As always, to le moulin, vanilladoubleshot, windtrails and doitforyou, my heart and soul and laughter and snark. To all the reviews, recommendations, story alerts and favorites. To those who nominated me for the Indie Twific Awards - I'm honored and thrilled.
I forgot to mention in the last chapter, the country song on the radio was 'Forever' by Rascal Flatts. Lovely, heart wrenching tale - and I'm not even a country fan.
Disclaimer: I can't even pretend these are my characters, only the silly little plot.
It's Guts That Matter Most
Life is like a box of chocolates. Kidding; I actually don't like chocolate, but I do like life, so that simile doesn't work well for this situation. To me, life is like blown glass encrusted in diamonds: fragile and priceless. To be handled with care, to be revered for its beauty. I don't think I've lived long enough to judge if I've lived this way, but I hope in retrospect, I will be able to say I lived and loved and pushed and fell with all my heart.
"Bella?"
Bella looked up from the red notebook, her pen pausing. "Yes?"
"I think… something is burning?" Charlie looked at her hesitantly, like he was unaware of his dominance in the kitchen.
Bella took a giant sniff and almost immediately coughed up a lung. "Oh, God." She whipped around from her position against the small kitchen counter and lunged for the oven, in which the contents were most definitely charring.
"I'm sorry, Dad. I think I just made our fish so blackened, Cajuns wouldn't eat it." She opened the stove and smoke poured out. She waved her hand, trying to clear it, as she snapped on the overhead fan.
Charlie reached across her for the phone. "How does pizza sound?"
Bella sighed. "Not as good as freshwater trout, but good."
After Charlie spoke to the only pizza place that delivered for thirty miles, he turned to Bella.
"You're not usually prone to burning things. What's up, Bell?"
"Distracted," Bella muttered, sliding her red notebook off the counter, under Charlie's police officer eyes. "Doing homework. Sorry."
Charlie nodded in that I'm-your-father-so-I'm-going-to-act-like-you're-being-normal way. "Right, well. I'll call you down when the grub gets here."
Bella nearly ran upstairs, the notebook clutched to her chest. Her heart was pounding uncomfortably against her xylophone ribs. The thought of another human's eyes coming across she and Edward's notebook was strange, terrifying.
She plopped down onto her bed, bouncing a bit on the old mattress. Her phone buzzed next to her ear, so she rolled over and grabbed at it.
What's another word for dark green?
Ever since exchanging phone numbers, Edward had been asking her to put names to colors he invented on his palette. He said something about needing her knowledge of words for his knowledge of hues. Bella liked that.
Your eyes.
Thirty seconds later, she snickered, imagining his horrified expression as she read his reply.
Be serious, please.
Bella sighed, thinking of maybe flustering him a bit more. But if he was painting, or at least trying to, he was probably on a temperamental streak and she didn't want to evoke his fire. She was happy to humor him most of the time. He was aloof and strange, but had a warm heart, reds and golds and a chasm of untouchable blue, scalding and passionate.
The blue was the artist in him.
Jade?
Thanks. Writing me something?
Drawing me something?
As soon as you write me something.
Promise?
No.
Bella laughed and threw down her phone, turning back over to continue writing. Despite not promising, he was a very fair person, and would always return her writings with either a picture or a small story of his own.
After the sentence about his parents' death, he hadn't written another word about it. She wondered if his writing about something so personal right off the bat had something to do with a trust exercise, like falling back into a stranger's arms and hoping they catch you.
What are you most afraid of? she wrote in the notebook, finishing up her thoughts. Every time, she would end with a question, and sometimes he would answer and sometimes he wouldn't.
She was about to turn off the light when her phone buzzed again. It was around ten PM, and she was full of supreme pizza and soda, and rain was drizzling lazily against her window.
Awake?
Now, more than ever.
Only just.
Dark brown?
Chestnut.
I was going to say your eyes. Goodnight.
XxXxX
"Esme's Interiors."
"Tell Esme to bring home some Sun Chips. I just ate the last bag, and I need some Garden Salsa in my life."
"Emmett? I'm Esme's secretary, not yours. Your snacking crisis goes down to the bottom of the list of my priorities."
"What's at the top? Filing your nails? Checking your Facebook page every seven seconds?"
"I am not a compulsive Facebook-checker."
"You so are. I've seen you."
"I just like to keep things refreshed. Emmett, I'll put you through, but if your food demands cause me to get fired, I'll kill you myself."
