An Introduction to Swirl and Daisy: The Non-Romantic Romance

Beta: xsecretxkeeperx

Chapter 38: An Interlude: The Introduction of Daisy

. . .

Edward couldn't keep his smile to himself, and with an entire week dedicated to humming, random head bobbing, and the occasional giggle (that's right—Edward giggled), I'd long doubted it was a Prom-induced euphoria. He hadn't even been this excited about sex, and that was saying something. Edward loved sex. Loved it. I would know. We did it a lot.

I chanced another glance at him. He was fiddling with his tie, smiling goofily at me. "What is going on with you?" I asked for about the fiftieth time.

I turned onto the curvy stretch of road that would take us to the Forks Community Center, where Prom was being held, the one proviso to my attendance being I got to drive. In August, we would be leaving Firebolt behind like an unwanted puppy while we took Edward's Volvo out to New Hampshire for college, which gave me only three months to savor his hunky metal body and grumbling roar.

"Can't a man enjoy how stunning his girlfriend is without suspicion? Bella, you are strike-me-dead-beautiful right now. I'm shocked Coach let you out of the house." The satisfaction of his compliment filled my whole body, especially when I felt his eyes trace the plunging v-neck of my crimson gown. I'd picked this dress on impulse, to reflect my newfound strength. Also, Edward was a boob man.

"I know your I-think-I-have-the-hottest-girlfriend-in-Forks smile. This isn't it," I said. He hummed mysteriously. "Come on. I know you want to tell me. You've been practically buzzing all week."

"Have I?"

"Edward, it's time," I said, trying the tactic he always used. "Teamwork, remember?"

Edward happily bobbed along with the bumps of the road, perfectly immune to my attempts. "How long do you suppose until we get to the Community Center?"

"I don't know. Five minutes, maybe. Why do you ask?"

The sun was setting at the end of the road, producing a brilliant mess of pinks, oranges, and yellows. We had taken our time at dinner, without thought or care for punctuality. Given the bareness of the roads, it was an easy assumption our fellow classmates were already sipping Prom juice and dancing to faculty-approved music.

"I have another question," Edward said. "It's about the mansion."

A frustrated sigh made my whole body sag. "This? Again? Really? Really, Edward?"

A month ago, when he'd originally offered to buy the mansion, he'd been all, "I don't want my opinion to sway you one way or another. If you want this house, I will buy it," and, "This is your decision. I'm putting it in your hands." I'd underestimated his aversion to the word, "no." I loved that house, but I wanted to change the world. A mansion-sized mortgage and Dartmouth didn't go hand in hand, no matter how much and how often Edward tried to convince me otherwise.

Esme hadn't made my decision any easier. Despite it being the bulk of her inheritance, she was determined to gift it to us. On this point, Edward actually agreed. Good kids did not graciously accept gifts worth over four million dollars from their grieving mothers.

"But," Edward had whispered in my ear, "good children do accept hefty discounts."

The Cullens had decided to keep the house off the market until Edward and I left for school, a combination of giving Edward more time to figure out a way to buy the house and giving us a private, safe place to take our "extracurricular activities." I'd made it my personal mission to do it in every room of that house before we left in September.

"What's that smile for?" Edward asked, tickling the corner of my lip with his forefinger.

I playfully swatted it away, and rose myself up in the seat to get a better view of the road and sunset. "I was just thinking about the house, how much fun we have there."

"You do have a tendency to fill the halls with a certain… vocal quality."

"I'm going to miss it," I said. "I really am. I can't tell you how much I love that house." Though I did. Often and loudly.

"So if I found a way to pay it off all at once before we left for school, you would say…?"

"I'd say we've been over this, like, a thousand times." We had checked and re-checked our bank accounts, added up the figures, budgeted about fifteen different scenarios. Edward had even offered to give up The Wedding Fund, which had grown significantly over the last year thanks to an influx of traffic to MyT-Spot. There really was no way around it. We couldn't afford it without supplementing our income with side-jobs at Dartmouth and even that was a stretch.

"I know we have, but things have changed since we last discussed it."

My eyebrows crinkled. "How?"

"We sold MyT-Spot," he said it so casually I thought I'd misheard him.

When he repeated himself, the pit fell out of my stomach. "But I thought—"

"That our chances of selling had died with Grandma. So did I, but I got a call from her lawyer last week. He's been acting as her proxy since her passing."

"I'm so confused. Why didn't you know about this?"

"Mr. Jenks had a lot of reason to keep the negotiations going. I had no idea how much the website was going to sell for and he's going to receive a huge chunk of Grandma's portion."

"How much?"

"I don't remember the percentage, exactly."

"How much did it sell for?" I pushed. It must have been significant, like six-figures significant, if we could afford to buy the house.

"Before I tell you, I want to explain something for the sake of full disclosure."

I tapped my thumbs on the steering wheel. "Okay, but hurry. I want to knooooow."

"Your impatience is duly noted, but I don't want to be accused of holding out on any information come tomorrow. Because the truth is, according to Mr. Jenks, we undersold. We probably could have sold it for double, if not triple or quadruple, what we sold it for, if we had decided to stick with it for a few more years and really dedicated ourselves to its development."

"Really dedicated?" I repeated. "Implying that we haven't been really dedicated for the last five years of our lives?"

"I'm talking no-school, no-lives, ninety-hours-a-week kind of dedication."

My eyebrows crinkled. "I'm not following."

"What we sold was an idea, the technology to back it up, and a modest user base. Mrs. Evans was a very astute businesswoman. She patented the software you programmed, so for now it's untouchable to anyone but us, but there were other areas we could have improved upon…" Edward continued on and on about the business side of expanding membership and mega-revenue prospects and near-term liquidity. There was a reason I preferred the world of character nodes and data. This was mind-numbingly dull. It wasn't until he mentioned that Google was rumored to be acquiring Youtube for over a billion dollars that my ears perked.

