Eddie doesn't normally check his cell phone first thing in the morning - for one thing keeping your phone in bed with you is unhealthy, for both mental health and sleep hygiene reasons, so he keeps it plugged into a wireless charger on his desk. And additionally, Eddie's not a morning person. He's done a pretty commendable job of pretending that he is, for the past twenty years or so, but he's been making a lot of steps towards honesty and self-actualization in the last few months, so he's feeling emotionally stable enough to admit that he fucking hates being awake before noon.
This was never a problem before Derry, back in the old days when the only person that Eddie knew outside of his job was his emotionally manipulative wife. Nowadays, the Losers all take it extremely personally when Eddie goes more than twelve hours without responding to them, so he's working on it.
So on this particular Thursday morning, which otherwise is spectacularly ordinary by Eddie's new standards of living, Eddie forgets. He was up late the night before wrestling with his taxes, which are a new state of living hell when you're only halfway through a messy divorce, and he oversleeps and almost misses his train. He doesn't actually even look at his phone until he's already at his desk at work, sitting down with a cup of coffee and bracing himself for an all-staff meeting that afternoon, which are always either three-hour snoozefests or three-hour torture sessions, no middle ground. Then he checks his texts and promptly scorches his tongue on his Americano.
Richie: don't look at tmz DON'T LOOK AT TMZ
THIS IS VERY EMBARRASSING
...belatedly, am realizing that is not a convincing argument for you not to look. would you just pick up your phone!
6 Missed Calls
Richie: seriously seriously call me call me call me
eddie are you awake. Eddie call me
eddie
eddie
eddie
"Jesus fucking Christ," Eddie says.
Bev 3: oh my God, Eddie, check TMZ right now!
William Denbrough: OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH shit Eddie have you seen it yet
Mighty Mike: Just heard! U ok?
Ben: whoa! Right? I mean, whoa!
"Seen what," Eddie says out loud, frowning, dread making the words come out hoarsely. He texts Mike, heard what? and then opens a browser, typing Richie's name in with some reluctance. The first result is his Wikipedia page, and then a row of YouTube videos from his stand up, and then a petition for Netflix to cancel his special because of a necrophilia joke he made about Trump - ha - and then, finally, Eddie sees the TMZ link, and his stomach just sinks.
TRASHMOUTH TIES THE KNOT ! Richie Tozier Puts a Ring On It … With Longtime Publicist Anna Gonzales
The TRASHMOUTH got off a good one last night … in a spontaneous wedding ceremony with RUMORED GIRLFRIEND Anna Gonzales! Spotted hand in hand outside the famous Graceland Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas last night, our favorite raunchy stand up staple was being anything but TRASHY with his new bride.
The couple has not made a public statement yet, but Gonzales has been the subject of dating rumors for as long as she's been HANDLING Tozier's public persona … and we all know she's had her HANDS FULL!
A source within Tozier's team confirms that the couple did hitch each other's wagons together last night, a last-minute decision following Tozier's sold-out show at the Laugh Factory. This source would NOT confirm how long Gonzales and Tozier have been dating, but the two have been vacationing together on a semi-regular basis since 2015, when they were photographed getting HOT AND HEAVY on a public beach in Malibu.
The TRASHY TWOSOME were also spotted enjoying brunch together this morning at La Strega, an upscale Italian restaurant in Summerlin. Congrats to the HAPPY COUPLE (we assume) !
Attached to this charming article is a blurry photo of Richie and a woman holding hands in a parking lot, leaning up against the side of a car together, the woman's shoulder pressed against Richie's chest. She's wearing a novelty wedding veil and a pair of ripped jeans; Richie is holding a cigarette and has his head tilted back in a laugh. Another photo shows the two of them sitting at a table of a restaurant, in the same exact outfits, sans wedding veil. Their heads are tilted towards each other, and one of Richie's hands is resting casually on her wrist. They're both wearing sunglasses.
Eddie stands up from his desk so quickly he gets a head rush, and then stands there for a moment, wavering, black spots appearing on the edges of his vision, before sitting down again. Then he drops his phone on the surface of his desk with a clatter, and folds his hands in front of his face and starts counting to a hundred.
His phone buzzes a couple more times while he's counting, but Eddie doesn't break off until he gets to the high forties, at which point he can't help it anymore and picks it up again. Bev has texted him something, but he swipes that away in favor of Mike's gentle, concerned-sounding, Richie didn't call u?
Called, yes. All six are from him. Eddie's thumb hovers over the phone icon to call him back, but his breath goes quick and short in his chest, and he has set the phone down again for a long second while he continues to count. His chest feels tight, and his face is itchy and hot, like he's about to cry, which would be absolutely ridiculous. He is not going to fucking cry, right here inside of his glass-walled office, at 8:30 in the fucking morning on a fucking Thursday. Who the fuck gets spontaneously married in Vegas on a fucking Wednesday night, anyway?
Just saw. He called this morning before I woke up. Haven't talked to him yet, Eddie texts to Mike. I'm fine. Have to work. Talk to you later.
Okay, love u ed, Mike sends back, almost instantly, like he was waiting for Eddie to reply. Then Eddie sends similar messages to the others, except for Richie. Eddie stares at the long line of one-sided eddie eddie eddie messages, his heart thumping painfully against his ribcage.
Wild night, huh? he finally settles on, and before Richie can reply, another: I'm about to go into a big meeting. Call me when you're free.
Then he puts his phone in his top drawer, with all of his pens, and shuts it so hard his computer monitor rattles.
Of course the entire day goes poorly. Eddie is short and irritated with everyone, even the people he actually likes. Hailey, the tattooed office manager who's in charge of the interns, even pulls him into the break room at one point and asks if everything's alright.
"I'm fine," Eddie says, his voice hoarse because he's been talking stridently-on-the-verge-of-shouting all day. "Why?"
"Why?" Hailey scoffs. "Just for the record, Eddie? Days like today are why people call you 'Geng-Ed Khan' behind your back."
That's actually sort of clever. Feels like a Richie joke. Eddie scowls. "I'm not allowed to have an off day?"
Hailey, who has known Eddie for five years, gets an unbearably sympathetic look on her face that tells Eddie she's thinking about the weeks after Derry when Eddie was walking around with a literal hole in his face. After a couple of days, it had become increasingly clear that most of his coworkers definitely thought that Myra had been the one to stab him, and trying to convince them otherwise was only making them more sure, so Eddie had given up. "Hey - is it Myra? Did her lawyers do something? The offer for my sister's divorce shark is still on the table, you know."
"It's fine, no," Eddie says, "it's not Myra. It's just." Just what? he thinks. Just say it, you pussy. "It's whatever. A bad day. Sorry."
"Don't apologize to me. I think you made Caylin cry."
"Who the fuck is Caylin?" Eddie asks. "When the fuck did we hire somebody named Caylin?"
Hailey just frowns at him. "Go home early, Eddie."
"Yeah, I'm going," Eddie says with a sigh.
He checks his phone again on the train; there's nothing more yet from Richie, which isn't surprising since he's probably on a plane or something. Into the third month of his tour, he's due to start the European leg any day now, which would be a weird thing for Eddie to know, his specific travel schedule. Definitely weird and intrusive, to have Richie's tour dates on his Google Calendar. Eddie doesn't want to talk about it.
So instead, like a well-adjusted person, he decides to torture himself on his commute home. He reads six different gossip articles about the marriage, all of which say basically the same thing as the TMZ story, because Richie still hasn't made a statement and he hasn't been seen in public since this morning. Then he reads the backlog in the group chat, which is like a real-time news scroll of everyone's first reactions. Richie, apparently, hasn't talked to any of them at length either, and Bev and Bill have spent most of the day speculating. None of them are particularly surprised that Richie got drunk married in Vegas, for obvious reasons. Although Mike seems to be making a fair attempt at convincing everyone that it's a misunderstanding.
Privately, Bev has sent him a screenshot of her text log with Richie from the night before, which contains a few nonsensical drunk texts about food and a selfie, Richie standing in front of some sort of car, clearly a parking lot somewhere, with a pair of Elvis sideburn sunglasses on his face. None of the messages mention Anna, or a drunk, spontaneous wedding. None of them say much of anything at all, actually.
It can't be real. Right? Eddie sends her, knowing she'll reply right away. He told us he wasn't dating anyone. Unless something changed?
Bev calls him instead of texting back, and Eddie fights with himself for a minute before he picks up. She'll just keep calling and calling, if he doesn't.
"I'm pretty sure it was a fuck up, yeah," Bev says, without even saying hello. Eddie finds this phone habit of hers charming, but then again everything Beverly does is charming. "She came with him last month, you know when he came to see my new house? Ben and I both met her briefly. Definitely didn't seem romantic at all. She was only with him because they had some meeting in the city to go to."
"You haven't talked to him?" Eddie asks, angling his face away from the rest of the subway platform, leaning in the corner next to the stairs.
"No. He left me a voicemail this morning," Bev says, "but he didn't really say anything. Just told me to call him tomorrow. He's flying to Toronto right now - he's got a show there tomorrow night, and from there he's off to Europe."
"Right," Eddie says, trying to sound like he didn't already know that. "Yeah, he called me a bunch too. I was asleep though." He tries not to think too deeply about the fact that Richie hadn't left him a voicemail. "What was she like? Anna. I've never met her."
"She was nice. Pretty," Bev says. "Didn't really seem to me to be Rich's type? But I mean, who knows, right?"
"Right," Eddie says dully. He rubs at his chest absently.
"I didn't get a chance to talk to her for very long, she just gave him a ride to my house," Bev says. "Richie told me they're friends, though. They go on vacations together, I guess."
"Right," Eddie says again, for lack of anything better. There's an ugly lump at the base of his throat that keeps popping up whenever he thinks of that line from the TMZ article. HOT and HEAVY in MALIBU. "Bev, do you think...it can't be real because. Because he doesn't like women like that. Right?"
Bev doesn't say anything for a second, and Eddie can practically hear her uncertainty. "He's dated women before, though? I mean - he was engaged once. And he told us he meant it."
Sandy. The woman Richie cut up his dick for, both figuratively and literally. Yes, Eddie has heard of her. Once or twice. "I guess I just didn't expect - " what? Eddie doesn't know how to finish that sentence.
"I know what you mean," Bev says gently. "But honey - he didn't say he was gay. Just that he liked men. It's possible that he likes both, it's a possibility that it's real. It might be new, they might've gotten caught up in the moment...I don't know." She pauses, significantly, again. "Are you okay?"
Eddie's train is here. He watches dispassionately as the crowd of people edges up against the platform board in a quickly-moving push of arms and legs, the rush hour crowds even worse than usual, due to a couple of route closures uptown. Eddie sags against the brick wall and lets the train go, not really feeling much of an urge to move yet. "I'm fine."
Beverly hums. Eddie pictures her at her new house - beautiful exposed brick in the kitchen, antique banisters, big open windows, amazing light. Eddie's only been once which is pretty sad, considering how close she lives, but he sort of wanted to stay forever - just move in permanently and watch Netflix every night on her couch, eating her homemade flavored popcorn and listening to her laugh - so really it's for her sake that he's stayed away. She's managing the post-divorce phase so much better than he is. "It'd be alright if you weren't. It doesn't have to mean anything, you can just be upset and I won't ask why. None of us would, until you want us to."
Eddie takes a deep breath, and then lets it out. A new wave of people have floated down to the platform, lining up along the line to wait for the next train. He should really join them. "Okay. I'm okay, though."
"Sure."
"I'm just - it's surprising, that's all," Eddie says, glancing down at his watch. He picks up his briefcase, straightens his coat. There's no reason for him to be doing any of this, since nobody is looking at him, but the routine movements somehow make him feel a little better. "He'll probably call me tonight sometime, after he lands. I'll text you what he says."
"Text the group chat," Bev urges. "Bill's losing his mind with curiosity."
"Such a gossip queen," Eddie says.
"I know," Bev says fondly. "Love you."
"Yes," Eddie says, swallowing thickly. "I love you too." His hands shake, a little, when he slides his phone back into his pocket.
Good thing he doesn't get great reception on the subway; Eddie spends most of his ride home counting. The thing is - well. The thing is that Eddie is a grown adult, who has had several romantic relationships in his life, regardless of the several hundred jokes Richie made about Eddie saving himself for his cold, loveless wedding night. He was with a woman all through college, a shy, pretty English major named Harriet, whom Eddie called 'Harry.' They broke up because she moved to Louisiana for graduate school, and then after that he was with a girl named Taylor, brash and funny and loud - she worked in the mailroom of Eddie's first office and taught him how to play pool. Then there was Nicole - Nic - a buttoned-up lawyer who used to call Eddie her 'pocket boyfriend,' which used to really piss him off, so that didn't last long. And then, his mother died. And then, he married Myra.
He knows how it works - the blunt, harsh truths about trying to fit your life alongside someone else's. Sometimes you're on board, and the other person isn't. Sometimes, you think it's all gonna work out, and then it just fucking doesn't. Eddie remembers the clean heartbreak with Harry - the explosive blow-out with Taylor - the long, slow death of his relationship with Nic. And now, there's Myra - more like a slog through a WWI trench - who, for all her faults, did love Eddie, and still does, in her own way. But love isn't always enough, and love isn't always good for you. There are different kinds, and Eddie thinks he's starting to see the differences more clearly now than ever.
He knows...well, he knows Richie doesn't owe him anything. A year ago, Richie called him in the middle of the night, having just walked off of a stage somewhere in the Mountain Standard Time zone, and started rambling so manically that Eddie sat up straight in bed, his heart pounding, thinking that Richie was on something, that Eddie was going to have to sit there and talk him down from a bad high. But that wasn't it, instead Richie's voice just wound up tighter and tighter until he blurted it out, and every muscle in Eddie's body simultaneously clenched and relaxed. He likes men. Richie likes men. Richie likes to date and sleep with men. Was that okay with Eddie? Was that going to be something Eddie had a problem with?
Of course not, fuck you, Eddie had said, quickly enough that he could hear the relieved rush of breath, the scared little noise that escaped Richie's throat. I love you, you idiot. I love you so much! Are you fucking stupid?
Eddie still can't believe that's what he said, in that moment. Richie had laughed, though. And they'd talked for a long time, after that.
One of Eddie's hobbies, post-divorce, is Googling Richie obsessively, so Eddie knows quite a bit about his love and/or sex life. Unfortunate for his mental health, really. Richie had told them all about Sandy, of course, back in Derry at their nightmare catch-up dinner, the funny-not-funny story about the vasectomy, the new husband that Richie had joked about, very plainly covering up a brutal heartbreak with a joke. (As he always did.) But there were others, of course there were others - Richie was famous, Richie was on SNL for a season and a half, he opened for Dave Chappelle, he's been in movies. People write articles about him. He's in the news, when he does things. People take pictures of him on the street and post videos of him walking to his car, the morning after he drunk-marries his publicist in Las Vegas.
Eddie makes a deal with himself not to look at his phone again until he gets home, which he keeps by distracting himself with other torturous memories, like the rumored affair with Katherine Heigl back in the early aughts, when Richie was a hip SNL guest star and she was a teen dreamboat on Roswell. Then he makes another deal with himself not to look until after he takes a shower, during which he thinks about an episode of Will & Grace from 2006, in which Richie played one of Grace's boyfriends and the running bit was that he was extremely loud in bed. There were three different sex scenes, all of which were visually tame, but featured Richie moaning and yelping loudly for comedic effect while various other characters stood on the other side of the door and reacted, and Eddie can't fucking believe how many times he's watched it. It's intensely pathetic. Eddie doesn't want to talk about that, either.
