I want to enjoy tonight.
I want to enjoy being with you, in case it's our last.
I'm tired of thinking.
…and I've never stopped loving you, Bella.
Edward's words tumble over my brain on repeat throughout the rest of the evening. The opportunity to overanalyze his words is there, ready for me to dissect and discuss and bring me completely out of the magic of the night – but I shake them back to the recesses of my mind with each passing minute and each downed champagne flute.
I agree with him; I, too, want to enjoy the night. I, also, am so damn tired of thinking. I want nothing more than to enjoy every moment with him. So I do.
He's wrong, though. Every toast, every flitter of his fingers on my skin, every laugh only solidifies what I already know: this won't be our last.
It's not very often in life that you feel the universe and stars and whatever cosmic alignment you follow fall exactly into place. It's humbling. It's bigger than the life I imagined for myself. It's better than the life I imagined for myself.
When Edward swings me around the dance floor, I feel it. When he dances with Emmett and Jasper like they're seventeen again and back in high school, I feel it. When he dances with Alice, ever so gently as not to ruin a hair on her head, I feel it. And when he takes his place next to Jasper to give his speech as Best Man, and asks us to raise our glasses towards a promising future, I know it.
I never stopped loving him, either.
By the time he's done, I need him to know it, too.
"I can stand before you tonight and tell you story after story of some pretty ridiculous things that Jasper and I have gotten ourselves into over the years, but I won't bore you with all that. I can tell you all about Ring and Runnin' the houses on Main Street, but I won't get into that. I can tell you how we used to go Skinny dipping down at the lake after midnight but no one wants to think about that, either," he pauses and the room erupts in laughter reserved for nights like these. He continues.
"I could go on and on with stories full of us being ridiculous but instead I'd rather focus on all the smart moves he's made. Most importantly, marrying you, Alice."
The crowd coos and awes and taps their silverware on their glasses, a cue for the bride and groom to kiss. With that, Edward raises his glass up in the air and we all follow, agreeing with him wholeheartedly when he says, "Let's toast to the smartest decision Jasper's ever made."
The champagne may be the best I've ever tasted, or maybe it's because the beauty of the night has overwhelmed my senses. Soon enough he is back over at our table and Rose is doing the duty of the Maid of Honor speech. The three of us decided years ago to switch off on Maid of Honor duties; I should start practicing my speech for when it's Rose's turn to be the one in white.
Edward is sitting next to me again, and he reaches for his silverware to clang against his glass in time with the others, but underneath the table his hand has found mine and I'm holding on to him like I can't let go.
I'm listening to Rose's words, practically memorized in my head after hearing her practice it so many times over the phone for the last year, and I know they're meant for Jasper and Alice, but they aren't so far off from Edward and me, either.
I know he feels it too, the way he squeezes my fingers against his own and leans just slightly enough that I can feel him against my shoulder. I close my eyes and savor the feeling of him next to me, making a vow to myself to never forget the way it feels when his presence is absent. Can't appreciate the good if you don't have the bad to compare it to, right?
The music picks up again, and I know we're going out there before he even tells me. I never would have pegged Edward for one who dances at weddings, but this is a new Edward now. I shake my head in conversation with myself. Not new. Just a side of him that he kept buried beneath insecurities and fear.
"Come on," he says, tugging on my hand. "I do a wicked Cupid Shuffle."
We're on our feet before I can protest. Like I would tell him no.
"How wicked could it be? I mean, the guy tells you what to do," Emmett kids. He hands us all a shot and the four of us grab, clink, tilt our heads back, and morph with the power of more liquid courage.
"And the direction to do it in," Rose adds, wiping her hand with her mouth before we enter the dance floor once again and don't leave unless we have to.
"Do you think it's what they imagined?" I ask Edward a little while later, my head resting against his chest as we sway to a slower song. With the hours of the night trickling behind us, his buttons are now loose and undone with time and playful intoxication. A walking temptation is what he is. I move to tell him exactly that but his arms tighten around me, lulling me back beneath his spell again. I am as content as a kitten. I'm probably purring.
