Clearing the Air
Chapter 2: Preparations
Disclaimer : I don't own anything twilight… we all know who it belongs to..
A/N : This story does not have a beta. So all mistakes are mine
I have been waiting forever, to just be near you,
I have been waiting forever, to hear my name from you,
I have been waiting forever, to undo what I did to you,
I have been waiting forever, to get lost in those eyes of you,
I have been waiting forever, to smell the sweet you,
I have been waiting forever, to just be near you,
And now that I have you here, I will never let go… of you.
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The constant buzz of alarm woke Edward with a jolt, which irritated him to no end. It felt like he had just fallen asleep minutes before the beast started buzzing. Edward always felt like the world played tricks on him. That whenever he was awake, the clock would run its normal course and the moment he closed his eyes, the clock would jump up 6 hours ahead and wake him up with its annoying noise. God! Why did you let human beings invent clocks he thought, it is the single most dangerous invention that has led to the destruction of mankind in many ways. According to Edward, if there were no clocks, then the constant need of competition between human beings, states, countries would not have been there. All this started as a result of chasing the clock monster was his theory. He would proudly lecture to anyone who would give him time of the day that the simplest method of achieving world peace would be by destroying every single time measurement device in the world.
Just as he was about to smash the infuriating device into pieces, his eyes fell on the calendar at his table, it took him less than a second to realize the significance of the day. It was the day of their High School Reunion. A reunion he had practically begged Jasper to arrange for he could hope of finally meeting Bella there and try to fix their jeopardized relationship. Edward had felt very much defeated when Bella didn't answer to his proposition of kissing her back in 5th grade. He could not bear to see the disgust that would no doubt be promptly shown in her eyes later, so he had made a hasty exit never even looking in her direction. He had spent the rest of the day hiding from her and seeking shelter in one of the trees that surrounded their playground. He could not gather the guts to go to Bella's home at their assigned playtime. And things went downhill from there. The next day was no better; he spent his day hiding from her when all he wanted to do was ask for her forgiveness. As days passed, they stopped speaking altogether. He missed his best friend dearly, but there was no way he could make things better without clearing the air about that unfortunate day, and that was something Edward did not want to do. Even after all these years, after losing Bella, he still couldn't find it in himself to repent for having asked for that kiss. His friend was a hot girl and all he wanted to do was kiss her. He could not feel sorry for having said so, and he definitely was not going to lie to Bella by saying he was sorry about that day.
Edward had nearly fallen off of his couch when Bella's name popped up in 'people you may know' list of Facebook. His first reaction was to click on it and go through her profile. Damn, the girl hadn't heard of privacy settings or what! All her pics were up for display for anyone who cared enough to see. She had grown beautiful with age. She was carefree and appeared to be enjoying herself in the company of her friends. Edward racked through his brain trying to come up with one other occasion where she had been so carefree and chilled out in his company, but came up with nothing. He felt anger and jealousy growing inside him at the thought that she was more open to someone that wasn't him; and this surprised him slightly. Sure he always missed her and craved her in her absence, but he was over his little crush on her; or so he'd thought until then. Now, he was far too confused. He went to her info and found that she was working in a talent grooming center as a senior instructor, she had got her masters in communication and negotiation about 2 years ago from UoF; but most importantly what he noticed was that she wasn't in a committed relationship! He felt ecstatic for a moment before it dawned on him that few people didn't declare their relationships on Facebook to avoid the aftermath of subsequent break-ups. He was gloomy again at the thought that Bella might be taken and that he had lost his chance thanks to his stupid-teenage-damned-mind. Then again he thought, 'what the hell, if they haven't declared their relationship to the world, they may not even be sure about the relationship' which means may be he still had a shot, and he would make the most out of it.
Now, that Edward had found Bella, he needed a plan to get her back. He was nervous about approaching Bella for many reasons. One, he really didn't wanna fuck it up this time around. Two, he didn't even know if Bella still remembered him or the time they had spent together or the way they had drifted apart due to his stupid declaration. Three, sure he'd had his share of girlfriends in college, nothing was too serious and now in his job as a free-lance software developer for Apple, he didn't even need to go to an office for the job, he basically worked from home and didn't have much of a social life save for occasional one-nightstands here and there to keep his libido satisfied. He wasn't even sure how the whole dating thing worked these days. He would have come up with thousands of other reasons had he been given the time and space to do so. But his musings were disturbed when his best friend Jasper started chatting with him over the site.
