Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns it all. I'm just playing with it.
Chapter 4: Not Today and Never Again
Bella's POV
A dusty brown sedan approached the parking space behind me, pausing briefly before the driver attempted to back in. She started at an awkward angle, moving too quickly, and nearly hit the blue Chevy coupe in the adjacent space before pulling into the slot with barely enough room to open the driver's side door. Ms. Cope climbed out of the car, hauling a bag full of papers and a lavender bakery box, and I wished I felt like getting out of my truck and inventing an excuse to go to the office. Madeleine's Muffins made the best pastries in Forks, and Ms. Cope's legendary sweet tooth ensured that she'd picked the best of the best.
As I watched her ambling toward the entrance to the main building, I wondered why she wasn't moving faster. The rain was really coming down, as all I saw was a sheet of water when I looked out the window, but she didn't seem to mind. In fact, she didn't even seem to be getting wet.
I blinked and felt a cascade of moisture on my cheeks. Apparently it was only raining in my cab.
I wiped my face with my sleeve-I'd left my tissues at home to discourage myself from crying-and considered again popping into the office for a raspberry danish or a bear claw if she had any. But I had no appetite today, nor could I see that changing in the near future, so I stayed slumped in my truck where she couldn't see me, counting my breaths to make sure I was still alive.
Yesterday couldn't decide what it wanted to be: a dizzying blur that seemed to have happened to someone else, or a frame-by-frame replay of the worst day of anyone's life ever. Sometimes the whole thing seemed like a teasing trailer for a horror movie with random scenes and words out of context and the only certain thing was the palpable sense of fear. Other times, like right now, I could see what happened in the forest in slow motion, hear it in surround sound, and feel it in all its painful potency. Either way, it was still a nightmare.
No, a nightmare would be better than this.
With a nightmare, no matter how real, there was always the guarantee that it would eventually end. At some point, usually when I was falling down a dark hole or cornered by the monster, I would wake up sweating and panting in my bed. I'd claw at my clothes to make sure the villain hadn't really gotten to me and then fall back with a grateful sigh and say, "It was only a nightmare."
But yesterday… yesterday was no mere nightmare because it had no prescribed end. This time, while I was fully awake and trusting, the monster had gotten to me and slashed my insides to bloody bits. In fact, he's the one who shoved me into the dark hole in the first place.
And there ends my first full twenty minutes without referring to him, however metaphorically. Well… at least I didn't say his name.
I glanced over my shoulder and noticed that the school parking lot was starting to fill up. I had intentionally parked on the other side of the lot today because I didn't want to see the empty space where the silver Volvo wouldn't be today and would never be again. Judging by the number of cars arriving, I would soon need to head to class. Of course, this would be the year that we had all but one class together, an unavoidable torture that would surely be my undoing. I couldn't wrap my head around how I would get through an entire year's worth of daily reminders of his absence. I was entirely surprised that I had even survived the night.
I turned on my new radio-stuffing down the visual of the jolly, brawny boy who installed it- and tried to find some measure of solace. I considered the heavy metal station, thinking that it might play a song about living without your immortal beloved, but the beats would have been too severe for my already throbbing head. Saccharine pop or raging rock would be of no help, and fifties music was out of the question.
I stumbled onto a country station and heard two girls singing, "There's nothing you can do or say, you're gonna break my heart anyway, so just leave the pieces when you go." I'd never listened to a country song before in my life, but I sat through that song and the next one called "What Hurts the Most." The haunting chords and lyrics almost sent me reeling again, and then, as if the DJ felt sorry for me, he played a rousing track called "My Give-A-Damn's Busted." The female singer's voice was the perfect mix of powerful and pissed-off and reminded me of how I'd felt yesterday, staring at the beautiful face of that stupid vampire I loved so much.
My face cracked a smile when the familiar flame of rage warmed the cavern in the center of my aching chest. In the sixteen hours since my flight from the forest, I had discovered the beauty of anger. And it had become my companion, my shield, my security blanket, and I held on to it as if my life depended on it.
And in a terribly real way, it did.
