Lover | Richie Tozier

Chapter 27.

Bill emerged from the water, breaking the surface with his dirty blonde hair and looking around at the others with indigo eyes. Stan and Richie splashed cold waves in each other's faces, laughing hysterically until Stan 'accidentally' got some sand in his grasp and threw it directly into Richie's mouth. It was payback for the rock, they all supposed.

Elle floated carelessly on her back, her arms levitating lazily on the cool film. She heard the boys bantering but drowned it out with the far more appealing sound of birds chattering somewhere in the distance. She'd tune in every once and a while to hear one of Richie's jokes, and grinned to herself while she pretended she hadn't heard it. He knew she had, though. That's why he kept telling them.

"I'm going back up to the lookout to tan. Bill, make sure they don't kill each other please" Elle requested, bringing herself to her feet and treading her way towards land.

His smile touched his face and tapped into his eyes. "Sh-Sure. Thanks again for being here."

"Thanks again for having me."

The orange fire in the sky hadn't quite sunk it's way behind the hills yet. It's rays reached out and painted the atmosphere with gentle strokes. It came down to brush over the surface of the lake, lighter than the color of the sky but still visible enough to see its tangerine hue.

Soft violet haunted the edges of the rose clouds, tying together the visibly cohesive masterpiece that was the sunset. Maybe it wasn't sunny enough to tan, but it sure was pretty enough to sit back and watch.

Elle unraveled her towel like a red carpet, laying on top of it and staring up at the swirls of color as the late August humidity patted her dry. She could still hear the boys down below. Two of them, at least — one very familiar voice missing.

Richie swallowed every inch of his pride and jocular humor as he climbed up the bank. He saw Elle laying out and, as he did, felt as if his heart had just plummeted off the edge of the quarry.

She turned her head, meeting his searching eyes and speaking before he could. "Hey, Toaster."

"Hey," he repeated. There was no sense of bitterness in his voice this time. Only nerves. They wrapped around his throat and urged him not to speak.

Come on man, get it together.

He shook them loose, sitting next to her in silence.

"I know you're mad at me," she informed suddenly, staring back up at the clouds.

He scoffed, wrapping his arms around his knees and tucking them into his wet chest to radiate some warmth throughout his thin figure. "What are you talking about? I'm not mad at anybody."

"Richie," she looked at him again. Her eyes burned through him. "Why have you been avoiding me then?"

Her question caused him to burst into a sudden hot flash despite being too cold moments ago. He hoped that she'd think the redness nipping at his face was from the cold air brushing against his skin and not the exposure he was feeling.  "I haven't."

"Are you bullshitting me?" She supported herself on her elbows. He opened his mouth to speak and she held her hand out to deflect the retort she knew was coming. "You are. What did I ever do to you?"

Her voice went so soft at the end that you could almost feel it running through your fingers. Every little ridge and wave of her voice was an expression of emotion.

He twitched with anger. "I mean, you lied to me," he confronted, not being able to help but feel very stupid for conversing with this girl as if she cared.

She now sat all the way up. "Lied? About?"

His finger traced gentle patterns into the sand. "About Eddie. You said you weren't friends with him. You didn't have to lie to me, you know? I don't care if you're his friend and I'm not hurt that you're not mine."

The words tried to hurt her, but they couldn't. They prodded at her surface with persistence but Elle knew the fact of the matter was that Richie did care. He cared very much. He cared about her like she had claimed to care about him.

"Eddie only asked me to be his friend on Thursday, but alright, if that's how you feel." She sat on her shins, picking at small purple flowers from the growing lush beside her. Her hair now valued the state between being damp and dry — it was dry enough to wave slightly, but damp enough to draw its shape in the breeze.

It's not how I feel. You should know that.

Richie found himself suddenly wishing she could read his mind. Somehow fuse their thoughts into one so she could feel everything he couldn't say.

"But if you ever change your mind," she began again. "I'm always open to the idea."

His heart knocked forcibly against his chest. She still cares. All that he had done to this girl and she still hadn't vanished. Her love was so whole it made him realize what pieces of himself he was missing.

She got up and dusted off the grains of sand that had stuck to the coconut oil on her legs. "On second thought, this cliff looks fuck-dangerous. And you guys come up here often? Since when?"

Richie followed her to the soul-stirring perimeter. Stan and Bill were still playing below. "Since 7th grade. Bill introduced us."

"Jesus," she muttered. "You've been up here since you were 12? Bravery, my good sir, I applaud you."

He shook his head and looked to the ground, laughing silently, but Elle could still hear his faint breaths in between. "Yeah. Bill says if anything ever happens to us up here we're as good as dead."

"That's not necessarily true," she shrugged.

"Oh come on, are you serious? You think you wouldn't be a dead fucker the second you hit the surface? At that point it's not water anymore, it's concrete." He looked down, holding his glasses so they wouldn't slip off and suffer the very tragedy he just described.

"Maybe a miracle or something would happen, I don't know."

"A miracle?" Richie pondered.

"Anything is possible," she gleamed, staring off the depleting edge of the cliff.

[He wasn't falling for her, no, that was impossible.]

"Anything." She repeated.

He supposed it was. He was never one to pay much attention to those bullshit sayings that sounded like something that'd be plastered on the children's hall in Derry Public Library, but right now, it sounded like the truest statement he's ever heard. Something about the tone in which her words swam made it so. He'd never believed that, not a day in his life, but now he did. Right now, standing next to her, anything was possible.

[that was im(possible).]