Chapter 15 – Damage
"Bree? What the hell did you do?" I raged as I ran to try to find the source of the smoke. Sure enough, that was the moment the smoke detector started screeching, which only made the situation that much worse.
I didn't even have time to consider what exactly could have caused it, because the entire kitchen suddenly seemed to erupt into flames.
"Holy shit!"
I went to grab the fire extinguisher, but I guess I wasn't quick enough because the next thing I knew, I was being rained on. The apartment's sprinkler system was triggered, but it wasn't just in the kitchen – the conjoined living room was also getting drenched, and apparently so was our neighbor's place next door.
We only had the apartment less than a week, and we were already fucking everything up. Just perfect.
After an unpleasant visit from the fire department and the complex management, we were left with a warning and told if we had any more issues, we would be kicked out. I guess they weren't very forgiving or tolerant in such an uppity place like that. But even worse than that strike against us, was the destruction. What wasn't burned in the kitchen, was water-damaged, as was our entire living room. We would not only have to suffer through an inconvenient kitchen remodel, but we also needed to buy an entire new living room set. New couches, new rug, and a new TV and entertainment center. It was utterly ridiculous.
In the chaos of it all the people surveying the scene that day, I managed to keep track of Bree the entire time. I was beyond pissed at her, but I had to admit, I was a little proud of myself for handling it all as well as I did.
Or, at least I thought I handled it all.
"Bree. You want to tell me what happened now?" I asked her the moment things finally settled.
"Oh, Bree is long gone, Ass-wipe, and if you ever yell at her like that again, I'll make sure Bella is long gone as well…for good."
I huffed. "Rosalie. Nice of you to drop in."
"Is it though?" she countered.
"No, not really," I admitted. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I appreciate our truce and all, but you are sort of my least favorite alter. Hold on, let me rephrase that – you are my least favorite person…probably in the entire world."
"Really? I'm flattered. Who knew you had a sweet side?"
"Everyone, actually. I'm pretty well known for my sweetness," I retorted like a smartass.
She rolled her eyes, and then walked into the kitchen to see the damage herself. "You gotta give the kid some credit, she knows how to start a mean fire. Our little pyromaniac."
"So, if you're in charge of the others, and you can watch everything they do, why the hell did you allow Bree to do all of this?" I asked flabbergasted.
She shrugged. "I'm not one to judge other's mistakes."
"Yeah, but she could have gotten seriously hurt, and then you would all be suffering."
"I allowed Alice to jump off that mother fucking cliff as well, but I don't hear you complaining about that," she countered.
"Okay, why did you allow Alice to jump?" I questioned. "If she would have died, so would you."
"Oh, we weren't going to die; don't be so melodramatic. Besides, if I don't let them have a little fun, they are far less tolerable in the theater."
I let out a long, hard breath. "Rosalie, why are you here?"
"I already told you, I came to protect Bree. She doesn't take yelling very well, and if you ever do it again…"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you'll make sure I never see any of you again. I'm not scared of your threats, Rose. Bella would never give up on us because of you."
"Try me," she deadpanned.
"Why are you here!" I whined in frustration.
"Do you have a comprehension issue? I just told you why…"
"I mean, why are you still here?" I clarified. "Shouldn't you be off with your girlfriend somewhere, or wherever the hell you go when you're in control?"
She hesitated, but then reluctantly admitted – "We can't exactly afford our own place. The way I see it, Bella pays half the rent here, and a good portion of her income is rightfully mine since I run that bookstore better than she does. So… here I am. We really have to do something about these couches. They're soaking wet."
I laughed once. "Hold up… You are going to stay here…with me?" I asked in shock. "Where the hell do you usually go when you're in control?"
"That, is none of your fucking business. Let's get one thing straight – me being here isn't some handout from you. I have as much right to be here as Bella does, and even as much as you. As far as I'm concerned, you are my unfavorable roommate. I'll just use that spare bedroom as my own."
"Fine. There is a nice comfy tile floor for you to sleep on in there."
She smiled, but her eyes were somehow condescending. "I don't think so. I will buy myself a bed and deduct the cost from my portion of rent."
"Oh, you will, will you?" I snorted.
"I will. You're sleeping on the bed from the old apartment, are you not? The bed Alice and I bought."
"With Bella's bookstore money," I pointed out.
"With my money," she disagreed. "As I stated before, I have worked there far more than enough to justify me taking some money for myself."
"Whatever. But since you bought that bed, I'll tell you what, I'll move it into your new room, and I'll get Bella and me a brand-new bed. A bed that you and Alice haven't fucked other people on. Sound fair?"
I didn't wait for her to agree before I went straight to the master bedroom and started taking the bed apart. I could see that Rosalie wasn't happy about it, but she stood there watching, with her hands on her hips, and didn't say another word.
