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Nobody taught me to want. But now I want. I remain lying down with eyes open, looking at the ceiling. Inside is the darkness. A pulsating “I” is taking shape.
- Clarice Lispector, Água Viva
Chrissy isn't very good at wanting things. Or more accurately, she had used to want quite a lot of things - like ice cream and a pet and to go play football with the gaggle of kids in the field down the bottom of the road - but there were always reasons why she couldn't have them - too many calories and too messy and don't be silly Chrissy, girls don't play football. She'd learnt quickly that she wasn't supposed to want things, to be a nuisance, to take up too much space and that the correct way to approach being asked to make a decision was to begin an elaborate weighing up of what would make those around her happiest and least damage the perception of her as good .
So Chrissy was out of practice in wanting when Eddie waltzed into her life, all restless energy and carefree attitude. She'd told herself she just needed something, anything, to help her get through senior year without giving into the clawing sensation in the pit of her stomach, this abject terror that her life was a train accelerating down the tracks and she was about to fly off. Weed's supposed to help, or so she's heard.
She’d thought that buying drugs would be sort of scary, would make her feel immoral and bad, but she hadn't anticipated him , surprisingly sweet despite the intimidating facade, with this uncanny ability to put her at ease with his clear disregard for anyone's opinion of him. It was like she could actually feel her muscles relaxing, jaw unclenching, the tension leaving her body as she stole a few moments in which she didn’t have to try desperately to be good.
So in a spur of the moment wave of impulsiveness she'd asked if he'd like to smoke with her. "Just this first one," she'd clarified and then told the tiniest of white lies. "I don't really know what I'm doing."
He'd replied, "Sure, anything you want", wide, easy smile and understanding, kind eyes.
Of course it hadn't been just once; she'd enjoyed it too much, passing the joint back and forth and the lack of pretension involved in spending time with him. She didn't feel like she had to be Chrissy Cunningham around him, she could just be another student looking for a way to relax. He had this way of looking at her like he actually saw her - not the head of the cheer team or Jason Carver's girlfriend, not the 3.6 GPA, not the 25 inch waist, and certainly not the queen of Hawkins high. It feels like he somehow sees who she is once all that has fallen away, sees her imperfections and weaknesses and still chooses to keep looking.
She'd made sure there had always been an excuse to meet up again just to be in his presence. In the beginning she hadn't talked very much - he’d had more than enough to say to fill the space for the both of them. She'd just sat and smoked and giggled at his slant sense of humour, smile hidden behind a carefully placed hand.
It had been early on that he'd noticed. She thinks it was maybe only the second or third time that they had met. Although they'd been set side by side, legs dangling out of the back of his van, so perhaps it was a little later, after they'd started meeting every Thursday after cheer practice so she could avoid suspicion by telling her mother she was going to Josie's diner with the squad. She'd had his jacket spread across her thighs, late April air still too chilly for her cheer uniform to really be appropriate.
The sound of her laughter was still hanging in the air when he had asked, "Why do you do that?"
When she'd looked at him he'd had a sort of inquisitive look to him, head tilted at an angle ever so slightly. "What?"
He'd raised his hand to cover the lower half of his face in an imitation of the way she had covered her smile seconds earlier. "You don't want me to know you're laughing at my jokes?" he had suggested with a teasing smile.
"No!" she'd rushed to say, worried she might have offended him and feeling a little terrible about it. "It's not that! I just, well, I have a weird smile." She'd felt stupid saying it, especially when it earned an amused look from him.
"No one has a weird smile," he'd told her. "Can't look bad when you're happy."
She'd shrugged inwardly. "Well I do." And then because he had still been looking at her like she was a little insane she had continued, "I have crooked teeth; Jason says I should really smile with my mouth closed."
His eyes had done something sad and soulful as she pulled the corners of her lips up a little in a demonstration of the sweet smile she's practised over and over in the mirror.
"Oh god don't do that," he'd said, a theatrical, disgusted expression on his face. "My eyes, my eyes!" he'd wailed, clawing at them like he'd been burned with acid.
Laughter had bubbled up in her and before she could cover her mouth he'd placed a gentle hand on her forearm, stilling its movement. He’d felt warm even through her cheer uniform jumper and she'd realised passingly that it was the first time he'd touched her.
She'd looked up at him and he had returned her gaze, eyes brightened now.
"Look at that: someone who actually finds me funny," he'd said earnestly. "Just about the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, I reckon."
Slowly friendship had crept up on them, light and playful and unserious, like friends you make at camp over summer. Conversations had been almost exclusively limited to harmless topics like music and films and hobbies and the fact that they had absolutely no overlapping interests in any of them.
She thinks they'd been a month or so in, May already half way done and spring blossoms falling from trees when they'd first tread, careful and unsteady, on dangerous ground.
"So what's the plan after graduation then?" He'd enquired, smoke still hanging in the air from her latest exhale.
She'd shrugged noncommittally and passed the joint back to him. The future was something she generally did her best to avoid thinking about. "Mom thinks I should temp for a bit, just til next summer - that's when Jason wants to get married."
Eddie always had this look on his face when she mentioned Jason, like the name left a bad taste in his mouth. He'd said nothing for a long while, taking a drag and expelling it into the warm day. "And that's what you want, yeah?" he'd finally asked, looking her dead in the eye with an unwavering gaze.
She'd blinked rapidly at him. "Well, yeah, I guess."
"You guess?"
"I don't really know what I want," she'd reasoned, feeling a little defensive at his words. "But Jason's a good guy, and my parents say we're well-suited."
He’d looked at her kind of odd and interrogating, with eyebrows drawn together. "So you're dating him…because that's what your parents want?"
She had felt he’d been purposefully misunderstanding her, with the slightly mocking undercurrent to his question. She’d let out a huff of breath, frustrated. "No, obviously not."
But when she had started to interrogate why it was that she was dating him (something that would plague her thoughts for the next week or so), she had realised that she was dating him because she was the cheer captain and him the star of the basketball team and he'd asked her to go for milkshakes with him once in junior year (she'd got a diet coke, less fattening) and the next morning she'd come into school to irritated questions from the rest of the team.
“And when were you going to tell us about your boyfriend?”
Oh, Chrissy remembered thinking, I have a boyfriend?
