Writings

I love long car trips.

I’ve always had this theory that all my fiction ideas are out there floating in the air, just waiting for me to grab them. And that the harder I smack into them, the better they stick. This was why, as a very young child, I was somehow perfectly content to ride my bike no further than one driveway to either side, so that my mom could look out our front window and make sure I was zipping by with some regularity. I would pedal that same 200 yards for hours, making up stories and talking through dialogue. Then, I would come in, boot up our MS-DOS machine, and write it all down.

When I was allowed to go further, I would do the same thing, but throughout the neighborhood, sometimes pedaling the same hill over and over again because with the rush of the downhill side came characters and dialogue and plot.

From ages 13-18, I had a season pass every summer to the amusement park near my home. I would get my mom to drop me off (and later, drive myself), and arrive with a water bottle, a notebook, and a pen. I would spend the day riding the coasters and inevitably leave the park with material for story after story. If riding downhill on a bike caused story ideas, hurtling through the open air at seventy miles an hour was an even better idea.

Nowadays, my “smacking into ideas” happens mostly during long drives (though it’s been a few years since I’ve gone to an amusement park, and I think a visit is in order). Fortunately, I drive a lot by myself. So even though I’m hard at work using Camp NaNoWriMo to get as close as possible to finishing STREGONI, when my drive this week yielded a chapter of ONE DAY, I dropped everything to get it down.

This story, I’ve mentioned before, is one of the oddest and most organic writing experiences I’ve ever had. Ask me when a plot point is going to occur in STREGONI, and I can tell you almost to the paragraph, even if it’s unwritten. Not so for this story. I know exactly where it’s going, and even almost every single step they’ll take along the way (at some points down to the actual dialogue—the exchange about Ann Arbor home prices was written probably a year ago), but I don’t know always when a particular piece will fit, or when these two are going to make a particular stride. For instance, on my drive, along with the scenes in this chapter, I also talked my way through the conversation Bella and Carlisle will have about his divorce…but when I came to put it in the chapter, I found they’re not ready to talk about that yet.

Much to my chagrin.

So, I’m just going to buckle my seat belt, and go for the ride.  Thank you for coming along.

So, my word count in MS Word tells me that there is almost 20,000 words written of One Day. I’ve posted about 14, maybe 15,000 of that. I confess–this story is running away both the one I struggle most with writing, and the one which I am most passionate about finishing (though it runs a close second to Stregoni, which runs a close second to my two long-overdue FGB pieces—I guess I just love writing about these characters.)

At the same time, I think in part because I *do* know where this is going, it’s hard to sift through these chapters of misunderstanding and confusion and hurt. Especially since I tend to get right in there with my characters and feel everything they feel. I thank you for your patience in this.

One Day is funny, because it’s a mix of both completely pre-planned scenes and often even distinct pieces of dialogue that were written in my initial exuberant rush of getting this down on paper, and inspiration and scenes which really are very much in the moment. It’s oddly organic–but not the easiest to write! I was surprised at some of the things which happened in this chapter (Bella’s hand, for instance). And one thing I was very surprised about was that the line from Carlisle which gives the title of this story found its way in. I had written just that single line almost after I wrote the first 2,000 words of this story (which have yet to post!), and when I wrote it, I thought, “Aha. There’s the title.”  I had expected it to come in far further down the line, but no, here it was, ready to slide in amidst the turmoil of this chapter. And it makes sense there. It’s strange how writing works that way at times.

At any rate. I know some of you would like to see things move quicker, to see where these two are going to end up. But, in my experience, walking one’s way out of grief is often a “one step forward, two steps back” kind of dance, and above all else, I want Carlisle’s and Bella’s experiences in this story to be organic to the AU which spawned it. Enjoy the chapter, and thank you for reading. And for all the pimpage and support and notes of, “Hey, we still want more of that!” It keeps me going. 🙂

A heavy freight train rumbled past at full speed, no more than ten or fifteen yards from the window. For a brief second, the clamor of a full bar disappeared into the blare of the train’s horn, and every table shook violently. Beers were snatched into the air so they wouldn’t slosh. When the train had whooshed by, I glanced at the other people at the table, wide-eyed.

“Sidetrack,” one of them explained, grinning. “Aptly named.”

The others laughed, and beers were set on the now still table once more.

I became strangely popular after the first week in Patient Care. Whether it was girls who wanted to know what I knew about “Will,” or guys who flocked because the hottest guy in the M1 class had seemed to show an interest in me, it was tough to turn them down. People wanted to invite me out to bars, to coffee, to study dates. I met so many M1s, I could barely keep them straight.

Tonight it was at least Kelsey, whom I’d gotten to know. She was a native “Michigander” as they called themselves, from some small town called Petoskey. She’d done her undergrad at UM, and like many of them, hadn’t wanted to be anywhere but UM for medical school. She seemed as though she would be perfectly content to do her internship, residency and really, her entire career right here in Ann Arbor.

Or technically not here in Ann Arbor, I thought, staring out the window at the tracks.

Kelsey’s boyfriend’s name was Dan; he was in the law school. Like some longtime UM people they’d found haunts beyond the typical undergrad places, and so after a long study session—gross anatomy was our newest module—they’d dragged me and two of our study buddies, Mitch and Nabil, out to a dark bar in the neighboring town of Ypsilanti, home of the tiny Eastern Michigan University. Sidetrack was literally as it was named—about thirty feet from the main train tracks through “Ypsi.” There were two pianos, and they had a regular open mic night. As we sat and chatted and drank, on the far side of the room in a shadowed corner, people kept plugging into the amps to sign or play. Some were incredibly talented, some were incredibly well, not, but it wasn’t bad background noise either way.

And the company, so far, was pretty good.

“So, Isabella,” Nabil asked. “How’s the cold treating you?”

“Just Bella,” I answered, “and it sucks.”

They laughed.

The weather had taken a turn for the worse in the middle of October, and as we were approaching Halloween, the temperature had dropped low enough that I found it necessary to take out the down coat my mother had insisted on shipping me from L.L. Bean.

