NOTE: I went back and rewrote this chapter in first person. The third person POV was just too stilted, and I felt too much distance between myself and the characters. So this is a slight revision with only a few changes besides the pronoun alterations. :)
With many thanks to my lovely and talented pre-reader, ladylibre, who has already saved me from several embarrassing mistakes in this chapter alone…. :)
Thanks for being patient with me. As much as I've always posted weekly in the past, my work schedule has doubled starting in January. So perhaps I'll just post as I can and make no promises that I'll have to break. Thanks for understanding the life of a very busy wife, mom of four, homeschooling teacher, and writing instructor for online and co-op high school classes. ;)
I do not own Twilight, but I do have a lovely husband, four angelic [snort] children, and a sizeable mortgage….
Chapter 1
BPOV
Sitting in my ancient VW Beetle, I checked the address I had typed into my iPhone. Yes, this was the place. Nervously I tucked a strand of my shoulder-length brown hair behind my ear as I took in a deep breath, letting it out slowly in an attempt to calm my nerves.
A lot was riding on this interview if I wanted to escape from the hell my life had become since my return to Chicago for the fall semester of my junior year of college. I just hoped that the people living in this house wouldn't question me too closely. I would have to tell them something, of course, whether they had heard the rumors or not. The University of Chicago was a big place, but my newly-former roommate, Jessica, was not only popular but also had a big mouth, so who knew how far her lies had spread over the past few weeks?
Sucking in another deep breath, I forced myself to open the car door and approach the house which towered three stories above the tree-lined sidewalk.
The neighborhood was an old one, and I felt immediately at home among the old homes, most of them dating back to the last decades of the nineteenth century. Old things—antiques, dusty books, objects with a history—always attracted my attention, and this neighborhood, and this house in particular, appealed to something deep within me.
In fact, it more than appealed to me—it called to me.
But the fact that I loved the neighborhood and felt unaccountably drawn to this house in particular made me more nervous. I was very conscious of the pressure weighing heavily in my chest. This just had to work out if I wanted to retain my sanity and pursue my studies.
Walking up the sidewalk to the gate, I gazed up at the house with something akin to wonder. Aware that my hands were trembling, I pressed them together to mask their shaking as my eyes combed over the details of the structure before me. A classic Victorian, the house was beautifully maintained, its soft gray paint accented with white trim and touches of deep red, the same color as the front door.
Biting my lip, I clicked open the gate to the waist-high picket fence and slowly walked up the gray flagstones to the charcoal-gray porch which boasted two dark red Adirondack chairs and a white porch swing on the far side where riotous honeysuckle covered a trellis, providing shade for most of the porch.
I loved the place already. I just hoped that everything worked out. Unfortunately I needed somewhere to live immediately, and this house looked as if it were made for me. Tentatively I pressed the doorbell, smiling slightly at the deep, old-fashioned tones that rang out faintly, reminding me of pealing church bells.
The red door was opened by one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. She was tall, a good five or six inches taller than my respectable five-foot four inches, and her blue eyes were almost lavender. Her soft blonde hair was swept carelessly into a ponytail, and her figure, encased in running clothes, was that of a runway model.
The blonde raised her eyebrows at my obvious gawping, and I forced my exhausted mind to the subject at hand.
"Hi, I'm Bella Swan. I spoke to Alice about the room for rent?" I babbled too quickly.
The blonde's scowl cleared, and she smiled as she stepped back and invited me inside. But her eyes remained cool, and I had the feeling that this woman was reserved—her extraordinary beauty probably demanded it.
"I'm Rosalie, and this is my house—mine and my brother's, I should say."
I smiled, feeling a little more at ease. "It's a beautiful place. How old is it?" I asked.
"It was built in the late 1880's, but my parents had it completely restored a few years ago when Jasper and I moved here for college. It's been in our family for ages—five generations, I think. Someday I want to trace the family history of the place, but I never seem to have the time."
