LIKE A STONE
THEY KEPT HER IN THE HOSPITAL for six more days. I lost the baby on the fifth, before I could even tell anyone. It hadn't been a lonely experience. I knew it was coming - Alice had seen it, and warned Rosalie, who had warned me. It was better to know it was going to happen. Better to wake up without the blood all over the hotel sheets, because I'd expected it and worn a pad. It felt like a regular period, though the cramping was worse and there was a tiny sharp painful tugging on my left side. Dr. Owens confirmed it that afternoon, eyes filled with sympathy. But I knew she must have been a little relieved. I wasn't the first teenager to end up in her office, and I didn't want to know what percentage of them didn't make it out.
In my head, I knew this made sense. I was too young. I wasn't ready. My body wasn't built for carrying life within it, not yet. I was too thin, too inhospitable. But by the next day I was surprised by how sad I was. I'd gone from pretending it wasn't real to wishing it wasn't over.
Charlie's plan was that Bella and I would fly home with Dr. Cullen while Edward, Alice and Rosalie drove the truck back to Washington. Dr. Cullen fielded that call. He convinced Charlie that we had all missed too much school already, and Charlie was unable to argue with him. We could all fly home together. Dr. Cullen would ship the truck home. He promised Charlie this was easy to arrange and not at all expensive, and I knew it was a lie because I'd looked at trying to ship more things from home when we planned to move to Forks. Our budget had only allowed for what we could take on a plane ourselves.
We flew out after dark, sot eh glass ceilings above in Phoenix were no longer a danger. Alice pushed Bella in her wheelchair so that Edward could walk beside her, holding her hand. Rosalie and I lingered further back, and I found my own heart filled with bitterness whenever I saw them together now. It was no longer cute. Bella and Edward, together, served as a constant reminder of my sister's eager desire to rid herself of me and our family. To cast us aside. For him. I had been so mad at her for trying to sacrifice herself for me, and now I was eternally livid she would leave me the same for far more selfish reasons.
Bella didn't like needing the chair. Didn't like the curious glances thrown her way. Now and again, she would scowl at her thick, white cast as if she wanted to tear it off with her bare hands, but she never complained aloud.
She slept on the flight, and quietly murmured Edward's name in her dreams.
Charlie met us at SeaTac, though it was after eleven and the drive back to Forks would take us nearly four hours. Both Carlisle and Alice had tried to talk him out of it, but Bella got her stubbornness from somewhere and it wasn't our wishy-washy mother. The Cullens followed behind the Cruiser the whole way. And despite the egregiously late hour, Adam was there, waiting inside our house, passed out on the couch with a bouquet in his hands and a tacky 'welcome home' helium balloon. I didn't even give him a chance to wake up, tackling him.
"Oh thank god." He breathed, clutching me tightly to him from where I had laid on him in desperation. He breathed my hair in deep, and I grimaced as he did — it had been a long flight, I doubted I smelled like hotel shampoo anymore. "Oh my god I missed you. Do you have any idea how worried I've been? Never do that to me again."
"Sorry." I looked up, smiling, kissing him. I was so tired my entire body ached. "Hi."
"Hi." He smiled back, the tip of his nose rubbing against mine.
"When...how...?" I tug the balloon, getting up off him so he can stand up while Charlie helps Bella into the house in her wheelchair. He knew I meant how did he get into the house.
"Oh, the Chief and I've gotten real close." He winked, grinning, and Charlie shot us both a look that clearly showed he wasn't happy about it. "Because someone didn't call me for a whole week."
"Someone didn't have her phonebook." I remind him, though it was an excuse. I'd avoided calling Adam because I was waiting to tell him the news. That had changed day before yesterday. "Um, come on. We gotta talk about something."
"Door stays open!" Charlie shouted back from halfway up the stairs, seeing us heading to my room.
I roll my eyes, but relent, pointedly keeping my door all the way open. "The night of the dance. I got sick."
"Yeah I know, Chief told me. Said you got food poisoning from the pizza we ate, but none of us got sick." Adam worried, letting me guide him to sit down on my bed. "Jess called and said it must've been some kind of stomach bug? She thought you were at my house Sunday night, she covered for you when your Dad called. Where were you?"
