Three Weeks

Three weeks later, and I'd no further contact from Bella.

Three Bella-free weeks meant that no-one was banging on my door at inconvenient times saying, "Do you have an onion? And any garlic? And some cilantro? A can of red beans? Oh, and a ripe avocado? Thanks. Oh, and a packet of corn chips? You're unreal. Seeya." Or, "Could you open this jar of peanut butter for me? Have you got any teaspoons? Not that I'm going to eat peanut butter straight out of the jar with a teaspoon, no way. Not much." Or, "One of my lightbulbs blew, and you're stupidly tall. Could you replace it for me? Do you have any lightbulbs? I'm all out."

Three Bella-free weeks, and she wasn't answering my calls. I missed her. Enough was enough. Really, it shouldn't take this long to get over a little embarrassment.

I left a note under her door. And another one the next day, when she didn't respond to the first.

"Oh, hey, hi," she said vaguely when she finally rang me.

"Well, you're certainly hard to get hold of," I answered. Shit. I said hard. And I talked about getting hold of her.

"Yeah, I can be quite slippery," she said, still sounding remote. Fucktons of shit. She said... I don't remember what she said. I didn't even register it. In one ear and out the other, as they say.

"So, how've you been?" I enquired, striving for casual, not like I'd been obsessing.

"Oh, yeah, good. I went to see my Dad. It was good. I'm back now."

That's why she hadn't called me! Her father lives in what amounts to a forest, at least, there's forest all around him and a tree right next to his house. There's no telecom connectivity. Internal fistpump, because she hadn't been avoiding me. I hoped.

"So, you must have lots of news?"

"Uh?"

"About Charlie. How is he?"

"Great. He's great."

"And his girlfriend? How's the senior citizens' romance going?"

Here was an opportunity for a really good segue. Don't pause for breath. It's going to be so smoooooooth. "Wanna meet up tonight and you can tell me all about it?" Cullen is the King. He rocks, he rules, he reigns.

"Uh..."

Whaaaattt? Are you hesitating? Why the fuck for?

"Yeah, actually, okay. Let's do that. How are you, by the way?"

"Fine. You know."

She's the moody one, but I spent half the day worrying and the other half fretting. By the time I arrived at our usual table at Aro's that night I'd gotten it out of my system and I reckoned I was presenting myself as my regular picture of suave.

"Bells, it's been ages," I said warmly when she slid into the booth beside me. "Lovely to see you. How's work and life and everything?"

"Sucks, okay, and it's what you make of it."

"Of course. Any update on your upcoming step-daughter status?"

"Oh, Dad and Sue are being so coy, it's cute really, she's obviously living there and they're both trying to pretend that she just stays over sometimes because they can't admit to themselves that they're living in sin..."

"Well I should think not, they'd evoke consternation amongst all the good folk in town..."

"Yeah, the disapproval rating would be sky-high..."

And by tacit agreement, the hiccup had never happened. Fun times. My good friend Bella and I without a care in the world that we weren't able to tear down via sarcasm. And beer.

And oh, the joys of spring. Let's sweep that which has gone before under the carpet, and I won't mention it if you won't. We're not embarrassed any more, we're peaches and cream.

Then Bella announced she wanted to dance. We'd danced together lots of times, and from my point of view it was pretty much comic relief, as Bella's limbs were so awkward. She was like a marionette with seven different people pulling the strings while wearing blindfolds.

We went on out to the dance floor, and I'm not called Snake-hips for nothing and she's not called uncoordinated for nothing. I could barely suppress my laughter, but it wasn't because of how funny she was, it was because I admired her so much for loving music and movement anyway, and I was glad to have my friend back even if we were ignoring an issue. Or was it an issue? Maybe I was just exaggerating the significance of the whole business.

Yeah. I was. Forget it, Edward. It was nothing. Bella's relegated it to the over-and-done-with basket, you should too.

We scooted back along the bench seat of our booth, panting slightly after our exertions, and finished our drinks. I got us another and sat back, legs splayed, arms hooked out over the back of the booth, waiting to cool down.

"God, I'm hot. Have you got a pencil?" Bella asked.

In any universe except Bella's you'd wonder how these two remarks could be uttered side by side. But I'm here, in her sphere. And the first thing I do when I'm hot is make sure I've got a pencil. At least one, often more, because I never know when I'll need lots of them.

"Yeah, dozens. In my wallet, in every pocket, and several tucked inside my socks," I answered. "I never go anywhere without a 2B."

"So funny I forgot to laugh," Bella said. She walked over to Dimitri in his enshrined seat at the bar and came back, shoving and poking at me until I was perched on the very end of the bench, half hanging off. Then she did the most extraordinary thing.

