What I am posting in just a few short moments here is a future chapter for my Outsiders fanfic, Don't Think Twice, It's All Right. I wrote this mainly as an anniversary (as in, we've been friends for one year now anniversary) present for latch_22, but before that it had been a scene that was taking shape in my head and I wanted to write it anyway before I forgot it completely. The entire thing came out to be twelve pages long, so whenever I do get to this point in the story, it'll be its own individual chapter and not just a part of one. And I think it'll work out better that way, just because of what it is.

I know not a lot of people keep up with my fic, I'm guessing simply because it's a sister fic and I know how royally unappreciated those are, but if you are, you know what's happened thus far and I don't feel I have to detail all of that. But since this is a future chapter, I'll warn you of any potential spoilers here in a moment.

Even if you haven't read The Outsiders or my fanfic, feel free to read this anyway and give me any feedback -- I do appreciate the constructive criticsm, especially with this because I'm sure I'll be editing before I actually get to the point where I want to post it.

So, here is some general info on what you'll be reading, if you decide to do so:

Title: Secret Plan to Make Intarwebz Wifey Love Me Even More. :) (The shortened version is just Secret Plan, which you might recognize.)
Spoilers: I figured I'd do this sort of first in case it would be a huge problem for anybody. There aren't really any, except for references to a canon character death sprinkled throughout, since I've been following the post-book timeline. So if you haven't read the book or my fic, just watch out for that. Umm ... I don't want to say too much without giving away the rest of the story, so I'll just give you a one-word hint: Woodstock.
Characters Included: Steve Randle, and my OFC, Eleanor.
Summary: I don't really know how to summarize this. It's just basically Steve and Eleanor discussing (and, uh ... *cough* doing) drugs, as well as discussing their own lives and their own dilemmas. It's kind of -- or at least it will be -- a pivotal chapter, I think.
Warnings: Mainly drug use and discussion of drug use, as well as some course language.
Disclaimer: I own nothing and no one, except for Eleanor (and Barbara, but she only gets a very brief mention here), and I'm making no profit from this. Any relation or ties to real-life events, people, etc., is purely coincidental. There is a very subtle nod to the Nickelodeon sitcom Drake and Josh in here, but if you don't watch it religiously like I do, you won't catch it.

The chapter itself is under the cut. Obviously I wouldn't stretch your f-list with this.

“We’re almost out of gas.”

“We can’t be. I just filled up.”

“Yeah, you did—two hours ago.”

“Oh, come on,” I giggled stupidly. “We couldn’t have run out that fast.” Frowning, I leaned across my seat and glanced at the gas gauge. He was right. The arrow was teetering dangerously just over the ‘E.’ “That’s odd.”

“What? That you’re wrong?”

“No. I could have sworn …” I looked at it again. “Maybe the ‘E’ means ‘extra fuel’?”

“And then what? ‘F’ would mean ‘flat-out of gas’?”

“In a perfect world.”

He only shook his head. “I’m gonna have to pull off. There ain’t a town around for miles and who knows how long we’d be out here if we did run out.”

“Either way, we’re going to be stuck out here. What are we going to do?”

“Just wait for another car to come along. They might know where a gas station is.” He slowed my van to fifteen miles per hour, and then ten, and finally to a halt at the side of the dirt road. The grass was tall here, wheat green and sharp. Not sharp enough to stick you, but just prickly. The ground lacked moisture, too, and I could tell this area had been deprived of rain. At least there were some late summer wildflowers in bloom; they glowed in the lingering evening sun.

“So?” I prompted. “That’s it? We’re just gonna sit here?”

“Well, driving isn’t an option right now, El. So, yeah. We’re just gonna sit here.”

I sighed and leaned back in my seat, slightly frustrated, but at the same time, mildly relieved, because it would have been my turn to drive soon, anyway, and I didn’t feel like it. “This is boring,” I said, and that was the last time either of us spoke to one another for a whole hour. In that time frame, there were no other cars, which I knew was making Steve anxious, or upset, or maybe both. I was, too, but I didn’t show it. Eventually, though, I needed to get out of the car and stretch—I’d been sitting far too long.

“What are you doing?” Steve demanded when I moved to open the door.

