Chapter summary: Rosalie Hale, a god, staring at me from the middle of the cabin. "What's wrong with this picture?" she demanded harshly. Her eyes were right on me as she said this, piercing my soul.
It's ... hard.
It's hard to think; it's hard to breathe. It's hard to even know what you're doing right now, or what you're supposed to do.
When Rosalie Hale lets you know, in no uncertain terms where you fit in her things-she-cares-about list.
Nowhere.
That's where I fit: nowhere.
I had somehow stumbled back into the cabin, opening the door, somehow, and ...
And I just stood there.
What did she tell me she wanted me to do?
I don't remember anymore.
It was a living nightmare, being under Rosalie's thumb. Whatever I tried, it wasn't good enough, and when I fought back, she slammed me down so hard that if I were a bug, she would have crushed me, and just not cared.
That's how low I was, lower than a crushed bug in Rosalie Hale's regard.
And why should I care? Who was she to me?
Okay, don't look at me like that.
What I'm trying to say, is that the other kids in town, what did I care about them, or what they said about me? The Hales moved in, drove in like they owned the place, their noses in the air, so they were no different than the other snooty girls who looked down at me, the poor Sheriff's daughter.
Why should I care?
Why should I care if she wanted me as her sister, that she wanted to be 'equal,' whatever that was? Why should I care if she said she didn't care about me?
Why?
I looked around my home now, the interior of a tiny cabin in the middle of the forest of God-knows-where, and I wondered bitterly why I should care so much about Rosalie's rejection that it physically hurt me.
It was so unfair. Every little thing she said or did affected me like a ton of bricks falling on me, but every thing I did didn't faze her at all, or, worse, it kicked off one of her screaming fits, and whatever little thing I said or did, she gave right back to me in spades.
Where was the justice in that?
And I was now so desperately wanting to remember what I was supposed to be doing for her, so she wouldn't see me as totally screw-up?
I mean: more of a total screw up.
Oh. Clothes.
She ran off to bathe. She needed clothes. She needed a towel. She needed ...
She didn't need me.
She didn't care about me.
I wanted to sit down on the bed, hard, but I knew if I did that, I'd be a complete mess in seconds, and I wouldn't get up. That's where Rosalie'd find me, and didn't we just need to hammer that last nail home in that coffin: useless me.
I picked out a black dress for Rosalie. It was really, really nice: really elegant, and I wondered if she'd like it, my choice? I mean, she bought the dress, and it was fine, finer than anything I had ever seen in my life, but I wondered if she'd think why I was handing her a black dress to wear, and what was I saying about her that she had to wear black clothes, and would it clash too harshly with her pure-white skin, or would it call out too strongly that her eyes were always pitch black now around me?
Or was I 'in my head' again? Overanalyzing? And would she be furious at me for picking something but then later admitting that I backed away from the choice out of fear.
She'd just love that, wouldn't she?
Oh, she wanted me changed, too, because she couldn't stand me being the least bit untidy, what with bloody prints all over me where her body touched mine.
I slipped quickly out of the dress that Rosalie gave me. A house dress. A nice house dress. And looked for something suitable to wear.
And I went right there. My hands were reaching for jeans and a flannel shirt, because that was me, that was what I wore.
And that was what she so hated. She didn't see me as being comfortable in the clothes I always wore: I was a working girl. She saw me as rejecting my femininity.
And how could I possibly argue with her, and tell her I wasn't doing that at all!
How could I reject my femininity when I didn't have any to begin with?
That conversation would go really well, wouldn't it?
Just like every other conversation I had with Rosalie Hale, from day one, in fact.
My hands slid over my jeans and comfy flannel shirt, and went to the neatly folded pile of dresses. I couldn't believe it: I was voluntarily picking out a dress to wear, not because I was like every other girl in the world and wanted to wear the dress, but because I knew Rosalie Hale wanted me to.
I picked up the elegant black dress for her, and draped carefully over my arm. Towel over other arm, and squared myself to face the door.
I looked at the door, and the door looked right back at me, for a long, long time.
...
I walked bravely to the door and opened it.
Rosalie was standing right there, glaring at me with burning golden eyes, as hot as the Sun itself.
"Ta," she said imperially, her voice laden with sarcasm, like 'took you long enough' or 'don't mind me, I had nothing better to do than stand out here the whole time.'
Her eyes blackened from a beautiful burnished gold to a furious pitch black as she spoke, her eyes becoming an indiscernible opaque onyx, masking every readable emotion on her cold, hard face.
She swept in, right past me, regally relieving me of the towel I had draped over my arm, and she stood in the center of the cabin, towel flung over her shoulder, making her look like a statue of one of those Greek Gods, come down from heaven, just to make my life a living hell.
Her presence filled the whole cabin, but her eyes were fixed on me.
"So," she said coolly, "enjoyed the free look?"
"Huh?" I said, confused.
I supposed I should just get used to this feeling of constant confusion around Rosalie Hale.
"I said to leave the things out if you didn't want to see me naked," she said. "You said you didn't, but what did you do, huh? Did you do as I said? No. So I guess you really did want to see me naked, didn't you?"
"Oh," I said, ashamed and blushing, then added quickly. "Uh, no. I just ..."
She ignored this. She scooped up my sullied dress on the floor, and swept past me, tossing it outside.
"You 'just' what?" her tone was utterly unforgiving and unrelenting.
"I just nothing, I guess," I whispered, looking down.
"Uh, huh," she said. "Just one more thing you say without force or conviction."
A firm hand gripped my chin. "Not that I'm surprised," she said levelly, "just pointing this out, why? It didn't escape my notice, Lizzie. It shouldn't have escaped yours."
Then her tone became biting. "Unless you really did want the look, is that it?"
She let go of my chin, and my head turned away, automatically in shame.
"Uh, huh," she said. "Thought not."
