A/N: Oh, well that wait was a little better, yeah? Just a little? Okay, time for a beach day!
Shout out to AushaPasha for helping me with Edward this chapter.
And many thanks to May and Di for prereading/beta!
Behind Bella, the women lounging on the porch of the shelter made various noises of appreciation as Edward's car pulled close enough for them to get a good look. They were lounging on the large house's front yard while Bella waited, standing at the end of the drive.
Theoretically, they were "whispering," but Bella could hear every catty word as they snickered to each other.
"Look at him. What the hell is wrong with me, huh?"
"Girl, please. Her pussy must be made of gold."
Bella ducked her head, cheeks flaming in spite of herself. It took all her willpower not to tug at her shorts or run her hands through her hair one more time. She'd been furious at how long it took her to get ready today. She should have just pulled on the cleanest pair of shorts she owned, tossed her hair up in a ponytail, and been done with it. It was ridiculous that she'd tried both pairs of shorts she owned and one pair of jeans to see how they went with the bikini top. She didn't even want to think about how many times she'd redone her hair.
Shaking off the feelings of inadequacy that had her mouth going dry—even if it was true, and she wasn't saying it was, it did. Not. Matter.
"Sissy!"
It was easier to ignore her stupid nerves when she heard her brother. This was what she was here for; what today was all about.
"Hey, you," she said, reaching back to ruffle her brother's hair before she climbed in the front passenger seat.
"Sissy, we're going to the beach."
"I know, bub." Bella had to shake her head. As if Emmett hadn't been talking about today nonstop since they made the plans.
Emmett babbled off a long list of things he wanted to do while at the beach, but after a few minutes, he trailed off. He sang the theme song to one of his favorite shows to himself, and Bella smiled, happy that her little brother was happy.
"So, I have a bone to pick with you, Swan," Edward said when it was clear Emmett was in his own world.
For a heartbeat, time warped. She heard an authoritative voice in her head. "Ms. Swan, see me after the bell rings."
It was easy now to forget he'd once been her nightmare of a teacher. In fact, the absurdity of the thought eased some of her nerves. This was such a weird and ridiculous situation.
She took her sunglasses from where they hung on her shirt and put them on, quirking an eyebrow at Edward. "What now? You going to complain about my diction?"
They pulled to a red light, so he took a moment to smirk at her. "No, your diction is quite exemplary."
She snickered.
"You guys make no sense," Emmett groused from the backseat.
"Hey, this is an A and B conversation, Emmy. See your way out of it," Bella teased.
Emmett blew a raspberry and went back to playing with the action figures he'd brought.
"As I was saying," Edward said.
"Right, right, bone to pick. So what did I do this time?" Bella asked.
"You know, I managed not to get into this whole TikTok thing. And it's not easy, between my sister and trying to keep on top of the latest ill-advised TikTok challenge the kids are into, I thought it was quite the feat."
"Moo haha." Bella rubbed her hands together. "My evil plan worked. You'll be your own age before you know it."
"Well, it was entertaining for a while. A lot of funny kids. But then it was just… inundated with Taylor Swift."
Bella stared at the side of his head, pressing her lips together hard. "Really?" she managed, the word shaky as she tried to keep from laughing.
"Every kind of Taylor Swift related video imaginable."
She couldn't help it. She cackled. "Edward," she said between gasps. "It's an algorithm."
"What?"
"Oh my god. Seriously, is this your first time on the internet?" She had to hold her belly, she was laughing so hard. "It goes off what you watch and look up. Taylor Swift wouldn't be anywhere near your feed unless you wanted her there."
"Oh. Well. Hmm." He tilted his head, his expression thoughtful, though his pink cheeks belied his embarrassment. "Maybe Emmett got hold of my phone."
"Oh, did he learn how to spell?"
Edward frowned.
Bella pressed her lips together to stop the next round of giggles.
He waved a hand. "I guess that's the problem with never leaving high school. Taylor Swift was impossible to escape when we were growing up. She's still, eh… overly represented now."