He sits on the edge of his bed for a long time in his towel, staring into space and feeling his chest caving in on itself. When they were kids, Eddie used to proofread Richie's English papers for him, and he'd always demand that Richie let him keep them after he got them back from the teacher, because Eddie needed to track his improvement as his tutor, or some bullshit like that, Eddie doesn't even remember what he'd said. Still, Richie always handed them over dutifully, and Eddie remembers his seventeen-year-old self reading and rereading and rereading, especially on bad nights when his mother would scream or cry or threaten to hurt herself. It was a comfort, especially as he got older, and Richie wasn't always as readily available in person - he got a part time job at a grocery store when they were sixteen, he'd dated, here and there, girls from other grades who liked his glasses and thought he was funny. He didn't stop being Eddie's friend, but he just wasn't around as much, and so Eddie just reread his tenth grade book report on Hatchet a million times instead, which was also, if he's being honest, intensely pathetic.
He's a little better at covering, now, although Bev and Mike see through him like he's made of fucking glass. Regardless, it's easier to explain away why he knows all these weird details about Richie's career - because he's famous! And that's really weird! Totally normal to be curious! He can lie and pretend he hasn't seen almost every piece of televised media Richie has participated in, ever, but Eddie has. Sometimes, though, when he slips up, Eddie can shrug and make fun of whatever it was - cannot believe you were on the fucking Ghost Whisperer, Rich, were you that hard up for cash? - and Richie will just laugh and rib him back and it's fine.
It's fine. Whatever! It's fine. Eddie had thought - well, it doesn't matter what he'd thought. Just because they talk on the phone - it doesn't mean anything. Just because Eddie feels - well, it doesn't matter what he feels, either. Eddie is a forty-two year old man in the midst of a bad divorce, he's on the verge of bankruptcy because he can't pay off Myra's credit card debt and keep up with the rent on two New York apartments at the same time, and he has like, several different anxiety disorders. It's not like he's a catch. It's not like Richie, who has probably had amazing sex with Katherine Heigl, owes him anything at all. He can marry whoever he wants.
Sometimes you're on board, and they're not. Eddie's been scolding himself for two years now, trying not to get his hopes up, but somehow they crept up anyway. It's not a fun feeling.
When he finally works up the balls to look at his phone, Richie has started texting again. The first message contains a photograph of the view from his new hotel room, which is something he does every time he touches down in a new city. This particular one has a spectacular angle on the parking lot.
Richie: ED, EDD, AND EDDY! I AM SO TIRED
EDDIE DID YOU KNOW YOU SHOULD NOT MISS YOUR INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT BECAUSE YOU FELL ASLEEP ON A LOUNGE CHAIR AT THE WRONG GATE? NOT A FUN EXPERIENCE. I SHOULD MAKE A PODCAST WITH ALL MY LIFE ADVICE
EDDIE IT'S SIXPM ARE YOU STILL AT WORK? DON'T FING TELL ME YOUER STILL AT FING WORK
Eddie smiles despite himself. No, I'm home now. You did make it to TO, right?
His phone immediately lights up with a FaceTime call. Eddie looks down at his bare chest in panic, and then thinks fuck it with tired resignation, and answers. At least he has pants on.
"Eddie!" Richie's outside, to Eddie's surprise, the video sort of jittery at first, the scenery dark. Eddie squints, holding his phone out like that will help, until it stabilizes, and Richie's face appears, lit up under the light of a streetlamp. His eyebrows are raised, and he laughs a little, sputtering through a grin. "Hey hey! Whew, babe, if I'd known this was that kind of call I would've found some privacy first."
Eddie looks down at himself again and scoffs. "I just got out of the shower."
"Sexy."
Eddie rolls his eyes. Richie says all of that shit in such a goofy, over the top way that Eddie hasn't been able to talk himself into taking it seriously. "What the fuck, you missed your flight? Were you that hungover?"
"Yeah, man, it was - I was pretty fucked up last night, as you probably figured out," Richie says ruefully. He's walking somewhere, the lights above his head bobbing in and out of frame, earbud wires trailing out from beneath the fringes of his hair. He lifts his other hand to take a drag from a cigarette and all at once, Eddie can almost smell it. Cigarette smoke, and that obnoxious cologne Richie wears - two smells that Eddie could pick out from a crowd anywhere, anytime. "I missed my first one, and they booked me another seat, but then that one got delayed. Didn't actually get in until a couple hours ago." He takes another drag - he looks nervous, Eddie thinks. Keeps looking up and over the phone, at whatever's on the sidewalk in front of him. "And my phone died in the middle of all that, and I lost my charger, because I'm a fucking moron, and so I had to find a cab, like suddenly it's 2004 and we're all living like cavemen. Anyway, I'm here now." He grins at the camera, the connection glitching again and warbling the last few syllables of his sentence. "Sooo. What's up with youuuu?"
"Well I didn't get married last night, so not much," Eddie says dryly. Richie cackles. "Seriously? What the fuck?"
"Man," Richie says, sounding slightly out of breath, "wild night, Eds. You said it."
"Don't call me that."
"You're not even gonna congratulate me?" Richie asks, ignoring Eddie's comment completely. "I got married, man! Fuck you. Send me a fucking fruit basket."
"You eat fruit?" Eddie asks. "You don't fruit. I don't believe you've ever seen a piece of fruit in your life."
"A cookie basket, then. One of those soccer mom things with the chocolate covered sugar cookies on sticks."
"An Edible Arrangement?" Eddie says, twisting the words into a nasal, slightly Minnesotan accent that sends Richie tipping over into a giggle fit. "You want an Edible Arrangement to celebrate your drunk nuptials?"
"I love it when you do Voices," Richie says gleefully, still laughing. "Nah, Eds, it was crazy. It was - I've never been that drunk before. Ever. In my life, I have never. I didn't actually think it was possible, to drink that much and still be alive. I don't even remember anything past like, seven pm."
Eddie feels his throat closing up a little, as he chokes out his next words. "So you and uh, Anna, you're not really…"
"No!" Richie interrupts, with a laugh loud enough to strain the speaker. "Of course not! I would've told you if I was dating somebody, come the fuck on. Besides, she works for me."
Eddie feels something tight in his gut unwind, just a little. "The internet definitely thinks it's real. You haven't said anything publicly yet, I think that's making it worse."
"Yeah, well, the person who writes those for me is recovering from her own hangover right now too," Richie says. "Bad idea to get her fucked up right before I do something stupid. That's going on my podcast. Episode two."
"Or maybe, perhaps, the person you pay to manage your public image shouldn't be like, personally involved in your public image?" Eddie says, just this side of snide. "Just a thought."
"Also good advice. We'll cover that topic in the 'don't drunk-marry your employees in Vegas' installment. Probably enough there for like a three-episode arc."
Eddie shakes his head, not dignifying that weak-ass joke with a laugh. "You're an idiot."
"Undisputedly," Richie agrees. He smiles warmly, but his eyes are still averted, so the effect isn't as heart stopping as it usually is, when it's genuine. "You been watching the blogs for me all day, Eds?"
"Bill has," Eddie says, and Richie barks out a laugh. "He's got too much time on his hands. Writer's block again."
"Fucker," Richie says fondly. He moves the phone slightly, and Eddie can see the swing of a glass door, and a ceiling appears behind Richie's head. "Well, it was definitely the weirdest thing I've ever done while drunk. Also the most cliche. We're not even sure if it was legal yet, Anna's gonna look into it. But on the bright side, they put our wedding photo up on the wall next to Jon Bon Jovi's, and the chaplain promised me they wouldn't take it down even if we annulled. So that's pretty cool. I feel like that's a fucking career accomplishment, you know?"
"Oh yeah," Eddie says, even as his stomach clenches at the phrase 'our wedding photo' coming out of Richie's mouth, "there's SNL, Netflix, the spoken word Grammy nomination in 2009, and your drunk selfie on the wall in Vegas. Career best."
"I hate that you always have to say 'spoken word' Grammy nomination, like, specifically," Richie complains. "It's still a Grammy nomination. You could just say that."
"They don't even present them at the actual ceremony."
"Yes they do! Some years they do!"
"Didn't you miss the ceremony because you were in rehab?" Eddie asks skeptically. "And you lost to like, Michael J. Fox."
Richie laughs again. "Shut up. Losing to Marty McFly was a fucking honor."
Eddie smiles at the phone, hopelessly fond. "So that's a yes?"
"I gotta go," Richie says, pausing in some sort of hallway. He's still laughing a little. "My eyes are drying up, I'm so fucking tired. Can we talk tomorrow? I have rehearsal in the morning, and then stage call's at five-thirty, but I wanna talk to you more."
"Yeah, of course," Eddie says, without really thinking about it. His neck gets hot in the next second, because that sounded too eager even to his own ears. "I mean, uh, I have to go downtown tomorrow to meet my lawyer, but you should call me when you have some time. I'll just be running around all day, I could step away."
"Divorce stuff?" Richie asks, in that carefully neutral voice he always uses when they talk about Myra. It's the Richie approach to being sensitive.
"Yeah," Eddie says. "It's no big deal, though."
"If you say so," Richie says, with no particular inflection one way or the other. It drives Eddie batshit sometimes, trying to figure out Richie's opinions on the divorce. They hardly talk about it, and when they do, all Richie ever says are nonsense platitudes, delivered in a TV newscaster voice. "I'll call you then. Probably around noon?"
"That's fine," Eddie says.
"Cool." Richie has entered what is clearly his hotel room now, and Eddie feels his neck flush even warmer, at the strange intimacy of the glimpse of Richie's suitcase in the background, splayed open, his clothes hanging out over the edge of the bed. "Show me your tits before you hang up. Just real quick. Please?"
"Fuck off," Eddie says, the flush creeping up his neck. He scowls, hoping it comes off as irritation.
"Just a little peek? Daddy needs a pick me up before bed," Richie taunts, somewhat lazily, like his heart's not really in it, but Eddie feels his stomach curl up anyway, just at the suggestion of the words themselves.
"No."
"Aw, you're no fun. Not that I didn't know that already. Hey, sleep tight, Spaghetti."
"Yeah, okay," Eddie says, through a tight throat. Richie's already looking away, yawning a little as the background blurs behind his head, the image stuttering again. "Good night."
"Good - " the rest of what he says is garbled, and then the image freezes. Eddie huffs and ends the call, and then tosses his phone several feet away, hearing it land with a dull thud on the carpet. Covering his face with both hands, he then leans his elbows on his knees, and just tries to breathe.
The casual reassurance that this was a drunken mistake and not based on any actual desire on Richie's part to marry a woman does not do much to prevent Eddie from fucking torturing himself, which is how he spends most of his Friday morning. This is a bad day for Eddie to be hopping around the city for meetings; he's been gifted with way too much commuting time to Google.
Anna Gonzales doesn't have a Wikipedia page, but she has a LinkedIn, and a profile on the PR firm's website, which contains a nice, professional headshot of a beautiful woman with dark hair, bushy eyebrows, and a gap-toothed smile. It's a charming quirk about her face, really - one of those things that give a person's appearance character, makes them memorable. Eddie's always sort of liked that sort of thing - a mole, a lump on someone's nose from a bad break, birthmarks - he thinks it's part of what makes people unique. On Anna Gonzales, though, Eddie finds that he suddenly can't stand it.
He looks at every single paparazzi photo that's ever been published of them: Anna and Richie, who have been working together for almost fifteen years, who frequently go out drinking together and lounge around on beaches in swimsuits. Eddie finds pictures of Anna and Richie at restaurants, clubs, bars, concerts - a video of them arriving at the airport two days after Richie's release from rehab in 2010, and they're holding hands - they're fucking holding hands! - Eddie wants to slam his face into something.
The video itself is fairly sickening - Richie had made headlines for the rehab thing, and 2010 was still deep in the era of paparazzi journalism. Eddie doesn't even watch the whole thing; it's just footage of Richie, looking pale and thin and sort of nauseous - clutching Anna's hand like a lifeline, walking through an airport entrance with his chin glued to his chest. The person holding the camera is shouting questions at him, there are camera flashes every few seconds. Eddie swipes the browser page away viciously, feeling a little sick himself that he hadn't been there.
What must Anna think of them - the Losers? Richie talks about Anna a lot, but it's always in a sort of distant way, like someone you work with but still don't know very well, which is clearly a lie considering how many times they've been photographed half-naked together. If she really is Richie's friend, why hasn't she insisted on meeting them? Why wasn't she there at the hospital in Bangor, when Richie was still under anesthesia and they had to snoop through his phone in order to find someone they could call that knew what kind of health insurance he had? Even if it wasn't romantic - wouldn't she have booked the next flight out? Fifteen years, for fuck's sake. Did she even care?
That's an unkind thought. Eddie is reminded of Audra, who is lovely, and really was married to Bill when all that happened. She didn't rush to his side like a war widow, either. She took Bill's word for it that they were his friends, and when they all finally met her she was perfectly pleasant and not suspicious at all. Just because Eddie would've lost his shit if his significant - if his partner - his whatever - had gotten himself stabbed in a sewer with a bunch of people they never mentioned before doesn't mean - look, it's ridiculous for Eddie to be suspicious that Anna wasn't suspicious, he knows this. He's letting his emotions interfere with his judgment here. Just a tad.
The group chat, as usual, has moved on without him.
Bev 3: richie, you owe me two million dollars for getting married without my permission.
Ben: Yeah! Oh no wait Bev he should pay you three mil because you didn't get to dress him
Bev 3: oh my GOD! THREE million dollars, TRASHMOUTH!
William Denbrough: does R even have any money
Like at all?
I think most of his capital is tied up in hawaiian shirts and that ridiculous apartment he owns in silverlake
Mighty Mike: He's not responding because he knows what he did and he's ashamed
Bev 3: gonna add another mil to the bill for every thirty seconds he doesn't answer
FOUR MILLION
FIVE MILLION
SIX MILLION
SEVEN MILLION
Ben: hahahahaha
Bev 3: EIGHT MILLION
Richie: I AM SLEEPING! JESUS! SOME PEOPLE SLEEP!
William Denbrough: RICHIE
Mighty Mike: MR. GONZALES!
Ben: RICHARD GONZALES
Bev 3: NINE MILLION
Richie: stop yelling I'm hungover again
Eddie's sitting in the lobby of his lawyer's office, which isn't really the ideal place to participate in a rowdy group chat, considering how many rich, influential people probably engage the services of this particular divorce lawyer. (Bev included.) However, Eddie doesn't love himself.
Eddie: Has anyone ever noticed that Richie is somehow always asleep when he's uncomfortable talking about something?
Bev 3: oh my god. TEN MILLION
Richie: EDDIE come on. Some of us have cool jobs. Some of us aren't fucking SQUARES
William Denbrough: does anna have a cool job
mr. gonzales
Mighty Mike: Anna's a publicist. She probably gets up at 7am like a normal person.
Richie: you shut the fuck up about my wife
Ben: aw
Eddie sucks in a sharp breath, and regrets saying anything at all, very suddenly. He puts his phone away angrily before he can do anything else he regrets.