"Are you a student, too?" I asked, curious.
"Yes, University of Chicago. I'll be graduating this year—pre-med—then starting med school next fall. You?"
"Same here—University of Chicago. I'm starting my junior year. English major," I responded a little stiffly.
Rosalie chuckled. "Another of those oh-so-marketable majors," she grinned, and I reluctantly joined in her laughter. Truer words were never spoken.
"Well, at least with English, you can teach or write or edit or something," Rosalie stated. "My twin is a philosophy major—I have absolutely no clue what he's going to do with a degree in what? Thinking?"
"I heard that," came a teasing male voice with a slight drawl, one much more noticeable than Rosalie's. A grinning blond man came down the stairs, and he was nearly as beautiful as his sister—there was no mistaking this person as anyone else but Rosalie's twin brother.
Was his name Jason? Jackson? I wondered frantically. Rosalie had just mentioned his name, darn it….
"Bella, this is my brother, Jasper. Jazz, this is Bella. She spoke with Alice about the room."
"Nice to meet you, Bella," he said, still smiling as he stepped forward to shake my hand. I couldn't help noticing that his good looks which, while not quite as dramatic as his sister's, were still quite head-turning. His blond hair was long, almost to his shoulders, and his eyes were the same blue-lavender as his sister's. He was tall—over six feet—and well-built but slender. Definitely athletic. "I'm Alice's fiancé as well as Rose's brother."
"Hi, Jasper," I replied a little shyly.
Jasper turned to his sister. "Let me get Alice, and we can all talk together."
Rosalie nodded as her brother took the stairs two at a time. I had liked Alice when I spoke to her on the phone, and I really hoped that this place would work out. I sighed at the thought of all that had happened recently as I followed Rosalie over to a sitting area in the large living room.
After answering Rosalie's offer of coffee in the affirmative, I settled on a soft brown leather sofa before an imposing stone fireplace. The walls of the room were a gentle sage green, the furniture either brown leather or cream and green upholstery. The cream-painted crown molding was a lovely touch, creating a formal yet comfortable feeling—but not at all the usual hangout for college kids.
I didn't know much about furniture, but I could tell that the furnishings in this room were a mixture of valuable antiques and expensive pieces; the overall effect was warm and welcoming rather than extravagant.
Just as Rosalie entered the living room with a tray of coffee mugs, I heard the rapid fire of feet rushing down the stairs behind me. I turned to see Jasper accompanied by a tiny sprite of a girl. Her black hair was short and spiky, and her cornflower blue eyes danced with excitement. Despite it being a Saturday morning, I was surprised to see Alice dressed in expensive jeans, knee-high brown leather boots that probably cost more than my car, and a peasant top that was obviously designer-made. She looked more like someone going out for a hot date than a college girl hanging out at home on a Saturday morning.
Rosalie placed the tray on the oak coffee table as the girl whom I assumed was Alice practically pranced to up to me. Standing to greet this beautiful girl, I smiled to myself. If I moved in here, I was definitely going to develop a complex from living among such beautiful people.
"Hi Bella—I'm Alice," chirped the girl. When I smiled and extended a hand, Alice bypassed the gesture and hugged me with surprising strength instead. A little shocked by Alice's easy familiarity, I flinched at first but then relaxed a bit, returning the hug tentatively.
When Alice drew back, she was smiling so widely at me that I couldn't help grinning back. "We're going to be best friends, Bella," Alice said, and there was a serious note underneath Alice's sparkling friendliness. "I just know it."
"Let's all sit," Rosalie said, frowning slightly at Alice's exuberance while Jasper smiled indulgently at his fiancée.
A few moments passed as we added cream and sugar from the tray to our coffee mugs. As we all sank back into the soft leather of the matching sofa and loveseat, a slightly awkward silence fell over the group.
