AN: Thanks for all the great reviews on the Prologue! The plan is to update every Tuesday (and I already have some chapters written). Follow me on twitter at bethaboo555 for teasers and extra little bits!

Thanks to my awesomesauce beta, JosieSwan

Bella

The restaurant was typical Renee—overpriced and over-cultured, with tiny toothpick chairs that held socialites and aspiring models who came to be seen, but not to actually eat any of the rabbit food the place served. I rolled my eyes at the waiter's fake French accent, and gave him the evil eye when he tried to cop a feel by arranging the starched white napkin in my lap.

"I'll let Mrs. Dwyer know you've arrived," he said, his snooty voice not quite covering his obvious distaste for my attire. I toyed with the idea of telling him that Renee would have his ass if she was ever referred to as Mrs. Dwyer, but decided against it, smiling beatifically instead, sending him scurrying to the kitchen like a rat looking for a hole.

"Isabella, darling!" I heard Renee before I saw her. Ten pairs of eyes swiveled my way as my mother picked her way through the tables, teetering on mile high heels and dressed in some utterly ridiculous chiffon monstrosity that made her look as if she were contemplating flight.

Unfortunately, I was here, and even more unfortunately, we were both confined to the ground.

Renee stopped in front of the table, an expression of breathless excitement on her delicate features. Or then again, that might have been the Botox Phil was endlessly injecting her with.

"Mom," I said flatly. She settled into the chair and arranged her plumage, before trilling charmingly to the hovering waiter, "two iced teas and two green salads, dressing on the side."

I grimaced, anticipating yet another inedible lunch that would totally screw up my digestive system. Our order given, Renee turned to me, the melting helplessness in her gaze sharpening to knife points.

"Isabella, I won't say you look well, because you don't. Not at all."

I shrugged, mentally preparing myself for an hour long interrogation on my multitude of flaws that would masquerade as polite lunch conversation. Sullenly, I slid farther down in my chair and regarded her with bored angst. I loved the way that my mother made me behave like a rebellious eleven year old instead of the mature, mostly-grownup, 24 that I was.

The razors that doubled for her eyes took in every single rip and tear on my jeans, the plain gray of my t-shirt and then she actually shuddered in distaste as she glared at my favorite pair of black Chucks.

"I won't ask if you got the clothes I sent, because I know you did. I tracked them all the way to your door, Isabella. But if the box was ever unpacked, I would be astonished."

I had to force the smug smile down. "It wasn't."

Renee sighed with such suffering you'd think she'd just made it through New York Fashion Week—her equivalent of a world war. "You do realize that they'll be wrinkled beyond reason now."

"Yep." After so many years of displeasing my mother, I had finally learned to take what I could from these wonderful moments together—it certainly helped that baiting her was so damn easy. The waiter appeared with our salads, and there was only the sound of polite laughter and the screech of cutlery on overpriced china for a few minutes as Renee pretended to eat and I tried to find something on my plate that wasn't green.

Of course, she hadn't come from LA to "eat" an overpriced bunch of weeds, and without further ado, Renee set her fork down with a decisive motion. "Isabella, I want you to know I'm not going to give up. There is so much more to you than this. . .rebellion."

"Mom, it's hardly a rebellion when it's been more the rule than the exception."

"I continue to wonder how I gave birth to a child who is so different from myself," Renee said, and I knew this was more of an observation than a question. She didn't really want an answer, she just wanted to complain some more about how I didn't care about clothes or makeup or using my body to sell a bunch of crap that nobody needed.

"It's called nature versus nurture," I said snidely. "You left me with Charlie for too long, and by the time you remembered I existed, it was too late to make a dent."

"This is your future, Isabella, and as much as I would like to give you up as a hopeless case, I care about you too much to do that. Someone has to make you see what a mistake you're making."

"I went to college," I argued. "You won that battle."

"Public university, in Washington, of all places." Renee shuddered, as if imagining the wind coming off the Puget Sound and ruffling her chiffon feathers. You were admitted to Pepperdine and Stanford and the University of Southern California. You could have even lived with Phil and I."

"Yeah, cause I loved doing that so much."

"Sarcasm, Isabella," Renee said with a hard edge to her voice, "is not very becoming."

"Good thing I don't give a crap about being becoming then. You know, I give you full permission to totally give up. You don't have to waste a second more worrying about me or my future. I'm sure it's cutting into all that time you spend sunbathing and shopping and trying to look eighteen again."

