Chapter 12 text

Wednesday, July 14th

I woke up early, actually missing waking up in Edward’s arms, although it had only happened twice before. I couldn’t believe how much had changed in my life since Alice’s wedding. In three days, I had met this amazing guy who, by some miracle, actually liked me and told me so, and I had spent the night with him twice. I was truly falling for him. Hard. I guess that’s what happens when you’re starving; when you finally find food, you eat until you’re ready to explode.

I mindlessly got out of bed when my alarm finally went off and got ready for my day. It was going to be another slightly boring class, where the students had to finalize their chapters because they were handing them in tomorrow. They had to spend the day peer-editing each other’s work and handing in the edited and final copies so that I could observe the editing and grammar skills of each student as well.

As I pulled into the school parking lot, my mind raced with Edward’s kiss from yesterday. I had never felt so connected, so wanted and so satisfied in my life. And although it was simply a kiss, it had meant more to me than anything else I had ever experienced.

I walked into the class and gave the students their editing assignment. That was the last thing I remembered of my time at school. In the back of my mind, I knew that I needed to check up on the student’s progress and be the teacher in the classroom, but I couldn’t get yesterday out of my head. Edward had taken my story about Jacob so well. I was afraid that he would see how foolish I had been and think that I was just a weak and desperate girl. Instead, he basically called Jake an idiot and thanked his stars for Jake’s stupidity.

 I still didn’t understand why though; why someone like Edward would ever want someone like me. I had nothing to offer him, nothing to give. Edward was beautiful, brilliant, kind, giving and incredibly thoughtful. He was a freakin’ doctor who helped with the rehabilitation and therapy of children for Christ’s sake. He was a saint. And I was painfully ordinary, with one friend and no experience. I was forgettably dull and I had nothing to offer this ‘relationship’ if that’s what it actually was, nothing to offer Edward to make him want to stay with me. …well there is something that you could give him that you’ve been carrying around for 28 years…

I shook my head at the desperate thought.  It wasn’t like it was something that I wanted to keep forever, or something that I wanted to keep until I was married, I was just scared. Jake…he had alluded to the fact that he wanted to sleep with me, that ‘it would be fun’ as he put it, but I didn’t trust him enough to be comfortable with him. And just like any other time we got together, I knew as soon as we did that, I wouldn’t hear from him again for a long, long time.

 I sometimes wished that I would have just slept with Jake though, just let him do whatever he wanted with me. It would have sucked, being used and not really wanted, but at least I would know what it was like to be touched, marginally desired and perhaps, I wouldn’t be this scared shell I was now. Edward wouldn’t want someone like me, a girl who was emotionally damaged. No one wants to take someone’s virginity, but during a certain age range, it was bound to happen. Edward was 30, would he really want to pop a cherry, or teach someone how to touch or be touched? By today’s standards, I should have already done all this, I should have had these experiences. I should have experienced what it felt like to be naked in front of a man, touched by a man. I should have felt secure enough to trust a man not to hurt me, or laugh at me or ridicule me. I should have felt like a confident and capable adult, but I didn’t. I felt like I was still a kid.

I could feel my eyes tearing up and quickly blinked them away before any of my students saw. It was embarrassing enough to be thinking about this at all, let alone in front of students who were more experienced than I was.

Class ended some time later while my mind continued to be unfocused for the rest of the day. I drove home with unseeing eyes, somehow making it safely back to my driveway.  My mind kept running over what Edward told me the day before, how he had a 28 hour shift and that we wouldn’t be able to see each other until tomorrow.

It scared me a little, how much I had come to feel comfort when Edward was around and knowing that I wouldn’t see him left an unsettling feeling in my stomach. I tried to distract myself by calling Alice, but realized my own stupidity once I heard Alice’s excited voice on the answering machine.

You’ve reached Alice and Jasper Whitlock...EEEEEEE…we can’t come to the phone right now as we’re on our HONEYMOON!!!Please leave us a message and we’ll call you when we get back. *kiiiiissssssss* I love you…BEEP.

Alice’s voice was a far away whisper as she told Jasper that she loved him before the defining BEEP sounded in my ear. I decided to leave a quick message saying that I missed them and hoped they were having a great honeymoon. Alice said that she would be checking her messages from the road in case I needed to reach either of them.  I knew it was an unimportant message, but it was better to say something than to just leave a message of me breathing.

After I hung up the phone, I slumped down on my couch and looked around my quiet home. I quickly realized that there was nothing else for me to do. There was no one else in my life besides Alice and now Edward, no one else to call, to talk to, to spend time with. I slowly curled up, bringing my legs up to my chest while I rested my right side on the back of the couch. I wrapped a blanket around my legs and stared out my front window at my lively neighborhood. There were children playing, friends walking their dogs, mothers pushing their strollers, partners walking down the street holding hands. A tear fell from my eyes as I realized that I only really had two people in my life; one that was off on a honeymoon, starting a brand new life, and the other I had known for a total of 4 days.

