Infinite Visibility
Rating: M.
Acknowledgement: Thanks, always, to HollettLA, who can possess a "lingering distaste but not a loathing" for an errant comma. It is one of her too-numerous-to-count gifts. xo
Chapter Two
"So…you like it out there." It isn't a question, and Bella opts to ignore the undertone of disappointment in Jacob's voice as they traipse up the slight incline, stepping over frozen brush and downed limbs.
"Yeah," she replies simply, trying not to sound winded as clouds of visible breath appear at her lips before dissipating into the air. The snow is a few days old, crystallized on top by the minimal melting afforded by a brief burst of afternoon sunlight and subsequent refreezing, and their boots crunch noisily through the surface with each step. "I don't get how you're not freezing," she says, clapping her mittened hands together in a vain attempt to coax some modicum of warmth back into her frozen fingertips.
"Wolf-thing," he replies simply, holding a branch back from the trail and standing to one side to let her pass.
"But you're not a wolf right now," she argues, ducking beneath his arm.
He shrugs. "It's in the blood," he says. "The blood in the veins doesn't change just because the form does."
Her mind wants to go there – always does when blood is mentioned – but she wrangles it back to the present. "Oh." As they step clear of the brush, the ocean stretches out ahead of them, pitching and rolling, whitecaps dotting the green-gray surface. She remembers back to a mildly warmer day and launching herself from this exact spot, feeling for a brief moment as though she were flying before slipping beneath the water's surface, the cold nearly robbing her of her breath. Not a bad metaphor for the relationship that had driven her to such recklessness, now that she thinks about it.
"Don't even go there," Jacob warns her, only half joking, as if he were the mind reader. "Just because I'm hot-blooded doesn't mean I want to go for a swim in the dead of winter."
She laughs. "Noted."
They stare out at the pitching sea. "I'm glad you're happy out there," he says after a moment, his voice carrying the gentle note it always had in the months after. "I miss you, but I'm glad you're happy. You deserve that."
As always, his unwavering friendship, his genuine affection, are a balm to her soul, smoothing over the rough spots that crack when she goes too long without paying them any attention.
"You should come and visit," Bella offers, staring out over the choppy water. "It's a lot different."
"This is more my style," Jacob replies with a sweeping gesture at the wild growth around them, the far-reaching water beyond the drop of the cliff at their feet. "Plus…the pack."
She nods. "Right." If she didn't know better, she'd think he looked slightly regretful at the ties that bind him to La Push; she wonders if there is more to Jacob than she realizes – if he, too, harbors unspoken desires to break free. "Well, open invitation," she says, and he smiles that easy smile that she so often borrowed when she couldn't find her own.
"Noted," he echoes, and she smiles, leaning slightly into his bulky shoulder. After a beat, his arm rises and wraps around her, large fingers curling around her bicep.
"Just promise me you're careful."
"Okay, Charlie."
"You forget: if Charlie knew what I knew, you'd be attending Peninsula College and wearing a tracking device around your ankle."
This time, she laughs out loud. "Too true."
The following morning, still dressed in purple plaid flannel pajama pants and a navy blue long-sleeved thermal shirt, she sits cross-legged beside the sparsely decorated Douglas fir that has taken up temporary residence in the corner of the living room, a small pile of presents beside her: a small box with a digital camera that Bella knows will take her months to figure out how to use from Renee, a hand-knitted scarf-and-mittens set from Grandma Swan, and a woven leather friendship bracelet from Jake. She holds another small box in her lap and gently peels away a strip of the candy cane-printed wrapping paper to expose a partial picture of a gleaming silver cell phone and the Motorola logo.
"It has unlimited minutes," Charlie says, voice gruff, eyes glued to the box. "So you can always call. Anytime. For however long."
A brief pang of guilt stabs her when she realizes how seldom she called home over the course of the fall semester, how brief the conversations were when she did call. How few details about her life she has shared with her father, whose concern is plastered across his face like a shiner that no amount of Hollywood-quality makeup could hide. "Dad, this is too much."
