Ch. 2 - Getting Reacquainted

-x-

I trudged up the staircase and Alice took me into a bedroom that smelled like strawberry cream and cinnamon. This whole house smelled like candy. The scent of these vampires was doing nothing for my sweet tooth.

She flipped on the lamp and set the rest of my stuff down on the dresser. All of the furniture was Victorian style cherry wood, and the wallpaper was a deep violet color. The bed was high and wide enough for three or four people, with a purple satin pillowy headboard. The four posts had carvings of cherubs and roses that matched the rest of the elegant furniture.

I kind of gaped for a couple seconds, until I remembered whose home I was a guest in. The Cullens had never offered me anything short of extravagant.

Now that I had seen this room there was no way I'd be able to squeeze myself in a shitty dorm, sharing breathing space with a roommate I didn't know.

"It's the master bedroom, so it has a bath over here." Alice pointed her elbow toward the door in the corner of the room, beside the closet.

"Wow." I murmured as I stepped over to the circular tower of windows that overlooked the woods around the house. "You sure no one minds that I have this?"

"It's not like the rest of us sleep." She smirked. I had forgotten again...

I smiled sheepishly and started to unzip my duffle bag.

"So," She plopped herself down on the end of the high bed, her feet swinging off the edge of the mattress. "Emmett and Carlisle will be here all night if you need anything. I need to stay with Jasper overnight but I'll drive over in the morning to prepare you for your first class on Monday."

"I'm already as prepared as I can be." I muttered sharply. "Alice..."

There was an unmistakable twinkle in her eye. "I just want to make sure your shoes match."

I groaned.

"Black converse match everything, Alice."

She shook her head lightly and tutted. "You'll want to make a better impression than that."

"The hell I will." I chuckled bitterly. "Who have I got to impress anyway?" I asked nonchalantly as I tossed a pair of socks over my shoulder.

She gave me a wry glance and pursed her lips. "You never know, there could be a guy..."

I scoffed at her and kicked my empty duffle under the bed. "I doubt it."

There would never be another guy that could tear my heart away from Jacob.

"Ok, well." She hopped to her feet and walked backwards out the door. "I'll let you sleep. See you in the morning."

"Thanks, Alice."

She closed the door softly behind her and I heard her tapping down the stairs.

I didn't bother putting the rest of my stuff away; I was too tired to do anything more than brush my teeth and throw on a pair of pajamas. The bed had like fifty layers of quilts and had that sweet smell infused into the sheets. I curled up under only the top blanket and tugged on the chain of the purple tiffany lamp on the nightstand.

It wasn't too dark in the room, but just dark enough. Some of the orangish light from the street glowed behind the sheer curtains that covered the windows.

I took in a deep breath and tried to sleep.

That was when the thoughts of Edward began.

It wasn't that I had never thought about him every night, at least in my subconscious. But Edward had always been that sort of hum in the back of my mind, while Jacob occupied the forefront. Something tonight had switched things around - now Jacob was the distant hum in my subconscious, and Edward was center stage.

I kept wondering if I had been the only reason he'd gone to the Volturi. For some reason, it still seemed inconceivable that he would go through so much trouble to end his life over me. I had assumed our love to be unhealthy and devoid of compatibility. It was one-ended, with Edward always bringing the weight down. I had nothing to offer such a beautiful, talented, perfect young man, and he had too much to offer me.

Jake had been the answer to my prayers on more than one occasion in the past. He was kind and he cared about me just as much as Edward had - only he didn't make me feel guilty for doing so. I could love Jake back in a genuine, but less extravagant way, and that was something I had never properly been able to do for Edward.

Somewhere deep in the ugly violent pits of my innermost self, though, I wept for Edward. I had chosen his loss over Jake's but instead I had gotten two for the price of one. My heart still ripped itself to shreds when I thought of what my life might have been like with Edward - even moreso than it did when I fantasized about a future with Jake. I suppose part of me still believed Jake could love me - that I hadn't truly been given up by him yet. There was always the chance that Leah...

