2,288A/N: Hello there! Thanks for joining me on a new adventure! As some of you might know, every summer for the past few years, I try to write a story that revolves around a summer theme. This is this year's summer story! (Hurrah, Summer!)
Now, it's no secret I love angst, but I usually try to keep my summer stories lighter in tone, and that'll be true for this story. However, that being said, and without wanting to give too much away, we begin the Prologue in a different tone than the rest of the story. (That's as much of an angst warning as I'll give, lol).
So, if you're absolutely determined to do nothing but sigh and smile and dream of butterflies and sunshine all summer, you can always pick up the Story in Chapter One. (Personally, I'd just keep reading.) ;)
There's a 'Summer Haven FAQs' at the end of the chapter.
Most characters belong to S. Meyer. The rest belong to me. All mistakes are mine.
Summer Haven – Summary: Two separate lives, lived thousands of miles apart, forever altered by chance events. Two separate lives, lived thousands of miles apart, grappling with those events in their own ways. Two separate lives, converging one summer in an idyllic haven.
*********************************************** PROLOGUE: THE HARD PARTS **************************************************
New York City – Early Fall
Edward Cullen
"You know, not to sound impatient, but hasn't it been a while since the nurse offered you that ice cream?"
I peeked past the curtained hospice room's window, the one overlooking the blindingly white, elegantly decorated two-story lobby. It was the smallest window in the room. The others were floor-to-ceiling glass doors taking up two full walls and opening up onto a view unencumbered by curtains. Beyond them, a sprawling, well-maintained garden came complete with soothing sculptures, trickling waterfalls, a sparkling, artificial pond, and colorful, flitting, chirping birds.
The perverse irony that provided such an idyllic Eden to those who wouldn't be able to enjoy it for long didn't escape me. Was it a tease? A cruel joke? Or was it a foreshadowing of what they could soon expect if all those old spiritual stories held?
Either way, 'Too large and impersonal' is what I'd called it when we'd first arrived for a tour. 'She'll be better off at home, in familiar surroundings, with me taking care of her.'
As far as I was concerned, we didn't need a hospice, regardless of how well-regarded and prestigious it was in its field. I mean, its clientele was a mix of people who no longer walked this earth and those people left behind who had heftier concerns than leaving a Yelp review. Its reputation meant zero to me. But my mother-in-law, Chelsea, not only insisted with her typical, obstinate petulance, but she'd managed to convince my wife. So, here we were.
And the damn place couldn't even provide her with ice cream promptly.
Through that small window into the lobby, I spotted families, nurses, and doctors strolling about in various stages of activity. Some stood around murmuring in hushed voices while some walked by with brisk purpose as if either would change anything. Others sat silently on the plush, upholstered chairs situated around the massive, white stone fireplace - the lobby's focal point. There, with unblinking, blank faces, without twitching a muscle, they stared into the flickering flames – statues, for all intents and purposes, frozen not by a fiery goddess but by impending grief. Two of these frozen individuals were Chelsea, holding a tiny, sleeping bundle in her arms, and to her right, Alice, my sixteen-year-old sister.
I glanced away. They weren't who I was looking for. What I hoped to spot was my wife's nurse rushing in with an apology on her lips and my wife's vanilla ice cream in hand. But nope, no such luck. Sucking my teeth, I released the privacy curtain and made my way back to my wife, where I took the seat beside her bed and picked up her thin, clammy hand. I gave it a gentle squeeze.
"So much for being the best in the tri-state area, huh? Only God knows where your ice cream is right now. Probably off melting somewhere, a big blob of..." I muttered, trailing off. "Hey, maybe I should go look for her."
"Look for who, Edward? The nurse? Because she's a little late with my ice cream?"
"Mhm."
"No!" Kate snorted. "Not unless you want to be one of those people."
My brow furrowed. "One of what people?"
"The ones who think that just because they or their loved ones are dying, everyone should be at their beck and call."
More than the words themselves, it was the easy way she spoke them and ones like them that fueled my growing resentment. Not resentment toward her; I wasn't that ignorant, nor was I stupid enough to think she spoke with physical ease. It was clear each word took effort.