He shakes his head. "Everyone in New York has a cell phone," he says, and she wonders idly from where he got that particular tidbit of information. "It has an address book in it so you can add phone numbers for your friends." His lips twitch beneath his moustache, eyes resolutely on the box in her hands, still half-concealed by the wrapping paper with too much tape along the seams. "The lady said you can download music for the ringtone?" This last detail comes out like a question, and Bella can see that he's reached the limits of his tech-speak ability. She rises from her place beside the so-called Christmas tree and crosses the small space, bending to wrap her arms around his neck. He leans forward in his recliner, accepting the hug and wrapping an arm across her upper back.
"Thanks, Dad."
"No excuse not to call your old man now, right?"
She grins as she pulls back. "Right."
He nods, hands draped gently over the fishing rod that Billy had told her he'd been salivating over on their last trip to Newton's. "And the bill comes to me, so no calls to China."
Bella rolls her eyes. "Come on, Dad. It's going to take me ages to get my Mandarin to the level of a full-length phone conversation." She spies a smile beneath the moustache and shifts her weight, the cell phone box propped against her hip. "Really, though. This is great. Thanks."
He nods again and grips the rod by its handle. "So's this." His eyes narrow slightly. "Expensive, though."
"Guess you better catch something that'll make it worth it, then," she replies, returning her focus to the box in her hands and peeling away the rest of the wrapping paper, trying to envision a world in which Charlie likes talking on the phone and she doesn't mind eating fish any time she comes home. It's funny, she realizes, crumpling the discarded paper in her hand, how the people we love are sometimes forced to change right along with us.
Greenwich Village is less populated than normal, and Bella wonders if that's a result of the bitter cold or the recent holiday. Having wasted no time lingering in Forks, she was on a plane back east on January 2nd, and as such has arrived back in the city three days before Kelsey is scheduled to return. Now, she wanders through Washington Square Park, hugging the new winter coat Charlie also bought her close to her frame, burying her already-chapped lips beneath the knitted scarf she has wrapped around her neck enough times to create a shield for her face. Her new messenger bag – an unexpected gift from Kelsey – bumps against her hip, relatively light given that she doesn't yet need to carry much more than a notebook and the city map she rarely consults anymore, and as she reaches the eastern edge of the park and steps onto University Place, she takes a deep breath and heads north.
Ever since Bella was a small child, books have been her escape. From picture books to chapter books to young adult novels to contemporary fiction and classic literature, she has always sought refuge in worlds beyond her own. In the months after Edward left, especially, it was Neil Gaiman and C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien: anything about imagined worlds that had no bearing on this one.
The first time she steps into the Strand, she is immediately certain that she will never want to leave. Just inside the door is a table, the surface of which is invisible beneath the pyramid of books carefully constructed atop it. Beyond that, another table similarly styled. To the right, other, smaller tables with smaller hills of books.
A few tables back she can see a glass case with leather-bound tomes that look suspiciously like first editions; beyond that and to either side are bookshelves so tall that ladders would certainly be necessary to reach the higher ones. She has sudden visions of flying back and forth on an old rolling library ladder, pulling dusty volumes from shelves and losing herself amid the stacks, never to resurface. She can think of worse ways to spend a life.
Despite the relatively deserted feel of the cold city streets, inside this book haven it is warm and bustling, with people hovering by tables reading the backs of paperbacks and dust jackets of hardcovers; a small army of employees identifiable only by the red nametags hanging from their necks by silver ball chains lurk on the periphery, awaiting requests for help. Bella's mind flits briefly to the small bookshop she would frequent in Port Angeles and the clerk who welcomed her as soon as she entered, the bell atop the door dancing to announce her arrival. The woman would then periodically pop up to ask if she needed help, or if she was looking for anything specific, or if she had read the new John Grisham. Helpful but always hovering, and Bella, despite her desire to spend hours immersed in other worlds, could never get quite comfortable enough in the tiny shop to let herself get lost.
Conversely, when she enters the Strand, no one takes a blind bit of notice. She makes her way around the enormous tables, eyeballing familiar covers and picking up a few less familiar ones to read the synopses. She passes one of the store employees – a small, bespectacled boy who looks to be about her own age – and he gives her nothing but a small nod as she passes. She wanders, and she looks, and she reads, and she is blissfully, wonderfully uninterrupted.
