We Were Born To Die

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight.

As usual, I didn't have class on Thursday. It was going to be a very long day spent at home and I wasn't particularly looking forward to it. My mother didn't work anymore; she was on a fixed income which meant we'd probably be spending most of the next twenty-four hours alone together. I woke up early which was the norm but just stayed in bed for a while. I got up around eight-thirty and went to turn on the shower. The apartment was cold as usual and I shivered as I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I stopped to look closer.

I had never been a very vain person. I was fairly thin and pale with eyes and hair that were equally dark. My features were soft and feminine-a pair of full lips and a small, slightly curved nose. But there was something in my eyes, something in the way I held myself that just didn't seem right. Straightening up, I tried to smile, tried to push my shoulders back and look proud.

I could be proud, couldn't I?

I could be brave.

I sighed, letting my chest fall.

Why couldn't I be brave?

I stripped out of my night clothes and stepped into the shower. The water was too hot and it scalded my skin, though I didn't mind. It felt nice, woke me up, made me feel alert.

I hated days when there was nothing to do and nowhere to go. Activity was something I could use to channel my anxiety. I made a mental list of everything I needed to get done: my paper for English, the review sheets for algebra, my bio homework...

Ugh, bio.

The thought of ever walking through the doors of the lab building ever again made me cringe. After our conversation yesterday, I was pretty sure that Edward couldn't stand me. I had pushed my luck way too far and now he thought I was a bitch. I had sat up all last night thinking about the situation I had created with Edward. I didn't even know anything about him. I couldn't even remember his full name. We hadn't really talked about much of anything, such as our majors, where we were from or what we hoped to do with ourselves when college was over. There was no reason for his obvious shortness yesterday to bother me, but it did. For whatever reason, I wanted him to like me. And for some reason, that felt like a humongous problem.

I turned off the shower and stepped out, brushed through my hair and headed back to my room to get dressed. It felt like a jeans and sweatshirt kind of day so I threw on the first ripped up denim object I saw along with my favorite blue sweater.

It only took about three cups of coffee for my mother to wonder into the kitchen. She looked a lot like me, but a lot older. In the past year, she'd lost some weight due to her illness, and the crow's feet at the corners of her beautiful, blue eyes (the one trait of hers I had unfortunately not inherited) had deepened.

"Good morning." she mumbled.

I nodded.

Renee made her way to the fridge and poured half a glass of orange juice, followed by another half-glass of vodka from the top shelf of the pantry. I didn't say anything because I knew I couldn't. I knew what would happen if I did. She would cry and storm off to her bedroom and I wouldn't see her for the rest of the day, not that I particularly wanted to spend much quality time with Renee. She never said much and, as a result, I usually found myself tongue tied whenever we were alone together.

She sat down at the table across from me and stared at me silently. Head tilted slightly to the side, I watched her watch me. Renee sighed, took a sip of her drink and then tilted her head the opposite way, seemingly pondering something of paramount importance. She looked hopelessly lost.

"What?" I asked, perplexed by her actions.

She groaned. "Why are you here, Bella?"

I raised a brow at her. "Um...I live here."

She rolled her eyes in return. "I know that. I mean, why aren't you at school?"

"I don't have class on Thursdays."

"Oh. Is that so?" she asked, sipping on her drink some more.

I nodded and waited in silence for her to say something more.

She didn't.

"So, is there anything you need to do today?" I questioned, hoping she might send me off on some errand.

Renee pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Do you have a boyfriend?"

I have to admit, she caught me by surprise.

"No." I replied quickly. "Why the sudden interest?"

"Why not?"

"Because...I don't want one?" My response was more of a question than an actual answer.

"Why?"

I honestly didn't know what to say to that. "It's just...it doesn't fit me."

Renee nodded and threw back the rest of her screwdriver. "Are you screwing around then?" She got up and poured herself another drink.

Again, I quickly answered, "No."

"You gay?"

"Oh, my God! No, I'm not gay! And what's with the third degree?"

Renee plopped back down in the seat across from me and pursed her lips again, doing that same sympathetic head-tilt as before. "I'm just trying to get you. Do you go out? Go to college parties?"

I shrugged. "Not really. So?"

"Well, when I was your age..."

When she was my age, she got pregnant with me. I couldn't help the thought from slipping into my mind. My parents had met one fateful night at a frat party and I'd arrived a short, nine months later.

"I don't want to talk about this, Renee."

"No, damn it! I'm your mother. You can talk to me."

"I don't want to talk to you about whether or not I'm hooking up with guys!"

