Chapter Text
Chrissy Cunningham was a good girl.
She went to church, 9am mass every Sunday instead of sleeping in. She got straight As and still did the extra credit assignments. She made cheer captain two years running, Homecoming Queen three years running. Prom was still two weeks away, but half the student body had stopped her in the hallway to let her know they were voting for her. She didn’t gossip, she didn’t drink, she didn’t party. She didn’t talk back to her mother when her dinner plate was only half full, just watched her brother get second helpings plus dessert. Chrissy wasn’t just a good girl – she was the good girl.
But here’s the thing about almost getting murdered by a telekinetic sociopath from an alternate dimension: it really makes you reassess what’s important. And being a good girl doesn’t mean shit if you’re dead.
Chrissy knew she wasn’t supposed to have survived. She wasn’t Nancy Thompson turning her back on Freddy Krueger: she was Unnamed Cheerleader who was supposed to die in the first scene of the movie. The only reason she lived was because Eddie Munson was a nicer guy than anyone in town gave him credit for.
Because he’d felt awkward tearing his trailer apart for contraband ketamine while she stood around in her cheer uniform, so he’d flipped the radio on in the kitchen before upending his bedroom. And when Chrissy had been running for her life on another plane of existence, it was nothing but dumb luck that Dolly Parton’s Light of a Clear Blue Morning had come over the airwaves while Eddie was shaking her and begging her to wake up.
Chrissy had a long time to think about it, a good long time to process the almost end of her life and the almost end of the world. She watched Jason Carver, her boyfriend since they were thirteen, turn into someone terrible and unsurprising. She watched Eddie turn into a hero and get pulled back from certain death by a girl with a buzz cut. She saw her flawed little hometown band together in hate, and then band together in crisis.
The girl, Eleven, closed the rifts, and the government came up with a cover story about tectonic plates and one in a million fault lines. She made a whole new band of friends, and it’s a comfort knowing she’s not the only one in town who’s got a Walkman and headphones in her purse at all times, Dolly Parton queued up and ready to go just in case she hears a clock chime somewhere it shouldn’t. No one will forget how the town hunted a teenage boy for sport, but when the smoke had cleared the Munson trailer was repaired for free, and rumor had it, Principal Higgins handed Eddie his diploma before final exams even started. It wasn’t enough, but it wasn’t nothing either.
She almost died, is what Chrissy kept coming back to. She looked straight into hell and almost fell in. And if she almost died then, she could die at any time right now. And if she could die at any time, then she’d better have done somethings worth living for.
It was May 2nd, 1986. In two weeks, school would be out for summer, forever. Chrissy had plans.
Martha Summers’ Beauty Salon smelled like hairspray and acetone. It was a Wednesday morning, and packed with women: every chair, every nail bench, ever hair dryer was occupied and half a dozen women swapped magazines in the tiny waiting area. Brenda Summers, one earing set on the glass front counter, phone held between her ear and shoulder and scribbling down appointments, finally wished the caller a nice day and turned back to Chrissy, who twisted a strand of hair around her finger and tried to look casual.
“You think you’ll work here after graduation?” Chrissy asked. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched her mother lean over to Mrs. Nelson. Her hair was in curlers in the middle of a permanent, and she was completely absorbed in their conversation about the grocery store’s price of eggs. Good.
“Probably.” Brenda put the phone back in its cradle, and pulled a pack of gum out from behind the cash register. “The money’s only fine, but it’s not very hard. Plus, working here, you hear everything going on in town. Trust me,” She smirked conspiratorially, “Some of it’s a doozy.”
“Actually,” Chrissy drew out the word and lowered her voice. Brenda’s eyes sharpened and she leaned a over the counter a little, pretended to straighten the stack of business cards in front of the register. “I wanted to ask you about something. Or someone.” Chrissy said quietly.
She and Brenda weren’t best friends. They were barely good friends. They’d had a handful of classes together, one group project in sophomore English, and their mothers didn’t socialize outside of Mrs. Cunningham’s monthly salon appointments. But both of them were graduating in a few weeks: the fear and excitement of the end of high school and the beginning of the rest of their lives bred a certain level of camaraderie.
