Hello great, poetic land mermaids of the Twilight fandom.
If you are reading this fic before reading Come Undone - what are you doing? You're going to be so confused. Stop what you're doing and go to the other story, read that and come back here.
If you are here from Come Undone - congratulations you found another 7Eleven urinal cake of fic. This fic is going to be a different flavor than the last one. I'm getting away from the SM-teenage-angst and delving into some more adult themes. Why? 1) to flex my writing style 2)because both of these kiddos have GROWN. They need some grown up problems and BD sucks ASS in that department (fetal explosion, really?) 3)What do the Volturi think of this whole human thing? Hmmmm...? *sips tea*
So, a couple of things:
-Sex. There's going to be some wholesome, vanilla, hetero, softcore sex scenes. Not lemons bc I hate those (if you want good sex Twilight fanfiction, I heard 50 Shades of Grey is pretty good) But, I totally expect Bella and Edward as married teenagers who are of the same species would be fuckin' like rabbits. So expect that.
-I am h-o-h (Meniere's is a bitch, y'all) and have been in the Deaf (with a capital D) community for a bit. I know ASL (not natively fluently, but I am can converse) Deaf people get SHIT when it comes to media. Children of a Lesser God was the last good thing for Deaf people in the last like twenty-something years, imho. So, if you can't find something, create it lmao That's why I'm doing this fic, honestly. Come Undone was for you guys. Ordinary World is more of my passion project. The chapters will be longer and better edited, but they probably won't come as fast. BE PATIENT ily
-ASL written in this story is going to be translated into the ~~English equivalent~~ because ASL on paper is called gloss and it looks like this: TONIGHT SEE MOVIE ME / GO WITH ME CAN YOU. Hearing people who sign also tend to talk while they sign (this is called simcom). So the English equivalent just makes sense in all regards.
-Some warnings without giving stuff away: adult stuff, okay? Maybe it'll be mental. Maybe someone (major) will die. Who knows, right?
READ AND REVIEW.
Bella - 2009
There was a deep, profound sigh behind me that caused me to pause what I was doing on the computer and spin around in the office chair.
Edward, my husband – a word that gave me both butterflies and the cold sweats – was sitting on his knees on the floor of his bedroom, surrounded by his eighty-year-old music collection. His hands moved from cardboard box to cardboard box as he pulled tapes and records out and inspected them. I watched as he inhaled air until his cheeks were puffed up and then let it all out with a noise that sounded like a dying balloon.
I propped my head on my hand and watched him organize his stuff, ogling him for the millionth, billionth time since I've met him. He was perfect. He had bronze-y, messy hair and a splash of freckles over his nose and the tops of his cheeks. A birth mark in the shape of a heart sat over his lovely collarbone. A Chiseled jaw and eyebrow bone made up his face. And his eyes - I pressed my lips together to keep from swooning - his eyes were the prettiest, purest shade of emerald green I've ever seen.
He ran his fingers through his hair and turned his head to the side, revealing one of his flesh-colored hearing aids. A reminder of the newest bullet point on the list of Things that Make Edward Edward.
He was deaf.
This fact was one that we were both still getting used to. He hadn't always been deaf. In fact, as of seven weeks and six days ago, he could hear all sounds humans could, most sounds humans could not, and everyone's thoughts as they were created in their heads, with the odd exception of mine.
He tipped his head and one of his hearing aids gave a screech of feedback – a high-pitched noise that sounded like when a microphone is tipped towards its speaker.
I waved my hand towards him to get his attention and his beautiful, green eyes snapped at me. "Your hearing aid is squealing." I said and formed my hands into the word for 'feedback' in American Sign Language.
His fingers found the backs of his ears and the squealing stopped. "That better?" His voice was clumsy, like he was trying to talk out of his nose and a couple ticks too loud, but it was still Edward's voice. The voice of the man I loved.
"Yep." I signed at him – my fist moving up and down in the air like a nodding head - and leaned forward. "How's the sorting going?"
"What?" He said.
I made a motion to the mess he had created on his bedroom floor. "How is sorting?" I enunciated my words better so he could read my lips.
He was going through his stuff, preparing for the eventual move out of Forks. His music being his most extensive and involved collection to move.
