Chapter Thirty-Three Notes:
Things no one will read:
(1) This chapter has a Miss Cleo reference. Don't know who the hell she is? Youtube her now for maximum enjoyment.
(2) This story is somewhat canon. And somewhat not. Hence, its label as an AU. As this progresses, things get further and further from the books and I take several liberties. One of which is the principal's name. Some of you kindly notified me his name is Principal Greene. I screwed up, but after (too much) debate, I decided to keep him as Principal Huntley. He's the only character I got to create from scratch in this entire story, so I'm attached to him.
(3) Booksgalore beta'd this chapter and the next. And listened to my bitching and whining. Woman deserves a medal. A virtual high five will have to do.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: Sixty Seconds
Too late, he realizes what's about to happen. Though, really, he had to know this was a possibility. Still, he didn't care; he had something to say, and regardless of the risk, she would hear him out.
In his eyes, fury and disgust morph into fear. Hulking over an oblivious, apologetic fool of a girl, his body begins to shake. Skin becomes hair, teeth sharpen to fangs, and adolescent pain surrenders to animalistic rage.
His eyes are no longer anything the girl recognizes. Nothing human remains inside this thing; it's beyond reason, rabid and starving. She can't let her see herself as its prey. But she's not naïve enough to believe she's merely an obstacle standing in its path. Rather, she is the enemy, a selfish, vampire-loving traitor. Maybe it has some sort of unthinking, primal instinct that feels her heart lies elsewhere. Maybe it remembers what its human alter ego heard pour out of her mouth moments earlier. Maybe that's why this thing pushes her defenseless body to the sand and stays instead of racing down the beach and giving her only a brief, isolated instant to replay in her nightmares rather than a lifetime of disfigurement.
The human it once was received permanent damage due to changed loyalties in her heart. When it snarls at her, she swears it's hissing "an eye for an eye."
She wriggles in the filth of the cold, wet ground, praying for unconsciousness to take her. But the fates demand she feel every second of her fall into freakishness. The thing climbs on top of her flailing body and burrows its claws into her pliant flesh, branding it as its own and forever destroying any chance of her forgetting this very moment.
It digs and tears and takes until she expects to see chunks of her own body piling in her periphery. This isn't an accident; this is her sentence, her punishment.
"Stop," she cries. "Please."
It excavates deeper and cracks her spine, effectively telling her it thinks she still has a debt to pay.
Her limbs jerk and spasm; she'll never feel them again. Her body will lie useless while her mind will have no other focus than the night her freedom was taken from her.
Her face, suffocating in the sand, manages to shift when something wet and warm leaks down her temple. Saliva from the hairy beast above robs her tears of their purity.
"Please," she whimpers. "Please just go."
Its talons pierce further into her limp body. She hears the nauseating squish of vital organs shifting and smells the rusty, vomit-inducing odor of her own blood. Past her fractured spine, the thing finds the girl's heart. Its claws penetrate multiple chambers at once, but she doesn't die immediately. She still has time to remember. She sees her father's face when she climbed off a plane at Sea-Tac in ninth grade, so happy that he'll finally know his daughter outside of federal holidays and a single week in the summer. She sees her mother, radiant in a simple white dress at the county courthouse, kissing her cheek after the girl walks her down the aisle and whispering, "I love you, sweetheart." She sees a boy with pale skin and hair the color of burnt sienna, her favorite crayon. As she begins to black out, she remembers his voice as he whispered in her ear, "I belong to you."
Minutes or hours later, her body loses consciousness. If it awakes at all, it will spend decades confined to respirators and the sterile cardboard of hospital sheets.
Ankles deep in salt water, I watch my own body fade away on the shore. The beast that ripped me from normalcy senses me and, still atop my near-lifeless physical form, turns to study me.
"You're Jake," I whisper. "You're sweet and kind and selfless. You're still in there. Somewhere. You have to be."
"I am," the creature smirks. The voice is Jacob's—albeit plagued by a sadistic tone my Jake never used—but the body from which it sounds is still hairy and menacing. It narrows its eyes and whispers, "But I'm also this."
"You're good, deep down. I believe in you," I vow.
From underneath its colossal legs, I see my physical form acquiesce and weaken until nothing remains but a limp body of knotted hair, grated flesh, and splintered bone.
"You ruined me, Bella. You ruined us. All for a filthy bloodsucker you can never trust." Under matted, mangy hair, its lips twist into a sneer. "I can find you. Anytime. Anywhere."
From behind him, a crowd forms. The faces are aloof, and though I am more familiar with seeing them panicked, I recognize all of them. Harry. Billy. Sue. Jared. Paul. Sam. Embry. They nod in agreement, silently informing me that I deserve this.
I awoke to a forehead dripping with sweat and a stomach churning with the heaviness of a cement truck. I stumbled into the bathroom, crying in silent heaves until I spilled my dinner into the toilet.
Anytime, nightmare Jake had told me. Anywhere.
After I scrubbed the dream out of my mouth with my toothbrush, I crept back to my bedroom and prayed Charlie was completely oblivious to my trek to the bathroom. My face twisted on pillow as I digested Hallucinogenic Jake's words.
It wasn't real. But I still believed it was possible that the cocky, determined stranger Jake had become would find me.
In the dark, I fumbled on my nightstand for the plastic bottle of sleeping pills. I didn't need to flip on the light to know that four pills was twice the dosage Dr. Cullen prescribed. But they were necessary. If the nightmare had a sequel, I didn't want to remember it when I woke. Palming the pills and shoving them into my waiting mouth, I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed for morning.
X X X
I woke the next day disoriented with a vague memory of medicating myself sometime during the middle of the night. There had been some sort of bad dream, but I refused to dig deep enough to bring it back to my conscious thoughts. As my eyes focused, they found the red glow of the numbers on my alarm clock. Six forty-eight. I had a little over eight hours to pull myself together.
