"I've realized that..." he started, then took a shaky breath. "Earlier today, when Stanley pulled you aside... seeing you two so close and secretive, I hated it." The words tumbled out in a rush. "I don't like how others make you smile..." He traile...
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°•°Vanessa's POV°•°
"Oh, here we go," Richie said as our waitress arrived with a small bowl of fortune cookies, the table now cleared of the wreckage of our meal.
"Thank you," we mumbled, the earlier boisterous energy beginning to wane.
"You okay?" Eddie asked me, handing me a cookie. Besides the buzz from all the alcohol, a deep, unsettled feeling had been gnawing at me all evening. I just placed the cookie back in the bowl, my appetite for games gone.
A snippet of conversation pulled me from my thoughts.
"Hey, we saw your movie, by the way," Beverly said loudly, a deliberate pivot in the conversation.
"You did?" Bill asked, not sounding thrilled.
"Oh my god, it was so good," she gushed. I could tell she was grasping for a safer topic, anything to avoid the dread that was slowly seeping back into the room.
"Oh, my God." "It was so scary." "And the ending sucked?"Bill asked, a wry smile on his face.
Beverly chuckled. "Yeah, it did. I'm sorry." "That's all right."Bill's smile faded as he just stared at her. "What?" she asked, shifting under his gaze.
"Nothing. This is just weird," Bill stated, putting words to the feeling we were all trying to ignore.
"Yeah." "Just all this,all these memories, people that I don't even remember forgetting."
"I mean, it's weird, right?" Ben spoke up, drawing all our attention. "Now that we're all here, everything just comes back faster and faster. I mean, all of it."
A chorus of agreement went around the table.
"Yeah, you know when Mike called me, I threw up," Richie said with a nervous chuckle. "Isn't that weird? Like, I got nervous, I got, like, sick and I threw up. I feel fine now. I feel very relieved to be here with you guys." He looked up and finally noticed our identical, grave expressions. "Why is everybody looking at me like this?"
"When Mike called me, I crashed my car," Eddie admitted, avoiding my eyes. He knew our tense phone call had happened just before Mike's, and he was probably thinking about the 'mommy' slip-up.
"Seriously?" Bill asked. "Yeah." "Shit,man, I hear you," Ben said. "I mean my heart was literally pounding right out of my chest." He looked over at Mike, who wore the grim expression of a man who'd been waiting for this moment for decades.
"I thought it was only me," Beverly whispered.
"It was like pure..." Bill stuttered, struggling with the word until Mike finally gave it voice.
"Fear. It's fear what you felt."
"Mikey," I said, my voice smaller than I intended. "Why did we feel like that?" The feeling of being watched since crossing the Derry town line, the cold sweat on my palms, the overpowering urge to protect Eddie-it all had a name now.
