A/N: I now present chapter 31 of Static. The story's about 90 days old now (chapter 1 just expired in my documents). These fics grow up so fast. Warning: this chapter contains heavy violence and a little more angst than usual.

XXXI.

loving you was really hard

"You know what, Bella? Fuck you."

Leah turned around, and as she got further away from Bella, the blurry image of the former got smaller and smaller. Bella stared at her ex-friend and ex-accomplice, thinking she'd come back, but she ultimately didn't. The tan skin, black hair, and denim shorts were nothing but what used to be. Comfort used to be a familiar thing for Bella.

Bella's world spun slowly around her as she realized what she had done. She wanted to follow Leah now that she knew she wasn't coming back, but she couldn't follow a vision. It was far too late. Choking back tears, she took the last swig of her can of beer and set it down on a table beside her. Then she turned to the opposite of comfort.

Edward leaned against the door frame, in Bella's immediate vision. His face was lit up like she was his favorite person in the entire world. He was only really happy to see her when he was intoxicated.

"Hey, babe," he greeted her. "Why the long face?"

Oh, fuck you.

Bella couldn't find anything good to say in return. All she could do was stare at Edward with such hatred, all because it was his fault everything that she'd had with Leah had gone to shit. Leah wasn't an easy person to get along with in the first place, and now everything was broken. It had never hurt Bella before, not being Leah's favorite, but when she was used to being close to her for a little while and all of that suddenly came to an end, she was thrown off kilter. Now it kind of hurt. It wouldn't hurt tomorrow, though, and that was why she just looked at Edward and tilted her head, signaling for them to get away for a bit, even if it wasn't what she truly wanted. All she wanted was to not embarrass herself even more around all these people.

And even though she hated Edward, and he hated her, their hatred could be altered because nothing would hurt tomorrow.

He followed her out of the mansion, and they made their way down the street.

"Get the fuck away from me, Edward."

As Bella paced through the motel room, the room that she used to occupy with her girls, a storm brewed inside her. Edward had the same storm in him now, only lightning was going to strike sooner and they both knew it. Edward and Bella were one and the same: when things were bad, they were ungodly; when things were good, they were pure magic.

Edward couldn't get away, though. He'd followed Bella to her old, dark, dingy motel room after she had clearly told him not to. Somewhere on the way, she had decided she didn't want to be around him anymore. Now she wanted to get the rest of her things, catch up with her girls, and go home. But he didn't listen since both of them had their alcohol goggles on. What she had said meant anything to him.

When she realized the motel room was empty except for her items, her world fell apart.

She was too late, and she was perfectly alone with Edward.

"I am so goddamn sick of you!" he yelled, buzzed and stupid and still trailing behind her. "All this time and money and effort, wasted. It's all gone because you want to go home all of a sudden."

Bella clumsily started picking her scattered clothes up from one of the beds and packing them into her backpack, which had also been left behind. Just days prior to now, right after she'd been bailed out, she had been excitedly deciding on what to wear to a party with her girls, despite what they'd been through. At the time, Edward's beach house had sounded like fun. As soon as night had fallen, though, everything else had followed.

The party's over, she thought. It's been over the second I ended up in jail. It's time to take my underage ass home.

"I fucking hate you," she said simply. Her back was still turned to Edward, which was one of the most dangerous positions she could be in. "You're full of shit, you know that?" she asked like she was talking to her orange backpack, the old backpack she'd been using since her freshman year of high school. "I've been hurt too many times for you to—"

He grabbed her left arm and forcefully turned her around to look at him. He held her arm in an iron grip, and she stared up at him in both awe and terror. His once beautiful green eyes were watery and his mouth smelled like death.

"You've been hurt?" he asked. "I'll show you some fucking pain."

And then with nearly superhuman force, he shoved her up against the wall adjacent to the bed. Her head slammed into the paint, and all she saw was red. She was too angry to be taken down; it would be the last thing she did. She tried to put up a fight, tried to kick him where it would really hurt, but he just held her tighter. He placed his right forearm over her chest and pinned one of his legs against one of hers. If she kept kicking, she would slip and fall. Her poor self-defense skills could never do anything offensive to him.

"You've been hurt," he continued, "because of me?"

Then he lifted his right hand, switching so his left arm restrained her.

And he slapped her right across the face.

If she were to say it felt like a kiss, then she would have been lying. If kisses were supposed to make the receiver's teeth feel weak, then she'd never been kissed.

