The Other Way : Thirty One

Blue The Exact Same Color As All Of My Insides 

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There was a box on my doormat when we pulled up.

Unassuming and so normal in brown paper wrapping that I almost forgot how fucked up everything had gotten the moment I spotted it. Edward had looked distracting enough that it kept my mind off reality for most of the drive, all sorts of out of place behind the wheel of Esme’s silver Volvo. He’d picked me up in the middle of that crowded room and stormed out without a backward glance, depositing me in the front seat of a car I’d seen before and smelled too familiar to ignore.

“Why are we in your mother’s car?” I tore my eyes off the misleading box as I undid my seatbelt.

He glanced at me as he threw the car into park and killed the engine. “Because I don’t have one.”

“You don’t?” My question went unanswered until Edward had uncurled himself from the car and appeared at my door, helping me to stand in my trailing dress and aching foot, my abandoned heels dangling from his fingertips.

“What would I do with a car?” he asked with a chuckle. “I rode a bicycle in Africa.” He helped me to the door while I imagined him wheeling down a rutted dusty road somewhere too far away for me to fathom. I handed him my house keys and stooped to pick the box up, nearly half of the top covered with a colorful collage of stamps. “I knew it would make it here before me,” he grumbled, unlocking the door.

“What is it?” I clutched the box to my stomach, already excited.

“You asked me to get you something. Something ‘pretty’ if I remember correctly.” Edward pushed the door open and I limped inside, fluttery with anticipation. He dropped my shoes in the hallway and leaned up against the back of the couch, watching as I fell to my knees and opened the box on the coffee table. It was a tea pot, nestled in a cascade of white tissue paper. Cast of metal, enameled a shiny bright blue and etched with a delicate golden pattern around every voluptuous curve. The spout of the teapot curled dramatically and the lid was topped with a golden ball the size of an almond.

“Edward,” I exhaled, not really knowing what I had expected him to send, but certainly not this and I secretly loved how he always seemed to exceed my mediocre standards. The metal was cool to the touch, the lid secured with a metal hinge and the inside was black as night.

“Tea is something you can’t escape over there. It’s like a handshake.” He smiled sheepishly, looking almost as though he’d expected me to hate it.

“I don’t know if I have any.” I nearly pouted, wanting so badly to put this beautiful present to work. Edward seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when he produced a plastic bag from his pocket as though he was only waiting for the right moment to give it to me. As if he had known this was going to happen, and had come prepared.

According to Jasper, he had.

“Jasper said he called you,” I accused. Edward nodded, confirming my suspicions and I scowled at him. “I thought you said your mother asked you to escort her.”

“She did. His call was only a formality.”

“How long have you been back?”

“Two days,” he sighed.

Part of me wondered if I was the only person who hadn’t known what was going to happen tonight. I stared at the pretty tea pot in my lap, feeling so far flung that this simple metal object from halfway around the world was suddenly the only thing I could understand. Its gilded etchings matched my dress and the blue was the exact same color as all my insides and I clutched it tight in case I accidentally burst into tears, or threw it against the wall. When I glanced up at Edward, his lips rings were tucked out of sight and his arms were crossed over his chest. His eyes darted all over me as though he could see all the marks he’d left, invisible to everyone but us.

“What are you thinking?” I asked him so that he wouldn’t ask me first.

“That I’d like to peel you out of that dress. But let’s make tea first,” he said with a tortured smile, picking up the set and heading toward the kitchen, glancing back at me just before he disappeared. “Don’t change.”

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We ended up in my greenhouse, set up at the little white wrought iron patio set Jasper had put near the peonies as though we really were having a tea party. Playing pretend in our dress-up clothes. It was so out of place, him, here, that I was sure I’d gotten up out of bed in a dead sleep and fallen face-first down a rabbit hole. Edward boiled a full kettle of water before collecting a couple of shot glasses, the sugar bowl and a spoon, all of it now clustered on the little table between us. I lit a couple of candles as much for light as for the bug repellant and sat in one of the chairs watching him intently, his forehead furrowed as he concentrated on setting everything up in front of him.

Ritualistic and thoughtful. Determined and precise.

“This looks important,” I mused as he dumped a palmful of tea leaves into the bottom of the metal tea pot and filled it with boiling water, candle light sparkling against his lip rings. His hair looked longer, sun bleached against his skin.

“It is. The ceremony is almost more important than actually drinking it.” He winked at me and filled one of the shot glasses nearly to the top with sugar, adding it to the teapot and stirring the contents before closing the lid.

“Now what?” I asked, thoroughly intrigued.

“Now, we wait.” He leaned back against his chair, eyeing his surroundings. He’d discarded his jacket and then his tie, looking far more comfortable without them, sleeves of his shirt rolled up and buttons undone. Gone mostly monochrome in the remnants of his suit except for all that familiar ink, arms as colorful as anything around us. Dandelions peeking from his collar.

“It’s nice in here,” he mused, tonguing his lip rings and fingering a soft leaf of sage from the big purple pot by his knee. “Did you do all of this?”

