Surely it couldn't be morning already?
Her head ached, her eyes were puffy and sore from a night filled with crying, and she could not mentally handle the alarm clock blaring on the bedside table. Bella could have sworn she had shut it off before she fell into fitful slumber somewhere around an hour or so ago.
Lethargically, she lifted her arm and let her palm slam down against the button, silencing the noise and allowing her to begin to wallow in the memories from last night.
Edward had broken up with her. He had said he didn't want her to come with him and his family-didn't want her- and after boldly pleading for her to take care of herself for his own peace of mind, he just vanished.
Bella had tried to chase after him, leaving the safety of the trail next to her house to stumble through the dark forest in search of him, but after hours of wandering in the brush, she just… gave up. She merely collapsed onto the damp, dark forest floor and waited.
She had laid on the ground for an indeterminate amount of time before Sam Uley had managed to find her and carried her home where she was fussed over by her father, a doctor, and other curious searchers who had shown up to help until she couldn't take it anymore and retreated up to her room to fall into a nightmare-filled slumber.
A great shudder wracked her body, and even though Bella didn't think she could cry anymore, tears still managed to fill her eyes, the salt within burning the sensitive ducts. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her watery vision.
Distantly she heard a soft noise of some sort before realizing the sound came from herself. A hiccup. A sob that broke towards the end. A ragged intake of air as she struggled to keep her breathing even as the panic of being without Edward sank in again.
She grabbed a stray pillow from behind her and pulled it tight against her torso, curling around it as an upset child might to a stuffed animal. Shoving her face into the softness of it she tried to muffle all the pitiful noises that started to spill forth. She didn't know if Charlie was gone yet, but if he was still preparing for his morning she didn't want him to be able to overhear her crying.
As soon as she started letting out her sobs in earnest to bleed out the pain a little bit more, a knock came from outside the door.
Speak of the devil.
"Bells?" Charlie called out from the hallway. Bella heard the sound of scuffing boots as he shuffled outside, no doubt debating on coming into the room or not. "You aren't up yet? You're going to be late for school at this rate."
The statement stopped Bella's tears in their tracks, and she pulled away from the damp patch she had made in the pillow to partially roll over to look behind her and towards the bedroom door. She scrunched up her face in confusion at Charlie's words as her fingers dug into the fabric of the pillow she clutched tightly.
What? School? Didn't they both agree last night that she would be allowed at least today to recover from the whole ordeal of being dumped and lost in the woods for hours?
While she understood the importance of education, the events of the previous night were so mentally, physically, and emotionally taxing that she felt like a wrung-out dishrag. She didn't think she had it in her to try and put on a brave face today for the rest of the world. She didn't want to go to school and listen to the other kids whisper about how she and Edward broke up, or the embarrassing fact that she had gotten lost in the woods and a small-scale search party had been sent out over her.
Both events would be on the lips of every teenager at Forks High, and she would likely have to endure several people asking questions about everything that would be salt in the wounds all day, and she knew the chances of crying later in one of her classes if she went were higher than she would have liked.
Ideally, that percentage would hover at zero, but now? Seventy-five, at least.
"Look, kiddo," Charlie said, his voice snapping Bella out of her growing apprehension. "I have to go, but I'll see you when I get home tonight." He paused for a moment. "Drive safe."
Bella just continued to stare at the door for the span of several heartbeats, listening to his heavy footsteps as he walked away and down the stairs as he headed to work.
Twisting her body back around so she was curled up against the pillow again, she continued to lay in bed for another few minutes, looking outside the window to the cloudy gray sky and debating her life choices, before letting out a disgruntled huff through her nose.
Exasperation flooded her body, replacing the melancholy with something that didn't make her very soul ache. The annoyance she felt was motivating enough to kick off the covers and drag herself out of bed. She didn't want to go to school, she wanted to stay home and wallow. But if Charlie really wanted her to go, she would suck it up and try and give it a shot.
