Chapter 5
The charged mood in our alcove between the palms ends when a drunk couple comes teetering around the path, making out noisily and bumping into us. I recognize the couple from the bar the night before, and I can't help but feel a bit jealous of them and their obvious romance. Will I ever have that again? With Bella? We had that once. That 'I can't keep my hands off of you' air that sickened everyone around us.
Bella takes a step back and crosses her arms, but she doesn't realize what that does to her boobs, pushing them up like she's just offering them to me. "Let's just get this over with." She turns and I follow, shoving my hands in my pockets in frustration.
Opening the door with my key card, I can see housekeeping has been in for turndown service, the lighting is low and moody, the radio is turned to some light jazz (that bland, elevator type that calls forth images of that curly-haired clarinet fucker I loathe) and the sheets are flipped over themselves invitingly. I stand in the doorway, unsure, so I let Bella decide where she's going to sit.
Instead of moving to the loveseat or even outside onto the balcony, she starts opening all of my drawers, sifting through and making a mess of the orderly items there before moving to the closet and pushing the hangers apart, inspecting each neatly hung article. I lean back against the wall and watch as she moves to the bathroom. I'm not worried about her finding any of my tools, I haven't brought any on this trip with me except for a knife that to the naked eye appears to be pocket comb and a syringe that comes dismantled, hidden as a toothbrush.
"May I ask what you're doing?"
She comes back into the room and kneels down, flipping the covers up on the bed to look beneath it. "I'm looking for clues like you did in my house."
"Oh? And what are you coming up with?"
She sits back on her heels, slapping her hands down on her thighs. "That you've turned into a neat freak perhaps with a touch of OCD if the color-coding of your shirts is any indication, you don't own a pet since there's not one dog or cat hair on anything, and you might be here on business, since who the hell brings suits to Key West?"
"Is that why you look so mad and confused? I'm a neat freak?"
"I look mad because if you are here on business, that means I'm just a side trip."
"You're not. And the confused?"
She looks up at me, her brow furrowed and her little nostrils flaring. "I don't know who you are Edward. I knew who you wanted to be, I once knew everything about you. And the man I see before me doesn't add up."
I reach down to offer her a hand, but she gets up on her own, swinging over to the other side of the room by the balcony doors. I'm unsure of what to say, so I say nothing. I grab the bottle I'd opened earlier, busying my hands with glasses and pouring two.
She takes the one I offer and moves out the door, placing her glass on the post of the balcony wall standing with her back to the ocean. "The Edward I knew would never own suits. He wouldn't have a shaving kit or be here on business. He was a groupie that wanted to follow Metallica around the country and was proud to own exactly one pair of jeans. He wanted to follow me to fashion school and enter air guitar competitions. He loved it when I wore his ratty boxers and smoked too much weed, causing me to devour an entire box of Chips Ahoy and leave crumbs in his bed."
She takes a big gulp of her wine and fiddles with the stem, her eyes following her fingers as they twirl the glass. "And the Edward I knew would never, ever have left me."
"I'd still let you eat Chips Ahoy in my bed."
"Maybe I'll just steal a pair of your boxers and call it a night."
We're staring at each other, both of us waiting for me to answer her real question. "I didn't want to leave you the way I did. It kind of was decided for me." Not a total lie.
"I'm not even sure exactly how you left me. One minute we're talking about which t-shirt you should wear to match my Converse for graduation and the next minute, I'm walking to Pomp and Circumstance alone like every other loser we went to school with. We were supposed to be making fun of the whole thing together. Instead, you left me as pitiful as one of the crying club."
"The crying club?"
"The girls that squeal and cry fake tears, throwing their arms around your neck, saying how they'll miss you even though they never spoke to you before. Everyone feels bad for them because it's a known fact that high school is their glass ceiling."
"That sounds awful."
"It was. Becky Esposito actually made me take a picture with her stuffed bear between us."
We fall silent, and the loss of banter is an immediate reminder of what I left behind. No one could make me laugh and want to talk all night like Bella. Sitting on one of the Adirondack chairs, I rub my hand down my face. She sits next to me, tucking her feet up underneath her and holding her legs. "I know this won't mean much, but I am sorry. I'm sorrier than you can imagine." She nods, and I'm grateful that she doesn't automatically dismiss it.
"Do you remember the last couple of weeks before graduation?"
"In general or specifically with you? Cause I was stoned a lot back then."
"Specifically with us."
Her fingers twist the hem of her dress. "You started acting differently. I remember wondering if you were getting nervous, maybe about the future. I never once thought you were nervous about us, though."
