Yeah I’m still writing it. Fitfully, but it’s there. The story ends with a knockdown, drag out Jancy fight that culminates in their reconciliation but here’s something that’s not that:
The walk back to the apartment is cold and longer than she thought. Jonathan holds an arm out for her on the sidewalk, expecting Nancy to sidle into him. To seek support from him. She will, just not yet. Not now. Instead she turns to another Byers, Will, and leans on him instead.
“Hi,” she subtly slurs against her brother’s boyfriend. Mike is ahead of them, in an animated discussion with Sandy and Laura.
“God, how drunk are you?” Will asks with a chuckle. He’s surprisingly sturdy, despite how frail he looks. She supposes that’s a Byers trait. They’d have to be made of sterner stuff with the childhood they had. Behind them, Jonathan brings up the rear, dragging her luggage, smiling sadly when Nancy turns to him. The last thing she wants to do is think of him as a child, the bruises on his face and the cause of them. Nancy shakes her head softly as she looks at Will.
“Not that bad,” she swears. And to an extent, it’s true.
“How’s mom and Hop?” Nancy asks.
Will glances at her and then turns away. It’s a familiar look to Nancy, a Byers boy not wanting to tell some truth. Where Jonathan is a tough cookie to crack, Will is easier.
“That bad?” She asks, leaning into him a little more, trying to squeeze the information out of this poor boy.
He sighs and looks back at his brother. “It’s not bad, just…tense. Especially with Jonathan.”
That almost makes Nancy stop in her tracks. But she’s just adept enough to keep her stride, pulling Will in even tighter to her.
“Not with him, really. With mom. They’re, I dunno, at loggerheads or something. She tries to speak on the phone with him and he’s not having it. I had to beg him to come back to Montauk for Christmas, and he only did for like two days before heading back on the train. It was tense the whole time.”
“Really?” The last thing she needed was a mystery to solve. But damn if this isn’t an intriguing one. The Byers family has always presented itself as a unit to the public. Nancy knows them well enough to see the lies at the edges of that. She’s seen the tension between all three of them, usually quick and resolved, but sometimes not.
The block stretches ahead of them, a cold wind whipping in their faces, her brother still deep in conversation with Laura and Sandy. Nancy spares another glance back at Jonathan, who’s trying his best not to look at them. Part of her feels guilty for leaving him alone, but the rest of her knows they’ll be together soon. For good and ill.
She wonders if even Will knows Jonathan’s complicated feelings towards his mother. Sure, some of that was undoubtedly teenage angst, but it’s deeper than that, more profound. There’s true resentment there, which Nancy is sure Jonathan has only ever admitted to her, and only in spurts. The dark secret at the center of his wounded and tender heart.