But that had all sounded a little ridiculous when she really thought about it and she had known it wouldn't do a very good job of illustrating her point so half-heartedly she'd huffed, "It's none of your business why I'm dating Jason anyway."
"Sorry, you're right," he'd conceded dismissing the topic with a wave of his hand. "We’ll forget about him then, but in exchange you have to tell me something you want to do that has nothing to do with anyone else.”
She’d tried to think and then when she couldn’t had gestured for him to pass the joint to her to buy her some time. But even after she’d taken a slow drag she hadn’t really been able to understand what he meant - everything she ever wanted was wrapped up with the effects it would have on everyone else. Eventually, she’d asked, “Like what?”
"Like how I want my band to get big, and I want to move as far away from this piece of shit town as possible," he’d suggested, "or we could try something smaller like how right now I really want to get high with a pretty cheerleader."
He'd done that a lot, saying she was pretty, as if it was a neutral statement and not something that made her heart skip a beat and it was stupid because he was definitely not the first person to call her pretty but for some reason she couldn’t help but feel like it was different when it was him.
He had sent her away with the assignment to find something that she wanted. “Not thinking of anyone else,” he’d clarified. “It has to be something you want just for you.”
He'd had to wait a couple of weeks for her to come back with an answer. "Go on, hit me with it," he'd responded with a grin to her announcement that she thought she might have figured out what it was she wanted.
"I think I want to break up with Jason."
He’d been briefly speechless which, she had learned, was quite an achievement when it came to Eddie. "Ok, that's… kinda big," he'd begun cautiously. "I was thinking more along the line of a dress or some jewellery…or something."
"Why? Do you think I shouldn't break up with him?" she’d asked, self-consciously.
She’d spent a lot of time thinking about it - Jason did care about her and he got on well with her parents and took her to nice places and bought her expensive jewellery and really there wasn’t anything massively wrong with him. Except he had this way of looking at her that made it seem like he was looking straight through her and she often felt like she could be just about anyone and it would make no difference to him. The problem with Jason, she had realised, was that he loved the idea of her more than he actually loved her.
Still, despite her hours of careful deliberation, she couldn’t help herself from wanting his approval that she was making the right decision.
“Well, I mean the whole point of this is for it to be something you want." He'd reasoned. "And anyway, I think it might be unethical for me to advise you when I have a vested interest."
"You do?" She'd asked too quickly.
"Sweetheart, do you know how much trouble I'll be in if I'm found smoking weed with Jason Carver's girlfriend?” He’d smiled over at her affectionately and she’d tried to ignore the odd sinking feeling in her stomach. “I stand a much higher chance of making it out of high school alive if you end it."
After that, she practised wanting things regularly: wanting to eat fries at Josie's, wanting to go to college (specifically somewhere out of state), wanting to buy a prom dress that actually fit her and wanting to spend less time with the cheer squad and their obsessions with looks and boys and status. And as the last days of school began to slip right through her fingers she realised that she felt lighter and freer, less concerned by others opinions, more like herself. Maybe it was the weed but she thought it might have more to do with the boy she was buying it off.
It had been after graduation that it had finally hit her. She'd skipped the big party at Jason's house that the rest of the cheer team would be attending in favour of a quiet gathering Eddie had invited her to. As she’d walked into Steve Harrington’s backyard she’d felt slightly awkward and out of place to see the three people gathered around a bonfire fueled by old revision notes. She hadn’t realised quite how small the group would be.
How Eddie was connected with them she hadn't really understood, something to do with a group of freshmen that she’d thought it best not to press too hard about, but she couldn’t imagine any of them wanting to spend any time with her. She’d spoken to Steve a couple of times during his brief flirtation with Alice from the cheer team in junior year though she was certain he wouldn’t remember that and she recognised the girl with dirty blonde hair (who she had later learned was called Robin) from band who often played at the same games and pep-rallies she had to cheer at but then there was also Nancy Wheeler who was whole new levels of intimidating - the perfect girl, so pretty and intelligent and everything Chrissy had always tried so desperately to be.
But Nancy had been the first to spot her and welcome her with a hug like they were old friends and it had been so easy to dissolve into the group, laugh along as Robin took the mick out of Steve, and roll her eyes with Nancy at Eddie and Robin trying to flick bottle caps into people's cups and she had felt so welcomed and safe and had wished she had found this group of people earlier.
As the night crept in, Eddie had shirked his jacket to place round her shoulders when she'd started shivering and late in the evening when he’d got up from his chair he'd said "I'm going to go grab a beer, you want anything?"
She’d looked up at him from her flimsy pop-up chair, admired the way the flames illuminated one side of his face. "Can I get a soda, please?" she'd asked, because she'd been drinking wine all evening and was starting to feel a little tipsy.
When he had said, "Of course Chris, anything you want." she had realised suddenly and violently that what she wanted was him.
She had assumed it would be reasonably easy to get him to ask her out. She's never been good at knowing when people are interested in her (as she knows from when she would regularly get in trouble with Jason for letting guys talk to her for too long when they were apparently quite clearly flirting) but Eddie has this way of looking at her, all soft and smiling, that makes her feel like she's worth something and she's aware that she's at least kind of attractive, aware that you don't get to date Jason Carver unless you are. She'd thought it would be as simple as some flirty phrases, a suggestive gaze from beneath fanned eyelashes, a soft hand placed carefully on his upper arm.
But as the summer had dragged on, hot and close, with little to show for her efforts, Chrissy had been forced to accept that the usual roster of cheer team flirtation techniques weren't quite going to cut it. Her attempts had slowly gotten increasingly obvious and their lack of results increasingly embarrassing.
She had forced him to sit through the breakfast club three times in as many weeks, sighing more and more dreamily each time that they watched Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson lock lips, eyes slipping over to him as she did in an attempt to make it clear that she'd quite like a denim clad, weed-smoking outcast to kiss her like that.
Once, she had tricked him into shotgunning a joint with her by pretending she didn't know what it was, asking with a voice light and curious. When he had learnt in heartbreakingly close and sealed his lips over hers ( almost like she so wanted him to do) she had savoured every second, letting her eyes flutter closed, the world dissolving around her, and breathed him in until her lungs hurt.
