A/N: Guh, long wait. Sorry about that.
Good news is that sofomores and freshman have testing my school so I get doubly time to write in the morning, two hours worth of it. Bad news is that I've already outlined the end of this story, and I'm close to finishing up the writing. :( But I still have a lot more chapters to post before that even comes close.
This chapter is one of my favourites, namely because the band Mainline is the lover to my ears. I'll post a link to their website, you can listen to a couple free songs, but you can only get this song on iTunes. I just so happen to have the album. :P
Crawl, sex appease slowly
crawl, let it fill up
crawl, sex appease down things
crawl, let them feel out
—Mainline; Brilliance of Shadow
Luckily enough for me, Edward wasn't in school the next day. He skipped and coincidentally, so did Jacob. The thought of them running into each other without the social security of a safe environment made me a little unsure of staying the rest of the day.
But missing even one day of school was completely out of the question for me. There was no doubt in my mind they'd be fine, so long as they stayed away from each other… Well, okay. Maybe I was worried just the slightest bit.
My stomach had butterflies in it all day; I was still reeling from almost being caught by Jacob. My jaw chattered relentlessly for most of the day, and my nerves were too sensitive to deal with anything besides trying to figure out how a polynomial would affect the rest of my life.
I tried to relate to it, or relate it to me. I used to ask myself how reading would help me out in the future, and look how that turned out.
I was on the verge of talking to my sheet of paper. Okay, I thought, let's just do this. The only word that stuck in my head was poly, the word for many.. Many numbers, many uses. Taxes… rent… I'd need to find out the sum of something at one point or another in my life.
The other thing that stuck in my head, the thought which constantly dribbled from my frontal lobe, was the word poly-amorous.
Multiple partners…
I wasn't poly-amorous, was I? That word was meant as something long term, and something that probably required both members of said relationship to be in the know. Edward had grown used to it, but Jacob?
I cringed away from my desk. Jacob was a big guy; he towered over Edward, and he played football. Edward knew how to fight dirty, but Jacob had muscles and years of being beaten on in his favour. Edward, on the other hand, probably wouldn't walk away without a couple bruises, if not a few broken bones.
Enough! I thought. This was ridiculous. Jacob wouldn't find out. There wouldn't be a collective trip to the hospital, and nothing would screw this up. Edward would keep his mouth shut and we'd continue on with what we had been doing for more than a year now.
I breathed in deeply and concentrated on the dark ink on the page in front of me. I blew away the eraser dust and started over on the same problem I'd been working on for little over half the class.
--
Two days had passed since I'd spoke to Edward. I called him once, and only got his voicemail. If he wanted to talk he would call back. He needed his space because, unlike me, he had a life with friends who depended on him.
Because of the torrential downpour that suddenly appeared after the one sunny day Forks had seen in a decade or two, the fields were completely soaked over. The mud was so deep it was starting to get into quicksand territory. Maintenance had given up on salvaging the grass, and greenery abandoned the flowers they planted there. The bulbs were dead; why go and dig them up?
Jacob had been pushy lately. I was usually passive about this, but I had to admit that what Edward had babbled about the other night was… digging into me rabidly.
I found myself constantly thinking about it.
When I slept I had visions of me in an ugly wedding dress that I had seen while watching some reality show. All the girls were talking about how beautiful it was, and I saw the way Jacob spaced a bit, not really caring. I saw myself just living a completely unhappy, comfortable life.
If I didn't make it to Dartmouth, what then? My stomach sank and I breathed out a shaky breath.
"You alright, Bells?" Jacob asked. "You're always staring off into space." His eyebrows furrowed together and I looked over at him.
"No, everything's… peachy."
His arm wrapped around my shoulders and he pulled me closer to his side. And for the first time since we started dating, I didn't play into his embrace. My body went stock still and I stood up quickly.
"I'm going to bathroom," I stated, walking down the hallway and past Billy who was sitting at the table in his wheelchair.
He didn't look up at me, and I didn't look at him.
Once I was in the bathroom I ran the water as cold as I could get it and splashed it on my face. The first shock ran down my spine and I looked at my face in the mirror..
It didn't look any different.
My nose was red and my cheeks were pink from the cold water, but my eyes were just their regular coffee brown. My hair was straight with those little curls that annoyed me, but these things were normal.
I looked away from my reflection quickly and picked up a towel to wipe my face with. I felt sick being in Jacob's house; I didn't want to be in this relationship, I didn't want to be his girlfriend. I never did, but now I felt so morosely guilty for being in it. He cared enough to stick with me even though he knew I was in it for the wrong reasons.