She stalked back to the center of the cabin, muttering an angry: "God damn slimy river water!"
Her attention refocused on me, her laser eyes boring into mine. "So," she said.
I bit my lip. What did I do now?
"So?" I said defensively.
"So," she said crisply, "you didn't leave out your dress, nor a change of clothes for me, making me look like a total idiot wondering when you were going to come out, or did I have to come in. Strike one. What else is wrong with this picture?"
Her eyes bore holes into me.
"Uh, ..." I said, trying to breathe around the lump in my throat.
So unfair! was all I heard screaming in my head. I try to do even just one thing right, and I'm punished for doing everything wrong! And now I have to list out my sins like I'm going to confession, and the last time I did that was six years ago?
Bless me, Rosalie, for I have fucked up yet again, my first fuck-up is that I don't even know what I fucked up. My second fuck up is that I'm not supposed to say the word 'fuck' not even in my head, and that's just working SO well for me right now, isn't it?
I looked back at her dumbly, not daring to say what I was thinking right at her to her face.
But the thing is: she reads minds, doesn't she? Mine, particularly.
Her eyes narrowed to slits.
"Lemme give you a hint there," she said condescendingly, then turned from me in a contemptuous twirl and went to the stove and sat on it, resting her arm on the big black kettle.
The river water on her (okay, naked) backside hissed off her, but it wasn't an angry hiss, it was a soft hiss.
She regarded me coolly, measuring me.
And finding me to be a dumb-ass.
Of course.
"The fire's gone out," she stated the obvious for the dumb-asses in the room.
"Oh," I said.
"'Oh,'" she echoed coldly. "Lemme ask you," she said, "what happens when the fire goes out?"
I bit my lip. "Uh, well, ..."
She broke in: "Do I give a fuck if the fire goes out or not, Lizzie, huh? Do I?" she demanded harshly. "Do you think I need the fire at all?"
"Uh, ..." I said quietly into her hot, hate-filled eyes, "no, you don't ... care, Rosalie."
I didn't think she's want me to answer her question word-for-word.
Particularly the f-word.
"Wrong answer, Lizzie," she said shaking her head with disappointment, "wrong answer."
Of course, I thought bitterly.
She continued relentlessly: "Because when I came back two nights ago with the fire out, and you nearly fucking dead from the cold, do you think I fucking cared then with you fucking dying again because the fire had been out for how long, Lizzie, huh?"
Rosalie can be cold-furious, and she can be hot-furious.
The temperature went up in the cabin by several degrees, the pure heat focused on the one person Rosalie was screaming her head off at.
Me.
A little rivulet of sweat trickled down my arm from my armpit under Rosalie's intense fury.
Welcome to my hell.
"Uh, ..." I gulped.
Rosalie was shouting at me. I mean: she was, like, really furious with me, just because I was a dumb fuck and didn't stoke the fire, like it was the end of the world!
Rosalie shout at you, ever? If yes, then you know exactly how I feel. And if she hasn't, then there are no words that I can say to you how low I felt. If I had a gun, I would've shot myself, to take me out of her misery, because obviously every second I was breathing was an annoyance, a hinderance to her Majesty.
"Uh," I said in a very small voice, "yes, you do care."
I couldn't look at her.
But then I realized what I said.
Yes. She did care.
But ...
But ... but didn't she just say she didn't care about me and throw me face-down in the snow? Why would she care if I lived or died if she didn't care about ... me?
I was so, ... completely, ... lost.
"So: that. Strike two," she said coldly, then she turned on the heat again with her glare. "But what really gets me is the assumptions you're making by letting the fire die out. What? Am I supposed to tend to the fire, when I have no impetus to? no need to? Or are you totally incapably of doing the simplest things now? Is that it? You can't even tend to the fire now?"
"I ..." I said. "Um, no ... um, yes. I mean: I can ..."
"You so want to ..." Rosalie cut in fiercely, "... get in the ..." She corrected course quickly: "You so want to 'help'? Tell me, how can you 'help' if you can't even do the simplest things and take care of yourself?"
I was silenced now.
I had no answer.
"What, ... happens, ... Lizzie," her breaths punctuating each word, "when I leave you in, what, three weeks from now, for a week? Or will it be less for you to die from self-neglect? What happens? What are you showing me with this ..."
She broke off and shook her head.
She wouldn't look at me now, and that actually hurt more than her baleful glare ever did.
"I'm ... sorry!" I said.
If I had known how pissed off Rosalie'd be at something so stupid as stoking the fire.
I mean, God! It was the fire. The fire was out. Who... cares? I'd put a log or two on the embers, it'd start right up again. That's what embers were for! The fire went out! Big deal! It wasn't the end of the world!
To Rosalie Hale, however, every little misstep was the end of the world, and all of them were my fault.
And in all of this, did Rosalie ever show one ounce of feeling for the hell she's putting me through? Just once?
"You're ... 'sorry'!" Rosalie said and hopped off the stove, totally unaffected by it and the heat it still generated that would peel the skin right off the backside of any other person in the world.
She stoked the fire herself and turned back to me. "Does 'sorry' get anything done, ever?"
I waited for her to continue to berate me.
She didn't, she just waited.
"No," I whispered.
She smiled at me in sympathetic pain: it looked like a grimace, not at all like a sympathetic grin.
"Something else wrong with this picture," she continued. "You want the lecture?"
I bit my lip. The lecture. Now she was my mom, that I never had when I needed her the most.
"No," I whispered.
She glared hard at me at that.
"Good," she said. It didn't sound 'good.' "Then you tell me. Come here."
She walked right up to the mirrors.
Oh, God! The mirrors.
I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs to make this all stop. I couldn't take any more of this. Not anymore! Please!