I couldn't think about that.

I tossed and turned beneath the sheet, trying to clear my head. It was all behind me now. Why couldn't I just move on? Why was I so fucking preoccupied with the past?

With an exasperated sigh, I grudgingly turned the lamp on and let my eyes adjust to the room. I surveyed my surroundings sleepily for a few minutes, looking for anything to preoccupy myself until I fell asleep. My gaze dropped to the halfway opened the drawer to the nightstand, and I pulled the handle curiously to look inside. At the bottom of the drawer there was a thick black Bible, a tattered red notebook that looked to be very old, and a sleek black fountain pen.

Odd.

I wasn't about to challenge my unexercized mind with a passage from the Bible, so I flipped through the small notebook, looking for hints as to who it could have belonged to. It was completely blank, not even a scrawled date in the corner of the cover. I experimentally shook the fountain pen and tried writing my name on the first page.

The ink was red and my first thought was that it reminded me of blood.

Creepy.

With a sick smile, I tucked myself back between the pillows and started to free write in the blood ink about my horrible life. I wrote about how much I wanted Jacob back, and how much I hated myself for abandoning Edward. I wrote about how fucking freaked out I was to start college and how I just wished I could fall asleep already.

I don't remember when I stopped writing, but before I knew it, I was blinking my eyes open to a brightened room.

The tattered little notebook had been tossed aside, closed with the fountain pen clamped to the back cover. I cautiously opened it back up to the first page, just to be sure I wasn't dreaming that I'd written in it. All of my scrawl was still there. I read through the first couple sentences of my thoughts before I started to feel too sick to go on. I hadn't been in a pleasant mood last night.

I was just about to roll out of bed when I jumped at the sound of someone knocking on my door.

"Yeah?" I called groggily, tucking the covers back around my body.

"Room service." Emmett's muffled voice announced jovially from the other side.

I laughed grudgingly. "C'mon in."

He pushed open the door with ease and strolled inside, carrying a considerably sized tray with two covered plates and a glass of orange juice.

"Sorry if you wanted to make something for yourself, but Alice was kind of restless when she got here this morning." He grinned as he carefully set the tray down in my lap.

"She's already here?" I whispered, already exhausted.

"She's been here since five AM." His eyes sparkled humorously as he sat on the edge of the bed.

"Damn." I sighed as I opened the cover to reveal three slices of French toast. "It's like I hired a second shadow."

He covered his mouth to keep from laughing too loudly. "You'll never know how ecstatic she is to have you here."

"I think I can guess." I mumbled around a forkful of food. "You don't think she'll cook for me every morning, do you?"

He blinked steadily, but I could tell he was trying not to bust out laughing. "You might have to talk with her about that - you know, set some boundaries?"

"Mm." I was reluctant about having to set boundaries for Alice regarding anything. I hated the way her face fell whenever I told her I wanted to do something without her help.

"She seems happier since you got here, Bella." His voice had a more serious tone to it, and I couldn't help but meet his gaze.

"You all seem happy... well except -"

"Carlisle?" He said quietly and I nodded. Emmett took a long breath and looked around the room as he thought. "He's going through some sort of crisis or something. I don't know what caused it. It was like after it happened, he went into shock or something. He seemed like he was going to be okay, then a couple months later, he just - snapped."

"...Snapped?" I repeated carefully, setting my fork down.

"He doesn't spend as much time with us as he used to. I mean, I know we all live separately now, and he has his work at the seminary... but he just seems like he'd rather be somewhere else when we are together." He paused, frowning. "I think maybe we remind him of.. her - them."

I murmured a small sound of understanding and looked down at my plate, suddenly not as hungry as I had been a second ago. "You're happy though, aren't you?" I asked him tentatively, afraid that I was opening up an unwelcome topic.

He was silent for a brief moment before he gave me a half-hearted smile. "Yeah." He shrugged. "I loved Rose, and I still do. She was my everything." His eyes looked glassy as he averted his gaze from my face. "But I was never one to dwell on what happened yesterday. I try to look ahead instead of behind. I know she's gone, but there isn't anything I can do to change that now - and I know she would have wanted me to be the happiest I could be, even without her."

