There's a Word for It Chapter 16: Ubi Caritas Una historia, a twilight fanfic

Recap: Last chapter, Bella turns down Edward's offer to make her immortal, citing her fears that she'd kill someone. To her surprise, Raquel thinks becoming a vampire isn't a bad idea, just disgusting. Jacob tracks Bella down at the coin laundry and threatens to reveal her relationship with Edward; Emmett shows up to drive Jacob off and make Bella's acquaintance. Mike asks if she's seeing someone, and she lets him believe that she has a lover in Tucson. Bella discovers that Justin Stanley is a plagiarist, copying from both the Internet and his girlfriend, Lindsay Mallory, and that had she been able to attend Dartmouth, her time there would have overlapped with Edward's. Lamenting that lost opportunity to be together in public, Edward asks Bella to go on a trip with him.

A reminder that at this point in the story it's February 2012, Bella is 24, and Edward's 17 going on 110. Edward's still a virgin, Bella isn't; and Bella is hiding a dread family secret about her health.

Bella's also a linguistics geek of sorts, and you may recall that she's mentioned "code-switching" before: it means adapting one's speech to the situation, whether it's Spanish versus English, or formal versus informal.

There is a discussion in this chapter about an experience many of you have had (as have I), but keep in mind that different people perceive it and live through it differently, and the chronology varies by the era and location. Also, you'll encounter a couple of characters you last saw in Chapter 3. So, a little angst, a lot of fluff here.

Thanks to Camilla10, who (appropriately enough for this chapter) has just posted a one-shot with Carlisle talking about sex! to Mr. Price, who has a question for you later, and to all of you for your patience.

Chapter 16: Ubi caritas/ Una historia

Before I could go on a clandestine trip with Edward, however, I had an unpaid teacherly chore to perform: chaperoning the Sadie Hawkins dance.

"When I was here in the 1930s the girls' choice dance was called the tolo dance," Edward said as he curved around me in bed one night. "The name's from Chinook Jargon. Do you know it?"

I had come across references to Chinook Jargon when I was working on my Quileute project, but I didn't know much about it. "It's a pidgin of local Native languages and English, right?" I said, wriggling against him in our warm cave of blankets and duvet. We were wearing progressively fewer clothes in bed, so I was able to enjoy the contact between my naked back and his smooth bare chest.

"And French," he told me. "It was the lingua franca of the Pacific Northwest fur trade, and the white settlers picked it up too. The old families spoke it back in the '30s, though not newcomers like us. The dance was where 'kluchman tolo' – 'the girls take control.' It's also where the word 'hooch' comes from."

"Huh," I said, then hummed a bit as he stroked my covered hip and down my exposed thigh. "Does anyone speak it anymore? In fact, does anyone ever say 'hooch'?"

"Probably not many besides your drunken friend Waylon from the Sawmill Tavern. But there's still all the place names we use." His hand moved up, into the dip of my waist and down to my belly, which coiled pleasantly under his touch. "There's La Push, for instance, not a Quileute name at all, but from 'la bouche.'"

In case I'd forgotten what the French word meant, he put his mouth on my shoulder and sucked very lightly.

"Ah, 'cause the mouth of that river is there," I said absently. What was its name? I really couldn't think while his lips were traveling onto my neck.

"The Quillayute," he said. Duh. "Then there are the rivers and creeks – Hyas, Lolo, the Sitkum. But my favorites are the Tatoosh Islands, off Cape Flattery." His voice vibrated low across my skin.

"Yeah? What's that mean?" I asked, though I didn't really care at that moment.

For answer, quick hands slid up and around, and I gasped as they curved over my breasts, his thumbs caressing my nipples. Oh. Men always liked to name things after boobs. I arched forward into his palms, and back into the cradle of his hips, pushing against his erection. He made his own gasp, and I smiled into the dimness of my room and reached back, searching for the waistband of the boxer briefs he still insisted on wearing in bed.

"Not yet, please, I'm too …" he trailed off, the words strained. Instead he moved one of his hands off my … tatoosh? Tatooshes? … and down, sliding easily into the loose blue boxers I used as sleep shorts, his fingers cool on the heat inside. I moaned as he touched, knowing by instinct and observation where everything was, how to tease and go slow and then harder as my blood pounded under the surface.

He had asked me my preferences the first time he did this, where to stroke and explore, how much pressure to use. But the truth was that, because of "vampire things" or the nature of our connection or some inextricable combination of the two, everything felt good with him, and some things felt good with him which wouldn't with anyone else. His erection glided along my ass as his hands worked me above and below, until my scream was long and silent and he grunted and juddered behind me, holding my hips captive against his.

My breath returned and I twisted around to face him, letting the blankets slip down to my legs. The room was illuminated only by a string of fairy lights, so it was too dark for me to read his eyes, but I knew he could see my smirk.

"Were you trying to seduce me with your ethnolinguistic prowess?" I teased him.

"Maybe?" he mumbled. He kissed my ear, his tongue touching the shell in his own tease, that vampire something in his saliva sending a wave of sensation across my flesh, over my collarbones and down to my chest.

I pulled away with reluctance. "Do you think about it, seducing me? Because I certainly do," I said. "I trust you."

"I don't yet. I can't -"

He grimaced, then started to speak again, but I tapped his lips. "Which is fine. I respect that," I said, hoping I sounded more sincere and patient than I felt, because I really didn't want to be an asshole about this. "Though I have to say, it's difficult sometimes not to beg you. But you know I'm ready."

I paused and then asked, slyly, "Do you think about it?"

He groaned a little. "Believe me, I do."

"Do you have lube nearby when you do?"

Now he made a strangled sound, but answered, "Um, I don't need it."

Oh, God. I swallowed my own groan and caressed the front of his boxer briefs, tracing his length, hard and damp inside, this proof of his power of recovery speeding my pulse. He certainly wouldn't need lube now.

"Can you show me?" My voice was husky, and he twitched under my fingers, through the cloth. I could see his nod then, and the back of my head hit my pillow as he rose to his knees and pulled at his waistband, his torso a gorgeous play of glow and shadow.

I ran my hands up over my ribs and cupped my breasts as he had done earlier, moaning at the sight of his fingers around himself and the memory of those fingers on me. My breasts were compact from running but Edward obviously adored them, and they adored him back, and so I felt no shyness as I stretched out under his gaze.

"The Tatooshes are waiting for you," I murmured, and his teeth gleamed briefly in response before he got to work, fast and sure and beautiful. I watched until he landed on the islands and then his hands joined mine moving under the blanket.

-έπ-

The dance was again in the gym, decorated in red and pink for Valentine's Day. The dresses were still tight and spangly, but the boys, all there as guests of a girl, were better clad this time. Some of them even wore ties and sports coats, and Edward stood out just a little less than usual in his elegant charcoal suit as he arrived with Alice, his entry ticket, "reaffirming Bruce Clapp's belief in the Cullens' incestuous tendencies," as Edward put it.