"I'm sure that explains why you've watched enough videos of Swift related content to be inundated with content."
He went quiet.
Bella shook one shoulder in a little dance and hummed "Shake it Off."
Edward sighed but shot her a smile.
They slipped into an easy silence. So easy, in fact, that Bella let out a long sigh as she looked out the window at the perpetual cityscape.
"Are you okay?" Edward asked.
Bella chuffed, the question striking her. "I am." She breathed in deeply and out again as though testing the air, and gave a small, incredulous laugh. "I really am." Closing her eyes, she tilted her head against the headrest. "Sorry, I just feel…relaxed, I guess? Like I've been on the defense and this is the first time in… I don't even know how long that I'm just me."
There was a beat of silence before he spoke again. "What about with your friends? Surely, they've taken you out at some point in all this?"
"Friends." Bella shook her head. "Older guys don't hang out with kids in high school that they aren't grooming," she said with an edge of sarcasm. Then, she shrugged. "But even without Mike, I've never been the popular one. There's Angela, and she at least tried being there for me, but it's too much to ask of someone with a husband and kids."
She sat up, squaring her shoulders. "Anyway, it's better not to get distracted. Jessica pointed out that, for better or worse, I have time and space to think things through a little better than just hopping into the next thing I need to do so we can survive." She glanced at her brother in the rear view mirror, smiling when she saw he was still staring happily out the window. "I'm trying to figure out what else I can be besides a waitress. There are entry level positions I'm theoretically qualified for—data entry and customer support, that kind of thing. I'm trying to figure out how to interview for a job like that."
They'd arrived at their destination—a predictably overflowing parking lot.
"The best thing would be to do mock interviews," Edward said. "It's not too hard to find the most typical questions online. It's a matter of confidence. The more you practice, the more confident you'll feel." He paused, scanning for parking. "Someone at the shelter can help, can't they?"
"Maybe," Bella said vaguely, remembering the snickering assholes on the porch.
"You don't think one of them would help?"
"They all have their own things going on. I don't know. I'll ask."
"Hmm." Finding a parking space, Edward maneuvered the car forward first. Then, he put his arm around her seat, craning his neck as he backed into the space. As he put the car in park, his face was closer to hers, then as he looked in her eyes. "I can help you."
She blinked, momentarily befuddled by his nearness. "Erm, I don't know how much we would get done with Emmett around."
"We can do it next week. With school out, the foster kids have a few adventures planned. The agency takes them, so I can help then."
"Oh, that would be… I mean, yeah, if you don't mind."
He smiled. "It's no problem."
As they got out of the car, Bella rolled her eyes at herself. Crushes were so goddamn annoying. And once you had one, it was so hard to erase. This one particular person was bathed in highlighter fluid—bright, and garish, and impossible to ignore. The tiny details were so distracting.
His blush over his accidental confession that he liked Taylor Swift. His breathtaking smile. That little move with his arm over the seat. Why did it all drive her so crazy? She knew when the night was quiet at the strict lights-out-time at the shelter, it would be these images playing on a loop in her mind.
As she straightened up from helping Emmett out of this booster seat, her breath left her in a gust.
Those images and this one…
She'd never seen Edward look so casual. Board shorts, a plain white tank, and an open button-down? Why should that have done something for her? But, on him, it did. There was something about the definition of his arms and chest. She let herself stare a beat as Edward reached above his head to close the hatchback. There was no sense in denying it was a nice view.
"Okay, my good sir," Edward said in a dramatic voice. "Your sweet ride awaits." He pulled the wagon around to the side of the car and bowed deeply, motioning for Emmett to climb up.
"Oh, a carriage!" Emmett said, jumping in excitement.
"Carriage?" Bella chortled. "Where did you get that?"
"Ariel had a carriage in the mermaid movie," Emmett said, slapping pretend reins in front of him. "She raced the horses. She was like this." He made a squeaking noise like a carriage, but the way he moved was more like a race car, leaning hard to the side. "Stay down, Prince Eric. You're not gonna fall!"
