Chapter 12 ~ Depth Perception

Edward

Rare are the moments, when you’re caught off guard, in the Army.

Particularly in the infantry.

I don’t recall any of those moments, myself.

Prior to coming home to Napa, that is.

I can name a few, now.

Moments when I was left speechless, dumbfounded, out of sorts.

Thrown off kilter.

Coincidentally, those moments had all occurred within the past few weeks…all within the realms of Napa Valley, California.

All, including the ever surprising, never wavering, always bemusing, Bella Swan.

This time was no exception because, once again, I had been stunned into silence, simply by her very presence.

She’d stood there and she’d witnessed…if even only by sound, my complete lack of control, via a baseball bat against the evil wine bottles of the Cullen Vineyard private stock.

And yet, she was still there.

It had been three days since I’d spoken to her.  Hadn’t made the greatest impression with the whole, Felix encounter earlier that day and it felt like it had been forever since we’d interacted and yet, I also felt like she’d never gone anywhere.

Like we were still able to laugh at things like getting kicked out of miscellaneous mom and pop vineyards, or her highly inappropriate outfits that she refused to stop wearing.

Like she didn’t know what a bi-polar mess I was.

Like it had just been the night before that she’d put her hand against my face and told me, it wasn’t my fault.

I could vaguely feel my body going through its required, daily, functions.

Breathing.

Swallowing.

Pumping blood.

But it was like I wasn’t there, wasn’t exactly present.

Rather, I was watching the two of us from some other area in the room, like a movie of sorts.

Me, standing there, unable to look away from Bella Swan’s knowing glare.

And her…demanding that I acknowledge her.

Refusing to be sent away.

Absorbing my pain.

Say something, I kept screaming to myself but I wasn’t listening…or, couldn’t speak…something along those lines.

All I could do was watch.  I just had…no idea how to explain what she’d just witnessed.

Say something.

Even I couldn’t understand the anger I had been feeling more toward myself than anyone else, lately.

Say.

Something.

“What are you doing here, Bella?”  I breathed, finally, still watching, still angry, but at least the anger was subsiding.

It was her.

She did this to me.

“I…”

She started, and then stopped herself, like a car with bad engine oil.

I was an idiot, of course.  I’d been a little too harsh, thrown her off guard.  Made her uncomfortable.  She didn’t know what to say, then, so I continued to offend her, not understanding why I was doing it and unable to stop myself.

“You should go,” I told her and then removed her hand from my cheek, placing it next to her own body, before letting it go.

I turned, to try and figure out where exactly I should begin with operation, cleanup of my father’s memories and willed myself back into my own body, trying to gather some resemblance of a human being as I listened for her footsteps to fade away over the broken glass that lay throughout the room, only…they didn’t.

They didn’t make a sound, as a matter of fact.

I let out a sigh.

Of frustration.

Or maybe, it was relief.

“Screw you,” I heard, instead and I twisted to question her, scowling at the harshness in her tone.

“Excuse me?”

“I said…screw you.  Edward,” she repeated, glaring harder, now, breathing heavier than before.

The rest of my body caught up with my torso and my head tilted a little at her, nearly annoyed, but not really.  “Really…screw me.”

“Yes.”

“And why’s that?”

Pray tell.

“Because,” she said and then she made the cutest goddamn, defiant look that I think I’d even seen.

I had no idea how she did that.  Made me feel frustrated and happy, and completely pissed off, all at the same time.

It was hard not to smile, all of a sudden.  And I didn’t really feel like smiling.

“Yes?”

“Because you don’t know when to stop pushing people away…” she started and I didn’t react.

Didn’t respond at all, even though I wanted to.

In the exact way she’d just described.

I was suddenly imaging myself, in a POW camp, like we’d been taught back at Fort Benning…practicing my techniques at resisting the enemy’s tactics at getting information from me.

She wouldn’t break me.

“Because you make a stand when it’s uncalled for and you walk away when it is…”

That one took me a minute to follow as I felt the eyebrow over my right eye raise up, just a smidge.

And a crack in my defenses begin to form.

She was good.

She was really good.

“Because you’re probably the most broken person I know, and you don’t even see it for yourself.”

And that one, hurt.

Okay, maybe she’d break me, after all.

Maybe I wanted her to break me.

Screw the training.

“You don’t think I see how completely screwed up I am?” I spat at her in retaliation for making me face my demons in that room.

I wasn’t  ready to face them.

I wanted to ignore them…or, avoid them.

I’d been doing it for years, I’d gotten good at it.

It was comfortable.

This…wasn’t.

“You don’t  think I know how much I’ve screwed up everyone else’s lives around me?”

Bella looked intimidated.

But she wasn’t backing off.

It wasn’t her style.

Not pie girl.

I swung an arm at the door, for lack of anywhere else to fling it at.

“Why do you think I left this fucking hell hole, Bella?  Why do you think I didn’t want to come back?  Why I’m absolutely dying to leave again?  Literally.”

