Chapter 5: Slide

A/N: For some reason, a lot of people didn't catch that in chapter 3 (technically chapter 2) Bella got a job from the employment agency. She's employed. Don't be surprised when I talk about it. :) Oh, and jadedandboring and barburella think they're the center of my universe...which is likely... but they still didn't know Bella got a job three chapters ago... :-(

"It's all right to make mistakes
you're only human
Inside everybody's hiding something
Take time to catch your breath and choose your moment
Don't slide"

~Slide, Dido

Life became a smooth road, a steady tempo I could dance to easily and still feel somewhat productive even as I circled in a rut.

Monday through Friday I worked, as I had been for a month and a couple of weeks now. The work I did was mindless: entry level faxing and stapling and filing. It took up 45 hours of my week though, lunchtimes included, and brought me to the realization that I could cross the vast majority of office jobs off my list of things I might want to do when I grew up. That decision was a long time off and I didn't have the faintest clue where to start thinking about it anyway, but the thought of spending years of my life in a cubed-in, office environment with so many rules and meetings was a frightening thought indeed.

I think a call center atmosphere was the perfect place to work for my particular needs. I wasn't one of the poor people on the phone – though lord knew they got paid more than me and that wasn't saying much. It gave me access to a wide variety of people, and the work was menial enough that I could soak in the range of personalities.

Being quiet had its advantages. If you didn't say much, people assumed you weren't paying attention and they'd say anything around me. I fantasized briefly about going to the CIA with my new device. Human bugs; if you'd put a microphone and a wire on me I would have recorded enough secrets to make any secret agent cream his shorts.

It was heartening in a way. Most days it felt like I was the only one stumbling through life with two left feet and a blindfold on. Over the weeks I'd worked at the call center, I'd learned that not a lot of people had their life on straight.

Then again, if I had to look at things scientifically, I would have to consider my data pool. All things considered, not a lot of people thought a customer support position was a valid career choice. There was that interview question – another favorite of Alice's – 'Where do you see yourself in five years?' No one answered that they enjoyed letting people yell in their ear for 40 hours a week.

Either way, I got into a placid state, observing and soaking in as much as I could.

Working in a customer service center teaches you a lot about the mindset of the average human being. If everything wasn't nicely packaged or exactly as the individual had hoped, it was called poor customer service and defective product. If you're not selling the product the customer wanted, they expected you to custom fit their order – at least that's what I got from listening to the complaints of the minions on the phone. It was both amusing and frustrating when I came across those same people berating other customer support people as they took care of their outside business in the break room.

I began to hate Burger King and Subway and every company whose commercials advertise life 'your way.'

People were, for the most part, the same. I began to understand parents' reactions to their imperfect children - at least, James and my mother anyway. But children are trickier than consumer products. You can't yell and scream, demanding a refund that one of the upper management will eventually give just to get you off their phone. You can't send them back from whence they came. Rather, you can, but the whole life in prison or death sentence thing defeats the purpose of wiping the slate of your progeny clean.

The customer was not always right. Sometimes you just had to deal with what you got, no substitutions, exchanges or refunds. People wanted to take no responsibility for signing up for a service when they hadn't read all the terms and conditions. My mother had sex, got knocked up and when my father died, responsibility of me went to her. She didn't read the fine print, thinking he had permanently relieved her of the responsibility of raising me when she left me with him.

Work at least gave me a sense of progress and purpose. The pitiful wage I made was enough to cover the pittance Edward charged me in rent. I wasn't entirely oblivious to the cost of living in Los Angeles, and I knew I was getting off easy. When I told him to charge me more, Edward only rolled his eyes. The house was paid off, he pointed out. I took to keeping the refrigerator well stocked in lieu of a bigger rent. It made me feel less worthless.

For as many times as I reflected that I wanted to change, I wanted to be well and cured, there were more times the question, 'what then?' terrified me. So I took life as it was dealt: one card at a time.

It's not that I gave up or forgot my ultimate goal. Trying to figure yourself out is not like dieting or any other physical improvement where inactivity means you've broken your resolution. There are no helpful videos with the likes of Richard Simmons for anything I needed help with. No meal plan could reinforce my image of mental health.

So much of my journey was interior, unwinding the twisted bird's nest of knots that had taken up residence where my personality should have been. A lot of that meant watching other people. Not to imitate them - I wanted to find myself, not someone else - but to see how I fit in with them, how I was supposed to interact with people. Once, I might have known these things but, like anything, if you don't use it for years you will forget. Social interaction was an ability nowhere near riding a bicycle.

