Sorry for the late update. I seemed to be having router problems. It sounds like a plumbing issue, but really has something to do with why I couldn't upload.

We have much rarer blood than the national average. I'm O-neg. You all can have me.

The forum folks have been incredible and supportive and wonderful. Thank you. And many thanks to everwondering, my beta lady.

SM owns it all.


Bella:
"You go first," Edward said. His shoulders were still tense, and he looked at me warily, like I was about to disappear, but his eyes were warm as he searched my face.

I threw two twenties and flubbed the third. Not a great start. I walked to the board, chalked my score and collected the darts.

"Hi," I said.

He stepped to the line and threw a perfect triple twenty and two nineteen's, a strong but polite opening. I gave him a bit of a dirty look for playing nice after he marked his score, and he shrugged with a small smile.

"I'm glad you came," he replied.

I took a deep breath and exhaled, trying to ignore how much his voice and his words thrilled me. I found my center of gravity in the small of my back, straightened my shoulders and threw. A single twenty to close, a triple nineteen and another for points; a strong play.

"Alice thinks Tanya is blackmailing you with something that would hurt your family," I said, keeping my voice low, beneath the juke box and the crowd noise. I pulled my darts, and walked back to him.

He stared at the board for a minute, and then threw a nineteen and two eighteens, keeping up but not pulling ahead.

"It's something like that." He didn't meet my eyes, but his shoulders had relaxed, and he almost seemed relieved.

I was flustered when I went up to the line, and it showed. I threw two eighteens to close, but the third didn't stick and bounced out of the board to fall on the floor. I grimaced and picked it up, scoring the surface of the flight with another dart so I would know which one was now dull. Alice probably had a nail file in her purse that I could sharpen it with, but I wasn't about to go ask her right now.

"Tell me about it when it's over?" I said. He looked at me briefly, and nodded once, but one corner of his mouth quirked up.

He closed his eighteens and stuck a trip seventeen and a spare, closing the gap between us.

"If you're still around." His voice was teasing and soft. I tried to ignore the way his jeans fit, slung low on his waist as he moved to the board and then back again, but I wasn't successful.

I lobbed three separate eighteens, putting me one single point ahead; we were essentially tied.

"There's no place else I want to be," I said.

He shot a triple sixteen, and another, and flubbed an eight. He now had a solid lead.

"Jasper said you didn't feel welcome in our house," he murmured.

On my turn I tossed a triple sixteen and two fifteens, catching up a little.

"I told Alice I thought you wanted some space," I explained, cautiously.

He stepped to the line while I chalked my score, and I stepped away as he landed a single fifteen. The others sunk low.

"I don't." His voice was flat.

I stuck a single fifteen, but the others were stray twos, the exact same throw he'd just had.

"Good," I said to my shoes.

He reached out to me and tucked an errant lock of hair back, tracing a fingertip along the edge of my ear, stroking the skin awake, and moved to throw. I stood still, trying not to make a noise or hurl myself at him and lick the back of his neck where his hair made a tiny point.

He closed his fifteens. I would have to sink five bulls before he made three.

"Coming to practice tomorrow?" Edward asked.

I moved up and tried to focus. My ear still tingled from where he touched me, and he was licking his lower lip and I couldn't keep my eyes on the dartboard. My first shot didn't even land in the cork. I took a deep breath, let half out and held it, and threw two single bulls.

"I was told I was required," I said, smiling.

We were tied, now, but it was his turn.

He stepped up with his cocksure half-smile, and I wondered if he knew what it did to me and my secret places. He landed two singles. He walked to the board, and I watched his shoulders move beneath his shirt; I wanted to wrap my arms around him and feel them against my skin, and press my breasts to that warmth, and he turned around and caught me looking.

In two long strides he was at the line in front of me, leaning in, face inches from mine, looking at my mouth.

"Bella," he breathed, "I'll fix this, I promise."

I slipped my left hand between us, stopping his descent, and he kissed my fingertips. When I started to pull away he grabbed my wrist and kissed my palm with parted lips. I gasped and met his gaze, jade eyes intense, and I closed my eyes to escape them.

I angled my body around him and threw one black bull and one red. I didn't even throw the last dart; I'd won. He was still holding my other wrist.