After I set up the crappy, cheap, somewhat lumpy, queen sized bed in the guest room, I immediately left the apartment to go purchase a new bed along with a new sofa. I was hoping Rosalie would be gone by the time I returned, but when I realized she was still there, I did get a little satisfaction from seeing her jealous expression as the store delivery guys followed me in and set up my new bed in the master bedroom. My brand-new California King sized bed, with the latest dual action incline capable technology, and memory foam topper. Yeah, I probably spent way too much for the damn thing, but it was well worth it, if only to piss off Rose.
"Problem solved," I told Rosalie with a wink.
"Whatever. I wouldn't sleep in that atrocity if you paid me."
"Aw, Rose, you're jealousy is showing," I teased her.
"Not really. Those things were recently recalled for malfunctioning and electrocuting people. The store you bought it from swindled you. But have fun with that."
"Well, since Bella will be in the bed with me ninety percent of the time, I suppose we will all die together," I said unconcerned.
Rosalie huffed bitterly, but otherwise didn't respond. Instead, she stormed off to her new bedroom and locked the door.
As unpleasant as Rosalie was, I couldn't help but be grateful she was there. The amount of relief I felt, knowing where Bella was, was immeasurable. I'd happily cohabitate with Rosalie for the rest of my life if she'd allow… but I'd probably always bicker with her – she made it impossible not to. Then again, I think we both secretly enjoyed the banter.
"Wow, could you possibly make a more disgusting looking breakfast?" Rosalie asked me the following morning when she woke up and emerged from her room. The stove was burned to hell, but I was making good use of the one burner that was still functional. My food looked amazing, therefore Rosalie's bitterness just amused me, and I wasn't about to give her the satisfaction of knowing her prolonged presence was getting to me.
"Hungry sweetheart?" I asked as sickly sweet as possible.
"I'd rather eat dog shit," she replied in the same fake overly sweet tone.
"I can go get you some," I offered. "The people next door have a little barking rat that craps all over the place that they never clean."
"Well, they probably leave the shit there because they saw your face and thought this is where all the shit is kept," she retorted. "By the way, you clogged the toilet. You're going to need to go take care of that."
"I didn't clog it, I just left it there for you. I wanted you to feel right at home and figured that was the best way to do it."
"You are repulsive!" she spat. "How anyone would find you attractive enough to fuck you is lost on me."
"You should ask your alter-egos," I retorted smugly.
"I wouldn't boast about them too much. Alice would fuck anything with a cock, and Bella was desperate for someone to accept her. You're basically a warm body to both of them."
"A highly desired body," I corrected her. "So, I'm just curious, when you wake up naked in my bed, does your body betray you and crave more?"
I tried to hold it in – really I did – but my pompous rhetoric got to me, and I broke down in the biggest belly laugh I could remember having in a long time.
"You really are a bumbling fool," I vaguely heard her say over the sound of my laughter.
I knew I was acting stupid and immature, but I couldn't stop. Her disgust only added to my hysterics, and I ended up falling over and rolling on the floor as I tried to calm down and catch my breath.
By the time I recovered, Rosalie had disappeared, and I wasn't sure if I was relieved or worried. When I realized what time it was, I decided it was best to just assume she had gone to the bookstore, because I too was about to be late for work if I waited any longer.
Throughout the day, I would teeter between worrying about Rose and regretting my behavior, to laughing to myself as I remembered my jokes. I really was pathetic, but hey, it got me through the day.
That evening Rosalie was a no show. I waited until well after midnight, but I ended up succumbing to exhaustion soon after. A few hours later, I was awoken by the front door being unlocked from the outside, and then it opened, before slamming shut.
"Oh, I'm sorry, did I wake you?" she asked full of attitude, making it irritatingly clear she was still Rosalie. She then proceeded to make as much noise as possible as she fumbled about the apartment. I'd assume she was drunk, but she wasn't hiding the fact that she was doing it on purpose, just to be a bitch.
I pretty much decided it was war after that.
I finally went to bed just before dawn, but since I didn't really have enough time to sleep at that point, I spent the next couple hours scheming up ways to make Rosalie's life miserable.
From poor self-hygiene and bad housekeeping, to just being a straight up dick all the time, I was definitely amusing myself with all my ridiculous ideas. Thankfully, however, with the rising sun, my love had mercy on me and finally returned…
"Oh, thank god," Bella said full of relief the moment she saw me. She was trembling and looked so bewildered that all I could do was hold her until she calmed down.
"Everything is okay," I cooed as I slowly rocked her back and forth.
"I didn't know where I was when I woke up," she murmured into my chest. Then she pulled back to look behind her. "Where was I?"
"Oh, uh… the guest room. Rosalie moved in," I explained carefully.
