The names are not mine, the rest - is.
Begging Invitations
A dreamland. I am in some kind of new world, one where boys like, fall into my bedroom. Definitely a dreamland. Because this cannot be real. This cannot be my life. This cannot be Edward freaking Cullen before me as my boobs, exposed to the chilly night air, are freezing - my skin trembling, my nipples hardening. My eyes close, shut tight. I open them. He's still here.
"Edward!"
He raises both hands, telling me something, to be quiet? Telling me not to be afraid? Well, I am a little afraid. But more so just flustered. I'm surprised, dumbfounded, "What are you doing here? Why are you..."
"I should be ashamed, I know. I should be sorry, I know. I'm not. Bella, I'm not. I apologise only for not explaining. Only for meeting you, and perpetuating this...this." He comes closer, gesturing between us as the space gets smaller. He's talking about us, me and him.
"I'm confused." I feel confused all the time lately. I grab the covers, to cover my naked body. Edward saw me naked. Edward is looking at me...naked.
"You're lovely." His voice is like air, like lust, like chocolate, like the moon. The moon coming into my room, lighting me up, on fire. I'm on fire.
"Why did you come here?" Please just tell me. Simple terms. I can take it. I need it.
"To have what I cannot." He sits on the bed next to me. The weight of him is a mixture of warmth, the coolness from outside lingering on his skin.
"What can't you have?" He eyes me, his eyes are on me like I am food, hungry. It's intimidating, completely animalistic. And from this boy, for this boy, I am lusty, lust pouring out of my own eyes, my own mouth, my own heart. He sees me, he sees into me, over me, along my skin, my shoulders, my neck, my face. I feel it all.
"You." But you can have me. Take it all, it's yours.
My voice doesn't exist, my mouth opens for one reason, and one reason only - to breathe. All around me, surrounding me, the air is tight, too tight, and harder to draw in. Edward sits close, but not touching. He's playing hard to get even here, even now.
"Your father's coming." What? I look at the door. How does he know? I look at him. Edward...
Where did he go?
"Bells..." Dad knocks then comes in, the blanket now wrapped around me completely.
"Yeah, dad?" His eyes are squinty.
"Everything okay?" His voice is like burnt coffee.
"Yeah, why?"
"Nothing, I just thought I heard... Nothing. Uh, just close the window, you'll freeze. Goodnight."
"Night, dad." He closes the door, and I wish I could lock it.
"Edward." I whisper, and he climbs back through the window. Wow. Edward is climbing through my window, and he smells crazy good. Like...something I can't name. Something new. Something secret. Something sexy. And it fills my room.
"Bella, would you get dressed for me?"
"Um... Sure. Turn around." He turns and I wonder why he asked me to get dressed. It's disconcerting. It makes my cheeks red. And not in a good way. "'Kay." When I'm done, I move back over to the bed. We sit, and he sits in front of me with his legs crossed. I cross mine too.
"Can we just talk?" He says, and I'm holding out no hope at this point for any real answers...or maybe it's the answers I want to hear which I think so infeasible, as a thousand reasons against them scream until hoarse against the flickering candlelight illumination of such long awaited admissions and revelations. These nagging voices and their nauseating reality sit so very heavy in the pit of my stomach. All I can think of are these things he could say, will say - excuses, pragmatic evaluations, mutual admonishments for our foolishness - to explain, to justify why we shouldn't be together.
"Are you here to tell me why you shouldn't be here?"
"Something like that."
"So..." I wait.
"How about we start with the easy stuff first?" Easy. Like, what did you have for dinner today? Easy.
"You first." I tell him, but he just kind of sits there looking, looking at me. He doesn't move, he's so...still. Presumably thinking about what he wants to say, what he wants to ask.
"Who are the people in the pictures on your wall?" Oh. Anything but that.
"Not easy." This is fifth date material...or something.
"No?" I know he's even more curious now...fuck. I really don't want to talk about it.
"No. Next..." I urge him to ask another.
"Why do you play this song on repeat?"
