I Am Thankful For Stupid Questions
"Again, thank you so much for letting me crash your Thanksgiving," Bella said as she and her roommate Alice crunched through the snow, weighed down by bags of groceries in each hand.
Alice tried to wave her thanks off, "For the last time, you're not crashing it. You can't really crash a party of two. Well, you can, but you're not." She grinned. "Besides, I think Edward is more excited about you coming than me. You're the one that can cook."
Bella cheeks warmed a little. "I'm not that good," she protested.
"Thanksgiving won't be macaroni and cheese and cold cut turkey sandwiches. You're a godsend."
They both laughed at that and stomped off the snow as they arrived at Alice's tiny apartment. She and her new husband Jasper lived in a one-bedroom basement that they rented from the owner who lived above them. There was barely enough room to turn around in there, but Alice made it homey and welcoming.
Unfortunately, Jasper wasn't going to be with them this Thanksgiving. He was with his family in Texas. Alice couldn't go because of school and work obligations, but she all but forced him to go home without her because she knew how close his family was. He was only going to be gone a few days, she reasoned, and she had her brother and Bella to keep her company.
Her brother, Edward, greeted them at the door. "I thought I heard Bella's clunker out there. How's it holding up in the snow?"
"My truck is perfectly fine, thank you very much," Bella replied.
He laughed and teased, "If that's your idea of perfectly fine, should I be worried about what I'm about to eat for dinner?"
Alice elbowed him sharply, "Shut up and be nice or you're not eating at all. Now be a gentleman and help us bring all this stuff in."
That was Edward. Alice's older brother by two years, he took his role seriously, and was endlessly teasing her. Bella had become a sort of little sister by default after spending so much time with Alice, and Edward seemed to have no problem including her in his games.
He took a few bags from the girls and set them on the table, riffling through them as he did so. "Ooh, are you making pumpkin pie and everything? This is going to be the best Thanksgiving ever!" His eyes lit up like a little boy's as he turned to Bella.
"I can't make everything," she said matter-of-factly. "I was hoping you'd help at least a little."
"Good luck with that," Alice called over her shoulder as she put food away in the fridge. "Edward can't cook his way out of a paper bag."
"What does that even mean?"
"It means that if you were homeless and living in a paper sack and someone offered you money if you managed to cook something edible, you wouldn't be able to do it."
"That makes no sense."
"I never said it did."
Bella ignored their antics and finished unpacking. When she was done, she turned and watched the bickering siblings before getting annoyed.
"Okay!" Bella shouted, interrupting a debate on Edward's living quarters should he ever be homeless – a box or a van down by some river – and put her hands on her hips.
"Sorry," they answered in unison. Bella felt uncannily like their mother as they looked at her guiltily.
"Just try to keep the arguing to a minimum," she said. "I know it's a requirement of the holiday, but I would like to survive this shindig relatively unscathed.
"Yes ma'am," Alice saluted her and Edward just kind of smirked. "Now put us to work!"
A few hours later, the Turkey was mercifully in the oven. Yes, the Turkey. Edward had just stared at it in reverence as Bella wrestled with it.
"You know, this thing is kind of heavy," she hinted with a grunt, snapping Edward out of his daze.
"Oh sorry," he helped lift it out of the sink where it had been defrosting, and onto the counter so Bella could stuff it. It wasn't an extremely large bird, but it was awkward to handle.
"When was the last time you actually had a turkey?" Bella asked, curious.
Edward looked to Alice, "I don't remember. Maybe some time in junior high?"
"Yeah, I think it was my last year in the elementary school," Alice said. She was concentrating intensely on the list of proposed dished Bella had written up. "Sometime before Mom got that promotion." Both her parents worked at the hospital, which meant odd hours and very little family time. It was the reason the siblings were here at school instead of at home. "What do you need me to work on now? The stuffing's checked off, and the turkey takes so long that we can't really start anything else yet."
