Hello? ::Taps mic:: Anyone there?
Sorry for the delay – we went camping over Halloween weekend and I came home to see that ffn was having some issues. Hopefully, all are resolved so we can get back to our reading!
Here's that time jump!
Remember When thirty seemed so old
Now looking back
It's just a stepping stone
To where we are
Where we've been
Said we'd do it all again
Remember when
"The days are long, but the years are short," a stranger chuckled his words to me in the grocery store one Saturday morning when I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I had had both kids with me, Benjamin and Charlotte, both under ten years old at the time with two different agendas completely separate from my own.
It was pure and utter chaos.
Bella had been home sick with the flu, and in an attempt to get the kids out of the house for a bit and for Bella to finally get some quiet time to rest, I had decided to get our grocery shopping done for the week with both kids in tow.
Disastrous idea.
Not only did I forget a lot of the basic staples in our house, the favorites, I had also walked out of there in a complete sweat from chasing after both of them the whole time and fifty bucks over budget.
I thought about those days often as time went by. Days when we woke up flying by the seat of our pants, remaining in that permanent state of chaos from morning until night, sometimes only meeting at night once the lights were out and the kids hopefully asleep in their beds. We shuttled and shuffled from one sport to the next, recitals thrown in there somewhere in between school, events at The Rec, and family vacations.
The words from the stranger stuck with me throughout it all, through all of the crazy times and quiet times, a resounding voice in my head that never changed with the passage of time. The days were hard and full, and those days eased into years in the blink of an eye. We laughed and cried, grew both physically and emotionally, and cherished each step along the way. The Rec, and our house above it, morphed over time in the same way that we did as a family. We made room for more, got rid of any parts holding us back, expanded inside and outside and in between to accommodate our needs as a family.
Before we knew it, The Rec had seen and celebrated more birthdays and holidays than what we had ever expected when we had envisioned this in our lives, and I never forgot the words of the stranger in the grocery store. 'The days are long, but the years are short' ended up being the most accurate statement I had ever heard in my life.
It felt like they had grown up overnight.
They grew with each passing day, a little bit each night that we would only see every now and then when we weren't lost in the shuffle of life. Each year we marked their height on the wall leading into the kitchen, Bella and I looking over at each other with proud smiles above their heads. That is, until their heads grew taller than ours once the teenage years came around and greeted us all like a punch in the stomach.
Benjamin and Charlotte had grown into two wonderful and beautiful young adults, and even though we had watched them grow and mature over the years, we held on to the notion that two other people didn't grow or age at all.
To us - Bella and I, age was just a number and we defied it every chance we got. Even though we both turned fifty this past year, we didn't feel a day over thirty.
Sighing as I stood in our bedroom, I looked around the room in a brief moment of reflection. Our bedroom had shifted over the years with all of the renovations and additions we had gone through, but this most recent change in structure would definitely be the last. The kids were almost fully grown, Benjamin standing tall at twenty-six and Charlotte almost eighteen and applying for colleges for the following year. There were framed pictures on the walls and on our dressers to commemorate moments and milestones cemented in time. Graduations. Proms. Acceptance letters. Vacations to distant and tropical islands.
Opened suitcases sitting on top of our bed filled to the brim with warm clothes for winter. A wife moving expertly among the suitcases, tossing more items into said suitcases.
At this rate, I wasn't sure they would let us on the plane due to the weight of our excess baggage.
Bella had been the one to convince me that going to New York, and leaving the kids behind, would be fine. Benji was an adult, only a few years younger than I had been when I had taken on the idea of resurrecting The Rec and would be fully capable of running it while we were gone. He had grown up here, had worked here since he was of working age, and had established a respectful and warm rapport with the staff and patrons and the families of The Rec. I had complete confidence in his abilities, and I knew I would return to The Rec to see it still standing in all of its glory.
Benji wasn't the child I was worried about. It was my other one.
