A/N: Chapter 11 Redux! Yay! Enjoy. :)
Each confession I make
BPOV
Alice was voted off the show. Apparently, she was more of a sister figure to Edward. And to me, but they didn't mention that. What was I going to do without her?!
I sniffled, blinking tears away. This show was making me hormonal. Or it was just that my one and only friend, my only confidante was leaving.
Alice rolled her eyes, but took a break from neatly packing her two dozen or so suitcases to hug me. Okay, maybe not two dozen, but the girl did have a lot of clothes. Thankfully, she wasn't at all disappointed at the recent turn of events, and instead, was incredibly excited to get on with her life post-reality TV. I was jealous of her, to be honest.
"Honey, I'm just going to a hotel in LA until the show is over. I'm not heading back to Seattle yet," she said into my hair, smoothing it down in a motherly fashion.
"What will you do until then?" I asked, not so gracefully wiping my nose with the back of my hand.
"I don't know; I have some sketches that some designers are asking to see of my dresses, and then once the show is over, Jasper and I will decide if we want to stay here or go to Seattle."
Okay, now I was insanely jealous. She had her Prince Charming and mine was gallivanting off with Lauren Mallory on their date night tonight. Life was cruel.
"Now," Alice continued, "I hung up outfits in your closet. They are separated, so you shouldn't mismatch any of them. I even color coordinated the hangers for you. They should last for a few weeks and then we can get together and do some more shopping. Okay?"
I nodded, sitting on my bed and picking at loose threads on the comforter. Bored with the threads, I picked up a throw pillow and hugged it to my chest as I watched her dance around the room throwing toiletries in a bag on her bed, unmentionables in a little silk laundry bag, my wayward clothes in their proper drawers since I have become indifferent to the state of my clothes or where they seem to end up at the end of the day.
She came to sit on the bed next to me. "Besides, you and Edward can have some alone time now that I'm gone." She nudged my shoulder playfully.
I snorted. "They finally got around to installing those stupid cameras the day after our first rendezvous. Now the only place we can even think about doing anything is the bathroom and his floor. Oh, I wonder what it would be like in the whirlpool…"
Alice laughed and I fought the urge to barrel on with my problems. I didn't want to bombard her with my problems in the midst of her eviction from the Edward Cullen Whorehouse this week, but now I was this close to breaking down. And she didn't seem to broken up (actually, she wasn't at all broken up) about her impending departure.
Things weren't going well. At all. The next morning, we had snuck up to his floor – God, he has his own floor – to take a shower without Alice interrupting us when she would inevitably come back not-so-discreetly from her date with Jasper. Throughout the day, I then found out what it was like to be fucked on the coffee table, against the wall, on his living room rug, the kitchen counter, and the seat in the shower. Needless to say, we were exhausted by the time we separated that night to our own rooms.
But it was worth it. The feeling of his sinewy muscles arching underneath my fingertips, the way he would trail his nose down the swell of my chest to the valley of my breasts and back up the path to trace the column of my neck, the way his hair felt as it fell through my fingers. I stared wistfully out the window, unaware of Alice's attempts to get my attention.
"What, oh, yeah," I returned my full concentration on Alice and what she was about to tell me. Or rather, ask me.
"Is everything okay, sweetie?" she asked, her hand on my forearm.
He and I had spent every night together since, only on his floor, because of the camera's and Alice coming and going all the time. I basked in the moments where his arms were wrapped around me, tightening subconsciously when I dared to try to pull away. I let out my breath in whoosh of air that blew my bangs out of my face at the same time.
"I'm in love with him, Al," I said softly, resting my head in her lap while she ran her hands through my hair.
"What's so bad about that?" she asked.
"Because he's everything I hate. He's egotistical and an asshole, not to mention a womanizer, but then he's sweet and caring and completely perfect in every way. And what's bad about that? There is no way he would ever be with someone like me."
Alice paused her ministrations, her hands held still in my hair. "What do you mean 'someone like you'?"
"You know, plain and simple. I work in a bar, for Christ's sake." I closed my eyes, willing all my feelings to go away. Just let me sit here with my best friend. Keep him out of my mind and away from my thoughts and my body and everything will be just dandy.
I needed a reprieve from these feelings, these overwhelming, exhaustive emotions that came barreling at me from every direction constantly. Even when I was in the same room as he, it was like being under fire but the bullets were sharp pokes in the heart, reminding me how perfect he truly was.
We were interrupted by Jasper, who came running to the doorway, stopping, breathless. "Change of plans. Bella, get dressed for dinner. Lauren has food poisoning and we need to get some sort of filming done tonight. So you're up for dinner."
I rolled my eyes and pulled myself off the bed. "Joy."
"Oh, and Bella?" he asked as I moved to my closet, fingering my clothes, mentally going through my rolodex of outfits trying to find something to wear. "Can I talk to you about something?"