If it honestly became too much, she could just go home. It's not like anyone could physically stop her from leaving if she wanted to.
She brought a hand up to wipe at her tear-stained face, scrubbing harshly at the skin around her eyes for a second as if she could somehow physically brush the ability to cry away. Only after her vision was good and blurry did she begin rushing to get dressed.
She spent little effort on her clothes, deciding on a simple long sleeve shirt, a warm jacket, and some jeans and well-worn sneakers.
After she quickly ran a brush through the tangled mess that was her hair, she checked herself out in the mirror to see if she didn't look too sleep-deprived before sighing at the dark, puffy circles under her red eyes. It would be obvious she stayed up all night crying, but there was little she could do about it this late in the morning.
It's not like anyone wouldn't know why she looked the way she did.
Grabbing a package of Pop-Tarts from the kitchen after she trudged downstairs, she scarfed the dry pastries down before she even made it to her truck. The loud roar of the ancient vehicle coming to life when she turned the key was soothing, something none of the Cullen's had understood when any of them (Edward and Alice) had asked if they could buy her a newer, faster, nicer-looking car.
Driving to school was a blur she barely remembered, but it helped clear her head and made her feel like she could actually handle today after the short trip. It was therapeutic. For a second she could breathe.
However, as she pulled into the parking lot, all sense of calmness she might have scrounged up immediately disappeared. Her heart threatened to drop right out of her chest as she saw who was standing next to her usual spot.
Edward fucking Cullen.
Her trembling fingers tightened on the steering wheel as she idled in front of the entrance to the school. She chewed on her lower lip, debating on quickly reversing and just going back home, but she would not give him the satisfaction of being able to scare her off.
Anxiety swirled deep in her belly as she looked out her window and at his perfectly passive face as Edward leaned against the side of his car and watched her.
He didn't smile. He didn't wave. But he had obviously been waiting for her arrival.
As soon as she gathered the courage to park, he pushed off the door he had been leaning against and walked around to open her truck's door like he usually did when they would meet in the mornings.
Didn't he leave last night? Why was he here?
She knew today was going to be shit, but she didn't expect it to start out like this. And dammit she was already sick of crying. She angrily scrubbed at the fresh wave of tears that had started to fall down her cheeks with the sleeve of her jacket.
Edward seemed alarmed by the sight of her crying. It was the first sight of emotion she had seen from him in what felt like days.
"Are you alright, Bella?" His voice was both the twisting knife and the bandage and caused Bella to only cry harder. "Did something happen?"
Did he really have the gall to ask her that?
Bella shook her head as she sucked in a shaky breath only to choke on it halfway as a sob tore through her. Blood bloomed hotly in her cheeks as embarrassment started to creep into her chest, ashamed to have fallen apart in the school parking lot right in front of Edward.
"Why are you here?" she managed to ask as soon as she could force away the tightness in her throat to allow herself the ability to speak again. "Edward, you said you were leaving. Why are you here ?"
That perfectly sculpted face morphed into a mask of confusion as if he didn't have any clue as to what she was talking about.
"Bella, when did I say that I was leaving?" he asked, head cocked slightly to the side as he opened the door to let her out of the truck. He always tried to be a gentleman to her, but she didn't want that right now.
Bella slammed the door shut before he could finish fully opening it. She didn't want to get out. Especially if he was going to play head games like this.
"You know what I'm talking about!" she spat out. Her chest heaved as indignation started to bubble up, and she grit her teeth together tightly to keep from screaming at the myriad of painful and upsetting feelings that bounced about inside her.
Edward frowned. His beautiful topaz eyes gazed at her curiously as she watched her try to keep her cool.
Several small groups of students were hovering nearby, curious baby faces looking at what was happening with the two of them with wondering eyes and voices. Even with her dull human hearing, she could hear the whispers floating around her, causing a blush to coat her cheeks and neck.
