Chapter 24

Junior is a no-show.

Edward tries to remember if this has ever happened to him before. He recalls a few times when Junior was reluctant to rise to the occasion, but eventually its baser needs eventually won out over any reservations Edward may have had about the object of its affections. Junior has always reigned victorious, because it is still only twenty-four years old, and its needs are often more powerful than the feeble protestations of Edward’s mind. In the battle of wills between penis and brain, the smaller organ generally has had no trouble exerting its will over the larger.

But now, a third party has charged the battlefield, and its arsenal of weapons is proving far mightier than those of its rivals.

In tonight’s fight for supremacy, the clear winner is Edward’s heart.

His date is unaware of the war being waged beneath the surface of Edward’s coolly handsome exterior. He looks a bit tired, she thinks; that must be the problem. She knows it’s not her. She has been assured more than once that she is attractive, even beautiful. She doesn’t need to hire a man to get a date. But she’s in between boyfriends right now and she’s bored. Paying an escort to do her bidding gives her a kick. She enjoys being wined and dined and treated like she’s the most special woman in the world, and even the best of men have trouble keeping up that level of attention after awhile. She knows all too well why the idiom “familiarity breeds contempt” exists. So she hires an escort when she wants the respect afforded only from a stranger.

Edward figured this out within the first half hour of their date. He has not lost his touch at reading between the lines; at least, not with most women. He has found the majority of them to be transparent, to varying degrees. This is why he’s had so much success as an escort.

He has been quite successful so far this evening, only too happy to flatter and amuse and seduce this woman, because these are the things at which he is adept. He is comfortable skating along the surface, telling her what she wants to hear. He has drawn out this part of the evening as long as he could, because he knew eventually she would not be satisfied with merely the surface. And sure enough, his seduction has worked - she wants more.

She is all over him like a cheap suit, replacing the expensive one she peeled from him like the skin from a juicy apple. She wants to take a bite, and she wants to be bitten in return. But he finds only poison in her, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth and a limpness in his bones. She puts more effort into her ministrations, continuing her exhortation to bring him to life; but her charms and skills are not enough to undo the spell of the fairer one who came before her.

He watches her honey-colored head bob between his legs, and the color reminds him of his mother’s hair. He groans, but not in the way his date desires. He grabs a hank of the offending strands in his hand and pulls, interrupting her efforts to resuscitate the limp carcass of Junior that flops next to one thigh.

She sighs in mild exasperation and slithers up his body, letting her impressive tits hang in his face. He knows it is a landmark day when he remains unfazed by a rack like this.

“Who is she?”

He is surprised to hear these words leave her lips. He looks into her eyes, and sees a glimmer of empathy, maybe even pity.

“Who’s who?” he answers, ineffectually playing dumb.

She’s not playing. “The girl who’s fucking with your mind so that I can’t fuck with your body.”

Startled, he lets his guard drop, and she glimpses the real guy under the glib surface. Edward sees something real in her, too; something he could like, under different circumstances. He wants to tell her the truth, but he can’t say the fairer one’s name out loud. It would be sacrilege. He has already changed hotels, because he knew he could not entertain this woman in that suite, especially not one week to the night after her. He has done everything he could to remove this situation from that one; to make this a separate world unto itself. But he cannot divide himself in two, no matter how he tries.

His date sees this. And yet he still cannot defile the truth by sharing it with her.

“I’m just tired,” he says. At least that much is not a lie.

“Occupational hazard?” she asks with a sardonic laugh.

The ghost of a grin haunts his lips. “I didn’t sleep well last night. I’m sorry.”

His date lets her hazel eyes roam over his lovely, somewhat tragic features, and she feels sorry for him. That’s a new one for her, and certainly not what she paid for. But something in her won’t give up on this one. He’s a good guy - too good for this gig. Yet here they are, and she is going to make the best of it.

“You know what? I’m going to give you a pass. I’ll do all the work this time. You just close your eyes and dream. Imagine whoever you want,” she says, her voice softening. She leans down and kisses him softly along one high cheekbone, and though his brows knit, his eyes flutter closed. He is only too happy to lose himself in illusion. He succumbs to the lure of his own imagination, and Junior follows.

“That’s it,” his date coos, planting a kiss on the opposite cheek. “Close your eyes and dream, sweet prince.”

　

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“So, when did you stop liking Adam Sandler movies?”

Bella looks across the car seat at Mike in surprise. “What do you mean? I love Adam Sandler.”

“You didn’t laugh once during that movie,” he replies with an accusatory quirk of his brows before shifting his eyes back to the road.

“Sure I did,” she argues. “You just didn’t hear me.”

He lets out a laugh of his own. “I know what your laugh sounds like. Besides, every time I looked over at you, you had this totally preoccupied frown on your face. Kind of like now.”

Her frown turns to a scowl. “Shut up. I did not. I thought the movie was funny. I was laughing on the inside. I’m sorry if I don’t howl like a baboon so the whole theater turns and looks at me, like some people I know,” she shoots back with a grin.