“I’m getting some air, mom! Back in ten!” Brenda called over her shoulder, and pulled Chrissy out the door and around the corner. In the alley between two dumpsters, Brenda leaned against the exposed brick wall of the building and raised her eyebrows expectantly. “So? What do you got?”
“Do you, um,” Chrissy tried to mirror Brenda’s posture and ignore the smell of the dumpsters. “Do you remember the rumor junior year that a girl paid Eddie Munson to have sex with her and…do things to her?”
The rumors all agreed that a girl (no one settled on who she was) paid Eddie Munson (there were no variations where it wasn’t Eddie) to have some kind of dirty, kinky, fucked up kind of sex with her, so fucked up no one would repeat the details. Chrissy had four years of experience with the Hawkins High rumor mill and she knew two things. First: no one repeated the specifics because no one actually knew the specifics. Second: there were just enough bones there that this rumor felt true, and if anyone would know, it would be someone who put in hours of her life at the salon.
Brenda didn’t lean in and giggle the way Chrissy had seen her do when she was gossiping with other girls. Her eyebrows settled back down, and her face took on a disdainful kind of stillness. She took a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of her skirt and tapped them against the heel of her palm once, twice.
“And?” She asked coolly.
Chrissy looked out over the end of the deserted alley. “I have a friend who wants to know if it’s true.”
“You want to know who fucked Eddie Munson?”
“No.” Chrissy said, “I don’t care who she is. I just want to know if it’s true. And if it is, I want to know what they did.”
“You mean your friend wants to know.”
She was losing Brenda, she could tell. The tap of the pack against her palm was an annoyed tap. She could back out, tell her to forget it, but there was no one else who would know better than Brenda. And if she changed her mind later, tried to ask Brenda again, she’d get shut down. She could go straight to Eddie and ask – no. She’d gotten pretty brave fighting for her life, but not that brave. She needed to know before she sought Eddie out.
Maybe…if she came clean, not all the way, just a little, maybe Brenda would too: sometimes you had to give a little in order to take (something Jason had never understood).
“There’s no friend.” Chrissy said, and looked Brenda in the eye this time. “I’m the one who wants to know.”
Brenda raised one eyebrow, looked at her appraisingly for a moment, and finally seemed to decide that she liked what she saw. She opened the pack and pulled out a long, slim cigarette, the kind advertised in ladies’ magazines, and then held the pack out to Chrissy.
“It’s true.” Brenda said, smiling a little as she lit both their cigarettes around her cupped hands. “I should know: I was the girl who fucked him. And,” She leaned back with a smirk, blowing out a stream of smoke, “I’m guessing you want to be the next one.”
“I’m thinking about it.” Something spiked like jealousy in Chrissy’s chest right next to something like excitement. “Can I ask what you did?”
“Only if you tell me what you’re gonna ask him to do to you.”
“I haven’t decided if I’m going to ask him to do anything yet.”
“Bullshit.” Brenda laughed, not unkindly.
Chrissy laughed too and thought about what had been running through her head the last few months. It wasn’t a cat she was willing to let out of the bag just yet.
“Just tell me yes or no, it was something…freaky, right?” She asked, “Something you didn’t want to ask Andy to do?”
Brenda nodded. “Something I didn’t trust Andy to do right, either.”
Chrissy looked down at her cigarette and worried her bottom lip between her teeth. She had let it go half to ash without taking a single drag. In as quick a rush as she could, she said, “You know those handcuffs he wears on his belt?”
She put the cigarette in her mouth and inhaled before she could say more. It wasn’t even the tip of what she wanted to ask Eddie to do, but it worked: a grin broke over Brenda’s face and she gave Chrissy’s arm an excited little squeeze, like they were partners in crime now.
“We used the handcuffs too! Right after he smacked me on the ass and told me what a bad girl I was.” Brenda whispered. Something shivered down Chrissy’s spine: she hadn’t even thought of that. “Have you ever done it doggy style?” Brenda asked.
Chrissy shook her head without saying the truth: that she’d never done it at all. Jason had always moved too fast, too hard, and it had hurt when he’d tried to shove a finger inside her. She’d told him she wanted to wait till they were married, to save herself for their wedding night, and that had actually seemed to please him more than if she’d put out. Meanwhile, an aching need had grown in her gut that was big enough now to burst her open, and no amount of touching herself in the shower had helped.
