Once More With Feeling
This is a story that I started a few years ago, but due to technical difficulties was lost. I have decided to rewrite in order to get the creative juices flowing so to speak. So if it seems familiar it probably is.
That being said, if you remember this story there are going to be several key changes to it.
There were things that I wasn't particularly thrilled about with the original, but due to outside influence I felt pressured to go in a different direction than I had planned. This time it's going to be a truer version of my story.
That isn't saying I don't want input, it is the single most valuable asset a new writer can have, but I won't be changing characters or plot lines.
As a side note, I know that Bella moved to Forks during her junior year, but for the sake of this fiction I am not sticking to cannon.
Also, all characters belong to SM, I own nothing but a dirty mind.
"Damn it." I muttered as I tripped over my shoelace, bouncing on my butt two times before I landed with a thud at the bottom of the stairs.
At least I was alone, there was no one around to witness my humiliation. That was a first, my extreme klutziness was usually a spectator sport.
One look out of the kitchen window told me that it was going to be one of those days.
Another cold, rainy day in Forks. Nothing surprising there.
I wrapped my arms around myself, pulling my jacket tighter, this weather was not what I was accustomed to.
I was born in Forks, but when I was five years old, my mom divorced my dad and moved us to Phoenix.
A place where it was always warm and the sun always shone.
My mom had sent me to Forks to visit my dad Charlie, a few times over the years, but after they both realized that I was bored to death, I was never made to go again.
My dad also came to visit me in Arizona a couple of times, but it was clear that he was not comfortable being around my mom and that he would rather be in a dentist's chair than sitting down to a meal with the both of us.
As I grew older, I realized that he never really got over the pain of losing my mom.
He never met anyone else, or at least anyone else important enough to try and have a lasting relationship with.
Don't get me wrong, my dad loves me, he called me once a week, and sent money for birthdays and Christmas.
One year for spring break he took me to Disney World and he even brought his best friend's son Jacob so that I would have someone close to my own age to enjoy it with. That was a great trip.
It just seems that as I got older, we both quit trying so hard. I knew in the back of my mind that if I ever needed him that he would be there. That knowledge was enough.
That is how I found myself once again living in the wettest place in the continental U.S.
My mom had met and married a minor league baseball player named Phil.
Don't get the wrong impression, Phil is a great guy, he loves my crazy mom and he seems to love me also, but with his career comes lots of travel and not a lot of stability.
My mom tried to do the stay at home thing, but I could see how unhappy that she was; so I decided to be the grown up and picked up the phone and called Charlie.
Two weeks later I was packed and moving to Forks, for my senior year.
It was awkward as hell starting a new school as a senior; especially in a school the size of Forks High School.
In a town this small, all of the kids had known each other since they were in diapers and there was no room, at least with the girls of the school for an outsider.
The boys were another story; to them I was fresh meat.
By the end of the first week, I had been asked to the movies by three boys, another had already asked me to homecoming and one had even asked me to prom at the end of the school year.
Needless to say that hadn't exactly made me the most popular girl amongst the other girls.
Two girls in particular, Jessica and Lauren had made it their mission statement to humiliate me as often as possible.
I can't say that I blame them though seeing as two of the guys that had asked me out; Mike Newton and Tyler Crowley were their respective boyfriends.
It wasn't like I was trying to take their boyfriends, truthfully I had no idea what they had been thinking.
I'm nothing special, believe me, I am nothing if not a realist.
I'm short and thin, I have long brown hair that is too wavy to pull off that straight and sleek look and it's too straight to have those really cute curls.
My skin is pasty white and my eyes are just brown.
My breasts or lack thereof, are barely enough to keep me from being mistaken for a boy. My hips are slim and narrow and the only good thing I can say about my figure is that I have a decent ass.
But I think that I have that for self-preservation, seeing as I am always falling and landing on it.
I'm just not a girly girl, and despite that it seems that I am public enemy number one amongst the girls at school.
There is one exception though, my only friend at school is a sweet girl named Angela.
Angela isn't like the other girls at school, she's very sweet and soft spoken and best of all, doesn't seem to give a damn what Jessica, Lauren and all of their cronies think.
Angela and her boyfriend Ben have taken it upon themselves to kind of be my guardian angels.
They sit with me at lunch, stand up for me when girls are picking on me for my lack of style or my daily slip and fall.
