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ghost-proofbaby · 2 months

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the seasons pass (but you never do) - e.m.

summary: he knew your reputation. he knew you had you way with half of hawkins. it was never going to end well - but that didn't stop him.

warnings: reader is NOT a good person (need to emphasize this), billy hargrove is involved and sort of ooc, smut, oral (fem receiving), a lot of hurt, not a 'happy' ending, reader has severe issues with self-esteem (not in the usual obvious way), very self-sabotaging reader. mentions of reader having adult relationships with multiple male characters. NOT A 'HAPPY' ENDING. minors dni - 18+

pairings: eddie munson x fem!fuckgirl!reader (with mentions of steve x reader, johnathan x reader, and billy x reader.)

wc: 8.4k+

a/n: i cannot emphasize enough - the reader in this fic is very toxic. she is not a good person. this does not end well. also, be wary, as billy is used as the easiest companion who can align with her being a bad person, so she is friends with him. this probably won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it's been a year in the works! thank you to anyone who reads. <3 also, HUGE thank you to my love @hellfire--cult for making that banner for me. i am undeserving of your talents baby.

oh, also, here's a fun playlist to go along with it.

SUMMER, 1988

It was always going to end this way. It’s how it’s supposed to go - you met him, you wanted him, you got him, you left him. There was never any illusions on your part as to what this was. He knew your reputation. He knew the ending. You knew the ending.

It was always going to end this way.

There was no amount of flowers he could have got you, no amount of midnight rendezvous to change this course. It never mattered how his laughter wound your chest tight or how his fingers fit a little too perfectly between yours. You didn’t do long-term relationships, and he always asked for too much from you. You could give him a summer, no more and no less. He knew that, you knew that, all your previous flings knew that. There was only one ending ever in sight for the two of you.

So why does it hurt so much when you catch sight of him around town with her?

Chrissy Cunningham is beautiful. She’s all shades of sunrise pinks, flavors of sweetness that spur stomach aches - the epitome of enchantment and a type of softness you couldn’t compare to. And when you see her arm in arm with him, you can see that beauty of hers painted across him. Her pinks paint roses on his cheeks, her laughter etches dimples into his cheeks you’d only ever seen in the late hours of the night. She makes him happy. She makes him look lovesick. She doesn’t hide him in the darkness, she flaunts him in the light, and he looks devastatingly beautiful without the shadows.

You should be happy for him. It shouldn’t phase you; you didn’t bat an eyelash when Steve Harrington had taken to dating every other girl in the town after your spring with him. You never winced when Johnathan Byers started dating Nancy Wheeler after a flirtatious fall with you. Billy Hargrove had been on the same page as you, ready to brave a chilling winter with you and accept when the ice melted along with the infatuation, returning your winks when you spotted each other with your newest one night stands in shared bars.

But Eddie’s summer stuck to your skin. No amount of showers run cold, no amount of new partners who you won’t allow to spend the night, wash you clean of him. The change in the leaves only amplified the ache left in your chest when August turns to September. The flowers weren’t the only things wilting when September flashes into October.

You miss him terribly, and it’s all your fault.

You let him stick around far longer than you should have. You let his wandering lips slot between yours and you let him sleep at your side from the very first night. When it was all said and done, you were the one that broke every single imaginary rule you had set for yourself, and the blame was yours to carry. Eddie Munson was never going to be a three month memory to wipe away with the steam of your mirror. He’d done it, he’d left his mark. He’d managed to make the streets of Hawkins feel cold and empty in his absence, to make everything dull in comparison to your life before him.

You empty the last of your glass of wine, all bitter and tinged on your tongue, and chuckle internally as you watch Eddie’s hand’s find Chrissy’s hips from across the bar. Go figure.

SPRING, 1987

The Hideout was busy as ever, booming with business on a Saturday night as you reentered the scene. Your ‘date’ for the night was still outside the bar, surely not even entertaining the thought of coming back inside.

He hadn’t taken to you breaking the news that it was over kindly.

“You never let them down easy, do you?” Billy chuckles as he leans against one of the standing tables near the bar. He had seen the look in your eyes when you dragged the nameless boy out the front door; he’d seen it plenty of times before. Starry eyed boy, ever-fleeting girl. They were fools, and they should have noticed your wandering eyes and lack of commitment from the get-go.

“Never,” you smirk back as you approach him. The live band had just finished, the music over the speakers nothing compared to the deafening screams of the guitars that had played, “It’s not my fault the boys in this town never learn their lesson.”

Billy only shrugs and throws back the last of his whiskey, “What did it this time? Did he drop the big L? Maybe he brought you flowers like Harrington did that one time?”

“Oh, God,” you place a hand over your heart dramatically, “Please don’t remind me. Breaking his heart nearly broke my nonexistent one.”

“Yeah, right,” Billy cackles, “Still can’t believe you ever gave the sap a chance. Or what about Byers, hm?”

