The Fandom Gives Back Counterpoint Extra for ecullensgirl

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This oneshot takes place December of Edward’s sophomore year of college, a couple of hours after Bella confesses that she hasn’t been with anyone sexually since they broke up. Edward arrives at Rose and Emmett’s house to babysit David.

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“Thank you so much for doing this, Edward.” Rose expressed her gratitude exactly one second after she opened her front door. “We were really—well, for lack of a better word—fucked.”

Thirty minutes earlier, Emmett called me in a panic. His mother had a stomach flu and was unable to watch David so they could attend the annual holiday party thrown by Rose’s law firm. Though neither of them had any real desire to go, Rose insisted staying home would be a “career limiting move.”

“It’s no problem whatsoever,” I assured her. “You know I love the little guy. Where is he?”

“Em’s changing him. We didn’t want to leave you with a ton of shit on top of everything else.”

I laughed. “I fully expected that I’d have to change diapers when I said I’d watch him. It’s not a big deal.”

Rose looked suddenly panicked. “Do you even know how to–”

“Change diapers?” I interrupted. “Yes. Though in all fairness, I didn’t until recently.”

“Okay.” Rose looked extremely nervous.

“It’s going to be fine. Even if David throws me for a loop—which shouldn’t happen, by the way, given all the time I spend with him and Emmett—my mom is two minutes away. In addition to raising me, she went to medical school. Between the two of us, we should be able to handle anything.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you; we’ve just never left David with anyone who wasn’t family. I guess I’m more neurotic than I thought. Anyway, he goes to bed in a hour. Don’t let him bring anything into the crib with him except his pacifier. He gets a bottle before bed; the formula and instructions are on the kitchen counter. We won’t be out late. The partners at my firm expect everyone to make an appearance at the holiday party. They also invite clients, so it’s less about celebrating the season and more about who they can impress.”

Emmett appeared with David in his arms. “Because none of their associates put in enough time at work as it is.”

“He’s bitter,” Rose explained.

“I am not bitter,” Emmett interjected. “Far from it—I think every Friday night they require Rose to work should include an open bar.”

Rose ignored him and addressed me. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

“It’ll be fine. Really. Go have as much fun as you can have with a room full of lawyers. I’ve got this under control.”

“If you decide you want to invite someone over to keep you company, that’s all right.” She looked at me expectantly.

Huh?

“You just said that you were nervous leaving David with me because you’d never left him with someone to whom you weren’t related, and now you’re telling me to invite girls over?”

Emmett snorted. “David likes the ladies.”

“Let me be more specific,” Rose said, rolling her eyes at Emmett. “If you want to invite Bella over, that’s fine with us.”

I turned to Emmett. “I guess the word is out now?”

“Not at all,” Rose insisted. “Em hasn’t told me anything except the fact you and Bella are talking again, which I already knew from Bella.”

“What else has Bella told you?” I asked.

“Oh, I see how it is.” Rose feigned annoyance. “The idea that Emmett might have told me something you told him in confidence bothers you, but you’re not above pestering me for information.”

“That depends,” I said. “Are you willing to give me any?”

“No, but I would like to reiterate that if you’d like to invite Bella over, she’s more than welcome.”

“You really don’t think I can handle this, do you?”

Both Rose and Emmett began laughing hysterically.

“What?” I asked.

“Like Bella would be any help,” Emmett muttered under his breath.

“In Bella’s defense,” Rose began, “she’s never had to care for a baby. Of course she doesn’t know how to. Really, I was just suggesting it so you wouldn’t be bored once David goes to sleep.”

Four minutes later, Rose and Emmett were out the door, and for the first time in my life, I found myself in charge of another human being. Meanwhile, I was beyond preoccupied with thoughts of Bella. It took everything I had to focus completely on David and not let my mind drift to this afternoon’s revelation. Bella’s self-imposed celibacy during our estrangement was at the forefront of my thoughts, but I couldn’t allow myself to get caught up in it when I had a ninth-month-old baby in my care—especially when said nine-month-old baby was strong, enormous, and got into everything.

