Suit Girl 21
"No. You'll stay here, of course," I told Edward. His flight left early in the morning.
"I'm a night owl," he said.
"Like I don't know?" I reminded him. He was never late for work, but he always pushed the clock.
"I mean I won't sleep until I'm on the plane," he said. "Not that I mean to keep you up. You look beat."
Yeah, funerals will do that, I wanted to say. "Disappointed?" I said instead. Was he disappointed with the way I looked?
We were both sitting on the window seat in the kitchen. We were close, but when I asked him, he took my hand and pulled me into the vee his open legs made. My back was to him, but he took me by the chin and turned my head enough that he could kiss me. I wasn't used to him, to this, not like this, but I turned my body as he slid enough that I pretty much ended up on top of him. The kiss that had barely been broken started again, light this time, until his hand on the back of my head and the lift of his mouth, made it sinfully deep.
I no longer knew I was still in my kitchen. Truly. He artfully moved us lengthwise on the bench. It was narrow, but he kept a foot on the floor to anchor us. I laughed, briefly as we readjusted, but he guided me down the center of his body as he ravished my mouth. "I have a bed," I whispered somewhere in there. We didn't make it.
xxxxx
I ended up being the nervous flier. Alice and I were stuck on the tarmac for thirty minutes before we could deplane. Alice was the one to comfort me. But my nervousness wasn't about being trapped in the plane.
I had one reason for the jitters. Edward Cullen. I needed to figure it out again—what it was like to be with him. To be next to him.
To hear his voice…in person.
To feel my hands in his.
To be held by him and know, and revel in the joy of being open.
To lean into him and breathe.
We'd had one night before he left my apartment and went home to California. He'd offered to stay another, but I insisted he make his flight. I needed the space. Just a little to catch up. Alice…then Edward. Emotionally I was flooded.
"You have to go," I'd said to him, repeating all the reasons he'd given earlier for why he couldn't stay. "You have to go."
He was right. He didn't sleep. We'd talked and kissed most of the night away, but we were silent too, and I fell asleep, I even dreamed, and I woke up groggy and heavy, warm lips and his soft voice, he was dressed. He was leaving.
xxxxxx
Over the months apart I hadn't Skyped. I had texted him everyday, many times a day and sent pictures. Not the kind I could ever regret, but the kind that showed me going about. I went for sexy once or twice. Just that. And he gave it back, his face, man he could work it. He knew how. I looked at the mug shot he took just for me, his eyes, just for me. I looked at it all the time. And a couple times a week he'd send me the one taken back in the day at the shop, the two of us in the mirror, the evidence of our…compatibility. I could admit it now. I was lusting for him. And it was mutual. It was evident. Right there. No wonder Jacob behaved badly. I'd given him no choice. I had lied to myself and to everyone else.
So in our absence from one another, we'd joked. A lot. We talked until late at night. A couple of times I watched the sun come up, my cell plastered against my ear. He was messing with my schedule, early to bed, early to rise. He was messing with everything. My heart. My soul. He said the next time we were together was up to me. I gently nudged Alice, I wouldn't go without her. Matter of fact I let her think the whole thing was her idea.
We made a solid plan, set a solid date. He knew how to draw me out, make me take a chance, force me out of the cocoon of Chicago.
We were like high school kids. I felt that way-ridiculous and fabulous. This budding romance got me through the long, sad winter with Alice.
I had talked her out of selling her house to buy a loft, then a condo. She had overshopped and overspent before she came to her senses. My back, fingers, neck and shoulders were still sore from the extra amount of tailoring I had completed during prom season and wedding season. And that was with the extra help I'd hired to carry a business that after many years was pulling so doggedly on the leash toward expansion that I was weary of trying to contain it and meet its demands.
It was the women clientele that was pushing me to the next level. While women's clothing, in general, was seeing a surge in the market, suits were more in vogue all the time. So rather than being unique in wearing the mostly male attire I had become a commonality. Granted, the crux of my wardrobe was inherited from Dad and carried not only family history but the history of the business, but still, I was no longer unique.
