I do not own Twilight.
Sorrrry it's been so long! Here's a couple of chapters to (hopefully) keep you happy.
My mother stares at me from across the dining room table, her eyes tight, her mouth chewing slowly. I feel like she can read everything that happened today on my face like a book. And it's not a book she wants to read again.
She sighs and puts down her fork, abandoning her picked at salad. Her eyes are like interrogation lights.
"How was your day, honey?"
I chew quietly, thoughtfully, taking a sip of water before daring to answer. Charlie is sitting at the head of the table, but he's no more in charge of this conversation than I am.
"Good," I say. Is it a lie? I don't know.
"How was the…visit?" The slight purse in her lips tells me she's still against any sort of visitation. She's still betting on the restraining order.
I shrug, push around a tomato on my plate.
"Hard," I say. It's the truth, and I know my mom is not one for beating around the bush. Besides, she'd get her answers one way or another.
"What did you talk about?" I know she's not asking to be polite. There's a morbid curiosity about her tone. Like she's desperate to know, to be a fly on the wall.
I stare at her. "A lot," I say.
She sighs and I can suddenly see myself in her. The impatience, the need-to-know, the irritation. We've been mirror images of each other my whole life, though we butt heads on nearly every topic.
"Isabella, you are not thinking of taking him back."
It's not a question, and coming from my mother, this isn't a question. She knows what she wants to happen. She knows how she wants this story to play out. I wonder what she would think if I showed her my discolored wrist? I wonder who her favorite would be then?
I don't answer her statement because, for one, I don't know how to answer. But also, because it's the question that everyone has been asking me, like it's some judgement that I need to make now, on the spot. Like there's no room for growth, no room for healing. It's black and white, a yes or no.
But life isn't that easy. If it was, there would be no purpose to the color gray.
I think about saying that to her, just to spite her, but I know it will inevitably end in one of our famous literature-is-a-waste-of-time-and-money arguments and I really don't need any more arguments in my life today.
"Isab—" she starts, proving everything that I know about her right, but I slam down my glass, pushing my plate away from me, interrupting my name mid-syllable.
"What if I am?" I demand hotly and then in the same breath, "What if I'm not?"
She doesn't say anything.
"How does what I do affect you? Why do I feel like I have to run everything by you? Every decision I make, every person I talk to, every dollar I spend gets some sort of comment, some opinion that I never asked for!" I slap my hand against the table. "I'm an adult, now. I don't even live at home anymore. Can't you respect my decisions and move on from them?"
My mother's mouth is tight, her lips pressed in irritation, her eyes narrowed in disbelief. "This has nothing to do with me—"
"What do you mean this has nothing to do with you?" In the blindness of my anger, the infuriating tears welling, I barely notice Charlie trying to quell the situation. "This has everything to do with you! I dated in college because you told me to! I moved in with Mike because you told me to!"
"I didn't tell you—"
Anger is a curious emotion. It releases itself in a multitude of ways—tears, yelling, silence. But the way my mother looks right now, the way she is speaking in tones that are just barely over a whisper, has never before been in her vocabulary of anger—nor mine. She sounds defeated, like she's learning something knew, something horrible.
"Your mother didn't make you do those things, Bella," Charlie states, but I can see the danger warring in his eyes. He doesn't know who to stand for. With anything Edward, it's always been me. But having to choose between my anger, and my mother's?
"Maybe not outright, no!" I yell, glancing between my mother and Charlie. "But words sink in, you know. Those subtle hints that weren't so subtle? They kept me up at night, mom."
"Like what?" she asks, her voice and chin trembling slightly and I'm resistant to seeing her cry; resistant to feeling badly for her.
I scoff, putting up my hand to count off each topic that has drilled into my head; the ones I took without fight, because it was easier.
"Edward," I say, "Anything about Edward. Anything bad. Even when his mom left—she left a seventeen-year-old to fend for himself, you couldn't find a nice thing to say about him." I add another finger. "College," I continue. "Do you know how hard it is to try to be happy in a field that I'm supposed to love when it's constantly being torn down by my own mother? You preach being happy with yourself and loving what you do, but you can't fucking respect it, can you?"
Her mouth falls open at the curse. I never curse around my mom—I never curse in general, but it seemed a necessary evil.
"Mike," I say, ignoring any retort she would have. "You pushed me and pushed me to start dating. You didn't want me to have time to catch myself. You didn't want me to have time to heal because you were afraid I'd go back to Edward, like he was some end-all-be-all for me. And you know what the first thing I thought of when I met Mike was?" I stare at her, her appearance blurry through the tears, though my voice, surprisingly, is strong. "'Mom will be happy.' Do you know how fucked up that is?!"
I hear her teeth click together, though at this point, whether it's out of anger or hurt, I'm not sure.
"And no, mom. I don't like visiting my ex-boyfriend in prison, but I'm afraid of what will happen to him if I don't visit—and I'm afraid of what will happen to me. Do you have any idea how it feels to stare into the empty eyes of someone you've loved with every part of you? Do you know what it's like to be told that you were all they had, and then have to deal with the fact that you left them anyways?!"
My voice breaks on the last word, and the torrent of tears is unstoppable.
It's worse even, I think, than the very first time I visited, when I cried in front of Charlie afterwards.
But, even though I can hear and feel my mom hushing me, stroking my hair against my agonizing sorrow, the words ring true in my ears.
It's like the floodgates have opened, releasing all of my regrets with them.