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"That's a double six! Boom!"
Max startled as Lucas slapped his hand down onto the worn fold of the Risk board so hard the plastic army figures jumped, half of them clattering onto their sides like miniature casualties. He threw his arms into the air, chest puffed out, letting loose a high-pitched, screeching victory laugh that echoed off the wood-paneled walls.
"I take North America! It's over, MadMax! You're totally cornered. Admit defeat! Cry for mercy!"
Max rolled her eyes and shook jer head, leaning forward to swipe hair out of her face. She shifted her position to sitting cross-legged on the floor, her back propped against the base of the sofa, letting her head fall back until her red hair spilled over the cushions. Overhead, the late afternoon sun was beginning to slant through the high, narrow windows, casting dusty orange bars across the room. Early summer in Hawkins was blooming into something thick and humid, but inside the basement, the air was light, filled with the incessant sound of rolling dice and Lucas's bright, energetic voice.
"Lucas, it's a board game," she said, her voice cracking with amusement. "And you didn't conquer North America. You took Kamchatka. That's literally just one territory, you giant dork."
"It's the gateway!" Lucas protested, his voice cracking violently on the word gateway. He flushed, rubbing the back of his neck, but immediately covered it up with a goofy, exaggerated flex of his thin arms. "It's called tactical dominance, Max. Ask Dustin. Ask Mike. They know I'm a military mastermind. A tactical genius!"
He leaned over the board, his face just inches from hers, making ridiculous laser sound effects like "Pew! Pew! Kaboom!" as he knocked her tiny red infantrymen off the board with his index finger.
Max sent him a sharp glared that only survived for three seconds before she giggled, reaching out to shove his shoulder playfully. "You are such an idiot."
"An idiot who's winning," he shot back, grinning from ear to ear.
She stared at him, taking in the sight that made her heart warm instantly. Lucas was wearing a striped polo shirt that was just a little too short in the sleeves, revealing thin, bony wrists. He had his knees pulled up near his chest, his baby-faced jaw jutting out in a grin that was eighty percent bravado and twenty percent childish joy. When he laughed, his voice pitched up into that familiar, squeaky register. It was the same voice that had cracked continuously during their D&D sessions all winter, the same voice that had sounded so earnest when he asked her for a dance at Snowball six months ago.
Back then, under the blue crepe paper and fake snow, that voice had made her heart flutter. It still did, honestly. He was her favorite person in Hawkins. Lucas was the one who had fought for her to be in the party when Mike was being difficult. He was the one who checked on her, who spent his last quarters to buy her a soda at the arcade, who looked at her like she was the absolute center of his universe. She adored him.
He scrambled to his feet, pulling a crumpled piece of paper out of a box on the shelves.
"Hey, watch this!" he piped up, his voice squeaking again as he struck a superhero pose. "I wrote down my strategy for Dragon's Lair. If I execute the sword sweep on level four, I'm gonna crush your score by tomorrow... or whenever we play."
Max snorted, leaning her chin on her hand as she looked up at him. "Oh, really?"
"Yeah! I'm talking fifty thousand points! You're gonna be eating my dust!"
"Fifty thousand?" Max snorted again.
"Yeah!"
"In your dreams, Stalker. I'll double that before noon."
"Oh, it is on, then" he declared, dropping back down to his knees beside her. He leaned in close, nudging her knee with his, his eyes wide and full of spark. " Arcade Queen is gonna lose her crown!"
She laughed again, leaning into his shoulder for a second before she shoved him aside. She shrieked, trying to pull her hands when Lucas caught her wrist so he could bring her down with him on the floor. Being with him was easy. It was safe, fun, and filled her up with a lightness she desperately needed.
But as the laughter died down and Lucas turned back to the board to count his armies, a soft, quiet ache settled into Max's chest.
She looked at the side of his face, to the soft curve of his cheeks, the smooth jawline, the way his hands moved over the tiny plastic pieces. She loved this boy. But as she turned fourteen, she couldn't deny the quiet pulling deep inside her.
Their relationship was so sweet, but it was stuck. It had been stuck in the exact same place since December.
They never held hands while walking to school because people would stared, but sometimes they did under the table when they sat next to each other. His hand always a little sweaty, his grip light and cautious. They shared awkward, half-second side-hugs behind the bleachers. Once, behind the Palace Arcade, he had leaned in to kiss her cheek, but he had misjudged the angle, bumped his nose against her jaw, squeaked out a panicked "Sorry!", and bolted inside to buy a Slushie.
It was adorable. It made her smile every time she thought about it.
Yet, as she sat here watching him make a funny face while trying to balance three dice on his nose, Max found herself longing for something... more. Something that felt like a real, big-girl-and-big-boy relationship. She wanted to hold his hand without it feeling like a middle-school secret, but she dislike the stares. She wanted to look at him and feel that breathless, heart-in-your-throat romantic tension she read about in magazines -the kind of kiss that made the world stop, not an accidental bump of the nose followed by a squeak.
"Hey," Lucas said, his voice dropping slightly as he noticed her staring. He let the dice tumble off his nose, catching them in his palms. He reached out, his hand fumbling a bit before catching hers. His palm was warm and gentle. "You good? You're staring at me like I'm a Demogorgon."
"I'm good," Max said softly, her thumb sliding over his knuckles. She gave his hand a sweet, genuine squeeze. "Just thinking."
"About how awesome my Kamchatka move was?" he asked, his eyes lighting up with that goofy, boyish charm again.
Max let out a soft laugh, her gaze softening. "Yeah, Lucas. Exactly that."
