The Other Way : Fifteen

Too Beautiful To Be Caused By So Much Pain

-

I left Alice in the lagoon and Edward brooding in the sand, making my way back toward the villa with my head all sorts of fucked up.

Why did he have to take his shirt off?

I probably could have kept it together if he had, but the reality of all that ink set into his skin did something worse to my brain than the lavender inebriation I had been sporting. It took every ounce of my willpower not to openly stare and I had to leave so that I didn’t make a fool of myself, or comply with his demands to remove my sarong, made with burning eyes and those damned lip rings disappearing between his teeth. I trudged across the island, lost in a daze and didn’t come-to until I found a note tucked into the front door as I was swiping my key card.

Have to stay overnight, early hearing in the morning. Back by dinner tomorrow. Love you. J.

There was a bottle of wine waiting for me alongside a shiny, paper-thin glass on the coffee table. Fresh flowers sat near the bed and the towels had been restocked, a pair of clean robes on the hook behind the bathroom door. The note wasn’t in Jasper’s handwriting and I couldn’t help but wonder if Jacob had been here while I was gone.

I added a glass of wine to the general all-around fucked up feeling I was floundering through and fell asleep on the deck for an undetermined amount of time, dreaming about Edward’s piano tattoo and Jasper pinning me to the wall in the entryway back at home, right there beside our marriage certificate. I woke up in a blurry daze, knocking echoing from the front door and my mouth gone dry from the sun and the salt.

A small girl in the recognizable staff uniform with a name tag pinned to her chest was standing at the door, all hair and eyes and more of that beautiful brown skin, holding a covered tray. Jasper must have ordered me dinner.

“Mrs. Hale.” The girl dipped her head, her eyes never meeting mine in the first place so I didn’t bother to smile at her when I let her into the bungalow. She set the tray down and began uncovering dishes, busying herself. She could have been Jacob’s little sister, for all they looked exactly alike.

“I expected Jacob.”

“He’s on the mainland, Ma’am. In the capitol.” The girl kept her eyes firmly on her task the entire time she spoke and I was glad that she did because my face went slack.

Oh.

“When will he be back?” I stuttered, trying to sound uninterested.

“Tomorrow evening. Do you need anything else?” She stood before me with her hands clasped and her eyelids fluttering at me and I tried my hardest not to imagine Jasper and Jacob kissing in the middle of a fancy hotel room somewhere.

“No, but thank you Emily.”

---

Alice showed up drunk and hanging off of Edward sometime around midnight, giggly and light footed. I opened the door, not at all surprised to see her because I could hear her arrival from halfway across the island. She released him and flung herself through the front door, kissing me solidly on the mouth before fluttering away, surprising the shit out of me. To say nothing of Edward.

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked in a whisper as Alice pranced around the room, telling just about every object she touched how much she loved it and nearly tripping over the corner of the sofa, giggling manically. Edward seemed torn between keeping an eye on her or staring openly at me. I was still in that damned bikini, still partially covered by my wrinkled sarong, but I knew just what he was thinking.

“She’s been drinking,” he said blandly.

I rolled my eyes. “Obviously.”

He looked down at me and spoke in a hiss, eyes piercing. “I hear you two have had some nice little chats in a lagoon lately, like a couple of loose-lipped mermaids. Talk about anything in particular?”

I didn’t know if he was referring to my half of the water-bound conversations, or Alice’s, though the accusing tone in his voice hinted that he blamed me for her current state. I still wasn’t sure how long ago the whole baby-in-the-field debacle had gone down, but I was fairly certain it wasn’t that far off and still fresh enough that it stung when you poked it.

“She said she tells you everything,” I accused him and watched his mouth tighten, which meant it was the truth.

His eyes narrowed as he watched her clamber up onto my big white bed and start jumping. “She’s important to me, but it’s not what you think.”

“I’m not what you think.” Fuck my broken mouth. Fuck.

Edward’s head turned slowly, eyes dragging to my face and he blinked at me, owlish and thoughtful.

“I’m beginning to understand that.”

---

An hour later Edward was sitting on my couch, Alice sprawled along it with her head in his lap. His fingers were absently stroking her bare skin, brushing up against flowers and scattering dandelion seeds. She was only half asleep, mouth moving slightly as she whispered to herself with her eyebrows smashed together. I’d made her drink a glass of water and knew she was fighting off the spins.