His eyes flashed and mouth twisted. "I don't know if I can get rid of anything." His eyebrows pulled together. "I love it all."
I moved from the office chair to my knees on the floor next to him, being careful not to accidentally push any of his stacks over or snap a fragile record. "Then don't get rid of anything." I said and shook my head.
He stopped my chin with his fingers, his brows furrowing. "What?"
"Don't trash your music." I said and signed slowly. "Just put it in storage for now." I had to fingerspell 'storage' since I didn't know that sign yet.
He picked up a tape box and tapped his chin, his eyes tracing around the boxes. He finally sighed. "Maybe you're right."
"I know I'm right." I leaned forward and kissed him. It was easier to kiss him now that he was human. He wasn't a predator anymore with a bunch of predatory features designed to lure in prey. I didn't get dazed and woozy from his scent anymore. However, he still smelled amazing, like fresh soap and cut grass.
Some things never changed, though. I still had to fight the urge to throw myself at him in a fit of ecstasy every time he looked at me with shiny adoration and my heart rate would still take off like a jackhammer in my kiss every time our lips met.
But, as of seven weeks and five days ago, his did too now.
He pressed the palm of his hand into the small of my back to pull me closer to him so I was straddling his lap. I ran my fingers ran through his wavy hair, down his chest. He cupped my face and opened his mouth slightly, to let me in further. I felt his erection through his jeans and pressed myself closer to drive him crazy enough to want to move to the bed.
A couple of thoughts always ran through my head when we kissed like this:
1) He was so warm now. I couldn't get over the fact that we were now the same temperature. I loved feeling his flush in his neck and across his cheeks. I loved feeling the divots in his lower back go damp with sweat. I loved feeling his warm breath tickle my bare skin.
2) Sex was way better now that we were both human. He could be free to do what he wanted now, what I wanted now - which was everything. No more worrying about losing control and breaking me somehow, which he was always afraid of doing. As humans, we could have every part of each other now.
3) How I rolled this dice of fortune and gotten Edward as my one true love in life, I have no idea. But, I counted my blessing with every sigh and gasp and tiny noise of his. Every murmur of my name made me thank my stars, even if it sounded a little funny now.
He pushed me back as I was getting into it so he could talk to me. "What time is it?" He asked. His green eyes were swimming with lust and adoration, as if I was the prize and not the lucky winner in this situation.
"Hey, Siri." I said aloud, without taking my eyes off of Edward. I squished my chest against him and ran my lips against his strong jaw. "What time is it?"
"It's two-thirty-eight pm." My phone answered back from its place on the desk.
"Two-thirty-eight." I signed.
His brow furrowed. "We have to get to class."
"It's Thursday?" I pouted and pressed my forehead against his chest.
Edward giggled at me, his hands running up and down my arms. "Dan would be disappointed if his favorite students weren't in ASL class."
I pulled back. "Because we make up a fourth of his attendance sheet." I groaned and carefully got to my feet, pulling Edward up with me. He was a head taller than I was and had an athletic build – which was actually getting better, beefier since he started running and lifting weights in the morning. As if he couldn't get any more perfect.
"Maybe we can visit a jewelry store after class?" Edward's eyes flashed with hope.
I turned around to grab my stuff from his desk. "Yeah, sure, maybe." I said quickly and glanced at my ring-less left hand, making sure it didn't spontaneously grow one. Edward was very, very excited to be married, but he came from a time where that's what you did. You got married young because it was expected of you. 1918 was a very traditional era, I imagined.
I wasn't not excited to be married. I loved the fact that I got to grow old with the man I loved. But, I grew up in the modern world raised by my mother who thought marrying young was Satan's gift to humanity to make them as miserable as possible.
This belief is why I had postponed telling my parents, instead opting to come back to Forks pretending that everything was exactly the way it was, with the small exception that Edward was now deaf and cured of whatever 'cancer' he had gone to Japan to get treated for.
"What did you say?" He asked, his hand grabbing mine.
I hesitantly looked at him. "Maybe." I signed.
He rolled his eyes and dropped my hand. "That means no." He started for the door.
"Edward, wait." But, he didn't have his eyes on me, so he didn't hear me. I chased after him, grabbing his shoulder to get his attention before he descended the Cullen household's grand staircase. "We can go to a jewelry store if you want." I said.
