Love Grows: Steve Harrington's Girl Next Door

1983: Good At Getting Beat Up

"Hey, Steve."

"Hey, Rosemary."

Tonight, she's wearing her glasses. They're great, big, circular things with a gold metal frame that give her the impression of an owl with round, intelligent eyes.

And it's those same eyes that bug out her pretty skull when they register what's happened to Steve.

Rosemary pinches the corner of her frames to readjust them, squinting out into the dark from the warmth of her own window, to the battered boy stood in the house opposite.

"What happened to you?" She questions, letting her wide-eyed gaze comb over every pulsing bruise and every angry cut that decorates his face.

Steve winces, the tips of his ears flooding a bright shade of pink. After swallowing, he finally replies.

"Promise you won't laugh?" He can barely mask his embarrassment.

"You're hurt," she simply states before smiling and furrowing her brow. "Who would even do that?"

That's when Steve's reminded how blissfully ignorant Rosemary is, especially when it comes to who she's kind to. Even to those who don't properly deserve it.

"I, uh, sort of got my ass handed to me... by Jonathan Byers." He swallows the massive lump in his throat.

"I see." Rosemary nods. "Jonathan Byers beat you up."

"That's what I said, isn't it?"

"And, did you deserve it?"

The lump in Steve's throat grows back with a vengeance, all hard and dry and impossible to gulp back down, that all he can do is resign himself to it and try to ignore the feeling of shame squeezing his chest.

"Yeah," he finally whispers before holding up his hands, red with paint for whatever reason. "I tried cleaning up my mess, too. But I don't know if Nance is gonna wanna speak to me ever again."

Rosemary stares at him dead-on in the way Steve finds slightly unnerving. She's a starer. Always has been. It used to piss him off when they were kids, with her piercing eyes that dig their way through to his soul and the corner of her mouth ticked up in a smirk, as though she knows a secret that he doesn't. Like always, he breaks first and drops his eyes to his hands, looking at the dried flecks of red going crusty under his bitten nails.

"So," she soothes in a soft voice like summer rain. "Have you apologised to her?"

"What?"

"Apologised," she offers.

The word hits him hard and sends him reeling, that he can't help but release a huff in the form of a breathless laugh, running a hand over the top of his head before it finally comes to rest on the back of his neck.

"I'm a fucking idiot," he hums.

"Your words, not mine." Rosemary tilts her head.

"Tell me something," Steve asks. "Do you think I'm an asshole?"

The girl across the trellis blinks, twice. Then, she wrinkles her nose to the side.

"I think..." she begins thoughtfully. "I think you're really good at acting like an asshole. And sometimes, when you're in too deep with an act... it gets pretty hard to separate what's real and what's fake."

Steve feels stung, slightly taken aback by this weird girl's words. Brutally honest yet as gentle as a hug. It also makes it starkly apparent to him that she's been watching him, in school, when he barely acknowledges her presence but then acts all friendly the moment they get home. Guilt worms its way through his body.

He presses, "So, what you're trying to say is... yes, I'm an asshole?"

The girl shakes her head.

After, she thumbs along the lace of her curtains, and twitches them closer together.

"I'm going to bed," she decides after a yawn. "And it seems to me you've got a heck of a lot to figure out."

Steve feels a budding warmth that blooms in his stomach, overwhelmed with determination, knowing what he must do.

He nods. "Sure, Rosie. G'night."

"Night, Steve. And good luck." The corner of her mouth has tugged upwards in that knowing smirk again, and Steve's dark brown gaze collides with hers so he can study her expression. After a beat, when the silence between them has stretched wide enough, Rosemary chooses to elaborate, "In telling Nancy that you're sorry."

He smiles at her, feeling laid bare but light, watching her recede from view behind the lattice of her cream curtains.

Until she pauses in drawing them together, those big, round glasses on her face reflecting moonlight, her features still poking out the gap.

"One last thing," she adds. "You asked if I think you're an asshole, when really, that's not even the point. It shouldn't matter what I think; it shouldn't matter what anyone thinks. It's on you to be yourself."

Steve arches his brow, suddenly curious.

He questions her, "Is that what you do? Be yourself? Without giving a shit about what anyone else thinks?"

Sweet, strange Rosemary from the house next door, just casts him an ever knowing glance, before actually disappearing this time, for the rest of the night.