I glanced around, at the swing dangling from the ceiling just a few feet away, a carpet of clover beneath it. Violets in full bloom up against the lamb’s ear. Snowberry and witch hazel. Yellow crowned yarrow and my newest edition, a plant that had taken surprisingly well to its surrounding and made my head hurt every time I was near it, much less my heart. Lavender, the Spanish variety, clustered into tight purple buds with showy paper petals bursting from their crowns. Silvery leaves and long slender stems, potently sweet and steeped in far too much memory.

“I guess I can see now why everyone was so worked up about the greenhouse. He really did buy it for you.” Edward mused, staring right at that lavender plant like he knew exactly what I was thinking.

I gulped. Painful and searing as though I’d rolled my gum around in powdered glass and tried to swallow it whole. I couldn’t bear the thought of parting with this place. I loved it here, every plant hand picked and I’d talked to all of them, poured the gravel pathways myself and spent hours lying in the patches of clover. Sitting underneath the rather sad looking pear tree. It just wouldn’t flourish, no matter how much water or time or whispered words of encouragement I gave it. I was trying not to think of that tree as a metaphor for my marriage, but my mouth obviously doesn’t give a fuck about my self preservation.

“I’m divorcing him,” I spilled.

“You’re what?” Edward stared at me as though I’d just declared my intentions to grown a horn in the middle of my forehead. Wary and curious and full of disbelief.

“Getting a divorce,” I repeated in a near whisper. “I want it. He wants it.”

It felt so awkward to say out loud, just as awkward as when I admitted to Alice that Jasper was gay, giving the words a brief physicality that rendered them undeniably real. I’d barely had time to adjust to it myself, the conversation with Jasper in the car had changed everything and I was torn between bone throbbing sadness and downright fucking enthusiasm. I watched Edward, waiting for a response but he only sucked those black lip rings into his mouth, tonguing the bell that was inked there between them and wrapped his hand around the handle of the teapot in silence. He tipped the spout close to the lip of the shot glass, a stream of dark liquid hitting the bottom and as it filled he pulled the teapot high into the air, a long thin stream of tea hitting the glass and frothing to a bubbly crown at the top. He ended with a flourish and filled the second glass the same way, close and then far away, so that each was topped with a foamy inch of aromatic tea.

“The first round is always the best.” He glanced at me as he pushed a steaming shot glass across the table, his mouth curling suggestively to the side. “Strong and sweet and wickedly hot.”

He was talking about tea. Right?

I watched him toss the shot back, slurping noisily, wincing as he nearly slammed his shot glass back onto the table with a hiss. Looking as though he’d just taken a shot of fiery resignation.

“I’m sure that your mother wouldn’t approve of that method. I think she taught you better manners,” I teased him, the glass already burning my fingers. Edward grinned and crossed his elbows on the table.

“You have to slurp. It’s considered rude if you don’t and otherwise, you’ll burn your tongue right off.”

He was right. The tea was roughly the same temperature as a molten meteorite and taking it with a healthy gulp of air was the only thing that made the heat somewhat tolerable. It was so strong and so sweet that I felt jittery and high strung the instant it hit my stomach. The next round was a little weaker, by heat and sweet standards, the last even more so, much like the tea I was used to drinking by the mugful. Edward measured another palmful of tea, glass full of sugar, pot full of water; prepping another round. His hair was falling into his face and his shirt was starting to wilt in the damp air of the greenhouse, my own curls beginning to compact into ringlets and if I squinted my eyes hard enough I could almost imagine we were on some island in the middle of the big, gigantic sea.

“Did you know that Carlisle was planning to out Jasper tonight?” I asked as he stood, fishing in his pocket and producing a pack of cigarettes. They were a different brand than the ones he smoked before, the pack the wrong color, but the sight of it in his hands made my head spin.

“Yes,” he paused, striding a few solid paces away and tucking a cigarette between his lips instead, a flare of flame lighting up his face. He stopped near the swing, eyeing it as he let out a mouthful of smoke. “Letting you walk into that room was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” He hollowed out his cheeks to take another deep drag, the stick hidden in his hand, burning end dangerously close to his palm and smoke curling between his fingers. Before I could ask him why he would let me do it, allow me to walk blindly into a battle I had no idea was about to be waged, he continued. “He did it because of me.”

“You? But, why?”

Edward visibly shuddered. “Because I broke,” he thundered, rough and forced out underneath his tongue. “Because I called him from Niamey and I told him everything. Alice and the baby. You and that fucking island. Jasper. Jacob. All of it.”

“Why would you do that?”

Edward took another angry looking drag off that cigarette and almost glared at me, words of smoke that disappeared into the air around his face. “You. I can’t even remember how to breathe. How to sleep . . . I’ve been awake for days and I can’t decide if I should stay away from you, or not. Part of me wants to hate you for it.”

“You hate me?” I struggled to keep my face straight, digging my fingernails into my palms and hoping the pain would force my face to stay composed.

He snorted derisively. “I want to climb inside your smile.”

What was that supposed to mean?

“Is this what you wanted? From the very beginning?”

“No,” he shook his head, pausing forever to chew on his lip rings. “I wanted to fuck you. Then I got greedy and wanted you to love me.”

So fucking blunt. And truthful. And him.

“What do you want now?” I floundered and Edward nearly burned a hole right through me with those laser-beam eyes.

“I’m still hoping for that.”

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