Purists should consider this very much AU.
Friday. Ante meridiem – 15°C
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It is immediately obvious that I have said the wrong thing.
She looks puzzled—or perhaps surprised—but certainly not happy. I don't know what answer will make her content so we appear to be settling for bemused silence. Later I can make another attempt at a response that will satisfy her; but for now at least, I'm far too cold. I feel the chill deep in my bones. They call this summer.
She's still staring at me, watching me shiver in my thick, sheepskin coat. Her bare arms as pale and as perfect as her heart-shaped face. This is what she's trying to tell me. This is what should frighten me.
"Can we go inside, Bella? I'm freezing."
The incredulity is etched plainly in her features. If my previous response had startled her, the current question had her nothing short of alarmed.
"Did you not hear what I just said?" She stutters then gapes, her mouth working open and closed soundlessly for a time. "I don't think you understand what I'm telling you. I know it's a lot to take in..."
When she trails off she looks completely lost. In that moment alone can I see her as she used to be: fifteen years old, all gangly limbs, and shy smiles. We're not fifteen any more. We can never be fifteen again.
My teeth knock together noisily, ruining the force of my exasperated sigh. She's disappointed, and I know how she feels. I came here expecting a cheerful reunion; to find the awkward, somewhat sullen girl that had been my only friend, and hold her in my arms while I told her how beautiful she had become. How she had grown into her skin. But you know what they say about best laid plans.
"You want me to be shocked? You want me to be appalled?"
She doesn't seem to know how to answer me, just watches as I finger the gash over my eye, my fingertips coming away stained with fresh blood. It had been some sort of attempt to protect me. Bella's husband, Edward, had shoved me out of the way of what he had perceived to be impending danger. 'Déjà vu', Bella had laughed. Edward had not found it amusing.
"Shocked would be appropriate! Do you even understand what I've said to you?" She asks me again, I feel like she has asked me a thousand times.
Behind her shoulder, Edward evaluates me with a pinched face and one narrowed eye. He's appraising me, and every time he considers me, my words, it means something. Even if I don't know what that is. Their daughter wrenches her hand free from his, and with a single wave in my direction, dashes off into the woods. She is terrifying and beautiful. At her mother's behest she had laid her hands upon me and shown me their story. Her secrets still echo in my mind.
"Of course I'm happy that you're here," she starts again. "Very happy. And I'm glad you're being so... understanding. It's just that I also want you to be cautious—be careful—where I wasn't."
I know what it is that she's saying. I can turn around, climb in to my shitty old Kombi, and drive back to wherever-the-Hell it is that I came from, or, I can stay. I can stay and hope that her secret doesn't kill me.
To her credit, she doesn't flinch when I wrap my arms around her, my cold lips whispering against her ear. "Please Bella, inside. Before my fingers fall off."
I start towards the house. It's tall, off-white walls are spotted with windows that glow with promised warmth. Edward strides out ahead of me and holds the door open with a sweeping arm. An antique gesture. Inside, there stands a couple, arms wrapped around each other. From her correspondence alone I can tell that these are Bella's parents-in-law. Her emails were often dotted with romantic descriptions of the Cullen family—the patriarch in particular.
"Edward, Bella. We were wondering when you were going to invite your guest in." Her voice is a soft hum; she has a mothers smile.
She shakes my hand gently, once. I can barely feel the pressure, the tips of my fingers are purple from the cold. When she introduces herself and her husband, her face shines with curiosity. They don't get many visitors, she explains. Of course they don't.
Bella tells her new family our shared history. At length she talks about how close we were in Arizona, how our mothers had become friends, how we exchanged secrets in the sun. She even goes on to tell them how my emails and phone calls stopped her from 'going crazy' in Forks.
"Until you stopped calling," I say, "I didn't hear from you for months."
Bella and Edward both have the decency to look ashamed. We don't really talk about the dark time. Those four months when Bella lost the love of her life, and the will to live. Knowing what I do now, I should wonder if there isn't so much more to tell, some darker truth buried within those stolen weeks. The subject is quickly changed, and as I remove my coat the low sound of central heating reaches my ears.
"I should take a look at that." The patriarch gestures to my face, the cut across my eyebrow.
Edward explains, "Carlisle's a doctor." I knew that already.
My fingertips are still stained with blood.
I nod my consent and the doctor disappears. While we wait for his return, Edward hangs my coat by the door, Bella guides me to the sofa, and Esme offers me a drink. Bella tells her that I drink tea, that even as my accent fades my drinking habits remain wholly English. I don't have time to ask if they even have tea in the house before she is gone from sight, leaving me alone with my friend and her husband.