But that's what I did. I just kept taking. I was the 'taker' and Rosalie was the 'giver,' and she just never stopped 'giving,' and I was scared, now, that I would never be allowed to stop 'taking' everything she gave me: all her anger and spite and disdain.
I didn't 'schlump' to her, because I just couldn't take a lecture on my lack of lady-likeness. But I didn't sweep there, either, my long elegant gown causing all to fall before me in worship, either. I wasn't fighting her, there was just no fight left in me. I just walked up to the mirrors beside her and waited.
She looked at herself, perfection, then she looked at me in the mirrors.
I don't think there's a word for what I look like.
"So," she said coolly, "you tell me: what's wrong with this picture?"
I bit back my first automatic response: you mean, everything?
There was god, Herself, her long, golden hair and perfect physique that men died for, and there was me, looking utterly stupid in a nice house dress I put on just for her, and she was asking me what was wrong with this picture.
I could babble on for hours as to what was wrong with this picture.
All the words of self-blame and -immolation got caught up in my throat. If I say one word, she would lay into me; I was sure of it. She might actually just lose it and kill me, sparing me the lecture.
That would be a good thing, wouldn't it?
Rosalie lost patience with me, her hand came up to the back of my head, and she very deliberately put my head against the mirrors.
"Hm?" she demanded. "Do you see what's wrong here?"
I swallowed.
Yes! I screamed. So please just kill me and be done with it!
I couldn't stand this any more.
I did everything to keep all my anger and sorrow bottled up inside me, but one tiny sniffle escaped, and I swallowed again, swallowed my sadness. It tasted hard and bitter.
Rosalie pulled my head back from the mirror.
"The fire's gone out," Rosalie said quietly.
She pointed at the mirrors, an accusing finger pointing right into my soul reflected in the glass.
"The fire's gone out," she repeated. "And once it's snuffed out, you die inside, so what's the point of going on?"
I sniffled again.
"Lizzie," she said, "reignite the fire. I will not do this for you."
"But every single time you snuff it out!" I cried anguished, all my bottled up anger and frustration boiling up out of me so I screamed it right into her face.
Rosalie smirked. "No," she replied calmly. "No, I don't. You chose this sullenness, this despair now. You can't blame anything outside yourself for where you are now nor how you feel."
I knocked her hand off my head.
"You!" I shouted. "I swear to God, Rosalie Hale! You just ... you just ... crush me every time, then you blame me for getting worn down by you? I just ..."
I looked away angrily, biting my lip hard, wanting to scream at her, but not wanting to give her the satisfaction of watching me sink so low.
"You just ... what?" she demanded.
All the wind left my sails, and I was dead to the world. She just didn't understand. She wouldn't see anything in any other way than hers, and there was nothing that I could say to her that would convince her otherwise.
"I just don't care," I said sadly. "I just don't care anymore."
"Care." She commanded.
I hung my head. The obvious question: 'Why?' screamed itself back at her, but I knew the answer to that, so I didn't say anything.
"You've taken everything, Rosalie," I said sadly, "you've taken away everything I care about. I have nothing left, do you understand me? Nothing!"
I looked up at her, looking for any sign of understanding.
Fine. Nothing. Just her unsympathetic look.
Kill me now, God, please.
I tried to look away from her, because the one and only thing I had left in this world to care about was looking right back at me, and if I looked at her for one more second, I just knew the tears would come.
I have never cried so much in all my life.
Rosalie's hand came to my chin, gently turning my head to hers.
She was smiling wistfully at me. "Nothing?" she said. "I was raped by my fiancé, the man who would've secured for me every possible happiness in life, providing for my parents, given me children, a stable, bountiful future ... everything! And instead of that he gave me over to his friends so they could take their turns on me, then he finished me off himself with a bullet to my stomach, leaving me to bleed out on the cobblestones in the bone-chilling cold with only the snow to cover over my shame."
She looked at me levelly. "I lost ... everything... and then the Cullens came and took away my life and gave me the gift of eternal hunger and want: always thirsty, always despairing, never-ending hateful undeath, and in all this, Lizzie, in all this, I picked myself up and I held my head high, because you know why?" she demanded angrily. "Because the world does not determine who I am. I do! And I will never, ever give it the satisfaction of seeing me beat down nor defeated. Ever. Everything was taken from me, but I laugh in the face of total loss, and I carry on!"
She dropped her hand from my chin. Done. Done with her God-damn lecture that she said she wouldn't give me. Done with God-damn me.
"Well, I'm not you!" I whispered sadly.
"No, you're not," she whispered back.
She put her hand to the back of my head, grabbing my hair, forcing my face up so I had to look at her and so she could see the tears of shame falling from my eyes and laugh at me.
But she wasn't laughing at me.
She looked at me intently as the tears fell.
Then she leaned in, and she kissed me.
I ...
I didn't know how to react. I just stood there, stunned, and she just kept her cold lips pressed to mine, pressing my head to her, but not pressing herself more on me than that.
And the realization hit me.
She's kissing me.
And my lips quivered in an infinite sadness of this moment happening, and I swallowed involuntarily as she kissed me, and the very faintest taste of her slid down my throat, just the whisper of the scent of her lips.
And I stood there.
And she kissed me.
She pulled back, pulling my head back lightly, too, resting my head in her hand, and she looked into my eyes.
I blinked once. Twice.
Then she leaned in and kissed me, lightly on the lips, once, twice, then straightened up, looking down into my eyes again. Her eyes were glowing with a golden fire.
Her fire was not out at all: it was ablaze.
"Uh ..." I gulped. "Uh ..."
I swallowed quickly.
"Um," I said bewildered, my head spinning so fast I was afraid I might faint. "Wh-what was that for?"
Rosalie's eyes blackened to pitch as she looked down at me, breathing in me.
"I have wanted to do this for so very, very long, Bella Swan," she said very quietly.
"Uh ..." I said helplessly. "Uh ..."
