Risbee: Happy Sunday!
CPW: Yes, it is sorta wonderful today isn't it?
Risbee: We're posting our story, I placed second in the Plot Bunny contest yesterday for my o/s Gotta Have You, and I'm sure there is other stuff going on.
CPW: Nothing as important as your Plot Bunny results. I'm proud of you and think everyone should go take a read of it, 'cause it was really cute and funny.
Risbee: You're making me blush.
CPW: And you're gonna make me hurl. You know I don't do cute and fluffy. Oh and I should point out that the same one shot is nominated in the Single Shot awards. Voting starts tomorrow at thesingleshotawards (dot) blogspot (dot) com
Risbee: Whatever. Anyways, we don't own Twilight; but we are halfway done writing the outtake for this story, bought by the wonderful sharkbellywhite in the FGB Auction. Thanks honey! Our poor, overworked, yet wonderful Beta MaggieMay14 will shoot us soon.
CPW: Onto the show. Bring on the Turkey!
BPOV
I never professed to be able to see into the future. In fact, I'd always been skeptical of anybody that felt the need to consult with their psychic friends to help them make decisions. People that could read minds or see visions, yeah they were freaky. Miss Cleo, I'm looking at you. I freely admit this though. I would have given anything to know two months ago that I would be relying on Renee Swan to get me home for Thanksgiving. Jesus, Mary and Joseph this was going to be a long trip.
Siobhan would be proud. Ha!
I mean, I wasn't necessarily surprised that she had to come get me. The dorms were due to be closed for the holiday and everybody had to go home, or at least find other accommodations. It's not like I had a car here and riding home with Edward wasn't exactly a feasible option these days, so Renee was regrettably my only option.
Not that Esme and Renee didn't try to force the issue, but I wouldn't allow it. Lord knows how many times I had to explain to Renee that unless they wanted to buy me a car, one of them would have to pick me up. I know we had the same conversation every day there for a while, sometimes twice a day. There was one day I was pretty convinced I heard Esme in the same room as my mom, having the same conversation with Edward, which meant they had compared notes. Gee, big shock there.
Eventually, they eased up a bit which made me wonder what Edward said to his mom to get her to drop the issue. Did he know, like I did, that they tag-teamed us? Still easing up did not mean giving up completely ,as was evident from the fact that I was still trying to deal with the fallout of our breakup from Renee. The woman was relentless and I honestly think it was pure fear of having to handle Thanksgiving alone that finally convinced her to come get me. Well, that and the fact that I threatened to hitchhike knowing full well that chief-daddy would never allow it.
"Well, I just don't understand why you couldn't just suck up your pride a little bit and ask him for a ride, Bella. I mean, surely he wouldn't leave you stranded and starving in the dorms over the holiday weekend."
"Mom, I really don't want to talk about it… again. Look, I've explained it to you already thousands of times. Things are just too weird right now. We're not speaking really, we can barely make eye contact and I didn't want to make him feel anymore uncomfortable than we already do around each other. Plus, Emmett was riding with him and it wouldn't have been fair to him either. They both deserve a stress free ride home so just let me handle it, okay?"
Just let me handle it. I seem to be asking that a lot lately.
"All I'm saying is that what if I didn't have a car?"
"But you do."
"But what if I didn't?"
"Mom, you do."
"But what if I didn't?"
Oh my God, fucking shoot me.
"Mom, if you didn't have a car, things might have played out differently. I could have hopped on a Greyhound. I could have found some other student going towards Forks. I could have stayed in a hotel for the weekend and ordered room service. I could have tied a bunch of helium balloons around my waist and hoped for the best. But the fact of the matter is, you DO have a car, you DO have the capability to come get me and I DIDN'T have to ask Edward. Can we just not talk about it anymore? Please?"
"Balloons would never have worked, Bella. You could have been snagged on tree branches and popped one and then where would you be but stuck up in a tree."
Is she for real?
"And besides, it would have taken you way too long. You would have missed Thanksgiving altogether and by the time you got home it would be time to go back to school."