It had lasted forever and not long enough simultaneously. He'd pulled away, allowing her to expel the air that they had shared, and then she had batted her eyelashes and leaned forward ever so slightly, parted her lips just so, hoping that the cherry lip gloss she had on would do most of her work for her. It hadn't, and when he had asked if she wanted to try again she'd had to turn him down because despite it being a heady experience, their almost kiss, she was afraid that if they were to do it again the almost might just kill her.
The whole campaign had ended in August, sitting reading on the sofa, her back to the armrest so that her legs could stretch down its length and lay across his lap (a move that she had originally introduced as part of her grand seduction but was by then just routine and familiar). Holding a thumb in her book to keep her page she had finally swallowed her pride and asked him to go to the movies with her.
If you want something doing, her father had always said, best to do it yourself .
"On Sunday maybe?" She'd suggested, tone rising at the end like a question so he knew that it was just a passing thought, that she hadn't spent days agonising over whether to ask him, and when and how.
He'd clicked his tongue and shot her an apologetic look over the top of the book he was reading (something fantasy). "I'm busy this weekend."
"One night next week then?" she'd continued, trying not to feel too defeated. "I thought we could see Aliens?" She'd spent so long poring over the cinema's flyer of upcoming films trying to carefully consider the one he might enjoy the most.
He'd hummed out a pensive sound. "I don't know, I’ve seen it with Dustin already." Then he'd turned to her, expression bright and excited. "Hey you should ask Robin though, she likes films!"
Chrissy had been forced to give up there and then because she knows how to take a hint when it is written in red pen, capitalised, and triple underlined. There was absolutely no avoiding the fact that Eddie just wasn't interested.
She thinks it's ironic that she's finally managed to relearn how to want (not because she thinks she should or because it'll please others but purely and simply because she does) and she's back to wanting things she can't have.
So she's stuck with no option but to try her best to get over him, which might be a little easier if he didn't insist on making her laugh and being so attractive and saying, "Anything you want, Chris," to every request with that smile, wide and honest, that makes her believe that he might actually mean it.
She turns those words over in her mind often, the way his mouth curls around them, air whistling past lips. She knows he doesn't actually mean it, it's just something to say, but over the summer he has let her paint his nails bright pink and teach him cheer routines and he's taken her out to the mall in the next town over for a day of shopping he clearly did not enjoy and he's even sat and listened to Whitney Houston's album in full with running commentary from Chrissy of her opinion on each song and sometimes it seems like there's nothing she could say that wouldn't elicit that response.
It is not in any way conducive to her mission to get over him but occasionally (frequently), with curtains firmly closed and light switched off, she'll lie in her bed and imagine asking him to kiss her or touch her or tell her he loves her, imagine he might respond with that same honest smile, and familiar cadence anything you want, Chris , his voice slightly rougher, gravelly, eyes dark and hungry.
Maybe it wouldn't even matter that he isn’t really interested in her because the girls on the cheer team are always saying that guys will have sex with anything with a pulse and she knows he's not massively picky from when he’d spoken about girls he’d picked up at shows.
Once, after a mention of such a conquest she'd asked, lips loosened by weed, "Have you had a lot of sex?" She’d been lying on the picnic table where they’d first spoken properly, legs dangling off the edge and feet resting on the bench, him sitting beside her but facing the other way so that if she were to sit up they’d be sort of back-to-back.
His laugh had made her feel childish and clumsy, like there was some more sophisticated way of asking that she was too inexperienced to know. "Sure, compared to you, I guess," he’d said in the end, looking down to catch her eye as he did.
"Why, how much do you think I've had?" The question had made her feel a little odd even then. They had spoken about sex before but often only in the abstract and never as it related to her. She felt embarrassed to have drawn attention to it, especially lying there with his gaze still intensely trained on her.
He’d looked away before answering. "Well, I reckon you've only had it with Carver," he'd ventured.
She'd nodded a confirmation and then for some reason she still can't account for had mumbled, "Not that I particularly wanted to." (It had been hard balancing her mother's idea of what a good girl should be: pure and virtuous, but deferential to her boyfriend. How could she be both with Jason's hand on her thigh, gentle but insistent, and cajoling words murmured in her ear?)
His head had snapped down to her, a look of concern etched into his features. "He didn't-"
"No, no," Chrissy had rushed to answer, anticipating the end of the question. "I always said yes in the end."
She hadn’t had much time to decipher the expression that had passed over his face because he’d turned away from her to look out into the trees surrounding them. He’d taken a drag of the joint and released the smoke slowly, tendrils curling in the warm air. “Fuck,” he’d muttered to himself, but had ultimately left the matter there even though Chrissy could tell he had wanted to say more.
It was ridiculous, she now realises, for her to have ever thought she might be able to get over him while she was still seeing him near enough every other day. The summer has allowed her too much freedom and since her break-up with Jason, loss of the prom queen title (loss was a strong word - how could she have lost something she’d never even had - but that was how her mother saw it) and acceptance to a liberal-arts college her mother hasn’t cared enough to interrogate the list of flimsy reasons she’s given for always being out. At this point she thinks she could probably just tell her mother she’d be out all day to smoke weed in Eddie’s trailer, or wouldn’t be back till gone midnight because Corroded Coffin were playing at the Hideout and her mother would wave her off with a distracted smile that didn’t reach her eyes and tell her to have a good time. She wishes she had realised a long time ago that the way to get her mother off her back was not to strive to be the girl she wanted her to be - a thankless mission given the ever-moving goalposts - but rather to disappoint her so wholly and effectively that she gave up entirely.
Still, it might have been nice for her to have extended her overbearingness just long enough to stop Chrissy from embarrassing herself by spending every possible minute she can with a boy who doesn’t want her, pining silently and painfully.
The new plan is quite simple. When summer comes to a close she will go off to college and never speak to him again, forget to call in when she makes it back to Hawkins, try to erase the fingerprints he has left all over her life.
That should just about work, she thinks. She hopes.
Summer's nearly over and the threat of adulthood is beginning to hang heavy in the air, the knowledge of it bearing down on them like an oppressive heat.
"So… college" he says simply, arms plunged into soapy water as he washes the dishes they've just eaten dinner off.
She had known he was going to bring it up before he said it, something about the uneasy intake of breath that had told her she would finally have to think about the way her room sits packed away into boxes, ready for her to stuff into the back of her father's car so that he can drive her out of Hawkins (her mother will not be joining them as she fundamentally disapproved of Chrissy's choice to go to college), and what that means for the two of them.