Bella held the tears back. Crying over Edward Cullen used to be her favorite past time, but not anymore.

Shocked by his own actions, Edward loosened up a little, so Bella thought it was all over. Or maybe her lack of tears made him want to beat her more since he was just that kind of guy she had gotten lucky enough to have. He pulled his fist back and launched it like a fucking rocket. Instinctively, she slid over, her face just a few centimeters away from the collision between his fist and the drywall. The noise was astonishing. She'd never forget that noise. He pulled his fist away from the wall and didn't take the time to examine the damage he'd done; he was only on to more damage.

"You missed," she said, her voice nasty and spiteful. "You fucking missed because you're a coward. You could never punch me like a man."

"You stupid fucking bitch," he said, still holding her against the wall, his voice quiet.

Bella Swan wasn't really an angry person by nature; she'd always been better than that. She had been a coward from the day she was born. But there was something—or, perhaps, a lot of things—about Edward Cullen that made her angry and ugly and mindless every once in a while. He occasionally made her forget who she was, whether it was fueled by lust or anger. Things were always passionate, nonetheless. They would be boring if they weren't passionate.

Tonight (or this morning), Bella ran on wild, angry fumes. That storm was taking over completely now, and it was all lightning. The impact between his fist and the wall had been total thunder.

"You're pathetic," she went on. "You're the biggest piece of shit. Fuck you." Then she spat. Warm, angry saliva with some phlegm, too, flew into Edward's face, quicker than any apology she could make, but not as quick or as precise as his fist this time. He didn't hit the wall again; his target was all flesh and cartilage and bone and blood. Fist to cheek, cheek to nose, head to wall.

"Actually," he replied, calm as ever, as if nothing even happened, "fuck you."

If she were to say it felt like true love, then she would be lying. If true love was supposed to feel like having all the spirit knocked out of her, then she'd never been in love.

He finally released her from the wall, and her knees gave out. She collapsed, her eyes closed, sirens in her head, but some actually very faint in the distance, too. Either to shut down the party they had left at the mansion or to shut down the little party they were now having of their own, they could both hear sirens.

Or at least Edward could. Bella was out, cold.

She wouldn't move, and Edward wasn't a patient guy, so he quickly went to her level, onto his knees. Head leaning against the wall, hot blood gushing from her nose, cheeks red... She wasn't a pretty sight. Her mouth hung slightly open, too, and when she continued to not move, he realized he had two options: leave her or panic.

He put his hands to her shoulders and shook her roughly. "Come on, Bella," he said, his voice shaky and sullen. "I know you can hear me."

Nothing.

"Wake up. Wake up."

There's no fucking way.

He sat there for a few minutes, feeling sorry and sorry and sorry for the first time in his life. Minutes had gone before he got up to do something.

He made his way to the dark bathroom and retrieved a wash rag. Silent and sure to not see his reflection in the mirror, he turned the faucet on and waited until the water ran ice cold. Putting the cloth underneath the faucet and wringing it out, his skin cooled down a little, only to heat back up at the reminder of what he'd just done.

He went back to the unconscious girl in the room and kneeled beside her again, quickly wiping the blood from her face. I care, he thought. I care enough.

As he was just finishing, Bella's eyes slowly opened and she groaned softly.

"Bella," Edward whispered.

"What the hell just happened?" Her eyes were wide, adjusting to the darkness.

"You passed out momentarily," he told her. "You drank too much at the house, and then you fell and hit your head."

"How long was I out?"

"Only a few minutes."

"Oh, okay."

They were silent as they stared at each other. His eyes were as moist as ever; hers were jaded and far away.

"I'm tired," she said. "Will you go to sleep with me?"

"We can't go to sleep," he answered. "You might have a concussion."

She frowned but said nothing.

He didn't have anything good to say besides I'm sorry, but for as long as he would know her from this point onward, he would always be sorry. He was still tired of being mad, but he was finally feeling sorry for the first time in his entire life and he would never be able to shake it. That was a given.

Bella looked around the empty motel room and again realized that her girls were gone. Leah and Emily and Kim had all left her because she had been selfish. They had simply gotten the rest of their bags and departed for La Push without hesitation. Bella envied them—especially Leah—over that; they were so good at going back to reality, but Bella couldn't let hyperreality go. The very worst aspect of it was sitting right in front of her, after all.

"Let's go out," said the figment of her hyperreality, holding her hands in his. Let's make you forget.

"What's that smell?" she asked.

"What smell?"

"It smells like blood."

