Chapter summary: Why can't Bella just see that we love her, no matter what? Why can't she see we can help her more when she's with us than when she's not? Why can't love be enough? It's enough for me: I love her, no matter what. Why can't it be enough for her?


I kept at it until her hair was as smooth as silk, and kept at it some more, letting the comb caress Bella's back alternately with the back of my hand and the base of the comb and then on the next stroke with its teeth as the comb flowed down her long hair.

Bella was purring by the time I put the comb aside.

"That felt soooo good, Rosalie!" Bella's voice came from the heavenly bliss she was floating in.

"Do you want to experience something even better?" I asked in a sultry voice.

I kissed her on the shoulder. My lips lingered there for a second.

"No fair!" she panted. "You can't be kissing a sensitive spot like that!"

"Bella," I grinned, "your whole body is a sensitive spot!"

I felt Bella's smile. "True, true," she said thoughtfully.

"So, ..." I said, and leaned down to kiss her there again.

Bella so easily dipped her shoulder, twisted away from me, and at the same time pushed away from the ground with her fingers and hips. She landed in a sitting cross-legged position facing me on the other side of the blanket.

To watch Bella pirouette away from me was to watch poetry in motion. As a human, she was always making demands that her body couldn't fulfill, and that's why she was so clumsy. The creature she is now? She makes the same demands, but her body can cash those checks and still have plenty in the bank to spare.

I looked at Bella refixing her towel, catching a glimpse of that body of hers revealed by the parted towel.

Yes, indeed, plenty there in the bank.

It's not like she had filled out as a vampire. The opposite, in fact: venom burns away some of the body fat. Bella was underweight as a human, so she was even smaller as a vampire, the soft lines of her face thinning a bit in her change, but the rest of her body was pretty much left alone, because there wasn't much to change, but what there was had become more defined. As a human, she had an uncertain outline to match the uncertainty of her demeanor. Now both had sharpened into more clearly defined lines.

Before, as a human, many people missed her beauty, as this girl-next-door was so easy to overlook. As a vampire, she kept her girl-next-door look, but now that girl-next-door was a head-turner. Bella was still the girl-next-door, it's just that now 'next door' was Beverly Hills or Miami Beach, right here in nowhere Ohio.

"Now, now!" Bella scolded me from across the blanket, wagging her finger at me playfully.

I raised my eyebrow, mystified. "Yes," I implored, "'now, now!' Right now, if you please!"

Bella rolled her eyes at me. "Oh, yeah, that's right; you are quite the nymphomaniac, aren't you, Rosalie?"

I snorted a laugh. "You're one to talk, Bella!"

"Well, I did learn from a master ... I mean, mistress ..." Bella chuckled playfully.

I smiled at Bella. "... And so?" I knew one day Bella would get the hint, but we didn't even have this whole day. Enough chit-chat; let's get to the goods!

Naughty Bella was picking up what I was putting down, but she refused to play along.

"Nawt-anh, Rosalie Hale, and I'm shocked at you trying to get into my pants just as soon as you see me!" Bella cried with mock-anguish and -seriousness.

"Bella," I said, just as seriously, "you aren't wearing pants."

Her towel covered her upper body well enough, but it just barely covered her thighs, and her sitting crossed-legged like that? I glanced downward and got an eyeful.

Stunning! was all I could think when I saw what the towel oh-so-poorly tried to cover. And, indeed, I was stunned, for I missed most of what she said in reply and had to replay the sensory data from my ears through my mind to get what she had said.

"And nor are you!" she countered. "I was gonna play you a game of strip poker, but that'd be the world's shortest game, given that all we're wearing is a towel each."

I blinked.

"Bella, I'm not wearing a towel." I wasn't, in fact, wearing anything.

Whap!

My vision was obstructed as my towel that had been by Bella's side hit me with the force of a car hitting a deer.

Bella cleared her throat as I removed the towel from my face.

"As I was saying," she dictated, then twirled her index finger, pointing downward in a sign for me to put it on, "since both of us are now in just towels, strip poker would be no fun, so we'll have to play a different card game ... you did bring a deck of cards, right, Rose?"

I grumbled as I wrapped the towel about me.

"Yes, I brought the cards, but I don't much see the point, Bella," I complained. "Aren't we just delaying the inevitable?"

But I complied and fished out the deck of cards from the camping supply pack, tossing the sealed deck to her.

"The point, Rosalie," Bella said, tossing the deck right back to me, and commanding, "You shuffle'm. The point is ..."

Bella paused and smiled wistfully at me.

After a second she continued. "This is the longest conversation I've had with anybody in at least two years, sweetheart, and I'm having it with you. This is the first conversation I've had with anybody I've had in weeks, Rosalie. No, longer than that, because the last time we met, we basically jumped each other's bones ..."

I smiled back to Bella in sympathy and in understanding.

"... which was really nice, and I'm really looking forward to that, too, okay, Rose, but ..."

