Lover | Richie Tozier

Chapter 18.

As promised, Beverly wasn't at school the next day. She currently resided at home, coating her sore throat with bowls of chicken noodle soup that her father had prepared for her and sprawled across the couch that he would otherwise be occupying. Thank God and everything else above that he worked a full time job, it truly did Beverly a massive favor in cases like this. The last thing she needed was to be home with a sick-fuck when she was quite literally a sick-fuck on her own.

Without Beverly attached to her hip, Elle strolled into the lunch room with a lost look dimming her eyes. Bev wasn't absent much, and when she was, Elle would take the lunch period to study or work on a story she was meticulously writing to no avail. But with it being only a couple weeks into the school year, there was nothing to be done. Every box on her to-do list was checked off with bleeding red ink. She had nowhere else to go.

Reluctantly, she sat in the empty spot that Beverly should be sitting across from. The action was the same as it had always been, but this time there was nobody to talk about magazine covers or music or movies with. She unraveled the curled top of her paper-bag, reaching into it until a familiar sight caught her eye and every intention of hers from across the room.

"God damnit," Eddie muttered harshly, "she didn't separate the carrots from the broccoli."

He sneered with bitter disgust while looking down at the organized state of his lunch. Sonia didn't know that he always threw out the broccoli and settled for the carrots, but that wasn't something she had to know, anyway.

Eddie arranged his lunch neatly in front of him, placing the tupaware in order like Tetris blocks. He took a plastic fork, ready to indulge, but pausing stiffly and concretely when he was interrupted by a presence lingering in front of him.

He looked up slowly, pure fear running through his veins. Was someone about to use him as their personal punching bag? Crush up his medication into a fine powder and dust it on the floor? Throw his aspirator across the room, maybe? God above only knew what could possibly happen to him this time.

His worrisome eyes looked up at Elle and he swears to God relief injected his lungs faster than the Hydr0x he uses when he's having an asthma attack. She looked down on him like the angel that she was, a halo forming around her head in disguise as long, dark hair.

"Fuck," Eddie placed an undersized hand over his striking heart. He could almost feel it making its way to his throat. "You scared me."

She backed away a little, clearly alarmed that she had alarmed him. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to," she winced, worried she'd sent him into one of the full-blown panic attacks that he was known for.

"It's okay, I'm..." he paused and smiled timidly, but still courageously enough to set fire to his face. "I'm okay."

With that alleviating reassurance, Elle moved forward with her proposition. "Well," her fingertip dragged across the surface of the table as her way of anxiously fidgeting, "I have a question for you," she ultimately confessed.

A small, scarlet fruit found its way into his grip. "Yeah? What's that?" Eddie asked eagerly, placing the strawberry into his mouth. The berry settled around the corners of his lips and tinted his skin without his knowledge. Elle was going to ask if he wanted to clean it off, but he seemed to be enjoying it, so she ignored it.

"Well uhm, you see... so here's the thing," she fondled with her fingers nervously. "Beverly isn't here today, meaning I have nobody to sit with, and I know that you don't normally do this but-"

"Sit down," he offered invitingly, putting an end to her anxious rambling.

She paused, widening her eyes. "Really? I can?"

By the time she had asked this question in its entirety, Eddie was already rearranging his plastic containers so she could sit down. He gave that same strawberry smile. "I insist."

Richie was so busy joking around with the Losers in the first half of lunch that he hadn't even noticed that Elle wasn't in her normal spot, perched perfectly in his field of vision. Stanley finally gave him time to breathe, and Richie pulled away, ruffling his charcoal curls back into place. When he looked back up, that's when he realized that Elle, in fact, was not where she usually was.

His eyebrows furrowed behind his large lenses and he lifted himself out of his seat a few inches, looking for the girl that brushed against his skin as she leaned over to fix up his busted lip. Bill and Stanley paid no mind to the fact that Richie was postured like a sunken sailor holding his head above sea. It was a rare occurrence that they pushed their full attention towards Rich when the two were together, regardless.

His chest fluctuated when he fused his gaze with his target. Fuck, he thought irrepressibly, his shirt suddenly becoming too warm and his pants becoming too tight. He could've kicked himself for feeling this way, and he probably would've if it weren't for the fact that stiffness grew around every one of his joints like vines. There she was, right in front of his searching eyes, with her bronzed skin and... Eddie Kaspbrak?

"What the hell," Richie whispered to himself uncertainly.

Bill turned towards his muttering friend. "Wuh-What's the matter?" He asked. For someone who Richie thought paid no attention, he surely had an open ear.

Richie shot his gaze back to his friends, who he momentarily forgot were even there. "Nothing. It's nothing," he insisted dryly. But when they brushed it off and turned away, his eyes returned right back to where he loved them most.

"These are my favorite," Eddie cheered, tearing open a package of glazed Honeybuns. Elle watched as he carefully pulled out the desert. "Want some?" He offered with a healthful radiance. Elle grinned back and took her half, the icing sticking almost immediately.

They both bit into it at the same time, humming in gratification as the processed sugar made it's way into their bloodstreams. Eddie laughed when they did, coaxing her with his large eyes.

He finally had a friend to sit with at lunch.