Somehow, meeting with his divorce lawyer after that doesn't seem too bad. He white knuckles through, and decides to treat himself to something terrible and fried for lunch. It doesn't count if it's cathartic, Eddie and his therapist have decided.
Richie finally calls as Eddie in the middle of scarfing down his therapeutic Nashville hot chicken sandwich, about forty minutes later. Eddie props his phone up against his glass of iced tea so he can keep talking.
"Oh my God, what is that," Richie says gleefully, "Eds, you have come on your chin."
Eddie sputters, almost choking on the mouthful of food. Richie snickers at him as he recovers. "You fucking asshole, it's ranch dressing."
"Looked like come," Richie says cheerfully. "Should I call back? Later time? Let you have some privacy with your sandwich?"
"Fuck you," Eddie grumbles, taking a rebellious bite. He says the next sentence through the food, ignoring the side eye from the guy sitting down the bar from him. "How'd rehearsal go? Did you fuck up?"
"Nope!" Richie's sitting in front of a wide mirror, and Eddie can see his own face on the phone because of the angle that Richie's holding it. There's someone standing next to him too, digging through a large bag, and Eddie puts his sandwich down hastily, his stomach curling up in dread. "Went great, actually. Hey, Anna Banana!" He turns his face, motioning to the other person in the mirror, and the image shakes a little as Richie moves. Eddie sucks in a sharp breath. "Eddie, you've never met Anna, right? Anna, this is Eds." A pretty face ducks into view, and Eddie shoves one of his hands beneath the bartop, gripping his own knee tight enough to hurt. "Eddie Spaghetti, meet Anna Banana. And vice versa."
"Hi," Anna says. Eddie still can't see her face too clearly, since Richie's phone is still being jostled around, but Eddie tries to smile back anyway.
"Does that make you Mr. Banana?" Eddie asks, congratulating himself on sounding normal. He hears both of them laugh. "Nice to meet you. My last name isn't actually Spaghetti."
"Oh, word?" Anna says. Her voice is deeper than Eddie had expected, his unkind thoughts about her all day having characterized her as some sort of hot girl bimbo villain from an 80s movie. "I had no idea. You know it took me like weeks to get your actual first name out of him; he kept calling you 'Spaguardo.'"
"You asshole," Eddie says, hearing both of them laugh again. The picture stabilizes, and Eddie is greeted with his first decent shot of Anna's face - not that he doesn't already know what she looks like, but it's one thing to creep on photos of someone and a whole other to see the real live thing. She's got her hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun with a couple of pens poking out of it, and she's wearing glasses - wire frame ones, much more stylish than Richie's. She's not wearing any makeup but she still looks beautiful, because of course she does. "I'm sure everyone's been congratulating Richie all day, Anna, but let me be the first to offer condolences. Very sorry for the loss of your freedom, hope it passes quickly."
Richie makes an offended noise, but Anna laughs delightedly. "Thanks, yeah, I'm still processing obviously but I'm sure the actual grief will hit me soon."
"I'll show you grief," Richie says, and pushes her out of the frame with one big hand on her face. Anna's sudden burst of laughter is almost shrill, and Eddie sees her punch his shoulder, and then the blur of her green blouse as she walks off behind his shoulder. "She's the worst. I have, let's see, approximately...eighty-five million 'ball and chain' jokes already - do you want to help me vet them? Thinking of trying some out tonight on stage. Just to shake things up."
Eddie can still see her in the mirror over Richie's shoulder, her face out of view but the curve of her shoulder, a splash of color on the back of her arm - some kind of tattoo. He feels weird about the fact that she can hear everything they're saying. "Thought you were trying to distance yourself from your old, stale, sexist material."
"It's not sexist if it's ironic," Richie says, with the full confidence of someone who knows what they're saying is total bullshit. Then again, that's how Richie says everything. "'I hate my wife' jokes are very 2011, anyway. Hey, too bad we didn't do this after I got out of rehab, Banana! Probably would've helped."
Anna says something that Eddie can't make out, and Richie turns his head to reply. Eddie is stuck looking at the side of his smile, his skin flushing hot and his stomach roiling. He thinks about the pictures again, despite himself, one shot in particular that he'd found where they'd caught Richie and Anna in a pharmacy, walking out together with armfuls of chip bags and boxes of aspirin. That one, in particular, had been almost harder to look at than the beach shots, for some reason.
Richie is grinning when he turns his face back to the camera, but it falters a little when they make eye contact. Eddie quickly rearranges his expression into a smile, squeezing his own knee again. Get it together, he thinks. Get it together, you selfish fucking prick. "So uh," he says quickly, watching Richie's face smooth back into a grin with a small measure of relief, "did you find out if it was real? The marriage license, or - or whatever?"
"The marriage license, 'or whatever,'" Richie repeats, snorting a little, "was not real, actually. Turns out when you roll up blackout drunk to a famous celebrity wedding chapel they sort of just indulge you. Kind of a relief, to be honest, I think my lawyer's pretty sick of me as it is."
Eddie can still see Anna in the mirror. He grits his teeth. "No shit. I can imagine."
"They promised to keep the photo up, though!" Richie continues cheerfully. "I think Anna's gonna put something on Twitter today. Although I wouldn't know what, since I am not allowed access to my own account - "
"You are not to be trusted!" Anna calls, loud enough that Eddie can hear it clearly. Richie laughs again.
"She changes the password every day, it's diabolical," he tells Eddie, who attempts a laugh of his own. Then he cringes, because it sounded pretty weird. "I'm the only modern comedian who isn't using Twitter to build a following with Gen Z. It's like they want me to only appeal to fifty-year-old misogynist dads."
"What makes you think they would like you if you posted more?" Eddie scoffs. "The kids are much smarter now. They have internet from birth; they'd see through you in a second."
"Well, Sarah Silverman is even more problematic than I am and she's like, a politician now, practically," Richie says. "Hey Eds, do you have Twitter?"
"No."
"You have a Twitter. Right? You have to have a Twitter."
"I don't have a Twitter and I don't want one," Eddie says. He squints at the camera. "Bill is obsessed with it, though. Why don't you bother him?"
"Billy's obsessed with anything that can distract him from his fucking job," Richie says with a laugh. "Of course he spends like, twelve hours a day on it. Oh, hey - yeah thanks," he says, looking up at somebody off-camera. A man's voice, speaking too quickly for Eddie to hear clearly, saying something about microphones. "Yeah, no, Matt told me already. Sorry Eds," he says, looking back at the phone, "this is Steve, you remember Steve?" Richie swivels the camera around to show Eddie a stern, stocky man in a bad suit, looking skeptical. Then he swivels the phone back around before he can say anything. "He's in charge of my career, so you can direct your constructive criticisms his way. I'm sure he'd love to hear them."
"I can let you go if you're busy," Eddie says.
"No! I mean yes, I am technically at work, but so are you," Richie says. "Unless - you probably wanna finish your lunch before you run off to your next grown up adult business meeting - "
"Why do you have to call them 'grown up adult business meetings' every single fucking time?" Eddie asks, rolling his eyes. "You're a prick. No, I'm done for the day. I'd go back to the office for awhile, but I'm actually closer to my place, so I'll probably just work from home for the rest of the afternoon. When do you go on again?"
"Five-thirty," Richie says. He sounds somewhat distracted, and the cadence of voices in the background has risen. Eddie can't see Anna in the mirror anymore, but there are several other people milling around, walking in and out of frame. "Looks like it'll be closer to five-forty, now. I guess they're having some issues with the sound."
"Is it one of the ones we can watch?" Eddie asks. "That live feed thing you did in Seattle?"
"No," Richie says, "thank God. I'm testing some new stuff tonight, wouldn't want any of that shit on the internet. But they always do short clips, usually - the venue does it, actually - they put them on YouTube. Probably not until tomorrow, though."
"Okay," Eddie says reluctantly. He's only actually seen Richie live once, since for whatever reason he doesn't often perform in New York. Too expensive, hard to book, he's always said - Eddie's skeptical. With the steady success he's had since Derry, after firing his writers and taking the reins back, he's been all over the place - Eddie's only managed to make it to one show, a small club he performed at in New Jersey. This was before he and Myra split for good - she actually came with him. In retrospect, that had been a fucking terrible idea. "Well, break a leg. Don't bomb."
"I'll try," Richie says fondly. "Hey - show me your tits."
"Fuck you," Eddie splutters loudly, turning the heads of his neighbors at the bar again. "Save your fucking jokes for the idiots who blew their money on you, asshole."
"You love my jokes," Richie says, laughing. "Okay, see ya."
Eddie scowls and hangs up without a goodbye. The image of Richie's smile lingers afterwards, like an imprint on his dark phone screen. He looks at the remnants of his sandwich dispassionately. The ranch dressing really does kind of look like come.
"Goddamn it," Eddie says, and signals for the check.
Eddie had, believe it or not, actually tried to leave Myra while he was still in Derry. When Richie was still in surgery, and the rest of the Losers were trying to explain to the cops how they'd ended up beneath a collapsed house with various stab wounds and broken bones without mentioning the eldritch alien being that had terrorized them there, Eddie was on the phone with Myra, desperately trying to keep her from storming into the hospital and dragging him home by his ear. Back and forth for hours, texts and phone calls, until even the nurses started to shoot him pitying looks. On one such phone call, Eddie had gotten so fed up that he'd blurted out that he wanted a divorce anyway, and that he wasn't coming back ever, so she might as well get used to it. That hadn't gone over well.
Richie got through the skin grafts just fine - the claw had only clipped his side, really, it could've been so, so much worse - but Eddie was acutely, constantly aware that it could've been him on the table, if Richie hadn't reacted so quickly. Some of that reckless bravery was still thrumming through his veins on the morning that he was finally allowed in to visit - that old adrenaline that he'd forgotten about, the fuck it impulse that It had taken from him, when It took his memories. Eddie had felt - they all had felt, and still did - like he was waking up from a long, boring dream.
And so, with the courage of his thirteen-year-old self, Eddie had allowed the words to bubble up his throat and out of his mouth, as Richie lay blinking up at him from his hospital bed. I love you, Eddie had said. Clutching his hand, his head leaned so far over the bed that it was almost touching Richie's shoulder. I love you, Rich. I'm sorry I forgot, but I remember now. And Richie - pale and groggy, squinting because his glasses were still missing, halfway to outer space on morphine - had laughed.
"No you don't," he'd slurred.
"I do," Eddie told him. He touched Richie's face, his vision blurring from exhausted, anxious tears. "I love you. You saved my life, and I love you."
Richie laughed again. His pupils were so dilated that Eddie could barely see the color of his irises. "Shut up," he said, and squeezed his eyes shut. Eddie remembers making a noise of distress that had embarrassed him, almost like a whine. "Go away. Get th'fuck away from me."
"Rich, no," Eddie had said, so frozen with pain he hadn't known how to react.
It was, undoubtedly, one of the worst moments of Eddie's life, watching Richie weakly try to flinch away from his touch, slurring horribly, don't touch me don't touch me, over and over until Eddie finally ducked out of his sight.
He'd tried again, of course he'd tried again - he wasn't going to hold it against Richie, when he was drugged and traumatized and probably thought Eddie was a nightmare or something. So the day after they released him, Eddie slid into the backseat of Bill's rental while they were parked outside of Denny's, waiting for the others to bring out the food. Richie hadn't been looking him in the eye much, since he'd woken up, and Eddie was trying hard not to read into it.
"I told Myra I wanted a divorce," he said, blurting it out with that same preteen chutzpah. It was in the air, really. Eddie remembers Richie whipping his head around so fast his glasses almost flew off his face.
"What?"
"You heard me."
"Um," Richie said, nervously pushing his frames back up his nose, "no, I didn't?"
Eddie took a deep breath, and reached out for Richie's hand. He gave it willingly, flipping his palm over face up on his leg, squeezing Eddie's fingers as they slid into place. "I told Myra," he said slowly, "that I want a divorce."
"You want a divorce," Richie said.
Eddie snorted. "Yes." He paused, braving a look at Richie's face, which looked pale and shocky. His stomach swooped. "You want me to say it a third time?"
"No, no, no," Richie said, "no, um, twice is good. Twice is nice."
"Okay, Dr. Seuss," Eddie said with a grin. He squeezed Richie's hand. "So listen, I know Bill's gonna come stay with you while you're still laid up, but I was thinking in a month or two, once I get some things worked out, I could maybe - "
"I gotta pee," Richie interrupted, still staring at Eddie like he'd sprouted horns or something.
Eddie blinked. "What?"
"I have to pee," Richie repeated, and then kept staring at Eddie for another minute. When no other information seemed to be forthcoming, Eddie opened his mouth to politely inquire if maybe Richie was still high as balls or what, but in the same moment Richie ripped his hand out of Eddie's grip and stumbled out of the car so quickly Eddie winced, thinking of his stitches.
His hand still suspended mid-air, and his heart quivering in his chest, Eddie had thought, well I guess that answers that question, and had kept his stupid fucking mouth shut for the remainder of the night. Then the next morning, Myra had called, and Eddie sat on his disgusting motel bed and listened to her yell for a long time, not responding or even registering much of what she was saying, too numbed from a lack of sleep and the slow, droning hum of the air conditioner in his hotel room. You come home right now, she'd told him, you owe me a face to face conversation, at least! And Eddie figured that was sort of fair, and so that's what he did.
It was easier to be brave in the company of his friends, the only people in the world who really knew who he was. It felt easier to be himself when he was shoulder-to-shoulder with the most courageous people he'd ever met, which Eddie has been slowly realizing over the past year or so was an excuse. He knew who he was, he's always known. There's a really fucked up reason why he's always given his girlfriends male-sounding nicknames, and it's not because he was trying to be cool. And well - that's really pathetic. It's not like he didn't know.
Myra wanted to talk him out of his bravery, and Eddie let her. That's the sad truth. Eddie was halfway heartbroken already, tired and traumatized and injured, and Richie didn't really text him back that much, even though he kept responding in the group chat, teasing Mike about his dorky vacation pictures and typing out long paragraphs of encouragement for Bev whenever she'd bring up her divorce. What's different about me, Eddie had thought, other than what I was going to say in the car? Than what I said at the hospital? Maybe he remembers, he has to have figured it out. He's trying to let me down easy, for once in his life. Maybe with age did come some grace. Or maybe he just picked it up in rehab.
So he let it happen. He went back to work, sucked up to his boss, licked his shoes and apologized for daring to have a medical emergency, and signed them up for couples therapy. The group chat was supportive, and Richie didn't say much about it. Didn't tell any of the Losers about Eddie's wild claims about divorce back in Maine. In dark moments, Eddie wondered if Richie had even believed him.
Of course it didn't work. They made it another eight months and then Eddie got fed up and took Myra to Richie's show, which was not only a terrible idea but also a really mean thing to do. Richie had a long, extended bit about something that had happened when they were sixteen - he and Eddie and Ben had hatched this plan to "borrow" Richie's dad's car and drive to Portland to visit Bev, and they'd made it as far as Augusta before realizing that they'd forgotten Eddie's backpack, which had all their cash in it. So they had to turn around and drive back, and they sneaked into Eddie's house - Eddie had put some crushed up dramamine in his mom's hot chocolate that night - and got the backpack and then turned around and drove back to Portland again, determined to make it before sunrise, before realizing that they couldn't exactly show up to Bev's aunt's house at three in the morning and not end up in jail, or something. So they'd turned around again - Ben had made his sad, disappointed face, it was terrible - and so they got high to try and cheer him up and passed out in Richie's basement, curled up in sleeping bags. All in all, they'd spent like four hours just driving on the highway back and forth, and they'd had to wake up at five in the morning to refill the car's tank so Richie's dad wouldn't bust them, and when Bev heard the whole sad tale she'd laughed herself sick.