Making her way further into the bowels of the store, she trails her fingers along spines and pores over titles she's never heard of, trying to determine what mind space she is occupying before committing to a purchase. Then, as if she has asked the question aloud, the memory of her final English paper and her subsequent epiphany hits her. On its heels comes the title of another work she'd been meaning to read when she wrapped Frankenstein, but her mind had been too bogged down by final exams and papers and projects to dedicate time to independent reading. She casts a glance at the shelves on either side of her, but realizes that despite the fact that she's been in the store for upward of two hours, she has no idea where to look. Making her way to the end of the aisle, she casts about for an employee and spots a tall boy in a beanie with his back to her, half-bent and shelving books at the opposite end of the row. She approaches him slowly, eyes running along the spines of the books to her left, in case she's in the correct section purely by chance; it would be embarrassing to ask for help only to have him point to a shelf mere feet away. When she is standing just behind him, she clears her throat.
"Excuse me; do you have Virgil's Doomed Love?"
The boy turns to face her, and she sucks in a breath. At first glance, he's too similar, too close a replica, too familiar, and all of the contentment that had cocooned her like cotton is torn away, leaving her feeling as though she's been stripped and sucker-punched. She stares at him for a moment, mouth agape, before spinning and dashing up the long aisle, hearing a faint "What the hell?" coming from the boy behind her as she flees. Darting around the tables near the entrance and nearly tripping over a stroller near the checkout counter, she finally bursts through the exit and onto the crowded sidewalk.
"Watch it," a guy with a steaming paper cup of coffee mutters as he sidesteps her, and she mutters an apology as she takes in gulping breaths, clutching one of the carts of discounted books with her bare hand, the ice-cold metal burning the skin of her palm. She lets the dull ache in her hand ground her as she navigates a sea of sensation: she feels unsettled, blindsided, as if she's seen a ghost. It's impossible. Patently impossible, because while the moment that she'd stared into the stranger's face was fleeting, it was long enough for her to absorb details: the all-too-human flush of his cheeks, the blue-green of his eyes. Just a likeness, she tells herself as her breathing and her heartbeat try to regulate themselves. That's all.
"Hey." The voice floats over her shoulder, and her still-stuttering heart picks up the tempo, now positively hammering against her ribs as if fighting for its freedom. "Are you okay?" the look-alike asks, and she turns, half-convinced that her momentary vision had been a trick of dim lighting. Those blue-green eyes narrow, a heavy brow creased in concern.
Blue-green eyes, she wills herself to remember. Not gold. It is this detail she latches onto as she nods, but the boy is still frowning. "Are you sure? Because you kind of look like hell."
A bark of surprised laughter escapes her lips as she stares at his face, and if she needed further assurance that the person before her was far removed from his vampire doppelganger, those rather blunt words were it.
"I kind of feel like hell," she admits, releasing the metal cart and balling her hand to coax blood back into her palm, as if she is gripping her courage in her white-knuckled fist. His creased brow smoothes slightly and a relieved half-smile twists his mouth, even as he appears to be trying to hold it back.
"I have those days," he confesses with a slightly awkward nod. "Regularly." This time he grins – in commiseration, she assumes – and she takes in his plain white t-shirt, his faded jeans, his stubble, and the strands of unkempt hair peeking out from beneath his knitted hat. The red oval nametag hanging from his neck by a silver chain. Tyler, it reads, and the name is soothing in its modernity. "Anyway, yeah. Probably."
"Yeah, probably?" she parrots, utterly lost.
"Yeah, we probably have Doomed Love. If you want to come back inside, I can find it for you."
She swallows. "Okay," she replies after a beat's consideration. "That'd be great."
"Okay," he says, spinning and sidestepping a few people standing on the sidewalk before disappearing back inside the store. Bella takes a fortifying breath of cold, city air and follows him.
