Lover | Richie Tozier

Chapter 35.

"So when did you move to Derry, then?"

"Almost 10 years ago," Elle answered. She looked over at Richie, who was staring at the sidewalk as the moonlight mirrored a sparkle on his glasses lens.

"Do you like it here? I've lived here all my life," he shrugged. "I don't really know much different than this."

"I like it. It's a cute little town, not too much going on. It's quiet. Haven't seen much of it, though." She took a deep inhale of the atmosphere. The fragrance of the earth washed over her and refreshed every cell.

He fell silent for a second. "You like quiet?" He finally asked. His mind wandered to far away places as he remembered one of the very first days he met her, when he reprimanded himself for thinking they could ever be more than acquaintances because he was simply too loud and lawless for her.

"I do. Things have been quiet my whole life, I think. I don't have siblings, up until this point I've only had one real friend, and-"

"What about your parents? They don't fight?"

She shook her head, slightly caught off guard by his question. "No. My dad is away on a lot of business trips, so there's nobody to fight with. Besides, I've never seen them get into any more than a minor disagreement in my life."

Richie slid his feet across the ground. Echoing chants of his parents screaming at each other filled his ears where Elle's gentle voice should be instead.

He felt his thoughts crash around him and sever his heart with the broken pieces.

"You said you haven't seen much of Derry?" He recalled, wanting to change the subject as quickly as she could.

"I believe that's what I said, Trashmouth."

He smirked a little. "Have you ever been to the Kissing Bridge?"

She stopped in her tracks. "Kissing Bridge?" She repeated, sounding it out like a word she'd never heard before.

He nodded, suddenly sensing the fact she felt some kind of innuendo in his question. "God, I mean," he shook his head, feeling slightly embarrassed. "That's what the locals call it."

She began walking again. "Why do they call it that?"

"Well..." He trailed off. "Want me to take you there? It's just by the Barrens and runs over the Kenduskeag."

"Barrens?"

His smirk grew larger. "That's for another time, Lively." He patted her on the back like he'd do with Stan or Bill or Mike, yet couldn't help but notice that she felt so much softer than they did under his touch. "So what'dya say, my'lady? You gonna let me take you to the o'l Kissing Bridge?"

She began bubbling out small laughter, a sound that mixed beautifully with the rush of the flowing river and rustling plant life. "What the hell was that?" She stopped again.

The lamp she paused under sliced a beam of white light onto her face. It trickled down and illuminated the highest points on her face, giving her a glow that looked so ethereal, Richie questioned if he was dreaming or not for a minute. It sure seemed like it.

"What? The voice? You liked it?"

She nodded, still smiling. "Mhm."

"I'll explain it to you when we get to the bridge," he negotiated, trying everything in his power to claw onto any time he could to make this moment last longer.

He looked down on her again, and she looked up at him as if she were stargazing. There was a dazzling, mysterious way about him.

"Are you gonna keep speaking in stupid voices or are you gonna lead the way, then, Tozier?"

He felt his body inch closer to her and then retract once she spoke and interrupted his haze. He brought out his stupid voice again. "Very well then. Right this way," he pivoted and began walking, leading her behind him like a magnet attracted to its opposite field.

"I see why they call it the Kissing Bridge now." Elle got down on her knees, running her fingers over the wood carvings. It wasn't too hard to see what was written, the moonlight diffused over the black sky in a silver shadow and sparked enough glare for them to observe. Under her fingertips were letters etched into the surface, usually surrounded by hearts and spaced by plus signs. She caressed her thumb over an R + E.

"Yeah, a bunch of people who are stupid in love like to come up here and write this bullshit." He took a seat on top of the thin plank, admiring the way she payed such close detail to the carvings.

"You think it's bullshit?" She asked, rising again.

"I think infatuation is a lot more common than love. People are just too stupid to know the difference. So yeah, a lot of it is bullshit." He finalized.

She nodded slowly, facing the river. "Didn't think you'd know so much about love," she grinned, giving him a side-eye. "I had to write an essay for Archer about love and didn't know jack-shit about what I was saying."

"It's not hard," he hopped down, taking his place next to her. "It's a simple concept, really. But just because it's simple doesn't mean it's easy."

She strained both of her eyebrows, trying to follow his sentences closely and understand what he was saying. "That doesn't make any sense."

"It does," he fixed his glasses upon his face. "Love itself is a simple concept. It's an undying flame between two people under the conditions of almost nothing. But infatuation has conditions, and that's the difference. These people," he pointed to the carvings, "haven't ran into the conditions yet, so they don't know the difference."

She stood there silently, staring down the grassy sloped bank. It sunk into an abyss of darkness, but she could still hear the river singing below. She'd momentarily look over at him, admiring every little idiosyncrasy of his, while he'd do the same when she wasn't looking.

"You're so smart, Richie." Her voice cut through the silence like a knife. "Why do you let people think otherwise?"

He laughed a little. Because I have so many emotional wounds that I need to patch them with humor and hurt myself before anybody else can. You can't do that with knowledge. "I don't know, my'lady. Why don't you ask my good sire, the Lord? He createth' me, after all."

"Createth? Never mind," she smiled freely. "I take back what I said. You're an idiot." She nudged his side a little.

"So I've heard," his eyebrow stitched upwards. Once his eyes fixed on her smile, he gave one of his own.

She went on to talk about several different things, and Richie would try his best to listen, but eventually everything she was saying would lose its meaning as he got lost in her presence. Like that feeling when you're falling asleep and all the noise around you starts to sound like music.