J: Wassup! Eddie buddy!
E: Jazz how many times do I have 2 ask u 2 stop using my childhood nickname! V r 25 for Godsake!
J: Chill dude! U kno I'm jus messing wit u rite?
E: Yeah, n what a day to mess with have u chosen..
J: whazzup ur ass dude :P
E: I found Bella.. online and now I don't kno whatta do..
J: seriously! No shit..?
E: Yep seriously
J: Alice is gonna be on sugarish high for weeks once she hears this.. wher did u find her btw
E: Came as a pop up in fb dude.. I dunno whatta do..
J: send her a freaking request and get to know her, take her on a date is what u do
E: U make it sound so easy.. but I'm sweating my ass off here..
J: what?
E: U know I fucked it up last time right? I don wanna repeat the same thing again..
J: come on Eddie, u were in what.. like 5th grade then? Sure she wudve moved on by now.. Jus take a chill pill and make a move..:)
E: Its not that easy, I will need some help..
J: kay, I n Ali will be there in 30 mins…max ensure to have food and drinks ready..
E: Thanks man.. I need it!
J: don't sweat it before hitting it darlin'
E: eww.. I don wanna be a part of this conversation anymore… im signing off..
After seeing every pic of Bella for 5 more times, Edward finally logged out and ordered pizza and gathered up wine and beer to go with it. It had been nearly impossible for the two men to stop Alice when she tried to crawl straight into the lappie screen to get a better look at Bella, much less stop her from sending Bella friend request.. which they were not.. so the rest of the planning for the big reunion had happened with Alice's eyes fixed on screen as if attached by superglue and refreshing her page every 10 seconds to see if Bella had accepted her request. She was so bad that Jasper had to practically tilt her chin, get her to open her mouth and feed her small bits of pizza and serve her wine in spoon since she absolutely refused to look away from screen for more than 3 seconds at a stretch saying she had a lot of catching up to do! Now what kind of catching up one can do staring at the photos was an unsolved mystery to the two men. It was finally decided that Alice and Jasper will host an unofficial high school reunion as a means to personally invite their high school friends to their upcoming wedding in 5 months. Alice will invite Bella to Forks under the pretense of this reunion and get her to meet Edward. The three of them agreed with absolute consensus that Edward should not contact Bella through any means before the said reunion and a thorough cleanup of his fb account was done under the nosy eyes of Alice who might have made him unfriend few of the girls stating Bella wouldn't like them where as the real reason was that Alice didn't approve of their dressing sense.
Naturally after anything and everything however insignificant about Bella was finalized, the focus shifted towards Edward; who was given specific instructions about shopping trip before reunion and had mock meetings conducted with Alice under the surveillance of Jasper regarding approved-appropriate behavior and talks. As stupid as it sounds to do all of these preparations before Bella even approved Alice's friend request, they definitely helped calming Edward's nerves. Turns out that while the trio lived their lives off of Facebook, Bella only logged in once in a blue moon. It was ten full days before Bella accepted Alice's friend request and ten more days before she exchanged phone numbers. Once Alice got her hands on Bella's number, she spent as much time as possible "getting reacquainted" with her childhood friend, which made Edward a very happy man and Jasper was left feeling all lonely and sad.
Just the day before Edward had endured shopping with Alice where they shopped for everything from socks to shoes to shirt to belt. Alice even wanted to shop for Edward's undergarments but Edward had had enough and he made a hasty exit narrowly escaping Alice's outstretched arms in the mall; which left Alice as a very agitated pixie that swore to never help Edward with her fashion insight in future. As strange as it might sound, this definitely shot up Edward's spirits to cloud level. He felt as if he had been granted a precious blessing. Of course, he kept his thoughts to himself because he liked to be in single piece when he met Bella.
