"Are you absolutely sure?"
I pressed the phone to my ear and rested it on my shoulder, pushing open the front screen door and bending down to pick up a very large package that had just been deposited onto the front porch. The box wasn't too heavy to maneuver but the phone that I had cradled between my ear and shoulder made the whole scenario awkward and difficult. After a few huffs and puffs, I managed to shove the box into the house and slide it firmly into the foyer with my foot.
"Yes. I'm positive." I squeaked out, my voice sounding like I had just run a sprint.
"And nothing is damaged?"
Turning the box around for further inspection, I shook my head as my breathing returned to normal.
"Not from what it looks like. Hold on; let me take it out." Reaching behind me to the key holder on the wall, I grabbed the first set of keys I could reach and stuck them into the opening of the box, sliding the key along the edges of the tape, making the flaps gasp for their well over due freedom.
"Looks perfect," I muttered in relief. Opening the flaps, I reached in and grabbed the black dress, the soft material pooling in my hands. "A little wrinkled, but that's to be expected from being shipped across the country."
After spending the past few days on the phone back and forth with Tyler, Alice, and the postal service, we managed to send my bridesmaids dress from New York here to Forks. Tyler never complained about doing his part – finding the dress in my closet, and the matching shoes, then boxing them according to Alice's instructions. It had only taken a few days, luckily, and the relief this sent to Alice exuded in waves through our phones.
"Thank God," sighed Alice. "One more thing I can cross off the list."
I could picture her in my mind physically crossing this item off of her never ending To –Do List, and I couldn't help but feel sorry for her for this added burden. Alice could handle life's fastballs well, but it didn't necessarily mean she had to.
"Sorry for all this," I mumbled, plopping down onto the couch in the living room once the dress was secured safely back into the box.
"Stop, Bella. It's nothing."
I knew better than to pick a fight with a bride to be.
"Whatever you say. So, what's next to cross off your list?" I fumbled with the edges of the blanket that had spent most of its life on the back of the couch.
"We have an appointment tonight with all the guys for tux fittings."
"Final?"
Alice exhaled loudly before responding. "Almost. Final will be a few days before the wedding to make sure everything is perfect."
"And when is ours?"
"You and Rose have your final appointment on Thursday and I have mine on Saturday morning."
"Wow. It's getting real."
The wedding was in less than two weeks, and it was hard for me to wrap my head around how fast it all was happening. After they had announced their engagement and set a date, it had seemed like a lifetime before the actual wedding, and now that it was almost staring us in the face, I couldn't believe that the time had almost come.
"Tell me about it." I could hear the exhaustion and stress in her words. "There's not much left to do, but still so much to do."
"I'm here to help. I can't guarantee that your centerpieces will come out looking anything like the way you imagined them once I get my hands on them, but I'm all yours."
Alice laughed, "You busy Sunday? I plan on finishing all the programs, bows for the seat covers, and the gift bags for the guests staying overnight at the hotel."
"Alice, I literally dropped out of the sky, unplanned, on the other side of the country. I have zero plans for the rest of time."
There was a slight pause on the other end of the line. "I didn't know if you and Edward had made any plans."
"It's not like that," I replied, hoping that my voice came across as nonchalant as I had hoped for. Nonchalance is usually a far cry from anything involving me and Edward Cullen.
"Not yet," she added, her voice sounding soft like a song from my childhood. "Besides, haven't you two been talking since Bill's the other night?"
Oh, yes.
It had been three days since we had all met up that night at Bill's and began our morning at The Rec. The atmosphere was solemn when the six of us turned our backs on the abandoned building, each of us processing a part of our former selves that we all had tried to remain buried for so long. Later that night, after I had spent the day sleeping since I had spent most of the previous night awake, I had woken up to a message from Edward, separate from our group chat, and we had retained a comfortable and ongoing conversation ever since.
A fresh round of guilt bubbled up inside of me and I shook my head and wrapped the blanket from the couch around me in an attempt to block it all. While I was going back and forth with Alice and Tyler about my damn dress, I was also going back and forth with Edward, and I couldn't stop the butterflies in my stomach with each chime of his message if I even tried.