“Couldn’t break a heart I never had. He always had eyes for Wheeler, that’s what made it fun,” you shrug and grab at a fruity drink that had been abandoned at the table, “To answer your question, he got clingy. All jealous because I was making eyes at the lead singer,” you tip your chin towards the stage that’s now empty and take a sip of the cocktail, “Say, what happened to your date? She looked pretty.”

“You were making eyes at Munson? Doll, I knew you were getting desperate after me, but him?” Billy cuts himself off with a low whistle.

“Shut up,” you take another long sip of the drink. It’s sweeter than your preference, but free alcohol is free alcohol, “Tell me what happened to the blonde you were chatting up.”

“I’m more into redheads.”

“Aw, but it looked like you two were really hitting it off.”

“I had to have three shots before I could stomach her laughing at my jokes.”

You reach over to pinch his cheeks, receiving sharp slaps against your wrists.

“Hot,” you coo before leaning back and ending his attack against your hands, “You know, if we both strike out tonight, we could always go home together.”

“You struck out, the night is still young for me,” Billy grins wickedly and looks around the busy bar for emphasis.

There’s a small commotion at one of the doors to the side of the stage, and you glance over to catch sight of the band that had been playing exiting.

The lead singer, Munson as Billy had referred to him, was just as stunning when taken down from his stage pedestal. His hair had been pulled back into a low bun, his torso once exposed on stage now covered in a faded Judas Priest tour shirt, but his Cheshire smile on his face was just as brilliant without the stage lights. Dimples hidden by the dark bar lighting, plush lips and scruff framing his face.

Billy catches you staring at him.

“Maybe you didn’t strike out,” he hums, “You gonna go for it, hot stuff?”

You smile in return. Something dangerous, something evil yet inviting, “I might. I do need a new play thing for the summer, after all.”

“Careful. I’m sure there’s a line of groupies willing to fight you for the Eddie Munson.”

Billy had been mocking you with a shrill voice, but he had been wrong.

There was no line of girls for you to compete with as you approached Eddie. And if there was, they wouldn’t have stood a chance. From the moment you had smiled at him, uttering your name into Eddie’s ears over the bass of the music, placing a careful hand on his shoulder and telling him how much you just adored his music, he had been hooked. You had him in your grasp from the start.

And maybe Billy knew that as he flashed you a sly grin over a redhead’s shoulder as you dragged Eddie behind you later that night, heading for the restrooms that patrons notably didn’t use.

It was your lipstick smeared over Eddie’s neck that night, it was your name falling from his lips as you pressed him against a stall wall, it was your hair that he tangled his hands in as you sat pretty on your knees before him, it was your nails digging into his jean-clad thighs as he fucked your mouth. No, other girls never would have stood a chance.

By the end of that night, you hadn’t even cum, but you thought nothing of it, still smug that you’d found yourself a new supposed victim. You’d never considered which one of you truly held the match, which one of you might bleed gasoline rather than crimson blood.

All that you considered was the fact that you’d wanted Eddie, and you’d got him, just as it always went.

That was only the first night.

SUMMER, 1987

You fall for him in the summer. You convince yourself you’re in control still, but it’s fruitless - you’d lost control the moment you’d tasted him on that dizzy spring night rather than waiting for the arrival of summer’s heat.

“Come over.”

Two simple words, yet the moment you’d spoken them over the line, Eddie had wasted no time to speed his way across town for your apartment. He was officially at your beck and call. You said the word, and he was at your dispense.

It was the fastest he’d ever arrived at your doorstep, rapping his knuckles against familiar rosewood and listening to the familiar weight of your footsteps approaching the door.

“Hey, you,” you sigh softly once you catch sight of him in your porchlight. The creatures of summer buzz as background noise as you drink him in. Same wild curls, same deviant smirk. There looks to be new rips in his black jeans, and his shirt is wrinkled, but none of that shatters the dreamy image of him to you.

You still want him just as badly as you had the first night.

“Sorry I took so long,” he teases, leaning into the doorframe you rest your hip against, “Traffic, you know.”

“Oh, of course. It’s just terrible this time of year,” you play along. You both know he’d made the fifteen minute drive in under ten minutes. But there’s something in the warm air, something electric and fluttering and addictive and palpable. You’re sure if you were to rest your hand flirtatiously against his chest as you normally did with your rotation of partners, that he’d burn you.

Something new. You tell yourself it’s just the excitement of a fresh Summer plaything, and you ignore the voice that whispers with the reminder that this started in the Spring.

“You gonna let me in?” he nods in the direction of your apartment behind you, bathed in a soft yellow from the dusk and the lamp on the table beside your couch.

You bring a hand to your chin and tap a finger mockingly, “Hm, I don’t know. Should I?”

“You should,” he leans even closer.

“I might need convincing.”

His breath washes over your cheek, so gentle you could have mistaken it for the summer breeze. You can smell the spice of his cologne, the stubborn smoke from his last cigarette. It makes your head spin.

“Convincing, you say?” he murmurs as his lips graze your earlobe, “I’ve been known to be convincing.”