"Help me peel the yams. Edward, you can help, too, for a little bit. I'll need you again when I want to put this thing in the oven."
Edward rolled up his sleeves, happily. "Challenge accepted. I bet I can peel more yams than you, Alice."
She rolled her eyes. "Sorry, Edward, but it's not just a matter of speed. You need to leave some of the thing in one piece so we can actually use it. You can't just hack at it with a machete. It takes some finesse."
"Oh, I've got finesse." Edward twirled a peeler in his fingers and picked up a yam, tossing it in the air and catching it neatly. "You just can't see it because you're my sister."
Bella just giggled from her place at the counter while the two got to work at the table. She couldn't remember a time where Thanksgiving dinner preparation included smack talk.
"I don't know," Alice said slyly, "Bella's not your sister and I've never seen this so-called finesse with her."
Edward shot his sister a dark look before glancing at Bella nervously to see her reaction. Alice knew Edward had a little crush on her best friend, but he'd never made a move. He always had an excuse - school, work, or something – but she knew he was just too embarrassed.
It might have something to do with the time he first met Bella and she'd seen him buying certain feminine products for Alice and she recognized him from the pictures Alice had up in her room. That was before Alice and Bella were roommates, and Alice blackmailed Edward into shopping for her. Bella never found out with what, though.
But Bella didn't seem to hear, or else chose to ignore Alice's comment, so Edward chucked a yam peel in his sister's direction. It landed on her cheek and stuck. She shrieked and grabbed a handful of peels to return fire before Bella turned around.
"For crying out loud, you guys really are like kids," she said. "Alice, I'm not cleaning up any of your mess."
"He started it," Alice couldn't help but pout.
Bella just rolled her eyes again, and said, "Really, Alice?"
Edward at least had the sense to look contrite, but as soon as Bella's back was turned, he smirked at Alice in victory. Narrowing her eyes, she threw the yam she'd just finished peeling at him, and it bounced off his forehead with a satisfying thud.
Bella sighed, but didn't turn around. "I'm going to ignore that. Edward, come help me put this thing in the oven."
"It's not a thing," Edward said as he stood, pretending to be scandalized. "It is the Granddaddy of Turkeys."
"It's like, five pounds. It's not even a Daddy of Turkeys. It's barely of Daddy of Chickens."
"You mock, but compared to the Chinese food I had last year, or the McDonald's the year before, this thing is Heaven."
"So why do you antagonize Alice so much?" Bella asked as she shook the cranberry sauce can and its contents slid out with a satisfying 'shlurp'.
Edward glanced over from the stove, where he was carefully stirring and mixed and on the watch for burning. "I'm her big brother. It's my job."
"Jasper, just because I kicked you out doesn't mean I'm not allowed to miss you," Alice's voice floated in from the living room, where she was talking on the phone with Jasper. As she had been for the past thirty minutes.
Grinning, Edward said, "And she just makes it so easy sometimes."
Bella laughed. "I guess I can't argue with that."
"As you shouldn't. You can't mess with the natural order of things. Big brothers are supposed to pick on their little sisters. Just as little sisters are supposed to annoy big brothers." Edward sounded indignant, but Bella know he was only teasing.
"Heh, yeah I guess I missed out on the sibling handbook since I'm an only child."
A beat passed. "I can pick on you, too, if you'd like," Edward suggest with a devious grin.
"What?" Bella looked up from beating the cranberry gelatin into submission, alarmed. "No, I didn't mean that. I don't want you to look at me as a sister."
"I don't see you as a sister at all," Edward said quietly, suddenly finding the pot of mashed potatoes fascinating.
Silence fell in the kitchen, broken only by the sounds of the stove working its magic and brief snippets of Alice's conversation. It was clear she was going to be preoccupied for a while.
"Edward," Bella said hesitantly. The sound of his name on her lips captured his attention immediately, and he turned to face her. He watched her move on from the cranberry sauce to the package of peas. "If you don't see me as a sister 'at all'… why haven't I uh, seen this so-called finesse you mentioned earlier?"