There really was a special place in Hell for people like me.
It was unspoken, but it was there, nonetheless. Our conversations were light, easy, flowing without a sense of purpose. Drifting. Unspoken or not, it would remain that way.
I had no desire at the moment to delve deeper into our past. I was still reeling from everything with Tyler and I truthfully did not think any of my coping strategies that I had deemed effective in the past would or could come close to navigating a potential disaster with Edward.
So I tried my best to put my guilt aside and live in the moment and see where it took me.
I wasn't naive. I knew that Edward and I would eventually have to discuss the ugly parts of a thing we once called beautiful.
But it was the unspoken not yet that I clung to.
In an attempt to downplay Alice's insinuations, I interjected, "Yeah, but I've also been talking to all of you since Bill's."
I could practically hear her eyes roll through the phone. "Are you actually trying to convince me that talking to Edward privately and talking to all of us in a group chat is the same thing?"
"I'm just saying that it's not a big deal."
"Um, wrong. It's huge."
"Can we not make it huge?"
"It's too huge not to make it huge. Sorry."
"We're just talking."
"Yes! And that is huge! You went from not talking for ten years to talking regularly in a four day span."
Yeah, I guess huge is the right word.
"I'm too tired for this."
"I agree. How about you come to the tux fitting tonight? I can use another female's perspective since I'll be surrounded by an abundance of testosterone."
I looked around the room, the house empty and bleak to match my current social situation. My dad was working and Mom was puttering around town doing whatever it was that she did all day, so I agreed to go.
-tr-
After a shower and blow dry, I decided on jeans and a white long sleeve shirt, slipping on a dark blue puffy vest and forgoing a jacket. Being around Edward made me all sorts of flustered and the last thing I wanted was for him to see me with a puddle of sweat dripping down my face.
Since I had not planned on arriving to Forks two weeks earlier than intended, I did not have a car of my own and did not want to spend the money on a rental for the next two weeks. Rose agreed to go with us to the tux fitting, and was picking me up on the way.
Mom had ended up meeting with friends from the library for dinner, so I didn't feel bad for leaving anyone behind when Rose picked me up at six. It was a quick drive to the tailor, and we filled the car with upcoming wedding details. Rose knew where I stood in terms of discussing Edward and I but it didn't stop her from looking at me as if I were fighting the inevitable. Luckily, she had left it at that.
Rose and I walked in the store as the sales associate flitted by the door with the suits carried by her and another woman behind her. Judging by the blinding smile on Alice' face, it looked as if the tuxes were all in. Emmett had gotten there before us, shockingly, so he was Alice's first victim. He emerged from behind the curtain a few minutes later, and the tailor immediately got to work on perfecting his look for the big day. Alice and Jasper remained at his side, adding in their own input regardless if it was solicited or not. Another of Jasper's groomsmen, a college roommate by the name of Peter, disappeared behind another curtain for his fitting to begin.
Alice took this moment to join us on the side.
"Well? What do you think?" I didn't know what Alice was more excited for: seeing another piece of her master plan come together or being able to check another item off of her list of things accomplished.
"I think two out of four isn't bad," Rose said, pointing back towards two of the four groomsmen, Emmett and Peter, who were being tugged and pulled and poked and prodded with pins of all sizes. "They really do look great."
I had to agree. Going with the red and black Valentine's Day theme, the guys were all a sight to see.
"Do you like the red vests? Not too much?" For once there was doubt in Alice's voice and I shook my head, pointing towards a catalog that sat at the table near us.
"I like this darker shade. Much better than the fire engine red you originally wanted," I answered, thumbing through the catalog until I found the one Alice had ultimately chosen. "It's called Ruby Burgundy."
"I'm.. Ruby.. Burgundy?" Leave it to Emmett to land a joke halfway across the room while being poked with needles.
"It matches your flowers perfectly!" Rose exclaimed excitedly, sharing a smile so wide with Alice that pretty soon I was wearing a matching smile as well.
The excitement in the room was palpable. We were going through the catalog, Alice pointing out this and that about her decisions when Jasper interrupted her with a hand on her elbow.
"Edward's running a little late so I'm going to head in," he said, pointing towards the dressing room curtain.
