our last summer. (e.m)

one: decade later.

the last time i had seen eddie munson,
i was eight years old.
it's been ten years since i've seen that best friend of mine.
some days i wonder if he even remembers me after all this time. 
if our days spent in the sun together,
doing nothing but laughing and stirring up trouble,
are memorable for him like they have always been for me.
my uprooting hadn't been unexpected.
if my eight year old eyes were equipped to look past the promise of recess,
pool days with eddie,
sneaking sweet forbidden treats,
then i might've been able to see my parents relationship crumbling.
i had been moved away with my mother on a random morning.
i thought her packing up my belongings into cardboard boxes meant we were playing a game.
i understood then on the ride to my new home why every time i successfully unpacked,
smiling triumphantly,
she looked utterly exhausted.
"stop unpacking your stuff, dammit."
she'd said in that thick accent of hers.
my mom was from georgia,
where she brought home the best, sweetest peaches when we returned from christmas with the grandparents.
my dad was from rhode island,
but he never talked about his home life.
my mom used to say it was too wounded for any child,
that hearing it would only secondhand traumatize me.
so i never asked and he never told.
their upbringings were only one of their many differences:
my mom and her loving, gentle parents.
my dad and his aching childhood.
my mom and her sweet accent,
sweet tea,
sweet hands.
my dad and his tough demeanor,
worlds best clam cakes,
and a voice made for story times.
living in hawkins, indiana was the only thing they ever agreed on,
until that, too, fell through.
my dad tried his hardest to keep up with me as i grew into adolescence.
but it could only survive so long through shortened phone calls and letters that often got lost in the mail.
eventually,
we just drifted from one another.
my father became another stranger of my past,
lingering in the shape of my eyes and the curve of my nose as the only proof of his existence.
the only time i hear from him now are on birthdays,
when a card arrives with a hefty monetary gift and in his scrawl,
"happy birthday, my clover.
love you.
-dad."
clover was his idea, too.
y/n is my real name,
after my father's greatest mentor in college,
but clover stuck when i was a toddler and that had been my first word.
"why do your parents call you clover? are you irish?"
eddie munson asked me after he knocked on my front door,
wondering if i had a brother he could play with.
i told him no,
i didn't,
but i could play.
so we did.
"no, my parents just think i'm their lucky charm,"
i told him while we picked up rocks and skipped them over the rivers surface.
he giggled and said,
"lucky charm. like the irish guy on the cereal."
and that was it.
we became the best of friends,
even after i beat him that very first game we played.
i wish i would've had the chance to tell him,
so that our goodbye could have been worthwhile.
but it had been anything of the sort.
in fact,
i watched in agony as his face crumpled when my father kneeled down to him and pointed to our car that was driving miles and miles away.
i begged and cried for my mother to stop driving so i could say goodbye,
until her words shocked me frozen:
"if i stop now, clover, we'll never leave."
now here i stand,
eighteen years old and anticipating my first semester of college in the fall.
but the anxiety for that will have to wait because the summer coming up before me is one i never imagined before.
my fathers request before i be shipped off to college was to fly to hawkins and be with him.
for just one last summer,
he promised.
it doesn't make sense to me why he wants me to come all of a sudden.
it's not like i'm being sentenced to prison or anything,
there will be plenty of more summers for us.
besides,
where was this when i called and pleaded with him to let me come back to hawkins,
to let me live with him?
now that i'm over it and ready for new beginnings,
my father digs his nails into me and brings me right back in.
so of course i'm going.
i pack all the things my suitcase will hold and i board the first june flight out.
a part of me is sick with nerves to see my father after all this time.
but a bigger part of me hopes and prays eddie munson is still there.
maybe this time,
by the summers end,
we'll get the goodbye we always deserved.
—
a/n
my loves !!
i hope you're all excited for this story like i am!
it's a change from the short little imagines i used to do,
so please give me some grace in the future!
i'll need it.
i love you all sm and i'm so glad you're here.
thank you for the support,
you mean the world to me.
i hope all your eddie munson dreams come true in this story of summer romance.
stay safe and healthy my friends
<33
-e