Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns it all. I own a storyline.

It's been a long while since I've posted on FF, but this is just a story to pass the time when I don't have much homework. Year 11 doesn't provide me with many of those times, so this story might not get updated very frequently, and for that I sincerely apologise.

This story will be entirely from Bella's perspective. If it comes to the point where enough people would like to hear things from Edward's point of view, there might – might – be an EPOV.

This chapter is fairly fast-paced, but slows down at the end. It will be a lot slower after this one.

Also, as a sidenote, the continuation of this story will entirely depend on the number of reviews I receive.

Playing With My Heart, Chapter One:

This isn't going to be a tale with a happily ever after, where the best friend finally realises that they love you back and carry you off into a beautiful sunset.

It will, however, be a story that explains the giant clusterfuck of mistakes I made when trying to reach that happily ever after.

Being the dork loser I still currently am, it was hard for me to make friends until Edward Cullen came along in high school. Somehow he saw through the feral braces that made me look like a duck, and the thick-rimmed glasses that magnified my eyes to monstrous proportions. Don't ask me how, because I could never summon the courage to ask him.

I wasn't totally inept in the art of choosing clothes, so I didn't go around school in baggy jumpers and sweatpants the whole time. I wore jeans – like almost everybody else at Forks High – t-shirts in the summer (with a cardigan more often than not, due to the gross weather Forks seemed to always have) and sweaters in the winter.

I had a Facebook account, I swore sometimes and I experimented with alcohol at the few parties I was invited to in my late teens.

My biggest issue was that I was a wall-flower, and seemed to blend in with the scenery a lot.

Also, I was kind of chubby – my mother, Renée, always said that it was just 'baby fat' – baby fat that hadn't been shed yet, obviously. I'm still of a thicker build than most, but I've grown to accept it. There wasn't much I could do without starving myself and exercising non-stop for four hours a night.

Unfortunately there was a time when that was what I had done in order to change. That would later become clusterfuck mistake number four – but enough of that.

No-one had ever gone out of their way to speak to me, up until my freshman year, when Edward's older sister Alice (by three minutes, she never failed to point out) introduced us to each other on orientation day and told us that we were now "freshman buds".

There really was a startling difference between them, not just appearance wise. Alice was perky, mischievous and bubbly. Edward, on the other hand, was very subdued.

They shared their crooked smile, and that became a problem later on, when I began to push Alice away for that reason exactly.

Edward and I quickly became very good friends, bonding over steak with mushroom sauce, a strange obsession with the musical Sweeney Todd, the love of blogging and an exceptional dedication to music and literature.

It was our sophomore year at Forks High School when Edward and I confirmed the fact that, yes, we were best friends.

I was sitting in the woods, behind a fallen log that marred a beautiful clearing of wildflowers. Edward and I would meet here every Thursday night to catch up on everything that had been going in our lives – the things that we hadn't had the time to disclose at another opportunity.

Earlier that day, I'd seen Edward flirting with Lauren Mallory near her locker, and it brought to the forefront of my mind all of my insecurities about my weight and my glasses and my braces and the fact that all of a sudden I had started breaking out in pimples all over my face.

Lauren was wafer-thin, 20-20 vision, the straightest teeth I'd ever seen and the clearest skin, too. She was literally the exact opposite of me – blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and insanely attractive.

Surely Edward would prefer to sit next to her at lunch, and do homework with her, and have Thursday night chats in the meadow with her instead of me.

It was in these kinds of self-deprecating thoughts that I wallowed until I heard the crunch of grass and flower stems before I saw the shadow creep over mine, swallowing the wide shadow I cast on the ground.

"Hey." I didn't lift my head from where it rested on my drawn-up knees when he spoke. "Bella, what's wrong? You've barely spoken to me all day."

I swallowed back the beastly tears that threatened to make salty tracks on my face.

"Nothing – nothing's wrong." I replied. "It's just – It's just been a bit of a rough day."

Edward usually wasn't one to push me to say anything when I was upset, but there was obviously something in my voice, or on my face that made him push at that moment.

"Bells, come on. You're my best friend and you can tell me anything."

That was my exact problem.

"Am I, though?"

"Are you what?" He was confused, poor thing. I didn't blame him. "Are you able to tell me anything? Of course, Bells."

"No, Edward, that's not it." I was being stupid.

"Then what is it? I can't fix things, if I don't know what's wrong!"

I never wanted to make him upset. "Um... don't worry about it – really, I'm fine. I'm just having a girly moment. Forget about it."

I tried to smile, but my chin quivered and I had to hide my face in my knees to stop myself from crying.

"Oh, Bella... Come here." He plonked himself down beside me and wrapped his arm around me. I couldn't help but think that his arm wouldn't stretch around me all the way, like it would with Lauren.

That thought wrenched a dry sob from my throat as I buried my face half on my knee, and half on his chest.

He shushed me and comforted me for a while before asking again, "What's wrong, beautiful?"

The term of endearment caused my head to snap up and my eyes to widen.

He chuckled. "What? Am I not allowed to compliment my best friend?"

I blushed ferociously, but asked, "Am I really your best friend?"

His brow furrowed and he answered so sincerely I couldn't help but believe him. "Bella, of course you are. There's no-one in the world that I could trust more than I trust you. You are the most important girl in my life – shit, don't tell Mom I said that."

I giggled. My fears lifted momentarily, until – "What about Lauren?"

"Lauren Mallory?" I nodded. "She's in my History class, what about her?"

