I am not an artist at all lol, just fwiw. Lily kind of...surprised me with it? With her being one. As you will read. ...Not sure why I felt the need to say all that ANYWAY, #5! Thank you from the bottom of my heart if you made it this far!
(Sidenote: Lily's a lot harder on herself than she should be. Remember, this is 2005, and body positivity didn't start really getting the attention it deserves [at least media-wise] until around 2012. But hang in there! It just takes some time.)
Chapter 5
Boys
Dreaming about Edward Cullen would become something of a routine for Lily after that. It bothered her. She shouldn't have been dreaming about him at all. For that matter, she shouldn't have been so eager to learn his secret, let alone earn his trust. It was a shallow desire and, honestly, a pretty predictable one. What girl doesn't want to be the only one who the standoffish but popular boy will talk to? The lone wolf's sole confidant. She could have gagged at the melodrama of it all. That stuff was fine in books, but so were recipes for Gooey Butter Bars, and her attempts to bring that off the page and into her life had yielded nothing but ooey gooey fire on the bottom of the oven. Embracing teen drama would probably have similar results.
That wasn't the only thing that got to her though. The dreams themselves bothered her. They were unsatisfying and repetitive...and revealing. That was the part she hated the most. Edward was always walking away from her—down a crowded hallway at her old school, across an icy parking lot full of cars, or just around the corner in a hospital—and she was always trailing far behind, unable to call his name….
Ugh. And here Lily had considered herself immune to such pitiful teenage angst, but that had been ruined by a boy who had no more interest in her than he would have in a pair of Crocs. The feeling was mutual, of course—not about the Crocs; she'd left a pair or two back in Phoenix, although she would take that secret to her grave. She didn't care about their fight. She didn't care that Edward had been steadfastly ignoring her for a solid month now. Lily's interest in him was a purely scientific and impartial curiosity.
Whatever he was, whatever powers he possessed, she wanted to know. If you lived in a world with Superman or aliens or angels that walked the earth, you'd want to at least be in on it. There wasn't anything more to her desire to be near Edward Cullen than curiosity. That was her story, and she was sticking to it...whether it was true or not.
The days following their accident had been unpleasant ones, and not just because of Edward's sudden determination to pretend she didn't exist. Everybody wanted her firsthand account in varying degrees of detail, and they all looked at her with the same pitying expression when she was done telling them what they wanted to know. She had a suspicion that if she'd been more attractive, that look of pity might not have been so prevalent, but who wouldn't feel sorry for a fat girl in a neck brace on a stretcher? Of course, that could've just been her insecurity talking. Most of her classmates were probably genuinely concerned, even if they often seemed disappointed by the lack of gory details. That didn't matter though. She was still an unwilling celebrity for one agonizing week—until, suddenly, she wasn't. And oh, what a relief that was.
Unfortunately, Tyler Crowley's attentions weren't so fickle. He had somehow taken it into his head that he owed her, and he glued himself to her side in his servitude.
"Oh, what's up, Tyler?"
"Heya, Tyler. Oh—that's okay, I got it."
"Hey again, Tyler. Yep, just...getting some water."
"Uh, hi, Tyler."
He was always opening doors, walking her to class, and offering to carry her stuff. Lily knew she probably should have appreciated his kind attention, but instead, he was quickly wearing out her patience. Every time she wanted to talk with Angela or listen to Jessica's stories, he was there. He even abandoned his lunch table with the popular kids to sit at theirs. Mike and Eric looked like they hated the arrangement. Either they picked up on her concealed irritation, or they each thought Tyler was trying to steal their spot as the group's designated guy friend; they had started fighting for the position between themselves out of nowhere, and now a new challenger had appeared. She longed for the days when they had all gotten along.
Boys. They never bothered her before, much less bothered with her. Now all of a sudden, boys were all the troubles she had. Mike and Eric, Tyler...Edward….
Okay, so it did bother her that he wasn't speaking to her anymore. It shouldn't have. After all, they had barely ever talked, not counting the hospital spat. But Lily had been willing to salvage their meager friendship, or at least to try. The day after the accident, she'd walked into Biology intent on proving that there were no hard feelings about their fight.
"Hi, Edward," she had said as she took her seat.
All he did was turn his head towards her the tiniest bit, nod a little, and then look away.
What. A. Jerk.
Lily's on-the-spot resolution of never speaking to him again had been extremely firm...at least for the rest of the period. Then she went home, dreamed about him, and resolved to mend the gap between their day-old acquaintanceship. After all, they had almost shared a civil conversation back on that second Monday. She just couldn't let all that warmth and friendship go to waste, now could she?
The next day, she tried again.
"Hey, Edward. How's it going?"
A grunt under his breath was all she got for that one.
Yep. Definitely a jerk.
But that didn't stop her. The next time Lily sat beside him, it was with an aggressively chipper, "What's up, Edward? Ready to get your Biology on?"
His "Mm-hm" was meager and noncommittal. Any hurt she felt, however, got turned right around into resolve.
"I'm not a big fan, but cells are cool. I mostly like the parts about plants. We did that in fifth grade with volcanoes and things. Or maybe it was when we learned about clouds...? Actually, I think that was a different grade when we learned about the weather. Did you ever do any of that—like, learn about the water cycle and how lightning is made and the different types of clouds?"
"Mm-hm."
"Me too. I liked that. Still, plants were the best. There was a project where we had to collect leaves and make a little book with them, but all mine kept getting torn or falling off the page. Tape does not stick well to palm leaves, I'll tell you that. They're pretty hard to fit on a piece of notebook paper too, palm leaves. I guess I could've just chosen a different kind of leaf to use for that page."
"Mm-hm."
And so it went. She would rattle off a paragraph's worth of nonsense, give him a chance to tell her she was talking too much, get nothing but a lackluster "Mm-hm" in return, and then try again. By the time their few minutes of pre-Biology freedom were up, Edward still hadn't said a thing.
Just like her nightly dreams of him, this pattern would continue...only now she was doing it out of pure stubbornness and spite. If he thought that ignoring her would get her to clam up, he was wrong—just like he was wrong about being rude to her in hopes, she had no doubt, of forcing her to forget about his secret. He was such a jerk about it. A silent, mysterious jerk. But Lily didn't care. So he wanted to be rude to her? Make her think that he regretted saving her? Fine. She would give him something to regret. She was going to sit there every day, three feet away from him, and talk his friggin ear off.
"Nice weather we're having, huh?"
A nod.
"I hope it snows again soon."
A hum.
"I've never been here in the spring. Is it nice?"
A one-shouldered shrug.
Every afternoon for about two weeks, that was their routine. She came in, sat down, and put up a one-sided chat about whatever conversational drivel fell into her head. Oh, the irony. Lily had always hated small talk, and here she was using every possible line she knew, all so that he would acknowledge her. Even if he just got annoyed and snapped at her, at least that would be something. She started to hope for it more and more as he started responding less and less.