I felt trapped, cornered, scared. This wasn't happening. This couldn't happen. Ever.
I was terrified that this was a dream, a horrible, horrible dream that I would wake up from.
She looked deeply into my eyes, then she leaned in again.
Then she stopped.
"Yes," she whispered, "or no?"
"Ahhum?" I breathed back.
She leaned in, and she kissed me again, and she held me in the palm of her hand as she kissed me.
I guess she took my 'answer' as a yes, then.
She leaned back, looking down at me, and my eyes darted everywhere, her, anywhere else in the cabin, her, the stove, her, the table, her, the mirrors, no, don't look at me in the mirrors! her, her, out the window, anywhere but her, but always returning to her.
"It would help," she said quietly, "that if you don't want this, that you push me away and tell me so, or if you do want this, that you kiss me back, or ..."
Her voice faded away.
I darted a glance at her, and I tore my eyes from her in a panic, afraid of what she might see.
"Bella," she said.
The she took her left hand and, taking my hand in hers, put my hand on her shoulder, then leaned in, looking at me searchingly.
Then she pressed her lips to mine, and she kissed me.
My hand stayed on her shoulder. It felt like a cold, dead fish, resting on her shoulder, then I felt it twitch. I felt it want to take her long gold-spun hair in my hand and press her head closer to me.
I felt it want to do that.
Rosalie pulled back and she was smiling faintly down at me; it was a sad smile.
"Uh, huh," she said in a resigned tone.
Then she leaned in slightly and kissed my forehead very, very lightly.
Then she looked away and shook her head. "Gotta wash this river water off me. I really do."
She kissed me once more, very lightly on my forehead. It was a kiss filled with regret.
"Yeah," she said sadly, and let me go, turning away from me.
My hand slid off her shoulder and fell to my side.
...
"Do you know what I hate about this tub?" Rosalie asked.
Then she did something: she placed her butt into the bottom of the tub and leaned back, stretching herself out.
"You just got," stretch, the metal groaned in protest, "no room to," stretch! The metal gave under her and deformed itself molding itself into her shape, stretching elastically into an elongated oval from the small circle it had been, "stretch out!"
The dirty water in the bottom of the basin sloshed about and dribbled out the sides now deeply indented by her neck, her shoulders and her stretched out legs.
Gluck! Gluck! Gluck! sloshed the water from the depressed sides of the basin onto the cabin floor, some of it seeping down into the seams, some of it puddling, so of it seeking escape avenues to lower parts in the cabin, pressed down by the stove or the kitchen sink or toward the door.
Rosalie didn't care.
"There!" she cried, relieved.
She grabbed the big iron pot of steaming hot water beside her and poured it over herself, letting the water hiss over her body, fall into and over the basin and gather in puddles about her on the floor.
She lay in the now small puddle of hot water remaining in the basin, luxuriating in the comfort of a nice scalding-hot bath.
Water-torture for anybody else. It would have steam-burned another person, its victim, to death, covering their bodies with second- and third-degree burns.
Rosalie just rested in it, looking up at the ceiling, her naked body stretched out in the the flattened tub, her head resting on the floor, her eyes looking up at the ceiling, her thoughts abstracted.
She glanced at me, then looked right back up at the ceiling.
"Tell me something," she said softly.
I bit my lip.
I was sitting on the floor right beside her, towel back in hand. She had taken the little black dress I had selected for her and casually tossed it aside, dismissively. 'You're not for me now,' her toss had said. 'You come after my bath, not now.'
"Tell me anything," she offered hopefully.
But I didn't know what to say.
The world no longer made sense to me, and I needed it explained to me. I needed her to explain it to me now.
Anything I'd say would just come out as chewing tobacco spit, dribbling out the side of my mouth, if I tried to form words now.
She glanced back at me with a look tinged with impatience. She wanted me to say something.
I swallowed.
Her look became wry.
She looked back up at the ceiling. "I'll tell you something, then, okay?"
She flashed me a glance for confirmation, smirked then leaned her head back and closed her eyes, a ghost of a smile on her lips.
She blew out a long, luxuriating sigh.
"I hunted a bison today ... buffalo? ... bison?" Her tone queried herself, but got no answer, so she continued on. "Anyway. After. You know? The rock ... thing where I ... you know. Well, anyway, I caught scent of a wolf pack, and I was like, oh, just great, here we go, but you know, what can you do?"
It was a rhetorical question, I gathered.
"So, anyway, I tracked the pack for a while then come out to the plains, and lo, and behold, what do I see?"
She opened her eyes, looked at me, and closed them again, pleased to see I was paying her attention.
"Well," she said primly, "there they are, and it looks like they separated this big ... bison? from the herd, and they were worrying away at its legs and flanks. And I mean, there were like six wolves attacking this one ... buffalo? Anyway, and it was, like, big! I mean over seventeen hundred pounds big, but the wolves kept hounding the thing, and it looked like they had been at it awhile, and it was on its last legs, it seemed."
She was quiet for a second.
"So, I was like," she continued, "nuh, uh, and I charged in there and started knocking heads. I crushed two of the wolves' skulls before they knew what had hit them, then a third one attacked me, right? the idiot, so I ripped its jaw off its face and slammed it into the snow, and I turned to the other wolves, and was like, 'So, who's next?' And then guess what happened then?"
She looked over at me expectantly.
She smirked and closed her eyes. The bath water had lost most of its steam.
"You'll never guess! I surely didn't, so I'll tell you," she said. "So, kuh-wham! I get blindsided and knocked over from behind and the ... bison tramples me! Can you believe that? I couldn't believe it. I got up, and I shouted at it, 'Look you, motherf-...'" She glanced over at me.
"Sorry," she said quickly.
"No, it's okay," I blurted. I was enraptured by her story, and wanted to know what happened next.
