Cocoa and Tears

The next morning I woke to find that I had slept completely through the night without waking once. That surprised me given that I had cried harder than I have ever cried before for at least two hours. My body must have shut down from the pain.

I wanted to believe that everything that happened was just a dream. I wanted to resign everything to some dark recess of my mind that couldn't be acessed. I knew it was true, though, because I could still feel the overwhelming grief washing over me. This is what a broken heart felt like.

I thought I had experienced it before. I felt it when I broke up with Edward so long ago. I felt it when my father died. This was new. It was different because the other times it was expected, I had seen those coming. This snuck up from behind and took my legs out from underneath of me. I didn't know I felt that way, and it was dead before it had a chance to live.

The worst part was that I had crushed him all over again. I made him question himself. I made him do something that he had obviously already stopped. He was a good man, and I almost turned him in to a cheater. I knew from experience that wasn't something he took lightly. I knew that he was mad at me for doing that to him.

Just because he wasn't engaged to Tanya didn't meant that he wasn't in love with her. All this time I thought that I was being his friend. Maybe I was just subconsciously worming my way back in to his life so that I could cause chaos where it didn't need to be. I was poison. I was the plague. I would keep destroying him again and again until there was nothing left.

I heard a knock at my door, but I didn't want to talk to anyone. No one knew what had happened, and I wanted to keep it that way. Maybe I could just stay in bed for a few days and no one would be the wiser. I rolled to face the wall.

Someone opened the door and walked over to my bed. I could feel their weight as they sat near my feet. I felt a hand brush the hair back from my face. I heard a gasp, so I must look worse than I felt. I opened my eyes and saw Rose staring at me with her mouth open.

I had forgotten she was coming. We did this every year. The day after Christmas we would spend the day together. Sometimes we went shopping, sometimes we stayed in and watched movies.

"I can't do it today." My voice was barely a whisper.

I closed my eyes and turned my face back in to the pillow. I could feel it coming back, the torrent of tears that had shut off sometime in the night.

"I know. Edward told me." I looked up at her. "He was in the living room when I got here."

"Where is he now? I can't see him. I don't think I could stand it."

"Shh. Shh." My voice had turned a bit hysterical towards the end. "He was just bringing your coat back. He's gone now."

I wondered idly if gone meant just for now or for good. Either way it was farther and longer than what I wanted in my heart of hearts. I wanted him to come to me and tell me it was okay, that he forgave me for being such an awful person.

Why couldn't I just let him go? He was happy and I keep wanting him to come make me feel better. I had no right to want to feel better about any of this. The fact that I kept waiting for it, and wanting it, just made me feel even worse.

Rose couldn't hear the turmoil in my head, but she could hear the sobs pouring out of me now. I didn't know why she was still here. At this point she should be afraid of me too. It was probably just a matter of time before I ruined everything for her too.

She just kept rubbing my back in big, slow circles. She waited for the cries to die down enough so that she could speak over them.

"You're mom left for work a few minutes before I got here. It's just you and me. Bella, I know you, and I know that you don't want to get out of this bed right now, but you have to."

"No, I don't. I don't have a job, there's no where I need to be."

"Yes you do. Your job is to take care of yourself. You are falling apart. As my best friend you are responsible for getting me through tough times, and I have to do the same for you. Now I am going to sit here until you get your ass out of this bed. I won't leave."

I could hear in her tone that she was dead serious. She wasn't going anywhere.

"I don't know that I can, Rose. My body is numb with pain. I don't even think I can feel my legs."

"Let me help you. We'll get through this together. Trust me."

I looked at her through my tear filled eyes and knew that I didn't deserve her sympathy right now, but I was glad to have it. I nodded to let her know that I was ready.

She helped me slowly sit up. I clung to her and cried in to her shoulder. Once I was able, she helped me get my feet on the floor, and then stand. I leaned on her so much that I couldn't have maneuvered in any direction. She was steering me towards the bathroom.

Once we got in there she started running hot water in to the tub, and added some bubbles.

"I know you have a thing about people seeing you naked, but you're gonna have to deal with it for now okay? I need to get your clothes off."

I was too far gone to even try to fight her. She helped me in to the tub and let me sit there without saying another word. She just sat beside the tub and hummed some random songs. I forgot how pretty her voice was. It was helping, the hot water and the humming. I started to feel somewhat functional so I decided to wash my hair. I dunked my head completely under and started rubbing to get the soap out. I toyed with the idea of not coming back up.

I stood up and Rose had a towel waiting for me. She helped me out of the tub, but I didn't need her as much now. I could hold myself up at least. She had brought some clothes in, but I didn't know when.

She helped me get dressed then she blow dried my hair for me while I sat on the bathroom counter. I started crying again, but this time it was because I was grateful to have a friend like her.

She helped me down and then walked me to the kitchen. On the way I saw my coat laid on the back of the couch. On top of it was a box. It was the bracelet he had given me. He probably wanted it away from him so that he wouldn't be reminded of what I had done.

