Nowforruin agreed to beta this. THANK you.
I don't own Twilight. Any similarities to actual persons or events, alive or dead, real or fictitious, are merely coincidental, and most likely the product of my feverish imagination.
9.
2007
My attendance at Alice's party was a foregone conclusion. I knew I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see her, irrespective of how much her disappearance act had wounded my pride.
At that point, I was practically itching for a confrontation with her. I reviled what she'd reduced me to, and the fact that some little douche kid had taken something I'd considered legitimately mine made the bile rise from my stomach leaving a bitter aftertaste in my mouth. Riley, for all I cared, could've been the most decent and affable guy on the planet who'd only seized what was freely offered, and I would've still hated his guts. The fact that he turned out to be a spoiled bastard, devoid of redeemable qualities, really didn't matter to me at first. It was just an added bonus.
What I hadn't figured out was what exactly I planned to accomplish by seeing her again. I wasn't seeking closure –some futile attempt to wrap what had transpired between us up into a neat little package, which could be filed away as a past accident. I, for sure, wasn't ready for that, and I highly doubted whether I'd ever be. I also wasn't delusional enough to think that we'd clear the air and some happily ever after tale was in the cards next. Things were too screwed up for that. Secretly though, maybe I did hope she'd realize that she'd made a mistake.
I didn't bother with any meds that day – a mistake that came with a nice price tag attached. Instead I attempted to squelch the feeling of anxiety and anger I hadn't been able to shake by going for a long run along the East River thinking that the release of some stored up adrenaline would help; it was in vain. By the time I headed over to Alice's place around eight I was wound up tighter than a two-dollar watch. My stomach was in a knot and my temper barely contained. I yelled at my driver for not stepping on the gas at an approaching yellow traffic light and nearly knocked a delivery boy on a bicycle over as I shoved open the car door without bothering to look first.
Alice must have noticed my foul mood when she greeted me, dressed in a demure blue cocktail dress, accessorized with a pearl necklace, and her hair tamed into a bun.
"Good evening, Edward." She kissed me on both cheeks and pulled me into her apartment. "Our birthday girl is here already," she said in a hushed tone, her arm interlacing with mine. "I've to warn you though. Riley is here with her. And yes, they very much look like they're together." She turned to inspect me for a peculiarly long moment. "On that note, the furniture is borrowed from the storage container of a client of mine…just in case you think you need to smash something up." It was then that I noticed I was gripping her arm tightly.
I chuckled. "I'll be fine." I let go of her and followed her into the living room.
Her apartment, much like Alice herself, had been transformed into something conventional, trite even. Like a yuppie couple with an average, commercial taste had moved in overnight. Several antique-looking pieces of furniture were strewn around the space that previously had none. A large sofa, several armchairs together with some random plants, mirrors and paintings completed the oddly homey look. Suddenly the austere condition before the mini-remodeling project seemed preferable. A white clothed table with two bartenders behind it was stationed in the corner in front of the open kitchen and some waiters were serving hors d'oeuvres.
I glanced around the room, immediately searching for Isabella. I didn't see her anywhere.
The crowd in attendance had changed just like the furniture. Instead of strung-out drunk misfits, expats and girls dressed in skimpy outfits, the place was swamped with young professionals in casual business attire mingling in groups of three or four, sipping wine and cocktails out of glasses. If it wasn't for the absence of anybody over the age of thirty-five, you could've almost mistaken the party for a firm event. Without another word, Alice and I walked over to the bartenders to get a drink.
"She must be in the bathroom," she murmured, downing a shot of vodka. "God, I hate all her friends. This will be the first and last time I'm doing this."
"Where do you guys know each other from, again?" I couldn't remember either of them having ever mentioned how they'd come to know each other. I only knew Alice was two years older than Bella and worked as an art dealer of sorts. I'd always assumed they'd grown up with the same circle of friends.
"Our mothers were best friends when we were little. Before my mother went off the deep end … when she still had friends." The tone of her voice was flat like she wasn't taking about her mother, but some person whose demise she'd read about in the newspaper.
"What happened?"
"She died. OD'ed, to be precise." She turned around to order another drink.
"I'm sorry?" I offered, not sure whether the sentiment was wanted.
"Don't be. I'm not. She was in and out of rehab so many times … the constant fighting with my grandmother about money. In the end, I just wanted it to be over. There were so many relapses … times when she almost died. Sometimes it almost seemed like she wanted to die. The first time I called 9-1-1 I was five. When it finally did happen, it was a shock…but also a relief. Not sure that makes sense."
