After our successful family meeting and my coup with Carlisle I was in an especially chipper mood when I crawled through Bella's bedroom window last night.
She greeted me with a most excellent hug and things quickly devolved into a rather steamy kissing marathon! We had to put some music on to muffle our moaning. It was spectacular! I shall never tire of Bella's magical touch.
While she showered I sketched some possible cabin layouts and thought a little about how to construct everything and what we would need. Bella let me brush her hair after her shower and looked over the plans as we chatted in excited whispers. I asked her what she wanted in the space and she said somewhere to lounge and snuggle, a small space to make a snack and a bed! I hadn't considered a bed, but we do love lying down together and gazing at each other. Perhaps she would like to nap sometimes too, even if we never stay overnight there. She agreed she should have a bathroom and I assured her it wouldn't be too difficult to add one.
We worked out a rough plan for a single floor cabin with two main rooms, plus a small kitchen, washroom and bathroom. I want to have a porch as well with a porch swing for when the weather is nice out that is screened off so Bella doesn't get mosquito bites. They are the cursed vampires of the insect world. Those bastards shall not touch my beloved!
Bella showed me a website on her laptop run by a man called Craig. He has a handy dandy list of things for sale and even for free in the local area. She explained that I just need to email the people with the things and ask when I can collect them but that good things get snapped up quickly. That shouldn't be a problem because I am very fast, even though my fingers don't work on my iPhone screen.
We already found some free windows and a reasonably priced plastic water tank! At school I got emails about when to collect things this evening. This is all infinitely more engaging than drudging through high school classes and feigning interest in the subject matter.
Bella has found some very interesting leads for materials for the cabin, she is very dedicated to keeping it as cheap as possible, so has shown herself to be an excellent scavenger and bargain hunter.
When I entered the lunch room to meet with her and Emmett, she was deep in conversation with greasy Newton. She had noticed a bandage on his finger and asked if he was ok. Bella is so caring. It transpires he got a nasty splinter when moving some pallets into the dumpster at his parents' store. After a little more sympathy, Bella asked if she could have the pallets if they were still there. She said she wanted the wood for an art project. Mike said she could have anything in the shared dumpster area behind Newton's Olympic Outfitters and that they had a combination lock because of the dumpster fires still plaguing the local businesses and police department. So it wasn't Mike, after all. Who is committing all of this arson?
Bella assured Mike she would lock the dumpster up, got the combination and thanked him, giving him her pudding cup and making her way to my table to chat with Emmett and I while she ate.
"Did you catch that? We might find some useful free stuff in the dumpsters."
"But that is trash Bella! Dirty, dirty, trash!"
"I doubt it's even that dirty, none of those stores sell food. I'll have you know Renee and I got about half our furniture in Arizona from dumpsters and stuff people had left on the curb. It's a good way to get free stuff that is still useful. And it's better for the environment Edward."
I pictured the rancid landfill that must be Renee's home and frowned. My poor darling growing up in a Dickensian hovel! I had no idea. Emmett shot me a look and thought loudly "LET HER DO IT HER WAY OR SHE WILL CUT YOU OFF DUDE! REMEMBER!". I gulped and nodded, despite my disgust, I felt that I should go along with her plan for fear of being put on a smooch strike. Also this was going to give me some much needed insight into Bella's time with Renee.
"Let's go by after school. We can use your truck and I can do the lifting and carrying if we find anything good so you don't risk hurting yourself, ok?"
"Sure. There are the other stores there too, and one is a hardware store, isn't it? We can look in their dumpster area too and see if there's anything we might use."
"You're so clever, Bella!"
Emmett agreed and then went on to give us some advice about building from his experience. The images and memories in his head were far clearer than his garbled verbal explanation, but Bella seemed to either understand, or do a good job faking it. Mostly we need to make a box of interlocking logs, so I will need a few tools, but I think we have some at home. Bella and I agreed on a plan to use as many materials from our land as possible and avoid buying lumber whenever possible. We will need to get some things that we do not have though, such as insulation and tar paper for the roof, so we are keeping a careful list and I am poised to pounce on anything Craig puts on his list.
