Chapter Text
It’s Sunday.
Bella looked out her bedroom window. The paper was gone. Her heart raced.
In the kitchen, a weak sunbeam filters through the kitchen window. Bella pours two cups of coffee, one for Charlie hiding behind the newspaper, and one for her. She fixes them with cream and sugar the way she likes (Charlie likes it black, the monster) and sets them down on the table.
Bella sits. Bella stares. She sucks a breath in, clenches her eyes shut, exhales, open.
She looks at the newspaper hidden Charlie.
“IthinkIwannagototherapy.”
The newspaper flutters. Charlie appears, bewildered. “Wuh?”
“I--” Bella bites her lip, losing her resolve. “Therapy. I think it would be, um. Good.”
“Oh.” Charlie raises his eyebrows. Clears his throat. “Uhh, yeah Bells. Of course. If ya want. I mean I..”
He folds the newspaper haphadardly. To bella it doesn’t look like he gives a darn one way or the other what the paper is doing.
He leans forward, his face strained-looking. “Look, Bells. Bella,”
The use of her real name-nickname startles her. She reaches for the comforting warmth of the coffee, using the mug to half-hide behind it.
“Bella, I know I haven’t been the best father to ya. At all-“ his voice cracks, and he looks away for a moment. “But I’ve been reading online about—about signs and warnings and Christ I’m a cop, right?”
Bella nods, still unclear where Charlie is going with this. Still nervous. She needs to get to Port Angeles soon.
“But, uh”, he continues. “Can you..can you promise your old man that if you’re havin’..well, thoughts that you’d tell me, please?”
“Wh—” Oh. Oh. The last few months puzzle piece together for Bella, for what it must’ve looked liked for Charlie. The sleepless nights, not hanging out with her friends..
Bella stands and crosses the tiny kitchen table, leaning down to catch her father—her dad—in an awkward half-standing hug.
“I’m not—it’s nothing like that,” Bella says truth hanging off every word. “It’s..been a hard few months. I know I ended it but..he was my first boyfriend? And I’m going to get help. In Port Angeles.”
Bella can feel Charlie nod. She pulls away, surprised to find herself tearing up.
Charlie’s looking away from her now, out the window. She swears she heard a sniffle. “Okay, Bells,” he says. “You be careful, okay? Call me if you need anythin’.”
“Sure, Dad You be careful too.”
As Bella heads for her truck, she realizes that she’s never said I love you to Renee’.
Charlie neither.
But it goes unspoken in making dinner and the be careful’s. So maybe that’s their thing.
_______
The drive to Port Angeles is unremarkable. A soft drizzle began as Bella slammed the door of her truck, and instinctively reached out to pat it as an apology. It wouldn’t last forever, and the last thing she needed was to have Charlie drive her around, or worse, buy her another car..
The meeting place in question was a tiny park a few minutes from the “city” part of Port Angeles. It looked every other park Bella had played in growing up, but with muddy grass instead of mulch covering the orange Arizona dirt around, well, any spot a child could potentially fall.
She admired the playground for a moment, recalling the time when she was seven and had scraped her knee on some basketball court asphalt, and had run around crying for Renee’. She couldn’t find her, and ended up getting a band-aid from another mom at the playground.
Bella shook her head, trying to etch-a-sketch the memories away. No use thinking about that right now. Renee’…well. She tried? Right?
Not wanting to get her jeans wet, Bella elected to stand under a tree. She shoved her hands into her coat pockets, starting to wish she remembered her gloves.
She made sure to wear her sturdiest boots thickest coat shy of the parka, and a turtleneck for good measure. Bella has never seen vampire teeth tear through clothes, but if they can only be killed by fire or other vampires…
Bella hoped Victoria got what she thought was the obvious message—this is a public place please don’t hurt me.
“You look nervous.”
Bella’s eyes shot up from the ground to the park bench nearby.
