Apologies

In the morning I woke up groggy, and still hurting. I reached over to the bedside table and retrieved the bottle of water and ibuprofen that I had put there last night. I looked at the clock and realized that I had slept in despite the fact that I went to bed earlier than normal. I got up and started down the hallway towards the kitchen. I expected my mom to be there but all I found was a note on the refrigerator door, taped conspicuously just below the small dent that was now approximately five feet up on the door. Such a comedian.

Gone to church. I'll be back for lunch. Rose called.

I felt kind of bad for ignoring my mom last night. I just needed time to sort through it by myself before I even thought of mentioning it to her. The memory suddenly made me feel cooped up and I decided that I needed to get out of the house for a little while. I grabbed a granola bar and another bottle of water. I threw on a pair of gray yoga pants and an old tee shirt then thought about where I could go. I decided to walk down to the river that cut through the back half of the property, instead of going out in public looking like I got beat up by someone, so I picked up my gray hooded jacket and went out the back door.

It took me an while to reach it, but when I got there it was worth it. It was fall, so all of the leaves had turned, and some were falling in the breeze. I looked around wishing I had thought to bring a blanket. I settled for a seat on rock that jutted out in to the water. I was lost in the sounds of the river water splashing on the rock, so I didn't hear him come up behind me.

"Great minds think alike."

I started at the sound of his voice, nearly losing my already precarious balance, before he grabbed my arm to keep me from falling in to the water.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you like that."

"Well, I'd say you're getting pretty good at scaring me when you don't mean to. At least this time no one ended up in the hospital." I expected him to turn and go. I hoped he would.

"True. Mind if I sit?"

I looked at him in disbelief, "Do you want to?"

"Yeah. The way I see it, I've got some apologizing to do."

"For what?" This time I couldn't hide any bit of the shock that ran through me.

"For the black eye, the concussion, the close call with the river just now... and the way I acted yesterday. I did a lot of thinking last night, and I want to believe that you didn't cheat on me. You never gave me any actual reason to think that you did, so..." He bowed his head after that last statement looking almost ashamed.

"Um, excuse me, but did you hit your own head this morning? The only one of us here that needs to apologize for anything is me. I should have done it the right way yesterday. " I took a deep breath and, with the most sincerity I had in me I told him, "I'm truly, truly sorry for what I did."

"I know you are. And I'm sorry I didn't believe you. About there being another guy I mean, and about the whore comment. Even if you slept with every guy you knew, I know you aren't the kind of girl that would do it for no reason."

He sat down on the rock next to mine and stared in to the water. I couldn't even let myself believe that he was being serious. We'd had one pseudo-discussion about it, there wasn't any way that he had forgiven me.

I did honestly want to be able to salvage something of the friendship we had once shared, so I was completely honest with him.

"You know, there never was any one else when I broke up with you. I thought about it, but never followed through. I couldn't trust that it wouldn't eventually happen, so instead of doing something stupid and cheating on you... well, you know what happened."

"I spent a lot of time hating you for what I thought you did. I had convinced myself that you were an awful person so I could just go on hating you, and I can see that I was wrong for that."

"No, you weren't. I was an awful person when I did that. You had every right to hate me, and I'm glad you did. To be honest I didn't even really like myself back then. I took something beautiful and made it in to something ugly. What we shared was something special, Edward. I know that now. What I did completely disrespected that, and I will always regret it." I had always known that he loved me more than I ever deserved. I also knew that if it broke my heart to do what I did, then it must have ripped his completely out.

He turned so he could see me from the corner of his eye and grinned. "I did have a right to hate you didn't I?"

My nerves caused me to laugh at the look on his face, half sorry, half smug.

"Bella, whether or not you knew it, I would have understood. I was scared shitless about growing up. I would have understood."

"It's easy to say that now, but you don't know what you would have done back then."

"Neither do you. You took that choice away from me. Maybe I would have been okay with us seeing other people for a while, maybe not. I just know that you weren't the only one questioning whether or not we were doing the right thing. I was just trying to get through it with you by my side. I'm sorry that you didn't feel like you could share that with me."

"Me too. I would go back and change it if I could, but I can't."

"I'm not so sure I would want you to. Everything happens for a reason, I guess. I've grown up a lot since then. I've changed, and I can tell that you have too. I've been pretty happy with my life, so I can't say that I'm not a tiny bit okay with what happened since it got me to where I am now."

"So, what, are you following me now? Trying to make me pay for it by being nice to me and making me feel worse?"

