So, yeah. You guys are incredible and stuff. I was also thinking... would you mind if there was a lemon or two in this story?
And the reviewers are!!
Screams-At-Midnight, mrsjacobblack91, pierce.me.through.with.sadness, All.The.RageR, Bethany Knight, Ghosts in the Snow, jake.n.ash.n.edward, okiegirlforever, edwardsfavouriteflavour, maryellen, LookAfterMyHeart, Kevin the Cornbread Slice, IrisOfTheRainbow (x14), BellaAtHeartt (x2), booknerd14, Marshi, FrEvrNvrLasts, sweet333249, sunybee, FearLover, jacob is the new black, Teffernee, AlwaysAround888, CullenLove, books and bojangles, allpresent, HarvestEclipse31, musicormisery4105, Intoxicated By His Presence, laibballfan, bedwardforever, GinnyBrown is here and now, twilightaddict26, Michelle62092, edwardluva234, Bleaktwilight, EC4me, Grillllz, LivforLove, dollegirl, 143twilighter, smile for the paparazzi, It's Moe, TwilightPassion, nixxyadiction, Muff'Nbutter, Music ADD, x-aly-x.
Special Mentions:
mrsjacobblack91: Jelly!! Yumm. I love it with ice cream :-)
pierce.me.through.with.sadness: Nope, no Emily in this story. But good guess!
jake.n.ash.n.edward: Yeh, she cried both because of Edward and because she felt guilty about his ex.
LookAfterMyHeart: Nope, no Emily in this story :-)
BellaAtHeartt: Bella was crying for many reasons - but they'll be explained in this chapter so I won't spoil it for you ;-) Leah and Sam are an item now, yes.
Marshi: Oh, no I don't hate Jacob - I'm actually sitting on the fence with the whole Team Edward and Team Jacob business. I love Jacob, hes a sweetie, but I decided to whip things around a bit and make him a sexy bad boy ;-)
IrisOfTheRainbow: No, the masquerade isn't a prank - though I considered the idea to start with. But then I decided it would be fun to write it, so the prank part held off.
FearLover: Yep, Sam and Leah lurve each other!
jacob is the new black: Bella was crying for many reasons - but they'll be explained in this chapter so I won't spoil it for you ;-) As for the mattress joke - you know when there's a chef on TV making something, but then instead of waiting for it to cook they whip out one they made before the show, and say, "Here's one I prepared earlier"? Yeah... it was kinda meant to relate to that. :-P
AlwaysAround888: Nope, no Emily to come between the lovers!
CullenLove: Lol, I like your craziness about the whole drink in the bin thing - but to be fair, maybe he just forgot it was in there and chucked it in the bin when he realised? Dunno. It is Edward The Crazy! ;-)
books and bojangles: Hahahaha, bathtubs, that's awesome! I'll have to try that next time I go to a friend's house :-)
HarvestEclipse31: Yeah, I agree about the dragging Bella off into loneliness just to disappoint her - but he did it for a few reasons. He actually was gonna kiss her - but chickened out at the last second. Plus, if he was gonna get rejected, he probably didn't want his friends to see it, and if he wasn't going to get rejected, Bella probably would have felt uncomfortable with them watching. I know I would. Edward's a gentleman in that way, I guess, sometimes annoyingly so!
bedwardforever: I'm not sure when they'll have the "I like you...", "I like you too!" conversation. It'll definitely happen though!
LivforLove: What joke were you referring to? If it was the mattress one, read the review reply above this one... if not, let me know and I'll try n explain my lameness lol
dollegirl: Lol, it's good to hear I'm not slaughtering this story line! And drama? Bring it on lol!
143twilighter: Heh, I can totally picture Alice with the boxers on her head, can't you? Yep, the only singles are Alice, Bella, Edward and Paul. Of course. But Ben and Angela aren't official... yet.
smile for the paparazzi: Bella was crying for many reasons - but they'll be explained in this chapter so I won't spoil it for you ;-) And no, Bella's not Edward's rebound at all, I'm not that mean lol. Edward pretty much already loves Bella as much as he loved his ex - even though he feels quite guilty for it.
