Disclaimer: Not Stephenie Meyer. No $, etc.

Chapter Five: Sweat

seems like I've been here before.
seems so familiar.
seems like I'm slipping
into a dream within a dream.
it's the way you whisper.
it drags me under
and takes me home.(mjk)

BPOV:

I inhaled the cigarette smoke as if it were a life raft; holding the nicotine in for as long as possible before I let myself let it go. It was after 9, and I was back at the Cullen's, which I suppose was now to be considered my home, sitting on the same bench outside that I'd sat smoking last night. I felt kind of disgusting because I'd been out here for the last two hours chain smoking and the ashtray was overfilled with the stubs of my Marlboro Lights.

But I couldn't bring myself to go inside. I'd never felt so connected and compelled, but then in the same sense so exiled and alone.

It was seriously one of those times that I knew I would remember, and the specificities would be made clear through the notes jotted in my journal. I would remember exactly what it felt like to be so thoroughly emotionally torn; so utterly and completely devastated by the swell of disorder that had swept through my being.

I'd never been so alone, and I'd never been so alive.

I knew without a doubt what these feelings were propelled by. Edward Cullen. Boy who had made it abundantly clear that, for whatever reason, he could not be around me. Chalked it up to me reminding him of someone he once knew. It was a first. Someone didn't even have to get to know me before they told me they didn't want to be around me. But it really didn't make me feel any better. I just felt like someone had taken the chair from underneath me and I was falling … grasping at the rope tied around my neck.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

But of course he was in the same Creative Writing class. Of course the one thing that I had counted on keeping me afloat throughout the day had been tampered by his presence. Or was that even really it? I got instructed to sit beside him and I just fucking longed to touch him; longed to smooth away the pain filled creases on his forehead and the bitterness to his jaw.

I wanted to tell him I was sorry. I was so sorry I reminded him of someone.

He avoided looking at me as we sat next to one another, which was exactly what I'd expected. His eyes were either set firmly forward or contemplating his notebook, which was completely filled with his sprawling cursive. The paper looked beautiful with his handwriting across it. And I hated myself for thinking so.

The class was doing some mid semester progress check, and of course it just happened to be Edward's turn to present his work. Mr. Banner called him to the front, and he casually slipped from his seat and headed in his direction. He had his notebook in his hand, which I found sort of interesting because it seemed as though it would be required to be more formal than that.

But Mr. Banner gave Edward a knowing sort of smile, and I then sensed their connection. Edward was his favorite. It didn't take me long to figure out why.

The beauty of his prose nearly equaled him in physical measure. I was overtaken by his stunning mastery of language; by how deeply and profoundly his words completely moved me. I felt my jaw go slack as I listened to his voice recite in tender brilliance the words that had made mere lined paper so stunning. I realized I had seen him writing; I had witnessed how the act had so completely taken him over.

There was no true way to grasp a specific understanding of exactly what it was he was writing about; as most of it seemed to rely heavily on some type of abstract poetic form. But I could see a change in his writing and his diction as he seemed almost done. His voice became suddenly more aggressive, and then there was kind of a dramatic emphasis on "the undertaker of her scent." Which would have still been beautiful and still had me leaning with held breath, but then he looked up from his reading and looked me directly in the eye.

And it was not an angry look. His eyes were sad; they were torn.

After he sat down again, he continued not looking at me, and when class was dismissed he bolted from his seat in the same manner he'd done from the car this morning. I felt a little paralyzed at first, staring after him, certain there was some sort of cruel irony in all of this. I was going to be sitting next to him for the next four months, riding to school with him … fucking living with him, and he couldn't stand to be around me.

The rest of the day passed in an uninteresting blur. I had no more classes with Edward, which both relieved and disappointed me. Alice showed me where her and Jasper and usually Edward sat at lunch, but he was conveniently missing from that hour. Maybe off with Rosalie, perfecting their probably already perfect fucking screw.

But then she walked by our table 10 minutes later, with Emmett and not Edward, and I was even more intrigued.

He rode with us again, again sitting in the back, but the scene was almost exactly the same. He sat with his eyes clenched shut, bolting away the near second the car came to a halt.

I felt the beginnings of a routine starting, and it made my skin crawl with unease.

The part of the routine that I was most okay with was the cooking part. I cooked dinner tonight; nothing extravagant, penne pasta with sausage and a light tomato sauce, but again, those who ate my food were the most receptive of diners, and it almost made my heart sing to see them happily eating. Jasper ate over for dinner tonight, and it was really nice to spend time with him and get to know the guy who so fully occupied Alice's heart. Her eyes danced when she looked at him, and again I was awash in the same longing ache that had been introduced to me earlier.

