He knows that look on Richie's face without his boyfriend having to say anything at all. It settles hard on his chest and makes him feel all the worse because if he could speak up. Instead Eddie just feels himself bunker down even more with a sharp sting of anger welling up inside him but he mutes it, smothers it down with another long drink from his glass.

There isn't a part of him that wants this but it is hard to break with what is familiar, comfortable. The pieces of him that has existed since he was a child in the clutches of his mother. As Richie steps closer, he can't help tensing up but looks up with his boyfriend with a saddened look.

Calling Myra a monster in the aftermath of all this was probably an understatement. Eddie tried to understand her in the beginning because he knows (god, he knows) that this had all been so sudden. He had vanished one day and then almost died before dropping this divorce on her. It had been unfair but it was something he had to do if Eddie wanted to move on with his life.

"I didn't think about my old work email," he says lightly, quietly. "The usual― you know how it, Richie. I'm sick and don't know what I'm doing or how I'm ruining my life, your life. That she forgives me, understands me and that she'll always be the only person who can. It's the sort of shit that piles up after awhile, you know? I don't want to fuck up your life too, Rich."