I'll Always Find Peace In The Meadow
Previously...
"Going anywhere nice?" I ask, trying and failing to keep the curiosity out of my voice.
"Anywhere is better than here," she says, and her tone tells me all I need to know: this conversation is over. That statement was her way of dismissing me. I nod silently and leave her room, going to the bathroom to shower and begin my day.
Chapter Thirty-nine: 'world's biggest bitch' (Bella POV)
Thursday 6 July 2017
I text Edward before I leave my house, asking if I can come over. I tried to hold off from texting him until it seemed like an appropriate time in the morning. I hate getting up as early as I did today, because I had to purposefully waste time until that "appropriate hour" arrived. At exactly 9:00AM, I texted him. His rapid reply of "Yes!" has me packing my bag with my laptop, journal, a book, charger, etc, before heading down to the garage. As I slowly reverse out of the garage and down the driveway, I send a brief glance to my bicycle which is still chained to the mailbox post. I haven't touched it since I got my hands on the keys to the blue beauty I can now call my own. Soon I'm on my way to Edward's.
I'm just pulling up to his driveway as Mrs Cullen's car exits their large garage. She doesn't even look at me as she reverses, turns and drives off, though I know she noticed me because she had that pinched look on her face... or maybe that's just how she naturally looks?
I throw up the hood of my raincoat which I slipped on before leaving the house. I hop out of my truck, lock it and then speedwalk to the front door, shielding my bag underneath my raincoat. I knock with three sharp wraps on the door and impatiently wait for it to open.
Unfortunately, mini Mrs Cullen answers the door. Her dark, short pixie hair cut now has pink highlights tinting the ends. Someone's been to a salon recently.
"Go round the back," is all she says, before going to close the door in my face, leaving me stood out here in the rain.
Before the door can completely close, however, I hear Edward's exasperated voice shout somewhere from within, "Alice! What the hell are you doing? Let her in!"
I hear Alice's heavy sigh as she swings the door open again. The bored glance she sends my way as I step in has me trying not to roll my eyes. The door is slammed shut behind me, causing me to jump. Edward enters the foyer from the left, hurrying to my side as he sends a glare his sister's way. "Don't you have friends to entertain, Alice?" he asks, obviously trying to get rid of her.
I watch their exchange as I pull down my hood and unzip my raincoat, shrugging out of it carefully, so as not to get too much rainwater all over the place.
"Don't you have lives to ruin, Edward?" she counters, matching his tone. My eyes widen as I toe off my Converse, not bothering to untie the laces - mainly because I don't want to embarrass myself by trying, and failing, to bend over to untie them. Lives to ruin? That escalated quickly.
"Whatever, Alice. Bella and I are using the media room," he says, gesturing for me to follow him as he walks past her and toward the stairs. All under the watchful eye of his sister, I hasten to pick up my shoes - Ow! - and follow him.
"Don't care, Edward. The girls and I are doing each other's hair," she explains, though I'm sure he doesn't really cares what she has to say either.
"Yeah, I can see that," he says with a smirk - though this smirk isn't the one I've gotten used to seeing. This one is evil, malicious. She rolls her eyes and heads in the opposite direction. "Can you believe her?" he grumbles to me as he leads me downstairs. I silently shake my head at his back, not really understanding what just happened between him and his sister. At times like this, when he complains about his sister, which is frequent when it comes to Edward Cullen, I'm grateful my parents had no other kids after me. Siblings appear to be hard work, especially when they're as... difficult as Alice.
He tells me to hang my coat over the back of his desk chair and to leave my shoes in his bathroom, before we go into the media room.
We argue over what movie to watch for almost twenty minutes, before settling on Gladiator, a movie I'm surprised Edward has never seen. I thought every teenaged boy loved violent movies, and this is one very violent movie. It was one of my dad's favourites, so it's a movie I know all about. This shocks Edward, much like when he found out I'd seen Casino before.
Next we argue over what snacks to get from the extensively wide selection at the back of the room. We don't necessarily argue over what to have (there would be no point because we can choose individually). Mostly we argue over the fact that there are no Haribo Gummi Bears available - him for and me against - and about stealing a couple of the cans of beer that are in the refrigerator - again, him for and me against. In the end, I accept the fact that there are no Gummi Bears and he follows his parent's rules and my example by grabbing a can of Dr Pepper instead.