David was the spitting image of Emmett—curly black hair, pale skin, and rosy cheeks. Though Rose was thrilled that David so closely resembled his father, I wondered if Emmett was disappointed that they didn’t get a mini-Rose. When I thought of having kids someday, I always hoped they’d look like Bella. Well, except if we had a boy. In that case, I would want him to look like her but be tall like my family. As much as being different sucked for me, I’m sure it would have sucked more if I’d been shorter. I may have been a freak, but from the time I was fifteen on, I at least had physical intimidation in my favor. If Bella and I had a baby and he was mentally like me, I’d want him to look like her but have my height. If we had a girl, I’d want her to look like Bella—a tiny, sweet version of her mother who would accept my unconditional love and let me adore her and give her all the advantages I had that Bella didn’t. Specifically, our daughter would have two parents who valued, wanted her, cherished her. She’d grow up feeling entitled to love and happiness and never question her worth, because she had a home in which she was nothing short of worshiped.

I crawled around on the floor with David, and we rolled a ball back and forth until it was time for me to put him to bed. The trust he placed in me was astounding. I’d spent a good amount of time with him, yes, but not on a regular basis. I doubted he could actually remember me. I considered this thought as I put him on the changing table. He started fussing, clearly unhappy about getting his diaper changed. Next to the wipes, there was a stack of tiny fabric cone things. I took the top one off, and stuck it on the edge of my nose, hoping to distract him.

David looked at me like I had two heads until I began to make funny faces at him. He smiled, and I started to change him. The second his diaper was off, he pissed in my face.

“Oh, buddy, so wrong.” I pulled off my wet shirt and tossed it aside. “Hasn’t your daddy ever told you not to piss in another man’s face?”

David giggled at me. He actually giggled, and I couldn’t be pissed that he pissed. I mean, after all, he wasn’t all that different from me—he was just a guy trying to find his way in the world.

“You know,” I began, “I pissed in an inappropriate place once—in my roommate’s bed. I was in college though, not nursery school. But you don’t even go to nursery school yet, do you? You probably don’t know what college is.” I got the clean diaper on him as quickly as possible, and continued talking to him as I dressed him in his pajamas. “College is the first part of school you’ll actually enjoy. You can take the classes you want, not just boring stuff you already know. Anyway, most people live in dorms when they go to college. Actually, some people live in dorms when they go to high school, but I didn’t do that because my parents thought I was too socially inexperienced to handle that. Most of the people I know at college went to high schools like that—prep schools—but not me. I don’t regret it, though, because that’s how I met your Aunt Bella.”

Did I actually just say that?

“Not your Aunt Bella like she and I are married, and I’m Uncle Edward and that’s your Aunt Bella. She’s not my wife. She’s not even my girlfriend yet—I mean, anymore. She’s your aunt in the sense that she’s very good friends with your mommy, and she loves you. I hope you love her, too. That would mean a lot to her, because you’re new and innocent and she would never question why you loved her. You being a little guy, she’d take it at face value—that you love her, because she’s kind and means well and you have a good time when you’re with her. I envy you that, that Aunt Bella would have faith in the validity of your emotions. That your love is real, because you don’t know of any other way. The irony there is that it wasn’t so long ago that I was no different from you. She just didn’t trust that, because I’m a big boy, and big boys haven’t always treated her the way they should.”

“Boy?” David perked up, recognizing at least one of my words.

I pointed to him before pointing to myself. “Yes, boy. We’re both boys. High five, my man!” He clapped his hand against mine, and I carried him over to the crib. I placed him inside and handed him his pacifier.

He said something vaguely resembling “night night” before popping his pacifier into his mouth and rolling over onto his stomach. I rubbed his back until he fell asleep with his knees tucked underneath him and his butt up in the air.

“I love you, little man. Lots of people love you. Never forget that.”

Once David was asleep, I did more than obsess about Bella’s admission. I didn’t presume to think she’d been saving herself for me—despite her insistence otherwise, I still didn’t believe that she loved me like that.

This did not prevent me from calling her, hoping to discuss it further.