"No, you may not," Alice said, shoving me into the bathroom. "She has to get ready!"
"But it's about the show," he persisted.
"It can wait, Jazz, I promise. I need to make her look hot," Alice said, kissing him quickly on the lips.
Great, now Alice was hell-bent on making Edward realize that not only was I in love with him, but that he had no other option but to fall head over heels with me as well.
Alice helped me get dressed in a tight, red silk shirt-dress and black heels. She quickly curled my hair while I put on light makeup to make my eyes less dull with the constant etch of unrequited love.
"You look perfect," Alice whispered as she hugged me.
She stood by Jasper and wrapped her arms around his waist as I walked by them to my doom. A dinner with the man I was in love with. I laughed at the irony of this – a dinner was how our whole foreplay really got started.
Roger, the man who first opened the door for me, once again opened the door for Edward and me. I learned he wasn't in fact an actor, but was in charge of the house. Edward opened up the door to a silver Volvo for me as I climbed inside. I felt him stop to try and say something, but instead shut the door after I got in and went around to his side.
"You know you look stunning, right?" he asked as he fiddled with the radio to find something decent to listen to.
I blushed, my gaze dropping to the floor before I looked up him from under hooded eyes.
"The camera crew is already at the restaurant, setting up the room," he said and I had to shove the disappointment away. This was a TV show; of course the camera crew would be there. It's stupid to think that I'd actually get to have a dinner with him alone, I thought sarcastically.
We sat in silence for the drive into the city. I'm glad that even after our more…intimate time together, we could still sit comfortably with each other. Every now and then, I would see him look at me out of the corner of my eye, almost say something, and close his mouth again. He would then return his gaze to the road.
I watched as his hand slowly reached for mine, rubbing slow circles along the skin between by thumb and forefinger. It made me soften a little inside and be a little less bitter about this ridiculous TV show. It made me feel like maybe I really was the one that he wanted and not just another girl between his Egyptian cotton sheets.
I sighed, leaning my head against the seat. "I'll be so much happier when this is all over," I said, looking out the window, seeing nothing but inky black sky. I would be able to go back to my job and stop worrying over what Edward Cullen was thinking about me, or hell, even if he was thinking of me. But the prospect of being without him, without ever feeling his fingers trace my skin, his breath taunt my lust, his mere being tempt my libido, not to mention heart, was a daunting one.
His gaze was on me. I didn't have to see it; I could feel it boring into my body. His hand pulled out of mine and he ran his arm up my forearm, urging me to look at him. "Is it that bad for you?"
I backpedaled and tried to remember what it was I had just said. "I didn't mean it like that. I just mean that I'll be able to go back to work, see my dad, get back into my routine that doesn't involve me being on primetime television."Back to where I don't have to be reminded of you everywhere I go, I thought to myself.
He gave a tight smile as I wrapped a hand around his, "I'm serious. It hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be. Like the day we first met."
He chuckled and I quietly let out a breath of relief that he didn't stay offended. "God, I thought you were going to take my head off when I used that line on you."
"It wasn't even a good line, Edward. Seriously. What was it? You don't want to watch where you're going; otherwise I'll think you'll fall for me? Amateur stuff, there, Cullen."
He smiled at me. "It worked before. Girls were just lining up to get in my bed."
I imitated the tight smile he gave me earlier and ignored the feeling that someone had just delivered a punch right into my gut. The one that literally takes your breath away and burns in pain. That's what it felt like to hear him describe what his meaningless flings were, and in a sense, what I was to him since this was no different. Right?
He looked at me carefully, but I carefully constructed my face to hide the face of unbearable pain and looked straight ahead at the road.
I don't think he noticed. Or at least, I hope he didn't. "Did you know that Lauren thought Jasper was gay when she had her interview?"
Oh, thank God he didn't notice. Or he didn't let on that he did.
I smiled and laughed, saying I had no idea. Or something like that. I stopped paying attention to what we were talking about because right now, the pain of my unrequited love was nearly suffocating me. Dramatic, yes, but oh, so painfully true.
When he opened the door to my car at the restaurant, I all but leaped out of the car. I took deep breaths, trying to control my breathing and not hyperventilate. I had even told Rosalie this show would ruin my life, but no, she didn't listen to me.
The dress was doing nothing to help me and was cutting off all circulation. I had to lean against the car to catch my breath, but that only caught Edward's attention.
"Bella? Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine, just a little motion sickness. I'll be okay in a sec."
Now he was looking at my heaving chest which really should have disgusted me because honestly, who checks out a girl when she can barely breathe? But really, it just turned me on and made me want to jump him in the parking lot. Once my breathing returned, that is.
I coughed once I had resumed normal breathing patterns and he looked at me sheepishly, and I could almost see the tips of his ears turning red from being caught ogling me.