“Nice. Real nice, Bella,” he replies, putting his hand over his heart as if he’s been wounded. “At least people know where I stand. You never have to wonder what’s really going on with me - I just let it all out there. What you see is what you get.”

She smiles then. “That’s true. That is actually one of your nicer qualities.”

He gives her an exaggerated look of stunned surprise. “I’m surprised you found one. Seems like back in the day, I could never seem to do anything right.”

“That’s not true,” she denies, although when she thinks back, she realizes maybe it is kind of true. She’d never known exactly what was missing in their relationship, so she expressed her overall dissatisfaction in subtle ways, constantly nit-picking and pointing out even the smallest of Mike’s flaws. He didn’t deserve that, and she ended up disliking herself more than she ever did him.

She looks at him now with latent guilt. “I’m sorry for the way I treated you then. I was pretty immature. I didn’t really know why I was unhappy, and I took it out on you. That wasn’t fair, and I’m not proud of it. I am sorry about that.”

His surprise is genuine this time. “We were both immature then,” he says with a shrug. He suddenly laughs and adds, “Man, if this car could talk! Think of the stories it would tell.”

He waggles an eyebrow at her and makes her giggle. He is still driving what used to be his dad’s Civic, but now belongs to him, a going-off-to-college gift. She is fairly certain that every single time he took her out on a date back then, he’d lured her into the back seat and tried to wrestle her out of her clothes.

“You were relentless,” Bella remembers, side-eying him and shaking her head. “I almost gave in a couple of times.”

“Don’t be fooled - I’m still relentless,” he says with a grin. “As soon as we get this sucker in the parking garage, it’s on like Donkey Kong.”

He lets out a wolf howl and Bella laughs in earnest, swatting away his roaming hand before it can creep over the center console and give her thigh a squeeze.

Mike likes that he has her laughing, especially after the movie failed to do so. If he can make her happy, maybe he can make her feel other things, too. He’s half elated, half frustrated that Bella Swan still provokes the same feelings in him she always has. She is as warm and real as ever, and twice as pretty; but that same vaguely stand-offish vibe she has always emitted is stronger than ever, surrounding her like an invisible force field. He wants to charge through it with the heroic fervor of Luke Skywalker brandishing his light saber, but he fears that instead of arriving on the scene too early, this time he has come too late.

Han Solo has already beat him to the punch.

They are quiet as they pull into the parking garage near their dorms. Bella feels the silence as an easy one, but Mike’s interpretation is that of tension. He is about to ask her questions to which he’s not sure he wants the answers.

He debates taking her hand as he walks her to her room, but she is moving briskly ahead, not at the leisurely, romantic amble he would have liked. He hurries along with her, the pace making him blurt out his query with much less nonchalance than he wishes.

“So who was that suit guy who showed up to take you home last night?”

Bella is frowning slightly again. She barely glances at Mike out of the corner of her eye before answering, “Just a friend.”

Mike lets out a derisive laugh. “Well, he was pretty over-protective of you, for being just a friend.”

Bella slows down slightly and gives him a curious look. “You think so?”

“Yeah. He was looking at me and Riley like we were the lowest forms of human life. I mean, come on,” he scoffed. “Like I’d ever let anything happen to you, or take advantage of you.”

“No, I know you wouldn’t,” she agrees quickly. “I guess he’s just worried about me.”

Mike can see she’s fighting a smile. So she likes that this other guy came across like some crazy, possessive freak. Great.

“Yeah, well, he went overboard,” Mike tells her. “Where did you meet that guy, anyway? Dude was kind of creepy.”

“Creepy?” she exclaims. Then she laughs like he’s an idiot. “Edward's not creepy at all. He’s about the sweetest guy I’ve ever met,” she says defensively, and Mike feels a little nauseous.

“Edward? What the fuck kind of name is that?”

“It’s a classic name. You know, like the name Michael. Except he’s not into being called Ed or Eddie,” Bella says with a lip-curl of distaste. “You can hardly blame him for that.”

She is practically marching up to the entrance of McMahon Hall now, Mike stomping alongside her with matching militant zeal. This is not at all how he wanted this night to end. When he’d called her earlier to see how she was, he thought offering to take her to a movie would lift her spirits and make her feel better. He figured her request to see “something funny - so funny it’s stupid” was a good sign. Maybe they could have a laugh, reminisce about the past, and then talk about their present and future. They have done exactly that. But clearly they have different ideas about the present, and where they want the future to take them.

By the time they reach Bella’s door at the end of the hall, Mike is feeling repentant.

“Look, I’m sorry I made a crack about that guy. He’s obviously important to you, so. . .” he trails off, not sure what else to say. If she wants to date some creepy older suit-wearing guy, who is he to stop her? This Edward dude probably has money coming out of his ears. Mike is lucky Bella was willing to share the tub of jumbo popcorn at the movie.