Edward chuckled. "Carriage race it is." He picked up the wagon handle and took off at mock-breakneck speeds, tilting the wagon this way and that while Emmett hooted with gleeful laughter.
Shouldering the large beach bag that held a few more things they needed, Bella followed them, a smile playing at her lips. A chuckle from nearby drew her attention, and she turned her head to see an older woman walking likewise toward the beach. At a guess, given the group she was walking with, Bella thought she might be the grandmother to the large brood of children and adults.
Noticing her, the woman gave a gentle smile. "Lovely family," she said. "Just missing the dog."
Bella's cheeks heated, and she ducked her head. In that moment, she had a tiny daydream of a future she'd never stopped to think about. A handsome husband and doting father? A family beach day?
In her reality, such a wholesome image was something she'd only seen on television. She hadn't ever been the kid in the scenario, and now, she certainly wasn't the wife and mother. If this lady knew what she was actually seeing…
But then, the woman's assumption that Edward was an involved father was spot on.
The wagon Edward had was the sturdy type designed to withstand the sandy beach. He wheeled them, still "racing" haphazardly, until Emmett interrupted his shrieks to point. "Look. There they are." He waved ecstatically at a small group set up a decent distance from the water.
"Oh, really," Bella muttered under her breath.
The family sat across two large blankets under a wide umbrella. There were three adults. The only man—maybe in his forties and handsome enough, if Bella had to say—lounged, stretched out on a beach chair, hands behind his head and sunglasses on. Lounging beside him was a bombshell of a woman. She didn't look that much older than Bella, and her two-piece definitely hadn't been cobbled together at Target.
They were both ignoring the third adult in their party—a pretty brunette maybe Bella's age. She wore swim shorts, a cropped shirt, and a baby in a mesh carrier strapped to her front. The baby howled beneath its wide bonnet, and a cherubic toddler boy clambered to unsteady feet next to the brunette.
Sitting with her legs crossed on a mini beach lounger, long hair up in a high ponytail, her two-piece suit, a smaller version of her mother's, had to be the Rosie Bella had heard so much about. At the sound of Emmett's bellows, she slipped out of the prim, proper pose she'd been in and bounced up like a normal four-to-five year old. "Hi, Emmy!"
Except for the brunette, the rest of the family sported various shades of beautiful blonde hair.
Really, Em? Bella thought to herself, amused and just a bit intimidated. There was nothing about these people that screamed warmth and everything about them screamed privilege. They were from the right side of the tracks and she and Emmett were from the wrong ones.
But, for her brother's sake, Bella tried to shrug that off. She put on a friendly smile as the brunette—who turned out to be a nanny named Vera—introduced everyone. Vera seemed nice, though a bit harried as she tried to console the screaming baby boy and keep his toddler brother from running into the surf while keeping up a conversation with Bella and Edward.
Rosalie's mother managed an insincere smile and a, "good to meet you," but only after she gave Bella an obvious once-over.
Her father seemed irritated to have to sit up. "Will you quiet him down?" he snapped at Vera and his wailing baby boy. He gave a sigh as though he found everyone around him incompetent and finally looked at Bella. He raised an eyebrow. "How old are you?" he said instead of greeting her.
His tone was the same condescending, disapproving tone of principals and in-charge assholes the world over. Bella swallowed and tilted her chin up. "I don't see what that matters," she said, keeping her tone light.
Mr. Hale looked at Emmett, his lip twitching down, and then at his wife. "A teenage mother who's already lost her kid? That's who you want around our kids?"
"I'm not Emmett's mother," Bella said.
Edward stepped to her side, his expression harder than she had ever seen it. "Bella and Emmett both found themselves in an unfortunate situation after their mother died, Mr. Hale. Life's messy like that, sometimes."
Mr. Hale scoffed. "For some of us more than others," he said as he relaxed back in his chair, putting his glasses back on.