"Yeah," she replies lamely. They had been chatting animatedly only seconds ago about the terrible film they've just watched but just one word has turned them back into strangers left with only stilted conversation.
She's standing to his side with a rag of a teatowel, waiting for something else to take from his hands. The kitchen is a little too small for the two of them and has left them skirting around each other every time she has to put something away.
"Excited?" He asks, handing her a fork. As she takes it from his hand, her fingers brush against his.
"I suppose." A part of her must be, she thinks, but in this moment the most overwhelming feeling is one of nervousness. "It'll be kind of weird."
She places a hand on the handle of the cutlery drawer and without her having to say he moves a couple of steps, twisting his arms at an odd angle to keep them in the sink.
"Why will it be weird?" he asks.
She shrugs and pulls the drawer out; it skims past his body, brushing lightly against his hip. Placing the fork away with a clink she tries to formulate an answer. "I guess I've lived here my whole life," she explains. "I think I might miss it."
She feels a little guilty about being so dismissive of the opportunity when he wants nothing more than to escape this small town, and immediately wishes she hadn't said it.
If it bothers him, though, he doesn't say. He just hands her a dinner plate and she takes it, fingers resting below a tiny chip that is beginning to form into a crack. The plate is big enough that their hands don't have to meet at all in order for it to pass from his custody to hers.
"And will you miss me?" He asks, meeting her eyes with a trademark grin to accompany the joking tone.
The answer is yes, deeply and unbearably. The answer is sometimes I miss you seconds after I've said goodbye; as I turn away I miss you before I even make it to my house; I miss you right now, standing here, knowing that in just a few hours I won't be with you. But she can't say any of that so she forces herself to mirror his smile and quip, "Yeah, I might have to start paying full price for weed."
He laughs at it, light and breezy, and she thinks she might have actually managed to get away with it. As she turns to place the plate atop a pile of mismatched crockery in a cupboard that requires her to stand shoulder to shoulder with him, he says, "Oh I'm sure there will be more than enough guys at college who are happy to sell to pretty girls at a discount, oldest trick in the book."
And that's why it's so hard, this mission of hers to forget about the stupid crush because every time he says something like that there's this tiny, dumb part of her brain that tells her it means something to him, saying she's pretty or calling her sweetheart or flirting like it's going out of style.
What she’s supposed to say to that, she doesn’t know, so she just accepts the tray he’s holding out to her, and runs the cloth across it with intense focus. "Where will this go?"
"Trays are on top of the cupboard," he tells her, "just behind you."
She nods and wishes that he'd never said anything, thinks it’s unfair that this awkwardness will be one of the last things she has of him.
Eddie’s voice interrupts her thoughts. "Aren't you going to ask if I'll miss you?"
No, she hadn't planned to, because if he says yes she's not sure she'll be able to follow through with her grand plan of running away to college and never seeing or thinking about him ever again and equally, the prospect of him saying no is utterly terrifying. Still, he's asked her to so she will, because although she doesn't go around saying things like anything you want, Eddie she is painfully aware of the truth of the statement.
"Will you miss me?" she inquires obediently as she reaches up to put the tray back atop the cupboard. It’s just slightly too high for her and even as she raises onto tiptoes she isn't quite able to hook it over the top in order to push it away.
She’s moments away from giving up when he comes up behind her and says, “Here,” in a soft voice. He takes it from her hand and places it up on top of the cupboard with ease. In doing so he leans in a little closer than maybe he expected, so that Chrissy is pressed against him across the entire length of his chest, pinned between him and the countertop.
It's over as soon as it's started - he apologises hastily and steps back - but her breath still catches in her throat and when she quickly spins around the kitchen is tiny enough that he’s still so close, all soft features and big dark eyes.
When he says, "Yes, of course I'll miss you Chris," with an earnest sweetness, her brain switches off and before she can think about it she's closed that tiny space between them, risen up on her tiptoes, pressed her lips to his. It's frantic and messy at the start, the angle not quite right until he overcomes the initial surprise and takes a step closer so they're pressed together and he can curl an arm around her waist to pull her slightly higher to him.
In the moments they part for stolen breath she attempts to stutter out some sort of excuse that quickly just dissolves into incoherent mumblings. "Sorry I didn't-" she begins before their mouths crash together once more. "I just had to-" she manages the next time. "Before I go- once-"
Before she can collect the words together into any sort of meaningful explanation he lifts her up and sets her down surprisingly gently on the counter behind her. His hands are still wet and there will be soapy handprints on her thighs but she can't bring herself to care at all because his lips are on hers again and his fingers are distractingly low on her hips and she spreads her legs a little wider so that he can come closer, press himself flush against her front.
She realises her hand is still clenched around the teatowel and she lets go so she can clutch at his shirt and the hair at the back of his neck instead. She tries to pull him closer but there’s no space between them left to erase.
She's not sure how long it has been, presumably somewhere between seconds and hours, when she pushes lightly on his chest, hand spread in a palm. He breaks the kiss and moves back, giving her a chance to suck in a breath and suggest, "Bed?"
Some part of her had known it was a bad idea before she'd said it but once the word is hanging in the air there is no questioning it. Eddie takes his hands off her and places them on the counter, either side of her thighs then turns away from her, looking down to some point on the floor just past her right knee. She's gone too far, she knows that, because kissing is one thing but that would be another and the only thing for her to do really is to apologise, hop off the counter, smooth down her skirt, and go home before this can all get too embarrassing.
But she's thinking again about those words: anything you want. She can hear them in his distinct intonation because he'd used them only hours ago when they'd been trying to pick a movie to watch and she knows she shouldn't ask but it's like a tap's been switched on and now the water's flowing there's no stopping it.
"Please, it isn't- It doesn't have to mean anything," she rambles, promises she's not entirely sure she can keep leaving her mouth before she has time to think about them. "We can forget it in the morning. I just- I need you."
He doesn't say or do anything and the scene holds still for a moment until she reaches out with delicate fingers under his chin to lift his face. He avoids her gaze for only a second before he allows his eyes to flick to hers.
"Please, Eddie."
"Fuck ok, ok, bedroom," he mutters.
She knows his room well, could navigate her way around the space blindfolded, can reel off half of the titles from the numerous stacks of music from memory, could probably even draw you the distinctive shapes of the water stains on the ceiling above his bed and describe the feel of his sheets between her fingers from the times she's lain there smoking while he works on d&d campaigns or practices guitar.
