(-)(-)(-)Far Away Flame(-)(-)(-)
March, present day
On the floor next to my nightstand, I sift through a sea of photos, ticket stubs, dried flower petals, drink stirrers, and brochures.
Piles upon piles of memories chronicling our years together.
Continuing to pull trinket boxes out from my nightstand, I stumble across a sandwich bag of seashells. The faintest scent of the ocean remains. My fingers trace the uneven, scalloped edge of the gray sand dollar in the collection. I smile, but realize I'd never put that ribbon through the hole so it could be used as a decoration. I meant to hang it on the Christmas tree that first holiday we celebrated as newlyweds.
I meant to do a lot of things that never happened, I suppose.
Pausing, I study a picture of Tyler and me standing under a palm tree. The sun is setting beyond the Pacific. He's got his arms wrapped around me from behind, his face nuzzling toward my neck, and I'm laughing at the tickling sensation. I can still feel the scratch of his stubble along my jaw, his warm breath creating goose bumps over my shoulders.
He couldn't keep his hands off me.
Looking like we belonged at a P. Diddy party, we were both wearing variations of white; my husband in linen pants and a button-down shirt and me in a backless, halter sundress.
Damn, that honeymoon to Cabo was sexy as hell. Sunning ourselves on our private beach by day, dancing under the stars at night, making love till the sun came up, and starting all over again.
Ten days of pure bliss. Followed by another seven years filled with what I thought were life-altering moments of happiness. We had hilarious and wacky adventures that brought us closer together through laughter and tears. Memories we'd be able to share with the grandkids someday.
My brow crinkles, the ache still palpable. Best laid plans . . .
It's funny I don't find myself crying as much anymore. Even weirder? I'm not angry like I used to be. I'm resigned and ready to begin again.
Press restart.
I spend the next two hours emptying my bureau, walk-in closet, and bathroom cabinets. Everything I need to start over is packed neatly into seven suitcases. The furniture and replaceable knick-knacks are staying behind.
In my next place, I'm treating myself to a whole new look, a new life. After all that's transpired, I've earned a fresh start.
.
.
.
"So, my ticket is booked for the eighth."
"You sure you don't want to come earlier? Spring Breakers will be heading out by the first. You could find yourself a hot piece of cougar meat and play Stella gettin' her groove back, Panama City edition."
"Cougar meat?" I shake my head. "You've been in the sun too long. Your brain is fried."
Jasper's cackling on the other end of the phone, and it eases the perpetual agita I've had in my gut for the last nine weeks.
"Okay. The eighth it is. And hey, there are still guys who're hanging out after the crowds leave. They might be college drop-outs, but they're still around."
I roll my eyes. "Thanks, Jazz. I know I can always count on you to have my best interests at heart."
"I'll talk to you later, sis," he replies with a snicker. "Love you."
"Love you, too. Bye."
I heave an exaggerated sigh and fall into the sofa, wondering if this is one of the surfaces where Tyler screwed that skanky, little whore. Thinking better of it, I grab a newspaper, lay it on the cushion, and sit back down again. At least the couch isn't coming with me. He gets to keep all the memories from around here, tainted and otherwise. My emotional investments were liquidated weeks ago.
It's been a bumpy few months, but I'm just about finished rounding the bases of the grief cycle. I breezed through denial in the two hours prior to confronting Tyler. Anger turned out to be a little trickier. My genetic makeup of Italian and Irish makes for quite the temper, which can rise to a fever pitch when provoked. I may have broken a dish or nine and screamed like a lunatic on more than one occasion. And that poor Waterford vase that Tyler's parents gave to us as a fifth anniversary present definitely never saw me coming.
These days, I'm hovering between depression and acceptance. Lord knows I don't want to bargain for anything; I jumped clear over that sucker. What would I be bargaining for? Why would I want to take back a husband who has no regard for our marriage vows?
The only time my anger bubbles to a rolling boil is when I think about how I stumbled across Tyler's infidelity. Like, if I hadn't seen that picture, would I still be living in fantasy land, thinking I had a perfect marriage to an awesome guy?
In the blink of an eye, everything changed.
Facebook is a funny, funny thing.
I remember scrolling through my timeline a couple of months ago and finding a picture taken by somebody I didn't know. It showed up in my feed because my one of my high school friends—Gianna—had been tagged in it. She attended some pharmaceutical conference in New Orleans, and her friend snapped a photo of her out with colleagues. Oddly enough, my husband appeared in the picture . . . when he should've been in Chicago on business . . . but instead seduced some trampy waif who—I'm certain—has no pores and no cellulite.
