The names are not mine, the rest - is.

Elemental

"Come with you? Now? Where?" This night is like, fast, too fast. Since Edward fell into my room unannounced up until now, as he's asking me to leave, go with him, I have had no time to think ahead. And I still don't. All I know is, if I don't go, I may never know his deal. I may never learn him the way I want to. Touching or no touching. And honestly, standing here, in front of him, standing this close, his face, my mouth, his eyes, my face - searching for an answer - this moment is so full of something I've never felt before. Something not orchestrated, something not played out in rehearsal beforehand, something not on the big screen or on the pages of books that I love.

It's real.

"You know what...it doesn't even matter. Let me get my shoes." He turns to leave...through the window. "Wait, you can't go out that way, you'll fall!"

"I'll be fine. Meet me at my car." He'll be fine? I walk towards the window to watch him go, but before I make it to the sill, he turns to face me. "Hurry, before your parents wake again."

I grab my purse, I change my top, pull on my hoodie and zip it up to my boobs. My boobs that he's already seen...my god. I push my finger into a little pot of pink tint and run it fast across my lips. I throw my hair over my head, ruffle, ruffle, stand - dizzy - and check myself in the mirror. This is it.

I know all of the cracks in the floorboards and I consider this mental map of the creaky parts as my foot hovers before each new step. Gracelessly utilizing what little agility I possess, I manage to make it down the stairs and out the door without making any noise. I am free.

Edward stands in the black of night against a silver car, his hands in his pockets. I walk towards him, excited. Super excited to feel normal, to feel like the actual I waited for really might happen.

I think of Nettie and can't wait to tell her and Rose about this. Only maybe not about the masturbating...

He doesn't speak when I reach the car, he just opens the door to the passenger side and waits for me to get in. It's special, so minute, but so nice. I get in and it's warm, or maybe my expectations are tricking me into thinking it's warm because when he gets in, his elbow skimming mine, I instantly feel cold again. He starts the car, a low humming sound, sounding brand new, comes to life in the night and we're off. He turns on the heater and I can't stop looking at him. He turns to me a few times and I want to tell him to stop, stop looking away from the road. And each time he looks away, I want to ask him to look at me instead.

The car's speed feels smooth, slow almost, though I notice he's going sixty. It doesn't feel dangerous, though being with him does. It doesn't feel safe, though knowing he's in control does.

It's funny. When I look at my hand, I don't remember being hurt. It aches and has been a pain in the ass like, all week but I woke up in that house feeling confused and weirded out. But not damaged in any way. Maybe I should? I mean, he squeezed me so hard he almost crushed me. And then he dropped into my room like a bomb - a teenage boy, smelling like soap, sexy and new - and now it's after midnight and I'm driving in his car, going somewhere I didn't feel the need to check on first.

I think maybe when we bumped heads, my brain rattled around in my skull and nobody thought to check for concussion.

"You changed." Edward is looking at me again. His voice is so soft when he speaks, and he speaks so little. It's kind of annoying, but like, calming or something.

"Oh." Looking down at my clothes, I run my hands along my legs, wishing now that he hadn't noticed. "Yeah." Even though I totally did want him to notice. But in a good she looks amazing kind of way.

It's a little awkward again because I have no idea what to say, no game of twenty-one questions to hide behind and nothing relevant in sight that could possibly help. I reach for the heat, it's starting to suffocate me in this tiny car, only Edward does too. His fingers touch mine and I am jolted. Sent back into my seat, held down by my seatbelt that feels too tight. I am cold, he is...cold. "What the fuck was that?"

"Cold hands. I apologise."

"No, Edward. Freezing hands. Like, shocking me with an ice bucket, no, an ice mountain of something sharp and... Is that like..."

"I have a condition."

"You do?" I remember his hands being cold before, I remember feeling cold still after the party when we left but I was high, I was nervous. I thought maybe I was remembering it all wrong. And in class... He has a condition?

