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“El, honey, you’re going to be late for school,” Joyce yells from the kitchen. “Will is leaving for the bus in five minutes.”
“Not going,” El calls back, burying her face in the sweatshirt she slept with. It used to smell like everything she misses from Hawkins. Like waffles and Mike’s D&D cards and Max. But unlike the constant aching, the scent faded.
“El.” Joyce pokes her head through the doorway, concern painted across her features. “Are you not feeling well, sweetie?”
El shakes her head. “Tired. Didn’t sleep good.”
Joyce sits down on the bed, sighing softly. “I can stay with you until I have to go to work at nine. But you’ll be by yourself until Jonathan or Will gets home.”
“Okay.”
“Let me go say goodbye to Will, okay?” Joyce pats her on the leg before leaving the room, her footsteps thumping on the hallway floor through the house’s thin walls. As far as layout and size, it’s very resemblant to their house in Hawkins, but with none of the emotional attachment. The only thing El feels when she looks at her room’s boring gray walls and scratchy carpet is empty. Because there are no memories.
There’s no image of stark blue eyes, watching El use the superpowers she no longer has. There’s no comic books littering her nightstand, no stories of islands she can’t pronounce and superheroes she wishes she could meet in real life. A record player sits on the floor in the corner, but there isn’t the soft, sweet voice singing along to the songs while dancing around the room with a hairbrush. There are no remnants of Max in her room, and El thinks maybe that’s what she hates so much about it.
She slides off her bed, going over to her closet and pulling out a shoebox from the top shelf. When the backs of her legs hit the bed, she lets herself fall back, scooching herself up to the headboard with the box in her lap. Inside, stacked in neat piles, is El’s life. Messages from her friends, photographs taken on the Polaroid camera Hop gave to her last spring, notes that were left on the kitchen counter, drawings from Will, Hopper’s final letter, and on the very top, paperclipped together to keep them separate from the rest of the papers, letters, and photographs from Max. She pulls out the most recent one— delivered four days ago— and rereads it for what has to be the umpteenth time. She drinks in the words like she hasn’t had water in days, and savors the stinging sweetness of the closing.
Love, Max.
“ I love you, Max,” El w hispers, tears dripping onto the already smudged notebook paper.
“Hey, El,” Joyce steps back into her room with a concerned expression that only deepens when she sees El crying. “Oh, honey, what’s wrong?”
El shakes her head, folding the letter back up with shaky hands as quickly as she can. El may not be extremely familiar with social behaviors, but she has enough sense to know that something as personal as Max’s letter isn’t something that should be seen by anyone other than who it was addressed to. If she’s honest, El doesn’t want anyone else to see it.
She closes the box and shoves it back in the closet before being met by Joyce’s arms wrapping around her. “Hey, sweetie, I know. I miss him too.”
El realizes all at once that Joyce is talking about Hopper and that she must’ve thought the letter was from him.
“It’s not about Hop,” El says quietly, pulling herself away from Joyce. “Not this time.”
“Then what is it?” Joyce asks sharply, curiosity outweighing concern.
“I want to go home.”
Joyce sighs, tired. Will has wanted to put up this fight every day since they left but is too passive to do so. El doesn’t blame him, but she doesn’t have the same quiet tongue that he does. “We are home.”
“W-Wisnoscin. . .” El clears her throat. “Wis con sin is not my home. Hawkins is.”
“Not anymore,” Joyce tells her firmly.
“No.”
“No?”
“ You took us from home,” El says quietly.
Joyce rubs at her temples. “I was doing what was best for us.”
Suddenly, white-hot anger is boiling through El. The pressure in her head is enough to make her explode and Joyce may just be collateral damage. “ Us ? Will hates it here. I hate it here. Jonathan is never home. Will is sad all the time and I—”
“Hawkins isn’t safe for us! I was protecting my children, and that includes you!”
“It is safe! The bad men are gone!” El throws her hands up, blinking back tears.
“We don’t know that, El!” Joyce fires back. “We thought they were gone the first time and the second time and—”
“So we left them? If something bad happens, our friends are alone! We can’t help them if we are here!”
“You can’t help them at all. Your powers have been gone for months, El!”
The words El had been ready to shoot back at Joyce die in her throat. “I-I. . .” She knows her powers are gone and she knows that she couldn’t stop an attack if it came, but she also knows that if something happened to one of her friends. . . if something happened to Max , El would never forgive herself.