And yet here, perched on the edge of his bed, watching him close the door, the space feels different. The air hums with the knowledge of what's to come and warps the perspective so the walls move closer and the organised clutter rearranges itself until the room seems entirely alien to her.
The bed complains about the extra weight when he takes a seat beside her, a tentative distance between them as if he's worried she might have changed her mind. When she reaches for his belt he gently stills her hand. "What's the rush?" he asks softly, bringing a hand to cup the side of her face. "We've got all the time in the world."
They kiss slowly, languidly, miles away from the fevered rush of the kitchen. When he traces his tongue over her lower lip she opens her mouth, letting their tongues slide over each other. She moans at the feeling of it and allows the vibrations to pass from her mouth to his. She’s already beginning to feel impatient, the stirrings of something delicious are beginning to rise in her and she wants more, wants now.
She leans back on the bed and pulls him down with a fist closed around the fabric of his shirt, lips never parting from his. He arranges himself carefully over her so that his weight is off her. His hair falls in a shaggy curtain around them, the ends tickling lightly at her neck when he moves.
When his mouth relocates to place slow, delicate kisses to her jaw she takes the opportunity to catch her breath, wraps an arm around him possessively. He makes his way across the length of her jaw and then, into the soft skin behind her ear, he asks, "What do you want, sweetheart? Tell me what you like."
The question throws her - she hadn't realised there was more than one way to do it - and the way he's kissing her neck again is leaving her with no brain capacity to invent an answer so she says, "I don't know, anything, just touch me," and then she punctuates it all with a please because far be it from Chrissy to forget her manners just because a pretty boy has his mouth on her.
He agrees, a muttered okay , but he takes no action to change what he's doing and yes, maybe he is technically touching her because they're kissing again, his tongue licking its way around her mouth, but apart from that there’s the rough denim of his jeans against her legs and his hand on her waist is placed carefully so that it doesn’t stray past the hem of her shirt to the thin strip of skin that peeks out beneath and she wants him to touch her, to feel the slide of his skin against hers.
She's not sure what it is that gives her the confidence to pull the fabric over her head and deposit it haphazardly beside the bed but she regrets it almost instantly. As his eyes rake over the newly exposed skin she feels compelled to apologise. To use her mother's words, she has let herself go over the summer, not enough cheer practice, too many shared beers, and what was once a taught, flat expanse of flesh is now a little fuller, a little doughy. She doesn't massively mind it herself; she likes that she doesn't get dizzy before lunch or at night and secretly, privately enjoys the curves that it has brought her, the now shapely figure cut by her chest and hips.
Still, Jason used to comment obliquely when she filled out and she feels she should at least make some acknowledgement of her undesirable state.
Before she can get her mouth round the words he's saying, "Fuck, you're so beautiful," and ghosting a trio of kisses over her ribs then more across her abdomen, hands coming up to frame her waist. The rings on his fingers feel cool against her heated skin and she wonders eagerly if they might leave angry red indentations that she can remember him by once they're finished.
But before long his hands travel lower. Pushing her tiny tennis skirt up to bunch around her waist, he hooks a finger under the band of her knickers.
"Can I?" he asks breathlessly, and waits for her to nod fervently before he pulls them down. She draws her legs up into the air to make it easier and once the fabric is over her feet he catches one calf in a broad palm and holds it steady so that he can deliver a delicate kiss to the inside of her ankle.
His mouth begins to trace a path up her leg, kisses placed carefully and deliberately, and Chrissy had felt restless earlier but now the anticipation is driving her insane. She'd like to rub her thighs together but can't with one of her legs in his grasp.
She lasts until he makes it to her knee before she breaks and whines, "Please just-", cutting herself off there because she's not sure she can bring herself to say any of the words that might reasonably end that sentence.
She feels him smirk against her leg and the drag of his lips over the skin as he tells her, "Patience, Chris. I hear it's a virtue."
He presses another kiss to the inside of her knee and she thinks he's being even more excruciatingly slow about it now, just to torture her. After only two more, he stops again to speak. "You're going to have to be a good girl and wait for it."
But the end of the sentence is entirely obscured by the sound of the moan that rips from her throat. Involuntarily, her hips cant up off the bed and hands grasp for something, anything, as the phrase good girl bounces around in her head and yes, she thinks, she can wait, she would like to be good for him.
He looks up at her, eyes dark and wide, and after a shaky breath says, "Ok, noted."
She does manage to wait, to lie mostly still and with no complaints save a few impatient whines that free themselves from the back of her throat as he inches closer and closer. And she is patient even as he presses a kiss to the crease of her thigh, even as he lets his breath ghost over her centre and the sensation of it makes her want to scream.
The matter-of-fact way that he says,"I'd like to eat you out," makes her blush a deep crimson, the phrase almost seeming more dirty than the act itself which is, in kind, ten times filthier than anything she can imagine herself doing.
"If you don't like it we'll stop," he bargains, sensing her hesitation. "Just give me five minutes."
She agrees with a shy nod of the head and he gives her no time to change her mind before he licks a broad stripe up the length of her. She moans loud enough that the rest of the trailer park can probably hear her but there is no room left in her brain to feel self-conscious about it.
After a couple of shorter swipes he lifts his head from her to ask, "Good?"
She manages to gasp out, "Yes. Don't stop," before his tongue is on her and she loses the ability to speak, to think.
He guides a leg over his shoulder, his hand snaking round to settle flat against her abdomen, keeping her still. The thumb of his other hand ghosts over the bundle of nerves at her apex and it sends something through her like lightning. She writhes against the sheets and, without her instruction, her fingers thread themselves into his hair, tugging at the strands.
Immediately she apologises, untangles her hands and places them neatly at her sides again.
He pulls away from her briefly to say, "It's fine," and then when she looks sceptical. "I like it."
She returns her hands to his head and helps to guide him back to her, a little unsure and self-conscious. But it's not long before she's delirious with the feel of his tongue against her, enough to not care that she's gripping his hair so tightly it must hurt and her foot is digging into his back between his shoulder blades, and how any of this is enjoyable for him she can't comprehend but it must be because every so often she can feel, feel , him moan against her, sending vibrations through her in a way that will surely haunt her fantasies for the rest of her life.
