"Human Desire"
There are some things that even listening to the thoughts of every single person you've ever met won't teach you. You don't learn it from being a voracious reader who never forgets anything, no matter how much you might want to (I'm talking about you, "Hannibal." Pigs? Really?). You don't pick it up from watching movies practically since the art of cinema was born. (I feel obliged to mention that "Nosferatu" was a load of crap) And you don't get it from advice from the wisest father a vampire could have.
You just don't learn it until you're in a car with your beloved, the woman you are convinced is your mate, the woman who you want to literally spend eternity with, and the two of you decide to listen to some music.
It's not until then that you realize that a ninety-year age difference means that you two have very different taste in music, and that the tickets you got to the Django Reinhardt festival in Portland this weekend just might not go over as well as you had hoped.
How do normal couples deal with this stuff? They might actually talk to each other before assuming that their loved one is as interested in gypsy jazz as they are. Not me. I just go ahead and express my profound disappointment and swear I really wasn't looking forward to it.
"I'm sorry, Edward," Bella is saying. "It's not that I'm uninterested. I just am not a big fan of jazz. I mean, I'm eighteen!" She shrugs her shoulders emphatically. "We're not exactly famous for our love of jazz."
"It's OK. If you hate it, we'll leave and go listen to Justin Bieber or whatever it is that you teenagers listen to." For the record, I will not listen to Justin Bieber. I will only pretend for her sake. And I might be sulking just a little bit.
"I don't want to listen to Justin Bieber. I just said that I am not the jazz fan you are. It's OK. We don't have to like all of the same things. We're allowed to have separate interests. I mean, you like watching teenage girls sleep and I don't."
"Have you ever tried it?" I ask her with a grin. "Maybe you'd like it. You never know."
"I've been to sleepovers, you know, back when I had friends that slept and stuff. It's over-rated." She smiles at me sweetly. "You know, all we did is practice French kissing and have pillow fights in our underwear."
The Volvo deviates slightly from our side of the road as I stare at her.
"Just kidding, " she giggles.
The other glitch I'm running into in the transition between Bella Swan-obsession and Bella Swan-girlfriend is that she was intriguing to me because of her closed mind. But now that she's my girlfriend I really want to know what's going on in there, and she's not exactly the most talkative thing in the world. I mean, I want her to spill all sorts of secret thoughts and insights and desires to me, but she just doesn't. She doesn't even keep a diary. I've looked.
I'm also feeling torn about this whole "having sex" thing. On one hand, my romantic side, my born-in-1901 side is telling me that it's not respectful to Bella and that I should wait until she agrees to marry me. Like that's gonna happen.
On the other hand, my teenage side as well as my virginity-burning-a-hole-in-my-pocket side are pushing me to put on some Isaac Hayes music and put the moves on my girlfriend.
I get the distinct impression that Bella would have sex with me. I gather, from her previous comments, that not having sex would actually be a deal-breaker. I have to remind myself that she's grown up in a very different world than I did, one with MTV, Grand Theft Auto, and scantily-clad Disney heroines. The world is a much more sexualized place than it was when I was a kid and premarital sex is much more commonplace, as you can probably guess from my eighteen-year-old girlfriend's extra little tax deduction.
Speaking of tax deductions, Thomas is being a pretty portable baby today, all things considered. It is a pretty long drive to Portland but he manages to sleep, eat and be a non-crier for most of it. Being late summer in the Pacific Northwest, it's warm while not being so sunny that I attract undue attention for being iridescent. It's a fantastic day for a road trip.
We arrive in Portland in the early evening and I take Bella and Thomas out for dinner in one of those free-range beef, organic produce, fair trade-coffee serving places. You know, kind of like how people ate when I was a kid. Except with artisan cheese. Whatever that is.
So we get Thomas settled in and I decide that nothing says "romance" like one of my color-coded lists of things that Bella and I should talk about. Luckily, I might have brought one.
Bella pouts. "I honestly thought that you brought us here so you and I could spend some time alone." She puts her hand on my chest and looks up at me with those big brown eyes. She's killing me. Metaphorically.
"Bella, Sweetie, I do want to spend time alone with you." I put my hand over hers to hold it in place because it's starting to…wander. "I just want to talk with you about some stuff." She smiles sweetly at me.
"OK," she says, acquiescing a little too easily. "Let's sit down on the couch."
I let her pull me over to the couch and take a seat. I decide that I will try to talk to her with her in my lap rather than making her move. It's all about compromise, right?
"So, one of the things that I think that we need to talk about, now that we've agreed that we love each other," I can't resist smiling sappily at her when I say this. "Is marriage." She nods. "You agree?" I ask, surprised.
"Yeah, we haven't talked about marriage in at least two days," she says. "I got worried," she adds dryly.
"Ha, ha, smart-ass. Fine then, we'll talk about vampires instead," she turns to face me and pushes her mouth against my neck.