The boy – Tyler – makes his way along a narrow aisle straight toward the back of the store and arrives at a small information desk; keying something into the computer, he peers at the screen before nodding once. "Follow me." Bella does so again, and he leads her halfway down a narrow aisle before dropping to one knee and running a single fingertip along a row of spines; the hem of his white t-shirt inches up, and she can just see the waistband of blue-striped boxers above the line of his jeans. Cheeks burning, she looks away, gazing upward at the towering shelves either side of her, making her feel as though she's in an alley made of books. "Bingo," he says, straightening, hand curled around a thin paperback. He turns and hands it to her. "Anything else?"
"No," she says quickly. "That's it. Thanks."
"No problem." He gives her a sly smile. "Hope your day gets less hellish."
"Thanks," she says again, gripping the book. He nods and turns away, heading back toward the shelves he was restocking, and when Bella looks down at the book in her hand, the cover art is a thicket of barren branches, twisting and intertwined like a forest from which there is no escape.
"I knew you would like it, but I didn't know you'd like it quite this much," Kelsey teases as Bella loops the strap of her messenger bag across her body, preparing to head to the bookstore for the third time in as many weeks. Despite two more trips to the store since the first time, she has yet to see Tyler again, and she has very nearly convinced herself that the hallucinations she once sought have taken a rather alarming turn into the tangible. She isn't sure whether to be relieved or disappointed that the boy might have been a figment of her imagination – or, at worst, a manifestation of a budding mental illness – and she has silently promised herself that if he is nowhere to be found on this trek to the store, she will pretend that the first meeting never happened, that perhaps she was simply seeing features she wanted to see in a stranger, projecting details onto some poor, unsuspecting kid in a bookstore.
In response to Kelsey's teasing, she shrugs. "You're welcome to come with me." She is expecting a declination of her invitation, so she is surprised when Kelsey unfolds herself and rises from her bed with the grace of a gazelle, grabbing her coat from the back of her desk chair.
"Actually, I think I will. It's been awhile since I checked out their art shelves."
Tamping down on her surprise, Bella nods. "Let's go."
Three hours later, when Kelsey has thoroughly exhausted every remotely artistic shelf in the store and Bella has borderline stalked every male wearing a red nametag, she is forced to cut her losses. The boy, if he exists, is not here. Walking into the store, a maelstrom of anxiety and anticipation had swirled around the thinnest thread of possibility within her, and with each red nametag-wearing boy who wasn't him, the tempest dulled and diminished until it was an all-too familiar knot of disappointment. She wants to kick herself for letting past demons manifest this way, for looking for someone who doesn't want to be found, who may or may not be real. She had been so proud of herself, so boosted by her belief that she was moving forward, not looking back, that she feels as if she's had a rather spectacular relapse, and her disappointment in herself is crushing.
"One book?" Kelsey says, her face a picture of disbelief. "We've been here for three hours, and you have one book?"
Bella forces a smile to her face. "Quality, not quantity," she says, eyeing the stack of tomes propped against her friend's hip: books on painting technique, sculpture, renewable-material art. They pick their way toward the checkout counter at the front of the store and take their place at the end of the line. "That looks a little beat-up, even for a used book," Kelsey observes, dipping her chin toward the paperback in Bella's hand.
"Yeah. I don't mind it, actually."
"Why Cummings?"
"I haven't read enough of his stuff," she replies simply. What she doesn't say is that she's in the market for a new favorite poet, given that her previous favorite – Neruda – wrote too many love poems that she would read and reread as she was falling asleep against a marble chest, stone-cold fingers tracing the skin of her upper arm as she drifted, a velvet voice picking up the verse where she left off when her eyes fell closed.
Later that night, when she is lying in bed reading her new-old book by the light of her tiny reading lamp, she rereads the first two poems that she read in the store before flipping to the third, absorbing it slowly, attempting to glean meaning from the minimal words. She is glad she enrolled in a poetry class this semester; she has always been a fan of fewer words. When she turns the page to the fourth poem, her head comes up off the pillow slightly as she squints in the dim light. There are barely-visible notes scribbled in the margin, penciled words very nearly rubbed from the page by thumbs or time. Angling the small lamp closer, she attempts to make out the notes, but they aren't formed thoughts, rather singular words as if the writer were offering suggestions or edits for a poet long gone. She gives up and closes the book, rolling to place it on the floor beside her bed and turning off the reading light.
