#yummmmm

The ride home the next morning was uncomfortable, to say the least. For starters, Steve avoided your eye contact nearly the entire drive. His eyes were focused on the road ahead as he pursed his lips every so often, obviously deep in thought.

Everything was ruined now. Not it like it was anything amazing already, but it was most definitely tainted and your obsessive overthinking started to assume the worst like he obviously loathes you now, can’t stomach the idea of kissing someone like you, everything was a mistake, and now you’re just another girl whining about how Steve Harrington doesn’t want you enough.

Are you some narcissistic brat and your ego is just bruised or are you actually bothered?

You shifted awkwardly in the passenger seat, leather creaking just as painfully. As much as you would like to pretend that the radio was loud enough to silence your own thoughts, it wasn’t happening.

You clear your throat and make a brave first move. The tension felt so thick and unavoidable. You felt like a can of soda after it’d been shaken and thrown at the pavement.

“Steve?”

Without so much as a blink, he reaches forward to turn the music up louder. His thumbs start drumming along to the beat nonchalantly. A frustrated sigh escapes between your lips before you try again, but he just repeats the same. Unbelievable.

“What is your problem?” you finally snap, crossing your arms firmly over your chest and mimicking his avoidant stare out to the road.

You can see his fingers release from the wheel as he speaks, nearly yelling over the music in the speakers. “My problem? I don’t have a problem, maybe you have a problem—you always have a problem!”

Brows knitted and mouth now agape in offense, you can’t help but raise your voice in reply. “What the hell are you talking about?!”

Steve huffs like you’re the most oblivious moron in the world who can’t just read his mind when he insults you the first time. He could choose to go on a rant he’s already wasted his breath on before, about how your boyfriend is a fucking prick who doesn’t respect you or much less even seem to like you, but he won’t. It doesn’t matter because you don’t care about his opinion and it’s not like Steve should give a shit either, you’ve always said that.

Even still, Steve would rather crash his BMW with the two of you in it than admit he’s dealing with his own conflicted feelings for his incredibly annoying coworker who is still dating an asshole that’s not even him.

In the end, he chooses to say nothing. The silent treatment for the rest of the ride seemed easier than explaining himself when he doesn’t even know what thought is his own self obsession with just being wanted by someone that seemed like a challenge or if he should actually explain that your biggest problem is that he likes you.

You roll your eyes in irritation with a dramatic grunt as you turn your body away from his as much as you were physically limited given the small confines of his front seat. His jaw clenches as his foot presses on the gas, clearly in a rush to get you out of his personal space.

“Whatever,” you mutter while you use your nail to chip off any remaining polish onto his leather as petty punishment for his attitude. It was only fair to act as childish as he was about all of this.

You wish you never kissed him, obviously it only made things more complicated—just when you thought you reached some kind of truce to make things better.

As Steve pulls into your driveway, both of you get instantly pale at the view in front of you.

What should be excitement is replaced with immediate dread and anxiety at the sight of none other than your boyfriend, who should be a hundred miles away at McKinney Law, but is now sitting on the hood of his shiny new Jeep Grand Cherokee in your driveway like a loyal dog waiting for his owner’s return. He had been checking his watch as you pulled up, but who knows how long he had really been waiting on you? You timidly wave your fingers at him as you imagine hearing him bring up your tardiness in a fight already.

“Oh, this ought to be fucking good,” Steve mutters to himself as he kills the ignition.

Your eyes close as you take a shaky deep breath before unbuckling your seatbelt to finally face reality. The universe really did have a twisted sense of humor.

Steve surprises you when he’s stepping out of his car as well, leaning against the metal door as he watches you carefully head up your driveway with heavy footsteps towards your boyfriend. He really fucking hated that guy.

“Steve Harrington?”

Your boyfriend’s eyes squinted at the other man down the pavement, like a territorial scrap between two feral cats was about to happen in front of your parent’s house.

“Yeah, it’s me, don’t cream your pants,” Steve sneers and you shoot him a glare. Seriously, what was his damage?

You catch your boyfriend’s puzzled expression before he’s pulling you into the most performative hug of all time, including running his hand underneath the back of your sweatshirt—Steve’s sweatshirt you slept in the night before. You haven’t seen your boyfriend in weeks, his touch alone should illicit some kind of bodily response from you that isn’t a recoil, but you can’t help but squirm uncomfortably with him touching you like this, especially when it’s in front of Steve.

