In the morning, Edward surprised me at breakfast.
"I think it's time you watched me hunt." He said with a serious face. I nearly choked on my fruit.
"What?! I thought you didn't want me there?" I was coughing my watermelon back up; I felt my face turn bright red with loss of air.
"From a distance, of course; twenty miles or so should be enough." Talking more to himself than me.
"How in the world am I supposed to see you when I'm twenty miles away?" I had lost my appetite. The image of him, attacking some poor creature in a crude way made my stomach flip with disgust.
"Well, last night you were right. I do need to go hunting dangerously soon, and I thought that, since you were going to be one of us soon, might as well know how to do it, before the time comes." He shrugged and played with the new vase of roses the maid had put in our room.
"I think I'd rather wait for when the time comes…" I had the image back in my head and was ready to vomit.
"Too scared?" He asked me, a smile in his voice although he was still serious, playing with the roses.
"No, too disgusted." I answered truthfully. Why lie to him when he'd know soon enough. As if on cue to break the uneasy silence between us, Alice called.
I watched Edward nod and talk very fast to her over the phone, still serious. Something wasn't right; his face and tone of voice were different from its usual bliss. I had a feeling, something deep in my gut that it was about me. I could just feel it. He handed the phone to me after what seemed like minutes.
"Hi Bella!" I heard Alice's overexcited and anxious voice from the other line.
"Hi Alice, how are things over there?" I was curious to see if she'd tell me anything.
"Everything's fine. How's your trip?" She sounded very interested. I knew that I would get it out of Edward soon enough.
"Beautiful! The sunset is gorgeous, the beaches are warm and pretty, the fish are a tad ugly, and the room is cool." She laughed and said that she wished she were here with us to see all of it, and I told her that I wished she was here too. That basically ended it for conversation with her, and before you knew it, I was handing the phone back to Edward.
He said his goodbyes to her and hung up the phone. "What's the matter?" I asked him, my voice going from happy and longing to serious and concerned.
"Nothing is up." He put the phone back where he got it from and headed back to the table where I still sat.
"Don't play stupid with me. You know as well as I do that something is wrong at home. Now spill." He sighed.
"I can't keep anything from you, can I?" He sounded frustrated.
"Nope, I'm way too observant, you said it yourself." I smiled and waited for him to say something. When he didn't, I got impatient.
"Well? Are you going to tell me?" I asked, my hands folding over my chest.
"No…were you expecting me to?" He laughed at this.
"Kind of. Please tell me… I know it's something about me." He looked at me with a shocked look to his eyes.
"What kind of mind reading powers do you have and why haven't you told me about them?" He questioned.
"None, I just know when things have something to do with me. If you don't tell me, I'm going to be so stubborn today; you won't know what to do with yourself."
"And if I do tell you, you're going to wish you were never born." He said in reply with an overpowering glint to his face.
"Is it that bad?"
"Yes, I'm afraid it is." He dropped his head. I was curious, but nervous. Did I really want to know?
"Tell me; it'll make you feel better." I promised to him, knowing all the while it could possibly do the exact opposite.
"No, it won't. It will make me feel worse, and you feel awful." He was too stubborn.
"Tell me, now. We are married; we need to tell each other things. No secrets, no matter how bad they may be." I slammed my fist weakly on the table, trying not to cause breaking or loud noises.
"Fine, if you really want to know then I'll tell you. You will have three people waiting for you when you get home. One, Jacob Black; two, Jane; and three, your mother." How was this supposed to make me feel bad, or like I wished I was never born?
"And how is this bad?" I trailed off, knowing that he'd tell me sooner or later.
"Jacob Black is coming because he is going to try to convince you to divorce me and stay human," his jaw tightened at this. "Jane will be there to make sure that you are a vampire, and your mother will be there because she wants to tell you that she is pregnant and hopes you are not." It worked. I wished I had never been born. I wished that I could die instead of become living death. I wished a whole lot of things that I wished I hadn't.
"I thought that Jake had run away. Jane wants me to become a vampire…on my honeymoon? And my mother is pregnant?! Why all at once?" I asked him. "Why do they all have to come at once? My mother just saw me at the wedding. Jane could have told me they had an expectation. Jake can just go away." I started to feel the tears in my eyes. Too many emotions at once for my taste. He was by my side in seconds.
"Please don't cry; we're out of tissues. It's the one thing the maid forgot to refill." He told me.
"I'm not, don't worry." I felt the tears disappear when I said that. I should try that some other time.
"I have a way out of it, but you're not going to like it." He suggested while I was still amazed on how well my tears went away.
"Spill." I said to him.
"What if we went home early? Jane isn't expecting us home for another two weeks, Jacob is coming when he hears news of you being home, and your mother is already staying in a hotel with Phil. So, basically, if we went home early, we could change you, have you wait the three days or so for the process to be complete, make sure that you are ok enough to be around people, and then visit your mother and the dog." It was a very good plan; I had no problem with it.
