A Picture is worth a Thousand Words

Bella POV

Alice and I were sprawled across her large bed, both dressed in our pajamas. On the television was The Tudors, season 2. Instead of watching it rapturously, we were both paying more attention to the laptop that was sitting in front of Alice, and her new toy: A Powershot digital camera. Alice was a solid debater, and in being a solid debater, she had spent her entire weekend thus far at debate tournaments, where she took out the competition completely. In fact, according to her (and her somewhat powerful ability to predict the future), she was heading straight for the National Debate Tournament in Alabama. She was an amazing debater, being able to "visualise" what her opponent was going to do, and therefore having the ability to piece together her battle. It was a powerful thing to watch, Alice is stubborn, evasive, and very persuasive. Not to mention just a bit argumentative at times when she doesn't get her way. But, that is half the reason I love to have her as a friend, she keeps me from doing truly dangerously stupid things, and also from crawling into a shell and living my life happily like a turtle... or so she tells me.

"Seduce me." Anne Boleyn whispered to Henry on the television set. The background music for the Tudors is amazing. I really think that is the main reason Alice and I watch it. Alice and I were worshipers of good music, dating back to the Classical-Romantic: Ludwig van Beethoven; and as recent as Paramore. And we were picky. The modern classical often rubs the wrong way, and I personally have never been one to enjoy the fanfare that composers such as Tchaikovsky was famous for in the Nutcracker Suite... Alice, however, loves it. This is often our only qualm about classical music. Alice likes fanfare. I don't. Consequently, we don't listen to the classical stuff together. Fights have occurred over the ability of a composer based on the amount of faring... and Alice is a debater, so I usually lose. Miserably.

"I just love Anne Boleyn." Alice muttered for the millionth time. Alice has always had a small attraction to "the Whore"... the original woman to steal a man from his wife and destroy his sanity in the process... if you listen to Katherine or her daughter Mary, or the Pope of the time, or Thomas Moore (whom we both love very much). The connection started before I met Alice, back when she lived in New York. A fortune teller told her that she was the reincarnation of the Lady Anne herself. Ever since then, she's been inseparable from Anne Boleyn.

"That's it." Alice shut the laptop soundly and straightened herself. "We are going to take pictures." Mildly baffled, I looked over at her in slight confusion.

"What was that?" I asked.

"We are going to take pictures." she repeated, picking up her camera and clicking it to prove her point. I looked down at my clothing.

The slippers were ones that even Alice would never approve of. Instead of being cute and fluffy, girly and pink... they were the thin, deflated, tan moccasin-type slippers that were worn, and had at least one juice stain on the side. My pajamas were completely another story altogether. My pajama pants were six or seven sizes too big (they weren't mine originally) and therefore tied together with a hair tie. They were plaid and flannel, blue and green checkerboards layering each other like the gameboard machine threw up. I had on a rather scarred long sleeve white T-shirt that was a size too small, straining against my chest and showing a good inch of my stomach and far too much of my forearms. I wasn't wearing any makeup, I had a patch of zits on my chin and six or seven blackheads straddling my nose, my eyes were puffy and I'd been in a funk... and it showed on my face. My hair was still wet and curly from the shower that I had taken an hour previously to coming to her house, and I hadn't brushed it, so it was going to frizz. Tonight was a girl's night. Tonight was meant to be a night where Alice and I watched old movies, the Tudors, ate ice cream and chocolate-- in excess, mind you-- and complained about our overzealous (and now ex) boyfriends, Jasper and Edward.

"Alice, I really don't... Alice, really, I don't think... Ali, I'm definitely thinking that we should..." her face shifted every time I tried to start a new sentence. First it started out with innocence, then it went to annoyance, then to disbelief, and then to the classic, "Don't even try it" look. "Alice, no." I stressed. The "Don't even try it" look disappeared. It was replaced with humour.

"Bella, yes." Alice said, hopping off the bed and running to her gigantic closet.

"Alice..." I started.

"Oh, shut up your whining and put this on." she pulled out a long, cream dress. It was embroidered with flowers and small reflect-O beads that the majority of the English speaking population call sequins... again, according to Alice. I blanched soundly.

"It-it has a train." I whispered, tugging on the fabric to demonstrate the sheer size of this excess of material. Alice responded by throwing out another dress at me. This one was black, halter, and slinky. I caught it by the ring on the front, and pulled it out to look at it. "Ah, man, Ali... this is even worse!" I whined.

"Shut up your whining and put it on!" Alice shouted from the closet, obviously too distracted by the clothes to come out and yell at me face-to-face. I sighed and sat on the bed, deliberately disobeying her orders. I didn't want to dress up in the little black dress or the wedding dress. I wanted to eat ice cream until I felt like I should be throwing up and cry about Edward. I wanted Alice to sympathize with me, eating the equalivent amount of ice cream and crying about Jasper. Playing dress up and taking pictures was the last thing I wanted to do tonight. Alice walked out of the closet holding a long skirt and long sleeve dress. It was made of thick satin and it was a deep red.

