"So….." she prompted, as if the two letter word was the key to my locked lips.
"So, we had a lovely time." I surmised, unzipping the second suitcase that rested upon the bed next to my inquisitive new sister-in-law.
"And…?" her voice got higher.
"And we got a real giggle out of this stuff!" I flung the crotchless underwear I'd wanted to 'lose' at her, but missed entirely and they landed in a sorry flop upon the floor.
"They weren't intended for comedic purposes you know?" she said dryly. I knew alright, I knew exactly what they were meant for, and I tried not to meet her eyes as the tell-tale blush spread across my face.
"Oh! Come here!" she sighed, wrapping delicate fingers around my wrist and pulling me onto the bed next to her. She turned to face me cross-legged and leaned forward to pull my legs onto the bed into the same position so that we were face-to-face and I couldn't avoid her. "Bella we may all be geriatric by human standards, but we're still basically teenagers, and our hormones – or endocrinal venom, whatever - have kept with the times! You don't have to blush about this stuff with me! In fact, especially not me! I'm your best girlfriend, and you've finally jumped from the virgin wagon, I'm excited for you and we have got to talk about it!"
I tried to suppress the smile and fixed my eyes on the patterns of the comforter we were sitting on. Alice was right, she was – and probably would forever be – my best girlfriend, and she had this way of making me want to talk and gush about things, but never felt the need to myself.
"So let's try again, girl," she lifted my chin and locked my eyes with hers, "how was the honeymoon?"
I let the grin break out, "if you foresee any of them coming home early whilst I'm mid honeymoon description you'll shut me up immediately, agreed?"
"Agreed." A devilish grin flooded her face.
By the time Edward and the rest of his family had returned home from the hunt, all of my clothes had been packed away into the wardrobe and all the sordid details of our honeymoon had been revealed.
It was early evening, almost a full 24 hours since we'd arrived back at the Cullen mansion from our honeymoon. Having eaten two full portions of the curry Esme had cooked up when we had gotten home, Edward just about managed to carry me to bed and tuck me under the duvet before I was dead to the world. His snoring jibes had resumed in the morning when I'd managed to wake myself up with a particularly loud intake (snort) of breath whilst I drifted in and out of sleep, "tease me all you want," I'd acquiesced, "but you will never know the bliss of snoring your way through 11 hours of sleep on 800 thread count sheets."
He'd rolled his eyes and whispered in my ear, "I know a better kind of bliss though…" and in my hazy sleepiness I'd been ready to jump him, but he and the family had wanted to take a hunting trip for the day, so my urges had to wait.
I'd looked forward to spending a day relaxing – maybe a hot bath with some of that gorgeous lavender oil to soothe my aching muscles from the extensive travelling, I could shave my legs and double shampoo and condition my hair, I'd drink green tea whilst browsing my college class electives on Edward's laptop… oh I'd wished. Alice had wanted to stay home. With me.
Ultimately, I managed to fit in a shower, unpacking my suitcase, and sending an email to mom to let her know I was home. Oh yeah, and I had that talk with Alice. Thankfully she'd made herself absent when I'd sat down to watch a rerun of Malcolm in the Middle over a bowl of soup – just a mere 5 minutes before Edward and his mind reading capabilities sat down next to me on the sofa.
"Missed you." His lips murmured into my hair.
I stopped blowing on the spoon I held to my lips, and instead turned to smile at him – my stomach turned cartwheels, and my heart sped up its beat, whilst my mind slowed down and felt at peace. I hadn't realised how much I'd missed him – how bereft I'd felt in the wake of his absence – but now I felt like I was truly home.
Placing my bowl of soup on the coffee table, I moved in closer to him, to his scent, to his lips… "I –"
"Not on the couch, you guys… geez!"
"Emmett's home." We simultaneously murmured, lips inches apart, foreheads against each other.
"Damn straight I am! And damn lucky I am too! Y'all need a chaperone."
Edward sighed deeply and turned around to face him, "we're married, Emmett, we can do it now, so we no longer require a chaperone, but thanks."