Richie told this story as the theatrical end to his set, complete with Voices - he did an excellent Ben, and an extremely exaggerated Eddie, the asshole - and Myra had sat through it with her arms tightly crossed and a stony look on her face. Eddie had laughed loudly and vindictively, which wasn't even the last shitty thing he did that night - he'd also abandoned Myra in the lobby to go backstage to see Richie afterwards. Just for a few minutes, he'd said, but then they did some shots of Patron in the dressing room, and Richie took Eddie around to meet the crew, and it ended up being almost an hour before Richie had to run off to catch a plane. Eddie trudged back to Myra, who'd taken one look at his glassy eyes and dopey smile and smacked him cleanly across the face, right there in the lobby in front of the janitors and lingering ticket staff.
So now Eddie lives in a studio apartment in Long Island, and Myra's contesting the divorce because she's claiming his sexuality is a result of mental illness, so that's great. And Richie's sort-of-married to his beautiful publicist who buys him aspirin and looks fucking amazing in a bikini.
Amazing, truly. Really par for the fucking course, if Eddie's being honest.
Apparently, "putting something on Twitter" means a photo of Jon Bon Jovi and his wife from their Vegas wedding in 1989, complete with the hair and the weird elbow gloves and the powder blue suit and everything. The caption says, me and Anna Banana on our way to Sbux, just a typical day and it has like, literally, thousands of retweets. Eddie almost has an aneurysm. Like he can almost feel the blood vessels in his brain swelling.
"He told me it wasn't legal," he stress-yells at Mike, on the phone in the middle of his lunch hour, "he said to me, he literally said to me, that they were going to clear things up, not - not this - "
"Man," Mike interrupts, "your volume, Ed, it's a little - "
"Oh, what the fuck ever!"
"I'm just saying - you're at work, right?"
"Are you supporting me or nagging me right now?" Eddie demands, kicking the edge of his desk chair, which sends it careening into the side of his file cabinet. The sad little fern on top of it - Eddie had thought briefly that some foliage would be calming - rattles dangerously. "Are you under the impression that I don't know when I'm yelling? That I'm not aware of when I'm being irrational and shrill? I'm aware, Mike!"
"Well, hey, that's encouraging," Mike says.
Eddie sits down on the edge of his desk, the flat of his palm pressed against his forehead. Outside his office, he can see the interns who sit at the cubicles all looking very conspicuously focused on their laptop screens, for once. "I'm losing it, Mikey."
"I know," Mike says sympathetically. "Look, Eddie, maybe you should just talk to him."
"I tried! Didn't I tell you I tried?"
"You tried once when he was high on pain medication," Mike says, unforgivingly, "and then again two days later right after he got out of the hospital, when he was barely walking upright. Come on."
Eddie groans weakly. "He - he literally dive bombed out of the car to get away from me."
"He also fell asleep with his eyes open like three times on the car ride back to the hotel," Mike reminds him. "And in the restaurant - you didn't see him - he almost walked into a wall."
Eddie slides his palm down to cover his eyes, and groans again.
"Look, Ed," Mike says, much more sympathetically, "I don't know what he was thinking during that conversation, or how much of it he even remembers, but you have to realize that the burden of the first move is on you. I mean, you get why, right? You were married, man."
Eddie feels a guilty tug in his chest. "Well, yeah, but - "
"No buts. No excuses. Be real about it with me, at least," Mike says. "Let's assume for a second that he feels the same way, which I think he does - of course he wasn't going to say anything, not when you had a wife waiting on you at home. You also never actually told him that you liked men, either. You've never actually told any of them that, except for me and Bev, and that's only because we figured out how you felt about Richie - "
"It doesn't matter," Eddie says, his throat clammed up with a weird sort of panic. "It doesn't matter whether I'm gay or bi or whatever. Whatever I felt in the past doesn't matter. It's just him now. You know what I mean? I only want to be with him."
"Okay," Mike says gently, "and that's fine. However you want to define it is fine. But Richie isn't going to...assume anything. Okay? He's not ever going to think of you as an actual possibility until you present yourself as one, and that's not because he's insecure, or anything - I mean, he is kind of insecure, but - that's not the point. You've only ever dated women, you've only ever talked about women. And that's all he knows, right now."
Eddie lets out a shaky breath, still keeping his eyes covered. The backs of his eyelids are prickling with heat, like he's about to cry. "I couldn't just - I mean, what am I supposed to do, Mike? Just come out like he did? It would be so...dishonest."
Mike is quiet for a long moment. "I'm not sure what you mean by that, Eddie."
"I mean." Eddie stands abruptly, moving to sit in his desk chair instead, feeling suddenly exposed in front of the glass door of his office. "I mean, I don't...I've only ever been with women."
"So?" The silence stretches again, and Eddie listens to a soft rustling on Mike's end of the phone, like he's shuffling his phone around. He can't come up with a single thing to say. "Eddie...listen to me. It's not about what you've done. Who you've been with. It's about what you feel. Who you are. Do you see the difference?"
"I guess, but." It's not like Eddie is completely unaware of modern day sexual politics, but he'd always sort of...held himself apart from them at the same time, because he was older. Like it only applied to those thirty and under, or something. Eddie always felt like he'd missed the cut off, somehow, he'd been grandfathered into the old system, regardless of how people talked about it now. There'd been this low-grade jealousy he'd felt about it, too, a sort of grouchy these kids don't know how good they have it sentiment of thinking that made him feel even older. "Are you saying I should come out? Is that what you think I should do?"
"No, just - you don't have to do anything if you don't want to," Mike says. "Tell whoever you want whatever you want. That's your decision. But...if you want to be with Richie, you're going to have to tell him, at least eventually. I'm thinking that's at least part of the problem you're having with communication, my man."
Eddie thinks about it for a second, what that conversation might look like, but he can't even come up with any words that he could say. It's like a big white blank spot in his head. He'd said it to Myra, but only out of anger and vindictiveness. But to say it for real? He tells Richie he loves him all the time, now - they all say it as often as they can, whenever they speak. Eddie can imagine saying it to Richie in a different way, maybe - in bed. Whispered in his ear. Low and intimate at the end of a long phone call - but what is he supposed to say about it otherwise? Hey Rich no big deal just wanted to let you know that I've always been attracted to men but I've never really felt the urge to really act on it because turns out I've been in love with you for my entire life except I forgot who you were so that's weird. I always told myself that porn didn't count but that was total bullshit, but when I try to imagine myself actually being with men who aren't you, it weirds me out, so maybe I'm just attracted to you and only you but I'm not sure? Attractive, right? Let's make out. Sure. That'll work.
"I never should've stayed with Myra for so long," Eddie says instead, his voice choked with regret.
"Maybe not," Mike says. "But you're not with her now. You left her. You did that. A lot of people don't make it that far, Eddie."
He could've done it sooner though, probably. Eddie covers his eyes again with his hand, thinking about the look on Myra's face at Richie's show, all that hurt and anger and resentment, just because she knew, deep down, what that story had meant. What it said, about Eddie.
"And come on, what's the worst that could happen?" Mike asks, reasonably. "He doesn't feel the same way - fine. You could survive that. He wouldn't rub it in your face, or let it ruin your friendship. We've been through too much together to let that happen."
"As a professional risk analyst," Eddie says weakly, "I have to say that there are, in fact, much worse things that could happen than that."
"Well, you could get hit by a bus right after he rejects you," Mike says.
"A safe could drop on my head from a twenty-story building."
"Localized hurricane. Kills you right there on the street, in front of the Manhattan Harbor," Mike says. "Slurp slurp. Eddie soup for breakfast."
Eddie laughs. "No, worse, it only paralyzes me from the waist down so my dick doesn't work anymore, and then Richie rejects me and uses the story in his set. His neurotic, impotent friend who he had to gently let down. And then he and Anna move to the suburbs and have beautiful kids together and they come pity-visit me every Christmas."
"He wouldn't do that," Mike says, suddenly serious. "Come on, Eddie. He's not gonna fucking do that."
Eddie sighs. "Well, he wouldn't make fun of me in his set. No."
"He's not gonna move to the fucking surburbs, either," Mike says gently. Eddie smiles despite himself, looking down at his knees, picturing Mike at his apartment in South Carolina. He teaches graduate school now, an online library science program that pays pretty well, and he jumps around between his great-uncle's place in Florida, the Losers' various abodes, and an oceanside apartment in a little beach town called Litchfield by the Sea. Eddie went to visit him once, not long after he left Myra, and they went digging for clams right outside his apartment building. Mike had looked ten years younger, and he smiled and laughed so easily, Eddie had been kind of jealous. "Can you imagine Richie with a lawn? Imagine him, like, fixing gutters and shit?"
Eddie snorts with laughter. "I don't think he even knows how to change the oil in a car."
"Trashmouth Tozier with a lawn," Mike repeats, still sounding utterly charmed by the concept. "Do you think he knows how mortgages work?"
"Definitely not," Eddie says.
Richie is famous, but not like, Brad Pitt famous, so there isn't really a whole lot of coverage other than the initial flurry of articles. Over the next week or so, Richie mostly just posts about his tour dates on Twitter - or whoever it is that's posting on Richie's behalf - and there's only a few paparazzi shots that Eddie finds - mostly of Richie alone, walking around on the streets of Europe, photos he takes with fans that get posted on Instagram or Facebook with captions in French or Italian or whatever other language region he's in. Eddie's Instagram has started showing him photos of Richie automatically, like the AI itself has noticed Eddie's unhealthy, weird obsession.
Eddie can't help but look; some nights he just scrolls and scrolls and scrolls, his heart tripping over itself at the pictures of Richie's familiar face, his easy grin and the casual way he throws his arm around people's shoulders. Making stupid faces with college students, hamming it up for their cell phone cameras. That must be his favorite part, Eddie thinks - the kids. He hasn't spent enough time with Richie in person to have witnessed it, but Eddie knows him so well, he can only imagine how excited Richie must be to meet all these young twentysomethings who like his jokes and play along with his bits.
In a weak moment, he Googles Anna again, and finds nothing other than the same things he'd found before. Eddie doesn't know if it would be better or worse, if Richie were more famous. On one hand, thank God he's not getting followed around everywhere he goes so Eddie doesn't have to look at pictures of them, like, eating bagels every day and holding hands, or whatever. On the other hand, they could be eating bagels while holding hands and Eddie wouldn't fucking know about it, which is somehow just as terrible.
On a Friday morning, about three weeks after the sort-of Vegas wedding, Richie and/or Richie's team posts a photograph of Anna and Richie sitting at a coffee shop, wearing each other's glasses. Richie has on Anna's thin, elegant frames, and they're clearly too small for his face, the arms splayed out comically to fit his big-ass head. Anna's wrinkling her nose and wearing Richie's, holding them up with both hands, probably because they'd fall off her nose otherwise. There's a pack of cigarettes and a half-eaten sandwich on the table between them, and the sign behind their heads says something in German. Eddie stares at it for a long time, his head aching.
"Belgium, actually," Richie tells him. They've had a standing Skype call every Friday night for months now, and Richie hasn't missed a single one, regardless of where he is or what time zone he's in. "But we were in Germany in the photo. I think. Pretty sure." Richie blinks for a second, clearly trying to remember. He's in a hotel room somewhere, his hair wet from a shower, some kind of blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Eddie keeps getting distracted by his neck, the stubble that goes all the way down past his Adam's apple. "I don't know, the days are starting to blur together. It's insane, really."
"You don't have any dates in Belgium," Eddie says stupidly, and then blinks, backtracking. "I mean - you only had a couple of shows over there, I thought. London, Dublin, and then back to LA for that audition."
"Yeah, no I'm not doing shows," Richie says. "Press, mostly. For the kids movie. Lots of family-friendly talk shows, wholesome appearances. I did get to do like fifteen minutes at a club in Berlin though, just kind of spontaneously, that was rad. Half my set totally bombed, and the jokes that did land, I'm pretty sure they were just laughing at my accent."
"I still can't believe you're in a kids movie," Eddie says, shaking his head. "Are you sure they know who you are? They didn't mix you up with like, Jim Gaffigan?"
"What - fuck you," Richie says, with a sputtering laugh. "I am very skilled at voiceover work. The girl in the sound booth cried when I did my big emotional scene."
Richie plays a talking stuffed animal in a Nickelodeon animated feature about a magical amusement park. He does have plenty of lines, being the little kid main character's sidekick, but the reviews have been pretty brutal so far. Eddie's not sure this one's going on the "career high" list. "What could possibly be your big emotional scene in a movie about talking animals, Rich?"
"My love interest is a raccoon played by Mila Kunis," Richie says proudly. "I save her from falling off a ferris wheel. It's very harrowing."
"You are truly an artist," Eddie says dryly.
"Thank you," Richie says, completely sincerely, as if not noticing the sarcasm at all. "Anyway, I go back to London tomorrow to do the Graham Norton Show, that's gonna be fun. Matthew Rhys - you know, the guy from The Americans? - and Sara Bareilles are on the same episode with me. Plus some British actor guy, I forget his name, but he's in that show you like."
"Which one?"
"The depressing one about the cop who investigates murders."
Eddie rolls his eyes. "Richie, you just described like, ninety percent of the BBC lineup."
"I know, you have such morbid taste in TV," Richie says. Eddie snorts. "I'll get you an autograph."
"I do not fucking want another celebrity autograph addressed to 'Edward Spaghetward,'" Eddie says fiercely. "Especially if it's from a famous person I like."
"Am I a famous person you like?" Richie asks with a grin. "Because that's how I addressed your birthday card, and you didn't say anything."
"Shut up," Eddie says. It comes out a little more sharply than he'd intended, a little more sincerely angry, but Richie just laughs, not seeming to notice. "Why aren't you doing shows? I mean, they speak English in lots of those places, right?"
Richie shrugs. "Humor is more regional than you'd think," he says. "The shows in England and Ireland sold pretty well, but they were still rough. Tougher crowds for sure. There's a reason comedians don't generally go on international tours." He sighs. "I wouldn't have done shows at all if I weren't testing new material, but I had all these interviews to do anyway, I didn't want to waste the extra time. I had to talk Anna and Steve into it, though."
Eddie's stomach sours at the name. "Yeah, I uh, I saw those pictures you put on Twitter," he says awkwardly. "I thought - I mean, you said you guys weren't dating. Right?"
"Right," Richie says slowly, raising his eyebrows. "We're not. Like I said, she works for me."
"Those pictures kinda make it seem like you are." Eddie takes a deep breath, and summons some of that Derry chutzpah. "Are you like, doing a publicity stunt thing? Is that what the Vegas thing was really about?"
"No, man," Richie says, scoffing loudly. "What the fuck? No."
"I'm just asking."
"And I'm just answering," Richie says shortly, his brow furrowed. "This isn't a Disney Channel movie, Eddie, people don't fake date in real life. What the fuck?"
"You work in Hollywood and you think people don't date for publicity? Get real," Eddie says, rolling his eyes. "It's a fair question, Rich. You know that's what people are gonna think. You haven't actually made a statement saying the wedding wasn't legal."
