Emily's POV:
"Edward-you horrible son of a rotten smelling fungal black slippery sticky onion crushed in a juicer machine, you-" I started to blabber frantically only to stop and stare at the man standing in front of me, still and erect, tired and sad, seeing him going through everything hard I was going through myself these past four days when I looked up to stare into his blue eyes I missed so much that instantly my own eyes welled up with tears. I wiped my nose again with the back of my shirt to stop myself from breaking out in front of him.
"Edward-you real beetle of-" I started yet again but my body betrayed my tongue and before I knew I shouldn't, I ran towards him and launched myself on him, opening my arms hugging him firmly, my fingers digging into his shirt and my eyes betraying my mind, flowing tears of sadness and reunion.
"Lily I-"
With the force I attacked him, he staggered back a bit, tumbling on the stray book before falling on his back over the bunch of other books on the floor, taking me with him. I lay still over him, my breathing ragged, heartbeat racing infinity, my arms still around him, holding him for dear life. Avoiding eye contact seemed best for me right now.
"You, rotten piece of crap- how dare of you to make me worried over you, I ought to just kill you right now-you bloody-" I kicked him on his knees, balancing my weight over him, still not looking at him.
"Lily, listen-"
"What should I listen to, you filthy rag-" I kicked him yet again, swinging my legs slowly though, as I was aware he looked weak. He let me kick him as much as I wanted to and when I was over it, I laid on top of him, breathing heavily.
It took me a moment to realise where and which position we were in, with me straddling him and him lying beneath me. Instantly, I lurched my weight up, too embarrassed to even look at him, my mind replaying every intimate and passionate moment we shared that night. I removed my arms from around his neck to stand up when I felt a pair of arms wrap around my waist to pull me closer and immediately, I fell again on his hard chest.
He pressed me closer to him, his hands trailed down my waist to my shoulder, pulling me slowly and he buried his face in my hairs.
"Edwar-"
"I missed you, Lily. I missed you so much!"
I was touched by his gentleness and his softness which he had been showing to me so often these days. I closed my eyes and hugged him back and we lay there for a while.
"You've lost weight, Emi!"
I opened my eyes to stare at his face, his eyes still closed and holding me. His face was so close to mine, I could make it's each and every features, his nose, his hair, his cheeks, his eyelashes, his plump lips and before I knew what I was doing, my hand was raised dangerously and my fingers trailed over his cheek before cupping his cheek completely.
Immediately, his eyes snapped open to look at me in shock and surprise. I retracted my hand quickly, my fingers forming into fists before putting them over his chest and stood up abruptly. He also was on his feet in a moment, extending his hand to catch my wrist but I took two steps back, staring at the floor.
"I need to go to the washroom! I'll be quick!"
I rushed quickly, my feet heavy in steps. Quickly locking the washroom's door, I slid down slowly on the floor covering my mouth to stifle a sob in a dark room. Tears flew down my cheek yet again, while I sobbed quietly to myself shaking my head for my own stupidity. I wanted to cry out loud, wanted to scream and kick something in frustration but Edward didn't know I used to cry like that.
He knew me as a strong person, one who never goes down and cries like a bird for getting her happiness stolen and he definitely would never have imagined me in this state, being all weak and vulnerable just because I was in love with him and he couldn't love me back.
He could love me back. I knew that. If I confessed to him right then and there, I knew he would stop seeing Lara, in fact, he would never see her again just to stop me from getting hurt more. He would leave her for real and would gladly lie to me that he loved me back all this time to save our longtime friendship.
He was that concerned about our friendship which means so much to him as it is for me!
But I couldn't have his life and happiness destroyed because of me and my stupid feelings that wouldn't leave me no matter how much I tried. He deserves more and I couldn't have his worth lowered to myself by confessing anything.
That was the biggest of the biggest reasons I never told him about my feelings.
Because I couldn't have him love me for fake! Just to save our friendship!
