This is my entry for The Jukebox contest.
Song choice: Cowboy Take Me Away by the Dixie Chicks
Rating: M
Word Count: 2,932
Pairing: Bella and Edward
Summary: Bella's lived her life hoping for a promise to be fulfilled from one of her mother's favorite songs, she's nearly given up hope, but is her cowboy really out there?
Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight, or these characters, I just own the shenanigans I put them through.
"Here you go, sugar," I say as I place a platter of pancakes, eggs, and sausages in front of man dressed in a black business suit, "What else can I get for ya?"
"I'm on the phone," he snaps, looking at me angrily. A Bluetooth device is crammed in his ear, "No, no, I can talk; this waitress chick obviously can't see when someone is talking on the phone."
I roll my eyes and go back to the kitchen. I work at Cheryl's Diner, a small, family owned restaurant just outside of Seattle. It's like home to me, and pretty much the only place that I can call home.
"Douchebag at table eleven," I whisper to Alice as I grab my next order from the cook. Mornings are the busiest time for us; we've got all walks of life coming in our doors, the regulars, the uptight businessmen, the blue collar crowd, and the perpetually strung-out and hung-over.
"The usual," I say to Ted, one of our oldest regulars, "Two strips of bacon with a fried egg, and toast," I hand him a napkin and a fork, he looks at me expectantly, "Oh! And orange juice, of course," I fix him a glass and set it by his plate.
"Bella, who has ruffled your feathers? Do I need to kick someone's ass?" he looks at me knowingly.
I can't help but smile at him. He's the sweetest old man, well any aged man, that I know. I think of him as a grandfather figure.
"You wouldn't hurt a fly, Ted," I wink.
He laughs, "You know you look exactly like your mother when you smile like that," Ted says in between bites of fried egg.
I cast my eyes to the floor, not wanting him to see the sadness that I felt. My mother was a subject that I didn't often delve into.
"I'm sorry," Ted says softly.
"What're you all spiffed up for?" I ask to change the subject. I wave my hand over Ted, he's wearing a nice, white button-down long-sleeve shirt and navy blue tie, with grey dress pants and a matching fedora perched on his head.
"Oh, my grandson's coming to visit for the weekend, we're spending the day in the city," he says with a smile, obviously proud.
"I didn't know you have a grandson," I've known Ted for almost six years and I've never heard him mention a grandson.
"He doesn't get to visit often, he travels a lot. He's about your age." Ted nods as I refill his cup of OJ, "Wait a minute, you've met him before, he was here about two years ago around the time your mom…" he trails off and looks away awkwardly. Geez, Ted's on a roll with bringing up my mother.
"I'm sorry, dear."
"I've got to get back to work, Ted," I attempt a polite smile. I thought that eventually I would stop feeling this, this helpless need to breakdown every time someone mentions my mother. Like Ted said it's been two years, but I haven't been able to move on.
I can feel the tears coming as I pass through the swinging doors into the kitchen. The heavy smell of bacon, grease and eggs hits me, making my stomach curl. I place a hand firmly on my stomach, as if that would help keep its contents from ending up on the floor.
Johnny and Lila, the cooks, shoot me worried looks as I pass through the kitchen and slip down a hallway and pass by Cheryl's office.
"I'm taking my break," I say quickly as I yank open the back door and drop down onto the cool, concrete steps. I bury my face in my hands as the tears that I had been trying to hold back flood from my eyes.
"Damn it, damn it, damn it!" I sob.
"Guess what, my Bella!" Mommy says excitedly as she walks into the apartment. I look up from my coloring book to see her set down a bottle wrapped in brown paper on the kitchen counter. She kneels down and scoops me into her arms, the crayons I had been using fall to the floor.
"What Mommy?" I giggle as she twirls me around.
"Daddy's coming home!" she smiles and gives me an Eskimo kiss.
"Really!" I squeal and hug her neck tightly, but I pull away from her quickly, "Have you been drinking, Mommy? You smell bad."
Eight-year-olds shouldn't know what alcohol smells like on someone, especially not their parent.
"Now, honey, you don't need to say things like that, you'll hurt mommy's feelings," she says as she puts me back on the floor.
"When's Daddy going to be here?" Daddy had been gone for a long time; I kinda forgot what he looked like.
"He's going to be here tomorrow, we get to go pick him up. Are you excited?" she picks up one of my fallen crayons and begins to color in a picture of a puppy dog
"Yeah, I guess I'm excited, but why was Daddy gone for so long?" I ask, Mommy had never told me where Daddy went, she only said he had business to do.
