I was ten minutes into my commute home when I realized that I was driving in the wrong direction. Instead of turning left on Pine, I made a right, and from there, it was almost as if my car was steering itself, operating on some sort of muscle memory of where I should be going. With a sigh, I turned into the next parking lot; my brain couldn't handle the simple task of calculating an alternate route, so I reversed my trip and took the long way home.
It had been like this for three weeks now, since the day I arrived home from vacation to find that my fiance had thoughtfully packed all of my belongings and left the boxes stacked neatly in the suddenly empty garage. I was confused, and naive. Part of me thought that this must be some elaborate surprise, that while I was gone, Royce had decided to surprise me by upgrading our townhouse to a house in the suburbs. My steps echoed through the empty house as I wandered through, looking for an explanation.
Explanation came in the form of a tersely worded letter on the kitchen counter.
Rose,
This may come as a surprise to you, but I am no longer happy. You probably think I'm a coward for leaving like this, but marrying you would be even more cowardly. I hope that one day you can accept that this is for the best. The townhouse has already sold, you'll need to be out by the 23rd. I have already made the necessary phone calls to cancel the wedding. I think you'll find that the check I have left you is more than sufficient to get you started in the next phase of your life. I wish you luck.
Respectfully,
Royce.
Paper-clipped to the letter was a check for $25,000. For some reason, it was the paper clip that angered me the most. After six years together, and only two months before our wedding, Royce had left me with seven sentences and a paperclip. Numbly, I got back into the car and wracked my brain for hotels I could stay at, potentially long term, without going broke. I had Royce's credit card in my wallet, but I would be damned if I'd use another thing from him. Rosalie Hale paid her own way, effective immediately.
Since then, I had been operating on auto-pilot. I went through the motions, but at best, my life felt like watching a TV where the color has started to go off. Everything looked the same, but wrong. In my worst moments, I felt battered. Every part of me raged against the new turn my life had taken.
I still hadn't told most people. No one at work knew; really, Royce was such a non-entity in my work social life that I doubted anyone would ask. The realization that no one would ask anything about him was both freeing and depressing. One the one hand, eight hours a day where no one casually brought him up was like a tiny pocket of relief. On the other hand, we were a close-knit group, so the fact that most of my coworkers knew nothing about Royce at all was a sad reflection on what our life together had become.
My brother knew. After three nights at a hotel, I had to start making headway on finding a place to live, and I itched to have my things out of storage. The thought of using Royce's money for anything burned like hand sanitizer on a paper cut, but the reality of it was, I had no choice. The shortened time frame I was working with, paired with the fact that he had left me nothing in the way of furniture meant that I needed to cash his check.
Once I had an apartment, I had somewhere to move the boxes, which meant that I needed Jasper. He didn't ask questions beyond "What time do you need me there?" and I was grateful. Telling Jasper the bare bones was hard enough, but it did come with benefits. Jasper would tell Alice, who would tell Bella, who would tell Edward, and that was my circle of friends taken care of. Jasper would also tell our parents, and their disappointment in me would mean that I could expect to hear from them again in about six months. As far as I was concerned, that might be enough time for me to build up my defenses against their chilly disapproval.
My friends though...I knew they would be different. Alice would sparkle her way in to my new apartment, and find a way to make the bland beige walls feel like home. Her enthusiasm drew people in, and it was never forced. Bella would make her presence known by ensuring that my kitchen had food, that my cabinets were organized, and that my bedroom and bathroom were completely unpacked before everyone left.
"The most important thing," she had said to me six months ago, when we were helping Jasper and Alice move in to their new house, "is to make sure that at the end of the day, you have a place to shower off the grime, a place to sleep, and you can get to your coffee in the morning. Everything else is just a bonus."
As I pulled up to the townhouse on moving day, I saw that everyone had beaten me there. Rather than the moving truck I had assumed Jasper would rent, five cars lined the street. I had the morbid thought that we would make a funeral procession of sorts, mourning not a person, but the death of my former life. Shaking it off, I got out of the car and forced a smile. It was only as I was approaching the group that I realized I knew only four of the five people gathered in my driveway.
"Hey guys. Thanks for coming." Deciding to bite the bullet and hopefully avoid any awkwardness, I walked up to the lone stranger in the group. "Hi, I'm Rosalie. I'm going to assume the Expedition is yours." I stuck my hand out and hoped that I was putting off friendly vibes.
"I'm Emmett. I'm pretty sure the giant car is what got me an invite to this shindig," he replied, grasping my hand.
On any other day, I would have taken a moment to appreciate the man standing before me. Tall and broad-shouldered, he would have been intimidating if it weren't for the broad smile that lit up his face. I might have made a joke about how his giant muscles probably factored into his invite. I definitely would have appreciated the warmth of his hand as it enclosed my own. Even in my current state, I knew that Emmett was one of the most attractive men I'd ever met. On any other day, I would have made sure he knew it.