Her face morphed from confusion, to curiousness, and then settled on more confusion except with far less fear. "Rosalie moved in? Like, in here with you? How did that happen?"
I shrugged. "I don't know exactly. She just came here a couple days ago and said she wanted her own room. She decorated it… I guess, and basically told me not to bother her."
"Oh… Well, that's good.. I guess. But maybe it's not so good," she said unsure.
"Why not?" I questioned gently. "At least if she is here I know you're safe."
"Yeah, but as my dad has told me several times in the past, living with Rosalie is very… difficult. She can be really harsh and vulgar. I just don't want her words and actions to affect us."
"Well," I sighed. "To be honest, she has been pretty bitchy, but… I'm not exactly proud to say that I have, maybe sort of, enjoyed stooping to her level just a tad."
Bella raised her brows in surprise. "You've been giving it back to her?"
"It's probably not the best thing I've ever done, but it has been entertaining. When Rosalie is here, I feel like I'm back on the football field, battling out our biggest rival for the championship… Wow, and I can't believe I just admitted that out loud. That's pretty terrible of me, isn't it," I asked, once again feeling guilty as shit for letting Rosalie get a rise out of me. The poor alter had endured far more in her time than I could possibly imagine, and I treated her like crap.
"Fuck, I need to apologize again," I mumbled to myself.
"Don't," Bella said quickly. "I think that it's incredible that you're willing to do that."
"Huh? Why? I was pretty mean."
"I bet she was worse," Bella said confidently.
"I'm not so sure about that," I disagreed.
"The thing I've come to realize about Rosalie is – she pushes, and pushes, and pushes until she scares everyone away," Bella told me. "Even my dad steers clear of her when she is in control. But having you push back is something she isn't used to and probably doesn't know how to respond. If anything, maybe you'll finally put her in her place. It's like she's a wild animal constantly fighting for dominance. She won't ever back down unless she is challenged. Thanks to you, she finally will be."
"I don't know," I said, not sure what to think about that one. The truth was, I didn't want to think about it at all. When Bella was there, all I wanted to do was forget the others and focus completely on her.
"Uh… is this a different couch?" she noticed abruptly.
"Yeah, we had a little issue while you were gone," I said carefully, not wanting to upset her anymore. I delicately explained what happened, and assured her it was all fine. She felt horrible, but like with all of her other alter-induced debacles, it was out of her control so I convinced her not to dwell on it.
Bella and I enjoyed a week straight of no alter interruptions, but I'd often catch her rubbing her temples as if she was suffering from a terrible migraine, except I was fairly certain that her particular migraines were caused by the others' insufferable attempts to break free from the theater.
Bella was strong. The strongest person I had ever met, but when they all ganged up on her, there was only so much she could take…
"Why is there no candy in this place?" she asked me the moment I arrived home from work one day. She was sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, with just about every item we had in the pantry surrounding her. It had been a long shitty day of issues at work, and now it looked like I was in for a long shitty night of fucking babysitting a devil child in my girlfriend's body.
"Hey, Bree," I greeted her with as much enthusiasm as I could currently muster. "Whatcha doing?"
"Looking for candy. Why don't you have any?" she asked again, sounding like a rotten spoiled brat.
"Uh, Bella and I don't usually eat much candy. Neither of us really care for it," I explained to her with forced patience.
"Well, I like it," she pouted. "Hey, what's in here?" she asked, immediately jumping to her feet and looking in the wine fridge.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, not for kids!" I said as quickly as possible but kept my tone soft as to not scare her again. Last thing I wanted was to bring the beast back out. "If you're thirsty, I can get you some water."
"I hate water," she snapped, stomping her foot. "Can we make s'mores?"
"Uh, no. Nothing with fire for you. We still haven't fixed all the damage you caused last time."
"I was trying to cook," she said defensively.
"Well, hey, why don't we cook something together?" I suggested. When her sour expression melted into a smile, I was able to relax a bit.
Together, we made my dad's recipe for pizza from scratch. We had flour all over the kitchen and all over ourselves, but I had her giggling a few times, so I considered it a success.
"This is so yummy. Better than Pizza Hut even!" she said, sounding nothing like my health-conscious girlfriend and exactly like the child she considered herself to be. It still boggled my mind just how different they all were.
"I'm glad you like it," I told her. "I think we may even have some ice cream in there for dessert."
"Really?" she squealed.
"Totally. We won't tell Bella you ate all this. She wasn't happy when I bought the stuff at the store in the first place."
"Alice is going to know, and she is going to be so pissed. She says she wants to try Keto. This is definitely not Keto," she snickered.
I laughed. "How do you know what Keto is?" I asked, thinking it was odd that she would even be aware of the latest fad diet.
"Alice keeps talking about it. She said everyone is doing it on TV. All the movie stars and singers and everyone. I don't really care about any of them."
