"There's an echo pulling out the meaning
Rescuing a nightmare from a dream
The voices in my head are always screaming
That none of this means anything to me"
"Bored to Death" Blink 182
Edward
Digging the balls of my feet deep into the sugary-white sand, I push myself against a warm breeze. Beads of sweat tickle the dip of my lower back, and gather on the unshaven bristle above my upper lip. The song I'm listening to dies away, and for a sweet second I'm rewarded with the sound of the gulf lapping at the beach. Laughter and music dwindle somewhere in the distance, and I grit my teeth at the intrusion of lost tourists, cruising the coastal roads in search of a more popular destination town along the Emerald Coast. Destin. Pensacola. Anywhere but here, in this quaint, scantily inhabited town of Santa Nora, Florida.
The pause between songs in my iPod ends, replaced with the belting lyrics of some unknown song. Each slap of my feet against the sandy ground beats in time with the pound of the drum, the strum of a guitar, and the frustrated wail of the singer, and for a moment I'm not Edward Cullen, living in some soon-to-be incorporated gulf-side town, driving his worries away during a daily run. I'm not empty. I'm not alone. I'm just a normal high school senior pounding the beach in time with the music blaring from my earbuds. I don't hurt. I don't feel pain. I have an amazing girlfriend with killer curves and a warm, wet, welcoming mouth. I have two loving parents and two siblings I'd die for. There's nothing missing inside. The tightness of my chest at night doesn't exist. I'm young. I'll live forever. I'm transcendent.
Except I'm not.
The burn of my calves and the tender ache of my hamstrings matches the fire raging inside my chest, but I don't cease running. One song trips into another one. Sweat from my forehead blinds my eyes, but I blink away the blazing sensation and travel onward. I pass a couple other runners, some older, some young. They wear their Fitbits and these intense expressions on their face: eyes narrowed forward on some unseen obstacle or destination, eyebrows shaped in a deep V, arched and pointing toward their nose, droplets of sweat dripping from said nose. I wonder if they run to forget, like me, or run to remember.
I don't slow until I spot a pier glowing in the distance. The springtime sun blisters away, leaving a hot soreness to my already sun-damaged sink. Slowing to a jog, I press my thumb against my arm, watching the pink fade into white and then pink again.
Less than minutes later I'm approaching the pier. Purple lights sparkle from the salt and wind-worn wood. Long, tan legs and bare feet dance back and forth in the salty breeze. She smiles down at me: white teeth against tanned skin, sun-bleached, too-blonde hair, and generous tits barely hidden underneath a thin, white shirt. Even in the setting darkness, I see her nipples: dark, round, porny.
She stands and saunters down the public pier, her smile still on mine, but very much aware of the effect she has on the men she passes. They watch the bounce of her breasts, the sway of her hips in those frayed denims so short they might as well be bikini bottoms. Her fingers walk along the wooden handrail until her bare feet hit the sand and she's standing right in front of me. She pulls the earbuds from my ears, and drapes them over my shoulder.
"Hey, baby." Her breath is a whisper on my ear.
We've dated for two years, but this is all we are: whispers and erections, kissing and seduction. Aside from the superficial, she's a stranger to me, and vice versa. I know she's an only child. I know her father left when she was just a kid, and her mother remarried a dentist. I know she's following me to college after graduation, and she's told my sister she expects us to be married one day.
But there's so much I don't know.
I don't know why she cries sometimes when she looks at the sunset, or why her skin turns clammy whenever I attempt to have a serious conversation about anything. I don't know how she can love me without knowing a single thing about me, and I'm not talking about the simple stuff, like what my dad does for a living, or my brother's middle name. I'm talking about the serious stuff, like how confused I feel about religion and politics, or my lineage. The fact that at the age of twelve I found out that I was adopted, and how I wasn't informed by someone I love, someone I trust. I found out from Ben Cheney, a guy on the baseball team, and the biggest dick around. He'd tormented me all season about it, until I bloodied his nose and sat in the dugout the duration of the last two games.
She kisses my lips, and the thoughts fade around the edges. All those things seem so unimportant when her pouty lips touch mine. Warmth and wetness invades my mouth as her tongue tickles mine. I grab her ass, because that's who I am with her: stroking her heavy curves and sticking my dick wherever she'll let me, and she's the kinda girl who lets me stick it anywhere, so why was I complaining earlier?
"Your parents out tonight?"
I nod, and she smiles, already knowing the answer to my question before I answer it. My parents are young for their age, and vibrant. They love going out on Friday and Saturday nights, leaving their teenage kids to our own devices. This is the perfect setup for teenage debauchery, and although I partake in it—regularly—I don't necessarily enjoy it outside the moment.
"I've missed you." She drags my right hand from her ass, placing it on her breast. Leaning into me, she kisses me again, her hand palming my dick through my gym shorts.
