guys!” he called over the music. Heads snapped in their direction. “Can Chrissy come to Pride with us?”

“Hell yeah!” Robin yelled back instantly.

“Absolutely!” Will called with a grin.

“Only if she brings more cookies!” Mike shouted before Elle nudged him in the ribs, making him laugh.

Eddie turned back to face her with a smile. “The people have spoken.”

***

The following Saturday dawned hot and clear and perfect weather for spending the day outside. By the time they all flopped onto the grass of University Square after the parade, Chrissy was sure she had a little bit of a sunburn and almost too much going on in her head to process.

She was joined almost the second she sat down by Robin and a willowy redhead named Vickie who, until a few hours ago, Chrissy had always assumed was just her other best friend after Steve.

Vickie smiled wide and opened the cooler she’d just liberated from Eddie’s van and hauled across the green. “Hiya,” she said, reaching in for a bottle of water. She returned with two and offered one to Chrissy.

“Hi,” she grinned back as she accepted it. “Thank you.”

Vickie cracked hers open and took a long drink, not caring that some missed her mouth and splashed onto her Dykes on Bikes tank top. Robin opted for a handful of melting ice cubes and rubbed them over her sweaty face before she smiled at Chrissy. “So, what do you think?”

Chrissy thought her smile might speak for itself. She’d come to Indianapolis with her new group of friends without the slightest idea of what to expect. Eddie had told her it wasn’t that much different than a regular festival, but Chrissy had never been to a festival with so much vibrancy and passion practically pulsing in the ground under her feet.

It was only two in the afternoon and already she’d cried twice while listening to the speeches from activists from ACT UP and AIDS United, had a rainbow painted on her right cheek by a drag queen with the most beautiful blue eye shadow she’d ever seen, and watched in amazement as Eddie’s apprentice, Will Byers, walked in the parade with his mother and stepfather who each wore shirts proudly proclaiming how much they loved their gay son. Linking arms with Will had been Elle, Jonathan, and Nancy. The latter carried a huge sign between them that just said WE LOVE OUR GAY BROTHER covered with photos of the Byers-Hopper family that had, according to Mike, taken Elle at least three weeks to make.

That might have been her favorite part. Watching how many parents were there with their children, how many proud grandmas were holding signs and banners. Among her favorites was an elderly couple in their seventies whose sign had read FREE GRANDPARENTS FOR ANYONE WHO NEEDS US! WE’RE PROUD OF YOU AND WE LOVE YOU (WE MEAN IT!)

Chrissy let out a quiet laugh. “I…wish every day was like this.”

Robin beamed. “Me too,” she said with a nod before she looked around, almost wistful. “Maybe someday.”

“Can I, um,” she bit her lip. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course,” Robin shrugged.

“I don’t want to sound like an idiot,” she began as she fiddled with the bottle cap in her hand. “But when he was telling me about this whole thing last week, Eddie said something about painting a rainbow in his front window.”

“Sure,” Vickie nodded and pushed back her auburn bangs. “A safe space marker.”

She looked between the two of them, waiting for further explanation. “I don’t, um…I don’t know what that means.” She could guess, but before she did anything, she wanted to be sure she understood entirely.

“It’s just a little signal,” Robin said kindly. “If a gay couple went into a restaurant or a bookshop or a tattoo parlor, for instance,” she smiled, “with a little rainbow in the window, they’d know they were safe there. That they wouldn’t have to hide who they were.”

“There’s a coffee shop by the art museum,” Vickie added. “You know, the one on Riverside?” Chrissy nodded before she continued. “Up until about a year and half ago, it was the only place in Muncie where I knew I could hold my girlfriend’s hand without worrying someone was going to beat the shit out of us or call the cops.”

She blinked. “Oh my God. Really?”

“Vic,” Robin put a hand on Vickie’s knee. “Let’s uh, let’s ease her into it, alright? She’s had a lot to take in today. Pretty sure she didn’t even know we were a couple until this morning.”

Chrissy blushed and looked down at her water bottle. “Well, I only really know you guys through Steve, and he never said anything…” She didn’t know how to say that she’d also lived such a sheltered life until recently that it never even occurred to her to question if Robin and Vickie might be anything other than close friends.

“No, no,” Robin shook her head. “I’m not trying to make you feel bad,” she promised. “Steve would never tell anyone.”

“I, um,” she looked over to where Steve was directing Dustin and Lucas where to lay out a picnic blanket. “I actually thought you two might be—”

Robin smiled as Vickie let out a snort. “You wouldn’t be the first,” she assured her. “But no. Even if I was straight,” she shook her head. “Steve wouldn’t be my first choice.”

“No?” she asked, taking a sip of her water with a smile. Together, they watched as what had started out as Steve directing blanket placement rapidly devolved into a three-way argument about whether under or beside the tree was a better idea.

“Mmmnno,” Robin laughed. Chrissy glanced back over to see Vickie shuffle around so that Robin could lean back against her chest. Vickie’s arms wrapped loosely around her shoulders and she absently kissed the side of her head. It was so comfortably intimate that Chrissy felt like she needed to look away. She did so with a twist in her gut.

Jason had never been one for public displays of affection. If he walked with his arm around her shoulders or kissed her in front of other people, it was usually a sign of possessiveness, not intimacy. She usually didn’t mind—and she’d never been the kind of person who wanted to be manhandled in front of a crowd and make everyone else uncomfortable—but every so often she found herself wishing he’d be a little more touchy-feely.

Just sometimes.

Just a little.

“No,” Robin continued with a contented, happy smile playing on her lips. “I think if I was a straight woman, I’d be more interested in that big, scary, tattooed teddy bear over there.”

Chrissy’s head snapped up again and she followed Robin’s gaze beyond the blanket scuffle to where Eddie was talking animatedly to Will and Joyce about something. His hands were moving with his excited gesticulation; his expression was bright, his eyes wide up with excitement. Will and his mother were both laughing, sharing in whatever had lit him up. Suddenly, Chrissy wished she was sitting closer so she could hear what he was saying.

“Oh yeah,” Vickie agreed. Chrissy glanced over again to see the redhead nodding. “Whatever girl gets him to let down that big ol’ wall he’s got around his heart is going to be one lucky lady.”

She opened her mouth to dispute this idea—to say that Eddie didn’t seem like he had any walls at all, that he’d been more open and forthcoming than most people she knew, even in the short time she’d known him—but closed it again. She felt Robin glance in her direction like she was waiting for that exact response. But Chrissy focused on taking another gulp of water and said nothing.

She wasn’t sure she could mention any of that without giving away that her other favorite part of the parade—the part she had a feeling Robin already knew about—was when Eddie realized she couldn’t see most of the festivities and had bent down and pulled her up onto his back for a piggyback ride. She didn’t need to say any of that out loud. She already knew she was going to have a hard time forgetting it.  

Steve had been her ride to Indianapolis, but he was staying in the city to visit his dad, so Chrissy found herself without a way home until Dustin pointed out that Eddie had more than enough room in his van.

From her place in the passenger seat, Chrissy turned around and checked how many people had stuffed themselves into the back of the transit van. “How many people can this hold?” she asked as Eddie navigated through Indy’s choked post-festival streets.

Eddie glanced in his rearview and waved at the nine people still shuffling over one another and bickering tiredly about who was sitting where and where was most comfortable for a two-hour drive. “They’re fine,” he decided before he looked over with a curious gaze. “What was your favorite thing about today?”

“Uh,” she bit her lip for a second in thought before she decided, “all the proud moms and dads.”

Eddie grinned. “It’s cool, right?”

“It’s more than cool,” she countered. “It’s…” she floundered for the words. “I just can’t imagine—” To say she couldn’t imagine her own mother being so supportive might have qualified for understatement of the century. She shook her head. “That’s what families are supposed to be, aren’t they? I don’t know why it struck me so hard to see all those people show up for their kids but…”

“No,” Eddie shook his head. “I get what you mean. It’s different than just run-of-the-mill good parents.”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “It was good for my heart.”

He smiled to himself. “Yeah,” he echoed. “Mine too.”

Behind them, the conversation sounded like it had turned into a quiet discussion about who was going to suggest a stop at Waffle House before they returned home. Chrissy watched as Eddie checked his mirror again before studying the traffic ahead of them with a thoughtful little line between his eyebrows.

They made it onto the freeway before he spoke again, breaking the comfortable silence that had settled between them in the front of the van. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” she looked over from where she’d been resisting the urge to snoop around the cab and see what he stashed in his glove box and door pockets.

“And, uh,” he only spared her a quick glance before he returned his eyes to the road. “You can feel free to tell me to fuck off if you want—”

“Okay…” she laughed despite the little coil of unease his disclaimer twisted in the back of her throat. “What is it?”

“I’ve heard you mention your mom a lot,” he said, sounding like he was choosing each of his words very carefully. “But not your dad.” He waited for a beat and then continued. “Is he…still in the picture? Or…”

“It’s, um,” she coughed. “It’s kind of complicated.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Eddie said immediately. “Kind of a dick move to just ask that, anyway,” he added, almost under his breath.

“No,” she reached out a hand to put on his arm, but pulled it back, thinking better of it. “It’s not—” she stopped and shook her head. “I don’t mind talking about it.”

That wasn’t true. She didn’t really like to talk about it. She tried her best not to tell most people if she was being honest with herself. But there was something about the way that Eddie had already shared so much of his own life with her—even the less-than-pretty parts—that made her want to answer his question.

“He, um, he’s in a…well, it’s like a…like a care home? A long-term care facility,” she said, finally finding the right words.

“Oh,” Eddie looked over for longer this time.

“He had an accident,” she went on, knowing that he wanted to ask for more details. “When I was about eight. He was whitewater rafting with his work buddies…not wearing a helmet.” Her lips pursed. “They hit some rough water…he hit his head on a rock…” she swallowed hard and shrugged. “And that was pretty much it.”

“What—uh—what’s…”

“They said it was a traumatic brain injury,” she filled in. “It took him two years to wake up.”

Eddie’s eyes snapped over to her for just another second before he changed lanes to get around a slow-moving Volvo. “But he did? He did wake up?”

“Mmhmm,” she nodded slowly. “But he—uh—” she swallowed around the dryness in her throat. “He’s not…really there anymore, y’know?”

“Chrissy, I’m sorry…”

“No, it’s okay,” she said. It wasn’t okay, but there was nothing he could say that would make it okay, and ‘I’m sorry’ was just as good as anything else. “He has good days. He can speak most of the time and walk a little bit. He doesn’t…” she looked down and realized she’d twisted her hands together so tightly that her fingertips were turning white. “He doesn’t usually know who we are. Um, my mom—” she coughed again. “He recognizes my mom more than my brother and I.”

Eddie checked his mirror again. In the back seat, she could hear Mike and Lucas engaged in a subdued debate about the best Waffle House menu item for late-night dining. He cleared his throat lightly. “You don’t have to stop,” he said, still cautiously tiptoeing around each word. “But I get it if you don’t want to talk about this anymore. Just don’t feel like you have to.”

She shook her head. “It just got me thinking about her this afternoon,” she admitted, the words forming before she could think about stopping them. “All those moms with their kids…so proud and happy and supportive.”

“You and your mom aren’t close, huh?”

Chrissy let out a snort. “Uh, no. Not really.” She pushed her bangs back with one hand and reached back to pull her ponytail out with the other. “After my dad’s accident…” she shook out her hair, trying to dispel the knots and tangles. “I don’t know. It was like since she couldn’t control that part of her life anymore, she decided she had to control something else.”

Eddie looked over again. “Like you?”

She nodded. “Like me. And everything I do, everything I say…everything I eat, everything I wear…”

He frowned. “Jesus…really?”

“Really,” she assured him. She was leaving out the worst of it. The calorie counting. The daily measurements she had to endure until she finally moved out on her own. The weekly check-ins to make sure she wasn’t putting on too much weight. “She’s always been kind of…domineering,” she added. “But with me,” her fingers twisted again. “I don’t know. I’m like her pet project. Some kind of little Barbie doll she can force to live the kind of life she always thought she should have.”

“Hence the already-picked-out career and your cookie-cutter boyfriend?”

Chrissy bit her lip. “Jason is a really good guy—”

“Hey, I never said he wasn’t,” Eddie lifted his hands off the steering wheel in defense. “There’s nothing wrong with cookie cutters, y’know.” He looked over with a wry smile. “They’re mass-produced for a reason. Everybody loves ‘em.”

She snorted again, there was a little more humor this time. “You’re such a jerk.”

He laughed, and without taking his eyes off the road, started to rummage in the box of cassettes in between the two front seats. “You love it,” he muttered. “And listen,” he went on before she could decide how she wanted to respond to that. “I know you didn’t bring any of that up to ask for my advice, but it sorta feels like maybe you could use a little guidance.”

“It does?” she asked dubiously.

He glanced down finally and found what he was looking for. “It does.” He pulled the clear box onto his lap and popped it open. “And when I find myself in times of trouble—”

She reached out and put a hand on his forearm, making contact this time as he went to pop the tape into the car’s stereo. “Eddie?”

He looked over. “Yeah?”

“I don’t think I can stomach any John Lennon right now.”

Eddie’s expression fell like she’d just insulted his entire bloodline. “Gross. No. In my car? Absolutely not.”  He shook his head and shuddered dramatically. “What I was going to say was that when I need advice, I try to listen to the wise, wise words of my sister.”

She blinked, surprised enough to take her hand away and let him push the tape into the deck. “You have a sister?”

Eddie grinned as the tape began to play and the first notes faded in through the speakers.

We’re not gonna take it

No, we ain’t gonna take it

We’re not gonna take it

Anymore

Chrissy started to laugh as the guitar chords ripped through the van, breaking up the conversation in the back when Dustin perked up and pointed at the front of the car. “Turn this up!” he demanded.

“Only if you little sheepies sing along,” Eddie called back, his hand already on the volume wheel. He looked over and gave her an encouraging nod. “That means you too, Cunningham.”

“I think I only know the chorus,” she laughed, raising her voice over the sound of the music and the nine voices in the back.

“That’s okay,” Eddie called back. “Gotta start somewhere.”

We’ll fight the powers that be just

Don’t pick our destiny ‘cause

You don’t know us

You don’t belong

We’re not gonna take it

No, we ain’t gonna take it

We’re not gonna take it anymore

By the end of the second chorus, Chrissy was bobbing her head and singing along with everyone else and by the time the song was over, her sides were hurting from laughing so hard.

She couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.

They stopped for gas halfway home. When she was coming out of the convenience store, wiping her wet hands on her shorts because there was never enough power in the restroom hand driers to do anything, Chrissy stopped at the pump, noting the cluster of bats Eddie had tattooed on his arm as he held the nozzle to the van.

She smiled and leaned against the vehicle to face him. “Would you give me a tattoo?”

Eddie blinked. “What?”

“I mean, I’d pay you, of course. But yeah. I want a tattoo,” she said firmly.

“No you don’t,” he shook his head.

She scoffed a laugh. “Excuse you. Yes I do! Why would you say I don’t?”

Eddie shook his head, smiling. “Because I think you had your mind blown open today and you’re a little buzzed on that, and thinking about how you’re mad at your mom—”

“So what?” she challenged. She couldn’t deny any of that was true.

“So you don’t really want one,” he insisted before he laughed. “Listen, I’m not opposed to a little rebellion, obviously,” he glanced down at his own appearance. “And if you were anyone else, I’d say ‘sure, you got the dime, I got the time,’ but—"

“But what?” she asked, standing up straight to put her hands on her hips. “What makes me different than anyone else?”

“I just don’t want to be something that you’d regret,” he said and then shook his head quickly, launching ahead before she had time to process how his words had all but smacked her in the face. “Do. I mean. Fuck," he griped before trying again. "I don’t want to do something—I don’t want you to do something you’d regret…later.” He coughed and looked just a little too interested in the pavement just below the gas tank. “If…you. Y’know. Decide you don’t want it anymore.”

Chrissy looked at him for a long, loaded moment. For the second time that day, her mouth opened and closed like a fish as any words she might have said evaporated on the tip of her tongue. She wanted to tell him she could make her own decisions. That she was old enough to know what she would and wouldn’t regret and that he didn’t have anything to worry about.

But saying any of that would make it sound like they weren’t talking about tattoos anymore.

And they were still talking about tattoos.

Weren’t they?

The pump stopped at thirty-five dollars and Eddie shook his head, clearing his throat again. “Just think about it, okay?” He replaced the nozzle and screwed the van’s gas cap back on. “Tattoo removal is really painful and expensive, and it always looks like shit.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her head to one side, studying him. “Okay,” she agreed finally. “I’ll think about it some more.”

“Good.”

“But when I decide I still want one—”

“Yeah, yeah,” his smile returned, and he nodded before he surprised her by opening the passenger door and motioning for her to get in. “I’ll do it.”

***

Tiger Lily’s was always closed on Sundays. Chrissy waited until after church and the weekly brunch that followed with the Carvers and her mother before she made up an excuse to go in.

It wasn’t entirely a lie. There were quarterly taxes to review and upcoming deliveries to plot on the map for the week. But she always did that on Monday morning.  That Sunday, using the window paint they usually reserved to promote prom season, Chrissy painted a small rainbow flag in the bottom corner of the front window.

The store was going to be hers someday anyway, her mother always liked to remind her. And if it was going to be her store, Chrissy wanted it to be a safe place for everyone.

Chapter Text

life was a willow and it bent right to your wind
they count me out time and time again

v.

“Okay, but what fucking Chance guy?” Lucas’ voice rang through the entire shop as he and Mike dragged in the sidewalk sign for Elle on Tuesday afternoon.

“I don’t know any specifics,” Mike was saying with a heavy sigh when Eddie finished cleaning his studio and came out to the front. “You know everything I know.”

“Okay, but what specifically did Nancy say?” Lucas demanded. “Tell me again.”

Eddie popped his head over to Will’s side, who was very determinedly sweeping with his Walkman on, and then looked over into the piercing suite where Erica was swabbing the top of Elle’s left ear. Her gun was on the stainless-steel table with the steel stud display beside it. “Don’t ask,” Erica said without looking up. “Trust me.”

“All she said was that she thought you and Max were a better couple,” Mike said, sounding very much like someone who wished he’d never brought it up.

“Because…” Lucas moved his hands in a circle.

“Because she’s not too sure about this Chance guy,” Mike sighed. “That’s all she said.”

Eddie assessed the room, his arms crossed over his chest. “Max got a new boyfriend?”

“No!” Lucas turned around and pointed directly at his face. “No, she definitely doesn’t.”

From the counter where he was counting the register, Dustin looked up. “Kinda sounds like she might.”

“Okay, no but she doesn’t,” Lucas repeated. “Because she doesn’t know anyone named Chance, okay? No one named Chance works at the flower shop. None of the dudes she sees at the skate park are named Chance—”

“Are you sure about that?” Dustin asked before Eddie had the opportunity. “Did you like, take a poll?”

“She’s never once in the entire thirteen years that I’ve known her mentioned someone named Chance, Dustin! I would have remembered such a douchebag name! She lives in an entirely Chanceless existence!”

“Maybe they just met,” Mike suggested with a shrug.

“They just met, and she just decided to start dating him?” Lucas asked in disbelief. “Do you know how long it took her to agree to go out with me?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Two years!”

“To be fair,” Dustin pointed out, not looking up from his cash counting. “We were twelve when you and Max first met.”

“And it wasn’t that she didn’t want to go out with you,” Mike reminded with the matter-of-fact tone that only someone who’d been hearing about this exact thing for over a decade could muster. “It was that her mom wouldn’t let her have a boyfriend until we got to high school.”

While Lucas took in another deep inhale looking ready for another round of verbal sparring, Eddie held up his hands. “Look if Little Red wants to play the field a little bit, that’s her business and I would really really prefer that it stay her business—”

“Me too!” Erica called from the back. Her brother rolled his eyes.

“In the meantime,” Eddie looked at his store manager. “Henderson, finish up the deposit. I’ve gotta hit the hardware store before they close.” He paused at the door. “And remember, my little lambs, I’m buying enough rollers for everyone, so don’t make any plans on Sunday.”

“I’d like to remember why we’re all stuck painting this place six whole weeks after we moved everything in,” Erica called from the back.

Eddie sighed, his hand on the door. “Because that’s how long it took me to pay off the moving expenses from the company credit card,” he called back.

“You gotta get back to paying cash for everything!” she yelled. “The interest rate on that card is bullshit! And you’re not building your credit if you’re carrying a balance from month to month!”

He rolled his eyes. “Expert piercer and financial advisor,” he muttered. “How’d I get so lucky?”

The hardware store was close enough to walk and they had more than enough rollers, blue painters’ tape, and detail brushes to make it through the weekend. He was making his way back to the shop when something caught his eye through Tiger Lily’s front window.

A pair of legs, clad in bright blue shorts, bouncing on a stepladder.

Eddie stopped and frowned in confusion for a second before he ducked under the green awning and saw Chrissy balancing on her tiptoes, jumping up to try and reach a bulb into a light socket. He watched her try unsuccessfully—she was still at least six inches away even with her platform—once more before he knocked on the window.

He heard her surprised Ohh! through the glass and winced, reconsidering the choice to startle a woman precariously perched on a high surface. To his relief, she didn’t fall. Her arms helicoptered out to the sides and she swayed for a second before she caught her balance and squinted at the window.

She brightened when she recognized him, treating him to her sweet, slightly crooked smile before she hopped down and crossed the shop to unlock the door. “Hi,” she greeted brightly as she stepped aside and welcomed him in.

“Need a hand?” he asked with a laugh. He set down his two bags and motioned to the lightbulb she still held.

Chrissy looked down and shook her head with a flustered laugh. “I’m sure there’s some obvious joke about how many blondes it takes to change a lightbulb here—”

Eddie smiled. “I always think of you as more of a redhead,” he blurted out without thinking about how that sounded. Like he thought of her often. Often enough to sort her into a hair color category and assign some kind of meaning to it. But she looked up with another smile that changed his mind about trying to take it back. He coughed and ran a hand over the back of his neck, willing away the heat he found there. “Anyway, this isn’t really, y’know, public knowledge? But I’ve replaced a lot of lightbulbs in my day."

She lifted her eyebrows. “Oh yeah?”

“Tons,” he nodded emphatically. “At least…” he blew out a breath and pretended to consider it. “Five? Maybe seven?”

“Seven?” she repeated, still grinning. “Why would you keep an accomplishment like that a secret?”

He shrugged modestly. “It’s unbecoming to brag.”

Chrissy snorted and pressed her knuckles to the tip of her nose as she shook her head again. “Well, I’m certainly not going to refuse the help of a professional if he’s offering.”

Their fingers brushed when she handed him the lightbulb, but she stepped out of his way and motioned to the stepladder. It took all of thirty seconds to swap the bulb in the overhead fixture. But considering the way he had to stretch on his tiptoes at the very top of the ladder, there was simply no way she was ever going to reach it on her own.

“Thank you,” she said as he got down. To his surprise, her cheeks were a little pink too, making him think that maybe it was just warmer inside the shop than outside and he wasn’t blushing like a freshman just because she’d smiled at him.

“Of course.”

They stood in a brief moment of awkward quiet before they spoke at once.

“If you’re not busy tonight—” she began.

Just as he said, “Well, I should probably—”

They both stopped and Chrissy blushed again. “Sorry,” she bit her lip. “Go ahead.”

“No,” he shook his head. “What were you going to say?”

“Um. Just if you aren’t busy tonight,” she paused and for a second, he wished he could reach up and gently pull her lip from between her teeth. She chewed it so much it was amazing she didn’t make herself bleed. “We’re down one for trivia at Benny’s and I wondered if you wanted to come along.”

Unexpectedly, Eddie felt his heart sink. Not because he actually wanted to go to trivia—because he hated trivia, especially bar trivia, and especially if Chrissy’s Ken doll was going to be there—but because for a second, she looked genuinely nervous about asking him. Like she actually hoped he’d say yes. He swallowed hard. “Uh, I would,” he lied. “But it’s just that—”

“Oh, right,” she blinked and shook her head. “No, sorry. It’s Tuesday. I forgot. That’s your gig night, right?”

He was stunned she remembered. “It is,” he nodded. “Usually. But, uh, it’s actually fumigation week at The Hideout—” he cracked a smile when a little line of confusion appeared between her eyebrows. “I know—already? Barely had time to buy my fumigation cards and gifts this year.”

Chrissy giggled. “So, you…aren’t playing tonight?”

Shit, he thought without meaning to. He shouldn’t have said anything. Let her think that he was just at his usual gig and— “Uh, no,” he admitted. “Not tonight.”

“So, you just…hate trivia?” she guessed, an amused expression still playing on her lips.

“I uh,” he coughed. “I actually have…a thing…Tonight. With this—uh—this woman. From The Hideout, actually. She’s a bartender there.”

Chrissy blinked. “A…date?” she guessed, ducking her head to try and read his face.

“Yeah,” he nodded, wishing very hard that he’d never said anything, at all, ever. Not to Chrissy right now, not to Cannie last week when she asked if he wanted to go out. Not to anyone. Ever. “You could call it that.”

She studied him for a moment longer, still wearing a half-smile. “So, I’m not an expert,” she began carefully. “But I always thought that dates are something you should…be excited about?”

He laughed quietly and shook his head. “Well, historically,” he countered. “Me getting excited about first dates is usually a waste of energy.”

“Oooh, spoken like a true romantic,” she teased.

“Old Billy Shakes ain’t got nothin’ on me,” he quipped with a grin.

She laughed again. “You should at least bring her some flowers,” she suggested, stepping back and turning toward her refrigerated cases that lined the shop.

“Oh, I see you, Chrissy Cunningham,” he said, not wanting to shut her down entirely with the news that nothing about Candace Rosso struck him as the type who would grin and blush over a bouquet of flowers on a first date. “Trying to unload some of your inventory on me—it’s very clever.”

“Ha,” she squawked with her back to him. “So funny,” she muttered. “It’s on the house,” she looked over her shoulder. “As a thank you for the help with my lightbulb problem.”

“Aw,” he mumbled. “You don’t have to do that.”

She slid open one of the coolers, clearly having already decided that she did. “I’ll even put it together for you myself, you big baby.”

He tried to protest twice more while she plucked an array of cut flowers from her coolers. Once she waved his words away, the next she outright ignored him until she’d assembled a beautiful bouquet of dark purple dahlias, light blue snapdragons, and a few pops of white roses surrounded by soft greenery. She tied a purple ribbon around the stems and held it out to him.

“Voila!”

“Wow,” he said, not having to feign being impressed. “That’s nice.”

“Yeah,” she smiled at it, looking proud of herself. “It is, isn’t it?” She motioned for him to take it. “I hope she likes it.”

Eddie swallowed hard again and accepted her offering. “I’m sure she will,” he lied. Because it was worth it to see her smile again. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she grinned. “I hope you have a nice time tonight.”

His guts twisted again. She sounded like she really meant that.

Of course, she does, he kicked himself. Because she’s a really nice person who means the things she says and who wants to be your friend.

“You too,” he managed as he scooped up both of his bags from the hardware store in one hand to carry his flowers with the other. “At trivia, I mean.”

“Right.” She nodded. “I always do.”

He didn’t think he imagined the way her smile tightened just a little.

***

If Eddie was being honest, he did have a nice time on his date. Cannie was exactly his type—loud, uninhibited, and with a sleek, sheet of black hair that fell halfway down her back and a lot of eyeliner. She had sleeves of colorful tattoos—half of which she could attribute to Hellfire Ink—and she had excellent taste in music.

They went to see some friends of hers play at a roadhouse on the highway. Good, loud, classic metal that set his blood racing and his ears ringing in just the right way.

She told ridiculous stories about the people she served at The Hideout and despite his usual cynicism around dating of any kind, Eddie found himself laughing most of the night. Glad he’d decided to say yes when she’d asked him.

At least, he thought he was.

But when he pulled into her driveway at just after two in the morning, and she leaned across the center of his van to press her full, red lips to his—no hesitation, no first-date nervous laughter or twisting her fingers into an anxious tangle in her lap—he didn’t feel anything.

It didn’t stop him from kissing her back. From closing his eyes and leaning into her, inhaling her pleasant scent of cigarettes and musky perfume. From wishing he did feel something because that would be so, so much easier.

Cannie pulled back first and let her forehead rest against his. “You wanna come in?” Her voice was soft and deep and husky everything in his brain was jabbing him with a hot poker telling him he should. Want. To. Say. Yes.

“I, uh, I got a guy coming in at eight tomorrow,” he said, shaking his head before he glanced at the clock. “Today, I mean.”

She winced and nodded, sitting back to shove her hair away from her face. “Yikes. That’s really early.”

“Yeah,” he mirrored her nod. “It was the only time he could do it. Otherwise, I’d—”

“I get it,” she shrugged and reached between her feet for her purse. Before he could blink, she’d darted back across the front seat and brushed her lips to his for another brief kiss. “Raincheck?”

“Yeah,” he nodded again. “Definitely.”

She winked with her hand on the door. “Enjoy your early wake-up.”

He drove home with his stereo blasting, trying to drown out the self-loathing and the reminder that he was a liar who couldn’t stop lying to everyone about everything. Especially when it came to his social life, apparently.

Lying to Chrissy.

Lying to Cannie.

Definitely lying to Dustin when he inevitably asked how it went tomorrow.

Lies lies lies.

His ears were still ringing and his head was starting to hurt by the time he got home. He shuffled out of his clothes and into the shower without any urgency.

Because of course, he didn’t have to go to sleep right away. Because of course, he didn’t have an appointment at eight in the morning.

Because no one in their right mind would schedule a tattoo appointment that early.

He wandered into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water, trying to banish the usual scratchy throat that came from a night out. He paused on his way back to his bedroom, smiling when his eyes landed on his countertop and the bouquet of purple and blue flowers there.

He liked them too much to have given them away.

***

By Sunday afternoon, Lucas had worked through most of his grief. He’d rounded the bases on bargaining and anger mid-week, moping through depression on Friday, and when they were filling paint trays on Sunday, he seemed to be tiptoeing toward acceptance.

“Really, this might even be a good thing,” he said to his sister while she tied a bandana over her hair.

“Okay,” Erica agreed, definitely not listening. “Hand me that tape.”

“Because what were Max and I before we were a couple?” he asked, doing as she asked.

“A pain in my ass?” Erica suggested while she rolled three strips of bright blue along the doorframe to her and Elle’s studio.

“Friends,” Lucas said, ignoring her. “We were great at being friends. We were best friends.”

“I thought Mike, Will, and Dustin were your best friends,” Elle commented as she inched past them into the room with her own bucket of paint.

“Yeah,” Lucas agreed. “Me, Mike, Will, Dustin, you and Max,” he reminded. “Remember? It was great.” He shrugged as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “It can be great again.”

“You know what would be great?” Erica asked as Eddie popped his head out of his own studio and motioned for her to pass him the tape. She tossed it to him like a softball, making for an easy catch. “If you’d stop telling me how great it’s going to be and actually pick a wall to start painting.”

With everyone painting—each taking a wall or a whole room in some cases—it wasn’t an overwhelming job. Uncle Wayne had arrived early in the morning with a truck bed full of drop cloths and two extra ladders, along with the promise to return in a few hours with lunch for everyone.

Eddie was more than halfway done with his studio when he heard the front door’s bell jingle. He paused with his roller halfway down the wall and listened to the familiar rise and fall of voices, Dustin and Wayne greeting one another, before he heard something unexpected.

“Sweetheart, you don’t have to carry all that,” Uncle Wayne said with what sounded like a laugh. “Let me take some of it.”

“Don’t be silly,” the undeniable sound of Chrissy’s voice shocked him like a live wire, splattering paint all over the wall with the roller nearly slipped from his hand in surprise. “I’m stronger than I look,” she said.

He dropped it back into the tray and forced himself to walk slowly from his space to the front where, sure enough, she stood carrying a stack of pizza boxes, holding them away from his uncle. “Hey,” he greeted from the doorway.

She turned and smiled brightly. “Hey,” she echoed. “Hope you don’t mind—Dustin told me there was a painting party going on and that you guys could use all the extra hands.”

“And she thinks this old man can’t carry a couple of pizzas on his own,” Wayne grumbled good-naturedly as he took the boxes from her hands.

Chrissy let out a shocked laugh and shook her head. “You’re welcome!” She was wearing a pair of paint-speckled overalls and tennis shoes.

Eddie watched in amusement as his uncle smiled a genuine smile. “Thank you,” he said quietly as he set the pizzas on the jewelry case before he pointed at her. “But don’t you try hauling that beer.”

She held up her hands. “No sir,” she promised. “All yours.”

“Hey, speaking of,” Eddie reached into his back pocket for his wallet. “Are you going to let me pay for this, old man?”

“No, I’m not, smart ass,” Wayne shook his head once and headed back toward the door to retrieve a case of soda and beer from his truck.

Chrissy put her hands on her hips and faced Eddie. “Alright, Mr. Munson,” she said with a smile. “Put me to work.”

The painting slowed considerably once everyone had a slice in one hand and a roller in the other, but with Chrissy determined to help him, they managed to make a nice amount of progress on the third wall of his room.

“So how was your date the other night?” she asked, not looking up from where she was carefully painting the trim around the window.

“Uh, it was good,” he said, swallowing his crust too quickly. It scraped his throat on the way down. That wasn’t totally a lie. It had been a good date, by most standards.

She glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “I’m glad,” she said, sounding once again like she really was. “Did she like the flowers?”

He was grateful she’d returned her attention to her painting. “Oh,” he coughed. “Uh, yeah, she did. Good call on that one.”

Chrissy let out a delighted little laugh and gave a sassy little shimmy of her hips and shoulders. “Score one for old-fashioned romantic gestures,” she said triumphantly.