"I hear you, kid. Hey, what'd you think of that documentary we watched about the six wives of Henry the Eighth?"
"Sorry. Anne Boleyn is still my favorite."
"No way! Catherine Parr is the shit!"
"Can I delicately mention Anne Boleyn birthed the person that caused the marriage failure between Catherine Parr and the love of her life, after Henry died? Clearly, Anne Boleyn wins in all aspects. The same daughter of Anne's ended up being the most famous queen of all time."
"Yeah, but Elizabeth died a virgin. So not cool."
"That's what you think."
The conversation might have continued – it had been an ongoing battle for days; Emmett was a huge history buff – but Esme poked her head out of the office and gave Bella an amused look.
"Bella, my client can hear you. Can you keep your Elizabethan arguments off the clock?"
"Busted," Emmett sang. "Tell Esme I said Garden Salsa. Or else. Catherine Parr rules!"
Blushing and laughing, she heard the dial tone on the other end as Emmett hung up.
"What was that about, sweet?"
"I'm sorry Esme. Emmett called to request you pick him up a snack, and we got into a bit of a verbal scuff."
"What does he want? I swear, he eats enough for all three of the boys combined…"
Bella grinned. "Fat-free rice cakes."
XxXxX
Bella leaned back against Alice's knees as they sat outside during lunch, enjoying the sunshine.
"I can't believe it's the last week of school," Alice said wistfully. "Bella! You have red in your hair."
"Only in the sun," Bella answered, loving the heat on her face. She tipped her head back and closed her eyes. "Are you okay?"
Alice sighed deeply and ran a hand through Bella's hair. "I'm going to miss Jasper so much."
Jasper had been accepted to the University of Washington's history program. He had been up in arms about leaving Alice behind, waiting until almost the last minute to decide that he was, in fact, going. Alice was happy for him, and for herself, too – for the first time in two years, she and Jasper would be able to have a normal relationship, not under the scrutiny of those who thought their living arrangements were strange. Seattle was approximately three hours away, and she would stay with Jasper every other weekend in the apartment he had just secured in the city. They would be living as independent adults for the first time.
Rosalie and Emmett would be heading up to the University of Alaska, also living in an apartment in Fairbanks. They both missed the frigid climate and beauty of Alaska, and Rosalie would get her early childhood education degree in a state where teachers were scarce. Emmett was leaning towards engineering, and UA offered the only PhD program in the state.
"At least you have me," Bella said jokingly, patting Alice's hand. "I'm here for emotional support. I may not be able to provide for you in all aspects of a relationship, but I can be your pseudo-boyfriend. Take you out on dates. Stammer about how pretty you look. Talk dirty to you about the Civil War."
That caused Alice to burst out in laughter, making several onlookers crane their necks to see what was so funny.
"I'm sorry I only caught the tail-end of that conversation, but please, don't elaborate."
Bella and Alice turned around to see Edward and Jasper standing to their left. Edward had his lopsided smile fully in place. Jasper was giving her a wounded look.
"Were you making fun of me, fair Bella?" Jasper asked in his serious way, low and mournful.
"Oh, no, Jasper… It was a joke, just trying to, you know, make Alice feel better…" As she stuttered, a smile crept onto Jasper's face, and his dark brown eyes twinkled.
"One might want to make sure the person you're referring to is out of earshot before you start insulting them," Jasper said, a teasing smile accompanying his boyish beauty. "Just some advice."
She threw blades of grass at him, which fell extremely short. Edward watched them fall, his eyes the same color. Then he looked back up to Bella.
"Biology?" he asked, proffering a hand to help her up.
"Ugh," she answered, just as the bell rang. She got up without Edward's hand, brushing grass and dirt off her butt. "Did I get it all?" she asked Alice.
"Yes," answered Edward. Then he blushed terribly, chomping on his tongue, realizing his implications.
Bella laughed, pointing at his dark red cheeks. "Magenta."
XxXxX
Bella never really considered the Cullen's house a hard-hat zone, but when she walked by Edward's bedroom one afternoon on her way back from the bathroom, she quickly reassessed her thoughts on the matter. A loud crash sounded, echoing in the large home.
She took a deep breath, gathered courage from the deepest place in her, and shoved open the door.
His studio lay in tatters. A leg of a piano bench was halfway across the room, and the actual bench drooped pathetically on three legs. Paint was dripping wet across the walls and down to the carpet. Edward himself, with different colors dribbled across his naked chest and cargo shorts, his eyes wide and frightening, was the most broken.