"I'm sorry I missed the wedding."
The invitation I am certain was sent only as a nicety, she never truly expected me to attend. She tells me as much before wondering aloud—not for the first time—what I'm doing here, why I'm not back at college. It's difficult to explain. How can I not tell her this, when she has told me everything? For years she hedged around it. Wanting so badly to tell me the secret that in the beginning was not hers to share. When finally it was, she left electronic clues, and spoke in cellular riddles that my rational mind could not comprehend. Secrets like hers did not exist.
When the doctor returned, Edward rose from his chair. "I should go and find that daughter of ours. Before she gets herself in to trouble." He leaves with a smile on his face. Toothy, and charming. Probably the only genuine part of him that I have seen.
Carlisle sets his things down and waves me to him, a reassuring nod soon after. With gloved hands he cleans the gash and I gasp when it stings sharply. Quietly he apologises, and assures me that I won't need stitches. He sees my fingers tipped with blood, long ago dried, and takes my hand gently in his. Something in his slow, unnecessary exhalation of air makes me feel sad. I clear my throat and he releases my fingers.
"Bella, could you show me to the bathroom?"
She smirks. "Need a human minute?"
I loathe the expression at first utterance. I loathe the face that shaped it, the lips that formed it, the voice that spoke it. All perfect and grotesque. All at once Bella and never less like her. I nod because I'm too nervous to speak, too angry to form a polite sentence.
The whole house is immaculate. Right down to the polished porcelain of the lavatory. When finally my hands are clean I splash some water on my face. I look tired. I feel exhausted.
Back in the living room everyone is seated again, and on the coffee table rests a dainty china cup, nestled in it's saucer, teabag dangling over the edge. I thank Esme as I sit down and take an experimental sip. My throat loosens, my lips hum. She spares me only a glance before turning her attention back to Bella, and the girl upon her knee. They have their fingers laced together, and Bella's eyes are closed, lids fluttering.
"She prefers it to talking." Edward explains.
I lean closer to the girl, close enough to feel the heat radiating from her small, pale face. "I imagine I would, too."
She smiles at me, wide and bright; the very picture of childish glee. But she isn't a child. Not just a child.
"You never told us what brought you here." Bella says, "Are you taking a break from college?"
I'm certain now that she has seen through each of my evasions. This heavenly creature is too canny to be Bella, but I'm desperate to have my friend back so all I can do is pretend.
"I might go back. I'm just not sure yet. Bella," I fairly whine, "I don't know what to do. I don't know who I am." I want to tell her I'm scared. Not just of her secret, of her family, but of life. Of living. But here, in front of her husband, her child, her in-laws, and in the wake of her revelation... it seems too trivial.
Perhaps you'd have to be a mind reader to know my discomfort, to sense how desperately I wanted to talk to Bella. My Bella. Alone.
"You haven't even seen the cottage yet. Bella should take you for a walk, it really is lovely down there." Edward gives me a small, knowing smile. My cheeks heat.
I'm finishing the last sip of my tea as Bella hands her daughter off to Esme and snatches up my coat, telling me the story of their marital cabin. She plucks the now empty china cup from my fingers, whisking it, and it's saucer away. I haven't even had time to stand before she's at the open door, waving my coat excitedly. Whether or not she witnesses the shocked exchange of her family, I do not know, but it is hard to imagine she misses something even my dull eyes can see. I thread my arms through the heavy sheepskin and she sweeps me out of the door in another extraordinary display of speed.
Friday. Post meridiem – 18°C
.
It is immediately obvious that I have said the right thing.
She's doubled over with laughter, shaking and heaving as I tell her the story of how I left college to start driving aimlessly all over the country. My journey of self discovery seems silly sitting here, next to her. We exchanged stories for hours wandering around her cabin, their family home, and along the banks of a river, weaving tales through the trees. Standing at the bottom of an especially beautiful cedar, I told her I wished I could climb to the top. She told me how she often did. When I asked her to haul me up, even to the lowest boughs, she shook her head sadly. It's dangerous, I'm fragile, Edward would be furious.
In the years we exchanged phone calls and emails Bella spoke a great deal about Edward. In the beginning at least, she seemed to tell me everything. It's because you can't see me, I would tell her. Can't see me judging you. She would laugh at the truth in that. And I knew it to be true because I felt the same. Over time she grew more distant, gradually able to tell me less and less about her life. I had blamed Edward. When the dark time came, and the emails stopped, I worried for a time that he had killed her. The portrait I had painted of Edward was abusive, and cruel. Even now, it is not what he is, but how, that makes me feel as though I was right all along.