Bella turned her head enough that his family couldn't catch it when she rolled her eyes. She might have been a hot mess, but at least she wasn't whatever the hell he was. She glanced over, glad her brother seemed to be too busy jabbering with Rosie to have picked up on any of that nastiness.
"Well, anyway," Vera said with false cheer. "How do you feel about sandcastles?" she asked Bella.
Bella grinned. "I always wanted to make a sandcastle."
"You've never made a sandcastle?" Edward asked.
She ducked her head and shrugged. "It's not really something my mom had the patience for." She glanced at him, not wanting to dwell on it. "So you used to make sandcastles."
He made an odd face, his lips twisting a bit at one corner. "I mean… I did." His smile became wistful. "Alice liked sandcastles. She could never get the moats right, so I had to help."
They got down to the business of a beach day then, Edward setting up the things he'd brought—two chairs, a big blanket, and a small ice chest—while Bella managed to slather sunscreen on herself and enough of Emmett to be satisfied he wouldn't burn. Vera settled the baby, guided the toddler to a safe hole of goopy, wet sand, and then set out everything the kids needed to get their sandcastle on.
At first, Bella tried to help, but little Rosalie made it quite clear this was her and Emmett's castle. It was mostly funny—she was quite the little diva, and Bella found it hilarious her little brother was goofy over her. It was cute.
"Here," Edward said, squatting beside where she sat on the sand. "You can make your own."
He'd brought a few things too. And though part of Bella thought she should refuse—she was the adult in this situation and she was aware Mrs. Hale was watching her with an arched eyebrow—most of her thought fuck those two anyway. She grinned as she took the small, bright orange shovel and pail set from Edward and set to work.
"You don't want to help?" she asked, taking in Edward's stance.
He stood there, arms crossed, and made that weird face he had before. "I'm supervising."
"Uh-huh." She watched him another moment as she patted wet sand into the pail. She remembered the displeased look on his face when she suggested this beach day in the first place. "You don't like the beach," she realized out loud.
He opened his mouth, but before he could deny it, she laughed. "You won't even sit in the sand."
"The sand is hot."
"This sand is damp."
The twisted look on his face only got worse, and she laughed again. "You think it's yucky," she teased, aware of their current, underage company.
"I…" He rolled his eyes, clearly recognizing he'd lost this battle. "Wet sand is yucky. Ugh, the squelch." He shuddered. "And dry sand just… gets everywhere."
"Okay, Anakin Skywalker." She nodded at the ocean crashing nearby. "And the water?"
The disgust on his face was impossible to miss now. "Pretty to look at, but… you do know how many fish and humans pee in that and worse, right?"
She scrunched up her nose. "Ew, okay don't ruin it for me. You know I'm going to have to go in sooner than—"
"Sissy!" Emmett barreled at her then and straight into the satisfying little tower she'd managed to make, knocking it down and tumbling to the sand after it. "Whoa. Whoops."
"Whoops indeed." She arched an eyebrow at her brother. "Can I help you?"
"We wanna go in the water."
Bella looked over his shoulder to see that Rosie had darted back to her mother and was attempting to lure her into the water. It didn't look like she was going to win that one judging by the look on Mrs. Hale's face.
"I'll take her if you want to watch the boys, Mrs. Hale," Vera called.
The woman sighed but nodded her agreement.
Bella got to her feet and went to the space Edward had laid out for them. She hesitated a moment, turning away from him as he sat in one of the chairs he'd brought. It felt oddly intimate to slide her shorts off in front of him. The rest of the whole damn beach, who cared? But him…
She blushed, glad she was facing away from him. She took off her shirt and started to apply sunscreen to the parts of her that had previously been covered.
"Hurry up, Sissy," Emmett whined.
"I'm trying, bud. I'm trying to make sure I don't burn up, but there's always this one spot on my back."
"You can ask Edward for help if you need it. That's what he's there for."
