Chapter 13 – Bella
"Are you okay?" Bella asked Edward as she caught him stuck in a blank stare once again. It happened every so often, and every time she saw him in that way, she couldn't help but worry about whatever was causing it.
Those skeletons in his closet were beginning to shake, and Bella knew it was only a matter of time before they exploded and blew up the whole damn apartment building.
Even with the looming potential threat against their relationship, Bella continued to shock herself by not running. She didn't even have an urge to lash out or strike before being struck. With Edward, Bella didn't feel like herself at all… or perhaps she was finally feeling like herself for the first time. Was that who she was really supposed to be? If it had not been for one shitty experience after another in her life, would she have become that happy, optimistic, loving woman she was slowly turning into?
Edward made every aspect of Bella's life better. She was seeing beauty in things she had never noticed before, and she was legitimately excited for each and every day. The only drawback that she had encountered as a result of her new love, was her music. She was having trouble finding that internal rage that she needed to perform the anger-filled songs like she had before, and her softer, sweeter melodies weren't received well by her audiences. It wasn't long before her band was considering getting a new vocalist…
"At least temporarily. You know, until this guy tramples on your heart and you can find the turmoil again," her drummer, Jacob, informed her. "Please don't punch me."
Bella shocked the both of them by smiling.
"You're snapping, aren't you?" Jacob asked, confused by her facial expression. It was one he probably had never seen on her before. "You don't have a weapon of some-sort, do you? Listen, I'll go back and tell the guys to shove it. We will find other venues to play for. Everything will be fine."
"Calm down, idiot. I'm not snapping. I'm just thinking about what I could be doing with all my free time now that I don't have to worry about you losers anymore."
"So… you're not mad?"
"No. I mean, I might miss it a little, but my heart's not really in it anymore. It's not like I was ever really good at singing anyway. I just liked to scream out all my frustrations with life. I think I'm ready to… move past that phase now."
"Cool," Jake said slowly, still not entirely convinced she was being sincere. "Well, it's been… nice. We are all going to miss you… I think."
"I wouldn't bet on it," Bella disagreed. "Good luck finding my replacement… and I really mean that; I'm not being sarcastic or anything."
"Thank you," he replied, but said it like it was a question.
Bella really was happy to be moving on from the band. She wasn't enjoying that smoky, stuffy, heavily intoxicated atmosphere anymore, and she was especially happy to free up her evenings.
"My goodness, you are just going to turn into a regular Betty Sue before we know it," Leah told Bella at work the following day.
"What the hell does that mean?" Bella asked unsure.
"You gave up your band for this guy? What's next, you go find an office job to do clerical work?"
"I didn't give up the band for him," Bella said defensively. "I'm just not passionate about it anymore."
"Let me guess, you lost your passion over the past month?" Leah retorted. "That's not losing passion, that's being in a mood or a rut. That's being too swept away by a boy and wanting to spend all your time with him and giving up on your dreams, only to regret it later when he tears your heart to pieces."
"That is not what this is at all," Bella disagreed. "And what dreams exactly do you think I'm giving up? My dream to be a rock star? Pfft! I was never some great singer with huge aspirations to make it big. I have always known we would never amount to anything more than what we already were, and I was fine with it. I'm just... moving on now."
"At twenty-one years old your youth is already over. Time to start looking at retirement homes. Maybe you should pick up golf? Oh wait, you might break a hip."
Bella rolled her eyes. "For your information, I actually love golf already. Me and my pop used to go out all the time. And just because I'm deciding to stop spending my Friday and Saturday nights screaming on a stage, doesn't mean I'm giving up my youth. Don't be so fucking melodramatic."
"I'm not trying to be a drag here; I'm just worried about you. I've seen so many chicks lose themselves for a guy and it ruins them. I don't want that to happen to you. Believe it or not, I kind of think of you as a friend."
"Leah, as strange as this sounds, I kind of think you are my only friend. I appreciate the concern, but I'm not fooling myself into thinking Edward will always want me. I know how fucked up the world is and I'm totally prepared for it."
