Chapter Text
Chapter 1
It was her stupid fucking doctor’s suggestion.
Eddie had come in about her aching body and, maybe she should have expected it given the new legalization laws, but her doctor immediately recommended the nearest dispensary. Even had a business card to hand her. (Marijuana companies are moving in on Pharma companies’ turf, Eddie had thought dryly). Then, Eddie had graciously explained that, no, her muscles were just sore from her shitty job and could she please have some goddamn muscle relaxers?
“Unfortunately,” her doctor had said, “your…” He looked back down at her chart and squinted at her intake form, where she had clearly written ‘No Insurance’ in her squiggly handwriting. “insurance doesn’t cover muscle relaxers.”
Losing her patience, Eddie had shot back, “Well, it sure as fuck doesn’t cover weed!” while still in her bra and underwear on the examining table. The doctor had given her an unimpressed look while writing something in her chart. If Eddie had to guess, it might be a recommendation for anti-depressants, which had just made her angrier because she was being realistic and not hysterical. When the doctor had finally left the room—after pointedly leaving behind the dispensary business card next to Eddie’s carefully folded pile of clothes—Eddie had her phone out typing an angry Google review.
So here she is. Inside of her forest green Subaru Forester with her head craned to read the huge sign towering over her: “Doctor Nugz Pharmacy” in neon-green letters. The brightness visible in the cold light of day is frankly alarming and Eddie wonders if this eyesore of a stoner bat-signal could be seen from space.
Getting up to go inside is proving to be a challenge. It’s as if her scratchy interior is sucking her into the driver’s seat. The plastic handle tunnels further and further away from her reach.
The thing is: Eddie wouldn’t be caught dead in there. Her adolescent hesitance about weed was initially about the health of her lungs. Could she choke? Get cancer? Set her house on fire with a faulty lighter? Then when she moved out of her mom’s place in college, she dabbled. And maybe continued dabbling after graduation. But only if she could bum off friends. Her mother might not watch her every move anymore, but she has instilled a lot of fear into Eddie, okay? And she could just imagine the amount of shit that would have hit the fan if her mom found out Eddie went to a dispensary while she had Eddie under her tastefully polished thumb.
When Eddie started looking for post-grad jobs, she isolated herself from her friends. This was both a sad side-effect of growing apart and being burdened with the constant pressure to move back in with her mom. The latter was narrowly avoided by her mother’s timely death. The former resulted in a sad lack of weed. Then that temporary office gig came up which required monthly drug testing, so it wasn’t even worth it to pick it up again. And by the time she moved in with Bev she was thinking this temp job would turn into a permanent thing.
Now, she’s working a grueling server job, clutching a prescription in her sweaty hand, and she’s fucking afraid to go into this corny ass weed store. What’s going to happen? A shithead makes fun of her for not knowing enough about weed? Or they take one look at her and overcharge her because she’s short, blonde, and wearing overalls? Her blood is boiling at the thought. All at once, she pushes open the door and puts her foot down. She’ll do it if only to prove that she can.
The sliding door beeps to alert the staff of her arrival. The interior of the store is an homage to vintage drugstores. There are two short isles containing a wide variety of disposable vape pens, silicone pipes, rolling papers, other various stoner accoutrement and, of course, gasmasks to hotbox your own fucking face. Eddie gives in to the urge to roll her eyes. Behind her, someone chokes then clears their throat.
“Welcome to Doctor Nugz Pharmacy, how can I help you take your medicine today?”
“Jesus Fuck.” Eddie jumps and faces a tall (taaaalll) smirking woman with a head of jagged black curls and thick black glasses. She’s wearing a play-dough green polo that’s nearly entirely engulfed in an oversized denim jacket. The buttons of her jacket clack-clack against the counter—an archipelago tucked into the far-left corner of the store at the head of the small isles. She has a black-jean clad hip cocked and pointed directly at Eddie. The carabiner on her belt loop jingles as she moves.
“My what?” Eddie says, facing the woman fully. She spreads her legs further apart and plants her hands on her hips. She hopes her practiced power-stance cuts a more intimidating figure than her Keds and overalls imply.
“Your medicine?” The woman quirks an eyebrow that gets lost behind a curtain of curly bangs. “How can I help you feel better?”
The woman’s freckled face does an exaggerated pout which only succeeds in drastically pushing her oversized glasses further down her nose. She pushes them up with the tip of her chipped red polished nail on the bridge.
Eddie coughs.
“Do you mean my pot?” she says dryly, pointedly eyeing a strain loudly advertised as Alaskan Thunderfuck. The woman follows her eyeline and huffs a snort through her nose—quickly catching Eddie’s incredulity at something with a name like that being considered medicine.
“No, I mean your fully legal recreational herb supplement.”
“Can’t I get just like, a half-of-a-pound of weed?” Eddie asks seriously, rubbing her chin.
The woman sputters, “You can’t, like, buy that much!” Her right hand is over her chest like the caricature of an offended Puritanical woman. “Unless,” she adds, pausing with a finger on her lips, “you got a couple hundred grand in that cute lil fanny pack of yours?”
She nods at Eddie’s pink bag strapped across her chest. Now, it’s Eddie’s turn to sputter. “Jesus. I can’t even picture that much money in my brain. Fuck.”
The other woman is laughing at her, but not cruelly.
“Solidarity.” She salutes Eddie with a cheeky grin. “Let’s just start with an eighth, okay?”
Eddie nods as if she knows what that means. The other woman is tapping her long ringed fingers on the display glass—taking in Eddie’s useless nodding with an amused expression. It’s times like this Eddie wishes she could reign in her stubbornness. She wants to leave so she can stop making an idiot out of herself, but she’s fucking committed to seeing this through. To prove to her doctor that weed won’t help and then she’ll get her goddamn muscle relaxers. She can’t do that if she leaves now.
It is with absolute certainty that Eddie says, “I don’t know what the fuck amount that is.”
The woman laughs—a punched-out breathless sort of sound. As if Eddie told a raucous joke.
“Okay,” she says, looking Eddie up and down appraisingly, hair bouncing at the exaggerated movement. “I know a pretty girl who bums weed when I see her.”
“I don’t bum weed!” Eddie shoots back, affronted at the audacity of this woman she just met. The stomp of Eddie’s white Keds echoes through the store. Just because this woman is correct doesn’t mean she just gets to assume she knows Eddie’s life.
