𝐖𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐍. ˢᵗᵉᵛᵉ ʰᵃʳʳⁱⁿᵍᵗᵒⁿ ¹

013

013. 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿, 𝗶𝗻 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝗿.

        𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐈 𝐍𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐎 𝐖𝐀𝐈𝐓. Her motto was always "wait for no one", because sometimes you wait too long and realize that what you're waiting for just isn't coming. That motto started some time ago when she was a teenager, she didn't really know when, but she'd said it so often to her mom, to herself — even to Dustin — and they knew she was serious about it. Lori did things on her own accord. All the time. Whatever it was, she did it how she wanted, even if how she wanted was by the directions of someone else. Whatever appealed to her liking, she used. She knew herself, to a certain extend, but at the same time she knew well that nobody had ever really known who they were.

    So if she waited for nobody, why was she sitting in her own car, early in the morning, waiting for none other than Steve Harrington. She had the keys — she didn't let Steve hold the keys — and she could well on just drive away. But she sat in the passenger seat, waiting with her feet up on the dash, as he pushed open the door of the jewelry shop.

    He had the box in his hand, with the necklace in it, and his other hand shoved into his pocket. He stepped off the curb and walked against the wind to her car, his face scrunched from the cold breeze.

    "Jesus, what took you so long?" Lori said, when he pulled open the driver's door. There was no reason for him to be driving anymore — he'd only driven the way there because Lori fell asleep and he, well, it was his fault they were going anyway. "Did you make conversation with the man at the counter, or something?" she said, looking away.

    He slid into the driver's seat with a huff. "He was really talkative." he said, simply, his voice monotone as he searched for the keys.

    Lori reached for the keys in the pocket of her jacket. "I'm sure he was," she said, not believing it. The keys jingled in her fingers but she didn't pass them to him yet. "You still have the necklace, right? You didn't back out of it."

    He caught her eye, and he stared for a second. "Course' not. It's in the box." he said, with a sigh.

    Lori adverted her eyes down to the little box sitting between them on the center console. She let the keys fall into his hand at that.

    Steve grabbed the keys, twirled them for a moment and then started the engine. There was a grave look on his face, as Lori was observing, his face portraying the same kind of tense that it was when he'd been talking about Nancy on the docks. The engine roared and his hands fell onto the wheel.

    Lori was looking forward as the car reeled backwards, and drove out of the parking spot, down the little hill away from the shop. She watched the shop disappear in her side view mirror, until it was gone and they were on the main road. She looked at the passing buildings, at the few people in town who were awake now— roaming the main street, going to work— and the blurs of falling leaves that obscured the yellow lines on the ground. Her throat was humming a mindless tune for a while, and Steve simply drove, his eyes pinned forward to where they were going.

    When they passed the last building of Evansville, Lori let out a small, barely audible sigh. She was trying not to think about it, but they were heading back to Hawkins. Soon they would be in Hawkins again, and things would be shitty, she would have to dodge the burning questions of why she stole her mother's car in the middle of the night. There was more to it than just the punishment, though — Lori wasn't afraid of punishments — it was rather the fact that Hawkins made her feel stuck. It was a weird place, and there was always something, just... off. She didn't want to go back to being curious every day and hating it.