When you push back, you can tell you interrupted a silent war of eye contact between the two of them. It doesn’t even feel like your boyfriend is even talking to you when he speaks, throwing his voice towards the end of the driveway for Steve to hear. “Wanted to surprise my girl after I finished exams. You know how hard I’ve been studying, sugar, I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to take you home last Friday, but—“

You want to grab his shirt and drag him inside to get away from this awkward showdown as quickly as possible, but Steve has to always get his word in.

You hear him snort as he speaks through a closed jaw. “So, you wait until the last Friday of the month to show up and apologize? You’re like the worst subscription of all time,” Steve huffs before he’s about to get back in his BMW and thankfully disappear, but of course, your stupid boyfriend has sonic hearing all of a sudden.

His arm drops from you and your anxiety spikes.

“What’s that, Harrington?” he challenges, ignoring you tugging on his sleeve to just please follow you inside and forget about Steve. When he shrugs you off to join Steve at the end of your driveway, you consider getting between the two of them, but your shoes felt like they’d been filled with cement.

“Do you have something to say? Because last time I checked,” your boyfriend motions between the two of you as Steve seems disinterested in anything he’s saying anyways, “this is between me and her—“

“Her and I,” he corrects with a deadpan expression that makes your boyfriend’s face resemble a tomato. You usually don’t seem him get this riled up, but he was familiar with your descriptions of your infamous coworker; including his insufferable habit of being a smart-ass all the time.

They entertain each other with sarcastic smirks and temper-controlling grins, but you feel like one of them is about to erupt.

Your boyfriend’s finger jabs at Steve’s chest then, hard enough to shift his posture and you watch both of their expressions harden into something more serious as you continue to watch like a deer in headlights before two cars crash together.

“Stay away from her,” your boyfriend warns.

Steve has a low chuckle before saying something under his breath that you didn’t quite hear.

Panic sets in as your boyfriend suddenly whips his head to look at you with unmistakable confusion.

Your heart is in your mouth, throbbing against your tongue and making you feel sick as you stare back, eyes wide, unsure if Steve told him the worst possible thing he could have— which was unfortunately just the truth.

You gesture some kind of shrug in any attempt to seem oblivious, but your boyfriend looks between the two of you again and Steve is only looking straight at you with the same unreadable expression he’s had since you woke up next to each other.

“Why didn’t tell me he’s been the one taking you home every Friday? You told me you’ve been taking the bus?” Your boyfriend’s voice dropped in volume, almost sounding hurt or offended. A twinge of guilt gnaws at your stomach lining causing the burning feeling of bile to creep up your throat. You didn’t think of yourself as a dishonest person, but he really had a way of framing you to be one.

“I do take the bus, just not on Fridays,” you rush out, your defense sounding more shaky than you wanted. There’s a ringing in your ears as you blankly look between the two of them. You really wish you weren’t dating a future lawyer who prides himself on putting you on the spot in front of others.

He takes a step back from Steve before standing by your side, glaring down at you as he shakes his head in disapproval. “What else are you lying about?”

You catch his eye look suspiciously at the unrecognizable sweatshirt before his shoulder collides into yours to brush past you and head for your front door. A clear message that this conversation was far from over, but at least it was not going to be in front of Steve anymore.

There he was, still standing behind his car door and looking at you, once so unreadable and now what seemed like only disappointment as he watched you choose to follow your boyfriend’s footsteps without so much as a wave in his direction.

The knife in your stomach twisted as you felt so much shame when you saw Steve’s pleading eyes at the end of the driveway. Your cheeks blushed scarlet as you avoided his burning gaze, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes when you hear the angry clang of his car door and thunderous rumble of his engine before he disappeared.

——————————————————-

There was a familiarity in the aching loneliness you felt so deep in your soul as your boyfriend, happily snoring against your bare chest, completely oblivious to your existential dread after you concluded sex would shut him up for the umpteenth time.

After you left the driveway, he followed up the stairs to your bedroom with interrogating questions you deserved to hear, but you couldn’t bring yourself to be honest—not with him, but mostly with yourself.

