It was definitely her.

Edward had been conversing with Bella for a solid week and a half now on Facebook. He'd followed links posted on her Facebook page and found her across social media. Twitter, Tumblr, she had it all under Bella Swan.

Ramona Ryden also had Twitter and Tumblr...and Bella Swan's face.

On one Google Chrome tab, Edward was talking with Bella about how, thanks to dancing Groot, he couldn't get the Jackson Five song from the end of Guardians of the Galaxy out of his head. On another tab, Ramona Ryden had responded to another Tumblr user's slut shaming post.

"See girls, this is having respect for your body," the original text claimed along with a picture of a young woman, conservatively and prettily dressed. That post was adorned by hashtags such as #THISisAnAppropriateSelfie and #DontHaveToPostNudeToGetLove

"So is this," Mona Ryden had returned, and posted a picture of Bella, her eyes bright, her arms spread wide, gloriously topless. Her hashtags included #NudeandComfortable #IfYoureNot #RespectMeAnyway.

The pictures had been posted five minutes ago, mid-conversation with Edward. There had been a few minutes between responses in their conversation-not unusual, but the timing was coincidental. Had she taken that picture in between speaking with him?

He couldn't shake the image of her sitting at her computer in the same room the photo was taken in, dancing and at least half nude. It was fucking with his head. How was he supposed to concentrate on a talking tree when he was thinking of what she looked like, her hands cupping one breast, circling her thumb over a pert, pretty nipple. He pictured her at her desk, head tilted back, lips parted as she panted, and then she moaned.

Edward shook his head, swallowing a moan of his own. He glared at the ceiling, irritated, but he didn't know who with. He hadn't come up with those kinds of visions himself. There were plenty of videos that left little to his imagination.

Bella's Facebook messenger flashed again, catching his attention. His throat tightened when he saw it was a YouTube link. Was she really…

He clicked and instantly felt foolish. It was a video from a woman who'd made her own dancing Groot out of a Dancing Flower toy. There might have been a joke in there about dancing wood, but there was nothing at all erotic about it at all.

"You're an idiot, Cullen," he muttered. Of course she wasn't going to link him to one of her videos. They were talking about comic book movies for chrissakes. She wasn't going to punctuate her enjoyment of PG13 movie with an x-rated masturbation video. Chris Pratt was an attractive sweetheart of a man, but still, he wasn't spank bank material.

"Hey, Louie Loopy."

Edward craned his head all the way back, surreptitiously hitting the right keys to close his browser. "Remind me again why you have a key to my place?" he asked as his sister came in his room. He hadn't heard her come in, which he supposed was why she was calling him names.

Alice quirked an eyebrow. "Little brother, you don't have to hide your porn from me. We shared a laptop in Europe, remember? I know the kinds of kinky shit you get into. Is it tentacle or preggo porn this time?"

"Anal figging," he said without missing a beat. "What do you want, little sister?"

"You weren't answering your phone, probably because it was on the kitchen counter." She held the thing up with a dry look. As she did, it chimed with his Facebook notification.

Edward lunged for it, but Alice dodged neatly away. It only took her a few seconds to pull up his chat with Bella. Damn technology, allowing him to be logged into the same program from several different platforms at once. Alice danced around the room, playing keep away as she scrolled.

"Look at this. You guys are such dorks. Dissecting comic book canon versus the film version of characters?" She laughed, finally letting him snatch the phone back. "So when's the first date?"

"There's no date."

"What? Why?"

"I'm not interested."

"Who are you trying to kid, buddy? I was actually there last Saturday, though seeing as you only had eyes for Bella, I'm not surprised you forgot. You couldn't be more into her if you were actually inside her right there on the table."

"You're disgusting."

"And you're just about as red as a blood moon." She put her hands on her hips. "What's the real issue? You're not usually gun-shy with girls. I know it can't be that you don't think she's into you. She was staring at you just as hard, and you're not an oblivious idiot."

Edward thought about telling her, but it seemed so unchivalrous to air Bella's dirty laundry. The fact Alice and her "people" hadn't figured out Bella had her own soft-core porn website

told him that she didn't want her friends to know. "It's just not a good idea. Are you going to tell me what you're doing here?"

