Beautiful Disaster

All that mulling over old times leaves me in a surprisingly good mood, at least until I get home and can already hear Bella and Jazz before I even reach the door. They are at it again – fighting, and only fighting, as I’ve had to find out the hard way. For a moment the temptation is strong to just turn around and come back in an hour when hopefully the worst has blown over. Then I can pick up the pieces and try to mend things with sweet words and not-so-sweet f**king, but I force myself to take those last steps and unlock the door.

I don’t see them in the living room, but they are loud enough that their voices reach me as they keep shouting at each other.

"How is it possible that you’re such an idiot?" Bella accuses Jazz, then interrupts his fleeting attempt at a response. "I mean, you know how he is!

The guy who needed five years and God knows how many pep talks from you to even ‘fess up to me that he wanted to f**k me! You can’t really expect him to have changed any in the past months!"

Oh great, they’re fighting about me. My curiosity piqued, I remain leaning against the entry door, attempting not to make a sound as I strain my ears trying to pick up every word they utter.

Jazz snorts.

"Trust me, it took more like a week and you slinking around in a tiny, white bikini for him to realize that!"

"Glad you’re so insightful when it comes to others but not to yourself!" she screams back. "Don’t you see that this is not going to just resolve itself? I can see how much you’re hurting, and by proxy that’s hurting me, too! He won’t change, he won’t get his head out of his ass, now even less when he’s got your c**k shoved up there on a regular basis. You need to talk to him!"

"But I can’t!" comes the pained yet angry answer.

"Then I will!"

"No! You can’t!"

"Says who? You don’t really know me if you think I have a problem telling him that -"

"Please don’t then! This is my business, not yours. I’m so fed up with you thinking that you’re Little Miss Congeniality! You don’t know the solution to every f**king problem in the universe!"

That shuts her up, but only for a moment.

"And maybe I’m f**king sick of watching either you or him moping around! I can’t remember the last time when we had a whole weekend without any drama or mood swings that we didn’t spend f**king from sunup to sundown, and then some!"

"Yeah, maybe that’s because the only way you shut up is when you’re sucking on someone’s cock!"

"You didn’t just say that!"

"Yeah, I did, and I can say it again if you don’t shut up -"

"You don’t get to tell me to shut up! But maybe listening for once in your life would help? But, oh, no, it’s so much easier to just wallow in silence and kill everyone else’s joy with your brooding, right? The moment he gets home I’m going to tell him. Deal with it!"

Her declaration is underlined by the click of the bedroom door being closed, then opened a moment later as Jazz follows her, both of them coming down the stairs. I know that any second now they will see me, but before I can make up my mind what to do about that, it is too late.

Bella looks furious, as if her tone and words hadn’t been a dead giveaway, and all of that rage comes bearing down on me now when she sees me standing just inside the door. Yet instead of getting right in my face she draws it all in, assuming that fragile calm that I’ve come to fear, as it means that she’s totally pissed beyond reason.

"You’re late."

The words are precise and bitten off, accusation making her eyes hard and unbidding.

"I am?" I ask lamely, not remembering if we have agreed to me being home after work or not.

"Yes. I called the hospital two hours ago and they told me your shift had ended before noon. And now it’s five in the afternoon."

I’m about to make up some excuse, then decide to stick to the truth, but then the meaning of her words hit me.

"You’re calling after me? Are you checking up on me or something?"

Try as I might, that comes out as an accusation, and I can see the tension in her rising.

"Do I need to?"

"I didn’t think so, but then again I didn’t think you would call my work to find out whether I was hiding something from you or not."

She doesn’t even look chagrined when she answers.

"I was calling because I wanted to know when you’d be home, to figure out whether or not I should cook something or order take-out and have you pick it up on the way over. Sorry that I’m annoying you so much by trying to be a good girlfriend and providing food for when you come home, starving, as usual, because there are only six supermarkets and ten restaurants in the next three blocks from here!"

Talk about bad timing if there ever was any. My stomach chooses that moment to rumble loudly, and in a bout of insanity I ask, "Well, did you cook?"

"Fuck you!"

As Jazz doesn’t join in our ‘conversation’ I try to defuse it, telling myself that someone has to try to act maturely for once.

"Well, if you need to know, I went over to Alice’s."

Bella’s eyes narrow upon hearing that.

"You did what?"

"We talked. Just because you start foaming at the mouth whenever someone mentions her doesn’t mean I have to break off all contact with her."

For a moment Bella looks as if I had slapped her, and not in a playroom-friendly kind of way, then she rounds on Jazz, screeching as she points her finger at me.

"THIS is exactly what I’ve been talking about! He’d rather hang out and talk to that f**king cunt instead of either of us! And now he’ll have his panties in a twist for weeks because he’ll go crawling back to her, begging her to like him again because it’s oh, so important to him that she still considers him her friend when she’s actually disgusted by him. He’ll never get the message! He’ll never understand that you -"

"Shut the f**k up," Jazz interrupts her, his voice frighteningly deep and stern. Where screaming hasn’t helped, this does, only it just works for him.

Instead of getting in his face she rounds on me, then shoves me in the chest, hard, making me stumble out of her way more from surprise than actual force.

"You’re such a f**king ass**le!" she shouts at me, then grabs her purse and coat, shoves her shoes on and storms out, slamming the door behind her with a loud bang.

Puzzled by her exit I turn back to Jazz, trying to ask him what that was all about, but find him staring at me with something close to malice on his face.

"You know what, Edward? She’s right. You are a f**king ass**le."

Chapter 33

For a moment I don’t know what I should feel more – pissed off or hurt –

but I find myself mostly confused. It’s nothing new for Bella to get in my face like that; I know she deals with her frustration by letting her emotions run rampant, and I prefer that to her brooding and moping around for ages, but this obviously goes beyond any other fight we’ve had lately. And being left standing in my living room with Jazz, who is seething with anger, while I have absolutely no idea what is going on, is not helping things.

"What the f**k?"

Probably not the most eloquent way to phrase the question, but I don’t think anything else will get through to him right now.

Jazz keeps staring at me for several seconds, then grunts, and turns away from me, still tense as hell.

"Nothing. Forget it."

"What do you mean, nothing?" I shout, my own ire rising at the way he’s trying to shut me down. "Obviously I’m an oblivious ass**le that doesn’t

"get" anything. You could at least do me the courtesy of telling me what I was too dense to "get" this time!"