Out with the Old and in with the New Year Anonymous Contest
Title: Layers and Colors of Love
Pairing: Edward & Bella
Word count: 4,235
Rating: M for Language
Summary: AH Canon It takes Bella one day to change the color of her room; it takes her four days to fall in love. It takes her one week to realize what love and life is.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Link: Vote here http(:/)www(.)fanfiction(.)net(/~)picsffcorner
Breath. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the one you know you have for sure. – Oprah Winfrey
I re-paint my room every time I feel like my life is about to change.
Edward POV
I smiled, looking at the clock and waiting for the time to reach 10: 30 AM. It had been five days, and I knew that Bella would be arriving soon. I smiled when I heard the flower vase break. Shaking my head, I walked over to see the silly girl stumble her way into the store.
*A Few Weeks Back*
I organized all of my CDs in perfect order on the shelf. After making sure that it was all in order, I fell back on my bed with a heavy sigh. I was glad to be home. After moving away from the parents' house, many people believe it's best to live on their own. I disagreed; coming back home is the best feeling. It had been six months since the last time I used this bed. I smelled the pillow to memorize it. It felt good to finally take some time away from Columbia University. My medical studies were getting harder and harder for me to keep my head together. I made sure not to take classes during the summer or winter, so I could come back home and take a break. I wasn't in any hurry to finish medical studies; the main goal was to learn all I could with perfection. People would be putting their lives in my hands; I could perform with no less than perfection.
This month I would be helping my mom with her Home Decorating shop while she would be enjoying staying home and cooking Christmas dinner. I didn't necessarily want to help, but my dad had emailed me a few weeks ago, explaining that my mom wanted to join church choir for the Christmas Holiday and could therefore use the extra help. However, no one would be there to take care of the shop, and she wanted to cook too. So I decided to step in to help. But helping out the family wasn't anything new; I helped with the shop every summer before had I moved to Columbia University.
The next morning, my mom gave me the tour and showed me the new additions that were added to the store. One side had huge buckets of different colors of paint, while the rest of the shop was filled with accessories for the interior and exterior of housing. I wondered if people in Forks bought these things. Some did, but there were times when mom had to pay rent out of her own pocket.
Once everything was set up, and my mom was leaving, some noise caught my attention. I looked around to see a young, blushing brunette come stumbling into the shop. She raised her arm to show a broken vase on her hand. She looked apologetically at us, but all I could focus on were her brown, chocolate colored eyes. Damn, she was hot.
"Oh, Bella, its fine dear; I can fix it." My mom walked over to her, taking the broken vase and putting it carefully on counter.
"I'm so sorry Esme; honestly I think the vases are after me." Both women laughed.
"How are you? How is college?" Mom asked.
"It's amazing. I am going to change my major again; I want to be a pilot." Bella turned her gaze to me.
"Bella, sweetie, that's great, but I don't think you can be one. Didn't you say you were afraid to fly?"
Bella blushed. "Oh, yeah, I will talk to Alice about that. I have until January to think of something new. I hate journalism." She nodded turning toward the bucket of color paints. "I'm so excited; Alice got me a date tonight."
I turned away to hide my disappointed. Damn it, she was taken.
"Well, that is great news. Have you met my son, yet? He came to town for his Christmas break. He will be going back to New York next month."
"Oh, yeah, Alice was telling me he was coming. Hi." I heard her say. I turned toward her, nodding and smiling politely.
"What happen to your last date?" Mom asked.
I couldn't help but turn to look at her.
"It didn't go well, he was into drugs. I found them in his car." Her cheeks flushed. Her brunette hair moved smoothly on her back as she moved her head side to side.
"Oh dear, I hope this boy is good."
I looked at Bella's legs; she was wearing tight jeans that showed the shape of her skinny legs.
"Yeah, so do I. Alice is complaining about the paint smell in my room. I wish I could find a guy that makes me feel happy, that way I can keep that color of emotion in my room." 'Color of emotion?' What does that mean? Did she change colors depending on what she felt?
"I feel like changing the color of my room again. I am going to paint my room pink today. Hot pink." Bella started to search for the pile of buckets.
My eyes followed her fingers, as she carefully touched each bucket and traced the name with her fingers.
After a few more minutes of chatting with Mom, Bella bought a large bucket of color hot pink and left. My mom hid her laugh when we heard the sound of another vase breaking.
"Do you want me to move the vases? They seem to be in the way," I asked Mom.
"Oh, honey, there is no point of moving them; Bella will just break something else. She is cursed with being a klutz she gets it from her mom. Isn't she sweet, though? She moved to Forks just a few months ago."