So much for trying to get through the day without making a spectacle of herself.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Edward said, each word spoken slowly like he truly didn't understand what was happening. "Will you please elaborate?"
"Edward, you dumped me. And then you said that you and your family were leaving without me," she whispered softly, knowing with his hearing he would be able to hear her perfectly. Her shoulders slumped as all the emotions suddenly dissipated and left her feeling hollow. She wanted to go home. "I spent hours looking for you last night. I got lost. They had to send a search party to find me. Did you know that? Do you even care?"
Sighing, she rested her elbows on the steering wheel and placed her head in her hands. Her fingers threaded through her hair and she tugged gently on the long strands as she balled her hands up into fists. A broken laugh escaped her as she tried to keep herself from falling to pieces even more than she already was.
"And now you're pretending that nothing happened?" Her tone was incredulous. "I know you know how to lie, but I never thought you would lie to me ."
Edward stood outside the truck, as still as a statue with his head dipped down while he stared at the ground with his lip caught between his perfectly white teeth. His eyes flicked back and forth across the cracked pavement as he tried to absorb what she said.
They stayed in a stalemate like that until the warning bell rang, startling Bella and urging her to move. She released her hair, running her fingers through the mussed tresses to try and look presentable again.
"Edward, I-" She paused, not really knowing what to say to continue her sentence.
She clenched and unclenched her hands in her lap for a moment as she watched the milling about students slowly make their way into the building, leaving the two of them alone in the parking lot. Leaning back in her seat, her head thumped against the back wall of the truck as she watched the final teenager file in and the doors close.
"I can't deal with this right now," she mumbled after a solid minute of silence, reaching over to snag her backpack off the seat beside her before opening the door and hopping out. "I need to get to class. I'm already going to be late enough as it is."
Icy fingers wrapped around her wrist and stopped her movements before she could slam the door shut. "Wait."
Snatching her arm away, she looked up at Edward and into his honey-yellow eyes. She scanned his face, desperate to try and understand why he was doing this.
It was blank.
That same feeling of wrongness flooded through her as she looked into cold amber, and she took a step back, bumping into the side of her truck as she boxed herself between the rusted truck bed and Edward's marble body. There was no chance of running from the conversation like she wanted to.
All Bella could focus on then was the thudding of her heart in her chest and the way it sounded like feedback in her head. She knew what was coming. Just as she had known last night before the bomb had dropped.
Everything felt… cold. The wind that gusted through the parking lot was nothing compared to the ice that seemed to fill her chest cavity, the shards piercing every organ until they stole the very breath from her lungs. Her breathing quickened.
"I can't-" she managed to rasp out while shaking her head in denial at the person who was her whole world. If he left again then she didn't know what she would do. "Edward, please…"
"I never broke up with you last night," Edward said, the words firm enough and with enough conviction that Bella thought she might have been making the whole thing up. "Yesterday I never came over to your house-"
"Because you've been avoiding me," she interjected, eyes narrowing in accusation as if daring him to try and deny it.
A sigh parted his lips. "Yes," he admitted with a shrug of his shoulders. "Because I've been avoiding you."
The answer was like a slap to the face and she turned her head away, no longer able to look at him.
"I can do better," she whispered as she stared into the tree line. She focused on a bird high in one of the boughs instead of the fact she wanted to throw up. The bird was red. "I'll be more careful from now on. I won't be as clumsy so accidents like that won't happen again."
"We both know you can't do that," Edward replied, voice devoid of emotion. "But it doesn't matter. I'm making sure it never happens again by parting ways with you now. I can't keep pretending to be something I'm not and it's not fair to either of us for me to continue to try."
A lone tear rolled down her cheek. She felt Edward's icy fingers against her face as he brushed it away before he turned her face back towards him. For a moment she relished the cold touch, bringing a hand up to grip his own that cradled her cheek.