"What was it?"
"What she OD'ed on?"
I nodded.
"Heroin is what killed her. But there wasn't a drug – illegal or legal – that wasn't in her system when they found her. She was alone and broke in a motel room upstate. Nobody but my grandmother and I attended funeral. Most of the people from when my mother was still well enough to maintain the socially acceptable façade of a functioning addict had already started to avoid her and me." An odd, almost bitter sounding laugh escaped her. "Particularly after nearly all of the trust fund was depleted. Bella never did. We always kept in touch."
Alice Brandon was even better at maintaining complete detachment than I was, I noticed with no small amount of admiration. She was standing leisurely, cocktail glass in one hand and the other propped on the table next to me. On her face not a trace of emotion.
"And that, by the way, is Riley." She nodded into the direction of a tall guy with tussled brown hair who was talking animatedly to a tall blonde. She was giggling profusely, apparently amused by whatever story he was telling her. "The girl who is so obviously besotted with him is Kate, Bella's roommate," Alice explained further with a sneer on her face as she stared at the girl.
I took a closer look to gage my opponent. His skin was tanned, which made his blue eyes stand out. His clothing looked casual – an untucked white shirt with a seersucker jacket above – like he'd just returned from a quick sailing trip, yet formal enough to count as office attire. He stood at the other end of the room flanked by two pretty girls with a wine glass in his hand smiling at them. Altogether not an entirely repulsive figure I had to admit and it seemed he was popular with the opposite sex.
"What a tool," I muttered, inhaling my whiskey soda and getting a refill.
"Oh, he so is."
"What's his deal?" I asked, as Riley turned to look at Alice and raised his glass to her in greeting. An impeccably polite smile ghosted her lips for a brief moment.
"Parents are loaded with ambitions to push their spawn into political office. It's the last unaccomplished goal from a family that has everything. They tried with his older brother first, but that one was smart and balked. To make sure his parents would leave him alone, he then married a girlfriend twice divorced with a father who's not only connected, but who also served time on a RICO violation. Gotta give him props for that, I guess. A career in politics is out of the question for him after that liaison. So their parents switched gears and now their money is on Riley, who seems to be eager and more than willing. He'll start law school next year."
"I see." The more I learned about Riley, the less I liked him. Judging by Alice's story, his humanitarian efforts were a neat little resume filler, as I'd already suspected. In my experience, very few people were truly ever motivated by altruism. Most had other agendas, and Riley's modus operandi was to be liked and then elected. How Bella never saw his shtick for what it was baffled me.
"Edward, what's in the parcel that was delivered this afternoon?" Alice asked just as she walked into the room. I stared at her and didn't answer Alice's question. Isabella looked paler than usual, hinting at a lack of sleep, but that might have been my imagination playing a trick on me. It could've been just as easily the light pink dress she was wearing hanging loosely over her narrow shoulders that was accentuating the tone of her skin. "A photograph or a painting?"
"A painting," I answered absentmindedly as I watched Isabella move to chat briefly with a guy I recognized to be Seth. She hadn't spotted me yet.
"I see."
"Alice?"
"Mmm."
"Did you tell her you invited me?" As I asked the question, Isabella looked up and saw me.
"No," I heard Alice say before she walked away.
For a second when our eyes met, Isabella lost her composure. Her shoulders sank and a line began forming between her brows. After a slow inhale, she righted them, said something to Seth and starting walking toward me.
"Hi." She stood in front of me, a smile one her lips and her posture perfect, except for her hands, which were nervously grasping her elbows. "I'm glad you could make it," she said as if she'd been expecting me, her voice sounding formal and put-on.
"You don't have to lie, you know." I stared at her. She blinked and looked away.
"Why would I?" She shrugged her shoulders, a futile attempt at acting impervious to my comment. Her eyes never meeting mine gave her away.
"Alice invited me. I'm certain you aren't glad to see me here …" I motioned with my glass in my hand around the room "… while you're celebrating your birthday with your friends and, most importantly, your boyfriend." I paused for a second, trying to get her to look at me. "But I don't mean to be rude, so happy birthday, Bella!" I raised my glass to her.
"It doesn't have to be that way," she said in a controlled voice, her chin raised, but her gaze focused somewhere in the distance behind me.
"And what way would that be?"
"We could be friends."
