DISCLAIMER: I do not own the character concept. However I own the story in which the name lay.

RATING: M for Sexual Situations and Light Drug Use

SUMMARY: It is June in Edward and Bella's mean time between college and graduate school. Newly married they embark on a road trip that takes them across the country, to oceans, lakes, mountains, rocks and down into the valley.

Story is told in the first person from Bella's point of view. Story is all human and slightly OOC. Also, the story is not linear. It will jump to different points of the summer and into the future. It may be confusing at first, but I swear all holes are filled and sticking with it is worth it.

Please review and tell me what you think.

Him But Not

November 12 - FIVE YEARS LATER. C-ART Gallery New York City, Edward has been gone four and a half years. He went missing on the road. But We'll see that later. Now it is later and Bella is older and has found herself at a gallery.

I don't know why I came out. Strike that, I do, Angela convinced me to come out. She told me I don't get out enough. But why am I here? At a gallery opening for some man's photography. I don't want to see photos.

Making my way around the room, I don't pay much attention to the art until I come to something I rocognize. I am statue still and staring at the photo before me. It's me. I know it. It is the only photo Edward took of me. It was the first day of our time on the road, the only time he tried to shoot me because I turned away and wouldn't let him see my face. The photo is of the back of my neck as I look out the car window at the last stop light in Forks before hitting the open road.

I gasp and turn and search the gallery. I look at all the people standing around eating finger foods and drinking wine. I begin to walk quickly about the gallery, looking rapidly between the photos on the wall and at the people. Then I spot him.

"Edward?" I whisper, barely a sound coming off my lips.

The man who looks like Edward looks toward me and he narrows his eyes and tilts his head in confusion. He is standing with a small group who also look at me. My gaze is met by five sets of identical eyes. A beautiful blond standing to the man's right says something to him and he shakes his head and shrugs.

Tears begin to fill my eyes. It isn't Edward, his eyes are not my Edwards pools. He looks so much like him, but different. I feel the tear roll down my cheek and wipe it away. I turn away then walk swiftly to the exit.

As I exit I think I hear steps behind me. I walk faster and go several blocks into darker parts of the city. Two men come out from an alley and begin to follow me. "Hey baby, you lost?" One of them says. I do not respond but walk faster. One of the men grabs my arm but before he can turn me around or say anything, before I can think to be afraid, the men are gone, have disappeared somewhere in a rush that sounds like a blast of wind.

I look into the night and breathe heavily. Then I see a man walking slowly toward me out of an alley. "What are you thinking walking alone at this time of night." He says with annoyance.

My eyes become wide as he approaches and I cannot stop myself from running toward him. I throw my arms around his neck.

"I know it's not you" I say as tears start to fill my eyes. "But where did you get the picture? Where did you get your face? I know you're him, but what is wrong with your eyes? You're not him?" I pull away and look into the mans face and place my hands on his cheeks. They are ice cold and he looks at me with confusion mixed with something else, something more complicated, a half recognition.

He looks at me deeply as if he is trying to remember a word he has forgotten.

"What is your name?" I ask after gaining some composure.

"Edward." He says.

"But not Masen?"

His eyes become wide, "no, no, I'm Edward Cullen. Not Masen."

I step back. "Where did you get the picture of me?"

He says nothing. Confusion still waring over his features. My face contorts in pain, my heart is breaking again. "You're not him, but you are. I know you. How could I forget? But you have. Give me closure, please if you're just going to forget me, give me something leave with."

I turn when he says nothing and take a couple steps before I hear him say "I'll give you anything you need."

"Where did you get my picture?"

"It was on my camera."

"Oh Edward." I take a step back to him and he flinches. I stop. "Don't you remember? Do you know me?"

"I don't know."

"We were." I sigh. "How do I say this? There was so much time. That's not enough. How do I explain?"

"Just tell me how it comes to you."

I shake my head. "No, I couldn't." Looking at him, my lips part and I breathe deeply, then let it out. My body rests into the air. "My picture, it was on the wall at the gallery, it was on your camera?"

He nods.

"But you don't know where it's from? You don't remember?" I ask, anguished.

"No," he says sadly. "Tell me what you think it is?"

"Me. Taken by my husband. My Edward. My love. We were too young."

"Tell me more. About the photos. There are only some I know. The ones I like the most are the one's I can't explain. They always hurt me to see, I don't know why."

"You don't know? Could you be him?"

"I don't know."

"You and I. Or he and I. We traveled. We got married and drove all summer until I started school and he went back out on the road to shoot more pictures." I want to tell him everything. There is this want in me to tell him that there were valleys in our days together. That's what it was. That's what they were.

Dead times when I would be sitting in the passenger seat watching the road come at us. Edward would turn off the satellite radio to see if he could pick up a local radio station. And something about it. Something about the sound of the channels flipping through, felt so empty. In my mind left unentertained, left to fend for itself in finding thought I heard in the changing sounds open air. It was lonely.

"Why did you follow me?" I ask.

"When you were in the gallery. Something about you. I saw you. Then you turned away and I knew you were the one in the photo. I couldn't not follow."

In those valleys, in the dead times of day, I could see dust in the sunlight, I could feel the heat begin to rise as the afternoon took over the day. I could imagine locusts were buzzing somewhere while grass turns brown, outlining patches of thick green shaded by trees.

"And what do you think? Now that we are here and don't know me."

"But I do know you, you're her."

Those valleys always came when we were in the open parts of the driving routes, the long boring viewless roads. In those valleys I could sense danger, like a deer tentatively approaching the open for fear of hunters, and I could see us drowning.

"But if I'm her and you took the picture, you are someone I thought was dead."

"Maybe I am dead."

"So should I pretend that you're the ghost of my dead husband?" I say coldly "I know you are him."

I would imagine water crashing over the surrounding hills of days and overtaking us in the dead hours. No passion, no art, no depth or meaning, just death cruel and anonymous.

"I don't know if I am him," He says "I don't remember. People change a lot when they're young. We didn't change together I guess."

"What does that mean? You were my husband. Are my husband. I couldn't love after you. I tried. But nothing. I love you."

It would have been an easy delight to drown with Edward in those dead days. But there were too many things I wanted to do before I died.

I turn and begin to walk away from this Edward, my Edward only not. Everything I love. I walk away with my newly opened wound.

Suddenly I feel something sharp, then I feel lighter and everything goes black.

Please review. If I get a review I will post the next chapter. Things are getting weird and dark.

THANKS!