Lover | Richie Tozier

Chapter 24.

"What the fuck is wrong with you, Richie? You've said a total of 5 words since we left school. Is there something wrong?" Stan looked peculiarly at his friend, who had been close to mute since they met up per usual. "Are you mad at me or something?"

Mad that you were right, yeah. Richie shook his head tensely, anger building another concrete wall around his heart. "What? No. No reason to be mad at anything, ever, cause I don't get mad, right? Everything is a fucking joke to me?" He spat profusely.

"Wuh-What the hell, Rih-Richie. What's your problem?" Bill uttered, stopping his bike.

"Nothing!" Richie snapped, filling himself to the brim with all of the tragedies that had happened to him in the past week: his parents leaving again, his ass getting kicked in by Bowers, hitting Stan on accident, and now the fact he'd become an outsider once again. He had taken the bait and believed that for once, someone cared enough to not avoid him.

The burden felt ten times heavier when it was put on him again compared to how he felt when it was taken off. "Nothing is wrong! Jesus!" He insisted sternly. There was something much deeper in his yell: humility, agony, but underlining all of that, still a little bit of belief. Maybe it wasn't belief in its purest form, but it was belief that made Richie realize how deeply he had fallen into the trap. Because he still wanted to believe that there could be nothing wrong. She could care about him.

His skin washed over with angry heat. To fight the flames, he clutched his handlebars a little extra tighter and took very heavy exhales. This was another thing Stan and Bill had picked up on over the years; Richie was prone to emotional outbursts. They fell silent, watching as the boy uncoiled all his inner pain in front of them.

"Can we just go home now?" He felt a lump of tears in his throat, looking away before any could make their way to his eyes and roll down his cheeks. "Fuck."

Stan and Bill said no more, at least not to Richie, and continued walking.

The door to the Tozier residence rattled picture frames of broken memories as Richie slammed it, tossing his book bag on the floor with a sound that rattled the environment from its lava center. He pressed his back against the door, panting roughly. Not with exhaustion, but with anger, pain, and tears. This was the Richie that truly nobody else had seen. The Richie that arises when he's had enough. The Richie that arises when he's tired and hungry. The Richie that arises when jokes can no longer patch his emotional wounds.

He closed his eyes, the hot tears he'd been trying to choke back flowing freely where blood from Henry's rings had been only 3 days before.

He tore off his glasses and forcefully threw them right next to where his backpack sat on the floor. As tears spilled down his gentle face, he reopened his eyes.

His vision was blurry, a result of not having his glasses on and the wave of tears that crashed over his face, creating the illusion that someone had taken a Polaroid photo with a dirty lens. Despite all of that, he could still see a fallen picture on the floor. He bent down, picking it up carefully with his fingers.

He blinked tightly, ridding himself of any lingering tears sitting on his lash line so he could get a good look. On the back, in neat calligraphy, wrote, "Richie - age 4, and mom, enjoying a picnic."

He flipped the photo over. As described, there sat a young Richie with his mouth covered in grape excess from his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Sometimes he misses the days when all that came out of his mouth were spoonfuls of sticky peanut butter. Sat next to him in the picture was his mother. A stunningly beautiful woman with curly hair falling to her shoulders. That's where he got it from. His dark eyes, too. They were all compliments of his mother.

She was probably the last time Richie could recognize true beauty.

Despite this day being buried in the deepest burrows of his memory, Richie still remembered it quite well. He had spent the morning using steel pots and pans for drums, showing his mom that he could be just like his musical idols one day. The sound was horrific, interrupting any idea of silence with the loud striking, but Richie insisted that it was good enough to have a band of his own one day.

"You're driving me crazy, Rich! Can't even hear myself think," she joked eloquently. "How about we go to the park? You can be as loud as you'd like."

When Richie's small face looked up at her, she was wholesomely beaming. A true luminosity radiated through her smiling lips. "I'll pack your favorite", she coaxed, looking down at her son. Richie shot up, jumping in excitement, tugging at her long skirt as he pleaded to leave right then and there.

The park was decently busy that day. Lots of kids occupied the play equipment, but Richie and his mom found a quiet spot underneath a Weeping Willow tree. They sat in the shade that the dense falling leaves had provided all around them, eating their lunches and telling jokes. This is where he thinks his facetious sense of humor started.

The fragrant smell of sweet magnolias and clementine mixed with the earthly perfume coming from the sunbaked branches and complemented their laughter.

He specifically remembered the way that the porcelain sun winked off of the jewelry she was wearing around her neck and sunk into her eyes. She'd laugh her signature laugh as he rolled on the ground, pretending to be different animals so she could guess what they were. He remembered the way the freshly cut grass itched at his young skin, but he also remembered not caring about that, either. He thought back to the way that she would purposefully guess the wrong animal, calling out, "a cow!" as Richie oinked like a piglet just to see his reaction. It would drive him insane. Back then he genuinely thought she didn't know the difference between a cow and a pig, but what else are you supposed to think at 4 years old, anyway?

The photo that held clouds of vibrant memories had been taken by a stranger who happened to be passing by. Richie remembered that because at the time, it was him and his mother up against the world. It was just them. Just them. Up until later the next year, when his father had shown up after presumably escaping a situation that was threatening to his freedom. Richie never knew a single thing about his dad, but the symbolistic tattoos on his skin and torn clothing gave him enough context to figure out that he didn't want to. Even at 4 years old.

The pleading of his father's deep voice in the face of his mother's gentle one still rang in his ears. Broken promises that he'd get a job, kick his drug habit, and change for the better swirled around Richie in suffocatingly small intervals. Nothing changed, but his mom had been so exhausted of being a single parent that she didn't care until things got really bad. Maybe that's why Richie wanted Elle to care so badly.

He took one last look at the picture that was stuck in his grip. More tears quivered over his faltering eyesight, eventually tipping his head back and basking in everything that his life used to be and everything that it now was. He missed eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at the park. He missed telling his mother terrible jokes but admiring how she laughed at them anyways. He missed pounding wooden spoons against pots and pans while she cooked him breakfast. He missed how she'd always be waiting on the end of the slide to catch him once he built up enough courage to go down all by himself.

He missed being loved.