My grandmother passed away yesterday, so please be patient with me if I'm slow to update over the next little while. Thanks.

'You're doing good. Just ease it out slowly.'

Bella's brow furrows in concentration. She eases her left foot off the clutch, but doesn't accelerate enough. The car jerks and stalls.

'Shit.' Bella sighs and reaches across to switch off the radio. I can tell she's frustrated, but she doesn't spit the dummy. Instead, she pulls the hand brake on, turns the key in the ignition, takes a deep breath, and readies herself to try again.

She stalls twice more before she gets the car moving. As soon as she gets going in first, she's fine. I've only taken her driving a handful of times, but she changes up and down gears smooth as can be, leaves a sensible gap between herself and the car in front, and parks neatly. It's just leaving the kerb or taking off after giving way that she's really struggling with.

'Take the next left.'

Bella's eyebrows lift, but she flicks the indicator on and takes her foot off the accelerator. She takes the corner the way I showed her yesterday, barely touching the brake and instead using the gears to slow the car before she turns, then accelerating around the bend.

'Nice,' I say. My supremely uneducated guess is that once her muscle memory takes over, she'll have the whole stopping and starting thing sorted—in my car, at least.

'Are you sure this is a good idea?' Bella murmurs as she checks her rear-view mirror. 'It gets pretty steep.'

'You'll be fine,' I promise her. 'There's next to no traffic this time of day. You won't need to do any stopping and starting until we get down to the beach.'

'Okay.'

I try not to talk too much as Bella navigates the drive. She listens to the engine, changing gears efficiently as we wind our way up the mountain and then back down the other side. I watch the muscles in her legs flex as she presses the pedals and shove my hands under my thighs to keep from trying to touch her while she's concentrating.

'You're driving home,' she says as she bears left at a fork in the road, heading towards the beach. 'I'm not touching that give way.'

'No worries.' It's a hill start on a pretty blind corner and I'm glad she noticed it now. I had forgotten about that particular intersection and I would've felt like a total dickhead if she'd had a hard time with it.

By the time Bella finds somewhere to parallel park and pulls the car over, the sun has sunk behind the mountain we've just driven over. It won't properly set for another two hours, but the light here has softened and the heat of the day is starting to seep away.

I slip my hand into Bella's as we make our way down onto the sand and she smiles up at me. The breeze toys with the wisps of hair that frame her face and suddenly my insides are trying to rearrange themselves again.

'Least it's low tide.' Her lips curl into a smirk.

I give her the reaction she wants, wiping at my brow in relief. We wander south, towards the rock pools, Bella tugging on my hand each time she stops to pocket a shell or a piece of sea glass.

'I used to come out here with Dad all the time,' I tell her.

'Yeah?'

'Yep. This is where he taught me to drive.'

She smiles at that. 'So that's why you decided to subject me to it, too?'

I shrug. 'I knew you'd be fine. You're doing great.'

Bella pulls me to a stop. 'You okay? Are Katie and your dad still fighting?'

I shove my fingers through my hair. 'I mean, they're not exactly fighting. Katie's staying with Riley and refusing to go home until Dad apologises, and Dad's wandering around acting all wounded because he can't bring himself to even try to understand why she's upset with him.' Even though he respected Riley's chosen pronouns while they were visiting, he sat Katie down afterwards to ask her what they 'really are.' Apparently, 'they identify as genderqueer' wasn't the answer my father wanted, because he kept pushing her on it, until Katie lost her shit and asked why the fuck he needed to know what Riley's genitals look like. 'Like, do you want to know exactly how we fuck or something?'

'And your mum?'

I sigh. 'I have a horrible feeling she's drinking her way through it.' When I spoke to her last night, I had to ask her to repeat herself a few times, but I couldn't tell if the slur in her speech was induced by alcohol or emotion.

Bella wraps her arms around my waist. 'I'm sorry,' she says. 'Family tension is really difficult.'