Rosalie took charge, however. "So, Bella, tell us a little about yourself and why you want the room. It's kind of unusual to go looking for a room halfway through the semester," she remarked, her tone noncommittal but her eyes curious.
Gulping down my mouthful of coffee in surprise at Rosalie's direct question, I nearly scorched my esophagus. Placing the mug on a stone coaster on the coffee table, I leaned back into the soft brown leather and glanced at the three sets of blue eyes fixed on me. I blushed slightly at the unaccustomed attention, cleared my throat, and began speaking.
"I'm from a small town called Forks in Washington State, about four hours away from Seattle on the Olympic Peninsula. My dad is the chief of police of Forks, and I've lived there all my life. My—" I paused for a moment, then pushed on with effort—"my mom died of ovarian cancer right after I graduated from high school, so I stayed in Forks with my dad for a couple of years before starting college here at the University of Chicago. I roomed in the dorms my freshman and sophomore years with a girl named Angela, but she got married this summer. So I advertised and found someone who wanted to split the cost of an apartment off campus this year. I ended up moving in with a sophomore named Jessica. And it's not working out." The last sentence was spoken in a flat tone which seemed to intrigue my listeners.
"What happened?" Alice asked, and I noticed the concern in her eyes rather than the blatant curiosity that I had expected—and had seen in Jessica and others to whom I had shared my background.
I took a deep breath before continuing. "Jessica and I are very different. I'm a serious student; she's a partier. I don't mind a party on Friday or Saturday nights on occasion, but Jessica is out almost every night and often brings her friends back to our apartment so they can keep the party going, sometimes until three or four in the morning. I have early classes, so I'm stuck with trying to function with very little sleep. Also," I paused, blushing, "Jessica brings her boyfriend back to her room often, and, um, they're not very quiet when they're…together."
My listeners nodded with sympathetic understanding—Alice even gave a dramatic shudder.
"I can't sleep. I can't study. And Jessica is not neat—she leaves a trail of beer bottles and empty takeout containers everywhere she goes. The living room smells like a distillery half the time. And the few times I've tried having friends over for a study session on a weeknight, Jessica and her friends interrupt us, playing loud music and dancing while we're trying to work."
"I can understand why your situation isn't working out," Rosalie said, nodding.
Smiling sadly, I continued. "I was going to wait for the semester break to look for a new place or move back to the dorms when I'd have more time, but…" My voice trembled as I dropped my voice, "something happened…that makes it pretty clear that Jessica wants me out. Immediately."
At this point I had to pause to regain my composure, and my listeners must have noted the sadness in my expression and tone of voice. "Right now my stuff is in Angela and Ben's garage, but they only have a one-bedroom and no real room for me." Unfortunately, their sympathetic eyes did not miss the fact that I was shaking as I finished my sad tale despite folding my arms across my chest and curling into myself a little—a defense mechanism that I was all-too-familiar with.
Rosalie raised her eyebrow while Jasper fidgeted, apparently responding to the obvious stress I was exhibiting despite my best efforts to calm myself. Alice left her seat beside Jasper and joined me on the loveseat, taking my hand in an unspoken gesture of support.
Taking a deep breath, I let it out slowly as I tried to sound normal—or as normal as possible. "So when I saw your ad on Craig's List, I thought I'd check it out. And here I am," I shrugged, smiling weakly.
Alice hugged me. "Of course we'd love to have you here, Bella! This is going to be so much fun!" she practically squealed in my ear. "We're going to become best friends—I can just see it!"
However, Rosalie handled the situation more circumspectly. "Bella, it sounds like you'd be a good fit here. Right now three of us live here—myself and Jazz and Alice. Since those two share a room, we have an extra room on the second floor that has been used for storage for as long as we can remember, and when we came back for fall semester, Alice insisted on cleaning it out and renting it. Why don't we take you on the grand tour and then we can talk further?"
