Dedicated to Fran.
August 2011
Twenty-Two/Twenty-Four
"I'm going to fucking miss you. Hell, I'm going to miss fucking you."
"Edward." He dropped her off at her college dorm room in mid-August, and would return a handful of days later.
"We've been apart for much longer," Bella added consolingly, burying her face against his chest. A part of her was itching for a breather. Another part of her worried about how this love would withstand time and distance. How this love would withstand the ravages of the real world.
Fortunately, Isabella barely had time to miss him between weekends. One of her biggest worries was financing her tiny expenses without asking for her parents' support. Although he would not speak to his daughter for months, Isabella's father made generous monthly deposits. "Don't be a fucking martyr," Rosalie cautioned. "Just take the money."
Despite taking the advice – and consequently, the money – Isabella picked up extra hours TAing. She supported Rose's campaign for Student Body President. She wrote a thesis. She worked her job as a clerk at the library.
As he would every weekend from then on, Edward visited Isabella during her first weekend as a college senior. Despite the demands of medical school, Edward found the time to drive three hours to Norwich and back. They spent that first Friday night holed up in her college dorm room, on a sturdy blue mattress atop a twin-sized bed.
On their first night together on that bed, Isabella was spooned against him, back to his chest. In some ways, it was just as intimate as their first time. His thrusts were slow and deep. All he had to do was lift her leg to enter her, and he could hold her – slenderly large hands on her tits, her hair, the curve of her stomach. It had grown wobbly and soft after a summer of heavy eating. Edward's touch was hungry and reverent like he had not noticed her stomach softening under his kiss.
They made love on that twin-sized bed dozens of times.
The next morning they ate a late brunch in her school's dining hall. Isabella wondered if that's how they looked to the outside world. They were in her school's dining hall, having a late brunch. Nearly six feet tall and too large for a smaller two-person table, Edward looked disheveled in shorts, glasses, and a dorky t-shirt. In her wheelchair, she wore linen white pants and a red tank top. Messily, her hair was twisted into a bun at the nape of her neck.
People would stop to say hi to Isabella – friends she made at extracurriculars, between classes, and during late nights in the library. Bashfully, she would smile as she introduced Edward – just as Edward.
"You're very popular, Bee," Edward commented lightly over bad black coffee.
Snorting, Bella smiled sardonically. "Yeah, right."
"You are," Edward said earnestly. "People genuinely like you."
Blushingly, Bella pondered the question. Once she shed the trappings of adolescence, Bella had become a social butterfly. Socially, she thrived at college and would continue to thrive for the rest of her life because she liked people. Beyond adolescence, she decided, popularity was about being kind.
"I'm not popular," Edward added quietly, his jaw stiffening. He spat out the statement with cold, crisp disdain.
Recognizing the flare of vulnerability, she stroked his stubbled cheek with two trembling fingers. A summer earlier, she would have made some mordant comment about how he seemed to spend endless weekends of yachts, nightclub openings, and private islands, and themed costume parties. She knew better these days.
"I might get invited to lots of fucking events and parties," Edward elaborated. "But we fucking hate each other as people."
"I like you," Bella murmured warmly, firm but playfully. She bent over for a kiss and smiled gently over his lips. "I like you exactly as you are."
For many consecutive weekends, they spent weekends sprawled out in different nooks and crannies of her campus. They found spacious tables that could fit their cargo – laptops, books, printed readings, highlighters, and pens – and spent hours on them. For one study break, Edward kissed her behind a musky old library bookshelf, and she giggled the entire time. For study breaks, Edward would take quick walks. The contours of the Norwich college campus were hugged by forest.
In her nightmares, Bella was haunted by the ghosts of the girls that had come before her.
The second week of college flew by, and Friday found Bella at the desk of her library job. The Norwich library was a brick building from the 1970s, with slanted geometric windows. The basement floor, reached through a rickety elevator, was home to the administrative offices. Bella reached her desk by wheeling past rows and rows of decrepit and boxy microfilm readers.
Bella's desk job consisted of fielding requests from other libraries in the state and finding them in her library's catalogue. As dorky as it was to admit, she loved it. She was midway through printing a book strap for Daughters of Dissent: Religious Reform and the Education of Women in 16th Century England when –
Startled, she felt something warm nuzzling the space between her clavicle and the shell of her ear, and it was a nose, and it was –
"Edward."
They made love again, and again, that weekend. After – when they were both sticky, sweaty, and wrapped up in each other – Isabella mindlessly drew shapes on his abdomen with one trembling finger. Her head was resting so that her chin was on his sternum. One of the wonders of sex for Isabella was how much it relaxed her body. Her trembling was languid and the spasticity in her legs seemed to dull.