But she spoke as if she were discussing something as innocuous as the fall weather outside, as incidental as the leaves visible beyond those floor-to-ceiling windows, cascading with the billowing breeze, their scattering a presager to the upcoming long winter. Never mind that those leaves were once an integral part of a whole, essential in the makeup of that perfect garden landscape. Yet with an unexpected snap, they'd grown brittle, cracked, and would soon shrivel and leave behind barren branches. Then, they'd disappear altogether, into specks of dust so minuscule they may as well have never existed.
So, no, her words were nowhere near as benign as she made them sound. And for the past seven months, resentment engendered by the situation bubbled just under the surface. It threatened to foam at those words, to froth until it spouted over.
Which is why I wanted to shout and counter that 'Yes! Yes, goddammit! At this moment, the least Life could do was get her some ice cream on time before it melted! And yeah, everyone should be at her beck and call!'
Of course, I neither shouted nor verbalized either thought.
"I mean, it's a damn hospice. Isn't the whole premise of them to make your stay comfortable if not necessarily enjoyable?"
"Where comfort is measured by how long it takes to get me my ice cream?"
"Damn right."
Kate chuckled – a weary chuckle meant to indulge my absurd logic. As she involved herself in that, I took furtive note of how heavily her shoulders and head rested against the elevated bed frame, like one of those aforementioned wilting leaves, clinging to its branch, its colors fading amid the surrounding backdrop. Her pallid complexion contrasted jarringly with the red handknit headscarf she wore – a gift from her mother to keep her head warm, concealing her once vibrant but now ashen blond hair.
I hated that headscarf. Its bright crimson clashed with everything else in this sterile, white room. It was yet another inanimate taunt, an unsettling reminder of all the colors that once enriched our lives but had slowly leached away until only one undeniably iridescent light remained.
Kate finally replied, her tongue-in-cheek tone light, though I discerned her exhaustion. It was as if she were swimming against the tide.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the court, I present to you, Edward Cullen, Esquire." She clapped softly and carried on a one-woman cheer show while I offered her a playful smirk. When she returned her hand to mine, it was she who now gave me a faint squeeze. "Edward, make me a promise. When I'm gone, don't sue the hospice for making me wait for a half-hour for ice cream."
My muscles tensed. "You're not going anywhere."
Again I cursed my inability to suppress an increasingly turbulent state of mind, a state of mind which made me speak what we both knew were bald-faced lies. Kate was indeed going somewhere else we wouldn't be in this godforsaken haven – as the place's director termed it. But along with flippancy, Kate's humor had lately taken a dark turn. She constantly joked about the situation as if she were performing a standup routine around it.
It was all her way of coping; I knew that just as I knew, I should've been more gracious about it – allowed her to joke to her heart's content and laughed my ass off.
'Hah! I get the joke! Because I'm a lawyer, and all we do is sue for the most ridiculous reasons! Hah! Hilarious!'
But like rotten carrion, her blasé attitude fed the bewildered beast within me, the beast who still hadn't come to terms with how quickly our lives had taken that dark bend in the road.
"Well, maybe not just yet," she agreed, "but let's be honest; at this point, a half-hour of my life is not an insignificant piece of the pie. Still, cut them some slack, Edward. They're probably busy serving pizza to someone for whom fifteen minutes is a huge chunk. Get it?" She winked. "Because they have even less time than I do."
"Kate, when you have to explain the joke, that's a clue you should probably cut it out of your repertoire."
"Oh, come on. Admit it, it's funny, and some part of you, no matter how tiny" – she squeezed her thumb and forefinger in front of her face – "wants to laugh right now."
An unwilling smile crept over my face. It hiked up first one corner of my mouth, then the other. Finally, I surrendered to chuckles.
"I knew it!" she exclaimed, her voice hoarse yet triumphantly smug.
"I'm chuckling more at your obstinance than at your comedic talent."
"Edward, you've always had a great sense of humor; don't let it disappear now. Well, maybe clamp down on it for a bit after I'm gone, but for Tristan's sake, let him grow up with your humor, with your laughter. You know, your sense of humor is why I fell in love with you in the first place."
"You mean it wasn't my good looks that first attracted you?"
While my momentary bout of levity was initially cathartic, especially when we ended up laughing together, it was soon annihilated by her ensuing cough. She shook her head and waved a hand with more vigor than I expected when she spotted me reaching for the nurse's button.