“Just stretching my legs.” I’d forgotten that it took a slight jump down to get out—you couldn’t slide out the way you did a car—and my legs were stiff already, so I stumbled a bit when my feet hit the earth. “I’m okay,” I said quietly, though it was nothing more than an unfriendly reminder—I wasn’t okay. I hadn’t been in three years.

I wandered around for a bit, trying to get the blood circulating in my legs again, and then for a long while I just stood there, leaning back against my painted van with a cigarette between my fingers, and allowed the breeze to toy idly with my hair. I felt very relaxed, and for the first time in years, very much at peace with myself. I liked that feeling. Maybe the world still hadn’t learned anything, but right there, in that moment, everything was all right.

I hadn’t heard him get out, but after a spell, Steve joined me on my side of the van. He had a cigarette, too, only it wasn’t really a cigarette. It looked different.

“What’s that?” I wondered, though I already knew.

He only shrugged, and said, “Nothin’,” and I smiled knowingly to myself—he was afraid to tell me. He still thought he had to protect me. And Soda would have done the same thing. I could have laughed, but I remembered myself and pushed open the sliding door, and sat down with my back to the frame.

“I’m not that naïve, you know,” I told him.

He took a seat across from me. “What?”

“Oh, don’t play dumb. You know ‘what’—”

“Are you talking about this?” He held up his cigarette-that-was-not-really-a-cigarette, looking bemused. I frowned.

“Yes. It’s reefer, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “You wanna try it?”

I hesitated, deeply curious. I didn’t know if I wanted to, and I’d never tried marijuana before, not even with Barbara, unofficial substance queen of Tulsa. “I don’t know,” I said. “What does it do?”

He passed it to me without hesitation. “Find out for yourself.”

This was starting out quite similar to my LSD experience, and I was skeptical. But I was also very intrigued, so before I could convince myself otherwise, I grabbed it from him tentatively and took a long, generous drag off of it, inhaling sharply afterwards … only to dissolve in fits of choking coughs, quite like it was my first cigarette.

“What the”—cough—“how do you”—gag—“What the hell is this stuff?!”

“It’s reefer,” Steve said simply. He had this smirk on his face like I should have known what I was doing. I shook my head furiously, fighting back another wave of coughs, simply for the mere sake of my sanity at this point.

“It’s terrible!”

“No, it’s not. You just gotta get used to it.” He pointed to the joint that was, miraculously, after all of that, still in my hand. “Try it again.” When I didn’t move, he said, “El, just do it.”

I sighed, and tried it for a second time. I coughed more, but not nearly as much. And each time it became easier and easier—Steve was right. So we just sat there for a long time and passed it back and forth until both of us had loosened up considerably. Not that we were tense before, but now everything was just great and terrific, and I felt warm and floaty, the way I used to after my ritual glass of vodka months ago.

My muscles relaxed involuntarily and I leaned back against the door frame, my legs hanging out the side of the van, dragging on the ground as my feet swung lethargically, and I smiled happily. “My head feels funny,” I giggled. “My skin is tingling.”

“Good. That means you’re high.”

Another giggle escaped me. Suddenly, everything was funny. “Well, I like being high, Steve,” I said. And I did. I really, really did. The feelings and the sensations were much less intense than that of LSD, and much more enjoyable. With reefer, I didn’t have to worry about the proverbial “bad trip,” because that didn’t exist in this realm of the drug world. I just felt … good. Simply put. Like everything was right with not only the world around me, but the entire universe.

It wasn’t long before we finished off that joint, and Steve lit another one and we passed it between each other until that was gone, too. We were so high. I always thought it’d be scary to be this far gone, but it wasn’t. Not at all. We were giggling like little kids—Steve must have been used to it, but I couldn’t get over how funny everything was. I don’t know how long that all lasted, but it was long enough for neither of us to notice if any cars had gone by or not. Unfortunately for us, we were too high to care.

After a while the laughter subsided, and everything became real serious. Was that supposed to happen? I didn’t bother to ask.

It was dark now, and the moon was out, and everything was bright and vivid—the flowers, the grass, everything. I had thought they were all glowing before, but now …

“Do I look different?” I wondered, touching my face gingerly. “I feel like I look different. Do I?”