I reached up and brushed my lips over the faint dimple in his cheek.

"You'd better," I whispered.

He gathered my darts for me, took my hand and led us back to the rest of the band.

Alice, Rose and I left after a bit, after they kissed their boys goodnight. Edward walked with me out to Rose's car, and when he leaned in, I dodged again.

"Really?" he asked me, puffing his bottom lip out in a bit of a pout. His hair was a mess and some had fallen over his frowning brows, and he was so adorable and sexy and I nearly lost my resolve.

"Really. Didn't your mother ever tell you to clean up your mess before you started another?" I asked without thinking, but he just laughed, and kissed the top of my head.

"No, she told me to seize every opportunity to live life to the fullest, and to brush after every meal."

He had very nice teeth.

The girls and I spent the evening watching Tim Burton movies and hair band concert footage, laughing at the costumes in both, lounging on piles of pillows and sleeping bags.

At one point Alice looked at me and frowned.

"Is this what normal girls do?" she asked, gesturing to the living room, the blankets and bottles of nail polish, the junk food and the television.

I grinned at her. "I wouldn't know."

Rosalie threw a fistful of popcorn at her, and it stuck in her hair, the fluffy white kernels caught between the black spikes, and I laughed so hard I choked. She hopped up and stood on tiptoes to see herself in the mirror over the mantle.

"This is a good look for me," she declared, "I think I'll keep it."

She passed out early, curled up like a small hibernating mammal in Charlie's recliner, and I listened to Rosalie softly playing a Spanish classical piece on her guitar. 'Fantasy for a Gentleman', I remembered it was called, as I drifted off to sleep.

I was vaguely aware of my father coming home, and him speaking to Rose, but when Alice and I woke to her buzzing phone, she was gone.

"I knew she'd go. She doesn't like being away from Em."

Her phone chirped again with another text alert.

"Edward wants to know what kind of syrup you want on your waffles."

We left my house in a hurry, still wearing pajamas. When we got there, Edward hugged me and whispered in my ear, "I missed you last night," and I felt his chest vibrate with laughter at my groan.

The band rehearsed the set they wanted to do at Alice's party, and Jasper's homework for all of us had been to find songs with a Halloween theme to add to the list. Most we discarded or added to a pre/post show mix, but a few we kept.

Edward sang a classic cover of "Spooky" that left me blushing and breathless and wishing I was naked, and Alice yelled at us for having musical non-sex in their sound studio.

"Oh," he said. "Like this is Virgin Records? Bitch, please."

She squawked a bit, and Jasper snorted. I noticed that Rosalie wasn't making eye contact with anyone, and Emmett was bit late with his comedic rim shot.

We practiced all day and beyond, stopping only for meals. At midnight Jasper and Emmett got into an argument while Rosalie was upstairs icing down her fingertips, and I sat down on the floor with my back cushioned against the egg-crate foam wall and closed my eyes. Edward tuned his piano a little; when he was satisfied he closed the lid, and tested the keys with a pretty melody.

"Claire de Lune," I murmured, smiling to myself.

The notes spun out, and eased into something different, a canon that spiraled in a haunting lullaby.

"That's new!" Jasper said."Does it have words?"

"I'm working on it," said the boy of my dreams, his voice husky with overuse.

"Finally," Jazz said.

He kept playing, and the tune wound around my sleepy brain, until it slowed to a stop.

I woke in the morning in Edward's bed, fully clothed. He was asleep on his couch, across the room, still with his shoes on. I got up and kneeled on the floor by his head, and stroked the hair out of his face. He shifted in his sleep and smiled, and I mouthed the three words that had been threatening to escape my lips for a month, and left his room before I said them aloud.

"Mornin, darl," said Jasper, handing me a cup of dark caffeine. He was wearing pajamas with trains on them and a hat with earflaps. I diluted the coffee with milk from the fridge, trying to clear the haze from my brain.

"Did you sleep at all?" I asked him.

"We worked on a new song until about three," he said. "I want to get it ready for the Blues Fest; they like to hear some original stuff."

I nodded, and stared into my mug.

"Are you going?" he asked.

"I haven't decided," I told my coffee.

"It will break his heart, but he'll survive." Jazz said cheerfully.

I blushed, and the blond boy chuckled at me.

