Previously…

I nodded. "Sure. Well. I'm glad you trusted me enough to tell me." I paused before saying, "And, if you still want, I don't mind dropping by your house sometime and uh… pretending." I winked at him. "And you can hold my hand if you want to."

He beamed. "Are you sure?"

"Certain."

"Wow, I wish I had said something earlier now," he joked.

"Yeah," I agreed. "I'm more than happy to hold your hand as long as I know that it doesn't mean more to you than it does to me."

"Believe me, it doesn't." He backtracked fast then. "Not that you're not pretty or anything. I mean, you're gorgeous but…"

"Not your type?" I put in with a laugh. "I know."

Jake just smiled at me and I was relieved that I had sorted out that fallout in the very least. Now there was just the fallout with Edward that I had to sort. But I had a feeling that that was something that couldn't be fixed in an hour at Starbucks.

~FOM~

'Cos this time can be like the first time

Close your eyes- pretty soon we'll be there

No man could ever guess what you're feeling

Turn a spark to a flame, make a wish, close your eyes

Won't you start all over again

Just like the first time that you touched my skin

All over again

I tasted heaven take me there again

All over again

Your smile, your touch, your taste

It turns me on and on and on

And I'll fall in love with you

All over again

-All Over Again, Ronan Keating feat Kate Rusby (A/N: Actually a gorgeous song- I'd advise listening ;))

Foundation of Memories

Chapter 10- Some Things Never Change

Edward POV

I watched the landscape flash past miserably. My heart felt like it weighed a ton in my chest. I couldn't believe that I had let her get away. I couldn't believe that I had lost it at the last moment. I couldn't believe that I had practically handed her to Jacob on a plate. I may as well have told him to have at her, because I sure as hell didn't want her.

Even though that was the furthest thing from the truth.

It was clear, though, from his body language and protectiveness that he liked her. And the memory I had had in the arena backed up my suspicions.

And now he had taken her for coffee and it could have been a date and I had let her slip through my fingers, like water. Why was I such an idiot? Why hadn't I just told her that I had remembered something? Or, better yet, taken her in my arms and apologised profusely. Or maybe even kissed her.

The moment we got home, I went up to my bedroom and sat by the window, waiting for her to come back. I don't know how long I waited for, but the sun was beginning to slide below the horizon and the smell of dinner was filling my bedroom when the now-familiar red truck pulled up alongside an old Volkswagen Rabbit that had been sat outside all day.

Bella got out of the drivers side and went round to meet Jacob on the other side. She said something and he laughed and pulled her into a hug. My fists clenched and I opened my window in an attempt to hear what they were saying, but I couldn't make out any of the words. I watched as they chatted for a few minutes, and then Jacob got into the Rabbit and Bella waved him off.

She wrapped her arms around her little body and stood there for a while after Jacob had gone. Then, she shivered, and turned and looked up at my window. She saw me sat there and blinked in surprise. But then she smiled weakly at me and lifted her hand to wave hesitantly.

I smiled ruefully and waved back.

My heart jumped into my throat when her timid smile grew and lit up her face. She didn't move, though, just stood there grinning at me. After a moment, light spilled out of her front door next door and Bella turned her face to look at the person standing in her doorway. She looked back up and gave me one last wave before going inside.

I sighed and got up, crossing the room to flop down on my bed. I wondered what I had done before this whole losing my mind thing. Because, now, there was nothing that I really wanted to be doing. I always just wanted to sit by and let the world pass; but I still felt like there was something missing. Deep down, I knew that it was Bella that was missing from my new life but I was too scared to admit it. Admitting it would be like jumping right into the unknown. I couldn't just start seeing her again after all of this time. I had treated her so badly for so long that it would be a miracle if she ever did forgive me.

Even if she did, I had no idea what to expect from our friendship. Obviously, we couldn't just pick up where we had left off because I had no idea where that was.

