Author's Note- Thank you for all your great reviews. I really like reading them, and they make my day. I'm glad you like Edward and Bella in this story, because I'm having a great time writing them. But this is a much more serious chapter, so not a lot of fun. It's crucial to the plot though. I'm adding a quote from Edward in Eclipse, because it's one of his lines that stuck with me and is partly the inspiration for this story. So, enjoy!
Disclaimer- I own nothing. It all belongs to Stephenie Meyer.
Soundtrack- "I Bruise Easily" by Natasha Bedingfield
"You see, Jacob, you might leave her someday. Like Sam and Emily, you wouldn't have a choice. I would always be waiting in the wings, hoping for that to happen." – Eclipse, pg. 502
Chapter 4
Scarred
Alice and Rosalie sat on Alice's bed. Alice looked guilty, and Rosalie was trying to look indifferent. But beneath her exterior she was angry and guilty too. I knew them both well enough to read their faces.
"What were you thinking?" I repeated.
My voice came out softer that time, softer than I'd wanted. I felt the tears welling up in my eyes and stomped my foot. I didn't want to cry, I wanted to yell. I was supposed to be angry so why was I crying?
"Bella…" Alice started.
"No!" I shouted, and then turned on them, "You're supposed to be my best friends! And you were trying to set me up with Edward Masen!"
Alice opened her mouth to say something, but I shook my head.
"I told you," I whispered, "I told you I wasn't ready. I'm still not ready. And you just ignored me."
"Bella, it's been months," Rosalie said slowly, standing up, her voice level.
"I was with Jacob for years," I replied.
"And then he decided he was in love with someone else," Rosalie muttered.
My head snapped up, and I glared at her. She shrugged, and whispered, "Sorry, but it's true."
I knew it was true. God, I knew it was true on so many different levels. As much as I was mad at Rosalie for saying that, I couldn't deny it was the truth. After months, it still hurt.
Jacob and I had known each other since childhood. When I'd moved to Forks after my mom's remarriage, he'd been one of the things that made the transition easier. My father had loved him like a son, and I knew that part of him still did. It had been so easy to date him, and fall in love with him. I'd chosen to go to St. Thomas because it was just a few hours from Forks, so it would be easy for Jake to visit me. Then I'd encouraged him to go to college, too. I hadn't insisted he come to St. Thomas; I hadn't thought it would matter. I hadn't even been upset when he chose a college clear on the other side of the state. But then I'd gone home last summer only to find Jacob waiting for me.
"I can't do this anymore, Bella. It's not fair to you, and it's not fair to Jenny," he'd told me.
Jenny. He was concerned about Jenny while he was breaking up with me.
"You need to move on, Bella," Alice whispered, bringing me back to the present.
I stared at my best friend's face. I slowly lifted my hand up and wiped the tears from my face.
"I told you I wasn't ready, Alice. Please, trust me when I tell you that. I can't just recover from something like this. It's… it's like my heart's been scarred, and I'm not sure if I can ever give it away again. I'm afraid that the scars will show, that it'll get hurt again…"
"Bella, we know. That's why we did this," Rosalie said.
Alice was kneeling in front of me, looking even tinier and actually subdued. "We don't want you to be like this forever. We don't want you to be lonely for the rest of your life. So we're trying to help you move on."
"A sort of rebound relationship," Rosalie said.
I almost laughed through my tears. Instead, it came out as a tight snort.
"I thought it was the best friends' duty to tell me not to get involved in a rebound," I said.
Rosalie shrugged and said, "Not a rebound relationship, necessarily. Those are messy. You need one of those stepping stone relationships. My mother used to say that there's one relationship that will last forever, and then there's the relationships that get you there."
"Like Jake," I whispered.
"Jake was a lesson," Alice said, "Think of it like that. And now we're trying to get you to put that lesson to use."
Alice's comment stung a little bit. Those years with Jacob were just a lesson that I was supposed to move on from as though nothing happened?
"You need to move on," Alice told me.
I nodded slowly. As angry as I was at them, I could see that this was purely out of concern for me.
"Next time," I said, "When I tell you something about how I feel, listen. I'm pretty sure I'm the expert on that."
Alice shrugged, and said, "We're your best friends. We're supposed to know you better than you know yourself."
I laughed, and this time it came out as a laugh rather than a snort.
"Well, I think you're efforts in that direction are a complete waste. Why did you have to pick the one guy on this campus who hates me?" I asked.
"Edward doesn't hate you," Alice said, flippantly.
She stood up, waving her hand as if to wave away my comment.
"I think he does," I said, "Or were you too wrapped up in Jasper to notice we argued the whole way back to campus?"
