Lover | Richie Tozier

Chapter 60.

"She said, and I quote, 'Yes. In every language.' She fucking said that, dude! And you should've been there to see the light in her eyes, she might as well have used them to guide home a ship that was lost at sea — they were that bright. She really likes you, Rich. She seemed more sure of it than I do."

The world moved underneath Richie with no mass at all on his walk home, his narrow legs becoming weightless and his lanky arms renewing themselves as sapphire butterfly wings. He felt as if he had just metamorphosed into the airborne creature and used his papery wings to cut through the air with overflowing happiness. The smile on his face hadn't faded with the brittle snow and he wore it luminously with flames of euphoria that refused to go out.

To everybody who might've seen him pass by, he probably looked like an idiot with that childlike beam stuck on his face with nobody to see it, but he didn't care. Maybe he was an idiot. But he was an idiot who was finally feeling things after many long, numb years.

The doorframe behind him rattled under the force he had applied, throwing his house keys carelessly on the mantle that was growing increasingly covered with graphite dust without his parents there to clean it. His nimble fingers peeled off his jacket and set it down where he remembered a chair to be, but the lack of light that used to bother him so much prevented him from seeing just where it was that his cardigan fell. Blistered from the cold, his freckled nose still pinched upwards with his smile. The grin marbled into his veins and through every system of his that assisted in his breathing. His heart trembled rigidly, so unused to the feeling of ecstasy that it almost caved in on itself and stopped beating at all.

His fingers spread against the wall beside him and tried blindingly to search for the switch that would fill the foyer with dim golden light. But... it seemed like Eddie's words were the light.

"She really likes you, Rich."

That singular sentence supplied Richie with enough fire to set off multiple matches and detonate the world around him to expose Heaven above. Happiness poured in from all directions, like God had finally taken his order and made it to perfection. His prayers had been answered and the angels had been sent. Richie Tozier was completely and implicitly happy.

His fingers caressed over the row of switches, turning on the fan and the porch light as he did so but still failed to land on the one that would put an end to the concentrated charcoal that seeped from the walls of his home.

"Where is the stupid fucking thing?" He uttered hastily. His palm pressed against the various handles a few more times until he located the one farthest from him - the correct one that would transfer a glow to the LED bulbs above. He used to be able to find it with ease; an ease that was so unfamiliar now that he forgot what it was even like to come home. He turned the switch upwards and gave light to every object and photograph around him.

Already bracing for impact, Richie tightly shut his eyes to use his lids as shields from the sudden blinding increase of luminosity, careful not to damage his fragile eyes any more than they already were. He tore his glasses off, rubbing the bridge of his nose while his vision washed over with crimson and adjusted his eyes to the newfound light.

Slowly but surely, he separated his closed eyelids. It was only a slight amount, but the waves of golden light struck over the surface of his very sensitive eyes through the only gap he had made. As he grew more and more accustomed, he left more central space. Everything began panning into focus more clearly yet not clearly enough to sharpen the edges of some of the objects that he couldn't make out without his glasses.

In the middle of all of this haze and vagueness, the world seemed to close in on itself in a thin line. While all else around it was colored and vibrant, the object that caused Richie's beating heart to drop was still blanketed in darkness.