A/N: I know it's three days late. I'm sorry. It's the end. Ends are rough. They're almost as hard for me as titles and summaries. ;)
One more chapter after this one.
Word Prompt: Competition, compensation, composition
Something True
Competion, Compensation, Composition
Bella's lying flat on her stomach, arms tucked under the pillow, her head to the side. Edward's been tracing his fingers over her back for several minutes, each stroke deliberate.
"What are you drawing?" she asks, watching sunlight stream through the window and sprawl across furnishings, the piano, the wood floor.
His answer comes low and with more words than he's strung together at once all day. "Chord progression. In D minor."
"Hmm..." Bella lets his attention, his mind, his music, and the tickling of his fingers relax her.
This summer, like most, has flown by. Only this one has seemed faster than all the rest, probably because she wants it to slow down, or maybe because she's been keeping so busy.
Bella can't pinpoint the moment when her longing to get away from Forks morphed into anxiety. It's been gradual, a building awareness slithering under her skin, stretching, making her restless, making her itch. There, but transient. Now, with only one more day before she leaves, her nerves have materialized into something solid. She can probably reach out and touch it like a wall, like a cage.
She's leaving. She's free. And it feels like a cage.
...
The night of her graduation, Bella had scrubbed the tallies off the base of her wall. It took Ajax, a heavy-duty scrubbing sponge, and a lot of elbow grease to remove the last taint of the tallies and to get the wall white-clean again.
A week later, Edward went to the University of Washington's graduation ceremony, not for Angela, but for his other friends. He brought Rose with him. She wanted to be there for Emmett. Emmett whom she'd been seeing more and more. Emmett whom she had yet to call her boyfriend, but whose name she couldn't say without smiling.
Engulfed in duties for the auction, the tying up of loose ends, Bella was stuck in Forks.
Edward and Rose returned in time on Saturday to help serve the auction's spaghetti dinner. The Veterans' Hall was decorated in a rainforest theme, complete with a waterfall created of curtains and clear, running rope lights. Lit up palm trees dotted the room. Rows of tables were set out, some for dining, some to display silent auction items and bidding sheets. Grass-like fringe edged every table. Long-leafed exotic plants as centerpieces would be raffled off at the end.
With the help of Bella's girlfriends, her mother, and some men and women from the Senior Center, and after compensating for auction expenses, they raised $11,400. All of that going to improvements on the Hoh Rainforest's visitor center, and protecting and maintaining the trails.
Bella's dad brought in $2200 by offering a day with the Chief of Police.
Jessica bid on a basket of hair products that she lost to Lauren. Alice bid on a six week session of tennis lessons. She lost because she couldn't afford more than $25.00. It ended at $175.00. Jasper outbid her, which made her laugh and hit his shoulder until he said they were for her. As if it was ever a competition.
Then she kissed him.
At one of the display tables Bella recognized the girl she met during the fire when they had been evacuated to the middle school. The girl who lent Bella her book. She waved, but it seemed the girl didn't remember Bella.
Her blonde hair was longer and her face more mature. If she were to ask Bella again if she'd ever been in love, she could now say yes. But of course she wouldn't ask. She didn't even remember.
She was about to remind the girl when Bella's dad put his arm over her shoulders. "Marion would be proud."
Bella's mother on the other side of her told her she was proud.
The line for dinner started and Bella and the rest of the servers slipped aprons over their heads. To keep things moving quickly, there were three rows of tables all serving the same thing: salad, spaghetti, garlic bread.
Jared and Kim were there, in Bella's spaghetti line. Holding hands. She waved to them. They lifted their free hands. Smiled.
As she piled pasta on their plates all she said was "Hi." She didn't know what else to say. "How are you doing?" "I miss your mother." "Has the house sold?" None of it seemed right.
As they moved along to Edward who was offering the garlic bread, Bella thought she could have at least thanked them for coming. Too late now, they were off to find their table.
Caught up in the whirlwind of the evening, Bella hadn't had the opportunity to talk to Edward, other than giving him orders. By the time they were able to sit down to eat, she was too afraid to ask him if he'd talked to Angela while in Seattle; she wasn't sure she wanted the answer. Sitting beside her, knee to knee, he told her anyway.
They didn't talk. Other than when she walked across the stage, he hadn't even seen Angela.
"She hasn't been calling either," he said, and Bella felt his breath on her cheek, his lips following.
Bella's family and friends, Edward, all stayed late to help clean up.
The auction's end lent Edward and Bella more time to spend with each other, though it was borrowed time and in the backs of their minds they both knew it.
On the hottest day in July, they stepped off the dock and into the aluminum fishing boat, Biter sitting on the floor between them. Edward anchored the boat near the island where they jumped into the cold water and pushed a raft topped with towels toward the island. Biter dog-paddled along beside them.
There were too many big rocks near the island to bring the boat all the way to shore.
Biter loved to swim and to fetch a stick from the water. He ran himself and Edward and Bella ragged. All of them landed heavy against the ground in front of a trio of fir trees. Lying on her back on top of her towel, Bella closed her eyes against the mostly blue sky, savoring this day of having nowhere else in the world to go. She felt the wind in her damp hair and eyelashes and the stinging rise of goosebumps all over her skin. She smelled the dry dirt behind her and the wet dirt in front of her.
The small grin on her face must have given Edward the hint she wasn't sleeping. She felt his lips, damp and soft, brush against hers, his hand on her side, light and then gripping. She felt his laugh through his nose and his smile on hers.
She brought her fingertips up to rest on his jaw as they kissed, as she bent her legs, and as Edward settled between them, swim trunks against bikini bottoms.
He warmed her body, slinking his hands up her side, tucking his finger under the strap of her bikini.
