In the Debris
Floret
Victoria
Lampposts lining the harbor cast streams of light over the night-black river. I watch gold and copper walk on water as we pull into town. Dragging my eyes from the river's trance back to the road, I direct Carlisle to my street. He wanted to drop me off at home, thinking it was safer if I didn't drive while upset, and I assured him that I could pick up my aunt's car in the morning.
"Your mom will be better tomorrow. On a lower dose she'll be much more coherent. You can ask her what you need to ask her then."
I thank him for everything, open my car door, lift my backpack over my shoulder, and glance one more time at my mom, slouched like a rumpled blanket in the backseat. She appears to be sleeping, but I know she isn't. She's drugged.
She's drugged because if she wasn't she'd be going through withdrawals. She depends on these pills just to live. And she isn't even doing that right now.
There are no cars in the driveway, but there's a glow from the window, so I assume my aunt is home. Mud must be working the late shift. I twist the key in the lock and let myself inside.
It isn't my aunt who greets me, though. It's Mud I see as I enter the living room.
"Victoria," he says.
I stop at the edge of the sofa, my fingers digging into its arm. "Carlisle's bringing her to the hospital. She's... not good."
"I'm sorry." He scratches at his unshaven jaw. "I wish I'd known where you were going. I would've taken you to her. Why don't you talk to us like you used to? Tell us what's going on?" He steps forward, reaching out to me. I step back and a frown takes over his face.
I return his frown. "Where's Aunt Cheri?"
He doesn't answer, but he's starting to look at me in that intense way he does that makes my skin feel trampled over by thousands of bugs. I feel it from my arms all the way up to my scalp. I'm really in no mood to tolerate this tonight.
"Why do you always have to look at me? Stop looking at me!"
"What?" he asks as if he has no idea what I'm talking about.
"You know what I mean. I know you do. And I know you've come into my room at night. You creep me out and if you keep doing it, I'm telling Aunt Cheri."
I run up to my room, slam the door, and drop my backpack on the floor. It falls like it's a pile of rocks, or like it's me. I open the front pocket to fish out my phone and text James. He'd remained on the line for me until my battery came too close to running out. After the text is sent, I plug my phone in to charge it before sliding my poetry book from my bag. I'm still using the one James gave me for my birthday. I trace the carved V. My finger moves down and up, down and up. He'll be here soon.
There's a soft rap at my door. "I'm not coming in," Mud says. "Will you meet me downstairs?"
I open the door, tell him to stay where he is, and I sit down at my desk. "James is on his way over." I don't look at him when I talk. I'm looking at the poetry book still in my hand.
"Cheri told me what you hoped to learn tonight."
"Yeah, but I know about as much now as I did when I was seven so..."
From the corner of my eye I can see him shifting. "Victoria, I - I'd like to show you something." He holds his hand out, a photograph between his fingers.
I stand up and take it from him.
He squats down against the doorjamb, his arms resting over his knees. "I didn't mean to scare you. I-"
"Why are you giving me a picture of Mary?" Mary is Phil's sister. She passed away at nineteen. Leukemia. Of course I've never met her, but I used to like looking through my aunt and uncle's old photo albums while they told me stories of their relatives.
I put my attention back on the photo. Mary's hair is straight and brown. I don't see the resemblance at first, but the longer I stare, it becomes obvious that she looks a little like me. The roundness of the end of her nose, the line of her mouth, the chin a little pointy, the cheekbones. Eyes locked on the picture, I touch my face.
"You see it?" he asks.
Fingers moving from my cheek, over my lips to my chin, I nod. My mind seems to be on pause, although I know exactly what he's saying. But how? And why?
"I thought it was a coincidence at first, the similarities. After her death—I was only seventeen—I used to see her in people. From a distance, the back of someone, a girl's profile, long brown hair. But when I looked again... My eyes were playing tricks. Maybe somewhere inside I was hoping I'd run into her."
I almost look at him, but can't tear my gaze from the picture. Another aunt. A real aunt.
"A couple of years back I started to see her in you. I thought it was my mind playing tricks again. I'd take a second look, and your expression would change, and she was gone. I brushed it off. But the older you got... as you continued to mature, I started to see her even in the shape of your shoulders and the way you walk. I didn't know until recently, when I really started thinking about the - well - that it could be plausible. I thought about your birthday. The year you were born. The months back."
I knew that the search for my father could end painfully, but because of things like drugs, or him not being interested in knowing me, or my never finding him at all. But this outcome had never once entered my realm of possibilities. This is a whole new stratosphere. Even the air tastes different. Is this still oxygen I'm breathing?
"What about Aunt Cheri?" I feel tears building under my eyelids.
"I hadn't met her yet. We married in '96, you know that. You would've been three."
"She doesn't know?" I'm looking at my lap but I can picture the look on his face by the sound of his voice—drawn, eyes downcast, lips downturned.
"She does now."
"You didn't tell her before. That you had a relationship with her sister?"
"It was only once. I didn't even know her last name at the time."
