September 9th (later)

"I'm in."

OMG. I can't believe Edward Anthony Cullen had just said that!
It got even more surreal, when Edward threw an arm around my shoulder and tucked me under his armpit,so all I could feel was a cocoon of hoodie and denim and man. Not to mention he must have slapped some deodorant on, before he came out to meet me.
Now, that's a weird thought.
Edward slapping on deodorant just to meet me.
He must have foreshadowed this event.
Ha. I joke. I joke.
Without saying in he steered me in the direction of th barji, as if he'd read my mind on the subject. I guess it was great I didn't have to pretend to look in Sears and Bloomingdale's first, but it was un-nerving he could pin-point my mind exactly.
"Wait, before we go in," Edward stopped just shy of the main entrance and tucked a flyaway hair behind my ear. I shot him a puzzled look, but he merely shrugged and mentioned, "theatrics."

"It'd help if you did the same for me too," he suggested when I continued staring blankly at him.
"Oh! Right."
I hesitantly reached out and tried to smooth the tufty bit of sandalwood hair poking out above his ear. Edward got a weird look on his face before ushering me into the barji, and fried onions and spicy spicy chicken hit us full force.
"Table for two sir?" an indian waiter had materialised like he'd just been summoned from a bottle. He hovered over our shoulders as we shrugged off our coats, like an arabian genie waiting for his first command.

"Table for four actually. The other two might be here already, a girl with blonde hair and a guy with-" He stopped to look at me.
"A dragon tattoo," I supplied.
"Yeah. Find them," was Edward's demand, and the genie dematerialised and was gone with a hasty, "be right back, sir."
The place was heady with saffron and incense sticks, poking out of decaying bananas that masked the putrid smell of rotten fruit. The smoke it produced was good enough to provide the barji with enough ambiance to start a bonfire. Edward was grimacing, the irritant grind of hot chilli making out throats burn and eyes well.

But yet, he cuddled convincingly into me, burying his nose into my hair like it cleansed the air around him. "Aaaah," he breathed in and I found myself marvelling with how unfair our role of positions left us in. Not to be outdone, I turned my nose into the crook of his armpit and inhaled deep.

"Erck," I made a face, even though the waft of Edward was quite lovely.
"Very funny," he mumbled into my hair, before tucking his neck into the crook of mine, taking advantage of the fact that my nose was still buried in his armpit.
"Edward? Bella?"
Aw shucks, the shit had just hit the fan.

September 10th

I can't believe I stayed up all night, like a giggling schoolgirl.
Fair enough I am a schoolgirl and was giggling to boot.
But that's just not me!

Half the time, I thought my parents would come knock on my door, acting all annoyed, but the other half of the time, no-one did.
Not even my college-bound brother who has the sensitivity of an elephant's foot.
Instead I replayed the events of the previous night again and again into the early hours of the morning, taking things apart, dissecting it, and then piecing it up all together again.
I am now, Edward Anthony Cullen's girlfriend.
And it still didn't make sense, however many times I repeated it to myself. There was even an embarrassing portion where I stood in the front of the mirror, my bedroom lamp throwing Michael Myers-esque shadows on my face, and I started grinning. For no apparent reason.
"Take that, Rosalie!" I crowed.

So all right. I wasn't acting happy because Edward Anthony Cullen asked me to be his girlfriend. It more came along the lines of what happened after he did.
"Rosalie," Edward said calmly, even though I could feel his heart drumming against my breast. His arm was still around me, and my nose was still orientated towards his armpit, embarrassingly enough. I couldn't help but feel grateful though, because it was of my pesky nose that I didn't have to face Rosalie full-frontal.

The hilarity of the situation hit me.

"Bella, are you okay?" I could only imagine Rosalie stepping forward, reaching out a hand to touch me, but freezing as if a hot cold viper had struck when Edward protectively turned me away. "Why is she crying?" Rosalie bluntly asked her brother. "It's not because you're touching her, is it?"
A hiccuped sob leaves my lips as Edward growls, "No!"

"Then what is it?" Rosalie persisted. "Because Bella will never let a boy touch her like that."
Like what? I wanted to say. The way Rosalie portrayed it, you'd think Edward was cupping my ass cheeks and pushing his groin into my hip. Instead he was looking alarmed, as he loosened the grip on my shoulders and started to edge away.

I wouldn't let him.

"Can you excuse us, for like, two seconds?" Edward asked his sister, before he started steering me towards the bathroom. Well bathroom was a fine word. Since the barji took up the smallest shop in the largest shopping mall in south-west Washington, the bathroom was more like a broom closet. It was unisex, with a gross morph between a male and a female pinned to the door. Edward opened the door, and both of us crammed in, our bodies pressed so compactly together, I had to unbury my nose from his armpit and take a deep breath.

