Hateful Words

[Jody]

Story Title: Hateful Words

Type of story: One-Shot

Main characters: Belle, Aden

BTTB Rating: G/T

Genre: Drama

Spoilers: No

Warnings: No

Summary: A conversation following Aden telling Belle that the sight of her makes him sick.

As much as I love the way Belle doesn't get petty and is always there when Aden needs her. I would love if she could be there for him but still stand up for herself once in a while. This comes from me being a Belle fan before an Aden/Adelle fan.

After coming back from the development site Belle went down to the beach and just sat on the sand for hours. She didn’t know what else to do. Usually, taking out her camera and taking pictures would help her feel better about things, but today she knew it wouldn’t be any good. She couldn’t help but think back to the last three years of her life and wonder why it is that she always found herself feeling the most towards guys who have no problem hurting her. Did she have a neon sign on her forehead saying ‘take out your anger and frustrations on me, I can take it"? Interrupting her from the thoughts she felt someone come up behind her. Turning around to see who it was, she realized it was the same person responsible for her depressing thoughts.

“Can I sit?” Aden asked, hoping she would let him. He had been torturing himself over what he had said to her. And he wouldn’t be shocked if she didn’t want to see him again.

“No! I make you sick just looking at me, remember?” Belle replied. She wasn’t in the mood to deal with him right now.

“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to say that.”

“You never mean it.” That’s the problem.

“Can’t we just talk?” He asked, although from the way she was behaving he doubted the answer would be yes.

“No we can’t. I don’t want to talk. I can’t. And whether you believe it or not sometimes things get to be about what I want. Oh, but I forgot - in our relationship it’s never about me, or my feelings, it’s just yours and how everything effects you. There is no room in it to consider that things hurt me has well. I’m tired, I’m tired of always forgiving you and acting like the things you say don’t hurt like hell." She said, thinking why she couldn’t just have a moment’s peace. Would that really be too much to ask for?

Aden didn’t know what to say. He knew he hurt her but he hadn’t realized how much it affected her. She always understood and he thought if he apologized she would, now as well. He tried to find a way to explain himself but he was struggling to find a way to explain treating her the way he did - yet again.

“Belle, I’m sorry. It’s just that sometimes I can’t stop myself from saying these things. And I hate myself for it. It’s just that when I find myself in certain positions suddenly…”

She cut him off. “You feel like you’re giving away too much and I’m going to find out about your past or that I won’t want you... then turning around and hurting me to protect yourself from being rejected becomes like a reflex action to you. I get it. And the worse part is I understand why you do it. I understand how hard it must be opening up about your past and how afraid you are of being rejected over it. So when you called me a skank…” Belle finished for him. She wasn’t in the mood for his excuses.

“Belle!” He said trying to stop her. He hadn’t thought about that incident in a while. But he knew bringing it up wasn’t going to help them with today’s problem.

She cut him off yet again. She was tired of being interrupted. “Let me finish. You get to scream or talk all the time. Let me have this one time. When you told me about your past, I forgave you for it. I understood, and I don’t regret that. It’s just that, for that time before I knew, you made me feel horrible about myself thinking you really meant that. Before you, two of my previous boyfriends had called me the same name when they were mad. In the past, I’ve always wondered if everyone in town thought that of me and for you to say it made me like maybe they do. But at the end of the day, once I found out why you said it, I forgave you because I could understand things better.”

She paused to catch her breath. She knew, from the look in his eyes that he was listening and it felt good to finally be heard.

She continued when she realized he wasn’t going to interrupt her. “Aden, when you called me a skank, as horrible as it was, you had a reason. When you refused to see reason and let me explain myself after I kept your fathers drinking a secret, you had a reason. Or every other time you snapped at me. But having a good reason doesn’t make the things hurt any less.”

“I know.” What else could he say?

She ignored his interruption. Nothing was going to stop her from saying what she had been holding back for so long. “But this time, what you said was uncalled for. You hurt me for no other reason than that things weren’t going your way. When you came back from the clinic you gave me that whole speech about how you were not going to cause trouble and that you understand my reasons for moving on. But the second you came back to work you were back to making me feel guilty for not being able to be with you. You’re acting as if I’m a horrible person for not being with you. I’m sorry things aren’t the way you want it to be. But considering what you did you shouldn’t expect it to be. This time you made me feel bad for the hell of it. Just to make yourself feel better. And that I can’t and won’t understand.”

