Chapter Twelve

With a push of a lever at the driver’s seat, the doors at the front of the bus slid open. Edward had nearly fallen asleep right after signaling his stop and didn’t realize that he had arrived until the door had been open for a few seconds and no one else on the bus moved. He had been up the entire night working on a case and his eyes felt like they were going to roll back into his head. The silence galvanized him and he leapt to his feet. Stumbling along the way, he made his way down the length of the bus past the other half-sleeping passengers and mumbled a thank you that he was almost positive that the bus driver didn’t hear. After he paid, he stepped off, and the bus drove off behind him.

It being one of the rare days in autumn when the wind wouldn’t threaten to bite off your ears, the street was flooded with people trying to take advantage of the weather by walking to fetch their morning coffee from a store across the street or running to the library to print something off last-minute. Edward couldn’t make it five steps without bumping into someone. Usually, he’d have Scott with him, but that morning, Scott had run out of bed before Edward woke up. He had mentioned having to go to a morning shift at the restaurant that he worked in to bring extra change in, so Edward wasn’t worried. He saw him scurrying by across the street and figured they’d catch up later.

A small, rough hand suddenly grabbed Edward’s shoulder and pulled him backwards. He would have fallen on his back if he was the littlest bit less alert. He saw a black sleeve attached to the hand before he recognized who it was.

“You're a b*****d, you know that?” Fay snarled. It took a second for him to recognize her. The complete lack of possibility to see her the past few years had done it to him. Edward still remembered the grey hoodie she was wearing the day she was arrested. She was still wearing it, but under an expensive-looking leather jacket. Her hair had started to grow out again and her drug rashes had mostly disappeared. She looked better than when she was taken in. They had told him that she was getting treatment in prison. She had evidently started eating again judging from how she looked. The dark rings and creases under her eyes seemed like they were going to be a permanent thing, but she looked better, but in a way, much worse.

She had been trying hard not to look at him until she got up the street, but once her hands were on him, she couldn’t take her eyes off. Suddenly, everything about him�"the way that he looked, the way that he breathed�"was more than despicable. He looked so strong and brave in his tailored business suit and briefcase under his long red jacket. His hair was gelled and brushed and there wasn’t a scratch on his skin. He was everything that he always wanted to be. She wanted to rip off everything that he was with her bare hands.

“Fay�"”

“Don’t say my name,” she scowled.

He tried to bring a hand up to calm her down, but it only accelerated her heaving. He knew she was about to hit him, and he tried his best to back up as much as he could with the cloth of his jacket still in her grip. “They told me you were released a few days ago. I didn’t think you wanted to see me.”

“I just wanted to get something straight.” Her face was burning. It almost hurt her. “You left me right when my life was falling apart. Then, once you take the opportunity to ruin my life and land me in prison, that’s when you decide you want to help me?”

People walking by were staring, but they were in too much of a hurry to seriously care. Edward shook his head. “The drugs were killing you.”

“Maybe I wanted to die!”

“I wanted to be there for you, but I couldn’t. You know that.”

“I just told you about the baby!” Her voice was getting close to cracking. She was screaming just a decibel under what would be noticed by anyone who would call police or security. “You just heard about him. I had to hold his body in my arms, and when you came back, I was still there for you. How many times did you promise me you were always going to be there for me? Do you know the hell they put me through? Did you know that my parents couldn’t stand to look at me when I got home?”

“I made a mistake,” he said. It took him three tries to get it out of his stomach. “If I could go back and change it, I would. I’m sorry.”

“That’s your problem. You think that you can wrap the universe around yourself; that you can do whatever you want and everyone else is going to feel exactly how you want them to.”

She stepped forward and Edward raised a hand and impulsively shut his eyes. He thought she was going to hit him. Once his eyes opened, he froze and stared at his raised hand just as she was. He was scared of her. For the first time in his life, he was scared of her.

“Don’t ever talk to me again,” she said. She looked like she could have spit venom. “If you see me on the street, stay away from me. Just stay the hell out of my life.”

Edward finally breathed again after she let go of his jacket and almost audibly whipped around to start off the other way. She could feel that he was still staring at her from behind, so she turned at the very next corner that she found and went straight from then on. The rush of people on the street made it impossible to follow her, but the helmeted skull patch sewn onto the back of her jacket was already imprinted in his mind. It looked like the same skull that was drawn on the back of her cigarette bottles.