Characters borrowed from S. Meyer

Twenty One

Edward

I looked on silently as the three of them stood before me.

I was in no way prepared to deal with this right now, let alone in front of our entire friend group.

"Nope," I said simply before pulling the door shut again, turning on my heel, and heading back toward the car.

"Edward, wait!" I could hear Alice's muffled voice through the door but I didn't care. Not that I was trying to be dramatic but they didn't seriously expect me to sit across the dinner table from Bella after everything that had happened. They had to be out of their fucking minds to think anyone with any semblance of self-respect would subject themselves to that.

Both she and Jasper were behind me by the time I made it back to the Volvo.

"I swear I didn't know she was coming until she pulled up like five minutes ago," Jasper said. I turned to see him holding his hands up in confession. "Bro code mandates that I would've at least given you a heads up. I was as surprised as you were. Alice knew, blame her."

I could tell he was trying to keep the mood light but the fact that Alice knew and didn't tell me only bothered me more.

My gaze turned to Alice who smiled sheepishly.

"I thought that if I told you you wouldn't come."

"I think you would've been right", I mumbled.

"Just help us set the table and then we'll eat and then it'll be over with. We'll have you out of here in two...three hours tops."

"You can't ask me to do that right now. If there's anything my therapist taught me it's how to set my boundaries. I'm not going back in there."

"Edward, let's be reasonable," she whined. "It's not like she strangled your puppy or something. She moved on with her life, she didn't do it to hurt you."

I scoffed and popped the driver's side door open. "Alice, no offense, but I don't really think you have any fucking say in this. There's a reason we've barely spoken this year, and that reason is Bella. So to be honest, she's the one you need to tell to be reasonable."

"Fine, be like that. Miss out on New Year's with your family because you're too afraid to go in and face your problems."

"Great, I will," I smirked at her before sliding in and starting the car. I had dealt with a hangover all day anyway, I'd be completely content to be literally anywhere else but here tonight.

Now it was Alice's turn to scoff in disbelief. "You can't be serious!"

"Fuck off Alice."

"Hey," Jasper cut in suddenly, eyes hard and tone harsh. "Don't talk to my fianceé like that."

Alice resignedly threw her hands up and started the path back toward the apartment. "It's ok Jazz, let him go. I'm not going to waste my entire night out here trying to convince him."

Jasper pleaded as she retreated back to the party, "Dude, come on, come back inside. No one said you had to be best buddies again. Hell, you don't even have to talk to her, Rose and Emmet and Ben and Angela are all on their way. It won't just be us four so that'll help ease some of the tension. At least just come in and have dinner before you storm off."

"I really don't–"

"Edward?" I heard Bella call from behind Jasper. My sentence dropped from my lips as she approached. She was several feet behind him but I could clearly see the expressions passing over her face - a mix of guilt and sadness and hesitation.

"You can stay, I'll go," she offered, crossing her arms over herself.

"You really don't have to Bella, you know you're always welcome by us," Jasper offered, but she shook her head.

"No really, Edward should be in there. I had no intention of coming if it meant that he wasn't going to get to stay."

She stopped in line with Jasper and for the first time since we last saw each other she was addressing me directly.

"It's tradition and it's your sister's place, and I can't act like I'm ok with you isolating yourself and missing out because of me. Just go in and have fun, I'll catch up with you guys another time. Once you've had more time to cool down."

"I'm fine," I lied, "I'm cool."

"Right," Bella smiled sadly, disbelievingly "I know that I have a lot of making up to do, but you leaving is just punishing yourself, not me. Direct your anger at me, not your sister or Jasper."

"I'm equally upset with all three of you at this point." I glowered.

Bella laughed under her breath, "That's. . . understandable." After a few moments of silence passed between the three of us, she spoke up again, "I'm just going to head home."

"Great. See? You scared her off, mission accomplished. Now come inside," Jasper said as she walked away, and I couldn't tell if his sarcasm was meant to make me feel better or worse.

