The Other Way : Thirty Two

I Came Up For Air Too Fast And Just Got The Bends

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Almost the entire ride to the Mirabell dinner, I thought about Edward’s dandelions.

Thought about them rather than the rest of him. Rather than his collarbones or his piano  keys or the way he slept, hard and deep and stone still. Rather than his lip rings. Rather than that damn bell. Even though I knew the true connotations behind the flowers, I allowed myself to make new ones. By now I fairly certain that the tattoo had nothing to do with space or time. Nothing to do with life or death. It was me. Found wrapped up tight against the sun and then willed to life. Ignited, except lately I’d been wandering around like that last ghostly orb just before a heavy wind. Trembling with the effort of holding myself together. Poised on the precarious edge of disintegration and certain that it was a kid nearly a decade younger than me who was going to be my undoing.

Jacob.

So new and soft and ripe with possibility that he was almost unbearably vulnerable, willingly flinging himself into the unknown for love. Leaving everything he knew to show up on at our doorstep. He was either crazy or so much braver than me, and I still hadn’t decided which.

Jasper was staring out the window of the town car as we hurtled toward the party I had no desire at all to attend, peering off into the distance, his fingers curled through mine. Rose had suited him to match me without drawing too much attention from the ridiculous dress I was laced into. His suit was dark charcoal, shirt a silvery white, and he was once again in those honey-colored shoes, the lightest shades edging nearly up to the gold of my dress. Gold silk at his breast pocket, his wedding band the same color.  

I was sure he was thinking about Jacob. About the tearful confession the boy made from his knees just before we left tonight, and we were already running late. Reaching for hair that wasn’t there anymore and fumbling with his hands when they had nothing to do. It had been heartbreaking to witness, I was sure even more so for the two people involved, and I’d felt like I was intruding on a moment that should have been sweet and soft and just for them. Instead, it had turned into a pleading ultimatum with ragged, tear stained edges and someone had to make a choice.

I tightened my grip on Jasper and took a deep gulping breath before I blew.

“Jasper.” He turned his face to look at me, eyes heavy and forehead furrowed. The strain was beginning to show, every one of Jacob’s feelings echoed there before being forced away and I bit my lip roughly, trying to keep my eyes from prickling. I knew him better than I knew myself, how he liked his coffee and the fact that he always drank from my cup instead. The way he rolled over in his sleep and how he could drain a beer in two solid gulps. His deep set eyes and painfully familiar smell. The bruise he’d left on my ass two weeks ago had just finally faded away, along with those stitches.

“It’s time.”

Poof.

---

Edward was staring at my hands.

I tucked my wedding ring away, hiding my fingers in my lap and he swallowed roughly before opening his mouth.

“Have you slept with him? Since then?”

Oh, flashes.

Of skin and sand and sheets. Lavender and ink, diamonds and teeth, and I dug my own into my lip as I shook my head. Jasper and I had waltzed seamlessly into our old life. Reassumed our roles as though nothing had happened, skirting the obvious until Jacob showed up. He kissed me a little harder, looked at me a little longer, asking me silent questions that I declined to answer and he would have given me anything I wanted, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask. I was too enamored with my heartbeat to listen to anything else, certain that it had changed drastically over the last two weeks. I felt listless and lightheaded all the time as the frantic skittering was slowly replaced by something low and laborious.

Exhausting and strained. A constant metronome beat, over and over and over.

Edward. Edward. Edward. Edward.

“Why not?” He furrowed his eyebrows, looking so perplexed that I knew without a shadow of a doubt just what his intentions had been all along. Knew that the phone call made from the deck while I laid there and watched him pace the hardwood was in preparation to leave, securing flights. That he had known he was disappearing and orchestrated that entire thing. Guided Jasper and I through something that we couldn’t have ever done without him, possibly with the hope that it would continue after he was gone.

Or that I’d come to my senses.

“You didn’t even say goodbye,” my voice wobbled precariously.

“I’m sorry for that,” he sighed. Eyes dropping heavily to his feet.

“I thought you were trying to get away from me.”

He shook his head, sounding frustrated again. “You kept telling me I was leaving. I started to believe you.”