"What's planned for today?" I asked.

"We have to work on the Festival set as soon as your boy wakes up," he said.

"I'll probably take off, then."

He nodded. Alice had scanned every word in the contract to see if there was a loophole to let me sing with Breaking Dawn, but it didn't look like there was time for an appeal. They needed to rehearse without me.

I gathered my things and he helped me carry my bag out to my truck.

"I still want to see you write down that that bit about the fire, you know," he admonished.

"What kind of melody would you put it to?"

"How does fire speak?" he asked, and waved goodbye.

I tinkered with the poem for a while, and then set it aside and finished the reading assignments for World Lit for the next two weeks, so the weekends would be free for Alice's party and the Festival.

Late in the evening I got a message alert:

Give me some music? I've used up all of my own. –Debussy_88

What mood are you in?

Dirty and blue, head full of the girl and wanting. –Debussy_88

Dan Auerbach's 'I Want Some More'. Why so frustrated?

A few minutes he replied:

Very good song. I'm in limbo until I get my words back; I can't let her fire die to cold coals, but to fan the flames isn't fair. –Debussy_88

Show her your own heat, and keep her warm.

Wise words. Will you write soon? I've missed your pretty phrases. –Debussy_88

Soon.

But the words didn't come that night, or the next.

On Monday Alice handed Tanya an invitation, and I watched them have a brief conversation from the other side of the hall.

Alice walked with me on the way to Chemistry.

"She's intending to come as a pirate," she said.

"That works," I replied, trying not to sound bitter. "Why have a couples party, anyway?"

"I want the evening to be about music and costumes and dancing; not about hooking up with someone. If people come together already, there tends to be less fucking in the hallway bathroom."

I looked at her from the corner of my eye, and her jaw dropped at my red face.

"You didn't!" she moaned.

Edward gave me some apologetic distance that day, but he didn't go far.

The next day, however, he caught me just before lunch, and pulled me outside, to the exact same spot we'd occupied last week. His face was red and his jaw was tight, and my stomach turned to lead. He pushed me against the wall.

"Are you trying to get Newton killed?" he asked through his teeth.

"What the hell are you talking about!"

"That skirt is indecent!"

"No, it isn't!" I almost laughed out loud in relief, but then I was irritated. "It's longer than what Tanya is wearing!"

"Then it's the socks. Whatever."

"What's wrong with them?" I was wearing a denim skirt and heather grey cable knit socks that went past my knees.

Edward reached down and stroked his thumb across the skin of my thigh above the knit ribbing. I shivered as the nerves carried the sensation higher.

"Every single straight guy in school is thinking about these three inches of skin." He was standing so close I could feel the heat from his body, and his mouth was close to my temple.

"What would you prefer to think about?" I whispered, touching the shell of his ear with my lips. I was furious that he would chastise me for my clothing, especially when he was publicly dating another girl, but I was also turned on as hell. I felt dangerous, and ready to be wicked.

He inhaled sharply through his nose, and pulled away.

"Anything other than Mike Newton looking at you like that!"

I shot a quick look around the quad, and then behind the cover of his body, I slid my hands up the back of my skirt, hooked my panties with my thumbs and slid them down my legs. I gathered them in my fist, triumphant that I had managed to perform the entire feat without falling on my ass, and stuck them in the pocket of his jacket.

"There, does that help?"

He stood there, staring at me, his eyes almost black.

"Don't let Tanya find those," I said, and walked back to the cafeteria. He didn't follow.

He didn't speak a word to me in Biology, just sat facing forward, one knee bouncing under the lab table.

Towards the end of class I leaned toward him and whispered, "What are you thinking?"

His face turned red and he bit his lower lip, but his gaze never shifted from the front of the classroom. The electric heat coming off his body was almost visible, like a mirage on desert sand, and I burned next to him, hoping the wetness between my legs wouldn't stain my skirt.

The next day I wore jeans.

James found me at the end of lunch on Thursday. He nodded to Emmett and Rose, and asked Edward if he could speak with me. Edward looked irritated, but nodded. I got up, pissed that he would even think he could give me permission to do whatever the hell I pleased. We walked to a private corner where Victoria was waiting.

"So what do you think?" he asked, grinning like a scruffy fruit bat. "Will your boy go through the roof if you sing with me?"

