Remember Me (A Twilight fan fiction)

3. Complications

"And then you and the Cullen boy left to play baseball."

"I was going to play baseball?!" Bella asked her father incredulously, staring out at the familiar green landscape as they made their way back home.

For the first time in over a week, a smile curved Charlie's lips. "That's what I said."

Bella's ribs ached as she laughed out loud, listening to Charlie's replay of the events leading up to her eventual departure. When she had first boarded the plane with him that feeling of unfamiliarity with her father snuck up on her, just as it had upon every first meeting with the chief - the same foreign feeling that she struggled with since she was a little girl sent to spend the summers with her father. The odd thing, she noticed, was that this time it had not taken long to become comfortable with him.

Fat raindrops pattered against the windshield of the chief's patrol truck. It was strange, but comforting to be back in Forks, and while she had never cared for the immense precipitation, Bella felt somewhere down deep inside that what she had said at the hospital was true. She was home. Despite her limited recollections of her father's home, she had the feeling that the modestly populated town was the only place where she would find her answers.

His expression changed very quickly, and his lips then turned to a frown. "But the Cullen boy was very...persuasive."

Bella noted that her father did not care for using the "Cullen" boy's first name. It had not mattered, though. To her, it felt like she was being told of memories that belonged to someone else – she could not relate the bits and pieces that Charlie and Renee had given her to her own life.

The two had fallen into a silence and Bella pointed her toes on her right foot, trying to stretch without causing herself more pain. As though it wasn't bad enough that her leg was broken, it was also beginning to fall asleep.

"Are you okay?" Charlie asked, noticing Bella shifting in her seat. He was more thankful than he had ever been in his life to have her back.

She nodded, staring out the window. "Dad?" she began uncomfortably, "What else can you tell me about him?"

If it were up to Charlie, he would rather have kept his mouth closed on the matter. He still felt that Edward was very much to blame for Bella's hasty departure. "He made you mad. And you wanted to leave because of him."

With a sigh, she turned to face her dad as he drove, his fingers gripping the wheel angrily. "Besides that, Dad." Charlie had stated that already, and Bella was quite clear on her father's feelings for him.

Charlie heaved a sigh. His little girl had agreed to come back home with him. While it pained him to see her forearm still wrapped, bruises and cuts on her face, and her calf covered in plaster, he fought the hostility that threatened to wrap around his neck and choke him.

"Well, apparently you and Edward were dating."

She flinched at the sound of his name. Edward. Bella recalled the alarmingly pale and handsome boy who had been avoiding her since the first day she attended school in Forks in what felt like just a week prior. Her memories of his perfection, she could remember very well – Edward Cullen. From a family of five adopted teenagers, he was beautiful, achingly so, appearing to be the youngest of the bunch. From the first moment she saw him in the lunch room, she would never forget him as he sat there with his equally beautiful siblings. With unkempt reddish brown hair, Edward Cullen's face was perfectly proportioned; his lips set full and perfect beneath his straight nose and his eyes were a color she had never seen before – a dark brown, even blackish color.

Her new friend Jessica had warned her not to waste her time as this boy had not shown any interest in any girls at school; nevertheless, Bella had felt an odd connection to him. Fate had decided that the only empty seat would be next to this pale, unearthly male. Though, for some unknown reason, Bella had gotten the distinct feeling that she offended him in some way. That first day in Biology class was painful, and although she had received more than a warm welcome from the student body at Forks High, this Edward Cullen's near threatening, but stand offish attitude toward her had cut her like a knife.