Day 5: Part 1

Emmett Ruins Everything

I didn't want to get out of bed the next morning.

No, correction. I didn't want to get out of Edward's bed the next morning.

I loved the way my naked body felt against his blood red, silken sheets (which I thought were a bit overkill, but placated my unease by insisting Alice picked them out). I loved that when I turned, even the slightest, there was that split second of pause between when I smelled nothing and when his musk would lift from the sheets. I wanted to burrow myself in his bed like a fucking badger and lose myself in this feeling.

Last night had been good. Too good. So, naturally, I began to panic.

But it wasn't the usual panic. I didn't feel a bubbling in my stomach or a tightening in my throat, I just felt an overwhelming disquiet. I was antsy. I needed a cigarette.

"Do you want some scotch?"

I looked up without moving my head. Emmett was sitting across the booth from me in the only one-star diner in town. While I hadn't been ignoring his phone calls per se, I had made a regular habit of forgetting to call him back.

And I had felt guilty.

Sort of.

But still, here I was, being a good friend and hanging out with Emmett when what I really wanted to do was go back to Edward's bed and masturbate until I passed out from exhaustion.

Emmett was wearing a button-up and was clean shaven, the look successfully distinguishing him from the regular plaid shirt and paint-stained panted denizens that were inhabiting the rest of this disgusting place. But his hands were resting, cupped on the table and he was running his thumbs over each other in a classic Nervous Emmett type of movement. It made me anxious and I slapped the top of his hands to get him to knock it the fuck off.

"We're at breakfast diner, Emmett," I said. "There's no scotch here."

Emmett lifted both of his eyebrows up and unclasped his hands to hold them forward in a defensive 'whoa, whoa' gesture.

"Bella, hey," he said, frowning, "look, I'm sorry, all right? You're just . . ." he gestured at me, "you know, acting pissy and it's making me nervous."

"I am pissy," I said. I picked my water glass up and took a sip from it, looking at the ceiling in a pointedly pissy fashion.

"I know, it's why I wanted to see you." He leaned over the table until both of his elbows were propped up and he was able to lace his fingers behind his neck. He looked down at the table. "Jasper called me."

I slammed my glass down on the table, and pushed myself into the back of the booth, wincing as the buttons on the back of my jeans squeaked against the cheap red leather.

"Jesus. What the fuck could he possibly want to say to you?"

Emmett frowned further. "He said you freaked out yesterday and bolted from his house. He was worried about you and wanted to make sure you were somewhere safe."

"Jasper's a fucking liar," I said. "He's a psychopath and a pervert and I left because I caught him fucking Tanya and he didn't stop when he saw me. In fact, he smiled at me."

Emmett pulled his eyebrows together low over his eyes. "Are you sure he saw you?" he asked. "I mean, he could have been – "

"He saw me, Emmett. Just as much as he lied to me about the fact that you left town."

Emmett set his jaw. "Yeah, I talked to Jasper about that."

"And?"

"He said that you got freaked out being in his playroom and wanted to leave." Emmett raised his chin a little and I noted the defiant edge to his tone. "And he tried to prevent you because he was worried about where you'd go. So he lied to try to stop you." He shrugged. "I don't know, Bella. It's shady shit, but it was with decent intentions."

I felt a pressure form in my chest. This was not Emmett, not my Emmett. The Emmett who treated me like his little, damaged sister and who coddled me with affection and who calmed down Rosalie when my tantrums got too much for her. This Emmett, sitting across the dirty lacquered table from me with his eyebrows raised, challenging me to denounce him and his fucking twiddling thumbs, was not here to placate me like he usually did. He was here, finally telling me something he should have told me years ago: suck it up, you're not a kid anymore, quit acting like a child, and get your shit together.

The pressure bloomed. Had I finally done that one thing that would push Emmett away? The question startled me and I narrowed my eyes at him. He was now fingering the edge of the plastic menu and looking down at the table, one of his hands still cupping the back of his neck.

I almost laughed. "Rosalie put you up to this."

He sighed. "We're both worried about you, you know? You went through some awful shit with James, and we both noticed the change in you. It's not . . . good. It's damaging you, I can see that. You used to be happy-go-lucky and all that shit and now you're –" he gestured at me "– like this. You can't like it, either."

"Can't like it either?"

He huffed out a short breath. "You know what I mean."

"Nope," I said, "I don't think I do. What I hear you say, though, is that you don't like my attitude. My bitchiness. My pathetic-ness. My – "

"Whoa, hey," he said, holding his hands up again, "stop, that's not what I'm saying."

"Isn't it though?" I said. "Don't you think I know what I'm doing? Everything that comes out of my mouth? I know I taint the air when I'm at your place, but I thought that out of all people . . ."

I stopped. He had pushed the menu aside, had splayed out the massive fingers of his massive hand on the table and was now looking down at them. I closed my eyes.

"Look," I said, "I know I can be a pain sometimes, but I really don't mean to ever upset you. Or Rosalie, for that matter. I'm just . . . not happy. And I don't know how to fix it."

He looked up at me. "It's not that you're a pain, Bells. I love you. You know that. It's just . . ." He sighed. "I just don't know what to do to help you. I tried with Jasper, but clearly that's not working. I know you hate what your body does to you, the panic and all that. And I know Tanya used to have a history of it, so I thought that – "

I waved my hand at him and he closed his mouth. "Yeah, yeah. I know. The panic attacks."

He screwed his mouth up and opened it.

"Yes," I bit out, "yes, it helped. But he's so weird that I can't stand to be around him."