She leaned over and gave him a quick, affectionate bump with her shoulder. She loved the boy sitting in front of her with all her heart. She just wondered, with a small, quiet flutter in her chest, when they would finally step across the line into something real.
♡♡♡♡♡
The phone on the kitchen wall rang with a harsh rattle that shattered the quiet morning. Max shot upright in bed, tangling her feet in the sheets and nearly tumbling face-first onto the wooden floorboards. Heart hammering against her ribs, she scrambled out of her room, her bare feet slapping against the cold linoleum as she raced down the hallway.
"I got it! I got it!" she called out automatically, though the house was already empty. Neil had left for work an hour ago, and Billy's car was blissfully absent from the driveway. Only her mom at home with her, maybe somewhere doing laundry.
She snatched the beige receiver off its wall mount just midway through the third ring, pressing it tight against her ear. "Hello?"
"Hey, Maxie-pad!"
The high, familiar squeak blasted through the earpiece, accompanied by the background rustle of packing bags and Erica's muffled shrieks in the distance.
"Don't call me that!" Max leaned her forehead against the cool, painted drywall, a soft, involuntary smile instantly tugging at the corner of her lips. "Lucas. You sound like you're in the middle of a warzone."
"Erica stole my cassette tapes!" Lucas's voice pitched up, cracking loudly on the word tapes. "She literally hid my cassette tapes in her Barbie camper! But- hey, look, we're loading up the car right now. My dad's already honking the horn. I just... I wanted to call before we hit the road."
Max let out a small, amused huff, twisting the yellowed coiled cord around her pointer finger. Yesterday rushed back to her in a warm wave. The two of them had deliberately hidden away in his basement all afternoon, dodging Mike's incessant calls on the Supercom and hiding from Dustin's arcade invitations just so they could have an entire day for themselves. Just the two of them. It had been goofy, chaotic, and entirely sweet. A precious pocket of time carved out before he vanished for half the summer.
"Are you all packed?" she asked, her voice softening.
"Yeah. Well, mostly. If I leave Erica at a rest stop in Ohio, it's going to be a great trip," Lucas said, sounding immensely pleased with himself. He paused, his tone shifting into that gentle, eager edge that always made Max's chest warm. "I'm gonna miss you, Max. Two weeks is... it's a long time."
"It's fourteen days, Stalker. Don't get dramatic," she teased, though her finger tightened around the telephone cord. "Besides, you'll be at a lake house. You're going to be swimming and eating hot dogs while I'm stuck in Hawkins dying of boredom."
"You could always come to the arcade. Crush Dustin's scores for me."
"Oh, I plan on it," Max chuckled softly. "Go on, your dad's gonna leave without you."
"Right! Okay! I'll write to you! Or call if there's a phone!" His voice cracked one last time, high and breathless, full of boyish excitement. "Bye, Max!"
"Bye, Lucas. Have fun."
The line clicked dead, replaced by the flat, droning hum of a dial tone. Max hung up the receiver slowly, staring at the plastic phone for a long moment before letting out a quiet sigh. The silence of the house settled back over her like a heavy blanket.
The first three days of Lucas's vacation bled into one long, continuous blur of sticky June heat and heavy quiet. Without Lucas around to drag her into spontaneous board game marathons and the rest of the party off doing their own summer routine, Max found herself retreating into her own world.
She stayed home.
She spent the long, sweltering mornings sprawled on her bedroom floor, the box fan in the window whirring loudly as it blew lukewarm air across her nose. She flipped through stacks of comic books, listened to the same three cassette tapes until she knew every guitar rift by heart, and stared up at the water stains on her ceiling. Sometimes she watched TV, but only when Neil or Billy wasn't there.
By the fourth afternoon, the quiet inside the house became too loud.
Max grabbed her skateboard from the corner of her room, slammed the front door behind her, and headed out into the neighborhood. The asphalt on Cherry Lane was soft from the summer sun, radiating waves of heat that shimmered against the horizon. The street was completely deserted, lined with cookie-cutter houses and quiet lawns dried yellow by the sun.
She dropped her board onto the pavement with a sharp clack and kicked off.
The rush of wind against her face was an instant relief. Max carved long, smooth S-curves down the middle of the empty street, her red hair flying out behind her like a banner. She pushed off hard, gaining speed, feeling the vibration of the polyurethane wheels rattling right up through the soles of her worn sneakers and into her bones.
She practiced her kickturns at the dead-end cul-de-sac, pushing herself faster and harder until her t-shirt stuck to her back and her lungs burned.
♡♡♡♡♡
The Sixth Day arrived with a thick, suffocating wave of Indiana humidity that settled over Hawkins like a wet wool blanket. By noon, the whir of the box fan in Max's bedroom felt entirely useless, merely blowing warm air across her damp forehead. The quiet walls of her room were starting to feel less like a sanctuary and more like a solitary confinement cell.
Giving up on her book, Max grabbed her bike that Neil bought for her a month ago -after Max kept begging her mom for weeks and after Mom begging him for anothr weeks-. She kicked open the front door, and headed toward the one place in town that offered both air conditioning and distraction: the Palace Arcade. Mom asked her to wait until Billy come home and asked him to drive her there, but Max ignored it as she snorted.
The carpet inside the place was as sticky as ever, glowing under the blue and neon-pink neon lights that flickered to the rhythm of synthesized bleeps and bloops. The moment her sneakers crossed the threshold, she spotted them hunkered around the Dragon's Lair machine: Dustin, Mike, and Will.
"Max!" Dustin bellowed over the arcade's ambient noise, his face lighting up as he waved a half-eaten soft pretzel in the air.