As far as expanding the shop, I had argued it out with Alice. She fed my own fears. She wanted me to keep the business as it was so I knew her reasoning-we would lose the very flavor of Swan's Clothiers if we grew.
And just as we reached consensus, her advice swung like a ten ton pendulum. I shouldn't let fear rule me, she said. Time was short. God forbid I should one day know regret for not seeing how far I could go.
I knew grief was a process, but selfishly, I wanted the old Alice back. I missed her even as I understood she'd been shaken to the core and was currently being rearranged into her future self.
And then there was the dour Aro. He wanted me to sell out to someone who could handle the volume. Even Emmett weighed in. He thought I should franchise. And while Jacob no longer handled my books, his firm did, and that guy was after me as well to get off my knees and open multiple locations under the Swan name with me holding the reins as the CEO.
The American idea of business, of course, was to build an empire.
But I had no desire to do so.
I liked what I had. I had taken responsibility for it right out of college. My family history, my devotion to my father, was there. My life…and loss with Jacob. My discovery…of Edward…was there.
And it worked. And it was no small thing to build a life, and I had done that.
And Chicago…was a part of me. My home. I loved and hated everything about it. The snow. The beach. The crime. The stores. The feel of it, hum and drum, song and beat. I loved and hated every last note.
But now as we finally disembarked into the bright light of San Jose, my memories of Edward the first and last time we'd been together nearly blinded me. If Tim hadn't of died…. It was terrible to think of Tim's ending as our beginning, and of course, it wasn't, but it had brought us together.
"This is the first time you aren't looking at me with that question in your eyes," Edward had said during our one night.
"What question?" I'd asked.
"Like asking me to break through," he'd said.
"I…don't know what you mean."
"Trust me. It was always in your eyes, you wanted something from me."
"And it's gone now?" I said.
"First time," he said.
My white sheets wrapped around us, over his hip, through my legs, under my waist, over his shoulder, as we lay just as entwined on my bed. "What do you see there now?" I said.
He pulled in his chin to study me. "I don't know. It's new."
"Will Alice see it? She can't see it. Will she look at me and know? What kind of friend am I…falling for you when she's lost…."
"Hey. Hey. It's alright. This isn't against Alice. And she won't know. It's my look. It's for me," he said holding my chin.
I wiped a hand over my face just to be sure there was nothing in this strange new look that lingered. But then I'd have to poke out my eyes. He'd said it was there.
"Maybe it's happiness," he said. Overly confident as usual.
"You've seen me happy," I said.
"I've seen you determined, busy, laughing, serious. This look, though, it's new," he said.
We held onto one another. Yes. That was it. This was how happy felt.
So deboarding the plane, I was familiar with this feeling…I was happy.
"When we die," Alice said as we walked the terminal at San Jose International, "it will be like this." She stopped and looked out one of the terminal's big windows. So…bright.
I was trying to breathe, to look around without being desperate. I saw him at once. "Bella," he called out.
"There's Edward," I said in a very sedate voice. But inside…I screamed it.
"Edward!" That was Alice. She didn't hold back. She went tearing forward and leaped into his arms. He laughed, holding her, and over her head looked at me, big beautiful grin on his face. I walked slowly toward them, holding my carry-on before me like Mary Poppins might have held her magical case. Yeah, sexy.
Of course, he lived in all of this light. He wore a summer weight suit. Blue linen. It was risky, but on him, no risk. Just right. Wrinkled in just the right way. On him—still elegant. He was California.
His hair was lighter. His eyes were darker. His skin showed sun. His teeth even whiter. He was clean shaven.
"I had a meeting," he was saying to Alice, looking at me. She'd asked about the suit, pulled at the jacket to check the partial lining.
"You're so cute," she said.