Three o'clock was my high noon. It was then that Edward and I would have another one of our standoffs. Our hands would mold around dishes coated with hardened remnants of unwanted lunches rather than pistols, but the electric tension crackling in the air would be the same as if we were facing off in the OK Corral amidst tumbleweeds and curious townsfolk.
Because of my afterschool detention, I expected the hours leading up to 3PM to suck on an epic scale. However, I wrongly assumed I had nothing to worry about until I set foot on school property
A few minutes and a trip to the kitchen later, with good intentions and Cheerio dust in his mustache, Charlie brought reality crashing down upon me earlier than I'd planned.
"Harry's been in the hospital this past week. Heart trouble. They're letting him go home tonight, so I was thinking about paying him a visit at home tomorrow." Already, my heart beat from my esophagus, even before he added, "You could come with me."
Awaiting my answer, Charlie ate his cereal in oblivion.
I choked on mine.
After gulping down gasps of air followed by half a glass of milk, I tried changing the subject. "Remember that you have to pick me up at five tonight and tomorrow, Dad. I've got that group project I'm working on after school." It was a lie, but lying now came so easily to me that I welcomed deception over Charlie's topic of choice.
"Yeah, sure. I remember," he muttered dismissively. "Anyway, I went over to Olympic Medical last night. Leah and Seth kept asking about you."
It took three tries before I could say, "I can't."
"They seemed really worried. It'd be nice if you showed them you're doing okay." He took great pains not to look at me as he offered me reassurance as an incentive. "We won't make any other stops outside of the Clearwaters' place."
"No." My hands left their original positions gripping the bicep on each opposing arm and hit the table with more force than I'd intended, sending my spoon rattling against the oak. "La Push is—I-I can't go there, Dad."
Never one to push, he dismissed the subject, muttering as if embarrassed, "Just thought you'd like to see your friends."
"Friends… They're not—I can't go there," I repeated in a hoarse whisper. Leaving my cereal bowl on the table, I stood abruptly. "Alice is giving me a ride this morning. I'll be in my room."
"Bells?"
"Dad, I—"
Alarm in his eyes, Charlie interrupted me by holding up a hand, palm flat to the air, likely hoping it would operate as a stop sign to any emotional waterworks. "When's the last time you got the mail?"
I rocked back and forth on my heels, still too keyed up for a normal response. "Uh…"
"I ordered something for you. Should be here any day now."
Checks and gift cards were Charlie's trademark. Any present that fit into a box and required wrapping paper was foreign to him. If he made extra effort, despite my need to retreat into myself at the moment, so could I.
I pushed the lump in my throat down with a swallow. "Thanks, Dad. I'll look for it on my way out this morning."
Turning around, I thundered up the stairs for fear that Charlie would somehow ferret out the truth behind my sudden panic.
My bedroom wasn't an improvement over the kitchen. Each corner served as a reminder that the room no longer swaddled me from the insanity of my not-so-brave new world. The window hiding behind the dresser served as the means by which Edward stole his way back into my life. The bare nightstand, cleared of its former collage of Jake-related mementos and a pumpkin I smashed a lifetime ago, now reflected a lack of inside jokes and heart-stopping gifts of unspoken endearment. In the closet, every remotely cute article of clothing I owned went unworn because my ruined body couldn't bear contact with snug fabric; instead, I depended on the loose-fitting sweatshirts and too-large, low-rise jeans rumpled in the laundry basket next to the door.
The worst, by far, was the bed. There, I'd cried out Edward's name in desperation from my dreams. Last night, the dreams turned to nightmares my memory couldn't fully recall other than a sense of heaviness settled into the pit of my stomach when I woke.
When Charlie made his fatal inquiry this morning, the heaviness gave way to near-hysterics. Knowing I had just moments before Alice bounded in or Charlie crept by the doorway to check on me, I closed my eyes, settled atop my bed, and began my battle anew.
Just as I regained my carefully preserved mental block, Alice arrived and did her usual mummification of my back. "These are coming out soon," she mused, referring to the stitches. "Soon you're not going to need me anymore."
I lowered my hoodie down over my newest set of bandages, gulping as I shook my head. "I'll still need you, Alice."
Her smile could have easily swallowed her entire face. "Thanks."
I owed her gratitude, not vice versa, but I could only manage a small smile of my own.
Not one to sit still for long, Alice hopped off the bed and grabbed my backpack off the floor. "Ready?"
I followed her out and headed toward the end of the driveway, where a large box rested against the base of the pole supporting our mailbox. Grabbing the box and a varied assortment of catalogues and mass mailings from the mailbox itself, I settled into the Jeep with Alice.
She eyed the box and smirked. "Aren't you going to open it?"
"Why don't you just tell me what's in it, Miss Cleo?"
Giggling, Alice responded, "Where's the fun in that?"
I ripped open the tape at the top of the box with the tip of my house key and lifted a heavy, rectangular object from its confines. "Oh my God. It has…wheels."
Charlie meant well. He really did. But he hadn't bought new clothing or furniture for me since I was a fetus. His taste wasn't exactly mine…or anyone's.
"It's fine if you're going to the airport," she interjected with stilted optimism.
It was a suitcase. And it was cotton-candy pink, the sort of bag a six-year-old Barbie aficionada uses for a weekend trip to Grandma's house.
Charlie probably thought carrying my backpack in my current condition was too much of a chore. The way he took care of me warmed my heart, but no one at Forks High needed wheels to transport their text books. The last thing I wanted was another reminder of how I was different from the rest.
When we arrived at school, I tucked the junk mail into the front pocket of the suitcase and shoved it until it fit in my locker, planning to wheel it out with me when Charlie picked me up after detention to avoid hurting his feelings.
X X X
Even without a pink suitcase rolling behind me, I still couldn't manage traveling from class to class incognito.