“Uh-huh.” Tall and Curly doesn’t sound convinced. As Eddie walks closer to the counter, she needs to crane her neck higher to maintain eye contact with the woman. This pisses her off more. Once she’s in leaning-distance from the front register, the woman continues with a hyperbolic vocal fry: “So you agree, you think you’re really pretty?”
“Oh my god.” Eddie pinches the bridge of her nose. “I’m gonna go.” She turns around. “I think I saw another dispensary on the way here.”
“Wait wait wait!” the woman shouts, nearly tripping over her feet as she scrambles to escape the archipelago of the counter. Her voice is pleading when she says, “Don’t go to Say Yes to the Cannabis. Their manager is a fucking dick and they have the worst shit. I swear—I’m done teasing.”
As if to convince Eddie that she’s on her best behavior, she attempts to flatten the frizzy top of her head and proudly straightens her nametag. Covered in peeling stickers and written over with sharpie, it reads Richie in messy handwriting.
“Okay.” Eddie says slowly, allowing Richie to guide her back to the display case at the front counter with a light touch on her shoulder. “Do you have anything that will make my body feel less like it’s been hit by a fucking truck?”
Eddie figures, while she’s here, she may as well try to solve the problem her doctor had pointedly ignored. From what she remembers of her minimal prior research into marijuana, some people claimed it helped with body aches. She’s got those in spades and it’s not like she has the luxury of health insurance to bail her out.
Humming thoughtfully, Richie scans the menu with a long finger over her pursed lips.
“Well, for beginners I’d recommend Blue Dream.” Richie ducks to grab a plastic twist-top container from the display case. “It’s a sativa-dominant hybrid that gives a pretty balanced high and full body relaxation.”
Eddie interrupts Richie’s rehearsed speech about terpenes: “I never said I was a beginner.”
The 1950s salesman voice Richie seems to be aiming for breaks. On her face is a smile like that of the Grinch when thinking of something particularly devious.
“Well, for experienced smokers, we have the Rabbi-blessed Kosher-Kush. It’s a little pricier.” Richie is examining her short nails closely. “But the high? Fucking incredible.” Both of her eyebrows are lost in the tangle of her hair.
If anyone were to ask Eddie her fatal flaw, she might consider it to be her stubbornness. But she’s always been an over-achiever and can’t just pick one. So, it’s through the combined power of her bullheaded-willfulness and her dumbass competitiveness, that she spends $120 on a pipe shaped like a peach, a lighter, and an eighth of religiously enhanced weed.
(̅_̅_̅_̅(̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅̅_̅()ڪے
When Bev comes back from work that evening looking exhausted, Eddie is on the couch grinding weed in their shared mortar and pestle.
“Don’t say a fucking word.” She grits out between her teeth. “I forgot to buy a grinder. And fuck if I know where yours is.”
Bev laughs at her. Eddie’s glare in response would make most people afraid. Or at least intimidated. But Bev seems to be immune. Plus, Eddie reasons, she probably doesn’t paint the most fearsome image in her oversized sweat groutfit and sensible house slippers.
Eddie likes living with Bev. She doesn’t judge Eddie for her precise organizational methods. She frequently thrifts the coziest furniture (after thoroughly deep cleaning, of course) that fill in the spaces Eddie would have normally filled with cheap IKEA showroom shit. Bev bakes and shares—dessert not being something Eddie allows herself to indulge in often. And, Bev helps Eddie feel like someone people might be lucky to spend time with. And with Bev, comes her partner, Ben.
Ben is the kindest person she knows. It’s truly disgusting how perfect Bev and Ben are for each other and downright rancid that their relationship positively influences all their other relationships. Eddie could vomit at how healthy those two are together. This line of thought seems to just fuel her anger at her own day job, the chronic pain it causes, and the unfortunate solution her doctor has suggested.
“I need to smoke this weed to prove to my doctor that it won’t help my pain,” Eddie explains evenly, “and prove to Richie that I’m not a beginner.”
“Who the fuck is Richie?” Bev asks, already putting her bags down to clean out her favorite pipe. Eddie shakes her head and points to her shiny new peach bowl. Bev doesn’t hide her surprise. “Where did you get that?”
“I didn’t tell you I was going to the dispensary today?” Eddie questions both herself and Bev, who shrugs. Eddie pinches her fingers into the ground cannabis and carefully packs the peach. “Well, I went to the dispensary.”
“Oh shit, did you go to Smoke Show?”
“No. I was at Dr Nugz. And the minute I walk in, the tallest woman I’ve ever seen says I’m a beginner at smoking.” Eddie brings the mouthpiece to her lips while rolling her eyes. The taste of smoke is familiar and the heat in her hand is grounding.
Bev has already kicked her feet into Eddie’s lap—a standard position for the two while Bev smokes her own work stress away. Eddie inwardly laughs at the irony of their reversed roles. Then, Bev kicks her in the tit way harder than necessary to be passed the piece. Over Eddie’s pained threats, Bev says, “There’s no way it happened like that.”
Eddie passes the bowl, still rubbing her aching tit. Jesus fuck is Bev wearing toe rings?
“It did,” Eddie asserts with absolute certainty.
“Bullshit,” Bev breathes through her hit—smoke making her voice sound muffled and distant.
After her first hit in years, Eddie is embarrassingly stoned enough to imagine the smoke around them spelling the word: a hazy ‘bullshit’ floating around the room—mocking Eddie and her pride. Ben walks through the word, wearing a blanket tight around his shoulders like an extremely sleepy prince.
“What’s bullshit?” he asks through a jaw-cracking yawn. His brown hair is flat in the back—indicating he just awoke from a late-afternoon nap. Their face—soft and round—is creased where their sheets left imprints.
Bev passes him the peach without seeing his approach. It’s freaky how they can do that.
“A hot girl working at the dispensary implied Eddie doesn’t know anything about smoking weed. Apparently.”
“I didn’t say hot! I said tall,” Eddie shouts. The pillow she aimed at Bev’s smirk hits its mark through a cloud of smoke.
“They’re the same!” Bev tosses the pillow back to emphasize her (inaccurate) point. Ben laughs. Fucking traitor.
“Any-fucking-way. She told me to try Blue Dream. Said it was ‘good for beginners’,” Eddie explains.
