Nancy and Steve give it another go. They’re older, wiser, and Nancy doesn’t mind the idea of trying again with this new, older and more mature Steve.
Except Steve has a habit. At first, it didn’t irk her. But eventually, the bottle bursts. He casually brings up Katie Anderson from his freshman year, a junior girl he didn’t date but slept with, who he was tutored by until he adequately distracted her, and Nancy shoves his head up and out of her lap before she stands.
“Stop talking about them, Steve!” Steve looks at her, bewildered and confused.
“I— I’m sorry?” His brows furrowed into a soft pinch and Nancy feels like she’s vibrating with her own anger.
“Stop talking about your exes like you’re still in love with them.” It’s firm and quiet near the end, Nancy’s jaw clenched shut.
Steve looks dumbfounded, pinching at the lint of his sweatpants. They had just been talking about highschool, academics, Steve thought it was a funny story, and yeah when he remembered Katie he remembered good times. She had been funny, and sweet, a touch sardonic with a slightly crooked smile. She had been his first, actually, with gentle nails scraping through his hair as he fumbled to please her. He had barely been King Steve yet.
Maybe he had kind of been in love with her. Just a bit. Not at much as he loved Nancy, but he had definitely been attached to Katie until she dropped him for an older boy.
“I…I’m not though?” Steve didn’t want to make it seem like a question, but this conversation felt perplexing to begin with.
“But you talk about them like you are.” There’s a slight whine to her words, but before anything he can pick up the hurt, the anger. He had never liked making her upset, never liked having loved ones angry at him. He quickly stood to take her hands but she pulled them back and crossed them across her chest, hands hidden in the crooked of her arms like she didn’t even want him to think about holding them.
“Nancy, I love you.” And he did. He had for years, had loved her fiercely and loved her softly, had ached with it and soared with it. He had loved her even when she wasn’t his, had been certain of that fact every time he thought of her, even when the thoughts became less frequent, like they were going dormant only to resurface and spark brighter when he spoke to her again. “You don’t need to worry about my exes.”
“I don’t think you’d cheat on me, Steve,” And Nancy meant it, Steve loved with his entire being, devoted to her, he never once strayed, not even when they were fighting or she ignored him to dwell in her anger. He only looked at her because Steve loved her, and she knew that was true, but… “But it hurts to hear you talk about people you used to love like you still love them. It’s like you can’t let go and move on.”
“I am moved on.” Steve furrowed his brows. “Nancy, I’m with you, I’m not— Yeah, I loved those people, and I can remember why, but I don’t…I’m not gonna leave you for them.”
“You do it with everyone, Steve.” Nancy huffed out of her nose, blue eyes looking up at him and bottom lip jutted just the tiniest bit. “I want you to only think of me like that. It doesn’t feel like you do. Even when you talk about Carol or Tommy, if you talk about them like you still love them.”
“In some ways I do!” Steve pursed his lips at the outburst. “I’m allowed to remember the good parts of people, Nance.”
“It’s not good parts though, Steve! You talk about them like you love them. Like how you talk about me. It’s frustrating to be on the same level as people you don’t even talk to anymore.”
“I don’t talk to them because you don’t like it!” Steve snapped and quickly withdrew, taking a step back. But the words had hit and Nancy looked shocked before quiet fury etched into the furrow of her brows.
“When did I ever stop you from talking to anyone? You can’t make your own decisions on who you talk to, Steve, is that it?”
“I could talk them.” Steve clenched his jaw. “I could find them in the phone book. But I didn’t because the one time I bumped into Jessica from sophomore year, you nearly chewed my head off.”
“You were smiling at her like she hung the fucking moon, Steve!” Nancy’s voice was rising and Steve’s own rose in his defence.
“Jess has a very nice personality and she helps her grandma still in the nursing home! Of course I was talking to her like I used to because she’s still a good person and I did love that about her! I still do!”
“Then maybe you should be with Jessica!”
“Jessica is married!”
“That’s your only excuse?” Nancy scoffed in disbelief. “You’re just like your fucking dad.”
That shut him up, his retort vanishing with a snap of his jaw. There wasn’t enough time to feel good about it, Steve’s brows pinched and brown eyes shiny and wide. Sad. Hazily, she wondered if this was the expression he made when she called him bullshit years ago at that party. She couldn’t remember.
“I can’t help that I love people, Nance.” Steve spoke softly, words strained as he blinked and looked away, eyes wet. “I love you. I have for years. But I also loved other people before you, and after you. But I have always been loyal to you when we’re together. Even when I thought some days that you hated me, or regretted being with me, and not someone else.”