There sat Victoria, lounging, seemingly enjoying the rain if the cheeky smile on her face was anything to go by. She had her face turned slightly toward the sky, allowing the rain to hit her face, but her head wasn’t turned so much so that Victoria couldn’t see Bella.
The fur coat still made its appearance, although the green shirt she had worn on that fateful day in the baseball field was missing, a dark colored tank in its place. The thought of that day made Bella’s wrist ache a bit in sympathy.
“Well, I am.”, Bella started. “Why have you been following me? What do you w-want?”
“Hello to you too, Bella.” Victoria bent her head more towards the rain, now shutting her bright red eyes.
At least she fed recently, Bella thought.
“Right, because saying I’m nervous is definitely a hello.”
Victoria chuckled, her lips turning at the corners.
Bella had forgotten how, er, attractive..vampires could look. Because they were perfect beings designed to kill humans. Or something.
She could feel her cheeks burning. She hoped Victoria wouldn’t notice, or at least wouldn’t say anything.
“What do I want with you?”
“Well—yeah. The Cullens are gone” the because of me goes unsaid. “And I don’t think they’re coming back. So I’m here…alone.”
Charlie’s plead for safety flashes through her mind.
“So..what do you want with me? Are you going to kill me? Right here?” Bella takes her hands out of her pockets and gestures around the empty playground.
On the edges of the park are sidewalks. Every so often a person with an umbrella appears. To them, they probably just look like two people—two humans—talking, not caring about the rain.
“I’m not going to kill you, Bella.” Victoria said, her voice softer than her usual cheeky grandiose. Bella couldn’t place what Victoria might be feeling. Her eyes were open again, head fully turned in Bella’s direction.
“Laurent is gone. I don’t know where he is, although when I was tracking his scent my best guess is that he went north, but I lost him. And with James…” Victoria offered a nonchalant shrug, but some unreadable emotion flashed across her eyes, just for a moment.
Bella flinched. How could she not? She was the reason James was dead..even if he was the one who tried to..
Victoria’s voice cut off her mental trail of guilt.
“Well. It’s just me on my lonesome. I don’t think I’ve been alone like this in..well, best not to out myself in years.” She flashed her teeth in a hard bright smile, the soft moment gone.
She stood and walked towards Bella. When she saw that Bella stiffened, she raised her arms in surrender but still continued forward.
Bella held her ground. With the trunk of a tree behind her, it’s not like she had any other choice.
“I want friendship. I want to be your friend, Bella.”
Bella blinked. Victoria laughed again at her apparent confusion.
“Wh-what? Why? Why me, why not find s-some other, I don’t know, vampire or something. I’m sure there’s plenty out there.”
Victoria tilted her head in that catlike way. “I think you and me have a lot in common.”
Bella wished she wasn’t so nervous, so—afraid?
No. Bella didn’t feel scared. She just felt..tense. Like she was about to give a presentation in front of her whole English class.
Bella laughed to herself then, at her own joke-not-quite-joke. Victoria looked on, curious but not judgemnetal.
“Um..sorry,” Bella coughed. “Uh..y-yeah? You think so?”
Victoria simply smiled. And in a blink, she was gone.
For a moment, Bella stood there, allowing the drizzle to let up some.
That was the first time in months Bella had been close to a vampire. The emptiness remained, but Bella was fighting it. It seemed like adrenaline or something staved it off but—no, that was ridiculous. She wasn’t an adrenaline junkie. Maybe the excitement of the supernatural made, well, life worth living.
Or was it something else? Could it have been Edward, then? Alice? Were they really the final pieces in making her whole?
And I threw it away, she thought.
Her hands were shaking. But Bella didn’t feel scared. Nervous, sure, of course, this was Victoria after all, and how the hell did Bella know that she could be trusted?
But the way she looked at Charlie—God, if he ever got her because of her—didn’t look predatory. She didn’t seem hungry, in the glance that Bella had gotten.
But how the hell was she supposed to know?
It was decided. Victoria can’t be trusted.
Well, Bella thought, keep your friend’s close…
Bella exhaled one final time, then headed back to her truck.