Chapter Text
New York City, 1992
“I think I’m gonna break up with Tammie.”
The statement is met with a chorus of aggravated groans from the couch and Steve balks as he sits down with his coffee.
“What?”
“Again?” Robin asks. “You realize this’ll be the fourth time you’ve dumped her?”
He scoffs. “No, it won’t!”
“No? Let’s do a quick count here.”
“Okay, you don’t have to–”
“There was two summers ago, when she wanted to go see Ghost a second time and you broke up with her so you wouldn’t have to.”
“That’s not what–”
“Then,” continues Eddie easily, perched on the arm of the couch and holding up two fingers, “the next time, you dumped her because she sneezes like a chipmunk and it drove you nuts. And… Nance, wanna take us home?”
Without looking up from her magazine, Nancy says, “Last time, you told her you were getting transferred to New Jersey for work and that you, quote, ‘didn’t do long distance,’ after she said that she thought Tom Selleck was an overrated actor.”
“He was Magnum P.I.! Literally the coolest guy on TV!”
She shrugs. “Debatable.”
Behind them, the door to the café opens and Jonathan walks in, shaking out his umbrella and glancing around (as if they’d be sitting anywhere else). Nancy waves him over and he gives his usual subdued smile, stopping by the counter for a drink before settling on the ottoman next to the couch.
“What are we talking about?”
“Steve and Tammie are breaking up.”
He snorts. “Again?”
“So what is it this time?” Robin asks, chin in her hand like she can’t wait to hear the answer. “What unpardonable offense has she committed now?”
He grows sullen, crossing his arms and shifting in his chair. Finally, reluctantly, he mutters, “She told me she loved me.”
“Oh my god,” Nancy groans.
“Well, that makes her certifiably insane,” says Eddie, “but I don’t see why that should stop you from seeing her.”
“Maybe because I don’t love her?”
Nancy purses her lips as if to keep from laughing. “Then why in god’s name do you keep going out with her? You can’t get rid of her any more than Eds can quit smoking.”
Cigarette halfway to his mouth, Eddie frowns. “Rude, Wheeler.”
“I’m just saying,” she shrugs. “Maybe there’s a reason why you and Tammie keep finding each other.”
Steve snorts. “What, like a sign from the universe?”
“You have to admit,” Jonathan inputs, sipping his coffee, “it’s a little weird.”
Robin brightens, leaning over to dig in the cluttered bag at her feet. “Wait, maybe it is!”
“Yeah, it’s weird. That’s what I just–”
“No, no, no,” she says, flapping a hand at him to shut him up. “A sign! From the universe!”
Steve’s eyebrows raise as he looks at her skeptically.
“Seriously?”
She sits back up and starts shuffling a stiff deck of cards (one or two drop to the carpet and she ducks to retrieve them). “I’ve got this friend of a friend,” she explains, “who’s teaching me how to do tarot readings.”
Without looking, Eddie can hear Nancy’s eyes rolling. Robin is like a magpie, always collecting odd hobbies, each stranger than the last. In the past, she’s learned macramé, phrenology, and even tried to get into spelunking before realizing that Manhattan was a little short on caves.
When she was Robin’s long-suffering roommate, Nancy tolerated her odd habits, but she put her foot down the day that Robin carried an ant farm into the apartment.
That was when they decided they weren’t really suited to live together after all.
“What about it, Stevie?” Robin continues, laying the cards out on the coffee table in front of her. “Care to hear your fortune? First one’s free.”
“Nooope,” he says.
“Oh, come on!”
“I’m still not over your stint in palm reading when you told me I only had three days to live.”
She sniffs. “It’s not my fault that you have abnormally short life lines. You should get that looked at.”
“I’ll do it,” Eddie says with an easy shrug.
He’s always felt a sort of kinship with Robin. They’ve always been the two odd ones out, and he doesn’t mind indulging her weird hobbies when no one else will. If nothing else, it’ll be good for a laugh. Not like a fucking deck of cards can actually tell the future, anyway.