“It’s…intense. Especially with him.” Brenda smiled like she was remembering a steak dinner at Gibson’s. “Consider yourself warned: Munson should have a FOID card for the weapon on him.”
“Was he, you know, he wasn’t freaked out by…”
Brenda gave a little scoff-laugh, “He’s the resident freak, why would he be freaked out? But no, he was really good about it. He’s not, like, judgmental or anything.” Brenda looked around and said a little quieter, “I think he’s one of those guys where he gets off on the girl getting off. It’s, like, a fetish or something.”
“That’s a thing?”
“Oh, yeah.” Brenda nodded. “He was going down on me at one point, and, like, I’m not exactly quiet, but I swear to god I thought he was gonna blow his load right then.”
The same shiver raced down Chrissy’s spine again, wriggled into her belly, and made a home there. “Wait, he put his mouth…”
A burst of laughter like a bark came out of Brenda’s mouth. “Oh honey.” She said, shaking her head, “Go see that boy. Today. He’ll be in the woods behind the high school in two hours.”
“How do you know?”
“Cause I was gonna buy from him this afternoon.” Brenda said, stubbing out her cigarette on the brick wall. “But I can buy from him literally any other time, and I’m feeling like a good Samaritan today, so you’re gonna take my appointment.”
Chrissy hastily put out her cigarette and followed Brenda out of the alley. “So I just show up even though he’s expecting you?”
“Oh, trust me,” Brenda said, linking her arm through Chrissy’s, “He won’t be disappointed.”
The last time she’d gone to the clearing in the woods with the picnic bench, she’d thought she was losing her mind. The trees had felt like they’d been closing in around her. Shadows flitted and moved too quick like they were circling her, about to grab her by the ankles and drag her under the dirt. The only thing that had made everything retreat was Eddie.
Now the sun filtered through the leaves above her, bright enough to dispel the shadows but not yet at it’s full July heat. She sat down carefully at the picnic bench, she was early, and vaguely wished she’d worn a dress with a longer skirt to better avoid splinters.
The dress was her favorite, crème and peach linen with buttons in a straight line down the front and pockets to boot. Her mother loved and hated the dress: loved that it nipped in at the waist, and hated that it wasn’t as high cut as she thought it should be, that it made Chrissy’s chest look just a little fuller than she thought appropriate. A few months ago, her mother’s withering glance would have had Chrissy scampering back upstairs, but now? What if she died and she hadn’t had a final moment to enjoy wearing her favorite dress? Had suffered through her final moments on earth wearing the green and yellow polyester number her mother always cooed over? Chrissy had worn the dress, even paired it with her favorite pair of crocheted knee socks.
A stick snapped behind her, and it was a marvel after everything that she didn’t jump out of her skin.
“Chrissy Cunningham, as I live and breathe.” Eddie Munson was stepping into the clearing out of the trees off a narrow dirt path. He looked surprised, but he was smiling at her too. He was wearing ripped jeans, even though it was probably almost too hot for them, and he’d left off his leather jacket in favor of a faded, black Metallica t-shirt. His arms weren’t as skinny as Chrissy had thought they would have been. Eddie was leaner than Jason for sure, but there was still corded muscle in his arms that made the veins in his forearms stand out. It made her swallow.
“Hi Eddie.” Her face felt hot. Was she blushing? Maybe she was just still warm from the walk over.
“How’s the eleventh hour of high school treating the Queen of Hawkins High?”
“Balancing the Prom budget only feels a little pointless. How about you? I heard Higgins already gave you your diploma.”
“And yet O’Donnell is still demanding that I write a final paper. But she also said I could do it on The Lord of the Rings, so I figure it’s a wash.” Eddie meandered toward the picnic table and if his eyes flicked down to her socks for a second, it was too fast for Chrissy to tell for sure.
“You look good.” He said, “Not that you don’t always look crushingly beautiful to us mere mortals.”
“But I don’t look like I’m being haunted by a demon monster?” She laughed, “You look good too. How’s your side healing?”