"Yes. I don't like to talk about it."

I made him feel bad. I suck. He's definitely going to trust me with his secrets now...

"It's okay, Bella. You didn't know." No, I didn't. Because you tell me nothing!

"Can you tell me where we're going?"

"It's a surprise." I like surprises. Super secret surprises that reveal this whole thing about us not being able to be together as a wild exaggeration would be perfect.

I turn for the first time since we left my house to see what outside looks like. It looks like school. Are we going to his dorm room? Am I going to get to see his things? His bed? I imagine sitting on his bed with him, maybe lying down side by side as we try not to touch each other. He would have to give in then, right? Then again, he didn't try anything at my house at all. Not even once.

I'm so helplessly confused.

We pull up to the edge of campus near the green where the girls and I got high. Edward shuts off the engine, gets out of the car and I just sit there. He doesn't say a word, but opens my door, standing tall, waiting for me to get out too. I do and we are one again, standing so close I can almost taste him.

"What are we doing here?"

"You'll see. Come on." He pops the trunk and grabs something, it's grey. "You might need this." He hands it to me and I hold it out, it's his grey coat from the first day of class. I smile to myself as the box of fantasies that live inside my head, play out in the darkness as Edward walks away. I slip my arms into the sleeves and pull it around me. It's a little tight over my hoodie and won't cover my boobs but I don't care. It's Edward.

We walk across the green, and he's walking much faster than I am. I try to keep up and let my hand linger out at the side of me a few times hoping he will grab it. He's really serious about this no touching and I'm so frustrated I might go mad before the dawn, especially if he doesn't have answers waiting for me at the end of this trek.

-o-

Her feet move quickly, her short legs brushing against each other with each pass. My instinct is to grab her, have her hiking at the same pace as me. But this is not really my pace. My pace is fast, a speed she could barely see. But I cannot take hold of her wrist and I cannot lift her onto my back. So I wait, and we continue to advance in a way that causes great annoyance to me. Just another reason we aren't compatible.

The thrum of her heart beating, the hum of the car as we drove. Her warmth, heating me whenever we're near each other, resulting in us almost touching. The immediate intimacy she seems to want at all times.

This would be the time to express myself - and all the times before when I should have but could not.

Am I just delaying the inevitable? Am I right to hold back when I know it's only a matter of time before the bottle stop is blown out in a rush of need? Am I right to lead her along this path when I know in all reality we can never be?

Reality. This is mine. My existence is one of the extraordinary, the seemingly impossible even. One of fantasy, one of nightmares. Reality. Mine is not hers.

My feet are tired of not being able to push past their need for more.

"We're almost there, keep up." I pick it up a little more. I watch her from here, her body gust forward with a new hurried stride. She is no doubt focused on the end, concentrating on what is at the end.

I am filled with lines from pop culture, from comic books and legends. All the theories - some right. All the stories of us - a lot of them wrong. Many laughable. She won't be laughing. She will think of the made up, the pretend, the blood suckers from scary movies, with their capes, the bats and the garlic.

I wish for her to only see the truth of my words, sketched out in pieces, one by one, until finally she has them all - and she will.

"Walk ahead of me." She looks up at my face, I know she wants to ask why. She doesn't and I'm glad. The fact that I can't hold her now as the ground gets harder to hike is killing me. Every time she wants and I don't give, it kills me. Resounding failure filters into my brain. What kind of man am I for her?

I am no man.

I should not be the one to do this.

But I will be. Because she's inside me now. All around me now.

-o-

The higher we get, the lighter the sky seems. Maybe because we're closer to the moon, closer to the sea. We walked a while and through the trees and the rocky ground, he still never took my hand, helping me through. I probably shouldn't expect it. I'm my own person, with my own strengths. Still, it doesn't stop me wanting to be helped, or wanting him to want to help me, regardless.

Through the trees, way past the green, what I once thought was the prettiest place in this town, is dust compared to this. I am wide awake, a new kind of open to what I see, because what I see is truly special.

