"Thank you so much for doing this," Edward says for the millionth time in the fifteen minutes they've been sitting in the coffee shop. "I don't know what I'd do if you hadn't said yes. I'm normally not this clueless, but I've never felt like this about someone before. It's like I suddenly realized that everything I thought I knew was useless, and now I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing."

"Relax," Bella grins, leaning back in her chair. "It's not a big deal."

"No, it is," Edward insists. "I know you're just doing this as a favor, but I really appreciate it. This girl, she's just—" He sighs, tracing the edges of a coffee stain on the table with long fingers and blunt nails. "I'll do anything to get her to feel the same way about me."

Bella takes a sip of her cappuccino to hide a smile, and clears her throat. "Well, why don't we start there? Tell me how the whole thing started."

Edward sighs again. "It was love at first sight," he says earnestly. "I was at the library, looking for a pathology book and she came over to help me." He blushes. "I got a little speechless when she asked what I was looking for, though, and I think she thought I was kind of lame. She was just so beautiful, though. It made me incoherent."

Bella doesn't really believe in love at first sight—hell, she has a hard time just liking most people based on a first impression—but it's kind of cute how obviously head-over-heels Edward is for this girl.

She nods for him to go on.

"And smart," he says fervently. "She found what I was looking for right away—well, once I stopped stammering enough to tell her—and then she told me about this study she was reading on dogs that can sense cancer, and we got to talking."

"Okay, so you connected over a common interest," Bella confirms. "You both like animals."

"Well, not really," he says. "She's studying to get her Master's in psychology, so I think she was interested in the neurology part, not so much the dogs. But she did say she did an internship where they studied slices of rat brains, so she's at least interested in animal brains."

"Uh, okay," she laughs a little uncomfortable. "Maybe not so much of a common interest then."

"Well, I like animal brains, too," he says quickly. "It's just that I kind of like them better when they're in the actual animal, you know, because that way they're not dead." He pauses. "Unless it's an MRI, or something. We could both enjoy a scan of a still-living animal's brain."

"Yeah, that'd be a hot date," she mutters dryly. "Okay. So you talked for a while. Then what happened?"

"Well, I already knew she was the woman of my dreams," Edward says, and once again it takes her a moment to realize he's being completely serious. "But I didn't want to scare her off, so I just hung around at the library for the next few days and checked out a lot of books."


Thank you for your reviews! They keep the chapters coming! ;)

Jess