“You close, sweetheart?” he asks and she can’t answer because she makes the mistake of looking down at him, catching his eye as he casts them up the length of her body and the look of him with his mouth on her is obscene, utterly obscene, and she can do nothing but push her head back into the pillow and moan throatily and if the answer wasn’t yes before it definitely is now.
When her orgasm crests in her, tight coil in her stomach finally releasing, the sounds coming from her mouth are ones she does not recognise as her own, barely recognises as human in fact.
He helps her through it, mouth slowing to deliver small kittenish strokes. In the end she has to be the one to push his head away from her when she feels like herself again, instead of some crude, wanton creature, and the way he’s lapping at her once again becomes vaguely embarrassing. Before he pulls away and sits back he presses a closed-lipped kiss to the inside of her thigh.
He drags a sleeve messily across his chin before pulling each arm out of his shirt and delivering it in a bundled ball to the floor, and it's only in doing so that she realises he's still fully dressed. She wonders how it is that she can feel so thoroughly debauched when he's not lost a single stitch of clothing and she sits up quickly to help correct the imbalance, pulling his t-shirt up and over his head. His hair comes out unruly and messy and she smooths it down with gentle fingers for him.
She lets her hands dance over his chest briefly, lingering over the dark ink beneath his collarbone. When there is less urgency she will ask him to explain each one, why he got them and how long they took and whether they hurt. She will run her tongue over every inch of them. For now she reaches for his belt again, continuing undeterred this time to open the buckle and undo the buttons of his jeans, the outline of him clearly visible against the fabric.
She lets him shimmy them down his legs and lean across her to retrieve a condom from a disorganised drawer.
As he does she contorts a hand behind her back to undo the clasp of her bra and removes both it and her skirt to add to the mix of clothing in the floor.
By the time she's laid down again, shifting slightly to ensure the most comfortable position against the pillow, he's shed himself of his boxers and settled to kneel between her legs. She lets her eyes drag over him, drinks in every inch of his form. Everything she ever did with Jason was done half clothed in the back of his car because that was their only option when they didn't want their parents to know so this is new, entirely unfamiliar save for tiny cartoon diagrams in biology textbooks, and he’s so different from that, all dynamic and vivid. His chest expands with his breath and the tips of his ears have started to tint red and the muscles in his arm shift almost imperceptibly under his skin as he rolls a condom down over the length of him.
She thinks there is something unavoidably beautiful about him, and she finds herself wishing that she had any sort of artistic ability so that she could capture him like this, knelt at her feet and looking up at her.
And the fact that he’s looking so intensely should make her self conscious, because she's never been fully naked in front of anyone before and he can see all her unflattering parts, pudgy stomach and cellulite-specked thighs, but his eyes are filled with a dark desire, and if someone were to tell her right now that she was pretty or beautiful or, God, even sexy, with him looking at her like that, she might just believe them.
"You still want to do this?" He asks.
She nods and then says "Yes" with all the firmness she can muster.
"If you want to stop-"
"I won't."
He laughs at her resolute determination and leans down to press a soft kiss into her hip bone. "Ok but if you do, if you don’t like something, you'll tell me."
"Yes, yes," she agrees hastily. "Just- Eddie- please-"
Despite the guilty feeling it had always left her with afterwards, she had enjoyed sex with Jason. Maybe not so much the feel of it (which had been vaguely uncomfortable and overall underwhelming) but the closeness, the way she could pull him into her, eradicate all the space between them until the only way they could get closer was to merge into one. Sometimes she had felt they were halfway to achieving it.
Sex with Eddie, she finds, is a different thing entirely. Even as he aligns himself with her entrance, even before he’s really actually done anything, she can feel her desire coursing electric through her body. And when he finally, finally , after precious seconds that seem to drag on for hours, pushes into her, the way she can feel herself stretch around him, at once too much and not enough and just right , sends shivers through her that she can feel right to the ends of her fingers, the soles of her feet, the tip of her nose.
He sinks into her slowly, allows her to absorb him inch by inch, and when he's gone as far as he can he holds himself there, forehead pressed into the crook of her shoulder, so she can gulp in messy breaths and try to adjust to the feel of him inside her. For a few long moments that is all she can focus on.
Slowly, her body adapts to accommodate him and she becomes aware of his lips on her neck, pressing kisses over lingering strands of sweat-slicked hair that stick to her skin. Just as she thinks she might be ready he tells her, "I'm going to move now."
"Yes." The sound whistles, high and breathy, past her lips and he begins to rock into her, a little tentative at first, thrusts shallow and unfocussed. Even then, the drag of him moving inside her is dizzying and delicious, and she feels a heat curling inside her, twists the bedsheets round her fingers. It’s a feeling that only grows as he settles into a more consistent rhythm, expands with every thrust, with each rough sound that spills from his lips.
There is a moment that her hips shift beneath him, allowing a slightly different angle, and her body opens up to welcome him, to pull him that bit deeper . They both groan in unison at the feeling, the sounds mingling into one.
“Like that, sweetheart?” he asks and she nods frantically, as if worried he might stop if she doesn’t.
It’s almost overwhelming, the way he’s everywhere, hands roaming her body, mouth peppering kisses across her shoulder, neck, face, and inside her he’s touching places she hardly knew existed.
"Fuck, Chris, you feel-" His sentence trails off but if this feels for him anything like what it does for her then she can fill in the blank for him: magnificent, transcendent, perfect, right.
“Yes,” she agrees with a sigh.
“Not gonna last.” His voice sounds completely wrecked as he says it, same for the muttered apology that follows too. She can’t help but feel unbelievably powerful to know that she's the one who has undone him like this in a matter of minutes.
“Please.” she whispers. Curling a hand round to the base of his skull, she pushes her fingers up into his hair, fingertips scraping lightly against his scalp. “Wanna make you feel good.”
He swears under his breath and pushes into her a final time. As he comes she captures his lips in hers and drinks in his moans, absorbing his pleasure into herself.
Before his breathing has even begun to steady, he's rolling off of her and working her with quick, deft fingers that have her gripping at his bicep and coming with his name on her lips in no time.
While she’s still lying, worn-out and breathless, he runs through the motions of tying off the condom and dropping it into the bin and putting his boxers back on and fetching a damp cloth to wipe delicately over her thighs and asking her if she would like anything to drink or eat (just water, please).
