It had become Bella and Edward, which I didn't like very much.
Not Bella. Not Edward. Bella-and-Edward, one word spoken fast, because they went everywhere together, and when you asked Bella to do something, her eyes flickered to Edward, like she needed his permission to live. I didn't like that.
The days that the Cullens were there, oblivious to our conversations or not caring, our lunch table tried to make up some couple names for the two of them. The best we'd gotten was 'Bedward,' only that had the word 'bed' in it, and I didn't want that word anywhere around the two of them together, so I didn't like that much either.
Sometimes their hands would absently twine together, and Bella would shiver, smiling like a satisfied cat, sometimes his lips would land on hers, a casual exchange of affection that was conveyed so nonchalantly, so without fanfare, that it was obvious more had been done behind closed doors. That wasn't the new frontier, kissing. Not at all. I didn't like that.
She's always watching him, taking her eyes away only when asked a question, separated by classes, forced to walk her separate way. And then his eyes follow her, and you can tell he's been trying so hard not to look like he needs her so much more than she does him. And in a way, I loathe him for it. He would be so much easier to hate him for existing if he took Bella for granted, if he wouldn't go for the liquor cabinet if she broke up with him.
Sometimes she looks at me and smiles like she did those first weeks of school, before he came into her life, sometimes she talks to me like she did before he got up and walked away and her full-time job was loving him, proving her worth so he didn't up-and-go again. I noticed something; that when she's talking to me, at least her eyes don't drift to him like they do when she's talking to Jess, or Angela. I like that.
When I was going out with Jess, before I got to know her well enough to see her dark side, I kissed her once or twice. We really only made out heavily once, and I couldn't help it, when I pulled away from her in the half-light in the awning that sheltered her porch, I said Bella's name. It wasn't because I was living my dream with Jess' lips, only that I had just thrown another kiss away that I didn't want, that when she smiled at me, the skin tissue around her mouth looked so pink and inviting, I was almost relieved when she puckered up and they were hidden by that Cullens' lips.
I had thought one day, the first day I saw her, the first day I saw her after he left, that maybe it could be Bella-and-Mike. I was wrong, and I don't like that very much.