Thanks, as always, for reading. xo
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February 15, 2013 – Word prompt: Graceful. Plot Generator – Phrase Catch: Playing for keeps.
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"How can he be marrying her?"
I hear Alice sigh through the phone. "See, this is why I wanted to meet you for coffee."
"It doesn't make any sense," I continue, ignoring her interjection altogether.
"They reconnected a few years ago when we were all back in town for Christmas." The way she says "we were all back" makes me feel like I'm fifteen and was excluded when all my friends went to the mall. Granted, Charlie comes to visit me in San Francisco for Christmas the years I'm not in Forks, and even when I am in town I don't spend it with the Cullens, but still. The unpleasant taste of being the catalyst behind my own ostracism lingers on my tongue; it is as if, by declining to forgive and forget, I orchestrated my own isolation. Off my silence, my friend sighs again. "I'm picking you up in ten minutes. Be ready." There's a click, and she hasn't given me time to decline.
"Hey," she says nine minutes later, standing on my doorstep decked out in designer.
"Hi," I return, slipping out the door before Charlie can appear in the space behind me and ask where I'm going. I left his newspaper on the counter and the coffeepot brewing in hopes that my absence would barely register. I follow her down the porch steps and watch as she slides gracefully into the driver's seat of an Audi the color of sunshine before slipping into the passenger seat.
"Nice wheels."
"Thanks," she says, putting the car into Reverse. "Christmas gift from Jasper."
"Wow. So life as a musician is going well, then."
Her eyes slide over to me before returning to the front and pushing the car into Drive. "Jasper works for Merrill Lynch now," she says. "Has been for nearly two years."
"Oh." I frown at the road ahead. "Sorry. I didn't know."
A lyric of the song playing at a low enough volume that I have to strain catches my ear. A hollow sound is ringing where your heart used to be. "I like this," I say, gesturing awkwardly toward the stereo. "Who is it?"
"Elle King," Alice replies, turning the volume up slightly from the control panel embedded in her steering wheel. "'Playing for Keeps.'"
I nod, listening to the melancholy lyrics that are somewhat at odds with the upbeat tempo.
Well, I bet you're sorry now. You did this to yourself.
It's a lonely road where the forgotten go, where your misery finds its company.
As we drive in relative silence the rest of the way to the diner, I force myself not to remember ice cream sundaes and games of footsie beneath Formica tabletops. Once we're settled with twin mugs between us, Alice sighs. "Bella, Jasper and I are going to be getting engaged soon." I feel my eyes and mouth widen. "We're not yet, so please don't say anything, but we will be soon. We didn't want to steal Emmett and Rosalie's thunder, and we're still shopping for rings so he hasn't actually proposed yet, but it's coming. And when it does, I'm going to expect you, as my good friend, to be in my wedding. And Jasper's going to expect Edward to be in it as well. And the reason I'm telling you all this is because maybe it's time to…make peace with things. I know he hurt you, and I know what happened was awful, and I'm not saying it wasn't. But maybe it's time to let it be in the past."
"It is in the past," I say, feeling my defenses rise as I curl a hand around my mug.
"But you still don't want to be around him," Alice presses, and I'm slightly taken aback by this new, blunt version of my old friend. "You still called me in a fit when you found out about Rosalie. The event is in the past, but it seems like the way you feel about it is still very current."
"He broke my heart, Alice," I say, angry at the tightness in my throat that still wells up even after all these years. Angry at the fact that I still feel like that seventeen-year-old girl in this moment, when everyone else has apparently moved on.
"I know," she says, and her immediately gentle tone only makes the ache build. "I know he did. And I'm not making excuses or apologies for him. My point is that he took enough from you back then; I hate to think that you're still letting him take things from you now."
"I'm not," I say, but the words taste suspiciously like a lie.
"I haven't seen you in almost three years, and before Esme and Carlisle decided to renew their vows, I hadn't talked to you in nearly eighteen months." Guilt is a wall I slam into, and I can't meet her eye. "And I know life gets busy and everything else, but we've been friends for years, and I can't help thinking that if I weren't in love with Edward's brother, I would have heard from you when you published your book. Or when you came back into town for a visit. Or anytime, really. I feel like if I hadn't fallen for Jasper, I'd know what your apartment looks like and what you do when you're not writing books and whether you've been in love since high school."
"My apartment's tiny, and I freelance," I reply, a half-hearted attempt at levity. It doesn't escape my notice that I ignore her third question altogether. The look in her sharp gray eyes tells me it didn't escape hers, either.
"I miss my friend," she says finally, softly, and I break her gaze to stare into the dark surface of my black coffee; unfortunately, my own eyes gaze back at me, and they're no more comforting than Alice's gray ones.
"Me, too," I say, and I feel her small hand wrap around mine for a beat before letting go.
. . .
"I'm just…not ready, and I don't know why." I try to keep my foot from twitching as Alice paints my baby toe a ridiculously bright shade of pink. She straightens to consider her handiwork before moving on to my next toe.
"Well, you don't have to know why," she says simply. "If you're not ready, you're not ready." Sometimes I envy Alice's ability to see things in black and white, but then I think black and white must be easy when she doesn't have heated green eyes boring into hers, silently asking permission she isn't ready to give. "I guess," I say, and she peeks up at me from beneath her dark bangs.
"He's not pressuring you, is he?"
I shake my head. "No." I don't explicate, don't explain that while I don't feel pressured by Edward, I do feel pressured by everything else: the fact that we've been together for two years, the fact that I've known him – and loved him – for much longer, the fact that everyone else is starting to have opinions about the status of Edward's and my lack of sex life. I'm pressuring myself, and while Edward isn't overtly pressuring me, the knowledge of what he wants is its own kind of pressure. "He isn't," I add, but my best friend can hear the words I don't say.
"But?"
"But I don't understand why I can't," I admit, watching her precise painting. "I love him. God, Alice, I love him so much. And sometimes I think maybe I want to. But then we're together and I just…freeze."
"Maybe that's your subconscious doing you a favor," she suggests, my third toenail getting its coat of pink. "I mean, it's not something you can take back if you regret it. And Lord knows once you do it once, he's going to want to do it all the time." That thought hadn't occurred to me, and if anything, it only fills me with more dread. Alice continues, entirely oblivious to my silent panic. "And what if you got pregnant? I mean, your dad would probably shoot him."
"He'd wear a condom," I argue halfheartedly, even as I'm not sure why I bother. A part of me was hoping Alice would tell me I'm being silly, worrying too much about something that's not a big deal, convince me to just do it already, but she's as much a virgin as I am. "I'm really…I'm not afraid I'll get pregnant." I sigh as she finishes my left foot.
"Then what are you afraid of?" Alice squints at my toes.
And isn't that the million-dollar question? "I don't know." God, I wish I did. "I'm afraid it will hurt," I say after a moment, and the moment the words leave my lips I know they're at least part cop-out. The implication is the lie, even if the words are truth.
"It probably will," she says, finally looking up at me. "But I've heard that part doesn't last that long and isn't really that bad."
I nod, despite the fact that I don't believe her. How can being pried open not hurt?
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