"Anna thinks it'll just blow over," Richie says, with another shrug. "And honestly, it's not a super great look to tell the world that we got shitfaced in Las Vegas two weeks before my kids cartoon movie comes out, Eddie."
"I mean, that's...fair," Eddie says reluctantly. "But - it's just - "
"Just what?" Richie actually looks a little angry, or offended maybe, leaning close to the laptop on his elbows. Eddie swallows hard.
"It's just that I thought you were done with...the fake girlfriend stuff," Eddie says reluctantly. "When you...came out to me, you said you didn't want to lie anymore. And I'm just...a little concerned that maybe your management might be talking you into something you don't want to do. That's all."
Richie doesn't say anything for a long moment, adjusting the blanket around his shoulders, which Eddie can see now is actually a huge, fluffy towel. The thought of Richie having this conversation naked, straight out of the shower, makes Eddie's pulse jump. "Eddie, I appreciate what you're trying to say here, man, but it's not like that. Anna's a friend."
"But she's also your publicist," Eddie points out. I'm your friend, is what he really wants to say. She didn't even come to the fucking hospital. "And her motives might not match up exactly with yours. Just saying."
"I've known her for like fifteen years," Richie says, frowning. "She's a good person. You haven't even met her."
Eddie holds up his hands. "I'm not saying anything about her, Rich, she seems perfectly nice, I just - "
"I know what you're saying," Richie interrupts impatiently, waving one hand dismissively through the air, a sharp slashing motion that makes Eddie physically sit back in his chair, as if Richie really is sitting right there in front of him. "I fucking get it. But you don't know what you're talking about, okay? No offense." Eddie blinks at him, his stomach flopping over at the bluntness of the words, and the seriousness of Richie's tone. "Eds, babe, I love you, you know I love you. I love all of you guys, but sometimes I feel like you don't really get what my life is like. And it's not like, your fault, because my life is insane, no normal person would ever want to live like this, you know. Try to make a living doing this bullshit. It's insane!" Richie laughs, a little manically, his hands still jittering nervously around his face. "Bill understands sort of, because of Audra, but even he thinks that I can just, like, calm down about it sometimes. But I can't. I really, really can't."
"What do you mean?" Eddie asks, frowning.
"I mean, like - Jesus, Eddie, do you know how long it took me to get here? And do you know how much money I actually walk away with, at the end of every day?" Richie's eyes are wide behind his glasses, earnest and clear. "It's good money. But it's not stable. I don't have a fucking 401k and health insurance or whatever, and a lot of that cash goes right back out of my pocket, back into shit like this." He gestures around at the hotel room. "International flights, tour expenses, all this bullshit. I can't not do it, because if I want to work I need to do it, I need to be certain places at certain times, I need to keep up a certain appearance with other rich people - God, it's all such bullshit. It's all just so fucking stupid." He runs a hand through his wet hair, letting his head fall backwards on his neck briefly. "And it could all disappear so fast. The wrong scandal, the wrong joke at the wrong time - it's so easy. It happens to comics all the time. I'm not Seth Rogen, Eddie, I'm not fucking Will Ferrell. Do you know how close I came to losing it all when I went to rehab? Or two years ago, when I bombed in Chicago? It would've been so easy."
"You were on SNL, man," Eddie says, a little shaken by the vehemence in what Richie's saying. "You've done movies, you have sold out tours. Don't try and tell me you're living paycheck to paycheck, come the fuck on."
"Yeah, well, I put a lot of that cash right up my nose," Richie says darkly, "I didn't ever save much when I was younger. Now it's different, obviously, I'm not saying I'd be out on the street or anything, but it's not like I have any other fucking job skills. If I piss off the wrong people they'll just stop calling, Eds. Hollywood is a small fucking town." He sighs. "You think anybody is gonna lose sleep over some trashy stand up comic because he played the background character in a couple SNL skits in the 90s? Get real."
Frustrated, Eddie throws up his hands. "So fake dating your publicist is going to suddenly make your career more stable? What the fuck?"
"I'm not fake dating her! That's not what I'm fucking saying! God." Richie shakes his head, his jaw tight. "Anna pulled me out of all those fires, man. I trust her, I trust her judgment. So when she says to me, 'Rich, we need to let people talk about us for awhile so they don't talk about this other thing we don't want them to notice,' then that's what I do. Okay? Not just because she's good at her job, but because she's probably the main reason I still have a career, and she fucking cares about me. I mean, Christ, she's been telling me for like ten years that I should write my own material. She's not trying to shove me back in the closet or anything."
"Are you even out of the closet?" Eddie asks hotly, unsure of when this turned into a fight, but unable to back down regardless. "Because you're running around the world with a beautiful woman, Rich, that doesn't scream 'out and proud' to me."
"'Running around'? Okay, Dad," Richie says with a scoff. "What happened to all that shit you said to me about 'coming out when I was ready' and 'I don't owe the public anything'? Huh? Fuck you, Eddie."
Eddie bites back his immediate response, clenching his teeth against the wave of defensive anger. He closes his eyes briefly, counting silently in his head, and tries to inject some semblance of calm into his voice. "I just want you to be happy," he says, through gritted teeth. Richie raises his eyebrows at the camera, like, really? "I do. I want you to be happy and okay with yourself. Alright? I'm sorry. I'm not trying to fight." He still sounds angry, he can tell he sounds angry. He takes another deep breath, trying to calm down. "I'm sorry. Really."
Richie eyes him warily for a long moment, before running his hands through his hair again, his hair drying in frizzy curls around his strained, tired face. "I'm sorry too."
"It's none of my business," Eddie chokes out, "who you run around with or what you're doing with your career, I just - you know, you've told me half a million times how sick it made you to tell those fake stories on stage, to act like you were this person you weren't, and now here you are doing...kind of the same exact thing, Rich, you have to admit."
"I mean...okay," Richie says reluctantly, "you maybe have a point there. But it's not - it's not the same thing. I'm not lying. I'm just…"
"Lying by omission?"
"You're such a hard ass," Richie complains, glaring at him. "You never cut me any slack. It's deeply annoying."
"That's called 'emotional maturity,' dickwad," Eddie says. He smiles a little, watching Richie's face struggle in response, like he wants to smile back but he doesn't want to give Eddie the satisfaction. "I'm sorry. I'm just...you know, worried, I worry about you."
When they were kids, Richie would've made a big deal out of Eddie saying something like that - sincere and affectionate. Neither of them could stand it back then, everything was just too much all the time, which is why they yelled at each other constantly instead. Richie would tease him loudly and Eddie would call him names and they'd wrestle in the dirt until neither of them felt vulnerable anymore. Now, though, Richie just goes quiet, smiling with the corner of his mouth. Eddie feels like his feelings are too big for his body, watching him rub shyly at the back of his neck, his expression bashful. "Thanks, Eddie. I know you do."
"But I know you're a grown up, obviously, it's none of my business," Eddie says.
"It's not that," Richie says. "You're my friend, it's your business. But it's not Anna's fault, okay? She means well. It's the right thing, you gotta trust me."
"Okay," Eddie says, through a lump in his throat. "I trust you."
"Good." Richie's teeth flash, when he smiles.
"Would you ever, I mean," Eddie says, pausing to clear his throat, "if you...ever started dating a guy. Would Anna want you to...keep that a secret?"
"God no," Richie blurts. "I'm telling you, she's not like that. She knows...you know, about me. She's known for a while." His expression softens, growing distant, like he's remembering something. "You would really like her, you know. Seriously. Maybe this whole thing has given you, like, a bad impression? And that sucks, because she's really great, Eds. She reminds me of you, a little bit."
For some reason that hits Eddie hard, his hands clenching nervously in his lap, out of sight of the camera. "Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. I mean, she's a lot nicer to me than you are," Richie says with a laugh. Eddie's heart clenches painfully. "But now that I remember who you are and everything...yeah, I think there's a reason why we always got along so well, you know? She's a lot like you."
Eddie doesn't know how to feel about that, how to react. He feels himself starting to blush a little too, which is mortifying. "Oh. I mean, that's...crazy, huh?" He laughs a little. "There's nobody in my life that reminds me of you. But that's mostly because I work in insurance, probably."
Richie bursts out laughing, the earlier tension completely gone, as if it were never there in the first place. Eddie's shoulders loosen at the familiar sound. "I don't know, after you told me that story about what you did at your work Christmas party - maybe it's the quiet ones, Eds - "
"It wasn't me, it was my friend," Eddie says vehemently.
"Sure, sure," Richie says. He looks a little like his younger self in that moment, with his hair frizzing up, smiling so hugely. Eddie has a moment of vertigo, the memory of little kid Richie superimposing over the grown up reality in front of him. He had a lot of those moments in Derry, but it's been awhile since he was so affected by it. But he's been thinking about little kid Richie a lot, lately: the way Eddie's heart would speed up whenever Richie teased him, ruffling his hair, wrapping his little noodle arms around Eddie's waist. His knees, always skinned and bleeding, the way he wouldn't let anyone touch them unless it was Eddie, wielding a band-aid and disinfectant spray. That ratty old hoodie he'd wear in the autumn, that he was always leaving at Eddie's house. Those dorky glasses that magnified his dorky eyes. God, Eddie loved him. Loves him, still.
"Come to New York," Eddie blurts out. Richie looks taken aback for a second, but then his grin spreads widely across his face in the next. "When you're done over there. When are you done?"
"Another week and a half," Richie says. "Yeah, I could - I mean, there's the audition in LA, but after that I could come. I haven't seen you in ages."
"Right, of course, the audition," Eddie says. "After that. Come visit. You can stay with me." His heart is pounding so hard it hurts a little. "At my divorced man apartment. It's very sad. The bathroom is disgusting and my neighbors sell meth. You're gonna love it."
"I do love me a good NYC shithole," Richie says. He's still smiling earnestly, like he does when he manages to make Eddie laugh at one of his dirtiest jokes. "Yeah, okay, let's do that. When's the last time I was in New York?" He scoffs. "I don't even remember."
"I'll show you the good spots," Eddie promises. "None of the overrated tourist places."
"I bet you know every single restaurant worth going to," Richie says with a grin. "You've probably got all the menus memorized."
"I do," Eddie agrees. "Don't bring Anna." Richie blinks, looking a little taken aback, and Eddie feels his face heating up again. "I just mean - I miss you. So just...come alone. Just you and me. If that's okay."
The silence feels suddenly loaded, and Eddie has a hard time meeting Richie's gaze head on, but he does it anyway, refusing to look away. Richie looks stunned for a hot second, before it smooths out into something softer, almost nervous.
"Okay," he says after a moment, "sure. I can do that."
"Great," Eddie says, smiling and knowing he probably looks nervous too.
"Super," Richie says, still beaming. He looks fond, one of his hands clasped around his other elbow, leaning his chin on his palm. "Hey Eds."
"What?"
"Show me your tits," Richie says, and guffaws before he even finishes the sentence.
Eddie hangs up on him immediately.
It's probably for the best that Eddie's divorce is going badly, since the latest round of depositions have been distracting enough that he doesn't have much time to stress out about Richie's visit. He's been doing a fairly good job at compartmentalizing it, but it really does fucking suck.
It has been awhile since they saw each other in person. Thanksgiving, probably, at Bill and Audra's house in Los Angeles. That was one of the weirdest holidays of Eddie's life, considering that he and Myra had officially split only a week before. He and Bev flew out together, after a three-day weekend with the movers. Myra hadn't wanted to stay in the apartment without Eddie, and so it was a long, grueling process, getting most of the bigger furniture into storage, separating what was his and what was Myra's. Most of it had ended up going straight into storage, actually, since most of what Myra wanted were the expensive things, which Eddie's lawyer wouldn't allow him to just give up to her without a fight - and Bev's presence there only seemed to exacerbate Myra's stubbornness.
"She thinks we're sleeping together," Bev had informed him, when they'd finally made it to the airport, collapsing in a booth together at a bar near their gate. "She thinks I'm your mistress. She didn't say anything, but I could tell."
"What a concept," Eddie said, grinning, and Bev laughed along with him, ordering drinks for them both without asking. She's always been a little pushy like that, like Richie is; somehow, when it's coming from his friends, Eddie doesn't mind so much. "You're out of my league anyway."
"I could say the same thing about you! I'm unemployed now, remember?" Bev protested. She knocked her elbow against his arm gently. "I thought you told her about...you know?"
"I did," Eddie said heavily, nodding at the bartender as she slid two glasses of frosty dark beer across the table. Bev picked hers up immediately and took a long, bracing drink, but Eddie just held his for a moment, wrapping both palms around the base of the damp glass. "She doesn't believe me. Her lawyer filed a motion last week asking the judge to assign a therapist to interview me, on the grounds that I'm not in full control of my mental faculties."
"You didn't tell me that!" Bev scowls. "I would've been bitchier to her if I'd known that."
Bev had been icy and silent in Myra's presence, shouldering in front of Eddie whenever Myra got too close, or tugging him away whenever the conversation got too pointed or intense. Eddie was unspeakably, profoundly grateful. "It won't work. At least that's what Nathan says - even if the judge grants her motion, it's not like it's not a plausible story, that I had a near death experience and decided to come out of the closet. Because, well, that's sort of what happened." Eddie gulped, the phrase still sounding weird and wrong, when applied to himself. "Nathan has a counter-motion ready that he's filing on Monday, asking for the same thing for her. He thinks if the judge grants one, he'll have to grant both, and either way, a therapist's statement will probably work in my favor."
"She can't possibly think that she can...what, get more money out of you by making the court think you're mentally ill? If that is what she's doing."
"No, she doesn't care about money," Eddie said grimly, taking a bracing gulp of beer. "She just wants to drag this out for as long as possible, because she still thinks I'll come back, if she wears me down enough."
"Jesus," Bev muttered, reaching out to squeeze Eddie's wrist. The lines around her mouth were deep and angry.
"She could get more money out of me if she wanted," Eddie said honestly. "I don't care. I can make more of it. The only thing I really want to keep are the cars, and she doesn't even want those. I just want it to be done." Eddie slumped, feeling the weight of the last eighteen months all at once, pulling his shoulders towards the ground. "For some reason, Nathan doesn't want me to say that on the record, though."
"Because he's a good lawyer," Bev said sympathetically. She was still squeezing Eddie's wrist firmly. "Maybe you should go ahead and see the court therapist. Or ask yours to submit a statement, independently. He's right, you know - Myra won't be able to dig anything up that will hurt you. Tom tried, and it only made him look worse." She shook her head grimly. "We always talk about it like we're pulling one over on them, have you noticed? But we're not. We're not doing anything wrong, and we're not even lying. You did have a near death experience that caused you to reevaluate your life, Eds. We all did."
Eddie was quiet for a long moment, trying to come up with the right thing to say. Bev's divorce hadn't been finalized for all that long at that point, and sometimes he could see her wavering. "I love you, Bev. Thanks for doing this with me."
"I love you too," Bev said, squeezing his wrist one more time before sliding her hand away. She didn't say 'you're welcome,' mostly because she hadn't needed to. It felt sort of overkill, really.
