Another re-post, even though this is from just this morning. I was actually checking my facts on the next blurb when I noticed the inconsistency with the narrative voice. I'm surprised no one else caught it, but imagine y'all were just being to nice to say anything. ;-) Anyway, enjoy the improved version and thanks so much for reading along!
~Ginnie
The Beginning…
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"When did you first see the signs?" Tia asks, her voice soft and more curious than clinical.
Bella smiles at her, grateful that her colleague is acting as more of friend than a professional at the moment.
"Not until right before we left for college," she answers.
Tia raises an eyebrow at her.
She laughs, raising her hands in supplication. "I really didn't! I was blinded by love, and… well, we spent every Friday night apart without fail. My dad's best friend and fishing partner lived one town over, near the beach. They got together every Friday night and cooked out before going to bed early so they could get up at the ass-crack of dawn."
Tia chuckles.
"I even had my own room over there," Bella adds, rolling her eyes. "Well, it was Billy's two daughters' old room. They were both grown already, so I slept there Fridays and drove my dad's truck back to town Saturday mornings whenever I got up. Sometimes I hung out with some of the kids down there, but usually I raced home to spend the day with Edward. He was always slow to get out of bed, but I just thought it was because he was a typical teenage boy, you know?"
Tia nods. "How many times have we heard parents of kids here say the same thing?"
"Exactly. Edward hated Charlie's Friday night sleepovers at first, but eventually settled down about it. I always believed he was spending those nights his own family, or some of his jock friends. And I never thought to question what he did because he was always so happy to see me again and, not once in the time we were together, did he look twice at another girl."
"Which is what most teenage girls worry about when it comes to boys…"
"You got it. I was oblivious."
"Until…"
"Until we graduated. Until we had to decide where to go to college and talk about what we both wanted to do in the future, and we figured out that we both wanted different things."
She ticks things off on her fingers, one by one, remembering it like it was yesterday.
"I had more stability in Washington than I ever had growing up, so I wanted to stay there. He missed the sun and the warm surf in California and wanted to go back there. I knew what I wanted to study and what I thought I might want to do for a career. He had no idea what he wanted to study but thought he might want to get back into acting again. I looked at time apart as inevitable, we were growing up after all. He looked at it like it was a death sentence. He wanted me to come with him."
Tia nods sympathetically. "Benjamin and I had similar issues when he went to medical school. Only he was the one who knew what he wanted to do with his life. I just wanted to be where he was."
Bella's smile is sad. "Edward wouldn't even consider following me where I wanted to go. He was set on California."
"And you?"
She shakes her head. "I applied for Stanford, Berkeley, and UCLA, same as him. In the end though, I didn't have the financial aid to pay for it, so I decided to stay in Washington. When I told him…" She looks away, swallowing at the memory. "It was our first real fight. We both said horrible, immature things to each other and when he left I didn't see him for three days afterwards."
"He went on a bender?" Tia asks.
Bella shrugs. "I can only assume. Knowing now what I didn't know then, that's probably exactly what he did. I was so devastated myself that when he did show up, I assumed his red eyes and gaunt appearance were because he'd taken our split just as badly as I had. He begged me for forgiveness and I granted it blindly. It was another year before I knew about the drugs."
"How did you find out?"
Bella inhales unsteadily. "Well, after a very long seven months, missing each other like crazy, we spent Spring Break together in Mexico where Edward proposed. I agreed immediately and he paid for our return tickets to go through Vegas."
"Wow…"
"Yeah, I know, but that's not even how I learned about the drugs. He was high enough off of getting me to agree to marry him and move to California."
Tia nods.
"We spent the next few months working out my transfer to Stanford. He tried to convince me that, as my husband, it was his responsibility to pay for everything, but of course, I argued. Then, we caught a break. As soon as we filed the paperwork with the school that we were married, it qualified us for a whole host of financial aid that was targeted for 'non-traditional' students. Edward hardly had to pay for anything for me. For either of us."
"So you went."
"I went…"
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