I knew how to make to you laugh, how to make you smile. I did not know all of your secrets, but I knew the secrets of your heart. When you said vampires couldn’t be tickled, you still laughed when my fingers trailed over your stomach. When you said you wouldn’t smile until I did, I told a joke that your brawny brother had told me. You smiled, and broke your promise.
You’ve broken many promises, and I don’t think I can fault you for any of them. Another thing I’ve come to realize is that I’ve never learned how to make you cry. I would never defile such beauty. But you knew how to make me cry. I spent many nights shuddering at my fears that you didn’t want me enough to change me into an immortal, that your distance was indifference and not for my own safety.
I have never voiced these fears; how my heart stopped when you pulled away with that desperate look in your eyes, like you were in too deep. Now everything has come crashing down on me, drowning.
I roll over on my bed; your side is undisturbed and will remain that way forever. My world has collapsed on itself, and I can’t find myself amidst this crushing nothingness. My vision grows hazy as I forget to breathe. My blood vessels swell as my heart stutters, trying to find a reason to keep beating.
I tell it to stop. It beats only for you, my shining, beautiful immortal, but now that you don’t want it, it does not want itself.
I wish you were merciful enough to take it with you, that way I would not have to feel.
She stares blankly at the ceiling, uncertain where to look. Everything in the room haunts her. His rocking chair creaks slowly, as if a ghost is there. But there is only one ghost in the room; the girl curled up in a ball, trying to resurface from the relentless tide.
She remembers what he used to tell her.
“I love you, Bella.”
“You’re as beautiful as your name.”
“I can’t live without you, love.”
“I won’t leave you.”
The alarm clock I was too lazy to turn off blares to life, singing a song I used to enjoy.
“Lost in the darkness
Hoping for a sign
Instead there's only silence
Can't you hear my screams?”
I turn off the radio and throw it against the wall. I hate it. It’s mocking me. I’m not worthy of you, my immortal, nor am I worth the pain of keeping alive. That’s why you’re gone.
I’m worth nothing, and you’re worth the world.
What he really meant:
I love you, Bella, (but not enough to keep you with me forever.)
You’re as beautiful as your name, (but your beauty is like roses. A short-lived beauty that dies at frost’s first breath.)
I can’t live without you, love. (Eternity is forever, and in this frozen time, I want to live as you do. But I’m not human, so when I die, I shall no longer live.)
I won’t leave you. (As long as you don’t ask for things I will not give, or look too deeply into the situation.)
Charlie slowly opens the door. Through the slits of my eyes, I can see his pain. I’m catatonic, I know. All see is one face, the one face that made me and broke me. Daddy, I’m sorry, but I’m not okay right now.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to smile again, daddy. I want to smile for you, but I’m too selfish. Know that I love you, but not enough to resurface from my misery. My soul is gone, spirited away by someone who is my world.
You were never one to want empty smiles, so I will not try.
Daddy, close the door and leave this room. Your daughter is gone, wandering after her fickle Romeo. She isn’t coming back. Meet your new child, this ghost.
She will try to smile, but she will fail.
Everyone always kept a fair distance. When Jasper almost bit her, everyone fell away.
When Carlisle tended her, he did not show the compassion he was so famous for. There was always an edge there that she noticed. Her worst fear.
(They all knew what was coming. Did they do anything?)
Ask the crying girl in the corner. Look into her dead eyes and you’ll know the answer.
I can’t stay like this forever, I realize. Charlie and Renee still matter, even if nothing else does. How long have I lain on this empty bed, curled up in a ball? I don’t want to move. I want to become nothing. Please, let these sheets swallow me and suffocate me, until I’m as small and insignificant as I feel.
He said I was his everything, but now I’m his nothing. He took everything in me with him, but not my physical shell. I would depart it gladly to just be with him. I know he’ll never return to give me back myself.
So what now?
Remain empty until I die?
I shudder into nothingness, the equivalence of sleep, I suppose.