"So not the point, Mom."
I reached forward and turned on the stereo before leaning back on the headrest and closing my eyes, deciding to focus on the music instead of trying to talk to her. Maybe she'd think I was sleeping or something, I didn't really care. I just didn't want to talk about Edward for a little while. I thought about him though, and about us constantly, and I just wanted a few minutes before things got weird again, because with us all going back to Forks… yeah, it was inevitable. Well, assuming I even saw him of course.
I needed to see him.
Two whole miles. We made it about two miles before I heard it and my eyes popped open like somebody shot me. I looked over at mom and she was trying to look innocent, with her hands on the wheel at ten and two and her back perfectly straight and avoiding eye contact, but it made her look anything but.
"No. No way. I am NOT listening to Delilah and her sappy love stories for three hours. I will WALK home first."
"I can't control what's on the radio Bella and really, she's not that bad. You might even learn a thing or two. She's syndicated for a reason you know."
"Look, you can try and make me listen to everybody's sob stories and romance and all that shit," I would not apologize, I would not apologize, I would not apologize, "but I can't handle it. I loved him Mom. I did… I do… but I did not love how we were together. It wasn't the same." The tears started flowing, my nose was running and if I wasn't barreling down the highway at a reckless fifty-five miles per hour with a cop's wife, I would have crawled into her lap and gone fetal. Because she was my momma and I needed her to comfort me.
"Of course it wasn't the same baby. You actually had to work at it for the first time ever because you had something together. You both tiptoed around it for so long that you never had to really face it before. And then when it did click, when it did happen, it was so powerful that it freaked you both out. Hell, even your dad said something about the connection between you two being cosmic. Your dad has never used the word cosmic in all the years that I've known him."
I laughed and choked at the same time because I wanted it all to be over. I wanted to be with Edward. I wanted to be strong. I wanted to prove a point to anybody, everybody or somebody. But at this point, I wasn't really sure what it was all about anyway. I just wanted things to be right.
I thought about what my mom said though, and she was correct. Edward and I never had to try before, we just were. We danced around and had this incredible thing going, but at the end of the day, he went to his house, I went to my house and we had our separate lives. At UW, we were each others lives. We didn't have parents, or little sisters, to walk in on us. Granted, we did have Emmett and Siobhan, but still… for the first time, the only two people in our relationship were the two of us. It was terrifying and beautiful and so uncharted that I think we were both a bit freaked out. At least, I was finally starting to believe that I was; I could only assume that he was too.
Three easy-listening hours later we got home and the second we pulled in the driveway, I started crying.
"Get it together Bella. You're all splotchy and you are going to scare your dad."
I nodded and grinned because I knew she was right, Charlie was a tough guy but he couldn't handle tears, especially from his girls. In fact, they gave him hives and then he had to take Benadryl, which would result in him falling asleep on the couch. After spending all that time in the car with mom, I needed him to keep her entertained tonight because I'd done my time.
I grabbed my bags out of the back of the car and walked inside. It looked the same, but different. Like only two people lived there, which I guess technically they did. I was just a visitor there now… wow, that hit me kind of hard. I looked around and tried to figure out exactly what it was, it just felt like something was missing. It looked… empty?
There was a note from dad saying that he had to run out for a few things, but that he would be home for dinner and as much as I wanted to see him, I was almost relieved that he wasn't at home. It would give me a chance to go upstairs, decompress, take a long shower and get myself put back together before I had to put on my brave face and pretend that everything was fine. I walked up the stairs and stood in the doorway of my room taking everything in. It felt empty, just like downstairs, but worse. My bed was there, but that was it. All parts of me, all signs that it was my room, they were all gone and were in my dorm room… and even then most of them were stuffed in a box under my bed.
It then struck me as I looked around… that was what was missing downstairs. All the pictures with the Cullen's were put away. All the gifts, trinkets and signs that they even existed had been moved. God, what had I done? This had become so much more than just about Edward and me, but I didn't mean for it to be. Whatever ended up happening between Edward and me, I didn't want to have this kind of impact on everybody else. It shouldn't have any effect on them because they weren't in the relationship with him; I was. This was so epically wrong.
