A/N: Does anyone know how Edward's hometown is supposed to be spelled? Rizembul? Risemburg? I'm sure I've spelled it a gajillion different ways. Oh well. Artistic License.

XIX. Another Day, Another Siege: Peach Juice

I was expecting the tingles of ischemia in my left foot. I was expecting something gross and sweet like him drooling on my thigh. I was not expecting but rather hoping that maybe we, in that romance novel state of sleep where people's true intentions come out – that state doesn't exist, by the way – would have wrestled each other down to the couch, and I would wake up pressed inch for inch against him.

Yeah. I would laugh at me, too.

Instead, I woke up to something thumping around in my kitchen, something sizzling in a skillet, and something hollering, "Hey, wake up, Win. What do you want in your omelet?"

I lumbered into the kitchen, wearing the same clothes I was wearing the night before and not really caring. Edward was dressed and poking at a canary yellow omelet with my spatula.

"You're making me breakfast?" I asked, rubbing my eyes.

"I'm making me breakfast," he replied without looking at me. "But, stove's on and the eggs are out. Thought I'd offer."

I smiled but didn't tell him that he hadn't offered. "Sure," I said. So, I brewed a pot of stiff coffee, and Edward made us matching omelets, and we sat down for a tandem breakfast.

"How's the leg?" I said, warming my hands around my mug.

"Sore," he said around a mouthful. He swallowed and finished, "But functional."

"Good," I said. "I've got errands to run, and I can't carry you around all day." Never mind that I'd never really had to carry him around before. Never mind that I hadn't made any plans yet. Never mind that having to help him around for a day actually sounded a little appealing.

When Edward asked me what I had planned, I had to come up with something very quickly. Oh, I need more seven-sixteenth washers and thirteen gauge copper wire, why do you ask? He said we were out of eggs.

To my surprise, he then asked me if I wanted company. My heart started fluttering in my throat, and I almost accepted right there. Luckily, I stumbled over the trip wire on my mechanic instinct before I could hit the one on my girl trigger.

"You can't walk that far yet," I said firmly. God forbid I give him the impression that I actually wanted him around.

"Well, I'm not going to sit around here alone all day. And I can walk just fine. I've been walking around all morning."

I really wanted him to come with me. Actually, I really wanted to know what would happen if he came with me. If I liked the result, then the trip might be good exercise. If I ended up making an idiot of myself, then it was too dangerous. I was sorely tempted to tell him to keep himself company, but I knew what Edward would say and I could probably guess how I would react. So I made a big show of caving and agreed.

We left a little after ten, once I had bathed and dressed. I had this new dress, a sweet little apricot thing with princess seams and a hem a good couple of fathoms above the knee. I had wanted to show it off and what better opportunity than a bright, breezy day with Edward as my audience? It occurred to me, when Edward and I were about a quarter of a mile from the end of my drive, that my dress was still hanging in my closet, and I was in the pants I used to wear when I bathed Den and a t-shirt Alphonse had forgotten when he left for Dublith.

I looked down at myself and laughed.

"What's so funny?" Edward asked.

I shook my head. "I am," I said. "I really dressed up, didn't I?"

Ed shrugged. "It's only the market."

And I realized, with some degree of relief, that it was.

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I thought I was going to have to trick Edward into letting me buy him something to snack on, he was so adamant about refusing my money. Luckily, we passed a fruit stand where the merchant was munching loudly and juicily on an apple. That seemed to convince Ed, and I bought him an apple and a peach for myself.

The walk to my favorite hardware store was a long one. Through the market, past a couple of hungry looking projects, into the city – if you could actually call Rizembul a city. On the corner of Third and Magnolia, I stopped into a little café to borrow some napkins for my runny peach. The employees there were stingier than I had expected, and since coffee and peaches do not go together, I stormed back outside – still dripping stubbornly with peach juice – and flopped down next to Edward where he was warming a bench.

"Something wrong?" he asked. He was trying not to laugh at me and doing a conspicuously poor job of it.

"Nope. Nothing," I snapped before sinking my teeth brusquely into my swollen peach. I could feel rivulets of juice running down my chin and wrist, leaving sticky-sweet trails. I imagined I looked rather like a pouting child, eating my peach out of spite now. All I wanted was a damn napkin.

A refractory drip fell from my chin before I could stop it. It landed with a sugary splat on my sternum, just above the lip of my v-neck shirt. I sighed angrily and looked down. "Damn it all," I grumbled. I looked over at Edward and said, "They couldn't even spare one stupid napkin!"

I didn't actually finish the sentence. I stopped somewhere around even and didn't bother to finish. Now, if I had any skill with boys, any semblance of tactic or expertise or something, I wouldn't bumble and fall out of myself when I caught one staring at my chest. I would smile smugly and say something clever and confident like I was so used to the attention. Oh, those old things? I get that all the time!

However, since I'm me – damn my luck – my mouth hung open like a choking fish, and I blushed so dark that the drop of juice of my chest turned from coward yellow to hot-and-bothered orange.

Edward made a noise I hadn't heard him make since we were kids and became very interested in the flaking green paint on the bench.

We blushed in time like the good old days. "You're a mess," he said abruptly. He looked back at me, still red, with a really determined look on his face. Were I not still stuck on Oh my God, he was looking at my boobs, I would have thought it was really sweet.

Edward pulled his left hand into his sleeve and swiped at my sticky mouth with his cuff. I got the impression that he was trying to do this from as far away as he could.

