I sat at the table, the fingers of my right hand digging into the skin of my left wrist. My nails scratched at the surface of my skin until it stung something awful and turned a dark, angry red.
"I'm sure whatever it is can't be that bad, Bella. I'm your mother, you can tell me anything," Renee said to me.
It wasn't the truth. I couldn't tell her anything. "Mom, you wouldn't understand."
She wouldn't. No one would. Even I myself didn't understand what I had done. I didn't understand why I wanted to cause someone so much pain.
"Bella, just tell me what happened. You know I won't judge. I've been through a lot in life. Maybe I can help," she said, softly. She knew I was on the verge of breaking.
"I cheated," I said softly.
"On a test? Oh, Bella- good grief. You had me thinking you had killed someone." She laughed her hearty laugh and shook her head.
"Not on a test mom," I said, smiling darkly.
"Huh?" she asked, obviously confused.
"I didn't cheat on a test mom, I cheated on Edward."
I looked up into her eyes and saw disbelief.
I smiled even bigger.
Six months earlier.
"How long are you going to hold onto that shit, Bella?" Edward, my boyfriend of three years, yelled at me loudly. My ears were ringing from the volume of his voice, and my eyes were burning from my tears.
"However long I want to, Edward!" I screamed back, my voice not sounding strong like his, but hurt. I didn't want him to know just how deeply he had hurt me.
"Jesus Fucking Christ. I can't do this anymore. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm fucking sorry. How many Goddamn times do I have to say it?" It didn't even sound like he meant what he was saying.
"I don't care how many times you say it, Edward, the only thing that matters is that you don't mean it. You're not sorry," I said, now taking to throwing things at him.
"Bella, it was four months ago. We've talked about this. I was drunk…and fucking…lonely. I missed you!"
"So you fucked some supermodel because you missed me? Bullshit!" I screamed, continuing to throw anything I could get my hands on at him. How I still had the energy to make tears, I don't know. I had been crying all day.
When I saw the paper that morning, it made everything come back to me full force. It was an older picture, I knew. Edward's hair was longer. He had gotten almost all of his long golden locks cut off a couple weeks ago. In this picture his hair was still long. He had his arms wrapped around some blonde. He was leaning in to kiss her.
The headline on the magazine said, 50 biggest scandals of 2009. That was when I had found out he was cheating. And so did the rest of my friends and family. To say I was embarrassed would be an understatement.
The day the photos came out, my dad flew up to New York and came into the house while I was confronting Edward about the pictures and the late night phone calls. All the signs were there; I had just ignored them.
I didn't get much done, because the second I opened the door and let my dad in, he had Edward pinned to the ground. Charlie's face was red, and although he was much older than Edward, I had no doubt in my mind that with all the anger that he had in that moment, he could have taken Edward with his hands tied behind his back.
That was written all over his face.
I had never been so embarrassed in my entire life. The paparazzi hadn't ever followed me around before, but now they were all over me like moths to a shiny light. "Bella, are you and Edward still going to go through with the wedding?" "Bella, how does it feel to know your husband cheated on you with a supermodel?" They followed me everywhere, until one day, while inside Bloomingdales with a friend of mine, they swarmed around me and I just broke down. I screamed and cried and then fainted.
I think they felt pretty bad after that. Most of them didn't show up on my doorstep the next day. Even they knew I wasn't okay. Then, in two months, everyone had figured that Edward and I had worked it out. Even our friend and family.
Boy, were they wrong. I screamed at him every night. I threw things, called him every bad name I could think of and more. We hadn't worked anything out. I wanted out of the relationship so badly, but Edward made that pretty damn impossible. When I told him to leave me alone, he'd only pester me more. When I told him to take his hands off of me, he would just grip me harder, almost to the point where it hurt.
"Bella, you're not walking away from this. I'm fucking sorry, but no. I'm not going to let you walk away after being with me for three years. It's not happing," he would say.
He took five months off of work. We went to some little island of the coast of Costa Rica, spent about a month there. I think I said two words to him the whole time we were there.
That didn't matter to Edward though. As long as we stayed together, he didn't care if I was happy.
"When do I get to leave?" I asked, calmly this time.
"Where do you want to go, Bella? I'll take you anywhere. I just want you to be happy again."
"I'm not going to be happy with you, Edward. I just want to leave. Go back home. Please. If you want me to be happy, just let me go home."
"And just waste the last three years of my life? No. You're going to stay and we're going to work this out," he said with a finality that even I didn't argue with. He picked up the pillows and set them back on the couch and walked up the stairs to leave me sitting in my own personal hell.