Bev and Ben nod, seemingly waiting for the impending outrage, as if what Eddie reported wasn’t extremely humiliating and insulting! Eddie patiently waits for them to understand her point.
“But,” Ben starts, once he realizes that Eddie has paused, “she’s like…right?”
“She’s not right,” Eddie seethes, “because I’m not a beginner.”
Ben looks at Bev pleadingly.
“You’re right, Eds,” Bev says gently. “Just because you haven’t smoked in literal years, doesn’t mean you should smoke a strain that could actually help your pain and ease you back into smoking.”
Eddie aborts lighting the bowl—red eyes wide as she takes in Bev’s message. “Fuck you, Marsh.”
“So, if you didn’t buy the easily accessible and mellow Blue Dream, what the fuck did the tall woman—what was her name? Richie! What the fuck did Richie tell you to buy?” Bev asks.
Eddie instinctively glances at her purchase. Bev follows her eyeline and sees the container, closer to her end of the coffee table than Eddie’s, and lunges before Eddie can even think to move.
“Dude!” Bev screams. Like, actually fucking shouts, causing their shitty homophobic neighbors to bang on their shared wall. “This is 28% THC!”
“Um.”
“This girl must have wanted to leave an impression on you, Eds,” Bev says with an impressed whistle.
They end up smoking three bowls total, which Eddie has seen Bev and Ben do on slow days. But tonight, they’re giggling into each other’s shoulders and arguing about what show they should all watch since it’s obvious they’re all stoned to hell. Eddie is fully blaming it on the strength of the Kosher Kush. She can’t feel her face and her attention is flittering like a hummingbird in a field of fresh flowers.
Eddie tries not to think about the last time she smoked—but it’s a pretty moot attempt. It’s like when she tries to tell herself not to think about how many people have used a public bathroom before her—of course she’s going to think about it! Just the heavy smell of weed smoke brings back the memory: sitting on the roof of her childhood home at twenty-three while family and friends she barely remembers are inside sitting shiva. Absolutely petrified that the ghost of her dead mother will somehow haunt her forever.
Most of that night is a blur to her now: hours of women in black Eddie distantly recognized blubbering and hugging her, the shoulder of her itchy black shawl covered in snot, the chug of the single AC in the living room window battling with the excess of warm bodies and the sticky heat of summer in Maine. It was the sixth time she was approached with some variation of, “Don’t you have a boyfriend to look out for you now?” that got her to stalk into her room, shove the window up as far as it can go, and climb onto the roof with a handful of marijuana paraphernalia she smuggled home for the occasion.
As a child, Sonia would tell her daughter that, if Eddie could see her shadow, Sonia was with her. If Sonia was with her, she could see and hear everything Eddie was doing. Everything—she had made sure to enunciate every time she reminded Eddie. She never quite knew if she was alone for nearly all her childhood. When she finally saw through her mother’s lie, she was still afraid of the shadows in her room at night—that they would tell her mother lies to keep her away from all of her friends.
Eddie didn’t quite realize the memory was traumatic until it resurfaced. Thinking of all those people inside mourning a woman who knowingly deceived a child in such insidious ways sickened Eddie, evoking the sort of nausea she normally associated with carsickness on a summer’s day. It would take days to shake.
At the end of it all—after she threw the snotty shawl into the darkened backyard and smoked the joint down to the crutch, Eddie didn’t feel as alone as the strangers in her home expected. Yes, her mother was gone, but so were her rules and expectations. For the first time in her life, sitting on the sagging roof of her old home, Eddie felt light, as if the divine tether that linked Eddie to her mother was suddenly and forcefully cut. The shadow that hung over her had been banished to wherever the fuck her mom had gone in death. Far far away.
On rougher nights, she still feels guilty that her freedom tasted so sweet.
Her feelings about her mother are still ambivalent despite the years of circular introspection. Sonia was cloying—saccharine sweet one minute, then bawling that Eddie didn’t love her the next. Eddie knows that the person she’s become is despite her mother’s influence, knows that everything she enjoys are things her mother hated. It took years to conceptualize that Sonia was manipulating her. Her intro psych professor, for a class Eddie took as a senior desperate for a social science credit, taught Eddie the term “emotional abuse”, which then took her down many late-night Google dives.
But some shameful, childish part of Eddie still loves her mother, even to this day. She still wants the torrential wind of her love pointed at her like a particularly worried factory fan. Her mother made her a glass house of love that well and truly broke when she died. Eddie still catches herself looking for the same support structures: brittle, jagged love that cuts deeper and deeper the more enmeshed she gets.
On the roof, she took a few hits, simmering on how cracked the love she had for her mother had become from all the stones they both threw. The smoke dissipated into the sticky air like the quiet murmuring of the people below.
In the present, Bev is snoring loudly on top of Ben, who is letting out the occasional sleepy snort. The joint in her hand has gone out. The television is stuck on Netflix’s Are you still there? screen over their marathon of Hell’s Kitchen. Eddie, whose mother never let her have a sleepover as a child, wants to curl up with Bev and Ben for the rest of the night on the couch. The thought of going back to her own bed is lonely.
It’s rare that Eddie is impulsive. Every single night she brushes her teeth, and flosses. She does her diligent skincare routine—a seven-step tried and true perfected method. She’s negotiated her brain down to only needing to do her tasks each two times. Tonight, the people her dumb fucking brain would normally threaten are in her arms. Sure, she’ll need to lean real close to make sure they’re still breathing, later, but having them in her sight helps ease her anxiety—enough that she’s able to lay her head on Bev’s thigh, close her eyes, and breathe.
(̅_̅_̅_̅(̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅̅_̅()ڪے
The next few weeks are grueling. Foot-traffic at the restaurant has increased with the July 4th holiday on the horizon. Of course, they’re short staffed. So, Eddie finds herself serving the most annoyingly poor tippers for brunch and the sleeziest married men coming in for happy hour drinks. Eddie feels like her feet have been ground down into nubs. She’s also rapidly approaching the anniversary of when her mom took her to their local Rabbi at 14 for the stolen copy of the Victoria’s Secret catalogue she kept hidden under her bed. Neither her nor the Rabbi were the same after that mortifying conversation. She was sent to Jewish Day Camp as further punishment.