Yesterday I had slammed the door behind me, as my goodbye still hovered in the air, run up to my room, and flung myself across the bed. I fell face down into my pillows and stayed in that position, knowing he would soon be flying up the stairs after me. But as a few minutes ticked by and I didn't hear anything, I started to wonder if he was coming, as that thought had never once occurred to me. I flew over to the window and peered out, hoping I'd see him crossing the street to meet me, and kept an ear out for the opening of the front door. I stared out the window for more than a half hour, fixated on the spot where the edge of the path came into view. My eyes began to burn and blur with the strain of trying to conjure up his image by the sheer force of my need to see him.
But I didn't see him. I didn't see anything except the occasional car driving by.
He wasn't out there anymore, and he wasn't in here, which could only mean one thing.
He left me. Just like he'd intended.
Despite how carefully I had spoken, how much thought I'd put into everything I'd said, my words hadn't meant anything. He didn't realize that he needed to stay, to wait for me to come down from the dangerous perch he'd dragged me to. He didn't understand that I'd had the right to be angry with him for planning to leave me. He didn't even understand that what he'd done was wrong. He didn't understand a damn thing, and I had been right to leave him.
That reasoning, in all its flawlessness, came to me around three this morning.
Before that, there had only been the gnawing knowledge that I would never see him again. That our last kiss… that sad, desperate kiss… had indeed been our last. That I would never feel his touch again, never feel his body curled around mine protective and strong. That our love had ended as drastically and suddenly as it had started. That forever only lasted for a few months, at best. And worst of all, that for the rest of my life, there would be a jagged, gaping hole where he and I should have been.
That was when I'd first slipped off that steep precipice toward the bottom of my soul where an endless desolation was waiting. That was when the first of my tears fell, followed quickly by several hundred of its closest companions. I'd flown to the bathroom then, retching up was left of my lunch, and laid on my head against the cool porcelain of our bathtub. But the soothing sensation felt painfully familiar, far too similar to another sensation I was in no position to remember yet. The swelling in my heart tripled in force and propelled me out of the bathroom and onto my bedroom floor, gasping for breath as I tripped over the corner of my upturned rug. I'd ripped my jeans in the process, my favorite jeans at that, and cursed aloud. And in that moment, my pain lessened just enough to stabilize my frantic heart rate.
That's when I realized that anger was my new best friend.
Anger was what fueled me while I completed my most urgent homework and finished my English essay without soaking it with tears. Anger was what got me through two hours with Charlie while we ate dinner and watched the first few innings of the game. Charlie kept looking at the door, checking his watch, and glancing at me, and the anger on my face was what kept him from asking the question that would surely have sent me back to the bathroom and forced what little dinner I had eaten back to the surface. Anger was what kept me upright while I brushed at my teeth and what I was trusting to give me the strength to change into my nightclothes before attempting to sleep.
But when I tried to lift my shirt over my head, his unique scent knocked me on my ass and flung my anger to the far corner of the room. On instinct, I pushed my shirt into my nose, amazed that I hadn't smelled him before then, and deeply inhaled, heedless of the tears and moans that resulted. I felt like a junkie trying to get high, knowing the dazzling rush was only temporary yet needing it more than the next breath I took. I sniffed and cried and groaned and died a thousand times until sometime after dawn when my tear ducts needed to replenish themselves. During their all too brief pause, I must have fallen asleep because when my eyes opened again, I could hear Charlie whistling in the bathroom. He left a few minutes later, and as I knew that he wasn't coming to pick me up this morning and never would come here again, I had bolted out of the house, determined not to be misery's sitting duck.
A shriek of playful laughter reached my ears from somewhere behind my parked truck. Its optimism tried to infiltrate my mood but was immediately sucked into the blackening pit where my heart used to be. I wrapped my arms around my waist as the hilarity continued outside and noticed that I was wearing my beige sweater. In my semi-conscious haze this morning, I had grabbed the first clean shirt I touched and kept on my torn jeans. I'd worn this shirt a few times since that special day with him, but as I looked down now, all I could see was his smooth white hand pressed against my abdomen, his cool touch setting my skin ablaze through the twin layers of my clothes. I could smell the flowers in the meadow mingling seductively with his sweet breath. I could see the love in his shimmering eyes, deep and eternal, and felt it washing over me in a bittersweet flood. Fresh rain spilled from my eyes and proved without question that I would never stop crying.