"Probably better," he says, and taps me against the waist. "Look around."
The last thing I want to do is leave the spot against his chest that has now been deemed my favorite place, but I comply and follow his gaze around the room. Everywhere around us, guests are enjoying themselves exactly the way that Alice had wanted. Most dancing, some sampling their remnants of dinner, a crowd mingling at the open bar, the rest laughing at their tables. All smiling. All happy. All lost in the joy that only weddings can bring.
"Yeah, it's something else," is all I can muster, reverting back to my place against his chest.
If he's tired from swinging me around all night, he doesn't show it. "I've been to a lot of weddings but it's different when it's your best friend."
I agree with him, nodding against his chest. I think back on it all, remembering the day Alice called to tell us Jasper had proposed, to the feeling of dread I felt when I first thought of seeing Edward again after so long.
And later, when Alice shoves a delectable piece of wedding cake into Jasper's face and his only response is to wipe it back onto her face with a kiss, dread is the last thing I'm feeling when Edward brings me in for a kiss of his own.
Hours later, when the band has gone home and we all have been kicked out of the bar in the lobby, I'm stumbling against Edward as he leads me to my room. I swear he has never tasted this good.
My arms wrap around his neck, my heels clanging against each other as I loop them through my pinkies behind his head. I laugh when they clonk against him, both of us too punch drunk with each other to even care, especially when he's kissing me the way he is.
He leaves me breathless and craving more.
More kisses, more of Edward, more missed time to make up for.
"Key," he mumbles against my lips before they disappear down my neck, his hand reaching out blindly for what he's looking for. Somehow I manage to disentangle myself from him, his body and mine the farthest apart they've been all night, and I rummage with much difficulty inside of my clutch that is big enough for only three things: my phone, lipstick, and my key.
It takes entirely too long for us to open the door, laughing at each other as we fail to hold the key the right way to signal the door to unlock. Once we do, I'm right back where I was minutes before. With him, against him, touching him, kissing him, the way I was always supposed to.
"Zipper," I breathe to him, turning around so my back is to his front, dying in anticipation to feel his fingers loosen me from the teeth of these restraints. I feel his lips on the back of my neck, down my shoulders, and I dip my head back to feel him, all of him, ready behind me.
"I'm putting you to bed, Bella," he laughs, but the way he stumbles us towards the bed makes me wonder if it's not the other way around.
"Good," I respond, pulling him down to me as my knees and then elbows hit the mattress.
"To sleep," he clarifies.
I sit up again and stare at him. He can't be serious.
"To bed? Or to sleep?"
He knows what I mean.
"Not tonight," he answers me with a kiss that completely goes against what he is trying to stop. Somewhere deep down in my alcohol addled mind, I get it. I know he's right. I know sleeping together again, when we have just barely begun to break the surface in understanding each other, is the last thing we should do. But that rational notion is buried deep beneath my all too clear thoughts of how much I need this man right the fuck now. It's a wedding; love is literally in the air and contagious.
But the way he has moved to sit next to me on the bed and not throw himself on top of me like I want him to shows drunken me just how serious he is. I settle myself on my back against the pillows.
"Okay."
His face softens and he taps me on my elbow.
"Here," he says, and I roll to my side for him to slide my zipper down. It's not an easy task, especially for two drunk people who have no business undressing each other when there is an apparent no-sex rule enforced by one of them. I don't think he was anticipating the built in cups, and the sight of my bare back is when I see him question his resolve. I stay on my side, my arms folded against my chest as he stumbles and curses my dress down the rest of my body, his hands lost in satin and tulle and zippers working against him. I giggle but my eyes never leave him, watching him, both of us under the sway of overindulgence and undercurrents of desire.
Once I'm covered and settled beneath the covers, he sighs and reaches for my hands.
"Thanks," I murmur, the circles his fingers are tracing into my skin already pulling me into a sleep that my body so desperately needs. My head shifts against the pillows and something pokes me on the side of the head. Rubbing the intrusion, I attempt to sit up. "No, wait. Bobby pins."