If he knew the whole truth he would be disgusted with me.
It's not like I wanted to be in a relationship with Edward or anything. He was nice and all, but this was strictly friend with benefits—while I cheated on my boyfriend.
I felt sick.
--
Two days after my pity party in Jacob's bathroom, Edward came back. I saw him with his friends gambling on the patio. His pile was the smallest of them all, and he looked concentrated like always.
He gambled too much.
And he rarely ever won.
It was something that both bothered and worried me, but at the same time I had no right to interfere with him and his… extracurricular activities.
I couldn't watch him lose again, so I walked off to class ten minutes early and sat in Spanish, doodling across a blank sheet of paper; squiggles and lines that didn't make any sense and didn't have any direction. The story of my life.
God, what was wrong with me?
I sounded like a whiney little emo kid.
I made the decision right then and there not to let my mood determine the rest of my day. I'd manage to get through this… somehow.
The rest of class I mainly stared at the back of Edward's head. I didn't mean to, but there was a piece of burnt hair that caught my attention and I swear to God I could see a face in it.
This irritated Jacob, who was constantly grabbing my attention. He would write something from the board onto my notes to get me back in focus, or he'd pass me a note. Like we were in middle school again.
Tests were handed back at the end of class. My grade was the highest, which decided the rest of my day. I smiled until last period, successfully making it through without incident of occurrence.
--
American culture has set the standard for forbidden romance amongst the general public.
I mean, soap operas, romance novels, even the gossip magazines pick up on cheating in relationships.
Was it even about love? Did any of this happen for the sake of it?
I doubted that; severely doubted that.
But still, to put yourself out there and then stay with that person had to take some sort of emotional investment. To publicly ridicule yourself and then stay there and not care what anyone thinks of you as long as you're happy—love or no love—and living a life you wanted to live.
I was not living the life I wanted to live.
I wanted to go to college. I didn't want to die a virgin. I wanted to be socially capable, and I wanted a successful future. But… maybe this wasn't the best way to go about getting it.
There was no love anywhere in this, and therefore I could not be satisfied.
I didn't love Jacob, and if he loved me it was one-sided and obsolete. God, I sound cold, but it's true. I could never love Jacob; it wasn't like that. He wanted to change everyone around him, and in turn the people around him changed who he used to be. When we were kids he used to be this fun loving person that you couldn't help but smile around. Now he was just this guy that you wanted to be around because he had a great smile and could make you laugh, but he was colder.
I think people knew there wasn't much chemistry between us. Girls hit on him constantly, and I'd have to act upset and jealous because that's what whiney teenage girlfriends do.
I had to act like I hated Edward when he glared at him in the hall. I didn't hate Edward, though. He was a good guy with a bit of an attitude, but that shouldn't define him.
The thing about Edward was that he was loyal. He was aggressive, but if someone was messing with a friend of his he'd risked getting his ass beat to stand up for them..
With Edward it wasn't the case of Bros Before Hoes; it was Friends Before Anything. That was the defining quality about him, the loyal trustworthiness that drew people to him.
For Jacob it was that easy going laid back attitude that made you melt. Well, until you looked past it and found out he was a relatively boring guy who wasn't good at making conversation, only throwing bits and pieces in wherever he thought it was necessary.
I snapped my head up as soon as I realized I was comparing and contrasting the two of them. What was wrong with me?
My eyes settled back on the page in front of me and I sighed loudly, rubbing my eyes with the heel of my hand. It wasn't often I thought about them together and then went back and forth comparing different traits. For a moment I considered it, though. Who had the better personality and who had the better body? Huh, I don't think I could deal with that right now.
I heard footsteps on the carpet and my head snapped up.
Edward.
He looked at me and continued to walk on. He didn't stop, but he went to the room behind me.. The door was on my right and I could hear him sliding down the wall. Our backs were pressed together through the thick plaster and I could hear him shuffling out whatever paper he needed.
"Hey," he murmured.
"Where've you been for the past week?" I whispered, aware of the people in the area around us.
"No greeting or 'how have you been'?"
"No, you didn't call me or anything. Jacob's been gone a lot, too. I thought you guys might have gotten into it or something."
He snorted loudly and I heard a thud against the wall before the scratching of a pencil.
"No, we didn't get into it; I haven't seen him all week. Don't worry about it." He murmured back.
"Can you blame me for being worried?" I asked. "I don't know what's going on that you two hate each other so much, but I just don't like violence and—"
"It's really none of your business, Bella." His voice was bored and he yawned at the end.