“Didn’t I just see you two hours ago?” she answered, laughter in her voice.

She was happy—not just in this moment, but in general. It was a stark contrast to the Bella I dated, and I wondered if I’d ever get used to the difference.

“Two hours and forty-two minutes,” I corrected her.

I left out the fact that to me, it felt much longer.

“Right. You would know. So it’s been two hours and forty-two minutes since we last spoke, and I’m seeing you tomorrow morning. Unless you’re calling to cancel on me–”

“Never.” I didn’t want her to even think that.

“Well, you can’t miss me; it hasn’t been long enough.”

She was wrong, of course—totally and utterly wrong. Two hours and forty-two minutes was more than enough time for me to feel her absence and long to see her again. Truth be told, these days I began to ache for her moments after she left my presence, information I took great care to conceal from her, fearful she’d use it to manipulate me.

“I haven’t interrupted anything, have I?” I asked.

“Did I not tell you about my hot Friday night plans?”

Two hours and forty-two minutes was apparently long enough to change everything.

“No.”

“There’s a new cake recipe I wanted to try. I’d just put it into the oven when you called. I can’t get too wrapped up, though. It needs to come out in fifty-one minutes.”

I was simultaneously relieved and annoyed at myself. Bella hadn’t been with anyone in over a year, yet I was so insecure when it came to her, I was ready to believe it could all go to hell in an instant. Maybe because it had in the past, and that history was the single greatest predictor of future events. I pushed my doubt aside, determined to focus on the fact that Bella was back in my life and home on a Friday night—baking.

“You misled me,” I teased. “That doesn’t sound hot at all.”

“That’s what you think. The oven is incredibly hot—325 degrees, in fact.”

“Yet not at all torrid.”

She snorted. “No, not like that. Were you not paying attention this afternoon? I don’t do that anymore.”

Was I not paying attention? Was she kidding?

“Oh, I was paying attention.” So was my ever-possessive cock. The smaller of my two heads wanted to believe sex with me was such a life-altering experience, that I’d forever ruined her for all other men. The head that sat on my shoulders wanted to know the real reason she hadn’t been sexually active. “It’s actually why I called.”

“Really? Just so you know, I don’t do phone sex these days, either.” Laughing, she muttered under her breath, “Shit. I broke a rule again, didn’t it?”

“I’d love to know where these rules are coming from. I don’t recall ever issuing an edict forbidding any mention of sex. It would be an exercise in futility for me to do so, given the nature of contemporary society. Everything is about sex. This morning I saw a french-fry commercial about coming.”

“Fried food can be orgasmic.”

“True, but this was on CNN. it just goes to show how impossible sex is to avoid.”

“You’re telling me.” She sighed.

“But you have avoided sex.”

“Doing it, Edward. I haven’t done it. I still talk about and think about it. I have fantasies, and sometimes I even masturbate…”

I gulped, and adjusted myself in my pants. Please, please, please let her think of me when she masturbates. How awesome would it be if she called her vibrator Edward?

“…I’m normal and healthy, just celibate.”

I pushed the mental image of her fucking herself with her vibrator while screaming my name out of my mind and focused on the conversation at hand.

“That’s why it’s so hard for me to wrap my mind around it; celibacy isn’t normal for you.”

“You’re right. Normal for me is sublimating ecstasy for emotion, for using sex as a means to avoid intimacy. After you and I…” She paused. “Is this all right?”

“What?”

“Talking about us. It’s another one of the rules. Add it to the rule about sex–”

“Fuck the rules.”

“You can fuck the rules; I’m not letting myself fuck anything.”

“Wait, I thought you said you still masturbated?” I couldn’t help but tease her.

“My vibrator doesn’t count. Anyway, I’ve realized through therapy that the methods I’d developed to prevent myself from getting hurt were actually causing a great deal of pain. I mean, I didn’t need to pay a professional to find out that they’d hurt you. I already knew that, and though I regretted my actions, I had no idea what to do about them. My counselor made me see that although I couldn’t change the past, I could modify my current behavior to prevent causing any more damage to myself or others. One of the changes was not to have sex outside of love.”

