As soon as the bell for third period rang, Bella grabbed her belongings and rushed out of chemistry to the gym, where Angela was just walking out of gym class. One look at Bella's face and Angela was concerned. "Bella, what's wrong?"
Bella grabbed her hand and raced through the hallways, leading her through the library to the student council room. That's where the two friends mostly spent their third period spare. Technically, all student council members had a spare third period this semester. This year's council members decided that they wanted to keep their lunch hours free because they were all so busy, so they all coordinated it with administration and scheduled their spares together. Now they had council meetings every Monday, and sometimes on Wednesdays if they needed two meetings that week. Usually, Bella and Angela stayed in the library and did their homework, or hung out with other council members. Today, however, Bella was kidnapping her friend to vent about everything that had happened to her that day.
"Girl, you're scaring me…" Angela said worriedly as Bella yanked open the door to the student council room. It was meant for meetings, so there were some tables and chairs scattered haphazardly. There were some freshman girls sitting on top of the tables, taking selfies and watching videos.
"You three, out. We need this room." Bella demanded, and waited for them to leave. They scowled at her, but did as she asked. Definitely a perk of being co president. Angela stood there gaping.
"Bella, what is going on?"
Bella stared at her friend intensely, took a deep breath, and exploded:
"You will not believe what the fuck just happened to me. Today, I was in English just minding my own business when I get a text from an unknown number and lo and behold, its his royal highness, Edward fucking Cullen, who's telling me he has an emergency and I'm so confused because one, where did he get my number from and two, how was he at school, he was supposed to be fake suspended but anyway he says he needs my help so I ditch English to meet him in the parking lot and he's spewing some shit about more revenge on James which he told me about yesterday and I instantly say no cause I don't wanna get into the middle of anything and-"
"Woah woah woah, Bella! Slow downnnnnnn." By the end of her speech, Bella was pacing the tiny lounge room. Angela waved her hands and motioned for her friend to chill the fuck out. "What happened? Just tell me what happened. Please."
"Edward piece-of-shit Cullen got me busted by Mr Berty for almost slashing his tires and scratching his car and now I'm gonna be stuck in detention with that sleazy motherfucker till the end of the week!" Bella was heated. She was aggravated. She wanted to hurt someone. Preferably Mr Join-me-in-the-dark-side-it'll-be-fun-bella-trust-me-hue-hue Cullen.
Angela's facial expression was the visual representation of term 'dumb founded'. She looked entirely and utterly perplexed.
"I'm confused," Angela declared, mercifully stating the obvious. She shook her head slowly to clear her thoughts. "Who's car were you vandalizing-"
"Not vandalizing. Attempting to vandalize." Bella corrected her hastily.
Angela nodded and tried again. "Whose car were you attempting to vandalize? Edward's?"
"No, Mr Berty's!" Bella answered impatiently.
"Why exactly were you going after Mr Berty's car?" Angela did not think she could get more puzzled. She was wrong.
"I obviously didn't know it was Mr Berty's car," Bella was losing her cool. Why was Angela being so dense?
"Then whose car did you think it was?"
"James."
"I'm sorry, but what the fuck, Bella? Where the hell did James come from?"
"Edward asked me to help him fuck up his car today in the parking lot."
"I thought Edward was suspended today because of the fight."
"No, Ang, Mr Berty just pretended to suspend Edward and asked him to take the day off but Edward came to school anyway and texted me in English to come find him in the parking lot so I skipped class to find him and and then he asked if I could slash James' car's tires for him, which was actually Mr Berty's car, and I agreed to do it because I felt bad for him, but then Mr Berty caught me, and now I'm in detention, Angela, detention. For christ's sake, keep up!"
What about this whole debacle did Angela not understand? She wasn't usually this slow.
"Alright, alright, let's not get so heated and unreasonable." Angela said soothingly, patiently, like talking to a child that was throwing a temper tantrum. "Let's start from the beginning, and slowly, this time." She gave Bella a pointed and patronizing look. "How did you get involved with Edward Cullen?"
Oh right, I didn't tell her, Bella thought with a small amount of guilt.