"Blood doesn't have a smell," he disagreed.

She shook her head, which was still cloudy. "It smells like pennies. And salt."

"Let's get you a little cleaned up," he said, dropping the discussion. "We're going out."

Without looking in the mirror before leaving, Bella and Edward headed off and ended up at a diner not off far from the boardwalk. Dimly lit and mostly empty, it was the perfect place to quietly recharge. With her head in her hands, Bella wasn't fully awake, but no longer unconscious. Edward blamed her current state on the alcohol. The coffee he ordered for her did nothing to change her grogginess.

As she sipped the hot, black coffee, she couldn't focus on the man in front of her, eating French fries like nothing was wrong. What was he? What were they? How did they even get here? And where would they go? She couldn't decode any of this. All she knew was that they'd been arguing, and then everything had gone black. Nothing with him made sense, so she didn't focus on him anymore. She turned to look out the window next to her.

Outside, the world was alive and warm. People—people just like Edward and his girl and Bella and her girls prior to tonight, prior to the blowups and breakdowns—walked around, awake and laughing, even as it was three in the morning. Venice Beach was a vibrant, neon, buzzing dreamland. For Bella, being tired through it all was sobering. Why did she ever let herself fall into this place? She turned back to Edward and saw that he was the reason. She hated the sight of him. With the booze goggles slowly fading away, she began to see him for what he really was: a thief, a liar, and one of the worst things that ever happened to her.

He hadn't always been a piece of shit, though. For three entire summers, she had loved him, and he had loved her. They'd fallen in love with each other over those summers, and even when they had been around other people at their schools in the autumns and winters and springs that had gone by, they had never stopped loving each other. That was what had made them connect so easily after so much time apart.

We could go back to Seattle, Bella thought. They could go back, just like they had the second summer. Loving him back then, though, had been difficult. For most people, it had to have been hard to fall in love and have sex at the raw age of fifteen only to go back to their real home the next afternoon, silent and twisted. Loving Edward Cullen had never been particularly easy, but back then, it had been worth the fight. It had been worth the constant feeling of inadequacy and all the excuses. She had made excuse after excuse for him and the magnitude of their love.

It just didn't make any sense now.

Seattle was beautiful, though, and that was where Edward's boarding school friends from Oregon (along with Edward's true personality) had come out to play. In Seattle, Edward had liked to drive fast and spoil Bella and live like he had and hadn't been seventeen. Seattle was hardly real anymore.

We could go back to Portland, Bella also thought. They don't know who we are when we're there.

Loving Edward in Portland that third summer had been significantly easier. With just the two of them and no boarding school friends in sight, they had been able to focus on real love, on what they liked and wanted and needed from each other. He had taken her to art houses, to see something beautiful that wasn't himself. Portland had also consisted of the most love, and Bella had discovered that sex wasn't all that bad, once she got some practice. Portland had made them endless, though. She'd never thought of herself as the kind of person who could invest so much energy and love and adoration into just one person, but Edward had expanded that. Their love was bottomless.

Or it had been.

Bella had never made any promises to not love him, but as she stared at him, she knew the love had been long gone. Finding each other in Venice was less of a blessing and more of a curse.

Upon flicking on the light switch in the dim motel bathroom and catching her reflection in the mirror, Bella gasped. Swollen lips, inflamed cheeks, and traces of blood near her nose all stared back at her. Her hair was a mess, matted in some areas with more blood. It stung when she touched the back of her head.

She didn't even recognize herself.

All she saw was a victim.

She spent a long time in the bathroom before coming out again. Sitting on the cold edge of the toilet, avoiding the mirror, she wondered why Edward never checked in on her, but it all made sense when she reemerged into the motel room.

He was gone. All that remained were her strewn-out clothes and crumpled up dollar bills. All that hung in the air was her shame and his cowardice. She was practically choking on it.

She went back to the bathroom and used a wash rag to wipe away the rest of the blood from her face. He had been so lazy, dressing her up like his little doll only to do a half-ass job in the end. If he was going to hide his blatant disrespect, he should have at least tried harder. He had loved to spoil her, but he didn't know how to cover up his own crimes. His Ivy League education didn't mean anything if he was a fucking idiot, which he was. He was definitely a villain, but he was a stupid one.

It was time to go home and return to her brain. She should have never left without it.

She changed clothes, and after making sure there was nothing of hers left in the motel room, she followed the neon lights just outside the door.

A/N: I'll update Monday.

Thanks,

HS