Word Prompt: Highlight

Dialogue Flex: "The pressure is on."

Using the provided snippet of dialogue, explore what comes to mind, be it a scene, a thought, or something else.

Something True

Highlight

This Winter

"I told him I just want to be friends," Rose says as she changes the record. "Same with Emmett." She lowers the needle. "I just wanted to fall in love. But I messed it all up." She lies back on her bed as Al Green starts crooning.

"Maybe it never was love," Bella says, and Rose lifts her head.

Rose and Bella are taking advantage of this time before the other girls get here. Bella has found it hard to talk about anything honestly with them. When she talks, which is seldom, it's in a joking or sarcastic manner. She's been acting more like Alice around them than herself.

"How do you know for sure?" Rose asks. "When it's love?"

"I think it's impossible to know... for sure."

"So everyone just thinks it?" Rose sits up. "What about my parents?"

"Everyone except your parents." Bella laughs "Your parents know for sure."

Rose lobs her pillow at Bella.

"What about you and my brother? More than friends now?"

Bella throws the pillow back at Rose.

"What?" she asks. "Answer me."

"More than friends," Bella says. She closes her eyes trying not to think of her best friend's brother's lips on her neck, on her shoulder, on her chest. She can't stop herself.

"Gross," Rose says.

Edward has taken Bella out three times since their first date. He likes to link their fingers as they walk, sometimes drawing her hand in front of him holding it in both of his. Afterwards they end up at the cottage and make out until Edward pulls back. Always Edward.

The place they went together last wasn't exactly a date. Bella had gone with Edward to the market for groceries. It was The Black Market, the same place Edward had caught her buying condoms with Alice. Edward got a smack on the arm for purposely leading Bella down that aisle and smirking at her saying, "I think they offer a discount by the bagful."

A hand at her hip, he pulled her in close to his side, a kiss to her temple.

Elvis's Blue Christmas had ended and started again. For reasons only the cashier could know, the song was being played on repeat. As Edward added a case of beer to his cart, Bella suggested they have an actual blue Christmas.

"It's a sign," she said, pointing up at the ceiling as if that was where the speakers were.

"Come over on Saturday and decorate with me," he said.

...

Furniture is pulled away from the back wall again, which has been repainted white. Edward had painted over all the artwork with the exception of Bella's lake scene drawing.

"No room for a Christmas tree so we're going to paint one." He hands Bella a pencil to sketch it out. "Make it look real."

"Oh, my God. Too much pressure," Bella says.

"Then draw it however you want. Make a triangle. I don't care."

Moving to the wall, determined not to make a simple triangle, Bella draws a tree as big as she is and as much like the fir trees outside the cottage as she can. Edward brings out his cans of colored paint and together they start painting the tree.

Music from his iPad—not his compositions, not Christmas tunes—fill the room.

She watches him paint, gazing at his profile: his chin raised, his hand lifted to the wall, his bicep flexing against his T-shirt. She likes the feel of his arms, so solid. Looking away she concentrates on her painting, the lighter green, the highlights. A second later, feeling his eyes on her, she turns toward him. He averts his eyes. She averts hers. Then his are back, she's sure. But when she looks, his attention is on the wall. They play this game until she whips her head to him to catch him. She does and they share a gaze for a moment.

He brushes a dab of paint on her nose, a smile behind his pressed-together lips.

"Hey!" She reaches up with her brush to get him back but he blocks her, holding her wrist.

"Let me," she says.

He shakes his head, still stifling a laugh. She's wagging and wiggling her wrist trying to get him with paint. His barely-concealed laugh lands on her lips.

Relinquishing the fight of her wrist, she tilts her head and slips her tongue to his. She kisses his jaw, his throat. He lets go of her wrist to hold her hips and as fast as she can, she steps away, drawing a line of paint from his forehead to the end of his nose.

Jumping up and down, she says, "Got you!"

Laughing, he slides the paintbrush from her fingers, puts it down beside his, and wraps her up in his arms, kissing her, moving her, collapsing onto the draped couch. The plastic rustles beneath them.

"You're getting more paint on me," she says between kisses, and he wipes his forehead and the bridge of his nose on her cheek.

"You look good in green," he says.

"You, too. Your eyes are green," she says as if he doesn't already know.

Above her, his grin falls serious. "You look good in anything." This time when he kisses her it's deep. She feels it in her lower stomach. She wants to keep feeling it, kissing him back with matching intensity.

When they kissed two days ago his stubble had scraped at her, but now his scruff has grown to a length that is softer—it almost caresses.

Both hands at her sides, he lifts her shirt as he kisses down her chest to her exposed stomach. Feeling his tongue on her skin, her abs tighten. He kisses his way back up to her lips, taking his time to kiss over her bra. She arches toward him, sliding her hands up his arms, her fingers under his sleeve. She grips.