"Um, yesterday, before I left, I-uh, I thought I'd let Mr Banner know about the dance confirmation we'd gotten from Berty. I ran into him on the way to his classroom. Banner, that is. I ran into Banner. Apparently, his sitter cancelled last minute and he needed to get his daughter to his mom or whatever. He asked me if I could supervise Edward in detention while he was away…"
"He didn't think to ask, oh I don't know, another teacher?" Damn, Angela was really out here asking all the important questions.
"Well, clearly there was nobody else available, and he was in such a hurry, I didn't have much time to think, so I, ya know, might've just said yes…?" The tables had turned. Bella was dusting invisible lint off of her shirt while Angela was glaring daggers at her.
"We were on the phone for maybe 45 minutes on which you let me babble on and on about my walk with Ben, and you didn't even think to mention, not even once, to your best friend in the entire world, might I add, that you had spent the evening babysitting Edward fucking Cullen, the troubled and entirely fascinating bad boy who had just gotten into a very public fight and was in detention, out of all places, for the first time, and do not quote me on this because its definitely false, in forks high history? How could you even think to do this to me?" Bella rolled her eyes at Angela's dramatics.
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry! It just slipped my mind I guess." It was a bold faced lie, but Angela was too busy playing her wounded best friend role to notice.
"Slipped your mind? What kind of disloyal, mistrusting, sad excuse of a best friend forever do you- Okay I'm done. I'd be more mad at you if you didn't have so much juicy tea to spill." Angela returned to her sweet, innocent, nosy self. "What did you guys talk about?"
"I don't know, nothing important." Bella thought for a second to tell Angela everything about what Edward had shared with her in the classroom. Angela was her best friend, and Bella could trust her with anything. And realistically, if Edward had shared such personal information with Bella, who might as well have been a stranger to him, he wasn't very tight-lipped with his secrets now, was he?
Another voice wanted to spill Edward's secrets and betray his trust. That voice wanted to hurt him just as much as he'd hurt her. But no. Bella Swan wasn't a vengeful person. She believed in karma. It was not her place to seek out revenge. It would make her no better than any other tattle tale or snitch.
And Bella Swan was a lot of things, but a hypocrite and a gossip were not one of them.
"He just said some stuff about his beef with James. Typical alpha male bullshit. I didn't get to talk to him long. Banner showed up pretty quickly." Bella shrugged, not wanting to say anything more.
"I'm still a little confused, Bells. If Edward was just being a typical dude, why did you feel bad and decide to help him?" Angela needed to drop this. Bella averted her gaze from Angela's curious eyes, and decided to fall back on what she knew how to do best: sarcasm.
"I don't know, Ang, maybe because I have the most heart racing, butterflies inducing, earth shattering, life altering, feel-like-i'm-living-a-teenage-dream-tonight crush! Maybe because I'm in love with Edward fuck me Cullen!" Bella cried out, grabbing Angela's face and started belting out Katy Perry's love anthem. Angela giggled, amused by her best friend.
"Wanna hear something funny?" Angela raised her eyebrows, entirely distracted, causing Bella to halt her horrible rendition and pay full attention to her. "And you better not tell a single soul." Angela made Bella promise.
"Ben is absolutely in love with Katy Perry!" Bella gasped out loud. "I'm serious! His favourite album is Teenage Dreams, and his spirit songs are Fireworks and Roar. He thinks she helped shape the 2010s." The two girls looked very seriously at each other. Then they burst laughing.
"Angela, you've got to marry him! Maybe he'll pick 'Unconditional' as your first dance song." Bella teased, giggling at her own joke, bursting out into that god awful chorus. Angela shoved her playfully.
"Hey, don't be mean. He also loves Eminem. He can recite all of 'The Real Slim Shady'. Watch it!" Angela defended her man.
"Boy oh boy, what an absolute gangster." Bella joked again, but got serious. "He's a sweet guy though. He has a heart. I'm glad he has a crush on you, Ang." Angela made a puppy sound and grabbed Bella's hand.
"Thanks, Bells." They smiled at each other. It seemed the conversation was over. They exited the council room and found their usual spots at one of the library tables, pulling out their homework and returning back to their normal chatter as they concentrated more on their work. They remained working in a comfortable silence until Angela perked up her head, the gears in her brain turning. "Hey, Bella, did you say Edward set you up so you could get into detention too?"
Bella nodded her head reluctantly, not really following where her best friend was going with this.
"Maybe, someone's got a crush?" Angela sang, wiggling her eyebrows and puckering her lips at Bella. Bella blanched and blushed simultaneously, shaking her head.