"Okay. But you knew who she was eventually."
"Cheri and I had been dating for a while by then. I already loved her. I didn't think any good would come of telling her. What would be the point? It would do nothing but hurt her."
I think about how I would feel if I had a sister who James slept with and never told me about. I turn to Phil, meeting his eyes. He's very still. "It must've sucked really bad when you realized you'd have to tell Aunt Cheri the truth."
He starts shaking his head before I even finish talking. "No, Victoria. We raised you. We both love you. I love you. When I started counting back the months, I was hoping, all right? Confirming it made me happy. But I didn't know how to tell you or Cheri, or how either of you would take it. I must have planned it a hundred times in my mind." His hand meets his furrowed brow like he has a headache.
"Where is she?"
"The lodge."
"Is she - is she coming back?"
"She'd never leave you. But as far as leaving me, I don't know. I hope she comes back. I can't imagine my life without the two of you in it." There are tears in his eyes, and I drop my head, looking down at my lap again, taking a deep breath.
"I'm going wherever she goes. And I'm not calling you Dad."
I pick my backpack up off the floor and push past him, leaving him, now standing, in my doorway. At the top of the stairs I turn back. "You've known when my birthday was all along. How come you didn't figure it out before?"
He's wiping at his eyes. His voice sounds like his throat's trying to hold it back, like his voice is resisting being swallowed. "You were two before your mom told Cheri about you. She said your father was someone she met in Arizona. I never had a reason to consider the dates. And it's not something that - it's not the sort of thing you mark on a calendar. A one night..." He looks away from me.
I walk straight down the stairs and out the front door where I wait in the dark on the sidewalk for James. Minutes go by, the blowing wind chilling the tears on my face. I push them aside before they become icicles. A pair of headlights turn down my street and I watch him stop at the curb, watch him rush to get out of the car, hair in his eyes.
I'm in his arms fast. His chest is firm against my head, and it's almost as if I haven't felt him in weeks. His arms clamp tight around me, and he rocks me back and forth some, saying my name a few times.
"Your mom?" he says into my hair. "Where is she?"
"He isn't Mud."
"What?" I feel his hand at the back of my neck.
"He's my - my..."
There's silence for a long time, crickets, wind, no voices, until finally James speaks up."He's your...?"
"My dad."
Releasing me to my shoulders, he looks down at me, lines creasing between his eyebrows, his mouth opening for words that don't come out. I know what that feels like. Is his throat constricting? Is his mind racing? Can he feel his pulse in his fingertips?
"He didn't know." I give him the best explanation I can in this moment, trying to explain how Phil's strange looks were him recognizing pieces of the truth, trying to work them into a whole.
"What do you want to do?" It's all up to me, he says, and it is. Everything is up to me.
I look at the house, this house I grew up in—day in, day out for twelve years—and it looks different, like it's balancing on a cloud. I've lived here thinking I at least knew one thing for sure, one truth I could count on, who my aunt and uncle were. But now I know, all these years, this house, where I lived, was my father's house. The man who built a dam with me, who called me Little One, who looked at me, not because he was a slime, but because he was piecing together who I was, who he was, who we were to each other.
"I want to go back in." Sliding my hand into his, I bring him with me. His fingers close over mine, holding tight.
Inside, Phil—my dad—is on the sofa with his head in his hands.
When he hears us, he looks up and we stare at each other.
"Hello, James," he says, but his eyes, circled in red, are still on mine.
"Why didn't you go to the lodge?" I ask him. "Why did Aunt Cheri have to go?"
"I told her I would go. She wanted me to be the one to tell you. Since you were, since you were searching for... me, I guess."
"I'm going there tonight. She must be so sad right now."
He closes his eyes and tears drip down his face. He nods.
James comes with me to my room as I pack some clothes for the night. I start throwing things in my backpack, run to the bathroom for my toothbrush, and then back to my room to my underwear drawer. James closes the door.
"Victoria. Victoria, slow down." He takes me by the arms.
"I have to get to her."
"I know but-" he squares my shoulders "-you're worried about her, right? Well, I'm worried about you. Are you okay?"
I look up at him but don't answer. There's no answer to that question.
"On the phone you were-"
"I know."
He holds my face and kisses my cheek. Pulling me to sit on the bed, he wraps his arms around me, tucking my head into his shoulder. "Just take a breather." He kisses my forehead and then the corner of my eye. His lips rest there.
I feel as though I've just settled into a hot tub. My heartbeat starts to slow, my breathing evening out.
"Remember the night of Lauren's Halloween party?" I feel his lips move on my face, his breath.
"You wore my wings."
"I had such a mad-crush on you I would've worn your wings to school the next day if you asked me to."
"You would've let me make you look like a fool?"
"No. I didn't care about what anyone thought but you." He kisses me again right at the edge of my eye. And I think that is how life is; you're always on the edge of something. James and I spent years on the edge of a relationship until we decided to step off the edge and fall into it. I was on the edge of finding a father, and now that I've found him, I have to make a decision. Will I back away from the edge or step over it, immerse myself into the unknown?
