CHAPTER SIXTEEN

16. fortune vs fate.

A few more rounds later and the laughter started to finally die down into quieter chuckles and giggles whilst more serious conversations, mainly from anyone other than Richie, were used at the table. Richie continued to refer to Ben's weight loss in a joking manner, calling him hot and comparing him to a Brazilian soccer player.

"Is Stanley coming or what?" Ben tried to move the conversation away from him, gesturing to the empty chair that had been placed there by the employee when they said they were expecting someone else to arrive.

Stanley, Adriana repeated in her head, picturing his light curls and goofy grin. How he always managed to be serious and still have fun, practically being the dad of the group at times. He would always comfort the other members of the group when they needed it, by showing up to their homes with food or buying cinema tickets for a trip out. She missed him a lot.

"Stan Uris- Stan Urine!" Richie made the connection, "No, no, he's a fucking pussy he's not gonna come."

"Just wait," Andy took a long sip of her drink before looking up, "Stan the man will save the day, just you wait."

Bill just weakly smiled and continued to drink his beer.

"Why would Stanley save you, anyway? Was I not the one who practically performed surgery on you after Bowers cut you up? Holy shit, thats right!" Eddie hit Ben's arm repeatedly in a joking manner as they talked.

Beverly leaned her head on her hand that was propped up on her bottle, "Please tell me you became a doctor, Ed."

"No, I ended up becoming a risk analysis," he replied.

"Oh, that actually sounds really interesting. What does that entail?" Richie asked innocently, though most of their friends had caught onto what was about to happen. Just as Eddie started to talk, Richie snored loudly and faked being asleep. They all laughed, apart from Eddie. "Was this job invented before fun?"

"Oh, that's real funny," Eddie forcefully laughed though he looked slightly annoyed, "Sure, that may not be as exciting as being a doctor. But we all know that if anyone became a doctor it was Adriana. You went to med school, right?"

She nodded, "I graduated medical school, worked my way up at the biggest hospital in the area and soon became head paediatrician. I quit about 10 years ago and now I work for Quality magazine in New York editing all the articles and covers before the magazine is published each week."

"Why'd ya quit?"

Andy turned to Bill to answer his question, her eyes never once leaving his as they spoke, "After years of watching kids come in with broken bones, fevers or in need of stitches, the job starts to weigh down. It's all good sending them home back in one piece, but then you start to wonder how they became that way in the first place. I've seen children coming in with bruises and wounds and flinching away from their parents. It just became a bit too much for me to handle." 

Adriana was partly telling the truth. In fact, before she had her own daughter she loved being able to take children out of their abusive homes and away from their abusive parents, giving them a better life. But after giving birth, she couldn't stomach being able to sit in front of a mother or a father knowing what they did to their children. How could someone hurt their own child? 

Another reason she changed her career path was to spend more time with Georgina. She especially hated working the night shifts, knowing that she was alone with Frank. Even if she was just a few months old and the first few months of her life, Frank was the ideal father. She couldn't spend more than a few hours away from her baby.

If given the chance, Andy would drop her position at Quality magazine in a heart beat and go back to what she loved.

The Losers around her nodded and hummed in agreement before Beverly raised her bottle in the air, "I propose a toast. To the Losers!"

All of the glasses and bottles met in the centre of the table before they all took long sips of their drinks. Slowly they all began to descend into quieter, more private conversations with the people around them. Beverly and Eddie started to talk together; Ben and Mike chatting; and Bill and Andy. Richie mainly drifted from conversation to conversation happily, inputting crude comments or innuendoes in inappropriate times or telling his own anecdotes.

"So, I saw the movie and read your books," Andy told him, swirling her glass around in her hand absentmindedly.

Bill groaned and rubbed his face, "Let me guess, the ending sucked?"

She laughed at him, punching his shoulder, "As much as I loved the beginning and the middle..."

He just shook his head, "Every review, every comment... It all says the same thing."

"You've got another movie coming out though, right?" she asked, sipping on the beer that he had given her after he realised she hated what Eddie ordered her, she waited for his nod, "Well, you get another chance to nail the ending and get it right. Think of it as perfecting your skills."

"I'm stuck on writing the script currently, funnily enough it's the ending that I can't write. I've got producers, directors and a stage full of people waiting for me and I just can't do it," he admitted.

"Well, why do you think you can't write the ending?"

He just shrugged.

"Do you think it could be because you never had a happy ending yourself? Well, I take that back. A satisfying or deserved ending, not everyone needs a happy ending for their story to be finished," she voiced her opinion, she had thought about that whilst watching his first film and reading his published work. After watching it in the theatre, she drafted several letters to reach out to him. All of them ended in the trash.

"Perhaps," he nodded.