By the time he returns with her glass of water she’s managed to find the energy to pull her underwear back on and drag his discarded t-shirt over her head. His eyes track up her body from feet to face before he hurriedly averts his gaze.
He mumbles something inaudible and places her water down on the bedside table next to her.
“What?” she asks as she picks up the glass and takes a gulp.
“Could get you a clean one if you want?” Without really looking at her, he gestures to his shirt with an unlit cigarette he’s retrieved from a packet on the desk.
She declines with a shake of her head, does the same when he offers her a drag of his cigarette (her mother had tried to get her into them to curb her appetite but no matter how she tried she couldn’t stand the taste). Lying back on the bed, she pulls the sheets over her and settles to observe him where he is perched on the desk chair, face in profile, cigarette glowing gently as he smokes.
“You want me to drive you home?” he asks, eyes flicking to hers for a second before darting away again.
She shakes her head although he can’t see. “No, mom thinks I’m at Steph’s; she’ll cover for me.”
He looks at her then, something apprehensive and cautious about the way he does, like he’s dealing with a wild animal. Chrissy thinks she likes it; it makes her feel like she’s as far as she could possibly be from the perfect, predictable, boring version of herself she’d once tried to be.
When all there is left of his cigarette is the butt, she asks, “Are you not coming to bed?” with some attempt at a coy smile, and watches his adam’s apple bob as he swallows thickly.
The room is peaceful - quiet and dark - and she’s curled up against his chest, his arm wrapped around her. She feels safe, feels centred, like she’s finally where she belongs. She thinks that’s what allows her to whisper, “I didn't realise it could feel like that,” into the night without feeling too vulnerable about it.
Enough time passes before he answers that she thinks he maybe isn't going to say anything but he finally tells her, “Clearly you've not been having very good sex."
She knows it was only meant to be a joke, sort of sarcastic in that way almost everything he says is, but it makes her feel oddly lonely - a reminder that this was in no way different or special for him, that he has had and will continue to have a lot of good sex with a lot of people who aren’t Chrissy.
She brushes off the feeling and burrows further into him. He is hers for now, that is all that matters at the moment. "Tell me a secret." she asks him. "Something no one else knows."
"You already know all my secrets," he claims.
"You must have something left you haven't told me."
She’s sure she hears him think of something, hears his interrupted breathing as he prepares to speak, and then decides against it.
"Go on," she prompts.
He shakes his head and presses a kiss to her shoulder. "Seriously Chrissy, with you I'm an open book." And then in response to her frustrated sigh, "Ok then, what do you think I'm hiding?"
She takes a moment to consider it. "I'm thinking… your hair's not really curly, that's a perm."
"Oh no," he laughs breezily and she can feel the puffs of breath on the skin at the back of her neck, "you've got me."
It's a dumb conversation but tucked into his chest it feels perfect and so she keeps talking, knowing at some point this will have to end, it will be morning and she'll have to make good on her promise to let this mean nothing, untangle her limbs from his, go home and pack up the rest of her things, but for now she can keep talking, and hope that she might make the night last just a little longer.
Chrissy wakes to soft morning sun filtering through the tiny window and casting a glowing parallelogram of light onto the bed where she lies, as she had fallen asleep, with Eddie's arm draped across her. She can feel the expansion and contraction of his chest in time with even, steady breaths on the back of her neck. His thumb drags slowly up and down the side of her stomach where her shirt has ridden up in the night.
She would give just about anything she has, she thinks, to begin each morning just like this.
Sighing contentedly to herself, she turns over so that she can face him, and as she does he rushes to withdraw his arm and issues a muttered apology.
"S'okay" she drawls, still not quite awake, and once she's settled against him again she picks up his arm and wraps it back around her.
"Morning," he murmurs with a smile.
She smiles back at him, face inches from his on the pillow. It might be the way he's looking at her, with this soft reverent look that she can easily convince herself to mistake as something romantic. Or perhaps it's because she's thinking about the night before, remembering that although she had kissed him first and had uncharacteristically boldly asked (pleaded? begged?) for sex, hours later, once they'd exhausted all topics of conversation, he had been the one to tentatively kiss her neck and mutter, "Is this ok?" as he'd slipped his hand beneath the baggy t-shirt she'd stolen and into her underwear. She'd been capable of doing little more than stutter out random single words ( yes , please , more , Eddie ) and she'd definitely been too out of it after that to have been the one to suggest that he push her underwear to the side, still holding her tightly, like he worried she might disappear if he didn't, and rock into her slowly and sweetly while whispering terrible things in her ear like how crazy she makes him, how gorgeous she is, how he fits so perfectly inside her - like she was made just for him. They had come in perfect unison that time and Chrissy thinks it might be the closest she will ever come to believing in God.
Maybe it's all that giving her some stupid thread of hope that he might possibly want her, or more likely it's just that, too sleepy to think straight or worry about what he wants, Chrissy does what she wants and leans into him, lips meeting his in a soft, chaste kiss that, despite being something you might give to your out-of-town aunt when she came to visit, feels ten times more intimate than anything she ever did with Jason. She tucks herself neatly into the space beneath his chin with a blissful smile. He settles a hand on the back of her head, soft curls of hair between his fingertips, and she wonders if maybe this is a dream, because surely it’s good to be true.
The confirmation of that thought comes in the form of his voice, soft and measured, cutting through the tranquil silence of the room. "I thought we were forgetting all this in the morning," he says.
"Oh," she vocalises. Instantly the beauty of the morning drops, the world losing its rose-tinted sheen - the sunlight that had seemed so purposefully placed to illuminate the way their bodies fit together reveals itself for what it truly is, just a patch of light. She chastises herself for being so foolish as to let herself get carried away, and then for ever having believed she wouldn't.
She pushes herself back from him. "Yeah, sorry, I-" she begins, unable to meet his eye. Hurriedly, she sits and swings her legs over the side of the bed so she can get up, find her clothes, leave, leave, leave.
"No, wait," he protests, sitting up behind her and catching her with an arm around her waist before she can stand.
She wriggles beneath his arm, trying to escape his grasp. "It's okay, I’ll just-"
“No, don't be like that,” he tells her, his tone sharp. It reminds her of the way her mother will speak to her when she’s done something wrong and she feels her heartbeat pick up in her chest. Instinctively, she stops trying to pull away from him and sits perfectly still, head tipped down as she waits.
