Author's Note: Just to remind y'all, Chapter 6 is Edward's side of Chapter 5.

I advise that if you can't remember what happened in Chapter 5, you reread that first, and then read Chapter 6.

Chapter 6: Slip ups

EPOV:

Bella need's new clothes! All the rest of her clothes are at Charlie's so a trip to the mall is actually mandatory this time! Bella is so not getting out of this shopping spree! I could hear Alice's thoughts buzzing with excitement.

I shot her a warning look; I didn't want to upset Bella on her first day with her new memory! She could always just borrow something from Rosalie or maybe Esme; they were all about the same size. Alice was a few sizes smaller, given her petite frame. At some department stores she still had to browse the kids and junior's sections.

When we weren't in Bella's peripheral vision, Alice stuck out her tiny little tongue out at me.

"Sooo, I've decided, we have to go shopping for some new clothes for you! I mean, all your clothes are at Charlie's so pretty much the only outfit you own is the one you're wearing right now!" Alice beamed at Bella.

Confusion and apprehension flickered across her face. Right. She didn't know who Charlie was. Alice was about to explain, but I beat her to it.

"Charlie is your father, Bella," I informed her. I suddenly grasped that these were the first words that she'd ever heard me say. Another opportunity lost, I had originally hoped that my first words to her would be 'I love you' or something in that area, but instead it had been about her father. How unromantic.

"Oh," she said tonelessly. A familiar blank look twinkled in her eyes. It was the same reaction that she used to give me when I dazzled her. Had I just dazzled her? I certainly hoped so.

She closed her eyes and sighed.

"You don't have to go shopping now, Bella, if you're too tired. We've shoved a lot of information into you in the past hour or two…" Esme assured her.

Bella immediately tensed up, the dreamy look in her eyes gone.

"No, I'm definitely not tired," she guaranteed us. I believed her too, after all, she had been asleep for four whole days. I heard a slight rumbling come from her stomach, "A little hungry though," she admitted shamefaced. Why was she so embarrassed about being hungry? It was perfectly normal for a human.

"Oh, oh… Of course you are! How inconsiderate of me to have forgotten that!" Esme fluttered. I too mentally scolded myself for being so careless about the preparations for Bella. "I guess we're going to get used to that…" she faltered. We all glanced at her with bewildered expressions, strike one had gone to Esme.

While Bella had been asleep, we all had taken bets to see who would 'slip up' with Bella first. The majority of us had betted on Emmett, and nobody had put their money on Esme. Emmett smirked, feeling victorious that he had not been the first to give away too much information to Bella.

"What do you mean that you'll have to get used to that?" Bella asked inquisitively. Ah, always perceptive.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to meddle…" she blushed crimson. She was obviously not only still perceptive, but also big on apologies. As much as her unnecessary apologies annoyed me, it comforted me that these things were still unchanged about her.

"No, no, of course not Bella," Alice said nicely, "Is there anything that sounds particularly pleasing that you would like to eat?"

"I don't know…I guess whatever you have in the house is fine," Bella said. Always trying to make things more convenient for others and more unpleasant for her own self, it was so predictably Bella. But then again, she probably has no memories of foods that tasted good to her.

"Let's try pasta then! Edward invented this wicked pasta recipe! It's way better than Ragu's! You used to love it!" Alice squealed. Alice could be so irritating sometimes. Didn't she consider that Bella doesn't have a clue who Ragu is? I didn't want her to be more frustrated than she already felt, and bringing up things that she obviously wouldn't remember wasn't helping the cause.

I tried to give Alice a subtle glare to express my annoyance at her.

"It's okay, you don't have to cook for me, you probably have better things to do," Bella mumbled to me.

Immediately, guilt washed over me. She had obviously thought the reason why I had given Alice 'that look' was because I hadn't wanted to prepare her meal.

Now look what you've done. Alice thought.

"Don't be absurd, Bella, its fine," trying to fix my mistake, I glued the kindest smile I could manage to my face. Stiffly, I stood up to go start her pasta.

I heard Bella stand with Alice as they flitted behind me. The rest of my family felt the need to come too.