He watched her for a minute appreciating the way the sunlight through the window picked up all the red in her messy ponytail and the freckles on her shoulders beneath the sleeves of her tank top. He swallowed hard and cleared his throat again. “Can I ask you something?”

Her paintbrush stopped halfway down the window frame. She looked over her shoulder again, blue eyes sparkling with mischief. “Can I tell you to fuck off if I don’t want to answer?”

He grinned. The word ‘fuck’ sounded all wrong coming out of her mouth. Much too cute. “Always.”

She laughed. “Go for it.”

“You said no one ever brings you flowers.”

Her smile dimmed slightly, and she turned back to the window, bending to dip her brush back in the charcoal gray paint they were using for the trim. “Uh-huh.”

Eddie narrowed his eyes. He’d been expecting her to laugh again and shake her head and tell him she was exaggerating. “No one?” he asked. “Ever?”

“Well,” her shoulder moved. “I mean. When I was in high school, I made all my own corsages and bouquets for prom and homecomings from the shop because it just made sense—y’know, financially.” He felt his frown deepen as she astutely ran her paintbrush along the window frame. “And…I don’t know. I work in a flower shop,” she laughed quietly. “I guess it doesn’t seem like something I need.”

“Are…flowers…anything anyone really needs?” he asked before he realized how that sounded. He coughed again. “Not that—uh. Sorry,” he shook his head. “I didn’t mean that how it sounded.”

She looked over her shoulder again and spared him a small smile. “I get it,” she assured him.

“I mean, nobody needs tattoos either,” he shrugged. “So, we’re both running impractical businesses.”

“Shame I’m not good at anything else.”

Eddie’s smile doubled. “Me neither.”

“Speaking of tattoos,” she said, turning back to her painting. “What would you recommend?”

He blinked. “For…what?”

“For me,” she laughed and glanced back again. The sparkle had returned to her eyes. “For the tattoo that you’re going to give me.”

Eddie laughed and bent to dip his roller in the paint tray. “This again.”

“Come on,” she needled lightly. “You’re the professional. Consider this my consultation.”

“What does it matter what I’d recommend?” he asked. “It’s your tattoo—it’s going on your skin forever—”

“Because I care what you think,” she said like it was obvious. “And you know me. If you were going to design something for me…what would it be?”

She wasn’t looking at him, didn’t see the way he rubbed the back of his neck and shuffled his feet like a nervous teenager. “I’ll tell you and then you’ll get mad and say it’s boring or that I don’t know you at all or you hate the idea—”

“You are so dodging this question!” she accused, shaking her head even as she studied the trim. “Just blurt it out—first thing that comes to your mind.”

He exhaled with trepidation. “Flowers.”

“I knew it!” she spun back around and pointed her paintbrush in his face. “I knew that’s what you were going to say!” It felt more like an accusation than confirmation. Like he’d fallen into some conversational trap she’d set, trying to prove exactly what he’d worried about—that he gave the same answer anyone else would have.

“Well, not—” he fumbled, trying to pinpoint her expression. Was she actually mad he’d said it? “I don’t mean, like. I don’t know, a tiger lily,” he said with emphasis, pleased when she smiled just a little. “But I’m sorry, you work at a flower shop—people are going to associate you with flowers.”

She sighed; her shoulders deflated, and her eyes rolled before she turned back around. “I know.”

Eddie fidgeted in place, wanting to bring that smile back. Wanting to feel like he hadn’t let her down somehow. He swallowed hard. “You didn’t ask me what kind of flowers I would pick for your tattoo.”

Her brush stopped again. At this rate, the window was never going to get painted and that was fine by him. “What kind of flowers?” she quietly asked his wall.

He squinted, thinking back to the page of one of Henderson’s flower books. The chapter on mountain flora. “Have you ever heard of purple saxi…fraga?” he asked, testing his own memory as well as her knowledge. “Or maybe it’s saxifrage?” he softened the ‘g’ at the end of the word. “I’m not sure.”

Chrissy looked over her shoulder, her eyebrows lifted. “Aren’t those the ones that grow in the Artic?”

He nodded. “Yeah. They have these really pretty purple flowers and they kind of just…” his fingers splayed out toward the floor, “carpet the whole tundra in the spring. And then I guess there’s other colors too—red ones or stuff that looks like little daisies. But the purple’s first to come up every spring.”

She still looked partway between confused and expectant. “And…that’s the flower that makes you think of me?”

He shrugged, wishing she’d turn around again. This felt easier when he was just talking to her ponytail. “They’re…uh. Deceptive—”

“Deceptive?”

“Yeah,” he nodded again, plowing through his explanation. “They’re these tiny little flowers that look like…nothing. Like there’s no way they should be able to survive in that environment because it’s freezing and dark and uninhabitable. And then you find out they’re the hardiest flower in the world and it doesn’t make any sense because they’re…” he motioned to the ground like they could look down and see a crop of them beneath their shoes. “They’re just…little and sweet-looking and given everything they have to deal with they should be…I don’t know, really thorny and harsh and…” Eddie stopped talking and let his eyes drop to the bunched-up drop cloth at their feet. “I don’t know,” he said, feeling more than a little embarrassed for how that all had come tumbling out of his mouth. “That sounds really stupid now that I’m saying it out loud—”

“No, no,” when he looked up, Chrissy was shaking her head quickly. “No, it doesn’t. It—” she paused and bit her lip. “It sounded…nice.” It was her turn to glance down as a small, shy smile played across her mouth. “I don’t think anyone’s ever called me ‘hardy’ before.”

“Uh, hey.”

They were both startled at the sound of Max’s voice cutting through the room. She was standing in the doorway, her cheeks flushed and with a fine sheen of sweat on her brow. “Hey, Red,” Eddie said with a confused wave. “Decided you wanted to join in the fun after all?”

Max looked distracted but managed a smile. “Uh, no,” she pointed at Chrissy. “Jason just called the shop, looking for you.”

She frowned, her head tilting to one side while Eddie felt like someone had stepped squarely on his chest. “Why were you at the shop?”

“I was just out for my run,” she said, glancing down at her ratty shorts and a baggy t-shirt. “And I stopped to check my schedule. The phone rang while I was there.” She paused and coughed, swiping her wrist over her forehead. “I told him you were making a special Sunday delivery.”

The shit-disturber within him wanted to ask why Max’s first instinct was to lie. But he kept his mouth shut.

“Oh,” she didn’t bother to hide how her frown deepened. “Um, okay. Did he give you a message?”

The redhead shrugged. “Uh, just to tell you that your fiancé called, and he wants to know when he should pick you up for some…Carver family barbecue?” She glanced between Chrissy and Eddie and back again, unaware that her choice of words had upgraded the boot on his chest to a Buick. “Figured you would want to call him back and let him know.”  

“Oh, shit,” Chrissy muttered, glancing down again. “Uh yeah,” she nodded. “I do. Thanks. I just—totally forgot we had that tonight.”

“Don’t rush,” Max held up her hands. “I bought you at least an hour if you need it. I told him he just missed you and that you had to go all the way to Morningside.”

“Okay,” she nodded again, not looking any less flustered. “Thanks. I’ll get moving in a minute.”

“No problem,” Max said, shooting them two thumbs up before she backed out of the room.

To his surprise, Chrissy didn’t immediately abandon the window she’d been working on. But she did pick up the pace, refocusing herself to get as much done as she could in a short time.

He only lasted a minute before he couldn’t help himself. “So, when did that happen?”

“When did what happen?” she asked, dipping more paint on her brush when she crouched down to swipe at the underside.

Eddie shook his head and took her cue, rolling more paint onto his roller and attacking the last remaining wall. “When did Jason get the upgrade from boyfriend to fiancé?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged, dropping onto her knees. “Forever ago?”

“Forever ago,” he repeated with a thoughtful nod. He knew she didn’t want to talk about it, but he couldn’t stop. “So, you just…never wear an engagement ring?” he asked. He had no right to be angry. He knew that. He knew he had no right to feel like he’d just had the rug pulled out from under him. But that didn’t stop his feelings from bubbling up at the back of his throat like bile.

“I don’t have an engagement ring,” she said simply. Before he could say anything else, she continued, painting faster than she had the rest of the afternoon. “It’s not like that, anyway.”

He frowned. “Not like what?”

“It’s not like he did some big…fairy tale romantic thing,” she said with a little bite on the edge of her words. “He didn’t have to get down on one knee and ask me to marry him. We just—”

“Wait.” Eddie stopped painting. “He didn’t even have to ask you?” he repeated in shock. “You’re saying you’re going to spend the rest of your life with this guy, and you don’t care that he never even says the words ‘Will you marry me?’”

“No,” she shrugged like this wasn’t the weirdest thing he’d heard all day. If nothing else, he would have expected any proposal that came from that well-coiffed tool to be straight out of a storybook with doves and roses and some big speech about how he couldn’t imagine his life without her.

Wasn’t that what nice girls like Chrissy were supposed to want? Or at least expect? Wasn’t that part of the bargain when you grew up with a family with pressure and expectations like hers?

“It’s not that big of a deal,” she said breezily. “We’re both too practical for anything like that, anyway.”

“Right,” Eddie said quietly when she finished the final piece of trim and set her brush down. “Sorry,” he added. “Didn’t mean to pry.”

“It’s fine,” she shook her head. “No big deal. But um,” she motioned to the window frame and offered a smile that was much too forced. “Here. At least I managed to finish something.”

“It looks great,” he said honestly. “Thanks. I appreciate the help,” he went on, hoping to coax a real smile back out of her before she left. “You didn’t have to do all this.”

“No,” she shook her head. “It was fun. I like painting.” She looked at her watch. “But I really should go.”

“Yeah,” he nodded again. “Okay. Have a good night.”

The smile she gave him at the door was tight and left her lips too quickly. “Thanks. You too.”  

By the time everyone left, the shop looked brand new with its freshly painted walls and trim. Eddie had finished washing out the brushes and sponges in the basement and was drying his hands on a towel when the front bell jingled again. He hurried up the last few stairs and stopped with a sigh of relief that it was just his uncle who’d let himself in.

“You get all finished up?” Wayne asked, looking around. “Looks nice,” he decided without waiting for an answer.

“Yeah,” Eddie followed his gaze around the front room. “I’ll hang everything back up tomorrow, but yeah. I think it looks good.” He looked back at the older man. “What’s up? You forget something, before?”

“Uh, yeah,” Wayne rubbed at the back of his neck for one second before he shook his head. “I forgot to tell you,” He coughed quietly. “That you, my boy, are one dumb bitch sometimes.”

He blinked. “Uh. Okay.”

“I would’a called you a dumb sonofabitch,” Wayne said grimly. “But frankly, I thought too highly of your mother for that to be appropriate.”

Eddie crossed his arms over his chest. “Did you seriously just come all the way back down here to insult me? You could’ve done that over the phone.”

“I also left my hat,” he pointed to the register where, sure enough, his weathered ballcap was perched where he’d left it that afternoon. He crossed the room to pick it up, curling the brim between his calloused hands.

“Kay…” Eddie said and let out a slow exhale. “Well.” He moved to the door and held it open. “Get home safe, I guess?”

“Nope,” his uncle shook his head. “Close that,” he said, making Eddie feel like he was fifteen again. Especially when he pointed to the couch. “Sit.”

Obediently, he did as he was told. He dropped down onto the couch and rubbed his eyes. “Y’know, Unc, it’s been a really long day and—”

“Then it’s a good thing all I’m telling you to do is shut up and listen.”

“Fine,” he sighed. “I’m listening.”

“Are you?” Wayne asked, not sitting down next to him, but choosing to pace slowly back and forth by the jewelry case. “Because I’ve known you your whole life, Eddie. I’ve seen you do and say some…exceptionally stupid shit in your day.”

He ran his hand over his face. “Jesus Christ…”

“But all that? That’s nothing compared to you telling that girl to go get more engaged this afternoon.”

Eddie looked up. “You were eavesdropping?”

“I was painting above your doorway in the hall,” he argued swiftly. “Not my fault you can’t check for other people around when you’re running your mouth, making idiotic suggestions like you did today.”

“I didn’t do shit!” he exclaimed. “She was going to marry that douche before I met her, and she’s going to marry him just as much today. Nothing I said made that happen any more or less than it already was.”

His uncle looked at him, his mouth set in a firm line. “And you’re gonna be fine with that, huh? Whenever that finally happens,” he clarified. “And she really marries that guy. You’re gonna be okay with that?”

Eddie opened his mouth and closed it again. He dropped his head into his hands and against his will let himself remember the way his whole chest had seized that afternoon when Max had called Jason Chrissy’s fiancé. The way it felt like his vision had dimmed when Chrissy said she liked the flowers he chose for her. The urge he had earlier in the week when it felt like the most natural thing in the world to reach out and brush his thumb along her bottom lip to keep her from biting it.

Other things too. Looking to his right and seeing her in the front seat of his van, bouncing her head in time with Twisted Sister, laughing and singing with pink cheeks and messy hair. Having her whole body pressed against his back at the parade, his arms hooked under her knees so she could see better—the way that had all felt so easy and uncomplicated. The way just talking to Chrissy—sharing things he never shared with anyone—felt so easy and normal and uncomplicated.

He scrubbed both hands over his face and sucked in a breath. “It doesn’t matter,” he said after what felt like a long time. “It doesn’t matter what I’m okay with—” he looked up and met Wayne’s eyes. “That’s her life. That’s what she wants to do. I’m not…I’m not part of that equation.” For one dangerous moment, his uncle’s expression softened into something that started to look like sympathy. Eddie raced on, hoping to head it off. “I just figured,” he rolled his shoulder. “Y’know, if she’s gonna throw away the key with that mayonnaise sandwich, least he could do is buy her a nice ring.”

Uncle Wayne was quiet again. Eddie kept his eyes on the older man’s dusty boots and watched as they crossed the room slowly and sat down beside him. Wayne’s arm fell heavy around his nephew’s shoulders and he pulled him in for a brief squeeze. “You’re a good man, Ed,” he said quietly. “Don’t let anyone ever make you think otherwise.”

Despite his twisting heart and gut, Eddie offered a wry smile. “I thought I was a dumb bitch.”

“Oh, you are,” Wayne agreed, getting to his feet. “It’s rare for anyone in this family to be both,” he acknowledged as he pulled his worn-out cap over his gray hair. “Usually we go one way or the other,” he mirrored Eddie’s ironic grin. “But I always knew you were special.”

Eddie stood up and stretched. “You wanna stay for a beer?”

“No, no,” he shook his head. “I said my piece,” he checked his watch. “F’I leave now, I can make it home for Dr. Quinn.”

He smiled as he held the door open. “Tell her I said hi.” He waited until his uncle had turned the corner and he heard the familiar rattle of his old pickup firing up before he locked the doors and started shutting off the lights.

Eowyn surprised him by jumping up on the shelves behind the jewelry case just as he was about to turn off the last of the overheads. “Hey pretty girl,” he smiled and held out his hand for her to smash her face against. “Where were you hiding all day?”

Without warning, she sprang from the shelf, kicking a trio of books on her way to stand at the door to go up to the apartment.

“Jesus,” he muttered and bent to pick them up. He stopped for a second and glanced at the cat, then back at the books she’d thrown to the ground. He rolled his eyes and grabbed his sketchbook from beneath the register. “Fine,” he said, coming around the case to unlock the door to the stairwell. “I’ll finish the goddamn consult.”

***

Eddie blamed an extra busy week at the shop for how long it took him to find time to walk across the street with the envelope in his hand. But in between a bachelorette party who all wanted matching rose chains around their ankles and a bald eagle carrying an American flag for a former Marine, he managed to steal half an hour for himself the following Saturday afternoon.

Tiger Lily’s was busier than he’d seen it in a while with groups of customers clumped around the books at the counter, another cluster of women chatting with one of the employees Eddie didn’t recognize at the register, and some still waiting to be served. Chrissy was busy with a trio in the corner farthest from the door. She was juggling a scheduling book and a photo album of her past work, showing examples and jotting down ideas almost simultaneously.

She didn’t notice him slip inside the shop. Which, when he considered it later, was a good thing.

Since she didn’t notice him come in, she wasn’t looking at him, and she didn’t notice the way his eyes widened when she lifted her left hand to tuck a stray curl back behind her ear.

And she certainly couldn’t tell that at the sight of the large diamond solitaire decorating her ring finger, Eddie felt like someone had just socked him squarely in the stomach. He knew his mouth even dropped open a fraction of an inch, drying out his throat and making him struggle to breathe for a second before he got a hold of himself.

She hadn’t noticed him come in. So she didn’t notice him turn and slip back outside a second later. The bright, sunny afternoon felt like another assault as he turned in the opposite direction and started walking.

He didn’t want to go back to Hellfire yet. Not with the way his blood was jumping in his veins and his whole body felt like he needed to scream.

That’s what you wanted, dumbass, a voice in his head whispered to him. You wanted a nice, big, signal so you could put an X in that box and keep moving. And it was true. It was exactly what he’d wanted when he brought it up to her before. A nice, clear message that his little crush was exactly as unrealistic as ever and he needed to grow up and get on with his life. 

What had he expected? That she’d tell Jason since he’d never officially proposed to her, she wasn’t going to marry him? That if Jason did propose the right way with a diamond the size of Montana that she’d say no?

“Munson—”

He stopped and turned around, surprised to see that Steve had chased after him. “Harrington…” he greeted guardedly.

“I uh,” Steve let out a heavy sigh and shook his head. His hands dropped to his hips. “I’m sorry. I should’ve warned you.”

He forced his face to remain neutral. “Warned me about what?”

Steve gave him a look. “Come on, man. You know what I’m talking about.”

“No,” he lied. “I don’t. There’s nothing to warn me about,” he shrugged. “Nothing’s changed.” He swallowed hard and glanced over Steve’s shoulder in the direction of the flower shop. “Girl like that?” he shook his head. “Come on, Steve. Nothing was ever going to change.”

Steve’s shoulders dropped. “Dude…”

“Just, uh,” he handed over the envelope he’d brought for her. The sketch he’d worked on for three days—starting over twice trying to get the shading and contours of the crop of little purple and white flowers just right. The client intake form he’d folded around it with her name filled out. Just in case she decided to go for it. “Just…I don’t know. Put that on her desk or something. Don’t mention I stopped by.”

“Eddie—”

“Can you do that, Harrington?” he asked, cutting him off a second time. “Please? For me?”

Steve sighed again and took the envelope from him. “Sure, man,” he said after a long pause. “I’ll just tell her it was in the mailbox.”

“Thanks.”

They looked at one another for another beat before Steve spoke again. “Look, I know we’re not best pals or anything. But I know a little bit about what you’re going through.”

“Dude,” Eddie shook his head. “This is not like you and Nancy and Jonathan, alright?” He waved his hand like he was wiping away even the possibility. “You and Nance were a whole thing before she—”

“Still know the feeling, is all I’m saying,” Steve cut him off before Eddie could rehash the way Nancy had drifted between him and Jonathan for years before finally marrying Will’s older brother three years ago. “And it sucks.”

“Sure,” he shrugged. “But I’ll survive.” He offered a completely joyless smile. “I’m like a cockroach that way.”

He got through the rest of his appointments without a problem. He knew Dustin could tell something was wrong, but every time he tried to ask, the phone would ring or the door would open or someone would need something and it would pull him away.

It was a small grace from the universe, but Eddie took it without complaining.

He didn’t feel any better by the time he finally locked up and made his way back to his apartment, but he forced himself to eat dinner and restring the guitar he’d been neglecting for a month, and finally, to pick up the phone just before midnight.

Cannie’s answering machine picked up on the fourth ring. She was at the bar, of course. But he’d known that when he’d started dialing. He wasn’t ready to talk to her yet—this message was the best he could manage, and he knew he had to do it before he lost his nerve.

“Hey,” he said after the beep, staring at the flowers still arranged on his kitchen table. “It’s Eddie. I was, uh,” he coughed. “Wondering if you wanted to cash in on that raincheck.”

Chapter Text

anywhere else is hollow
i'm begging for you to take my hand
wreck my plans

vi.

“Chrissy, dear?”

At the sound of her mother’s voice coming from the front of the otherwise empty shop, Chrissy stopped with her fingers poised above the keyboard. The green cursor on the old desktop blinked, waiting for her to complete her sales number input.

“Chrissy?” There was an edge that time. She knew she only had a few more seconds to get up to the front before the evening took an ugly turn.

Laura was standing at the front window with her arms crossed when Chrissy appeared behind the counter. She felt a hot weight of dread drop into her stomach when she realized her mother’s attention was directed at the corner of the window. Her latest addition to the shop’s signage. She coughed lightly. “What’s up?”

She pointed to the exact spot Chrissy had been hoping she’d miss in her usual inspections. “What is this?”

Chrissy forced her eyes to stay wide and innocent. “What’s what?” She swallowed hard when Laura’s pointed finger did not move. “It’s just a rainbow, Mommy.”

“Why is it here?” she demanded lightly.

She gave a shrug she hoped passed as innocent. “I just thought it was cute.”

“It’s not,” Laura clipped. “Get rid of it.”

Chrissy ground her teeth together and squared her shoulders. “I don’t want to.”

Her mother had already turned from the window, heading toward the back office to inspect her daughter’s bookkeeping. She stopped and turned with a frown. “I’m sorry, sweetheart?” she asked, looking genuinely confused. “I didn’t hear you.”

“I, um,” she swallowed again. She thought of Robin and Vickie, too afraid to even hold hands in public. And of one of the speakers at Pride whose partner was murdered simply for existing in a small town in Kentucky. And all those dead boys in San Francisco and New York that nobody cared about. “I said I don’t want to,” she repeated herself. “It’s not hurting anybody. And I think it looks nice.”

Laura stared at her. “It’s hurting our business, Chrissy,” she said firmly. “People will look at that tacky window and they’ll think we don’t know what we’re doing. Why would they trust us to dress their wedding or their garden party when we can’t even handle a simple window display?”

“I haven’t heard any complaints—”

“Why would anyone complain to you?” Laura asked and the sweet, concerned facade evaporated in an instant as she let out a high-pitched, humorless laugh. “Sweetheart, you’re not in charge.” She was close enough now that she could reach out and grab her arm if she wanted to. Chrissy tensed her body, waiting for the viper-like snap of her mother’s hand just above her elbow. She’d probably have bruises in the shape of long, manicured fingers again.

It'd be just like high school.

She clenched her jaw again. “I haven’t noticed a drop in our sales,” she said finally. “You can check the books yourself,” she added, motioning to the back. “By every account, we’re doing better this summer than we did the last two.”

It was the closest she’d ever come to outright defiance and every instinct she possessed was telling her to just shut up. To go get soap and water and scrub the glass and apologize and promise that it wouldn’t happen again.

But before she could cave and before her mother could snap again, there was a knock on the front door. Their heads snapped in unison to see Max standing beneath the yellow overhead light with an apologetic smile on her face. Behind her, Chrissy was surprised to see Lucas.

“I want it gone by Monday,” Laura hissed before she turned toward the door. In a matter of seconds, she was smiling again. The warm, effulgent shopkeeper returned to graciously twist open the lock and welcome her employee back inside. “Max, sweetheart,” she greeted. “How are you?”

“I’m good—uh—well,” Max stuttered as she and Lucas stepped inside. “I’m well, thank you, Mrs. Cunningham. I just forgot my board here earlier,” she motioned to the skateboard and tennis shoes stashed behind her usual spot by the register. “How are you? How have you been?”

“Oh, you know me,” Laura let out a musical little laugh. “Just trying to do the best I can with what God gave me.” She placed a light hand on Max’s arm and reached for the door with the other. “You’ll have to excuse me, dears,” she said. “I was just on my way out.” She looked back over her shoulder and aimed that saccharine smile at her daughter. “Chrissy,” she waited until their eyes met. “Don’t forget what we talked about, sweetheart.”

Chrissy stared back. “I won’t, Mommy,” she said quietly. “Have a good night.”

Lucas and Max picked up their conversation the moment the door was closed and Laura had slipped out into the humid early evening air. “I get why you don’t want to go into details,” he said as Max made her way back behind the counter. “But friends talk about this stuff—”

Max laughed. “I don’t want to tell you because it’s none of your business.”

“It’s cause you think I’m going to be jealous, right?” he asked before he dropped his voice. “Cause it’s big?”

“Oh my God,” she snorted.

“How big?” he needled. He raised his eyebrows. “Too big?”

“Lucas—”

“Like, in-over-your-head big? It’s okay,” he assured her. “You can tell me. That’s what friends are for.”

“I’m not going to tell you shit!” she cackled. “Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you because it’s none of your business.”

“You can just—” Lucas stopped abruptly. His face twisted in confusion. “Wait. What do you mean ‘even if you knew’? You don’t…”

“We’ve only been out a few times,” Max grabbed her skateboard and tossed her shoes over the counter. They landed right between Lucas’ feet. “We haven’t done anything yet.” Before Lucas could respond to that, Max stopped and looked in Chrissy’s direction, seeming to notice she was still there. Her smile dropped as she crossed to the other side of the shop. “Hey,” she said softly.

Her hand fell gently over Chrissy’s, but it was enough to make her jump, startling her from the hole she’d been staring into the ground. Right where her mother had been. “Hey,” she said, blinking quickly.

Carefully, Max’s fingers curled under hers and pried them up and away from the counter. “You okay?”

She sucked in a sharp inhale and forced a smile. “Yeah,” she nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Max looked from her to the door and back again. “What’d your mom want?”

Chrissy shook her head. “She—uh—she had some ideas about the way I’m decorating the shop.”

Max was quiet for a second, pursing her lips in thought before she squeezed Chrissy’s hand. “Lucas and I are meeting Mike for Chinese. Do you want to come with?”

She shook her head before she could even consider the offer. “No,” she said, “that’s okay, thanks though.” The last thing she wanted to think about was eating right now. Especially eating in front of other people. All it would do would guarantee that her mother’s voice would be chasing itself around in her brain for the rest of the night. The thought brought an unpleasant roll of nausea to her stomach. She looked at Max and made herself smile. “You go,” she squeezed her friend’s hand back. “I’m really okay. I promise.”

She could tell Max wasn’t convinced. But Max, who had grown up in a house where lying about being okay was the norm and finding any excuse to avoid confrontation was a skill, said nothing and pulled her in for a quick hug instead. “Love you, C,” she said just loud enough for Chrissy to hear.

Chrissy swallowed hard. “Love you too, sweetie,” she said tightly when Max let her go. She shared her smile with Lucas. “Have fun, guys. Tell Mike I said hi.”

They were long gone by the time she finished her end-of-day reporting and shut everything down for the night. She stopped in the center of the shop and stared at the rainbow in the window.

It would take no time at all to scrub it from the glass. The paint they used for window decorating came off with a little soap, water, and elbow grease. It could be gone in less than five minutes.

And then her mother would be happy with her again.

Chrissy left the cleaning supplies in the cupboard behind the main cooler and the rainbow exactly where it was. If Laura hated it that much, she thought with a petty twist of the locks into place, she could clean it herself.

She felt just a little bit better as she jumped for the gate and brought it down to lock. Not much, but more like she could breathe again.

Until movement from across the street caught her eye and all the air squeezed from her lungs again.

The door to the stairwell that led up to Eddie’s apartment opened and a woman stepped out into the fading orange light of sunset. She was pretty, Chrissy decided. Gorgeous, actually, with long legs clad in ripped black jeans, a tight tank top cropped to show off a few inches of smooth skin on her stomach, and the most gorgeous hair Chrissy had ever seen. Long, thick and glossy, and so black it almost looked blue. Her arms were colorful murals of tattoos and as the door closed again, Chrissy saw that her hands were full.

Of Eddie.

Stuck in place, she watched as this woman pulled Eddie into her by his belt buckle and sealed her lips to his. Their hands laced together, and Eddie anchored them at the small of her back, effectively pinning her like she was being handcuffed. It was just enough to make her laugh and she broke away with a delighted cackle that Chrissy could hear all the way across the alley.

They looked so comfortable together, she thought with a hot spring of jealousy climbing up her throat. They probably just got done having sex. That was enough to turn her stomach again and for a horrible moment, she thought she might actually throw up. Right there on the sidewalk.

She started walking in the opposite direction as quickly as she could and with each step, she tried to get her breathing under control. She tried to follow the logical path out of the dark tangle of her own thoughts and did what she used to do when she still lived at home and thought her mother might actually be driving her crazy.

Just list the facts, her school guidance counselor had told her. Put each one on the ground like a stepping stone until you feel like things make sense again.

Fact: Eddie was her friend, and she wanted her friends to be happy.

Fact: Eddie was single, handsome, and a total sweetheart who was free to date anyone in the entire world that he wanted to.

She’d made it two blocks away. It felt safe enough to slow her pace and maybe coax her heart and her breathing to do the same. But she kept listing her facts.

Fact: She had a fiancé who loved her and who, when she’d mentioned that he’d never actually proposed, had done so without question, in front of all their friends and family, and had presented her with a diamond ring fit for a princess.

That fact didn’t do anything to calm her down, but it gave her hands something to do as she began worrying her new ring as she walked. Twisting it back and forth until the space between her fingers started to itch and turn red.

Fact: Eddie was her friend.

That one felt like it needed repeating.

Eddie. Is. Your. Friend.

“That’s it,” she said out loud to herself. “That’s all.”

That’s all he was and as the diamond on her hand and the memory of that woman’s satisfied, confident laughter reminded her—a reminder that stung like a set of fingers gripping her just above her elbow—that’s all he was ever going to be.

And that was not a fact that should make her want to cry.

She had a key to Jason’s apartment, and she was relieved to see him sitting on his couch, alone, when she let herself in.

“Hey,” he sat up with a confused half-smile already pulling at his lips.

“Hey,” she huffed, dropping her purse by the door as she kicked out of her shoes. Jason’s apartment smelled just like his old room had at his parents’ house. Like lemon Pledge and Old Spice and just that was almost enough to calm her still-racing heart.

“What’s up?” he asked. “You didn’t tell me you were coming over—”

“I know,” she agreed, crossing the room before he could get up. “I just—” she shook her head and leaned over him, pushing one hand into his golden hair. “I missed you.”

Jason smiled the second before she covered her lips with his. With her eyes closed and her heart still hammering in her throat, Chrissy reached under her sundress and hooked her thumb beneath the waistband of her panties. She slid them off the moment before she climbed into Jason’s lap; her knees pinned to either side of his hips.

“Whoa,” he breathed when she reached between them to stroke his stiffening cock over his gym shorts. It took next to nothing to get him hard. Another comfort. “What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing,” she shook her head again, pulling his face back to hers. “Just shut up and kiss me.”

He lifted his hips against her when she slipped her fingers beneath his shorts and boxers and urged him to pull them down. He broke their kiss long enough to pull back, too many questions in his eyes for her liking. His hand came up to the side of her face. “Chris, were you crying?”

“I said,” she sank down onto his length, pulling a satisfying moan from his open mouth as his eyes fell closed and she put her lips by his ear, “shut up.”

He did. He shut up and pressed his lips to her neck. His hand anchored at her hip, coaxing her to move now that she had him deep inside her. She closed her eyes again, focusing on the familiar stretch and fullness. Rolling her hips and rocking until she found an easy rhythm.

His silence didn’t last long, but she didn’t hear what he was saying, murmuring things against her skin while she rode him. She didn’t need to hear him. All she wanted to do was feel him. Feel his hair and his scalp beneath her nails. Feel his arms around her waist and his lips on her neck, her chest, her shoulders. Feel something other than how she’d been feeling.

Jason was good, she told herself, tilting her head so he could suck on her earlobe. Jason had loved her since she was fourteen. Jason had gone through every awkward first with her in the twelve years they’d been together. Jason knew exactly what to do to coax an orgasm from her and silence the roaring din in her head.

He slid his hand beneath her skirt and pressed his fingers to her swollen clit.

She just had to remember that, she told herself, picking up her speed to match the roll of her hips with the circles Jason was rubbing. She just needed to remember that this was what she wanted—what she’d always wanted—and banish those other traitorous thoughts from her head.

Those thoughts that had her wondering how it would feel to have thick, brown hair curled beneath her fingers instead. Or those full, dusty pink lips moving over her pulse. Or how Eddie would move his long, dexterous fingers against her clit, while his cock throbbed inside of her, dragging just right—

She came hard and with a sharp sound of surprise as her eyes flew open and her mouth dropped in a silent gasp. Jason grunted into her neck and held her in place, snapping his hips up and against hers until he jolted and came a moment later.

“Holy shit,” he murmured against her collarbone. He pulled away and pushed his hair back, off his forehead with the slight sheen of sweat. “Where did that come from?”

Chrissy swallowed hard and forced herself to smile. Jason always believed her smiles. He never tried to look past them to see if she was hiding something behind them. “I told you,” she said with a heavy exhale before she leaned in and kissed him one more time. “I just missed you.”

He bought her excuse of a volunteer meeting at church and didn’t press her to stay when she said she had to go. She told herself she’d look harder at the community board on Sunday and try to find something she wanted to volunteer for in the future. That way it wouldn’t be a total lie. Maybe the food bank or the youth group needed an extra set of hands.

She started to shed her clothes as soon as she’d locked her door behind her. A trail that led from the living room back to the bathroom where she turned the shower on as hot as it would go.

The water stung when it touched her skin, it turned her bright red, but she barely felt it as she sank to the ground beneath the spray and wrapped her arms around her legs. She would have made it hotter if she could have. Hot enough to burn away the sick feeling burrowing in the pit of her stomach. Hot enough to get her mother’s voice and disapproving glare out of her memory. Hot enough to scald the away the stupid, inconvenient tears from her eyes. Hot enough to melt the feeling that she didn't know who she was anymore and she didn't know what she was doing.