This was something you enjoyed about him. He wasn’t like other boys - he didn’t fall to your feet and praise the ground you stood on, not directly. He didn’t follow you like a lost puppy. He took the time to dance with you, to entertain you with banter and to enrapture you with the chase. Maybe that’s why Spring and Summer felt the same when it came to him.

“I call bullshit,” you laugh breathlessly as his lips connect with your neck, making a trail of pecks until he reaches the bare skin of your shoulder. “You still haven’t convinced me to listen to Metallica.”

“We’ll get there, baby,” he whispers against your skin as his fingers sneak beneath the strap of your tank top, “Just be patient.”

The pet name strikes a kink in your armor, and in an instant, your hands are on his shoulders and dragging him into the living room, barely remembering to slam the door shut behind him.

You never let them call you nicknames normally. Billy had been the only exception.

But when he calls you baby, something blooms in your chest. And it’s vines and thorns alike twist and prick your gut, deflating your better judgment as the two of you are a mess of clumsy limbs that can’t seem to navigate your hallway fast enough. You can’t seem to get him to your bed fast enough.

“Off,” he demands against your lips when you finally have him sitting on your comforter, thighs straddling his as his hands tug at the tank top’s hem.

“What happened to patience?” you tease, but you’re already complying, shucking off the fabric and exposing yourself to him. You’d foregone a bra - it was too hot in Hawkins this time of year.

He doesn’t offer you an answer, hardly taking the time to suck in a deep breath before his mouth wraps around one of your peaked nipples and his large hand spans across your back to press you as close to him as he can get you. You’re already moaning too loudly, sure to receive noise complaints from the neighbors tomorrow. But you’re not thinking about the neighbors or tomorrow, you can only focus on his tongue and lips, working soft magic over your body as he twists the two of you so that he’s hovering over you.

“Fuck,” you blissfully breathe out, fingertips raking through the roots of his curls. His mouth has moved on to your other breast, leaving blooming petals of bruises in its wake.

Another thing you’d never allow to happen with any of the other boys.

No marks. A simple rule. A forgotten rule when it came to Eddie.

“You like that?” he chuckles as he places a final chaste kiss to your chest, lifting his head and staring up at you with his bambi eyes. He had the kind of eyes you could get lost in, wander and wade through for hours if given the chance. Shadows of brown and honey intertwining, beckoning to you with a promise of the adoration you seeked out.

You do like that. As a matter of fact, you love it.

“I like it better when your mouth is busy, rockstar,” you say as if you wouldn’t listen to him talk for hours, as if you hadn’t listened to him speak about nonsense as the time passed the two of you by.

He takes his cue, and he does as you ask. He traces roadmaps down your stomach, across your thighs and hips, not uttering a single word until he’s pulled away your cotton shorts and lace underwear.

When he’s face to face with your heat, he finally speaks again.

“Beautiful.”

It’s just a word. If any of your previous flings had spoken it, you’d smack them away and declare the moment over. In fact, you’d done just that with your autumn boy from last year. You weren’t here to be called beautiful, to be held carefully or to be praised as you let them take you however they pleased. You were here to get one thing and one thing only - your own pleasure.

Your back still arches when he says the word, your vines still crack your ribs just as they had reacted to the utterance of baby.

The thorns prickle beneath your skin when he makes you cum with his tongue once, twice, thrice too many times. When he pulls your body to his, when you allow him to forego the protection of a condom and you let him sigh contentedly into your mouth when he slides in, it all pierces you the same.

And when your voice has grown hoarse from chanting his name and your lips have gone chapped from kissing him desperately, you break your final damning rule.

“Stay with me?”

The plea comes out soft and heavy as your head rests against his chest. Even with your window open, the night breeze drifting in, the heat is stifling. It’s too warm to stay pressed so closely together, but it doesn’t stop you from clinging your body to his.

He doesn’t hesitate in his reply, “Of course.”

The two of you sink further into your sheets and each other. It wasn’t the first time Eddie Munson spent the night in your bed, and it surely wouldn’t be the last.

AUTUMN, 1987

“You like him more than you liked the others.”

It’s not a question - it’s a fact secured in concrete that falls from Billy’s lips as the two of you lean against the brick exterior of the Hideout. A cigarette is half-gone and held limply between his lips, yours freshly lit and clung to tightly between white knuckles.

“I don’t like him,” you scoff, “He’s a good fuck.”

You weren’t here on your normal business, scoping for another warm body to join you in your bed for the night. Eddie’s band, Corroded Coffin, was performing one of their weekly shows.

“Right. A good enough fuck to live to see the fall,” Billy presses, raising his eyebrows at you as he takes another drag and let’s the whisps of white smoke carry off into the cool night.

You’d just been striking out. That’s what you had told yourself. It was bound to happen eventually; you’d hit a dry streak, and you’d have to eventually find a repeat offender. Eddie was just that for you. Someone easy to fall back on. It didn’t hurt that you also enjoyed his company, especially when he’d swing you around in your kitchen while the two of you made dinner in your apartment or when he’d let you cuddle into his neck during the scary movie marathons you’d began to take part in with Halloween now looming around the corner.