"You might think you're prepared, but anyone can see just how in love with him you are," Leah countered.
"What?" Bella said, taken aback. "No. That's fucking ridiculous. No way. I hardly know him."
"You keep saying you hardly know him, but you have been with him for over a month now and you have yet so spend a single night away from him. If you guys haven't been getting to know each other, what the hell have you been doing all this time? I mean, other than constantly fucking."
"Well, the constant fucking doesn't leave much time for talking," Bella joked.
"Right, and I'm still jealous about that. But, I just hope you're being careful. Protect your heart like you protect your vagina."
Bella laughed. "I can't exactly put a condom on my heart."
"No, but you know what I mean. Speaking of condoms, how many boxes have you guys gone through since you've been staying with him?"
"Too many to count. He is constantly coming home with new ones. The store he buys them from must think he is running a brothel or something."
"At least he cares enough to buy them. My last boyfriend made me buy them. He said contraception is my problem since if I were to get myself pregnant, I would be the one to have to deal with it."
"Wow, well he sounds like a winner. I wonder why you didn't stay with him longer."
"He started out super sweet, that's all I'm saying. These men turn like rabid dogs. You want to know Edward's true colors, tell him you're pregnant. See how he reacts."
Bella laughed once. "I already know how he would react. On the day we met, he had just broken up with his girlfriend because she told him she was pregnant."
"Wow. Harsh. He certainly is a prize," Leah said disturbed.
"No, I mean she lied about it. She was never really pregnant. That's not something you joke about. It's disgusting, really."
"I guess so. Speaking of the joy of not really having a little womb hijacker, how does he handle period sex? I brought a guy home once while I was on it and he freaked out. Wouldn't even let me give him a blowjob."
"Oh, he is fine with that, he…"
"What?" Leah asked when Bella let her words trail off.
"Hold on," Bella said, digging in her bag to look for her phone. She pulled up the calendar, and she immediately froze.
"Bella, what's wrong?"
"Nothing, I'm just…" Bella flipped through her calendar and began counting the weeks between her periods. They had always been regular, except… "I haven't had a period in six weeks."
"What?" Leah spat. "Bella!"
"Holy shit," Bella whined as her entire body began to tremble with the most amount of fear she had ever experienced in her life. "No, no, no, no."
"Okay, let's calm down. Maybe you're counting is just off," Leah suggested.
Bella's shaking hands swiped through her calendar again, but she had always been so diligent about marking the start date of each of her periods, and the last one she had was two weeks before meeting Edward.
"This can't be happening. I'm having a nightmare, right? Please wake me the fuck up," she said in a panic.
"Doesn't stress interrupt the cycle? I mean, you've gone through some major changes in your life since meeting Mr. Perfect; maybe it all threw you off," Leah said, trying to be supportive. "Did you ever have sex without a condom?"
"No… not really, but… I mean, we did, but he didn't come. This really can't be happening right now."
"Your last period was before you even met this guy, right? Is there any chance… I mean, say you are pregnant, is there a chance it might not even be Edward's?"
"I… I haven't been with anyone else since before my last period. It was… God, it was two weeks before I met Edward, so… meeting him would have been right around the time I was ovulating, and of course I jumped right in bed with him. Oh my god, how could I have been so stupid?" Bella cried.
"We don't know anything for sure yet. You said you used condoms, so it's probably just a false alarm."
"We were… we went through so many condoms those first few days. It was like one after another. I don't know, I mean, it's possible we just weren't careful enough. I don't know what I'm going to do."
"Look, there is no point in stressing just yet. I don't have a client coming in for another hour, so I'll go get you a test. I will be right back, okay?"
Bella nodded, but she was stuck in a cloud of fear and self-loathing. To Bella, in that moment, there was nothing worse than being pregnant. If it was true, Edward had broken up with a girl for faking a pregnancy, lost his mother, and got a stranger pregnant in virtually the same day. Sure, they really didn't have sex until the following day, but it was basically the same thing. And instead of thinking of them both being at fault, Bella's insecurities and irrational guilt had her taking the blame solely onto herself. How could she do that to him?