I felt like I was on an endless roller coaster. I didn't know what to do, how to act, where to go or who to talk to. I just wanted somebody to tell me what to do.
I had to laugh at the irony. All this time I'd wanted people to trust me and let me make my own path. Now that I was lost, I had nobody to turn to. Fuck. Why was this so hard?
The emptiness, the sterility, it was all too much. I had to get out of here and let it sink in.
I had Edwards' number halfway dialed before I even realized what I was doing and deleted them knowing that that it would have been more than just a little bit awkward. He wasn't my lifeline anymore. Fortunately, I snapped out of it and called Angela. I needed to get away from here, away from the ghosts that weren't there, but yet still were. I could feel him like a phantom limb and I felt smothered by the nothingness. She agreed to come over and go for a walk since I couldn't decide where I wanted to go; I just knew it had to be somewhere. There were just too many memories attacking me all at once and I needed a clean slate to lay everything out there so I could and try and make something of this mess.
I grabbed my coat off my bed and went downstairs to tell mom where I was going and found her doing yoga in the living room. For what it's worth, it is not easy to carry on a conversation with your mother when she is in downward facing dog. It's a bit disturbing actually. I had forgotten how much but it was my cue to wait outside.
Angela pulled up a few minutes later because, well, because it never takes more than a few minutes to get anywhere in Forks. She just smiled at me and we started walking, not talking, just walking. I thought about everything she said to me when I saw her a few weekends ago and most of it I could figure out, but some of it made me angry. Especially when we ran into him when we got back to the dorm. I may have been drunk but I don't think I'd ever forget it.
"See what you've done to her? This is all your fault, you know."
"Bella, you're so much better off without Edward anyways. You can be free to do whatever you want to do. Who cares what Edward thinks right?"
"He wouldn't have let you drink tonight, he probably wouldn't have wanted me to visit, and he surely wouldn't have let you get a tattoo."
His fault. Better off without Edward. Wouldn't have let you. That wasn't it at all. She made him seem like this monster and he wasn't. I needed to know why she said it and I needed to make sure she knew that he wasn't that way at all. He was the kindest, most genuine, most perfect person I'd ever known. I hated that my issues tainted the way she saw him.
My issues. Huh.
"Back in Seattle when we ran into Edward and I was wasted… why did you say those things? Edward didn't keep me locked in a basement. He didn't hurt me physically and he wasn't some sort of tyrant. You can't think about him like that. Promise me that you don't think badly about him."
"Bella, you said he was picking your friends and that he didn't trust you."
"He was… sorta." And he was, but just not to the degree that she was talking about.
"Well, he either was or he wasn't. I've watched plenty of Lifetime movies to know what an abusive relationship looks like."
"Oh my God Angela, you cannot possibly think he was abusive. Just… just no. He can't kill spiders, he can't watch commercials about the animal shelter, and he has to eat the last Peep because he doesn't want it to get lonely. Ok, maybe I shouldn't have told you that, but really, he's not as bad as you make him seem. I was just frustrated with him and the whole situation."
"But you said…"
"I know what I said and I stand by it, but you are completely magnifying the situation and making it seem a kazillion times worse. There is no abuse; he simply doesn't trust me to make my own decisions. Add that to the fact that we're not the same people as we were before and there you have it." I tripped over a pothole and landed on my knees in the middle of the street, ripping my jeans. Awesome, now I was bleeding on the outside as well as on the inside.
"Okay then. What about this, Bella? Have you ever thought that maybe his eyesight is better than yours? That maybe he knows he has to look out for the potholes and the Liam's of the world because he knows you don't like to see the imperfections and flaws in life? That maybe he'd rather protect you than change you? That maybe the last thing on earth he wants to do is crush your spirit?"
I thought about what she was saying and this time Edwards words from the other night washed over me in a wave.
"Why do you care, Edward?"
"Just because we broke up doesn't mean I stopped caring about you."