I nodded. "Why did she move to Forks? Did she move here for community college?" It seemed weird for her to be living here. From her clothes, she looked more like a city girl. I did hear Mom and her talking about college; Bella had looked wistful, like she missed something.
"She used to go to Phoenix University, but her dad died. Do you remember when I told you Chief Swan died?" She waited until I nodded. "Well, she is his daughter. After he died, on the job one night, Bella decided to move here. Her mom was already married to someone else in Phoenix, and Bella wanted to take care of Chief Swan's house. She goes to Seattle University and visits every weekend, but I guess she has this month off too."
"What's with her becoming a pilot when she is scared to fly?" How can someone forget that?
"That, my dear, is Bella for you. Since her dad died, she has changed her major five times. She believes her dad's death is a sign for her to live her life to the fullest. So she is trying every major she can think of. She takes classes for it for a few weeks then quits. It's quite funny if I do say so myself."
I laughed. "Who pays for them?"
"Well, her step-dad is a baseball player. He supports her, and since Chief Swan died on job, she gets government benefits as well. I think she works too, but I am not sure. Anyway, the important part is, she is one of my best customers. She is the reason I have so much wall paint. She comes every five days and buys a new bucket of paint. Just make sure we have any color she likes."
"Every five days?"
My mom started to pack up her things. "I don't know but the more I ask, the more I get confused. She is one of those birds that doesn't know which direction she wants to go. Hopefully she will find her joy in something." With that, my mom left the store in my care for the day.
As my mom predicted, Bella entered the shop five days later, breaking another flower vase. Secretly, I was hoping for her to come sooner. She went straight to the paint, picked out a bucket, and walked over to the counter.
I noticed that her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were red. "Bella, are you okay?"
She shrugged, looking at the bucket and avoided my eyes. I wish I could see her eyes.
I decided to make some small talk, while checking what color she picked. Night Gray- interesting. "So why gray? Isn't that a little weird?" I couldn't picture a gray room.
"Gray means sorrow; it's not bright and is easily created when colors are mixed," she forced out.
"You know a lot about colors," I murmured. "I used to play with colors too. Whenever I felt mad, I would take it out on my coloring books. It fascinated me to see how much colors can show." I looked down to see her meeting my eyes. Her eyes were filling with unshed tears. "My friends claim I am a very good listener. If you ever want to test it, I am here."
She started to sob. I walked quickly toward her and moved her to a 'For Sale' couch. She sat down and cried herself out. After giving her some Kleenex tissues, and bringing her a glass of water, her tears stopped. "My week went horrible!" she cried out.
"Why? What happen?" I hope it was her date, I hope she isn't going out anymore. I can't believe she is sitting here crying.
"You know Alice, right?" she continued without waiting. "She introduced me to Mike Newton. Mike was great. The first night we fell in love."
I swallowed hard.
"I planned to get engaged the next night, but all he did was taken me to his friend's parties." She cried into her Kleenex.
I looked at her in disbelief. How can you get engaged on a second date?
"Then he asked me out again. I thought he would propose to me, but again he took me to a party."
My eyes grew wide.
"On the fourth date I was thinking of what our kids would look like, when I asked him. He said he doesn't want to marry me. He just wants to party! Can you believe that?"
I opened my mouth to say something but she started to sob again.
"Then…then…this morning I called him up and he broke up with me..." she squealed into the tissue.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. Holy shit, this girl is crazy.
I moved my hand smoothly on her back to calm her down. I decided at that moment that I would stay away from her. Something was seriously wrong with her, and I knew medical enough to know she needed some serious help. "Bella...calm down. It's okay. You can get any other guy, and you have plenty of time. Why can't you concentrate on your career?" I can't believe I lied to her. No guy is crazy enough to be with her when she thought of marriage on her second date.
"Career!" She said the word as if it was dirty. "I don't have time for a career. If I worry about my career, when will I have time to find my husband?"
Okay…Red Flag Alert
*Present Time*
That was how my first meeting with Bella went. After Mike, Alice introduced Bella to Jacob. Bella again fell in love and painted her room purple. She said purple stood for magic, like how she felt when she first saw Jacob. It was magic. She thought of engagement, then marriage, then children. Finally, on the fifth date, Jacob broke up with her because he didn't want kids. He wanted to stay in La Push and be a kid himself. On the break up day, she picked up another paint bucket. She chose the color dark brown, because she was miserable. She cried and sobbed, and then left to paint her room.
Jasper, Alice's boyfriend, introduced Bella to James. Bella chose to paint her room red the day James started to date her. Red stood for love, and Bella felt she was really, truly in love this time. She thought of engagement, then marriage, then children. She broke up with James instead of waiting for him to break up with her, because he confided, he doesn't believe in marriage. He likes to live in sin.