I should have known from the day they placed her in my arms that Charlotte would run the world. Strong-willed is one way to describe her; in-command would be most accurate. She was confident, always sure of herself and what she wanted, and made sure she achieved whatever it was that she wanted to claim. Until, of course, something else came along to pique her interest. She tackled whatever it was that held her interest, jumping headfirst into whatever it was at the time.
Which was why I knew that if she wanted to throw a party while we were gone, then it would most definitely happen. I was sure of it.
Even though I had put both Benji and Emmett in charge while we were away, we all knew that it was Charlotte who would be running the joint while Bella and I were gone. Even Benji would sometimes succumb to Charlotte's plots and plans, and Emmett being the big kid he never outgrew with age, I had Jasper on standby, as well.
"Do you remember what happened the last time we tried this?" I asked Bella the night before our flight to New York. "We lasted an hour before we had to turn around and come back."
We had attempted to disappear and enjoy a long weekend in Seattle a few years ago, but the rumors of Benji throwing a party in our absence had us balancing on one wheel as we reversed onto the Interstate back towards home.
"I remember," Bella answered with a chuckle, going over her mental checklist one last time. "I think they'll manage just fine without us."
"That's exactly what I'm afraid of," I groaned in response. Images of kegs and crushed cans and shots and other illegal substances infiltrated my mind as I thought of just how fine Benji and Charlotte would be without us.
My wife's arms circling around my waist from behind momentarily distracted me from thoughts of the pure destruction our children could leave behind in their wake when left alone.
"They'll be fine," she encouraged. "We have an anniversary to celebrate."
She placed a reassuring kiss on my cheek and disappeared back into our closet with one last squeeze from behind.
Bella was right. We had celebrated twenty years of marriage this past October and had decided to treat ourselves with a trip to New York City for a few days during the holiday season. I had never been over to the East Coast, and after all these years of Bella raving about a New York City Christmas, we agreed that disappearing for a few days to celebrate this milestone in our marriage would be fine.
The Rec would be fine.
The kids would be fine.
I would be fine.
Those were the three sentences I repeated to myself over and over again throughout the course of our entire cross-country flight. I said them to myself when I looked out the window and saw the New York City skyline in the distance. I repeated them when our plane landed on the tarmac at Newark airport, the turbulence of our descent mirroring that of what I thought was happening to The Rec at that exact moment.
Bella's smiling face reminded me every now and then why we had decided to go away in the first place, and it made me forget my worries for the time being.
"They'll call if they need you," Bella reassured me when I checked my phone for what seemed like the thousandth time while we were in line at our hotel right inside Times Square in the city. "They're fine."
I nodded, knowing deep down that she was right, and I had nothing to worry about, and shot a small smile in her direction.
"I'm done." I agreed, bringing her in close while we moved closer in line towards check-in. "Promise."
"Good," Bella answered, nodding towards the opening in the line in front of us, "because I'm starving."
It wasn't in me to not worry – I had spent my whole life thinking about my next move. As a child, I would worry about where I would stay next, who I would stay with, how I would get my next meal or clothes on my back or my homework done so my teacher's wouldn't notice anything out of the ordinary. My pension for worrying followed me into adulthood, manifesting itself into this overwhelming need to have everything in place, even though the things I worried about I could do in my sleep. Like another expression I had heard growing up, worrying gave me something to do but it never got me anywhere.
And right now, the only place I wanted to get to was dinner and drinks with my wife.
We were across the country from all our responsibilities and stresses, and the smile Bella gave me made me leave it all back in Forks where it belonged. Bella and I had lived a happy life together, raising two incredible children in our favorite childhood place, and had rarely spent time alone like this. I promised her an unforgettable anniversary trip, and I made sure I did exactly that.
New York City in Christmas had us enjoying every minute – minutes spent enjoying the location and other minutes enjoying each other.