"Because it's you." Oh god. It's you? I'm a dork. I'm crazy. I'm squirming in my skin and he's still looking. "I mean, it's what I was listening to when I first saw you."
"In class?"
"Oh, um, no...I saw you walking across campus first." I watch for his reaction. I see a smile. Small. Sexy. I want to giggle, dive on him and giggle, make him giggle and then maybe just...smell him some more.
"Do you masturbate a lot?"
"What?"
"I said, do you..."
"Don't say it again! God, I'm so...I wasn't, it's not like..."
"Bella. It's not a bad thing." I know it's not. Wait, it's not?
I'm small. Right now, I'm the small thing that no one can make out as I sit underneath the too bright light as they all stare. My room is the petrie dish. And I'm burning, burning bright from the focus.
"You're uncomfortable now." It's not a question he's asking. It's just...true.
"I think it's my turn." I sit up, excited to get information from him, about him. Finally. "Why can't we be together?" Each piece of his face, I wait for it to change. I wait for the frown, the frustration, the sadness, anything. Nothing.
"We said easy. Next..."
"Just...tell me why no touching. Are you just nervous? Is it a religious thing?" It's so...odd. And noticeable.
"What do you mean?" He's confused. Finally. Something.
"You held my hand, twice. But you got pissed at me when I hit your head with my head and then after this," I wave my hand at him, "You didn't help me in or out of the car, you didn't hug me goodbye, you didn't touch me just now and I was naked. Even now, you moved away as I moved closer, no knees, no touching."
"Observant."
"Not really. Just...impatient." So many weeks, so many classes, so much waiting, waiting for the right thing to say, like, I could just mess it up in an instant. I cried in front of him, I fainted. I touched myself...I said his name and he saw me. He knows. So just...do something already.
"Bella, we still can't..." He looks away from me for the first time since he fell into my room. I don't like it, I think he's going to leave.
"Don't go." Please stay.
"Then make it easy."
"Okay, on one condition. For every two easy things, I get a hard question!" I wait, waiting to be shot down. Denied access, yet again.
"Deal."
"Deal." I hold out my hand, a reflex, waiting for him to shake it. He doesn't take it. Of course. What is his deal?
-o-
Bella Swan, bare and becoming, pink and lovely. Bella Swan, naked and eroticised, masturbating to thoughts of me. The paintings are so clear in the dark, living vines only I see, across her chest, covering her breasts, running through to her heart.
If I were human, if I were an average teenage boy, I may have made a joke about this, causing embarrassment - more than she already feels - at the same time as harboring my own embarrassment. I would be hoping for something physical in all her glory. I would be itching to be inside her.
I am all of those things.
Fully and all too aware. I am itching, I am hoping. But with that hope, I also see her lying on the floor in J.J's class. I see her hooked up to a machine, wires and beeping, the waiting and the despair of it all.
If I had a soul, it would be above me, dallying with her's. If I had a heart, I would no longer be a cantata, my heart and I, we would be beating to the same aria as her's. I hear it. Even now, over her explanation of why she lives on campus and not here at her family home. It's all because of her parents and something mournful about a wheelchair. Before she can explain, she dodges me again, and continues to plot and avoid, continuously denying me when I ask about the people in the frames. When she speaks of these people, she seems despondent, in another world, one that I don't know, one that doesn't exist in this time and space with her. Each night, for a whole week, I came here, her mother's tone towards her changing only once. I don't blame her for the look that covers her face now, or for leaving to live at school away from them, and I wish once more that we could run. We would run fast and free. And I would try my love. This thing inside me waiting to burst out.
My mind is lost in wonder about how she would respond to my true nature. I try to find ways of gauging her reaction. I explain to her about our living situation and how often we've moved, moving from town to town every couple of years so we stay unfamiliar. I tell her how Carlisle, my 'adoptive father', found me, still embellishing the only facts I can actually give her. As much as being a sick orphan, on the brink of death, can be embellished. Nevertheless, Carlisle saved the day with a kind of miracle cure. See: vampirism - miracle cure. Not at all something I thought I would ever say, let alone think.I also spoke of how he met Esme, as Bella's big brown eyes got wider with each new piece of information, only to then fill with tears, and finally, get smaller again when she smiled as the happy ending came. She asked me how Carlisle and I look so alike since he's not my birth father and I deflect, she asks me about the new rule of no touching again and whether or not it's just as simple as my "hands are so cold". Because they are. She's asking too much, so I try for something new, "My turn. Are you squeamish?"