But it wasn’t hot enough to do any of that. And Chrissy dropped her forehead to her knees and cried out all the stupid things she was too scared to let herself think.

***

Eddie answered on the third ring. “Hellfire Ink, whatcha need?”

It had been six days of picking up her phone and setting it back down again. Of forcing herself to make eye contact with Jason. Of avoiding her mother as much as possible while still avoiding suspicion. Of trying to ignore the hurricane of emotions churning inside of her.

But if she was still laying facts down in a path she might someday be able to follow, there was still the fact that Eddie was her friend. And she liked spending time with him. And she had something she wanted to ask him.

Chrissy felt herself smiling as she curled her phone cord around her fingers. “To…book an appointment?”

There was a pause before Eddie spoke again. “Am I talking to Chrissy Cunningham right now?”

Her smile widened. “You are.”

“Chrissy Cunningham,” he said slowly. “Wanting to make an appointment…” He paused again. “For a tattoo?”

“No, for an appendectomy,” she laughed. “Of course, for a tattoo.” She ran her fingers over the purple flowers and the intake form she’d been studying and staring at for nearly two weeks. “I had a consult with a really talented artist,” she went on. “He dropped off this incredible sketch that’s exactly what I’m looking for.”

“Ah,” Eddie coughed. “Well, I’m afraid Will’s booked up for the next few weeks—” he paused while she giggled. “But if you’re willing to settle for second best…”

“You’re such a jerk,” she laughed, shaking her head. “But I’m serious,” she said, sobering a little. “This is beautiful, Eddie. It’s perfect.”

He hesitated. “Yeah? You’re sure that’s what you want? Don’t just go with that if there’s something else you’d like better.”

“Well,” she bit her lip. “I have one slight alteration if that’s okay.”

“Of course,” he said immediately. “What is it?”

Her index finger skated over the edge of the crop of flowers and the dark green leaves surrounding them. “Could you add a little honeybee on one of the purple flowers?”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “No problem. I’ll draw up a few options for you to look at when you come in. Any other requests?”

She chewed her lip some more. “Would it be possible to do it after hours one of these nights?” When he didn’t respond right away, she raced on. “Unless that’s weird or not something you do—”

“No, it’s totally fine,” Eddie agreed. “No problem.”

“I just don’t…” she coughed. “I don’t know. I just want to do this for me,” she decided after a moment. “I don’t necessarily want anyone else to know about it yet.”

“Well, tasteful discretion is just one of the many benefits of choosing Hellfire for your tattoo needs,” Eddie said smoothly, making her smile again. “How about Wednesday night? Around seven?”

“Yeah?” she asked. “You don’t have…plans…or anything?” Plans with that woman with her amazing hair and tight jeans, the words sat heavy in the back of her throat, but she swallowed them down.

“Nothing I can’t move for you,” he said and then coughed. “For a—friend—” he stuttered. “A friend who wants to be a client, especially.” He recovered and she could hear him smile into the phone. “That’s definitely worth special treatment.”

“Well don’t make me feel too special,” she warned, consciously untwisting the cord when she saw the tips of her fingers turning blue. “I’m going to pay you just like everybody else.”

“C.C….Wednesday night…” he muttered in a low voice. It took her a second to realize he was writing this down. “Zero special treatment.” His voice returned to normal. “Got it.”

Chrissy laughed again and felt a flutter of nervous excitement. “Is there…anything I should do? Before I come in?”

“No,” he said easily. “Well, I mean. Don’t be drunk—” she laughed before he went on. “Or take a lot of blood thinners. And eat something at least an hour before and drink plenty of water, but otherwise…Oh!” He cut himself off with an exclamation that almost made her drop the phone. “Where are we putting this tattoo?”

Her lip found its way between her teeth again. “I was thinking on my back?” she suggested. “Maybe between my shoulder blades?”

He paused again and she wondered if he was writing that down too. “Okay,” he said after a moment. “Then just make sure you wear something kind of loose because you’re going to be a little sore afterward.”

“Okay,” she nodded, though he couldn’t see her. “That’s doable.”

“Alright,” she heard him smile again. “Then we’re set for Wednesday.”

“Wednesday,” she repeated.

She was early on Wednesday. Just ten minutes, but she couldn’t make herself wait any longer. The four days that had passed since she’d hung up the phone had been the longest of her life.

Wednesday in particular had dragged on at a painfully slow pace. Minute climbed agonizingly on top of minute despite the nonstop string of customers she’d helped all day. There were other small mercies too. Wednesdays were Jason’s usual night to coach his little league team, so she didn’t have to worry about him wondering what she was up to. And her mother was out of town.

She felt guilty for being happy to hear that her Aunt Tracy had broken her leg on Sunday night and that Laura was spending the week with her in Shelbyville. But that guilt didn’t last too long every time she let her eyes stray to her little rainbow marker that she still hadn’t washed away.

Eddie unlocked the door to Hellfire with slightly wet hair and a well-worn Iron Maiden t-shirt that looked so soft she wanted to touch it. “Hey,” he greeted with a smile. “You’re early.”

Chrissy shrugged and stepped inside. “I’m very punctual when I’m nervous.”

“You’re nervous?”

She fidgeted with the strap of her purse on her shoulder. “Um, a little?” she admitted.

“Nothing to be nervous about,” Eddie assured her. He locked the door behind her and as she moved past him, she inhaled and bit back a smile. He smelled like he had just gotten out of the shower. Like Ivory soap. “And nobody’s here,” he added, waving her in toward his studio in the back. “I promise—just you and me.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly as she followed him to the room she’d helped paint. “It looks really nice in here,” she mentioned. “Like a whole new shop with the walls all redone.”

“Yeah,” he glanced back over his shoulder with a grin. “The people who helped me out really knew what they were doing.”

“Especially that window,” she pointed to the spot for which she’d been responsible.

“Oh yeah,” he nodded. “That’s the showcase. I save that window for last when I give all my tours.” He motioned to the swivel stool in the center of the room. “Have a seat, let me grab your art.”

She took a seat and let her eyes trail over the stainless-steel surfaces. They landed on the tray he had already set up. It looked almost medicinal, only instead of scary-looking tools she didn’t recognize, there was a collection of bottles of colored ink, a squeeze bottle of clear liquid covered in plastic, a stack of paper towels and round cotton pads, and something that looked like a hot glue gun plugged into a little power box, connected by a thin cord to a foot pedal.

When Eddie returned, he had a small sheaf of thin paper in his hand. For a second, she thought it was tissue paper, and she was surprised when he grabbed his other tray to lay them out for her, to see four different variations of the sketch he’d done before, all in slim lines of purple ink. “I wasn’t sure how big you wanted this bee,” he said, sounding almost apologetic. “So, there’s a couple of options.” He pulled the tray closer so she could see before he glanced down with a grin. “And thank you for the biology lesson, because until you asked, I didn’t know there were different kinds of bees.”

She giggled and studied her options. “This one,” she pointed to the second from the right. The little honeybee was tucked just inside one of the flowers on the very edge. Visible, but not obvious right away. “It’s perfect.”

Eddie’s smile widened. “You got it.” He tucked the others away in one of the cabinet drawers and retrieved a hand mirror. He motioned for her to follow him to the corner where there was a full-length mirror and turn around. “Where are we thinking?” She held the mirror and angled it so she could look at her back. He placed the paper high up between her shoulders. “Here?”

She shook her head and reached with her free hand to the middle of her back, where her bra was usually clasped. “More like here?”

Eddie slid the flowers down a few inches, covering the spot where her fingers had just been. “Like this?” She nodded and he looked hard between her reflection and her back like he was tattooing the exact location into his own memory. “Okay,” he nodded and stepped away from the mirror. “I’m gonna step out,” he wasn’t looking at her as he motioned to her top. “That should come off, along with anything underneath that you don’t want to get ink or blood on. Sit, uh,” he patted the stool again, “here, facing that way,” he pointed to the wall opposite where his own stool was positioned. “And we’ll be good to go.” He finally looked up and raised his eyebrows. “Any questions? You want anything before we get started?”

“No questions,” she shook her head. “But, um. Water would be good. If you have any.”

Eddie grabbed a bottle of water from the mini-fridge beneath the counter and held it out to her. “Take your time getting settled,” he said. “I’ll knock before I come back in.”

“Oh,” she nodded again. “Okay. Thanks.”

Her hands felt a little unsteady as she undid the buttons of her top. It was just an old denim work shirt that her brother had outgrown years ago. Soft and washed a million times, missing one button toward the bottom, and big and billowy enough that she rarely felt the need to wear a bra underneath it. It wasn’t something she’d feel too guilty over if it ended up ruined by the time the night was over.

Chrissy sat down on the stool and slipped it off her shoulders, quickly bringing it around the front of her body and tucking her arms back in the sleeves before she folded them around the backrest of the stool. Her bottom lip worked itself between her teeth again. She hadn’t really considered the physics of how this was going to work.

Just her and Eddie, sitting in this room together while she was basically topless for…

How long would this take? A few hours? All night?

Anxiety coiled like a serpent in her belly. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe she should just—

“All clear?” Eddie’s voice interrupted her spiral and accompanied his knock on the door frame.

“Uh-huh,” she said, her mouth moving before her brain could intercept.

He showed her everything while he was assembling his gun. Asked her to watch as he unwrapped new, clean needles and ensured her that everything was sanitary and free from contamination—something she hadn’t even considered might be a problem.

She thought it would feel like getting a lot of shots, over and over again. A stabbing kind of pain. But to her surprise, it was more of a burn or a sting—when she felt it at all.

Eddie had a shockingly light touch with his buzzing needle gun. Chrissy was aware of the sting but more aware of how gently he swiped away the ink and blood every few seconds. She was aware of the warmth of his body leaning close to her. Aware of the way his knee would brush against her hip when he shifted.

“Awfully quiet up there,” he said as he paused to run a damp paper towel over her stinging skin. “Doin’ okay?”

She swallowed hard and nodded. “Yeah,” she forced the word up from her dry throat. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

“I’m not hurting you, right?” he asked, the second before he turned the gun back on. She felt the tip poised just above her back. “We’re about halfway done with the outline.”

“No,” she shook her head. “It’s okay. It’s not as bad as I thought it’d be.” She dragged her teeth over her lip as he pressed down on the needles again. “Will it—”

Eddie stopped again. “Will it what?”

“Will it distract you or bother you if we…” she coughed. “Y’know. Talk?”

“Oh no,” he said easily and switched the gun back on as if to prove the point. “I can do this shit in my sleep.”

She let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “Okay, good.”

“But if you wanna talk,” he shifted closer, brushing her hip with his knee again. If she glanced down, she could see the rip in his jeans. His skin peeked out pale and pink between the frayed black fabric. “There is something I’ve been dying to ask you.”

Her heart squished up into her throat. “There is?”

“You really like The Hobbit more than The Lord of the Rings?”

She exhaled again and resisted the urge to laugh. “I do.”

“But why?”

She paused and ran the tip of her tongue along the back of her teeth in thought. “I think it has a happier ending.”

“How so?”

“Well,” she tilted her head in consideration. “I mean. It’s still sad, obviously. After all that time and all that effort to get back to the mountain and reclaim what was theirs, the fact that Thorin’s whole bloodline was wiped out was heartbreaking.”

“But…?” Eddie prompted, his voice coming from somewhere near her right shoulder blade.

“But Biblo still gets to go home.”

“Frodo and Sam still get to go home too,” he countered.

She shook her head. “No, it’s not the same. When Bilbo goes home, it’s still home. It’s still his safe place—it’s still the thing he was trying to get back to.” She bit her lip again. “When the hobbits come home… They’ve been changed so much by everything that happened to them that…even if the Shire was just like they left it—which it wasn’t, it’s all looted and destroyed—it still wouldn’t feel like home. Because even once they rebuild it and make it like it was…they’re what’s different. So that home that they loved so much is just lost forever and that’s…” she swallowed hard. “That always felt like the saddest thing to me.”

Eddie was quiet while he moved the point of the needle gun slowly over her skin. “I never thought of it like that,” he said after a moment.

She swallowed back her first instinct—the one that almost leaped to an apology for coloring the way he thought of one of his favorite books. “How do you think about it?”

“I uh,” he cleared his throat. “I always think about this book I read about Tolkien when I was in eighth or ninth grade, I think—and how he was in World War 1 and how most of his unit didn’t, uh, come home. And then he wrote these books where, for the most part, everyone gets to come home. These like, farm boys who grew up together and got swept up into this battle that was so much bigger than they were—” he paused and a second later, Chrissy felt the cool swipe of wet paper towel over her back. “I don’t know. I just liked that he had all these chances to do the predictable thing and have at least one of them not survive, but he didn’t. He let them all come home. And yeah, they were different, and it wasn’t how they’d left it and…” she thought she heard him shrug. “But they still came home. They still had a chance at living the lives that were interrupted when they left with Frodo.” He paused again. “That’s more than a lot of people get.”

Chrissy smiled and looked down at her folded arms. “That’s a kinder way to think of it,” she said quietly.

The gun stopped buzzing and Eddie wiped her skin again. “Okay,” he sat back. “Outline is done. You want to check it out?”

Her stomach flipped in anticipation. “Yeah, sure.” She stood up, careful to keep her shirt pressed firmly to her chest, and walked to the mirror again. Eddie held the smaller mirror for her this time and angled it just right so she could see the black outline of her flowers and little honeybee. Her face split in a big smile as she looked from her tattoo to Eddie and back again.

He raised his eyebrows. “You like it so far?”

She nodded. “It looks really cool,” she assured him.

“Good,” he grinned. “Now’s the fun part.”

She drank some of her water while he set up the colors. He double-checked that she still wanted purple with a few of the white and yellow mixed in before he started squeezing from the bottles of colored inks into a row of little cups on the edge of his station.

“Just heads up,” he said as he finished setting up. “This part may hurt a little more because I have to go back and forth with the needle instead of in a line like I was doing for the outline.”

“Okay,” she nodded. “That makes sense.”

“But tell me if it’s too much, okay?” When she glanced over her shoulder, he was looking at her like he’d been waiting for her to turn back. “I can take as many breaks as you need.”

She smiled. “No big plans I’m keeping you from tonight?” she asked as she turned back around.

“Oh no,” he assured her and gave his gun a test buzz with the foot pedal. “I cleared my calendar for this.”

Chrissy bit her lip, pulling her smile back between her teeth. She wanted to ask if he was serious—if there was something he’d actually rescheduled to accommodate her after-hours request.

But there were so many ways he could answer that might stir up that dangerous, volatile nausea she’d felt when she’d seen him outside of his shop last week.

She kept her mouth shut. It was easier than inviting that feeling back and trying to decide how much of it was about Eddie and how much of it was about her mother and how much of it was about everything else.

He wasn’t kidding. The mild stinging from the outline turned into more of a persistent scraping as he started filling in the purple petals of her flowers. Chrissy clenched her teeth and tried her best not to tense up. Eddie paused. “Too much?”

“Uh, no,” she fibbed before she swallowed hard. “But I think it might be easier to relax if we keep talking?”

“No problem,” he said and eased his foot back onto the pedal. “So, what made you decide to join the dark side?”

“The dark side?”

“Your tattoo,” he said with a smile she could hear in his voice. “I thought you were joking the first time you brought it up. What made you decide to go for it?”

“You mean besides the perfect design being delivered right to my mailbox?”

She heard him smile again. “Yeah,” he said. “Besides that.”

The tip of her tongue ran along her teeth again. “It’s a present to myself,” she confessed. “Doing something that I really want to do,” she said, debating with herself before she added, “for my birthday.”

“Wait.” The needle stopped again. “When is your birthday?”

She looked down at her folded arms. “Um. June 30^th,” she admitted.

“What? That was like, three weeks ago. Happy birthday!”

“Thank you,” she said with a small smile. “I don’t usually tell anyone when it is.”

“Why not?”

She fought the urge to shrug, wanting to stay as still as possible. “I don’t know. I don’t like anyone making a fuss. It makes me uncomfortable if I’m the center of attention.”

“Did you do anything fun, at least?” The gun buzzed again, and the sting returned to the middle of her back. “Other than deciding to go ahead with this sweet friggin’ tat, of course.”

Her smile brightened for a moment before the memory of how she’d spent her birthday crowded back into the front of her mind. “Just a, um, big family dinner at my mom’s house, and…” she stopped and looked at her hands. Her left hand. The ring finger that was still getting used to its audacious new decoration.

“And?” Eddie prompted.

She didn’t realize she’d stopped talking. “Um. Jason,” she nearly choked on his name. “He asked me to marry him. Officially.”

Chrissy couldn’t be certain, but it felt as though it was Eddie’s turn to tense up behind her. “Aha, so that’s where that glacier you’re rocking came from.” It was supposed to be a joke, but she didn’t think he was smiling when he said it.

Although the rational part of her mind reminded her that she couldn’t see him. She didn’t know that for sure.

“Uh-huh,” she nodded. That was supposed to be it, but her mouth opened again and she heard the words falling from her lips before she could stop them. “He made a huge deal about it,” she said quietly. “Asked me in front of everyone with this big speech prepared…it was—” she stopped and felt her cheeks burn at the memory. If she’d known how he was going to react to her casually pointing out that he’d never actually proposed, Chrissy wasn’t sure she would have ever said anything.

But she had, and in response, just two days later, Jason had pulled her up in front of his family and her family and all their friends. She hated the way she couldn’t remember it without remembering how everyone was looking at her with their expectant eyes and big smiles. The way there was nothing she could have said except the yes that she’d given him. How it didn’t feel even a little bit romantic, no matter how many times she played it back in her head.

“Sounds like a lot,” Eddie said when she trailed off again.

“It was,” she agreed with a sigh of relief that she wasn’t going to have to put it into words. “I don’t know what I’m going to do if I have to have a big wedding—”

“Isn’t that supposed to be something you get to make the call on?” he asked quietly.

She rolled her eyes. “If the last twenty-six years are any indication, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to have much of a say in what kind of wedding I have.”

He was quiet again for what felt like a long pause. He stopped the gun and wiped her back with a damp towel before he started up again. “And if you…did have a say in it?”

She chewed on her top lip for a change, considering the question. “I don’t know,” she conceded. “I just hate the idea of all those people looking at me…feeling like I have to perform or be on my best behavior.” She shook her head as the familiar knots of anxiety twisted in her stomach. “If I had it my way, I think I’d get married on like, a Thursday or something when everyone’s at work.”

Eddie snorted. “And you don’t think your mom and Mr. Perfect would go along with that?”

She twisted the ring on her finger. “I think we both know the answer to that,” she muttered. The stinging pain in the middle of her back was starting to wane—not quite as sharp as before. “Tell me something about you,” she said, desperate for a change in conversation.

“What about me?”

“I don’t know.” Again, she had to fight not to shrug before an idea occurred to her and brought a smile back to her lips. “Tell me a story about Uncle Wayne.”

Eddie chuckled. “What kind of story?”

“I don’t care,” she said. “Tell me your favorite memory of him.”

He kept working on filling in the outline of her tattoo, quiet for almost too long before he finally spoke again. “It’s not…” he cleared his throat. “I don’t know if necessarily it’s a happy memory.”

She swallowed hard. “Is it your favorite?”

“Yeah,” he didn’t hesitate. “It is.”

“Well, that’s all I asked for,” she reminded him gently. “I’d like to hear it…if you want to tell me.”

“It was, uh, it right after I’d come to live with him. My mom had just died and—” he cleared his throat again. “I knew him, of course. It wasn’t like I got sent to live with a total stranger, but I didn’t really…I don’t know. I didn’t really know what to think about him yet.

“But my mom had been taking me to see my dad every few months since he’d gone in—and I remember the social worker telling Uncle Wayne that he should try and keep as much of my routine the same as before so he thought that should include trips to the prison.”

Chrissy swallowed again and tried to imagine Eddie as a ten-year-old kid. Messy curly hair, big sad brown eyes, having to go and visit his father in prison after his mother had just died. The thought of it made her heart hurt. Made her want to turn around and put her arms around him and tell him she was sorry.

But he was working diligently to color in the flowers he’d drawn on her back and she didn’t want to interrupt him. She pressed her lips together hard and let him continue.

“And so, we get there and my dad’s the same as he always is. Just…angry and cold and telling me to sit up straight and barking at me why don’t I want to look at him and—” The pressure of the needle changed just as she was about to ask for a break. The pain diminished and Chrissy uncurled her fingers from her palms. “He went to grab my arm to uh—to make sure I was paying attention—and before the guard could even look up to stop him, Uncle Wayne was standing behind my dad, had his arm pinned behind his back and his face down against the table. And he said, ‘You put enough marks on that boy and his mother. You wanna pick on someone, you can try picking on me for a change.’”

Unconsciously, she thought of her own arm and the near-permanent bruises she had above her elbow growing up. No one had ever stepped in to stop her mother from giving them to her. “And did he?” she asked when Eddie had stopped again.

“No,” he said quietly. “That was the only time I ever saw my old man look scared of anyone. It was just for a second,” he added. “But I saw it. And as soon as I did, he didn’t seem so big anymore. And then after we left, Wayne took me out for lunch and he said, ‘Be straight with me, Eddie. Do you like going to see your dad?’ and I was kind of afraid to lie to him, so I said no. I told him I hated it—that I’d always hated it, but I went because my mom thought I should. And he asked if I wanted to go back, and I said no. And he said okay, then we won’t go back until you say so.”

Chrissy felt a small smile tugging at her lips. “I like that story,” she said softly. “Thank you for telling me.”

He was quiet again as he stopped the gun and brushed another wet compress over her skin. “Thank you for, uh, being someone I could tell it to.” He blotted the fresh ink with a dry paper towel and cleared. His throat again. “Purple’s done,” he announced. “I’m just going to go in with the white and yellow now. Do you need a break?”

She did. Not from the pain, but because the room was feeling a little too small all of a sudden and the urge to turn her little stool around was getting a little too strong. She ducked into the bathroom and gulped down half her water before she looked at herself in the mirror. The plastic bottle was still cool and helped a little when she pressed it to her cheeks and the back of her neck.

“What is wrong with you?” she asked her reflection, barely mouthing the words out loud. It wasn’t even that hot in the studio and she looked like she’d been running a 5k. Slowly, she turned around and looked over her shoulder, studying the work that Eddie had already done on her tattoo. Her smile took over as she admired the way he’d shaded the purple of the petals so it wasn’t all one color. They looked like real flowers that way.

Chrissy waited until her flush had retreated before she returned to her stool, resituating herself and her button-down in front of her.

“Alright,” Eddie said, sliding up behind her again. “Home stretch.” He reached out a gloved hand and squeezed her shoulder. “You’re doing great.”

She smiled. “Thanks coach.”

The silence that settled over them while Eddie got back to work was more comfortable than before. When she opened her mouth to speak again, it wasn’t because she needed a distraction. “So, when’s your birthday?”

“Mine?” Eddie asked. “It’s November 15^th.”

“Ah,” she said with a smile. “A Scorpio.”

He snorted. “Are you going to tell me my stars now?”

“Not today,” she decided. “But it does make sense.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Uh-huh,” she nodded. “Scorpios tend to be seen as intense and mysterious—maybe a little intimidating at first…” she added, thinking of how she’d almost talked herself out of coming over with her welcome bouquet that first day because she’d caught a glimpse of him smoking out front. She remembered thinking he was probably going to laugh in her face and tell her to get the fuck out of his shop when she’d seen all his chains and leather and tattoos.

“Oh yeah, that’s me,” he laughed. “Mr. Mysterious.”

She laughed. “I think you’re pretty mysterious.”

“Chrissy Cunningham,” he muttered quietly, sounding as though he was shaking his head. “All you have to do is ask and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

Her stomach gave an inconvenient flip, and she felt her throat dry out again. “Okay then,” she said, trying to keep the conversation as light as it had been a moment ago. “What’s your favorite food?”

“Chocolate chip pancakes.”

She giggled again. “You said that so fast.”

“I knew the answer,” she could hear him smiling again. “Why hesitate?”

She bit her lip. “I can’t even remember the last time I had regular pancakes…let alone chocolate chip.”

He let out a low whistle. “You’re missing out,” he assured her. “They’re one of the few things I don’t consistently fuck up in the kitchen.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I still haven’t mastered hard boiling eggs, but I make a mean stack of chocolate chip pancakes.”

Chrissy grinned. “Well, hard boiling eggs is not nearly as easy as people want you to believe it is.”

Before he could answer, a sharp pain blossomed beneath his gun, and she sucked a sharp inhale through clenched teeth to keep from crying out.

“I’m sorry,” he said immediately. “I’m sorry. You had a little bit of a scar in this one spot—are you okay? I had to press a little harder; I should have warned you—”

“No, it’s okay,” she lied. “I just wasn’t—"

The words died on her tongue as Eddie leaned in and blew a soft, cooling breath over her skin. Any thoughts she might have had evaporated; scattering over her skin in a cascade of goosebumps before she could help it.

And then almost as quickly as he’d done it, she felt Eddie sit back like she’d smacked him. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Jesus, that was so unprofessional. I never do that. I don’t know why I just—”

She didn’t trust herself to turn around. But blindly, she reached her hand back and found the outside of his knee. “Eddie,” she gave him what she hoped was a quick, friendly touch before she took her hand back. “It’s fine. You were just trying to help. It…” she coughed. “It felt good.”

He didn’t say anything, but she felt him still sitting behind her. Not quite far enough away as she would have expected. She could tell he was close enough that he could lean back in if he wanted to and put his lips as close to her skin as they’d been a second ago.

“It did?”

Chrissy curled her fingers into her palms again. Her short nails bit into her skin. “Yeah,” she said softly. “It did.”

Do it again, she wanted to ask. But she couldn’t ask that. But if she asked that, she couldn’t un-ask it. She couldn’t go back to pretending she didn’t want him to. Didn’t want him to do more than that. She couldn’t pretend her mind wasn’t full of thoughts of how it would feel to have his lips trail kisses up her spine, linger against the back of her neck while his hands slid over her hips and down her thighs, pulling her back against his chest—

A sound from the front of the shop startled them both and Eddie stood up faster than she could blink. The front door opened, and the bell rang. “Hang on,” he said quietly and left the room, pulling the door to the room nearly shut behind him on the way out.

“Fuck,” she whispered to herself and pressed a hand over her eyes. This was such a bad idea. This had to have been one of the worst ideas she’d ever had. If he wasn’t nearly finished, she had half a mind to tell him that she needed to go home as soon as he came back.

But after everything, an almost-finished tattoo would do nothing but serve as a reminder of how she couldn’t trust herself anymore.

“What are you doing here?” she heard Eddie ask through the shop’s thin walls.

“Oh, hey man.” Chrissy relaxed. It was just Dustin. “I left a disc here last night. It’s got some research I was helping Suzy with on it—”

“Yeah, it’s in the locked drawer. Under the register.”

“Thanks.” There was a pause. “What are you doing home, anyway? I thought you had a date with whatshername.”

“You know what her name is,” Eddie said evenly. Back in the studio, Chrissy considered how close to the door she could wheel her little stool. “You’re just being a fuckin’ baby.”

“And you’re being a fuckin’ idiot,” Dustin countered. There was no venom in this argument, she noted. It sounded like one they’d had more than once. “You just need to—”

“I know you think you’re helping,” Eddie cut him off firmly and Chrissy felt her lips pout in a frown. He just needed to what? “But this is the absolute worst time for a Dustin Henderson pep talk.”

Another pause. “May I reserve the right to administer said pep talk at a later date and time?”

She smiled to herself despite her still churning thoughts.

“Sure,” Eddie said, sounding tired. “Literally any other date and time except right now.”

“Fine,” Dustin let out a dramatic, heavy sigh. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yep.”

“Wait.”

“What?”

“You didn’t tell me what you were doing.”

“You’re right,” Chrissy heard the door open again. Eddie must have been holding it open. “I didn’t.”

“Prick.”

“Shrimp.”

By the time he returned, the tension from earlier had dissolved and Chrissy was pretty sure she’d schooled her expression back into something neutral. Something that didn’t look like she’d been eavesdropping.

Eddie finished with her tattoo just before ten o’clock. She paid in cash as the signs in the shop requested and made sure to pay close attention to the after-care instructions he gave her.

“It’s not going to feel all that great for about a week,” he warned as he handed her a bottle of Bactine and a tube of bacitracin ointment. “But after it peels and heals up?” He grinned. “I think it’s going to look awesome.”

“Me too,” she agreed with a big smile. “Thank you, Eddie. I really appreciate it.”

“Anytime,” he said before he added, “happy birthday.”

He told her to try and sleep on her stomach if she could—warning that her new ink would feel more like a wound than a piece of art at first.

Chrissy climbed into bed and settled onto her stomach in the dark of her bedroom. She thought she might be tired enough to fall right to sleep. That the ups and downs of the little rollercoaster she’d been riding for the last month might be exhausting enough to let her drift off without any help.

But the moment she closed her eyes, all Chrissy could think about was that moment when Eddie blew that gentle, soothing breath across her skin.

He was trying to help her, she reminded herself. It was just a first-aid instinct that took over when someone had a cut or a burn. She’d done it herself a million times while working in her own shop.

But the logical reasons she could list didn’t stop her imagination from taking over where her memory stopped. It didn’t stop her from imagining that he wasn’t just acting on instinct. That he’d wanted to kiss her just as badly as she’d wanted him to.

There was nothing to stop her from imagining what it would have felt like if she’d been sitting in front of him for a different reason. If he hadn’t been worried about being professional and she wasn’t there for a tattoo.

If he had just been able to pull her back against him and let her shirt fall to the ground while his hands ran along her thighs and up over her breasts. While he kissed the back of her neck and worked his way slowly to the spot just beneath her ear.

If he’d hooked his feet around hers and kept her legs spread wide as his fingers trailed on a long teasing journey down her belly and beneath the layers of her shorts and her panties.

Chrissy bit down on her pillow, muffling her own moan when she slid her fingers between her thighs and felt how wet she was. Eddie seemed like the kind who would moan quietly into her ear when he realized the effect he had on her. Maybe he would let his tongue dance along her earlobe while his long fingers circled her clit.

Are you going to come for me, Chrissy?

She could practically hear him whisper into her ear as she pressed down harder.

And this time when she did, half the relief was in not having to pretend she was thinking of someone else.

Chapter Text

and there was one prize i'd cheat to win
the more that you say
the less i know

vii.

Eddie was starting to get a headache. His client records were a mess, and he had no idea how they’d gotten so disorganized so quickly. On the other side of the front of the shop, Lucas leaned over the counter to where Dustin was copying the schedule from the book into the computer with their new scheduling software.

He was already dreading Dustin having to teach him how to use it.

“Okay, Dustin, listen,” Lucas said, pressing the tips of his fingers together.

“Listening,” Dustin said, not looking up from the keyboard.

“What would you think if I said, ‘I haven’t seen Terminator 2 yet’?”

Dustin stopped typing. “Wait. What?”

“What would that mean to you?” Lucas prompted. “If I said, ‘I haven’t seen Terminator 2 yet’?”

Eddie watched as Dustin tilted his head to one side in thought. “Well. To me,” he motioned to himself. “It would mean that you were a liar.” Lucas dropped his head and sighed as if Dustin had completely missed the point. “What?” he asked. “You did see it! Twice in the theater, even. Once with Max and once with me and Will. We had that whole conversation about how if the plot was a D&D campaign, all Sarah Connor would have to do is—”

“Okay, okay,” Lucas stood up straight. “But what if I hadn’t seen it? And I said to you, ‘I haven’t seen Terminator 2 yet.’ What would you think?”

Dustin looked over solemnly from the computer screen. “I’d think you were a cinematic idiot,” he said. “And you’d have my pity.”

“Ughh,” Lucas groaned. “No, you’re not getting me—”

“Lucas, I’m not understanding any part of this conversation,” Dustin cut in. “You’re asking me what I’d think if you told me that you haven’t seen a movie that you’ve definitely seen that came out like, three years ago. What am I supposed to think?”

Across the room, Eddie shuffled his records together, no longer even pretending not to be listening to this much more interesting conversation.

“No, but just…” Lucas sighed. “Just by that one sentence. ‘I haven’t—”

“—seen Terminator 2 yet,” Dustin finished for him. “Yeah. I got it.”

“Would you get the impression that I really wanted to see it?”

This stopped Dustin before he could return his attention to the computer. “Oh.” He frowned in thought. “Well, I mean. You couldn’t have been desperate to see it, I guess. Otherwise, you would have already seen it.”

Eddie watched, amused, as Lucas visibly brightened. “Right,” he said with a smile starting to stretch across his face. “I’m totally not going to see that movie.”

“Although—” Dustin had started his data entry again and stopped as another thought crossed his expression. “The word ‘yet’…”

“What?” Lucas asked; his smile dropped away. “What about it?”

“Well, now that I’m thinking about it, you’d only say ‘yet’ if you really did want to see it. Like, you were planning on it. Because otherwise, you’d just say you weren’t going to.”

Lucas’ eyes narrowed. “But in your opinion, would I definitely see it?”

“Oh, how the fuck am I supposed to know?” Dustin demanded, throwing up his hands in frustration. “Maybe you got tired of everyone telling you to go and see it.”

Lucas visibly darkened. “But why would they care?”

“Because it’s a brilliant film! It’s violent and complex and the effects kick ass—” Dustin stopped again and frowned. “I never thought I’d say this, but can I, like, work now?”

Eddie looked at his watch as he stood up and stretched his arms overhead. “It’s close enough to seven,” he announced. “You guys can just bring in the sign and lock up.” He pointed to the computer while Lucas did as he asked and stepped outside. “Can we do client records on that?”

“No,” Dustin shook his head. “This is just for scheduling. Any kind of CRM function is going to be on the thing Max is bringing over.”