James drives me to the lodge, walks me to my aunt's room and after I knock, he kisses me goodbye. "I'll wait right over here until you go in." He points toward the end of the hall with the yellow-flowered wallpaper. "I'll call you tomorrow."
When my aunt opens the door, I glance at James and wave low.
"He told me you were coming." She kisses my cheek. "It's late."
She's wrapped in a robe, and while her eyes look sleepy, they don't look like they've had a wink of sleep.
"Not like I'm going to school tomorrow, anyway." I follow her into the dim room. The glow from the bedside lamp is so lazy it would never make the trek to the opposite wall if not for the mirror above the dresser. Still, there are corners in the room untouched by light. The bed covers have been thrown back on one side, the other side perfectly intact. "Go back to bed," I say, digging through my bag for my nightshirt. After changing I go into the bathroom to brush my teeth, and then climb under the covers with my aunt. I slide my hand across to her arm, holding.
She scoots a little closer.
"Are you going to forgive him?" I ask.
"It's not a matter of forgiveness."
"What do you mean?" My eyes are beginning to adjust to the dark. Her skin looks pale, but I can't see the blue of her eyes.
"Whatever happened between them, it was before, and nobody can regret it or wish it didn't happen. Nobody can be angry about it, because it brought you into the world."
"Auntie... nobody would blame you for being mad about the way it happened."
"I'm not."
"Then why are you here and not there? If it isn't about forgiveness, what's it about?"
"Trust."
"Mmm."
"He never told me."
"How come he didn't know who your sister was for so long?"
"Mom was sick and didn't like having visitors around. We spent most of our time at his house. I didn't invite him home until things were serious, and then there were pictures, I guess. He must've known then, but never said. But Victoria, listen, that's between me and Phil. That's our problem to work out. You can't burden yourself with it. Or use that as a reason to hate him. Okay?" she says, pushing hair from my face. "Okay?"
I nod. "So then you're my stepmom." I smile at her because that's good news to me, and she grasps my hand under the sheets. "I'm the redheaded stepchild."
"All us Mayes girls have red hair," she says. "But yours is the reddest." She lets that segue into asking me about my mom and I fill her in until my voice is like fading light, dimming, flickering out, gone.
I've never spent the night in a room at the lodge before. The bed is as comfortable as any bed, the pillows soft, and the room is warm. It's an easy place to fall asleep. At least, I think I sleep. I'm not sure if the memories behind my eyes are sleep-dreams or wakeful visions. I remember Uncle Phil teaching me to ride a bike, holding on to the seat for me. I remember him adding a light to it, the only way I was allowed to ride it at night. I remember him holding my hand, walking me along the lake shore, letting me put my feet in even though the water was freezing. Just because I wanted to. Just because I begged. I remember him coming into my room that one night, touching my face. My dad, touching my face. Was that the day he figured it all out? That touch on my face scared me like nothing else back then, but now I see it differently. It was tender. It was affection. If learning the truth didn't exactly make him happy, there were definite emotions stirred.
.
My mom's in an outpatient program through the hospital, and staying in a house with a few other people who are also in outpatient programs. Carlisle explained that they're weaning her off methadone by lowering the dose little by little. If they were to take it from her cold-turkey, she'd have worse withdrawals than those caused by heroin. She's traded one addiction for another.
Aunt Cheri and I go together to visit her. Her room is bright with one big window, the shade pulled up, and it's actually sunny out. She looks better than she did in the car. Much better. Her hair is clean, amber curls to her shoulders, her face bright, but her eyes are still dark underneath. She wipes there, like she can feel my gaze. People have said I look like her and I try to see it. I guess it could be true if not for the hollowness of her eye sockets and cheekbones, her thin neck, her protruding collar bone peeking from the V of her blouse. None of us say anything for too long.
I lean back against the wall just to move. My mom speaks first.
"Hi Cheri." There's no smile. Her eyes turn to me. "Victoria." She moves closer and places her hands on my shoulders. "You look beautiful." She pulls me into a hug. I feel as though I'm being embraced by nothing but bones. My arms hang at my sides. I remember this feeling—being hugged by such thin arms. She smells like soap. Slow-moving, she walks to her bed and sits down on the edge. Her hands squeeze the comforter and then release it. She's looking at my chest or my neck, not my face. "I moved to Washington, and planned to get straight for you. I was going to see you graduate."
My aunt and I have yet to utter a sound.
"Do you still write poetry?" Her eyes drift from me to Aunt Cheri.
"Y-" I clear my throat. "Yes."
"Good. I'd love to read some. Sometime."
I don't know why she's acting like we're here to catch up, like it's only been a few months or something since we last laid eyes on each other.
"Why didn't you tell anyone who my dad is? Why didn't you even tell Phil?"