"You could have fooled me."
As it all started to sink in, I realized that for the first time in my life I had lied to Edward. I knew he cared, that even if we never spoke to each other again he would always care in some aspect, just as I would always care for him. How I could even allude to something different was crazy talk. But that night I spoke out of anger, I spoke out of hurt, and I spoke out of line. It may have cost me everything.
"So what do I do about it? And no more of that reverse psychology bullshit. I'm confused enough about the whole situation as it is. Just tell me what to do." She started to open her mouth, but before she could say a word, I quickly interjected. "Yes, I know what I'm saying. I have no pride anymore."
"It's not a matter of pride, Bella. Nobody wants you to give that up. Though as far as telling you what to do, I can't do that and you know it. Obviously you want to fix it, so do it. It's your relationship, your responsibility. You're a big girl; you can take care of yourself. Now, say hi to Ben." She picked up her phone and held it out to the side up to take our picture, but before I knew what happened she turned and kissed me on the mouth.
"What the hell was that?" I laughed and watched as she hit send on her phone.
"Just setting the balls in motion. If I know you and Edward the way I'm pretty sure I do, you're not the only one venting right now. Cute, huh?" She showed me the picture and aside from the shocked/deer in the headlights expression on my face it was actually a pretty awesome picture. "He called Ben right after you called me you know. They're together now."
Somehow I found comfort in that. It reminded me of how we leaned on them before, when we were trying to figure things out and here we were doing it again. Cue Elton John singing the 'Circle of Life'. I still didn't know what was going to happen between us, but at least I didn't feel like things were as hopeless as they seemed hours earlier.
We wandered around a bit more, eventually returning back to my house and I invited Angela inside because I knew my parents would have loved to see her. She declined though once she got a return message from Ben. I didn't even have to ask what it said; the blush creeping across her cheeks was more than enough. In all honestly though, it was probably a good thing that she didn't stay because I obviously had a lot of thinking to do.
And over the next few days I thought a lot. When I wasn't sleeping, I was thinking. I thought while I did laundry, while I tried to reorganize my room and while I took a break from studying for exams. I thought about things when I tried to watch a Seahawks game with Charlie until he figured out my heart wasn't in it and told me I could go. I honestly didn't mean to cheer when the other team scored, it just happened. I was even thinking as I drove to the diner on Thanksgiving Day to pick up dinner.
That's right. Diner food for Thanksgiving. That was all my fault too.
I knew Renee couldn't cook something so overwhelming as a Thanksgiving dinner by herself. That was why we always did holidays with Edward, Esme, Carlisle and Alice… sweet Alice. I wondered if she was still bossing Jasper around and if he was still putting up with it. Maybe I'd write her a letter for the future with all my sage relationship advice. Snort. A letter of 'don'ts' because something tells me the 'do's' wouldn't be a problem for her.
I was a little surprised at the amount of traffic in the diner parking lot as I pulled in and actually had to circle the lot a few times before giving up and parking in the gravel lot across the street. Don't get me wrong, the food here was good, but it wasn't that good. Okay, so maybe the pumpkin pie was, which is why we ordered it every year and why it was the one contribution Renee made to the meal with the Cullen's.
I wondered briefly if they knew it wasn't homemade.
Mary waved at me from behind the counter and I grinned back. "Hey Bella. I've got them boxing everything up in the back. It's a pretty big order, do you want to pull your car around back and just load it up there?"
"I'm fine. It's nice out so I'll just make a couple of trips. I'll be fine." The Macy's Day parade was being repeated on one of the TV's so I just sat on a stool at the bar and watched the giant balloons and poor lip-syncing as it wound its way through the cold streets of Manhattan. Then it hit me, lots of food? Why would Renee have ordered lots of food? There were only going to be three of us eating it. Mary came out of the back with three pies and I knew there had to be some sort of mistake.
"Mom ordered three pumpkin pies?"
"Actually two pumpkin pies and an apple."
