A/N: So this is just me, getting rid of some Christmas feelings...
Soundtrack: How do I tell a Girl I want to Kiss her - Modern Baseball
Disclaimer: No Vamps in this one, characters belong to Stephenie Meyer
Coming Home
"Flight 328 to Rio de Janeiro is now ready to board. Passengers please take out your passports and wait in line", the rather brazen, impersonal sounding voice of a woman announced the next flight for those twisted minded people, who spent Christmas under the burning Brazilian sun and were now parading around the airport in nothing but shorts and Hawaiian shirts, causing a hustle and bustle to the desired terminal like there was a Black Friday sale waiting for them and Edward Cullen would have found it amusing, not to mention hilarious watching wives and children following fathers and other self-appointed travel guides like a bunch of ducklings a drake, if he'd been able to sit still for even a second.
He was anxious.
His knee was bouncing and he was tugging on his hair like a lifeline, making it even more of a mess than it usually was and sometimes, in between, he would let his hands fall down in his lap, staring at them with a furrowed brow, knowing that if she were here, she would pry them from his hair, telling him with a soft chuckle and a spark in her eyes that if he wanted a new hairstyle, he should just go to a stylist.
He would laugh then, at himself, at his hand, the crumpled note it was holding, at the picture in his mind and the dry humor in her voice, that would always get him back to earth, grounding, pulling, holding him.
He sprung to his feet for the fiftieth time in the past half hour, glancing at the destination board hanging over their hands, wishing for time to move faster, the plane to arrive earlier, for the numbers to just fucking move already, because doing a shitload of bloody nothing was just about to drive him into madness.
As if he hadn't been there before.
He cursed under his breath, a flood of expletives and a well-aimed kick to the next garbage can relieved some of his frustration, but then he noticed a little girl's rather horrified face complete with big blue eyes and he smiled contritely, a silent apology for having lost his mind so close to the holidays, knowing that if his she knew about it, she'd be after him with pitchforks.
The girl suddenly smiled in response, showing dimples and a rather large tooth gap. "You're pretty", she lisped, tugging on the butterfly clip on the tip of her red pigtail.
"Uh...ahm...Thank you?", he offered, tugging on his hair again. The exhaustion, the trembling hyperactivity due to the caffeine and sugar in his blood, keeping him running for about thirty hours now, were taking its toll and he felt like he'd been awake for years.
She giggled. "Do you have a girlfriend?", she asked, blushing slightly and it reminded him so much of her, of her blush, her giggle, the way she'd look at him out of the corner of her eyes when she thought he wasn't looking at her and it made his insides split like it did every time he thought of her .
"Something like that", he answered with a sad smile. The girl's face fell. "Oh", she said, clearly disappointed. "Is she pretty, too?"
He chuckled, kneeling down to be face to face with her. "She's very pretty", he said, smiling softly. "Much like you, Papillon." The girl beamed. "And the thing is... she doesn't even know it."
"But how?", she seemed confused, knitting her brow rather adorably. "If you're pretty, then you're pretty. How can't you know it?"
He chuckled, shaking his head. "She's very stubborn", he told her. "Headstrong. She thinks she's nothing special." He laughed at the sheer absurdity of it. She'd always been a strange one. Only seeing, what she wanted to see when it came to herself, but so incredibly observant and understanding when it came to other people.
"But she is, right?", the redheaded girl demanded to know, a fierce expression on her tiny face.
"She's very special", he assured her, fighting the tiredness in his bones.
The girl's face lit up. "Like a princess?", she asked, bouncing up and down, her braids flailing around her head.
Edward laughed, thinking about her opinion concerning prom dresses, tiaras and everything she called the "Princess-syndrome extraordinaire".
"It's pathological, Edward", she'd said, eying the dresses Alice had laid out for her for the dance with barely concealed disdain. They were all shiny and sparkling with too much lace and ruffles. "It's like they're living out some kind of childhood trauma, some media-induced conviction that every girl wants to be a princess at heart." She'd rolled her eyes, twirling strands of her honey brown hair between her fingers. "They either do that at prom or on their wedding day and the meaning of those dates gets totally lost, which is a tragedy in itself by the way. We're seventeen for fuck's sake. Shouldn't we look the part?"