I found myself in good spirits as we explored the city that never sleeps over the next few days, trying to quell my natural instincts as a tourist to take as many pictures as I could in our time there. I, personally, could never quite get used to the fast pace of the city and its inhabitants, constantly wondering where the rush of people were going in such a hurry.
Bella, on the other hand, transformed back into the college girl she once was when she was younger. Getting us on to the right Subway was like riding a bike to her. She knew how to hail a cab like nobody's business. She found us all of these amazing little food joints throughout the city, the hidden gems that served hot food more delicious than I had ever tasted in my fifty years.
After running The Rec for twenty years, I had seen my fair share of Christmas trees. Every year we bundled the kids in their winter gear, tossed them into the backseat of the pick-up we used for maintenance at The Rec, loaded them up with hot chocolate and cut down our own tree for the season. Bella and I would argue each year – her wanting a tree that could touch the ceiling, me wanting a more manageable tree, and every year we would compromise and get the tree that Bella wanted. The kids were always in agreement with Bella – the bigger, the better.
I would turn into the Grinch for that one December day, my arms covered in sap and pine needles with a few tiny yet powerful electric shocks thrown in for good measure as I twisted and turned the tiny string lights around the tree. It was always short-lived; all my bitterness would disappear the minute that I plopped down on the couch to watch the three of them hang ornaments on the branches, each ornament telling a story of our family and our rocky road to get us all here. Ornaments made from hardened macaroni and popsicle sticks or cut out handprints glued together to form a Christmas wreath were always my favorite.
So when I stood in Rockefeller Center, staring at the tree that was as tall as the sky with lights never-ending, I shook my head and pitied the poor bastard who had the job of putting the lights on this bad boy each year.
"Picture?" A man asked, his voice bringing me out of the daze I was in since the sun went down, and the city and holiday lights took over the job of lighting the city for us all. I turned my head away from the tree and lights when I heard him, realizing that he was offering to take a picture of Bella and me. Nodding my thanks while Bella verbally thanked him for the offer, we were soon one of many who were posing for pictures in front of the tree, but we didn't let that stop us. We were too caught up in the holiday spirit to care; Bella wrapped in nostalgia while gratitude enveloped me in an embrace so tight I almost couldn't breathe.
She looked so beautiful underneath the city lights.
She was one of those people who adapted and thrived in all her environments, whichever one she was dropped into. Whether she was a kid moving to the foreign town of Forks, Washington, or when she was thrown into New York City as a college freshmen, or when she took a second chance on me all those years ago and settled back home to marry me and become the mother to my children, Bella always managed to make everything work. She made everything better just by being a part of it.
"Merry Christmas," I whispered to her when the camera flashed, our faces pink and cold from the December air. The man nodded when he saw that he had taken an acceptable picture, handing the phone back to Bella before disappearing back into the crowd.
My head was tilted to the side as I watched Bella's face, already knowing that she was feeling the same way I was. Lost in memories of years past, grateful to know we had plenty of more memories ahead of us to continue making.
"Merry Christmas." She answered back with a satisfied smile.
Putting our phones away, we walked a few feet to grab a pretzel from a friendly vendor on the street, the cellophane wrapper barely containing the heat emanating from the delicious snack.
"What's next?" I asked around a mouthful of pretzel.
"Follow me," Bella responded, tossing the remnants of our snack into the closest garbage can. I chuckled as we headed a little further away from the tree and towards our next adventure Bella had planned. In all seriousness, Bella must have forgotten how old we were with the activities she had planned for us. I looked forward to tomorrow when we would see The Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. Sitting and watching a show? Yeah, I could do that.
"That's a terrifying idea," I mumbled jokingly but followed her anyway. I had been following her since we were ten years old so naturally my feet were already shadowing her as if independent from my body. I stopped not long after when I peered down and saw the ice reflecting against the surrounding buildings. "You're kidding me, right?"
She shook her head as if I were the crazy one. "How can we come to Rockefeller Center and not go ice skating?"