The same ache I'd had ever since I'd gotten here. Ever since I'd met Edward Cullen.

So after the happy dinner scene (which was only attended by Alice, Jasper, and Dr. Cullen) I made my way to escape outside into the chilling darkness where I could further contemplate why on earth someone I didn't know in the slightest was having such a profound effect on me.

After the first hour and half a pack of smokes, I'd decided that a lot of it had to do with how infinitely layered Edward seemed to be; as if most (if not all) of what he purposefully allowed others to see was part of some highly staged act in which his true self, or his core, would never be realized. The cocky attitude and the Rosalie escapade came right into mind. The desperate and pained look I'd seen on his face earlier, and the beautiful and poignant writing he'd presented made me absolutely question whether or not the rest of it was just for show.

The second hour came the self doubt, where I began really kicking myself for even spending this much time making guesses at who Edward really was. Obviously, I made myself think, what he mostly was was someone who couldn't stand to be around me.

But why? And who did I remind him of? An ex-girlfriend, a girl who he'd had a falling out with? This someone must have had an extreme impact on him to have caused the reaction he'd had today.

But before I could relinquish any further thought on the matter; before I could truly decide where to settle my thoughts, Edward decided to come out and have a cigarette with me.

I knew it must have been a decision, because he must have seen me sitting out here. Plus, he could have thought back to yesterday, as this spot was the first place he had seen me in to begin with. He decided to come out here, all on his free will.

We were both quiet at first, as he lit his cigarette and stared absentmindedly into the trees that were huge before us. I watched him, realizing that I actually felt relieved and not nervous that he was out here with me. I realized I wanted to be around him. It was something I know part of me must have plainly known, but in that second, I finally accepted it.

He turned to me then and caught my eye, and we looked at each other with some sort of quiet understanding. He shook his head then, and looked down at the hand that held his cigarette.

"I keep fucking asking myself why I'm out here," he said, eyes still fervently focused downward. "I told you the situation already; I told you what has to happen, and yet I'm still out here."

"You wanted a cigarette," I said simply, as if to reassure him that I wasn't going to make a big deal about today's earlier events. He looked up at me quickly, and a faint smile touched lightly at his mouth.

"Yeah," he said. "I wanted a cigarette."

EPOV:

Yeah, I sure as fucking hell wanted a cigarette. And I'd already had about 10 before finally deciding to see if she would be out here. I had been writing nonstop all afternoon, jotting down prose that was often nonsensical and overtly abstract; prose that spewed forth without pretense and culminated with ferocity. I was still completely feeling it. I was still totally and utterly musin' it.

Dealing with Bella and her smell was just as difficult as I'd anticipated. And when Mr. Banner had called me up and asked for my presentation, I was actually grateful. Grateful to get up and just get a few feet away from her.

But then my reading got all fucked up. Because my muse was still pulsing, I couldn't help but make it obvious. I couldn't help but put it all out there. It was just fucking raging, and I could feel my hands moving and sense my voice raising, but I couldn't control it any longer. And then I looked up and looked her directly in the eye. Because in some weird way I blamed her for more than just smelling so goddamn close to my dead mother, but also for bringing all this shit straight out of me. Because within the last day that I've known her, things have been anything but normal for me. They've been fucking out of control.

So, naturally I bolted the second the bell rang, avoided any possible run ins at lunch and stayed far away from the inside of the house as evening approached. But I didn't go far. I sat on the hood of Alice's car, watching the movements of the inside of the house from the safety of twilight shadows. Those fucking glorious ceiling high windows gave me the most perfect view. And so I just fucking watched her. Watched her move from her bedroom upstairs down into the kitchen where she stayed for over an hour, apparently cooking dinner for everyone to eat. And I couldn't bring myself to go inside. I watched her finger a cookbook, rummage through the refrigerator, stir something in a saucepan over a stove while she stood over it, waiting and watching for it to be ready.

And I was hooked. There was look on her face, it was slight, and I was probably reading into it more than I should, but it was this faint unguarded look that was anything but hard; anything other than my mother's perfect scent. A wash of sadness passed over her previously worn grimace, and there she was. And it was as pure as the muse and music and everything else that had been trembling through me this last day. I realized that the feeling I'd had in class today was right; she was the cause of this all. But it wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

But I just kept watching her. They ate, and I still sat watching, dwindling my pack down to nothing. And then she disappeared from the house and I knew she was back sitting in the same spot, my spot, the same spot I'd seen her at yesterday. But I stayed still for a while, debating my course of action now that I'd realized the severity of what all of this was boiling down to.