He'd agreed with her, mostly because he'd never had an opinion on prom dresses before, aside from how much cleavage they were showing and he still remembered his sister's fury when she'd shown up at the winter formal dance in a knee-length blue dress and black chucks, hiding a flask filled with Tequila in her bra. They'd shared the few sips of alcohol after they'd both abandoned their respective dates for the evening, sitting on the bleachers and staring into the black and blue winter sky, talking about college and life and whether or not Pepsi was the same thing as coke (she'd been arguing against it and when he'd called her out on it, she'd insisted that they'd never clarified that they were talking about beverages and that Pepsi was definitely not the same thing as cocaine).
He still knew what she looked like in the blueish light of the floodlights.
"Yeah...", he said, furrowing his brow. "Like a princess, but much better", he added and the expression in her eyes reminded him so much of his sister Alice. The excitement, the exuberance... The memory was bittersweet.
"So she's smart, too?" , the redhead asked.
"Very smart", he answered, running a hand tiredly through his hair, thinking of how she'd beat him at every test in school except for math even though she was a year younger than him.
The girl nodded, her red braids bouncing. "Then you have to tell her", she said seriously, hands clasped around the small book she was carrying. "A Christmas Carol" it read on the cover and he thought that Dickens was rather strange reading material for a five year old girl.
"Tell her what?", he asked a bit dumbfounded, the lack of sleep and his anxiety catching up with him.
She rolled her eyes and it was a gesture, an expression so similar to his sister, to Alice, that he couldn't breathe for a moment. "That she's special, duh!" She shook her head like he was the world's greatest idiot.
"She is", he insisted and it was so surreal, talking about her to the little, redheaded girl with those bright, strangely knowing eyes in the middle of an airport, while people were busy running around them, like they were in the eye of a storm.
"Then what are you waiting for?", she asked, raising an eyebrow. "She's pretty, she's smart and she's special", she counted. "Not to mention that you love her", she added as an afterthought.
He gaped at her. Blinked. Not trusting his eyes. Wondering if he'd had something stronger than coffee at some point or if five cups through the night were enough to cause hallucinations.
"Oh, don't act so surprised", she chastised him, appearing way older than her physical five years of age. "You know it."
He gulped. "Don't you have to go back to your family?", he asked uncomfortably. "Your Mom will worry about you."
She laughed. "I don't have a Mommy", she announced. His eyes widened in sympathy. "I have two Daddys!", she cried out happily, bouncing up and down like she was the one with five cups of coffee in her system.
"Kate!", a rather ruffled looking man with a messenger bag and a suitcase in hand called at that moment, shooting Edward wary looks while he reached out a hand for his daughter. Another man with short blonde hair was waiting for them with two other suitcases in hand, avidly reading the destination board. "Come on, honey. That's our flight", the man said and Kate nodded.
"I have to go", she said, lips curved into a beatific smile. She pressed a hand against Edward's cheek and looked at him with those unnervingly knowing blue eyes.
"Don't waste any more time, Edward", she whispered and it were the same words, delivered with the same expression like they were two years ago when his sister called him out on it and he wanted to cry out, to reach out for her, for that girl, who resembled her so much, but he was exhausted and tired and he saw colors and shades in strange places, flickering on the periphery of his vision, making him question his sanity and he could do naught, but whisper her name. "Alice", he breathed, looking into the face, that resembled his sister so much.
She just smiled, a wide, toothy smile. "She's waiting for you", she said before abruptly turning around, skipping over to where her father was waiting for her, leaving Edward in a droning state of emotional turmoil.
"I made a new friend", he heard her say proudly over the rush of blood to his head. "His girlfriend is a princess."
"That's wonderful, sweetheart", her father said with a smile in his voice. "What's his name?"
He heard her jump, skip, bounce. "Oh, I don't know", she said happily. "He didn't tell me."
Edward fell back into his chair in a daze, saw the numbers crawling slowly until his flight was finally announced.
Alice had told him the same thing two years ago. Don't waste anymore time, Edward. She's waiting.
She'd been Alice's best friend since the first day of primary school and a constant fixture in the Cullen household ever since then. They'd grown up together and she'd been like another younger sister, a good friend, the girl he'd sneak off with to steal cookies from the kitchen or play pranks on their neighbors or teachers, because she was just as adventurous as any boy their age and one hell a lot smarter.
She'd been there until one day she wasn't.
He walked through the terminal, not knowing where his feet where leading him, because he had only one goal in mind, had had it ever since he'd found the note in Alice's old yearbook and it was like it was burned into his body, etched into every cell, every bone, muscle and vein and he just wanted to see her.
He just had to.
The boarding passed in droning silence and he saw the blonde stewardess smiling at him, reminding him of his ex-girlfriend from High School and he knew on a rational level that she was flirting with him, but he just couldn't bring up the energy to care.
