A/N:
Yes, I am taking this story off hiatus, but as you all knew from the start of this story, it won't mean a whole bunch of chapters will suddenly pour in. Sorry :P
But here's one for you, and I hope you'll like it.
For those of you who watched Three's Company, you'll remember this episode, but you'll also notice I changed quite a bit in it as well to accommodate the details I've added.
Title: Three's a Crowd
Author: MarieCarro
Genre: Comedy/Romance
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Bella and Rosalie are roommates and best friends. When the third friend of their BFF trio moves out to live with her boyfriend and her newborn baby, the girls need to find someone new, and it appears that someone just happens to stumble into their laps.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
CHAPTER 7
While contentedly humming to herself, Bella cared for the neglected geranium in its tiny pot in front of her when she was suddenly interrupted by Edward's loud entrance. She looked over her shoulder just in time to see him grinning at her.
"Well, hello there. And how's everything going with my super-sexy mega-babe and roommate slash lover today?"
Bella rolled her eyes at his antics but humored him as she turned around and beckoned him closer with her finger. Rosalie was at work, so she felt safe to be as she wanted around Edward and not hide it away.
"Why don't you come closer and ask me again?"
Edward wet his lips with his tongue in anticipation and smirked. "Why?" he asked and leaned over against the back of the couch so he was hovering over her.
She grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him toward her. "Just kiss me, you idiot." Their mouths connected and they simultaneously let out a sigh and a moan at finally getting to do what had been on both their minds the entire day.
It wasn't easy to secretly be involved with your roommate, no matter how casual they tried to make it.
They parted and Edward placed another kiss on her neck as Bella turned back to her project.
"I like the color of that flower," he said with his chin supported on her shoulder.
"Nice, isn't it? It's Julie's. She asked me to give it some love, so I just changed the soil, trimmed it a bit, and steadied it with a small stick."
"Now, if you can steady Fred up with a small stick, she'd become your number one fan," Edward said and they shared a laugh before he presented her with one of his earbuds.
"What are you doing?"
"Just put it in and listen."
She did as he told her and soon the thrilling tones of an electric guitar riff enveloped her senses. It wasn't a song she recognized, but she could tell from the first notes that it was her favorite band. "Is this—?"
"Yeah, they released their new album today, and I wanted us to listen to it together."
Bella glanced at him from the corner of her eye and smiled. "Do you even know how sweet you are underneath that weird shell you've got?"
He shrugged. "I have my moments."
There was a sound by the door before Rosalie entered and Edward immediately stood back up on his feet, taking his earbud with him.
"Hey," Rosalie said cheerily. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing," Edward said, as bad as ever at lying.
Bella jumped up from the couch with the flower pot in hand. "I was just on my way down to Julie to give this back to her." She headed for the front door, but Rosalie stopped her.
"Oh, while you're down there, can you tell Fred the kitchen faucet is leaking and he needs to fix it?"
"Sure, he can add it to the ever-growing list of things he needs to fix around here," Bella mumbled and left.
Edward steered toward his room, feeling annoyed at having his time with Bella interrupted again, but he'd barely taken two steps when his wrist was grabbed by Rosalie and he was pulled back.
"Edward, I need to talk to you," she said, and her expression was anxious and filled with worry.
His body went cold because he was convinced Rosalie was going to tell him she knew everything about his and Bella's relationship, and that would mean the end of it because Bella would feel too much guilt to continue after that. "Look, Rose, I'm sorry, it wasn't planned and the intention was never for you to feel hurt," he started, hoping it would soften the blow.
She drew her brows together in a confused grimace. "What are you talking about?" she asked and then gave him a light slap on the arm. "Stop making fun of me, this is important!"
Edward gaped at her, but hurried to compose himself. He cleared his throat and hoped he hadn't accidentally revealed something. "Uuh, right. Sorry. Just forget what I said. You were saying?"
"You know Royce King?"
"Who?" Edward asked, still reeling from almost blowing his and Bella's cover.
Rose glared at him with little patience. "Edward!"
"What?" The name sank in and he remembered that Royce was Rosalie's latest and his greatest nemesis at school. He rolled his eyes and groaned. "You mean Royce 'masterchef' King?"
"Don't be like that, I actually like him," Rose insisted. "And I've actually invited him over for dinner."
Edward cocked his head and openly stared at her. "For dinner?"
"Yes."
"You?"
"So?"
"You're gonna call for a pizza or something?" He chuckled, but tried to hide it behind his hand.
Rose frowned. "No. I'm gonna cook. He wanted me to."
He couldn't hold in the laughter anymore at the thought of Rosalie cooking for anyone, let alone a chef-in-training, and believe it would turn out well.