Eventually, she didn't even try to make small talk anymore, because he stopped responding to it altogether. "Hi, Edward," and that was it. Soon enough, he stopped acknowledging even that.
And yet the dreams continued. They were the only times he actually looked at her, although it was always with a glare in flat pitch black or glorious, furious gold. She would call his name, and he would look over his shoulder at her with a scowl on his handsome face. She would reach for him, and he would turn and walk away. Soon he didn't do anything but walk away from her; she lost his eyes altogether. Every day it was the same. In the lunchroom at his table, in Biology at hers, in the parking lot before or after school, he never looked her way.
It really shouldn't have bothered her so much.
Lily did her utmost to keep her darkening moods out of the limelight with both her friends and her parents, but she always had been a terrible liar. Even Renée began picking up on her unhappiness. Lily managed to convince her it was just hormones and "the wrong kind of rain." Lily liked real rain, and Forks was more prone to a misty drizzle than anything else, but that wouldn't have ever been enough to bring her as low as Edward Cullen did. Still, Renée bought it, and she was thankful for that.
Mike was the only one who seemed pleased these days. Edward's obvious disregard must have made him feel more comfortable about coming over and talking before Biology. Even her guy friends weren't exempt from the taller boy's intimidating popularity, it seemed. Mike would sit on the edge of the table and chat with her up till the bell, ignoring Edward the way Edward ignored the two of them, and she was thankful for that too. It was a nice distraction, just like the upcoming beach trip would be.
The ice hadn't returned since the day of the crash, which meant that La Push was a-go. The marathon of rain cheered Lily up—even if it did mean no snow, boo—and the prospect of the beach day did the same for her friends. You would have thought it was a carnival or a school dance instead of just a trip to the beach.
Speaking of dances….
Jessica had called her on the first Tuesday in March to ask about inviting Mike to the girls' choice dance in two weeks. For some reason, she had thought that Lily might want to ask him herself. That had been quite a surprise, but it gave way to a convenient epiphany on her part.
"Really, Jess. It's totally cool, I swear," she promised when insisting that she had no interest in Mike hadn't worked. "I've decided not to go to the dance."
It hadn't occurred to her until the conversation with Jessica that she could just not go. Up till then, Lily had been worrying over finding a dress that flattered her plus-sized figure, what to do for the obligatory hair and makeup, how she would ask her friends if any of them weren't going with a boy so they could go with each other. Skipping the event altogether was way, way easier. She did wonder if she might regret it someday, but Lily was a world-class procrastinator—take the relief now and the consequences later.
"Aw, are you sure?" Jessica had asked. "It'll be really fun."
"Nah, I'm good. But thanks anyway. I'll look forward to hearing all about it."
She expected her friend to be in a fantastic mood the next day, but Jessica was surly and silent instead. She hardly talked at all in Trig, and none of it about Mike—a very bad sign. He couldn't have turned her down, could he?
When she asked on their way to Spanish, Jessica said she didn't want to talk about it, so Lily didn't bring it up again. Jess was silent all through class and on the way to lunch too. Lily's fears seemed all but confirmed when her friend sat as far away from Mike as possible and spent the break talking to Eric—she never talked to Eric. Mike, in return, seemed unusually quiet. He kept throwing covert looks their way.
Much as she dreaded such an inevitably awkward talk, it sort of felt like Lily's duty to address the issue. She just wished it could've been anywhere but Bio, because she knew, knew knew knew, that nobody could tune anyone out 100%, and even if he really was completely disinterested in her, Edward would still hear their conversation. Even if he didn't care, she did. She hated it, but she did.
Mike came and leaned against the table with unusual diffidence. Edward, as usual, sat there looking away from them. He could have been as distant as the moon...and yet she still cared.
"Hi, Mike. How's it going?"
"Fine." He stared at the floor. His hands were braced on the table behind him; they clenched and unclenched over and over.
For a handful of seconds, Lily was torn between finding a harmless, meaningless topic of conversation, and wrangling a good segue into the necessary discussion. Mike saved her the trouble of either.
"So...Jessica asked me to the spring dance," he said, kicking at the floor a little. His eyes were glued to his shoe.
"Hey, that's wonderful!" she gushed with a thick layer of sugary—and slightly simulated—enthusiasm. "Congratulations, man. You guys are gonna have so much fun."
He frowned and looked up at her for a few long moments. Lily's stomach flipped uneasily. She almost crossed her fingers as she thought, Please just have turned her down because you're nervous, come on….
"Well…. Actually, I told her I had to think about it," he finally said.
"Aw, what? How come?" She did her best to look concerned and upset. It wasn't very hard with the burgeoning realization that Mike might indeed like her. Like...like-like her. But maybe she was wrong. This time her fingers really did cross, stuffed deep down in the pocket of her pants for comfort.
His shiny, boyish face broke out in a bright red blush that made Lily's heart beat harder in panic and pity. It might have just been her nerves, but she thought Edward Cullen shifted in his seat the tiniest bit. Maybe he too was experiencing second-hand embarrassment.
"I was wondering," Mike began, his eyes still on the floor, "if...well, if you might be planning to ask me."
Guilt and discomfort swept through her like a queasy storm. She was racking her brain for a gentle way to let him down when Edward's head turned just the slightest centimeter in her direction. If she hadn't been so hyper-aware of him all the time, she would never have noticed it.
It was harder than ever to speak in a smooth voice, now that she knew for sure he was listening.
"I mean...um…. Mike, I'm flattered, seriously, but I think you should go with Jessica. She's super awesome, and I think y'all would—"
"Did you already ask someone?" His eyes flickered over to Edward. Lily's face got twice as red as Mike's, but her blush was a lot darker than his. He was a tomato, and she was a beet, let's call the whole thing off.
"No, I'm just not going is all," she assured him.
Mike's frown grew a little puzzled. "Why not?"
"Well, for one thing, I'm a really big klutz," she laughed. It was the truth, or at least the easiest one to get into. She was not talking about the pains of finding plus-size prom dresses in front of Edward Cullen.
"That doesn't matter if you've got the right partner." The sudden return of Mike's habitual smile made Lily's disappear. "I'm a great dancer."
"No—I mean—I've really got zero rhythm—really," she stammered. "I mean, I have some rhythm. But that's with singing and...the only thing I even know how to do is waltz."
"That's okay. We'd have fun anyway." His smile was growing more optimistic by the minute.
"But I have plans," Lily lied, desperate for an excuse.
"Can't you postpone them?"
"Not really. I'm, uh...I'm going out of town."
"Where?"
Edward's chair creaked a little. Her eyes flickered over to him the way Mike's had. It gave her an idea she was too panicked to assess, and she blurted out, "Alaska."
Mike double blinked. "Alaska?"
"Yep."
"Wow."
"Yep."
"Can you do that in just one weekend?"