It was way more than just an interruption in my routine. It ran deeper than that. She was changing things, she had changed things, but I suddenly realized I was interested to see how all of this would play out. I was interested to see who she was. She had to be more than just a demon from the past put here in this house just to taunt me. Yes-she had unearthed some memories … some things that I hadn't even allowed myself to fully register. But if I did … what would happen then? Did I want to find out or did I still just want an escape route?

So I did the only natural thing there was left to do. I went into the backyard, to find Bella sitting in the very spot I'd anticipated her to, and I sat with her. I said some stupid shit about how I didn't know why I was out there, mostly just to relieve the tension I felt was building inside of me and definitely branching out and affecting her. I just wanted to be near the flowers and spice and breathe it in and cradle the ache and let it burn me. Feel the burn. I wanted to feel the burn.

I think I just wanted to feel.

We sat there smoking for awhile, not talking, avoiding each other's eyes and just concentrating on the cigarette smoke. I felt oddly comfortable being around her, the kind of comfortable where you don't have to fill the silence with unnecessary and awkward conversation. We could just be here, in quiet contemplation, and let that be it.

***

A couple of days went by and I found myself in a new routine. Going to school, avoiding Bella, breathing deeply while sitting beside her in class, and writing constantly. The evening would come, and I would stay away from the house and sit outside and watch her. Then, when she disappeared, I knew I would find her sitting on the bench, so there I would go, and we would sit in silence until one or both of us ran out of smokes. And back into the house we would go, still not talking, but honestly not really avoiding conversation either. The silence fitted us. It was in actuality quite soothing.

I had very nearly forgotten about my other obligations until on the fifth day when I heard it from Rose. It was after 11 and I was still under a blanket of stillness when I walked into my bedroom to find Rose sitting on my bed with a disgusted look on her face. It was a frustrating interruption to my mood, and I found that I resented Rose's very presence at the moment. She stood quickly and without hesitation came before me and started rubbing her hands up and down my arms.

"Where you been, baby?" she whispered in my ear as she continued the rubbing, letting her hands move down further. "I haven't seen you in forever … it's been days. Are you avoiding me or something?" She reached her palm and pressed it firmly on my dick, and suddenly I was very hard and very horny. But it really didn't have anything to do with Rosalie in the slightest, but my libido was pulsating and I felt myself going through the movements of the normal and often gratifying process of fucking Rosalie Hale. So I put my hands on her shoulders and pushed her onto the bed, and she smiled because she realized she had me.

But I didn't fucking care. I wasn't even really thinking about her. I just had to satiate this need, and then that would be it. And then maybe I wouldn't need any more silent conversations or devastating scents. Maybe this need, this primal and natural need, would make me feel like me again. It would be like tying a knot, or cutting a cord. Making sense out of the madness.

So we engaged in our usual procession of fool-hardy fucking. She undressed and without any foreplay I forced myself into her, and we rolled around with ferocity and unusual aggression. Something was off but we both didn't pay attention long enough call it out. I moved in and out blinded by the generalities of skin and sweat. I didn't care who she was. I didn't care what happened. I just needed to get this out of me.

Once we were finished, I rolled over and away from her. I stared without seeing at my bed sheets, and I knew everything all at once, right then and there. "I can't do this anymore, Rosalie," I said, my voice coming out in almost less than a whisper.

"What are you talking about?" she asked, and I could feel her movements on the other side of me, and it felt like she was propping her head up onto her wrist.

"It's over. This … this isn't real. None of this." I turned and look at her, and her face was completely blank. Maybe she wasn't hearing me … maybe she wasn't understanding. Or maybe she didn't really care. "We have to grow up. We have to get over this."

"But why?" She pulled herself up and sat cross legged before me. She seemed merely confused, but not upset for any reason other than she just didn't understand my motivation.

"I don't want to pretend anymore," I whispered, looking down at my hands. She didn't say anything, and we just sat without talking for a couple of minutes before she finally caught my eye, and smiled.

"Have a good night, Edward," she said. "I'll see you at school tomorrow." And she left my room, leaving me a little surprised at how seemingly well she took it. Which either made me think she was just bullshitting me, or that she possibly felt the same. Either way, I was alone once again. I turned off my lamp, and for the first time that I could remember, I fell asleep without listening to music.

Ok, so this chapter was semi angsty and a bit impulsive, but it actually is more of a transition to help present the next arc in the story: Edward and Bella becoming friends. They both have issues with opening up to people, so that is why for now they find it preferable to simply not talk to each other … but they are finding that they are compelled to be together.

Anyway, during my trip to Oregon I did a lot of other personal writing, so that may have had some influence on this chapter. I don't know. But I do know that we have to get past this hurdle to get to the juicy middle. Know what I mean?

Anyway, thanks to all you readers who were patient for this story to continue. Please review … let me know how you think their relationship is progressing. 3