A/N: A little BFF moment… Thanks for reading!
Shoutout to maniacalmuse to make this read better and to correct my many flaws! She also started a new story: The Dark Lust. It's very good and full of suspense :D
Framily = Friendship where you see each other as family.
Chapter 14: Fierce Framily.
"Ding dong!" Rosalie's voice echoed through my apartment as she let herself in, carrying two bags of groceries and trying to close the door with her leg while balancing on one sneaker-clad foot. "Honey, I'm home!" she added in a sing-song, fifties-housewife flair when she saw me standing in the doorway to my bedroom.
"Hey there, so glad you could make it," I said to her, walking over to the kitchen where Rose was now unloading our dinner. I felt comfy and refreshed after showering and changing into some yoga shorts and a loose sweater. We liked to pig out and get comfy for these kinds of nights, which meant loungewear was a must.
"I wouldn't dare to miss it, Bells. I love our family-style dinners together," she said quietly with a smile on her face. Rosalie's makeup was still in place, her hair draped stylishly around one shoulder in a fishtail braid.
"What aren't you telling me, Hale?" I asked her, crossing my arms in front of my chest and leaning against the counter.
Rosalie's blue eyes twinkled as she spoke next. "I'm just hoping we'll have a real family soon, just like Alice. You know, you with your internet-dude and me with, ah ... Emmett." Her voice was soft, her forwardness totally out of character. I knew Rosalie craved having a family and her biological clock had been ticking for quite some time now, even though she was only twenty-six. Unfortunately, her taste in men had been rather bad up to this point. I was hopeful that Emmett could be the right one for her. It wasn't like Rose to be all over a guy so shortly after meeting him. I smiled at her, not really knowing what to say and opting for nothing at all; I didn't want to scare the kitten back under the couch. An open, wall-less Rose was quite pleasant. We chopped vegetables and potatoes together in perfect silence, listening to some music.
"So, I know you're holding a knife and whatnot, but do you want to tell me about Emmett?" I asked bravely, noticing Rosalie stop mid-chop as she took a deep breath. She looked at me with wide eyes, a little tense.
"Leave those, come and have a smoke with me," she said and dropped the knife onto the counter. I laughed at her nervously wiping her hands on a towel and flinging it in the sink. She walked over to her bag to retrieve her pack of cigarettes, and I succumbed to the habits we shared when I joined her on my balcony.
Rosalie inhaled deeply before looking at me, her sock-clad feet tapping on the concrete.
"I'm having such a hard time, Bella." She exhaled the smoke, leaning her head against the window. "Since everything that happened with Royce, I'm just so scared to let someone else in, you know?"
"Ah, Rose. I know he's not like Royce. He can't be," I muttered and then took a long-awaited drag from my own cigarette, wondering how I could explain this to Rose properly. Royce was a douchebag; Emmett couldn't be anything like him, especially if he took after his younger brother, Edward.
"What makes you so sure of that?" she wondered, her brows marring her forehead with a frown.
"Ikindaknowhisbrother," I rambled softly and didn't even look her in the eye. She hated when I did that.
"Isabella Marie Swan," she gasped. "Are you telling me you've been seeing your little internet friend in person? And mister Warrior is no other than Emmett's baby brother?"
I nodded, feeling guilty for not confiding in her whilst telling Alice everything. "His name is Edward," I said and looked at my blonde friend, her eyes the size of dinner plates and she gasped loudly again.
"Bella! Why didn't you tell me? Emmett kept going on about his nerdy brother, Edward, and the way he described him I kept thinking how he could be such a good match for you!" she exclaimed and almost burned my hair with her cigarette when she leaned in to hug me.
"No, don't you dare make this about me, Miss Hale. I want to know all about Emmett Cullen and how that's going," I told her, and threw the butt of my cigarette into an old flower pot filled with water.
Once we got back inside and finished up making dinner, Rosalie told me about her dates with Cullen brother number two. Apparently, Rose was so head over heels for him she let him drop her off at her house the night we all went out. She swore he didn't go inside with her, but she did give him a peck on the cheek. I pretended to be shocked, placing my head over my heart in the most dramatic fashion.
"Bells, please. Do you have any idea how much willpower it took to keep it that decent? The man has dimples for crying out loud. He is absolute perfection," she swooned and at that point I knew she was lost to the man's charm. "I moved too fast with Royce. Let my feelings get the better of me," Rosalie said and prepared two plates for us while I set out two beers on my coffee table. Looking over at the couch, where Edward had given me that fucking mind-blowing orgasm, I had to hold myself back from laughing when she told me she'd moved too fast with her ex. Too fast meant that Rosalie Hale put out on the fifth date. She had this idea of being swept off her feet by a gentleman—everything Royce wasn't but pretended to be. It seemed like Emmett made Rosalie unleash her inner horndog, something I looked forward to seeing unravel.
"Sweetheart, you didn't move too fast. Trust me," I said to her, flopping down on the couch and waiting for her to join me.