The next day, she is once again considering the faded words in the margins of the poem as she sits at a small table in one of the student lounges in Pless Hall. As she thought the night before, the first appearance of handwritten notes are simply words, as if the author was making suggestions or merely jotting down keywords to retrigger his thoughts upon returning to the poem. As she delves deeper into the book, however, the scrawled annotations become more detailed, more thought-out, as if the writer began having a conversation with the book. In a few places, he appears to have penned a few lines of verse himself.
"It's you," comes a voice from above her, and she looks up to see the boy from the bookstore – Tyler – looming above her, a half-smile twisting his lips into something that looks like a smirk. "The bolter." It takes Bella the space of a few breaths to find her footing, and in that time his smirk seems to be dimming, yielding to uncertainty.
"It's you," she replies finally. "The shelver."
The smirk deepens. "You go here?" He gestures around them at the university building and the other students milling about who are studying, chatting, and eating, in some cases doing all three concurrently.
"I do. You go here?"
He shrugs, both hands gripping the straps of his backpack. "Sort of."
"How does one 'sort of' go to college?"
"I audit."
"Hm."
"Are you enjoying the Virgil?"
She mishears him, thinks he's said "vigil," and her features pull into a frown. "Pardon?"
"Doomed Love. It's not exactly a light read. I asked if you were enjoying it."
Her eyes narrow slightly as she stares up at him. "You've read that?"
"Yep." He offers no further explanation but tilts his head toward the vacant chair across the table. "May I?"
"I'm, um, studying," she says, not really an answer either way.
His lips twitch as long fingers curl around the plastic backrest of the empty seat. "Me too," he says without taking his eyes off her, the unspoken implication making her flush and look back down at the open book in front of her as he lowers himself into the chair and deposits his backpack on the floor beside it. "What are you studying for?"
"I'm enrolled in a poetry class," she replies, omitting the fact that the book isn't for class. He reaches across the table, pointing to one of the notes in the margin. "Do you always mark up your books?" She peeks back up at him.
"Those aren't mine," she admits, and he leans back in his chair.
"Hand-me down book?" he asks, his lips twitching again, and she wonders idly what it takes to make this boy set his smile free.
"Second-hand," she clarifies.
"I know a pretty good used bookstore in town," he teases, and she finally closes the book and meets his eye.
"That's where I got it."
"I figured." They lapse into silence, and true to his words, he is studying her. Mustering up the confidence she has fought so hard to gain from her few short months in this city, she forces herself not to look down again; instead, she studies him right back, cataloging the details that blindsided her a month ago: the blue-green eyes, the stubble, the flushed cheeks. This time he isn't wearing a hat, and she takes in his hair, an artist's palette of variegated hues: brown sugar and pennies and leaves in October. She allows her brain, just for a moment, to make the concrete comparisons: longer sideburns, scruffier clothing, the silver ghost of a scar above his right eyebrow. His tendency to tangle his fingers in his mess of hair is an utterly human habit that Edward – and the rest of the Cullens – always had to make such intentional efforts to cultivate. Pushing the silent contrast aside, she refocuses on the boy before her, whose eyebrow – the one without the scar – is arched in some combination of teasing and expectation that she can't quite quantify. "Well?" he says finally, when their mutual study is finished.
"Well, what?"
"Doomed Love. I'm still awaiting your verdict."
Her mind wanders back to the thin volume sitting atop her dresser, Post-it flags still peeking out from its pages like lizard tongues. Finally, she hitches one shoulder. "Love can be hopeless." He considers this, and her, in silence for a few moments. Just as she feels the urge to begin squirming under his scrutiny, he nods slowly.
"That it can." His eyes drop to the poetry collection on the table before her. "What about that one?"
Relieved that he hasn't forced her hand in the aftermath of her uncharacteristically honest and potentially telling disclosure, she glances down at the cover. "Less depressing."
He nods slightly. "In a sense. Which poetry class is it?"
"Intro."
At this, he frowns. "What year are you?"
"Freshman."
