"Shenanigans"

Bella's POV

I pulled the last pan of cookies out of the oven just in time, inhaling deeply the wonderful smell of freshly baked gingerbread. I realized that it was probably extremely eccentric of me to be baking Christmas cookies what with it only being the beginning of August, but I couldn't help myself. Renee had bought a cookbook entitled "500 Cookie Recipes" in a short-lived attempt at baking. According to the letter that was hastily stuffed between the first few pages, she had messed up the first recipe so badly that even their dog wouldn't go near the basic chocolate chip batch. She'd mailed it to me after deciding that maybe baking wasn't going to be a time-consuming hobby in her near future.

The familiar smell of the spices calmed my nerves and helped me to shake off the horrible monday I had had at the company. Nothing specifically bad had happened, so to speak. I had just had a difficult time concentrating on my work and, as a result, had gotten very little done. As we were on a deadline to finish editting a certain number of pages each week, this only made my workload larger for the next four days. Sighing as I transferred the cookies to a light green platter, I tried to be optimistic about doing my work at home tomorrow.

Since I was a lower-level editor for the firm, I still had to log a certain number of office days per week depending on our workload. Thankfully, though, I had proven myself to be enough of a self-motivator to my boss that he had only insisted that I come into the office twice a week. The rest of the workweek, I could take my work anywhere I wanted. This meant that the book I was currently editing could come with me to the park, to a coffee shop, or to the public library. Probably, though, given that tomorrow was supposed to bring a thunderstorm that shouldn't let up until evening, I would spend the majority of my time cuddled up in the armchair in the living room with a blanket and an endless supply of coffee and gingerbread cookies.

"Hello, ALL!" Alice yelled, bursting through the door with enough energy for an entire cheerleading squad. She hung her keys up and bounced into the kitchen. "Why does it smell like Christmas in here?" She grabbed a cookie off of the platter before I could answer and ran back up the stairs to her room.

All I could do was stand there, shaking my head. I had no idea how she managed to go an entire workday, on a Monday especially, and still come home like that. She was banging around in her room for a minute or two before she skipped back into the main room. "You never anwered my question, Bella. And the cookies are really good."

"Renee tried her hand at cooking and it didn't go over so well so she sent me the cookbook," I grinned, grabbing a couple more cookies and joining her on the couch. Before I could even get settled, though, she had shot up like a bullet and was off again.

"AAA-Lice! How am I supposed to relax when you're doing that? Come sit!" I yelled up at her, exasperated.

"I'll be out in a minute! I just remembered something!"

Distant rustlings sounded from her room and I suddenly felt a weight in the pit of my stomach. I had lived with Alice and Rosalie for five years (since sophomore year of college) and, if there is one thing I've learned in that time, it is the distant sound of a shopping bag being opened. My mouth went dry and I scanned the room to see what could be done about the situation. I saw all of the cookie ingredients lined up on the counter. Maybe if I was covered in flour she wouldn't make me try clothes on? She wouldn't want to get the new shirt or dress or torture device dirty...

Then I realized something marvelous. I looked down, seeing that I kind of was already covered in flour. I'd have to take a shower and that could take a really long time if I wanted it to. Jumping up with as much energy as my roommate just had, I darted past her room and into mine, slamming the door behind me and locking it. I breathed a sigh, feeling safe with a securely shut door between me and-

"Be-lla!" Alice sang, her voice floating out of her room. I swear that she could be in a horror movie with that sing-song voice. I can just picture myself screaming and sprinting down some dark passageway with Alice twirling along behind me, singing my name and holding a shopping bag.

"Uh... I'm getting in the shower!" I yelled back. "Covered in cookie dough and stuff..." I quickly stripped down to my underwear and flung my clothes across the room. If I was in a towel, she couldn't very well ask me to get back into dirty stuff in order to try on whatever it was she had.

She was knocking on the door and it startled me so badly that I jumped and knocked half the stuff on top of my desk to the floor. "Crap!" I yelled, diving for the silver picture frame that I had gotten for my last birthday. In it was a picture of Rosalie, Alice, and me all piled on a couch and laughing. Alice's mother had taken it when we all went to visit her family for Christmas two years ago and it was my favorite photo of the three of us.

I managed to save the picture frame at the expense of a badly bruised elbow, which had just slammed into the wall. I moaned out and clutched my elbow. The door was flung open by Alice at this moment and she stepped triumphantly into the room weilding a pink store bag and a bobby pin. "HA!" She yelled, looking around for me.

"How did you DO that?" I called from the floor, frustrated that locks no longer restrained the clearly unstoppable force that was Alice Brandon.

She turned and looked at me, her eyebrows raising as she took in the scene. I was lying on my back in nothing but my underwear in the middle of the pile of lotion bottles, jewelry, stationary, magazines, and papers that had not been as fortunately rescued as the silver picture frame. She started giggling as she clasped my hand and helped me up. "What the hell are you doing, Bella?"

I rolled my eyes. After all the time we have spent together and as clumsy as I am, she shouldn't have been surprised to barge into my room and find me on fire, let alone sprawled out on the floor. "I tripped. Is that so hard to believe?"

