Hey all, here's chapter 2 a little sooner than I thought! Warning that there are some self-destructive tendencies in this chapter.

Stephenie Meyer created Twilight and its characters.

For the next week or so, Bella had been in a fog. She was running on autopilot and avoiding Jessica because she didn't want her to think something was up and she also just didn't have the energy to be more social than she needed to be. She'd skipped out on lunch every day for the past week claiming she had some assignment to grade or students to talk to at lunch.

Edward and Jessica had met up for lunch most days over the past week and Edward had started to share his concern.

"Is Bella alright? Granted, I haven't known her long, but she seems to be a little distracted lately," he confessed. He'd stopped by her classroom once in the past week just to say hello and she'd been quiet and seemed to be more reserved than their last interaction. He didn't want to push her boundaries, so he hadn't stopped by since. Maybe she was just avoiding him?

"Oh, sometimes she gets like this, don't take it personally. I think she's somewhat of an insomniac and it gets to her occasionally. It usually wears off after a few days or so. I tend to just give her space and then she snaps out of it eventually."

"Oh, really? Huh…" Edward got lost in thought for a while thinking of ways to possibly help. She was the first person here to really befriend him and their interaction after hours had been enjoyable and easy until Mike had showed up and made it awkward. "How long have Bella and Mike been dating?"

"Oh, about 3 or 4 years, I think. Why?"

"Oh wow! Just curious. That's quite a while, they must be pretty serious then?"

"Well, yeah! I mean they've been dating that long; I imagine a ring will be coming soon, you know?" Jessica fawned. "I mean they have their ups and downs like any couple but he's just super in love with her, it's so sweet. Sometimes he'll bring her coffee in the mornings between classes and he gives her rides all the time. Why, you want to ask her out or something?" Jessica laughed a little harder than necessary. She didn't really like Mike all that much and she noticed he was a little overly protective or maybe even possessive of Bella and a little handsy if she was honest, but she had a crush on Edward and the conversation was moving into territory she wasn't overly fond of.

"That's nice of him. No, nothing like that. I just met him the other night and was curious is all."

"Yeah. Hey, why don't we surprise Bella tomorrow in her room for lunch? That way we can just check in and make sure she's not too sleep deprived."

"Yeah, okay."

"Hey Babe, I'm home for the day. You can come over whenever." Bella sent to Mike.

"I'm with Tom. I'll be there in like an hour."

"Okay"

Bella got dinner started and put a couple beers in the fridge for Mike. She didn't drink but Mike was really into different types of beers right now so she got him something new from the store. When Mike arrived, she was just setting everything on the table.

"Hey Babe, yum! Thanks for making dinner!" he said, giving her a quick kiss and grabbing a plate and quickly loading it up. The way he started scarfing down food made Bella think he and his friend may have gotten high recently.

"How's Tom doing?" she asked.

"He's good. You should come over one of these days. We've been having some really good jam sessions lately and I want you to hear it!" Mike was good at guitar, there was no denying that, but he often played it any chance he could and would often bring it to get-togethers with their friends. It could get really awkward as he would play while people were trying to have conversations and a few times he brought it to movie nights and would play it during the movie. Bella had long since avoided going to those get-togethers because she felt uncomfortable every time he'd pull his guitar out to play.

"Oh, yeah, maybe one of these weekends we can go over there." Bella didn't love Bella didn't love joining him at Tom's because usually it involved 4 hours of the two guys playing guitar non-stop and then them getting high after. She was fine with them doing that on their own but she didn't care for drugs and then having to sit and observe them the whole time was pretty boring. Jake used to go, and he would keep her company while Mike and Tom would do their thing but he and Mike weren't on the best terms right now.

"Yeah, maybe this weekend. Tom got some new weed that we've been waiting to try out. You should try it with us! It'd be fun. I want to see you trip out!" he laughed. "Maybe we could have high sex," he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

"I don't think so. If you guys want to, that's fine but I don't really want to try it," she replied quietly.

"Your loss!" he winked, taking a swig of his beer.

After clearing the dishes and putting away the leftovers, Bella went out to the living room to sit with Mike. She was staring blankly at the screen as Mike played when she got a text from Jake. To be honest, it was nice to hear from him. She'd tried to start conversations with him for a while and his only response was that he didn't want Mike to get mad at him again for talking to her so he thought they should give it a rest for a bit.

"Hey, what's up? Sorry it's been a while."

"Hey! Not a whole lot, how about you? And no worries! I get it." She didn't have many close friends these days so finally hearing from Jake really perked her up a bit.

"Just finished up at work and heading home. Linda's in a mood tonight and laid into me for nothing again." His supervisor was going through a rough patch and would occasionally take her bad mood out on him.

"Dang, I'm sorry. That sucks!"

"Who are you talking to?" Mike asked, side-eyeing her phone.

"Um Jessica just wanted to know what time I'd be in tomorrow," she stammered, putting her phone down. She didn't want to lie about talking to Jake, but Mike would get so worked up about it that she didn't want to start a fight.

