~~Fifteen~~

With lakes, rivers, deserts, and hundreds of miles separating them, my parents had somehow developed matching shadows under their eyes that looked like scars. A year went by before those markings disappeared.

They were both now sleeping better at night. In Arizona I was no longer followed into my dreams by the sound of my mom typing away at her laptop, and in California, I no longer woke to find my dad snoring in his lounger in the living room, empty beer cans scattered around him.

I visited my dad during the summers. He'd remarried this winter and now I had an older step-sister, Rosalie, who was so quiet she could almost be called silent, and who didn't act like a friend, much less a sister. When she spoke to my dad or me, it was only when she had to, and only in mumbling whispers. Seventeen, tall with hair as gold as dead, sun-bleached grass, and eyes as blue as my grandma's toilet water—I had to admit she was beautiful, despite all the dead things or toilets I could compare her to. Edward seemed to have trouble keeping his eyes off her whenever he came around, which was a lot. Each summer we'd pick up where we left off. We never officially broke up but we didn't call each other boyfriend and girlfriend anymore, either. When we were together, we were together, simple.

We'd emailed each other through the school year. His were always short, and ended with "The tree misses you," but what I imagined was Edward climbing up our tree, sitting on a branch, remembering me, missing me. And even though his notes were short, they came with pieces of stories he'd written. I'd print them out and read the story snippings, searching them for anything familiar, any sort of secret message Edward was trying to send, but unless I really reached, unless I turned myself into one of his gargoyles or something, the stories were just his. All him. If I could come up with anything good that came of my move, it would be that I got to read bits of his stories. I had a feeling that if I'd been around, he'd never have shared them with me.

Last year when I returned for the summer, it had been a whole year since I'd seen him, and we'd hugged for a long time on my porch. We stepped back, we stared at each other, and then laughed and ran through my house and out to our tree. When I left that August we counted the months—nine of them—until we'd see each other again. We'd endured an entire year separated, surely we could do nine months. And we did.

This year, as he stood on my front porch, just minutes after I'd finished unpacking, he was so different it stole my breath. His voice had deepened even more. Instead of simply being taller than me, he was now two heads taller than me, and not only did he look different, the way he looked at me was different. There was a gleam in his eyes, like instead of simply looking at me, his eyes were hovering over me. A stare that could envelop. Like Dorothy's twister. Leaving me dizzy, barely on my feet, barely in my world.

"You changed," I forced out, as if a person's voice could actually forget how to work.

"So did you."

I pulled some of my hair over my shoulder.

"Your hair's the same." He gave the ends of it a light tug, and I couldn't take my eyes off him. His hair wasn't the same. It was more combed now. I wanted to shake my fingers through it to make it look like a tree-climbing mess again. His eyebrows were thicker, and they brightened his eyes. I searched for something that was exactly like it had been, but I couldn't find it. Even his freckles seemed lighter, fewer. Maybe if he smiled his dimple would be there at the bottom of his cheek. I swallowed. How could you know someone so well, yet hardly at all?

"So." He was slow to open his arms and I was slow to step into them. They wrapped me as tight as twine. "How ya been?"

I don't think I ever answered. I just held on around his waist, my head against his chest now instead of his shoulder, and I reminded myself he was the same person. "He's Edward," I told myself. Edward.

By the time we let go of each other, the wind had changed direction.

"Do you still climb up to our branch?"

"I write up there sometimes." His fingers moved to his hair, messing it up some, which made me smile.

"Show me something you wrote."

"I'll email it to you after you leave." I was pretty sure he blushed but it was hard to tell with the way he swooped down to kiss my lips. With a deep inhale, his hands tugged at my waist. This kiss moved through me like never before, sinking well past that feeling in my stomach, dropping all the way to my knees. My fingers met at the back of his neck.

A darkness took over his eyes when we parted, not the same dizzying look from a few minutes earlier, but the kind of look that dove into me like a promise straight to the heart. The darkness in them told me he was mine, if not forever, then at least for right now. We were both left winded.

All this newness was never going to stop.

"The tree missed you," he said, and smiled. But it wasn't his whole smile, it was that quarter smile from way back when he was twelve, still there, and I couldn't keep myself from hugging him up tight, like he was a Christmas package and I was the bow.

We didn't run out back to our tree this time, we walked. I held his arm, looking up at him. Just looking. Watching his face and the way the breeze moved his hair and the way he sometimes looked down at me, too, like he was just as relieved to see me as I was to see him.

In the days following, I'd catch him glance down at my hips, my chest, sometimes even my neck or collarbone. And once when he was walking behind me, I turned abruptly to tell him something and I caught his gaze lift fast from my butt. I'd forgotten what I was going to say, folding my lips into my mouth to hide an embarrassed smile.

~15~

"Give her a chance," my dad said to me about Rosalie. "She's been through a hard time."

And I haven't? I was still a decent human being.

Rosalie had closed herself in her bedroom and I knew then, hearing her talk on the phone from the other side of the wall, that she could be loud. Funny how you can live with someone and not know a thing about that person.