“When is that?”

Dustin shrugged. “She said maybe tomorrow? Maybe Friday. Depending on when she gets her hands on a copy. But she promised she’s going to pick up that rat’s nest of a filing system you have and get the whole thing transferred into the new system before the end of the summer.”

“I’m not complaining,” Eddie crossed his arms over his chest. “But why is she doing this?”

His friend looked at him, confused. ”She said she owes you for like, an ounce of weed, and this how she’s going to pay you back.”

 “Oh, shit,” he blinked, shaking his head. “She does. I totally forgot about that.”

“Yeah, keep that to yourself,” Dustin said as he closed the schedule book and began clicking through various menus on the computer screen. “This scheduling software blew our technology budget for the next two months so she’s doing us a huge favor by sharing.”

Eddie narrowed his eyes. “I thought you said it was like, seventy-five bucks.”

Dustin looked at him as the computer powered down. “We have a very small technology budget.”

“Well, it’s all in how you use it,” Eddie muttered before he crossed to hold open the door for Lucas to drag in the sidewalk sign. “What are you guys up to tonight?”

“We’re helping Mike set up his new PC,” Lucas said.

“And—just going out on a limb here—” Dustin added, “probably stepping around clunky metaphors to dissect what Max is doing with her new boyfriend.”

Lucas’ jaw dropped. “If you knew what I was talking about why didn’t you just say so?”

Dustin grinned. “Because it was funny.”

Eddie snorted and turned the Allen wrench he kept on his keyring into the push bar on the front door. Lucas looked back at him. “You got your gig tonight?”

“That’s right,” he looked up from fiddling with the locks. “And here’s the weekly reminder that you little sheepies are always welcome to come and support your local starving artists.”

“And have to watch you and Candy all over each other?” Dustin asked. “No thanks.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “We’re not all over each other,” he said firmly. In fact, since he’d bailed on a date so he could spend the night giving Chrissy her first tattoo, Cannie had been decidedly less responsive to his calls. Not a total cold shoulder, but definitely cooler. “And it’s Cannie, douche. I know you know that.”

“That’s a stupid name,” Dustin muttered like a twelve-year-old.

“You’re just mad because your meddling didn’t work out,” Eddie reminded him. “And it was never going to, by the way. I’m sorry you backed a losing horse, but that’s not really my fault.”

“My meddling would have worked great if you weren’t such a pussy.”

Eddie inhaled deeply through his nose. “Henderson, let’s pretend that you work for me.”

“Oh, don’t try to pull rank when you know I’m right—”

“Then let’s pretend that you don’t.”

His empty threat didn’t faze Dustin in the slightest. He stared boldly back. “Eddie, you can’t fire me. I know too much.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah,” he scoffed. “Really. What bank do we use?”

Eddie blinked. “First—”

“Already wrong.”

“Damnit.”

Lucas looked at his watch. “We should probably go,” he said before he raised his voice. “Erica, you want a ride?”

“In my own car?” Erica called from her corner of the shop. “That you’ve been driving around all summer like I didn’t notice?”

He sighed. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” she echoed. “I want a ride.”

Lucas clapped Eddie on the shoulder with the look of a man who always wished he’d remained an only child. “Break a leg.”

Eddie offered him a smile. “Thanks, man.”

***

Their crowd that Tuesday night was nearly double in size—a whopping sixteen people scattered around The Hideout. Though Eddie had to imagine that had more to do with the recent structure fire at the bowling alley off Route 35 than Corroded Coffin suddenly summoning a fanbase.

That was alright by him though. No one in their little heavy metal quartet was expecting a record deal or a sold-out arena tour. It was just nice to have a chance to play a steady gig and do something they all still loved to clear out the cobwebs that tended to gather from working too much 9-5.

The usual set was from 8 to 10 with a break long enough for a basket of surprisingly decent curly fries in between. The seasoned salt was still clinging to Eddie’s fingers when he stepped back on stage. He slung his guitar over his shoulder and brushed his hands on his jeans.

And then he stepped up to the mic, raised his eyes to the crowd, and dropped both his jaw and his guitar pick at the same time.

Chrissy Cunningham was sitting at one of the high-top tables in the center of the smoky room.

Chrissy.

Cunningham.

Was at The Hideout.

To see him.

He would have credited something else with her sudden appearance—a concussion of his own or a really nice trip he didn’t remember signing up for—but there could be no real doubt that she’d come to see him play.

Not after she caught his eye and gave him one of those big, bright smiles of hers. She waved, looking so perfectly out of place in a pink sundress that tied up behind her neck, leaving her arms and shoulders bare.

“Fuckin’ play something or get off the stage!” A voice rang out from the back corner of the room, startling Eddie back to the present.

He blinked and grabbed another pick from the mic stand, not wanting to invite any feedback by moving too close to his amp. He turned back to his bandmates. “You guys cool to switch it up for a song?”

There was a wave of shrugs that started with Frank on bass and made its way to Jeff. “So long as it’s not like, Skynyrd or some shit,” Gareth said from behind the drums.

Eddie rolled his eyes. “Gentlemen,” he admonished. “I would never.”

“Then start us up,” Frank shrugged again. “We’ll follow you.”

When he turned back around, he was surprised to see that Chrissy had not come alone. Robin and Vickie were seated to her right and if he squinted through the haze, he could see Steve placing an order at the bar.

Unbe-fucking-lieveable.

“Uh, sorry for the delay,” he said into the microphone, willing his sudden spike of nervous energy away. He debated his next statement for less than a second before he decided there was no point in pretending that he didn’t care about these most recent additions to the audience. “But someone pretty cool just walked in—a couple someones—” he added when Robin let out a ridiculous wolf whistle that made him grin. “And it called for a change in the setlist. So,” he strummed a test chord and cleared his throat. “Without further ado.”

Eddie was pretty sure that everyone loved the switch to Twisted Sister. He thought he remembered the whole bar singing along in a way they had never done before. It was a safe bet—he personally had never been in a bar that hadn’t turned into a singalong when “We’re Not Gonna Take It” came on.

But the truth was that he wasn’t paying attention. He played and sang and bounced around on stage like an idiot like always, but he couldn’t make himself look away from the blue eyes watching him from the center of the room.

There was another band that went on after them each Tuesday. They were already tuning up by the time Eddie had packed all his stuff into his van and slipped back inside, hoping he wasn’t too obvious in how he was searching the room.

“She’s at the bar, tiger,” a voice came from his right as Robin looped her arm through his. “Make sure you tell her she looks pretty.”

Eddie looked at his friend with a smile. “She always looks pretty,” he said quietly before he gave Robin a once over. “And so do you.”

“Shut up,” she laughed, shaking her head. “I am just here as a part of her cover story if anyone asks.”

“Oh yeah? You and Vic decide to cut back on the Indigo Girls and start listening to thrash metal?”

She shrugged. “Stranger things have been known to happen,” she said and let him go, giving him a little push toward the far side of the room. “Go be nice.”

“I’m always nice.”

Chrissy was seated at the very end of the bar, staring into a glass of something that looked like lemonade and chewing her bottom lip. Eddie fought a brief flash of guilt as he approached, thinking about Cannie on the other side of the bar. Thinking he might be in for an uncomfortable conversation or two by the time the night was over.

But Steve was also at the bar, parked on a stool in the very center, looking close to starry-eyed as Cannie leaned over the glossy wooden surface and sank her long nails into his hair. “No way, dude,” she laughed her low, throaty laugh. “No way this is your real hair.”

“It is!” Steve exclaimed. “I swear.”

“It’s too good,” she laughed again. “Eddie, you’ve seen this mop?”

“I have,” Eddie assured her, pausing to give Steve’s shoulder a friendly swat. “You’re not the first to be ensnared by the lure of the mane of King Steve.”

“Alright, that’s taking it a little too f—” Steve objected, but Cannie cut him off.

“King Steve, huh?” she asked with a grin as she rested her chin on the heel of her hand. “What’d he do to earn that title?”

Eddie, suddenly thinking that this little roadblock might have just sorted itself out, squeezed both of Steve’s shoulders encouragingly. “I’ll let him tell you himself.”

Cannie was still grinning when she glanced down the bar in Chrissy’s direction. Her hands were busy filling a glass full of Stella from the tap. “You guys need anything else, let me know,” she said, passing the glass to him with a wink so quick he almost missed it. “I uh, put hers on your tab. I assume that’s cool?”

“Thanks,” he smiled. “I appreciate it.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah, well, I’m awesome, Munson,” she said casually before she turned back to Steve. “So, about this nickname, Your Most High—”

“Okay, you’re most high if you think I’m answering to that,” Steve said firmly, and Eddie watched him grin when Cannie cackled again.

Yeah. That was definitely sorting itself out.

Eddie took a deep breath and forced himself not to skip the rest of the way down the bar like he wanted to. “Chrissy Cunningham,” he said, drawing her name out like a game show host. She looked up from her glass and smiled again as he shook his head. “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world.”

Chrissy giggled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said with a careless glance around the room. “I used to come here all the time before they changed chefs.”

Eddie laughed and set his beer down on the bar. “Can I join you?”

“Please,” she motioned to the stool to her left. “You guys were great, by the way.”

He smiled into his glass as he took a sip. “Now, now, you don’t have to lie.”

“No, I mean it,” she insisted. “I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I really liked it.”

“Good,” he nodded with a ridiculous swell of pride in his chest before he dove in, addressing the elephant in the room. “So, no trivia tonight?”

Chrissy wet her lips with the tip of her tongue before she pressed them together, seeming to choose her words carefully. “I just felt like a change.”

He nodded again. “Speaking of change,” he said and glanced behind her. “How’s that ink looking?”

Her grin returned as she turned slowly on her stool to show off her bare back. He gulped at the graceful swoop of her neck and shoulders—the soft curls of red and blonde that had fallen from her high ponytail, the delicate jut of her shoulder blades—and fought back the urge that had plagued him for the last two weeks. The same urge that had taken over and made him blow on her skin when she’d winced.

The urge that made him want to trail kisses up along her spine and neck and then turn her around and crush her lips to his while he pulled her into his lap. The same urge that he’d been fighting the rest of the night.

And every night since.

He cleared his throat and forced himself to focus on the ink itself. It had all scabbed and peeled already and looked perfectly situated low between her shoulders. A bright splash of purple on her otherwise peachy pale skin. “Looks great,” he said appreciatively.

Chrissy shrugged as she turned around. “The guy who did it really knew what he was doing.”

If it wasn’t so dark, Eddie was pretty sure she could tell he was blushing. Actually blushing. Like a ten-year-old. “You like it?”

“I love it,” she countered immediately. “I’m already thinking about what I want next.”

“Aha,” he raised his glass in a mock toast. “That’s how we get ya. Now you’re hooked. Next thing you know, you’ll be looking like me,” he said with a glance down at his decorated forearms.

Chrissy’s eyes followed his and she tilted her head, studying him in that careful, thoughtful way she had. “Aside from the bats,” she stretched out her hand and then held it back, her fingertip just half an inch from touching him. “What else do you have?”

Eddie felt his mouth run dry. Was he supposed to pretend it didn’t feel like she was flirting with him? How hard was he supposed to look to find a platonic explanation for this? He coughed and brought his other arm down from the bar. He flipped it to the underside. “Uh, the puppet master, over here.” He glanced up and smiled. “An homage to my unending love of Metallica.”

“Naturally,” she agreed with a nod and surprised him by leaning in closer to push up his sleeve. “What’s this one?” she asked, completely in his personal space. He could smell her perfume—the kind she hadn’t been wearing the other night—the kind that smelled like oranges and something sugary. Her hair brushed his arm and if she wasn’t careful, she was going to fall off her stool and right into his lap.

Eddie glanced down at his bicep, practically inhaling a mouthful of her hair. “That’s a wyvern,” he said, resisting the urge to blush for an entirely different reason. “It’s like a…magical…dragon thing that I got for—uh,” he coughed. “Really nerdy reasons.”

Chrissy giggled again and sat back, giving him the chance to breathe again. “How nerdy?”

“Did you ever play Dungeons and Dragons?” he asked, the question falling out of his mouth before he could stop it.

She laughed. “No.”

“Oh, well, then that’s as far as that explanation is going to go.”

Chrissy sipped her drink and shook her head. “You did not strike me as someone who played Dungeons and Dragons.”

He scrunched his face. “Uh. In high school. Yeah. We had a—“ he stopped himself finally, the last vestiges of his desire to seem cool and mysterious clamping a hand over his mouth. “Nope. Never mind. Not enough alcohol in the world to make me finish that sentence.”

“Oh, come on,” she pleaded with another laugh. She set her drink on the bar and clasped her hands together. “In high school, you had a what?”

“No,” he shook his head. “I’m not just volunteering this stuff—you could use it against me.”

“Don’t you trust me?” she asked, sounding shocked.

He shook his head again. “You tell me something embarrassing first.”

She sat further back with a sigh. “Um…” her eyes rolled up and to the right and she chewed on her bottom lip for just a second before. “Mmm,” she nodded as a thought bloomed behind her eyes. “Here’s one.”

“Hit me.”

“I threw up after I got my first kiss.”

Eddie blinked. “How soon after—”

“Immediately,” she said with grave seriousness, despite the smile tugging at her lips. “Like. On the boy’s shoes.”

He felt his eyes widen. “Holy shit.”

“It was pretty horrible,” she said with a laugh. “But at least he was nice about it.”

“How old were you?”

“Ten,” she shrugged. “And to be fair, he stuck his tongue in my mouth and I thought he was an epileptic and having a seizure and I got so anxious I puked.”

Eddie stared at her. “A lot happened in that story.”

She laughed again. “It did,” she agreed before she raised her eyebrows. “So, you were saying? Something about high school…?”

He let out a heavy exhale and stood up. “I need a smoke,” he announced and then nodded toward the open back door of the building. “Why don’t you come with me?”

There was a picnic table on the far edge of the concrete pad that served as The Hideout’s back patio, and Eddie didn’t hesitate to climb up to sit on the table itself rather than the uncomfortable benches. He offered a hand to Chrissy, happy when she took it and pulled herself up to sit beside him.

He took out his pack of cigarettes and carefully selected the joint he’d rolled earlier. He put it between his lips and lit it, careful to blow the smoke away from Chrissy.

She wrinkled her nose after a second. “Is that weed?”

“Guilty,” he said without hesitation, and held it out to her. “You want some?”

Her eyes lingered on the smoldering orange edge of the joint for just a moment too long before she shook her head. “No, thank you. I shouldn’t.” She sipped the glass she’d brought with her and then nudged her narrow elbow into his side. “And you are an expert question-dodger.”

“Aw man,” he muttered. “Shame on me for bringing this up.” He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Fine,” he sighed. “Yeah. In middle school and high school, my friends and I played…a lot of D&D.”

Chrissy mirrored his posture, nodding slowly like a therapist. “Did you have, like a…” she broke character with a giggle. “I don’t know how it works,” she admitted. “Do you have leagues for this kind of thing?”

He looked purposefully at the dirty wooden planks beneath his shoes. “We, uh, we had a club.”

“What, like how my grandma used to have bridge club?” she asked, sounding excited to have a reference point. “Where you’d go to each other’s houses and play?”

He scrunched his face again. “Not…exactly. It was more like a…” he coughed. “Like an official club. Through the school. It was in the yearbook.”

“Oh.” He saw her nod again. “That does sound very official.”

He sighed. “It was.”

“Did you…” he glanced over in time to see her bite her lip again. “Did your club have a name?”

He’d known this was coming. Had dreaded having to own up to it since he accidentally started this conversation inside. Eddie put a hand over his eyes and felt his ears burn red. “It…was called The Hellfire Club.”

Chrissy sat up and covered her mouth two seconds too late to hide her shocked laugh. “Oh my God.”

“Shut up.”

“You named your big bad tattoo business—”

“Stop…”

“After your D&D club?” she squeaked. “That might be the cutest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“No,” he insisted. “It’s not cute! It’s…scary and intimidating and mysterious!”

Chrissy’s whole body shook when she laughed. “It’s adorable!”

“Okay,” he couldn’t pretend to be upset, not when she looked so positively delighted to have acquired this piece of knowledge. “I’m never telling you anything ever again.”

“Oh my gosh,” she giggled, barely acknowledging his threat. “You’re such a geek!”

“Don’t say that too loud,” he admonished with a chuckle. “I have several clients who’d probably want to get their ink done elsewhere if they knew what I nerd I am.”

“Okay,” she sobered a little and mimed zipping her fingers over her lips. “It dies with me, I promise.” She was only quiet for another second before she spoke again. “Wait I have one more question.”

He dropped his head back. “No you don’t.”

“No,” she agreed. “I have a million more questions, but I only need this one answered right now.”

“What.”

“Your club…”

“Uh-huh.”

She narrowed her eyes to focus on his profile. “Did you have uniforms?” He didn’t have to answer. She had all the ammo she needed in the way he scrunched his face in embarrassment. “Oh my God,” she squealed. “What were they?”

“It wasn’t a big deal,” he insisted. “It wasn’t like I came to school dressed as a dungeon master every Friday or anything—”

“Wait, dungeon master?” she repeated. “That sounds important. Does that mean you were like…the—the captain? Of your D&D club?”

“Well, it doesn’t really work like that, Head Cheerleader—”

She gasped. “How did you know that?”

Eddie rolled his eyes affectionately. “Lucky guess.”

She gave him a gentle shove. “But you were essentially the captain of your…”

“Essentially,” he cut her off. “Yes. I mean. It was—” He needed to stop. He needed to stop right now and put a tourniquet on these mortifying facts just falling out of his mouth.

But her eyebrows lifted. “It was what?”

He sighed again. “Fuck it,” he muttered, shaking his head. “It was my club,” he admitted. “I…started it. I petitioned the school so it could be an official elective and everything.”

“You petitioned the school,” she echoed. “I’m not even joking right now, I’m very impressed.”

Eddie snorted. “Yeah?” he asked, glancing over at her. “So, this is doing it for you, then?” he teased, unable to help himself. “That you’re sitting in the presence of a dungeon master?”

“I’m very impressed,” she repeated, not exactly taking his bait. But not totally ignoring it either.

Her giggles finally subsided as he took another hit off his joint. He glanced over after he’d exhaled and smiled. “You know, for someone who doesn’t want any of this, you sure are paying pretty close attention.”

Even in the dark, lit only by the string of colored Christmas lights that ringed the patio, Eddie could see her blush as she tucked her hair behind her ears. “I’m…. curious,” she said finally. “I’ve only ever tried to smoke like, twice. And I wasn’t good at it and Jason would get really mad every time I did it so…” she shrugged. “I figured it just wasn’t for me.”

He considered this for a moment. “Well,” he rolled a shoulder, trying to tiptoe as casually as he could into his next offer. “I’m not going to force you, but if you wanted to try some,” he held up the joint again. “I can shotgun it for you.”

Chrissy blinked. “Is that like…” she tilted her head to one side. “Like a contact high?”

He smiled. “Slightly more direct than that,” he said. “I’ll do all the work and then blow the smoke in your mouth.”

She couldn’t hide the way her eyes widened just slightly and he caught the split second her gaze dropped to his lips before she met his eyes again. “Um.”

“It’s okay,” he said quickly. “You don’t have to—it’s just easier to inhale like that sometimes if—”

“No, no,” she shook her head, cutting him off. “No, I want to.”

“You’re sure?”

“Uh-huh.”

Eddie forced his foot to stop bouncing and put the joint to his lips. No big deal, he told himself. You’ve done this a thousand times.

A thousand times with other people, though, a little voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Dustin reminded. And Chrissy Cunningham is not other people.

He drew the smoke deep into his lungs and leaned in as Chrissy opened her mouth tentatively. He kept his eyes focused on the hand she was leaning back on against the picnic table, not trusting himself to try and make eye contact as the sweet, skunky smoke passed between them. Because if he did, he’d want to kiss her and he wasn’t sure anymore that she’d push him away. And he wasn’t sure if that would be better or worse.

But when he’d exhausted his breath, he sat back and realized that Chrissy was sitting stock-still, almost like she was afraid to move. He smiled and tipped his head to meet her eyes. “You know, in order for this to work? You actually have to breathe.”

That was enough to break the tension and Chrissy let out a laugh that sounded more than a little relieved. “Right,” she nodded and covered her eyes for a second before she sat up straight again. “Can we…try it again?”

He was already pretty buzzed, but he wasn’t about to turn down this opportunity. He was about to nod and take another drag when the back door opened, and Vickie appeared.

She stopped like a wide-eyed doe caught in the middle of the road for a second before she winced. “Uh, sorry!” she called. “If I’m…uh…interrupting anything?”

“You’re not,” he called back. Because that was true—they weren’t doing anything. They weren’t, he repeated to himself. They weren’t doing anything. “What’s up?”

“Robin’s not feeling great,” Vickie said taking a few steps across the patio. “So, we were going to head out. But I didn’t want to strand anybody if—”

“I can get a ride home,” Chrissy spoke up. “Is Robin okay?”

“Yeah,” Vickie nodded. “She’ll be fine. Just an upset stomach and the band who followed you guys?” she looked at Eddie and wrinkled her nose.

“Not great, right?”

“Definitely not what you want to hear if you’re trying not to puke.”

He laughed. “Tell Buckley I hope she feels better,” he said and hopped down from the picnic table to wrap Vickie in a brief hug. “And thanks for coming.”

Thank you for whatever had to happen to get Chrissy to come with you, he wanted to say. Thank you for helping me steal a little more time with her.

Almost like she could read his mind, Vickie grinned up at him when she pulled away, still holding him at arm’s length. “Well, the course of true love never did run smooth,” she said, so quietly he was certain he was the only one who was supposed to hear her. “Get her home safely please.”

“Of course,” he promised and placed a hand on his heart. “You too.”

“Always.” She peered around his shoulder and aimed her bright smile at Chrissy. “We’ll see you soon, yeah?”

“Definitely!” Chrissy promised. “Movie night!”

“Movie night!” Vickie echoed. “Rob and I’ll bring the John Hughes!”

“I’ll bring the popcorn!” she laughed in response. She waited until Vickie was gone and he’d returned to the table before she looked at her watch. Her eyes bugged slightly. “Jeez, it’s almost midnight.”

He smiled. “Is that what time you turn into a pumpkin?”

She giggled. “Something like that.”

Eddie motioned over his shoulder. “Y’know, Robin takes forever to do anything; I can probablycatch them if you—”

“Could…you maybe drive me home?” She drew out the first word of that request, forcing the rest to bump into each other on their way out of her mouth. They looked at each other for a beat before she raced on. “Sorry, that’s presumptuous—I shouldn’t—”

He shook his head quickly. “No, no it’s fine. I’m happy to give you a ride home.” He tried to cover the way her suggestion had rendered him momentarily speechless with a smile. “You’ll just have to tell me where you live.”

Chrissy didn’t live at the flower shop, but she asked him to stop there before taking her the rest of the way home. She had left something that couldn’t wait until she came back in the morning. “Sorry,” she apologized as they got out of his van when he’d parked across the street. “I don’t actually live that far from here. We could—” she stopped herself, coming around to his side of the car.

Eddie looked up from the keys he had a tendency to twirl around his finger when he was nervous.

Not that he was nervous, of course.

“We could what?”

“I mean,” she bit her lip and looked down at her strappy sandals. “I mean I could just …walk there. From here.”

He blinked. “By yourself?” he clarified before he looked from one end of their perfectly safe and deserted street to the other. “In this neighborhood? I don’t think so.”

Chrissy grinned up at him. He didn’t think he was imagining that she was inching closer, canceling the gap between them one tiny step at a time. “So, you’re going to make sure I get home safe?” she asked.

He nodded. “Boy Scout Dropout’s honor.”

She snorted and then copied how he’d scoped out the street. “And then who’s going to make sure you get home safe?”

She was definitely standing closer now. Close enough that, if he wanted to, he could reach out and brush her hair back from where it had slipped from her ponytail. Close enough that he could let one hand fall to her hip and the other to the back of her neck. Close enough that he could pull her in the rest of the way and cover her lips with his.

His throat bobbed with a hard swallow. “Well,” he said carefully, “you could always do that.”

Chrissy raised her eyebrows. “And then we’ll just spend all night…walking each other back and forth?”

He smiled despite the way his stomach felt like he was waiting for the first drop of a rollercoaster. “Sounds kinda fun.”

She bit her lip again. “Or we could—” Chrissy stopped abruptly and frowned. She peered around his shoulder, squinting for just a second before her eyes widened. “Oh my God.”

Eddie whirled around, following her as she bolted across the street. “Chrissy, what—”

He stopped on the sidewalk just outside of the front window of Tiger Lily’s, frozen in place while Chrissy frantically dug for her keys and started unlocking the front door.

A woman was inside the shop, lying on the floor. The outline of her body lit by the yellow overhead bulb. On the floor was a spilled bucket of soapy water and a scrub brush.

He couldn’t make himself move until he heard Chrissy’s voice again as she knelt in the water and started shaking the unconscious woman. “Mommy?” she demanded. The word kicked him back into gear while Chrissy kept asking, “Mom, come on. Wake up! Are you okay?”

Chapter Text

wait for the signal and i'll meet you after dark
show me the places where the others gave you scars

viii.

Almost everyone she knew hated hospitals, but Chrissy didn’t mind them. She could do without the smell, but she found something strangely comforting about their pale green walls and bright overhead lights. The bustling of medical personnel up and down the halls. She liked that it was a building full of people who could fix things. Put broken bones and parts back together.

When she was little, and her father had spent two years in a hospital—the same hospital where she found herself in the middle of that punishingly muggy August night—Chrissy had made a game of all the waiting she’d done. She counted the blue tiles on the floor—one for every three white tiles—and tried to jump from one to the next without her toes slipping off. She tried to convince her brother that she’d counted all the tongue depressors or cotton balls in one of the jars on the counters and make him guess how many. Then she’d decide when he was close enough and make up some kind of prize for him to win.

She wondered if she should call him. Her brother. Doctor Kyle. Her mother’s obvious favorite. She pushed up the sleeve of her sweatshirt and checked her watch. Only a little after one. He’d probably still be awake, she considered before her bottom lip found its way between her teeth again. But he might not be, the devil on her other shoulder countered. And even if he was, he was all the way up in Chicago and he didn’t have a car, so he wouldn’t be able to get a train or bus ticket until the morning anyway…

Beside her, Jason sat down with a heavy sigh and handed her a white foam cup of weak tea. “Sorry,” he muttered, interrupting her thoughts. “It was the best they had.”

“It’s fine,” she said quietly. “Thank you.”

Jason was there because Jason was supposed to be there. Because when the ambulance had driven Chrissy and her unconscious mother to the emergency room an hour ago, she realized she had to call him.

Had to tell him what had happened and act like she would have if this had just been another normal night that she’d been out with her friends. Like she hadn’t been shamelessly flirting with Eddie Munson all night. And definitely like she hadn’t been a breath away from inviting him back to her place.

She fiddled with the cuffs of her sweatshirt again. It wasn’t her sweatshirt. It was Eddie’s. He’d grabbed it out of his van while he waited with her for the ambulance, draped it over her shoulders while she was shivering on the sidewalk, and trying her best to answer the EMT’s questions about if her mother had any heart problems or history of stroke or diabetes.

When she put her nose to the soft, well-worn fabric, it smelled like him. Like cigarettes and Ivory soap and whatever else it was that made boys smell so good.

She’d expected Jason to be angry or suspicious by the time he arrived at the hospital. But he wasn’t. He’d hugged her—ignoring that she was wearing some other man’s clothes, ignoring that she probably smelled like weed and God knows what else—and told her everything was going to be alright.

That had only made her feel worse.

She hadn’t technically lied to him when she’d skipped out early on trivia that night. She’d said that Steve and Robin had invited her with them to see one of their friend’s bands play. That it wasn’t really her kind of music—or Jason’s, for that matter—and that she wouldn’t be out too late. That she was just going to show some support, have one drink, and probably be in bed by midnight.

That last part was true. She had only had one drink.

And if things had kept going the way they’d been on the street outside of Tiger Lily’s, she thought as she sipped the scalding hot water and burned her tongue, she very well might have been in bed by midnight.

The thought pushed color back to her cheeks and made her want to slide down in her chair and retreat between her shoulders.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,” Jason said, shifting to face her in his plastic chair.

Chrissy’s stomach dropped to her knees. “What?” she asked, forcing herself to sit up.

“I heard you telling the nurse you thought she slipped in the shop,” he said in his low, measured voice. She’d heard this tone plenty of times before. Usually when he was talking to his students or his seventh-grade baseball players. “That there was water and soap on the floor.”

She nodded and wet her lips, taking another sip of the too-hot water to keep from biting her lips. “I think she was trying to scrub off the—”

“The rainbow you painted on the window,” he finished for her. She nodded again as her gut gave an unpleasant twist. Jason’s lips dipped into a thoughtful frown and two familiar lines appeared deep on his forehead. “Chris,” he said, “why did you paint it there in the first place?”

She blinked and sat up straighter. “That’s what you want to talk to me about?” she asked, feeling her eyebrows lift.

“I’m just trying to understand,” he went on, ignoring her question. “I mean. You know what it means, don’t you?”

“Yes…” she said slowly. “And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with ensuring that the store I’m supposed to run for the rest of my life is a safe and welcoming environment for everyone.”

He let out a patient sigh and reached over to cover her hand with his. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that either,” he said in that same kind, calm, deliberate tone. “I think it’s sweet that you want people to feel included,” he added before he motioned to himself. “You know me, babe. You know I’m not a bigot. What those people do in the privacy of their own homes, you know, it’s none of my business. I don’t have a problem with that—”

She contemplated pulling her hand back, but she felt frozen, rooted in place. “Well, it sounds like you do have a problem with it…”

“Just—” he shifted again. “I want you to think about it from a business perspective. That’s all. People are going to think twice about doing business with a florist who supports that kind of lifestyle.”

Chrissy closed her eyes and forced herself to take a deep breath. “Jason?” she asked, gently sliding her hand out from under his. “I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

“Of course,” he said, sitting back when she opened her eyes. “I’m sorry. I know you’re upset right now, and I probably should have waited to mention it. But I know it upset your mother and it’s been weighing on me, as well, and—”

“Anything else in the world,” she cut him off. Her nails curled toward her palms. “I will talk to you about literally anything else in the world right now except for this.”

“Chris—”

“Miss Cunningham?” A man approached them. He was tall and gangly with a deeply receding hairline and a thick brown mustache. He extended a large hand as he approached. “I’m Dr. Clark.”

She stood and shook his hand. “Hi, Dr. Clark.” Her voice was too high and too wobbly. She nearly winced. She sounded like a little kid. “Is my mom okay?”

The doctor nodded and she felt the tension in her chest diminish with the breath she let out. “It appears she had a little mini-stroke, but she’s awake now and she’s lucid. She’s able to speak and is asking for you both.” His eyes moved from Chrissy to Jason, standing behind her with his hands on her shoulders.

“A mini-stroke?” Chrissy repeated. “Isn’t that…” she frowned. “That’s bad. Isn’t it? Do you know what caused it?”

“It’s not great,” Dr. Clark agreed. “But it’s not terminal and most patients fully recover in less than three months. At most, six months. But your mother is in terrific shape otherwise and given how quickly she was able to regain consciousness and lucidity, I expect her to be good as new in no time.” Jason squeezed her shoulders tightly and she felt herself nodding as the doctor continued. “As for what causes something like this, it’s not always easy to pinpoint. Stress is often a contributing factor, as well as any sort of history of high blood pressure or high cholesterol.” He smiled again. He had very kind eyes. “We’ll know a lot more once we get the results back from her tests. And, of course, we’ll be keeping her for a few days to monitor her and ensure there’s no lasting damage.” He paused and placed a hand on Chrissy’s elbow. “Despite it being a mild stroke, getting her to a hospital so quickly likely made all the difference. She’s very lucky that you found her when you did.”

No one was sharing room 306 with the patient when Chrissy and Jason stepped inside. Chrissy paused near the door and watched as Jason walked around her and pulled up a chair to her bedside.

Her mother had always seemed so much bigger than she was. Not just taller, although she was that, too, but bigger. Like she took up more space in any room.

But in her hospital bed, in an unflattering pale blue gown with her blonde hair flattened against the stiff white pillows and sheets, she didn’t look quite so big. Her skin was pallid and only accentuated the dark circles under her eyes.

Chrissy realized as she forced herself to take a step into the room, that it was the first time in her life she’d ever seen her mother in bed with remnants of her makeup still on. No matter what had happened during the day Laura Cunningham believed in going to bed with a clean, moisturized face.

Even on the day of her father’s accident, Chrissy remembered watching her wash her face in the hospital restroom, scrubbing at her cried-off mascara before she rubbed Oil of Olay into her skin like some kind of healing ritual.

“Chrissy, sweetheart, why are you just standing there?” Her mother’s voice startled her out of her memories and brought her blinking back to the present. She let out a weak laugh. “I’m not contagious.”

For a minute, Chrissy felt a lump rise in her throat, and she wanted to cross the room and crawl into bed beside her. Place her head on her chest and hug her and tell her how glad she was that it wasn’t anything more serious.

But she’d only made it a few steps before Laura continued, “Everyone’s just overreacting, honestly. I wouldn’t even be here if you’d just done as I asked you weeks ago.”

She stopped again and felt her face flush. “You didn’t slip, Mom,” she said quietly. “You spilled the water when you collapsed, not the—”

Her mother cut her off with a cold laugh and looked to her left at Jason. “Leave it to our girl to try and explain my own accident to me,” she said with a perfect mix of fondness and condescension. Her blue eyes flicked back to her daughter. “But Chrissy, dear, could you please find a nurse to bring me some more ice chips?”

