A/N - A BIG BASKET OF PORN to JaspersDestiny for beta'ing and to Twilover76 for pre-reading.

And HUGE! ASS! THANKS to everyone who voted for Penal Code over at the Lemonade Stand last week! It won a spot in the Fab Five for Fic of the Week! WOOOOT!

Chapter 5 - Tossing Pudding

You know that scene in the movie The Sixth Sense where the wedding ring drops to the floor, and Bruce Willis has this moment of clarity when the entire mystery of the movie unravels?

Motherfucker - I'm a ghost!

I looked from Alice to Edward and back to Alice again, about to ask what the fuck she was talking about, when reality punched me in the tit with some choice sound bites from the last few days...

"Shouldn't we negotiate terms?"

"Why didn't you take the money? Was it not enough? I have more."

"How many cops do you know, exactly?"

"Oh my God," I choked, backing away from Edward until my shoulders hit the wall. "Oh, my God!"

"So...you're not a hooker?" His look of confusion morphed into a hopeful grin.

"Oh, my God," I repeated.

"Bella?" Alice took a step toward me. "Are you okay? You look kinda...green."

"Oh my God." My stomach churned and I lurched for the bathroom, tripping over the hem of my makeshift toga and falling bare ass naked onto the floor. "Oh my God."

"Are you going to be sick?" Alice asked. "Edward, help me get her to the bathroom."

"Bella, are you okay? Can I get you something? A Tums?" he asked, reaching out for me.

"Don't touch me!" I screamed, crawling across the floor and just barely making it to the toilet in time to empty my stomach. I could feel Alice holding my hair away from my face while lava erupted from my throat.

After a few more violent convulsive heaves, the nausea momentarily passed, and I tried to breathe.

"It's not what you think!" he said, his voice hoarse and lame. I lifted my head and saw him in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot as if he had some sort of STD rotting his crotch. "I mean...shit, it's just...your hair was really big! And your clothes—"

"Fuck a frog, Edward! Stop talking and get the Tums!" Alice yelled.

"In the bathroom," he replied. "Bella, I swear I didn't bring you up here for a handjob. Honest! The plan was to arrest you."

"I wanted to have pudding with you..." Despite my anger, I spoke the words in a small, sad voice. He'd seemed so sweet and funny yesterday, and oh my fuck, his hands...his body. Everything about him was incredible. And I'd thought he'd liked me. "And I guess you thought pudding was some sort of street lingo for "let's exchange sex for money?"or is solicitation of sex for pudding some sort of new law that I'm not familiar with?"

He let out this strangled laugh while I coughed and sputtered and choked and cursed in response, bending over the toilet again.

"So what happened?" Alice asked, sounding exasperated. "How did you go from collaring her to getting a handy? I mean, I knew you were desperate but . . . paying a hooker to get off?"

"I'm not a hooker!" I wailed between heaves.

"It…really wasn't like that, Alice," Edward insisted, getting slightly angry with his sister. "Bella, please tell her it wasn't like that."

I wanted to scream, but I couldn't summon enough air into my lungs with the projectile vomiting and such.

"Oh, Bella...my brother's an idiot! I'm so sorry..." Alice rubbed my back as the last vestiges of partially digested food made their way out of my throat and into the commode.

Now that my stomach was empty, I felt like boiling myself in water to get rid of the terrible, dirty feeling that seemed to coat my skin. Fuck, I wanted to pretend like the entire thing never happened, but the evidence remained between my legs—the dull ache Edward's dick had left in my pussy. It had been a while since I'd gotten properly laid, and he'd been very accommodating and enthusiastic, waking me up several times during the night to have more sex.

I'd thought it was because he liked me and desired me, not because I'd been offering some sort of "Open House" night to prospective Johns to earn their business.

On trembling legs, I hobbled over to the shower and turned the faucet to hot, waiting for the water heater to wake up.

"We did it three times," I said bitterly. "Plus the handjob."

"I like you, Bella. I mean, I really like you—"

"You tried to pay me!" I sobbed, cutting him off.