"Emmett is my sort of step-brother," Bella supplied, after the silence dragged on for half a beat too long. At my puzzled look, she laughed. "Renee was briefly married to his dad, about six years ago. We met once or twice, but he kept in touch with Mom even after the divorce, and when he moved out here two months ago, she passed on my information."
"Alright people! Now that we've got the introductions over with, let's get a move on!" I couldn't help but laugh at Alice's drill sergeant tone.
"Hey, how much coffee has Tiny here had?" Emmett stage-whispered to Edward as I turned to open the garage door.
"Honestly, probably none. This is pretty much Alice on her "mellow setting," Edward replied. "The upside is, if you do exactly what she tells you to do, exactly how she says to do it, she'll let you live."
"I can hear you guys, you know," Alice called over her shoulder. "And I'll have you know that my energy is all natural. As long as you consider a six shot iced espresso natural."
Beside me, Jasper groaned in exasperation. "Babe, if you don't lay off the espresso, your heart is going to explode. I'd really prefer you stay in one piece."
"Yeah, yeah, yea..." Alice trailed off as I opened the garage door, revealing a pile of boxes.
Silently, we circled the pile, trying to form the best plan of attack.
"He didn't...these boxes aren't labeled, Rose!" Bella was indignant. "I mean, really! Would a Sharpie have been that hard to come by?"
The rest of the group was stunned into silence. Bella wasn't the outburst type, and she definitely wasn't the awkward, vaguely inappropriate outburst type.
"Okay, look," I finally said. "There's no point in trying to ignore the elephant in the room. Yes, Royce left me, and yes, he did it in a way that only a complete asshole could consider reasonable. The boxes are unlabeled, and God alone knows what he deigned to leave me with, anyway."
"I'm sorry Rose, I didn't mean..."
"It's okay, Bella. I know."
"How many times am I going to have to say this today? Let's get a move on, people!" One thing was certain, Alice knew how to break tension.
There was always something sad to me about seeing a life boiled down to a stack of boxes, but in this case, I actually felt a glimmer of hope buried underneath all of my other churning emotions. As the cars filled up with boxes and the pile in the garage diminished, I started to feel lighter. Regardless of how it came about, I was going to make the most of this opportunity.
My new ground-floor apartment made unloading the boxes easy, and less than two hours after we started, everything was unloaded. I was expecting the furniture delivery guys in a couple of hours, and until then, there wasn't a whole lot that could be done.
"Thank you guys so much for all of your help today. I've got some time before the furniture guys show up; why don't we head out for some lunch, and then I can take it from here."
"Oh sure. Because we're going to leave you to drag all of these boxes into their respective rooms by yourself, Rose." I should have known better than to think that Alice was going to walk away from a blank slate.
"I agree. What if we just start opening boxes. Rose, you can tell us which room, and the boys can move it for us." Bella's initial plan may have been foiled by the unlabeled boxes, but never let it be said that the girl couldn't adapt.
The boys were pretty good-natured about the fact that we were only using them for their brawn, although I did hear some grumbling about no food. As we opened boxes and directed traffic, I started to really believe that this would be okay. Eventually, opening the boxes turned into a game, and all of us were laughing while we tried to guess where each box would go before it got opened. And then Emmett opened the box.
"Okay, let's see what we've got here. Any bets?" He called out good-naturedly. He sliced open the top of the box, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a jumble of color. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. "What'll it be, folks? Bathroom? Kitchen? Place your...oh. That..." Hastily, he folded the flaps shut. "Bedroom."
I thought I would die of embarrassment. Of course Royce would leave me that box. Of course. Just when I thought it wasn't possible to be more horrified, Bella grabbed the box and opened it up.
"God, Emmett. What could possibly be so...oh." Again, flaps were shut. "Yeah. Bedroom."
By now, everyone in the room was curious, and it wasn't like my day could get worse. "For the love of...Yes! It's a box of sex toys." I got up and snatched the box from Bella. "We're all adults here, let's just forget this happened and move on, okay?"
In the silence that followed, everyone in the room did their best to look at anything but each other. Thankfully, the sound of the buzzer broke through the room.
"That must be the furniture delivery. I'll just let them in, show them where to go," Jasper said. Before he even finished speaking, he got up and fled. Poor guy. Having concrete proof that your sister has enough sex toys to warrant their own box on moving day had to be up there on the list of things no guy wants to experience.
