Summer Flame
I met him for the first time when I was seventeen.
A wild, crazy, heart-bearing summer of salty waves and sandy toes.
On the second night, he kissed me under the setting sun.
He laid me down on the dunes, a grassy, itchy patch of vegetation crawling with life as he kissed from my neck to my shoulders to the tiny little birthmark under my breast.
We shared stories, and secrets, and promises.
He broke my heart on the tenth night, clarifying it was just a summer fling and nothing more.
I took his ego and shattered it on the eleventh day when I kissed his best friend on the boardwalk.
Looking back, after all these years, I regret that the most.
The following summer, I swore him off. His family moved back into their beach home, and he was here to stay.
Rosalie made his existence a living hell the second his family arrived until the moment they left. Once, he tried to eat at Dad's restaurant. But what he doesn't know is that in this beach town, when you mess with one local, you mess with them all.
Rosalie really, really fucked him up after that.
By the end of summer, the year I turned eighteen, he hadn't said a word to me.
The night before he left, he walked up behind me at a beach party. His body was warm against mine, even next to the heat of the fire.
"I fucking miss you," he whispers so softly that I spend the next year imagining if it ever even happened.
The third summer his family spends here in the Outer Banks drags on. Two hurricanes hit back-to-back, and tourism is slow because of it. My dad only keeps me around on the weekends, so I'm free Monday through Friday, and Rosie and I conveniently find ourselves at our favorite private beach.
Her top lays next to her bare breasts, sand covering the sides. I wish I could be as purely confident as she is.
My tan deepens the longer we stay out, and the longer we lay out, the more I think about him, and the more I think about him, the more I want to see him.
Feel him.
Kiss him.
It's not until August that I let him find me, and when he does, it's an apology that flows from the lips I want nothing more than to rest mine against.
"Shhh," I whisper, gripping his hand and leading him into the water.
"Bella, I—"
"Light me on fire," I tell him, waist-deep in a blanket of motion.
He does. Edward consumes me, pushing my body against his, opening me up, sucking the breath from my lungs without actually kissing me.
And on the last night of summer, lit up under a streetlight on the empty boardwalk, Edward kisses me, exhaling a fire inside me so eternal it won't so much as flicker.
The next summer and the summer after that are much the same. He comes and goes; I play hard to get; we meet up and consume each other like a flame on gasoline.
He hangs around other girls, and I watch from afar as he kisses them, holding their bodies against his own. I convince myself it doesn't hurt as much because I allow it to happen. I allow him to sleep with me and then with others.
I allow it, so I don't get hurt.
And so, I allow myself to do the same.
And I allow him to watch it go down.
On a stormy Thursday night, at the party of a close friend of mine, Edward huddles around the kitchen with his crew. I walk past him and his friends in nothing but the shortest denim I could find, and a tight tank top. And a boy pressed to my backside.
He dances on me, lips against the salty summer skin of my neck. The sun practically drips from my hair.
"Wanna get out of here?" he asks into my ear.
When I turn around, it's Edward's eye I catch. His white knuckles grip the beer can in his hand, and I smile up at the handsome blonde who is nothing to the man I need.
"Okay," I answer sweetly.
I'm anything but.
Isabella Swan isn't made of sugar; she's seared with more spice than any baker could handle.
Walking past Edward, hand in hand with the blonde, lit the fire I so desperately crave.
All the other men have tried to extinguish it, put me out; Edward's only fanned the flames. He gets my ferocity.
I make the second biggest mistake of my life this night. I sleep with the blonde to spite Edward.
He doesn't talk to me the rest of the summer.
I hate to admit that I cry against Rosalie's shoulder too many times to count.
That spring, I graduate college and find a job that doesn't allow me to escape life and head back to the only place my body craves. I go the summer without Edward, without Rosalie, without the fire.
And the next year.
And the next.
Three long summers alone, away from my life, and I get a phone call that changes it all.
"Bella, honey, it's Mom. Dad… Dad died this morning."
It's hard. It's really fucking hard. He was everything to us, and now… now he's nothing.
I take leave from work that summer and help Mom get things straightened. It's the middle of June, too hot to handle, and Rosalie and I are dressed in black as we walk back from the funeral.
We drink a margarita on the beach for Dad and get sun drunk. We strip out of the confines of black and run into the water of our favorite spot. We swim on our backs and pretend we're seventeen again.
In July, Mom puts the restaurant up for sale. By August, it's bought.
