Description: Bella never jumps, Edward never comes back and life moves forward. A one-shot displaying all the ways Bella has changed in the past four years.
A/N: This is a companion piece to my story, 'What's the Harm in Looking?' The Bella Swan that Edward knew is very different from the one that exists 4 years after he leaves her, and I wanted to explore that a bit.
This was written in less than an hour. It has not been beta'd.
The life of Bella Swan.
Bella Swan as 18 years old when the love of her life fell out of love with her. She was left crying in the rain, like a bad teenage romance movie, except in this one, he never came back. There was no airport scene where he pushed through crowds to beg for her back, no surprising her outside her window with a heartfelt apology and a dozen roses, no grand declaration of love and sincerest regrets for leaving her alone all those months.
There was just… nothing. Cold, unfeeling nothing.
Silence pressed on her, day after day, week after week. She took comfort in the monotony of life, because it gave her an escape. Wake up, go to school, come home, go to bed. Wake up, go to school, come home, go to bed. Wake up, go to school, come home, go to bed. No thought necessary.
So, it shocked everyone, including herself, when she decided to apply to college. "Somewhere different," she muttered when asked where she wanted to go. She sent out a few half-hearted application essays and, a few months later, with an acceptance letter on the kitchen table and a single suitcase packed, she flew out to start her freshman year at Arizona State University.
She forgot to pack sunglasses.
She settled into college life fairly quickly. She wasn't inherently outgoing, but she knew when to smile at the right times and laughed at everybody's jokes. She had the reputation on her floor of being the mom- the one that people came to for drunken relationship advice. "I just don't know why he doesn't want m-m-m-m-me!" girls would wail into her shoulder while she rubbed their backs and offered soothing words.
She joined a sorority.
As weeks dragged into months, she got tired of looking at her reflection. Honestly, she was always rather tired of it, looking back into a face that was always too-tired, too-pale, too- Bella Swan. One night, when the rest of her floor was occupied with a bottle of vodka in room 391, she took a pair of scissors into the bathroom. Accompanied by the sounds of laughter and drunken slurring in the hallway, she methodologically cut her hair into an edgy bob.
When all was said and done, she cried. She no longer saw herself in the mirror, but the pale face with short, asymmetrical hair was too familiar for comfort. She covered all the mirors in her dorm room with paper towels until she could bum a ride to CVS for some hair dye.
Bella bleached her head to hell and then blanched at how much paler she looked. Bought another box of dye and transformed it into a bright auburn. She was satisfied with that, for a while. Said it made her feel like lightning.
If she was being honest, the color was a bit too brassy.
She started smoking, hiding the habit for months until her roommates started finding butts buried at the bottom of trashcans. It soon became a common sight to see Bella Swan hurrying around campus, a large iced coffee in one hand, her phone in the other, a cigarette dangling off her lips.
The nicotine made her head spin.
Her friends said that college life suited her. She was the one in the library at four in the morning, peering over textbooks with empty energy drink cans littering the desk around her. She'd only leave her coveted window seat to run off to the bathroom and sneak a cigarette, blowing the smoke into the air vent above the stall.
She received excellent grades and found her passion in writing. Not creative pieces- heavens no, she had clogged up too many emotions for too long to start delving into anything like that—but hard, factual truths. She joined the school paper and covered budget meetings and student government elections.
Her professors loved her. Raised her hand in class, did the readings, what a lovely young girl she is, they would rave to each other. Often invited to office hours for coffee and conversation, she always politely refused, citing duties elsewhere. She would be running off to her on-campus job, holding office hours at the newsroom or packing up to go to the library and study. She was too busy to forge meaningful relationships, but maybe next week! She would smile, sling her backpack over her shoulder, and rush out of the classroom before her professor could protest.
She didn't sleep much, anymore.
When class was over and she finally dragged herself out of the library, she took her fake ID to the nearest dive bar and ordered straight liquor. It tasted like paint thinner. Sometimes, she even remembered to pay her tab before she stumbled into the night, accepting rides from anyone who offered one.
The next day, she would show up to class, 20 oz iced coffee in one hand, a smoldering cigarette in the other, ready to talk about the readings without so much of a slight suggestion that she had woken up in the bushes an hour before class started.
On nights when she had to study, she could be found at her desk, accompanied with a half-empty bottle of gin and an ashtray full of smoldering cigarettes.
She started carrying a flask.
She had a small tattoo behind her ear. MCMXVIII. Whenever someone asked her about it, she shrugged and kept silent. Once, on a night when she was particularly trashed, her sorority sisters asked her about it. All she said was, "It's a reminder, of sorts."
When asked to clarify in the morning, she didn't remember the conversation.