She stands, fumbles through her purse, pulls out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, and with a shaky hand lights one up. She looks so breakable and I have trouble caring. She doesn't speak until after she sets the lighter on her nightstand and a takes a few puffs, and when she does I have to strain to hear her. "I didn't know him." She takes another drag and shakes her head as the smoke comes out. "Peter and I weren't talking. With Phil it was just one of those things. Right place, right time. Or wrong place, wrong time."
"So you left?"
Her face tenses. "My family was just waiting for me to screw up, and I did, didn't I, Cheri? I lived up to all your expectations."
"We believed in you more than you think, but now isn't the time for that. Address your daughter."
She continues to look at Aunt Cheri, though. "After I got their wedding invitation and saw his name, there was just no way. I couldn't..."
"But what about after? When I was living with them?"
My mom's eyes look all around the room, but it's like she's not seeing any of it. "I don't know. It... I told myself it was enough that he was raising you. How many lives had to be ruined because of me? Like Cheri said, it was best if I just stayed away." She smashes a half-smoked cigarette into an ashtray at her bedside.
"But it was my life, too. Mine."
She nods, looking down but doesn't say anything.
"You like to play. I know enough about you to know that. But you played with my life. I'm not a doll. I never was. But you treated me like one."
She lights up another cigarette. And I notice that the ashtray is full of half-smoked or even quarter-smoked ones.
"I was wrong about myself. I had real plans. I had dreams of a future for you, a great one. But, as real as they felt inside, I couldn't realize them."
"Your problem," Aunt Cheri says, "is that you've never understood consequences."
"I don't understand consequences?" She raises her voice, walking toward Cheri. "I had my daughter taken from me at five years old. I loved her more than anything and I had to force myself to stay away from her, for her own good. I had to protect her from me. You don't think that's the worst consequence there could be? Imagine her taken from you. Imagine being told she's better off if she never sees you again. And believing it. Knowing it's true, Cheri!"
Cheri, seeming unaffected by my mom's outburst, is calm in voice and manner. "And the drugs kept you apathetic."
Eyes on the floor, my mom says, "They took the pain away. I couldn't feel pain or regret. But it always comes back. I'm filled with it. It's in every inch of my body, every second that I'm sober."
I open my backpack and pull out the picture that started everything, my search for my dad and all of this. It's the picture I'd written the poem on. I hand it to her. She gazes at it for a little while and then looks up at me.
I'm on another edge here, and this one I'm backing away from. Charlotte had backed away from our edge first, though, seventeen years ago, and then she continued backing away until she was so far she almost didn't exist.
So I say, "I hope you get clean. I do. I hope you stay clean. But you're just Charlotte to me. Someone I don't know. Not my mom. This is my mom." I pick up Cheri's hand.
I walk out. Aunt Cheri follows. My mom has the picture and the poem. She said she wanted to read one, well there it is. She can read it and know everything I want to say to her without my having to say it.
Heading back to the lodge, sunlight fills the whole car. It makes me squint. I think about how my life turned out. How different would it have been if I hadn't been taken from her? Where would I be right now?
I remember back to the time I first met Uncle Phil, driving from Arizona to Washington. He'd stopped for ice cream. "What's your favorite kind?" he asked.
I told him bubblegum, and he had to go to three different places before he found it. I'm sure he would've kept searching if he hadn't found it at the third place. He was trying to cheer me up even when I didn't really understand that I needed cheering up. I was sure that by the next day or the day after that I'd see my mom again. We'd be dancing around the house. I'd go back to Mrs. Shelley's class.
I think about the red circles around Phil's eyes, and what they encase. Much more than guilt over a kept secret swells inside those circles. They carry in plain sight the fear of loss—the fear of losing Cheri and me both at the same time.
Aunt Cheri said she couldn't resent how I came into the world. And with the only mother I know or want next to me, I realize I can't resent how things turned out, either. I tell her this.
"Let's go get our bags and go home." She says that maybe life didn't unfold in the most ideal way, but it's ours. "It's the life we have," she says, hands on the wheel.
This time I decide to step over the edge and see where I land. We both do.
Out my window I notice flowers along the road as if they've popped up overnight. I know that can't be true. Funny how in California it seemed spring had come too soon, while here it seems to have snuck up on me. I hadn't even noticed spring happening. It's just here, sunlight diving between trees and swimming through my window, settling on my lap as if it's found a new home, like it's planning on staying, like Forks is where it belongs. But everyone here knows better. It could be raining within the next hour, within the next few minutes. I slide the window down, squinting as the sun and wind hit my face at the same time. I won't let myself think of the sun and the arrival of spring as any kind of sign. But the truth is, whether or not the events of the past twenty-four hours were what I wanted or hoped for, they landed in my lap just like the sun.
Edward
Lectures on grammar are usually enough to knock me out, but today in English Comp when Mrs. Dean explains the use of the comma versus the use of the semi-colon, it reminds me of Bella and me and where we are now. In sneaking around, we're really not seeing much of each other. This place we're in has to be nothing but a pause, I tell myself, a comma between two clauses. We just have to get to the other side, the other clause, the place where we can be free together.
