Disclaimer: Stephanie Meyer owns all.

Rated M for several reasons.

Chapter 21 A Principle Carrier of Meaning

BPOV

Did you know that quicksand is not actually deadly and is never going to swallow you whole? But it does hang onto you tighter if you struggle. So I stopped struggling and let him talk.

I might have childishly thought that I wouldn't listen, but of course I did.

And when he was done we sat silently in the darkening room until he plucked up the courage to ask me what I wanted to happen next.

He'd already told me what he wanted.

So here I am, back in my apartment.

Alone in the dark.

Thinking.

Rose was right, he and I were never just friends . . . .

...

He met Tanya through work, her practice specialises in legal stuff around the racing and breeding thoroughbreds and they quite often interacted with Edward's veterinary practice. Of course he'd been attracted to her, she was beautiful, intelligent and she shared his passion for 'The Sport of Kings' and so it wasn't surprising they'd hooked up a few times. He'd thought she was nice enough though she didn't have much of a sense of humour and generally concerned herself more with 'status' than he ever gave much thought to.

Which of course he wouldn't. Alice, Emmett and Edward are what used to be called Trust Fund Babies and the fact that they work and aren't total wasters is a testament to the parenting powers of Ma and Pa Cullen.

I've always known that Edward was a chronic over thinker, just not always what he was over thinking.

I'd assumed that he wouldn't notice that I'd given him up after Rose and Em's wedding, especially when New York happened so soon after, but it turns out I was wrong. He had noticed and he'd missed me, but it hadn't occurred to him to tell me that because that's what happens, friends drift away from each other after college when the adult world finally claims them. And it wasn't like he'd lost me completely, we still saw each other, were still the same with each other, albeit without the 'benefits' I'd withdrawn.

And he'd gone on with his life, finishing his studies, building his career. Content with everything he had.

Until I met Jake.

He knew he wasn't entitled to be jealous so he made a conscious effort not to be on the few occasions we were all together, and when we weren't he went about enjoying the fruits of his years of labour.

But he did start wondering if there was actually something wrong with him. He'd hardly led a sheltered life, he'd met more woman than some people had had hot dinners. Why then hadn't he ever been tempted to see more of one than her lady parts? It wasn't like he couldn't build a relationship with a woman, by then he had several female friends, like Jane and Leah, fellow vets at the practice.

And then his Mom told him I was moving in with Jake.

He admitted that it upset him but he put that down to the realisation that he was suddenly the odd one out, a family of loving couples and Edward. The only one who hadn't grown up? Or the defective one, as he'd once been accused? It wasn't like he'd grown up in an environment without love and the rest of us made it look so easy. What if he was over thinking it, making it harder than it needed to be? Relationships start with two people who like each other, are attracted to each other, getting to know one another. They don't always result in the lasting love that his Mom and Dad have, Alice for example had had quite a few false starts before she met Jasper, but the fact was she started.

So when Tanya invited him to a function at her practice as her plus one he didn't give in to his instinct to say no, he went. And they had a good time. And he wasn't worried when she subsequently asked him if he'd mind escorting her to a family birthday celebration. Or when she'd suggested they attend a Race Day together. And he'd been enormously pleased with himself when he asked her out to dinner for the first time.

He said he knew it wasn't the romance of the century but that I'd once told him that was all bullshit anyway. He liked her, enjoyed the dates they shared once or twice a week and wasn't bothered by her emotional and physical distance. With hindsight he said that it was hardly surprising they got on so well, they impinged so little on each other's lives. But everyone seemed to accept them, find them normal. So perhaps they were.

I was shocked when he told me that Tanya was the one who broached the subject of marriage. Those are some cojones she's hiding under those pencil skirts. He said the idea hadn't horrified him per se but neither had he thought 'damn what a good idea, this is the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with'. She hadn't pushed him but she hadn't let the subject completely drop either, pointing out how neatly their lives fit and how easy it would be for them to take that extra step and 'fit' with everyone else.

That made me a little nauseous to be honest, still is. I've spent years avoiding revealing my feelings to him, and as stupid as it is, feels, felt, it's like she just waltzed in and stole him out from under my nose because I wasn't paying attention.

In the end he did ask her to marry him, soon after the weekend when he'd introduced her to the family, because it had been just as easy as everything else between them.

