Alexithymia | STRANGER THINGS [ON HOLD UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE]

seventeen | suzie, do you copy?

With a shake of her head, Valerie said, "I can't do this."

With a sigh and a shake of his own head, Matthew asked her, "What the hell are you talking about?"

Valerie replied, "What the hell do you think I'm talking about?"

With a groan, he said to her, "I swear to God, Val, if this is about who I think it's about—"

After grabbing his arms and repeatedly shaking him around from where he stood in front of her, Valerie told him, "I can't fucking do this, Matt. I-I mean, what if I say the wrong thing? What if y-you know, I end up chasing this person away? What if I embarrass myself in front of this person?" When he had only raised an eyebrow at her, she said, "I-I can't do this. I need you to do it for me."

With a sigh, he said to her, "Jesus Christ, Val. Just grow some balls and go up there and talk to 'em."

With her eyebrows furrowed, Valerie asked him with a shake of her head, "But-But how could I grow some balls if I don't even have any balls to grow?"

With a roll of his eyes, he told her, "It's a figure of speech, Val."

In response to his words, Valerie simply sighed to herself before she went to say something more to him, only to stop when Matthew had grabbed her hands and lightly removed them from his shoulders and then forcefully turned her around to have her back facing him.

While Matthew led her through the crowds of people without much of a care about whose shoulders he hit, Valerie did what she could to try and break free of the grip that he had on her.

And while she did that, Matthew told her, "We're gonna be juniors soon as summer's over, and I think now is the perfect time to get over this fear of yours and go up to this person and actually talk to 'em instead of just simply staring at 'em and looking like you're gonna have a fucking stroke."

In turn, she asked him, "What about you? I've seen what you're like with the person you like. What's stopping you from going up to the person you have a crush on?"

With a shake of his head, he replied, "We're not talking about me. We're talking about you and the fact that you can't fucking talk to this person without tripping over your words and looking like your eyes are gonna fall out of your head because of just how wide they get once you see 'em."

It wasn't until they were standing inside of one of the stores inside of the Starcourt Mall and Valerie could finally see the person that had caught her interest after what happened with El and the Demo-dogs and the Upside Down that she said, "I can't do this, Matt. Don't make me do this."

It was then that Matthew quietly said to her, "Hey, you can do this, okay?" While she simply shook her head at his words, he quietly told her, "You are Valerie Mayfield, and you are honestly the strongest person I have ever met. So, believe me when I tell you that you've got this."