I'm back! ~Strikes pose~
Anyway... On with the STORY! And thanks to everyone who reviewed!
Bella's POV
Eventually I wiped away my tears and said, "Come on. We should see what happened."
"Alright," Edward agreed.
When we stepped out of the car, an officer approached us.
"Are you Isabella Swan?" he asked in an official voice.
"Yes, sir," I replied.
"And are you Jacob Black?"
"No," intervened Edward. "I'm Edward Cullen, a friend of Bella's."
"Bella?" the officer asked, confused.
"That's me," I explained.
"Oh," the officer said. "I'm so sorry, but your father has passed away. A heart attack. He will be missed dearly, as you can imagine. He was a very good man."
I tried to look surprised.
"Passed away? When?" I asked.
"Just about an hour ago."
"An hour."
"I'm afraid I can't let you in right now – we're investigating the scene. Just a routine thing, you understand. As I said before, it was most likely a heart attack. But it has to be checked out."
I was at a loss for words. I couldn't go back to Jacob, and now I had nowhere else to go.
I found myself being taken towards the car. I was oblivious. I hadn't even heard the end of the conversation. How embarrassing. The officer had probably asked me countless questions, while I was dead to the world. I winced at the word 'dead'. I still couldn't wrap my head around it. Charlie was... dead?
The heart attack was especially hard to contemplate. Heart attacks were only supposed to happen to old people. Charlie wasn't that old.
"Bella, are you alright?" Edward asked. He sounded worried. He waved his hand back and forth in front of my face.
"I'm fine," I assured him. He sighed in relief.
"So, where are you taking me?" I asked nervously. He shot me a confused look.
"My house, of course," he replied.
"No! No, it's fine, I can stay in a hotel," I said.
He looked at me skeptically.
"How long do you plan to stay there?"
"I'm... not exactly sure. But I'll figure something out."
He groaned.
"Bella, come on... Don't be so stubborn."
I ignored him.
"Fine. But at least take this," he sighed, holding out a wad of money.
"No," I insisted.
"Yes."
"No."
"Fine." Odd . I hadn't expected him to give in so easily. "What hotel?"
"I have no idea - the nearest one, I suppose."
It turned out that the nearest hotel was very, very near – too near for my liking. I would never have admitted it, but I liked being in that car more than I should have.
As I was getting out, I felt a slight tug on my purse. Of course. Edward wasn't going to let me leave without taking the money. I glared at him.
"I felt that," I growled. I could see him suppressing laughter, but he sobered up quickly.
"Come on. For me?" he asked, giving the most dazzling crooked smile that made my heart skip a beat.
"Okay," I muttered in an undertone. I didn't want to let on how much I needed it.
"Thank you. By the way, how do you plan to get your truck back?"
"I don't know. I don't suppose..."
He smiled again. "I'll pick you up here at 11 tomorrow."
"Thanks. Seriously. How many times do I owe you my life by now?"
"I've lost count." He didn't even try to keep the grin out of his voice.
"So have I. I was hoping you would know, but I guess I'll never find out now," I sighed in false disappointment.
"I'll try to remember. See you tomorrow," he chuckled.
"Bye."
I stepped from the car onto the pavement and immediately shivered. I walked as quickly as I could without tripping to the hotel.
It was a shabby hotel with a small lobby. The lobby had a tarnished gold carpet and a few worn armchairs. On the far side of the room there was a small desk with a grubby glass screen in front of it. A small brass plaque next to it announced that it was the 'REC PTI N'. I presumed that it meant reception, and I walked over to it.
The hotel wasn't much warmer than the street – I hoped that the rooms were better heated.
"Can I help you?" asked a squat woman with wild, black curls and a North California accent – a rare thing in Forks.
"Yes, can I get a room please?"
"A single room?" she asked. She smirked as she spoke – it was pretty obvious, I admitted.
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"I'm not too sure. What's the nightly rate?"
"Twenty dollars."
I had no idea how much Edward had given me – but, knowing him, I was well covered. Plus, I had about twenty-five dollars lining the bottom of my pocket.
"Sounds okay," I told her.
"And you definitely don't know how long you'll be staying?"
"Actually, no."
"I get it," she said, holding out a brass key to me. "It's on the third floor, when you get out of the elevator take the first left, then another left and it's at the end of the corridor."
Darn. I hated elevators.
"What if I take the stairs?"
"Just take the elevator, hun," she said and walked into the small room behind the desk, muttering something like "I don't get paid enough for this."
Well, I wasn't going to take the dingy elevator – so I resigned myself to ascend the stairs, and look for the top of the elevator once I was on the third floor.
I searched around the lobby for the staircase, but I couldn't see one. I walked down a narrow corridor, but there was none there either. I gulped. I would have to take the elevator.