Her smile saddened, then she shrugged her shoulders.

"But I'm all alone, you know? And I just want to be with somebody, be with you, mind-to-mind, and talk and hear somebody else's voice, or not talk and look into your eyes and not be lonely for just a little bit."

I wanted to exclaim, 'Oh, Bella!' and hug her to me just to wipe that forlorn look from her face, but I don't know if that would have offended her the way that would have offended me if anybody other than Bella did that to me.

So instead I offered an apologetic, "We did talk, and look, a bit the last time ... after."

Bella's smile was a grimace. "Yeah, Rose, but the sweet-nothing talk of post-coital bliss? Yeah, it's all nice and all, but it's really sad, 'cause we're both looking at leaving each other, so it's all just desperate 'I love you's. That's not really a conversation to keep me going for weeks of solitude and hunting. No, it actually made the alone time worse, because I felt just so wretched!"

I grimaced, and the words were out. "So come home with me, Bella. After this, don't go out there into the solitude, but come back home with me, to family."

Bella sighed. "Yeah, and I'm sure this ..." — she waved her hand in front of her red eyes — "will go over really well with Mommy and Daddy Cullen."

That was the first time I had heard her tone turn sarcastic toward her family that she had estranged herself from.

"Bella," I said, disappointment creeping into my voice.

Bella looked away. "Sorry," she mumbled.

"Why did you just say that, honey? That was just so spiteful!"

I looked at Bella, pleading for her to look back at me, for us not to let this slip away.

"Bella," I said, "you know that isn't true."

"Isn't it?" Bella's eyes snapped back to me.

"Bella," I scolded again sadly.

Bella grimaced.

I pressed forward: "You know Carlisle has forgiven every one of our mistakes, or, in my case, deliberate acts. And, really, Bella, I don't hold a candle to what Edward did, and purposefully at that, and nor do you, and you know that, Bella. And we're all like that. You'll be welcomed back at any time with open arms, Bella; open arms."

"Yeah," Bella said, not agreeing. "There is a difference, though, in my case. You all made your mistakes or whatever, but you went back willing to give up something I just can't."

"'Can't'?" I repeated reproachfully.

"Can't," Bella affirmed.

"I don't believe that, Bella."

"Well," Bella said sadly, "that's 'cause you don't know what it is like."

And that word — 'It' — hung in the air between us.

Yes, 'it,' the ardeur that drove Bella to kill and kill again. 'It,' the thing she claimed that made her so monstrous that the only good she could do for us was to leave us.

I looked across at Bella, wanting to communicate in that look that whatever 'it' was, it was never in the way of our love for her.

Bella looked back stonily, so lost in her despair, so unreachable in her 'it'-ness.


Chapter End Notes:

[1] Sneaking out this chapter during 'lunch break.' Do not tell on me, please! And if you do, I work in the Batvia, Ohio sbux, and my name's Mary-Lewis Clark (:p some of you may get that eventually ...). A lot of pale people have been showing up at my sbux, as of late, I've noticed.

[2] This chapter is titled: "A Leaf Falls." This is from the concrete poem by e. e. cummings:

l(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness

This is Bella's existence. This is the existence of a nomadic vampire. This is what it is, to be existing on the fringe of society, looking in, sometimes, but never, ever being a part of. And that's true for someone in the forest of Batvia, Ohio, and that's true for someone living in the heart of NYC going to Ginger's Bar, cruising for chicas (but that's someone else's story, and in Clubbing, at that).

This is loneliness.

A leaf falls.

[3] So, yes, seriously: this is a story about addiction. It is, after all, a vampire story. Ever notice that those who love the person with addiction, just love them, but the person loved is just so sure they are unloveable, hateful, in fact.

And there are three outcomes, right?

a. She's given up on and disappears into nothingness, never seen again, because Love doesn't have limits, but human beings do ... even vampires do; OR,

b. Her self-hate leads to her own destruction, and sometimes, oftentimes, pulls those who love her down with her, destroying them, too, because they don't let go. They love her too much to do that. They love her even more that they love themselves. And they get destroyed ... because they love her (I'm just saying what I've seen happens; I didn't say life is fair); OR,

c. She wakes up one day, and actually succeeds in getting off it, letting go of the self-hate, and poof she's back, and loved, and loving, and functional, and not destructive to self and others. And, really, it happens just like that. Magically. All of a sudden. For no reason. And it doesn't come from anyone else, this salvation, it comes from her, just choosing to let go and to live.

Yes. I've seen all three happen. To myself, too.

This story ... well, what do you think is going to happen? What happens ITRW ('in the real world')? Not fantasy. Not, 'aw, how sweet!' But what really happens, all the time? Even after going to Twelve Step and Rehab and everything, what really happens?

This story is marked as 'Tragedy/Family,' btw. Just so you know.

en . wikipedia . org / wiki / Tragedy