Living with Edward was easier than I'd expected though. He worked odd hours at the hospital, so I had a lot of free time on my hands. All in all, it was a somewhat ideal situation. I was alone without being lonely. It left a lot of room to think in peace. But there was only so much time I could spend untangling the threads in my mind. All the silence and peace in the world wasn't going to fix me any quicker. This left a lot of time in the "well, now what?" category.

There was a TV in the living room and several shelves of books but TV and books had been destroyed by my stepfather. Early on some primitive defense mechanism had driven me to find an escape for my mind. I'd read a lot, but most of my books were ripped into several pieces when James was angry at me. Any attempt to watch television was usually thwarted by some excuse about a messy room or forgotten chore. Besides that, there were two TVs in the household: one in the living room and the other in my mother's bedroom. With James, out of sight out of mind was the best platitude to practice. I tried not to be out in the open where it was easier for him to find some excuse, some imperfection to pick at. Even years later, being in Edward's living room, watching TV alone, made me nervous.

Still, as easy and kind as Edward was, there were uncomfortable moments. One of the issues that came up first was whether or not I owed Edward my life story. In some ways it seemed only fair. He'd opened his house to me. Did that mean he deserved to know things I wasn't ready to tell?

We both danced around the issue of our pasts. I knew the story of his parents' death, but not the inevitable after effect of them. Alice and Edward were close, but when they mentioned their older brother, Emmett, there was an underlying anger there that I didn't fully understand.

I didn't ask so I would have to tell, but I knew eventually I would have to say something. Edward wasn't just my landlord, he was becoming my friend. There was a give and take that went with any relationship, friendship included.

In those early days, though, I played my cards close to my chest, saying only what I had to.

"You never call your mother," Edward said suddenly. I was in the kitchen, listlessly reconsidering the idea that as long as I was giving myself a personality makeover, I just might be a vegetarian. The tofu and tempeh weren't bad but I was craving red meat like a motherfucker.

I looked away from my lunch, looking up at Edward with surprise. "Call my mother?" I echoed because the thought honestly hadn't occurred to me.

Edward busied himself, preparing his own lunch. "You don't have a cell phone."

My eyebrows furrowed. The tone of his voice implied that I should be drawing some conclusion but none was forthcoming. "Don't really see a point to a cell phone," I answered slowly. "You, Alice and Jasper are the only people I know." And we weren't exactly great friends. Even if I had Alice's number or Jasper's, what would I call them for?

"You don't know your mother?" Edward asked, meeting my eyes as his hands continued cutting up a tomato for his sandwich needs.

I put down my forkful of sprouts, suddenly not hungry. Anxiety twisted in my stomach. It hadn't occurred to me that I should want to call my mother. If I'd taken the route I was supposed to – gone off to college and lived in a dorm like a normal girl – would I have wanted to call my mother? Didn't every commercial, book, television show have some running theme about calling your mother being a pain in the ass chore?

I wondered if Renee missed me. She had her new husband to entertain her. Phil. She wasn't alone for long after James left. Maybe she couldn't be.

After it sunk in that Phil wasn't going to hit me – he didn't even yell at me – I decided I liked him. In any event, he took care of her which was one less thing for me to worry about. Renee was a bit of a mess on her own, but what the hell would I have done with that in the state I was in?

"My mother's fine without me," I muttered noncommittally, pushing the remnants of my lunch around.

"She doesn't worry about you?" he pressed.

I cleared my throat. Did she worry about me? I didn't know the answer to that question. She hadn't worried much when her husband pushed me to the ground. She hadn't noticed my spiral into the depths of depression and hadn't tried to help me when I started failing in school. Did she worry now that I was out of her sight? "As you pointed out, I haven't called her. I don't know the answer to that question," I deflected.

He sat down across from me, shrugging slightly as he picked up his sandwich. "I would call my mother if I could," he remarked, seemingly innocently.

And suddenly I was annoyed. The implication in his voice was that I was neglecting my mother. Imagine that. He felt I should be appreciative of her because he'd lost his mother. Well, I'd lost my father too. That didn't make Renee some prize just because she was alive when Charlie wasn't. "What about your godfather? I never hear you call him," I said, just to steer the subject away from me.