I rest my cheek on the top of her head, closing my eyes and absorbing her tenderness. 'Yeah, it sucks.'

We pick our way over the rock pools, Bella crouching to observe starfish and sea anemones and little fish while I just enjoy watching her indulge her curiosity. When the shadows start to lengthen, Bella suggests we have dinner in the converted beach house turned swanky restaurant on the point. Neither of us are wearing shoes, but this early in the season, Tuesday nights are quiet enough that they're willing to ignore our sandy feet and casual clothes.

As we trade bites of hand-rolled pasta, I ask Bella if she thinks one of us needs to let Jasper know we're seeing each other.

She scrunches up her nose and reaches for her glass of sparkling water. 'I imagine he probably knows.'

At my questioning look, she elaborates. 'Our mothers are the biggest gossips in the known universe. If Jasper has spent any time in Maria's presence in the last few weeks, he'll know that she saw me holding hands with an outrageously handsome young man named Edward.'

'Right.'

'Is this because you're concerned about breaking some sort of bro code?'

I wipe my mouth and set my napkin beside my plate. 'Not really. I personally don't think either of us owe him shit. You especially. But Al brought it up with me, so I wanted to check if you're on the same page. 'Cause chances are, we'll run into him at something soon enough.'

Bella nods. 'Yeah, I guess we probably will.' She swallows a bite of campanelle and shrugs. 'To be honest, Edward, I don't think he ever had any genuine feelings for me. So if he does act like a moron, it will be because of some seriously fucked up possessiveness, which I have zero patience for.' She fixes me with a stare and I can see how easily she could control a class of rowdy kids if she needed to. 'I don't owe him anything, and neither do you. So I'm telling you now, I'll be incredibly ticked off if you get into a pissing contest with him.'

I don't really want to examine the psychology behind the fact that I'm getting turned on by Bella's firmness. I hold my hands up in surrender. 'That's fine. I'm not a fan of pissing contests anyway.' I tend to avoid confrontation where possible. Maybe that makes me a pussy, but shouting matches and fist fights aren't my style. 'Piss is fucking gross,' I add, trying to lighten the mood.

Bella snickers. 'For real. First piece of advice they gave me when I started in OOSH? Never tie up a little boy's shoelaces.'

'That's some wisdom right there.'

'Mmm-hmm.' Bella smiles and thanks the waiter who clears away our plates before she rests her chin on her hands. 'While we're talking about pissing contests… do you have any exes I need to worry about running into?'

My ears are suddenly very warm. 'Uh, no.'

Bella's eyebrows lift. 'Not a one?'

'The thing is'—I scratch the back of my neck—'I haven't actually had a girlfriend since high school. And Tanya, the girl I dated for two years when we were in school—she moved to the UK a couple of months ago.'

'Tanya.' Bella squints at me as she searches her memory. 'She used to live with you and Al, right? Before Jasper.'

I nod. 'Yeah. We stayed friends.'

Bella frowns for a moment before her expression clears. 'Ah, and you and Katie were living the nomad life for ages. So you just had a whole lot of casual sex?'

She smirks at me and I'm pretty sure I'm blushing hard. 'I, uh, I definitely wouldn't say a lot. Some, sure. But yeah, we weren't in one place for too long and to be honest, I wasn't really in the headspace to want anything more than the occasional hook up.'

Bella nods, and I can tell by the gleam in her eye that the next thing out of her mouth will make me squirm. 'You're pretty bloody good at it. You know, for someone who hasn't had a lot of sex. I certainly don't have any complaints.'

Game on. I lean across the table and crook a finger at her. When she leans forward, I brush my lips against her cheekbone, then bite down gently on her earlobe. 'Bella, we haven't had sex yet.'

Her voice is a little shaky. 'Exactly.'

'Mmm. Well, think about how hard you came last time we messed around.' She exhales, her warm, humid breath caressing my cheek. 'Now think about how much better it's going to feel, coming while I'm inside you.'