Chapter Summary: So what do you do when Rosalie Hale tells you 'no' when you ask her out? Get on with your life, right? No surprises there, so who cares? But what do you when you tell Rosalie Hale 'no' when she asks you out? Heh. Who could be that stupid, right? Yeah, who? Yeah.

Rosalie regarded me intently, like I was some new strain of virus she'd just discovered in the lab, and didn't know quite what to do with me.

But then what she said surprised me.

"When?" she asked.

I just couldn't believe it. She didn't brush me off, nor scold me, nor ...

She was asking me ... 'when'? Like ... she was actually considering it?

"Uh," I said, surprised at the contingency I didn't actually expect to happen, "well, tonight, maybe?" I asked cautiously, then added hastily, "that is, if you wanted to, or weren't busy with something else, or you ..."

"Stop," she cut in sharply, irritation coloring her voice.

Shoot! I instantly realized I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have given her that out. That was me chickening out, and I saw in her face she was disappointed with me for doing that.

She sighed heavily, and then put her face into her hand, resting it there for a moment as she covered her eyes.

"Uh, ..." I said, not knowing how to recover from my flub.

And I had seen it so clearly before. Me, being brave, asking her out, and her answering, and me taking it well, whether her answer was 'yes' or 'no,' because that didn't matter. What mattered was that I had asked. That I had dared to do what nobody else would dare.

Not in Ekalaka, anyway. Ask Rosalie Hale out? That was too high a reach for most people Back East, never mind here!

But I didn't plan for it to fall apart like this, at least not at the very beginning.

I guess I didn't plan for my chicken nature. I guess I should've factored that in. And not asked in the first place at all.

Joy.

Rosalie dropped her hand back into her lap and straightened up purposefully. Then she took me in, looking me up and down. And I saw what she saw, a little lanky kid in a sweaty sweater with knobby knees and no poise, no composure whatsoever.

"Why would I want to go out with you tonight?" she demanded.

And she was right. I mean: who'd want to go out with me? I mean: really!

"Um," I said, and dropped my eyes, "I guess you're right. Never mind. Sorry to bother you."

I couldn't look at her.

There was silence for a second, then a very quiet and very sarcastic, "Well, that went swimmingly!"

I wondered if I had the strength to flip the basin over my head. That way I could crawl under it and waste away and die out of the notice of everybody. Her words crushed me. My head fell to the side of the basin, and I shut my eyes, squeezing them tightly.

Rosalie added salt to the wound: "And then she falls apart. Great."

Surprisingly, I felt tears coming. I thought Rosalie said her mother beat the tears out of her. Had she decided not to do that to me?

"Rosalie," I whispered sadly, "you're the only person I know who can go even into my own happy place and just ..."

I swallowed sorrowfully.

"... just crush it!" I finished.

"So, when you don't wallow, you indulge in escapism?" Her voice was cutting.

I sniffled. "Whatever." I hissed back quietly.

"Well," she said, and I heard shaden-whatever in her voice, just delighting in my misery, "I have to say, you did an admirable job of being a boy asking me out. Your imitation was near-perfect. Have you considered becoming an actress?"

"Ha-ha, Rose," I snapped back sullenly, "I got it, okay? But I tell you what, if I really were a boy, I wouldn't have chickened out like a little girl. No, I would've been all confident and self-assured and all ... boy-like like that."

Rosalie was quiet for a moment.

"No," she said finally. "I meant what I just said — as I always do, little one — boys, for the most part, behaved in nearly the same manner was what played out just now."

I opened my eyes in surprise at that, blinking away the tears.

"Did a lot of boys ask you out?" I asked.

Rosalie gave me an affronted excuse me? look.

"I mean," I added quickly, "not to pry. And I didn't mean you went out with a lot of boys like that. I mean, I wasn't implying you're that kinda girl who went out with a lot of boys, ... you know?"

Rosalie's face just kept getting more and more offended. She glared at me as she drummed her fingers on her knee.

I caught the clue that now was a good time to shut up. So I did.

Rosalie pursed her lips.