I laughed. Cute didn't cut it. I reached him and the three of us, we held on for a minute, then Alice peeled herself off, and he readjusted. He and I and he was the airport, all of it, nothing else, just him, me. Just us. And I was flying.
"Finally," he said.
It was the best word.
"Still driving the Volvo?" Alice asked.
He was.
"I love this car," she said a few minutes later. Somehow we had reached the car. I only knew I was with him.
It was his hundred thousand dollar Volvo. It sat four only. And that was more than enough for the three of us. But…there were four of us, it seemed. I knew him from the pictures, of course. Jasper Whitlock. Sounded like a gunslinger, but he was out of the car, pacing while he talked on his cell. He wore a summer weight wool suit. Gray. A nice breathable fabric for this bright San Jose heat. But the thing was…the pants were short and cuffed.
"No way," Alice said, her eyes glued on Whitlock. Alice hated rolled cuffs. It was wrong. Wrong. The style had originated in England for real reasons, back in the day, puddles and such. It had no place anywhere else, and not for the last hundred years. But Whitlock's pants were high-water, cuffed at the hem, and funkier still he didn't wear socks.
He had long, kind of curly blond hair, a little wild, but just enough to be attractive. He was pacing, talking on his cell. He saw us, smiled. I watched his eyes go to Alice, take her in, up and down. Then he said he'd call whoever it was on the other end. He clicked off. "How you do?" he said to Alice. He had a southern accent.
She ran her hand over his lapel. "Like the notch, the tonal stitching," she said. She looked down. "Even the twelve hundred dollar wingtips can't apologize for those cuffs."
"Well…I'm glad you're here darlin'," he said. He had the warmest smile, eyes.
"Oh, you're Bella," he said to me as Edward slammed the trunk where he'd stowed our luggage.
"Guilty," I said. "You're Jasper."
"My mother's fault. All the first males are named, Jasper Warren or the reverse. I narrowly missed…the reverse."
"Jazzy, Jasspie…it's versatile," Alice said, taking the liberty of checking the lining of Jasper's jacket as she had with Edward's. "Full-lining?" she muttered.
Jasper laughed. He held his arms like wings to keep them out of her way. "Shy little thing, aren't you?"
"I take it those trousers are fully lined too?" she laughed.
He wagged a finger before opening the Volvo's door for her.
Edward opened my door, and I got in. Thing about his car, the white leather seats were separated by a console. That was fine. The inside was cozy. I was still in a kind of shock to be so close to him.
He hadn't kissed me yet. He smiled at me, fumbled a little to get the key in the ignition. He started the car and backed out of the space, smiling at me several times. From the backseat, Alice and Jasper hadn't taken a breath.
"A grosgrain waist on a twenty-five hundred dollar suit? Give me a break," Alice said.
"She's going for the pants," Edward mumbled in a sing-song, and we all laughed. He took my hand then. I had asked him to hold off. We'd had a long talk. I didn't want to flaunt our newly discovered love in front of Alice.
She had been through so much and was working hard to heal. But when she was in a certain mood and saw a couple's pda, it could be more bitter than sweet, and I didn't want anything to make her sad. But as I looked in the backseat and took note of her examining the hem in one of Jasper's cuffs, I did put my hand on Edward's arm, briefly. I squeezed a little to let him know…I was happy to be here.
He lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles. I laughed and pulled my hand away, but he grabbed it again.
I turned to look at Alice, but she was redoing the handkerchief in Jasper Whitlock's breast pocket, and he seemed very interested in her…technique. When I settled back, Edward lifted my hand again, slower this time, kiss pressed against my wrist, mouth warm, his eyes on me.
He wasn't going to hide.
I leaned over the console, and we kissed. It shattered me, that one kiss. I was a fool to think we could take it slow. "Welcome to California, Bella Swan," he said low.
We kissed again. Light and friendly. I settled against the door and pressed my knees tightly together. I gripped his hand with both of mine to keep myself from flying right out of the sunroof.