"It is, I'm his girlfriend, and we're—we're—"
"We're what, Bella? What were you going to say, huh? He's your boyfriend and I'm your fuck buddy?"
"That's not it…"
"Yeah, it really is. Now can we not talk about this? I just got to school and this place is a hellhole as it is without fighting with you." A book closed and I heard more shuffling. "I have a fucking mountain of homework here."
"Anything I can help you with?" I asked.
"Yeah… you know how to check for punctuation?"
"Uh-huh."
"Here." His hand popped out and he passed off a thick packet with his name at the top scrawled in messy pen.
"You have horrible hand writing," I mused.
"I know. It used to be good and then I don't know what happened." He chuckled and I heard books being thrown around the floor.
We sat in comfortable silence while I circled spelling mistakes in green and punctuation mistakes in red, looking over the short story that was relatively boring. Edward cursed over his math homework and I could imagine his hands running through his hair with each sigh.
"Bella!"
My head snapped up and I saw Jacob standing across from me, in front of the computers with a grin on his face. Edward's jaw snapped closed behind me.
Just act cool, I thought to myself.
"Hey," I whispered as he came closer.
"What are you doing here? Everyone's in the senior courtyard." He squatted down in front of me and his eyes swept over the work laid out before me.
"I have work to do." I shrugged.
His fingers picked up the spine of the book I had been reading and he made a face while he flipped through it.
"Why do you read this?" he asked.
"I like it," I grumbled.
"It's just so old; none of this stuff applies to you."
"I like it."
"It's from eighteen forty seven!" he yelled with disgust. My jaw clenched and I closed my eyes tightly.
I heard him shuffling around and when I opened my eyes he was elbow deep in his backpack throwing out crumpled papers. When his hand emerged he had a copy of the Teenager Hand Guide and a shit eating grin on his face. Jacob tossed my book across the floor and threw his book on my lap.
"What is this?" I mumbled. I looked at the table of contents and caught onto body building, dieting, and making a good impression on someone.
"It's the best book, everyone's reading it. It's like half guide book and half novel. It's really good, Bella. Give it a try."
I liked romance…
"Yeah… I guess.. I'm not all that into New Age stuff."
"It's not New Age," he said defensively. His brow kind of came down in a half-glare. I shrank back a bit.
"Alright," I mumbled.
"Come on, everyone's waiting." He smiled again.
"I have a ton of work to do and I really need to get it done." I held up the packet and Jacob stood up, towering over me.
"If you're sure…" he hesitated. I smiled up at him and he grinned down at me, walking across the library and out the double doors.
"A bit pushy, huh?" Edward piped up.
"No… he just has his own opinion on literature."
I sat up on my knees and crawled over to where my book was. When I turned around half of Edward's body was hanging out of the door.
"What?" I asked while I crawled.
"Nice view." He grinned.
I rolled my eyes, trying to ignore the blush that came up my cheeks and forehead. He slid back into the room and started to shuffle through his bag again. I stuffed my book and Jacob's into my backpack and went back to correcting.
"So you're just gonna take that?" he asked.
"Take what? Nothing happened."
"He's trying to brain wash you with that New Age crap."
"I won't actually read it. I'll probably just Spark Note it and hope I can hold up a conversation about it." I flipped the page and leaned my head back.
"Sure," he drawled. "So tell me what the first chapter was about."
"I think it said something about wearing fitted clothing to make your body look more like a pencil than an hourglass. Or maybe it was how to stick your finger down your throat without scratching the uvula with your acrylic." I answered.
"What chapter would I look through to find which material would be softest to stuff my crotch with?"
"Chapter six, right after getting padded bras and before how to act like a pseudo-lesbian without being an actual lesbian."
"Hmm… this is gonna be some new age alright."
"Yep."
A/N: Oh yes, it will be quite the new age.
I don't know about you guys but there's some Teenage Guide Book floating around the school in my neck of the woods. There are kids who swear by it. There's different books for different areas, states, regions etc. but they're essentially the same. I think Chicken Soup for the Soul was a popularized one, I never read it, though. Shrug.
A couple people asked if Jacob was pushing Bella for anything, and worried about consensual rape. That's not it, Bella is eager to please him, and sexually is the easiest way, considering all of her time spent in the sack in Emotionlessward/ Ass-backwardsward.
Don't forget to review! (and today's the last to day to vote for the Bellie awards over at TheCatt(dot)not Labour of Devotion is up for best collab :D)
