For everyone who ever wanted a more... interesting love story. Best enjoyed with Hayley Kiyoko and a humorous eye. Enjoy!
Eddie is perhaps the most beautiful person she's ever seen, Bella thinks, even as she tries to smother the blush that blooms across her cheeks. It's day one, she reminds herself, and she is in public, surrounded by a knot of kids that she only vaguely remembers from elementary school (she'd made it half way through first grade before Renee flew south in search of warmer weather) and she cannot afford to have a crush on a member of the standoffish Cullen Clan, not even one as beautiful as that. She needs to keep her head down. She needs to make friends. She doesn't need to be outed as a closeted weirdo with a heart wrenching, world ending crush on the most beautiful and unavailable girl in school. Edythe Cullen is off limits, she thinks firmly to herself. Jessica chatters on, blissfully unaware of how deep Bella Swan has already fallen.
Day one doesn't go according to plan, if only because in biology class Edythe death glares at her from across a lab table for no discernable reason and stupid Mike Newton takes the opportunity to at once commiserate and flirt with Bella, who is feeling only a little bit devastated. At the end of the period all five feet and nine inches of Edythe sail out of the room, her red hair fluttering in an invisible wind, her manicured hands clutching her books, her pleated skirt kicked up a bit in the flurry of escape. All five feet and five inches of golden-retriever-personified Mike follow Bella to gym, and she resists the urge to stab him with a pencil.
Does she want to hang with him after school? Mike asks as they pick up badminton rackets. No, sorry, gotta get unpacked and have dinner with my dad, Bella brushes him off. Bummer, he says, next time. Not unless you grow a pair of tits, Bella thinks, but she keeps that one to herself, because this is the very definition of a Small Town and plenty of media consumption and teen fiction has told her that lesbians aren't cool until at least college.
Make any friends? Charlie asks over spaghetti. Mmhmm, she nods noncommittally.
Days two through fifteen are a bit more copacetic. She adds an odd quip or two to accompany Jessica's chatter, discusses music with Angela in the halls between history and English, and learns how to bat Mikes advances away with sharp banter that he barely seems to register. She only has to ask the front desk lady to write down her locker combo twice before she wises up and scrawls it on everything she owns. Perfect, beautiful, mysterious Edythe Cullen is absent.
Day sixteen Bella rolls out of bed with a churning stomach and the beginnings of a migraine. Half in hope and half in agony, she muses in the shower, though really, it's more like half in foreboding, half in excitement. Something feels different about today.
Different is that Edythe is in the cafeteria when she strolls in with Angela, seated with her family, flinching away from the snow that her brother, the big one, Emmett maybe, is shaking out of his hair. They're laughing. It's like an ad for Ralph Lauren's winter collection, Bella thinks bemusedly, instantly feeling inadequate in her Costco leggings, hiking boots, and borrowed flannel. She snags an apple and a carton of milk, not really up to pretending to be into mass-produced pizza just now. Throughout lunch she is barely there at the table, just barely able to answer Jess's question about prom.
Prom, she blanches. Bella's never really been one for angst, she's always preferred breezy sarcasm to moody silence and unflinching practicality to brooding, but prom might be her one exception. As an awkward teen and a closeted lesbian she feels entitled to at least a little angst over this celebration of heteronormativity.
In her head, of course, prom is a fairy tale. She wears something with a beaded bodice. Edythe wears something with a lot of cream colored lace. They drive in her red tank of a pickup truck, wear matching bunches of flowers (Bella thinks they're called corsages), stand hip to hip for the obligatory photograph with themed backdrop, and spend the rest of the night scandalizing the chaperones with how closely they can dance together. They kiss in the cab of the truck on the way home.
Bella answers Jess's question non-committally. She's not really sure prom is her style. The bell rings, saving her from any further interrogation, which Jess looks fully ready to administer. Prom is for everyone, obviously.
Biology is at once better and worse than it ever has been. Better because a minute after Bella takes her seat, Edythe Cullen breezes in. Worse because the polite chatter they engage in is absolutely devoid of any kind of chemistry. Edythe asks about her mom and newly-minted stepdad. Edythe comments on the weather. Edythe tries to not-so-subtly check up on Bella's lab work. Bella feels her knee-weakening crush die several tiny deaths at the hands of a bland personality and a holier-than-thou attitude. Sure, Edythe is still drop dead, stupid attractive, and the mystery is still there, intriguing as hell. There's just no vibe, no common understanding between them. No connection.
By the end of the period, Bella doesn't want to take Eddie to prom, she wants to google deep dive her social media and financial statements and maybe stakeout her house with a pair of binoculars, nature-photographer style.
