19.
There are parallels I'm beginning to notice. They are infiltrating and they are impossible to ignore. Reminders that you can never truly erase your past, never truly escape it. It will always reappear, reincarnated as a different thing but carrying with it distinct and undeniable remnants from the original.
The first came in the kitchen, the hum of the refrigerator's cooling mechanism, that insistent buzz, how similar it sounds to an insect hovering in tall grass, high desert, calling out for attention. The click of the second-hand on the clock over the mantle and the click of the turn signal in my father's pickup truck, how it only worked when turning left, the tick, tick, tick. Bella, crank that window down. Let some air in. The feel of Edward's arm, heavy, around me, through me, above me, inside me, his heaving breaths, the wash of warm air with each exhale, carbon dioxide consumed by me and the trees. How similar it is to Jacob's arm, in those long winter nights, the ones we spent together both before and after marriage, in his house or my own, whoever had electricity, whoever had fire, whoever had heat.
There's something primal to it, the huddling close for warmth, for survival. Something borne of ancient times, of Adam and Eve in their garden of Eden pre-apple, pre-snake. A woman from Adam's own rib, created for companionship, yes, for procreation, yes, for survival, for persecution, for a scapegoat, yes, yes, yes, but, most importantly, created for warmth. Compounding body heat, skin on skin on skin. John, Edward, Adam. He's asleep now, peaceful, open, relaxed. The sunlight streams through the glass window, vibrant yellows oranges reds and pinks, the sky after a storm, the reward after the weather's turbulent anger, a mother's caress, an apology after the punch, sympathetic, delusional. See how nice this is? See how peaceful? See how beautiful? Forget about that tumult, all that thunder, lightning and wind. I won't do it again, I promise.
I am the sunrise after a storm, multi-colored and brilliant, hopeful and amnestic.
I burrow deeper into Edward's arms and memorize the smell of him, the texture of his clothing, the fine skin of his neck leaking into shadow, his forearms and the tendons there, the line of his jaw and the protruding stubble, the curve of his ear and the hair that curls around it. I remember the cold metal of the scissors, our goodbye work-in-progress, the clean slice of the blades through his overly-long hair, the auburn strands drifting to the floor between us as if in sacrifice to the God above or, perhaps, the God below. My eyes close and I press my lids together tightly until I find the stars behind them, how they flicker and shoot and shine. I search for the familiar constellations, the ones hidden behind atmosphere, the greenhouse effect, the trap of the sun's heat, the blue blue blue. The stars above and within, one with the earth, one with the universe.
When I wake again, I am displaced and confused. Lost. I stretch out and my hand knocks into the arm of the couch. I am cold, a knit blanket wrapped haphazardly around my legs, having succumbed to a fight I hadn't known I was partaking in. Edward is gone and the sun is high in the sky. I know without looking outside, I know by the angle of its rays as it breaks through the glass as if by force. The unimpeded aggression of a bluebird day, no clouds to temper our planet's closest star. I hear voices from the kitchen, softer then louder, building like the dial of a car's radio slowly turning up, unintelligible, clear, unintelligible, signal interference, shouting. A memory: curled up in the passenger's seat of my father's truck, the keys in the ignition, battery on engine off, his phone charging, forgotten on the console. And me, alone, listening. Always listening. Paying attention. Sneaking information. Music, a foreign language, a serious voice speaking of the news, a local advertisement. Traffic on the highway, an accident closes one lane of traffic. Avoid. More static. I turn the dial up louder. Louder. Louder. Listening!
Then my father is back, opening the metal door of the cab, turning off the radio with one quick hit. Enough of that noise.
Esme's voice then Edward's. Serious, stern. Yelling, quieting. Fierce, submissive. A strangled fight. I sit up, the blanket falling to the floor with a whump, gathering in a puddle at my bare feet. I wear my pajamas, the ones Esme purchased that I still cannot repay, the soft cotton revealed in the daytime, pale skin and pale clothes. I wander to the kitchen. My toes are covered in nail polish, a deep orange. One of the first colors painted during the sunrise after the storm. I peek around the threshold into the kitchen, muted, warm. Sandwich supplies litter the counter: lettuce, turkey, slices of cheddar, knives and loaves of bread. Splendor and excess, a picture of domesticity. Esme wears her apron.
They fall silent at my arrival as if a mute has been hit, as if my father has returned. Enough of that noise.
"Good afternoon, Bella," Esme says after a few moments of painful silence in which I search for Edward's eyes and cannot find them. He is unreadable, turned away from me, looking out the window onto the sunny street, Dorian Gray in profile, unreadable, stern, distant, perfect and impossible to maintain. "Would you like something to eat?"
