Wow. What a weekend to be a Twilight fan. Handprints and footprints at the Chinese Theatre, LA Twicon, and only around 6 billion media interviews... :L

ANYWAY.

Chapter 9? WOW! :O XD Chapter 9 got double the number of hits every single day this week than any other chapter so far! :O You guys ROCK. :D And I'd like to take this opportunity to just say that I read all my reviews, and I do try to reply to as many of them as I can. But reviews that don't have a reply link make me sad because then I can't say thank you. :( So THANK YOU! XD

One last thing - if anyone here is doing NaNoWriMo (see NaNoWriMo[dot]org) this month, then GOOD LUCK! NaNoWriMo is the entire reason this fanfic exists past chapter 2... So if I can push myself to do it, anyone can! :) :L

Okay, that's enough rambling from me. :P Hope you like this chapter - let the redecorating begin!

Chapter 10

Alice bounded into the kitchen to join Bella and Rosalie and their steaming mugs of coffee at the table, scowling as Bella pulled the chocolate cereal away just as she reached for it.

"Nuh-uh, Alice, no sugar for you today. You've got to be productive, and we've got to put up with you."

Alice grinned, the excitement of her plans for the day far overwhelming her momentary annoyance at Bella.

"By the way Alice," said Rosalie airily, "I hope you've scheduled multiple snack breaks for today, the boys are going to want them."

Alice blushed a little and bit her lip.

"Um, yeah, sorry about that, guys... I don't know what came over me last night."

Rosalie snorted.

"We do."

"But hey, look on the bright side!" said Alice, cheering up again. "Now we have an excuse not to do any of the heavy lifting!"

Bella's eyebrows raised in alarm.

"Heavy lifting? What have you got planned for today?"

"Relax, Bella," said Alice, rolling her eyes. "I just spotted a few things on sale in the second hand furniture store the other day. You said the apartment was being sparsely furnished, so think of it as a really early birthday and Christmas present combined. From me and Rose."

Bella glared, but knew she had no choice but to accept it. She shot Rosalie an accusing look, who shrugged, as if to say, 'you don't say no to Alice'. It was true.

"Speaking of last night," said Alice, swiftly and not-so-subtly changing the subject, "I don't mean to judge a book by its cover, but hel-LO, Edward!You said he was hot, but you never said he was that hot!" Rosalie snorted with laughter, and Bella blushed, but pretended not to notice.

"Wow, Al, I'm surprised you managed to tear your eyes away from Dr Whitlock long enough to notice him... other than "identifying" him maybe once or twice!"

Alice groaned and covered her face with her hands, peeking out between her fingers.

"D'you think he'll remember?"

"Jasper or Edward?"

"Both!" she wailed, dropping her head onto the table.

"Honey, I'm pretty sure Jasper spent the whole night remembering," laughed Rosalie, while Alice groaned again and Bella giggled. "And as for you, missy," she continued, turning to look accusingly at Bella, "what was that between you and Edward?"

"Wh- what do you mean?" faltered Bella, her cheeks reddening. "Nothing happened!"

"Exactly!" said Rose exasperatedly. "What the hell was that? You barely said two words to him, and there was I thinking you were practically in lurve with him!"

Bella cringed.

"Don't exaggerate, Rose. We've been through this already. Edward wants to be my friend."

"Whatever." Rosalie, bored of the conversation now, stood up to empty her mug into the sink. "Just don't freak out if he turns up on your doorstep someday soon with a rose held between his teeth or something. That guy has the hots for you whether you want to believe it or not. I can sense these things."

Bella snorted.

"What, like you could "sense" Royce King was into you in college just before he ended up with that Italian guy Marcus?" At this, Alice finally lifted her head up off the table again and laughed too, as Rosalie stalked from the room and went to get dressed, her long hair swishing indignantly.

~o0o~

"You. Got. Paint. In. My. Hair." Rosalie stood, gripping a paintbrush menacingly, glaring at Emmett. He grinned cheekily, waggling his own paintbrush at her, and she launched at him, slapping a thick stripe of "frosted dawn" across his face before dashing to hide behind the couch, giggling like a schoolgirl. Emmett took a minute to spit out a mouthful of paint onto the old sheet that covered the floor, before launching after Rosalie and chasing her into the kitchen, from where the others now heard slightly alarming shrieks accompanied by more giggles. Alice turned from the patch of wall she was meticulously painting, her face conflicted, as if one half of her wanted to follow and shoo them back to the living room, away from anything that could be ruined if the paint got on it; and the other half sincerely didn't want to see what Rose and Emmett were doing in there.