"Oh, tell her I say hi."

"Will do!" she quickly sent a quick text to Jake instead. "I'll talk to you later"

After a couple minutes, he turned off his game, turned to her, and easily moved her over the top of himself so she was straddling him.

"Hi," he smiled.

"Hi," she replied quietly. He gripped her hips and pushed his own up to meet her. Bella suddenly felt a pang of need and moved into it slightly. That was all the encouragement he needed, and he moved her off of him, got up, and pulled her into her room. He started to kiss her fervently while also working on getting his pants off. Bella was sick of feeling numb and self-pitying all week and decided to try and just enjoy it. With her mood brightened a bit from being able to talk to a friend, even if it wasn't a long conversation, she started to pull off her shirt. Mike quickly grabbed a condom and pushed her down on the bed and pulled her pants down. He grabbed her hand and moved it onto himself and had her pump him while he opened the condom wrapper.

He started to push her all the way down so her back was lying on the bed, but she stopped him and turned around instead. She didn't feel like looking at him while they did this. He touched her for about 5 seconds before pushing into her. The more he pushed in and out, the more she just wanted to feel good and forget.

"Harder," she whispered. He started slamming into her and after a couple minutes, it started to hurt a little bit but she was finally feeling something, so she didn't tell him to stop. "Harder," she said again, louder this time. Mike was starting to sweat and she could feel some of it dripping onto her but he continued to ram into her with fervor her long, brown hair was flying all over the place and he grabbed a handful of it in his fist and pulled. She was moaning loudly now and was forever grateful for the decent insulation and that her room wasn't connected to another apartment. She would've been mortified having someone listen in.

After he finished, he went into the bathroom to clean up and then went to go grab some food from the kitchen. This left Bella alone and feeling a little bit of self-loathing, but she felt like she was awake again at least and that was better than feeling numb... Right?

The next day, Bella was back to feeling a bit more normal. She was out of her funk and everything just felt a little brighter. She still felt a little bit of self-loathing for having encouraged Mike but this was still better than feeling fuzzy and numb. Or at least she kept telling herself that.

Three minutes after the bell rang for lunch, Jessica and Edward were pushing their way into her classroom.

"Hey, stranger," Jessica exclaimed excitedly. "We're crashing in here for lunch and I'm locking your door so we don't get a hoard of children trying to bum us out!" Bella laughed. Jessica spun one of the desks around to face Bella's desk and started laying out her lunch.

"Wow! Hey guys! This is a surprise, I was just about to walk over to your room, Jess."

"Well, we missed you this week and decided to let the kids out a couple minutes early to force you to hangout with us. The kids were totally bummed," she joked.

"I'm sure they were devastated," Bella smirked.

"There she is!" Jessica threw her arms up in the air, her dirty blonde curls bouncing. Bella giggled at her friend's antics.

"Thanks, guys. Sorry about last week. I-"

"So…" Jessica started, giving Bella a pointed look with her piercing blue eyes. "There's been some progress in my attempts at shipping Missy and Rob this week." Bella smiled, appreciating Jessica's dismissal of her apology. She would constantly tell Bella she said sorry too much and sometimes she would just change the subject to get her to stop.

"Yeah? Did you change around the seating arrangements like you wanted?" Edward asked. Bella looked over at him with a confused smile. "Oh, don't look too surprised, Swan. I helped her with the seating chart," he said, clearly proud of his efforts.

"Eh… I mean you moved around three people. Let's not take too much credit!" Jessica joked. They talked about their students love lives for the remainder of lunch, gushing about the successes they've made in helping them out and the tragedies of students who didn't fall for their efforts. When the warning bell sounded, they started packing up and gave a quick goodbye, Jessica unlocking Bella's door as she left.

As Bella packed up to leave for the day, she heard a knock at her door and Edward appeared.

"Hey! What's up?" she asked.

"Hi, sorry for intruding," he flashed a crooked smile and cleared his throat. "And I don't mean to pry… But Jess mentioned sometimes you have trouble sleeping…" Bella froze. Where was this going, she wondered. "If you want, I brought a few CDs you can borrow to help you get to sleep. My dad sometimes has trouble getting to sleep and he listens to music before bed and says it usually helps him so… I thought you might want to give it a shot… if you don't already… do that…" he rambled. It had just dawned on him that maybe she does this already and he just sounded like a creep.

"Oh! Thank you! That's really thoughtful of you," she smiled, still a little guarded. She hadn't mentioned anything about her past, or anything more than surface-level details about her relationship with Mike to Jessica, so she let out some of the breath she'd been holding.

"You don't have to take them if you don't want to, it's just some classical music and a mix of some Pink Floyd. I thought you might like it… But I also have absolutely zero idea about what kind of music you like so you might actually hate it… but…" he was rambling again. She took the CDs out of his hand and looked them over.

"I haven't heard much from Pink Floyd but I'll give it a shot! And I love classical music, thank you!" she smiled genuinely.