"Um, I think so," she said in the fakest voice she'd ever heard. "I might be away that Monday too, I guess." Geez, she was light on her feet as an elephant. Maybe her dancing skills and her lying were related.
For all the times Lily had fibbed to her mother, she really should have been better at it by now. But the lack of talent was probably a good thing, in the long run. It made choosing to be honest much easier—except when it came to over-eager boys who suddenly developed infatuations for no good reason whatsoever. She would take lying to Mike over hurting him any day, even if he hadn't like-liked her.
"Why don't you go with Jessica? She's really fun and super nice. I'm positive you guys would have a great time."
"Yeah, I guess," he mumbled. Lily couldn't think of anything else to say as he walked away, head hung low in dejection. The sight tugged on her heartstrings, even while she reeled from the knowledge that Mike liked her. He looked like a sad puppy; how could she not feel sorry for him?
Mr. Banner started talking. Lily sighed and shook her head. She reached down into her bag for her notebook, straightened back up, and noticed Edward Cullen staring at her.
She almost jumped in her seat—the binder dropped onto the table with a loud plop. Edward didn't flinch. He didn't look away from her, even though she stared straight back at him. For one long string of moments, she was lost in the beauty of his face so close to hers, along with a feeling of relief she was too preoccupied to analyze. And then she had to go and ruin it, whatever the heck 'it' was.
"Your eyes are black again today," she said without thinking.
Those onyx eyes blinked. His expression had been something intense, almost frustrated...until she opened her mouth and stuck a foot right up in there. The last word wasn't even past her lips before he shifted back into a look of blankness, now as habitual to Edward's beautiful face as Mike's puppy dog smile was to his.
He turned away and went back to ignoring her, as if she had imagined the entire episode.
"Mr. Cullen?" Mr. Banner called a few seconds later.
"The Krebs Cycle," her neighbor said without missing a beat. Lily was still staring at the side of his face, holding her breath. Would he look at her again? ...No, of course not. He went back to sitting there the way he always did—books unopened, shoulders angled away from her, his perfect face to the window on the far side of the room.
She meant to turn back around and put him out of her mind entirely. Instead, she whispered, "I'm sorry," and continued to stare. She didn't expect him to acknowledge it, so she looked down at her unopened notebook. A strange tightness crept over her throat; she rubbed at it with one hand.
"I don't mean to say stupid things," Lily continued without meaning to. "Like that. See? I should just stop talking. Right now. And yet I don't." She shrugged along with the sing-song observation. Oh well. She was already on the pain train, so choo choo. "I always end up getting on your nerves, don't I? I wish I didn't. But still, I'd prefer that to you ignoring me totally and completely. I guess that's not the sort of thing I'm supposed to say out loud, is it? I don't mean to make you uncomfortable—I swear. But I guess I probably am—right now. Sorry about that. ...This would be another great time for me to stop talking, huh?"
Wow.
Wow, Lily.
Just...wow.
Edward had looked at her for the first time in weeks, and not only did she ruin it in five seconds flat, but she went and gave him even more reasons to despise her.
Lily's throat got tighter. Good. It would keep her from committing any more acts of idiocy. But it also might mean that she was about to start crying. Bad. Bad for lots of reasons, the least of which was that she should have been paying too much attention to Mr. Banner's lecture to cry. She should have been doing a lot of things, like not talking to Edward, not thinking about Edward, not almost crying at the beginning of class like a kindergartener—over Edward. All her problems seemed to have to do with him. Well, all the ones she cared about; Mike asking her out felt insignificant in comparison with making an idiot of herself in front of the boy beside her.
She spent the rest of the class period floating between the Biology lesson and self-loathing. At least she never cried, even when her eyes got watery and her bottom lip began to tremble. Stupid. Edward Cullen was not worth such ridiculously random angst.
When the bell rang, she practically fell out of her chair, ready to run for the hills.
"Lily?"
It shouldn't have been such a familiar sound. It shouldn't have made her heart beat so hard. She shouldn't have been this close to hearing violins just because her name passed his lips. Shouldn't, shouldn't, shouldn't.
She must have looked crazy when she faced him. Her eyes felt wild, and the calm expression she wore felt strained.
He stared at her without saying anything.
When it went on for too long, her train wreck brain mode kicked back in, and she asked, "Are you mad at me for noticing your eyes?"
"No," he answered.
"Do you wear contacts?"
His lips twitched as if he was fighting a smile. He shook his head minutely. Her heart beat a bit harder.
"Are you going to tell me anything else about yourself?" she demanded, feeling bolder now.
"No," he said again.
Lily tried not to let the hurt show on her face. It probably did anyway.
"'Kay, great," she muttered. "Thanks."
"I'm sorry," he continued. His voice was gentle and sincere, and that only deepened her confusion and made her heartache worse. "I'm being very rude, I know. But it's better this way, really."
Her reply was the opposite of his—snappy with irritation, but that was preferable to the sadness she felt. He couldn't pity her if he didn't know she was sad. "What is, Edward? What way? What the heck does that even mean?"
"I mean that it's better if we're not friends," he explained with an oddly serious expression. "Trust me."
Lily squinted at him. It was as dangerous a squint as ever a squint could be.
Trust?
"That's funny. I think I've said the same thing before. And so have you. And yet—" she flung her arms out in a frantic horizontal arc— "there apparently isn't much of that going around." She was whispering, but her voice was frenzied. A few stragglers in the classroom were huddled together and staring. Mr. Banner too was looking their way.
Lily did her best to quickly quell her temper as she gathered her books. Through her teeth she said, "I just don't understand why you go from hating me to ignoring me, and then from ignoring me to being nice to me—are you sure you don't have a personality disorder?"
When she dared to look up, she half expected Edward to be gone; the other half of her expected him to be mad. He was neither. He was still just sitting there, staring at her with a look so odd, she couldn't even put it in a category of emotion.
"You think I hate you?" he asked. His voice was easier to read, emotion-wise. It was tight as an overstretched rubber band. His eyes stayed glued to her, intense and indecipherable.
"Sometimes," she said, "I think you're sorry you ever saved me."
Okay, now he was angry.
"And sometimes I think," he practically hissed, "that you are the most ridiculous person I have ever met."
She kept her tone ice-cold as she amended, "Have it your way. But it sure seems like that. Maybe you just want me to think you regret it. I don't know."
"No," he snapped, "you don't."
In a flash, he had his books gathered and was out the door. Lily got up after waiting about ten seconds, just to be sure she didn't see him again.
Choir was reaching the point where she and Angela couldn't chat much anymore. Everyone was supposed to stretch as soon as they came in and keep doing that until class started. Warm ups began promptly on the buzz of the bell with lip trills, and it was nothing but busy from then on. Today, that was a good thing. She didn't know what she would have said to Angela to explain her foul mood. Hopefully her garters would get unbunched before the class dismissed.
The five minute bell sounded, and everyone flooded off the risers to go get their things from the tables near the door of the room.
