Bella

When I send out the SOS to my sister, Rose, and Alice, I know they'll be worried, but I need their advice right now. I'm feeling reckless, and while sometimes impetuousness can be exciting, it has consequences, and I need to be keenly aware of all the angles here.

Lauren and I are chatting about our parents when Rose and Alice finally chime into the Zoom chat with serious expressions. They talk over each other, and I have to mute them from my end to shut them up.

"No, Garrett hasn't contacted me; this isn't about that. Or maybe it is; I don't know." Sighing in frustration, I unmute my two friends and wait for the barrage of questions, but I'm surprised when I don't hear anything. "Nothing?"

Lauren shrugs, clearly the spokesperson for this motley crew. "We've been talking, and we have a theory about what might be going on."

I snort, but before I can respond, Rose butts in. "Do you wanna bone Edward?"

"Because if you do, we feel like that might be a reasonable response." Alice smiles widely. "He's kind and smart. He's been paying you a fair amount of attention, and you have the jilted thing in common … in a sense. And you and Garrett were celibate for the last few months of the engagement, so you probably have some pent-up energy."

"It's understandable if you feel like sowing some oats." My sister stares a little blandly at me.

"And you've all decided that it's totally okay for me to do this? Two-ish weeks after my non-wedding disaster." Rolling my eyes, I lean back against my headboard. "How very modern of you three to make this decision for me."

"Oh, come on. It's not like that, and you know it." Rose points at me through the screen. "You tell us that's not why you called us here, and we'll back down."

There's a beat, and then a second. "It's not the full reason." They're all murmuring knowingly, "And not the way you're thinking. He lives close by, and I really like his sister and their family. What if I just dated him a little?"

Rose opens her mouth, then shuts it quickly.

"No, what were you going to say?"

She hesitates, which isn't like her at all. "Can I ask you a serious question? Did you love Garrett? Like really, soul-crushing love him? Because I know you're upset and embarrassed, but I don't feel like you're heartbroken."

Three sets of eyes stare at me as I process her inquiry. The truth is I'm not sure. I mean, yes, of course, I love—loved Garrett. I wanted to marry him, for Christ's sakes! But …

"Everyone is allowed to grieve differently, Rose." Lauren is speaking softly, trying to defend my silence, my choices, my life.

"I think I was comfortable with Garrett. We'd been together so long that it just seemed reasonable that marriage was the next step. I wanted to get married, and I thought he did too. He always said he did, even when we first started dating. But you can be comfortable with someone and still be head over heels for them too."

"You weren't, were you?" Alice wipes her eyes. She is fierce, but she's the softest of all of us.

"Maybe I need to think about that some more before I move on." I blow out a stuttering breath.

Rose smirks. "Maybe also think about how the man tried to hit on you on what should have been your honeymoon." She gives all of us a knowing look before we all burst out laughing.

"It's not really my honeymoon, and he didn't really hit on me; he just told me he totally would." We laugh and catch up on the last few days. When Rose and Alice say their goodbyes, Lauren lingers.

"I didn't want to get into this before because I didn't know when they would show up, but Mike spoke to Garrett." Lauren doesn't stammer or offer me a preamble. "Do you want to know what he said?"

Running my hands through my hair and resting them atop my head, I shrug. "I guess? I mean, was he kidnapped or something interesting?"

Lauren chuckles. "No, no. He, uh, he just 'couldn't do it'." She looks at me through the screen, and I don't know how to respond.

"Did he say anything else?" I can't look at her. I don't want to look at her.

"Mike said that Garrett only said that he just didn't want to be in the relationship anymore and with the idea of marriage looming over him, he panicked."

I start chewing on the skin around my thumbnail like I always do when I'm worried or stressed. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"What else am I supposed to say? I'm talking to you, not him! I can't ask him why he felt that our wedding day was the day to have that realization or why he didn't feel like he could talk to me. I can't ask him why he went through the motions for so long. Christ, Lauren! We were quarantined together!" I shove at my tablet, causing it to topple off my lap and hit the mattress face down.

"Bells?" My sister's voice is crystal clear; I just can't see her face. But I can imagine what it looks like—full of concern, just like the timber of her voice. I pick up the tablet to look at her.

"Yeah?" I sniff, realizing that I'm crying over my failed relationship and not realizing that it had failed long before our doomed nuptials.

"Garrett might not be the problem or, at least, not the whole problem." Lauren smiles gently. "You and I have never been the ones to speak up for ourselves or be the one to defend ourselves. We're like ducks—"

"We just let it roll off our backs." I stare at my sister, a woman who is meek and mild, just like me.

Our parents didn't do wrong by us; we're just less confrontational by nature. We don't like to cause a fuss about anything from wrong food in restaurants, to terrible gifts, or people somehow getting our names wrong. We just let it go.

"Are you saying that I just let all the red flags in our relationship go? Maybe it was easier to ignore what was right in front of me, the fact that Garrett wasn't happy or we weren't really in love, because it was easier to just pretend it didn't exist?" I pull myself up as Lauren nods.

"I'm sorry. I've just been thinking about this while you've been gone." She shrugs but looks genuinely sorry for springing this on me.

"Thank you for saying something. I probably would've gotten there soon enough, but could you imagine if I hadn't?" Sighing, I stand up and stretch.