Ben is captain of the football team and stops the boys from harassing me. I don't know how I would survive this year without Angela and Ben.
But as sweet as they are, they are a couple and therefore do couple things on weekends. We never really socialize outside of school with the exception of phone calls here and there.
So after three months of my going to school and then coming home to curl up with a good book, Charlie finally noticed my lack of social life and decided to do something about it.
The thing that he fails to realize is that I am just like him.
I don't mind being alone, I have never been a social butterfly and I had no desire to change that.
Taciturn, I think, is the word that best describes us.
While he is the chief of police for Forks, he has very few friends. He however, does know everyone.
His closest friends live outside of Forks, on a Native American reservation called La Push.
Harry Clearwater and Billy Black were probably the only two people on the planet that truly new Charlie. They should though, they had been hunting, fishing, drinking and baseball watching buddies for over thirty years.
Billy Black has a son named Jacob and he's my closest friend.
He's a year younger than I am, and for a while there I think that he had a little crush on me.
Fortunately, all that it took for him to get over that was for Leah Clearwater to develop some curves and he was done for.
We still talked on the phone a lot, but I rarely saw him.
Leah is a sweet girl but still insecure about their relationship and since I didn't want her to see me as a threat, I stayed away.
Charlie has always been a pretty regimented man.
Getting up and going to work around seven and home by five or shortly after.
He used to live on TV dinners and sandwiches with the exception of his Thursday and Saturday night steak and cobbler nights at the local diner.
Saturday and Sunday was meant to be spent down on the reservation with Billy and Harry fishing.
Code for sitting out in a boat all day drinking beer.
Now that he has me to cook for him his schedule has only altered slightly; instead of tv dinners and sandwiches it was whatever I cooked and whenever I had it on the table.
Thursday and Saturday nights were still diner nights. Even I couldn't top their berry cobbler.
It was on Thursday night, while we were seated at his permanently reserved booth at the diner, he mentioned my lack of social life.
"Bells, I want you to get out of the house this weekend and do something."
"Huh?"
"You stay too cooped up, it's not healthy."
"I go out a couple times a week to the supermarket." I argued.
"That's not what I mean and you know it."
"I go to the reservation with you sometimes." I tried.
"You haven't been to the res in three months since Jake started dating Leah." He argued, and since when did he start keeping up with what I do?
"Well dad, it's no fun being fifth wheel Bella."
"There are plenty of other guys down there you know, and didn't I hear something about Mike Newton asking you out?"
Where the hell was all this coming from I wondered.
"I'm not interested dad and just for your information, Mike has a girlfriend."
"Well what about any of these other yahoos in town?"
"Dad, do you really want to talk about boys?" There that should shut him up.
"Look Bells, your mom is threatening to come take you back to Phoenix, if you don't come out of your room on occasion."
I was speechless, since when did they even talk and what the hell was he telling her?
"I promised her that I would get you involved in something, so you are going to Dr. Cullen's house on Saturday morning to have a music lesson with his adopted son Edward."
"Oh, I am so not doing that." I was horrified.
"Look Bells it only for an hour a week, you can survive that, and Dr. and Mrs. Cullen have a daughter about your age, who knows maybe you can even make a friend."
"I don't need any friends dad, I have you."
"Look Bella, do it for me, so I can get your mom off my back." "If it doesn't work out after a few weeks, I can at least tell her I tried."
"Also, it would be doing me a real favor." "Dr. Cullen's son has just graduated from some fancy art school in New York, and he is considering teaching music as a career, he needs a student."
"Great now I'm a test subject." I muttered.
"Look Dr. and Mrs. Cullen are good people, they do a lot for this town and for the people on the reservation that can't afford to pay for medical care."
I grumbled knowing that I didn't really have a choice about this,
"Fine, but I'm not singing in front of anyone."
"Not asking you to Bella, I've heard you sing, you sound just like me." Charlie laughed.
"Then what?" I quirked an eyebrow at him.
"Piano lessons" He chuckled.
"Wait, what?" I asked in horror. "First of all that requires hand eye coordination and in case you haven't noticed, I don't have that."
"Second of all that requires practice and I think that I would have noticed a piano lying around the house."
"Billy said that he has Rachel's old keyboard at the house, he said that you could use it until we see if you're going to take an interest."
"So I'll tell Dr. Cullen that Edward can expect you bright and early Saturday morning."
