Wahhhh wah, I don't own Twilight or Friends and so forth.
The baby kicked me and I felt like kicking her back.
It was like there was nothing I could do to please this child. She hatefully took cheap shots at my ribs all day long like I had any choice in being her warden. It felt like wary foreshadowing of what I had to look forward to in the coming months; she was certain to crack a bone before she escaped.
I was swollen and unfortunate looking, lacking any sort of prescribed glow that I should have been emanating in the middle of my second trimester. I sweat a lot more now, though. Maybe that's what they were talking about.
Vomiting this much was terrible, too. Puking with no foreseeable goal, like evacuating excess alcohol from a night at a bar, or trying to squeeze into a size four, was tremendously taxing. If I hadn't known I was on the fast track to becoming a bloated beach ball, I would have estimated that I'd lost at least six pounds so far. I couldn't keep down a bite, and it got to the point where even thinking about food made chunks stand at the ready at the bottom of my esophagus.
Especially poultry.
I thought back to the first night I suspected I was pregnant: how I fried up some golden delicious battered chicken 'til it sizzled, cut into the tender breast and brought it to my mouth, ready for the rush of delight to race through my veins the way only food could make it, and then leaned over and threw my face up into the plastic garbage bin in the kitchen. Fucking poultry.
So you can imagine my joy at Alice racing between the apartments preparing for turkey's biggest heyday. In that moment, I sort of wished I was Canadian.
I was about to express this opinion to Rosalie, who was sitting at my eat-in kitchen when Alice busted through the door.
"I'm not going to make a turkey this year," she proclaimed decidedly.
Hallelujah! Looks like the unplanned pregnancy used up my bad luck quota for the year.
This little tidbit did, however, bring the monster out of the bedroom behind us.
"NO TURKEY?" Emmett roared, stomping into the living room.
Emmett was an entity built on a foundation of three things: food, sex and… ok just the two, then. He was sort of dumb but totally lovable and easy to live with, so we got along fine.
"Emmett, we don't need an entire turkey. Rosalie doesn't eat it, Bella's having her aversion to poultry and you know Jasper won't have Thanksgiving food. I'm not going to waste an entire day cooking so it can go to leftovers."
"Rosalie!" Emmett whined, "Why the fuck not?"
She made a kissy face over her shoulder and went back to playing Brick Breaker on her Blackberry.
"Alice," he tried again, "how can we have Thanksgiving with no turkey? That's like Fourth of July with no apple pie or… Friday with no two pizzas! What would your mother think?"
I could see the ire rising up in her. Insinuating that her mother would be less than impressed with anything she did was Alice's hot button; she was a classic overachiever who would never be enough for her mom… but it only made her try harder.
Emmett might have been a lot smarter than anyone gave him credit for.
"Fine!" Alice spat in angry concession, "but so help me, Emmett McCarty if you don't suck the meat off every last bone on that bird, I will maul you."
He shrugged. A threat from a Keebler elf didn't really register when you were 300 pounds of brick-wall man. I had no doubt that Emmett could eat an entire turkey by himself. That being said, I also had no desire to witness it.
Alice rebounded as she emptied a bag of groceries that wouldn't fit in her fridge into ours.
"Oh and guess who I invited? Remember that guy Edward Cullen from high school?"
Edward Cullen… Edward Cullen… Nope. "No," I quipped.
"He was in Jacob's class? Marching band? Kind of overweight…?" she tried again.
I was still coming up blank. I knew plenty of people from Jake's class but fat trumpeters rarely made the cut at the kind of parties I went to. "I don't remember him," I told her again.
"Well anyway, I ran into him today. He's here on business and he didn't have a place to go, so I invited him here. And by the way, he's lost a bunch of weight. He looks gooooood. I mean really, really gorgeous."
Well spank me and call me Macy's Parade, no poultry and a sexy dinner guest? Thanksgiving wasn't looking so bad after all.