“I haven’t seen you getting lucky,” you snap, a sudden defensiveness taking over. A lie, of course. You hadn’t frequented the bar enough lately to even know the last time your former fling had gotten laid.

Billy throws up his hands as he discards the butt of his cigarette, “Hey now, don’t get so feisty, doll. It’s okay to admit you’re going soft.”

Soft. Soft like Eddie’s hands when he pulled your hips against his night after night. Soft like Eddie’s eyes when he watched you in the shower during the mornings after, quick to swipe away any shampoo that drips down your forehead and dangerously close to your own eyes as you wash your hair. Soft like your voice every time you asked him to stay, over and over, never learning your lesson.

“I’m not going soft,” is all you say as you put out the cigarette, not even half-finished, and move to go back inside.

You’re not having this conversation. There’s nothing more to dissect. You weren’t going soft and you couldn’t like Eddie, it wasn’t in your nature.

It’s a mantra you repeat to yourself as you take in the sight of him still setting up the stage. You catch his eye and he grins at you, and you remind yourself you’re not soft. No, whatever this feeling is, it’s not soft. It is angry and loud, it is demanding and sharp. It is copper on your tongue and it is raging storm clouds in your mind. It is the opposite of everything he has been to you; it is every contrast possible to the way he treats you.

He treats you like a human being. You’re not a prize, you’re not an idol – you’re just a person, and sometimes, he treats you as if that’s the greatest thing you could possibly be.

When the show is over and rounds have been bought for the band, he comes home with you. He staggers on his feet and you know he’s had too much whiskey for his own good. Normally, any guy this drunk would be told to piss off.

He’s not any guy. He’s Eddie.

And so you take his drunken state in strides. You let his body lean into you as you guide him up the steps to your front door, you only smile when he gets handsy, you offer weak laughter at his terrible jokes.

“You only want me for my body,” he teases you between kisses when you hook your fingers into his jean’s belt loops to keep him close and upright, “Don’t you?”

This is the part where you tell him yes. You’re supposed to tell him he’s nothing more than a cure for the looming loneliness.

You shake your head.

“I’m not, but I can’t ride your personality, can I?” your fingers retract from the loops, and trace their way up his chest, memorizing the muscles beneath the t-shirt. It’s too faded to see the band logo once advertised.

“You could try,” he sways, and your wandering fingers curl into fists into the cotton material, “P-Probably be pretty hard, though. Just like me.”

He takes one of your hands and places it over the bulge in his jeans.

If he were any other guy, you’d play into it, because if he were any other guy, you’d be expecting to get something out of this night for your own selfish needs.

“Not so fast, rockstar,” you bring your hand back up to his chest as he hiccups, brows furrowed at your subtle rejection, “Let’s get you inside, yeah?”

It’s an uphill battle of gangly limbs and stumbling steps. He falls against your hallway walls more times than you can count as you guide him to your bedroom and allow him to splay out on the mattress. The laces of his combat boots are impossibly knotted, but you win the war in the end and tug them off of him. He wiggles his toes within his socks, and watches you with half-lidded eyes.

“This is the part where you try to ride my personality, right?” he tempts you, the wiggling in his toes flowing up to his eyebrows, eyes alight with mischief.

Your hand is gentle as you grab his ankle, exposed from jeans that had ridden up into scrunched material around the bottom of his calf. “Right. Let me get you some water first.”

You leave him to rush to the kitchen, gathering the glass of water you’d promised along with a bottle of painkillers from your medicine cabinet. For a moment, you take in the silence and lean your palms onto the cold kitchen counter.

Five months. Two months too long, technically, if you were comparing it all to your track record. He’d seen the eggshell white walls of your apartment more than your own mother, more than your closest friends. At this point, even on your most lonesome nights, you found yourself leaving an Eddie-sized space on the sheets beside you. One of your pillows now permanently smelt like him. There was a mug in your cabinet reserved for him and his ridiculously sweet coffee preference. You’d bought his favorite brand of cigarettes just last week, far stronger than your preferred menthols, and you’d found one of his socks discarded in your dirty laundry.

No, this wasn’t soft. It couldn’t be.

When you finally return to your room, he’s already asleep. You still leave the water and the pills on the bedside table for the next morning, when he’d need them. You try not to think too hard about the way that even in his drunken slumber, he’s left a perfectly you-sized space beside him, arm thrown out perfectly so that you can curl into him once you’ve brushed your teeth and dressed down into pajamas.

The last thing you remember before you fall asleep against him is the way your soft hand grazes over his stomach in soothing circles, and the way your brain softly whispers in the hope of his hangover not being too cruel to him come morning light.

WINTER, 1987

“Eddie! Stop it!” you squeal when he nearly takes you down with him as his back connects with the polished ice beneath the two of you.

Ice skating wasn’t the best idea for two people who were notoriously uncoordinated. But he’d asked you to come with him, and you’d put up little resistance.

