"And then I- you're not listening." Christine Wheeler shook her head as she leaned against the Scoops Ahoy countertop, her face dropping as she looked up at Steve Harrington with a defeated look.
"I am listening." He defended, looking back at her with a confused face.
"Really? What part of listening involves talking?" She asked, pushing off of the counter and rolling her eyes.
"This is the first time I've spoken since you started telling me about your day!" He said, looking at the girl like she was crazy. Christine shook her head again, pushing her tongue into her cheek and then giving him an upset look.
"Whatever. I gotta go anyways. Bye Robin." Christine turned immediately, walking out with her arms crossed. Just as she made it to the door she flipped Steve off, disappearing into the masses of mall shoppers and leaving him with a confused face and a mouth that was hanging wide open.
"That's the 7th time this week. You suck dude." Robin said, giving him a tally on the white board. He shook his head as he turned around, his hands flying up in the air as he looked at the girl.
"What did I even do wrong? God she just makes no sense anymore!" Steve said, looking at the board that had the tally's. Robin had made a game out of Steve and Christines encounters, tallying how often she left angry and how often she left happy. In the past month she had left angry 47 times and she had left happy a total of 6.
The months following the spring break trip were not the easiest for the two, Steve fighting ridiculously hard to fix his relationship with Christine after everything that happened. Things had been fine until early June, the girls attitude shifting. She would visit him every day twice a day like clockwork when he worked, Steve always happy to see her. And then after work he would pick her up from the police station usually, where Hopper had given her a 'internship' or she was basically a part of the police without the academy. She followed Hopper around all day, the pair growing rather close during the time. And Steve was happy to see her happy, except for when she wasn't.
He was never really sure what the shift was, what exactly had happened that had made her act the way that she was acting. And he was too afraid to ask her, in fear of if she would get mad at him for asking. The smallest things seemed to irritate her, and she was getting further and further away from the Christine he knew. She was becoming distant, but Steve didn't want to lose her.
"Why don't you just ask her what she's so upset about?" Robin suggested, raising her eyebrows at the boy as she pushed the board back to where it was before. Steve shrugged, looking at her with a doubtful look as he spoke again.
"I'm too scared to ask. She just snaps. I-whatever." He said, brushing off the interaction and going back to working.
Christine Wheeler had asked for the afternoon off hoping to spend it with Steve but she figured she blew it after getting mad at him. Christine knew she was being unfair, but her temper had shortened when she had gotten the news that her dad wanted to talk to her a month prior. She answered, but the voice on the other side of the phone was not her father, it was Alice Cohen. Her mother. After a brief conversation through her dads line that the couple had strangely rekindled, and the suggestion that she needed to consider forgiveness, she hung up the phone, and had been irritable and angry ever since. Sharing this information was hard for her though, so she kept it to herself, but took it out on Steve.
Christine pulled into the Wheelers driveway, her hand gripping the wheel as she put the car in park. She groaned as she got our, tired from the long days she had been working and the lack of sleep she was getting from thinking about her parents. The news had taken an extremely heavy toll on her, and she had no idea how to handle it.