I was back in my nun's habit, my second-hand Alice-insists-it's-a-Dior black dress, and Alice bucked the high school trends with a silk dress in soft peach that showcased but didn't flaunt her model (petites' division) figure. I chatted with my colleagues and I watched her dance with her brother before Principal Banner's waving hands caught my peripheral vision. Time to check out the parking lot. I grumbled to Angela and Ron Jefferson, the government teacher, put on my coat, boots and ski hat and headed out.

Angela had been smart to sign us up to chaperone - the behavior at the tolo dance really was better. The girls' locker room had been free of rum-laced Solo cups and the lot looked deserted; even the usual pack of smokers was missing. Girls take control indeed.

Still, I needed to make my rounds. Before I could step out on the asphalt, though, a hand landed on my shoulder, ungloved and familiar.

"Dance with me?" Edward said. "Nobody is here."

I laughed as I spun into his arms. "We could do this inside, where it's warmer," I pointed out. My breath made puffs of white air.

"No, we can't," he said somberly. "Anyone who saw us touching would know."

He led me around the corner from the door, just out of a pool of artificial light, and gathered me close to him. He was right – even with the barrier of my down coat, the feel of him under charcoal wool made me sigh and melt.

"Have I ever said how good you always look in your suits?" I mumbled. "Because you do."

"Thank you. And I would say how fetching you are in that dress, if I could see it right now. You look like a 1940s movie goddess -" his voice grew lower, and colored by frustration - "and I just want to push up your skirt and see what's hidden underneath."

"You can do that later," I promised him. A man of his era would like the stockings, I figured.

The vibrations of a hip-hop bass line seeped from the gym. But we moved, slowly, to the melody Edward hummed into my hair. It sounded familiar.

"Ella Fitzgerald?" I guessed.

He nodded. "And Sarah Vaughn and Frank Sinatra and every cabaret singer since. But really it's the Gershwins. I heard it first in 1937, when Fred Astaire sang it to Ginger Rogers."

"Sing it for me?"

I'd heard him sing in church, of course, but his voice doing a love song? I grinned in anticipation. The words were sadder than I expected, though:

"The way you wear your hat, the way you sip your tea - the memory of all that, no, they can't take that away from me," he sang.

Indeed, no one could take that away from a man with exquisite recall, I thought wistfully as we swayed, my boots crunching on gravel. Ira Gershwin's lyrics fit Edward better than anyone else on the planet.

"We may never, never, never meet again,

on the bumpy road to love

Still I'll always, always keep that memory of

"The way you hold your knife
The way we danced till three
The way you've changed my life
No, no, they can't take that –"

He stopped, muttered an oath, and pushed me gently back toward the parking lot. "Company," he murmured. "I'll be nearby."

I'd made it to Bruce Clapp's repaired Tahoe by the time the gym door creaked open. I turned and gaped at my bad luck.

Justin Stanley, in a tie, making a mockery out of that symbol of maturity.

I'd been surprised to see him at the dance, since word had it that Lindsay Mallory had dumped him after Bob Banner called them into his office and given both Justin and (unfairly, in my opinion) Lindsay detention for plagiarism on the "Scarlet Letter" essay. But he'd apparently managed to inveigle some other girl into bringing him, a ninth grader named Abby Dowling, and she was with him now, looking underdressed with bare legs and head, too worried about her hair to wear a hat. She wobbled on her high-heeled sandals, then stumbled as her escort stopped short at the sight of me. I shook my head – I'd stumble in those heels too.

"Good evening, Ms. Dowling, Mr. Stanley," I said, resigning myself to determining if he was too drunk to drive. "Are you heading home?"

Abby Dowling tittered, while Justin smirked in that smarmy, jock-y way he had. "Naw, I just need to get something in the car. We'll go back in a minute," he said.

Since he wasn't obviously wasted, I let him and Abby pass me and head to his Escalade. Still, the combination of a ninth grader and Justin made me uneasy, so I continued to patrol the lot, coughing occasionally to remind them of my presence.

It apparently made Abby uneasy too, because soon I heard her plead, "Please, Justin, let's get back. I'm freezing," and then Justin's muttered "Fine, we'll go." Thirty seconds later, the gym door creaked and let out a blast of Rihanna. "We found love in a hopeless place," she belted out. Heh. The Forks High parking lot might be a hopeless place, but Justin hadn't found love there tonight.

"Stanley's getting on my nerves, how he looks at you," Edward said next to me. I startled only a little at his sudden appearance.

I wrinkled my nose. "He made a pass at me once before he knew I was his teacher, but really, is he any different from any other guy?"

"He is, because it's not that he wants to take you to bed. That, I could understand," Edward said, drawing me between two pickup trucks and concealing us better from the street. "It's that he blames you for Lindsay Mallory's breaking up with him, and for preventing him just now from coercing young Miss Dowling into doing something whose mechanics she doesn't quite yet understand. He wants to see you humiliated."

"There's a lot of that going around," I said sourly, thinking of Jacob Black.

"True," Edward said, scowling. "Unlike the wolves, though, Stanley's mental capacity for devising a plan is quite limited. But the vile things he was thinking …" He shook his head. "Also, Angela Weber's starting to worry about you being out here, and my chatterbox sister is unaware just how uncomfortable she's making Eliza Teague."

I lifted myself onto my toes so I could reach his lips and kiss him goodbye. "I'll see you at the house later. And you'll see what's under my skirt."

-έπ-

My school break, Alice decided, should be spent in San Francisco, not France, and the journey there gave me a glimpse into the pleasures of traveling like a rich person, or more accurately, a rich person for whom discretion and convenience trumped luxury. So early on a Saturday, I left my conspicuous Honda - I hadn't yet bothered to change either my Arizona license plates or my Arizona cellphone number - in the Cullens' garage, and rode with Edward to a tiny airport on Clallam Bay. I also discovered that Edward drove like a maniac, albeit a very competent one, on the Peninsula's deserted roads, and, what was more reassuring, that he was far more comfortable being with me in a car than he had been on our trip to Seattle back in November.

The plane was a charter just big enough to let me stretch out and nap, and to take us without refueling to our destination, a private airport in Marin County. When we landed, a black Mercedes with darkly tinted windows, identical to Esme's, awaited us, and we drove on Highway 101, heading south. Raquel and I had bypassed San Francisco on our way to Seattle, so it was all new to me, and I marveled at the orange towers of the Golden Gate Bridge at first piercing the fog, then being hidden by it as we descended to the bay.

"Can we run here?" I asked, peering at the lines of pedestrians and cyclists paralleling the road over the bridge. "Or would you be, um, distracted by all the people?" I continued, trying to be politic about his predatory side.

He frowned. "At this point in my existence I'm not typically, as you say, 'distracted' by someone's blood," he said slowly. "Apart from yours."

"Apart from mine, really?"

"Yes, it has that certain je ne sais quoi." He picked up my hand and pressed it to his lips for a moment. "As do your scent, your skin and your mind. And something else, what is it?" He scrunched up his face in faux concentration. "Oh, yes, your tatoosh."

