Lover | Richie Tozier

Chapter 26.

"C'mon, Stutter! Don't be a pussy! Jump!" Richie encouraged, standing dangerously close to Bill's back.

"D-Don't you dare push me. I'll cuh-come back to haunt you, f-fuh-fucker."

"Do me a favor and take me to hell with you, will yah? I'm tired of waiting," Richie squinted, taking off his glasses.

"So who's going first?" Stan asked, freeing himself of his shoes.

Richie took a step back. "You're fucked, dude. There's no way I'm jumping. You're lucky Bowers isn't here right now."

The trio looked down at the cascading fall of rock and sand, swallowing harshly when the surface dipped into the water below. The quarry was a dangerous place to be, and they were certainly playing with fire.

"We going down there to swim or what?" Richie asked, growing impatient (and truthfully not wanting to look down at his potential death anymore).

"Y-Yeah, we're juh-just waiting for-"

"Jesus, Denbrough. Back up, will you? I've never seen someone die before and today will not be the day," a smaller voice interrupted. It was higher-pitched than the rest of the boys'. It definitely didn't sound like Mike's, that's for sure. It almost sounded like... a girl. Richie turned around.

As if he'd just seen a ghost, he froze. The blood in his body stiffened into a painful mass and his lungs were stolen of any available oxygen His brain stuttered for a minute, just like his best friend, as he tried to comprehend who was in front of him.

When his thoughts were smooth enough to actually be made sense of, he turned to Bill. "What the fuck is she doing here?"

"Nice to see you, too, Trashmouth," Elle peeled off her shirt, exposing her toned midriff. "I'm here to go swimming."

Staring became the only form of communication between her and the boys. Richie was about to make a dirty joke, it danced hazardously on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't. Because what he wanted to say wasn't a joke, it was the truth.

Stan coughed awkwardly. "Thanks for coming," he said, breaking the silence stretched between them.

"Of course," Elle smiled.

She looked pleased with the way she'd caught them off guard. More specifically, pleased with the way she'd made Richie, who always had something to say, speechless. "Hi, Richie." She gave a gentle flutter of her fingers.

He shifted awkwardly, thanking God all eyes weren't trained to him right now. If they were, he would be fucked. "Hey," he greeted blandly, still trying to act inattentive and uninterested in her.

In reality, he could drink in her appearance like a glass of finely fermented wine and get tipsy off of every sip.

"I-I invited her," Bill spoke up. "I didn't think y-you'd mind. I thought you guys were friends. I'm s-s-sorry."

Elle glanced at Richie, her eyebrows tucked and her gaze narrowed. "We're not friends?" She asked curiously.

Richie wanted to open his mouth and begin rambling in a declamatory manner about how they were certainly not friends because she'd lied to him about Eddie and friends don't lie, but he found himself rendered speechless. Especially when she was standing there in front of him like that.

"Fine," she pouted. There was a small shrug of her shoulders. "We don't have to be friends, then. But I'm going to go swimming because Bill and Stan invited me," she declared, marching down the path to the water.

Bill and Stan followed, but Richie was still unable to move. He was so confused, his thoughts scattered around like the mess in Georgie Denbrough's room that hadn't been picked up for ten months. A thousand questions fired at him at once: why was she here? What inclined Stan and Bill to formally invite her? Shit, did they think he liked her like that? Why wasn't he a part of this conversation? And the most puzzling of them all:

Why the fuck did she ask if they weren't friends? Isn't that what she wanted?

When he got down to the slanted entrance of the deep canyon, he glanced over at Elle. She lathered a mixture of coconut oil and sunscreen on her legs, attracting beams of sunlight and creating a strip of glitter running up her thighs. Richie watched this closely, growing slightly dizzy and mumbling a certain word or two under his breath. He shot his stare foreword again before he had looked for so long he was worried he couldn't turn back.

The surface of the water was as flat as a mirror, catching each of their reflections and throwing it back in their faces. It was without a single wave or tide, and if it weren't for the sounds of nature whirling around them and the clouds multiplying up ahead, they'd think time itself had been frozen.

"So nobody's gonna get in, then?" Elle's voice became one with the chirping nature. She hooked her thumbs around the waistband of her shorts and pulled them down. They all watched, but after a moment, Richie had to physically look away, worried his head would begin spinning so heavily that his knees would give in.

As she immersed into the water, walking slowly, it waved around her heavenly figure and created a pattern of haloed currents, as if the wilderness had put a spotlight on her. It gradually moved from her knees to her thighs, to her stomach, to just barely under her chest.

She wet her hair, sending the liquid crystals running down her shoulders and dripping onto her chest. She looked at the boys. "Jeez, take a picture, it'll last longer. Now are you gonna get in or what, Losers?"