"Easy. Watch." I was able to walk a few steps to show her just how easy it was to not make the decision to ice skate before I felt her hand on my jacket. I settled next to her against the glass rail as we watched the fools, eh- the people- below skate against a beautiful holiday backdrop. My back hurt just watching them.
"We used to do this for hours," Bella breathed, thinking about the time in her life when I was across the country picking up the pieces of my own shattered and questionable life. I wasn't the person standing next to her in her memories right now, and it didn't bother me to know that there was a period in her life when she had learned to find herself without me. We had grown together as kids, grew together as one of those inseparable couples in high school. We grew apart as young adults, those years filled with mistakes and life lessons and choices that bridged the gap between youth and adulthood. Those choices made us who we were and led us back to a reunion that would ultimately bring us a beautiful life.
We regretted none of our choices over the years. If anything, it made me look at Bella fondly now as we gazed down at the skaters on the ice.
"Hours? God, don't say that." Now my thighs were burning along with an aching back at the thought of myself balancing on two thin pieces of metal on top of cold, wet ice.
"Just for a little bit?"
I looked at her, her chestnut hair shorter than it used to be back in our youth, dancing in a bob atop of her shoulders. It was partially hidden beneath a warm wool cap, her warm chocolate eyes adorned with a fashionable pair of brown glasses, her smiling lips still an invitation for me even after all of this time.
After twenty years of marriage I should have been used to waving the flag of defeat. Sighing at my inevitable demise, I let her grab my hand and walk us down towards my fate. "We stop at the first pulled muscle."
Our time skating went exactly as predicted. We realized very quickly that we weren't as young as we used to be, our bodies rejecting the idea of ice skating after the first lap. We spent the rest of the time gracing the edge of the ice and gripping the guard rail, holding on to each other with every slip of the blade against the cold surface below. Luckily, we caught ourselves before one of us slipped and brought the other one down as well.
When we got back to our room later that night after dinner, nursing sore muscles and frigid limbs after a day of sightseeing, we turned to each other for the comfort we always found within one another.
"Did you ever get used to it?" I asked, holding Bella close. We were wrapped in the sheets and each other. "The constant noise?"
We paused for a moment, listening to the sounds outside and below our window on the 78th floor. Honks and occasional shouting and trucks bouncing along the potholed streets of New York City filled the soundtrack of the evening, the rush of the outside world in complete juxtaposition to the tranquility within our room. Snuggling deeper into my embrace, Bella buried her face into my chest.
"Eventually." She answered. "The noise helped, actually. Especially in the beginning."
I didn't respond for a moment, my focus drifting back towards the sounds of the night. It was easy to be distracted by all the movement, the sounds of life moving on and forward, completely ignorant of other lives around them. I imagined Bella as a freshman here in this city, healing a broken heart from our breakup and the dread of starting a completely new life separate from anything else she had ever known. I thought of Forks, compared it to New York City, and now saw, knew, heard, how completely different the two places were and would always be.
I thought of my own life at that time, the emptiness in the dark on Carlisle's couch with the worst thoughts a person is capable of thinking swirling constantly in my head. They played on an endless loop in my mind during those days, nothing to distract me from the darkness my life held without Bella. All my friends had gone off to college, as they should have done. The Rec was standing there, as dark and abandoned as I was. It was a time in our lives that we rarely liked to think about, but sometimes it was necessary. Thinking of times in our lives like these made us appreciate just how beautiful we had made the second chance at life together.
"Sometimes I wished I could escape the silence back home." I finally said, tightening my arms around her. "Turns out hearing your own thoughts all the time can wear on you."
It eventually had gotten to Carlisle, who pretty much kept me on the positive path from there on out.
"I don't think that time in our lives was easy anywhere. New York or Forks." Bella replied, drifting into silence to relive those dark times in her life. She had told me what it was like here in New York in those times, when she was meeting new friends during the day and crying for lost ones at night.