She beckons him over and he stands, sidling between the couch and the table and poking Nancy’s knee to make her scoot to the side. He plops between the two girls, looking to Robin with an expectant grin.
“Okay,” she says, fanning the cards in her hands and holding them out. “Pick one out and put it on the table.”
He runs his finger along the edge and picks one out at random, squinting at it and turning it over in his hands. Robin stops him.
“No, don’t turn it over,” she instructs. “If it’s upside down, it has a different meaning.”
“It’s a guy with a stick.”
She looks at the card on the table and nods. “That’s the knight of wands. Okay, um, so the first card represents your past, and this one’s all about, like, impulsiveness, recklessness, not really knowing what you want out of life.”
Steve snickers into his coffee. “Yeah, that sounds like you.”
“Hey!”
Okay, so maybe, in the past, he’s been a little directionless, but it’s awfully rich of Harrington to be throwing it in his face, considering the fact that he hasn’t had a steady girlfriend since 1983. If anyone here doesn’t know what they want, it’s him.
“C’mon, next card,” Robin interrupts, holding them out again.
He takes a little longer this time, a bit choosier. After all, maybe the first one was just a fluke. Finally, he pulls a card from the left side. This one’s right side up, and he frowns.
“This guy’s also got a stick,” he deadpans. “How many stick-holdin’ guys you got in this deck?”
The others laugh, and Robin looks exasperated, taking the card from him and inspecting it carefully.
“The… six of swords,” she declares. “Your present. This means that, uh, you’re in a period of change, or transition. You’re letting go of everything that’s holding you back and heading into a new phase of your life.”
“What kind of new phase?”
Robin shrugs. “New job, new apartment…”
“New clothes?” suggests Steve.
Eddie raises a middle finger. “New friends?”
Truthfully, he’s got no fuckin’ clue what kind of change this could be referring to. He’s had the same shitty job and the same shitty apartment for going on two years now. Nothing in his life has changed since he bought new guitar strings last week.
“All right, now for your future.”
Once more, Robin fans the cards, and once more, Eddie takes a long second to decide before plucking the one right in the middle and turning it around. He furrows his brow.
“A goblet?”
He sets it down and Robin nods slowly. “Ooh, ace of cups. That’s interesting…”
Could she be any more ominous?
“Why’s that interesting?” he asks, fingers itching to reach for another cigarette (but he sure as shit isn’t giving Nancy the satisfaction). “What’s it mean?”
“This actually ties right into the last one,” she replies, brandishing the card at him. “Ace of cups means, like, new beginnings, often a new relationship, or a chance for a real love connection.”
The bell over the door rings again and the once-bustling café falls into an awkward silence. Eddie twists around to see what’s got everyone so quiet.
There’s a girl in a wedding dress standing just inside. Her eye makeup is smudged, her blonde hair wet, and she has a sort of dazed look on her face, like she doesn’t know what she’s doing there.
She’s the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen in his life.
Steve whistles quietly. “Damn, Rob,” he mutters. “You’re good.”
The bride doesn’t seem to realize she’s being watched. She gathers the voluminous folds of her damp skirt in her hands and approaches the counter, ordering a cinnamon cappuccino in a high but surprisingly steady voice.
On Eddie’s right, Nancy stands up, staring at the girl with a twisted frown.
“Wait… Chrissy?” she says. “Chrissy Cunningham?”
The girl turns, mug in hand, with a look of detached politeness on her face, completely unaware of the strange picture she makes. Then her eyes widen.
“Oh my god, Nancy!”
In her excitement, she sloshes her drink a bit, narrowly avoiding staining her pristine white dress. She hurriedly sets it back on the counter and turns to embrace Nancy in a desperate hug.
Her voice is shakier when she pulls away and says, “You’re just who I was looking for! I got so worried when you weren’t at your apartment, but the weird guy downstairs told me you might be here, and thank god you are!”
