A/N: Thanks so much for all your wonderful thoughts.

I missed an update yesterday. Sorry! I had a long day, and then I knocked out early.

Characters belong to S. Meyer. The rest belongs to me. I claim all mistakes as mine as well.

Stage 6: Early High School Stage for Bella, College Prep stage for me

"...she's only a week old, where babies just cry and sleep."

"She sounds boring."

"I suppose she does. But you see, you and Emmett are in your preschool stage, where you do much more. But as the three of you grow, and despite your different ages and stages, I get the feeling that you'll all be the best of friends forever..."

Those words, spoken by Mrs. Swan when the three of us - Bella, Emmett, and I - were in our earliest stages, circled my head a lot in the weeks, months then years following Emmett's and my senior year and Bella's freshman year of high school. It didn't make a difference that the scene accompanying the words was a distant, vague memory, faded by time, and made all the more nebulous by my young age. Hell, as I've already acknowledged, the entire scene could've been an artificial recollection, a screenplay of sorts, produced and directed by my brain many years after the fact, with the working material lifted from an oft-spoken moment my mind simply refused to leave blank – even if it was years before I grasped which moments in life are worth filling in.

For example, that scene in the school hallway, when I spoke words in anger that I didn't mean, definitely wasn't a moment I wanted to be filled in with details. Yet, as they say, the devil is in those details, and that moment would sure as hell come back to haunt me.

Either way, the material point is this: Mrs. Swan, as much I love and respect the lady, was wrong. The three children in that early scene didn't remain the best of friends throughout all their ages and stages. It was, in fact, Mrs. Swan's second error in that relatively short passage, the other error being one we already discussed - Bella's early-stages habit of crying whenever she was upset.

Come to think of it, Bella must've gotten all the tears out of her system in those early stages. Because despite everything that happened, despite how painful I now know it is to be ignored by the one person whose attention you crave the most, she never shed another tear.

At least, not in front of me.

OOOOO

Stage 6: Early High School Stage for Bella, College Prep Stage for me:
(aka Bella could no longer be bothered, and it bothered the hell out of me).

If what I'd wanted at the start of my senior year was distance between myself and the then fourteen-year-old girl who'd given me almost no distance since she'd learned to walk, then I succeeded in spades.

Yet, there's a reason they say to be careful what you wish for.

From one day to the next, I no longer had to evade Bella in the mornings with the excuse of football practice. As part of the swim team, her mornings began early now, earlier than mine and early enough where she took the drive to school with Principal Cullen – aka, my mom.

Neither was I forced to limit my interactions with her in the school hallways so as not to attract too much attention to us. It worked out pretty conveniently how, suddenly, whenever we passed one another, Bella would have a friend beside her with whom she was in deep conversation; or an urgent message would appear on her phone; or, sometimes, she'd even discover something of massive interest on the walls.

What's more, in those first few weeks of school, at lunchtime, she sat at a table with Alice and Jasper, and with Jasper's group of friends. As the weeks wore on, she laughed and joked more and more with Jasper's group of friends until Jasper's group of friends was no longer merely Jasper's group of friends.

In other words, from where I stood, surreptitiously peeking into a life which was once an open book to me, Bella appeared to blossom as a freshman. Mom and Mrs. Swan had been correct, of course. Bella was not only smart, but she was also brave. She was more than ready for the challenges of high school.

So, as the weeks passed, and Bella and I co-existed in a modestly-sized high school within a small town, and in homes only a few feet apart...our worlds grew further apart. Regardless, we did an excellent job of disguising the new distance between us. Both of us now at an age and stage where being surrounded by friends was imperative to our confidence, it wasn't easy to tell that while we may have been in the same general space, talking and joking around, we rarely talked, and we never joked around with one another anymore.

But it was noticed.

"Ed, did you and Bella have an argument or something?"

Emmett asked me this once, right around Christmas. He and I were in the jewelry store picking out presents for Tanya and Kate, and suddenly, I was way more interested in the charms in the glass display case than I'd been a minute earlier.

"Did we argue?" I echoed stupidly. "No. No, we haven't argued."

It wasn't a lie. We hadn't argued. We'd reached some sort of silent understanding. And, at the time, as uneasy with myself as I was, I assumed she'd simply gotten the hints I threw her way. As I said, Bella was intelligent, way too bright not to have gotten them even had they not been glaring.

"Oh." In my periphery, I saw Emmett's slow nod. "It's just…I haven't seen her teasing you for a while, and it's usually one of her favorite past-times."

I smiled, and even though it was all my own doing…I missed her teasing.

"I guess she's been pretty busy, what with starting high school, and making new friends, and making the swim team."

"Yeah," Emmett agreed. "I suppose that's true. She is busy, isn't she? I'm proud of her," he said. There was a tenderness in his tone that Emmett rarely ever displayed, and the few times I'd ever heard him show it, it was invariably for his baby sister. "She's really gotten the hang of it, hasn't she? And, I guess she's outgrown you, huh?" he grinned.

He was ribbing me; joking around about a fact we both knew to be true: Bella had once worshiped me. It was a fact that I'd been just fine with until someone hinted that it might have been too obvious…and that I may have encouraged it too much. Yet, the possibility that she had outgrown me made my chest tighten.

"Yeah, I guess she has."

"I'm gonna miss that kid when we leave for college."

"Yeah," I said after a few heartbeats. "Yeah, me too."