“Ow, fuck,” he groans, still laying flat on his back with his eyes squeeze shut, legs spread wide as you wobble on your skates, “That fucking hurts.”

“I bet it does,” you nearly giggle, childish with your rosey cheeks and pink-tipped nose. Your smile is infectious once he opens his eyes and catches sight of you fighting back your laughter.

It was the first time the two of you had ever gone out before dark with each other. Although, you were sure by the time you two had finished your goofing off inside the indoor ice rink, it’d be night.

“Oh yeah,” he drawls, struggling to lift himself onto his elbows, “Laugh it up, chuckles. Don’t think I’ve forgotten your first fifty falls.”

“Fifty?” you squeak, forcing faux offense, “I only fell twice, thank you very much.”

It takes a bit for him to finally find his footing once more, plenty of hesitant and awkward movements to simply stand up right before you. Once you’re nearly face to face again, he’s pouting. “Kiss it better?”

Your feet shuffle beneath you, struggling to keep your balance. Your hands fly out and grab onto one of his forearms for balance, “Where’s it hurt?”

“Right here,” his free hand lifts to point to his lips, accentuating his pout further.

“Funny,” you muse, “I don’t recall you falling on your face - this time.”

He huffs as you begin to lose your balance again, one of your hands slipping down his wrist until your fingers are intertwined to the best of your abilities given the angle. His hand is freezing from the ice. Even despite his teasing, he’s quick to work with you, keeping the two of you standing straight with ever-shuffling feet.

“Residual pains or whatever they call them,” he waves off, tapping his lips again to make a point. You roll your eyes, but you’re still quick to lean forward and peck him.

“That’s all?” he whines, already moving in for another kiss.

Any onlooker would assume it’s a date. But it couldn’t be - you didn’t do dates. It was two friends, two acquaintances really, hanging out for the sake of fun. Just as you fell back on Eddie when your nights grew forlorn, he had seeked you out for comfort on his isolating days. It was just another perk of your arrangement.

An arrangement that had dragged on for eight long months.

“You’re greedy,” you mumble against his lips as he tries to deepen the kiss and you deny him.

“Of course I’m greedy,” he replies, nipping at your bottom lip playfully, “Can you blame a guy when it comes to you?”

You couldn’t, you really couldn’t. You’d had your fair share of possessive types in the past, the kind that felt the need to always claim you as your own. And you would have found it hot, too, if it didn’t feel like they reduced you down to nothing more than some trophy to parade around town.

Eddie didn’t do that. He was still greedy, he had still gotten daring with marking you as his own as of late, but he never reduced you. He never forced you to shrivel in size, never tried to compact you into the box he needed you in. He took you as you were.

You were enough for him. For the first time in a very long time, you were enough.

If you thought about it too long, you would have become dizzy out there on the ice with Eddie. So you don’t think about it. You indulge yourself in banter and echoing laughter, in the scolding looks from nearby parents when one of you makes a crude joke loud enough for their children to hear. You claim your indulging him with the incessant kisses, but you know deep down they’re also for you. To feel his lips on yours. To feel his hands on your hips. To feel his fingers between yours.

To feel like enough.

You’re both still giddy when you approach the counter after several hours have passed, dropping your rented skates on the counter as you glance to the arcade filled with patrons. Glowing lights and trilling noises emit from the area, tangling with giggling that you can’t quite place as coming from there or the ice. It’s loud enough that Eddie has to lean in closer to the teenager working the cash register.

He insisted on paying. You’d tried to fight him on it, but he insisted it was his treat.

It’s during this momentary separation, in which your worlds’ briefly stop revolving around each other, that you spot him. He must have been here for as long as you and Eddie had been, and you must have just been too wrapped up in enough to have noticed him sooner.

Just as you see him, he sees you. Just as you prepare to turn on heel, to return to hiding into Eddie’s enough, he’s calling your name.

It’s loud. It mingles with the sounds already coming from the atmosphere. Eddie doesn’t hear him, but you do.

“Steve,” you try to greet him with a friendly tone through your clenched teeth, taking a few steps further away from Eddie, away from enough and blissful delusion, “I haven’t seen you in forever.”

“Yeah,” he looks as if he’s seen a ghost as he approaches you, “Yeah, not since, uh- well, you know.”

Not since the night you’d officially cut all ties with him, somewhere between Jonathan and Billy. You’d broken his heart. You’d nearly broken your own.

Your lips are pressed into a tight lip smile as you try to redirect the conversation, “How’ve you been?”

“Good! I’ve- uh, yeah, good. You?”

I’ve been on a downward spiral of breaking every single rule that I have spent my entire life curating for my dating life, and I know you’re aware of this by the way you just looked at Eddie over my shoulder, and the way your brow is furrowing, and I get it. I get it. I fucked up.

“I’ve been alright,” you force your jaw to relax, you force a kind and shy smile. It’s almost akin to the ones you’d originally flash him to get him in your grasp, “How’s Nancy?”