I was floored.

“Not that I’d judge anyone who did have sex outside of love, mind you,” she added in a hurry. “I don’t think it’s unhealthy for the average person to have the occasional fling. We all need release you, know?” She let out a nervous laugh. “It’s just that in the past, my doing so was born out of a bizarre combination of self-loathing and needing to feel wanted—even if it was fleeting and for all the wrong reasons. People don’t have one-night stands because they actually desire the other person; they have them because they desire an orgasm. The other party involved is nothing more than a means to an end.”

“Was that how you saw me?”

“No. You were always more than that to me. I just wasn’t always good at showing that. I’ll never be able to fix the past, but I do want you to know that I could never view you that way. Even in the beginning, I could see myself falling hard for you. And it scared me so much—you have no idea. I’d spent four years of my life convincing myself I didn’t want that kind of life, that in letting anyone in I was just setting myself up for pain. Then I met you, and you challenged me. And I started to wonder if maybe I could have all that—if I could be loved and wanted in that real kind of way that doesn’t go away when boredom sets in. Had I spent my entire life not wanting it, or did I just not believe it existed? There’s a difference, you know?”

“Do you believe it exists now?”

“Yes. I learned that from your parents.”

I should have known. “They’re good for that. They’re still every bit as in love now as they were the day they got married.”

“Well, marriage still scares me,” she admitted.

“Why?” I asked.

“It’s completely irrational, I know, but I feel like once a contract is involved—and screw romantic notions, marriage is a contract—people do things because they have to, not because they want to.”

“People do that anyway, and divorce is more common now than ever.”

“Oh, you don’t have to tell me that. Like I said, I know it’s irrational. But even before I got to know your parents well, I started to think that maybe there was a chance. Things that never mattered before—like whether or not you wanted children—suddenly became monumental.”

“I want children.”

“I know.”

“Do you want children? The last time I asked you, you weren’t sure.”

“I’m still not sure. The idea terrifies me, but I think I’d like to have children. I mean, it’s not a requirement for me. If it never happens, I doubt I’d look back on my life and feel as though I missed out. But if I was with the right person and our relationship was solid enough, I’d probably want to have children. It’s just so hard for me to imagine that happening.”

The mental image came so quickly that I couldn’t stop it—me on my knees in front of Bella, kissing the bare skin of her still-flat stomach, knowing my child was growing inside her.

I wanted to tell her that I was the right person, and that if she were just willing to wait for me to feel like myself again, she could have it all—that I’d happily spend my life giving her she’s ever wanted but was afraid to wish for because she never believed it was real. It was a declaration I somehow knew I’d make eventually, but not now and certainly not over the phone.

“I know you were very lonely growing up–”

“So were you,” she interrupted me.

“I had my parents; you had no one.”

“I had friends. I never sat alone at the lunch table, if that’s what you mean.”

“Was it all bad? I mean, there must have been some parts of it that were good.”

“I loved cooking with my neighbor. When I was little, she’d let me stand beside her and pretend I was doing whatever she was doing, using real bowls and spoons. She was very into using seasonal ingredients in her recipes. My love of food and obsession with supporting local farming comes from her. Oh, and I had a tire swing in the backyard that I loved. Don’t you dare call me ghetto, Rich Boy!”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“That’s because you’re jealous. Something tells me you didn’t have a tire swing as a kid.”

“That would be correct,” I confirmed. “I think there’s a town ordinance against them or something.”

“Why am I not surprised? You’re probably only allowed to have wooden swing sets painted or finished in historically accurate colors. Sometimes I wonder how they even let me teach in your town.”

“Well, you do show up to work dressed like a Puritan.”

“I do not!”

“I can’t speak for now, but I know that when I was in high school, you did.”

“I know,” she admitted. “In those days, I still had something to prove. It was almost like if I showed any skin at all, people would know how promiscuous I was.”

“In this day and age, does that even matter?”

“Maybe not for you, but there’s still a double standard. Men can get away with that sort of thing; women can’t. Now I wear what I want. I don’t feel as though I have anything to hide.”