So Thanksgiving had been a little...shaky, for obvious reasons. Audra and Bill had a gigantic lakeside cabin that was a little ostentatious for Eddie's taste, but it suited Bill, who walked around in designer plaid flannels and two hundred dollar flip flops like he was born for it. Audra was intimidatingly beautiful and still sort of suspicious of the Losers, which made the entire affair that much more awkward, and Richie had been...weird, the whole time, sort of quiet and listless, not up to the job of breaking the ice like he usually was. Eddie had tried to catch him alone all weekend, but there was always something in the way - someone walking in the room at the wrong time, a conversation that turned tense at the other end of the table, a badly-timed text or phone call. Eddie had flown back to New York by himself three days later, feeling ill at ease and unsatisfied, like he'd just wasted an opportunity somehow, even though he'd been trying hard not to.
Richie is uncharacteristically withdrawn over the next week or so too, texting back a lot less, and with shorter replies, reminding Eddie of the miserable period after Derry when they'd hardly spoken. They still talk on Skype, but one week Richie has to duck out early when he gets an important call, and the next, he falls asleep halfway through, jetlagged from Europe and visibly exhausted. Eddie watches him for a minute or two after he finally nods off, snoring with his head tilted back against the headboard of his bed in Los Angeles, his heart pounding so hard he can feel it in his teeth. He has to practically force himself to end the call.
His audition goes well, though. It's for a movie that Richie actually wants - some Netflix project that he can't really talk about, since the details are under some sort of secretive embargo. The most he's told them is that the director will surprise them, and that the part he's reading for will not. It is actually good though, he'd texted, in the group chat. It's a comedy but not a stupid one. Good script and they cast the lead already and she's great. I don't know her personally but I hear she's down to earth, and she's been in some good stuff and no bill i'm not talking about ur Hot Wife.
"Cannot believe they're gonna let you be a movie star," Eddie says, on a quick FaceTime call, a few days before Richie's flight to New York. Richie makes a face at him, his mouth full of cheeseburger, which he is deliberately chewing as messily as possible, making sure to keep the phone close enough that Eddie's forced to hear all the gross chomping noises. "I know you're not allowed to tell me anything but if I guessed and you like, raised one eyebrow for 'yes' and the other for 'no,' could they still sue you?"
Richie raises one eyebrow, and then the other, in quick succession, and then angles them sharply in a warped Ace Ventura impression that makes Eddie guffaw loudly. "Well the thing I signed today was long and complicated enough that they probably own my future hypothetical children, so probably."
"Please tell me you have an actual lawyer, and you don't just go around signing shit like it doesn't mean anything."
"Lawyer?" Richie takes another comically large bite of his cheeseburger. "Oh hey, that might be a good idea. Have to look into that concept."
"Idiot," Eddie says, grinning. "That's why you kept getting all those sitcom gigs back in the day. The network executives were probably raking you over the coals."
"Yeah, I was kind of wondering why they all called me 'Richie 'The Chump' Tozier' but at the time I thought it was just a term of endearment." Richie grins. "Actually, do you wanna hear about why I got fired from Just Shoot Me? The real story, not whatever it says on my Wikipedia page."
"Did you fuck somebody's wife?" Eddie asks.
"I wish. No - so I don't know if you ever watched it, but there was this character on the show called Wally that got written off after the first season, and he was played by a friend of mine named Chris Hogan - I met him when I did a couple episodes of MADtv - "
"You did MADtv?" Eddie asks incredulously.
"I'm not proud of it!" Richie says with a laugh. "What do you want from me, I was like twenty-four. Anyway, Chris was a total fucking asshole, which is obviously why we were friends, and so when he heard I got the part he conned me into thinking that George Segal had a secret speech impediment, and - okay, stay with me here, Eds - "
Eddie's already laughing, unfortunately. "This is gonna be bad. I can feel this turning into a terrible story, Rich."
"It's really terrible," Richie says, with a gigantic grin. "So he tells me this whole story, right, about how he has a speech therapist coming to work with him every day on set, and nobody's allowed to like, bring it up to him because he's sensitive about it, and he's one of the stars of the show, yadda yadda yadda. So of course, day two on set, I immediately walked up to Tom Maxwell - he was the director - and, well - "
"Oh my God," Eddie says, covering his face with his hand.
"Which is what Chris knew I would do! This is why it was funny!" Richie says. "That's not even the bad part. The bad part was that the lady who came to set every day to visit George was his fucking mistress, actually, and everyone knew about it but me, and - okay, this sounds bad, but this is actually just the backstory of why I got fired, believe it or not - "
"What did you actually say?" Eddie asks incredulously.
Richie shrugs, still grinning. "Don't remember exactly. It was funny, though."
"I'm almost sure it wasn't."
"Opinions, opinions," Richie says. "Okay so yeah - flash forward a few months, my character gets like, promoted or something - I don't even remember much about the part really, but I had a lot of kissing scenes with Wendie Malick and that was something else let me tell you - and it came down to like a decision, right, whether to extend my contract for another run of episodes or just write me off. And so they used to do this thing, on the network sitcoms, where they'd call you into this office with the writers and sometimes the cast, too, and bounce ideas off of you to see if you can give them something to work with. Kind of like an audition, but more laid back. And they did that, and I was uh, let's just say, hanging with a bad crowd at the time - "
"MADtv," Eddie says derisively.
"Right. So, like, I was high as fucking shit," Richie says. "In my defense, so was George. But we got to shooting the shit, and uh, let's just say - it took a turn."
"Oh my fucking God," Eddie says, cringing at the possibilities. He doesn't even need the details to feel the secondhand embarrassment on Richie's behalf.
"I thought," Richie says, stuttering a little as he tries to control his own laughter, "like I really thought I was talking about a speech therapist. Tom had told me, but I still sort of thought he was fucking with me, you know? And like, the lady was really classy looking, and she'd just stop by and visit George in his dressing room for an hour or two here and there, and it seemed like a regular schedule!"
"A regular fucking schedule!" Eddie says, and Richie tilts his head back and laughs.
"Eds gets off a good one!" He laughs again, rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses. "I don't know man, you already know that I'm stupid. And Chris - well, I knew he would fuck with me, but he was as broke and pathetic as I was, I didn't really think he'd try to fuck up a TV job for me like that - hindsight is fucking 20/20, I guess, holy shit - "
"This Chris guy really seems like an asshole, but," Eddie says, tilting his head, "MADtv. So."
"Shut the fuck up," Richie says, guffawing loudly through the words. Clearly the sting of this particular betrayal has faded, just a bit. "So like, it ended up being this whole big thing. George's management made me sign an NDA, and they wrote my character off, and I'm still not...technically allowed to talk about it, I think? So maybe don't tell anyone this story, just to be safe. But then I got the SNL gig like a month later, so it was fine." Richie shrugs. "Anyway, that's why David Spade doesn't like me. In case you were wondering."
"Oh man, David Spade doesn't like you?" Eddie makes an exaggerated frowny face at the camera. "He's not gonna invite you on his talk show? That's rough, Rich."
"You're such a miserable fucking bitch," Richie says, laughing. "If I see this story on Reddit, you'll be hearing from my lawyer, you asshole. I've got three of them, thank you very much."
"That's so Hollywood," Eddie says with a scoff.
"Yeah, well." Richie takes another bite of his burger, and Eddie doesn't even flinch when he keeps talking, practically numbed to it at this point. "It wasn't a total bust. It was a fun show to work on, and it's how I met Tom." Richie falters visibly for a second. "We, uh, we kept in touch after that."
We dated, Eddie translates. Instead of jealousy, like he would've expected, all Eddie feels is a sort of weird amusement. "Did you uh, did you ever want to do TV yourself? I mean, like one of those sitcoms they give to stand up comedians. A King of Queens type thing?"
"Fuck no," Richie says, shaking his head. "That's where comics go to die, you know. Network television."
"Strong words from a guy who guest starred on the entire NBC lineup between 1999 and 2007."
"Eddielita, my love, have you been stalking my IMDB page again?" Richie asks. "You know I didn't enjoy kissing Wendie Malick, right? It was all for the art, I swear!"
Feeling brave, Eddie tilts his head innocently. "But did you enjoy kissing Tom Maxwell?"
Richie chokes on his food, leaning away from his laptop momentarily while he coughs. Eddie, unapologetic, just laughs at him. "You pissy little bitch," Richie finally says, when he's recovered enough to talk again. "I could've died just now."
"You're the one who cheated on me with a sitcom director," Eddie says, still amped up on that strange bravery. Richie's eyes bug out behind his glasses, making Eddie laugh again. "Hey, Rich, it's fine. I'm sorry, but you were just kind of, uh, obvious about it just now, I couldn't help but - "
"No! No, it's fine, that's fine," Richie interrupts, his eyes still wide. "He's, ah, he's married now. Some guy he met while I was in rehab. They have kids and everything - living the Gay American Dream down in the suburbs of Miami, Florida. Couldn't be happier for the guy, really." He clears his throat nervously, his eyes darting around the edges of the screen like he's watching a fly buzz around Eddie's head or something. "I guess I was kinda obvious, huh? I almost just said it. All casual, like, 'hey, that was my ex, Tom.' Something still stopped me, though."
"Hm," Eddie says playfully, nodding like he's thinking deeply about the question. "You didn't want to make me jealous."
Richie goes silent again, his eyes darting quickly to Eddie's face, and then away again. "Uh, yep," he says, after a too-long beat. "That's it."
He sounds nervous. Eddie's pulse is jumping, too. "Hey, listen, I didn't mean to - "
"It's fine," Richie interrupts again, laughing dismissively. It still sounds a little higher pitched than usual, but his expression looks more normal, his grin doesn't look fake. "Really, it's fine. Maybe I'll tell you about him sometime. He was a nice guy."
"Couldn't have been that nice, if he dumped you while you were in rehab."
"I dumped him, actually," Richie replies. "Fuck you very much for that assumption, Eddie Spaghetti."
"You're full of shit," Eddie says, grinning again. "You've never dumped anyone in your life."
"You're right, I just stopped returning his calls," Richie admits, and Eddie bursts into surprised laughter. "Listen, it was very traumatic for me! We made up eventually, though. You know, when he tracked me down to rub his happy marriage in my face - "
"You're such a dirtbag," Eddie says. "I can't wait to see you."
"Romantic," Richie accuses. His cheeseburger is all but abandoned by his elbow. "You better bring me flowers when you pick me up at the airport, you fucking dipshit."
"Oh, I'm picking you up now? You can't afford to shell out for a fucking Uber, with all that comedy tour money? Fuck you, dude."
"Fuck you twice, you're the one who invited me," Richie says, grinning widely. "Can't wait to see you either, by the way. My little stuck up, repressed fucknugget."
"You fucking fuck, you look like an unwashed beanstalk, who are you calling little," Eddie says.
"You," Richie says, poking a finger at the camera. "I call you little. Because you're fucking little."
"Fuck you," Eddie says.
"Fuck you!"
"Nice comeback, shitbrain."
"Oh wait - what was that? 'Please come visit me, Richie, I miss you so much!' Oh sorry, I was just reliving a memory just then, hope I didn't say anything out loud - "
"That's not what I sound like, asshole," Eddie says, his nerves jumping beneath his skin with adrenaline, like they did when they all jumped in the quarry together in Derry, frantically trying to wash the blood off before the ambulance arrived for Richie. Eddie had waited until the very last second to jump in, sitting with an unconscious Richie on the bank, watching his chest rise and fall and trying to align his own breaths to its movement. "You always make me sound like a Muppet."
"Duh, that's what makes it funny," Richie says.
Eddie was lying about his apartment; it's actually perfectly fine. It's small, but whatever. It has hardwood floors and a little outcropping outside the bedroom window that's sort of like a balcony, but the window is too high up for anyone to actually try stepping out there. The person who lived here before Eddie had grown plants on it, and there's still a couple left behind that require very little attention to keep stubbornly growing.
Eddie gets his air mattress out and inflates it, and then deflates it again. Then he inflates it again, and stares at it in anxious indecision. Then he deflates it again, feeling brave. Then he takes the whole thing and stuffs it in the bathroom closet, and calls Mike and gets a pep talk, which he thinks will be the end of it, until he opens Twitter - fine, fine, of course he has an account - and sees Richie's latest tweet, which is a selfie at the airport with somebody dressed up as Spock, for some reason. This has nothing to do at all with their potential sleeping arrangements, but Richie's wearing a different pair of glasses, thinner frames that look more dark brown than his old black ones, which makes Eddie wonder why he'd gotten a new pair, and then he starts wondering if it was for the audition, which makes him wonder if Anna had picked them out, and before he knows it he's trying to drag the air mattress out again.
I'm spiraling, he texts to Bev, who replies with several frowny faces, and a gif of Michelle from Full House making a sad face. bev seriously what the fuck was that
Ben told me to send it, Bev texts back. do you wanna call? We're both here, we can talk
no i'm supposed to leave to go pick him up in like 20, Eddie replies. can you just like really quick remind me that his marriage isn't real
his marriage is NOT REAL. we know this because he told us EXPLICITLY several times. Would u like me to remind you also of how cute and hot and amazing u are
Nope! I'm already anxious enough thanks
aw, Bev sends, almost instantly. Much quicker than her last message. u are tho Eds, like a total catch
ok fuck you but also thanks, Eddie texts, and sees the laughing emojis that she sends, just briefly, in the split second before he puts his phone away.
Thus emotionally supported, Eddie grimly drives to JFK, and plants himself in the pickup lane stubbornly. He will not park, god damn it, and Richie knows this. Even still, it takes like an hour for Richie to stumble out the glass doors, frowning at his phone and dragging a beat up carry on behind him.
"Eddie," he says, with immense relief and enough volume that Eddie can hear him through the car window. He hits the button to unlock the doors, a similar feeling of sudden calm at the scruffy, lanky-ass sight of him, his hair windswept and matted up on one side, like he'd been sleeping on it, and his clothes wrinkled to shit. Eddie waves at him, feeling stupid, and then grins to himself when Richie nearly drops his phone waving back.
There's a comical miming session that goes back and forth for a few minutes, while Eddie tries to communicate that his trunk is open, which Richie takes to mean 'please close my trunk without putting my carry on in it,' which makes Eddie groan out loud and gesture angrily in the rearview. Grinning, Richie jogs around the car and nearly gets beamed by a taxi, and then makes a face and jogs back around to the sidewalk side again and tries opening the passenger side door, which Eddie locks quickly before he can pull on the handle. Richie makes an exaggeratedly shocked face and presses his forehead against the window.
"Back seat!" Eddie shouts. "Put your fucking bag in my back seat!"
"Eddie my love," Richie starts singing, tugging on the handle again. "Pleeeeease Eddie, don't make me waaaaaait too loooooooong - "
"This is punishment," Eddie says to himself, pinching the bridge of his nose as he unlocks the door. He loves this person. He is in love with this walking, talking, novelty Happy Meal toy. "I am being punished for something."
"Oh Eddie Eddie, I love you so," Richie finishes the chorus, sliding into the seat with his carry on stuffed in his lap awkwardly. His eyes are sparkling behind the lenses of his glasses, and Eddie feels disgruntled about how beautiful they look. "Oh hey baby, I don't know if you know this but your trunk was open."
"Get that thing in the back seat," Eddie says, pushing the edge of the suitcase so it digs into Richie's stomach. "You idiot."
Richie cackles, making sure to shove the bag over the console as obnoxiously as possible. "You didn't come in to meet me!"
"I texted you! Parking here is fucking ridiculous, do you know how much they charge?"