Raising her arms, she scooped all that heavy hair up, and twisted it into a rope. Then she coiled the rope at the back of her head, and once it was in a more or less tight bunch, she produced a pencil and speared her hair. Her hands came away, and the hair stayed exactly where she'd pinned it. I was wondering which law of physics allows a woman to produce a hairstyle using centrifugal force and a thin tube of wood when I suddenly noticed something else. Bella's neck. Oh Lord.

It was slender and elegant and curved and graceful, like the neck of her namesake, nature's most lovely waterbird. It was also pale and vulnerable and somehow shocking in its frailty. That miraculous narrow cylinder conducted her breath and nerves and held her head up and connected her brain to her heart and her head to her body. I couldn't quite believe it. She sat in three-quarter profile to me, and without the veil I saw clearly for the first time her brow, her cheekbones, her nose, her jaw. I'd never even noticed the outline of her lips before, somehow, in all the talking we'd done. How had I never really looked at her?

Then, drawn by the slim pale column of her throat, my gaze moved lower. She was wearing one of her usual shapeless sweatshirts, but just above the neckline, even in this poor lighting, I could see her collarbones. Well, I could see them defined by the gleam of the skin along the top of them, and the shadow beneath. Oh shit, Bella. You're pretty and delicate and you're a girl. And I'm a boy.

Then Bella turned and caught me staring, and her expression morphed from the slack look she'd worn listening to the music to an intensity. There was a tv show made some time ages ago in black and white about a family who were traveling in space. My parents made me watch reruns of it, because they liked it so much. The family had a robot that spent a lot of time with the family's young son, looking after him. The robot had these extendable arms that looked like tubing from an air conditioning system, and whenever it detected a threat it would wave its arms around and warn the son, who was called Will Robinson.

Danger Will Robinson! Danger Will Robinson! the robot would intone, in its weird mechanical voice.

"So, Edward - about what we were discussing last time I saw you..." Bella said, and in my head, I heard the robot.

Danger, Will Robinson, danger!

"Mmm. Umm. Ah."

Bella had to bend close, and even then she couldn't hear me. I hadn't said anything worth hearing.

"Well?" she demanded. She'd been mortified about this the next day. Why was she bringing it up again? I'd thought it was done and dusted.

But apparently she hadn't moved on. The subject wasn't closed. Starting off with a stammer, she warmed up, rushing through words, stringing them together.

"It's, it's not that I want a boyfriend, well I, I do want a boyfriend, but sheesh, I'd even just like to feel that somebody likes me, you know? What do I have to do? I'm boring, I'm weird, I'm unattractive, I just want to get laid, I don't care if it's a one-night stand, well I do, because I want to have a boyfriend, why can't I find one, what's wrong with me Edwaaaaarrrrd?"

I took her firmly by the shoulders.

"Stop saying those negative things about my friend or I'll call the insult police and have you arrested."

"Easy for you to say. You're going around picking up girls everywhere, apparently. What is it about them? What makes you want them? What do guys want? Can you tell me?"

I couldn't. I was tongue-tied. Her huge eyes were colorless but dark in the dim reaches of the booth we were in, at the back of the room well away from the blaring, glaring lights of the dance floor. I could just barely make out that her cheeks were flushed.

"How do I be seductive? How do I be desirable?" she implored. "Half the girls in here tonight will get to go home with someone. How come I never find anyone?"

"Stop with the pity-party right now. You're a lovely girl, and if the dickheads around here can't see it, that's their loss. Don't change anything about yourself to try and be what you're not. None of these guys are the right guy for you," I said, feeling more hopeless by the second. If she asked me outright to take her home I would. I'd take her wherever she wanted, however she wanted. Fast, slow, you set the pace, Bella, tell me what you want and you'll have it.

But she wasn't asking me. She was lamenting the lack of suitable men, and I was only sitting a foot away. Therefore she didn't consider me one. She trusts me, she trusts me not. One wrong move, and the wrong petal would come off the daisy. My feisty Bella would throw a drink in my face before stomping on our friendship with scorn and dismissal.

So I sat there, and she held her chin with her palm, frowning. God knew what she was brewing up in that crazy mind of hers. I set my mind to regaining the platonic feelings I used to have, though it was useless. They were gone.

Then she huffed so loudly I could hear her even over the volume of the music. Something bad was coming, I just knew it.

"So, Edward Cullen, expert. Sexpert. What exactly does it take for a woman to be sexy?"

"Can you just stop all this? You don't need to be told by someone else. You don't need any advice, or opinions. You're sexy." Which was the truth as I saw it, even if my realization had been very recent.

My honesty wasn't well-received, though.

"Oh, garbage!" she exclaimed. "Who thinks that? Nobody! The chances of me having an orgasm anytime soon other than one that's self-generated are nil! Why would you say I'm sexy? You don't think so!"

She was thoroughly pissing me off. I might have made a response I really didn't give much forethought to.

"Oh, don't I?" I answered. "Prepare to be amazed."

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