TwilightPassion: Tempting suggestion... but another round of Truth or Dare would have exhausted my little brain I think lol
Muss'Nbutter: Nope, no Emily to disrupt the cute little Sam and Leah lol
--
As always, sorry if this chapter it dodgy. Hope you all like it! Any questions - ask in a review :-)
Chapter Twenty-Three: Morning After
So, Leah and Sam had been dating for a while. Alice knew, but other than the two secretive lovers, she was the only one. Leah hadn't even told her but once she'd seen the photos Leah had sent her, she knew. She had apparently asked, "So, how long have you and Sam been dating for?" in her follow-up letter.
When everyone had found out, there were wolf-whistles, squeals, hugs, more kisses and many manly arm-punches being thrown around. Eventually, someone had managed to control the smile on their face to ask for details.
"So, how long?" Kim asked, giving Leah a light thump on the arm.
Leah blushed and looked at her shoes. Sam's arm was wrapped warmly around her shoulder.
"A while" was all she said in reply.
Paul was much blunter with his question.
"Why didn't you just tell us?" he said, an eyebrow rising into his hairline.
Kim interrupted. "Yeah, Leah," she feigned anger. "Why didn't you tell you bestest buddy about your sordid affair?"
Leah laughed and looked up at Sam, who hadn't said a lot so far, but the pink tinge in his cheeks gave away his underlying guilt.
"Well," Leah said carefully. "My cousin has the biggest crush on Sam. She has for a long, long time. And I didn't want to offend her, so I thought it'd be best to keep it quiet."
"What?" Kim said, mildly annoyed. "So you couldn't tell us because of your cousin?!"
"Well, yeah," Leah said defensively, cringing into Sam's body as Kim glared. Leah tried to explain herself. "Well, if I had told you, you would have told Jared, who would have told Edward, who would have told Paul, who can't keep a secret."
"Oi!" Paul cried from his place on the beanbag in the lounge, where we had all gathered.
"You know its true," Sam said.
Paul laughed then, and shrugged, knowing that Sam was right.
Of course, I had heard all this from Alice, because I'd been too busy trying to un-puff and de-redden my eyes from the senseless crying I'd thrown myself into.
But now it was morning, and I was trying not to think about what had or had not happened last night, and how annoyed I was at myself for it all.
My thoughts started to influence my actions as I packed, and I angrily shoved a handful of Alice's clothes into her overnight bag. Everyone else was eating breakfast or something, but I'd said I wasn't hungry. So far this morning I hadn't seen Edward, and for that I was grateful.
The girls I'd slept in the same room with were smart enough to not bring it up again. Rosalie was even being kind to me – not that she wasn't a nice person, but usually I felt like she was too good to be seen speaking to me.
No, that wasn't the right way to put it. She certainly never snobbed me off or laughed at me, hec, I'd not even been aware she was in our grade until Emmett had claimed her as his own. Rosalie was a good person, she was just…quiet. Just quiet. And I thought the reason for that was because she didn't want to use us as friends just because she was Emmett's girl.
It was a noble reason, I thought, but still quite absurd.
I heard light footfalls on the stairs, and knew without having to pause for thinking time that it was Angela. A second later the noise stopped, and I saw by my merit of my peripherals that she was leaning on the door-frame, arms crossed.
"Aren't you hungry?" she asked, but it was only a courtesy question.
The rumbling of my stomach was my answer.
She sighed. "Come and have some food. You're missing out on all the fun!" Obviously, she was trying to cheer me up or something, but all I needed at the moment was a little time to sort my head out. Alone.
"No," I said, pleased to hear that my voice, at least, was normal. "I'd rather finish packing things up so we can get home a little earlier."
Another sigh from the doorway, and she was gone. She didn't come back, not to force food on me, not to insist that I vocalise my problems, not even to tell me that I was missing out again. And I was very, very grateful to her for it, because I knew she'd be stopping those (especially the bountifully energetic Alice) from coming up and trying out their own persuasive skills on me.
When I was done, I checked around the room once more to be sure I hadn't missed anything. My eyes scanned over the dusty photograph on Edward's dresser, but I deliberately did not allow my eyes to focus enough to see it properly.
Tears were beginning to prickle in my eyes, so I headed to the en suite bathroom for some tissues. They were there, on the counter, and I tore out a handful, pressing the scented velvety snot-rags to my face. Their presence set off my waterworks and soon I was trying, unsuccessfully, to find a way to make my eyes seem less red and puffy. Again.