"What's wrong?" her friend asked as they were packing up. "You seem sad."
Lily blinked. Did she?
"...I guess I am," she admitted, and then, while fighting with a stupid pencil that refused to go in the stupid binder pocket, she added, "underneath the urge to punch a wall, that is." Lily gave up trying to shove the dumb pencil and slammed it down on the table. She would just find another one, simple as that. One that didn't fight her at every turn and make her want to pull her hair out.
"I wish Edward Cullen was a pencil," she mumbled.
"What?"
"Nothing. Just nonsense. ...Do you think I'm ridiculous, Ange?"
The girl's light brown eyes grew wide. "Of course not. Did someone say that to you?"
"Something like that," she grumped. It seemed all she could do today was mumble and mutter. Like an old maid. "I don't want to talk about it—contrary to me bringing it up, heh. Want to hear something else?"
Angela nodded just as Lily knew she would. It was story time about Mike after that, as best they could manage without being overheard.
"Are you really going?"
"No. I mean, I'll probably go somewhere, but yeah, no."
"Why Alaska?"
"I don't know," Lily fibbed, because it sounded better than something like "I was looking at Edward, and it's where he's from, so that's what I picked." Instead, she just said, "It was the first thing that came to mind."
Talking to Angela was a lot like singing. It was very pleasant, even if Lily wasn't always very good at it, and it always made her feel better. When Angela waved goodbye to go pick up her brothers, Lily's happy smile was totally sincere...for the few seconds it lasted. Then it was straight back to Gloomsville, population: who cares.
It felt like the only good thing that had happened lately wasn't even really a good thing, strictly speaking. Charlie replaced her tail lights as an early birthday present, but it would have been nicer not to need it in the first place. The rest of the Behemoth, as she had dubbed her truck—better than Bubble Butt, at least—had come out of the accident relatively unscathed. She was lucky in that regard; Tyler's parents had to sell their van for scraps.
Speaking of boys and vehicles, Eric was leaning against her truck. He nearly gave her a heart attack when she walked around the side and saw him standing there. She hadn't been paying attention to her surroundings. One day that bad habit was really going to bite her in the butt.
"Oh! Hey there, Eric."
"Hi, Lily."
"What's up?"
She was unlocking the door while he spoke, and he nearly made her drop the keyring.
"Uh, I was just wondering...if you would go to the spring dance with me?" His voice broke on the last word. He winced. Lily's sympathetic flinch was internal, fortunately for both of them. Apparently the dance being girls' choice didn't matter as much as she had thought—and she was almost thoughtless enough to say that, but she caught herself at the last minute.
"But I thought it was...um, not a good idea, so I'm not going. But, uh, thank you, really!" She smiled at him genuinely. Mike's offer had made her a little uncomfortable, and so did Eric's honestly, but it was still flattering. No doubt he was worried that she—wait, unless...unless this meant…. Oh no. No. No way two whole boys had a crush on her. Was this real life? Had she actually died in the wreck and this was just a strange form of purgatory? If they were any two other boys, she would either have shrugged it off or jumped for joy, but why did it have to be her friends? How were they supposed to go on like nothing had happened after this?
"Oh," Eric said. "Well, maybe next time." Next time? Hopefully he just meant that in a nice offhanded way.
She scrambled for something that would let them both save face. "Thanks for asking me anyway. I guess you probably thought that I was gonna end up alone. It's always nice when friends go together. It's way better than a date—I mean, people say. Anyway, thank you. For real."
"Uh-huh," he mumbled. "Well…. Seeya." And then he walked away with the same hang-dog dejection that Mike had embodied. Ugh, poor Eric. What a wallop of embarrassment that must have given him...but it couldn't have been half as bad as hers. Did she count as a heart-breaker now? That was not something Lily wanted on her list of things to fix.
She heard something that sounded like a low chuckle, and then Edward Cullen walked past the front of her truck, his gaze straight ahead and his lips pressed together. Lily's cheeks started to catch fire; she fumbled with her keys, yanked open the door, and jumped inside the truck before anybody else could see her.
She was ready to put this bizarre and tumultuous day behind her, but it looked like that wasn't about to happen—and it was all thanks to Edward freaking Cullen. It started when he cut her off in his stupid Volvo. A line started to form behind her. She looked into her mirror while she waited, and who did she see? Tyler Crowley waving at her from his new car. She pretended not to notice him, but her luck just wouldn't let it be. The next thing she knew, he was knocking on her passenger door window.
She reached over, cranked it on down, and began apologizing.
"Hey Tyler, sorry. Edward Cullen cut me off. I'm stuck for the moment."
"Oh, I know—I just wanted to ask you something while we're trapped here," he said with a grin.
No way. Nuh-uh. This could not be happening.
"Will you ask me to the spring dance?"
Why was this happening?
"I'm gonna be out of town, actually," she told him in a distant, robotic voice. Like someone who was shell shocked. That's pretty much how she felt, anyway.
"Yeah," he admitted. "Mike said that."
"But...then why...?"
He shrugged and said, "I was hoping you were just letting him down easy."
Her teeth clicked together sharply. She hoped he didn't hear it, but part of her didn't care if he did.
"Nope. Sorry. I'm going to Alaska."
"Alaska?"
"Alaska."
"That's cool. Anyway, we still have prom."
She stared after him as he walked back to his car, craning her neck like an owl. What was that? What the heck was this day?
Lily turned around just in time to see the Cullens and the Hales all sliding into the Volvo with inhuman elegance. She saw the driver of the vehicle in the car's rear view mirror—he was shaking with laughter. If it was possible for her jaw to drop any lower, it would have. Edward Cullen couldn't know what just happened, could he?
If he did, he was unquestionably cruel enough to think it was funny.
Lily gripped her steering wheel, halfway between fury and humiliation. She had to press extra hard on the break, just to make sure her foot didn't accidentally slip and end up turning their ride into a nice shiny hood ornament for her truck. Before she could reconsider her restraint, the car was speeding away. She lumbered on home feeling too clunky and irritated to listen to the radio.
When she got to the house, she decided that dinner would be a comfort food. Frozen lasagna. It was one of the few things that Lily found difficult to get wrong, and it never failed to satisfy her soul. After shoving the plastic tray into the oven, she went to the fridge and got out the bag of instant salad she'd asked her dad to get; they were starting to fall into a pattern of turn-taking when it came to shopping, just like she and Renée had done. The salad was almost to the point of getting mushy, but she knew Charlie wouldn't mind, especially when it was smothered in ranch.
While she was slaving over the laborious process of making pre-prepared food, the phone rang. It was Jessica calling to share the joyous news: Mike had said yes. She celebrated like a bridegroom who'd just proposed at a baseball game, and Lily clapped and cheered for the happy occasion. It was a relief not to have to worry about Mike anymore.
