She was staring at every dream ever buried in her private little graveyard, and all she could think was that her toe hurt.
"Hell." Bella said, not even realizing she had spoken out loud, so caught up was she in her examination of the niche under her floorboard.
He was so perfect — Adonis, no less — with his gold eyes and chiseled face warm with happiness. There she was at eighteen, looking shamefully plain and sinfully happy next to him. It was looking through a window into another time, another world.
This was the world where Edward had wanted her.
No, he never wanted me. Bella reminded herself severely.
Her heart rate increased as she gazed at the pictures of him.
Hardly daring to let hope take flight, she rummaged through the flotsam.
Expired plane ticket vouchers.
A half pressed pink rose from the party caught innocently in with the pictures — a splatter of rusty brown blood speckled it. Was that blood from the wounds that had torn not just her body, but also her heart?
There, in the slim jewel case.
The unmarked CD that held Bella's lullaby, among other things, shone gently in stripy rainbows.
Her heart thumping painfully somewhere around her throat, Bella put the CD into her Walkman and jammed the earphones into her ears.
She pressed play with a trembling finger.
Still, half of her mind was on the left hand that probed her toe, wondering whether she'd need to splint it, or at least ice it.
Lush melodies, heartbreaking in their key and familiarity, rolled over her in waves that licked and teased at the raw edges of the wound that still gaped when occasion called.
"My toe hurts." She mumbled as the first track ended. "I should get some ice at least." At least she wasn't bleeding. That reminder of her lost family would be all too brutal.
He existed, and all I can think about is my toe?
She knew what was happening. Her body was protecting itself from the kind of pain and event like this could — and would — trigger. Building up a wall of distractions and denial. Bella was already half trying to talk herself into believing it was a dream.
A faint hint of Edward's dizzyingly mouthwatering scent clung to the pictures. Bella closed her eyes and inhaled, pressing her cheek to the floor to get closer to him. No dream had ever captured the exact quality of the smell, and Bella knew no dream ever could.
Oh. God.
This was real. After a year of dreaming and doubt and hopeless love, here was the proof. Bella gazed hungrily at the pictures once more, marveling at how he was even more beautiful than she had hallucinated.
Her chests ached and throbbed after a pair of arms she still cried out for in the night, and tears spilled down her cheeks and onto the expired tickets to Florida. "You left everything and nothing behind." Bella said. "You left everything behind but you! Damn it, Edward. What did you mean by leaving this?"
There was no answer — the way it had always been on all those nights when she screamed his name.
Bella looked one last time at the pictures and tickets and memories — and put them back into the floor.
"It all happened." She whispered to herself.