"You don't want her to be your best friend instead of me? I mean she's probably really smart and wouldn't annoy you with Math questions like I do, and she's really pretty and I remember that one time you told me you had a thing for blondes, and she's a lot thinner than I am, and you could probably hug her better than you can hug me –"

"– Whoa, Bella." He interrupted. "Her intelligence level and hair colour could never take precedence over what we have..."

I was about to comment on the fact that he hadn't mentioned the weight issue, when he started speaking again.

"... and as for that idiotic comment about your weight, I don't even know what to say to that."

I teared up again and went to stand. It was obvious that he was about to say something negative about my weight and I wanted out before he could.

"Hey!" He yelped as I stood up to leave. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Home, Edward." I began to walk away. "I understand if you want to be her friend because she's nicer to look at than me. I really do."

"Bella, if you would listen to me, you would realise that I was going to say that you are beautiful – for the second time tonight, by the way."

I stopped and turned around. "You don't need to lie, Edward, for Christ's sake."

"I'm not. Really, I'm not." He walked over to where I was, halfway to the edge of the meadow, and held out his pinkie. "Best friends?"

I nodded and hooked my pinkie in with his. "Best friends." I said, tearily.

He pulled me in for a hug with our intertwined fingers and we embraced warmly for what seemed like forever.

After that evening, our friendship strengthened to the point where people we met questioned our relationship status.

It was during our junior year that I discovered that I kind of liked it when people did that. Every time we went to the cinema, or our favourite diner on the corner of Jackson and Mowatt Streets, I found myself wishing Edward would pull me in closer and say that we were together, instead of laughing it off and chuckling out a "No, we're just best friends."

I got butterflies when I stared at him for too long, and more than once, Alice had noticed and questioned me on my feelings. After about the five-hundredth time of her inane questions, I caved.

She thought it was the most amazing revelation since bread starting getting sliced. She told Jasper Hale (her boyfriend, and now husband), who told his twin sister Rosalie, who then told Emmett McCarty (Rosalie's boyfriend, now fiancé). At the time, our group at school was comprised of those four plus Edward and I – which essentially meant that every single lunchtime from that moment until graduation was filled with sly glances from Alice and Rose and waggling eyebrows from Emmett and Jasper.

Six months later, when I had not yet made my move on Edward and Alice and Rose had been subjected to multiple rants and sob sessions, I decided that it was time to be productive.

I called an emergency meeting between Alice, Rose, Jasper, Emmett and I one Wednesday afternoon and explained the situation to them.

I explained that I would be embarking on a journey I liked to call The Ultimate Quest for Love, and that I was employing them as my right-hand women and men.

Alice and Emmett jumped immediately into action, plotting various schemes in which Edward and I were trapped in a confined, dark space, with only each other for company. Rose and Jasper quickly shot down the outrageous ones – one of which involved Edward and I being walled in with only a bed in the confinement with us, an idea that sprung from the cruelty Emmett employed upon his Sims.

Jasper more than once expressed his concern at our weekly meetings that I had set up, but I reassured him that I knew what I was doing.

These meetings were set up strategically, so that Edward would not become suspicious. He volunteered with his father in the paediatric ward of the local hospital on Wednesday afternoons, which provided a nice gap in which to hold a meeting about him.

Time flew, and we had entered our senior year. With the pressure to find a college to attend after graduation, it became much clearer to me that I would have to up the ante when it came to TUQFL, as Edward and I would not be attending the same college – Edward was planning on attending a college in California to study medicine, and I would be studying literature at UOW more than likely.

Without the other's knowledge, I had been compiling a list of things that I had observed in relation to Edward's choices in girlfriends – similar traits, physically and personality-wise.

The fact that Edward confided so much in me about his girlfriends made it much simpler for me to create the list.

I finished the list the day before our twenty-third TUQFL meeting, and planned to present it, and my new plan, the next day.

Alice, Rose, Jasper and Emmett were in various positions around my room, waiting for me to speak.

"Okay... I've come up with a plan."

"Lay it on us, Bella." Emmett boomed.

"Well, over the past half-year, I've been studying the patterns in Edward's choice of girlfriends."

Rosalie interrupted me. "Bella, I know where this is going – "

"No, Rose. I need to do this." I said sternly. She sighed resignedly and slumped against the headboard of my bed.

"Anyway, as I was saying, he has certain patterns in his selection of girls." I pulled the crumpled piece of paper from my pocket and began to read.

"Subject: Edward Cullen. Number one – Edward likes girls with some kind of blonde hair, whether it's natural, dyed or streaked. I am going to dye my hair blonde, and then follow everything on this list until I'm perfect for him. He won't be able to resist me."

I glanced around at my friends – most of them had uneasy looks on their faces.

"What?" I asked.

Jasper piped up from his corner. "Bella, we think you're perfect just as you are. You don't need this. I don't think any of us want to sit by while you change yourself for something that might never happen. You're going to get yourself hurt if this doesn't work out."

"I won't. You guys need to believe me – I want to change for him. Change is healthy, right?"

"We just don't want you getting hurt because he doesn't return your feelings. Bella, please don't do this. I know that we were supportive of you in the beginning, but this isn't right." Alice contributed.

"If you won't help me, I'll do it myself." Defiantly, I stared them down individually, knowing exactly when I'd cracked them. Alice closed her eyes and hung her head, Emmett threw his hands in the air, Rose shook her head and Jasper sighed.

"Great. Alice, crack out the hair dye."

Not listening to them was clusterfuck mistake one. Dying my hair was number two.

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