"Dad?"
The word resonates through the open plan of my house. My father's car wasn't in the driveway when I arrived home, but I ask anyway because the idea of being caught by surprise is anything but pleasant.
He's not here, and I'm alone for the first time in... I struggle to recall.
I used to relish my solitude - I'd put my iPod in and dance around the house in my underwear, singing into my hairbrush or mimicking music videos. I'd let out all the parts of me that I'd be mortified if anyone else saw. I'd sit in the bath for hours with the doors open and music playing through the intercom system and sit on the couch watching bad tv half-dressed.
I loved every minute of it.
Now, the house feels too big, empty and hollow and threatening and I don't really want to be here but it's the best way. Or so I'm telling myself.
"I think... I think I need to leave here."
He looked at me, confused.
"Um... ok, where do you want to go?"
"I think I should move back into my house."
"Bella, your dad hates me and my family loves you. Why would we move into your house?"
I looked at him sadly, desperately hoping that I wouldn't have to point out where he'd gone wrong. He waited for a response from me for an agonisingly long time, and then his eyes flickered with understanding.
"You don't want me to come with you, do you?"
"I just... I think it's better if we do things this way. Get some space."
His face turned to a glare, something I'd seen many times before, but never directed at me.
"Is this some fucking revenge thing for me walking out the other day? Are you trying to show me how it feels?"
I was horrified that he'd come to that conclusion.
"Of course it isn't!"
"Then please enlighten me, Bella, because I'm obviously a couple of steps behind here."
"I was talking to Garrett -"
"Of course you fucking were," he sneered, but I continued anyway, trying not to break under the malice he was throwing at me. I knew he was angry and scared and trying to protect himself, but it still hurt that he would treat me like this.
"We've been over this, Edward, and I'm not going over it again. He is trying to help me."
"By taking you away from me," he spat. "And you're going to let him sell me down the fucking river because he says that it's the best thing for you."
"Will you please just listen to me?"
My voice was filled with a combination of frustration and undisguised pain, which he obviously picked up because his eyes softened slightly and he nodded once for me to continue.
"Garrett talked me through what happened the other day after we spoke to your parents about the trial. He told me that even though you and I have real feelings for each other," I stated the words clearly to reassure him, "what we have together isn't healthy, and I think that he's right. The way I depend on you, and can't do anything without being plagued by fear, that's not healthy."
Edward opened his mouth but I held up a hand to stop him because I needed to get this out.
"He asked me to think about the ways that I want you in my life as opposed to the ways I feel like I need you here. We can't heal fully, or have a real, normal relationship, unless we learn which parts of us are the broken, co-dependent parts and which are based on real feelings.
"Does that make sense?"
Grudgingly, he nodded.
"Maybe I'm missing something, but why the fuck do you have to leave for this to be resolved?"
"Because when you're here I feel like I have to be around you at all times, like I can't think properly if you're not in sight. I think I need to... wean myself off the compulsion to have you around, and I don't see how I can have you only a few feet away at all times and do that. I'm not strong enough. How can I know that what we have is real, when I can't tell if I'm just too broken and frightened to leave?"
"Do you want to leave?"
"No!" I cried, knowing how confusing my garbled diatribe must have been to him. "I just... I need to know that it's real."
"Of course it's real," he swore, taking my hand in his. "Yes, we met in a fucked up way, and yes, it's made things unbelievably fucking difficult. But Bella, I- I care about you so fucking much, and I don't want to lose you based on some hunch you have that being away from me is going to magically cure everything that's wrong with us and between us."
He dropped my hand and placed his back in his lap, looking uncharacteristically bashful.
"You said we were going to do this together. You promised me."
"I'm not leaving - I'm just letting us get some space. It'll be good for us."
I said the words with more conviction than I was feeling in that moment.
"How do I know that you're not going to get home, realise I'm really a total asshole and tell me to go fuck myself? What if something happens to you and I'm not there? What then, Bella?"
His tone got increasingly frantic as he spoke.
"See? This is what's wrong with us. We should want to be together, not feel we should out of fear of what could happen if we're not. I just want to get us to that point so we can be happy together and not frightened everytime we're apart."
My words seemed to finally be making sense to him, and I exhaled heavily.
"So how do we do this?"
"Well," I sighed, because I wasn't sure how to continue. "I'll go back, and we'll see each other when we want to, I guess. We'll keep doing the therapy thing, we'll hang out, I'll probably be here all the time because I'll miss your crazy family," I joked weakly, "and we'll find something that works for us."
"I thought this was working for us."
The phrase 'a bandaid for a bullethole' came to mind.
"Edward, we can be so much better than this, and I want that. Not just for me, but for both of us. I'm sorry, but I've made my choice. I'm not leaving you behind, and I still want to be with you, but I just... I want to do it properly. We deserve that normalcy in our lives."
"It's always about being normal, isn't it Bella?"
He stood up, putting space between us that made me immediately uncomfortable.
"Nothing about this situation is normal! I don't know why you'd even want to be just normal! We can be so much better than the average idea you cling to! You're just fucking scared, and running from me, and I can't fucking believe you'd do this. If you want to go, then just fucking go, don't feed me your bullshit lines about caring about me and wanting to make this shit right... just go."