“Steve…” Guilt gnawed at her insides as she stepped closer, reaching out for him, but he shied away even as her hands rested upon his arms.
“I never move on, not really. I can’t seem to, Nance. Because I think about how good it felt to be with someone I loved.” His breath hitched and she wondered if he’d actually cry. Steve had never cried much, not in front of others, even her. That was something she had to get used to after dating Jonathan, who seemed to catch other peoples tears like a contagious yawn.
“I just— I want to hold on to the feeling of loving someone. And being loved back.” Steve’s voice was wobbly but after a deep breath in, it managed to smooth it out just a bit. “I will always love my exes, my old friends. Not loved, but love. And it hurts sometimes, but I remember the good parts of them and it’s like being with you, Nance. I get butterflies and my heart races and I just feel so elated.” He licked his lips and fumbled even as a small smile made its way onto his lips at just the memories of those loves, fleeting but intense and still lingering in his very being because that’s all he seemed to be made up of. Every atom, every cell, was simply brimming with love and the need to be loved.
“But I’d never take them back. Something went wrong, whether it was me or them, but we wouldn’t work. Even if I wanted it to. And I love you so much, Nance. I couldn’t fathom cheating on you. So, no,” His voice grew firmer. “I’m not like my dad, and you don’t get to say that just because you wanna hurt me back.”
Nancy looked down, unable to form the apology in her throat into words. All she could think about was the way he described it. She couldn’t understand. How could he love them all still, actively love them every time he thought of them, when he hadn’t spoken to most of them in years. Nancy had had past crushes and boyfriend and she could care less about them now. She cared for Jonathan, but that was different. Deep and more profound. They were bonded by trauma and understood each others hearts. When she ended things with him, it had been sad but mutual (she tried not to think about how Jonathan liked to lie, especially about his feelings, to make others feel better). She had been certain she loved Steve.
She still did, she thinks. Maybe that’s why her next words hurt so much.
“I can’t be with you if you don’t only love me, Steve.” She’s always been independent at heart, and she never let herself have less than what she thought she deserved. She wanted Steve to only love her, but if that wasn’t possible, maybe she needed to find that with someone else so she wouldn’t constantly be burning with jealousy inside every time she saw him talk to someone with that same smile he gave her.
It felt like emotional infidelity, if anything.
“I—“ It’s that look again, like she’s taken his heart out and stomped on it with her designer heeled boots. “I do love you, Nance. I always have.”
“But it’s not just me, Steve.” Nancy’s lips thinned, eyes burning. “I deserve to be loved without feeling like your love is so easily shared. I— I want to be the only one who has your heart.”
“You do.” He insisted, reaching for her this time, but she stepped back with a hand out like a mother withholding a hug from her weeping, recently scolded child. It was an scenario Steve was too familiar with. “Nance.” His voice broke around her name, but still, tears did not fall.
“I think— I think I should go.” Nancy said softly, stepping around him as he stood there, unable to figure out how a funny story about Katie Anderson had led to this. “And I think…We should stop seeing each other, Steve. For both our sakes.” She picked up her coat from the rack and Steve turned to look at her, eyes wide and hurt.
“Nancy…Nance, please don’t go.” He made his way towards her, his pleading voice soft, only heard because of how silent the room was. Nancy pursed her lips and closed her eyes as she turned away from him, wiping her tears quickly as he crowded her side. He took her elbow and curled himself around her like he could protect her from her own hurt. Steve was always like that. Looking out for other people. He had a big heart.
Nancy’s heart was so much smaller, and it had fit in that space, as large as his parents home but so much warmer. She thought a part of her heart may forever nestle in one of the valves, that every breath Steve took might rattle it and keep him loving her too, and it was selfish.
Because really, she was taking her whole heart with her and planning on giving it to someone else. Leaving that space she had filled cold and empty. Like a childhood bedroom that had been cleared out, ready to move out and on.
She wondered if Steve would ever fill the space in his chest entirely, or if he would be continue to fill it with smaller hearts, fragments and tears of what used to be homed there. Like peeling paint from posters that had once been taped to the walls but were striped away, leaving the space bare but imprinted with the knowledge that something had been there once. Maybe, he never let them leave. Locked them up in that giant space in an attempt to fill it, to keep them beating with every thud of his own heart.
Nancy’s lip trembled.
“Goodbye, Steve.” She pulled away and didn’t look back as she opened the door.
“Nancy, please-!”
It shut behind her and Steve stifled a sob, biting his lip so hard it might bleed.
Steve did love her. Truly and entirely, but maybe she was right to some extent. He couldn’t love just one person, would always love more than his fair share.
Not that it mattered. Nobody stuck around to love him back anyway.
