He startled me by laughing. I glared up at him. He was laughing, but his eyes were fierce, staring ahead at the road.
"Tricked him how?" He asked without looking at me.
"I flirted with him. Made him an offer. I don't really feel comfortable talking to you about this, Fredward."
"I'd like to have seen that." He chuckled darkly. "And you accused me of razzle-dazzling people—poor Squaw Black."
I blushed and looked out my window into the night.
"What did you do then?" he asked after a minute, during which his eyes had widened and he had been rubbing his palms together rapidly.
"I did some research on the World Wide Web. You know, HotBot, Web Sights, and shit like that."
"And did that convince you?" His voice sounded barely interested. But his hands were clamped hard onto the steering wheel.
"No. Nothing fit. Most of it was kind of silly. And then... " I stopped.
"What?"
"Well, I got really upset with myself for being so dumb, and I went out in the woods to pout. And then, at that point, as I was sitting there in the damp forest with all of its green dampness touching me from every angle, I decided it didn't matter."
"It didn't matter?" His tone made me look up—I had finally broken through his carefully composed face. His face was incredulous and incredible, with just a hint of the anger I'd feared.
"No," I said softly, about to drop a fat one on him. "It doesn't matter to me what you are."
A hard, mocking edge entered his voice. "You don't care if I'm... a monster? If I'm not... human?"
"I don't care."
"'Cause I'm not human, Bella. And I am a monster." He was silent, staring straight ahead. His face was bleak and cold. He wasn't smirking.
203. Like Xzibit hot-dogging on a car.