The next problem we face is where to sit. There's this humongous U-shaped couch, and we are stuck on where each of us should sit. Should we sit beside each other in the center? In our own corners? Laid out across the center? This battle isn't done externally, like the last two arguments. It's a fight we have with ourselves as we stand facing the couch in silence. We both seem to struggle with it, and I know it's because we don't want to sit too close and suffer temptation, or too far and not feel like we're watching this movie together - yes, the couch is that large it could end up feeling that way.
Eventually, we both sit beside each other, but with a space between us which we mutually use as our 'snack area'. I cross my legs and pull a blanket over them before grabbing one of the large, fluffy pillows and placing it in my lap. My ribs ache, and I want to be as comfortable as possible. I watch Edward fidget around, trying to get comfortable too, before he presses play on the tablet controller thingamabob that he's tried to show me how to use but I just can't get the hang of.
His questions start soon after, which initiates the next argument - this time about him not shutting the fuck up during the movie!
~I*A*F*P*I*T*M~
Nearly three hours later, I'm in tears.
"Oh, just ignore me," I hiccup, wiping the back of my hand across my snotty nose in a very unladylike fashion.
"Do you always react this way to that movie?" Edward asks me from his place directly beside me. Within the first half an hour, the snacks were all consumed, that safety space between us left enticingly vacant. Somehow, sometime, we drifted closer together until that space we'd purposefully put between us was no more. For the remainder of the movie we sat side by side, so close that our sides were pressed together. Edward's arm ended up slung over the back of the couch at some point. I don't know exactly when.
You know in romance books, when the couple go to a movie and end up so distracted by their company, usually with how close they are, that they end up missing a majority, if not all, of the movie they were meant to be watching? Yeah, well, that didn't really happen with me. I don't know about Edward, but I love this movie and wasn't going to miss one second of it, even if there was a handsome boy who I happened to have some sexual experience with only a week ago sat so close I could smell his cologne.
Okay... so maybe I noticed a little.
I answer his question with a silent nod, that's quickly followed by another hiccup as I attempt to calm down. "Sorry," I chuckle, "I'm an emotional wreck with some - okay, many - movies and this is one of them."
"I can see that," he replies with his own chuckle.
I think it's an absent-minded action, or maybe it's deliberate. Either way, I notice when Edward's thumb, the one on the hand of the arm that's still slung over the cushion behind me, starts rubbing comforting circles into my shoulder. "What other movies get you this emotional?" he asks curiously.
"Oh, lots," I answer, the chuckle I expel this time sounding a little more breathy than the last. "Um, Marley and Me, of course. Braveheart has me in tears every single time. The romances like Me Before You, Titanic, The Fault in Our Stars." I say the last one with a knowing glance in Edward's direction. He just smiles and winks, setting my heart aflutter. "The Notebook-"
"The one my mom and sister were supposedly watching on your first day here?" Edward interrupts me to ask.
"Yep," I confirm with a nod, "that's the one. Great movie and fantastic book! What else? Um, oh! Love Story, with Ali McGraw. It's an older movie compared to some of the others I've mentioned but it's so wonderful! And how could I forget? My Girl, with the kid from Home Alone."
"The Christmas movie?" Edward asks. I nod and then lecture him on how the world will end if he doesn't watch My Girl. I need to start making a list of movies my uneducated best friend MUST watch! With a wide smile, and the continuous, soothing rotation of his thumb, which has now transported to the dip where shoulder and neck meet, Edward asks, "Anything else?" I grin right back at him and dive into more of my rather extensive list of movies-that-make-me-cry. I've listed another half a dozen before I gasp loudly.
"Oh!" I exclaim, another title coming to my mind in a flash. "And Ghost!"
"A horror?" Edward asks, again with that clueless tone in his voice.
"No! You've never... dear God. Are you kidding me right now? You've never seen Ghost? With Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg and *Partick Swayze*," I say, waggling my eyebrows as I draw out the last name dreamily, attempting to wind him up. Edward's face scrunches up adorably.
"Why'd you say his name like that?" he asks, sounding affronted. I try to hold my smirk at bay as I answer.
"Come on, have you seen the man?" I ask rather bluntly. Edward just rolls his eyes and I laugh. "So you've heard of him then?"
"No. What's he been in?" he asks, the perturbed look slowly leaving.
"He's the main guy in Dirty Dancing." He stares at me with a glazed look. Again, he's clueless. "Road House?" He shakes his head. "Seriously? Neither of those ring any bells?"