"I guess not. On the ground is as likely a spot for you as any other," She looked me up and down. "God, Bella, we need to get you some new underwear. Who wears plain cotton anymore?"

"I do," I said defensively. "When you're sitting at a desk all day editing, the last thing you want to have to worry about is Indian Underwear."

Alice cocked her head to the side. "What is Indian Underwear? Is that a brand name? Do they market in the United States?"

I blushed. "No. It's just something Renee used to say. Don't worry about it."

"Oh, no you don't," Alice pursued. "What is it? Maybe It'd be good for my store."

Alice had gotten the best possible start right out of college. As a Fashion Merchandising and Business Management double-major, she had been hoping to one day open her own boutique. In her second semester senior year, she had made a connection with an older woman who was looking to make an investment with the money she had received from a nasty divorce settlement. After Alice pitched the store idea, the woman fell in love with it. Two years later, they were both equal partners in a very chic little shop named Royale.

"Indian Underwear isn't a brand name, Alice. It's just a type of underwear," I said evasively. "And I'm absolutely positive that you have tons and tons of it in your shop."

"What kind is it?" She insisted.

"Don't worry about it," I said, retreating to the shower and shutting the bathroom door behind me. I turned on the water quickly, waiting for the barrage of questions from Alice who refused to leave anything alone. After a few minutes of waiting, I was surprised when she didn't knock down the door. I hadn't heard a peep out of her and I had walked away without answering her question. Since when did that happen?

I stepped into the shower, contemplating. Maybe she realized it made me uncomfortable and decided to just grow up and leave it alone? After all, we were out of college. I relaxed as the hot water hit me, soothing the ache in my shoulders which had been tense all afternoon. Shampooing and conditioning my hair in peace, I smiled at the relaxing alone time, savoring the fact that I'd temporarily escaped the clutches of my crazy roommate. It was relieving to know that Alice seemed to have some sense of when to stop pestering me about stupid things that didn't really matt-

"AAARRRG!" I screamed, scrambling away from the jet of water that had suddenly turned ice cold. Slipping, I grabbed hold of the shower curtain and ripped the whole damn thing down in my attempt to steady myself. Throwing it to the ground, I shut the water off and stepped out, grabbing my robe.

"ALICE!" I yelled as loudly as possible. "YOU WAIT UNTIL I GET BACK DOWN THERE!" I slid into my blue silk robe that Rosalie had given me one Christmas, flipped my dripping hair up into a clip, and stomped down into the living room.

Alice was sitting on the couch with a bag of popcorn, watching reruns of Gilmore Girls. The washing machine and the dishwasher were both running and the kitchen taps were spitting out blazing hot water, judging from the steam that was rising from both sinks. "What the hell are you doing?" I ground out.

She turned to look at me. "What's Indian Underwear?"

"Seriously?! You couldn't have waited until I got out of the shower to ask this question?" I fumed, going over to the sink and turning off the faucets.

She looked at me deadpan. "How long have we know each other?"

"Fine. You don't like to wait. But, you know what? Just for that, I'm not going to tell you until after I get dressed. HA!" I turned on my heel and stomped back up to my room, grateful that I had finished rinsing out my hair before the attack.

I opened the top drawer of my dresser and stopped dead in my tracks, staring at the bare wooden insides of the completely empty drawer. "ALICE!" I roared. "WHERE IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY IS MY UNDERWEAR?!"

"BELLA!" She yelled back, mocking me. "WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY IS INDIAN UNDERWEAR?"

I dashed back out to the living room, standing in between her and the television. "Give me back my underwear," I said through clenched teeth.

"Answer my question," she responded patiently, taking another handful of popcorn.

I shrugged my shoulders in defeat, knowing that I'd be going commando until I told her. "Fine." I blushed. "You know how um... indians are really good at creeping up on you?"

Alice frowned. "Yes," she said warily, not entirely sure where I was going with this.

"Well... Indian underwear kinda does the same thing," I said, watching the confused look on her face. "You know... it creeps up on you," I finished lamely.

Alice took one more split second, registering what I just said before she burst into laughter. The popcorn bowl was forgotten on the coffee table as she gasped for air. "In- Indian ... Creeping... there's creeping!" She spat out, laughing too hard to form a coherent sentence.

"Where's my underwear?" I yelled over her, frustrated.

She laughed out something I could barely decipher but I headed to her room, having heard the word 'hatbox' and the word 'bed' between all of the wheezing.

Edward's POV

"That's the last of it," Emmett called, dropping the final box to the ground right next to the dozens of others that we had just unloaded from the moving van.

I looked around at the moving carnage, trying to figure out where to start first. Maybe if we divided all of the boxes up based on what room they were supposed to go in? Then at least we wouldn't have all of them in the living room, making it impossible to move more than a few steps inside the door before having to weave through the labryinth of things that we either wanted or that our parents had insisted we needed.