Leah was back before Bella even realized she had left, and she pushed her into taking the test right away. It didn't even take the entire three minutes for the two little pink lines to appear brightly and unmistakably in the test window.
Bella was pregnant, and she had some decisions to make.
"Are you going to tell him?" Leah asked quietly as Bella was attempting to accept it as fact.
"No!" she said reflexively, as if the idea of telling him was repulsive. "No, I'm just going to… get it taken care of… I think."
"Maybe you should take some time to think about it for a bit," Leah suggested.
"There's nothing to think about. I'm only twenty-one. How the hell could I take care of a kid on my own?"
"Well, I mean, ideally, Mr. Perfect would help you out with it," Leah pointed out.
"This isn't his problem, it's mine. I need to deal with it."
"So, he isn't the father?"
"He is, but it's not his problem."
"Why not? It took both of you to make the baby. I mean, you didn't force yourself on him, right?"
"Leah, you don't understand. Edward is… he is driven, and the smartest person I've ever met, and he is really going places. It's bad enough he is slumming it with me right now; I'm not going to force him to be tied to me for the rest of our lives. Besides, I know nothing about mothering. No, there's no way I'm keeping it."
"Well, it sounds like you're sure then."
"I am. Totally sure." Bella grabbed her bag and headed for the door, but had to pause. "Leah, can you…"
"I will call your clients for today to reschedule."
"Thank you," Bella said graciously before retreating the building.
She couldn't stay at work in that state, but as soon as she left, she immediately felt lost.
Where the hell was she supposed to go now?
She knew she wouldn't be able to go back to Edward's and pretend like there was nothing wrong, but she didn't want to go to her grandfather's either.
So, she wandered.
She must have walked for miles, and eventually she found herself at the docks on the bay. The boats were gently bobbing in the water, and her eyes somehow became fixated on one of the anchors, which made her think of Edward's mother.
"For a woman I'll never meet, I'm feeling like I'm needing your advice right now," Bella said out loud, using that anchor as a stand in for her tombstone. "I bet you're as horrified right now as I am. The idea of your son knocking up someone like me. I'm sure you wanted so much more for him. I wish I knew your name so I could actually address you. Then again, that would probably make me feel even crazier than I do already. What am I doing?" she huffed. "I'm not going to have this baby, that would be… I don't know what it would be."
Just then, as if fate was trying to tell her something, a woman and her young daughter walked by. They were holding their hands and the girl was spinning and jumping around joyfully. When she suddenly fell and scrapped her knee, the mother picked her up and comforted her, and the little girl clung to her mother like she was her entire world. Watching their interaction only confused Bella even more when she suddenly felt a tear roll down her cheek.
What if having a baby didn't have to be the worst thing imaginable? What if having a baby would finally give her the one thing she had always been craving her entire life – a love that would always be there.
When a warm feeling washed over her, Bella realized that there was no other option for her. She had always wanted something permanent – perhaps that was why she had become a tattoo artist in the first place. She had been too scared of loss to believe in happily ever after, but this was different. This was creating a family for herself that would never leave her. Sure, the child would grow up and eventually have a life of its own, but Bella would always share in that life. They would always be a family. The child wouldn't die and leave her in the world alone the way she always knew her grandfather would eventually. The child would never abandon her for another woman or tell her she wasn't good enough. In the end, that sense of an unconditional and reliable family was all that Bella had ever really needed.
With her mind abruptly made up, Bella knew she couldn't be a coward and not tell Edward. He deserved to at least be given the option to be in his kid's life. But images of Edward's brief but reoccurring freak-outs invaded Bella's mind. What was he keeping from her? Whatever it was had to be serious, and she was terrified of what it could mean for their baby.
Bound and determined to figure it out before she told him that she was pregnant, she did something she never thought she would – she snooped. She went back to the apartment, and since Edward was in class, she used his absence to look in drawers and closets, and even under the bed. She wasn't sure she would find anything, but she was so wrong; it didn't take her long at all to find something.
"Edward Angelo Marchesseni?" Bella read the name she found in a passport "What the hell?"