“Bella’s from Florida,” Kelsey explained, “and Arizona before that. See how her coat is new? And she didn’t even know to put her scarf on the inside.”

Ah, that. The first day I walked out in thirty-degree weather, she laughed and the next thing I knew was unbuttoning my coat and stuffing the scarf back inside the neck.

“It can’t keep you warm out there,” she said, and when I protested, added, “Just wait until January. You’ll need it over your nose and mouth to make sure you don’t freeze your throat by breathing.”

I wasn’t looking forward to that.

But tonight was reasonable, or at least, it was my new definition of reasonable. Low forties, only moderate wind, and we were tucked inside a cozy bar with fireplaces and good beer. We ragged on our professors, shared a plate of fried pickles (I thought it was a disgusting idea until I tried them), and generally let off steam. On a weeknight.

Such an odd feeling. Somehow, I had friends.

“I did spend a little time in Washington State with my dad,” I explained, and the words surprised me. I didn’t talk about Forks with anyone at Michigan. When they asked my story, I mentioned going to high school in Phoenix, then Phil’s transfer to Jacksonville. Easier to let everyone think that transition had been completely smooth, and no one asked anything about it.

“That’s right. Isn’t that where you went to school with Hotty McHotterson’s brother?” Dan grinned.

I blinked. “Who?”

Kelsey punched her boyfriend in the shoulder. “His name is Will, doofus. And I don’t think he’s hotter than you.”

“Well, then, you’re blind, because he is definitely hotter than me. Flattery will not get you laid, girl.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. “Well, but he’s an asshole. So obviously, you’re going to stick with me anyway.”

“An asshole of the highest order,” Nabil added. “Man, that guy is unbelievable. Did I tell you he corrected Dr. Jayaraman? In front of the class.”

“What?” I hadn’t heard this story. Dr. Jayaraman was our professor for gross anatomy. He’d specialized in cardiothoracic surgery and had been one of the first pioneers of open-heart surgery in India before coming to the states.

“Oh, man, it was epic. Dr. J was lecturing on the history of cardio? And Asshole is sitting in like, the back of the auditorium. And I forget what Dr. J said, but there’s like this indignant snort from up behind all of us.”

I giggled. “An indignant snort?”

Dan punched Nabil. “Yeah, Dude. An indignant snort?”

“Indignant! It was indignant, I tell you!” He waved his hands. “No, no, no. Fuck the snort. Anyway, so he snorts—”

“I thought you said fuck the snort?”

Another punch, this time thrown at Mitch.

“How do you fuck a snort, anyway?” I asked.

“An indignant snort at that,” Kelsey added, and we all laughed.

“We are so not friends anymore,” Nabil said, but he was laughing, too. “So, okay, fine. The Asshole makes this noise from the back of the room—”

“A snort.”

“—he snorts, fine.”

“Indignantly.”

“Will you all shut up?”

By that time, we were all laughing so hard we could barely manage to drink.

“Okay, okay, okay. Enough.” I cut them off. I was in a different section of Gross than they were, so I’d missed this story, and frankly, I wanted to hear it. “What did he do?”

“See? At least Bella wants to hear my story.”

“That’s ’cause she’s not indignant.”

Another round of laughter.

It felt funny, laughing. I just didn’t do it that often. Reading, yes. Crying…not as much as I used to, but more often than laughing. And certainly not this kind of teasing, ongoing laughter back and forth.

I couldn’t decide if it felt good.

“Okay. So the story,” Nabil said. “So there’s this noise—stop it—and Dr. J is all, ‘Yes? The gentleman in the back?'” He imitated Dr. J’s accent. “And Asshole is all, ‘Nothing.’ And Dr. J is like, ‘Did you wish to comment?’ And then I kid you not. Asshole proceeds to stand up, and correct everything Dr. J said about the development of cardio knowledge. Like the big stuff, okay, but he starts taking issue with all sorts of little things he said about what ventricles and valves were discovered when, and how heart disease has progressed, and all this shit. Order is reversed; there are cause-and-effect errors in the logic, et cetera et cetera. And then get this. This is the part where it gets good. Dr. J. says like, ‘I’m fairly certain I am correct in my assessments. The sources are very clear.’ And so the Asshole?”

Nabil paused for dramatic effect.

“Yeah?”

“He says, ‘You weren’t alive when those discoveries were being made, so if your sources were wrong, you wouldn’t know, would you?'”

Mitch grinned. “Oooh, burn.”

“Did he seriously say that?” Kelsey asked.

“Right? ‘Cause he’s like, what, twenty-two?”  Nabil guffawed. “Dude is out of his fucking mind.”

“What did Dr. J do?”

“Told him to have a seat and they could discuss it more at office hours. And then he sits down and puts his headphones on, real obviously, like ‘Fuck you man, I’m not listening anymore.'”

“Unbelievable. And I thought he was just an asshole to other students.”

“Nope. Equal opportunity assholery, right there.”

Dan laughed. “That’s better than Hotty McHotterson. Equal Opportunity Asshole. I like it.”

We all laughed, and for a moment the only sound at the table was beer glasses clinking as we drank.

“So,” Mitch continued a second later, turning to me. “You went to school with Hotty McHotterson-Slash-Equal Opportunity Asshole?”

“She went to school with his brother,” Kelsey said.

“Oooh. What was he like?”

What was he like? He was an accomplished surgeon, a father of five, a devoted husband, and probably the most stable person I’d ever met. Who this person was who would disrupt a lecture and then throw earbuds on to defy the professor…well, that guy I didn’t know.

I shrugged. “He wasn’t like this. But I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

“Ah, fuck the Asshole,” Nabil said, which prompted a round of laughter and “You wish you could”s from the others. But then the boys were off talking something about Michigan football—apparently the upcoming match was against the in-state rival and was to be considered a major game. I hadn’t made it to a single game since starting medical school, and so while the other four talked, I stared out into the bar.