I couldn't have a response to this other than to giggle, and he went on, "So the answer is, if the weather cooperates, we can work something out." He looked at me apologetically. "You won't have much of a view, I'm afraid."

I grinned at him as we eased into line at the toll plaza. "If I have a view of you in those running tights, that'll be all I need."

Shortly afterward we pulled into the garage of a townhouse in Pacific Heights that must have been constructed not long after the 1906 earthquake. "This is lovely," I said, gazing around the living room. Everything except the buttoned brown leather sofas was of the same period as the house, built in a sedate Beaux-Arts style, handsome but not flashy. The art, too, was of the period, American Impressionists like William Merritt Chase and Childe Hassam, respectable but not nearly as costly as their French colleagues.

"This was the first place we bought," Edward said. "It's no Juneau, but San Francisco has some reliably overcast stretches." Figured he would know – I'd bet he had the average cloudiness of every North American city in his head.

"It's certainly no Yuma either," I said, looking out from a north-facing window. The house was atop a hill, and I could see the dips and rises of the neighborhood, and the fog-shrouded bay – it was hard to believe that just a few hours ago I was in the remoteness of Forks. I touched the fuzzy catkin of a branch of pussy willow in a faience vase framed by the window.

"The caretakers went to the Ferry Plaza market for those," Edward said, nodding toward the flowers. He had already told me about the live-in caretakers, an older couple who had dropped the car off in Marin for us and then decamped to their daughter's place in Foster City. Don and Gene were the tenth set of caretakers for the house, testifying to the Cullens' long tenure there. "But I thought you'd prefer to visit the market yourself to stock the kitchen for our stay."

"You know me well," I said, turning away from the flowers to smile at him.

"Not as well as I would like."

"You want me to tell you about my childhood, Dr. Freud?" I said, joking, but his face had become pensive.

"I do, in fact," he said. "I know more about the childhoods of every other teacher at Forks High than that of the woman with whom I spend my nights."

"It was dry and dusty and difficult," I said, more lightly than I felt. "But can I tell you about it later? Right now, I want to see the city. "

-έπ-

The market, alongside the cavernous ferry terminal, was less ridiculously bountiful than the sun-drenched ones of Los Angeles, but marvelous in its own way. I ended up with a bulging bag of items both for our stay and to take back to the food desert of Forks. We strolled along the Embarcadero waterfront under cooperative skies, and Edward described how there once had been a double-decker highway here instead of streetcars and bike lanes and palm trees, until a more recent earthquake, one when I was a toddler, led to its demolition. It was hard to imagine that people had once thought it was a good idea to have a freeway separate the city from its bay.

That night we walked a few blocks to a restaurant that even I had heard of, in a rambling old house nestled among shops selling handmade chocolate and yoga clothes in Lower Pacific Heights, one of those places that list the suppliers of the lettuce and fish on the tiny set menu.

It wasn't overtly fancy - even though my escort wore one of his innumerable suits - but it was expensive enough that we were the youngest patrons in there. Or rather, I was the youngest.

Edward, of course, was the oldest, a fact that would have astonished the diners who eyed him with awe and hunger as we followed the maître d' through the Mission-themed dining room to our table, next to a bay window with stained-glass insets.

It was fascinating to see people react to him not as the local doctor's moody teenage son, but as the mid-20s guy he came off as in his exquisite suits and assured manner and with me by his side.

The menu allowed for a couple of choices, and he picked what I didn't. I started on my first-course salad and he deconstructed the pyramid of black cod and chicory on his plate.

He stabbed a few pieces on his fork and guided it toward my mouth, but I intercepted him with a raised hand.

"Don't feed me," I said as mildly as I could, but something in my tone awakened his curiosity.

"Wouldn't it be appropriate in this setting?" he asked, returning the fork to his plate. Over his shoulder I could indeed see a 50ish man closing his lips around the chard on his partner's outstretched fork. "Or you don't trust my skill? That's a fair concern, I suppose."

"I imagine that even never have done it before, you would be better at it than anyone in this room," I said. "I just can't stand the idea of being fed. When I was a little girl I saw – well, it makes me think of sick people, too weak to feed themselves and choking on the …" I trailed off. "The point is, it's not alluring or romantic to me. I've been to weddings where the bride and groom fed each other cake, and I always had to turn my head." I turned my head now, looking into the bustling open kitchen full of chef's whites at the end of the dining room, to avoid his gaze.

"You said you would tell me about your childhood. Could you do it now?" he asked softly, and I turned back to him. "Please?"

His "please" made my throat tighten. I took a sip of the Napa Valley sauvignon blanc in front of me to loosen it, and took a deep breath. "I think I told you that I grew up in a small town in Arizona called Laconia, outside Yuma," I started.

He nodded. "Which I thought was very apt, considering how your mind is closed to me."

"Right," I said, remembering that conversation after one of our first runs, and how I had had no idea what he was really saying. "Charlie grew up there too; his family had been there forever. He met my mom in Yuma when he was taking classes at the community college. Well, she became pregnant at 19, they married, I was born. Charlie worked for the police department and we lived in the house he'd inherited from his parents - it still had a mortgage, so it wasn't that great of a deal. Mom spoke mostly Spanish, Charlie mostly English, and I code-switched."

"Always the little linguist," Edward said.

"Yeah, I guess," I said absently, too preoccupied with what came next to respond to his attempt at teasing. "As far as I know, my parents were in love … at least, I don't remember them fighting. And then it all fell apart when Mom was 24. She had begun working as a para at a school in Yuma when I started at Laconia Elementary. But then she found out she had breast cancer, and Charlie -" I took a big swallow of wine "- Charlie couldn't deal. I've read that 75 percent of women who come down with a chronic disease are divorced by their husbands, but Charlie didn't bother with that: one day he just disappeared.

"Mom had just had surgery, she was about to start chemo. So here it was: She was ill, she was stuck with a little kid, and she and Charlie were both only children - there weren't any cousins or siblings around who could help out. Renee wasn't even from Laconia. She tried to keep working, she tried to do everything herself, but it was impossible. I came home one day, and Mom was in bed, horribly sick from whatever drugs had been pumped into her. It was dinnertime and the only thing I knew how to make was peanut butter sandwiches, but we were out of peanut butter, and out of money to buy peanut butter.

"So I went next door, to Yolanda, to ask her for some." I smiled ruefully at the memory of my neighbor, with her brood of kids and grandkids, her own cut-off notices and long-gone husband, and a heart still big enough to worry about me and Renee. "She sat me down in front of a plate of beans and tortillas, and went over to take care of my mom. Yolanda was wonderful to us. She organized the ladies of her church … Anita and Patti, the Marias, Iris and Guadalupe … to keep me and Mom clean, and our bills paid, and to get groceries from the food pantry –"

"That's why you work at the food pantry in Forks," Edward interrupted me.

