Lover | Richie Tozier

Chapter 57.

"It just doesn't make any sense," Eddie uttered through the unwelcoming air. When the words parted ways him, they danced freely in the air, taking the shape of winter fog. "He's not... he's not..."

"A girl?" Beverly interjected straightforwardly.

He looked over at her, darkness on his face in the form of eyes. "Yeah."

The bite of the wind whispered along his jawline faintly. He felt like he could cry but was afraid of the tears freezing on his cheeks and never coming off. But in an astounding turn of events, Beverly's tone had warmed after Eddie had looked her deep in her eyes with his broken heart.

He buried his face into his hands, and when he did so, he could feel the chilled tip of his nose press into his palm. He let out a long, low groan of frustration. "It's so fucked up, honestly. So fucked."

Beverly provided an inch more of space between them, looking at him with a singular raised eyebrow and a sympathetic expression. "You know, there's nothing wrong with-" she began, ready to embark on her speech.

"Not that," he interrupted quickly, more of the frozen air leaving his mouth. "I know that it's okay to be... whatever you want to call it. Or think that you are. Or whatever the fuck. I know that, it's just... fuck. I'm such a shitty fucking friend."

Beverly's eyebrows pulled completely together in a slick movement of confusion, the eyes under them racing across his face. "You're a shitty friend because you like your friend? I'm not following, Kaspbrak. I think those meds have tripped up your head a little."

"I'm not talking about Richie. I'm talking about Elle," Eddie clarified. It hurt to even think, let alone say out loud.

"Oh." Her eyelids widened and left an icy blue space in between. "What, uh, what about Elle?" She asked reluctantly, suffocation starting to tighten down in her chest.

Eddie met their eyes again, and he could see how his flinching response caused Beverly to grow nervous for a quick second. He took a deep breath, cold wind ghosting into his body, and exhaled before speaking.

"That's... that's my girl. And I feel like a sick, home-wrecking fuck for thinking about breaking what she has sometimes. Elle is the only person who's ever given a fuck about me before the rest of those Losers came along. You know that?" He asked rhetorically, not bothering to wait for an answer.

"She has this kind of beauty that radiates so intensely through her heart and pulls everything into her. The girl is like a fucking vortex or something. I've never felt kindness until she checked on me the day we first met. She cared enough to do that and nobody ever had before. I wasn't invisible to her. It was such a small gesture, but it mattered. I'd totally be in love with her if I weren't..." he pulled the sentence out, never finishing it. "I don't know."

He shook his head and sent ice hovering around him from his hair. "But I guess that doesn't matter. It's just not how life is right now. The fact of the matter is that Elle likes Richie and Richie..."

"Likes Elle," Bev finished. "Me too."

Eddie turned towards her, his eyes touching hers and staying there. "You like Richie, too?" He asked gently.

Her head pivoted side to side, shaking in misunderstanding. A great tremor overtook her eyes. "No, Eddie..." she exhaled shakily.

It only took a minute of stuttering thoughts for him to take notice of the fact that her eyes were a little damper than usual. A little more broken. A little more lonely.

His mouth spaced, trying to get his mind to follow, until after a moment he finally uttered out, "Oh.. oh my God, you mean-"

"Yeah. Yeah, that's what I mean," she interrupted, nodding upwards to Heaven, where she wanted to be, and down towards Hell, where she felt she was. "And I've been a real dick about it, too. I just don't know how to act, this is so- it's so different. That's why when you confessed, I knew it was okay for me, too."

Silence was a virtue when she concluded. A trustworthy, comforting virtue that relieved both of their pacing hearts. "And that's why you're not being a bitch to me right now?" Eddie eventually inquired, bite in his tone that wasn't intended to be there.

She supposed she deserved it, so she lifted her shoulders weightlessly. "I guess you could say that," she looked down at her frosting lap and elicited a quiet laugh that was so genuine it pained her. "It's because I finally have someone to empathize with. Elle... she never understood. She can't. She'll never know what it's like, and I'll never know what it's like for her to understand. I tried over and over again to comprehend why everybody else was feeling so differently, including her. I thought I might've been mental or something," she explained, the volume in her words faltering. "And then I realized I wasn't mental. Just different. Just different. And I fucking hated that. I was constantly floating to try and fit in and the only thing that kept me grounded was her; my best friend, my only friend."

Eddie closely watched how her emotions spoke through her face more than they had with any of her words. She continued, completely high off of the admittance.

"Then one day she comes along and is like, 'hey, I'm going to sit with this boy', it was you by the way, and you're like, 'what the fuck', right? A boy? What happened to it being us girls? And then you remember that her whole life isn't just about girls. Because she likes boys. She likes boys," she repeated to herself. "Stupid idea if you ask me."

Eddie drew back, placing a mock-offended hand over his chest. "Excuse me?"

A complete laugh left her mouth this time, so warm and wholehearted that it seemed to melt the oncoming snow around them.

"Right, sorry." She let the textile of her dress crease in the wind, adjusting her position. "I'm gonna be honest, kid. I hated your fucking guts at first. And then Richie came along, and I hated his guts even more. And because of that bitter taste in my mouth, I tried to get rid of it verbally. I said the most awful things to her, my God."

Thoughts paced through her mind and haunted her with their everlasting memories, forever lost in history. When she closed her eyes, the decaying Fall ambiance from Halloween night entered her senses again.

You're such a slut for him, Lowe.

You wish he would've kissed you.

"But the worst part of it all was that she admitted it all. She sat there and took it, because despite how twisted and fucked I worded it, it was still the truth. She looked me right in my eyes and told me that she wanted to kiss Richie, and that she was his. All his. I could've killed her, man. But then I remembered who she was, so I didn't. I just cried, over and over again."

Eddie blinked. "So..." he started, catching up to speed with how vastly different and embittered her emotions were compared to his. "So that's why you claim to hate Richie so much?"

Another strand of silence tangled them together.

"It was never about Richie Tozier. It was about the fact that I wasn't Richie Tozier."

Eddie mirrored her nod steadily. Through the stillness, the world finally opened itself back up again. Light could be seen and Beverly wasn't suffocated by her reprehensible secret that choked her with strained fingers.

Everything was said, filling her with enough adrenaline and energy to speak a final time. "But I think I'm over it. Or I'm learning how to get there, at least. I can't rewrite the stars and align them in my favor, but I can accept how miraculously they've pulled those two together."