"I swear, if you guys get any paint on those cabinets, I will personally castrate both of you!" she shouted, her voice surprisingly loud and scary for such a small person. Giggles only slightly muted, Rosalie returned back into the living room, dragging a pouting Emmett behind her.

"I don't like you when you're working, Alice," she said, picking up her paintbrush again. "You're mean."

Alice smiled at her sardonically.

"Honey, this is me on a good day."

Jasper, whose gaze had been flickering cheekily but cautiously between his own paintbrush and Alice throughout the incident, quickly turned away and focused diligently on the patch of wall he had been allocated, his face amusingly serious again. Edward snorted quietly and mouthed something Bella couldn't figure out in Jasper's direction. Jasper scowled and flipped Edward off, at which Edward merely laughed again, reaching around Bella to get to the paint can.

Bella sighed, and continued to methodically work her brush strokes up and down, humming quietly to the song drifting in from the radio in the kitchen.

The minute Alice had walked into the apartment that morning, she had immediately abandoned whatever plans she had woken up with and demanded that Bella go down to the hardware store and buy a very specific, and almost impossible to find, shade of paint, because the living room was, as she had put it, "completely unlivable in" – which, to be fair, with its brown-streaked walls and millions of small clean rectangles where pictures had once hung, wasn't entirely inaccurate. By the time Bella had returned, Emmett, Edward and Jasper had arrived – and had hit off immediately – and together with Alice and Rosalie, they had the opened windows, covered what little furniture remained in the living room with plastic sheets Alice had pulled out of nowhere, and dutifully snooped around every inch of Bella's new home.

After snarling at Emmett and, to everyone's surprise, Jasper, for then suggesting it was time for a coffee break, Alice announced they were going to have the entire living room repainted by lunch time, before moving on to the bedroom – at which point Emmett's wiggling eyebrows had lead him very close to actually being bitten by Alice – where Edward and Jasper would assemble the bed she had bought, while she, Bella and Rosalie hung the new drapes throughout the apartment and Emmett, who continually boasted about being a handyman extraordinaire, fixed the leaky faucet in the bathroom. After this, Bella's army-general-slash-best-friend announced, they were to report back to her with their progress.

Bella began to hum a little bit louder, trying to ignore the whispers and giggles coming from Rosalie and Emmett's corner of the room. She loved Alice, but to tell the truth, her "work" persona scared her a little. Still, she was glad her friend had offered to help – without her, Bella would have ended up leaving the apartment in the squalor it had been that morning for a ridiculously long time.

"Hey, Rose," whispered Emmett, his voice carrying easily across the room. "You've got some paint on your face."

Rosalie smirked at him.

"Oh really?"

"Yeah, it's right here on your chin."

Bella glanced around, and smirked as Emmett managed to wipe a splodge of paint right across Rosalie's mouth. She glared at him again.

"Oh, that's not on, mister." Grabbing his face, she kissed him messily, covering him in paint where he had rubbed it off only minutes earlier. Rather than pushing her away, Emmett slid his paint-covered hands down her back, picking her up suddenly and allowing her to clamp her legs around his waist. All four of the others groaned loudly.

"Come on, guys!" said Bella, her amusement peeking through her facade of annoyance. "Don't defile my apartment on its very first day!" Edward and Jasper laughed, already coming to understand Emmett and Rosalie's shameless relationship, and Bella backtracked quickly. "Actually, scratch that, please don't defile my apartment ever!" Rosalie and Emmett broke apart, sniggering, and Rosalie slithered back down to the ground, as Alice surveyed the room.

"Congratulations everybody, I believe phase one is complete."

Emmett did a little cheer.

"Finally, food time!"

"Clean up first!" hollered Alice, stepping in front of Emmett and barring his way into the kitchen. Emmett stared at her in disbelief while his stomach rumbled loudly, but Alice stood her ground, hands on her hips. Grumbling, Emmett gave up, and went to collect his and Rosalie's paintbrushes. Patting him lightly on the head and muttering "good boy," Rosalie confidently sauntered over to Alice, attempting to pass her.

"Do you not have ears in your head, woman? I said clean up first!"

Rosalie rolled her eyes.

"What do you think we invited the boys here for? To sit around and look pretty?"

Alice just stared at her, while realization dawned on Rosalie's face that Alice wasn't in a joking mood today. Scowling and muttering under her breath, she went to join Emmett.

