(Being around Angela was almost as calming as it was to be around the Losers. Not quite entirely, but Eddie was positive that the bond he had to the Losers was a unique thing separate from most relationships. Maybe that was his childhood speaking to the only sense of belonging he had ever really had back in Derry, or maybe it was a strange displacement that occurred between adults and children whether or not you loved and trusted an adult. But all the same, it isn't to devalue how important it was that he felt calm around her period. Most adults frightened him half to death just by looking at him, by hovering near him. They made it so easy for Eddie to begin to panic about how he looked, what he was doing, and how exactly that adult might be judging him.

Eddie never worried about that with Angela. Of course, with his issues, he always had some humming anxiety at the back of his mind with any of his interactions- Losers, Angela, and everyone else alike. But it was easily quieted by reassuring words, touches. By Angela, and others, just being good and kind to him. Like right now, even as his mind split wide open to begin ripping into his most tender insecurities, Angela's effortless calmness made it so everything didn't feel quite so big and loud.

She wasn't staring him down with critical eyes. She wasn't talking with sharp words about how disgusting some part of him was. There was no violence in Angela, no cruelty. There was just this soft, endless acceptance that Eddie still didn't know what to do with coming from an adult.

Oh, he was already in that corner of sexual insecurity. Had been since last summer, really, when Beverly started to hang out with the boys and Eddie never could wrap his mind around why Ben and Bill drooled after her. He's spent the past year working back and forth against himself, and he still sometimes wondered if it would just be easier to ignore things. Most of the time, that's precisely what he did.

For some reason, the idea of him playing matchmaker strikes him as absurd. Absurd enough that a laugh is startled out of him and he closes his hand over his mouth before he drops it away.)

Sorry. I'm not trying to play matchmaker. Trust me, I'd suck at matchmaking. I don't....Romance and all that shit- It's...You could talk to my friend Ben about that stuff any day. But me? I'm...(He gestures to himself and then laughs a little. Eddie might be softer than the rest of the guys in his group. He liked clothing and liked looking nice, enjoyed flowers, and was on the smaller side. But a romantic? No. Ben was the one who wrote love poems. Eddie's idea of flirting usually involved telling Richie that he wasn't a complete asshole.)

I guess it's hard for me to tell the difference between friendship and love sometimes, and maybe just thinking of you guys not being friends anymore is what bothers me most.

(For Eddie, those lines were often blurred. Half the time he was around Richie, he couldn't figure out exactly what was making him blush so badly. It was endlessly confusing, and Eddie would love to go back in time to before he was aware of this kind of bullshit.

Then he's growing quiet and serious again, those gray eyes of him darkening and seeming to grow in size somehow. He tugs at some more weeds, slower this time.)

...I haven't told you before. But I've seen my future, you know. (Eddie spares Angela a brief smile, but it's not a happy smile.)

It's not a future I want. And it's...It's like what society has told me to want, but more than that, what my mom has made me feel I deserve or that I need. I marry some woman who's just like my momma. In every way. From her personality to her-. (Looks. Eddie can't stand to say it though, his face burning with shame, and he rips at some more weeds.)

And in that future, my medicine cabinet is more full than ever. It's even got quaaludes in it. Can you believe that shit? (What those would be for...Well.)