Throughout the entire day, Edward's stare robbed me of invisibility. In the hallways, at lunch, during English class…every fraction of an inch my body moved, Edward's eyes followed. Yet, he never broached the outer limits of my personal space. Not once did he confront me with mention of my desperate sobfest in my driveway the night before. Even though he'd definitely seen it and surely knew what my pleading stare into the darkness meant, he'd kept his distance. We both knew I'd been looking for him, maybe even missing him.
But he'd done nothing.
Which was brilliant, really.
Because it only made me more confused.
Empty emotions no longer protected me from the truth. My anger wasn't strong enough to block the degree to which I yearned for my favorite version of Edward. However, I wasn't a saint, so unabashed kindness was out of the question. My confusion trapped me in an answerless gray area; I couldn't acknowledge Edward yet I was incapable of ignoring him.
This became obvious after my first sight of him following third period. He leaned against his closed locker door, legs stretched before him, ankles crossed, hands buried in the front pockets of his jeans. Edward became the lone image in focus; the rest of our classmates rushed by us in a blur, ignorant to the magnetism of his presence. He turned his head toward me and, even from twenty feet away, rendered me paralyzed.
Blinking once, he gave me a nod, but his face revealed not a trace of emotion. I blinked back, as if my eyes to speak to him in involuntary, indecipherable Morse Code. After several blinks by each of us, he straightened himself out and headed the opposite direction down the hallway, the tornado of copper hair atop his head standing out against the dull haze of the faceless scurrying to their next class.
With my strength directed at fighting off memories of last night's nightmares, feelings for Edward I'd once considered dormant forced their way to the forefront of my mind. The night before, on my knees in the driveway, I'd realized just how much I missed him. This admission was dangerous and possibly a colossal mistake, but it told me I could no longer pretend I hated him. Or that I didn't care. Today, I wore those not-so-simple facts all over my face. Soon, we'd stand next to each other in Forks High School's closet of a kitchen, and those feelings would be obvious to him, if they weren't already.
Had I been a smoker, my neuroses would have driven me through an entire pack by the time the school day came to a close. Instead of turning to nicotine, I resurrected a habit from my childhood and gnawed on my fingernails like a stray dog ripping meat from the bone.
When the clock on the wall ticked away 2:59 and welcomed 3:00, my nails were jagged but my resolve held steady. The plan I'd devised was ludicrous; still, I clung to it like a life preserver.
One minute at a time.
Survive in sixty-second increments.
Don't think; just wash and dry.
I wasn't ready to move forward, nor could I risk the emotional landmines awaiting me if I stepped backward. Mentally, I did my best to morph Edward into Mike Newton, my own personal living, breathing symbol of stagnant lack of interest. With Mike, things were simple. No lust. No discomfort. No hostility. No fluttering pulses. No broken hearts.
I'd played another version of this game before, trying to tell myself Edward didn't matter, that he didn't send my heartstrings into overdrive. The first time I'd played, the game was pointless and I'd lost big. Maybe I was a fool to think this time would be different. Edward wasn't living, he didn't breathe, and time spent in his company was filled with lust, discomfort, and, at times, hostility. He'd caused my heart to both flutter and break. My battle was uphill, but I had to believe that this time I could win in the end.
We were just washing dishes, for Christ's sake.
A minute at a time. Survival. Sixty seconds. Pour the damn dish soap. Rinse. Repeat.
I took calming breaths and rounded the corner, where Principal Huntley awaited me in the cafeteria.
His smile was that of the devil claiming a lost soul. "Our dishwasher is likely as old as you, Miss Swan. As such, it is quite inept when it comes to heavy-duty washing." Huntley gestured to the open kitchen door, through which I could make out piles upon piles of filthy pots and crusty serving vats. "I hope you two don't mind a few hours of heavy scrubbing."
You two. Too late, I realized Edward beat me to detention. I turned toward the kitchen, and there he was, propped against the doorframe. He carefully watched for signs that I'd either bolt or erupt in molten rage.
Lifting my chin, I did neither. Instead, I squared my shoulders, buried my nerves, and hauled myself over to where he waited. Washing dishes, I reminded myself. Child's play.
Our eyes met. My heart stopped. Royally, I was screwed.
But I kept walking. Toward the kitchen. Toward him. Toward death by dirty dishes, sponges, and awkward silences.
At my approach, Edward backed up from the door, into the corner of the kitchen until his hands found their way up behind his back to grip the edge of the counter. With obvious impatience, we watched each other. I waited for him to stop staring; he waited for me to speak. One word from me would supply the answer to the question that likely bounced around in his head since the night before. One syllable would tell him exactly where we stood.
The joke, however, was on him. Because even I didn't know what this—us—was anymore. What we were, what we could be. Whether it was too late or too soon.
Lies were futile, as we were beyond deception now, so I went with the ambiguous truth.
"This is what it is," I announced, not looking to the chiseled features of his face.
"Which is…?"
"Punishment."
To my right, Edward flicked on the faucet. "The worst kind," he agreed, his voice neither relieved nor nervous. I had no idea if he was being sarcastic or simply admitting he too feared the awkwardness of the next two hours.
His words gained a new level of truth when he slowly unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and tangled the tips of his fingers in the fabric as he rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. Simultaneously, we both caught me staring at the exposed flesh of his forearms. His brow furrowed in confusion, and I'm sure my own face shared a similar expression. Whatever my mental lapse was…I couldn't identify it.
From the cafeteria, the double doors slammed, indicating Huntley had disappeared back to his cavern of certificates and carbon paper, leaving Edward and I alone in silence except for the hiss of running water.
Without speaking further, we decided he would wash, I would dry.
For the first few minutes, I ignored our past history and held onto hope that my sixty-second plan would work.
Had I been robbed of my sense of smell, sight, touch, and hearing, perhaps it would have.
However, when Edward stretched his upper body several feet across the countertop to pick up a macaroni-encrusted metal pot from a far corner, the game was over.