Nancy Wheeler. After you left Steve the first time, letting whatever situationship that had begun just fizzle out, he’d ran into her arms. From the get go with Jonathan, you’d always known you were a placeholder for her. Even Billy had made a damn pass at her once you guys gave up at spring’s dawn; he’d claimed it might as well be a tradition now, only laughing as Nancy shot him down as expected.

Nancy Wheeler was everything you weren’t. She could promise these men security, stability, commitment, a future. She didn’t hide them. They weren’t dirty secrets forced to only wander into her arms late at night, they weren’t kicked out at the end of each night once she’d had their way with them.

Nancy probably never had her way with men, you realized, more likely letting them have their way with her.

“We broke up,” Again. He forgets to add the again.

They’d gotten together after that first time, been together while you had fun with Jonathan, broken up the moment you were finished with Jonathan and he could go to where he belonged – with Nancy.

Of course, when Jonathan chose a different university to go to, somewhere far away from Nancy, those two had broken up. Steve had swooped in again. It was a never ending headache of small town gossip you had grown tired of hearing about.

“I’m sorry,” you aren’t really, “That’s… forget I’m asked,” you’d feel worse if you hadn’t seen the girl waiting to the side for Steve. His date, no doubt.

“No worries, it’s been a while since it happened anyways,” he shrugs it off, but you can still see the hurt in his eyes.

He’d once called you drunkenly, going off on how he was going on all these dates trying to find you or Nancy again, how none of them were you or Nancy. Which, at the time, just irritated you because Steve, why do you still have my number? But now? Now, you almost get it. You almost understand the pain of searching for a familiar face in the eyes of strangers because any time you had gone to your usual haunts these last seven months, you found yourself searching crowds for wild, messy curls and warm brown eyes. For shades of honey and the scent of tobacco drowned out by cheap cologne.

You hadn’t been striking out anymore, the realization hits clear as day. It’s not even that you were being as picky as you normally were – none of the guys were Eddie. None of them had freckles below their right eyes that made your breath catch, none of them had the same calluses along their fingers from years of guitar practice. None of them had the same boyish grin that shone through the dark of your room at two in the morning, leaving you with no choice but to let him stay. They weren’t Eddie.

“You like him more than you liked the others,” Billy’s voice reverberates from the back of your mind.

The truth seeps into your bones like ash and flames, a fever burning you from the inside out.

Steve only fans the flames when he nods over your shoulder at Eddie, “So, are you and Munson a thing now?”

Flames. Hot coals in the back of your throat, lively embers trailing down your spine. You’re watching the entirety of who you had worked so hard to become over the years bursting into flames.

“What?” you whisper, not realizing Eddie had finished paying behind you, “No. No, we- no. We aren’t anything. We’re just… we’re just friends.”

Even the word friends whispers away into smoke, choking you up.

“Friends? Looks like you two were on a date, like he’s your boyfriend or something.”

“Well, we’re not. He’s not.”

Steve hardly buys it, but when Eddie joins your side once more, you don’t even offer him a glimmer of a farewell. You grab the wrist of your friend, your not boyfriend, and you high tail out of there. Still choked up, still running, still reeling.

It’s still light when you leave the building and your hand drops from Eddie’s. You’ll both pretend the cold is from the weather, and not the distance you put between him and yourself.

And if he heard your conversation with Steve, he doesn’t bring it up. Not that night, at least.

SPRING, 1988

“I can’t do this anymore.”

You got him in the spring – it makes sense that you lose him in the spring.

“What do you mean?” you play dumb, painfully coy as you continue to rinse the dishes. Plural. Dishes that the two of you had just dirtied through a painfully tense dinner together. In your apartment, at the counter of your tiny kitchen, knees not even so much as brushing.

“This,” something has broken inside of him. Snapped, shattered, splintered. “It’s been a year, and I keep telling myself that you’ll come around, but-”

“Come around?” you cut him off with a laugh, one that stabs not only through his chest but your own. A double-edged dagger that has been sharpening itself for a year now, “Come around to what, Eddie?”

He hadn’t expected the way you lash out, the cold storm that you had been consumed by since the winter night where Steve had looked at you like something had changed in you. As if you had finally gotten better, as if you had had something sour in you all along and Eddie had managed to magically drain you of it.

He couldn’t. He never was going to be able to.

“Me?” he’s not sure of himself, voice wavering and eyes sparkling as they widen with tears of frustration, “Us? Fuck, I don’t know, but I can’t keep-”

“You thought I would come around to the idea of us?” your voice is cool and collected, nothing like his, as you finally turn around, “What, like we’re dating?”

You were. A year of this back and forth, and you were too stubborn to just accept it. It was your downfall. It was the bleeding wound for not only yourself, but for Eddie – for this, as he had called it.

You like him more than you liked the others.

So, are you and Munson a thing now?

A good enough fuck to live to see the fall.

You were never going to be enough for him. In your lifetime, you’d always known what you were good for, and it wasn’t for boys like Eddie Munson.

“What else do you call this?” he motions vaguely to the dishes, to the fridge that holds his takeout, to the hallway he had tumbled down more times than you could count, “We’re more than just good friends, sweetheart.”

