6 – In the streets we're running
The one good thing about weed was that you didn't get hungover. But that was about it. Even though it was quite late when we finally found our way back to the motel and gone to bed, we all woke up reasonably early the next morning.
Edward ran out to get some bagels and coffee while Alice and I brushed our teeth and pulled our clothes on. We didn't speak much. I didn't mention the kiss. It was weird not telling about it to Alice, but somehow I didn't want to yet. I hadn't talked about it with Edward. I hadn't talked about much anything with Edward after that.
I didn't know what to think about it. It was probably nothing, though. That was probably what Edward thought about it, anyway. Just a kiss. The only problem was that every time I thought about it, I wanted to do it again. I wanted to kiss him again so bad. It didn't make any sense.
Edward came back with three mugs of coffee and a bag of bagels, and we ate on the bed, getting crumbs all over it.
"What do we do next?" Alice asked after we had eaten.
"I don't know," I replied and reached out to grab Alice's bag and pull out the map. I spread it out in front of us.
"Any suggestions?" I asked.
"I don't care," Edward announced. "As long as it's something interesting."
"Hey, I have an idea," Alice exclaimed. "We could go to Salt Lake City and visit Rosalie. Why didn't I think of that before?"
"Yeah, we could do that," I agreed. Rosalie was Alice's cousin; she was twenty-two, had her own apartment and was so much cooler than Alice or I that we liked hanging with her. She never seemed to run out of men, booze or exciting things to do.
I turned to look at Edward, who was waiting to be told who the heck this Rosalie was.
"She's my cousin," Alice told him. "You'll like her."
"Yeah, you will," I said. At least I had a hunch that Edward would like her lifestyle.
"Let's get going then," Edward said, shrugging his shoulders.
"Yay! I'll go call her right now," Alice yelled and jumped up from the bed to find her cell phone.
We drove almost the whole day. We took turns. Edward drove first, then it was my turn, and after that Alice. We only stopped couple of times to get more gas, eat lunch or take a few quick walks. We listened to our road trip CD over and over again, until Edward complained that it was time to listen some real music and turned on the radio. Alice and I sang along to the songs we knew, and Edward bought beer from a gas station when he thought Alice and I wouldn't notice. Alice talked with her mom awhile, and I turned my phone off when my mom tried to call me. One of us cracked a joke or a funny remark about something every time we started to get tired or irritated with the driving, making all of us laugh.
All in all we had pretty fun day. At least more fun than I thought just driving down the highway would be, and when the sun was already started to set, we were in Twin Falls.
"I say we stay the night here and drive in Salt Lake City tomorrow," Alice suggested, rubbing her eyes, tired from the driving.
"We just need to find a place sleep," I said.
"And some food, I'm starving," Edward added.
"Again," I sighed, grinning. "Where do guys get such big appetites?"
"Being this awesome all day long requires lots of energy," Edward remarked and climbed out of the car after Alice parked it on the side of the road.
"Okay, I'll go grab something to eat, and you two try to find us a motel to stay in?" I suggested.
"See you back at the car," Alice said. "Don't go too far, or you'll get lost."
I rolled my eyes and walked away, taking a better look at Twin Falls and trying to find a supermarket or something. I walked towards the city center, or at least I thought I was walking towards the city center. I knew that like Alice had pointed out, I was pretty talented at getting lost, but if I just made sure that I remembered the way back to the car and didn't get very far, I would be okay.
I turned on to another street at the corner but realized that it seemed to be narrower than the one I had just come from. I had a bad feeling about this, like I was going in the entirely wrong direction. It started to feel like a really stupid idea – wandering around by myself in a strange town. I had only suggested it because I wanted to be alone for a moment, to think about everything… to think about the kiss.
But now I was just alone in a strange town, on a deserted alley and it was already getting dark. I walked along the street, deciding that I'd turn around if the next street looked as small and desolated. I was just turning around another corner, when a group of guys walked past me. They seemed to be few years older than me, all more or less drunk. One of them whistled at me. I considered giving him the finger, but they didn't seem like guys I wanted to irritate, so I just walked past them.
"Hey, why don't you come join us, sweetie," another one of them shouted. "We've got beer."
"I don't think so," I mumbled and kept on walking.
"What did you say?" One of them grabbed my arm and made me gasp. I wasn't exactly scared yet, but I did want out of this situation as fast as I could.
"I said I don't think so," I said in a firm voice. I jerked my arm away from him and kept walking. I turned on to another street but then stopped.
"Fuck," I whispered to myself. The street went on about ten yards and then ended at a concrete wall. I weighed my options; I could wait here for a while, until the guys would have left or I could just walk past them, ignoring them. I thought for a minute, then turned around thinking that they wouldn't probably actually do anything. They were just a couple of drunk guys with big mouths.
Well I guess I was wrong, because when I turned around, all five of them were standing in front of me, blocking my way.