Nancy pulls back, dark eyebrows drawn together in concern.
“Chrissy, is everything all right?”
The girl’s lower lip trembles as she blinks hard, shaking her head. Her red-gold hair (clearly once in a styled updo that has since collapsed) swishes with the movement, sending flecks of rainwater into the air.
“Here, come sit down,” Nancy offers, gently steering her towards the couch. “Uh, everyone, this is Chrissy. We went to high school together.” She points to each of them in turn. “Chrissy, this is Steve, Robin, Eddie, and– oh, you might remember Jonathan. He was at Hawkins High with us.”
Chrissy manages to produce a small smile as she waves to the group as a whole (offering an extra nod of recognition to Jonathan), before collapsing beside Eddie.
Nancy hands her cappuccino to her and perches on the arm of the couch. “So…” she starts, clearing her throat, “are you on your own, or should we be expecting a groom?”
Again, Chrissy shakes her head. “He doesn’t know where I am.”
Something about the way she holds herself—her hunched shoulders, her fidgety hands—tells Eddie that’s a good thing.
“What happened?” asks Robin. “I mean… if you don’t mind us asking.”
“It started about an hour ago,” Chrissy begins, after taking a deep, shaky breath. “I had just gotten dressed, a-and I was staring at my bouquet and thinking ‘I would’ve picked daisies’. And I thought that was weird, like… shouldn’t I have picked out my own bouquet?”
She sniffs, and Eddie looks around before handing her a crumpled, coffee-stained napkin which she accepts gratefully.
“And then,” she continues, wiping her eyes delicately, “I started really thinking about it, and I realized that I hadn’t been allowed to pick anything! I– I didn’t choose the flowers, or– or the music, or the n-napkins, or even” —her breath hitches— “or even the groom!”
She’s crying in earnest now, and it’s at this moment Eddie stupidly realizes that he has a perfectly good bandana in his back pocket. But before he can pull it out, Nancy has somehow produced an actual goddamn handkerchief (with lace edges and everything, what the fuck, Wheeler).
Handing it to her, Nancy clucks, placing a hand on her arm. “Oh, sweetie…”
Chrissy murmurs a quiet “sorry,” before blowing her nose.
“So… once I realized that I didn’t wanna marry Jason, I– I started to panic, so I just ran outside and hailed a cab and…” She turns to Nancy with shining eyes. “And you were the only person I could think of that wouldn’t immediately call my mom and tell her where I was.”
It’s a lot of information to take in, especially in under a minute. No one seems to know what to say, sitting in an awkward silence that Nancy finally breaks.
“Well…” she sighs. “Sounds like you might need something stronger than coffee.”
——————————
The very first thing Nancy does upon entering her apartment is offer Chrissy a fresh change of clothes.
(“That dress is gorgeous,” she’d said, “but it doesn’t look comfortable.”)
So now there’s a wedding gown that probably cost more than three months’ rent hanging up to dry in her shower, and Chrissy is wearing sweatpants and a faded Emerson tee shirt. Her damp hair is tied back in a loose bun, and she’s sitting at Nancy’s kitchen table, staring at the cordless phone in front of her.
“Do you want me to do it?” Nancy offers. After all, someone has to call Chrissy’s parents and let them know she’s alive. Otherwise they’ll probably file a missing persons report and that’d be a whole other can of worms.
Better just to get it over with now.
For a long second, Chrissy looks like she might agree. Nancy is briefly reminded of all the times in high school when she’d have to be the one to ask Mrs. Cunningham if she could sleep over. It was a common trick, she knows. Harder for them to say no when it’s someone else’s kid asking.
But for Chrissy, there was more to it. She’d seemed almost scared of her mom.
Not like Nancy can blame her. Hell, Chrissy’s mother had once scolded her for having a second helping of turkey at Thanksgiving. Nancy can’t imagine she’ll have a temperate reaction to her leaving her fiancé at the altar.