"Stop, Edward," she choked, still laughing, while I hesitated. "Don't. I'll be fine." Her bloodshot eyes were still full of amusement as they raked me over from top to bottom. "Yes, it was your looks as well, along with your thick, copper hair, your perfect face, your tall, lean frame, and your big, fat co-"
"Now you really need to stop," I chuckled.
"Why? It's true. And fine, maybe a minuscule bit of your brains," she added with a weak shrug and an eye roll.
"Oh, just a minuscule bit of my brains, huh?" I smirked, playing along for a moment, allowing myself to forget the wheres and the whys.
"There's the Edward I know," she murmured, her exhausted eyes softening. "Edward, promise me you won't drown in bewilderment. Promise me that you'll take some time to mourn, but then you'll allow yourself to move on."
"Move on?" I scoffed. "What does moving on even…? I mean, Kate, I…I…" Inhaling and exhaling hard, I dropped my gaze to the immaculately white sheets between us, resting my elbows on their smooth surface and cradling my head in my hands. 'The highest thread count,' they'd told us. 'Only the best for your loved one,' they'd repeated over and over as if high thread count would make a difference. 'Does the high thread count grant magic wishes?'
"It means you don't have to be a martyr, Edward, nor build a shrine to me or our relationship." She paused, waiting, and when I huffed and raised my head again, she met my eyes through tired yet determined blue ones of her own. "Don't turn us into a perfection we weren't."
"Ouch." I grinned. "That's rough, woman."
"Again, it's the truth. I don't have time for anything less." She took my hand and once again laced her fingers through mine, offering me a placating smile. "And it doesn't mean we weren't great friends or content with what we had. But one of the benefits of sitting where I am is the extra insight it tends to lend one, a sort of crystal ball into the future if you will."
"A crystal ball?" I echoed, raising a brow. "Tell me, oh wise one, what do you see-"
"Edward, babe, I'm waiting, and as we've discussed, my time is more precious than Jay Leno's car collection."
"Fine. I promise I won't sue the hospice for the delay in your ice cream, okay? But don't ask me to make promises I can't…" I raked a rough hand down my face, "I can't even fathom right now."
"Even if you can't completely grasp all its intricacies right now, you can still make the promise. In law terms, it's called Consideration, and you know that because you're a brilliant and promising young lawyer at merely twenty-seven-"
"We're both brilliant and promising lawyers at merely twenty-seven."
"-and you'll figure it out if you allow yourself to. Trust me; I've lived with that arrogant determination for the past three years."
"Have I been that difficult, Kate?"
"Edward, you're just starting in your career, and if you're going to succeed, a bit of arrogance and a strong will have to be part of that package. I know that, and I knew that going in, so I'm not complaining."
"It sounds like you're complaining just a tiny bit, Kate," I grinned.
She offered me a smile. "We were both arrogant and strong-willed. How's that?"
"Kate, I'll change."
Kate took me in through eyes full of sympathy as if I were the one in her position.
"Edward, this isn't one of our law school study cases. We can't argue, negotiate, or litigate our way out of this one. We were in a relationship, and although it wasn't perfect-"
"We still are in a relationship."
"-it was a good one."
"So, let me get this straight; it was my sense of humor which first attracted you, but that funny guy has gone to shit now and been replaced by an arrogant bastard. Also, our relationship is a good one, but it's nowhere near perfect."
She offered me a thumbs up. "Close enough."
"You know, if you weren't in here, those would be fighting words," I smirked. "And it makes me wonder just what's kept you with me all these years."
"I told you. It was your big dick. Big dicks count for a lot to a young law student."
Again, I chuckled, but the chuckle quickly evaporated as I drew in a sharp breath and shook my head.
"Kate…"
"Edward, promise me."
"I don't know that I can."
"You have to, Edward. You have to." With a strength that startled me, she picked her head up from the pillow and leaned in closer, actions which I knew taxed her. "If it were just you, I'd selfishly allow, even expect you to wallow and mourn me into old age. But you have Tristan to think of. He's only eight months old, and he deserves a happy life, a full life."
"I know he does," I swallowed hard. "I know."
"For his sake, you have to move on with your life."