Because spring is here, Mrs. Makenna's lawn is once again in need of mowing. So the other day when I mowed, Bella and I met afterwards, under the bridge behind her house where we kissed our mouths raw. This is what it's come to for us to be near each other. Most of our time is spent on the phone.
Tonight I lie in bed with the phone pressed to my ear.
"I wish I could touch you right now," she says and I can feel her fingers on me. I can feel my fingers on her. "Your arms."
"Go on."
"And I miss being in a bed with you. Close to you. Your hands on me in the middle of the night. Your chest." Her voice cracks and I try to answer but my own voice gets caught like a frog in my throat.
"You want to try phone sex?"
I sit up, laughing at the blunt way this comes out of her mouth. Her mouth... Of course, I agree.
"Okay, wait, okay - um - I'm slipping my hand down... into your pants. Can you feel my hand, Edward?"
"Mm-hmm." My hand moves south going for the waistband of my boxers.
"I'm placing my hand around your big, long, hard, soft-"
"Wait. Is it hard or soft?"
I hear her stifling a laugh. I know she's not really into this, and I'm playing along.
"Okay, I'm holding your big, long, hard, smooth phallus."
"Phallus? That's hot."
"Should I have gone with appendage?" She's cracking up. It makes me laugh, too. "This is too weird. Let's meet somewhere. We'll have car sex." She whispers "car sex" and it sounds like the wind talking.
Even though it's two in the morning and we have school tomorrow, we decide to meet at her house. I take the Volvo because it's quiet. She's waiting on the sidewalk when I come by to scoop her up in what she calls a "drive-by." She doesn't want me to stop, and gives me a scowl when I do.
"Couldn't drag you around," I say, driving off before she even has the door closed. I only turn the corner before I stop the car, get out and switch places with her.
I let her drive so if there's any ducking, I'll be the one doing it. By the time I'm in the passenger seat, she has the heat on full blast. I take off my jacket and kiss her. Her hand meets my arm, rubbing. The end of her nose touches the end of mine. "Hi Edward, Edward, Edward." She smiles.
I drop my mouth to her neck. "Hi Bella, Bella, Bella." My lips sink into her skin right below her jaw. She shivers and I know it's not from the cold. It's baking in here. I turn the heat down and she drives away.
I haven't put any music on but I'm about to until I decide silence with Bella is pretty much the best kind of silence. She heads through the twisting roads of towering trees toward the ocean cliffs. The sky is too overcast to see any stars and there's barely a moon. She parks at a lookout point, cuts the engine, and we decide to scoot the front seats all the way forward and move to the back where there's more room. Once in the back, she tosses her jacket up front next to mine and slides over to me, resting her head on my chest. Slouching lower in my seat, I put my arm around her.
"How's your phallus doing?" Her hand rubs along the side of my waist, and then her fingers give me a light scratch.
"You know how it is. Kinda hard, kinda soft."
She looks up at me. Hair has fallen over her eye and I push it aside. She reaches for my hand, holding it as she stares at me like I'm something to look at, like I might be the best thing she's seen. It's too dark to see if her eyes are lightening, but I'd bet anything they are. "I miss you." Again it's a whisper, but this time all Bella, no tunneled-wind sound
"I miss you, too." I kiss her soft and we sit in the quiet, Bella resting against me, holding my hand. I don't want to move. Ever. Moving means the clock is ticking and the time will come to go. Maybe if we sit still enough, time will be still with us.
We accidentally fall asleep.
When we wake up, my head is pushed up against the hard window, and Bella's lying with her legs bent behind her, her head in my lap, where there's also something hard going on. I touch her hair, running my fingers along the side of her head where it's softest. It's still dark out.
"My hand's on you in the middle of the night," I say, my voice hoarse, and she hums.
She sits up, stretching. I watch her lean toward the front, bending as she reaches for her phone. I hold her at her hip while she checks the time. "Five twenty," she says, landing beside me again. Her hand falls to my chest. "I liked that."
"Me, too."
"We should not have car-sex again sometime."
I smile and kiss her, and this is when our kissing gets a little out of control.
She pulls away from my mouth. "I have to get home." She comes back to my mouth.
"Your parents."
She breaks away. "My dad's probably already left for work. He's not the problem. My mom gets up at seven to wake me up."
"Why did we fall asleep?" I ask against her mouth.
"Idiots," she says, climbing over my lap.
Moving hair aside, I kiss down her neck to her shoulder until I meet fabric. I catch the end of her shirt, about to slide my hands under it when I find another shirt in the way.
"How much clothes are you wearing?"
She laughs while I slip my hand under the second shirt, rubbing her back with my fingertips first and then my palms. She feels cold under my hand, but I'll warm her. I work my way up higher. There's no bra-strap. There's no bra. Two shirts, but no bra? I'll take it. Her fingers meet my neck and climb up to my face, guiding me to her mouth. She grinds down on me and I lift to meet her.
"Can we?" I ask.
