Thank you so much to everyone who's followed and/or favourited! And a massive thanks to magicbustrip, Courtney-Tamara, and jessiefien for your lovely reviews! I'll reply to them by PM - but you don't how much your support and words meant to me last night or today!
After tomorrow's chapter (which will make it two weeks since I started this weirdly enough) I'm going to see about taking a couple of days to a week's break and then starting up again so I don't burn out like I felt I was yesterday.
Chapter 14 - Port Angeles, August 2004
Carys took a Saturday trip to Port Angeles with Monica on the first full weekend of August. She'd supposed to have been going with Sarah, but as Monica had explained when she arrived on Carys' doorstep that morning, Sarah had been called in to cover Dr Snow and sent her other half in her place.
The reason for their visit was that there was an amazingly affordable hairdresser in the city who not only understood curly hair but as Carys found out that Saturday, more importantly, understood her hair.
This might not seem like too big a deal to some people, but to Carys, it was a true revelation. After all, she'd thought to herself whilst taking the plunge and changing her hair for the first time in years, why was her hair now almost reaching the bottom of her spine if not because she rarely trusted anyone to cut it properly?
Monica claimed her trip was due to wanting to see how Carys' hair turned out and needing to get her roots done anyway, but Carys had a feeling it was really so she could convince her that a more drastic new haircut and colour would actually be a good idea.
Somehow it'd worked.
Carys had given in to Monica and the hairdresser Samantha, and so four and a half hours after they'd arrived in Port Angeles she found herself sitting with Monica in a small coffee shop in the city, cradling a cup of tea and sporting a brand new look.
"I love the colour!" Monica exclaimed again, leaning in as she stared into Carys' eyes and seemingly forgot the three other times she'd said the exact same thing since they'd sat down. "It brings out the bits of green in your eyes. I honestly hadn't noticed it before!"
Carys hadn't really done so much either. Well, not much since she'd dyed her hair a far less appealing shade of red when she was 12 and had had to spend a day at the hairdresser's to correct it, and not at all since she'd stopped wearing dubious colours of eyeshadow as she had when she was sixteen. Now that her hair had been cut to a couple of inches below her shoulder blades, layered, and dark red highlights had been streaked through, the colour lit her eyes and brought out the green she'd completely forgotten existed.
As she had each of the other times Monica announced her fascination with her eyes and hair that day, Carys smiled in response and thanked her.
"So what do you want to do for the rest of the day?" Monica asked Carys before taking a large sip of her coffee.
Carys had taken to drinking tea over the past couple of months and was nursing her cup, trying to make it last that bit longer.
"I might... Drive home in a bit?" Carys made the statement into a question and frowned her apology at Monica.
"You want to go home?" Monica replied with a sad look to which Carys nodded. After a moment, she looked out of the large window behind Carys' seat and grinned cheekily before she leaned in again as if imparting a great secret. "Okay... But only if you wait for me to go grab some stuff I've had my eye on in the store down the block. It'll take... Twenty minutes-" they both knew it would, therefore, take at least an hour, "-at the most, and then we can go?"
"As long as I get to stay here?" Carys agreed, wondering to herself about what could possibly be so important that Monica had to grab it when she'd not mentioned anything earlier.
Carys smiled when Monica made a triumphant sound and downed the last of her coffee, then left the cafe with a wave and a "do not move a muscle!".
A prolonged glance out of the window behind her told Carys all she needed to know a few seconds later, as Monica ran across the clear road and launched herself at a friend Carys didn't recognise.
As soon as Monica and her friend were gone, Carys sighed and stared down at her tea as if it had all the answers in the world and she was simply unable to decipher them just yet.
The past couple of months had felt hard, but she hoped it wouldn't take too long for her to get over Carlisle, or at least to work out how to accept she was in love with him and still be friends with him.
The one thing she couldn't do was tell him how she felt.
If she actually told him, it would make things difficult between them as it had with Richard after he'd asked her out.
At first, things seemed fine - they seemed fine - but then over time, things had begun to change subtly. They didn't meet up just the two of them anymore, there were no more private conversations where they chatted to the side of the group, and when arrangements were made to hang out it was usually another person who invited one or the other of them.
Essentially, they were still friends but a wall had seemed to go up. Though she wasn't entirely sure which side had erected it, it was there.
It was the reason that Carys knew if she told Carlisle how she'd realised she was in love with him, it would be far worse than Richard asking her if she'd like to go on a date.
Not only were the feelings behind a pronouncement of love far more concrete sounding than a date, but when Richard asked her out both of them were single.
Sandra had been telling Carys only the other day about how she'd seen Dr Cullen's incredibly attractive strawberry-blonde girlfriend when she was turning out of the long winding drive to his house one morning, and whenever Carys had teased him about it in the past, he'd never denied the fact he had one.
Carys took a slow sip of her rapidly cooling tea and ran over her list of reasons why she needed to get over Carlisle Cullen.
Again.
One - Carlisle has a girlfriend.
Two - He would never think of me in that way even if he didn't have one.
Three - He has five kids, and so he's got enough on his plate already.
Four - He's at least nine or ten years older than me.
Five - It would ruin our friendship and I'd never get to see him or speak to him again because there wouldn't be anyone to buffer us.
Si-Fuck.
Carys had been so focused on her thoughts about Carlisle that she hadn't realised the man himself had walked into the coffee shop with his son, ordered, and was now walking back towards the table she was sitting at near the door until it was too late.
Even as she glanced about her and clutched her teacup, she knew she couldn't be rude enough to duck and run, let alone ignore his presence. Even if she didn't care about that, there was also the matter of number five on her list. She didn't want to ruin her friendship with him, she just needed time to get past her feelings...