My occasional bitterness stings like the bile in my throat.
I glance toward the front door, picturing how Tyler looked when he came home from work that night. I can still envision our confrontation like it happened yesterday.
"Hey baby." He tossed his keys on the bench of our hall tree in the foyer. "How you doing?"
My tongue had become paralyzed, my throat closed. All I could do was rub my eyes for a few seconds before placing my glasses back on my face, hoping to keep it together long enough to stay off the eleven o'clock news. "Not great. Wondering if we can talk about it."
He leaned down, placing a kiss on my forehead, and collapsed into the sofa next to me. "Sure, what's up?"
I pointed to the screen. "Got a picture here I need you to see."
He turned my laptop to the right to get a better look, and the color drained from his face.
"I—I can explain."
I cocked my head. "I bet you can."
The doorbell rings, pulling me out of the nauseating memory from almost three months ago. I do my best not to relive that evening. It wasn't pretty.
I open the door with a sigh of relief.
"I brought my two favorite guys for times like this." Rosalie holds up a bottle in either hand. "José and Jim."
I greet her with an exhausted smile, stepping willingly into the embrace she offers. "Those are the only boys I feel like spending time with anyway," I confess.
Neither of us makes a move to end our hug. I need this and she knows it, too.
I head straight into the kitchen and pop a frozen pizza in the oven, while Rose wastes no time getting started on emptying the music from my entertainment center. After dinner, we fill two Far Side coffee mugs with whiskey and mix up a batch of brownies. I get the feeling we won't be getting any more done tonight, but I couldn't care less. She's spending her spring break week off from teaching away from her husband and two little ones to help me move out of this house and into an apartment in Decatur, closer to my job.
At the very least, we have every right to get blitzed and just veg.
.
.
.
"You know Emmett feels responsible, right?"
I scrunch my half-numb face and reach for the remote, miraculously managing to hit the mute button on the fourth try. "W—w—whuh?"
She shrugs, and roars an unladylike yawn, but continues. "He blames himself for ever choosing Tyler to be in our wedding. If he hadn't been there . . ." She pokes at the corner of the tray of brownies we were sharing. We never bothered to cut them, just grabbed forks and dove in. "You guys wouldn't be in this mess."
I tilt my head back on the couch cushion, still covered in newspaper. "Well, you know that's ridiculous, and your husband needs to cut that shit out. I don't blame either of you. This is on Tyler alone." I sit forward, pulling my fingers through my hair. "And it pisses me off because he and I had a lot of good years, y'know? All those camping trips the four of us took?" I recount, shaking my head. "We had a ball."
"Our cruise," Rose whines. "He fucking stained all those memories. Rat bastard." She waves her fork around, brownie bits flying every which way. "You should'a Lorena Bobbitted his ass."
I giggle at her certifiable yet appealing solutions, and in seconds we're both in hysterical fits.
"He loved you so much for so long."
I stop laughing and sigh. "He did. And I loved him."
"We can't figure out what made him cheat," Rosalie rambles, tearing at the newspaper under us. "Tyler never said a thing to Em. No clues, no warning signs." She clicks her tongue.
"I don't know what drove him to cheat, but I sure as hell know the thought of kids freaked him out." My eyes are fixed on the ceiling fan as I spout the only plausible theory. "I've been talking about it for so long, hounding him all last year. I mean, we weren't getting any younger."
"But you talked about kids before he even proposed."
"Yup."
"And you both agreed you wanted a family but would wait a few years." Rosalie's volume increases in perfect time with her irritation.
"Yup."
"Why the fuck would he change the rules of the game halfway through?"
I no longer possess the energy to shake my head. I spent the last nine weeks doing this dance. There's no use in trying to figure out what Tyler had been thinking. He did what he did because he's a coward.
It hurts my heart because I never thought I'd use that word to describe the man I married. He was always brazen, honest to a fault, and never backed down from a confrontation. When he found himself to be wrong, he'd be the first to apologize and rectify the situation. He never made me feel unloved, always made me his top priority.
Finding out he'd been having an affair since last fall proved even more devastating and bewildering. Almost immediately after I discovered it, I realized that he'd become more attentive since the affair began, more loving, and more generous than he'd ever been before. And he'd always been all of those things; they just increased tenfold while he wrestled with his guilt and cowardice.
Emotions become thick in my throat and I have to swallow back my tears.
Seconds pass before Rosalie reaches her hand across the couch to grasp my fingers, neither of us brave enough to address the elephant in the room.