"Coffee", he managed to get out, falling into his seat by the window. "Just coffee, please."
The blonde woman disappeared.
Edward folded himself into the seat, his legs and arms too long to fit properly, putting in his earphones just to have an excuse to avoid conversation, while the plane began rolling, faster and foster until it left earth, severed the connection, defied gravity and disappeared between the clouds.
Freedom.
Growing up with her, it didn't escape his notice that she'd developed a bit of a crush on him and he'd thought it was kind of adorable. He was a year older than her and Alice, Captain of the soccer team and probably the most popular guy in school.
Not that he cared.
Or she for that matter.
"It's a game", she'd always said, chewing on the tip of the pencil, she always carried around with her to hold up her hair. "And there are the ones, who play it because they love it and those, who do it because they think they have no other choice." She'd tipped the pen against the ring in her lower lip at that point. "But the thing is, we always have a choice. You can refuse to play, because people will always only be popular if there are other people, who think they are." She'd smiled then, this small smile, that made her warm, brown eyes light up. "Power to the people, Edward."
"So you don't think, I'm wonderful?", he'd pouted playfully, crossing his arms over his chest.
She'd laughed then, that deep, warm laugh, so rich from her husky voice, that sounded like she'd smoked for years when in truth she'd never had more than a joint here and there.
"You've always been wonderful", she'd said softly one time, blushing involuntarily like she would every time, he'd tease her about her little crush on him. "I don't need a whole school to tell me that."
Edward sighed, rubbing his eyes tiredly while the usual security advices were given out. The blonde stewardess brought him a cup of coffee, but he only smiled faintly, inhaling the scent and continued to stare out of the window, down on that field of clouds, willing the plane to move faster, because now, after a year of wandering and searching, wishing and dreaming, he finally had a destination.
His fingers caressed the crumpled note in his left fist, the words forever etched into his memory.
He'd wasted so much time.
Back in school, he'd known about her little infatuation, but he'd discarded it, made fun of it, had enjoyed seeing her blush, had done anything but take her seriously, because she'd never seemed overly perturbed by him putting his arm around Tanya or kissing his girlfriend of the time in the school parking lot right in front of her and his sister's eyes while they were waiting for him to drive them home.
He'd been so fucking blind.
She'd dated in school. A bunch of idiots in his opinion, but no one had ever asked him to put in his two cents. Alice especially had used her best death-glare to scare him off whenever he dared to tell her that he thought she was too good for all these one-track-minded imbeciles, saying that he should look in the mirror before he said shit like that.
Her words, not his. Alice had always had a penchant for cussing.
In the end, it had been him, who'd beaten up every asshole, who'd even dared to lay a finger on her. They never talked about it, but she would see the bruises on his knuckles and the black eyes and crooked noses of his opponents on Monday mornings and she'd furrow her brow, look at him questioningly with her hazel eyes as if she couldn't understand him for the life of it before shaking her head and going back to sketching hands and faces in her worn notebook.
"You shouldn't drink that", a man's voice sounded to his left and his head jerked around to see an elderly man with short, white hair and glasses taking the cup of coffee, the stewardess had just brought him.
"Hey", Edward protested, acting much like a drug addict on cold turkey. The man shook his head disapprovingly.
"Go to sleep, son. You've got about seven hours until we reach London and if you keep running on that stuff, you're going to break down before you get there", he said sternly, ignoring Edward's shocked face and open mouth.
"Sleep, boy", he said again and took a sip of the stolen coffee, screwing up his face in distaste and flipped through the pages of a leather bound volume resting on his lap. It looked like the book, Kate, the little, redheaded girl had been carrying.
Edward opened his mouth again, but before he could say anything, the old man eyed him over the rim of his glasses, freezing him in the motion. "I'll wake you up", he promised, waving his hand dismissively. "Now sleep already."
It didn't take long for him to loose control of reality. His eyes fell shut, his head hit the window and he felt the fatigue taking over his body.
He'd surprised her and Alice at their High School graduation, had flown in from New York, where he'd been living for the past year, studying pre-med at Columbia University and both their faces had lit up like Christmas trees when they'd seen him standing in the crowd of parents and siblings, his cheers droning out all the others'.
She'd been so beautiful that day, silver chopsticks replacing the usual pencils in the bun in her hair and when he'd seen her later at the dance in a shimmering silver dress and red flats, he had to silently admit, that perhaps, just perhaps she wasn't just a sister to him.