Wiping my tears, I stood up to turn off the lights of the washroom when I felt something fall on top of me. It felt human-like and I screamed at the top of my lungs, my hands shaking frantically from fear as the said thing entangled in my legs.
"Edward!"
I heard heavy footsteps approaching me.
"Lily! Are you okay? What happened? Did you slip? Should I come over!?"
My voice trembled.
"Edward, I think something fell on top of me!"
"What? How can something-"
"I don't know! It's digging... in my legs and... it’s hard... and... bony... It feels like human though! Oh my god! Help me! It's a corpse! It's a dead rotten corpse!! It doesn't smell though! Edward! Get your fucking arse right here, I'm telling you-" I tried to remove the thing myself but instead it scared me more by poking on my left cheek.
I heard him chuckle from outside.
How could he laugh like that? Was he always a psychopath who loved to kill people for his madness and hid their corpse in his washroom! I read about these in recently published parts of ‘Ten things you don't know about your friend!’ and I remember checking Edward, Jake And Mia's stuff to confirm.
Did I miss something? I really think I should've opened his car and searched it thoroughly using my forensic spray. Maybe I would've found some rotten body parts then.
Was I his next victim, lying all weak on the floor, ready to meet my dark death in such unexpected circumstances?
I heard a key digging into keyhole before the washroom door opened with a creak.
It's a modern wooden door for god's sake Emily, it doesn't open with a creak! And Edward isn't a psychopath, you are! For thinking like this!
I slapped my inner self hard for defending Edward instead of taking my side!
"Lily! Are you okay?"
He turned the lights on and my eyes widened in surprise, embarrassment, humiliation and once again the embarrassment followed by shock.
"What the-" I frantically kicked the object from above me and it crashed loudly on the nearby wall, splitting into pieces... or more like bony parts.
Standing up instantly, I glared at Edward who was still smiling at me, trying not to laugh out hard.
"Why the hell do you have a human skeleton in your washroom!? Don't tell me you ate the meat and was going to throw the rest outside when you heard me coming in and locked you and your.." I looked at the skeleton." your human leftover in my library!"
He crossed hands in front of his chest in amusement, his muscles all flexing from his white shirt, a beautiful faint but tired smile playing on his lips.
"On the contrary, in my defence, I must tell you it was your birthday gift, though it doesn't look like one!"
I believed him though how much he sounded scary and stupid.
"You were going to gift me bones on my birthday?! Why is that? Did I upset you that much that you started comparing me to a dog!"
He saw through my facade, his lips curling upwards in a smile and for a moment I thought everything was okay between us once again.
"You're a doctor Lily so I thought you might need help with this thing! I hope you like your belated birthday gift!"
"I do. I like this human skeleton as my gift no matter how much people think I have joined armies with nomads and Bushmen and am next in line to be their leader!"
He chuckled and left me to do my chore while he said he would wait for me in his office. I washed my face, cleaning every corner of it, splashed some of the water inside my eyes and slapped my cheeks gently to alert myself up.
"Wake up Emily! You got to talk to him!" I nodded to myself in my reflection and went outside to see him sitting on a couch, staring at the lunchbox I prepared for him waking early in the morning and wrapped it too meticulously like a real housewife!
"It's your lunch if you must know! I'll lay it for you to eat! Wait there!"I opened the box and started to assemble everything I made on a large table in front of his couch.
"But you said, you wanted to talk!"
"Well, I do. I wanted to talk about your nutrition!"
I opened the salad box, sprinkled salt over it and tasted it to make sure it wasn't too salty. "Mm. It tastes right. Here! Eat it!" I slid down my handmade food in front of me while he stared at the food, then at me and back again at the food.
"But I thought you wanted to discuss what we did that-"
I raised my hand, waving at him.
"Nah. We have a lot of time at home to discuss all those stuff. First, you eat! I think I made this soup little spicy, will it be okay for you? Wait, where did I put sugar bottle? I'm sure I put it in this bag," I said and searched my bag again but didn't find it. "Oh man, it's a trouble, I needed to add this in curd otherwise this-"
"Emi, I'll eat everything you made for me. Now just give it to me!"