Max strolled over with a small, genuine smile tugging at her lips. It was good to see Dustin back in full force. She remembered, for a long time after the Snowball dance and straight through the freezing middle of January, he had been weirdly quiet around her. He'd barely made eye contact, keeping his distance during party hangouts, leaving Max completely baffled as to what she'd done to annoy him. But over the last few months, the ice had thawed, and now he was back to his usual, hyperactive self.
"You're just in time," Dustin said, pulling a grease-stained napkin from his pocket to wipe his fingers. "I was just explaining to these guys the vital importance of maintaining optimal parabolic trajectories when launching the signal from Cerebro."
Max blinked, leaning her weight onto her back foot. "Cere- what?"
"Cerebro. The radio setup I'm going to construct at Camp Know Where," Dustin declared, his chest swelling with pride.
"Camp know what?" Max frowned.
Will chuckled behind Dustin and pop his head aside to see Max. "He's going to a science camp. Camp Know Where."
"Yeah! It's three days until I depart for a haven of scientific brilliance," Dustin said cheerfully. "I'm building an- do you want to come too?"
"Umm... no," Max shaked her head. There was no universe she would attend a camp that full of science nerds. She would be cry and puke in the first day for taking amount of science knowledge dose.
"Oh, well, that's your lost. Because I'm building an oscillator that can bounce radio waves off the ionosphere! We're talking long-range communication over thousands of miles. I'll be able to broadcast to Utah! To Europe!"
Max listened, nodding vaguely as Dustin launched into a five-minute rant dense with terminology about capacitors, frequencies, and atmospheric refraction. Half of it sounded like a foreign language, but she didn't mind. His endless enthusiasm was infectious, and it beat sitting alone in her room staring at the ceiling.
Still, as she looked at the group, the math hit her. Dustin was leaving for his science camp in three days. Lucas was gone for another week and a half. That left... Mike and Will.
She glanced over at Will, who gave her a quiet, warm smile from behind Dustin's shoulder. Will was fine. In fact, Max really liked talking to him. He was gentle, listened when she spoke, and didn't feel the need to turn every single conversation into a shout-match or a competition.
Then her eyes shifted to Mike, who was leaning against the side of the arcade cabinet, arms crossed, slouched in his trademark moody sulk. Mike was still, by all available metrics, a total asshole. He had tolerated her presence a little more since the Mind Flayer incident, but the prickliness was always lurking just beneath the surface. Max made a conscious effort to speak to him as little as humanly possible.
Great, she thought to herself. My summer inner circle is down to a gentle artist and a human raincloud.
Yet, because they were the only game in town while Lucas was away, Max found herself falling into a new rhythm over the next few days.
♡♡♡♡♡
When Dustin left for Camp Know Where, the remaining trio became a quad whenever El was allowed out of Hopper's cabin. El's visits were brief and careful, and while Max and El weren't super close yet, there was still a tentative, fragile air between them after how things had started. Max enjoyed the girl-power solidarity, even though they only communicating through a single nod or two, agreeing at certain things that Mike thought it was stupid. Having another girl around, even one as quiet and wide-eyed as El, made Mike's insufferable sighing a lot easier to stomach.
It was a starkly different routine from her normal summer. Usually, Max hung out with the party only when Lucas came to fetch her. He had a meticulous system: he would call her house first to make sure the coast was clear, or he'd pedal his bike down to the very end of Cherry Lane, waiting past the big oak tree so Billy wouldn't spot him from the driveway. Seeing Lucas stand by his bike at the end of the street, adjusting his backpack and looking out for her, had been the highlight of her afternoons.
Now, riding her bike alongside Mike and Will without him felt undeniably hollow. She was trying so hard not to miss him. She really, truly was.
Yet she failed miserably.
Every time the group stopped at the gas station for Slushies, Max found herself staring at the empty curb where Lucas usually sat, furiously trying to untangle a red licorice twist. Whenever Mike said something stupidly argumentative, her immediate instinct was to turn to her right, expecting to see Lucas making a ridiculous face or rolling his eyes behind Mike's back.
Most of all, her brain kept replaying their very last phone call. She could still hear his voice in her head, clear as a bell. He had called her "Maxie" in that ridiculous, high-pitched squeak that a bit sound different -he said that he had cough, so it affect his voice. The nickname, by the way, he'd blatantly stolen after overhearing her mom say it in the kitchen the week before.
"Bye, Maxie!" he'd cracked over the static, before adding that goofy, boyish joke about how she was "too scary to miss."
It was infuriating. She missed his squeaky laugh. She missed his baby-faced smile, his thin arms gesturing wildly while explaining his arcade strategies, and the way he got way too passionate about comic book lore.
And yet... there was that other, quiet part of her brain that she hated admitting existed.
She was also... relieved for the break.
She was grateful for a breather from the sheer childishness of him. But the absurdity of it was laughable. Being relieved by his absence didn't stop her from wanting him back. In fact, the space to breathe only made the ache in her chest tighter. It made her realize just how deeply he was woven into her days. She missed the dork. She missed her boyfriend. She was tired of the childishness, but she wanted him.
Damn it, Max thought, kicking a peble near her vans as Will stepped out of the pharmacy. Just come home already, Lucas Sinclair.
♡♡♡♡♡
Finally!
The telephone had been installed in her bedroom on Tuesday morning. It was a small, pale-blue Rotary unit sitting atop her small wooden nightstand. Her mother had fought quiet, desperate battles with Neil for weeks to get that extra line run into the hallway and down into Max's room, framing it as a "necessity for safety" while Neil was working late shifts. Max knew the real truth: her mother saw the way Neil stared at Max whenever the kitchen phone rattled on the wall with a glare that demanded to know who was calling, why, and for how long. She saw the way Billy would lean against the doorframe, a cruel, mocking smirk playing on his lips as he made loud, pointed cracks about her "little boyfriend."
