Chapter 2
"His appendix burst?!" Bella parrots dumbly, Jessica simply nodding along with a deep pout and genuine worry in her eyes. True, she barely knows Edward and true, Bella kinda gets the feeling she's more in love with the idea of him, but the point is, Jessica is worried. And Bella kinda feels like a hag for thinking so bad of Edward Cullen while his internal organs ruptured. Whoops, guilt trip galore.
And that is when Bella is hit with a bout of inspiration.
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"Got yourself a suitor, Alice?"
"Nope!" Bouncing into the living room, Alice presents the bouquet to Edward with a flourish, producing the accompanying card she'd tucked into her jacket at the first opportune moment after she'd been entrusted with its safe delivery. Her dear brother stares at the stems, utterly bamboozled as he works through the hazed remains of Isabella's lingering scent. The rest of the family slowly (for vampires anyway) migrate over, even Rose looks curious. Alice is all but vibrating with excitement over what's happened; she's adorable and Alice is certain they're going to be the best of friends. So thoughtful, so kind, so, unexpected! This is going to be great!
"A get-well card?"
"Yep! Since we're rolling with the whole appendix thing- but I didn't even see this coming! Bella must've just decided it on the fly!"
Alice claps her palms together, mind already whirling with the vast amount of information that has been steadily brewing there for years. She'd had no idea that Bella would be Edward's singer; it makes things riskier than she'd like. The rest of them may not know it yet, but Bella is going to be a close part of their family. She'll better them, complete their unit. Edward might be able to read this from her mind, but he doesn't know it, doesn't yet feel it in his bones, doesn't sense it with every step and every breath. Not like Alice does.
No, the future is looking bright and it is at last so close Alice can almost taste it, can feel the flavour sitting on the back of her throat as her mouth pools with venom. It's here at last.
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Fingers aching and breath a visible ghost before her lips, Bella sits back on her haunches, grinning wildly at her Dad. She'd rolled out of bed (not so) bright and (certainly) early, only to find Charlie in the process of attaching snow chains to the trust rusk bucket that she calls a truck. He'd seemed surprised at her eagerness to help and, while her fingers certainly aren't thanking her for it, the experience has been another good slot of Daddy/daughter bonding time.
"Well, I think that should do it, Bells."
"I'd say so. Thanks for starting it, but next time give e a shout? Because this is certainly something I need to know how to do if I'm gonna be spending a few years here." Offering Charlie one more smile, Bella clambers to her feet, brushing down the rumpled material of her jumper. It's a different motif today, an old Halloween favourite with a cheesy logo. It's not the season yet but Bella's not really bothered; the burnt orange colouring suits her skin tome and the wool is soft as hell. "Well, I'll head off. I've got you a packed lunch set up in the fridge; I did it while I was making my own. See you tonight, Chief!"
Snapping off a quick salute to the background noise of her father's chuckles, Bella jolts open the door of the trunk, scooping up her bag from where she'd deposited it on the drive earlier, and clambers into the cab. It's far from graceful; at one point she one of the bag's straps caught on the stick-shift and Ol' Red complains loudly when she attempts to wrestle it free and almost throws the truck into a sixth gear that doesn't exist. But she manages well enough, settling into the driver's seat with only minimal fuss. A quick glance out the windscreen and Bella scoffs, fondly rolling her eyes at the sight of her father in hysterics. Okay, it probably was funny to anyone watching, she'll admit to that. Allowing the engine to roar to life beneath her fingers (admittedly, Ol' Red is more a retired lion lounging upon pride rock than a king of the jungle in his prime), Bella throws the truck into reverse and swings out into the road. Not too many years left of school now… perhaps she should truly start considering just what she will be doing after that. She's got a lot open to her this time around, what with being in the land of the free. More opportunities than a small costal town in England that is.
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Sliding into what is swiftly becoming her seat at the cafeteria table, Bella drops her bookbag to the ground with a solid sounding thump, nudging it beneath the table with the heel of her foot. She's a little doubtful that any of the teenagers here would take a fall as gracefully and full of good humour as she might, so better to be safe than sorry. Pulling out a carton of homemade pasta, Bella cracks the lid from the top, fork twisting in her hands before she spears one of the penne.