"He'll survive," I repeated Jasper's words from Sunday, not bothering to point out that he wasn't mine at the moment.

The ugly boy beamed with an angel's smile, and said he would sign us up for a practice room in the music building for every day this week and next. I wasn't entirely sure I was comfortable with that, but when Victoria asked if I would mind if she hung out with us, I relaxed.

Then James handed me a list of songs, and asked me to choose some, and mark off what I didn't know. It was a long list.

"I just want to keep it flexible, you know?"

I nodded, and turned back to my friends.

"What did you decide, Bella?" Alice asked, her voice soft.

"I'm honoring the contract I signed," I said, trying to keep my voice even.

Edward glared at me.

"How, Bella? You can't even speak up in class without passing out!" His voice was harsh. "There's going to be a thousand people at the trials, and I won't be up there to hold your hand when you get scared."

He stalked off while his family watched him go. We were all silent until the bell rang.

Edward:
I sat in Mr. Banner's room, contemplating the grid in the ceiling tile, trying to get my head on straight. The girl was never the same person twice, and she made me crazy. Monday she'd been shy and distant and the next day she'd been a sex kitten with a temper.

Fuck. I still got hard, thinking about Tuesday. She'd been so close to me, and I could measure in inches how near I was to the secretly naked girl; and I knew how she would feel, too, wisps of silky fur and damp hot flesh, accessible with just a flick of my wrist, and all I could do through the whole class was think about bending her over the table and sliding in, and I knew she'd be wet for me from the way she shifted in her seat, sitting with her thighs held close-

Bella walked into the classroom, and I pulled her chair out for her. She ignored me, set her books down on our table and walked to the sharpener to shorten a perfectly pointed pencil. I sighed. I'd been a dick, and I deserved the snub.

She sat down and opened her books, waiting for class to start. I tried not to stare at her, or look at the line of her jaw, defined by her clenched teeth, and the way the cords of muscle stood out in her neck, and lower, to the grace of her curves under the blue sweater she was wearing-

I jerked my eyes away as class started. Mr. Banner invited a volunteer to present last week's blood type test and the entire class findings, and Bella raised her hand.

We both looked at her in surprise, but he called on her. Without looking at me, she gathered our notes and marched to the front of the room. She spread out the notes on the front table, took a deep breath, and gave an oral report that held everyone's interest for almost ten minutes, detailing the test process and the merits of a sadistic lab partner, how the agglutinate actually worked, the class results versus the national average, and finished with a quip stating that 'clearly, Mr. Cullen and I are incompatible.' Then she fielded questions. Mr. Banner was amused. I was stunned.

She walked back to our desk, but before she sat down she fished something out of the pocket of her jeans, and flung it at me, without looking. I caught it, instinctively.

I turned the cap from the lemonade bottle over in palm, noticing the faint scratches where we had spun it back and forth between us so many times, and looked at the girl. Her back was rigid in her chair, and I was almost glad for the curtain of mahogany curls that hid her face. I set the lid on the table between us, and when the bell rang, she gathered her things and left it there.

I picked up the cap and put it in my pocket. I still needed her, even if she no longer needed me.

After school I found her at her locker.

"Bella, I'm sorry. I was an asshole."

She waited, staring up at me, mouth and chin firm. Even when she was angry with me, I wanted to drown in her eyes.

Show her your own heat, and keep her warm. Ordinary_Girl had said.

"I want you to go." I said, rubbing the back of my neck. "And I know you'll be great. I just don't know if I can watch you with someone else."

She looked at the floor and nodded, and then back at me, and offered a small smile that didn't reach her eyes.

"That's how I feel about Tanya."

She left, heading toward the music hall.

Friday we decorated the house with purple lights and black gauzy fabric in some crazy New Orleans funeral theme, and Saturday we picked up food and flowers and made 3 different kinds of punch.

I finally got dressed in the costume Alice had come up with, some sort of ship-wrecked sailor in distressed front flap pants with flare legs, and a tight t-shirt with stripes. She tried to get me to wear a little white hat, but I refused.

Rose, dressed as Marilyn in 'Some Like it Hot', let out a low whistle, and Emmett doubled over with laughter. He was wearing a suit and a Stetson, ala Frank Sinatra, the lucky bastard.

