Part One
To Try and Remember
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"I'd like to think I'm the mess you'd wear with pride."
-Band of Horses, "I'd Like to Think."
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She's somewhere between the cold food section and aisle three, her permanently cocked hip jutted to fit the warmth of the lovely little child with rosy cheeks and a sweet disposition.
"Apple or peas?" she asks, presenting the jars for the two year old's judgement.
The peas earn a crinkling of her button nose and the young woman smiles in agreement.
"I'm with you on that one."
They make their way to the checkout, people not so subtly eyeballing the young girl with the baby. One dimpled smile, utterly reminiscent of her grandfather, and the judging glances are transformed into coos of appreciation, attention that the wide eyed baby accepts delightedly.
Bella scoops the baby into her arms, a small warm cheek burrowing eagerly into the crook of her neck, seeking the comfort of skin and letting out a content sigh. The check out girl, gum snapping like some terrible cliché, is still packing the bags, her laborious movements almost lulling Bella to sleep.
Eyelashes flutter against her neck, and Bella smiles at their special game. Butterfly kisses. She turns her head and sends one back, gleeful chortles her reward. This game continues for three more flutters until Bella feels Amelia's smile against her neck. The check out girl questions her form of payment and when Bella returns her attention to Amelia on her shoulder she's surprised to feel her duck shyly behind her hair. Another giggle. Bella leans Amelia back, only to find her eyes avidly fixed upon something behind Bella's shoulder. She giggles again, lurching forwards and peering from the security of Bella's hair.
"What are you laughing at, sweet girl?" Bella asks, turning her head to discover the object of Amelia's adoration.
Only to find her own.
With a rosy complexion to rival that of her baby's, Bella stares at her long lost friend, his open mouth a comic mirror to her own.
"Jacob?"
His jaw is still unhinged and once upon a time she would have tapped it shut and wiped away some false drool. But not now.
Instead, she busies herself by readjusting Amelia's sleeves and smoothing her hair back.
"I thought you were in Alaska?" his voice is as unhinged as his jaw.
"Yeah, well. Things change. I changed," she offers weakly, a strange prickling in her fingertips as her heart palpitates an uneven tattoo. Only then realizing her choice of words have underlying connotations – underlying connotations that began this whole sticky mess.
"I mean. I'm not changed, as in fangs changed, I mean obviously. I have a baby, so…" her words trail off.
She hasn't blushed in so long. It's making her lightheaded.
"You're married?" he asks and she smiles ruefully at him.
"No, Jacob. I'm not married."
"Oh."
"And I'm not getting married."
"Oh."
She's never heard him so stuck for words. That was her job.
He's still beautiful and she feels dowdy, for the first time, in her jeans and t-shirt. She wonders if he notices.
There's an awkward, static silence. More awkward than when she walked in on Renee and Phil at age 10, even more awkward than Charlie's attempt at a sex talk and the resulting silence when she blurted out that she was pregnant.
Bella smoothes Amelia's corn-silk curls and thinks of Thomas. He was a nice boy - too nice - with an unassumingly lovely face, one you could trust. He wasn't anything remarkable – not a perfect, dark beauty with angles painted by angels to create a masterpiece to rival the Sistine divines or wild undiscovered plains, all burnished skin, ebony hair and a smile that could go on for days. No, he was human, ordinary and just lovely with the crooked angle of his nose and eyes set too wide. And he came to Bella, providing a distraction and escape from eternity, treaties and things that went bump in the night. And Bella found that love didn't have to be all declarations and sweet nothings and fire and ice and not being able to exist without one another. It didn't have to be complicated. It could just be comfortable. Thomas was normal. He was nervous and overwhelmed when she told him she was pregnant, but he stayed and he was happy and proud when Amelia was born. But Bella was restless, not wanting to acknowledge the understanding she now felt for her mother's actions in fleeing Forks. She understood them only too well now. Until one day she packed her bags, said goodbye to an understanding Thomas and took Amelia home to see Charlie. Charlie opened the door with a watery smile and Bella fell into his arms, only then letting herself cry. She was home.
But she realizes now that home was never complete without the boy – man, now- that now stands awkwardly in front of her.
She finds herself staring at him: The scar on his left eyebrow made by the trajectory of a flying wrench (he got Paul mad.) and the gentle stretch of his smile (it still went for days and days) and the strong capability of his hands, all calluses and blunt nails. She remembers holding that hand. She remembers it holding hers back.
He clears his throat and jams said hands into his pockets, rocking slightly and whistling through his teeth.
Amelia squirms impatiently in Bella's arms, still eyeing Jacob with something akin to awe.
Jacob seems to be debating something, his eyes narrowed into the same thinned line as his lips. He breathes out abruptly,
"Can I hold her?"
Bella stares at him momentarily then stutters, "Uh. Yeah, sure."
She awkwardly juggles her purse back over one shoulder before passing Amelia quietly to Jacob. He seems to be regarding her as he would a difficult maths problem: with befuddlement and total disbelief.
Amelia is still all wide eyes and reaches up to the curtain of Jake's long, ebony hair to push it from his face. She repeats the motion a few times, watching intently as it cascades over her tiny hand. Bella watches Jake's face the entire time, hardly breathing, and sees him mirror the awe of Amelia.
"Mama?" she calls suddenly.
"Yes, baby?" Bella replies, reaching over to take her from Jake. Amelia pushes her hands away and burrows into Jake's chest with a content smile.
"Pretty," she sighs, her hands still toying with the sensation of his long hair.
"What's with you Swan women and emasculating me, huh? 'Sort of beautiful' and 'pretty…" he grumbles half heartedly, the corner of his mouth betraying his false emotion.
Bella giggles at him and suddenly Jake's grinning back at her as if she's seventeen again and this is just another day, just another smile, as if this smile wasn't the first she'd seen from him in three years. She closes her eyes and basks in it slightly. She feels warm.
"She looks just like you, 'ya know?"
Her eyes flicker open and Jake's looking at her again, like she always disregarded and always secretly wanted. Like he never stopped.
The moment breaks as Amelia tugs impatiently on Jake's hair.
"Amelia, that's not nice. Say sorry to Jacob, please."
Amelia pouts slightly, pushes his hair back again.
"Sorry, Jake."
"That's alright, kiddo. I've had worse. Your mum punched me once," he recounts with an impish grin.
Bella rolls her eyes dramatically, "well, you did deserve it."
"Sure, sure."
There's a beat of silence that stretches between them, that permeates their very beings and forces them to acknowledge why there is silence in the first place.
She loved him and she left him.
"Well, I should probably go now?" she states as if a question, reluctantly.
"Oh. Yeah, yeah of course. Sorry," he says hastily.
He smiles at her and her eyes well up a little as he makes no move to hug her. All she wants is for him to hold her again. To tell her this can be fixed.
But he doesn't.
Bella can feel the pressure behind her eyes so she quickly walks with her trolley towards the exit. In the safety of the carpark she allows her sadness to overwhelm her.
Amelia touches her face with a concerned look and Bella smiles through her tears.
"Sorry, baby. Mama's just feeling a bit sad."
She's wiping her face roughly with her sleeve when two gentle arms wrap around her from behind. And she sobs one loud, grating sob as he whispers,
"Oh, Bells. I've missed you like crazy."
And just like that, she sees her entire future play before her as the sort of beautiful man that holds her heart gives her a smile.
And she's home.