Word Prompt: Regret
To see the image prompt, paste this address into your browser, closing any spaces and changing "dot" to a period: 500px dot com /photo /1734221
Something True
Regret
This Fall
After school on Friday, beneath a cloud-swollen sky, Bella finds Rose pinned by Royce against his car. They're kissing wild, and he's going at her like he's about to have sex with her right there in the parking lot. Hardly able to believe what she's seeing and without thinking, Bella rushes past oglers and chucklers.
"Royce!" she says, taking Rose's arm. "I need my friend." She glares at Royce and tugs Rose away. "Your keys." She holds her hand out.
Rose climbs into the passenger seat of her BMW.
"Why are you letting him treat you like this?" Bella asks as she drives out of the parking lot. "You think you deserve it, but you don't, okay? You don't. Maybe it's time to dump his ass."
She chances a look at Rose, and spots tears spilling from her eyes. Bella pulls over to the shoulder into the dirt on the side of the road. "Rose?"
"I can't. I love him."
Bella drapes her fingers down her friend's arm. "But it isn't the same, is it? Not for either of you."
"It could be. Sometimes it's like it never happened."
"Okay. I trust that you know what you're doing. Just don't let him hurt you. Maybe you messed up, but that doesn't mean he gets to hurt you back every day of your life."
Rose doesn't say anything.
"Promise you won't let him."
"I promise."
"Promise you'll talk to him and tell him to stop this. Tell him it has to be like before or not at all."
"I'm not telling him that."
"Well leave out the last part. Tell him it has to be like before. Promise."
She doesn't answer.
"Rose, promise."
"All right. I promise."
...
On Saturday, next to Edward's dying tree, Bella knocks on the cottage door. It takes him longer than usual to answer, and for the first time out of all the times she's come here, it occurs to her that he might not be home.
But then he opens the door.
"Oh my gosh," Bella says entering, her voice squeaking on the "gosh." She covers her mouth. Her next "Oh my gosh" is muffled behind her hand.
Curled up and sleeping at the base of Edward's chair is a little black puppy. She kneels down next to him and starts stroking his fur.
"Don't wake him up."
Bella looks up at Edward. "'Cause he's a baby?"
"Because he's a ten week old German Shepherd."
Bella doesn't know what he means by that and continues petting the soft coat. "He's perfect. What's his name?"
"Thelonious."
Bella's petting stops, her eyes fixed on Edward's. "Thelonious? He's a puppy."
"Thelonious Monk. The jazz composer. The piano great? Call him Theo if you want."
"Oh, no. I'm calling him Thelonious. He's definitely Thelonious, the piano great."
The puppy wakes with a yawn bigger than his head. It brings out a whine. He stands and sniffs Bella's arm, then stretches up to sniff her shoulder.
"Hi, Thelonious." Bella tries to pet his throat but he nips at her wrist. "Ow. No, Thelonious." She goes to pet him again and again he bites her finger. "Ow!" She yanks her arm back. "He hates his name."
Edward picks up the dog and a little toy rope. The dog chews and chews at the end of the rope.
"Why does he bite so much?"
"Because he's a German Shepherd puppy. It's what they do."
"It hurts. And he's going to get big."
"Sorry. It's how he plays right now. He'll learn to stop before he's too big."
In Edward's arms, Thelonious seems to have lost interest in the rope and bites at Edward's shirt sleeve. He sets the dog on the floor.
"He's not Thelonious," Bella says. "He's Biter."
Bella thinks about stepping up on the couch to protect her ankles and shins, but the dog sits, looking up at Edward like he's waiting for a command. Bella doubts he knows any quite yet.
"Look, he's winking at you."
Edward leans down and scratches behind his ear. The dog blinks lazily. Edward squats closer, sliding his hand down to scratch Biter's throat and chest where his one diamond-shaped light brown patch is. The dog lifts his snout to sniff Edward's chin. They look at each other like they're in love, and luckily the puppy doesn't bite Edward's face off.