His eyebrows hitch. "You're only a freshman?" Off her nod, he shakes his head. "Shit. I was going to invite you to come out with me tonight, but you wouldn't get in." His lips twist, as if he's once again biting back a smile.
"Too bad," she replies lightly, as if she were the kind of girl who says yes to boys.
"Friday," he continues, undeterred, and she looks back up.
"Friday, what?"
"Some of the people in my building are having a party. Will you come?"
She shakes her head. "I don't think so."
"Tomorrow," he counters, and she shakes her head again, this time in confusion; she's having a hard time keeping up with his rapid-fire non sequiturs.
"Tomorrow, what?"
"Have dinner with me," he says.
"I have a study group."
"Have breakfast with me," he amends, the ghost of a smile around the corners of his mouth.
"I have class."
"Have coffee with me," he says, and, finally, the smile breaks free. She knows, as it does, that she's going to concede.
"I have more class." But she's answering his smile with one of her own, and he realizes he's winning.
"When do you not have class?" he asks.
"You don't even know my name."
"So you'll tell me, and I'll tell you mine, and we'll go from there."
"Tyler," she says, and the momentary surprise is obvious in his features before his eyes narrow and he gives her a sly grin.
"Wow, that could get confusing. We both have the same name."
She rolls her eyes, and a chuckle escapes her before she can corral it. "It was on your name tag."
"Cheater," he says, still grinning, and she considers him for a moment, this strange boy who looks just familiar enough to make her heart twinge.
"I don't think it's a good idea," she says finally, and any levity is gone from her voice, replaced with a heavy sadness that he doesn't miss.
"Coffee is always a good idea," he argues, but the tone of his voice matches hers and his smirk dims. When she looks up into his eyes, they are blue-green and appraising. "Have coffee with me."
"Why?" she wonders aloud, the Hail Mary of her excuses, the last-ditch attempt to deflect his inexplicable interest.
"Because why not?" His answer is so simple and so honest, and she finds herself saying yes before her brain has okayed it with the rest of her. The momentary gravity that graced his angled features is gone. "Okay, Tyler," he says, forcing his lips to curl over his teeth, as if to temper the smirk-cum-smile. "Where can I meet you?"
When she steps out of the building that houses her last class of the day, she is just reaching into the front pocket of her messenger bag for her mittens when she hears Kelsey's voice from somewhere up the sidewalk. The wind is biting, the sky an unremarkable shade of gray that matches the concrete beneath her feet, and she glances around until she spots her friend standing off to one side of the building's entrance. Kelsey has a rainbow of rope-thin scarves around her neck, a leather jacket hugged tightly to her thin frame, leggings tucked into Doc Martens, and an undeniable air of New Yorker about her in the way she leans against the façade of the building, casually ignoring the stream of other students and pedestrians between them. Idly, Bella wonders what she looks like on the rare occasions that people take notice of her – wonders if, at least on good days, she looks like she belongs here.
"Hey," she says as she approaches, sliding the woolen mittens onto her hands. "What are you doing here?"
Kelsey shrugs. "I had an advising appointment and figured I'd see if you want to grab food. I skipped lunch."
Bella shifts her feet on the sidewalk. "I'm, um…actually meeting someone."
Kelsey's dark eyes widen slightly, and that little gesture goes a long way toward making Bella once again feel like the friendless loser she described herself as before the winter break. "Someone?" she asks.
"Just…a guy," Bella hedges, and her friend beams.
"Excellent."
"It's just coffee."
Kelsey rolls her eyes. "Every great love affair starts with something as innocuous as coffee," she muses, affecting a wistful air as she falls into step beside her friend. They walk together as far as the corner before Kelsey peels off to purchase a chicken kebab from a street vendor; never having warmed to the idea of meat on a stick, Bella shudders as she waves goodbye and makes her way the rest of the distance to the café where she agreed to meet Tyler.
When she steps inside the small diner-style place on West 3rd Street, he is sitting in a booth with another girl. She is on the same side of the booth as he is, leaning into his shoulder, trying to snatch what appears to be a pencil from his hand. He is laughing, making no attempt to dim his smile, and something about the sight of it makes Bella slow her steps, captivated by his unrestrained laughter.
