Chapter 27 ~ Coarse Road

Day One, Part One

~ Bella ~

“I love you, Edward.”

“I love you too, Pie Girl. With all my heart.”

“I know this was only supposed to be for the summer, but I don’t ever want to lose you.”

“Me either, ever.”

“And I know you have to go, but come back to me, okay?…when you’re time is up, I’ll be here.”

“I’ll come back, Bella. I promise.”

One last kiss.

I watch him go until I can’t see the bus anymore.

Then I pine away for him…write him daily…build a career…he comes back in one piece…we grow grapes together….have babies…grandchildren…

Cue romantic music.

I closed my eyes, again.

This is of course another conversation, in some parallel universe, where I wasn’t quite so desperate for a man who had signed his life away to the Army.  Also, Edward wasn’t a dumb ass who manages to think everything that happens is his fault and that he has to sacrifice his own happiness for everyone else’s well being.

I shut my eyes tighter.

I knew I still lived and breathed, despite the darkness.

Everything pointed to that conclusion.

I could hear my heart beating in my chest…my ears…my throat.

Could feel my lungs rising and falling, my eyes opening and closing, every once in a while.

But rejection hurts.

It sucks the marrow from your bones, the air from your lungs and the life from your heart and just…hurts.

And as I replayed the events in my head from the previous day like a broken record, I didn’t even know why I’d said it.  He’d even practically pleaded with me not to, just before.

Stay.

Like I was some…stupid, lost puppy, begging the world’s biggest jerk to throw me a bone.

It wasn’t as though he hadn’t told me he’d be going back or that we’d ever even discussed our relationship beyond this summer.  What did I expect?

Of course he didn’t want me following him to Georgia.

I felt like an idiot, after saying it.

I also felt…lost, after leaving him standing there at the bus stop.

And by the time I had let the hurt subside and the pride dissipate, and I’d gone back to tell him I knew he hadn’t meant it, that I hadn’t meant what I’d said either, it was too late.

My last chance to tell him how much he’d meant to me, how much we meant to me.

And it was gone.

What would I do now? I wondered, if he died while out on some mission for Jasper…The last thing I’d have said to the man I loved with all my heart would be, “It’ll be as if you never existed.”

I couldn’t bear to think of this summer ending like it had and, even if I could, I didn’t want to.

So I didn’t care what Emmett had to say after Edward had left, the day before.

Didn’t care that I hadn’t eaten or hydrated myself with the proper fluids.

That I was supposed to begin a new life in web design, soon…on my own terms.  We’ll need a business plan, soon, Ms. Swan.

All I cared about was trying to delete that last conversation out of my mind and instead, pretending we’d ended things the night before, making love, holding each other, cherishing those last few hours…

Trying to anyway.

I waited in bed, under the covers, until I’d heard the Hale’s house become quiet and I knew everyone was gone for the day.

Then I got up.

I putzed around.

The Hale’s kitchen was calling to me and it was the only thing that would keep my mind focused on something other than Edward, so…

I baked a pie.

I felt as though I was moving in slow motion as I took special care with each step…added each ingredient…covered them and shaped the crust.

I sat unmoving as I stared into the oven while it baked.

When it was done, I admired it.

It was perfect and I watched it, curiously, with thoughts running through my mind of a lost soul, filling my life with wine tastings, laughter till my sides hurt…grape festivals…creating feelings inside of me I’d never been able to appreciate, before…

Then I shoved it into the trash can and went back to bed.

I stared at my cell phone sideways, as I lay there; waiting for him to call even though I knew he wouldn’t.

And later, I don’t know when…I didn’t respond to the light taps at my bedroom door, or Emmett whispering in to me, asking if I was okay.

I just waited for sleep to find me, staring out the window at the moon as it lit up the grape vines, wondering if he was thinking of me, too.

Find someone else?

How could I? 

There was only him.

Day One, Part Two

~ Edward ~

My body woke before I did, just before dawn peeked into the windows.  My eyes were closed and I smiled, stretching an arm out to feel for Bella but something was wrong.

She wasn’t there.

That didn’t seem right until I heard the standard military wakeup call sounding out in the courtyard and remembered where I was.

Then my mind recalled the events of the previous day.

Leaving Bella, sleeping in my bed.

The run…deciding not to sell…

Seeing her at the bus stop.

Her asking me to stay and all of the words that followed, up to and including her turning and leaving me there to watch her disappear out of my life.

I reminded myself who I was now.

I am a soldier in the United States Army.  Ft. Benning, Georgia.

I am Carlisle Cullen’s son.

He loved me.

I have been bequeathed the Cullen Vineyard, in lieu of his death.

I am friend to few.

Trouble to the Volturi family.

I am not an arsonist.

Not really.  But I am a man who has broken the heart of the one person I never wanted to see hurt.

I wanted to wallow in it - my failure at connecting what was in my heart with the words to adequately represent those feelings.  But you don’t have the luxury of having a moment’s peace to yourself in the Army.

There’s no time to feel sorry for yourself for saying extremely stupid, hurtful things to that one person that showed you passion, caring, unconditional acceptance…

Love.

Somehow, I fit it in, though.

Through my run.

It was different.

The air was different.  Heavier, somehow.

And the scenery was…definitely different.

Daydreams of Felix getting his hands on Bella again flew through my mind…and of me, trying to rescue her from his clutches, only to have her assure me that she’d indeed…moved on.

