𝐅𝐋𝐎𝐖𝐄𝐑𝐒 • Steve Harrington

Chapter 18

( Sunday, February 24th 1985 )

DROPPING Max home yesterday, Julie found out she lived on Cherry Lane, which seemed comical for a girl with red hair, and it saved her the remembering the next day round. She simply turned up at her doorstep with a slim shoebox full of cassettes.

Before she left, she put all her mixes to one side, but she took the lot of her cassette collection: Kate Bush; Missing Persons; Babe Ruth; The Bangles; X; Romeo Void. All of it. Then she drove straight here.

Cherry Lane was a quiet one, even with the Ratt song playing at full blast on the other side of the yellow front door.

She had patiently waited for some sort of response to come of ringing the doorbell, and what came had full eyebrows, a chiselled face, big sweaty arms on full display, a mullet and one dangling silver earring hanging from a left earlobe.

Billy Hargrove.

Anything with a pulse at Hawkins High knew who he was. The new kid from California that guys wanted to be and girls wanted to be with.

Julie had never seen him this up close before, but the sweat drenching his white muscle vest was far from a sight to behold.

The pure hatred on his face dissipated the moment he swung open the door, face to face with a blue-eyed brunette in a striped button down, a tweed waistcoat, denim flares and high brown boots.

His shameless once over her body as he raised his wrist to the upper doorframe, made her raise an eyebrow. He extended his lips into a smirk.

"Hi," he said. There was a rasp to his voice that reminded her of eighty-year-olds that lived a long life of chain smoking.

"Hey," she said awkwardly. "I'm here to see Max."

His widening grin teased his straight pearly teeth. "Who's asking?"

"Julie. I dropped her off here yesterday."

"Julie," he repeated, testing it on his tongue. "That's a pretty name."

"Can you at least try to not make my friend barf? Jeez." Max marched up to the door from behind Billy. "I've got it." She was dressed in a blue ringer shirt and some jeans, her hair in two plaits on either side of her chest like Julie's had been the day before.

Contrastingly, Julie's hair was half-pinned back today instead, falling in waves on her back and on her shoulders.

Billy gave her a final once over before stepping aside, lifting his hands in surrender at either side of his head and walking away.

Max was red hot with embarrassment. "I'm sorry about that, come in."

Julie was led to Max's bedroom under the watchful blue eyes of Billy as he prepared himself to lift the barbell he kept in the living room.

Julie was relieved to close the door behind her. "I didn't know Billy's your brother."

"Not biologically, thank god," Max grouches, making Julie laugh through her nose. "My mom married his dad and now I'm forced to pretend that we share DNA for the rest of my sorry life."

Julie joined her on her double bed, keeping the shoebox close to herself on her lap. "Well, according to Steve's black eye he's pretty charming."

"He told you about that?"

"Yeah. He gave the guy quite the shiner, I had to ask."

Max sighed. "Such a jerk."

"Then let's forget about him and you open this instead." Julie held out the shoebox like it was Pandora's box.