What would later haunt me was the uncertain way we left the conversation. We were two young attorneys in one room, yet we never clarified the indisputable and inconclusive meaning of 'moving on.' Nor did I give her that promise she sought so vehemently.
Instead, I returned the conversation to a much lighter topic.
"Where's the damn nurse with that godforsaken ice cream?"
Kate chuckled and laid back against her pillows with a sigh. I imagine she'd decided to wait before pushing again to extract that promise.
But Life doesn't always allow us to wait.
I got to my feet and brushed my lips against her forehead. "Let me just go grab you some ice cream from the shop downstairs, all right? What would you like?"
"Ooh, you think they'll have Ben and Jerry's?"
It was…strange; she sounded excited, more enthusiastic than she'd sounded for a while. And as I stood there and took her in, for the first time in months, she barely even looked sick. Her cheeks were flushed an almost healthy shade, her eyes sparkled, and her mouth turned up in an eager grin.
"Hello, Earth to Edward? The ice cream's not going to get itself."
"Oh, now you're in a rush for the ice cream."
"Well, you've certainly talked about it enough."
"Do you want me to send up your mom or Alice to keep you company 'til I'm back?"
"Send up my mom only if Tristan's awake," she grinned, "and Alice only if she's about to choke my mom."
Had I known it was the last time I'd see Kate alive, I would've replied with something more. I would've said something better, something significant, something profound that I could look back on during those days and nights that followed, while alone at home with our infant son, and think:
'Well, at least those were great parting words. At least, I know our final words to one another sent her into the next place in peace. At least, there is nothing we left unspoken.'
Instead, my last words to my wife were:
"Ok. Ben and Jerry's it is. What flavor?"
OOOOOOOOOO
San Francisco – Late Fall
Isabella Dwyer
"Jake, you just saved the day for me – or my grade, at the very least."
"Aww, don't worry about it, Bell. No big deal, and it's not that great a telescope."
"Well, it's a big deal to me, so."
"Bella, Jake would've loaned you that telescope even if it was his only telescope, and owning a telescope became a government requirement, and anyone caught not owning one would be shot between the eyes."
Rebecca furtively whispered those words to me that night as Jake set up the telescope by the tiny window that overlooked a minuscule sliver of the bay in my sublet, micro-apartment.
Whoever said 'Beggars can't be choosers' must've had me in mind.
The apartment's official lease belonged to a friend with whom I'd roomed on the down-low before she graduated last year and done me the favor of moving to L.A. without alerting the landlord. It was a tiny piece of shit, hole-in-the-wall. But it was a tiny, piece of shit, hole-in-the-wall in San Francisco, so.
As for the telescope in question, it once belonged to Jake's brother. A few years earlier, this brother had picked up a stargazing hobby and thereby a telescope, both of which soon began collecting dust. It was a piece of crap, "barely strong enough to pick up the buckle on Orion's Belt," as Jake had jokingly described it when he'd offered to lend it to me. But it was a free piece of crap as opposed to the one Berkeley wanted to "rent" me despite the loads of tuition they'd scammed from me over the past three-plus years, regardless of my partial scholarship.
So, here I was, with the crap-but-free loaner from Jake, in my Lilliputian, illegally sublet apartment, while drinking the free wine Jake and Rebecca had arrived with when they'd stopped by to drop off the telescope.
But I wasn't complaining. In fact, I'd always appreciated how Life had a way of keeping me afloat, of helping me get by at the last minute, of meeting me halfway.
"You're so ridiculous," I'd replied to Rebecca that night, chuckling under my breath. "And convoluted. And you're reading way too many dystopian novels in that Lit class. And Jake's just my friend."
"Doesn't mean he wouldn't want to be more."
To that, I said nothing.
A night of wine, movies, and some stargazing with two of my best friends quickly turned into empty glasses, strewn bottles, laughter galore, and a forgotten telescope and TV. By midnight, we were feeling nice. It was nothing dramatic, nothing out of the norm, nor that would've kept us from functioning in our classes come morning. But we were college seniors on the cusp of graduation, so we weren't too worried.
If anything, I felt more relaxed than I'd felt in a while, more like myself – a person content with the novelty of the world and its peculiar machinations. After all, one only got a hundred years or so on this Earth in which to explore its novelties, to wonder at its random ups and downs. Not that extremes in either direction had marked my twenty-two years. As I said, I always managed to stay afloat, to keep my head above water, and I was more than fine with that middle ground because what was there then to bitch about, as my dad always did, or regret, as my mom did?
