Die Chapter 11

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight. Again, thank you to Fran for all of her help and guidance with this story. Also, thanks to all the people continuing to read and leaving me reviews. I love hearing from you guys. It seriously makes my day and I love to hear reader's thoughts on what's going on in the story. :)

We woke up a few hours later with only five minutes to spare. Edwardthrew me my clothes and we both hurried to get dressed. I couldn't afford to take another zero on a lab and I certainly couldn't afford the distaste my TA might develop for me if I perpetually skipped.

I realized as we were heading out the door that I had left my bag and jacket in the lecture hall. My chest tightened. My pills were in that bag. How was I supposed to live without my medication?

"Is everything okay?" Edward asked, brushing my hair away from my face and opening the door.

I nodded though it wasn't really. "Yeah. I'm great." I offered him a tight smile. "I just realized that...When everything was going on, I forgot to go back to my seat and grab my stuff. Everything is in that bag." And by everything, I meant my Valium.

Edward frowned. "Well, maybe Alice and Rose grabbed it."

I hoped to God they had. "Yeah, maybe."

By the time we made it to the lab building on the far side of campus, we were a good ten minutes late. We slipped in as quietly as we could manage, coming in right in the middle of the lab instructions. I sat at my usual place beside Alice and Rose's portion of the bench. When she heard my chair move, Alice's head whipped around. She leaned close and whispered, "Oh, my God, Bella. Thank, God, you're okay!"

I stiffened as she wrapped an arm around me. Our activities warranted a warning glare from the TA and I hoped I hadn't made her too mad.

"Thanks, Alice. I'm fine." When she pulled back, she looked outraged. I had never seen Alice so angry. "What's the matter?"

"What the matter? Bella, the last time you disappeared with him, I found you...ugh! And then, you just leave the lecture with him again and never come back? I didn't even know what to think, Bella."

"Do you have my stuff?" I asked hopefully. Honestly, I couldn't focus on anything but getting my prescription back. Alice scowled at me. Perhaps, that had been a little inappropriate.

"Yes, I have your stuff, Bella."

"Oh, thank goodness."

She tossed me my bag and I hugged it to my chest, along with my threadbare old jacket. "Where were you today?" she hissed, eyes wide.

"I'm sorry, Alice." I heard someone say from my left. I turned to find Edward peering around me, his signature crooked smile lighting up his features. I felt my stomach flip-flop. "It's my fault. Bella was with me. We should have come back and told you we were leaving."

"I don't have anything to say to you." Alice huffed.

Rose, who had been silent up until now finally piped in. "Al, don't berate Bella for finally getting some. Look at how much more relaxed she is. If you ask me, Edward's done us a public service."

"There's nothing wrong with Bella just the way she always was. Ever since she met Edward, she's been all over the place. You didn't see her Monday night. It was...not Bella."

"Hello!" I hissed at them, giving my lab instructions a cursory glance before passing them off to Edward. "Can we not talk about Bella as if Bella isn't here?"

Alice nodded and Rose scoffed.

"Sorry, Bel."

"It's okay, Al. Thanks for the concern but I really am fine."

Edward and I divided our tasks between the two of us and set to work on today's assignment. I half considered popping a couple of my little blue pills but decided I didn't really need them. Instead, I mindlessly measured out the samples and deposited them into our LB plates. Today, I was somewhere else. I was back in Edward's bed. I thought about the possibility of Edward taking me home with him after lab today and the idea made me giddy. I was entirely consumed by the events of the past few days. I felt like a different person. I couldn't stop smiling, couldn't stop stealing glances at Edward as we worked. Why was everything suddenly so different?

I noticed halfway through prepping our materials that Edward seemed uncomfortable. I felt my face fall. I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop and here it was.

"You okay?" I questioned. I felt as though everyone had been asking that a lot lately.

Edward nodded, pursing his lips. He opened his mouth to speak, hesitating. "What did Alice mean when she said Rose didn't see you the other night?"

There was a sudden tension between us. I didn't want to tell him how upset I'd been. I didn't want him to see that side of me.

I felt myself crashing.

I was panicking again.

There were so many things that Edward didn't know about me, so many ugly things that I hadn't told him. What if he didn't understand? What if he wanted nothing to do with any of it? I wasn't sure I would be able to blame him if he didn't.

"It's nothing. I don't wanna talk about it." My evasion came out in a rushed whisper. Edward's brows furrowed.

"Can we not do this, Bella? You don't need to hide things from me. If we're going to be...whatever we're going to be...you have to be honest with me."

