Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing. I'm so glad you all love these two as much as I do!
Thanks to Fran, Gemma, Ariel, and Pamela for editing and prereading.
And thanks to Twilight and Normal People for letting me play in their worlds every now and then :)
Edward
"You goin' to Eric's?" Mom asks me Tuesday morning when she hears my bedroom door open from down the hallway. Feet scuffling against soft carpet, I grumble my way into the kitchen, where Mom finishes up a few things before heading out for the day.
"Maybe," I yawn loudly, plopping down into the seat at the table. "Haven't gotten that far ahead yet."
Mom laughs. "How could I forget? You're a teenager. You sleep past noon. Sorry for waking you so early at this ungodly hour of…" She pauses to look at her watch, "ten o'clock."
"Yeah, well. Don't make a habit of it." I reply, earning another laugh from my mother at my expense. Smiling just a little, I reach for a blueberry muffin sitting on the table. Mom must have put them out earlier this morning. "You heading to Aunt Maggie's?"
Mom enthusiastically nods as she reaches for her coat. "Yep! Taking advantage of those after Christmas sales," she says like she's about to embark on a serious mission. "I'll be home after we eat."
"Where are you going for dinner?"
"I'm not sure. Somewhere in Port Angeles. Did you want me to bring you something home to eat from the restaurant?"
Perfect. "Yeah, sure. Call me when you're there so I can tell you what I want." The final piece of the plan falls into place. When Mom calls me from the restaurant later tonight, that'll be our cue it's time to bring Bella home.
"Sounds good," Mom says. The sound of Aunt Maggie's car honking outside ends our conversation. She looks around to make sure she has everything she'll need before bending down to me at the table to plant a kiss on my cheek. "Love you."
I reach for another muffin. "Love you."
The minute I hear the car pull away, I'm heading to the shower and sending a message to Bella.
She just left. Hopping in the shower now and then, I'm on my way. That okay?
She answers quickly.
Sounds perfect. I'm ready.
I shower quickly; the idea of spending uninterrupted time with Bella for the first time seems to be more exciting than Christmas morning. Sure, we have our time at First Beach, but those are stolen minutes in the backseat of my car.
It'll be nice to have her here, with more time on our side and a chance to be ourselves without the possibility of anyone interrupting. The chances of my friends coming over after the night they had last night are slim to none, and besides, Eric's is the place we all go to chill.
Today will be all about us and nobody else, and it makes me feel warm and relieved.
Being with Bella is the only time I feel I can be my true self.
I love that.
As antsy as I am to pick her up after my shower, I take a few minutes to do one last look over my room before leaving. Mom always makes sure the rest of the apartment is immaculate, but she leaves my room and laundry to me. I'm not a messy person, but I could be a little cleaner, though I'm sure it's clean enough for Bella. My dresser and desk are full of small items here and there, little glimpses into my life, and I leave them there. I like the idea of sharing them with someone, and I know Bella would appreciate seeing them, appreciate the story behind each item.
Satisfied with everything I see, I throw on a hoodie and head out, letting Bella know I'm on the way. Now that it's officially a few days after Christmas, most people are back to work, Bella's mom and brother included. We could have spent the day at Bella's house, but I know she likes getting out of that house whenever she can.
I know there's more of a story there than what she's told me, but I won't push her to tell me anything she doesn't want to talk about.
As I'm pulling into her driveway, she steps out the front door, her hair down in natural loose waves, and it strikes me just how much she hides in school. With her hair out of its restraints and the smile she greets me with, I wonder if her life would be a lot easier at school if she let people other than me see this side of her.
But then again, fuck everyone else. Why should a change in her appearance suddenly make her worthy of their acceptance? And why should their opinions even matter at all?
Fucking high school, man.
When she opens the door to my car, her long legs fold beneath her as she settles into the passenger seat, and I'm glad I'm the only one who gets to see this side of her.
She's like a Christmas present made just for me.