"Well, maybe you will finally get your own satisfying ending to this chapter in life and you will be able to finish your chapters in your book," she smiled brightly, sipping on the beer once again.

He just nodded, not really knowing how to reply to what she had said. "We know about your career, but what about family? How is Liam? Did you ever get married, have kids?"

She just chuckled at his string of questions and how his cheeks got brighter after realising he was bombarding her, "Liam is doing good. He finally settled down and had two of children called Tom and Ella, they are absolute sweethearts. He retired from his position in the army a few years ago and now he helps train the new recruits and he even runs a counselling group on the weekends for veterans."

Bill listened intently to everything she was saying, nodded and humming in the appropriate parts of conversation. "What about you?"

"I never got married or had children," she lied convincingly to Bill, though Beverly could hear all the conversation from behind her. "How are you and Audra?" 

"Just waiting for the divorce papers to come through, actually," he weakly smiled but she could easily tell how he seemed to be hurt by the whole ordeal. She then realised just how wrong she had been. Though she knew Beverly was married, she didn't seem too happy about it. Eddie was  married and also didn't seem too happy. Richie, Ben and Mike were single as far as she knew. None of them had their happy endings.

"I'm sorry to hear that." Her hand covered his lightly on the table, his eyes shooting to the small and affectionate embrace. "How is Peter taking the separation?" Bill seemed surprised that Andy knew his son and wife's name and his confusion was evident on his face. "We did an article about you and the production after the movie release. My friend was the one who did your interview."

He nodded, remembering vaguely how he was interviewed for Quality magazine. "I think Peter is just happy that the arguing has stopped now we don't live together. He seems find fo the idea of two Christmases and birthdays. He wasn't too sure at first but he seems to be handling it well."

Andy nodded her head, only just realising that their hands were still connected on the table for all of their friends to see. But the others were too caught up in their conversations whilst waitresses cleared their tables quietly, Beverly thanking them promptly. Their food and empty glasses were replaced with a bowl of fortune cookies.

"You know," Richie stated, rubbing the back of his head before breaking open his cookie, "When Mike called me, I threw up. Isn't that weird? I got nervous, I got sick and I threw up. I feel fine now but, I feel relieved to be here with you guys. Why are you looking at me like that?"

Richie noticed that each of his friends were glancing at him sympathetically.

"When Mike called me, I crashed my car."

"Seriously?" Bill asked Eddie, noticing how the room went eerily quiet as each member in the room recalled the moments that Mike had called them.

"Man, I hear you. I mean my heart was-" Ben motioned to his chest with a wavering hand, "It was like pounding right out of my chest."

"I thought it was only me," Beverly looked down.

Adriana's hands began to shake in her lap, her fingers instantly going to her ring finger to play around with the wedding band like she usually would when she felt anxious. Only to remember that it was in her back pocket.

Instead she moved forward and took a fortune cookie and started to break it off piece by piece and eat it slowly.

"I could feel f-f-f-f-f-" Bill stuttered, stumbling over the word.

"Fear," Mike finished, "It's fear. What you felt."

"I smoked a whole pack of cigarettes in the parking lot when I got to work," Andy stated, "When Mike called I had this overwhelming fear that everything was going to become fucked up. So I brought my first pack of cigarettes in years and they were gone a couple minutes later."

"Why do we all feel like that, Mike?" Bill asked, "You remember something we don't."

Mike thought about his words, how she should tell his friends who had completely forgotten about what had happened to them. "Something happens when you leave this town; the further you get, the hazier it gets. But me? I never left. So yeah... I remember. I remember all of it."

Everyone was silent. The only noise came from the cutlery clashing on plates or light chatter from the tables around them. It was so silent that Adriana could hear her heart beating rapidly in her chest.

"Pennywise..." Beverly whispered.

Adriana's heart was beating faster. Any more and she was sure she would have a heart attack. Her heart hammering in her chest so hard that she could feel it drumming in her ears and behind her eyes. 

"Motherfucking clown," Eddie retorted and looked down.

Andy's legs began bumping up and down under the table with the nerves of the situation. She was familiar with the signs of her panic attacks; shaky hands, loss of breath, dizziness. So as soon as she spotted the symptoms she started taking deeper breaths and imagining breathing into a paper bag.

Usually she felt like she was choking on air or her own tongue during her attacks. But this time was different. She could feel the thick, black sludge suffocating her. She knew what it was as soon as the sensation hit her. She had felt the exact same almost 30 years ago. No, exactly 27 years ago. She remembered that now.

She took a sip from her bottle of beer to wash it down, finding that she downed at least half the bottle. It was gone for now but she was left with that scratching in her throat.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Writing this book makes me want to buy the real It book by Stephen King so bad! xx