"What do you mean, like vomit and gooey stuff, like insects and slime?" She's adorable.
"More like...horror, bloody horror..."
"That's your hard question?" She looks confused. Cute and confused as her nose wrinkles and her eyes get smaller. She pulls at her feet, wrapped underneath her as she thinks for a while.
"Yes. And your answer?"
"It's not so simple. It really all depends. I mean, if you got hurt, like, got cut somehow. I wouldn't freak out. If you..." She thinks for a while, her eyes penetrating me, piercing me over and over again with her stare, until, "No. I like horror, bloody horror."
That's it, I have nothing left in my arsenal. It might just have to be the truth or nothing at all. I cannot see the future and nothing has been decided. I have no hope, absolutely no hope when it comes to what will be when she sees me that way for the first time.
"My turn again. Um. Your know, your eyes change colour...sometimes they are so light, and sometimes, like now, they are dark, like mine. Why?"
"I'm not like you, Bella."
"What do you mean?" She moves forward again, always trying for more.
"I'm not right for you." Her knees touch mine and I feel the beginning of it momentarily, cementing me in my spot yet elevating me above it all at once. Pulsing beats and running currents. How does she not feel it?
"You could be right for me. If you just...try." She lifts her hand, her fucking hand to touch my face. This can't work if she won't listen.
"No. I couldn't. I can't." I move, gone, off the bed, away from her, against the wall.
"What is going on?" An instant sadness, as if I am breaking her heart over and over, she is rejected once again. I have to stop, end this now.
"We're not the same, and if you continue to pursue this, you will get hurt, Bella."
"I don't believe that. I don't believe you." Blind persistence. Is this girl brave? Or is she just stupid?
"Believe that then," Her hand, she forgets so quickly. Not like I, not like I have a choice. "Believe me, if you think this to be a strong connection, believe me. Trust me."
"Trust? You haven't given me anything to trust, Edward. Only half truths and not much else, nothing I can hold onto anyway. You, I can't hold onto. Will you even be in class? Will I ever see you after tonight?"
"Yes."
"Yes to both?"
"You will see me again, but this is hard, much more difficult than I imagined. It takes everything in me not to..."
"Not to what?" She's off the bed, moving towards me again.
"To be with you, touching you. I think about..."
"About what?"
"My lips on yours, tasting you..." I can't stop.
"You think about kissing me?" She's close now, too close. I feel her breath across my face and I...she smells insanely good - her scent assaulting, her blood tempting.
"Every second." I give her truth. Maybe not the truth she really wants, but still.
"Would you wrap your arms around me first?"
"I would close my eyes so I could sense you, feel you moving closer in the dark, each beat of your heart getting faster..."
"And then..." She's relentless, with every new breath, with every new word, she's determined.
"Your lips would be sweet, soft, wet from my tongue." She's panting, her chest heaving. "Your cheeks are delightful."
"Are you...would you be like, kissing me right now?"
"Right here, against this wall. Right here, against my heart." Her body this near, it's almost too much. But this space we're learning is ours now.
"I trust you." I search her voice for clues; insincerity. I find no such thing.
"Why?" She is as crazed as I feel.
"Because I was naked and you asked me not to be. Because you sat on my bed in the middle of the night and didn't try anything, not once. I trust you in the hope that...you'll know. You'll know it's okay to say anything to me. Maybe even why we can't do what we're already doing. I trust you."
"Bella, if I asked you to come with me right now, would you?"
AN:
The Boy makes me better. I have love.
Next chapter: (Hopefully...) Saturday
So... are you still with me?
Please and thank you!
samrosey. xo