She swallowed hard. “Sure, Mom,” she said numbly, backing slowly out of the room.

“And another pillow, as well?”

“Uh-huh,” she nodded once and dropped around the corner. She made it down the hall and around into a deserted corridor before she pressed her back to the wall and brought her trembling hands to her mouth. The cuffs of Eddie’s sweatshirt tasted dry and salty as she stuffed the fabric into her mouth and bit down to hide her scream.

***

Her hands were still shaking when she knocked on Eddie’s door an hour later. The nurses had kicked her and Jason out not long after she’d brought her mother her requested ice chips and extra pillows, assuring them both they could return first thing in the morning.

Chrissy wasn’t sure, but she thought the nurse who’d delivered this news might have been intervening on her behalf. She’d popped into the room just in time to interrupt Laura’s next errand for her daughter.

Jason had driven her home and lingered as she said good night. Waiting for an invitation, no doubt, but she couldn’t bring herself to offer him one. For a few minutes, while she stood in the dark entryway of her apartment, Chrissy thought she might just be able to take a shower and go to bed and do her best to reset for the difficult days that had just been laid at her feet.

Just a few minutes.

And then it felt like she blinked, and she was here. Knocking on Eddie’s door at two o’clock in the morning, hoping that he’d hear her.

The locks turned and she heard a chain slide before the door opened a few inches and a mop of dark curls appeared above a pair of brown eyes squinting in the hallway light. “Chrissy?” Eddie murmured in confusion. The door opened the rest of the way, revealing a version of him she’d never seen before. A sleep-rumpled plain white t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, bare feet. “What are you doing here?” he asked and rubbed his eyes like a little kid. “Is your mom okay?”

“She’s fine,” she nodded. “She’s…she um,” she coughed and looked down, the realization of what she was doing sinking in slowly. It was the middle of the night, for God’s sake. What was she thinking? Just showing up at his door at two in the morning without an invitation. “God,” she shook her head. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing. This is so—”

“No, no,” he shook his head and stepped back, welcoming her inside. “Come in,” he said and cleared his throat as he bent to turn on the nearest lamp. “What’s going on?”

“I…um…” she stepped into his small apartment and looked around. His furniture all looked at least a decade old. He had a bookshelf stuffed with movies and paperbacks and there were framed posters on his walls. Bands with names she’d never heard of, a big one from The Realto announcing a B-horror film festival in October of 1992. An acoustic guitar and two electric occupied the far corner in their stands.

When her gaze traveled back around the room, Eddie ducked his head to meet her eyes. “Chrissy?” he said again. “You wanna sit down?” She nodded and all the words she’d been about to say dissolved like sugar on her tongue. He motioned to the living room and the green plaid couch. “I can make you some coffee if you want,” he offered with a jerk of his thumb toward the little kitchen she could see through the darkened doorway.

“Okay,” she said with another nod.

“Do you take cream and sugar?”

“Yes.”

“…Because I don’t…have those things,” he said quietly and glanced down at his bare feet. He scratched the back of his neck. “Um…”

She swallowed hard. “Do you have whiskey?”

Eddie looked up again. “Yeah,” he said with a blink. “Yeah, I have whiskey.”

“Then I’ll have that?”

She left her shoes by the door and sat on the green sofa. There were cigarette burns on the very edge of one of the cushions and it reminded her of her grandfather—her dad’s dad who had a tendency to fall asleep with a cigar in his hand and had, according to her father, set the couch on fire more than a few times that way.

Eowyn jumped up a second later with a happy, curious little mrrow?  Chrissy smiled and let the cat smash her face against her open hand. Her purr deepened as soon as she caught the scent of the sweatshirt she was still wearing. Her lap had been commandeered as Eowyn’s new bed by the time Eddie returned with two tumblers in his hand.

The ice rattled against the glass when he passed it to her and he smiled at his cat. “Sorry,” he muttered. “You don’t have to let her sleep on you.”

“No, it’s fine,” Chrissy shook her head. “It’s nice.” She ran her fingernails over the gray and brown stripes between Eowyn’s ears. “She’s a sweetheart.”

Eddie smiled again. “Yeah,” he said before he took a sip of his whiskey. “She is.” He waited until she’d taken a sip of her own and tried her hardest not to cough when it burned her throat before he spoke again. “But something tells me you didn’t come over just to hang out with my cat.”

When she’d been walking over, she had thought about what she wanted to say. She’d just needed someone to talk to who hadn’t grown up with Laura Cunningham and the greeting card version of herself that she projected to the rest of the world. She wanted to talk to someone she could be honest with—someone who understood how hard it was just to exist in the same room as her sometimes. She just needed to vent for a minute about the hospital, about how quickly she’d gone from relief to rage. How much the guilt and grief and anger were all still swirling around at the back of her throat making it hard to draw a breath.

It was only meant to be a little unloading of the weight she always carried with her, but once she started, Chrissy found that she couldn’t stop.

Everything started bubbling to the top of her mind. The obsession with her weight and measurements. The way her mother would buy all her clothes for her a size too small and then make an enormous show of letting out the seams so they would fit. The way she buried all of this under a beautiful smile and perfect makeup and acted so sickeningly sweet in front of anyone else that no one would have ever believed Chrissy if she’d had the guts to tell anyone or ask for help when she was growing up.

The decades of passive-aggressive little comments about her appearance, her grades, and her friends. Now how she was running the shop, her wedding plans, the unannounced visits to her apartment where she’d check for any junk food or soda in the refrigerator.

Eddie stayed quiet for most of it. She watched his expression range from anger to sadness and back again a few times before he reached over and covered her hand with his. It was a warm, welcome weight that made her want to turn her wrist so she could lace her fingers with his. “Chrissy, none of what happened tonight…” he began carefully when she had to stop to take a breath. “None of that’s your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

And she knew that, deep down. She’d been more than a little relieved when the doctor had said it was a stroke and not a head injury from falling while trying to clean the windows. It would have happened no matter where she was. No matter what she’d been doing.

Logically, Chrissy knew all that. But that didn’t stop the lump from rising in her throat or keep the tears from stinging behind her nose. She sniffled. “Then why do I feel like this?” she asked, wishing he could just tell her. Wishing he could work some kind of magic that would make her feel normal again. Not so wrong. Not so guilty. Not such a disappointment. “I mean,” she sniffed again and insisted, “I’m a good daughter. I listen to her. I do everything she asks me to do. I go to church with her every Sunday no matter what. I—I—I didn’t even go away to college because she told me she couldn’t run the shop without me for four years. I lived at home, and I dated the boy she liked the best, and I wore everything she wanted me to and…” The words finally stopped their relentless lining up and faded into one last, hopeless thought. She swallowed hard and looked up. “I just don’t know what else I have to do to make her love me.”

On the opposite side of the couch, Eddie pursed his lips and looked down at the glass he’d emptied while she’d been talking. He leaned forward to set it on the coffee table and took in a deep breath. “Chrissy,” he said quietly and looked at her, doing that thing he did where he ducked his chin to ensure she met his eyes. “Listen,” he sighed. “I don’t know your mom,” he admitted. “But I feel like I know you pretty well and I don’t…” he paused and pressed his lips into a firm line again. “I don’t think ‘good’ covers it when we’re talking about what kind of daughter—fuck it,” he shook his head and muttered before he went on with his correction, “—what kind of person you are.  You’re kind and warm, and smart, and fun to be around and…” he paused again. Chrissy felt her heart fluttering somewhere high in her throat. “And if your mom has managed to know you your entire life without loving you, then—” he sighed. “I don’t know. Then she’s a freak who should be studied—”

Chrissy interrupted him with a weak laugh. She wiped uselessly at the corners of her wet eyes.

“I’m serious,” he went on, looking down at his hands once more before he looked up. Chrissy was struck again by just how beautiful his eyes were. So dark they were nearly black and full of more depth than she’d ever seen in anyone else. He always looked at her like he could see right through her. Like he could read every thought in her head without trying. His throat bobbed with a hard swallow. “I’m serious,” he said again, his voice a little deeper this time. “I don’t know how someone could know you for five minutes without loving you.”

Her stomach gave an unexpected flip, and she gulped around the sudden dryness in her throat. Her vision seemed to dim, her whole world narrowing in focus to just Eddie sitting across from her. Just Eddie and his dark, beautiful eyes, and his full inviting lips.

Just say it, she begged in her mind. Just say it, Eddie, so I know for sure.

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She closed it again.

He blinked first. “I uh,” he coughed and reached for his empty glass. “I need a refill,” he said abruptly and stood from the couch. He turned back to her. “More?” he asked, pointing to her glass. “Or still working on that?”

She shook her head. “No,” she forced the word up finally. “I’m okay for right now.”

He nodded and retreated to the kitchen, causing Eowyn to jump away to follow him. Chrissy rested her forehead on her open palm and closed her eyes. She didn’t even know what it was that she wanted him to say. That he was in love with her? That he wanted her to break up with Jason so they could be together? That whatever she’d thought was going on with him and that bartender was meaningless and already over?

She let her hand slide away from her face and stared at the spot where he’d just been sitting.

Did she want him to say that he was in love with her?

Would that make any of this easier?

She let out a heavy exhale and threw back the rest of the whiskey in her glass. It stung as much with the last swallow as it had with the first, though the slivers of what remained of melted ice cubes helped ease her throat just a little bit as she got to her feet.

The whiskey bottle and his empty glass were on the kitchen counter, but Eddie wasn’t touching them. He had his back to the doorway and his weight rested heavily on his hands. His head hung down between his shoulders, staring at the dishes in the sink.

Chrissy opened her mouth to speak again, but her attention was pulled to the corner and the small table tucked there. A collection of mail on the edge and in the center, a vase with two dark purple dahlias and a white rose inside. She stopped and tilted her head to one side.

She knew those flowers.

“Oh, hey.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Eddie turn around as he sensed her presence. “What’s up?”

“I, um,” she frowned. “Are those the flowers I gave you?” The question hit the air before she could decide if she wanted to ask it. “For your date?”

Eddie leaned against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. “Yeah,” she heard him say quietly.

She couldn’t pull her eyes away from the vase. How many weeks ago was that? How careful did he have to be to keep even the few remaining blooms alive that long? “Why did you tell me…” the rest of the words died on her tongue.

“That I gave them to Cannie?” he finished for her. She nodded and he sighed again. “Because you wanted me to give them to her,” he said. “And it was easier to let you think I had than…”

Chrissy blinked and forced herself to look at him. “Than the truth?”

“Yeah.”

“Which is…”

“That they came from you,” he said with a shrug. As if what he was saying was nothing. As if she didn’t feel like he’d just placed his heart squarely between her teeth and told her she could crush it if she needed to. “And I didn’t want to give them away.”

“Because they came from me,” she repeated softly.

“Yeah,” he said and shuffled his bare feet against the linoleum. “But if that’s—”

Whatever he was going to say next, Chrissy didn’t hear it. She crossed the room in only a few steps, stretched up on her toes, and pressed her lips to his.

It wasn’t the first time she’d thought about kissing Eddie Munson since she’d met him. And when she thought about it, she always thought it might feel good. Especially if it meant putting an end to all this back and forth in her mind and canceling the tension that felt like it had been building between them for weeks.

But she was wholly unprepared for how good it would feel. For the rush of desire that poured into her without warning. Liquid fire, pooling low in her belly, unlike anything she’d ever felt before. For the way everything else in her mind, everything else in her life—her mother, Jason, the hospital, the rainbow sign, all of it—would fade away the second his lips touched hers. Eddie only hesitated half a second before his hands were on her body, one on her hip, one sunk into her hair, keeping her locked against him, making her legs useless as her knees went weak at his touch.

She grabbed for him, her hands fisting in his t-shirt as he turned them in place so that it was her back pressed against the countertop. His other hand moved to grip her hip and he broke away just long enough to hoist her up and sit her on the counter. She missed him as soon as his lips left hers and she reached for his face again, pulling him back in as her knees squeezed his hips, drawing him in closer, trying to ignore the sudden driving need he’d ignited between her legs.

Eddie pulled away again. His large hands came up to cup her face as he brushed his nose against hers. “Chrissy,” he breathed hard, his long eyelashes fluttering when he closed his eyes. “We shouldn’t do this.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and leaned forward to press her forehead against his collarbone and his fingers drifted down her back. Slow, soothing strokes along her spine. “I know,” she admitted, her voice just above a whisper. “I know. I’m sorry, I should—” she felt him kiss the side of her head, by her temple. “I should probably just go home.” His neck was right there. An all too appealing vein that was begging her to put her lips to it. She steeled herself when she felt him kiss her again. The shell of her ear this time. His heart was pounding against hers and Chrissy knew that if she was going to go, all she would have to do was to push against him.

He'd let her go. He’d let her slip from under his hands and give her all the space she wanted. She took in another deep breath.

But he smelled so good, and he was so warm and safe.

And she’d been so good for so long.

She stretched forward just enough to press a kiss to his neck. She could feel his pulse there, throbbing in time with her own. He let out a slow, measured exhale. “If that’s what you want,” she heard him say softly. Her lips trailed from his neck to his jaw and just below his ear. Just a little taste, she lied to herself. Just soft, tentative kisses before she gathered the courage to walk away from him. She kissed his temple. His cheek. Where the fan of his eyelashes met his cheekbone.

He took her face in his hands again. “Chrissy,” he said in a low voice that had her clenching on nothing. He tilted her chin up to meet his eyes. “What do you want?”

Another lump rose alarmingly fast in her throat, and she swallowed hard, willing away the sudden blur of her vision. Because no one ever asked her that. No one ever looked at her like they wanted to know the answer. No one even looked at her like they could even see her. Not the way Eddie did. “You,” she breathed out the word the second before his lips were on hers again.

Her mouth opened beneath his with a moan from deep in her chest when he swept his tongue between her lips, teasing it against hers. He dragged his hands down her neck, lingering on her breasts when she arched her back and pressed them into his palms. He groaned quietly and she spread her fingers wide, her hands greedily roaming over his chest and shoulders.

He pulled away just as she was about to need a breath and his lips wandered from hers down across her jaw and over to her neck. “Come here,” he murmured into her skin, the second before his hands slipped underneath her ass and he scooped her off the counter, coaxing her arms and legs to wrap fully around him. She felt him smile when she let out a little squeak of surprise. “I got ya,” he promised against the column of her throat.

She hugged her whole body around his and sank her nails into his thick, dark hair. It was so much softer than it looked. He didn’t complain when she pulled it free from its elastic band and let it fall to his shoulders. Eddie’s bedroom was only a few steps down the hall from the kitchen and he didn’t stop to turn on any lights before he dropped down to sit on the edge of his bed with her still in his arms.

He drew the zipper down the front of his sweatshirt and pushed it off her shoulders while she pulled his lips back to hers, swallowing down his soft moan when she stroked her tongue over his. His hands roamed with increasing confidence over her chest and down to her hips and thighs. “Eddie, please,” she broke away with a heavy sigh against his lips.

“Please what?” he asked pulling back to search her face. “What do you need?”

She rolled her hips over his, and a flush of want burned across her cheeks when she felt him pressing hard against her. It had been so long since she’d had to ask for anything—since she’d had the chance to articulate what she wanted. “You,” she said again, frustrated by how much she wanted to hide her face in his neck. Embarrassed by how badly she wanted him. “I need you to touch me,” she said, all but begging. “Please.”

Eddie nodded and kissed her again, one hand sliding up to hold the back of her neck while the other slid under her pink sundress—the one she’d picked out just for him, she reminded herself. He stroked his fingers softly on her silk panties, making her whine when he pressed down where she’d already soaked through them. His tongue circled hers slowly while he carefully pushed the fabric aside and slid the calloused pads of his fingers between her folds.

“Jesus,” he murmured against her lips. She rocked her hips hard into his hand, urging him to keep going, keep touching her. Anything to give her some kind of relief.

“Right there,” she breathed when he circled her swollen clit. “Just stay right there.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he assured her, trailing his lips down to her neck. He stayed there and let her grind down on his fingers, pressing hot opened mouthed kisses over her throat and scraping his teeth lightly over her pulse.

Her own body was trying to kill her. Trying to drown her in want and burn her from the inside out while Eddie’s fingers worked her clit and he traced his tongue along her earlobe, sucking it between his lips before she even had to ask. She was so close, and it still wasn’t enough. “Inside,” she begged, squeezing her eyes shut as he started to move faster. “Put—” she choked on her own ragged breathing, “I want to feel your fingers inside me.”

He nodded again and sat back a little so her knees could touch the bed and she could spread her legs wide over his lap. His fingers dipped experimentally at her core once and she bit her lip to smother an embarrassingly loud moan.

Eddie pulled away from her neck and his other hand slid from the back of her neck to her jaw again. She felt his thumb at the corner of her mouth and opened her eyes when he pulled her bottom lip gently from between her teeth. “You’re gonna bite through this lip one of these days,” he told her as the corner of his own lips quirked into a half-smile. He pulled her in for a sweet, soft kiss while he circled her clit again. “And there’s nobody here but us,” he reminded. “You can be as loud as you want.”

She felt herself smile and nodded with her forehead pressed to his. His fingers paused at her entrance again and she reached down to hold his hand in place, her every nerve terrified he’d pull away and tease her a second time. “Please,” she said again. “I just need you to—” He slid two fingers in to the knuckle and anything she was about to say dissolved as her mouth fell open in a silent cry of surprise and satisfaction. “Oh, fuck,” she breathed, working her hips over his hand, relishing the stretch.

Eddie’s lips were on her neck again. “Take what you need, baby,” he murmured just below her ear. “You can have whatever you want.”

He started to thrust his fingers at the same time his thumb found her clit and she moaned again, this time not bothering to try and muffle the sound. Her hand trailed down Eddie’s chest as she rolled her hips to meet his movements and she came up higher on her knees so she could stroke his cock, straining beneath his sweatpants.

“I want to touch you,” she whispered and tucked her fingers just beneath his waistband. The way she felt his breath stutter against her skin urged her to be bolder. To tell him what she really wanted. “I want us to come together.”

“Fuckin’ hell,” he muttered, nodding the second before she slipped her hand into his pants and the boxers he wore beneath. He sucked in a sharp breath when she wrapped her fingers around his cock and stroked him slowly, up and down, swirling her thumb over the tip, matching the way he was still moving inside her.

Eddie let out a sound of distress when she pulled her hand back. The sound, a choked whine he tried to muffle against her collarbone, shot through her and made her clench hard around his fingers. She ran her tongue over her palm, soaking it as best she could before she tucked her hand back beneath the layers remaining between them and took hold of his cock again.

The way he moaned when she touched him, the way he matched the rhythm of her hand with the way he circled his thumb over her clit, it was all almost too much. She moved her hand faster, knowing she wasn’t going to be able to hold on much longer.

“Ladies first,” he whispered against her ear as if he could read her mind. “Let go, Chrissy. I got you.”

It was just a second later, another thrust of his fingers and brush of his thumb that had her falling apart with a sob as the fire that he’d started finally caught and rolled over her in slow-burning waves of delicious relief. She let him pull her down for another kiss, stroking his tongue over hers to match the slowed movements of his finger while she rode out the last of her orgasm.

Her fingers and toes were still tingling when she began to move her hand again, sliding up and down his cock at a fast, desperate pace until Eddie broke away from her lips with another choked cry and she felt him spill over her fist. Hot and sticky and so deeply satisfying that Chrissy couldn’t do anything but pull him back in to keep his lips on hers as long as possible.

But he broke away again, this time with something that sounded like an apology as she pulled her hand out from beneath his pants and he pushed the fabric of her ruined panties back into place. “Sorry,” he said again, shaking his head. “I didn’t mean to—That was fast.”

She smiled and relaxed into him, fitting her body back against his to keep him close. “Not when you’ve been thinking about it for as long as I have.”

He smiled into their next kiss, Chrissy could feel it more than see it and the thought sent a warm spiral all the way down to her toes. “Please stay?” he asked, brushing another kiss to her lips on the tail of his question. “Even if it’s just for tonight.”

“I was hoping you’d ask,” she confessed with a quiet giggle. He traded her a handful of soft, sweet kisses before she forced herself to untangle her limbs from his and stood up on wobbling legs.

She cleaned up in the bathroom and returned to his bedroom to find that Eddie had turned on the lights and changed into a different pair of sweatpants. She paused in the doorway, unable to help the way she smiled watching as he moved around his room picking up discarded towels and clothes, shuffling sketch pads and sheet music to the desk in the corner, and putting three different coffee mugs on top of them from where he’d gathered them from surfaces around the room.

He offered her a guilty smile when he caught her watching him. “Sorry about the mess,” he muttered. “It’s the, uh, maid’s week off.”

She hummed in amusement before she looked down at her rumpled sundress. “Do you, um, do you have something I could borrow to sleep in?”

Eddie nodded and returned to his dresser. He tried the top drawer and then stopped, dropping down to the bottom of the three drawers instead. He dug for a moment before he stood with a worn black and white baseball t-shirt in hand. Chrissy eyed his half-smirk as he handed it to her, and she unfolded the black sleeves to study the design on the front.

The shirt was old and had been washed so many times it was almost threadbare in places. But Chrissy couldn’t help but grin when she read the faded letters and logo on the front. “The original Hellfire Club uniform?” she asked, lifting her eyes from the cartoon devil.

Eddie’s cheeks were just the slightest shade of pink when he shrugged. “You did ask,” he reminded.

It felt like five years had passed from the moment Chrissy had teased him about his nerdy interests to when she was standing in his room, pulling his old t-shirt over her dress before she untied the strings at the back of her neck and let it fall to the floor. She slid her arms into the sleeves and relished the feeling of the soft cotton on her skin. It skimmed the tops of her thighs when she held out her arms and turned around for his opinion. “Do I look like a dungeon master?”

Eddie grinned, all dimples as he crossed the room to drop a kiss on the tip of her nose. “No,” he said and kissed her forehead. “You’re way cuter than any dungeon master I’ve ever seen.”

She stretched up on her toes and brushed her lips to his. “Let’s go to bed,” she said softly and linked her fingers with his, tugging him back toward his unmade bed. If she could just stay here, she thought as she climbed beneath the covers with him, in this moment that felt so right and normal and like everything she ever thought love and sex should feel like…

If she could stay there, then she wouldn’t have to go back to the rest of her life in the morning. She wouldn’t have to think about what she’d just done and what it meant for everything else.

Eddie reached over and turned out the light, rolling onto his back and opening his arms for her to cuddle against his chest. Like they fell asleep like that every night. She felt him kiss the top of her head as his arms circled her and his heart thumped steadily beneath her ear.

She thought if she could just stay awake, then by the time the morning came, she would have made sense of everything. She would miraculously know what to say and what to do and how to navigate all the uncertainty that was waiting just on the other side of sunrise.

It didn’t seem like that big of a request, really.

Just one more sleepless night to figure everything out. That was all she needed.

But Chrissy only had to close her eyes for a second before sleep reached out and pulled her all the way under.

Chapter Text

now this is an open-shut case
guess i should've known from the look on your face
every bait and switch was a work of art

ix.

The first thing Eddie saw when he opened his eyes was a scrunchie. A black scrunchie buried in a sea of strawberry blonde curls resting on his chest. He smiled sleepily, fighting the way his eyes wanted to drift closed again, and did his best to shift from underneath Chrissy without waking her up.

She made a little sound of protest and grabbed the pillow he’d been using, tucking it under her cheek with her eyes still closed as he moved to sit on the edge of the bed. Eddie bent and kissed her temple before he glanced down at his clothes. Most of her makeup had smeared into his white t-shirt. Streaks of gold eyeshadow and black mascara. The rest was still stuck beneath her eyes and at the tops of her cheeks.

He only had a minute to enjoy seeing her face totally unguarded and at rest, before a little line appeared between her eyebrows and her lips dipped into a frown. Her eyes fluttered open slowly. She looked up at him, blinking the world into focus. “Hi.”

He smiled down at her. “Hi.”

“What time is it?”

He checked his watch. “It’s just after nine.”

Her eyes widened and she sat up quickly. “Nine?” she repeated. “Oh my God,” she said, throwing off the covers and practically leaping out of bed. “How did I sleep so late?”

Eddie watched as she scurried around the corner of the bed. “I think not going to sleep until after three probably had something to do with it."

"I wish you would have woken me up," she said quietly, absently trying to pay down her messy hair.

"I didn't really think to set an alarm," he admitted. "Hey,” he caught her arm gently as she made to fly past him. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“I have to go. I have to get to the shop,” she blurted. “I have to at least forward the phones to the answering machine, and put a sign on the door that says we’re closed before Steve gets there at ten and—”

“You can just call Steve from here and let him know,” Eddie reminded her, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his gut when she pulled her arm out of his grasp. “Everyone will understand if you’re running behind today.”

But she shook her head, stepping away from him and returning to her search for her clothes. “No,” she said quietly. “I can’t…I can’t stay here.” She bent and retrieved her dress from where she’d dropped it the night before. “I shouldn’t have—”

He waited, his breath stuck in his throat, for her to continue. When she didn’t, he swallowed hard. “You shouldn’t have what?”

There were only so many ways she could end that sentence and none of them were good.

The pink material of her sundress crumpled as she twisted it between her hands. He watched as she took a deep breath and let it out. “I shouldn’t have come here last night,” she said softly, not looking at him. “It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t…” she shook her head. “I don’t do this,” she said, more to herself than to him. “I don’t cheat or lie or…I just…”

Eddie leaned forward, his elbows on his knees as she trailed off again, looking hopelessly around his room. Looking at the carpet. At the bed she’d just slept in. Looking anywhere but at him. He put his face in his hands and scrubbed his eyes before he took in a sharp inhale and sat back up. “It’s fine, Chrissy,” he said, not caring that the words sounded hollow even to his own ears. “It’s not a big deal. I’ll just get out of your way so you can do what you have to do.”

He stood up and left the room, giving her the privacy to get changed without him. He considered stopping in the kitchen to make some coffee—black, because he still didn’t have any cream and sugar and it didn’t feel like there was any need to go out and buy some now—but the logical, protective side of his brain quickly vetoed that idea. The kitchen was a minefield of memories now. Memories of how his stupid, sentimental need to keep her flowers alive had sold him out. Memories of the way Chrissy’s kisses had felt desperate and vulnerable at first until he’d kissed her back and she’d all but melted into him. Memories of the way her lips felt on his neck. Her hands roaming over his chest. Her legs wrapped around his waist as she sat on the counter—

“Really?”

Her voice interrupted his spiral and stopped him just as he reached the living room. He turned. “Really, what?”

“Really?” she repeated. She’d changed her clothes. The pink sundress he couldn’t take his eyes off of at The Hideout was no less effective after having spent a night on his floor. “What happened last night is not a big deal to you?”

He sighed. “That’s not what I said.”

“Well, that’s what it sounded like.”

“What am I supposed to say, Chrissy?” he asked, genuinely hoping she’d tell him. “It’s pretty clear we’re at the point in the story where the princess realizes she made a mistake with the frog and decides it’s time to go back to the prince.” He hated the way he sounded. So cold and petulant. But he couldn’t stop himself yet—not when he felt like there was a hand around his throat, choking the life out of him. “And if that’s the case—”

“If that’s the case, then what?” she demanded. “How can you act like this is so cut and dry and easy?”

“It’s not easy!” he exclaimed. “I never said it was easy! I never said it was going to be easy. But if you’re still confused by my role in all this—”

“Yes!” she cut him off again. “Yes, I am confused! I don’t know what to think when you act like want me one minute and then the next—”

“There is no next minute for me,” he said firmly. That was enough to stop whatever she was about to say, and her head snapped back an inch as she blinked, giving him time to continue. “I want you. All the time. This minute, the next, all the ones before that. All the ones after that. That’s it.”

Her brow furrowed into deeper lines. “If that’s true, then what are you doing?” she demanded. “Why do you keep shoving me back to Jason?”

“Because this isn’t a fairytale!” he exclaimed. “I can’t…rescue you from some sad life you don’t want if—”

“If what?”

He sighed and ran his palm over the bottom half of his face, scraping his stubble against his palm. “I want to be here for you Chrissy,” he said quietly. The fire had gone from his voice. He didn’t want to yell at her. He didn’t want to fight with her. He just wanted her to know how he felt. “Whenever and however you need me. I want to be a safe place for you to go and feel like you can just…be yourself. Whoever that ends up being.” He took in another breath. “But I can’t…I can’t just be your vacation or your last act of rebellion before you settle down in some safe little suburban life.” He swallowed hard. His voice felt dangerously close to cracking. “I—” he shook his head and tried again. “We both deserve more than that.”

To his dismay, Chrissy’s blue eyes filled with tears. She pressed her lips together in a firm line and shook her head. “I don’t want you to save me, Eddie,” she said softly. “I don’t know what I want…and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

He took a step toward her. She didn’t pull back when he placed his hands on her arms and let her drop her head against his chest. “I know,” he said quietly. He wanted to tell her that wasn’t entirely true. That she did know what she wanted, or at least she had a few hours ago. She just had to be brave enough to do something about it.

But that wasn’t his decision to make.

She sniffled and shook her head, staring down at their feet. One of her tears hit the carpet between them. “I don’t think I can give you the answer you want,” she said. “I’m—I’m all messed up, and I'm hurting everyone and—" she looked up finally, swiping at the mess of makeup still under her eyes. “Everything’s just been so confusing since I met you.”

He nodded and tried his best to ignore the lump in his throat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want you to feel like this. I don’t want you to feel like you owe me anything.” He reached out and pushed a messy curl back behind her ear. “But for me? Everything’s been crystal clear since the day I met you.”

Chrissy’s face crumpled again, and she squeezed her eyes shut, pushing two fat tears down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as she stretched up on her toes and pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth. “I really do have to go.”

“Yeah.”

And when she walked away, he let her.

***

He managed to make it through half the day, fulfilling the appointments he had at eleven and two before he couldn’t take it anymore. “Dustin,” he called when he saw that Will’s door was closed as he made his way to the front of the shop.

“What’s up, boss?”

He offered a weak smile and nodded back toward Will’s studio. “You think Byers will mind handling the walk-ins the rest of the day?”

Outside it was a humid, hot, overcast day—begging for a thunderstorm that just wasn’t coming. No one was out on the street and the chances of a rush of customers seemed entirely unlikely.

Dustin shook his head. “No, he should be fine,” he shrugged before he narrowed his eyes. “Why? You going back to bed? You should,” he said without waiting for an answer. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks, man,” he muttered with a roll of his eyes and bent to rummage under the counter for his Walkman. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said once he’d found it.

“Wait, wait,” Dustin started to follow him before he stopped in the center of the room. “Erica!”

“What?” she called from her corner of the shop.

“Can you and Elle watch the phones and the front for ten minutes?”

Eddie unlocked his door as his piercing staff paused before Erica called back. “You know we’re not your damn secretaries!”

“I know!” Dustin assured her. It was his turn to roll his eyes. “Is that a yes?”

Another pause. “Sure,” Elle called back. “Just ten minutes!”

“Thank you!” He said before he lowered his voice. “Everything is goddamn negotiation with those two.”

Eddie said nothing and began climbing the stairs to his apartment. Halfway up, he was vaguely aware of Dustin following him. “What are you doing?” he asked, stopping, but not turning around.

“I want to talk to you.”

“Can it wait?”

“It…can if you can tell me that your weird mood isn’t about what happened between you and Chrissy last night.”

His face furrowed in confusion, and he looked over his shoulder. “How do you know about that?”

Dustin smiled. “So I'm right!”

He sighed. “Fuck.”

“Come on,” his shop manager whined. “Just tell me what happened—you’ll feel better.”

“Mmmnope,” he shook his head and climbed the rest of the stairs to his door. “I really don’t think I will.”

“Well then I’ll feel better,” Dustin countered, following Eddie into his apartment without waiting for an invitation. “And we both know you’re a very empathetic dude, so, who knows? Maybe you’ll feel better by proxy.”

He dropped down onto his couch and rubbed his eyes. “I highly doubt it.” When he let his hands fall, Dustin was sitting in his armchair, looking like an expectant therapist. “And seriously, how the hell did you find out about last night?”

“Steve,” Dustin shrugged. “He told me he was going to The Hideout with Robin and Vickie and Chrissy because she said she wanted to go and see you play, and she didn't want to go by herself.”

His frown deepened. “She did?”

It was Dustin’s turn to look confused. “Wait. Did she not go to see you play last night?”

“No,” he shook his head. “She did. I just didn't realize it was her idea.”

“So she went and saw you...and then what happened?”

“And then…we talked outside for a while,” he said, giving in and letting the words fall out of his mouth. He gave Dustin a high-level overview of how the rest of the night had played out. The ride home. The flirting outside of Tiger Lily’s, the unfortunate timing of her mother’s stroke, the way she’d turned up at his door a few hours later. He caught the way Dustin’s eyes widened when he skipped ahead to the morning but soldiered on through the highlights of what all had happened before she’d left.

“And then what?”

Eddie frowned. “Then what, what?” he asked. “That’s it.”

Dustin’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “What do you mean, that’s it? You just let her go?”

He sighed. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Chase after her!” he exclaimed. “Don’t let her leave! Tell her you’re in love with her and that she needs to leave her douche-canoe fiancé and be with you because it’s ridiculously obvious that she’s in love with you too!” He sighed. “Any of those would have worked—have you never even seen a movie?"

“This isn’t a movie, dude,” he said, losing patience for this heart-to-heart. “That’s not how shit works in the real world.”

“No offense, but you’re kind of making it clear you don’t know how shit works in the real world.”

“Henderson—”

“No,” Dustin snapped. “Don’t ‘Henderson’ me, Eddie. You’re one of my best friends and I care about you and right now, I care about you enough to tell you that you’re being a complete idiot.”