The overlap of these two events causes Eddie’s entire body to say, “fuck you.” Her joints are burning. Her muscles are aching. Walking causes her bones to creak like a screen door in a hurricane. At baseline, Eddie is impatient and aggressive. But on days when her body pain has been cranked up to eleven? She’s only seeing in shades of red.
Luckily, she had planned ahead and took today off four months in advance. (An intricate detail in her third quarter to-do list). Her only plans for the day are to smoke weed and hide under her comforter with Double-Stuffed Oreos. She even wrote it down in her planner. Maybe she’ll finally finish The Body Keeps the Score. Or she’ll magically enjoy content created by the Bravo network and have her pain numbed by the most mindless programing her dumb gay friends enjoy so much.
Lighting one of the joints she keeps special in an oversized weekly pill container eases the tension in her shoulders—the anticipation of diminished pain already diminishes her pain. She’d been extra careful to crack open her window for optimal air flow. On her bedside table next to her is a clean ashtray and a tarnished zippo lighter. She’s triple checked that the front door is locked and deadbolted. She had even changed the battery in her smoke detector. Now, she can put the joint between her lips, flick the zippo to flame and inhale.
It’s ten minutes after she zeroed her pre-rolled joint that her hands seem to twitch with inaction. So, she thinks, what better time than to get ahead on next month’s spending. Based on her numbers, if she only orders out once this month, and her body decides to work on the days where she must wait tables, she’ll be in the green—just barely. It’s only been the past few months in which Eddie has been able to have any money left to save.
Just as she’s about to reward herself with a twenty-six-minute NASA nap before her next joint, her email dings angrily.
From: [email protected]
Subj: New Statement in yourPerthsUMedicine
Eddie doesn’t need to read the body of the email. She knows she’s being charged for her bloodwork, the 5-minute physical and probably the nurse’s fucking Starbucks iced coffee. She deletes her take-out allotment for next month and the following. She shortens her weekly grocery list and unsubscribes from Netflix—their prices went up anyway. She writes a note to herself in her planner to Pick up another shift you broke bitch. She’ll read the dumb email about another outrageous medical bill tomorrow.
Tonight? She’s getting fucking stoned.
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Eddie Marie Kaspbrak is a woman of absolute certainty.
For instance, she knows meat left out to thaw for over 4 hours should immediately be thrown in the garbage. She knows her mom lied about her childhood asthma but did not lie about her debilitating nut allergy. And she knows the stress she’s presently putting her body under will have long-term consequences. Consequences like fucking hypertension or tendonitis if she continues to overwork herself. So, with this information firmly seeped in the folds of her brain like acid, she’s quite certain when she groans, “I fucking hate my job.”
Beverly pats her sympathetically from across their tiny living room. The hand that she’s raising to mime the patting motion has a lit blunt slowly smoking and clouding Eddie’s direct view of his friend’s stoned expression. She’s wearing pajamas—the silk ones she wears when she’s got the day off. Her face is bare. The freckles down her pale arm glow and bleed into twin inky floral arrangements on her forearms. The glare of the bodega’s fluorescents from across the street bleeding in through their blinds illuminate the curls of smoke drooling from Bev’s mouth.
Eddie takes a large chug from her PBR and flips Bev off with her other hand. Bev cackles.
“You and everyone else, Eds.” She inhales thoughtfully—the red cherry rivaling the red of her hair. “You think I wanna work at Starbuck’s forever? Fuck no. I’m only in that shithole for the choice health insurance until I can find someone who’ll hire a washed-up BFA.” She flops over, holding the blunt far above her head to keep it safe while she lounges.
“I work so fucking hard for some measly tips.” Eddie groans. “And I don’t even get insurance! Despite my barely functioning body being the only reason that I can even DO this job. I can’t do this shit forever, you know?” Eddie mumbles. There’s a huge stain on her shirt from when a man accidentally spilled his drink on her then proceeded to ask her out. When she said no, he poured another adjacent drink on her. She doesn’t want to go back to the laundromat for a third time this week, but she doesn’t have the money in her budget to support new clothes every time a man pours a drink on her. What she does have, though, is a huge can filled with quarters she can use to go to the laundromat as much as she needs.
Most evenings are spent like this: Bev puffing smoke out the window until well-after the sun has gone down while Eddie rants and curses between PBRs. It doesn’t do much to change either of their material circumstances but they both appreciate the release of tension only possible via bitching.
Now though, Eddie takes the joint from Bev’s outstretched hand.
“It’s just fucked!” Eddie says in exasperation. She ashes the joint before she starts waving her arms in cross-faded emotion. “I got a degree for a job, but I can’t get a job until I have experience and I can’t work for experience because I have loans and bills to pay.”
Bev points at her seriously. “That’s how they get you, dude.”
Bev becomes the caricature of a haughty college dean making at least six figures, “‘Pay us money you don’t have for a piece of paper to qualify for a job you can’t get until you pay us back.’” She drops the act with a huff. “I should have gone to community college. NYU was not worth the debt. And enemies.”
The latter bit of Bev’s statement is ominous but relatable.
“I agree,” Eddie says, taking another hit. This time she’s thoughtful. Her student loans and rent take the lion’s share of her budget. The sliver between them on the pie chart is labeled ‘sustenance’ because she’s had too many Soylents to feel comfortable calling it ‘food’ anymore. In her own defense, they’re extremely efficient and require neither prep nor clean-up.
But the point still stands! Her labor goes towards the “necessary” debt that she’s accumulated to get her job, to pay for a place to live which she can’t fully enjoy because she’s usually working. So, she works to pay off this possibly increasing debt and to pay her landlord to not throw her out on the streets so she can work to pay for her home which will actually never be her home—
“We just gotta enjoy life while we can,” Bev says softly.
This is enough to briefly break Eddie’s mental loop. Bev’s implied point, ‘we can’t worry about what we can’t control’ is clear to Eddie. Or at least, her sluggish brain chugs, that’s what it feels like. Deep in the core of her, Eddie worries that she’s built to worry. Like all her brain is good for is churning itself in figure eights. Her body molded to be always strung tight and high.
