Happy reading!
This is a re-post. I thought I put up the wrong version and took it down.
18. Back to You
You can break my heart in two
But when it heals, it beats for you
I know it's forward, but it's true
Won't lie, I'd go back to you
You know, my thoughts are running loose
It's just a thing you make me do
And I could fight, but what's the use?
I know I'd go back to you
- Back to You, Selena Gomez
Are we okay?
Yeah, we're okay.
Why did I say that? I'm anything but okay. Honestly, I think that I was too stunned in the moment to really know how I felt about it. It wasn't until I was lying in bed that night, that it all hit me. It bothered me, and it's eating me up. It's been a few weeks, and I'm still obsessing over it, and I have yet another reason to be jealous of Tanya. I also hate confrontation, so I probably would've told him that I was okay either way, because the thought of confronting anyone makes my skin prickle and my hair stand on end and makes me want to run in the other direction with my hair on fire. I would rather get stung by a thousand killer bees than confront someone. I would rather… you get the point.
It also doesn't help that it's Valentine's Day and everyone around me is in a love coma and it makes me a little bitter, because I don't have a Valentine of my own. It seems like every other girl in the Sophomore class has been given boxes of chocolate or huge teddy bears from their boyfriends and I got a Hershey kiss set in the middle of pancake this morning by my father.
My English teacher is discussing Night, the first book that we're going to be reading for the class, when the guys and girls delivering roses came into the classroom. Over the last week, during lunch, people could place orders to send flowers to their girlfriends or boyfriends or friends. I'm slightly surprised when my name gets called.
I get a rose from each of the guys… and one from Jacob. I've been avoiding him, and one would think that he'd have gotten the point by now. The whole thing makes me uncomfortable and I don't know what I'd say to him if I did see him.
At lunchtime, we all meet up at our typical table, all the guys got all of us girls roses, which is sweet of them. We all talk about our classes and how many giant teddy bears that we'd seen already today.
At some point, Edward slides a small box in front of me. I open it to find a pair of carved earrings. The charm dangling from them looks just like the carved bird ornament he gave me for Valentine's Day two years ago. The ornament that I still have on bed side lamp. We don't say anything as I take out my studs and put them in, but I do see him smile into his sandwich.
I feel a sense of dread as I walk into third period Latin. We're getting our first tests back today and I'm more than certain that I didn't do well. In fact, I'm pretty much expecting to fail. So, when Mr. Moore starts to hand out the tests, my heart starts to beat a little faster. When he sets my test on my desk, I'm in a pit of my own anxiety. I literally hold my breath as I flip over my test.
Oh, thank God it's not an F!
I've never been so happy to have a C in my life. I was certain that I was going to fail. Over the last couple of weeks, I've learned the hard way that Latin really isn't my thing. I should've known, Emmett passed with flying colors (rolls eyes). I should've taken Spanish or French, something that wouldn't make me feel like an idiot every time the teacher spoke, and it just isn't clicking. Verb conjugations and noun cases are… Latin to me… no pun intended. I should've transferred to another foreign language when I still had the chance. Whoever said that this was easy, was mad.
I looked over to Edward, whose paper is boasting a perfect score.
How did he do that?
"You got a hundred?" my whisper's high pitched as I continue to look, dumbfounded, at his paper. My Latin skills are officially even more inadequate than I thought moments earlier. He got a freaking hundred!
He smirks at me and I swear he puffs his chest out like he's Mr. Universe, "What can I say? I'm a savant." He starts to lean toward my desk, wanting to get a look at my grade. "What did you get?"
With cat like reflexes that I wasn't aware that I possess, I flip my test over before he can see my grade. It isn't terrible, but it isn't a perfect score either.
"That bad, huh?" he smirks again, and I stick my tongue out at him.
Mr. Moore calls the class to attention once he's finished handing out the tests, making the murmured voices cease. This shouldn't be a big deal, but he picks it up, and my heart sinks. The Bucket of Death.
The name makes it sound much more dramatic than it actually is. It's just a clear plastic purple container that has tiles with the names of every person in the class. Instead of having students raise their hands and calling on them like a normal human being with a soul, he picks out of the bucket. As he walks toward the desk he sits in at the front of the classroom, he shakes it, looking manically around the room. He gets way too much pleasure from this, way more than should be logical. It shouldn't bring anyone this much pleasure to torture kids.