"Let me guess, you've shown Mister Internet around your room?" She rolled her eyes at me, picking up her fork and stabbing a piece of chicken with it. I was glad there was chicken, or the cutlery might've ended up in my own flesh.
"No, not that. But I did see his, and he saw uh ... my couch." I laughed at the horrified look on her face. She looked at the couch, then at me and groaned.
"You do know I'm eating here, right?" She shot me a dirty look but couldn't mask her smile.
"Couches are great for eating." I wiggled my eyebrows suggestively and we both almost cried from laughter.
"I won't even ask, but girl, from that blush on your face I can tell you like him very much," she observed.
"I do, and it's actually scaring the fuck out of me. So I get what you mean, sorta." I scooped up a bite of mashed potatoes. Rosalie smiled at me and let out a deep sigh.
"What's our deal? Why can't we just throw ourselves into it, like Alice does?" she wondered. I didn't know what to say to her, honestly. Alice seemed to be love's trusty sidekick, always trying to get the both of us to follow our hearts instead of our heads. Seeing her with Jasper could sometimes almost be too much, because after all those years of being together, they seemed to have cracked the code.
"You know, you should try to be less hard on yourself," I said to Rosalie as she put her now empty plate on top of the coffee table. "Tell me about him," I urged, putting my plate on hers and getting more comfortable on the couch.
"We talked a lot, sat outside for a while at the club. I felt really bad for Alice, but she just called Jasper and he came to pick her up after," she began and tucked one leg under the other. "He told me about his business, I told him about mine, and he seemed very happy that I know what it takes to run one. He's had trouble with girls in the past because of it, because he's so busy most of the time." She paused and took a swig of her beer. "He hasn't dated in forever, and I told him I just had a horrible relationship that left me kind of out of trust for the male species, which made him laugh."
"So, you talked about Royce?" I asked her, genuinely interested. Rosalie never seemed to bare her feelings—not even I got the full hundred percent—yet now she seemed softer, more approachable.
"I did," she said and looked at me with her blue eyes sparkling. "He told me that I was right to throw his ass on the street after what he did to me," she snickered. "And when he got me home, I wanted nothing more than to let him stay over. Is that bad?" she asked me, hugging her knees while still holding the bottle in her hands.
I almost got mad. "Honey, please. It's not wrong, stop thinking that! Do you think I am wrong if I sleep with guys?" I asked her, almost afraid to hear her answer. She had never judged me in the past, although she probably should have.
She shook her head at me. "I don't think it's wrong. I think you're amazing for being so confident and taking power, taking what you want. It's just that guys always seem to want me for my body or to use me as arm candy," she rolled her eyes again. Rose wasn't wrong, though. Her former boyfriends had never ended things themselves, it was always Rose who broke up with them because they were mostly arrogant douches with a God-complex.
"Sweetness, you need to stop thinking and take what you want. I think Emmett is a great guy. Stop stressing and see how it goes, okay?" I said calmly, running a hand along her knee and giving her a little squeeze.
"Only if you'll do the same." Rose looked me in the eyes, confident and ballsy, just like I knew her.
I nodded. "Deal."
"I just can't believe you didn't tell me about your, uh ... Edward. What's he like?" Rosalie asked me when I drank the last of my beer. I told her about the first meeting, about our dinner date at his place and she almost swooned when she heard about the sweet, kind and devastatingly sexy nature of Edward. She giggled when I told her that he tried to remain a gentleman the entire time we were together.
"You know, Emmett kept saying that he couldn't believe what a complete ass Royce was. That, if he ever did something like that, his mother would chase him around, beating him with a stick if he was anything less than a gentleman to women. Seems like someone raised her sons to be perfect specimens." Rose chuckled and I couldn't do anything besides agree with her.
"You know what, I promised Edward he could meet you guys this Saturday. Why don't you bring your Emmett?" I proposed, finishing up my bottle of beer. Rosalie eyed me suspiciously.
"Are you getting married or something? You seem quite eager for us to get to know the guy." I couldn't believe what came out of Rose's mouth and had to hold back laughter.
"Gee, calm down," I started as Rose watched the screen of her phone light up. Her smile did the same for her face and her eyes fluttered from the phone back up to me. "It's just that we decided to give whatever this is a fair shot. He wanted us to be serious, you know ..." I trailed off and felt bad Rose was making a little bit fun of me. She should be proud that I'm doing this.
"I know, sorry." She sighed happily. "I can't wait to meet him. He sure makes my friend a happy girl from what I can tell. It's fine, I will invite Emmett. But I don't know whether he's free or working."
I nodded. "It would be great to have him there, I think Edward's a little shy around new people," I told Rose.
The two of us continued our little boy-talk until Rose couldn't contain herself any longer. Emmett was the one texting her earlier, saying that he wanted to spend some time with her on his free evening from the café. She almost ran out of my apartment when I told her to go and have fun. I made Rosalie promise that she wouldn't overthink it; the wall she always puts up around herself needed to go. Otherwise, she'd never be happy.
