A/N This is the Prologue for my new story "The Letter". This is completely different than Ascension. It is all human. I must warn you, this Bella has a potty mouth. If you are under the age of 18 you should proceed with caution because this will be a story full of adult themes. Not so many lemons, yet, but adult themes for sure. If you like it, you know what to do. Leave me the lovin' at the end.
Big thanks to Lillie Cullen, my beta, my friend, my soul sister. Love you H&R bb.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything Twilight. Stephenie Meyer does. But you all knew that already. Edward, on the other hand, woke me up at 4:30 one morning and started whispering this story in my ear and would not shut up until I started writing it. Who am I to deny him?
Bella
"Hey, Edward?"
"What's up, Bella?"
"You think we could, like, just go to bed, and stay there, for fucking ever?"
"Suits me!" he said, laughing.
I stumbled around our house for a few more minutes, trying to remember where the fuck everything was. Ugh. I hated coming home after being gone for so fucking long. It was like going to another house.
Edward headed off towards what I thought was our bedroom. At four-o-fucking clock in the morning when you have been on a bus for twenty-four hours, and haven't been home for six months, who the hell knew where the fucking bedroom was? I couldn't help stopping to watch his sexy ass walk away. God I'm pathetic.
He could have any fucking woman in the world that he wanted with a flick of his finger, so what the fuck was he doing with me? I'm nothing special. I'm a plain girl from the hole of the universe, Forks fucking Washington.
After he disappeared from my view, I took a deep breath and looked around. How did I get here? How did this happen to me?
Well, before I get too far ahead of myself, let me just say that the story of how I got here is un-fucking believable.
I have to think back a long ways, through a haze of traveling, booze, drugs, sex, and God knows what else to even remember what brought me to this particular place in my life. Oh yeah, it was a letter that started me on this journey.
I was twenty-four years old when this all began. God, that seems like forever ago. Hold old am I now? Thirty-two? Wow. Time sure flies when you are sleeping with Edward Fucking Cullen every night.
I had just graduated from the good old University of Washington with my master's in English Literature. You may ask, what does some one do with a master's in English Lit? Yeah, I asked too. What kind of pansy-assed pathetic degree was English Lit for fuck sake? Well, of course, you teach English Lit to other fucking morons who think that it's a great degree to get. And, you don't give a shit that they are throwing their lives and their money away because you are getting a paycheck off of their stupidity, right? Right?!
If it weren't for my two best friends, Alice and Rosalie, my life would have been utter shit. When I was asked to join the faculty at the university because of my stellar grades, my leadership ability, and some other lame shit they had quoted to me, I hated the thought of being a professor at 24, but I took the job. Had I not, I would probably still be looking for a job. As it were, I was miserable.
Alice was a wedding planner and she was damn good at it. She traveled everywhere and even did celebrity weddings and governor's daughter's weddings and shit like that. She was a bundle of energy that one. She didn't work very often. Hell, she didn't have to. Her prices were outrageous and when I had asked her to plan the wedding for Mike Newton and me, I had told her so. I remember her laughing at me and saying, "Silly, Bella. Don't you know that you don't have to pay me?" Yeah, okay, whatever. Thank God that didn't work out. But, I'm getting ahead of myself again.
Rosalie had inherited her daddy's Ferrari dealership so she quit college and took that over when her dad died. She was making some big bucks too. Imagine a twenty-one year old who was more beautiful than Aphrodite running her father's Ferrari dealership without a college degree and making six figures a year. Six BIG figures a year.
Why did I have to be the smart poor one? Who the fuck knows, but my have the tables fucking turned.
I was walking across campus on September 12, the day before my twenty-fourth birthday, when I heard it for the first time. I was casually strolling along enjoying the rare nice weather when I saw some kids at a picnic table with a big stereo. Hip-hop was blasting out of it and I wrinkled my nose as I kept walking. Ugh. That was the kind of shit that Rose and her boyfriend Emmett creamed their pants over. I preferred Mozart and Beethoven. But then, I heard the voice, and I literally stopped walking. It was velvety and rich, not harsh like most hip-hop artists, and the words…Oh. My. God. This man was different. This man was a fucking genius. The way the words rolled off his tongue was poetic, even though he was talking about sex, drugs, and alcohol. I was mesmerized. I tried not to look conspicuous as I took out a book and sat down against a tree a short distance away to listen.
With every word of every song, I fell more in love with that voice. I listened to the chatter to see if I could figure out who it was. I had to know. I was going straight to the music store to get it. Rose was going to make fun of me. Fuck Rose. I felt like I couldn't breathe every time the voice stopped.
Mike's voice brought me out of my reverie rather quickly. "Bella, what the hell are you doing over there? We've got plans tonight. Get your ass over here and get in the car."
Ugh. I got up, smoothed my skirt, and kept walking, trying to remember some of the lyrics of the song I was listening to so I could find out who the mystery voice belonged to. I didn't want to have to ask Rose, but I kept that in the back of my mind as my last ditch effort at finding out.
I got into Mike's Toyota and slammed the door. I did not want to go to Forks with him. It was Friday and I wanted to stay in Seattle. I wasn't interested in spending the weekend in Forks at Charlie's house. Charlie is my father. He would think he needed to stay home and fawn over me like I was some little fucking girl that needed it. God I hated the thought of that. Then there was Mike's parents. Mike's mom was okay, she didn't say a whole lot to me, but his dad was more obnoxious than Mike was.