There was a knock on the door. "Bella?"
Uh oh. I'd know that voice if I was dead.
"I'm busy!" I squealed, staring at the door and hoping like anything I'd locked it.
A pause from the other side of the door. I got a strange sense of intuition and knew that Edward was deciding whether to come in or not. I tried to be swift as I crossed the cold tiles with my bare feet and clicked the door shut.
The doorknob wriggled a bit, but I knew it was because he had let go of the handle and not because he was about to force his way in. I instantly felt guilty, like I'd made the wrong choice and I actually did want him to comfort me. He ought to be feeling guilty, why deny him that? No, no, no, I scolded myself. What a horrible thing to think.
"I brought you some juice, if you want it. Ange said you were feeling a bit under the weather."
'Under the weather'. Only Angela would say something like that. I knew there was a reason I loved that girl so much.
"Thanks. I'll get it when I'm out."
A pause.
A longer pause.
An even longer pause, then I heard him clear his throat and draw a breath to speak –
"Bella! Get your butt downstairs you little sook, he doesn't ever care-"
Oh Alice. How wonderful your timing is.
"Oh. Sorry, I- you probably want to have a shower, don't you Edward? Haha. This is your house after all… Sorry. I'll just be, um," was that Alice, stuttering? What was going on? "I think I just heard someone call my name!"
There were light steps quickly retreating down the hallway, then Alice was gone and Edward and I were alone again, separated by a door with a flimsy lock. Unlock the door, unlock it not, unlock the door, unlock it not, unlock the-
"Bella," Edward said, and I knew he was about to say something important. An apology? Maybe. But if he was – I didn't know what I was going to say in reply. I didn't want to find out either. So I cut him off.
"I think you should go back down and finish off your breakfast. Thanks for the juice." The finality in my tone made me feel like my heart was breaking. I had no idea why, but telling Edward to simply go downstairs made my heart ache more than it had when me and Mike had ended.
Edward didn't say anything. I heard him set down the glass of juice, then walk from the room, closing the door behind him. As soon as I heard the sound of the latch clicking I let out a huge breath I hadn't realised I'd been holding. Then, once I was sure he was gone, I unlocked the bathroom door and stepped tentatively out, making as little noise as possible for an unknown reason.
There, on the dresser beside the bathroom door, was the glass of juice. I simply stared at it for a moment, but didn't pick it up. I wanted to drink it but I couldn't make my arm move to do it, so I just crossed the room and started mindlessly sifting through items around the room, checking for the millionth time that I hadn't left anything behind.
The door slowly pushed open, and I froze, my heart being thrown around in my chest like a sneaker in a clothes dryer. I should have realised by the quietness of the approaching footsteps that it wasn't Edward, but I didn't. So it was just that bit more painful when I saw Alice's head poke around the door.
"You alright?" she asked, not coming fully into the room, giving me the option to continue my morning of aloneness.
I just sighed. "Come in."
And she did. I tried to smile at her but it faltered halfway through and the tears welled up, spilling over before she'd taken the few necessary steps to be hugging me tightly. I just cried. No sobbing, no hiccoughing, no spluttering out incomprehensible words. The tears just kept making wet patterned lines on my cheeks as I breathed in and out, my head resting on Alice's small, soft shoulder.
It wasn't all to do with Edward that I was crying. I missed my mum, I missed the sun, I missed having a boyfriend - but I didn't miss Mike so much. I knew the phase would pass but it was still annoying to be stuck in such a pathetic state of mind.
But, as always, I was soon okay again. Alice sat me down on the bed and looked at me carefully.
"I would normally say that 'he's not worth it, go for someone better than him', but," she sighed and fiddled with her hands. "The problem is, though, is that he is worth it."
I smiled and wiped the tears across my cheeks, looking up at the ceiling and blinking a few times.
"I'll be fine," I said, still smiling an automatically brave-looking smile. "Shall we go soon?"
"Yeah." She looked around the room. "Got everything?"
I nodded.
"Okay." She looked at me carefully, and continued to do so as she spoke. "Bella, don't worry about breakfast. Just because you're in his house, eating his food, stealing his room and using his electricity doesn't mean you have to say goodbye." There was definitely sarcasm in her tone.