"Ok, so when are we leaving?" I asked him, feeling my mood lighten. I couldn't believe it, but I was actually looking forward to going to the tree covered town we called home.
"You're ok with us leaving so soon?" This shocked him, along with many other things I say to him.
"Yeah, it's too sunny here for me, too." I agreed with him. I made a face at myself; I lived in Arizona most of my life, why was Hawaii any different? It was more humid, but just about the same as Phoenix.
"Interesting…ok, how does next week sound to you?" He asked. It wasn't enough for me.
"Are we talking early in the week, or later? I need details." I explained.
"Most likely in the middle. We need time to figure out how to get you back home unnoticed and still human. Then, we need to figure out how to make you a vampire and break it to your mother and father, and the dog." He put his head in his hands and sighed.
"What?" I asked.
"What do you think?" He lifted his head and looked at me under his dark eyelashes.
"Well, I think that you don't want me to be one of you and you just want to live peacefully, but you know that that's not going to happen if I'm still human, and you're unhappy with not being able to do things your way for once." He stared at me in shock, yet again.
"It's like I said it out loud, or something." He still stared at me in disbelief.
"Ok, I have an idea. We have a private jet, right?"
"Right…" His disbelief turned into confusion.
"What if it crashed? What if I died?" His eyes looked like they were going to bust out from his head. "What if I pretended to die?!" I quickly said after his expression changed.
"No, absolutely not, no way, it's not going to happen." He stood up and started pacing back and forth in front of me.
"Why not, it could work, listen. What if I pretended to die in this plane crash on our way home, I could fake my own death, my parents wouldn't notice me being gone, because to them I'd be dead, and Jacob….well, Jake might know, but it's not like he would tell, right?" I shrugged, my plan abounded perfectly good in my ears.
"He told on you for riding a motorcycle with him." He pointed out.
"That was to keep you away from me, but, as you can see, that didn't work. I'll just tell him that if he loved me, he wouldn't tell. He tricked me into kissing him, why can't I trick him back?" This was not going to be fun; lying wasn't exactly my forte.
"Let me tell Carlisle about it, and Alice, and see what they think." He sighed in disapproval.
"Listen, I have a feeling that this will work, you guys just have to set up a funeral date." I smiled, knowing that I would be locked in a casket for the whole thing, if it even worked out.
"How are you going to breathe? Caskets are sealed; air tight." He found a pretty good flaw to my plan. I had a better answer.
"I wouldn't have to breathe." I smiled, his eyes narrowed.
"No." His mouth didn't move an inch, but somehow sound got out, and somehow, I heard it.
"Fine, then I'll just go talk to Alice." I got up as if to go see Alice in the next room, not realizing that she wasn't there, and opened the door. I heard Edward laugh from behind me. "I was caught in the moment, don't laugh!" I scowled at him; he, still laughing at me. I walked into the bathroom and decided to get ready for the day.
My shower was long; I took even more time blow drying my hair pin straight, and then looked at myself in the mirror. I was dressed in a light blue V-neck tank top with jean Capri's and a light blue sea shell anklet that Edward had bought me at the aquarium. I was decent looking, so I left the bathroom in search for my husband.
I found him sitting on the couch reading a magazine.
"What took you so long?" He asked me, not looking up.
"This kind of beauty takes time…" He looked up and smiled at me. "Ok, I took a long shower and blow dried my hair, in case you didn't hear." I said tapping his ear with my pointer finger.
"What? You just took a long shower and blow dried your hair? But, my dear, you look like a goddess who just stepped down from the heavens." He put his magazine aside and pulled me into his lap. "Now, what are we going to do today? We only have half of it to go, though; you wasted time by taking longer in the bathroom. We could go have lunch…" He prompted.
"You mean I could go have lunch, Mr. I don't eat human food, so I'll just sit and wait for my wife to be done." I buried my face into his neck and began to smell the scent I had gotten so used to over the past six months or so. My mouth started to water, but I resisted the urge to kiss him. Instead, he lifted my head up to meet his face and kissed me. Our lips molded together like clay, our hands intertwining into each others' hair, my breathing coming to almost a complete stop; it was wonderful. Of course, though, he is Edward and has his unusually cruel punishment for me; boundaries.
He finally pulled me away from him; I took in deep breaths to make up for the one's I'd lost.
"Seriously, what are we going to do today?" He asked me after my breathing had regulated. I thought about it for a second.
"We could go out on the patio and you could teach me how to play chess…" I thought it sounded like a good idea, like usual, but to him, I was thinking of things to do when we didn't have to world at our fingertips.
"Um, no. How about something interesting?" He smiled my smile; it touched his eyes and everything.
"Like what?" I smiled to him, trying, but failing miserably to mirror his.
"Like…figuring how to get you home without being noticed." The phone rang immediately.