As she approaches the booth, she notes the similar hair color, similar eyes, and the fact that he ultimately surrenders the pencil without much of a fight, ruffling the girl's hair slightly before slinging an arm casually over the back of the booth seat. "Hi," she says as she draws to a halt at the end of the table, and Tyler's arm drops from the back of the booth.
"Hey," he replies, straightening slightly, gifting her with what she suspects is his trademark half-smile. "Bella, this is my sister, Caroline. Caroline, this is Bella." The small girl smiles up at her.
"Hi," she says, and Bella returns the greeting, glancing once more at Tyler, who looks apologetic.
"Sorry," he offers. "My mother had a thing."
"Not a problem," she says, still standing with the strap of her bag slung diagonally across her body. "Did you want to hang out another time?"
"No," he says immediately, nudging Caroline with an elbow. "Pie."
The girl eyeballs him once before smirking up at Bella. "That's Tyler-code for me to scram so he can have a date with you."
Tyler glances quickly up at Bella and then away, out the diner window to the bodies passing on the sidewalk, and she notes with a twinge of glee the faintly flushed cheeks from which she herself too often suffers. He half-laughs and nudges his sister again. "Thanks a lot."
She giggles and slides out of the booth, crossing the black and white tile to the red-cushioned stool at the bar, clutching a spiral notebook and the liberated pencil in her hand. Tyler looks up at Bella again and gestures toward the vacant bench seat across from him. "You're making me nervous." She unwinds the strap of her bag and lowers herself to the seat across from him. "Okay," he says, curling his body toward her and resting his elbows on the Formica tabletop. "This doesn't count."
She frowns, her fingers pausing midway down the line of coat buttons she'd been in the process of undoing. "What?"
"As a date," he clarifies, flicking his eyes once to where his sister is ogling the glass bakery case to the left of the counter, a waitress leaning against the bar awaiting her order. "It can't count as a date when my kid sister is within earshot."
Bella flushes slightly, though he hasn't said anything overtly suggestive, her hands still poised at the fourth button from the top of her coat. She, too, glances in Caroline's direction before unbuttoning the rest of the buttons. "I'm counting it," she replies, hoping her tone is casual as she shrugs her coat from her arms and lets it pool around her hips. She leaves her scarf on, the bite of the wind still chilling her hands and feet, and he is just opening his mouth to reply when the waitress who had taken Caroline's dessert order appears beside them.
"What'd she get?" Tyler wonders, and the lady grins.
"Chocolate cream."
Tyler rolls his eyes, an affectionate half-smile on his lips. "Figures."
She echoes his laugh and retrieves a pad from her apron. "Coffee?" He nods and gestures toward Bella, who does the same. "Anything else?" They both shake their heads and she disappears.
"So…you're counting it," Tyler repeats, one corner of his mouth quirked upward. Bella nods, and he blows out a breath as if she's driving a hard bargain. "Well, in that case, you owe me."
"Excuse me?"
His lips twitch. "The chance for an actual date, if only so that you can be sure that I don't always show up with an eleven-year-old in tow."
"You're already angling for date number two when we're barely even ten minutes into this one?"
"Evidently."
"What happens if I say yes and we get to the end of this and you decide you never want to see me again?"
At this, he leans back, considering her as two mugs of coffee appear on the table between them. "Tell me," he says finally, long fingers wrapping around the bone-colored mug, one eyebrow cocked in expectation as he reclines against the backrest of the fake leather booth.
"Tell you what?"
"You don't strike me as the type to play hard-to-get," he says carefully.
"I'm not."
A nod. "So tell me why you're giving off that vibe."
"Is it hard-to-get if you really don't want to be gotten?"
Rather than dismiss her words as another example of the dreaded mind game, he chews them over, considering her through slightly narrowed eyes as he picks absently at the corner of a worn leather journal near his elbow. "I don't know," he says finally. "But why run until you're sure of what it is you're running from?"
She ponders this, and all the times she should have run but didn't. She wonders if perhaps this time it would work in the reverse if she were to take flight. "Okay," she agrees, grabbing hold of her burgeoning courage with both hands.
