Seducing the Good-Girl

Chapter 7-Slut Number One

A/N

I feel like most of this is one big dialogue... Whatever. Enjoy it anyway!

Happy advent season!

Lucy xX

***

First your parents, they give you your life, but then they try to give you their life.

~Chuck Palahniuk

***

By the time November rolled around and the cold weather really began to bite into my skin, I was ready to let out a scream of despair and be done with it all. Lauren and Tanya were still on their quest for eternal glory, or whatever it was, and James was still creeping around. I had mentioned the incident to my parents a couple of days later, and they were particularly uninterested.

"You can't trust men," my mother had said, examining a blueprint of something. "But take it as a compliment. He thinks you're pretty."

My father hadn't even bothered to comment.

I began to rebel against my parents more and more, and started to hang around the houses of my friends more and more often. While they seemed to have little problem with me going to see Rose, they were still furious each time I came home from the Cullens' house, no matter how many times I told them that the Cullens weren't out to steal our money. They just didn't get it.

One Saturday, however, when sleet was hashing down upon our roofs, my father took it much, much too far. They hadn't met the Cullens - a Swan couldn't be seen with somebody so common - but they'd both drawn ridiculously strong conclusions about the family. It was sickening, honestly.

My father called me into his study during the morning, after the coffee argument I'd had with my mother. (I'd won, I was glad to say. No way was my mother dictating what I drunk too). I trudged in, wearing a pair of ordinary skinny jeans and a shirt that Alice had insisted I buy on a shopping trip the previous week. I'd been ready to drop down dead at the end of it.

"Good morning, Isabella," my father greeted me as I walked in. "Please, take a seat."

God, was the man talking to one of his patients or to his own daughter? If his tight, formal tone of voice was anything to go by, I'd guess the former. Then again, I really hoped that my father didn't talk to sick people in the manner he often spoke to me. Having my father as your doctor would be hell on Earth.

"Good morning, Father," I said, sitting down in the small plain chair he had indicated. My father leant back in his own chair and folded his hands across his stomach, tapping his fingers against each other in contemplation. He searched my eyes for a few moments, and I had to refrain from glaring back at him.

"What are you wearing?" he asked suddenly, looking my attire up and down. I frowned.

"Jeans and a shirt. And socks. Why? What's wrong with it?"

"You can't go out in that," he said, aghast.

"Why on Earth not? It's what everybody else on the planet wears."

"Precisely my point, Isabella! We are Swans: we cannot simply go around in anything! Have you forgotten everything since moving to Forks?"

"No," I snapped. "But in seventeen years old, and I don't have to do everything you tell me to do. Particularly when it makes you look like snobby, spoilt, rich, prats. I don't have to be like you."

"You hold our name! You will not disrespect it in that way!" he hissed.

"What? By wearing the wrong clothes? Please. That's precisely my point. You know, you'd make much better friends with people if you were to actually behave like a person with feelings instead of an uptight robot."