✓ | BETTER WITH YOU → richie tozier ³

twenty

DEAR ASH,

Hey, beautiful. It's me.

I suppose I should start off with apologizing. I didn't mean to make you not want to be with me. God, that was the last thing I ever wanted. Now you're gone, and I don't what's wrong with me.

Just a head's up, this is going to be a longass letter.

And just a quick sidenote- I did slit my wrists before writing this. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll bleed out before I have to see your face crumple and hate me. Whatever.

I guess I'll call this part one.

Part One

Three years ago, I tried to kill myself for the first time. I guess you've probably heard the twisted version from the people at school and the semi-accurate version from the rest of the Losers, but because I love you, and because you mean more to me than anything in this life, you're finally going to hear it from me.

The first thing that you should know is that I hated you for that first year.

But I guess I just used hate to mask what I was really feeling, which was love. Unconditional love for the girl that completely tore me apart and put me back together all at once. You can't find that just anywhere, beautiful. You made it happen. You made me feel it.

Anyway, I was kind of a wreck. I filmed Mike (obviously), just for the sick fun of it. I beat up people if they insulted you. I got suspended practically weekly.

There was this one time where I drank so much booze and smoked so many cigarettes that I almost got hit by a car when I was stumbling into the street. None of my so-called friends had bothered to make sure I got a ride home.

Eddie had followed me to the party to make sure I was going to be alright, and he shoved me across the street before the car hit me. The only thing was, it hit him instead. Four stitches to the side of his head.

And you know what sucks? I didn't even give a shit.

None of the Losers spoke to me for two weeks. I don't blame them.

But yeah, that's sort of the stuff I was going through. And I'm sorry for keeping it from you. I should have told you, gorgeous. But I hate making myself look weak in front of you. It hurts me, I think, to have to show myself as not as tough as everyone thinks I am, kills me.

Part Two

On my sixteenth birthday, the Losers all pitched in and tried to something for me. They made me go to Mr. Keene's store to pick up Eddie's pills- which I was not happy about by the way- and because they knew I would do anything for Eddie, it wasn't like I could refuse.

So while I was there waiting two and half fucking hours for some measly pills, the Losers were planning a huge birthday party out by the quarry.

Stan and Bill made this rainbow cake (some gay pride thing because they can't let that fact go), and later when I asked them about it, they laughed and said something I've never forgotten:

Ah, Richster, ol' bud!

Everyone has some gay inside them!

Some of them are just too pussy to let everyone else know!

PS. They were drunk. I still laugh at them about it to this day.

Anyway, after I got back from getting the pills, Eds convinced me to go with him to the Quarry, which I did because it was Eds.

When I got there, there were candles and lanterns on the trees, and Stan and Bill had invited Mike and Bev over, and there was all this hugging and man, it was one of the best nights I had had in forever.

Bev told us all about Portland, and Mike told us about the stuff he had been doing on his grandad's farm, which was on the very outskirts of town.

No one mentioned you.

But I remembered you.

When we were all sitting on the edge of the Quarry, and I was leaning back on the rocks and smoking a cigarette (not our kind, which I couldn't bring myself to smoke), I just thought about you, and how if you were here you'd grab the cigarette from my hand and take a drag yourself.

Or how you would laugh and jump off into the Quarry for the hell of it, or shove me underwater and I would duck out of your reach and pop up out of the water sputtering and coughing and we'd start laughing so hard that our breath would get all gaspy and uncontrollable and we wouldn't be able to breathe.

And then, maybe, we'd both take a walk, and you'd kiss me and we'd be freezing but stay outside anyway, all wet and shivery, just so we could keep each other warm.

You know that feeling?

I think that's when I knew that I was really, really in love with you.

Head over heels, like I said.

Part Three

When you came back, it was like falling in love all over again.

I saw you, and I thought, there is no way this is that little spitfire that slapped a cigarette out of my mouth when she was staying at my house.

But it was you. A little older, a little less vulnerable, but you were my Ash.

Gorgeous, these past couple of months of having you back with me have been the best of my life. And I'm sorry for messing them up.

Everytime you laugh, everytime you smile at me, it's like I'm living. It makes my entire day. And I know this sounds cheesy and weird, but I don't think I've written anything so true.

And so, this is why I'm getting ready to do what I have to do.

If you get this, and I'm dead, I want you to know it isn't your fault. It's never your fault. You have given me every ounce of happiness I've ever earned.

And I don't deserve you. I don't deserve your unconditional love for me, I don't deserve you knowing my flaws and my mistakes and accepting me for each and every single one of them.

I want you to know I love you, and that I've never stopped loving you. I haven't regretted a single moment I've ever had with you. Every fight, every dance, every kiss, it's been everything.

I love you, beautiful. You're my world.

Love, Richie

And with a gasp, Richie shot up from his bed, the heart monitor beeping wildly as Ash read the last line of his letter to her, and threw her arms around him.