She'd been dating Jacob Black at that time, but it was just the same as always with the both of them. They always found a way to end up together, discarding boyfriends and girlfriends and everything around them like they were just an afterthought to the real thing. To them.
They'd been dancing, swaying mostly, because she was so clumsy when she wasn't caught up in her art, her paintings and sculptures, that for sake of everyone around them they kept to simple movements in time to the music.
She'd laughed, close to his ear, the raspy sound sending shivers down his spine and he'd dug his fingers into the skin of her waist and hip, covered only by the thin, threadbare material, suppressing the sudden flaring up of lust in his body.
He'd held her tightly, made her laugh by making comments about the poor choice of music and the boys, who were desperately buying booze and condoms from a few trusted sources.
It had been perfect. Had been perfectly imperfect. Their own little bubble and he'd wanted to tell her that he'd missed her and her dry humor, the paint stains on her fingers and the way her hazel eyes would look at him, warm and amused and like they were waiting for him to say or do something. Anything.
He'd wanted to tell her that he was miserable in New York, that the new freedom couldn't cover the loss of his home and that he'd never been happier than in that exact moment when she'd made a joke about a drunk Mike Newton hanging over his table, passed out cold, her eyes sparkling with mischief.
But then the accident happened.
Alice, his sister, who'd foreseen each of their grandparents' deaths, who'd predicted each and every snowstorm in the dreary town of Forks, who'd known who was knocking on the door before looking outside, hadn't seen the car speeding down the road, hadn't seen the drunk driver behind the steering wheel barely keeping his eyes open, hadn't seen herself and her boyfriend Jasper in the middle of the street in front of the gym, where the dance was held, making their way over to his old Ford, when the car hit them sideways.
They were both dead upon impact.
He couldn't remember much of what had happened after. Flashes of her holding on to him, both of their clothes soaked with blood, because they'd been the first ones to reach them, the droning in his head, making it impossible to hear their own screams and agonized cries, shouting, praying, begging for them to be alive, for someone to call an ambulance, to just fucking do something already, because they couldn't, they just couldn't be dead.
But they were.
He still remembered the funeral. His parents' ashen faces, her hollow cheeks, the taste of booze on his tongue, because he couldn't even get out of bed in the morning without the alcohol induced fog clouding his mind, numbing the pain.
It had been a clear day. No rain, no sun. Just a day like every other. A Friday, when they'd buried the bodies of his sister and her boyfriend, had given them back to the earth as if life hadn't taken enough from them already.
He didn't know how they'd ended up in his room. It was all a blur of words and colors and people expressing their grief and he'd broken down the minute, they'd reached his room, her small body supporting his large frame and he'd taken her with him, down unto the bed, her body pressed against his and he'd felt alive for the first time since that terrible crashing sound.
She'd looked at him with those hazel eyes. Understanding and warmth and all consuming sadness so evident and all he'd wanted had been to be closer, closer, closer to her, because she was home and she was alive and she was everything. Everything.
They'd torn off their clothing in a frenzy, his teeth nibbling on her bottom lip, her hands in his hair, down his shoulders, his back, his hips. She'd tugged on his hair, when his tongue was circling her breast, kissing the tattooed name "Alice" on the side of her ribcage, the three black birds with their wings spread wide flying under the intricate letters of his dead sister's name, his hands pushing down the last bit of clothing and then she'd been there, naked and warm and soft, molding around him, warming flesh and bones and hearts and he'd breathed for the first time in weeks, her scent of paint and turpentine, strawberries and just a hint of Tequila invading his lungs and he hadn't wanted it to stop, had wanted it to never stop. Never, never, never...
She'd screamed when she'd reached her peak, her eyes shut tightly and then opening, that gorgeous brown-gold liquid color flooding his mind and he'd shouted out expletives when the waves of ecstasy hit him, soaring and burning and crashing and falling.
"Wake up", a gruff voice pierced through the barricade of tangled limps, sweat and breathy whispers, begging each other not to stop. "Wake up, boy. It's time", the voice said again and Edward awoke with a start, her name on his lips.
He was drenched in sweat, his heart beating erratically and it took him a moment before he recognized his surroundings.
A plane over the Atlantic Ocean. On the way to London. The white-haired man next to him.
He was watching him over the rim of his glasses, scrutinizing, examining, searching. Edward had no idea what he was hoping to find or if he liked what he found. His expression was inscrutable, making him think of her father when the man had refused to give him any information besides the fact that she'd been offered a scholarship at some Art School in Europe.