One of her biggest worries is that her excessive worrying leaves her no room to feel love. As if, once her body is steeped in panic; panic is all she’ll feel. So what? Eddie tries deepening her breathing. So, what if I’ll always be panicked. That’s a pretty fucking absolute statement. She easily identifies her All-or-Nothing thoughts. Her therapist, through their out-of-pocket bi-monthly visits, has helped her learn how to call out the fallacies in her OCD over the years. It’s tedious to break it down as granularly as she’d like but the weed helps her patience. As if she has all the time in the world to calm down rather than just the minute and a half since Bev last spoke.
“You’re right,” Eddie agrees again, voice smokey and scratchy. The weight on her chest still feels immovable. One aspect of her anxiety that she’s still working on, is actually feeling her way through it. Eddie is good at thinking her way through emotions—pointing them out but burying the feeling deep in her psyche.
“I mean like…” Eddie starts, avoiding Bev’s eyes. “Will we ever be okay? Like, we’re working our lives away and you know the state of the global climate! Like, like, like, what if we die in a climate catastrophe before we can quit our dumb fucking jobs! What if I die alone with only my student debt as my legacy?!” She’s breathing heavily now—their cracked ceiling is tunneling—going black and fuzzy around the edges.
“It’s okay,” Bev’s low voice is closer to her ear than she remembers, and it ruffles something in Eddie like she’s rubbing velvet against the grain. Eddie jumps.
“It’s just fucking overwhelming! My mom got to live a whole life AND dictate my life. Now that I can do what I want, whatever the fuck that is, I have to live with minute-by-minute anxiety about existing.” Eddie knows she’s ranting; knows she’s spiraling down and down and down. Like a ball dropped down an infinite staircase. She knows this isn’t fair to Bev, who just wanted to have a normal, chill night and now has to deal with Eddie’s hyperventilating ass.
“You’re fucking right, Eds!” Bev says—not angry or exasperated at Eddie but in agreement. Eddie finally chances a look at her friend. Bev is pensive. Her hair is plopped on top of her head in a bun like a red meatball. She’s wearing one of Ben’s old college shirts—overstretched around the neck and faded from years of washes. Even in mostly-darkness Eddie can see the glow of Bev’s pale face, the thoughtfulness in her wide, green eyes.
“I think about this shit every day,” Bev reassures her. “I also know I can’t do anything about it.” At this, Bev shrugs. It’s not an uncaring shrug, rather, a lost shrug. An I don’t know what the fuck to do shrug.
“Party while you still can,” Bev laughs heartily at her own pithy phrase. Hard enough that Eddie finds herself cracking a smile that breaks open her mood. Another reason why Eddie is now forever in weed’s debt is that it’s made her brain less sticky. Now, her thoughts are flowing like a river instead of a dried-out lake. Her mental agility is attuned to her good vibes. Eddie decides to tell her therapist she’s reached a drug-induced breakthrough. But she’s going to swear her therapist to secrecy. Her doctor can never know.
Their night ends with Bev asleep—seemingly gotten out of brushing her teeth for the evening. Eddie drags herself back to consciousness. She keeps her eyes closed through her whole thrice-repeated bedtime routine and doesn’t remember falling asleep.
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Most nights at the restaurant feel like she’s at a reverse petting zoo. Where shit covered pigs try to pet her with their muddied hooves, even if she didn’t ask to be an attraction, and absolutely did not consent to being petted.
Most men are subtle, eyeing her up and down, calling her “sweetheart.” Her whole body cringes every time a man takes in her appearance. Every single night she wishes she had smaller tits. Not even the two sports bras she layers under her uniform top dissuade the disgusting pigs. Usually, she manages to leave work with a nauseating feeling and no more. But nights where men get... loud, and bold, she wants to fucking die. Or kill them. She knows Bev would help her cover it up if need be.
She wishes she worked behind the bar. At least she’d have a barrier between her and the animals. Plus, the bartenders, Vivian and Violet, have a reputation for taking absolutely no shit. Both with collections of intimidating blackwork tattoos and blunt black bangs—men that catch their piercing gazes end up wandering over to a table. Far away from the eyeline of the bar. She vows to ask her manager for bar training if only so she can get some tips for keeping men away from Viv and Vi.
Open Mic nights are usually better than most: the crowd has bread to eat and a circus to watch, like children captivated by a tablet their parents put in front of them to keep them from screaming. She also gets the opportunity to see an up and coming “comedian” bomb before they inevitably try to hit on her. Eddie doesn’t think she’s laughed at any of the jokes tonight so far.
Until she looks up between taking orders and sees the next performer’s long legs and knobby knees take a large step onto the stage.
“Fucking hell,” Eddie mumbles to herself sharply.
“Hey y’all!” Richie starts, looking a little nervous and sweaty at the temples. The microphone looks small where her fingers are wrapped around it. She’s wearing a pair of fucking atrocious cargo shorts with a well-worn leather belt wrapped around her lithe hips. Her top is only marginally better—a soft looking bra top with a garish paisley green button-up thrown haphazardly over it. Eddie briefly wonders if she got dressed in the dark. Or lost a bet.
“So,” Richie says conversationally. “I’m a lesbian.
A couple sitting at the table closest to the stage whoops and hollers. If Eddie were rude enough to heckle, she would have pointed to the shorts and shouted, “WE KNOW.” The rest of the room is unsure of how to react, whether it’s okay to laugh.
“To other lesbians, I tend to introduce myself as Your Bony Service Top.”
This one gets a few laughs and an appraising glance from a table of women with mullets. Richie brushes her curly bangs out of her face and Eddie can now see her self-deprecating grin a little more clearly. It’s difficult to keep her eyes on Richie as she tries to travel between tables quickly and discreetly with trays of food and drinks. For the first time at Open Mic Night, Eddie wishes she were one of the patrons dressed up for a night out; sitting in a chair looking up at Richie instead of dodging obstacles and wandering hands.
“I call my strap The Grim Reaper because, while it is attached to a fucking skeleton, you WILL experience a little death.” She winks charmingly. More laughter this time. Even Eddie finds herself grinning despite armfuls of greasy bar food burning into her skin.
“All of my friends that matter know I’m gay,” Richie says, ruffling the messy curls piled on top of her head. She got her hair done since Eddie last saw her—her curls are still shaggy and spiraling out of her head like UV rays from the sun but it’s fresher on the sides. Handsome, even.