"No," she said quietly, then added spitefully, "I wasn't asked out by 'a lot of boys.' In fact, I hardly ever got asked out, and when I did, what transpired was as it did here. The boy stuttered out some incomprehensible query, and at my first question, slunk away with his tail between his legs, squeaking out some mousy apology for inconveniencing me."

She looked down at me. "Like I said, you played your rôle to a 'T'."

I rolled my eyes. "Gee, thanks!"

The quaver in my voice mocked my attempt at false indifference.

Rosalie continued, her voice faraway, as if she were back in her home town in New York, back when she was in school: "That's probably why I was so swept off my feet by Royce. 'There's a man,' I thought to myself, 'who knows what he's about and knows who he is!' So rare to find: a confident man."

She became even more thoughtful, then said: "I just didn't realize at the time that I didn't know who and what he was." She looked away for a second, and muttered a venomous "... the bastard!"

Rosalie turned back again and regarded me coolly. "Still want to be a dashing young boy?" she asked with a very thinly-veiled attempt at hiding her icy scorn.

I sighed. "I never did in the first place, Rose," I said sadly, "I just wanted ..."

I looked into her critical face.

"Never mind." I murmured, dropping my eyes.

Rosalie frowned. "I just love how you so consistently kill your hopes aborning."

I wanted to snap back with a sarcastic retort. Something like, 'oh, that's one of my best qualities; thanks for noticing!' You know? Turning away her attack on my weakness as if I didn't care.

But I did care. I hated myself for never being able to do anything, or being able to be truly brave and go for I wanted and ... succeed, succeed instead of just failing and failing and failing all the time.

I hated that in me, and here it was again, making me fail.

And there Rosalie was, pointing it out to me in her cold, cruel, merciless way.

"So," she asked quietly, "are you going to tell me what you wanted?"

I shook my head sadly. "It wasn't anything special at all, Rose," I said.

Rosalie chuckled. "Come now!" she chided. "You screwed up your courage to ask out the Rosalie Hale, and this effort was because it was to be 'nothing special'? I don't believe that. Tell me what you wanted, ... please?"

I sighed.

It was the 'please' she said, and how she said it, that killed me. It was if she were genuinely interested. And it sounded like she were almost desperate to know what I was thinking.

It was like she were begging. And I knew she never did that for anybody, so why would she do that for me?

"It was just ..." and my fingers fluttered in a mockery of me attempting to do a hand-wave of dismissal, "... I just saw us walking down Main street and going to the coffee shop and getting a root beer float to share. That's all. Just a little ... you know?" I gulped. "A little time out, you getting away from your family and me just asking you — you know? — where you came from and — I don't know — just how you were doing, and no worries, just some time out, then I'd bring you home, I guess, and I'd go home, and that'd be it. See?"

I was the one pleading now. "See, Rose? It wasn't anything, just ..."

I paused and breathed in. "Just some time away from it all. No high drama, just ..."

I didn't know the 'just' anymore.

"A pleasant outing?" Rosalie supplied.

"Yeah, that!" I said, opening my eyes, glad of her understanding.

Rosalie pursed her lips. Her expression became thoughtful.

"Then, ..." she paused, and said so quietly I barely heard her words, "why didn't you just say that?"

I felt the heat of anger suffuse my face. "Well," I blurted out, "because you got all ..."

Rosalie held up her hand impatiently. "No, stop, baby," she commanded, "this all could've come out just like you said it, but it didn't. You chose not to, and it wasn't because of something I said, it was something that you said to yourself. What did you say to yourself that stopped you from getting to this point?"

I sighed and closed my eyes again. "I don't know, Rose, but I suppose you're gonna tell me?"

I was hurting and so, so bone-tired.

"Baby," Rosalie said quietly, "look at me."

I forced my eyes open again. Rosalie looked blurry.

"You do know what you said to yourself," she said, "because I saw you say it to yourself. I asked why I would go out with you, and then you had this whole conversation with yourself where you did not include me at all, and then you shut down completely, and you left me sitting here, dumbstruck and wondering what the hell just happened in the thirty seconds that someone comes out of nowhere, asks me out, doesn't say why, and then disappears into a puddle of their own shame!"