He grinned a little and though I wanted to reach across the table and smack his forehead, a slight part of me felt relief in seeing his smile. That was the Emmett I knew; the one who knew how to make inappropriate lightness out of even the most depraved of situations.

"I did kind of warn you about him," he said and despite my raging annoyance, I grinned back.

"Yeah," I said. "He's very formal, blah, blah, blah. He acts like he's from a different century or something. The way he talks."

Emmett's grin widened. "Did you notice he doesn't use contractions? Except when he's pissed about something, then it's like he forgets to be all serious and just lets loose like the rest of us."

"Really?" I asked and I felt my body lean over the table. "I haven't seen him lose it yet. Well, once and all he did was throw his fork down."

"Wait until he's really annoyed with something." Emmett leaned it all conspiratorial-like, and his face became serious again. "You'll hate to hear it, but I really do respect him. But I don't get why Rosalie loves him so goddamn much."

"You're phenomenal, Emmett."

He gave a cocky shrug and leaned back into his chair. "Okay, one more serious thing."

I nodded but cocked an eyebrow.

"What he does works. Tanya, Alice, Leah, all of them. Tanya had come to the house parties forever and there was always some small moment when I'd see her totally freeze up. I didn't get what was wrong at the time, but Rosalie told me to ignore it. She was kind of a wreck. Then she met Jasper and since then, she's been happy. She was miserable, like, really miserable. Then, she was good. I'm sorry you're getting that creepy vibe from him, but it might be a good idea to push it aside and let him do what he does best: fix people."

I sighed.

"Bella, it'll only take a little amount of intense time with him and I swear to God you'll never have a panic attack again."

I crossed my arms and leaned back into my seat. I rolled his request over in my head. I didn't like it.

Sensing the end of the discussion, Emmett sighed dramatically. "So when are you going to pick your fucking mutt up?"

Alice had driven me over to the diner saying that she wanted to "surprised me with something delicious" after lunch with Emmett and picked me up when I was done with him. She drove me to a little jewelry boutique on the outskirts of this pathetic, Podunk town. I rolled my eyes the whole way to the store until she smacked my shoulder and told me to calm myself or she wouldn't buy me anything.

"I don't want anything," I said after the fifth employee came up and put earring near my ears. I batted her away. "What do I need fancy jewelry for? Give me some hemp and I design you one hell of a sweet-ass necklace."

Alice gasped. "Hemp, Bella? God, no. Makes my skin all itchy and blotchy." She ran her nails over her neck in a psychosomatic fashion and shuddered. "Only white gold for this body."

She leaned over one of the display counters and pointed at a necklace. She beckoned me over and I stared at it for a moment before shrugging. "I don't know. Why are you buying me a necklace?"

"Um," she said and when nothing else followed it, I turned my head to look at her. Both of our faces were bent over the display case and I was so close to her I swear to God I could feel the heat radiating off her fucking face.

"Alice?"

She stared pointedly at the display case, ignoring the heated stare I was shooting her. "Um, well, it's not really me buying it for you."

I shot up, almost hitting her face with mine. She flinched. "Oh, holy Jesus, Alice. Edward is buying me jewelry?"

"Well, sort of."

"Yeah, this is kind of a do or don't do thing. You can't sort of buy jewelry. The way you can't sort of drive to Nevada. You did or you didn't – "

"He's taking you to a ball," she spit out, so quickly that I could imagine the sentence as one long word in my head, not punctured by spaces or anything as clearly unnecessary as that.

My throat tightened and another slow, aching roll went through my stomach. "Yeah, that's something he should have run by me first. Bella doesn't do balls. Or dancing. Or - " I gestured at the display case, "jewelry or anything like that."

"Okay, hold on," Alice said, holding her hands up. "He didn't say he was taking you. I said he was taking you. He doesn't even know, all right? I just thought it would be nice. It's in a few days." And then, in a quieter voice, she said, "Though I thought you'd like the dress . . ."

"You bought me a dress?" I spat, my mouth like a goddamn fountain of saliva. "You can't – you can't just – Alice, you – fuck." I took a deep breath. "Two, four, six, eight."

I straightened up and spent a second collecting myself before giving her the nastiest look I could muster. But I calmed my face down at her expression. Her mouth was loose and her eyebrows were bowed together over her eyes, but it wasn't an angry expression, just . . . an expression.

"Alice?" I asked. "You all right, there?"

"I'm fine," she said, shaking her head a little. "Let's just go home."

The ride back to Edward's was uncomfortable. No, not uncomfortable. Downright awkward. I tried to analyze Alice's blank expression. There was some cheesy, bubblegum pop song playing loudly in the gaudy Porsche and she was tapping her fingers to it in something resembling a beat. But her eyes were fixed ahead and she looked sort of absent.

"So," I said after a few moments. "Are you, like, upset with me or something? This is awkward."

She took a deep breath and shook her head. "No," she said, "I'm not mad at you. Don't fret."

I believed her so I kept my mouth shut.

She pulled up into the driveway and pressed a button on her rearview mirror, opening the garage. We weaved our way in between the cars and paused so she could grab a can of pop out of the fridge. I opened my mouth to ask her to grab me one, too. But when she slammed the door shut harder than was strictly necessary, I let it go.

I kicked off my shoes in the laundry room and prepared myself to ask her what the fuck her problem was, but she spoke before I could.

"Who the fuck are you?"

I peered around the open door and looked past her into the kitchen.

"I'm James. Who the fuck are you?"