mixtape (reddie)

Chapter 58

"Hungry Eyes is my favorite," Eddie tells him.

Richie smiles, stocking the shelves with cans. His boyfriend sits on the step ladder to his left, but Richie doesn't need it anyways. His legs are long enough to allow him to reach the top shelf on his own.

Eddie reads the back of the mixtape cover for the seventeenth time in the past ten minutes, memorizing the tracklisting. "There are a few I don't know."

"So go home and listen, you dweeb," Richie laughs. He continues stocking cans, his new part time job at the market filling his pockets with money he has no idea what to do with.

Eddie looks up, his eyes more visible beneath his new haircut. His hair is still feathered and messy, but now his face is clearer. The freckles are coming forth with summer approaching. His skin is going to bloom.

"What? No. I haven't seen you in, like, three days. I wanna hang out for a bit," Eddie says.

"I get off at four," Richie promises, putting the cans down to approach the sitting boy. He ghosts his hand along the outside of Eddie's cheek, his fingertips trailing down his neck to touch the necklace his ring is on. He remembers this beaded chain, he remembers the way it hung from Henry's throat with an arcade golden band slipping off of it.

"That sucks," Eddie scoffs. "I wish you got the job at Blue's. We should kick Bev's ass for stealing that from you."

Richie smiles and shrugs. "She didn't steal anything. Bevvie was the one who showed me Blue's in the first place, she should have it."

"But still..." Eddie mumbles under his breath. "I'm leaving next week, Rich. I want to spend some time together before I go."

The road trip.

Richie sighs, turning back to the shelves as he resumes working. They're not kids anymore. Richie's got a job, he's in therapy, and he talks to Wendy once a month about volunteering down at the youth center to help troubled kids. Eddie's gotten into the university up in Bangor. Him and Bill start in the fall, so this is their last summer to just go wild. Henry got Eddie's car working, so the plan came together pretty quickly after that. Eddie and Bill leave next Thursday. Richie's been counting the days down in his head, a silent death sentence looming in the back of his mind.

"You won't be alone," Eddie says. He knows what's on Richie's mind, he can practically read his other half like a well described novel. "Stan and Mike are losers and will always want to hang out, and Ben will come check on you when he's not at practice. I don't know about Beverly, though."

Richie shrugs again. Since the breakup, Beverly has been distant. She's "reflecting" and "looking inside herself" to "make a change". Richie feels as if she's too embarrassed to show her face around the boys again, or maybe it's her pride that she just can't swallow down. Either way, she's focused on her studies more than ever. She doesn't have time for anybody these days.

"It just feels... empty. You and Bill will be gone, and that's just... it'll feel weird."

Eddie reaches out to take one of Richie's limp wrists, bringing it up to kiss the boy's ugly, scarred knuckles. "You know what day I'm coming home?"

"July 28th," Richie reassures himself.

"There we go. Just repeat that in your head, over and over," Eddie tells him, promises to return embedded in his skin wherever Eddie's lips touch.

It's hard to believe anybody when they tell him things like that. Richie doesn't believe in things like "I'll be right back." If someone leaves him, he assumes it's permanent. He's got too much trauma to just blindly trust like that nowadays.