Becoming friends with El is easier than Will would have thought, once he lets himself do it. They don't have a lot to say to each other, but it's nice just having someone to sit with sometimes while he's sketching pictures or doing homework. They go for long walks in the neighborhood, sometimes, in companionable silence, and Will sort of regrets all the months that he could have had this, but didn't.
El still stays shut up in her room all the time—he has to knock on her door any time he wants to see her—and he calls her on it one day after dinner, after she's put her dishes in the dishwasher, when she's stepping quietly out of the kitchen. He catches up with her, takes her hand. "Why do you always do that?"
"Do what?" she asks, looking genuinely dumbfounded.
"Leave, hide in your room."
She shrugs bashfully, tucking a few strands of hair behind her ear. "I want to be polite."
"'Being polite' isn't supposed to mean shrinking yourself down to nothing," Will says softly. "Come and hang out with us."
El gives him a wide-eyed stare and then nods slowly. "Let me get my things," she says, and that's that.
Will wonders whether El resents him for his feelings for Mike, whether she finds it hard to be his friend. For his part, he doesn't resent her, not anymore. It helps that they're broken up—Will may never be able to be with Mike, but neither will El, now, probably—but mostly, it's not about beating her; Will feels like she and he are on the same plane, now, wanting the same boy who doesn't want either of them, and that makes El feel like someone Will can relate to.
Will finally takes Dustin up on his offer to stay with him the week before they all go back to school for their junior year. El's invited, too, but chooses to stay behind in Sullivan. Will knows she wants to see Max, and probably Mike too, but it's too soon not to hurt, and El was never close to any of the others anyway. It makes Will ache for her a little to know that she's going to be left behind in Sullivan, probably pining for Mike and feeling jealous of Will's relationships with him and Lucas and Dustin.
Before he gets to Dustin's house, Will tells himself that he's not going to seek out Mike's company, that he'll talk to him incidentally when he's with him but that he's otherwise going to focus on his friendships with Dustin and Lucas and Max. And he tries, he really does, for the first few days of his visit. But Mike's house is still where everything happens, and Will and Dustin find themselves sleeping over at Mike's on Thursday night.
"Are you going to be okay here overnight?" Dustin pulls him aside and asks, and Will nods and smiles, because his desire to be a normal kid who doesn't get addicted to people is even bigger than his desire to protect himself.
And it goes just fine and drama-free until Will wakes up in the middle of the night to find Mike sitting in El's tent, clutching his walkie to his ear. "Mike?" says Will quietly, stretching to look at him, trying not to wake anyone else up. He checks his watch: it's past one in the morning.
"Sorry. Thought you were sleeping," whispers Mike.
"I was. I get up in the night a lot."
Mike frowns. "You didn't used to, when you lived in Hawkins."
Things change. People change, Will wants to say, but instead, he just asks, "What are you doing?"
"Missing El," says Mike. "It's stupid. She's got to be sleeping at this time of night anyway."
"I know you must really love her still," says Will, and he only feels a small pang of jealousy. "Put that down. Come over here."
Mike sets down the walkie and comes to sit next to the place where Will's still curled up on his side on the couch. Will is acutely aware of the warmth of Mike's thigh brushing against the top of Will's head. He sighs.
"I miss you, too, you know," says Mike now, and—Will's heart leaps into his throat—Mike extends his arm so that his hand comes to rest on Will's shoulder.
"Don't talk like that," says Will reluctantly.
"Sorry."
But Mike doesn't retract his hand, and Will is acutely aware that any second, any one of their friends could hear their whispers and wake up and see them sitting together like this, like there's something here that's worth hiding. This relationship is going to be the death of him, isn't it.
"Be my friend again," says Mike.
"No."
"Please."
"I can't. You know you're not good for me; I've told you this."
"But I could be, if you let me," Mike says, dropping his voice even further soft. "We were best friends. Can't we be that again?"
Will wants nothing more than to agree, but he knows better than that. He drags himself into a sitting position; Mike's arm falls awkwardly around Will's waist. "I wish we could," Will says. "I wish we could."
xx
END OF PART ONE