Now, with the door closed and the soft glow of her bedside lamp casting long shadows against the wallpaper, Max could sit on the edge of her mattress without her pulse spiking every time a ring cut through the house.
Still, the calls over the past week had been agonizingly brief.
Whenever the bell chimed, Max would snatch the receiver before the second ring, pressing it tight against her ear. But it was always the same: Lucas's high, squeaky voice rushing through long, breathless lists of what his family was up to. He'd talk about canoeing across the lake, the sunburn blistering across shoulder blades of one of his white cousin, or the massive family dinner where his uncle had burned twenty hot dogs on the grill.
Max always listened, leaning back against her headboard and smiling softly at his excitement. She was genuinely glad he was having fun. He deserved a summer that didn't involve shadowy monsters or life-or-death battles.
Yet, as she listened to him chatter about the lake house, a quiet, bitter envy would twist in her gut. She had tried asking her mom once, just a tentative, quiet question while Neil was out at the garage, if maybe the two of them could take a weekend trip somewhere. Anywhere. Just two days down to the coast, or a drive to a state park, just the two of them. Her mother's eyes had softened with a deep, weary sadness, but before she could even answer, Neil's heavy footsteps had echoed down the hall.
When her mother brought it up at dinner that night, Neil hadn't even looked up from his plate. He'd shut it down instantly, his voice low and flat, stating that he was far too busy with work to waste time on frivolous trips, and there was absolutely no chance in hell he was letting Max and her mom go off on their own without him.
So that was that. Max was trapped. Hawkins was her sentence for the summer, a grid of melting asphalt, dusty arcade carpets, and sticky July heat.
♡♡♡♡♡
By the eleventh night, at precisely nine-thirty, the pale-blue phone beside her bed rang. Max picked it up on the first chime, pulling the receiver to her ear as she sank onto her knees on the rug.
"Hey," she said, her voice dropping into a soft, cozy whisper.
"Max!"
The high-pitched squeak burst through the line, vibrating against her ear drum, still having cough, she guessed. Max let out a long, quiet breath, resting her forehead against the cool edge of her mattress. "Hey, Stalker. Surviving the bug bites?"
"Barely. Erica tried to push me out of the canoe yesterday, but I managed to grab her paddle, so we just ended up spinning in circles for ten minutes until my dad had to row out and rescue us."
Max snorted, a quiet, genuine laugh escaping her chest. "Sounds like she's winning the war."
"She is not winning," Lucas shot back, his voice cracking violently on the word winning. "Well, almost. But I managed to hold my position and dignity. But... hey, look. I have bad news."
Max sat up a little straighter, her fingers tightening around the smooth plastic of the receiver. "What's wrong? Is everything okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, everything's fine, it's just..." Lucas sighed, his sound trailing into static over the long-distance line. "We're not coming back on Sunday. My aunt is throwing this huge summer party on Saturday night, and my parents decided we're gonna stay three more days so we can spend two extra nights at the lake house."
Max felt her shoulders drop, a sharp, sudden wave of disappointment crashing over her so hard it tightened her chest. Three more days. Three more days of riding her board or bike through empty streets, avoiding Mike's bad mood, and sitting alone in her room listening to the house creak.
"Oh," she said. She forced her tone to remain light, swallowing down the heavy lump forming in her throat. She didn't want to ruin his fun. She didn't want to sound like a clingy, pathetic drag. "Well... that sounds fun. More hot dogs for you, right?"
"Yeah, I guess," Lucas said, though he sounded a little bummed, too. "I was really hoping to get back sooner, though. Dustin is leaving for that science camp, right?"
"Yeah, he's going tomorrow," Max said, leaning back against the side of her bed and pulling her knees to her chest. "He's been talking nonstop about building some giant radio setup. Half of it sounds like total nonsense, but he was pretty hyped."
"Classic Dustin," Lucas chuckled, his high laugh crackling through the receiver.
For the next twenty minutes, the disappointment slowly melted away into the warm, familiar rhythm of their usual back-and-forth. They talked about Will's newest drawings, how annoying Mike was being about Eleven, and how Max had almost pulled off a double-kickturn on her board yesterday at the cul-de-sac. They teased each other endlessly, Lucas making fun of her temper and Max threatening to throw his Risk board into the street the moment he got back.
It felt so easy. It felt like sitting on the basement floor again, the distance between them shrinking down until it felt like he was right there in the room, sitting on the carpet across from her. Max closed her eyes, resting her cheek against her knee, wrapping the phone cord tight around her knuckles. She prayed, with everything in her, that he wouldn't have to go yet. She wanted him to stay on the line for another hour -two hours- anything to keep the quiet of her room from creeping back in.
"Hey, Max?" Lucas's voice came through, softer this time, carrying that eager, gentle tone she loved so much.
"Yeah?"
"I really miss you."
Max's heart did a soft, warm flip in her chest. She smiled into the dark room, her thumb tracing the plastic smooth seam of the phone handset. "I miss you too, dork."
"Oh, really?" he asked, a goofy, boyish chuckle following the line.
"Don't sound too smug," she murmured fondly.
Suddenly, in the background behind him, a sharp, muffled voice cut through the static. It was Mrs. Sinclair, her voice carrying clearly from down the hall of their cabin: "Lucas! Get off the phone and get ready for bed! It's past ten!"
Lucas groaned loudly into the receiver, the sound pitching up into a long, dramatic whine. "Mom! I'm on a long-distance call!"
"I don't care who you're calling, young man! Teeth brushed, lights out in five minutes!"
