AN: Thanks for all the great reviews on chapter 1! To clarify, there's going to be an update a week on the first five chapters, which are already written. Then, there's going to be more updates, but they may take a bit longer. This "short" story was originally only supposed to be the five chapters but I fell in love (again) with these characters and there is just so much more of their story that I want to tell.

***UPDATED AN: In Putting Lessons, yes, Bella and Edward's age is put at 15. Here, they are 17. I had to up their ages to make my story work. Sorry guys! I know it's not consistent, but it had to be done.

Thanks to my beta Tif, who rules.

EPOV

One week later. . .

I stared at the fire that my friends had built in celebration that the school year was finally over, and wondered why everyone was happy another year had slipped away. The bonfire was a tradition that apparently spanned back to their parents' high school days, but no matter how prestigious the occasion or the company, I couldn't seem to join in the party. Half of me wanted to, because these were supposed to be some of the best times of my life, and the other half, well, the other half wanted something I shouldn't.

I curled my fist tightly around the cold beer bottle, feeling the condensation leak through the paper wrapper and into my skin. Glancing around, I noticed that everyone had begun to pair off, the bodies growing closer together as the cool night air rushed in fast enough that the fading bonfire couldn't create enough residual heat.

Mike and Jessica were curled into each other in the bed of his truck, looking strangely innocent for what they were rumored to do in their spare time. I wondered for a brief, uncharacteristic moment if maybe they did love each other. My sister, Rosalie, and her boyfriend, Emmett were next, sitting with legs dangling on the edge of his Jeep Wrangler. Typically I would never have invited her to this sort of gathering, but once she had started dating Emmett, I'd lost my ability to say anything. Mostly, we tried to ignore each other and pretend that we couldn't see our sibling breaking about a million rules mere feet away.

At least that was what I always jokingly told her. I didn't want her to know that even if Emmett McCarty was mostly a standup guy, I wanted to knock his brains out every time he laid one finger on her, but those kinds of opinions wouldn't be very popular and Rosalie would never forgive me. So I stayed silent and tried to endure it as best as I could.

Various other couples were scattered around the edge of the ring of light that the fire provided. The atmosphere had quieted considerably, and I figured it was probably because everyone was tired and probably more than a little wasted. Occasionally, I'd hear a solitary giggle or the whack of an empty beer bottle as it hit the ground and I kept having to remind myself that right now, tonight, I was supposed to be on top of the world.

I'd be a senior in the fall, and for the last three years, I'd ruled the school both socially and on the football field and until now, it had been enough. But tonight, I was feeling strangely melancholy and strangely nostalgic.

Before I could stop myself, I imagined Bella sitting beside me on the trunk of my Volvo, but the image wouldn't gel in my mind. Bella would never be caught dead here, hanging out at a bonfire on the last day of school, drinking cheap beer that Emmett's older brother had bought.

On the other hand, though I couldn't picture here beside me tonight, I could picture her a million other ways. Bella and I had enough of a shared past that even if I used one precious memory for every minute of this infantile party, I'd never run out.

Usually, I wasn't this weak. Usually I could avoid thinking those sorts of thoughts. Usually I could steel myself against their onslaught and keep them hidden away so that I never had to unearth the guilt that always accompanied them, but tonight I seemed to be powerless against them.

I knew that I was having especial difficulty tonight because I was bored with the people who were supposed to be my friends and because bright and early tomorrow, the Swan and the Cullen families would decamp from the city and make the annual trek to the beach for the summer. Tomorrow was the first day of the three months I'd spent in close quarters with Bella.

I'd have done just about anything to avoid going to the beach this summer, but Esme had refused to let me out of it, saying that she wouldn't have many more summers with me. I supposed she was right, and as I couldn't deny my mother anything, I'd reluctantly agreed.

It wasn't until later that I realized Bella and I would be together again, every day. The beach house, though it was meant for two families, wasn't very large. In the past, we'd crammed in, not caring that we were close together physically because we were close mentally. Those days were long gone.

I shredded the paper wrapper of my beer and after I checked that nobody was watching me, I tipped a long drag of it onto the ground as unobtrusively as possible. I'd never really wanted to drink, but when I'd become part of the popular crowd my freshman year, I'd found the forbidden thrill exciting and novel. The first night I'd spend puking my guts out had changed my mind permanently. I found that I didn't mind the taste and that I enjoyed the buzz that a single beer gave me, but unlike everyone else, I didn't drink to get drunk. And I had no intention of doing it tonight.

"Edward," a drawling feminine voice slurred behind me and before I turned around to deal with the inevitable, I rolled my eyes. Some girls, like Bella, took every action too seriously. Other girls, like Tanya, didn't take any actions seriously enough.