I passed fellow Sergeants that I’d known from my stay there, at Benning.  I wasn’t all that close with any of them and they nodded in recognition when they saw me but that was about it.

I didn’t pay attention to how far I ran as something gnawed away at me inside.  Something I knew before I left, but didn’t want to face.  Something that would be the reason I’d never find another someone ever again.

Because she was all there was.

All there ever would be.

And I’d blown it. 

Thankfully, there wasn’t time for pondering back at base camp. After I showered, dressed and skipped breakfast, it was finally time to face my men.

As I walked over to where they’d congregated in the courtyard, I couldn’t ignore the taunting of my own mind as it recalled the words I’d said to Bella the day before over and over for me.

You’ll find someone else.

“Idiot.”

I tried to re-work the words in my head.  What I should have said, was, Please don’t ever find someone else.

I shook my head, placing a hand against that pain inside my chest, just as Jasper joined me. “You okay, Sergeant, you look…”

“Fine, sir,” I told him and he nodded.  “Excellent.  Well, if you need anything, you know where I am.  Welcome back,” he told me, clapping me on the shoulder before he turned off toward the officer’s administrative building.

“Sarge!  You’re back!” I heard before I’d had a chance to respond to Jasper.

It was Ben Cheney.  One of my first trainees.  He was one of those kids who was destined to be a part of the Army for life.

You could just tell.

And once he’d made the announcement I was there, there was just no avoiding the troops anymore. 

They’d crowded me in before I’d even thought about telling Cheney to shut the fuck up.

Then the bombardment of words began.

“Welcome back, Sarge!”

“Yeah! We were startin’ to think you weren’t coming back.”

Yeah, me too.

“Hey, we heard you met a girl.”

I eyeballed Jasper as he disappeared into the building, knowing it had been him who filled the guys in on my trip to Napa.  I also knew he had to have heard Ben, but he didn’t look back and didn’t acknowledge anyone that he passed as I was left to answer the question alone.

I ignored the tightening in my chest, created by the absence of Bella’s hand in mine during awkward moments like this.

Tried not to imagine her smile or to remember the smell of her shampoo.

I breathed in…and then out.

“Yeah.”

I smiled, trying to end it there and continue on my jaunt over to begin the workout we had ahead of us, but they were a greedy bunch when it came to shit like that.

“So…what was she like?” another asked.  Crowley. Cocky little fucker.

I ignored him.  Kept walking toward our drill post for the day.  We needed to train.

I needed to train.

I needed to not think.

Two more days.

“Musta been a beauty if Sarge was being all… exclusive and shit…” and another…

“She give it up easy enough?” and a…

“What?”

“You know, Sarge, the pussy.”

“The punnnnntannnnng.”  Fucking Crowley.

“The fountain of fucks,” from the back of the group.  Yorke, I think.

Then Cheney, again…because he just didn’t know when to shut the fuck up.  “So…did ya get some?”

“Excuse me?” I stopped in my tracks, stopping everyone else in their’s.

“Come on man….give us all the wet juicy details.”  Ben was grinning like an idiot, rubbing his hands together as though he’d never known what the experience of actual sex had been like.

Hell, maybe he hadn’t.

I tried to breathe, avoiding eye contact all together because, had I seen the playfulness in Ben’s eyes when he’d said that... the complete disregard for the person I’d just left behind, I might have pulled out my United States Army issued hand gun and shot him in the fucking head.

“Come here Cheney.”

I hooked a finger at him sideways and he was still laughing when he was within arm’s reach of me.

Did you know if you punch a guy in the nose at a certain angle, with a certain tilt of your palm, it’ll cause that person’s nose cartilage to be jammed into his brain, killing him pretty much instantly?

I’d been close enough to a few enemies before to do it.

I did not practice this technique on Ben.

I held back.

A little.

“Woah!” another one of my younger men, Seth Clearwater, called out.

Ben was flat on his back, bleeding from underneath his hands when I told the rest of the grunts, “Nobody ask me another goddamn question about pussy, understand?” I nearly shouted at them as other troops were stopping to stare.  “Next person to ask about anybody’s pussy gets the same fist to the nose as Cheney, got it?”

They nodded and someone helped Cheney up, but Clearwater…he raised a tentative hand.

“What?” I asked him flatly.

“What if I wanna know about pussy that Yorke is gettin’?”

And then my eyes closed and my shoulders sagged a little. 

Because sometimes, these soldiers…my men…were like dealing with a bunch of fucking kindergarteners.

“I don’t give a shit if you wanna know if Yorke got pussy, Clearwater.”

Another hand that didn’t wait for me to acknowledge.

“Can I talk idly about pussy that I wanna get?”

“I don’t…” care….

“What about pussy I paid for?”

“Jesus Christ.”

More random questions and then they were all laughing and, even though I hated them for it, I couldn’t exactly blame them for it either.

“Obstacle course…in under ten…go.”

After I ordered them out of my face, they all took off at a run, including Cheney, holding his bloody nose…over to line up in formation to start the day.

I looked back to my commanding officer’s office window for some reason, before joining them…just in time to see the blinds close up.

Then I put a hand to my chest again, rubbing the pain out, as I joined my troop.

A/N: Coarse wines have a rough texture, opposite of a smooth wine.