The anxious look still hasn’t left Chrissy’s face, but she shakes her head and finally picks up the phone.
“No, I’ll do it,” she says. “She needs to hear it from me.”
Nancy nods, arms crossed. She moves towards the couch, giving her some space, and turns her attention towards the others.
Robin is lounging in the armchair, scarfing down Cheez-Its directly from the box (Nancy makes a mental note to vacuum the cushion later), while the boys occupy the sofa. As always, Jonathan is quiet, while Eddie fiddles with a Rubik’s cube and Steve watches a soap opera on TV with surprising intensity.
She leans on the back of the couch, trying to figure out what’s captivated him.
“I didn’t know you watched this show,” she says.
Steve shakes his head. “I don’t. I’m waiting for the break. My new commercial’s supposed to be airing today.”
“The shampoo one?”
“Nah, I didn’t get that one,” he says with a frown. “They got some celebrity sponsorship, so they scrapped mine.”
“That sucks,” Robin says. “Who wouldn’t wanna buy shampoo from you?”
“Yeah, just look at this luxurious head of hair!” Eddie makes as if to give him a noogie, but Steve ducks out of the way, smacking at his hand. They play wrestle for a few seconds before the soap opera clicks off, replaced by an establishing shot of a pizza restaurant.
Steve sits up, reaching for the remote. “Shut up, shut up, this is it!”
They all clam up to watch what looks to be a generic commercial. A guy walks into the restaurant and a little animated pizza slice tells him what to order, listing menu items in the form of an obnoxious jingle.
Jonathan finally asks. “Where are you?”
“Are you voicing the pizza?” Robin gasps, and Steve shakes his head.
“Wait for it…”
Finally, after the cartoon has recited the phone number of the restaurant twice, there’s a quick shot of Steve handing a stack of pizza boxes to the customer, smiling wide.
The commercial ends, and Steve is looking at the rest of them with a grin much like the one he just wore on the TV.
“Well?”
“That’s it?” Eddie asks, a little indignantly. “That was two fuckin’ seconds! You didn’t even have any lines!”
Through a mouthful of Cheez-Its, Robin says, “I loved it. Truly Oscar-worthy. They’ll finally have a reason to add a category for ‘Most Memorable Performance in a Domino’s Commercial’.”
“Just tell me you got the pizza’s autograph,” Jonathan chimes in, having picked up Eddie’s discarded Rubik’s cube.
Nancy tries valiantly to hide her snicker with a cough because Steve truly looks disappointed and if anyone’s gonna be supportive, it may as well be her. She knows how much his acting career means to him.
“I thought it was great,” she says, reaching down to put a hand on his shoulder. “Really! Good job, Steve.”
He’s a little sullen when he thanks her, but he pats her hand anyway. He mutes the TV as a C-list celebrity tries to sell them dog food, and from the kitchen, Chrissy’s phone call seems to grow heated. Her voice is tight, like she’s trying not to cry again.
“–told you, I can’t. I can’t marry him!” She pauses, listening to the person on the other end before exclaiming, “Because I don’t love him! Isn’t that enough?”
Everyone’s doing a terrible job at pretending they aren’t eavesdropping. Jonathan is staring a little too hard at the coffee table, and Robin seems to be counting bumps on the ceiling. Steve glances at Nancy.
“Should we go?” he asks.
She chews her thumbnail and doesn’t answer him.
“I– I don’t care if he’s upset,” Chrissy is saying, though her voice falters. “If he really cares about me, he’ll want me to be happy, and– and I could never be happy with Jason, Mom. I’m sorry.”
That’s another thing Nancy remembers from school—Chrissy was always apologizing for things that weren’t her fault. It was as if she believed that everything she did was an inconvenience to someone, somewhere.
From the couch, Eddie asks, “You know anything about this guy she’s supposed to be marrying?”
She shrugs. “Never met him. Her high school boyfriend was named Patrick.”