I pull the poking one out of my hair and toss it onto the nightstand in the dark.
"Who's Bobby?"
I laugh and pull a few more out of my hair. "These," I say, pulling and placing several more into his hands. "I have five thousand of these in my hair."
I keep pulling and handing them to him, one after another.
He stops me after he's lost count of how many I've placed into his palm.
"Yeah, not happening tonight." He drops them onto the nightstand like neglected pocket change, his eyes heavy and his head bobbing lazily to the right as he settles me back into the sheets. It's been the longest twenty four hours ever, and he is dead on his feet. How he makes it back into his room, I don't know, because I fall asleep before he leaves.
But what I do know is that he leaves me with a kiss goodnight and not a goodbye.
-tr-
Much too soon, the realization that I forgot to close the curtains in the room dawns on me, quite literally. The sun isn't the brightest as it's promised to be, but it is also not the dim gray that I so wished for of yesterday. I groan against the pillows, stretching my arm towards the intrusion as if the curtains will close themselves with the force of my finger. Three seconds of consciousness and my hangover already screams in my ears, and I drop my arm beside me with a huff. My arm lands on a solid mass next to me and my previously closed eyes attempt to open. Well, one of them at least.
"I'm not Edward so you can stop touching my ass," Rose croaks beneath the blankets next to me.
"When did you get in here?" I grumble, rolling back over and taking some of the blankets back. "And why?"
"Like, an hour ago from Emmett's room. Your room was closer than mine." I remember giving her the extra key to my room and wonder why I thought that was a great idea.
"You were in Emmett's room?"
Not a surprise there.
"Yeah, I had to get out of there. Drunk Snores were out of control," she answers before adding, "Yours aren't much better, either."
"Hey!" I give her kick to whatever part of her body I can reach in my sleep deprived and alcohol influenced state. "I do not snore."
I hear her pshh into the pillow.
"Maybe not. But you are awfully handsy." She rolls onto her back and then laughs. "Edward must love it."
Against my better judgement, the need to tell her is stronger than my pounding headache.
"Edward and I slept together the night of the rehearsal dinner."
"I know."
"How?" I sit up a little too quickly, and my hands go to either side of my head. You know when you don't even have to look in a mirror but you just know your hair rivals that of Medusa? So much for the purpose of Bobby Pins if they don't keep your hair in place. I flop back down onto my side of the bed. Rose made it apparent that I have one of those now. A side of the bed. I would have preferred my favorite position of becoming my own personal starfish in my own bed.
"You didn't have to tell me," she shrugs like it's common knowledge. "I just knew."
I stew on that for as much as I can at seven in the morning. "Is it wrong that I don't feel bad about it? Like at all?"
"Girl, bye."
"I'm serious, Rose."
She closes her eyes again as if I'm keeping her from sleep. She is the one who came in my bed so I shove her until she continues. "So am I. Loved Tyler. Great guy. Not Edward."
"So I should stay then?" I ask after a few minutes just as I feel her breathing getting heavy again. "Here, in Forks?"
This time she rolls over to face me, sitting up so her head rests against the curve of her hand. "You know we've all missed you on this coast." She pauses. "My second bedroom is yours if you want it."
"Is that crazy, though? Dropping everything, moving across the country, for a guy?"
She rolls her eyes and her body away from me again, signaling the end of this conversation. For now, at least.
"You're not doing it for a guy," she drawls, her voice heavy with sleep. "You're doing it for you."
The temptation of sleep starts to pull me under again, and just when I surrender to its comfort, Rose juts an arm out and knocks me back into awareness.
"So does he still have a big dick?"
We laugh ourselves back to sleep.
-tr-
"Tell me why we have to go to this?" Rose asks for the hundredth time three hours later when we drag ourselves onto the elevator.
"We promised Alice we would," I reply, pressing the button to the lobby where a brunch awaits us.
"I underestimated the open bar," Rose whines, leaning against the corner of the elevator.
"Rookie mistake."