The next day, dressed in baby-concealing pants and a cream-colored top with a lace overlay (the kind of shirt where you'd be able to see my nipples through it for, say, the duration of a 30 minute sitcom), I draped myself across the couch at Alice and Jasper's apartment across the hall. It seemed that I did a lot of draping myself these days; pregnancy was good for that if nothing else.
I had mixed feelings about the little monster in my uterus. She was the definition of an accident: the product of nostalgia and bad decisions with Jake, my ex-boyfriend and Alice's brother.
Alice and I had been best friends since I could remember; Jacob had been in love with me since high school. When I ran out on my wedding to Mike Newton, DDS, and into Alice at Central Perk, she invited to live with her in the city while I put my pieces back together. After a few years, bad timing, and some serious cat-and-mouse, Jake and I finally got together and dated for about two years. It ended when he fucked the skank with the bellybutton ring from the copy shop.
On a break, my ass.
Anyway, a whole lot went down between then and now: Jake had a short-lived marriage to a British chippie named Jane (he may or may not have said my name at the altar, which is a whole different animal), I dated, he dated, as a couple we were pretty much done for… save for one night of reminiscing that left me with a distended abdomen and an distaste for chicken.
If I had to be having a baby out of wedlock with anyone, I guess it would be Jake. Since we're all girls here I think I can borrow Sex & the City terminology and say he was my great love. And we're sort of inextricably entwined… his sister is my best friend and married to his old college roommate, who is also ex-roommates with my current roommate and lives across the hall from us… there are all sorts of ways to draw the lines from A to B. So here we are now, about to become something else to one another, and to the little nudger in my gut. It's a little unconventional but we're doing the best that we can, and the only thing that will work for us: tackling it as friends.
"I'd shake your hand but I'm really into the game. Plus I think it would be better for my ego if we didn't stand right next to each other."
I was drawn out of my inner monologue by the sound of Jasper's voice behind me. I had been barely listening to mundane chatter among the occupants of the room while they discussed something like adopting an all-star team of Asian and African babies, consecutively one after the other, in the near future.
And then I pretty much lost the capacity for coherent thought.
Holy Book of Mormon, that was a beautiful man.
"Who's that?" I whispered to Rosalie, nearest to me on the couch.
"That guy Edward that Alice was talking about. Didn't you go to high school with him?"
There was no fucking way this guy went to my high school without my knowing about it.
He was tall and lean, but muscular, with these incredible planes in his face that were the product of perfect bone structure and good genetics.
Take note, Baby, I thought to my womb. You're still in formative stages and you need to mimic that.
On top of the gorgeous face was a shock of copper-colored hair that stood up in every direction, like he had been running for hours. I wanted to put my fingers in it.
But most of all, over the lovely bones and under the untamed mane was a set of smoldering green eyes that exuded intensity. I couldn't stop staring at him.
And he was staring back at me.
I felt a little more like Bella Swan the cheerleader and little less like Bella Swan the unmarried prego. God, I missed high school.
I listened as he and Jake caught up, including the part where Jake made an offhand comment about Edward's sexiness that made everyone in the room lift an eyebrow and I hated myself a little for having a piece of that growing in me. In that moment, I sort of wished it was Edward's bronze-tressed baby developing perfect features in my belly.
Finally, it was my turn.
He stalked over towards me.
"Hi, Edward, right? I'm Bella Swan," I said, extending my right hand.
"Oh, I remember you," he answered, leaving my proffered hand untouched.
Good thing I was so important in high school.
"Really? That's so sweet. I gotta tell you though, I'm having the hardest time placing you…" I lowered my voice an octave before the next part, "Wait, did we fool around at Ben Cheney's graduation party?" I had vague drunken recollections of some topless fondling and over-the-pants boner rubbing in the guest room at Ben's parents' house circa 15 years ago.
"You are unbelievable."
Nice to know some things don't change. I always was finessed in the fine art of heavy petting.
"It's time to eat," Alice flitted between us hastily, pushing us towards our respective seats at opposite ends of the table and beginning to serve dinner.
I looked distastefully at the 19 pound turkey she placed in front of Emmett, who was seated to my left. Emmett eyed it warily and I saw small beads of sweat beginning to form at his temple… bet those "warm-up" crackers didn't seem like such a good idea now.
