Your parents decide to relocate after an incident the summer before your freshmen year of high school, one that leaves you irrevocably changed.
But after three years away, you decide to stop running from your demons and return to Hawkins High for y...
As you're leaving the library, Eddie walking by your side, you have a fleeting thought that you really like having him next to you. It feels like a calming presence. He looms over you, but in a way that surprisingly doesn't feel threatening. It feels safe. Familiar. He smells like a combination of metal, pine, patchouli, and cigarettes and you can feel heat radiating off of him. Like there's a magnetized energy between his arm and yours, inches apart as you walk.
You both stop when you reach the bottom of the stone library stairs and awkwardly, slowly face each other. You both smile, look away, letting out a chorus of awkward laughs. You had a good time together. You slayed his "Twelfth Night" essay and laughed the whole time. You learned a lot about him. He was more than it seems anyone in Hawkins gave him credit for. Sure, he sucked at getting school work done, but he was insightful, thoughtful, inquisitive, kind. That smile didn't hurt either. It looked like his whole face smiled when he did, eyes and all.
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"So um," you say, "do you need a ride?" You gesture behind you toward your red Oldsmobile Cutlass with your thumb.
"Oh...no," he says, something different in his voice, like it was registering about an octave deeper. "I, um, I live right down the road. It..you know...it would take longer to get in the car for me to just....Yeah, no, but thanks. I, um, had fun...even though it was, you know, school work."
"Uh...yeah," you stutter, trying to recover, even though you're not exactly sure what made everything so awkward all of a sudden. "No problem. Well...see you tomorrow," say you with a small smile and turn toward your car.
"Hey, um, Y/N?" Eddie calls to you.
Your turn around, "Yeah?"
"Don't forget that it's my turn to play teacher next," he grins before turning on his heel to walk home, his curly mane bouncing with each step, in time with the chain on his jeans.
You grin, too, to yourself. The playful banter between the two of you gives you butterflies. At least you think that's what it is...you've never had them before. What happened three years ago shut you off to anything that remotely felt like that. And you didn't even think those feelings were possible after what had happened.
But, as it turned out, Eddie Munson was just full of surprises.