I laughed again. "Alright, I'll go and eat." Alice pulled me up off the bed.
"I'll shove this stuff in my car. Angela is still down there. She'll fix you something nice."
So I dragged my feet across the floor, and tried to give myself a lift as I came closer and closer to the kitchen. The happy voices of my friends warmed the air and I found myself smiling for real when I stepped around the doorway.
"She lives!" Emmett cried. He was close enough to reach me, so he seized my hand and started twirling me around like a ballerina. I laughed.
"Emmett," Rosalie scolded playfully, twisting around on her barstool to smack his buns. Next thing she knew she was in his arms, being swung back and forth in a way similar to the technique used in fifties style films. She laughed as Emmett spun around the room, singing a made up tune.
I occupied her empty bar stool beside Angela and reached forward to the few pieces of toast left, buttering and chewing as I observed the others in the kitchen.
Everyone but Alice and Edward's parents were here, laughing and eating and enjoying their humiliation-free mornings.
Kim, Jared, Sam and Leah were chatting over their steaming mugs of coffee and hot chocolate. Angela and Ally were both sitting in silence; Angela subtly smiling at one particular Cheney brother and Ally smiling as she watched Tyler and Paul play Thumb Wars. Edward was mostly hidden by the fridge door, and had been motionlessly staring at its contents since I'd entered the room.
Feeling considerably braver and less embarrassed with witnesses in the room, I hopped off my seat and walked around the island countertop.
"Morning," I said in his ear. I thought he would have pulled back but he didn't; he just turned his head towards me. Our faces were inches apart, and my breath was caught. I swallowed heavily at his grave expression.
"Good morning," he said, fanning me with his breath.
I almost lost my self-control and jumped him, but forced my feet to move me around to his other side so I wasn't quite so close. I looked into the fridge, observing the colourful contents.
"Hungry?" he asked me, but I didn't turn to him. I kept staring at the abundance of food – it looked enough to feed Emmett for a week. And that was a lot of food.
"Yeah," I said mindlessly. "What's for breakfast?" The half-eaten bit of toast sitting on the island behind us was comparatively bland to all this wonder in front of me.
"Anything," Edward said, but he didn't say it right. It was more of a generalisation of the word, like he meant 'you can have literally anything you want'.
I did my best not to stutter too much. "Su-surprise me."
He didn't say anything. He just smiled and put his arm around my back so I was trapped between him and the big, white, cold container.
"Choose the three best looking things you can see."
You, you and you.
The fridge started to groan with the effort of keeping the temperature consistent after being open for so long. It blasted me with a big gush of cold air and I instinctively took a tiny step back – but then found myself plastered to Edward's front. I instantly jumped forward again, shocked both by what had happened and how warm he was, and blushed deeply as I tried to locate my voice while breathing evenly.
"Kiwi fruit, yogurt and watermelon."
"Okay." He straightened up and let go of the fridge, allowing me passage. "Sit down and watch me work my magic."
No need to sit down for that to happen.
A few minutes later I was sitting beside Angela, fruit diced in a bowl and yogurt over the top. Edward had added some muesli upon my request, and I was enjoying my very healthy breakfast.
"Did you drink your juice?" Edward asked me. I remembered the abandoned orange juice in his room. Hope it doesn't cause an infestation of ants, I thought to myself.
I put my hand to my forehead, both to show my answer and because his closeness had caused a new rush of heat to my skin.
"I'll get it," he said, and then he was gone.
I kept eating, exercising a lot of self-restraint to not look around every few seconds for the rusty angel. After what seemed like hours, Edward returned, juice in hand.
He sat down beside me – and it was only then that I noticed Angela had moved. She was sitting between Ben and Tyler and was playing Thumb Wars with them both at the same time, laughing. I smiled at how happy she looked but didn't comment. Edward stayed silent too.
When I'd drained the juice and scooped the last remnants of yogurt into my mouth, I noticed that Alice was still gone. I looked around the room, through the doorway and then out the window to see if she was still putting bags into the boot. She wasn't anywhere to be seen.
I turned to Edward to ask him where Alice was.
"I don't know," he said in reply. "But she's the slowest packer I've ever seen."
I smiled and nodded, choosing not to say anything because my swollen heart was constricting my throat in his presence.