“We are back to normal actually.” Eddie reached the picnic table lifted his shirt up to his ribs to show her. There was a snake inked into Eddie’s side, the tail disappearing under his shirt, the head baring its fangs down at his hip, and the rest coiled over his ribs. The worst bite, the one that had taken a chunk out of his side, had healed over and distorted the middle of the snake’s body in the process. Chrissy was already reaching out to touch it before she caught herself and pulled her hand back.
“Go on, it’s okay.” She glanced up and Eddie nodded. His skin was warm and pale under her fingertips as they trailed over the knotted scar tissue. “Had a few nightmares about what might have happened if Wheeler and Buckley and Harrington hadn’t taken the son of a bitch out as fast as they did.” Chrissy could almost feel his voice through his ribs. “Gareth says I should get it touched up to hide the scar, but I don’t know, I kinda like it how it is.”
“It’s like a sign you survived.” She said without thinking. When she glanced up at him again, he was smiling a little.
“That’s what I said.” His voice was quiet for a moment. Chrissy had never really heard him be quiet before. Then again, she realized, she was leaning over a picnic table at a ridiculous angle to touch what was basically his chest, oh God, Chrissy, you look desperate, get yourself together. She sat back down on the bench and Eddie let his shirt drop, climbed onto the bench across from her.
“Not that it doesn’t make my day to see you, Cunningham, but are you just enjoying the nature of Indiana in a notorious drug dealing spot, or are you looking for something more specific?”
Chrissy tried to make her smile easy, chill, and not loaded with all of the very specific things she’d mulled over for the past two weeks. He hadn’t stopped smiling at her since he stepped into the clearing, and it was giving her butterflies. “I ran into Brenda today, and she, uh, mentioned she was going to meet you here. And then I mentioned that I was actually looking for you too, because I wanted your help with…something, so she let me take her appointment. I hope that’s okay.”
“Everything,” He enunciated every part of the word, gave it more syllables than it normally had, “is okay with me when it comes to you, Cunningham. But your dramatic little pauses are making me think you’re after something besides my pre-rolleds. And I’m pretty sure you’re not here for anything harder after how last time went so…” He raised one eyebrow. Chrissy wanted to tease him for calling her the dramatic one. “I’m on pins and needles, baby.”
Chrissy sat up straighter, and tried to remember all the words she’d practiced on her walk over, tried to get them out cleaner and smoother than she had with Brenda. “There was a rumor last year that a girl asked you for sex.” She said slowly, “The kind of sex she didn’t want to ask her boyfriend for.”
Every nerve was on fire with adrenaline, so she could see the laugh bubbling up in Eddie’s throat, could see him waiting for her to laugh, to say just kidding! When it didn’t come, she saw him look at her again, clock her blush and her lip between her teeth. He’d been tapping absentmindedly at the wood surface of the table, picking at some initials carved in the corner, but his hands suddenly stilled. Chrissy kept her hands under the table, worrying the band of her watch, a hangnail, anything she could find.
“Just…just out of morbid curiosity,” Eddie had stopped looking her in the eye. He was glancing over her shoulders at the trees and then behind himself at the trail. His hands had started moving again, tense and fast, fiddling anxiously against the wood. “You’d tell me if this was a prank right?”
“Why…” Of all the ways Chrissy had seen the conversation going, she hadn’t prepared for this one. “Why would it be a prank?”
“I don’t know.” Eddie was glancing around faster now. “Maybe because the prettiest girl in Hawkins is asking me to have kinky sex with her? Seriously, Cunningham, we came out the other side of the end of the world together pretty recently: you’d tell me if the basketball team is in the bushes right now waiting to tar and feather me as soon as I say yes to cuckolding Jason Carver, right?”
Chrissy summoned all the determination that had gotten her across town, across the field to the clearing in the first place and put her hands on top of his. Eddie stilled in an instant, took his eyes off the trees and brought them back to her.
“It’s not a prank.” Chrissy said, “And I broke up with Jason last month.”
Eddie looked at her again, really looked at her. It felt like he was seeing inside her, seeing her conversation with Brenda, seeing her tossing and turning in bed that morning, her shower the night before when she’d used all the hot water, put a cramp in her wrist, and still not scratched the itch inside her. She broke his gaze to look down at their hands. Eddie’s hands were big, with long fingers and clean, short nails. The metal of his rings was warm where she’d always thought it would be cool.
