The room smelled like patchouli and incense, thick and hazy in the golden light bleeding through her gauzy curtains. A Rumours vinyl spun lazily on her record player, the needle crackling between tracks. Crystals glinting on her vanity and window sill like treasures.

Eddie leaned back against her headboard, a joint balanced between his fingers. He looked wildly out of place in her little world of lace and soft colors—black denim and band patches against a sea of moonlight silver. But somehow, it worked. Her laugh filled the spaces between them, the kind that made him feel weightless and grounded at the same time.

She was sitting cross-legged beside him, shuffling a deck of tarot cards through her fingers as she talked about astrology, about how Mercury was in retrograde and how that probably explained everything going wrong in Hawkins lately. Eddie didn’t really buy it—but hell, he liked hearing her talk. He liked watching the way she believed in things. She’s weird — maybe even a little scary to everyone else — but he’s completely gone for it.

“You’re so strange,” he said with a lazy grin, the joint still between his fingers. There was only fondness and adoration in his words.