The lines around her mouth Renee wanted so badly to eradicate tightened. "You are trying my patience, Isabella."

Someday she was going to realize how much I enjoyed doing that, and it wouldn't be nearly as fun anymore. Good thing that day was so fucking far away. For all her beauty and sophistication, Renee had the intelligence of a marshmallow. She wasn't subtle or deep, and poking holes into all her lame, materialistic arguments was way too easy. However, you had to give her some credit, because even if she wasn't exactly sly, Renee was certainly determined. She kept going, as if I wasn't the intractable daughter that she'd never quite wanted.

"I was speaking to Natasha the other day—you remember my friend Natasha? She's with Ford Models—and she told me that Boston is actually an up-and-coming hotbed of fashion. She said she might be able to . . ."

"No," I said flatly, interrupting her before she could even ask. There was no point. I would have to be starving and homeless and crazy to do what Renee wanted me to. Especially if that included modeling in any shape or form.

"Now, Isabella, I know that you don't think that you're beautiful enough to model, and goodness knows, I've had my own misgivings about your looks through the years." Renee paused and her head tilted slightly, as she mentally removed the clothes I knew she considered hideous and reassembled me the way she wanted me to be. "However, I do believe you're finally growing into your looks. Goodness knows, it didn't take me so long, but then, you aren't all me. You're your father's child through and through."

I was probably the only one who could really understand how much of an insult this was, and so I said nothing, staring stonily at my plate, as Renee rambled on. "I told Natasha that you'd call her up. Or maybe I should just give her your number. She said one of her best photographers might have an opening next week, and you'll need test shots. . ."

As Renee rambled on about headshots and auditions and casting calls and stylists, I tried to tune her out and take stock of my life, such as it was. Ever since my dad Charlie had died and she'd plucked me out of Manchester, England to live the "fabulous" life, I'd been trying to find my happy place again, and finally, I felt like I was making some progress. I wasn't about to let Renee waltz in and take it all away again. Before, I'd been too young to have a say in what she did with my life, but now, I was old enough that I could finally tell her off. Though I thought I'd long buried all of my bitterness and resentment for her behavior after Charlie's death, it all came rushing back, swamping me, until I felt as if I was nearly vibrating with it.

"Stop," I growled out, and Renee looked up from a list she'd pulled from her Prada bag—plans no doubt, for my triumphant modeling debut. "I won't do it. Today, or tomorrow or ten years from now." I knew my voice was louder and harsher than it usually was with her, mostly because I hated letting her know how much her blatant disregard for everything that was important to me hurt, but it did hurt. By my own measurement, I was doing okay; it wasn't my fault that she used a different system entirely.

Despite her ridiculous appearance, Renee had a backbone of iron. She wasn't about to give in easily. Straightening almost imperceptibly, her eyes narrowed like laser points. "Isabella, I've let you play around long enough. You're 24. It's time to get serious."

"I am serious." My voice cracked a bit at the end, and I hated that I'd let her see behind the mirage that I could care less what she thought of me. She was my fucking mother, and she didn't want me to be happy. In the end, it was still all about her—like it had always been.

" If you were serious, you would do something about your future. Instead, you insist on playing these silly games, and tinkering around with that . . . .blog."

Renee had never hesitated to tell me exactly what she thought of my writing, but this still stung. It stung so much that I gave into weakness and wished that Charlie had never stepped in front of that asshole's gun. If he hadn't, he would still be alive, letting me be exactly the person I wanted, not forcing me into a carbon copy of my mother.

"My blog is my future. That's the life I want. Not some lame, materialistic existence full of air-kisses and Botox. I'm not ever going to be you."

"You could be though, Isabella. You're pretty—almost beautiful—at least if you would desist dressing like a bum." She rambled on, going over all the points of my physical appearance and explaining, oh so sweetly, that although they could never measure up to her, they were still good enough on their own.

Fuck this. I was done being "good enough." It had been a long time coming, and I'd said it all to her so many times I'd lost count, but despite that, I knew I had to finally stick to my principles. If I didn't accept anything from her again, I wouldn't have to even give Renee the slightest say in my life. As it stood now, she still had the ability because it was her right. After today, I would make sure that this was no longer be true.