I can't remember how many times Alice and Rosalie had asked me exactly why I was dating Mike or why I had allowed myself to get engaged to him. I had pulled the lie off well. I would shrug and say, "Because I love him." I wasn't much of a liar, and they knew it, but they would always back off and leave me alone to make my own mistakes. I knew it was a mistake, but it was a lack of options. My self-esteem had never been the best. I had never thought of myself as pretty or desirable. I was just plain Isabella Swan. Not as pretty as the other girls, but not as ugly as some.
Mike and I had dated since my senior year at Forks High School. He had pestered me to go out with him since I moved there at the beginning of my junior year to live with my father. My flaky mother had run off with some damn baseball player and I finally had enough of her, so I went to live with my dad, Forks Chief of Police Charlie Swan, at your service. I hated my life.
Initially, when I moved to Forks, I started seeing my old friend Jacob Black who was a member of Quileute tribe over in La Push. My dad had been friends with his dad forever and Jake and I had made mud pies together when we were kids. I guess when I moved there, Charlie, Jacob's father Billy, and Jake all just naturally assumed that I would end up with him. Charlie and Billy did everything they could to throw us together so we finally relented and dated for a few months. That came to an abrupt end when he was drunk one night and tried to force me to have sex with him down at the beach during a big bonfire party the tribe was having. I'll never forget how bad my hand hurt when I punched him in the face and broke it. Charlie wouldn't even believe me or try to defend me. Somehow, he thought it was all my fault that Jake had gotten drunk and tried to force himself on me. As I recall, it was Jake that was drunk, not me. Oh well, that's Charlie. He always closes his eyes to things that make him uncomfortable and just hears and believes what he wants to. I wore that cast forever.
Anyway, after that, I went on a few random dates with a few random guys from Forks High, but there was never anyone special. I guess Mike just finally wore me down. He had asked me out a zillion times and though we were friends, I just would not go out with him. It was weird. He had been the first person to talk to me when I started school there. At any rate, once he wore me down, he had me. We finished high school together, we went to college together, and finally, we were engaged to spend the rest of our lives together. I wasn't so happy about that prospect, but I didn't want to hurt his feelings. I don't know why because he was never afraid to hurt mine. In fact, he was never afraid to hurt me period.
Mike sped away from the college that day ranting and raving at me about how we were going to be late for dinner with his parents and why hadn't I packed yet and why was I sitting in the middle of the fucking grass instead of getting my ass to the car so we could get going. Blah. Blah. Blah. I had learned not to argue. I had learned to tune out his voice and just agree with whatever he said and apologize for it. Was I really going to marry this man? This abomination? Yeah, I was going to. That is, until I fell in love with a rapper.
As miserable as it was, I struggled through the weekend in Forks. I stayed at Charlie's, like I always did, because it was a nice break from Mike and his groping fucking hands in the middle of the night. Charlie was naïve enough to believe that Mike and I lived in separate apartments and he was also naïve enough to believe that we were not sleeping together even though we had dated for six years and were engaged. It made things easier for me while in Forks to stay at my dad's house and leave Mike to stay wherever the hell he stayed. I still think that every time we went down there he was screwing that skank Jessica. I'm pretty sure that was why he liked going there every other weekend or so. He could ditch me at Charlie's, yet still exercise complete control over what I did and who I did it with, and he could get his piece of tail on the side from Jessica. All I can say now is, I hope they are happy together because they deserve each other.
It didn't matter, Charlie never came to Seattle to see me. You would think 140 miles wouldn't be too far, but apparently for Charlie it was. The only time he would drive that far was to go fishing with Billy Black. It still irked me that they were friends. Not my problem though. I had given Charlie the "I told you so" speech when Jacob went to jail shortly after his eighteenth birthday for statutory rape and assault on one of the tribal elders' daughter's. Apparently, I wasn't the only one that Jake had gotten drunk and taken liberties with. Charlie never apologized to me for not sticking up for me in that situation, and I resented him for it. A lot.
After that particular weekend was over and Mike and I were back in Seattle, I made up an excuse about Rose and Emmett having a fight and headed directly for their house. I had heard the lyrics over and over in my mind the whole weekend and was greatly resentful of Charlie for disconnecting the internet after I moved out. The man seriously needed to move into the twenty-first century in my opinion.
When I reached Rose's place, I told her about the songs I had heard. Thank Heaven Emmett wasn't home to make fun of me. He was out playing basketball with his buddies. As soon as I described the songs to Rose, she went to her CD collection and handed me a CD out of it. I looked at the cover and saw the most beautiful man I had ever laid eyes on staring back at me. He had the greenest eyes of any I had ever seen. His name? Edward Cullen. What a crazy name for a rapper, right?
I remember that my hands were trembling and so was my voice when I said, "Could I borrow this for a few days, Rose?"
"Oh hell, Bella. If it means that much to you, you can have it! I can get another one if I decide I want to," she said, shrugging.
I was on cloud nine. I jumped back in my piece of shit truck and slipped the CD into the CD player. I listened to that velvety voice all the way home and after I got there, I sat in the truck for another half hour just listening, and falling more in love with every passing second.
So begins the story of Edward and Bella, a match made in… Heaven?
End Note: Please leave a review and let me know if you want me to pursue this one! I probably will, regardless, but I always want to hear how you like it!