"If you would just turn me-"
"No," he practically hissed out the word, causing Bella to flinch at the harshness. "You're not meant for my world, Bella. You never were meant to be one of us, and I shouldn't have been so selfish and weak as to even let you put your foot in the door."
"So I'm a mistake?" She released his hand and let her arms rest limply at her sides. She felt completely numb and swayed on the spot as she tried to remain standing even though she couldn't feel her legs anymore.
Edward inhaled deeply before blowing the air out through his nose. His liquid gold eyes were growing darker.
"Yes."
Then the earth fell out from under her feet, and she would have collapsed to the wet pavement if Edward hadn't caught her and set her down on the seat of her truck.
Her entire body shook as she felt Edward's cold lips press against her temple in a gentle, final kiss.
"Please, live a normal, human life," he pleaded after he pulled away. "Live a life that I would never be able to give you."
"I don't care about a human life," she said softly with a shake of her head. "I don't want that kind of life. I want you ."
"I'll just be a dream to you in a few years." Edward huffed out a small laugh. "Please, take care of yourself. Goodbye, Bella."
She swiped out a hand, trying to grab onto his jacket or shirt to keep him here just a bit longer, but he was just out of reach and she only grasped at air. Before she could blink his car that had been sitting beside her gently rumbled to life and quickly peeled out of the parking lot.
Edward was, once again, gone from her life.
She didn't even realize that she had been sitting in her truck for hours, unmoving and barely aware of the world around her until other kids started to wander into her view. With clumsy fingers, she dug into her long-forgotten backpack and pulled out her cell phone to check the time.
In blocky font it read out as three-fifteen. School was over.
Bella had spent the whole day sitting in the parking lot crying over a boy. How pathetic.
Then her eyes happened to glance down at the date just below the time.
September 16th.
Her brows furrowed as she stared at the screen. That couldn't be right. It was supposed to be the seventeenth. It had been exactly four days since her birthday disaster.
But how could the calendar be wrong? As far as she knew, the only way to change the date on it was to manually do it, and her phone rarely left her side. Besides, why would someone want to change the date on her phone?
Bella continued to frown at the screen for a few seconds longer before tucking it into her pocket.
Looking up she happened to see the small group of human friends she sometimes hung out with start to make their way to their group of vehicles.
"Hey, Ange!" she called out.
Angela must have heard her because her head popped up and her eyes immediately found Bella's own after a quick scan of the parking lot. A small smile was an indication that her call had been heard.
Bella waved her over, urging her to join her for a moment.
"Bella, have you been sitting out here all day?" Angela asked as soon as she stood in front of her. "We didn't see you in any classes or during lunch."
"Maybe," Bella mumbled. She fiddled with the keys that were in her hands as she thought about what to say. "I had a lot to think about."
Angela hummed in her throat, head bobbing in acceptance. "Did something happen with you and Edward? It looked like you two were arguing this morning."
"We broke up," Bella said even quieter. Her voice cracked with emotion midway through and she winced at the sound.
A warm hand was on her own then, holding the hand that didn't have her truck keys in it. Bella felt tears start to prick her eyes and she used the back of her free hand to wipe away the tears before they could accumulate further.
She didn't want to cry. Not in front of someone. She would save the real breakdown for when she got home.
"I'm so sorry. I understand you need to take some time to yourself after that." The other girl then narrowed her eyes in annoyance. "I can't believe he dumped you before classes even started. Who does that kind of thing?"
Bella couldn't help but smile at the protective tone her friend had taken. She still felt like absolute shit after the breakup, it had only been a few hours after all, but somehow being prepared for it helped.
"Hey, would you mind telling me what day it is?" she asked. "My phone's being weird and I'm just so discombobulated from today that I'm mixing up my dates."
Angela's head cocked to the side. "It's the sixteenth. Why?"
Bella's brows furrowed once more.
No way would both her phone and Angela lie to her about the date. Something weird was going on and that made her highly uncomfortable.