And with that, I felt the playing field leveled. It was so simple, so quick and easy – it sounds really stupid, I know – but just knowing that there was something there, something that might make my plight seem a little less desperate made me a little more confident. Edward was totally staring at me. Even though he was a boy – man, whatever – and boys were supposed to stare at girls, it felt like some kind of phenomenon. And I had caused it.

While Edward scrubbed briefly at my mouth, I screwed up my face and pulled away. "Thanks, Mom," I drawled.

He laughed nervously, and I took the wheel.

"Come on," I said, standing up. I grabbed his now damp sleeve and pulled him up with me. " I want to pick up that wire before they close for lunch." I tossed my almost finished peach into a trashcan and dragged Edward down Magnolia.

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I had forgotten just how long the walk to McIntyre's Hardware was, and somewhere between the train station and my old pediatrician's office, I started to feel a little awkward pulling Edward by the wrist. A few people had tossed us odd looks, but I was not entirely sure if it was because of my death grip on Edward or because they recognized him. Whatever the reason, I thought I'd better let go of him. Then I thought about the bony bump on his wrist that pressed into my palm. I thought about the soft pulse under my fingertips. I thought about the way he tensed up when I took a step a little to the right and brushed against him. And before I knew it, I had wrapped my arm around his and was smiling like an idiot.

I felt him glancing at me out of the side of his eye.

"What?" I said.

He looked away with a frown. "Nothing."

"Good." I meant to say it to myself. I really did.

In case I was worrying that Edward was being uncharacteristically gentlemanly, he waited for me to open the door to McIntyre's. It made sense, though. I was closer to the door. He did sort of catch it once I had opened it, though. That was almost holding it open.

I would love to say that I didn't ditch Edward as soon as I went into the hardware store. Maybe I would sound less puerile, less open to being distracted by the next shiny thing on the street. If I owed Edward anything, I owed him attention. Him. As in Edward. Not Edward's automail, but Edward.

So, I ditched him as soon as I went into the hardware store. Mr. McIntyre saw me and mentioned the newest prototype for synthetic muscle that he was beta testing for the manufacturer. Between dizzying babble about the pros and cons of steel sarcomeres versus the current pulley-and-spring system, Edward disappeared. I couldn't blame him.

The funny thing about regret is that regret itself is not that bad. You did something you weren't supposed to, and you wish you could go back and fix it. That certainly doesn't feel pleasant, but it's not that bad. Okay, what if you did something you weren't supposed to, but you really enjoyed doing it? And you actually ended hurting someone by doing it. And it didn't even occur to you that it would hurt anything. And you can't even understand why it hurt someone until you remember that it's been done to you so many times, and you realize what a hypocrite you are. And now you feel really bad about it. It's the shame that gets you. Regret is nothing compared to that.

Edward didn't give me a hard time about it when I caught up with him outside Dr. Scovall's office. I expected some bitter silent treatment or something, but instead he was resigned, sighing and conceding. He didn't give me any funny looks when I linked arms with him again; he took the shopping bag filled with things I didn't really need from my arm and carried it for me.

"Do you remember when my mom tried to get Alphonse and me to catch chicken pox from you?" he asked, watching the wind chimes hanging from the corner of the clinic's awning.

I laughed. "And it landed you in the hospital for a week?" It wasn't funny. Why was I laughing? I cried for the entire week; I thought I had killed him.

"Feels like lifetimes ago, now," he remarked distantly.

"It was." Or, at least for him, it was; Edward changed lives every few years. I was still in that life, still that nine-year-old girl. Clumsy. Determined. Terribly uncomfortable in my skin.

And I was still sticky with peach juice, damn it.

I pulled Edward's arm closer, and he didn't seem to mind. "You ready to head back?" I asked.

"Yeah. Don't forget the eggs."

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When we got back to my house, we'd been enjoying each other's quiet for almost a quarter of an hour. Or rather, I'd been enjoying his arm, and he had been enjoying my quiet. The house was very still, almost sleepy, and neither of us – either consciously or unconsciously – wanted to disturb that. I sloughed my coat and offered to take Edward's, too. He seemed to deliberate for a moment before shrugging out of it and passing it to me. I threw both our coats over my arm and headed into the foyer toward the hall closet.

"You want to start some water for tea?" I called over my shoulder. His reply was garbled but affirmative, and I could hear him shuffling around the cabinets for the kettle.

In the hall, I opened the closet door and reached for a hanger. I put up my coat first, straightening it so it balanced on the hanger. Edward's coat was heavier, and when I tried to even it out on the hanger, one shoulder slipped off and the whole thing fell to a pile on the floor. I gave a frustrated snort and stooped to pick up the coat. With more care, I righted the coat on the hanger and stashed the whole thing in the closet.

Without the vaguest sense of triumph, I closed the closet door and started toward the kitchen. Then something on the floor caught my eye, and when I looked down, I saw a folded rectangle of paper.

I knew immediately that it fell out of Edward's pocket, and if I had had any dignity, I would have picked it up and put it back in his coat without reading it.

But I read it anyway. Of course I read it. Of course I picked it up, heart fluttering, wondering if it was a note from someone or a receipt or a doodle, hoping it had something to do with me.

It didn't. It was a train ticket to Central.

He was departing on the fifteenth. And in my surprise and guilty heartache, it took me nearly a minute to remember that it was the fourteenth.