I nodded happily and he took his spoon to dig in the vegetable soup I had made for him but his eyes furrowed when he saw broccoli sprawled proudly over his favourite spaghetti and his not-so-favourite pie stuffed with spinach.
"I don't eat broccoli, Emi. You know that and what's with this pie? It's stuffed with grasses and-" he looked up at me and stopped speaking.
I glared at him my infamous glare of Eat-It-Before-I-Stuff-It-In-Your-Body-From-Down-Your-Ass!
He gulped in disguised fear.
"In fact, I'll disclose you happily my little secret Emi, that I own a broccoli tree outside my farmhouse and recently I bought a beautiful spinach garden to quench my thirst of eating spinach! Man, I love these two vegetables!" he continued to eat all of them, without looking at me.
My biology ghost kicked me hard on my butt to tell him how stupidly he explained my botany but I killed and buried the ghost in his office, patting its imaginary grave with my shoes.
"It's for your health, Eddie! See how much you've grown weak. You didn't even attend any meeting, did you? That's why I was telling you all this time-"
I stopped blabbering hearing a faint sound of 'click' and my head snapped immediately to see him holding his phone in his hand, taking my picture.
"Hey, that's-"
"A face that is worried for me!" he showed me his phone, tilting it to my side before swiping to show another picture of me,"And a face which misses me so much!" he swiped another, "A face which cares for me so much"
I snatched his phone from his hand fast and opened his gallery to see a folder ‘My Lily’ filled with all types of faces I was capable of making. Immediately blush rose to my cheeks to see he indeed kept my photos in his phone and my chest swelled up in pride to see his phone wallpaper consisted of our picture at the beach on our honeymoon to Mauritius.
And not the one with Lara!
"When the hell did you take so much of my faces-" I looked up to see him looking down, playing with the spoon on his food.
I knew what he was thinking.
"Edwa-"
"But I hurt you!"
He looked up and I saw his eyes filled with regret, remorse and sadness.
The three expressions I never wanted him to have after he gave me the most amazing night of my life!
"But Edwar-"
"I hurt you so bad, Lily! I'm a villain who doesn't deserve someone like you as my best friend. I should be beaten up so badly-"
"Edward! Will you listen to me first?"
"No, Lily... don't take my side. I'm a loser who can't even protect you from me myself-"
"Listen to me, Eddie!"
"And all this time I was protecting you from all those men when a real beast was lurking in my body all along-"
"Edward!" I yelled at him.
"Look at me. Here! Look at my whole self! Do I look like you hurt me? Do I?! Am I that weak to you that you think I can't even protect myself if I want to? Do you think whatever happened between us two that night was only your fault?!"
"But Emi-"
"No. It wasn't your fault alone! It was my fault as well. But what could we do anyway? We were two people with the opposite sex, clinging to each other for our facade, touched each other to fool someone and before we realised what we were doing, things got out of our hands. So it isn't anyone's fault. I understand it pretty well!"
"But Lily I used you for my-"
"No. You didn't, Eddie! It was just the heat of the moment. Nothing else!"
"But you're my best friend and I can't have you under me for that stupid scientific term!"
"I don't know. Okay. I took it my way and my way doesn't involve any of us being at fault or anything we did as a mistake!"
I really didn't want to cry out loudly in front of him for the pain which was shooting right through my injured heart every time I called it ‘fault’ when it seemed so much real for me.
"But Lily, I hurt you and no fact or reason you state can stop me from hating it or forgiving myself for that! I'm gonna repeat it my whole life!"
I put my hand on his shoulder to calm him down.
"Edward, there is only one thing you can do to hurt me and you know what that is?!"
He looked up at me, his eyes red from all that emotions and for a moment I thought he would cry like a child in front of me.
"What is that?"
"By behaving like this. Like I never knew you from the beginning, like I never knew if you were a beast or a villain… Like I never knew you intended to hurt me or not. Like I never knew you cared for me or not!"
