Author's Note: Stephenie Meyer created Twilight. I created this work of fan fiction.

EPOV

I couldn't get to Bella.

The cop had enjoyed trying to taunt me into saying or doing something he could actually arrest me for while the bouncer went back inside. He emerged after what felt like ten minutes, holding my jacket.

"Well, I've got some good news and some bad news," he said sarcastically as he handed me my jacket. "I think your girlfriend talked that guy into not pressing charges."

"What's the bad news?"

"They left together."

I charged towards the back entrance, hoping to somehow catch Bella. The bouncer stopped me with a palm to my chest.

"Sorry, Romeo. You're not going back in there tonight. Besides, they're gone. Got in a black town car with a driver."

I had been digging around in my jacket pocket for my phone, but his words froze me. I looked at the bouncer and then the cop with a dumbfounded expression on my face. The cop smiled.

"I take it that was your ride, too."

Son of a bitch.

I heard the cop and the bouncer laughing as I ran down the alley towards the street. I began dialing Bella and waving my arms for a cab. I had gotten her voicemail four times before I managed to acquire a cab. I gave the driver Bella's address and continued calling. A few minutes later we pulled up at her building. Paying the driver and letting him go turned out to be a bad idea because after five minutes of wailing on her buzzer and calling her phone, I got a text.

With Jacob ER. Getting lip sewn up. Give me until Wednesday.

The message was loud and clear. She wanted me to leave her alone until she got back from her business trip. I honestly couldn't blame her. I had ruined her birthday and now she would be gone for four days and needed to be concentrating on business. My messed up ass would not be of any help.

I sat on the stairs outside her place and called for another cab. The same cabbie was in the area because a few minutes later he was picking me up. When we got to my apartment building he shouted after me.

"Are you sure I can't take you anywhere else tonight?"

I flipped him off and he laughed as he drove off. I had been laughed at so much tonight, but nothing haunted me like the disgusting grin on Jacob's drunken face.

I let myself in and stripped down, not really caring where my various items of clothing landed. I turned my shower on to a scalding temperature and stood under it for what felt like an hour. Before long, I found myself slipping into a familiar feeling that I knew all too well. Numbness.

XOXOXOX

BPOV

When I walked out of the ladies room I saw Jacob on the floor, clutching his face, and then I looked up just in time to see a bouncer shoving Edward out the back door. I shouted after him, but didn't follow. I struggled to help Jacob to his feet and he looked at me, wide-eyed. We had both returned instantly to sobriety or as close to it as possible. Him from the punch in the face, me from the scenario unfolding before me. I imagined it was the same for Edward. I was taking a look at Jacob's mouth when the bouncer came back inside.

"You know these two jackasses?" he grunted at me.

"Yes."

"Looks like he got you pretty good there. That's going to need stitches," he said, pointing to Jacob's lip, which continued to bleed profusely. There was a good amount already soaked into his shirt. "You want to press charges? I have an officer right outside who would be happy to take your statement."

Jacob dropped his head and muttered, "no," before turning to enter the men's room.

"That's what I figured. From what I saw, one of them's a talker and one of them's a swinger. He talked," he said, pointing over his shoulder to the men's room. "He swung," he said as he pointed over his other shoulder towards the exit.

"I'll take the talker to the ER."

"Do you want me to get you a cab, miss?"

"No, I'll call the car."

What about Edward?

"What about the one you took outside?" I asked.

"I'm keeping him detained out there until you two are gone and then I'll send his ass home," the bouncer said as he crossed his arms over his chest.

"He can't come back in?"

"Nope."

"Let me get you his jacket then. I have to get all of our stuff from the coat check..." I had already started walking away as I finished my sentence and I stumbled in my beautiful shoes. Beyond giving a shit, I took them off and made my way towards the front of the club. I hated how immediately the loud, happy atmosphere had turned to disappointment for me. Birthday ruined.

Now Jacob and I sat in silence together in the waiting room of the overly crowded emergency room. He probably thought the ice pack they had given him for his lip was a convenient excuse not to have to talk to me, but the truth was, he was already off the hook; I didn't want to talk, at least not for the time-being.

I hated that my biggest fears were becoming realities.

Jacob will never accept another man in my life.

Edward will never be able to control his anger.

Combine these factors with variables like the fact that this was my birthday and the fact that I was leaving on my first official solo act of business for the company. The timing could not have been worse.

Edward's calls had stopped after my text and I was relieved to interpret his silence as acceptance of my request. There was so much I was confused by and uncertain of, but one thing was blatantly clear: all of the doubt and worry had to be shoved into the back of my mind until I got back from San Francisco.

XOXOXOX

When I landed in San Francisco the next morning I turned on my phone and only had one missed text during my flight.

Back from SanFran Weds. Make up w/my stupid bro Thurs. Family dinner Fri.

There wasn't even a question mark in Alice's message. Sometimes I truly hated how everything was already a foregone conclusion according to her.

'We'll see'was all I wrote back.

That night I had dinner with the client and I was surprised when I discovered I had a hard time focusing on the conversation. I was so obsessed with looking for a call or message from Edward that I was beginning to scare myself. I didn't know why I wanted to hear from him because I certainly had not yet attempted to sort out what happened on my birthday. Too bad I hadn't put a gag order on Jacob. His messages had the mood swings of a psycho 13 year old girl.

i know you're mad at me and i'm sorry.

i'm fine by the way. thanx 4 asking.

that guy has a mean right hook.

but i could have taken him. haha.

your silence is freaking me out okay?