If telepathy is his shield, manipulation is his sword.
"So where are you off to next? Think you can stay in Forks for a while?"
"Oh yeah," I nod with sarcastic vigour. "I'll blend right in 'round these parts. You know, between the zombies and the regular old pasty locals." The rich brown of my skin, and the natural curl of my hair had never been more pronounced than in the lush, green town of Forks.
Bella laughs, baring her perfect teeth. "You'll wish I was a zombie by the time I'm done with you!"
She runs circles around me, flinging herself tree to tree, pretending to chase me. I'm trying to do what she asked of me, trying to exercise caution, but when we reach the porch of the main house and collapse in to a giggling pile of limbs I can barely even remember what it is I'm supposed to be afraid of.
She's a monster, I think. "You're a monster," I laugh out loud.
I'm nervously excited when she tells me I should stay for a few days. It seems her sister-in-law, Rosalie, and her husband, Emmett, are away for a while. A second honeymoon, she tells me. They have been together since the thirties, and desperately in love the entire time. She tells me that Rose is the most beautiful creature in all of creation, and I don't doubt it for even a second. There is no more room in my life for scepticism.
The peculiar living situation of the Cullen family had been relayed to me over Bella's first few months in town. She herself thought it no more gossip worthy than her neighbours new lawn mower. But me? I had thought it thoroughly scandalous! An opinion not entirely changed since the revelation of their true familial nature. They weren't just a family. They were a nest. A coven? If there is a word for what they are collectively known as, Bella has not told me what it is. I don't think she wants to.
In the space of three heart beats she has run to my van, collected my bags, and offered me a hand. I take it. She smiles. It's like we were never apart.
She puts my bags in Rosalie's room. It's beautiful. It seems surprisingly feminine for a shared space, and is pristinely clean. Bella points out the spacious bathroom before flopping down on the enormous bed. They don't sleep, she tells me. I don't need to ask why the bed is here.
We lay there on our backs, the late afternoon sun filtering in through soft curtains. Her skin sparkles. Her perfection pains me.
"I want to hate you." I say.
"I know." Is her reply.
It's a strange scene in the kitchen. Esme and Ren are working in tangent, preparing dinner for the 'breathers'. Ren, Bella tells me, is the name I am to address her daughter with. If there's more to that story—and I'm certain there is—she doesn't wish to share it. We're having veggie burgers, Ren informs me. When I ask if that's her favourite, the child's mouth clamps shut and her mother grimaces. I can only imagine.
Saturday. Ante meridiem – 7°C
.
In the very early hours of the morning Ren is fast asleep in the cottage, watched over by a vigilant, loving grandmother, while Carlisle is beginning his shift at the hospital. Bella and Edward left hours ago to get their own meal, and share some time together. I cannot sleep. The potent mixture of excitability and fear races through my blood, keeping me awake. I wonder, not for the first time, if any of them can hear the erratic beating of my heart.
There is every chance that I am alone in the house but still I tiptoe down the stairs. There's water in the fridge. I take out a single bottle and press it to my throat, cooling my nervous blush. I catch my reflection shining back at me, warped and distorted in the polished steel of the toaster. What a mess. Setting down the water bottle, I probe my injured eyebrow experimentally. My fingertips come away clean.
"I am sorry about that."
A sharp stab of fear tears down my spine. Every single vertebrae rattles in turn until my whole body is shaking in earnest. When I turn to face him, fully illuminated in the moonlight, my tremors are yet to subside.
"It was hardly your fault." My tongue feels heavy in my mouth. I have no idea how long I've taken to respond.
"No. True enough." He smiles, lips never parting.
Earlier, Ren had laid her hands on my face, spilling her families secrets into me. I was dumbstruck. A little cold, and more than a little afraid, I stumbled back, tripping over my own feet and striking my face against the headlight of my van. It had been a tiny cut. Jasper had reached for me, Edward had pushed me away. At some point the tiny cut tore open. Soon it will just be an ugly scab.
He's staring at me with that same tight lipped smile. It's almost a smirk. Almost. It makes me yearn to know what would have happened if he'd gotten his hands on me.
"You weren't planning on biting me, were you Jasper?" I want the question to be playful but it sounds thin, and fearful. His gaze slides down my throat and back up my face. I'm drowning in his eyes.
"No, Lena." Is all he says.
And whether it's the intensity of his stare, or the fear of what I suspect is his lie, I shiver again. I feel the chill deep in my bones. They call this summer.