Without even thinking about it, I slide far down into my chair, as far down as I can get without being on the floor, trying to be invisible, like this'll help him not call on me. Every single time that I've gone up to answer a question on the board, I've gotten it wrong. It's a type of embarrassment that I don't particularly want to encounter again. Especially when it feels like you're the only one in the class that gets the answer wrong.
He starts the lesson, going over the next units' vocab words. The vocab quizzes are the only things that save me from failing the class. It's going well, and I'm relaxed, which is my first mistake. Once we get to the section of the lesson that require answers, the lid comes off and he starts to move the tiles around, like a witch stirs a cauldron.
Please don't pick me, please don't pick me, please don't pick me.
Every time a tile comes out and he doesn't say my name, I can feel myself weak with relief. I'm saved embarrassment for the day.
"How can someone be good at Latin?" I razz Edward as we walk out of the trailer.
He laughs, "I don't know. How can someone be good at painting?"
"Alright, look," I grab his arm, letting the people behind us go by once we've cleared the stairs. "If I'm going to maintain a respectable GPA, I'm going to need help with this class."
"Are you asking me to help you?"
"You're really going to make me say it?"
"Yeah, I think that I am." Will you ever stop smirking?
I huff, putting on a dramatic show for him, "Will you help me with my Latin?"
He puts his index finger against his chin, like he actually has to think about it, and I punch him lightly on the shoulder. "I think that I can do that. Start after school?"
"After school, like at my house?" My parents and Emmett won't be home this afternoon, and it feels weird to know that we'll have the entire place to ourselves.
He laughs lightly, "We can go to my house, but my mom is meeting with a couple of clients this afternoon and it won't really be conducive to studying."
"No, it's fine." It's just we're going to be alone in the house and I'm going to have a hard time not thinking about the dirty dream that I had of you last night that involved my living room couch, but it's fine.
"Um, Bella." He says after a second.
"Yeah?"
"I kind of need my arm to go to my next class."
I blush bright red and release his arm like I've been burned. "Sorry."
He smiles softly down at me, and I feel my insides flutter. "See you later, Bella."
I watch him walk away, not seeming to care that I'm making myself late for class.
Today in art, my paper isn't blank. I draw birds in a blooming tree, no longer in my art block. When the final bell rings, I walk out of the school, carrying my flowers. I almost get decapitated by a girl's huge teddy bear when she turns and almost smothers me with it. If I'd looked away for a second, my ass would have landed on the concrete.
As I'm nearing Edward's car, I see familiar brown-haired girl, fawning all over him.
Bree's taken it upon herself to be friends with Edward. She's found her way over to our lunch table a few times over the last few weeks, laughing at all his jokes, even when they aren't funny. The girls aren't exactly friendly to her. They know her game and make it clear that they're on my side. I, on the other hand, decided to remain neutral. If Edward wants to date Bree, he can date Bree. Just like he'd dated Tanya. Even if it does bug the hell out of me.
"Hey, Bella." Edward gives me a look that clearly says save me.
"Hey," I greet Edward, smiling at Bree when she gives me a disgusted look, not happy that I interrupted whatever oh so important conversation they were having. Bree, like Jacob, can't take a hint.
"Bella," Wow, I always wanted to know what my name would sound like spit at me. She gets all flirty when she looks back at Edward, "See you tomorrow, Edward."
I stumble back a little when her shoulder hits mine as she walks by, going over to wherever her broom is parked.
"Huh," I hum as I start to examine him.
He looks down at himself, wondering what I'm looking at. "What is it?"
"I'm just surprised that she didn't leave any claw marks behind, that's all." I smile up at him, thoroughly amused by my own joke enough for the both of us.
The furrow between his brow lifts as he starts to laugh, "You're crazy." He shakes his head, "Let's go." As he walks by me, I think I feel him kiss my head like he did the night we sat on my porch.
What the hell?
The ride home isn't filled with awkward silence and tension, instead we're listening to old school Fall Out Boy, and I tell him about the girl that almost clobbered me with her teddy bear. He proceeds to laugh for two minutes straight. It actually feels like we're friends again and it's nice.
When get to my front door, I have a moment of panic because I can't find my keys for a good minute. I can see us now, still sitting on the porch when my parents and Emmett get back from work at eight o'clock. I have to take out most of the contents of my bag to be able to find them. Edward doesn't say anything while I'm on my hands and knees going through my things, but I can see the smile wanting to break free around the corners of his mouth.
