CHAPTER NINE: THE BIRD
The Town
After
I am a man with regrets. I ache for what was once mine, for all that has been squandered.
It is easier to be angry with Bella than to miss her and need her and wish for her. But I can't be angry.
I will never stop missing my wife.
I miss her infinitely more since the day my father died. Some days I want to erase the memory of her lips pressed to mine, her hands holding on and her voice against my skin. I'm haunted by her touch.
I sit on a high stool at the coffee shop with my newspaper and a blue pen. It's almost like being at a bar, except I won't go home smelling like sin. My hair and my clothes will radiate coffee beans for the rest of the day.
I look at my calloused hands. She used to claim to love these hands, rough against her softest skin. The pen looks awkward in my fingers.
A little girl, holding a plate full of pastries, climbs up next to me. Children make me nervous. They are too honest. And they remind me of what I did. The girl inadvertently pushes her tall stool against mine as she climbs up.
She has little teeth and unruly hair that looks like it hasn't seen a brush in days. I look around, scanning the coffee shop for the girl's mother, but there is no one.
She stares at me, tilting her head to the side. "What's your name?" she asks in her raspy voice.
For whatever reason, I have the strongest urge to tell her, but I don't. "Didn't your father ever tell you that you shouldn't talk to strangers?"
She scowls with her brown, brown eyes and sullen lips. "You're not a stranger. You're here every day," she practically accuses me. I'm not sure how she knows this. I've never noticed her before.
"I'm still a stranger," I promise her.
She holds her pointer finger up to her lower lip and stares at my pen. "No, you wear jeans and clean shoes and you drink a lot, a lot of coffee. You can't be a stranger." Her logic is difficult to argue with.
I focus on my newspaper instead of her innocent face. Maybe she'll get bored and go away. But it's like my brain no longer knows how to read. I blink at the small print, but all I can focus on is the small child to my right.
Half of a blueberry scone appears in the middle of my paper. When I turn to face her, she has the other half stuffed almost entirely in her mouth, crumbs everywhere.
She watches me intently, her eyes wider than should be humanly possible. I take a bite, merely to appease her. With the way she looks at me, it's obvious she sees someone I'm not.
She doesn't ask me any more questions, she simply stares. It's more off-putting than the endless chatter.
I circle a few random job postings, trying my best to ignore her. I think I might be succeeding until a finger pokes me in the arm.
"Shouldn't you be in school?" I sigh, trying to sound exasperated.
She blinks at me several times, and before I can stop her she's reaching up and placing her little hands on either side of my face. I flinch, and immediately regret it.
She studies me intently, her little eyebrows knit together. "Why are you sad?" she asks. With her frown tilted to the side, she looks like she genuinely wants to know.
"I'm not sad." Now I sound defensive. I'm also lying to a child.
She whisper-shouts in her little girl voice, "What are you?"
I am a man who regrets. "I don't know."
"You don't know?" she giggles, as she removes her hands from my cheeks. "My name's Wren."
This inexplicably makes me smile. "Like the bird."
She wrinkles her nose and shakes her head. "No. Like the girl."
"You shouldn't talk to strangers, Wren."
She ignores me. "How old are you anyway?"
"How old do you think I am?" I ask her.
She studies my face. "Twelve or nineteen." Twelve or nineteen. I wouldn't go back to twelve, but nineteen, in a heartbeat.
"How old are you?"
She tries to sit up tall. "Five and a quarter." I wonder if I ever counted my age in quarters. I somehow think I didn't.
"Will you be my best friend?" she asks out of nowhere.
"No," I tell her, trying to sound convincing.
"Why not?" She puts her hands on her hips and it's almost enough to make me laugh. Almost.
"Because I can't."
"But why?"
"Because you should have a best friend who is five and a quarter."
Because you deserve better.
She doesn't like this answer. I want nothing more than for this child's mother to appear and save me.
I flip through my paper and pull the comics out, laying them out on the counter in front of the girl named after a bird. She places both palms face down on the bright paper, leaning in, her face only a couple inches away.
I go back to the job listings, but I don't really see them.
Sometimes it feels like I'm forgetting Bella's face, or her laugh or the way she sees the world. And sometimes I remember her so clearly that she seems more real than she ever did when she was mine.
I can hear her voice now. She used to tell me all the time that I should get my contractor's license. She said it often, not in a nagging way, but just because she thought I should, and that I could. She thought I could be more than a pair of hired hands.
At the time, there was always something holding me back. Now, here I am with nothing, nobody here to tell me I can be more than what I am, and for the first time, I feel like maybe I could. Be more.
I watch the girl out of the corner of my eye as she fidgets on her stool, pulling her legs up under her so that she's up on her knees.
I wonder if Bella and I could have done it. If we could have raised a family. We probably would have fallen to pieces. We fell to pieces regardless.
There is a flash of motion beside me as the little girl's stool tilts back and out from under her. Before I can even think, I'm on my feet, my arms outstretched, holding her an arm's length away.
The stool crashes to the ground, the sound jarring, startling everyone around us. It's a stark reminder that my heart still beats in my chest. That I'm still very much alive.
Her feet dangle in the air. Everyone is staring.
"She's not mine," I tell nobody in particular. They go back to their coffee and their chatter.
But there is one set of the brownest watery eyes staring at me, wide as ever.
Please don't cry.
A brunette rushes out from behind the counter, wiping her hands on her apron. After righting the stool, she takes the girl from my shaky hands and sets her on her feet.
"I am so sorry," she tells me without looking at me. "I told you not to bother the customers," she scolds.
I feel the strangest urge to defend her. "She wasn't. She wasn't bothering me."