Bella takes out her frustrations on the badminton court and it's a clumsy disaster. Oh well, she thinks, as she peels off her sweaty gym shirt and swipes deodorant on, there'll be other girls.
Days later, after Edythe Cullen flies across an icy parking lot and saves her from becoming a particularly gory grease stain on the pavement, Bella does a quick reassessment, both of her feelings and her impression of the most eligible Cullen bachelorette.
The ambulance ride to the hospital gives her time to rekindle the crush which is now fueled by the feeling of Eddie's surprisingly strong arms cradling her and the memory of the heat behind her eyes. The quick but thorough examination by the way-too-young-to-be-a-doctor Doctor Cullen (who is claiming to be the legal guardian of five teenagers, which Bella thinks is actual bullshit) fans the flame of nature-photography/paranormal investigator. Take me to your leader, Bella thinks as she argues with Edythe in the hallway next to the vending machines, induct me into your secret society. I'd do pretty much anything to know what the fuck you are. I'd absolutely do anything to run my hands through your hair and non-platonically cuddle by a fire.
Prepare to be dissatisfied, Eddie snaps, talking about her super-secret super-powers. Too fucking late, Bella doesn't say, thinking about thick red hair, pouty lips, long fingers.
It's a standoff, one that spreads ice across their lab table in biology, and across the cafeteria at lunch time. Glares and snide comments are exchanged, and they don't go unnoticed by Bella's new friends. Teenage girls are nothing if not good at being nasty, Bella reflects as she listens to Jess and Lauren engage in the age-old female bonding ritual of verbally shitting on their enemies. Currently their attention is turned to Edythe, ostensibly because Edythe has been nasty to Bella. Oh what a tangled web we weave, Bella mutters as Jess and Lauren deconstruct something Eddie said in English class about gender roles. (Has she even heard of third wave feminism? Jess asks indignantly. How can you make it this far in high school and still not understand subversive interpretation, Lauren snipes.)
Directly following the conversation, over a particularly boring biology worksheet, Edythe mutters, you know you could tell your lackeys to stand down, I'm not trying to reestablish the patriarchy.
Why am I not surprised you have super hearing to go along with your super strength, Bella rolls her eyes. Re-establishment of the patriarchy, she snorts a few minutes later. What do you, live under a rock? Bella does her best to finish her worksheet and avoid the wide-eyed almost shock broadcasted across Edythe's face. The glow of victory warms her all the way home.
The next day Jess, Ange, Lauren, and Bella venture out to Port Angeles. Dress shopping is the excuse, there's a Sadie Hawkins dance at the end of the month, but really everyone just needs an afternoon of goofing off and feeling grownup, buying their own bubble tea at the Pho stand at the mall and pretending to consider dropping more than fifty dollars on a dress that will only be worn once. (Really Jess and Ange will come back with their Moms on the weekend, Lauren will spruce up her dress from Athletic Banquet from last year and Bella will avoid the dance like the plague.)
Around four, when the conversation turns to handbags, Bella decides she needs a little one-on-one time with the book shop a couple blocks down and promises to meet her friends at the restaurant.
She doesn't notice the man following her until she leaves the shop, three books heavier. He tracks her from a block back, at first, then closer and closer as they walk further and further away from the warm glow of the main drag. Disquiet grows in her gut like cancer, tendrils of unease clutching at her heart and weaving into her hands and feet. Stupidly she takes a side street, then another one. Idiotically, impossibly, she finds herself in a narrow alley, blocks away from where she wants to be, surrounded by not one but four men, all of whom seem to be intoxicated. All of whom are interested in what's under her dad's flannel. It still smells like him, she thinks absently, that's why I snagged it. She's unable to process how fast her situation has turned from bad to seriously dangerous.
The one immediately in front of her, the man that's been obviously following her for blocks backs her against one of his buddies. His hands are not respectful. There is no room for Jesus between their bodies, Bella thinks bemusedly. She can feel his him up against her her and feels another at her back and for the first time in her life she thinks she might really die. This is so much worse than the incident with Tyler's van. Then she never saw it coming, she had no time to think about how bad it would hurt. Now she's intimately aware of what's about to happen.
SING she's thinking to herself, trying to remember if Sandra Bullock ever had to use that move on more than one guy at a time, when help arrives in the form of a literal guardian angel.
Edythe descends like a bat, falling gracefully from above onto the leader, snapping his arm like it's a toothpick. She's a jungle cat, entirely feral, entirely controlled in her attack. Skulls crack. Bodies fall away from Bella's like dominos. She's left standing, breathing hard, in the midst of carnage but relatively, miraculously untouched. C'mon, Eddie mutters, and takes Bella's hand, guiding her gently to the silver car at the mouth of the alley. They leave the men behind and drive.
