DISCLAIMER: I do not own the character concept. However I own the story in which the name lay.

RATING: M for Sexual Situations and Light Drug Use

SUMMARY: Bella Swan, eco nerd architectural designer, living far from home and not happy, recently dumped and trying to find her way. How many road blocks can there possibly be to finding your place? AH/AU

Story is told in the first person from Bella's point of view. There will be bummer parts but stick with it, I think you'll like the ending.

Please review and tell me what you think.

I was pleased with myself that morning, the world felt like it was mine, like it was revolving around my wishes. I felt like the special girl, the perfect blonde. The mid morning light coming in through the window at the Starbucks was on me. And because everything felt so right, I didn't hear Laurent when he broke up with me. I was busy looking at my reflection in the shop window.

I he hadn't ended his talk with "it really is the best for both of us I think" I might have never figured out what was going on.

"What was that again?" I asked.

He shook his head and looked down at this cup checking the lid to make sure it was on and sighed. "I don't think this is going to work out." Laurent said. I was silent, my mouth open. What the fuck I mouthed, unable to actually get the words out.

"Can we talk about this?" I asked distraught.

"I've made up my mind Bella."

"When?"

"A few weeks ago." He said looking down.

Four days in Forks, Washington with my parents, and that entire time he knew. He knew when we went into Seattle to shop and visit friends. He knew when I asked to go into a jewelry store and ogle diamond rings. He knew when my parents were taking photos of us and wanted to include him and he instead offered to take the pictures so that my dad could be in them.

The hour sitting in the airport, waiting for our flight while he was reading Men's Health, he knew then. All through our four and a half hour flight back to Colorado when I slept with my head on his shoulder, he knew then.

He knew on the drive home from Denver International Airport, knew when we went to bed, and he knew when he woke up. The he finally let me in on his secret during breakfast the morning after our return home. That he was not in love with me, and that he could no longer be in a relationship with me.

There are at least five days that I know of that Laurent knew that he wanted to leave me before I knew that our relationship was over. After four days visiting my family and telling my mother that I was pretty sure Laurent was the one I wanted to marry, had the audacity to break up with me in a public place like Starbucks.

I left the coffee shop quickly, leaving my purse and drink. Laurent followed immediately after me, both items in his hands. "Bella," he called out. "Bella, slow down."

I began crying. So embarassed, I had never cried in a public place except for one time when I was in high school and was hit in the head by a basketball. That was embarassing enough, but there I was in what at the time felt like the middle of Cherry Creek in the mid morning brunch hours, walking as if I had sandbags attached to my legs. After four years Laurent was breaking up with me and he didn't even have the care to take off his sunglasses while he did it.

Tear were coming down my face and Laurent was following me down the sidewalk my purse and coffee in hand, calling out my name for all and sundry to hear. "Bella. Bella slow down." I crossed my arms, looking down at the ground and kept walking.

"Bella, stop." He caught up to me and then came in front of me. Got in my way.

"Get out of my way." I pushed at him knocking the coffee out of his grip. It slammed to the ground splattering open and splashing on the bottoms of our pant legs. I kicked the empty cup away only to have a girl walking her dog make a tsk sound as she picked up the cup and put it in a nearby trash can. I kept my eyes on her and turned my head to follow as she walked passed. "Thanks" I said snottily. "It was down for like 10 seconds, not like I wasn't going to pick it up." She ignored me and kept walking.

Reaching down I lifted my bag and began walking again, but Laurent stopped me.

"No." He said and placed his hands on my shoulders holding me still. "You need to listen to me. I am sorry. I don't want to hurt you."

"You don't want to hurt me?" I was a bitch about it, cruel even. "You don't want to hurt me? You don't want to hurt me. And here you are. You don't want to hurt me?" It's all I could say, I couldn't think to say anything else. It kept coming out. There was no filter, no thought. It ws just repeatedly "you don't want to hurt me?"

I turned and walked away fast, leaving Laurent behind me. My face was red and tear streaked. I put my sunglasses on and tried to straighten up and not cry. I walked all the way home. Occasionally my body would shake with a sob and I would stop and pretend to tie my shoe or sneeze.

A week later I did what all rational women do and had my blonde hair died deep brown. I started wearing my glasses instead of my contacts, allowing my brown eyes to show. I quit the gym and began jogging, something I have loathed since high school and had never before had the compunction to do with any regularity. I would go on long jogs outside in the crisp Colorado January, constantly moving to keep my body form shutting down in the cold. I stopped trying to make myself look less boyish, dismissing my padded bras and fitted skirt in favor of earthy knits and slacks.

I began shopping at Whole Foods and bought books about green living. Anything that was different from my life with Laurent. I began riding a bike instead of taking the bus. Attended a seminar on urban agrarianism and joined a coop. I did anything I could to stake out a new place for myself, to prove that I was in control. Furthering my ties with the urban earth lovers I burrowed my way into the middle of the green crowd. With Laurent gone and most of my friends with him, I had a void to fill. In that void I packed my life with hippies, hipsters, and people who say "namaste" without irony. In a perfect world it would take more than having money to move easily between lifestyles. In a perfect world all the green people would see through me and recognize me for what I was, a displaced Washington girl with a serious identity crisis.

There were times I found the positive in the situation, making a strange sort of peace with my lost personality. I had met Laurent my freshman year at University of Colorado, a drunken hook up. Yes, our four year relationship was the product of drunk freshman sex. We should be proud.

But that strange peace always came crashing down when I'd remember that the run had ended so the relationship was for all intents and purposes a failure. And I was alone. Occasionally I'd think of all the opportunities I missed out on in college because I was busy with Laurent. Then I'd get mad. Then I'd cry again. Vicious cycle.

My home in Forks was fresh on my mind when Laurent broke up with me and I was sick with longing to go back. Back where I belonged, where I didn't have rejection to deal with. Back in the place I knew.

I came so close to quitting my job at Lawrence and Carver, a sustainable design and architecture firm I had been working at for five months. There wasn't much that had been keeping me in Colorado. Only Laurent.

I hated the climate, hated the smug green living types I worked with and for on a daily basis. Every day felt like a great big show where everyone was trying to outdo each other on how far they were willing to go for the environment.

What made it harder was that sustainable design is my chosen profession, and that I had sentenced myself to my current misery.

I studied environmental design for two years at the University of Colorado in Boulder when a professor recommended I have some sort of professional emphasis. It was my idea for that emphasis to be sustainable urbanism. God help me, I am not certain why.

L and C was my first my first real job as an adult and the first month or two after I started I was balls to the wall enthusiastic. Coming to work early and leaving late. As time passed I began to settle in and realize that there was nothing special about being a working adult.

The office of L and C were located on the upper two stories of a three story converted brick warehouse in the LoDo district of Denver. And I'm stuck here at this green firm, no Laurent, nothing. When he told me the relationship was over, I cried, then decided that there was nothing keeping me in Colorado. It was my mother who talked sense into me about how I had a good job and that the employment market was not friendly, and that maybe I should apply to jobs in Seattle and Portland but stay in Colorado while I waited. So I did. I applied and applied and nothing.

I'm stranded.

Next Chapter, the arrival of our favorite guy. Please review.