Becoming Bella by Sarah Hegger (20)

Bella opened the door later that night to a pale Pippa clutching a huge bar of chocolate.

“I’ve never seen you eat chocolate.” Bella swung the door wide.

“Don’t start with me.” Pippa charged in and dropped her coat. Beneath it she wore a pair of beautifully tailored charcoal pants with a cashmere sweater. Pippa always looked great. “The chocolate is for you.” She put her hands on her hips. “And oh my God, Bella. What the hell? Why didn’t you call me?”

“You heard about the store?” She didn’t know why she hadn’t called Pippa. Maybe because the connection to Nate felt a little too close for comfort and Pippa was also married, expecting a baby, and hosted the biggest makeover show on television. It made Bella’s problems seem very small town and insignificant.

“Yes, I heard about the store.” Pippa trailed her into the kitchen. “From Matt. Who heard it from Nate. Are you okay?”

“Yeah; a little shaken but fine.” She put the chocolate on the table and grabbed two glasses. She filled both with milk.

Staring at her over the rim, Pippa drank her milk. “Good, because I’m about to be really pissed at you and I don’t want to yell at someone in crisis.”

“Then I’m most definitely in crisis.”

“Too late.” Pippa clanked her glass down on the table. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I have not.” Had she?

“Yes, you have.” Pippa stuck her chin out at a fighting angle. “I know I’m not around as much as I could be, and Liz is, but we’re friends, Bella. At least I thought we were. I shouldn’t have heard about today from Matt.”

Clutching her glass for fortitude, Bella sat. “I haven’t been deliberately avoiding you, if that helps.”

Pippa narrowed her eyes. “Nope. Doesn’t help at all. What’s going on, Bella?”

“You might want to sit down.” Pippa made her nervous standing there looking like a Valkyrie. “You remember that date I made with Liz to go up to Whispering Pines?” She took a slug of her milk. “Well, I met this guy called Adam.”

Pippa listened as Bella told her all about Adam, the possessiveness and the increasingly erratic behavior. Mad as she was, Pippa didn’t interrupt, and then she said, “That really, really sucks.”

“Yes, it does.” Bella topped up her glass. “But Nate has been a huge help.”

Pippa grabbed her hands and gave them a squeeze. “Tell me you’re being careful?”

“I’m being careful. All the locks here and at the store have been changed. Phone numbers, all that sort of thing.”

“Good,” Pippa said. “Because I might be mad at you for keeping me in the dark, but I love you, and this is all very scary.”

Bella had been putting that thought off all day. Circling around it by keeping busy after Liz left. Still, she found herself peering out the window all the time, double checking her locks, picking up the phone to make sure she could still hear a dial tone. “I keep asking myself what I could have done differently,” she said.

“Nothing,” Pippa said. “You know this isn’t your fault, right, Bella?”

Bella avoided her stare by making circles on the table with her glass. “I suppose, but I just keep going over and over it in my head. There was something, the first time I met him, that felt . . . weird. Not off, but not right either. I told myself I was never going to have a normal dating life if I didn’t at least give him a chance.”

“And that’s right.” Pippa rapped her knuckles on the table. “Look at me.” She waited until Bella complied before she continued. “That’s how normal dating works. Men are like dresses. You have to try them on for size. Some look great on the hanger but don’t look great on you. Others are fine but don’t really do much for you, and others are killer.” She clapped her hands over her mouth. “Bad choice of word there, but I think you get what I mean.”

“I do.” Along with avoiding thinking about how shaken she was, Bella had been avoiding thinking about her stupidity. “But when he first sent me all those texts . . . I mean, that’s not right. And then the flowers. Nobody sends flowers like that. I even thought that, and still I went on a date with him.”

Pippa fetched herself some more milk and broke off another piece of chocolate. She popped it into her mouth. “I stayed with a man for about two years more than I should have. We hadn’t had sex for nearly eight months and still it shocked the life out of me when I found out he was cheating.”

“Maybe he was really good at hiding it?” Bella took the piece of chocolate Pippa offered. This was a chocolate kind of conversation. “Even with my long dry spell, eight months with no sex while you were in a relationship had to ring all sorts of bells.”

“You would think.” Pippa grimaced. “I think I didn’t see it because I wasn’t looking for it. For whatever reason. Maybe I didn’t want to face the truth. Maybe it suited me to stay in a relationship, however toxic.” She took another piece of chocolate. “My point is this: Hindsight is twenty-twenty. It’s easy to look back and see what you should have done and could have done. But this Adam is sick, Bella, and I doubt anything you would have done differently would have made any difference. He’s fixated on you, and that’s because he’s got things all twisted in his head.” Pippa tapped the side of her head. “His head is twisted. Not yours.”