What remained of his tolerance snapped and he shook his head. “I don’t need to listen to this shit right now—”

“No, I think you do.”

“No,” he countered, standing up. “I don’t.” It was slightly more dramatic of a declaration than he meant for it to be, but once he’d done it, he didn’t feel like sitting down again. “We’re not in some Tom Hanks movie, or a storybook, and if Chrissy wants to go back to her cookie cutter dude and her cookie cutter life, then all I did this morning was speed up the inevitable.”

It was Dustin’s turn to stand up. “The inevitable?” He repeated, following Eddie as he headed for the kitchen in search of something for his burgeoning headache. “You think that’s the inevitable conclusion of all this? Chrissy stays with her dickbag fiancé and you stay alone? That’s what's always supposed to happen so why fight it?”

“Yeah!” he spun back around, throwing up his hands. “Sure. Sounds actually pretty logical if you ask me.”

“Fuck logic!” Dustin cried. “You think people write poems and songs and go off to war and die defending logic?” He waited a moment, then continued when Eddie didn’t know what to say to that. “And how is it logical that Chrissy ends up with Jason and you end up alone?”

Eddie clenched his jaw in frustration. “Because that’s what—” he stopped and shook his head.

“That’s what?” Dustin demanded. “That’s what always happens? You let yourself fall in love with someone and you end up alone?”

“Historically?” he countered. “Yeah. Pretty much how it goes.”

That wasn’t entirely true. If he was being honest with himself—and Eddie hated being honest with himself—he would have to admit that he tried his hardest not to fall in love with anyone, ever. Because he was terrified that it would go badly and that he’d end up heartbroken and alone like so many of the people he’d been surrounded by growing up.

But Dustin was having none of this. “Well, I hate to break it to you, Eddie, but sometimes people just have shit luck for a while before things work out. And in other inconvenient news,” he went on, “you’re not some monster or garbage human being, okay? And I get it—I get that it’s scary to take a risk on something when you don’t know if it’s going to work out. But that girl?” he pointed to the window in the direction of Tiger Lily’s. “That girl is worth the risk. I don’t know why you think you don’t deserve to get what you want, but you do. I promise,” he added, dropping his arm. “I promise you do.”

Eddie looked at him for a long moment before he let himself collapse into a lean against his countertop. He felt like he hadn’t slept in a week. “Was that the Dustin Henderson pep talk I’ve been avoiding for the last few weeks?”

The corner of Dustin’s lips slid into a half-smile. “See what happens when you don’t let me talk?” he asked. “You have to deal with compounding interest.”

He let out a hoarse chuckle. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Is that all you’re going to keep in mind?”

He sighed and let his arms drop from where he’d crossed them over his chest. “No,” he said quietly. “I’ll keep the rest of it in mind too.”

“Good,” Dustin said, indignantly. “You big stubborn asshole.”

Eddie couldn’t help but snort as he shook his head. “I love you, man.”

Dustin rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” he waved his hand in Eddie’s direction. “I love you too.”

“Your ten minutes from Erica are probably up.”

“I know,” he grumbled. “Get some sleep. You really do look like shit.”

Dustin let himself out and Eddie popped three painkillers before he grabbed an Afghan from the closet and curled up to sleep on the couch.

His bed still smelled like Chrissy’s perfume.

***

He slept off and on most of the afternoon and evening, thoroughly fucking up both his back and his sleep schedule for at least the next few days.

The rain had finally started by the time he forced himself to get up and move around. He put on his shoes and went back downstairs to check that they had already locked up and turned out all the lights and was surprised to find that the waiting room was not as empty as he had expected.

Max was sitting at the counter with her head buried in the unholy mess of his client files. She looked up with a jolt of surprise and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses slid down her nose. “Hey,” she said, pushing them back up. “Dustin said you were sick.”

He shook his head. “I’m fine,” he lied and motioned to her face. “Didn’t know you wore those.”

Max took the glasses off and scowled at them. “Just for reading,” she admitted before she put them back on. “Or in this case, deciphering your terrible handwriting.”

He winced. “Yeah, sorry.”

“Aren’t you really old?” she asked with a grin. “Didn’t they teach penmanship in ancient times?”

“They did,” he countered and raised his middle finger at her. “I was number one in my class.”

Max snorted and returned her focus to his files. “Sorry to be here so late,” she went on. “I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to have to deal with anyone walking in.”

He nodded and leaned against the counter on his elbows. “Anyone like…Sinclair?”

“Just the one,” she said with a quick glance up. “I wouldn’t mind if Erica came back in to hang out.”

Eddie considered this and watched Max squint at his paperwork. “Can I ask something that is, like, none of my business?” She didn’t look up again, but she didn’t say no either, so he decided to go ahead. “What did he do, exactly? Lucas, I mean.”

Max sighed and rolled her eyes. “Nothing,” she said plainly. “It was just time to move on.”

“Uh-huh,” he said slowly, standing up to come around to the other stool behind the counter. “So just…out of nowhere…something like ten years together just…hits some arbitrary expiration date and that’s it?”

“Yup.”

He nodded again. “Yeah, okay, that sounds pretty straightforward.”

“I thought so too.”

His head tilted to one side as he studied the way Max outright refused to look up now. “And this…expiration date,” he went on, pressing the tips of his fingers together. “Just happened to come up right after Lucas got accepted into that master’s program in Indianapolis?”

Max stopped squinting and lowered the paper in her hand, placing it carefully in one of three stacks. “He got accepted at six other schools too,” she said quietly. “All over the country.”

“Right,” he agreed. “But he's choosing to go to the one in Indianapolis next month.”

“Yeah,” she snapped and slammed her hand on the center stack of papers. “And that's a stupid thing to do.”

“He…doesn’t seem to think so,” Eddie chose his words carefully, connecting the dots he’d been noticing since before he’d moved into the shop.

“Yeah, well, he doesn’t always think clearly when it comes to super important stuff like the best opportunities and stuff that’s going to affect the rest of his life.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “Max, c'mon. What the fuck does that even mean?”

“He only went with IU because it’s the closest to me,” she said with a huff. “He didn’t even ask me if I cared if he went out of state. Or if that was really the best program. He just decided that IU was it because it was closest.”

“And that’s…bad?”

“It’s not a reason to make a decision that’s going to affect the rest of your life,” she said, throwing up a hand.

Eddie narrowed his eyes. “Did you…want him to go out of state?”

“I wanted him to make a decision without worrying about what I thought about it.”

“Dude, that’s what being in a relationship is,” he reminded her. “You make decisions thinking about how it’s going to affect the other person.” He shook his head in confusion. “I don’t get it. You’ve been in love with the guy since you were fourteen years old and suddenly you aren’t anymore? Just like that?”

“I never said I wasn’t still in love with him,” she said quietly, almost a mumble.

He blinked in surprise. He hadn’t been expecting a straight answer. “So you still love him,” he said slowly. “And he still loves you…so much so that he chose the school closest to you so that he wouldn’t have to move and worry about uprooting your life at all and that’s…” He waited for her to respond. “I don’t know, Max. I guess I’m not seeing where the cause for a breakup is in all this.”

“What’s not to get?” she demanded lightly. “He made a stupid choice for the wrong reasons.”

Eddie felt his brow furrow. “Wait. Are you…” his frown deepened. “Max, do you think that you’re the wrong reason?”

“What if it’s not that great of a program?” she asked ignoring his question. “What if he ends up regretting his decision? And then he blames me for being the reason he chose it in the first place? I’m not that great, y’know. I’m definitely not worth railroading your entire life and career over just because you don’t want to try a long-distance relationship.” Eddie stared at her, sensing she wasn’t quite finished yet. “And who even knows if we’re really in love, you know?” she went on, proving him right. “I mean. Just because two people have been together since they were kids, that doesn’t mean anything. Look at Jason and Chrissy, for chrissakes.”

“I’d rather not,” he muttered.

“Exactly! How much of that is real love and how much is just inertia, you know? Staying together because it’s easier than breaking up because everything about your life is all wrapped up in someone else.”

He held up a hand. “Listen, I’ve known you and Sinclair since you were, what? Eighteen? Nineteen?”

“I don’t know,” she grumbled. “Whenever Dustin started working for you.”

“Right,” he nodded. “And in that time, I’ve seen both of you do some pretty ridiculous shit for the other.”

“Nothing crazy,” she rolled her eyes.

“Oh really?” he challenged. “Lucas convincing his parents to let you and your mother move into their house while all that shit with your stepdad was going down?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, okay. That was pretty solid of him.”

“And, correct me if I’m wrong, but were you not first in line to give his sister your own, actual, blood when she needed a transfusion a few years ago after that car accident?”

Another eye roll. “We all donated blood for Erica,” she said, mumbling again.

“Well, what about when he got accepted to all those programs all over the country and you were ready to quit your job and move without a second thought?” She couldn’t lie and say she hadn’t been ready to do that exact thing. Dustin had told him as much when he was explaining the finer points of this most recent breakup—though Eddie hadn’t asked—and Chrissy had said something about writing her a glowing letter of recommendation if she ever decided to leave Tiger Lily’s.

“Ugh—”

He pointed a finger at her. “Do not roll your eyes at me again, Mayfield,” he said, sounding a little too much like his uncle for his liking. “They’re gonna stick like that.”

Max snorted. “Then I wouldn’t have to look at your ugly face anymore.”

He grinned, happy to see her smile again. “I’m just pointing out that all that? And then Lucas deciding to go with the school that’s closest to you so you wouldn’t have to uproot your whole life just to be with him?” He shook his head. “That’s about as close to proof of ‘real love’ as anything these cynical eyes have ever seen.” Max looked at him for what felt like a long time before she let out a heavy sigh and dropped her head into her arms in a dramatic collapse. He smiled sympathetically and reached out to squeeze her shoulder. “Life sucks, kid,” he said. “And when you find someone who actively makes it suck less? You can’t push them away because you’re scared of fucking up.”

She lifted her head and offered him a wry smile. “You know you’re like the least qualified person to give relationship advice, right?”

“Dude,” he said emphatically. “I know. Trust me.”

“Which is really annoying because it’s not…terrible advice.” He shrugged modestly before she went on. “You should think about following it yourself, even.”

It was Eddie’s turn to sigh and he let his head hang down between his shoulders. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said, looking up again. “I’ll…talk about my scary feelings with the…person I’m scared to talk to them about…”

“Uh-huh…”

“And you talk about your scary feelings with the person you’re scared to talk to them about. How ‘bout it?”

She offered him a wary, sideways look for a long moment before the edge of her mouth curled in a smile. She held out a hand. “Deal.”

“Good,” he said when they shook. “You wanna take a break from all this shit? I’m starving. I’ll buy you dinner.”

“Aw, really?” she asked, already hopping off her stool. “Gosh, Eddie, you’re like the big brother I never wanted.”

He laughed and ushered her out from behind the counter. “Likewise, Red,” he said, shaking his head. “Likewise.”

***

By nine o’clock, Eddie had a stomach full of tacos and a fridge full of groceries again. He felt a little better.

Not a lot, but a little.

He at least felt well enough to stare at the phone number Max had written down for him and think about puking rather than picking up the phone and dialing.

“Promise?” Max had said, holding out the slip of paper like a treat to a dog. “Because I’ll find out if you don’t.”

He had promised. And she had promised. And they agreed that if they both kept their word, they had a shot of no longer being the most annoying people that any of their friends knew by the end of the summer.

With his stomach tying itself in a series of knots—really, the Navy would be impressed, he thought—he took his phone off the wall and carefully punched in the number.

It rang three times.

“Hi, you’ve reached Chrissy Cunningham,” her answering machine chirped in her usual, pleasant voice. Despite everything, Eddie felt himself smile at the sound. “I’m really sorry I missed you, but if you leave me a message, I promise I’ll call you right back. Have a great day!”

He took a deep breath in and almost hung up.

The jarring beep was like a smack to the back of the head. “Uh, hi, Chrissy. It’s…Eddie,” he said, nearly forgetting his own name. “Munson. You…probablyalreadyguessedthat.” He almost hung up a second time. “I just, uh. I don’t feel great about what happened this morning,” he admitted. “I’m sorry if…” He trailed off and coughed and squeezed his eyes shut. “Anyway, there’s a lot I’d really like to say to you and it’s just now occurring to me that none of it is the kind of thing you say on an answering machine so. If you get this, you can call me back. If you want.”

He rattled off his number and dropped the phone back onto the receiver.

Then he went back and laid on his couch with Eowyn curled up on his chest while the tv played through the networks’ usual late-night line-ups and the sky outside his window faded from a stormy night to the silvery blue of pre-dawn.

He didn’t sleep a wink.

Chapter Text

to kiss in cars and downtown bars
was all we needed
you drew stars around my scars
but now I'm bleedin'

x.

Anyway, there’s a lot I’d really like to say to you and it’s just now occurring to me that none of it is the kind of thing you say on an answering machine so. If you get this, you can call m—

Chrissy stopped the tape and rewound it, playing the message from the beginning. Just as she had six times the night before.

And three times already that morning.

Each time, she’d reach for her phone and start dialing his number. And each time, she’d punch the End button before she could get to the last digit.

She’d spent the day at the hospital, fetching and carrying for her mother like a handmaiden. Running up and down the hallways asking nurses for this and that. Laura insisted on sending her to the house twice. First for her makeup bag and then again for her Rolodex of medical professionals so she could start lining up her second opinions.

On the way in the second time, Chrissy stopped at the card store across from the hospital and purchased a box of candy for the nursing staff assigned to her mother.

“Thanks for taking such good care of my mom,” she’d said with a tight smile as she slid it across the counter. “In 306,” she added before she mouthed the words, I’M SORRY as clearly as she could.

One nurse had glanced at the other as she’d accepted Chrissy’s gift. “That’s your mom?” she’d asked with a lift of her thin eyebrows. Chrissy had nodded with a pang of guilt that she knew was misplaced. “Oh, honey,” the nurse had said with a sympathetic smile. “We’re sorry. We at least get to go home at the end of our shift.”

The only relief she had throughout the day was that Jason was at school—setting up his classroom and finalizing lesson plans. He called the hospital twice to check in and make sure everything was still okay.

And somehow, he didn’t seem to notice anything was different about her. Not her tone. Not the way she was desperate to get off the phone. Not the short, barely-there responses she gave to his questions. She didn’t want to think about what that meant—how little he was paying attention.

Had he always been this oblivious?

Whether he had or not, it didn’t matter. By the time he got to the hospital around dinner time, Chrissy felt so exhausted that she could barely keep her eyes open to eat the salad he brought her from the cafeteria. No dressing, no cheese. Little more than a plate of sad iceberg and a few cherry tomatoes. One slice of a cucumber and three entire croutons she knew better than to try and crunch in front of her mother.

“Are we keeping you up?” Laura had joked when Chrissy’s head had bobbed, and her eyes felt like they were closing on their own.

“No,” she’d lied, shaking her head. “Sorry. I just, um,” she speared another piece of lettuce with her plastic fork and didn’t finish her sentence.

No one seemed to notice as her mother continued telling Jason about how the nurses didn’t know what they were doing, trying to get her up and out of bed so soon. “I’m owed a rest for heaven’s sake!” she said, sounding like the most put-upon woman on the planet. “If I want to lay in bed for a few days, I think I’ve earned that right.”

Jason had put his arm around Chrissy, and it would have been too easy to just rest her head on his shoulder like she’d done a million times. Take a little bit of comfort where she could get it.

But as soon as she thought about it, her mind jumped right back to Eddie’s apartment. The lived-in feel of all his furniture. The warmth of his hand on top of hers. The way she’d fallen asleep instantly with his arms around her.

It took almost another ninety minutes, right up until the end of visiting hours, for her to choke down the rest of her salad.

Jason didn’t act like he was expecting an invitation when he dropped her off. Although he had kissed her and run the backs of his fingers along her cheek. “You sure you’re okay?” he’d asked, his brow furrowed in concern.

“I’m fine,” she’d nodded. “Just, y’know…” she’d shrugged. “Mom in the hospital and everything.”

“Right,” Jason had smiled sympathetically. “Chris, listen, I just…I want to apologize for what I said last night.”

“Last night?”

“About that sign…” Jason’s eyes had dropped to the gear shift between them. “It wasn’t the right time to bring that up. You have enough on your plate without worrying about how people are going to perceive your business.”

“It’s fine,” she had said again. “It’s not—” she shook her head. “I think I just need to get some rest.”

Jason had leaned across the car to kiss her again. “Of course. I can go be with your mom in the morning,” he’d added. “If you want to sleep in.”

She’d shoved all her guilt and frustration aside and accepted that offer. She’d played Eddie’s message over and over again, fighting the urge to run back over there and tell him how sorry she was for how they’d left things that morning.

But she didn’t. She’d told herself that once she’d had another night’s sleep, she would know what to do.

And then she’d barely slept, tossing and turning in her bed until she’d given up and retreated to the couch to watch reruns of I Love Lucy and Laverne & Shirley in between brief naps.

And now it was morning and no matter how many times she picked up her phone and started dialing, she couldn’t make herself call Eddie back. Every time she thought about it, her words from the previous morning came back to slap her in the face.

She sat at her kitchen table and put her head in her hands. She’d acted like an idiot. Like a scared little kid who lashed out at everyone else because she didn’t know what to do.

Eddie had been nothing but wonderful to her. Caring and attentive and more patient than anyone deserved. And to repay him for being everything she never knew she wanted or needed, she’d all but spat in his face because he wasn’t going to make all her hard decisions for her.

She put the phone back on the hook and took a shower, determined to do something other than mope around her apartment berating herself until she had to go back to the hospital.

The Inn at Laurel Lake didn’t look like a nursing home or a rehab center from the outside. Chrissy had always liked that. It looked like a well-maintained Victorian mansion with lots of windows and a huge wraparound porch where some of the residents were often found among the white wicker furniture, playing cards or doing puzzles together.

“Chrissy,” Barb, the head nurse on her father’s floor was always smiling and looked happy to see her. “This is a pleasant surprise!” she said, standing up from her desk. “How’s your mother doing?”

“Better,” she said with a nod. Among her many tasks the day before had been updating all of Laura’s usual obligations with the news of her stroke. “She’s feeling like herself again.”

“That’s great,” Barb said with another smile. She looked down at her charts for a moment before she looked up. “I was actually just about to go grab one of the other nurses to go pay your father a visit. He got a haircut yesterday,” she grinned. “But he’s due for a shave.”

Chrissy nodded. “I can do it if that’s okay?”

“Of course,” Barb agreed and made a note in her files. “I popped in to see him when I came on shift about an hour ago,” she added. “He was in a very good mood.”

His door was partially ajar, but she still knocked, just to be polite. He was sitting by the window when she slipped inside, wheeling the tray of shaving accouterment behind her. He looked up and for a second, she let herself believe he recognized her. His smile was bright and charming when she said hello. “Shave and a haircut?” he asked. The words were slow and formed with deliberation, but not nearly so muddled as his speech had been before.

Chrissy smiled back. “Just finishing the job,” she agreed as she set the tray beside his chair. “Your hair looks nice, D—” she stopped and shook her head. “Phillip.” She still slipped at least once a visit and wanted to call him Dad. His specialists had warned her and her brother that the nature of his injury had frozen them both in his memory at certain ages. That to show up as fully grown adults, calling him Dad and acting as though they hoped he’d recognize them, would only serve to confuse and upset him. “The nurses did a good job.”

He nodded, still smiling politely as she was sure he did to all his nurses, doctors, and orderlies. “Thank you.”

“It’s a beautiful day,” she said, pushing open the curtains further to let more sunlight in. “Would it be okay if we stayed out here? There’s not nearly as much light in that little bathroom.”

“Oh-kay,” he said with another nod.

She dispensed the shaving cream into her palms and took her time spreading it over the lower half of his face and neck. The blue-handled razor was cheap and only had two little blades, but Chrissy did her best to go slow enough that she didn’t nick his skin.

With each careful stripe she cut through the cream Chrissy was reminded of the person he’d been before his accident. The way she used to sit at the top of the steps every night at six o’clock, waiting for him to come home from work. She could still remember how he’d pretend he didn’t notice her watching him as he came in the door and set his briefcase down and shrugged out of his coat. How he’d walk halfway up the stairs to change and let her jump out to scare him. The way his laughter felt like it filled the whole house when he grabbed her and lifted her up, covering her neck with tickling kisses that made her squeal.

He tilted his head back as she drew the razor along the square cut of his jaw. He was still as handsome as the photos that covered the walls of her mother’s house. The photos of her parents on their wedding day, of him and his parents at his college graduation, of him and Chrissy—holding her on his shoulders, looking up while she smiled down at him like he was the only other person in the world.

She swallowed hard and rinsed the razor in the bowl of water, trying to focus on this one, simple thing she could do for him without her vision blurring or feeling like someone was standing on her chest.

“Music?” he asked, surprising her. When she looked up, he pointed over his shoulder at the radio on the dresser in the corner. “Nurse Barb—” he paused, and the corners of his mouth dipped with concentration.

“Oh, that’s right,” Chrissy nodded, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Nurse Barb told me you’ve been listening to the radio a lot more lately.” His frown diminished and he looked relieved that she’d guessed correctly. “Do you want me to find us something to listen to?”

“Yes,” he said, and the first letter of the word stuck on his tongue. He paused and then added, “Please.”

She turned the radio on and found the station that played mostly stuff from the sixties and seventies—hoping something might connect with him and put another smile on his face.

She finished his shave, taking extra care at the dimple in his chin—the one he’d passed onto her and her brother, although Kyle’s was much more pronounced. He smiled at her when she’d used the towel to clean away the rest of the shaving cream when she was finished, revealing a face that looked only a little older than the man in her memories. “There you go,” she said softly, pushing his graying brown hair back away from his eyes. “Still the best-looking guy in any room.”

The water with its clumps of shaving cream and speckles of stubble was dumped down the drain in his bathroom and the bowl rinsed out along with the razor. She busied herself with tidying up the small mess she’d made, throwing the two hand towels she’d used in the laundry bag in the corner just as "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac came through the radio's small speaker.

“Chrissy.”

She stopped abruptly and turned around. “I’m sorry?” she asked, her voice as small as she could make it—small enough to keep the hope that he knew who she was from creeping in.

But as soon as she turned, her heart sank. Because he was not looking at her. Of course, he wasn’t. Of course, he had not suddenly had some miraculous spark of lucidity and suddenly remembered who she was. Who he was. Where he was and what had happened.

He was looking down, at a picture in a frame in his lap. He must have had it tucked into the side of the chair while she’d shaved his face. But still, her heart twisted when she saw him smile down at the photo. “Chrissy,” he said again and held it up so she could see.

She’d seen that photo before. It was from second grade when she went to school for picture day wearing a Pepto Bismol pink sweater with an alarmingly bright red heart stitched into it. Uneven bangs and a smile that wrinkled her nose and showed off a mouth of uneven teeth.

She swallowed around the lump in her throat and approached the chair again. “Your daughter?” she asked, nodding at the frame.

He looked at it again. “Yes,” he said with that deliberate cadence again. Every syllable was carefully formed before he passed his lips. “My honeybee.” He looked up at her. “Isn’t she bea-u-tiful?”

She smiled and nodded. “Yes, she is.”

His hands still held a slight tremor as he touched the glass and the image of her crooked smile. “Smart, too,” he said after a moment before he stuttered, “And k-kind.”

Not so kind, she thought with a hot rush of guilt at the memory of the hurt she’d put in Eddie’s eyes. “I wonder where she got that from,” Chrissy managed to say with her voice tight in her chest.

But her father shook his head slightly. “No,” he said quietly. “She’s…” he paused for a moment, struggling to form the word without faltering, “fearless.” He touched the smile of her seven-year-old self again and said, almost to himself, “Not like me.”

The word shocked her. What memory could he be drawing from that would make him think that? Was he thinking about how she was always the first of her cousins to climb to the top of the tree in the backyard? Or first in the water at the lake or the ocean? Not caring about the temperature of the water or the slimy fingers of the seaweed that sent other kids her age shrieking.

She’s not fearless anymore, Dad, Chrissy wanted to tell him. She’s afraid of everything. 

But he only had those good memories to call from. None from after his accident. None of the moments where her mother had drilled that fear back into her, giving her plenty to be frightened of, plenty to doubt and distrust. Making sure she was too afraid to think for herself. Too afraid to know what she wanted. Too afraid to go after it when it was standing right in front of her.

Chrissy blinked back the tears that blurred her vision. “She’s something else, too,” she said, using her fingers to comb his hair back and away when it had slipped into his eyes a second time. He looked up, intrigued, and Chrissy forced a smile before she leaned down and pressed her lips to his soft, clean-shaven cheek. “She’s lucky to have such a great dad.”

And when her father reached over and squeezed her hand, she let herself believe that maybe there was some part of him that understood what she was trying to say.

***

With the freedom that came from having her mother’s car to drive herself around, Chrissy took her time getting from the nursing home to the hospital. She stopped at the shop to check messages and the mail, and stopped at the house for some books and magazines in the hopes of keeping Laura’s mind occupied long enough that she might forget about critiquing her daughter’s every move. She even took the time to bring the kitchen garbage down to the cans and haul them to the curb when she noticed the calendar on the refrigerator informing her that she could still make it in time for the weekly pick-up.

“There,” she said out loud, allowing herself a moment of feeling accomplished as she looked around the kitchen she’d just tidied up. “That’s better.”

Her mood was only just starting to inch toward the good side of neutral when she parked Laura’s Crown Victoria at the hospital visitor’s lot. She’d managed to go whole hours of the morning without thinking about Eddie and the night she’d spent with him and the mess she’d made of everything immediately after.  It felt like progress, and she was just starting to think that if she kept this up, maybe she might be brave enough to return that phone call when she got home later.

But all the progress she’d made, all the inching toward ‘okay’ she’d done, even all the complicated good feelings that spending the morning with her father had stirred up vanished the second she got off the elevator on the third floor.

Jason was sitting in the waiting room. His elbows resting on his knees. His head hanging low. He looked up when she approached, saying his name like a question, and her heart stopped.

His eyes were red. His cheeks were blotchy.

Before she could ask what happened, he stood and wrapped her in a hug so tight she almost couldn’t breathe. “I’m so sorry, Chris,” he said into her hair. “I’m so, so sorry.”

She had to fight to push him away enough to be able to see his face. “You’re sorry?” she repeated, trying to ignore the blood rushing in her ears. The thunderous pounding of her heart. “What do you mean? What’s wrong? What happened?”

“I’ve been trying to call you,” he said, his voice hitching in his chest as he took a breath. “Your mom—”

“I spent the morning with Dad,” she said, cutting him off before she realized it. She gripped his forearms. “What Jason? What happened?”

“Chrissy, I’m…” he shook his head again and took a deep, shuddering breath. “Your mom’s gone.”

A blood clot.

The very thing the nurses were trying to prevent by insisting she get out of bed and move around. The very thing she couldn’t be bothered to consider as she lay there, discounting their expertise and insisting she deserved to rest rather than walk anywhere herself.

A blood clot had formed in her leg and when she finally did get up, it traveled to her heart and lungs and caused a pulmonary embolism.

According to Dr. Clark—whose forehead wrinkles had seemed to double overnight and who just couldn’t apologize enough for her loss—Laura Cunningham was dead before she fell back into her bed.

“I can take you to see her,” he said, motioning to the hallway. “If you’d like.”

But Chrissy stopped; her knees locked, and her feet felt like they were glued to the floor. She shook her head. “No,” she said too quickly. She coughed. “No, thank you. That’s not necessary.”

Dr. Clark looked confused for a moment before he schooled his features back and nodded. “Of course.”

Jason’s arm was around her again. “Come on, babe,” he said softly. “I’ll go with you.”

“I don’t want to,” she said firmly, keeping her voice low to match his.

“Don’t you want to say goodbye?”

“I’ll say goodbye at the funeral home,” she said tightly as she ground her jaws together. “I don’t want to see her like this.” 

It was true. She didn’t want to see her mother like this. Like this with all these people around. With Jason breathing down her neck and Dr. Clark waiting in the doorway. Everyone expecting some big emotional breakdown or at least some indication that she was feeling something appropriate.

She didn’t want to see her mother yet because to Chrissy’s horror, the only thing she really wanted to do was laugh. And she knew if she started, for even a second, she wouldn’t be able to stop.

She’d laugh until she cried and then she’d cry until she threw up and then she’d start all over again. She could feel the urge as solid as her own heartbeat, rattling around somewhere beneath her ribcage.

“I’m just not ready yet,” she said out loud. And to her relief, that was the right answer—the secret code that got both the doctor and Jason to melt their expressions back into sympathy and leave her alone.

Her affairs were already remarkably in order. Unbeknownst to Chrissy, while Laura Cunningham had acted as though she’d never die and lived with the kind of overblown confidence that only an immortal could possess, she’d also kept very neat and detailed records about her final wishes.

The will was updated every six months. The life insurance was paid annually. The arrangements were already in place with the funeral home she preferred.

She’d even written her own obituary.

Logically, Chrissy understood why she’d done all this. Because everything in the folder that Laura had done for herself had also been done for her husband. Years ago, when they didn’t think he’d ever wake up. She’d set everything in order then to make it easier for herself and somewhere along the line decided to add herself to the arrangements.

It made for a shockingly easy day. A list of phone calls to make, boxes to check, and to-do items to cross out.

The only real difficult phone call was to Kyle, who had already purchased his bus ticket the day before and wouldn’t be home until the following day. But even that wasn’t as painful as Chrissy suspected it was supposed to be. He had barely responded more than a few syllables of “Oh,” and “Okay,” and finally, “Are you okay?”

She wasn’t. That dangerous urge to laugh had finally passed and instead, she just felt numb. Cold and hollow inside. A space dug out where grief was supposed to go and instead—

“I’m fine, buddy,” she had said on the phone. “I’ll be fine. I can still pick you up tomorrow if you want.”

He did and she said she’d see him at eleven and that was that.

Jason’s parents brought dinner to the house. Fried chicken and mashed potatoes and green beans.

Comfort food.

She forced herself to eat the smallest drumstick. She took the time to peel off the crunchy fried skin first before she picked at the meat.

“Chrissy, sweetheart,” Jason’s mother spoke up from the head of the table, pulling her attention away from where she was staring at the little pile of fat and oil. “Why don’t you come back to our house for the night?” She shared a glance with her husband. “We’d hate for you to be alone right now.”

“Oh,” she blinked and the reflex to agree nearly choked her before she caught it. She didn’t want to spend the night with the Carvers. Not with any of them. “Thank you, that’s very sweet,” she said finally, and shook her head. “But I’d rather just stay here by myself tonight.”

“Well, we could all stay with you—”

“Judy,” Jason’s father cut her off gently. “She’s going to be around people non-stop for the next few days,” he reminded, not unkindly. “We can give her a night to herself if that’s what she wants.”

Chrissy could have kissed him.

Jason offered to stay three more times before the evening was over. Each time she had to refuse, Chrissy felt her nerves fraying a little more until she was almost ready to snap.

But to her amazement, after the third offer, Rick Carver stepped in again and reminded his son that she wasn’t going to change her mind. “And if she does,” he said, giving his shoulder a squeeze, “she knows how to reach you.”

Out of everything that had transpired in the last few days, Chrissy wasn’t sure anything was more shocking than this man suddenly surging to the front of the line of her favorite people.

But there he was, herding his wife and son out of the house she’d grown up in. And there she was, all alone in the foyer with the emptiness echoing around her. All alone.

Exactly like she’d asked.

Exactly like she thought she’d wanted.

She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there when Eddie knocked on the passenger’s side window. She knew she’d only lasted half an hour in the house she’d grown up in, wandering from room to room waiting for something—anything—to take up residence in that hole in her chest.

But nothing did. And before she could make another lap around the floorplan, she’d grabbed the keys to her mother’s car and drove back downtown. Back to her little pedestrian byway. Back outside her shop. Parked facing the only place she knew for sure she wanted to go.

And unable to make herself take her keys from the ignition, get out from behind the wheel, and go knock on Eddie’s door again.

The sound made her jump and she blinked herself out of her thousand-yard stare, shaking her head as she looked over to her right. Eddie lifted his eyebrows and pointed to the lock. Flustered, she nodded and hit the button. He opened the door and slid onto the leather seat like she’d been expecting him. Like they’d planned for her to pick him up.

“So.” He gave her a small half-smile, just enough to let her know he wasn’t as at ease as his body language suggested. “Stare down any good trashcans lately?”

Despite everything that had happened since she’d woken up that morning, Chrissy snorted an unattractive laugh and dropped her chin, shaking her head with her eyes closed as she pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry,” she said softly as her laughter subsided. “I really thought I could get out of the car.”

When she looked up, Eddie offered her a shrug. “Well, you made it this far,” he reminded her. “I figured I could come meet you the rest of the way.”

She took a deep breath in and let it out with a puff of air between her lips. “My mom died today.”

The smile immediately dropped from Eddie’s face. “Oh fuck,” he said softly. “Chrissy, I’m so sorry.”

She nodded, and for the first time all day, felt a rush of tears sting behind her eyes. Her nose started to run, and she sniffled, reaching for the packet of tissues that was always kept in the pocket on the driver’s side door. “I—um—I know I don’t have any right to just show up here after how I acted yesterday but—”

“That doesn’t matter right now,” he cut her off quietly.

“No,” she shook her head. “It does matter. I wanted to call you and I was going to, and then—”

“Chrissy,” Eddie reached over and gently touched her cheek, turning her face toward him. “It’s okay. We can talk about it later. Or…”

She sniffled and nodded. “It’s just that…all day, while I was dealing with all this shit with my mom and…” she let out a weak, wet laugh. This was so stupid. It all sounded so stupid and pathetic when she said it out loud. “All I wanted to do was come here and…and talk to you…”

And I don’t deserve to. Because I hurt you. Because I made you think I didn’t want you.