Emmett started by trying to pawn off the bird on the other dinner guests. The second it passed under my nose, I gagged and turned my head in the opposite direction.
"Can we please keep all the chicken and turkey at that end of the table?" I asked nasally, gesturing far, far away from me, "The smell is just… blechh."
"Typical," Edward barked in a velvety cough.
"I'm sorry, what?" I said on a laugh… what the fuck died in this guy's ass?
"I said it's typical. Typical of you, Bella Swan, Queen Bella, does whatever she wants in her own little Bellaland!" He flounced some invisible hair over his right shoulder in what I assume was supposed to be an incarnation of a snobbish girl.
"Um, do you have a problem with me?"
"Apparently, you were a little mean to him in high school," Alice answered gently.
He began violently shoveling yams onto his plate. It was sort of frightening. Ex-fat kids have SO many issues.
"Well, I'm sorry for whatever I did to you in high school, Edward, I'm sorry to have hurt your feelings." I said delicately. I'm also sorry that your bat shit crazy, because it's an unfortunate waste of hot.
"Oh it wasn't just me. We had a club. The 'I Hate Bella Swan Club.'" He lifted his hand excitedly for a high five aimed at Jacob.
Jacob's gaze stayed on his plate.
Not only was I disgusted by how uncool high fives after age nine, but Jake, my effing baby daddy, was in an I Hate Bella Club in high school. Et tu Brute?
I narrowed my eyes at him. "You joined an I Hate Bella Club?"
"Co-founded," Edward interjected.
"You were sort of a cock tease when we were kids," Jake responded quietly. "You kept me in the friend zone forever and it made me angry!" he pled.
"So, what you guys would get together and just say mean things about me?" I asked, exasperated.
"Oh we did a little more than that," Edward said, smiling. "We started a rumor."
I was almost afraid to ask. I stared at Jake angrily and demanded, "What rumor?" The silence hung heavily around us while Jacob avoided my eyes.
"Oh come on Edward, just take off your shirt and tell us!" Rosalie whined.
Jake opened his mouth and some garbage about "both male and female genitalia" tumbled out. I was floored.
"We said your parents flipped a coin, decided to raise you as a girl, but you still had a hint of a penis." Edward clarified proudly.
Hot dinner guest was turning out to be a serious life ruiner.
It all started to make sense… why Tyler Crowley wouldn't go out with me… why Eric Yorkie never ventured beneath my breasticles… I was angry and upset and mostly embarrassed. I wished there was an "I Hate Edward Cullen" club that I could join. Or at least a Facebook group.
"Did you know about this?" I pleaded with Alice.
"How did you NOT know about this? Everyone in our school heard that rumor!" she answered helplessly.
"Everyone in my school heard that rumor," Jasper spoke up, "You were the hermaphrodite cheerleader from Long Island?"
"You gave me a teeny weeny!" I shouted at the pair of them, Jacob and Edward like twin towers of idiocy, but I was strangled with my own pissed-offedness. What a bunch of Grade A douchebags!
For a second I got rational, though. I could continue to be fruitlessly mad about something that happened in high school, or I could do something about it.
Payback, it would seem, was indeed a bitch.
"That's pretty funny," I said after a beat, struggling to keep my voice even. "I guess I deserved it. I was kind of a bitch in high school. Remember when that Animal Control lady tried to take Marcel away because I was homecoming queen? This is not the first time I've felt the backlash of my teenage misgivings."
"Chyaa," Edward said on a laugh.
Gradually, the conversation began to shift to less horrendous subject matter and when Edward headed for the bathroom I saw my opportunity.
I was waiting for him outside the door when he exited.
"Can I talk to you for a minute?"
He looked suspicious, but gestured his hand like I should continue.
"Privately?" I asked, headed towards the door to the balcony.
He followed me outside and put his hands on his hips expectantly.
"I just wanted to say that I'm sorry. Really. I can't take back what I did as a kid but I'm a different person now and I'm ashamed that I hurt you that way. We're both adults know and I know it must have been terrible for you back then, but I'm hoping you can put that aside and forgive me."
