17.
Today, I am twenty.
I have worked three shifts at Esme's coffee shop and memorized half of the menu. I pretend I know what the orders taste like, their differences and their makeup, but they are all the same to me. Each one a concoction, bitter and sweet at war, the potency of either a spectrum depending upon the size, the syrup, the steamed milk. I speak softly and Esme tells me I must be louder, command a presence, smile until my cheeks ache, until they cramp into dimples. I try very hard to be this adult version of me, the one with a job who takes orders, who mops the floor at the end of her shift and sweeps up any wayward espresso beans beneath the machines. Flimsy plastic credit cards, heavy metal credit cards, the crinkle of paper money, the clatter of coins in the till. Counting change. I am unlocking another part of myself, a stranger knocking at the door within my own skin. Who's there? Actually, make it a double!
Esme is kind and patient. Angela is kind and patient. Mike is kind and less patient. He can be loud, he smiles seemingly without effort, his blonde hair sticks up in the back, a permanent impression from his pillow. He congratulates me at the end of my third shift, tells me I did a good job in that boyish way he has, a compliment hiding something deeper, some personal interest on the brink. His left incisor curls beneath a neighboring tooth, hiding, hidden.
Today, I am twenty. Two years older than my mother when she gave birth to me and I think of my shared name and my shared burden. I picture holding a newborn, a toddler scrambling about on my lap, grabbing my clothes, her hair the same color as my own or darker, Jacob's deep black, coarse yet fluid, shiny, a river's stream after the snow melts, a rush over smooth, flat rocks. Jacob's letter in my mind, the one I could read but only barely, words that I recognized among all the ones I did not. Sorry. Sarah. Forgive. Goodbye. His rushed handwriting, the magnet that held the paper to our refrigerator turned storage container no electricity that summer. My confusion as I puzzled through it, lost, needing a decoder for my own language. The gradual onslaught of understanding. The feelings inside of me. The pressure of holding back. The release.
I dissolve into the trees, I stand on the dotted line, I find Edward, I drive north, I start over in Tacoma. I read, my finger trailing under each word of a children's book meant for ages 8-10 years even though, today, I am twenty. I sit with Esme in the kitchen, legs dangling down from the tall stool at the counter, when the knock comes. Carlisle is gone, already at work. I figure he's returned, forgotten something, but why would he knock? Esme smiles her secret smile, gestures to the door with her chin.
"Why don't you go grab that?"
I leave my book, its pages defying gravity, floating upward, spine stiff, and cautiously head to the door. I stop myself from peering through the window, covered to invisibility by a white curtain. This is Tacoma. In this garden, there are no apples. No snakes.
Edward stands on the other side, rain on his cap and shoulders, little sprinkles, a glowing flame in his hands as if borne from his palm, growing upward, a thin stalk from a root of cupcake, yellow frosting vanilla cake. Happy birthday he says, because he knows, which is impossible. I remember his driver's license, the approximation there. June, 1989. The gentle descent into summer. Nothing like now, with fall's encroaching tendrils, the gray sky turning everything monochromatic, a tempered dullness, a desaturated film. Within all that gray, the shock of yellow. The frosting. Of red. Edward's cheeks. White, his teeth, the tentative smile there.
"Alright, blow it out before the wind does it for you," he says, still standing on the stoop. I block the entry way, blinking, am I smiling? Dimple in my right cheek, what can I get for you today? I inhale abruptly, the cold outdoor air turns hurricane in my lungs and I duck, dip, blow. The ribbon of smoke floats up from the tiny ember and I realize I haven't wished for anything at all. My wish is here, holding the cupcake, waiting for me to invite him in.
I step aside and he enters, bathed in the overhead lights. He takes off his cap, scrubs at the back of his neck with his open palm, eyes glancing toward me and then away, the other hand holding the cupcake, uncertain, unsure. I look up at him, unabashed, cataloguing the differences only two weeks can make, the shadows under his eyes, the green irises ringed gold, his hair long again, curled around his ear, brown, red.
"Edward, is that you?" Esme calls from the kitchen, ending the moment, saving us from ourselves. Edward clears his throat, follows Esme's voice. I trail behind, tethered, the wisp of smoke from his ember. Outside the windows, the rain increases its cadence, trails of wet that slap and drip down the glass, the opening above the sink through which I can see the sodden street.
"Hello Esme," he says, hugging her, one-armed and stiff, the other still holding the cupcake out toward me, keeping it away, protecting it.
"How was the drive?" she asks.
"How did you know it was my birthday?" I blurt out simultaneously, finally finding my voice. Edward jumps a bit, eyes to me and away, my face on the milk carton, the vibrancy of it, the sharp edges, how I look when Edward returns on the day I turn twenty.