“Not really,” Steve said, and then, “Well—your eyes are glassy. And bloodshot.”

I looked at him wildly. “Is that supposed to happen?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Don’t worry. See? Mine are like that, too.”

“Ohh,” I said curiously, leaning forward for a closer look. “Wow, you’re ri—” I leaned too far and fell out the side of the van with a startled squeak. Steve was laughing too hard to bother asking me if I was all right—I was—and I couldn’t stop giggling. Beneath me, the grass was cool and moist, and I just laid there for the longest time and gazed, crystal-eyed, up at the stars.

“Hey,” I said after a while, my voice light and far off, “light another one.”

“What?”

“Light another joint, please.”

“No. Are you kidding? No. We’re high enough already. We don’t need another one.”

“I said ‘please.’” No answer. “Pretty please with a cherry on top?” I giggled girlishly. “You know you can’t resist my charm.”

“Yeah, I can.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Whatever.”

I sighed and rolled over, and breathed in the scent of the grass and the nighttime. “Fine, then. At least turn on the radio. I could go for some tunes.”

“I can’t. We’re almost out of gas, El. That’s why we’re here.”

“I forgot,” I said by way of apologizing, and giggled again. And then sighed contentedly. “Oh, I do remember one thing, you know. My transistor radio is in the glove compartment. I think it’s still got batteries. Get it out for me, will you?”

“Whatever you say, Transistor Sister.” I giggled again. I was beginning to aggravate myself, but everything was so damn funny. And then my eyes welled up a little, because I was remembering that Soda used to sometimes call me ‘Transistor Sister’—all those times I’d go on and on about music, I think it was his endearing little way of telling me to shut up already. But I tried not to think about that.

I heard Steve messing with my radio, settling on a station with static that fizzled out after a minute, and I heard “Time of the Season” come through. “Oh, leave it there,” I said drowsily. “I like this song.”

“I don’t.”

“Too bad. I do. Don’t change it.”

“What if I want to?”

“I’ll kick your ass if you do,” I laughed. “But lucky for you, I’m too high to argue. Or to do anything but just lay here.”

And that’s what I did. For a little while, at least. I really just wanted to fall asleep there, but a sudden need for food was keeping me from doing so. I wasn’t even hungry. But I thought I’d heard somewhere that smoking marijuana gave you “the munchies.” I guess they weren’t lying.

“Eleanor, I have a question for you,” Steve said after a while.

“What’s that?”

“Have you done drugs before this?”

Startled, I rolled over onto my back. Way to catch me off guard, I thought, feeling like a sore loser. I decided to play dumb. “Excuse me?”

“Have you done drugs before this?” he repeated, slower, as if I’d been incapable of comprehending it the first time.

“No,” I said, a little too quickly, and with a little too much nervous edge to my tone. “What makes you think that?”

“Well, you weren’t as … what’s the word I’m looking for?”

“I don’t know.”

“I just thought you’d be scared to try this—getting high, I mean. I didn’t expect you to like it so much.”

“So you just automatically assume I’ve taken drugs before?” My voice trembled on the word ‘drugs,’ and he chuckled knowingly. “You’re generalizing.”

“And you’re lying.”

“I am not lying!” I exclaimed. Steve glanced down at me and raised an eyebrow à la Two-Bit. I rolled my eyes. “Okay, fine, I’m lying.”

“So you have done drugs before this.”

“Yes,” I said, quite bluntly. “I have.”

“What kind?”

I rolled over onto my stomach again and kept my face close to the grass, rendering anything I happened to say supremely incoherent. “LSD,” I mumbled.

“What? I couldn’t hear—”

“Acid!” I exclaimed, feeling stupid. “I dropped acid with a friend from school. There. I said it. You happy?”

Steve looked at me in disbelief. “Eleanor? You?” He was almost kind of speechless. “I don’t believe that. You, of all people?”

“Why is it such a surprise to you?”

“There’s just no way you could have done acid. I don’t believe it.”

“Well, I did. There’s a first time for everything, isn’t there?”

He looked at me curiously. I had obviously done something he never had, which really was a first, and I’ll admit I felt a bit prideful. “So, what was it like?”

