"I swear, if I'm dying tonight because of you, I'm gonna haunt your ass so hard, Harrington!"
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah! I'm gonna go full Poltergeist and shit!"
"Then bring it, Graveswood."
"Challenge accepted."
***
In which after years of suppressing their...
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Chapter Eighty-Six: Meet The Parents
(pre-Suzie, Do You Copy?, Pt. 5)
***
Rowan and Steve studied together the rest of February and into March.
As winter faded away into spring, Rowan and Steve were studying together when Rowan wasn't either studying or hanging out with Eddie, Robin, Chrissy, Valerie, Nancy and Jonathan or having sleepovers with her female friends or seeing Eddie's gigs/campaigns or helping to babysit Alistair and his friends—sometimes she'd even accompany Steve in chauffeuring the gremlins to the arcade, the Hawk, or even the library, hearing the bickering—mostly Steve and Dustin's which continued to be vastly entertaining—and rolling her eyes and smiling. She studied with Steve for their tests and his finals coming up this month—she was also helping Eddie with his; her best friend was getting extremely stressed out with the concept that he could fail and repeat again—alternating not just between Steve's house and her trailer, but also at the spot in the woods that felt less like her place but more like hers and Steve's place. And after a few hours of studying together, they'd call a break and have something to eat—again, alternating between Steve cooking which was always good, getting pizza, and dinner with her family—talking and bickering and bantering and enjoying each other's company.
That while studying was purely so they could help each other with the tests and finals, Rowan was finding she liked studying with Steve and the study breaks right after, that Steve might like it too. And she was glad that she had said yes when Steve asked her to do this a month ago.
Now, she and Steve were in the living room, Steve sitting on the floor with a notebook in his lap while Rowan laid on the couch, her feet on the couch and her knees up while another notebook was propped up against her knees. On the floor was a mess of loose sheets of paper, flashcards and textbooks—they were studying for Rowan's Calculus test and Steve's upcoming English final. And Rowan knew firsthand from Eddie that Mrs. O'Donnell, the senior English teacher, was a bitch with tests. The coffee table had been pushed to the side, to make room—Rowan had volunteered to use her telekinesis, but Steve had insisted that he push it out of the way. Eventually, Rowan had gotten involved and they pushed it out of the way, almost collapsing into laughter after they finished pushing it out of the way and Steve joked they could dance in the space left now in the middle and Rowan had drily reminded him of their terrible dancing moves on Halloween and Steve had said back, "Hey, I don't mind dancing terribly if it's with you, Graveswood," and Rowan had to remind him about studying to hide the confusing, swooping feeling inside her—and Rowan felt it was better that way, that this suited them much more than when they started studying in the beginning.
Tongue sticking out, Rowan scribbled away in her notebook, answering the practice questions as Joan filled her ears. The silence between her and Steve was comfortable, companionable, nothing like that empty void of a silence she'd registered when she first came to the Harrington house. It worked for them, when they were studying different subjects.