"We don't have much time."
"Don't need much time," I say on her throat, thumbs brushing her breasts. Yes, I'm coaxing. And yes, it's working. She sighs. I pull her top shirt off. Underneath is just a tank top. My lips go directly to her shoulder, kissing along her collarbone, my hands at her waist where the shirt has risen. Gripping the hem of it between fingers, I start to raise it, but she stops me and says, "Not out here." Her hands move under my shirt, then, running over my stomach, and I can take my shirt off, so I do.
"Cover me with your jacket."
Pulling my jacket from the front, I hold it over her waist like a barrier as she stands, hunched over, to take off her pants.
She unbuttons my jeans and I lift up so she can pull them down just enough, boxers, too.
"Definitely not soft," she says, stroking.
Slinking my hand between her legs, I touch her while she touches me and I like when the rhythm of our hands match. I like it a little too much. My breathing is heavy—heavier than hers. But she's the one who moans, and she feels ready. I move her over me and I'm in.
"God," I say and it's a grunt.
"I know."
She arches her chest toward me. I put my mouth on her breast, teasing her nipple as well as I can through the cotton. She's moving over me faster. Too fast for me to keep myself under control much longer.
I wrap my arms all the way around her, holding her as close as possible, my face against her chest.
Sex with Bella is good anytime, but when we unwillingly go without it for long, it's exceptional.
She doesn't climb off of my lap right away. She stays where she is, looking down at me. "Know what I missed while you were gone?" she asks, as if I'd been on vacation or something. "This." She touches a freckle on the side of my face and then kisses it.
"That it?"
"No, but that was the weird thing. I kept seeing it when I pictured you."
"You pictured me?" I smile at her, or more like smirk.
"Didn't you picture me?"
I drop the smirk. "Every day."
"What weird thing about me did you miss?"
I look her over, tilting my head to the side, letting my eyes pause on her ass for a little while, my hand following, gliding over her skin. But I tug on her big toe. "Your toenails."
"That is weird. Really weird."
"I mean, how they're always painted. I wondered if you still painted them."
"I didn't."
"No?"
She shakes her head. "I painted them for you." She touches my mouth.
"Why?" My lips move against her finger.
"Because, plain toenails are kind of ugly, aren't they?" Her finger brushes back and forth over my bottom lip before she takes her touch away, but I catch her hand, bringing the side of her wrist to my mouth. I give her a little bite, a nibble on her wrist.
She starts to move off me, but something seems to catch her eye out the window. "The sun's rising," she says, sitting sideways on my lap, eyes focused outside. "It's so beautiful."
I'm looking at the side of her face. Some hair's in the way, blocking most of her profile, and I push it aside, back behind her ear. "Yeah," I say.
.
After another day of school pretending not to be with Bella, and of unsuccessfully avoiding looking at her, I find Esme sniffling in the kitchen. She tries to hide what's going on by turning to wipe her eyes up quick, but I've seen enough. I could ignore it. I could keep walking. But I think this is about my father, and it makes me feel somehow partially responsible.
"What's the matter?" I put my hand against the counter, leaning forward and back, too uncomfortable to be still.
After asking a few more times she admits that it is about my father, saying that they'd had plans together but that he canceled, giving her some vague excuse about a drive to Olympia.
"An old friend, he said. A good friend. A woman."
I cock my head at her, squinting. "Charlotte?"
"You know her?"
"She's my friend's mom." I drum my index finger over the counter, remembering the wedding picture Victoria found. All three of them looked pretty happy. Knowing that my father and Esme had something going on behind my mother's back, I know Esme has to be thinking about whether or not he'd do the same thing to her. "Hey, Max's school. They're showing this movie tonight from seven to nine. I'm going. He asked me to, but do you, I mean, would you want to come?"
She looks at me like she's about to say yes, but she says no instead. "Sounds like a brother thing."
"I think he'd want you to go. I'm pretty sure it would make him happy."
She steps closer to me. And then slowly she puts her hands on my shoulders before pulling me into a hug. I'm stiff at first; we've never hugged before and it's awkward. But I just go ahead and hug her back.
"You really are something else. You know that?"
"Yeah, well, don't tell my dad."
.
Before the movie starts, the lights are already dim and the gym is rumbling with voices. Max tells me not to look right away as he points out where Kate is. I look right away. She's cute. Blonde. Little.
"Go talk to her." I nudge his arm.
"And say what?"
"Go tell her she looks pretty."
He scoffs at me and shakes his head like I've told him to kiss her in front of everybody or something.
"All right. Ask her if she liked the book."
"You want me to talk about the book?" He's dropped his head, his eyes and brows raising like I've gone mad.
I shrug one shoulder. "That's how I got Isabella."
He takes off then, going right up to Kate. I wish I could hear him. I try to read his lips, but can't. I do see her smile at him, though.
"You two have something really great," Esme says. "I didn't get along with my sister so well as a teenager."
I turn to her. "I've seen him at his saddest." I blink hard, trying not to picture it. "I never want to see him like that again."