They all stood up, and Rosalie led me through the rooms, Alice and Jasper tagging along behind us. The kitchen behind the living room was recently renovated—marble countertops, custom dark cherry cabinets, stainless steel appliances, the walls painted a soft yellow. My fingers itched to start cooking in the amazing kitchen—I had never had even a dishwasher in any of the kitchens in the places I had lived, much less a workplace of this caliber.
The adjoining dining room seemed to be set up more as a study with textbooks, papers, and laptops covering what looked to be an antique cherry dining table that seated eight easily. The cherry sideboard was also stacked with textbooks and sported a printer in the middle of the semi-organized chaos. The matching china cupboard held lovely pieces of cream-colored china against the deep green walls, and a large silver tea service was surrounded by iPod docks, phone chargers, and other techno-gadgets. Several bookcases were stuffed to overflowing with notebooks, texts, and reference books.
A small mudroom off the kitchen led to the backyard which was rather spare in late autumn—the trees were bare, the rose bushes dormant, the flower beds mulched for the winter. But I could tell that it would be lovely in spring and summer, and my heart grew even more attached to this lovely home and its beautiful inhabitants.
Rosalie led me back into the house, Alice and Jasper continuing to trail behind me as we returned to the living room. From this angle, I noticed something that I had missed seeing from where I had been sitting earlier.
"Do any of you play?" I asked, touching a finger to the lovely antique upright piano tucked into the corner of the room.
Rosalie nodded. "Mom made Jasper and me play piano for years. Jazz got out of it when he hit his teens and switched to guitar, but I kept on through high school. But I rarely have time to play with my current schedule."
I nodded, unable to say anything more, but touching the polished wood with a reverent hand. Perhaps sometime, if they didn't mind….
I loved the wood floors mellow with age, the lovely artwork—originals, not prints—hanging on the walls, the sunshine streaming through the old-fashioned pane windows across the well-worn but still beautiful area rugs. This place seemed perfect—a real home after the hell of the living with Jessica these last two months and the dorms before that. And even my home in Forks really hadn't been a true home since Renée's death.
"Let's go upstairs," Rosalie suggested, and I followed, Jasper and Alice on my heels. The stairs were wide with carved oak banisters, the wooden steps covered with a deep red rug down the center. I couldn't miss the voluminous collection of family photos hanging on the cream-colored walls as we ascended. When I looked up as we reached the landing, I sucked in my breath.
An extremely large and finely-detailed stained glass window of a glorious peacock graced the landing area where the stairs turned to proceed to the second floor. The blues and greens of the bird's body and long tail feathers caught the diffused sunlight magnificently. The window, created in the style of Tiffany, was both classic and breathtaking.
"Isn't the window amazing?" whispered Alice, and I could only nod, transfixed by the beauty of it—the way the colors from the window were set off perfectly by the neutral cream walls. Whoever had decorated this house knew what they were doing.
At the top of the stairs, Rosalie pointed out the master bedroom with en suite bathroom that belonged to Jasper and Alice. The yellow and black color scheme was both bright and sophisticated, its unusual combination working well in the large room.
"Alice is majoring in design. She mostly does clothing, but she also dabbles in interior design," Jasper stated in a low voice as I nodded, understanding now why Jasper and Alice were following the tour: they wanted to see my reaction to each aspect of the house. Alice nearly clapped her hands with joy each time my jaw dropped in awe, and Jasper smiled at his fiancée's obvious pleasure.
Rosalie showed her room—a large, airy room painted a deep red with touches of black—as dramatic as she was. "Sometimes my boyfriend Emmett stays the night, but it's not bad, even for two people. I have to use the hall bathroom, though, rather than having an en suite bathroom like Jazz and Alice."
Rosalie approached the only closed door on the floor. "This is the room we're renting," she said as she opened the door.
Like the rest of the house, the floors were oak, old but well-maintained, mellowed by decades of use. The walls were painted a vibrant sky blue, and the white crown molding set off the color beautifully. Two windows, one to the north and one to the east, let a lot of light into the fairly large room—not as large as the others but a good deal larger than the one in my apartment with Jessica.
