Troubleshoot
Disclaimer: all characters and copyright belong to SM.
Happy Now?
For the last few weeks, Renee had immersed herself in wedding plans. She'd spent hours every day on the phone with Edward's mother, Esme – no worries about the in-laws getting along. Renee adored Esme, but then, Bella doubted anyone could help responding that way to her loveable almost-mother-in-law.
Of course, it had let Bella right off the hook. Edward's family and her family were taking care of the nuptials together without her having to do or know or think too hard about it.
Charlie was absolutely furious, but thankfully not at Bella. According to him, Renee was the traitor. He'd counted on her to play the heavy. What could he do now, when his ultimate threat-telling her mom- had turned out to be utterly empty? He had nothing, and he knew it. So, he moped around the house, muttering things about not being able to trust anyone in this world…
Bella caught him doing exactly that when she let herself in after her near miss on the road earlier.
"Dad?" She called as she pushed open the front door. "I'm home."
"Hold on, Bells, stay right there."
"Huh?" She asked, pausing automatically.
"Gimme a second. Ouch, you got me, Alice."
Alice?
"Sorry, Charlie." Alice's trilling voice responded. "How's that?"
"I'm bleeding on it."
"You're fine. Didn't break the skin- trust me."
Bella felt her muscles tense. Why was Alice here? She had been hoping to have a quiet word with Charlie, but with Edward's sister in the house, it would be nigh on impossible.
"What's going on?" She demanded, hesitating in the doorway.
"Thirty seconds, please, Bella." Alice called out. "Your patience will be rewarded."
"Humph." Charlie added.
Bella felt like bolting. She really didn't want to wait around for the surprise reveal. She had a dreadful feeling it had something to do with the upcoming wedding. She tapped her foot nervously, counting each beat. Before she got to thirty, Alice said. "Okay, Bella, come in."
Moving with caution, Bella rounded the corner into the living room.
"Oh, Dad!" She gasped. "You look – "
"Silly? Preposterous? Stupid? Like an overdressed – "
"I was thinking more like debonair." Bella interrupted with a weak smile.
Charlie scowled, not believing a word of it. Alice took his elbow and tugged him around in a slow spin to showcase the pale grey tux.
"Now cut that out, Alice. I feel like enough of a fool as it is." Charlie grouched.
"No one dressed by me ever feels like an idiot."
Bella begged to differ; she had suffered silently through many fashion disasters that Alice had forced upon her in the past. "She's right, Dad." She lied. "You look fabulous." She managed to inject the right amount of enthusiasm in her tone to make it sound half way believable. "What's the occasion?"
Alice rolled her eyes. "Really, Bella, you are so not funny. It is the final check on the fit. For both of you."
Bella peeled her gaze off the unusually elegant Charlie for the first time and saw the dreaded white garment bag laid carefully across the sofa. Her stomach dropped, perspiration breaking out on her forehead.
"Oh." She whispered.
"Go to your happy place, Bella. It won't take long." Alice advised.
Bella sucked in a deep breath, trying her best to quell her rising panic. This was just another stress she didn't need. Turning away so Charlie couldn't see her reaction, she turned and ran out of the room, stumbling up the stairs to her bedroom.
Alice was right behind her. "You'd think I was shoving bamboo splinters under your nails." She muttered to herself.
Bella paid no attention to her complaints. Resignedly she stripped down to her underwear and held her arms straight out. She closed her eyes, trying to find her happy place, but failing miserably. She wished the whole wedding mess was over and done. Behind her. Already repressed and forgotten.
Getting married was the compromise she had agreed with Edward in order for him to agree to change her. She had accepted all his outrageous gifts without complaint (even the cursed Mercedes) and was registered, however futilely, to attend Dartmouth College in the Fall. Now it was his turn.
Before he turned her into a vampire-his big compromise-he had one other stipulation to make good on.
Edward had an obsessive sort of concern over the human things that Bella would be giving up, the experiences he didn't want her to miss. Most of them – like the prom-seemed silly to Bella. There was only one human experience she worried about missing. Of course, it would be the one thing that Edward wished she would forget completely.
Bella had wanted the complete experience before she traded in her warm, breakable, pheromone-riddled body for something beautiful, strong…and unknown. She wanted a real honeymoon with Edward. And, despite the danger he feared this would put her in, he'd agreed to try.
Well, at least it had been the one thing she had wanted, until Jacob and his crazy offer had put another spin on things. Bella was only vaguely aware of Alice and the slip and slide of satin over her skin. She didn't care, for the moment, that the whole town was talking about her. She didn't think about the spectacle that she would have to star in much too soon. She didn't worry about tripping on her train or giggling at the wrong moment or being too young or staring at the audience or even the empty seat where her best friend should be.
No, her best friend was stuck firmly in her head, again making the offer that she suddenly couldn't stop thinking about.
"Jacob, surely you can't be proposing that we have a baby together?"
"Maybe you're not the only crazy one, Bella. Or maybe your insanity is catching. But, yes, that's exactly what I mean."
"I miss you already."
"What?" Bella said distractedly.
"I said I miss you already." Edward repeated with a fond smile. "You've been preoccupied all evening, love. I can empathize if you're feeling a little overwhelmed. Alice can be a little…overenthusiastic…shall we say?"
"Mmmm." Bella wasn't really listening. Her mind was far away in La Push with a certain werewolf.
