February 12, 2013 – Word Prompt: Fever. Dialogue Flex: "You can't please everyone."

. . .

"What are you doing here?" I blame my surprise for the fact that the first words out of my mouth aren't exactly polite ones.

Charlie glances around his foyer in mock confusion before focusing on me. "Last time I checked, this was my house. Unless you've moved in and kicked your old man out in the past two days."

I shake my head, rising from his sofa and wrapping my arms around his neck. He stiffens slightly, then relaxes into the hug. We've never really been huggers, but the past couple of days in his house with nothing but my old ghosts for company make me grateful beyond measure for his unexpectedly early return. "Sorry," I say, pulling away. "I was just surprised. I didn't think you were coming home until tomorrow."

He shrugs, dumping his duffel bag inside the door and kicking off his boots. "Told Billy you were in town and he said he didn't mind if we cut the trip short." I want to tell him he didn't have to do that, but I'm so glad he did that I'm not sure the words would ring true. "You hardly ever come home, so I didn't want to spend your whole visit freezing my ass off."

"Catch anything?"

"Nothing big enough to make it worth it," he replies, shrugging out of his coat. "Lemme grab a shower and we'll catch up." I nod and step aside as Charlie climbs the stairs, and I go back to my perch on his sofa and my mug of coffee. Fifteen minutes later, he's standing in the kitchen with me, smelling of Irish Spring and Old Spice and everything familiar and comforting and home.

"Your coffeemaker sucks," I tell him as I pour him a mug.

"You can't please everyone," he replies. "Maybe if you agree to come home more than once a year, I'll invest in something more suitably high-brow."

I roll my eyes as we return to the living room and he sinks into his recliner with a relieved sigh, steaming mug in his hand and thick cabin socks on his feet. I can tell by looking at him that he's wearing more than the usual number of layers.

"Cold out there?"

"Freezing. After the borderline pneumonia Billy got last year, I can't believe he still wanted to go." I remember Charlie's panicked phone calls, updates on his best friend's steadily climbing fever, my status as the only woman either of them was willing to call at two in the morning despite the fact that I knew little more than they did about home remedies. Charlie shakes his head. "I like fishing as much as the next guy, but if he didn't get such a kick out of the ice fishing thing, I'd be content to leave it until spring."

"You're a good friend," I say, raising my mug to my lips.

"So. Tell your old man what's been going on in your life."

I shrug, picking at a loose thread along the edge of his couch cushion. "Not much. Working. Writing some."

Charlie nods. "Another book?"

I shrug. "I don't know. I don't know what it's going to be yet." I don't tell him the truth: that this second round of words is made up of ones that I'm not sure I could ever share with anyone else. That the minute I got the invitation in the mail with the Forks return address, I started putting figurative pen to paper in an attempt to purge some of my old demons. That I reopened old scars that some nights make me so raw I spend hours twisting and turning, tying my bed sheets in knots as I try unsuccessfully to find the blissful peace of sleep.

That while I thought I had spent all of the years between then and now growing, healing, maturing, moving on, it turns out that I'd simply numbed that part of myself, and that with my return, sensation is returning by degrees: tingles, a small burn, a dull ache.

I don't tell him that I'm terrified of what the next level of sensation might be.

. . .

"This is about me?" Edward asks, his eyes darting between my scarlet face and the white page before him. No blue ribbon on this copy, as it's just come from my computer printer.

"Of course it's about you."

"Bella." He shakes his head. "I wish I were as good with words as you are." Good with words, and yet I can find none to tell him what the words he does say do to me. "This is exactly right," he says, shaking the paper slightly. "This…you know I feel exactly this way too, right?"

"I do now," I tell him, only half-teasing.

"Bella, I love you so much." He pulls me roughly toward him, and I'm anticipating his mouth on mine, but instead he wraps his arms around me and pulls me into his chest, pressing his lips to the crown of my head. "You were wrong about one thing, though."

"What?" I say, voice muffled against the warm cotton covering his chest.

"There are no prettier girls in that school than you." A lie, but it's the loveliest one anyone's ever bothered to tell me.

"Yeah, right," I tell him, but the warm buzz of pleased satisfaction hums in my chest.

. . .

Thanks for reading. Thanks for the lovely reviews. Thanks, even, for the less so. And thanks for all of the new quotes on forgiveness; such wise words. xo

Another update later today because tomorrow real life might be chaotic.