“But sometimes, when new people come into the fold, particularly men, I have to re-explain lesbianism to them like I’m teaching kindergartners not to bite each other. No, you can’t ‘turn me.’ Especially when the very idea of being near you intimately turns my stomach.”
Laughter.
“No, I won’t make-out with your girlfriend in front of you. But I might, behind your back, if she’s into it.”
Richie winks at the couple in front. The man, slight and fair haired, flips her off to her raucous laughter.
“And lastly, yes, scissoring is real and it’s as incredible as it sounds.” Richie’s voice takes on a dreamy edge, gazing into the distance as if she’s remembering past lovers. The crowd is laughing with more confidence.
“The thing is, I don’t hate dicks. Dicks can fucking rule if they’re attached to the right person. But when that person is a man? I’m like… 0 out of 10, would not ride ever.”
The mulleted women are cheering and raising their glasses. Richie salutes them. Eddie honest to god giggles as she’s filling up some grapefruit seltzer bullshit. She looks around to make sure no one saw. Richie keeps talking like this never happened.
“If I ever had a Comedy Central special where I could scream about being gay for 30 minutes, I’d do a pageant and crown myself Miss Andry.”
Content that no one saw her laugh, Eddie makes her way to table four. Richie takes a sip of some mysterious dark booze—tilting her head back as she swallows obscenely. The mulleted women catcall. Richie fucking winks at them as she licks her lips. Jesus fucking Christ.
Someone bumps into Eddie from her left—completely opposite where she’s facing the stage with an armful of drinks. Three out of four sticky glasses of grapefruit cocktails end up on Eddie’s front like the spray of a sudden fatal neck wound. The pointy woman who gets showered in the fourth hisses about complaining to her manager.
“Dyke!” comes a call from deep within the crowd. This stops the argument Eddie would have absolutely gotten fired for had it continued. Tables of people are looking around to find the source of the slur. Eddie feels her face heat up in anger—brings her hands into fists when she sees other men laughing along with the rude shout. Richie, despite the small frown on her face, seems to take the heckling in stride.
“Dude,” she says slowly, cradling the mic between her hands. “Stop stealing my goddamn material!”
This gets a relieved laugh from the crowd.
“You see,” she continues even though the shouting man has now stood up, appearing as if he’s going to get closer. Eddie tenses and scans the crowd for their bouncer. The woman she spilled a drink on is still ranting about speaking to her manager and Eddie is forced to tell her that her drinks are on the house. A small sacrifice for continued employment.
“I don’t like making my entire act about being a dyke because like, there’s so much more to my winning personality,” Richie explains. “But I enjoy doing it because 1. It helps me get laid and 2. It lets me know who the fuck to avoid when I get to the bar after.”
The bouncer, a shrill guy with a barrel chest named Jeff, finally approaches the man. They’re talking in hushed tones, but Eddie can easily imagine what the heckler is whispering based on his drunken gesticulation in Richie’s direction.
Richie is less smirking and more twisting her mouth warily. “That dude—” she gestures at the man who is now near-red in the face from shouting. “—doesn’t realize that him calling me a dyke is going to get me so much ass tonight.” The man appears to be shouting obscenities while Jeff is holding him back with broad biceps. The cheering of the crowd drowns out whatever it is he’s saying with near spiteful exuberance.
Eddie’s face hurts from laughing.
Richie is doing exaggerated bows—bending evenly at the waist as a few women approach from the crowd. Before Eddie needs to run back to the bar to pick up more drink orders, she sees a black lacy thing being tossed up on stage. Richie holds up the huge bra over her head and speaks clearly into the microphone, “I dedicate this to all of your mothers!”
(̅_̅_̅_̅(̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅̅_̅()ڪے
It’s later, after Eddie has started her break to rest her aching feet on a barstool, that Richie approaches. It’s clear she’s tipsy from the variety of fancy cocktails women have bought for her throughout the night. Eddie isn’t, like, invested. She just has eyes. Richie rests her arm across the bartop, right into a particularly wet spot. While Eddie might have recoiled, because backwash drink condensation ew, Richie doesn’t flinch. She leans into the bar and cocks her hip.
She’s long since shed the obnoxious over-shirt she’d been wearing and is now clad in only her thin bra-top over her goddamn cargo shorts. Her arms are dotted with delicate tattoos and a smattering of dark arm hair. In the dim light, Eddie can clearly see she has, at least, her right nipple pierced.
“Fancy seeing you here.”
Richie’s voice is lower than it had been at the dispensary—as if it’s rumbling and bubbling up from the depths of her. Eddie figures it must be the alcohol or heady confidence after a good show. Richie had been the funniest one at open mic night tonight—Eddie had to give her that much. But Eddie’s tired and her joints are screaming, so all she can muster is a blank stare.
“You, uh, like the show?” Richie asks, burying one large hand into the tuft of curls at the back of her head. From between strands, her gold rings shine like dim stars. Despite Eddie’s present high pain-level making it difficult to focus, she can tell Richie is being earnest—gone is the bravado and what remains is something a little softer.
Eddie says, “I laughed.”
Richie straightens abruptly and giggles. “Why does that feel like high praise from you?”
“Because it fucking is.” Eddie says shortly. “Every single open mic night I serve shitty apps to shitty comedians who can’t make me smile who then try to hit on me after their sets. You, at least, made me laugh.”
Richie’s face does something complicated: it lights up then falls rapidly. “Oh shit. I didn’t know you worked here. Fuck. That’s so rude of me. And tacky. Ugh.” She palms her face heavily. Something in Eddie takes some pity. She appreciates Richie’s genuine apology and apparent respect for service workers.
“It’s fine—I’m on a break.” Eddie says, saving Richie from her own mumbled, “Rich, you fucking idiot.”
Richie slides her hand down her face so that her slightly glazed eyes are visible. “Ah, let’s light up the truck that keeps running you over.” Richie says, now pointing at the sign above the bar proclaiming, The Green Room.
“If you burn down my place of work, I don’t get paid anymore,” Eddie snarks back— stretching her arms high above her head. Fuck, her back hurts.
Richie’s eyes dip slightly. She licks her lips and her face reddens. Maybe she’s drunker than Eddie had initially thought.
“You going to be okay getting home?” Eddie’s voice startles Richie into standing up straighter. Richie points a thumb over her bony shoulder.
“Stan the Man and Patty Mayonnaise are taking me home.”