"We're about to reach London", the man said, closing the book in his lap and taking a sip from the cup in front of him. Tea this time, from the smell of it. It was a dark red leather volume with gold letters on the front. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. He pointed at the cup in front of him. Steaming, black coffee; the scent brought him back under the living.
"Drink up", the man ordered. "You'll need it if you want to make it on time."
Edward took the cup warily, thinking about poison and human trafficking, but the promise of caffeine won. "In time for what?", he asked quietly, his voice raw.
The man let out a husky sound, somewhere between a laugh and a cough. "For her", he said as if that would explain everything. He adjusted his glasses. "Do you want me to spell it out, son? You should stop thinking of yourself as a fool, perhaps then you'll stop acting like one."
He didn't know if he should feel offended at the barely concealed insult in the man's words, but in the end it wasn't anything, he hadn't thought of before.
The man shook his head, his white hair glowing slightly in the bright afternoon light streaming in from the windows. "You know, the thing about humans is that they're awfully good at giving meaning to things, that are basically meaningless." He directed his dark, piercing eyes at Edward. "So in the end, it's no use to dwell on the past, because what you're doing now is important, really important, young man. Because sense... meaning... you'll find it. In the end." He smiled, an amused, self-deprecating smile with the hint of white teeth in the strange light. "In the end, it will all make sense."
Edward managed to down his coffee before they were ordered to fasten their seat belts because the plane was in its final descent, dwelling on the strange man's words like it was something hard to digest.
The anxiety began welling up inside him again, when the British country appeared in front of their eyes after they'd broken through the clouds and he felt electrified and nervous at the thought of her being so close, barely out of his reach and it would just be a few hours now until he'd finally reach his destination.
Her.
When he'd woken up the morning after Alice's funeral, her scent had still been lingering in the air and he'd reached out a hand, expecting, wishing, wanting her to be there, next to him. A warm body in the dead days after the apocalypse.
But she hadn't been there.
She'd been gone. For hours possibly. And no one, not her friends, not her father, nor his Zombie-like parents had given him any information about her current location.
He'd been going insane.
And then he'd broken down.
The plane hit the frozen British ground, a bell rang, announcing that they'd landed on time at London Stansted Airport, welcoming and wishing them all a Merry Christmas.
It was the 24th of December and he had about five hours to make it on time.
The man next to him got up, the book with the golden letters tugged under his arm. "You know what you have to do, son", he said with his gruff voice. "Buy the girl some flowers, will you? And...", he turned around one last time. "It's time, Edward. She's waiting."
He'd heard that a lot. That she was waiting. Alice had said it ever since their Freshman year, had repeated it with a shake of her head and a frustrated "Duh!" and her father had said it every single time he'd ask him about her.
"She's waiting", her father would say with that inscrutable frown on his face, his fingers jerking like they'd very much like to knock some sense into him, because apparently he didn't understand whatever it was, that he was supposed to understand.
He wanted to ask them, whoever the fuck "them" were, if she knew that he was waiting, too.
For her. For a chance. For something.
Anything.
They played Christmas Carols through the speakers while he walked around the airport to the train station, his last connection to London central.
"Flowers?" , a blue haired teenage girl from a flower shop on the corner asked. She had big, golden eyes and her hair was arranged in a myriad of corkscrew curls. She smiled and instead of offering him one of those thousand rose bouquets, she held out a small bunch of tulips in various colors. "For your girl?"
Edward stopped, his eyes zeroing in on the flowers. She loved tulips. Had painted them over and over again, never getting tired of using them as a motive.
"It's never the same", she'd said one time, when he'd been teasing her about it, with that mysterious smile, that made her look like some kind of mischievous elf, an old soul in a young body, so childishly naïve and so incredibly mature at the same time. "The angle, the texture... the secret is finding the differences in things, that look the same." Her smile had become brighter and she'd tipped the end of one of her brushes against his nose. "That's important, Edward. The little things, I mean."
The little things... His eyes fell to the book on the counter next to the girl. A paperback edition of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol".
He suppressed a smile, shook his head and held out a bank note. "I know", he said, before she could say anything. "She's waiting."
The girl's smile grew wider. "Whatever are you talking about?", she asked with a glint in her eyes, accepting the note with a gracious nod and handed him the tulips.
He shook his head, a wry smile on his lips. "Nothing", he muttered. "Too much caffeine."
"You're on your way home?", she asked, wrapping the flowers in pink paper.