"We just cleared this room out and repainted—it's been used as storage for as long as Jazz and I can remember," Rosalie explained. "But it's too nice a room to leave empty."
"Plus there's another smaller bathroom here across the hall," she pointed out, and I turned to see a small bathroom with a white tile shower stall, white pedestal sink, and walls a shade or two darker than the blue of the bedroom walls.
Alice danced forward, linking her arm through mine. "It's not en suite, but it's all yours. But if you're dying for a bath, just let me know and you can use Rose's huge clawfoot tub or our whirlpool bathtub." I did not miss that Alice was already speaking as if I were definitely coming to live with them.
It was true—this house and its inhabitants were practically perfect for me. I already loved the blue of the bedroom and bathroom. How odd was it that the obviously new paint job was my favorite color?
I have always adored old houses, except for the old kitchens and bathrooms, and this place had been recently upgraded in both of these important areas.
Then a frightening thought occurred to me, and I swallowed hard, nausea biting at my stomach.
"Um, the ad didn't say how much you're asking for the room," I practically whispered. Wouldn't it be terrible if after all this, the room was out of my modest price range?
Rosalie led us all back downstairs where we resettled in our former seats in the living room, sipping our coffee which was quite cooled by now.
"The cost is $1000 per month—no utilities. And you pitch in evenly on groceries."
My heart sank. My budget was half that. There was no way that I could afford this place. Vainly I tried to suppress the tears coming to my eyes so easily after the drama of recent days, the lack of sleep, and the hard work of moving out of Jessica's apartment so quickly.
My emotions were in freefall-I just had to escape before I burst into tears in front of these kind people. The disappointment hit me like a wrecking ball to my hopes. I already liked Rosalie, Jasper, and Alice; not only had they seemed like serious students but also ones who also knew how to have a good time once in a while. They were funny and quirky—just the kind of people I liked best and felt most comfortable hanging out with despite my shyness.
Trying not to wobble, I stood up. "I'm sorry for wasting your time. I-I should have asked you the price at the beginning so that I wouldn't have intruded…." My voice trailed off as I tried to control my tears. Grabbing my purse, I refused to look any of them in the face; I knew that if I saw one compassionate glance, I would definitely lose it. "Th-thank you for your time. I hope that you find a nice roommate—"
Alice grabbed my arm and pulled me unceremoniously back into my seat. With my purse still on my other arm, I sat down, my eyes fixed on my lap as I tried unsuccessfully to control my tears.
"What can you afford?" Alice asked gently.
"$500 is the most I can do," I whispered thickly; I was sure that they all heard the tears in my voice.
"Tell you what, Bella," Rosalie said briskly. "Our cleaning lady had to quit—her husband just retired, and they're moving to Florida at the end of the month. If you want to do the cleaning and cooking, we can take the other $500 off the rent. What do you think?"
I looked up at Rosalie, wiping at the tears on my cheeks. "I don't mind cleaning at all, and I love cooking. Are you all okay with this arrangement?" I asked, and there was no mistaking the nods and welcoming smiles bestowed on me by my new roommates.
"So, when can I move in?" I asked, grinning despite my misty eyes.
Alice clapped her hands, bouncing with glee while Rosalie and Jasper exchanged pleased smiles.
Alice leaped to her feet. "Well—let's go get your stuff!" she squealed. I joined Alice's jubilant laughter, and all felt right with the world.
Thanks for reading!
I wish I could respond to all of your lovely, lovely comments and reviews, but I simply can't do so and still expect to have time to sleep and perhaps even write, too! But please know that each comment is precious to me and is cherished then saved into a special file that I re-read on days when I can't quite believe that I'm a writer…. ;)
Until next time, dear friends!
~Cassandra :)
xxxooo