His sister pinned her with a sharp look. "Jasper wants to know if you're coming over. We're going to start the second season of Orange is the New Black in twenty minutes."

"Tonight? Are you insane? You know we don't know when to stop once we've started. We're going to end up watching the whole damn season tonight, and we're going to be zombies at work tomorrow."

"Blah. Blah. Blah. Why don't you want to date Bella?"

"Why is this so important to you?"

"Because you're acting weird."

"Your face is weird."

She crossed her arms and glared at him.

"FIne. I'll order pizza, and I'll be over in twenty minutes," Edward said. He stood up and took her by the shoulders, guiding her out of his apartment.

She put up a minimal amount of resistance. "Tell me why you won't ask Bella out."

"I will bring the beer if you will get the hell out of my apartment and leave me alone for twenty minutes."

"Well, if you wanted to punch the clown, you could just say so."

He closed the door in her face. She pounded on it. "You know there's no shame in fem-dom porn. I bet Bella would be okay with smacking your ass with a riding crop."

Edward opened the door again. "Why the hell did you say that?"

Alice furrowed her eyebrows. "What?"

"Why would you say she would do that? The riding crop. Why would you say something like that?"

She gaped at him. "I was joking."

"That's a hell of a thing to joke about. You don't know her. Not really."

"Whoa." She held her hands up. "What the hell is going on right now?"

"Goodbye, Alice." He closed his door again.

She pounded on the door and shouted a few protests, but Edward ignored them. His sister knew him well. She only stayed long enough to make sure her displeasure was well noted. Then the pounding stopped.

By then, Edward had made it back to his room. He fell back on his bed with a grunt of frustration, his arm thrown over his eyes. He was going out of her mind. Alice had every right to be angry at him. They were twins. They didn't keep secrets from each other. There'd been very few exceptions throughout their lives.

This girl and her dual identity was driving him crazy.

Edward reached blindly for his laptop and pulled it to him. Settling it on his tummy, he typed out a response to the message Bella had sent. He tapped the edge of his laptop, thinking.

Alice was right; he wasn't gun-shy, and he was attracted to Bella. If she were any other girl… No, that wasn't right. If she were his Bella, the girl he'd had such a big crush on in high school, nothing would have stopped him from charming her. He wasn't the boy he'd been once. He was confident. If there was only Bella Swan to consider, the decision would have been a no-brainer.

But then there was Ramona Ryden.

Edward pulled up her website again and navigated to one of the more recent photosets. In it, Bella was done up in dominatrix gear-skintight black leather, garters, blood red lips and midnight dark eyeshadow. She held a riding crop and beckoned at the camera.

Someone's been a bad, bad boy, the caption read.

Alice didn't know how close to the truth she'd been.

Ramona Ryden looked at him with erotic wickedness in her gaze while Bella Swan went off on a diatribe about Marvel vs DC Comicbook movies and how DC had said a Wonder Woman movie would be a bad idea for various bullshit reasons. Edward smiled at the mini rant, charmed by her passion.

His conflicting thoughts about Bella and Ramona weren't going to resolve themselves.

He tapped on the laptop again and moved his fingers over the keys. In the next second, he was typing out the one thing he'd wanted to say for a week and a half.

Can I take you to dinner? This weekend?

On the message screen, Bella's name appeared followed by an ellipsis letting him know she was typing a message for an irritating five minutes-at least it felt like five minutes-before her message popped up.

Like a date?

He laughed, somehow pleased with the idea she'd obviously struggled to find those three simple words.

They were weighty words, and as he considered them, he remembered the electricity in the air when he walked her home. He remembered how she swayed, stumbling a little, getting closer to him.

He'd wanted to kiss her. Sweetly. Slowly.

He wanted to do filthy things to Ramona Ryden.

He wanted to know why Bella wanted to go on a date when Ramona was a skeleton in her closet, and he wanted to know what else was in there.

That was a lot of responsibility for three little words. It was just a date. There was no promise where it would go. And if nothing else, it was a means to an end. He'd be expected to ask questions, to pry in the name of polite conversation.

Yeah, a date. A decade too late?