"Are you sure that's all for us? I mean that's a lot of pies for three people." Just then one of the guys from the kitchen came out with what looked like two casseroles dishes and I knew something had to be up. "I don't think that's ours, Mary." She looked at me and down at the ticket in her hand and nodded slowly before sliding it to me to look at. Yeah, something was definitely up.
"Are y'all not eating with the Cullen's this year, hon? I just assumed you were like you do every year, so when Mrs. Cullen called to order a green bean casserole, I just combined the two. Was that not right?"
Well that answered my question about if they knew about the pies. I also now knew that Esme did not in fact make everything else she served at Thanksgiving dinner. Sneaky little thing. But yeah, they knew about the pies, of course they did. Esme knew Renee better than anyone, well except for Charlie of course. Esme knew Renee couldn't cook, couldn't bake, and could barely use the microwave.
Oh shit. If Mary thought we were eating together, odds are she told the Cullen's their food would be ready at the same time. Which meant that… yup, when the little bells chimed above the door I didn't even have to turn around.
"No, Mary. There's been a change of plans this year. We need our orders separate, sorry. Maybe I will go move my car around back."
"I'm so sorry, sweetie. There's no need for you to go to that trouble. Here's your pie and I'll go divide everything really quick. You should be able to get it all in one trip. No need to move, here… have some coffee." She poured a small cup for me and handed me the container of creamer and I busied myself with a stirrer, trying not to look over at who I could feel looking at me. Not because I didn't want to, but because I couldn't.
I knew that if I looked at him I wouldn't be able to hold myself back and I would fling myself around him to cry and snot sob and make even more of a complete fool out of myself than I already had. No, when I talked to him, it needed to be in private, just the two of us. If I could even get him to agree to do that and at this point I wasn't sure he'd agree to talk to me.
Look at him.
No.
You know you want to.
Of course I want to. I just can't.
Do it! Just a quick peek.
I couldn't fight it any longer and I could feel his eyes boring into the back of my head. It didn't feel like he was angry, if that made any sense, so maybe it would be okay to look over and acknowledge him. I mean, we'd had some contact at school and we were civil. It didn't have to be any different here, right?
Slowly, I turned and lost myself in the green eyes that haunted my sleep. I smiled shyly at him, not really in a flirtatious way because neither of us was ready for that, but in a 'you've always been my best friend and I miss you' type of way. He nodded back slightly and we just stared at each other, neither of us able to speak.
I could feel myself being drawn to him and I needed to be close to him. Mary would have our orders ready in a few minutes, so we'd be going our separate ways then. Surely we could have a conversation for a few minutes and everything would be fine, right? I started to slide off the stool, hearing the bells chime again, but not really paying attention to who came inside – until I saw lopsided wonky tits and poufy blond hair fling herself all around Edward.
Looks like Jessica's family ordered from the diner too.
Happy fucking Thanksgiving.
EPOV
"You look sick. Did you have dad take your temperature? Sometimes when I'm sick he makes me take this medicine that tastes like bananas and mom brings me ginger ale. Do you want some ginger ale?"
"No, Alice. I feel fine, I promise. I'm just a bit tired."
"Then get some sleep. I went to a sleepover a few weeks ago at Tanya's house and it smelt like burnt tire. It was so weird. Me and Lacey pretended we were sick so that we could leave. Mom said it was wrong to lie, but it really smelled funny. I slept good in my bed. You should sleep in your own bed, you'll feel better."
"I will."
"Jasper wants to play Xbox with you tomorrow. Is that okay? I already told him it was okay."
"It's fine."
"When is Bella coming over? I know she's not your girlfriend now, but I still like her as my friend. She plays really good. I have some new Barbie's I want to show her. Mom got me a really nice one that is Lt. Uhura from Star Trek."
"No, Alice. She won't be coming over and how the hell do you know about Star Trek?"
"Jasper."