I had to do everything in my power to stop laughing as I saw her cry once again on the couch. I felt sorry for her, but for her to find a guy, who likes to live in sin, was pretty hilarious. This was her third guy, sixth color, and third heartbreak. "Will Jasper or Alice be fixing you up again?" I moved to the counter to put some stuff in order.
She swallowed down her water. "No, my new roommate Rosalie knows someone, but she is checking to see if he is single or not."
I nodded looking at the time. I started to put everything away, since it was time to close. "Hey, Bella, do you know the number of the Pizza Hut here? I feel like eating some pizza."
"Yeah, but it's better to go there and order. They don't usually come to this area in the cold because of the snow. I can take you. I know where it is, and we can use my car. I feel like some pizza too."
After deciding the pros and cons, I called my parents to tell them I would be bringing some pizza, and then I left with Bella.
While she was driving, I searched around for some music. "Hey, you listen to classical music?"
"I listen to Debussy. Do you know his work?" She pointed to one of the CDs in her CD pouch.
"Are you kidding? Clair de Lune is my favorite." I put the CD in and sighed as the music filled the car.
"Do you want to meet my dad?" Bella suddenly asked.
I looked up in confusion. Wasn't her dad dead?
"The graveyard..." She turned to the side. "It's been days since I last talked to him. You want to meet him?"
Just for a couple of seconds I saw the innocent Bella. The same Bella who was blushing on the first day I met her. This careful Bella was what I wanted. I didn't realize I had answered her, until she parked her car. Silently, I followed her lead, passing stone after stone. I said a little prayer for every person to rest in peace.
I stopped when Bella stopped. She slowly knelt in front of her dad's grave. "Hey Dad, sorry I didn't get you any flowers. It was a surprise decision. This is Edward. You know Dr. Cullen? Their son, he is here for the holidays." She turned to me.
I knelt down next to her awkwardly. "Hey, Mr. Swan. Sorry I haven't visited before now. I have been busy with medical school. Remember you told me you hoped I would follow my dad's footsteps? Yeah, I am going to be a doctor." I sighed. This felt extremely weird to talk like this. I started to talk again when Bella didn't say anything. "I met your daughter. She is very unique. She changes the color of her room every few days..." I smiled when I heard Bella chuckle beside me. "She is finding her way around careers and guys. She is interesting and sensitive, but the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. She has hidden layers that everyone wishes to uncover. She loves you a lot. She misses you more than anyone can tell. I hope you're here chief, you need to watch over. I don't mean watch over her, but over the guys she dates. She scares the hell out of them." I laughed when Bella gasped and hit me. This was the first time I saw her eyes shine and heard a real laugh.
"You knew my dad, Edward. He was a very quiet, but very romantic guy. He believed in love at first sight. Before dying, he demanded I not let time come in between me and the person I would love. He believed that love only comes into a person's life once. If you let that person get away, you won't be able to love again. He always held on to his love; I admired that. I wish I could love someone like that, and have someone love me like that."
The way she talked, I sensed that this was the mature Bella. She didn't seem the same woman who cried over her five day boyfriend. This girl was grieving for her father.
"You can't find love like that in five days, Bella. If it's meant to happen, it will," I whispered, hoping she wouldn't get upset.
"I can try. All I have ever done is focus on what others expect of me. My mom expected me to be a perfect daughter, my teachers expected me to be a perfect student. The only person who wanted love was this man. The man I couldn't take time off to get to know. It was always my education that got in the way. Now, I've lost something I will never have again. The least I can do is fulfilling his wish; his wish for me to fall in love, and make my own life filled with happiness. Time doesn't stop for anyone."
One more layer of her soul was uncovered.
"Time can't be fast forwarded either, Bella." I pulled her into my arms.
After that day, I realized that the real Bella was hidden behind many colors. The only way to see them was to see her. Every day I would take a bucket of color and go to her house to help her paint. She would argue how it wasn't her color and I would say that it was the color people saw. Every day I would see a new Bella.
The real Bella was smart, intellectual and scared. Scared to be lonely, scared to miss a chance in love and life. She just wanted a real love. Like everyone else, she was looking. Her only problem was carrying her heart in her sleeve.
On Monday I met her ex-boyfriend, Mike. He made some small talk about the color of her room, while I was quietly painting. After a while he started to beg Bella to take him back. The feelings of jealousy and fear ran like shocks through my body. I prayed to God she would give me a chance before anyone else.
She didn't give him a straight answer. She said she needed time, and that she would answer him on New Years. I sighed in defeat but didn't interfere. It was her life, and I was going to leave in two weeks anyway. On Tuesday another boyfriend came around; it all seemed very annoying to me. Jacob walked inside her house like he owned the place. He ordered me to paint smoothly and not ruin his girlfriend's room. I was very close in pushing his face into the bucket full of paint. Bella interrupted him and told him firmly that she would think about it, and tell him on New Years. His red, furious face was enough to make my day.