Once we're finally inside with the door shut, it's eerily quiet. There's no TV playing or people walking around. There's no Emmett yelling at a game in the living room. We're completely and totally alone, which we've never been before. It feels strange to be in my house with no supervision.
"Do you something to eat or drink or something?" I offer weakly while we're standing in our favorite part of my house, the foyer.
"No thanks."
I push my bangs out of my face for the millionth time today, "Okay, um, study in the dining room, I guess?" I offer up the dining room because I don't think that I can handle sitting on the couch with him without sweating profusely in areas that I didn't know could sweat and my imagination running wild.
"Okay."
We walk into the dining room and take seats next to each other. For the next thirty minutes, he tries to explain how to translate sentences into Latin and all the tenses and how to tell which one you need to use. I try to pay attention, I really do, but he's so close that his hand rubs against the back of mine softly and I can't keep my mind from wandering to other things. Like the couch… and Tanya.
"I'm not okay!" I blurt out, because I can't take it anymore. It all falls out of my face before I realize what I'm saying, and he freezes. "The whole you and Tanya and the friends with benefits thing and I said that I was okay when I'm really not I'm wigged out and I'm not sure why I said that I was okay other than the fact that I'm a teenager and we're impulsive and stupid and I didn't mean to lie it just kind of happened." I rush and by the time that I'm done, I'm winded because I just blurted it out all in one breath and I wasn't aware that my lungs can hold that much. And he's just sitting there staring at me, probably wondering where this came from because we haven't talked about it in weeks.
"I… uh… shit," my face lands in my hands, yelling at myself internally for bringing it up. It's his life, it's not like it's any of my concern anyway. I shouldn't be throwing it in his face. "Let's go back to studying." I pick my pencil back up, going back to my Latin textbook.
I'm in the middle of conjugating porto in my head when I feel his hand cup my chin, turning my head gently to face him. His eyes are soft and sad as they peer into mine, "I wish I could change it."
"I shouldn't have brought it up." I can feel my face get hot. He shouldn't have to defend himself to me. It's one thing for me to obsess and fret over in my head, it's another to verbalize it to him.
I'm pretty sure that I've made everything worse, because we're sitting here not looking at each other. The easy conversation and teasing of the afternoon seem to be long gone.
"For what it's worth," he says, releasing my chin from his grasp, breaking the strained silence. "I know it's not the same thing, but you and Jacob and the whole date thing bugs me."
"Fair enough."
He pushes some hair behind my ear, his fingers lightly touching the earring that dangles there, and I get goosebumps.
We go back to studying and by the time that he leaves my house later in the evening, I'm no closer to understanding any of it.
A few nights later, I'm at work. It's slow, just after the dinner rush. Charlotte and I are the only waitresses on duty at the moment. The only customers are an elderly couple that just walked in.
As Charlotte goes over to take their order where I sit them at a booth near the front of the restaurant. I wander into the kitchen, where Emmett is standing at the counter. As I stand there, I can't help but intervene.
"What do you think about Charlotte?" I ask Emmet, leaning against the counter next to him, tilting my head in her direction where she's taking the order of the elderly couple.
Emmett looks up, throwing the dishtowel that he's been using to wipe the counters, over his shoulder. "She seems nice."
I roll my eyes, resisting the urge to groan out loud because guys can be so clueless. "No, like, you know, do like her? Because, I know for a fact that she likes you."
He looks at me for a moment as if he's letting what I said sink in deep to his brain. "I haven't really thought about it, but," he looks back up at Charlotte who's just finished up with the couple, laughing at something that's said to her. "I mean, why not. She's cute and funny, it might be fun."
I fight back the smile of victory and resist the urge to happy dance, "If you tell her we had this conversation, you're dead. Got it?" I'm pretty sure the girl would die if she found out that I've played match maker between her and my brother. I don't fancy being skinned alive anytime soon.
"Got it." he comments, blowing me off. As he walks away, he hits me on the shoulder with the dishtowel as he goes back to the dishes.
I feel pretty good about this.
A/N: My Latin teacher really did have a "Bucket of Death" that he took too much pleasure in using to torture his students. He's also my favorite teacher that I've ever had.