Across the way, a guy plugged a guitar into the amp, and he took a seat before one of the lower mics. His hair hung over his face, and for a second, I thought the topic of our conversation was making me imagine things. He didn’t look up, and I couldn’t double-check, but I knew the carriage of those shoulders. The shorts had been traded for jeans, the gym shoes for black boots, the t-shirt for an untucked black button-down—but clothing was just a thing. A disguise. And it didn’t hide him well.

The song’s opening dissonant chords rolled through the bar. Slowly, a few people stopped talking, and then a few people behind them. The open mic night had been, near as I could tell, about fifty-fifty—some reasonably skilled people, and some complete hacks. But as the notes started to roll across the bar, people started to notice that someone with actual talent had taken the mic.

He knew how to play the guitar. I supposed that shouldn’t have surprised me; of course all of them, with their endless brain capacity and endless time, would know several instruments. And Carlisle had spent how many centuries alone before turning Edward? He of all of them had needed pastimes.

By the time he started to sing, the bar was almost silent. At my own table, it was Kelsey who whispered first.

“Speaking of…” she said, sounding awed.

I nodded.

I wasn’t one for music, but I knew this one. How many times had it been played at school dances, or on the guitar by emo kids who wanted attention? If anyone had asked me about it yesterday, I would’ve said it was the most cliché, overdone, saptastic song in the history of mankind, and that it was only sung by Jeff Buckley wannabes in hopes that it would hide their otherwise utter lack of talent.

But I’d never heard it sound like this.

Raw, was the word that came to mind. There was something about the way he played; the way he didn’t look up into the bar, but bowed his head ever so slightly over the mic. I’d heard the lyrics before—I was relatively sure that if I focused I could sing at least half of them—but they sounded different. As far as I knew, neither the original writer (Leonard Cohen? Was that right?) nor Jeff Buckley had been a vampire, much less a vampire who’d lost a family he spent several centuries building, but the words seemed like they were written for Carlisle to sing.

Baby I’ve been here before
I’ve seen this room and I’ve walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew ya

An understatement of epic proportion.

We sat transfixed while he played. When the last note wavered its way quiet, there was a second of pure, stunned silence before anyone began to applaud. However, when they did, it rolled across the bar in waves. Several people got to their feet, including my table.

“I had no idea the Asshole was so emo,” Nabil said.

“I had no idea the Asshole was so good,” Kelsey added.

I stood and instinctively started to edge out of my chair. “I had no idea he could sing.”

At the mic, Carlisle simply bowed his head, unplugged the guitar and shoved it back into a case with a shoulder strap. He shrugged it over his shoulder and was on his way for the door before the emcee of the open mic recovered himself and reached for the list to announce the next singer, whoever the poor sap was who had to follow that up.

Kelsey called, “Bella?” before I really even realized that I was moving toward the door. Thank goodness for him drawing attention to himself, because as he edged his way out, people kept stopping him to congratulate him on the excellent singing, giving me time to keep up.

He broke through the door after the host congratulated him, and stumbled—well, he walked in a preternaturally smooth fashion, I was the one doing the stumbling—into the frigid air outside.

The street was empty, save a few cars driving back toward the two universities and a handful of people puffing furiously on cigarettes to keep their smoke break as short as they could manage before ducking back inside.

Carlisle moved the guitar to his fist in one fluid motion and put on a knee-length peacoat that I hadn’t even seen him grab.

“Carlisle,” I said quietly.

He turned, his jaw flexing as he gritted his teeth. Funny, how at the start of the term, I couldn’t imagine ever having seen him angry. Now, the scowl seemed like it was the expression I’d always known.

“Will,” he corrected. “And why are you following me?”

“Because you’re running.”

“I’m not running.” He turned to face me square. “What do you want?”

“The song was good,” I managed. “I didn’t know you could sing.”

“Everyone can sing.”

My heart pounded loud enough that I knew he could hear it from where he stood. We stared at each other as some of the smokers wandered inside and a rusting sedan full of disorderly boys rumbled its way down Cross St. In the distance, another train whistle blared.

“What do you want, Isabella?” he repeated.

“You,” I said, before I’d thought better of it. “I want to be around you.”

For a long moment he looked skyward. Even from several feet away, I heard him inhale and exhale slowly, though no water vapor formed from his breath.

“You weren’t supposed to be here,” he said simply.

Was that why he’d played? He hadn’t expected anyone there to know him?

“Well, I was.”

“Oh, trust me, I noticed.” His jaw flexed again. “What was it again? Equal opportunity assholery?”

My stomach seized, and I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. “You weren’t supposed to hear that.”

He tapped his ear with an index finger. “Unfortunately for us both, I’m not gifted with your poor, selective, human hearing.”

Tears stung my eyes at once. I swallowed to keep them at bay.

“I just”—my hands clenched into fists—”I want to be able to talk to you.”

For a long moment, he didn’t reply, just stared down at the sidewalk, which shone an eerie blue/orange beneath the streetlights and the reflected neon from the nearby bars. The train whistle blasted again.

When Carlisle finally spoke, his voice was low and careful.

“Bella,” he said gently, “has it occurred to you that perhaps I do not wish to talk to you?”

I choked. The tears came at once, in full force, first warm as they rushed down my cheeks, but only a second later becoming cold and sticky in the night air. My face stung.

Carlisle muttered, “Goddamnit.”

At least I thought he did.

Another vaporless sigh. “I am trying not to be a jerk, here,” he said.

“Well you’re sucking at it!”

He blinked.

Well, that was good at least. Guess he hadn’t expected that. Bella Swan, equal opportunity asskicker. For a moment we only stared at each other. The music from the bar gained volume suddenly and quieted just as fast as another smoker ducked back inside.

“Honestly. What is your problem?”

For a moment, he looked away. In the darkness, I couldn’t make out if it was an angry expression, a sad expression, or what—I watched the blue-orange lights from the streetlamps and the cars and the bars bounce off the planes of his face in odd ways.

He looked very pale.

“You,” he said finally. He didn’t turn back to look at me. “Isabella, you are my problem.”