Hah. Seventeen-year-old me was a sucky date, and not in the good way.

"Oh, really." For some reason, Edward felt ever so slightly scandalized at the flirtation-how quickly Bella became Ramona.

Then again, a little flirtation never hurt anyone, right? And two could play at that game.

~0~

"We're going to be dead at work tomorrow," Jasper said, his head lolling on the back of the couch.

"I hate to say I told you so."

"Don't lie, little brother," Alice said, getting up to stretch. "You love to say I told you so."

"Yes, well. Anyone who says they don't like being right is lying. Also, bite me, little sister."

"Nah. You smell funny." She stretched up onto her tip toes and let out a breath. "Anyway. I need a bio break before we move on to the next episode. Be right back."

The room was silent for a few seconds, but then Jasper began to chuckle. He was staring up at the ceiling, and Edward leaned his head up to look too. Seeing nothing at all funny, he turned his head back toward his soon-to-be brother-in-law. "What?"

"So the implication earlier was the Big Boo chick lost her service dog because she let it go downtown on her."

"Nothing gets past you, does it?" Edward drawled. The so called implication had been pretty blatant on the show. "That was gross. Funny but gross."

"Yeah. It just reminded me of something. You remember when we were in college and you found that site? You know, with the girls and the animals?"

Edward groaned, curling in on himself and wrapping his arms over his ears. "Oh, God. Why the hell would you bring that up? That was traumatic as hell. Oh, man."

Jasper cackled. "Yeah, exactly. You screamed when you saw it. You actually screamed."

"Damn right I screamed. I wasn't looking for that." Edward shuddered. "Jesus. The first picture was a girl with a horse in her. Fuck, don't make me remember that shit." He rolled right off the couch and onto his knees, still holding his head in late-night, deliriously-tired melodrama. "Why? Why would you do this to me? I tried so hard to forget."

Jasper was almost howling now. "I still don't understand how it fit or how the thing didn't crush her." He gasped for breath. "How many people do you think die in the name of beast on woman porn?"

"What the hell is going on out here? Have you both lost your minds?"

Edward uncurled himself from the fetal ball to find his sister staring at them, her hands on her hips.

"Edward found horse on woman porn," Jasper said around his laughter.

Alice's eyes bulged. "Is that what you were looking at earlier?"

"What? No," Edward said, still trying to catch his breath from his own laughing fit.

Jasper sat up straight on the couch, wiping tears from his eyes. "Wait. What were you doing earlier?"

"I knew he was looking at something filthy when I went to go get him," Alice said. "But bestiality, Edward? That's just sick."

"It wasn't beastiality. Christ."

Alice's features lit in victory. "So you were looking at porn."

"No!"

Jasper whistled. "Look at him. He's turning red."

"He's been doing that a lot tonight."

"Yeah, it was something raunchy," Jasper said. "Send me the link later. Unless it really was bestiality. Or poop porn. I don't get poop porn either."

"Do you really share porn?" Alice asked, looking between them.

"Eh." Jasper gave a vague shrug. "Sometimes you find something really interesting."

"That's gross. You know there's only one reason you're looking at porn."

"This is the modern age, sugar. If Edward gets his keyboard sticky, that doesn't affect my enjoyment any. The link doesn't get stuck together like pages of a porno mag."

The humor had long since drained out of the situation at least as far as Edward was concerned. He and Alice both made a noise of protest at Jasper's words. "Great. Thanks for that image, babe," Alice said.

Edward didn't say anything. He was too busy trying to choke down the urge to punch his best friend in the face. He didn't like the idea anyone anywhere could forward nudie pictures of Bella to their buddies. The whole thing was really beginning to piss him off.

"So dude. The porn? What the hell was it? I'm trying to figure out what would make you blush."

"Ah, Edward's kind of a prude," Alice said, waving a dismissive hand. "It was probably something tame."

"I'm not a…" Edward closed his eyes and shook his head. "Whatever. There wasn't any porn."

"Sure there wasn't," Alice said.

Jasper patted his shoulder and leaned in. "Send me the really raunchy shit later," he said in a stage whisper.

Edward crossed his arms. "I hate you both."