Lately, my upcoming graduation and the fact that I had no real job lined up beyond my bartending gig. The bartending paid good money, yeah, and it was one of those things that had kept me afloat, that had gotten me through the part of Berkeley that my partial scholarship didn't cover. But it wasn't exactly a long-term career choice.
Then, there was the extra burden – both mental and financial – caused by my boyfriend, Paul. When I'd met Paul last year, he was one of the bouncers at the bar. One night, a few laughs after work led to sex back at my place. Sex led to his falling asleep in my tiny apartment after said activities. Before I knew it, he was a nightly fixture, where ten or so minutes of pleasure meant an entire night of having his six-foot-four, hulking frame squeezed into my twin-sized bed. For me, it was kind of like indulging in chocolate cake while knowing you're going to have to follow it up with an hour of cardio. It's tasty, but is it really worth that much work?
Unfortunately, Paul soon decided he was burned out and needed to unburden himself from life's pressures. When asked what that statement entailed, he'd provided some labyrinthian reply from which all I really gathered was that he'd be quitting his job and hanging around the already crowded apartment for a bit, 'mentally' exploring his possibilities.
That was four months ago.
Over the past few weeks, Paul had taken to coming and going at all hours of the day and night. We barely saw one another, and when we did, he was usually 'mentally' exploring his possibilities, which, as it turned out, translated into being either drunk or high or both at all hours. Obviously, there was no more sex, but there were living expenses that weren't getting any cheaper in the Bay area and a long, unavoidable talk between Paul and me.
But first, Paul needed to come home sober. Therefore, I pushed away those uncomfortable thoughts and set them aside for that inevitable moment. Everything would work itself out somewhere in the middle, the way things tended to, so there was no point in risking my current wine buzz on thoughts of then.
Humming to myself, I adjusted the telescope's lens with one hand and, with the other, raised the wine glass to my mouth, simultaneously squeezing shut one eye. For a second, performing all those actions at once made me light-headed and blurry-eyed. But the moment soon passed, and I chuckled at my lack of coordination.
It's…strange to think now of how, at that moment, I actually enjoyed the sensation, that woozy loss of balance and equilibrium, and the rubbery legs that accompanied it. It was like…like letting go, like floating up high with the fuzzy stars I saw through the lens, like trusting the universe to set me to rights, to carry me when the time came, as it always did. For a moment, I could even grasp Paul's way of thinking. I mean, why would anyone ever willingly abandon that weightlessness, that total disavowal of a world of hefty responsibilities and return to an Earth with its extreme ups and downs?
When I think back now, I wonder if that moment was Life's sneaky way of foreboding, of foreshadowing the events about to come, of warning me that the last-minute luck that always carried me through was about to take a nosedive.
"What are you up to, Bells?"
The transitory moment of disequilibrium also meant that I'd missed Jake's approach into that part of the room we called the kitchen.
"Come take a look," I invited, pulling back the blanket draped over the scope – my amateur light-pollution fix – and making room for him in front of the telescope. Then I resituated the blanket over our heads while Jake peered through the lens.
"So, what am I looking at?"
"At this time of year here in the Bay area, the principal constellations should be Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, and…" I sipped my wine and searched my memory, "oh, yeah, Draco."
"Do you know which is which?"
"Not a clue."
We both chuckled.
"But," I qualified, "as the course proceeds, we'll be learning about all different sorts of constellations and how to track them, how they interact, how outside conditions affect them and how we see them, and a bunch of other stuff, so."
Jake pulled back and looked at me, yet under the blanket, all I saw were his dark eyes sparkling like those stars above us.
"Sounds complicated, especially for a throw-away elective in your last year." The sparkling eyes moved, and I knew he'd angled his head. "What made an English major pick an Astronomy class of all subjects as a final elective?"