“Okay,” he ducked his head so he could meet her eyes again. “Can we talk upstairs? Or we can go somewhere,” he went on when she didn’t answer right away. “Go get something to eat or—” he stopped himself with another one of those half-smiles before he glanced around the car. “It’s just that I kinda feel like I’m sitting in a cop car.”

Chrissy swallowed and swiped at her eyes and nose. “Yeah,” she nodded again. “Upstairs is good.”

He held all the doors for her on the way, allowing her to go first up the stairs to his apartment and then inside once he’d unlocked the door. His living room felt no less inviting than it had the other night—instantly warm and welcoming and lived-in and she felt some part of her breathe a little sigh of relief.

“No pressure or anything,” he said as he closed the door behind them. “But I’m starving, so I need to make some dinner.”

“Oh,” she shook her head. “No, of course. Please eat if you’re hungry.”

“Are you hungry?”

She opened her mouth to refuse—another instinct that nearly took over before she stopped it—and then closed it again. “Kind of,” she admitted. She couldn’t remember if she’d finished her drumstick or not. She remembered leaving half the mashed potatoes on her plate, but she was pretty sure she’d eaten all the green beans she’d taken from the container.

He smiled again. “Any objection to mac and cheese?”

She chewed on her bottom lip. “I honestly can’t remember the last time I had mac and cheese.”

Eddie shrugged out of his denim jacket and hung it on the hook by the door. “Well, isn’t it exciting,” he said, bending over to unlace his boots before he stepped out of them and tossed them on the mat next to her flip-flops. “That today is the last day you get to say that.”

Chrissy let herself giggle at that and followed him into the kitchen. She sat at the kitchen table—noting that he still hadn’t moved her flowers—and watched as he moved around the small space. Eowyn jumped up onto the table and gave her a firm headbutt while Eddie was adding the noodles to the boiling water.

“Are you allowed up here?” Chrissy asked the cat before she received a light swat of a paw on her hand, demanding to be pet.

Eddie glanced over his shoulder with a grin. “I mean, you can push her down,” he shrugged. “But she basically does whatever she wants. This is her place—I just pay the rent.”

She smiled again and gave Eowyn the head-scratching she requested until Eddie turned off the stove and spooned bright orange noodles into two bowls. She scooped the cat up and set her gently on the floor before a bowl was set before her. “I don’t, um,” she paused with a frown. “I’m not sure I can eat all that.”

It was more food than anyone had made for her in years. Twice the portion size she ever dared cook for herself. Eddie accepted this with a nod. “That’s fine,” he said, rolling his shoulder before he turned back to the refrigerator. “Just eat what you can—I won’t be offended.”

When he sat down across from her it was with two paper towels torn from the roll, two forks, and a jar of salsa. He jumped up again almost immediately. “Do you want anything to drink?” The fridge door was opened again. “I have…uh. Sprite, beer, and…” he squinted. “Nope. That’s cheese.” He stood up again. “Can I interest you in a glass of cheese?”

She grinned and shook her head. “Water’s fine.”

“Water it is,” he nodded and grabbed a beer for himself before he poured her a glass of cold water from the tap and dropped in two ice cubes from a tray in the freezer.

She waited until he sat down again before she gave him a sideways glance. “What’s the salsa for?”

“Oh,” he opened the jar and poured it directly onto his portion of macaroni. “Just a garnish.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Is it good?”

He shrugged and mixed the salsa in with the noodles. “When I was a kid, it was the only way Uncle Wayne could get me to eat any vegetables.” With the top still off the jar, he offered it to her. “You’re welcome to try it.”

Chrissy couldn’t imagine what would have happened if she’d refused to eat vegetables. No, she stopped and felt her frown deepen. She knew exactly what would have happened. The same thing that happened any other time she disagreed or disobeyed.

But the macaroni felt adventurous enough on its own and she shook her head before she slid her fork into the bowl and took a bite.

For the second time in thirty minutes, she wanted to cry.

“Oh my God.” The words were garbled around the food in her mouth.

Eddie looked up, surprised for a second before he smiled. “Call me unsophisticated,” he said before he pointed to his own bowl with his fork. “But it’s good, right?”

It was so good. Salty and smooth and heavenly, decadently cheesy. Nothing that started out as bright orange powder should taste so amazing. She didn’t think she could articulate any of that in between the bites she wanted to keep shoveling into her mouth like a convict, so she just nodded again and tried to slow down.

Her stomach protested once the bowl was half empty and she made herself stop before she got sick. “I can do the dishes,” she offered once Eddie had finished his portion.

He shook his head. “They’re fine,” he said, getting up and taking both his bowl and hers to the sink. “They’re not going anywhere.” He glanced down at himself and frowned. She noticed that his clothes and hands were still stained in places with tattoo ink and idly, she wondered how long he worked on Thursdays. “But, um, I’m kinda gross,” he stated. “I’m gonna shower real quick—just—” he motioned to the rest of his apartment. “Make yourself at home.”

Chrissy got up once she heard the water running and rummaged in his cabinets until she found a plastic container for the macaroni she didn’t eat. She placed it in the refrigerator and then set about washing the dishes he’d collected—mostly coffee mugs, she noted—before she set them all in the drying rack. Then she wiped down the counters and the tabletop and moved the few remaining flowers in the vase back into the center of the table.

She wanted to keep herself moving. To keep from giving in to any of the intrusive thoughts waiting at the threshold of her mind. Thoughts of her mother. Dread about what was going to be expected of her at the funeral. Deeply inconvenient and much too inviting thoughts about Eddie in the shower. Anxiety about seeing her brother tomorrow and having to deal with his grief on top of her own.

She dropped back into the kitchen chair and put her head in her hands. Her elbows on her knees.

Her own grief.

If it ever showed up. 

Her mother had been dead for nearly twelve hours and the only time she’d wanted to cry was over macaroni and cheese and the worry that Eddie wouldn’t want to see her again.

Some daughter she was.

She squeezed her eyes shut and tapped her knuckles against her forehead. There had to be something. Some sweetness she was forgetting. Something about her mother—her only real remaining parent—that she was going to miss.

She didn’t hear the water shut off or notice Eddie return to the kitchen until he pulled up the other chair and sat down in front of her. “Hey,” his voice was soft as he took her hands in his and pulled them away from her forehead.

“I can’t think of anything,” she said to the floor. Their legs were touching—soft gray sweatpants against her knobby bare knees.

Eddie rubbed his thumbs over her knuckles. “What do you mean?”

Her vision blurred again. “I can’t—” she looked up. “I can’t think of anything. I keep thinking there’s something I’m going to miss about her…that there was something that I—” she coughed on the word, on the realization, “something that I loved about her but…” she shook her head and felt her face crumple. “But I can’t think of anything. Every good memory I have…it’s like if I think about it for more than a second, I remember something horrible that came after. Any birthday or special event or…” she sniffled. “There was always something I did wrong that she would have to tell me about later. Some way that I hurt her or embarrassed her or…I was...” the tears finally spilled down her cheeks. “But I can’t even think of one happy memory?” she said, asking herself more than him. “What does that mean?”

Eddie leaned in and pressed his lips to her forehead. “I think it means that you’re exhausted,” he said into her hairline. “And you need some rest. And you’re being too hard on yourself right now.”

She sniffled and looked up. “Why are you so good to me, Eddie?” she asked with another hopeless, tear-soaked laugh. “I’m such a mess.”  

He smiled. “Well, I like messes,” he said and shrugged. “I mean, you have seen how I keep my van, right?”

Chrissy snorted and shook her head. She freed her hands from between his and ran them over her face. “God, I feel like this day lasted ten years.”

“Do you want to sleep here tonight?”

“Yes.”

He sat up straighter and blinked. “Oh, okay. I was actually thinking I was going to have to make a case about how we can just sleep, and I’ll even sleep on the couch if you want… It was going to be a whole thing.”

She let herself have a real laugh. “No, I…” she bit her lip. “I want to be here, Eddie,” she said softly. “I didn’t—” she paused. “I didn’t even want to leave yesterday. I just…panicked. I’ve never…” she swallowed hard. “I’ve never felt like this about—about anything and I just—”

“Chrissy?” Eddie interrupted her gently and took her hand again. “I don’t want you to say something just because you think I need to hear it.”

She pursed her lips again. “I think I just need some—um—some time to…”

“Chrissy,” he said again with a no-nonsense edge to his tone that made her look up again. “Your life’s on fucking fire right now.” She coughed out a shocked laugh, prompting him to add, “Correct me if I’m wrong.”

“No,” she shook her head. “No, you’re not wrong.”

“So, let’s just hit the snooze on any major life decisions until some of the smoke clears, okay?”

Chrissy nodded. “Yeah. That’s…probably a good idea.”

He lent her his Hellfire t-shirt again and a pair of sweatpants that fit her like two windsocks and only didn’t puddle around her ankles because she’d cinched the drawstring as tight as it would go.

She fell asleep on the couch ten minutes after declaring she wasn’t tired enough to go to bed just yet. Tucked under Eddie’s arm, her face pressed to his chest, while Anthony Hopkins narrated a documentary about lions on PBS and Eowyn curled up behind her knees, making biscuits on her calves while she drifted in and out.

She didn’t know what time they turned the tv off or made their way back to Eddie’s bed, but when she opened her eyes again, his room was full of soft, silvery morning light.

He was still fast asleep beside her and barely stirred when she slipped from underneath the covers. She rummaged in the kitchen as quietly as she could until she found a bag of coffee grounds in the cupboard and plugged in a percolator that looked like it was from 1975.

Out of curiosity, she opened the refrigerator and bent to look for the milk Eddie had used to make their macaroni and cheese last night. She stopped short when she saw a carton in the door, and right next to it, a small carton of French vanilla CoffeeMate.

She picked it up to examine it more closely. Unopened, with an expiration date stamped for a week away. Brand new. Chrissy bit her bottom lip and closed the door again, bringing the creamer with her. It made for a heavenly cup of coffee, much richer than she would have made for herself at home with her skim milk and Nutra-Sweet.

From Eddie’s living room, she could see down into the alley where they spent most of their days. The green awning of Tiger Lily’s waved at her in the light breeze and twisted her stomach at the thought of what all she still had to do.

She heard him step up behind her and didn’t jump when his chest touched her back. “How’s that sidewalk this morning?” he asked, his voice low and sleepy and right next to her ear.

Chrissy smiled and reached back blindly to take hold of his hand, pulling his arm around her waist before she leaned her weight against him. “Same as always,” she said quietly and took a sip of her coffee. Only it wasn’t, of course. Because this was the first day that the shop across the way belonged just to her. No one else. This was the first day she was looking at it as a business owner and not as a manager or an unwilling apprentice. The idea felt too heavy to unpack so early in the morning—she tried her best to push it to a corner of her mind where she could deal with it later.

“So what do you have to do this morning?”

She swallowed another mouthful of coffee. “I have to get my brother at the bus station at eleven,” she said, trying to keep some of the dread from her voice. She loved her brother—she did—but it was always so awkward between them. Especially since he’d gone to school and left her to fend for herself with their mother. Left her to listen to Laura heap praises upon her son’s every move while offering nothing but criticism for everything her daughter tried to do. “And then we’re going to choose the flowers for the funeral together…” she sighed. “And then I have to bring her clothes to the funeral home and go to the church to tell them what…” she stopped and let her head loll back against his collarbone. “Too much,” she decided. “I have too much to do, and I don’t want to do any of it.” I just want to stay here with you and pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist. The words sat right on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed them back.

Her free hand reached up to cover Eddie’s arm and keep herself locked against him for another minute. She couldn’t say that yet. Not when she had too many things she still had to deal with.

“So, there’s no wrong way to answer this,” Eddie said, sounding as though he was choosing his words with care. “But do you…want me to come to the funeral?” Chrissy felt her lips pout in thought. He loosened his grip on her waist and turned her gently to face him. “No wrong answer,” he reminded, searching her face. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

She bit her lip. “Do I want you there?” she repeated and then nodded slightly. “Yeah. But I’d—” I’d want you to sit with me and hold my hand and I don’t know how I’d explain that. Vaguely, Chrissy realized she should be feeling some kind of guilt to accompany these thoughts she was having. Something that would remind her that the ring she was still wearing wasn’t from Eddie and there was an entire fiancé waiting to be the one sitting next to her and holding her hand on what was supposed to be one of the worst days of her life. “I don’t know if it’s a great idea,” she said finally.

Eddie nodded. “Well, the good news is that your mom and I have a history,” his lips quirked just slightly into a grin. “It wouldn’t be out of the question for me to still want to pay my respects to the woman who tried to get my shop closed down for corrupting the moral fiber of the neighborhood before it even opened.”

Chrissy rolled her eyes and let out a groan. “God that was so embarrassing,” she said, leaning to rest her head against his chest. “I was hoping you’d never find out about that.”

She felt him chuckle before he kissed the top of her head. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I never held it against you.”

“Do you think…” She looked up and bit her lip again. “Yeah,” she nodded again. “I think if I just knew you were there it would…” she swallowed. “I don’t know. It would help. I guess.”

“Okay,” he agreed easily. “I can do that.”

She wanted to kiss him again. A real kiss. The kind he’d swept her up in the other night. But she didn’t. Because, as she kept reminding herself, she couldn’t.

So, she finished her coffee and changed back into her clothes and tried not to think about how when she left him the second time, it somehow hurt worse than the first.

***

Kyle had always been taller than her, but it seemed like he’d doubled in size since he left for Northwestern. Three years of rowing crew had turned him into a broad-shouldered giant who completely enveloped her when he bent to hug her at the bus station.

They stopped for sandwiches first and then a visit to Laurel Lake so Kyle could give their father a hug and where Chrissy had to grit her teeth and politely thank all the nurses who offered them both condolences.

She wondered how long it would take until the words I’m sorry for your loss no longer made her want to walk into traffic.

It was late afternoon by the time she unlocked the door at Tiger Lily’s. She picked up the day’s mail scattered all over the floor and set it on the counter. Kyle followed, closing the door behind him. He looked around, hands in his pockets like he was afraid to touch anything. “It looks nice in here,” he said quietly.

She looked up from the bills she was flipping through and shrugged. “It looks like it always did.”

“No,” he shook his head and managed to look just like their father when he pushed back the light brown hair that fell into his eyes. “No, it looks better.”

“Thanks,” she said quietly, unsure of what to say to that. “Hang on, I’ll go get one of the books and we can figure out what arrangements we want for tomorrow.”

He nodded and she went to the back to pull one of her design albums of funeral and sympathy arrangements. He wasn’t where she left him when she returned to the front of the shop.

Her heart sank when she found him standing close to the front windows, his eyes cast downward. Staring intently at her little rainbow in the corner. She sighed and dropped the book onto the countertop with a heavy clunk. He didn’t flinch. She frowned. “Kyle?”

He pointed to it, not turning around. “Did you put this here?”

Chrissy took a deep inhale through her nose and readied herself for an argument. This was her store now, after all. No one else’s. She could put whatever she wanted in the window, and no one could say otherwise. “Yeah,” she said shortly. “I did. But I don’t really—” The words halted on her tongue when she saw his shoulders start to shake and his head drop. She took a few cautious steps toward him. “Kyle?” she reached out a hand to place on his back. “What’s—” He turned around and she barely had time to see his red, tear-streaked face before he caught her in a tight, almost desperate hug. Too surprised to do anything else, Chrissy put her arms around him. “What’s going on, buddy?” she asked, reminding herself that she was still the big sister. It was still her job to comfort him, no matter what.

He shook his head, his tears soaking into her shoulder. “You know what it means, right?” he asked; his words were a muffled mess.

“Yeah,” she said again. “I do.” She waited another moment before she pulled back, ducking to meet his bloodshot eyes. “Is this about mom?”

“No.” He shook his head and gripped her shoulders, holding her at arm’s length before he squeezed his eyes shut. “I mean, it is,” he admitted. “But that’s not…” he looked over, back at the window before his eyes welled again. “I just didn’t think I was ever going to be able to tell you.”

Her expression folded in confusion. “Tell me what, buddy?” she asked before the realization smacked her squarely between the eyes. “Oh.”

“It’s why I didn’t want to come home,” he choked. “I thought if Mom found out she’d—disown me or something and I thought you’d hate me and—”

Chrissy pulled him back in for another hug as her vision blurred. “I could never hate you, Kyle,” she promised. Her chin rested on his shoulders. “And I—I can’t speak for what Mom would have done but…” she sniffled. “But you’re my brother. And I love you. And I’m going to leave that rainbow up for the rest of time if it helps you to remember that, okay?”

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, still holding her like a lifeline. “I’m sorry I left you here with her.”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t your job to protect me,” she said quietly. “And you had to protect yourself too.”

He sniffed hard and let her go, reaching for the closest box of tissues on the corner of the counter. He handed her one and they leaned against the glass, wiping uselessly at their eyes and noses.

Kyle looked at the window and then back to his sister. “Did Mom really hate that you did that?”

Chrissy smothered a smile between her lips and nodded. “Yeah,” she said, tossing her tissue into the trash. “She really really hated it.”

Kyle smiled. “Good.”

***

The funeral was exactly as horrible as she thought it would be. There were only three moments she would ever care to replay in her memory. The first, was that her Aunt Tracy volunteered to give the eulogy, unintentionally saving her godchildren from having to come up with something on their own.

The second was Max and Lucas, sitting in the pew behind the family at the church. The way Max had rolled her eyes and nearly turned the same color as her hair when Chrissy had eyed their entwined hands in the receiving line after the service. “Shut up, C,” Max had mumbled affectionately before she’d let Lucas go to wrap Chrissy in a tight hug.

And the last was the moment she’d caught sight of Eddie in the back of the church, not coming through the receiving line. Dustin and Will were with him. They’d all worn suits and Eddie had pulled his hair back in a low ponytail. She only saw him for a second, just long enough to catch the wink he gave her. Just long enough to settle her nerves and keep her from screaming when yet another woman from church gripped her hand too tightly and told her what a beautiful spirit her mother had.

The reception lasted too long. There was too much food. Too many people. Too many hugs she didn’t want and tributes she didn’t want to hear and people touching her and pulling her in ten different directions at once.

Asking about the shop.

Asking about her father.

Asking about her wedding.

Too many people clucking their tongues and shaking their heads and reminding Chrissy over and over again that it was such a terrible loss. And that Laura would be missed so very much.

Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if she had thought to go shopping and was wearing a dress that actually fit instead of the one she dug from the back of her closet, a half size too small. She’d thought for a moment that morning when she’d struggled with the zipper before finally giving up and yanking it down over her head, that it was a fitting homage to her mother. That today, of all days, Laura would love to know that she was wearing something that she hated, that made her feel uncomfortable and fat and guilty for what she’d been eating all week.

Truly, she could think of no better tribute.

The house was full until well after dark, with people passing in and out all day bringing casseroles and flowers and trays of cookies. By the time Jason closed the door behind the last of the guests, all Chrissy could see was the mess they’d all left behind. Paper plates smeared with cocktail sauce and crumpled napkins. Plastic cutlery tucked into paper cups with the dregs of soda clinging to the bottom.

“What if we didn’t clean up?” Kyle asked when they met in the kitchen, leaning against opposite sides of the L-shaped counter. “What if we just…like…sold the house instead?”

Chrissy snorted. “What, like this?”

“Sure,” he shrugged before he turned and started piling lunch meat onto a cut croissant from one of the sandwich trays occupying the countertop. “We’ll say it’s a unique fixer-upper opportunity.” She smiled as she rolled her eyes. He held up another croissant. “I can make two if you’re hungry.”

She shook her head. “I’m okay,” she said, eyeing up the nearest tray of cookies.

Jason appeared in the kitchen and stepped between them to grab a garbage bag from under the sink. He paused and put his arm around her shoulder. His lips touched her temple and she felt the first intense wave of guilt roll like nausea in her stomach. “I’m going to start cleaning up,” he said quietly and then kissed her again. He swatted playfully at Kyle’s shoulder as he walked past on his way back to the living room. “Good to have you home, bud.”

She felt her brother’s eyes on her as they heard Jason start tossing debris into the garbage bag. She glanced over. “What?”

“Nothing,” he shook his head. “But…are you okay?”

“If I say yes, can we agree not to ask each other that anymore for like…a month?”

He rolled his eyes. “Okay,” he said and took an enormous bite of the sandwich he’d just made. “Point taken.”

Kyle was upstairs, having called dibs on the first shower, by the time Chrissy managed to pull herself away from the counter and sit down at the table. Idly, she grabbed a paper plate and pried the plastic lid from the nearest tray of cookies. She picked out two soft pink macarons, a thumbprint, a powdered sugar-dusted almond cookie, and two peanut butter blossoms.

The first macaron cracked deliciously between her teeth. Raspberry filling hit her tongue with a sharp, sweet decadence that had her stifling a moan.

The sound of plastic rustling pulled her out of her moment of indulgence. She opened her eyes to see Jason standing at the edge of the table, garbage bag still in hand, an amused half-smile on his face. “What are you doing with all those?” he asked, motioning to her plate with a nod of his chin.

Chrissy blinked and felt that automatic rush of shame. The instinct to set the cookie down, be content with one bite, throw the rest out and pretend that she’d had plenty. “I was just…” she clenched her teeth and glanced down at her full plate. “I haven’t had anything to eat today.”

Jason looked around the crowded kitchen. “Plenty of healthy food to go around, babe,” he said with a little chuckle. His smile hadn’t faded, but Chrissy noticed it didn’t reach his eyes. “C’mon, I’ll fix you something else.” Before she could stop him, Jason crossed the room, picked up her plate of cookies, and tossed it into the garbage bag.

Chrissy felt like he’d slapped her. Like he’d grabbed her arm right above the elbow. She stared after him, unable to stop the feelings churning in the back of her throat like bile. Shock. Rage. Indignation.

“What do you want?” he asked with his back to her. He reached for the tray of vegetables and dip. “You like sweet peppers, right?”

“I wanted those cookies.”

Jason stopped and turned around. “You had some,” he answered with that infuriating, bemused half-smile. “I’m sorry, I thought you were done.”

“Why would you think I was done?” she asked, slowly pushing away from the table. “I had one bite.”

“Hey,” he held up his hands in mock defense. “I’m sorry, okay? Have as many as you want. I just know the last thing your mother would want is for you to start overeating again just because you’re upset that she’s gone.”

Jason turned back around and piled three pepper rings, a handful of carrots, and cherry tomatoes on another paper plate. He crossed the kitchen and set it down in front of her, right where her cookies had been a minute ago.

“What did you say?”

Jason stopped on his way back to the counter. “What?” he asked. “I just said—”

She pushed back all the way from the table and stood up. “Did you really just say ‘overeating again’?”

“Chris—”

“No, please,” she shook her head. “Please tell me when you think the last time was that I was overeating. Because I can’t remember a single day of my entire life when I had the luxury of overeating, Jason.” Her hands curled into fists at her sides. “Because my mother watched every single bite that went into my mouth. Because she used to make me weigh myself and take measurements every single day when I lived with her—”

“I know, Chris, that’s not what I—”

“What did you mean, then?” she demanded. Now that she’d started, she couldn’t stop. She felt like she had when she used to make herself throw up in high school. Like she wouldn’t be able to breathe until it was all up and out of her system. “What reason could you possibly have for trying to tell me what to eat now? Today? And blame it on the fact that I’m sad? Yes, God forbid I allow myself thirteen hundred calories instead of my usual nine hundred for one day of my entire life.”

For a moment, she thought he might apologize. A real apology where he acknowledged the role he was playing in continuing the damage her mother had caused her. And if he had, Chrissy might have forgiven him. If he’d made her believe that he meant it, that he didn’t mean to hurt her when all she wanted was comfort, she knew herself well enough to know that she likely would have forgiven him.

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting just a little bit?” he let out a short huff of a chuckle. “I didn’t say you couldn’t eat whatever you wanted. If you want to eat a whole tray of cookies and make yourself sick,” he motioned to the table behind her. “Be my guest.”

With a little shake of his head that couldn’t be anything but dismissive, Jason turned around again.

Chrissy watched him moving trays and plates around on the counter, slowly continuing to fill up the garbage bag by his feet. She drew a long breath in through her nose and curled and flexed her fingers into her palms again. “Get out.”

Jason stopped with his hand halfway on the way to turn the water on in the sink. He turned again. “What?”

“I want you to get out,” she said firmly, trying to keep her voice from shaking. She’d never asked him to do that. She’d never asked anyone to do that before. “Get out of my house. I don’t want you here.”

He scoffed. “Okay, Chris, I know you’re upset, and I understand, okay? I do,” he insisted, holding up his hands again. “You’ve had an emotional couple of days and you’re not thinking rationally.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “No, Jason. I…y’know, I actually think I am. I think I might be thinking clearly for the first time in a very long time, and I don’t…” she opened her eyes. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Good,” he said immediately. “I don’t want to fight with you—”

“No,” she shook her head again. “I mean this,” she motioned to the space between them. “I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to keep pretending this is something that I want when it’s…” she let out a heavy breath and dropped her shoulders. “Honestly, I don’t know that it’s something I ever wanted.”

Finally, his expression shifted. His face changed from confusion with its hints of condescension to genuine concern. “Chrissy, where is this coming from?”

“It’s coming from me,” she bit down on the last word. “I know you’re going to tell me that I’m grieving and that I’m too upset to be thinking rationally right now but—” she pressed her lips together in a tight line and twisted her engagement ring off her finger. She held it out to him. “I can’t marry you. I don’t want to.”

“Look,” he softened. “I’m sorry if I said something to upset you,” he said, reaching out a hand for her. “But let’s just sit down and talk about this tomorrow when you’re—”

“You’re not listening to me,” she said, feeling like she might throw up at any moment. “You never listen to me,” she added with a bizarre, bubbling urge to laugh again. “I mean. Never. I could tell you anything and you’d just twist it into something that you wanted to hear, and for the longest time, I really thought that’s just how people treated each other but it’s…” she shook her head. “It’s not. And I—I deserve better than that.”

“Chrissy,” he took another step toward her. “Please. Think about what you’re saying.”

“Oh, I am,” she assured him. “And I know we’ve been together forever, and I know you’re the kind of man a million women would love to spend the rest of their lives with but…” she reached for his hand and pressed her ring into his palm, forcing his fingers to curl around it before she dropped his wrist again. “But to me…I don’t know, Jason. To me, you’re just one more thing my mother picked out for me that doesn’t fit.”

The corner of his jaw clenched in a tight square. He shook his head. “You don’t mean that.”

The floorboards creaked on the other side of the room and their heads snapped at the same time to see Kyle standing like a giant centurion in the doorway. He cleared his throat. “Pretty sure I heard my sister ask you to leave, Jase.”

“Kyle, how ‘bout you stay out of this?” Jason asked and that insufferable patient tone returned to his voice.

But Kyle only took another step into the kitchen. “No,” he countered. “I’ve stayed out of enough. My sister asked you to leave,” he repeated. “So, you should probably listen to her.”

Jason looked from Chrissy to Kyle and back again. For a second, she thought there might be a fight. But the urge flickered and faded in Jason’s expression the moment Kyle stopped slouching and stood to his full height, straightening his broad shoulders with a shrug.

Kyle walked behind him and closed and locked the door once Jason had stepped out onto the porch.

She’d managed to sink into the kitchen chair again by the time her brother returned to her side. He sat opposite her and covered her trembling hands with his on the table. The silence was palpable until he coughed again. “So, I didn’t catch most of that,” he said, remarkably casual for someone who just watched his sister blow up half her life. “But we’re eating these fucking cookies, right?”

Chrissy lifted her eyes from the hole she’d been staring into the table and nearly choked on the laugh that bubbled up in her chest. “Yeah,” she said, reaching for another macaron. “We’re eating these fucking cookies.”

They stayed up until dawn, watching Disney movies on the couch and eating cookies until they crashed out of the waking world curled against each other like a pair of puppies.

It was the first time Chrissy could ever remember going to sleep feeling full.

Chapter Text

i knew you'd miss me once the thrill expired
and you'd be standin' in my front porch light
and I knew you'd come back to me
you'd come back to me

xi.

September was the longest month of Eddie’s life.

He didn’t see Chrissy again after the brief glimpse he caught of her at the funeral. It was only for a second, but he saw how her expression softened when he winked at her. How it looked like she was able to take a deep breath and almost smile before someone pulled her attention away.

That was worth the hassle of rescheduling two of his clients and borrowing a suit from Steve and re-learning how to tie a tie after nearly a decade without even owning one.

He had one message from her on his answering machine that she’d left while he was working, about a week after the funeral.

“Hi, it’s me…” she’d trailed off for a moment and he had wondered if she was debating on saying her name. “I just, um, wanted to tell you that I’m going out of town for a little while. I just have to—um—” she’d stopped again. “Anyway, I want to talk to you when I come back. I just…don’t know when that will be so. Okay. You don’t have to call me back,” she’d rushed on. “I’m leaving soon anyway, I just wanted to tell you… that…” His heart had lived squarely in his throat for the three seconds it took her to continue. “Um…yeah. Okay. See you…when I see you, I guess. Bye.”

He'd tried to call her back, but there was no answer.

A little while didn’t sound so bad when he’d listened to her message three days before Labor Day. He figured she’d be gone for maybe a week—two at the most.

But a week turned into two, then three, and before he knew it, the mornings were starting out cold and foggy and all the leaves on the trees that lined the alley were beginning to turn gold and orange and crispy.

“I haven’t heard from her,” Max said with a shrug on the last Thursday of the month. “But she keeps paying us so Steve and I are both taking that as a sign that we might not be unemployed when she decides to come back?” She shrugged again and pointed to the counter, to the shirt on the far right. “I like this one the best.”

“Okay, but would you wear it?” Dustin asked, studying the mock-ups of the new Hellfire shirts he was desperate to start selling.

“No,” Max said without having to think about it. “But that’s because I don’t believe in offering free advertising to any company by splashing their name across my boobs.” She glanced at Eddie. “No offense. Not even yours.”

“Could’ve done without the ‘splash’ imagery,” he admitted before he moved his shoulder. “But hey, I respect a man with a code,” he assured her, not really paying attention.

Dustin sighed. “Eddie, what do you think?”

“I think they’re her boobs,” he shrugged, still distracted by what she’d said about Chrissy still paying her and Steve. “She can splash or not splash whatever she wants over them.”

Max snorted. “Now that I would wear on a t-shirt.”

Dustin rolled his eyes. “I meant about the design.”

“Oh,” he pulled his eyes away from the window and forced himself to focus. “Uh…I don’t know, man,” he admitted. “I trust your judgment. Whatever you like best.”

Dustin’s sigh seemed to come from the depths of his soul. “You vetoed the last two I liked best,” he reminded.

“Well, then who gives a shit what I think?” Eddie asked. “Clearly I don’t have the right eye for this kinda thing.”

“Chrissy needs to come back soon though,” Max added thoughtfully, looking over her shoulder at the darkened windows of Tiger Lily’s. “Because I gotta tell ya, this getting paid to do nothing but pick up the mail twice a week? It’s really nice and I could really get used to it.”

“Erica!” Dustin called.

His star piercer appeared in the doorway, a half-eaten apple still in her hand. “What?” she asked before she noticed the array of shirts on the counter and rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, are you still trying to get him to decide on this?”

“I told him I don’t care,” Eddie reminded.

Erica ignored him and crossed the front of the shop. “You know he’s basically useless until Chrissy comes back from her little vacation,” she said as if she and Dustin had discussed this before. Eddie didn’t kid himself. They probably had. She pointed to the same shirt Max had chosen. “That one.”

Dustin frowned. “Are you sure?”

“I am not useless,” Eddie added indignantly. “I’m a perfectly functioning adult, thank you very much.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Erica said with a nod and pointed again. “It’s that one. Call the printer and pull the trigger.” She offered her boss a saccharine smile and put a patronizing hand on his shoulder. “And of course you are, honey.”

“Eddie,” Dustin said firmly. “Last chance. Please vote.”

He shook all the distracting thoughts out of his head and forced himself to focus on the three designs in in front of him. “This is just like…apples and oranges and…something else that’s just like an apple or an orange but not exactly.”

Dustin groaned and covered his face. “Dude…”

An idea struck him. “Hang on,” he held up a finger. “I have one other possible design option.”

“Dude!” Dustin repeated as Eddie darted for the door.

He debated for a moment before he set the t-shirt he’d been thinking of as Chrissy’s down on the counter with the other options. “Now, I’m telling you all right now that this is old,” he warned, keeping it against his chest while he looked from Dustin to Erica and over to Max. “So, I don’t want to hear any shit about antiques or ancient artifacts or—”

“Oh my God you’re such a baby—” Max rolled her eyes and yanked the t-shirt away from him, dropping it onto the counter.

They studied it for a moment, their heads tilting to the right at exactly the same time that was, even Eddie had to admit, kind of adorable.

“It’s cool if you don’t like it,” he said quickly. “I just forgot about it and figured I’d put it on the table.”

“I like this lettering better,” Erica said, pointing to his shirt.

“Me too,” Max agreed with a nod. “Especially the little crown over the ‘i.’ Maybe you could take the tattoo gun from this one,” she pointed to the shirt she and Erica had voted on before. “And put it here, instead of this mace?”

Dustin leaned in closer until his nose was almost touching the fabric. Eddie felt his hackles raise defensively. “What?”

“What are these things here?” he pointed to the two special D&D dice that decorated the top of the shirt.

“Nothing,” Eddie coughed and almost snatched the shirt back. “I like what Max said. About the tattoo gun.”