“What?”

“You! You are my problem!” He took a step backward as though he needed even more distance than we already had. Gone was the smooth, deep voice I’d heard just a few minutes before, replaced by a strangled, high-pitched whine that didn’t suit him.

“Before you I had everything,” he went on, still not looking at me. “My wife. My children. My job. My son…”

Edward. My stomach clenched.

“I had all those things,” he went on. “I had a family…”

The whistle blasted again, and a second later, the entire street was flooded with light from the headlight of a locomotive. Carlisle’s blue-orange skin became pure white in the light. For a long moment, he turned to look at the train barreling toward us. Then he looked back at me.

“Bella, I had everything,“ he repeated. “And then you showed up, and eighteen months later, I had nothing. So…no. No, I don’t want to talk to you. Please. Leave me alone.”

And then he stepped in front of the train.

I think I yelped; perhaps I outright screamed. It had been too long of course. I’d forgotten the way Edward’s hand shot out over my body that icy morning in the Forks High parking lot; forgotten how strong they were; how fast. There was no screech of brakes against iron rails, no shuddering impact, no nothing. Just the blare of the whistle, the deep rumble of the cars rushing by, and when the train cleared, the vampire was nowhere to be seen.

~||x||~

The following Monday I got my lab space. An infernally tiny room which I had to share with a researcher creating little diabetic rats to test lab grown islet cells. One wall of little plastic tub cages was his, and white rats skipped in them, rustling their pine litter against the walls. The other wall, however, contained larger plastic tubs for my degus.

I spent most of my spare time there over the next two weeks, getting ready for my shipment of animals. Artificial serotonin and dopamine made their way into the fridge, as did liquid versions of most of the major antidepressants.

I still studied with Kelsey and Nabil, and occasionally Mitch. None of them, to their credit, asked me what had happened with “The Asshole” that night at Sidetrack. They had also stopped referring to him, though I gathered that this was at least in part due to the fact that Carlisle had a proclivity for not attending class.

I couldn’t blame him for that. It wasn’t as though he needed to.

For my part, I tried not to think about him. The first night, I’d had a nightmare in which Carlisle hadn’t managed to duck the train. Instead it had rammed into him with full force, mangling itself as it flew off the rails and mangling him also.

I woke up in a cold sweat. And then vowed I would stop thinking about it.

So when a knock came at the lab door, I figured it was Kelsey coming to grab me for our Chipotle date.

“I’ll be right out,” I called. “Burritos wait for no woman.”

“Burritos are inanimate,” a deep voice answered as the door opened. “It would be difficult to say they exactly ‘wait’ for anyone.”

I leapt up so quickly that I caught my finger between the wires on the shelf in the fridge. It screeched as it jerked forward, and my stomach clenched as I realized I was about to send several dozen glass vials flying onto a very hard tile floor.

Except I didn’t.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting on one of the stools, my middle finger throbbing, but with the fridge in perfect order. Two very cold hands moved over mine, gently pressing at my knuckles.

“Ow.”

“That hurts?” The hands pressed again. A searing pain shot from my middle finger to my wrist.

“Yes! Fuck! And Jesus, let go of my hand.”

“I’m sorry.” He perched himself on the other stool. “It’s only a sprain. You can get a finger splint from any drugstore, and it will feel better in a couple of days. Do you have any ibuprofen?”

“Not here,” I grumbled.

“Ice?”

“Does this look like an infirmary?”

He shook his head and promptly vanished, reappearing no more than twenty seconds later with a frosty can of Coke.

“Don’t grip it,” he said, handing it to me. “It will feel good at first, but then your knuckle will want to lock that way. Just lay it against the back of your hand.”

I blinked. Had he just run down the hall at full speed?

“Did you just—?”

“I was discreet,” he answered. He watched me put the Coke can against my hand. A good minute passed without either of us saying anything.

“How did you know I was here?” I asked.

He shrugged. “We all have our hiding places.”

“Oh?” I raised my eyebrows.

“The Starbucks on South U sees a lot of me. As does the art museum.”

I didn’t say anything.

“And, Alice might have hinted you were here.”

Alice. Edward had always called her unbearably meddlesome—his complaints about her had been second only to his complaints about Rosalie. But I thought back to her e-mail, and the way she seemed to be trying to keep track of Carlisle and me both.

“Her e-mail address bounced when I tried to answer her.”

He nodded. “Honestly, sometimes she disappears on me, too. ‘Autonomy,’ she calls it.”

And yet she told him where I was…

“Why are you even here?”

He looked at the floor uncomfortably, his hair falling forward over his face. “Alice said I needed to apologize,” he mumbled. “She said it wasn’t fair of me. What I said to you.”

That was an understatement. I raised my eyebrows.

“I’m sorry I lost my temper,” he said.

“That’s not an apology. That’s you expressing your own remorse at your lack of self-control.”

I sounded like my shrink. She would’ve been proud of me. I made a mental note to bring that up at my next appointment.

Carlisle sighed. “Bella, I’m not good at this.”

“No shit. I figured that much out.”

A soft thud echoed as he sprang off his stool and began to pace. He was back in athletic shoes again today, and they squeaked as he walked back and forth.

“This isn’t easy for me, you know,” he said. “You being here.”

“Are you under some sort of mistaken impression that it’s a walk in the park for me? First you ignore me, then you tell me I’m your biggest problem, then you walk in here to apologize and you sprain my hand.”

“Technically, you sprained your own hand,” he said, and I scowled.

“Do you know how long it took me to tell all of you goodbye? To get over you leaving? To get over losing Edward?”

The squeaking stopped. Except for the scrabbling of little rat paws on plastic, the room fell silent. When Carlisle finally spoke, his voice was quiet, timid.

“You got over losing Edward?”

Had I really just said that?

“I haven’t,” I said at once.

Except that wasn’t true. My little Toyota. My acceptance to medical school. The fact that I wasn’t taking psychotropic drugs every hour on the hour. That my therapist here only saw me once or twice a week.