I hear a car pull up into the driveway and the sharp tones of my mother’s voice. I know it’s all over and it’s time to wake up. She’ll want to take me away from here, but I can’t.
My immortal is too beautiful to exist in normal, sunny Phoenix, and without proof of his existence, the numbness inside of me will break free and my heart will implode.
What’s left of it, anyway.
Her mother leaves after she finally breaks down. Her father was never one to know how to handle tears, and she eventually cries herself dry.
When the hole becomes too much, she decides to go to sleep. She’ll sleep until she dies, then she’ll be able to sleep with her memories of him; those two sweet, forbidden syllables that make up his name kill her inside.
Her eyes glaze over and she ceases to exist.
She learns a vital thing about lies and truth. The truth will set you free, but not before it rips your heart out and shatters your world. If you keep lying long enough, eventually the lie becomes the truth. That’s how denial works.
'I never existed,' she chants over and over. When her heart rips open for the world to see, she grows new, flimsy skin over the wound. Denial is her doctor.
(But it’s not the doctor she once dreamed of calling father. No, he’s far away doing whatever immortals do.)
The days are so long, but I do not notice. My eyes are closed to the world, and I am safe. Whenever my heart starts to stutter, I let it. I’m too numb to care if it stops all together; for all its worth, it’s just a useless organ. Just like me.
Sometimes I glance at the calendar and shudder, realizing that those long days have bled into weeks, then months. Christmas is an empty hell. Charlie stares forlornly at the straggly tree I put out. But I’m staring at the mistletoe, remembering how a dark-haired, muscular immortal brought it out in July and gave it to my immortal.
He hung it on his doorframe, and when I came over to his mysterious, timeless house, he spun me around and kissed me, stealing the breath from my lungs. Now it’s the memories that steal my breath away, not him.
I barely remember the way his lips feel. Hard and cold? Cold as his eyes when he said good-bye?
Or cold as my soul?
I find it ironic when he said he would not change me into a vampire and steal my soul. It was an empty promise because he took it anyway.
Soulless. Joyless. Worthless.
It seems that my favourite suffix is less now. I’m lesser in everything without him.
Her immortal once showed her a rose in his mother’s garden. It was beautiful with its red petals, the colour of her blood. He plucked it from its stem, its vein. With gentle fingers, he tucks it behind her ear and kisses her gently.
“This rose will eventually die, but in the time that it lives, it is beautiful, Isabella,” he whispered in his silken voice. “That’s the beauty of being human. Things change.”
Three months later, when a rose and heart are ash, she wakes up crying. Things may change, but not always for the better.
When I first ‘woke up’ after hearing his voice, I knew I couldn’t hide anymore. I had finally resurfaced from the dark pool I’d created. Without my denial to give me my morphine, I faced the world alone.
The next day when I took the motorcycle to Jake, his smile taught me that new skin can grow over a wound, even when the heart is ripped open. Eventually the skin grows thick enough to stop the bleeding to a trickle, and you can look to the world to with new eyes.
After watching a movie with Edward one night, he took her hand and said, “If I had a heart, I would give it to you forever. Do you mind having it metaphorically?”
Yes, she did mind. When he left, he had nothing to come back to. He had both of their hearts, now.
My immortal, I love you. I have always loved and will always love you. You never came back, so I gave in to the half-human who taught me to be human again. When you took my heart away, he gave his to me. We now share one, and while our bond is nothing like what I shared with you, he fills the emptiness.
I want to hate you and the hold you have on me. I can’t tell you how much I hate myself when I writhe under Jake, hot and sweaty, and cry out your name. It only cuts me, though, because he is strong enough to accept that I will always love two men.
You never came back and I’m still paying the price.
My immortal, I wish I knew how to make you cry. Sometimes you would tell me eternity is a long road, but my path is longer than yours ever has or will be. Take your rose and my heart away, my immortal. The memory of that innocent, 18-year-old girl is gone now.
I just remember one question I asked you.
“You...don’t...want me?”
If you asked me that now, I would give you the answer you gave me.
Farewell, my immortal.