Joyce’s face softens, and she moves to sit beside El on the bed. A hesitant hand lays itself on El’s shoulder, and when she packs up the courage to look Joyce in the eyes, the woman has tears streaming down her face. El’s crying too, but it went unnoticed in her anger. “I’m sorry. I know that you’re upset about your powers. Look, I just. . .” A sob slips from Joyce’s lips, and El instinctively covers Joyce’s hands with her own.
“I saw him everywhere in Hawkins. Every person from high school, every uniformed officer, every bad cup of coffee. It all reminded me of him. And I couldn’t stay in that place.”
“You’re trying to forget him?” El understands, but she also doesn’t. How could Joyce want to forget about Hopper if she loved him? “That’s not fair.”
“I lost him,” Joyce whispers, wiping tears from her eyes.
El pushes away from Joyce, wrapping her arms around herself in an attempt to ease any of the pounding in her head. She lost Hopper, too.
“I—”
“No.” El shakes her head. “You loved him, but you took us from the people we love.”
“But—”
“I love someone too, and you’re keeping me away.”
“This isn’t about Mike, El,” is all Joyce can manage to say.
“No,” El replies, wiping tears from her cheeks. Her eyes flit to the box in her closet. To the special, paperclipped stack. “It’s not. Mike and I are not. . . dating anymore.”
Joyce seems taken aback by that. She stumbles over her words for a moment before asking, “Who then, El?”
“Max,” El breaks on the single syllable. “I love Max. She’s alive and she needs me. A-And I need her. Please let me go back to her.”
Joyce stares at her for an impossibly long time, and Jane begins to feel like she’s back in the lab, being examined by tall people in white coats. When Joyce wraps her arms around her, she doesn’t have the energy to pull away. Joyce finally speaks, sadness and regret dripping from her lips when she says, “I’m sorry, but we can’t.”
* * *
“Max,” El whispers into the phone that night, tears streaming down her face as she repeats the other girl’s name into the phone over, and over, again. “Max.”
“El, hey. Hey, what’s wrong?” Max’s voice is wobbly already, like she’s on the verge of crying. The thought only makes El sob harder.
“Max, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” El hugs her knees to her chest, cradling the phone between her shoulder and her ear. The hard plastic feels cool against her flushed face, and she presses it closer to her ear, lest she miss a thing Max says.
“Why are you sorry, El?” Max asks. Her voice has an edge, a little lilt that always peeks out when she’s worried about something. El can picture the way her eyebrows are pinching together, blue eyes weathered with concern.
El sniffles, wiping at her nose with the sleeve of her t-shirt. “I can’t come home. I-I tried to talk to Joyce, but she said we can’t come back.”
Max sighs. “I got your letter. D-Did you get mine?”
Excitement jumps through El’s throat in a gasp, but then she realizes that is must not have arrived, and it knocks her back into tears. “No.”
“Oh. It’ll, uh, be there soon, then.” Max’s breath catches in her throat. She sounds nervous. Social cues may not be El’s strong suit, but fear is an emotion that she’s never had trouble picking up on.
“Max, are you okay? You seem scared.” El speaks as calmly as she can, trying to ease the nerves of the other girl. Her crying has subsided from heaving sobs to silent tears at the mere sound of Max’s voice. Something about the smoothness of the redhead’s voice can calm her down almost instantly.
“Uh, y-yeah. Everything’s fine.”
“Friends don’t lie,” El breathes, wiping more tears from her cheeks. She can tell that Max is frightened, and in turn, it frightens El. It’s like she can feel Max, even without her powers.
Max’s voice is so faint when she speaks, El would’ve wondered if she spoke at all, if the words from her mouth didn’t hang so heavily in the air. “Uh, I just. . . Neil’s home.”
El feels like her heart is being stomped on over, and over, again. “Max—”
“It’s fine, El. I know how to avoid him, usually. It’s just. . . I didn’t last night.”
“Oh, Max.” El swipes tears from both cheeks. “What did he do?”
Max inhales sharply. “It doesn’t matter.”
( It does. )
El presses her hands hard against her eyes— she’s seen Max do it to stop crying. Desperation to see the girl on the other end of the line and the utter heartbreak she feels for her overwhelms her all at once, and she thinks she might split int two. When Will told El that he was in love with Mike, he said that the feeling was so intense it hurt . El realizes she may be in the exact same boat. “Max, I need to see you.”