“I’ve never…” had sex – oh Christ, no, don’t open with that, “It’s never felt the way for me the way it looks like it feels in the movies…being with a guy. And, like, I know movies aren’t the same as real life, but the way the other girls talk about it in the locker room, it doesn’t feel like that either. And maybe that was just – I mean, Jason wasn’t exactly…”
Eddie’s hands turned palm up under hers. She was holding hands with Eddie Munson on the same picnic bench where two months ago she’d thought she was losing her mind and they’d sat here exactly like this and she’d had her first normal thought in a week, and it was, oh no, he’s hot.
“Jason always thought I was the good girl. Because everyone thinks that.” Chrissy had to keep going, it wouldn’t come out if she stopped to think, “But for a while now I’ve been wanting something – some things – that aren’t what a good, normal girl would want. And when I remembered the rumor from last year, I decided to come and ask you because you’re…”
“Already the town freak?” Eddie finished. He said it without any malice, like it was perfectly fine, and that made her furious at the whole of Hawkins all over again.
“No.” Chrissy said, “Because you’re safe.”
She was holding Eddie’s hands way too tight, she realized too late, but when she started to let go, Eddie’s hands held on and his thumb brushed gently over the knuckles of her left hand.
“Obviously, if you’re not interested, or if the stuff I want is, like, super weird, we can just forget about this.” He didn’t seem to be horrified at her. But he hadn’t heard the specifics yet, and Eddie was probably too nice to act freaked out to her face. It occurred to her, she could just ask him for exactly the same thing Brenda had asked for, if only because she knew he’d already said yes to that.
“I don’t want to forget about it.” Eddie said. The tension and fear had all drained out of his shoulders, and he was looking at her that way again, like he could see what she’d had for lunch the day before. His brown eyes were so big and soft though, Chrissy thought it might not be bad even if he could see inside her head like that.
“Besides,” he continued, “I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in the world you could ask me for that I’d say no to."
“You don’t know what I’m going to say yet.”
“Well then lay it on me.” Eddie grinned and for a second Chrissy thought of the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood. “What kind of kinky shit are you into, Cunningham?”
Chrissy laughed, even as her pulse became a jackhammer. This was the part that had scared her almost more than the prospect of Eddie thinking she was a freak. Talking about it, speaking any of it out loud, felt more illicit than actually doing it. God, she hoped her palms weren’t sweating all over Eddie’s hands.
“You have to promise not to laugh."
“Cross my heart.”
“And that you’ll tell me if it’s too weird and you don’t want to do it.”
“Slim chance there, sweetheart, but okay.”
Eddie was still holding her hands. Did she just blurt it out? How much detail was she supposed to go into? Oh God, would he want her to explain why she wanted what she wanted when even she didn’t know why? Maybe she had to start at the beginning, in seventh grade at Jocelyn Williams’ house when Jocelyn had shown her the dirty magazines under her older brother’s bed, how the one with the cover photo of a woman’s body crisscrossed in scarlet rope had fallen into her hands and haunted her with an urge she didn’t have the words for.
Her mouth was too dry. There were too many things in her head and not enough words, not the right words for any of them. It felt like they were going to explode out of her chest in a wave of gibberish letters. She pulled her hands out of Eddie’s abruptly and snapped her purse open in her lap.
“I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to say any of it out loud. Just don’t,” She pulled out a pen and the small notebook she kept for shopping lists, opened it to a blank page. “Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not laughing.” She could hear the smile in his voice as she wrote. Maybe this was better actually. Writing it out as he watched her meant she couldn’t deliberate or cross things out, had to just go for it in short sentences and bullet points.
“I can hear you holding it back.”
“I swear to god, Cunningham, I’m not laughing. This is just possibly the cutest shit I’ve ever seen.” He craned his neck to see over her hand and Chrissy waved him back. “I’m actually masking how disappointed I am, because hearing you say it out loud, whatever you’re writing, was definitely going to be my favorite part.”
“You are laughing!” Chrissy was too though, the nervous giggles had taken over her chest. It was nice when Eddie teased her because he was never mean about it: he only did it to get her to laugh along with him, never laughed at her.
