Author's Note: Unbeta-ed. No point, no plot. I'm procrastinating.
Disclaimer: Alan Jackson. Twilight. The Red Pony.
and love is a sweet dream
that always comes true
oh, if life were like the movies,
i'd never be blue.
The first postcard arrives a month before the wedding. Charlie calls her into the kitchen after Edward leaves, tells her to sit. He's got this serious look on his face, and Bella begins to worry that something's gone terribly wrong.
"The mail came today," Charlie starts, brows burrowing in frustration. He's leaning against the counter, arms crossed over his chest. He glances down at the floor before his gaze flicks up towards Bella's. "I thought maybe it'd be best if…Bella, I know you've…Aw, jeez, you got a postcard."
A pause. "A postcard?" Her voice sounds far away, and she's staring hard at Charlie's face. Something like sympathy flashes across his features as he nods at the neatly stacked mail on the tabletop. Bella turns towards it, pushes aside bills and coupon flyers to reveal a glossy picture of a man suspended in midair over a bucking horse, 'Wyoming' printed on the corner in orange block lettering.
"I figured I should wait till Edward left. Before I, you know," Charlie explains, waving a hand halfheartedly at the postcard.
"Oh," Bella breathes, taking the postcard in hand. She traces the arch of the man's back, brushes her thumb over the state name. Flipping it over, she's met with Jacob's messy scrawl. She's not prepared for the pain that rockets through her, burns down like acid from her head to her toes. She gasps against the feeling; an arm slinks around her middle as a dull throb stats deep in her chest.
Bella,
I'm in Cheyenne. Just thought I'd let you know. Stop worrying. Stop calling. Just stop. Please.
"Bella?" Charlie questions worriedly.
"I'm fine," Bella answers, standing up and looking about the kitchen. Her gaze jumps from table to counter to floor. She tries looking everywhere but at Charlie; she doesn't think she's prepared to deal with that look in his eyes. "I'm fine," she repeats, walking towards the stairs. "I'm going to bed."
_________
Bella wakes in stages. A shift of a leg, fingers curling in towards her palm, an awareness of the cold, and she's blinking awake. It's dark out, and there's the sound of a light drizzle on the metal roof of the garage. She moves to stretch and freezes. There's a blanket covering her.
"Hey," a voice break through the shadows. "You're awake."
"Embry?"
"Yeah."
Bella pulls the blanket tighter around her frame, crawls out from the backseat of the Rabbit. Her limbs move awkwardly, still tingling with the pleasantness of sleep. Her last step is a fumble, but before she can crash to the floor two warm hands grip her elbows, hold her upright.
The warmth is achingly familiar, and Bella collapses against Embry's chest. Great, heaving sobs tear from deep within her. They leave her throat raw, and she clutches desperately at the boy before her. He is solid and real, so similar to Jacob that it hurts even more just to be around him.
She shuts her eyes tightly, tears clinging to her lashes as she presses her wet cheek against Embry's ribs. She's murmuring incoherent apologies into his burning flesh as he rubs a gentle hand down her back, pats awkwardly at her shoulder. When she's good and drained he walks her out to her truck, helps her climb in.
"Can you…Can you try not to think about this?" Bella asks softly, slipping her seatbelt into place.
"Sure."
________
When Charlie calls her into the kitchen a week later, Bella is prepared. Charlie's back leaning against the counter, arms crossed. "You got another one," he says.
It's postmarked Mason City, Iowa.
Be happy with your choice, Bells. Stop making it hard for me.
His words sting, and she hates that she's causing him pain. It's all she ever seems to do. She bows her head, hair falling in a curtain around her face as tears silently make the trek down her cheeks. She doesn't hear Charlie approach, too absorbed in the postcard clutched tightly in hand.
He stands quietly beside her, reaches out to lay a tentative palm on her shoulder. The warmth of it is ridiculously human, and Bella finds herself pushing into his touch. She cries for Jacob and herself. She cries for the Cullens. She cries for her father. She thinks of how after the wedding she'll never feel his touch again, and it only makes her cry harder.
"I'm so sorry," she sobs to the tabletop.
________
Lately, all Bella does is cry. While she's awake, and sometimes while she's asleep. She finds herself staring blankly before her, eyes stinging with unshed tears. She hates it, tries to stop. Trying to keep the sobs at bay makes it harder, and instead she collapses into a wet mess of hiccups and gurgles and clammy cheeks.
"Bella," Edward pleads, cool fingers stitching patterns on her soaked skin. "Talk to me. Please."
"I'm sorry," she answers. It's all she seems to be able to say lately.
Her life is this: crying and apologizing.
________
Charlie fixes her with a wary stare.
"It's fine. I'm fine."
There's a bulging, oversized envelope on the table.
Bella's heart pounds furiously in her chest as she forces herself to look inside. The first thing she spies is a postcard. The front is a glossy picture of the New Mexico desert. She flips it over, inhales sharply.
Something borrowed. Nothing fancy.
She's almost afraid to find out what's in the envelope. Her throat tightens, and she finds it suddenly hard to breath when a leather cord slips free. She remembers spying it tied mid-calf on Jacob. Suddenly, oxygen is swelling in her belly, and when she exhales she's laughing.