Edythe is breathing hard. Distract me, she says.
Bella tells her that she bought her a book at the book store. A book? Eddie asks hysterically. It's about intersectional feminism, Bella says, you sounded like you could use a primer. Should I assume you know where I was supposed to meet my friends? Bella asks a minute later. Edythe nods, fighting off another round of laughter at the book comment. She is still strung tight with anger, but her eyes are on the road, her mind is on Bella, and she's not going to murder anyone tonight.
At the restaurant Bella has to explain what happened to her friends. It's a slightly downplayed version, one without the split skulls, but it still has enough of the truth that they reach out with hesitant hands. Should they hug her? Will it freak her out? Bella feels herself start to shake. The adrenaline leaves her body in a flood, leaving her exhausted and, yes, traumatized.
Quietly Edythe offers to buy Bella dinner and drive her home if her friends are ready to leave. Not-so-quietly Jess gives Eddie a death glare, tells her where she can shove that suggestion, and guides Bella into Lauren's mom's Kia Sorento. Best Friends don't leave Best Friends with bitchy non-feminists post-assault.
On the way home Bella lays down in the back seat with her head in Ange's lap and they all discuss the merits of liberal arts colleges versus state schools. If Bella's a little less vocal than usual the other three let it slide. Lauren offers to park so they can all go in and talk to Chief Swan together. Bella waves her off.
She doesn't tell her dad.
The next morning Edythe's silver car is parked in the driveway. I read your book, Edythe says quietly when Bella climbs into the passenger seat.
What I really want to know, Bella says, is what the fuck is going on.
They skip school.
It all comes out in the end. By sundown on Bella's fifty-fourth day in town, she has the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the mysterious Edythe Cullen and her equally mysterious family. They're vampires. Vegetarians. Hundreds of years old. Hungry for her blood. It's a lot.
Edythe senses the tension in Bella's bones, the sheer magnitude of her emotional upheaval. We could leave, she offers tentatively, if it would make you more comfortable, if it would make things better we could leave and never come back.
Bella kisses her. For a moment Edythe sits in shock, lips slightly parted, eyes wide open. The kiss is, in Bella's humble, virginal opinion, not great. Edythe is both cold and immobile. It's like kissing the bathroom sink. Then Edythe is across the road, off by some distant stand of trees, breathing kind of hard for someone who doesn't need to move air through her lungs.
Sorry, Bella calls, genuinely worried that she's misinterpreted some things. Like the fighting. And the looks. And the gentle touches. Crap. What if Eddie's just one of those touchy, fight-y, girls? The kind that don't especially like kissing other girls. The not-gay kind. Crap Crap Crap. I'm sorry, Bella calls again.
Edythe looks at her, a burning, hungry look that sears across the distance and makes an explosion rocket through Bella's whole body.
The next kiss is, in Bella's humble, still-pretty-virginal opinion, fantastic. Edythe's cold hands cup her cheeks. Bella allows one hand to tangle into that long, red, definition-of-temptation mane. She can feel the delicate, but still rock hard, skin of Eddies scalp beneath her fingers. She does not allow her other hand to slide down to Edythe's butt, as much as she wants to. Edythe strikes her as one of those traditional, no-butt grabbing girls. Classy.
They kiss for a while, occasionally having to stop so Eddie can grab a breath, control her thirst. Bella doesn't mind. Wildly, crazily, she thinks she might be falling in love. She vows to keep that one to herself though, at least for a little while.
I love you, Edythe says in between butterfly kisses in Bella's drive way. Bella says it back immediately, because how could she not.
Later there will be angst. Bella might be levelheaded and ready-worded but Edythe is a moody brooder. Bella has to learn to let her stew. Edythe has to learn to let Bella walk away angry sometimes. They both have to deal with a hungry, obsessive vampire and his vindictive mate and also a few misunderstandings and a royal court of vampires and few awkward family dinners with each other's parents. Edythe has to endure the gauntlet that is Bella's friends, none of whom are convinced she is good enough. Bella has to endure an awkward sex talk from her dad the first time Eddie is caught in her room, and then another one from Carlisle the first time they're caught in the Cullen home.
It's not a lesbian love story unless one of them dies in the end, so a week after the wedding (Bella's gown delicately beaded, Edythe's covered in lace) Eddie and Bella lay side by side in bed, whisper words of love. Edythe bites Bella and within three days Bella's heart beats its last.
The End.