"I don't want to force you to do anything that you don't want to do." He said.
"I just…" I started, anxiety making my voice high and squeaky. "If I come home with a ring on my finger and Charlie sees he's going to throw me in the FPD jailhouse and then go on a manhunt for you. Like, with bulletproof vests and attack dogs and the full SWAT team. I just need to tell Charlie first." I sucked in a breath. "Okay?"
A bunch of emotions flashed in his grass-green eyes as I spoke. Confusion first as he tried to follow along, frustration second when he couldn't because I speaking too fast, and then resignation when he gave up the effort.
"I lost you, didn't I?" I said slowly.
He just breathed a short breath of exasperation and turned to descend the stairs.
"Edward," I chased after him again.
I tripped, since stairs and two left feet don't exactly mix, and started to tumble. Edward caught me by the shoulders before I completely ate it and straightened me back up.
"Both of my parents are divorced because they got married at my age." I said slowly, using the few signs I knew now to help convey what I meant. "Knowing that their only daughter did the exact same thing without telling them is going to be hard."
The sign for 'hard' was two curled peace signs going opposite ways, right on top of each other. I imagined for a second each hand as my parents when their marriage failed: going opposite ways, but staying right on top of each other.
He put his hands on my shoulders. "I'm not mad at you."
But, he was. Because this was our one and only fight and we had it about every three days. Edward would ask me if I had told Charlie yet, eager to do married-couple things like go on a honeymoon and live in the same house fulltime. And I would argue the fact that knowing that their eighteen-year-old daughter running off and getting married - the exact same mistake they did - would basically kill them. And he would drop the subject, frustrated.
I sighed deeply. At least I wasn't pregnant.
He started to turn and I touched his arm so he would focus on me again. "I'm sorry I spoke too fast." I signed.
He pressed a kiss to my forehead and closed his eyes, ending the conversation.
"You guys are going to be late." Alice said from the base of the stairs.
Alice was a vampire, which is what Edward used to be before a Japanese doctor developed a cure for vampirism. She had all the vampire traits: impossible beauty, hard, marble-white skin, and golden eyes. And then there were the traits that were specifically Alice: her delicate, toothpick frame, her playful gleam in her eyes, and her black hair that stuck out in odd directions.
"Do you want me to drive you? I was thinking of going to Port Angeles myself." She offered, a mischievous smile crossing her lips. "Since you drive like a human now?"
Edward descended the rest of the stairs, his hands around his eyes like blinders, his crooked grin on his face. "If I can't see your mouth move, I don't know what you are saying." He said
"Rude!" She flashed over to him at impossible speeds, knocked him to the carpeted floor with a grunt, and perched over him, a wicked smile over her face.
I jogged down the rest of the stairs to see if he was okay. His vampire family could be a little too rough with him, forgetting that he was a fragile, breakable human now. His brothers were especially bad. New hand and finger-shaped bruises bloomed over his arms and legs almost daily.
"Don't you dare." His eyes widened at his sister as he stared up at her.
"Oh, I dare."
Her fingers moved over his ribs and he thrashed around with the tickles, laughing hard. "No, no." He laughed and tried pushing her granite arms off of his body. "Stop it, Alice!
"I should take a bite out of you!"
"No, no." He wheezed and tried to fight her off, his red hair falling into his face and his crooked grin wide on his face. "You're killing me."
Esme ghosted from somewhere in the house, her face twisted into an angry mask, a growl already forming in her throat. "Alice, stop it." She ordered.
Alice froze, sighed, and picked Edward back up to his feet – a fluid movement that took a millisecond to do. "I wasn't actually killing him." She argued.
"Alice," Esme said in a warning tone.
"Ugh, no fun."
Edward fixed his hearing aid that was starting to squeal again. "It's okay." He said as he played with the device and looked at his watch. "She was being careful."
Esme just gave another warning glance to Alice, who rolled her eyes and crossed her chest. "You guys better hurry." She said at the both of us. "You're going to be late to class."
Edward wasn't looking at Esme, instead his eyes trained downward at his wrist. His jewel eyes widened. "Oh, we're going to be late to class."