She continued to look through the paperwork she found in his desk drawer, and every single piece of paper, including all of his schoolwork, had the last name Marchesseni. Not that the name meant anything to her, but why would he lie about his last name? It just didn't make sense. However, the more Bella let the name roll off her tongue, the more familiar it sounded.
"Marchesseni," she said again. "Where have I heard that before? Wait," she said before going to the kitchen and digging in the drawer where they kept all the restaurant take-out menus.
She grabbed the one for Bella Luna, which happened the be the restaurant right below their apartment. Sure enough, at the bottom of the menu in fine print read, "Owner and head chef Demetri Marchesseni. So… Edward is related to the owner of the restaurant. Not sure why that would be so incriminating that he would lie about it," Bella said to herself. "Why lie about his last name at all?"
Unsatisfied with just the small lie she discovered, Bella continued to dig through the apartment looking for more skeletons.
"Okay, Mr. Marchesseni, what else are you hiding?" she asked as she went back to the closet. "There has to be something else."
Bella pulled a chair over and climbed up so she could look on the high shelf. "Ah-ha!" she said when she found a shoebox tapped shut.
She brought the box down and took it to the kitchen. She grabbed a pair of scissors, but then she hesitated. "This is a huge violation of privacy," she said, trying to talk herself out of opening it. "So, he lied about his name. That doesn't give me a right to open this."
Bella decided to put the box back and attempt to let it go. When Edward was ready to open up to her, she would be waiting… except after stewing about it for a few hours, and freaking herself out about the baby and changing her mind several times, Bella looked at the clock and knew Edward would be home soon. This would be her last chance to get an understanding of who he really was before she told him about the baby, which could possibly intertwine them irrevocably.
Bella's nerves, combined with her mistrust and general nosiness, won the battle against her conscience, and she decided to open the box. Her mind raced with all the possibilities, but nothing could have prepared her for what she found inside.
"Oh, my god."
Her stomach immediately dropped and her entire body began to tremble again. She was in such a state of shock that she didn't even hear the apartment door open.
"Hey, you're home early," Edward said as he put down his coat. "What are you looking at?" he asked as he approached her, but she didn't have to answer. He saw the old shoebox, and he saw what she was seeing, which made him freeze instantly.
Bella looked up at him with tears in her eyes, but the look of sheer horror on his face made her feelings of betrayal pause.
"This is it?" she asked him. "This is your big secret? Whatever the hell this is. What is this exactly?" she asked emotionally.
She waited for an answer, but it was as if he lost the ability to speak… or even move.
"What the hell is this?" she shouted at him with her tears of shock morphing into tears of anger. When he still didn't answer her, she grabbed a handful of the newspaper clippings and threw them at him. "Answer me, damn it!"
Instead of speaking, he squeezed his eyes shut tightly, just as she had seen him do before, but this time she refused to be patient and supportive.
"No! You don't get to clam up on me now! Tell me why you have all these newspaper clippings of my mother's death. Tell me why you have my father's obituary in here, and my grandmother's. Tell me!"
Edward opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out, and despite her yelling, he refused to look at her.
"Well, fuck you then!" she said as she grabbed her bag and stormed out of the apartment.
Once again, she had no idea where she was going to go, she didn't even have a single clear thought at that moment. She couldn't comprehend anything that happened that day, and her entire world felt like it was spinning. The busy noise of the city street only added to the chaos in her mind, and she honestly wondered if she was about to keel over from a brain aneurism.
"Bella, wait!" Edward called after her.
She turned to look at him, but her anger was too strong, and now her stubbornness was adding to it.
"I gave you a chance to explain. You just stood there and stared at me. I'm done! I have enough shit to deal with in my life than to have to worry about some psycho stalker, or whatever the hell you are."
"I'm sorry… just, please give me a chance to explain."
"Explain with more lies? How did you find my name again? Your professor? Sure. You even lied about your last name. Who the fuck does that?"
"You're right, I lied," he admitted. "And I really have no excuse for it."
"No excuse? Right," she said angrily.
"Can we just go back inside and I'll explain?"