Edward's sandwich dropped right out of his hands as his whole body went rigid. His eyes flashed to mine, and I was instantly terrified by the utterly malevolent glare I saw. But in the next instant he'd pushed back his chair and stormed out of the kitchen without a word, his lunch forgotten. A second later the door to his room slammed.

I sat at the table frozen under the onslaught of another memory.

Most of the time I was a quiet kid. Even with Charlie I'd never been all that unruly, but with Renee and James, I was a facsimile of a child. Except…

After Victoria left, there were periods of relative peace in the house. I didn't get in James's face now that she wasn't around to push me there.

It would come out of no where. I would be sitting in my room when a fire would spark in the pit of my belly. It was low like a pilot light in a heater: ever present but steady and harmless. But beneath my dead-eyed exterior, a terrible rage was brewing. Think of the Incredible Hulk except it was my blood that was poisoned green instead of my skin, and the violent strength boiling in my veins instead of my muscles.

When that happened, I picked fights with James. It started small – just the irritable backchat that most teenagers were prone to – and then I would push, and push, and push, and push until he snapped.

The worst beatings I received were no one's fault but my own. When I pushed James to a dangerous ledge there would be a flurry of pain and chaotic noise: my screaming, his hollering, hair and clothes ripping because he gripped me and shook me and tossed me by whatever he could grab, the muted thud of fists against flesh, the clap of his belt across skin.

Those were the times when Renee would intervene. "Enough! Enough!" she would scream, tugging at James's shirt as if to pull him backward. Then all the confusing clamor and continuous pain would stop – a movie being paused in the middle of a tense action scene. James would be breathing raggedly. I would be cowering on the floor, my arms wrapped around my head and my legs drawn up as I tried not to cry and failed miserably.

Then, inevitably, James would grab my arm, yanking me up until I was kneeling. Throwing my arm back down, he would grip my hair in his fist, yanking my head back until I had to listen to him. "You fucking crazy bitch. You make everyone around you crazy," he sneered before finally releasing me.

Then I would scramble to my feet, stumbling up the stairs to my room as my anger unraveled behind me like string from a tumbling ball of yarn. By the time I closed my door there wasn't enough fury in me left to even slam it. Instead it clicked shut quietly, snuffing out the little pilot light at my center and replacing it with a despair that made me want to writhe because it consumed me whole. It was a feeling so entirely nameless – leaving me reeling and confused. Burying my face in my pillow, I would sob until my body was limp with exhaustion – until I had nothing left inside of me but the cold, desolate emptiness at my core and the ever-present weight around my heart.

By the time my mother came to check on me, bringing a cold compress for the worst bruises and aloe vera for the scrapes, my eyes were dead again – completely bloodshot from crying, but as blank and lifeless as I felt inside.

Back in my room, in Edward's house, I sat on the bed with my legs drawn up and my chin resting on my knees. I wasn't sobbing, but I was shaking hard.

What had I done? How had I done it?

There was only a twinge of annoyance at my core and I'd managed to make Edward – a stranger who'd been nothing but kind in the short period I'd known him – look at me with a monster's eyes. The hate in his eyes when he looked at me before he stormed off was unmistakable.

I tried to calm down, reasoning that it must have been some social faux pax. Maybe I shouldn't have been mentioning his godfather, reminding him that his parents were dead. I'd learned just a few days ago that Carlisle and Esme Cullen had died the summer Edward was 15 and Alice was 14. The two younger kids had been shipped off to a music camp for a week while Emmett, had been road-tripping with a friend before he started at USC that fall.

The last day of camp Carlisle and Esme hadn't appeared at the little concert the kids put on. When the rest of the parents had come and gone, taking the other kids at the camp with them, Edward and Alice were still alone.

Calls to their home line and cell phone went unanswered. The hospital where Carlisle worked informed them he'd taken the week off. Esme's partner at her restoration business answered similarly. The police were called to knock on their door.

Alice said she found solace in the fact they'd died together, their arms wrapped around each other as they succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning peacefully in their sleep.

Still, while my logical mind thought that Edward's extreme reaction must have been related to his parents' deaths, I couldn't shake the guilt and anxiety that crept under my skin. I found myself unable to concentrate. Concrete thoughts wouldn't settle in my head, instead scattering like dust in the wind. It was frustrating and somewhat nerve-wracking.

So when there was a soft knock on the door, I jumped a mile high.

