"Nobody Lives Forever"

I follow Bella into the kitchen so she could make herself some "food". We have always kept some "food" in the house, just because Esme needs to buy it for appearance's sake. We get rid of the perishables every once in a while, but we have less of a sense of urgency about the stuff that doesn't rot. Which means that we end up with an overabundance of strange canned goods. Bella was a little surprised to see how many jars of capers we had. And cumin, whatever that is.

I mean, I don't even remember eating capers or cumin when I was human. It wasn't like my Mom would whip up a batch of capers a la cumin or anything. Does anyone actually eat that stuff? Or are you required to have it in your pantry in case the neighbors show up?

So Bella is making some sort of meal that involves chicken, I think. She offers me the cold chicken blood that's drained out onto the Styrofoam tray, but I grimace at her. Smart-ass.

"Angela is having a going away party tomorrow. Do you want to go?" She asks me.

"Where is she going?" I watch as Bella slices some French bread.

"College?" she says, raising an eyebrow at me sarcastically. Oh, I think that this is one of those times when I was supposed to know what not to say and I didn't and now she is upset. Shit.

"Are you upset about Angela going away?" I ask, hoping that that's it.

"No. Why would I be?" I'm in deep trouble now. She won't even look at me to give me the sarcasm brow, and she's watching the chicken cook. Watching chicken cook is actually a really good metaphor for the tedium that is my life, if instead of chicken you substitute something like "glaciers" and instead of cook you say "move." That's how boring it's been until Bella and Thomas came along. It occurs to me to tell her how she's changed my life for the better, but she's upset right now and I'm not sure if this is the right time. Sam Spade never had to think about this stuff. He'd just say the wrong thing and then the girl would slap him and then he'd give her a smoldering kiss and everything would be cool. Lucky bastard.

"Uh, I can…" Just then Jasper walks into the kitchen, stops suddenly and throws up his hands and says, "Whoa! Tension!" and walks back out quickly.

Bella laughs and her bad mood dissipates. "I'm sorry, Edward. I didn't mean to get all snarly on you all of a sudden. I'm just kind of jealous of Angela for getting to go to school, but really? It was totally my choice to have Thomas and I'm really lucky to have you guys helping me out. I'm being kind of immature about this."

"I think it's understandable, Bella. The guy from Texas whose show Emmett watches all the time? He says that feelings aren't wrong, it's just how we deal with them."

"Are you talking about Dr. Phil?" she looks at me skeptically.

"Yeah, that guy. You're allowed to feel upset about not getting to go to college right away. I just want to know what I can do to help." She sighs and shakes her head.

"See, Edward, that's part of the problem. You're always so sweet and protective, and you try so hard to make me happy, and your family does so much for us. It makes me feel like a jerk for getting upset about this stuff."

"We love you. We want you to be happy." I walk over to where she's watching her chicken cook and wrap my arms around her. "I love you," I say into her hair. She just sighs and we hang out having that uncomfortable silence that happens after someone tells someone else that they love them and the other person doesn't say anything. Awkward. But I knew that Bella didn't love me the way I love her, and I had begged her to stay with me anyway the night we had our "Chinatown" Chinese food date, the Night of the Hideous Honesty. So I kind of got what I asked for.

Bella lets out another big sigh and pushes away from me. "I know you love me, Edward, and I like you, too. It's just hard to figure out how much of it is love, and how much of it is gratitude for all that you do combined with…" She makes a gesture indicating the space between the two of us. "You know…lust."

"I'll take it," I say, maybe just a little too fast. She laughs. "No, really, Bella. I'm willing to settle for gratitude and lust. I'm not picky." She shakes her head at me and turns back to the chicken.

"That's just not fair to you. You deserve to have someone really love you. I'm not saying that I don't. I'm just confused."

"Don't worry about it, Sweetie. I'm not going anywhere. Really. I'm immortal and stuff. Take your time." Bella laughs and takes her chicken and capers out of the oven. I tell her, "I'm going to check on Thomas. Enjoy your poultry or whatever."

I walk out shaking my head. I had to fall in love with a teenager? Seriously? I mean I know I'm not the most mature guy in the world, but a little more conviction about this stuff would certainly be comforting. I'd even be willing to settle for the whole, "You've done a lot for me and you'd make a good husband. Let's go play house." She's worried about taking emotional advantage of me? I wish she'd take advantage of me. In every way possible, especially the dirty ones.

I go into my/her room and peek at the squirmy one. He's starting to move around a little bit like he does when he's going to wake up soon. I pick him up and get stuff to change him. We have a little talk about how his mom is indecisive and how it's making me a little frustrated. He seems to agree, judging by his lack of protest.

"I'm glad we had this talk, dude. Let's go get you some boob. One of us should get some, right?"