Rose walked me to a stool at the island, and I laid my head on the counter. I heard her going through cabinets, water running, and the microwave starting. She was making hot chocolate. This was our go to drink when we were feeling down. I almost smiled at the memories of all the times we had drank it and talked about sad things.

Once the cups were ready Rosalie came back and sat on the stool beside me.

"Okay, now talk. Tell me what happened.

"Thanks, but I'll be fine. I just need a few days to grieve. I'm getting better." Even as I said the words I knew they weren't true. I had to go on though. I couldn't live in my room for the rest of my life.

"Grieve what, Bella? I don't know what happened. Edward only told me that you were really upset about something that happened last night. I would have asked him, but he practically ran out of here."

"He should have. It's not safe for him to be near me. I'm probably going to kill him at some point. I would be afraid too, if I were him."

"Bella, stop. Just tell me what happened."

I choked out a hard laugh, "You know how some people say they were born to do things? Well I was born to rip him apart every chance that I get. That's what happened."

"Not good enough. Start from the beginning and go from there."

I lifted up my head, took a sip of hot chocolate, and heaved out a sigh. "We were on our way back from the theater and he told me that he had gotten me a present. We were in the shop and he was rubbing some cream on my back-"

"Whoa, stop right there for a second. Why was he rubbing cream on your back?"

"Oh, I almost forgot. Some drunk man tried to grab me in the parking lot, but Edward took care of it. The man accidentally made me fall and I landed on my back so Edward was putting some kind of medicated cream on it."

"Okay, got it. Keep going"

"So anyway, he gave me my gift and then he saw my tattoo. He asked about it and I told him the truth. It must have made him think about the way we used to be together and he started kissing my back. He stopped a pretty soon after that though."

"That's it? I know there's more to it than that. Talk to me, it will help, I promise."

I shook my head, but kept going anyway. "I knew he had stopped, but for some reason I pushed it and tried to make something out of nothing. I was taking advantage of the situation, which I didn't even realize I wanted to do until that moment. We came really close to letting something happen that shouldn't have."

"So what did you do? What did he do?"

"I realized that I was about to turn myself in to the 'other woman', and him in to a cheater. I stopped it. It was too late though. I knew that I loved him at that point and it was too late to change it. I don't think that I ever stopped, really. I just buried it deep enough that even I had a hard time finding it. Anyway, I let it slip that I loved him. He just sat there confused and hurt. I didn't know what else to do, so I left."

It was an impossible situation to be in. I was in love with him and he was in love with someone else. I had ruined everything. He was too good for that. He was too good for me.

"So did you give him a chance to say anything?"

"He didn't need one. It was all written plain as day on his face. You said it yourself, he couldn't get out of here fast enough this morning. Speaking of which, what did he say to you before he left?

I wasn't sure that I wanted to know. I had been debating whether or not I should ask, but I couldn't shake the curiosity. Was he as angry with me as I thought?

"Just that you had gotten really upset last night, and that you might need someone today. He said he was going away for a few days, but didn't say why or when he was coming back."

I nodded and a few tears fell on to my cheeks. I tried to breathe through it so it wouldn't fall apart again.

"I keep doing these things to him and I can't stop. I broke his heart once, and I didn't want to be the reason it was broken again. I know if anything would have happened he would have told Tanya. I didn't want to cause them to break up when he's in love with her. His heart would break again and in a roundabout way it would have been my fault, again. There's a got to be a limit to the pain I inflict on him."

Rose put her mug down and wrapped me in a hug. She could see that I was about to crumble so she tried to hold me together.

"I tell you what. You and I will sit and watch movies the rest of the day. I promise I won't tell anyone, even Em, about this."

"Thanks."

We made our way to the living room and stayed there the rest of the day. We watched old horror movies, but never paid attention to what was going on. We were too busy going over all the finer details of that awful night.

Rose picked up the bracelet he had given me and noticed that it was just like hers.

"Do you think they went shopping together? To be honest I was surprised that Emmett even got me anything."

"No, I don't think they did." All I could so was smile at her. I wanted her to stay in the dark on that one.

Rose had called my mom around lunch time to give her a heads up. She wanted to come home, but Rose talked her out of it. She came back at the regular time, and Rose left. She came to sit by me on the couch and wrapped her arm around my shoulder.

"You want to talk about it?

"Not anymore tonight. Maybe in a few days."

"Okay. Just so you know I canceled our New Years Eve party." My mom always had people over for New Years. I had completely forgotten it was coming up and felt awful that she did it because of me.

"No, mom, I'll be fine. Don't do that. If it gets to be too much I'll just go to my room."

"It's already done, besides they needed volunteers to work at the hospital. It's always a busy night."

"Thanks, mom. I know I don't say it often enough, but you're the best mom ever and I love you." I leaned in and gave her a big hug.

"I love you too. And, I'm sorry, I know this is all my fault. I never should've pushed him on you to start with."

"It's really okay mom. I'm a big girl and I obviously can cause my own problems."