For the first time in months, I truly saw him. Or, more accurately, his body. His shoulders. Those unfortunately exposed forearms. The base of his neck. The slight movement of his upper arms when he dipped his hands into the steaming water pooling in the sink. My heightened nerves practically combusted when my eyes absently wandered toward his waist, where the hem of his shirt rose up past the waistband of his jeans to reveal a sliver of pale skin along the small of his back.
It was perfect—smooth and scarless. Unlike mine.
The comparison proved costly, as it stirred up the one terrifying memory I had to quash. I pushed to feel something else, anything to keep that night in the sand from replaying itself in my head. My hormones heard my plea and complied, but the alternative wasn't much of an improvement. Instead of suffocating horror, I was cursed with waves of…attraction. My breath sped up as if I'd just been saved from drowning.
Attraction.
Jesus.
It couldn't be helped. Trying to chase it off was of no avail; I still felt it: blatant, unwelcome attraction toward Edward. Edward the boy or Edward the vampire. My body didn't see a difference and would take him in any incarnation.
My abdomen contracted; fate had just delivered a hormonal punch to my gut. My mouth was dry and gaping open, telling me I was shocked. Shocked that I noticed, shocked that I cared, shocked that I felt something I'd prayed died months ago.
I barely recognized myself, the girl gawking at a previously unseen part of Edward's flesh. I'd expected to feel awkward and a little queasy during our afternoon together, but I never thought I'd feel this.
Wringing a towel between my fingers, I snapped my attention back to the ceiling and waited for a hollow noise to ring in the empty basin before me, signaling Edward had finished washing the first of many grimy cauldrons.
When the sound came, my eager hands jumped to their drying duty. As if my life depended on it, I ensured each crevice was bone dry.
We worked in tandem for awhile, never speaking or braving eye contact. The silence was not comfortable. Less than two feet of space separated my head from his right shoulder, and I struggled to pretend I didn't notice the way his chest rose and fell with each breath.
A cast-iron saucepan proved the key to my undoing.
Edward washed faster than I could dry. Though I was fairly certain he slowed himself down for my benefit, eventually he'd stacked a mountain of clean pots in the waterless sink in front of me. He'd finished a saucepan, but there was nowhere left to place it, so Edward held it out in the space between us. I finished running my towel over the stock pot in my hands and set it aside. Begrudgingly, I reached into the forbidden void separating him from me. At the last second, I slipped slightly, sending my arm forward, my open palm covering his bent knuckles. They were warm from the water and clutching the pot's handle. My eyes trailed to the soap suds foaming at his wrist, sparkling hypnotically under the fluorescent lights. Realizing I'd hesitated beyond the confines of an accidental touch, I jerked my hand back and removed the instigating pan from his grip.
"Sorry," I mumbled. My response automatically burst from my throat. I hadn't meant to speak, but now that I had, I'd broken our unspoken, mutual vow of silence, granting him permission to follow suit.
"You don't owe me any apologies, Bella."
A double meaning. My tongue pushed against my cheek as I wordlessly scoffed, saying what my vocal cords couldn't: Well played, Cullen.
I knew what he was doing, but it didn't matter. My eyes lifted without my permission. His found me, and we spent a beat too long staring back and forth, our upper bodies angled toward the other, before the dripping saucepan slipped from my fingers.
We were both too distracted to notice until it landed on my foot and the clattered onto the linoleum.
"Ow!" I yelped, jerking us back to reality.
Edward didn't hesitate. Moving to a squatting position at my feet, his fingertips brushed lightly over the toe of my shoe. The strands of his hair weren't robbed of their ruby/chocolate glory under the cheap, artificial lighting. The earlier sight of his exposed lower back had apparently doomed me into a time machine, sending my back into the days of blissful naivety. Now nothing about him escaped my notice.
Gazing up at me with worry, he asked with gently parting lips, "Are you alright?" He sounded panicked, as if every bone below my ankle had shattered upon impact.
The pan had merely grazed my foot, so the pain was short-lived, leaving only a dull ache stemming from the joints in my big toe. By the time Edward finished his question, I felt fine. A wry, unplanned smile pulled at my lips at his needless concern over an empty pan. "I've had worse."
His eyes dwelled on the unexpected upward curvature of my lips before the rest of his face returned to distress. "Try wiggling your toes. Tell me if you feel any pain."
"Relax." I made a show of tapping my entire foot up and down. "I'm not made of glass."
Edward opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it. Rising to a standing position, he took the pan with him and dropped it back into the water, deciding it needed a second washing. "It could have been broken, knowing you. I was simply taking a precaution; you needn't get so defensive."
My eyebrows knitted together. With excessive volume, I shot back, "Look, I know what breaks me and what doesn't. Better than you ever could—"
"Actually, I've been to medical school," he said offhandedly as he finished washing the offending pan. "Twice."
My mouth hung open a bit. "Good for you." In speaking, I aimed for sarcasm. Instead, my voice cheated me by reflecting awe.
Sneaking a sideways glance at him, I saw that though he focused on washing, he grinned in triumph.
I was so stupid.
I'd fallen right into his trap. Because now he'd piqued my curiosity. And we were finally talking, which was likely his plan all along. My inevitable clumsiness gave him the in he'd been waiting for.
In silence or in conversation, the tension between us could be sliced with the unwashed butcher's knife sitting on the counter. So I let him win—this time—and asked with mock sympathy, "Twice? Do vampires learn slower than humans? Did you flunk out the first time around?"
Nothing offended him; he laughed and tapped his temple with his index finger. "We have photographic memories. My comprehension wasn't an issue."
I rolled my eyes. "No, of course not."
Edward leaned forward and propped both elbows on the edge of the sink to better assess the grime on the bowl before him. Still studious of his dish-washing duties, he didn't look up at me as he explained, "I graduated from Harvard med school in 1957. By the 1980s, medicinal technology had progressed significantly, so I attended Johns Hopkins for a bit of a refresher beginning in '88."