My heart seized fiercely, unexpectedly, and certainly harder than I ever thought possible. I missed Alice, even though I didn’t want to. I was scared for her and in total awe of her and sort of fucking pissed off at her, but I couldn’t believe that she hadn’t come back with him. “Why did you leave her there? I don’t think you should have done that.”

“She married him,” he shrugged, his jaw ground together, sounding unimpressed.

“Dayo? I thought she couldn’t?”

“Leave it to her to trump a thousand years of cultural traditions.” He smiled crookedly, as though he’d made a joke. “She’s happy. Safe. I’m letting her go.”

“But you’re in love with her.”

“You’re in love with him. Don’t deny it,” he barked, shutting me down as I opened my mouth to protest. He was right. I’d been in love with Jasper for years and it wasn’t the sort of thing I could hide. It wouldn’t do any good to try to play it down because it was all over my face. A fanciful daydream love that tasted like saffron and violets. Soft and raw and pure in a way that made my mouth go numb and my heart skitter around like a preteen girl on hormones and a new crush.

When I was near Edward, my heart just churned out his name like an echo.

He was peering at me like he was reading the inside of my skull, biting his bottom lip with brutal indifference, bone and metal warping the tiny inked bell inside his mouth, eyes nearly watering as he glanced away from me. He looked nearly apologetic, as though he felt bad for yelling at me.

“You met us at a really fucked up time, Bella. We’d only back in the states for a day. The night of that stupid dinner, when I found you outside with that gigantic rock around your neck, I’d had my feet on American soil for exactly twenty-two hours. Jubilee hadn’t even been dead for a week. Alice was supposed to come with me but she was such a wreck that I basically drugged her just to get her to sleep and let my mother drag me along instead. I shouldn’t have left her alone,” he lamented, sounding angry and regretful. “She woke up while I was gone and destroyed her room.”

I stared at Edward in shock, mouth unable to communicate at all with my brain which was probably for the best because I would have said something stupid. He took a heavy breath and chewed on his lip for a while before continuing, as though he was trying to decided how to navigate a minefield.

“I can’t blame her. I destroyed our medical tent when we lost the baby, so she learned all her tricks from me. I yelled at her, screamed and ranted like a fucking asshole because she hadn’t listened to anything I said. She wanted to use some fucking plant she found out there somewhere and made me stand by and watch her sabotage herself. I broke a bunch of stuff and said a lot of really terrible things and then I left her there to deal with the aftermath. Walked around until the sun came up and I only went back because I felt so fucking guilty.” He gulped. “The village was was in turmoil and Alice was a goddamn disaster. I was terrified that something terrible was going to happen to her. That they’d come after her in the middle of the night like a damn witch hunt.”

“They would do that?” I stuttered. Edward shot me a cynical look.

Yes. Yes they would.

“This was the chieftain's only surviving heir,” Edward continued. “Not only does Dayo not have any children of his own, his immediate family has suffered devastating losses and Jubilee was the final nail. They were out for blood and Alice just lay in her room staring at the wall like she was going fucking comatose. I probably would have done it on my own, but Dayo basically demanded that we leave. He knew that she’d be blamed and he forced me to take her away by practically banishing us.”

Edward glanced warily at me but I was still too stunned to speak. He sighed, and just from the way he kept it low in his chest, I knew everything only got worse.

“I put her on a camel and got us the fuck out of there, but I don’t think we were really safe until we boarded that boat in Morocco. She cried the whole way there, for fucking days across the desert. We made it to Lisbon, but we got stuck there before they could get a plane over to us.” He swallowed roughly, jawline hard as stone. “I went to find some food that first night and I was only gone twenty minutes, but she managed to carve half a word into her arm with my motherfucking pocket knife before I got back.”

He spat the words as though they tasted like acid, caustic and flesh burning.

Holy fuck.

“Her heaven tattoo?” I gaped.

Edward swallowed roughly and nodded. “That fucking tattoo,” he grumbled. “I only made her get it because I couldn’t stand to look at the scar anymore, the way she touched it. It had barely healed before the ink went down. If you look close enough you can see it underneath there.” He finally looked at me, his lip rings rubbing against each other as his tongue searched them out.

“I guess I didn’t realize she was that bad.” I mumbled, remembering how strangely detached and overly giddy she was, jumping from topic to topic like a rubber ball on a hardwood floor. How many times she had caught me off guard, suddenly five minutes ahead and waiting impatiently for me to catch up. How she bounced between needy and remote, loving and detached, caring and nearly sadistic, like it was the easiest thing in the world to be so manic.  