For some reason, Bella's heartbeat sped up, was it from nervousness, fear, or uneasiness?

"I'm sorry guys, I don't really think that me eating is especially entertaining… I mean it's not like I eat any differently than you guys do," she said, blushing warmly. I had to stifle a chuckle from the irony of what she had just said. In truth, we ate very differently than she did. She used forks, knives, and spoons, while we use our razor sharp teeth coated with poisonous venom.

Emmett snickered behind me and Rosalie elbowed him in the side. Bella glanced at us, amused by our amusement, but thankfully let it drop.

Slowly, everyone except for Alice and I dispersed in different directions.

Alice sat down on our living room couch and beckoned Bella to join her.

I wish Bella would have come into the kitchen with me instead of sit in the other room with Alice. As selfish as it sounds, even if it's just for a few minutes, I didn't want to be away from her.

Although I knew it was wrong, I eavesdropped on Alice and Bella's conversation. I wanted to know as much as I could about the things that were going through Bella's mind at the moment.

I know you're dying to know what Bella's thinking, Edward. This is partially for you. Alice thought, and sadly, she's dead on.

She was going to ask Bella if she wanted to know anything about herself, but Bella sighed crestfallenly before she got the words out of her mouth, so she opened the conversation differently…This is where super vampire hearing comes in handy. Even though there was a wall between Bella and me, I could hear her very clearly.

"What's the matter, Bella?" Alice, noticing her dejected mood asked.

"I just don't think that he likes me," Bella sighed.

Through Alice's thoughts, I saw Bella tilt her head towards the kitchen. She couldn't have been referring to me, could she? It took me a second to register that she had indeed meant me.

How could have she possibly come to that conclusion? What a bizarre idea! I could never bring myself to even come close to disliking Bella!

You asked for it. Alice thought. She then flashed all of Bella's 'new' memories of me through her mind, and in all of them I looked like an incredibly unfriendly grouch. I hadn't realized that I had looked so distant and crabby through Bella's eyes.

"Before I lost my memory did I do anything too awful to him?" Bella asked, breaking my train of thought. She was biting her beautifully luscious lower lip the way she always did when she was worried.

The worst thing she had made me do was fall in love with her, and that's the best thing that's ever happened to me during my entire existence!

"No, not really," Alice said while thinking, Do you understand now? Do you understand why she is so unsure about you?

"So is there anything you'd like to know about yourself?" Alice asked, swiftly changing the subject.

"Well, of course, but I'm not sure where to start," Bella admitted. "I guess I kind of want to know what kind of accident I was in that caused me to lose my memory. Spare me the gory details though please."

I relaxed. We had already discussed what we would tell Bella if she brought up the matter of her 'accident'.

Alice didn't speak for a second. Had she forgotten what we had rehearsed just earlier? I scanned her thoughts, which were guilty about having to lie to Bella. Suddenly, I was relieved that it was Alice who had been given the burden to fib to Bella instead of me.

"Oh, you got a rare disease called Memoriaeumonia… You're one hundred percent cured now though… Carlisle performed surgery on you, you know he's a doctor right? The disease took over the part of your brain that controls your memories… In order to get the virus out of you, we had to remove and replace that section of your brain," she explained. In her mind, Alice was frantically asking Bella for forgiveness for the lie that she had just told.

She nodded, as though the thought that she had had a fatal disease didn't concern her at all, so typically Bella.

"Do I have a mother or siblings?" she asked Alice. I calmed down; this was an 'easy' question. Alice would not have to lie to her on this one.

"Um, yes… You're parents are divorced though, no siblings. Your mother lives in Florida and recently remarried to a nice guy named Phil. You came to live with your father, Charlie, because your mother started traveling with Phil. You see, he was a minor league baseball player so he wasn't at home a whole lot," Alice replied.

"So what do my parents think happened to me?" Ah, right when I thought her questions were getting less complicated, she throws another 'toughie" out at Alice.

"Well, pretty much they think you ran away… Anything else?" Alice said quickly. That wasn't a lie; actually that was one hundred percent true. Charlie did think that Bella was a teenage runaway, I would know.