Just then, a vaguely familiar ringtone pulled me from my thoughts. I smoothed out my frown and grabbed my phone off of my bedside desk, opening the new message.

Meet me on the veranda? was all that it said. I lifted my eyes to the sender and felt my pulse speed up.

I didn't reply. Without consciously deciding, though, I went over to my window and pushed it open, hesitantly climbing out and then clumsily vaulting the fence in between. I peered into Bella's room, but it was empty, so I presumed that she was still downstairs, and I waited.

Just as I was about to chicken out and head back to my own bedroom, the door opened and Bella came in, glancing at her phone and holding an apple between her teeth. I hesitated, and then tapped on the window.

Her head snapped up, and that smile came back. She was so beautiful when she smiled. She threw her bag down on her bed and took the apple from her mouth, slipping her phone in the pocket of her jeans as she came to the window and unlocked it before pushing it open. "Hey," she said softly, her cheeks flushing a gorgeous pink colour.

"Hi." The awkwardness swept back over me, and I wondered whether I'd ever be able to talk to her without feeling like I shouldn't be.

Her eyes darted anywhere but at me. "Thanks for coming along earlier. It… erm… well, it means a lot."

I snorted, remembering Esme saying those exact words. "Yeah. It's… actually not that bad to watch."

Her eyes snapped to my face. She stared at me for a long moment, as though trying to find something in my expression, or trying to suck a secret out of my flesh.

I cleared my throat, not liking her scrutiny.

"Sorry," she muttered, her cheeks glowing again as she dropped her gaze.

"Can I come in?" I felt my eyes bug out of my head as the words came out of my mouth; I had not planned to say that.

Judging by the look on Bella's face, she hadn't been expecting it either. "Um…" she stammered, "sure, I… I guess so." She stood aside and I carefully clambered in.

Once I was in her bedroom, I looked around, hoping to be struck by another sharp memory, as I had been in the stadium. But I wasn't. It was just a stranger's bedroom. I heard Bella shut the window and then she turned to me, taking another bite out of her apple and watching me look around.

The walls were a light shade of blue, though the windows were lined with light yellow curtains; it was the kind of colour clash that you didn't expect to go together, but it just did in this one room. The ceiling gently sloped down closer to the window and the pale blue carpet was so thin that it may well have not have been there. Her bed was pushed right up against the wall that separated our bedrooms, just as mine had been before I had moved it, and her wardrobe was pushed up against the opposite wall; again, exactly the same as the old layout of my room. It was almost surprising how similar the rooms were, though it shouldn't have been considering that we were next-door neighbours.

The biggest difference, though, was the personal touch that Bella's bedroom had to it.

The walls around her bed had been practically turned into a photo collage. I moved closer and looked over all of the photos that were blu-tacked to the walls, leaving no space of wall between each picture. As I analysed each photo, I realised that I would have a hard time finding a picture that didn't have me in it. It felt kind of weird seeing all of these duplicates of me staring out of this almost-stranger's wall.

"Well?" Bella asked quietly after a moment.

I was currently staring at a photo of the two of us. We were sat in one of those bucket-swings that you got a kids' parks, her head on my shoulder as she laughed at something I had said and my arm around her waist as I grinned in a smug way at the camera, pleased to have got Bella to laugh.

When I didn't respond, Bella came to my side and gazed at the picture I was looking at. She lifted her finger to touch it, gently pushing on one of the corners and pressing it on to the wall more firmly. "Alice took that," she told me in a whisper. "It was… um… two years ago?" There was a question in her tone showing that she was unsure.

"Did Alice always… stalk us?" I asked.

Bella laughed. "No. But… she's your younger sister, so she liked hanging out with the older kids. She's a good friend of mine." She sighed and flopped on to her bed.

I finally looked down at her. "This is weird for you, isn't it?"

She nodded slowly. "But I guess it is for you too, huh?"