"Nope, I was already here, about a hundred feet down that way when I saw you come through the trees."

I could see that he was deliberating over what to say next. A few times he started to speak, but then thought better of it. About five minutes had gone by when he finally decided what to say.

"So, now that the apologies are all out of the way, what do we do?"

"For starters you can promise to stop trying to kill me."

He laughed louder than I thought was appropriate, it wasn't that funny, maybe he was nervous too. It made me want to join in and so I did. I was almost drunk on the relief that the sound gave me. When we both quieted down it was like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I realized that I had been worried he would always be like that, mad at me. It was nice to see a hint of understanding from him. It was nicer to feel a hint of forgiveness for myself, knowing that I hadn't completely broken him.

"I forgot how funny you are." He wiped a fake tear away from his left eye.

"It would be funny, if it wasn't true. I swear I think you were subconsciously trying to cause me physical pain."

"Who said it was subconscious?" His tone was abruptly too serious for me to know if he was joking.

I looked at him , honestly panicked. Maybe I had been wrong. Just when I thought I was about to salvage something, maybe I was actually about to make it worse. I didn't have to wait long to find out.

"You looked... liked you were... about to puke...AGAIN!" He heaved the words out between spasms of laughter.

"Well, obviously, I forgot what a good liar you are." I couldn't help but to laugh with him again.

He turned is head and waited until I looked at him. "It's good to see you again, I didn't think it would be, but it is."

"Yeah, I'm pretty charming like that." I wanted him to know that I felt the same way so I continued, "I know exactly what you mean. Now. Yesterday wasn't very pleasant though." I couldn't keep the grimace off of my face for long.

"How long have we known each other, now?" I grinned, thankful for the subject change.

"Well, we met in the fourth grade, so that would be about fifteen years. Yup, fifteen years ago I beat you in to submission."

He chuckled, "I think kicked is more like it. What kind of sadistic ten year old thinks it's fun to kick little boys where the sun doesn't shine?"

"This kind of ten year old girl." I laughed at the memory of him hiding behind the slide trying to get away from me. Too bad for him he had broken the heart of my then best friend, and I was not giving up until I caught him.

From then on we would see each other from time to time. As we got older I got nicer, and I stopped beating up little boys. In middle school, the same year I met Rose, we had a class together and after a few weeks he got the courage to ask me to be his girlfriend. That lasted three days, but we stayed friends.

That was the last year we saw each other at school for a while. I called him once every summer to talk to him and see how he was doing. Those were always good conversations. We were just friends, nothing more, nothing less, just friends. Then we were 16, puberty had hit, and we decided to give it another go. That "go" lasted four years. And up until the last few weeks we were together, I would have sworn it would last forever.

We were engaged at 19, and broken up at 20. I still wasn't exactly sure what happened. Maybe I never would be. The knowledge that my dad had terminal cancer scared the hell out of me. I started taking stock of my life, and thought that I was going about it all wrong. I hated knowing that I had hurt the person that had known me longer and better than my very best friend.

His voice pulled me from my reverie, "So, what are you doing down here?"

"Honestly?"

He nodded his head for me to continue.

"After you left last night I didn't say anything to my mom and I know she was dying to find out what happened. This morning she was gone before I got up, and I just kind of felt bad for ignoring her like that. Anyway, with all of that on top of all of this," I gestured back and forth between us, "I needed to come here and clear my head."

"You wanted to clear your head about what went on between us, and you came here?"

I started blushing before he finished the sentence. We had spent a lot of time here together the summer before I went off to college... a LOT. We never did anywhere near this much talking here before this though...

"Yes, despite what your perpetually gutter destined mind is wandering to right now, this place has a lot of happy, non sex related, memories for me and I just feel more at ease here. It sounds stupid," I hesitated feeling a little bit vulnerable, "but I can picture taking everything that I am having problems with and throwing it in the river. Everything just disappears with the water. It helps."

He didn't say anything, and neither did I. It was silent other than the water and the birds. We sat like that for another twenty minutes. This was all feeling too surreal. I had thought that I would never get to explain anything, and here we were, kind of talking like friends again.

Finally I got up the courage to ask him, "So what's this Tanya like? Aside from being obviously easy to bed down?"

He looked at me and rolled his eyes, "Not funny."

"No? Not even just a little bit? Don't forget, I know what goes on between you two." I laughed trying to lighten the moment.

He ignored my last question, and opted to answer the first instead. "She's great. She's nice, and she's smart. She's good to me."

"That's great, I'm glad you found someone that makes you happy. So, are you taking this one all the way?