I could think about him now without crying, for the most part. There wasn’t that yawning gap in my stomach. I didn’t wake up screaming. Hell, I hadn’t woken up screaming even when I’d dreamed about Carlisle and the train…

He sat back on the stool quietly, tucking his feet under the little bar and putting his head in his hands.

“Carlisle?”

No answer.

I reached across to him, and my hand no sooner made contact with his shoulder than he  jerked upright to knock it away.

“It’s not fair, you know.” He still didn’t look at me. Instead, he spoke to my lab partner’s rats, as though they might offer him comfort or answers he wouldn’t get from me. “It’s not fair that you are human.”

I rolled my eyes. “Gee, thanks, Rosalie.”

A brief flicker of eye contact. “That’s not what I mean. I’m not upset with who I am. But I’m jealous. That you can grow, and change, and…” He swallowed, and his head dropped back into his hands.

For a long moment, we both sat there. The Coke was getting warm, so I slid it aside on the lab table with a screech.

“I keep thinking,” he went on finally, closing his eyes and balling his hands into fists. “Keep hoping, I guess. It’s stupid; I know it’s stupid. I know what I am.”

“You keep thinking what?”

“That it’s going to go away. I keep thinking that some night, I’m going to look up at the sky and I’m not going to remember all the nights I watched the stars with Edward. That I’ll sit around on an afternoon and the Beatles will come on the radio, and I won’t miss dancing with Esme. I keep thinking”—an odd, ragged breath—”I keep thinking that one day, the sun will rise and that day will be the day it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

He hopped off the stool. He wasn’t wearing a coat today; which was odd as it was below freezing. Before I could move, he was at the door, his hand on the knob.

“Wait—” I managed, and he stopped briefly, looking over his shoulder. He blinked.

“It’s true. I am sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry about what I said. And I’m sorry that you had to hear all this. But most of all, Isabella, I’m sorry because I can’t be the man you’re looking for right now. I just…I can’t.”

“Carlisle, wait.”

He froze, and for a moment, his eyes locked to mine. They were a dark honey amber; the halfway point between when he was fully satiated and when he would need to feed.

“Will,” he said forcefully. “Bella, it’s Will.”

Then the door opened, and he disappeared…past a very stunned-looking Kelsey, who stood, backpack in hand.

“Was that—?”

I nodded. Moving to the doorway, I positioned myself so that I could watch him go.

“Bella! You should’ve invited him to lunch!”

I shook my head.

“He…he needed to go run,” I answered.

The main door to the research lab wing hissed as it closed behind him.

Forward
Back

Medical school flies at you fast. One day I was reading to get ahead on the term, the next I was scrambling to keep up. Michigan taught its M1s in modules, where we covered one topic for several weeks at a time, in conjunction with basic instruction on patient care. I was quickly buried in readings for “Patients and Populations,” or PatPop, as it was more commonly known. Part epidemiology, part general pathology, part medical history—it was a good thing I didn’t have much else to focus on.

Carlisle stayed true to his word and didn’t withdraw, but I barely saw him. It wasn’t uncommon, I found, for M1s to ditch class and just do the reading–at times, that seemed to be the only way to keep up. We were also in different cohorts; he was a traditional student, and I was at Michigan for medical science. So I only caught glimpses of him from across the auditorium at PatPop lectures, and only on occasion. He continued to play the role of the tuned-out twenty-three-year-old, sitting hunched low in his chair with his earbuds in more often than not. And when lectures ended, he vanished immediately. He never showed up at the library or any of the new student mixers, and as near as I could tell, whoever the guy was that he’d been with on the first day of classes had disappeared.

So I was beyond surprised when I was in the middle of a study group with two other M1s in the Michigan Union and a girl at my table wolf-whistled.

“God, he’s hot,” Kelsey said. “Isn’t he a medical student?” She nodded in the direction of the Wendy’s line.

As usual, I barely recognized him. The messy hair, the earbuds, the sunglasses—the sunglasses hilarious, as the food court was in the basement and quite dark. But it was his clothing that was most outrageous. A pair of knee-length mesh shorts hung loosely off his hips, exposing the waistband of his underwear. On top was a worn-looking Michigan Football t-shirt, on which I could see a dark “V” on the chest and back.

That must have taken some effort. Vampires didn’t sweat.

A smiling—well, okay, drooling—woman brought him a tray full of food: sandwich, fries, and a drink. He moved to a table in the corner, turning at least a dozen heads as he walked across the room. Putting down his tray, he pulled a thick textbook out of his bag and began jotting notes in the margin.

“He’s in my cohort lecture,” said Corinne. “Always totally tuned out. Which is good, because that way we can all stare. I mean, what a body.”

“Shhh,” I said unconsciously, still looking over. With his left hand, Carlisle carefully shredded French fry after French fry, breaking them into two pieces, then the two into four, and so on. Every now and then his fingers would dart out to dip a piece into the little paper cup of ketchup in front of him, and then that piece would disappear—where to, I had no idea. If I hadn’t known he couldn’t eat, I wouldn’t have seen anything remotely amiss. He was very good at this.

“Are you shushing us?” Kelsey laughed. “Bella. He’s all the way on the other side of the room.”

And he can hear you anyway, I thought, remembering how quietly Edward was able to speak in that expansive house and still summon his entire family.

Sure enough, Carlisle glanced in our direction. He and I locked gazes for a half-second, and then he pretended to bury himself back in whatever it was he was doing.

“He’s a complete jerk, though,” Corinne added. “I watched a girl trip and fall in front of him, and her books went flying. He looked down, shrugged, and walked off. And he smart mouths the teacher every time she calls on him.”

“He’s going through a lot,” I muttered.

“Do you know him?”

Oops. I realized too late what I’d said. “Uh…” My mind raced for a plausible explanation. Where was Edward and his cool lies when I needed him? At once, my stomach jerked, as though to remind me exactly where Edward was.

“I went to high school with his…brother. We even went out a few times. But then their family had to move away. We didn’t graduate together.” That was all pretty much true.

