AN: thanks as always to Monica for flexing her beta muscles, and Ciara, May, Jo and Marie for pre-reading. Love you guys.

You know those fluffy Christmas fics that post around this time of year? This is not one of those. You've been warned, lol.


Flip

He runs past the end of the drive every day. Like clockwork, at ten past five.

After work, before dinner.

I watch through slatted blinds, dusty and sun-faded.

Every day, for twenty seconds, his legs move, his heart pumps, his cheeks tinge with pink as he sails past, headphones on, oblivious.

Everyone knows Edward Cullen in this neighborhood.

The kids call him Crazy.

Sometimes he steals their pristine perfect bikes and rides away laughing. He shouts at them for staring, but I guess I would too.

Stare at him.

Shout at them.

My friend, Amber, says he was in a psychiatric hospital for a while, part of a plea bargain to stop him being put in jail.

He has issues.

Jacked a car, drove it into his girlfriend's house, and then choked her lover until he had red eyes and his neck was the color of blue raspberry and cherry slushies all shaken up.

I mean, maybe he deserved it.

The guy.

Maybe Edward Cullen was just so fucking crazy in love; he did that. Like he felt so much rage he wasn't thinking with his right mind. Poisoned by love. Consumed by betrayal.

I think I'd die if I felt like that.

Love is a drug.

And Edward Cullen… well, maybe he's a drug too.

It's Wednesday. I'm by the window, but the blinds are drawn up today, letting in grey light. Mom visited, and now the house smells like Lysol and potpourri. She's emptied it out into a wooden bowl and placed it on the sideboard strategically to cover green and dark water rings. I don't know why she cares. It's ugly and dated and my eyes are itching, the scent thick and overpowering.

Now my throat is itching too. I don't move though, despite my discomfort. Moving might mean I miss him.

5:09

I breathe, and I'm sure my throat is closing up, closing in tight, my heart racing.

What if I die?

I might die.

I might be allergic and die from potpourri. Has anyone died from potpourri before?

Reaching up on tiptoes, I flip the catch on the window. It swings open, a deep inhale as I hang my head out of it to stare into the bushes below, a breeze catches my hair making it fly. My hands press hard against the flaking sill. I lift one, blue paint sticking to my palm.

When I look up, he's there. Thick grey sweatpants, his white t-shirt wet at the neck and down his back.

And for once, he looks this way.

I freeze, caught in eyes I can't even tell the color of, suspended with my head out the window and air held tightly in my lungs.

He looks.

Then he looks away.

I look away too.

My feet move quickly to the belly of the house. My face and neck red and splotchy in the bathroom mirror. I splash it with water to try to cool the mortification, but it doesn't work. My cheeks glow hot.

He looked right at me.

He knows.

Maybe I shouldn't worry about it, but I do. I worry about it until I nibble skin from my lip, drawing blood, tangy on my tongue.

Storming back into the front room, I grab the potpourri and dump it in the trash, hauling out the liner to the garbage cans at the bottom of the drive. They rattle as I stuff the bag in. My foot connects with metal, frustration and rage when I can't close the lid on it properly, swearing at the filth and the trash like I want to swear at Mom when she comes over and… mothers.

Amber says she only does it because she feels guilty. Mom only ever does things out of guilt, but she doesn't feel guilty often. Not often enough.

I jump out my skin as I turn, his footsteps too light for me to have heard.

"Jesus!" I scowl at perfectly shaded lips and dark eyebrows. "What the fuck are you doing? Trying to give someone a heart attack?"

He looks down at me because he's tall and I'm short. Shorter. His cheeks are still red and there's sweat and stubble on his face.

"You watch me," he says, matter of fact.

His eyes are hazel, like if you were to swirl together all the colors of a forest. A jumble of green and brown.

"Don't be ridiculous." I walk away, back up the drive, but he follows.

"You do." His tone is almost mocking. Almost cruel. "Every day. Hiding behind those blinds."

"I just like looking out the window," I snap, defensive and irritated. I spin on the steps, hands on hips. "Does it even matter? It's a free fucking country last time I checked."

He shrugs broad shoulders so far up they almost reach the top of his ears. He looks stupid.

"It don't matter."

"Then why are you here? Being all sneaky. It's weird."

"What's your name?" he asks, rocking on his feet.

"I'm not telling you."

I walk up the steps and into the house, closing the front door loudly and resting my back against it until I'm sure I hear the crunch of his feet retreating down the drive.

When I risk a peek out the keyhole, he's gone.

I hide on Thursday. The sting of embarrassment eating me alive, but on Friday I can't help myself.

This time I move windows—upstairs, behind the nets that Nana put up at least a quarter of a century ago. Lace and frills, soaked with condensation, yellow and black in places. They're grim, and this place is falling apart. It's apt. Metaphorical.

I hover close to the bed with its yellow-floral comforter. I don't sleep in here; I sleep in the small room crammed between the stairs and the bathroom. It feels safer, somehow.

When Edward appears, his run slows to a jog. Then he stops. My eyes widen as he looks around, over his shoulders, and opens the rusting mailbox, rifling through it.

His lips curve; he waves an envelope in triumph, arm stretched high.