I sighed because I knew he was right. I couldn't lie to him.

"Fine. After I had left your place on Monday, I went home and got rip roaring drunk. Okay? It was really embarrassing and Alice called me and realized I was blitzed and came over."

"So...I guess this isn't a regular habit of yours then?" Edward asked, his eyes carefully avoiding mine. I felt as though this was some sort of breach in the contract. Why did I have to share my truths with him if he couldn't even give me the courtesy of reading his eyes?

"No." I snapped, ready to move on from this topic. I was ashamed of my actions. I hated alcohol. I hated what it turned people into, but I had done it anyway, perhaps a bit too well. "I never drink. I hate drinking."

Again, Edward nodded without looking at me. I waited impatiently for him to let me in on what he was thinking. I couldn't stand the suspense any longer. I stopped what I was doing and fixed my eyes on the side of his face, hoping that he would notice them burning a hole in his cheek and give me the answers that I wanted. I saw him catch my gaze in his peripheral vision and raised a brow, tapping my foot anxiously. He stopped and turned to me, taking a deep breath.

"I'm so sorry, Bella."

"Is that all you have to say?"

"I'm just so damn sorry. I should have handled this better..."

"No. Don't be sorry. It's my fault, too." I added the too because there was no way I was letting him off the hook. I was too proud for that.

Edward silently agreed with me and resumed whatever it was he was doing.

Lab felt long and torturous. I couldn't stand the silent tension between us. I wanted to touch him, wanted to look at him, but there were too many eyes on us. The last thing I wanted was to draw everyone else into whatever it was that Edward and I had. I wasn't even sure what I was to him yet, or what he was to me. However, something in the pit of my stomach made me feel as if this was the beginning of something big. It was that same feeling you get the night before leaving on a trip or the last day of school, as though you're finally about to get something that you've been anticipating for a long time.

The two of us sat through our incubation time somewhat quietly while the rest of the class buzzed around us. The boy on the side of the bench opposite me flirted with the pretty foreign girl he had as a partner and another two poked fun at his efforts. Rose and Alice talked with one another in the corner of our bench, leaning over work they had made mistakes on and giggling about things I had never really understood … though I thought that now I might. Either way, I could never talk about Edward and me the way the girls would talk about the men they had been with in the past. Everything between us seemed so private, so personal.

Toward the end of lab, the TA asked us to look at our samples under a microscope. I plugged in the heavy machine and flipped on the switch. I grabbed one of the mounts we had made and struggled a bit with the clamps on the platform. My hands were shaking again. I wasn't sure if it was my lack of coordination or my nerves, but it made my cheeks flush. Suddenly, I felt cool hands steadying my own, lifting the metal mechanism and fastening the slide into place. I turned to Edward and smiled.

"Shaky hands," I said shrugging and he smiled so brilliantly I couldn't help but beam back at him.

"Sure." he scoffed, leaning in close and whispering under his breath, "Your blush betrays you."

I pursed my lips, ever the stubborn one. "Not nervous." I insisted.

My eyes slid to the right and I caught sight of Alice and Rose, eyes glued to Edward and my interaction, mouths slightly agape. I questioned them with my eyes. I knew this was different for me. I knew it was sudden. But I didn't like the way their attention seemed to have shifted from trying to convince me to sleep around to critiquing my exploits. Rose and Alice always seemed to do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. Why should I be held to a different standard? I appreciated that they were concerned about my wellbeing, but I was a big girl. I could handle myself...kind of.

Maybe that wasn't exactly true.

Either way, I decided not to think about my inclination towards instability. I liked the way Edward made me feel and I didn't want to think any deeper regarding the subject. Didn't I deserve that? To be happy, if only for a little while? I smiled at the girls and offered them a thumbs up. It was the lamest consolation I could have come up with, but it was the best I could do. I felt stupid with excitement and it was seeping into all of my actions. Maybe I was crazy but I couldn't bring myself to care.

Edward and I went to turn in our final work and I could feel my breath catching. Lab had never felt so long. The line to our TA's table seemed endless and I tapped my foot impatiently. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Edward smirking at me.

I turned to face him, my eyebrows shooting up in the air. "What?"

He shook his head and laughed, presumably at me. "What happened to you?"

"Nothing," I exclaimed, a bit too defensively.

"I've never seen you this keyed up before. You're like...perky."

I squinted my eyes at him, sticking out my tongue to let him know that I was joking.

"You two are sickening." I heard someone whisper behind me. When I turned, it was Rose. "I love it. Don't let Alice berate you. You two are having a little fun. What's the harm in that?"