Rosalie, who had moved to perch herself on my desk, called, "She's right, Alice. They argued the whole time."
"See, he hates me," I said.
"I wouldn't say that," Rosalie said, "You both just have too much tension, that's all."
I stared at her with wide eyes.
"I told him that I thought he was gay, Rosalie. That's not tension," I replied.
Rosalie shrugged it off. She was always so sure she was right.
"Sexual tension," Rosalie said.
"Edward Masen and I do not have sexual tension!" I hissed.
Alice started laughing somewhere next to me. They sounded like chimes, and grated against my mind.
"Bella, when you were in the theater next to him, every time he moved you readjusted how you were sitting. I was sitting right next to you," Rosalie said.
"I did not," I insisted.
But my cheeks burned from embarrassment. My friends both laughed harder. They could tell I was lying. The truth was that I didn't know for sure. I had been so aware of him next to me that I could very well have moved every time he did. But not in a "sexual tension" way as Rosalie had insisted. If I had moved, it had been purely to get away from him.
I felt justified in my mind, and therefore able to battle against Rosalie. But she'd given up, and was now examining her nails. No doubt she'd drag us all to a nail salon soon, and she was planning her new manicure.
"We could have chosen a better guy though, one that Bella actually gets along with," Alice said, talking more to herself than Rosalie or me. Then she grinned madly and said, "Like that Mike Newton from Biology. He'd certainly be interested."
I groaned, and sat back down on my bed. I accidentally sat on my Jane Austen guide, which I'd left out from earlier. With a sigh, I pulled it out and threw it onto my bed stand. It missed by a good few inches and hit my alarm clock. They both fell off the bed table in an astounding crash.
"Way to go Bella," Rosalie said.
"Aim isn't her strong suit," Alice replied.
Before they could come up with anything else or anyone else to pepper me with, I dragged them into the spotlight.
"You both seemed very happy tonight with Emmett and Jasper," I said.
As expected, they both took off in a two-sided conversation about how great the two guys were. I was then able to bow out of the spotlight.
It was easy enough to check out during a conversation with Rosalie. She was more often than not too absorbed in herself to notice you weren't paying attention. But with Alice I had to be careful. So I half-listened and allowed myself to fall into my own thoughts.
Of course, Jacob was the first thing to pop up. I'd more or less avoided all mention of him or what had happened since coming back to school. Alice and Rosalie had been the first one's I'd told, through various phone calls, when it happened. But they'd both followed me, and hadn't mentioned him either. Until tonight, that is.
But I couldn't stop myself from thinking about him, especially around other guys. So I'd become a hermit in Forks, and now, at school, I was shutting almost everyone I could out. Jake had been such a big part of me. I had loved him. I had thought I had a future with him. When he left me, and not just left me but fell in love with someone else, he had left me scarred. I considered my heart to be scarred from Jacob. That's why the idea of putting it within anyone else's reach hurt me. I wasn't ready to risk it. I knew myself well enough that I knew I needed to heal, and that I would be able to pull myself together. But I hadn't lied when I'd told Rosalie and Alice that I wasn't ready.
That's why I'd reacted the way I had in the club that night. I'd been drunk, yes, and my judgment was out the window. But the old Bella would have just been shy. I'd been shy and defensive, so ready to hate anyone who gave me the slightest reason. Hate was such an easy emotion, and Edward was so deserving of it.
I was drawn quickly back to my friends when Alice called my name.
"Bella? What's wrong?" she asked.
I smiled lightly, and then said, "Nothing. I just zoned for a second, about my Jane Austen paper."
Alice pursed her lips, giving me a look that said that she knew very well that I was lying but she was dismissing it.
"What were you saying?" I asked.
"I wanted to know what you thought of Jasper," Alice said.
"Oh. I think he's great. I think they're both great. And it's pretty obvious that they're both very interested in you two," I told her.
Alice smiled, happy with my answer.
"I hope so. Jasper is the man of my dreams," she said.
I couldn't help it. I burst out laughing. Even Rosalie joined me.
"Since when? Alice, you've known him for what, a week?" I asked.
"I knew that first night. Remember, I told you in Biology the next day?" Alice asked.
Now I stared at her. "You were serious?" I asked.
She nodded smugly, then said, "Wait and see. I'll be right about Jasper and me. We were meant to be."
Sunday morning I was at the library, working. The new trainees couldn't handle Sundays yet, so I was working the circulation desk. Sundays were always busy, because most students put off all their work for the week until Sunday. Last year, one student had reduced a freshman worker to tears because she couldn't find the book she needed to read by the next day. So I had started taking the Sunday morning shifts. I didn't mind. I was always able to find the books I needed and could read them before the mad rush started. This Sunday was particularly nice because it was relatively quiet. It was only the first weekend of the semester, so there wasn't much schoolwork to worry about.
