A/N: This may be the last thing I post for a while. Though I am thankful for your alerts and favorite adds, the lack of reviews are daunting, and leave me to believe I may just be embarrassing myself here amongst so many gifted fanfic authors. I want some opinions on this. If this is worth continuing, please let me know. I will commence to writing Bella/Alice after the conclusion of When You Think You Know Her, so I won't be gone... and to my favorite authors (Hollowgo, Shamrock317): I shall be lurking for updates! If you haven't read any of these two authors' works, please check out my favorites list and get to reading!
I love you guys for the support!
A.S.R.
"Alice?" I said her name hesitantly, not sure how she was taking the news I'd given her. I meant what I had said, and did not plan to change my mind, no matter how she argued with me. But so far all I had gotten from the exquisite being driving was silence. "Can we talk about this?"
"Now would not be the most ideal time, but it will be discussed in due course," she hissed in one breath. I saw flecks of venom fly when she said it, telling me the vampire approved of my choice. But that was only a part of the acceptance; I needed my Alice to accept it as well.
If I hadn't started my stupid, pointless cycle, we could have had a nice ride down to my childhood home. If I hadn't started my irrelevant bleeding, we could discuss in full the decision I'd made, she could ask me questions, and I could give her answers. "Why do I have to be a stupid human?" I found myself muttering sullenly, childishly. "Stupid period ruining everything." I heard Alice give a short chuckle from behind the wheel. I scowled at her for laughing at me, and snatched up the iPod that was attached to the stereo in her father's car, turning it to a certain song I'd sung to her a few nights before, resulting in a rather rough tussle between my bed sheets, one that we'd both enjoyed. I admit, the revenge was petty, but I still felt a satisfaction when she reached over and clamped her fingers on my wrist. I grinned at her, knowing the thoughts playing behind those inky eyes, and I let the song play out before I switched it to another that held similar memories, laughing out right at the snarl that rolled free of her throat. I could hear her swallow the venom that my teasing had produced, and I felt a little guilty. But just a little, mind you.
The rest of the ride was quiet, aside from my efforts playing DJ, and thankfully it was only another two hours before we pulled onto the dirt road that led to my house, at the very end. I was consumed by memories as we flashed through the trees, hearing echoes of my laughter as I swung on the tire swing Daddy had tied up to the live oak tree at the base of our driveway. My tree, I thought to myself as we passed it.
I could also hear my sobs up in the leaves as I hid from my father after the girls at school found my poetry folder, and my crush on one of them reached his ears via her parents. I'd thought he wanted to whip me; he'd wanted to comfort me. "It doesn't matter to me who you love, Butterbean," he'd said after he climbed the tree to sit next to me on my branch. "You're my little girl, not theirs, and it's not up to them how I raise you. You can love whomever you want to love." I felt tears rise in my eyes as I remembered the moment, and how it had made me feel accepted. It was the first time I had ever felt that way. I was thirteen.
The porch light was on when we came to a stop in front of the ancient two-story, the dogs were barking like crazy at our arrival, and Alice hissed softly, thinking the same thing I was, I'm sure: the animals always went bananas around her. A giant silouette, wide and tall, stepped out of the open screen door, and it slammed shut behind him, bouncing on the frame a few times before it settled. The light mounted to the wall behind him obscured his rough features in shadow.
"Are you okay, Alice?" I reached over and rubbed her forearm slowly, studying her face, her nostrils. I'd taken note that when her nostrils flared too much that it meant she wasn't in a great mood. I'd yet to make a logical explanation for it without asking her.
"Just keep touching me, I'll stay grounded," she answered me quietly as we opened the doors to exit the vehicle.
She met me around the front of the car, and I laced my fingers through hers, squeezing her hand to reassure her, and took the few steps forward to the front steps. My daddy was standing there waiting for me with his arms crossed over his chest, wearing his overalls and flannel shirt, which came into sharp focus as my eyes grew adjusted to the soft light. "That you, Butterbean?" he said, and at the sound of his deep voice with that country accent, my heart swelled with a joy I usually only felt when Alice was near.
"Daddy!" I let go of Alice's hand and flew up the five steps to his waiting embrace, jumping on him, and he wrapped his arms around me and I inhaled his scent deeply, etching it further into my memory: wood chips, tobacco, and Old Spice cologne.
"OOF! Whoa, you're not as light as you used to be, Butterbean!" He hugged me tightly, and I squeezed him back, not believing I was home. "And I'm not as young as I used to be either. Your old man's back is going out on him."