Returning my attention to the telescope, I readjusted the lens. "When I was little, and we lived in Phoenix before my parents' divorce, we'd visit my godpop up in the wilds of Washington State, in a little town called Forks, where my parents grew up. Godpop had a really great telescope set up in the backyard, one that made it seem as if you'd set foot in a wondrous expanse, at turns making you feel as significant as an astronaut landing on the moon and as insignificant as a random ball of matter and hot air. Looking through that telescope was like…like knowing that the galaxy really and truly held all the answers if only one were willing to look long and hard enough."
Jake seemed to exhale after a heartbeat. "That sounds…amazing."
"It was. Unfortunately, I was barely ten the last time we visited – too young to stand still long enough to study the sky for those answers."
Jake chuckled.
"But man, I used to love going up there. It was like…a haven, a place where even my parents refused to argue." I drew in a deep breath and released it in a sigh. "Then my godpop married and had his own family, and my parents divorced, and the visits stopped, and…I don't know. I guess when I read the elective's description, it just made me think of Forks, so." I shrugged.
For a few minutes, I kept my gaze on the ebony sky. Every few millimeters, or what was likely thousands of miles, in reality, that blackness was punctuated by clusters of miniature white specs, like a spotty blackboard that hadn't been properly wiped down. I vaguely recalled how much more saturated the Forks sky used to look in those long-ago days, like a child had taken a piece of chalk and drawn long, thick bands across that blackboard. The massive universe appeared unending, and, like Paul when high and/or drunk and mentally exploring his possibilities, in those final moments of peace, my possibilities suddenly seemed just as endless.
I pulled back and peered at Jake, not really surprised to find his gaze still on me.
Jake was a good-looking guy, not that I could see in the dark right then, but I knew, of course. We'd been friends throughout college. He was tall, dark-skinned, and well built, but more than all that, he was genuinely a great guy. Maybe I'd met him at a time in my life when I wasn't ready for the extreme ups and downs a real relationship would likely entail. He'd wanted more, I'd known even without words, but we'd crossed into the friend zone, and he accepted that.
I felt the heat of his touch as he pushed back a stray lock of my hair behind my ear, and I vaguely wondered how he'd even known how to find it in the relative darkness engendered by the blanket's cover.
"So, is that what made you burn so brightly, Bells? Gazing at those Washington State stars when you were little?"
I took time to formulate my answer. Even once I opened my mouth, I'm not sure what I was about to say.
"The fuck is going on here?"
My head snapped toward the angry voice, though I couldn't see its speaker due to the blanket over me. But I'd heard that tone more and more lately. Paul's boredom had begun to manifest itself through late nights accompanied by increasing belligerency. From my closet-sized bedroom, I'd hear him come in, throw things around, curse and mutter to himself before eventually passing out and snoring loudly on the tiny couch. In the mornings, I'd clean up around him, hoping the clatter would wake him so we could have that overdue talk. But he slept like the fucking dead, and then I'd have to attend to my life, so.
Now, my annoyance at his tone and at his sudden arrival – just when I'd been so chill – grew when I pulled back the blanket. Paul's glazed eyes flickered with anger, the kind of anger you know is just aching to start trouble. It was the kind of anger where we usually cut off the bar patron and signaled for the bouncer – who was once Paul.
Rebecca and Jake picked up on the unstable mood too. Rebecca quickly appeared in the kitchen with empty bottles and glasses, cleaning up so she could get the hell out. Meanwhile, I noted the forced calm in Jake's tone.
"What's up, man?"
Paul didn't acknowledge the greeting. "It's fucking one in the morning. What's going on here?"
His hard gaze panned between Jake and me.
Annoyance morphed into my own anger, one that thrummed like wildfire in my veins and startled me with its force. I wasn't a person prone to anger. But it was umbrage that he'd not only come home in that condition, again but that he'd curse at my friends and me, make them uncomfortable and thereby humiliate me.
And he kept right on going.
"I'm fucking exhausted, and I can't even come home to a quiet apartment to crash!"
"You know, I may have felt sorry for your plight if you actually paid rent."
"You're a mouthy little…" he trailed off.
And not wanting to make a bigger scene than we were already making, I pressed my lips together. Oh, but we'll get to that, I thought. Then I just began rage cleaning up as well.
"Bella, you want me to stick around?" Jake whispered sideways.
"No. He'll crash and feel like a pile of dog shit in the morning. Then, I'll kick him out."
"What the hell are you two whispering over there?" Paul boomed.