"Edward? What's wrong?"
He swallowed hard, shaking his head, motioning for her to leave.
"I'm not leaving. What's wrong?"
He gestured with his hands, obviously beyond words. She had no idea how to communicate with him, and she looked around his room wildly. Her eyes landed on a big piece of paper and several Crayola markers, so she grabbed at those and wrote.
What's wrong?
Edward dipped his whole hand in paint and smeared it across his canvas – red, angry, infuriated.
She wrote again.
What happened?
He finger painted a huge arrow in red, pointing to the left, to the covered up canvas she knew portrayed a warm, beautiful girl.
How can I help?
Edward swiped at a color, dashed it across the canvas, and then drew a question mark next to it.
How Bella understood his strange language she didn't know, but she felt him, every inch of his desperation to get back to earth from whatever place he was at.
She looked at the color, a light blue with a touch of green.
Cerulean.
And on it went, she naming several different colors he created and she watched, transfixed, as his shoulders lost the tension slowly. As he painted a bright pink blot on the canvas and turned to her, sitting cross-legged on his carpet, she wrote Pepto Bismol and that made him crack a smile, so she figured it was over.
But then he painted a yellow streak all the way down his canvas, soft and lilting, the color of fresh butter and marigolds.
She almost wrote a word, but he shook his head and moved towards her, and she scrambled to her feet, ready to meet him.
His hands went into her hair, grasping at the roots. Their foreheads knocked together, and she had never been so close to a boy before – but to have it be this boy, infuriating and crazy and beautiful and gentle as he was, to feel their chemistry flow between them like warm gulf waves –
"Yellow," he said then, his breath hot and mourning across her face. He pressed their noses together, and she could barely hear him over the rush of heartbeats in her eardrums. "Yellow is sorry." His grip tightened in her hair once, and then he was backing away.
"Edward," she gasped, grabbing onto him, desperate to retain his heat. "It's okay, I'm here – I trust you – "
His sharp intake of breath carried him back to her. He cupped her cheek with his long, delicate fingers and pinned her to the ground with the flash of smoke in his eyes. "Don't."
Edward was not in school the next day, so when Bella walked out to her truck after the last bell rang, she was surprised to find a sleepy, disheveled boy sitting on her tailgate.
Surprised and secretly enamored. She couldn't exactly pinpoint the moment her heart started racing at the sight or the thought or the sound of Edward Cullen, but race it did, thrilled and exhilarated. A smile spread across her face of its own volition, and he smiled back, tentatively, ducking his head shyly.
"Hi," she said when he was in earshot. "How was playing hookey?"
He shook his head, opened his mouth, closed it and settled on a smile. "I just thought… I would give you this." He reached behind him and set the red notebook in her outstretched hands.
"Thank you," she said softly, a little bit confused on why he would drive thirty minutes out of his way to give her the notebook.
"Are you going to graduation?" he asked, picking a thread from his soft grey t-shirt, not looking at her.
"Ugh, that's coming up, isn't it?"
He looked at her strangely. "Um, yes. Tomorrow is the last day of school… so it's the next day, after that."
"Oh," she said lamely. "Um, yes. Then I'll be there."
He nodded. "Do you have… a ride?"
Bella dipped her head in ascent. "Yeah, Alice and I were going to go together. You know, she's a total mess about Jasper."
He blew out a very long breath, and then smiled at her without the lines next to his eyes. "Right. Well, I guess I'll just… see you there."
Bella bit her lip, and then nodded again, not understanding his strange bout into melancholy. She was sure she never would. "Okay."
"Right," he said again, jumping down, definitely not looking at her now. His palm opened, and a crumpled piece of paper fell out of it, onto the asphalt. Without another word, he turned on his heel and loped back to his idling Volvo.
She winced at the scream of his tires as he peeled out of the parking lot, frowning as she bent to retrieve the piece of paper he threw on the ground. She walked to the driver's side door, smoothing the paper as she went.
She nearly dropped it when it revealed itself. Crumpled, battered, a little damp from a sweaty hand – it didn't matter.
It was an origami swan.
XxXxX
Bella couldn't help laughing as Alice and Angela embraced. One minute, they had been talking about the pros and cons of eyebrow threading, and the next they were crying over their respective boyfriends leaving them for college, or as they saw it, forever.