So I was surprised when the door to the circulation room opened and someone walked in. I was even more surprised by who it was.
"Emmett?" I asked.
"Hey, Bella!" he said, waving and coming over to the desk.
Standing alone, without Jasper or Edward with him, I realized how big he was. He was tall and wide, but in a good way. Of course Rosalie thought he was hot.
"What do you need?" I asked putting away the book I'd been working on.
"I'm looking for Rose," he explained, looking a little embarrassed.
I laughed and said, "I thought Alice and her were going to visit you guys today. That's what they told me this morning."
"Yeah, but not for a few hours," Emmett told me.
I smiled inwardly for Rosalie. He was obviously too excited to wait those few hours to see her.
"Well, she's not here," I told him, "It's not exactly her favorite place. We don't carry Glamour or Cosmo."
Emmett laughed, a loud booming laugh that caused the one other student in the circulation room to look up from his laptop with a scared look. I laughed too, but mostly because Emmett looked so relieved. He obviously wasn't the library type, either.
"I'm guessing you tried her room already, and ours. So I'd suggest you look at the gym. She said she might do a few laps in the pool this morning," I told him.
"Thanks, Bella," he said.
"No problem," I replied with a smile.
He started to walk away, so I turned my attention back to my book. But then he stopped, and came back, frowning now.
"Listen, Edward told us what happened last night," Emmett said, "I want to say sorry for him. He's not very good at apologizing all the time, and we don't like to make him do it. He beats himself up too much."
I stared.
Emmett continued, "Edward's a good guy. He just losses his temper sometimes, and he's very stubborn. But he's a good guy, really."
I just nodded. What was I supposed to say?
"And as for you thinking he's gay, I told him that I could see that," Emmett said, suddenly grinning.
I couldn't help laughing, even though I considered the whole gay thing one of the most embarrassing moments of my life thus far.
"He doesn't date much," Emmett told me. "He's studying music and it takes up a lot of his time. He claims he doesn't have time for dating. But he's not gay."
"Thanks for explaining things, Emmett," I said, still smiling.
But Emmett wasn't done. He hesitated for a second, and then said, "He's thinking about what you said to him last night. Or yelled, I guess. He over-thinks everything."
"Um… okay," I whispered.
That was a good thing, right? If he was thinking about my telling him off, that meant that maybe affected him enough for him to rethink his actions. Right?
"See you later, Bella," Emmett said.
I waved and managed a goodbye before Emmett walked out of the room. But I was still thinking about what Emmett had said, and feeling terribly embarrassed again.
Why did I have to open my big mouth? That's what always got me in trouble, first at the club and now with calling him rude and arrogant. It wasn't that it wasn't true- he had been to me. But that's not something you just go around and tell people.
I groaned, and took out my cell phone.
Emmett's looking for you. I sent him to the gym. B
I sent Rosalie a text, knowing that if I didn't warn her that Emmett was looking for her I'd be in trouble later.
Thanks. I'm at the pool. R
I sighed, and set my cell phone down on the desk. I stared at it for a second, and then picked it back up. Renee's number was on speed dial.
"Bella?" she asked, answering on the first ring.
"Hi, Mom. How are you?" I asked.
She sounded distracted, and answered with a quick, "Good, good. How are you? Why are you calling?"
Her frantic-mom voice cut in. I smiled lightly against the cell phone.
"I'm fine, don't worry," I told her quickly, "I just… I wanted to ask you something."
"What is it, honey?" Renee asked.
Before I could answer, there was a loud voice in the background of her phone, and she answered, muffling the phone with her hand.
"Sorry, honey. That was Phil," Renee told me, "We're going jet skiing in the Gulf. Isn't that fun?"
"Yeah, yeah, sounds great," I said.
I swallowed tightly, and said, "You know what? You go have fun. It's not that important. Tell Phil I said hi."
"Are you sure?" Renee asked.
"Yeah, I'm sure. Have fun," I repeated.
Then I hung up the phone. I set it back down on the desk and looked out towards the empty circulation room.
My question was dead in my throat, constricting it and resting there, unable to go out, but unable to go back in.
Was I ready to move on? Was I too scared to take any risk?
Author's Note- I hope you enjoyed it. As for what I've done with Jacob, let's just say this was inspired by the quote at the beginning. I don't like Jacob personally, but I don't think he's a bad guy. But don't worry, you'll get your fill of creepy interfering guys, especially next chapter. And now you know the reasons behind Bella's actions. So review! The more you review the more I feel like writing. Haha!
