Lover | Richie Tozier

Chapter 6.

Richie snaked through the isles, grabbing small items here and there and tucking them into the inside pockets of his dress shirt.

"Bullshit, Richie, if you told Bowers that you'd be 6 feet under," Stan scoffed, hardly able to keep up with how fast Richie was moving.

Richie shook his head. "Not true. I've got enough charm to talk myself out of it," he hid a small package of M&M's in his back pocket. Stan didn't pay any mind to the fact that Richie was shoplifting. Bill didn't really care, either. He didn't care about much anymore. Not since his brother passed away. Life was too short to care.

Richie stopped in his tracks as he laid his eyes on a familiar pair of high-waisted jeans. His feet planted into the ground, making it impossible for him to move. His sudden halt caused Stan to bump into him, and because of that, Bill bumped into Stan. A human domino effect.

"What the h-h-hell," Bill remarked, leaving Richie to spin around and hush him with the placement of his index finger in the middle of his lips. "𝑆hhhh," he hissed.

Richie turned back in the direction of the girl. She was gone now. He poked his head up over the isles, seeking her out again.

"What the hell are you doing?" Stan whispered.

"That girl," Richie found her again and pointed. "She's the one that bumped into me today. Or, I bumped into her. I don't know, same shit, okay? But she was the one that shut Henry up."

Bill and Stan stood on their tip toes over the isles. They weren't as tall as Richie was and therefore had to increase their elevation to see whatever it was that he was raving on about.

She caught all their stares, checking out a rack of chips while sipping on a cherry red slurpee.

"She is preh-pretty," Bill commented. "H-how come y-you said you didn't kn-know ih-if she was?"

Richie didn't really know why. It had been a long time since he was able to recognize true beauty. Trauma does that to you, he thinks.

"Why are you hiding?" Stan asked. Richie didn't know the answer to that either, so he straightened up his posture and began standing normally again.

She had seen them, she really had. And she had heard them too, but she pretended like she hadn't. The way the three boys hid in the isle watching her like a National Geographic photographer watches an exotic bird added a little sprinkle of comedic relief into her day. Stan recognized this behavior because he was a birdwatcher himself: slow, narrow, and quiet.

Bill pushed Richie's shoulder softly. "S-So, go suh-say something to h-her."

Richie thought for a moment. Should he? It's not like they were friends, after all. She barely knew him. She didn't know any of the Losers. Was bumping into a stranger and fucking around with Henry Bowers together worthy of outside-school talk? And why was he hesitating so much? He was Richie the Trashmouth Tozier, so shouldn't his mouth be trashing?

"Tozier," She spoke first, answering all of his questions. "Hi." Her lips grinned at him, curling into her blushed cheek.

Richies attention fell on the girl standing in front of him. "Hey, how the hell are you? Weird seeing you here. Really weird," he twitted back awkwardly, his voice higher-pitched than usual. He suddenly lacked any support from the bones in his body.

His god awful attempt at pretending like he hadn't been wondering about her all day caused Bill to wince. If Stan had allowed him to, he would've taken a large step in front of the pair and pushed through the doors, running away so he wouldn't have to watch another girl turn away from Richie.

"I'm good," she shrugged, biting her straw through her smiling lips. "Bored is the better term, I guess. I'm just here to pass some time after school. You?" She asked, her eyes reading his anxious body language like her favorite book.

"Nothing, I'm just-" a small package of Razzles suddenly fell out of his shirt and collided with the tile floor.

Stan almost had to turn around at the strength of the second hand embarrassment, his mouth scorning like he'd just bitten into something too hot. Bill's idea didn't seem so bad now.

Elle's expression suddenly turned serious, relaxing every muscle in her face. "Just... shoplifting?"

Richie tried to conjure up an excuse, really hard, but what the hell's a good enough excuse for shoplifting?  My parents left town suddenly and couldn't find a fuck to give to make sure I was fed? That wasn't an excuse, that was the truth.

Before he could muster up a good story (which he was usually very good at doing) she had opened both sides of his overlayed button-up, exposing all that he had hidden inside of it.

"Holy fuck, Richie," she mused tightly. Her eyes scanned over every inch of him. Small packets of candy were tucked away in every place he could find useful and a small bag of chips clung onto his skin by the waistband of his jeans. "What, have you not eaten at all this week? Looks like it."

It was meant to be a joke, but the deep look in Richie's eyes was enough to tell that it was not. It was a dark bed of trauma that laid inside of him.

"Here," she freed the chips from his waistband, taking them into her arms. "Give me everything else."

"Shit," he panicked. The rate of his heart matched new speeds, thudding against his chest. "Please don't rat me out, I swear to god I'm not a bad kid I just..."

"I'm paying for them,"she cut him off. Richie almost couldn't believe the lack of bite she had in her words. It was so incredibly unfamiliar.

His eyes grew wider than they already were behind his large lenses. "You're what?"

Her own eyes spoke of a gentle soul, refusing to let any judgement sift into her appearance. "I said I'm paying for you. Grab whatever you want," she paused. "Whatever legal things you want. I really don't care. It's on me. I have more money in my bag."

Stan and Bill watched in disbelief from the background, amazed a girl wasn't running from Richie's troubled ways right in front of their very eyes.

She took all Richie had given her, walked up to the cash register, and payed for his items without one ambivalent second thought. She handed Richie two convenience store bags and dropped the remaining coins into one of them afterwards. "There. Keep the change."

Richie took them into his sore hands. "Fuck, thanks so much, you didn't have to do that. I know you probably think I'm such a dick," he began. The sincerity coming from his voice was almost heartbreaking. This was much different than the normal Richie Tozier everybody had been talking so much about. There was more emotion in this one - real emotion. "I owe you. Big time."

"You don't owe me anything. Just eat. I'll see you around, Toaster." She turned away and started to perish into the glare of the afternoon sun.

"W-Wait," Bill spoke up. "I didn't catch your name."

Richie answered before she could, watching the girl disappear. "Elle. Her name's Elle."

"At lunch you said you weren't paying enough attention to remember her name," Stan corrected, raising one of his brows.

Or maybe, Richie was paying so much attention that in the end, it felt like he wasn't paying any at all.