I, on the other hand, had finished off that bottle of wine in quick succession, nervous about having them both in my room and grateful for the soft layer the liquor put between me and reality.

“You both have dandelions.” I was staring at his fingers still stroking her skin and the seeds that were dotted up her neck, not bothering to hide my fascination. His lips pursed but he nodded.

“It’s not a coincidence. I got them for her.”

“Do you have any more for her?”

Edward smashed his brows together, nearly glaring at me and spoke slowly. “I have many that I got with her . . . But that’s the only one that’s for her.”

“Do they all mean something, then?” I waved my hand at him, indicating each individual drawing that was flaunting its face from just below the surface of his skin. He was still shirtless, everything on display and even his legs were adorned. Each of his ankles sprouted an elephant, legs stretched to spindles like Salvador Dali’s paintings, spanning the length of his calves and the elephant’s heavy bodies were topped with tiny houses at his knees.

“There are a few that I’m not particularly attached to.”

Edward gently extricated himself from Alice, arranging her softly back onto the sofa and ambled out onto the deck, hands in his pockets. I followed him, my feet feeling as unsure as the rest of me and only a little of that was from the bottle of wine. I tottered after him, reaching the railing just about the time he was lighting another of those damn cigarettes and the smell of it made me feel twice as drunk.

“Will you share that with me?” I asked, peering down off the deck into the water. Aside from the pearly white gash from the moon, the ocean looked like a pool of liquid tar, thick and black and sticky.

“No,” he said and I scrunched my face up at him, not at all expecting him to decline. He broke into a smile as though he’d been waiting for just that particular reaction from me. “But you can have one of your own.”

“I don’t want my own. I want yours.”

Edward swallowed roughly and arched an eyebrow, lip rings tugged between his teeth. He held the burning cigarette out toward me and I plucked it from his fingers, a single drag making me dizzy in an instant. I held it back out toward him, resisting the urge to cough but he shook his head.

“One more. Then you’re giving it back to me for good.”

Another solid drag and I was thoroughly buzzed, the tarry ocean kicking up a hit of lavender that sent my head cartwheeling. I handed the cigarette back, our fingers brushing, and he turned to sit heavily in the lounger. The same one Jasper and I had curled up on while we discussed his infatuation with me. He set his elbows to his knees, face hard and cigarette smoldering. He didn’t speak, his eyes trained on my abdomen before lifting them to my face and holding a hand out toward me.

Hovering patiently between us.

I pushed off the railing, taking a faltering step toward him, stomach twisting with something that felt like hunger.

“What do they mean? The dandelions,” I asked with my next step, his hand still hung in the air.

“The three celestial bodies. The sun, the moon and the stars.” He spoke as he twined his fingers through mine and pulled me closer, tilting his head so that I could see the cluster of flowers on his neck. One was tightly closed and the next was in full bloom, bright yellow petals set against his skin like burning rays of light. The third was a perfect ghostly sphere while the last was partially disintegrated, feathery seeds scattering across his neck and shoulders in a speckled pattern. I touched a finger to the last errant seed of the bunch, flung far out on his opposite shoulder in a spare expanse of unmarked skin just above the furthest reaching limb of his octopus.

“Are they a constellation?”

He nodded as I traced my finger back toward the next seed, set right there above the bump of his collarbone. “Alice’s is Pavo, the peacock. Its head is the one by her eye.”

I watched my finger intently so that I didn’t have to meet his gaze because I knew he was staring at me, my invisible line drifting toward the next puff of grey as though he was a giant connect-the-dots puzzle.

If only it could be so easy.

“And yours?” I whispered.

“Cygnus,” he swallowed, adam's apple bobbing. “The swan.”

My mouth hung open as I reached the next seed, suddenly seeing the pattern laid out before me. A swan, flying toward his sternum with its wings spread out along his shoulders and its tail up by his ear. I didn’t know whether or not to tell him that was my maiden name, the one I’d abandoned a long time ago.

“Why the swan?” I stuttered, mindlessly continuing my tracing.

