A few seconds later, I saw a shadow behind the door before the latter opened up, revealing an Edward Cullen more devastatingly handsome than ever.
He successively opened and closed his mouth several times before a sound finally came out.
"Miss Swan?"
"Uh, I apologize for my tardiness, Professor Cullen, but I…" Damn it! With all that time I had spent endlessly replaying the same scene in my mind, I could have at least thought of a good excuse to use to explain my tardiness! I said the first thing that came to mind. "I was detained at the library."
I blushed profusely at the mention of the now sacred place, and I noticed Edward's jaw clench as a flash of recollection crossed his eyes before he schooled his features.
"Take a seat." He said evenly after a few seconds.
I did as he asked. The other students didn't seem to notice the tension in our interaction and the state in which it put me, with the exception of Angela.
"Are you ok, Bell's? You don't look too well." She whispered after I sat down beside her.
"Don't worry about it. I just… didn't sleep well at all last night."
It wasn't a lie. As a matter of fact, I hadn't slept well at all the entire week since that fateful night at the library. I just couldn't stop thinking about what had happened. I kept replaying the scene in my mind, wanting to remember every minute detail, desperate to re-experience those delightful sensations Edward's touch had elicited, and trying in vain to guess what Edward had felt.
I wondered what would have happened if the ring of my phone hadn't interrupted us right when the tension between our two bodies was at its height. Would things have gone further or would one of us have put the brakes as I had been about to do? Would I really have been able to stop?
I couldn't quite figure out how we had gotten to this point. I had no idea how things had escalated so quickly. I wondered if our encounter mattered at all to Edward… if he was as troubled as I was… if he too had been unable to think of anything else.
Was it just about sex for him? Or was there something more?
No, it had to be strictly about sex. What could a God-like creature such as Edward feel for a plain girl such as myself other than animal attraction at best? I was his opposite. I was embarrassingly ordinary while he was unbelievably perfect in all aspects in my eyes.
You should be grateful that he ever looked at you even if his interest was purely sexual…
What about me? What did I feel for him?
It wasn't the first time I asked myself this question, but I still had no satisfying answer.
Was I merely attracted to him?
No, it couldn't just be attraction. I was obsessed with Edward Cullen. Literally. I was fully aware of that. I owned that fact. I had been obsessed with him from the first moment I had met him. His face haunted me day and night. I lost all sense of time whenever I thought about him. He was slowly revealing to me a part of myself I never suspected existed. A new Bella with new desires, new needs. The need to be loved especially. That was exactly it… Edward made me want to be in love and to be loved in return.
But did that mean I was in love with him?
How could I be? What did I know about love to make such a declaration? It was such a foreign concept to me. Was it possible to fall in love, just like that, with a complete stranger? Someone you knew absolutely nothing about? I'd always believed otherwise.
But if what I felt for Edward wasn't love, then what was it?
What was that feeling that made my heart race and that had butterflies fluttering in my stomach whenever I saw Edward?
Why did my flesh become heated and my hands sweaty whenever I heard the sound of his voice?
All these questions tormented me during every hour of the day and of the night. So much so that I felt as though my head would explode.
I was lost.
I could have asked my friends for advice, but I hadn't. I hadn't told them a word about what had happened between Edward and me at the library. I wanted to keep it a secret. I didn't want to share it with anyone, not even Rose and Alice. For that matter, those two were way too preoccupied by their personal happiness and caught up in their blissful bubble to realize that something was wrong with me. Alice was spinning out love's sweet dream with Jasper whose metamorphosis stunned me. Alice had told me that the first meeting between my brother and her parents, Esme and Carlisle, could not have gotten better, and they'd grown even closer ever since. She seemed very serious about Jasper, and she'd admitted to me that she truly believed he was her future husband. She couldn't explain why. She simply felt it. She and Jasper both seem to be on cloud nine, and I was glad to see them so happy.