The conversation didn't last long—she had to go tell Angela and Lauren. Before that, Lily suggested that Lauren ask Tyler to the dance. Lauren was rather standoffish, at least when Lily was around, but Tyler was a popular guy. Chances were she'd say yes if he asked, and they would probably have a great time together. It was difficult to feel guilty about using it for her own convenience when Jessica thought it was such a great idea.
"What about Angela?" she asked.
Lily hummed and wondered if Jess knew anything about Angela's mystery crush. Better safe than sorry, she figured. "I don't know."
"I'll bet she's too scared to ask anyone."
"Aw…. Oh, hey! What about Eric?"
Jess immediately latched on to that idea too, and Lily couldn't have been happier for it. That was Mike, Tyler, and Eric taken care of, thank goodness. She did feel a little remorseful as she thought of Angela's mystery man...but maybe this would help spur the guy to some actual action at last.
After that, Jessica asked her one more time if she was sure she wouldn't go to the dance. Lily gave her the Alaska excuse—yes, Alaska—and then they said goodbye.
She went back into the kitchen, mixed the salad up nicely in a big tupperware bowl, and checked on the lasagna, which had an hour and ten minutes to go. Well, that left her with...way too much time on her hands.
Lily sighed. She didn't have any homework left, one of the benefits of sitting in the back of most of her classes. There wasn't anything that needed cleaning, not that she would've had the fortitude not to put it off till the weekend, if there had been. She didn't feel like reading or watching TV, didn't feel like singing or listening to her scant collection of CDs….
It was time to draw.
She went upstairs to get her sketchbook. It was a present from her mother last year on her birthday, and she had already gotten all the way to the middle. She would have been proud of that, if so many of the drawings hadn't been attached to negative emotions. Lily didn't always draw to make herself feel better, but that's what the majority of this notebook was—vent art, she believed it was called. If you could call it art at all.
No, that was no way to think. Forks meant change, and change meant positivity. She was a pretty good artist. She had finally stopped being afraid of hands, and she could actually draw realistic faces now—without a reference!
She had an inkling whose face she would be sketching tonight….
No, no, she was going to draw a flower. And then a cloud. And then a flower on a cloud. Anything but the brooding angel that appeared every time she closed her eyes. Geez, Lily. Get it together.
She did indeed sketch a flower and a cloud and a cloud-flower, but then she did more clouds, and that turned into heaven, and heaven turned into….
Nope. New page.
The sketchbook was shaped like an oversized journal with soft leather covers the color of terracotta. The sunny brown reminded her of Arizona, so that's what she drew—mesas and buttes and canyons and the only semi-arid foliage she acknowledged: cacti. One residence flowed seamlessly into another, and soon she was drawing beaches and magnolia blossoms and tall pine trees...which then transitioned into darker, thicker firs. A forest of cedars and hemlocks. Tangled branches and clouds overhead. A boy with wild, darkish hair, dripping from the rain.
Charlie came home before she could think of what to draw on the new-new page.
"Mm-mm," she heard him say as he stepped inside. "More spaghetti."
"I'm not a one trick pony, you know," Lily called, turning in her chair. She leaned over the back of it and reached out her hand when her father walked into the kitchen. They high-fived as he passed—a tradition so old, neither of them really noticed it anymore or knew how it had started.
"Lasagna." Charlie sounded pleased as he squatted in front of the stove. "You keep this up, Lills, and I'll need a new belt."
"I'm gonna fatten you up and turn you into the typical small town, donut-loving cop," she threatened. "You've really gotta get out of shape, Dad."
He frowned at her playfully. Lily got up to check their dinner and retrieve the ranch-covered roughage.
"You've sure got trees down pat," her father said. He was leaning on the table with one arm, his head craned at a funny angle to look at her sketchbook.
"Dad," she complained and hurried over to close it. "Private much?"
"You're the one that left it wide open, kid," Charlie replied with a shrug. She grumbled under her breath about him being no different than Renée. He heard her anyway and said, "Watch your mouth, young lady."
Lily smirked at him over a steaming serving tray of lasagna. "Nice to know that being compared to Mom is forbidden language in this house."
"I think I give you a lot more freedom than your mother does. Uh, no offense to her."
"Dad, the difference between you two is the difference between a tight leash and a big backyard," she assured him, and then added an obligatory, "No offense to her," with a teasing smile.
Her father looked more pleased than ever, although he tried to hide it.
She removed her sketchbook from the table, told him to have a seat, and plated up a big serving of lasagna with a bowl of salad on the side.
"Hey Dad," Lily began after a few bites. "While we're on the subject of you being such an amazingly open-minded and laidback parental figure…."
His eyebrows furrowed in suspicion. "What do you want?" he asked bluntly.
"Well, I was thinking about going out of town next weekend. On Saturday, at least."
"Where to?"
She almost said Alaska. Her dad's eyebrows reversed direction when she started chuckling, but Lily just shook her head at his curious expression.
"I'm still not quite—uh, well, I mean...um...Seattle. Actually."
And the eyebrows were back down. Her father's face was a real open book. It occurred to Lily that maybe his blush wasn't the only thing she had inherited. With Charlie's crystal clear expressions and Renée's inability to tell a convincing lie, it was little wonder Lily couldn't hold a poker face to save her life.
"You don't sound too certain."
She winced. Another thing about her parents: Renée could be a surprisingly perceptive person...when it came to anyone but her daughter; and Charlie could be one of the most oblivious men alive...except, again, with his daughter. Or maybe it was just the cop in him, spotting a guilty subject.
"I'm not, actually," she gave up and admitted. "It's just an excuse to get out of the dance."
"What? Why?" He sounded surprised. So much for his perception.
"Dad. It's me, Lily, your daughter. Come on, can you picture me at a dance?"
Charlie set down his fork and leaned back in his chair as if he was offended. "Sure I can. You're a great dancer, Lills." The fatherly objection in his voice and the endearing delusion of his belief in her were both heartwarming and exasperating.
"Da-a-ad," she whined, "do you remember whose two left feet I was born with?"
He shook his head obstinately. "No. I remember all those times we danced together, and you were great."
Lily blinked.
"You mean my birthday?"
A flight from the top of the Pacific Northwest to the middle of the Southeast is a long, expensive way to go. Charlie never complained though. Whenever he could, her dad would fly down to Mobile for the weekend of her birthday, and every time he did, they would waltz together. Grandma Swan had forced her son to take dancing lessons as a young man. The waltz was the first and only dance he had learned before pleading guilty to a pair of left feet and begging to be bailed out of the class. Charlie hated to dance, but his daughter had wanted to, so he taught her the waltz.
She hadn't thought about those dances in such a long while. They hadn't happened too often—the last time might have been her eleventh or twelfth birthday—but that just made the memories all the more precious. Lily smiled at them now, and her father started to blush.