"I'd like to think I'd do it anyway," I said, "but, yes, I do it out of obligation more than because I'm such a nice person." I grimaced at the mix of dismay and anger on his face; I'd told this story only to Raquel, who had her own memories of empty shelves and disappearing fathers, and so her reaction had not been as extreme. "Actually saying all this to you, I'm realizing that it sounds worse than it was. I mean, I never had ballet lessons, but I never really went hungry either." Edward's face darkened further, but I stopped my story since our server was now hovering and uneasily assessing our full plates.

"Is everything to your liking?" she asked.

"It's all delicious, but do you mind delaying our main courses for a bit?" Edward answered, giving her what I knew by now was an insincere smile, but it was brilliant enough to make her blink. "We got to talking and became distracted."

She stuttered and stumbled away, and Edward returned his tight eyes to me. "Please eat," he said. I concentrated on my endive and fennel for a while, and he handed me his fork, handle turned toward me. "If you wouldn't mind having a few bites of my dish, it would be helpful. Or even just put it on your own plate."

I ended up eating most of both appetizers, because even if this was a painful conversation, it was being accompanied by the best food I'd ever had. The server returned, and looked relieved, and our main courses followed quickly. Mindful of the ears around us, Edward told me about how his "great-grandparents" living on the Peninsula had lobbied President Roosevelt to establish the Olympic National Park in 1938 while I tackled my quail and his lamb.

"F.D.R.'s reason for doing it was the decline in the population of Roosevelt elk, and we have to wonder if Uncle Emmett's voracious appetite and not just disappearing habitat had something to do with it," he said with a wry smile that disappeared when I put down my fork, stuffed and wondering how I was going to manage two desserts. "I hate that you didn't have enough to eat," he added quietly.

"Right now, I'm beyond full," I tried to joke, but he didn't react, and I went on: "Seriously, it wasn't that bad. I got a free lunch, like most everybody at my school. I mean, I never ever, ever want to eat a school lunch again – the smell of tater tots and chicken nuggets in the Forks High cafeteria makes me a little nauseated even now - but it was food, and I ate it. And I was better off than a lot of my classmates. Besides, Yolanda taught me how to cook cheaply – you know, beans, corn, squash, the Three Sisters, plus a bit of ash, and that's all a human needs."

Edward looked dubious – his teachers probably never covered that in fourth grade social studies in 1909 - and I hurried on, "Yolanda also managed to track down Charlie. He was in Flagstaff, working as a cop there, and he agreed to send money so we wouldn't lose the house. It was only long afterward that Yolanda told me her biggest worry - that somehow I'd get reported to child protective services and end up in foster care. The county's huge; I could have been placed 100 miles away from my mom.

"But I knew enough to keep my mouth shut at school and that didn't happen. What did happen was that Mom lost her hair, and was tremendously sick for several rounds of chemo, and wiped out from radiation, but she did get better, and everything was fine for a couple of years. No Charlie, but to his credit he kept sending checks, and the doctors were just counting down to the five-year mark so they could declare her cured."

Our dishes were cleared then, Edward canceled dessert, and I ordered chamomile tea.

"But she wasn't cured," he said when the servers had departed.

"The cancer went to her liver," I said simply. "The prognosis was never good, but Mom's doctor seemed determined that he wasn't going to lose an otherwise healthy 28-year-old. And Mom was determined too. You know how everyone talks about 'fighting' cancer, and the 'war on cancer' and being brave and courageous? If that meant anything, my mom would be alive today. Instead, she died after being in excruciating pain, after a 'brave struggle against cancer.'" If air quotes could be bitter, mine were.

Edward started to say something, but I waved him off. I didn't need to hear another "sorry" about my mom's death. "She was in the hospital in Yuma after a procedure that she never recovered from, and Yolanda took me to see her. Mom was hooked up to all sorts of stuff, and an aide was trying to feed her, and getting impatient … I'll never forget that," I said, wishing for the 1,000 time that I could. As I had told Yolanda, maybe I could forgive, but more than that was impossible. "So, you know, no forks aimed at my mouth.

"The whole thing was awful. Mom wasn't always lucid, and they never wanted to give her enough painkillers. Charlie was next of kin, but he wasn't around to do anything, of course. Yolanda went ballistic. She screamed at Charlie on the phone, made him arrange for hospice care for Mom. That was better – she was home, nobody was forcing her to eat or waking her up in the middle of the night for pointless blood tests.

"And the morphine worked, mostly. But it made her say things she never would have otherwise." The tea arrived and I fiddled with the pot for a few moments, remembering the hospital bed that dominated the living room; the table next to it laden with lotion and alcohol wipes and gauze pads; Maria Hinojosa from the church, part of the rota of women who filled in when the hospice nurse was gone, rattling dishes in the kitchen; Renee speaking so quietly I had to lean down to her mouth.

"Not long before Mom died she told me that she had done this all because of me. All the agony, the vomiting, the fevers, the burns, the seizures … it was so I wouldn't be left alone." The tears rushed up, and I clenched my jaw so I wouldn't sob aloud.

"Let's go," Edward said, suddenly next to my seat.

"What about –" I started to object, but he tossed a credit card onto the table and pulled me up from the chair.

"Don't worry." He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and took me out a side door I hadn't noticed. We stepped out onto a narrow porch overlooking the restaurant's herb garden, and I breathed in the cool, damp air.

"Do you still want to cry?" he asked.

I pressed my cheek into his solid chest, then shook my head. Just the contact helped. "No, and thank you," I said. "It's better now. I loathe the idea of crying in public. The last time was at Renee's funeral."

He shrugged his suit jacket off and settled it around me. "Remember when I gave you my coat on the ferry from Seattle?" he asked.

I wiped away a tear and gave half a laugh. "I took it off almost immediately. It felt too intimate, and I was already kicking myself over the crush I had on you."

"And I refused to put it back on. I told Alice that it made me uncomfortable, but the truth was that I didn't want to spoil the traces of your scent on it. They faded away in a few hours, though." He cupped my chin up and kissed my wet eyes. "Leave this jacket on a while longer while I go inside to collect your things and leave a tip."

It was only when we were on the sidewalk and heading north that he returned to our conversation. "You know that your mother was saying that you were worth all the side effects," he said.

"Was she?" I asked, and sighed. He would think that, but I couldn't. "No, I don't believe that. I heard only blame. And I can't blame her, because she was right: she would have had a much easier death if she hadn't been struggling, and fighting, and being brave – and if I hadn't been there. I was only 9, but I knew I never wanted to be in her situation, with someone dependent on me like that when all I wanted to do was die."

We were silent for a few moments. "So you had a tubal ligation," Edward said finally, taking my hand in his, because this was San Francisco and we could do that in public.

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"You told Angela Weber."

That was in September, when he was completely ignoring me. "You were stalking me even back then?" I said, poking him in the arm with my free hand, carefully enough to avoid injury (my own, that is).