"I've told you before Bella, he was doing business," Mommy always gets mean when I ask about Daddy, "He's done with business now, and he's coming home. We need to get this place cleaned up for him, so put your colors away, now."
Mommy stood up and put her bottle in the refrigerator before moving to the stereo and playing her favorite song.
That fucking song, the song that I hate and love at the same time, my mother sang it as a promise to me, but it was a promise that she couldn't fulfill.
I said, "I wanna touch the earth
I wanna break it in my hands
I wanna grow something
Wild and unruly"
I wanna sleep on the hard ground
In the comfort of your arms
On a pillow of blue bonnets
In a blanket made of stars
Oh it sounds good to me
I say, "Cowboy take me away
Fly this girl as high as you can
Into the wild blue"
Set me free oh I pray
Closer to Heaven above and
Closer to you, closer to you
Mommy sang along with the song as she moved around the apartment cleaning the clutter that had accumulated over the past year. We hadn't cleaned since Daddy went away to do business.
Mommy's favorite part of the song was coming, the part she would sing her heart out to, she pulls me up into her arms and spins us around and around to the beat of the song,
I wanna walk and not run
I wanna skip and not fall
I wanna look at the horizon
And not see a building standing tall
I wanna be the only one
For miles and miles
Except for maybe you
And your simple smile
Oh it sounds good to me
Yes it sounds so good to me
Cowboy take me away
Fly this girl as high as you can
Into the wild blue
Set me free oh I pray
Closer to Heaven above
And closer to you
Closer to you
I love when Mommy is like this, she looks so happy.
"One day I promise you, your cowboy is going to take you away, my Bella, and it'll be the greatest adventure of your life."
God, how I lived by that promise, that hope that my mother, Renee, had planted inside me is still going strong today. My mom always wanted me to live a life like that song, to find my cowboy, as she put it. She put a lot of belief in that a man could make your life better.
I remember asking her if my dad was her cowboy, she never answered me. I eventually figured out that if my dad had been her cowboy, then we wouldn't have been in the situations that we were in, and she wouldn't have been using drugs to rid herself of his memory.
I can't even count him as my father anymore; he never was one to me. Charlie went away on "business trips" more often than I can remember. He was a drug a dealer, hell, he still may be a drug dealer, I haven't seen or heard of him since I was eleven-years-old when he went away on another "business trip" and never came back. My mom just stopped talking about him, but she didn't have to I could tell that he had hurt her, in more ways than just emotionally.
After my dad left, my mom started moving us around to different places, we always stayed around the Seattle area, but we never lived in one apartment longer than six months.
Renee didn't have a steady job, my mom would work one place until she saved up enough money to move onto somewhere else, some other place that she said was always going to be better than the last, but it never really was, but there always was one constant with her, that song. It went with us no matter what.
When we moved into an apartment complex next to Cheryl's diner, things started to look better. I was thirteen at the time. Cheryl and her daughter that was my age, Alice, lived in the same complex and she hired my mom on the spot the first time she met her. Cheryl and my mom became inseparable friends, and Alice and I followed their suit.
School never was a priority for me, I had missed so many days that I never thought I would be able to catch up, graduation seemed like impossibility to me. Alice helped me turn that around, we studied together and she tutored me when I fell behind. We graduated in May of 2009, Alice was the Salutatorian. She was awarded a scholarship to the University of Washington and she left that August.
I had been so wrapped up in graduating and being left behind as Alice went off to school that I didn't see the changes that were taking place in my mother. I knew that she had been dating a few guys that would come by the diner, but I didn't know that she started using again.
I was finishing my shift at the diner one night when Cheryl pulled me aside, "Renee didn't come in this afternoon for her shift, do you know where she is?" I'll always remember the worry on Cheryl's face, I didn't understand it at the time, but now it is too clear to me.
"She told me you gave her the afternoon off, she spent the day with Bob, or Tim or whatever his name is," I said passively.
"Shit," Cheryl cursed under her breath.
"What's wrong, Cher?"
"Have you not noticed that Tom isn't a good person for your mother to be with? She's using again, Bella, and this time its heavy stuff. Meth and heroine, she's getting it from Tom," my stomach sank. How could I have been so oblivious to this?
"But she told me you gave her the afternoon off," I was angry, more at myself than anyone else, "Why did you let her off if you knew she was going to be with him?" I raised my voice.
"Isabella, I didn't let her off, I told her not to go, begged her, but you know your mother she's going to do what she wants," it was eleven o'clock; there was no telling where she had gone.
"I'm leaving," I said, leaving the dirty dishes and unswept floor behind. Cheryl followed, locking up the diner behind her.
