A/N: Thanks so much for all your wonderful thoughts.
So, I seem to have confounded some of you when I said in the last chapter's A/N that there were about a handful or so chapters left in this story. Some of you aren't sure how I can wrap this up in five or so more chapters. While I honestly believe I can, those of you who know me know I tend to be full of shit with my chapter count approximations. So, we'll see. :)
Also, this chapter is shorter than usual because it's really a continuation of the previous chapter, which just grew too damn long.
Most characters belong to S. Meyer. The rest belong to me. All mistakes are mine as well.
Break – Chapter 11
When I arrived two minutes early to the coffee shop where Edward and I first met – or I suppose, re-met – he was already there. I spotted him through the café window, his back to me, seated at a small table. I knew it was him by the shade and wave of his hair, by the breadth of his shoulders, and by the manner in which those shoulders carried themselves. For a few seconds, I stood just outside of the door, drawing in deep breaths, gathering myself, organizing my thoughts…and all the while, watching him.
When the bell above the door chimed, he turned and looked over his shoulder, then swiftly stood when he saw it was me.
I'd forgotten how tall he was – broad-shouldered, yes, but the rest of him narrowed into a lean frame. As I approached, he smiled, and I realized I'd also forgotten how sometimes, his smile had a way of starting out small at one corner of his mouth, then languidly spreading to the other side, so that by the time it was complete, the entire thing morphed into a grin that lit up his eyes.
And those eyes…as I reached the small table by the window where he waited, and I stood opposite him, I noted I'd forgotten how clear his green eyes were; how almost translucent. Once, during our relatively short association, I'd observed that his irises, while green, were flecked with gold and framed in a narrow band of navy. They'd reminded me of stained-glass windows in churches, whose undefined shapes and bold colors told the most detailed of narratives.
And the longer our gazes remained locked, the more I understood 'forgotten' wasn't the right word. After all, as Rose once said, files aren't deleted; they're pushed down the list when other files take precedence.
Edward and I hadn't spoken in a year. During that year, I'd worked on those files which had to take precedence so that the entire system wouldn't crash again. I'd rebuilt the database from the bottom up; through new social connections, discovered and rediscovered interests, and a decision on what to do with myself for the short-term, at least. For the good of all my other files, my file labeled 'Edward…Cullen – Her brother' had to be pushed down the list. But now, it was time for periodic database management.
Edward rounded the table and pulled out my chair.
"Thanks," I murmured, diverting my gaze from him as I sat.
"No problem," he said quietly in return and took his own seat.
Our eyes met and held, and for a few moments, neither one of us spoke.
Edward cleared his throat. "You look great. You let your hair grow out again."
"Oh," I said ineloquently, touching my hair like someone who couldn't recall what her own hair looked like. "Thanks. You look great too."
He offered me a sheepish smile. "Uhm, I was going to order you a coffee, but I wasn't sure if you still took it the same."
"Oh." Again. I cleared my throat, to see if that would help. "Yes. Yes, I do take it the same."
"Okay. So, give me a sec, and I'll go put in our orders." With his thumb, he gestured toward the counter and spoke the statement more like a question.
"Okay. Thank you."
He stood fluidly, turned toward the counter, and I exhaled through narrowed lips. I watched him place our orders, and in less than a minute, barely sufficient time to compose myself, he was back in his seat.
"They should be ready in a few minutes."
I nodded and swallowed.
"Edward, I-"
"Bella, you-"
We both chuckled at the same time. Edward graciously motioned for me to go first. When I spoke, my words came out slow and haltingly yet more evenly as we wore on.
"I just wanted to thank you for meeting me today on such short notice and…despite how we left things the last time we spoke."
He shook his head. "No. No problem. I was…glad to hear from you, even gladder you texted today and not last week or next."
"How come?"
He inhaled deeply. His hands were on the tabletop between us, and he shifted them back and forth as he spoke, eyes on his hands.
"Well, I've been away for a while, for the past year or so."
"For work?"
He looked up at me. "Yeah."
"Where've you been?"
He exhaled. "Uh, I was in Asia for a while – for a few months before last year's flu season. Then in Central America and the Caribbean for a small yellow fever outbreak." He scratched his head, thinking. "I spent a couple of months in Atlanta at CDC Headquarters."