"It was involuntary – I have excellent hearing," he protested. "Tell me happened to you after your mother died."

"Not much," I said. It was easier to talk about this stuff while walking and touching him, I found. "Charlie came back for the funeral, and having worked in the big, big city of Flagstaff, he was more attractive to the local department. He got a job as deputy chief, and moved back into his parents' house. Since he and Mom had never divorced, there was nothing to stop him from just picking up where he had left off. And financially, things got easier – Charlie's salary was better, and Mom had a little life insurance policy from the union, and that covered the funeral expenses.

"Later I discovered that she had a bigger policy, and that it was set up so I'd get it when I was 26, and Charlie wouldn't get it at all." I shook my head – Renee was being more resentful than smart, but then she didn't have all the information she needed. "That's what I'd use to pay for grad school.

"Anyway, I don't remember if Charlie was talkative and comfortable in his skin before he left, but he certainly wasn't afterward. We kept mostly out of each other's way, and for Christmas he'd give me money to get something for the kitchen. Still, I had Yolanda, and I made it through high school, and I met Raquel and made it through college, and then I moved to Forks and met a vampire. The End."

He hadn't flinched when I'd poked him, but he did now, and I cringed. "Sorry, that didn't come out quite right," I said.

"It's okay."

He went silent again, but I could feel his hand tighten around mine, so I wasn't entirely surprised by his question.

"Have you been tested for the BRCA mutations?" he asked.

Those were the mutations, I well knew, that were discovered when Renee was being treated and greatly predisposed carriers to early breast cancer. I also knew that I wasn't in the usual demographic group for them. "I'm not Jewish," I pointed out.

Edward nodded, but said, "Maybe you are and don't know it – there was a case in Louisiana some years ago when several Cajun children had Tay-Sachs disease because their parents had a common ancestor they weren't aware was Jewish. And those names in your family you mentioned - Zapatero, Espinoza and Carabajal – they're all Jewish names."

"Maybe, but if they were Jews, they weren't Ashkenazi Jews, since they're from Spain, right?" I said. The Jews who fled Spain after Isabella and Ferdinand took over were Sephardic Jews, separate from the BRCA-prone Askhenazi Jewish population of Eastern Europe. "Besides, when I was at UA, a researcher at the medical school was doing a study on cancer mutations, so I got a free test. I don't have the BRCA ones."

"I see," he said, looking troubled as we stepped around a skinny guy walking a skinny greyhound in a striped sweater. The dog shivered violently, whimpered and pressed against its owner's legs as the vampire passed.

"Hey, relax, we're on vacation," I reminded Edward. "And my apologies. I bet you never expected your first dinner date to be such a downer."

"No, I didn't," he said, his voice utterly serious. "But I asked you to tell me. And I'm better off knowing."

I looked down at my boots instead of his lovely, solemn face, because he didn't know everything.

-έπ-

Edward was in a better mood by the next morning; a couple of orgasms will do that as well for a vampire guy as for a non-vampire guy, as I learned when I woke up in the darkness from an unsettling dream and groped for him. I forgot what the dream was about, but I'd never forget the feel of his skin, or how his cock pulsed under my fingers after he finally agreed to rid himself of those damned boxers and let me touch him fully, my hands gliding over his length, his own hands gripping the bars of the bed frame behind him.

The second time, he was comfortable enough to let one of his hands join mine, allowing me to breathe into his neck and murmur about how one day I'd put my mouth where my fingers were. His cry didn't quite mask the sound of the iron bar snapping above us.

"Did I freak you out?" I asked him after he'd cleaned up. I hadn't considered that salacious talk would disturb him – the only inhibitions he had demonstrated so far involved the possibility of physical harm and, um, eagerness.

"Freak me out?" he said, stroking my cheek. "Only by some definitions of that phrase. It's that while fellatio may have been considered commonplace by your classmates at University of Arizona, it wouldn't have been among my college classmates. The thought of it has a … powerful effect on me."

"So, it's an advantage to going out with an old man," I said sleepily. "I'll keep that in mind."

The next time I woke up, Edward had gone out to Fillmore Street and returned with croissants, delicious and still warm.

"I envy your caretakers being able to just walk down the street and get this every morning," I mumbled around a bite as we sat at the dining nook in the kitchen.

"American cities all used to be like that," he said, pouring me a glass of juice made from the oranges I'd bought at the market the day before and that he had just pulverized with his hands.

"They all had kickass croissants in 1918?"

As someone who didn't eat, he actually had to consider this a moment. "I don't believe so?" he finally said, then added, "Smart aleck," when he saw my smirk. "What I meant was that you could just walk down the street to the bakery, or church, or school. Didn't Laconia have a little downtown once?"

"Yeah, but there's nothing there now, just the police station and the town offices. Even the school's moved. I had to take a yellow bus."

"Exactly. When we lived in Rochester in the 1930s – it was Rosalie's hometown – the sidewalks were filled with people going to work, going shopping. There were streetcars and even a subway then. Now the place is all expressways and parking lots and subdivisions where we used to be able to hunt. Don't get me wrong - a car with tinted windows is a wonderful asset for a vampire. It's terrible for cities, though."

It looked as if I was never going to meet Rosalie of Rochester. But happily, there was plenty to do in San Francisco without a car, and over the next days, we took out the Mercedes only twice, so that we could hike at Point Reyes and so that Edward could spend a misty morning surfing at Half Moon Bay ("not the best waves," he said, because he was a vampire and a surf snob, but they looked pretty darn big to me as I watched, wrapped in blankets, from the wide, flat beach).

We ran the trails in the Presidio, where Edward frightened more dogs, and across the Golden Gate (no dogs allowed) amid the fog. I kept close enough behind him that I had a good view of his legs in those running tights. I could also tell that I wasn't the only woman on the bridge path staring in admiration at him. Since it was San Francisco, and you could do that there, quite a few men stared too.

We also visited the Museum of Modern Art, where I stopped at a huge yet delicate Alexander Calder mobile on display.

"I bet the curators here would love to see the Calder at your house," I said quietly.

"They have," Edward said, to my surprise. "Not at our house, of course. But we regularly lend our pieces to museums."

"As a public service?"

He shrugged. "Certainly. But it looks good in the auction catalog. Buyers bid higher for works that have been exhibited and have a museum imprimatur."

"Your life is so much more complicated than I could have ever imagined," I said, thinking of the mornings I had woken up to see Edward closing down his laptop after a night of managing the Cullens' portfolio of stocks and trusts and real estate, a cladogram of shell companies – I'd teased him once about money laundering, and he had merely nodded. On our trip to Seattle, I had believed that he was just playing around with a few shares, but he was actually doing a job that some rich families employed dozens of people for.

I didn't even have a 401(k).

We spent time in the Mission District, visiting art galleries for Esme as well as the 18th-century adobe Mission Dolores, with its statue of the missionary Father Junipero Serra, or "the monument to European oppression of the Native Americans," as Raquel had called it when I told her of our plans.