"It'll happen," she whispers, going where I didn't think she would. "You're gonna be a phenomenal mom someday, Bella. There's somebody out there for you; I just know it."
I snort and shift gears, refusing to let the tears spill. "Yeah, a hot Latino in the kitchen named José. We've got a threesome with a bottle of Coke to get to." I smack my hand to my forehead. "Ugh . . . is it wrong to continue to support the company your soon-to-be-ex works for?"
Her Cheshire smile takes over. "Not when it's going to help you with a hefty divorce settlement."
.
.
.
Sleep eludes me, though I don't know why. Some people believe that if you can't sleep at night it's because you're awake in someone else's dreams. It's a nice thought, but it does me no good right now. Hopefully, my dreamy self is having a fabulous time wherever she is. She deserves it; we both do.
Rosalie is knocked out in the guest bedroom, so I creep downstairs to watch some television. At least that'll help put me down fast. Being half-drunk, I bet twenty minutes of jewelry sales on QVC ought to do the trick.
Before I curl up on the couch, I glance down at a crate of DVDs and VHS movies Rosalie collected earlier this evening. I recognize the old tape that sits on top, my swirling, not-yet-matured, cursive writing depicting the recording: 8th Grade Graduation Dinner Dance.
I pop the tape in the player and watch as the machine adjusts the tracking to rid the screen of white, wavy lines. There are about ten minutes of footage of my old classmates arriving and taking pictures with friends. The feathered hair kills me, let alone the sheer heights some of the girls achieved with the simple use of half a can of Extra Super Hold Aqua Net. I'm sure we Jersey girls are responsible for significant depletion of the Ozone layer. Those chlorofluorocarbons were no joke.
I have to muffle my giggles when Sean Norcross and Brandon Tucker walk through the balloon archway, both looking like Don Johnson à la Miami Vice days. Their attire is complete with skin tight pastel t-shirt, white sport coat, and loafers sans socks. The video pans across the gymnasium and captures me snapping a picture of Charlotte and Maggie in front of a mini hot air balloon. I'm using my purple Le Clic disc camera. God, I loved that thing. The only other trinket I held closer to my heart back then had been my Swatch watch, with its interchangeable bands and guards. My parents might not have been able to afford to buy me multiple pairs of Guess jeans and Forenza sweaters like some of the other girls, but I had a cool-ass watch, that's for sure.
The next couple of minutes are kids moving through the buffet line while the audio is dubbed with Barbra Streisand, singing, "The Way We Were." I consider muting the song, unable to stomach its painful beauty, but then a young Edward appears on the screen. A few seconds later, I find that I'm smiling, misty-eyed, enraptured by his face once again. Even after all that's happened in my life—with Tyler and without Edward—I'm still bewitched by the sight of him.
He's wearing black pants, a white dress shirt, a black tie and a gray tweed jacket. I remember thinking he looked so cute that night. He's laughing and talking with the people who're serving the meals. I giggle, watching his nose crinkle when the caterer puts green beans on his plate. He hated green beans with a passion.
A bit later, the video cuts to about half of the girls in the class dancing to "Supersonic" by JJ Fad, taking me back to when dinosaurs roamed the planet. I have to laugh, noticing the boys always seemed to be on the outside edge of where the girls were dancing. They never joined in fast dances, must've been too uncool. They just watched from the sidelines until the DJ slowed things down and they could ask their favorite girls to join them.
I went to the dance on the arm of Jack Morgan. Such a sweet guy and a real trooper, considering I had a plaster cast on my left wrist. He never complained once about his collar bone hurting after having my arm rest there during a few slow songs.
The DJ continues to interview kids about where they're going to high school next year and if they plan to join any clubs or sports. Edward, of course, talks excitedly about soccer, while his date and several other girls swoon around him. He's oblivious to their flirtations, though, and it makes me shake my head and smile even more.
After the interviews, the camera pans the room and I'm transfixed when I see Edward cross the gym and ask me to dance while I'm sitting at a cluster of chairs with friends. He takes my hand and walks me to the center of the floor. There are a few other couples out there, but most kids appear tired, gathering around tables as the evening draws to a close. The recording is fuzzy, and the room dark, but the light coming from the camera captures a smile on both of our faces while we dance and talk together.
I wish I could remember what we were saying to each other.
I sit forward on the couch, entranced by the sweet scene that I used to spend nights dreaming about half a lifetime ago. In an instant, though, my heart begins to race. I find my hand clutching at my neck in shock. I leap off the couch and dump the crate of DVDs, scouring the mess for my wedding video.