"Be safe," my voice echoed through the hallway as she waited for the elevator to come up. Rosalie looked at me from over her shoulder, her blue eyes blazing with confidence.
"Of course, Bells."
The moment I shut the door behind me, I made my way back to the couch. I didn't even care about the mess on the coffee table, it would still be here after my long-awaited phone call.
I bit my lip, trying to calm down the butterflies in my stomach when Edward picked up on the second ring, his voice smooth and relaxed.
"Hi baby, how was your day?" he asked me, sounding upbeat.
"It was a little stressful, but I'm glad I survived it all. Rose just left, how was yours?"
"Well, interesting to say the least. We had a little threatening email from a potential new client. She wants a new website, pronto." Edward chuckled and I imagined he must talking about Jane Volturi. She was a feisty one, that was for sure.
"Let me guess, Jane?" I waited for him to speak again.
When Edward did, his voice was surprised and I could tell he was smiling. "How did you know?" he wondered playfully.
"I'm working on her new book. She came by for a meeting with me, Alice, and Victoria at the office. Alice basically told her to up her game on the internet and apparently, Jane was already on that and waiting for the proposal of a certain company," I told him.
"So, you recommended us then?"
"No, I promise I had nothing to do with that. I was surprised when I heard her say the name of your company. I really wanted to come across as professional, so I didn't even mention I knew you," I admitted. There was a slight silence at the other end of the line. Had I hurt his feelings?
"Oh, okay," he said, his voice on the quiet side. "How was your evening with Rosalie?" he asked, changing the subject.
I told him about her doubts about Emmett, and Edward seemed to back me up on my pep talk to her earlier. He told me his brother is a genuine, good guy who sometimes lacked a little tact and sported a sometimes unhealthy amount of enthusiasm. Emmett had talked about Rosalie to him as well, expressing his growing feelings for her. I told Edward that his brother might have to be very courageous and kiss the woman. She'd know he was right for her then; Rosalie needed a guy who took the initiative.
"I miss you," I stated and played with the tassels on one of the decorative pillows on the couch. Part of me wished I was sitting on his big, soft couch so I could see him and kiss him after work. The breath I didn't know I was holding fell from my lips.
"I miss you, too." His voice dropped as if he was feeling sad. I wanted to make him smile again, say something stupid or make a fool out of myself in a game so he could win it. "You want to get online and play some COD?" I smiled at Edward's question and agreed. As soon as I hung up the phone, I booted up my PS4 and grabbed my headphones.
Playing Call of Duty online with a squad usually ends up with people swearing at each other and wanting to kill them various times. Yet this game was surprisingly mellow—as mellow as a first-person shooting game can get. I think I even yelled more times than Edward, making him disconnect the other annoying players so it was just us. My headset was suddenly putting a lot of pressure on the shell of my ears, the usual result of restless gaming until the wee hours of the morning. Surely it wasn't that late already? One glance at the clock in the kitchen behind me made me curse.
"What's wrong, Enchantress?" Edward asked me.
"Did you check the time at all since we joined the party?" A loud 'fuck' erupted from him, making me chuckle.
"We should really be going to bed, we both have work and I know you're getting up ridiculously early to go to the gym," I proposed and heard Edward sigh.
"I know. Fuck, I had no idea it was past midnight."
"Now you know, Warrior," I said, laughing. "I miss you." I sighed and almost clasped my hand over my mouth, realizing I had already told him I missed him when he answered the phone earlier.
"I miss you too, baby. Is it almost Saturday?" Edward's voice was sweet, as was his impatience.
"Not really, it's only Tuesday tomorrow," I said and suddenly had some sort of epiphany. "Can I meet you at the gym on Wednesday? Maybe I could stay at your place?" I bit my lip waiting for his response, hoping I wasn't 'too fast' anymore. I could clearly hear Edward's smile through his words.
"If you stayed over, I'd never make it to the gym. You know I wouldn't," he started and I snorted, eyes trained on my television screen.
"That could be your cardio?" I joked. "I'll meet you there, then?"
"You'd volunteer to get up at the crack of dawn to go to the gym with me? I thought my Isabella needed her sleep?" He chuckled. His Isabella, I swooned internally.
"What time are you usually done? I'll come get you and we could have breakfast?" I tried again. Edward told me to meet him outside his gym a little after seven and gave me directions, which led to me telling him I'd have Rose drop me off since the gym was on her way to the salon.
"It's date?" I sounded a little unsure of myself and didn't recognize that.
"It most certainly is, baby. Sleep well, I'll be thinking of you." He disconnected from the server, leaving me in a dark living room, with no lights on except for the one in the kitchen. I got rid of the headset, throwing it on the couch and shutting down the electronics.
Another date, I thought and caught myself smiling. Wednesday couldn't be upon me fast enough.
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