As for Rosalie and Emmett, they were still playing cat and mouse. Apparently, the other night when he had claimed he wasn't done fixing the pipes in Rosalie's bathroom, that wasn't code for something else. Sexy Muscles still hadn't given in to my friend's advances, which seemed to only fuel her desire to have him. Rose kept coming up with ingenious ideas to ensnare Emmett in her net. Each of her plans was crazier than the previous one. After the shower hose, she had messed with her radiator, turning it on to the max, so much so that when Emmett had come to fix it, he'd found her in a bright red negligee supposedly because "the heat was unbearable". She had damaged her nightstand, broken a window, pretended her panties had been stolen, sawed off one of the legs of her bed and had even invented a fear of the dark just so Emmett would keep her company and sleep in her room on her still unknown roommate's bed.
In short, Alice and Rosalie were far too busy with their own lives to have any idea what was going on with me. And every time I considered telling them, I ended up deciding against it. Perhaps it was a little stupid but sharing this secret with Edward made me feel like I had an infinitesimal part of him. It made me feel bonded to him.
I was pathetic.
That was my conclusion after two hours of lecture. After two hours of Edward acting like nothing had happened. He hadn't looked at me once throughout the entire lecture. He hadn't once asked my opinion about the topic, even though he had always done so up until now. He didn't seem interested in my insights anymore.
I felt ignored by him and it hurt. It hurt badly. But it also made me mad… because as far as I was concerned, ignoring a problem did not make it go away. We needed to have a conversation, as unpleasant as it might be for me. We weren't kids anymore and it was about time we put our cards on the table.
I swore to myself that if he told me he didn't want me, I would definitively forget about him. Edward Cullen would be out of my life. For good.
I made the decision to go speak to him at the end of class after all the other students had left.
Shortly before the end of class, Edward walked between the rows to collect our assignments on Madame Bovary. Much to my surprise, he discreetly slid me a piece of paper when I handed him my assignment. I obviously couldn't read it with Angela sitting right next to me, so as soon as the bell rang, I rushed out of the classroom and headed straight for the nearest restroom.
I locked myself in a stall, slowly unfolded the piece of paper, and held my breath as I read the contents of the beautifully written note.
Tomorrow. Midnight. Third floor of the library.
I need to see you.
E.
-i-
I need to see you.
I need to see you.
I need to see you.
Ughhh.
Calm down, Swan. Breathe…
Calm down? Breathe? How could I even contemplate breathing when Edward Cullen, the man of my dreams, the object of my wildest fantasies, had said he needed to see me? He hadn't written that he wanted to speak to me. He hadn't written "we have to talk about what happened." No, he had used the word "need". I could swear it. I had read his note at least 100 times, studied the inclination of his beautiful handwriting, going as far as memorizing the distance at which he placed the dot of his 'i's.
I was so far gone...
I couldn't control the ferocious beating of my heart against my ribcage at the thought of seeing Edward again, at the prospect of an encore.
Yes, well, let me tell you that if your heart keeps beating so erratically for the next 24 hours, you're going to have a heart attack before you get to see him again, you fool.
The thought made my blood run cold. With my bad luck, that was quite likely to happen. And it was absolutely out of the question! I wouldn't let anything keep me from seeing Edward alone again. I would not be run over by a car, I would not be shot, and I would certainly not be attacked by one of the tigers of Seattle's national zoo. Choosing not to take any chances, I immediately went back to my dorm room after my day of classes, disappointing Rose and Alice who wanted to go downtown for a girls' night out in the hopes of finding, and I quote, "a volunteer to partake in my debauchery". What they didn't realize was that I had already found a perfectly capable volunteer. They still didn't know about my impromptu encounter with Edward last week, nor did they know about our planned rendez-vous tomorrow evening. Of course, they had protested. Fiercely so. They called me a grandma. They called me stuck up. They even predicted that I would die an old maid, alone with my three cats. As I maintained that I wouldn't go with them, Alice suggested that we go tomorrow instead. Once again, I declined the invitation and this time, Rosalie burst out in anger.
"Do you intend to spend all your days and nights locked up in this room whenever you're not in class? Bella, you're in college, damn it! It's time to learn to socialize!"