"Well, I only dance with my dad," she said. It was impossible not to grin outright when Charlie ducked his reddening face like a little boy. Sometimes that was exactly what he seemed: just an overgrown boy who was too shy to smile at anyone. Lily could appreciate how charmed her mother must have been by that curly-haired, rosy-cheeked, standoffish young man. There was something so appealing about holding the key to a secret garden. It was probably the same appeal Edward Cullen held for her….
That thought snapped her out of the pleasant reverie she'd fallen into and back to the present.
"Anyway, I need to go shopping for some new books," she said. "The library here ain't gonna cut it."
Charlie was staring at the table pensively. His arms were crossed. Was he mad?
"I'm not sure I like that, Lily," he told her. "You haven't been driving very long, and it's a ways to Seattle."
"Yeah, but I literally drove all the way to Mobile and back over Christmas break, remember?"
"That was with your mom's car, not this old truck. Thing probably doesn't get very good mileage."
"I can stop along the way as many times as I need," she argued. "I've got a ton of extra cash since somebody went out and bought me an entire vehicle free of charge." Lily stuck her tongue out at his embarrassed frown.
"Well…. Are you going all by yourself?" He sounded oddly uncertain all of a sudden.
"Yes?" she answered with matching uncertainty. "Why do you say it like that?" Maybe he was just dismayed by the idea.
"No reason," he deflected.
It was Lily's turn to do the eyebrow quirk. "What? Do you think I'm up to something?"
He sighed and said, somewhat reluctantly, "No…. Seattle's just a big city, Lills, and, well...I know you're track record with getting lost and all."
Lily tried not to pout. "I blame Mom for my bad sense of direction. But I'm not illiterate—I can read road signs. Mostly. Besides, how will I ever get any better at solo navigation if I don't practice on my own?"
"Hm, well…." Charlie trailed off with the same hint of reluctance. He almost sounded hopeful when he asked, "Do you want me to come with you?"
She wasn't quick enough to keep herself from cooing, "Aw," like someone who had just seen a puppy. He scowled at her, and she held up her hands. "Sorry, sorry. Reeling in the mushy gushy. Thank you," Lily said with a heartfelt grin she couldn't suppress. "That's really, really nice. And we totally should go one of these weekends. But...to be honest, I could use some, uh, thinking time? Driving by myself is good for that—and, anyway, I know you wouldn't enjoy just standing around while I go through books for hours and hours."
Her father sighed again and asked insistently, "You sure you won't just bite the bullet and go to the dance?"
Lily frowned. His words were eerily reminiscent of her conversation with Mike. "Okay, have you, like, forgotten all the times I've been to the ER for tripping over literally nothing? Remember Rachel and Rebecca's party? Remember soccer?"
When she was six years old, her father had enrolled her in a kids' soccer program for a few weeks in June. During their very first game, she had tripped on nothing, fallen face first, and somehow chipped one of her top incisors. Not a week later, she was racing around with Rachel and Rebecca Black at the girls' birthday party, tripped over nothing once again, and broke the neighboring tooth in half.
They were only baby teeth, but both of her parents had treated it like a full-blown medical crisis. They used the double dental debacle as an axiom of their daughter's "poor spatial relationships—" AKA clumsiness—and would probably continue to do so for the rest of her life. Ironic that she was doing the same thing now.
Her dad's look of stubborn defiance didn't budge. His arms were already crossed, but they seemed to cross harder somehow.
"You know I'm not trying to be your mom, Lil' Bit, but I really think you oughta go."
"Well, you are actually doing a spectacular impression of her," Lily grumped. She leaned back and crossed her arms now too.
Her father persisted. "Is it because nobody asked you?"
"It's girls' choice," she answered in an evasion as slick as the Matrix dodge. Go Lily!
But her suddenly very nosy father would not be deterred. "I'll bet Mike Newton would like it if you asked him."
"What?"
Charlie immediately began backpedaling. "Nothing, just...if he's hoping that you'd, uh…." Lily felt her jaw hit the floor and watched the chief of police start to panic. "Well, I mean, if nobody else has asked him, and he thinks—probably—that you're nice and all…."
Her jaw actually popped. "Oh my gosh. Have you been talking...to Mike Newton's parents?"
Charlie shrugged bravely, but he had the decency to look ashamed of himself.
Lily shot up. "Dad, I can't believe you! Are you, like, playing matchmaker or something?"
"Of course not," he protested, but that open-book face said otherwise.
She grit her teeth, grabbed her lasagna, got the sketchbook off the counter and shoved it under one arm, and then marched out of the kitchen.
"Tantrums aren't cute at your age, Lily," he called after her.
Never had she felt closer to teenage rage with her father. She stomped up the stairs and had to resist slamming her door. The nerve! Trying to set her up with Mike Newton! And here she thought Charlie wasn't a busybody, and that she'd be getting a reprieve from parents intervening in her personal life, and...ugh.
She tossed the plate on her dresser and flopped down on the bed face-first. The wood creaked beneath her weight. Her nose was smushed against the quilt and she could hardly breathe, but Lily didn't care. For all she knew, the whole horrible crush catastrophe with Mike might have been entirely her father's fault! ...But she supposed there was no way to know that for sure. He could have just been talking with Mike's dad or something and heard about the boy's—ugh—interest in her. He would have thought it was nice, such a nice young man having a—ugh—a sudden crush on his seemingly spinster-bound daughter. Her dad was probably just trying to be helpful. With Renée, that sort of nosy if well-meaning interference was to be expected, but with Charlie, it was kind of surprising. Super surprising, come to think of it. Here was a man who avoided "girly things" like the plague, including anything too emotional or personal. For him to actually involve himself in this, even in such a meddling, backstage kind of way…. Really, it just showed how much he cared about her.
Lily wasn't at all used to being mad at her father. That was probably why the anger wore off so quickly. Not ten minutes later, she was meekly retracing her steps back downstairs. The kitchen was empty and the TV was on.
"Dad?" she called as she leaned into the living room. Her father looked away from the game he was watching, eyebrows up in surprise and mouth stuffed full of lasagna. "I'm sorry I blew up at you. I know you were just being nice, and, I mean, compared to other divorced dads," she said with a teasing smile, "I should be grateful you show any interest in my life at all." Even if the interest was inconvenient from time to time. "You really are a good parent, you know that?"
Charlie swallowed the lump of food and reluctantly muted the TV. His cheeks turned red in record time. It was something he worried about, she knew—that he hadn't been a good father to her, a good parent, just because she only stayed with him a few months out of the year.
"Aw, come on, Lills. You don't have to butter me up or anything. It's fine. Compared to most teens, that isn't even blowing up."
"Still," she said with a remorseful shrug.
"The fact is...you're a—" he cleared his throat— "you're a pretty good kid. I know that. It's just my job to worry about you."
"I know." She smiled. "It's in your officer-y nature anyway."
"Yeah, well. Seattle's fine. Just be careful."