I am clever enough to time my location and helpfulness that night so that I get into bed with Bella and Thomas when they go to bed. It's just a matter of, "Oh look! I just so happen to be here in my pajamas and available to hold Thomas while you get ready for bed. Of course, I'll hold him while you brush your teeth! You're lucky I wasn't busy cataloging my stamp collection or making my Christmas card list." I can't tell you how much I love just lying there with the two of them. Even if there's like no chance of getting frisky with an infant in the bed.

^0^ ^0^ ^0^

The going away party at the Webber's is cool, if feeling uncomfortable because the guest of honor's dad thinks that your girlfriend is a brazen hussy for getting pregnant out of wedlock is your idea of cool. Not that he says anything. Mostly he just glares at Bella and thinks nasty thoughts. I glare back at him a bunch anyway. Which confuses the crap out of him, because he actually likes me. Carlisle's dad was a preacher, in the church of crazy vampire-burning fanatics - a somewhat obscure sect - and he always goes out of his way to be nice to Reverend Webber. So, he can't figure out a) what I'm doing with the town trollop; and b) why I'm looking at him like he spit on my mom.

Everybody's pretty excited to see Thomas, though. I won't let that knuckle-dragger Mike Newton even get close to him, which is easy to pull off because Mike Newton is pretty intimidated by me ever since I made him soil himself on prom night. Good times, huh, Mike?

I remind Bella of that and she looks at me suspiciously. "You told me that you were following me because the wolves would blame you if anything happened to me. Was that the truth?"

I shake my head at her and smile. "Nope. All lies. I was stalking you. In a loving way," I add quickly. "I wanted to kill Mike just for being your date, let alone trying to manhandle you."

"Manhandle me?" She smirked at me. "Could you come up with a more archaic expression? Was he being a masher?" I laugh.

"Yeah, he was trying to dishonor you."

She moved closer and fluttered her lashes at me. "Ooh, was he attempting to defile me?" She was just flirting with me now.

"You know, this would be hot if we weren't talking about Mike Newton," I said to her, bending my head down to murmur in her ear.

"Like if we were talking about you ravishing me?" she purred at me.

"You're playing with fire, Sweetie. You're teasing someone who's going on eleven decades without scoring," I grin at her, and she gives me a kiss that gets more interesting right up until we realize that we have an infant in between us. "Plus, Reverend Webber thinks that you are a brazen hussy." I give the good reverend a wink and he looks away quickly.

We mingle a bit more and Bella eats some spinach dip and then I suggest that we go home and watch a movie. I hope that "watch a movie" is code for "make out on the couch", but I figure I'll pick a good movie just so it's not a total loss if she doesn't want to swap spit with me.

I decide on "Double Indemnity" because I don't think that I could handle the sexual tension in "The Postman Always Rings Twice" if Bella isn't willing to make out with me on the couch.

We return to an empty house - thank you, Jesus – this day is getting better and better. Bella takes Thomas upstairs to do a wardrobe change and put him down for a nap. I concentrate on trying to give the living room some romantic ambiance. I figure candles seem weird for movie watching, so I just try to strategically arrange the furniture so she has to be really close to me, while still being able to hear the baby monitor which she insists on using even though I can hear everything happening on the third floor without it.

I have the movie cued up and the room just the way I want it, and I pause to listen for Bella upstairs. I can hear her mumbling softly to Thomas. I decide to leave a note for my family to leave us the hell alone if they get back soon, and am thinking of creative threats when I realize that I have been so preoccupied with making my nefarious little plans that I haven't been paying attention to anything else.

Which has allowed the mysterious Victoria to sneak all the way up on me without catching her. She's really hard to detect; she's like the vampire equivalent of a greased pig. And the only reason that I even know she's here is because she's got me in a headlock.

I want to yell for Bella to stay where she is, but now it's too late and we are all standing around in the living room; Bella at the base of the stairs looking at us wide-eyed and scared and Victoria and I, me with my head about to get wrenched off.

"This wasn't exactly the way I planned it," she growls in my ear. "I wanted you to watch me kill your pretty little human and her baby. But I guess this will have to do."

I notice that Bella had changed clothes while she was upstairs, into something a little less demure. So maybe if I wasn't about to be decapitated I might have gotten some action tonight. Good to know.

a/n: The amazing Betham beta'ed this as well as all the other nonsense I send her with little or no notice. Speaking of which, I wrote Bella's POV of chapter 17 - where she has some important girl/succubus talk with Tanya – for the Fandom fights Tsunami compilation. Fandomfightstsunami (dot) blogspot (dot) com. I generally like to use this spot for apologizing for not replying to reviews but it was out of my control this time as this lovely site was preventing me from doing so. So I'll just say that I'm sorry ff (dot) net sucks and thank you for the lovely reviews.

I know this one's pretty short so I've got a poem for you from Emmett's Asian poetry writing days. This is a Sijo, a Korean poetic form usually consisting of 3 lines of 14-16 syllables each.

My wife Rosalie is ultra hot. But she is angry with me.

I have provoked that pansy Edward again.

Now he's playing moody music. I guess I'll go eat a bear.

xoxo JuJu