Hi everybody. I haven't been on this site in a REALLY long time, and I know a lot of people who are following me are waiting for more chapters of Bella of the Volturi. Honestly, I don't know if BotV is going to continue happening or not, but I can at least say that I will try to finish it. And sorry that it's taken so long.
Anyway, I hope you all can enjoy this oneshot. It would take place in Eclipse sometime, I'm guessing in that whole last month of senior year where nothing really happens and Bella is trying to spend some time with human friends.
The original plan was to go to the mall in Port Angeles with Jessica and Angela. Somewhere along the way, Lauren and her cousin got invited, and Angela bailed. So here I was now, being awkward and quiet in the back seat of Jessica's car. Jess was driving, Lauren was in shotgun, and the two of them were gobbling to each other like I didn't exist about every piece of gossip they could remember. I wondered how enough happened in other people's lives to sustain them talking to each other every day, and I wondered what they would be saying about me if they weren't at least semi-conscious that I could hear them.
We were going to meet Lauren's cousin, Brienna, at the Port Angeles mall because she already lived there. Lauren had mentioned that some other girls Brienna went to school with might be there too, so now this was going to be a grand party of people I didn't know and might not like.
I don't know how I get myself into these messes. I wanted to pull a book out of my bag and read, but I knew both of them would snap at me for being so rude, so I decided against it and looked out the window.
The drive to the mall was an hour long, but it felt like three in the car with them. I wished, not for the first time, that I had driven myself up in my truck so that I could pretend I had somewhere to be and duck out early. But it looked like I was in this for the long run, so I decided to just brace myself and get it over with.
We walked into the forever 21 and Lauren made a horrible, high-pitched squeal. A second later, it was matched by another, made by a girl who looked somewhat like Lauren. They ran to each other and hugged like they hadn't seen each other in years. I wondered how long it had been since they'd actually seen each other, and if they acted like that every time anyway.
Jessica and I approached them.
"Oh my god, did you get highlights?" Lauren was asking.
"Yeah, I got them done a week ago. Aren't they, like, super cool?" Brienna flipped her hair, which was mousey brown with a few awkwardly placed white-blonde stripes. She nearly hit another customer in the face with it.
Lauren acknowledged Jess and me, now. "This is Jessica," she said enthusiastically.
Brienna shook her hand smiled, and said, "I love your skirt!"
"Thanks, I got it here!" Jessica replied.
Lauren turned to me now grudgingly, "and this is Bella."
Brienna looked me up and down critically, and I wondered what Lauren had told her about me. "Hi," she said apathetically. Whatever she had heard, matched with apparently what she saw, she wasn't impressed.
God I wanted to just be home. I could be curled up in bed with a book right now. Or better, curled up in bed with Edward. Or best, curled up in Edward with a book.
Brienna, Lauren and Jess spent the next 45 minutes trying one nearly everything in the store. I sat in the chair outside the dressing room and 'ooh'ed and 'ahh'ed at everything as needed. Finally we left without buying anything.
Lauren spearheaded the next adventure. "I hear they opened a new Abercrombie on level three."
"Yeah," Brienna answered. "It's super cool. I was there the other week with Tasha. Let's go!"
"Absolutely! I haven't been in an Abercrombie since I visited my grandparents in Seattle," Jessica said. She turned to Brienna, turning on her gossip-whisper voice. "It was horrible. The cutest boy lives next to my grandparents, but I was dating this guy, Mike, at the time–"
"Oh my God, I hate that." Brienna agreed. "Like, I love having a boyfriend, but I hate not being able to keep looking, you know? I just dumped a guy two weeks ago because he got mad at me for flirting with waiters. I'm like, so what? It's just a couple waiters?"
"That's stupid of him," Lauren said. "I hate it when guys get all weird and jealous."
"Oh, I don't know," Jess said. "Sometimes it's cute when they're jealous."
It was at that point I realized we were about to walk past a Barnes and Noble. I wondered if I just walked slower and stopped following them if they'd even notice.
But Jess would probably be angry if I did, so I spoke up, "Hey, do you guys mind if I run in there?" I asked, pointing.
Jess and Lauren glanced at each other in a way that made me think they'd already placed bets on how long I would last before I ran off, and Brienna looked at me confused. "Why? Do you need a book for a class or something?"
The three of them were staring at me, and I knew Jess and Lauren weren't going to bail me out. I could feel my face turning red, and I had to remind myself that liking to read was not something I should be self-conscious about.
"Uh, no. I just was going to pick up a couple new books," I explained lamely. Brienna still looked at me like I had a second head. "You know, for reading."
Brienna look over at Lauren, who rolled her eyes and shrugged, then turned back to me a little distainfully. "Okay, well, we're meeting some other people in the food court in an hour. So… see you there, I guess."
An hour of freedom! I wanted to fall to my knees and thanks the Lord for this gift, but instead I just said, "Okay," as nonchalantly as I could manage, and turned to leave before anybody changed their minds.
They walked off in the other direction, leaning their heads in to talk in gossip-tines again, as I walked towards Barnes and Noble. Just as I entered the threshold of the store, I heard the three of them ring out in laughter, and I turned red again because I could feel in my spine that they had been talking about me.