I know Edward is an intelligent man, the owner of a keen, if clinical, analytical mind, but I just gaped at him when he told me that. Because, really, what a fucking idiot. Yet I'm beginning to see how he could 'think' himself into that situation, it is very like Edward to miss the wood for all the trees. Of course Tanya didn't waste any time and it brings a wry smile to face to know that he was so clueless he didn't realise that to bring everything together as quickly as she did she had to have been just waiting for him to come round to her way of thinking. She's a shrewd operator I'll give her that, she never once told him she loved him, asked if he loved her or tried to encroach on his space. And I wonder if, with all that, she'd also realised that once he'd married her she would have had him for life. Edward's been in more vaginas than Tampax but at heart he's a decent man with a highly developed sense of responsibility, that's why he's so easy to fall in love with.

And that's why we're in this mess.

He'd been attracted to me from the first time he saw me, but I was his brother's girlfriend's friend and as he so nicely put it, you don't shit on your own doorstep. He didn't set out to be an asshole in college, he'd had girlfriends in High School, but he had a plan, a goal, and a relationship like Em and Rose's was just going to get in the way of the years of studying he had ahead of him. Besides he was a normal, albeit gorgeous, guy and he wanted to have a little fun.

But he admitted he always struggled with the line between friendship and attraction with me and though I'd never realised at the time there were many periods in college when I was the only girl in his life. And he'd be happy. And then he'd get scared and he'd back off. Back off because a relationship in college wasn't part of his plan. Back off because I never once gave him any sign that I thought of him as more than a close friend I'd hook up with occasionally. And back off because he did care for me and didn't want to hurt me, as he was always being told he would, or fuck up our friendship.

That last part I could identify with, that's why I never gave him any sign I cared for him beyond a close friend, because having him in my life in any capacity was better than nothing at all.

I never tried to analyse Edward, or his motivations, I'd made my mind up about who and what he was early on and I wasn't going to drive myself mad over thinking everything like the other girls did. But as I look back on it now, with his words, I find myself mourning a relationship I didn't know I'd had. Would I have said anything, shown anything of what was really in my head to him, if I'd noticed any of the signs? Would I have taken that risk? Even though I loved him? I honestly don't know.

So really, he's not the only fucking idiot here.

He couldn't pinpoint when his impending nuptials started looking more like an approaching freight train than a sensible well thought out idea. But he said the train hit him at the airport, when he saw me. No angels didn't sing and the clouds didn't part suddenly bathing me a shaft of heavenly light. He realised he had one relationship he could compare his burgeoning unease to. Ours.

She didn't make him laugh. She didn't stimulate his mind. He didn't know what music she really liked, what books she read, or even if she really liked either at all. She was a snob. It wasn't easy with her at all, it never had been, it had always been him being and doing what he thought she wanted. He wasn't compelled to be touching her all the time. He didn't miss her when she wasn't around. She didn't provoke any kind of physical response in him unless she touched him first. He wasn't jealous when someone hit on her. She wasn't as beautiful to him as me, she didn't make his blood pound in his ears, his heart race in anticipation. She didn't drive him crazy.

And then he realised that he would be giving something up if he married her.

Me.

Us.

Asshole made me cry again.

A lot.

He admitted he'd had no idea what to do with this newly acquired knowledge, other than pull out of the wedding, until I rocked up in Louisville. We'd been so easy in a completely different way, such a better way, that it had been all he could think about afterwards. And he'd agonised over whether or not to tell me he was coming to New York. Because he didn't know what I wanted. Didn't know what he wanted. And because Tanya's last words to him were ringing in his head.

But in the end his desire to see me, be with me, won out over his head.

And again when he invited me to the Ball.

And again. And again.

Until he'd become increasingly desperate for a sign from me that I was in whatever this was with him too.

But he hadn't noticed that he'd stopped thinking about what he was doing until Em called him on it, made him see that history might be repeating itself, made him see what he risked losing . . . .

...

All of this should be a poignant introduction to our future together as friends and thwarted lovers, and in time it probably will be.

But there are two things holding me in my tangle of melancholy thoughts.

Tanya's last words to him;

"You're not defective Edward, you're in denial. You're not incapable of loving anyone, just incapable of loving anyone but Bella Swan. The only thing I can say to excuse my selfish love for you is that it never once occurred to me that you didn't know that. I thought we could build a life together, that I could make you happy with what you could have because she wouldn't give you anything else."

And that I was the one who planted the seed in his head that he was defective, accused him of it. I remember that night at Netta's, it was the end of our first semester of college and Rose and Em had snuck off somewhere to do the horizontal mambo, leaving Edward and I to drink ourselves insensible. But I don't remember that conversation, the damning words I said, even though Edward did.