Glancing from box to box, I realized with frustration that only about five of them- out of probably fifty- were actually labelled. "How are we going to be able to tell the difference from one to the next?" I asked, looking pointedly from Jasper to Emmett and back again. "None of them are labelled."

"That's easy, dude," said Emmett slowly. "You open each one up and look to see what's inside."

"Thanks, jackass," I spat. "Since you seem to have a game plan down, why don't you open all of these up and figure out what's in them while Jasper and I go return the moving van before we have to pay for it for another day."

Jasper laughed, grabbing his car keys off of the counter and following me out the door, leaving Emmett looking annoyed. I rolled my eyes at that. He deserved it. Plus the fact, it wasn't exactly like I'd left him to take care of a quantum physics problem. He'd be opening boxes. A monkey could do that.

"Do you want to follow me?" I asked Jasper, climbing into the huge U-haul van.

"I just hope I can keep up with you, Speed Racer," Jasper snickered.

I made a face. "I don't think it's going to be an issue in this monstrosity." I stuck the key in the ignition and revved the engine, which immediately started whining. Chugging slowly down the street, I could almost hear Jasper laughing at me. I was just approaching the turn-off to the main road when a red BMW zoomed in front of me, cutting me off in an attempt to make it back into the neighborhood. Slamming on my brakes, I punched the horn, cursing at the idiot driver who clearly couldn't see that my van was the more dangerous of the two vehicles. Muttering about Napoleon Complexes, I headed off in the direction of the truck rental.

Gratefully climbing out of the van and handing over the keys to the guy behind the counter, I quickly settled the bill and jogged back out to Jasper's waiting car in a supremely bad mood. Why the hell hadn't someone invented a better way to get large quantities of things from one place to another for minimum expense? It was absolutely ridiculous that perfectly respectable people should be subjected to driving such a humiliating pile of junk across town.

Jasper had a smirk on his face as I buckled my seat belt. I shot him a warning look. "Just drive the car, man. I don't ever want to have to think about that stupid truck again." He chuckled but did as I asked and sped out of the parking lot quickly, for which I was grateful.

"So how do you want to get everything unpacked once we know what's in all of the boxes?" Jasper asked practically, trying to distract me.

I sighed. "It'd probably be easier to get the essentials unpacked first. We're going to need all the kitchen things out so that we can eat. And we're going to need to get out all of our sheets and stuff unless we want to sleep without them."

Jasper nodded. "Makes sense. Do you want to divide the boxes up so that we don't have an army of them to climb over?"

"I was thinking the same thing," I agreed.

Jasper, Emmett, and I had finally gotten all of our stuff together and all of the moving arangements taken care of. It had been a long time coming, since we all wanted to make sure that we each had a steady job lined up before moving to Seattle, but everything finally fell into place by the beginning of July. The last thing we needed and which we straightened out with relatively little pain was our living situation. Jasper's uncle lived about an hour outside of town and had managed to find us an incredibly affordable little house which was just close enough to the interstate to make the commute into the city reasonable.

The ride back was much better since we were going faster than twenty-five miles an hour and Jasper had good music. We pulled into the driveway shortly thereafter and made our way up to the front door. Emmett cussing loudly sounded through and we grinned at one another, prepared to see him standing in the middle of the whole mess in complete frustration.

Strolling in casually, I was about to make a wisecrack at his predicament when I stopped short. Jasper practically ran into me. "Hey, man, what are you-" His voice cut off as he took in the scene in front of us.

A solid wall of boxes was erected neatly from the floor to about a foot from the ceiling, sectioning off the entire back half of the living room. A small opening at one end, clearly intended to be the entrance, allowed access to the other side of the fort. Coming from the far side of the wall was the sound of Emmett yelling at the top of his lungs. "WHAT the HELL is your problem!" He screamed. "I didn't want you to- NO! Go OVER! OVER! DAMN IT!"

Jasper and I scrambled through the opening to see who he was yelling at. Emmett was in the far corner of the room with his back to us. He was sitting on the floor staring up at the huge flat-screen TV that we had bought together our senior year of college. Displayed on the screen was the final scores of a very badly played round of Call of Duty on the X Box. We watched as Emmett flung the controller down in disgust.

"E-HEM!" Jasper said, causing Emmett to practically jump out of his skin.

"God, Jasper. Scare me to death, why don't you?" He grinned. "Wanna play me?"

"Weren't you supposed to be doing something productive?" I asked scathingly.

He shrugged with a huge smile plastered on his face. "Beating your high scores seems pretty productive to me."

"Judging from the scores of your last game I'd say you have a long way to go," Jasper observed, watching Emmett scowl.

The doorbell sounded out, however, and our idiot roommate was immediately cheered up. "PIZZA!" he yelled happily, sprinting past us and sliding out the small passageway with more agility than I could have imagined possible for someone as big as he is.

We heard the door open and followed quickly, watching as Emmett politely took the three large pizzas and paid the delivery guy. After he shut the door, he turned around. "Getting food is pretty productive," he shot over his shoulder, carrying dinner around and into the kitchen. "I got one for each of us."