"What is this place?"

"I found it one day, and now I come here when I need to get away."

"Get away from what?"

"Life." It's an obvious answer. One that screams of many roads I hope to learn.

"It's so pretty."

"Like you." I fight the compliments he gives. He doesn't get to do that. He shouldn't get to do that before I know if he's really going to give what comes next.

"Don't do that."

"I can't say nice things?"

"You can. Only if you mean them."

"You don't think I mean them." It's not a question but I answer anyway.

"It's not that. I just...want it all." I can't help it. I can't not ask. I can't not need the information he's withholding. The simple things I think I deserve.

"Come on." He walks ahead of me through the opening and through the flowers, the blue, maybe purple flowers. He stops at a bank, and sits. His knees up, his wrists resting on them.

I go to him. And I think, whether he tells me or not, I'll never not go to him. If he's waiting, wanting. No matter how much, how little, I always will.

Edward is a part of my life now.

"Here." He takes off his jacket and lays it on the grass.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome." He's so polite. He's so correct. I don't see a slip up anywhere in anything he's ever said to me.

"You think of things...before you say them, I mean. I don't work so well like that."

"I told you, we're not the same."

"I'm beginning to see that." But I want to know why.

"Bella, do you believe in God?"

"I don't know. Sometimes. I mean. Sometimes I wish he was real. It kind of feels...like he should be, you know? But then, I've never seen him, so..."

"You don't think that life is proof of god?"

"No."

"Is that how it works for you then, see it to believe it?"

"Sort of. I guess some things are unbelievable. For lots of reasons. But if I saw it, if I saw God. Then no matter what I thought was reasonable, possible, probable...it doesn't matter, right?"

"Face me, Bella." I turn to face him, my legs crossed. I can already feel my ass getting wet from the grass. I can hear the animals that live here, scurrying, flying from branch to branch, the light trickle of water. There must be a brook nearby. "You said you trust me."

"I do."

"Is that real?"

"I don't know. But I don't want to be anywhere else. And I haven't wanted anything else but you in a long time. So if it's not...then it might end badly. And if it is real...well I guess we'll see." I want nothing more than for him to open his mouth and give me truth. His history, his reasons, his feelings.

"I trust you, Bella. I am trusting you to remember yourself. I am trusting you to remember what you see and what you feel right now and all that you've seen before."

"Okay..." I'm a little afraid. The sinking feeling in my stomach is back, travelling through my legs and back again.

"Roll up your sleeves and hold out your arms." I hold them out and I have no idea what's coming, why I need to do this. "Don't close your eyes, okay Bella. Look at me. Just look at me."

Barely there, I feel the chill, separate from this outside world, of his fingers. Barely there, I anticipate it with every piece of me, every beat of me, waiting, waiting for them to fall heavy. The wind feels strong, the wind is silent it's so strong, all the sounds cushioned from the birds and the water. His index finger draws a line along my wrist as I look at nothing but him. But I see other things too, other things like my bed, falling onto my bed, and my feet, my feet no longer touching the ground. I can't look away and I can't move. I'm so cold. What is he doing? He's still here, still touching me, like before, this is like before in class, how I felt right before I passed out. I don't want to do that again. What's wrong with me? I don't want to go to sleep, Edward. I don't want to fall. Edward.

"Edward."

"It's okay. Breathe. Look at me, Bella, just look at me and breathe. Can you hear me?"

"Birds. I can hear the birds again."

"Are you alright? What did you feel?"

"Like I was dying. Like I was about to fall into the world from right here. Like it was about to go dark and I couldn't move to get up. What did you do? What did you to me, Edward?"

"I touched you."

AN:

The Boy has many skills, pre-reading is one of them! *blushes*
Next chapter: (It's come to my attention that I suck at schedules, so let's say... Hopefully... ) Wednesday.

Your comments and thoughts are like seeing the Meadow for the first time...with Edward!
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samrosey. xo