"That first year," I started, pausing to shake my head at the thought, "I didn't think I could do it. Do you know how many times I almost jumped on the fastest flight here to get you back?"
"I would have never let you go." She squeezed me tighter in our bed. "But think about it – our lives now. None of what we have now would have happened if we didn't have that time apart."
My degree in social work. My decision to reopen The Rec. Benjamin. Charlotte would have happened at one point, even though it was undecided where she would grow up if we hadn't settled in Forks. It was hard to picture our life without Forks and The Rec as our setting.
"Probably not." I agreed, sighing when I thought again of all the blessings in my life. "And look at us now."
Clothes strewn around the room, an unopened pack of Bengay for my lower back calling my name. I wouldn't change a thing.
"You know New York is on her list."
Bella's words were like the squealing brakes of the taxi outside our window. They snapped me back into a reality that I had no choice but to accept.
"I know." I exhaled, rubbing a hand up and down her back in acknowledgement of what she said. I shook my head in honesty. "I won't hold her back if this is what she really wants to do."
Sometimes what Charlotte wanted to do was fleeting, and Bella and I learned when Charlotte was maybe three years old to just nod and go with whatever flow Charlotte was floating on at that exact moment. If attending a college out here in New York was what she wanted for the time being, then we would support her as long as it was a safe decision.
We also learned that safe and smart decisions didn't always occur simultaneously.
She also applied to colleges in Hawaii, Florida, and Maine, so regardless of which decision Charlotte landed on, Bella and I were preparing to let her go, to release her on an invisible thread still attached to Forks.
"You never held me back," Bella added. I know I didn't physically hold her back – she ended up staying in New York for years after our breakup. From an emotional standpoint, however, I always wondered about all the ways I had held her back inadvertently.
I shook my head. "Not completely. But what if my staying in Forks had swayed you into staying behind?"
She rolled her eyes and laughed. "Do you really think my parents would have let me stay home because of some boy?"
"'Some boy'? Was that what Charlie called me when I wasn't around?" We laughed softly until it slowly dissipated into comfortable silence again. Resolute in my decision, I added, "I'll let her go."
"I know." Bella agreed. "But let's be honest here. Charlotte is Charlotte. She's going to make her decision regardless if we let her go or not."
Always amused with the antics of our daughter, I shook my head in wonderment. "Where did she come from?"
"She's your daughter," Bella smirked.
Damn right she was. Even if sometimes the path she traveled was filled with bumps and dead ends, leading her in so many different directions Bella and I grew dizzy with her adventures, I was so proud of her.
I held on to that feeling when the last of her belongings were shoved into the back of her car, ready for the long road ahead towards the college life. Charlotte had decided that living in a year-round warmer climate than Washington was where she wanted to spend her four years of undergrad, and as hard as it was to send her off, I had to let her live this part of her life. It was part of growing up, a time to learn and grow responsibly without us watching her every move.
"I'll be fine," Charlotte had insisted when she slammed the car door and turned back towards me. I nodded in agreement while she rolled her eyes at me the way she always did. It was a trait she apparently inherited from her mother.
Charlotte was always fine. She was carefree to the point where nothing fazed her – she was permanently optimistic and never stressed over pretty much anything. She was the exact opposite of me, to be precise. Our copper hair was the only thing we held in common, and even now, hers was richer in color while mine was fading at the edges. I ran my fingertips across those spots of hair surrounding my ears, intrigued by how much Bella was enjoying this change of color as of late. I didn't mind the sudden surge of action in our bedroom again – we were going to reap the benefits of being Empty Nesters.
Charlotte and I were standing on the gravel driveway of The Rec, the only place she had called home up until now. The sun was out, a rarity, and it made me slide my sunglasses down to block the rays. It also helped to block the emotions that were leaking out of them in a slow and final salute to her childhood.