“We both knew what we were getting into.”

“Did we?”

Come over.

I might need convincing.

Stay with me?

You should have been smarter. You should have been more careful.

It’s a brutal fight, and it’s the everything you had been waiting for. The illusion of softness finally breaks. Whispered words of care have become sharp insults, all the small moments where you had made mistake after mistake with him are now weapons. If the dated walls of your kitchen could speak, the tiles would murmur of all the blood being spelt as brutal defenses are sent back and forth from both sides.

“I need more.”

“I can’t give you more.”

“You could, you just don’t want to.”

“What’s the difference, Eddie?”

You were never going to be enough. You should have seen that, clear as daylight from the beginning. You were something rotten from the moment he met you, and he had just been too stupid to recognize all the decay.

Of course I’m greedy. Can you blame a guy when it comes to you?

Why couldn’t he just accept what you were willing to give? Why did he have to push, to persist, to insist upon you laying more of yourself out for him? You had already dissected yourself beyond repair, made the cuts that would never heal and bared your innards in a way that you never should have to begin with.

Stay with me?

You wish you were still just lazing in between your sheets with him. A you-shaped space at his side, a pillow on his side of your bed. You wish he had never picked a fight he had every right to rage. You wish, you wish, you wish.

Stay with me?

And then you lose, you lose, you lose.

“You were just some idiot who thought you could change me,” you seethe at some point, aiming damning arrows for every exposed bone he’d ever given you a glimpse of, “What made you think that? Hm? Was it when I paraded you around the town, calling you my boyfriend? Or was it every time I told you just how much I loved you? Was it when I fell to my knees and kissed the ground you walked on, Eddie? Go ahead. Tell me.”

You were just rubbing salt in the wound at that point. Saying everything he had wished for over the last year, that you never gave him.

You never called him your boyfriend. You never told him you loved him. You never did, and you never would.

When it’s all said and done, it’s everything you had expected. A screaming match that the neighbors will complain about the same as they’d complained about every late-night rendezvous between the two of you. An effective cutting of ties that you’d been anticipating for a long twelve months. If it were the movies, maybe the fight would have been more effective. Something that would delve into the lead up of love confessions, an ending where you wind up in his arms and he’s whispering every which way that he still cares for you, even with your teeth bared and your sharpest knives poised.

It’s not a movie. It’s everything you expected.

But you hadn’t been prepared for the ache. When your own vicious words left a taste of ash on the tongue, when his eyes flashing with something harsher and less caring for you left a hollow ache that rang in your ears longer than his voice did. You didn’t think that you’d feel the cutting of ties. Every nerve ending in your body feels that jagged edge that saws through all that you two had tried to build over the last year, but it’s far too little and far too late. The foundation was cracked – you were damaged.

You lose him. The world doesn’t end; the night carries on even as he grabs his leather jacket and leaves behind the sock in your dirty laundry. And when he exits out your front door, hiding away any tears that might have slipped free, just as you were, you feel that unexpected whisper inside of you.

Stay with me?

You sleep alone that night. For once, the smell of tobacco and his shampoo makes you throw the pillow that was once his across the room.

SUMMER, 1988

She deserves him.

Chrissy Cunningham deserved Eddie Munson far more than you ever had. She was enough.

Summer can stain, but it can’t erase. Even in the months of aftermath, even for every tear shed in private and wave of yearning that would drown you in the dead of night, you never changed. It had hardly taken weeks after Eddie had walked out of your life for you to return to your old ways, going back to the bars and seeking out the latest warm blood to lose yourself in that night.

It didn’t matter that you compared each and every single smile to Eddie’s. It didn’t matter that you’d have to grip your sheets until your knuckles turned bloody to avoid touching the strangers hovering over you, hoping to feel familiar skin and a comfort long lost instead of whatever poor soul you’d dragged home with you.

He deserves a love full of life. A love that breathes him in and doesn’t drain him. One that could let him feel the sun on his skin rather than hiding him away in the night.

A love that doesn’t tick away each passing season, because it’s a love that doesn’t have a ticking time bomb attached to it.

“Never thought I’d see the day Cunningham got her claws in Munson,” Billy mumbles around a cigarette at your side.

He didn’t tease about Eddie those first few months. One look at you, and he had known.

“She didn’t get her claws in him,” you say, monotonous as you reach for your drink once more, “I’m happy for him. They look happy.”

They do. They really, really do. A love that burns like summer, and has never been touched by a dying autumn or cruel winter. The type of happiness Eddie would have never been able to find from you, try as he had.

Billy taps some of his ash into the tray at the center of your shared table. Surely, he had better things to do, but he stays. It was probably entertaining, watching you pine and regret for once in your life, “Looks can be deceiving.”

“Their’s don’t. I bet you that there’s a ring on her finger before next summer.”

You don’t want to imagine the pain that would ignite in you. That’s the type of emotion that would far surpass any regret you currently feel. But you seem to enjoy torturing yourself, eyes still zeroing in on her left hand, as if you already see the glint of whatever diamond Eddie would seek out for his worthy lover.

