She Will Be Loved

Chapter 4

The only good thing about the accident was that it got Edward and Bella to separate for a bit. Unfortunately, every other boy I'd ever met swarmed in to fill the gap. This all, weirdly enough, made all the girls depressed.

All the girls.

As in, Bella, too.

It went like this:

Mike passive aggressively rejected Jess when she asked him to the spring dance. Tyler kept talking to me about Isabella. Tyler was starting to ignore Lauren, who I hadn't realized until now was a rival for his affections. Eric... well, poor Eric was more of an annoyance really.

There were a couple others, of course, but none of them actually had the courage to act on it: they just hung around staring like brain dead hyenas until I appeared to chase them away. This was becoming my only interaction with Bella: at home, she liked to be alone with her thoughts and I'd grown bored with chasing her around to ask her questions. At school, I felt obligated to shoo away the people trying to do exactly what I'd been trying to do at home and she'd smile at me and then we'd move on.

At home it felt like she'd never really left Phoenix.

At school, I wished she never had.

The worst part was knowing she had no idea what she was doing. Bella was a loner, shy type: she had no idea how I felt, walking around my own home with someone who never talked to me. And all of the guys... she seemed to think sending them our way, giving us her castoffs would make us feel better:

"You should ask Tyler to the spring dance." Bella had said casually, halfway through one of the few meals I'd made it too: some weird Mexican thing. She'd probably stalled... that or she was finally learning to be careful in the kitchen, therefore taking longer with all the ridiculous dicing the meal must have required.

"Why." I asked, taking another large chomp off my fork and chewing grumpily. I was probably giving myself wrinkles with all of the frowning I'd done lately, but the thought did not improve my expression.

"Well... I talked with Jess." Bella started.

"Of course you did." I muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Why should she talk to her twin sister before she talks to a girl I know she barely tolerates?

"Well, Jess is going with Mike. And Angela could ask Eric... Lauren could go with Austin... " she trailed off, waiting for me to finish.

"And why would Tyler agree to go with me?" I asked.

Bella shrugged. "You are his only real girl friend."

I snorted and took a sip of water. "Who are you going with then?" I would have asked about Edward but Dad was sitting right next to us, staring at his plate as he listened to his daughters chat.

"I'm going to Seattle." Bella said simply.

"Why?" My dad and I said as one.

"Well, I wanted to get a few books—the library here is pretty limited—and maybe look at some clothes." She shrugged.

"That truck probably doesn't get very good gas mileage." Dad pointed out.

"I know." Bella told him. "I'll stop in—"

"Isabella, just borrow my car." I interrupted. "Jacob just gave it a check-up and I'm sure you could use the extra gas money to buy another romance novel or something."

"Still." My dad fretted. "Seattle is a big city—you could get lost."

Bella and I gave him matching incredulous looks. Bella answered first. "Dad, Phoenix is five times the size of Seattle—and I can read a map. Don't worry about it."