After the difficult logistics of our restaurant meal, we agreed to skip any more fancy dinners where I had to eat for two. But in the Mission I did find an excellent taquería with food that was reminiscent of home. There I could eat at a counter while Edward, dressed for gallery-going in a suit so dark blue it was almost black and a white shirt open at the neck, read to me from someone's discarded copy of a Mexico City tabloid in pure castellano. His meticulously correct Iberian Spanish was not quite as sexy as his French, but pretty sexy nonetheless, as the young cashier obviously agreed.

"What does 'padrísimo' mean?" Edward asked me when we were back on the sidewalk and heading to the Muni stop. "That was in someone's thoughts. Surely it doesn't mean that I somehow look like your father?"

I smiled at his ignorance of that bit of Mexican slang. "It means that that Tijuana girl at the cash register thinks you're pretty hot stuff," I said, and kissed him, because this was San Francisco and I could do that in public, even with people all around us.

But Edward's lips were unresponsive under mine. "Bella! Bella Swan!" a man's voice called out, and my frijolitos-stuffed stomach lurched. I didn't know anyone in San Francisco - one reason Raquel and I had skipped it was that we didn't have a place to crash here. So did the wolves find out where we were and squeal on us? Had Alice missed someone from Forks visiting here?

I took a step back from my secret lover and turned in direction of the voice, and was faced with two stubble-faced hipster lumberjacks, one blond and one brunet, dressed in flannel and puffy vests and sneakers. Thank heavens, and oh, no.

It was Aidan and Gabriel, not from Forks, but members of a Tucson-based band with a new record deal, and former UA classmates.

Also, former friends with benefits who probably considered blow jobs commonplace. Oh, fuck me, what would they reveal to a mind-reading vampire?

"Hey, guys!" I said, nerves making my voice constrict to a screech. "I didn't know you were in the city." I gave Aidan an awkward hug, and then Gabriel. After Edward, they felt kind of … flimsy. "I thought you were touring further south."

"Uh, yeah, we were on our way to Merced, then we got a last-minute gig here," Gabriel said, distracted, because he was no longer focused on me, but on the stranger beside me. He and Aidan had just seen me snogging Edward, so I couldn't pretend that we were mere acquaintances.

"Ah, this is Aidan Kosinski and Gabriel de los Reyes, who went to school in Tucson with me – and oh, yeah, guys, thanks again for putting Raquel and me up at Christmas," I babbled, stalling. "This is my boyfriend, um—" Fuck, maybe I shouldn't use Edward's name –

"Alex Shapiro," Edward said smoothly, offering a hand that in San Francisco's February air wouldn't seem oddly cold. As he did, I gawked at him, not just because of his new name, but because he was now wearing glasses, retro horn-rimmed ones just like the ones I'd seen on half the employees in the galleries we'd visited that morning.

"Oh, that must be new," Aidan said, more bluntly than was polite, looking back and forth between me and Edward, as if trying to adjust to the idea that the Bella he'd seen so many times sweaty and disheveled after a run, or after riding him in bed, was now attached to a man who looked as if he could casually drop several thousand dollars on an painting by an emerging neo-Pattern and Decoration artist. Which he just had.

"It is," Edward agreed blandly. "Our first vacation."

"You from that town Bella's in?" Gabriel asked. He was also a little hostile, and I had to wonder if Edward's nature was making him and Aidan uneasy, as it had Raquel.

"I'm studying medicine in Seattle," Edward said, not quite answering Gabriel's question.

He was? I shook myself and tried to lead the conversation away from Edward's imaginary résumé. "I've been hearing your single on the radio," I put in. "It sounds great."

"Yeah?" Aidan said, managing to drag his eyes back to me. "Where?"

"The University of Washington station. I can listen to it online."

"Yeah, one of the DJs there likes us, but we've been getting some college play elsewhere too," Gabriel said. "Listen, we have to go meet someone here –" he nodded to the taquería Edward and I had just left, a restaurant that had doubtless attracted him for the same reason it had me "- and do sound check and shit, but come to our show tonight. It's at a club in Hayes Valley, and we'll put you on the list."

"We're the openers," Aidan added, "so you have to get there on the early side, and actually pay attention to us, since who knows if anyone else there will."

I looked at Edward in question – I wasn't sure if being in a club full of drunken people was something he could tolerate. But he gave me a tiny nod, and I accepted. The guys gave us the address and set times, and headed inside, though not without a backward glance or two.

Edward started walking, and I followed, unsettled and unsure what he had seen in their minds. For a 110-year-old virgin, he was been remarkably nonjudgmental about the fact that I was a grown woman in the 21st century, and that I had had sex. But I didn't think that a vampire with perfect recall needed to know the details of that experience or the names of the people I'd had it with.

Edward waited until we had rounded a corner, then burst out in laughter. "You," he said, taking off his glasses.

"What?" I said, unnerved. What the hell had the guys been thinking?

"You were so mean to those boys in college."

"What? I was never mean to them," I said, startled and thinking back over my years hanging out with them and the other people in Raquel's circle. Aidan and Gabriel and I had hiked and gone to movies, studied together, had barbecues together. When they had girlfriends, the girlfriends hung out with us too. There was no drama at all.

"You were completely indifferent to them," Edward said. He sounded almost giddy. "They longed for some glint of romantic interest from you, they brought by dates to make you jealous, but you never reacted. When you called me your boyfriend, their minds just exploded in envy. Especially Gabriel's. He's been carrying a gigantic torch for you."

"We were friends!" I protested. "They knew I didn't want a boyfriend."

"And they were afraid if they suggested they might fill the role, you'd send them packing," Edward said, tucking his glasses into the pocket inside his suit jacket. "It never occurred to you that physical affection could be tied to emotional affection?"

"But they weren't," I said. "Emotionally affectionate, I mean."

"They never, say, made sure you had the best seat at concerts, or that you never walked home alone from the library or –"

I raised my hand to stop his list. "Sure, but I didn't think it meant something."

"You don't see yourself clearly, do you?"

"That's not the issue," I said, annoyed with myself. I kicked my boot heel against the curb as we waited for a truck to pass by. "Apparently I don't see other people clearly, and I'm a thoughtless jerk. I don't know why you're so pleased by that."

"Because," he said, more serious now, "I might be the physical virgin in this relationship, but we're both emotional ones. I like being your first."

"If you put it that way," I conceded, "you are my first. And only. Why didn't Alice warn us about Aidan and Gabriel? Didn't she see them coming?"

Edward pulled his phone out and showed me the "Yes, I did!" from his sister.

"But she apparently also saw that it wouldn't be a problem," he said. "She has her own life to run; she doesn't want to run ours too."

We'd made it to the bus stop, and stepped to the end of the queue. "By the way, nice to meet you, Dr. Shapiro. Where did that come from?"

He shrugged. "It's the name on my driver's license, or rather on one of them. There are 1,400 medical residents in Seattle, and at least three of them are named A. Shapiro. So now there are four."