"Going after my sister." I lie quickly. "Not the point. I've been sick all week, it was really then, when we took Bella to the hospital, I got myself checked out...shit, I don't know how to say this Adam. I was— I was pregnant."
He froze, and then, slowly, his eyebrows furrowed over deeply hurt eyes. They filled with tears quickly, his hands moving to hold me by my waist from where I stood over him. His voice was heartbreakingly small. "Was?"
Whatever reaction I'd been expecting, it wasn't this. It jarred me for a moment, long enough for Adam to pull me in to stand between his knees, hugging me close, his head against my stomach. "Oh baby, I'm so sorry."
"It's not your fault." I'm so confused. "We just have to be more careful next time. I'm gonna go on the pill."
"Yeah." He pulled away, breathless, wiping away his tears on the sleeve of his undershirt. "Yeah, no, you're right. We're not ready."
Why did he sound like he wished we were? "Adam...I'm seventeen. You're eighteen."
"I know." He sniffed. "I just... I was gonna be a Dad."
His voice broke on the word, and it made me well up with emotion.
The next week was tough for us. Adam was clingier, needier, and I was grateful because I needed the comfort more than I thought. It was so much better to go through this together than alone. We didn't tell anyone. I was pretty sure Charlie wouldn't have had the same reaction as Adam, though he seemed to reluctantly like him. Or, at least, Adam seemed more welcome than Edward was.
I wasn't alone in taking care of Bella. Alice volunteered, delightedly, and Charlie and I couldn't be more grateful for it. Bella, too, though embarrassed that she needed someone to help her with her most basic and intimate needs, was glad that someone was Alice. She seemed to prefer Alice to me, actually, and while I was a little upset at that I knew it was because Alice could afford her privacy by doing things with her eyes shut or without breathing the same way Rosalie had.
Within a matter of days, Alice had replaced me as Bella's twin in all but biology. They were flush with a plethora of inside jokes and confidences, as if they'd been best friends for years rather than just weeks. I ignored it, because it gave me more time with Rosalie and Adam. Now that Edward and Alice were openly in the picture, Rose and I made our friendship public. She came over just as much as my boyfriend did, and he wasn't happy about it at first. But he only needed to see how upset I got once to never call her 'the frigid skank' again. In all fairness to him, Rose was not his biggest fan either, and they made it known, bickering with each other on the days she didn't openly ignore him.
As quickly as Carlisle would allow, Bella traded in her plaster cast for a walking cast and a pair of crutches. It was a great week for me, at least. I wished I had a camera to immortalize how adorably awkward my sister was in crutches, it lived up to my every expectation. A part of me enjoyed Edward's constant stress over her a little too much.
There was a divide now. If Bella was aware of it, she never brought it up. At lunch, she sat with the Cullens, and Emmett and Rosalie sat with me, Adam, and everyone else. It took a long time for my table to adjust to it. Rosalie wasn't exactly friendly, ignoring absolutely everybody but me, making it very clear she had zero desire to make friends outside of me even though it was very rude. Emmett made up for it. He was soon the favorite of our little group, everybody loved him. It was a little impossible not to. Over and over again, I would catch myself staring, wondering how Rosalie had ever seen Charlie in this giant infectiously charming five-year-old.
Bella healed and time passed. My focus shifted to Prom, and now that the most imminent of danger was over, this was easily the most important part of my life. Adam had no choice and no escape. I was taking a page out of Rosalie's book and effectively kidnapping him. I would dress him in a suit myself if I had to.
The night before Prom, I was surprised. I'd panicked when I couldn't find that damn mint green dress anywhere, and doomed myself to wearing a far simpler, plainer little polka dot thing. I was so unhappy about it I hardly slept. But in the morning, there it was, hanging off my mirror. Rosalie only appeared in the reflection after I'd walked up to it, as if in a daze. She was clearly delighted with herself. "Do you like it?"
The dress was entirely transformed. It was still that pale, icy shade of mint green, but the flat silky fabric was now overlaid with silk chiffon, impossibly soft to the touch and so light and sheer it rippled ethereally when I lifted at the skirt. The cut had been altered, I could see that, the neckline was different and the straps more delicate. A separate sheer stretch of fabric hung over the mirror, too— I assumed a shawl.