Patrick had been sweet. He’d always made it a point to be nice to her, and was clearly smitten with Chrissy. They’d started seeing each other near the tail end of their freshman year and even stayed together through graduation. The definition of ‘high school sweethearts.’ Nancy’s not sure how or when things ended.
She and Chrissy had started to drift apart by then. Between college applications and their respective duties with journalism and cheerleading, they’d started seeing less and less of each other, until their friendship fizzled down to one obligatory photo taken at graduation and a six-year period of estrangement.
Nancy still has the faded Polaroid tacked up above her desk, a nostalgic memento of her teenage years.
“No, I don’t want to come home!” Chrissy insists. But she looks a little uncertain, anxiously rubbing her wrist along the edge of the table. “I– I don’t know. I’ll figure something out, get a hotel room, or, or–”
Nancy speaks without thinking. “You can stay with me!”
When Chrissy looks at her, her eyes are wide and grateful. She mouths ‘really?’ and Nancy nods.
“I– I’m staying here with Nancy,” she says into the phone, voice firm. Another pause. “Wheeler. From high school? … Yes, Ted and Karen’s daughter.”
Jonathan has circled the couch to stand by Nancy, and he nudges her shoulder with raised eyebrows. “You sure about this, Nance?” he mutters.
Maybe it’s a little impulsive. After all, it’s been six years. Who even knows if she and Chrissy will still have anything in common after such a long time? They might drive each other crazy.
But ever since Robin moved out, she’s been lonely. Sure, Steve and Eddie still abuse their privilege of having a spare key, barging in at all hours to use her phone, borrow her plunger, or (most often) eat everything in her kitchen that isn’t nailed down. But a pair of obnoxious across-the-hall neighbors is not the same thing as a roommate, and she misses having another girl around.
“Yeah,” she answers with a shrug. “Why not? I’ve got the space.”
(She’d actually been in the early stages of planning to convert the spare bedroom into an office space, but that can wait.)
After another minute or so of back-and-forth with her mother, Chrissy finally hangs up the phone and lets out a heavy sigh of relief. Nancy approaches, arms crossed and expression gentle.
“You okay?”
Chrissy nods tiredly. “I think so.”
The phone call clearly took a lot out of her, and she looks a bit lost. Like she’s been following a clear set of instructions all day but veered off-course somewhere and doesn’t know what to do with herself now.
In a way, isn’t that exactly what happened?
She’d woken up this morning with exactly one thing on her to-do list: get married. With that off the table, she probably has no idea what comes next.
Luckily, making plans and telling people what to do is Nancy’s forte. If her new roommate needs a little bit of a push to get her on a new path in life, she is more than happy to provide.
“Why don’t you take a shower,” she says, “and I’ll put some fresh sheets on the bed?”
(She’s already mentally preparing a list for the following days: have another spare key made, redirect Chrissy’s mail, get her things from her house, pick up an extra box of tampons…
The last one is mostly because she’s already running low, but it can’t hurt to have more now that she won’t be the only one using them.)
As she predicted, Chrissy looks relieved at the prospect of having a clear task, even something as simple as showering. She stands up, returning the phone to its cradle by the couch.
Nancy gestures to the bathroom. “Towels are in the cabinet below the sink, and just hang the dress on the back of the door for now. We’ll figure out what to do with it later.”
Chrissy smiles in thanks before turning to look at the rest of the group.
“It was nice meeting you all,” she says, playing with the hem of her borrowed tee shirt. “Sorry for, um… all this. I promise, I usually make a better first impression.”
Waving a crumb-covered hand, Robin says, “Are you kidding? Leaving your fiancé at the altar, then calling your mom afterwards just to tell her to fuck off? You’re basically my new hero.”
Chrissy giggles, face erupting into a blush. “I don’t know about that… ”
“Very nice to meet you, Chrissy,” Steve adds, looking at her a bit too long for Nancy’s taste. He’s got the usual smarmy grin that he uses whenever he flirts, and she doesn’t bother hiding her eye roll.