"Oh, doctor, doctor, I'm feeling a little faint," I said, fluttering my hands around my face.

Edward glanced up at the sky, where the clouds were starting to thin; the Mission District's microclimate would betray us with sunshine soon. "As we'll be spending the rest of the afternoon at home, I promise to give you a thorough examination very soon," he said, sounding not virginal at all. "But here's our bus."

-έπ-

The club was maybe a quarter-full when we arrived, and the setup music was still playing, an old song that once would have made me cringe but now just made me smile and think of our afternoon in the sheets playing Ethically Dubious Doctor: The smell of your body and the touch of your lips/You are beyond all imagination, my teenage sensation/And I think, maybe it's wrong/ How young is too young …

Edward must have known what I was thinking, because he smirked down at me, eyes sparkling behind his glasses. As I always was, I was carded, and then we showed our VIP wristbands to a bouncer, who let us into a section of the balcony with little tables overlooking the stage and the audience standing below us. With its crumbling ceiling medallions and peeling rosette-adorned pilasters, the place must have had a long history.

"Have you been here before, Teenage Sensation?" I asked after a waitress took our drink orders.

Edward confirmed that he had, several times over the decades in its different stages as vaudeville house, dance hall and jazz club. "This place is much smaller, but it reminds me of Winterland, where I saw Jimi Hendrix in 1968. It was demolished later," he said.

"What is it now?"

"An apartment building. Not a bad one, though."

He sound a little regretful, nonetheless, and I had to wonder what it was like, to see cities evolve and buildings razed - and perhaps even more important for him, forests and whole species disappear – before his unchanging eyes. Did he always miss what he no longer had?

I was pulled out of my thoughts by scattered applause and the arrival of Aidan and Gabriel on stage. I recognized the other band members as well – Zia Mendes on the keyboards and Trey McGrath, bearded now, on the drums. Oh, yes, Trey, a bit of a pig, but who had demonstrated to me the impressive stamina of drummers …

The band had the sort of generically nonsensical name all indie-rock bands did, but it could as well have been called "Guys Bella Swan Has Slept With (And Was Kind of a Jerk To)." I peeked over at Edward, who felt my eyes on him and leaned over to kiss my ear, which instantly made me feel much better about myself. This beautiful, brilliant man loved me, jerkiness and all. I took his hand and pulled him up to standing because a concert is always better if you can move. And besides, this was San Francisco, so my boyfriend could wrap his arms around me and lick my neck in semi-public if he wanted. And he did.

The Truant Javelinas had always been good, even when they were playing at frat parties, but this night they commanded the space like professionals, which they really were now. And of course, the acoustics were a lot better here than at the UA FIJI house (man, that frat was going to be banned from campus one day). Aidan and Gabriel switched off on lead vocals, Aidan singing in English, Gabriel in Spanish. The crowd wasn't familiar with their stuff, so the biggest response came from a cover of "Mentirosa," the old Mellow Man Ace song.

"Today you tell me something," Aidan sang.

"Y mañana otra cosa," Gabriel added.

By the end the crowd was joining on the chorus, in both languages, and the applause at the conclusion of the set was considerably warmer than at the beginning.

"How can you concentrate on the performance?" I asked Edward as the lights went up and the stage crew started setting up for the headliners. "Isn't all the mental noise bothersome?"

"Sometimes," he acknowledged as we sat down. He poured some of his wine into my empty glass. "The times I've had to watch high school plays have been excruciating. But the better the performers, the less crowded their minds are, and that's true of the audience, too. Your friends are good, so I can enjoy their playing."

Those friends joined us in the middle of the next act, still sweaty and high from performing. Trey hugged me, too tightly and wetly, resisting when I tried to pull away. Suddenly Edward was beside us, invading Trey's space, and he abruptly released me.

"Alex, Trey McGrath, my boyfriend, Alex Shapiro," I said, rubbing my face where Trey's beard had scratched me.

"Boyfriend, you?" Trey said to me. He was well on the way to being drunk. "How can that be?" Edward's face was hard, but he extended his hand, and Trey's smirk faded as they shook. As Seth had, Trey was getting a taste of vampire strength, I guessed.

"Miracles happen," I said dryly, and turned to Zia. Edward looked gorgeous but perhaps more human in the darkness, and she seemed only a little stunned by him. When the headliners finished, we lingered on as the cleaners swept a mound of plastic cups off the floor below us and the waitress dropped off more drinks.

Edward was easily answering Zia's questions about medical school, Trey and Aidan talking to the club's manager, so I leaned toward Gabriel and asked him how his family in San Luis was doing. Oh, Gabe … he looked so cute, his hair loosened from his onstage ponytail and swinging to his shoulders, his scruff carefully groomed, his brown eyes reassuring, so human.

It left me cold.

"Everybody's fine, but tell me about this guy," he said, tilting his head to Edward. "I never thought …" he trailed off.

"That I'd ever have a boyfriend, like Trey said?" I finished for him. "Me either." I thought about what Edward had said about Gabriel this afternoon, and I felt culpable. Believing that the person you pined for wasn't interested in not just you, but anybody, was one thing; seeing her in love with another man could be a blow to your self-esteem.

"You know, my dad kind of fucked me over for relationships," I went on. "I wasn't ready when I was in college to be in one. Maybe I've grown out of being so scared now."

"And now we live thousands of miles apart," Gabriel said. He slammed down a shot of tequila.

"Yeah," I said apologetically, and hesitated. I wanted to reassure Gabriel, and I wanted to him to move on. "It's all in the timing, I guess? But E – Alex, I met him at just the right time, I think.

"And he's amazing," I added softly, looking over at Edward, with his grown-up glasses that both softened the severe perfection of his face and made the humans looking into his eyes, he had told me, feel a little less uncomfortable. No matter what I said, it wasn't a question of timing, but who Edward was.

"Yeah, but do you really know this guy?" Gabriel asked, whispering in Spanish now, in the assumption that the red-haired Seattleite didn't know it. "You sure he's not a serial killer who's just pretending to be a doctor?"

I choked on my wine.

Gabriel clapped me gently on my back as Zia watched and Edward made to get up from his chair. I shook my head at him. "Oh, stop it," I finally told Gabriel, tears streaming from my eyes. "You're such a goof. Besides, I've met his family. His dad's a doctor, too, and definitely not a serial killer." As for the rest of them, yes, they're serial killers, or have been, but I didn't say that aloud.

Zia and Edward returned to their own conversation, but not before I got an unfriendly look from Zia that gave me an idea.

"Gabe, what's up with you and Zia?" I asked. "Are you a thing?"

Now Gabriel sloshed his beer. "Not really?" he mumbled.

I intercepted another look from Zia. "Maybe you should think about that," I suggested. "Not that I should be giving anyone relationship advice."

"Um, yeah. How's Raquel?" he asked, changingthe subject.

"She's great. I can't see her as much as I'd like. And she's going out with someone."