A gift I enjoy unwrapping more and more each time I see her.
"What's in the bag?" I ask her as we make our way down the other side of her horseshoe driveway on the hill.
"I did a little shopping earlier," she shrugs her shoulders. I raise an eyebrow and use a finger to peer in the bag, one eye still on the road. She laughs a moment later. "I like Christmas cookies, so what?"
I spy sugar, cookie cutters, and vanilla extract, among other things, in the bag.
"Oh, we're baking them?"
"Why not? I haven't had any this year."
"Do you usually?" I ask, turning the wheel, so we're making our way downtown. The streets are mostly empty now that most people have gone back to work, and we're in a strange time between Christmas Day and New Year's Eve.
"Only if I make them myself," Bella answers. "I don't know; I figured it would be fun to do today."
"I can't wait," I say to her at the traffic light, leaning over to convince her with a kiss.
Having never baked a damn thing in my life, I actually have no idea what we'll need and if we even have any of what we'll need at home. Bella assures me I should, saying the only thing she'll need is a cookie sheet, and she would be surprised if Esme didn't have one.
It doesn't dawn on me until Bella is placing the ingredients onto my dining room table that she's the first girl I've ever brought over to my house like this. Sure, I've had birthday parties here when I was younger, and people have stopped over now and then to chill for a bit, but I've never invited a girl over. Not like this … just her and me.
And more importantly, it's not awkward. Bella steps into my house like it's not a big deal that she lives in a fucking mansion, and I live here, in a tiny two-bedroom apartment on the other side of town. Maybe it's my own insecurities that made me think she would, but instead, she finds her way to the kitchen to place down her bag of cookie ingredients on the table like her being here is the most natural thing in the world.
The more time goes on, the more I believe it to be true.
"Here, roll the dough with this," Bella says a little while later. She hands me a rolling pin from her bag and points to the flour sitting on the table. "Sprinkle some flour on the rolling pin first."
We had made the dough from scratch and were ready to start the next step.
"Like this?" I ask, coating the rolling pin in a hefty amount of flour.
Bella laughs, and I love hearing the sound echo throughout my kitchen. "Yeah, that should work."
Rolling the dough isn't as simple as I thought it would be, but eventually, I learned that even something as simple as rolling dough has a science to it, and once Bella shows me how to do it, so the dough isn't too thick and doesn't break, I have it rolled out in no time.
The fun part is using the cookie cutters, talking and laughing as we place them into the sugared dough. We have reindeer, wreaths, bells, Santas, angels, and snowflakes all ready to go into the oven. Bella had preheated it when I had first started rolling out the dough, so by the time we had laid the first round of cookies onto the parchment paper on the cookie sheet, the oven was good to go.
"How long do they cook for?" I ask, leaning against the counter as Bella places the cookies in the oven, closing the door and wiping her hands on the dishtowel.
She's setting a timer on her phone. "Six to seven minutes, depending on your oven. We'll check them at six to see how they're doing."
Nodding, my eyes land on the leftover pile of dough on the counter. "What do we do with this?"
"Make more," Bella answers easily, reaching for the rolling pin again. "We repeat the same process over and over again until we're left with pretty much nothing."
It doesn't take long for us to fall into a comfortable rhythm. We listen to Christmas music and talk while we roll, flour, and bake. An hour later, when my kitchen is stacked with cookies in various stages of cooking, and my house smells like the Pillsbury Doughboy's asshole, Bella sighs and looks around, surveying the damage.
Her hair is still down and loose, and there is a speck of flour on her right cheek. She's wearing Christmas socks with a pair of black leggings, a loose red sweater with a peek of a black strap underneath against her shoulder.
She's beautiful.
Bella turns to look at me. "This should be it. We don't have enough dough left to fit another cookie-cutter."
She begins to rinse the cookie cutters in the sink, but I hold a hand up instead.
"Hold on," I interrupt. I walk over to the counter where the dough is and form a tiny little B in the small amount we have left. "We have enough for this."
