Practical
Loving Emily made sense. Her love was calm, safe. Giving her love, making love with her, it all made sense.
Loving Leah was different. She was proud, wild, everything that I wasn't. Her love was a rollercoaster, filled with tears and laughter. She was dangerous, lying on the beach at night, giving me a seductive smile, stretching her bronze legs. She was a goddess, stretching invitingly.
Leah was daring when she snuck out at night and pulled me out of my sleep, into the forest, to the old shack we had found as kids. Back then, as children, we had played house there. Now, she would whisper, we're doing the same thing, just a little different. And then she would smile wickedly, and pull me into her.
Emily was innocent, baking cookies and weeding her garden. It was all happiness and joy as we would sit together in the warm sunlight, sipping sweet tea and snuggling. Emily asked for nothing, but I would give her everything anyway. Love was simple.
It was practical.
So the searching looks that Leah would catch was an impediment. The ache that filled my chest when I saw her and Embry brush their fingers together, giving each other that secretive smile that we used to share, didn't make sense. Hearing Embry's thoughts as we ran, feeling the rush that he felt when he would disappear inside her, hearing the smug thoughts… It shouldn't have hurt.
I should have been happy for them.
Dreams shouldn't have haunted me at night, making me wake up gasping and sweaty. I shouldn't have had to see Emily's face crumple in pain when I would slip and call her the wrong name. I shouldn't have had to hold her at night as she cried because she had lost her best friend, and not even be thinking of her. I shouldn't have wanted to run to a different house, to another girl, who was holding herself as she cried, all alone.
The scars on Emily's face was a reminder of this. The true reason why I had slashed up her face, the reason that I had told no one; that I had managed to keep a secret from even the pack, unnerved me.
Because loving Emily hadn't always made sense. It hadn't always been simple.
I had hated her. I had hated the feeling of warmth that bubbled up in my stomach when I would see her. And I had hated it, at night, when I would try to hold Leah, and couldn't. I had hated seeing her cry, and not wanting to hold her.
I hated choosing Emily. But at least she made sense.
And when she disappeared -- down into damp ground, in a cold coffin -- it was too late.
I realized it was too late for me to heal, for me to forget, as I held our two children close, and couldn't even cry. There was no escape as the pain wrenched at every single part of my body, like blood pounding beneath a bruise.
And as I turned as saw Leah, crying quietly, and felt a sadness that was even deeper than loosing Emily, I knew it was too late for me to ever move on.
But it wasn't only me that realized too late, that she had waited too long. There was no forgiveness. No loving words, no sobbing in each others arms. So as Leah reached down and placed a white rose in Emily's coffin, looked up with tears streaming down her cheeks, and caught my gaze, I could see the regret flash across her face. And I knew it was too late for her to ever forgive herself.
And all I had left was dreams, haunting me at night, of two girls, so very different, both bleeding and crying, with me standing in the middle, unable to comfort either.