The same couple from the front table at the show approach—presumably Stan and Patty. Stan is laughing at something Patty had said while tucked up under his arm.
“Good.” Eddie nods affirmatively. “You shouldn’t drive under the influence.”
“Are you an undercover DARE officer trying to nab me for drunk driving?” Richie whispers covertly.
“No, dumbass. I bought weed from you like last fucking week.” Eddie rolls her eyes.
The couple is next to Richie now, watching the exchange with curiosity.
“How did that kush treat you, by the way?” Richie asks slyly. Eddie flips her off.
“Fuck you. I made my roommates listen to Over My Head by The Fray like thirty times and apparently started crying. I remember absolutely none of it.”
Richie guffaws again, catching the attention of mullet women who are glaring daggers at Eddie. After a beat, Richie asks, “Did it help the pain?”
Eddie thinks about this briefly. She distantly remembers Bev and Ben singing along with her. None of her joints shouted at her the next morning either. Eddie refuses to admit this to her doctor due to her pride and commitment to her awful Google review but the Kosher Kush did help.
Eddie gets up and stretches again to see if Richie’s eyes will follow the movement. They do and Stan slaps her on the back. Richie jumps and fixes her glasses.
“I plead the fifth,” Eddie says as she begins walking back towards the kitchen for last minute orders. As she walks away, she thinks she hears Richie’s voice, but it easily could have been anyone at the bar, saying, “I think I’m in love.”
(̅_̅_̅_̅(̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅̅_̅()ڪے
Eddie often thinks about how different her life would have been if she caved into her mom’s wishes. She’d probably be married to a conservative man named Peter Chasten. He’d never go down on her and he would last two pumps into fully-clothed missionary before falling asleep. She wouldn’t find him sexually appealing at all but would have thought that was normal. Their house would be in the suburbs, somewhere devastatingly white with no public transit. He’d say goodbye to her in the morning with a chaste kiss on the cheek. He would take the only car, leaving her alone in a cavernous McMansion while he does finance or what the fuck ever.
Eddie would cook dinner he’d be happy with about 50% of the time—so it would be a toss-up if her evening would be pleasant or horrible. She would see her mom every weekend, where she’d be hounded about medication and aging and breast exams and “When am I going to be a grandmother, Edith?” Eddie hates the guilty feeling twisting in her chest when she thinks this, but she’s grateful her mother died before she could get her way.
Eddie is especially grateful that she can get home at butt-fuck AM to find Bev and Ben still up, watching some new true crime series they’ve been binging, and smoking weed. They greet her with quiet welcomes and pass her a beautifully rolled joint. Eddie inhales and says, “So, Richie was at open mic night.”
Bev pauses the show—immediately turning to Eddie with a thoughtful expression. “The hot girl from the dispensary?”
Maybe it’s the late hour or the fact that, after tonight, Eddie has realized that Bev is right, but Eddie doesn’t correct her. Just nods. Bev and Ben exchange a look before turning back to her in tandem
Eddie ignores their piercing twin gazes and instead frowns at the cherry of the joint. “She was wearing cargo shorts.”
Bev nods sympathetically. “So, she’s definitely gay.”
While the weed is relaxing, it doesn’t cause the swell of warmth for which Bev’s soothing support is responsible.
“She has a nipple pierced,” is all Eddie’s work-weary weed-stoned brain can supply. Ben clicks his tongue in a motherly way, as if to say, ‘my poor suffering baby.’
Ben, with his sweet baby face asks, “Are you going to make a move?” at the same time that Bev asks, “Right or left?”
Eddie freezes. There’s a huge difference between knowing she’s gay and actually navigating a relationship. Yes, she’s afraid. But moreso because she’s been avoiding the whole question of dating since she came out a few years ago. It took her so long after her mom died to be comfortable thinking of herself as gay just in her own head.
Being a lesbian feels more like rote knowledge to Eddie now, rather than something in which she’s emotionally connected. It’s like all of the fear and anxiety she felt as a teenager trying to hide from her mother blocked up any positive feelings she might have about being both out and proud. It’s something she feels guilty about, especially around Bev—who’s been (loudly) bisexual for as long as Eddie has known her. Probably longer.
In a lot of ways, Eddie is jealous of Bev. Of her confidence and her ability to stand tall in the face of derision. Eddie remembers the overwhelming anxiety she felt around any girl when she first realized she wasn’t straight. She’d force herself to date boys the second someone was interested in her. Imagining kissing them felt like homework. Her dreams were filled with soft curves, and she’d wake up in the morning feeling sweaty.
If Eddie let herself get close to another girl, would she get a crush on her? Ruin their friendship? Out herself to her mom and face her scorn? Despite her healthy appearance, Eddie felt, on the inside, like she was sick. And her disease—this perversion, would spread if she let it. Until her mom died. And Eddie, stoned out of her mind on the roof of her childhood home, had said out loud: “I’m a fucking dyke.”
No one had answered her, of course. And she sort-of whispered it because her house had been full of people sitting shiva but, still. She had said it.
After her mother’s death and shortly into Eddie’s subsequent Gay Sexual Renaissance (having casual relationships with a handful of women), Eddie realized she had developed A Type. The woman would usually be bossy—not afraid to keep Eddie in line. The sexual chemistry would be incredible because sometimes? Eddie just wanted someone to tell her what to do. Despite how angry that makes her if someone else assumed she wanted it. Maybe it was the easier option, to not engage with her own sexuality at all.
But the relationships were volatile, sometimes bordering on unsafe. Eddie would feel isolated and crowded. She’d push herself away and Her Type would fret until Eddie came crawling back. Because what is love if not mutual worry?
Richie feels different. Loud, boisterous and bright. She looks at Eddie as if she’s a good person and not just a sentient mass of anxiety. Eddie feels that she is breaking a pattern with Richie. Like Richie wouldn’t use guilt as a tactic to trap Eddie in a relationship. Like Eddie could actually have a chance to unclench her jaw. But the thought is too good to be true. Where Richie is meant to laugh, Eddie is meant to worry.
“I don’t know?” Eddie says to Ben in the present. Then says, “Right,” to Bev.
Bev cheers while Ben frowns.
He says, “You should, if you want.”
Bev says, “We have to find out if she has her left tit pierced too.”