“Steve, I couldn’t explain LSD to you if I were addicted to the stuff. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced, I can tell you that.” I shook my head. It was difficult to recall properly, but I tried to think back to my first experimentation with a real drug—my first experimentation with the Sixties, if you will. My mind blurred and convulsed with all kinds of colors and images—I didn’t think I’d be able to remember it that vividly. “It was absolutely out of this world.”

“Would you try it again?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not.”

I sat up and leaned back against the side of the van, as he laughed at me lightly. “I still can’t believe that,” he said. I saw him light another joint, but he didn’t offer me a hit and I didn’t ask for one. I thought maybe it was just a regular cigarette.

“Oh, come on, you hypocrite.” I smiled playfully. “Like you haven’t done drugs before.” After a pause, I said, “And reefer doesn’t count.”

“Well,” he said, in mock resignation, “you got me there.”

“So you have, too?”

“Sure.” He shrugged like it was no big deal. “Everyone in Nam did.”

“Everyone?” I repeated quietly, thinking of Soda. I couldn’t picture him smoking anything but cigarettes—and even that was limited with him—and there was no way in hell I could see him shooting up heroin, or anything like that.

Steve must have sensed that’s what I was referring to. “Yeah, El,” he replied ruefully. “Everyone.”

I decided I would ask him about that part later. “So?” I demanded. “Now that I’ve undergone my interrogation, I think it’s your turn, my dear.”

“As if I didn’t already know what you’re going to ask.”

“You damn well should. Do I even have to?” He laughed, but did not answer me. “Well? What drugs have you done?”

“Reefer doesn’t count?”

“No, it does not.”

“But it’s a drug.”

“Just answer the question,” I sighed. “And besides,” I added, “Soda told me in one of his letters that he thought you’d gotten involved with some heavy drugs there.”

“Well, he was right, but I wasn’t the only one.”

“What do you mean?”

He took a long, generous drag on what I realized was another joint. He let me have a hit or two, and soon the giggly effect of our high returned, only neither of us were laughing. “He shot up heroin with me a couple of times,” Steve explained. I stared at him in utter disbelief, but he didn’t look at me.

“Are you—Really?”

“I’ve lied to a lot of people, El. But I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“No, I believe you, just—I mean, thank you—but I just for the life of me cannot picture him ever doing drugs. You know?”

“Eleanor, he didn’t ‘do’ drugs. That was me. He only tried it a couple of times.”

“Same difference.” I became slightly irate then, and I was already giving myself a headache. “And what were you doing with heroin over there, anyway? Do you have any idea how dangerous that could have been?”

“We were careful.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Well, don’t go callin’ me a hypocrite, now, because you’re doin’ the same thing. El, do you know how dangerous your LSD could have been? I’ve seen guys try and kill themselves while on that stuff—and that wasn’t even on purpose.”

“What?”

“You remember when you were all high and mighty, thinkin’ you knew everything there was to know about Vietnam?”

“I never thought like that.”

“You bet your ass you did.”

“No. I’m not arrogant like that, Steve.”

“Well, you remember all those things you told me, about how bad the war was, and how unfair, and all that shit?”

“It’s not shit,” I said quietly.

“That’s not what I meant. I know it’s not. But you remember that, right?”

“Sure.”

“Well, now that I’ve been there … it’s a lot worse than that, Eleanor. I’ve seen guys get so fucked up over there … It’s worse than you ever thought it was, that’s for sure.”

“So how does that relate … Are you talking about how drugs are dangerous there?”

“That’s half the reason some of those guys got so screwed up. You’ve seen it at your VA place, right?”

“Not because of drugs. They were all wrong because of bombs and gunshot wounds and things like that.” I paused thoughtfully. “Where are we even going with this? I never did call you a hypocrite.”

He nodded. “Well, I mostly just wanted to tell you about that. About Soda.”

“But you didn’t, really.”

“Yes, I did.”

“No. I mean, you did, but you didn’t give me any details. Not about that, anyway.”

“I didn’t think you’d want to know.”

“He was my brother, Steve.”