"Don't be a jerk," Rose said and hit him again, and Edward did his best to compose himself.
"Rose, please, don't you remember what happened last time when you tried to flambe a roast? Whoosh!" He made a hand gesture to show how she'd almost burnt the kitchen down.
Defiantly, Rosalie placed her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at him. "It was you who told me to pour alcohol over it."
"I did," he said, not at all denying he'd said that. "But I didn't mean half a bottle of ethanol." He met her narrowed glare with a deadpan look of his own. "The ceiling fan was nothing but ash afterward."
Rosalie decided on a different tactic and pouted pleadingly instead. "Stop whining and just teach me a few tricks instead."
He sighed and rubbed his face aggressively with both hands. "Rose, it would take me over six months to teach you anything that would even be recognized as food."
"Please."
"No." He shook his head. He wasn't going to break.
"Pleeeease."
"No."
"Pleeeeeeeeeeease! Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty please!"
Edward clenched his fists and pressed them into his eyes. "Fuck!" he said under his breath and then put his hands up to get her to stop assaulting his eardrums. "Okay! Fine! I'll do it!"
She immediately stopped and gave him a huge, happy grin. "Yes! Thank you."
He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and finger as he could feel a headache coming on. "When is he coming over?"
"Tonight."
"Tonight? As in later today?"
"Yes, so you'd better hurry with teaching me. We can start right away." She eagerly headed for the kitchen, but Edward hurried to round her so he could physically bar her from taking another step. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Rosalie, no! Read my lips. It. Can't. Be. Done."
"What do you mean?"
He put his hands together as if he prayed for her to understand. "Rose, there's only one way for you to cook dinner for a professional."
"Great! Then let's do that. What way is that?"
"That I cook that dinner in secret and you just tell him you did, okay?"
Rosalie squealed and jumped on him, throwing her arms and legs around him. "Oh, thank you so much! I knew I could count on you!" She started raining small kisses all over his face, which caused Edward to stumble until his back hit the wall.
At that exact moment, Bella decided to walk through the door with Fred in tow, and they both froze at the sight in front of them. Fred hurried to avert his gaze but Bella crossed her arms and locked her gaze on her two roommates.
Edward paled at the sight of her while Rosalie unwound her limbs and landed back on her feet, unbothered by the entire situation. "Hi Fred!" she said cheerily. "Are you here to fix the faucet in the kitchen? It's been leaking for days now."
Fred mutely held up his tools with an awkward smile.
"Great!" She followed their landlord into the kitchen, continuing the conversation. "It's actually perfect you're fixing it today. I really need a fully-functioning kitchen tonight!"
As soon as they were out of ear-shot, Edward stepped up to Bella, who still had her arms crossed.
"I promise you, that was not what it looked like," he said, but it only caused her to purse her lips.
"Yeah? And what did it look like?"
He placed his hands on her arms and looked straight into her eyes. "She invited Royce over for dinner. I said I'd do the cooking and she reacted like Rosalie does. You know her better than I do, and you know how she is."
Bella uncrossed her arms and tensed her fists by her sides. "Yes, I do know how she is," she hissed. "And I know how guys are putty in her hands if she so much as blinks at them. So can you blame me for feeling insecure when I see her wrapped all around you?"
Edward raised his hands and cupped her cheeks. "I've told you, Rose is like a sister to me. It's you I want." Without hesitating, he leaned down and captured her mouth in a kiss. She allowed it for a few seconds, but she had to break away from him and looked at the ground to regain her control.
"They can come out of the kitchen at any time."
"I'm not the one who wants to hide," he said, but let her go and headed to his room, leaving her standing outside the kitchen by herself.
~~TAC~~
Edward sang to himself as he chopped as if his life depended on it. Bella entered the kitchen with a contrite expression. She felt like an idiot for even insinuating that Edward had a thing with Rose on the side while he was secretly dating her. When they first met, it couldn't be denied that he led his life by his dick, but not even that Edward would be stupid enough to get involved with both of them at the same time and genuinely believe he could get away with it.
Rosalie was busy getting herself ready, so she was occupied and Bella felt safe to wrap her arms around Edward from behind to hug him. "What are you cooking?" she asked softly.
"My own funeral menu, apparently," he said and transferred the chopped vegetables from the board to a pot on the stove.
"I'm sorry for earlier," she said and let her arms drop. "I saw you two and I remembered how things were when you had just moved in." She supported herself on the counter and studied the spices Edward was using for his dish. "I got jealous."