"You were in New York a couple of weeks ago, though. Right?" I smiled.
His hands dropped back to the table, and he offered me a faint smile.
"Yeah. That night I saw you with…" he cleared his throat, "I saw you at that restaurant, I was picking up an order for a group of us back at the office. We were having a late session at work. There are issues with this year's flu vaccine, but-" He waved it off and grinned self-consciously, squirming around in his seat, his cheeks turning pink. "Never mind."
"No," I said while actually nodding. "No, I know. I mean…I saw you on TV a couple of weeks ago talking about it."
He quirked a thick, well-groomed eyebrow. "You did?"
"Yeah. You discussed specific strains."
At this, Edward threw back his head and chuckled heartily, and it was…the most joyous and the most heartbreaking moment I'd experienced in a while. It took me back to those days when I found myself falling in love with him…yet still so unsure of myself.
The chuckle reverberated through his arms and into his palms, which were back on the tabletop, and into my hands, which were knit over the table and in front of me. Sighing, he met my gaze again.
"I guess I never learn my lesson about that, do I?"
"Apparently not," I grinned wryly.
"My friend and colleague, Emmett McCarty, was standing behind the camera while I gave that interview. When I started talking strains, he waved his hands wildly, mouthed, 'Stop!' But, I was on a roll." He snorted self-deprecatingly.
"Yeah, I remember how you are once you get started on those strains."
I rolled my eyes, and Edward chuckled again, quietly this time. For a few moments, we said nothing.
"Anyway, last week I was at CDC Headquarters again, and I have to return next week."
"You've been busy," I noted.
"Yeah," he nodded, "but you know what they say about idle hands and idle minds." He raked a hand through his hair. "Anyway, it's been good. Keeps me focused. I haven't-"
The barista called our names in the middle of Edward's strange speech, and Edward's chair scraped the floor as he pushed it back.
"Excuse me."
He returned promptly with two mugs and two saucers, mine a black coffee, and his a frothy latte. And as he set both mugs down, I thanked him while my mind wandered to those days of latte art. A small smile tugged at the corner of my mouth, which I concealed when he sat back down.
We both wrapped our hands around our cups, though neither of us took a sip.
"So Bella, how-"
"Edward-"
Again, we shared a mutually self-conscious chuckle, dropping our eyes to the space between us.
"I went first before," I said. "It's your turn now."
After a few seconds, he looked up at me through vibrantly green eyes framed by a thick contrast of dark lashes and brows.
"How've you been, Bella?" he asked softly.
It was a strange circumstance; if anyone besides Rose had first-hand knowledge of how I'd been before, when I was still recovering from my breakdown…and how I'd been the day of my breakdown as well, it was Edward.
The realization hit me in that split second before I replied: in its own peculiarly paradoxical way, Edward knew me even more than did Rose, more than anyone knew me because he was there, both times.
"I've been good, Edward. Pretty good. Busy as well. I got a job."
"Did you?" he grinned. "Where- I mean," he shook his head quickly, green eyes growing simultaneously wide and apologetic. "Sorry. I just mean, what do you do?"
His obvious unease tied tense knots in my stomach. "No, it's fine, it's fine." I tried waving away his apology, but we both needed a moment. We reached for our coffee, took a few seconds to hide behind our mugs, and after another long pause, I set down my mug and cleared my throat.
"Well, though not as exciting as your year around the world-"
He snorted.
"I'm actually part of a writer's group workshop downtown," I continued. "We set up publications, readings, and contests for new writers, stuff like that. It's interesting work. I meet a lot of wonderful people."
"That sounds amazing, Bella, and right up your alley. You've always been an artistic, free spirit, who was never meant to be bound by some stupid, two-cent, neighborhood publication." He exhaled. "It sounds great, Bella; it really does."
And there it was; a hint of that open awe I remembered from our time together, awe that for a long while afterward, I believed he'd feigned. It was that belief, that his admiration for me had all been a lie, which kept me up for months afterward despite Doctor Rose's professional advice.
Yet, here it was again. Here we were again.
"But what about your writing?" he asked carefully. "How's that going? I remember…I remember you were really involved in a project-"
"It was a novel," I blurted. Then, I sighed. "It was a novel, Edward."
He smiled gently. "You never told me that before."
A pause.