On Wednesday, I met James. He was the reason I started to paint rough strokes. He was touching her, and talking dirty to her. I advised her to call the cops since he looked drunk, but she called one of her roommates' boyfriends to take James away. I didn't know Alice's boyfriend Jasper was the same guy I was friends with in high school. He came and took James away. We both agreed to meet up and hang out before I left for school. I was glad when Bella told James no when he asked her out, and didn't bother giving him the deadline of New Years.
On Thursday, all of her roommates and their boyfriends came to check on Bella. I was very happy with the gold color I chose to paint her room. It stood for wisdom, which Bella had a lot of. Alice and Rosalie were Bella's roommates at Seattle University. Rosalie was engaged to Emmett, who was studying sports medicine. However, he could probably made a career as a comedian with his sense of humor. Alice, one of my high school classmates, was also Bella's roommate. She was Jasper's girlfriend, and was studying fashion designing. Jasper was going for an MBA.
On the Friday of New Years Eve, I decided to leave Bella alone and let her decide what she wanted. I wasn't going to explain anything to her. She needed to understand life is too short, but running faster wouldn't get her anywhere. It would just take her to where she was standing now.
I went to one place that I wished for the thousandth time I had gone to before.
I knelt down in front of Chief Charlie Swan's headstone, and placed some new flowers on his grave. It felt peaceful to talk to him, especially about his daughter.
"Hey Chief, I hope your soul is in peace. I wanted to let you know, Bella has great friends. They really care about her. They are kind and protective. I even heard Emmett calling Bella his sister. She has a protector now, too. I made her see some more colors in her world. I hope she realizes it's not the color but her decisions. Colors can be easily changed, but decisions in life are hard to undo. I hope she makes a good decision and goes back to studying. I hope she finds time instead of just some guy. I hope she doesn't choose a wrong guy, because she is too scared to miss some time. I hope she takes time to see all her options, before deciding on what color to see every morning."
"What if I don't want to see a color?" I jerked up in alert at Bella's voice. I didn't notice she was there, and wondered how much of that she had heard.
"I thought you wanted colors to reflect your emotions?" I made some room for her.
"The thing I wanted to see was love, Edward. Love. That's something that I couldn't see, even after I painted the color red. All I saw was white. After the lights went out, everything went black. Mike wanted a girl to party with, Jacob wanted an arm candy in front of his friends, and James just wanted one thing that he won't get. Everyone wanted something, and I would have given it if I had seen love. But I didn't see love. I still didn't see. I was afraid to lose time and I lost, Edward. I finally lost one thing that I thought I had." She cried.
I pulled her to me. "What did you lose?"
"I lost time!" She put her arms around me.
"Bella, what are you saying?"
She pushed me a little until she met my eyes. "Don't you see? I lost time, time to know what love could be, time to get to know what could have happened. I lost the time to see what was right in front of me. I lost time to get to know you..."
I sucked in a breath.
"Bella..."
She shook her head, stopping me. "I did meet a guy, Edward. I saw him kneeling in front of my father. I saw him talk to my friends and treating them like his own. I saw him everyday bring a new color into my life, but he didn't say the words that I had been waiting to hear. Why did I let time go? I thought I had it in my hands."
I smiled, kissing her cheeks and felt good about the bold move when I felt her face redden. "You did see him, but did you see him getting engage? Proposing? Or having kids? Did you see him settling down?"
She nodded against me, "I saw him as a doctor, I saw him sitting with me in a restaurant, and I saw him calling me beautiful while I cried."
"You know what?" I whispered. I smiled when I felt her shiver. "I could see it too."
Forty-five minutes before midnight, I had arranged everyone to meet in Bella's house. Bella would tell all her ex boyfriends it was never meant to be, and then her and I would go to my house for New Year's dinner. Everything was set; Emmett and Jasper were on music duty, while their girls would take care of the food.
Jacob and Mike showed up, only to start checking other girls out. I rolled my eyes, moving closer to Bella and holding on to her. I kissed her shoulders and neck to show everyone she was off the market.
I had snagged the crazy woman who dreamed about getting married the next day.
"Edward." Bella put her arms around me, moving her lips closer to my ear.
"Yeah?"
"Happy New Year!"
I looked up, only to be grabbed by my hair as she pushed her lips on mine. I groaned as I felt her lips move in sync with mine. Far away I heard the countdown and the shouts of "Happy New Years!" surrounding us.
The color around me was definitely love.
The End