Evening Star: Edward's Story

Chapter Forty-Three: Loss of Control

A-hah! I'm kissing up a bit after being tardy with the last two chapters. This one is back to my 2500-word average (almost right on the nose, in fact). I could have gone farther with it, but decided I found a perfect place to stop.

And it's a particularly sexy chapter, with Edward getting all hot-and-bothered, especially written for those of us with OCD. ;)

However, I started right in on the next chapter since they're so closely related, so there's a real possibility I'll have another chapter for you in a few days.

Thanks for reading!!! :)

Standard Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight and I don't. Darn.

Chapter Forty-Three: Loss of Control

Bella had just fallen asleep in my arms, absolutely exhausted after working all day Thursday. We lay on her small bed, cool night breezes wafting in her open window, the slight chill hinting at the coming of fall. I gathered her closer as the delicate wind raised goosebumps across her bare arms. I took full advantage of this poor reason to hold Bella more tightly, for my body was undoubtedly colder than the light breeze. But any excuse would do, of course....

She murmured indistinctly in her sleep, snuggling closer to me as she sighed, a faint smile touching her unconscious visage. I smiled too, satisfied with my day's work of dropping by Forks High in order to gently persuade (Bella would have called it “dazzle”--semantics!) Mrs. Cope to align my and Bella's schedules to match almost exactly. Only one subject did not mesh as Bella was to study a different branch of higher mathematics than I was (much to her chagrin—math is her least favorite subject). But, disregarding this one exception, Mrs. Cope had been fairly easy to convince regarding changing my schedule to mirror Bella's.

Presenting Mrs. Cope and the office with a small bribe in the form of a rather generous box of candy, courtesy of Godiva Chocolatiers, also helped my request to become reality. I had forced myself to smile, tight-lipped, as I was bombarded by her rather lewd albeit flustered thoughts about my physical attributes, but the results of being with Bella nearly all day every day of our senior year was well-worth my suffering through twenty minutes of Shelly Cope's rather personal fantasies. I sighed at the memory, wishing that I could wipe a select few remembrances from my perfect vampiric memory—and today's events in the Forks High School office would definitely be included on the list of forgotten memories.

Being in only one class together, as Bella and I had been last year, was simply not acceptable. I wanted her at my side every possible moment, and by this time I was an expert at manipulating Shelly Cope and the rest of the staff at Forks High. I smiled to myself again, very pleased with my ingenuity, knowing that Bella, too, would be ecstatic over spending so many of our school hours together.

Perhaps now my mentioning school or her upcoming birthday would not cause Bella's lovely face to fall or her eyes to cloud with suppressed tears as has been the case for the past few weeks. I was more concerned than I let on about her highly emotional reactions to these two topics; perhaps now Bella would smile about our returning to school, at least.

However, I still could not wrap my considerable mental powers around the reason for Bella's dread of her birthday. While she complained, pouted, and even grieved at the thought of turning eighteen, I was thrilled for her.

After all, I would never turn eighteen. My smile faded at that thought—how I was frozen in time, trapped in a perpetually seventeen-year-old body, never moving forward, always a boy, never becoming the man I was meant to be. To tell the truth, despite Bella's dread of “aging,” as she called it. I was more than slightly envious of her potential for growth—not just physical growth but mental and emotional growth as well. Any kind of change in these ways are rare for our kind. Yet Bella argued that changing her into a vampire would make us equals in age, in strength (once her newborn power waned, of course—something of which she was not yet aware), and in mental abilities.