“It’s okay,” she answers. She looks melancholy now; he’s not sure why.

He gathers his courage to blurt out the other thing he wants to say.

“So, is it serious between you and this Edward guy? If it is, just say so. If it’s not, well. . . I’d like to see you again. Even if it’s just as friends. I’ve missed you, and I had a good time tonight. I’d like to do it again.”

Bella looks into Mike’s earnest blue eyes, as bright as the sky on a cloudless day. She wants to tell him that what she and Edward has is as serious as it gets, but how can she be sure? Instead, she tells him the truth.

“I don’t know what I have with Edward. I know what I want, but I don’t know if it can work.” She frowns and looks down at the ugly gray carpet, then the ugly plaster wall, then the ugly silver door handle clutched under her fingers. Finally she lifts her gaze back to the blue. “I think we’re a lot better off as friends, Mike. But I’d like to do this again, too, if being friends is okay with you.”

Mike’s heart is heavy, but it hasn’t sunk completely. He gives her a grin far more cocky than he’s feeling.

“I think I could do the friend thing with you.” He’s not sure this is true, but he’d like it to be. And if this thing with suit-guy doesn’t work, it wouldn’t be so bad to be the one helping her pick up the pieces, would it?

Bella smiles, and Mike tries not to see the relief in her expression. “Thanks,” she says. “For taking me to the movie - for being a good friend. I appreciate it.”

He smiles and tells her, “No problem,” even though it is kind of a problem, but one he hopes he can deal with. They share an awkward hug that he desperately wishes was more, but he’s too much of a pussy to kiss her when she basically just told him, “I really want the suit dude, but if you wanna hang around in the wings just in case, I’d be cool with that.”

He’s still mentally calling himself a pussy as he walks down the hall. The word reverberates in his head all the way back to McCarty Hall.

Bella gets ready for bed, then lies down, sniffing the pillows for any remnant of Edward’s musky scent lingering there. She checks her phone for messages, but sees nothing new. It is near midnight. She knows, deep in her heart of hearts, what Edward is doing right now. She knows.

She thinks back to what she and Edward were doing one week ago tonight, right now. He was shattering her world irrevocably with every touch; with the thorough and systematic invasion of her body, mind, heart and soul. She can only pray that no matter what he is doing now, he is not changing someone else the way he did her.

She re-reads the series of text messages between them from earlier this evening.

Hi. How are you feeling? Better, I hope.

Slowly but surely. You witnessed the worst of it - got the brunt of it, too. I’m so sorry about your shoes. Unforgivable.

Nothing you could do would be unforgivable, least of all that.

I’ll remember you said that. BTW, I loved your addition to my poem. Can’t believe you read that tripe. You really have seen the worst of me now.

I’ve seen the best, too, and it showed in that poem. Stop putting yourself down. Pisses me off.

Duly noted. So you’re a poet, too, Mr. Cullen. Your verse made me cry.

Why?

Because it touched me. Because I want it to be true. Because I want you. I want “we.”

She remembers there was a pause between messages then. She waited what felt like hours for his reply.

You kill me when you say these things, he texted at last.

Kill you, how? In a good way or bad way?

I don’t even know. You don’t hold anything back. No games. I’m not used to it.

Bella pauses as she’s reading, because she has just realized she is honest with Edward in a way she was never able to be with Mike. She wonders why. Maybe it’s because she has nothing, and everything, to lose with Edward.

I’m not interested in playing games with you. Well, some games might be fun. But you know what I mean.

I do know what you mean. And I realize I want it all with you. . . The games. The truth. Whatever it is. However I can get it. But I don’t know how to do that without hurting you.

Bella had paused then, because she didn’t know how he could do that either.

Just give me your truth in return, she finally texted.

The truth is, I miss you. I will miss you tonight like crazy.

She wanted to remind him it was their one-week anniversary, but it hurt too much to point out the obvious.

Ditto, she replied. Like Crazy.

She feels crazy now. She puts the phone aside and stares at the ceiling, trying to shut off her brain. Trying not to think about what she knows he is doing right now. She squeezes her eyes shut and relives her night with him instead. She can almost feel the warmth of his touch, the hypnotic trance of his eyes locked with hers, the heat of his breath on her face, the intensity of him moving over her and inside her. She recalls the pain and pleasure of him filling her to overflowing, pushing her to her limits and then beyond.

But this time, she imagines ecstasy overwhelming every other sensation as he thrusts deeper and harder and faster inside her. She realizes she is touching herself, stroking in time to Edward’s movements in her mind. Her hand and Dream Edward pick up the pace, attacking with a frenzy that makes her belly tighten and a fire ignite within, growing until it engulfs her completely.

She cries out softly as she comes, but she is not worried about anyone hearing her beyond the thick walls of her tiny room. She is not really here, anyway.

She is miles away, in a bed of sumptuous silk, with her dragon slayer, her poet, her prince.