Max let out a soft, resigned sigh, her head resting back against the wood of her nightstand. It was summer. Nobody in Hawkins went to bed at ten o'clock in July. But Mrs. Sinclair was strict, and when she set a deadline, there was no arguing.
"Duty calls," Max said gently, trying to hide the disappointment creeping back into her voice.
"She's so strict," Lucas muttered, though there was no real venom in it. He let out a small breath, his voice dropping down into a quiet, hurried hush. "I gotta go before she comes in here and takes the phone away forever."
"Go on," Max smiled faintly, tracing a circle on her shorts. "Don't get grounded."
"Okay. I'll... I'll try to call you before we pack up on Saturday, alright?"
"Alright. Goodnight, Lucas."
"Goodnight, Max. I love-"
"Lucas Charles Sinclair!"
"-Alright! Alright!"
She could heard Lucas grumbled before the line clicked shut, replaced once again by the flat, mechanical drone of the dial tone.
Max held the receiver to her ear for a few seconds longer, listening to the empty hum, before slowly placing it back onto its cradle. The bedroom fell instantly silent. The whir of the fan in the window sounded louder now, heavy and continuous, doing little to cool the warm summer night air.
She pulled her knees tight against her chest, staring at the little pale-blue phone sitting on the table. Three more days.
♡♡♡♡♡
Max wiped a light sheen of sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist, her thumb instantly darting back to mash the red button on the cabinet in front of her. She was back at the arcade, again. The Palace Arcade was bathed in its familiar, hypnotic glow. A fever dream of flickering neon blues, magenta stripes, and the chaotic bleeps, digitized explosions, and plastic buttons being violently smashed.
Renting space in the arcade on a scorching Friday afternoon had taken actual threats. Left to their own devices, Mike and Will would have happily spent the entire summer sweltering in the Wheeler basement, buried under stacks of character sheets, miniatures, and endless, tedious debates over spell slots. But by twelve-thirty, after three straight days of being dragged into their basement lair, Max's sanity had reached its absolute limit.
She had stood at the top of the basement stairs, board game box tucked under her arm, and delivered a crystal-clear ultimatum: Either we go to the arcade right now, or I swear to God I will snap every single one of your pewter figurines in half.
Will had immediately scrambled for his shoes. Mike had grumbled, rolled his eyes, and cursed under his breath, but he had followed.
Now, standing side-by-side at the Street Fighter cabinet, Mike was paying dearly for his reluctance.
"Dead again, Wheeler," Max smirked, her character landing a final, devastating kick that sent Mike's fighter crashing off the screen with a loud, digitized groan. "That's seven. Seven in a row. Do you want to try for an even eight, or are you ready to hand over another quarter?"
Beside them, Will let out a quiet, wheezing laugh, covering his mouth with his sleeve as Mike slammed his fist down onto the wooden ledge of the machine.
"The joystick on this side is stuck!" Mike protested, his face turning an unsightly shade of blotchy red. "I'm pressing left and he's not moving left! It's totally rigged!"
"Right, right. Blame the machine," Max teased, coolly sliding another shiny coin into the coin slot. "Gosh, I love winning. But watching you throw a baby tantrum makes it ten times sweeter."
God, she couldn't wait to tell Lucas about this.
The thought of him brought a sudden, warm flutter straight to her chest. Lucas was supposed to be back tomorrow. Finally. Finally.
He had called her late last night -his first call in almost four days after being dragged around by his endless extended family- and the second she'd picked up the receiver, she had laid the sarcasm on thick. "So you still remember me, stalker? I thought you got adopted by the lake monster."
The panic in his voice had been instant and hilarious. He had practically stumbled over his words, his voice squeaking frantically into the earpiece as he swore he'd tried to call three times, but the payphone line was busy, his annoying cousins wouldn't give him two seconds of privacy, and his mom kept making him haul coolers. Max had just leaned back against her pillows, laughing softly into the dark, telling him to relax and that she was just messing with him.
She had asked him if he was still sick, though. His voice had sounded... off. He'd come down with a bad summer cold and a runny nose a week ago, but even after he swore the cold was gone, he still sounded strangely different over the phone. A bit raspy, a little heavier around the edges, though the sharp, high-pitched squeak still popped out whenever he got defensive. Lucas had brushed it off with a sniffle, promising he was totally fine before breathlessly blurting out that he'd bought her something special from a roadside trading post before his mom yelled at him to get off the phone.
"YES! FUCKING FINALLY!"
A loud, triumphant roar shattered Max's train of thought.
She blinked, snapping back to reality just in time to see her character lying flat on her back on the CRT monitor, the word GAME OVER flashing in blinding red pixels.
Max's jaw dropped. While her brain had been miles away thinking about Lucas, Mike had managed to land a cheap special move, clearing her health bar entirely.
"Did you see that?!" Mike squealed, practically jumping in the air, his long arms flailing as he pointed at the screen. "I beat you! I actually beat you! The streak is broken, Mayfield!"
"You got lucky because I was distracted, you idiot," Max snapped, her cheeks burning with sudden annoyance.
"A win is a win!" Mike gloated, puffing out his chest and doing an absurd, mocking little shoulder wiggle right in her face. "King of the arcade! Bow down!"
Max stomped away, letting out a sharp, irritated huff, utterly ignoring Mike's obnoxiously loud victory dance. She wasn't going to stand there and listen to him gloat for the next twenty minutes.
She wove her way through the maze of glowing, noisy cabinets, her sneakers squeaking on the carpet until she reached the back wall. There it sat in all its dark, beautiful glory: Dig Dug.
Her machine. Her domain.