A few minutes later, I wiped my face and climbed out of the cab. A light drizzle was falling from the overcast sky – this time I confirmed it by sticking out my hand and watching the pale pellets bounce off my skin – and I kept my head down as I walked toward my first period class. Thankfully homeroom was optional this year because I didn't think I could take sitting there trying to act normal when my world had imploded yesterday.
As I dragged myself through the parking lot, I tried not to look but my eyes betrayed me and landed on the empty slot where his car used to be and would never be again. The pain in my heart constricted and I fought it down, promising it free rein once I arrived back home. But the lurching in my stomach could not be ignored and I ran past my homeroom to the first bathroom I could find.
When I finally walked into Government after the first bell rung, the turbulence in my stomach had finally subsided. I felt the faint rumblings of hunger and thought I might try to grab an apple from the nurse before next period.
The loud chatter in the classroom proved that my teacher hadn't arrived yet and convinced me that no one would notice that I was alone. But as tried to sneak to my seat in the back, Lauren's nosy eyes told me different.
"Bella!" she said with false cheer. "I was wondering when you'd show up. I started to wonder if you and Edward were ditching today."
She couldn't have known the fire that burned through me upon hearing his name, a name I had been so careful not to utter since yesterday. I buckled slightly under the weight of those perfect two syllables but slid into my seat without replying. She must have noticed that something wasn't right though, that this wasn't an instance of the male Cullens – more searing pain – going camping, because she turned around to face me.
"I mean, because you're never this late to class."
I took out my notebook, suppressing the urge to club her with it.
"And he's still not here." By this point, she had attracted the desired attention from the rest of the room. "That's weird, huh?"
"I guess." Maybe if I responded, that would shut her up.
She looked around at all the now curious faces and grinned. "So … where is he, Bella?"
I raised my eyes, beaming every ounce of my anger into her smug face and was pleased when she shrank back. "He's not here."
Whatever she was getting ready to say was preempted by Mr. Cromley's arrival. He was pulling one of the school's five A/V carts, which reminded me that we would be watching a film on how colonial America's government evolved into the current three branch system. Mr. Cromley was one of Forks High's most coveted teachers because he believed in the power of cinema – why teach it when you can show it? At the moment he was my favorite teacher because his arrival forced Lauren to turn back around in her seat.
Although she now pretended to ignore me, my triumphant feeling was short-lived. If this was only first period, what would the rest of the day be like? He and I had been synonymous for so long that it would only be natural for people to ask me where he was. How could I bare to think of him long enough to attempt answering that question? What would I say when I did? How long could I answer the questions with half-truths before people realized something else was going on? And once it became necessary, how would I form the words "We broke up" without breaking up myself? I put my head in my hands and prayed for the first time I could remember that God would somehow show me the way to get through this.
I heard Mr. Cromley turn on the television and hoped this movie would take us to the end of class so I could escape without having to face Lauren again until third period. He was giving us a synopsis of the film, telling us what to listen for, and reminding us that this material could show up on a pop quiz in the near future. I listened with half an ear, waiting for him to turn out the lights so I could rest my head on the desk without notice.
"Edward, this is a first! I don't think I've ever had a Cullen arrive late to my class."
When I heard his name, my body convulsed because I was certain that I was hearing things. I remembered that there was an Alvin in this class and thought for a second that Mr. Cromley might have made a mistake.
But when Lauren sucked her teeth and said, "Of course he's here now," I shook off my confusion and looked up. My eyes nearly popped out of my achy head at the sight of Edward standing next to the A/V cart with his molten gold eyes staring at me with wary intensity.
Notes:
I have loved country music for eighteen years, so I try to include it in my stories whenever I can. The first song Bella listens to is "Leave the Pieces" by The Wreckers. The next two are by Rascal Flatts and Jo Dee Messina, respectively. All three are amazing, so even if you don't listen to country music-and I promise not to hold that against you-check them out!
I hope those of you who are sick of stupid Edward – I'm looking at you, traceybuie and Leibeezer :) – will at least cut him some slack for showing up today!
Thank you again for all the reviews. I can't tell you how happy they make me.