A woman in her thirties pads by, scowling and dragging her giggling, staring kids behind her. Embarrassed enough to push my girl aside, but too horny to piss her off, I take her loving hand and entwine my fingers between hers, leading her from the shore and up the sandy hill.
"Someone's eager," she says, her voice soft and laughing, caught up in the breeze.
I toss a smile over my shoulder and ignore the strain of my dick against my shorts. It's easy to do, surprisingly. Easy to go limp, even with a bouncing, over-exuberant blonde tagging along, ready to suck and fuck all night. Easy to do considering she hasn't noticed or doesn't care that I haven't uttered a single word during our entire exchange.
~oOo~
The bay's quiet tonight, aside from the soft sounds of Spanish music flowing from the back patio of the house next door. I stand on the dock overlooking the bay, a longneck in one hand, my hair in the other. The creaking strain of bare feet slapping against wood behind me alerts me of her presence.
"You brought Brains home again, huh?" My kid sister, Kate, snatches the beer from my hand and stands next to me. She's fierce in the early moonlight: studded nose-ring glinting off the white orb in the night sky, her blonde hair a stark contrast to the pink and purple hues streaking through and through, trailing into choppy, uneven ends.
"What an unfortunate nickname you have for my girlfriend." The words are thick and scratchy from the disuse of my speech for so long. Clearing my throat, I steal my drink back and take a long pull.
"What an unfortunate girlfriend." Her face pinches in disgust, then blossoms into interest. "No, you know what? This is great. A new subject for my vlog: why good guys pick bad girls."
"You're not vlogging about my relationship," I say in a warning tone. My sixteen-year old sister vlogs about everything frequently and without a filter.
"Come on, I'll give you a nickname to keep ya incognito." She quirks her pierced lips into a thoughtful pout. "She's Brains and you're Brawny. How's that?"
"Unimpressive and unimaginative. I thought you wanted to be a writer."
"I wrote out a grocery list today," she says, dryly. "Technically that's enough to qualify me as a writer."
"You underestimate yourself sometimes." I down the rest of the beer in one long gulp.
"I underestimate myself? Hypocrite much?"
Someone across the bay slams a door too hard. Dogs bark. Then more join the chorus. Kate's right; I'm a hypocrite. I drown myself in a girl who cares little about anything other than herself.
"Why do you do it?" she asks, as though reading my mind. A light flickers on behind us and we turn. My bedroom window casts aglow. Rose's perfect body frames the window, her curves darkly illuminated by my bedside lamp.
"I think it's the mystery of it all," I say. "The mystery of Rosalie Hale. Every time I learn an insignificant little something about her, I think I'm chipping away at the mystery."
"You've always loved a good mystery, but Rose is no mystery." Kate takes the empty bottle from my hand, and steps backwards on the dock. "Rose is a vanity, an illusion."
"Yeah, what do you know about it?" Feeling suddenly defensive, I follow her down the dock.
She turns her back to me, but I feel her smirk from behind. "Because I know girls like her. Hell, I've dated girls like her. Tits bigger than her brains. I also know she's thumbing through your college acceptance letters as we speak. Pretty sure I saw her toss a couple into the wastebasket beside your desk."
"What the hell."
I elbow my way past my laughing sister. The dirt stuck to the bottom of my bare feet irritates my soles against the tiled floor when I step inside from the back patio. The sound of Corruption, Jasper's latest video game, screams from his bedroom. I pound my fist on his door once as I walk by, an old habit since childhood. He calls my name from behind the door, but I don't slow down. Not until I'm facing the girl peeling open another letter.
"What do you think you're doing?"
She glances up. Wide, innocent blue eyes stare into mine. I waver. Almost cave. Fucking fickle, I am. A vanity myself, unsure of who or what I am without this girl by my side. But I feel it in the air: a monumental moment. A moment of change. Something's about to go down, and someone's about to get hurt. That emptiness inside sways, and a rush of excitement infiltrates the deadness inside my chest.
"What do you think you're doing?" Rose crumbles a letter inside her fist and tosses it into the trash. The envelope flutters to the ground. She picks up the remaining stack and flips each one. "Mississippi State, Tulane, University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, Virginia State … what the fuck's up with Virginia?"
"I was born in Virginia. Lived there until I was four." I make a go at the envelopes clutched in her hand, but she holds them above her head, dangling them like a prize. At six-foot two I only tower over my statuesque girlfriend by a few inches. Refusing to give in to her silly game, I roll my eyes and flop down on my bed. I don't expect her to ask about my Virginia comment, but I'm still disappointed when she doesn't.
"You have a full ride to the University of Florida. You'll be running for one of the top track and field teams in the nation." Rose lowers her arm, and tosses the remaining letters in the trash. She parks her supple ass on the edge of my bed. I pretend not to notice. "In a few weeks we'll be looking around for a place in Miami, a place together. What's the point of keeping any of these?"