Peering over my shoulder, Bella shakes her head and looks up at me. "Wow. You're definitely trying to seduce me today, Cullen." She turns and gently forms a matching E as well. "Can't have one without the other."
I immediately find the truth in her words.
"I see that now."
I didn't see it then, but I see it more and more each day. Each time we're together. We just…fit. Easily.
Naturally.
She carefully places the E and B onto a sheet that is already in the oven, closes the door, and looks over at me with a shy smile. We start to clean up the remnants of the mess we've made in the kitchen, letting the cookies stay there and cool so we can decorate them later. Inside of her bag, she has even remembered to bring Christmas cookie containers, and it's a small peek into what makes her…her. Always thinking ahead. Always prepared.
Always controlled.
Once the kitchen is clean, we make our way to my room to watch a movie. She stops at every picture my mom has on display, each one having a story of its own behind it to share. I would have been embarrassed to show these pictures to anyone else, but it's Bella, so I don't mind sharing.
"So this is where the genius studies?" Bella jokes once we're in my room, tapping her fingers on the top of my desk as she takes in my room in slow wonderment.
"Genius?" I scoff, rolling my eyes. "Please."
She turns to look at me with her hand on her hip. "Give yourself some credit, Edward. You've worked hard for someone to be able to say that to you and have it not be a lie."
I point a finger back at her. "You've worked hard, too."
She ignores me, continuing her slow perusal of my room and everything in it, just like I thought she would. I don't mind; I sit on the edge of my bed and reach for the television remote on my nightstand.
"Are these your journals?" Bella asks a minute later, running her hands along leather-bound spines sitting in place on the shelves of my bookcase.
"Yeah," I nod. "Running out of space to put them."
She laughs through her nose. "You're going to need a bigger bookcase soon."
I watch as she continues her own brief tour of my small room, only big enough for a double bed pushed against one wall and a desk, dresser, and tall bookcase. It's tight in here, but I've never minded it. Just like in the hallway, she stares at the pictures and posters on my walls, admiring some and sending me questioning looks at others.
Either way, it makes me laugh at her reactions to each of these little tokens of my life. When she sits down next to me on the bed, I resume scrolling through the channels on my TV.
"What do you want to watch? I'm sure there are some classic Christmas movies still on some networks somewhere."
"Nothing," Bella replies. "I don't want to watch TV."
I look over at her. "Okay," I say, reaching over to put the remote back on my nightstand. She doesn't make me question her reason why for long.
"Come here," she says, suddenly shy but still able to tell me what she wants.
If someone had told me I'd have Bella Swan in my bed, let alone my room, I would have laughed and laughed and laughed.
Instead, the last thing I'm doing right now is laughing.
If I thought having Bella beneath me in the backseat of my car was amazing, it's nothing compared to what I think now when I have her beneath me in my bed. There are no restrictions here, no seatbelts digging into our backs, no tight spaces we have to squeeze ourselves into.
Right now, she's stretched under me, her legs open for me to rest between them, her hands sliding up and down my back as her lips slant across mine. There's a different energy in the air; somehow, we're more relaxed than we've ever been, though the feel of her body against mine sets a rapid pace between us we've never experienced together. The freedom we have today — no interruptions, no judgments — combined with the fact that I've never wanted anything more than this, her, in my life, fills me with an intensity I know is reciprocated by Bella.
Her hands move from my back into my hair before eventually coming to rest against the back of my neck. She sighs when my lips pull away from hers to find her secret place below her ear, and a moment later, she squeezes me gently on the shoulder, her body moving out from beneath me.
Lying on my side, I watch as she sits on the edge of my bed before I eventually move to sit next to her. Bella turns to me, placing a kiss on my mouth.
"I want you," she says, pulling away and holding my face in her hands, so our eyes meet. "All of you."
Realization dawns on me now, and I look at her quizzically.
