Lover | Richie Tozier

Chapter 50.

"For God's sake, think of how much that medicine has fucked with him. He's been dry-swallowing tablets of shit he doesn't even need for years. Years, Richie. He's lucky I couldn't pour that shit down a drain," Elle dug the soles of her shoes into the gravel road leading away from the Hanlon farm, fantasizing about what it would be like to twist open the ends of Eddie's pills and watch them become one with the foam in the Kenduskeag.

Richie's mind was a surging perplexity, wearing him with a puzzled expression. "But I thought you just told him to keep using his inhaler?"

"I did," she sent a rock or two tripping across the dark horizon with the side of her foot. "Because it's just hydrogen and oxygen. But pills... pills can hold a million things inside of them."

Her heart sunk with the weight of pure gold as her thoughts stuttered over an encyclopedia of medicinal ingredients. She sighed deeply, taking some of the tension with her as she exhaled.  "I don't know, dude. I think... I think I need to invite him over to my place and get a good look at what he's carrying around."

Richie grinned like a devil, his curls becoming his horns. "Rude."

She glanced over at the only person who seemed to shine brighter than the moon above them. He looked the complete opposite of a devil, though he was smirking like one; he looked like an angel. She could see the fullness of his lips in their entirety, and she thinks for a second that even though no feature of his makes him more beautiful than the others, they surely come close. If she thought hard enough, they pressed against her own in the fictions of her mind.

"What's rude, asshole? The fact that you nearly killed me inside of that maze? Tell me about it."

It seemed like with every word she spoke, Richie felt himself fall further and further into her spellbinding existence. She was a vortex, pulling everything out of him and into her. "Eds gets to go to your house and I don't? Picking favorites, are we?"

She scoffed a small laugh, looking at the ground the same way that Richie looked at her. "Jealous, are we?"

The apples of his cheeks suddenly radiated many hues of red with equal intensities, basking in the feeling of abrupt exposure. It wasn't embarrassment, no, it was exposure. She'd seen through him yet again. He had to force himself to shut down before she could find out how he really felt about her.

"Who's the one walking me home right now? I don't see Eddie here," she threw a glance over her shoulder sarcastically, and then another one into the empty field to her left, and then one towards the boy on her right. "Last time I checked, I wanted you to walk me home."

The side of her body lightly rubbed against his own, emphasizing the "you" portion of her sentence.

"That's just because Eddie would piss his pants if he saw something charging at you. He couldn't protect you like I could," he boasted, brushing invisible dust off of his shoulders. In actuality, he wanted nothing more but to hook his needy hands around her waist and pull them together rather than act like the arrogant asshole he was pretending to be.

"Couldn't hold my hand like you do, either," she mentioned, wearing a perfectly executed beam on her gentle lips.

Oxygen froze in Richie's throat in the form of ice. "Huh?" He asked, letting go of the rigid breath that he didn't even know he was holding.

She looked over at him perplexed, like the answer to his question couldn't have been more obvious. "What? Do you think I just go around holding hands with anybody?"

The edges of his soul burned with combustion, gradually making its way to his center. When it finally did, he felt the warmth crash over him like his thoughts whenever she'd slightly touch him and interrupt the speed of mind. "I mean... I don't know. How am I supposed to know? Do you?"

"Never in my life."

"So why do you do it then? Why me?"

She took a step away, taking in more of his careful face with her eyes than she had previously been able to. "Do you not want me to?"

He suddenly felt the flaring pain of how off-putting his question had sounded and his neck turned, shaking his head automatically. "Oh, fuck, no, I didn't mean it like that. I'm just... it's just..."

I'm so confused. Why me? Why the boy with cuts on his fists and bruises on his arms when you deserve a prince with love in his heart and a silk glove slipped onto his fingers? I can't give you that.

She hooked herself around his arm. "You don't need to know the answers all the time, Toaster. I know you're smart but sometimes things just happen and there's no reason for you to chase an explanation. You're running through empty territory and asking for signs that the world has already given you. You're loved, Richie. But you need to let yourself see it."

He looked down on her and felt — not heard, felt — the choir of a thousand angels harmonize within himself. He may have always told himself this is why nobody loves you, but the way she was looking at him screamed this is why that's bullshit.

And this time, he edged his hand towards hers. He lingered around it for a second, taking in the tension that it gave his aching muscles and holding his pinky out as if that was the way to first initiate such a gesture. Then, in a swift movement and an epiphany of bravery, he used it to hook around hers and draw their palms together.

He felt roses bloom between them and become a garden of touch, the petals of her hands covered in fresh rain. Looking at her took whatever breath he had away but he'd never breathed so freely before.

He asked himself one last question that night, and it wasn't who, what, when, how, or why, it was: Surely I'm loved, but what if I'm in love? Then what?