"Don't worry about me, Rose. I'm fine! I just don't feel like going out tonight."
"Not tonight, not tomorrow…" Alice cut me off.
"I'm working tomorrow night. You know that!"
"So what? We could go out after! But no, grandma doesn't want to…" Rose commented, irritated, gesturing with her hands.
"Can you not make such a big deal out of this? We'll go out another night!"
"Yes, so you've been saying for days. We know you're hiding something from us, Swan, and we will find out what that is." Alice warned me with an inquisitive look.
If only they knew...
"You're imagining things, Alice." I tried to be dismissive.
"Bella, I know you inside out. I can tell when you're lying!" Rosalie chimed in.
"Are you seeing someone?" Alice pressed on.
"What?! NO!" I acted outraged.
"I know there's a guy beneath all of this…" Rose wouldn't give up. I wasn't surprised.
"You know you can tell us, right? That's all we want for you. We'll leave you alone afterwards! we won't pry!"
Yeah right. Because that was so very much their style: being respectful of someone's boundaries.
I huffed in spite of myself. Who did they think they were kidding? To confess that I was indeed seeing someone would signify the end of my peace. They would ask for every last detail.
"Girls, just go out without me tonight, and I promise that I'll go out with you on Friday evening. Just the three of us. Wherever you want. I won't put up a fight." I tried to appease them.
They seemed to seriously consider my position. It was a good sign.
"Even if we play dress up with you?" Rosalie asked, lifting a brow.
I nodded my head yes all the while trying to suppress the frown that threatened to stretch across my features at the thought of them treating me like a doll again.
"Great! We'll go shopping beforehand!" Alice announced, giddy with excitement.
The girl was truly a shopaholic…
Satisfied, they finally headed out, leaving me alone to my Edward Cullen-filled thoughts. Before they left, Rosalie did throw me one last "Sooner or later, we'll find out what you're keeping from us, Isabella Marie Swan."
Once I heard the door close behind them, I heaved a sigh of relief. I changed into my pajamas and snuck underneath my sheets, intent on doing what I did best lately: fantasize about the dreamy Edward Cullen. I fell asleep envisioning a thousand scenarios about how our rendez-vous tomorrow would unfold.
The next day of classes went by uneventfully, in large part because I hugged the walls and kept a low profile to prevent any unfortunate accident from happening.
When Tuesday evening finally arrived and I found myself in one intact piece, I thanked all the stars in the sky as well as all the deities for protecting me from my legendary bad luck.
It was 8:00 PM. I was at the library. Unless a shelf fell over me or the building went up in flames, nothing would prevent me from seeing Edward tonight.
-i-
For the 15th time tonight, I checked my watch.
11:40 pm.
I sighed heavily. Why was midnight so slow to come?
I took a look around me. The library had been empty for over 2 hours, so what harm would it do if I closed 15 minutes early? None, I decided.
Resolved, I pressed the small red button on my desk.
"Dear students, I hereby inform you that the library will be closing its doors in 5 minutes."
I knew there were no students left in the building, but I thought the exercise was funny.
I took advantage of the few minutes I had left alone before our meeting to collect the book I had been distractedly skimming through and return it to its rightful place. I went up to the third floor and headed for the "French Literature" section. I smiled when I caught my reflection in one of the few mirrors in the library. I was quite proud of myself. I had managed to make myself look nice and enticing without Alice's care. I had done my best to look attractive without bordering on 'slutty'. After admiring my own work on my outfit, hair and makeup, I kept walking. Once I stood before the shelf, unbidden flashes of my previous encounter with Edward last week at this same location came to mind, and I felt my skin flush. I thought about our heated kiss. Edward's tongue. His fingers. His bold touch. His sexy groans. His husky voice filled with warmth…
""I want this room to be yours." Robert told me."
My breath caught in my throat when I heard his voice.
He was here.
Thank you for stopping by.
You all know by now that I write when you prompt me to... so tell me when you're ready for more :)