(Ten)

I roll up to the corner of 32nd and Hove and leave the engine idling. She suggested to meet here instead of her place. Said it would be easier for me to find. Or easier for her to hide whatever it is that exists down these back alleys crammed with shadows and neon-bright pawn shops promising dollars for gold.

I flash the headlights when Bella appears. She waves to tell me she'll be two minutes, then crouches down to talk to what at first looks like a pile of trash. When I look closer, I realize it's a homeless guy with a black dog curled against his side. They exchange a few words, and she hands him what I guess is money before she crosses the road to me, sending a smile over her shoulder to him.

I lean over to open the door. She slides in, gives me a smile. Only it's different. Less familiar. Nervous. "Thanks for doing this."

"No problem. I was over this side of town." I'm full of it today.

"You like to drive?"

"Yeah."

"How come you take the bus, then?" With a click of her seatbelt, she twists all her attention to me.

"The traffic kills my engine. The bus makes more sense." I don't tell her the real reason. That I'm less inclined to go off track if I have no way to get home afterward.

I glance at the homeless man again before I pull back into the traffic. His eyes are fixed on me. They're more than curious; they're protective.

"Do you know him?" I ask, switching on the radio. Music blasts into the car, making her jump. I turn it down to background noise.

"Yes and no," she says, the worst possible way to answer a question.

"So, maybe?"

She starts to rummage through her bag, finding whatever it is she uses to put her hair up. The smell of her shampoo takes over the usual smell of leather and faded air freshener. "He used to work in insurance. Never touched drink or drugs." She catches what she's said and looks guilty, but I shake my head for her to continue. "What I mean is, he's just trying to survive the bad hand he's been dealt."

I swallow the irony. It scrapes my throat. "He's had a rough ride, then."

"You could say that. I always stop to say hi and give him what I can. You know all of us are only a dose of bad luck away from living on the streets. I'd like to think someone might help me if I was in that situation." She shrugs and goes back to staring out of the windshield.

"Somebody would," I say.

She glances over, reads between my lines, and smiles.

We drive in a comfortable silence for as long as she can manage, which isn't long at all.

"Can I find something to listen to?" She's touching the dials before I answer.

"Sure. What do you like?"

She chews on her lips, scanning the stations. "Everything. Depends what mood I'm in. What about you?"

"Same."

She listens to a few seconds of a song and then flips to the next. Again and again. It's a trait Ally used to drive me insane with. Same as flicking through the TV channels until my eyes hurt.

"How do you know if you like it or not if you don't listen to the whole thing," I say, pushing her hand to the side, taking control. "You have to hear it all the way through, then you can decide if you like it or not." I find an old rock song, one that doesn't take me back to black holes spent in The Roadhouse. "Listen to this."

She looks at me in shock, and then laughs.

"What?" I scowl.

"That's the most I've ever heard you speak." Her eyes are all over me again. I stare at the traffic. My fingers itch for a smoke, so I tap out the beat of the song on the steering wheel instead. "I like it," she adds, trying to melt my mood.

I only smile when she turns away.

The car's like a sauna as we crawl through traffic. Bella peels off her coat, unwraps her scarf. She's flushed from the heat. It's all I can do not to put my hands all over her when she leans over into the backseat, dumping her extra layers. I crack the window to give me a chance to breathe something other than her.

"So, what've you been up to this week?" She plays with the zipper on her boot, the air vents, her hair. She never stops moving. It could be nerves or just that she's full of life. I'm stone in comparison.

"Not much. Working, mainly."

"What do you do?"

"I'm a journalist." A little white lie in present tense.

"Really? That's amazing."

The masochist in me likes to ramp up people's expectations so their disappointment falls that much further. "I was before I fucked it up. Now, I write obituaries."

She doesn't miss a beat. "That's still an important job. When my dad died, he only got a few sentences, and they spelled his name wrong. I mean, how hard could that be? He wasn't an astronaut or an inventor, but he deserved more than that, you know?"

I wince inside. My attention to detail has been lacking. I can barely find it in me to listen while I talk to relatives, never mind sympathize with them. I'm a selfish fuck.

"What about before? What kind of journalist were you? If you don't mind me asking?"

"Not at all," I lie again. "I was a war reporter for CNN."

"Wow, Edward. That is… that's hardcore." Her fingers pinch the material of my hoodie, tugging like she can't believe it. "It must have been amazing, getting to travel all over the world ... but then the things you must have seen. The things you had to write about."

A horror movie plays through my head. I close my eyes to the images and the road. When I open them, they're still there, playing on loop. "Yeah, it had its moments." My voice is uncertain of itself.

She lets go of my hoodie, but her hand hovers, as if she's going to touch me somewhere else. Something changes her mind, and she tucks her hand under her thigh. "It's a brave job."

I shake my head. "Not really." She might be right, but I can't hear those words now. Not without thinking how I've thrown it all away and how that makes me the worst coward of all.

"What about you?"

"Me?"

"You said you have another job."

"Oh, yeah." She pushes my question aside with a non-committal sigh. "I work downtown in an office. It's boring. Trying to make ends meet." She starts spinning a silver ring on her thumb. "Will you be able to do your old job again, when you're …" She struggles to find the word. Better. Sober. Alive.

"Maybe."

I lie to her about the time of the meeting this week. I can't risk her asking me any more questions because I'll have to stop them, and the only way I can think of to do that is to kiss her, and the thought of kissing her escalates into the backseat before I can stop it. I think she knows I'm bullshitting, as she's a little less bright as she crosses the street. Em arrives twenty minutes later and accepts my reasons for driving, other things on his mind. I can't get Bella out of mine.