Edward played his music loud in the car. So loud, you could feel it in your chest and the soles of your feet and watch it vibrate the windshield. Which is exactly why he played it so loud – so he could feel it. This must've been a song that he knew pretty well too, because he bobbed his head with the beat and sang along with the lyrics off-key.
I pursed my lips as I studied his face as he drove, wracking my brain for a way to tell my dad that we were married.
I remembered when we got back to Forks and I had to tell him about what happened to Edward without 1) giving away the Cullens' secret and 2) making myself sound completely mentally unstable…
I had grabbed two beers from the refrigerator and set them on the coffee table. Samuel Adams brand - his favorite. "Dad, I need to talk to you." I said as I popped the top off of one and sat down next to him on the couch.
I watched his eyes widen at the beer I readily offered – not something I normally did as I discouraged his alcohol consumption - and watched the gears turn in his head and what I could possibly have to talk to him about. His eyes flashed with a bunch of different emotions as he weighed out the possible topics, like a news ticker of possibilities right in front of his eyes - I was pregnant. I did something felonious. I'm joining a cult. I needed money. "Okay, Bells." He started hesitantly. "Shoot."
I sucked in a short breath. "It's about Edward."
That opened a whole new can of worms. "Is he okay?" He asked first, leaning forward to hear what I had to say.
I knew what he meant: the 'cancer.' Edward had come down with a grave disease only vampires could get – the strikes it was affectionately known as - but we passed it off as a rare form of brain cancer to the rest of Forks, Charlie included.
"Actually…that's what I want to talk to you about." I said. "He's doing great."
He breathed a sigh of relief. "That's good."
"Yeah," I started, my eyebrows pulling together. "The treatment he received in Japan has put him into a…remission. He's a lot better than he was. No more cancer. No more pain or crutches anymore."
"That's great!" Charlie celebrated as he sipped his beer. He looked at my disconcerted expression with confusion and his smile faded. "Isn't it?"
My mouth twisted around as I tried to think. "Dad," I started suddenly. "Do you know how the Cullens all look the same? Even though they are adopted?"
He shrugged. "Sure." And then his eyebrows furrowed as he gave it another thought. "Hmm. Why do they all look the same?"
"They all have a…genetic abnormality." I said. "Like albinism, but not. It's a long scientific word that I can't even begin to pronounce. Carlisle and Esme both have it and they sought out kids with it too."
He nodded and drank the rest of his beer. While Charlie was bright, genetic biology was not his forte. He took that explanation without any fight, like I had assumed he would. "Makes sense."
"Well, the treatment Edward had has corrected the abnormality, so he looks a little different from the rest of his family now." I said. "Unfortunately, it also took his hearing."
Charlie's eyes flashed with surprise at me. "He's deaf now?"
I nodded in response.
"How's he taking that? How are you taking that?"
I looked down at my hands. "It was a surprise to everyone, but he's handling it better than we expected." I said, "I just don't want to you to be shocked when you see him, because he's a bit…self-conscious about it." I'm also married to him now. I wanted to add at the end, but didn't, my mouth suddenly feeling like it was stuff with a bunch of cotton.
Charlie looked at me peculiarly – like he was still waiting for a punchline to the joke. "Is that it?" He asked guardedly, guessing there was something else.
"That's it." I lied, my voice sounding squeaky. I tensed for the interrogation. He could tell I was lying, right? I was a horrible liar.
Instead – to my surprise - he relaxed. "I don't think your boyfriend going deaf is a 'two beers' situation, Bells." He said as he grabbed the other and settled on the couch. "I don't get worked up over stuff like that. I'm not your mom." He teased.
"Yeah, you're definitely not Mom." I gulped, knowing I would have to tell Renee about the marriage eventually too. Marrying young was ranked among genocide and maybe punching kittens in my mother's mind.
A siren dropped me out of my memory and back into the present. I touched Edward's shoulder and made the sign for "ambulance," which looked like I was screwing in a light bulb over my head. He glanced up in the rearview mirror and pulled into the shoulder of the road to let the emergency vehicle pass.
"Thank you." He said.
"Welcome." I signed back.
His eyebrows pulled together and he sighed as he merged back out onto the empty two lane highway that connected Forks to Port Angeles. I touched his arm again and he glanced at me briefly while I signed. "What's wrong?"