“You can’t run away forever,” she told me.

Like I hadn’t heard that one, before, in many a conversations.

Including several with myself.

“Wanna bet?” I laughed, trying to keep it light.  Trying to keep her at bay.

“Yes.”

And I needed a distraction.

Another direction for this conversation.

“What do you want?”  I challenged her.

“What?”

“Why are you here…in my house…in my father’s cellar…with a mad man?”  I asked her, leaning over her, attempting to piss her off…or, scare her…or, make her question her own motives.

Not mine.

“I wanted…” she hesitated, then.

“What, Bella, you wanted what? To fix me?”

“No,” she said.  And it was a confident answer.  One I believed.  I had to… But still…

“Then what?”

I waited.

Wanting to know, now.  Not just trying to distract her from delving into answers she might not want to hear.

“I wanted you know…it…” She dug her feet in, unwilling to quit. “It doesn’t matter.”

“What doesn’t matter?” I ask and she thought it over.

Debating whether it’s worth saying, most likely.

Tell me.

My eyes narrowed at her.

Well, at her words, more than her…I had a feeling she knew more, now.  That she’d heard the stories in full, instead of just in part.

And again.

She was steadfast.

Don’t stay.

Shit.

Don’t go.

What was wrong with me?

I felt like I was moving backwards in time.

Before walls were built and preventative measures had been taken.

She didn’t say anything.  She knew I was privy to what her mind wasn’t telling me.

“You think you know, but you don’t,” I told her because I was fairly certain, she’d only heard Emmett’s version of the stories.

Story.

As in, one in particular.

And I didn’t want her thinking of me that way. 

Not Bella.

As far as all the other people in that town, I could have cared less what they thought, it was old news, I wasn’t about to defend myself to any of them.

But with her…it was…different.

I opened my mouth to spill it, to explain it…to…make her understand, it wasn’t what she thought but as I did, she beat me to it.

“I don’t care, Edward…I’m not going anywhere and I think if you just gave people a chance…they probably wouldn’t care, either.”

And shit.

It hurt.

And felt…really good to hear her say that.  The first part, anyway.  I made an educated guess that she was referring to Emmett with that last part.

And my mouth…it just didn’t know when to shut the hell up, sometimes.

“It really doesn’t matter anymore,” I said and I was right.  It didn’t.

Too much time had passed.

Too many people wouldn’t want a trouble maker like me around.

Small towns were like that.

“It always matters, Edward.”

And then, the way she said it, a genuine, full on, ear to ear smile erupted from me.

Because Bella was just…

Too much.

“What?” she asked me and I breathed in and out again…forcing myself to be a gentleman, despite my admiration of every ounce of woman that she was.

And because she at least deserved the truth.

And I needed to not think about Emmett’s opinion of me, for a while.

Before she could say anything else, I told her, flat out, “I lied to you, Pie Girl.”

And at that, her facial expression, it changed.  She was…turning white, which was…not what I’d expected.

At all.

“Are you okay?”

She coughed a little and cleared her throat. “I’m, no I’m fine…what…were you saying?” she asked, rubbing at the back of her neck and I found the will to be upfront with her.

She deserved that much.

“I said, I um…I lied…”

Man, this was uncomfortable.

“…the other day, when you asked me if we’d kissed.  Yeah, I lied.”

And you wanna talk about awkward silence.

“It’s…funny, you say that,” she started but I wasn’t quite done.

She needed the apology to go with the admission.

“I’m sorry, Bella, I really shouldn’t have let things get as far as they did that night you were over here…I mean, Hell, I probably shouldn’t have had you over here in the first place, it’s just that…”

And then I realized what she’d said.

“What do you mean, it’s funny I say that?”

And then she turned on me.

No longer the sweet, nervous Pie Girl.

“What do you mean you shouldn’t have had me over here in the first place?”

“I asked you first.”

“Technically, I asked you first.”

“You are so, stubborn,” I told her, letting out a frustrated breath of air and she waited me out. 

Breaking me down, once again.

The Army could use women like her.

“I just meant that, it wasn’t very respectful, to have an engaged woman over, whom I might or might not have found extremely attractive, got her drunk and then nearly….”

My eyes grew big…I couldn’t exactly finish the thought because I needed to adjust certain…portions of my body, so as to not offend her, yet again, with its…protrusion.

“So, you…regret…the kiss,” she said, not asked.  She looked, disappointed.

“I regret that you’re engaged.”

A simple clarification.

I wouldn’t have wanted her thinking she wasn’t attractive…’cause, I mean…she was.

She smiled, a bit shyly.

“Edward…I’m not.”

“You’re not…regretful?”

Because, me either.

“Engaged.”

Huh?

“You’re…”

And then, with a slight twist of her mouth, she informed me, that, “Edward, I think it’s my turn for an explanation.”

“Oh, kaaaaaaaay,” I said, hesitantly hopeful. And yet, not.

