So I start my New York life over.
Rosalie is working as a junior at a PR agency and gets me a job answering the phones. It's tedious, and I spend most of the day reading novels tucked out of sight under my desk, but it's sort of wonderful. To be around people, and not want to bite them or fuck them, there's something redemptive about it. I begin to understand why the Cullens can put up with high school over and over if it means they get to be in one place for a while. I like the stability, the routine of it all.
On the weekends, I watch baseball with Emmett. For reasons passing understanding, he's obsessed with the Cubs. "It's really something, Bella. They haven't won a championship since my change. I figure I'm their longest-standing fan by decades. They have to win eventually."
I laugh in disbelief. "I'm serious, Bella," he gives me a wounded look. "You have no idea how much money I have lost to Jasper over the years because of this team. They owe me a win."
Rosalie shows me the city. Her favorite place is the Met, and she likes to go at night, when the tourists have thinned out a bit. She adores the Egyptian Wing, sitting in the shadow of the Temple of Dendur. "This is one of the only places where I feel young," she says simply. "The passage of time seems slower here." We walk across the Park to the Hayden Planetarium. Rose trails her pale fingers along the handrail of the Cosmic Pathway. "See, Bella? Thirteen billion years. Even we are nothing in the face of so much history."
On Saturday we lunch at Barneys, and she spends an hour with me at the cosmetics counters, glaring at overeager sales staff until they shuffle uncomfortably away and she can take her time showing me what I need. Stronger foundation, concealer for the shadows under my eyes.
"Can I ask you something?" she says, tilting her head to one side and examining her handiwork. "Why did you leave the others? Were you unhappy? Is that why you were on this self-destructive streak?"
I rub idly at the smears of makeup she has applied to the back of my hand. None of the reasons sound very good in my head anymore.
"I thought...I was making things difficult. By being around. I thought it might all go back to normal if I wasn't there."
Rosalie's forehead creases almost imperceptibly, and then she goes back to dusting powder all over my face with a huge, soft brush. "There!" She brandishes a hand mirror in front of me. The artificial color helps a great deal, particularly here in the bright faux-clinical environment of the cosmetics department. I look...healthy. Happy.
When summer settles over the city, Rose and I give up our jobs, the pretense too hard to maintain with so many sunny days. In the evenings, the three of us lie around in the Park listening to concerts. Tonight it's the Philharmonic. Emmett is flat on his back, taking up most of the dark red picnic rug. He lazily tosses a baseball so that it loops easily over a tree branch above him before falling back to his mitt. Rosalie and I sit barefoot, wriggling our toes in the dry grass, the earth below still warm from the heat of the day.
The music is intoxicating. A Chinese soprano is singing an aria from Roméo et Juliette, and her voice dances in the humid air.
"Do you think...if I practiced every day for, like, a century, I would sound like that?"
Emmett bounces his baseball off the back of my head.
"Not a chance, little B. I've heard you in the shower."
Rosalie and I both giggle and she swats at him with the paperback she's reading.
It makes me wonder, though. Was Edward always a beautiful piano player, or did he just have all the time in the world to become one? What do I want to become, now I have all the time in the world?
Emmett charters a yacht from the Manhattan Sailing Club, and some nights as the sun sinks over the city, we head out on the water. Rosalie and I take turns diving off the front of the boat, slicing gracefully through the refreshing waves. Emmett challenges me to races, my newborn energy a relatively even match for his imposing brawn.
In the fall, I start classes at Columbia. Jasper arranges beautifully forged transcripts and student records, and I'm sure there is a large donation from Carlisle somewhere in the background. But I find I love being back at school, hungry for my classes in English literature, philosophy and art history. The old buildings remind me of what Rosalie said, that there are still some things older than us. I read the masters in my freshman courses, because Wuthering Heights is something I don't even want to recall anymore. I meet Rose for lunch most days. We don't eat, of course, but the companionship is worth the charade. She volunteers at the Bank Street preschool right down Broadway, and the stories she tells me about working with the children make her whole face light up.
The rest of the family come to us for Christmas. Alice pouts outrageously when we won't let her decorate. "It's a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, Bella!" she wails at the lush six-foot spruce we have installed in the lounge. I pat her on the head and try not to take offense. It is just so lovely to have everyone in one place. Almost everyone.
The difference from last Christmas is absolutely palpable. The apartment is filled with music and conversation. The only unrest comes when Alice accidentally tells Emmett, who has slowly plowed his way through five Harry Potter books and is almost done with the sixth, that Dumbledore dies. He chases her furiously down one side of Manhattan and up the other, as she nimbly predicts and evades him, an unseen blur dodging pedestrians and traffic and squealing rapid-fire apologies over her shoulder.
As happy as I am, I begin to understand what it must have been like for Edward being the seventh wheel in a house with these couples. There is a loneliness that unfolds, late at night, after they retire to their rooms. An empty space that stretches out from my heart to fill every part of me.
The first week back at school in the new year, Rose is in a strange mood. She begs off meeting for lunch, and disappears in the evenings, returning late and heading straight to the shower before joining us. I watch Emmett closely for any sign that he's noticed her absences, but he just seems glad when she comes home, dragging her lithe form into his lap and kissing the top of her head.
I'm in the East-Asian library studying for an exam when Rose sends a text message insisting that we meet later that night for drinks at an address I don't recognize. Em and I watch the Redskins lose yet another football game first, so I'm late to meet her at the restaurant, and I'm distracted. I smile too broadly at the host who just about swoons and suddenly can't tell me where my table is, so I lean over a rail at the entrance to look down on the seating area below. Rose's blond hair is instantly recognizable as she stands at the bar. She is leaning into the man standing next to her and whispering savagely into his ear. Suddenly, with one breath I am staggering back against the wall, desperately scrabbling to catch my balance.
Edward is here. Edward is here in this bar.
"You ridiculous, selfish, egotistical..." Rose's voice is dripping acid, her list tailing off into an inventive stream of curses that even make me wince. "She's been through hell and out the other side. We all have. And for what? You can't get your head out of your ass long enough to see that you had a chance here and you blew it."
Edward is ignoring her, but I can tell by the way he leans more heavily on his forearms that he is listening. I am looking at them both in profile, and his dark jacket is rumpled, white french cuffs poking out at the wrists. There is an untouched tumbler of scotch in front of him, and he shuffles it slowly back and forth from hand to hand. The weight on his shoulders seems to be increasing by the second as he slumps forward a little at her every word, his hair falling in his eyes.
"She didn't want it to happen this way! None of us did! But she would have chosen it. She would have chosen you."
"Fuck off."
His voice sounds sharp, cut glass, razor blades. He sounds every one of his hundred and nine years. "I don't want to see her. I don't want to know what she's been through. I don't know how to make this any clearer to you, Rose. If you want to keep tracking me down all the time like this, I can't stop you. But don't think for a second I want to hear a fucking thing about Bella."
I am two states away before I stop running.