She hurried forward and slung an arm around his neck so that he couldn't pull away. She was tempted to give him a noogie, but she gave him a big ol' kiss instead. He grumbled a protest and wiped at his crimson cheek—like a kid afraid of catching cooties.
"You can't fool me, copper," she quipped. "I know you're just a great big sap on the inside."
He grimaced and reached for the remote, mumbling to himself as he turned the volume back on. She shook her head with a smile and left him there.
A nice hot shower before bed put her in an even better mood. Her room felt extra cold after the steaming bathroom, especially with her in a pair of threadbare shorts and a raggedy t-shirt—and her hair wasn't even dry all the way. But she wasn't bothered one bit. Lily sat on the old quilted bedspread and hummed to herself in 3/4 time, perfectly content. She drew as she hummed. It was the third new page she had used today, and it was filled with Edward Cullen's eyes.
Sketching him had only been for the sake of closure. If she got the boy out of her head and onto the paper, maybe she would stop dreaming about him so much. She used up an entire page drawing and redrawing his glare, trying to capture the lighter shade of his irises, and then the shadows his long eyelashes cast across them, and then the play of shadows across his cheeks and nose...until, suddenly, she wasn't just drawing his eyes anymore.
Edward's face became the subject of her night. She migrated from one page to the next without a thought about closure or catharsis or anything like that; she had forgotten the idea already. Lily was more careful as she drew him now, more meticulous, and yet the portraits came effortlessly and with almost startling perfection. Had it ever been so easy to draw anyone so well? She knew the answer was no, but she had no idea why. If anything, his face should have been her greatest challenge—the most beautiful thing she had ever tried to capture.
Tousled hair, brushstroke cheekbones, crooked smile…. His pristine features covered the thick paper, almost the same color white as his skin. In contrast to the other page full of scowling eyes, she drew him frowning only once, and it was the perplexed look she had seen from him occasionally instead of his ferocious scowl or cold sneer. She drew him sitting down, his back angled towards her, one perfect cheek cradled in a perfect hand. She drew him in profile, eyes staring straight ahead, lips pressed together to suppress a grin. His lopsided smirk laughed at her for knowing his face too well, and his inquisitive eyes seemed to wonder why she did.
She always wrote the title of her subject at the top of the page. A few flips over, for example, would reveal the words "clouds and flowers" and "home trees." Lily stared at her open sketchbook, her pencil hovering over the paper. It felt...strange...almost momentous to write "Edward Cullen" in the corner of the paper. There was something oddly intimate about the action. This was his name, something that belonged to him, and it was in her sketch journal, something that belonged to her. Pressed between the pages like a flower or a secret. ...Or was that silly and overly dramatic? What was in a name, let alone a name in some amateur's notebook—geez, Lily. Geez.
With a frustrated groan, she plopped her face down on the book. Why was she so hung up on this guy? It couldn't just be because he was so pretty. Was it because he had saved her, or because he had some superhuman secret? Or was it the lone wolf, secret garden thing?
Whatever the reason, and whatever his secret...she wanted to be friends with him. To know him better.
And, okay, maybe that was fine and all. But drawing him over and over again and getting all weird about his name in her book? That didn't seem too normal.
...Oh well. Had she ever really felt normal even once in her life?
That was probably why Edward didn't want anything to do with her. That whole "better not to be friends" thing might just have been his way of letting her down gently, like she had done with Mike and Eric and Tyler. But Lily wasn't interested in Edward the way that the other three boys apparently were in her, for some absolute fool reason. Besides, he wasn't like the other boys—and she could have gagged just for thinking up such a melodramatic cliche...but it was true. He wasn't. And even if she had been interested in him, there was no way on God's green earth that the feeling would ever be mutual.
Edward Cullen would never look at her the way she looked at him...even though that look had nothing to do with anything romantic, of course. She just wanted to be friends; even if he never shared his superhuman secret and it drove her crazy for the rest of her life, she still wanted that. To talk to him and make him smile and learn about Alaska, about what he liked and disliked, about what it meant to be a stranger in an almost-but-not-quite strange land, just like her.
It stung to know that he would never want it too.
In spite of her darkening mood and the bedside lamp she had forgotten to turn off, Lily fell asleep to the lullaby of those pensive thoughts, her cheek on top of the open sketchbook.
In the morning, her lamp was switched off—unless the bulb had blown last night, uh oh. But nope, it came back on when she checked. Charlie must have seen the light under her door and turned it off for her. She smiled and went to wash the inevitable graphite off her cheek. When she woke up, she wasn't using the book as a pillow anymore, but the dark smudges on her face said she had been very comfortable there for a long while last night. This wasn't the first time she had fallen asleep on a sketchbook, and it probably wouldn't be the last.
After she got dressed, Lily took one final look at Edward Cullen's smiling face before leaving the room with a sigh, her sketch journal still open near the edge of the bed. The odds weren't good that she would ever see that lopsided grin in person again, now that he had declared his intentions.
"'It's better if we're not friends,'" she murmured his words, taking the steps two at a time. And then, "'What the heck does that mean?'" she mocked herself in a silly, squished voice. "Yeah, I think you know what that means, Lily. He knows that you're probably crazy. You know who talks to themselves? Crazy people."
She continued to mutter as she searched through the fridge for something filling but fast. Last night's lasagna appealed to her a little, but she really did need to start eating better. After firmly pushing away the resulting image of her lab partner's muscular arms and lithe, slender build, she settled for a browning banana and headed out.
Lily did her best, as she entered the school parking lot, to keep her eyes off the silver Volvo. There was an open space beside it, but she didn't dare park there. Besides, if she was going to stop pining—platonically pining—over Mr. Mood Swing, she needed to stop thinking about him so much.
She parked a fair distance away from the car, not a Cullen in sight. She opened the door, climbed out, fumbled with her bag for a moment, and then, poof. Lily turned, and there he was, leaning casually against her truck.
"Geez!" She practically shouted the word in her surprise. Her sigh was exasperated as she pressed one hand to the top of her chest...but her next exclamation, "Geez," was the opposite: awe. "How the heck do you do that?" she whispered incredulously.
"Do what?" he asked with that lopsided smirk she hadn't expected to see again, let alone so soon. The smile he'd given Tyler back at the ER had been earth-shattering in its beauty; his teeth had nearly glowed with their impossible whiteness. This expression was a lot more smug than that, roguish even...and it stopped her respiration cycle as effectively as an ocean.
She sucked in an urgent breath and stuttered, "Um. I, uh...I dunno…. Appear out of nowhere?"
"Lily, it's not my fault if you are exceptionally unobservant." His voice was velvet-soft and full of muted amusement.
He was right, of course. Obliviousness was another one of the traits Charlie seemed to have passed down, only for her it had to do with surroundings instead of feelings. Even so….
"You spend an awful lot of time trying to convince me that I didn't see what I know I saw, but I can tell the difference between someone just walking over, and someone teleporting."
