Word Prompt: Bait
Plot Generator—Idea Completion: Everything old is new again.
An idea or concept is presented. Follow where it leads you.
Something True
Bait
This Winter
Bella pauses under the three birch trees and squints up at the leafless branches. Under the bright white sky they look like thin, reaching shadows.
Her cold knuckles are sore after she knocks on the hard door.
"My Little Lulu," Mrs. Cameron says, opening the door wider so Bella can step past her.
Bella has found that she can cross from whatever world she happens to be in over this threshold and get wrapped in the same comforting feeling from her childhood.
"Your cheeks are pink," Mrs. Cameron says. "Life been treating you well?"
"Sometimes. I miss you." She hugs her, the wool sweater scratchy against Bella's cheek.
"Well, I'm right here in good old Forks, honey." She pats Bella's back. "Never left. Never told you to stay away."
"Sorry."
"Drink?" Keeping one arm over her shoulder, Mrs. Cameron leads Bella to the kitchen. "I made iced tea."
Iced tea in winter, Mrs. Cameron's favorite. Bella used to drink it even when she didn't like tea, just because the thought of it was fun. She would add way too much sugar to her glass.
While Mrs. Cameron pours tea over ice, Bella leans back against the counter.
"I think I have a boyfriend."
"Sure you do, lovely girl like you." She hands Bella her glass.
"But..." Bella shakes her glass around, ice clinking.
"But?"
"I want love to be real." She says this down to her tea.
"I love you. Do you love me?"
Looking up, Bella nods.
Mrs. Cameron shrugs. "There you have it."
Bella knows it isn't that simple. She takes a long sip. "You said - you said you had a love story for me. When I was ready."
"And you're ready now?"
"Yes."
"So you are. Come on. Have a seat."
They sit in the living room, Mrs. Cameron in her glider, Bella on the floor, her back against the sofa. She's always sat on the floor here. It's her spot. She wouldn't be surprised if the carpet is faded beneath her from all the sitting she's done here over the years.
"I was twelve when I got the first note," Mrs. Cameron says as she begins to glide. "I saw a corner of the paper sticking out from under a ceramic garden frog. It said: I love you, Marion Nobel. He'd spelled my last name wrong."
She pauses for a laugh and Bella joins her.
"I thought, 'Who would write something like that, yet not know how to spell my last name?' I went through the list of boys I knew. Couldn't figure it out. Well, I didn't have to wonder too long. Next day, he showed up at my door with a single pink rose. His cheeks matched, let me tell you, and I bet mine did, too.
"We continued to leave silly little notes for each other. He always left mine under the frog, and I left his under a planter on his front porch. Just the corners of the paper would stick out from underneath to alert us. After that we were inseparable. We talked about everything together. We made future plans together. We cried together. His parents were divorcing, and divorce in 1951 was not the common thing it is today. He'd never let me see him cry before, and then and there, at fourteen years old, I decided we were soul mates.
"In high school, he started playing football. I went to every game possible.
"He gave me this circle pin. Back then they stood for going steady and your virginity. You weren't supposed to wear it if you were no longer a virgin.
"Well, he kept getting better and better at football, and his physique really filled out. He looked twenty at seventeen. Me? I still looked about fourteen. These girls, they made their interest in him very clear. You might be able to guess that he didn't discourage their advances.
"He told me we had to break up. I just wasn't right for him anymore. I couldn't understand why not. I was still the same person I'd always been, the person who had always been just right for him. It took me a long time to learn that that was just it. I was the same person, but he'd changed. It was him. He needed something else. Someone else.
"The hardest thing to do was to stop wearing that pin. I had taken it off for the wrong reason as far as I was concerned. I was still a virgin, but no longer had my one and only. I kept it on top of my dressing table for as long as I can remember. Have no idea where it is now. Don't care either." She gives a single nod of her head.
"I was an enemy of love for a long time. After all, if I couldn't rely on my best friend, the one who tucked notes in my yard for years, who could I trust?
"I couldn't so much as look at that frog anymore. One day I kicked it down the porch steps and watched it crash into pieces.
"Well you know what life taught me? You can give up on love all you want, but that doesn't mean love gives up on you." She points at Bella.
"It took me years to learn this, though. I met my Daniel. And, well, at that point, falling in love with him, I was relieved I wasn't with that old sleaze Tommy or anyone else. For if that had been the case, Daniel and I might never have been. And Bella, we needed to be.
"Like baby birds, we have to fall before we learn how to fly. But flying is always a possibility from the day we are born."
"Does everyone fall? Does everyone get hurt?"
"Most people. And most people hurt others as well, whether they mean to or not."
"What about the ones who mean it? How do you know?"
"The ones who mean it?"
"The ones who hurt you on purpose. How can you tell them apart from the others? How can you see it and not take the bait?"
Mrs. Cameron leans forward, her eyebrows pulling together. "Who hurt you on purpose?"
"Nobody." Bella reaches behind her, elbows bent, hands on the cushion, and pulls herself up onto the sofa.
"Who hurt you on purpose? A boy? A man?"
"That's not why I'm here."
The older woman stands up, seeming to tower over Bella. "That is why you're here. That's exactly why you're here."
Bella doesn't say a thing. She glances down at her drink sitting there condensing by her feet.
"Isabella Marie Swan."
Bella covers her face. "No, Mrs. Cameron. No one. It's over." When she swallows, she feels like she's swallowing all her insides.
She can hear Mrs. Cameron sit back down in her chair. "It doesn't appear over, honey."
"It's just stupid. Stupid choices."
"If you can't discuss it with me, I won't press. I want this to be a place you come to, not a place you avoid. You do have someone else you talk to?"
"Someone else knows."
"Someone you trust?"
Bella pulls her hands away from her face and looks into Mrs. Cameron's dark eyes. "Yes." There's a jolt in her stomach and she moves her fingers to her mouth, now covering a smile. "Yes, I do trust him." She lets out a breath that feels like no other exhale before.
"The boyfriend?"
Bella nods.
"Then I guess the next step is trusting yourself."
Bella's smile fades and she drops her hand to the sofa. This, she knows, won't come easy.
Picking up her glass from the floor she takes a diluted sip. "Can you tell me about Daniel?"
A/N: Thank you for reading everyone. Your reviews are very heartwarming.
Special thanks to Thimbles for looking this chapter over for me before I posted.