My bones popped as I unwound myself – who knew how long I'd been sitting stark still on my bed. Staring warily at the door, as if it might burst into the flames, I approached cautiously, opening it slowly.

Edward stood in the hallway, his hands behind his back and a sheepish look on his face. "Do you want to watch a movie with me in the living room?"

I blinked at him brilliantly because that was about the last thing I'd expected to come out of his mouth. Sure we sat at the same table when we happened to be having a meal at the same time, and I'd been lured out of my little hole when Alice visited a few days before, but he'd never initiated any sort of activity between us.

Right on the heels of shock was a rush of pleasure. My face felt too warm. The only explanation I had for my sudden blush was that I'd skipped that awkward stage during my teen years where the least bit of attention from cute boys or girls made me want to giggle and twirl my hair around my finger. The late-blooming schoolgirl in me was jumping up and down because ohmygosh a really cute boy wanted me to hang out.

Technically. Sort of. Maybe as a way of apologizing for glaring at me like he wanted to murder me, but still!

"Depends," I blurted, simultaneously soothing my frazzled nerves and gagging the ridiculous schoolgirl. "Will there be popcorn?"

A slow, admittedly knee-weakening, smile spread across his face. He didn't speak, instead bringing his hands out from behind his back. He was gripping two packages: popcorn – kettle corn and cheddar flavored.

"Easy," I said, smiling timidly back. I tapped the kettle corn, licking my lips before I could help it. The sweet-salty treat was, to the best of my knowledge, one of my favorite snacks.

It took me a moment to realize Edward was staring at my mouth. That fact had barely registered before his eyes snapped back up to mine, and he swallowed hard. Still, his smile didn't falter. "Go pick one out. Whatever you want. I'll make the popcorn."

I followed him out into the hallway and downstairs. The DVD cabinet was a little intimidating. Edward had a huge collection, and I found I couldn't really remember much about movies in the last decade. My dad and I used to watch Star Wars together, but I wasn't up for that trip down memory lane when I felt out of sorts as it was.

"You look a little lost," Edward's voice startled me. He seemed amused.

"Most of the titles I recognize are movies I haven't seen," I explained, tapping randomly on one of the movies I'd been looking at.

Edward's eyes bugged out. "You haven't seen Jaws?"

"Uh, no? I mean, it seemed kind of… stupid," I admitted, wondering too late if it was the wrong thing to say. What if he took insult?

"Blasphemy," he replied, teasing. "Everyone has to see Jaws at least once. It's prerequisite."

"To what?"

He blinked. "Life," he said decisively.

"Oh, well, with logic like that, who am I to argue?" I joked back with him before I even realized what I was doing. The words felt slightly awkward as they tumbled out of my mouth – like shoes that fit but weren't worn in yet. It wasn't entirely uncomfortable, but I wasn't sure of my footing either.

Edward grinned again and strode forward. He proffered me one of the bowls of popcorn he carried, taking the movie from me once one of his hands was free. His nearness made my eyelids flutter, and I was glad that I was staring at the ground.

A few minutes later the movie began. I was lying on couch with the popcorn balanced on my stomach. Edward was in the arm chair, his feet propped up on an ottoman and the bowl in his hands. He kept sneaking glances at me as the opening scene played out while I pretended not to notice.

"Really?" he said, exasperated and incredulous after Jaws claimed his first victim.

"What?" I asked, confused and wary.

"How did that not scare you? It scared the crap out of me when I first saw it." He shook his head.

"What? Why?" I scoffed. "You don't even see the damn thing."

"That's the brilliance of it! They didn't need make-up and special effects. It was all the suggestion, the unknown. Brilliant." He was gesturing with his arms now, and I couldn't help but be amused.

"That's not brilliance. It's accident. The shark didn't work."

Now it was his turn to gape. "What?"

"Come on. Everyone knows this. Spielberg had an animatronic shark, but it wouldn't work, thus forcing them to film around it."

"You're lying," Edward accused lightheartedly. "Eyes on the screen, Swan."

Smiling, I went back to watching the movie until he let out a disgruntled humph a few minutes later. Looking up, I found him glaring at his cell phone. "You're right," he conceded.

I couldn't help but tease him again. "I know. The shark's name is Bruce. Hence the name of the shark in Finding Nemo." I didn't know how I knew these things. They were random factoids that I didn't even know were wandering around my brain until that very moment.