We went next door to our apartment complex, I heard the song before I even got to the door, she had it playing so loud.
The door was unlocked.
She was gone by the time we got to her. Cheryl and I found her with a goddamned needle in her arm strung out on our living room couch. Tom, or Bill, who-the-fuck-ever was nowhere to be seen. There were whiskey and tequila bottles lining the coffee table.
Oh it sounds so good to me
Cowboy take me away
Fly this girl as high as you can
Into the wild blue
Set me free oh I pray
Closer to Heaven above and
Closer to you, closer to you
Closer to you
Cowboy take me away
Closer to you
Cowboy Take Me Away ended as I removed the needle from my mother's arm. I was seventeen when Renee was finally taken away.
"Ted got to you again didn't he?" Alice says as she sits down beside me. She pulls out two cigarettes and passes one to me. After she'd heard about Renee she came back home and has been working at the diner and going to community college ever since, and I love her for it, but I feel like I'm holding her back.
"He just always seems to bring her up at the worst times," I release the smoke that I had been holding in.
"I'm sorry, Bella," she says and I lay my head on her shoulder. I take one last hit off of my cigarette and flick on the ground.
"I can't dwell on it anymore, I'm tired of losing my shit anytime someone talks about her," I stand and brush off my apron and pants, "Let's get back to work," I push my mom to the back of my mind and wipe the tears off of my face.
It seems like the people had multiplied in the diner, every booth, table, and barstool is being occupied. I started bustling around taking orders and filing drinks when I heard it…
I said I wanna touch the earth
I wanna break it in my hand
I wanna grow something wild and unruly…
I just couldn't escape it today. I'm about to walk back to the kitchen when I hear Ted call my name.
"What ya need, Ted?" I say suddenly feeling exhausted.
"First, I want to say I'm sorry, I think you know what for," I nod, "and second, my grandson is just about to be here, I really want you to meet him, and properly this time," he looks so eager.
"Ted, there's a ton of people in here. I can't-" I try to explain that I can't stand around waiting to meet someone when he interrupts me.
"No, no, no," he looks over his shoulder and out the window, "he's here now, it won't take long."
I follow his gaze out the window and watch as a man on a black sport motorcycle pulls up to the curb. Maybe meeting his grandson wouldn't be such a bad thing.
Cowboy take me away,
Closer to you…
He removes his helmet and hangs it on the hand bars. My heart beat speeds as I watch him walk through the door. He's beautiful, hands down the most handsome guy I've ever seen. He's tall, so tall, he's wearing black jeans, worn, black leather boots, and a black leather jacket with a grey shirt underneath. His face is breathtaking, shockingly green eyes stand out in contrast to his pale, flawless skin. Even more contrasting to his eyes is the mess of copper-bronze hair that covers his head and falls into his eyes.
Ted stands and greets his grandson, "It's so good to see you, Edward," he pulls him into a tight hug.
"It's great to see you too, Papa," he smiles, his voice is deep and sultry, God, I haven't even met him and he's driving me crazy.
"This is my grandson, Edward," Ted says to me, "Edward this is Bella."
Edward extends his hand toward me, and I place mine in his as I look into his eyes, they're so green.
"It's a pleasure to meet you again, Bella, this time under much better circumstances," Velvet, and honey, that's what his voice sounds like.
"It's nice to meet you, too" I stammer out.
Ted slaps both of us on the shoulder, "Well, you kids go have fun," he says to us.
Edward smiles at me, "What're you talking about Ted?" I ask, confused.
"You've got the day off, I've cleared it with Cheryl," he points behind the counter and I turn to see Cheryl nodding and smiling at me.
"Go, have fun," she says warmly.
"Okay?" I say skeptically, looking at Edward.
"My name is Edward Cullen. I'm a professional photographer, and I love Chinese food. My favorite color is red, and I'm a Gemini. I'm twenty-three years old and I don't drink or do drugs," he spouts, "Now you know something about me, let's go have some fun. I've heard you need it."
"Wow," I say, astonished.
"I wouldn't set you up with anyone I didn't think was worthy of you," Ted says caringly, sounding exactly like a grandfather.
I smile at him, appreciating what he had done for me. I take off my apron and pull the pen from my hair that had been holding it up.
Edward once again held his hand out to me; I take ahold of it as he leads me through the entrance of the diner and out to his motorcycle.
That was five years ago today, we've been together ever since that day. I found my cowboy in Edward, the person that my mother wanted for me, Edward is my greatest adventure, and we're still going strong. I never would have guessed that my cowboy would have shown up riding an iron horse.