The hour passed too quickly, but I managed to find two new novels– one a love story and one about a man avenging his father's death. I didn't want to leave my haven, and I especially didn't want to spend any more time with Lauren and her cousin, but I walked towards the food court anyway.
When I got there, I saw Brienna's too-bright highlights at a table with about five other girls. None of these girls were Lauren or Jessica, though. I thought about turning back and circling around in ten minutes, but Brienna caught my eye and now it was too late to back out. I walked over to the picnic-style table and sat down on the edge of one of the benches, next to Brienna. The girls all looked at me a little warily, but the dark haired one I'd sat across from smiled at me welcomingly. I guessed that Brienna had already told them all I was a weird bookworm who hadn't even tried anything on in Forever 21. Actually, with the hour alone she had with Jess and Lauren, she'd probably heard a thousand stories of my weirdness and shared those with her friends too.
Once the girls got over my arrival, they launched back into their conversation. One of them was having a hard time with her boyfriend, because he never listened to her and she couldn't get him to stop playing call of duty unless she took her shirt off and even that was starting to fail her sometimes.
The responses ranged in everything from, "Dump him and get a new boyfriend, girl. You're, like, super hot and you deserve better," to "If you want to keep a boy interested, you have to put out." Someone responded, "God Mila, you're such a slut!" to that last one.
Finally, the consensus was reached that her boyfriend was too sexy to be dumped, and that the best way to keep his eyes off the screen and on her was to flirt with other boys around him so that he got jealous.
I was about ready to begin banging my head on the table when someone said, "Oh my God, Soph, if want to make Bradley jealous with someone else, I just found the perfect candidate."
Everyone's heads whipped around to where the girl was looking, and Sophie said, "Bradley who? I'll take one of him instead, please."
I looked too, finally, and I saw the boy the girls were talking about. Tall, strong, beyond handsome, well dressed, bronze-haired, and yellow-eyed. Edward.
He was standing with Alice, and they were laughing at something, probably they heard the same drivel I'd been listening too, and found it funny. I'd find it funny too, if I weren't stuck with it.
"Wow, stare much, Bella?" I was broken out of my Edward-induced trance by one of the girls.
"Huh? What?" I asked.
Everyone at the table laughed, which made me blush uncomfortably, but even just knowing Edward was here made everything a little more bearable. I glanced back over at him, but he wasn't looking at me. Alice was explaining something excitedly to him. He smiled at her and mussed her hair. I wondered what they were talking about and why they weren't coming to rescue me yet.
I brought my attention back to the table of girls, hoping to excuse myself, and I just barely caught the tail end of a conspiratorial smirk between Brienna next to me and the bleach-blonde girl, Mila, across from her.
"You know, Bella," Mila started, speaking too sweetly, "I think you should go talk to him."
I opened my mouth to agree, but Brienna cut me off. "Yeah! Go say hi. We'll even help you break the ice. His name is Ryan, and the black haired girl is his cousin, May. He's a soccer player, so talk to him about that." Brienna smiled at me with forced warmth, and I tried to add up her words. I couldn't figure out why she was lying to me until I saw some of the other girls trying not to snicker.
They were trying to humiliate me.
They wanted stupid, plain, gullible me to walk up to the hottest guy they'd ever even seen and make a fool of myself so that they could laugh about it.
On the one hand, I wanted to tell them to stuff it because I knew they were lying. I could just tell them Edward was my boyfriend. I could prove it. I could walk up to him and kiss him and of course he'd kiss me right back and take me home and I would never have to put up with these horrible girls again.
But suddenly, a different path became clear.
"Do you really think he'd talk to me?" I asked, pretending to be shy about it.
Brienna smiled– she thought she had me hook, line, and sinker. "Oh yeah, of course. He'd love to talk to you. And he's a big reader, too. You should tell him about the books you got today."
Wow, so now she was hoping I would not only get his name wrong, and Alice's name wrong, and ask him about soccer, which he doesn't play, but also she wanted me to make myself out to be a huge nerd, too.
"Oh, I don't know," I said. Partially because I thought it would be more fun to see her try to prompt me more, but partially because I was starting to regret this whole joke. It was stupid.
"You have to! You two will hit it off, I know it!" Mila insisted.
"Quick, he's coming this way!" Brienna said. He was, in fact, coming this way. Unobstructed, he and Alice would walk right past our table. He wasn't looking at me, though. I realized that between hearing the conversation and seeing Alice's visions of what I was planning, he was going to go along with it. He was pretending not to know me already.
Okay fine, if he wanted to play, I was going to play. He was still a few steps away, though.
I turned back to Brienna. "Are you sure about this?" I asked.
She had wicked excitement in her eyes, and I wonder how often she did this sort of thing– embarrassed unsuspecting friends-of-friends who didn't know any better.
"Yes!" she urged. "Absolutely!" and she pushed me right off the end of the bench.
I stumbled a half step to the side and undoubtedly would have fallen over if not for crashing right into Edward. He helped right me, and looked down at me concerned, and with faint amusement hidden in his eyes.