This was the one game in all of Hawkins where her title was absolute, untouchable, and immortal. No one could touch her score. Not Dustin, no matter how many pages of written mathematical code he brought with him. And certainly not Mike.
And, of course, not Lucas.
Max slid a quarter into the slot, her hands automatically finding the joystick and button, the familiar chiptune music filling her ears as the black-and-green graphics lit up her face.
As she expertly guided her little digging character through the dirt, popping monsters with cold, mechanical precision, a soft, fond smile worked its way back onto her lips.
Whenever the party hung out here, or whenever the two of them managed to sneak off on a "date" under the pretense of grabbing sodas, Lucas would religiously devote at least two or three quarters to this exact machine. He would plant his feet, set his jaw with that fierce, childish determination, and vow that today was the day he was taking the Number One spot on the leaderboard from "MADMAX."
Every single time, he'd die on Level 12, let out a high, dramatic whine, stomp his foot, and complain that the dragons were cheating. Then he'd look at her, rub the back of his neck with that baby-faced grin, and say, "One day, Max. One day, I'm gonna be on top."
Max snorted softly to herself, pressing the pump button to inflate an enemy Fygar until it exploded into pixels.
Right... keep dreaming, Stalker.
The noise of Mike's bragging died down somewhere in the background, completely drowned out by the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of her game. The arcade was loud, chaotic, and hot, but for the first time in two weeks, Max felt a quiet, fluttering excitement settled deep in her chest.
Tomorrow. He'd be back tomorrow.
She'd see his goofy, boyish smile, hear his squeaky laugh in person instead of over a static-filled phone line, and hand him a joystick so she could crush him at a game all over again. Everything was going to go right back to normal.
She was completely locked into the zone, her thumb working the pump button with practiced skill. Then, a sound cut through the digital bleeps right behind her back in a sudden.
"I knew you guys would be here."
Max's thumb hesitated on the arcade button. The voice was low, carrying a deep, resonant rumble that vibrated right off the carpet. It was raspy, almost gravelly, with a quiet, smooth warmth that didn't belong in an arcade full of year one of middle-schoolers. It sounded like an older teenager, maybe a high school junior, or one of those older guys who hung out around the pool hall downtown.
It felt incredibly familiar, yet entirely wrong.
She opened her mouth to turn and glance over her shoulder, fully expecting to see some random guy standing in her personal space, when Will's excited voice cut through the air from three feet away:
"Lucas!"
Max froze. Her heart gave a sudden, violent thud against her ribs.
Lucas?
Slowly, Max let go of the joystick and turned around.
He was standing right there under the neon-pink overhead lights, shifting his weight from one foot to the other with a brown paper bag tucked under his arm.
At a quick glance, it was still him. He had the same dark curly hair, the same striped collar poking out of his jacket, and that same bright, earnest smile that always made her chest feel tight. But as her eyes took him in, her brain completely refused to process the image.
Two weeks and three days. He had only been gone for seventeen days. But somewhere between the lake house, the summer sun, and whatever sudden biological meteor had struck him in Ohio, puberty had hit Lucas Sinclair like an oncoming freight train.
Was he always that tall or he just got taller? Not dramatically so, but enough that the hem of his jeans sat just a tiny bit higher on his ankles, the jacket he was wearing, in a way, made him didn't look like a little boy playing dress-up anymore. The soft, baby-faced curve of his cheeks had leaned out, revealing a cleaner, sharper jawline that caught the edge of the arcade lights. No, it was always like that before, she just didn't notice it well.
Lucas looked up from Will, his dark eyes tracking over to where Max was standing rooted to the spot. The goofy, wide smile spread across his face, and he took a step toward her.
"Hey, Max."
The words didn't squeak. They didn't pitch up into an eager, childish treble. They dropped out of his throat -low, warm, smooth, and carrying a quiet depth that hit the space between them like a force. It wasn't the voice of the boy who had squeaked over a board game in his basement. It was the voice of a young man.
Max's stomach flipped. Hard.
It felt like the drop at the very top of a roller coaster, a sudden, breathless weightlessness that sent a sharp shockwave straight down to her toes. Her breath caught in her throat, her grip on the machine behind her tightening until her knuckles turned white.
"You... you're back," she managed to say, but her own voice sounded small and breathless in her ears.
"Yeah," Lucas said, rubbing the back of his neck. The gesture was familiar, but the way his forearm tensed made Max's cheeks flare with a sudden, blistering heat. "Arrived an hour ago. Dropped my bags at home and came straight here."
He took another half-step closer, his deep voice carrying over the noisy arcade like a quiet hum meant only for her. He looked down at her, his eyes warm and completely unguarded, entirely unaware of the absolute nuclear meltdown currently taking place inside her head.
Max stared at his mouth, at the way his jaw moved when he spoke, her brain hopelessly short-circuiting.
Oh God, she thought, her heart hammering wildly against her ribs as she stared up at her boyfriend. What just happened to him?
♡♡♡♡♡
The trek from the Palace Arcade to the Wheeler basement was an exercise in absolute sensory overload for Max. The afternoon sun beat down on the pavement, radiating thick, sticky heat, but the real swelter was happening entirely inside her head.
The party had collectively agreed to relocate to their makeshift headquarters, largely because Lucas had arrived carrying a massive brown paper grocery bag stuffed with regional snacks his aunt had sent back with them. When they tumbled down the basement stairs, the familiar scent of cool concrete, damp carpet, and old board games greeted them. Hopper had dropped Eleven off just ten minutes later. El slid onto the couch right next to Mike, her hand instantly finding his, while the rest of the group scattered across the floor.