Once the furniture was in and set up, we were all more than ready for a change of scenery, and some food. Over the course of lunch, we managed to get back into a groove of banter and laughter. Emmett was new to the group, but he fit right in. By the time our drinks arrived, Alice had dubbed him "Muscles McGee", and Bella had extracted a promise that he would come to her house for dinner the following week. Jasper and Edward were a little harder to win over, but not much. By the time our lunch showed up, Emmett was officially invited to join their monthly poker night. It was almost like Emmett filled a hole in our group that we never knew was there. After the last of the plates were cleared from the table, we headed back to my apartment sated and happy.
Walking up to the building, Emmett hung back from the group. "Hey Bella," he called out. "I'm gonna head out."
Bella pulled away from Edward and ran up to give Emmett a hug. For sort of step-siblings who hadn't spent all that much time together, they were surprisingly comfortable around one another. "Thanks for your help today, Em. I'll call you this week about dinner. Renee will never let me live it down if you're not well-fed, you know?"
Bella pulled away and I walked up to Emmett. "Thank you so much for today. You don't even know me, and you gave up a Saturday for me." I was embarrassed to find myself choking up. "Just...thank you."
"No problem. I'll admit, I didn't have entirely selfless motives. I got to meet some great new people, and you even fed me. What more could a guy ask for?" Something about his easy smile made me want to ask him to stay. Stopping that train of thought in its tracks, I settled for a handshake.
"Regardless, I really appreciate your help. Don't be a stranger, okay?"
I was about five feet away from him when I heard him say, softly enough that I knew it wasn't meant for me to hear, "Oh, I definitely won't, Rosalie." When I turned around to look, he had already turned to walk to his car.
When I got back into the apartment, it quickly became clear that unpacking was going to be the least of my worries. Royce may have been generous when he wrote that check, but that had to be in an attempt to assuage his guilt over what he had taken. Aside from the box of toys that had caused so much embarrassment, he had left me with nothing that could have been considered "ours". No dishes, no sheets, no blankets, nothing. After an hour, it was obvious that a shopping trip was in order.
Alice and Jasper had promised to watch her sister's little boy for the evening, so they regretfully bowed out, although not before Alice promised that the next weekend, we'd go out to find some accent pieces to warm up the apartment. Edward probably would have begrudgingly gone shopping, but Bella waved him off with a laugh.
"And then, there were two," Bella joked as we got into her car and headed to Bed Bath & Beyond. She had offered to drive, ostensibly because her car had more trunk space than mine, but I suspected that she knew I was too unfocused to be trusted behind the wheel. I couldn't say that I blamed her.
"Who does that? Who leaves their fiancee, and takes all of the basic necessities of life when they go? Would it have fucking killed him to leave me a goddamned towel?" I was seething. It didn't escape my notice that I was angrier over the loss of my towels than I was over the loss of the man I was planning to marry, but I decided to examine that later. "All of that time I spent picking out the perfect dishes, the perfect everything, wasted!"
Pulling into a spot, Bella put the car in park and looked at me, seriousness written all over her face. "Do you know where he went? Wanna egg his car? Slash his tires? We could re-enact a bad country song or two, maybe pour pool shock all over his new lawn to kill the grass. You say the word and I'm there. No one else has to know."
The set of her shoulders and her tone of voice told me that Bella wasn't kidding. I couldn't help but laugh. "Thanks, but no. I don't know where he is, and anyway, we can't just vandalize his property. Edward would kill me if he had to come bail us out."
"Come on, Rose. My dad's the chief of police. No one is going to arrest me. Hell, if we call him, he'll probably give us a ride. In fact, I'm almost positive he'd be willing to loan us a firearm or two. Not that he'd condone shooting anyone, but God knows, Charlie is not above scaring the shit out of people when the situation calls for it. If you change your mind, let me know." With that, she got out of the car and stared at me expectantly, like she hadn't just suggested we pull the chief of police into a revenge scheme that involved breaking several laws. "Well? Let's go. We've got goddamned towels to buy!"
And just like that, some of the pieces of my heart shifted back in to place. Truth be told, if Royce was willing to be this cruel, then losing him wasn't really a loss after all. I'd use his money to buy myself all new things. I wouldn't have to spend a single second of my time worrying about if what I picked out was perfect enough to fit in with Royce's vision of what a home should look like. I had friends who loved me enough to commit crimes on my behalf. What more could a girl ask for?
Squaring my shoulders, I stepped out of the car and linked arms with Bella. "Let's do this thing. Don't let me forget wine glasses-we are definitely stopping at the liquor store on the way back."
"Now you're talking."
A/N: This story was inspired by a prompt that TheHeartofLife gave me one night while she was trying to talk me into writing Rosalie. I hope I can do it justice. AccioBourbon holds my hand, doles out sage life advice, and makes sure that what I write wouldn't make my former English teachers weep. AthenaJean holds my other hand, fills in the gaps when I leave out words, and is basically the other half of my soul. Accio and Athena are the best two betas a girl could ask for, and I'm lucky to call them friends. Any mistakes left are all me.