A Bad Deal?
A Devilish Plan
A/N: This chapter originally was supposed to be a bit longer, but I figured since I haven't posted anything up in like four weeks, I might as well get this up and work on the rest later.
Bella's plan to befriend Rosalie worked splendidly. It was almost amazing how easy it really was once she got started. The blonde did have her thorn barriers to overcome, ones that were super sharp and hurtful if not avoided properly, but ones that Bella had quickly learned to navigate around. Once she had skillfully evaded those, she was able to get to see and understand more of the person Rosalie was underneath. And the blonde's personality slowly unfurled like the petals of a blooming rose.
It wasn't some rapid sort of shift in their relationship paradigms- that couldn't realistically happen. They were still awkward around each other at the start, it being a sort of cat and mouse game, waiting for the one to slip up and reveal the true intent behind the act. Rosalie was mistrustful of Bella's motives despite the girl trying her best to portray an innocent front. But Bella wasn't going to give up. She was going to constantly pepper the blonde with kind actions and friendly support until she could finally break down those thorn barriers completely rather than just deflect them entirely.
And it was beginning to work. It had been only three weeks since they had first created their alliance in taking down Alice, but already Rosalie was treating Bella more of an equal rather than someone to be looked down upon. She began to confide more in the brunette and they hung out a lot at the blonde's mansion after school.
"How about we find Alice's private diary and make copies of it and hang them around school, so as to embarrass her?" Bella suggested as she sat at the dining room table, Rosalie sitting in the couch and tossing up a ball into the air before catching it.
"Really? That's your grand idea? Who even keeps a diary in this day and age?" Rosalie snorted at idea. Currently the two of them were brainstorming ways into blackmailing Alice back for all she had done to the blonde.
"It was just an idea," Bella defended.
"A terrible idea," Rosalie amended and then shot Bella a teasing smirk to let the brunette know she wasn't being cruel. This was another thing that had changed. The blonde still made mean remarks but they were playful now. Almost as if she didn't want to say them but did so as a pretense because she was so used to spouting out abusive language. But because she really didn't want to offend Bella she would throw in a small quirk of her lips, or crinkle her eyes up as if hoping to convey with her body language what she couldn't with her words.
Bella guessed that working towards a common goal was making the blonde push aside her early disregard of Bella, and take her more seriously.
"Then do you have an idea? If you think mine is so terrible, come up with a better one."
Rosalie shrugged. "If I had a perfect plan, I would have already enacted it. As such, I got nothing." Her phone buzzed and she picked it up with her free hand, still throwing the ball up and down. She read it quickly, Bella wordlessly waiting for the blonde to finish so that they could continue their talk.
"It's from Alice," Rosalie said suddenly, the admission startling Bella. Was Rosalie going to share text messages now? What had the pixie sent her that could cause the blonde to divulge this information to Bella? Was it more blackmail?
"She's going to have a party."
"Oh," was all Bella could think of how to reply with, relaxing when it wasn't anything bad like she had thought it would be. "Do you think she wants to...I don't know, set you up again or something?"
Rosalie hadn't told her the truth about what had happened that night. All she would stress, over and over again, was that it had been a set up created by Alice in order to get dirt on Rosalie and knock her down a peg or two so she could take the top female spot in school, not that Rosalie even really cared about such things as who was at the top in the first place. She had never asked to be popular, she simply was.
"I don't know. Why would she? If she already got me the first time," Rosalie mussed. Then Bella got a text. She pulled her phone out and saw it was a message from Alice. It detailed party events, complete with emojis and exclamation marks.
"Whose that from?" Rosalie inquired and Bella waffled between either telling her, or making up a lie. She settled on the former, not wanting the blonde to be distrustful of her. "It's Alice," she admitted and Rosalie missed, the ball dropping to the floor.
"You gave her your number?" Rosalie almost hissed and Bella couldn't tell if she was upset or shocked.
"I had to," Bella defended, suddenly feeling hot and cold all over as if she had done something worse than robbery. "All your friends made me exchange numbers with them." Bella had been sitting consistently with the rich kids at lunch time now, establishing a sort of bad-ass reputation for herself among the lower tier students. They paid her respect now, for she had conquered the line that divided the rest of the school and the cool kids. She was almost like a superhero in their eyes. She found the concept ridiculous and the new attention it brought her annoying. She didn't want pesky groupies following her around.
But because she sat with the cool kids, they decided it was time to give her their numbers so that she could come to their 'parties and shit' as Emmett so nicely put it. She hadn't been in a position to decline.
Rosalie didn't comment further on this. She almost looked a bit taken aback, as if she hadn't meant to even raise this topic in the first place. "So, are you going to the party?"
"I guess I have to," Bella shrugged. She really wasn't a party person. But something told her she shouldn't reject Alice's party invites. Ever. "And if I go, maybe I can see Alice do something dumb while drunk and then use it as blackmail for your cause."
Rosalie considered this, leaning down to pick up her ball and begin playing with it again. "Alice doesn't really get crazy drunk, no matter how much I've tried to make her reach that point. But hopefully with both our combined efforts, we can make her trip up. Then we'll even the scales." With that the matter was settled.
And when the night of the party arrived on Friday, it changed everything between Rosalie and Bella.