At first, I'd tried to be tactful. Then I'd moved onto careful clichés, like "I'd much rather be your friend," to finally, in desperation, blunt and brutal honestly. None of the ways I'd tried to tell her that we were over and done with had worked so far. Unfortunately the whole school still thought we were seeing each other because she wouldn't fucking leave me be.

I wondered what would possess a girl to run away from a boy that missed her and I wondered, too, what would possess a girl to throw herself at a boy who hadn't wanted her in months. Sighing I turned towards Tanya, who was stumbling towards me, totally drunk off her ass and totally and typically helpless.

"Edward," she crooned again, in what she probably thought was an inviting voice. What Tanya didn't know that I wasn't like most of the other guys she knew, all of whom would probably jump at the chance to get her drunk and then naked. Truth was, I'd seen her naked before and I didn't exactly want to repeat the experience.

During spring break, we'd all come out to the bonfire site and Tanya had chugged beer after beer, apparently trying to give herself the seductive power she needed to finally do what she'd been failing at for six months: get me into bed. Unfortunately for her, the last thing I found sexually arousing was someone who was throwing up at my feet, even if they were naked. Tanya had been trying to "make it up to me" since that night, and though I'd told her dozens of times that I just wasn't interested, she had obviously decided to ignore me again.

"You wanna help me?" she asked again, stumbling over her words just as she stumbled over her feet. What kind of idiot, I thought as I watched her mince towards me, wore high heels to the woods?

Every molecule in my brain screamed out that the last thing I wanted was to have anything to do with her, but Esme had raised me to be a gentleman and the instinct was too ingrained so I nodded shortly, agreeing that I'd help.

I grabbed Tanya's arm just in time, as she swayed and came dangerously close to falling on her face. Esme would have been appalled that I'd had to fight the compulsion to just let her fall, but I'd learned in the last few months that humiliation didn't stop Tanya—it just made her fight harder to get what she wanted.

"Ooooh, thanks Edward. You're such a great guy," she mumbled as I began to help her into the passenger seat of the Volvo. I hadn't intended to go home before now, but with Tanya to take care of, it seemed my evening was over. I looked over at Rosalie, who was cuddling with Emmett, and we shared a look. Her expression was full of sympathy; she knew just how much I disliked Tanya and all the steps I'd taken to convince her of the same.

"We're leaving already?" Tanya asked, questioningly looking up at me from the seat of the car.

"Right now," I said, shutting the door with a decisive click and walking around to my side. And just like I'd figured, Tanya was already half in my seat by the time I opened the door. Sighing, I slid into the seat and carefully moved her back where she belonged—on her side of the car, not on me.

I started the car, pulling out of the bonfire site so hard that the Volvo sprayed dirt behind us. I was straight up pissed that again Tanya had managed to get us alone but I had zero intention of letting us continue in that state a second longer than we had to and if that meant breaking every traffic rule in Forks, then so be it.

Luckily, there were no cops on the route to Tanya's house. I nearly forcibly dragged her out of the car and to her front door, no longer feeling even the tiniest bit charitable after having to remove her hands from my thigh more than once in the less than five minute drive here.

I left Tanya on her doorstep, half-passed out, crying and begging for me to fuck her. Shaking my head a combination of pity and disgust, I rang the doorbell and hightailed it out of there before someone could open the door.

My tires squealed as I backed out of Tanya's driveway, but I slowed after I'd turned off her street. I'd been lucky on my way here, but the cops in Forks all knew me by name and Carlisle had threatened to take away my baby if I got one more speeding ticket. I'd tried arguing with him, saying that there was no point in driving a car like this if you didn't let it go every once in a while, but he'd simply shook his head and walked away. So I had to be good since I certainly had no intention of losing my transportation for this summer. I had a feeling that I'd be wanting to get away from the house more often than not.

Thinking about this summer brought Bella to mind again and I wanted to groan in frustration. Usually I was stronger than this, but tonight, the compulsion to just see her was beginning to wear down my self-control.

Five minutes later, without even being conscious of making a decision, I found myself turning onto Bella's street. The Swans, with just Bella, hadn't found it necessary to ever move out of their first house. With Alice, Rosalie, and myself, along with Carlisle's burgeoning medical practice, Esme had made the executive decision to move when I was 12. Bella and I had definitely begun to grow apart at that point, but I still resentfully believed that moving away had been the final nail in our coffin. From then on, I'd only seen her at school and that had never gone very well.

But I remembered with crystal clarity what we'd done on the last night of school every year before that. We'd stayed up really late, drinking cans of stolen Coke, and had always made all sorts of crazy and impossible plans for the summer to come. I guessed that maybe the bonfire I'd just been to was supposed to be a substitute for what I'd done with Bella, but it felt even more wrong than usual to make plans without her.