“Eddie…” Dustin’s eyes narrowed as he stood up. “Is that a D20?”

“A what?” he tried to scoff, shaking his head. “I don’t…know what that is?”

Between Max and Dustin, Erica’s jaw dropped, and her eyes widened. “Holy. Shit.”

“Oh my God,” A smile spread over Dustin’s face.

“Stop—” Eddie held up a hand, willing his cheeks not to burn. “It’s not what you think…”

“Oh really?” Dustin asked, bordering on gleeful. “Because I think you just outed yourself as a D&D enthusiast and it looks like you might have had a D&D club before—”

“That you apparently named your business after,” Max said, also grinning.

“And that had t-shirts,” Dustin added, giving the fabric on the table a shake. “Or am I misreading the situation?”

Eddie sighed and let his face drop on his hands. “You’re not.”

A swift punch was delivered to his right arm. “Asshole!” Dustin cried when he looked up.

He rubbed his arm. “What? I don’t have to tell you everything!”

“How many times, Eddie? How many times did you listen to us talk about this shit and say how we need one more person to round out our campaigns—because Max sucks and she never wants to play—”

“—and is also standing right here,” Max reminded him indignantly. “Standing right exactly here.”

But Dustin continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “—and you said nothing?”

Eddied opened his mouth and then closed it again. “Yeah,” he confessed. “I listened to you say that a lot of times.”

“Will!”

Seconds after Dustin yelled his name, Will popped his head around the corner. “What?”

“Did you know Eddie used to play D&D?”

“Yeah,” Will shrugged. He stopped when Dustin gasped dramatically. “What? I’m the one who did the wyvern on his arm,” he added. “I kinda figured he must be at least a little familiar.”

“And you said nothing?” Dustin demanded. “Man, I am losing the hell out of the trust in this institution.”

Eddie cleared his throat. “Do you like this design,” he asked, tapping on the shirt again. “Yes, or no?”

“Yes,” Dustin and Erica said in unison.

“Especially if we make the little change Max suggested,” Erica added.

“Great,” he nodded and pushed it toward Dustin across the counter. “Then mock it up and let’s go to print already.”

“Okay, but for real,” Dustin looked up with pleading eyes. “When’s the last time you picked up a set of dice?”

He exhaled slowly. “Couple thousand tattoos ago,” he admitted.

“Wait…” Will narrowed his eyes, a small smile at the corner of his lips. “Would you seriously consider playing with us?”

“If we asked you,” Erica added, crossing her arms. “Which I don’t know about because you did lie to us this whole time acting like you didn’t know what we were talking about anytime someone brought it up.”

Eddie looked from Will to Erica and finally over to Dustin who was bouncing, ever so slightly, on his toes like a chihuahua dancing for a treat. “Alright,” he sighed, losing the fight to keep a smile from his face. “Next time you freaks start a new campaign, let me know.” He focused his gaze back on Erica. “If I’m invited,” he added.

But Erica couldn’t help her grin either.

For the first time in over a decade, Eddie spent the first Saturday night of October playing Dungeons and Dragons with his friends. He’d let himself forget—accepting the narrative that it was a kid’s game he didn’t need anymore after he graduated—that it was something he used to love. Something he did just because it was fun and a pleasant escape from reality for a few hours.

He'd only been home long enough to check his answering machine and dump some kibble in a bowl for Eowyn when there was a knock at the door. Confused, he checked his watch—confirming that it was still as late as he thought, a little before midnight—and pulled it open.

Chrissy Cunningham had shown up on his doorstep a few times now. Each time she looked a little worse for the wear. But not this time. This time she looked tan and freckled and with more pronounced streaks of blonde in her hair. She spoke before he could do more than blink with surprise to see her. “I broke up with Jason,” she said almost as soon as he’d opened the door. “And I’m in love with you.”

Amidst every emotion fighting to hit him at once, Eddie heard himself croak out something that sounded like, “Um. Hi.”

Chrissy’s eyes widened and she put her hand over her mouth. “Shit,” she murmured against her fingers before she dropped them again. “I was going to lead up to that.” He still couldn’t quite manage to say anything more than the laugh he choked out. “I really was,” she insisted, her eyes still large as she winced. “I had all this stuff I wanted to say about how much I missed you and how sorry I am for disappearing the way that I did and that I didn’t think I’d be gone for so—”

Eddie's brain and body finally started working together and he took a step outside of his door, canceling the space between them. He took her face in his hands and covered her lips with his, effectively silencing her panicked ramble and turning whatever she was going to say next into a surprised little hum against his mouth. She melted into him immediately, her hands coming up to rest on his chest as she stretched up onto her tiptoes to fit as much of herself against him as she could.

He'd been pretending he hadn’t missed this. Been pretending that the kisses he’d shared with Chrissy before hadn’t been some of the very best of his life. That they hadn’t fit together like they’d been made for just that purpose.

But that had been a lie and the second her lips touched his again, Eddie could think of nothing else than doing whatever it took to make sure he never had to spend another day without kissing her.

He pulled away after a moment, relishing the way Chrissy blinked slowly, looking a little dazed as he rested his forehead against hers. “Say that first part again.”

She smiled. “I broke up with Jason,” she said, stretching up on her toes to brush her lips to his again. “And I’m in love with you.”

“Okay. That’s what I thought you said,” he grinned. “But I might need to hear it a few more times just to make sure.”

Chrissy giggled and pushed lightly against his chest. “Can I come in?”

“Of course,” he said, stepping back over his threshold to pull her inside before he closed the door behind her. He felt like his skin was on fire. Like his blood was racing so fast it was sparking in his veins. Trying to give her a little space, Eddie looked back at his apartment over his shoulder. “Do you want any—”

He stopped abruptly when Chrissy reached out and grabbed hold of his belt, pulling him back to her with a swift tug. “Can we talk later?” she asked as she curled her hands around his hips and kept him close enough that he could see all the little flecks of gold and green in her eyes. Close enough he could smell that deliciously sweet, citrusy perfume she wore. Close enough that he thought if he didn’t kiss her again soon, he might actually explode.

“Sure,” he said softly and brought his thumb up to gently free her bottom lip from her teeth again. “Whatever you want.”

“I just want you,” she breathed before she pulled him the rest of the way in.

It was a harder kiss this time. More desperate than before. Eddie wanted to hear her say that again, too. To make sure she meant it. To make sure he’d heard her right. But he couldn’t make himself pull away again. Especially not when she was telling him everything he needed to know anyway. She opened her mouth easily, welcoming the sweep of his tongue over hers as her hands slid up his chest and her arms wound around his neck. He kept one hand buried in her hair as the other dragged down her neck, over her chest, and down to her thigh, bringing her leg to hitch up around his hip so he could lean harder into her.

The little moan she let out was delicious, a soft little whine he wanted to hear again and again like his favorite song. He could feel her up on her toes again, still straining to be closer and the height difference he usually thought was kind of cute was just enough to be frustrating. He untangled his fingers from her hair and gripped her hips, hoisting her up and pressing her back hard against the door so they were the same height. He couldn’t help but groan when she wrapped her legs around him and pulled away from his lips with a breathless sigh. She tilted her head to one side, an invitation he barely needed to pepper her jaw with kisses before he sucked on her racing pulse, scraping his teeth lightly over her soft skin before he pressed his lips down in an open-mouthed kiss that had her mashing her lips together, smothering another moan.

She was an easy weight in his arms when he stepped away from the door. She gripped him tighter when he pulled back from her neck to ask, “Bedroom okay?”  

Chrissy giggled again and nodded. “Yes, please.”

He couldn’t help but grin as he started to move them back through the apartment, toward his room. “God, you’re so polite,” he murmured into the soft skin just below her ear. Her body shook when she laughed, and Eddie had to fight not to stop and pinch himself and make sure this was really happening.

They landed in a clumsy tangle of limbs on his bed and Chrissy sat up first, pushing her hair back from her face before she reached for him again. His hands slipped under the silky fabric of her top and she nodded to his silent question when he pulled away long enough to meet her eyes. She lifted her arms and let him pull it over her head, revealing a soft yellow lacy bra underneath. Before he could ask for anything more, she stood up and undid the buttons of her jeans, pushing them down her hips and kicking them away before she joined him back on the bed.

She climbed into his lap, her knees pinned on either side of his hips, the yellow lace of her panties just above where his cock was straining against the layers still between them. Her hands rested on his shoulders as his arms circled around her waist. The light coming in from the street outside was enough to still see her clearly in the dark. Her long eyelashes and soft lips and her eyes dark with lust. Eddie pushed her hair back a second time and took in a slow, measured breath, and let it out as she pressed her forehead against his. He let his eyes travel slowly down her body and back again. “You’re so beautiful,” he said softly, drawing little circles at the base of her spine with his thumbs.

Chrissy followed his gaze and bit her lip again. He wasn’t sure, but he thought she might have blushed. She dragged her hands down his chest and took hold of the bottom of his t-shirt. “Off,” she demanded lightly, tugging it up and off the second he lifted his arms to help her out. She sat back on her heels, her eyes roaming hungrily over his skin, taking note of all the tattoos she still hadn’t seen. Her fingers spread over the skull on his chest and the spider over his ribs before she leaned back in, close enough to whisper against his lips, “I think you’re beautiful too,” before she covered them with hers in a soft, slow kiss.

Alarmingly, Eddie felt his chest tighten as he wrapped his arms tighter around her and shifted them so she was on her back, her head on his pillow. He kept his eyes closed until that rush of emotion passed and kissed her again, her chin and her jaw, down her neck, and over her collarbones. He paused at the valley between her breasts and bit playfully at the little pink rose at the center of her bra. His hands moved beneath her, pausing at the clasp between her shoulder blades, cursing himself for not doing this when she was sitting up.

But Chrissy arched her back and reached up and behind herself, pushing his hands out of the way to pop the clasp without hesitation. She slid her arms out of the satin straps and pulled the bra the rest of the way off, tossing it to the side of the bed. “Thank you,” he murmured with another grin as he leaned in to kiss her again.

Chrissy laughed against his lips. “My pleasure,” she giggled when he broke away to resume his trail down her chest.

“Yeah,” Eddie agreed, glancing up as he kissed the top of one breast. “That’s what I’m goin’ for.” Her laugh dropped quickly into another moan when he swirled his tongue around one hardened nipple and sucked it between his lips. He rolled the other between his finger and thumb, trying to match what he was doing. She arched hard against him, and her legs wrapped tighter around his waist. He switched sides, relishing how she squealed when he grazed her with his teeth and did his best to ignore how achingly hard he was. How desperate he was to tear away the rest of their clothes and sink into her to deliver them both some relief.

But he could wait, he reminded himself. He’d already waited forever for Chrissy to want to be with him—he could wait a little longer to make sure she felt as good as he did.

She whined his name—just when he thought he couldn’t get any harder—when he shifted overtop her again and continued to kiss his way down her body. Down between her ribcage and the dip of her belly until he reached her navel and he paused with another kiss there. He stilled his fingers at the lace band of her panties. “Can I take these off?” She nodded and lifted her hips when he sat up to slide them off and down her legs. He lay back down and kissed her belly again before he dropped his head lower, kissing her just above the soft dark blonde curls between her thighs. He felt her tense and he looked up. “Are you okay?”

Chrissy bit her lip and looked at the ceiling. “Uh-huh.”

He frowned and moved back up her body until she had no choice but to look at him. “What’s wrong?” he asked gently. “Do you…not want me to go down on you?”

She winced. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I’ve never… Um. Done that. Before.”

Eddie blinked, and for a second, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to murder Jason Carver or shake his hand for being the world’s worst boyfriend and setting the bar so exceptionally low. He pushed thoughts of Jason out of his head and bent to kiss Chrissy again. Soft and slow, wishing it was enough to melt all her anxiety and tension. He brushed his nose against hers when he pulled away. “I won’t,” he assured her softly. “If you don’t want me to.”

She shook her head. “No, I…I do,” she said and let out a flustered, quiet laugh. “I mean, if you want to.”

Eddie grinned into their next kiss. “I do,” he echoed. “I really do. But only if you’re okay with it.”

Chrissy nodded. “Okay,” she breathed.

He gave her one more kiss before he moved back down the bed again and settled between her thighs. Everything about her was hot and pink and wet when he spread her folds, forgoing the impulse to tease her and instead, licked her open with one long stroke of his tongue. From the head of his bed, he heard Chrissy let out a gasp of surprise, urging him to do it again. He flattened his tongue against her, savoring every inch, letting her arousal soak his face while he lapped at her slowly. She tasted deliciously salty, heady, and intoxicating, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever had anything better on his lips.

Chrissy’s hands were gripping the sheets tightly and he took hold of one of them, not moving or changing his tongue’s slow exploration, to urge her to slide her fingers against his hair.

“Oh, fuck,” she breathed as he gently pushed her thighs open wider for him and let out a loud, ungoverned moan when he thrust his tongue into her as deep as he could. Her nails curled against his scalp, making him groan when he could feel how she was clenching on anything he could give her. “Jesus, Eddie,” she all but whimpered, bucking her hips, and squirming to try and get even closer to him.

Eddie pressed one hand on her belly, holding her still as he circled her swollen clit with the tip of his tongue. Chrissy’s other hand sank into his hair, holding him firmly in place. He looked up and locked eyes with her as her thighs began to tremble. “Stay right there?” she begged in a whisper, her chest rising and falling with her ragged breathing.

He nodded and pursed his lips around her clit, sucking on it hard before he flicked it again with his tongue. He kept his eyes on her face, watching as her eyes widened when he stroked two fingers experimentally at her entrance. She nodded the second before he pushed into her, matching her moan when she clenched that silky wet heat around his fingers.

Eddie kept his lips moving, sucking on her clit while he fucked her slowly with his fingers, wanting to memorize every sound she made, every roll of her hips against his face and his hands until he could feel all the tension he’d been building in her body snap like a spark.

Chrissy came with a sound that crested like a sob in her throat and slid into a loud moan. Her back bowed almost completely off the bed as her thighs snapped around his head while she squealed with relief, pushing and pulling at him as he kept going until he finally relented and sat back for a much-needed breath. He kept his fingers moving slowly inside of her, feeling the way she clenched and pulsed as her orgasm rolled through her like a wave until she finally relaxed and seemed to melt into his mattress with a heavy sigh.

Eddie reached for his discarded t-shirt and wiped his face as he pulled his hand from between her legs and kissed his way back up her trembling body to capture her lips with another kiss. He moved a lock of her hair off her sweaty forehead and kissed the tip of her nose. “Still doing okay?”

Chrissy let out a breathless laugh and covered her face with one hand. “I don’t think I can feel my legs,” she admitted.

“That’s okay,” he said easily with a grin when she peaked between her fingers to look at him again. “I’m not ready to let you go yet.”

Chrissy sat up, meeting him in another kiss as her fingers worked to unbuckle his belt and pop the button at the top of his jeans. “I’m kind of hoping you’ll never be ready to let me go,” she admitted softly.

Eddie stopped and again felt that rush at the back of his throat. That stinging just behind his nose. He took her face in his hands again and swallowed hard. “Chrissy,” he said, sinking down onto his heels. “I don’t want you to feel like you owe me any promises or anything,” he said carefully. “But I’m pretty sure I’ve been in love with you since the day I met you,” he confessed, surprised at how easily the words slipped past his lips. “And I let you go before,” he added. “But that was the hardest thing I ever did. I think it might kill me if I had to do it again.” He watched as Chrissy’s throat bobbed and her eyes filled with tears. “Shit,” he muttered. “I didn’t mean—” he shook his head. “Please don’t cry. I don’t hold any of that against you I—”

But to his surprise, she let out a wet laugh and shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said, holding her hands over his as his thumbs pushed at the tears on her cheeks. “I’m sorry. These are good tears,” she insisted.

He felt his brow lift. “Good tears.”

She nodded. “I’m just so—” she laughed again. “I just missed you so much,” she said, pulling him in to kiss him again. “I’m so sorry I disappeared for so long,” she went on between brushes of her lips to his. “I wanted to call you so many times, but I didn’t want to say any of this over the phone and I—”

“It’s okay,” Eddie promised, letting his arms wrap around her when she buried her face against his neck. “It’s okay, I get it.” He kissed the side of her head. “I missed you too,” he admitted. “So much.”

“Can we keep going?” she asked, murmuring the question against his skin, kissing him just below his jaw. Her hand trailed down his stomach and she palmed his erection through his jeans. “Please?”

“You and your manners,” he said, shaking his head and making her laugh again. He pushed back all the things he still wanted to ask her, all the things he wanted to say and tell her. There would be time for that later, he reminded himself. That’s what she was trying to tell him. That she wasn’t going anywhere. That they would have all the time in the world.

He leaned over to his bedside table for the box of condoms in the drawer and discarded the rest of his clothes in a heap beside the bed in record time.

Chrissy laid back against his pillows as he rolled the condom over his straining cock. She reached between them and stroked him through the latex before she guided him to her entrance and squeezed his hips with her thighs, urging him to push into her.

She was so tight and hot and wet it practically killed him to sink in slowly, inch by inch until their hips were touching. Eddie couldn’t remember if anything in his life had ever felt better than the way she clenched around him, moaning his name in a breathless whisper as he started to move. They found an easy rhythm and she rolled her hips to meet his thrusts, the little sound she made every time he pushed into her cut right through him, urging him to go faster.

Her whole body gripped him tight when he thrust in a little harder. Chrissy opened her lips beneath his and sucked his tongue into her mouth, urging him to do it again, not caring that his headboard banged against the wall with every snap of his hips. She moaned around his tongue, her nails scraping at his back and again, Eddie had to convince himself he wasn’t dreaming. That somehow, this was the real world, and he was really buried so deep inside Chrissy Cunningham that he couldn’t tell where he ended and she began.

He shifted to come up on his knees, feeling drunk on the way she groaned when he sank back into her again, hitting her deeper than before. He spread her thighs wide over his and watched his cock disappear inside of her when she rolled her hips to match his thrusts again. Chrissy squirmed and spread her fingers wide, reaching for his hands. Eddie linked their fingers together, surprised when she pulled his right hand up to her mouth and wrapped her lips around his fingers. “Fuck…” he groaned as she sucked on them, taking them all the way to the top of her throat before she let go and pressed his wet fingertips to her clit.

“I like that,” she mumbled, sinking back into the rumpled sheets and pillows. Eddie watched her face as he began to rub her clit and she nodded. “Yeah,” she encouraged. “Yeah, just like that.”

Every nerve in his body felt like it was on fire, his thighs were trembling beneath hers as he snapped his hips faster, rubbing her clit in the same rhythm. “I want you to come again,” he blurted out, pressing down harder.

She nodded again. “I’m so close,” she promised, and he could feel it in the way she was gripping his cock on every thrust and the way she curled her fingers around the sheets at her sides. It only took another few strokes of his fingers before he felt her let go again, the clench and pulse around him all he needed to finally let himself join her. A jolt like an electric shock he felt in his toes and then a rush of warm relief that blotted out the rest of his senses and canceled every thought in his brain while Chrissy pulled his face back to hers, keeping them locked together until their breathing slowed back to normal.

“We saw the Grand Canyon,” Chrissy said later, once they’d cleaned up and climbed under his covers. She lay on her side with one of his pillows pulled tight between her shoulder and cheek, telling him about the month-long road trip she’d spent with her brother. “Have you ever been there?”

He smiled and shook his head. “Not yet. How was it?”

“Big,” she said, her eyes wide. “Really big.” Eddie snorted. “A lot bigger than I thought it was going to be. The postcards don’t do it justice.”

He reached out his hand to run the tips of his fingers along the shell of her ear before trailing down along her arm. “What happened after the Grand Canyon?”

“Mmm,” she rolled onto her stomach and hummed contentedly when he started tracing long, slow stripes up and down her spine. “Then we went to California and drove up the coast. We saw LA, and San Francisco,” she smiled when his thumb brushed over the purple flowers between her shoulder blades. “And Kyle got food poisoning from this diner outside of Salem, so I spent two really gross days in a motel in Portland watching cartoons with him while he puked his guts out.”

“You’re a good sister.”

She rolled her eyes. “And then we started coming east, and we were going to keep going—cut all the way over to New York and go down the other coast, but…” she bit her lip and trailed off.

“But what?”

“But I missed you, Eddie,” she said softly. “All those things I saw were great, and I’m so grateful Kyle and I decided to do that trip and get all that time together but…” her narrow shoulders moved in a shrug. “I missed you,” she said again. “And I wanted to come home and…I guess I wanted to see if you missed me.”

He leaned in, canceling the distance between them, and kissed her again. His arm curled around her to roll her back onto her side to pull her as close as possible. “I missed you,” he echoed. “So much.” He kissed her forehead when she dropped her chin to snuggle against him. “Honestly,” he went on, steeling himself for what he needed to ask next. “I had myself convinced that if I ever saw you again, it’d just be you telling me you sold the shop and were taking the midnight train goin’ anywhere—”

Chrissy pulled back and looked up, confused. “What?”

“Or, okay, I think it’s probably more like the 1:17 to Jersey City, but, c’mon. Where’s the poetry in that?”

“You didn’t think I was coming back?”

“I didn’t know,” he admitted. “I mean, there’s nothing keeping you here anymore if you wanted to leave…Obviously my rakish good looks and charm notwithstanding,” he added, hoping that if he joked, she wouldn’t be able to tell how much the thought terrified him.

“Eddie,” she smiled softly and brought her hand up to brush her thumb over his cheekbone. “I’m not selling the shop.”

He blinked. “You’re not?”

She shook her head. “I thought about it,” she said. “A lot, actually. While I was gone. And I talked about it with Kyle and it’s not just…” she pursed her lips. “I missed you,” she said again and even though she’d already said it so many times, Eddie wasn’t sure he was ever going to be tired of hearing it. “But I missed that place, too. I missed Max and Steve, and Mr. Melvald, coming in every Thursday like clockwork to buy a rose for his wife…” she shook her head again. “The more I thought about it…the more I realized that I love running a flower shop. And I’m good at it.”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “You are.”

“I really love being such a big part of people’s lives,” she went on, her eyes sparkling a little with excitement he’d never seen when she talked about her work. “Getting to help someone pick out flowers for their first date or prom or their wedding…or being able to make the right suggestions so that someone has an easier time planning a funeral or a memorial service…” she pressed her lips together thoughtfully. “A flower shop can do a lot of good in the right hands. And I think what I really wanted was to feel like I had a choice if…if the right hands were going to be mine.”

Eddie took her hand from his cheek; he pressed a kiss to her palm and then to the tips of each finger. “And the location’s great,” he said with a smile. “Really nice neighborhood.”

Chrissy giggled and nodded. “Yeah,” she agreed. “The view across the street is a pretty great reason to stick around too.”

“And Kyle’s on board with your plan?” he asked, trying to get a hold of the near-euphoric feeling in his chest. The one that made him want to jump up and down on his bed like a five-year-old and yell out the windows that Chrissy—his Chrissy—wasn’t going anywhere after all.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “He’s taking this semester off to help me get things settled with the estate,” she added. “So, he’ll be around a lot more for the next few months at least.” She smiled shyly. “I think you’ll like him…if you…I mean, if you want to meet him.”

“Of course I do,” he said immediately. “He sounds great.”

“He is,” she grinned. “I think all your little shop sheepies will really like him too.”

Eddie laughed, more than delighted that she’d remembered his pet name for all his young employees. He slid his other arm beneath her shoulders and gathered her up to hold her closer to his chest. “I—um—I want to tell you something,” he said quietly as she pressed her forehead to his. “And it might sound kind of dumb.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“I’m really proud of you,” he told her, pulling back just enough so he could meet her eyes.

It didn’t surprise him that she blushed and bit her lip. “I didn’t—”

“You did a lot of really scary things,” he said firmly, cutting her off before she could try to say otherwise. “In a very short amount of time. I think you’re amazing,” he added before he said it again. “And I’m really proud of you.”

“I couldn’t have done any of it if I hadn’t met you,” she said softly. “I mean, maybe I could have,” she considered, “but I wouldn’t have. You made me—you make me—” she corrected herself, “feel brave. Brave enough to ask for what I want.”

He didn’t know how to tell her that was the greatest compliment anyone had ever given him. Or how to tell her that she made him feel brave too—brave enough to trust that she loved him as much as he loved her. Brave enough to hope that something good could happen. Brave enough to keep loving her even when it seemed hopeless. He didn’t know how to put that into words yet. So he smiled and kissed her again. “Well, when it comes to me, Chrissy, you can have anything you want.”

She pulled away, surprising him with a lift of her eyebrows. “Anything?”

“Yeah…” he said slowly, eyeing her curiously. “Anything.”

“Even…chocolate chip pancakes?”

Eddie let out a loud laugh. “Especially chocolate chip pancakes.”  He looked over her shoulder at the clock. Nearly three in the morning. “You want some right now?”

Chrissy giggled with cheeks the most pleasant shade of pink he’d ever seen and nodded. “Yes, please. I’m starving.”

So, Eddie made her chocolate chip pancakes at three o’clock in the morning.

And Chrissy happily ate every last bite.

Chapter Text

and when I felt like I was an old cardigan
under someone's bed
you put me on and said I was your favorite

xii.

The wedding was perfect. A brilliantly sunny fall afternoon set with dark blue suits and soft sage green dresses, bouquets of African daisies and handfuls of flower petals thrown into the air when promises of forever were sealed with a kiss.

Chrissy didn’t think she’d ever seen two people so happy and in love as Vickie and Robin when their foreheads touched as their officiant declared them dedicated and their lives committed to one another for as long as they both shall live.

As much as she wanted to stay and spend the whole night dancing and celebrating with the friends who had welcomed her like family two wonderful years ago, by the time the sun dipped behind the hills outside of Steve’s mother’s house and cast the spacious yard and gardens into shadow, Chrissy could barely keep her eyes open.

She dropped down into a chair at one of the round tables set up beneath strings of white lights and watched everyone on the dance floor. She couldn’t help but smile as she saw Lucas catch Max as he spun her back into his arms, her red hair fanning out in a twirl to match the floaty skirt of her dress. At the bar set up on the Harrington’s back patio, her little brother was leaning his chin against a fist, watching with hearts in his eyes while Will was telling him a story, talking animatedly with his hands.

A pair of familiar hands dropped onto the tops of her shoulders, pulling her gaze away from watching Steve manage to dance with Robin, Vickie, and Cannie all at the same time as she looked up and into her favorite pair of brown eyes.

Eddie smiled down at her. “Hey, beautiful.”

Chrissy squished one of his hands between her cheek and shoulder. “Hi.”

He pulled up a chair and dropped down in front of her in one fluid movement and held her hands in his. “Last two weeks catching up with you?”

She nodded and clenched her jaw trying to hide a yawn. Meetings with new suppliers and farmers in Washington, followed by a week-long floral expo in San Francisco had kept her away from home for almost ten days. After a canceled flight and a weather delay, Eddie barely had time to pick her up from the airport that morning before they had to get ready to watch Vickie and Robin tie the knot that afternoon. “But don’t let me be a buzzkill,” she said as Eddie’s thumbs drew absent circles on the backs of her hands. “If you want to stay later—”

He leaned in and brushed his lips against hers. “Are you kidding me?” he asked with a smile as he pulled back. He untangled their hands and pushed one of her curls back behind her ear. “You’ve been running on fumes all day. I’m ready to go home whenever you are.”

She smiled sleepily and kissed him again. “Are you okay to drive?”

He nodded. “I’ll just grab my stuff and meet you back here so we can do the goodbye circuit.”

Chrissy watched him pack up the electric acoustic guitar, amp, and microphone Robin had asked him to bring so he could provide the soundtrack for the wedding itself. He returned, as promised, so they could hug and kiss everyone together before they slipped away.

Eddie had changed out of his suit and into sweatpants and a t-shirt by the time Chrissy got out of the shower and wandered back into the kitchen in her pajamas. She hopped up on the counter while he stood with his head in the freezer. “Did you eat all the ice cream while I was gone?” she asked as Eowyn jumped up beside her.

“I did…” Eddie said slowly, shifting things around in the freezer. “But…I felt bad about it,” he added before he stepped back and closed the freezer door, a quart of Rocky Road in his hand. He set it on the counter beside her hip and gave her a quick kiss. “So, I bought some more yesterday.”

Chrissy smiled. “My hero,” she sighed dreamily. “Speaking of heroes,” she went on. “Did you see how amazing Cannie looked?”

“Nope,” Eddie said immediately with a swift shake of his head.

She rolled her eyes with a giggle. “That’s a shame,” she said. “Because if I ever looked that phenomenal while being enormously pregnant and ten days away from my due date, I would expect everyone to be checking me out.”

He opened the drawer to her right and glanced up with a half-smile. “Okay, she did look good,” he agreed. “Especially since she’s seriously going to have that kid any minute now—”

“I know,” Chrissy nodded with another smile. “Steve broke down and bought a beeper in case she goes into labor while he’s at work.” She bounced her shoulders happily. “It’s so cute.”

“But as far as checking anyone else out,” Eddie continued his rummaging. “My attention span really only lets me focus on the most beautiful woman in the room, so I wasn’t really…ya know…keeping track of who else was there.”

She giggled and bit her lip. “Oh, he’s so smooth,” she commented, pleased when she saw the tips of his ears turn pink. On her other side, Eowyn’s whiskers brushed her arm, drawing her attention away from Eddie while he dug in the drawer for a spoon. She scratched her head and bent to kiss her between the ears. “First we find a bigger apartment,” she told the cat quietly, “and then we’re getting you a little brother.”

Eddie looked up from the cutlery drawer and smiled. “I thought you wanted to get her a boyfriend.”

Chrissy shrugged. “That seems like a lot of pressure to put on both of them to form a romantic connection,” she said. Eddie snorted and shook his head. “And I know everyone loves Faramir, but Éomer is just as cool and either way, we have a matching set.”

He selected a spoon and popped the lid off the carton of ice cream. “Okay,” he agreed, tilting his head to one side thoughtfully. “But what if we bring home a boy cat, name him Éomer, and then Eowyn falls in love with him?” he asked, coming to stand between her legs. “Then what? We can’t encourage an incestuous relationship.”

“Mm,” she nodded as he sank the spoon into the ice cream and took a bite. “Well then, we change that cat’s name to Faramir, and we get a new Éomer. Preferably a kitten so as not to invite a love triangle.”

“You’ve taken us from one cat to three cats in less than a minute,” Eddie said with a smile. “You realize that?”

She smiled again. “I just don’t want Eowyn to be lonely. I want her to have a rich, full life.”

His lips were cold when he kissed her again. “We’re both very lucky to have you looking out for us,” he said softly.

Chrissy let her nose brush against his while she took the spoon from his hand. “Actually, I think I’m the lucky one.” She helped herself to a spoonful of Rocky Road and let it melt slowly on her tongue.

She still had days when it felt wrong to enjoy something so simple as ice cream. Days when guilt and shame would rear their ugly heads and twist her stomach in knots until she didn’t trust herself to take another bite. The first time she realized that the jeans she’d been wearing since high school were two sizes too small, she’d had a full-fledged panic attack in the fitting room.

But Eddie had found her that day and shimmied under the fitting room door to sit with his arms around her until she could breathe again. Telling her she was beautiful. Reminding her that she was healthier now than she ever had been. That he was proud of her for a million reasons that had nothing to do with what size her clothes were.

Eddie always found her. Always brought her back from her bad days. Always made her laugh again. Always reminded her that there was more light in her life now than darkness.

She held the spoon away from her lips like a microphone. She cleared her throat. “So, Eddie Munson,” she said with a grin. “You just successfully played your first solo gig at a lesbian commitment ceremony. What are you gonna do next?”

Eddie smiled as she tipped the spoon back in his direction. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “I’m—uh.” He paused and cleared his throat. “I’m going to ask Chrissy Cunningham to marry me.”

Chrissy blinked and had to stop herself from letting the spoon clatter to the ground. Her heart felt like it jumped somewhere high up in her throat. “You are?”

He nodded. “But, um, to be honest,” he scrunched his face in a wince. “I’m pretty nervous about it.” His hands came to rest on the counter beside her hips. “I’m not sure she’s going to say yes.”

She bit her lip and nodded, fighting the current of emotion rising in her chest. “Well…” she said carefully. “I…happen to have it on good authority that she loves you more than anything in the world…”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” she nodded again. “And she wants to spend the rest of her life with you.”

As if she could want to do anything other than spend the rest of her life with this wonderful man that fate had dropped at her feet when she didn't realize she'd needed him the most. Who had loved her and saved her and helped her save herself a million times since she'd met him. Who let her be silly and made her feel like she could breathe for the first time in her life. 

Eddie’s smile returned—bright and wide enough to deepen the dimples she’d fallen in love with the first time she met him. “So, you think I should go for it?” he asked, still speaking into the spoon like it was a microphone.

Chrissy giggled and nodded, not trusting herself to say anything else with the lump she was fighting in her throat.

He took a deep breath in and took the spoon from her hand, setting it back on the carton of ice cream. He stood up straighter. “Chrissy, will you mar—”

“Yes,” she blurted out as her vision blurred.

He laughed and reached his hand up to hold her cheek. “You sure? You can take some time to think about it—”

She pulled him and cut him off with a kiss that was interrupted when she couldn’t stop smiling. “Shut up,” she laughed softly. “I don’t need to think about it. Yes,” she said again. “I want to marry you, Eddie.”

“Good.” His shoulders dropped as he let out a heavy sigh of relief. “Because I would really like to marry you, too.”

It was later when they’d fallen into bed and Chrissy tugged his shirt over his head that she saw it.

The new tattoo Eddie had added to his collection while she’d been away. A freshly healed, beautiful splash of color among all his black ink tattoos.

A small cluster of purple saxifrage.

Right over his heart.

-fin-