________
"I'm sorry," Bella whispers. "I'm so sorry."
She places the wedding band gently on the porch railing of the Cullen's house. Edward stands statue-still, jaw set and eyes devastated.
"So this is it."
Her breath hitches on the wet sound of a sob, "Yes."
On the drive home she thinks of her love for Jacob and Edward. Somewhere, in the midst of heartache and forever, she forgot to love herself. And she cries, heaping sobs and snot and oceans of tears. She cries for Edward who will have to live forever, and Jacob who feels too hard. She cries mostly for herself, who couldn't possibly love enough.
Charlie helps her inside. He tucks her into bed, and she remembers being young, Charlie fumbling through a bedtime story. This love, the warm swell of it in her chest, it is constant and right. She hopes to one day feel that way about herself.
________
"You'll call?" Charlie asks, for what seems the millionth time.
"Of course," Bella grins, swinging the door of her truck open, the engine miraculously fixed. She tosses her duffle bag onto the passenger seat, turns toward her dad.
"You know I don't like this, right?" Charlie scowls.
"I know."
Charlie nods, pulls Bella into a hug in an uncharacteristic display of affection. "Love you, kid," he whispers gruffly into her hair.
"I love you too."
Father and daughter part, cheeks aflame after their embrace. "No picking up hitchhikers."
________
Bella loops the braided leather Jacob sent her on the truck's rearview mirror, points the front of her massive Chevrolet towards the Atlantic. She spends two months zigzagging across the continental United States.
For the first time in a long while, Bella feels alive. She wakes when she wants, and there is no Jacob or Edward there to help her when she feels as though the world is crashing in on her. She realizes she kind of likes it.
She loses her virginity to a boy in Maine with curly brown hair and brown eyes. He's plain and dull and normal. Wrapped tight in sheets, he pulls her close and whispers stay. She flips away in the pre-dawn light, engine rumbling down a long stretch of highway.
She cries all the way to the state line.
________
At a truck stop somewhere down in Arkansas, Bella buys two postcards. She sends one to Charlie. The other she tucks into the glove compartment, for when she finds more appropriate words than 'thank you.'
Dad,
Met some newlyweds my first night in town. I'm running low on cash, so they're letting me sleep on their couch. Don't worry, I'm keeping the pepper spray you gave me close. I went swimming with the wife the other day. She's teaching me the breaststroke. I bought you a book on the Civil War. You'll get it when I return.
I miss you.
—Bella
________
Bella's road trip runs a little long, and by the time she gets to Forks it's too late to sign up at the community college. She's not too beat up over the fact. In the mean time, Bella gets a job as a waitress. She hates it.
One night, about a month after she's back, Charlie turns to look at her. She's curled up on the couch, reading a beat up copy of The Red Pony that she picked up at a yard sale in Colorado.
"What?" She asks, turning a page.
"You're okay?"
His question catches her off guard, and her whole body freezes. There's that familiar ache in her chest as Edward and Jacob flit through her mind, but it's not numbing as it used to be.
She turns to Charlie, smiles. "I will be."
________
Sal is gorgeous. He's got blonde hair that curls against the collar of his shirt and eyes as blue as the sky.
He makes Bella nervous.
"So, dinner?"
Her fingers tighten against the straps of her backpack.
"Sure," she grins, a blush spreading fast across her cheeks.
________
She's hesitant, but Sal is persistent. And patient.
"Can we just…can we slow down just a bit?"
Sal kisses her cheek, twines his fingers with Bella's. "As slow as you want. Snail slow."
Bella grins, tugs his body closer to hers. "Maybe not that slow."
________
They've been dating for nearly a year, and Bella is happy. There's no heartache. There's no promise of forever. She's not all apologies and loud sobs.
Instead, there's inside jokes and morning sex. On laundry days, Sal puts on puppet shows with Bella's socks. They leave her aching all over. In a good way. A pleasant, tingly ache that comes from too much laughter.
When one year quietly dips into two, Sal gives her a key to his apartment, asks her to move in.
It gets harder after that. Bella finds it's almost impossible to live with Sal. Everything about them seems to clash now that they're sharing a living space. A tiny part of her wonders what she was doing, saying yes to Edward so young.
________
She cries for a week straight.
But a breakup is not the end of the world, nowhere near it. So, Bella gets up, showers, and tries to move on.
And she does. Eventually.
________
She's been staying with Charlie for the past two months when the news come. A phone call from Billy to Charlie that lasts seven minutes, exactly. Jacob's back.
She smiles when Charlie tells her. He's got a grin on his face the size of the moon. He invites her to tag along to La Push with him, but Bella shakes her head, tells him maybe another time.
"You sure?"
"Yeah."
When Charlie sets out for the reservation, Bella settles down on the couch to study. She's got a big test coming up, and she's not even close to being marginally prepared for it. Before she can plunge into note cards and highlighters and key terms, she lets her mind wander back to the postcard she sent down to La Push with Charlie.
The front is a glossy picture of trees in Autumn, bright reds and vibrant oranges, shocking yellows and dark browns. On the back, in the neatest lettering she could manage:
Welcome home.