"Are you okay?" he asked me.
"Uh yeah, fine," I lied. I was blushing, and I was actually pretty mad. I had no idea Brienna would go so far as to physically push me into Edward. That reminded me of my purpose, though.
"Okay," Edward said. He looked like he was about to walk off.
"Hey, so, hi," I said, grabbing his arm as if I was stopping him from leaving. He looked back at me and I could tell he was trying not to smile.
"Um… hi," he said, like he was confused.
"Hi," I said again. He was looking at me expectantly, and I realized I was supposed to be making a fool of myself. "So, I hear your name is Ryan. Nice to meet you." I held out my hand for him to shake.
He looked down at me like I was crazy. "Um, my name is Edward, actually," he corrected. He was so much more composed than I was.
I heard snickering from the table behind me, and I shot Brienna a glance. She mouthed the words, 'oops, sorry,' and put on an apologetic face that was almost a little believable.
I turned back to Edward. "Oh. Okay. Sorry." I looked at my feet, pretending to be embarrassed.
"Yeah, no problem," he said dismissively. He made like he was going to leave again, and I tried to remember what sport he was supposed to have played. I finally understood how actors could forget their lines so thoroughly once they got on stage. This was hard!
I gave up on trying to remember the sport and tried to think of something quick to say to keep him from walking away. "I'm Bella!" I blurted out, too rushed and too excited. Thank God I was already dating Edward, or he'd write me off as some infatuated idiot and never speak to me.
"Hello, Bella. Well, it was nice to meet you," he said in the way people say goodbye.
Soccer! Soccer was the sport.
I grabbed his arm again before he could leave and said, "So you play soccer, right?"
"Well, um, no. I don't," he said.
Okay, two out of three things I was supposed to get wrong, excluding Alice's name, but I thought I could get away with that because I wasn't really talking to Alice (who was pretending to read the P.F. Chang's fast food menu and not care about our interaction) and I could easily be assuming that if Ryan's name was wrong then May's name would be wrong too.
And what was the third thing… "Oh! Books! You like books, right?"
I felt bad. I wasn't doing Edward any favors in the acting department and he was really carrying this charade along.
"Yeah, I guess. Where are you going with this?" he asked.
Where was I going with this? I hadn't actually thought this joke through very much. Step 1: Pretend to fall for it and look like an idiot. Step 3: Make Brienna and her friends feel like idiots. Somehow, I'd missed Step 2…
Suddenly, and idea came to me.
"Well Edward," I said, trying to turn on the charm. I tried to lean against the table behind me seductively, but it was further than I thought and I stumbled a step back before bumping into it. The girls laughed, and Edward was trying very hard not to and I could feel a blush coming on, so I tried to pretend it didn't happen and get back to flirting. "I think you're, um, handsome, and stuff."
Now Edward was really fighting to keep back the laughter. "Oh yeah?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said. The entire table behind me was choked sounds and sputtered laughs. If there was ever a time to smack this all back in their faces, it was now. "How about you kiss me?" I asked.
I actually heard Brienna laugh out loud for a quick second before she caught herself.
Edward half-smiled at me, he'd been waiting for the punch line. He grabbed me by the shoulders, whipped me around so that the whole table could see us from the side, and very forcefully kissed me.
He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to him and absolutely devoured my mouth or at least ten seconds before letting me go.
He was smiling and I was dizzy, but I looked back over to the table and every single girl was staring, jaw dropped. Alice was laughing quietly behind us. The one nice girl at the table, the dark-haired one who smiled at me earlier, was the first to regain herself, and she smiled and gave me a thumbs-up under the table.
Edward broke the silence. He was still smiling at me, and he said, "Well, that was fun."
I smiled back up at him. "Right?" I agreed.
"What?" Mila finally choked out. "What just happened?"
"I like books, too!" Sophie said.
Edward and I laughed, and Alice joined us, turning her attention back from where she had pretended to be looking.
"I'd like you all to meet Edward." I laced my fingers into his. "My boyfriend."
One of the other girls muttered, "No fucking way."
Edward smiled at me and tugged on our hands. "Do you want a ride home? Alice and I were just leaving. Maybe you could come over to my place for a while."
"Sure," I said, smiling up at him. I grabbed my Barnes and Noble bag off the bench next to Brienna and said, "Tell Jess and Lauren I got a ride home and I'll see them on Monday, will you?"
Still somewhat in shock, and red in the face, Brienna said, "Uh, sure, I guess."
We started to walk away from them, and Alice said low enough that they couldn't hear, "If you really want to shock them, we should invite them all to the parking lot to watch you drive off in a Porsche!" and we all laughed.
I wondered if they were trying to figure out what we had whispered about them to make us laugh while we're walking away.
So that's that. Feel free to review if you want to, especially if you see any spelling/grammar issues! I didn't actually proofread this because it's 4am where I am right now and I just wanted to get it done and posted. Maybe I'll try to proofread it later– Sorry, my fellow grammar-nazis! I've let you down!
Anyway, thanks for reading!
~Covee