"No! I just...I didn't want you to think I was taking advantage of you!" He smacked his head. "That sounded better in my head."

"Jesus, Edward, how much money did you leave again?"

"He gave me fifty dollars to rub his dick!" I wailed. Alice pushed him out of the room and I ran a washcloth under the tap.

Edward piped in again from the hallway. "I didn't... I mean, I wasn't... Holy shit, this is all really fucked!"

"Let's look at this rationally for a second," Alice cooed, cleaning my face. "Guys usually pay for sex one way or another—with flowers, jewelry, fancy dinners... Edward just happened to give you cash."

"Jesus, Alice," Edward said, muttering a string of intelligible words.

"You're not helping, Alice." I grabbed the cloth and blew my nose into it.

"I know. I'm kind of at a loss as to what to say. Edward fucked up big time. And maybe this isn't the best time to tell you, but I know he cares about you."

"Bullshit." I sneezed.

"No, really! He left a fuckton of messages on my phone about you... How you're sweet and funny and beautiful. I was going to wring his neck for putting his job and life on the line by dating a hooker—"

"Not a hooker!" Edward and I screamed in unison, and if I hadn't wanted to cut off his balls, I might have felt bad about the forlorn tone in his voice. But dude, there's only so much a girl can take. Sleeping with a guy who thought he was buying sex from a hooker had to be a hard limit for me. No way would I put up with anymore weird bullshit from men...especially after Jake.

Alice shook her head. "I know! But he thought you were, and he was willing to risk everything to be with you."

Well, that was kind of sweet. No, wait a minute!

"He offered me cash last night before we fucked." I laughed bitterly.

"What?" Alice's jaw dropped, her dark eyes blazing.

"He said something about not having money, like he was offering me a make-good or some shit."

Alice glared at Edward, who took a step back.

"In my defense, I still thought... I mean, I was hoping there was some way for us to—"

"Shut up, Edward!" I didn't want to hear any more. This was so over.

EPOV

I paced outside the bathroom, trying to focus on making this situation not suck.

Bella and I had just spent the entire night having, no lie, the best sex ever on my Starsky and Hutch sheets, and now...she was puking.

I made a woman puke.

That's gotta be bad, right? Like, all time record bad? Making a woman puke?

I'm pretty sure that's worse than bad.

There's no way for this to end well.

Somewhere inside, admittedly, I was doing this crazy happy-dance-slash-Irish-jig sorta thing, when I heard Alice announce that Bella wasn't a prostitute in any way, shape, or form... And, honestly, I didn't hear much after that. I was too centered on the fact that the woman I was falling head over heels for was not going to be a hazard to my job after all.

But now that it was all starting to sink in, as I listened to that same woman attempt to hold back tears and Alice say things like "He paid you how much?", I tried to keep my head above water as Bella ticked off all the idiocies I'd committed over the past few days.

She was right.

I'd thought she was a hooker.

I hadn't bothered asking if she was a hooker.

I'd broken the law and taken advantage of her assumed hooker duties—and not only that, but I'd done it twice.

I rubbed my face in my hands, trying to think. I could hear Alice attempting to calm Bella, making me out to sound slightly less like an asshole, but I could also hear the disgust in her voice, too—probably because of how I'd treated this girl since the first time we'd met.

Closest thing I've come to having a girlfriend in who knows how long and what do I do?

Not only had I insulted this woman, who was the most amazing person I'd ever met, but I'd somehow translated a simple request for a pudding cup into an offer to let me cum on her face.

I mean, Jesus...cum on her face?

Really?

It was all starting to seem so unbelievable to me... Everything I'd somehow convinced myself to be true over the course of our...relationship?

I was beginning to turn damn near hysterical with myself when Bella stormed out of the bathroom, finally.

"I'm so happy to see you're amused with the situation, Edward Masen."

"I'm not! I just... Bella, please...!" I followed her as she went to find her clothes, and although Alice made her own lame attempts at getting me to leave her be, to let things go for the time being, I was fairly stubborn, so I blew her off for the most part.

Then my own surreal kind of moment hit me—one that left me a little curious.