“Me too,” Max breathes. “Fuck, you have no idea . ”
“I think I’m in love with you,” El almost says, but then she remembers what Will told her about saying important things in person and she swallows the words. She would like to see Max’s face when she tells her, anyway. Instead, El exhales a shaky breath and tries to slow down her heartbeat.
“ Shit .” Max’s voice wobbles with a new sense of urgency. “El, I gotta go.
“Be safe, Max. I need you.”
“I’m gonna get to you, somehow, El. I promise.”
“Max, go,” El whispers. “Please, stay safe.”
“I— uh, Goodnight, El.”
The line goes dead.
* * * * *
Max meant what she said to El. The promise she made over the phone the night before isn’t one she plans on breaking. Max is prepared when her mother comes into her room the next morning, chiding her for oversleeping and reminding her she’ll be late for school if she doesn’t get up this instant. Tissues are wadded up on the floor beside her bed, and she’d been sitting with her head hanging off the bed to let all the blood rush into her face before her mother came in.
“Maxine, you’ll be late! Get up!”
“M-Mom,” Max speaks from the back of her throat, breathing through only through her mouth and trying to sound congested. “I don’t feel good.”
“Let me feel your forehead,” Susan leans over the edge of the bed, laying the back of her hand just above Max’s eyebrows. “Oh, you do feel warm. One minute.” She comes back a few moments later, her brow furrowed. “I can’t find the thermometer.”
Max bites back the smile threatening to take over her face, and she can feel the thin body of the thermometer pressing against her thigh from the pocket of her jeans. She adjusts the quilts on top of her, pulling them up higher to her chin, trying to fake a shiver as best as she can.
Susan peers down at her intently, studying Max’s face. She grazes Max’s cheekbone with her fingers, and Max flinches away, trying not to wince— the bruise on her cheek is still tender. She sees tears well up in Susan’s eyes, and Max is torn between the two feelings in her stomach: anger because her mother is the one who watches Neil’s hurricane rain down on Max night after night; sympathy because she knows her mother has been a victim to his storms too.
Clearing her throat, Susan blinks away the tears. “Well, uh, if you feel like you have to, you can stay home. Neil didn’t come home after the. . . incident last night, so I don’t know whether or not he’ll go to work. Either way, his car is in the driveway, so he probably won’t be getting back here soon.”
“Okay,” Max says, sniffling. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Feel better, Maxine,” Susan says. She hesitates for a moment before leaning down to kiss Max’s forehead.
She leaves Max’s room and after a few prolonged moments of rustling in the kitchen, Max hears the opening and closing of the front door. Max waits a few more seconds, holding her breath for no reason. She hears her mom’s car engine roar to life and listens to it quiet until it fades away completely. When Max knows that Susan is gone, she throws the blankets off of her body and slips out of her bed. The duffel bag and backpack she packed are stowed in the top of her closet, and she gets them down after pulling on her sneakers.
Before leaving the room, Max picks up her walkie-talkie and tunes into her channel with Lucas. “Lucas, do you copy?”
“Max, are you okay? Over.”
“I, uh, I’m leaving now. Tell Dustin and Wheeler? Over.”
She waits in a few long, silent moments for Lucas’ reply. Finally, he says, “Of course. Be safe, Max. Call when you can. Over.”
Max smiles. “I will. I’ll see you soon, Sinclair. Over and out.” She tucks the radio into her backpack pocket and presses her palms hard over her eyes for a moment. Max places note she wrote for her mom where she knows only Susan will find it, and for a moment, she’s overwhelmed with guilt. The thought of leaving anyone, much less her mother, alone with Neil ties her stomach up in knots. But, then again, her mother has never been more absent. Picking up more and more shifts, leaving Max more and more alone. Not that she can blame her; Max always swore she’d be gone in a heartbeat if the opportunity came. And, well, the opportunity has come. After a deep breath, she goes into the kitchen, grabs Neil’s car keys off of the counter, and walks out of the Hargrove’s house without another glance.
