A little more. Thank you for reading!

The Fall…

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"So you went."

"I went. I was really happy about transferring at first, too. I loved Northern California and the simple prestige of going to Stanford was exhilarating. It took a few months before I noticed the darker side of things. The skipped classes. The parties. The weekend trips down to L.A."

She pauses for a moment, remembering that she'd first suspected Edward of cheating on her. Sometimes she still thinks that would have been easier to deal with than the truth. Then again, she knows that she'd just have ended up in therapy for a whole host of other issues if that had been the case.

She glances back at Tia who waits patiently for her to continue.

"He eventually admitted he'd been going to auditions, and I tried to be supportive, I just didn't understand all the secrecy. Until I went with him to L.A. the first time, that is." She looks down at her nails again. "He tried really hard to hide it from me, but when he left me alone at some Hollywood party where I didn't know a soul, I knew something was seriously wrong. It wasn't like him to leave me like that. He was somewhat of the jealous type, even if I wasn't."

"Did you actually catch him at it?" Tia asks, handing her friend a box of tissues. Bella hadn't even realized she needed them.

She takes them and shakes her head. "No, I didn't see him, but I put it together. He was sniffling a lot and wiping his nose when he found me. His eyes were all glossy, too, and he was laughing a lot – acting like I'd just imagined wandering around for almost an hour by myself."

"What did you do?"

"I confronted him. I asked him straight out if he was high. He got really pale, then tried to make the typical excuses, so I walked out on him. I took a cab straight back to our hotel and packed my bags. I expected him to chase after me, but he didn't. He didn't come back until early the next morning and he was completely shit-faced when he walked in the door."

"Christ, Bella… I'm so sorry."

"I'd never seen him like that before," Bella says, getting a little lost in the memory. "It scared me so much that I ended up staying and taking care of him. I didn't know what to do after that, so we went home without speaking about it again. It took me an entire week to summon the courage to confront him about it. He was scared, I could tell, and he confessed that he'd been partying occasionally for years; always when I wasn't around. He didn't bat an eye when I gave him an ultimatum and promised he'd quit, that he'd do anything to keep from losing me."

She sighs and Tia nods, knowingly.

"The story is pretty standard from there," Bella concludes. "He wasn't ever really in treatment for the right reasons. When he got his first big feature film roll, he chose his career over mine. He chose a life of glitz and glamour over a life with me. And ultimately, he chose the drugs again and again."

"When did you leave him?"

Bella laughs, though it's really not funny. "Which time?"

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