A/N: I may or may not be traveling tomorrow, so I'm going to post two chapters today, just in case I am. If I'm not…well, bonus chapter. Happy Friday! xo
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March 6, 2013 – Word Prompts: Boss, loss, cross.
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"Hi, Edward, it's Bella."
The voice, the sound of that voice saying my name, makes it seem as though the ground is shifting beneath my feet. "Bella," I echo, trying to find my bearings.
"Bella Swan."
As if I didn't know, wouldn't know her voice anywhere, even after all this time – as if there could ever be another Bella – and a surprised half-laugh falls from my lips before I can grab it back in. "Bella, I'd have known it was you even if you hadn't said your name. I don't need a surname for clarification."
"Oh," she says, and I can picture her blushing on the other end of the phone with a clarity that surprises me. "Okay. Well, um. I got your message. On New Year's. I just…wanted to return your call."
"I'm really glad you did," I say, crossing the room to turn down the volume on my music dock. "How are you? Did you have a good New Year's?"
"It was okay," she replies, voice wary, and once again, I try not to imagine her pressed up against someone when the clock struck twelve. "My friend's boss had a party."
"Cool," I say, wincing immediately.
"Did you have a good holiday? With your family?"
It's funny – I remember opening gifts, a sea of festive wrapping paper, Emmett belting out Elvis' "Blue Christmas" after way too much eggnog, but it's all hazy; the only crystal-clear memory from the day is the way my heart had galloped in my chest when I heard her voice on the phone. Didn't even care that it was polite small talk, because it was polite small talk with Bella. "Yeah," I say. "It was…nice. How was yours?"
"Good, thanks," she says. "Nice to visit home."
"Yeah," I say, memories of Forks sliding through my mind like snapshots. Unsurprisingly, all of them contain Bella. Heartbreakingly, too many of them were snapped after I lost her.
"Well, anyway," she says, after a few moments of awkward silence. "I just wanted to return your call."
"Hey, Bella?"
"Yeah?"
"I really meant what I said. In Forks. About…being friends again. I'd really like it if we could do that."
She's silent, and I wonder if, once again, I've pushed her too far. But then: "We live twelve hours away from each other."
"Like this," I blurt. "Just…phone calls. Talking. That's it. It doesn't have to be anything more." The same promise, the same reassurance I gave her years ago, but this time, I'm determined to keep it. Determined to make her see that, despite the mistakes I made when I was eighteen, whatever little bit Bella is willing to give me now is enough.
"Okay," she says finally. "Maybe…maybe we can start by just…getting to know each other again." There's a short pause, and when she speaks again, there's that new hardness creeping back into her voice that wasn't there when she loved me. "I'm different now. So…you'll have to get to know this me."
"I'm different now, too," I reply, and while she said the words like an apology, like a disclaimer, I say them like a promise.
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Bella looks like the ocean at midnight in her shimmery dress, and I can't stop sneaking peeks at the expanse of skin above the neckline of her dress: shoulders and shoulder blades and collarbones and that little "v" at the base of her throat and the tiniest, barest suggestion of cleavage. It's more skin than I've seen Bella show since we were kids in swimsuits, and it's torturing me. As we press our bodies together to the slow songs, I have to pull away more than once to keep it a secret, the effect she's having on me.
When we pull into the driveway, Chief Swan's cruiser is missing from its usual spot. When she invites me inside, I have to silently tell myself that it doesn't mean what it sounds like, what parts of me so desperately wish it meant. This is Bella – she doesn't even realize how sexy she is, what she does to me.
"I love you," I tell her, not for the first time, as we lie with ankles woven together atop her bedspread, her dark hair pooled around her pillow, but it's the first time I've been on her bed since we used to bounce on it, and even if she's not ready for me to show her, I have to tell her.
"I love you, too," she says, whispers, as if she's slipping me a secret, like she's Cinderella and we're part of a spell that could be broken. I kiss her, feeling my heart race and my body prickle with heat as my lips find her mouth, neck, earlobe. My name falling from her lips pushes me even higher, and my hands find the zipper of her dress and drag it down. She tenses, and even through my haze of want, I pull back, looking into her beautiful, trusting eyes, the loss of her mouth on mine almost painful.
Take care of her. It's been my promise to myself, always, but it means something so different now.
"It's okay," I promise her. "I just want to touch your skin. I won't go anywhere."
But God, I want to. I want to go everywhere. With her.
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