"Wait a minute," I said, slowing my pace a little as I entered my bedroom. "Speaking of last names...you specifically told me you weren't the Commissioner's daughter. Was that true?"

The statement seemed to slow her down, but then she picked right up from where she'd left off, grabbing her things and avoiding any eye contact.

"Um... what?"

"Yesterday I asked you if you were any relation, and you said no."

Alice stopped one step short of an ass kicking on my part and turned to eye Bella suspiciously for the first time since she'd arrived.

"I—I—I..." she stuttered for a few seconds, but her temper returned shortly thereafter and she told me, "Don't change the subject, Edward."

"Oh, indeed, Miss Swan... I think a subject change is exactly what we need right now."

I was cool on the outside but sweating bullets on the inside.

No doubt I had a whole lot of apologizing to do if I was going to have a chance in hell at getting another shot with Bella, but I was pretty thrown that she had lied about being Charlie Swan's daughter.

It didn't make sense.

I stepped into the doorway, blocking her from leaving me hanging there. Then she looked up at me and I saw the girl I'd shared coffee with the night before—before I spewed mine all over her shirt, that is.

But there was something else there, too...in her eyes.

"I was afraid you'd only want to get to know me to help further your career. And before you cut me off, it's happened before," she said in a small voice.

Her words kicked me in the gut, and my first instinct was to beat the shit out of whoever had used her like that.

My second instinct was to beat the shit out of myself because...holy...Shit, I'm a dick.

I am a big dick.

A big, huge, wart-infested dick with, like, diseases and shit all over my balls kind of dick.

Bella was finally quiet, though, and I needed to take advantage of the moment to make her see that I wasn't the prick she thought I was, even though she had every right to think that I was. I mean, I was even having a hard time remembering I was a good dude.

So I sucked in some air and blurted something out that even I'm not sure I quite understood.

"Look...everything moved really fast that first night, Bella. I would never have done something like that had I not been completely blindsided by the fact that you were the most beautiful thing I'd ever laid eyes on—aside from all the big hair and heavy make-up, that is. I mean, on a good day I'd have accused you of hooking, you'd have slapped me across the face, and baddabingdaddabang, we'd have gone our separate ways. But you were..." I made some kind of stupid NNNF sound, "...and when you—I mean, when we...that is, after we...you know...and then you ate my pudding and...fuck, that was sexy, but then you passed out and that old lady called me a pervert at the ATM and..." I raked a hand through my hair. I was done. "Shit, Bella, I just didn't know what else to do at that point. I was a goner... I fell for a hooker—at least I thought I had—and I was a goddamn goner."

She stared blankly at me.

Alice's mouth was agape.

It was a little awkward.

I was out of breath, but I managed to add one more idiocy to my long list of standing idiocies: "Just like Richard Gere."

Why must I keep talking?

Bella seemed to have lost the ability to speak. Awesome, I made her puke and now she's fucking speechless!

And her dad is probably not only going to fire my ass, but he's most likely going to kick it as well.

Several times.

Publicly.

"Shit."

"I have to go," she finally said, and she pushed passed me with her purse and clothes cradled in her arms. I picked up the discarded bed sheets off the floor and draped them around her shoulders. She winced.

"Bella."

"I have to go, Edward." She shook her head, trying to find words, maybe. Trying to find just the right way to let me know this was over? I don't know.

She never found them, though. She just...left.

Alice's mouth was still slack-jawed, and the last thing I remember seeing as the elevator doors closed was Bella's crushed expression staring down the hall at me.

Even from where I stood, I could see the glassy tears beginning to form, and what was far worse than seeing Bella cry was that I knew I'd caused it.

I had to make this right.

I had to find a way to convince Bella that A) any guy that might have used her to get ahead in their career didn't deserve her anyway, B) even though I didn't deserve her, either, and despite the fact that recent events might have said otherwise, I would never treat her wrong ever again, and C...

Okay, I didn't have a "C" yet, but I would, and when I did I'd lay it all out there.

Take a chance.

And win the girl back.

I hoped...