"Why, do vampires make you hot?" she pretends to bite my neck and I have to pull her head away gently.
"Bella, I can't focus when you're doing that." I try to push her away from me a little so I can show her I'm serious. "We have to talk about how you, you know, aren't like me."
"That's exactly what I was going to investigate!" she says, laughing as she nuzzles her face against mine again and starts undoing my top button. I clap my hands down on hers again.
"I mean the vampire thing." I just really feel like Bella has to know what she's getting into with all this. I don't want to lose her and that means I'll eventually have to change her. But what about Thomas? And does she even want to be with me forever?
"Oh, Alice already talked to me about that," she waves her hand dismissively. "She said you were going to worry about hurting me but that you wouldn't."
"Hurting you? What are you…" I stop, stunned. "Are you talking about when we…" I can't think of any way to put it except waving in between the two of us, which is the universal gesture for "fooling around," I guess.
"Yes, Alice said we would be fine." She nods to me confidently and leans over to kiss me again. Which shuts me up for about a minute. As does the ickiness of my sister and girlfriend talking about sex. But then I remember that there were more things I wanted to talk about.
"Bella, that wasn't all," I mumble around her mouth. She grumbles and pulls away.
"Edward, if you don't want to…" I don't even let her finish that blasphemy.
"I want to, really." I look into her eyes so she can see just how earnest I am. "Really. I just think that we should talk about some stuff first and...I think we should take it slow. I'm having a moral crisis here. I was born in 1901, Bella. This is weird for me."
She nods and smiles at me. "I understand. I'll try not to be so aggressive. I thought you were just…shy." She slides part way off my lap so her legs are still across mine and her head is resting on my chest. I play with her long, dark hair while she runs her hand lightly across my chest. I decide that I really am the world's biggest girl since this actually makes me even happier than all of her seduction attempts. Not that those weren't pretty awesome, too.
I explain my 17 year-old boy vs. world's oldest living Victorian gentleman thing to her. She seems to understand.
"I'm sorry if I scandalized your inner Victorian gentleman, Edward," she flutters her lashes at me. "I'll try to be more considerate."
"You don't have to apologize. I probably send some mixed messages. And I am pretty irresistible. I could see why you might have trouble keeping your clothes on around me."
She rolls her eyes at me so I figure I should move on to my other agenda item: immortality.
"The other thing is that we need to talk about what you want in terms of…" I don't really know how to put it. Especially since what I really want to talk about is not so much what she wants but what I want. Tricky. How to make it seem like her idea?
"Are you talking about me becoming…like you?" she asks, nervousness filling her voice. I nod, watching her eyes carefully. She's so hard to read!
"I…I haven't really thought…that's not true, I have thought about it. I just don't know how to make it work, Edward." She looks at me sadly. "What about Thomas? If it was just me I would probably beg you to change me so I could be with you forever, so I didn't have to think about leaving you alone when I get old and die."
She sighs and leans back a little, putting some space in between us. "But if it wasn't for Thomas, we wouldn't have met, you realize that?" I nod, because she's right about all of it and I feel selfish asking her for something like this.
She looks at me gently. "But I understand why it's important, not just because of how we feel but because of the Italians." I raise an eyebrow at her.
"Carlisle told me about the Italians. He said to not let it affect my decisions, that you guys would do everything you could to keep me safe."
"We will, Bella. I don't want to pressure you to do something that you'll regret." I pull her closer again. "Just think about it, OK?" She nods against my chest.
I let out a big exhale. "Whew! That was a mood killer, huh?" Bella giggles.
"Hey Bella, instead of making out let's talk about death and creepy Italian vampires and me infecting you with my venom," I say in an exaggerated voice as she laughs.
"Although, maybe I want you to infect me with your venom," she purrs and crawls back into my lap. Then she stops and looks at me questioningly.
"If we keep our clothes on can I manhandle your Victorian gentleman a little?" she asks sweetly. Which is the weirdest euphemism I've ever heard but I kind of asked for it, right?
I manage to get an uninterrupted dose of "face-time" with my girl, without the phone ringing – because I turned them both off – and without worrying about being overheard. I really don't want to be indiscreet but I will say that breasts are pretty awesome.
I'm pretty sure I'm going to die of happiness. Oh, yeah. Too late.
a/n: The lovely and talented Betham beta'ed this so please me kind to her; she works hard to fix the mess I send her. The incredible TwiCarol wrote a lovely rec for this on Jasper's Naughty Girls (just the name makes me blush) in addition to making me a really cool blinkie. Both links are on my profile.
I, unfortunately, will not be able to update next week but I'll be back the week after. I have an overly ambitious plan for my classroom's graduation which means I will be making things out of paper mache and felt all week and am spending my weekend at a traditional jazz festival with all the other ultra hip people. (by which I mean, all of the oldest people in Northern California) My apologies and I promise to be back on the 8th. Thanks for the reviews! xoxo JuJu