One perfect eyebrow quirked up, and his smirk grew sardonic. Lily looked at her truck instead of him, eager to steer the subject somewhere better, for the sake of her temper. She failed, of course.
"So. I saw you laughing yesterday. In your car, I mean. Do you enjoy cutting people off, or is it just me?"
"Just you," he admitted, and her temper flared. It was nothing compared to what his next words did. "But that was for Tyler's sake, not mine. I had to give him his chance."
His snicker erased the fleeting hope that he didn't mean what she thought he meant.
"Why, you…." She hadn't been this close to swearing out loud in a long while. She stifled the impulse and continued in the most scathing voice she could produce, "Are you a sadist or something? Do you get a kick out of other people's pain, or is it, once again, just me?"
Edward was angry now. She could see it in his eyes. They were light again today, almost honey-colored, but their expression was far from sweet.
"Lily," he said in a low, cold voice, "you are utterly absurd."
Something between a growl and a shriek came out of her throat. She pressed the bottom of her palms against her eyes and clenched her teeth. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, freaking Edward Cullen and his stupid freaking attitude…. She was this close to using an adjective that was not "freaking."
"I'm absurd?" she repeated. "Edward, you are the most hypocritical, infuriating, idiotic…. You're the one keeping secrets even though I literally saw you stop a van with your bare hands. You're the one who apparently thinks that not talking about it will make me—what, give up? Think I imagined the whole thing? Go crazy? Congrats!" She threw her hands in the air. "You're halfway there!"
With that, she tightened her grip on her bag and her keys and stalked away from a maddeningly and undeniably amused Edward Cullen. Maybe he was the crazy one. At the end of her rant, the jerk had the audacity to try hiding a smile—like he was about to laugh at her.
She didn't expect him to try talking to her again after that. Instead, he called, "Wait," and was suddenly at her side even though she'd been marching as fast as an angry brass player. The puddles splashed her jeans; the icy water stung. She was too mad to care or to slow down, but Edward kept up and kept talking. Lily hoped she splashed him too.
"I'm sorry, that was rude," he said, and he didn't even sound out of breath. "I'm not saying it isn't true, but it was rude of me to say it anyway."
"Oh, that makes it so much better," she breathed, sweating beneath her raincoat. Her throat was starting to hurt from the chilly air, and her feet were soaked, and she must have looked absolutely deranged as she stomped through every puddle in the parking lot. Even so, Lily kicked up the speed another notch when she saw how easily Edward was keeping up with her. Stupid show-off.
"Are you all right?"
There was nothing but concern in his tone now, and part of her wanted to see if it was there in his face too. A combination of annoyance and embarrassment kept her from looking.
"What," she snapped, "you've never seen a fat girl get out of breath before?" It certainly didn't help that her heart was already beating so hard from arguing with him.
To her surprise, he stopped walking, and to her even greater surprise, she turned to face him. They were under the awning of the cafeteria by that point anyway. Lily instantly regretted her comment when she saw his expression, despite the fact that she was already so familiar with it: brow furrowed, lips pressed tight, eyes intense. He was angry.
...Or was he? His voice sounded calm enough when he asked, "Is that what you think of yourself?"
Her face was red, but that just was from the sudden sprint, not because of his quiet, sincere question. Not at all.
She looked away from him and shrugged. "It's the truth. What of it?" Before he could answer her, she crossed her arms and demanded, "So. Are you following me for a reason, or was that just to get on my nerves?"
His tawny eyes flitted over her face with incredible speed. His expression turned from stoic scrutiny into something puzzled and dissatisfied. The same expression she had sketched in her book. For some reason, it made her heartbeat quicken.
Without warning, he said, "I was wondering if, a week from Saturday—you know, the day of the spring—"
"I'm—" Lily interrupted in a voice that was suddenly up an entire octave— "I'm going to...I'm out of, um…." She was trying to tell him about Alaska, or Seattle, or whichever it was, but the words wouldn't come out...and that wasn't just from the shock of Edward Cullen asking her to the dance. It was because she wanted him to, which was a shocking thing in itself.
"May I please finish?" he asked with a gentle but brilliant smile.
She nodded dumbly.
"I heard you were going out of town that day, and I was wondering if you wanted a ride."
...That wasn't what she had expected.
Shame washed through her, and she bowed her head helplessly under its weight. Of course he wasn't going to ask her to the dance. She really was absurd.
"Lily?" Edward's voice had that low, muted tone again. He sounded concerned. "Are you all right?"
She nodded, fighting back the threat of tears that were there for no good reason.
"You don't have to say yes," he murmured. Lily looked up at him then, a little surprised. There was some intense, gloomy emotion in his expression—she couldn't give it a name—but then it morphed back into his seemingly habitual smirk, albeit more rueful than ridiculing this time. "It's better if you don't, of course. That would be the right thing to do."
"What are you—" she cut herself off and shook her head. "Are you offering me a ride? On Saturday?"
"Yes."
Lily blinked. So she hadn't imagined it. "But...do you even know where I'm going?"
He shrugged. That heavy emotion was still on his face, only half-hidden behind the smirk at this point, but the tiniest bit of amusement was present when he said, "Alaska."
"Seattle, actually," she corrected him. The words sounded distant to her ears. He was offering her a ride? Really? Just the two of them? But…. "But you...didn't you just take it back though?"
He grimaced outright, no pretense of a smile anymore. "No. I'm too weak a creature to do that."
Lily blinked at him again. Through a haze of confusion, one perplexing point stood out. "I thought you didn't want to be friends with me."
"I said it would be better if we weren't friends, not that I didn't want to be."
"Oh." Well, that didn't clear anything up at all, but she was too thrilled by his admission to complain. Her heart fluttered and sang: he wants to be friends.
"It would be more...prudent," he explained, apparently aware of how little she actually understood, "for you not to be my friend. ...But I'm tired of trying to stay away from you, Lily." His eyes were intense. His voice was a smolder. "Will you go with me to Seattle?"
Her pulse was like a snare drum, and her eyelids wouldn't stop trembling as she bore the weight of his heavy golden gaze...but suddenly she couldn't stop smiling.
"Okay," Lily squeaked out. She coughed a little, and then said it one more time. "Okay."
Edward grinned, and she thought her heart might stop altogether. Without warning, however, his face became serious.
"You really should stay away from me," he said in a perfect mix of ominous and polite. "I'll see you in class." He turned away abruptly and walked back the way they had come. She stared after him in confusion and wondered when, if ever, she would understand boys.
There we go!
My New Year's plans fell through partially. Still got to spend the night and do fireworks, but at my friend's house like normal, no camping. Still, no roaches either! Although I did find a real, genuine centipede in her bathroom. I've only ever seen millipedes before, so, cool!
Anyway, I really can't thank you guys enough for reading this far. Just seeing that there's views, let alone faves or reviews etc, it's amazingly wonderful. You all deserve the best freaking year :0 GO GET IT, BUDDIEEES!