"Are you sure?" I ask, taking one of her hands from my face and squeezing it between us. I shake my head and roll off her. "That's not why I invited you here today. I have absolutely no expectations —"
She reaches for my hand again. "Edward, I want to." Her eyes drop for a moment, and she speaks her next words downwards. "There's absolutely no one else I would want to experience my first time with than you."
My face softens at her admission, and this time it's me who tilts her chin towards me, so our eyes meet. "I don't want to rush you," I say. "I mean, obviously, I want this but only when you're ready."
She nods. "I am ready. I may not know what I'm doing at all, but I trust you."
I smile softly at her as we sit side by side on the edge of my bed, the afternoon sun shining into my room like it did on that day I first kissed her. She's haloed by the light, a sign that she was surely placed in my path for a reason.
I understand what she means when she says that. We know the risks. We know this moment will always be marked on the maps of our lives. We know it will change things between us forever. We also know, without a doubt, that it's something we can't deny. Can't ignore.
Nodding, I lean over and plant a kiss on her shoulder where her red sweater has slipped. "I trust you, too."
She smiles softly at my touch, our eyes meeting when I pull away.
"Do you have a condom?" Bella asks.
I nod. "Yeah, in here."
I get off my bed and walk over to my dresser, grabbing a condom and sliding the drawer closed again. I make my way back to the bed, standing directly in front of her, and place the condom on my nightstand for when we're ready.
We're not quite there yet.
I can tell she's unsure of what to do next, and I realize now how nice it is. It makes me think of other times before this, with other girls who never wasted any time getting to what they wanted. Laughing softly, I say her own words back to her this time. "Come here."
I hold my hand out, and she wastes no time in sliding hers into my own. I pull her to me, her laughs disappearing against my lips, our mouths falling into that same cadence that somehow washes me in peace and sets me on fire all at once. My hands slip beneath her sweater, beneath the black lace she wears beneath it. Her arms, encircling my waist, rise when I pull the fabric up and away from her body. The red sweater and the black lace bra that has been peeking at me all day land softly on my floor. But I'm too mesmerized by the sight of her standing in front of me to care.
She is pale skin and soft pink, a flush on her cheeks as she realizes how exposed she is in front of me, and I somehow stop my staring and move to reassure her just how perfect she is in my eyes.
"Hey, hey," I whisper, cupping her face in my hands. "You're beautiful."
In true Bella fashion, she rolls her eyes and dismisses the compliment, any awkwardness between us gone as we fall back into our normal sense of comfort. She reaches for the hem of my shirt and begins to lift it, her fingers ghosting up my stomach. I help her the rest of the way, tossing my shirt onto the floor like her clothes before it.
We find each other again, the heat from her skin on mine almost unbearable as our mouths meet and our hands explore. She fills my hands perfectly; her head tossed back as we cross lines and don't bother to look back.
And when the rest of our clothes lay in piles next to the rest, and we have no more barriers between us, I've never been more grateful for college applications and after-school programs in my life.
It has turned my life in a completely different direction, one I'm not sure I ever would have explored unless it fell right into my lap the way it had.
"Like this?" She asks me when she takes me in her hand, soft, firm upward strokes making me groan against her cheek, my forehead resting against hers.
"Fuck yes," I mutter. I'm at her complete mercy, and I'm happy to be there.
We stand in front of the small window in my bedroom, the curtains hiding us from the rest of the outside world. It's the way I prefer it; just the two of us. She's like a breath of fresh air, a moment of silence in a loud room.
"We can always stop," I say to her when we're back on my bed again. "I don't want you to —"
"I know." Bella places her fingers on my mouth, stopping me from repeating myself. Maybe she's afraid I'll convince her to change her mind. It's not that I don't want to do this with her — believe me, I want to. I just don't want her to make a decision she'll regret because she thinks it's something I'm expediting her to do.