“And I bet if that happens, you skip town within twenty four hours of finding out.”

He’s right. Nothing was truly tying you to this sleepy town, and the reminder of your worst mistake, your most terrible slip up of all time, would easily send you running with your tail between your legs.

“Probably,” you sigh, no longer putting up a front. You hadn’t even tried batting your lashes at a single man since Eddie and Chrissy had arrived at the bar. You were striking out tonight, on your own volition, “Maybe I’d move to California. I hear the men there are easy enough.”

“They are,” Billy laughs, throwing his head back. It’s enough to garner attention across the bar, numerous girls being enticed as if he might be a siren beckoning to them, “Take it from one. The girls on the west coast are prettier, though, so you can’t blame ‘em.”

The girls on the west coast probably resemble Chrissy. Golden skin, golden auras, golden light. Honeyed words and the sweetest of blushes across coy cheeks. They probably embody every sunset and sunrise simultaneously, and you can only stand there green with envy.

“You are awfully easy,” is all you can offer in reply. The banter has started to fall flat since Eddie. You’re no fun – hardly taking any bait that Billy will hand over so generously.

Maybe, if you had tried a little harder, you could have been one of those girls. Clear blue skies, not a sight of the storm clouds that you still let consume you.

Maybe Eddie would have stayed if you had tried a little harder.

There’s no real hope for it now. You’re left to being nothing more than a conglomeration of pathetic pity parties and the taste of cheap beer these days, hardly worth the chase once the boys get close enough to see the rot. You’ve stopped trying so hard to cover it up; you’d ripped yourself open for Eddie, and had never found a way to properly suture yourself back together so that anyone new might not get a glimpse of all the bad. They could spot it from a mile away these days.

It doesn’t help that you no longer try to cover it all up with overly sweet perfumes or sickly sweet pickup lines.

Billy’s laughter didn’t just draw the attention of the girls around the bars. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see a pair of whiskey eyes find the two of you, locking on you far too easily to have not known.

You notice, because of course you notice him. But when Billy notices, it catches you a bit more off guard.

“Like I said,” he drawls, and you nearly panic when he grabs his drink off to leave you behind, “Looks can be deceiving, hot stuff.”

Your eyes find Eddie’s quickly, not listening to a word that Billy is saying. Chrissy is saying something, something surely important, but her boy isn’t listening. Her boy, her conduit for all her sunshine, is staring right at you and has no plans on looking away any time soon.

He’s seen the rot up close and personal. He’s the one who’d handed the treacherous scalpel over to your shaking hands, encouraging you to open up in all the ways you never wished to.

You shouldn’t do it. You’ll regret it. You really shouldn’t do this.

“They never learn their lesson, do they?”

You don’t know who Billy is talking about.

Eddie, who almost seems to be under your spell, taking a slow slip of his neat whiskey, staring you down as if he’s brimming with bad ideas that he hopes you can hear from across the room.

Or you, who should know better. You hurt him, you broke his heart, you don’t deserve him. And yet, you’re selfish as ever, mind reeling with possibilities of how you wish the night would end.

You can hear the bad ideas. Clear as day. Especially when Eddie only breaks eye contact long enough to lean in to Chrissy and whisper something that effectively dismisses her, leaving Eddie all alone and in your gaze.

“They don’t,” you say, throwing back the last of your drink.

You know where he’s heading. And you know where you’re heading. A moth to his flame, going only where he will allow you. You’re a ghost of the menace you once were. The other men, the other bodies that kept you warm these nights; none of them were him. You didn’t want them. You weren’t soft with them. They never stayed, because you never asked them to. There was only one man in this bar, in this entire damn bar, that would ever fill the hole left behind in you after Eddie’s summer. Eddie’s spring, Eddie’s autumn, Eddie’s winter.

And he was walking outside the bar, almost tauntingly as he sauntered through the doors, beckoning you with each and every step.

Perhaps this time, Eddie’s the one who needs a summer plaything.

“This isn’t going to end well,” Billy taunts you as he takes a few steps back, knowing damn well as to what was about to happen. Bad ideas, downright terrible ideas.

Eddie is playing the same game as you were once a master in. It dawns on you; Chrissy Cunningham wasn’t his newest love. She wasn’t his sweetest sunrise or gentle spring. She was a passing wind, just like all the boys you’d enticed before him. She’s already moved along, pretty hand resting on the shoulder of a new beau and not even paying any mind to Eddie’s absence. She may deserve him, but she doesn’t have him.

Nor do you. The roles have been switched, and you should know better. He’s leading you to an inevitable death, whether it be a little one or something of catastrophic value. He is leading you right into your own demise. Just as you used to do with every new victim you’d set your mark on before him, before your summer, before it all.

All your old tricks, turned to weapons against you.

And you’ll let him. A moth to his flame. A dog at his window sill.

“It never does.”

Stay with me?

Maybe, this time, you’ll be the one staying. If only for the night, and if only for Eddie.

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