Max slips into the driver’s seat of Neil’s car, trying to stop her hands from shaking as she jams the key into the ignition. The engine rumbles; Max feels the vibrations beneath her fingertips, and suddenly she’s ten years old again. She sees the California desert spread out before her, the sounds of a Pink Floyd cassette floating from the stereo, and her dad grinning at her in the passenger seat. Max felt invincible in that moment, and she manages to harness some of that energy again.
“I’m coming, El,” Max whispers, and then she pulls out of the driveway and takes off down the street.
* * *
Max stops at some backroad gas station somewhere in Illinois, awkwardly avoiding any adult who could question her. It’s not like Max is a stranger to rule-breaking, but she supposes that this is substantially larger than all her past violations. She tightens her jacket around her frame when she steps out of the car.
As quickly as she can, she fills up Neil’s car, goes inside, pays for her gas and a snack, and hurries back to the vehicle. She’s not sure why she was so nervous. No one besides the cashier even really noticed her.
She decides that she’s just anxious to see El, and honestly, who could blame her?
She slides back into the car and pulls out the map she brought with. Max spent hours trying to figure out the best possible route to get there, and when she did, she outlined each road she planned on taking in yellow highlighter. Memorizing the next few turns she has to make, she puts the map to the side, flips the cassette in the sound system— a mixtape Will sent her last month— and sets off toward her best friend.
* * *
It’s late afternoon when Max rolls into the Byers’ driveway. She knows it’s the right house from the Polaroids El sent when they first arrived. Max tries to steady her breathing and stop her hands from shaking, but then she realizes that it’s one-thirty in the afternoon and El and Will are at school. Deflated, she sinks back against the tobacco-scented seat, her hands falling limply into her lap.
Maybe this whole thing was stupid, Max thinks. El will probably think I’m crazy and Neil is going to kill me and—
“Hello? Who’s there?” A familiar voice pierces the spring air, light, but sharp. Max’s eyes flit upward to the doorstep where El is standing on the doorstep wielding a baseball bat and a stare that Max is entirely sure could stop her heart. “Who is there ?”
Max’s excitement overwhelms her anxieties, and she clambers out of the car, trying desperately to find some sort of footing on the driveway. Max manages to stand up straight, pushing her hair out of her face. The bat El was holding falls to the ground, clanging against the concrete. The sound is loud, but Max barely hears it because El breathes, “Max.”
And nothing else matters.
The brunette barrels toward her, flinging her arms around Max so hard they both tumble to the ground. Max groans, her sore ribs smacking against the concrete sneds shooting pain through her body. She doesn’t care though because El is hugging her and El is here and everything is okay.
Also, El fucking Hopper is practically laying on top of her and that is about the only thing she can process at the moment.
“You’re here,” El says, her breath fanning against Max’s cheek. “How?”
Max looks over at the vehicle she just spent the last eight hours in. “I. . . borrowed Neil’s car.”
El’s eyes darken. “Max, you could have gotten hurt.”
“But I didn’t. And really? Driving a car through a few states is significantly less dangerous than some of our other adventures,” Max chuckles, but El isn’t laughing. Her face is deadly serious, and Max suddenly feels like she’s being studied under a microscope.
“Max, your face,” El whispers, reaching out to her cheek. Unlike with her mom, Max doesn’t flinch away this time; she leans into El’s gentle touch, basking in the warmth that floods into her face.
The redhead clears her throat. “Let’s go inside, yeah?”
El climbs off of Max and pulls her to her feet, brushing dust off of Max’s jacket. Max grabs her bags out of the car, but El takes them from her almost immediately, and she doesn’t have it in her to protest. Once they get inside, El drops Max’s stuff on the carpet and turns around to face the other girl. El tugs gently at Max’s shirt. “Can I see?”
Max’s eyes go wide, heat flooding her face as her mind goes in a million different directions. Max is sure that El makes her completely stupid. “W-What?”
El gestures to her cheek, where the bruise is. “Please.”
Oh.
“Yeah, okay,” Max sighs. Ignoring the blush burning across her skin, Max shrugs off her jacket and reaches for the hem of her shirt with trembling hands, pulling it slowly over her head. El gasps softly, eyes flitting across Max’s body. It reminds El of the constellations in the books she’s read about stars, only the colors are inverted. Dark bruises and freckles contrast against the expanse of Max’s pale skin, splattered across her torso, chest, and shoulders. “It’s been a little worse than usual lately.”