Turning in my chair, I want to pull her to me but her grip tightens on her legs. "Bella, believe me when I say there was nothing I was more sure of than us."
"Then what? We had plans, were you unsure about them?"
"My plans… changed."
"And you couldn't tell me? Edward, we were supposed to leave for California the next day."
"I had every intention of leaving with you. But some things were happening, and in the end, I had no choice."
"No choice. That's about as flimsy an excuse as 'it's not you, it's me' or 'I don't want to hold you back'."
"There were some things going on that for your own good, I didn't tell you. I was hoping they would go away and not affect us in any way. But I was wrong. I have never been so wrong. Trust me when I say me leaving had absolutely nothing to do with how I felt about you. Leaving is the hardest thing I've ever had to do." Ironic, coming from a hired killer, but I continue. "Do you remember my dad at all?"
She blinks. "The man you said only existed to knock up your mother?"
"I hardly think I used the term 'knocked up' about my own mother."
"Semantics. Yes, I remember you telling me about him - or lack of him."
"I didn't tell you that he came to see me right after prom."
The look of hurt on her face stabs me, guts me like a concealed hydraulic knife tucked into a sleeve would. Bella and I had no secrets, and this is just the smallest of all the secrets I've kept from her.
"Why would you keep that from me?"
"Because… you'd hate me if you knew why he was there. Why I needed him so much those last few weeks."
She looks at me blankly. "Edward, you discussed all your problems with me. Even the icky boy ones."
"Well, this one was… ickier." Oh Bella, you're going to laugh so hard when I tell you this one! The last stages of puberty brought forth some pretty freaky changes, most noticeably, my desire to kill outweighed my desire to be the air guitar champion of Washington State, isn't that hilarious? Yeah, I don't think so.
"Unless you're about to tell me that you became a pervert that got a thrill from watching your mother undress, I think I can handle it."
"My father, well, he's in a specialized business. Part of the reason he wasn't around when I was a kid. The more time I spent with him, the more I realized that it was my calling in life."
"You left me to become a priest?" she shouts, her voice reverberating around the glass walls of the balcony. "That's like, the worst thing you could become to a teenage, Cure-loving atheist."
"No, I'm not a priest. Jesus, I didn't lose my mind entirely."
"So then what? What is it Edward, what did you become that was more important that what we had planned? No, scratch that. What was so much more important that you left without a word - without a trace of you? What the actual fuck?"
"I can't tell you everything tonight" And I truly can't, I'm too scared I'll really make her run from me. I don't have the balls, I'm sorry to say, and that has nothing to do with the damage she inflicted on them earlier.
"If you think I'm going to do this again with you, you're crazier than a shithouse rat."
"Bella, please." I reach for her but she tucks herself farther into her chair away from me. She's right. This is a mistake. Why did I think I could win her over with a smile and a trip down memory lane? I've become a monster, and she deserves better. She deserves the Edward I was, which I'll never get back.
A knock sounds on the door, and I groan, hating the interruption. "Go away!" I yell.
"No, you know what? Answer the door Edward; I think we're done here." I start to get up to stop her, but she puts her hands out in a 'don't touch me' gesture. "I'll get the door. Maybe it's your dad coming to stop us from running away together."
She storms across the room, and I know Bella well enough to know that when she says she's done, she's done. It was always best to let her stew and get rid of her anger, except the anger wasn't usually directed at me. She opens the door to a porter and takes a box from him, placing it on the dresser gingerly. "Well, it's been real. A real fucking nightmare. I never would've guessed that the Edward you became would be a coward."
The door closes swiftly behind her and I'm left in a cloud of anger and Tahitian Island Dream.
Sighing, I bring the box to the bed and use my comb knife to cut a slit in the packing tape. Staring down into the cardboard, there's a metal box which can only mean one thing; Emmett has a job for me. I remember the message the front desk gave me that I ignored, telling me that he'd called. How very Emmett to make me work on a vacation he insisted I take. It was probably Rosalie's greedy pocketbook. I throw the kit on the bed and look inside the box for more. Pulling out the refrigerated, aluminum bag, I'm relieved it's arrived but it only serves to remind me what I really need to tell Bella if I want her in my life at all, and this is truly the thing that will make her run screaming.
I look at the two items on the bedspread, both things horrific and my lifeline all the same.
Will the girl of my dreams hate me because I've become a hitman?
Pulling the zipper of the pouch open, I finger the bags of blood lying deliciously within.
Or will she hate me because I've become a vampire?
Huge thanks as always to my GIF-loving pre-reader, LayAtHomeMom, and my favorite person/muse/beta, CarrieZM. Without them I am nothing.
And without you, I am just a bunch of unread words in cyberspace.
