Chapter 6: Walking Back to Georgia

She's the only one who knows
How it feels when you lose a dream
And how it feels when you dream alone.
She's the girl who said she loved me
On that hot dusty Macon road
And if she's still around, I'm gonna settle down
With that hard lovin' Georgia girl.

Hopper is uninterested in romance and wants nothing to do with Valentine's Day. El forces him to confront both.

This had to be the coldest day in Hawkins history, Hopper thought as he trudged to the cabin through almost a foot of snow that had hardened almost into ice. He was wearing his thickest gloves and had his hands shoved deep into his pockets and still his fingers were numb within a minute of leaving the car. It was cold enough that he was a little worried about El; the cabin wasn't very well insulated, and on days like this it sometimes felt like the fire was hardly warming the frigid air at all.

He was relieved when El opened the door for him right away, convinced that a single extra second out on the porch would have given him frostbite. Despite his concerns about the temperature in the cabin, when he stepped inside, the difference was so great he thought he'd never been in a warmer room. Even so, he was shivering even as he pulled off his gloves and coat. He just waved a little at El, who was curled up on the couch with a thick blanket, before going to change into the warmest clothes he owned.

When he emerged from the bathroom, El was at the table, and still had the blanket draped around her shoulders like a cape. He pulled a beer from the fridge and sat down to join her. "Manage not to freeze to death today?" he asked as he peeled the foil off his dinner.

She nodded, and then said, "Valentine's Day is soon."

"Is that so?" said Hopper, trying not to betray his dread, because he knew exactly where this was going. He'd been expecting her to say something every day since the ads for chocolate and roses had started airing on TV back in the middle of January.

"Yes," she told him solemnly. "It says on the calendar. And I saw on TV. And Mike told me."

"Mike told you, huh? And what exactly did he say?"

To her credit—and to Hopper's slight disappointment—El didn't blush. She looked him straight in the eye and said, "We have to spend Valentine's Day together because we're in love."

Hopper choked on his beer. He had to pound on his chest while he coughed, and by the time he got his breath back his eyes were streaming. El was still just watching him, apparently completely bemused by his reaction. "You're what?"

"We're in love," she repeated, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Hopper was already shaking his head. "No," he said. "You're just kids. You're too young to be in love."

"But we are." There was a distinct pout in her expression.

"El," he began, and then stopped with a sigh. Trying to convince his daughter that Mike Wheeler wasn't in love with her was probably not the right move here. And trying to convince El that she wasn't in love with him would be damn near impossible. "Love is…love is for adults," he said carefully. "I'm not sayin' you and Mike can't like each other. He's clearly nuts over you. But being in love is…that's a whole different thing, kid."

"Why?" she asked, and he didn't miss the note of challenge in her voice.

He probably should have anticipated that question. Off the top of his head, Hopper found that he didn't really know how to answer. "It's just different," he said, knowing even as he said it that El wouldn't be satisfied with such an insubstantial answer. And as expected, she just crossed her arms and continued to look at him expectantly. He tried again, speaking slowly to minimize the amount that he stumbled over his words. "It's…more intense," he said. "If you're in love, you want to be with the other person all the time. And you want them to know everything about you, no secrets. And even when you're far away, you never stop thinking them, almost like you need each other to keep living. And it's for adults."

El considered this, and then said definitively, "That sounds like Mike and me."

Which…she had a point, dammit. The kid had called her every night for almost a year without even knowing she was alive, and keeping El from him had resulted in more than one explosive shouting match. And as for no secrets—he'd bet everything he owned that her whole friends-don't-lie thing had come from Wheeler himself.

"You're not adults," he repeated lamely.

"We're thirteen," she said, and if Hopper hadn't been so caught off guard by her declaration of love, he would have laughed. El was different from most thirteen-year-olds in a thousand ways, but apparently the conviction that thirteen was practically grown up was universal.

He sighed and looked up at the ceiling as if it would provide him any guidance.

"So," she pressed, apparently taking his lack of response as a concession that she was right. "Can he come over? On Valentine's Day?"

He wanted to say no. If he was being honest, it scared him a little, how serious she was about this boy. No matter what they'd been through together, they were still too young for the kind of commitment that she was alluding to. But he'd already reluctantly agreed weeks ago that Mike could come over sometimes without the rest of their friends, and to revoke his permission just because of a stupid holiday seemed cruelly arbitrary. "Fine," he grumbled.

Her eyes lit up, but before she could get too carried away in her excitement, he flashed her his sternest look and leaned toward her a little bit.

"But you are not going to be in your room together, you got that? Living room only. And I will be here the entire time."

El gave him that look where she seemed to be rolling her eyes without actually moving them. "You should go out," she said.

"You want me to change my mind about letting him come over? You're not getting left alone together. Don't push your luck, kid."

She huffed, and this time she really did roll her eyes. "You should go out for Valentine's Day."

He barked out a laugh. "With who?" he asked her.

She looked surprised confused by his reaction. "Joyce," she said, and the of course was implied by her tone.

He was so startled that for a moment he couldn't come up with anything to say. He just stared at her before spluttering, "I—Joyce and I aren't like that, we—"

"Your face is red," said El, rather smugly.

"El," he admonished her, and then stopped, because she was right, and she was much too smart for whatever bullshit he might tell her.

"You love her." And the way she said it, it was like it was the simplest thing in the world.

He felt himself sag a bit. There was no point in lying to himself or to her. "Yeah, kid. I do."

And though she had clearly already known, she looked ecstatic at the admission—and a little triumphant, too, but the dominant emotion in her face was joy. "I knew it!" she exclaimed, grinning widely.

He smiled back at her in spite of himself, a little sheepishly.

"Does she know?" asked El.

At that, he grew serious again. "No," he said firmly. "And you are not going to tell her, and you are not going to tell your friends, either." El frowned and opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off. "And don't tell me friends don't lie. This isn't a lie, okay? It's just…a secret."

"Why secret?"

"Because…" Hopper struggled to put it into words that would make sense to this girl who seemed to think love was so straightforward and easy. "Joyce has a lot going on. With everything that's happened—Will, and Bob—she doesn't need to have this on her mind. And we're friends, that's the most important thing. We're friends first."

"Me and Mike were friends," El pointed out.

"Yeah, well." Hopper rubbed at his temple, not eager to think about El's relationship with Mike Wheeler any more than was strictly necessary. "Anyway, I don't even know if she feels that way about me."

"So ask her," said El, as if it was that simple.

And maybe it could be. He tried to picture it—going out with Joyce on real dates, not just sharing cigarettes in her kitchen. Settling down with her for real someday. He knew that El already thought of her as a mother. And he could easily imagine himself seeing Will as a son. But nothing was ever that simple, not really. They'd both been divorced, and their relationship had always been complicated, and that was without considering that he'd restrained her while she watched her boyfriend get eaten not five months ago.

"It's complicated," he told her.

El just shrugged, a small smile playing on her lips.

"And—" he narrowed his eyes at her—"I'm serious, okay, about not telling anyone. I need you to promise me."

El crossed her arms, frowning again.

"El. Promise me."

"Fine," she said. "I promise."

"Good girl." He picked up his fork and pointed it at her dinner, though it had probably gone cold by now. "Come on, let's eat."

They both took a few bites in silence before El said, "But you will tell her. Won't you?"

Hopper put down his fork. "Kid—"

"Won't you?"

She had that look in her eyes—that determination that no one in the world could ever argue with. "Someday," he said, and he hoped it was the truth.