"Headache." He answered.
Worry made me blanche slightly, even though I knew exactly where these headaches were coming from. Muscles memory from the time with the strikes, where small pains were the symptom of something much more sinister.
These headaches, though, were entirely ordinary. Edward's new struggles with communication forced him to concentrate hard to read lips. Too hard. Tension headaches were almost guaranteed at the strain he had to endure to converse nowadays.
And he got them more often when he was speaking with his family. Vampires spoke quickly and fluidly, barely moving their lips at all. I caught him saying "what?" or "repeat that" about six hundred times a day. And it didn't help that his family didn't seem to make an effort to make communication easier for him by enunciating or better yet, picking up sign language.
"Do you want to switch?" I asked when I watched one of his eyes squint close.
He looked at me and nodded and then pulled to the side of the road again. I pulled out a bottle of Advil from my schoolbag and handed it to him before switching positions. I adjusted the mirrors, lowered the volume of the music, and moved the seat before pulling back out onto the highway.
"When are they going to take ASL?" I signed with one hand after a couple of moments of silent driving.
He didn't answer for a moment. "Esme is learning." He finally said.
"Esme isn't your only family."
He fell silent and still. That's why he didn't push me too hard to tell Charlie about the marriage, because he also had a secret of his own: how much he had to struggle to communicate with the other Cullens.
I didn't really understand why he didn't tell him. I assumed his family would take up sign language if they knew how hard being deaf was for him, but he didn't like bringing it up. It was like he felt guilty for being deaf. Like it was his fault somehow and by asking them to learn ASL, he was putting them out.
"You should say something." I signed.
"I'm okay." He said in his stilted accent, his eyebrows furrowing. "The headaches will get better once I get better at lip reading."
I sighed through my nose, so he wouldn't see the action, and reached over to take his warm, soft hand.
Our class was made up of six other adult students. Dan, our teacher, was a hard-of-hearing, middle-aged guy with large blue hearing aids that dressed like he was going to a Woodstock reunion party. "Good evening, Cullens." Dan signed as we both took our seats in the back, fluidly fingerspelling our last name, my new last name.
Edward was the only deaf student in the class. Everyone else probably thought this was an easy A, as I think the only other foreign language offered at this tiny community college was Spanish.
"Today, we're going to talk about noun/verb pairs in lesson five." Dan signed as he spoke, referring to the PowerPoint that was projected on the screen behind him.
I opened our shared textbook to the lesson we were on and Edward traced the back of my hand with his fingertips as he watched Dan sign.
It was a little disconcerting to me when I learned that ASL had its own grammar and syntax. I thought it was just English, but with your hands – easy enough, right? But, there were all these rules you had to follow. Sentences were made up differently than how they were conveyed in spoken English. And it wasn't just your hands that spoke, it was your body language, your position, your facial expressions. A conversation turned into a full body workout.
But, I threw myself at it with everything I got, taking advantage of the summer before college to crash course myself into this new language. I set up extra time during the week with Dan to practice. I watched YouTube in ASL. I would fingerspell road signs with one hand to myself as I passed them while driving, order food in ASL, try and interpret the news as I watched television with Charlie. And of course, converse as much as I could with Edward directly. And even with all my extra effort, I still felt like I wasn't learning it fast enough. At least, not learning it fast enough to be useful to Edward.
Because, no matter how much I was holding off telling my parents, I was Edward's wife and Edward was now deaf, which meant that I was – to an extent – his link to the hearing world.
And that scared the absolute crap out of me.
Edward ripped a page from his notebook and wrote down a note in his elegant handwriting. You okay?
Dang it. Edward was so observant of everything I did now. The man couldn't read my mind, but that didn't stop him from knowing exactly what was running through my head.
I'm fine. I wrote back, my handwriting not nearly as nice as his.
You shouldn't worry about telling Charlie. He wrote. What's he honestly going to do to you? Kick you out of his house? Then you can live with us full time! He punctuated the last sentence with a happy face.
Okay, maybe he didn't know exactly what was in my head. I hadn't been thinking about telling Charlie about our marriage. At least, not in the last five minutes. I hesitantly picked up the pen. He would tell my mom.