"Good boy, Pal," Edward says.
Tail wagging, he wanders away sniffing at his surroundings before chewing on the corner of the couch.
Edward says they should get him out and clips a leash to his collar.
Before they take off Edward slips away into the kitchen, past the table and the counter to where Bella can no longer see him.
"Don't bite, Biter," she says to the puppy. He's too cute so she bends to scratch him. This time she gets away with it. His ears are the softest. She wants to press her lips to them but she's afraid she'll get bit.
"Here," Edward says, tossing her a paper-wrapped deli-made sandwich.
"How'd you know I would be here today?" Bella herself didn't know until thirty minutes before she knocked at his door.
"Didn't." He wraps the end of the leash around his wrist and heads for the back slider, his puppy following.
"You got it just in case?"
"No." Edward slides the door open and steps out onto the deck. "I got two for me."' His quiet laugh makes Bella laugh.
It's strangely sunny for a late-September day. Bella hopes this means she'll be able to see the stars from her window tonight. She loves the rare nights when she can fall asleep counting stars after she puts her book down and shuts off her light.
Munching on their sandwiches, they stroll in the opposite direction of their normal route. Sometimes bits of lettuce fall from one or the other's sandwich and Biter eats them up if he can find them.
Looking at Edward, the stubble along his jaw, Bella can guess that this is about three days worth of beard growth. Within two days it'll be gone and the cycle will start over. It makes her smile that she knows this about someone. About Edward.
They're walking so close that every so often she can hear his phone vibrating in his back pocket. He ignores it every time.
Unsure what to do with the paper from her sandwich, she stuffs it into her jacket pocket, then she takes Edward's and crumples it into her other one.
With the heat of the sun on her back and the tingling of perspiration under her clothes, Bella takes the opportunity to feel the water. Socks stuffed in her sneakers and her jeans rolled up, she steps into the lake just far enough to get wet from her toes to her ankles. She didn't realize until the cold water touched her that she hadn't stepped foot in the lake all summer. She wishes she had, even once.
Falling into step beside Edward, pebbles dig into her feet making her walk too slow. Edward and the puppy wait as she slips her socks and shoes back on.
She ignores the annoying grains of sand in her socks as they continue up a hill toward what used to be forest. A canopy of trees would be over their heads right now. Green lushness, not black emptiness. Edward stops at the remains of the Lakeview Restaurant.
"I heard they started it. For the insurance money. Nobody can prove it."
"Maybe they wanted an actual lake view."
They walk a little farther up the hill until the puppy is so tired he keeps stopping to lie down. He has to be carried home.
The wind picks up, clouds cover the sun, and feeling more than a chill, Bella zips up her jacket. She can't help but be disappointed that the stars won't shine tonight after all. She can't help but worry about what Rose has gotten herself into and how it's clear this is something she's not intending to get herself out of. She wants to say something to Edward, tell him to look out for his sister, but after learning about Angela, Bella understands why Rose hasn't opened up to her brother.
It was the last week of July, nearly two months since Bella had last seen Rose, when she showed up, near tears, on Bella's doorstep.
"I don't know where you've been, but I need my friend back."
Without question, Bella pulled Rose into her arms and hugged her, and then led her to her room. "I messed up," she said as soon as the door thumped shut. "Bad. So bad, Bella."
"What did you do?"
"I slept with him."
"Royce?"
"Emmett." Tears dripped from her eyes then.
"Who's Emmett?"
"From Seattle. My brother's friend. I'm going to lose Royce."
Bella had trouble looking at Rose. She paced toward her window. A part of her was sure she either misheard or misunderstood Rose. She took a deep breath.
"Are you going to tell him?"
The pause was long enough to get Bella to turn around and face Rose, who was shaking her head, her ponytail swishing. "I have to, don't I? He has a right to know who he's with. But what's he going to do? He won't forgive me. I haven't even done that with him yet. And so he hasn't-" tears flow out, her voice breaking "-he hasn't done it either."