"What on Earth is going on?" Rosalie's presence startles me, but I apologize and keep sifting through the pile. "Who's—oh my God, is that you and Edward?"
You'd never believe she'd been dead to the world less than five minutes ago, because she bounds over to the couch and grabs the remote. "I've gotta see this dance from the beginning."
She rewinds the tape for ten seconds just as I find the case titled, "Isabella and Tyler, April 10, 2004." I snatch my laptop from the coffee table and load the wedding DVD in the drive. I skip past the ceremony, finding no use in listening to words that no longer hold any meaning. Once we get to the reception, I slow the forwarding process because I can't recall when the exact moment I'm looking for will pop up. I think maybe it's after the "Electric Slide."
"So wait, what are you looking for on that?"
"I have to check a song . . . a song Tyler and I danced to. I know the videographer captured it." I continue to scroll forward in the sequence and gasp. "I think—yeah, this is it."
I pause the eighth-grade video on the television and turn the computer to face Rosalie and me so we can view the wedding DVD. As the dance at the reception plays out, I can feel the wetness pooling in the corners of my eyes. Cheap Trick's, "The Flame" flows from the speakers, and I'm brought back to that beautiful evening almost seven years ago when I married Tyler. I swallow tightly and unpause the graduation dance as reality lowers the boom.
Seven years ago versus twenty-two years ago. Two different nights, two different boys, exact same song.
Now I remember the moment of that dance with Tyler so clearly. Wrapping my arms around my husband's neck, I leaned my head against his shoulder. The threat of tears had been so nerve-wracking, I closed my eyes and took a few deeps breaths to stall them. The lyrics ripped at my heart. They still do.
Remember after the fire, after all the rain . . . I will be the flame.
I stare at the computer screen, swiping the streaks that fall. I didn't remember until tonight I danced to that song with Edward all those years ago . . . but now I recall I did know it on the night of my wedding. I watch myself, pained on screen, reliving the torment I felt in that moment. Berating myself, reminding myself that I was happy and blessed and starting a new life with a man who loved me beyond words. And I knew I had to leave Edward in the past forever. But hearing the haunting song had been a final gut-punch from the universe, and it made me question everything during that dance.
I remember this now. Remember every fucking millisecond of emotion.
Rosalie must've looked over at some point because she pulls me into her shoulder and brushes my hair back from my face.
"It's gonna be okay, Bella."
I shake my head, needing to get this confession off my chest.
I never told anyone how I'd felt during that dance, and that's the craziest thing. I didn't let Edward enter my mind that entire day, until the DJ happened to put that particular tune on. My husband pulled me away from some guests, wrapping his arms around me for a dance. A seemingly innocuous moment created complete havoc in my head for the length of that song.
I study myself on the computer screen, captivated by the subtle nuances I'm picking up as the song ends. I pulled my face back from Tyler's chest, my bare shoulders rising and falling with a sigh. I grinned at my husband, mouthed the words 'I love you' to him, and he returned them with a kiss. Then the crowd enveloped us, and we continued dancing and celebrating the day, a genuine smile back on my face.
"Do you know what I thought right there?" I whisper to my best friend, my voice breaking. "During that song I danced with two men." I turn, meeting her glassy eyes as she shares in my sorrow. "I knew I was dancing with the man I married and the one I wished I'd married."
Her brow crinkles. "But . . ." She stares at the television where eighth graders are waving goodbye to the video as it pans the crowd. "Edward?"
"He was always in the back of my mind. He spent our childhood right there with me. Even when we weren't super-close . . . he'd always been within reach." I sniffle. "We went our separate ways, and I've been having a grand old time. College was awesome, my twenties were awesome . . . but I would dream about him from time to time, you know?"
She nods.
"I mean, yeah, the scene at your wedding had been surreal, but I put it all behind me. I met Tyler, dated, fell in love. I never pined away for Edward, not ever. But when we ran into each other right before the bachelorette weekend, we rehashed a lot of shit." I take my glasses off and rub tears away from my eyes. "Good stuff, bad stuff. It didn't solve anything, but it convinced me that I would always wonder about him. Always hope that he'd find happiness. Be safe . . . loved." I sniffle. "And yeah, I suppose growing up I always held out a sliver of hope he'd been thinking of me, too."
"But you married Tyler." She squeezes my arm in a reassuring way.
"I did. Without regret. I wasn't stupid or ready to throw my life away on the highest improbability that maaaaaybe one of the times I ran into Edward would finally be the time he'd pledge his love to me."
