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Other Side Of Me
Chapter 25
"What do you think?" I asked, turning a circle in the middle of the empty apartment, my arms outspread. I faced him, dropping my arms to my side, hands retreating to pockets. Inside my winter coat and scarf, I shivered.
"It's all right," he said, going over to close the window. The intention, as the manager had explained, was to vent the overwhelming smell of fresh paint, but the open window also left the place like an icebox. Alaskan igloos had to have been warmer than this place. "It's spacious." He nodded. "That's the lingo, isn't it? A little on the normal side. It's like any other apartment. And I don't need two rooms. Unless you want to move in."
"I live with Jessica."
"Think you're gonna live with her forever? You'll move out eventually. What, you afraid of change?"
"Yes," I said, "I moved to New York City all the way from Forks, Washington because I'm afraid of change."
"Then no two bedrooms for me. If people start finding out I have an extra room, I'm fucked. You're the only person in this city I could live with." As he spoke, he moved to the kitchen area and tested the faucet. The water poured down quick and even. He shut it off.
"Because of my cunning wit?" I asked, but didn't wait for the answer. I entered the smaller of the two bedrooms. Even it was bigger than my room. I started arranging my furniture: the bed would go near the window, which would be covered with a curtain thick enough for privacy, but thin enough to let light in; my dresser against that wall across from the closet; I'd even have room for a desk. "I guess this isn't the place for you," I called. I went back to James. "But you're running out of options."
"There are always more options," he said. He reached back and rubbed his neck as if he might not have believed that and just saying it had caused his muscles to revolt. I knew how badly he wanted to be free of his current apartment - the shot plumbing, and the landlady who blamed him for the water running brown, if at all. He brought his hand down from his neck and shook his hair from his face. He looked different from just five months ago. That day he'd cut the engine on East Twelfth and I'd taken my first step as a resident on a Manhattan sidewalk, his hair had been short and his face smooth. His hair now fell below his collar, and the scruff on his face was thick enough to call a beard.
"Are you growing out your hair?"
"I'm thinking about it. Do you like it?"
"Sure. It fits you."
"Then I'll grow it."
I awoke in a pool of sweat. There wasn't a dry spot on my body. It had been a long time since I'd dreamt of James. Weeks, maybe. I couldn't technically call this one a dream though. This one occurred during the more lucid time of sleep, but before I was fully alert. This was a memory. I knew it was Jasper who had brought this memory to the outskirts of my subconscious. Seeing him, him finding out, whichever the reason, it absolutely had to do with Jasper.
Edward's heavy arm was over me. I scooted aside, careful not to wake him. I planned not to tell him about the dream - or memory, to use the more accurate word - like I hadn't told him of several others. If he awoke with me, I would tell him, but when he lay peaceful and enough time had passed, I never wanted to bring it up, never wanted it to even come to mind.
I slipped away, into the shower. As I'd passed through the living room, I had noticed Emmett was alone on the sofa. Rosalie had already snuck out. I'd stood and listened to Emmett's breathing for a moment - deep and even, soothing out there in the large, darkened living room. Spacious.
I shook my head.
In the shower, I didn't kid myself. I knew James and that memory wouldn't wash away as easily as my sweat. But I could fill the space between my dream-state self and my present self with enough unrelated thoughts to push that memory back to my subconscious: my enemy, now more powerful than James.
~::::::~
Of all the things to do in New York on a Saturday, Alice wanted to take the subway to Central Park and pedal around in paddle boats.
"Isn't it too cold for that?" I asked as I cooked our late noon-time breakfast. Cooking breakfast was the least I could do after they'd all cleaned for me.
Before I had begun, I noticed Emmett seemed a little mopy about Rosalie's absence. I wondered if she'd left without saying goodbye to him. Despite my efforts to get a real smile out of him, it had been just my regular clumsy-old-self that finally got him to laugh. It hadn't been the first egg I dropped on the floor that did it, but the second egg, followed by my cursing and the stomp of my foot. Emmett laughed and Edward wrapped an arm around me from behind.
"No, you can't have her," Edward had said to Emmett.
Now Edward was helping me counter Alice's boating idea.
"I don't think they're renting them anymore," Edward said. "It's already the middle of October."
"Wrong," Alice said. "I checked. And this might be the last week they're available."
With no further argument coming to mind, and acknowledging that Alice was the guest and tourist, Edward and I shrugged our shoulders at each other. Paddle boating, it was.