"Yorkie's gonna love you," she said.

Sometimes I hated my step-sister.

I left to go pick up my date for the evening, torturing myself by driving past Bella's house on the way. Her truck was there, and her bedroom light was on. I wanted to stop, and call her name just to see her face at the window, like some fucked up Romeo love scene, but I doubted her father would appreciate that.

"I don't understand why I had to come," seethed Alice from the backseat. She was dressed as a Charlie Chaplin tramp, complete with bendy cane and a fake moustache.

"Because I don't want to be alone with her," I replied. I wasn't sure if I was bringing Alice to protect me from Tanya, or her from me wringing her neck, but I knew that if something disgusting happened, Bella would believe Alice's version over any told by the rumor mill.

We pulled up to the house, and I rang the doorbell. Tanya's mother opened the door, coughed wetly and yelled for her daughter.

"Edward, aren't you the handsome sailor!" she rasped. She reached up to pinch my cheek, cigarette hanging from her diamond crusted fingers. "You've been dating Tee for what, five months now, and I finally get to see what you look like. She can sure pick 'em. You two'll make pretty babies, won't you?"

"Mom, please!" Tanya came running down the stairs, dressed in some slut-chick pirate get up, and had I not hated every inch of pale red hair on her head I would have thought she looked hot.

"What, honey?" her mother asked with a yellow smile. "Jesus, girl. He's gonna think you're frigid if you don't show off more tits than that." She tugged at the vinyl corset on her daughter's chest. Tanya slapped at her mother's hands, her face blotched with fury.

I felt surreal, like I had just stepped into a primitive country with strange customs I couldn't fathom.

"Let's go," she said to me, and I followed her out. Her mother patted my ass and closed the door after us. I shuddered.

"Did you have to come to the door?" Tanya asked bitterly.

"That's what you do on a date, isn't it?" I opened the car door for her, and she got in.

"Whatever. You get the password after I get pictures, then I go home..."

I got in, and we pulled away from the house.

"Password?" asked Alice from the back seat.

Tanya looked at me, malicious curiosity plain on her face. "You didn't tell her?"

After a few silent miles I reached into the pocket of the pants Alice had shredded and handed my sister the thumb drive, in explanation.

"Oh, fuck!" she whispered. "Tanya, you are one lucky bitch."

"Yeah." I agreed, nodding at Alice in the rear view.

"Honey, if Jasper knew you had this, he would have ripped your face off."

Tanya shrugged, but she wouldn't have if she had ever seen my best friend lose control. I once watched him wrench a man's arm out of its socket for grabbing Esme's boob. It happened at a state fair, before she and dad hooked up. Jazz had only been fourteen.

"I didn't want to get anyone's hopes up," I told my sister. "I don't even know if she fucked with the files."

"I told you I didn't," Tanya said.

"You expect me to trust you?" I asked her.

She shrugged again.

"And pictures of what, exactly?" asked Alice. She was holding the derby up with a finger and spinning like it was a basketball. "And who is taking them?"

"I don't care," Tanya said. "You can take them, if you want."

Charlie Chaplin's grin was angelic under the little moustache, but the glint in her eye was pure evil.

The guests were beginning to trickle in, and I was actually thankful for James's arrival, because he and Victoria took Tanya off of my hands. I busied myself with the music set up, rearranging wires and triple checking the mics. Bella hadn't shown up yet, and I was getting fidgety.

"It hurts, doesn't it," said a voice behind me. "The wanting, I mean."

Lauren Mallory stood behind me. I didn't even pretend to not know what she was talking about; I just nodded.

She shrugged.

"At least now your blues are honest."

She wandered off, and I stared after her.

My iPhone chirped with Ordinary Girl's update alert. She'd changed her status to: WAITING, and her profile song was 'You May be Blue' by Vetiver. Her poem was titled Mer.

I will meet him in sequins
And a taffeta tail,
Seashells and ribbon
Binding my hair.
I'll give him my voice
And split my legs
To come with sea foam
On surging waves.
I will be a still statue
Perched on the rocks
Silent and waiting
In the harbor sun.

Before I could respond, Tanya found me.

"Let's just get this over with. I just want to go home."