Her sad smile tells me I'm making sense, even through my drama.
"And, ugh—those two weeks prior to the wedding, man was I tested," I say, my voice filled with gravel. "Do you remember that Volkswagen commercial? The one where a guy is frantic, racing his car to get to a wedding?"
She crinkles her brow. "I can't remember."
I shrug, grab a tissue, blow my nose and continue. "Well, this guy is in a suit and he's driving as fast as he can, getting held up in traffic and stuff, and across town you see a bride getting primped. All her girls are around her, the dad's checking his watch. The music is creepy, kinda haunting. Bells are chiming, like you can feel the anxiety this guy is dealing with, trying to get to the church on time." I lean back on the sofa. "Finally he pulls his Jetta up to the front door of the church, runs in and the priest is saying, 'Speak now or forever hold your peace' . . . so you realize he's the other guy, the one desperate to win the girl and ready to interrupt the wedding to do it. The groom looks at the guy and then the bride and she just stares, sighing." I shake my head. "The next camera shot comes back to the outside of the church where the car is parked, and the words at the bottom of the screen say, 'Fasten your seatbelt.'"
Rosalie huffs, falling back into the couch next to me. "Talk about a mind fuck."
I raise my eyebrows. "You're telling me. I spent the two weeks before to the wedding having to see that commercial at least two dozen times. It made me sick. I kept asking myself what the hell I would do if that ever happened to me."
"Easy." She shrugs. "You would've gone with Edward."
"Would I?" I shake my head. "I don't know. Why would I have thrown away everything I knew Tyler felt for me on the possibility that maybe Edward really cared about me in that way?"
"Well, if he showed up like in that commercial or The Graduate or whatever, you would've known how he'd felt all along."
"I don't know. Maybe I would've felt it was a day late and a dollar short." Rosalie doesn't respond after a few seconds, so I chuckle at my hypotheses. "Oh, well. Good thing it didn't happen, right?"
She turns to me, her brow quirked. "Is it? Shit, after what we all know now, you would've been better off with Edward from the get-go."
I scoff. "When last I saw him, he intended to follow his Vegas show girl of a girlfriend out to Sin City to make a life out there, Bugsy Siegel-style."
"Well, I doubt he became a mobster, but it's been seven years," Rosalie retorts. "Lots can change in that time."
"Yeah. He could be married with a troop of babies by now."
"I wish Emmett could find him. We've tried tracking him down so many times, but with no luck. Anyway, Edward could be single and available; you never know."
I stand, ejecting the DVD from the computer and then the tape from the VCR. "That's the whole point, Rose. I never knew anything about him back then, and I sure as hell don't know anything about him now." I put away the movies and run my fingers through my hair, trying to turn my brain off for two seconds. "If he wanted to stay in my life, he should've never locked me out of his. Besides, things in my world are shitty enough right now. I don't need to start daydreaming about Edward Cullen again. That ship has sailed, sunk, and is collecting barnacles at the bottom of the sea."
"Didn't they try to raise the Titanic?" Her three a.m. voice is uncharacteristically hopeful.
"Did it work?"
Rosalie sighs and sticks her tongue out at me, conceding her argument.
"Exactly."
(-)(-)(-)(-)(-)(-)
A/N: How's that for fast-forwarding time past the icky "Bella's not married to Edward, so I don't wanna hear about it" years, LOL! And just to bring you up to speed, she was married to Tyler for almost 7 years . . . it is now technically 2011, but for all intents and purposes for us, we're considering this present day. Bella is 36 years old (and so is Edward, wherever he may be ;) ) And I hope you all got that reference to the movie, How Stella Got Her Groove Back. It was originally a book by Terry McMillan and then a movie, made even more famous by the amazing Angela Bassett starring in the leading role of a forty-something woman who travels to Jamaica on vacation and has a steamy romance with a twenty-something guy played by Taye Diggs. Delicious all around. ;)
I'm posting the video of the Volkswagon commercial in the Cabana. Still gives me chills to this day. Come check it out.
Much love and enormous thanks to my FAF team: Born, Cejsmom, Lay, and Momo. And to my fantastic readers and reviewers, I'm so thrilled you're still with me and finding pieces in the story that remind you of a time long ago, that holds happy or even bittersweet memories. I so appreciate your kind words and support for this tale! My apologies that I didn't get to any review replies this week. Life is so crazy, and I spend my free time writing so that I can keep to our posting schedule. Hope you understand.
Thanks for reading. See you next Friday!
xo, Jen