"Oh, uh…"
Edward sat up, angling his body toward hers. "It's no problem."
Right, it was no big deal to him because they were just two grown adults with nothing going on. She had to have imagined that his voice had gone just. A touch husky, a notch deeper than normal. She could be a grown-up about this.
She offered him the sunscreen and turned her back, telling herself again she was ridiculous for the thrill that zipped down her spine at his gentle touch.
And she was really imagining feeling his eyes on her as she and Emmett made their way to the water.
As the waves crashed over her feet, she regained her sanity. Emmett dove right into a wave and she rushed to catch him.
"Oof, what's gotten into you, Rosalie?" Vera said, laughing as she likewise kept the little girl from trying to swim out to sea.
"But we're mermaids, Vera!" The girl giggled.
"Mermaids!" Emmett agreed.
"You're mermaids with your land legs, you looney toons," Bella said. "Don't go too deep."
"Don't tell the boss I said so, but he's a good influence," Vera said a few minutes later as the kids busied themselves plucking sand crabs out of the sand. "She's always such a proper little princess."
"He seems to like it that way," Bella said.
Vera sighed. "He does. But she's five. You know?"
"I get it."
Not a minute later, the asshat in question strode past them. He spared a head pat for Rosalie, but otherwise, ignored her as he dove into the water by himself.
Vera scoffed, picking up Rosalie to distract her from wanting to follow her father into the deep water.
Bella then swung around, looking for a shell she'd just seen, only to run into another beachgoer who was standing too close. She stumbled backward and fell into the ankle deep water.
"Oh, hell, Bella, I'm sorry."
Bella blinked against the spray of the waves as Edward reached down to help her up. "Careful," she said as he pulled her to her feet. "Fish pee in here all day."
His features pinched, and he shifted, obviously uncomfortable. "I've seen Moana too," he said, voice gruff.
He looked so uncomfortable, shifting his feet gingerly in the water, she didn't think before she reached out to touch his bare shoulder. "Hey, seriously. I know this isn't your idea of a good time. I got Emmett."
"I know. You're more than capable."
His words came out a bit harsh, and she stepped back, stunned. His features gentled. He closed his eyes, huffing out a breath. "Sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you." He stepped closer to her, ducking his head so she was the only one who could hear. "That smug son of a bitch got under my skin."
She considered him with surprise. "Wow, yeah, I can tell. You almost sounded like a normal twenty-something right there."
His lip quirked up at the corner, and some of the annoyance drained from his features.
"Hey, fuck that guy, anyway," Bella said quietly with a shrug. "He had more to say about me being an awful mother or…"
"What didn't he have more to say about? You. Me."
"What about you?"
At that, Edward laughed and flashed her a full-out grin. "A lot, but it turns out Mrs. Hale and I have the same opinion about beach days." He scowled at the miniature form of Mr. Hale in deeper water. "He's the type of person who thinks things like being willing to go out farther is the pinnacle of manliness, and maybe I shouldn't be so proud to be like his wife."
"A lowly woman, sure." Bella shook her head. "That's why people like him don't bother me. I knew him for thirty seconds, and I can already tell you he's the kind of awful that makes the judgements coming out of his mouth actually compliments, you know? If that guy thinks I'm awful, I can't be half bad. I want to be considered awful by jackasses like him."
"That's a fair point."
Bella chuckled and bumped his side with her hip. "It's nice to see you actually are human. A little bit of peer pressure is all it takes to get you into the yucky water, eh?"
"Hey, I— Jesus Christ. What the hell?" Edward jerked back and jumped, his arms pinwheeling. "What was that?"
Bella couldn't help it. She laughed as she leaned down, grabbing a tangle of seaweed from near his foot. She tossed it a good distance away. "Just a sea snake," she teased, wiggling her fingers at him.
"Ugh," he said, and she laughed again, as he turned and stomped back to his chair.
A/N: SO! Let me hear from you. It's my birthday on Sunday, so just remember, your words are a gift to me! ;)