But the angry words she expects don’t come, instead behind her all she hears are his measured, even breaths and then there’s a weight on her shoulder that she assumes is his forehead. When he does speak again his voice is much softer, tender. “Talk to me,” he requests. “Come on, tell me what I’ve done.”
That’s the problem - all he’s done is what she’s asked of him. “Nothing,” she admits, shaking her head. “You haven’t- You’re right; we should just forget it.”
“Well, obviously I don’t want to forget it, Chris.”
( Obviously he says. Obviously, as if any of this is fucking obvious .)
The words hang in the air for a little while before she asks, "No?"
"God no," he assures her in a whisper, "and even if I wanted to I'm not sure I could, given how it's everything I've spent the last few months dreaming of."
Once again, Chrissy lets the words linger for a moment while she tries to find a way to reconcile them with anything she understands about him. "What?" she asks, feeling completely baffled. She makes to turn around.
He draws his arm away from her to allow her to do so and settles back, the duvet still twisted around the lower half of him.
Searching his face for some sort of explanation, she runs a restless hand through her hair. "What are you-" She sighs frustratedly. "So why have I spent half the summer making a complete fool of myself trying to get you to ask me on a date then?"
It's his turn to look at her like she's speaking a different language now. "What do you mean?"
"I've been parading around trying to get you to notice me. I mean, God, it’s been embarrassing flirting so shamelessly and wearing all these tiny outfits and throwing myself at you at every opportunity I can find only to have you illustrate that you are beyond a shadow of a doubt, completely uninterested," she tells him, getting increasingly agitated with each word.
"That's not true," he claims.
"I asked you on a date!” she cries and her mother has told her it’s unattractive when her voice gets all high and shrill and she knows she should really take a moment to calm herself but she’s so frustrated. “I asked you to the movies with me and you told me to go with Robin ."
His eyes widen at the revelation. "Shit, that was supposed to be a date?"
"Yes, you complete and utter idiot!" She's about to lose her temper, to rant and rave about how she’s leaving in three days and they have no time left and how could he be so stupid but he’s looking at her all lost and bewildered and he's just so ridiculous that all her anger dissolves instantly into an urge to laugh.
“Idiot,” she says again with a disbelieving shake of the head and an affectionate smile. "I thought you just didn't want me."
"Didn't want-" he repeats, incredulous. "Jesus, Chris, you’re the idiot. I've been head over heels for you since the first time you got high with me and laughed at my terrible jokes." He pushes her hair behind her ear and looks at her the same way he has done for months on end now and it feels immensely gratifying to know that all that time that look was supposed to tell her that he felt the same as she did.
"So what, do I owe you a date to the movies today then?" he asks.
She hums and pulls an exaggeratedly pensive expression. "Yes,” she concludes, finally, “but first I want to have sex again."
Laughing brightly, he pulls her closer into him. "That can definitely be arranged," he tells her and he's leaning in to kiss her when she places a delicate finger over his lips.
His eyes narrow and he lets out a small, frustrated sound.
"And after I want you to take me for breakfast at Josie's," she continues, remembering that she has been cheated out of more than just a cinema date. "And I want us to sit in a booth and when I press my leg against yours, instead of scooting away like I've just burnt you with a curling iron I want you to put your hand on the inside of my thigh."
She moves to sit beside him, back against the wall, then picks up his hand and places it where she wants. "Just here," she explains, breath catching slightly as he begins moving his thumb back and forth over the sensitive skin in a repetitive, soothing motion.
She forces herself to ignore it, as far as she can, and continues on. "And instead of going to the movies, we'll rent something from Family Video and I want you to put your arm around my waist while we're picking a film."
He slips his arm between her back and the wall and curls it round to settle his hand on her waist. She hadn’t really meant for him to do it, would much rather it had stayed on her thigh but she supposes she did ask him to, in this roundabout sort of way, so she places her hand over his, interlocks their fingers.
"And Steve and Robin won't say anything," she remarks, thinking about the way all they ever seem to do is exchange knowing looks. "So I want you to find some small, casual way to slip into the conversation that I'm your girlfriend and th- wait I am your girlfriend right?"
He raises an eyebrow, shrugs ever so slightly. "If you want to be."
She nods, self-satisfied. "Ok so you can find some subtle way to tell your friends that we’re dating," she informs him, "and then we'll come back and I don't really care what film you choose because we'll sit on the couch and I'll put my legs in your lap." She pivots to demonstrate, laying her legs across him the same way she always does only this time he drapes an arm over her thighs so his hand can curl back around and tuck under her knee and oh, Chrissy thinks to herself, so he can learn .
"And I'd like you to run your fingers up and down my calves, but honestly I'm not overly fussed because the main thing I want is for you to drag me into your lap about twenty minutes in-" She lets out a small yelp as he pulls her towards him and lifts her into his lap but it dissolves into a giggle as she settles, legs astride him.
She brings a hand up to trace the line of his jaw with her fingers. Her voice is barely more than a whisper now, like a secret shared between just the two of them. "And I want you to tell me that you haven't been able to focus on any of the movie because I'm too distracting and if you don't have me right that instant you might explode."
He presses his lips to the corner of her lips and begins to repeat her words back between kisses across her jaw. "I haven't been able to focus," he mutters into her skin, "on any of the movie." He starts on the column of her neck then and she tips her head back a little to allow him better access. “Because you're too distracting," he continues, this time sucking at the delicate skin in a way that makes her gasp and buck her hips against his leg.
"And if I don't have you right this instant," he concludes, licking over the spot where her blood is beginning to bloom under her skin. "I might explode."
He captures her lips and kisses her deeply before pulling back to ask, “Would that do?”
There’s no room to think of something witty to match his slightly ironic tone so she just says “Yes”, voice already sounding a little rough around the edges.
He looks at her like there is no world outside of this room, only the two of them and a tangle of bedsheets in the whole universe. Chrissy thinks she would like that very much.
“Well, I must say, Chrissy Cunningham, you seem to have gotten pretty good at wanting," he remarks.
And not long ago she might have thought that was a criticism, would’ve apologised and shrunk back, but instead she returns his easy, affectionate smile and agrees. "Yes, I'm pretty much an expert now - especially when it comes to wanting you."