She smirked, really pleased at that, but said coolly, "Uh, huh."
She closed her eyes and recollected herself to her story. "So, I was like, 'Look, you ... yeah, I was helping you here, so you just gallumph off to your herd over there, you hear me?'"
She smirked, in the retelling of her story, at her own moxie.
"But by then," she said, "the other wolves had run off. They weren't stupid, but guess what? The bison gets it in his stupid head that I'm the problem, and he's like, pawing the ground, like: 'I'm so going to knock you into next week!'"
Rosalie chuckled at that. "And I was like, rollin' up my sleeves, like, and I shouted at him: 'Okay, you bring it, muthafucka!'"
She was so into her story, she didn't even realize she was telling it to me anymore.
"And he, like, lowered his head and charged me, gallump, gallump, gallump, and then, I'm like, just so ready to go toe to toe with this dumb-ass bull, and he slams into me, ku-wham! and knocks me over again! Can you believe it?" she demanded, sounding both amazed and pleased that she had actually met her match in a hulking seventeen-hundred pound bull, probably the size of the interior of the cabin.
But seventeen-hundred pounds? It would've more than just knocked me over: all that there'd be left of me in a case like that would just be trampled Bella-bits.
Wait.
She had called me Bella ... when she kissed me. Not 'Lizzie,' but Bella.
She said 'Bella' was dead to her, dead to me.
Why did she call me Bella?
"Well," she continued on with her story, still lost in the telling of it, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, and you're going down!"
I didn't think that was the saying. I didn't correct her.
"So he gallumphs off and then turns and paws the ground again, getting ready to run me down again, but this time, ..." She smiled a self-satisfied little smile to herself. "This time I wasn't gonna play his little game anymore. He comes at me, full-tilt, see? And, at the last second, I side-step, see? And I grab him by the horns, ..." she chuckled and raised her hands in a pantomiming gesture.
Her hands twisted, lightning-fast.
"Then, snap!" she crowed. "Boom! He's down, neck broken, and I lean over his still body, and whispered to his dumbass-self: 'Guess who's down now, huh? Guess who won, muthafucka!'"
She sighed happily. "God! and now I'm just ... so ... full! BLEH! Buffalo blood tastes exactly like puke, piss, and shit, all mixed together."
She face twisted up and she made a disgusted retching sound.
Then she became quiet, her whole being reposed and reflective for a moment.
Her excitement from before just dripped off her and puddled on the floor with the water: gone.
"I'm just so full! I almost feel my back-teeth floating for God's sake! ..." she remarked. Then she opened her eyes, looking at me in askance, "... but I want you now even moreso than before. Why is that?"
I bit my lip and looked away, suddenly embarrassed.
But I wasn't scared at all. Not at all. "Do you mean," I ventured, barely daring to whisper the words, "that you want me ... like, ... want ... me? or ..."
"Yes," she said quietly.
I looked back at her.
Rosalie was lying in the tub, but she was looking at me like no one in my life had ever looked at me before, and it wasn't with lust, blood- or otherwise, although nobody had ever given me that kind of look either, come to think of it.
No, it was an imploring look, like ... 'help me!'
Like she didn't know how to help herself anymore, and she didn't know how to ask, either.
I couldn't bear that look. My eyes slid away from hers.
"Say something," she pleaded.
I still couldn't look at her.
"I'm scared," I whispered.
Rosalie sighed, and I heard her get up out of the tub. She took the towel from me and gave herself a few quick cursory wipes.
She sat down beside me, not facing me, but to my side, giving me space.
She ran the towel through her hair, and as she did so, she held the front of it to her face, breathing it in deeply.
I knew she was breathing me in.
"What are you scared of?" she said.
"Everything!" I said helplessly. I glanced at her quickly. I just knew this was the kind of answer she hated with a passion, and that was one of the things I was scared of, right now, that she would lash out at me as I tried to explain myself.
She just waited. Very patiently, too, I might add, which surprised me, and gave me the tiniest bit of courage.
"I'm ... scared ..." I said. "That this is just ... that you're ..."
I looked at her out of the side of my eye. "That you're toying with me." I said.
Rosalie bit her lip.
"Does it look like I'm toying with you?" she asked seriously, trying to keep the hurt out of her voice.
I looked away, caught, my face burning. "No," I mumbled.
"But I'm scared," I said, "that ..." I turned my head to her, just a little bit, but didn't look at her. "I don't know what this means," I said. "I don't know what this means, and I don't know where this is going, and ... that scared me. A lot."
Rosalie was quiet.
She looked down at her hands, crestfallen.
If I were a painter, and I painted her: Rosalie, nude, sorrowful, it would be the saddest painting in the world.
"I, on the other hand," she said regretfully, "do know where this is going, and I do know what it means, and that scares me."
Then she added quietly: "A lot."
Her lopsided grin quivered as she bravely kept it fixed on her downturned face.
We both were quiet for a while.
"You know what I wish?" she said.
I bit my lip.
I was so scared, and Rosalie was scared, but she was so ... calm, so still and quiet on the inside, and all I was was just a jumble of nerves.
"I wish," she said, "I had never ..."
She smiled to herself. "I was going to say, 'I wish I had never been born,' but ..." she shrugged.
"I guess I wish I had never been born to privilege, and never met Royce, and never had any hopes so that they wouldn't be so thoroughly crushed like that. I wish my first kiss wasn't his to rip from my mouth. I wish my first kiss was ... yours, with you now."
I sniffled.
I felt like crying for her.
Rosalie drew listlessly on the floor with her fingertip.
"Rosalie," I said.
"Uh, huh," she said, no life in her voice.
"You ..." I felt myself blushing. "You called me 'Bella,' before when you ... you know ... kissed me, and ..."
Rosalie put her hand back in her lap, but she was just still, just quiet.