"A number, Edward. I swear, all I want is a number."

"Where are we going?" he asked, glancing out the window.

"The Community Center." I slammed on the brakes. "Which I now realize is back that way." He had actually bored me into missing our turn, ending us up in a place with no cars and few streetlamps.

"Well, anyway," Edward said, adjusting the strap of his seat belt as I started to make a three-point turn. "I told Mr. Jenks that it wasn't all about the money for us. We wanted it to go to someone who believed in it as much as we did, who would nurture it and care for it so it could grow from a tiny sprig to a luminous willow."

My three-point turn was turning into a seven-point turn. "Edward, it's a website," I said, slowly reversing then jamming the stick back to drive.

"That's exactly what I said when I saw the figure they were offering. Are you ready for this? Seventeen, Bella. Seventeen. Plus Mr. Jenks was able to retain some of our shares, so we'll get a quarterly bonus."

"Oh." Disappointment swallowed up every thought, the number seventeen so big in its smallness, before anger punched it in the face and delivered my thoughts in a giant red wave. "Oh!" I said in disgust. "That Jenks is a moron."

"Tell me what you really think," Edward said in surprise.

I kept my eyes hard on the road as Firebolt inched his way toward freedom. Thirteen points really wasn't so bad for such a narrow road. "Seventeen thousand dollars is pathetic, Edward. I just thought…" What had I thought? That we were something special? The next Myspace or Youtube? That my programming was that kind of amazing? Yes. It freaking was. "We deserved more."

Edward's lips were twitching.

"What?" I asked.

"I'm just wondering how long I should wait."

"For what?"

"For you to realize."

"Realize what?"

His eyes danced, teasing me. "Bella, we make more than twenty thousand a year on MyT-Spot. Do you know how stupid it would be for me to sell the entire website for less than that?"

"Duh. What do you think I've been saying? We should have at least gotten a hundred thousand."

He let out a bark and hopped in his seat. "Oh, my God. This is too good."

"What?"

"Million, Bella. Seventeen million."

There was a loud ringing in my ears. "April fools?" I asked steadily, even though it was May.

A slight turn of Edward's smirking face told me all I needed to know. This was no joke.

I wish I could say I kept my composure. I wish I could say I didn't let out an ear-piercing scream, throw up my arms, and let my foot off the brake pedal. I wish I could say that almost instantly Edward and I weren't screaming for an entirely different reason as Firebolt rolled off the side of the road, plummeted down a small hill, and hit a tree.

I wish I could say that the first words out of my mouth as Edward and I sat panting in a wrecked Firebolt were, "Are you okay?" rather than, "SEVENTEEN MILLION DOLLARS! Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit! Seventeen million! We're fucking millionaires! HOLY MOTHER OF…"

Edward's hard breaths curved into a smile, and then there was laughter. In all the five years I'd known Edward Cullen, I'd never heard him laugh that loud and that hysterically. He threw back his head and soon my laughter mingled with his.

"Why… are you… laughing?" he choked out. "You… just killed… Firebolt."

"Because we can afford to fix him!" I squealed delightfully. "We're freaking millionaires!"

He only laughed harder.

"What about you?" I finally asked. "Are you okay? Why are you laughing?"

"Because… because…" He blew out a breath, trying to compose himself. "Because I have a confession. I promised myself years ago I would tell you when the moment was right." He swallowed, shaking his head. "There's something I've called you in my head since we first started dating in middle school."

My eyebrows knitted suspiciously. "Called me?"

"A term of endearment, if you will." He grabbed my hand and twisted the daisy ring he gave me a few summers ago around my right ring finger. "In my head, I call you…" a small chuckle overcame him. He coughed it back down and gave me a serious expression. "I call you Whoopsie Daisy."

I gasped and snatched my hand back. "You do not!"

"Bella, you just ran your car off the side of the road! You can not be offended by this!"

"But that—millions! Not my fault!"

He was laughing again, slapping his knee, wiping his face. "Oh, Bella, I love you so much. You don't even know."

Begrudgingly, a tight-lipped grin reemerged on my lips. I rolled my eyes and gave myself to it. "Whoopsie Daisy," I repeated and glanced down at my ring affectionately. "So that's why you've given me thousands of daisies over the years… it was all a big inside joke."

"I don't know if this helps, but you are the very first person in on the joke," Edward offered.

I leaned back and rested my head on the seat. It wasn't difficult. The car was tilting backward, propped up by the tree. I took the moment to think of it all… where we had started and where we had come. Two middle schoolers. A ringer and a potterphile. An entrepreneur and a web developer. Seventeen. Million. Freaking. Dollars. Perhaps more like ten, with taxes and Jenks' cut. But still… A lot. Of freaking. Money. We'd already changed our world. Now it was time for the rest of it.

My head lolled toward Edward. He was watching me with a gentle smile. "So," I said, "I guess that would make us Daisy and Swirl."

"Guess so," he said.

"I love you."

"I love you."

I let it sink in for one more minute, before letting out a last chuckle and reaching for my cellphone. "We should probably call my dad. Get a tow truck out here." I paused. "Or… Do you think we have time to, um…" I glanced down at his pants and waggled my eyebrows.

Edward looked around, considering. The sun had almost set. Only a few resilient rays of light illuminated the forest around us. "If anyone had seen us go off the road," he said practically, "they would have come to check by now."

"And anyway," I added, "it only seems fitting to give Firebolt a proper bon voyage. You know, before we send him to a premium auto shop to be fixed."

Edward unsnapped his buckle and patted the space right next to him with a cheeky grin. That night, we made it to Prom with fifteen minutes to spare.

We never regretted it.