They made out until Edward pulled back with a chuckle that told Bella he had to stop. She knew by then it was either stop or go further, and though they were on the island, they were not secluded.
Across from them, not too far away, the distance Bella used to swim, there was a small beach flecked with visitors. And every now and then another fishing boat would trail by.
Beside each other, they fell asleep in the sun to the sound of the wind in the trees, the heavy breaths of a dog, and lapping water.
Later that day, through the mirror in Edward's bathroom, Bella noticed a tan line across her stomach from Edward resting his arm over her as they had slept.
When she showed it to him, he kissed a line across it and then started the shower and pulled her with him behind the curtain.
All summer, they were smiles and laughs, had dinner-dates, movie-dates, and sometimes parties at the cottage with only their closest friends.
Until today, when Edward went quiet. Last night he'd walked her home and with his fingers to her cheek, his breath against her lips, he said in a voice as quiet as the night, "You're not going to be ten minutes away anymore."
He hadn't said much else since then.
Not when she showed up at his door, not while he later started working on music with his headphones on. Anytime he spoke it was a short, one-word answer.
In his music studio, Bella opened the shutters and gazed out the window at the sun shining on the lake, glinting off the aluminum boat.
"I'm taking Biter out," she said.
Edward didn't ask, "Alone?" like he had in the past, or offer to go with her. He just nodded his head. She went to the kitchen for Biter's leash.
While she wished Edward had said something to her, or at least wanted to join her, the truth was, she didn't tell him that her reason for getting out wasn't for Biter, but for herself.
They traipsed through the once dead forest that was now being reborn. Small ferns had sprouted here and there, green like patchwork, or like the afghan she'd given her dad.
She led Biter all the way to the Lakeview Restaurant, now finished on the outside, but only the bar open on the inside as of yet. Apparently the kitchen and dining area needed more work.
Sporadically through summer, while Edward was busy composing, Bella had perched on a moss-covered rock near the restaurant and sketched it in its different stages of repair.
Without a drawing pad with her now, Bella picked up a stick and drew the outlines of the restaurant in the dirt as she wondered what was going on with Edward. Why were they spending her last day in Forks like this? Apart? Not talking? Hardly looking at each other?
By the time Bella returned to the cottage with a panting dog, she had worked herself up into frustration, fed up with Edward and his silence. She shoved the music room door open and yelled at him.
"You need to talk to me!"
Taking off his headphones, he turned to her. Seeing his face, meeting his eyes and the flatness that had come over them, she calmed down.
"I'm leaving," she said. "Tomorrow. And all you're doing is ignoring me."
He stood and shook his head, opening his mouth as if he was finally going to speak. He didn't.
"Edward. Please? Isn't this something you can work on after I'm gone?" She gestured to his keyboard.
He continued shaking his head, grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her hard. Backing her up out of the room and down the short hallway to his room, to his bed, he continued to kiss all over her mouth, her face, the hollow of her neck. His kisses were rough and pulling, the scruff on his face scratchy.
Panting, he undressed them both fast, and then they were tangled up in each other, their hands roaming, their lips landing anywhere, everywhere. The way his skin felt, under her hands, under her mouth, sliding against her body. In that moment, it was everything.
Whenever she opened her eyes, his were closed up tight, creased. She stopped opening hers.
...
Now as he's tracing the chord progression on her back, he pauses only to drop kisses to her bare shoulder. She tucks her legs back, tangling their feet together.
"Are you going to play it for me?" she asks.
"Later."
She turns around and he opens his arms to her. He's still here, very present, his gaze on her. She snuggles into his skin.
She tells him she's scared.
"Of what?"
"Being apart."
"Don't be."
She backs away just enough to see his face. No sign of a smile. "Aren't you?"
He shakes his head as if in slow motion, but his expression doesn't change. She's looking for something positive to cling to. She searches his eyes. He closes them, and hers start to fill.
"I've seen so much end." She places her hand on his chest, brushing with her fingers. The movement is partly driven by nerves, partly because she needs to touch him. "Maybe it sounds stupid or impossible, but I don't want us to end." She opens her palm and flattens it over his heart. "Not ever."
He squeezes her fingers and tears leak through the corners of his eyelids.
He envelops her back into his arms. On his chest she can feel him shudder. When she looks up at him, he's looking at her, and the tears roll down his cheeks.
She's cried over guys, over Pete, over Riley, over Edward, but she's never witnessed any guy cry for her. While it makes her feel loved to be cried over, it doesn't settle her fear; his tears worsen it.
She hugs him tight and he hugs her right back. Just as tight.
"Say something, Edward."
He sighs and when he speaks, his voice cracks. "We're not ending, Bella."
And tears streak her cheeks as well. She doesn't ask him if he's sure or how he knows. She doesn't remind him that he may have said the same thing to Angela once. He's probably thinking of all that anyway.
She sniffles. "Play the chord progression for me?"
"Okay," he whispers, and presses a firm kiss to her forehead. He wipes his eyes.
After pulling his boxers on he walks to the piano. Bella covers herself with the sheet and sits up, leaning against the headboard.
She listens to the beautiful high chords interspersed with low notes. Her new score, she decides.
She watches the way his fingers move over the keys, his arms, his shoulders, the tilt of his head.
"Thank you," she says when he finishes.
The thanks is for more than he knows. It's for playing for her when she asks, for composing for her when he can't talk to her, for reassuring her, for crying over her.
For loving her.
He stares at Bella with his red-rimmed eyes for so long she has to look away. But then he's next to her and kissing her and tugging her close and tangling his hands into her hair, and she gets it, his silence. This day was never a day for talking.
It's a day for simply being.