"Baby?"
"Mmh?"
"When you said you wanted to go home. What'd you mean?
"I'm home already," she said, and she smiled against his ribs. Her cheeks pinkened at the confession. "I'm home when I'm with you."
He hugged her tighter.
On the third weekend of Isabella's senior year, Edward arrived the day after her period. The rhythm and strain of medical school started to show in circles around his eyes and general mutedness. It was the first time she had it after she lost her virginity, and she was comfortable "Ugh, not now," Bella barked at him when he snuck a hand up her blouse. "I feel disgusting."
It was fortuitous timing. Unlike every other time Bella rejected sex, Edward evinced muted relief instead of muted disappointment. Despite the discomfort in her lower belly, and the general ickiness she felt, there was something comforting about just sleeping with each other. Just sleeping between freshly washed sheets, with her best friend. With the person she loved most in the world.
The fourth weekend of Isabella's senior year – the weekend in September that coincided with her birthday -- Edward practically disappeared. Bee. I can't make it this weekend baby. Shit came up. Bella's returning call went to voicemail.
Are you OK?
Just – shit came up. I'll deal with it. I love you.
It was entirely new territory for her. Was she entitled to know? Did she need to know? Did she want to know? In the end, her trust won out. She supposed Edward would tell her when the time came.
Her twenty-second birthday came and went without a word from Edward. Not exactly hurt, but concerned and irritated, Bella went to bed early. Rosalie, Rachel, and an army of people – friends – roused her from her slumber with a cold bucket of beer.
That made her shriek and laugh so hard that Edward was momentarily forgotten, and she blew out a birthday candle over a weed-baked brownie with red velvet frosting. "Doctor Charming would never hurt you," Rosalie reassured her. "Just fucking chill. I'm not worried. And for fuck's sake, enjoy your weed brownie."
When Edward finally bombarded her with calls, having virtually forgotten her birthday, Bella hesitated before answering. She tsked into the phone. "Well?"
Edward hummed the birthday song into the tinny speaker, and Bella was mildly irritated.
"I'm so sorry. So sorry, my love. Are you angry with me, angel?"
"I'm not sure," Bella snorted sheepishly. "I'm really not sure. Is everything OK?"
"It is now," Edward said, and she could feel the intensity of his relief through the tinny speaker. "It is now. It won't – it won't matter. It doesn't matter."
"That's really reassuring, Edward," Bella deadpanned sardonically.
"It really isn't... It's not something that should bother you because it doesn't bother me, OK? And then I was just too busy to head upstate after all the bullshit."
Bella bit her lip thoughtfully. "Edward, we don't have to spend every weekend together. I miss you like crazy, but -- we can make it work."
"I want to see you," Edward countered. "I -- It's the best bit of my week."
"Why don't I head down?" she suggested. "I can take the train."
"The train?" Edward repeated, aghast, like Bella had suggested hitchhiking.
"I'm not useless, you know," she said wryly, even teasingly.
"Bella, I didn't mean – I just – Alone?"
"I'm taking the train," Bella repeated with finality.
There was something fun and empowering about travelling by herself. A kindly Amtrak staff member helped her get on the train – a lift elevated Isabella in her wheelchair onto the train. The conductor anchored her wheelchair to a designated cleared space. Pushing back some discomfort – people stared –, Isabella pulled out a reading for class.
Edward waited for her on the platform. The cold hit that year with a sudden burst of intensity, and he wore a faded hoodie over a pair of jeans. His face broke into a poignant, broken smile when he spotted her.
A conductor helped her descend from the two-platform train with a lift that elicited as much staring as Lady Gaga would have that year.
Torn between concern and anger, Bella's kept her lips pursed and her doe eyes gentle. She spoke firmly as she looked up from her wheelchair. "You're not off the hook."
"I don't deserve it," he said, all earnestness. "I'm just so glad you're here."
"I'm worried about you." As she spoke, the truth of it struck her painfully. Edward loved her. There wasn't an iota of doubt in her mind that this slip was upsetting because it was so out of character.
"There's nothing to worry about," he said, and his voice was heated with the intensity of a vow. "This won't matrer. The shit I dealt with this weekend won't matter. What just happened won't hurt us, OK? It was just – it doesn't matter. I swear to God it doesn't matter. Fuck, I swear on my Mom's – "
"D0n't finish that sentence," Bella shot quickly, pleadingly. She wheeled closer and took his hands. His fingers were icy. "I trust you."
"I love you," he said, and his voice broke with he intensity of his sentiment. "I've loved you since I was fifteen."
"I love you, too."