I think it was intended to make me feel worse - which it did...which is why no more than ten seconds later I found myself scrubbing my face with my hands before saying, "Bella, hold on, you don't have to go."

"Really?" She and Jasper asked at the same time.

She turned and looked at me with surprise on her face, still hesitant, probably unsure at the thought of joining what was sure to be a stilted family dinner, at best. But if that were the case, she shouldn't have come in the first place.

"For God's sake Edward, stop being weird," Alice whisper-hissed, snatching the bottles I'd brought from my hand once we'd reached the kitchen.

"I'm not -"

"Yeah, you are. You literally just threw a temper tantrum and threatened to leave."

"I'm being weird? This is weird. This whole fucking thing is weird," I huffed lowly. Could they blame me?

"Just try to be civil, would you? I know that you're upset and that your civility is probably buried deep, deep in there but can you at least try to pretend that you realize she's standing in the room?"

"No," I said petulantly, "I hate this."

"This," Jasper emphasized. "Not her."

"Same thing," I shrugged.

Alice pushed me back toward the living room, the frown on her face enough indication of how she felt about Bella and I being in the same place for the first time in ages.

"Please go play nice. Make it better."

"It's not my job make it better," I growled. My sister was a meddler and was trying to force me to endure a situation I wasn't ready to endure, let alone with an audience.

"Go."

I reluctantly made my way back to the living room where Bella was sitting on the couch scrolling through her phone, probably trying her best to look like she hadn't just been listening in to the kitchen conversation.

We didn't speak as I took a seat on the other side of the sofa, the part she wasn't already occupying.

If they wanted me to sit, that was fine, but I wasn't going to play nice. Bella had all but made a show of forgetting about me. She had evaded me at all costs since she'd been gone. This was her doing, and I wasn't exactly in the mood to repair the damage she had facilitated.

But as much as I wanted to say that it was the worst thing to happen since our split, sitting in a room with Bella for the first time in more than half a year, it was actually more comforting than it should have been. My body should have been revolting, my mind running laps around anything but her, but it didn't.

It almost felt. . . nice to be back in the same room. Awkward in its own right, but familiar. Necessary.

I was conflicted because a large part of me was conditioned over years to love this girl, to recognize her as my number one. Only a smaller, newer part of me felt a hostile dislike that had grown over the past year. Seeing her and seeing that she was ok was a relief on one hand and a stinging slap in the face on the other because that meant she had been perfectly fine without me and that made angry.

Against my doing, my plans of silent treatment didn't outweigh my need to ask -

"What are you doing here?"

Despite my efforts to play this nonchalantly, the words sounded harsh and accusatory and not exactly how I'd meant for them to sound. Bella looked up from her phone, the question hanging in the air for much longer than was comfortable for either of us.

"Alice invited me . . . she told me to come - asked me to come, I mean. And I wanted to be here because I wanted to see you all. I've had a lot of time to think and I came to the conclusion that I went about it the wrong way. I don't regret leaving but I regret how I treated you all in the process. I think it was time for me to stop hiding out and being selfish, so I came to see you guys. All of you," she said pointedly.

I was surprised by her candor.

"Well, it's nice to know that you listen to someone around here," I said after a moment's pause.

Her bark of humorless laughter was short, her mouth twisted into a disapproving frown.

"I deserved that."

The doorbell cut off my still unformulated response. I crossed the room with a few quick steps and opened it to Emmett and Rosalie bustling through, the latter balancing a pumpkin pie atop a significantly smaller tub of cranberry sauce in one hand and a container of her infamous mashed potatoes in the other.

"Happy New Year," Rose smiled, dropping a kiss on both of my cheeks before beelining for the kitchen, only to double back and stare open-mouthed at Bella.

Emmett blinked almost comically and scrubbed his eyes. "As I live and breathe. The prodigal friend has returned."

Redness bloomed in Bella's face. "Happy new year," she said lightly, tossing in a small smile and a wave for good measure.

For the rest of the night, I did my best to keep my eyes off of Bella, but a stolen glance once or twice couldn't be helped.