Number 15 of the soft sentence starters I think would be perfect for Chrissy to say to Eddie!
15. "I didn't realize I was waiting for you until you showed up."
She'd read about a million ways authors described people with weather metaphors.
Chrissy loved to read. To escape into alternate worlds. To maintain some modicum of sanity, stuck as it was between the pages of her favorite novels. A reminder that, no matter how everything seemed intent on going wrong, there was always, always hope that it would get better.
Getting publicly dumped at a party over spring break, for example, and then being told by her own mother that it was her fault for not being a good enough girlfriend? Seemed like the lowest point of her life.
Then, to find out that said ex-boyfriend was suddenly and miraculously dating her best friend? Or, well, ex best friend, she supposed, despite Monica's insistence that it just happened. Like a person could do a back tuck handspring and happen to fall into bed with the basketball captain that just ended the Hawkins cursed dry spell and won the state championship trophy.
Yeah, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the truth. All at once, Jason's extra attention he'd been giving her the past couple months made so much more sense. Despite being official, she and Jase had never needed to be so public with their relationship. It was a comfortable thing; a coexistence of sorts didn't demand every spare part of her.
Then, like the flip of a switch, she was suddenly doted on. Told constantly and consistently how loved and valued she was, with entire declarations made before the school that had her masking her discomfort with a small smile and a blown kiss.
Realizing that Jason was using that sort of behavior to cover up sleeping with her best friend for, like, two whole months before he finally worked up the courage to leave her was maybe the lowest she could be.
Or so she thought.
When she finally confronted him, asking him how he could just flush two entire years down the drain for the person Chrissy thought she could confide everything in, and having Jason look at her like she was some pathetic animal stuck in a drain?
The clincher was his excuse.
"It just seemed like, I dunno, you'd fall apart if I left. You're so fragile, Chris."
As though her entire life, her happiness, depended on a boy who couldn't even be honest with her.
That--- That was the lowest she could be.
She had other friends, of course. Friends who were absolutely there for her as she worked through the nightmare of navigating the last couple months of school in the shadow of betrayal. Friends who were happy to cut off Monica, Jason, and all of Jase's friends in the aftermath.
But it was her books that kept her afloat. That reminded her, staring up at the crevice from rock bottom, she had nowhere else to go.
So, she started climbing.
And it was then that she learned all those metaphors about people and weather were real.
Because Eddie Munson blew into her life like a hurricane of leather and denim. A maelstrom of destruction and devastation, unafraid of leveling everything in his path. All of those expectations laid on her shoulders, weight heavier and heavier as they stacked higher and higher, were lifted into the eye of him and washed away in the wake of his thunder.
What the fuck? Don't let those assholes' judgements make you feel like that. God, Chrissy, seriously, why do you let them speak for you? Why do you let them dictate you? What are you, a marionette? Cut your strings, Pinocchio, you're ready to dance on your own. I'll hold your hand if you need it, but swear to Christ, you've got incredible legs. Let them hold you up.
Chrissy, why the fuck do you put yourself through all that bullshit? Why are you pretending you're fine with that asshole dating your ex best friend? Aren't you fucking mad? Then be mad. Be fucking furious. Be feral. Go for the goddamn jugular.
Cunningham, are you serious? Why do you let your mom control you like that? Why does she think it's okay for to talk to you like you're fucking worthless? You're not her doll. Jesus, Chrissy, be you, I'm on my knees here. I'm desperate to see the real you, c'mon, don't leave me in the dirt.
A chance encounter at a party that snowballed into this incessant need to be near him. To listen to him as he rambled on about his dungeons game or his music or anything and everything that came to mind. Never had she met someone so unapologetically unafraid to be themself. And Eddie wasn't only unapologetic; he was loud. He was boisterous.
He was captivating.
And he was right.
She was mad. She was fucking furious. She had spent so long, so painstakingly long, trying to make herself small and demure and perfect when all she wanted to do was file her nails into talons and rip those expectations to shreds. She wanted to scream, blood dripping from her teeth and hands, and prove that the desolation of imperfections wasn't desolate at all. It was beautiful, full of haphazard debris she could use to build something new.