"Oh my god, Bella, oh my god!" Jolting at Jessica's less than subtle words, Bella stares crestfallenly down at the pasta that has dropped from her fork thanks to the vigorous shaking Jessica is giving her arm.
"Jess, 'm trying to eat."
"Edward's back!" Jessica hisses and Bella finally drags her eyes up from her untouched lunch, meeting the burning golden gaze from across the room. Holy hell, those are some startling eyes. Bella blinks, breaking the improv staring contest as she turns her attention back to her pasta, this time skewering two pieces with a frown. "Bella!"
"What, Jessica, would you like me to say?" Grinning as she finally (finally!) gets to eat a bite of her lunch since cracking the lid off two minutes ago, Bella turns her attention to the other girl, cocking a deliberating eyebrow her way.
"Come on, Bella, you could at least admit you're a little interested."
"Look, just because I find them all hella attractive, doesn't mean I'm going to wax poetically about shoving my tongue down their throat. Or if you would like me to dig further into the typical teenage fantasies for something to wrap my tongue around-"
"Bella!" Jessica screeches scandalised, drawing the attention of half the cafeteria to their table. The other half are preoccupied with the Cullen table, where the big burly one has broken out into thunderous bellowing laughter. It's a warm sound, bright and happy; she can see why he's the one spoken for out of the three guys.
"You think it, not say it aloud!"
"Nah, I've got better things to occupy my brain with. Besides, I want more than a teenage mentality of 'too cool for school, I can't risk acknowledging those of lower social standing'." Jabbing her empty fork in Jessica's direction, as if to punctuate the finality of her sentence, Bella returns to her food with a smile smearing across her face.
"Anyway, enough about them. Tell me about your dress, the date worthy one you were bragging about."
With one last glance towards the Cullen table (where Big and Beefy has yet to stop chuckling), Jessica begins to elaborate on the dress she had discovered on a previous shopping expedition to Port Angeles. Bella listens attentively, pulling through as much food as she can while Jessica fills the air with white noise. Well, not white noise, that's not a fair description. Bella's listening, she's soaking everything in the other girl says… but part of her is still very much aware of a pair of eyes still drilling into the side of her head. Flicking her gaze back to the Cullen table, Bella meets the scorching stare Edward Cullen is directing her way, a slight pucker at the skin above his eyebrows. How does appendicitis work? Has he had his appendix removed, or have they just fixed it up? Is he really well enough to have come back to school? With any luck, he's hopefully as skilled at lip-reading as he is at giving teenaged, intimidating glares.
'You okay?'
He stares a bit longer, frowns a little deeper, before the edges of his lips twitch up in an ever so slight smile and he ducks his head. It's the tiniest, barest nod of agreement but it settles the worry in Bella's stomach. He's okay and with any luck he won't be kneeling over in biology now. Hopefully he's as nice to get along with as he is to look at. In the meantime-
"Jess, come over to my house tonight and bring your best three dresses. After that, we're going out for a meal- there is somewhere to have a meal here, right?" The other girl flounders for a moment, popping a cherry tomato between her lips.
"Yeah, but why are we going for a meal?"
"Why not? That's what friends do, right?" The answering smile she gets in return is promising. Maybe she's not so incapable of making friends after all. And well, Bella thinks as her eyes slide back over to the Cullen table once more, it's go big or go home, right?
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Dropping into her chair (and it is her chair now, she's been occupying it for several weeks now) with all the grace and enthusiasm of a dog in snow, Bella slides her bag beneath the table as her notebook hits the top. Edward is already sitting beside her, and he is once again as stiff as… well, there's a fair few things she could describe him as, each one getting less polite as she considers them. Banishing the ideas from mind (and absentmindedly noticing that the cute pixie Cullen has managed to secure a table swap to sit herself across the aisle from Edward), Bella picks up a pen and twirls it around her fingers.
"So… you all healed up now?" Edward hums, the sound low and rough. Bella bites back the instinctive thoughts on rudeness, drumming a reminder of what happened the last time she made assumptions into her brain. That she's swearing some new perfume just in case is a moot point. She should go for a run after this; she'd avoided it this morning given the night's chilled remains stretching across the sidewalk with its iced fingers. By now it should have all melted… maybe. Hopefully? It'll be nice to get some crisp winter air into her lungs.