I'm not feeling the best either, but after chugging three bottles of water, some pain relievers, and three more solid hours of sleep, I feel like I can fake it til I make it. At least for a little while.
The elevator dings and Rose grabs her ears in protest at both the ding and my laughter.
She pulls me in towards her, "Okay, we'll say hi, grab whatever we can throw on a plate, and ditch back up to the room."
"I'm down."
Our plans are cut short when we spot Emmett and Edward at a table near the buffet. I notice they look no better than us as we approach their table and sit down.
"Morning," Rose grumbles and reaches for a water on the table.
"No." Emmett stops her, his eyes hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses. "Just no."
The three of us laugh as Emmett slides further down into his seat.
"Didn't think you guys would make it down," I say to Edward, thanking him as he pours me a glass of water.
"I needed some bacon grease," he says, rubbing a hand up and down his stomach. All of us understand all too well.
"I need a Bloody Mary," Emmett groans.
"Are those Mimosas?"
"Morning, guys!" Alice, the resident morning person in the group, appears tableside. "You made it!" She reaches down to wrap her arms around Rose's neck from behind.
Rose pokes her with a fork. "Yeah, we did. Can we go now?"
"I just wanted all of us to be together one last time before our honeymoon," Alice responds, sinking into a seat next to Jasper. He's definitely not as awake as she is. "As a bridal party, I think you guys rocked it."
We all agree, drifting off into yesterday's perfection.
"We just want to say thank you for making yesterday absolutely perfect," Alice continues. "A wedding is more than just fancy lights and food – "
"Dude, did you have the Prime Rib? Best I ever had," Emmett interrupts, Jasper and Edward coming out of their trances at the mention of food with nod of their heads.
Jasper clears his throat.
"Anyway," Jasper adds, "we couldn't imagine taking our vows without you all up there with us."
It feels like we're sitting at the lunch table again back at school, or at one of the picnic tables behind The Rec. It occurs to all of us that tables may change but some things will always be the same.
-tr-
"You headin' home?" Edward shuffles over to Rose's car where I am loading my bags and dress into the trunk. I nod, pointing towards the car.
"Yeah, Rose's parents dropped her car off here last night so I'm just going to head back with her."
He nods in agreement. "I'm right behind you." He rubs the back of his neck with his one hand, before exhaling loudly into the cold parking lot. He admits with a chuckle, "I'm hurting today."
I laugh right along with him, the only reason I'm still standing is because I can see visions of my bed on the horizon. "Signs of a good wedding, right?"
"Was there a wedding last night?" He questions, smiling and then grimacing a second later.
"I think so?"
"I know there was an open bar." He groans, reaching to me to slide my body next to his.
I gladly do. "Go home and rest."
He nods. "Call me later?"
"I will."
-tr-
I am asleep before my head hits my pillow, lost to unbroken sleep void of dreams or interruptions. I could have been dead for all I knew, and for the first time in almost forty eight hours, I am at peace. Between breaking into The Rec to drop off the picture I painted, to the rehearsal dinner, to spending the night with Edward, to Tyler showing up unannounced, to the whole wedding which is exhausting in its own right, I was surprised I had lasted and fared as well as I had under those circumstances.
It is no surprise to me that I slept the rest of the day away and into the following morning. I linger in bed for a while, not leaving the comfort of the sheets for no reason at all other than to soothe my soul. I feel like the same person I was before my trip to Forks yet also like someone completely new at the same time. I don't know what the difference is yet, but I feel like any minute I'll stumble upon it like I always do.
My parents aren't stupid – they know how long it takes me to recover from engaging in festivities with these childhood friends of mine. When I feel like I can keep a meal down without thinking of how it would taste on the way up, I join them downstairs and relish in the fulfilment it leaves me to see that Mom's already stored some of my missed meals in Tupperware in the fridge. Dad lets me use his favorite blanket when I nestle next to him on the couch to watch whatever movie fits his mood.
It's when a commercial for a major airline crosses the television screen that it hits me just like I thought it would.
How could I ever think about going back to New York?