He set me back down on my feet, and I stepped back to take in all six feet, four inches of his form, his dark beard shot through with silver, his hair thinned and also silvery. It was as if he'd aged fifteen years in the four months since I'd seen him last, even his blue eyes looked tired behind the frames of his glasses. He looked past me to Alice standing at the foot of the steps where I had left her without thinking, and it made me blush for getting caught up in my own memories and happiness, forgetting her pain. I retreated back down the steps to where she hung back shyly, allowing me this moment with my father, and snagged her hand, leading her up with me. "Hey, there!" my father said, studying Alice as we came up the steps. "Come on up, I won't bite you."
Even though I was over the moon about breathing South Carolina air and smelling the scent of my daddy's homemade chili, I noticed there was a pointed tone to the words he chose; and when Alice held her hand out for him to shake it, his lip curled and he looked at her tiny hand as if it were covered in writhing maggots, it clicked in my mind. He knows, I thought to Alice, wishing with all my might that she were the mind reader in the Cullen family. I choked back a gasp when I saw how dark her eyes were, more so than I'd ever seen them, even when we were intimate. Her stoic face didn't change as she said my father's name. "Mr. Fowler."
Daddy shook her hand, albeit briefly, and I watched his face as he flinched at the feel of her flesh. I glanced at Alice to see if she reacted to it, but her stony features were carved deeply into place. She needed to hunt, and she need to go soon. I realized with an uncomfortable twist in my gut that I had not seen her smile for hours. Forget the smile, Andrea! I scolded myself as Daddy turned around opened the screen door. Your father knows things he shouldn't!
"I made a pot of chili, you girls go ahead and eat up. I'm sure you're hungry after that ride," he said as he held the door for us and let us enter ahead of him, and I felt his eyes on our interlocked fingers.
Our house hadn't changed as much as my father had, the living room furniture still sat in the same positions and the Gamecock memorbilia was still plastered all over the walls, my daddy's favorite college football team. The television was playing an old sitcom that I remembered seeing when it was new in the 1990s, when I was a child. It was warm from the crackling fire he had built in the old fireplace, and I watched the reflections of the flames dance in Alice's eyes as she looked over at it warily. The smell of the chili hung heavily in the air inside, and I felt my mouth water and my stomach rumble simultaneously at the thought of eating it, so I made a beeline to the kitchen, tugging a mute, stiff Alice behind me. I took a bowl down from the cabinet and started ladling it full to the brim. "You can share with me," I offered Alice, purely for the benefit of my father, with whom I was determined to keep up appearances.
"Thank you, baby," she murmured to me, getting as close as possible to my ear to whisper to me. "He knows, Andie. I don't know how yet, but he plans to confront me some time during our visit," she told me as we went to take a seat at the table.
I nearly spit the mouthful of hot chili I'd just eaten across the kitchen. "Say what?" I hissed, pissed off that he planned to say something to Alice, but not to me. Did he think she was playing a human charade with me, still? Alice smirked at me, reaching for the spoon I had thrown down into the bowl.
"You sound like a vampire when you do that, love," she pointed out to me, and I felt my face flush red, which Alice ignored, spooning up some chili. "But don't worry, it will turn out okay, our tempers merely clash, I think. Do you want this bite, or shall I take it?"
I stared at her, dumbfounded as I watched her take the bite of chili, chew, and swallow. It looked perfectly human, which was strange to me, the weirdest thing I'd ever witnessed. I would have rather watched her hunt, it would have been more natural. I didn't like watching her submit to anyone like that, not even my father. "Alice," I whispered, horrified at what human food might do to her vampiric body. "You don't have to do that." She gave me a tiny shake of her head, telling me to hush.
"Mr. Fowler, your chili is really good," she called out to the door that connected the kitchen to the living room, where I knew my daddy was lurking, listening to us whisper back and forth in the kitchen. I heard him scoff to himself, and then he appeared in the doorway, leaning against the frame, and watched as Alice took several more bites, my insides clenching with every spoonful she took, before I had all I could take and intervined.
"You gonna save me some, Alice?" I tried to make my tone light and amused, but it was hard when I was scared to death about what she could be doing to herself to try to seem as human as he or I. She fed me the next spoonful in response, and I smiled after I'd swallowed, and leaned to kiss her for being so sweet, but my father cleared his throat and made me jump in surprise; I'd forgotten he was standing there that quickly.
"I'm glad you like it," Daddy said gruffly. "It's probably a lot different from what you're used to eating, huh?" I felt a bubbling deep inside myself that had nothing to do with digestion, and I felt Alice give a sharp tap on my thigh when I opened my mouth to angrily retort. Ow, I thought to myself, rubbing the spot she'd gotten me. That's going to be a bruise.