“Was he this beautiful in high school?” Kelsey asked.

“They all were,” I murmured, still looking across the room. Carlisle had put down his fry and was staring down at the book as though it contained some sort of divine revelation.

“All?”

“His family, I mean. He has several siblings. They were the most beautiful kids in school. The girls, too.” Rosalie, with her terrifying perfection; Alice, who could attract anyone but only had eyes for Jasper.

I had never fit with them. And now I was the one who’d torn them apart.

“Was he this much of a jackass in high school?” This was Corinne.

What? Of course not. Carlisle I knew—the gentle man, too compassionate to harm a human in defiance of every fiber of his nature. He’d helped kill James, but only to save me. How many afternoons had I been at his home and not taken the time to get to know him?

And if I had taken the time, would I even have known that it was possible for this other man to exist?

Looking over, I saw an odd tautness in Carlisle’s body. He held himself stiffly, unnaturally, although I recalled at once Edward’s telling me that no position was uncomfortable for them. His jaw was tight as he stared down at the table and his food.

Even with all that had changed, he didn’t like being called a jackass.

“He was very sweet back then,” I answered, not taking my eyes off him, and unconsciously speaking a little more loudly. “A real old-fashioned gentleman.” Quite literally.

“Sweet?” Kelsey laughed. “Someone that gorgeous; you almost don’t want him to be sweet.”

She had a point. I remembered how holier-than-thou the Cullen kids had come off on my first day at Forks High. How aloof. Carlisle had never been that way. He loved humans; he loved life.

“His son died,” I murmured and realized as the words came out of my mouth that the truth was reasonable. Let them think Edward had been a baby. Infant death had the potential to wreck a father and destroy a marriage just as surely. They didn’t need to know that Edward had been a hundred and five.

“Or at least, that’s what I heard on Facebook,” I added.

Both Kelsey and Corinne stared openly now. Carlisle’s head bowed more over his table, and his shoulders hunched. Would he be angry with me, I wondered? Knowing the two at the table with me, the news that Will Edward was a bereaved young father would spread like wildfire.

“Oh, God, are you serious?” It was Corinne. “Shit. Never mind. I take back the jackass thing.”

On the other hand, maybe it would help.

“No wonder he keeps to himself,” Kelsey added. “God. I feel awful for him now.”

Corinne pulled her eyes away and conspicuously turned the page in our textbook.  “Hey, let’s not all stare at him then, you think? Let him do his reading or whatever.”

Kelsey nodded. Relieved, I buried myself back in my own work, too.

We kept on about epidemiology for the better part of an hour. When we were satisfied with our knowledge, or rather comfortable with the lack thereof, we split, promising to email if anyone had any other questions. Kelsey and Corinne both left, clearing the table and leaving me with my books.

Carlisle still sat huddled at his table at the back of the room. I carefully packed my bag, and then went over to him. He didn’t look up as I slid into the booth, just kept furiously writing notes. He had the same, impossibly neat, quick handwriting style as Edward, I noticed, and for a minute or so I was content to watch him flip pages and scribble.

“Do you even need to take notes?” I finally asked, my voice low.

“Not taking notes,” he answered. “Marking edits.”

Edits? I flipped up the cover of the book.

Carl Jaspers, M.D.

Carlisle. Jasper.

When I looked back up at him, I found his eyebrows raised in expectation of my conclusion.

“You wrote the textbook.”

“I had a lot of time on my hands.”

I didn’t say anything, and his insinuation, this reminder of the loss of his entire family, hung in the air between us. I reached over and took a few fry bits.

“Those are cold,” he said gruffly.

“I know. But this way some will get eaten.” I shoveled down a few pinches of French fry, and he turned back to the book, the pages whipping past as he jotted quick notes here and there.

I wanted to ask how he was doing. If he’d talked to any of the other family members since seeing me. Surely, Alice would have called?

After several minutes, his pen went still. He didn’t lift his eyes from his book.

“It was what Esme said,” he muttered.

“What?”

He coughed. “What your friend called me.” He closed his eyes, and I knew he was remembering every detail–how it smelled, how the breeze felt, exactly what Esme had looked like as she’d said the words.

“When she told me she wanted a divorce. She said she didn’t know who had replaced her husband with this jackass.”

No wonder he’d looked so pained.

“Oh, Carlisle,” I muttered. “I’m sorry you had to overhear that.”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure either of them are wrong.” Again he stared back down at the book, giving me a good look at the way his hair fell forward over his face, his long eyelashes. Dressed as he was, and cowed in this little booth, he looked unbearably young. I had always thought it near-impossible for Carlisle to embody anything other than the grown man he was—even pretending to be in his mid-thirties, he projected a confidence and wisdom that marked him as much older.

But now I was struck by how boyish his appearance was. Edward hadn’t quite finished puberty—he’d always remained lanky and without that very subtle shift that somehow made men look like men. Carlisle was broader and heavier, and I’d always found it easy to imagine him as having been a man ready to marry and work in the time he’d lived as a human.

Not today. Today every bit of him that seemed to mark him as a confused young man was emphasized. The way his shoulders slumped, the untidiness of his hair, the Bic pen in his fingers, even the French fries and especially the clothes. He looked young. Vulnerable.

I realized with a start that I was now a full year older than he was.

For another ten minutes or so, I watched him scribble notes in the book and munched on the cold fries. I drank his pop, also—Mountain Dew, which for some reason struck me as hilarious. After a while, he glanced at his watch, and the book abruptly closed.

“I had to duck in here because the sun was coming out,” he said quietly. “I have enough time to get home, now.”

The backpack rustled as he shoved the textbook and pen back inside. I watched as he shrugged his shoulders into the straps, noticing again the damp, dark splotches across his chest and underarms.

Now that I thought on it, he stunk. He smelled much better than most guys would in a sweaty t-shirt, certainly, but there was an unmistakable human musk beneath his scent.

“Where did you get the shirt?”

“Stolen. From a young man who was showering at the gym.”

