Chapter 2
Mystic Falls, 2014
Bella Swan woke up in a bad mood.
Once upon a time she thought the ancient truck she used to drive when she lived with her father was the loudest car in the world. She was proven wrong by her neighbor's car. That... thing made Big Red sound like a purring kitten!
Said neighbor had just roared home at three a.m. 'Roared' being the operative word and, unfortunately, her bedroom was on the same side of the house as his driveway. Had she been informed about him she never would have closed in on the sale. In the 2 months she had lived here, he had managed to destroy all the joy she'd felt on buying her first house.
Why? He was a drunk. The kind who made her afraid to let the cat go outside when he was home. Her neighbor already had it in for poor BooBoo anyway, because he'd found paw prints on the windshield and hood of his car. She had tried to be nice that day, she did feel bad about Booboo, but he hadn't paid any attention to the peace-offering smile.
Now, here he was, waking up the entire neighborhood at three a.m. with that roaring car. The injustice of it, after he had snapped at her for waking him up in the middle of the afternoon during her housewarming party, before BooBoo had even come to live with her, made her want to march over to his house and hold her finger against his doorbell until he was up and as wide awake as everyone else.
Normally she would, despite the late hour. There was just one little problem. She was the teeniest bit afraid of him.
She didn't like it; Bella wasn't accustomed to backing down from anyone, not in this town, not anymore, but this guy made her uneasy. She didn't even know his name! All she knew was that he was a rough-looking guy and he didn't seem to hold down a regular job. At best, he was a drunk, and drunks could be mean and destructive. At worst, he was involved in illegal stuff, which added dangerous to the list. Figures she'd end up living next to the dangerous guy!
He was a tall guy, with a tousled mess of black hair. The fact that he looked as if he could go a few rounds with the wrestling team of her old high school (or at least with Emmett and Paul) and come on top (or at least alive and breathing) certainly added to her uneasiness. The guy wasn't even broad or looking like Mr. Muscle. He was lean, yet his posture screamed 'danger'.
Every time she had seen him, he looked as if he hadn't shaved in two or three days. Add that to the bloodshot eyes and bad temper and she came up with drunk. The small town had seemed so safe...
She had fallen in love with the neighborhood, with its older 1940s style houses. She had seen a good mix of people, from younger families with children to retired people whose families visited every Sunday. Some of the older folks actually sat on their porches during the cool of the evening, waving to passersby's, and children played in their yards. The absolute best was that no one asked her who her family was. That was a small perk but it was part of the selling point for her. She should have checked out all her neighbors because this guy living next door did not make her feel safe. Far from it.
Angry she turned on her other side hoping she'd be able to go back to sleep. Her hip thrust the white and silver streaked furry pillow that jumped up with a startled yowl, and Bella almost had a heart attack.
"Jesus! BooBoo, you scared the hell out of me."
She wasn't used to having a pet in the house, and she was always forgetting to watch where she moved. BooBoo, the gorgeous silver and white cat was a belated housewarming gift from her mother and the two weren't used to each other at all. He had been given to Renee as a housewarming present. Her mom loved the cat, until she got bored with the animal and re-gifted him to Bella, under the excuse of her going away, and the poor kitty had been in a feline pout ever since, and he took out his frustration on the furniture.
In just one week, he had frayed a sofa cushion to the point that she would have to have it reupholstered. She hated the tribal pillow design though, so maybe BooBoo had made her a favor, the jury was still out on that.
She woke to the annoying beep of the alarm clock. She rolled over to silence it yawning. The red numbers shining at her in the dim room made her blink, and look again.
"Ah, hell"
She groaned in disgust as she leaped out of bed. 6:58 am; the alarm had been going off for almost an hour, which meant she was late. Way late.
"Damn it, damn it, damn it,"
She muttered as she jumped into the shower and three minutes later jumped out again and dashed into the kitchen to open a can of food for BooBoo, who was already sitting beside his bowl glaring at her.
"Of all days, why couldn't you have jumped on the bed when you got hungry? No, today you decided to wait, and now I don't have time to eat."
BooBoo indicated that he didn't care whether she ate or not, so long as he had food. Shaking her head she returned to the bathroom, did a hurried makeup job, slipped earrings into her earlobes and her watch onto her wrist, and grabbed the outfit she always grabbed when she was in a hurry because she didn't have to fuss with it: dark blue jeans, a white eyelet silk shirt, with a red lace cardigan. She jammed her feet into her shoes, grabbed her purse, and was out the door.