I spent the better half of the day home alone with Rosalie, who spent more time keeping me company than wrestling me into submission under her tweezers, which she told me with some delight was the suffering my sister was enduring at the Cullen house with Alice. It was fun, just like two girls getting ready together. Rosalie did her own preparations at human speed, having brought everything over that she needed. The only time she insisted on taking over was to do my hair, and so I sat obediently with my desk chair moved in front of my mirror as she came over with a comb and hair spray.
It was tamer than I had ever managed. The waves looked impossibly soft, silky, from my deep conditioning in the shower earlier. She teased each little twirl into perfect place. I understood then where I had gone wrong. I'd cut my hair to emulate my great-grandmother, but Rosalie knew how hair had been styled then. She knew how Vera had done it.
We reunited at the dance. Adam's reaction when he'd come to pick me up from the house had been worth everything. Charlie took pictures, and then Adam drove us back to his house because his Dad wanted pictures too. Mr. Wexler told me he was very happy Adam had found himself a proper young lady, and it made me flush. Adam had grinned a little too obviously, he knew I was anything but.
I knew Rose had beat us to school when I saw her red convertible, conspicuous as ever in the parking lot. The clouds were thin today, a few streaks of sunlight escaping through far away in the west.
In Phoenix, they held proms in hotel ballrooms. This dance was in the gym, of course. It was probably the only room in town big enough for a dance. When we got inside I was delighted. It was everything I had hoped for, balloon arches and twisted garlands of pastel crepe paper festooning the walls. Everyone stopped to stare at my dress, and I grew smug, chin rising and shoulders pushing back as if to present myself as Adam steered me to the ticket table with his arm around my waist.
I found her on the dance floor. The other dancers were pressed to the sides of the room to give space to the two pairs whirling around gracefully. Emmet and Jasper were intimidating and flawless in classic tuxedos. Alice was striking in a black satin dress with geometric cutouts that bared large triangles of her snowy white skin. But Rosalie was Rosalie. She was beyond belief. Her vivid scarlet dress was backless, tight to her calves where it flared into a wide ruffled train, with a neckline that plunged to her waist. Adam was still holding me, but he disappeared then. The whole room did. I had never felt want this strong and this deep in my life. It wasn't desire, burning below my navel, though that too was there in the back of my mind. It was closer to worship. I wished I was the one twirling her. Holding her. Making her smile so radiantly it burned my irises. I didn't realize I'd teared up at the sight until I had to quickly dart a finger under each eye to protect my mascara.
"Think we can give 'em a run for their money?" Adam broke me out of my spell, voice low in my ear. I frowned at him in confusion, but he was already sweeping me toward the dance floor. What came next surprised me. Adam could dance. Mister 'High School Dances Are For Shallow Sheep' was lifting me and dipping me and spinning me out until I was giggling and shrieking deliriously like a child. My heart filled with so much joy I could've burst in that moment. He was too much of a dick to be intimidated by the fluidity of the vampires. He didn't care about who was watching. We were just having fun.
"I love you." I tell him breathlessly, several blurring songs later as he spins me back into his arms. He's surprised, enough I thump into him, but I'm grinning, kissing him out of his shock. "I love you, and I'm sorry it took this long to tell you, but I do. And I can't help it but I do. I love you, Adam Wexler."
I would never forget his face.
The room returned as we kissed in the middle of the dance floor. The room disappeared again as my eyes closed. I couldn't hear Jess and Mike cheering for us. I didn't see Angela and little Ben Cheney smiling fondly in our direction. I missed Lauren's envious glare. It was just me and Adam in that moment, and the love shining from his warm brown eyes. I would be happy with him, I knew. We had a real future together. A real life. He would be the father to my children. As we swayed, his arms holding me close against him, my fingers scratching gently at his buzzed head behind his ear, just smiling lazily at each other and staring into each other's eyes, I could see it all. I could see myself spending the rest of my life with him. And for the first time, it didn't scare me.
Across the hall, I saw her watching us. She stood with Alice and Emmett, her expression unreadable from this distance. It seemed to be further than it really was. I knew I was just a fantasy to Rosalie, a way for her to pretend she was just another teenage girl. I didn't understand until then that she had been a fantasy to me too. And fantasies weren't real.
This was real. And I held him in my arms, turning away to press my cheek against his chest, listen to the thumping of his racing heartbeat. This was enough.