I looked back down at my empty bowl and started making patterns in the left-over yogurt while I thought. Edward stood from beside me and started collecting everyone's plates, making barely a clatter as he stacked them all neatly on the sink.
"You shouldn't leave all that for your mum," Jared said from my left.
I turned and saw that he was pushing his chair back to get up and help Edward do the dishes. Edward looked at Jared and held up a hand to stop him.
"We've got a dish washer. I'll stack everything when you guys have gone and turn it on. Easy."
I envied him for a moment, thinking how much nicer things would be if Charlie had a dish washer. No, I then contradicted myself; some of my best memories of Charlie involve washing the dishes.
"We should probably go, Emmett," Rosalie said from the end of the counter to my right. Emmett was sitting right beside her, leaning on his elbow. "We've broken enough of Edward's stuff already."
As if waiting for a cue, there was suddenly a great CRASH as some plates slid from Edward's pile and headed for the floor. With reflexes that I would have thought to be impossible, Edward was there, and caught the three plates without so much as chipping them. I then saw Tyler standing sheepishly behind him, a mug dangling from his shocked hand.
"Smooth moves, Tyler," Ally laughed from her place on the couch beside Angela and Ben.
"I didn't mean to-!"
Edward cut him off by laughing quietly. "Nothing broke. It's all good."
Tyler stepped forward to put his mug down again, but Edward intercepted him and carefully put the mug down with his own hands. Tyler sauntered back to the couch and tried not to draw attention to himself.
"Alice!" Edward said suddenly, looking over my shoulder at the doorway.
I was about to turn around, but found I didn't need to because she hopped up onto the stool beside me.
"Ready to go?" she said to me, and I knew she meant the question as more of a 'Do you still want to go?'
I didn't want to go, not at all, but the memories of the assignments and unfinished work that was piling up in my bedroom clawed its way to the front of my mind. I sighed.
"Yeah, we should."
From behind me I heard Ally make a sooky noise. I turned to her and was about to say something witty when Alice beat me to it.
"Relax," she said, "you and Tyler can suck off each other's faces tomorrow. It's only Saturday, after all."
Ally looked mildly outraged and Tyler threw a shoe at her, but Alice caught the wayward ammunition and threw it back.
"Let's get a move on, people, time is money!"
And she was up, hopping around the counter to give Edward a hasty hug. Why is she in such a rush? Ally used her few remaining minutes to chat with Tyler, and Angela with Ben. I got up and followed Alice's path to the other side of the counter. I took my bowl and spoon with me and put it on the other side of the sink to Edward's carefully stacked crockery. Edward watched me do so, but then picked up my bowl and put it on his side of the sink.
"Where it belongs," he said to himself as he set it down. He turned back to me and spoke a little clearer. I wondered if he had meant for me to hear his comment to the dishes. "Leaving, huh," he stated. I nodded.
"Looks like it."
"Thanks for coming, Bella-" (I couldn't help but smile hugely) "-it was good to see you again. Maybe we could go see a movie again some time." He smiled beautifully at me.
"Yeah, another group get-together is a great idea."
I suddenly heard a loud slapping noise and whipped around to see Alice with her palm on her forehead. She looked exasperated. She turned immediately away from me though, so I only got a glimpse. Puzzled, I turned back to Edward.
"See you later, then," I said, and stepped forward to give him a hug.
Conventional opposite-sex-friend-hugs last for about one and a half to two seconds. I remembered the first guy I had hugged. It was Jacob, when we were little, but Jacob hardly counted because he was like a brother to me. So I guess it would have been Jasper. In primary school we had to do a class play and somehow I got the lead role – it was probably because my character was in a coma for the majority of the time. Lying still doesn't require a huge amount of coordination. But back to the hug – Jasper had refused to hug me in rehearsals, but during the performance night he couldn't really avoid it. The hug was less than a moment long and looked more like we'd fallen onto each other and had jumped apart by electric shock. At least we got laughs for it – even though it was meant to be tender and not comical.
I'd hugged countless people since, obviously more girls than boys, and most of them were Alice and Angela anyway. But there was always something different about hugging Edward.
