Chapter Two: The Unhonorable Maid and The Less Than Good Man

Jesus is just a Spanish boy's name.
How come one man got so much fame?
To enemies, it's pointless to anybody
who doesn't have faith.

When my blood stops,
someone else's will not.
When my head rolls off,
someone else's will turn.
And while I'm alive,
I'll make tiny changes to the earth.

"You haven't been working at home, have you?" Carlisle asked as I flopped back in my chair. I felt sweat on my neck but I let it slither down my spine without wiping it away because inevitably I wouldn't feel it when it got low enough.

"I've been meaning to," I trailed off and took a gulp of water. That was an almost lie, which made it almost acceptable. "Been busy with the wedding and everything."

"Right," he nodded four times and agreed with me, though he knew I was lying. "You know I can only help you as much as you want to be helped, right?" I stared at his crisp blue eyes. He looked like Rosalie, blond and soft. I hated when he looked at me like that; fatherly.

"Yeah," I murmured. "I'll see you next week." There was a little bit of guilt there; it was heavy and felt like a chest cold. Like having to cough in the middle of a test at school, but not wanting to be that person who hacks up a lung during the true/false segment.

"I'll see you at the wedding," he stopped me. "I sort of have to be there to give the bride away and such."

"Right," I nodded as he did. Four times. "I guess I have to hold the rings and such."

"Don't forget to work on what I told you," Carlisle called after thirty-four taps of my finger against my thigh. I nodded, four times, and went to the elevator to shower for the fitting Emmett was dragging me to against my will and better judgment.

One flip and three needle adjustments of London Calling later, I was showered and begrudgingly ready for hell in a bow tie. I sat in the lobby of the building, absently rubbing the saint around my neck with Carlisle's words running through my mind in a circle, like a carousel where the lever's busted and it just keeps gaining speed like a children's top. But that simile had another simile in it, so I doubted its validity. No matter how much I worked out, did physical therapy, I couldn't alter biology or science.

I watched the door open and close, causing rainbows to form from the light through the window. I tried to make vectors and equations to make a rainbow the length of the room. Halfway through Emmett came. I sat there for five more minutes while I figured it out. At five twenty eight the sun would be at the perfect location, if the door was held open about the width of a foot, and the glass was bent to form a seventy-one degree angle.

Jasper and James were with him, so I already felt out of place. They talked and caught up while I maneuvered through people's legs. Jasper arrived earlier this morning straight from Texas. He and Emmett played college football together at Tech before the accident. That was pre-accident Emmett, and now, with his former teammate here, post-accident, CEO, adult Emmett reverted somewhat. Darwin would have a field day.

Jasper was a professor there now, though with drawl like his I suspected it took all class just to take roll. James worked with Emmett, and we'd grown up with his family, the St. Claires. I never found an appreciation for him as a human being who inhabited the Earth with me, but I might be biased since he used to give me wedgies and help Emmett break my shit.

It was easy to be quiet when they talked the whole time. I took turns taking their sentences and taking out the prepositions to see how different they would sound without all that baggage. Seven blocks later, the retelling of freshmen and half of sophomore year, and seventy-three seconds of waiting to cross intersections, we got to the tux shop.

"When am I going to meet this lovely dame my best friend is getting hitched to?" Jasper threw over the door of the changing room towards Emmett. I could have said the same sentence in half the time without sounding half as stupid.

"As soon as her bridesmaid's get here. They're trying on their dresses next door, and then we're going to go grab dinner," Emmett hollered back. I knew they all finished getting dressed before me, but I kept going at it. I felt like Mighty Mouse most of the times, giant up top, puny on the bottom, when I had to lift myself around the changing room with just my arms. I heard them being measured and adjusted. If I went slow enough they might have to go to dinner without me, and then I'd sneak home.

I took a peak in the mirror and made a note to shave at some point before the wedding. I didn't bother lying to myself with the idea of getting more sleep.

Emmett knocked on my door and asked if I needed help, and I felt like Mighty Mouse when he was just a regular mouse again.