I felt myself near to crying as I listened to him, trying to tell himself that it was okay, and though he seemed as convinced as he could be, I was in tune with him enough to notice that he was just as lost.

"It doesn't bother you that you have to live for eternity without the person you love?" I asked numbly, feeling suddenly guilty that I had trouble getting over Jake when he was still alive and well, only a few hundred miles away.

"Of course it bothers me." He continued, and his voice was so quiet I hardly recognized it. "But I have hope that I can find love again. Just because I'm a vampire doesn't mean my heart is stuck in the stone forever." He forced a weak smile.

"Yeah." I wiped at the beds of my eyes. "You'll find someone, Emmett. You deserve it."

"Well, someday. I'm in no rush." He put his hands decisively on both knees. "It'll take a lot longer than a year or so to recover from a loss like this."

We lapsed into a long but grateful silence, each lost in our own thoughts, and just enjoying the other's company.

"You'd better finish that up or Alice will have a fit." He grimaced, eyeing my full plate of French toast and eggs.

I sniffed and forced a few more bites down before the hurricane hit.

"Bella, I found the cutest jeans last night that I want you to wear for your first day..." She sidled in through the door, both her arms draped with clothes, a plastic bag filled with what looked like shoes in one hand.

"I have an outfit picked out already." I pointed out while Emmett covered his grin.

Her mouth fell open in shock as she stared at the gray sweatpants and hoodie I had laid out on the couch. "That's not an outfit!"

Emmett got up from his place on the bed then, and waved at me before making a quick departure. "Don't let her burn your whole wardrobe."

I groaned, but I couldn't help my smile as Alice picked up my sweat pants with the tips of her fingers and dropped them into the bottom bureau.

"Try these on." She ordered cheerfully as she held up a pair of dark denim jeans with gold lining on the pockets.

I swallowed the last of my breakfast and washed it down with orange juice before swinging my legs over the side of the bed and taking them from her hands.

She rushed back over to the wardrobe, adding new articles of clothing to place on the sparse hangers while I slipped into the jeans.

"I don't know how you were expecting to last more than a few weeks with the clothes you brought, Bella."

"I wasn't." I laughed pointedly. "No one in college wears a different outfit every day - and no one in high school did either, except for you - " I stopped before I would have to mention Rose, and started ranting. "Besides, who says I want to get noticed here? I'd rather just be the loner who no one cares about anyway."

"What kind of attitude is that?" I looked up at her face and noticed that she looked genuinely put off. I ignored her question and got up to show her the jeans, adjusting my hips in the mirror.

"They're perfect." She said succinctly as she gave my legs a quick glance of approval.

"Okay. So what do I wear as a top?" I asked, just to humor her. Maybe if she got it all out of her system now, we'd be better off.

She smiled indulgently and slipped a crisp pink cotton dress shirt off the hanger. "Always start simple on your first day."

I scoffed inwardly. The outfit was anything but simple as far as my wardrobe went, but I guess to her it was.

I tried the top on, and it fit okay, though it was a little tight. Alice said it was supposed to be that way, and I just had to find a lighter bra to wear underneath it.

If I was wearing anything that required a change in bra color, it probably meant I should be in something else.

But I didn't tell Alice that. I had a feeling her interest in dressing me would die down after the first few weeks, and then I could go back to sweats and t-shirts.

"Don't you like it?" She asked in an almost crestfallen voice, brushing my sleeve as we looked in the mirror together. "Of course I like it. I just don't think it's me." I shrugged, starting to undo the buttons again. She rolled her eyes and headed back to the closet.

"Your style is simple and classy, Bella." She said primly. "This outfit is the ideal starter outfit for a first day at University."

I sighed heavily as I pulled the top over my head and replaced it with a loose brown t-shirt. "So long as it only has to be for the first day."

She turned to grin at me. "I knew you liked it."