"Oh- Uhm, I just forgot something I was supposed to do today, that's all." She internally groaned at how fake her excuse sounded, even to herself. "I, uh- I wanted to make sure I still had time to do it." She laughed lightly. "Thanks for telling me."
"No problem," Angela said with a grin. "And, hey, text me if you need anything." She gave a little wave before turning and leaving Bella on her own once more.
Bella kept up the small smile she had plastered on until the other girl was halfway back to the rest of the group. She dug her phone out again and looked at the screen.
It still read the sixteenth.
Edward hadn't known a thing about yesterday's breakup. Maybe… maybe she dreamed about it? But it felt so real.
Brushing her thumb against the keys she chewed on her bottom lip in thought before carefully tossing her phone onto the seat beside her. A different breed of anxiety started to unfurl in her chest.
Alright, Swan , she thought to herself as she started her truck and carefully backed out of her parking space. You're losing it. Only a little, though .
She followed the road up that familiar route that led to the Cullen's house. Each second that passed caused her heart to pound louder and louder until she pulled up to the empty and abandoned house.
After killing the engine she didn't even bother to get out of the truck and instead moved over into the passenger seat to look out the window and peer inside. The walls and doors were glass, offering her an excellent view of the home and letting her know it was completely empty.
Anger slowly trickled into her the longer she stared at the empty house. Soon she was breathing heavily through her mouth as she tried to keep her tears in check.
She clawed at the handle of her door, fumbling with the latch for a moment before finally wrenching it open and almost tumbling out.
Bella sucked in a breath of the cold air to steady herself and stomped up to the front door.
"I thought I was your family!" she shouted as soon as she reached the glass, glad no one was around for miles to hear her tirade. Gulping in a breath of air, she continued, "You said I was one of you! You let me in, you protected me, you even killed for me!"
A sob stopped her in her speech. Bringing her hands up she buried her face into her palms as she knelt down at the entrance and began crying in earnest.
"How am I supposed to have a normal life after meeting you all?" she whispered through her fingers. "Why did you leave me behind?"
By the time she stopped crying, her body was numb from the cold. It was also pitch black.
Wiping her face with the back of her arm, she sniffled several times before standing up on shaky legs and walking back to her truck. Her phone was blinking, alerting her to missed calls.
Oh no, Charlie's probably pissed , she thought as she pulled up the log to see how many times he had called.
She cringed at the six missed calls and then went to check out the worried texts she had also gotten. By the time she reached the last one, Bella knew she was in deep shit.
The phone only rang once when she finally called him back and she felt guilt swim through her at the worried tone her dad had.
"Bella, thank goodness you're alright," he said in one breath. "I was about to report you missing in the next hour if I didn't hear from you."
"I'm fine, Charlie," she tried to assuage him.
"Where in the world are you? Why didn't you answer? I've been trying to call you for the last two hours."
"... the Cullen's house." She paused. "Or what was their house."
Charlie grunted on the other side of the line. "Heard from someone today that they were finishing up packing because they were moving down to L.A. or something. Were you saying goodbye and lost track of time?"
"No," Bella muttered as she climbed back into her truck. "They were gone by the time I got here."
"Well, where the hell have you been since then?"
"I'll tell you when I get home."
"Alright, but you better drive straight here. I was scared out of my wits for you, Bells. You can't be doing this to your old man."
A tiny smile tugged at her lips. She and Charlie weren't exactly close, but she knew he cared about her.
"I'll be home in a bit."
Bella stared up at her ceiling.
So many thoughts were swirling in her head as her eyes slowly unfocused and she blindly gazed up at the fan.
Edward was gone. His whole family was. She was going to miss all of them, even bitchy Rosalie that had always seemed to hate her guts.
A normal life … she thought as she closed her eyes and brought her uninjured arm up to rest across her eyes. She lay there for several minutes, just breathing and thinking about what a normal life might look like for her.