Edward was called on to answer a question – his attention grabbed by Dan, who flicked the lights at the front of the room on and off. He put his pen down and rose his hands to answer.
Renee, a person who lived and learned from life experiences – the good and the bad ones – always warned me about getting involved too young. "Marriage is a conspiracy, Bella." She would say. "Don't make the same mistakes I did. Hold off drinking that Kool-Aid for as long as you can." I would not hear the end of it once I told her. It would be something she would haunt me with for the rest of her natural life.
Once he was done answering his question, Edward went back to writing his response. They're both going to know eventually. He wrote.
I moved my hand so our fingers were tangled together, so he couldn't write down more of what I already knew.
I drove again after class and with my eyes almost rolled 180 degrees up into my eye sockets, I found a locally owned jewelry store and pulled into the parking lot. It was for Edward - the love of my life, the air in my lungs, and the blue to my sky. My husband. I could peruse around a jewelry store for a couple of moments to humor him. Maybe even try on one or two.
Edward looked at me with surprise in his beautiful eyes and I threw his car into park and pulled up the e-brake. "Really?"
"Yes, but you owe me dinner after this." I said and poked him in the ribs.
He responded with a gigantic, lopsided grin.
It was still open – but for only another fifteen minutes. The door bell above our heads dinged and the older Native American lady with a long braid looked up from her romance novel with a smile. "Welcome."
I started pursuing the cases, Edward's fingers looped with mine. I was drawn to the turquois. Reminded me of the desert in Arizona. And the topaz – Edward's old eye color.
Edward disconnected from me to walk over to the other side of the store.
"Anything I could help you find?" I heard the lady ask Edward.
I looked over my shoulder. Edward was bent over the counter, his eyes not her, so he wasn't catching that she was talking to him. Her eyebrows pulled together into concern. She probably thinks he's being rude. I thought, fighting the urge to propel myself over there to assist.
She bent over to look at him through the counter and Edward took notice of her that time. "Anything I can help you find?" She repeated.
"Can I see that one?" He pointed at the glass.
Realization dawned on her face at the sound of his throaty accent. "Oh, yes." She yelled and I cringed. "Which one?"
"Raising your voice doesn't help him hear you." I said, her eyes flicking to me. "Just speak clearly. He'll get it."
She blushed red and then picked up the ring holder he was pointing at. I went back to looking at the turquois, trying to decide if I looked better in gold or silver.
"Bella," He said. "Take a look at this one."
I walked over to where he was standing. He was holding up a delicate looking gold band with an unsymmetrical rough-cut diamond on the top. It was tiny and simple and very, very me.
"That's beautiful." I said and signed.
"Just like you." He signed back and took my hand, sliding the ring onto my finger. I looked up into Edward's eyes. When we said our vows those months ago, Edward's eyes were blood red, he had a tube jammed in his nose, and I had to kiss him around a walker.
Now, his eyes were a bright green and instead of marble white, he was a beautiful healthy peach punctuated by a constellation of brown freckles.
"That's lovely." The lady said. "When's the wedding day?"
"Oh, we're already married." I said sheepishly as I looked at my hand. "We kind of eloped."
"So romantic." She looked at us both.
"How much?" Edward asked and turned to look at the sales lady, his fingers running through his bronze hair.
"Four." She smiled.
I did a quick mental stock of my meager bank account. "You know, after gas this morning, I think I have about four hundred dollars."
"No, thousand."
I ripped the ring off of my finger. Four thousand dollars. That was a semester of tuition at a moderately priced college. I handed it back to Edward.
"What are you doing?" Edward asked, his pointer finger wiggling as he signed the ASL equivalent.
"I don't have four thousand dollars." I didn't even know the sign for 'thousand' yet. I just made four and then four zeroes.
Edward snorted and held the ring out. "Bella, you have the money."
"No," I said and pushed his hand back. "You have the money. I have enough for a college textbook and maybe some McDonald's."
"What is mine is yours." He tried handing it back. "That's how marriage works, right?"
"I think it's more like unconditional love and support until we both die."
His eyes became intense, as hard as the jewels they resembled. "Do you like the ring?"
"That doesn't matter. I don't have the money for it."