I'm already home.
I feel free.
Even though I am packing my bags with all of my belongings, I feel free. Free from my own parameters, my own set of limitations that I set upon myself. I'm not carrying any of the What Ifs that I had used to hide my true feelings: loss. Heartbreak. Dreams unanswered. Instead, I am feeling full. What was lost is now found. What had broken my heart had actually helped me grow out of Edward and Bella and into Bella as an individual. Independent. The broken heart I had put back together with tape and wishes were now restored with gorilla glue and promises made to be kept.
I couldn't get out of there fast enough. Throwing my bags onto the backseat, I slide the car into Drive and don't look back.
From the outside looking in, it's still hard to see the beauty inside of it. There's still so much work to be done. The railing is still falling apart. The grass is either overgrown in some places or completely dead in others. The steps are still tilted and missing pieces altogether.
The Rec will always be beautiful to me, regardless of what it looks like on the outside, because it's not about what it looks like on the outside that matters.
I know I learned that a long time ago when I met a boy who had nothing to show to the world on the outside but hid a heart of gold on the inside.
He is The Rec. He offers joy and comfort and brokenness and the potential to be better. To be great. He is abandoned and restored and only missing pieces here and there.
Just like The Rec, he had been biding his time until all of his missing pieces aligned for the first time in his twenty eight years.
I take the steps two at a time, careful not to break my ankle on the broken steps or the crumbling railing. I know he knows I'm here with that damn security system he has, and it crosses my mind that I may set off every alarm known to man in the county, but I don't care. I crash into the door and make my entrance known with a bang, my eyes looking around frantically for any sign of him.
I see him at the same time he hears my loud entrance. He is doing something with the outlet on the wall near the kitchen area, and before he can speak I have my hands in the air between us silencing him.
"I'm staying." I rush to get the words out before he can stop me from saying them.
He gives me a soft and shy smile. "I know you are."
My tense body gives way and I place my hands on my hips in relief. "You know?"
He nods and steps close enough to me that with one move I can lose myself in his arms. He must feel the same rush as I do and pulls me in to him in a fierce embrace, his lips buried in my hair so his response is muffled.
"I feel like we've always known."
Simple.
He says it like it is as known and as predictable as the sun rising in the sky and the ocean waves crashing against the shore. I breathe him in; cling to his shirt as tears pool beneath my eyes. Before I blink them away, my eyes settle on the mantle behind me and on the painting I had left for him.
I barely had time to think about it in the past couple of days, but I had wondered if he had understood what it meant. That wherever he is, are where my own roots lie. He may not have roots at all, but together we have a foundation as strong as time itself.
It's not the painting that catches my attention, though. It's the mantle's newest addition. It's a framed picture that shows its age even behind the safety of the glass it's protected under.
Between the frame is a picture of all six of us our junior year of high school. Rose a senior, Emmett a freshmen in college. There's a Christmas tree in the background, holiday cookies on the table in front of us. Rose and Emmett are smirking, Jasper and Alice laughing at something together. Edward is smiling at the camera, but I am on Edward's back, my arms draped around his neck, my legs around his waist, my lips pressing flour covered kiss on his cheek.
The picture brings the memory to the forefront of my mind, and my heart clenches at the thought of so many more future memories in this same spot and even more to be made together in the house upstairs.
For someone who didn't have much of anything but managed to hold on to this for all these years tells me that he had more faith in us than I ever had.
I pull back from him to stare into his eyes. "No more hiding," I say, wiping my tears away so I can see him over my own blubbering. I add, "No more running."
He nods and pulls my face to his, his lips putting a stop to all the words, all the noise, all the nonsense.
I had been running. He had been chasing. He had been here this whole time, waiting for me.
And when he lets me up again for air, he says three words to me that I know he's been waiting to say since the day the boy in him finally realized he had turned into the man I always knew he was.
"Welcome home, Bella."
-tr-
Wow. I can't believe we made it here, guys! Just the epilogue to go. See you soon! Thanks for the reviews and recs. You don't know how much they mean to me!