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"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. You can turn the bitch card on and off whenever you please. Being nice when it
suits you, then being a total fucking bitch when that suits you, too. Just like now."
"I'm a bitch because I disagree with your smoking?"
"No, because you don't know anything. You weren't there when I was sick. You don't
know how bad it was. You can mock it all you want because you see me now,
recovering. You have no fucking clue."
"I have not once mocked your illness, Edward. I've only treated it with the same blasé
attitude you have. I'm not going to cry over you if you say you're okay. On the flipside,
I'm going to be concerned if you get ill, and I'm seeing that you're not okay. And the
'bitch' comments? Yeah, get out of my house with those."
"You're kicking me out?"
"What? Are you crazy? I'm asking you to be a little respectful of me, and not call me a
'total fucking bitch' when I dare to challenge you. If you think that's too hard for you, I
don't know what to say. I'm sorry you're ill and scared. I care about you, how you feel.
I want to be here for you. But you take me in and then push me away when things
resemble hard times. Like my mom said earlier about herself, when the going gets
tough, Edward gets going."
He wrenches the bed sheets off his legs. "You're right about that."
She grabs his hand. "You're actually going to leave?"
"Yep." He searches for his shoes.
"You're in pajamas. You're subleasing your old apartment. Where are you going to
go?"
He looks at her for a long minute. "Alice's," he hisses, knowing that it's the ultimate
blow.
She doesn't even address that. "Sit back down. You aren't well. You're going to kill
yourself trying to drive like this. I'm sorry, okay? Let's just drop it."
"No. Fuck you." He shoots out of her bedroom, and she follows on his heels.
"Edward, stop. Jesus! What are you so mad about? I shouldn't have spoken to you
about that, I guess, but you're completely overreacting."
He grabs his keys from off the table by the door. "Oh, well in that case, I should just go
so I don't need to overreact anymore. Bye." He slams the door behind him.
xXxXx
An hour later, she's sweating harder than she ever has in her life. She doesn't even
know if this can be classified as dancing, the pounding of her feet against the
hardwood floor and the beat of the music taking form in her blood. She can feel
Esme's concerned eyes watching the flow of her legs taking her across the room in
leaps, spins and shuffles, but if anyone, Esme understands that demons can only be
danced out.
Bella hasn't really danced for herself in ages. A dance without purpose is something
different than a choreographed routine. It comes from someplace inside you,
someplace deep, dark, frightening. The raw, skinned part of you. Dance in pure form
is an exorcism rather than an expression. It's demons and death and the release of
those things so the dancer can go on living once more.
When the music stops, she takes in a deep breath and leans against the bar. Esme has
a bottle of water in hand, and she presents it to Bella with a small frown.
"Edward had a shift today he called me to tell me he couldn't come in, that he was
sick. Why aren't you with him?"
Bella downs nearly half of the water in two gulps. Wiping her face, she hands the
bottle back to Esme, and bends down into a stretch. "We got in a fight."
Esme rolls her eyes. "You two are always bickering."
"It's different this time. Sometimes, he wants to be pitied. Sometimes, he wants me to
act like he's not sick. I can't keep up, so I called him out on it. He left. Went to his
sister's."
"That shrew? She is so rude."
"How do you know?"
"She came by yesterday, demanding to know why I employed a sick boy. First of all, I
said, he is not a boy. He's a man who needed a job. She said, he's only a boy, and he
doesn't know what's good for him, and neither do I. She said she was going to get
someone to check make sure my health standards were up to code. I laughed at her.
She left."
Bella turns away so she doesn't say all the horrible things going through her mind.
"She's seriously unbalanced," she says finally.
"She was a mother, protecting her young. At least, that's the impression I got."
"She doesn't need to threaten you to do that."
Esme laughs. "Oh, hardly. She didn't look smart enough to rub two thoughts together.
To think calling the health department on my studio! The case wouldn't even go
through. Of course Edward got sick he took care of a sick girl." She pats Bella's head.
"Ma cherie, do you love your boy?"
"Yeah, I do."
"Do you love it like you love your dancing?"
"What do you mean?"
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