We've run out of places to go before we have to be where we have to be. Bars are the obvious choice—no can do. Coffee shops—neither of us like the stuff or the people who haunt them. We're a different kind of ghost.

"When was the last time you went on a swing?" she says, walking over to a lonely set of four. The park is deserted. Everything is grey and shadowed, the few street lights around the edges barely making a dent in the dark. And when I say everything, I mean Bella, too. She's as colorless as the playground.

She holds the chains and leans back, letting herself go. Her hair flies behind her. I keep my boots on the ground and ask her if she's okay.

She doesn't look at me, pushing off gently so her feet barely brush the ground. "Yeah."

For someone who usually has twenty words to my two, she must have a build up of a thousand unsaid. "You sure?"

"I'm just a little tired," she says, not speaking again.

I shove my hands deep into my pockets, my shoulders hunched against the chill. "Do you have to work tonight?" I ask, thinking she should go back to her bed and trying not to think how she could come back to mine.

"Yeah, I do. Jimmy's already given me a warning about being late. Not turning up would be even worse."

"Shit. That's my fault."

"That's what I tried to tell him." I see a shadow of her usual smile.

We borrow time either side of our meetings. I'm having to take Em's shit and leave jobs half finished at work. I hadn't thought what she was giving up in exchange for those extra few hours. "I'll talk to him if he's giving you shit."

"I can look after myself, Edward." She's abrupt, but then adds, "But thanks for the offer."

She's the kind of girl who talks a lot but doesn't tell you anything. I'm biding my time. Her secrets aren't hidden deep; she's just an expert at avoidance.

"Aren't you freezing?" She flips the subject, eyeing my leather jacket, the thin T-shirt underneath.

"I don't feel the cold," I say, though my feet and fingers are numb.

She shivers under all her layers. "You've gotta be cold-blooded then, like a lizard or something."

"Maybe I'm dead."

She stops the swing with a scrape of her feet and watches me for a second. Then her decision is made. She comes to stand in front of me. Her mouth is tucked into her scarf, but her eyes are full of intention. She steps between my knees, her body heat blocking off the icy night. I need to back away, but I can't, and that's all the excuse I need to let her closer.

Bella lifts her hand and places her fingers under my jaw, presses them into my neck. I feel my pulse thumping against her skin, faster than it should. I start to pull my hands from my pockets, torn between pulling her closer or pushing her away, when she speaks. "You are alive."

A balloon pops in my chest when I realize what she's doing. She doesn't drop her hand, it stays there, warm and firm. I find her wrist under the edge of her glove, her pulse racing.

"You're alive, Edward," she repeats.

Thump. Thump Thump. Thump. Thump Thump. The rhythms fit inside each other.

"So are you," I say.

The next week, she doesn't make the bus. She doesn't call.

The meeting is a blur. I've already decided to check if she's at work. If she's not, I don't know what I'll do.

Em collars me outside—I have to wait for him to leave before I can make my way over. Lies and excuses cloud my mind as I try to pick the right one. He asks me for a smoke, adding at least another five minutes to our chat. I'm antsy, but he doesn't clock it. He's in the middle of telling me about Rosalie's asshole boyfriend when a familiar car pulls up to the curb.

Bella's boyfriend—or whoever the fuck he is—jumps out of the Tahoe and dives into the restaurant.

Minutes feel like hours before he finally comes back out, Bella behind him. I can hear his voice over the sounds of the cars. Em's attention is drawn, too. He sees the way my fists clench, the flicker in my jaw.

"Edward," he warns, placing a hand on my arm.

It stops me for a split second, holds my feet when they want to race over to her. Bella yells back at him, throwing her words into the night, but their meaning is lost in the wind. He grabs on to her and yanks her toward the car. She resists. Whatever he says next, quiet and close to her face, drains her fight. Satisfied, he opens the door then walks around to his side of the car. I hear the next part. "Get the fuck in, now." I wrench my arm away from Em before Tahoe finishes the sentence. I'm up and over the wall in a second, but I'm not quick enough. He's already in the car, the engine running as I cross the road, anger charging my veins. Bella spots me. Her face is frozen in some sort of horror. She shakes her head in warning, and slides into the car. Its wheels burn rubber against the asphalt, squealing away before I can get a hand on its metalwork. I watch it weave into the traffic, horns blaring at the careless driving. My heart hammers with unresolved rage. I'm going to kill him.

I pull out my phone and try to call her, but hers is turned off. Em clamps a hand on my shoulder, pushing me onto the sidewalk. "What the fuck was that about, E?"

He watches the traffic with me and scrubs his hand across his hair, worry lining his face. "Is she the reason you've been late?"

I shake my head, trying her phone again. Still no answer.

"Fuck." I punch my curse out with a fist. Em grabs me again.

"I think you need to calm down, and then I think we need to have a little talk."

I don't know what else to do, so I drop my head and nod.

I tell Em everything. He's pissed and concerned. He tells me I shouldn't see her again.

I don't lie. I tell him I have to.

He warns me. I don't listen.

It's only when the rest of the city is fast asleep that I get a text from her. "I'm okay."

Now who's the liar?

The next week, she doesn't make it to work at all.

AN: Thank you so much to every singe one of you. You keep me going.

Kim, Choc and Cat work their magic to get this into shape. They're my right hands.

I'm away for the next two weeks, so I won't be able to update - cries - but as soon as I'm back we'll get back on schedule.

Another wonderful story for you all in my profile:

The Monster by Thimbles: We are Generation Z. We are educated and engaged. We have the whole world at our fingertips. Our biggest killer? Ourselves.

See you in two weeks.

Sparrow x