She shook her head, signaling that she had had enough information for the moment so I returned to concentrating on her pasta.

Edward, she's coming towards the kitchen. I'm outta here. Alice warned me.

I took a deep, unnecessary breath, preparing myself to dazzle her. I would have to turn on the charm to convince her that I did not despise her. I looked up as she approached me and gave her the most sincere smile I could muster up.

"Edward?" she asked tentatively.

"Yes, love—" I paused and caught myself, "—ly girl?" hoping that she didn't hear the falter in my words. Her eyes widened and her pulse sped up, which made it apparent that she had her it. She immediately calmed though, and acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.

I heard a mixture of thoughts come from around the house. Obviously the rest of my family had heard my slip.

Emmett was gloating and bragging to Rosalie about how he was neither the first nor the second to mess up around Bella.

"I was wondering if you needed help…" Bella flushed. "Not that you look like you need help, I know that you're probably a very experienced cook, it's just that I didn't want you to feel like you had to cook my meal all on your own… Oh never mind, forget I even asked," it was obvious that her vocabulary had been severely depleted when she was around me. I understood because the exact same situation happened to me when I was around her.

I couldn't help but chuckle at her loss of words, which made her blush even deeper than she had been before.

"Still the same Bella…" I smiled.

I remembered how in the past, it had annoyed Bella that I never needed her help and to her, seemed to do everything better than anyone else on the planet. Even though I didn't really need her assistance, I asked her to watch the pot and tell me when the water boiled. Her grin widened when I said this, and instantly, I knew I had been right on target with my assumptions.

I didn't even consider letting her help chop the vegetables. With her luck, she'd take off her whole arm along the way. Watching to see if water boiled wasn't too dangerous, was it?

Her stomach protested with hunger, even louder than before. At this, another warm scarlet blush came over her cheeks.

"I see someone's a little hungrier than they led on," I noted, and started chopping faster than before. "I'm sorry; probably if I had chopped faster from the beginning the pasta would be ready by now," I frowned.

"No, no, for some reason my stomach is grumbling louder than necessary. I'm not too hungry yet," Bella said nonchalantly. Her stomach grumbled again, moaning with even more volume. "Shut the hell up," she whispered harshly to her abdominal area.

I stifled a laugh, trying to turn it into a cough, but she was not fooled. She looked up and glared at me.

"Still a terrible liar… I'm glad that hasn't changed, seeing how I can't read…" I caught myself just in time.

Another muffle of thoughts came from around the house, chastising me for my second mistake in the past quarter hour, a very poor showing on my part.

Thank goodness she didn't press me for more though.

At that moment, Alice twirled into the kitchen, "It's settled! We're all –meaning Carlisle, Esme, Rosalie, Emmett, Jasper, and I—are going to head over to the mall now! Later when you're done, Edward will drive you over to join us!" she chimed to Bella eagerly.

I was thrilled to be given the opportunity of having some alone time with Bella, but I wasn't too sure that it was the best idea. What if something accidentally slipped off my tongue?

Stop worrying, you'll be fine. I don't see you doing anything stupid for the rest of the day. Alice's thoughts were clouded with irritation at me.

"So… Were we close before, this whole thing?" Bella asked spontaneously, that was a reasonable question. After all, I hadn't introduced myself properly to her earlier.

"Pretty close," I said, trying to keep my tone light and cheerful. She paused, deep in thought, taking in what I had just said.

"Were we a couple?"

I froze; she was still too insightful for my own good. How had she figured that out on the first day she 'met' me? Had I really make it that obvious?

Even though I shocked with her new revelation, I couldn't help but be a little disturbed by her words. She had asked if we were a couple. Obviously since she used the 'were' which is past-tense, she didn't consider us a couple right now in the present. Like her memory, our relationship was history.

Thank you for waiting over the weekend!

Please review!

I hope this chapter wasn't too confusing; I tried to keep it as straight forward as possible! + I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to crank out these chapters every 24 hours! So if you don't see an update tomorrow please forgive me! I promise one by Wednesday though! –MTVicesk8r