He couldn't hold in his smile and turned to say something, but Rosalie chose that moment to join them. She was dressed in a tight-fitting short black dress which signaled to both Edward and Bella that she expected to get laid after dinner. The dress was her signature outfit when she craved sex, and they shared a knowing look with each other.
They were in for a long night at Murrey's.
"Nice dress," Bella said and passed her to leave the kitchen.
"Thanks!" Rose turned to Edward. "How's it going?"
"Good. It's almost done. All you have to do is allow the soup to simmer, check the temperature on the thermometer in the steak, and mix together the salad." Edward move to leave, but Rosalie stopped him with a panicked look.
"Wait, stop, I can't do all of that!"
He turned back to her with a forced patient expression. "Rose, if I stay, Royce will see me, and your entire ploy will be ruined." He started to leave again, but Rosalie placed herself between him and the door.
"Not if you stay in the kitchen," she said with a wide, overly-sweet smile.
Edward stared at her with his mouth agape. "You want me to stay in the kitchen all night?"
"Of course not," she said as if the suggestion was ludicrous. "Only until he's gone home."
"Yeah, you keep on dreaming," he said and tried to push past her.
"Please?"
He refused to fall for it this time. "No."
"Please?"
"I said 'No', Rose!" he repeated angrily, but she wouldn't budge.
"C'mon, Edward, please, I need you!"
He spotted Bella over her shoulder, and he called out to her for help. "Bella, please, talk some sense into her."
"What?"
He explained to her and she sighed and looked at Rose like an exhausted parent. "Rose, you can't ask that of him. It's unreasonable."
"Why?"
"Because you're wearing your 'fuck me' dress and we all know how those evenings end. He'll be stuck in here for hours."
Rose looked at her dress grumpily but then her expression brightened. "So help him and keep him company," she said, and Bella stared at her as if she'd lost her mind.
"Excuse me?"
"Well, you said yourself that you were only gonna sit a Murrey's anyway, so it's not as if you had any plans."
Bella clenched her jaw and pushed down the scream she almost let out. She was just about to tell her off and remark that if she wanted a staff to cook her dinner for a date, she should have gone to a restaurant, but Edward stopped her before she could.
"You're right, Rose. We'll help you."
She shot one of her pearly-white smiles at them. "Perfect! Thank you so much!" She left and Bella turned to Edward with fire in her eyes.
"What the fuck did you do that for? I don't want to stay here and cook so she can seduce her latest toy."
"Me neither, but think about it. This way, you and I can maybe have our own date, right here in the kitchen."
Bella's anger disappeared in a poof and her expression smoothed out to a blank look when his unexpected words hit her. "You want us to have a date? Here?"
"Why not? Rose already knows we'll be in here alone, so she won't suspect anything if we sit down and eat something ourselves. It's the perfect set up." He titled his head to the side and met her eyes with a sweet smile. "Don't you want to have a date with me?"
She scrambled for words because her brain had turned to mush. "I do. I guess I just hoped it would be somewhere else than our kitchen while we lie on Rosalie's behalf."
He half-shrugged but didn't let his smile fall. "You take what you can get, don't you?"
"Fine," Bella finally consented. "But mark my words, Rose will owe us big time for this."
"That she will."
~~TAC~~
Rose stared at Royce with a slight expression of disgust and boredom as he slurped up the soup from the spoon with a loud noise that made her want to cringe.
"Wow," he said and smacked his tongue. "I can taste the hint of cinnamon you used in the Consommé."
"Is that a good thing?" she asked uncertainly, and he smiled at her.
"Absolutely. How did you do it? It's the perfect balance of spice."
"Uuh," she stalled. "What do you mean? Do you like it?"
"Like it?" he asked as if she had offended him with the question. "I love it. It's delicious."
Inside the kitchen, Bella silently raised her glass of wine at Edward in a toast of the praise he'd received. He grinned back at her, pleased that his biggest competition at school had no idea he was complimenting him.
Only a few moments later, Rosalie came in through the door with a panicked expression. "He's asking so many questions, and I don't know what to say!" she stage-whispered.
"So I can tell," Bella mumbled and chuckled.
Edward gave her a playfully reprimanding look. "What do you need to know?"
"He wanted to know about the salad dressing."
"It's parsley and shallots chopped finely, the vinegar and salt was turned into it with a wooden spoon, pepper, some olive oil, and then it sat for an hour to really soak into the greens."
Rose quietly repeated what he'd said over and over as she left the kitchen again. When Royce saw her, he stood up and pulled her chair back out for her, and she gave him a grateful smile even though she was freaking out on the inside because she realized she'd already forgotten exactly what Edward had said about the salad.
Royce leaned down and traced his nose up her throat and let out a soft moan. "You smell amazing. What is that wonderful scent?"