I pick up my cell from the windowsill, tapping at the screen until I find the app that controls the sound system in the room. A familiar song yells in a low, angry roar from the speakers, a song about being bored to death, and maybe that's what I am: bored with this existence. Bored with being Rosalie Hale's boyfriend and nothing else. Bored of being her eternally hard dick and drag-along boy.
"I'm not going to Miami. Not in a few weeks to look for an apartment, and not for the fall semester."
Rose smiles and it's one of those placating, grandmotherly type smiles, the kind you give a kid when he says something dumb, but he's so fucking cute in his innocent ignorance that you can't help but give a pitying grin.
"You're in one of those moods again. One of those weird moods you get in sometimes." She places a hand on knee. Her long, pink nails tickle the hairs on my leg.
"One of those weird moods I get in since last summer," I say, pressing her to press me, but she doesn't.
Tapping her nails on my leg, a thoughtful expression flits across her face. "This is my fault, I've been too intense." She bites her bottom lip, sucking it between her teeth. "I've been talking it up for so long. You're tired of hearing about it, huh? That's why you're looking at other colleges." She scratches my leg with those nails, and it feels the way it always does: torturous and nice.
"You don't listen. You never listen."
Rose blinks, and stares at me as though seeing me for the first time. "You think I don't listen? I do. I listen and I see. I know about last summer, you know. I know about you and that girl."
The strum of my heart beats in overtime, killing that dead vibe. "You know about Tanya?"
"Was that her name? Tanya?" Rose says the word like a romantic poem. "Yeah, Ang Webber saw the two of you down at the dunes."
"And you never said anything?"
Shrugging, she looks away, right at the orange gator-head symbol mounted on the wall. "You got it out of your system, right?"
Dragging in a deep breath, it comes out more like a frustrated groan. "You think I hooked up with Tanya?"
"Does it matter?" Those blue eyes of hers blink out, and I don't even know this girl anymore. No, I never knew this girl.
Still, I touch her chin, turning her face to look at mine. "Tanya's my sister. My biological sister. She contacted me last year, and we met up."
"Oh." That blank expression doesn't change. There's no relief, no questions. Her eyes shift from mine and down to my lap. Her fingers creep from my knee and underneath my shorts. I showered after my earlier run. Showered and changed clothes, and if it's up to her I'll be out of these clothes again soon, because that's what she does: avoids conflict and conversations by tempting me with her touch, with her mouth.
Tonight's different.
Placing my hand over hers, I stop her sexual pursuit. "Rose, I'm running out of reasons why we should be together."
"We've been together since we were sophomores," she says, as though this excuses everything always left unsaid.
Past Rose's shoulder, I see Kate standing in the doorway. She's shoveling colorful cereal from a bowl and into her mouth. Milk splatters her shirt and the dark hardwood underneath her feet. She leans on the doorframe, looking entirely unconcerned with the frown I toss her way. Finally, she rolls her eyes and pulls the door almost shut. Jasper's video game noise intensifies down the hall. I close my eyes and picture the two of them: Jasper leaning forward on his gaming chair, cursing into his mic, Kate curled up on his shaggy rug near his feet, spooning the last of her cereal into her mouth. The two of them waiting on me to join them, to hear my daily complaints about my dull life.
Rose pulls her hand out from under mine. "I should go, give you some time to come to your senses." She toes on her flip flops and tosses her platinum hair over one shoulder, pausing near the doorway, but not turning around.
"You know I'm right," I say, softly. "Neither of us feel the way we should feel about someone we love. Hell, we've never even said the words."
"Didn't think I had to say the words to show you how I felt." She grips the doorframe like a lifeline, still not looking back, and for a second I'm blinded by her words. Does this girl love me? Does she really feel the way for me that I've so been desperate to feel for her?
Rose waits. She waits for me to speak again, because that's me: the one who wants to talk his way in and out of things, the one who needs the words, not the actions. But for the first time in our relationship I'm speechless, and all I want is for her to leave. I want her to leave so I can join my siblings in the next room. I want to sit on the floor next to Kate, dodging pieces of soggy cereal she flicks my way. I want to join in on the battle Jasper's waging on the television screen, to be as mindless and numb as my brother is, the kind of guy I once was before meeting Tanya and opening my eyes to all the hurt that exists in this world.
Still, she doesn't turn. She doesn't curse or scream or let out a broken sob. She doesn't beg me to change my mind. She picks up her phone from the desk beside the door and leaves without another word.
After Rose leaves, I head to Jasper's room and spend the night dodging not only that soggy cereal I knew Kate would throw my way, but also her endless amounts of questions. I fall asleep on Jasper's bed, an Xbox remote in one hand, his sheets bunched in the other. The sound of grenades and gunfire from the screen doesn't numb me the way they should, the way it has in the past. If anything it heightens the pain, makes me hyper-aware of the emptiness in my girlfriend's eyes.