I nodded as well, letting my eyes wander over the memories that I should have, but didn't. Water fights, picnics, games, outings, vacations and sleepovers. I reached up and gently pulled a photo that had caught my eye off of the wall. It was, again, of the two of us. We were on my bed this time, though, and it had clearly been taken by me; you could see the stretch of my arm where I held the camera up. Bella, though, was completely oblivious to my photo-taking because she was fast asleep on my shoulder.

Bella pushed herself up on one elbow to look at the photo I had picked out of the collection. She smiled slightly. "Six months ago. Your bedroom. That was my birthday."

My brow furrowed. "Why were you at my house on your birthday?"

She shrugged. "Because that was where I wanted to be. We lay in your bed and watched horror movies all night. You teased me for ages beforehand saying that I wouldn't be able to sleep. But I fell asleep halfway through the scariest movie and you shook me awake a while later because you were too scared to sleep and leave us vulnerable to 'alien attack'." She snorted and then sighed. Her voice was full of nostalgia and longing. I guessed that she longed for me to remember, too, so that I could laugh with her about it. Or, in the very least, make excuses for myself.

I stuck the photo in my pocket temporarily and then hesitated. But I pushed past the awkwardness and the uncertainty, and flopped down next to her on the bed, so close that our legs were touching. Neither of us spoke, or moved for a while; Bella didn't even take a bite from her apple though it was close enough to her mouth to. Suddenly, I was overtaken by the urge to take a bite from it myself. So I did.

Bella stared at me as I chewed the apple and then swallowed it.

"What?" I asked innocently, with a small grin.

She laughed. Really threw her head back and laughed out loud. "I guess some things never change, huh?"

I smiled and shrugged. Then I decided that it was now or never. I took a deep breath and blurted, "I remembered something today."

Her laughter immediately ceased and she sat up straighter. "What… what do you mean?"

I looked down at my hands, as I laced my fingers together. "I remembered… um… you were sat with… Jacob…" Even I didn't fail to notice the way that my hands fisted in irritation as I said his name.

Bella reached out to cover my angry fist with her hand, but wavered and then drew her hand back away again and just said, "Yeah?"

"Yeah," I murmured, "and then… I came over and said something about…" I trailed off.

"About?" Bella pressed.

If I had been her, I would have blushed. Instead, I just averted my gaze and muttered, "About a… date…"

Bella froze next to me.

I waited.

After a long moment, that was made longer by the tension in the air that exuded from me, she seemed to thaw out and she said, "That's good. Isn't it?"

I looked up, attempting to meet her eyes, but I couldn't. She wouldn't look at me. "I guess so," was all I could say.

We sat there in silence for a moment and then I looked back at Bella. She had dropped her apple on the floor now, and sat there with her arms wrapped around her knees and her chin resting atop of them. Her eyes stared across the room like they were trying to burn holes in her wardrobe.

"Bella?" I asked softly, reaching over and squeezing one of her hands in mine.

She turned her head to the side and smiled at me. "Do you think you'll ever… y'know… remember?"

I knew what she meant with her vague question. When she said 'remember', she didn't just mean remember, but she meant remember everything. Did I think that I'd ever remember everything that mattered? I sighed. "I dunno." I met her eyes. "You could always tell me?"

She snorted. "Tell you what? Everything?" She kicked out her legs and turned round, lying back properly so that her head was on her pillow and her legs lay across mine. I didn't move them, instead, I cupped her ankle in my hand and gently drew lines up and down her calves.

"Why can't you?"

She shut her eyes and shivered slightly under my touch. "Because…" a smile played at her lips "…I'd never get it right. You know when you try and describe something… something amazing, and it doesn't sound good at all? Or… or when you describe something funny that happened and nobody laughs because you just had to be there?"

"Mmm hmm," I confirmed.

Bella's gorgeous chocolatey eyes flickered open again and she watched my arm as it moved slightly, rubbing small circles around her ankle bone. "It's kinda like that. And… why try and recreate something that can never happen again?" Her voice cracked a little at the end of her question and she shut her eyes again.