“Demolished would be a better word,” Edward muttered.

“And that’s the night you slept together?”

Edward stared at me, looking nearly horrified. “Fuck no. I bandaged her up and fought the urge to knock her over the head so that she’d just finally sleep. I drugged her up instead, forced a sleeping pill down her and watched her all night long. She didn’t say a fucking word to me for three days and then attacked me in my sleep the night before we finally flew out. I just let her. I’d tried everything else and nothing was helping,” he sighed. “I took her to that island hoping that we’d be able to ignore it all for a while and just try to recuperate. That obviously didn’t happen.” He eyed me thoughtfully and I couldn’t help but bite my lip.

“You think I made it worse for her?”

“No, I think you were actually better for her than I was. You gave her something I couldn’t but . . . finding that Devil’s Claw certainly didn’t help matters. As for the rest of it . . . ” His eyebrows compacted thoughtfully. “Alice was in free fall. I’m sorry she took us with her.”

“Why did she do it? If she loved Dayo so much . . .” That particular wound was still gaping open without the benefit of stitches to hold it closed. Starting to turn green at the edges and oddly cool to the touch. The state of mind she must have been didn’t make it hurt any less.

“I don’t think she gave a fuck about much by that point.” He gulped and shook his head. “She went back there fully expecting to die. I expected it too.”

Jesus fucking christ. I was beginning to understand why he’d feel the need to at least accompany her, playing bodyguard on her mad dash back into the pit of fire. If only to ensure that the people she was running to weren’t going to tie her to a pole and leave her out for the hyenas. The ancient version of burning a witch at the stake. Edward was rubbing at the dandelions on his neck, chewing on his lips and it might have been subconscious, but that only made it worse.

“I can’t be your default. Your second choice,” I stated solemnly, staring at him.

“I can’t be yours, either.” Edward let out a rough exhale, his eyes widening and he shook his head in near frustration. “I didn’t come back here with any expectations, Bella. I left Africa and walked back into a shit storm that you are square in the center of. I can’t just stand by and watch, but you’ve never given me any sort of indication that I could ever be anything but a passing phase in your life.” He almost growled at the end, catching air in his throat and grinding his words between his teeth, trying to cover how hurt he sounded with a healthy coat of menace.

“I-”

“Every time I asked, you shot me down.” He shook his head, cutting me off. He was right. He’d basically asked me to change my mind, more than once, in so many words, and I’d deflected every one like an assassin dodging a sniper. “I left only to drop her off with Dayo and the moment that was done, I got the fuck out of there. I didn’t even stay for their wedding. I care about her in some way I don’t really understand and that I sort of blame her for, but I’m not in love with her. I have no better way of explaining it,” he sighed in completion.

“Just because the dog doesn’t understand what the bell does to him, doesn’t mean that the bell is to blame.”

Edward shook his head, looking serious and determined. “She’s not my bell.”

You are.

I know he didn’t say it out loud. I know because I watched his mouth and it didn’t move at all but I swear that I heard him, deep inside my head and with the voice he used right after he’d gotten off. A static whisper from his throat.

“Maybe the question should be, does the bell understand what it does to the dog?” He cocked an eyebrow at me, taking another drag, cigarette smoldering close to his fingers.

“Not in the slightest,” I shook my head.

“Then we’re even. Neither of us understands this.” He leveled his eyes right at me, bordering up on accusing but staying shy of flat-out blaming me. “I haven’t taken a single breath since the last time I saw you. I think it’s your fault.”

“Mine?” For a moment I wanted to be hurt that he was blaming me for something too, but I fully understood the feeling of being flung around like a rag doll.

“You’re not the kind I thought you were, and I don’t know what to do with that,” he grumbled.

“Of bell? What kind am I, then?” I asked, thinking of church bells and passing bells and school bells. The liberty bell and the tiny one that chimed inside my grandmother’s ancient clock. The one inside his mouth.

“Diving,” he said, flatly.

“Diving?”

“Yeah,” he wet his lips, tonging the ink between metal. “The compression chambers that divers use to resurface. I think I need you to breathe. I came up for air too fast and just got the bends”

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