Chapter 8 - Give and Take

Edward interrupted one of Isabella's pensive trances when he hurried into the flower shop on a fine May evening.

"I'm so relieved you're still open!" he exclaimed, rushing over to the cooler containing rose bouquets. "I can't tell you how happy I was to see your lights on from the street."

A quick glance at the clock told her it was thirty minutes past closing.

"Can I help you find something?" she asked, moving to stand beside him.

"Well, I was just going to go with some roses, but…" His whole expression suddenly changed for the worse, and he pulled a hand through his hair. "Dammit! Even a truckload of them wouldn't help. I don't know what I was thinking."

Isabella hated to see him looking so frustrated and anxious. "Do you…want to talk about it?"

His brow furrowed. He studied her for a moment and then sighed. "Actually, yeah. It might help to get an unbiased opinion on this. The ladies at the office, well…not only do they admit to being protective of me, they're also at least twenty years older. You're much closer in that department."

"Not by much," Isabella said, wondering why she felt so unhappy about the large age gap between them.

"Hey, how old are you anyway? I'm not even going to guess—I've learned my lesson when it comes to that. Age and weight, two topics men should never go near."

His easy grin brought a similar one to her face.

"I'm 25. My birthday's in September."

"Hmm, not quite eight years' difference between you two." He shrugged. "Whatever, close enough."

"For what?"

"For giving me some insight into the mysterious female mind. Do you want to sit? This could take a few minutes."

When they neared the worn table, Edward stared at it, suddenly lost in a daze of his own. Isabella took her seat, giving him a questioning glance. He closed his eyes briefly and shook his head.

"I never told you just how much you helped that night." His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. "As a pediatrician, I never expected to lose a patient like that—immediately, tragically, right in front of me. God, it's horrible enough when I see signs of a disease and have to prepare a family to see a specialist. But then...it happened, and afterward, I…I just…couldn't…"

Edward closed his eyes once again, releasing a slow breath.

"Thank you, so much." His hand reached out and squeezed her arm.

At his touch, their gazes met and held. Sincerity and warmth, appreciation and trust—they were all present in the cloudless green. Isabella's heart rate began to quicken. She felt something unfamiliar, something strange, and it made her uncomfortable.

She shifted in her seat and looked away to end the moment.

"So, what's going on?"

His scowl came back at once. "Lauren and I are in the middle of a...disagreement," he said, dropping down in a chair.

"Ah. Hence the roses."

"Exactly. But, the thing is, I don't feel I'm being unreasonable and obstinate...or whatever her latest adjective is. Why aren't my reasons just as valid as hers, you know?"

"What's the argument about?"

He groaned. "More than one thing. First of all, she wants to have a destination wedding. Somewhere tropical, like the Virgin Islands."

"Wow, that's…that's…"

"Yeah. I mean, I don't have a problem with the idea, in general, but I don't think it's right for us. To start, we can't take a lot of time off from work. We're both pushing it to be gone a week as it is. I was hoping to spend that solely on a honeymoon—just relaxing and enjoying our first days as newlyweds. If we go down to the Islands, so much time is going to be eaten up by travel and wedding preparation. We'd be lucky to get two full days to ourselves."

Isabella nodded to show she was following. She also happened to agree with his reasoning but waited to hear the rest.

"Then, of course, there's the matter of attendees," he continued. "My parents would also find it hard to take off that long, Lauren's mom hates flying, and her dad's health isn't the best. He probably wouldn't be able to make the trip. Most of our friends with have the same issue with work schedules or wouldn't be able to afford it. We could foot the bill for the bridal party, but I'd much rather save that money for something else, like future kids' college tuition or whatever. Which leads us to an unrelated but more important issue."

"Children?" Isabella guessed.

"Yeah. It's probably redundant to say this, but I love kids. I'm an only child and have always wanted a big family. I'd already given up on that idea because of our ages—Lauren just turned 34—but is one all that unreasonable?"

Isabella wasn't sure if that was a rhetorical question, but Edward let his head fall into his hands and groaned again.

"As a man, I know it's easy enough for me to say, when she'll be the one carrying a baby. And besides the physical impact, discrimination is still alive and well, especially in her field. I have no doubt Lauren is up to the task of being a working mother, but some of her peers and clients wouldn't feel the same way.

"She said she's open to adoption, and I would love to do that as well, but...is it wrong for me to want a child or two that I helped create? I guess...I don't know. She's right about there being so many kids out there who desperately need a family. And now that she's beginning to establish a name for herself at work..."

"Wow, that's a rather…fundamental issue," Isabella said.

"You could say that," he agreed dryly. "I mean, I love her, obviously, but this...this is a big deal. We've talked about it before, and while she was never as enthusiastic as I was...am...we were on the same page about having a family. According to her, she didn't start thinking differently until a few weeks ago, after snagging the Meyers-Glidden account. The senior partners took notice, and there's a rumor at the office that she's being groomed for an associate position in a few years.

"She's so excited—god, her face just lights up when she talks about it—but now she's staying at the office later than ever, wanting to make sure her work is above reproach. I mean, we hardly see each other these days. I hate being alone in that big house. It's too quiet, and...I'm fairly certain Jag's ghost is haunting the place."