"Not so fast, baby," one of them grinned and took a step closer to me. The others followed his example and stepped closer to me, so close that I could smell the alcohol on his breath. My heart was pounding fast in my chest, my palms getting all sweaty, as I tried to figure out how to get out of here.
"Let me go," I ordered as firmly as I could. That, however, made them just laugh mockingly. One of them stepped closer, grabbed my chin and forced me to look at him.
I pushed him away from me as hard as I could. "Get the fuck away from me!" I shouted at the top of my lungs.
My chances of running away weren't really high, so I decided I would just have to scream as loud as I could and put up as much of a fight as I could.
I tried to concentrate and tried my best not to panic as they all burst into laughter.
"I don't think so, sweetie," The guy chuckled and smiled at me, at the same time he opened his leather jacket, and I could see what was hanging from his belt – a knife. "Yeah," he said, as he saw what I was looking at. "So you better be really nice and quiet, darling. You wouldn't want to get hurt, would you?" he asked, stretching the words mockingly.
Fuck.
I guess this was the time to start panicking.
"I don't have much money," I said in a weak voice as he pulled me closer to him again. "But you can have that."
They all started laughing again, confirming my feeling that it wasn't just money they were after.
"I don't think we'll be satisfied that easily," said the guy who was holding me and gave me an appraising look. I started to feel nauseated.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Someone shouted from behind their tight ring, making all of them startle and look away from me. I jerked my arm away from the guy and didn't even realize it was Edward talking before I saw him. His face was full of rage and shock. He glanced at me quickly to see if I was okay. I tried to communicate to him with my eyes not to do anything stupid, that at least one of them had a knife. "Get away from her," Edward said, taking a step closer.
For a moment, no one moved. No one broke the tension. Then Edward took one step closer and punched one of them in the face.
So, apparently he hadn't gotten the message.
Edward grabbed my arm and tried to pull me away, but we weren't fast enough. Another one punched Edward in the eye so hard that he fell down. The guy with the knife, I noticed.
I didn't even fully realize what I was doing, but I kicked him on the crotch as fast as I could and then punched him in the eye, or at least tried. After that, all of them were on us.
Edward punched one of them, shoved another one out of the way, so that he bumped into a third one and then we were running.
Edward was faster than me; he pulled me by the arm so hard that it hurt, but I didn't pay any attention to it. I could hear their footsteps behind us.
We ran and we ran and we ran. It seemed like we ran forever.
Finally, we found our way back to the city center and Edward pulled me into a supermarket. We only stopped running when we were in the middle of the market. We both leaned against a shelf, catching our breath.
"Holy shit!" Edward was the first to speak. I wasn't sure if I could talk just yet, but I couldn't have agreed more.
"Are you all right?" Edward asked, grabbing me by the shoulders gently and observing me carefully, looking concerned. "Fuck, you scared me, Bella."
"I'm fine," I said, still breathless. I couldn't think clearly; my heart was still pounding like crazy, my veins full of adrenaline. I touched Edward's nose which was still bleeding, and he winced.
"Sorry," I mumbled. "Does it hurt?"
"I'm all right," Edward said, still not looking away from my face. His eyes were dark, intense. "Fuck that was crazy."
I looked him in the eye, and he looked back at me. Both still a bit breathless, both still scared. And for a second everything was absolutely still, like the whole world had stopped moving. I didn't know if I had first pulled him close or if it was him, but all I knew was that suddenly I was in his arms, his mouth on mine, hot and hard and demanding, not at all as sweet as yesterday. His arms were around me, his hands holding my waist so hard that it almost hurt, but in a good way.
His lips tasted like blood and him and desire. I opened my mouth, felt his tongue on mine, wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him closer to me… so close.
I didn't want to think. I didn't want to ever think about anything, I just wanted to feel… I wanted to feel him.
His hands moved down my back and hips, and his tongue moved in my mouth, hot and demanding. And it felt so good –
"Erm, excuse me." I think it took us a while to notice that someone was talking to us. We both stared, puzzled at the man, Edward still keeping his arm around me. "I have to ask you to either stop that or leave our store. Apparently you are disturbing some of our customers, and anyway that is not appropriate behavior in a supermarket."
Oh. I realized he worked here. I felt my face turning red and turned to glance at an old lady, who shook her head disapprovingly and gave us a grim look before walking away.
"I'm really sorry," Edward said, and I could see that he was trying very hard to suppress laughter. "We won't be doing that anymore."
"Thank you." The man nodded.
"We'll just go, um, finish our shopping now," I muttered, grabbed Edward's hand and dragged him away.
It looked like Edward couldn't stop himself anymore and burst out laughing while we were walking away. Once he started, I couldn't help myself anymore and started laughing hysterically too. All I could do was hope the guy wouldn't follow us and throw us out.