"You're so lucky, Bella," Angela sniffled, taking off her glasses to wipe at the mascara pooling under her eyes. "Oh, crap, Alice – "
"It's okay," sobbed Alice, "I have suh… some… eye makeup… remover!" The last word caused a new bout of tears, and Bella stifled her giggles behind her fingers as the two girls hugged each other again.
Bella got up quietly and padded down the hallway to Jasper's room. She knocked on the door, and his low voice told her to come in.
She admired him from the doorway, his handsome broad shoulders and barely tamed curls twisting away from his face. He had on a simple white shirt with a black tie and black slacks – something Alice picked out for him, she was sure – and he looked classic and serious and lovely.
"How goes it, fair Bella?" he asked from his desk, where he sat fumbling with the buttons on his wrists.
"Jasper," she said in a low voice. "What did General Lee do whenever he had to leave behind his adoring wife for war?"
He looked up at her, understanding dawning on his young, unlined face. "Is she caterwauling again?"
"She and Angela," Bella confirmed.
"I can't take the girl anywhere," Jasper said, his voice annoyed but his eyes shining. "Lead the way."
Jasper assessed the situation like a military man. "Bella, you take Angela. Get her some ice cream, or something. Alice, sweet, please stop…" He moved into the room carefully, his arms extended.
"Bella, you traitor," Alice sobbed, but went forward into Jasper's arms, careful not to get her damp mascara all over his white shirt.
Bella had often wondered about the odd dynamic of Alice and Jasper's relationship. She was carefree and light, tough and dainty. He was serious and strange, dry and handsome. But as she watched Jasper cradle Alice in his arms and whisper low words against her ear, she realized she didn't have to understand how things worked as long as they did.
"You look so pretty, Bella," Angela told her with dry eyes and rocky road ice cream on her tongue.
"Oh," said Bella, looking down at the blue dress Alice had made her buy. It was sleeveless, with a small v-neck and an empire waist. It stopped just below Bella's knees, and it made her feel feminine and light, like she wanted to put on big band music and swing dance.
"You really do," Angela said again. "Your hair is perfect, with the curls. What did Alice do? It's so shiny."
"I have no idea," Bella said. "I just sort of shut my eyes. She was taking out her sadness on me. She's never this bad. But thank you."
Angela laughed. "I know you think we're silly. But believe me when I say, you'll understand someday."
Bella shook her head vehemently. "I have my books and my writing and my thoughts. I'm happy just as I am."
Angela nodded, taking another bite of ice cream. "You think people want love to be happy? That no one has ever been happy before being in love? Bella, I was perfectly content in my little world, too. Love isn't supposed to be your whole life, your whole existence, your reason for breathing. It's to make your breathing a little easier, to compliment your life, to help you see a reason for your existence." She shrugged.
Bella nodded, thinking about this. For some strange reason, it made her think of the drawing she had found in the red notebook two nights ago.
It was of Bella, sitting cross-legged on dirty carpet, a piece of drawing paper in her hands with scribbles all over it. She knew it was Edward's perception of her that day she had helped him calm down. She looked desperate and caring and wild, her hair whipped around her shoulders in disarray. But what made the drawing stick out most in her mind was the minute detail Edward had added.
Over where her heart lay, in the shape of one, was the word blossoming.
Rosalie and Emmett and Jasper poured into the kitchen then, dressed in their yellow caps and gowns. Rosalie's hair was down for once, pouring around her shoulders, and she was so beautiful it brought tears to Bella's eyes. Emmett looked like a giant banana, and Bella told him so, wiping the tears away in laughter.
"I still haven't forgiven you for the rice cakes, brat," he told her. "You're skating on thin ice."
"Ooooh," Bella said in a I'm-so-scared way. "At least I don't look like a giant yellow –"
"Dildo?" Alice offered, walking into the kitchen with a dark mark on her neck.
"Alice!" Bella cried, as the rest laughed. "What's on your neck? Jasper!"
Jasper just grinned. "The lady needed some reassurance."
"I'm disappointed, soldier," said a low voice behind them.
Alice moved and they all turned around, gaping at Edward, who hardly ever joined in the spirit of things with jokes. She could imagine him getting so embarrassed he never spoke again, so Bella opened her mouth and encouraged him.
"Stonewall would have been appalled."
That continued the easy banter, all reigning down on Jasper, who grinned easily with his hands raised, unapologetic. But Bella sought out the small grin of thanks from Edward, and she met it with a small smile of her own.