Maybe that would change now though. Maybe this would be the time he laughed at her. Or went awkward, shook his head, said that was too fucked up for him. Chrissy capped her pen, and pushed the notebook across the table before she could stop herself. She buried her hands in the folds of her dress to try to stop them from shaking.
“I’m just worried – I’m concerned – Cunningham,” Eddie was still smiling at her, as he picked up the notebook and panic unfolded in Chrissy’s chest, “How are you gonna get down and dirty and actually engage in the third and best deadly sin, if you can’t…”
Chrissy watched his eyes swing over the paper, stop, widen, and read over it again, slower. The rest of his sentence died on his lips and his mouth dropped open a little. Chrissy counted nervously in her head, and watched Eddie read over the paper again and again. She made it thirty-seven seconds.
“It’s too much. That’s okay. We can just–” Shame filled what felt like her whole body. She felt stupid and scared, and her best hope now as probably to just beg Eddie to forget the whole thing had ever happened. She could probably get out of the clearing before she started crying, could probably, eventually, forget this ever happened. She reached out to snatch her notebook back, but before she could grab it Eddie’s hand caught hers around her wrist without looking up.
“It’s not too much.” He said quietly.
Chrissy swallowed, stayed still in his hand as her thumb rested against the pulse point on her wrist. “It’s not?”
Eddie shook his head, slid his hand up her wrist and laced their fingers together. “It’s not enough.”
“It’s not?” She repeated.
“I need more detail, sweetheart.” Eddie released her hand and laid the notebook down on the table between them. “I mean, there’s an awful lot of space to fill between tying you up and having sex. All of which, I am very agreeable to.”
Chrissy felt herself blush, not a pretty demure pink, but a dark scarlet. Eddie could see it happen, she knew he could, which made it worse.
“To start off with,” Eddie picked up her pen and uncapped it, “Is there a particular position you want to be in? What kind of tone do you want to set? Rough? Gentle? Should I be a strong, silent type or can I talk dirty to you during all this? Are there any names you want to be called?” Eddie ticked things off on his long fingers like they were nothing, like each one wasn’t a trap door Chrissy wanted to throw herself down. “Do you want to just be tied up, end of story, or do you want to be blindfolded too? Gagged?”
Chrissy’s lower lip was between her teeth before she could stop herself. Eddie’s eyes flicked down to her mouth and he paused. She wondered if he could tell that underneath the table her legs were pressed together.
“Let me know if this is too much too fast.”
“It’s not.” She said quickly, too quickly. “I’ve just never thought about it like that. I’ve never done this before. With someone else.”
“But you’ve done it on your own.” Eddie had caught the pause she’d tried to gloss over. “What is it?”
“What’s what?”
“Is it an old scarf you don’t use anymore? A belt? That one’s kind of hard to maneuver on your own. Don’t even try to tell me you’ve got some rope under your bed, not when you couldn’t say any of this out loud.” Eddie’s teasing smile was back. It pulled Chrissy’s smile back out at the corner of her mouth. “There’s something in your bedroom you tap into when you’re home alone, when no one’s gonna overhear you.”
Chrissy watched Eddie spin her pen between his fingers and wished she was the pen. “It’s a pair of old nylons.” She murmured.
“Really?” Chrissy nodded and Eddie leaned back a little, looked her over. “Does it work?
She shrugged, “It’s not really…enough, if you know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean.” The way Eddie was looking for her, how he hadn’t taken his eyes off her since he’d looked up from her notebook, made her squirm against the bench, something he definitely noticed. His tongue darted out to wet his lower lip, and Chrissy crossed her legs, then crossed them again the other way. The way he watched as she reacted to everything he said, it felt like being pinned down in the most delicious way.
“You’ve done this before.” It wasn’t really a question, but Eddie nodded anyway. “And you…like doing it?”
“It’s one of my favorite things.” He was still looking at her, like what he was really saying was the better to eat you with, my dear.
Finally his eyes dropped to the notebook. He turned it around and pushed it back toward her across the table. “Imagine for a second that we’re in my bedroom. Cause I assume you don’t want to do this at your house with your parents watching Bonanza reruns downstairs.”
The image of her pink bedspread and Eddie’s whispered voice in her ear telling her to be a good girl, to be quiet, flooded her mind without warning. “No, yeah.” Chrissy said with a little cough, “Your place is good.”