"That's too ridiculous, Angela, even for you. You've been reading too much Nicolas Sparks." Bella shook off her friend's theory, but Angela wasn't that easily deterred.
"It would make sense why he wanted to spend all this time with you," Angela argued, "In detention. Alone."
"With a teacher there. Supervised." Bella reminded her pointedly. "That's hardly a place to spend any kind of precious time with your crush."
"Yes, but it's more time than you've spent together ever. It would be the perfect opportunity to get to know someone that you wouldn't normally talk to." She wasn't completely wrong, but it was besides the point. Edward Cullen did not have a crush on her.
"Angela, you seem to forget that I've seen him almost everyday for the last 4 years. We've had a class together every semester. If he 'had a crush', why wouldn't he just come up and talk to me? Or text me? Or even acknowledge my existence?" Bella thought this was a very sufficient argument, and irrefutable. Angela did not.
"Maybe he was scared." Bella scoffed. "He could be. You blew him off in grade 9. He offered you your spot back and you didn't take it."
"Yeah, that's cause Tanya would've clawed my eyes out if I'd asked." Bella didn't want to have this conversation anymore. "Regardless, he's a piece of shit, and I hate him. He could confess his undying love for me tomorrow and I still wouldn't care. Nothing excuses his behaviour. It doesn't matter what his intentions were, he still fucked me over."
Angela sighed. Her friend was right. Crush or no crush, Edward Cullen had royally fucked up. "I get it. I just hope you can make it through the next couple of days without bashing his brains out." Angela gave a sympathetic smile to Bella.
Bella shrugged and smirked back. "No promises."
The rest of the day had gone by fairly quickly. Bella grabbed her things from her locker, bid a miserable farewell to Angela and Ben and trudged her way to Mr Banner's classroom. Upon arrival, she took a seat in the front row and pulled out her binder. She was going to silently do her homework and maybe read until her time was up.
Due to Edward's fake suspension, he was unable to join her and Mr Banner for the first day. This was more than okay with her. The less time she was forced to spend in his treacherous company, the better. Mr Banner walked into his classroom a couple minutes after she arrived, and cast her a sheepish glance.
"Hi, Bella," He greeted her somewhat awkwardly.
"Mr Banner," she nodded, wishing the floor would swallow her whole. She had walked out of his class today with no reason, and came back with detention. It was not even slightly comfortable to be around him. But he was her favourite teacher for a reason. He then smiled at her calmly and asked "Do you want to talk about it?"
She shook her head sourly. "No, thank you."
"Alright then. I'll just leave you to it."
They spent the rest of the time in peaceful silence. She finished all of her homework, and started studying for a chemistry quiz. All things considered, detention was unexpectedly pleasant. For the time being.
When the clock struck 4, Mr Banner started packing his belongings, giving Bella the green light to leave. "See you tomorrow, Bella. Have a nice day."
"You too." She sighed internally. On her way to her truck, she saw a note taped to her window that was signed to her. Curious, she ripped it off and opened it.
I'm so sorry for hurting you today. It wasn't my intention at all. I only thought it would be a little bit of silly fun, and we could rekindle our friendship. I understand you're upset with me, and I'll try to make up for it, I promise. I thought an official apology would be a good start. I went to Berty and told him everything, if that makes you feel better. Anyway, sorry for everything. I hope you'll forgive me.
Edward
A gut feeling made her look around, and her gaze paused at the same silver Volvo parked farther down the street. He was waiting for her, watching her. Bella released a very non-ladylike and quite indignant snort as she tore the note into smaller pieces, thoroughly enough that he could see. Then she got into her truck and drove away.
Hello, welcome or welcome back.
I'm going to try to work on a schedule this time, but I wanted to get this chapter out before I did that. It looks like chapters are going to be longer than I'm used to writing, so a schedule should keep me motivated and posting on time.
Thanks for reading and following and favouriting. It means a lot.
If it isn't too much to ask, please leave me a review and let me know what you think. I haven't updated in 2 years, so I feel like I'm flying blind. A little feedback would be lovely. I used to be lazy and never replied, but now I'm going to make a conscious effort to. I want to connect with all of the people who care enough to comment on my story and characters.
I hope you stick around for the ride. See you soon.