My shock must have registered because he added quickly, “I left him a fresh one.”

“Nice of you. I’m sure he didn’t mind you taking away his dirty laundry.”

The edges of his lips turned up for such a short fraction of a second I almost missed it. But the smile disappeared as quickly as it came, and he carefully swept the French fry bits into his meal bag, along with his sandwich and the now-empty drink cup. He began to turn away, but he stopped after only a couple of steps.

“Thank you,” he said, not meeting my eye. “It was very kind, what you said to your friends.”

Then he turned around and left, his flip-flops slapping against his heels.

~||x||~

Six weeks into the year, we were assigned to PC, that is, patient care. We met in a classroom at the medical school, dozens of bright-eyed doctor wannabes, with required stethoscopes and otoscopes in hand.

I confess I’d felt a little pleased when mine had arrived. The otoscope was surprisingly heavy–they were whipped out so often that for some reason I had never considered that the instrument might have some heft to it. Its cold cylinder felt like the heavy-duty police flashlight Charlie had always carried strapped to his belt. As a girl, I’d liked to pick it up and swing it around, shine it places. I think that was because I didn’t really understand divorce, and difference, and why we were in Arizona instead of with Daddy.

Something about the heavy instrument made it all feel very official, even more so than any acceptance letter or the mountains of paperwork which followed it. Holding an otoscope, I could actually envision myself in the white coat and sterile room.

The room was filled with lab tables, and some M1s sat obediently behind them, while others sprawled across them, sitting with their feet dangling and legs crossed. There was a lot of chatter; apparently the football team won some major game against their in-state rival, and there had been some spectacular touchdown catch.

I had never bothered to learn to care about football. In Phoenix, my school’s team was huge, but I never went to the games. And my short stint in Forks had been entirely outside the football season. I remembered vaguely that one boy—Tyler? Tyson? It was amazing how those memories all blended together; at least the ones that weren’t about Edward—bragged to me about what a stunning player he was on the eight-man team. He seemed certain that once I’d been to a Forks game, I’d forget about Edward Cullen completely.

If it were that easy, I would’ve watched high school football every day.

Carlisle had pulled another disappearing act after I saw him in the student union. Even Corinne and Kelsey reported they hadn’t seen him. He didn’t show up for class; he didn’t haunt the library or any of the coffee shops around campus. I’d sent him one email, telling him it was good to see him at the Union.

It went unanswered.

So when the door swung open one minute before our first class was supposed to begin, I was expecting the teacher.

Every head in the room swiveled. It was hard not to look. Such preternatural beauty, all of them. That summer, I had gotten used to it, I realized, although I had never stopped feeling inadequate. That the Cullens all looked perfect had slowly become secondary as I’d gotten to know them; Emmett, with his booming laugh and his incessant teasing; Alice, who had a talent for bounding into a conversation exactly when you needed her and exactly when you didn’t want her to; Jasper, who hung back but watched carefully, enjoying his siblings’ joy at having someone new to entertain; even Rosalie, who’d always remained frosty toward me, but who still took the time to talk on the sidelines of a baseball game. Esme, who called me her human daughter .

And of course, Carlisle. He’d offered me free rein over his study; told me I could select any books I wished to read. There were first editions everywhere–everything from Dickens to Bronte, even a folio of Shakespeare which, although nowhere near a first edition, was still well over three hundred years old. Whenever Edward and I had separated that summer–him to hunt, me to sit behind, it was Carlisle’s books I’d turned to. Sometimes, if he returned before his son did, Carlisle and I would talk about them; he putting them in context of the history at the time, connecting them to other works he loved, I doing my best to satisfy his curiosity about what it was like to read them as a young human, with only eighteen years of life experience and for whom those eras were locked in the pages of history textbooks.

I’d been at home there in that huge house on the river. To think of it sold, now, the family which had lived so happily within it dispersed and broken…it made my stomach clench.

Thirty-some-odd pairs of eyes watched Carlisle as he crossed the room, otoscope case in hand, stethoscope dangling casually from his neck. It wasn’t just his face, I realized at once. It was everything about how he carried himself. The few times I’d seen him so far, he walked with a slouch, the way boys our age tended to. But with the tools of his trade on hand, there was something calmed about him.

The night before, I’d done exactly what he was doing now: hung the stethoscope around my neck, the way I’d seen so many doctors and nurses do over the years. It had felt uncomfortable, heavy, out-of-place. I’d removed it after five minutes.

But I could imagine that for Carlisle, the familiar sensation put him back into his element. He certainly looked as though it did.

And then he laid eyes on me.

His body seemed to recoil—he might even have bared his teeth. He came up short mid-stride, turning away from wherever it was he was aiming and heading to the other side of the room. The sets of eyes stayed on him; thankfully, none of them seemed to notice who he’d been aiming for.

Carlisle situated himself as a table-sitter, his legs crossed casually at the thigh. He stared blankly at the front of the classroom, appearing to tune out, but I suspected it was simply that he didn’t wish to look at me.

The instructor entered a moment later, a cheerful woman with cascades of bright-orange ringlets who introduced herself as Dr. Leary. “I love working with the M1s,” she explained. “You all remind me why practicing medicine is a joy and not just work. But don’t forget that it’s work. The things we do in this class should be fun and inspiring–it’s why we get you into patient care and observations right away instead of waiting until your third year. However, I do expect the best from all of you. Study the text, practice the techniques, ask for help when you need it.”

Several dozen heads nodded enthusiastically. I glanced over at Carlisle, who still had a glazed look on his face. This all must seem so strange to him. Learning how to take a pulse, how to write a chart–these were things that were as second-nature to him as breathing, I imagined.

Of course, breathing wasn’t exactly second-nature for him, I realized, and laughed.

Dr. Leary projected a diagram of the anatomy of the wrist. She pointed out the tendons and the bone structure, and then the arteries and veins. She explained how to feel for the wrist tendons that would lead us to the correct place for taking a patient’s pulse.        Then she broke us into groups of three and had us practice on one another.