He didn’t say anything then, and really said nothing more for a long time after that. I felt so naïve and unaware now for having not known a thing about this—Soda had never hinted at even trying drugs, and I certainly never suspected anything. I wondered about something else.

“Hey, um … I just want to know. Did he ever smoke reefer with you, too?”

Steve nodded and regarded me curiously, like I should have known the answer right off the bat. “Yeah, a bunch of times,” he told me. “More often than he shot up with me, that’s for sure.”

“How often did you guys do that?”

“I don’t know. I did it more than he ever did.” After a pause, he said, quite unabashedly, “I still do.”

I hesitated, suddenly unable to speak. “What?”

“I still do it. Shoot up. In ‘Nam, I did it to escape, and I thought I’d be able to stop when my tour was up, but I guess it’s not that easy. I just … couldn’t shake it.”

Something else I’d been absolutely blind to. I sighed, feeling a little sad about these things. “So, what, then? You’ve kept up at it for over a year now?”

“Yeah.”

Rather bluntly, I demanded, “Are you addicted to it?”

He shrugged, and I could tell he’d tensed up a bit. “I wouldn’t call it that. I guess I’ve got a—what’s that called?”

“Dependence?”

“Yeah. That’s it.”

“Dependence leads to addiction, Steve. I hope you know that.”

“I do.”

“So you should stop.” I was trying to be calm about it. I would’ve flipped out otherwise. Back then, nobody knew—and probably didn’t care about—all of the negative effects that drugs have on you. To us, they were just something to rescue us from the insanity and the mania of the decade. But yet it was still a touchy subject.

“It’s not that easy, Eleanor. I can’t just up and quit. Be nice if I could, but … I just can’t.” And then he told me something that I hadn’t been prepared to hear: “And, the truth is, I kind of like it.”

I played dumb again. “Like what?”

“Smack. I like the feeling it gives me. A lot.”

And so curiosity got the best of me, as per usual. “What is it like?”

“You wanna try it with me sometime?”

“No, thanks. I think I’ve tried enough drugs for one lifetime.” I chuckled nervously. “I just want to know what it’s like.”

“Well.” He sighed, trying to think of a way to explain to me, I suspected. “Let’s put it this way. You know the feeling you get from this stuff?” He meant the reefer. I nodded slowly, and he continued. “It’s better. Not really the same, but better.”

I shuddered. “But don’t you have to … inject it?”

“Or you can smoke it. I didn’t, though. Injection’s faster—gets into your system like that.”

“Sounds like a lot of unnecessary work just to take a drug.”

“Well, how’d you take your LSD?”

I scowled inwardly, wishing he’d quit referring to it possessively, as if I owned it, or as if I was an LSD addict, or something. I wasn’t and he knew it. “Lemonade,” I said. “She—my friend—put this sugar cube item into my lemonade glass, and one in hers, too. That’s how we took it. Ingestion, basically. I’m not aware of any other methods.” And I really didn’t want to talk about my LSD experience anymore. “Why did Soda shoot up with you?”

“Probably for the same reason I always did—to escape.”

“From what?” I was grateful that he was telling me all of this. Steve rarely opened up about his own life or anything, and while I had a feeling this sudden garrulousness was all a result of the reefer, I still appreciated it.

“From the war. You know? And all the death and blood and fighting. We had no other way.”

“You could have … I don’t know. Written to me, or something. You could have done a lot of things, actually. You just didn’t have to do that.”

“Yeah, well …” He changed the subject then. “No cars?”

“I have no idea. I’ve been over here, obviously.”

“El, are you mad?”

“I’m not mad. Not at you, anyway. Just confused.”

“About?”

“A lot of things.” My voice trembled slightly. I wanted to cry. It’d certainly been a while since I had. I wasn’t sure where the sudden temptation came from, but I wanted to cry because I was eighteen years old now and had experienced things that nobody my age should ever have to experience for themselves. And I was considering the unfairness of it all again—Soda and Steve should never have gone to Vietnam. Everything would be just as it was supposed to be if they hadn’t. And they didn’t deserve that, eith—

“El—”

“I’m sorry,” I blurted.

“For what?”

“That you guys had to go to Vietnam. You and Soda, I mean. And everyone who went, or is there. It’s just not fair.”