She huffed. "Why? I get it, I can relate. You're young, attractive, unattached. I was young once. I can handle it."

I stood up and put my coffee cup in the sink, banging it down on the porcelain a little harder than necessary. "I seriously have nothing to say to you about this."

I turned around and watched Renee polish off her second, supersized screwdriver of the morning. I noticed the bags under her eyes and briefly wondered if she'd gone to bed at all last night. But this was about something else. This was about Renee and her obvious confusion regarding the topic of my celibacy.

"I just think you should be out having fun, Bella. Everyone has their time. I had mine; Bree will have hers, and what about you? I have to sit here and watch you mope around this house all day reading a fucking biology textbook?"

Biology. I cringed.

"So?" I retorted. I'd always been terrible at arguing with my mother. How was this even an argument?

Like always, the conversation came around to the big elephant in the room: the real reason my lack of social success bothered my mother.

"I'm dying, Bella!" she screamed and I jumped a little. I hated it when she cried. "Do you know what I get to do today? I get to go to the hospital and get my tests done so they can tell me how long before my kidney kicks the bucket. And you just sit here!" she sneered, disgusted. "It's fucking depressing, Bella. I can't even watch you. It's like living with...your father."

Well, that one really hurt.

It was no secret that Charlie and Renee were not soul mates. LikeI said before, I was the result of a one-night-stand gone awry. Sure, they had loved each other in their own way, but my mother hadn'tkept her general distaste for my father's habits a secret. He was too sensitive, too emotional, too weak.

Like me.

I didn't wait to hear any more. I got up, slung my bag over my shoulder and headed out the door. Before I knew it, I was out driving again, wondering aimlessly and crying into the silence of my car. There was no one to hear but me, so I let it all go. I didn't know where I was going; somewhere more comfortable, I told myself. But the truth was that there really wasn't any place like that for me. I felt almost homeless, so I went the only place I knew no one would bother me: school.

I didn't know very many people on campus. Aside from Rose and Alice and, as of most recently, Edward, I was pretty much a ghost there. I went to class and I came home. Simple as that. But every once in a while, when I wanted to feel really alone, I would go down to the library basement and hide in the back, behind the microfiche. It was quiet and isolated.

Safe.

I found myself there again, huddled in the back corner, my head buried in my knees. I couldn't stop crying. My valium was all but useless now. Unfortunately, drugs just couldn't fix some things. I knew that. I also knew that I was not going home tonight.

It was hours before I got myself together. However, even after I stopped crying, I couldn't bring myself to leave. Instead, I retrieved my old copy of Robin Hood from my bag and sat there reading in the back corner of the basement until the day had come and gone. I was hungry, exhausted and embarrassed. What was wrong with me? Why couldn't I get a grip?

When I checked my phone around ten o'clock that evening, I decided to draw the line at falling asleep in the library twice in two weeks. Instead, I gathered up my things and made the considerable trek back to my truck. I turned over the engine and cranked the heat before crawling into the backseat and going to sleep. How had I been reduced to this? As I pondered the reality that sleeping in my car could become a regular practice, I heard a knock on my window.

I let out a little scream, but not a very loud one as my breath quickly caught in my throat. The windows were a little clouded and I had to wipe away the fog to see the person on the other side of the glass.

I could have died right there.

"Edward?" I asked, more than humiliated at this point.

There were not words.

I rolled down the window and clutched my jacket close around my body. "Edward, what are you doing here?"

His eyebrows shot skyward. "What am I doing here? Bella, why the hell are you sleeping in your car?"

I didn't really have a good answer for that. "Well, I...I mean, um..."

"Just tell me the truth. Are you homeless?"

Irrationally, I was offended by his question. "NO!"

"Then why are you sleeping in your car, Bella?"

I considered my response for a moment before coming to the conclusion that I was fighting a losing battle. "Right now I just can't be at home."

Edward was quiet for a moment, his lips pulled into a hard line as he looked at me. My stomach growled and I cursed it for calling me out once again. I really was the biggest idiot. But before I could say anything to break the awkward silence that had fallen between us, Edward nodded to himself, obviously making up his mind.

"Bella, get out of the car." he said sternly. He lookedmadagain and that made me angry.

"No."

"Bella. Please, just get out of the car."

I shook my head like a petulant child.

"I'm not kidding around here, Bella. Get out of the car."

"No," I told him stubbornly, jutting out my chin. I started to roll up the window, but Edward stopped me.

"You're not sleeping in your car, Bella."

"I'll do what I want."

However, he had already reached into the car and unlocked the door, pulling it open and me along with it.