Lucas sat dead-center on the worn coffee table, surrounded by bags of weird midwestern potato chips, pretzel sticks, and soda cans, diving straight into the animated story of his two-week exile.
"So then my uncle, who insists he's a master pitmaster, literally sets the entire grill on fire," Lucas was saying, his arms gesturing wildly in the air.
He was still the exact same Lucas. He was goofy, intensely dramatic, completely loyal, and entirely incapable of telling a story without acting out every single role. But every time his mouth opened, the sound that came out hit the basement walls like a resonant wall of sound.
The childish edge.... the high, squeaky treble that used to crack on every third word, was almost completely, utterly gone.
"The flames were like, three feet high!" Lucas continued, leaning forward, his brow furrowed in classic, exaggerated Sinclair fashion. "Erica starts screaming and my dad has to smother the whole thing with a wet bath towel. The hot dogs were basically charcoal bricks. We had to eat white bread and yellow mustard for dinner."
The basement erupted into laughter. Mike threw a couch cushion at him, Will wheezed into his knee, and El let out a rare, delighted giggle.
Max, however, was sitting on the floor with her back pressed against the side of the sofa, struggling to keep her breathing steady. Every time Lucas spoke, she had to forcibly yank her eyes away and stare at the geometric pattern on the carpet just to keep from staring at him like a total freak. It was infuriating. Her brain was lagging, hopelessly trying to reconcile the boy who had left two weeks ago with the one who was sitting three feet in front of her.
He moved over to the comic book stack, immediately sliding into a fiery debate with Mike over whether the X-Men could survive an encounter with the Mind Flayer.
"They have Wolverine, Mike! He has an adamantium skeleton! You can't mind-control a guy whose bones are made of indestructible metal!"
The words were classic Lucas. Nerdy, passionate, and argumentative. But coming out in that low, gravelly, throat-centered register, every single syllable landed with a weird, electric weight that made her blushed.
She caught herself watching the shape of his mouth as he talked, tracing the cleaner, sharper line of his jaw when he turned his head to glare playfully at Mike. She looked down at his hands as he held up a comic book to prove a point. Were his hands actually bigger? His fingers looked longer, his knuckles more defined as he gripped the glossy cover. No, she tried to tell herself, shaking her head slightly. It's just your brain making things up. You're glitching.
"Hey," a low voice hummed right beside her ear.
Max jumped, her shoulders shooting up as she snapped her head round.
While Mike, Will, and El were huddled over a freshly opened bag of white cheddar popcorn, arguing about which cassette tape to put into the boombox, Lucas had slid off the coffee table and squatted down on the floor next to her.
He was leaning in close -close enough that she could smell the faint scent of summer rain and pine soap on his collar. He reached into his dark jacket, pulling the top of his brown paper bag open just a fraction.
"I didn't want Mike to steal any of it," he murmured, his voice dropping down into a hushed, secret low tone meant only for her. The deep sound vibrated right through the quiet space between their faces. "I bought you some chocolate and something cool from this roadside trading post in Ohio. I'll show you later, okay? When it's just us."
The low warmth of his voice hit her skin like a physical touch. Max's breath hitched. She looked up into his dark, bright eyes, totally trapped by the genuine, eager sweetness in his gaze.
"Okay," she managed to squeak out, nodding dumbly.
She could feel a wave of intense, blistering heat rushing up her neck and spreading straight across her cheeks. She quickly looked down at her lap, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear, terrified he'd notice the raging blush painting her skin.
"You good?" Lucas asked, his brow tugging together with gentle concern. He shifted a little closer, his knee brushing against hers. "You're kind of quiet today."
"I'm fine!" Max said, a little too quickly, her voice pitching up in a way that made her want to kick herself. "Just... hot. It's hot down here."
Lucas offered a soft, deep chuckle that rattled through his chest. "Yeah. Mike's basement is a furnace." He gave her knee a quick, affectionate squeeze before standing back up to reclaim his bag of chips on the table.
Max pressed the back of her hands against her burning cheeks, staring at the floor, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
Later that night, the heat in Max's bedroom was thick and stillness hung in the air, broken only by the steady, rhythmic whir of the box fan in the open window.
Max lay flat on her back under the thin bedsheet, her hands folded loosely over her stomach, staring up at the shadows dancing across the white-painted ceiling.
She couldn't sleep. Her body was exhausted from the summer heat, but her mind was running in frantic, continuous loops. Every time she closed her eyes, she didn't see the little boy who used to squeak over board games or stumble awkwardly while trying to kiss her cheek behind the arcade. She heard that new, gravelly voice saying her name.
"Hey, Max."
"I bought you something... when it's just us."
She rolled over onto her side, pressing her face into her pillow, letting out a long, frustrated groan.
It was ridiculous. It was the same dork! He still argued like a nerd. He still got overly competitive about those snacks like a child. He was still the loyal, brave, ridiculous boy who had spent his last quarters buying her sodas and fought to keep her in the party. Nothing about who he was had changed at all.
And yet, everything had.
She rolled back onto her back, staring wide-eyed at the dark ceiling, her heart beating a fast, heavy rhythm inside her chest. She ran a hand over her face, letting out a breathless, quiet laugh into the empty room.
Oh no, Max thought, her stomach doing that same dizzying, breathless flip all over again. Oh no... I'm falling for him all over again.
♡♡♡♡♡
As the afternoon waned, Mike and El had retreated to their own quiet, whispering world in the corner, Will had packed up his sketchbook to head home before dinner, and the noise had slowly died down. Instead of riding her board back to Cherry Lane, Max had willingly let Lucas lead her back to his house.