"I want you to have closure, and it's obvious you won't get it from Garrett, not in the traditional sense. So, I think if you can, you should find it on your own." When I look down at my device, she's smiling. "If Edward piques your interest, I'm on board."

I laugh lightly. "Let's call it a moment of weakness."

"Whatever you say. I miss you."

"I miss you too. I'll see you in a few days." I end the call and take a sweeping look around my room.

I decide to emerge from my room a few hours later, searching for food and maybe one of the members of the Cullen family. I end up at a British pub-type restaurant because someone walked past me with fish and chips, and I couldn't get them out of my mind when Carlisle Cullen, patriarch of the family, appears by my side at the bar.

"Mind if I join you?" He's smiling, but his eyes look tired. His face is relaxed but tinged pink from so many days in the sun.

"Absolutely." As he climbs up on the stool next to me, he groans slightly. "You all right?"

"I'm 58, Bella. I'm exhausted." Carlisle smiles when the bartender approaches, and he orders exactly what I have in front of me. "How are you doing?"

"I'm fine." It's an automatic response, and I sigh. "I'm not fine obviously. But I think I will be."

Carlisle angles his body to study my face. I can tell from the way his family is, so open and free with each other, that he's about to give me some "fatherly advice". I'm not sure I can handle it right now.

"Do you want to talk about it?" The question has me looking up at him in surprise.

Snorting, I shake my head. "You and your family have heard way too much about my woes this past week." I pop a chip into my mouth, and he clears his throat.

"Maybe my kids and my wife have, but I haven't, not really." The bartender drops off his beer and a platter of fried fish and potatoes in front of him. "I'm a good listener, if you want to talk."

He turns his attention to his drink and his food, and for several minutes, we sit in relative silence, eating our respective food.

"Complacency is a bitch, isn't it?" Carlisle says nothing but angles himself more toward me, leaving himself open so I can continue. "I just mean, thinking everything is fine or pretending it is for the sake of not having to deal with anything is terrible, right?"

"I'm not sure I understand. Are we blatantly ignoring terrible things or are we just not realizing that the terrible things are happening all around us?" He finally turns to look at me with an eyebrow quirked, and I see Jessica all over that face.

"Both?"

"Self-preservation is real, Bella. We'll do anything to save ourselves from harm, whether physical or emotional or what have you." I nod because I understand that concept, but I'm not sure I see the correlation.

"Bella, sometimes, we don't see things because we're just trying to survive." He smiles gently. "What have you been trying to survive?"

I'm quiet for a few minutes, gathering my thoughts. I'm sure he doesn't need an answer, but I feel like I need to provide one. More importantly than that, I feel like I definitely have one.

"I'm not a particularly brave or outgoing person; my sister's the same way. Our parents are social butterflies, and they host parties once or twice a month and have all our lives. Lauren and I used to hate it. But we used to make up little skits or songs so we could entertain their guests, and then we could escape upstairs and not have to be seen for the rest of the evening." I related to him literal years of our young childhood, trying to stay away from the mingling adults gathered at our parents' house.

"We did that to survive." Carlisle nods but says nothing. "When I met Garrett and we started dating, there were things I noticed right away that I didn't necessarily like, but I let them go because it made up the whole of him. Personality traits or quirks, the way he chews ice cream of all things." He laughs as I shudder.

"You ignored it to survive."

"I ignored it because I wanted to be happy. But I am happy, or I was before I met him; I wasn't looking for something or longing for love and contentment. When Garrett and I moved in together, it was because I truly felt joy and love, and I felt fulfilled." I look down at my plate, my food cold and growing soggy.

"When did it change? You saw the signs and yet you kept moving toward an end goal. You must have realized at some point that something was wrong, and you willfully ignored it." He picks up his beer, waving the empty bottle in the air, and the bartender nods.

"When he proposed. I was the first one to say 'I love you', and Garrett only said 'You too'. I just chalked it up to him not being great at expressing himself, but it was different when he proposed. He was eloquent and verbose. He must have told me he loved me about 50 times in two minutes." I chuckle half-heartedly. "It was too much. It was like he was trying to convince himself that he loved me, wanted to marry me, and create a life with me. Not promise me all of that."

"But you accepted," Carlisle points out as the bartender sets two more beers in front of us.

"I did."

"Why?"

I look over at him at his question. "Wasn't that what I was supposed to do? We'd been together three years at that point, and what else was there? Break up because I said no to getting engaged and flush all of that down the drain? That's a waste." I'm feeling a little defensive now, like Carlisle is somehow blaming me for all of this.

"It's only a waste if you don't learn anything from it." He picks up his beer again but sets it back down before taking a drink. "Have you learned anything yet?"

I take a deep breath. This man and his family have been nothing but incredibly kind to me this entire week; there's no need to fly off the handle right now.

"Maybe I don't know exactly what I want?"

He raises his eyebrows. "Are you asking me or telling me?"

"Are you shrinking me? Are you a therapist?" I eyeball him, trying to remember his occupation.

"I'm a pediatrician, but I hope I've learned some things over the years. Wants and needs change with time, growth, and maturity. You aren't the same woman you were five years ago, two years ago, or even two weeks ago. Maybe it's time to figure out who Bella is." Carlisle pats me on the back before picking up his beer and draining it.

"Have a good night, Bella. I'm sure we'll see you around tomorrow." He winks and waves to the bartender before climbing off his stool and walking out.

Maybe he was right.