Does she want to? Eddie has always had a hard time trusting her gut. Because usually, that was twisted into anxious knots and what if she was trusting her anxiety and not her gut? Or what if her gut was wrong? Absolute certainty requires research. Hours or days of Googling. She’s struck now, stoned on this weed a hot girl she wants to kiss sold her, to Google, “should I make a gay move on Richie?” Which, too specific. But Eddie has a hard time trusting herself without being absolutely certain.
Her friends are looking at her with red eyes and the most stoned smiles she’s ever seen. They’re such beautiful dumbasses.
“Well,” Eddie finally says, “we are almost out of weed, somehow.”
Bev immediately shoots up. “Take me on nipple patrol!”
Eddie laughs. “Please don’t stare at her tits the whole time.”
“I’m not trying to move in on your lady! I have mine own!” She loudly kisses Ben’s cheek.
“I’ll come, too,” Ben says supportively. “If only to make sure my girlfriend doesn’t steal yours.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Eddie mumbles.
“Not yet~” Bev sings.
(̅_̅_̅_̅(̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅̅_̅()ڪے
The first sign of Eddie’s budding lesbianism, that she remembers at least, was when her fourth-grade best friend told her she didn’t want to be friends anymore. It was an overcast day—recess was moved inside under the threat of a thunderstorm. It was during this indoor recess that Eddie was cornered. Kristen, her neighbor and best friend since she was five, told Eddie she found a new best friend named Tara. Tara had at least ten butterfly clips shoved into her hair. The smug smile on her face still makes Eddie angry as an adult.
It took about fifteen years for Eddie herself to realize that it was her first (and worst) breakup. Even after she secretly started dating boys at age 13 against her mother’s wishes, no other breakup had gutted her so truly. This should have awoken her sooner to the fact that she could not date men.
It’s not that she hates men. But she was raised to be both extremely suspicious of and dependent on them. As a child this was massively confusing on many levels. She was never allowed to date as a teenager but the moment she hit twenty, her mother introduced her to so many Nice Jewish Boys that might have given Eddie a literal medical allergic reaction to men. Not that Eddie was even particularly interested in men to begin with—a fact that she desperately hid from her mother along with the hives going out with these men caused.
Even when Eddie was a young child, Sonia Kaspbrack was pulling mental strings to get her married but be extremely unhappy about it. Sonia frequently oscillated between, “Your father never listened to me and now look at him—dead!” and “Since your father died, I’ve been such a mess! I can’t believe he left me.” At the latter, Eddie never once tried to explain that dying is not the same as dumping because her mother was incredibly obstinate. At the former, Eddie simply just did as her mother said. To avoid dying.
So what if Eddie frequently had debilitating panic attacks as an eight-year old child because she thought disobeying her mother was akin to dying. That didn’t make her totally fucked-up. Because she was a child and didn’t know any better. No—what makes her truly and utterly fucked-up is how she still has those same panic attacks as a grown-ass woman. How she’ll need to pull over at least once a week when she feels one rising between shallow breaths. Sometimes, if she’s feeling particularly vulnerable, all it takes is Breaking a Rule.
Not washing her hands before dinner or wearing her day clothes in bed or speaking too loudly indoors. Eddie’s skin would erupt in goosebumps—expecting a forceful punishment from a dead woman. It’s these occasions when her counting is the worst. Her fingers begin reaching out for unseen blemishes on her skin to pick until they bleed. She begins looking forward to sleeping and working as releases from the excruciating circles her mind would be spinning.
When she unravels all of this to her therapist, she feels both relieved and psychically damaged. Because her therapist, a round faced woman named Bri, was nodding supportively—as if Eddie just put a lost piece into a particularly challenging puzzle. But Eddie herself felt like she just tripped a landmine in her own brain.
Is she doomed to be controlled by the memory of her mother? This is the question that truly keeps her up all night. After she’s completed her rituals she stares at her water-stained ceiling—her anxious gut tugging her down a well-worn downward spiral.
Out of everything, Eddie is most afraid of being alone. The devil works hard but Eddie’s mother worked harder to keep her isolated from her friends since she was young. Moments trapped in her mother’s company, or worse, alone in her room, left Eddie with a strong need for connection. For someone to see her, not as a projected doll to protect but as a person with wants and needs.
Eddie flips over, burying her face into her pillow. The shadows against her wall feel less oppressive now that she’s been able to pinpoint why.
(̅_̅_̅_̅(̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅_̅̅_̅()ڪے
“So, I found Richie on Instagram.” Bev says casually. She’s’ twirling a wet lock of her red hair absently, as if this isn’t monumental news to Eddie’s delicate psyche
“What the fuck, how?” Eddie knocks over the seltzer she had precariously balanced on the arm of the sofa.
Bev rolls her eyes.
“This is your fault!” Eddie accuses—dabbing the stain with hastily collected paper towels.
“It’s not that hard.” Bev says. “All I did was scroll Dr. Nugz insta page. Checked out a few tagged pics and boom. There she is—” Bev shoves her phone in Eddie’s face. On the screen is Richie—lit cigarette smoldering between her lips. One hand is shoved in her long ringlet curls and the other is flipping off the cameraperson with a black polished nail. The bright flash reflects off her glasses and the swirls of smoke—ethereal smog leaving her body a lanky blur in a leather jacket.
Eddie scrolls down on Bev’s phone—careful not to double tap the photo itself.
Richie (RichBich420): Fannks 4 th pics
m’lad @BillyDD 💀👀
Eddie keeps scrolling. Passing selfies, front facing camera comedy bits and a surprising number of professional photoshoots. In every single one of Richie’s selfies, she’s wearing a different goofy expression—as if to say, “look at how hot I am while I’m also being funny. Also fuck you! What the fuck are you looking at?” It’s an image that suits the Richie see saw on stage—raunchy and chain clad. Taking homophobes on in cargo shorts and winning.
When Eddie reaches a softly lit photo of Richie’s back, covered in beautiful blackwork florals, modeling for a small-queer owned leather harness business, she throws Bev’s phone back at her.
“Did you see her follower count?” Bev asks, fluffed brow raised.
Eddie baulks. “No, why?”
“No reason.”
(Later, under the protection of her comforter, Eddie pulls up Richie’s Instagram on her phone. With twenty-thousand followers, she surely won’t notice @EddieKasp among them).