A/N: ARTIST OF THE WEEK:
Katy Perry.
The song I used was "The One That Got Away". The song is set like a decade or two after the time period Bella is in… but oh, well! The theme is apparent.
Bella POV-
I let him hold my waist like a good moll would do, but it was the wild atmosphere that I drowned myself in. Agnes Caldwell was playing live on the center stage, stacks of straws and bails of hay settled all around her so that the whites could sit for a spell and enjoy her exciting music. She was the epitome of jazz, as well as the most beautiful woman of color that my eyes had ever seen. Agnes was a legend to behold, and I just knew that the wages she was being paid was not one quarter the right amount she should have been. Her name belonged up there with Marlene Dietrich, Jane Green, Carole Lombard. "Bella- Bella!" Rosalie waved her pale hand in front of my face before shooting me daggers. "Where's your head at?" I shrugged, because I honestly didn't know. What made me suddenly care about music- especially jazz? Maybe it was my way of trying to ignore the fact that I hid an ugly bruise under all of my cosmetics. Maybe it was the truth that I wanted to tell my dear cousin everything, but knew I couldn't.
Edward's fingers squeezed my side, signaling that I should start acting normal again. People like Alice and Rosalie would start to get nosey if I kept up with this attitude. "Oh, nowhere exactly. But I do want to take a better listen to Agnes Caldwell, if you all don't mind?" Rosalie was hand-in-hand with Emmett, whom wore his ever-intimidating feathered fedora (and so did Edward have the suave ensemble of a businessman) but even then, he seemed whimsical with his glossy eyes set on my cousin. Alice had her companion on his tiptoes, as she didn't often seek the arm of a man, except for Reynaldo. I shut my eyes- that was months ago. His death could no longer touch us, I preached. To my surprise, everyone agreed and we made a distinct bee-line for the showcase, and even if it was crowded, I was utterly amazed at what I saw. She was more beautiful in person, rather than in the premiere posters hung around town.
"If my dad could see this now, truly. A colored woman, taking the stage and entertaining us with her crazy-hearted music. It makes our blood sizzle with excitement, and yet we get nothing in return for our attention." Alice looked on, taking no time to rebuttal her date's slashing comment. Just who did he think he was, some sort of a God that people should look up to and pay all heed to? Well, he was mistaken. We weren't statuesque "uptowns" with white supremacy on our minds. We were in the Northern states, and slavery was abolished a long time ago. Agnes was a free woman, with the talent that seldom whites, in their glittery gowns and expensive microphones, have in the singing industry.
I looked onto Edward to say something in return; he knew what it was like to be discriminated against for color. His grandfather was a dark Italian, with a tongue and attitude so different from those in the land that he traveled to by sea. Would it have been different if it were Giulietta Simionato, the controversial Soprano songstress, that he was talking down on? Would my fiancé have stood for the woman if she were Italian? When he made no move to put him in his place, I looked back at her and dreamed on. Agnes was curvy and tall, looking out of place between the viola player and drummer. They were short, skinny men of different colors- the drummer was unmistakably Mexican. And the viola player was a lighter shade of brown, not so dark as Agnes herself. I respected her, not because I deluded myself for a second in believing that we came from the same circumstance, but because she stood so beautiful, and so tall. Agnes rose from the depths of which her natural-born skin color put her in. Agnes was a fighter, and she fought many different enemies. One of them being Fredrick Dougherty, the man on Alice's shoulder. But he wasn't an average blue-blooded white man. He was an Irish.
I could tell by the way his lips curved in, and that hair almost tinted blond in the sunlight. There was almost the hint of an accented slur on his tongue- not to mention the fact that he was already three glasses of cognac ahead of Emmett and Edward. "I think the music is fine." Rosalie pursed her lips against Fred. "She's a hep-cat. If you could keep your mother's nagging mouth away from your ear for more than a few seconds, you would realize that what she's singing is the bee's knees." I blinked in shock; Rosa usually stayed out of matters that were too controversial for words. She was a single woman, who occasionally sought a man's lingering touch- and she lived on her, made her own living, and could dance all night long at a swing club. Rosa was a controversy, if there ever was one.
"Easy for you to say. You've got the legs of a loose bolt, but the face of Venus. Look at her." Fredrick gestured to Agnes with a demeaning finger. "Unattractively tall, big around the edges. What man is going to love her? From her music, she hates her own blood. And everyone else hates her." He said it with such conviction… it was almost like he knew her on a personal level. "What kind of woman would she be in a home? A lousy one." He scoffed and took a swig from his beer.
"What of it is your business? If she wants to live a single lifestyle and dislike people of her choosing, I assure you that you are the last person she must request approval from." There was a dim flame in his eyes as she continued on. "You may say I'm loose, but you're uptight." No one stopped her. Alice just listened on with half of a heart, and Emmett held her hand tight. "Your own inhibition keeps you from tasting a colored woman's flesh. That is why you're so ravishingly jealous, yes? You've got all this pent up lust for a type of woman that your mother and your mind would never let you have. And all this exciting, blood-sizzling jazz just tops the cherry of the sundae." Rosalie ended with a cute thrust of shoulders, her minx shoulder wrap and long, blonde hair framing her cunning features. "Don't take it out on Agnes. She's beautiful."