What was the harm in it?

I felt ecstatic, but something about the way Rose had said 'having a little fun' bothered me. The gears in my brain began to turn, against my better judgment, and I found myself following the rather depressing line of thought Rose had set me on. Edward had obviously had sex with other girls and I was just one of them. But, to me, Edward was in a league of his own. We were having fun that was true. But did that mean the fun would eventually end? Of course. I wasn't that naive. I knew that nothing lasted forever and no one actually ended up with their first. Could I even see myself ending up with anybody?

It occurred to me that up until this point in my life, I had never really thought of any sort of future for myself. I was just drifting through life haphazardly, never giving a single thought to the kind of person I wanted to be or the type of life that might make me happy because I had never been happy. I was only trying to get through one day at a time.

I woke up, got dressed, took my pills, and went to sleep. That was life and I suppose I thought it would continue indefinitely.

I wasn't looking for anything.

I didn't expect anything.

Then, there was Edward.

I looked at his profile, hoping he wouldn't catch me staring again. He was so strong, proud, and confident. He was everything that I had never been. He was persistent, that was for sure, and I respected him for that. He knew what he wanted, at least more so than I did. Since he had come into my life, I had been breathing Edward day and night and I wasn't sure if that was good or bad. All I knew was that it scared me to death.

I admired the way his nose sloped, breaking its continuity near the bridge so that itlooked just slightly crooked. He had long eyelashes for a guy and a sharp jaw. He was tall and lanky. The big sweaters and button-ups he wore reminded me of Kurt Cobain, but his smile was all Edward-witty and sly as though he knew something that no one else did.

Edward's head turned and his gaze caught mine. We were the next partners in line and he urged me forward. I smiled and handed over our papers. Edward talked to the TA and she beamed at him because he just had that effect on people. Edward was light and friendly, totally unlike me.

"You ready to go?"

I nodded though I wasn't quite sure exactly where we were going or why he assumed we would be going there together. I was tied in knots trying to decide whether I was secure or insecure in whatever sort of relationship Edward and I had. But he was floating on air; all of the anxiety he had displayed earlier was gone. He wasn't worried about anything, I could tell.

I told Rose and Alice that I would see them on Friday and Alice asked me to call her when I got home. I wondered briefly if I would be going home at all tonight.

In my mind, my relationship with Edward had been propelled into the stratosphere. Suddenly, he was everything. I was obsessed though I had only known him for a few short months.This, I had been told, was one of the biggest flaws in my character.

I fixated.

Edward had been one of those fixations for a while now, even if I didn't want to admit it. Everything I had done since January had either begun or ended with Edward. Part of me liked to think that it was some cosmic power that had been working to bring us together. Maybe, I kept being dropped into his lap because I was meant to be there.

However, I couldn't shake the nagging suspicion that I had been doing it on purpose. Suddenly, I realized I had been looking and waiting for Edward, just as he had been looking and waiting for me. The allure of the campus was not the silence or the solitude. Maybe, all semester, I had been showing up here after classes in hopes of running into Edward the way I had that first night in the library.

If that was the case, it had worked beautifully.

When we were alone again, Edward asked me what I was doing later. This made me laugh. After everything we had shared with one another, Edward's strategic approach to our relationship had not changed. I got the feeling that Edward liked to keep things casual. He was light and humorous-again, nothing like me, but I liked it. I liked the way he made everything seem so easy, as though we had known each other all of our lives. I did not intimidate him and neither did my quirks and oddities. He disregarded them. They were only another part of me, the same as any other part. I just hoped this trend would continue.

"I don't have any plans in particular. Why do you ask?" I responded, glancing up at him, a small smirk playing on my lips.

His smile was blinding. "Well...I've been your lab partner for, what … two months now? And we've had study dates, kinda...and accidental meetings and a hookup or two..." he winked at me and I felt my cheeks heat. "I thought maybe it was time we actually sat down and had a meal together, you know, like two respectable participants in a mutually agreed upon courtship."

I tried not to laugh. Edward was struggling to keep a straight face.

"Respectable, mutually agreed upon courtship, huh?"

He nodded. A chuckle escaped his mouth when he tried to speak. "Yeah...or dating. Whichever term you prefer."

"Should I draw up a contract?" I questioned, raising a brow at him. It was cold and the wind was blowing fairly hard, causing my hair to fall into my face, but I didn't notice.

"Would that help my chances of holding onto you? Like, is there a six-month lease or ...?"

I smacked his arm. "Ah, shut up!"

"I'm kidding! I'm kidding!"

