Sometimes, everything you're looking for ends up being right where you left it. *Entry for The Heart of Country Contest. 1st Place Silver Spur Award Public Vote, 2nd Place Silver Spur Award Judges Choice, 1st Place Gentlemen Wear White Award (Swooniest Fella) Public Vote and Judges Choice, 2nd Place Hay Ride Award Judges Choice.* Now expanded and complete!

Their first encounter is brief, minute, insignificant, forgettable. At least it should be. Edward and Bella live very different lives, but a chance encounter forces them to reexamine everything they thought they wanted.

Bella's clueless when it comes to men, especially her friend's boyfriend.

Upon waking, there's a brief, blissful period in which you don't yet recall the sins of the night before, but eventually, you have to open your eyes. I'm Bella Swan, seventeen years old, cheerleader. This morning I woke up in the wrong bed.

A first kiss, a first dance, a first curse word shared between best friends. This is the tale of a boring, young geek and the social pariah who thought the world of him. A tale of growing up. A tale of a Non-Romantic Romance.

He told me once that he preferred brunettes, but his fingers were always playing with long, blonde strands. He could never make up his mind... until he did. And now that I'm back I don't think he deserves a second chance.

"She's Audrey Hepburn, and he's Cary Grant. She's Marilyn, and he's James Dean. She's timeless elegance, and he's old grace. She's searching, and he's already found, already taken. She's sixteen. And he's twenty-seven. But that doesn't matter. Not to a girl in love. Nothing matters, then." Edward & Bella in the definition of a forbidden relationship.

A tragedy leaves Bella in a spiral of strange events. She's more confused than ever when a hot, magnetic lawyer offers a distraction from the tangled feelings she has for her oldest friend. ExB

Bella once told me that there was nothing braver than a flower growing through a crack in the sidewalk. I laughed because she was always giving feelings to things that don't feel. If she was standing next to me, I'd tuck the dandelion behind her ear. Or she'd blow on it and make a wish. A hundred wishes. Or maybe just one.

Re-post: AU/AH Bella's only release comes in the form of distantly orbiting the life of Edward Cullen. As with any addiction, however, she's always left wanting more. "Mad is a term we use to describe a man who is obsessed with one idea and nothing else." [Ugo Betti]

I know of three kinds of change: the kind that jangles around in your pocket, the kind that happens slowly, every moment of every day, and the kind that blows you away in an instant.

As Bella Swan starts over with hopes of finding her future, Edward Cullen is hanging on desperately to his past. She's treading water, and he's a corporate golden boy. They share an office, but few words...until one night changes everything.