"Oh, God, Rose." Bella swallowed. Any confusion evaporated and was replaced with regret. She could feel Rose's regret as if it were her own. She hugged her the same way she had downstairs. "Why did you?"
"I don't know."
"You have to know."
They sat on the bed facing each other and it took Rose a solid ten minutes to be able to speak calmly. "Royce and I had a fight before I left to help my parents move Edward back. Our parents were staying at a hotel, but Edward said I could stay with him and Angela. There was a party that night. And, I don't know, Emmett was there, and I'd met him before. He was the only one I knew so I stuck by him, and he was nice as always. He took me to his room and we just started kissing, and I stopped thinking. That's it. I just stopped thinking."
"You had to have been thinking," Bella said, only she knew that as logical as that sounded, it wasn't true. She knew exactly how a person could stop thinking—at least, stop thinking about the right thing.
But now Rose's problem has escalated. As far as Bella's concerned, it's no longer about how to hold onto Royce, but how to get rid of him.
Thelonious—Biter is still asleep in Edward's arms by the time they're wiping the sand and dirt off the soles of their shoes. Toe to heel, one after the other, Bella inches out of hers.
She takes the puppy from Edward and sits him on her lap, petting him as he sleeps.
"Do you think people have souls?" she asks without looking at Edward. "Like when they die, do you think souls live on?"
"Who died?" He sits beside her on the couch, stroking the dog with her. They take turns. He pets then she pets.
"Nobody. It just seems-" she pauses her petting "-impossible. But I can't imagine disappearing forever either."
"I think that means you believe in souls."
She shrugs. "Maybe some people have souls, but others, there's no way. How could they?"
"So you think it's selective? Is that what you believe or is that what you want to believe?"
Bella doesn't answer. They're both silent and Edward removes his hand from the dog, sitting back against the couch, kind of abruptly. When she looks at him his eyes are closed.
"What?" she asks.
"Hang on. Hang on, hang on..." He shoots to his feet and out of the room. She hears a door open.
Setting the sleeping puppy aside on the couch, Bella gets up to follow Edward. He's in his room, straddling the piano bench, bent over papers, scribbling away. She didn't even know he had a piano in his room. She's never been in here before. The piano looks like an old one and it's painted red. On the wall above it is a black and white poster of a black man wearing a hat playing a grand piano. She guesses he's Thelonious Monk.
"What are you-"
"Shh," he waves his hand, taps out a few high keys on the piano, writes them down. Hits a few low keys, writes again.
She can see his phone, tossed aside on the bed, light up with a call. She takes a few steps closer to it, Angela's smiling face coming into view.
She steps back, leaning against the door jamb, hands crossed behind her.
Finally Edward turns and looks up at her. "Listen." He sets his sheet music on the piano and plays what he wrote, low and dismal. "What does that sound like?" he asks over his shoulder. Bella sits next to him on the bench.
"Sad. Like despair or hopelessness."
"Good. Now listen to this."
The tempo picks up, keys in the higher octave.
"What is this?" he asks.
"I don't know."
"Listen." He plays the whole thing again, low and slow, two strong chords, and then high and fast. Low and slow, two strong chords, and then high and fast.
He plays it again. The two strong chords. "Someone dies," he says. Low and slow. "No soul." Two strong chords. "Death." High and fast. "A soul lives on."
"You composed our conversation?"
He shakes his head, stops playing. He looks at her. "I composed your thoughts."
He plays it again.
"My soundtrack?" She laughs.
"Your score." He doesn't laugh. He's serious, and she feels it in her chest. Tight. She's touched.
His fingers stop. His face close to hers, he shakes his head slightly, his eyes watery, greener than ever. He looks on the verge of tears, and it's like she's seeing much more than just his eyes. She's seeing something deeper, intrinsic. She's seeing him, and she better understands what he meant when he said he was only one thing. "It's been two months." He shakes his head again. "I thought... But this..." He starts playing again. "It's back."