So, now is the big day of reunion when Edward would finally get to meet Bella when he finds himself kissing the alarm piece he was determined to smash across the floor just seconds ago. The irony of the situation was not lost on Edward. All plays aside, he understood that this day would be pivotal in determining where his relationship with Bella would go… that is if they will ever have a relationship/friendship at all… and this thought made him incredibly nervous. He took a deep breath, returned the alarm clock to its place and started going through his "Alice approved" rituals for the day. Which was to brush his teeth exactly 200 times in the front, 100 times each side ways, 100 times in each direction from behind, clean his tongue and floss using the solution they'd bought during their horrible trip to the shopping mall; followed by shower in warm water for exactly 15 minutes, light breakfast of French Toast and Orange Juice, some meditation to calm his nerves, getting dressed in clothes laid out by Alice, try to brush his messy bush of hair and head towards the reunion venue in his recently serviced car. Though he would never admit it, Edward never counted the number of brush strokes or time spent in the shower, but he was glad that Alice was this meticulous about things or he might have forgotten something really important and ended up making a fool of himself in front of Bella.
It amused Edward how much his normally calm and chilled out demeanor had changed to that of nervous and he hadn't even met Bella yet. God help him when he would actually see her. He shook his head at his own inner voice and got dressed in the grey button down half sleeved shirt and dark blue jeans Alice had laid out for him. He ran the hair brush though his messy head a few times before giving up since it started to feel like he was plowing a tractor through rice fields which totally creeped him out. He then called up Jasper to ask if he was ready to head to the old playground; as much as Edward wanted to be there before Bella, he still didn't wanna be the first one to show up. Jasper told Edward that Alice insisted on the two of them being fashionably late; so even though he was ready, he wouldn't be able to head over there straight away. However, Tyler and Mike were already there and Edward should feel free to join them. The thought of these two creeps being alone with Bella, should she show up early genuinely concerned Edward, so he took off in his silver Volvo ignoring the speed limits to reach the place before her.
Edward had to endure a round of 'hello, how do you do's' with Tyler, Mike and Angela before he saw a cab stop right in front of the ground and Bella appeared out of it. If he thought Bella of 5th grade was hot, it was nothing compared to the Bella standing on the road right now. She was beautiful and took his breath away, no longer a pretty girl with barely any flesh; Bella had the right amount of curves to make her look the grown up she was with just a hint of baby fat left that prevented her looking like an utter zombie. She hadn't seen him yet, she was still looking around herself trying to find the non-existent differences between the place she had left and the place she was standing in right now. What Edward didn't know was that Bella was desperately trying to prolong the feeling of his eyes on her without having to look back at him straight away. It was Mike who pointed out that Bella had arrived to the group in an annoyingly loud voice that couldn't hide his eagerness to get her all to himself. The loud announcement of her name made Bella look up at the people gathered in the ground as she slowly made her way to them.
Edward was mesmerized by each one of her movements to notice anything else happening around him. That was how he missed the opportunity to stop Mike and Tyler literally pouncing on Bella to greet her. It was easy to tell that the two of them were trying to feel her up by the way they squeezed her when they hugged her welcome. Thankfully, Angela was already on her way to rescue Bella and give her a hug of her own. The two of them started chatting animatedly catching up with each other's lives of past few years. Bella was surprised to see herself answering Angela's eager questions without making it look off handed. She was proud that she was able to speak at all since her entire body was humming in the direction of Edward, who by the way was yet to speak to her or greet her. She found herself doubting if he would speak to her at all or behave like he used to all those years ago.
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So… I'll leave it at that, its not much of an improvement from first chapter I know, but we got to see things leading up to the first chapter. I actually wanted to stop it when Edward lays eyes on Bella; but I'd be pissed if an author did that.. so I took it a bit further. Next chapter will be a lot more fun with a lot more characters I promise. : )
And thank you so much for all the reviews, alerts, favorites each one of them mean a lot to me and makes me smile. For those of you that review this chapter, will get a teaser of next chapter. Just ensure that you are logged in while reviewing and PM feature is enabled.
Any scenes/ lines that you liked let me know in your reviews. You can also share your reunion experiences and I'll see if that will fit in this story.
See you soon
Till then, keep smiling : )
Loads of love
Tweety