"No, you just care about fire, it seems," I joked.
"I don't like fire, but it likes me. I'm just hungry all the time."
"Makes sense," I relented. "Well, besides eating, what else do you like to do? We have a little time before bed."
"Bed? I can't sleep here with you. When is my dad coming?"
"Um… I think he is on duty tonight. But you can stay here with me; I promise, you'll be safe. You can sleep in Rosalie's bed."
"Rosalie has her own bed here?" she asked surprised.
"Yeah. Her room is right back there."
A sneaky expression immediately consumed her features. "She is going to be so mad," she said before darting towards the room.
I followed her as quickly as I could, but by the time I got there, she had already thrown things from the closet and dresser. It was fairly shocking; I wasn't even aware Rosalie had that much stuff there.
"Maybe we should leave her stuff alone," I suggested as she continued to destroy the room.
"Why? She is mean to everyone. She deserves it," she said unconvinced.
"Maybe she does deserve it, but you still have to sleep in here tonight, so it's best to just stop now."
When she continued as if I hadn't even spoken, I got in front of her, and gently, yet firmly, told her "Enough."
Surprisingly, she stopped and nodded, and then waited for further instructions from me.
"Now, pick all this up. When you're done, you can come back to the kitchen and help me clean up out there. Got it?"
Again, she nodded… but she didn't look happy about it.
She did what she was told, but she was stomping around and huffing the entire time. When she came back out to help me clean the kitchen, she was even more angry and refused to speak to me. That was fine. She could be angry; I was only glad she wasn't scared.
When everything was put back in their places, we settled on watching some kids movie from the Disney Channel. I fell asleep halfway in, and when I awoke sometime in the middle of the night, she was gone. I wasn't sure why I was surprised at that point. It seemed all of them used my unconsciousness as an opportunity to escape my presence. But because of the hour, and the fact that she was Bree the last time I saw her, I was definitely worried for her safety, so I called Charlie. He was on duty that night; I knew he would be up and around and the only person in the world who would understand my concern.
"Bree wouldn't have left the apartment alone," he told me after I explained the situation.
"Didn't you say she hopped on a bus to L.A. alone before?" I pointed out.
"Yeah, but she learned her lesson then," he replied. "Considering the time, I honestly think Rosalie or Alice took back over while you were sleeping, and they decided to go out. Bree tends to sleep all night whenever she is able to stay."
"What about Tanya? She rarely comes out it seems, but when she has, it was usually after Bree. If Tanya is in control, where would she have gone?"
"I highly doubt it's Tanya. She probably would have stayed home if it was her. She doesn't really understand Uber or even bus routes. She is pretty clueless about stuff, so she doesn't usually fight her way out of Bella's mind very often. Just keep your cool, and I'm sure Rosalie or Alice will bring them home soon… or Bella will return on her own."
"Alright. Thanks, Charlie. I'll text you when she turns back up," I told him before hanging up the phone.
I knew he was probably right about Rosalie or Alice being in control, but I couldn't help but still be anxious about her absence.
I tried to get my mind off of her by watching some late-night true crime story – of course, that only made me that much more worried.
I waited for another hour, and then, at three A.M, I heard her key in the lock.
"Finally," I said relieved. I only wished that relief lasted. The moment she opened the door, my heart just about dropped onto the floor.
"Oh, you're awake," she said as she stumbled through the door…with her arm wrapped around a seemingly very drunk blonde woman. The two giggled as they shut the door behind them, and then Rosalie smiled sadistically at me, before grabbing the chicks face and shoving her tongue down her throat.
I seriously felt like vomiting.
Their make-out session went on far longer than I could stomach, so I got up and went straight to my room.
It was probably the worst thing I had ever experienced. I thought I would be okay knowing Bella's alters were seeing other people. As long as Bella was just with me, I could overlook the others. But the truth was, that hurt like hell. It didn't even matter if she was with another man or a woman, seeing my girlfriend's body with someone else was excruciating, and I wasn't sure how much more I could take…
…
…*~*…
***A/N: Okay, before you throw your tomatoes at me for Rosalie's stunt at the end there, you have to remember what her ultimate goal is – to protect Bella. Is she acting this way to protect her? Even if it's not something we can see yet, and even if her method is seriously fucked up, she has her reasons.
Now, I know I broke my number one rule of no cheating, but this story, and this instance, is definitely a grey area. Bella didn't cheat… but she kind of did, except it was totally against her will and knows nothing about it. Anyway, if you're still with me, we have some major growing to do when it comes to the saga of Rose and Edward. We will get there. It's coming. They had to hit rock bottom before they could go up, and I think they finally did here. Edward is on his last straw. It's time to figure out a way for them to coexist peacefully.
Thank you so much for reading and for letting me know all your thoughts and opinions. I appreciate it more than you know ;)