He crossed his arms, and despite the seriousness of the topic, Isabella wanted to chuckle at the exaggerated pout on his face. At that moment, he looked more like a petulant child than an educated doctor in his mid-thirties. She pushed the light-hearted thought away and considered his difficulties.

"Well, I'm probably not the best person to give relationship advice, but it seems to me you both need to figure out where you truly stand on each matter, what your limits are," she mused out loud. "Do you know which issues you wouldn't be able to…compromise on? What about her?"

He stared at the table's smooth patina for a moment, thinking, then nodded approvingly. "That's a really good question. I guess when it comes down to it, I'd give into the wedding location thing if she couldn't get married without it. I wouldn't be thrilled, of course, and would be more than a little concerned if she wouldn't marry me because of that." He shook his head vigorously. "No, we'll be able to work it out. Maybe still have a destination wedding but do it closer to home, like Hawaii or something.

"As far as any deal-breakers she might have...I don't know. She's mentioned moving closer to the city, and while I adore this town, she has a point about the commute. Hers is an hour, mine is five to six minutes. If we found a place somewhere in between, we'd have more time together." Edward frowned. "At least, I hope."

"Any, uh, 'deal-breakers' for you?" She tried to keep her voice neutral despite the curiosity she felt.

"Aside from cheating, I guess…well, I don't know. I keep coming back to the family issue, and I just don't know. Shit." He scrubbed a hand over his face several times. "Sometimes I wonder if we've changed over the past four years. Or maybe we're finding out that we don't know each other as well as we thought. Could we've have just been seeing what we wanted and ignoring the rest?"

Isabella was completely out of her depth. She said they only thing that came to mind. "Maybe if you two discuss what your respective, um, boundaries are, you'll have a better idea how well you really know each other?" She shook her head at her woeful lack of relationship experience. "I'm probably not the best person to talk to about these things. I'm sorry I haven't been able to help you."

"No, you have," he insisted, taking a deep breath and letting it out quickly. "I feel a lot less anxious than when I came in—my thoughts aren't as jumbled, and you've suggested a great first step for Lauren and me to take in working through our difficulties. You've made things so much better." A pause. "You always seem to make things better."

Once again, they looked at each other, and Isabella experienced that strange, unidentifiable sensation. She stared at him in a daze, trying to understand.

Edward was the one to finally break their connection. He chuckled in an awkward manner and brushed a bit of wayward hair from his forehead.

"Are you sure you're only 25? How'd you get to be so smart, anyway?"

She almost shrugged off his compliment, but something made her answer honestly. "It was my mom, I guess."

His eyes softened. "I heard about…what happened. I'm so sorry. It sounds like she was an amazing woman. I wish I could have met her."

"Yeah, she was amazing—and fun and bright and irresponsible and forgetful. Not perfect by any measure, but wonderful all the same."

"How big of a change was this place for you? I heard you were in college before you came here…"

Isabella began to talk about her early days in town, when her mom was still fairly energetic despite the chemotherapy. She told him about the crazy wigs Renee wore and the strange craving for Sour Patch Kids that developed after one particularly difficult course of treatment. He asked how hard it had been for her to take over the business and if she had always been artistic.

The conversation topic strayed to her childhood, then his childhood, her father, his parents…

"My dad's so laid back that, if I didn't know better, I'd swear he was high all the time," Edward laughed at one point. "His friends say he used to be that way in the Emergency Room—cool and calm, even in the most dire situations. Now he spends most of his time in the classroom teaching medical students. As for my mom, well, she tends to be a little more, um, intense. But as the Director of Operations of a hospital, she needs to be hard-assed sometimes."

"Wow, a whole family in the medical field," said Isabella, awed. "Talk about intimidating."

"Oh, come on. Surely you don't find me scary, right?" Edward reached over and nudged her arm playfully. "My parents aren't either, especially not my dad. Okay, Mom can be downright terrifying if you piss her off, but not many people make that mistake more than once." Chuckling, he stretched his arms over his head and glanced at his watch.

"Wow, we've been talking for an hour and a half. Alice is going to mad that she had to wrap up my dinner again. I swear, that woman clucks over me like a mother hen."

"It's really that late?" Isabella said, surprised by how quickly the time had passed.

"Yup. I'd better get out of here. Five comes way too early in the morning for me." He stood and stretched again. "You know, my parents are planning to visit next weekend. I'll bring them by the shop so they can meet you."

"Oh?"

"Sure. The first time they came to town, I hadn't gotten to know anyone well yet. So they haven't met my friends here, and I'd love to introduce you."

"Oh, um, okay," she said. Her stomach felt odd, and she wondered if she was coming down with something again.

They walked to the door and said goodbye. She watched as he climbed into his car and drove away.

Isabella stood in that spot for quite some time, staring out into the night and thinking.


So who's still with me? For those of you who didn't already PM me, YES, this is an ExB fic, lol. That's all I'll say. If you want to know more, you know how to reach me. ;) *hugs*

I want to give a crazy big goodbye to my crazy little chicken, Queen Rosie (Cullen), who was snatched up yesterday by a beautiful but currently-despised hawk. I called her Queen Rosie 'cause she was brave and in your face, squawking her fool head off. Dumb hawk. :(

ps-Just stuck a pic of Queen Rosie on FB.