"Perfect." I mumbled, before I cut into my steak a little with a little more force than was required.
That was why I was up at such an unholy hour on a miserable Saturday morning, guzzling down scalding hot coffee and chasing it with my preferred breakfast of a non-frosted strawberry Pop-Tart, reading a note from Charlie, giving me directions to the Cullen's home and a reminder to not be late and a check made payable to Edward Cullen.
Edward, I mused; what kind of name was that for a guy today?
I mean really, that name is really common for characters in some of my favorite novels, but they were written during the Victorian era.
I could just imagine this guy now, he will probably be wearing perfectly pressed suit trousers, a sweater vest and bow tie, with old man's oxfords.
I spent the drive speculating more and more about this Edward that I was to meet.
Each mental picture more and more ridiculous.
I imagined his nails perfectly manicured, filed to precise millimeters and heaven forbid that there is a hair out of place.
It wasn't until I passed by the high school that I realized that I missed my turn.
"Shit." I swore. He probably wouldn't tolerate tardiness either.
I examined my bitten nails while waiting for the light to change to green, wondering if he used a ruler to swat hands for any mistakes.
He'd better not even think about it, I'm just doing this to humor Charlie and my mom.
After checking the directions that dad left for me, I realized that I had missed another turn.
Why the hell did these people have to live out in the middle of nowhere anyway?
Once I found the correct road and had driven about a mile and a half, I realized that this road really was one huge driveway.
They lived on the top of a mountain, not a hill an honest to God mountain. I encouraged my old Chevy truck, begging it to make it up the steep path.
It must have been my lucky day after all, because it did make it up to the top without any trouble.
I sighed in relief, because really how embarrassing would it have been to have to call and cancel due to the fact that my vehicle would not make it up their driveway?
I tried to calm my nerves as I yanked my keys from the ignition, double checked to make sure I had the emergency brake on and grabbed the check that Charlie had written.
I took a deep breath and climbed out of the truck and got my first good look at the house.
It took my breath away, it appeared to be made from nothing but raw woods, with the walls being huge glass panels.
I had never seen anything like it, I couldn't imagine the views they must have.
The house appeared to have three stories at the top it looked like there was a room that actually overlooked the side of the mountain. It had a deck with a balcony and I couldn't begin to imagine how that was even built.
This wasn't a home, this was a freaking museum.
I now understood why the hell they lived that far out.
My nerves were now running rampant.
I just now noticed that there seemed to be a small hole in the knee of my jeans, and I had just thrown my wet hair into a ponytail this morning. I knew that I was a mess.
I double checked my favorite, worn out black Converse sneakers making sure that I didn't have any mud on them before I approached the front porch.
Once I was satisfied that I would not be bringing anything into their home, I took a steadying breath and raised my hand but before I could even knock, the door opened and I came face to face with this godlike creature.
There were no words for how beautiful he was.
I remember back to when my mom went through a religious phase and she made me go to Sunday school; I thought back to the stories that they told us about angels and their perfection.
I remembered that they said that Lucifer was the most beautiful of them all.
Well I had news for them, the devil has some pretty heavy competition.
There weren't words adequate enough to describe the perfection that was this man.
He had a riot of hair, the color I was not able to name but it included copper and bronze, caramel and chocolate.
It was thick and messy and looked like he had just jumped out of bed after some amazing sex. His hair was the kind of hair that you would want to grab handfuls of and pull while riding him hard.
His eyes were green, but saying his eyes were green was like saying that the ocean is blue.
They were so deep and expressive, and a shade somewhere between emerald and spring grass. I think that I even noticed some flecks of gold in there but my head was beginning to spin and I might have imagined it.
He had a strong chin and jaw line, with the perfect amount of stubble to give him a bit of a rugged look.
He was easily over six feet tall and had a lean body build.
He was holding out his hand for me to shake, I tried to shake back but was inspecting the feel of his hand on mine and couldn't respond.
After a few seconds or it could have been hours for all that I knew he cleared his throat to recapture my attention.
I could have sworn that I heard him chuckle a little and I felt my cheeks heat and I bit my bottom lip.
He then began to speak breaking the uncomfortable silence. "Hi, my name is Edward Cullen and you must be Bella." "Please come in."
At the sound of his voice my stomach clenched and I felt a rush of moisture south of the border.
"Well hello hormones."