"Will you stop me if I hurt you?" I ask her once I've rolled on the condom. I make sure she meets my eyes, hoping she understands that hurting her is the last thing I want to do, even if it may be unavoidable this first time. I know she doesn't have any girlfriends, or maternal guidance, to talk to about this sort of thing.
Knowing Bella, she's probably read it in a book somewhere, but we're learning now that there's a difference between learning about life's experiences in books than having it play out in real life.
"Yes," she breathes, her hands resting against my shoulders as I hover above her. "I'll stop you."
Her consent means more to me than getting off right now. In the past, I never bothered to double-check with girls about going all the way like I am doing with Bella. They were always wanting and waiting, showing me without words what they wanted from me. Feelings were never involved — so I never bothered asking. But now, my main concern is making sure Bella is all right every step of the way.
Nodding, I bend my head down to her, kissing her again as I position myself at her opening. Slowly, I push myself inside of her, waiting for her to stop me. She gasps out loud as she stretches around me, and I still and brush my fingers across her cheek to show her I know this can't be the best feeling right now.
For her.
Because for me, I have to steady myself above her and remind myself to keep it cool. She feels incredible, hugging me from the inside, enveloping me in a warmth that makes me bite my lip and my chin fall to my chest.
"Are you okay?" I ask, still not moving as we adjust to one another for the first time. Her hands grip my arms, her eyes clenching as she breathes in slow and steady breaths beneath me.
I wait until her eyes flutter open to breathe again.
"Yeah," she nods. "I'll be fine."
When she gives me that soft smile that got us here in the first place, I know we'll be all right.
"Okay."
I lean down to kiss her, sliding into her the rest of the way until I'm filling her completely. I would be content to stay here for as long as she'd let me, the grip she has around me like a vice I never want to loosen. She responds to my kiss, her hands sliding from my arms down my sides and then up to my tangle in my hair again.
I withdraw slowly, not wanting to hurt her and also not wanting to end this all too soon. She whimpers at the movement, and at first, I'm not sure if it's from discomfort or from pleasure. But when she reaches up to find my lips with hers, I think I know the answer.
When I slowly move forward again, hitting her deep in the same spot I was a moment before, I let out the breath I didn't know I was holding. Her hips, tentative at first, meet me as if we've done this before, and we both let out sounds we've been keeping back.
The groans from my mouth become almost involuntary the more we move together, learning this new world we've discovered between us. Slightly increasing our pace, I'm still extremely aware this is her first time, and before long, I'm panting into the side of her neck, trying to keep this going for as long as I can.
"It's okay," Bella whimpers as our bodies meet again, her eyes closed, and her head tilted back against my pillows. "It'll happen next time."
The thought of us having a next time, and a next time after that, and even more after that, sends me over the edge, and I groan a long release into Bella's ear at her words. My arms shaking as I hold myself above her, I collapse in exhaustion; the only thing tethering me to this earth is the sound of her muffled laughter from beneath me.
Chuckling myself, I lift my head from her neck, my eyes and the rest of my body heavy. Her face is flushed a soft pink, a smile on her face that will be forever etched in my mind.
I shower her face in soft kisses, her laughs again filling my room and permanently sticking to the walls so I'll hear them every time I walk in, even when she's not here. I separate myself from her gently and collapse in a heap next to her, my mouth lazily exploring hers one more time.
Once I pull my lips from hers, I'm smiling so wide I wouldn't be able to wipe it off my face if I tried. "Did you say next time?"
She nods and rolls over into my pillows, hiding her face and muffling her laughs. "Is that okay?"
I pull her out of the pillows, loving the soft blush that creeps on her cheeks. "It's more than okay."
Later, as we're icing the cookies we left to cool in the kitchen earlier, I realize how absolutely fucked I am now.
Because now, she's the only thing I want.
Still loving their fluffy time. Let's keep them here as long as we can, okay?
It's that time of year where time seems to disappear and the holidays hit me smack in the face. Hopefully I'll be here with an update next week, but if not, it won't be long after that.
See you soon!