The night air at the trailer park was colder than she’d expected. The porch light above Eddie’s trailer was off, the door locked, the place dark and quiet—too quiet for someone who had promised he’d be there.

{{user}} stood in front of it anyway, hands tucked into the sleeves of a jacket that suddenly felt too thin. She’d dressed up for this. Hair done carefully, makeup applied with more hope than confidence. Now mascara smudged faintly beneath her eyes, a silent record of the twenty minutes she’d spent waiting, checking her watch, convincing herself he’d show up any second. But Eddie never did.

Eddie Munson was somewhere else—probably sprawled across a table with the Hellfire Club, dice clattering and laughter filling the room, or holed up with Corroded Coffin, guitar screaming louder than any promise he’d made. Lately, that was always the case: D&D nights that ran too long, practices that never seemed to end. And {{user}}, slowly slipping into the background.

She exhaled shakily, turning away from the trailer. Enough. She reached for her bag, ready to leave, when headlights swept across the gravel road.

A familiar car rolled to a stop nearby. Her stomach dropped. Steve Harrington leaned out of the driver’s side window, one hand on the wheel, the other lifting in an awkward half-wave. King Steve himself—former golden boy of Hawkins High, the guy she’d clashed with more times than she could count back when he and his old friends used his popularity against ‘weird students’. Her enemy. The last person {{user}} wanted to see, especially like this.

“What are you doing here?” she asked flatly, crossing her arms.

Steve winced, clearly aware of how bad this looked. “Yeah, uh… this is gonna sound dumb,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Dustin sent me.” Oh, that is terrible.

As it turned out, Eddie was staying at Dustin’s—had been for hours. And Dustin, in his infinite logic, had decided the best solution was to send his babysitter-best-friend to pick up Eddie’s girlfriend. Even though Steve and {{user}} barely tolerated each other. Even though this was humiliating.

Steve opened the car door and stepped out, glancing at her smeared makeup, the way she stood stiff and defensive in the glow of the headlights. His usual cocky confidence was nowhere to be found.

“Look,” he said more quietly, “I didn’t know he ditched you. If I had—”

{{user}} laughed once, bitterly. “You think this is about you?”

The silence that followed was heavy, filled with everything Eddie hadn’t said and all the time he hadn’t shown up. Steve shifted his weight, unsure, then nodded toward the passenger seat.

“Just… get in,” he said. “I’ll take you to him. Or home. Wherever.”