It was quiet for a long moment as Edward regarded her thoughtfully. He could hear the dull thud of her heart hammering, the broken rhythms of her ragged breathing. She had been painfully distant ever since Alice had left after the wedding dress fitting. He knew she was struggling, finding the whole prospect of marriage overwhelming, but he thought with his sister and the others taking most of the burden off her shoulders with organizing the whole thing, that she would relax. Unfortunately, it proved to be the opposite.
Edward knew one way to take her mind off things and get her to relax. Holding her face in his ice-cold hands, he leaned in for a kiss. To his surprise and immense dissatisfaction, Bella didn't immediately respond to his romantic overture. She remained still, her lips staying firmly pressed together, where normally they would have opened under his, her breath coming in short gasps. He pulled away and scrutinized her carefully.
"You really are very tense, Bella. What's troubling you?"
Bella looked at him, her gaze coming back into focus. Edward was peering at her with anxious eyes, his hands still gently cradling her face. Sometimes it was easy to forget that she was kissing a vampire. Not because he seemed ordinary or human-she could never a second forget that she was holding someone more angel than man in her arms-but because he made it seem like nothing at all to have his lips against her lips, her face, her throat. So, it came as a shock to Bella that she hadn't even registered that he had tried to initiate a kiss.
Edward had claimed that he was long past the temptation her blood used to be for him, that the idea of losing her had cured him of any desire for it. But she knew the smell of her blood still caused him pain-still burned his throat like he was inhaling flames. He didn't show it, but just knowing that fact had become more off-putting over time.
Edward was still staring at her face, waiting for her to respond. Bella didn't know what to say. She could hardly tell him she had been thinking of another man while in a romantic clinch with him, especially as that man was his former love rival. Not that she had been thinking of Jacob in a romantic sense, more a preoccupation with his unexpected offer.
Their gazes locked for a moment; Edward's golden eyes were so deep, Bella imagined that she could see all the way into his soul. It seemed silly that this fact-the existence of his soul-had ever been in question, even if he was a vampire. He had the most beautiful soul, more beautiful than his brilliant mind or his incomparable face or body.
Edward looked back at her as if he could see her soul, too, and as if he liked what he saw.
He couldn't see into her mind, though, the way he could into everyone else's. Who knew why-some strange glitch in her brain that made her immune to all the extraordinary and frightening things some immortals could do. But, right now, Bella was seriously grateful to whatever malfunction it was that kept her thoughts a secret. It was just too embarrassing to consider the alternative, she could only imagine his reaction if he knew about Jacob's offer to father a child with her.
Edward pulled her face to his again. Bella made more of an effort to concentrate this time. She locked the fingers of her right hand into his bronze hair, her left pressing tighter against the small of his back. His cool hands stroked her face, his lips pressing lightly on hers.
Despite this, she found her mind wandering down the road again to La Push, thinking about what Jacob was doing right now.
"Bella, your mind is elsewhere again." Edward's impatient tone brought her back into the moment. His smile looked half amused-half annoyed. "Would you like to tell me what has you so distracted that my intoxicating kisses are having no effect?"
"Oh, its Jacob…" The words spilled out before Bella could stop them. She froze in Edward's arms, looking as much like a statue as he did during times of stress.
"You were envisioning your werewolf friend when I was kissing you?" He questioned, all traces of amusement vanishing like a puff of smoke.
Bella grimaced. She glanced toward her bedroom door. In the room next to hers Charlie slept, snoring obliviously. There wasn't much chance of him waking up anytime soon to act as a buffer. She and Edward were curled up on her small bed, intertwined as much as was possible, considering the thick Afghan she was swathed in like a cocoon. She hated the necessity of the blanket, but it sort of ruined the romance when her teeth started chattering. Charlie would notice if she turned the heat on in August….
"It's not like that." Bella said, finally finding the ability to speak. "I wasn't thinking of him in a romantic context."
Edward looked at her archly. "You did once upon a time. I recall the very passionate kiss you had with him on a mountaintop, just before the newborn battle."
"Oh, for goodness' sake!" Bella exclaimed. "Why bring that up after all this time?"
"I'm not the one thinking of another while in the middle of a romantic tryst." Edward countered. He started to pull away-his automatic response when he decided things had gone too far.
"Wait." Bella said, gripping his shoulders and hugging herself close to him. She kicked one leg free and wrapped it around his waist. "Don't storm off in a huff."
Edward's body was motionless with stress. The gold in his eyes seemed to harden from a liquid to a solid. "You've been preoccupied all evening, Bella. And it clearly has something to do with Jacob Black. I know you went to La Push – "
"Oh, so that explains Alice's last minute dress rehearsal!" Bella accused in a low voice. "You've had her spying on me again!"
"Don't stray from the point." Edward retorted. "Why did you feel the sudden need to visit your friend? What happened in La Push with Jacob Black to make you so distracted? What did he say to you?"
Bella squirmed, trying to avoid his intense gaze. But Edward thwarted that attempt by locking her face between his ice-cold hands again, forcing her to look him in the eyes.
"What happened, Bella? Tell me now or I will head straight to La Push and force the answer out of him myself."
"You wouldn't dare risk violating the treaty."
"Watch me!"
Bella stared up at him incredulously, not believing for an instant that he could be serious. But something in the determined set of his mouth made her think otherwise.
"Okay." She said, quickly giving in. "But you won't like it."
"Bella!" Edward warned impatiently.
"Alright, you asked for it." Bella retorted irritably. "Jake offered to be my baby daddy. Happy now?"
A/N-thanks for reading!