Chapter 1
Title: A Wobbly Start
Author: Natasha Brown
Rating: M
Summary: Bella's strained marriage with her high school sweetheart ends in a bitter divorce and she decides to celebrate with a little 'trip' to Europe, leading her to meet the most beautiful man she's ever seen. Will she be able to handle returning to the west coast after an amazing week with him?
A/N: this has been bouncing around my head for a while, and I actually started writing the fourth chapter before this one. I'm hoping to turn this into a rather long fic since I've been full of oneshots as of late. Any and all reviews (good bad fiery) are welcome. Merci.
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Had someone told me when I was seventeen that I'd wake up the weekend of my twenty first birthday in Vegas and married to my high school 'sweetheart', Mike Newton, I would have laughed in their face. And had they then said that the marriage would last three years, I probably would have pissed my pants laughing so hard.
But unfortunately, both those things became reality. In my drunken haze on a trip he'd organized for my birthday, we decided to legalize our five year high school romance. And then three years later, we decided to finalize the divorce, ending out rocky relationship. I loved Mike; he was slightly annoying, rather loud and overbearing, but he was sweet and caring. And heck he wasn't that hard to look at. But we'd had different goals for the relationship from the very beginning. When he asked me to our junior prom, he had a legitimate interest in me. When I said 'yes', I had a legitimate interest in making my ex jealous. He didn't want to go to college, having wanted to go straight to work at his father's mega sports store, but he followed me like a lost puppy to UW. I hadn't wanted to live together while we were at college, but it was cheaper and I wanted to make him happy. After we married and graduated college (him with a degree in Business Management and me with a mostly useless English degree) we fought for weeks on whether we wanted to move back to our small town of Forks, Washington or just stay in Seattle. I knew that I wouldn't be able to find many editing jobs in our small town, but he wanted to go work for his dad. Somehow he won the fight.
So I sat around at our newly built house in Forks, trying to find editing jobs I could do from home while Mike spent sixty plus hours a week at the store. I eventually found a job editing for an online news agency, and even though it was something to do, I was still bored relentless and unhappy. Mike would often tell me to go to Port Angeles and go shopping, or take trips to places, cause we had more than enough money for it, but I wasn't interested in either of those things. Between how I felt and Mike never being at home, the few hours we saw each other every day either involved us laying in bed, facing away from each other, or us screaming at each other until I made Mike sleep on the couch. I hated every second of every fight we'd ever had, because I saw how fighting had destroyed my parent's marriage, but on our third wedding anniversary, which Mike forgot, I realized that I couldn't live with him the rest of my life. I deserved to be happy as well. Plus these past six months of no sex were driving me crazy.
So a week later, I sat with him at the dinner table on one of his rare days off. And as he flipped through the newspaper and noisily chewed on his pasta, I prepared myself to tell him that I wanted a divorce. I said his name and he lowered his paper and set his fork down, giving me this look that I couldn't quite decipher.
"Mike, we need to talk."
"Bella, I know. I'm sorry."
"No, it's my fault too Mike."
"No it's not, Bells. You did nothing to deserve this."
I shook my head at him trying to interrupt him so I could speak but I dropped the glass of wine I had been sipping on when he spoke again.
"You don't deserve to have a cheating husband."
I pushed my chair back and stared down at him, my mouth hanging open.
"You…you…you cheated on me!" I screamed at him, my hands balling into fists at my size.
He stood up next to me to try and calm me, reaching out to touch my shoulder, but I shoved him away.
"I'm so sorry Bella. With the long hours at work and us constantly fighting…and one thing led to another."
"Who was it?" I spat at him.
He looked down at the palms of his hands before ringing them together and looking at me, avoiding my eyes.
"Jessica. She started working at the store about six months ago."
I turned around, unwilling to let him see the tears that were forming in the corners of my eyes. I stormed up the stairs towards out bedroom and I heard him call out my name behind me. I ran into our closet and pulled down the nearest suitcase I could, throwing my clothes into it, hangers and all. He came into the bedroom and I started to throw things at him, my tears now streaming down my cheeks.
"I can't believe what an ass you are! I can't believe I fucking changed my entire life plan for you! And you just go and cheat on me with some cheap whore from high school!"
He just stood in the doorway, not even bothering to dodge the items I threw at him. I roamed around the room, filling a second suitcase with clothes from the drawers around the room before I shoved past him, dragging the suitcases along the hard wood floors, hopefully leaving scratches. I stormed down the stairs, nearly tripping several times as I went to grab my keys and purse from the kitchen.
As he walked down the stairs I met him at the bottom. I stared him down, his frame towering over me.
"I was already going to tell you I wanted a divorce. That I didn't want to be unhappy anymore. I was going to suggest we just iambically split everything up and I would move out. But no, Mike. I'm going to wipe your clean in the divorce. now I'm going to make you wish you'd never even looked at that bitch."
I crammed my two bags into my car and drove away, speeding towards my best friend, Alice's, house. I pulled into her drive way a few minutes later, having done well over the speed limit and I stormed up to the front door. I walked right in like she'd told me to a million time, and I saw her cuddling on the couch with her fiancé, Jasper Whitlock before I fell to the ground sobbing.