God, he's beautiful, she thought to herself as Carlisle came to a stop in front of her... All six feet, two inches of pale, blond handsomeness and golden eyes mocking her impossible feelings for him.
"Hello, Carys."
God, he sounds so-
"Hi Carlisle," her eyes finally left his face to flicker across to his son, "hello, Edward."
Edward nodded his head a little in greeting and then gestured towards the door not far from Carys. "Carlisle, I've recalled a bookshop I meant to visit... If you'll excuse me, Miss Vale?"
Subtle as a brick through a single glazed window, Carys thought to herself.
When Edward smirked briefly, she assumed it was from thinking he'd achieved his goal rather than her thoughts.
"Of course-"
"Could I join yo-?"
They spoke together, and Carlisle broke off with a small smile that made Carys' heart hurt.
It's official. I'm pathetic.
Edward looked as if he'd walked in on something he shouldn't have, and nodded in her direction again before he swiftly headed off through the door.
Carlisle continued to stare at Carys for a moment before she remembered exactly what he'd been saying, and she nodded. He took a seat, and the two of them sat in silence for a full minute until two coffees were put down in front of him.
Carlisle broke first.
"You've been avoiding me," it was less of a comment than a statement, "did I do something wrong?"
Carys lifted her eyes from her cup and met his gaze, humbled by the hurt she saw there. It wasn't his fault she'd developed feelings for him. Nor was it his fault she was now avoiding him. All he'd done was be nice to her.
"No, you... No, you haven't, Carlisle."
"But you have been avoiding me?" He prompted.
"Yes... But-" Carys broke off with a huff as she bit her lips together and frowned, "-it's not... It's not because you did anything wrong. It's me. I've just..."
Carlisle looked his confusion, and she didn't know how to go on.
"It's not because I have offended you?"
"No. No, Carlisle, you could never have offended me."
Carys felt tears sting her eyes and throat as she looked at her hands, and when she looked back up she met his gaze directly.
And in the end, she didn't need to tell Carlisle that she loved him, because he recognised the look in her eyes. He understood how she felt, and though she couldn't know it, he felt the same.
They looked at each other for long moments before Carys blinked away her tears and composed herself, and then Carlisle removed a small box from his inner coat pocket and slid it across to her.
"Happy belated birthday, Carys."
"Thank you," she told him hollowly, before slowly taking the box from him, their fingers brushing as she did so. The heat from Carlisle's drink had warmed his hands enough that when their fingers brushed, she thought they were cold but not unusual for the surprisingly overcast August day.
Carys ignored the frisson of awareness that wracked her and focused on opening the box. She found inside a beautiful pair of earrings with what looked like diamonds set in yellow gold and silver, a large pear drop pearl hanging from the middle of each. She thought they'd been made to appear a few hundred years old at least in style.
"They're beautiful," Carys gasped, sliding her fingers gently over them before she closed the box and slid it back across the table. "I can't accept them, Carlisle."
"You can, they're a birthday present. Well... You should at least, that's what friends do. They're not real or anything if that's what you're worried about."
Carys couldn't have known that Carlisle's heart broke a little along with hers when he implied they were friends only. Her ignorance of his feelings had her sigh heavily as Carlisle slid the box back towards her.
"So we'll still be friends?" She asked him unsteadily, imploringly. Hopefully.
"I would be very happy if that were the case," Carlisle replied, an expression of unflappable calm on his face. "I don't think you know what your friendship means to me."
Carys quickly lowered her gaze and missed the flash of pain in Carlisle's eyes.
"Nor yours me," Carys told him after a moment. She looked up and smiled gently. "I don't suppose maybe we could pretend you haven't realised and let me have another month to get over you before we get back to the full teasing, running around the staffroom kind of stuff?"
"Of course," Carlisle told her, a strange thickness to his voice she couldn't place. "Of course..."
"It's not going to stop me wearing these though, I hope you know that," Carys tried to make light, and Carlisle's answering grin seemed as bright as the one which graced his handsome face whenever he spoke at length about his children.
He left Carys five minutes later when Edward returned, and by the time Monica came back an hour later than she'd said, Carys felt far more herself.
"Nice earrings!" Monica exclaimed enviously, sitting down across from her with two shopping bags and a takeaway coffee from a completely different shop. "Didn't realise you were going diamond shopping without me!"
Carys assured her they that were paste, but Monica insisted she'd worked in a jeweller's when she was younger and could tell the difference.
Luckily for Carlisle, Carys thought they must just be very good fakes. After all, who would give a friend true antique diamond and pearl earrings worth as much as those would have if they were real?
Carlisle was true to his word once again, and whilst Carys didn't actively avoid him as she had been throughout half of June and the whole of July, they only really had a couple of full conversations before September rolled around.
By that time, she'd become so attached to the earrings that she wore them almost every single day. If they didn't match her outfit, she'd make sure her hair was down to cover the clash.
A/N: The earrings are real, in case anyone wondered, and if you google Georgian pear drop diamond earrings from Bentley & Skinner, you can get a feel for what they look like. I wonder how she's going to feel when she realises she's been wearing nearly £100,000 earrings like they were nothing. eeeeaud just pointed out (thank you!) that it's a bit weird but he's a vampire, so I should add that Carlisle's owned them since they were made, and she's his mate which is why he gave them to her :). Canonically, he gave Esme a whole island when they married, so I like to think it's just something he'd do.
P.s. some of you guessed, but I wanted to confirm that when Edward was rubbing his nose and coughing in the forest, he was telling his family about what Carys was thinking.
P.p.s. can anyone guess who Carlisle's supposed secret girlfriend is?