"Yes, sir," Alice said to my father as if she hadn't caught the double meaning in his words. "My mother runs a business, and stays busy, so we have a 'everyone for themselves' rule around my house."
"What kind of business does your... mother... run?" Daddy seemed almost amused.
"She's an interior decorator, and does event planning on the side. She has an eye for art that people love. My father is a doctor, medicine is his passion, he loves helping people." This was all very true, and Alice gave my father a smile for asking questions that she could answer easily.
He slid his glasses down and peered at my mate over the tops the lenses. "How does he feel about your choice in major? Andie tells me you're majoring in Cultural Arts." Daddy didn't even glance at me, but my blood was starting to boil.
"He wants me to do what makes me happy," she said brightly, though I knew her tone was forced, I could hear it. "Our whole family is fairly artistic. My brother is a pianist, and composes his own music, and his wife writes children's fiction when she's not raising their daughter. My sister Rosalie designs wedding dresses and evening wear, I like to help her sketch and sew. Her husband, Emmett, is into carpentry, and draws his own blue prints, though I question his taste in decor: animal heads mounted on a wall are not becoming, in my opinion."
"Uh huh," was all Daddy said, and I knew he was thinking about his twelve point prize buck that was hanging on the wall of the study.
"The only one of my siblings that isn't into some form of art is Jasper, but he's a rather serious law student right now. But even he appreciates the beauty. I myself am more into the historical aspects of art, and its impact on human evolution," Alice went on, deflating a little under his steady, disapproving gaze. I didn't like the way he was looking at her... it made me want to hurt him, the way he was affecting my tiny mate next to me.
"Human evolution," he mused, still making Alice a very interesting program he was watching intently, then he pushed his glasses back up his nose. "A criminology major-" he looked at me, "and an arts major-" he looked back at Alice, "fell in love, is that right?"
"Yes, sir," Alice said, turning her eyes to mine and looking into my heart through them as she always did. "I fell in love with her energy, her essence, not her obsession with serial killers, which I do not share."
"Yeah, apparently she has a thing for murderers," he purred, his true feelings starting to show.
SNAP. CRACK. BOOM. "YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING!" I roared, jumping to my feet so fast that the chair I'd been sitting in crashed to the floor. Alice grabbed my arm to stop me from moving around the table towards him, and I pulled at it for a minute, the only thing in my mind was making him hurt for hurting her with his words. "STOP YOUR SNIDE COMMENTS, DAD, SHE'S HARMLESS!" Okay, so maybe not harmless, but I knew she would never hurt me, and this was his malfunction.
Daddy folded his arms across his chest, undaunted by my explosion, and looked at me like he'd never met me. "She's a monster, Andrea," he said quietly, the tone I'd hated as a child, the tone that meant he was very, very angry. It didn't scare me now. No, but it was enough to make me snatch my arm free from Alice's iron grip (I would regret that later, as it bruised me badly to twist my arm like that), and fly around the table to get in his calm face. Alice was faster, of course, and I hit her chest as she attempted to plead with me to leave it alone, restraining me from getting closer to him.
"Andie, please. Please. I can't handle this right now, I'm not strong enough," she said in my ear as I started sobbing with the pressure of all the turbulance in my head.
"She's everything to me!" I screamed at him, making him flinch as he started to move closer. "I don't care what you think, you don't even know her! Who are you to say anything about her?" I struggled uselessly against her embrace, fighting with a statue that had me held tight in its arms.
"I'M YOUR FATHER, ANDREA!" He had finally let his temper slip, and I knew now it would be ugly, because my father is a very controlled man, and I could count on one hand how many times he'd ever raised his voice to me. "Get your hands off my daughter, you bloodsucking freak!" He tried to yank Alice away from me, but of course he couldn't budge her. His volume and violent effort triggered something in Alice, as her face screwed up into a a crazed scowl.
Before I knew I had moved, I was back on the other side of the table with the entire kitchen between us and my enraged father, and Alice was in a defensive crouch in front of me, one hand behind her with it clasped tightly to my wrist, in case we needed to escape. She snarled at my father in warning, which only goaded his temper. "You little shit! You think I'd hurt her?" he screamed at Alice, who hissed then growled in response. I'd never seen her like this, and I was scared if Daddy tried to come closer to us, she would attack him to protect me. I had to calm her down, but Daddy wasn't finished. "Kate was everything to me, until she disappeared and left me to suffer! Humans are just sex toys and food to them, Andie, I know what I'm talking about. I had an affair with one for the first ten years of your life!"
A/N: Okay, so I lied. I have enough material for one more chapter. It will probably be posted tonight after this one, and then I'm serious lol no more until I get some incentive. So... review away, please!
A.S.R.