I had one final, futile look or stairs, and then proceeded to the elevator.
I got in, and pressed the button. The doors closed, and I tried o swallow my panic. But wasn't the third floor...up? I was definitely falling. And fast. At this rate, when I hit the floor, I would be slammed against the ceiling. And if it landed in a pit, I would be stuck for days, and people would never know.
I was still falling. How big was the basement of this building? I huddled into the corner, as if that would soften the blow. I braced myself.
And suddenly there was a thud on the ceiling.
This is it, I thought. I would surely die here. Well, worst-case scenario, anyway. I concentrated on the thud. What could it have been?
As if in answer to my question, a trapdoor scraped open above me. Oh yeah. I'd forgotten about the trapdoor.
The floor was approaching. I knew it. I reached up and put my hands on the edges of the gap, but I couldn't pull myself up. I began to panic again, when cold hands grabbed my wrists and pulled me up, and liquid topaz eyes stared into mine with worry.
"Are you alright?" a velvet voice asked.
"Yes. At least, I think so," I replied.
"What hurts?" Edward pressed, the worry in his eyes clouding his tone.
"Nothing. I guess I'm just shocked. By the way, did you remember? You'll have to add this one to your total."
He grinned.
"You didn't give me much time to remember, did you? I thought you didn't like elevators? Let me guess, you tried to face your fear. Could you have picked a more dingy, faulty and generally unstable elevator perhaps?"
"I couldn't find the stairs."
Without warning, he began laughing so hard that I couldn't help but join in.
"What's so funny?" I asked when he had completely finished.
"You. You couldn't find the stairs?"
"No. Why, were there any?"
"Yes, there were! The huge staircase in the middle of the lobby?"
"Oh, yeah. I forgot about those."
He began laughing again, but I refrained, and tried – and failed – to look angry.
"Your luck is worse than I thought," he managed to choke out.
"Well, I don't know if you planned to live your life in a dilapidated elevator shaft, but I'm going to my room now."
"Sorry," he apologized. I tried to scale the wall, and Edward stifled a laugh at my attempts. "Here, grab on," he said, crouching down. I climbed onto his back, and he jumped up the walls agilely. He pulled the doors apart and clambered through. The receptionist was standing, aghast, outside the doors.
"What the hell just happened?" she demanded.
"The elevator got stuck and my friend called me, so I came and got her out," Edward lied.
"How the - why didn't she take the stairs?" she asked, but then she recognized me. Edward stiffened beside me – probably in reaction to a stray thought of hers. "Oh... right. Well, I'd best be getting back to work..."
She trailed off, obviously uncomfortable with where the conversation was going. She almost ran back to her desk.
"I'd better take you to your room in case you can't find the door and abseil down the side of the building to find a window," he grinned. I tried not to smile in reply, but that was a battle that was lost before it started.
"What was that secretary thinking back there?" I asked when we arrived at my floor.
"Something about losing her job... Do you have any idea what that was about?" he asked. I bit my lip.
"I might," I replied sheepishly. "She was the one who told me to take the elevator in the first place."
"Ah. That might explain why she was also hoping that you wouldn't sue." He looked at me (and my heart stopped beating.). "Will you sue?"
"No. I'd probably trip over in the courthouse in front of the judge," I smiled wryly. We were at my room by then. I dug out the brass key – it seemed like a lifetime ago that I'd been given it – from my pocket and opened the door to the dingy room.
The color scheme was beige, brown and sludge green. There was a skinny bed shoved up against a brown wall. Seriously, who paints a wall brown? There was a tiny bedside locker next to it with an off-gold lamp set upon it. The window was very high up, but very big, and gave a prison cell type feel to the room. A small door on the East wall suggested that there was an ensuite bathroom and there was a pale wooden closet at the end of the bed, made of a completely different colored wood to the bedframe. There were a chair and a table by the closet. The chair had mustard-yellow cushions.
I sat down on it.
"This is... nice," I said optimistically.
"Mm... Well, I'd better be off. Are you sure you can stay out of trouble until tomorrow morning?" he grinned.
I rolled my eyes. "I'll try my best."
"Well then I'll see you there." With that, he climbed the wall and slunk out of the window. I ran to the window.
"Are you sure you want to abseil down the side of the building?" I called, leaning outside.
"I think I'll manage," he called back, and then he disappeared from sight.
I sighed. I had no clothes but the ones I was wearing – and a toothbrush would have been nice, too. But I would have to make do with what I had. I took off my shoes and climbed into the bed, fully-clothed.
Sleep took it's own sweet time to come, but when it did it was deep – I probably didn't even talk.
And that's weird for me.