"Why do people do that?" she demanded. "They get into their heads, shut everybody else out and then shut right down?"

"That's one way of looking at it," I groused.

She regarded me coolly, "And the other way of looking at it is?"

"Well, you..." I began.

"Ah, ah, ah!" Rosalie scolded.

"Lemme finish!" I shouted.

Rosalie frowned.

I glared at her.

I've found, dealing with Her Highness, that you always have to gauge these things. Her frown could be terrifying, but it wasn't her screaming at me, so I took it as her 'okay, you can finish, but this had better be good, or else!'

So I finished. "Look, you were all like, 'who are you to ask me out?' and, well ..."

I shrugged. "You were right. I mean, what can I say? 'I'm all that!' No, I can't, because I'm not, and even if I were, who am I to say something like that? And so, when you put it that way, there was nothing for me to say."

"See?" I asked, looking at her imploringly for understanding.

What I got was her surprise, or her disappointment.

"I didn't say that at all," she said, hurt in her voice.

"Yes, Rose," I said, "you did."

She shook her head. "No," she said angrily, "I didn't!"

"Yes, you did!" I shouted.

Great. A shouting match.

So mature! Neither of us qualified being grown-ups, it looked like.

Rosalie glared at me, and I was pretty darn sure I was glaring right back.

Then the tension broke in her. She rolled her eyes angrily and blew out a long sigh and said, softly, "Baby, what I said was, 'why would I go out with you tonight?' and ..."

"Exactly!" Ooh. Um ... I said that a little more forcefully than I intended, so I blew out a long breath of my own and ignored the pain coursing through my whole body.

The way she beat me, so hard, ... it was agonizing in my butt, and that pain just radiated through all of me. It made it hard to think, and when I did think, it was so easy just to become irritated and angry.

I said quietly. "That's what you were saying, see? You were saying what gives somebody like me the right to ask you out, or even go near you? See?"

Rosalie's mouth fell open.

Then she closed her eyes for a second and shook her head, her hands making twisting motions in the air around each other.

"The way you turn my words around ..." she said ruefully.

My tummy growled.

Shoot! I was hungry, too, and being reminded of it now, I realized I was famished!

AND I had to deal with Miss I'm-right-and-you're-wrong, too.

When can a girl get a break around here, ever? I mean ... really!

Rosalie looked down at my grumbly tummy, making me very aware of my bare ... well, knees, ... but pressed forward, anyway.

"So you're saying it's my fault that you withdrew your invitation?" she demanded.

"Well, yeah, ..." I said.

The way she put it, it made it sound like it was my fault that she made me feel like dirt, ...

... because, well, I was.

Rosalie's eyes narrowed.

"How much are you willing to bet on that?"

I could hear her counting the coin she'd be making off me.

"Uh, bet on what?" I stalled, blanching.

Putting the word 'bet' next to 'Rosalie' seemed to lead to terrifying results, even when I had a sure-win, or so I thought, until I found out otherwise.

She smirked. "You say that I stopped you from getting to an answer to your solicitation. I bet that's not the case at all. I bet, if our rôles were reversed, and I were the boy and you the girl, that I could get to an answer, given the scenario plays out the same way. Take me up on it?"

"H-how much?" I asked before I could stop myself.

Rosalie's smile became predatory. "Oh, I was thinking a small sum, like one hundred dollars, just to keep it interesting..."

She worked really hard to keep a poker face. She kept trying hard to press her lips together to hide her grin.

She kept failing on hiding her anticipation.

"I-..." I said. "I don't have a hundred dollars on me."

That was a true statement. In fact, in my entire life I had never even seen nor heard anybody mention one hundred dollars as a sum put for any use.

One hundred dollars? You could live a year off that. A whole year with room and board and anything you wanted to do with yourself the rest of the day, like, I don't know ... if you were feeling wild, you could play pool at the bar every night of the week!

But only if you had that wild hair grown in you.

