Disclaimer – Disney owns Lizzie McGuire

A/N - I've had this idea for awhile but it wasn't until I finally saw the movie, that I could actually see this plot in my head in order to write it. Thanks to Christylee for beta and editing this.

Part 1 – Rome

It was early in the morning when David woke from a restless sleep. What the hell am I doing? he asked himself as he stared up at the ceiling. After a few minutes, realizing he wasn't going to fall back asleep, David carefully slipped out of bed, not wanting to disturb the woman next to him. Pausing for a moment, he looked down and a small smile spread across his face as he watched her, curled up on the other side of the bed. Sighing softly, he tucked the covers back around her. Just 'cause I can't sleep, doesn't mean she can't, he thought before gently kissing her forehead and stroking her soft brown hair.

After hunting around for a moment, he found his boxers and dress pants that he had been wearing earlier that evening. Putting them back on, he simply buttoned the pants, not bothering with the belt. Trying to be quiet, David walked across the room towards the large glass windows that lead out onto a balcony. Pausing only briefly to grab a dress shirt and throwing it on, he walked outside, carefully shutting the doors behind him.

Standing out on the balcony, ignoring the chill biting his bare skin, he looked out at the incredible view of the Mediterranean Sea. Watching the moonlight reflect across it, David tried to make sense of everything that happened in the past three months. It's snowing in New York and here, there's not a cloud in the sky.

Stuffing his hands in his pockets, David took a deep breath and slowly let it out. How did I get here? One moment, I was studying for finals, the next, I'm back in Italy, sharing a bed with a gorgeous woman. He chuckled softly as he repeated that to himself.

She had just appeared at his door one day; no warning, she was just suddenly there. At first she had just said she was in town on business, but after a few days, she had admitted she was really there because she missed him. To say that admission threw him for a loop was an understatement.

Their first meeting had only lasted a few hours, at most, and then they were too busy with trying to stop Paolo. Then about a year later, she had come to visit Lizzie in Hill Ridge. During that two week visit, most of the time Lizzie was busy with something, and David was stuck showing her around. At first he felt like he was stuck babysitting, but the more time they spent together, the more they enjoyed themselves. By the time she left, the two had become friends.

She would come back again, senior year, and the two picked up where they had left off. While things stayed friendly, David could almost swear, at times, she was flirting with him. A simple touch, some banter, or a suggestive comment. But he had himself convinced that she was way out of his league, and that he was just imagining it. When she left, she kissed everyone on both cheeks, but with David she lingered a bit. It made him go red but again he deluded himself into thinking it was nothing.

They traded emails, and even rare phone calls whenever she was in the States, but he continued to think of their relationship as nothing other than friendship. Even if he was attracted to her.

He was in the middle of studying for his finals at NYU, around the end of November, when she showed up in his life again. This time sending his world on it's ear.

So lost in his memories, David didn't hear the doors behind him open and the person join him on the balcony.

He jumped a little as a pair of arms slid around him and wrapped themselves around his waist, and a soft, accented voice practically purred in his ear, "David. What are you doing out here?"

Every time she said his name like that, he couldn't keep that stupid, goofy grin off his face. Relaxing into her embrace, "Couldn't sleep, you?" he answered as he removed his hands from his pockets and rubbed them up and down her forearms.

"I rolled over and you were not there," she whispered against the back of his neck. "I do not like that," she teased.

David chuckled softly, "I'm sorry, Bella."

"You better be," she said with a small giggle, and then asked him, "What were you thinking about?"

David's grin widened, "Chinese food," he said sarcastically. With her lips pressed against his skin, he could feel her smile and knew she understood.

A few days into her visit they had gone out for Chinese, and while opening the fortune cookies at the end of dinner, she had told him she lied about being here because of business and she was really only here to see him, and not because she simply missed his friendship. Caught so off guard, if Isabella had told him to jump off a bridge, he probably would have. Luckily, she had only taken him to bed.

Whenever he could find the free time in between studying, he would go out with Isabella and he enjoyed being a couple with her, and not just cause of their physical relationship. While she did have an uncanny likeness to his first love, it was the differences between Isabella and Lizzie that really drew him in. He would often comment to himself that she resembled Lizzie but there was a bit of Miranda mixed in there too. Isabella was a lot more confident about herself than Lizzie was. She was also very aware of the world. While she was interested in entertainment gossip, much like Lizzie and Miranda, she could also talk about history, politics, and a variety of other subjects. They spent a lot of time talking, challenging each other's views.

Then a few days before she was originally supposed to leave, she dropped another bomb on him, she asked him to go back with her. In one of his rare moments, David acted impulsively and said yes. At the moment, there wasn't much to think about. Unfortunately, not everyone agreed with that.

She had stayed, delaying her trip home, and gone back to Hill Ridge with him so he could tell everyone what he was going to do. His parents hit the roof; they were not happy, to say the least, that he was going to be leaving school and much less going to Europe with a girl he had only started seeing. They were convinced that not only was he too young to do something like this, but if he left school, he wouldn't go back. He tried to convince them he was only taking some time off, a semester or two at most, but they wouldn't listen.

