Beast at My Side

They Call This Summer

It is immediately obvious that I have said the wrong thing.

She looks puzzled—or perhaps surprised—but certainly not happy. I don't know what answer will make her content so we appear to be settling for bemused silence. Later I can make another attempt at a response that will satisfy her, but for now at least I'm far too cold. I feel the chill deep in my bones. They call this summer.

She's still staring at me, watching me shiver in my thick sheepskin coat. Her bare arms as pale and as perfect as her heart-shaped face. This is what she's trying to tell me. This is what should frighten me.

"Can we go inside, Bella? I'm freezing."

The incredulity is etched plainly in her features. If my previous response had startled her, the current question had her nothing short of alarmed.

"Did you not hear what I just said?" She stutters then gapes, her mouth working open and closed soundlessly for a time. "I don't think you understand what I'm telling you. I know it's a lot to take in..."

When she trails off she looks completely lost. In that moment alone can I see her as she used to be: fifteen years old, all gangly limbs and shy smiles. We're not fifteen any more. We can never be fifteen again.

My teeth knock together noisily, ruining the force of my exasperated sigh. She's disappointed, and I know how she feels. I came here expecting a cheerful reunion; to find the awkward, somewhat sullen girl that had been my only friend and hold her in my arms while I told her how beautiful she had become. How she had grown into her skin. But you know what they say about best laid plans.

"You want me to be shocked? You want me to be appalled?"

She doesn't seem to know how to answer me, just watches as I finger the gash over my eye, my fingertips coming away stained with fresh blood. It had been some sort of attempt to protect me. Bella's husband, Edward, had shoved me out of the way of what he had perceived to be impending danger. 'Déjà vu', Bella had laughed. Edward had not found it amusing.

"Shocked would be appropriate! Do you even understand what I've said to you?" She asks me again, I feel like she has asked me a thousand times.

Behind her shoulder, Edward evaluates me with a pinched face and one narrowed eye. He's appraising me and every time he considers me, my words, it means something. Even if I don't know what that is. Their daughter wrenches her hand free from his, and with a single wave in my direction, dashes off into the woods. She is terrifying and beautiful. At her mother's behest she had laid her hands upon me and shown me their story. Her secrets still echo in my mind.

"Of course I'm happy that you're here," she starts again. "Very happy. And I'm glad you're being so... understanding. It's just that I also want you to be cautious—be careful—where I wasn't."

I know what it is that she's saying. I can turn around, climb in to my shitty old Kombi, and drive back to wherever-the-Hell it is that I came from, or, I can stay. I can stay and hope that her secret doesn't kill me.

To her credit, she doesn't flinch when I wrap my arms around her, my cold lips whispering against her ear. "Please Bella, inside. Before my fingers fall off."

I start towards the house. Its tall, off-white walls are spotted with windows that glow with promised warmth. Edward strides out ahead of me and holds the door open with a sweeping arm. An antique gesture. Inside there stands a couple, arms wrapped around each other. From her correspondence alone I can tell that these are Bella's parents-in-law. Her emails were often dotted with romantic descriptions of the Cullen family. The patriarch in particular.