"Are you sure you're fine, Bella? Have you called Charlie? Have you let him know you arrived safely? You have a few days before you start… you could take a trip out to Forks and catch up with him, y'know. He'd love that," Renee rambled on excitedly over the phone, requiring very little in the way of dialogue as she seemed to carry on the entire conversations with herself, Bella's input rendered unnecessary.
"Yes, I'm fine. No, I haven't called Charlie. But yes, I will," Bella spoke softly into the receiver, holding the phone in place between her ear and her shoulder as she pulled heavy medical texts from her last remaining box, placing them on the already crowded shelf-space. It was a large shelf, an old, worn looking wood that had been built into the white walls, slightly recessed so that it was almost hidden unless you were staring at it straight on. It was the entire length of the wall and Bella had managed to fill every square inch of it.
Classic English literature filled the top three shelves and the rest of the space was taken up by large, hardcover medical textbooks that she'd acquired throughout medical school. She still referenced them daily, the pages worn and marked with pencil throughout.
"Bella, I'm worried about you. This decision was so last minute… I don't really understand why you decided to move halfway across the country to Seattle of all places, seems kind of impulsive" Renee's voice was filled with trepidation and anxiety, both of which Bella didn't feel like having to manage in this moment. Plus, Renee lecturing her on impulsiveness was laughable.
"It's one of the best surgical residencies in the country, mom. It's closer to Charlie and it'll be good to spend some time with him."
But Renee wasn't convinced, just as she hadn't been when Bella first tabled the idea. She'd already gotten in and accepted the offer when she told Renee and Phil. The timing of her announcement was intentional – having already accepted there was no way they could object or try to dissuade her. She'd rehearsed a halfway decent excuse and recited it every time she was confronted with the question of why? She'd been at the top of her class in Jacksonville and had been accepted into several local residency programs She had a beautiful apartment, one or two close friends and a boyfriend that adored her. Nobody could understand why she'd want to leave all of it behind – trade in the sunshine and warmth for the wet and the cold.
Bella didn't relent. One day she was living in Jacksonville and the next she had booked a flight, rented her old apartment, signed a new lease and was heading out of state.
"I'll feel a lot better if you go see Charlie. Don't make me call him, Bella."
Bella scoffed, flattening the last of the boxes as she collapsed onto her couch, completely exhausted from the past week of packing, flying, unpacking and maintaining this exhausting charade.
"Fine. I'll go see Charlie tomorrow," Bella didn't mention that she didn't yet have a car. She figured that would only make Renee even more insufferable. She might even covertly call up Charlie and convince him to drive all the way to Seattle to pick up Bella, and Bella had no interest in being trapped in a car alone with him for three and a half hours. She could rent a car and avoid the hassle altogether.
"That's a good plan, sweetheart. Why don't you give me a call tomorrow evening and we'll chat about your visit with Charlie?"
"Sure thing," Bella agreed through a yawn. "Talk to you later," she offered, waiting for Renee's reply before hitting the end button on her phone. She changed into pajamas, washed her face and brushed her teeth and crawled into bed. She glanced around her new apartment, noting how much tinier it was than her apartment in Jacksonville. It was pleasant, a simple bachelor apartment located relatively close to the hospital. For Bella the selling feature had been the concierge and around the clock security.
As she lay in her bed, allowing her tired body to sink into the soft mattress, she couldn't help but notice how familiar and right everything looked. All her old furniture, which had looked too simple for her gorgeous Florida apartment, fit perfectly in her Seattle apartment. Everything fit, like it was meant to be. Like this was always where she was meant to be.
She allowed her thoughts to wander for a few moments longer before she fell into a restless, fitful sleep. She woke several times through the night, glancing at the door from her bed, every small sound startling her awake. She eventually gave up on sleep altogether and brewed a pot of coffee, grabbed a text from her shelf and studied instead.
At some point she'd looked up the number for locksmiths in the neighbourhood and jotted a few with decent reviews down onto a notepad. She'd call around tomorrow and find someone that could install a few extra locks as soon as possible.
Maybe a few extra locks would give her enough peace of mind to be able to sleep through the night.
Unlikely, but it doesn't hurt to try.
Bella glanced into the rear-view of her rental car. She had picked it up right after the locksmith left early that morning. She noticed the large bags beneath her eyes. She'd never been one to wear makeup but part of her wished she had some concealer to make the purple circles under her eyes less glaring.
Her hands gripped the steering wheel as she tried to shrug off the terrible anxiety that was building inside of her. Her shoulders were tensed, her fingers gripping the wheel, nailbeds white from the intense pressure of her grip. She glanced down at her phone, watching as the small marker moved on the map of her GPS.