We wouldn't make it out of the apartment until a little after 2:00, our hold up being Alice and Edward. Though he'd given in to boating, Edward wasn't easily agreeing to take the Subway. The rest of us stood around in front of the door listening to brother and sister bicker the same argument back and forth.
"I don't ride the subway," Edward said for the third time. "We'll get a cab."
"You're so prissy."
"Call it what you want."
"Edward…" Alice said. Apparently, in the past, all she had to do was say his name to get what she wanted. She'd tried it a few times in the last five minutes already and seemed surprised that it wasn't working.
"No, Alice."
"Edward, my dear brother, I've never been on the subway. Come on. This is my chance." She smiled at him so angelically that I was surprised the corners of her teeth didn't sparkle and chime like some toothpaste commercial.
Jasper may have been right about her ability to sense manipulation in others, but it was not beyond her to perfect the art. Jasper, as usual, amused with his fiancée, laughed behind her, only to come to an abrupt stop when he caught the way Edward was looking at me. Jasper and I seemed to realize at the same time that Edward's reluctance to take the subway had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with me. That was me, stopping laughter and good times in their tracks.
"It's okay, Edward," I said. "She wants to." He looked over at Jasper and they came to some sort of silent understanding with their eyes and both nodded.
"I knew I could count on you, Bella. Let's go." Alice grabbed her jacket and was the first one out the door. Jasper and Emmett followed, but Edward pulled me back.
"Bella, stay close to me, hold my hand or something. Anything that will keep you relaxed. Our friends aren't idiots and Jasper already figured it out. After last night, if anything goes wrong today, Alice and Emmett are going to know something's up." And then he kissed me before I could agree or disagree, or maybe just to help me forget the awful subject he'd just brought up. Whatever his reason, it worked.
"We're walking to the station," Alice said. "No cabs to go just a few blocks. We're going to pretend to be real New Yorkers."
"Bella and I are real New Yorkers," Edward said, leading us all in the direction of the nearest station. Maybe strange, but once you've lived in New York for some time, you don't want others to assume or even insinuate that you live somewhere else. Despite its many shortcomings, New York was a place full of proud inhabitants - disregarding the fact that slews of these prideful locals weren't native to New York.
"Hey, it's Beautiful!" Jane skipped up from behind us. I wondered how many times in the last several months I may have passed her without noticing. So often, I'd walked briskly out here with my eyes downcast. I'd seen more of the cement than the people.
"Jane," I said and introduced everyone. It was astonishing to see that she was taller than Alice. She had seemed so small to me last night but I realized now that she was just very slight. So frail and waif-like, that it made her appear even tinier than she was.
"Hang on," she said, reaching into a pocket and stepping aside to drop some coins into the gloved hand of the orange-haired homeless man who'd taken up residency in the doorway of that building.
"Afternoon, Owen," she said. He waved a thanks that she didn't see. She'd already returned to us and began rolling a cigarette.
"Ah, your smoking buddy," Edward said on a laugh.
"Beautiful?" She held the cigarette out to me.
"No, and maybe you shouldn't either." It felt a little strange chastising a twenty-one-year-old, but at the same time it felt good to be looking out for someone else for a change. "It really doesn't make you appear older, Jane. It just makes you look like a little girl who smokes - it's silly more than anything."
"Well, thank you very much, Mommy Dearest. Should I eat all of my broccoli too?" She lit up, looking into my eyes as if I really was her mom and she was my defiant daughter.
"What I mean is, after talking to you for a few minutes, it's obvious you're no teenager. I mean, the way you talk, it's like you're even older than twenty-one. You don't need the show of cigarettes."
"How old? Twenty-two? I'll keep that in mind." She took another drag, brought her bottom lip out on the exhale while inhaling through her nose - the French inhale. She had everyone else laughing. "Beautiful, it might come as a shock to you, but cigarette smoke is one of the least harmful substances I put in my body. See ya."
Just as I'd gaped when I first met her, I gaped again as she pranced away in the opposite direction she'd come.
"Jane," I called. "You should listen to your brother."
She waved a hand over her shoulder, a move that could've meant she heard me, she would take my advice, or she was dismissing me.
~:::::~
The urine smells that plagued the station stairways in the heat of summer were gone. Today as we descended the steps there was the smell of damp, mildewing cement, though it hadn't rained in the last few days. In the train, we were greeted with the scent of bodies - fortunately not dead bodies, but it was an unpleasant odor nonetheless.