"And why did you ..." I tried to say something, but the words just died away.
"Were my kisses sisterly kisses?" she asked quietly.
"I don't know," I said. "I've never had a sister." I added as an explanation for her sake.
You know.
She looked at the palm of her hand.
"But what do you think?" she asked.
"No," I admitted.
She looked up at me, then looked back down at her hands.
"I called you 'Bella Swan,' because I wanted to do things to you that aren't very sisterly."
She closed her hands into little, tiny fists, punching them together. Then her hands relaxed.
But she didn't.
"Not at all," she added sadly.
"And ..." I took a shuddering breath. "And now?" I dared.
A sad smile flashed across her face and then was gone.
"Do you know what I wish?" I said into the silence.
The regretful smile flashed across her face again. "What do you wish?" she said.
I looked at my own hands.
They weren't any help.
"I wish," I said, "that ... that I had lived Back East, maybe, I don't know, gone there with my mom, or something? And ... that I had all the money in the world, and ..."
I laughed at my stupid-stupid wish.
Well, in for a penny ...
"And I wish, Rosalie Hale," I said, "that I had guts, and that I had gone to one of your grande soirées, or something, and that I had said to you ... 'Rosalie Hale, you are the most beautiful, smart, ... headstrong, impossible woman in the whole world, and let's forget that jerk and ...'"
And my voice drifted off. There're stupid wishes, and then there's pointless rambling.
I shut up.
Rosalie grinned wryly. "Still living out your 'if I were a boy'-fantasy, I see, huh?"
"No!" I replied heatedly, blushing. "Yes! Maybe! I don't know!"
I hated stupid me in a stupid dress wishing a stupid wish.
Rosalie sighed.
She smiled to her lap, one last time, and looked up.
"I guess I better get dressed for this," she said. Then, leaning over, she gave me a quick kiss on my forehead, and got up, going to the chair over which she had tossed the dress.
"Dressed for what?" I said stupidly, stunned that she kissed me again, this time so naturally, like she had been doing this for hundreds of years: just a quick, soft kiss on my forehead, that's all.
She smiled over at me. "You asking me out, of course." Then she smirked ironically. "And with me being naked? I hear that can be ... distracting."
She chuckled softly.
"Uh," I felt my eyebrows coming together. "What?"
Rosalie smiled faintly, a very quiet, private smile to herself, and slipped the dress on.
It slid down her body like ...
I turned away quickly, not wanting to think how the dress slid down her, because it slid over her body like a decent dress shouldn't.
Besides, I didn't want it to see my jealousy. And I didn't want Rosalie to see my confusion at that thought.
...
Okay. Somebody pinch me.
I am sitting across the table from the one and only Rosalie Hale, in a little black number that so strategically hid all her bits that my mind was having absolutely no problems drawing straight from memory, and there she is, right there, and she wants to ask me out, after I so royally screwed that up before, in case you forgot.
Oh, and she had kissed me.
On purpose.
And I think maybe she liked it.
She smirked at me, encouragingly.
Okay. That wasn't encouraging. Was I feeling hot under my pinafore? Maybe just a little hot there, and ... everywhere else. Why the hell had I wished this? Did I actually think that my wish would get me to this point here and now? No, of course not! Because if I thought that, I would have just shut my trap, said something really intelligent instead, like, 'uh, huh, oh, really?' and then slunk under a rock to hide there for the rest of my life, which, if I were lucky, would be two seconds because a comet would smash into Earth and blow me to smithereens!
Hey, it could happen!
But now, no! I drew the deuce and am now being forced to look like a total ass and fool and flub up asking Rosalie out, again!
Fate was having a really great time with me today, wasn't it!
I was afraid to scream 'What next!' because what-next had a terrible way of happening to me with shocking regularity now.
I brought my hand to my face to wipe it, then I bit into my finger.
With Rosalie Hale looking right at me.
I put my hand down, then under the table, and my hands squeezed each other so hard I think I could've turned them into hand-paste!
Whatever that was.
Rosalie chuckled lightly. "'Rosalie Hale, you are the most ...'" she prompted me.
I looked away, blushing. Did I have the stage-fright jitters?
Who, me? Heck, no! I had 'stage piss-my-panties and run away squealing in terror'-... jitters.
I am so terrified I can't even come up with a good way of saying how scared I am!
"Uh, ..." I breathed, then swallowed. I glanced at her quickly then the almost violently turned my head away.
I was just about ready to puke.
Rosalie reached across the table, holding her hands out to me.
"Please?" she said.
I looked down at her hands. My tongue came out. It does that during the times when I'm really embarrassed, which, up to now, had been never, really, I guess.
I took my own hands from under the table and placed them into hers.
"Try to ..." she said, her words broken with the care of choosing them, "pretend ... that you see before you not what you think you know you see, but ... just ... a girl ... eighteen..."
She broke off, glancing away, then looked back at me steadily: "Eighteen, eternally, whose first love raped and murdered her, and then second time she availed herself to another, he said he would never countenance the company of one so vain, so self-centered, ... so ... shallow, and ..."
I looked at her in amazement.
I had never thought of that this way.
"And now, if you reject me, too, ..." She grinned bitterly. "Just think of how much a girl can take, and tell herself it isn't her, and it isn't fate, but ..."
She looked down for a quiet moment.
"Can you pretend that?" she asked quietly.
I looked at her, and I took a deep, ragged breath.
"No," I said.
No. I couldn't pretend that, that I was looking at a broken girl, beaten down by life, beaten to death, in fact, but pretending that she was strong enough, and that she could carry on now, despite everything that happened, and despite that fact that she would never have anything to look forward to again.
I couldn't pretend that.
I looked down at her hands, perfectly smooth, holding mine. Both our hands were smallish, I noticed.
"Rosalie, ..." I began, looking back up into her pitch black eyes, and thought: God! I'm so going to screw this up!