Aidan's head whipped around. "She is?" he asked. My eyes widened. Damn, I was seeing torches everywhere now that Edward had clued me in.

"Yes." The answer came not from me, but from Edward. "He's huge." Edward raised his hand above his head to indicate that Raquel's boyfriend was even taller than he was. "He's on the border patrol," he added mischievously.

Silence greeted this. Raquel had had things to say about the Border Patrol, the federal one, which blocked the free movement of the Tohono O'odham across their lands that straddled the Mexican border.

"I don't believe it," Zia said flatly.

"Don't listen to Alex," I said, rolling my eyes dramatically, even though, in one sense, Edward was right. "The guy's named Seth, and he's in school," I went on, omitting the "high" modifier.

Some of the members of the main act showed up then, and the conversation turned to how iTunes were stingy bastards and how they got more money from Bandcamp, and I mused on how normal this all was, friends and colleagues hanging out talking, and how this must be a novel experience for Edward, with humans at least. How fortunate he was to have a big family, bigger than I ever had.

I yawned. The musicians would be up for hours more, I knew, but I had a day job. Edward noticed, and silenced the conversations with the mere act of standing up so that I could say goodbye to everyone. There were handshakes and hugs from three of the Javelinas – "If he turns out to be a serial killer, remember I called it," Gabriel whispered in my ear - while Trey limited himself to nodding in my direction. I wondered if I'd ever see any of them again.

Edward led me down the staircase at the back of the VIP section, which landed us in a long hallway lined with doors marked "Private." Instead of going straight to the exit, he pushed open one of the doors and drew me inside a harshly lighted room filled with posters advertising bands, all stacked up on metal shelves – the publicity office, presumably. I looked at him in bewilderment as he locked the door behind us.

"I've been here before," he reminded me. His jaw was tense, and I didn't know what was wrong.

"So what did the guys think of you?" I asked, guiltily. Unlike Raquel, they'd never know they'd been mentally invaded, but it still made me uncomfortable.

"Besides that I am a murderer? It was difficult for me to be with them," he said, surprising me after seeing how natural he seemed to be with my friends. "They know you in a way I don't," he added with remarkable understatement but clear meaning.

"I thought that didn't bother you?"

Edward switched off the fluorescents so that the room was illuminated only by the pale wash of the street light through the office window. The neon letters of the posters glowed in the dimness. "I thought so too. That humans fantasize about you, about my siblings and parents, about everyone, really... I can accept that. But it's different when it's somebody reliving his experiences with you. Especially if it's Trey," he said darkly. "He's an egotist who cares about no one besides himself. He knew exactly what I was to you and just wanted to make me jealous."

"Trey's no sweetheart," I acknowledged, "but he was decent to me. Are you really jealous?"

"I am," he admitted instantly. He breathed in deeply and I wondered if he was smelling me. "It makes me want to mark you as mine."

"Mark me?" He had said the words with an intensity that puzzled me. "What do you mean?"

He stepped toward me, a predator in small space, and I instinctively stepped back so I was pressed against the wall, against an old Mars Volta poster. He took my hand in his cold one, and lifted it to the side of his neck where I could feel several small indentations, rare imperfections in his smooth skin. I inhaled sharply – I had observed this in our many make-out sessions, but hadn't realized until this moment what it was.

Of course, how else do vampires make new vampires?

"Carlisle," I whispered even as my mind struggled to picture the gentle doctor sinking his teeth deeply enough into Edward to scar and transform him.

"Yes."

"I'm not –"

He moved our hands from his neck to my lips. "I know," he said.

"How about a compromise?" I murmured against our fingers. Now it was his turn to be puzzled, and he freed my hand.

I pulled back my hair so the right side of my neck was exposed, and ran my finger along the skin. "Suck right there," I said, my voice husky in anticipation. He had never given me a hickey, and I, trying to be considerate of his limits, had never suggested it. But now I was a little drunk and reckless and eager for his touch. "Mark me as yours for a while."

His eyes darted to my neck, then back to my face. He was torn.

"I would do it to you, if I could," I told him.

He groaned and bent his head to my neck, his lips caressing my skin then pulling at it gently. Oh, fuck. The sensation sent waves of warmth down my back, and I slumped against the wall, strong hands at my waist keeping upright and attached, my breathing transformed into panting.

The pulling stopped. "Okay?" Edward murmured.

"Please," I moaned. "Please keep going."

So he did, and I squirmed, my legs pressing together, as blood rushed through my veins. His hand traveled up, under my open jacket, and squeezed, his thumb brushing my nipple.

"Please," I begged. One hard hand dropped to my leg, to the part of my thigh between my boot socks and the hem of my skirt. "Yes," I told him.

The hand glided up the inside of my thigh, then higher, finding the dampness there under fabric that proved no barrier to strong fingers. Fingers that stroked and caressed as lips tugged on one perfect spot under my ear, and it was impossible to tell which was the most overwhelming. Fingers that were practiced and serious and aimed this time for no teasing, but quick results. Results they got as I arched and cried out, a cry that echoed into Edward's mouth, now covering my own, cool air washing over a newborn mark blooming under the skin.

Out in the hallway, audio equipment in boxes rumbled by on casters, and we timed our departure carefully. I wore my hair down for the rest of our stay in San Francisco and for our return to Forks, where we couldn't do that sort of thing in public.

-έπ-

Chapter titles: ''Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est'': "Where charity and love are, there is God," the start of the old Latin hymn for Maundy Thursday, in honor of Yolanda and church ladies.

''Una historia sin mi madre'': "A story without my mother," from "L'via L'viaquez," by the Mars Volta, who, like the Truant Javelinas, sang in English and Spanish. The Mellow Man Ace song's title translates as "Liar."

Boobs in geography: The Tatoosh Islands don't much resemble their name, but there is a whole category on Wikipedia of "breast-shaped mountains," including Nippletop in the Adirondacks.

BRCA: Angelina Jolie, a BRCA carrier, has written about her preventive surgeries because of her heightened risk of cancer.

Tay-Sachs: Edward is referring to the Iota, La., cluster that got attention in the 1990s. Even more than the BRCA mutations, the mutation for Tay-Sachs, a disease that typically kills children of two carrier parents by age 4, is associated with Ashkenazi Jews. The Cajuns of Iota intermarried frequently, and the lineages of the families with Tay-Sachs were traced to a couple in the 1700s. There is debate over whether these two ancestors were Jewish, or whether they had spontaneously developed the same mutation as the Ashkenazis.

Some links about art and genes and the crypto-Jews of the Southwest on my profile page. Thanks for reading and reviewing!

Mr. Price here, hoping you will help settle a marital dispute, and knowing the odds of you siding with me over Mrs. P. are slim. When you picture the Bella in this story, what do you see? After learning about all the broken hearts she left behind in Arizona, and given her effect on other men earlier, I said to the author, "She must be a real femme fatale." Mrs. P. seemed surprised. She insists her Bella is just a plain Jane. Your thoughts?