"Think of it, then," Rosalie cooed enticingly, "if what you say is true, and you believe it, then you just say 'yes' to this bet and you walk away with an easy one hundred dollars, free and clear."

"I..." I dithered.

"Yes?" her voice wasn't laced with masked enthusiasm, ... it was dripping with it.

That decided me. "No bet," I said, relief flooded my voice.

Actually I felt all the pent-up tension that I didn't know had been building up in me during this conversation just explode out of my body in a wave, leaving me weak — okay: weaker! — and drained.

Rosalie looked sorely disappointed. "Chicken!" she taunted.

I blew out a long sigh. I think I had just saved my own life. One hundred dollars? How in the world could I possibly repay that kind of money? And, given that I wasn't earning a dime a day, like some of the poor souls out there, what would've been the in-kind payment that Rosalie would've demanded if ... I mean when ... I lost?

I shuddered to think what that could have been, looking at her hungry eyes looking at me.

Rosalie made a few sarcastic chucking sounds with her tongue, imitating a chicken, trying to get a rise out of me. But I knew how that went, so I refused her bait, just settling for a glare and a whispered, 'still no bet!' which I hope sounded resolved and brave.

I think it sounded pretty good, actually, not at all chicken-like.

Not too much.

Rosalie glared and snorted a disappointed, 'Hmmphf!'

I smiled, just a little bit, and wondered if it was daring to think she looked cute when she didn't get her way like that.

I mean, her way, not like 'having her way with me' because that was so totally ...

Wait a minute ...

Oh, my God! If I lost, would she take out like-kind by having her way with me one hundred times?

I feel sick now, and tried to think of something else, ... anything else!

"Okay," her voice was conciliatory, but she still looked miffed, "no bet. But let's play this scenario out again, anyway, our rôles reversed this time."

"Why?" I asked, mystified.

"Just humor me," she tsked.

"Why?" I asked again.

Rosalie glared again. "I'm sorry..." she said, not sounding sorry at all. "I didn't know I was talking to a 'why-parrot' now, ... or did you just regress to a three-year-old?"

"Funny," I bit back, sarcastically, "I'm just saying that why do you want to do this all over again, with you, of all people, asking me out?"

And I thought, yeah, me, ... of all people.

Rosalie pursed her lips. "You said I stopped you. If that be the case, then you could stop me, given the same scenario."

"But, Rosalie," I said reasonably, "you're you, and I'm me. That's totally different!"

"Yes," Rosalie said, smiling cryptically.

I sighed in annoyance.

"Humor me?" Rosalie asked plaintively.

I was catching on. This was another one of her 'lessons' that she so wanted to impart on me.

So, ... hm. Fight her or humor her?

"Okay," I capitulated, and thought angrily let's just get this over with.

Rosalie smiled. "How did you start again? Ah, yes."

She closed her eyes for a second and seemed to shrink into herself.

Eyes still closed. "Okay, you be me, and I'll be you, okay?"

It was like she was conspiring with me, ... like we were getting into all sorts of deliciously fun trouble, and she couldn't wait to get caught red-handed so she could 'fess up to what a bad girl she'd been, and I was the co-conspirator, helplessly dragged along, wondering if this was supposed to be fun and wondering for how many months my parents would ground me for her having all the fun and her getting off scott free and laughing with all her friends the very next day at poor little me consigned to my room for months and months!

Grrrr! I HATE that!

She opened her eyes, smiling easily. "Sit up, sweetie," she whispered, soto voce.

Okay, first difference: there was no way I was smiling openly, easily, invitingly to her like she was doing to me.

I let that difference slide as I struggled up to a seated position, wincing at the sharp sting my butt received as I shifted my weight and my cheeks made contact with the thankfully cool basin bottom.

Rosalie waited patiently, then, when I looked up to her, she brushed her hair back, and started.

"Hi!" she greeted me warmly, "You're Rosalie Hale, right? You just moved in with your family this past week? Hey, I was wondering if you wanted to go out with me? I could show you around town, and it's always good to get to know a town and its people from somebody who knows the place, right?"

