Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight, that belongs to Stephenie Meyers ... But this Eddie, Bella, and story is all mine!

Alright, pals, the end is nigh!
Well, in about a chapter.

Thanks for continuing with this little tale.

Special thanks are due to SunflowerFran for graciously beta-ing :o).

Chapter 6: Rainbows and Fucking-Fairy Dust

After coffee, we needed a neutral place to go and ended up going to the movies. We saw Argo. Remember how intense that was? We loved it. It was powerful, keeping us in a suspended state of anxiety, cutting the tension with humor and then throwing us right back into the thrilling plot. It was the closest thing to an adrenaline rush one could get while sitting in the dark for a few hours. Argo-fuck yourself, Eddie, I had teased you. I felt comfortable with you again after spending hours together just being.

When it was over, we went back to my apartment. You loved the place. You said it was the perfect amalgam of Alice and me: mixed colors and eclectic décor. You loved my green tea-pot I had named Steve, as you laughed at my tendency to name inanimate objects.

"Some things never change," you chuckled, running your hand through your hair.

I made us tea and we sat in my kitchen in those old, cream, rose-patterned armchairs I had inherited from my great grandmother. You loved them and said you could picture yourself sitting in them forever. I laughed and blushed because I couldn't get the image out of my mind either. You drew all over my painted-teal chalkboard table with chalk. We chatted like a pair of young twenty-somethings, completely unlike the old-battered souls that we were. It was freeing. We deserved the state of lightness we were experiencing after years of only knowing the heavy.

You headed back to the facility, needing to make curfew, and we promised we'd see each other soon. I sat in the chair you had vacated, tracing the silly chalk-drawings on the table with my finger, and completely in awe that you were suddenly back in my life after three years. And sober to boot.

Alice arrived home an hour later, and I was bursting to tell her. She was happy for you—and for me—and so sad that you had experienced such despair. She and I stayed up late talking and reminiscing the good times from our childhood.

I felt the seas of change ahead of us. It was a fragrant, sweet breeze that blew our way instead of the foul, shit-stink we had always unknowingly thrown ourselves into.

You had a daily schedule at the center, and I was booked with classes, labs, and clinical during the week. You had called me every night before we went to sleep and texted during the day. It was the new pulse of our friendship—beating slow and steady. We saw each other most weekends, going on platonic dates. My favorite was the zoo. We decided to go to the Lincoln Park Zoo on a rainy Saturday morning with Alice. Although it was an outdoor zoo, there were plenty of indoor habitats. You loved the meerkats. We spent way too much time with those diminutive beasts. I have pictures on my phone of you and the little things bonding. The smile on your face is one resembling that of simpler, happier times. I try not to look at those now.

We had agreed at the beginning of this renewed relationship that we would take it slow, as friends. Your sobriety was fragile and—compared to the years of drug abuse—so newly found. Entering into any sexual or romantic relationship could disrupt the tentative balance of being clean that you were able to achieve. There was so much I had yet to tell you—needed to get off my chest—but I knew I had to wait until you were in a more stable place in your life.

You spoke a lot about forgiveness and redemption for yourself. You apologized on the daily, for leaving me—for hurting me—for hurting yourself. Your eyes belied those of an older man, having lived many lives and seen and done too much. We've been through a lot, Eddie, you and me. Together and apart, more than the average kids our age. It's not fair, but it's all we knew. We did a lot of it to ourselves, anyhow.

You worked the program, progressed through your steps. You began to realize that you actually had it good growing up, but the problem started within you—something broke—and snowballed from there. You took responsibility for all the hell you raised and all the damage you caused. In front of my eyes, you became a man, and you softened a bit. It was nice to see the edge taken off.

You lived humbly.

I respected you.

Trust slowly started to grow again between us. Like a phoenix, our love was reborn from the ashes; you were reborn from the ashes. Hope is the most dangerous, destructive emotion, and I threw myself recklessly at it.

You let me visit you at the facility, and actually introduced me to your counselor. Beaming with pride, you introduced me as the Bella—future mother of your children, if you could become the man I deserved to marry. He told me how well you were doing, and I was so, so ridiculously proud of you.

I was invited to attend an open AA meeting with you, and agreed. You held my hand the entire time, and it was the most depressing thing I have ever experienced under circumstances that weren't my own. I've been to my share of support groups, but I was always the member; it was me that had always needed fixing. It was so strange to be the outside supporter. Still, I was proud of you because it took a lot of courage to look your demons in the eye and tell them that they no longer owned you. You had finally broke-up with that bitch heroin, left her high and dry. I was so fucking happy for you, and you started to become the man I always knew you could be, the one I always saw you capable of.

A few weeks later, when you were transferred from the residential program in Lincoln Park to one further north, I took it as a good sign. They wouldn't risk changing up your routine if your recovery wasn't stable enough, if you weren't strong enough to endure that. The only downside was that I got to see you less.

By Thanksgiving, you were released into a sober-living house and able to check out for a few days at a time to spend the holidays at your parents' house. It was such a blessing. Even though we talked daily, I missed you like hell. I visited you once we were both back in the city. The sober house was less strict than either residential facility I had visited you at, but still not without its restrictions—which was necessary and safe.

Time passed, as it tends to.

Christmas came and went. When you were with your family, I was with mine, but my thoughts were only ever with you. You had only been back in my life for just over two months, but already I had forgiven you completely. You only had five months of sobriety. It wasn't a question, though, as to whether or not you would stay sober and would we still be together in the future. No, it was a certainty. I saw our paths together, finally running along the same line, in the identical direction, toward infinity.

I left my parents' house early that holiday weekend, heading back to the city because I missed you too much. Your parents dropped you off at my apartment upon both of our promises that we would have you back at the sober house the next day at eight in the morning.

Once inside my place, you took me in your arms and kissed me fiercely and for the first time since I allowed you back into my life. Do you remember how amazing that moment was? It was first-kiss happy, and you're-my-forever amazing. It was sunshine and butterflies, rainbows and fucking-fairy-dust—that's what you had said, rainbows and fucking-fairy-dust. I laughed until I cried at that one. I loved how deeply and truly we loved. I loved you—so soul-crushingly much. Like I said, you were my drug, and I was always the worst sort of addict.

We didn't go any further that night, but I did let you sleep in my bed. I needed you by my side. I needed the promises of the future, and without my consent, I needed you.

Always.

I became your safe place. I became your hope. I was surely your future.

All we needed now was time. Time spent sober; time to finish medical school; time for you to figure out what you would do with your life: time.

Luckily, it seemed that time was finally on our side.

A/N: Well, thoughts?
I apologize for the past two days of absence... Crazy times .

See you soon,

~FabulousiTyxXx~