"Do you like the ring?" He asked again
I was going to lose this argument. I truly, honestly did not know how much money the Cullens had, but I knew it was a lot based on the collective worth of the contents of their six car garage. That didn't stop me from opposing the lavish spending of money he insisted on partaking in. I was raised sensibly on a kindergarten teacher's salary. I would've been happy with a twenty-five cent gumball machine ring, a tattoo, a straw wrapper bow-tied around my finger. I was just happy being with Edward.
Luckily my phone rang in my back pocket and I pulled it out to see Renee's face light up the screen. I was saved from this argument for now.
"It's my mom." I signed and answered it. "Hello?"
"Bella!" I had to pull my phone away from my face as she shrieked. "Phil got signed with the Diamondbacks!" Her voice screeched. "He's major league now!"
Edward looked down at me with questioning eyes as I held my phone at arm's length. I signed what I just heard for him. Although, she was shouting so loud I wouldn't have been surprised if Edward heard it himself, the decibel levels of her voice was high enough.
"That's great!" I said as I pulled my phone back. "Tell him congratulations!"
"You know what that means, right?" She started.
"Free season passes?" I guessed and she laughed at me.
"We're moving back to Phoenix, baby!" She said. "Our home turf! It's going to be so great. I'm so excited to get back to the desert."
I looked at Edward, the ring was still pinched between his fingers, making being a male model look effortless. I tried imagining him under the high desert sun. The last time we were in Phoenix, after the James debacle, he had to wait for the very early morning and the late evening to venture outside since his skin in the sunlight looked like it was embedded with a million little diamonds - a dead giveaway that he was something other than human.
But, now. He didn't effervesce in the sun anymore. We could visit Phoenix…
"And I already found a house." She chattered as I ogled my husband. "It's in Glendale. I know your life is in Forks now and you're an independent young lady, but if you ever want to come dry off in the desert, you're more than welcome to stay with us." She sighed melodramatically, like the prospect of me turning into an adult was tiring for her. Which was pretty hilarious, because I've been basically been thirty-five since I was twelve. "I know the babies would love to meet their new big sister!"
"Thanks Mom." I smiled.
"Have you thought about your college plans yet?"
"I think we're going to take this semester easy." I said. "Community college and then transfer to university in the spring."
"We're?" She asked confused and then made a noise. "Oh, Edward."
"Yes," I said. "Edward." My husband. I wanted to add on the end, but couldn't.
"How's he doing?" I heard the subtext in that question, the ellipses that wasn't said but always implied. How's he doing…with being deaf?
I had told the same story to Renee that I did to Charlie, so all she knew was that he was "cancer" free and deaf. "Great. We're both picking up sign language, which has helped a lot. Still hasn't decided on his major yet, but you don't really have to pick in the first year if you don't want to."
"That's wonderful, baby." She said. "I'm glad you guys are adjusting well."
"Yeah," I looked at him again. He had migrated down the counter and was looking at a different selection of rings. "Adjusting."
Seven months ago, I was set to follow Edward into his world. I was completely prepared to become a vampire to be able to be with him for the rest of my existence. I was going to abandon my family, my friends, my whole life to follow him. Two months ago, the tables of fate were flipped, and it was him that rejoined my world. He was a human now.
I wondered for a second how I got so lucky.
"I'll let you go." Renee said. "Give kisses to everyone for me."
"Okay, love you." I said as I held back tears.
I turned around to a small black jewelry box in the middle of my husband's hands. I groaned. "You didn't."
"I got one too." He assured, pulling this top off the box. Inside was the ring, the diamond glinting underneath the light and next to it was a thicker, larger band in the same gold. He pulled the rings out and handed his to me and picked up my left hand. "She gave me a discount since I got both at the same time." He grinned as he slipped the ring on.
I slid his ring onto his finger, tracing the new freckles on the backs of his hand before looking up into his eyes. His gaze was intense, searching and tracing all over mine. "I love you."
"Why are you crying?" His thumb ran over a tear that had spilled onto my cheek. "Is everything alright with Renee?"
"Everything is fine." I nodded and pressed the tears out of my eyes, glancing down at the rings on our fingers. "I'm just being sentimental."
"I didn't get any of that."
I made the sign for 'I love you' and he kissed my lips in response.