Okay, I know I didn't say that, at all. Because the way she said it? It made perfect sense.

I realized I was just staring at her, open-mouthed.

I mean, she had this presence that just made you want to nod your head and do whatever she said.

"Ask 'when?'" she whispered out of the side of her mouth.

"Oh," I said, coming out of the shock of her steamrolling introduction. "Um, when?" I asked shyly.

"Well," she said easily, "I was thinking maybe tonight, if you have an availability. No time like the present, right?"

I was wondering why she wanted to wait until tonight, when I was like, if she said, 'why wait?' then my thought was, okay, I have an availability right now, never mind tonight!

I wondered how she made me feel this way, because, obviously, when I asked her that, I saw no such feeling on her part toward me.

She waited, not the least bit ruffled or ill at ease.

"Well, okay," I said, "sur-..."

"You're supposed to say 'why would I go out with you tonight,' remember Lizzie?" she asked very quietly and quickly.

Her expression didn't alter one bit. I'm not even sure I saw her lips move.

"Oh," I said, flustered, and blushing at embarrassment. I didn't know you got graded on these things.

Rosalie smirked at my confusion, which only made me blush harder.

"Um," I said, hesitating, trying to remember what I was supposed to say, even though she just told me my line.

I got terrible stage fright. People looking at me expectantly? Puke city, and that's a fact.

"Uh," I stuttered then said those mean, mean words she said to me: "Well, why would I want to go out with you?" and I felt my face tighten and my chest tighten and my lips purse as I felt the anger coursing through me as I remembered how hurtful those words were when she said them to me.

"Well," she said, brushing her hair back, ... and I saw it was like she was brushing my words, my anger, my attitude aside, just like she brushed her hair out of her eyes: so easily and naturally, "you seem like a really nice person, Rose, and ..."

"Rosalie," I hissed, and smiled triumphantly, so pleased at how I fell into my rôle of being a Miss Meanie, just like her.

That gave her a second's pause, which gave me a wickedly warm feeling in my tummy. Push me around, huh? I thought vindictively, See how you like that, Miss Bossy!

She blinked in surprise at that, but recovered so quickly that it didn't look that my words even phased her at all!

"Um, okay, Rosalie." She recovered with such ease and grace, it left me dumbfounded and befuddled. "So I thought maybe we could go by the coffee shop and have a root beer float, if you wanted, you know? Get out of the house and see our town, small that it is, and what we have to offer. I know you've come from the big city, so you may be offput by our ways, so I thought a friendly hello and outing would be a nice introduction to us so you can see we're hospitable people."

I blinked in shock.

She just took everything I threw at her, and just ... just ...

Just put it to one side. It didn't even bother her. I tried so hard to knock her off-balance, but it seems like I just couldn't!

She just was so easy to get along with, so friendly.

She looked at me, smiling, and said: "So, what do you say? May I come around your house this evening after supper tonight and say hello to your folks before we go out?"

I didn't know what to say.

I suppose I could've said 'no,' and 'go to hell!' or something like that.

But you say that to her? Her eagerness? Her openness? Her friendliness? Her perseverance?

Putting kittens into a meat grinder would've been a much nicer alternative. Nobody could slight her, asking like that. Nobody with a shred of decency, that is.

I could say, "Well, I don't know, I'll think about it," I suppose. Which was the nice, polite way of saying 'no, thank you.'

But who could be that stupid, really? Here's this person from town, asking me out ... nicely, offering a walk to the soda shop and back, and if I said 'no, thank you' like that — that is: politely — then when would she ask again? Like ever? Like ... never? No, she'd go to some girl who'd be friendly back to her friendliness, not distant and off-putting, like I was to everybody who ever talked to me.

But I could say what I'd say.

"I'm shy."

It was a whisper.

I wasn't looking at her anymore. I couldn't. She wasn't a boy. No, she didn't even act like a boy. In fact, she was acting more girlish now than I had ever seen her act ...

No, wait. That's not true ... for she was acting girlish when ...

My stomach twisted up into a knot.