"Hey baby," I heard Emmett great who I assumed to be Rosalie. Introductions poured forth outside and I adjusted my tie.

"These dresses look great," Jasper encouraged the bridesmaids as I rolled out of the changing room.

"And here's my best man," Emmett cheered and came to stand near me in his matching monkey suit. I played with a button on my jacket. Rosalie was dressed in normal clothes, but beside her stood three women in deep red bridesmaid dresses, tied with a black sash around the middle. They ruffled slightly and were knee length. I recognized a pair of long legs. I also recognized another pair of legs. I felt bile.

"Edward, I guess you know everyone here except for Bella," Emmett pointed towards the girl from last night. I scanned Alice's face, then Tanya's, and finally the girl's. It was like a collection from Hell.

"The number's guy," Bella smiled. I restarted my count and started naming the muscles associated with that action.

"The girl who hates heels," I shook her hand and remembered the way she held my head. I took a peak at her feet and saw her in Converses and smiled.

"That's my Indian name, but Bella is good enough," she dropped my hand. I switched to listing the nerves that helped her smile in that way. It was safer to think of things like that.

"Edward, it's been a while," Tanya grabbed my attention. I could count the layers of lip-gloss. "How have you been?" Thirteen.

"It's been an interesting few days, but other than that, same old, same old," I snuck a peak at Bella but she was adjusting her sash thing around her waist. Her hair covered her face again, just like it did when she sat on my bed. I liked the way that sounded in my head, and wondered how it would sound out loud. 'Bella in my bed.' For someone who was as short as she was, her legs never seemed to end; the closet thing to the embodiment of infinity I'd ever seen. But I was an asymptote. Infinity never touched, no matter how far you traveled.

I was asexual. I might have been worse than asexual because most of the time I didn't even bother to have sex with myself. Bella in my bed. That made me nosexual. Been that way since the accident. Every morning I was greeted with a salute, and I ignored it. Bella in my bed. 1/infinity. I think it was the way her boobs looked in the dress, or the way her legs still looked amazing. Mostly it might have been the soft skin of her shoulder. Maybe I had just been alone for so long anything would be attractive and my hormones were backed up.

I looked at Tanya. I remembered thinking she was beautiful, like a model. I didn't graph her.

Bella in my bed.

I hated being limited by being a man. Integrals are definite. The probability of having sex…with anyone…was like 1/infinity.

"Your turn to get fitted, Edward," Emmett pulled my chair from behind. I was almost thankful to be away from her. Everyone turned towards the mirror to watch as the tailor sized me.

"So, which one of you beautiful women do I have the pleasure of accompanying down the aisle after our fair friends are wedded?" Jasper offered a lazy smile as he sized up his options.

"That'd be me," Alice danced over towards him. He grabbed her hand and kissed it. I took cues from Emmett as to how a big brother should react to such a thing, if we had been normal and whatnot. His jaw clenched. Eight muscles; that was it.

His question made me think about whom I'd be rolling with, and both options made me anxious. If I walked with Tanya, that'd be torture. No one really wanted to spend time with an ex; especially an ex who broke up with you because you were paralyzed.

Being paired with Bella didn't seem much better. This girl was something I couldn't predict, something I feared, and more than that, she was hot as fuck. I doubted she'd want to be stuck with a guy with no left feet when it came to dancing. She was the embodiment of dividing by zero.

"And my maid of honor is Bella, so she'll be with Edward," I tuned back into the conversation at the mention of my name. I tucked the hormones away and went back to reworking and explanation of infinity.

"How is she qualified to be that?" I turned after than man finished. Tanya, James and Jasper were talking as Alice took a phone call.

"Bella is my best friend," Rosalie gave me a weird smile at my inappropriate question. It was the kind a mother gave her child when he asked why a friend was fat or something. Being around people, other than my family, for the past few days had taught me that I was vastly inappropriate. Most of the time Alice, Em, or Rosalie ignored my rudeness, even though I didn't think I was being rude, just cautious.

Her answer categorized Bella as vapid, simple, easy, stubborn, and innately worried about things that didn't matter, by pairing her on a deep level with the woman marrying my brother. Unfortunately this didn't compute. I was Freud's uncanny. "I've known her since high school."

