Good to You [Eddie Munson x OFC]

Chapter One

I used to wish that one day I could say that I am truly, genuinely happy and before Eddie, I suppose I just tried to mask what I felt. I always forgot how truly hard it can be to live with depression until one day it just creeps up on you again and you wonder to yourself if you'll ever truly find peace in this life or if you'll continue to fight inside your own mind for the rest of the time you have here, however much time that may be.

Eddie was the first boy to ever truly love me. He made me feel alive again. I would get this fuzzy feeling in the pit of my stomach when I saw him smile, or when he played with his hair or when he looked at me. He made me feel like the person I once was before all the other boys that had come across my life took a piece of me with them when they went and left me with only a part of myself. I had become this numb shell of a person I once was. I was going through the motions of daily life but I was never truly living it. I felt as though I couldn't truly enjoy anything in life, because I couldn't feel anything at all. Eddie somehow changed all that.

Eddie and I had been in different friend groups since the beginning of time. I never thought much of him and his weird nerd group that he had. I had been friends with Robin and Nancy forever. It wasn't until Robin worked at Scoops Ahoy with Steve Harrington last summer that I started to be friends with him. Nancy had dated Steve briefly in our sophomore year but they ended on good terms and Steve blended in with our group fairly well. Nancy started dating Jonathan Byers which then added him to our group of friends. Jonathan's brother Will, and Nancy's brother Mike, are part of Eddie's weird club and over time, Jonathan and Eddie started to become friends (over, what else, but weed). Eddie becoming friends with Jonathan meant that Eddie was now in our friend group. It was weird having him around at first because I always saw him as the out-of-place kid who played a nerdy game every Thursday night with his friends but now he was hanging out with us all the time and I started to not mind him being around. He was still kind of weird but he was actually gentle and caring on the inside of that metal head exterior of his.

It was finally the second to last day of school for us seniors and I was more than ready to get out of there. Being in this school and this town always made me feel trapped. I couldn't wait to finally go away to college and be on my own for the first time ever. Don't get me wrong, I loved my friends here in Hawkins but I was dying to see new parts of the world that I had never seen and experience people I had never been around before.

Robin, Nancy and I were sitting together at lunch. Eddie always sat with his Hellfire friends. At least, I think that was what the name of his nerd club was.

"Eddie's acting up again..." Robin said, looking over at Eddie's lunch table.

Nancy turned around to look as well. "Did he just throw something at Mike and Dustin?"

I shook my head. "He's probably mad about something to do with that weird game they play." I looked down at my lunch in front of me.

"Oh, my god." Robin gripped my arm. "Look."

I looked up to see Eddie standing on top of the cafeteria table, sticking his tongue out at Jason, the basketball team captain, and giving himself devil horns with his hands. This man truly gave me second hand embarrassment, for real.

"He's in our friend group again, why?" I asked.

Nancy and Robin just shrugged and we continued on with our lunch, trying to ignore the inevitable fight that was going to ensue between Jason and Eddie. I looked up one more time to see what Eddie was doing. He had gotten down from the table finally and sat back down with everyone. I saw him smile at something someone said, and I started to get this weird feeling in my stomach. I looked back down at the table in front of me and tried to ignore the feeling I got when I saw him. The bell to signal the end of lunch rang and we all got up from the table to leave. Of course to exit the cafeteria, we were going to have to walk by Eddie and his nerd friends. I kept my eyes cast down as we got closer to him.

"Ladies." I heard him say as we walked by him and he did a small bowing gesture as we passed.

"Thanks, Eddie." Nancy said.

I glanced back at him and he winked at me. I could feel my cheeks starting to turn red and tried to suppress it as best I could. Did I like Eddie? No. There was no way. Maybe I was just feeling lonely.

"I think Eddie might like you." Robin said to me as we placed our lunch trays down on our way out of the cafeteria.

"Me?" I asked. "There's no way." But, I continued to think about it all the rest of the day and thought maybe Robin was right. She had a very strong intuition and could pick up on things you were feeling before you even realized you were feeling that way yourself.

"I'll see you guys after class." Nancy said as she turned off the path and into her classroom. Robin and I continued on to our class that we had together.

"Do you really think he likes me?" I asked Robin again as we sat down at our desks.

"Yes, Cas, I really do. You know how I am with feelings. I can just tell. And I think he likes you." Robin confirmed.

I pondered Robin's words all throughout class. I have no idea what the teacher had even said for the last hour because all I could think of was Eddie's smile and him winking at me in the cafeteria. I went back and forth with myself on whether I really agreed with what Robin said. I know she always had a strong intuition but I couldn't imagine Eddie liking anything more than his D&D games and maybe his guitar. There was no way he would ever like me that much, or at all.

The bell rang and I snapped out of my Eddie daydream. Everyone was racing to the door to get out for the day. I slowly packed up my belongings and grabbed my bag. Robin waited for me, since I was her ride home from school.

"Hey, do you want to have a sleepover on Friday night? I'm going to ask Nancy, too. I think it would be fun. We can celebrate school being over and graduation." Robin suggested as we walked to my car.

I agreed and we got into the car. We had a fairly quiet ride to Robin's house. I was just so fixated on these feelings I had about Eddie and how quickly one look from him could completely change my whole opinion of him. Maybe I truly hadn't actually looked at him before, which sounds about right since I felt like the last three years of my life had been a complete black hole. After my last relationship ended, I was diagnosed with depression and put on medications. I suspect the depression had been around for a while and I was just denying that I had a problem. But the medications made me feel numb. I felt like I wasn't a person anymore. I was practicing the motions of daily life but I wasn't performing as if it were my moment on the world's stage.

It wasn't until after I chose to go off my medications that I realized how badly they made me feel. But then, coming off them was scary as well. I started to feel again. I know, that sounds silly. But feelings are scary, especially when you feel them as intensely as depression can make you feel them. I had some intense downs and some reasonable ups. But nothing made me feel more alive than the way Eddie looked at me.