"Let me help," I offer, stacking the supplies as she taught me, an assembly line of meat and produce. Edward hovers off to the side, speaking by not speaking.
"Did you sleep well?" she asks, and I know by that question alone that she saw us on the couch, and that she does not approve of the picture.
"Yes," I answer simply, "Thank you again for the cake, and for everything."
"No thanks necessary," she says, waving her hand. "It was your birthday. Everyone deserves a cake on their birthday." I meet Edward's eye, finally, and our thoughts are synchronized. That is where Esme is so terribly, terribly wrong.
A dog barks down the street, the yap of a mid-sized beast, short fur, big ears, startled or spooked, and I am back to that halfway place, where I am here but not here, half of myself in the present and half of myself in the past, in a parallel desert where Jacob's dog ran free and wild, racing through the dust, trundling through the snow. The snap of the dog's chain, tied to Jacob's porch, saliva dripping down its chin, hungry, happy, thrilled to be alive. Jacob's smiling face as he greeted his beloved companion, how they grew together from rambunctious puppies upward, the dog on fast-forward, traipsing unstoppable into adulthood, catapulting into death. His childhood dog died six months after we wed. Our very first trauma, our very first test, and our very first casualty. And still, we came out triumphant. Still, that was not what broke us.
"Bella?" Edward's voice, cutting through my memory like a blade. I am thrown back into my own body, to the present, to Tacoma. We have driven north. Do not forget it.
"Sorry, what?" I ask, holding a forgotten sandwich in my hands.
"Come walk with me?" he asks, for seemingly not the first time. Esme looks between us like she wants to say so much but keeps it inside, locks it down. We are all fluent in the pressure of holding back. I pull on a jacket and shoes and follow Edward outside, the ground wet from the storm, sparkling beneath the sun now sinking from its apex. The grass squelches beneath our feet and we stick to pavement, to man-made trail, to designated pedestrian paths, to sidewalk, to the neat little squares that surround the neat little houses, each line equidistant from the next.
We walk close to each other without touching, his hands stuffed deep into the pocket of his jeans, his eyes forward, always looking into the distance, always searching for the open road, his destiny and his home.
Without speaking, we come upon a neighborhood park abandoned by children, school in session but ending soon, students trapped in classrooms learning to read books at a greater pace than I ever have, sounding out words without trouble, letters turning familiar and comforting, sentences turning into pictures turning into knowledge turning into growth. We settle down on the swings, two pools of rainwater trapped in the dip soaking into our clothes as we sit, rusty chains creaking beneath the weight of two overgrown children sliding into the past. I use my feet to twist and turn, the tips of my boots in the barkdust, two tracks in front of me where others before have jumped and fallen.
"Do you regret last night?" he finally asks, the inevitable question.
"Of course not."
He digs a hand into his pocket, the other still loosely holding the chain of the swing. Out comes my ring, an ancient artifact, a foreign object, a reminder and a curse.
"And what about this?"
"That's over," I reply.
"But who was he?"
I twist away from him then unravel right back.
"Do you not want to tell me?" he asks. Mercifully, his fingers close over the golden band and it disappears into his jeans once more.
"I don't know. It doesn't matter." My story is simple and uninteresting. I don't know where to start and I don't know where to finish. I think of the narrative he told me last night, the major points of his life, his beginning and middle and end. What it took for him to open up to me, a lost boy having never grown up, shuttled from home to home, landing by the grace of God, by a higher power, by fate or destiny or sheer blind luck, whatever version you believe, in Carlisle's lap, his future, his path, the truck on the dotted line, and my face at the end of it, waiting there in his trajectory, on a road pointed north in a country built for the automobile.
I know I owe him some type of truth, some type of explanation for the way that I am, for who I am, for what I am. But there is none. I was born in a vacuum and I would've died in one, too, were it not for a snake bite, a mother, a letter, and a heartbeat driving a car, a foot on the gas pedal, two hands on the steering wheel and my face on a milk carton with no search conducted.
"It matters to me," he says, somber and true. There is a creak of protest as I tilt toward him, the swing's trajectory fighting against my approach, the sideways slant, the unintended purpose. He watches me, waiting for something that won't come, for reason and for proof. I linger in his proclamation, search for the deeper meaning within it, what it is he's actually saying beneath the topsoil, the roots of the words, their etymology and their intent.
It matters to me. It matters to me. It matters to me.
You matter to me.
He tilts his head slightly, an invitation and a concession.
In the clear light of day, I kiss him again.