I parked a few houses down the street, knowing that the distinctive purr of the Volvo's engine would announce my presence to the Swan household. Renee and even Charlie would be thrilled to see me—opening the front door, and insisting that I come in to see them. They'd offer a can of Coke and some cookies and insist I tell them everything that had been going on in my life. Bella would only come downstairs if Renee insisted, yelling from the base of the stairs up towards her room, and then she would walk down reluctantly, distaste for me written all over her delicate features.

I couldn't bear any more of Bella's scorn, so I avoided the possibility and made sure that nobody knew I was even there. The soft rubber soles of my Converse slapped the pavement quietly as I walked towards the Swan house. It was still pristine white, because every other summer Charlie painted it with Carlisle's help, but the blue trim was faded into a dull slate. This house, for some reason, felt more like mine than my own. Or at least it had used to. Now it just felt like enemy territory in a weird war that I didn't quite understand.

Skirting the property line between the Swan house and my old house, I slipped into the front yard. Even though I hadn't been back this way in years, I still knew it well enough from the years I lived here that I was able to make it to the fence and let myself inside with a minimum of noise. Even though I was pretty sure that Chief Swan wouldn't arrest me for trespassing, I didn't want to have to come up with an excuse as to why I was creeping around his backyard.

I pushed open the door to the backyard as quietly as I could, but it either hadn't been used in awhile or Charlie had been too busy to oil the hinge because it screeched pretty loudly. Worried that someone had heard, I glanced up at the darkened windows of the house but nothing changed and so I continued into the yard, stepping carefully since it was dark and it had been a long time since I'd been here. Too long, I thought, as I looked up at the play structure that Charlie had erected when Bella and I turned five.

We'd spent a lot of time in the fort portion of the play structure, so much that we'd even personalized it into our own playroom. There were always toys up there and Charlie had even brought us a little fridge to keep juice and water and snacks. On the walls, we'd hung some of my drawings and copies of Bella's poems, her chicken scrawl barely readable in places. Though it had been years since I'd climbed the rickety ladder to the room where I'd spent much of childhood, I suddenly had an intense desire to see it again and see if any of it had changed.

Though it felt like I spent so much of my life running away from my past, I was apparently deciding to embrace it today and without even trying to argue with myself, I walked towards the ladder. Grasping the splintery wooden edges, I placed a foot on a rung and began to climb but before I could get more than halfway up, I heard the crunch of shoes on grass behind me and I froze.

"What are you doing here?" a voice hissed, low and more than a little angry.

I let out a sigh of relief. This wasn't exactly an optimal situation but at least I hadn't been caught red-handed by the Chief of Police.

I twisted my body around, still grasping the ladder and looked straight into Bella's eyes. "Just exploring," I told her as nonchalantly as I could.

"At one in the morning?" she asked incredulously.

I shrugged. I couldn't exactly tell her the truth. Besides, even if I did, she'd never believe me.

"You need to go," she insisted and the familiar bitterness had returned to her voice. For one brief moment I'd wondered if maybe under the cover of darkness and in our old haunt, we could have, just for a little while, buried the hatchet. But clearly Bella had no intention of ever letting go of any of the things that I'd done to hurt her, and I couldn't say I really blamed her. I'd been an ass, and if she was a bitch now, it was just fair and equitable.

Any other evening and I would have bowed to her wishes, the ever-familiar guilt building inside of me until I just capitulated, but tonight was different. I knew I couldn't leave until I saw what had become of a place that we'd both loved so much—and a place where we'd both loved each other.

It was sentimental and maybe just a tiny bit weak, but I had to see it. I had to prove to myself that maybe there hadn't been all this other crap between us. That at one point, Bella had been the only person I ever wanted to see, but if I tried to explain it to her now, she'd only sneer and laugh in that angry, bitter way she did now. Before, Bella's laugh had been like a bell, clear and true. I'd twisted it with what I'd done and every time I heard her laugh now, I felt sick with guilt. I'd done this; I'd created this girl with the sad eyes in front of me.

But I stood firm, regardless of the remorse and shame flooding me. "I came to see the tree house," I told her, "and I intend to see it." And then I turned back towards the ladder and continued climbing, even though I could sense the irritation radiating off her in waves.

Then I heard her sigh and I felt the ladder give and creak as she joined me. I reached the top run and climbed through the small opening. The last time I'd been in here had been four or so years ago, long before my growth spurt and though the ceiling had been a tight fit then, now there was no way I could even begin to stand up straight. I crouched down low and as my eyes adjusted to the light, I felt my throat tighten.

She had changed nothing.

The edges of the papers on the walls were curled and some of them looked like they would crumble to pieces if touched, but clearly they weren't ever handled. I rarely ever drew anymore, but seeing all my old drawings, even the rough sketches made by a kid, brought all the old desire back. I reached out a finger to trace the pencil strokes of a sketch of Bella, one of the many that were on the walls.