Every part of me felt warm. My toes, my torso, my face; my chest cavity felt like it was filled with liquid chocolate; smooth and rich. I wrapped my arms around his back and held one hand in the other, keeping my grip. Edward took a great breath in and his chest rose with the movement. I turned my face slightly so my cheek wasn't going to get squished and found that I'd unconsciously taken a big breath at the same time as him. Edward's hands were around my back, holding me completely in his long arms while my own could only just reach around his sturdy frame.
Now was the two second mark. I expected Edward to loosen his grip on me, but he didn't. I expected to loosen my grip on him, but I didn't. We both stayed exactly where we were, breathing patterns in sync.
Three seconds.
Four seconds.
Five seconds.
Six seconds.
"Ooooooh! Edward and Bella, sitting in a tr-! Ouch, what was that for?"
I reluctantly let go, and noticed that Edward's arms only started to fall away when mine had.
Paul was nursing his upper arms, looking incredulously at Ally and Angela on either side of him. They were lowering their fists while Paul cringed.
Alice cleared her throat from the doorway.
"We should go." It wasn't up for negotiation this time.
I turned from Edward without looking at his face and walked to Leah and the people she was sitting with. Instead of hugging each of them standing up, I leaned forward for short hugs, moving along the line and mumbling 'see ya' and 'goodbye' as I went. Then I went to Alice by the doorway. Alice was still coaxing Ally and Angela from their places on the couch.
"Get up, or when I yank you up you're going to feel something pop in your shoulder."
Ally and Angela were instantly on their feet, the boys laughing on the couch behind them.
"Good," Alice said and turned to the Port Angeles students on her left. "Thanks heaps for a wicked night, guys, we'll have to do this again soon."
"Yeah," I agreed as everyone else said the same.
Ally kissed Tyler goodbye and Angela and Ben hugged sweetly – the first physical interaction since the cinema I'd seen. Awww.
"Bye," I said quietly as I followed Alice out the door. It was only meant for one person, and as I left, I was sure he was the only one who heard it.
--
I got home and pulled my clothes out of my bag. Alice had left almost immediately, like she was desperately late for the Royal Ball or something. Ally and Angela were still in the car as she drove away, both giggling incessantly about their night.
Charlie wasn't home so I didn't have to worry about 'hello's when I walked in the door. I just hung up my coat and headed up the stairs, my small overnight bag hanging from one numb hand.
I shut my bedroom door behind me and headed straight for my heater, allowing blood to flow through my fingers again. As I waited, I looked around my room. My school bag sat menacingly at the end of my bed, seams splitting from the workload it possessed. An annoyed moan escaped my lips as I thought about how long it was going to take me to do it all.
I changed the settings on my heater so it heated more gradually and used less gas, then went to my bag. As I tiredly yanked books from it and looked at the subjects I had to do, my mind wandered in the background, apparently looking for some excuse to not do it just yet. My eyes caught on my overnight bag, and I thought it was a good idea to unpack it. Can't leave it all just sitting there, can I?
So I happily pulled it onto the doona instead, and unzipped the top, expecting my pyjamas to be on the top. But they weren't. I dug through and found them, eventually. Then I searched for my navy shirt – but it wasn't on the left hand side where I'd packed it. It was on the right, stuffed into a shoe. What's going on? I yanked out handfuls of clothes and spread everything out on my bedspread. Sure, it was all there, but it wasn't how I'd left it. Then, it hit me.
Alice.
Why was she going through my things? I saw my socks, underwear (thank god), pants, and pyjamas; the book of the moment I was reading, my overly-stretched hair-ties, miniscule makeup bag (supplied by Alice and only ever used when Alice was around), toothpaste, toothbrush…?
Toothbrush? Where is it? Oh there is it. Also in my shoe.
Hmm. I looked over the pile of my possessions again. Then I saw it. One white Converse shoe was there, but the other? No. Not there. Fantastic.
Oh Alice, why?
So, devilish little Alice has come up with a way to force Edward and Bella to see each other again. Muahahaha!!
I have to commend you guys on your reviews again - there was tonnes for the last chapter! I really appreciate it, and love you all :-)
Review again, if you feel so inclined!! And don't forget to give me your views on a potential lemon in this story!
Ohh, and my other news is thus - I'm Beta-ing now!! It's for BellaAtHeartt's story, 'Destined to Run'. If anyone else wants a Beta, I'd be more than happy to oblige. I love doing it!
-Shaps