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Word Prompt: Signature

Dialogue Flex: "There's no need to panic."

Something True

Signature

This Fall

The glass door slides open, Emmett joining them.

"Everyone's gone," he says.

Rose, squished up against Bella in the chair they're sharing, shifts.

Edward is slouched low on the couch, his legs open, hands linked behind his head, Angela seated beside him.

"We're staying here tonight," Angela says, at first confident, stern, like she's the one who decides these things, but then turning to Edward she adds a tentative, "Okay?"

Edward answers under his breath, "I wasn't expecting you to drive back."

Emmett, standing between the front door and the window is looking at Rose, who seems to be doing everything she can to avoid his gaze. Her eyes are on her hands now.

Within ten minutes, the cottage has become the antithesis of a party. The room is like a snagged fishing line, pulled so tight it bends the pole. The room is so tense, it's bent.

"Thanks," Angela says, laying her hand on his leg.

Bella recalls waking from dreams of her mother, dreams of a time when things were better, carefree—world-free. She awoke with little-kid songs in her throat and memories of swinging in the park, higher and higher, as high as her mother would push her. Those mornings lent her a lightness that only lasted until she sat up, drenched in reality's deluge. She wonders, now, if Edward dreams of happier times with Angela—Rose of Royce.

Edward glances between Rose and Emmett.

"Quit staring at my sister." He moves Angela's hand off his leg as he simultaneous says to Emmett, "Just... fucking don't."

Emmett looks at Edward for a few seconds before his eyes are back on Rose like he couldn't stop himself if he wanted to.

"Are you ok?" he asks her.

"Fine," she says, adjusting in her seat, rubbing shoulders with Bella. "Just fine." Her voice cracks.

"I feel like..." He pulls a pack of cigarettes out, shaking one into his hand. "Can we talk?" He nods a chin at the back door. "Do we need permission from your guardian?" He throws a look at Edward. "Just to talk."

Edward sweeps an open hand in front of him in a defeated gesture that reads, Be my guest.

The two aren't gone five seconds before Angela is saying, "I want to talk to you, too. Alone."

Rubbing a hand over his face, Edward doesn't answer.

"Edward?" she says.

He leans forward, pressing fingers to Bella's knee and looks into her eyes. "We'll be right back."

She doesn't watch as they round the coffee table and cross in front of her toward his room. Biter's paws tap against the floor as he follows his master, his dad.

Listening to the click of the door close, Bella swallows, her heartbeat almost hurting inside her chest. She knows what she's feeling. She wants to be the one closed away with Edward in his room. Like earlier when it was just the two of them. She doesn't like these feelings, doesn't trust them.

Go away, she tells them. But they don't. They fight back, grow stronger. She stands, zips her jacket, and exits out the front door.

It's not real, she reminds herself as she walks through dirt, through crunchy weeds that reach her knees. She doesn't see her surroundings, doesn't notice the breeze.

Feelings like these, that aim to rule a person, they can strangle you. She inhales deeply trying to quell her insides. She concentrates on the wind, cold on her face. Head versus heart. Be smart. No need to panic.

It's the attention you like. It isn't him. It's the attention. It's the way he looks her in the eye when they talk, like she matters. That's what it is. He makes her feel like she matters, and she likes the idea of mattering to somebody. That's all it is.

"Bella," she hears Edward call.

She continues forward.

"Bella!" He catches up to her, takes her elbow, spinning her to face him. "Why are you ignoring me?"

"I turned around, didn't I?"

He lets out a short laugh. "I turned you around."

She crosses her arms over her chest and takes a step back.

"Why did you leave?" he asks.

"Everyone's paired up in there." She motions behind him in the direction of the cottage. "It's not the place for me."

"Nobody's paired up. We were just talking."

She lifts her face to the moon. Back in May, she wouldn't have been able to see it with the way the trees here used to stretch to the sky.

"Are you getting back together with her?"

Facing the ground, he reaches to scratch his neck. And then, hands searching out his jacket pockets, he looks back at Bella but doesn't seem to have a word to say. She imagines that if he smoked like Emmett does, he might pop one into his mouth right now.