Then she remembered. It was trash-collection day.
"Oh come on!"
Bella muttered under her breath as she rushed back into the house drawing BooBoo's attention away from his milk long enough for him to throw her a murderous look and turn his back on her.
She dashed out of the house again armed with the trash bag, remembered she hadn't locked the door, dashed back, then dragged her big metal garbage can down to the curb and deposited the morning's offerings inside it, on top of the other two bags already in it. For once, she didn't try to be quiet; she hoped she woke up the inconsiderate jerk in the house next door.
She stumbled back to her car, a midnight blue modern Beetle and just for good measure, when she started the engine; she revved it up a few times before putting it in reverse. The car shot backward and with an almighty clang collided with her garbage can. There was another clang as the can rolled into her next-door neighbor's can and knocked it over, sending the lid rolling down the street.
Bella closed her eyes and tapped her head on the steering wheel - gently; she didn't want a concussion. Though maybe she should give herself a concussion; at least then she wouldn't have to worry about getting to work on time, which was now a physical impossibility.
She put the car in park and got out. What was needed now was control, not a temper tantrum.
She righted her own dented can and placed the spilled bags back inside it, then jammed the warped lid back on top. Next she returned her neighbor's can to its full and upright position, gathered the trash - he wasn't nearly as neat with his trash collection as she was, but what did you expect from a drunk - then walked down the street to collect the lid.
It lay tilted against the curb in front of the next house down. As she bent to pick it up, she heard a screen door slam behind her.
Well, she had gotten her wish: the inconsiderate jerk was awake.
"What the hell are you doing?"
He barked. He looked scary, in his sweatpants and torn, dirty T-shirt, a black scowl on his unshaven face.
She turned and marched back to the worse-for-wear pair of cans and slammed the lid down on top of his can.
"Picking up your garbage,"
She snapped. His eyes were shooting fire. Actually they were just bloodshot, as usual, but the effect was the same.
"Just what is it you have against letting me get some sleep? You're the noisiest damn woman I've ever seen -"
The injustice of that made her forget she was a little afraid of him. Bella stalked up to him, glad she was wearing shoes with two-inch heels that lifted her up so she was level with his chin. Almost.
So what if he was big? She was mad, and mad beat big any day of the week.
"I'm noisy?"
She said through gritted teeth. It was tough to get much volume when her jaw was locked, but she tried.
"I'm noisy?"
She jabbed her finger at him. She didn't want to actually touch him, because his T-shirt was torn and stained with... something.
"I'm not the one who woke the whole neighborhood at three o'clock this morning with that piece of junk you call a car. Buy a muffler, for God's sake! I'm not the one who slammed his car door once, the screen door three times - what, did you forget your bottle and have to go back for it? - and left his porch light on so it shone into my bedroom and kept me from sleeping."
He opened his mouth to blast her in return, but Bella wasn't finished.
"Furthermore, it's a hell of a lot more reasonable to expect people to be sleeping at three o'clock in the morning than it is at two in the afternoon, or"
She checked her watch
"seven-twenty-three in the morning."
God, she was so late.
"So back off, buddy! Go crawl back into your bottle. If you drink enough, you'll sleep through anything."
He opened his mouth again. Bella forgot herself and actually poked him. Oh, yuck. Now she'd have to boil her finger.
"I'll buy you a new can tomorrow, so just shut up. And if you do anything to hurt my mom's cat, I'll take you apart cell by cell. I'll mutilate your DNA so it can never reproduce, which would probably be a good thing for the world."
She swept him with a blistering look that took in his ragged, dirty clothes and unshaven jaw.
"Do you understand me?"
He nodded. She took a deep breath, reaching for the rein on her temper.
"Okay. All right, then. Damn it, you made me cuss; and I'm trying not to do that."
He gave her a strange look.
"Yeah, you really need to watch that damn cussing."
She felt a growl bubbling inside her and pushed her hair out of her face trying to muffle it.
"I'm late; I haven't had any sleep, any breakfast, or any coffee. I'd better leave before I hurt you."
He nodded.
"That's a good idea. I'd hate to have to arrest you."
She stared at him, taken aback.
"What?"
"I'm a cop,"
He said, then turned and walked back into his house. Bella stared after him, shocked. A cop?
"Well, fuck"