The truth was, you hated yourself more than ever. Before last night, you would have made fun of a girl like you. Probably would have called her a couple degrading names and thought she deserved to reap what she sowed after buckling her knees at the first chance she had with Steve Harrington. It didn’t matter that you would destroy your integrity by cheating on your boyfriend, you would destroy it again by just having sex with him to keep him from shouting anymore and not telling him the truth about anything last night.

“I puked on my blouse and he lent me his sweatshirt, that’s it!” It sounded pretty convincing. You even showed him the disgusting blue JELL-O shot stain on your original outfit to convince him. Maybe you weren’t a complete liar, but “that’s it” wasn’t the full truth either.

In the end, your boyfriend got to feel like The Man again as he rammed himself into you without much care for your own pleasure (or even with a steady rhythm for that matter) as he repeated in your ear about how you were his; the truth of that statement feeling like more of a lie than anything you argued about earlier.

His hands felt nothing like Steve’s. His lips were too stiff, his grip on you was too tight, and he didn’t handle with you the kind of tenderness you now longed for. You couldn’t tell the difference between a curse being lifted, unveiling what real intimacy can be like, or if a curse was bestowed upon you, destroying every sentimental touch you used to crave from your boyfriend, after last night.

As his drool started pooling on your chest, your eyes tear away from your ceiling to look longingly out the window. At what point did it feel like you lost complete control of your life?

In retrospect, you thought you were doing everything right. You would work while your long-term stable boyfriend would go to law school in the next city over to secure a career before he’s even graduated, be able to buy you the big suburban with a picket fence you’ve lusted for since you were a little girl, and live happily ever after with the perfect nuclear family. You’ve never questioned that dream because stability was what you really longed for, not the picket fence or the husband that tells you that you never need to work again. For the first time, you asked yourself as an adult what it really was that you wanted from your life.

It felt so isolating when you realized that the naked man who you thought you loved up until two days ago that now laid on top of you wasn’t a reflection of you anymore. While he wasn’t ever the perfect boyfriend by any means, you obviously were not a dream girl either.

Confronting yourself with your growing pains and own flaws that you would normally blame on your boyfriend, who was generally absent physically and emotionally and about as passionate about you as he was the weather, convinced you that this couldn’t be your future anymore.

You wish you’d hear the sound of Steve’s BMW comfortingly roar up the street. There was no rhyme or reason in believing for a second that Steve would magically come “save you” from this current reality, scaling the side of your parent’s house and tapping on your window to convince you to run away with him like some romance movie you’ve disillusioned yourself with again.

You imagined the last time you saw him, with his doe eyes narrowed when he looked at you like he didn’t recognize you anymore either. You wish you could have known what he was thinking, but you convince yourself it’s nothing you’d want to hear anyways.

As much as it pained you to admit it, the real reason you never told your boyfriend about Steve taking you home on Fridays was because you knew this would happen.

Deep down, you knew there was a danger in exploring even a friendship with Steve. It shouldn’t have to be so complicated, but you were attracted to him in ways you used to mock girls in high school for and he is so impossibly infuriating that you feel addicted to the high that comes with actually getting along.

When you were riding home with Steve, it felt like you were a different version of yourself. Even when he made you roll your eyes like always, there was still a blush on your cheeks. The nervous feeling in the pit of your stomach wasn’t something you’ve felt in a long time. You forgot what it was like to have a crush, to feel the exhilarating electricity between each other and tenacity of a kiss when it actually feels right.

You wipe away a stray tear with the back of your hand. You know what you needed to do now and maybe you’d be called a bitch, a slut, a lying whore, but none of that matters anymore. It was about time you started being honest with yourself and taking your life back.

Before you can talk yourself out of it, you’re shaking your boyfriend awake gently and sliding out from underneath him. He’s groggy and seemingly annoyed, but you feel his body stiffen once you say the words he never anticipated: “we need to talk.”

—————————————-

“Woah, you look like Hell.” Stacy stops wiping the counter as soon as you approach the concessions. Her eyes wide as she takes a real look at you and you can’t help but crack a small smile in return.

“Thanks, I feel like I just got back,” you joke flatly before asking her for a root beer float. Something about carbonated sugar with creamy sugar on top sounded like it would fix you right now.