It was a scenic drive as she passed the endless miles of greenery and trees. Everything in Washington was green and alive. One apparent benefit of the rain was endless growth, it seemed. She wondered if the same could apply to her.
It had been years since she'd seen Charlie. The last time was when she was 21 and in her last year of college, preparing to write her MCATs. She'd been gifted plane tickets from Charlie as a celebratory gift for graduation. He'd left a simple note in the card that he'd mailed: "hope to see you soon, Bells." He'd folded the tickets in half, clearly unable to fit them in a standard card.
She visited, spending only a week. It had been comfortable, familiar and easy to be with him. She and Charlie were more similar than she could ever remember from the once yearly obligatory visits she'd made in the early years of his and Renee's separation. Perhaps she was changing, or perhaps it was that she'd always been too young in previous visits to really pay attention to the subtle, but significant, similarities they shared.
They were both quiet, introspective and relatively serious people. Charlie enjoyed simple things, and only spoke when he had something meaningful to say. He was the type of person people listened to when he spoke. It was such a rare event that it captured everyone when it happened.
Bella had toyed then with the idea of moving to Seattle after that visit. She wondered if she could defer acceptance into medical school for a year or two, and then look at applying to medical schools in Washington. There was something that felt right about Washington in a way Jacksonville never had.
Here she felt like she could be herself, like she had the space to discover what that meant. In Jacksonville she'd spent years feeling like she was trying to fit herself into something that was never hers to begin with. She felt miserably out of place.
She'd even gone as far as looking into the application process for med schools in Seattle, but before she could flesh out the idea anymore everything came to a halting stop. The week she returned was the week everything had changed completely.
Her life became such an incredible whirlwind that she'd completely forgotten about the prospect of moving altogether. She never again entertained the idea. It had seemed as though both times she'd considered moving to be closer to Charlie her life had been turned upside down. The first time when she was 17 and contemplating moving to Forks instead of Jacksonville with her mother, and again when she was about to enter medical school, right before meeting Elias.
Bella shook against the upholstered car seat, shuddering at the memory of that time, at the memory of Elias.
She felt like she was running and fulfilling a dream all at once. The complicated set of emotions was simply too exhausting to contemplate and so she settled instead for drowning out all thoughts by blaring the mixed tape she'd shoved into the tape deck.
By the time she'd pulled up to Charlie's house she'd made it through the entire first side of the tape and halfway through the second side. It was a mixed tape she had made right before her last trip to see Charlie, and so it was fitting that it was the soundtrack to her drive back to Forks.
Despite the years that had passed since her last visit nothing had changed about his home.
His cruiser still sat parked in the driveway, the small garden in the front was still dismal with only a few perennials she'd planted years ago during one of her summer visits brightening up the dark brown soil. Weeds populated the rest of the space, a stark reminder that tending to living things wasn't one of Charlie's strong suits.
Before Bella could get out of the car Charlie appeared at the front door, a small smile on his face as he made his way toward her car, pulling the door open for her.
"Hey," Bella offered, smiling. Crawling out of the car and stretching out her stiff muscles.
"Hey, kid," Charlie said, holding his arms open, pulling Bella into a quick hug. "How yah been?"
"I'm alright," Bella grinned, pulling her small overnight bag from the backseat.
"You're driving a rental?"
Bella had forgotten how perceptive Charlie was. He must have noticed the small green sticker on the rear license plate indicating the car was a rental. She knew which parent she inherited the quality from.
"Yeah," she nodded, her hand clutching at the back of her neck, "I didn't have time to find a car yet. Between packing and flying and unpacking… it's been busy."
"Yeah. It was sudden, huh?"
It wasn't really a question, Bella realized. Not the way it had been with mostly everyone else. It was more of a statement, kind of like Charlie's way of letting her know he knew something wasn't quite right. He suspected there was something more to her reasons for leaving Jacksonville.
"Yeah, it was." Bella said nothing more on the topic and knew that Charlie wouldn't press for more information. He wasn't the type to invade her privacy when he could help it.
"Well, I got yah something. I talked to Renee and she told me that finances have been tight for you. She mentioned you might not have a car… and you've worked all the way through med school and I know they don't really pay interns very much. I wish I could've helped more…"
"Oh, dad… you shouldn't have done that..."
Charlie nodded, glancing toward the road as a thundering roar sputtered down the street. Bella turned her attention in the same direction, noting the large, red truck that cruised down the street and turned into Charlie's driveway.
She turned to Charlie, cocking an eyebrow at him but saying nothing.
Bella nearly choked when she saw who jumped from the driver's side of the truck, tucking around the side to grab a wheelchair from the cargo bed in the back.