"I'm not going back in there," she said as she backed away from him. All of her fears of letting anyone get close to her were being confirmed. Edward was a liar, and she should have never trusted him.
"Bella, please," Edward begged, taking a step closer to her to try to close the distance between them.
With his step forward, she took a step back… right into the street with oncoming traffic.
"Bella!"
The loud roar of a horn reverberated through her, and as she reflexively looked to the sound, everything seemed move in slow motion. The breaks of the massive bus screamed in protest, but it wasn't stopping fast enough and Bella was absolutely petrified.
There was no moving out of the way; Bella knew she was about to be crushed. She instinctively squeezed her eyes shut, and then she heard a loud thud. Strangely enough, she didn't feel the impact; all she felt, was him.
"Holy shit!" Edward cried as if the wind had been knocked out of him. "Are you okay?"
Bella looked at him, momentarily lost in the shock and confusion of what just happened. Was she dead? Was she really killed the same way her mother was?
It took the feeling of Edward's heavy breath on her neck, and the sound of another man asking if they were okay before she realized she was unharmed.
"Oh, my god," she said as the daze from the trauma began to wane. "Oh, my god."
"You're okay," Edward cooed as he held her tightly. "Everything is okay."
"I called an ambulance," the other man said, who she just realized was the bus driver.
"I wasn't hit," Bella said slowly. "At least, I don't think I was. Nothing hurts, I'm just… a little shaken up."
"You're bleeding," Edward told her as he took off his sweatshirt to hold to the cut on her forehead. "You must have hit your head on something when I grabbed you. Bella, I'm so sorry."
"Sorry? I'm pretty sure you just saved my life," she said quietly.
"You wouldn't have backed into the street if it wasn't for me. Holy shit, I can't believe that just happened. What the fuck is wrong with me?"
He finally let her go, and then he walked around himself before sinking to a squat and burying his face in his hands.
"What the hell happened out here, huh?" Demetri, the head chef of Bella Luna, asked as he came running out of the restaurant. "Edward, what happened?"
But Edward didn't answer, he just kept his face buried. When Demetri looked at the bus parked there, and then to Bella, he kneeled down by Edward and began rubbing his back. "It's okay, cousin. No one is dead this time, eh?"
"This time?" Bella questioned his words.
"Yeah, when he was a kid…"
A paramedic came onto the scene and interrupted Demetri, so Bella was forced to wait for her explanation. It wasn't until they insisted that they check out Edward as well, that anyone realized that he actually had been hit by the bus. The bus had braked enough that he wasn't more seriously injured, but he had shielded Bella with his own body, thus saving her from getting anymore hurt than just a minor head bump. Of course, had the bus not stopped when it did, they both would have been crushed. The realization, of which, was not lost on Bella.
For precautionary measures, both Edward and Bella were taken to a nearby hospital to get checked, and they were placed in neighboring beds in the E.R. as they awaited to be examined.
"Why did you lie about your name?" Bella asked him after the nurse left.
But again, Edward wouldn't talk. He just kept staring blankly ahead of him.
So Bella said the one thing she was sure to get his attention. "I'm pregnant."
Finally, Edward seemed to snap out of it enough to look at her.
"Like, for real," she added. "Must be hard for you to believe it after what your ex did, but I would never joke about something like this. I just found out earlier today. I was freaking out, so I decided to go through all of your things to try to figure out who the hell you are and why you keep getting stuck in these weird dazes. I just… I wanted to know more about the man who's baby I'm carrying, and you didn't seem like you were ever going to tell me yourself. Every time I tried to ask you about it, you would just… deny, or spin it, or make something up. I don't know you at all, do I?"
"I never meant to lie about my name," he mumbled quietly. "All of my friends had trouble pronouncing it, so I shortened it. Not legally, but when I introduce myself, I just say Masen. It was easier, and sort of became a habit."
"A habit? I lived with you for over a month and you never thought to tell me your real last name, or that your cousin owned Bella Luna, or that you have an old box full of articles about my dead relatives?"
"It was my fault," he murmured no louder than a whisper. "I killed your parents."