"Paul, lower your damn voice! I've got neighbors!" I hissed.
"Answer me, then! What the hell's going on here?"
"What do you mean what the hell's going on here?" I spat as I snatched a couple of empty bottles from Rebecca. "Jake loaned me a telescope for my Astronomy elective, and we were stargazing."
"Stargazing," Paul scoffed. When he stepped in my direction, I saw Jake tense in my periphery. "Is that what they call it now when you're under a blanket with a motherfucker? Stargazing?"
"Yeah, actually, when you're under that blanket while vertical and while staring up at stars through a telescope, they do call it that. Novel, isn't it?"
Flaring fury boiled and evaporated all concern about an audience. Paul stalked toward me, and I met him step for step, too outraged to feel anything beyond the mad throbbing in my temples. He was a big guy – muscular and tattooed from his neck down to his knees. Once, I'd been incredibly attracted by the powerful picture he painted.
"Bella. Bella, step back," Jake said urgently.
"No," I shot defiantly. "He's just drunk and or high and acting stupid."
"You think I'm stupid!" Paul roared. "You think I don't see what the fuck is going on here?"
"Paul, man, Bella and I are just good friends," Jake said.
"Good friends," Paul snorted. "Don't you mean fuck buddies?"
"That's enough, man!" Jake stepped forward and stood between us, but I sidestepped him, blinded by livid indignation.
"You're seriously sick, Paul," I hissed. "You're sick from all the shit you put into your system with the bullshit excuse that you're exploring mental possibilities when you're really just-"
There was a flash, like lightning erupting before my eyes. My skull rattled, and my brain shook against it. Then, the entire right side of my face burst into flames.
Once, during one of those visits up to Forks before my parents' divorce, there was a meteor shower we watched from my godpop's backyard. The meteors shot by so fast, those burning minerals propelled so rapidly that I feared they'd shoot right down to Earth and through me and singe me to ashes.
'Don't be scared, Bella,' my god pop said, kneeling so he could meet my wary eyes, his chocolate ones warm and calm. 'Do you know what meteors are?'
I shook my head. When his whiskers twitched from side to side, I reached out and pulled on the rough strands, straightening them, using their unruliness as an excuse with which to keep my gaze from straying upward.
'They're just stars that already burned up a long, long time ago, and now, they can't really hurt us.'
'No matter what, Godpop?' I asked tearily.
'No matter what,' he assured me. 'Now, their only purpose is to illuminate the path for the stars that'll come after them.'
In the months that followed, I'd often think of that long-ago conversation.
When I opened my eyes, I thought perhaps my godfather had been wrong, and I expected to find an inferno raging, a world turned topsy turvy. I thought perhaps a meteor or one of those stars I'd been watching had crashed through the window. Every sound rippled as if rising from underwater; every voice spoke from somewhere deep below the Bay's surface. I'm not sure how long I stood there, palming my cheek, ears ringing, and vision blurred.
When my senses finally returned, Rebecca was screaming and gripping one of Paul's arms with both of her own.
"Paul, stop! STOP! GET OFF OF HIM!"
"Fucking my girl," Paul muttered, that muscular arm moving frenziedly. Once, I'd loved clinging to those muscles as we did naughty things in my narrow bed. Now, that arm rose and fell with wild abandon – an out-of-control sledgehammer. "I'll teach him to-"
There was something in my hand. Instinctively, I brought it down over Paul's head. Rebecca's screams intensified. Shards of thick, dark glass went flying.
And Paul stopped.
He swayed, and I waited for him to go down. A rivulet of blood trickled down his forehead, past his bristly stubble, and I waited for him to go down. The front of his tee-shirt, damp and stained by sweat, rose and fell along with his heavy breaths. And I waited for him to go down.
When his eyes met mine, I realized I'd made a horrible miscalculation.
Not with my aim, no. I caught Paul square in the head with the empty wine bottle. My miscalculation regarded Paul's state of mind. He wasn't pass-out drunk. He wasn't even heavily stoned.
As I took in his dilated pupils, his glazed eyes, his runny nose, and his slack jaw – saliva dripping down his chin like a leaky faucet, it hit me that Paul was beyond 'mentally' exploring his possibilities. In fact, he'd taken the exploration to a whole different level, to a completely different world. Paul was in a world ungoverned by any sort of rules, where guilt had no place, where pain was nonexistent, and where the senseless made sense.