"Who would want that piece of—"
Mom gasps in horror. "You watch your language, Bella Marie. Just because you're grown doesn't mean—"
I roll my eyes and cut her off. "Who would buy a dilapidated restaurant that was on death's door… like Dad," I add for comic relief.
Mom doesn't find it funny, but it's the only way I can cope.
"Some local guy. Not sure what he wants to do with it."
"Who was it?" I ask, hoping it's not Mike Newton trying to turn it into another chain restaurant.
"Edward something or other."
I freeze mid-thought. "Edward?" I question. "Edward Cullen?"
"Yes, that's it! Handsome fellow. And sweet. He's got the cutest damned kid, too, Bella. You should see him—"
I'm not listening to her. My brains too busy catching up on what she's saying.
"Where does he live?"
"His folks owned a home in town. I think he stays there. The white house on the corner of Grove and—"
She doesn't need to tell me. I've been there too many times to count. Driving there is like singing a song from childhood. It may have been a very, very long time, but I know every fucking word.
My fist flies so rapidly it's like a beating heart against the front door.
The door flies open in quick, questioning speed.
"Yes?" he asks before taking me in.
White sundress, long brown hair, arms crossed in an uncertain emotion.
"What—" I start but can't finish. "Why—" I try again with no luck. "Are you—" but my voice cracks, and the thought of Edward owning my late father's pride and joy restaurant consumes me.
The fire that so many tried to quell ignites, reminding me what I'm still made of—what I've always been made of.
It reminds me that he never once tried to smother my fire.
"Why don't you come in, Bella," Edward says softly, opening his door.
Edward explains he and my dad had grown close over the years, how they'd talk about me. My dad would tell him about my intensity, Edward would tell him about my stubbornness.
I can't help but laugh.
"Why were we so…" he trails off, shaking his head.
"Dumb?" I ask.
He laughs with a nod, but I can't answer because there is no answer.
"You're married?" I ask.
"Single."
"My mom said—"
He shakes his head. "You can have a kid and be single."
"How old is—"
"He's three," Edward says with a smile.
"So, you live here year-round now?"
Edward nods. "You?"
I shake my head and stand. "I work in town."
Edward stops me and asks, "do you want to, I don't know, have coffee sometime?"
Looking down at him I smile, then nod, and then breathe.
Coffee turns into dinner, and dinner turns into a midnight beach walk.
"Where's your son?" I ask. "I don't want to keep you from him."
"With his mom."
"Oh. So, she lives in town?"
He nods.
We don't say a whole lot the rest of the walk. The waves talk for us.
As we climb through the sand to the sidewalk, Edward stops me, pulls a pen from his pocket, and grabs my hand.
"I've fucked things up so much in the past. This one's up to you, Bella. Give me a call if you want to do this again."
And there on my palm, like we're seventeen again, is Edward's number.
I think about it for a few days. His number now sits on a piece of paper on my mom's counter as I pace back and forth on the phone with Rosalie.
"Should I?" I ask her over and over.
"Do you want to?"
"Part of me says yes, and part of my says no," I reason.
"Does any part of you want to jump his bones?" she teases.
"That's the thing that scares me," I tell her. "Every part of me does."
"Give it a chance," she encourages. "You're older now."
I nod in agreement, surprised by her support.
"Older doesn't always mean wiser."
A week later, I called him. Two days after that we meet for dinner. Two weeks later, he kisses me for the first time since we were teenagers, but the butterflies are still the same.
"Why were we so stupid?" he asks me. "Why did we insist on hurting each other when it could've been this good?"
His lips touch mine sinfully slow.
"Ego," I remind him. "Pride."
I sleep at his house without sleeping with him. In the morning light, washed in the salty air, Edward runs his fingers through my hair breathing light and kindness and warmth into me.
Two weeks after that, I meet his son.
He's the spitting image of him. Porcelain skin, bright eyes, wild hair. We play in the sand; we swim in the waves; we eat soft serve on the boardwalk.
Before the sun sets, while his dad holds my hand, Mason whispers, "you're really pretty, but don't tell my mom."
That night, after he puts Mason to sleep, Edward stokes the fire inside me. His hands and mouth leave warm trails of kisses across my skin; pebbled flames shoot out in their wake.
His whispered words soak into my skin.
"Stay."
"I can't."
"Stay."
"Edward…"
"Stay."
On the morning I'm set to leave, Edward doesn't hold me back. He's said everything he needed to and then some, but he leaves it up to me to decide my fate.
I never make it past the county line before I turn my car around and drive straight to his house.
Edward's out the door and in my arms before the car's barely in park.
"Stay," he whispers against my neck. "Stay."
"Okay."