33.
I adore my bedroom. It is a refuge, a safe space. Near the back of the house, next to the screen door that flaps back and forth in the wind, the repeated slap of wood and netting on door frame. It's soothing, like the tap of an ethereal presence, a constant reminder, a welcome home. In spring, I open the window wide. Each year the rusty contraption requires more force, more elbow grease as I shove up from the inside. A grunt as the dry desert air comes rushing in, bathing the room in something earthy and raw. My bed is small and covered in a quilt passed down for generations. It's a bit musty but that's the way I like it, made up as if from another world, hand-knit by the steady fingers of an ancient god. In summer when it's too hot no electricity, I throw the quilt off and sleep naked atop it. I bake. In the winter when it's too cold no electricity, I leave my sacred chamber, bare feet on icy wooden floor, and traipse into my parent's room. I cuddle close with my mother. There is no substitute for body heat.
I have never lived alone. I was born into a family and I was trained to die in one, from the expectant arms of a father to the waiting arms of a husband. But now, I am alone in this apartment of clean lines, neutral cream paint, thin carpeting, gray appliances, plastic countertop, bedroom with blinds built into the window. I run my finger along the flap and it comes away dusty, use the knob to part them and peer through their gaps like a prisoner in a jail cell. Outside, Tacoma. Not quite downtown. A row of apartment buildings similar to the one I'm in now. Wooden siding stained with wet dripping down, doors with brass numbers that climb numerically. Stairs on the outside that wind skyward to the upper floors, sheltered under eaves of roofing. I looked at several apartments before choosing this one, all hardly divergent from the same genome. One has space for a den, one has an electric stove. One faces north, the other south. One is on the ground floor. One still has indents in the carpet from the couch of the last resident, little potholes worn deep from years of sitting.
This one is close to the cafe. Walking distance. Angela comes over after work on occasion, helps me decorate. We buy a wingback armchair and curtains that match. I sit in the chair and read. Outside, a giant fir brushes the window. A caress. There are times when I lose myself. When I am no one and also everyone. I become the protagonist, the antagonist. The hero, the villain, the dubious in-between. I imprint on the characters in the stories until the chair is no longer beneath me, the window no longer beside me. The fir tree becomes a suggestion, a shadow behind glass. I traipse through foreign worlds and near ones just as strange. The flatlands of Kansas. Tornadoes, brush fires. Tumbleweeds. Mountains capped with snow like the reaching peaks of Sisters. Planets with no water or air. Deep space and the suction of all sound. Dense forests packed with trees. A colony underground, running out of time. I am there and nowhere and everywhere. I am nameless and ageless, a stencil sketch. There are still words I must sound out, complicated sentences that I must parse. But I am learning this world and all of the words within it.
Esme arrives for our weekly dinner. Thursday nights, 5:30 on the dot. We stand in the small apartment kitchen chopping vegetables: bell peppers red yellow orange, a mirror of the imminent sunset, bulbous white onions, mushrooms flecked with the dirt of their former homes. My blade slices clean through its malleable skin, meeting the cutting board below it with a snap.
"How was your shift today?" Esme is asking. But I am distracted, thinking of a submarine dropping lower and lower into deep ocean, a giant whale, a sinking ship. I am startled from my reverie when Esme clears her throat.
"What? Sorry," I stammer, broken from my trance.
"I asked how your shift was," Esme repeats gently, always patient. Always understanding.
"Oh. Fine, yeah. It was fine. Nothing eventful," I reply.
"Good. That's good," she trails off.
"How is Carlisle?" I ask. And this is when our game begins. We speak around Edward. We allude to him, the dark void between us, the gap that consumes. But we don't say his name. That is the unspoken rule: to leave him unspoken.
"Oh, he's alright. He told me to say he's sorry he couldn't make it tonight. Another long shift at the lot. You know how it is."
I make a noise of acknowledgement, looking back down to focus on the vegetables. Esme places her knife on the counter, looks at me. Waits until I do the same. In the sink, the faucet leaks a steady drip, drip, drip into the basin below. It's the only sound in the room besides the dull push of air conditioning through vents. Outside, a car horn honks angrily. Brakes squeal, shriek. The pads rubbed raw. Catch and release. Runaway truck ramp ahead!
"We should talk," Esme says, letting out a deep sigh. I feel myself careening down a mountain pass. I clutch the counter, knuckles white ten and two.
"About what?" I ask even though I already know.
"About Edward," she says. On the stove, a pot of water threatens to boil over.
"What is there to say?" I mutter, dusting invisible crumbs off my hands just for something to do.
"Come," she says, leading me to the couch, its legs already forming craters in the carpet for the next occupant to cover up. I sit beside her hesitantly, our cooking forgotten. After a long silence, she says: "You're turning twenty-one next month."
I nod in acknowledgement.