I let out a sigh of frustration and rolled my eyes as Alice began flipping channels until she found something with Miley Cyrus or one of those other overdone teen actresses. I wasn't paying attention though. I was busy watching my mother flitter around the kitchen like a bumblebee on crack. There was something going on there, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
Ever since I had gotten home from school three days earlier, she had been all over the place. The phone hardly rang anymore, and if it did, it was Jasper calling for Alice. I constantly found my mother talking to herself or arguing with my father over little asinine things, but when I walked into the room they acted like everything was perfectly fine.
There was a word I was beginning to hate… fine.
It was quickly becoming the most overused word in my vocabulary as I used it every time someone asked me how I was doing. Whether it was my parents, Ben, Claire or even Emmett, it was always the same thing, day in and day out. Fine. I'm doing fine. Everything is just fine.
Of course, the words coming from my mouth differed greatly from the thoughts in my head because nothing was fucking fine. I was as far from fine as one could be. I was the antithesis of fine!
In fact, I knew things weren't fine in the Cullen house the moment I walked in the door and noticed the missing pictures on the wall that my mother didn't even try to cover up. I mean, she could have at least put some different photos up to make it look less conspicuous. But no, I had to look at the blank spots on the walls that used to house photos of Bella and me with our families. I felt like an ass, because even though Bella and I had broken up, it didn't mean our families had to tiptoe around the situation. So, rather than let things fester, like I had with Bella, I called my mother out on it the night I got home.
"You didn't have to take the pictures down you know." I was trying to help her out by setting the table for dinner, but she remained distracted as I purposely began mismatching cutlery, something I knew drove her mad.
"Edward, you are an important member of this family. I figured that looking at those pictures was going to make the situation awkward, and I just wanted to alleviate some of that. Ren…" My mother stopped dead in her tracks and turned back towards the stove, stirring the pot of chili she had simmering.
"You can say Renee's name, Mom. I'm sure you guys are still friends, and I would hate it if your friendship was ruined because things fell apart between Bella and me."
"I'm just looking out for your feelings, hon. Being home is hard enough when you've been out on your own for a little while now. I doubt it would help to come home and see pictures of you and Bella from junior prom or graduation hanging on the wall."
"Yeah, but…"
"Listen to me, Edward. I am wise beyond my years when it comes to matters of the heart. You and Bella are just going through a rough patch and Renee and I have faith that you guys will find your way back to each other, but we aren't going to meddle."
"Isn't you taking pictures down meddling?"
"No, it's not. Meddling would be me having insisted to you the other day that you drive Bella back to Forks with you and Emmett regardless of how you felt about the situation. Meddling would be me dragging you by your ear over to the Swan house so that you and Bella could hash out your problems. Meddling would be…"
"Yeah, I get the point mom."
"Good. Now fix this. I know there is miscommunication because you're eighteen, what else do you guys know to do?" My mother snorted when she laughed and I just rolled my eyes. "You and Bella are meant for each other. It's like… set in the stars or something equally cheesy and astral as Renee would say."
Ironically, my mother said almost the same things that Ben had said earlier in the day when we had gotten together. It didn't take me long after I got back from Seattle to call him. We met at the diner and he let me vent about the past two weeks where Bella and I basically ignored each other at school, with the exception of the odd head bob or small wave. There were no actual words spoken though. It was aggravating.
Ben was supportive, but told me I was being a jackass. He thought that even if Bella was in the wrong, I needed to open the lines of communication otherwise I would never get her back. My only problem with this was that I wasn't sure I wanted her back if nothing was going to change. We would just be going through the same routine and that was the last thing I wanted. After the conversations with Ben and my mom, everything was still up in the air and I didn't know what to do.
"Everything okay in there, Mom?"I shouted out as Alice laughed at the show on the TV and my mom peeked her head out from the kitchen.
"Uh… it's fine, Edward."
Fuck, I hated that word.
"Do you need some help?"
"Nope, it's just macaroni and cheese; I think I can handle it. Oh, Alice… Jasper's mom called earlier and his uncle is in the hospital and his parents are going to go visit him, so we're watching him tonight. He'll be over soon."