If anyone behaved strangely on the subway, it wasn't me. Edward and Jasper, both, were acting like a couple of over-protective body guards. Of course it was standing room only so Edward and Jasper were right by my side. Edward held my hand and his other hand held my arm.
"Do you mind if I…?" Jasper asked - a bit of a mumble only I could hear - and brought his hand to my shoulder.
I let him do it to face the challenge - though I wasn't sure there was any real challenge in it since I wasn't actually looking at Jasper as he touched me. Still my face was heating up, not in panic, but frustration. This was exactly why I didn't want people knowing about my situation. I wanted to scream at them that I was fine and I would have if I didn't know it would draw more attention to their bazaar behavior. Jasper's hand on my shoulder had already drawn the attention of Alice. I caught her looking .
"This is just like BART," she said when her eyes met mine. But then the doors slammed shut and she practically jumped out of her skin. "Well, not that part."
Emmett laughed at her.
"Wouldn't want to be caught in that, that's for sure." She glared over at the doors as if they'd behaved impolitely and needed to be taught to close with more ease next time.
When she let herself forget about the doors, her eyes made their way back to us, landing on Jasper's hand.
I wanted to tell her that if I had any say in the matter, neither Jasper nor Edward would have a hold of me like they were keeping me together, as if I would fall apart if they let go. I watched Alice tuck herself under Jasper's other arm and his lips automatically came to her head. That seemed to mollify her. She smiled.
I reached up to push his hand off my shoulder and then slid my hand down my arm so that Edward would let go. Holding my hand was enough, I was trying to tell him. He seemed to get the hint. His free hand rose to hold the bar overhead. Feeling calmer, I leaned against Edward as the train kept a rocking beat with the tracks.
Edward insisted on paying for everyone's paddle boat rental. While he stood in line, Jasper asked if I wouldn't mind riding with him.
"Sure," I said, "but Alice probably wants to ride with y-"
"My brother," she said, quickly. "If you can spare him for a few minutes, Bella. You've had him here for years now. Besides, you and Jasper should get to know each other. You're going to be like brother and sister."
"Bella," Emmett said, and I hadn't realized how quiet he'd been until he spoke. "Why don't you call Rosalie? I don't want to be the fifth wheel."
"Why don't you call her?"
"I don't have her phone number."
"You slept with her on the couch and didn't even get her number?"
"You saw us?" His blush was so deep it made me blush. Jasper and Alice were cracking up.
"Who do you think covered you up?"
"Rosalie."
"Why didn't you ask for her number? She would've given it to you."
"I thought she'd leave it with me, or a card or something."
I handed him my phone. "It's under Hale, cell."
He withdrew to a distant tree to call her, his form obscured in the dark shade of its bright orange leaves. It turned out she was at the office and would meet up with him in about ten minutes. I wondered if he knew what type of office she was coming from, wondered if Rosalie had revealed her occupation. Emmett waited for her on a bench while the rest of us went to our boats. I noticed that there were plenty of other people as crazy as us, pedaling over the lake in this wind.
Jasper walked beside me over the dock, keeping in step with me.
"I'll get in first," he said.
"Wait," I said, "me first." I was feeling confident and stepped into the boat, sat down and forced myself to look all the way up at Jasper. I focused on his face, so un-James-like. He slid in next to me and we started pedaling.
"This is going to be easier than I thought," he said.
"You're easy to be around, Jasper. This is good practice for me, though, don't you think?"
"It can only help."
"I'll tell you what doesn't help, though. You and Edward going all uber-superhero on me. I'm not a child. I'm not going to break into pieces if I have to stand on my own feet in a crowd of people."
"Duly noted. No more superhero action. Got it."
"Don't get me wrong. I appreciate what you're doing for me. But I do go to school, you know. I function on my own. Besides, the crowds don't affect me as much as the one-on-one factor. Like you and me alone last night."
"I can't imagine what it must be like for you. Or Edward."
Then we both stopped talking about it and enjoyed the view. The small lake, the bridge overhead and the leaves on all the trees blowing like crazy, so much color. I rested my head back against the seat and looked up.
"New York in the fall," I said.
"Beautiful."
I asked him how he and Alice met. He said they'd met at his parents' business banquet. Alice had started interning at their investment firm after college, but since Jasper worked in a different building, they never crossed paths until that party. As her relationship with Jasper evolved, they decided to keep Alice on full-time as a broker. He proposed to her in her office a few months ago, just after she'd landed her first deal.