Emmett then launched himself over the back of the furniture before landing delicately next to my husband. He picked Edward's cool hands out of mine and got up to wedge himself between the two of us "I don't care what you newlyweds do in your own time, how you do it or when you do it, but Esme sure as hell will care about where you do it – especially on her furniture."
"I was just going to kiss him! This is ludicrous!" I protested.
"I know what 'just kissing' leads to, Bella, I wasn't born yesterday." He turned to look me right in the eye, "And believe me, you do NOT want to be caught by Esme, doing that, on her antique furniture."
I caught Edward's smirk in the periphery of my vision and it clicked, "I feel like there's a story behind this defensiveness, Emmett," I grinned, "care to share?".
"We're home!" Esme's voice called throughout the house, and I heard the front door shut. I couldn't have hand-picked a kinder, more lovable mother-in-law than Esme. I knew that both Edward and Emmett would've heard the family approaching the house at 200 metres away, so Esme announcing their arrival was purely for my benefit.
"I will find out." I promised to Emmett quickly, and he fled the scene leaving us on the couch.
She ambled into the living room at human speed and immediately found me, "have you eaten yet?"
I gestured to the bowl in front of me, "I defrosted some soup from the freezer… I hope you don't mind?" It only now occurred to me I hadn't asked what was free game in the kitchen.
She tsked and batted her hand at me, "of course not, that smells like one of my earlier experiments in making tomato soup for you, and besides, no one here is going to fight you for it."
"There was a lot of food to decide from in there – if this soup is anything to go by, I can't wait to start working my way through it!" I smiled. Esme beamed back at me, the warm in her smile softening her eyes.
"Don't get too excited," Edward's voice pulled me away, "we've only a week before we need to set off again."
"A week?!" I hadn't realised. My head span, and I looked down at my hands in my lap.
"How exciting!" Esme chimed in, "this will be your first time through college… oh you're going to love it, Bella!"
A week. That's it. I had really not been paying attention – I'd been elsewhere, floundering about in my newlywed bliss with no responsibilities or deadlines, but now the clock was ticking. It wasn't the going to college bit that bothered me so much, it was the stopwatch timing my human life that was making me sick.
On the one hand, I was perfectly happy (if not delighted) to be staying human longer, so that I could enjoy all those little human moments I'd previously been missing out on, and no one was pressuring me to give it up. On the other hand, this indecision about when I wanted to be changed stretched out in front of me for miles into the unforeseeable future, and that giant, silent pendulum swung overhead, each whoosh of the heavy weight marking another second of mortality, of aging, of indecision.
For the first time I wished Edward was something different than he was. I wished he and his family were human, I wish they abided by the same timeline my family and friends did, so that I wouldn't have to choose.
My family. My mom, my dad… Charlie. Oh, dad. Every minute I strung out this process was going to make this harder. Knowing I was leaving him to an empty house when I agreed to move in with Edward post-wedding hurt my heart enough – but the selfishness of taking myself entirely away from him, leaving him to that house to himself, was like a punch in the stomach.
"Yeah…" I managed to murmur in response to Esme. But by the time I looked up from my lap, Edward and I were the only ones left in the room. He looked concerned, his thick brows knitted together and lips moulded into in a frown.
"Bella…" he started, scooching closer and holding my hands in his, "don't look so sad, it breaks my heart to see you like this… it's just college, no pressure for anything else."
I bit my lip to divert my attention from the tell-tale sting forming in my eyes, "it's not just college though, it's me moving on, going away from this place… it's the beginning of me distancing myself away from these people..."
I felt the floodgates weakening.
"…so that I can disappear."
And the dams broke.
A/N: Yeah so it's been a while since an update my bad I am a terrible person. A whole lotta nothing happens in this chapter so many sozzles for that but life has swept me up! Good news though: I will be graduating uni in 2 weeks with first class honours in biochemistry! Andddddd! I got a job as an assistant manager at a major soft beverage company that is not pepsi but the other one ;) anyway, I'm travelling emloads /emfor it, so I spend a lot of time in the car developing plot bunnies I intend to eventually write - I am very sorry for the delay, will try and get a better, more interesting chapter out soon! Reviews help:)!/strong/p