I couldn’t take it anymore. My home was starting to feel empty and depressing. I quickly jumped up from the couch, throwing my blanket over the back, and grabbed some flip-flops, my iPhone, headphones and my house keys. I went out my door, locked it behind me and started walking. I walked up my street, around my block and through the park a couple blocks away. I had music blasting in my ear so loud that it drowned out the slapping of my shoes, the chirping of the birds and the laughter of the children playing. I was completely lost in the music, but I wasn’t registering it at all. My mind was completely blank, I wasn’t thinking about anything. I slumped into one of the swings in the park and numbly pushed myself back and forth. My eyes were unseeing as I focused on the images in my mind. I saw Edward over and over; smiling at the wedding, worrying as he woke me up from my nightmares, excitement in his eyes as he took me to the picnic and movie in the park.

Everything in my mind was Edward. He was all I was thinking about. His words, his touch, his smell. He had taken control over my every thought and it frightened me. I hadn’t been happy in years, and now one man had entered my life mere days ago and had completely upturned it.

My mind continued to contemplate the overwhelming effect Edward had on me and before I knew it, the sky was getting dark and I was sitting on my front stoop. My playlist had ended but I hadn’t registered the silence.

I slowly stood after I looked at my phone and saw that it was already 5:12. I had been walking around my block for hours, my mind remarkably void of everything. I went straight to my kitchen, choosing a simple peanut butter and jam sandwich for dinner and sat on the couch. I kept changing the channel, not really recognizing what I was seeing. It wasn’t until I saw “Say ‘Yes’ to the Dress” that I stopped clicking and set the remote down. I watched the episode in complete awe, thinking back on my ‘Yeah, right’ folder on my computer. Hour after hour, the “Say ‘Yes’ to the Dress” marathon kept me engaged. I saw dress after dress, visualizing them in my folder amongst dozens of other pictures of wedding dresses I would never get the chance to wear. It was baffling how many episodes ran right after the other, showcasing woman after woman who would become bride after bride.

I actually stopped and wondered how many women there were in Seattle who were engaged, who had found their someone and were getting married. How many people in this town had found their other half, had fallen in love and more importantly had found someone to fall in love with them? And in return, how many people were still looking? How many women were just like me, sitting alone at home, wishing that they were in love, had found their someone and were on the show, trying on wedding dresses?

I knew that I wasn’t completely alone. I had Edward, sort of, but I didn’t know in what capacity I ‘had’ him. I knew he had feelings for me, he told me so, but were they just feelings of interest? Was he just curious about the possibility of ‘real’ feelings so he was just testing the water? Was he ‘testing the water’ with other women? What did he expect from me? For us? Were we an ‘us’? How would he define the ‘thing’ that was going on between ‘us’?

There were so many questions running through my head, and they just kept leading to more questions and more doubt. Edward had said that I was ‘the best thing to ever enter his life’. And although my heart soared at his words, my stupid fucking brain doubted them. I didn’t trust them. I wanted to, but I didn’t. They didn’t make sense. How could I be the best thing to ever enter his life when we just met and I had nothing to give him, barely even affection?

I turned off the TV and went back to the kitchen to wash my plate before I went to bed. I quickly jumped in the shower before slipping into my yellow cami and black, capri, pajama pants and then I crawled into bed. It was just after 10:30 and I wasn’t really tired, but I didn’t want to be awake anymore.

I laid there, staring at my ceiling as my clock mocked me with every hour that passed. I couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular to keep me awake, but my body refused to rest. I was tense, antsy and felt like I was missing something or forgot something. I’m missing Edward. I shook the thought from my head, not wanting to admit how much my brain was right. I didn’t want to get dependant on him, drawn to him so deeply. I had to remind myself that Edward was just a temporary happiness, that soon, he would be gone and I would be back to lonely old Bella. He was a vacation, and as lovely, wanted and needed as the vacation was, at some point, I had to come home.

Nothing

Nothing

Nothing.

Hour by hour and minute by minute, my brain continued to sit there in a state of vacancy but refused to let me sleep.

I started to cry at how tired I had now become. It was 1am and I had yet to get a minute of sleep, but my body ached for rest. I tried to think of any boring novel that I had that I could read, but reading always engaged my imagination and would do the opposite of tiring me out. I tried counting imaginary sheep, but I felt like an idiot for trying to imagine sheep while staring at my ceiling. I even tried thinking about past dreams to hopefully spur on the feeling of slumber, but all that came back were bad dreams and anxiety.