They had snuck through the front door like accomplices, dodging his mother in the kitchen, and slipped straight down the basement stairs, locking out the rest of the world.
Now, they were sitting side-by-side on the worn floor rug, their backs propped against the front of the old corduroy sofa. The lingering summer heat of late afternoon barely penetrated the low, concrete walls, leaving the air cool, heavy, and smelling faintly of old paper, laundry soap, and the sweet, lingering scent of red licorice.
Lucas was still talking about his trip, his hands moving animatedly as he recounted another disaster from the lake house. Specifically, he was detailing the moment Erica had tried to catch a bullfrog, slipped off the slimy edge of the wooden dock, and landed face-first into a thick patch of lily pads.
"I swear, Max, she came up covered in duckweed, looking like a little green swamp monster," Lucas said, a low, rumbling laugh echoing out of his chest. "She tried to glare at me, but she had a piece of algae stuck right on her nose! I couldn't even be mad at her for stealing my tapes anymore. I'm gonna bring it up at every single chances for the rest of her life."
Max chuckled softly, shaking her head as she leaned her shoulder against his. "You are relentless to her."
"She deserves it! She'd do the worst if it was me," he insisted, his lips curving into a wide, triumphant grin.
Max smiled, but as he kept talking -moving on to a story about how his dad had dropped a cooler into the lake- her mind drifted away from the words themselves and focused entirely on the sound.
God, she loved this new voice.
It was a quiet wonder that had been bouncing around in her head for the few hours. What baffled her most was that nobody else seemed to have noticed it. Or if they had, they hadn't said a damn word. Mike had been far too wrapped up in whispering secrets to El; Dustin had been gone at camp; and Will was always too polite to point out something personal.
The only person who had reacted at all was El. Max remembered the way El had stared at Lucas for three long, silent seconds when she'd first walked into the basement and greeted by him. Her brow furrowed in that intense, curious way of hers, as if trying to map a sudden shift in the universe, before Mike had pulled her attention.
So it was just Max. Just Max sitting here, completely consumed by every low-pitched, gravelly frequency that left his mouth.
Lucas was mid-sentence, gesturing toward the game board on the floor-"...and so my dad tried to use a boat hook to fish the cooler out, right?"-when Max simply couldn't keep it locked inside her chest any longer.
She leaned forward slightly, cutting right across his story, and blurted out, "Your voice is different."
Lucas stopped abruptly. The words hung in the quiet basement air, suddenly heavy and clear.
A instant wave of embarrassed heat flushed across Lucas's cheeks. The bold, storytelling posture melted away, replaced by a familiar, self-conscious twitch as he reached up and rubbed the back of his neck.
"Yeah..." he murmured, looking down at the carpet as his shoulders hitched up a little. "It... it just kind of happened. Overnight, basically. It's weird, right? Honestly, I thought it was just because I had that bad cold, remember? But... it never went back."
He sounded so genuinely uncertain, so worried that the change was something strange or off-putting, that Max felt a rush of sudden, fierce tenderness hit her right in the chest.
She reached out, gently catching his wrist to pull his hand away from the back of his neck, and shook her head slowly.
"No," Max said, her voice dropping into a soft, steady register as she met his wide brown eyes. "It's not weird." She held his gaze, her thumb sliding lightly over the skin of his wrist. "I like it."
The silence in the basement stretched out, warm and thick.
Lucas blinked, staring at her as the worry on his face slowly dissolved. The low hum of his new voice dropped even lower, carrying a quiet, velvety depth that vibrated right down to her toes when he whispered, "Yeah?"
"Yeah," Max murmured.
Without overthinking it, without waiting for the awkward hesitation that usually plagued them, Max scooted closer across the step of the rug, cupped the side of his jaw with her hand, and leaned in.
She pressed her lips to his.
It was just a peck, really. Just a soft, quick, and light touch. But the moment she pulled back a few inches, a massive, goofy, ridiculously swoon-worthy grin broke across Lucas's face. He looked so utterly charmed, so hopelessly struck, that Max couldn't stop the fond eye-roll that escaped her before her own wide smile broke through.
"What?" she teased softly.
Before she could process the look in his eyes, Lucas reached out. His fingers slid gently into the hair at the nape of her neck, his broad hand warm and surprisingly steady, and he pulled her back in.
This time, he initiated it.
The gesture almost caught Max completely off her guard. In the six months they had been together, every physical interaction had felt experimental, timid, or clumsy. It was just a bunch of a series of quick cheek bumps, sweaty hand-holds, and panicked apologies.
This was completely different.
His lips met hers with a slow, deliberate certainty. It wasn't awkward. It wasn't rushed or middle-school experimental. It felt entirely intentional with a quiet, confident step forward into something real. His grip in her hair was gentle but firm, pulling her flush against him until she could feel the steady, rhythmic beat of his heart against her chest and the warm breath lingering between them.
Max's eyes fluttered shut, her fingers tangling into the fabric of his polo shirt as her world narrowed down to the feeling of his mouth on hers and the electric warmth pooling in her heart.
When they finally pulled apart, neither of them moved very far.
Lucas was staring at her with a soft, slightly stunned smile, his thumb resting against her cheekbone, breathing a little faster than before. The baby-faced boy from November was still right there in his eyes, but everything else had shifted into something deeper, something grounded.
"Max," he breathed out, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that barely carried across the inches between them.
Max let out a quiet, breathless laugh, resting her forehead against his shoulder to hide the brilliant, uncontrollable blush heating her face.
Sitting there in the dim, cool quiet of the Sinclair basement, wrapped up in his arms, Max knew with absolute certainty that she was never, ever going to get over the sound of him saying her name again.
♡♡♡♡♡