We stopped walking once we were far enough away and tried to stop laughing.
"That was, quite…" I started, unable to finish the sentence.
"Yeah," Edward just said. Once he'd stopped laughing, I couldn't look at him anymore. I let go of his hand that I realized I was still holding and felt myself blushing.
I didn't know what to think. A part of me – a big part of me – wanted to just throw myself at him and continue at where we left off. But I shouldn't feel like that. This was the wrong place and the wrong time. It was all wrong. And I had just almost been raped, or who knows what.
But all I could think about was how his lips had felt on mine, and how I could still almost taste him in my mouth.
I tried to concentrate. "How did you find me?" I asked the first question that came into my mind.
"After you had left, I asked Alice if she could manage a moment alone. I said I needed to talk to you," Edward started to explain. "Which was true, I wanted to talk to you. So I followed you. And then I heard you shout, and I followed your voice. That was seriously awful Bella. I didn't know what had happened, and I didn't even know where you were. I just kept waiting for you to shout again."
"That guy had a knife," I told him.
"Wow," Edward said quietly.
"But it's all right now," I said. "We're all right."
"Yeah."
"And you were such a bad ass; I didn't know you could fight like that." I shook my head, grinning at him.
"You were pretty awesome too." Edward smiled. "I'm sure they're going to have couple of bruises tomorrow."
We were both quiet for a while. My heart was still pounding fast, but this time I didn't know if it was the running or the kiss. "We better do some shopping and get back to the car before Alice gets worried," I said. I knew that we would have to probably talk about this all sooner or later, but that time wasn't now.
Back at the car, we told Alice a slightly edited version of what had happened. I tried to tell her that it wasn't a big deal – that we had the situation under control, so that she wouldn't get too worried. I also left out the kissing part.
"Shit," Alice said, still looking all pale and freaked out. "I shouldn't have let you go alone."
"It's all right," I assured her, still wondering how I could be so calm. It was probably because I was trying not to freak Alice out. Or maybe I hadn't even fully realized what could have happened if Edward hadn't come…
But there was no point thinking about that now; it had all ended well after all.
"I found a nice looking bed & breakfast near here," Alice told us after she'd calmed down a bit.
So we all hopped into the car, and Alice drove us there. When we got to our room, I was already starving. Edward and I had bought us chips, coke, chocolate chip cookies and some fruit, and because no one felt like going out anymore, they had to do.
We sat on the floor, stuffing the food in our mouths as fast as we could, and for a while everyone was too busy eating to talk about anything. Then we watched the tiny TV in our room for a while.
After we'd eaten, I started to feel normal again, but it only meant that I had time to think about what had happened between Edward and I. It was so weird, how differently I suddenly felt around him. And when we'd kissed… I'd kissed my fair share of guys, but I doubted that I'd ever kissed anyone that intensely. I didn't know, maybe it was the shock and adrenaline, or maybe it was something different, but even thinking about it made me feel a bit dizzy.
Later, when Edward was taking a shower and Alice and I were alone for a moment, she gave me an examining look.
"What?" I asked.
"What's going on between you and Edward?" Alice questioned.
"What do you mean?" I asked, playing innocent.
Alice laughed and sat down on the bed. "Don't try to act like it's nothing. I don't know what's going on. It's just so weird, like you have this connection or something."
I sighed and sat down on the bed next to Alice. I thought she was exaggerating, but I might as well tell her now. "We kissed," I revealed.
"Oooh," Alice sighed and grabbed my arm all excited. "So you like him! I knew it! I said he was just your type."
"Don't get too excited," I warned her. "I don't know what it was. Maybe it was just the shock, all that adrenaline, you know?"
"Well, how do you feel about him?" Alice asked.
"I don't know." I frowned. "I haven't figured that out yet."
"Okay, well maybe you should," Alice said.
I breathed in deeply and laid down on the bed, feeling exhausted. Well, it had certainly been a long day. "I know. But it's probably nothing," I said. "I mean, I don't know if it's wise to have anything between us. It would make things too complicated and messy."
Alice snorted. "Who cares about complicated if you like him!"
"I don't know if I like him like that," I tried to explain. Sure, I thought he was nice. Sure, I had felt the urge to kiss him ever since we'd kissed at the supermarket. But it didn't necessarily mean I liked him. "I don't even know if he likes me."
"Bella, he kissed you," Alice pointed out. "What else could it mean?"
"That he wasn't thinking clearly?" I suggested.
"Whatever, I can feel it," Alice said. "I can almost see it. There's something more between you two."
"You're imagining things," I told her.
"I don't think so," Alice said, clearly excited about this. "Think about it. You need to figure out what you want."
"What's the point when I don't even know what he wants?"
"You're so wrong, Bella." Alice laid down beside me on the bed and smiled knowingly. "And besides, he wants you. I can tell by the way he looks at you."