A slip of paper nudged against her forearm and Bella startles. In the neatest handwriting she's ever seen from a boy, there's 'I am sorry, it hurts to talk for too long -Edward'. That he's taken the time to scribble that down (though let's not mention his handwriting is calligraphy worthy) is kinda sweet. Especially given the male ego of most boys here. Though she'd had no idea appendicitis could affect the voice. Then again, poor boy might have gotten an infection from whatever hospital procedure he'd gone through. Bella is, after all, not the be all and end all of all knowledge.
"It's fine, I can talk enough for the both of us I guess. Though if you get tired of it, well you'll just have to deal." Bella let's the words sit in the air for a moment before she snorts, offering the curious, right state Edward gives her a winning smile. "I'm joking. If I'm bothering you, just elbow me and I'll shut up." Pen flicking across the paper between them, Bella only releases it once she's done with her little caricature; a mini-Edward brandishing razor sharp elbows now present. The barely masked befuddlement on her table-mate's face is hilarious. Equally amusing is the way his adopted sister is, in a far from subtle way, attempting to see what she's doodled.
'You're not what I was expecting.'
"Expecting some kind of Jessica 2.0, I wanna climb the Cullen boys like a tree, big city girl?" Edward shakes his head, looking away and one hand fluffs through his hair, whisking bronze locks to and fro. He still look exceptionally model-like, it's sort of ridiculous but makes him very nice to look at indeed. "I mean, don't get me wrong. I like Jessica, but I am aware she's… a stereotypical teenager." Jessica can be nice; the pressure of being semi-popular and coupled with a determination to remain at that status level is shackling her, preventing really growth. Bella knows, she's been there before. It's why she's more than happy to keep trying to be friends with her; hopefully there's someone fun and cheery under all that teenage melodrama.
Scribbling down the notes on the board, Bella chances another quick glance towards Edward, taking note of the stiff shoulders and just how little his rib cage seems to be moving.
"Does it hurt to breathe too? You're really quite still."
"No," Edward whispers and it is a soft, slow thing, tinged with a strained humour that doesn't really backup his words. Bella can feel her own smile wilt ever so slightly by the tension, but she brushes it off. If he doesn't want to talk that's fine. Writing's okay too, everyone has their little oddities and who is Bella to judge a person by their little ticks?
"Did you end up with a whacking great big scar then?" Bella asks as Edward reaches for the equipment. There's a hazy memory of appendicitis and scars baffling in the back of her mind; it's not something she's had to think about in a long time but the old knowledge slowly comes tumbling back. Edward Cullen, he of the golden eyes that seem darker than before, twists to give her a curious look and Bella traces a line down the side of her abdomen. She has no idea if that is where a lab appendicitis scar would rest, she's taking a guess. From the amused smile Edward tries to hide in his lips as he ducks to write on their conversation paper, she's not quite hit the mark.
'Carlisle saved my life, but he did make the scar he gave me as neat as possible.'
"Coolio. Hopefully he's not ruined your chances as a male model; Jess'll be heartbroken if that's the case."
'It's a huge scar, ugly and twisted.' Bella snorts a laugh, having not truly expected a response like that. She can't tell if it's a deadpan joke or a genuine attempt by Edward to shake Jessica off his tail, but she finds it funny all the same.
"Has your blond brother had appendicitis recently too? He was wearing your expression at lunch time."
And, she thinks as Edward's writes a decisive 'no' on the sheet of paper, that maybe making friends with one of the elusive Cullens isn't as hard as everyone thought. People just need to be a little more positive about things.
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He's on Edward watch tonight, seeing as Alice and Esme took last night's shift. Him and Rose, his darling wife, the butter to his bread, the venom to his fangs, the-
"Emmett!" Edward's irritated hiss draws him back to the present and Emmett laughs, dropping onto a particularly thick tree branch. It groans under his weight but holds steady.