He seemed to regret his frankness and averted his eyes back to his drenched hands.
I, however, neither cared nor would let him hide from me. Now that Edward had spoken to me, I was incapable of doing the sensible thing: shutting up. Some things never changed.
He plunked the bowl, now spotless, in front of me. I swathed it with my too-damp dishtowel as I shot back, for lack of anything intelligent to say, "I was one year old in 1988. I think I'd mastered solid foods at that point, but that was probably it."
I slung a sopping dishtowel over the neck of the faucet before grabbing another from a folded stack on the shelf.
Edward studied my movements closely. Finally, he visibly relaxed and replied, "Well, I still can't handle solid food, so you've still got a leg up on me."
My plans for inane conversation were toast, as his phrasing turned my face into a sweaty tomato. All I could focus on were Edward's hands, which did nothing to erase the graphic image in my head. This unforeseen buzz between us bordered on being too much.
I needed to obliterate the silence and quash the voltage that hummed in the air. I dug up the safest response I could think of and eked out, "I've seen you eat. At lunch…haven't I?" Memories—hell, even basic thought patterns—were fuzzy at this point.
"I can eat. Technically. At times it's required in order to keep up appearances. But I find it grotesque and my body can't digest, so I have to…" He trailed off, likely fearing he'd repulsed me with a not-so-veiled reference to vomiting.
If only he knew I'd gladly gab about the texture, odor, and composition of puke for the next hour and a half rather than focus on the long-slumbering attraction that had stirred my hormones and left my brain frazzled and petrified.
I had to say something, so I blurted, "Oh. Well, be careful where you take care of that, or else Jessica Stanley will start a rumor you're bulimic."
"I'll keep that in mind." He handed me another saucepan, giving me a reason to look over at his face. His expression didn't display its usual brooding darkness. He looked amused, and that made me nervous. Or—more accurately—more nervous than I had been before. He was comfortable with me, possibly even…relaxed. Did I want this?
He was speaking again, and I shook my head to refocus on his words rather than his mouth. It didn't matter that I no longer spied his face; his tone of voice confirmed his playful smirk. "That doesn't disgust you?"
"The food thing?" How insulting that he considered me so fragile. "I admit, blood grosses me out. But that's it. I'm not one of your faint-of-heart, turn-of-the-century girlfriends, Edward."
I shouldn't have said it; I didn't mean to say it. But it was too late; I couldn't chase my words with a butterfly net in order to keep them from fluttering into his waiting ears.
He abandoned dishwashing altogether, releasing a pan into the sink with determined flick of his wrist. For a second, I thought he'd let it go in order to keep up our "this is just small talk" façade.
When his body stiffened and a look of determination crossed his face, I knew our pretending was over.
Suddenly, in a single, fluid motion, Edward pivoted on his heels and angled the right side of his upper body against the sink so that he faced me at eye-level. His elbows bent against the counter, his hip cocked. He's too close, my head screamed. He's too far, my heart countered.
I refused to mirror his change in stance, and my attempt to ignore him was cartoonish at best; I practically memorized the ceiling and was thisclose to whistling with mock innocence a la Wile E. Coyote as he set a trap for the Road Runner.
Edward leaned so that his head hovered half a foot from my ear, yet I continued to dry as if completely oblivious to the shift in his body language.
"You should keep washing." The words strained from my now-parched throat.
"I've told you before; I never had a turn-of-the-century girlfriend, Bella." Edward spoke in whisper, earnest while simultaneously sultry, as if we were lovers engaging in apologetic pillow talk. To the very pit of my stomach, anxiety wrecked me.
"Whatever; I don't care." Or, at least, I couldn't afford to.
Milliseconds before he responded, I felt his cool breath tickle the skin beneath my right ear. "I want you to care." The dishes were submerged, forgotten in the dirty water in front of him. "You're the only girl I've ever—"
"Stop." My arm nearest to him shook, the metal of the imitation-silver ring I wore on my right hand reverberating tinny beats against the iron skillet in my grip. "Just stop, Edward. Please."
His head moved over his shoulder to study the location of his original position a foot and a half away, as though looking back at the line he'd just crossed. Too soon, the wheels in his head turned and spoke to both of us. His body language apologized as he stood back in front of his half of the sink and re-submerged his hands back into the murky water.
Time passed, and the world's most excruciating silence began to eat me alive. As if nothing had happened, I moved for a return to our forced small talk. Urgently, too loudly, I spoke up, "So human food grosses you out?"
Embarrassed at my own candor, I glanced around, lowered my voice, and mumbled, "Sorry. I shouldn't have said that."
The longest pregnant pause of my life passed before he granted me reprieve by way of his response. "No one can hear us, Bella. And yes, human food is repulsive."
A shy grin tugged at the corners of my mouth. "All of it?"
"All of it."
Eying the dried chunks of Velveeta on the remaining uncleaned dishes, I nervously chuckled. "Then this must be, like, your personal hell, right?" After a second, I glanced over at him.
Unabashedly, he studied me in return, a cautious smile tugging at his lips. "Not exactly."
I never responded and instead thoroughly dried six pans in roughly two minutes, effectively catching myself up.
"You're falling behind," I chided flatly, mostly because I wanted to fill our newest bout of speechlessness with more meaningless chatter.
Edward crooked an eyebrow at me and dropped another skillet into my now-vacant sink.
I picked it up and mumbled, "I meant that you don't have to slow down for my sake."
"Facades are crucial." Before I could obsess over his frankness, he continued, "Huntley won't let us walk out of here a second before five o'clock."
I played with the edge of the counter, careful not to expose my reddened face to him. My presumption was off-base; his delay had nothing to do with me. "Right. Sorry," I grumbled, as if the blame for this anxiety-filled afternoon somehow fell on me alone instead of us.
"Don't be." I needn't look over at him to know he was watching me. Waiting for me.