"That was around how old Edward was when Carlisle and I first met him," she says slowly, waiting for me to accept this line of conversation. I give her a reluctant nod. "He was different then. Less… stoic. Less contained. He was vibrant and... and unexpected. You never knew what he was going to do next. Always thinking. You could see it in his eyes. It was almost… calculated. Not manipulative, of course. But he was planning. Plotting. Thinking of his next step. Always moving. Never relaxed or content." She's become one with her thoughts, her eyes up to the ceiling, a small smile on her face. Cherished memories, reminiscent.
"When he was with Tanya," I interject, forcing myself to say her name.
"Yes," Esme acknowledges, surprised. "Tanya, too. They'd both been dealt a bad hand. They were just kids, you know? They needed help."
"And you helped them? You and Carlisle?" I ask.
"We took them in," she says. "It was only meant to be for a few weeks, to help them get back on their feet. That's all they needed, really. Well, that's all Tanya needed."
"And Edward… left her behind? Here, with you?" Like me? I ask, the rest of the question implied, struggling to get the words out, remembering my accusation in the store room, the coffee beans all around us. Metal shelving and serious words. His face, devastated. Determined. You don't know what you're talking about.
"What?" Esme looks startled. "Edward didn't tell you?"
I shake my head.
"Tanya left him, not the other way around. She wanted more, Bella. She was young, had her whole future ahead of her. She just needed that bit of help to get her started. And then she was off," Esme explains. "She wanted to find her family. Start something new. She was so young. They both were. Like you now."
"She left him," I repeat. "She wanted more."
"She was at the beginning of something. And Edward… well, as I said, he was always plotting. But Tanya leaving, that wasn't part of his plan."
"What happened?" I whisper.
"After she left, Edward left too. It was bad, Bella. We nearly didn't get him back." Her voice catches. She holds it in, takes a deep breath before speaking again. "I love him like a son. I know I shouldn't, I know that he's not really mine. But there's something about him… he feels like mine. I want to protect him. I only ever wanted to protect him." She places her head in her hands, leans away from me.
"Esme–"
Esme holds up her hand, waves it in my direction.
"I know it's unfair, Bella. But I saw you. How young you are. How much you want, how you only needed a little help to get started. And I saw Edward, saw how much he cared for you. The way he looked at you, couldn't stop looking at you. Like you were everything. He was plotting again, planning again. He was vibrant. Smiling. And I knew that if you left, that would end. I would lose him, too, like the last time. Maybe even permanently. And I just couldn't… I just couldn't." She stops again, starts. The skip of a record player, the jump of a needle. "I fear I've lost him anyway."
I scoot closer to her. Smell her familiar scent. Her curved shoulders, the slope of her spine beneath a cardigan. Her hair, flecked with gray. Perhaps I've never been so close. Never seen the details of her. Never bothered with the full picture. Never truly seen.
"He'll come back," I say, placing my hand on her shoulder. I don't know if what I'm saying is true; I don't have any indication that it is. Outside my window, the fir tree scrapes. The sun sets. Esme inhales, the exhale shaky staccato. She smiles at me and it's a watery, liquid thing. How have I never noticed? Her eyes are gray!
We both jump apart, the shriek of the fire alarm bouncing through the apartment. She chuckles slightly, running her hands over her pants. We move to action, removing the food from the stove. I take a magazine, wave it beneath the alarm. It blinks angrily back. I throw open the window, its greased, new edges easy to slide. The fir reaches in, a wave of hello. A welcome.
That night, I lay in bed thinking. Wondering. I picture Tanya, her face in the polaroid. Her red lipstick. Her hair. Was she like me? Planning her ending, writing her next chapter? Hoping for an escape? Manipulating the narrative? Scrawling in the margins? I want to hate her, but understanding is the enemy of hate. It's the antidote. Her desires left a wake, her choices had consequences. Just as mine did, just as Esme's continue to do. There is intention and there is outcome. There are actions and there are reactions. A stone thrown in a still pond, dropped off a dam into the lake below, inevitably creates a ripple. A vibration along a fault line. How can I blame the stone? It couldn't help but fall, a victim to gravity's constant acceleration. Tanya wants a new start. I want an escape. Esme wants a son. Where is the cruelty in that?
Right before I fall asleep, I'm left with one last lingering thought. What does Edward want?
It's the middle of the night. The moon shines through the window, the open but down blinds leaving stripes of light across my bed. There is a loud, repetitive noise. At first, I think it's the fire alarm. It's gone off again, Esme's still here, I've left something on the stove. The timeline is all mixed up in my head, a video tape running in reverse, resetting to the beginning. After a moment, I realize it's my phone ringing. Only four people in this world have my contact, but when I look at the screen it reads only as an unknown caller. I press my palms into my eyes, double-checking my reality. My voice is gruff when I answer.
"Hello?"
On the other side, endless silence.
"Hello?" I repeat, impatient now.
"Bella?" Hasty. Recognizable. Imperfect. Real. "Bella? It's Edward."
x
i know it can be hard to read stories that aren't told chronologically. i appreciate your patience with this fic and its characters x