“Zeus transformed himself into one to seduce Leda.” His voice wavered faintly under my fingertip.

“And that’s your method? Seduction by disguise?”

“Obviously.” Edward’s eyes fluttered closed as he let me inspect him. I stepped up right in between his legs and noticed for the first time that the octopus, the indigo blue beauty who sat on his shoulder with her legs spilling down his arm and across his chest, was actually clutching the dandelion bouquet in one of those limbs. She wasn’t an exact representation of the creature she was inspired by, but a delicately re-imagined version. Sleeker and fanciful, the barest hint of a yellow underbelly peeking through as she clutched his arm and wound herself around his torso. The farthest reaching tendril draped across his sternum and curled in on itself, forming the bright burning ball of a sun on his opposite shoulder. A vast cityscape below the sun coated his arm clear to his wrist. The buildings were warped at impossible angles, gaping windows and curving bits of roadway. Laundry lines strung with fluttering clothing and-

Edward pulled away.

“You left before you finished your part of the bargain today.” He leaned back on one hand, breaking me from my enamored examination by tucking the nearly spent cigarette between his lips and sucking on it hard enough to hollow out his cheeks again.

“There’s nothing to see, Edward,” I exhaled, certain that I was the housewife version of the girl he’d been trailing across the globe for the last five years. Compared to Alice, I was woefully unadorned and probably a boring sight for someone with tastes like his.

“That’s just part of the reason why I’m so intrigued.” He exhaled smoke and squinted at me through it. “You’re sort of fascinating.”

“And what’s the other part?”

“Alice told me about you. I was right, wasn’t I?”

“She really does tell you everything,” I huffed, stating the obvious and glaring at Alice who was now soundly passed out on the couch, kaleidoscope arm dangling off the edge. I should have known she wouldn’t keep her mouth shut.

“Yes, she does.” He sat upright, snuffing out the cigarette and suddenly holding me by the backs of my knees, pulling me closer. I stumbled into him, hands to his shoulders and my stomach nearly bumping his forehead. He licked his lips, tongue soft around the metal hoops and peered up at me through his hair.

“Take it off.”

Devilish and taunting, all in one devastating wave.

“Why are you doing this?” I whimpered, near to breaking and I couldn’t even remember what I had been holding out for. I had been trying to buy myself time, but this particular hour glass was about to run dry. His fingers dug into my legs and all I could think about were the tattooed letters etched across the top of them.

Open Eyes.

“I want to be the one, Bella,” he spoke soft and sure. “The one who gets this piece of you. You’ve been holding out for someone and I want it to be me.”

“You want a lot of things.”

“Yes, but right now, I just want to look at you. Please,” he all but whispered, hands gripping the back of my knees as though he was trying to hold them in place, lest they roam.

I was so done for.

I gripped the knot of my sarong tightly to disguise the subtle shake in my hands, pulling the loose ends free and taking a deep gulping breath before letting the fabric fall. It draped over his arms before puddling to the deck and I stared out over the water, the lavender and liquor and nicotine doing nothing to dull the laser-hot pattern his eyes began burning into my skin. If it had been a tattoo, it would have been a sprawling, graceful trail that spiraled around my hips and left curlicues across my chest.

Feathery markings up my neck and flowery ringlets down my thighs.

His hands never left my knees, though his grip changed drastically from slack to nearly painful depending on his face. The lip rings were firmly tucked away and he took his sweet ass time, leaving no part of me unmarked, leaving a trail in his wake of the same delicate fractals that lightning bolts sear onto their victims.

Scar tissue that was too beautiful to be caused by so much pain.

Alice ended the torture. She rolled over with her hands clutching her face, her hair flattened on one side and her skin gone milky red, groaning Edward’s name. His fingers clenched into my knees when she sat up, wobbly and trembling. He sighed and looked back up at me, reluctantly releasing his grip as though it was the very last thing he wanted to do.

“I want to see your bell,” I stalled him, poised firmly between his legs so that he couldn’t stand without toppling me. It was obvious I wasn’t the only bell in Edward’s life and I was willing to bargain if that’s what it took.

“I’m not going to tell you where it is,” he teased, eyes bright.

“I’m going to find it someday,” I warned him and all he did was smirk at me.

“I’m counting on it.”

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