mixtape (reddie)

Chapter 22

Richie smiles, and for a moment, it feels like he doesn't have to explain anything to Eddie. It feels like they can just hang out in his room and have a normal night together, but then the sad fear shoots back up through Eddie's eyes like spiderwebs being sprayed from the ass of an arachnid.

"The thing about Henry Bowers is that-" Richie stops, realizing he doesn't exactly know what to say. How can one really explain their relationship? Richie sighs and sits on the bed, rubbing his face behind his glasses. Then, in a fit of exasperation, he dramatically throws himself back and says "Whale, oi'll be fooked."

"What was that, Scottish?" Eddie sits down next to him, crossing his legs on the mattress.

Richie rolls over onto his side to face Eddie, smiling at him. "Something like that."

"I think you always sound the same," Eddie says. "Every Voice just sounds like Richie Tozier to me."

"You wound me, Eds," Richie puts a hand on his chest in a dramatic fashion. "But... Voices aside, dude. I... I was friends with Henry when we were little. Like, real little. Six, seven maybe. I don't know. He was super different back then, y'know, not a complete-"

"Psychotic fucking asshole?" Eddie finishes his sentence, and then adds with a face of disdain "And... dirty."

Richie laughs at this, but continues talking, "Less of an ass, yeah. He was actually pretty nice, always taking care of me, letting me come over when my parents were being ''meanies," you know, kid stuff. He was nice, or at least he was to me. We were at each other's houses everyday, always hanging out and wrestling, just... bein' kids. We started growing up, but it was fine. Even when he went to middle school, he'd still come hang out with me everyday after school, and he'd tell me about this cool song he heard on his dad's radio that day. It was great, it was, we were best friends.

"And then... New Year's Eve came. Henry's father had thrown a party for everybody in his office, and my parents were invited too. Henry and I spent most of the night trying to see who could sneak the first glass of champagne without anybody noticing. At the end of the night, neither of us had been successful, but it was still fun just to try. Anyway, we had gone outside to see if we could see any shooting stars. Oh, that was a tradition by the way. Shooting stars on New Years Eve, and we always wished for the same thing; Henry Bowers stops getting hit and Richie Tozier stops being ignored. It was unspoken, but it was what we wished for every time.

"We were on the porch... it was cold, so I said "Hey, it's fucking cold." And then Henry looked at me. I remember his face, he was... he was terrified, Eddie. I always looked up to Henry, you know, he was older, stronger, cooler, he was everything I wanted to be. But he looked terrified, and I could hear the adults counting down to midnight inside, and I asked "Hen? What's the matter?" And the adults were inside, 5, 4, 3, 2, and it was freezing, and I couldn't see any shooting stars, and the adults were so drunk but we were kids outside, freezing our tiny acorn dicks off, and then they said "1!" and he had just kissed me."

"He what?!" Eddie practically shouts. Then, as jealousy blooms within him, the shock is quickly erased by an expression much more aggressive. "Did you kiss back?"

"No?" Richie scoffs. He shakes his head and says "We were just kids, I didn't even think about kissing girls, let alone my best friend. I pushed him away and suddenly understood why he was terrified, he was scared because of me. Because he wanted to kiss me but he didn't know how I would react, and that scared him. His dad's... his dad's rough, Eds. His dad throws him around, so being... being gay isn't an option for him. But he took that risk anyway because he- he- I don't know. I never got to look inside his mind, but I knew he was scared, and I knew that nothing would ever be the same. So I tried to go easy on him, I tried not to react the way his father would. I told him it was okay, that we could just forget it happened. Because it was an accident, right? He didn't mean it."