Even though it didn't seem like my dad was allowed to tell Rosalie what to do, her mom, Mary, sure told me what to do. Or, what not to do. She said I spent too much time alone with Edward and I was too young for that. He was only allowed to come over if Rosalie was home, too, and my door had to stay open at all times.

That rule didn't mesh well with me, mainly because I liked to keep Edward away from Rosalie.

Edward and I wandered hand-in-hand to the stream where we slipped and stumbled—also hand-in-hand—down a steep rocky hill. Sometimes we'd sit on a big couple of rocks with our feet in the water and talked about everything our minds held that we could possibly get out before we had to head home. And even then, at home in bed, I'd think of things I should've said or wished I'd said or would say next time I saw him. And sometimes, we said nothing, just sat listening to the tinkling of the water. But most times, we followed a path along the stream through a jungled-in area of plants way bigger than us, so dense that even though you could hear the stream right there, you couldn't see a bit of it through the leaves. Except for the dirt path we trudged along, everything was green—all around, above and beside us. Crossing to the other side of the stream, over a wooden bridge that had to be either rebuilt or reinforced every year or so, we found our way under a giant bush, to make out. Birds took turns with their different calls and chirps, some repeating a high-pitched rhythm that seemed to never end. There was something about birds and Edward and me. I was always aware of them when he was around.

The rocks beneath us hurt my back so Edward was the one lying down and I was leaning over the top of him, lips, tongues, hands, fingers. Breath.

It was hard to breathe when his hand fell from my shoulder to cover my breast over my shirt. Barely a touch at all, it still made a quiver run through me.

Curious about how it felt for him, I brought my hand down to the middle of his pants and I pressed, feeling. Feeling for it. There was hardness and he rubbed it up against me. I left my hand there and let him keep rubbing. I felt his breath hot on my neck.

"Will you go under?" he asked, his voice croaking.

"Under?"

"My jeans?" He looked up at me, and I gaped down at him, my eyes like an owl's. "I've never..." I shook my head. "I've never."

"It's okay." He unbuttoned his pants, took my hand and slipped it under. "I'll show you." He wrapped his hand around my fingers so that mine were wrapped around him. And I didn't look, couldn't look. It was just my hand. He showed me a rhythm, but when he let go of my hand and left me to do it all on my own I got nervous and stopped moving. He sort of did the moving. He didn't seem like Edward anymore. He seemed like someone else. Noises came from his throat. I'd heard similar sounds sometimes when we kissed but these were deeper, heavier, needier. I liked the sounds he was making so I started moving my hand in the way he showed me.

"Hold a little harder," he said, and I did, and seconds later his noises got more strained while his palm pressed into my back, and warm liquid spread on my hand, and Edward was catching his breath.

I smiled because it seemed easy. Much easier than I thought it was going to be. I reached into the stream by my feet to clean off my hand while Edward calmed down. He let me dry my hands on his shirt.

We kissed.

His eyes were barely open, like his eyelids had weights on them. I wondered if all he could see were his eyelashes. "Do you want me to?" He ran a hand up my leg, up my skirt, slipping in between my thighs.

I took a breath. "Don't you feel all wet in your pants?" I wondered if it felt to him like he actually peed his pants.

He laughed, his palm on my leg. "It feels like I want to change. But-" his fingers moved higher, to the bottom of my pantyline, and they slipped under "-do you want me to?"

"No." I held his wrist, his finger letting go of my panties.

"No, you don't want me to, or no, because you're nervous?"

"Both. Not yet. Not yet, okay?"

"Yeah, Bella. It's okay. Yeah." His hand left my legs, sweeping up over my skirt, to my arm, across my shoulder, higher, to my throat before landing on my face. Holding my cheek, he kissed me.

We had to go home so Edward could change, and we walked back through the path, up the rocky hill to the street, holding hands, and when I leaned against him, his hand dropped mine so his arm could wrap around me and we were close. Closer than we'd ever been. And when you're that close to somebody, that close, nobody else in the world exists.

~15~

The next day when Angela came over, she tried to talk to Rosalie, but all Rosalie said was, "Someone ate the last apple."

"I told Angela she could have it. She's my guest."

"Do you like red or green apples?" Edward asked from the sofa.

Rosalie walked over to him, standing behind the sofa.

"I like fuji apples. They're juiciest."

"Yeah."

Rosalie smiled at him. She actually smiled. Over an apple.

I went to sit next to Edward, but by the time he put his arm around me, Rosalie had already shut her bedroom door.

My dad came into my room that night as I was reading. He sat at the end of the bed near my feet and brought up Rosalie again. "She's-" he started but stopped. "Her dad, he up and left. He never looked back."

Sitting up, I dropped my book to my lap. "I don't get why that's my fault. What does that have to do with me?"

"It isn't your fault, Bella. You have me in your life. Do you see?"

"No."

He rubbed hard over his eyes. "It's just a reaction. Things will get better for her and she'll open up."