“What’s this?” El runs her finger along Max’s shoulder; there’s a faded would that’s been stitched closed. It looks like it’s healing, but El still studies it with almost painful intensity.
“He threw a bottle a couple of weeks ago,” Max says quietly.
El grimaces. “Did you stitch it?”
Max thinks of the time last summer when she took care of El’s leg. She shakes her head. “The angle was too awkward for me, and I couldn’t do it with one hand. Wheeler, of all people, actually. I had to coach his ass every step of the way, but his weird monkey fingers are actually pretty nimble. You know, I—”
“Max.”
“It’s okay, El.” Max pulls her shirt back on, clearing her throat.
“Max—”
“Hey, look.” Max takes El’s hand with her own shaky one. “I’m here. I’m okay now.”
El stares at her for a long moment, softening under Max’s gaze. “Okay. What do you need? You look very tired.”
“Could I get a tour?” Max asks softly. “And then maybe we can watch a movie?”
El gives her a big grin and starts her enthusiastic tour of the house, her excitement about Max being there returning tenfold. She tells Max about her school, and how she likes being in real classes, even though most of the kids think she’s weird. How she and Max are going to have so much fun, and Will and Jonathan will be so happy to see her. Max listens intently, happy to be in the other girl’s presence again.
After a few minutes of running her around excitedly, El sees how tired Max is, and leads her to the couch, where they sit down to watch some movie about a shark that El doesn’t quite understand, but knows that Max loves. They started off on opposite ends of the small sofa, with only their legs overlapping. But somewhere between the first jumpscare and now, El has managed to shift under Max’s arm, their sides pressed firmly together. She knows she’s supposed to be watching the movie, but she can’t help but glance over at Max. The redhead’s tired eyes crinkle around the edges when something happens on the screen, and her lips curve softly as she laughs at the dramatics of the characters.
But El also sees the weight. Max has dark circles under her eyes, like she hasn’t slept in days. Her heart tugs in her chest when she realizes that it’s a very real possibility, given Max’s current situation.
She tugs Max’s arm gently, and says, “Lay down. You are tired.”
Max tries to protest, but after a few seconds of the other girl’s quietly intense stare, she gives up. She looks around hesitantly, like she’s trying to figure out how to lie down without being on top of El. Maybe it’s selfish, but El pats her own lap gently, and Max’s eyes meet hers for a brief moment before she lets her head fall onto El’s legs. Her eyes flutter shut and don’t open again. El can’t help but reach a careful hand out to Max’s long hair, and Max only caves further into El at the touch. El threads her fingers through the red waves, gently untangling any small knots. She doesn’t look up at the television until the credits start rolling.
Sometime later, Max asks if she can take a shower. El leads her to the bathroom, pointing out all of the necessary items and getting her a fresh towel. She shows Max how the faucet works, and even though Max is entirely certain she could have figured it out on her own, El looks so cute explaining it to her. She’s almost out of the bathroom when Max calls her name.
“Yes?” She turns around, looking at Max with expectant brown eyes.
“I don’t suppose you got my letter, did you?”
“I don’t know. I have not checked the mail. Why?”
Max shakes her head. “No reason. Thanks, El.”
* * *
El does check the mail while Max is taking a shower. Her heart thumps annoyingly hard in her chest when she finds an envelope addressed to her in Max’s handwriting beneath a few things for Joyce. El wonders what could be so important in it. Not that anything Max has to say could ever be unimportant to El, but she’s has been nervously asking about it for several days, and Max has never done that with any of the other letters.
She opens it slowly, careful not to tear the envelope more than she has to. Max’s smooth, looping handwriting immediately brings a smile to her face, and she starts reading, picking apart the words and drinking them in one at a time.
El,
I never used to understand when Mom would talk about missing Dad. I mean, for one, she’s the one who left him, so I always thought she didn’t have the right to miss him. But looking beyond that, I didn’t understand when she would talk about how it actually hurt her to be without him. Like, there’s no way that being apart from someone could cause you actual, physical pain. Right?
I started to understand it a little bit the longer we were away from California. I missed Dad and the beach and the sunshine. It felt wrong. . . and cold. But it didn’t exactly hurt.
But now I understand. From the minute you left, I understood. My throat is scratchy and dry and I feel like I can’t talk whenever someone mentions your name. Or breathe. My head hurts all the time and I’ve cried more in the last month than I have in my entire life. My stomach is twisted in this tight knot, and the only time it unties is when I get to hear your voice over the phone. But even then it’s only a little bit.