“Fixated.” Bella shivered as she said the word. She didn’t want any of this, but that wasn’t going to change it or make it go away.

“Listen to what Nate tells you,” Pippa said. “He used to work in a unit that dealt with sex crimes in Salt Lake City. Be careful, and know that we’re all here for you. What did your family say?”

And her night for confessions rolled forward. “I haven’t told them.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want them to freak out and have them come running back here.” Which sounded good but was only half the truth. “And I don’t want the interrogation about how I let this happen.”

Pippa knew Nana and made a face. “Your nana gets things twisted in her head as well.” Leaning forward on her elbows, Pippa pinned her with a stare. “And I gotta warn you, Phi’s in a state about this.”

“You told her?”

“Nope.” Pippa handed her more chocolate. “This is Ghost Falls and she found out. She’s talking bodyguards.”

That was all she needed. “Talk her out of it.”

“I have.” Pippa shrugged. “For now. But you know Phi. When she makes up her mind about something, it takes an act of God to change it.” She settled back in her chair with another piece of chocolate. “Now tell me about Nate.”

Her face heated and Bella cursed herself.

“Hah!” Pippa slapped her palms on the table. “I knew there was something going on. Both of you get all squinty-eyed when you talk about each other.”

“Squinty-eyed?” Bella tried to check her reflection in her glass, but all she could see were a pair of grossly exaggerated hamster cheeks.

“Shifty.” Pippa nodded. “Like you’re keeping secrets. I’m not leaving here until you spill.”

“There’s not that much I can tell you.” Too tired to make up any more lies, Bella went with the truth. “I’m not really sure what’s going on with me and Nate.”

“But there is a something?” Pippa got that look on her face that meant she would keep after this like a ferret.

“We had sex.” Bella got it out in a rush. “And it was incredible, amazing. But that’s all it was. Nate is Nate.”

“Are you okay with that?”

“Yes,” Bella said.

Pippa raised a brow.

“No, actually, I’m not. I thought I would be, but I’m not.” Her head felt too heavy and she propped it on her palm. “I’m making all sorts of super decisions about men at the moment.”

“He’s another one who’s got things all twisted in his head,” Pippa said.

“But I knew that.” Nate had never made any secret of his allergy to commitment. “I knew that and I thought I could handle it.”

“Well.” Pippa sighed. “I think the best thing to do is order pizza and watch a movie.”

“But no chick flicks,” Bella said. “They might be part of why I’m in this mess in the first place.”

They ended up watching an action movie, finishing all the pizza, and going through half a large bag—okay, the whole bag—of M&M’s.

Matt picked up Pippa but came in first to check all her locks for her.

They left after making her promise to call if she needed them.

Locking her door behind them, silence oozed around her, and Bella did another window and door check. She drew all her blinds and drapes and sat down at the detailed plan for her store Matt had left behind.

A dog barked down the street and she tensed. Carefully, she teased out each sound until she could identify it. And the street made a lot of sounds in the night. Liz’s water pipes creaked a bit. The kids three doors over slammed the doors as they let their dog in and out.

She got up, wiped her kitchen counters again, then tidied the detergents and cleaners under her sink. Turning on the TV, she kept it low enough to hear but loud enough to distract.

Tomorrow, she would call her parents and explain why her phone numbers had changed. Or she might make up a plausible lie. She sat down and watched half a reality show without having any idea what it was about.

Her phone lit up and Bella nearly leaped out of her skin. She stared at it, too scared to check. It vibrated on the coffee table with an incoming message. But it was her new phone, with the new number Adam didn’t have.

Nate texted: How you doing?

Fine, she typed back and then deleted it. Okay.

 

Did you lock the front door?

 

She had to smile at that. About twenty times.

The phone stayed blank for a little while and then: Are you freaked?

Nite nite. She resisted the urge to add a smiley face. Liz would bitch-slap her if she did.

The phone lit up again.

 

Would you like me to come over?

 

With every functioning nerve ending she had. Bella stared at the words on the screen. She needed to be smart. Goddamn, but she didn’t want to be smart. Nate could come over and rock her world again. Take her to that place where there was no creepy Adam doing creepy things.

Except, in the morning, Nate would leave again. And Adam was still out there somewhere.

She picked up the phone and put it down again. After a slug of wine straight from the bottle, she picked it up again and typed: No, thanks.