I bit my lip. "Uh, ..." I said and gulped. "Um, ..."
Shoot! I screamed to myself.
"Will you ... would you like to ... go with me ...?" I pushed out.
"Like on a date," she said.
"Um, ... yes?" I said carefully.
Wasn't that what she wanted? I wondered.
She regarded me carefully. "You ever been on a date with a boy?"
I almost laughed out loud. Who? Me? On a date with a boy?
"Nnnn-..." I began.
But then I realized: I had been on a date with a boy, with that Edward Platt-not-Platt-but-Cullen-boy, and several times, actually.
"Yes," I said, with this new dawning realization, "I have."
Rosalie nodded thoughtfully. "What was it like, going out with a boy?"
"Well, ..." I said blushing.
Then I stopped, flustered.
The boy in question was the one she had set her cap at.
Who also happened to be her brother.
And she wanted to know what it was 'like'?
I realized that I didn't have any answer for her, that is: I didn't have an answer that wouldn't make one or both of us really embarrassed or look really, really bad.
I swallowed. "Uh, ... what do you mean?" I asked carefully.
Rosalie smirked knowingly. "I mean," she said, "did he have to do all the work on the date? Did he have to try to impress you? And make you feel special the whole time?"
Well, Edward didn't have to try at all, but that was a nit.
"Yes," I said, looking back at her.
"And you," she said, considering, "asking me out on a date. Are you up for doing that?"
"Oh," I said.
Oh, I thought. She was asking if I could pull an Edward Cullen. And with her as the one receiving all this praise and attention.
I looked back down at her hands.
I think we both knew the answer to that.
Rosalie said quietly. "I don't want that. I've been through that. The guy putting on airs, being the perfect gentleman, working so hard to impress. I don't ... want that ... superficiality now. I want something real."
I was looking at her hands holding mine the whole time.
This morning, I would have heard what she was saying, her answer, as 'No.'
I noticed something. She didn't actually say, 'No, I don't want to go out with you, Bella Swan.' She didn't say, 'No, I don't like you, Bella Swan.'
She didn't say any of that.
She said she didn't want to go out on a date.
But I thought that's what she wanted!
I closed my eyes for a second, and thought hard.
What did I want? Did I want to go out on a date with Rosalie Hale?
Well, yes! The way I envisioned it, though, was that we would go in her carriage to a play or to an assembly of her choosing, and she'd know just what to choose to make the night perfect, and ... I could be her escort, and offer my arm, gallantly, because that's about all I could manage: offering my arm to The Rosalie Hale, but then we would watch the play and she lean over and whisper: 'Ooh, this is my favorite part!' and we would watch, rapt, and then I'd escort her home, or maybe we'd stop for ices first, and it would just be ... pleasant.
That's what I wanted, just a pleasant, easy time. And that could be a date, but she didn't want that, apparently, so it could be something else. Anything else, so long as she liked it.
I don't know ... maybe she liked bowling? Not that we could do that, but ...
Maybe I could just ask her what she'd like.
Okay, wow! Where did that thought come from? I had never had that thought before, wondering what the other person was thinking or wanted. I had always up to now just worried what I was thinking, or what I was supposed to say, and how much of an idiot I looked like.
I looked at Rosalie in this new light.
"What did you want to do, then, Rosalie?" I asked her.
I asked her. Just like that.
Wow.
Rosalie looked right back at me, but this time the very corner of her eyes crinkled with just a touch of approval. Attagirl! I read in her look. And I glowed, just a little tiny bit, with her approval.
"Well," she said thoughtfully, "I don't know ..." she said.
"Yes, you do," I shot back.
Her eyes narrowed at me at that. I winced and reminded myself not to get cocky.
"Hm," Rosalie cleared her throat. "Maybe would you be up for a hen party?"
"'Hen party'?" I asked.
I didn't know what that term meant.
"Yeah," she said. "Just us girls, doing girlie stuff, talking, ..." she shrugged, "... about this and that, just ... being girls."
My tongue came out, touching my upper lip, and I looked down at Rosalie's hands.
"I'm not ..." I said embarrassed, "... really into the girlie-stuff, Rosalie, in case you didn't notice."
"Oh?" she asked liltingly, mocking me lightly. Then she cajoled: "C'mon, give it a try! Maybe it'll even be fun!"
I glared at her, suddenly suspicious.
"I dunno, Rosalie," I said, "it's not gonna be like painting toenails and stuff."
Rosalie looked about herself innocently, "Oh," she said, "it's not like there's a stock of nail polish in the cabin now, is there?"
Her voice was all sweetness, but I saw she was back in her element.
"Unless you brought some back with you on your excursion to town!" I accused.
Rosalie pouted. "Maybe I have, and maybe I haven't!"
"Nuh, uh!" I said. "No way!"
She smirked a lop-sided grin.
Then she got really forlorn. "So, no girls' night, then?" she asked heartbroken.
GAH! I was reeling under the onslaught that was Rosalie Hale.
When she turns on the pleading-eyes look, I don't know that there was anyone that could resist that.
"Well, ..." I felt my resolve crumbling, my foundation on quicksand, not on firm ground, after all.
But I don't think anybody was surprised with that.
"Well?" she entreated.
Puppies ain't in it, I thought ruefully, looking at her pleading face.
I shook my head. This was either going to be the biggest mistake of my life ... or ... not.
So, here goes nothing.
"Would you like to do a girls' night, then, Rosalie?" I asked, biting my tongue, hard, before I added: 'which I have no idea of what it is, or if I even will like it or not, but here goes?'
I didn't add that last part.
As much as I wanted to.
Rosalie smiled faintly at me, reading everything in my face, and then reading things in me, deeper, than what I even saw.
"I would love that," she said breathily.