"In a way", he said vaguely, still a bit vary from all these encounters of the third he'd had since this morning. The little redheaded girl, that had reminded him so much of his sister, had disturbed him the most.
She laughed. "Yeah", she said. "I know. Houses don't always make homes. Sometimes it's just one person. And the rest...Well, that's just an afterthought." She shook her head, the curls flowing. "In any case, Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas", he replied softly, before turning around to continue his journey, the flowers securely in his hands.
"Don't make her wait too long", the girl called after him with a slight giggle in her voice, that reminded him of her, of the way she liked to include laughing in every activity she undertook. "It's time, Edward."
He didn't even react, just laughed, shook his head. "I know", he wanted to cry out. I know. It had been time for so long now.
His fingers brushed over the small, crumpled note in his pocket and energy surged through his veins again.
When she'd left him, he'd been devastated and alcohol hadn't even been a solution, because she'd thrown out every bottle with anything even remotely alcoholic in it before leaving.
She'd even gotten rid of his mother's pralines.
It had been good, in a way. In a really painful, cold turkey kind of way, but he'd made it, had lived through it. An accumulation of days during which he'd forced himself to get in and out of bed every day, to do his chores, to study, eat and sleep until one day he'd woken up and there had been something else to do but to eat, sleep and study. The air had tasted differently, the light had been brighter and the memory of her and his sister hadn't hurt as much as they had those days before.
The train from Stansted to London was on time and he saw the snow covered scenery pass by while the world around him grew darker and afternoon blended into evening.
He'd gone home to Washington for Christmas. As painful as it was to be in his childhood home without Alice shouting from the top floor, calling him an asshole because he'd used up all the hot water, it had been necessary. For his parents, who were still walking around like Zombies, for him, because he just had to see her and he'd thought that perhaps, just perhaps she'd be home for Christmas.
She hadn't been.
And he'd been sitting in Alice's old room for the first time in a year. The walls had still been covered with photos from models in various outfits, pieces of fabrics had been scattered around the room and there had been her acceptance letter to Art School lying on the desk next to a photo of her and her best friend.
He'd opened her yearbook, because he'd always loved that one photo Alice had taken of her in summer. A close up of her face, half covered by hair, still in the motion of turning around, that faint smile, the curve of her lip, the mysterious glint in her eyes and the glowing red of the sun making her look like a fairy.
You're an addiction, she'd written underneath and it had been printed into every single copy of that book. Just one shot away from an overdose.
And he'd opened the book, but instead of seeing her smiling face in between hundreds of other faces, there had been a note sticking to the page.
A note. A phone number. An address. Somewhere in Camden Town. London.
He'd been on his way the second the book had hit the floor. Car rides, train rides, bus rides and too many cups of coffee later he'd been at an airport.
Then in London. And then there was nothing left to do but take the tube to her house and when he finally emerged from the Underground station, he was peaceful.
It was silent. Snow was falling. Dancing in the lights of the street lamps, a quiet waltz on Christmas Eve.
He reached for the note, unfolded it. Scrawny handwriting, hastily added letters and numbers.
You'll know when the time is right, she'd written and now he was standing on her doorstep, seeing the light in the windows, the faint smell of freshly baked goods.
And his heart was soaring, was flying and falling, because he was here and she was here and all these emotions, he'd had a year ago at the dance, when she'd been in his arms in a silver dress and red flats, came rushing back again and he wanted to tell her, tell her everything, but perhaps not in three thousand long winded sentences. Perhaps he'd just use three words. Just three little words.
He knocked.
Home isn't always a house. The blue-haired girl's words came back to mind. Sometimes it's just a person.
He heard shuffling, the soft clatter of something and then the door opened. Slowly. A head peeked outside.
"Bella", he whispered, hoarsely. Barely audible.
She gasped. A faint sound nearly droned out by the music playing inside and he felt his insides split, because she still looked the same with her honey brown hair, piled on top of her head, the glowing hazel eyes and the ring in her bottom lip.
"Edward..."
"I'm sorry", he croaked. "I'm sorry it took me so long."
Her eyes lit up and she smiled that breathtaking smile, she'd always reserve for birthdays and Friday night dinners and dances and she opened the door widely to let him in.
Home.
She laughed happily. "I've been waiting for you."
A/N: So what do you think? I really like this Bella, to be honest. And Edward, even though he's a bit thickheaded... Anyway, I love hearing from people, so why don't you just hit that little button down there and leave a review?
greets, Teddy