"Don't be such a bore, Eddy." If he doesn't like what's going on in his head, then he shouldn't go digging through it. After all, he's got some brilliant memories he's more than happy to think about with Rose. Just like that time she- "Ow! Babe!" The crack of Rose's hand slamming against his chest tumbled through the air, thunder on a cloudless night. He spots Bella (it's Bella, to Isabelle which is great because it's so much less of a mouthful) on the front porch spending a curious glance to the sky. Luckily, she shrugs it off as irrelevant and gets back to stretching. The girl's in good shape, not Rose worthy shape, but then what other woman is shaped like a goddess and just as-
"Emmett," Edward moans, pressing forefinger and thumb to his forehead, "please." Right, keeps he thoughts PG. He can do that. For a little bit.
"I don't even understand why we are here," Rose grumbles, arm's folded across her chest, the soft pink of her hoodie a delightful background to the waterfall of blond locks that tumble down before her shoulders. God, she's gorgeous, he's so lucky.
"I need to become accustomed to Bella's scent if we want to remain here." Emmett snickers, shoulders rolling back in the same stretching motion Bella is currently completing. Oh, he wonders what it feels like, this fabled muscle burn that apparently humans suffer when they exercise too much too soon.
"I still can't believe your appendix excuse got swallowed up, hook, line and sinker." Emmett has gotten that bouquet of flowers pressed between two glass panes and the get well card treated for long term display. He's not letting this go for at least fifty years; this shit's gold. All this just because some chick rocked up outta nowhere smelling oh so fine.
"Bells! You got your taser?"
"Yep!" The girl hooks a thumb into her pocket, pulling free a small plastic box that she spins between her fingers. Even with the distance between them, Emmett can still hear the tell-tale crackle of electricity that sparks between the two prongs. "I'm good!" she hollers, stuffing the device back into her pocket before proceeding to fire quick finger guns at her father, laughing as she finally stops risking tripping over her own two feet by twisting around to begin jogging forwards instead of back. It's a pretty familiar routine by now; whenever one of them have popped by to see how she of the delicious blood has been doing, she'd either been off running or up to something as ridiculous as the backyard swing.
Emmett loves it; it's been a while since he's seen an interesting human.
"I don't see why we just can't make her leave," Rose mutters, folding her arms and watching the little human take off settle into a steady pace of a jog down the street. Humming to himself, Emmett leaps down onto the road, the sturdy tree branch he'd been standing upon shaking in the aftermath of his departure. He'd made sure to land away from any curious human eyes; the only other person really around is Chief Swan and he's focused on the game. The game Emmett would like to be watching but instead he's tailing Edward as he tails the interesting human. Well, there are plenary of matches that he'll be able to watch in the future and it's not as if he has anyone at school to discuss the match with. None of the other Cullen's are really interested in football; baseball is the family sport, after all.
"Because we don't have the right to remain here over Isabella," Edward murmurs, the usual self-hatred taking over his features and Emmett pushes down the urge to roll his eyes. He's never tested it, but given vampire physiology, he wouldn't put it past his body to be capable of rolling his eyes hard enough that the pop right out of their sockets. It'd be just his luck and dear Rose would sooner laugh at his idiocy than help him for the first five minutes. Not that he can blame her, if anyone else did that, he'd find it pretty fucking hilarious too.
"And, like, Alice is super excited about it all. She must have seen something good, right?" Emmett muses, rubbing one forefinger and thumb against his chin as he thinks. "She'd have warned us if it were all gonna go to pieces. She trusts you, Eddy." Emmett doesn't exactly throw his own weight behind the belief Edward can resist. Sure, that self-hatred and certainty he's a monster that must suppress his own instincts has carried he pretty far already... but Emmett recalls his own singers vividly. How divine their blood had smelt, how the scent had been a siren's call, enticing him in, a hypnotic trance he'd not awoken from until he was already fang deep in a near drained body. Yeah, Emmett knows how hard that is to resist.
"I can do this," Edward agrees, taking in a deep breath. The hunger and pain of denial is crystal clear on his face.
Well, he's a stronger man than Emmett, that's for sure.
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*Sweats nervously*
Still on Hiatus? (I'm so weak to reviews though and you gave me 100+ of them for the first chapter of this...)
Tsume
xxx