Alice sighed and fingered the seam of the pretend pockets of her sailor-striped tunic. "I'm not feeling well." I was instantly at her side, grabbing her small arm in my crème wrist gloves and prompting her to stand with me. "No- no, I just… I need a refreshment, is all." Fredrick nodded solemnly and stood up, avoiding eye contact with the two men in our ensemble. He muttered a farewell before taking Alice's elbow and strolling towards the spirits booths on the other side of the carnival. All of that talk must have disturbed Alice, seeing as her oh-so-gentle nature was too fragile to withstand adult conversation- and any sort of patronizing from Rosalie's mouth. Said object was cuddling up to her massive date, feeding the swooning six feet of putty.
"You can thank me now." Rosa looked at me pointedly, her thin lips painted in red and her eyes framed with a hazy green shadow product. I didn't say a word. What was I supposed to say? Thanks, Rosalie, for fighting another battle for me. No, it was all wrong… I should have been strong enough and stood up for what I believed in. I should have been the one to make Fredrick go pink in the face.
"Quit that, doll face." Emmett preened sweetly. "Bella's too young; Freddy would have chewed her up and spit her out when it came to ethics. It wouldn't have been pretty, either. At the first mention of her untouched virtue in the social realm, Edward would have had him strung from limb to limb. Isn't that right, Eddie?" Edward said nothing, just sat back on his seat sipped from an open beer like a worthless use of Nitrogen and Oxygen he was! But I didn't doubt that he would have been right there for me when I needed him. Edward was a lifesaver thrown to me one too many times, but I didn't have enough pride nor dignity to ever reject him.
And why did Emmett call her doll face? There were already giving one another pet names? That was disgusting. "Thanks, Rosa. Maybe I'll have the guts to say something next time. I appreciate your opportunist virtue." Because we all knew that her natural born virtue was given away before she turned fifteen (or maybe I was the only one who knew that little part)- Rosa made up for her lack of demurity by being loud and ignoring standard society rules.
"Was that a back-handed compliment?" Rosa smirked down at me, but turned back to Agnes and the Brothers once more. I leered at the name- Agnes and the Brothers. They deserved a grandeur name… something regal and perhaps in a different language! But who was I to say? I wasn't some fast acting agent with a million things on my mind. I was Bella Swan, the five month fiancé of a mobster, and the daughter of a has-been Chief of Police. I was something, alright- but not to any of the right people. To the criminals I was the uptown daddy's girl, born under the sun and always the law-abiding girl. To the law, I was the slimy, sticky-fingered brat of a dirty cop. I wasn't accepted here or there. My presence didn't belong in this realm, and I seriously didn't belong with Edward.
Our conversation died down until we dwindled into a calm bull session, where Rosalie and Emmett pointed out dumb doras in the crowd and I just nodded to their arguments. Agnes stepped off the stage, after a prolonged goodbye with plenty catcalls and hoots of applause, and so her "Brothers" disassembled their equipment and took everything that could have reminded me of them. When would I witness their beautiful music again? Edward only liked Opera, and he really didn't enjoy the Jazz that so inspired me. "We would do best by taking our leave. Isabella and I have an engagement in the morning." Edward announced abruptly, and I suddenly felt the need to hang on to his every word. Engagement? Edward and I didn't do very many things together. It must have been something to do with a social duty or something for our wedding plans.
We walked hand in hand to his green car, and I didn't feel bad for driving in the nicest, shiniest one in the lot. "Do you think less of me for not say anything?" I spluttered out spontaneously. For some psychotic reason, I needed to hear him console me.
He shrugged his long shoulders, the hint of a smile on his face. "It isn't a bad thing that you know your place and when not to speak your mind. Your fiery cousin doesn't when to shut her mouth, and that may just be her demise. Especially if she and Emmett make it through the honeymoon phase." I nodded. Of all the times I knew when to shut up and actually did, it had to be now? With my cousin and new sibling-in-laws there? "You're smart, Isabella- don't ever allow your common sense be taken over by your silver tongue." We were on my side of the car, with the passenger door open but my body wasn't inside of the car. I leaned my head and back against the frame of the opened door, and just stared at him. In the sunset, he was so beautiful. His silhouette was domineering and too regal for mortal words, but there was this thudding heart in his wide expanse of a chest that I wanted to see. "Because if a man ever crosses you, in a way that makes you cry or even feel hurt," Edward leaned in and pressed his mouth against my cheek and stared at me so pensively, "I will kill him. And if a man ever touches you… intimate or violent, I swear it," he cleared his throat, but the emotion was already on his face, "there wont be a merciful bone in my body, and I will tie him to a chair and rip him to shreds-" To save myself from the gruesome tale that he would spin, I pressed my lips to his and thrust my tongue deep inside his mouth.
I knew his weaknesses. I knew how to shut him up when I needed to. "I know, Edward." I held his face in my hands and got on my tip toes to meet his eye level. "I know." I never wanted to witness that part of Edward, I never wanted to meet that monster inside of him. I knew that he had the money and the looks, but his ethics were out of whack and I didn't always believe in his emotionality. I just didn't want to end up like Agnes, bitter with regret and angry with hate for men and their wicked ways. I didn't want regrets, and I didn't want Edward killing or torturing another for me. Edward was becoming my everything, and that was something I never wanted to lose.
What was a woman when she lost her everything?
Nothing.
"All this money can't buy me a time can't replace you with a million rings.I should've told you what you meant to me,'Cause now I pay the price."
A/N: So, how did you like it? Who do you think Miss Agnes is in real life?
Look up these singer if you don't recognize their names. They are LEGENDS and beautiful to listen to.
REVIEW PROMPT: review or pm me with a real life experience with cheats of men, or a cute little story of love/forgiveness/discovery like we've seen Bella and Edward in the last two chapters. I'm in need of a little diversity : ).
Happy LATE Valentines Day.