And for the longest time, I didn’t know why. I couldn’t figure it out. But I realized it when you broke up with Mike for real. It’s because I have feelings for you. I know I’m not supposed to. I know girls aren’t supposed to feel this way about other girls. But Robin told me that it’s okay. And I want to believe her.
So, what I’m saying is that I’m in love with you. Like love love. I love you, Lev. Yeah. That’s all.
- Yours, Max
She reads it again, and again, making sure that she understands the words.
I love you, Lev.
Lev. The nickname bounces around El’s head, her ears ringing with the memory of Max’s voice. Max told her it was special, but she never told El why she called her by it. El didn’t push because, well, how could she? Hearing it makes her lose all coherency, and she never has enough breath to ask where it comes from when the name falls from Max’s lips.
“El,” Max says from behind her. El turns around, letter in hand, to face the redhead. Max’s eyes land on El, then the letter, then El again. She looks scared, more scared than El has ever seen her, which is saying something .
“Max, is this true?” El gestures to the letter.
Max looks at her helplessly. “You know I wouldn’t write it if it wasn’t.”
El smiles softly, trying to contain the bubbly feeling threatening to burst from every space in her body. “I broke up with Mike, you know.”
“I know,” Max nods. “But you never told me why.”
“I asked Will about love. When he told me what it felt like, I knew I didn’t love Mike. But—”
“But what?” Max sounds like she’s holding her breath. Maybe she is. El doesn’t think she’s taken a breath since she read ‘ I love you, Lev’ in Max’s letter. They make eye contact, each of them regarding the other with an air of caution they’ve never had before.
El kisses Max.
She smells like soap and mint, and strands of damp red hair brush against El’s face. Her lips are slightly chapped, but they move so much softer than Mike’s ever did. She opens her eyes to look at Max, count the freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheekbones.
Kissing Mike was nice, but kissing Max is like nothing El has felt before. It knocks all the air from her lungs and allows her to breathe more clearly than she has in months, all at the same time.
“Bitchin’,” El says, grinning when they finally part. They stand there for a few moments, each of them basking in the closeness of the other. Max is almost radiant, her smile so bright it makes El warm everywhere.
Max laughs, and it makes El’s heart flutter even more. “Yeah, bitchin’.”
“I love you, Max,” El tells her, sounding so soft and so sure of herself at the same time. Her heart thumps in her chest, and El knows for certain that this is what they were talking about in those TV shows she used to watch with Hop. That this is what Will was talking about.
Max’s face is mixed with disbelief, and something else El can’t quite put her finger on. A gentle gesture of assurance, Max touches El’s lips and then her own. “This isn’t. . . I didn’t think any of this would ever happen. I didn’t know it could happen. I mean, is this even real?”
“It’s real,” El says seriously, pressing a kiss to the end of Max’s freckled nose to prove her point. “I promise.”
“I love you,” Max says out loud for the first time. She looks down, blushing harder. “But you knew that already.”
El downright giggles. She grips tighter at the fabric of Max’s t-shirt, causing the other girl to look up hesitantly. El smiles at Max. “I like hearing it from the horse’s mouth.”
Max’s eyebrows furrow adorably. El has noticed that she gets a little wrinkle above her eyebrows when she makes that face. “Where’d you learn that one?”
“Jonathan,” El tells her matter-of-factly.
Max shakes her head, a giggle of her own escaping from between her teeth. “You’re amazing, Lev.”
“I like when you call me that,” El tells her quietly.
“You know, I didn’t have many girl friends in California,” Max says, careful to emphasize the space between girl and friends. Her eyes flit down to the floor. “None, actually. Well, I mean, there was this one girl who I always used to see at the skatepark. But we never actually had a conversation, just showed each other tricks and stuff. So I don’t think I could really—”
“Max,” El interjects, in that tone that prods her to get to the point. She never means it in a rude way, but Max has a tendency to ramble, and while El would listen to her talk about anything, it can be a little hard to follow. Lucas told El once that Max gets “lost in her own head.” El didn’t understand that because how can someone be stuck inside their own head? It’s not possible. But Lucas explained that it’s an expression, and El started to get it the more she talked to Max.