"Domineering little hussy." She passed Jasper, who was staring at Alice with a strangely desirous look on his face, as she stood in the doorway, hands on her hips, stretched up to her full height. "I said domineering, not dominatrix." She snapped her fingers loudly in his face and his trance broke, and he quickly cleared his throat and bent to pick up a can of paint, while Alice looked away and tried to pretend she wasn't blushing. Bella bent to pick up the remaining paint can, and her hand bumped into Edward's as he reached for the same thing. She gasped a little bit in surprise, and drew her hand back nervously. He grinned at her.

"Can't have the apartment owner actually doing any of the work, now, can we Bella?" He glanced over in Alice's direction pointedly, before looking back to Bella and winking. She giggled, putting her hand over her mouth in case the formidable Alice might notice them actually having fun, and then, upon realizing that her hand was in fact covered with paint, withdrew it quickly, still giggling.

Edward laughed at her paint-covered mouth, and before she knew what was happening, he had pulled the sleeve of his shirt over his hand and was using it to carefully wipe the paint off her face. She felt her cheeks heat up, and without looking at him she stood quickly, almost running into the kitchen where Alice had finally let the forces through. Alice herself was occupied showing Jasper the correct way to fill a kettle – apparently he needed a lot of very hands-on assistance – but Rosalie, managing to divert her attention from feeding Emmett little pieces of cookie for a minute, gave Bella a strange look, which Bella quickly shrugged off as she searched around for the mugs Alice had put away that morning. Edward followed her in slowly, standing in the doorway of the kitchen which was far too small for six people, and scratched the back of his head awkwardly. Bella avoided his gaze, spooning coffee into the mugs she had finally found in the cupboard above the refrigerator, trying to convince herself that she did not have a crush on Edward Cullen.

~o0o~

Later on, when Alice had gotten everybody started on "Phase 3" – "Phase 2" having been an impromptu spring-cleaning of the rest of the rooms, relatively quick but surprisingly thorough – Bella and Rosalie were standing on chairs in front of the sink, stretching and wobbling to and fro as Alice ordered them around until finally the slatted blinds were straight. As they climbed down from the chairs Rosalie grabbed Bella's hand, and after poking her head out the door to make sure all the boys were otherwise occupied, sat her down roughly.

"Right. You're going to tell us what's going on with you and Edward. I don't care if we have to sit here till midnight, but the guys might get a little suspicious."

Bella pretended to be confused.

"I don't know what you mean," she mumbled, looking down, and Alice began to tap her foot impatiently.

"You've been avoiding him like the plague since lunch time, and on top of that you've been weirdly quiet. Rose told me you were acting strange when you came into the kitchen after we finished painting the living room. Did he do something to you?"

Bella looked up, aghast.

"No! He didn't do anything. I just..." She looked down at her hands, twisting them in her lap. "I don't really know what's going on. One minute I'm laughing and we're getting on great and having a really good time, the next minute I get really scared and unsure and I just feel stupid for even thinking he could be attracted to me, and... I don't know what I'm doing, guys." She blinked rapidly, tears beginning to moisten her eyes. Rosalie slammed a screwdriver harshly onto the counter, making Bella jump, muttering something under her breath about "killing that motherfucker", and Alice crouched down next to Bella, reaching out gently to hold her hand.

"You need to let go of anything Felix ever made you feel, Bells," she said softly, brushing Bella's hair out of her face. "I know you don't believe us, but it's easy to see that Edward really likes you. The way he was looking at you today... And he looks like he's treading on eggshells, trying not to upset you, because he knows what happened with Felix. And then when you started giving him the cold shoulder... I know you didn't mean to hurt him, but the poor boy looked so confused."

Bella sniffed, and looked at her friends through her dampening eyelashes.

"You really think he feels that way?"

Rosalie crouched down to join Alice.

"We know it."

Bella sighed, still unsure, and her bottom lip wobbled.

"You need to let him know you're not mad at him, Bells. He'll be a man and get over it either way, but I know how you work, and it'll make you feel better."

Bella nodded sadly, and took a deep breath, looking up.

"You're right, guys. I'm sorry I've been such a mess like this the last few weeks. It's going to be hard, but I promise I'll try my best not to let anything related to Felix interfere with my life again."

Reviews make Edward explode from sweetness (in the best possible way :P ).

Also, the more/more exciting reviews I get, the quicker I respond to them! :P

:D

(and don't worry... chapter 11 continues straight on from this...!)