"Bella!" He shouts toward the house, causing a passerby to look at him funny and give him a wide berth. "Bella Swan! I know you're in there!"

I sink down onto the bed; it sags and squeaks like my insides.

How dare he.

A week later.

Saturday.

I'm hurrying down the block with my head down, bowed against rain. The thick drops soak my skin and my jeans, the paper bag from the grocers wilting and sodden under my arm.

I watch my wet feet move, slipping around in flat ballet pumps.

If Tanya had hurried up weighing me at the clinic, I wouldn't be late. I wouldn't have got caught in the rain and I wouldn't be missing Edward Cullen running. It's Tanya's fault, the fucking bitch, and I'm in a foul mood. Her threat of inpatient treatment underlined in red. A noose waiting for me.

"You're not doing well enough, Bella."

Well, fuck her. I'm doing just fine.

I turn into my drive, fiddling with keys in my purse. A jolt—a strangled gasp, my hand to my chest. The paper bag splits, fruit and vegetables, milk and bread, tumbling to the ground as I spy the figure on the steps too late.

Sitting in the downpour, rain dripping down his face, t-shirt clinging tightly to him like a second skin...

Every day since he found out my name he yells it as he runs past the house, his hands cupped around his mouth to amplify it as I hide behind the blinds or the net curtains. But not really, because I want him to know I'm here. It's a game.

"BELLA," he'll yell in a knowing sing-song voice. "I KNOW YOU'RE THERE!"

Now the yeller is sitting in front of me, soaked to the bone.

The sound of a car horn sends me scrambling, on my knees in the grit and dirt of the drive.

"Don't just sit there!" I snap. "Help me, asshole!"

He stays so still, I'm not even sure whether he's heard me. Slowly, he gets up, tilting his head up toward the heavens. The palms of his hands turn upward, a smile on his face as his eyes close and rain pelts it.

He's beautiful.

I mumble under my breath, arms full, jeans drenched as he finally crouches down, large hands piling milk and bread into his other arm.

Shakily, I open the front door. It creaks as it swings open. A glance over my shoulder as he stands stock still on the doorstep, his hair so wet it drips water from clumps plastered to his forehead.

"Come on in then."

He follows, both of us trailing damp feet and water through the house, into the kitchen. We dump everything onto the small round table with its plastic blue and white checked tablecloth.

Dark eyes take in the dim kitchen with its mismatched cupboards as we stand in silence. I see them flicker to me when I shrug off my jacket, my tank top underneath white and wet.

I'm not wearing a bra. My nipples show, dark pink and pointed underneath the flimsy material. I don't care.

"Were you waiting for me?"

My jeans are next, peeled and kicked off, landing with a wet thump on the floor, leaving me standing in plain black cotton panties.

He doesn't answer. Huffing, I open the door to the lean-to, where the ancient dryer is. The rain is louder out here, drumming down on corrugated plastic.

I don't look, leaving my hand outstretched, listening to the sound of clothes being taken off, until damp fabric is placed in my outstretched hand.

When I straighten, he's at the door, eyes still where my ass would have been seconds earlier. His mouth is parted. He swallows, his cheeks reddening. The drier kicks in behind me, the thump of our clothes rotating.

"You're really pretty," he says, clearing his throat.

"Why were you waiting on my steps?" I persist, arms crossing.

He looks down, in tight grey cotton boxer briefs and damp skin. I see him, hard, and for a second I want to be that girl, on my knees in front of a beautiful stranger, taking him in my mouth.

I don't wonder what things taste like often, but right now I wonder about him.

I want to know.

"You weren't here. Wanted to know where you were."

I shake my head. He's weird.

"Why do you care? We don't know each other."

When he doesn't answer that either, I tell him what's obvious.

"I was out."

"Getting groceries?"

"That and..." I blow out my cheeks, stopping myself.

It's none of his business. And this? Him being here, in Nana's home? In the place I live? A cold feeling of apprehension sweeps through me.

What if he's going to kill me dead like the crazy person everyone else thinks he is? What if they never find my body? Or he keeps me locked up in a basement for the rest of my life?

"And?" he prompts, shifting his weight, greying, bobbled sports socks pulled up on his shins.

I bite my lip.

"I had my weigh in at the clinic," I tell him.

He looks me over, unashamed, unabashed. He doesn't say it, but he gets it. His eyes linger on my arms and my collarbones and the gap between my thighs. He tucks his chin toward his chest in a nod.

Yeah. I guess he's not the only one fucked up around here.

There's a cloud of tension, so I move back into the kitchen, brushing against him accidentally on purpose.

I fantasize. Wishing he'd grab me with those large hands and fuck me against the wall, or something, like they do in the movies... or pornos.

He's passive, hands limp at his sides.

"Drink?"

"Can't," he mutters. "Not on my meds."

I roll my eyes. "I didn't mean alcoholic. Do you know how many calories are in a beer?"

"No," he rubs at his face.

"Too many."

I turn to the cupboard and bring down two mismatched mugs, filling the stove kettle with water. There's the scraping of a chair against scuffed linoleum. On tiptoes I reach higher, taking a box down of peppermint tea.

"Go out with me."