She started picking up some of the larger broken shards of bottles and piling them toward the middle of the room, as she spoke to busy herself.

“You know, I grew up in Chicago…never went anywhere…not even to the next state.  And I was okay with that, I thought, anyway.”

Wasn’t really sure where this was going.

Weren’t we just talking about her un-engaged-ness?

I was hoping she wasn’t about to tell me I was the exciting fling that threw the otherwise faithful fiancé into a moment of weakness, causing her to call her wedding off.

That’s just way too much to be responsible for.

“I got straight A’s all the way from elementary school through college.  Never once missed a day, was never tardy,  I never back sassed my parents, never drank…” she smiled that Bella smile again.  “Much, and I certainly never committed to something, only to change my mind later, I always had a plan, always thought things through and always…always, did what I said I was going to do.”

“Uh huh.”

Yeah.

She seemed like that kind of a person.

I liked that about her and hoped she didn’t see it as some sort of…flaw, or something.

“So….” I encouraged her, when she faded on me for a minute there, day dreaming about something.

“So, Jake and I have known each other for as long as I’ve had long term memories, he was my best friend through Middle School…he was there when my first cat died…helped me bury her…he kept the scary, only wanted sex guy types away, defended my honor on many occasions…was there for me through major hurts in my life…” she laughed, “And when things changed for us in High School, I thought, it seemed natural….like it was the next step, ya know?”

No.

Not at all.

I never knew what my next steps were from day to day.

“Yeah.”

She pursed her lips a little.

“I guess I knew when he asked to marry him, only, I ignored it…this feeling...” she was holding her stomach, then.  Like she was gonna be sick and I couldn’t think of where the nearest bathroom was, much less my mind at that point.

“There were signs…” she said, quietly and I had no idea what I was supposed to, so I just…stood there, wanting to go to her, to hold her, like she had for me, that night up in the kitchen.

But I couldn’t.

Then, suddenly, I didn’t have to, because her mood changed again.

She’d become less sad and more…confident.

“I wanted to start my own business, he wanted a stay at home wife…I wanted to travel, finally, he wanted to stake roots in Chicago…little things started to just…really annoy me about him and when he told me I need to re-die my hair for the wedding….I wanted to…”

“Bash his face in?”

That one, I could identify with.

I knew that feeling…

“Yes.”

“So…this isn’t about me?” I joked and Bella looked at me and said. “Kind of, no, kind of, yes.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, Edward, of all the places I could have gone when I left home that night, of all the relatives, we had within my immediate vicinity, I called Emmett…a cousin I hadn’t even spoken to in…years…and I ended up at that Welcome center, at that exact moment in time that day, waiting for him to pick me up and take me back to the Hales to try and figure out what my game plan was.”

“I don’t follow.”

She walked toward me, then and I backed up a little but really, there wasn’t anywhere to go.

She’d cornered me.

“I was standing at that wall, staring at those maps, not really thinking about anything having to do with maps, Edward…I was asking…no,” she corrected herself.  “Begging for a sign,” she teared up, a little, wiping it away just as fast as it had appeared.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I just wanted to know, ya know?  That I hadn’t just screwed my entire life up over some, cold feet or something.”

I held her gaze and asked her, because I was sucked in, enthralled…and needed to know the end of that story.

“Then what happened?”

And she choked up some more, swallowing down the tears, that time.  “And then, you whispered into my ear, and asked me if I was lost.”

I was pretty sure my heart stopped beating at her words.

Because never, in my short lived life, thus far.

Not even over in Iraq, had I felt the level of responsibility as I did in that moment, anticipating where this conversation was heading.

I wasn’t what she needed.

She needed…something else entirely.

Something I couldn’t possibly give her, despite the fact that I wanted to.

“I can’t be fixed, Bella, I’m a screw up in this town, have been for decades…and that’s all I’ll ever be to them.”

She placed her hand back against my cheek.

Right where we’d started the whole conversation we’d been having in that dank room.

And it was so warm.

“It’s not so important, what you are to them,” she said, staring up at me, watery eyed.  “It’s what you are to yourself, that’s important, Edward?”

I couldn’t answer her.

“And what you are to me.”

“I’m not…”

Anything.

I shook my head, trying to pull away from her.

I didn’t want to hear what she was going to say.

But she had other plans, Pie Girl.

She made me hear her, refusing to let me look away, or…run away.

“Something drew me to Napa, Edward, like…a beacon…or…a lighthouse, showing me my path,” she said, giving me no choice but to hear it.

I tried to keep the wall up.

I really did.

But damn, her hand was…and her eyes, were…

And let’s not even discuss the lips…the lips, had…

Everything.

All I could was stand there, like an idiot, with nothing to say as she finished off her thought, which was my suspicion, and just happened to be a distraction that I didn’t really want, if I expected to get out of this visit intact.

“You’re the reason I’m here.”

A/N:  Depth, in a wine, means that it is has a Full-flavored, multi-dimensional taste.