"Of course she could do it," he said. "She's not at all intimidated by people. She has this way about her, this persuasiveness."
"I'm familiar with her persuasive skills," I said.
"Still, the look on her face," he said. "The awe. She was shocked she'd done it, and I guess impressed with herself. I made the decision on impulse; I didn't even have a ring yet. I got down on my knee, though."
"I'm sure it was perfect."
I asked him about something he'd said last night. Why he thought his mother didn't care about him. It seemed she'd cared enough to keep his girlfriend in the business.
"Mrs. Whitlock," he said, his voice trailing off. "I'm surprised she doesn't make me call her that, to be honest. She's one of those carbon-copy richie-rich types. The only thing she cares about is her image. They're not all like that. My dad's not. But she'd drag her whole family, even herself, through the mud as long as she came out looking brighter, more glamorous. I think 'glamorous' is her favorite word."
I couldn't say why, but somehow, thinking of Jasper's mother and her wealthy image brought me back to that night at the penthouse art show. People spending tens of thousands on art pieces because someone powered by truckloads of money decided to hang it on his walls and have a party. I was brought back to that last night of regular James. I felt the all-too familiar burning behind my closed eyelids, and tightened them. I reminded myself what Rosalie had taught me: not everything had to bring up memories of James, and that there never really was a 'regular' James. And this, Jasper's mom, had nothing to do with James. Separate your current life from James, I told myself - always so much easier said than done.
"Well," I said, opening my tear-free eyes, looking over at Jasper, "my mom is far from rich and she couldn't care less about her family either. She still thinks she's a teenager - childless. The last time I saw her was about five years ago at my high school graduation. She flirted with my dad relentlessly - hurt him all over again, just so she could feel better about herself. She couldn't be bothered to come to my college graduation, and that was just fine with me." Edward was there, I thought. I hadn't seen him but he was there. I smiled to myself. This was one of those smiles that Rosalie told me about during my first session. The kind that were just for me. I wasn't logging them regularly because I didn't always recognize every one. I would log this one.
"What are you smiling at?"
"Nothing, just thinking, is all." I closed my eyes again and let him do the pedaling. He was doing all the work anyway, my legs were just following along.
"There's something calming about you, Bella. Everything you've been through, and you're not afraid to live. Some people haven't been through jack and life scares the shit out of them. It scares the shit out of me sometimes, which is why I put my hand on you on the subway. You didn't even need it. And, just now, when you were telling me about your mother, there was no bite in your voice at all. Like, that's just the way she is and you don't even hold it against her. The way you said it, you may as well been telling me about how she used to bake you cookies."
I wanted to tell him that the thing that scared me most - more than the flashbacks or strangers or blond men - was that James may have changed me forever. I was determined not to let that happen, which was why I couldn't cower in a corner away from life and why I kept pushing my own boundaries. But I didn't tell him, didn't want to bring James into the conversation again. Keep James out of my present as much as possible.
"I can see why Alice loves you," he said.
"I see why she loves you, too."
Our thirty minutes were up and we headed back for the dock. Jasper got out first and reached his hand out for me. I grabbed it without so much as a flinch, but I was aware that I avoided eye contact. Once I was standing on the dock, I aimed a look at him and smiled. He smiled back.
"You're fine," he said. He leaned closer to me and nudged my arm with his.
Alice came up and pulled him away. "You two are pretty cozy, I see. Your boyfriend's behind me, Bella." She smiled and winked at me to let me know that my coziness with Jasper didn't really bother her. But I knew her well enough. I could tell by the sound of her voice that she wasn't that nonchalant about my new friendship with Jasper.
"Why are you all wet?" I asked. Her hair was drenched and flat against her head.
"Edward splashed me, that fool." She worked her fingers through the ends of her hair to get them spiky again. "That water is freezing."
Jasper took his jacket off and wrapped it around Alice.
I felt a kiss on my head and turned to see Edward as wet as Alice. Apparently she'd taken out revenge.
"You're crazy," I said.
"It's Alice," he said.
"Right. I suppose you want my coat?"
He laughed. "Keep your coat. I'll be fine once we're in a cab."
We joined Emmett and Rosalie at their bench. They were holding hands, but dropped them as soon as they saw us approach. I wondered why they wanted to keep their attraction a secret when it was so obvious.
A/N: Reviews are appreciated.