"I have a feeling he thinks the same of you."
I nod. "Yeah. You're probably right."
"I love when he calls you Bro."
"Me too." And it's true that I don't even want him to grow up because he might stop calling me that.
.
The next day, after school, my dad comes over to the pool house with a drink in his hand, and what looks like a photo album and a newspaper tucked under his arm. He looks like he's had about as much sleep as I've had in the last couple of days. My hair's still wet from the shower I took after my run, so while I wait for him to say something, I take my towel from my shoulder and scrub it over my head a few times before throwing it in the corner on top of my crumpled sheets. He watches it land.
"Jane hasn't been by yet?"
"You're here to check up on Jane?"
He gestures to the sofa. "May I?"
"Go for it."
I notice he's wearing jeans and a long-sleeve T-shirt, ironed flat. I can't remember the last time I saw him in jeans. He looks younger but older at the same time.
I grab a Coke from the fridge and meet him back by the sofa, figuring I'm going to have to hear what he's come to say. He seems uncomfortable or nervous which makes me wonder if he's about to tell me he's messed things up with Esme.
He passes me the album I recognize right away as my baby album. Balancing it over my arm, holding my Coke, I open the first page to a newborn picture of me.
"Your mom put that together. She loved you. Proud of you from the day you were born."
I take a seat in the chair next to him, dropping my unopened Coke on the table, and turn the page: a list of Firsts in my mother's handwriting.
"Your first word was Dadda."
"That's everyone's first word."
"Not Max's. His was Doggy, remember?"
"Yeah. Mom loved that one." She was allergic to dogs. A dog was one thing Max and I couldn't have no matter how much we begged.
I turn the page again. On one side of the page, my mom's holding me, and my father's holding me on the other.
"She loved you," he says again. "Guess that's the best place to start."
I look up at him.
He takes a drink. Ice clinks. "Your mother was on her way out. She was leaving me, taking you kids with her." He sets his glass on the table in front of him, giving it a couple of turns on the table. He's really keeping an eye on his glass. "At that point I deserved it, her leaving. But the truth is, she left the marriage well before that, and back then-" he takes his eyes off the glass to look at me "-I didn't deserve it."
"And...? When would you say she left?"
"Max was nine when I learned of her infidelity," he says. I would've been fourteen. The same year money started appearing on the counter for me. My eyes sort of squint. "I was straight-forward with her and she gave me straight answers in return. I asked her why she married me. She admitted it was a mistake she couldn't see at the time. Said that the money was seductive, the lifestyle, all she could offer her future children. You." He points to me with the drink in his hand. "She told me I was good at what I did with my money. And I'll give her that. I used the money to entice her, to persuade her to - uh - fall for me. I thought it worked." He picks up his glass, shakes the ice around. There's nothing left. He sets it down. "She said she would stop seeing the other man, for the sake of you boys. Maybe she meant it. I don't know."
I'm about to tell him I don't want to hear this when he says it for me.
"Why don't we get some air? Show me that trail you run."
I lead the way. The wind is thin and weak, hardly there. Neither of us have jackets and we don't need them. I walk stiff next to my father. The farther into the woods we get, the quieter it seems and I'm actually grateful when he starts talking again.
"Look," he says. "The point is, I saw you doing the same thing with money that I did, didn't I? Before your mom passed. With your friends, your girls."
I look up at the sky. It's blue today.
"Didn't I?" It sounds much more like a statement than a question.
I nod and look at the dirt path ahead of us. I hate that we've stopped walking. If we just head straight a little farther we'll be close enough to the creek to hear it.
"The partying, the drinking, the defiance. Was I supposed to trust you at your word when you started bringing Isabella around? You bought her that camera, took her for spins in your cars, brought her to the pool house." His eyes are already on me when I turn to him. "I saw it starting. Your mom and me when we were younger. Same thing."
"Couldn't you trust me when I said I loved her?"
"At first I thought it was more defiance. Your rejection of Heidi, your adamance for Isabella. When it didn't stop, I thought you were confused about what love is."
"Thought? You don't think that anymore?"
He pulls the newspaper from his arm and hands it over. I'd forgotten he even had it. "Take a look at the front page of the sports section."
I unfold the paper, turn to the sports page and see myself above the fold, running, passing the finish line.
"This is me beating the record."
"Read what's printed below the photo. The credit."
Isabella Swan.
"She got them to run the article by submitting the picture. They interviewed your coach because of it."
"How do you know that?"
"She left a message at the office explaining it. And she said, 'Sir-" he puts a hand on my shoulder "-please let Edward know to expect a call for an interview.'"
I can't help but smile. And it's not only because I now know what Bella had planned, or because of the interview, or because of my picture in the paper, but also because she called my father "Sir."
I look up from the paper, from Isabella's name in print under my picture, to see my father also smiling. Is he proud?
"I know what she's doing," he says.
"What?"
"She's trying to befriend me."
"Is it working?"