"I was going to," I said honestly. "I was going to tell you exactly what I was writing. That weekend…I was going to share it with you, ask you if you wanted to read it."
As I spoke, Edward's breaths deepened so that now, his chest rose and fell noticeably with each breath. His nostrils, slightly skewed to one side, flared. His eyes swept away from me.
"And I fucked it all up," he breathed roughly. "I fucked it up from the very beginning. And worst of all…I hurt you."
"That night after I found out, you called me; you weren't supposed to be back in New York yet. You had a conference the next morning in Atlanta, a speech you were scheduled to give. That's why we were waiting until Friday night to meet."
He said nothing, kept his eyes on the window and on the golden, fall afternoon outdoors.
"You came back to New York early."
He nodded once.
"To speak with me?"
Another nod.
"What happened with your speech, Edward?"
He shrugged. "I asked a colleague, Emmett, to present it for me."
I shook my head, spoke through the lump lodged in my throat. "So much urgency once you realized I'd figured it out. Why couldn't you have shown that urgency beforehand?" I choked. "The moment you handed me that coffee cup, you should've-"
His eyes flashed back to me, jaw squared tightly. "I was wrong, Bella; one-hundred percent wrong. I'll own that completely. But for those first few minutes, I honestly thought you recognized me. And I thought…for those first few minutes, I thought the fact that you actually spoke to me meant something. I thought it meant you remembered me, and you were okay with me despite who I was and who I... It wasn't until we stood out on the sidewalk that I realized you thought you were speaking with a perfect stranger."
"Why didn't you say anything then?"
"I should've," he said miserably. "But…I didn't think it likely I'd see you again after that, and I selfishly wanted to hold on to our conversation for a few minutes longer."
"Fine," I said shortly. "What about the time after that, Edward? You had so many opportunities in those first few weeks."
"Do you know I saw you in that coffee shop for two straight weeks after that first encounter, and I didn't say a word to you. I didn't approach you. I'd come in and get my coffee, and there you'd be, typing away, distracted by your imagination, and I would stand there and wonder… One day, I found myself sitting next to you again, speaking with you, and every word between us just drew me in more and more. Every subsequent encounter was the same, and every subsequent encounter, I told myself I'd tell you before I left. And when I didn't, I hated myself. But Jesus, Bella, you should've been the hardest person in the world for me to speak with, yet you were the easiest. You should've been the easiest person for me to run the other way from, yet you were the hardest."
"And all while you did these things, all while you knew this, you left me in the dark. You took it upon yourself to deal with the paradox of us, and in the process, you made it all a lie. You turned it into a mockery."
"It wasn't all a lie," he said, swallowing, shaking head. "The most salient fact of all wasn't a lie."
I shut my eyes, shook my head.
"Are you okay?"
My eyes shot open. "I'm fine, Edward. I wasn't a china doll then, and I'm not one now. And I would've been fine. I would've been better had you been honest and upfront, than with the mortification you made me feel with your lies, with your omissions."
Now, he squeezed his eyes shut. "God, I'm so sorry."
"Tell me the truth. Tell me everything, once and for all. Tell me what was real back then and what wasn't, so that I can try to figure out what's real now. Because I'm stuck now, Edward. I've managed the database as far as I can on my own, and I think I've done well with it. But it's getting mixed up because I don't know what files should take precedence…and which ones should be returned to the bottom of the list."
It was a stupid thing to say – to say the least. Oddly bizarre. Nonsensical, verbal vomit spewed in the heat of the moment, which should've confounded anyone and everyone but me – and perhaps Rose.
Yet, the Stranger…Edward…Alice's brother had always possessed a singular insight into my head.
In the small space between us, Edward's palm lay flat over the table. In the relative silence between us, he held my gaze, while in my periphery, he edged his fingers closer; slowly, to where my hand was in a tense fist. All along, he knew I was watching…and debating in my own way, while he dared in his own way. But that had always been our way.
His fingers brushed my white knuckles; gentle, ghostly strokes, and when my hand finally relaxed and loosened, he eased his hand away. And as with that day long ago, the first time he touched me – such an innocent stroke – the heat of his fingers branded me, left a long-lasting imprint.
"If your database is mixed up, let me help you sort through it. And then…it'll be completely up to you how you want to organize those files."
A/N: Thoughts?
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