Bella pulled out her phone as she munched on something she told me were called tater tots, leaving me none the wiser as to what they were. She waved her phone at me and said, "Oh, by the way, the man with the water barrel said we can collect it from Beaver this afternoon! Just the gas for the round trip I guess, but it's only a twenty minute drive, so not bad. The guy said he's retired now, so he is downsizing his house. He said has some other random stuff in his garage we can look over when we get there too."
Emmett asked us if there's anything else we need help with, but Bella said she wanted to try and get started on our own and that we'd ask him if we got stuck. She passed him a container of bubbles to thank him, which I heard caused absolute pandemonium in his computer science class after lunch. He had a whale of a time!
After school I drove us to Beaver and we collected the water barrel. It was new, so cost $25, but would do well to collect water for washing dishes and the bathroom. It was dusty on the outside, so I'm glad we didn't use the Volvo and dirty the upholstery. I did not like the feeling of dust on my hands and kept wiggling them. Bella told me to stop it because I was scaring the man who was giving us free things, she used her strict voice that I like a lot.
The man with the dusty barrel also let us take several tarpaulins, a bucket of assorted hinges, handles, screws and hardware, two huge cooking pots, an oil lantern, that Bella likes but I shall never allow her to use because it is a deathtrap, and a filthy old rug, which should be burned immediately, or perhaps donated to Carlisle.
I made Bella let me stop to wash my hands in the river on the way to our next stop because I was hissing a lot about the dust. We got the windows without incident, though they were dusty too, but after a stop at the gas station to scour my hands we proceeded towards our final stop. I calmed down after Bella used her strict voice and suggested we get some work gloves before attempting to approach the dumpster.
After a thorough rattling in her awful truck we lurched into the hardware store parking lot by Newton's Olympic Outfitters, made a pit stop to get work gloves and then pulled around back to go to greasy Newton's dumpster. It was worth the trip despite my misgivings. While I was fiddling with my gloves Bella appeared to have fallen into the dumpster. She assured me it was on purpose and wiggled her way back out as I guided her. When she emerged she was clutching a large cooler with a broken handle.
"I think I just found a fridge!"
"Oh! That's a good idea! I can run down some ice from my house quickly every few days and you can use it as a little ice box for drinks and snacks."
"Perfect! Let's check the other three back here."
Two were empty, but the hardware store dumpster yielded a bag of cement which would be useful. It was ripped a little, but it wasn't wet, so should be perfectly usable.
After such a successful first day's haul we returned to Bella's house and rummaged around in the basement for a bit, we hid our supplies temporarily and managed to turned up some paints in a box labelled Renee's art supplies. I also begged Bella to let me take the sole box labelled with her name upstairs so that I could look through it with her some time and hear stories from her childhood. She said that because I hadn't scuttled all afternoon I deserved a treat, so she would look through it with me some time this week. I am most excited about this prospect.
After I had used half a bottle of dish soap washing my hands and been reprimanded by Bella for being wasteful, we relaxed on the couch for a while. I stroked Bella's hair and told her how clever she was again and again. She really has impressed me with her ingenuity and resourcefulness. It is lovely to see her so excited about the project as well.
I talked to her about possibly rescuing the stove from the old cabin and she looked up a few videos about how to refurbish something like that. We got distracted by kissing and moaning a lot on the couch though so we didn't get any further. The wandering of Bella's hands is becoming ever bolder! It is stimulating and terrifying in equal measure! I am thoroughly addicted!
A/N: Reviewers get to let their bold hands wander over Edward!
Thanks a million to my wonderful betas itsthatkindofanight and wh1teow1, please show some love and read Moirai, a reimagining of Twilight for the new decade!