"Here." she handed it to me softly, her eyes kind. "It'll help you get Edward back." she whispered when I didn't take it. I stared at her for a long time, not sure whether or not I should believe her. I opened my mouth to say that it wouldn't, Edward wasn't the shallow type... and no matter if he was, there's no way taking a picture of me in a satin dress would make him want me again. Alice shook her head furiously though, before I could verbalize any of this; pushing the dress into my lap. "Change." her eyes flashed dangerously, so I groaned and stood, heading for the bathroom.

"This dress is too tight!" I whined as I stepped out of the bathroom, a good five minutes later. My cheeks were flushed and I couldn't breathe properly. "And it's too short!" I wailed. "Look." I pointed to my legs. "I haven't shaved in a week! That's so gross!" I cried. Alice growled at me, got up from her bed and went to her dresser. After digging around for a minute, she threw something at my face. "What are these?" I asked, peeling them off my moist skin.

"Nylons. Now put them on and stop complaining!" she ordered. Her face was set and her camera was poised. I groaned again, dragging out the sound childishly and headed for the bathroom again.

It took me ten minutes to get the nylons on. At that point, I was sure I could have rung out the satin dress from my sweat. It was such hard work trying to be sexy. I don't think it's worth it, at any rate. When I finally returned, Alice was perched on the bed, and she was in a cute, green mini dress. Her hair was down and straight, and it looked very chic. I thought of what I had just seen in the mirror and wanted to cry. My hair, thin and flyaway as it was, was standing straight up, full of static, and was also running on two days without being washed. Being sexy was starting to look dead impossible at this point.

"Alice!" I whined. She snapped the camera and ignored me.

"Go sit on the bed and look sexy." she said. I wanted to cry. I wasn't any good at this... looking sexy thing. But Alice wouldn't have any of that. "No!" she almost shouted when I started pouting in a very non-sexy fashion. "This will help us get our men back!"

Edward and I had been best friends as children. When we were four, we both made a pact that we would get married. There was no age-limit, no buffer-if-we-don't-fall-in-love-by-this-point-we'll-get-married... we made the pact to each other that marriage would be in our future. That marriage to each other would be in our future.

Of course, by the time we were in middle school... both of us passionately denied making that pact to our families, who were there when we made it. And who enjoyed teasing us about it. So... we were just friends in middle school. This stuck throughout high school, until the end of first term of senior year. In early November, Edward and I were on his couch watching my second favourite move... Taps. His older brother, Emmett, came into the room and plopped down next to me, leaned into me and whispered in my ear, "When are you and Eddie going to do it?" Assuming he was talking about making dinner (as we often did on Thursday evenings, it being a family/friend tradition of ours) I answered, "After the movie." Emmett, of course, not talking about dinner, started laughing loudly and whistling at his brother in approval. Edward blushed deeply and left the room. It was another five or six minutes before I got what Emmett had meant. At that point, I also blushed deeply and retired to my favourite place in the Cullen house, Edward's room. It was painted a deep green, which matched his eyes nicely, and he had a huge King size bed that I would often lounge on for hours, and stare at the ceiling fan, which rotated lazily above the bed. Edward was already occupying the right side of the bed, so I opted for the central-left part. In all the years we'd been friends, this was just as common as hanging out downstairs, laying in bed together.

"I'm sorry about Emmett." he said after a moment. I kept quiet for a long time. What Emmett had said was reasonable, to an extent, at least, looking at our past. Over the years I had fallen very much in love with Edward, and though I was shy and didn't really want to be the first to admit it (due to pure cowardice, by the way)... I was beginning to realise that we could not go on being as close of friends as we were. We held hands, cooked together, went shopping together, laid in bed together for hours without thinking twice, watched movies together. We had even gotten to the point of snuggling together in public. And chaste, sweet kisses on each others face, neck, jawline, hands... we were practically dating. So after mulling this all over, I leaned up on my elbow and looked at him.

"Why aren't we dating?" I asked him. He looked at me.

"I didn't think you would want to date me." he said. I almost laughed outright, but I knew that might not be best. So instead I smiled and shook my head.

"Of course I would."

We looked at each other for a long time, and for the first time, I became very much aware that we were horizontal and our faces were quite close. I also was hyper-aware of Edward's breath and overall scent. Now, don't get me wrong, I've always known he smelled good... that was my original reason for deciding to marry him when I was four. He was the only one in Sunday school who didn't smell funny. I think at some point, he noticed our proximity and position, because he started staring at my lips. And I did something that I never thought I would do. I kissed him. Without reservation or second thought. Without holding back on anything.