"You can't see the groom. Let's go," I said, gently nudging Alice out the door. She stopped when us girls were almost out the door.
"One of you stay here. Make sure he looks perfect!"
"Not it!" Rose and I said in unison to each other, with me beating her by a fraction of a beat.
"Fuck you. I'll see you in a bit." Rose muttered and headed back towards the guys.
"Can you see anything?" Alice asked a few minutes later after we had stopped laughing at Rose. Her back was on the door of the store. I peered over her shoulder to see what was happening inside. I leaned back and shook my head.
"Yeah, the curtain that Jasper is changing behind. He literally just got in there."
Alice laughed, "You'd be surprised how quickly he can take his clothes off."
"Is it too late to trade spots with Rose?"
"What about now?"
"Still just a curtain."
"We decided on Jasper wearing a different tux than his groomsmen. White vest, white shirt, white tie. Everything else black." I watched as Alice began to pace back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the store, her breath coming out in shallow puffs as she paced.
"Hey, are you okay?" I reached my arms out and she walked into them, taking slow deep breaths against me.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Just sometimes I can't believe I finally get to marry him," she gushed, and my heart grew. I pulled her back in for another hug, conveying without words just how happy I was for her. I managed to get her to sit on the top step, the frigid concrete freezing into my ass as we waited for Rose to come out to tell us the coast was clear with Jasper back safe into the dressing room.
A few minutes and a barrage of questions to Rose later, we were back inside the store getting ready to head out for a bite to eat.
"Ah, there you are, man!" Jasper shouted when the bell above the door sounded into the store.
"We were about to restrain Alice," Rose joked as Edward made his way towards us all.
"Sorry, sorry. Got held up at work." He was wearing a dark sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, and it looked as if he had been on the run for the majority of the day.
"Work? What's in your hair?" Emmett stared at him strangely, reaching out to touch what looked to be a light layer of dust spackled into the confines of Edward's unruly hair.
"My hair?" Edward asked, dodging Emmett's unwanted hands and instead ruffling his own hair with his own fingers.
A tiny snowstorm rained down out of Edward's hair and onto the floor around us all, Alice darting over three of us to make sure Edward didn't sprinkle onto the suits.
"Yeah, it looks like you face planted at La Push then came straight here," Jasper added.
"What the fuck is that?" Emmett interrogated, still intrigued by the substance, running his fingers over a small dusting Edward had created unpurposely on the top of the table.
"Sand?"
"You ready?" The tailor spoke up then, with a threat of pins in Edward's direction.
"Yeah, man. Sorry," Edward said, hightailing it into the dressing room, trailing behind a puff of sand/dust from his hair as he pulled his sweatshirt up and over his head.
While the rest of them mulled over Edward's mystery residue, I had to decide if I could handle seeing Edward in a tuxedo at this very moment. I had months to prepare for seeing him the day of the wedding but this was unplanned and I suddenly doubted my abilities of keeping it light at the sight of him in his Ruby Burgundy vest and black suit.
I didn't have time to plan my escape. Edward came out of the dressing room in a hurry, heading straight to the mirror as if he had a place to be. I watched his eyes drift over his reflection, turning this way and that before the tailor instructed him on how he needed him to stand.
It was at this moment that his eyes caught my own in the mirror, and for the first time since he walked into the store, he stepped out of whatever world he was lost in and found me. His eyes softened at my small smile.
"What do you think?" He asked with a quirk of a half-smile.
What did I think?
I thought the man could make a burlap sack look good. I thought my legs were going to give out at the sight of him.
Self-control was slipping out of me like air.
In the end, I opted for honesty. "You look incredible," I told him, the words coming out soft with a powerful truth behind them.
He gave me a brief smile in return before he was abruptly turned away to measure his inseam.
I welcomed the interruption.
"Where to eat?" Emmett asked once they were all finished. Their suits were to be finalized one day next week, which meant that the guys could spend the next week carrying on with their lives. Us girls, on the other hand, had two more fittings and a mani/pedi on the books for next week. We had to decide on make-up and hair trials and other things that went into being in a bridal party.
The thought of dinner made my stomach growl.