That made Bella twenty-one, since Rosalie was twenty-one, and they must have been in the same class. That meant that for somewhere around seven hundred and thirty days, I inhabited a world without her in it. I knew her for exactly 0.023304591% of my existence, give or take, depending on the seconds and leap year days.

"Right," I nodded, four times.

"If it helps, I've never been a maid, and have very little honor, so we'll make a perfect pair," Bella offered, running her finger gently across her sternum. One and two thirds inches below her clavicle. I felt what she was missing; it sat tucked under my undershirt, shirt, vest, and bow tie.

"Let's get out of here, you boys look dashing, but I'm starving," Alice thrust herself back into the conversation as I contemplated telling Bella that she made numbers appear when she was around because my mind didn't want to think of anything else. It was probably for the best Alice stopped us before I put my foot in my mouth.

"You get your boys all finished up, and we'll meet you in our normal clothes at the restaurant in a half hour, alright?" Rosalie let her head rest on Emmett's shoulder. Bella would have to be a good foot and a half shorter to do that to me. Or my nerves would have to attach themselves back together, a lot quicker than they were. Five years, less than a sixth returned. Bella would be in a wheelchair herself before I could let her rest her head on my shoulder.

"Good-bye, Beautiful," Jasper kissed Alice's hand as he bowed. "Until later." He inhabited the world 5,258,880 and counting, give or take a few thousand, minutes before Alice was born. In distance, he could have run 350, 592 miles, if each mile took fifteen minutes. Or roughly taken a stroll around Jupiter, the biggest planet in the solar system, one whole time, and be over a fourth of the way with another lap. But that was variable, to which way he was walking, either with the rotation or against it. Either way, from the muscles in Emmett's jaw, I knew that was too long.

"Lay off," Emmett pulled Jasper and pushed him towards his changing room before glaring at Alice, who seemed to be pumping blood into her cheeks at an alarming rate. James just shrugged and waved. I figured it'd be fun to give Bella one last glance, because sometimes one more glance puts things in a clearer light. It was like having half an equation erased.

I turned and went back into my changing room.

I heard them leave, I heard them come back, and I hadn't moved to get undressed.

"Edward, hurry up," Emmett banged on the door.

"Sorry, it's hard to move with the pins and everything. You know I hate being pricked," I lied. I had watched the tailor poke me on accident at least twice.

"Right," he yelled. "Our reservation is for five minutes ago, do you mind meeting us when you finish?"

"Yeah, I'll be over soon," I smiled victoriously. He was an idiot to trust me. I'd rather run my fingernails against chalkboards than go eat with Tanya. I sat for a little longer, until the bell jingled twice at a distant interval, signifying they had left.

I would be paired with Bella. Awkward wasn't the right word, but it was the perfect feeling. After Tanya, my first, last, original everything, combined with the addition of a lightweight, titanium axeled, seventy degrees of adjustment optioned wheelchair, lacking social skills only increased by a dependency on pain and sleeping pills, brought on by a vast array of crippling emotional issues, and an IQ that made quantum physics bedtime stories, it might not be surprising to find out that my dating, personal, and social life didn't excel. And I gave zero fucks.

I hung up the tux and left it in the room as the tailor had instructed before going back out. Bella sat on the bench facing the trifold mirror.

"I wish you could have just heard my thoughts," I smiled at her, hoping maybe she did pick up on the abundant strengths I had to offer. She stood up and pushed hair from her face.

"I'm not sure who's hosting SNL this weekend," she stated. Second smile.

"What?" I felt mine fade. No one ever left me this confused.

"That wasn't what you were thinking about?" she nudged her head towards the door, signaling for me to follow. I appreciated her exaggerated social cues.

"No," I stated. "What are you doing here?"

"I offered to wait for you," she held the door open. "Because from the shifty look you had, I figured you would try to make a run for it." I stopped on the sidewalk and looked at Bella when she stopped along with me. My useless diver watch told me it was about the time for the sun to be the perfect angle for optimal refraction. It seemed like optimal time to see strands of Bella's hair painted golden, and her eyes freckled with honey. I wanted to see both.