"You sure you're okay," he asked quietly.
"I'm good, let's just go eat dinner and get the filming over with."
He looked a little disappointed that he couldn't offer his own form of CPR, but I pulled him along inside.
I prayed my epiphany from early this afternoon would only stay between Alice and me. I prayed for no word vomit and no poetic ramblings about my love for him. On camera. I felt physically ill at the thought.
It was only dinner. How hard could it be?
It was apparently a lot harder than I thought. We were sitting at the table, our chairs close together and our heads even closer together as we talked the dinner away. I had to shove every feeling that I had that day – fear, love, lust, lack of air, more fear, more love – aside because in the world of I Want to Marry Edward Cullen! there was no room for that.
"I don't know how you can say Wuthering Heights was a good book," he was arguing. "They were foolish in their love and only ended up destroying each other."
"Who's love isn't foolish?" I responded. In tomorrow's newspapers, the word was going to be that heartthrob Edward Cullen was gay because he's read Wuthering Heights.
"Not to the point of self-destruction."
"Then you've never been in love before because it hurts just as much." We were getting to dangerous territory and I had to change the topic before that ever-haunting word vomit reared its ugly head. "And you like those cheesy sci-fi novels about UFOs."
"Better than your obsession with the vampire books." He skipped over my first statement about love, thank God. It seemed that I had prayed more tonight than I have in my whole life.
"Besides, real love would be just that – real. It wouldn't let silly, fanciful things get in the way. Only the two."
"Like I said, if that's what you think, you've clearly never been in love."
"And you have?"
Damnit! "Y-yes. I have." We had long since forgot about the camera. Now all I was focusing on was how his gaze would occasionally drop to the V of my dress to catch a glimpse of my cleavage and the lacy blue bra that he admitted to loving last week. Hence me wearing it all the fucking time.
"Then it wasn't real because believe me, I know what its like and yeah, sometimes it's reckless and crazy, but if its something they both feel, they won't let it destroy them."
"Are you telling me what I feel? Because I know it's real." I was fuming. I didn't notice that I had switched to present tense and was now talking about him. He most likely wouldn't notice either.
"So you're still in love with the prick that cheated on you?" Okay, he did notice.
"How do you know about that?" I didn't talk to him about that, did I? I don't think I did. It was hard to remember at this very minute as we were in a verbal war, but I think I would remember talking about that.
"All I know is that if someone did that to me, I wouldn't go around parading my feelings for him on TV!"
Now we were both mad. Yet another reason we could never be together: we would kill each other. I had pushed my chair away from him and was now a good two feet away, which was good because otherwise I would have stabbed him with my fork or the butter knife, whichever was closest.
"I wasn't talking about him!" I yelled. "I'm in love with you, you idiot. And believe me, it most definitely is self-destructing. Especially when you know the other person doesn't give a shit about you in return."
Word vomit. To the exponential degree. He just had to get me started. I was out of breath from my rant and let out my next sentence in a whisper of a breath of air. "I'm in love with you."
"Bella," he said, reaching out to where I had stood up after I actually reached for the butter knife and he had followed suit. "I don't know what to say except…"
I sat down. "I think if the natural response isn't there, then we should just leave it alone."
"Bella, please," he was pleading with me and it was breaking my heart. But I had given him mine after it had been all but trampled on by the last man I loved and I sure as hell wouldn't let Edward destroy me next.
I knew I would probably never love anyone to the degree that I loved the man before me, because honestly, who could? But I wasn't going to let him take all my pride and dignity with him in the rejection.
"Just take me home, Edward," I said quietly, putting my napkin on my plate and standing back up again. I walked to the exit and stood by the car waiting for him until he came outside. He looked worn and defeated, just how I felt.
The car ride was silent. I was mortified. I just told the man that I loved him on national television. What did I say about my pride? That I would keep it? I think that was shot to hell now. I'll be known as the Rejected Sweetheart in the Enquire after the show aired.
He just didn't talk. His knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel so tightly, and the classical music was just barely audible and he did nothing to change it.
I got out of the car as soon as he pulled up to the house, not even waiting for the car to be completely stopped. The door opened for me and I went inside, not bothering to look back at him. I don't know what I would have seen, but so far, this was nothing like a fairytale. He didn't come after me, declaring his undying love for me or sweeping me off my feet. I was no princess because he most certainly was Prince Charming, and there was never a chance for me to actually be with him.
I knew it the whole time and I still let myself fall. Stupid girl.
I climbed upstairs, a battle in and of itself. I was exhausted, even more so than earlier this evening. I had bared my soul and lifted this huge burden, but it had only come crashing back down on top of me. Alice took one look at my face, my perfectly erected mask, and knew without even asking. She wrapped her arms around me in a tight hug, smoothing my hair and telling me it was going to be okay.
Somehow she pulled me to the bed and held me until I fell asleep.