I looked up at her face but didn't halt my actions. "Because it can. Bella… I want to be friends with you." I paused, and then continued, "I… I feel like I don't know you but when I look at these pictures… I feel like I should know you, if you know what I mean?"

"I don't." Her voice was suddenly flat and uncaring.

I was just as suddenly annoyed with her for blocking me, when I had just confessed something I had been scared to confess even to myself. My hand froze on her leg. "Why not?"

Her eyes snapped open again at my irritated tone and I could see the defensiveness sparking in them. "Because I've never had amnesia, you twat."

"Wow," I said, heavy on the sarcasm. "I never would have guessed." I pushed her feet off of my lap.

She sat up, tucking her feet underneath her now. "Oh really? What, you're gonna hold that against me now? Just because I remember things that you don't?"

I glared at her. "You know, you could try and be a little bit more understanding, here."

Her mouth dropped open in disbelief. "Me? Understanding? Fucking hell Edward! What planet are you living on?"

"Oh, come on! I am trying so damn hard to get my memory back and you just sit here and don't even try to understand things from my point of view!"

"And you do?" she countered. "Because, yeah, you've really tried thinking about what it would be like to lose the best friend you've ever had. You've really thought about how tough it would be for someone to see their friend remember everyone but them, haven't you?" She pushed out at my shoulder. "God, Edward, you're so self-absorbed!"

I got to my feet so that I could tower over her. "What? Jesus, you are the freaking definition of hypocrisy."

She practically bared her teeth at me. "Get. Out."

"With pleasure," I snapped back, wheeling and heading for the window.

Bella watched from her bed as I climbed out of her window. I shot one last glance back at her, meeting her ferocious glare with one of my own, before scaling the fence and prying my own window back open.

I fell back into my own room, and then looked up to see that I wasn't alone.

"We've been calling you for dinner for ages," Alice said slowly. But there was a hint of a smile on her face.

I scowled. "Don't you dare go getting your hopes up."

Her face fell visibly. "Why not?"

"Because that girl is a selfish hypocrite," I muttered.

Alice huffed in annoyance and then opened her mouth to say something – probably to tell me off for being 'mean' to her friend – but I pushed past her and headed downstairs for dinner without giving her a chance to speak.

~FOM~

It wasn't until I was back in my bedroom after dinner – and after a few hours on the Xbox with Emmett (I thrashed him) – that I remembered the photo in my pocket. I reached in and pulled it out with hesitant fingers, and then I looked down at it. Though I knew that I had taken the photo, I wasn't looking at the camera. I was looking down at Bella's sleeping face, a smile lifting the corners of my lips and there was a tenderness in my eyes that made me sure that I had at least liked her a heck of a lot.

I guessed some things never changed.

I reached over and slotted the photo on top of my alarm clock and then I lay on my bed and stared at it. I remembered Bella's words earlier: because that was where I wanted to be. She wanted to be at my house on her birthday. Why? Obviously, we had been close but why would she choose me over someone like Alice?

Her mind was so hard to unravel. I wished that I could know what she was thinking. But then, on the other hand, what if I didn't like what I heard?

What if her reluctance to talk to me about our old friendship was because of something bad? Perhaps we had fallen out?

I sighed and glanced at my laptop.

Suddenly, an idea popped into my head.

I darted out of bed and started up my laptop. My fingers drummed impatiently on the desk as I waited for it to warm up. Finally, finally, I opened up the internet browser and headed straight for eBay. I clicked in the search bar and typed, with shaking hands, 'ice skates'.

Instantly the screen was filled with results. I blinked and refined my search to my size feet as well, and within my budget and my country, and the number of results dropped considerably. I found a decent pair under 'Buy It Now' and clicked on it. I read the information, and checked the sellers' feedback, and then I pursed my lips and clicked to purchase a pair. I entered my details and then confirmed payment, using the family account.