"Bella," he says, pushing his hips into hers, followed by a groan. And they're kissing, and he's grinding, every once in a while groaning into her mouth.

Moving his weight off her, he takes off her shirt, tossing it to the ground. His fingers roam over her breasts, then he unhooks her bra and pushes it up. He glances at her eyes before his attention is back on her breasts, brushing a finger over her nipple, pressing his tongue there followed by the pull of his pursed lips.

She melts. She has no bones.

Dropping her head back, Bella closes her eyes.

Her breathing has picked up and she's trailing her fingers up his back, under his shirt feeling his skin, smooth and warm. Feeling his muscles as he moves. Kissing all over her chest, along her collarbone and to her throat—nudging her loose bra out of the way with his nose when necessary—he grinds against her a few more times.

And then he backs off.

Rising to an elbow, fingers to her throat where her pulse is strong, where his lips lay a moment ago, she asks, she croaks, "Why'd you stop?"

He doesn't answer immediately. On his knees, between her legs, he runs a hand through his hair, looking down, a quiet or secretive smile on his lips. Then, chest rising and falling, he meets her eyes. "Have to finish the tree."

Bella eyes him. There's something more to it than that. If this were the first time he's abruptly stopped, she could believe him, but this is at least the third time.

She refastens her bra and throws her shirt back on.

Pressing against his crotch, adjusting himself through his jeans, he gets up, and continues painting the tree. By the time they're finished with it, the tree looks much less realistic than it started. More like the suggestion of a tree, but beautiful, still.

Paint put away, Biter is let out of the bedroom. He goes right for his squeaky toy under the coffee table, chewing on it until the sharp sound annoys Bella and she switches it out for the rope, playing tug-of-war with him. Every time he wins, wagging his tail, he comes back, nudging her hand with the rope, asking her to play again. She does.

Edward hammers in some nails along the branches and then zig-zags blue garland across their two-dimensional tree.

Blue lights get strung next across the top of the wall, and then outside along the roof, around the windows and sliding glass door. Edward on a ladder, Bella is below guiding the string of lights to keep them from tangling. Biter watches until he gets bored and curls up on the deck.

When they're done they step back into the weeds just before the lake shore to admire the cottage—everything lit up blue in the night.

Edward moves behind Bella and circles his arms around her.

"I like it," she says, leaning against him.

Pushing her hair aside, he says, "Me, too," and presses his lips to her neck above the collar of her coat. "A lot." He drags his lips up to the spot right behind her ear.

On the way out, as Edward and Biter start to accompany Bella home, she pauses at Edward's wine barrel tree.

"I know," Edward says.

"I don't think... Edward, I think it's dead."

He nods. "I know." He rubs a hand over his face. "It was for my birthday." He shoves his hands into his jacket pockets. "When i moved back here and brought it with me, Angela said it would die. She said I couldn't keep it alive without her." He shakes his head. "She didn't say it to be a bitch. Well, maybe there was some of that—you know, pissed at me for leaving—but I've killed plants before. Forgot to water them. She had to water them or they died."

"You tried so hard. You didn't let it die or kill it; it just died. Sometimes they just die."

Gripping its trunk, he rocks it back and forth and then yanks the poor, dead tree out of the barrel, roots and all. He throws it over the deck into the dirt and weeds.

Surprised by the sudden movement, Bella steps back. Catching her around the waist, Edward pulls her in to his chest. He still has faint green markings on his nose; she probably does, too. He angles his face to hers, their noses touching.

He opens his mouth like he's about to say something and she can feel his breath coming fast, probably accelerated from throwing the tree.

"Just for a second," he says, maneuvering his fingers under the shoulders of her heavy winter coat and pushing it off. He doesn't take his eyes off hers. "I want to feel you." When her coat's on the ground, he draws his fingers up her goose-bumped arms, and then brings her close again, their bodies flush between his open jacket.

He kisses her. It's a firm and wanting kiss, one that seems to be baring himself while asking for something in return, pulling from her. Whatever it is, this part of her he wants—without deciding to—she gives it to him, her arms reaching up around his neck. She lifts to her tiptoes to give it to him. "You can have this part of me," her kiss says. And with his deep inhale he takes it, his strong arms wrapped tight around her, his body bending over her, forcing Bella back to the balls of her feet.

A part of her is his now. She's aware of it. She's letting him keep it, knowing that while they're together they can share it, but that she'll never fully get this piece of her back. And she feels like they both understand this even though neither have spoken.

"Edward," Bella breathes, overwhelmed and pulling away, her hand over his heart, her own heartbeat flying.

Clasping her hand at his chest, he rests his forehead against hers; she feels the pressure of it and his squeezing of her fingers. "This is real, Bella." He kisses her. "It is."