"Carrots, some pepper, salt, stir with a wooden spoon and let sit for an hour," she recited proudly, but when she looked at Royce, she saw he appeared somewhat disturbed.
"What?" he asked, and she blinked at him.
"Yeah, the dressing. That's what you wanted to know, right?"
He let out a small laugh, looking relieved. "Oh, right. Yeah, no, forget about that. I'd like to ask you something else, actually." His tone was seductive and he was suggestively running his hands up and down her arms.
Rose breathed a sigh of relief. This language she understood and spoke fluently. "Yes?"
Royce wet his lips with his tongue. "The starter; the rice timbale* served with the stuffed artichoke, was it boiled in a copper pot or a sauté pan?"
"Oh no, the oven!" Rose exclaimed and shot up from her seat.
"Again?" Royce asked with concern.
"Yeah, I know, it's very fickle. It sort of has a life of its own." She tried to back away, but he followed her.
"I can look at it and see if I can help you with it."
"No, please, don't bother yourself with it."
"It's no bother. I enjoy it," he assured and reached for the handle, but the door wouldn't budge. "Huh?" Royce tried again, but it was stuck.
On the other side, both Bella and Edward were barricading the door with their bodies, trying their best not to laugh at the absurdity of the situation as they stood next to each other.
Rose's voice could be heard through it. "I know! Old houses, you know. If there's too much pressure on the handle, it gets stuck."
"You're joking, right?" Royce said.
"No, I'm serious," she insisted and took his place to softly turn the handle. It smoothly opened and she winked at him. "See! I told you." She gestured for him to go back to the table. "Enjoy some more of the salad. I'll be right back."
Bella had both her hands clasped over her mouth while Edward had stuffed a kitchen towel in his own to muffle the sound from their giggles.
"Edward, help me!" Rose said, and he delicately removed the towel. "The rice thingy—"
"Timbale."
"Yes, that! Was it boiled in a sauté pan or a copper pot?" She sounded close to tears and Bella removed her hands.
"Rose? Is he really worth this?" she asked, genuinely concerned for her friend.
"He'd better be," she replied and waited for Edward's answer.
"Both," he said, and she gratefully kissed him on the cheek before she was once again gone.
Bella sidles up next to Edward. "Please, don't ever turn into a pretentious ass like the douche outside," she said.
He turned his head toward her. "I promise."
"Good." She stood up on her toes and placed a light kiss on his full lips, but then Edward stiffened as Royce's words trickled back to them.
"...a bit unnecessary."
"What?" Rose asked and both Bella and Edward pressed their ears against the door to listen more closely.
"The pot would have sufficed. All the pan does is absorb all the nutrients, but don't worry. It's a common mistake among amateurs."
Before Bella could react and stop him, Edward had already burst through the kitchen door. "Who the fuck are you to call me an amateur?!"
"Edward?" Royce asked and stood up in shock. "What are you—?"
"Don't pretend as if you didn't love every bite of my cooking, you little—"
"Your cooking?"
Edward shoved the glass bowl of dessert upside down in his hand. "Can I tempt you with my chocolate mousse, asshole?!"
Royce looked between Rosalie and Edward, and then when Bella handed him a napkin to wipe his hand, his eyes widened. "Can someone explain to me what's going on here?"
"Gladly," Edward said and went for the front door, which he opened. "You were just about to leave, weren't you?"
"Edward!" Rosalie protested and then turned to Royce. "I'm so sorry, Royce. I didn't mean for my roommates to ruin our date like this."
Bella looked at her in shock. She couldn't believe the nerve of her friend who had basically said she and Edward had nothing better to do than serve her and follow her every whim, but now, when her date had thoroughly insulted Edward, she still took the asshole's side over theirs.
"I feel this place is getting a little crowded," Royce said. "Perhaps we should go somewhere else."
Edward slammed the door behind the couple as they left, and Bella huffed in disbelief.
"Good riddance," she said and crossed her arms angrily. "I can't believe her. I always knew she was spoiled, but holy shit, that was a new side of her that I didn't like."
"Honestly, I'm glad they left," Edward said and when Bella turned to him, he was offering her a newly poured wine glass.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." He clinked his own glass with hers and then held up a finger in the air. "Oh, look at that."
"What?"
"Looks like we have the apartment all to ourselves and the second dessert to share." He grinned at her and she smiled back.
"You're right," she agreed. "Perhaps we should take advantage of the situation." She stepped closer to him, and he nodded.
"We most definitely should."
A/N:
Not quite the ending like the episode, but I like my ending better ;-)
Any thoughts? Let me know, and until next time,
Stay Awesome!