After a moment, it sank in that I had just bought a pair of ice skates. It sank in that I should go ahead with my plan. It sank in that I was going to have to make up with Bella, and then ask her – beg her – to teach me how to skate.

I exited the internet and shut down the laptop before I did anything else rash, and then glanced at the clock. It was already ten o'clock, and I had school in the morning. Ugh, I hated Sunday evenings.

I got ready for bed and then slid in under the covers. I stared at the photo in my alarm clock as I waited for sleep to come, but my mind was racing with thoughts of Bella, and ice skating, and a desperate attempt to remember more.

I tossed and turned for hours; until way after my parents had turned off the last light and gone to bed.

I sighed and looked back over at the picture, feeling sad that I always seemed to leave Bella on bad terms. Things between us had actually been going… not well, but it was almost okay. It had almost seemed comfortable; Bella had even laughed.

As soon as that thought crossed my mind, I froze. Bella's laugh. It was familiar. The laugh that I had remembered, the laugh whose owner I had desperately tried to pinpoint… it was hers! I hadn't forgotten everything after all.

I sat up. Then, before I had consciously decided to, I was making my way over to my window. I pushed it open and climbed out, carefully climbing over the fence for the third time that day. The cold night air hit my bare arms and made me shiver as I made my way to her window- which had thankfully been left ajar. I pulled it open wider and squeezed in, pushing her curtains aside.

As soon as I was in there, I wondered why I had come. But I was too far gone to even contemplate going back now. I stared at the figure asleep in the bed, watching as she rolled onto her side and brought her hand up to cup her face.

Then she whimpered.

I took a step closer, kneeling down beside her and staring at her sleeping face. She was so beautiful.

"Edward," she whispered, and I froze, thinking that she had woken. But she slept on, a smile on her lips, and I relaxed again. But then she started mumbling things again in her sleep, and I listened closely. "No, Edward, babe is too common. You can't call me that," she muttered, "or darling. That's so old-fashioned."

I felt a smile lift the corners of my lips. She was dreaming about me.

But then the small smile on her face fell away and she thrashed around violently in her sleep, suddenly letting out an anguished and incomprehensible shriek.

Terrified that her cries would cause her father to run in panicking, I acted without thinking it through.

I took a hold of her shoulders and shook her awake.

~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~

Note of relative importance: I only read through this chapter once in my hurry to update. If there are mistakes, I'm very sorry and if I find any, I will edit it immediately :)

Woo hoo! I did it! :D In case you're wondering, today's personal target was to get some kind of chapter finished so that I could update on Edward's birthday ;) Btw, did anyone else notice that the NM people didn't do their research? He said that he was 109 in NM but he was actually 108 when it was filmed and when it came out… I read too much into things don't I? :L

So anyways… happy birthday Edward Cullen! :D

Now, I know I say this every chapter, but I wasn't too sure about this one either. Lol. So many people tell me that this is their favourite of my fanfics and I have to admit that it's really not mine :L I think I like VTN best :L

But Bella and Edward had a nice little chat there… even if it did end in a fight… :S And, in case you couldn't guess, they're about to have another nice little chat… which may or may not end in a fight and/or murder :L Don't worry, I'm joking, no one's going to die…

So… I finish my exams on Wednesday (YAY!) and I am going to make this story priority because it has the shortest way to go before it finishes. So you can probably expect a few more frequent updates here in the coming weeks, but it probably won't be too long until it's finished. We're maybe halfway through? The ridiculous thing is that every bloody day I'm assaulted by tons of new ideas for new stories and I just want to keep starting them, but I already have too many as it is. But, with that being said, when this finishes, I will probably post another fic in its place because I am just that stupid.

I'm gonna stop rambling now lol. But if you want to have a long ramble then by all means please go ahead. Or at least tell me what you thought of the chapter?

Please? :)

Thank you!

Steph