He walked out of the room and I tried to brace myself.
He was just angry.
Angry, and frightened because he doesn't know what's coming.
This was the right thing for us.
This is the right thing for us.
The best way.
Edward didn't speak to me while I packed my belongings, and he wasn't there when I said my goodbyes to his family and left. I think they assumed that we'd had our own, private goodbyes, and said nothing of his absence. Esme made me promise to come over for dinner, even though I had to bargain my way down from every night to at least two times a week.
I cried a little on the drive home for the family I'd come to love as my own, but promptly wiped the tears away, embarrassed at my theatrics. They were only 15 minutes away and I knew I was welcome any time so I forced myself to calm down.
As I wander through my empty house, Checker on his leash and excitedly taking in his new home, a pang of the same sadness hits me.
I'm on my own.
My phone vibrates in my pocket and I reach for it hastily, hoping that it's Edward although I already know that it's not. It's Alice, and she's worried.
B - Jas says that Edward's been acting like a serial killer since you left, is everything ok? Want me to come over and we can do something awesome? - A
I sigh heavily and respond.
A - Come on over whenever you can. Have you noticed how ridiculously big this house is? I just did and it's kind of freaking me out. - B
B - How could you not have noticed? You've lived there your entire life, dummy. Be there in 8. - A
I laugh a little and head for the kitchen, only to find that when Charlie is here on his own, the state of our kitchen descends to nothingness rather quickly. When Alice arrives we take a trip to the grocery store in the name of obtaining supplies.
"You know, I'm kind of pissed at you for leaving," she muses, chewing on a stolen grape. I stop putting apples - green ones, because red ones are gross - into the plastic bag and look at her, confused and a little hurt.
"How am I supposed to continue with Operation Jasper when you're not taking up residence in his home?"
Her playful smile makes me realise, a moment late, that she's teasing me, and I can't help but laugh and nudge her with my elbow as I pass by to place the fruit in the cart. She laughs with me, a carefree happy sound that helps to lift my sour mood, if only a little.
"I'm so sorry I've inconvenienced your quest to get a man indicted for statutory rape," I deadpan.
"You are not even remotely forgiven," she shoots back with a wink, "and I'll be 18 soon anyway, so the clock is ticking."
"Please don't do anything til you're legal," I plead seriously, "I'm very fond of Jasper and honestly, he's too pretty for prison."
"You're right about that. You know what he's not too pretty for? My bedroom. Or my shower - oh Bella, imagine him in my shower!"
"No thankyou."
She gives a salacious smile as her eyes lose focus, and I'm so, so glad she's not thinking aloud right now. We traipse the aisles, me collecting items I need for the house and her collecting things that she thinks look yummy and things that she hasn't eaten for ages and suddenly craves the moment she lays eyes on them. She chatters incessantly, and rather than irritating I find it soothing, the way you feel when you listen to a familiar song as you're busy with some other task. You may not be 100% focused on the sound, but it's there and it makes everything a little bit easier.
Even though it's June and summer has barely started, Alice talks about the pending school year - senior year. She's been waiting for this for years, to be at the top of the pecking order, although I can't really understand why. Alice has never exactly been the type to fade into the shadows, and in freshman year she was cast as one of the leads in the school's production of Grease, something that in the past was unheard of.
Her mention of school gets me to thinking - Edward and I had planned to attend his school together in the fall, but would that still be happening now? The ball is probably in my court with that regard, and I resolve to think it over at a later point, when I better understand my feelings about... well, everything.
Alice comes home with me, helps me makes dinner, dominates the conversation with Charlie then chooses a movie for us to curl up in my bed with. She acts like she's just being her usual bossy-boots self, but I know that she's trying to protect me, to let me process so that when I'm ready, I'll open up to her.
She may not understand everything, but somehow, she stumbles across the best ways to help anyway. I love her more in these moments than I ever have before.
"Alright, I'm exhausted so you're stuck with me for the night," she mumbles as she snuggles down into my bed and the credits for the movie are the only thing illuminating my room.
"Sure thing, Alice," I smile and settle down beside her, allowing sleep to claim me.
I wake in the night and it takes me a moment to realise what's going on. I'm not in Edward's room, and his body is not wrapped protectively around mine.
For a second, even though I know I chose this, I start to panic. I sit bolt upright and try to calm myself to no avail when I hear Alice's low, sleep-dulled voice.
"Bella, lie down," she grumbles, reaching out to take my hand. She uses it to pull me back down into a more conventional sleeping position, me settled on my side, facing her.
"Are you ok?" she breathes, eyes still closed.
I'm not ok, not even close, but I will be.
I have to be.
"Yeah, Alice. Goodnight."
"'Night."
And because I don't think she bought my lies, she keeps her firm grip on my hand until I finally manage to return to the solace of unconsciousness.
AN: So there you have it.
Also, I don't know if you guys know this, but I write something of a crackfic with a good friend of mine, SwedenSara. It's called Smutiversity, and it tells the story of three authors who decide to attend a workshop on the fine art of writing smut... it's a little bit hilarious (and i'm not just saying that because I'm one of the writers.) Check it out, it's in my favorites section on my profile!