Eventually he took a cue from my silence, too. I had been so bad about checking my phone during dinner Sunday night that I left it back at the hotel during our visit to the client's office for our presentation on Monday morning. That afternoon we were being taken on a tour of the company's facilities, but I had time during our lunch break to run back to the hotel. I was foolish to do so. I had nothing from Edward. I splashed water on my face in the hotel bathroom and touched up my makeup.

Get a grip and FOCUS!

Tonight I had dinner with the connection I had made at Apple. The other client presentation may have been a slam dunk, but getting my foot in the door was going to require finesse and sharp instincts, none of which I felt I currently had. I compromised with myself; I brought the phone along, but had it turned off.

If its off, I have no reason to check it, right?

After the facilities tour I had about three hours to shower, change, and prepare for the pitch I was going to give over dinner. I got into the hotel shower and turned the water on as hot as I could stand it. Standing with my eyes closed under the spray, all I saw was Edward. It alternated between the amazing grin he always gives me and the horrified look on his face that I just barely glimpsed as the bouncer pushed him out the back door of the club. My feelings were still as conflicted as the images I was seeing in my mind. Of course I could forgive Edward, but his anger cannot go unaddressed, right? What could Jacob have possibly said to him that might justify the swing Edward took? Suddenly I really wanted to know. But who should I ask? Both of them would likely exaggerate the story in their favor. I let out a heavy sigh and turned the water temperature up even higher.

After my shower I sat in the huge terrycloth bathrobe and went over my note cards. I would be having dinner with an old classmate of mine, Marley, who had a job doing market research for Apple's European markets. She managed to convince Apple's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Phillip Stinchcomb, to join us. Because I was doing this as a personal fishing expedition, the cost of dinner was coming out of my own pocket. I was hoping the reward was worth the risk - and the stress.

I arrived at the restaurant early and was sipping on a chardonnay when Marley and Phillip were shown to our table. I stood to hug Marley and reached my hand out to shake Phillip's. The appraisal he visibly gave me was more critical than Alice's. I seemed to have passed the first test as he gave me a hearty handshake and took a seat.

"Is it just us then?" he asked, reaching for a menu.

I gave Marley a confused look and she just shrugged. "I'm sorry, were you expecting someone else?" I asked Phillip.

"Honestly, I only agreed to let you buy me dinner because I thought Esme Cullen would be here. I wanted to get her to tell me the story about how she turned down Samsung."

Great.

"I can't tell the story firsthand, Mr. Stinchcomb, but it is legendary around our office."

"Call me Phillip."

"Well, Phillip, Esme actually doesn't know I am here."

He looked intrigued. "What do you do over there at Cullen Creative?"

"I'm a Copywriter."

Phillip snorted and set down his menu. "Then I guess you can't possibly be here to pitch me some business."

"Actually, our company is structured so that copywriters are also account managers. We find that with a direct relationship between the client and the creative process, nothing gets lost in translation."

Phillip took a moment to consider this. "That's a pretty old school, Mom-and-Pop-shop kind of way of running an ad agency."

"Pardon my assumption, but if you know the legend of Esme turning down Samsung, then you must know how successfully this business model works for us."

Marley looked at me, sort of bug-eyed. Phillip resumed his perusal of the menu. I took his silence as a yes. I turned the conversation to something slightly more casual after we placed our orders. I began discussing Marley's work with her and Phillip chimed in occasionally with mention of Marley's accolades. Slowly and subtly I turned the conversation towards a broader scope of Apple's marketing and advertising. At least I thought it was subtle.

"I see we're finally getting to the heart of the matter," Phillip quipped after my mention of Apple's overall losses and gains for the previous fiscal year. "You sound like you've read our annual report." He tossed an accusatory glance towards Marley.

"The annual report is available to stockholders, Phil." Marley nodded towards me as she said this.

"Yeah, Phil." I smiled at him.

"You must have gone through it with a fine-toothed comb."

"I'm personally as well as professionally invested in your company's success."

I could see from the look on his face that approaching Phillip with numbers and statistics was going to get me nowhere fast. He expected that from me and if I continued down this path, the entire evening would be a giant waste.

So much for all those damn note cards.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. My mind wandered back the previous Friday night/Saturday morning when I met Edward in the office at midnight. I swore I could almost feel his arms around me again as I looked at the photograph he had bought me.

It was directly in front of me and, lit like it was, impossible to miss. It was a bird's eye view of a large bowl of apples, but in the very center on the top of the pile was a lime. The apples, the bowl, and the table they were sitting on were all in black and white, but the lime was a shocking, beautiful green.

I cocked my head to the side, but didn't say anything.

When he couldn't stand my silence any longer, he asked, "Do you like it?"

"Y-yeah. It's just...different." And I laughed like I had just cracked a joke.

I had cracked a joke...in my own head. I was staring at a bowl of apples and called it...different.

"Phillip, what is Apple's long running slogan?"

"Think different."

"When was the last time that line of thinking was applied to advertising and marketing?"

Marley's jaw dropped and almost hit the table, but Phillip smiled and threw his napkin on the table. We weren't exactly shaking hands on a deal, but I knew a seed had been planted.

First fishing and now apple analogies? Really?

I didn't care. Suddenly I just wanted to be back at home and with Edward. As I got in the cab headed back to the hotel, I turned on my phone and called the airline to change my ticket.