They spend the next hour ticking off items on the proverbial get-to-know-you checklist. On the topic of family, Bella learns that Tyler's parents are divorced, his mother remarried; that he gets along better with his mother, but that a longtime frostiness in his relationship with his dad is slowly thawing.
"My family's pretty fucked-up," he sums up, and she nods as she sips from her mug.
"Mine, too."
He nods in silent commiseration. "It's getting better, though," he says, and she wonders if he realizes that with these words, his gaze slides quickly to Caroline before returning to her.
She smiles. "That's good."
When she asks about other siblings, a shadow crosses his face; when he tells her that his brother, Michael, committed suicide five years ago, she makes a move to reach for his hand before realizing it, and her own hand stops halfway across the spotted table surface. His eyes drop to her hand before returning to her face, and he gives her a soft almost-smile, as if he's registered not only the gesture but the intent behind it. He turns the questioning on her, and she gives him the bare bones on Charlie and Renee and her relocation from Phoenix to Forks. He asks what she wants to study and she parrots the question back to him; they are both undecided, and she has never felt that an adjective described her so aptly, so completely, as that one. The conversation has only just graduated from preliminary details to more conceptual chatter when Caroline reappears at the end of the table with her notebook and pencil. "It's four," she announces, and Tyler blinks up at her, seemingly dazed by either the interruption or the words.
"Four what?"
"O'clock," she replies, rolling her eyes. "I have French tutoring at four thirty."
"Shit," he says, glancing at the clock on the wall behind the counter before glancing back at Bella as he shifts his weight to one hip, fishing his wallet out of his back pocket and dropping bills on the tabletop. "Okay, this is why this doesn't count. Because if I didn't have to haul ass uptown, I'd be walking you home, or at least buying you a refill."
"Refills here are free," Caroline interjects, and this time it's Tyler who rolls his eyes; Bella bites back a smile of her own as she once again notes the clear familial resemblance.
"Anyway, tomorrow," he says, returning his wallet to his pocket and grabbing his coat. "The party. Date number two."
Bella is tempted to protest, to shake her head, to argue that she's not the party type, but Tyler is snaking his arm through the sleeve of his coat, and she feels like an objection would be ill-mannered, given that it would delay his departure. And, despite her reservations, he's broken through her first line of defense. "Okay," she says, uncertainty heavy in her voice, and he smiles.
"Where do you live?"
"Hayden," she replies, and he nods.
"Eight o'clock?"
"Okay," she says again, then the idea hits her. "Can I bring my roommate?"
He smiles. "Girls. You always travel in packs."
"Safety in numbers," she replies as he slips from the booth and slides his other arm into his coat.
"You think I'm dangerous?" he teases, drawing the zipper of his coat up to his chin and fishing the beanie he'd been wearing in the bookstore out of his pocket.
"Nope," she replies. "But I've been wrong before."
He smirks, yanking the hat down over his ears. "I'm going to continue this conversation tomorrow night, so be prepared."
Caroline has been watching this exchange with silent fascination as she dons her own coat, and when Tyler places a large hand on her shoulder, she grins at Bella. "Nice meeting you," she says, and Bella nods back, never entirely comfortable with kids.
"You, too," she replies, then smiles. "Au revoir."
Caroline beams. "A bientôt," she replies with perfect enunciation, and Tyler smiles at Bella over his sister's head.
"See you," he says, and Bella nods, watching as they disappear through the glass door together. The waitress appears with the coffee pot in one hand.
"Refill?" Nowhere to be, nothing pressing to do, Bella nods, noting the small twitch of the waitress's lips as she tops off her mug. "He's a charmer, that one."
"He is," she replies, wondering fleetingly how many girls have sat across a diner table from him, sipping coffee and swallowing charm. Her mind imagines the considerable experience a twenty-one-year-old boy from New York could have and holds it up to her utter lack thereof with a steadfastly chaste, purposely innocent boy whose lack of experience hadn't precluded him from shattering her very nearly beyond repair.
Lifting the cup to her lips, she blows gently. Perhaps, she reflects, history isn't the worst thing to have. Perhaps a past is necessary to promise someone a future. Or perhaps, this time around, she should do herself a favor and focus on the present.