"Cool," Alice said excitedly. "Well, not that his uncle is in the hospital, but I haven't seen him since yesterday, so that's cool." She jumped from the couch and ran up the stairs with a spring in her step. She clearly got her over excitable tendencies from our mom.
"Was I that bad when Bella used to come over?"
"You were worse," my mother said with a gentle laugh before she stopped and became suddenly reflective. Rather than dwell further on my past with Bella, I turned back towards the TV and grabbed the remote. I quickly started flipping through the channels as I found myself wondering what the hell I was doing just sitting here on the couch. What the hell did I usually do when I was bored as fuck?
Oh right, I would be hanging out with Bella. We'd be watching shitty movies and making fun of the craptastic acting, or we would be making fun of our classmates and the childish things some of them tended to do. We'd watch classic movies and she'd let me pick them apart, being way to analytical about everything or we'd watching lame ass videos on YouTube of dogs sleeping and then running into walls when they woke up. We wasted time, but we did it together. Right now, as I contemplated going for a run to relieve some tension, I sorely missed wasting time with her.
However, thinking about our past led me to over-thinking everything, like I usually did. What if we couldn't get back together? Could I go back to being just her best friend, if that was all I could get from her? I wasn't sure that I could. After everything we had been though, all the heartache, I didn't know if I could handle just be her friend again. In the back of my mind I would always wonder 'what if?'
"Edward, welcome back," Jasper said thirty minutes later as he walked into the family room and sat down on the couch beside me. He draped his arm over the back of the couch and looked at me with a nod of his head. "So, I hear you have girl trouble."
"Where the hell did you hear that?"
"Your buddy Emmett. I ran into him at the diner this morning. I was having breakfast, pancakes. I guess that's beside the point. Do you wanna talk about it?"
"You're eight. What kind of wisdom could you give me and why are you talking like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like you're not eight."
"I'm not eight anymore. I'm nine, I had my birthday a few weeks ago."
"Anyways…"
"So, you wanna talk about your girl issues?"
"Not with you."
"You should talk to someone then. Bella would be a good option."
I turned and literally snarled at Jasper as he held up his hands in self defense. "Fine your mother pressured me into saying something the moment my folks dropped me off and Emmett might have told me to beat some sense into you when I saw him this morning too. When I told him that there was no way I could take you, he let me know that you hardly eat anymore and don't sleep, so I could probably get you in a headlock and you'd pass out." I looked at Jasper incredulously as he laid down his hands at his sides. "I wouldn't do it."
"Do what?"
"Beat you up. You look like someone's already done it. So what about some Halo? It will take your mind off that girl, right?" I sighed and gave up on arguing with him since it was clearly futile. Jasper fetched the controllers for my Xbox and we spent two hours playing together, with Alice interrupting often, and usually in different outfits. It was very odd.
Also odd was Jasper going on and on about his parents. His mother was a guidance counselor at the high school in Port Angeles and his dad was the town psychiatrist. Certainly explains why he was trying to talk some sense into me. The whole time we played the game, he rambled on about the benefits of honesty, being open minded and last but not least, he tried to talk to me about following my heart. Needless to say, when Alice showed up and wanted to know if Jasper wanted to play a board game with her, I was quick to pretend I had something else to do. The kid was way too old for his age all of a sudden.
I climbed the stairs to my room and curled up on my bed, watching shitty movie after shitty movie on TBS, stopping only to have dinner. The entire night was lonely and pathetic, but I couldn't bring myself to make a change. That was until I found myself face to face with Bella at the diner the next day.
Thanksgiving, as we had known it for the past several years, had effectively been cancelled. It had been a tradition with the Swan and Cullen families to get together and celebrate. Renee always claimed to bake a pie and my mother acted like her bean casserole and sweet potatoes were homemade, but we all knew it came from the diner. Since the usual dysfunctional fun was called off due to Bella and I's breakup, I found myself heading to the diner to pick up the usual items for our holiday dinner.