"Guilty," Esme interjects before Edward can respond, the tinge of a blush on her cheeks.
Edward opens his mouth as if he wants to say something but closes it, swallows, the throb of his Adam's apple in his throat. He places the cupcake on the counter, Esme spotting it, her eyes darting once to Edward's, quickly, barely. Looking for something. Testing something. Judging something. Edward shakes his head abruptly, shifts on his feet.
"I have to return the pickup to Carlisle," he says.
"I'll come," I say immediately, the offer I wasn't able to make the last time, sleeping in Carlisle's office, unconscious for his departure.
"Bring Carlisle back with you," Esme orders, "He went in early today."
We leave the cupcake uneaten and fall back into a pattern I hadn't known we'd established, him in the driver's seat and me in the passenger's, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, the other hand clenching the gear shift, eyes forward. The rain continues its torrent, the windshield wipers a blur before us, droplets that trail into other droplets, that morph together and succumb to gravity even faster than when they were solo, a race to the finish line.
"What did you wish for?" he asks, a fair few minutes into our drive, once our breathing has synchronized and the world outside blends to a suggestion.
"I didn't wish for anything," I confess.
He frowns slightly and I realize I must clarify.
"I have everything I want."
He takes his cap off again, hair falling in his eyes, a vibrant green, a dangerous hue among all this gray.
Edward's steady driving changes abruptly, the steering wheel flying beneath his hands, a sharp curve as we cut across a lane of traffic, the angry bellow of a horn in the car behind us. We bump over a curb into an empty parking lot, an abandoned strip mall ahead of us, shops all closed for business, lights off, the sound of rain on the roof of the car, Edward's rapid breathing as he throws the car into park. He's still not looking at me but his chest rises and falls like the tide, unstoppable, uncontrollable, overpowering.
"I missed you." He spits out the words. A confessional. A priest on the other end of the grate, his profile of judgment. Say three Hail Marys. Atone for your sins. Here there are no apples, no snakes.
He turns to me and there is a fire in his eyes, a deep, trembling glow beneath the green, the pressure, all that pressure, how hard it is to hold it all back.
I look down to his hands, knuckles white, gripping the gear shift for dear life. I reach out and trace the tendons, a tentative touch. Look up to him for acknowledgement, for affirmation. He breathes deeply, stops. Inhales once more, the hurried gasp of a drowning man, holds it all within. How many seconds can he last underwater? Beneath my fingers, his hand relaxes, unravels, the callus upon callus, coarse skin caressing coarse skin. I read the lines of him, his head line, his life line, his heart line. Mercifully, I am fluent here. Each noun, verb, adjective is clear to me, the story of him, the singular narrator, the generous language written down in the palm of his hand.
I pull his hand to my lap, rest it there, a pocket of heat within my own. He closes his eyes slowly, opens them. I feel myself in a truck, barreling down a mountainside without any breaks, the inevitability of it all, the necessity of it. You cannot fight gravity.
He twists, using his other hand to shift back into drive. We're moving again, picking up Carlisle, returning home, my home, once his home, Carlisle and Esme's home, our home. We eat lunch together. Edward sits close while I puzzle through a new book. I feel that closeness within me, through me, one with the earth, the earth one with me. After dinner, Esme surprises me with a cake (store-bought, she grimaces apologetic), striped in the colors of the sun. I thank her for her generosity, blowing out the candles with speed. Carlisle and Esme each take a slice, but I save my appetite for a cupcake with a single flame.
Carlisle puts on a movie, his favorite, a classic, everyone has seen but me. The Wizard of Oz. The accents are both of this country and away, their speech patterns both familiar and foreign. The far off, imaginary land of Kansas. I sit beside Edward, close but not too close, not quite touching but not quite separate. I watch as Dorothy is thrust from her life into a world turned technicolor, a strange and mysterious place where things are different but beautiful, haunting, ethereal, raw, and powerful. Where there is danger but humanity, cruelty and kindness. Beside me, Edward begins to fall asleep, his head dropping down then snapping back up in a ricochet, an embarrassed smile, indulgent. I'm careful, cautious. The tin man seeks a heart, and I, a tender touch. My fingertips crawl back to his, a magnet snapping into place.
The movie ends, Dorothy's voice a resonant echo, her tremendous, effervescent conviction, there's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home. I look at Edward, his sleeping face, steady breathing, head resting against the back of the couch, hand loosely interlocked with my own. I look at him and I agree.
x
fun fact is that i actually wrote the last paragraph of this entire fic first, so it's just waiting in my notes app.
recommendation: a heart arcane by iambeagle