“It’s nothin’ we can do anything about,” Steve said bitterly. “And you sound like a little kid.”

“I don’t care anymore. I’m tired of trying to sound sophisticated. Sometimes I wonder if throwing some sort of tantrum is the only way to get your point across these days. Nobody seems to listen to you otherwise.”

“Eleanor, I told you before we left that you needed a break.”

“And?”

“You ain’t takin’ a break. You’re just talkin’ and worryin’ like usual.”

“I feel like I’ve spent my entire life worrying. I mean, look at me.” I turned to face him. “I probably have worry lines across my forehead already. Don’t I? I’m too young for that.”

“No, you don’t.” He paused. “Are you crying?”

I turned away quickly. Damn. He and Sodapop were always too good at knowing when I was upset. Not like it hadn’t been blatant enough already. “No,” I lied. “My eyes are just still glassy, that’s all.”

“Bullshit,” he snapped, and I whipped around and glared at him scornfully. When he caught my gaze, he looked slightly apologetic.

“Look, I’m sorry, Steve. I’m sorry I’m human and have to cry in order to heal. I’m sorry I can’t just solve all my problems with a little bit of reefer and a hypodermic needle. Forgive me, really.” I stood in a huff and walked off a ways, away from the van and the road, and the radio, away from everything except the still of the August night. I ran my hands through my hair and sighed deeply. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I hadn’t for months. I should have been recovering now—I should have finally been overcoming my grief—but instead it seemed I was on the brink of insanity, or something not too far from it.

I sat down in the grass and took a deep breath, something that would normally help to calm a person, but apparently I wasn’t that lucky. I exhaled a shuddering sigh and then the tears came, silent but deadly, and this time I didn’t try and fight them off. I was tired of pretending.

Suddenly, I heard Steve’s voice behind me, and it made me jump. “Can’t really tell me you’re not crying now, can you?”

“No. I’ll be okay.”

“You’ll be okay.” He sounded cross, and the tone of his voice suggested he surely wasn’t looking for reassurance.

I turned around, wiping my nose on my hand. “What?”

He only shook his head. “Nothin’.”

“I’m sorry about what I said,” I told him. “I just got a little worked up, that’s all.”

“Truth hurts, I guess. It’s not your fault.”

I shrugged. “I just feel bad. I don’t know what to do. This shouldn’t be happening.”

“What shouldn’t?”

“The war. I mean, we already knew that, but now it’s just gotten to the point where it’s making everybody insane. The only people who don’t have anything better to worry about are you guys—the veterans. And maybe their families, too.” I twisted a lock of my hair up around my index finger in an attempt to distract myself from the fact that I still wanted to burst into tears; I may have needed it. “Everybody else is bored out of their minds of it but it’s still there in the papers every day. It doesn’t go away. It’s like this whole country has become trapped—we can’t escape it.”

“Yeah, and not just the country, now, either.”

“What do you mean?”

“I guess just everyone, in their own way. You and your brothers, because of Soda, and me with the … well, the drugs.”

“And none of it would ever have had to happen if the stupid government could have just …” I sighed, giving up. “I don’t know. I don’t care anymore. I just don’t get it.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I stopped trying to understand a long time ago.”

“I wish I could say the same.”

“I just don’t have the attention span for it,” he joked lightly. “That’s all there is to it.”

“Lucky you,” I remarked quietly, and turned away again. I felt silly. I’d been acting so juvenile. Was I ever going to grow up?

That alone was enough for the tears to return and I wasn’t even sure why I was crying anymore. I thought maybe there was something wrong with me—like I really was reaching insanity. I stood, thinking I’d be more calm if I paced, or something, but it only made me feel jumpy and anxious. You couldn’t tell from the outside, but that’s the way my insides felt. I hoped it was just the effects of the reefer wearing off.

“Eleanor, are you all right?”

I stopped. I had been pacing, but it wasn’t frantic. I’d thought it was. “I … No. I mean. I don’t know. I’m fine.” I forced an awkward little giggle and a smile to match, but it didn’t stop the single tear that escaped my eye and slid down my cheek. “I’m really fine.”

“El, you don’t have to say you’re fine anymore when we both know you ain’t.”