"No way! Jacob?" she laughed, smiling at the sight before her. Jacob had grown significantly, his hair long, silky and landing halfway down his back. His body was larger, lean muscle rippling through him as he moved. It was an unusually warm day for Forks, and Jacob wore jean cut off shorts and a short-sleeved dark blue shirt. Bella admired the sight before her, a completely innocent appreciation for her old friend and his obvious attractiveness.
"Hey Bella," he walked toward her, reaching out to wrap her up in a familiar hug. Bella stiffened as his arms snaked around her, pressing her small, thin frame into the intense warmth and strength of his unreasonably toned chest.
He didn't seem to notice her discomfort though, as he held onto her longer that was considered decent for a hug between old friends.
Before she could protest he let her go and smiled, "Oh! I forgot, I guess I should be calling you Dr. Swan now? Charlie brags to anyone that'll listen about his doctor daughter," he laughed, his eyes filled with a genuine happiness as he appraised her.
"No way," she groaned, "Bella is perfectly fine."
"Hey Jake, get me outta here will ya?" Bella watched as Jake ran to the passenger side door, pulling an aged and tired looking Billy from the truck, lifting him effortlessly into the wheelchair he'd pulled from the back.
Bella smiled and waved at Billy, happy to see he wasn't too worse for wear. The last time she'd visited Charlie she'd seen Billy and he looked to be in bad shape. Jake hadn't been around then, and Billy had drummed up some unlikely excuse about Jacob going to work in Canada for a while in the lumber mills to save up money for college.
It seemed like a lie then, but Bella wondered now if maybe it had been true? What else could explain the drastic change in his physique? Years of hard manual labour seemed the only logical explanation for his incredible transformation. Either that or he was a gym rat using steroids, an unlikely explanation. The nearest gym was miles away and Bella couldn't picture Jacob lifting weights amongst the other beefy jocks.
"So, what do you think?" Jacob asked, his arms outstretched toward the red truck Charlie was now leaning against.
"Um, it's great?" She replied, unsure why he was asking her, of all people, for her opinion on his truck. She knew less than nothing about trucks and cars.
"Yeah, it is! And it's yours," he smiled, holding a keychain in his hand, the key to the truck dangling on the other end.
"What?" Bella was incredulous. She turned to Charlie, questions written across her face.
"It's yours, Bells. I figured you'd need something to get you here on weekends when you're not working or on call. Jake here says this is a reliable vehicle."
"And I gave you a sweet family friends discount," he smirked, facing Bella now, "I just rebuilt the engine. She's old, but she's reliable."
Bella smiled from ear to ear.
"It's perfect!"
Jacob dropped the key into her open hand and she pivoted to face Charlie.
"You didn't have to do this but thank you!" she leaned in and gave him a quick hug and a peck on the cheek before turning again to appraise her new vehicle.
"Wanna take it for a spin? There's a couple things I should tell you about it," Jake explained.
"Hell yeah!"
Minutes later Bella was backing out of Charlie's driveway as Jacob rattled on about the quirks and oddities of her new vehicle. Once he'd made his way through his list they moved onto topics that could hold Bella's interest.
"How have you been, Jake?"
"I'm alright. Glad you see you. It's been years," he mused, his arm resting through the open window of the truck.
"Yeah, it's been a while."
Jacob wasted no time in trying to poke his nose as far into Bella's business as he could.
"Last I heard from Charlie you were pretty seriously involved with a guy… what happened there?"
Bella stiffened in her seat, her back straightening as she struggled to take deep, intentional breaths. She was fighting against her building panic, trying to find an exit route for this conversation as quickly as possible.
"Yeah. Um, it didn't work out," there was a finality in her tone that Jacob was reluctant to challenge.
"So, you broke up with him? He broke up with you?"
"It was mutual," Bella's voice was filled with discomfort and trembled with her anxiety.
"Sorry to hear," Jacob offered, understanding now that it was sensitive subject.
"Yeah. Thanks. How about you? Are you seeing anyone?"
"Me? Nah. Not right now, anyway. Kind of holding out for that perfect person."
"Perfect person? Sounds like you're looking for something fairly serious then?" Bella questioned, raising her voice slightly as she struggled to shout over the loud, creaking sounds her new truck made as she shifted gears.
"Yeah. I'm ready to settle down, I think."
"Wow. And here I am just trying to make it through the day resembling something close to an adult," Bella laughed to herself, turning a corner again heading back in the direction of Charlie's.
"You're what, 26? You're not thinking of getting serious yet?"
Bella wished this conversation would dwindle away, instead it was violently, brutally pulling things to the surface she'd rather forget forever.