"I'm Hollywood now, baby, I would've paid you back. No don't drive yet, c'mere," Richie says, and drags Eddie over the console by his collar to wrap his spider arms around his neck in a goofy, but heart wrenchingly affectionate, side hug. "Holy shit, guess what?! I missed you!"
Eddie shoves him away, his heart beating in triple time. "Ass," he says, slapping Richie's hands away from his face, before readjusting his shirt carefully and then pulling Richie back over for a properly-aligned embrace, this time. "Missed you too."
"You prissy motherfucker," Richie says, directly into his ear and squeezing Eddie's shoulder blades. Eddie shivers. Richie shoves his face into the side of Eddie's neck, laughing a little, which makes Eddie shiver again, harder this time, at the warmth of his breath on his skin. He's shaking a little, like he's cold or something, Eddie notices, and wonders if it's nerves from flying, or a cigarette craving, or what. "Is now a bad time to mention the sick baby that coughed all over me on the flight?"
"Fuck you," Eddie chortles, indulging in the hug for another long moment before shoving him away. "You're paying for dinner."
"You're taking me to dinner?" Richie flops back to his side of the car and puts his seatbelt on without being asked, which for some reason makes Eddie's stomach flip over on itself like a drunk gymnast. "Oh gosh, I feel like I'm going to Prom, Eds. The dream date I never had."
"Yeah, here, I even bought you a corsage," Eddie says, and acts like he's pulling something out of his jacket pocket before flipping him the bird. Richie snickers. "What are your feelings on Mexican? Do not touch that window."
Richie ignores him and rolls the window down. "As in the food, or the people?"
Eddie debates the merits of rolling the window back up with the driver's side control, and the ensuing window war that is bound to happen, before giving it up as not worth the effort. "The food, dumbass. There's a good place by my apartment, we could drop your bag off and walk. If you're up for it, anyway."
"That's cool," Richie says, "I'm not tired, if that's what you're asking. Fresh as a daisy, Eds." He sticks his head out of the window and breathes in deeply, sort of like a dog. Eddie shakes his head as he maneuvers the car carefully out into the lane, trying not to smile at him too obviously. "Can I smoke in your car? I can deodorize it afterwards, I promise."
"Absolutely fucking not."
"Come on, please? You won't even be able to smell it with the window down, especially once you start driving fast."
"No! I can't believe you still smoke, you're fucking forty-two. You're gonna get lung cancer."
"Only when I'm stressed." Richie rolls the window back up halfway and leans his head against it, twisting slightly to grin at Eddie. "Which is all the time, now that I think about it, so I take your point."
Wordlessly, Eddie reaches over into the glove compartment and pulls out a pack of gum, tossing it in Richie's lap.
"You're such a fucking sweetheart," Richie says, tearing into it immediately. Eddie keeps his eyes on the road, refusing to react to that. "Not that I'm implying that you stress me out, babe, it's just - you know, flying."
"I think I do stress you out," Eddie says with a snort. "I'm a stressful person. I'm in therapy now, we can acknowledge this."
"I actually find you very calming," Richie says, chomping down on two sticks of Orbit Wintermint. "Your yammering has a meditative effect on me. Like a white noise machine, or watching Teletubbies when you're high."
"Oh, hold me closer Tiny Dancer," Eddie says flatly. "You're sweeping me off my fucking feet."
"That's the plan," Richie says flippantly, and accidentally spits out his gum in the process of trying to blow a bubble. Eddie has to pretend not to notice, for the sake of his own blood pressure.
It's raining warmly outside when they finally make their way down the sidewalk to the restaurant; this was, of course, preceded by forty minutes of Richie bouncing from corner to corner in Eddie's apartment, gleefully comparing every inch of it to Carrie's apartment in Sex in the City. Wow Eddie I love this credenza. It looks just like the one Carrie had in the episode where she fucked that waiter, and gosh Eddie I am in love with the placement of your Vitamix here, it really reminds me of that episode where Carrie fucked that art dealer, and horrifyingly, also Eddie my love are you sure you've stocked enough Metamucil? You remember what happened to Carrie in that episode where she fucked the butt doctor, and that was about the point that Eddie dragged him physically out of the apartment by his shirt collar.
"Don't embarrass me in here, I know these people," Eddie tells him, still leading Richie down the sidewalk by his shirt. Richie just follows along with a dopey smile on his face. "And don't hit on Marie. You'll know who I mean."
"Are you having an affair with a waitress? That's very Broadway," Richie says. He skips a few steps forward to avoid a crowd of teenagers pummeling down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. "Bad taste to bring your trashy sidepiece to your girlfriend's restaurant, though."
"Oh come on, you're not trashy," Eddie says. "You're just deeply immature. It's a different vibe entirely."
"Thanks," Richie chirps, in an unidentifiable accent. He dodges another pedestrian - his limbs are too long for crowded New York sidewalks, really - and knocks his chest into Eddie's back accidentally as they stop at a curb. Eddie lets his collar go, and Richie doesn't move, and they stand there for a moment, pressed together at the streetlight, shoulder to hip. Feeling brave again, Eddie presses back into the contact, noticing the hitch of Richie's breath as his hand quivers against the muscle of Eddie's lower back, skittering across it like he can't decide whether he wants to touch or not.
"Rich," Eddie says after a second, the back of his neck feeling hot, which is how he knows Richie is looking at him. "Did you bring your wallet?"
"Uh," Richie says, sounding a little dazed. Eddie turns slightly to look, and Richie is staring at the side of his face, his hair damp from the rain and frizzed up around the square frames of his glasses. "Yes?"
"Good. Sidepieces don't pay for dinner," Eddie says. "So you're neither. Right?"
"Uh," Richie says again, and then the light turns, and Eddie snags his collar again. His skin feels too tight for his body, almost, like he's too jittery to be existing right now, as he tugs Richie across the crosswalk.
This is Eddie's favorite place, a hole in the wall with bad lighting and an incandescently beautiful hostess named Marie, who lights up like the Fourth of July when she sees Eddie walk in. Behind him, Richie makes an aborted noise, sort of a cross between a laugh and a wheeze, and Eddie elbows him in the gut in the second and a half it takes Marie to extract herself from the podium to give him a hug.
"Eddie! Oh, it's so good to see you, it's been too long! Who's your friend?" Marie has long black hair and a beauty mark above her mouth like Marilyn Monroe, and she's also like, three and a half feet tall, which makes Richie's giant, lanky ass look even more cartoonish by comparison.
"This is Richie," Eddie says, hugging Marie back lightly before pointedly pulling away, angling his shoulder back into Richie's chest. To his credit, Richie doesn't seem to react beyond another incredulous look angled over Eddie's shoulder. "He's my comedian friend I told you about."
"Oh, a comedian! We don't get enough comedians around here," Marie says, reaching up to shake Richie's hand. Eddie has to bite his lip to keep from grinning at the fact that Richie actually has to bend down to make that work. "I'm Marie, welcome to La Braseria. Eddie comes here all the time and God, we all just love him. Even though he's not funny."
Richie barks out a laugh. "Marie, it's an absolute, ah, pleasure," he says, stumbling in the way that he does when he has to stop himself from cursing. "Unfortunately we're all aware of Eddie's condition, but I assure you, we're working on it."
"I'm actually hilarious," Eddie interjects.
Marie smiles indulgently at him, raising her eyebrows at Richie, who is probably making some kind of stupid face behind Eddie's head. "Sure," she says, patting Eddie's arm. "You want a booth or a table? We're slow tonight, take your pick."
"Booth," Eddie says, slapping Richie's arm away as he tries to poke at Eddie's stomach, trying to direct Eddie's attention somewhere. "And some tequila shooters to start, if you don't mind."
"But you're gonna have margs after, right? Lucía and I made a fancy batch tonight," Marie says, sliding a couple menus out from underneath a large book, sitting open on her podium. A textbook, Eddie would guess - she's been studying for the MCATs, she's mentioned before. "Lavender blueberry."
"Oh my God," Richie says, sounding like he's having some kind of spiritual revelation.
Eddie rolls his eyes at Marie. "Sure," he says. "Hook us up."
"You got it."
Richie keeps gawking all the way to the table, at which point he knocks his head on one of the trailing garlands of fake flowers that hang from the ceiling in the dining room, knocking one of the ends loose. Marie laughs at him gaily as he attempts to fix it, waving him away and into the seat.
"Don't worry, they come loose all the time. My dad will fix it," she says, filling their water glasses. "I'll bring your drinks in a second - do you want chips and salsa for the table?"
"Yes," Richie says loudly, folding his big legs into the booth carefully. He's still looking around with an utterly charmed grin on his face. "Absolutely we do, right Eds?"
"Yeah," Eddie agrees, rolling his eyes at Marie again. She laughs at them one last time as she leaves, her movie star hair swishing appealingly against her back as she walks away. Queer as they both might be, Richie and Eddie still stare for a second.
"Jesus Eds," Richie says, as soon as she's gone, "you're a regular. You took me to your place."
"Bev and I come here a lot," Eddie says, fiddling with the water glass. "She's the one who found it, actually. When she helped me move into my place, she dragged me out to explore the neighborhood."
"How can a place be a dive and bougie at the same time?" Richie wonders out loud. "Lavender margaritas. Jesus Christ."
"They always have some kind of hipster flavor. You know, blood orange, or blackberry sage, or what the fuck ever. Last time I was here they had pineapple jalapeno." Eddie pauses. "Which was actually really good."
"I'm so into this. Thanks for bringing me here, my little," he pauses for dramatic effect, "spicy pineapple."
Eddie groans. "That was bad."
"It was sexy," Richie insists.
"It was not."
"You thought it was sexy," Richie says, definitively, leaning back as Marie returns with a tray full of alcohol and tortilla chips. Eddie takes the opportunity to pull at the buttons on his sleeves, his neck prickly and hot. Richie's hair is damp from the rain and his jacket keeps crackling loudly every time he moves, and it's kind of overwhelming. "Marie, quick question. Do you have specials?"
"Of course," Marie says, grinning and looking at Eddie sidelong.
"Can you just - bring us a couple of those, then? Whatever they want to make us. Just ask for the best food they can cook, in their opinion, we don't even care," Richie says. He holds a hand out at Eddie. "I can feel you clenching, but come on, they know your allergies by now, right? Marie, you have to know his allergies, am I wrong?"
"We know," Marie says with a laugh, and Eddie covers his face with his hand. "No hay problema, we'll make you some good shit. For our favorite customer and his comedian friend, huh?" Marie sets the bowl of salsa down between them, clearing her tray, and whacks the side of Eddie's shoulder with it playfully. "All good, Eddie?"
"Whatever, fine," Eddie says. "Nothing weird. You know what I mean, Marie."
"Ay, we made him a grilled octopus salad once and he still hasn't forgiven us," Marie says.
"Eddie," Richie says, aghast, "you ate octopus?"
"Not knowingly!"
Marie laughs again. "Enjoy your meal, boys, I'll put your order in. Lucía will be over to check on you."
"Marie, you're top notch," Richie says, waving at her as she saunters away again. He knocks Eddie's knee, beneath the table. "Dude."
"I regret bringing you here already," Eddie says. He scowls. "And don't flirt with Marie. She's nineteen and she's too good for you."
"I wasn't flirting!" Richie protests, waving Eddie's arms back from the table so he can slide the shots over. "Come on. Some hair of the dog, let's go."
It's much needed - the tequila. Eddie keeps his eyes on Richie as they slam the shots, allowing himself to look as Richie licks the salt from the back of his hand. Eddie's hands don't shake, exactly, but he can feel the tremors anyway, making eye contact with Richie as they bite down into the limes. Richie's eyes narrow behind his glasses, and his knees spread out beneath the table again, knocking companionably against Eddie's.
"Better?" Richie asks, a little hoarsely, and then doesn't wait for an answer. "Fuck me, these are purple."
"Yeah, because blueberries are purple, Rich," Eddie says, leaning back in the bench seat as Richie fusses with the pitcher, pouring it into the glasses. "You have to put the garnishes on too, asshole."
"Oh, excuse me, the garnishes," Richie says, picking up the dainty little butter dish with their cute little sprigs of lavender. "Good thing the glasses come pre-sugared, Eddie, we wouldn't want to offend anyone at our little garden party here."
The tequila has worked its way down Eddie's throat to his chest, and he feels his grin stretch wide and loose across his face. "If you're gonna do it, do it right," he says, nudging Richie's leg with his knee. He makes contact with the inside of his thigh, on accident, his leg moving further into Richie's space than he'd anticipated, and he watches Richie react as if in slow motion - his head twitching in surprise, his eyes snapping up to Eddie's face, and then his body curves inward, his shoulders angling towards Eddie in the warm space of their table. "I want a fucking lavender garnish on my motherfucking margarita, Rich."
Richie is staring at him, his hand suspended in mid-air over Eddie's glass. "Uh."
"Yeah?" Eddie says, feeling like his organs are all knocking together inside of his body, sloshed around by the electricity arcing beneath his skin. "You got a problem, Hollywood?"
"Nope, no, not at all," Richie replies, and shakes the butter dish over the top of the glass, shaking one of the twigs into the drink. "I am problem free. For tonight, anyway." His face is intent and sharp as he pulls back, like all of his focus is zeroed in on a fixed point.
And Eddie, as the fixed point for the evening, feels a little dizzy. "Good," he says, and takes a drink. It's frozen and it tastes like a fucking muffin. But God bless Marie, there's a shitton of tequila in it. "So?"
"So," Richie says, taking his own drink. "Uh, yeah, okay. That'll work."
"Bougie as fuck," Eddie says with a nod. "Not really a dive at all, fuck you very much."
"No wonder you like it here," Richie agrees, with a sly smile.
Their food is unlike anything Eddie's eaten here before, but incredibly good; Richie is given grilled steak with some sort of magical salsa-slash-sauce that makes his eyes roll back in his head, and Lucía serves Eddie a bowl of soup that is fragrant, and amazing, and seems to have a different collection of ingredients in every single spoonful he drags up. On the side are sweet-tasting rolls of bread and a cold corn salad that's spicy and amazing, and they finish off the pitcher of margaritas in what seems like no time at all, at which point it's replaced with another pitcher of something - can't be the margarita special, since they only ever make one flavor per night - that tastes not nearly as alcoholic as the last round, and only slightly sweet. Sort of like grapefruit, if grapefruit actually tasted good.
Richie babbles the whole time about Europe, in a tone of voice that's just this side of manic, visibly nervous. Which actually puts Eddie at ease, for some obvious reasons, but he doesn't know how to convey that without giving too much away, so he just listens.
He's also taken off his jacket, at some point, revealing a shirt underneath that is neither patterned nor wrinkled, and definitely not the one he'd been wearing on the plane. Which means he'd changed his shirt in the bathroom at Eddie's, specifically to go out to dinner, which for some reason makes his head feel loopier than ever.
"You ever been there, Eds?" Richie asks lazily, ripping pieces off of a bread roll to dip in Eddie's soup. Eddie pushes the bowl closer and lets him. "You told me about that trip you took to Spain in college, but you ever been anywhere else?"
"No," Eddie says, shaking his head. "Not the places you've been. I've been to uh, Newark," he says, and Richie huffs out a laugh. "Palm Beach once. Every major airport hub in the continental United States. Spent a couple weeks in Seattle for a work trip. Went to a concert in Nashville for my thirtieth birthday."
"Nashville!" Richie crows. "The bachelorette capital of America?"