Liar! My conscience accused angrily. I mentally shoved a slice of apple pie in her mouth though, and she shut right up.
Edward's stance relaxed. "Thanks, Bella. Kids are assholes, I know that. It really means a lot to hear your apology."
"I'm a nice girl now," I offered with a repentant smile. "Friends?"
His face softened and he put out his hand to shake, but I bypassed it and threw my arms around his neck, managing to press my breasts into his chest while keeping my baby bump from making an contact. It was quite a feat.
Surprised, it took him a second to return the hug. He dropped one hand low on my back and patted me between my shoulder blades with the other.
"Good job growing up, Edward," I whispered with my lips grazing the shell of his ear. I took a second to walk my fingernails up the back of his neck and rake them through that glorious hair. Ok, so it was a little forward, but I'm sort of awesome at this and it was my only shot at revenge which made me kind of desperate.
I felt him shudder against me and I knew it was working.
"Bella, I…" he started, but then let the sentence drift away. I wondered if he was far enough out of his ugly duckling phase to have gotten any serious poon.
By the way I felt his woody digging into my hip after little more than some hair-play and a boob press, my guess was no.
"How'd you like to fuck a cheerleader, Edward?"
His jaw chattered and I could see the hot breath escaping his mouth in little clouds as the condensation met the chilly air.
I led my lips along the swoon-worthy line of his jaw, idly thinking about how much more fun this was because he was sexy now.
I unbuttoned the fly of his pants and they pooled around his ankles. Plucking the waistband of his delicious Ralph Lauren boxer-briefs, I giggled.
"These would be even sexier if you didn't have your shirt tucked into them."
Poor, clueless ex-dork. There are some things that newly acquired hotness just couldn't change, I guess.
"Take your clothes off." Because he was so fat and useless in high school, and probably did nothing but schoolwork, he proved to be a quick study.
I kept him occupied by kissing his mouth with one hand knotted in his hair while the other led his hand up to my ta-ta. While his attention was otherwise involved, I surreptitiously kicked each and every article of his clothing over the edge of the balcony and he was none the wiser.
When I was certain there wasn't a shred of his threads- or the potential for any self-respect- left, I took a step away from him and brought my eyes down to admire his fantastic new body.
That's when the real challenge began. It took all the self control in me, and every cell of goal-oriented determination, not to point and laugh.
Edward Cullen had fat kid dick.
You know what I mean. When a guy was so fat, for so long, that he has this little chode of a cock that simply didn't catch up when he got skinny.
Edward Cullen was that chode.
This was too easy.
I felt sort of guilty about doing this in front of my baby… figuratively, I mean. But I guess when it comes down to it, it's not the kind of thing I would be ashamed if she knew. Exacting vengeance was one of the best lessons you can ever learn. She'd just develop a little early… just like mommy.
"I'm going to get a condom, I'll be right back," I whispered against his warm, soft lips, tracing my tongue along the bottom one and biting it gently once before I backed off of the ledge and into the apartment.
I had Edward Cullen, rumor starter and "I Hate Bella Swan Club" co-founder naked on Alice and Jasper's balcony, and I was about to get even.
"This is for the tenth grade," I said to myself quietly as I wrapped my hand around the cord for the curtains. "Hey guys, look at this!" I called to the room at large, yanking the braided rope and exposing little Edward with his blue lips… and blue balls… in the winter air.
"Who's got the teeny weeny now?" I shouted through the panes of glass, tilting my middle finger in his direction.
The magical cacophony of resounding laughter behind me was undoubtedly better than any music this band geek ever made.
Mortified, Edward covered up his baby junk and visibly seethed. I'm sure he was pretty cold, what with it being November in New York City, but his invocation of "shrinkage!" was laughable.
I know a fat kid dick when I see one.
The baby moved, but I don't think she was kicking. As she was a mere child, I was happy to oblige and I pressed my hand flat against the spot where I felt the sharp ping in my belly.
I'm pretty sure she was giving me a high five.