"Oh, they do. Especially Dirty Dancing. Who hasn't heard of that movie? I've just never sat and watched any of them." He shrugs.
"Okay, well you had to have watched Point Break with him in. It's also got Keanu Reeves in, too."
"Okay, now him I've heard of."
I smile broadly, resisting the urge to fist pump the air. Success! "Great! What have you watched with him in then?"
"Nothing," he admits casually. I gape at him once more.
There's a moment of silence.
"Did you even own a TV before I met you?" I ask, gobsmacked. Edward smirks, shaking his head at my apparently amusing behaviour.
"Yes, I've just never been one to sit and watch television often. Unlike you, who seems to study movie trivia as a past time."
"I do not!" I protest, carefully crossing my arms. "I just enjoy watching movies is all." I get lost in my own thoughts after declaring this. My time for watching movies has depleted drastically in the most recent of years, purely because I hardly have any time for it anymore, what, with school and chores and all. My movie knowledge is vast; my father never really set too harsh a limit on what I watched, as long as it was within reason, and whenever I have had the time since he passed, my mother never put a stop to me watching something out of my age-range. Probably because she didn't care.
Edward's thumb, which has now moved to the column of my neck in its lazy circling pattern, is what drags me out of my melancholy train of thought. I offer him a tense smile, which he returns, his much more relaxed than mine. Now we're as face-to-face as one can be, so close that his face is all I can see. His eyes drop from mine to gaze at my mouth for a split second, before jumping back up to meet my eyes again. "How's your bruise?" he asks.
I pull back, startled by his question, my arms tightening around my middle, instantly assuming he means my newest one, which he can't possibly know about. "Bella?" I remain frozen, until his thumb stops it's circling and dips beneath the material of my plain charcoal t-shirt at the back of my neck. Oh! He means my old one. Of course!
I shake my head silently, feeling silly. "Oh, it's fine now. Completely faded," I tell him truthfully.
There's a moment of pause, and Edward's expression is suspiciously guarded. "Can I see?" he asks finally, his voice deep and husky. Realisation dawns on me as his thumb reappears before dipping beneath the neckline at the back of my top once more.
"Uuh," I nervously try to find my way out of this. It's obvious what he's hinting at, and as much as I want to oblige and give in to the feelings that were awoken last Wednesday, I know that I can't. I must avoid that for at least another week, though I fear that even then the bruise on my ribs will still be visible. It is, after all, one of the nastiest I've ever received. No joke.
Besides, even if I made up an excuse, the pain is still too fresh and doing something so strenuous would be impossible for me right now, sadly.
"Uuh," I stammer again. Shit! "Maybe later," I eventually say, hating myself and my mother in that moment as hurt and rejection reaches his emerald eyes. He averts his gaze from me, his arm dropping from behind me. Well, don't I feel like the world's biggest bitch now!
"Why don't we go to the meadow?" I ask after clearing my throat as I push myself up off the couch. Edward barely glances up at me before standing, too.
"But it's raining," he reminds me.
I shrug. "It may have stopped," I say as cheerily as I can. I grab his hand and pull him toward the door, hoping that my distraction works.
Luck, for once, is on my side. Through the windows of the great room, we can both see that the rain really has stopped. "See?"
"But the grass will be wet."
"That's what blankets and raincoats are for. Come on. Please?" I ask, turning to face Edward. He seems hesitant but eventually sighs, nodding at me with a small smile. "Great! Do You have any waterproof blankets?"
He nods and after telling me to go and grab our things from his room, he turns and heads for the garage. I do as he asked, but not before taking a few seconds to breathe as soon as he's gone. I lift up my top to quickly inspect my ribs, hoping that somehow, miraculously, the bruising would be gone.
Nope. Still there.
With a heavy sigh, I drop my top and wipe at my face. It's a tad sticky with my tears from earlier, and that fact gives me pause. Usually, that movie leaves me in tears for a long while after. But Edward had me laughing in no time, ironically by striking up a conversation about movies that make me cry. He turned my sadness into happiness without even trying.
I shouldn't be surprised. It's something he does for me on a daily basis now, just by being him, and being in my life.
A/N: I hope you enjoyed this one! Please review!
Next chapter is an Edward POV. I wasn't lying when I said a couple chapters ago that big things were coming up... they'll begin unfolding next chapter. It's a bit longer than this one. See you tomorrow (sorry about this one being a day late. You're all probably used to it by now).