"No."
Her voice had thickened, the word escaping her in a way that sounded desperate. Serious and monosyllabic, it made clear that she was no longer interested in further conversation. The few short minutes back to Charlie's were filled with an uncomfortable silence.
"Well, take my number. You're living in Seattle, right? Maybe we can hang out if you come by on weekends? I head out to Seattle sometimes, maybe we could grab a coffee?"
"Yeah, sure. That would be great, Jake. Can I drive you and Billy home?"
"Nah, we're ok. Dad's meeting Harry Clearwater for lunch and I'm going to run back to the res."
Bella looked at Jacob, eyebrows raised in disbelief.
"Run back? All the way to the reservation?" Bella questioned.
"Yup," Jacob smirked, a self-satisfied look on his handsome face.
"Tell me honestly, Jacob, are you on steroids?" Bella laughed through the question, three quarters joking and a quarter completely serious. Jacob chuckled in reply, clearly not sensing the somewhat serious undertone of her question.
"Catch yah later?"
"Definitely – and thanks for the truck, Jake."
And with that Jacob was pushing Billy down the street and toward the main stretch of Forks.
Bella spent the rest of the evening with Charlie, though they spent very little time talking. She asked a few questions about how work was, rummaged through his fridge to find something to throw together for dinner and abandoned her endeavor when he insisted he would take her out for dinner.
They ate at the same diner, ordered the same meal and chatted about the same things they always had. Fishing, work, school, sports. The context changed slightly as Bella did her best to avoid questions about her relationship, and Charlie didn't pry. Instead, he asked her pointed questions about residency, listening intently as she explained what being a surgical resident would entail.
Charlie was beaming with pride as people stopped by their table to say hello, Bella fielding questions about her move to Washington and her career choice.
By the time they reached home they were both exhausted and Bella retired to her old bedroom, which remained unchanged since her last visit, falling into yet another fitful sleep.
She woke early in the morning, struggling to stay asleep and decided to start on breakfast. She drove down to the local supermarket and grabbed a few groceries, enough to last Charlie the week and make breakfast for him.
The moment she got back to Charlie's house she set to work preparing a nutritious breakfast and coffee. They ate together, Bella reading through the local paper and Charlie staring quietly out the window.
"Thanks for breakfast, Bells."
"Sure, no problem," she nodded, downing the last sip of coffee before folding the paper and tucking it away. Charlie caught her eyes, clearing his throat before starting to speak.
"Bella, you know me. You know I'm not the type to pry. But as your dad, I've 'gotta ask…"
She breathed in a sharp breath, pressing her eyes closed, awaiting the inevitable onslaught of questions that was sure to come.
Instead, Charlie surprised her with his simple inquiry.
"Are you ok? Are you really ok?" His voice sounded distant and sad. Bella forced her eyes open and observed the tired looking man sitting across from her. The question startled her, mostly because he wasn't trying to pry. He was trying to make sure she was ok – to make sure her heart was ok.
She thought about several possible responses, each steeped in its own set of lies and half-truths. She settled instead for the most honest answer she could muster without compromising her carefully crafted façade.
"Not yet… but I think I will be."
Charlie stared at her, his eyes soft, his salt and pepper hair falling across his face as he stared thoughtfully at his daughter.
"Alright. Well, I'm here. Always here…"
Bella nodded, her eyes welling with tears that she fought to conceal. Charlie rubbed the back of his neck, awkwardness finally settling over their interaction. He quickly changed the subject.
"So, when do you think you'll be back to visit?"
Bella smiled, knowing that this was Charlie's way of letting her know he'd enjoyed their time together.
"I'm not sure. I'll have to figure out my call schedule. I start tomorrow so I should know by then. How about I give you a call and let you know?"
"Sounds good."
They spent the rest of the morning together, washing and drying the dishes before heading outside to tidy the garden. Bella felt an unusual sense of longing when she pulled away in the new-to-her red truck. Charlie and Billy had promised to return the rental. There was a sister rental company just outside of Forks that would take the rental back. Bella was appreciative, glad to take the truck back to Seattle. Like a lot of things in Washington, the truck just felt right.
She pushed the mixtape back into the tape deck and let her thoughts get lost in the nostalgia of old music and more pleasant memories. She rolled down the window, letting the warm breeze catch her long, brown hair, flipping it wildly around her face.
She slowed slightly as she came to a sharp turn and felt her heart catch in her throat when a shiny, silver Volvo sped like lightning around the turn, easily reaching 90 miles per hour.
Bella was furious, shouting out the window at the careless driver though he clearly couldn't hear her.
"Slow down, asshole!"
A/N: A shiny, silver Volvo...