Edward rolled his eyes. "Now you're just showing off." He pointed to his eyes with two fingers and then back to the television. "Anyway, this is a masterful piece of cinema. Eyes on the screen."

I saluted him with mock seriousness and looked back at the screen obediently. Some time had past before I felt the need to snort. "This movie is cheesy."

"When it was released it was the height of special effects."

"When it was released," I repeated, highlighting the important words. "Kudos and all for moving the field of special effects – without Jaws surely the world would have been without Avatar –"

"An argument against Jaws," Edward shuddered.

"- but this movie is cheesy. And boring. Really, how old were you when this scared you?"

Edward's lips quirked up and down before he mumbled something unintelligible.

"What?"

"Eighteen," he admitted.

I giggled. I couldn't help it. "Really? I can't imagine being scared of this at 12 let alone eight-"

I was cut off as the shark leapt at Richard Dryfus, the sudden movement startling me to the point that I screamed, tumbling off the couch in my surprise. The bowl of popcorn tilted with me, making a mess.

Edward stood quickly to help me, but the moment he was standing over me, my mind went stark white. An intense wave of terror went straight down my spine like a cat raising its hackles. There was no rational thought in my head, only fear. I didn't even realize what I was doing before my body reacted. I skittered backward, crab-like, as fast as possible until my back encountered the solidness of the arm chair. "I'll clean it up. I'm sorry." The words were automatic. Ingrained.

We both froze, Edward's eyes going wide while my brain clicked back on. I blinked, trying to clear the fog from my thoughts. My body was tensed and cringing away, as if preparing for a blow.

Taking a deep breath, I made a conscious effort to relax. Shame and embarrassment made me look at the floor as I got to my knees, scooping up sticky puffs of popcorn. "Sorry," I mumbled.

He knelt across from me without saying a word and began helping me clean up the mess. I was grateful that he didn't speak, though I wished he would go away entirely. As it was it was difficult to keep a lid on the frustrated tears that had sprung to my eyes.

"Maybe you should see some one. It's perfectly normal to feel scared after an attack like that," Edward began softly as he sat back when we'd picked up every stray kernel.

"See someone," I repeated, turning these words over. It's not like I hadn't considered the likelihood that I needed therapy. I just couldn't imagine what good it would do me when my words tangled in my own head. If I couldn't communicate what I was feeling how could anyone stand a chance of helping me? "I'm fine," I lied.

He reached out, his hand cupping my chin as he tried to bring my face up to look at him. I was stubborn though and only looked at the ground. If I looked at him now I'd cry and he'd seen me break down too many times as it was. He sighed. "There's no shame in getting a little help when you need it."

Ha. A little help. "I said I'm fine. I just got startled, that's all." I chuffed, wishing I could make my voice sound light. "The stupid movie scared me after all."

"Bella," he said slowly, his tone not unlike someone talking to a child who didn't understand what she'd done wrong, "that wasn't because of the movie."

"Can we drop it? Please?" I hated the edge of desperation in my voice.

"After the other night with the razor and now this? I'm worried for you."

"Nothing happened!" I shouted, not knowing I was angry until I was suddenly in his face. "That first night I had a bad dream because some fucking asshole put his hands on me and tried to rip my clothes off! I was mostly asleep and I hurt myself accidentally. This is nothing! Nothing. I just jumped because of a stupid movie that you specifically said was going to scare me. Drop it!"

His eyes were so concerned when I finally looked up at them that I felt ill. Still, I couldn't seem to taper down the fury. As it was I'd wrapped my arms around my torso as if physically restraining myself. I wanted to push him. I wanted to get him away from me because he wouldn't shut up. "I don't-" he started again, but I cut him off.

"So, what? You can have a little hissy fit and we get to pretend to forget it ever happened, but I have to explain every time I jump? I don't like double standards."

Edward looked stricken and when his eyes narrowed I could see the same malice I'd glimpsed earlier that afternoon. I could hear his teeth gnashing behind his tightly closed lips.

As quickly as the anger came it was washed away by a wave of fear like a sandcastle crumpled and muddied by the tide. "You regret helping me. I know you do."

"You don't know anything," he snapped. Then he was stalking away from me again.

"You make everyone crazy," James's voice invaded my thoughts as the door to Edward's room slammed shut so hard it echoed.

A/N: Love jadedandboring, love barburella. Love y'all.

Sooooo... what are we thinking?