Frustration boiled from within; I needed him not to look at me like I could somehow save us, the us I'd always wanted but that he had denied me from experiencing. My words broke into disconnected syllables as I replied, "Don't do that."
Another pan splashed violently in the water before he turned and faced me. "Do what?"
"Deny me a normal day." Weak, pathetic, I begged him from behind my eyes, pleading to him silently in lieu of the words I couldn't say. "This is detention. We're washing dishes. Just…give me that."
His right hand clutched the counter's edge, even though I could feel that it wanted to reach for something else. Edward stepped back, his shoulder now at no risk of brushing mine. "That I can do."
He turned back to the still-soiled pots awaiting him and kept his word. We spent the remainder of our afterschool sentence on Monday washing and drying without dialogue. Though this wasn't the emotionless chore I'd hoped that it would be. His silence told me how much he was trying. After I'd asked him for space, he didn't stand as close, but some contact couldn't be avoided; fleeting brushes of his fingers against mine as we swiped pots and pans, reminding me that contact between us was more fire than ice.
During our final forty-seven minutes together, neither of us uttered a single word. I counted each minute as it passed, not as part of my sixty-second survival plan but because I found myself hating being further and further removed from hearing the gentle lilt of his voice. This fact told me I needed to get the hell out of that kitchen and into the parking lot as soon as possible.
When five o'clock blessed me, Edward and I had finished the entire stack of dirtied cookware, flatware, and a few especially disgusting serving trays. He loaded the rest into the aging industrial-sized dishwasher, which required him to bend over directly in front of my spot at the sink. I craned my neck to stare at the water spots on the ceiling as if the kitchen had turned into the Sistine Chapel.
Huntley dismissed us with borderline-sadistic remorse, but that didn't end my torture.
When I walked out of the kitchen, Edward trailed behind me, playing his role of the world's most timid stalker with achingly flawless precision.
I skipped stopping at my locker for the heinous pink suitcase and pretended that I neither saw nor felt Edward as I found my way to the parking lot. When vicious sheets of rain halted me under the eave of the front entryway, Edward made his move.
He coughed before he spoke. I wondered if it was to clear his throat or to simply warn me that he was about to push us forward, to force us into a less-intense replay of last week's episode in the park. "Do you need a ride home?"
"Thanks, but my dad's on his way."
"Good," he lied, not bothering to cloak his disappointment. Hands in his jacket pockets, he began moving away, leaving me. Edward was beyond graceful in his movements, but his departing words were off pitch and awkward as he asked, "Tomorrow, then?'
I had to be there, but I acted as if I'd show up by choice. "Sure. See you tomorrow." As I spoke, I couldn't help but study him.
He stood before me, beyond the eave and unprotected, getting drenched and blinking back heavy, bulbous drops of rainwater. In acknowledgement of my response, Edward jutted out his chin and granted me a shy smile as his good bye.
Dropping his chin toward his sternum, he turned away from me and ducked out further into the rain. I thought of the night that lay ahead and his never-wavering presence among the trees near around my yard. He'd see me, in some way or another, before tomorrow, though I wouldn't see him.
For now, I was at peace with that.
X X X
At five foot four, weighing in at a buck five sopping wet, my body shared but one commonality with that of a heavyweight fighter: its extensive experience with stitches. This round was the worst I'd experienced, but certainly not the first. Memory reminded me that after a few days, stitches itch as the skin begins to heal. During the night some would dislodge from my skin, and I'd often wake to find them loose under my t-shirt. I could feel the burn of the itch, but I refused to look in the mirror to get any sort of visual as how my skin looked and just how many stitches had left me.
Tuesday morning began with irritation. Itching and terrified from another nightmare set in sand, I woke at five in the morning and couldn't manage to con my body back into slumber. Giving up, I padded down to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. Despite dousing a good half-cup of cream into my mug, it still tasted like tar. I pondered subjecting myself to too-perky morning shows on television, but before I could track down the remote, a soft tap sounded against the front door.
Dread immobilized me. No one normal visited two hours before the sun rose.
I considered waking Charlie, but even his .38 couldn't do much against uninvited creatures of the night. Creeping toward the window, I prayed for vampires rather than something…hairier.
My stomach dropped at that last possibility, but then, through the glass bordering the doorframe, I saw a head of black, spiky hair. It was the best possible outcome, and suddenly, I could breathe again.
I flung open the door. "Jesus Christ, Alice! It's not even sun-up—"
"You're up anyway." She shoved a paper bag into my hands. Without looking, I knew it was something edible. "And I was bored."
Opening the bag, I spotted fresh fruit and a blueberry muffin, a vast improvement over the doughnuts she'd brought Charlie over the weekend. I shook my head and smiled, still basking in relief. "Thanks. I was a bit hungry…"
She grinned back and settled herself into Charlie's seat at the kitchen table. "Couldn't sleep, huh?"
Gesturing to my back, I replied, "Not the best day for the stitches." Gingerly, I seated myself across from her.
Her face looked sympathetic, but her pity wasn't something I wanted. "How are they looking today?"
I scoffed. Like I would know.
Changing the subject, I asked a question that had riddled my brain for some time. "How old are you, Alice? I mean, how old are you really?"
Alice smiled and let me occupy the driver's seat of our predawn bonding session. "I was born in 1901." She spoke breezily, as if discussing the weather. "Honestly, I don't remember any of my human life."
Many facets of my life were nothing to brag about, but I was blessed with parents who loved me and the idea of losing my memories of them tore at my heart. "Does that make you…sad?"
"Not really. The moment I awoke after my change, I knew I was meant to meet Jasper. Destiny dictated that I spend life with him by my side. All I had to do was be patient and wait." Her face lit up, and her quiet joy made me feel oddly empty.
"So you two have been together for awhile?"
"Almost sixty years."