"I don't know, it's only been three months. Besides, the last time I proposed to a girl the bitch broke up with me." He laughed at my insulted expression. "I know, I know. No name calling."

That had always been one of our rules when we were together. He couldn't call me names and I couldn't call him names. We also weren't allowed to drop the F bomb on each other. We were young, but we both realized how important is was just to respect one another. Cussing and name calling just took arguments to levels they didn't need to get to. We had had a near perfect relationship, and I threw it away chasing some life experience that everyone told me I needed to have. I think that was part of the reason I still didn't want to date anyone. What if I did it again? What if my thing is just to ruin good men? Maybe I was just better off, and the world of men was safer, if I stayed alone.

"So how many times did you bring her down here?" I grinned at him and he just shook his head.

"Never."

"Liar. I know your bag of tricks doesn't go too deep. This place is probably the only thing in your repertoire." I trilled a nervous laugh.

I really didn't want the answers to these questions, but I asked anyway. It's like when you drive by a car wreck, you know that you might see something horrible, but you can't look away. If this conversation were a car wreck, I was turning around and coming back for more.

He wouldn't answer me or look at me, so I guessed I must have pushed a little too far. I didn't want to go back down that road so I shifted course.

"How long is she gone for?"

"Few months."

"What ever will you do for that long without getting any?" WHY DID I KEEP DOING THAT?

"Careful woman, we're not that okay with each other yet." He chuckled and held up his hands in a defensive position.

Yet. We're not that okay, yet. Maybe with time, we could be, and I was hopeful.

"Good, it helps to know the boundaries. So. As long as I don't ask about, or make fun of, your habits, and you don't make fun or ask about my lack of habits, can we try to be friends? I mean it would make it a lot easier on my mom."

"Sounds about right."

"In that case, yesterday morning never happened." I held my hand out for him to take.

"Good enough for me." He took my hand in his and we shook on it. I tried not to notice how his hands still had that same roughness and strength in them. The kind that comes from a lot of hard work.

"That brings me to my next question. What exactly drove you to move in with MY mother?"

"Well, a few months after your dad died I ran in to her at the grocery store one day and we got to talking. She was lonely and I was looking for a place to stay. I was already doing some work for your brother so, it just worked out. Woman's just as stubborn as you, won't let me pay her any rent."

"I'm sure. She always likes to do that kind of stuff for people." I shifted my sitting position to get some blood flowing to my legs. "How often do you come in the house? I'm just asking because I need to know what times of the day I need to hide or wear a helmet." He fought the smile that was playing at his lips.

"Well, up until yesterday I would eat dinner with her most nights. During the day she would leave the door unlocked in case I need to get a drink or something to eat."

"I guess I owe you a thanks. It's nice to know she's had someone to nag when I wasn't here."

"Your mom is a saint and you know it. I won't tolerate any bad mouthing her."

"Please, forgive me. I forgot myself for a moment." I paused then looked back at him, "Thanks for helping me yesterday, too. I wouldn't have blamed you if had ran out and never looked back."

He laughed again. It was starting to get a little chilly, which was odd because the sun was still getting higher in the sky. I shivered and hunkered down in my hoodie just a little bit. I noticed him shrugging out of his jacket and sliding it towards me on the rock. I picked it up and slipped it around my shoulders. I had forgotten how good he smelled, and what a gentleman he could be.

"So, how on earth have I not known for two years that you were living here? Where did you go when I visited?"

"Your mom usually gave me a heads up and I would make myself pretty scarce."

"Well, at least you were warned. I had no idea until..." I let the sentence trail off because I didn't want to offend him again. "Guess we know who her favorite is."

"Would you still have come home if you knew?"

I couldn't answer that question without him taking it as an insult so I opted to say nothing at all. He wouldn't understand that it would have been a selfish way for me to avoid everything, and absolutely nothing against him.

"Front's coming in now. " Just then, the wind picked up and scattered more leaves to the ground.

"I should probably head back to the house. I need to apologize to my mom for last night, so I think I'm going to make her some dinner. You're welcome to join us if you'd like. Don't break tradition just because of little old me."

"We'll see."

We both rose and I handed him his jacket. We walked back towards the house in a companionable silence. We would occasionally make small comments on the weather, but aside from that it was a nice, quiet trip back. I left him just outside the shop (he'd led me back a much shorter way) and continued on to the house.

This was the first day in a long time I wasn't worrying about how things would turn out. Right now things were good for him, and that was great, because that's all I ever really wanted.