"Does it matter? Has anything I've said mattered?"
"To her it does."
He starts walking again. I fold the paper up, tucking it under my arm the way he had, and follow.
"Recently I've been reminded of what it's like to be eighteen."
"Victoria's mom?" We follow the curve where the hill starts to climb. It gets shadier.
"She's bad. Fifteen years of addiction. I don't know if - it's not impossible but the odds are against her. And you start thinking about what could've been done differently."
We're getting closer to the creek. From here it sounds like car tires rolling over wet streets. I stop. I stare at the ground until my father interrupts to ask what's wrong. There's mud from yesterday's rain to the right and big ants crawling over a huge rock to the left. Watching the ants, I ask, "Are you her father?"
"Edward." He says it fast, shock in his voice. "Son. No. The fact that you even have to ask me that..." His eyes blaze into me. "You asked me once if I could admit that I was wrong one time. Aside from the operating room, and Esme, I think I've been wrong most of my life."
Hearing him say this reminds me of what Bella said to me about how you can think people aren't listening to you, but they really are. Still, I'm confused about this change in my father, everything from his demeanor to his clothes.
"What's going on, Dad?"
He slides his hands into his pockets. "Someone from your past is in trouble and you start to remember who you once were. She came to me, told me about her pregnancy. Victoria thinks I'm the only one she told. And knowing Char, I believe that. Char was in tears not knowing what to do. And what did I do for her? I offered her money. I wrote her a check for three thousand dollars and told her to use what she needed of it for an abortion and the rest for whatever she wanted."
The thought of Victoria's mom getting an abortion, the thought of no Victoria, and at my father's encouragement, I can't look him in the eye. "Obviously she didn't go through with it."
"Nope. And she didn't take the money either. She might've just been looking for moral support and I thought I was fixing it by giving her money." His voice has grown harsher, and for once he's not aiming this tone at me. "I'd have given her more if she needed it. And now look at her."
The way he says this, the tone in his voice—I cringe over what Victoria might have seen.
His eyes are dampening, like the tears are lining up. He won't let them out, though. I already know this. He rubs at his forehead, and I start wondering if he wishes he'd brought more to drink with him. I study him. She didn't take the money. He said it. He has to remember what he said about how everyone will take money if it's there for the taking.
"So yeah, I guess you can say I've been wrong plenty."
I rub it in. I can't stop myself. "Then you have to admit it. Not everyone's after money. Right? Just like Isabella never was."
"I admit that there are some things that some people hold in higher regard than they do money."
"Like, love?"
"And pride. It hadn't occurred to me, until I met Victoria, that I may have insulted Char by writing her that check. I thought I was helping. She took off. I didn't hear from her. I had no idea where she went. And I didn't look. Your mom was pregnant with you. My attention was on her. Despite what you might think, I loved Elizabeth."
"And despite what you might think, I love Isabella."
"I know." He pauses, tugging at the neckline of his shirt. "I only hope that she loves you as much as you love her. Believe me or don't believe me, but my only intention was to see that you didn't go through what I went through."
"But either way, that should be my decision to make. Not yours. You don't even know how much you hurt her. Trying to protect me from her?" I shake my head, getting pissed all over again. "She's a person. She needed protection from you. The things you said right to her face. You called her garbage. You made her cry. You know that? And what was your problem with her then? We weren't even dating yet. And it wasn't like we were even near getting married. Was it because I bought her that camera? All because of that? It was like pulling teeth just to get her to take it from me, and then you called her trash, and she gave it back to me. God, you're so..." I blink a few times until the burn behind my eyes goes away.
His palms push against the sides of his face, sliding up until the heels of his hands are pressing against his temples. He closes his eyes and when he pulls his hands away, they open. "Edward, of all the girls without money, you had to pick Charlie Swan's daughter."
"Why does that matter? She could be anyone's daughter. And why are we back on money?"
"I knew Charlie, growing up, and I wouldn't exactly have called him an upstanding guy. I wouldn't have put it past him or his daughter to go after money."
"When did you know him?"
"High school."
I can't help my laugh. "And he couldn't have changed since then? Why not? You did, right? Maybe while you were becoming worse or whatever, he was getting better. After Isabella and I had a fight once, Charlie warned me not to hurt her. And when we broke up, her mom had a hand in that, because Isabella was hurt. By you." I tilt my head and frown at him. "You call that being after money? And look, you know you're not up for any father of the year awards. But Charlie... Forget it."
I start heading back to the pool house.
"I'll apologize to Isabella."
I turn around. He hasn't moved from his spot. "No. I want you to stay away from her. You can wait until she comes to you. But if she doesn't, you just... stay away. You're taking some kind of trip through memory lane. Walking through your regrets. And what happens when you wake up from it? You already brought up money. Even in your state." I gesture up and down at him. From here he looks small. "Just stay away from her."
A/N: Thank you for reading. Just one more chapter to go. Thank you for taking this ride with me. It's been a challenge. It's been fun. And you all have been wonderful.