"I mean, this was twelve years ago," Eddie reminds him with a laugh, "it wasn't quite as, you know, Instagram-y back then."
"Who'd you go to see?"
Eddie feels his lips curl up in a smile. "Bon Jovi."
"Fuck you," Richie says, laughing. "Really. Who'd you see?"
"The Foo Fighters," Eddie admits. Richie whistles under his breath. "It was a good show."
"Can't really picture Myra at a rock concert, to be honest."
"She didn't come with me. I went with a couple friends from work - this was before I was married," Eddie says. He tilts his head at Richie. "I hadn't even met her yet, Rich. We were only married for six years; I met her when I was thirty-four." It had been, in fact, the few years of Eddie's life which had felt actually genuine - that slot of space between his mother's death and his wedding day. Years thirty to thirty-four had been good ones.
Richie nods silently for a second. The air feels heavy. "Feels like it was longer. Like I could've sworn you said it was longer than that."
"Well, it wasn't." Eddie leans forward, leaning his forearms carefully against the tabletop. Around them, the restaurant has slowly filled up with a few other groups - an older couple in the corner, and another younger pair, clearly on a date, at the bar. A family sits a few tables away, loudly debating appetizers. "It shouldn't have even been that long. I knew it was wrong pretty early on. I was just…"
"Yeah." Richie swings his head back and forth, a nervy gesture that makes Eddie's head spin a little to watch. "We don't have to talk about all that tonight Eds, I didn't even mean to bring it up."
"We could talk about it though," Eddie says. "If you wanted to know." Richie doesn't say anything, his jaw working back and forth as he looks at Eddie, like he's clenching his teeth. "I'll tell you anything, Rich. Anything you wanna ask."
"I - " Richie pulls away abruptly, eyes wide, dropping the mangled remains of his bread on his plate. "Yeah. That's - thanks, Eddie. Listen, I gotta - " he jerks his thumb behind him, and Eddie leans back too, his eyebrow raised. "You know where the bathroom is?"
"Seriously?" Eddie says darkly, but Richie's already jittering out of the booth. "In the back, dumbass. Past the kitchen door."
"Okay. Put a pin in it, Eds, I'll be right back," Richie says, and absurdly, reaches out to touch Eddie's nose. Eddie stares at him incredulously, and Richie seems to be rather unimpressed with himself as well, scrunching up his nose and yanking his hand back. He almost trips over some lady's purse, as he flails his way through the dining room.
"Eds gets off a good one," Eddie mutters to himself, leaning back in his seat with resignation. Out of the three separate times that Eddie has attempted to talk about his feelings, two of them have now resulted in Richie desperately escaping for the bathroom. And the other time, Eddie made him cry, so that's great.
Reaching for his phone, with the intention to text Bev, Eddie accidentally picks up Richie's instead, which he'd left next to Eddie's on the table. Instinctually, without really meaning to, Eddie presses the button on the side to wake it up, and there's a text notification on the screen. The contact name says Bananna, and like a complete fucking moron, Richie doesn't have his privacy settings enabled to hide the message while the phone is locked. So of course Eddie reads it. It happens in the span of a second and a half - he doesn't even really intend to snoop, it just happens.
if you think he's jealous of me then he probably is, idiot. wasn't that the point of this whole thing? xp
Eddie drops it like it's on fire.
By the time Richie makes his way back, Eddie's already paid the bill and left a generous tip for Lucía, pre-stacking the plates on the side of the table and downing the last of whatever the pink shit is. When he sees Richie approaching, Eddie stands up, grabbing Richie's jacket from the seat and tossing it at his chest.
"Come on," he says, "I closed the tab. Let's go."
"I - what?" Richie stammers. "I thought I was paying."
"You took too long," Eddie says shortly, jerking his head at Richie as he slides his own coat on. Richie still just stands there like a dumbass, frowning, until Eddie thumps him on the shoulder. "Let's go, come on. I wanna go home."
"Ohhhkay," Richie says, following behind with an air of cautious confusion. "Was it something I said? Something Marie said?"
"Neither," Eddie mutters, tugging Richie past the small line at the hostess station, towards the door. Eddie waves at Marie, who waves back, and mimes catching the kiss the Richie blows to her, in the split second before Eddie yanks him out onto the street. "Seriously, you are such a fucking dumbass. I can't believe you sometimes."
"What the fuck, what did I do," Richie whines, tugging backwards against Eddie's hold and slowing them to a stop a few yards from the door. "Eddie, come on, are you mad? What's wrong?"
"What's wrong?" Eddie whirls around and thumps him again, too lightly to really hurt, but Richie flinches anyway. "Are you fucking with me? Richie, look at me. Are you like, playing a game or something?"
"What? No," Richie says frantically, holding up his hands like Eddie's gonna hit him for real. "Eds, what are you talking about? You invited me here."
"I know! I fucking know that, but I thought - " Eddie stops, jerking his head around at a couple walking past, who angle away towards the street to give them a wide berth. He glares at their feet until they're gone. "Richie. Jesus Christ. Did you get married because of me?"
Richie's face goes splotchy, patches of red and white beneath his stubble. "No," he says tightly.
"Check your phone," Eddie says tightly, crossing his arms across his chest. He can feel his own throat tightening up in response to the distress in Richie's face. "I didn't mean to snoop, I picked it up because I thought it was mine. You should change your privacy settings, asshole, anyone could read your texts!"
Richie's scrambling for his phone, and Eddie watches his face as he reads the message. Something drops in his stomach at the clear guilt that he sees, when Richie looks up again. "Eddie - "
"Jesus! No," Eddie says, whirling around and striding back down the sidewalk.
"Listen, it's not what you think! Christ, would you slow down," Richie says, stomping after him, kicking up dirty water from the puddles on the sidewalk. Eddie shoots him a look of disgust, which Richie plainly ignores, swooping in front of him to block his path and grabbing him by the shoulders. "Just stop for a second and listen to me. She's joking, okay? It's a fucking joke. I didn't lie to you."
Eddie knocks his arms away. "So you joke about me with her? It's a fucking bit?" The despair threatens to fall down on top of his head and smother him; Eddie can feel it hovering, just above his hairline, like an emotional sword of Damocles. "Go fuck yourself," he says, trying to push past.
Richie takes a step closer and blocks him again. "No," he says again, more stricken than angry, this time. "No, you're not a fucking joke. Eddie, listen to me. You're not a joke."
"Then what? What the fuck is it? Explain that to me, Rich. Look me in the eye and fucking tell me what it means," Eddie demands.
"It's - it means," Richie says, stammering, his voice warbling like he's about to cry. "She's just - she's teasing me, okay? She - obviously you know how I feel about you, I mean, fuck Eddie - you have to know. And I thought - like, the way you reacted to the whole thing, it seemed like you were, you know, mad about it or something. And she just." Richie yanks his arms away suddenly, his eyes going wide, like he's belatedly realizing the gravity of what he's saying. "I didn't lie to you about what happened, it's not some - some conspiracy, Jesus. I just - "
"You kept it going to see my reaction?" Eddie says incredulously, and thumps him again. This time, a little harder, but Richie just stands there and takes it, not even seeming to react. "You ass. You fucking asshole."
"I'm sorry," Richie says miserably. "I'm really sorry. I didn't - I didn't think it would bother you this much."
"You didn't - " Eddie breaks off, finally getting to the edge of his composure. He takes a step back, covering his face with one hand. Richie makes a wounded noise, reaching out, and Eddie takes another step backwards to avoid the touch. "You didn't think I would care?"
"Not really," Richie mutters. "Eds, please. I..." He doesn't seem to know how to finish, trailing off into nothing. Eddie looks up, and feels the expression on his face hit him like a punch to the face. "I'm sorry."
"You gave me this whole fucking speech about what a great publicist she is, that she was giving you this wordly advice," Eddie says. "You - and the whole time you were just - "
"That wasn't a lie! It wasn't," Richie rushes to say, "I was just...exaggerating a little, I don't know. God, can you stop looking at me like that? You're fucking killing me." Again, he reaches out, and Eddie lets him this time, shuddering a little when Richie's hands make desperate contact with his arms. "Eddie, please. She's teasing me, okay? Not you. I wasn't trying to pull one over on you, I told you all along that it was fake, didn't I? I just wanted you to…" His voice goes small. "I wanted to see if it would bother you."
"Well, it did," Eddie says tightly. "It fucking bothered me, Richie."
"I - yeah, I can see that now."
"It really fucking hurt my feelings, Rich," Eddie says, reaching up to grab his stupid face, pulling it down so that Richie can't keep looking away. "I tried to talk to you about this in Derry and you bailed on me. And every time I worked up the nerve to try and do it again you - you would do something else, like fucking stop talking to me for three months, or when you had that nervous breakdown about your stupid tour, or - or you fucking got married." He shakes Richie's stricken face for emphasis. "I woke up one day and you were married, Richie. You fucking got married to someone else."
"No I didn't," Richie says blankly.
"Same fucking difference!" Eddie feels like his organs might possibly be making an escape right out of his body, now. They're tired of knocking together, and they're making a run for it.
"Eddie, it wasn't real," Richie says, reaching up and grabbing his wrists. "It was stupid, it was really stupid, but it wasn't real. She's my friend, she only dates Republicans, she has terrible taste in men, Eds, I'm fucking serious. She wouldn't sleep with me if I paid her a million dollars but especially now, now that she knows who you are, and what - what you are to me." Richie's shoulders are shuddering, up and down, beneath Eddie's hands. "Eddie."
Eddie feels like his brain might be boiling inside of his skull. "Take me home, Richie."
Richie goes very still. "Yeah?" he says, so breathless it's sort of embarrassing.
"Well I'm not fucking kissing you right here on the street in front of everybody!" Eddie says, practically screeching, and shoves himself away before he can do something else incredibly stupid. His face is burning, he can feel every molecule of his skin from his forehead to his toes, and Richie is laughing incredulously behind him, his big clown feet making slapping noises in the water as he runs to catch up.
"Eddie. Eddie, oh my God, did you just say what I think you just said - "
"Shut up," Eddie says, reaching behind him blindly to grab onto Richie's shirt again. The warmth from his body heat feels three times as hot, like Richie is a hunk of radioactive material, dropped down from the sky right there for Eddie's benefit. "Come on."
"Eddie, what the fuck, stop, you're ruining the moment," Richie says, reaching out and dragging him to a pause in the open awning of a closed store. Eddie feels himself being twirled around, and then there's a quick flash of Richie's face, flushed and smiling, and then Eddie feels himself being kissed. It's not unlike electroshock therapy, which Eddie has never experienced, personally, but he can fucking imagine.
"Stop," Eddie mumbles, into his mouth. Richie's stubble is rough and scratchy beneath his lips, which is sort of hot, and he'll dissect that later, but clarity returns and Eddie pulls away, thumping Richie again on the chest. "What did I just say?"
Richie is just laughing, sort of high and manically, like he's in a fever or something. "Eddie, you're such a bitch. Shut up."
"You shut up. Respect my fucking boundaries!"
"Is this really the story you wanna tell everybody? You yelled at me until I cried and then wouldn't let me kiss you? Get over yourself!"
"You didn't fucking cry," Eddie says angrily, and yanks him back down by the ears. Richie makes a muffled noise of surprise that stretches out into a groan, so surprisingly intense and loud that Eddie instinctually presses closer, his hands sliding down Richie's neck to his shoulders, clenching in the crackly leather of his jacket. His glasses are smashed against the bridge of Eddie's nose sort of painfully, but then Richie turns his head and angles his mouth downwards and then it's fucking perfect, Eddie never needs to kiss anyone else in the world, this is it, this is the end of it. His hands are on Eddie's lower back and it occurs to him that he might be the woman, in this cliche movie shot, but then Richie makes another sound low in his throat and bites Eddie's lower lip and suddenly he doesn't fucking care.
"I love you," Richie says desperately, as Eddie's mouth slides away, leaning in hard to catch his breath against Richie's chest, his forehead against Richie's scruffy chin. "I love you so much. Eddie, holy shit, can you say something back because I'm gonna fucking lose it in the next three seconds if you don't."
"Obviously I love you," Eddie says, and Richie's hands go tight around his waist, his head flopping down against Eddie's shoulder. Shakily, Eddie reaches up to hold him back, sliding his hands back up around his neck. "I've never loved anyone the way I love you. I've been trying to say it for so long, Rich. I'm sorry I fucked it up so bad."
"Jesus," Richie wheezes, against Eddie's shoulder. "That's a lot. That's a whole fucking lot, Eds."
Eddie grins painfully, pressing the side of his face against Richie's ear. What's a lot is Richie, and his spider arms, tall and wheezing, trying not to cry against Eddie's shoulder. What's a whole fucking lot is that Richie was just poking him, wasn't he? Like when they were kids. Kicking him under the table to get a reaction, ruffling his hair so he could watch Eddie lose it. Fucking dumbass. Eddie loves him.
"Take me home," Eddie says again, fisting his hand in Richie's collar and tugging. Richie makes another wounded sound, and his eyes are definitely red when he brings his head up to smile wobbily at him. Like he's just been handed all his hopes and dreams on Christmas morning. "Come on. Take me home, Rich."
"Okay," Richie says, and his voice cracks. He reaches out for Eddie's hand. "Whatever you want."
A loaded statement. Eddie tugs him back down the street, his heart bursting out of his chest, and considers the possibilities.
Bev 3: one million dollars to the first Loser to guess who just butt dialed me in the middle of sex
Mighty Mike: Richie
William Denbrough: richie
Ben: I mean obviously it's Richie
Bev 3: NOPE
YOU'RE ALL WRONG
Ben: :-o
William Denbrough: OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH SHIT
Mighty Mike: Are you serious? Oh my God
Ben: hahahahahaahahahahahaha
Bev 3: I mean obviously the trashmouth was involved and let me just say for the record that nickname has never been more appropriate
My precious ears will never be the same!
Ben: babe. Hahahaha
Mighty Mike: should we send him a certificate or something? Eddie, I mean. Obviously.
William Denbrough: WHY AREN'T THEY REPLYING. SHIT BEV ARE THEY STILL DOING IT
Bev 3 OBVIOUSLY i texted you guys right away so yes probably
Ben: :-O
Mighty Mike: Ed's gonna be so mad when he sees these LOL
You know, when he…..finishes. Oh my God
Bev 3: mikey I can't believe you just typed that!
William Denbrough: OBVIOUSLY MY BRAIN IS MELTING. BEV AND MIKE YOU OWE ME A MILLION DOLLARS NOW
Ben: everyone does it, Bill. Don't be jealous
William Denbrough: ben that's not helpful
Bev 3: OBVIOUSLY it's rich and eds that owe us millions of dollars now. Like specifically me, since I was the victim of this situation
Ben: Babe! :-O
William Denbrough: the thought that they're just out there somewhere in the world doing nasty shit to each other while their phones are buzzing with all these texts has filled me with profound disgust
Mighty Mike: Okay, sure, Nebula Award Winning novelist William Denbrough
Bev 3: zing!
William Denbrough: clearly I'm going to regret pointing this out but Bev if he butt dialed you in the middle of sex then where the fuck do you think his phone was at the time. And like where is it now
Ben: Time out for Bill!
Bev 3: EW
Mighty Mike: Dude seriously
William Denbrough: lol they're both gonna kill all of us
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Eddie: FUCK YOU GUYS WHAT THE FUCK