It’s like Max’s brain is always going in a lot of different directions, and she gets overwhelmed by her own thoughts. El feels like that with real life sometimes, but not when she’s with Max. El tries to do the same for her.
“Sorry,” Max says, her eyes flitting all around the room before settling on the floor. “It’s just, I’ve always been friends with guys. And that’s great. But being friends with you is different. Once we actually started hanging out, I felt. . . visible. Like you saw all of me— or most of me. Not the part of me that had a huge crush on you.”
El smiles. Lucas taught her that expression—crush— too.
“And, uh, I wanted you to feel seen, too. Like, you had all of these different scenarios, and you were almost a different person in each one. There was Eleven, the subject-turned-escapee with the shaved head. And then there was Jane, which was, like, a semblance of the life you almost had a long time ago. And there’s El, the mage, and Party member and girl trying to figure out what she wants. But then, there’s the you that I see— like, a combination of all those other girls. And I gave you the nickname as a way to try to express that I saw all of that. All of you. Does that make sense?”
Max looks up at her with an almost pained expression. Like she’s getting lost again. When El doesn’t respond right away, Max’s head cranes back down, eyes glued to her feet.
“Max,” El says softly, pulling on her hand. She looks up, wincing, like she expects El to yell at her or push her away. Instead, she slowly pulls Max into a hug. Her arms tighten around the other girl, but El’s careful not to touch the bruises too hard. The redhead’s shoulders noticeably relax, and she hugs El back tightly. “I understand. Thank you.”
They stay like that for a while, enjoying the closeness of each other, but then El spots the letter sitting on the table and thinks about something that Max said in it. “Hey, Max?”
“Hmm?” Max hums, not moving her head from where it rests on El’s collarbone.
“What did you mean in your letter? You said girls are not supposed to like each other.”
Max’s body goes rigid in El’s arms. She pulls away stiffly, planting herself down on the couch. El sits down next to her, trying to get the other girl to look at her, but Max’s eyes are glued to the floor. “Uh, well, people don’t like it very much when a girl wants to kiss another girl.”
“What people?”
“Just people, El. A lot of them.” Max’s voice is shaking again. El reaches her hand out but pulls back before Max can take it when a thought crosses her mind.
“Are they like the bad men? Will they hurt us like the people in the lab?”
Max looks up suddenly, her eyes going wide with concern. “Hey, no. No, it’s not like that.”
Max takes El’s hands firmly in her own. El can tell she’s still hesitant, but the redhead’s stubbornness tends to outweigh her nerves. “It’s just. . . Well, most people think that only a boy and a girl should be in love with each other. And they think it’s wrong when a girl loves a girl or a boy loves a boy.”
“ Are we wrong, Max?”
“N-No. Those people are. We just have to be careful, okay?”
“I’m good at careful. Hop taught me all about careful,” El tells her earnestly. She scoots closer to Max until their knees knock together softly. “I will protect you.”
“And I’ll protect you,” Max replies. “We’ll protect each other, just like before.”
“Promise?”
“I Promise.” Max smiles at her, dizzyingly soft. El doesn’t understand how a person can make her dizzy, but Max does. And El can’t find it in herself to complain. They sort of melt into each other all at once, lips finding each other gently.
She’s so content in her position with Max that she almost misses the quiet click of the door opening and closing. Max pulls away quickly, her eyes going wide with mild panic. El squeezes Max’s hand. The footsteps are soft, so El knows it’s only Will, who appears in the doorway of the living room a few moments later.
He gasps, but no words are said; he and Max just silently meet eyes and then move to hug each other tightly. While they weren’t very close back in Hawkins, she started writing to him when they moved and the two have since formed a tight bond.
“You’re here,” he says, quiet excitement in his voice. Max nods, grinning at her friend and hugging him again. “I saw the car in the driveway. . . I thought that. . . oh, wow. You’re an idiot, Max.”
“I know,” she admits, looking over at El. “But it was worth it.”
Will looks back and forth between the two of them. El is looking at Max like she is the entire world, and Max is staring at her feet, blushing down to her collarbones. “ Oh , okay. So, you two, huh?”
Max scratches the back of her neck, blushing even harder. “Uh, well, we haven’t really talked about it yet, but if that’s something that El wants, then—”
“Yes,” El says simply, prompting Max to look up at her again. (Max also looks at El like she’s the entire world.)