It was something an old woman would say to her grandchildren. Hearing little Alice, free of wrinkles and gray hairs, announce she'd spent six decades with the love of her life should have come off as bizarre, but it wasn't. It made me feel warm and full of hope, just as it had when my Grandma Marie would tell me stories of how she'd met my grandfather the day he'd come home from fighting in the Korean War. She'd told me the story when I was nine, back when I believed fated love was inevitable rather than borderline-impossible.
Alice noticed my absent smile and continued with her story. "We met up with the Cullens shortly thereafter and joined their family."
"And you've been there ever since?"
"We have. Esme and Carlisle, Emmett and Rosalie, Jasper and me…and Edward."
My cheeks flushed at the mention of his name. Soundlessly, I mouthed, "Oh."
I couldn't help but notice the odd number. Three pairs...and Edward. Alice's phrasing emphasized what I'd failed to really dwell on before: he was alone.
I stopped probing Alice for more information, as I now had plenty to dwell on, and munched on the fruit she brought me as dawn fought its way over the horizon against Forks' ever-present cloud cover. Juice trickled down my throat, sweet but not entirely satisfying.
Silence occupied the space between Alice and me, but unlike yesterday's detention, uneasiness evaded us. Still, as the daylight crept into Charlie's quant kitchen, I had to ask, "Is he out there?"
She exhaled and gave me a smile that equated a gentle embrace. "No. Edward and I—we have an agreement of sorts."
"Which is?"
"When I'm here, he goes."
"I figured as much." I'd once tried to fool myself into thinking Alice was Edward's lackey, but had I looked closely enough, I would have seen the truth: she wasn't the type to take sides. My initial impression of her shamed me, and even though things between Alice and me seemed at peace at the moment, the present didn't erase my past behavior.
Her attention grew more intense; she already knew what I was about to say.
But I had to say it anyway. "I'm sorry I pushed you away because of…what he did, because of what happened between him and me."
"You don't owe me an apology."
Similar words had been spoken to me the day before, but repetition didn't change the fact that I had to atone for my mistakes. Even if others had made greater ones first.
I sighed and listened to the shuffling sounds of Charlie waking above us. Time was running out. Hurriedly, I blurted, "I have a lot of anger, Alice. But sometimes I think I'm pushing it in the wrong direction. So, yeah, I do owe you an apology. A big one. You've always been nice to me. Weirdly so, but nice. And I've been…not so nice in return."
Shrugging, Alice replied, "I know stuff that you don't. I have an advantage. I've always known we'd be friends, so in my mind, we always have been. No matter what you say or do, I'll just keep bugging you."
"Right." I let out a weak laugh. "Look, I can't predict the future, but that doesn't excuse how I acted. I was kind of a jerk to you."
"He was kind of a jerk to you. I get it, Bella, I do. A chain reaction of sorts." I opened my mouth to protest, but she continued, "I only learned recently what exactly he said to you, back in November." My face flushed; after that reference, I couldn't look at her. She sensed my discomfort and busied herself by straightening her skirt as she continued, "The fact you can even be in the same room as him says you're more of an adult at 18 than he is at 104."
I chuckled darkly, knowing she only knew select chapters of the whole story. "He never told you what I said to him last week, did he?"
"He didn't. And I didn't see it, either. But Bella, you don't owe me any explanations."
"I know." She was right; I didn't owe her any details of what went on between her brother and me. Which is exactly why I wanted to tell her. "I need to talk to somebody, Alice. There's no one else—no one else understands." I swallowed. "Is it okay if I talk to you?"
On Alice's face, it was Christmas and her birthday all at once. "Absolutely you can."
Closing my eyes, I released a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding. "I'm so embarrassed."
"What?" She scoffed. "Why?"
"The things I said to him, the way I acted…I was kind of mean. Really mean, actually."
She shook her head and narrowed her eyes in a sort of you-go-girl sense of female allegiance. "Good. He deserves it."
"Maybe so, but I'm better than that." I spoke half-heartedly because I wasn't sure that I was.
"Trust me, Bella. Edward had it coming." She laughed at some private joke I had no way of appreciating. I'd forgotten that the Cullens did that a lot.
"It was a nightmare. At one point, I tried to hit him." The blood behind my cheeks boiled.
Amidst my humiliation, shock overcame me when Alice's entire body contorted into jubilant laughter, the subtlety of her guarded amusement now completely abandoned. "He stopped you, of course."
I nodded grimly.
Her laughter faded. "He only prevented you from attacking him because you would have broken your hand. Had you been capable of causing Edward physical pain, he would have embraced it." She rolled her eyes. "He lives for torturing himself."
When I didn't reply, she let the subject drop. I finished eating, with Alice studying me as if I was eating my last meal before marching off to my execution.
My mouth full of muffin, I garbled, "What is it?"
"You look tired. You haven't been sleeping well."
"So?"
Arching an eyebrow, she queried, "Can I be honest with you?"
"I don't know," I whimpered, not looking her in the eye.
"You're stronger than you give yourself credit for, Bella." Alice reached forward across the table and patted the back of my hand with hers.
"Meaning what, exactly?"
"Meaning something very bad happened to you last week, and you're running away from it. Not once have you even tried to talk about it. Have you even looked at your back? At all? I think—"
In my chest, my heart raced. "I don't care what you think, Alice. It happened. It's over. End of story."
"The look on your face tells me it's not."
"I'm fine."
Alice snorted. "And I'm a Hawaiian Tropic model."
Rocking back and forth in my chair like a mental patient, I shook my head. "Not now. Please, Alice."
"Alright. Not now, Bella." Reaching across the table, she patted my hand. "But hopefully soon."
As my breathing slowed, I refused to look up from the table. "Did…Edward ask you to do this? To talk to me about…?"
"No."
"Good."
"Still mad, huh?"
My gut reaction was to respond, "He lied to me."
"He did."
With the hand I wasn't using to keep my breakfast from escaping from my digestive system, I played with the frayed edge of the placemat in front of me. Not looking up, I muttered, "I kind of want to punch him in the face."