"I don't really run much," I shrugged. Bella scrunched up her face before letting out a breath. It was like she emptied the vital capacity. If I took the initial reserve volume plus tidal volume and expiratory reserve volume, I could figure out how many liters she just altered the atmosphere of the world by, to the nearest liter, if the rest of the world held their breath at the same moment.

"I'm sorry," she sighed. I checked my watch again and started in the opposite direction.

"I've got something to see," I paused at the intersection. "I'll be at dinner in a few."

"I said I was sorry," she followed. I watched her from the corner of my eye. She looked so comfortable; jeans, sneakers, collared flannel shirt rolled up awkwardly. No heels in sight.

"You didn't offend me," I calmed her fears. That was all I needed, pity.

"Well you missed the turn for the restaurant, and I'm not going without you because they'll think I pissed you off or something, which it seems like I did," she huffed as she tried to keep up to me. I checked my watch and went a little faster. Bella followed until we reached the entrance to my building. I stopped. I wish I had done something cool, like skidded sideways like the good guys always did when parallel parking, or had the nerve to race behind her and make her fall in my lap, because I never wanted someone to be impressed by my limitation more than in this moment.

"You didn't," I stated again. She followed me through the doors. "Just, I had to do something and it's almost time. I have to know if I was right. I didn't think someone would wait for me, it's never happened before. So just sit," I wheeled around, looked at the door and back towards the lobby chairs. I moved one a few feet in one direction and placed it in the middle of the room. "Here, and I promise I'll go to dinner in five minutes if you just stop being you. You make it hard for me to think about the right numbers." A vector rendering of her hips started to work through my mind. I would bisect her vector any day.

"Ok," she whispered and sat down. The smell of vanilla followed her when she walked around me, with a hint of strawberries. That made my brain stop thinking about numbers. I watched her throat move with a swallow, and her lip tucked into the top as she bit the bottom. Lips and hands and hips made me think about anything but numbers, and that made me uncomfortable. I turned and moved back towards the door before I could really make us both uncomfortable.

Anxiety decreased as I forgot about her for a second and wedged something in the door to open it, then pushed the other the opposite way. The light blinded me for a second and I checked the angles, guessing as well as I could with no instruments. I was two minutes early, so I sat beside Bella and stared at the opposite wall.

"I'm sorry if I offended you," I muttered after forty-nine seconds of quiet. "Sometimes I do without realizing it."

"I noticed," she smiled. Three. A faint rainbow appeared near the floor, about two feet long and a few inches thick. "I like it though, your lack of a filter. It's refreshing."

"It's a lack of care for social customs due to self-imposed hermitism and developed social anxiety due to egotism," I corrected. I felt her eyes on me and I wanted to move the patron on my chest, twelve times, but I couldn't. "And because I have these wheels, no one stops me. But I actually have one hell of a filter, just about the wrong things."

"If only you used your powers for good," she mused. I liked the way it felt, to have her eyes on me, like the weight of the Mariana's trench at a depth where my watch would be worthless. The sun kept setting and three more rainbows appeared.

"You made rainbows," Bella whispered with some awe tinting her words. I liked the way that sounded too. And I still liked her legs. I liked the individual parts of Bella because I could define them. Cumulatively she was like trying to find a word you can't spell in the dictionary.

"I made refractions and broke apart the sun's ray into the color spectrum," I stated. "Did you really go to high school with Rosalie?" Curiosity loomed. Silence only made me think harder, so I opted for mindless chatter, which seemed less than mindless to me when it was concerning Bella.

"St. Agnes Catholic High School for Girls," Bella said, leaning forward so her elbows rested on her knee and her head fit in her hand. The curve of her spine was graceful. I wondered what it would feel like, to run my fingers along each protrusion. "You know the stereotype about Catholic school girls?" I nodded. She must have felt it because she didn't turn around. "Rosalie invented that."

"And you were there to help?"

"I didn't help with it at all," she sat back as the rainbows inched upwards. I believed her because it seemed ridiculous to lie about something like that.

