365The Twilight Twenty-Five
thetwilight25 dot com
Prompt: # 2
Pen Name: GemmaH
Pairing/Character(s): Edward x Bella
Rating: K
Word Count: 483
Photo prompts can be found here:
thetwilight25 dot com/round-eight/prompts
I'm so absorbed in the memories, I don't know he's home until the bedroom door opens. I jump, feeling the guilt rush through me as he pauses in the doorway and looks down at me cross-legged on the floor.
"You're still here," he mumbles as he moves again, walking over to the other side of the room and pulling a t-shirt from a drawer.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be; the box broke as I lifted it down." I look up to the top of the closet as I sit in front of its open door, old photographs scattered around me like autumn leaves. "I guess I got distracted picking them up." I look away as he unbuttons his shirt, focusing instead on gathering the snapshots of my life. I reach up with each one and add it to an untidy stack on the bed, keeping my head down and trying not to look at the images as I pick them up. I don't want him to see the tears they elicit.
The pile topples over as he sits down on the bed beside it. I stop what I'm doing and watch as he plucks a picture from the bed and smiles. It's not the way he used to smile; his lips are curved up but his eyes barely wrinkle. Still, it's more than I've seen from him in a while.
"Look at Em's hair," he says as he holds the image up for me to see. His brother is in the background, facing away from the camera. "He begged my mom to let him try and grow that damn rat tail. He thought he looked so cool!" He chuckles and I smile at the memory.
"Emmett always thinks he looks cool," I point out. Edward nods in agreement. As he looks away to pick up another photo, my eyes begin to fill again, as I wonder what my life will be like without the Cullens in it. We have so much history. Maybe too much.
I realize he's been motionless for a while and I wonder what he's found. I move gently to sit beside him, a few of the photos fluttering back to the floor as the mattress dips. I rest my head on his shoulder as I recognize the scene. The two of us are around eight years old and we're standing side by side, holding hands with cheesy grins on our faces. His grandparents are behind us, his grandfather's hand on my shoulder and his grandmother's on his, their free arms wrapped around one another. It was their 50th wedding anniversary.
"What went wrong for us, Bella?" he asks. "How did they manage fifty years of marriage and we're burned out after ten?"
I don't answer because I can't; I have no idea either. Instead I take his hand and squeeze it, because that's what best friends do.