I wanted to say that maybe I didn't want her to open up. Even if she started to like me, there was no guarantee that I would ever like her. I didn't say any of that. All I said was, "Okay."

He seemed satisfied with that and I realized the problem with parents. First, they didn't think you knew anything when you really did, and second, when they wanted you to know something, they thought you understood perfectly when you really didn't.

The truth was, I wished Rosalie's dad was around so she could go live with him.

~15~

The next evening our strange family of four sat together in the living room watching a news story about a local eight-year-old girl from a town thirty miles away who was kidnapped right outside her house. Her mother saw her from the window one second, and the next time she looked, all she could see was an abandoned bicycle.

Mary announced that Rosalie and I would take self-defense classes. My dad had taught me a lot about self-defense, but he agreed that professional training was important.

Even as Rosalie drove me to and from the next town over—fifteen minutes each way—neither of us spoke the entire ride. For five days this went on and it was so frustrating that my hands were fists and my face was tense by the last day.

"You know," I said to her, getting out of the car when we got home. "I never did anything to you!" I slammed her car door.

"Be careful," she said, and still angry I didn't walk with her into our house; I went over to Edward's.

"Try to attack me," I told him in his entry way.

He shut the door. "What?"

"Try to grab me from behind."

When he did I spun around using a new move on him and it made him let go with an "Ow!" even though I didn't even elbow him my hardest.

"See how that works?"

He laughed, throwing an arm over my shoulder, guiding me to his room.

"So you be sweet to me. Or else."

"I'm always sweet." He gave me a crooked-smile close to my face.

"No, you aren't."

"You know what to do to keep me sweet." His smile turned evil. He was talking about me putting my hand down his pants.

"I mean..." I sat down on his bed, eyes darting around the room. Above his desk he had this Reservoir Dogs poster, but all it was, was an ear with a string of blood dripping down. It was framed, though, so I guessed he really liked it. "Don't look at Rosalie anymore."

"I don't look at Rosalie."

He was still standing by his door; I could tell even with my eyes aimed at my lap.

"I don't," he said, coming closer, sitting next to me. "Or if I do it's only because I'm trying to figure her out. She never says anything."

"She talks to you."

"Hardly."

"When I leave, she gets to stay. With you."

"Not with me." He picked up my hand and put it in his lap, not the playful way like when he pressed my hand to his jeans, giving me a not so subtle hint, but in a different way, holding my fingers like they were delicate creatures, like they might run away or break if he wasn't careful. "She's like your sister, right? What do you think I'm going to do with her?"

"What are you going to do with her?"

"Nothing."

"Promise?" I looked up at him even though it was hard. He kissed me.

"Promise," he said, still kissing me, moving my lips along with the word, and we both lowered to our sides, scooting up toward the top of the bed.

His hands and lips roamed over me until my tank top was on the floor and my shorts were coming down, and he said, "When you're around, you're all I see." He dropped my shorts on top of my shirt.

"What about when I'm not around?"

"When you're not around, I hate it." He kissed my stomach, and up, up, to my chest, and over my bra, and I'd have believed anything he said just then. Anything at all.

His hand slipped between my legs. "How about now?" He opened his mouth on my breast and pressed with his tongue and then I knew. I would let him. Besides, he wouldn't be with me much longer, but he was with me now, and I wanted this. I wanted this before next year.

"Show me," he said.

Inside my panties I guided his fingers where they felt best. Then I let go, let it be all Edward.

"Softer," I whispered when he got too rough, and he lightened his touch.

I arched my back, clutching his arm, turning my face to his shoulder, hiding from the world as I felt. I just felt.

And then I lay against him and he put his arms around me and kissed my head.

"Bella, I've been-" he took a nervous shake of a breath "-there's only been you."

He turned me around to my back so we were face to face. "Has there only been me?"

I nodded, my fingers skimming his cheek. I'd never even kissed anyone else.

"You're leaving again soon."

"Two weeks," I said.

"Will you save it for me? When you're ready, can I be your first?"

"If I can be yours."

He nodded, and tears sprung to my eyes. They didn't leak out, but I knew he saw them, his gaze passing back and forth over my eyes, and this time he didn't tell me not to cry.

He squeezed me, his head on my chest.

~15~

Mary, Rosalie, Angela, and Edward were all in my driveway as my dad and I got ready to leave for the airport. Mary and Angela both hugged me. Rosalie lifted her hand in a kind of wave, biting on the side of her lip, looking diagonally at the ground. I didn't want to leave Edward again and I told him so as I stood on my tiptoes, reaching around his neck. His hug was so tight, lifting me off the ground. "We'll see each other next June."

When he put me down, I landed on his shoes. Bending to my ear, he reminded me he'd wait, and then kissed my earlobe, giving me chills.

Was this love?

Was it love if I couldn't decide who I would miss more, my dad or Edward?

And who was I crying for when I hid my face on the airplane? My dad, or Edward?

Both.

But Edward was the one I dreamed of.

A/N: Thank you for reading, reviewing, tweeting and rec'ing!

Happy Peace Day!

Seventeen is next, and last. :)