"Why?"

"Like I said, I believe in some things, sometimes," smile number four emerged. I liked the curve of her lips. If it'd been skewed, it would be a variation of the slope of her back. A second later I felt a familiar hand at the back of my neck, and the movement of cold metal running up my sternum until the weight of the patron rested outside of my shirt.

"How'd that get there?" I wondered with confusion, hoping she bought it.

"Voodoo," Bella offered with a smirk. I didn't count that in my smile tally, because it was sexy. "I like science. I like movies. I like music. I like books with pretentious titles. I like grass and the feel of it between toes and against necks and cheeks. I like moments when light is broken apart and made visible. But I don't have any answers for you, and you won't be able to figure me out."

"Everything is solvable," I promised. "Why did you tell me all of that?"

"I figured your mind wouldn't let you, but if your lips decided to ask me out, I'd do you a favor and give you a way to think of something for us to do without blowing a gasket or discovering a flaw in the Pythagorean theorem." Her hand was still holding the pennant, and I gulped. There were more freckles on one side of her nose than the other. But they were light, so no one could notice.

"I don't date people who've been saved," I stated, expelling it from my mind. "It hadn't crossed my mind to ask." That was the truth. Sometimes you can get so used to being alone, it doesn't even cross your mind to hope to have a change at maybe, slightly asking someone on a date.

"Me neither," she returned and let the metal drop against my chest. "We'll be strangers again after the wedding."

Most of the rainbows disappeared as the sun crept behind the building across the street.

"What is this, anyway?" I asked, letting the subject drop. Someone came inside and altered the entire thing until the wall was just a wall again.

"Saint Thomas," Bella explained, standing and returning her chair. "You promised, now lets go before Rosalie kills me."

"Blame it on me," I fingered the necklace before putting it back under my shirt and against flesh. "She hates me already."

"It was your fault," she walked beside me down the street. Sexy smirk number two. Same muscles, different results. Away from the vectors, I counted her footsteps. Thirty-five.

"Right," I nodded, four times. "Who is Saint Thomas?"

"What would be the fun in telling you?" she smiled. Four and a half. It was harder to determine which smiles weren't sexy anymore…two and a half sexy smirks.

"I could Google it," I promised.

"But that wouldn't tell you what you want to know," she explained as we listened to seven beeps of the crosswalk sign.

"It would tell me exactly what I need to know."

"It would tell you who he is, but not how he got to be hanging on your neck."

We were both quiet the rest of the blocks towards the restaurant. We were an hour late, but we slowed our pace as we approached.

"You make number's fly through my brain. Normally they're just there, lackadaisical, but you make me count more and faster," I finally blurted. It was inevitable. "When you left last night, I was fine. When you were there I created twenty-five equations. And when you did…whatever you did, it all stopped. No thoughts."

"Really?" Bella questioned with a little cock of her head. I wondered how it would feel to hold her head as she had mine, if the calluses of my palms from always pushing wheels would make me numb to the softness. I held the door for her. "Is that good or bad?"

"I'm not sure yet." The restaurant was crowded, but we found everyone easily, and I started replaying each thing Bella said, and each time she looked at me, dissecting it for hidden agendas and underlying meanings. I was McCarthyism; she was Arthur Miller.

"We were ready to send out a search party," Rosalie hugged Bella but refused to look at me. "If you'd been gone any longer we would have suspected something, if you were two different people." I watched Bella sit near her best friend, beside Alice. I sat in a place that made it hard to look at her.

"Why wouldn't you think that we just had loud, passionate sex in the tailor shop?" Bella took a sip of water as if she hadn't just said what she did.

"Because this is Edward," Emmett slapped my shoulder, which bowed under the pressure. "I'm surprised you lasted as long as you did without killing him, or vice versa."

I looked at the menu and counted the vowels. Seventy-eight.

"Right," Alice agreed. She nodded twice. "He's probably thinking of ways to plot the trajectory of bumblebees right now. We won't hear from him all dinner."

"And you're you, Bella," Rosalie laughed and hugged her again, wrapping her arm over Bella's shoulder.