It seemed absolutely mundane and boring and absolutely unwanted.
Lifting the appendage, she looked at the shiny silver bite mark there on her wrist when James bit her all those months ago. She would always have a reminder that the Cullen's existed. There would never be a chance to forget them as long as it remained.
She never wanted to forget about them, anyways. No matter how much Edward may have wanted her to.
Rolling over, Bella was careful not to lay on her injured arm as she climbed under her covers and curled up into a tiny ball. The stitches were starting to itch, but that meant it was healing and soon they could possibly be removed.
Part of her wanted the gash to scar. She wanted another physical reminder of the Cullen's mark on her life since sometime between after the breakup and leaving Edward had taken every other item of their existence with him.
The sketchbook Alice had made Bella that was filled with candid pictures of her. The CD that had all of Edward's piano compositions on it. Photos. Clothes. All of these items were gone.
That familiar burn started in her eyes again and she grit her teeth in agitation, tightly screwing them shut to keep the tears at bay. She would become dehydrated at this late from all the bawling she had been doing.
So to keep from crying she tried to figure out why it still felt as if she was reliving this day again. She had tried to convince herself that what she had gone through was just a very lucid dream, but for some reason, she couldn't shake the thought of it not being one.
It was weird because no one seemed perturbed by her question about the date. Everything she looked at had today's date as the sixteenth. News channels on TV, the laptop, her phone, and even her dad and Angela had correctly told her what day it was.
All of it came back to the sixteenth.
But her mind was screaming at her to not believe it. It was telling her that today was definitely supposed to be the seventeenth.
So why was it still the sixteenth?
She felt her eyes starting to grow heavy as she tried to parse out exactly why she was feeling this way. She was exhausted after the rollercoaster of emotions she had been on today. She needed to get some sleep, she supposed.
There was still school tomorrow, and after that, she had a shift at Newton's.
She was dreading what tomorrow was going to be like. Angela had likely been pestered by the group to tell them what made Bella skip classes until she finally spilled. Jessica would have told Lauren who would have probably sent a school-wide text message to tell everyone that Bella and Edward broke up.
Teenagers. Why did they have to stick their noses into everyone's business?
Bella felt her breathing slowly even out. Her mind began to settle.
The last thoughts she had as she drifted off to sleep were of topaz eyes and a crooked smile.
The alarm on her bedside table blared loudly, jolting Bella out of whatever dream she might have been having.
She groaned, stretching out stiff limbs before rolling over and slamming the off button on the clock, and sighed at the sweet silence.
Rolling out of bed after several minutes of loafing around (and almost falling asleep again), something urged her to check her phone. Stumbling over to her desk she pulled it off its charger and turned it on.
Her eyes widened and her heart rate kicked up into maximum gear as she read the date after the phone had fully powered up.
Today was September 16th.
Today was happening again.
"What the fuck?" she whispered as she placed it clumsily back down on the desk. She bolted down towards the living room where she fumbled with the remote to the TV in her rush to turn it on.
She didn't even take notice of Charlie standing there with a cup of coffee, watching her with bewilderment from the kitchen.
"Good morning, Forks, Washington!" the reporter greeted in a far too cheery voice.
"Shut up and tell me the date," she snarled as she upped the volume.
"It's six-fifteen on the dot on this cloudy morning, and later Brett will tell you what you should expect for your weather forecast."
Bella was seconds away from grabbing the television and shaking it.
"Uh, are you okay, Bella?" her dad asked.
She raised her hand and stuck out one finger to silence him. "Give me a minute. I need to see something."
"It is September sixteenth and we have a list of what's going on in your surrounding area today-"
Bella immediately muted the TV after getting her confirmation and tossed the remote on the couch.
"Bells, what's going on?"
Bella shook her head slowly and laughed softly before collapsing on the couch. She placed her head in her hands, palms digging into her eyes as she let out a long breath.
"Dad, I think I'm losing my mind."