The woman grabs the girl by the wrist, and nearly drags her over to the front counter, lifting her up onto a chair. She tells her things that I cannot hear. The girl stays put.
I pack up my things with an urgency to get out of here. I want to turn around as I push open the glass door, but I don't. I know the girl is staring and I don't know why I care.
It's cold out, feeling more like winter than mid-spring. It is a five minute walk from the coffee shop to my house. I'm sure I would drive it if given the choice.
Sometimes, when I walk up the long driveway, I still forget that she doesn't live here. The wisteria is in full bloom and it's almost suffocating: the smell and the sight of it everywhere.
I'm supposed to meet Emmett for dinner at the Puerto Rican restaurant downtown. I hope he doesn't bring the girlfriend. She makes him unbearable. They are always touching and gazing and whispering.
It's a short walk. One that we used to make frequently. The line is out the door when I arrive. Em is leaning up against the green building with two girls.
"Hey, man. Did you walk?"
No, I fucking flew in my goddamn private jet.
"E, this is Katie."
Of course it is. I have known a lot of Katies. I lost my virginity to one. This is thankfully a different Katie.
This Katie is smiley with big lips. They look almost kissable. The thought is so repulsive, so wrong, so confusing. Then she speaks and I wish she hadn't. Her voice makes me want to go deaf.
She scrunches her nose up at the menu as we stand in line to order. "What's good here?"
"Everything."
"I can't even pronounce any of these things," she whines.
Em and the girlfriend are in their own little world as he nuzzles her neck, and smiles at her like a pussy.
I don't want to be here. That's a lie. I want to be here with someone else. That's a partial truth. I want to be here with Bella.
The line moves quickly. We're surrounded by loud chatter, friends catching up, couples holding hands. And that's who we used to be. I order and pay for my food before anyone gets any ideas. I am not buying Katie's dinner.
I scan the room for a table. She holds her imported beer up. "What are you having to drink?" she asks me in her child voice.
"Water."
"Oh come on, it's Friday night." She orders a second beer.
"I hope you're thirsty," I say over my shoulder.
"It's Friday night." She says it like I'm stupid or seventeen.
I emphasize every word. "I don't drink."
She gives Emmett a look. I'll have to thank him for this later.
Crammed into a small corner table, I'm next to Katie and her two beers.
There are a hundred different bright colors everywhere and music that makes my ears bleed. But Bella loved this place. She always ordered the sweet plantains and a mango iced tea. She insisted on trying everything on the menu and would order a different entree every time. I always order the same thing.
I inhale my food without really tasting it and watch Katie pick at her plate.
I wonder if virgin-Katie still lives in the country. If she's married, has kids, has a house or a crack problem or drinks herself stupid.
This Katie likes to hear herself talk. And she keeps touching me. The kind of touches that are on purpose.
"I have to go," I announce, standing abruptly from my chair, almost knocking it over.
"Hold up, Edward, we'll drive you home," Emmett shouts after me.
I wave him off. I need to walk.
The air is just cold enough that I can see my breath. I walk past the empty lot. I walk and walk and walk until the streets are no longer straight.
The moon is barely visible, leaving the windy streets without sidewalks in near darkness. I'll get smacked by a few wayward tree branches if I don't look where I'm going.
The mistletoe doesn't sit in the oaks here.
A car slows behind me and I have to close my eyes. My entire body feels her, remembers what it was like when she was the prettiest girl and I was just a boy who walked in the street.
My memories are haunted by sounds. The sound of her car slowing behind me. The sound of her giddy laugh. The sound of her body writhing beneath me. The sound of her choking sobs. The sound of my lies. All of them.
The window is already down as the car pulls up.
And maybe I'm crazy now. I try to blink her away. Bella.
"You shouldn't walk in the street. I almost hit you." She's not smiling but her voice. She's really here. In a car I don't know.
She is so beautiful, even in the dark, that I want to close my eyes again. Her brownest eyes pierce with their honesty.
I stand there. Like an idiot. In the street.
"Do you want a ride?" She is begging me to turn her down. But she is asking what I want, and I refuse to lie.
I open the door without answering. She doesn't take her eyes off of me.
We sit in suffocating silence. I don't know what this is but I will take whatever she is giving me.
"Bella, what are you doing here?"
She takes a breath, her teeth worrying her lip. "I don't know." Turning away from me, her eyes wide, like those of a little girl named after a bird, she looks like she's trying to convince herself of something.
I can't look away from her face as she drives. I want to reach over and touch her, run my fingers down her arm, hold her leg just above the knee.
I tangle my hands up in each other, like a pair of vulture claws.
She pulls up in front of the house that used to be ours. I promised her we would fix it up. It was an honest lie. The house looks like it did then. When I thought it was the beginning.
With the car off, neither of us moves to get out. We just sit. In the driveway.
We are two people who no longer have anything to talk about. No more screaming words or begging words or words about forever.
Love me, forgive me, hold me down, scream it out. See me. Please. See me.
"Are you sober?" she asks, because she doesn't trust her eyes.
"Yes. Since... since the day my father died." Since the day you ran.
"I should go." She wants to mean it.
"Will I see you again?" I don't even care that I sound desperate.
She looks straight ahead when she speaks. "Good night, Edward."
-HL-
A/N:
Susan betas and tells me to "knock it off" when I need to be told.
Kim Pre-reads and she has the prettiest eyes.
Happy birthday Jaime!
My goal is to have ch 10 up a week from Monday. But no promises. I go back to work tomorrow and I'm about to move, so life is about to swallow me whole. Sometimes I wish life was simple, but most of the time I'm glad it's not.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this chapter.