"I can relate." A wry grin crossed her face.
The half-smile I flashed back at her was vacant.
"I don't know if I'm mad, like angry-mad, or just insane-mad." I looked her in the eye. "I don't trust him, Alice. Not at all. I don't care what his motivations were, whether he thought he was doing the right thing. He. Lied. And then he just sat back and never fought for me. For months, I was a wreck, and he didn't care."
Alice winced, but just as I took her reaction as a sign she pitied me, she spoke and told me her compassion was reserved for someone else. "At night, Jasper and I purposefully kept our distance from Edward, after what happened between you two." She spotted the crease between my eyebrows and explained, "Jasper's an empath; he feels what those around him feel. He can change emotions as well, but Edward's got his head so far up his ass that even Jasper could only do so much." She exhaled with emphasis. "Being around Edward after he cut off contact with you was unbearable for Jasper. The self-loathing?" She whistled softly. "Unbelievable. I had it better than Jasper, but not by much. Edward was always digging through my head for your future, to ensure that you'd stay safe. The second we returned to the house in the morning, Edward was always right there, searching my thoughts without as much as a hello." She chuckled. "Too bad I didn't let him."
"How does that work? You can, like, block him?"
"Yeah. But it took decades of practice, and it's still a lot of work. Imagine having to fill your head with nonsense, nonstop. I've read the dullest textbooks—in Mandarin. I recite Biblical verses endlessly. Emmett's not as good at shutting Edward out as I am, but, like I told you, ABBA is his weapon of choice. So Edward spends less time digging through his head than mine. Although that has more to do with the fact that I'm privy to a certain someone's future--" she gave me a knowing look—"so I'm vastly of more interest to him."
I sounded feeble as I murmured, "It's not his place to watch out for me."
"Bella," Alice began slowly, "a couple of months ago, you sprained your wrist in the parking lot. That nearly killed him, but he let it happen because he thought a few weeks in a sling would trump you having a vampire sweetheart. He hates himself that much. But even he has to believe that he has a place in your life after you go and get clawed up by a—" she lowered her voice into a whispered hiss as if Charlie could somehow hear us from the upstairs bathroom "—werewolf. Edward thinks he failed you."
I willed myself to speak, all the while hoping she'd sense I couldn't take much more of this. "That had nothing to do with him."
"I know that, but—"
"Let's not talk about this anymore." My elbows propped me up against the table just as my fingertips found my temples, easing the headache from the taboo topics we'd touched on in the span of minutes.
"Fair enough." Alice pinched the tip of her index finger to the pad of her thumb and drew them in an invisible line across her mouth. "My lips are zipped. Topic closed."
Tossing the now-empty paper bag Alice brought into the trash, I headed toward the stairs, calling over my shoulder, "Tape me up?"
She was at my heels without another word. "Sure thing."
We eased into our routine, after which Alice offered me another ride to school. I gladly accepted, thrilled to skip driving in Charlie's police cruiser. That is, until I opened the front door and saw what was parked in the driveway.
Yesterday, Alice had driven a monstrous Jeep belonging to her brother, the infamous Emmett I'd met at Newton Outfitters months ago. But today was different.
"Oh." I stopped short on the porch. Had Alice been a graceless human, she would have crashed right into me.
"Emmett's up north hunting with Rosalie. Besides…it's just a car, Bella."
No, it wasn't. It was his car.
I hated that it frightened me—he wasn't even in the damn thing—but I couldn't help myself. That Volvo was a haunted house on wheels, waiting to plague me with ghosts of my lovelorn past.
Still, Alice was right. It was a freaking car, and I was an idiot.
Jerking open the passenger door, I slid inside.
Like a semi-reformed coke addict, I sniffed the air constantly during our short drive. I had no shame. Edward's scent was everywhere, blanketing me, but I found that I wanted more—I needed it to smother me completely. After all, the smell of him was harmless; it didn't make empty promises or hold the remote possibility of ill-advised physical contact. It reminded me of the idyllic ignorance of my past life and put me at ease. The sweetness cloaked me back then, when he'd lean in close and say something unsettlingly perfect. More-recent memories were devoid of that captivating hybrid of honey, bar soap, and cream—once he'd walked away, he took it with him and left me inhaling car fumes, dirty rainwater, and the generic scent of bleach and floor wax.
The drive ended, and I stepped out into the morning drizzle, again missing what I never really had.
As Alice and I headed to Spanish, she glanced over at me and asked, "You going to be alright this afternoon? Trapped in that kitchen with him again?"
I thought of my upcoming detention and realized that his familiar, luscious scent would wash over me again before the day was through. That idea warmed me, and I struggled to right that mistake.
Tightening my arms around my middle, I answered, "I'll survive."
I did just that until I opened my locker after my final class of the day. I planned on taking my things with me to detention in order to make a quick get away once Huntley released us at five o'clock.
Charlie had asked about his gift to me the day before when I arrived at the cruiser empty-handed. This meant the pink luggage would have to make a public appearance, but I didn't really care what Edward thought of my accessorizing prowess at this point.
I dragged the suitcase out of my locker, pushing and pulling until it tumbled onto the floor, upside down, wheels spinning in midair. The mail I'd tucked inside two mornings ago scattered everywhere, and I fought shooting pains in my back to bend over and pick it up.
My hands gripped a newsletter from some policeman's union to which Charlie belonged, a catalogue from Bass Pro Shop, some sort of packet on student housing from Dartmouth, and a letter.
A letter with no postage or postdate.
The envelope blank except for my first name.
Scrawled in the handwriting of Jacob Black.
Chapter End Notes: I totally Googled how to spell "Wile E. Coyote." I'm not ashamed. Hope you bought why Bella would realize her attraction to Edward...the Jake thing is eating her alive, so she welcomes distraction.
As always, thank you for the PMs and reviews. I don't expect anyone to even read this, so anything beyond that never ceases to floor me. I'm forever humbled by all of you.