My group consisted of a guy, another girl, and me. The guy introduced himself as Caleb, which I found interesting. The girl was Katie–one of several dozen in our entering class. We set to work feeling one another’s wrists; although Katie and I had both had Red Cross First Aid way back when, finding the pulse was surprisingly more difficult than we remembered. I got Caleb’s, but it was weak.

Dr. Leary circulated to help us. When she reached our group, I explained my difficulty with Caleb’s pulse. She took my wrist and rotated it. “If you have difficulty finding it,” she explained, “you might turn your fingers at an angle—”

But she was cut off by a sudden argument from the other side of the room.

“Look man, all I’m saying is I’m having trouble. You need to calm the hell down.”

“Your incompetence is not my problem,” a beautifully clear voice answered.

My stomach turned to ice. Pulses. Of course.

“Seriously, dude? You’re going there? We’ve all been here for a couple of weeks…”

Not Carlisle, I thought. He’d been practicing medicine since before they understood there even was a circulatory system.

Dr. Leary straightened herself and walked to the other side of the room.

“Is there an issue, gentlemen?”

“Nothing that can’t be solved with a change of grouping,” the clear voice answered, and a second later, I found a very pale, very muscled forearm offered to me. “I’m certain even a woman whose only work has been with animals can do better than this fratboy.”

He glared at the other guy, who looked nothing like a fratboy–he had on thick glasses and a buttoned shirt.

“Take my pulse.”

I hesitated.

“Dr. Leary just showed you how to find a difficult one, didn’t she?” he said.

“Because that’s convenient,” muttered Non-fratboy.

A second later I found my wrist grasped in a surprisingly warm hand. Carlisle placed my fingers where they needed to go on his wrist, then with his index finger traced first the number 6 and then the number 4 on the back of my hand.

I nodded. I looked at my watch, the way I had when taking Caleb’s, and exactly sixty seconds later announced that Carlisle had a pulse of sixty-four.

The class seemed to calm at once. Groups turned back to their members to practice more.

Dr. Leary nodded to us. “You may stay in this group if you wish, Mr.—”

“Edward,” he said, the name causing me to jump. “Will Edward.”

“You may stay in this group if you wish, Mr. Edward.”

“Thank you.”

We all turned back to what we were doing. Non-fratboy continued to glare. Carlisle expertly found Caleb’s pulse, and gave him different instructions to find mine. When asked why he had a technique, he explained he’d been on his alma mater’s EMS squad. We worked only another ten minutes before the rustling of bags announced the end of class. Dr. Leary dismissed us, telling us she’d see us on Thursday for our first shadowing at the hospital.

I turned to tell Carlisle I’d see him then, but he was already gone.

~||x||~

I hit the library hard after class, reading up on anatomy, the next unit we were starting now that PatPop was coming to a close. We would be in the lab in a week. I’d gotten used to dissection from my undergraduate work, but I wasn’t looking forward to cutting open an actual human. A tiny part of me hoped I’d see Carlisle, although I knew this was unlikely. I studied until nearly midnight, then caught the night shuttle back to the student apartment complex.

I’d left my laptop plugged in on my desk, and it glowed happily. Dropping my bags at the door, I slid in front of it and gasped.

I had a new email. I didn’t recognize anything but one part of the name, but at once, I knew its sender.

Whitlock, Mary Alice Subject: Thanks!!!

I clicked.

Mary Alice Whitlock to me

Hi Bella,

Thanks for helping Carlisle today. Obviously, we’re worried about him, too. I’m glad he took my advice and stayed at U of M. Whether he realizes it or not, he needs you.

I realize he’s being difficult, but please stick with him. He will change.

We miss you.

Much Love,

Alice

An odd relief flooded through me. They were all there. Not that I’d doubted this, not exactly, but there was a difference between Carlisle saying that Alice and Jasper were in Canada and actually getting an e-mail.

I whipped off a response.

Isabella to Mary Alice

Hi Alice!

It’s nothing. It’s good to see him. It’s good to hear from you, too. How are you and Jasper? Carlisle said Jasper is a professor? That must feel so odd.

You should come visit us. I miss you, too.

Love,

Bella

The response was instantaneous.

Mailer–daemon to me

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

malicewhitlock@usask.ca

Technical details of permanent failure:

Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550

No such user: malicewhitlock@usask.ca

(state 14)

–original message details–

God. I’d forgotten about all this crazy secrecy. It seemed paranoia wasn’t a trait that belonged only to the youngest Cullen. I stared at the reply for several minutes, willing it to turn itself into an actual answer. It didn’t, and after a half-hour, I decided to go to bed.

Teeth brushed, flannel pj pants and hoodie on, I climbed into bed, practically reciting Alice’s email as I reached for the lamp.

We miss you.

My vampires were out there. My second family still existed, fractured as they might be. Even if Carlisle didn’t want anything to do with me, he hadn’t shoved me away. I had touched him today, at his insistence. We had spoken. And from somewhere, Alice was sending email.

For now, that would have to be enough.

I flicked off the lamp and plunged my bedroom into darkness.

Forward
Back

Edward, William John.

So I write like a method actor acts. To put myself in a chapter, I need to be there with my character, feeling what he’s feeling. And that’s why this one took so long. Carlisle’s shoes in this chapter are not ones I want to wear, for reasons that are very apparent, I think. He’s in a lot of pain. Yet at the same time, he’s a lot of fun to write because he’s changed so much in six years–and yet, of course, he hasn’t. At his root is still the caring guy that Bella used to know–it’s just going to take some time to ferret that guy out. In the meantime, she’s got “Will,” and he’s…different.

Anyway. I don’t anticipate this story updating quite this slowly throughout its tenure, although the fact that I know I can’t write it with due speed is the main reason it’s not on FFnet. A good chunk of it is written–this chapter took me up over 15,000 words in the document. But they’re disconnected pieces–a fragment of dialogue here, a description there. I know exactly where this whole story is going…thanks for hanging with me while I make it get there. 🙂