The words that had been brewing inside for the last thirteen years exploded out of me. "No. No. It's never going to happen. Not ever. I'll fucking die before I ever do anything you want. I'm done. With you, with Dr. Botox, with those ugly clothes you insist on sending me. I'm done. Until you can accept me exactly as I am, ratty jeans and brown hair and all, don't even bother talking to me again." I stood up suddenly, the twiggy chair falling to the floor from the force of my anger.

Renee spluttered, her hands fluttering in supplication. "Isabella, please. Do not make a scene."

"It's high time I did," I told her and turned and walked away.

Despite that I prided myself on never letting Renee's insensitivity get under my skin, my heart was thumping madly as I let the door of the restaurant slam behind me. I was free. Stupid but free—and hungry too, damnit.

I decided to celebrate by stopping by Demetri's diner and ordering a cheeseburger. After all, I'd pretty much skipped lunch because 1) it was disgusting and 2) I'd left before I'd even managed to eat a bite of what could only loosely be considered edible.

The bell over Demetri's door rang out as I opened it, and stepped into a world that was night and day from the restaurant I'd met Renee at. She would have rather died than eat somewhere owned by someone who worshipped meat the way that Demetri did—but I loved Demetri's dedication to his favorite food and the results of such devotion.

"Bells!" Demetri called out as I walked into the stainless steel hole-in-the-wall that made the best damn burgers in the whole city. "Good to see you again, child." He walked out of the kitchen, a huge black man with a head of Rastafarian dreads. He looked terrifying, but I knew from personal experience that he had a heart of gold.

I slung my leather hobo bag on a barstool and rested my elbows on the shiny stainless steel counter. "You too. I'm starving. Can I get a burger?"

"Your usual?" he asked, wiping his hands with a towel.

"Sure," I said and Demetri turned to the pass-through to put the order in, but I reconsidered. It had been an exceptionally shitty morning. I needed something more than just the usual. "Demetri? Could you actually make that a double? With bacon?"

He chuckled, a low rumble deep in his chest. "Having a rough day?"

"I had lunch with my mother." I resisted the urge to pour out all my frustration and anger and resentment about Renee, but apparently my face said it all, since Demetri gave me an exceptionally sympathetic look—even for him—and came around the counter to wrap his arms around me. He was warm and cozy and comforting—and that wasn't even taking into consideration that he smelled like grilled meat.

"Honey, you need to tell her off."

This was typical Demetri. He'd been counseling me to give Renee a piece of my mind ever since I'd wandered in here one day two years ago, my nose following the incredible aroma emanating from the tiny restaurant. I pulled away from his embrace, patting his bicep. "You'll be proud of me. I finally did."

He looked skeptical for half a second, his eyes examining my face, before he pulled me into an even tighter hug. "Demetri," I gasped, suddenly unable to breathe. "You're killing me."

"I'm just so proud of you," he said, releasing me. "You get extra bacon!"

I grinned at Demetri, burying the thought that Charlie would have loved him. "If telling Renee off means I get extra bacon, I'm going to do it every day."

Demetri moved back behind the counter again, and gave my order to Felix, the line order cook. "You're gonna have a heart attack by the time you're 30, Bells. Now tell me about the blog. How's it going?"

I rolled my eyes. "I'm down more hits. I don't know what it is. I can't seem to generate any interest."

Demetri, who was practically a surrogate father, was a loyal reader of my Boston music blog, and I often asked him for suggestions on how I could make it better. "I've been telling you. You need another article like that one you wrote about Athair's last album."

"That isn't funny," I hissed, annoyed that nobody would leave that fucking entry alone. "You know I regret writing that."

"But you meant it. Every damn word." Demetri moved down the counter, refilling drinks and handing out napkins like he was the guardian angel of cholesterol.

"That doesn't matter," I retorted. "It was private. My own private rant. I never should have posted it."

"And it was best thing you've ever put on there. Maybe if you put all your private thoughts up, you'd get more hits."

"Sound & the City isn't supposed to be about my private thoughts. It's not like Twitter or Facebook or some lame social networking pseudo-confessional. It's supposed to be an analytical, thoughtful, and objective blog about the Boston music scene. With reviews that aren't personal rants."

"Maybe that's your problem. That don't sound all that interesting."

Demetri's criticism stung and I recoiled, pleating a napkin before tearing it into tiny pieces. "Are you saying my blog isn't interesting?"

