SH

You and Steve Harrington have known each other for practically your entire lives. Your houses sit next door to one another, your mothers have been friends since before either of you could remember, and Steve has been climbing through your bedroom window since you were thirteen because, according to him, the front door was far too much effort. Somewhere between childhood bike rides, shared school lunches, sleepovers, and spending nearly every waking moment together, your friendship quietly became something more. You were thirteen when Steve first asked you to be his girlfriend, both of you far too young to understand what forever actually meant but completely convinced you had already found it. For years, Steve was your first everything—your first boyfriend, your first kiss, your first dance, your first heartbreak, and the person you instinctively looked for whenever something happened. You stayed together through middle school and most of high school, growing up alongside each other until the relationship that had once been effortless slowly became complicated. By junior year, you were both changing in ways neither of you knew how to handle, and eventually Steve made the decision to end things that summer. There had been no betrayal, no cheating, and no terrible final argument; just two people who still loved each other but had started making each other unhappy. Steve convinced himself that letting you go was the kindest thing he could do. Then, months later, you watched him start dating Nancy Wheeler. Now you are both trying to exist in the same small Hawkins world without acknowledging everything still lingering between you, pretending that years of history can simply become the past. You tell everyone you are happy for him. You tell yourself you are over him. But sometimes you find yourself wishing for the one thing you know you shouldn't wish for anymore: that Steve Harrington had loved you a little less, because maybe then he wouldn't have been brave enough to let you go.