It had been less than 24 hours since you broke up with your boyfriend of nearly three years. You had cried for God only knows how long, but at least until your hair had matted around your teary cheeks and until it felt like your eyes stung so bad that they would fall right out of your skull. You were in a grieving process, but you were stubborn and know that the choice you made was for the best. It’s not like you could continue to be loyal to him while feeling what you do for Steve.

That being said, you were still having difficulty making peace with your developing feelings, especially as they started to feel embarrassingly one-sided. You couldn’t think of a singular good reason why you would ever let a fantasy take over your consciousness and convince yourself there was a reality where “King Steve” would feel anything for you after that night. You were disposable, obviously you came with a lot of emotional baggage, and you weren’t the type of girl he would realistically want for longer than an evening.

Steve called out of work today. Probably to avoid you, you assume. Everything felt like it was your fault and maybe it was. Your heart felt ripped into two, one side still desperate to beat on and give yourself grace as you experience the woes of being a woman in her twenties, bound to make stupid mistakes in her love life, and the other shriveled up and bruised half that just felt defeated and accepting of the punishments that came from your actions. Realistically, what did you do that was so wrong? Why would he kiss you if he didn’t want it too?

“I heard you went to Clark’s birthday thing at Harrington’s,” Stacy pipes up from behind the counter before sliding your much needed cure towards you. “You must’ve had a real bitchin’ time.”

You pretend to not detect her obvious sarcasm. You didn’t really have the energy for defending your choices anymore. “Yeah, maybe too much,” you sigh while mindlessly swirling the ice cream into the dark soda, “I actually missed you, Stace. You probably would have saved my night.”

Her expression softens then. The point wasn’t to guilt her or anything, but it felt nice to just talk to a friend. If Stacy had gone that night—though, she would rather probably deep fry her own hand than ever attend something with that crowd—maybe you would have just gotten a ride home with her, had a fun sleepover at your place while your parents were still out of town, and skipped everything that ruined your life that night.

“Yeah, well, maybe next time,” she snorts before sympathetically adding an extra cherry on top of your float. Her freckled cheek rests on her hand as she watches your vacant eyes follow your still swirling straw pathetically.

You hear your last name being shouted from another direction with so much tenacity that it pops your self depreciating daydream instantly. You’re met with your unkempt and greasy manager, Rod, who has his hands on his hips and a deep crease between his bushy eyebrows as he barks at you to get back to the shoe booth already.

As you’re waving to Stacy, you hear Rod mutter under his breath about how he can’t believe he’s stuck with you for the rest of the year and not Steve.

Your footsteps come to an immediate halt.

“What?” Your mouth suddenly felt so dry.

Rod’s still grumbling, now with a cigarette being lit from stress, not really looking you in the eye because he’s never respected you to begin with. You ask him to repeat himself, but he gives a wave of his hand to blow you off again.

“What happen-“

“He quit, alright?” Rod snaps at you, blowing a cloud of smog towards you as he shouts. “He came in after open, dropped off his vest and tag, and quit. My best worker, gone.” He shakes his head while taking another worried inhale and you can feel yourself shrinking more and more as he continues. “Now, it’s just you. You better shape up, doll, no one got more memberships than Harrington. I’m lucky if you can even clean an alley right without a patron slipping, getting me stuck in a lawsuit!”

Rod’s voice faded as he stumbled away, ranting as he headed toward the other side of the concourse.

As soon as you were left alone, with just the smell of mildew and rented shoes, you felt yourself begin to cry. You were shocked you had any moisture left in your body, let alone enough to produce more tears considering you thought you expended them all last night.

You caught yourself staring at the spot where Steve normally stood next to you, complaining about your tardiness or commenting on your bad attitude. An ache formed in the deepest pit of your chest.

In a desperate attempt to stifle your tears, you sip vigorously at your root beer float, but the bubbles are burning your sore throat that strains to choke down a sob.

You can’t be caught crying over him at work, not in front of all of these strangers, but especially in front of his friends who just saw you embarrass yourself in his apartment over the weekend.

Everything was changing too fast. You hardly had enough time to adapt to one butterfly effect, but now it feels like your routine is getting entirely flipped on its head and it was too overwhelming. Was he punishing you? Why would he quit? He always complained about how badly he needed this job, are you that terrible to be around now that he couldn’t stomach being at the very least your coworker?