And I felt my knickers twist, just with the way she breathed out those words, so ... happy, and relieved, and triumphant, all at the same time.
"Uh, ..." I stuttered, "good!" I gulped my reply.
Rosalie chuckled lightly, eyeing me.
"Oh," she mentioned incidentally, releasing my hands, and looking away, casually brushing back her hair.
Suddenly, I was very, very cautious.
She got up from her chair and walked around to where I was seated.
"Um," I offered helpfully, feeling the full-on panic mode coming on.
She motioned with her hand, and underhanded wave, low to her hips, get up, get up, her little hand-wave motioned.
I felt my sweat trickle down my pits, again!
I stood carefully.
"So," she said.
"So?" I gulped.
"You asked me out," she said.
I looked away quickly. "Yeah," I said defensively.
"Yeah," she said pleased, smiling faintly. "And I said 'yes,'" she added.
"Yes," I said carefully. "That, too."
I didn't know where this was going.
"Did you ever imagine that happening?" she asked.
"Uh," I admitted, "actually, no. No, I didn't."
Rosalie looked away, nodding thoughtfully.
She looked back at me. "But you did anyway. That was pretty brave of you."
"Well, I don-..." I said.
And that's all I got out, because she brushed my hair back, and she was kissing me, on the lips. Full-on. Her arms wrapped around me, and ...
And she was kissing me.
And my hands didn't know what to do with themselves, so they fluttered at my sides, helplessly trapped in her full embrace.
'Hands' didn't know what to do? Did I say 'hands'?
My whole body was rigid with me not knowing what to do with myself.
But she didn't care that I was as stiff as a board, she just kissed me through my stiffness, and when she was done with her kiss, she pulled back slowly, examining me carefully, looking for signs of ... life? offense? terror?
I didn't know what she was looking for, but she was bold when she kissed me, and afterward seemed really ... careful, with me, or with ...
With herself.
Like she didn't trust herself to kiss me. Like she was scared of herself, and what this meant for her when she dared to kiss me, and what it might mean if it did offend me.
"Are you ..." I said a bit breathlessly, "... gonna be ... doing that ... like ... often?"
"Oh," she said easily, but underneath her ease, I heard her testing the waters carefully, "only when I really want to ... and only when you really want me to."
That last part she added a bit boldly, like she was telling me I wanted this.
And it was said a bit careful, too, like she was daring to ask me if I wanted this, by telling me what I wouldn't tell myself.
She looked away from my searching eyes, not being able to bear my scrutiny.
"What if," I dared to say, "I wanted to kiss you?"
She looked back at me, very slightly amused at something. "Well, then, you'd just have to kiss me, then, wouldn't you?"
"Because you wanted me to?" I put to her.
She smirked. "Yeaaaasss..." she said slowly, then she smiled, "'cause you were sure I did?"
"Mmmhm?" I said, looking at her carefully. My tongue came out again, its nervous tic betraying my false bravado. "I'm pretty sure I could tell if you did, ..." I said.
"I'm that easy to read?" she asked innocently.
Rosalie Hale and her moods? I smiled my own private smile myself. "Ya," I said, ... the German-accented ja coming out out my mouth, oddly enough. "I think I could tell if you did want a kiss or if you didn't ... your moods are pretty ... uh, transparent."
Rosalie chuckled, then teased: "Because if they weren't, then a sucker punch to your stomach would help clarify any misread signals on your part?"
"Uh," I said, brought up short, "that, too."
Rosalie laughed lightly.
She was close, way, way too close to me. But I didn't mind that, and nor did she.
"You look ..." I said, "... better, more relaxed."
"Yeah," she said, regret suddenly casting a pall over her. "When one jumps off the edge into the abyss ..." She shrugged.
Rosalie was like that. Pure strength one minute, totally vulnerable the next.
And I thought, looking into her pure face ...
No, I told myself, stop it! Don't think!
So I didn't think any more.
I brushed her fair hair back from her face. Rosalie looked at me in sudden surprise, like: this is happening?
And, I realized, surprised myself, that: yes, it was.
I leaned up on my tip-toes, and pressed my lips to hers, and I felt my arms come up and wrap themselves around her.
She didn't punch me in the stomach.
Instead, she brought her hands up slowly and carefully cradled my head in her hands. They were solid, cold, and smooth. So, so comforting in their strength were her hands, in the absolute power she held, the coldness of them cooling the blush right off me, so that my cheeks resting in them felt comforted by her hands.
I found that my eyes had closed themselves somehow, and I only became aware of this because they opened when she pulled back, looking at me, a golden fire alight in her eyes.
I couldn't look into her eyes and not be lost in them, but ... I couldn't look away from them. I was struck by the fire in her eyes.
I wanted to be lost in her eyes, forever.
Her eyes gave absolutely nothing away of what was in her, however, nor what was going through her mind, so I was totally surprised when she carefully bent back down, and attached her cold, hungry lips to my soft, burning ones, and she kissed me back.
And I thought: Somebody pinch me. Rosalie Hale is kissing me!
Then I told my thoughts to just shut up, and I kissed her back, with everything I had.
A/N: I am seated in a Starbucks right now, drinking my coffee, and across me, taking inventory, is Bella Swan, her hair in a pony tail as she very studiously makes sure all the coffee mugs for sale are properly arranged.
Bella Swan is alway careful to make sure everything is just so, that is part of her quiet inner beauty, isn't it.
This chapter is dedicated to the people who asked me kindly for the next chapter, and to the person who kindly asked me how I was doing, but not for me to write the next chapter, that is: only unless I wanted to.
I wanted to.
With regard to the Bella Swan/Lizzie Hale thing, for those of you who fall on one side or the other, are we resolved here in this chapter? No way. We, ladies and gentlemen, are just getting past the very tip of this iceberg. Rosalie's feelings run deep, and are not very clear, particularly to Herself.