I was steaming. I pulled away from him quickly, jerking my arm violently into my own chest. His expression seemed to soften then, but he still wouldn't leave me to myself.

"Bella, I'm begging you. Whatever the reason...please, just let me help you."

I looked at him warily.

"We're friends, Bella, aren't we? Let me help a friend."

I paused.

The way he looked at me, I believed for the first time since I met Edward that maybe he really was just trying to care about me. And, for some reason, I couldn't say no to him. I wasn't angry anymore, just embarrassed.

I hung my head, letting a few stray tears fall. I breathed in deeply and felt his hand coaxing me to look up at him. When I did, I felt incredibly vulnerable. If I could have crawled under a rock, I would have. No one, excluding the good doctor, had ever seen me like this.

Ever.

"Just come back to my apartment with me and let me at least give you something to eat or something. I swear to God, I am not making a pass at you...and I won't try anything. I just...I don't want you sleeping out here in your car. It's not right. You shouldn't be out here at night alone. Honestly, even if I could leave without feeling like an absolutely awful person, I would spend the rest of the night worrying about you."

I furrowed my brow and nodded, wiping my cheeks with the back of my hand. "Okay," I told him. That was all I could say.

We walked a long way in the cold and Edward never said a word. He didn't ask why I couldn't go home or why I was crying, only led me up the steps to his apartment and held the door open for me to walk through. It was all verysweet until I realized exactly where I was.

When the door slammed shut behind me, I panicked.

Why in the world had I agreed to come back to his apartment? I looked around the room suddenly hyper-aware of everything around me. It was a small open-concept unit-a tiny kitchen, a couple of beanbags, a television and a bed. I was alone with Edward in his home late at night, and truthfully, I was too tired to turn around and go back home.

Edward took off his worn leather jacket and threw it on one of the beanbags, but I didn't follow suit. I already felt naked in the emotional sense. He'd seen me cry. The thought of what had just transpired a few minutes ago made me cringe.

"I don't have a lot. Mostly, I eat out but I think there're some leftovers in the fridge if you're hungry. I could make you a cup of coffee. Tea?"

"Tea?" I asked.

"Yeah, you want some?"

I shook my head, wandering farther into the clutter of his little apartment.

"Do you live here alone?" I asked half hoping that he had a roommate.

He shook his head, following me. "Yes, just me. A few friends and I were talking about pitching in to get a bigger place, but I like living alone. I mean, the guys are pretty gross, not great roomie material," he laughed and a grinned a little.

Suddenly, I heard my mother's voice. You're just like your father. I was too cautious and my own caution suffocated me. My mother was reckless and all this time she'd not been talking to me, she'd been wondering why I wasn't more like her. I wasn't sure if I could be reckless, but I could certainly be brave, couldn't I?

I shrugged out of my jacket and tossed it over the top of Edwards. He smiled at me some, running his hand anxiously over the skin at the nape of his neck. I wasn't the only one who was nervous.

"Listen, Bella, I'm really sorry if I came off as...back there, I wasn't trying to tell you what to do. I just don't want you to feel like you have to, like, sleep in your car. You shouldn't ever feel like you have to do that." He was rambling now and it made me smile just a bit wider. "I know I sort of blew you off yesterday when you came up to talk to me. I guess I just let my feelings get the better of me. I'm not going to say my ego wasn't a little...bruised. It was. But I'm a big boy." he chuckled. "I can get over it." I nodded, looking down at my hands, absently picking at my fingernails. "I do want to be your friend, Bella. I really do."

I felt his finger pulling my face upward again, forcing me to look him in the eye. He was so close and he seemed so sincere, and for a moment, I honestly did think about kissing him.

But I didn't.

"I'll crash on one of the bean bag chairs. Take the bed. Think of it as a favor between friends."

I shook my head. "I can't take your bed, Edward."

"No, it's fine. Honestly."

"No. I seriously can't let you sleep on a freaking bean bag chair." We both laughed a little at that statement before I forged on from there.

I could be brave.

"We can both sleep in the bed."

Now, it was Edward's turn to shake his head. "No, I don't mind sleepi-"

"People just sleep in beds together all the time. It's no big deal. All we're doing is sleeping."

The debate seemed to be over before it had really begun. He smiled at me nervously as we shimmied under the covers, accidentally bumping arms and legs and feet. It was uncomfortable to say the least; I had never shared a bed with a boy before and my heart was pounding so loudly I worried he could hear it. It took us a while before we were settled, both turning away from each other, trying our best not to touch.

"Goodnight, Bella." he hummed.

And even though I doubted I would get much sleep that night, I murmured "Goodnight, Edward," back.