Several hours later, Alice had tucked me into the bed in her guest room with a cup of warm tea. We'd sat in the kitchen as she just let me cry and bitch and moan about how unhappy I was, and I almost didn't have the heart to stop Jasper when he volunteered to go kick Mike's ass.
As I lay in the bed, I realized I was more angry at myself. Angry that I hadn't seen the signs all along. And angry that I was so upset about this. In a way this made everything better. It made Mike the bad guy, and me just the jilted wife. I was just poor innocent Bella Newton soon-to-be-Swan-again, the police chief's daughter.
Thinking about my dad reminded me that I had yet to tell him I was moving out, because I had no doubt that Mike had called his house to see if I was there. But then again, Mike hadn't wasted too much energy chasing after me as I stormed out.
Somewhere around two a.m. I managed to fall into a deep coma like state until the alarm went off at eight a.m. Knowing Mike had to work that day I was hoping to get to the lawyer as early as possible to start the process. And I hadn't lied when I told Mike the night before that I was going to wipe him clean. He'd inherited a nice sum of money when his father passed away two years ago, and with as profitable as the store was making, I could come out with quite a bit of money. I felt bad that I wanted to rip him off, but had we stayed in the city and I gotten a job in a publishing house, I'd be contributing a lot of income as well, but he'd cheated me out of that.
Alice and Jasper were nowhere to be seen as I left to drive to Port Angeles to see the lawyers and I made a mental note to buy them a small gift and card. Alice had offered to let me stay at her place as long as I needed to, and not wanting to deal with my father's questions, I accepted. The drive went by in a blur and I hadn't even realized it was over until a few minutes after I pulled into the office building's parking lot. For a few years now I'd gone to Alice's older brother, Emmett, for all my legal needs, and I was sure he would make time to see me today. Several times over the years, he'd expressed his disdain for my now soon-to-be ex husband.
I climbed the stairs to the third floor and opened to the door that read 'Cullen, Locke and Locke' and stepped in to greet Rosalie, the receptionist who happened to also be Emmett's wife. She smiled warmly at me before pursing her lips and standing up to hug me. She towered over me; she loved to wear heels even though she was already six feet tall. She was the definition of a bombshell beauty. Long, flowing blonde hair, flawless skin, perfect teeth, bright blue eyes, and a body to kill for.
"Bella, dear, why are you here? Is everything okay?"
"Actually, it's not really. I left Mike last night."
"Oh thank the Lord. You are a million times too good for him!"
"Thanks dear. I was already thinking about leaving him, but last night he told me he cheated with this tramp from high school. So I grabbed some of my stuff and went to Alice's."
"Oh god Bella! I'm so sorry! He's such a pig." Rosalie said, pulling me into a deep hug. "Em's on the phone at the moment but I'll let him know you're here. He doesn't have anything scheduled for this morning, so just give him a minute."
"Thanks Rose."
She simply nodded her head before disappearing into the hallway off to the right towards Emmett's office. I sat down and picked up the closet magazine to flip through until Em was free. I was halfway through a boring article about the CEO of a bank who was arrested for embezzling millions of dollars when I hear Emmett's voice from down the hallway rushing to the waiting room. I put the magazine down just in time to be pulled into a tight, suffocating bear hug. Emmett sometimes forgot that his six foot five frame easily overpowered by much smaller five foot four frame. He sat down next to me still holding my hand.
"Are you dealing it with it okay? Because I'm more than willing to beat that scumbag into the dirt."
"I know, I know, Jasper said the same thing dear. Thank you. I'm tempted to throw a few punches myself."
"Oh I'm sure. But don't worry Bella. I'm going to make sure he's wiped clean in this divorce. You're family around here, and he's going to pay."
I smiled brightly at Emmett before following him into his office, reading to ruin my husband.
After a rather vicious legal battle that lasted nearly six months, Em had ensured I came out victorious. Mike got to keep the house and his car, but I won pretty much everything else. It seemed, that after we signed the papers, the only furniture he had left in the house was the master bedroom set, a couch with his beloved TV and the kitchen table. I was also awarded a nice chunk of his inheritance, as well as a share of the store and a percentage of all the income he'd made while we were married.
I wanted to pretend that I felt guilty when I saw his face as we finally reached an agreement, but I felt only pure joy. I'd gotten my revenge. And boy was it sweet.
I decided to rent an apartment in Seattle after everything was settled so Jasper and Emmet helped me move all my 'new' furniture to my new spacious place. The first night I stayed in the apartment alone was weird. I'd never lived alone before. I either roomed with Alice at UW or lived with Mike. And it felt liberating. I could drink straight from the milk carton and lounge around, not picking up my dirty clothes after myself.
By day three I was bored. Like out of my mind bored. I'd taken a hiatus from the online editing job and I had been searching for something in Seattle, but they all required more experience than I had. By week two, about a month before my twenty fifth birthday, I was ape-shite crazy. I was flipping through the channels for the billionth time when I stopped on a travel show. This young couple had traveled to Europe for a few weeks and I decided what I needed to do to get out of my funk. I had more than enough money for it. I, Bella Swan, was going to go to Europe, for the first time, and have the time of my life.