"Don't touch that!" she exclaimed from behind me. I turned and watched she climbed inside the room and she went over towards the drawing and minutely examined it, checking I guess to make sure I hadn't done anything to damage it. She glared at me after she finished, but I got the feeling that her expression had more to do with her concern over the sketch than her usual hatred and my heart lightened a little. And if I thought it was odd that she was so solicitous over one of my drawings, I didn't mention it.

"Do you come here often?" I asked, all the while noting her care of the wall coverings and that the floor was meticulously free of dust and dirt. The fridge hummed away and I knew what her answer would be before I even asked—and that her answer was going to be an awkward lie.

I wasn't wrong. Bella hesitated for a long moment, her eyes dropping to the floor. Finally, she answered, and her voice had just the exact tone it had always had when she was lying. "Never," she said. "I haven't been up here in years."

I knew that I could have called her on it, but that would only make her angry, and while she had that sullen look on her beautiful face still, there was less anger charging the air around us than usual, and I kind of wanted to keep it that way. So I kept my mouth shut and instead went back to looking at the mutual history that covered the walls. Bella wasn't a great liar and eventually her guilt would get the better of her, and she'd tell me the truth.

Just like I'd figured, about a minute later, I heard her feet shuffle towards me, and her voice said hesitatingly, "Edward?"

I turned toward her and was surprised at how close she was to me. To touch her, all I'd have to do was extend my hand a little and I could brush the ends of her long brown hair.

"What is it?" I asked, my voice brusque to hide all of the feelings that came rushing back like they'd never been repressed.

She shrugged, her thin shoulders sliding against the thin cotton of her t-shirt. Bella had always been small, but now, with me really looking at her for the first time in what felt like years, I was shocked at how thin she truly was. Her arms still resembled a pair of bleached sticks and she'd probably never lose that gangly look she'd always had despite being short, but now, suddenly, she wasn't all angles. Bella, I mused—noticing more than I should—had grown curves.

The idea that Bella had grown up hit me like a 2 x 4 to the face. I'd spent much of my own puberty forcing myself to think of her as a sexless child, but now that was ultimately impossible. My eyes had been officially and completely opened by the evidence in front of me and I realized that it would be impossible to ever return her to that comfortable, safe place in my own mind. And just like that, the guilt pressing up against my breastbone tripled.

But still, I let my gaze drift down the navy t-shirt and to the short plaid boxers she wore. I vaguely remembered that Esme had mentioned Bella taking up running during her free time, and I could see the development of her muscles in her pale-skinned legs. I raised my eyes to her face, with her intense brown stare and the lush waves of brown hair that tumbled around her shoulders and not for the first time I wished fervently that I didn't find Bella quite this beautiful.

She sighed, her ribcage moving against her shirt, and though the action was far from provocative, my pants were instantly tighter and I glanced away, embarrassed that I couldn't even control myself when the girl in front of me breathed in and out.

"I lied to you," she confessed. "I come here all the time."

"I noticed."

"It's silly. A crutch," Bella said and I got the feeling that this was a huge admission for her because of the way the words reluctantly left her lips. She would much rather not have had to explain at all, but strangely, she apparently thought she owed me an explanation.

"It's in your backyard. If I had this here, I'd come here too."

"I suppose." She didn't exactly sound convinced and I should have known she wouldn't believe me. She'd apparently forgotten who I really was and had bought, along with everyone else, the Edward Cullen. At first it had been so much fun to be this popular, mysterious persona that the entire school wanted a piece of. Lately though, I'd been craving someone who knew what I was really like and I'd been wondering if Bella remembered.

"Really," I said with as much believable charm as I could muster. "It's a wonderful place. Full of good memories." That really made Bella do a double take. Now she was just looking at me like I'd lost my mind.

"I don't get it," she finally said. "You have everything. Why on earth would you look back on this?" The old bitterness had returned to her voice, joined by its best friend, resentment.

I shrugged. "Sometimes the grass is greener on the other side, Bella."

And just like that, Bella's face totally closed. "I'm done talking to you," she said, though her expression had already said it all. She was angry with me, just like always, and this brief moment of honesty had ended, but I couldn't help but feel that maybe we'd made some progress. After all, we'd almost had a friendly conversation—on my side, at least.

"I'd better be going," I told her. "We're leaving early tomorrow." Bella grimaced, like she'd just remembered what tomorrow was.

I took the few steps towards the ladder and began to descend. "See you tomorrow then," I said cheerfully as she stared at the sight of me slowly disappearing. She said nothing. Not that I expected much differently, but as I walked back to my car, I felt hope for the first time in a long time. Maybe Bella didn't hate me for what I'd done, even if I deserved it.