As soon as the bathroom door is shut and she can hear the muffled sounds of the shower running, she rounds on the boys.
“Don’t even think about it.”
Steve frowns. “What?”
“Don’t you dare flirt with her,” she says, circling the couch and pointing at them. “She is off-limits, do you hear me? I am not losing another roommate because you two can’t keep it in your pants.”
As Eddie scoffs, Steve looks indignant.
“I resent that implication!”
“Oh, do you?” Nancy crosses her arms. “Does the name Maria ring a bell? How about Connie? You remember her?”
Maria had been her roommate before Robin, a sweet girl who worked at a restaurant downtown. She had made the mistake of going out with Steve, then had to move out three weeks later when the relationship imploded and she couldn’t stand seeing his face every day.
Connie (Robin’s successor) had gone much the same way, though she’d stuck it out a week or so longer.
“Hey,” Eddie protests, pointing to Steve. “I had nothing to do with them—those were both Steve’s fault.”
She levels him with a glare. “And Mark?”
After learning her lesson twice over, she’d thought that having a male roommate would work out better. Mark was great: clean, quiet, and gay enough that he’d never even think of taking advantage of her.
He lasted a month and a half.
And that was how she found out that Eddie was bisexual.
(Honestly, she’d been more upset that after nearly two years of friendship, it had never occurred to him to tell her until after he slept with her roommate, especially since everyone else apparently already knew.)
“Yeah, okay,” he says now, having the decency to look sheepish. “That one was my bad.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Robin interrupts, sitting up straighter. “Does this rule apply to me and Jonathan, too, or is it just the bozos who can’t make a move on her?”
Nancy sighs. “Technically, since neither of you live in the building, there’s less of a risk that she’d move out after an awkward break up, but I don’t think she’s into women, Rob. Sorry.”
“Fair enough,” Robin shrugs. “But what about Jonathan?”
“Jonathan would call her back.”
He straightens and says, “It’s true, I would. Unlike these two, I know how to treat a lady. But you’ll be happy to know that she’s not my type.”
As he heads for the coat rack, Steve twists around on the sofa to give him a look of disbelief.
“Not your type?” he asks. “Are you blind or gay?”
(Robin smacks him.)
Shrugging on his jacket, Jonathan calmly says, “No, and no. Just not into blondes, I guess.”
Some part of Nancy that she doesn’t want to examine too closely is weirdly pleased with this information. She chalks it up to relief that she won’t have to worry about him crossing any lines with Chrissy.
“Anyway, I gotta go,” he continues. “See you guys later.”
The door closes on their chorus of vague farewells, and Nancy returns to the task at hand.
“I’m serious,” she says. “And it’s not just cause I’m worried she’ll move out. She quite literally just got out of a serious relationship, and the last thing she needs is you two chatting her up. Is that clear?”
Neither of them say anything, too busy sulking.
“I said,” she repeats sternly. “Is. That. Clear.”
Steve sighs. “Yes.”
“Yes, Mom,” Eddie sneers.
She decides to ignore that in favor of fetching the extra sheets from the hall closet and carrying them to the spare bedroom to get things ready.
Later, after the others have taken their leave and she’s changed the sheets, Chrissy comes out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam and a borrowed bathrobe, looking refreshed.
“Feel better?”
She nods. “Much. Thank you,” she says, biting her lip. “And thank you for letting me stay. Are you really sure it’s–”
“Chrissy,” Nancy interrupts gently. “It’s no trouble at all.”
“Okay,” she says. She lifts her chin defiantly. “I won’t be a leech, I promise. I wanna pay my fair share of the rent, and everything. I–” She suddenly deflates. “Oh, god.”
“What?”
“I’ll have to get a job,” she says, embarrassed. “I’ve never had a job before!”
Nancy flashes her a sympathetic smile as she wraps an arm around Chrissy’s shoulders.
“Welcome to the real world, Chris. You’re gonna hate it.”