Once she started she couldn’t bring herself to stop. And she didn’t want to. She knew she could be hurting his feelings. But for once, when it came to him, she was going to put herself first.

“The way you’ve been acting lately. I’m actually relieved were not together. Know that’s probably hard to imagine with me still stalking you with my camera, but that’s, just because I don’t want to see myself with you doesn’t mean I don’t still miss you terribly. Ever since you came home you have been avoiding dealing with everything you did. You’ve been taking the easy way out, ditching school because you didn’t want to deal with it, and not making an effort to make things right. Did you know what a mess Rachel and Tony’s life is now? It all started because you holding her there made him think that she ran away. Yes it’s his fault to but you played a part in it. Now that you realize what you did was wrong did you try to contact your dad and let him know. I know it would be hard but have you at least tried to do anything to make up for what you did? No, you’re to busy planning camping trips, ditching school to avoid things, and hanging around the surf club having fun. That sounds a lot something the old Aden would have done - not the one who was trying getting his life on track and being a better person. And the boy you used to be is not the one I fell in love with.”

He was shocked and hurt by her words but knew he deserved it. The truth was he hadn’t liked the person he was behaving like himself at the moment, too. For a second time in this conversation he was at a loss for words to explain himself.

“I know, it’s just I’ve always found it easier to lash out at people, and to avoid the hard stuff. Pretending things are okay and not dealing with it is the way I’ve always been...”

When will he stop with the excuses? By now Belle was really getting tired of it. “That’s not an excuse anymore Aden. You have Morag, Nicole even if, so far, she’s done nothing but be an enabler to you - she’s still a friend, and most importantly Roman. You have people in your life that care now. So you don’t have to deal with stuff the way you used to. I know it’s probably a hard habit to break but it’s time you start trying to. You can’t keep using it has an excuse.”

After that they both just sat in silence for a few minutes. Aden taking in everything she had said and feeling really guilty for knowing he caused her to feel this bad when shes done nothing but support him. And Belle feeling relieved that she finally got say what she felt without holding back for the sake of his feelings. After a while Aden finally broke the silence.

“Yeah, I don’t know what to say, Belle.” He really didn’t know what to say to make her happy. It seems like everything he came up with so far was the wrong thing.

“Try nothing. It’s easier for you to not hurt anyone that way.” She quipped. But he noticed a small smile on her face. It wasn’t a happy one, by any means, but it showed that she was trying to lighten the mood. She wasn’t as worked up as before.

“I should probably give that a go.” He replied. He didn’t want to make her upset if she was over the serious stuff. But it wasn’t enough. He needed her to understand how sorry he was. He continued. “Belle, I am sorry, for everything. Know it probably doesn’t mean much to you right now but I am.” He hoped it would be enough. He knew it wouldn’t, though.

She looked straight at him and could see how sorry he was but it just wasn’t enough. She wasn’t angry anymore but she was still hurt. She would need more time. She stood up to leave. “I should go. I’m glad we talked. It feels so much better when I get to do the yelling.” She said. This time she smiled properly at him.

“Are we alright?” He asked. The smart thing to do after seeing her smile would be to leave things as they were. But he’s never been known to do the smart thing when it came to dealing with the emotional stuff.

“Right now we aren’t, but considering my ability to constantly forgive you for everything, in time we will be.” She replied. And turned to leave.

Belle walked away from him feeling better than she had in a long time. She was glad they had this talk. It felt good to express how she felt without having to watch what she says. She did love him. She didn’t think that she had ever loved anyone as much. And still hoped one day there would be a chance for them to be together again but for today she was glad to have things the way they were. Well except for being with Angelo, she really needed to end that relationship. What was she thinking? She would have thought that she would have learnt her lesson after the Drew/Lucas fiasco. But hey, she was human. She makes mistakes. Now that she has mastered the ability of making them maybe next she could work on mastering the ability to learn from them. She wasn’t going to dwell on that though. She’s 19 and has her whole life ahead of her to learn how to make good decisions. And today she made positive step towards that.

After a while she was still feeling happy with herself. So she took out her camera and headed out back to the beach take some landscape shots. She saw Aden still sitting in the same spot, looking incredibly handsome, but chose to focus the lens on the water instead. See - improvement already.

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