In a few short days she would learn the ins and outs of her new home in Arizona. It was mid-August, and she had some time before it would be time to check in to her dorm, but Charlotte and a friend of hers had insisted on taking a road trip a week early, stopping to enjoy the sights in states never visited along the way. It was insane, really, to agree to this but it ultimately became another argument I would not win. The only compromise we had made would be that Bella and I would fly out to Arizona the following week to help her move into her dorm, as it was also a significant time in our lives as well.
We had done it with Benjamin, and while it wasn't easy to let him go either, it helped to know that we still had Charlotte with us.
This time would be different. This time, Bella and I would drive back to Washington with Charlotte's car, and Charlotte would stay in Arizona to open up a new chapter of her life. Benjamin had settled in Washington, the perfect distance between us and Heidi and Marcus.
We held each other's hands in silence for the first hour we after we had left her behind, an unknown feeling settling into our stomachs. For so long it had been the four of us, and now we had to relearn how to be just us two.
We ended up enjoying our time together at The Rec quite thoroughly.
That was how four years of college slid by us. Charlotte would come home on breaks between classes or semesters or we would fly out to see her a few times a year. We again watched her grow and blossom some more, this time from a breezy girl of eighteen to a professional woman of twenty-one. We felt her absence more and more with each passing day, even though we were in constant communication with her and whatever it was that she was up to at the moment. She emailed us weekly, texted us daily, and allowed us to follow her on the limited social media accounts Bella and I had. I didn't even know it was a thing to block your own family on social media, but when she threatened to do so when I commented on a picture of a bathing suit she was wearing in one of the pictures she posted, I learned just how serious a crime I had committed.
It was social suicide for your father to comment on your pictures, apparently.
So, I watched from afar, hung her accolades from each semester up in my office on the wall right next to Benjamin's certificates and trophies, and memorized the sound of her voice when she called to talk. She was the hurricane in our world, yet the closer we were to her presence, she was more like the eye of the storm – strong and calm, soothing and a breath of fresh air before she changed her mind, changed her path once again, and left a pile of destruction behind her.
She was the most intriguing person I had ever known, and I never thought I'd see the day when someone would come around to tame her.
But he did.
"Dad, I met someone."
They were seniors in college when they met, and the way she said those words to me over one of our phone calls had me frozen on the other end of the line. Of course, there had been boys in her life over the years, some brave enough to stick around for a bit despite Benji and I making it extremely difficult to do so. I could tell just by the tone of her voice, the way even Charlotte herself seemed surprised and swept off of her feet, that this time was different.
And when she brought him home to Washington, to The Rec, that following spring, I knew.
I knew I would be taking a step back from the role of being the most important man in her life. I knew the look in his eye, the look in hers, the way that they couldn't hide the tiny looks and smiles thrown back and forth when they thought no one was looking. I noticed her peace, the way the buzz around her seemed to diminish when Peter was around.
I saw the way he visibly relaxed just by seeing her in the same room. I knew him.
I was him. He was me twenty-five years ago.
I remembered the words that stranger had told me in the grocery store. I remembered the hard days that seemed never ending. I looked back on them and realized that while I was in the trenches of those days and they felt like they would never end, I also realized that they had crept up on me. Those days turned into the years I clung to when I knew we were about to enter a different chapter of our lives.
And a few years later, when she came home beaming with a ring on her left hand, I knew something Peter did not.
I knew then and there that besides being granted the gift of being her father, I knew that giving her away would become one of the biggest blessings in my life.
Got a little teary-eyed writing this, guys! One more chapter and short epilogue left. For me, the major tears will come next chapter when I close out these characters and their lives for good. Until then, here is the snippet for the next and final chapter.
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Look for my next story, The Muse in the Shadows, coming very soon!
Chapter 11 Teaser
Remember when
We said when we turned gray
When the children
Grew up and moved away
We won't be sad
We'll be glad
For all the life we had