A part of her, the part that remembers what it's like to believe in love, recognizes why her question doesn't bring forward a quick and firm answer; but the larger part of her, the part that understands how people are so fooled by love, is irritated by his hesitancy.

"Because first you say you're just going to try to be friends, but then you say she wants more, and she seems to have this hold on you so-"

"She doesn't have a hold on me."

Bella rubs her forehead, letting out a frustrated sigh. "Whatever. She wants you back, Edward, and if you don't want her, being her friend is just giving her hope. Do you want her to hope for you?"

Bella swallows something more bitter than bile. She knows how false hope can break a person.

He pulls his lips into his mouth, releases them, brings his knuckles to his chin, scraping his jaw with his thumb. "You're really going home?'

"What does it look like?"

"Let me walk you at least. It's dark."

"Yeah. Walk me because it's dark, not because you care or want to be with me." She snaps her mouth shut, shocked by what she just said, and worried about what might escape next. Her eyes sting and her nose burns.

"You think I don't care?"

"Sure, you care. Because I'm your muse."

"Fuck, Bella." He takes a few steps away from her, freeing his other hand from his pocket. "I was ready to throw down with Royce because of you. Do you think I was thinking anything about a muse then?"

Standing here in the dirt and the nothing that used to be Bella's place, they stare each other down.

Bella turns to head home, Edward at her side, silent.

There's a magnetism on the right side of her body, the side closest to Edward. Why is she longing for him to put his arm around her like he so often does? It's as if she can feel the ghost of it, the weight.

Like he knows, his arm comes around her, but she steps aside. "Don't."

Fighting these feelings her mind is tricking her with is hard enough without him touching her.

"Bella," he says as they enter the canopy of the few trees left standing tall and strong. He ducks under a branch. "She doesn't have a hold on me. She's back there and I'm here. With you. Because I want to be."

Turning her head, hiding her face from him, her lip quivers with an emotion she doesn't want to have. When they get to her house, he'll turn around and walk home, but she finds herself wishing he wouldn't, wishing he'd stay with her rather than go back to Angela. Even if she could sneak him past her parents, she knows he can't do this. Regardless of Angela, Biter, Rose and Emmett are still at the cottage.

"Thanks for walking me," she says as they approach her house. But he doesn't turn back at the bottom of the driveway as he usually does. Even with the police cruiser parked there, he accompanies her all the way to her doorstep. Looking down at her, he brings a slow, unsure hand up to hold her face, his thumb brushing her cheekbone. She closes her eyes and breathes out, again trying not to give in to the feelings that want to take over.

"I know you've been hurt. And tonight Royce hurt you, and I think I hurt you. I don't want that."

Her eyes are slow to open as his words, his soft tone, seep through her as if her body is absorbing them. She shakes her head. Admitting that he hurt her would be admitting so much more than that. "You didn't hurt me."

"Okay." He withdraws his hand. "Good."

She tries not to look into his eyes, the dark green of them in the dim light coming from the streetlamp. But she can't look away. And he doesn't look away either.

"I'm leaving you here to go back to a cottage of people, when I'd rather you..." He drops his gaze to the ground or his shoes. "Never mind."

"Rather what?"

"It doesn't matter. I can't change it right now."

She may not know what he was going to say, but she understands what he means. There are some things you can't change no matter how hard you wish for it.

She walks inside; he walks away.

Something between them has shifted. As she makes her way to her room the ground feels different, less solid. Or maybe it's the way her knees are carrying her. But she doesn't know what to make of this, really. She's here, and he's there, going back to the cottage, to Angela who has the rest of the night to say whatever it is she wants to say to him, her signature moves: fingers to her necklace, hands touching seemingly innocent parts of his body.

Bella brushes her teeth and readies herself for bed, trying not to think of so many things—above all, the sleeping arrangements at the cottage.

Better she doesn't know. She pulls her sheets back. Better she's here and not there. She climbs into bed, shuts off the light, looks at the stars outside her window.

Better, she thinks as she counts tiny points of light in the sky, as they blur, as her eyes close.