"There's that new Mexican place that just opened up," Alice offered. The sun was still out, a rarity in these parts, but it was dwindling down to its last life.
"I'm down," Jasper agreed, and Rose and I shrugged and agreed on account of the Margaritas.
"You in?" I asked Edward as we all headed to our cars. He looked hesitant, a look fitting for how rushed he had seemed all night. He looked towards the sky, rubbing one hand on the back of his neck.
"Rain check? I kind of need the sun before it's gone."
"'Need the sun?' The fuck, man?" The look of confusion on Emmett's face was priceless.
"I'll catch you later," Edward said to us all, and shot a reassuring glance and smile in my direction.
"We'll follow you," Rose said to Emmett and he responded with a nod and wave of his hand.
I had no idea where this new restaurant was so I didn't question the direction that Emmett was going in. Rose and I were too caught up discussing the wedding and how good all the guys looked in their suits to really pay attention where we were going. We just followed along, blending in with the limited flow of traffic between the looping hills and tall trees of Forks.
In a town where there wasn't much to do, the figurative four walls could close in on you quickly. Joyriding with friends became another pastime we enjoyed doing, so we knew these roads like the back of our hands. We could pilot these roads in our sleep, unaware of the journey but on a fast track to the right destination.
That was probably why Rose and I were jolted out of our conversation when we recognized our surroundings and where Emmett had taken us.
"Why the fuck are we here?" Rose asked, The Rec looming in front of us as all of our cars came to a halt in the rickety driveway.
"This is where Emmett took us?"
"Apparently," Rose said, pointing towards Emmett as he got out of the car with a look I couldn't describe written on his face.
We got out of the car and followed Emmett's lead, Rose and I having to jog in order to catch up with him. The other day we had only stood mere inches out of the driveway and onto the grass, but today was different. This time Emmett didn't hesitate and walked right up to the front steps, careful not to dislodge what was left of the broken staircase.
I looked behind me to see that Jasper and Alice were following us, too.
Emmett reached the front door and stared at it for a moment before looking back at each one of us.
"There's no lock," Jasper acknowledged slowly, making all of us come to a realization that invoked every possible emotion.
There had been a deadlock on the doors of The Rec since it had closed ten years ago. Anything that was in there was locked up for good, regardless of its importance. It had been locked for a reason, and with it now being unlocked, I felt that this could be our version of Pandora's Box and I had no idea if that was something I was willing to battle just yet.
Maybe we were overreacting.
"Why did you come here, Emmett?" Rose questioned, and I could hear in her voice that maybe she didn't want to know the answer just yet.
"I'm going in," was his response.
Except he didn't have to.
Someone else came out.
All of us stared at each other for a moment, none of us trusting the emotion behind the words just yet.
"How did you figure it out?" Edward asked Emmett, staring at all of us from inside The Rec, the last of daylight filtering in behind him. I wasn't ready to look behind him inside just yet.
"When we were here the other day, I couldn't remember seeing that lock." Emmett answered. He shoved his hands into his pockets. "And I never forgot that fucking lock."
He continued after a pause, "And then tonight at the fitting. It's sawdust, man. You have sawdust in your hair."
I think we all connected the dots at the same time.
"You needed the sun to finish sanding the floors," Emmett finished and leaned back against the railing of the front porch.
"I lost track of time. I completely forgot about the tux and when I remembered, I just grabbed my keys and left. I'm sorry," Edward said to us all, saving the apology for Alice.
"Don't apologize, Edward, please." Alice sounded sympathetic, her eyes leaving Edward's to look beyond him with trepidation.
"What are you doing with it, man?" Jasper asked, shifting on his feet before turning his eyes to Edward.
I watched as Edward opened the door wide behind him, stepping onto the porch next to Emmett. He shook the railing Emmett had been leaning on, his gaze leaving the railing and up towards the gutters.
He spoke to all of us, but his eyes never left mine when he told us.
"I bought it."
-tr-
Some of you figured out Edward's plan right away! Awesome! Sorry for the delay – between four rounds of the flu and the holidays, I am amazed that I can barely stand this point! Thanks for your reviews and recs, as always!