He stopped refilling a ketchup bottle to swing his massive head my way. "That ain't what I said, Bells. I'm just sayin' that the post about Athair was the most interesting. And it got you the most hits."

"And the most hate mail," I muttered.

"Hey, look at that Perez guy. He's hated, but he's famous."

"I do not want to be the next Perez Hilton!"

"You gotta do something, though. Something other than what you've been doing." Demetri's voice was kind, as he leaned over the counter and plucked the shredded napkin out of my hands. "You're a smart girl—you'll figure it out. But just take it easy on yourself."

It was easy for Demetri to say this—he had a successful business and a job. I had just told off my one way of making money. Alice was not going to be exactly pleased when I got home and told her that the box of clothes she'd spent the morning unpacking was going to be the last.

I hesitated. "You never said that you thought the Athair review was interesting, only that it was risky."

"It was the best thing you ever wrote, Bells, and you know it. Before I read it, I thought maybe you were all cold and British. But you're not. You've got some fire in you somewhere. You just gotta find it."

He slid a styrofoam takeout box next to me and I picked it up. "How much do I owe you?" I asked, fumbling in my hobo bag for cash.

"It's on the house, honey chile. Meat and cheese and more bacon than you can shake a stick at."

I couldn't help but beam at him, and wish just a little that Renee could see me now. She'd have a heart attack. No—her head would probably implode. "My arteries thank you."

I turned to go, but Demetri stopped by me putting a hand on my shoulder. "You come see Demetri if you need more advice. That's always free."

And just like that, he cut my defenses to nothing. It was easy to forget after seeing Renee that I did have people who cared about me and who supported me, regardless of what I did. I hadn't only come here for the burger and the animal fat, but for that oh so necessary reminder.

"Thank you," I whispered, afraid that if I said it any louder, the tears that were threatening to spill out my eyes would fall. And no matter how much I loved Demetri, I didn't want him or anyone else to see how much Renee's attitude hurt.

I was three blocks away from home when my phone rang. I checked the number and almost stumbled. It was Renee. She had never once called me post-argument, and I hesitated. Maybe she was really sorry. Maybe she wanted to tell me that after all the crap she'd put me through, she'd decided to support me regardless of what I chose to do with my life.

Nope. I knew better than to fall into that trap. I ground my teeth together and hit the ignore button on my phone. It was time I figured out how I was going to really make it on my own, and unfortunately, taking handouts from Renee—even if she had no idea that they were handouts—was going to have to end.

I climbed the three flights of stairs to the apartment I shared with Alice, which I optimistically referred to a loft, and unlocked the door. It was quiet, almost silent, and I thought for a moment that maybe Alice had left to get lunch, when I paused and heard that the confident slice of scissors through fabric.

I walked into the living room that doubled as our headquarters and found Alice, my best friend and business partner, bent over a worktable, painstakingly cutting a pattern out of black cotton. She'd unpacked the clothes that Renee had sent, and they were pressed and hung on a rack at the back of the room. A dress on a dressmaker's dummy stood in front of her, and even though I knew almost nothing about sewing, I could tell Alice was in the middle of creating a pattern for it.

Knowing how she felt about being interrupted in this "crucial stage of development," I passed through to the kitchen and grabbed a plate, popping a sweet potato fry in my mouth as I transferred the burger (aka the paean to all things fattening) to the plate. I laughed when I saw that instead of the normal toothpicks that held the halves together, Demetri had used jaunty British flag picks.

"You're home early," Alice said as she walked into the kitchen, rolling her shoulders and neck. I didn't know how she spent so much hunched over that damn table, but I supposed that she didn't have much of a choice. Our operation was small—and well, not 100% legal. We hadn't been able to afford to hire any help before this, and now it was totally out of the question.

Which reminded me. I still had to tell Alice that we needed to do everything we could with this last box of clothes. I watched as she snagged a sweet potato fry and closed her eyes at the heavenly goodness.

"You stopped by Demetri's," Alice observed as she pushed her tiny body up on the counter. "Lunch must not have gone very well."

"Not exactly, no." I took a big bite of burger goodness and tried to postpone the inevitable as long as possible. I dreaded telling Alice that I'd basically cut off our business at its knees. Alice was the real talent behind the operation—I only provided the samples that we copied from. Without my contributions, we were going to be a underground couture copier with no couture to copy.