She carefully cut open the package and emptied the bag into a bowl to be microwaved, not looking at Edward as she spoke.
This took Edward by surprise. "Are you… um, wanting to see my finesse?"
"Nevermind, it's a stupid question."
"You're right, it is a stupid question."
Bella looked up in shock to see Edward grinning down at her, the awkward tension suddenly dissolved. "You're not supposed to agree with me!" She threw a pea at him and it whizzed by his ear, missing completely.
"Whoa now, I thought it was childish to throw food!"
"Maybe, but it's really satisfying!" She chucked a handful of peas this time, several hitting their mark and bouncing off his cheek and nose.
He blinked. Then he slowly walked over to Bella, a predatory look in his eyes, and invaded her personal space, placing his hands on the counter behind her, not three inches from her hips. He didn't touch her, but their bodies were so close that buzzing electricity filled the air between them with a crackling anticipation.
"Satisfying?" Edward's voice was low and husky at her ear. "I'd hardly call a handful of peas satisfying."
Bella gulped, but didn't push him away.
"This is finesse," his breath tickled her cheek. "And this…is satisfaction."
Quicker than Bella could process, he reached behind her, grabbed the bag of sugar meant for the pie, and dumped it on her head.
She shrieked, her hands groping behind her from some kind of ammunition. She found a spoon and cranberry sauce and launched it at Edward with a yelp.
He ducked behind the kitchen table, reaching for anything else he could throw, laughing all the while.
A volley of food was flying through the air almost instantly, as battle broke out in the kitchen, pierced with shrieks and peals of laughter.
"What the hell is going on?" Alice shouted, running into the kitchen, cell phone still at her ear.
Edward and Bella froze. They both looked at her guiltily, Edward with his arm cocked back about to throw pieces of a dinner roll and yam peelings stuck in his hair, and Bella holding a loaded spoon of mashed potatoes like a slingshot with sugar spilling from her hair when she moved.
"You know what," Alice said. "I don't want to know. If this is your way of finally making a move, Edward, so be it." She turned on her heel and spoke into the phone, walking out of the kitchen, "My brother is so weird."
Edward lowered his hand, his face a bright red even without the smears of cranberry sauce across it. Bella relaxed her pose, too, and shook out her hair.
"So," she said, almost conversationally, but just a little too tense. "Was it?"
"Was it what?" Edward looked dazed as he surveyed the mess and the girl standing before him.
"You making a move."
"Oh. Um." He tried to look away, but Bella was stalking towards him, looking completely ridiculous and fantastic and delicious all at the same time.
She stopped in front up him, backing him up against the refrigerator, much like he'd had her against the counter earlier. "Well?"
Something about the way she was looking at him, and the way she licked her lips while her eyes darted between his own eyes and lips gave Edward the courage to hesitantly say, "Maybe?"
"Then it's about freaking time." Swiftly, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his face down to hers, pressing her lips against his in a firm kiss.
When they pulled apart several minutes later, they were both a little breathless.
"Hey now! I'm really happy for you, but if you let anything burn, I will kill you both!" Alice shouted from the living, effectively bursting the bubble and the two broke apart as Bella shot over the stove to survey the damage. Aside from a slight decrease in volume, and the mess all over the kitchen, dinner was still fine.
"Bella?" Edward spoke from the floor, where he was sweeping up the remnants of their battle. Bella down at him, suddenly much shyer than he would have expected given the display of emotion he'd just witnessed.
"Yes?"
"I was right. This is definitely the best Thanksgiving ever."
She threw one last pea at him for good measure, but couldn't wipe the grin off her face for the rest of the day. Especially when they went around the table saying what they were thankful for, and Edward looked Bella straight in the eye and said, "I am thankful for stupid questions."
AN: I hope you enjoyed this silly little Thanksgiving piece. Someone mentioned they needed a good food fight, and the little plot bunny kept eating away at me. Thanks for reading!