"Haven't…. You haven't listened to Pink Floyd?!" he asked, incredulous. Bella giggled and shook her head. "Okay, well listen to that one first then. Comfortably Numb, Us and Them, Shine on You Crazy Diamond, and Wish You Were Here are pretty calming and then I added Money on there just because it's a fun song and I think you'd like it. If you don't then you might be nuts," he laughed. "I added some more but I think you might like those the most. And don't worry, I didn't add Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict. If you haven't heard much of Pink Floyd then you may want to wait a while before you jump into that one." Bella smiled wider and felt her heart flutter a little bit but tried to ignore it. He didn't just find some CDs… He burned her a CD. He spent his free time on this and carefully considered which ones to add.

"I'll take your word for it," she laughed. "Is that even a real song title?" Edward nodded. "Wow, I might need to check that one out just for the name! Thank you so much. This was really, really nice of you, I'll try them out today. I take it you're pretty into Pink Floyd then?"

"I mean… They're only one of the greatest bands in the history of music. So, yeah, I guess you can say I'm pretty into their music," he flashed his crooked grin at her again.

"I guess I'll really have to listen to it then if they're 'one of the greatest bands in the history of music!' And for the record, I have pretty eclectic taste in music and don't really dislike much aside from maybe generally Country music. There's a few songs I like but for the most part I just can't really get into it."

"You don't like Country? I mean I guess I like mostly the older stuff anyway. The newer stuff doesn't really resonate with me quite as much."

"I'm sorry! I will say I enjoy the older stuff a bit more than the newer country music! What other music do you like?"

"Oh, you might take us both down a rabbit hole with that question," he laughed. "I mean generally I love 80's music, less so the pop and a little more of the new wave stuff like The Talking Heads, The Cars, The Police… Then the prog rock bands like Pink Floyd, Rush, Genesis… I like Queen, ELO, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, I mean I could go on with the 80s stuff. I really like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers… I really like movie soundtracks, more of the action/adventure and fantasy compositions. Sorry, I really enjoy music, I can get really carried away sometimes."

"Wow! And that's just the 80s stuff, huh? I've at least heard of some of those bands," she laughed, her brown eyes sparkling with excitement. "I love The Talking Heads, The Cars, and The Police! At least the few Police songs that I've heard. Obviously Queen is amazing and I think there's a few Genesis songs that I've heard! And movie soundtracks are good! I love The Lord of the Rings soundtracks!"

"The Lord of the Rings soundtrack is amazing. Great! Well, maybe you will like the CDs then!"

"I'm sure I will!"

They continued talking about music for many more minutes when Edward noticed the time.

"Oh wow, it's already 5! Man, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to keep you this late."

"Wow, I didn't even realize! No, this was fun. Thank you!" And she meant it. She hadn't had this easy of a conversation with anyone lately. It was a nice breath of fresh air.

"Are you heading out? I can walk with you to your car if you'd like?"

"Yeah, let me just get my stuff together."

"Huh, quite the truck, you've got here," Edward said, once they reached the parking lot.

"Yeah, yeah. I know… It's a bit of a clunker but it's got sentimental value! And my friend Jake is really good at fixing up cars, so he helps out when it starts to give me trouble."

"Does it even have a radio in it?"

"Ha…Ha…" Bella said sarcastically. "Yes, it does as a matter of fact!"

"Does it go above 35 mph?" he laughed.

"It can go up to 55, thank you very much."

"Impressive," he joked. "Well drive home safe. Let me know how you like the music."

"Will do! Thank you again! Have a great night," she said, hopping into her truck. Her truck was just a little bigger than her 5'4" frame allowed her to slide gracefully into. Edward started walking over to a pristine silver Volvo.

"You too," he waved.

Bella checked her phone once she got into her apartment. She hadn't been on it all day and knew Mike had blown up her phone.

"Hey Baby, how's work?"

"Hey Baby, how's lunch?"

"I love you"

"Baby? Where are you?"

"Want to hangout after work?"

"I could bring pizza if you want?"

"Let me know when you get home. I'm gonna go to Tom's."

"Hey Babe! You're the best!"

"Last night was fun. I'd love a repeat!"

"I'm getting hard just thinking about it."

"God, I want to fuck you hard like that again."

Bella felt a little sick. She wasn't really up for a round two. Last night was more like a weak moment for her rather than a night of blissful passion. She decided she'd tell him that tonight she was busy grading tests and wouldn't be able to hangout. It wasn't an outright lie… She hadn't finished grading the last period's quizzes yet!

"Sorry, Babe. I've got to grade papers tonight. Maybe another time." She almost forgot. She hit the I, L, and Y keys on the keyboard of her phone and hit send.

"I love you" She'd made a shortcut so she didn't feel as guilty typing it out.

After she finished up some leftovers and graded the remaining quizzes, she walked into her room and put the Pink Floyd CD into her computer. Us and Them came on first and she listened to it as she got ready for bed. She liked it a lot! Edward was right, it really was calming music. Climbing into bed, Uncomfortably Numb came on and about halfway through she drifted off to sleep.