Before we got into the fight over fractional distillation, we were a desperately happy couple going on three months. The fight was a stupid one... what happy couple breaks up over a Chemistry lab? But neither of us were talking and so nothing was being solved. And these pictures, heck, if they'd get him to talk, or get me the courage to talk... why the hell not?

So I posed. Alice was happy with me when I finally resigned to attempting to be sexy. I didn't think it would work... but still. What did I have to lose? I kept that in my mind, and then snapped some of her. Now, she would get Jasper back, who had left her to frolic with Charlotte, the other woman... but as far as Alice was concerned, she had a premonition that he would come back to her. And Alice is usually right about her premonitions.

The next day, Alice loaded the pictures on Facebook, and made sure to tag them so Edward could see the pictures of me from my profile. I changed my profile picture to one that had been taken, it was a photo of me and a sexy hat and the black, slinky dress that she had originally tossed at me. I was holding the hat by the rim and throwing a very, "come hither if you dare" look at the camera. Edward was a disciple to Facebook, always getting on specifically at 10:15 at night and getting offline at 10:41. I wasn't a stalker... he was predictable. So I made sure to be online at these times, so I could talk to him. Whether or not it was the picture taking or not... I should talk to my boyfriend.

At 10:15, on the dot, his name slides up as Online in Facebook chat. As soon as he got on, I IM'ed him.

"Hey Edward. How are you?" I made sure to keep it casual, just in case he was still peeved with me.

"Fine, Love. And you?" I couldn't tell I was in the clear or not. So, instead of jumping around the point like Alice had advised, and like most girls would do, I cut to the quick. I wasn't really in the mood for playing games tonight, anyway.

"Are we still fighting over frac. dist.?"

"Not unless you still want to." he typed back. I was so relieved. "Nice profile pic. Love the hat." he typed. I giggled a little, and decided that I should tell him about the one thing I felt truly sexy in.

"The shoes were better." I said. His response was almost instant.

"Where are the shoes?"

"In the other picture." I had only allowed two to be added to my profile. I didn't like any of the others enough. It was a full eight and a half minutes before there was a response from Edward.

"The shoes are lovely." I was afraid a little at this point. Eight and a half minutes for him to respond with something so... cryptic? So I got offline immediately. And picked up the phone.

"Hello?" his voice was strained when he answered.

"You hate the shoes, don't you?" I accused, but tried my hardest to keep a light tone so he knew I was just kidding around.

"No!" he shouted. "I love the shoes. They're great." I laughed at his earnest voice. "May I ask when you took these pictures?" he said, his voice dropping.

"Uhm..." I stuttered. "Alice's house on Saturday night." I said. "We were watching the Tudors season 2 and she got the idea to take pretty pictures and..." I trailed off. Darn him for dazzling me over the phone! I couldn't keep anything from him when he did that.

"Oh." he laughed quietly. "You know, I do love the new pictures of you, but..." ah man, I thought. There was something to lose. He thought I was a slut! Dang it! I cursed myself mentally.

"But what?" I tried to keep the tears away from my voice and in my eyes.

"But I liked your other profile picture better. The one where you're hugging the Sheldor." he said. I started giggling at refrence to my other boyfriend, Sheldor the Conqueror. Sheldor was a large tree, and he a tree that I got my foot stuck in when I was getting my senior pictures done. So when I got out, I kicked Sheldor, and ended up breaking my foot. So my foot hurt. And I figured that if my foot hurt, Sheldor was probably in pain as well. At least mentally if not physically. So I hugged him. And the photographer took the picture. In the picture, my arms are attempting to wrap around Sheldor's trunk (which was probably a zillion feet wide) and my lips were pressed against the bark and my eyes were squeezed shut like a small child's when they kiss something. I really liked that picture too. It was funny, but I was also a huge fan of nature, and trees were by far my favourite plant... so it seemed fitting that I should kiss a tree.

Since I also liked the picture of Sheldor and myself better, I changed my profile picture back to that one. Edward came over to my house later and we made amends, officially ending our fight over fractional distillation, and promising to never fight about Chemistry homework ever again.

A/N: hehe. I just want to let you guys know that this story is riddled with true situations... I really do have a senior picture of me kissing a tree that I got stuck in... and my friend who is very much like Alice and I did take pictures and whine about our lost boyfriends. Lol. Thanks for reading, skimming, pretending to read, or ignoring completely... love you all no matter if you read or not. It was fun to write though, so I do hope it was fun to read, skim, pretend to read, ignore, etc.! So I think that I'll be sticking with one shots for a majority for now on... full stories just bore me. Even my own stories. So I can't expect any of you to keep interest in them!! Please review, it's always so great to hear from those unfortunate enough to be my readers! lol, jkjk. About the unfortunate part, not the review part. Thought I should straighten that out... hehe.

Until next time as always,
BrokenTopaz