“DAMN IT!” I yelled as I threw the blankets off me. I angrily wiped the tears away and stormed downstairs to get myself a glass of water and hopefully find something that would knock me out. Maybe some ‘Sleepy Time’ tea?

I scoured my cupboards for said tea, but came up with nothing. Tea was not something that I normally drank, and specialty tea was definitely a rarity. I settled for water and walked back up to my bed with a defeatist attitude.

“Ok brain,” I actually said out loud, illustrating just how desperately I needed sleep, “let’s get one thing straight. I control you and I need rest. So go to sleep and no bad dreams. You hear me?”

I flopped on my bed, cuddling with my pillow that still slightly smelt like Edward and slowly fell into a dreamless sleep.

RING…knock, knock, knock

I hesitantly opened my eyes, wondering why I was being woken up. I looked at the clock beside me and noticed it was 4:32am. It’s still dark out…why am I up?

RING…knock, knock, knock

There it was again, the sound that woke me up. I slowly registered that sound as my doorbell and someone knocking on my front door. The sound came again. I fearfully got up, grabbing the emergency baseball bat I kept under my bed and made my way down the stairs. I felt like a ninja in my own home, walking quietly and with some surprising stealth down the stairs, quickly past my front hall and through the kitchen to the far side of the house. I stood in my dining room, peering around the corner and out the living room window to see if I could see who it was. I couldn’t see anyone as I was too far away from the window but I saw a vehicle parked in my driveway. I squinted my eyes as I hesitantly took a step closer, still hugging the dining room wall and just barely made out a silver Volvo in the driveway. I let out a huge sigh of relief as I made my way back toward the front door and peeped through the peephole. There stood Edward, looking far beyond tired and still in his scrubs from his shift in the surgical ward. I still didn’t get how he could work part time in surgery and part time in therapy, but apparently this magnificently tired man did.

I turned the deadbolt and unlocked the door before opening it to reveal a half asleep Edward leaning up against the doorframe. He didn’t say anything as he walked in the door and enwrapped me in his arms. My arms instinctively went around him as my eyes began to close. He was what I was missing, what I needed to feel safe and to be able to sleep. I laid the side of my face on his chest and took in his unique smell.

I could feel Edward’s lips gently press into the left side of my temple. He squeezed me tighter into his body before he reluctantly pulled back to look in my sleep filled eyes. He looked exhausted. There were light purple bags under his brilliant eyes, his hair was in even more disarray than normal and he had a light scruff littering his jaw.

He gracefully lifted his hands from my back where they held me securely and cupped my face, trailing his thumbs over my cheekbones and under my tired eyes before his lips longingly pressed against mine. His kiss was needy yet slow, close mouthed but passionate. He reluctantly pulled out of the kiss and rested his forehead against mine as he pulled my body back into his.

“Edward?” I asked in a sleep filled voice. My arms immediately clung to him, afraid that this was all a dream and that he wasn’t actually here with me, holding me and anchoring me.

“I just needed to see you,” he whispered against my forehead before he placed a tender kiss there. “I missed you today. A lot.”

He pulled back to meet my eyes. We just stood there in my front hall, staring into each other’s tired eyes that shone with happiness and relief. He placed one more kiss on my forehead before he pulled back and slid his left hand down my arm to take my hand. It wasn’t until his hand engulfed the end of the baseball bat I was still holding that he noticed that my hands weren’t free.  His eyes lit up with humor and pride as he gently took the bat from my hand and entwined our fingers.

“That’s my girl” he whispered as I smiled back at him, he lifted our joined hands up and pressed a soft kiss over my knuckles. He gently pulled me along, leading upstairs and into my bedroom. He stopped on the left side of the bed, pulling back the blanket and holding it up for me. I reluctantly let go of his hand and climbed back into my now cold bed. Edward covered me up and slowly walked over to the right side of the bed. He was basically dead on his feet as he pulled up the blankets, crawled into my bed and got situated in front of me, wrapping his right arm under my neck and pulling me to lie on his chest.

“Goodnight beautiful,” he whispered against the top of my head as his arms tightened around me and he fell instantly to sleep. I laid there in the dark, staring up at the beautiful face above me, sleeping in my bed, resting his head on my pillow, just listening to his heartbeat beneath my ear. He really was here. He came to me after his shift, just to sleep. There was no agenda, very little words and no attempt at any physical activity, besides the sweet and longing kiss at the door.

He came to me, just to be with me. Just to sleep. It was with that thought that I closed my eyes, and dreamt of Edward sleeping beside me forever.