I nodded without speaking, and we found Alice in her room, showing off some designs to Angela and Victoria. She whispered something to both of them, and they left.

She posed us against a wall, prom style, and snapped a photo with her digital camera. The flash left a square patch behind my eyelids; after a few more clicks I was almost blind.

Alice showed her the pictures on the little screen.

"Those work," Tanya said, "but I want one more." She stepped close to me, her breasts shoved up to my chest, and pursed her lips like a sphincter. "Make it look good, lover," she said. Her sarcasm was as disgusting as her puckered mouth.

I gnashed my teeth in resentment and fury. Please, Bella, understand! I thought, feeling sacrilegious for even thinking her name.

Tanya closed her eyes, almost as if she was in pain, or tasting something sour.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, pulling, and I stepped backwards to regain my balance. Rosalie moved in, quick as a cat, and planted her mouth onto Tanya's, winding her hands into the strawberry blond hair.

The flash snapped, and the negative silhouette of the two girls kissing shimmered and faded as my eyes re-adjusted.

Tanya's eyes fluttered open and she moaned. Rose grinned down at her, gorgeous and lethal.

"Don't fuck with us," she said softly, and stroked the other girl's face with a long finger, in a gesture that was both intimate and threatening.

Sometimes I love my step-sister.

Tanya recovered, shoving Rosalie away and charging at Alice. My little sister went completely berserk, running around in circles and chattering profanities at Tanya like a rabid squirrel, clutching her camera to her chest, derby hat and tramp moustache still in place. When she regained her composure she doffed the little hat and grinned.

"If there is anything missing from those files, this gets put up all over MySpace and Facebook. Dig it, bitch?"

We all stared at her in shock. Tanya started to cry, and that quickly, the tables had turned and the whole ordeal was over.

"That should have been hotter than it was," mumbled Emmett from the doorway.

"What the fuck is going on?" demanded Jasper.

Alice tossed him the thumb drive and he cupped it in his hand like it was a precious jewel.

"You." He turned to the crying girl, and the look on his face was so savage that that the hair on the back of my arms rose. She had the sense to cower.

"Take me home," sobbed Tanya at me. "I'll tell you when I'm home."

I was only too happy to oblige.

She walked ahead of me, tears streaming down her face, and the ambient noise of the party dulled as she moved past the cliques of couples. I followed her out at a reasonably safe distance; she was silent most of the way home. As we got closer to her house, she dried her eyes and repaired some of her make-up in the mirror in the visor. She looked pathetic and miserable.

I sighed.

"Look," I began, "I don't know what I ever did -"

"It what you didn't do," she said dully.

I waited, confused.

"You were supposed to be the best," she continued. "and I just wanted to feel what everyone else did. But I guess I'm just what my mother says I am."

Oh. Pieces fell into place. I sighed, wanting to resolve things with her, to put some closure on this whole mess.

"Tanya," I chose my words carefully as I pulled into her driveway. "Just because I didn't make you feel good doesn't mean that the right person won't."

I put the car in park and walked her to her door and followed her into the house. Her mother was visible from the foyer, sitting on the couch in their living room, a can of beer in her lap.

"That was a quick party," she called.

"I got bored, Mom. Edward brought me home early."

"Jesus, girl, aren't you ever going to learn to loosen up? How are you supposed to keep a boy if you can't have a little fun?"

Tanya's haughty face fell and her shoulders slumped in defeat. Suddenly she was just a kid like everyone else, trying to find ways to handle that hand fate had dealt her. I couldn't even hate her.

I grabbed her shoulder in one hand, turning her so her back was to the living room, and placed my other palm over her mouth. I leaned in and mashed my face against my hand, making a big show of mauling her hair and back with the other, and once she realized what I was doing, she played along.

"Wooo!" called the voice from the couch. "You go, Tee! I didn't think you had it in you!"

I pulled away, and a genuine smile flickered across the girl's face, the first I'd ever seen, and then she looked away.

"Apology accepted," she said, not meeting my eyes.

I waited for her to give me the password, and then I realized she had.

I left, feeling like I was escaping the psych ward from a fucked up low budget horror flick.

As I pulled out of the driveway, my iPhone buzzed with a text from Alice:

She's here.


What was your best Halloween costume?