"Was that your plan?" I laughed. "Friends? Really? Is that what we are …or were?" I scoffed, narrowing my eyes at her. Her forced calm angered me. "Tell me something, Bella, would your boyfriend approve of our friendship? Were you with him already the last time you had too much to drink and hung out with me, your friend?" I challenged, not curious about her answer, but more so to see whether I could get any genuine reaction out of her.
"I told you long ago I was seeing someone and you don't…" She turned paler than she'd been before, a grimace on her face forming. "…have to be so…crude," she whispered.
I tore my eyes away from her and glanced over her shoulder at the object of my ire, though at that point I wasn't sure which one of them I hated more –him or her. Behind her back, Riley was busy whispering something into another girl's ear, his mouth dangerously close to her skin.
"Look, Edward, I'm sorry. You're right to be mad. I should've called. I should've …" A long sigh escaped her as she met my eyes. "What happened that night … I shouldn't have. I made a mistake, okay? Riley and I … we make sense," she pleaded. I understood her words perfectly well, yet none of what she said made sense to me.
"What exactly do you mean by that?" She looked away again, this time turning pink. And then it registered, I finally figured it out, understood why she wasn't with me, but with Riley. Or so at least I thought. It wasn't really about a lack for attraction. It was because I wasn't part of her world and no matter how far I'd make it, I'd never fully be. I should've recognized it before, but nobody – not my snotty classmates at Princeton or Columbia, or the people I worked for – had ever reminded me in such unqualified terms that I didn't belong, that I was an outsider still and would remain so for the foreseeable future.
"Never mind." I shook my head and placed my glass on the table behind me. I'd heard and seen enough for one night. "I hope you're happy," I said and started walking away from her.
"Edward, wait, please." I heard her say, but didn't turn around to look at her.
I glanced in Alice's direction as I made my way out of the room. She shot me an apologetic look. Honoring her plea about the furniture, I stormed out the door and down the stairs.
The first cool breeze signaling the end of summer hit me as I reached the street. I started walking up Lafayette, passed Astor and down Third until I reached my building, only stopping at a deli to buy a pack of cigarettes.
The ding of the elevator as it reached my floor woke me out of my trance-like state. Staring down the dark empty hallway, the realization of what the words we'd exchanged meant hit me. It was the end. No matter what, I would no longer run after her or make any attempt to contact her. I was done. She'd made her bed and I hoped, for her sake, she'd sleep comfortably in it.
Lighting a cigarette and pouring a scotch, the reflection of my own face in the mirror above the bar console caught my attention. I loathed what I saw. I couldn't bear to see what I'd become – some pathetic loser reduced to anxiety meds and booze by a little girl. Without much thought, I threw the heavy crystal glass into the mirror with force, shattering the mirror and the cordial glass into pieces. A small reprieve swept over me as splinter struck my face. Once I was on a roll, I continued. The rest of the glasses, the crystal decanters, another mirror, the TV…anything with a reflecting surface that caught my eye bore my rage that night.
When I was done, the apartment sufficiently smashed up and my hands bloody, I laid down on my terrace staring at the skyline, working on banishing any image, any memory I had of her, out of my brain. I got up from my spot on the chaise lounge only when the sun began to rise. I walked into the bathroom, inspected the damage, tossed any medication left in the medicine cabinet into the toilet, cleaned up and went to work.
That first day, it took me no small amount of effort to maintain my newly acquired calm. The second day, it got easier. A week later, when I received a handwritten thank you note in an unstamped envelope from her at my home, I'd successfully finished building up a wall to keep anything and anybody a safe distance away.
I read her note and quickly tossed it in the trash.
It was too little too late.
In the end though, no human being with a working brain and some hope left to find some measure of happiness could maintain a wall like that forever. It took too much effort. I figured it out eventually. The people you met, the relationships you developed, the love and maybe even more so – the disappointment you experienced always stayed with you. It was just a matter of time when those sentiments, those memories were pushed back into your present consciousness once more. Sometimes the words of someone else brought you back to a time and place you wanted to forget desperately. The smell, the sight of an unchanged building, or a song could trigger your memory. You could push the recollections back behind the wall for a little while to keep them at bay, but a small piece in the wall you'd built up so carefully crumbled in the process creating a crack. The structure was unstable after that.
Of course when I got the note, I was still convinced I could maintain my distance. Unbeknownst to me, the note left a small crack. The smell of her stationary and her words lingered even after I'd tossed the trash down the shoot in the hallway. I couldn't deal with the memories I had of her yet, much less the girl herself.
Thank you for reading.