He pulled me into him and led me across the street toward the cafeteria where the girls and I usually ate lunch. Typically, I didn't stay on campus after labs. I didn't like driving home in the dark by myself, but now that I was with Edward. I wasn't thinking about that. I wasn't thinking about anything, in fact, other than what was going to happen between us tonight.

"Edward, I'm totally broke right now." I reminded him.

He just shrugged, ignoring my protest and ushering me towards the entrance. He gave the lady at the register his student card and told her that he'd like to pay for mine as well. I gave him a look, which he also ignored.

"Thank you." He smiled and pulled me along beside him, leading me towards a booth near the back.

"Edward, you didn't need to do that."

"Oh, yes, I did. Think of it as me investing in my future," he jested, winking at me as he threw his bag down on the bench on the opposite side of the small, white table.

I rolled my eyes even though his words made my stomach flip-flop.

We separated then, heading in different directions and joining the dinner lines at various stations of the cafeteria. I grabbed a tray and filled it up with whatever looked edible: soup, fries, apple pie, and broccoli salad. I poured myself a cup of coffee. I could feel a headache coming on and wondered if it was because I had skipped a dosage. Even if that was the cause of my discomfort, I didn't want to take out my pills in front of Edward. He probably knew about them. He had seen them the day I'd bumped into him in the cafeteria, but some part of me hoped he had overlooked them.

I didn't want to call attention to that part of myself.

Not right now, at least.

I made my way back to the table and waited silently for Edward, nibbling on my fries and thinking how much things had changed between us since Monday. I had to admit that I had underestimated him. He was a better guy than I had given him credit for, or at least, he seemed to be.

"Bella?" I heard someone say over my shoulder.

I turned to meet the eyes of whoever had spoken. I did not recognize him. Had I met him before? Apparently, he knew me.

"Um...I'm sorry?"

"You're in K-101 lab with me, right? You sit at the table right across from mine."

I racked my brain trying to remember seeing him. I must have, but I couldn't recall. He was fairly average: nondescript. His hair was dirty blonde, his eyes pale blue, his skin slightly tanned. I was sure there were a hundred boys just like him at this school. He was a dime a dozen.

I pretended to remember him. "Oh, yeah, I don't think we've ever really met before, though."

"No." he conceded. "It's Mike, Mike Newton; really nice to finally meet you, Bella."

"Yeah." I responded, unsure of what else I was supposed to say. What was the point of him coming over here?

I waited for him to leave, but he didn't, he just stood there looking at me. Thankfully, Edward slid into the seat across from mine a moment later.

"Oh. Hey, Mike. What's shakin'?" he asked, smiling up at my unexpected visitor.

"Oh. Edward. You know Bella?"

Edward's brow scrunched in confusion. "Well, she is my lab partner."

"Oh, right. Okay. Cool." Mike looked away from Edward quickly, turning his attention back to me. "I'll see you around then, Bella?"

"Um...sure?"

He was gone just as abruptly as he'd appeared and there I sat, confused.

"What was that all about?" Edward queried, his crooked smile breaking my heart a little.

"I have no idea." I shook my head. "I don't...I don't even know that guy. Do you know him?"

Edward nodded 'yes,' then broke out into a fit of laughter.

"I think you have an admirer, Bella."

I pursed my lips, lifting my mug of coffee to take a sip.

"I'm not amused."

Edward shook his head. "You never are. Poor guy."

I ignored his comment. "Are you suggesting that Mike is my only admirer?" I probed, curious to see what Edward would say. I would be a liar if I said I wasn't fishing for compliments.

Edward tilted his head from side to side. "The thing is...I'm not an admirer. An admirer is someone who has a particular regard for someone."

"All right, Mr. Human-Dictionary." I stuck my tongue out at him, popping a fry into my mouth and taking another sip of coffee.

"Well, the point is...I'm kinda hoping you consider me to be something more than an admirer."

My heart was in my throat.

I swallowed hard, hoping Edward wouldn't notice the effect he had on me.

"I might." I managed to say, my voice sounding a bit more mouse-like than I would have liked.

Edward nodded, accepting my vague reply.

We sat in silence for a few moments, our eyes locked on one another. It was strange how comfortable I felt. All my life I had kept the people around me at a distance. I came naturally to me. I wasn't sure that I really knew how to be close and open. Nevertheless, suddenly, I found myself wanting Edward to know me—really, truly know me.

I felt his fingers skimming over the bare skin of my forearm and the contact made me shiver.

I smiled.

Everything had suddenly changed and I had never felt anything more exhilarating.

I felt alive.