Something honest.
Something real.
"Start here," Eddie said, standing at the edge of the quarry. Of course, she'd told him about all those desires. All that desperate need to feel whole after so long letting everyone else pick pieces of her for themselves. They'd been friends for over a month, and it was getting harder and harder to ignore those butterflies that took flight in her stomach whenever he so much as glanced in her direction.
Would she mess everything up if she took that chance?
Could she forgive herself if she didn't?
"C'mon," Eddie said, reaching out and taking her hand. Collecting her in the calm of his embrace as the storm raged on around them. "You scream, I'll scream."
"We all scream for ice cream?" Chrissy jested, making Eddie guffaw. Which only served to heighten the wings beating tornadoes in her stomach. To know that she could make him laugh was such a power.
"Of-fucking-course, sweetheart," he grinned, that pet name falling off his tongue like chocolate fudge topping. Like limbs broken from trees in the aftermath of the rain. Devastating in its rich sweetness. "We'll go out for ice cream anytime you want."
Lacing their fingers together, Chrissy squeezed tight as she stepped even closer to the ledge. Staring at the long, deep drop beneath her feet. Like she'd step off the lip and plummet straight back down into rock bottom.
Like she'd somehow, incredibly, already found the strength to climb out. Or maybe, maybe, like Eddie's rain had helped her float back up.
These were the thoughts that plagued her mind as she screamed, long and loud. A werewolf howling at the moon, teeth and claws unable to rip into flesh and bone instead tearing into the dark expanse of night. Bleating out the excess of scars she didn't realize pulsated beneath her ribs.
She screamed until her throat was raw. Until her lungs burned with the effort of holding that thunderous note. Until tears blurred her vision, the rainclouds of her eyes finally full enough to burst from her ducts and leak down her cheeks.
When she was finished, Eddie grinned, bright and beautiful. The sun peeking through the clouds, white teeth like rays glinting rainbow fractals against her heart. Then, he turned and let out his own howl. Far more animalistic, like the wolf she envisioned herself to be, and Chrissy took in another big breath before joining him.
Harmonious disaster, amplified against the quarry walls.
As they finished, laughing together in cleansing relief, Chrissy realized that this, this, was precisely where she wanted to be.
Hand-in-hand with Eddie.
Standing at the precipice of everything and nothing as it echoed their fury back at them, becoming quieter and quieter the longer they stood together.
Turning toward her, Eddie was all light and joy as he opened his mouth. Probably to ask her if she felt better. If she needed another go. But Chrissy was far too distracted by the little piece of hair stuck to his bottom lip.
Her free hand came up, brushing it away, before her fingertips trailed against his jaw. Head tilting curiously to one side, Eddie watched her with those dark, dark eyes, swirling with promises that she would never be the same if she took that leap.
She couldn't take it anymore.
She wouldn't forgive herself.
She surged onto her toes and crashed her lips against his like a clap of thunder.
It wasn't fireworks.
It was lightning.
Electric and unpredictable, it zipped across her skin in a jagged pirouette of sensation. Igniting her from the inside, making her glow with blinding light as Eddie gasped and groaned and let go of her hand to wrap his arms around her. Holding her to him. Keeping her.
"Christ," he breathed when they finally parted. The hand against her waist fisted in the fabric of her sweater, pulling her closer and holding her like rivers had carved his arms from stone just to keep her in place. "What-- What? Am I dreaming?"
Chrissy giggled, reaching up to kiss him all over again.
"Not dreaming," she swore, her fingers twisted in the lapels of his jacket. "Just, um. I've been--b-been waiting for that, I think."
"Yeah?" he verified, his voice a breath against her neck as he pulled her in, in, in. "You been waiting for little ol' me, baby?"
The smile that stretched her cheeks tasted like the air after the rain had passed. Sweet and terrifyingly addictive.
"I think maybe I have all along. I just didn't realize it until you showed up."
send me a soft sentence starter!