Eddie nodded. “So, imagine you just walked into my bedroom: what do you want to happen next?” He held the pen out to her. “How do you want to feel?”
Chrissy thought about it, really thought about it, in more bold colors and sensory details than she’d allowed herself to before. Eddie was okay with this, she reminded herself, taking her pen back, Eddie was saying yes, he didn’t think she was a freak. She wrote for a few minutes, and passed the notebook back. Chrissy waited for the joke while he read, the inevitable remark. Nothing came. He just nodded and reached for her pen.
“I’m gonna make a suggestion. Well, two, actually.” He drew lines connecting things, numbered other lines, then wrote some more and handed it back to her. Eddie’s writing was clear and focused without sounding like her biology textbook. When he passed the book back to her, Chrissy decided that if he could say what he wanted openly, she could too, at least on paper.
When she passed the book back to him, Eddie scanned her responses – then grabbed his chest, gasping, and threw himself backwards off the bench.
“Oh my god!” Chrissy shrieked even as she burst out laughing.
“You can’t do this to me, Cheer Queen.” Eddie rolled across the grass and looked at her upside down from the ground. “Are you trying to kill me? You expect me to go on after reading that?”
“It’s not any worse than what you wrote!”
“I don’t go waltzing through your wet dreams, taking notes. Don’t worry, I’m definitely into it, sweetheart.” Eddie muttered, scrambling back onto his feet and shaking his head like a dog to dislodge the leaves stuck in his hair.
“You missed one.” Chrissy said to cover the way her stomach was somersaulting. Eddie leaned over the table and let her untangle a twig snagged in his hair. His hair was softer than she’d expected, and it made her want to tangle her fingers in it and run her nails over his scalp, wondered if he’d like that. “Sorry, that one felt like it hurt.”
“Nah, I’m into hair pulling.” He smiled at her, big and closer than he’d been before and Chrissy tried to stop giggling. “Is hair pulling on the table? Not the picnic table, the sexy hypothetical table in your little book.”
Chrissy nodded, “Just not, like, too hard?”
“I’ll be gentle.” Eddie promised, and there was something about the soft low sound his voice made this close to her that made her blush to look him in the eye.
“I, um,” She stammered, “You should probably know it’s…it’s kind of been awhile. For me.”
“You mean Carver wasn’t a sensitive and generous lover?” Eddie asked it so flatly that she burst out laughing. “No, but can we talk about how this town’s rumor mill is completely busted if you’ve been broken up with Carver for a month and I’m just now hearing about it?”
“Generous and sensitive he was not.” Chrissy laughed. She thought for a moment about telling him about the time she tried to guide Jason’s hand to her clit and he’d thrown a fit, questioned her for hours about how she knew anything about that, and she’d had to apologize to him to calm him down. No, she shook the memories of Jason out of her head as Eddie stood up from the table and she took in the leanness, the hungriness of him. There were better things to think about it. “Does, um, does Friday night work?”
“Friday night works great.” Eddie extended a hand to help her up, like a gentleman or a knight. “And I know I’m the one with the rope and the expertise here, but you set the pace, Cheer Queen. If you want to slow down, stop, if you wake up Friday morning and decide you don’t want any of this, that’s what we do.”
Chrissy took his hand to get off the picnic bench, and abruptly, they were standing so much closer. He hadn’t moved when she’d stood up, so he was only inches away from her. She could feel the heat off his body, could smell his laundry detergent, his deodorant, all of it. It made her mouth water.
“I want to.” She admitted, “I’ve wanted to for awhile.”
Eddie smiled wide and leaned back against the table. “I don’t know if you already had an outfit planned, but I wouldn’t say no to this little thing.” He reached out and tugged playfully at the hem of her dress. For a moment she almost thought he might slip his hand underneath, and was disappointed when he didn’t. How was she going to last until Friday? How was she going to walk out of the clearing without staggering?
Chrissy smiled a little too big, tried to bite it back to a cooler, chiller size, failed. “Socks too?”
“Yes, please, socks too.” Eddie’s grin was positively feral. “Pick you up at ten?”
“On the corner. Don’t pull up past the lilacs or my mom will see you.”
“Be waiting at nine-thirty, Princess.”