“I am fine. I’m okay.” My voice broke. Another tear. And another. They were coming faster than I could wipe them away.

“You’re not okay. Come here.”

“Steve …”

“No, El … honey, come here.” He reached for my arm and pulled me into a gentle embrace—simply a comforting gesture, that’s all it was. Completely platonic. And though this was very rare for and not exactly like him, I did appreciate it. Sometimes he and Soda did more for me than they were aware of. And I think that did it for me. I really cried, then. I felt so stupid, but I didn’t care anymore. I truly didn’t. I’d tried to hold everything back in order to be strong for myself, and more importantly, for my family, but I just simply couldn’t do it anymore.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, between sobs. It wasn’t nearly that dramatic—when I cried you could easily tell by the way my sniffles sounded, nothing over the top—but I still felt dumb; I must have sounded like such a pretentious bitch.

“It’s okay, El. You’ll be okay.”

“I don’t think I will. I just don’t know … do you think any of us will recover eventually? I mean, completely?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Are you sure?”

“I told you I wouldn’t lie to you, didn’t I?”

“But how can you know?”

“Everything’s gonna be okay, El. We’re gonna be fine.” He continued to hold me, and he rubbed my back gently, and it was all very calming. He’d never really been this affectionate towards me before—maybe more so in a playful sense than an effusive—and while we did care about each other an awful lot, we just never displayed it like this. It still wasn’t romantic, and it never had been, and both of us knew it never would be. I may have mentioned it before, but I always did like it better that way. Besides, my brothers surely would have killed him—even Soda—if he ever tried to make a pass at me. It was always better this way.

My own racing thoughts had calmed me down some now, but the sniffles were still there—I always got congested when I cried. So I guess Steve still thought that I was crying. I think he was trying not to let go of me until he knew I was truly all right. He was still rubbing my back lightly, and briefly I felt his thumb hook under my bra strap—very marginally, but I still felt it. We both knew it was an accident and I could tell he must have been mildly horrified because he tensed up and really wouldn’t let me go. So I pulled away, myself, and grinned playfully.

“Steve Randle, are you feeling me up?”

And who knew he could get so flustered. I thought he’d just laugh it off. “It was an accident, El, I swear.”

I laughed. My eyes hurt from crying. “I know. Don’t worry about it. It could have been a lot worse, you know.”

“You’re blushing.”

“You’re blushing more.”

He smirked. “You okay now?”

I nodded. “I think so. I’ll be fine. I’m sorry about all of that. If I ever, you know, have some weird little meltdown like that again … I won’t get mad if you decide to just walk away. Really.”

“As long as we’re friends, Eleanor, I won’t be doing that. You didn’t walk away when I was goin’ on about the drugs, did you?”

He’d made a good point. “No, I didn’t.”

“And I thought you would. I thought you’d get mad. I mean, you did, but … well, you know what I mean, yeah?”

“Uh-huh.”

Cordially, he slung his arm across my shoulders and we walked back towards my van. I felt better now, and I think Steve did, too. It was the first time in a long while where we’d been real open with each other about our dilemmas, and I think we both appreciated it in our own way. “You know something?” I said slowly. That feeling of sentimentality hadn’t quite tapered off yet. “When you and Soda were in Vietnam, I always thought about what I would do if something happened to both of you. I don’t know what the hell I would have done, to be honest. I think I would have probably died.”

“I’ve heard this one before. What are you getting at this time?”

“Just … I don’t know. I guess I just thought something bad would happen to me if I even lost one of you, and I did, and … well, miraculously, I’m still here.”

“Just curious, but … why do you think that?”

“Why do I think I’m … not dead, basically?”

“Well, yeah.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know why. I guess I just … I don’t know, really.”

There was a shrewd look on his face, and I felt like laughing, suddenly. “I know why.”

“Oh, is that so?”

“’Cause you got me.”

-------

The drug references, by the way, were based purely upon research, and the only firsthand account present was from that of my brother, who has smoked pot before, and who has talked to me about the different effects, and things like that. I personally have not, currently do not, and most probably will not partake in drug use in the future.

Just wanted to make that clear.

Thanks for reading! :)

<3 Sarah