Before bursting out laughing again.

"You've been laughing all this time?" Edward asked with some disgust, raising an eyebrow.
I just nodded, unable to form the coherent words enough to make Edward understand just how happy I was about it.
Finally, I was able to calm down enough to gasp, "Did you hear how shocked she was?"
"And looked," Edward supplied. He was watching me now, his green eyes flitting over my face. "Was it worth it?"
"God yes!" I hiccuped.
"Is this what best friends have taken to doing to each other?"
"Hey!" I cried indignant, finding his chest convenient for some finger poking. "She's the one who started it, not me!"
"And you want to end it."

His cool statement weirded me out more than it should of. For just a second, I came close to the terrible truth. Is this what best friends did to each other? Didn't they just braid each other's hair and bake cookies together? Rosalie and me had never followed the traditional lines of friendship, but I wouldn't go as far as to say we wished harm on each other. It's just Rosalie's competitive, is all. Like her brother, but a million times worse. With boys, it comes down to just how many hoops you can shoot and how many fanny's you can bang (sometimes together?) but with girls...With girls, it was who had the best hair, and who had the best dress, and who had the best boyfriend. The former two usually resolving to give the latter prize.

I think that's why I'm one of Rosalie's true friends. She viewed me as non-competition, someone ready to get down in mud pats and I was just happy to find someone to sit next to in home-room. Fast foward from sixth grade, and I find that I've come out of puberty with some breasts (not the biggest, for sure- oh another competition factor) and a slightly better fashion sense.

All that meant was that I switched from dungarees to pants and t-shirts and oh- I started wearing a bra.
And you know, what made Rosalie really fuming?
I had a bigger bust size.

It was all my fault actually. If I hadn't laid my bra lying over her chair, one sleepover to change into some PJ's, then Rosalie would never have picked them up and read the label. The resulting scream could've brought the house down but all that succeeded was bringing Edward into the room.
And he saw my bra.
Talk about dying on the spo-hot.

So lately Rosalie had started viewing me as fodder too. I still walk around in trackie's and hoodie's so it's kind of hard as seeing me as a threat, but that doesn't stop Rosalie, once in a while querying after my love life.
She knows I never had a boyfriend, see.
And that's how the whole double dating business started.

"Yes," I responded to Edward's statement, squaring my shoulders. I went to undo the lock on the toilet door, "And now I'm even. Thanks for helping me Edward, you've been a true gent."
"Have I?" the surprised note suggested he thought he'd been anything but.
So he wanted to paint himself as a sleezy old man then, did he? I guess Edward has shot his fair share of hoops, so it's only natural he's shot balls of another kind. But a small part of me was refusing to let go of my former best friend, who sent valentine's day cards on February the 14th.

"Wait," Edward interjected as I went to switch the lock from occupied to vacant. "Rosalie never bought it!"
That sure caught my attention!
"She didn't?"
"We're trying to fool a person who knows us well, Bella. She was never going to buy it, the moment we walked in, hand in hand."
"Why not?" I asked affronted.
"How many times have we done the exact same thing, when we were kids? No, to get her attention, we need to do something more."
"I've never walked into a barji with you hand in hand before," I said stupidly.

My celebration had been cut short by this major pitfall presented by Edward. All jokes aside, he was very accurate- hadn't Rosalie questioned why was I crying just a few minutes earlier, when I was in the arms of Edward? The fact that I could've been happy never occurred to her, because why should it? My shoulders had been heaving and Edward had looked pensive. In Rosalie's mind, Edward had clearly found me distraught because I couldn't get a date, and led me into the barji because everyone knows Rosalie Lillian Cullen eats at the barji, morning, noon and night. Edward would then dump me on his sister, and carry on his hypocritical ways.

The fact that he'd just lead me to a unisex toilet was an anomaly to be brushed aside.

The air deflated out of me, like a pinprick needle piercing a balloon. And that's when I sat on the covered toilet seat, my head in my hands.
"This is stupid," I muttered, "Stupid stupid stupid."
"No, what's stupid is if you give up easily," Edward growled. "We will not give up. One anomaly she can ignore. But several, close-fitting anomalies? My sister would have no choice but to choose another line of best fit. And that line of best fit, is that me and you are dating. Together. For serious."

"But we won't be really, will we?" I asked glumly, feeling incredibly sorry for myself. The very first boyfriend I get, and it's not because of my charming wits or incredible sense of humor. No, it's because the boy in question took pity on me, and wanted to up his sister in the process.
"No."

Many luvli hugs to hayleyxx01 'n' Bildo for daring to push the button.
The button for reviewing by the way.
No other button, no siree...

I could have another chapter up in 48 hourz but that's down to you..
Go on. Live a little.
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(lol, see how smoothly I linked the two? Edward would be proud!)