Lizzie, who he had barely talked to in the past year, suddenly became annoyingly possessive again, like she always did when another girl came between David and her. Ignoring the fact they hadn't dated since junior year. They got into a large argument and were currently not even talking to each other.

This all hurt him; he felt like the closest people to him were all turning their backs on him.

In all the questioning of his sanity, when he was seriously doubting everything, there had been one person who didn't make him feel like he was being a moron and that he wasn't throwing away years of preparation.

When he talked to Miranda, she had given him a sarcastic grin and told him, You only live once.

After Christmas, and the hundredth fight about Isabella and Europe with his parents, David just packed and left. For once, he followed his heart instead of his mind. If everything blew up in his face, then so be it, but he had to live his own life and make his own mistakes.

It'd had now been a little over a month since he left, and while he missed his family and friends, he had to admit it had been great. While staying at Isabella's villa, a little ways outside Rome, she had taken him all over the place, to the more off the beat places he wouldn't normally have gone to, much less found. But slowly, and annoyingly, all the questions and doubts everyone had brought up, crept into his mind. Not being able to answer them was driving him crazy, and scaring him.

Then tonight they had attended a party thrown for Isabella's birthday. He suddenly felt like a very small fish in a huge ocean. Everyone looked down at him, judging him, and even though he couldn't understand much of what they said, he knew it wasn't good. While he didn't really care what they said, it did make him think that maybe Isabella could feel the same way. That helped intensify his doubts, and now, he couldn't stop worrying about it.

This was not lost on Isabella, who had sensed something was bothering him, and it made her worry. Tightening her hold his waist, "David?"

Turning around, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and looked into her big, brown eyes. "Why are you wasting your time with me? You're so out of my league."

"League?"

David tried to figure out how to explain the mess inside his head, "I don't fit in here. Look at your past boyfriends, I can't even compare to them. They had money, looks, influence. Hell, look at your friends tonight. I didn't understand everything they said but I know I was like a joke to them, and if those are your friends, I can't help but think of how you see me," he told her as looked down. "Is this a joke? Am I just keeping you company until the next rocker comes along?"

David felt her let go of his waist but then suddenly heard her swear in Italian before he felt the sting of her slapping him across the face. Jerking his head up in surprise to look at her while he held his jaw, he saw the anger written across her face.

"Joke?" she snapped at him, her accent getting thicker the angrier she got. While her English had gotten better, she still struggled with some words, and when her emotions went to extremes, her accent got thick and she would often slip from English to Italian.

For a moment, she started swearing at David in Italian. She was firing so rapidly, that he could only pick up a few words here and there, but he knew it wasn't good. Finally, running out of breath, Isabella paused as she took a deep breath. A little calmer, she continued in English, "This is no joke. Those are not my friends and you are so much more than those….those…," getting frustrated, "what's the word...passers?"

"Posers?"

Isabella nodded, "Yes, posers. They only hang around because I have money and am popular. They don't care about me and I don't care about them. I do care about you," she said as she poked him in the chest with her finger.

"But why?"

Her face softening, "Because you are you." When David gave her a confused look, she continued, "You are still the sweet, considerate, cute boy I first saw in that airport." She paused as she giggled softly as she remember the first time she saw him, sliding underneath the legs of one her publicists. "I like how you talk to me like I am normal person. How you tease me when I do something stupid." Isabella then stepped forward against his chest, to which David immediately wrapped his arms around her. "And I like how I feel when I'm with you. The singing, it is fun and I make a lot of money from it. But it is fleeting," she said, slowly looking up into his blue eyes. "I'd like to think that we are not."

Listening to her didn't make his fears go away but it made him stronger to face them. "I'd like to think that too. But, just say, what will we do if I go back to New York."

She grinned a little at him, "David, so many questions. When," she put a strong emphasis on when, like she planned on him going back to finish his degree, "you go back, I go too. I'm not saying goodbye to you again." Sliding her arms underneath the open shirt, she ran her hands up his back and nuzzled his neck.

David closed his eyes for a moment, enjoying the feeling, and finally relaxing a little. "Bella," he said softly as she started to kiss the nape of his neck.

Suddenly feeling her shiver in his arms, he opened his eyes to look at her. Just now he noticed that she was only wearing a bathrobe, and it barely fell to her knees. Feeling a very familiar feeling stir within him, he tried to contain it, as he looked at her in concern. "Cold?"

Isabella nodded with a small smile and withdrawing her arms from around him, she wrapped them around herself and rubbed her arms. As David started to take off his shirt to drape around her, Isabella stopped him as her smile widened. "I can think of a much better way to get warm," she said as she trailed a finger down his chest to his waist.

David mirrored her grin, "I am a bit cold." he said with a smug grin.

He watched as she walked back to the doors, loosening the knot of her robe. As it loosened, it started to slip of her shoulders and by the time she walked through the doors, she left the robe in the doorway. The goofy smile returning to David's face as Isabella glanced over her shoulder with a come hither look.

"Who am I to say no to the famous Isabella," he asked himself rhetorically as he quickly walked across the balcony and into the bedroom, closing the doors behind him.