Paul was not going down.
In the background, Rebecca shouted into her phone. "Send help quickly! He's drugged up, and-"
And...that's the last thing I remember about that night.
A/N: Thoughts?
Okay, as I said, that's about as angsty as we'll get. :)
FAQs:
Q: How long will the story be?
A: So we're starting with a hard one, huh? Unless I have the story completely written out (which I don't), I always get burned on this question. I'm hardly ever right! With that (huge) caveat, I will say about 20 chapters, give or take. :)
Q: Will there be angst?
A: This story will not have angst any worse than what you just read, if any more at all. Certainly, there won't be anywhere near enough angst to label the story 'Angsty.' Maybe just a few "aww" moments here and there. Perhaps a stray tear. A heart clench or two? Seriously, it'll be mostly summer-y stuff and the stuff of developing relationships (which can sometimes get rocky but not necessarily ansgty. :)
Q: Is there a posting schedule?
A: Back in the day, when I thought I didn't have time in my life, but it turns out I had more time than I've ever had since (especially this past year and a half), I used to have posting schedules, i.e., Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays; or Tuesdays, Thursdays. Now, the best I can say is that I'll try to post twice a week. Definitely once a week. On those weeks when the stars align properly, perhaps even thrice a week.
Q: What should I do if I encounter a spelling/grammatical/research/factual error while reading your story?
A: Please let me know! Whether you do so in a review or a PM is up to you, but please note that I don't have (nor am I on the lookout for) a beta. Like most of us fanfic writers, I do this for fun and in my spare time. I enjoy the freedom of posting whenever I'm ready to post without having to depend on anyone else's schedule. Also, like most of my fellow fanfic writers, my spare time is precious as I know it also is for most readers! But what this means for me as a writer is that sometimes, I miss an error here and there in my eagerness to post. If you alert me, I'll do my best to fix the error. Now, if you alert me via insults or while displaying an air of superiority comingled with disbelief that I'd make such a stupid mistake, I might leave the error just to be a petty, contrary bitch. :)
Q: What should I do if I absolutely hate your story?
A: The answer to this question should be straightforward. In fact, it should probably be the easiest to answer in comparison to all answers on here. Unfortunately, in all my time writing fanfiction, I've come to learn that for some inexplicable reason, some people have a hard time figuring this one out. So, here we go. If you're not enjoying the story, hit the 'X' button and close the story down. Get it off your screen. Forget it exists. In fact, depending on your level of hatred of the story and your desire to express such hatred, you may want to forget I exist as well. ;)
Q: Related to the question above, what are your thoughts on negative reviews?
A: While I won't lie and say I cherish them, obviously, requesting "reviews" invites positive and negative expressions. If you'd like to offer your thoughts respectfully, whether they're positive or negative, please don't hesitate to do so. I've started many interesting discussions over the years with reviewers infuriated with my characters or who have respectful critiques to offer me on my writing. Many of them are some of the best character studies and/or growth-through-critiques discussions I've had, and when done respectfully, I relish the discourse.
Q: What do you do when you receive reviews that are just plain old nasty/disrespectful/insulting/threatening?
A: I'm laughing just thinking of the answer to this one. Oh, boy. Okay, so it's pretty easy to tell from just the first few words if/when I'm reading the aforementioned type of review. If the reviewer hasn't shown me the courtesy of signing in to discuss the review, I won't show the courtesy of reading the entire review. I delete it as soon as I see where it's going. It will never see the light of day, and that guest reviewer just wasted their time writing something no one will ever read. I've heard jokes about how nasty guest reviews up the review count as well as do positive reviews, so thanks and eff you, nasty GR. Nope. I won't even keep it around for that. Now, if the reviewer HAS signed in, I can't delete it, and how I deal with it depends on whether I'm pms'ing or not. ;)
Okay, I think that basically covers everything! If I've neglected to address anything, please let me know! And know that I try to get back to as many reviews as possible, but unfortunately, there are only so many hours in the day. I can't always reply, but please know that I love hearing from you guys, and I greatly appreciate the time you take in reading and reviewing. 3
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Chapter 1 is coming up later this week!