Disclaimer: Characters belong to Stephanie Meyer, obviously. I just like to play with them.

Chapter 1: First Sighting

Somebody was staring again.

It was such a frequent occurrence in my life that after twenty two years I had learned to ignore it, but the feeling of eyes boring holes into the back of my head was still annoying. I considered turning around to give a Rosalie worthy glare to the offending party, but I knew it would be pointless. Unabashed gawking was the general reaction of people when we are all grouped together in the same place. I knew that sitting on the only loveseat - in the only coffee shop Forks had to offer - Rosalie squeezed in between Emmett and Jasper with Alice and I sprawled across their laps, legs tangled together, we made a ridiculously stunning picture. We could no more control this then people could control their staring. Not that we're all exceptionally beautiful or anything - well except for maybe Rose - but in a small town like Forks, which had never produced anybody that could be considered more then average, we were a novelty that the townsfolk of Forks still marveled over.

Emmett's sudden laughter - louder then normal when I was sitting on his lap like this - and shaking body, brought my attention back to my friends.

I glared at them, "What's so funny?"

"Mike was staring at Rosalie's boobs again," Alice answered between bursts of snorting laughter. "Rose winked at him, and he spilt his coffee all down the front of his pants."

I snickered. Mike Newton was a professional creep. Throughout the years he had been obsessed with each of us, for one ridiculous reason or another, so we took a special kind of pleasure whenever he publicly humiliated himself.

I followed the familiar sounds of Jessica Stanley, angrily hissing at Mike about making himself look like an idiot, to find them at a table directly behind my head. Well, that explained the staring. Jessica hated me probably more then anyone else in Forks, for reasons I had never been able to decipher. I wondered if she was more pissed about Mike staring at Rosalie, or the fact that he had spilt his drink and was now attacking the crotch of his pants with a pile of napkins. I couldn't stop myself from laughing, so I quickly buried my face in Emmett's shoulder before Jessica could look over and catch me staring. This seemed to set the rest of them off, because they all erupted into another round of laughter. This, of course, only made me laugh harder.

We were still laughing when somebody opened the door and a gust of cold hair hit us, causing a strange reaction in my friends.

Emmett's entire body stiffened, the hand he was resting on my hip clenched into a fist. Jasper appeared to have had a similar reaction, while Rose and Alice's eyes burned bright with anger. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize that it wasn't the cold air that had caused this reaction but whoever had walked through the door. I knew that I should probably turn around and see who it was, but I could think of only one person the four of them all felt such a strong hatred for, and I was in no mood to deal with Jacob Black tonight.

"What the hell is he doing here?" Rosalie hissed.

I sighed. Despite the bad blood after the ending of our relationship I was in no mood for one of Rosie's anti-Jacob tirades. They could go on for hours and it was a subject that was still painful at times.

"And why now, after all this time?" Alice asked. Now I was confused. I had just seen, or more accurately been forced to sit through an uncomfortable dinner with, Jacob yesterday. Curious, I turned my head slightly so that I was no longer facing Emmett's neck. And my world stopped.

It's too hot in here.

It was all I could think as I avoided the gaze of the boy…man, he'd be a man now, although he didn't seem to have changed at all over the years, standing by the counter.

I couldn't look at him. I didn't dare to. I both hoped and feared that I was seeing things, that I had finally lost my mind and the beautiful boy who had haunted every aspect of my life for the last six years was just a figment of my imagination.

Obviously I was, it was inconceivable that after disappearing so completely out of my life without so much as a goodbye, Edward Masen would suddenly reappear here and now.