There were so many things I wanted to say to her—that I was proud of her, that I couldn’t imagine how difficult looking that deeply into herself must have been, that she was brave and strong in a way I’d never had to be. Instead, I said what she’d expect me to say under these circumstances.

“It’s time take your cake out of the oven.”

“Huh? Oh shit, you’re right. Hang on a sec.” Forty-six seconds later, she returned. “It came out perfectly, thank you. I’ll never understand how you do that.”

I laughed. “Because I’m a freak.”

“You’re brilliant. Does it ever…” She paused.

“No, ask me.” It sounded almost like I was begging. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

I wanted more than anything for her to feel like she could talk to me.

“What’s it like inside your mind?”

“Do you mean what I am thinking?”

“No, not specific thoughts, though they would be fascinating to hear as well. But you’re always counting, right?”

“Not exactly. It’s more like the world around me has its own time signature, and there’s a metronome in the back of my head. I’m not actively counting, I’m just acutely aware of time. That’s always there, but so are the same kinds of thoughts you have. Like, I know it’s been fifty-four seconds since you came back from taking your cake out of the oven. I’m also very aware of patterns and angles; I see math and physics where most people just see a building or a tree. I’m thinking about tomorrow, how much I want to see you again already, how much I missed you when you weren’t a part of my life. But I’m also thinking how amazing it is that we can talk like this now, have a conversation that’s deep and not theoretical. This would have never happened when we were dating.”

I left out the music I was composing, and the image of her pregnant with my child, as well as the fact that said image made me hard.

“Huh.”

“What do you mean, ‘huh’? Were you expecting me to be mentally working on a cure for cancer?”

“Kind of,” she admitted, laughing. “No, seriously. I just didn’t expect your thoughts to be so similar to mine. I’d tell you I was counting the seconds until tomorrow, but you know very well I’m not capable of doing that the way you are.”

“I’m not capable of baking a cake from scratch.” I didn’t want her to feel like my abilities were any more valuable than hers. “By the way, what kind is it?”

“You’ll find out tomorrow. Speaking of, I need to get to work on the icing.”

“Fine, I’ll let you go. I’d say I was sorry to take up so much of your night, but I’m not.”

“I’m not sorry, either,” she admitted. “I’m glad you called me. You know you can call me whenever you want, right? Anyway, I’ll see you in the morning. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Bella.”

It was just as well. Seven minutes later, Rose and Em arrived home. As I drove back to my parents’ house, I wondered if the tree in Bella’s tiny back yard was strong enough to support a tire swing. When I came in through the back door, my dad was sitting on the couch.

“How was babysitting?” he asked.

“Fine. David pissed in my face.”

“Yeah, well, you certainly nailed me more than a few times. Paybacks are a bitch.”

“Thanks, Dad. And on that note, I’m off to shower until the water runs cold.” A thought occurred to me after I turned to go upstairs. “Do you know where I could buy a tire?”

“For the Volvo?”

“No, for a swing. I just need one.”

“Isn’t David a little small for one of those?”

“It’s for Bella.”

He looked at me quizzically. “I’d ask why, but I don’t think I want to know. I’m bringing the truck in to be serviced tomorrow. I’m sure I could buy a tire at the Mercedes dealership. I mean, if you can buy a car there, surely they have loose tires for sale.”

“Don’t worry about it; I’ll look into it. Besides, I want it to be from me. Thanks anyway. Goodnight.”

That night, I dreamt of pushing a little girl with huge brown eyes on a tire swing. When she became tired, we went inside where Bella served us slices of a cake she’d made that morning from scratch. As we ate, Bella told me about how our daughter stood at her side and “helped” her, mimicking her every gesture with a wooden spoon and an empty bowl. Our daughter insisted the bowl was actually filled with dreams and magic.

Of course I believed her.

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Huge thanks to Simone and Amy.

Also, to ecullensgirl for her support of Fandom Gives Back and my writing, for giving me this great prompt and allowing me to share the resulting words with the rest of my readers.