Sorry for those of you who had my unedited version of the first chapter. I wasn't aware certain symbols didn't work. Anyway, here is chapter two.
Trigger warning
Bella finally can relate to Shakespeare's Sonnet 147
. . .
"When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it." - Caitlyn Stiehl
Don't look. Don't look. Don't look, don't look, don't look, don't look-
"Bella? Are you okay? You've been staring at your hands for fifteen minutes."
"Huh?" Bella heard Edward perfectly fine, she just needed time to formulate a response. A lie. One that didn't sound like she was trying not to stare at his blonde sister. "Oh, yeah, I'm fine. Just tired, you know?" She's been getting better at this lying stuff.
He kisses her head. Yeah, definitely better at lying. "Well, I promise not to keep you up so late anymore." Edward promises, lips smiling into her hair.
Bella takes the opportunity to glance up.
Rosalie is folded in Emmett's large arms. The sight slices through Bella's chest, leaving her bleeding, breathless.
The stars are dancing behind her eyelids when she closes them again. Anything to not see that. Anything to not see Rosalie loving somebody else that isn't her.
For some reason, Bella is reminded of the sleepover where Rosalie had to leave an hour in because Emmett needed her.
Love was poison.
But she was drinking it in as if she were dying.
"Uh," Bella's voice is shakey, hard and cold, but somehow soft. Heartbroken. She can still see Rosalie pressing kisses to the side of Emmett's curls. "Can I at least have one arm? To eat?" She tries tugging at her limbs.
Edward pulls her to him, squeezing tighter. She can imagine her ribcage crying, and she groans. "Fuck, that hurts."
"Oi!" There's an airborne juice box that smacks the side of Edward's tousled hair. "Let her go, kid. She needs to eat." Jasper was the one frowning at him this time. "And breathe."
In her ear she could feel Edward snarling, but he let her go.
Bella looked at Jasper with relief and gratefulness.
He looks back at her with sympathy and a patent sad smile.
. . .
The silence was getting to be unbearable. It was too loud.
"Alice?"
"Yeah?"
"I want to go see Jacob. I need to talk to him."
"You can't talk to me?" There's a hurt in Alice's voice that cuts Bella to her lungs.
Her eyes sting. "Not about this."
. . .
"Why don't you love him anymore?" Jacob isn't trying to be mean, Bella knows this. But she can't help flinching regardless.
"I don't know." Bella sounds dead.
"When?" His eyebrows ache.
She rolls over onto her side. "I want to say when he left me. . ."
"But?" He prods. Honestly, Jacob wasn't excited that Bella didn't love Edward anymore. She was hurting.
"I don't know Jake," sighs, rolls over and flips a hand over her eyes. "I fell in love so quickly - could it have really been love? I mean," she needs to go on, but she can't say anything else.
"Bella, love is weird, odd, and painful. Maybe you were in love with him before he left and took his family with him? The betrayal and hurt you felt - and still feel - could easily block out the feelings you had for him."
It's fifteen breaths before Bella speaks again. "Yeah, but, I'm sure it's something else."
"What could it be, then?"
"I'm so gay, Jacob."
It doesn't take him long. He jumps, making her look at him. "Alice? You love Alice?" It's almost an excited yell.
"No. Worse."
This takes him longer. Bella counts every twitch of Jake's eyebrow like she would count the seconds in a minute, in an hour. Then he goes. "No."
"Yeah."
"No."
"Yeah."
"Not Barbie. Not the Barbie married to Ken."
"Jacob," Bella sighs, frustration leaking in. "Nothing will happen, anyway."
Nobody talks for another two commercials and three episodes of Spongebob.
"What are you going to do, Bella?"
She shrugs, not because she doesn't know, but because she can't do anything. "I'm not ripping their family apart, Jake. I've already done enough of that."
He blows out a breath long and hard enough to cover both of their problems.
If only things worked that way.
"God, I wish this was a movie or something."
"You and I both."