"She didn't offer to take you shopping then?" A year or so ago, Alice had come up with the brilliant plan of conning Renee into taking me on shopping expeditions when she was in town. I'd done it once or twice, but it only gave Renee the wrong idea. Whenever I suggested we go shopping, she would instantly assume that a modeling career was only a short skip, leap, and a jump away and nothing was farther from the truth. For the last eight months, Alice and I been making it solely based on the "necessities" that Renee still shipped me.

"No. She didn't. In fact," I chewed a stray piece of bacon, "I kind of told her off. Told her not to send any more clothes." Sheepishly, I poked at the glistening mound of sweet potato fries on the plate. I couldn't meet Alice's eyes. I felt as if I'd let her down, even as I'd managed to set myself free.

"You told her to stop sending clothes?" I looked up to see Alice's eyes nearly bugging out of her head. It wasn't exactly an attractive look, and I'd have to tell her when she wasn't quite so. . .upset.

"I had to, Al. There was no choice. I. . .I couldn't do it anymore." I hoped fervently that Alice would understand. She was my best friend. She knew what I'd had to go through with Renee. Even if her goodwill was our bread and butter, it wasn't more important than my sanity.

To my surprise, I was almost knocked over as five feet of sewing genius collided with me. Tiny arms held me like whipcord and I felt a rush of relief at her reaction. "It's going to make things a lot harder," I told her honestly, suddenly not wanting to varnish over reality with platitudes.

"I don't care," Alice said, pulling me back and looking me straight in the eye. "You telling off that bitch has been too long in coming. Now," she said as she appropriated more of my lunch, "we need to figure out how not to be homeless."

"Well, there is some money saved in the business account. Not a lot, but some. Enough to keep us afloat for maybe a month or two—if we scrimped and saved."

Alice's face fell almost instantly, and I groaned. "Alice, I told you, told you, not to make big purchases without asking and/or telling me first."

She shrugged, her tiny bird shoulders moving under the simple black cardigan she wore. "I unpacked the box and it was good stuff, Bella. Great stuff. But I needed fabric to get started, so I went to the stores, and well. . ." She dug a handful of receipts out of the back pocket of her skinny jeans and handed them to me.

I added them up mentally and decided that Alice's idea to brainstorm how not to be homeless was a great place to start. "Well, the sooner you can get those clothes copied and sold, the better. Because we're pretty much stone broke until that point."

Even with rushing, I knew it was a good two to three month turnaround from the beginning of the process to the end, and I also knew it would be up to me to fill the shortfall somehow. Alice would have her hands full with the sewing, and it was my fault that this had happened, so it was my responsibility to fix it.

"What can we do in the meantime?" Alice asked, almost echoing my thoughts.

"There's the blog," I said. "If somehow I could boost circulation and hits, I could get a lot more advertising. That could hold us over until you have the clothes ready to sell."

Alice looked at me skeptically as she shoveled sweet potato fries in her mouth. "And how are you going to boost your hits? The only thing you've ever written that was even remotely well-read was that review you did of Athair."

"I know," I said morosely. At least with the clothing business, Alice was doing what she was good at and in an industry she loved, no less. I was only involved because my passion, the blog, was undistinguished and decidedly unpopular. Sometimes I felt as if the only readers I had were Alice and Demetri—and they only read because they loved me, not because they loved what I wrote.

"You could write scathing reviews of all the bad albums you can think of," Alice suggested, the expression on her face openly helpful.

I made a face. "No. Absolutely not. I couldn't anyway—the only reason I was so nasty about Althair was because of how much I used to love them. That's what made it so memorable, I guess; I felt personally invested in the whole debacle. Besides, I am not going to build my reputation on negativity."

"But Bella, people like reading about negative stuff. Why do you think that one review was so popular? Everyone thought it was hilarious that you were so nasty about it."

I made an even worse face. "And that's exactly the problem. That's not what I want to do with my life."

"Well," Alice said, jumping down from the counter, her black flats landing lightly on the tile floor, "you've got to figure out what that is exactly. And pretty damn soon. I'm going to go finish cutting out my pattern. Thanks for the fries."

I watched as Alice exited the kitchen and tried to remember how exhilarated I'd felt only an hour before. Now, the only thing I could feel was panic mixed in with a healthy helping of terror. I'd never been homeless before and I didn't exactly want to start now. And the idea of crawling back to Renee was only slightly less loathsome than being a bum on the street corner.