Of course, I hadn't expected to walk into Bella when I got there. Then again, my mother had forced me to go for her, insisting she was elbows deep in the stuffing she was attempting to make. The moment I saw the back of Bella's head, I instantly assumed we had been set up. I could picture our mothers cackling over their mojitos as I tried not to stare at Bella but found it so fucking hard. 'Let's send them to the diner. They can hardly escape there unscathed.' They would giggle incessantly and then drink more as they plotted ways to reunite us.
I shook the thought from my head, as I wondered if they could truly be so manipulative. Then again, knowing Renee the way I did, through all of Bella's embarrassing stories, I realized that I was wrong. They could be downright evil if the situation necessitated it.
Mary noticed me waiting and waved briefly, acknowledging that I had arrived for my pickup as I saw Bella turn around and glance at me. There was a weird kind of head nod thing that she was doing, and I responded in kind, but the look on her face clearly one of regret and sadness. My heart literally jumped out of my chest as I watched her move off the stool she was sitting on. She was going to come and talk to me… coming to the diner might not have been such a bad thing after all.
That was until the bell rang above the door and I heard the irritating voice of Jessica Stanley behind me. "Oh my god, Edward!" she gushed as she wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me. It literally felt like if she squeezed just a little bit more, I'd crumple up into a heap on the floor and die due to lack of oxygen. It was suffocating. Of course, it didn't help matters that all I wanted to do was talk to Bella, even if just for a few minutes.
Jessica let me out of her over perfumed grasp and took a step back. "This is so awesome. I was hoping I would run into you. How is UW?"
"It's good, you know? I live with Emmett, so that's a bit of a challenge. My classes are good and stuff though." My eyes darted from Jessica's tanned face to Bella and Jessica followed, her face lighting up when she saw Bella sitting there.
"Wait… I thought you two were together? At least that was the rumor going around town in the summer," Jessica said rapidly as she motioned between Bella and I like she was one of the models on The Price is Right.
"It's complicated," Bella said, her voice tense and anxious. I watched her eyes as the moved across the diner, focusing on anything but me and Jessica. She clearly didn't want to discuss our shittastic romantic situation with the town gossip.
"Complicated like… one of you cheated on the other or complicated like you guys weren't actually dating?"
"Neither," Bella replied as Jessica put her hand on her hip and began alternating her glare between Bella and me. She looked like she was trying to crack some sort of mystery, but I was fairly certain if she kept it up, her head would explode. As appealing as that image would have been six months ago, Jessica Stanley wasn't something I cared to think about anymore.
"No cheating huh?"
"No," Bella snapped as her eyes met mine and I could see she was dead serious. Yeah, I had accused her of sleeping with Liam, but I had been a little bit furious at the time. I'm still pissed that she was always picking him over me, but seeing as we were both too stubborn to sit down and hash out our problems, like everyone said we should, we were at a stalemate.
"I bet Edward had a lot of girls flirting with him huh?"
"You could say that," Bella said, eying me suspiciously. Surely she couldn't have been thinking about Claire. She was hardly a threat to our relationship.
"Oh and you had no guys flirting with you? Liam did a lot more than flirting, Bella."
"Ooh… who's Liam?"
"A complete fucking asshole who…"
"You know what? I don't want to fucking argue about this in the middle of the diner. It's your irrational responses like this that remind me why we haven't talked in weeks."
"Wait… what? You aren't even talking? You guys were meant to be together. I mean, I tried desperately to get you to date me, Edward. Half the damn town knows that, but everyone knew you guys were meant to be. So you guys finally get things going only to have it go downhill so quickly? Really? I think this is one of the signs of the apocalypse. You did start dating right? I'm not hallucinating?"
"Fuck Jessica, could you be more insensitive?" Bella snapped as Mary showed up with her brown paper bag filled with diner goodies and handed it to her. Bella slid a twenty dollar bill across the counter and stormed her way out the front door of the diner.
"Yes, Bella and I dated. No, we are currently not dating and as a pre-emptive strike, no I don't want to date you." I ran out the front door of the diner, desperate to find Bella, but all I managed to find at that point was the taillights of her mom's Toyota as she drove out of sight.
Happy Fucking Thanksgiving.