"Can I do anything?" There's a warmth in Jacob's voice that clogs something in Bella's throat.
"When I need a cuddle, you always have to be available. No questions asked."
"Deal."
. . .
" I love you." Edward says, standing in the corner of her room, watching her get underneath her blankets. "Forever and always."
Bella shivers. It doesn't feel like a declaration, instead it feels like a threat, a warning, a foreshadow.
She isn't sure what Edward wants. But she's mad.
The kind of mad when the edges of your teeth ache, like they're on fire. Like you need to bite something to feel better.
Bella's ready to bite throats out.
So when she says, "alright." and Edward's face falls into bewilderment she hides her smile in the wrinkles of her blankets.
Fuck him. He can shove yellow cake up between the crack of his ass and into his bowels.
Yeah, fuck him.
. . .
They're all walking up the stairs into the school. Bella does this without Edward's help since he's giving her the cold shoulder over last night.
It's more than fine with her. Maybe he'll finally get it that she's doesn't love him. No. Not anymore.
Alice spins around them all, like the pixie that she is, she's been high for days, Bella thinks-
"Where's Edward?" It's Emmett who asks.
"Mad at me." Bella tries to sigh, but it ends up sounding like there's a laugh boiling under her skin.
"Why is he mad at you?"
Bella quivers a little. Will she never get used to hearing Rosalie's voice? Good thing she's not facing her.
"Ah. I said somethings he didn't like last night." Hopefully
The silence that accompanies her response burns.
She's burning up when she finally turns around. Rosalie and Emmett are making eyes at each other and the coy gaze and the slow turn of her lips are absolutely annihilating her.
She's not even sure who armed love with a rusty knife.
"Anyway," she swallows. "I have to go to the bathroom. I'll see you guys in English." She's referring to Emmett and Rosalie. But she can't hurt herself like that. She can't say their names.
She's walking away when Alice calls "Are you okay Bella? You look kind of sick."
Bella's almost sprinting now. "Yeah! Totally!"
She isn't sure what she just agreed to. The statement or the question.
. . .
White linoleum is what meets her face, imprints itself into her vision.
Bathroom have always been gross.
Bella is heaving, long and hard, kneeling over a toilet.
She was fucking sick. There was a poison in her stomach. Love was pooling there, cold and dark, like toxic waste. She shoves her fingers down her throat until nothing but bile comes up, until blood smothered the bowl.
She sits back and looks at the carnage.
She doesn't see love among that mess.
Slumping back, Bella finally gets it.
Only death can rip the love away from her system, away from her seething bloodstreams.
It might just have to do.
. . .
The mirror of the badly lit bathroom reflected something Bella didn't want to see. A monster. A zombie, someone infected. There were yellow bruises under her eyes and her cheeks were blank.
Love is ugly.
No. No, I still have time. Please. Please. Don't do this to me. I can't love her, she has my heart in a vice and it's turning to mush. I can't love Rosalie.
I can't.
. . .
"Ms. Swan, you don't look well."
Bella laughs, quick and harsh, like the rattle of bronchitis, some disease eating away inside of her that speckles her breath with red. Her laugh isn't the sound of happiness. It's the sound of death.
"I'm better now. Thanks though, sorry I was late to class."
". . . Yeah. No problem."
The way she moves to her desk in the back corner must scare some people. The way she moves is like a slug, feeling grey. There's a numbness that she can feel in her bones. She hates the way she clings to it.
As soon as she sits down, a paper note lands perfectly on her desk.
"You okay there, Bells? You look like the dead!"
She wonders if Emmett thinks he's funny.
Bella turns to Emmett and Rosalie anyway. Tries to ignore how worried Rosalie looks with golden eyebrows furrowed. She nods once, turns back to the front and flings the note in the trash.
She would be better off dead.
. . .
She watches Rosalie's hand creep up to hold Emmett's hand.
She can feel her ribcage breaking.
I LOVE YOU, Bella carves into her desk, I do I do.
