𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐢 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 | steve harrington

chapter one

Scoops Ahoy was a punishment filled with paper sailor hats and giggling teenagers with sticky pink lip gloss and homemade jewellery. It was breaks filled with melted peanut butter swirl and a whiteboard that told Steve Harrington that he'd dropped off since high school.

They'd called him 'King Steve' and 'The Hair Harrington' for his locks of dark hazelnut and swoops of caramel held up with amble amounts of firefaucet spray that slowly collected dust with each day that Robin Buckley swiped a line of blue marker over the blemished whiteboard with a horrible sound that reminded him of a duck screaming.

Steve was surprised to understand that he simply wasn't cool anymore but he supposed the girls his age who came in with overwhelming jasmine perfume and sweat glistened skin just didn't care for the boy with the sailors uniform on, disinfected scooper attached to his belt and a signed contract which meant he had to greet everyone with the same enthusiastic call of 'Ahoy!'

It had been a summer job to distract from his dads belittled opinions of his failed graduation, something he hadn't expected. Listings from colleges dropped with opened letters into the rubbish bin soon to be lost in a chaos of bills and squashed Coca Cola cans. His future down the drain swirled with chocolate stained milk and out of date cologne.

Mitchell Harrington was an a grade asshole and had worked his way into Starcourt to punish Steve for his failure. A summer job meant to turn his life around turned to months stood behind a glass counter and a broken silver bell digging into caramel and strawberry to push on flaking waffle cones, handing the treats to people more worthy of futures than him with their bright smiles, held hands and empty thank yous. No, Steve Harrington was not worth anything more than a small raise of twenty cents and a question to stay on at the ice cream parlour after school started again and Steve, begrudgingly, told his Dad he wasn't going back to sit senior year again like that one guy Eddie Munson who would be lost in stained cafeteria tables and d grade biology tests forever.

Steve didn't know what he was going to do. He surely couldn't stay in Starcourt forever, eating flakes when no one was looking and mopping the floor every day with the same bitter look and the scent of warm water mixed with bleach under his fingernails. He couldn't pretend that he was only worth a small amount of money in a brown envelope and the knowledge that he'd have to live in the suburban family home that had driven him mad for the past nineteen years. 

There were good parts of the occupation of course which included the opportunity to leave the house in his rusting maroon BMW, to not endure his dad yelling and his moms sour comments about how she always expected him to be better. Disappointment was a birth mark on his skin that he would never grow out of. It started the moment he had been born, pressed into his mothers arms with a small penis. 'I wanted a girl'. God how many times he'd heard that statement. Samantha Harrington would've been an a grade student with good morals and she wouldn't have thrown away her life in senior year because someone broke up with her.

Steve didn't even think that there was any connective links between his failed graduation and Nancy leaving him over a white blouse stained in cranberry or the idea that her best friend had killed herself and Steve frankly didn't care. This wasn't true, he did care, he really cared. Steve had spent nights lying awake hoping that Barbara Holland would come home soon and not for the selfish pretence that it would bring sweet Nancy back, sweet Nancy with her colour coordinated flash cards and her old teddies with names such as cuddles and strawberry. Sweet Nancy with her habit of twirling phone chords around her manicured nails and her collard pyjamas that smelt like fresh cotton and daises.

No, Steve had wanted Barb to come back because he had felt a connection through his love for Nancy because she'd talked about her friend so much that Steve had known her too. Barb's stupid jokes and collection of glasses and her rat faced chihuahua who chewed the ends on laces until they became frayed and her perfume that made her smell like a grandma. Steve had known Barb because Nancy had loved her and furthermore, Steve had loved Nancy.