Will grins at his ‘sister’ and friend. “About time.”
“What do you mean?” Max asks incredulously. “You’ve known about this whole thing?”
“Uh, yeah?” Will looks at her like ‘ are you serious?’ “Max, who do you think El’s been coming to with all these feelings? And every time you even mention El to me it sounds like butterflies are carrying your words.”
“Oh. Nice to know I’m absolutely terrible at hiding this,” Max says, eyes wide. She laughs a little, but it sounds tight, almost like it’s lodged in her throat. “So, you’re okay with this?”
Will wrings his hands together, the way El has seen him do when he’s nervous. (Will’s nervous a lot.) “Of course. We, uh. . . we queers have to stick together.”
El’s eyebrows furrow. “What’s a qu-queer?”
Max and Will exchange nervous glances, and Max looks like she might throw up. El squeezes her hand, and Max gives her a small, grateful smile. “Us, El. Remember what we talked about earlier?”
“Oh, yeah.” El is still a little confused, but she shrugs it off. “Okay.”
They spend the next few minutes catching up. Max fills them in on how things have been in Hawkins when Will starts asking a few too many questions about Mike, and Will gushes to Max about the art program at his and El’s school— the only thing about Wisconsin that Will has actually enjoyed. El listens intently, soaking up the warm feeling in the room.
Jonathan gets home a while later, and once he gets over his shock at Max being there, he welcomes her with a bright smile and big hug. Not so much because he and Max are particularly close, but because he knows that she could probably use both of those things.
Joyce follows after an hour or so, having gotten off early from her shift. At first, she’s pretty fired up about Max’s actions, giving a passionate reprimanding about the danger Max put herself in and how irresponsible it was. Max apologizes profusely, but then El helps Max explain the situation to the older woman. Then Joyce hugs Max for a long time, akin to the way a mother would hug her own daughter, and tells her that she’s glad she’s safe. That she can stay as long as she likes.
The Byers eat dinner together for the first time that week, sitting at their small, square table. Only this time, another chair is crammed in on El’s side, and she and Max sit shoulder to shoulder. Max eats with her left hand; El does not. They knock elbows all through dinner, and the tips of Max’s ears burn red every time. El only giggles, nudging Max with her shoulder. They’re all joking and laughing, and the way Max’s eyes shine at the kindness of the Byers makes El acutely aware of just how grateful she is for the warm welcome. Seeing Max happy after not seeing her at all for so long makes the bubbly feeling explode out of her.
*
After a while, Max and El retire to her room, laughing and blushing and everything in between. They go about their own separate nighttime routines, almost silent as they both move about the room. But then El is climbing under her covers and pulling Max in beside her and they melt into each other all over again. Max’s arms are wrapped tightly around the brunette’s stomach, her head resting on El’s chest. One of El’s own arms loops around Max’s back, holding her close, while the other cards through the mess of fiery red locks falling all around them. They stay like that, tiptoeing the line between consciousness and not in a comfortable silence.
The familiarity of the moment floods Max with memories of sleepovers in the few short months before El had to leave Hawkins. Late nights on the scratchy carpet, sharing popcorn and exchanging more-than-friendly glances. Early mornings with the sun shining too brightly through the blinds, shedding an ethereal light on the girls’ tangled limbs, illuminating El’s hair more golden than brown.
“I love you,” Max whispers from her place beneath El’s chin. She tugs one of her arms from underneath El’s back, reaching for her hand. El halts her movements in Max’s hair and intertwines their fingers, squeezing the other girl’s hand as a gesture of reassurance. Max shifts a little so her head rests on the brunette’s shoulder and squeezes El’s hand back.
“I love you too,” El whispers back. Max leans up, pressing her lips to El’s. The kiss is more careless than their last, less tentative and more ardent.
Kissing El is like nothing that Max has ever felt before. It’s safe and warm, but it’s more than that. Max has spent a lot of her life feeling weak. When she left California, every time she’s been excluded or exiled.Every time she’s lost someone she loves or not been able to help the people around her. Every time Neil or Billy has ever laid a hand on her.
But El makes her feel strong.
And maybe it was selfish, to come all this way. Technically speaking, Max would be considered a runaway at this point. She knows there are going to be repercussions. But with El nodding off on her shoulder and their hands still clasped tightly together under the blankets, Max can’t find it in herself to regret a damn thing.