She was acting sweet and demure and girlish when she was ... 'with' ... Edward.

And that hurt: she acted sweet when she was with a boy she wanted to be with, but when she was with me, she was just haughty and mean and harsh. And bossy. And angry and impatient.

It was like I wasn't worth her time or her effort to be nice to me, but other people for her, boys, were. And that hurt. A lot.

But her, acting girlish?

She didn't lose one ounce of her confidence, her self-possessed air, her pride, her self. She had all those things and on top of that, she had a sweetness and friendliness to her that ...

God! If she were that way with Edward, and with ... with that bastard ROYCE!

If she were like that with them? And they rejected her, and hurt her?

God!

And she said other boys didn't ask her out? And crawled away? Because she was like this?

God, men are stupid! Men are so, so stupid to miss on just knowing this person, this ...

I don't know what to call her. I can't find the words to describe what she's like, how she makes me feel in my tummy, in my brain as she purées it into a mess of confusion, on my ... well, my butt really hurts! but my arms and legs are jelly and my heart ... my heart is doing flip-flops.

And men ... boys ... anybody ... just pass on this because they're too proud or too scared just to say 'hello' to her and say 'hey, you wanna go to the soda shop and have a root beer float?'

They can't do just that?

Wait.

I can't do just that?

My face suffused with heat as I felt shame. I felt so ashamed and little and worthless.

I screwed up my courage to ask Rosalie Hale out, and then I screwed that up!

And then when she asked me, I couldn't even say 'yes,' like I wanted to, like I knew she wanted me to. All I could say was, 'I'm shy.'

God, I'm such a wimp!

"Baby?"

Rosalie's voice was small... it was almost ... scared.

It was like she was scared for me: that I would wither up and die if she weren't gentle right now.

I think she's right.

"Don't ..." I whimpered, "don't look at me now, please!"

Oooooh! Darn it! I can't believe it!

Guess who's crying now? Bet you a hundred bucks that you know the answer!

There was a sighing of air: "Wow!"

And I heard the amazement in her voice.

I guess she was finally getting what a piece of work she had ... in me.

That smote me, her realization, and I broke down, right there on the lip of the basin, and I was bawling like the little three-year-old girl she had just accused me of being, and realizing that, too, made it hurt even worse.

I had just descended from a girl being asked out on a date by Rosalie Hale! to a bawling three-year-old baby girl, and worse: right in front of her, too.

She scooped me up. She picked me up, effortlessly, with her arms circling my back and under my knees and she brought me to the bed on which she sat.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow!" I mewed as my sore and sensitive butt hit the denim of her jeans.

She realized this and put my head into her shoulder and boosted me up and put her hand under me. It still hurt, terribly so, but the cold and smoothness of her hand was infinitely preferable to the fabric of her jeans. It was almost a balm and the pain receded to where I got to think about other things.

Like what a terrible, terrible failure I am, that I flub an ask-out on a date, twice in a row!

"Oh, baby!" she cooed consolingly. "Oh, baby, you are so, so fragile!"

That actually didn't help at all. I was now screaming, wailing into her shoulder, and I pulled myself into her with all my might, my fingers trying to dig into her back and shoulder blades and my teeth biting down into her shirt.

I was that low. I was so low that I grabbed at her, my only purchase, with everything I could: my hands, my fingers, even my teeth.

I felt if I let go, or if she let me go, I'd fall into the abyss, and I'd never, ever find my way up nor out again. And I held onto, and held into her, with all my might, so much so that if she were another person my teeth would've cut into her flesh and drew blood, and my fingers would've clawed into her back and shoulder blades, causing her harm.

She wasn't another person. She wasn't a person, at all. She was a god.

And I was a mere, little mortal, crying into her shoulder, holding onto her for dear life, and in holding, breathing her into me, and the rose, the honeysuckle was such a powerful balm that it calmed me and held me together, even as I fell apart.

"My poor, poor baby!" she sang gently and sweetly. "It's okay, little one. I've got you. I've got you."

I cried. I cried and I cried and I cried.