I couldn't look at Bella.

"What took so long anyway?" Tanya asked. I didn't look at her. Her overtly polite tone only made everything worse.

"I watched Edward singlehandedly dissect the invisible and make a rainbow," Bella explained. "Very cool. I've never seen someone do that, and sort of understand it. I wish I could say it wasn't worth making ya'll wait, but it totally was." I pictured the sound waves of her laugh and how they wove into my ears.

"That sounds like good ole Edward," James patted my shoulder, mimicking Emmett. I figured I couldn't be degraded further, but occasionally I am wrong. Well, no, that's not true. I'm only wrong about people. I was right about the refraction. "How'd you do it?"

"I tilted the door of the Tower, and when it was at such a displacement between the lines within the glass, I did my best to guess how the door beside it would have to be pushed forward, to alter and offset those lines, but just enough so the prism was created," I explained halfheartedly.

"Ok, I'm already bored," Alice caught me before I could continue. I nodded, four times, and went back to the menu. Being shot down by Rosalie and Emmett left me used to not talking to anyone about anything. It wasn't harsh, they just didn't want to hear about it. They started talking about things they wanted me to also join in and talk about, but I didn't have the heart.

I offered sentences throughout dinner, but nothing else. Enough to keep them from talking directly to me, but not enough to attract attention. I was a floor lamp.

I spent the rest of dinner pushing food around and counting the words said each minute by each person and creating averages. The final line of the problem scrawled in my bedroom worked it's way through dinner, but left me empty still.

When Bella spoke I listened though. She didn't say much, but she laughed when she should and she asked questions when she could. I learned she was Rosalie's sidekick, and it seemed like that was it. Of course I wasn't one to know what best friends did. She was still in school. James tried to talk to her, but she evaded.

It finally ended. I cursed Emmett, and swore to ignore him again as soon as possible. I figured that with a wife soon enough, I wouldn't have to worry about him trying to make me get out, forcing me to talk about nothing. He tried to know what was best for me. I was happier making refraction.

I kissed Rosalie goodnight and she smiled at me.

"Thank you, for being a part of this. I know it's not easy for you," she whispered. I ventured a projection of hearing that condescension about twelve more times on the wedding weekend.

I wanted to tell her that I had no choice, but it seemed inappropriate. I wasn't sure, so I kept it to myself.

Alice, Rosalie, Emmett, Jasper and James started towards the bars. Bella excused herself claiming work in the morning. They didn't invite me because they knew I wouldn't go. Ironically I appreciated that.

"What did you solve during dinner?" Bella asked as she tucked her hands in her pocket and shifted from foot to foot.

"It would take eleven million, nine hundred and twenty-five thousand, seven hundred and ninety-two ice cubes that were in our glasses tonight to cover the floor of the Buckingham Palace," I muttered. "But I'm not sure if that includes steps or not." Smile number five, because it was three fourths sexy.

"I really did like the rainbows," she hailed a taxi. "When I was little, my grandmother had a crystal lamp, with little crystals that hang down the shade. It made a little disco on the carpet in the afternoon."

"I'm sorry I made you late," I shrugged. It seemed like the right thing to say.

"Why?" she opened the door as a cab pulled up. "It was really cool to see. It was a lot better than eating dinner and talking about taffeta and losing weight for pictures."

"I think you are in your ideal weight class for your height," I complimented. "Over or under would be unhealthy and isn't recommended by the Surgeon General and most all nutritionists."

"I'll try to remember that," she took a breath. "What did you just solve?"

I wanted to tell her I thought I perfected my map of her lips, where the limits and everything worked perfectly, but it also seemed inappropriate.

"Remember the filter?" I gave her a smirk. I didn't think I knew how to do that. I didn't know I could do a lot of things.

"The one you're severely lacking most of the time?"

"Yeah, well I found it."

"Pity," she crinkled her eyebrows. "I'll see you at the church. Have a good week, Edward."

I turned and left as the cab pulled away. In eight days, Bella would be a stranger again. I wasn't sure if it was a good or bad thing.