OOOOO

As the weeks passed, I filled out college applications, scholarship applications, and all sorts of applications that would hopefully get me out of Forks.

"Ugh, all you do anymore is fill out fucking applications," Tanya spat viciously one night.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. What the hell was that for?"

We were in my room, and I'd been occupied at my desk when she'd come and taken a seat on my lap. Which was fine; what eighteen-year-old guy doesn't want his girlfriend's ass on his lap? But when she began kissing my neck and trying to pull down my sweatpants, I kindly asked her to stop. That was when she pulled back furiously, and all hell broke loose.

"Tanya, these things have deadlines," I tried to explain for the umpteenth time.

"I thought you filled out all your stupid college applications?"

"It's not a college application. It's December. All college applications already went out. This is a scholarship application, and if you'd bothered to fill any of them out yourself, you'd know the schedule."

Now, she jumped off my lap and stalked to the window.

"College isn't for everyone, Edward," she hissed.

"I know," I said more calmly, trying not to offend her, but lately, every conversation with her ended in a fight. "I understand that."

"Do you? Do you really understand what's going on here?"

I sighed and raked a hand through my hair, surreptitiously peeking at the time on my laptop. That application had to be in by midnight.

"No, I don't understand what's going on here lately. Why don't you be clear with me, Tanya?"

"I thought I was. I mean, everything I've done for the past few months has been to show you…" She sighed, keeping her back to me as she gazed out of the window into the darkness. "Edward, when you handed me that jewelry box for Christmas, do you have any idea how excited I felt? I thought…I thought…"

"What did you think?" I prompted.

She rounded on me, eyes burning. "But then, it was a fucking charm. A charm. Who the fuck gives his girlfriend a charm for Christmas? Do you know who wears charms? Fourteen-year-olds wear charms. It was like you were thinking of Bella while you were shopping for my Christmas present."

"What the hell are you even talking about? I would never buy Bella a charm. She doesn't wear jewelry."

Tanya stared at me. Then, with a snort, she shook and dropped her head.

"Seriously, Tanya, what's this problem you have with Bella?" I asked.

Tanya's head snapped up, and she put a hand up, palm out toward me. "Never mind Bella. It turns out that fucking kid wasn't even the problem."

"Hey, that's more than enough. Watch your damn mouth when you talk about her. She's never done a damn thing to you for you to-"

"The problem here is you, Edward! I thought there was a ring in that jewelry box! I thought you'd finally gotten the hint and-"

"And what, proposed?" I asked in disbelief. "Tanya, we're eighteen!"

"And?"

"What do you mean 'and?'" I asked, fisting and pulling my hair. "Eighteen-year-olds don't commit themselves to one another for the rest of their lives. Besides, I-" I exhaled, shaking my head, "I have plans, and they've never included staying in this town."

She strode quickly toward me and re-claimed her seat on my lap.

"Edward, we can both go to Clallam County Community. We can get married and live in your parents' basement until we find an apartment that we can-"

"In my parents' basement? And…what? Let them support us?"

"No! Of course not. We can work part-time. We can get jobs at Newton's Sporting Goods, or you can continue at the café and I could-"

"Tanya…Tanya what are you saying?" I asked, my tone calmer but still conveying just how insane I found her plans for us. "How long have you been thinking these things?"

She held my gaze for a long while, then she leaned in and pressed her mouth to mine. "For a long while, Edward," she breathed against me, nipping my lips. "I love you, and I know you love me, and we're so good together," she said as she straddled my lap and began a slow dance, "in so many ways."

"Tanya…"

"Edward…" she groaned as she rocked and pressed herself tightly against me, "you know that no one will ever make you feel what I make you feel, that you'll never want anyone's body the way you want mine, that you'll never fit inside anyone the way you fit inside me…that you'll never love anyone…"

But that was the thing. Yeah, I cared about Tanya, and yeah, she made me feel things I'd never felt before. And usually, when she moved like that, she could get me to agree to just about anything, and I'd justify it by telling myself that it was love. But now…lately, when I pictured my future…Tanya wasn't in it, and a slow dance over my growing hard-on wouldn't change that.

So, I forced myself to take her by the shoulders, carefully yet firmly, and pull her away. Our gazes met and held and…

And that was that.

OOOOO

I won't say our break-up didn't hurt because, of course, it did. She was my first real girlfriend, and for a while there, between the novelty of a 'grown-up' relationship and the sex that accompanied it, yeah, I'd thought it was love. But when December turned to January and January to February, and I took a deep breath, and there was no lingering pain, no regrets, I knew I'd be okay.

And when one cold February afternoon, a letter arrived from Northwestern, and I tore it open and grinned, I knew I'd made the right decision. Yet, even as I texted my parents, who were out running errands, even as I texted Em, there was that one other person whom I wanted to text and share my news with more than anything – and it wasn't Tanya.

But…I didn't text her. We'd stopped sharing both our successes and our failures with one another months earlier.

It turned out, Emmett was accepted to Northwestern as well. The next couple of months were a flurry of preparation for college, for a move to Chicago, and for the end of our senior year. February turned to March, then April. April became May, and one May morning, when I looked out of the kitchen window, the sun had made a rare appearance to Forks. Its rays broke through the clouds, and when I followed their trajectory, they were shining over a girl in the neighboring backyard.

Bella and I hadn't shared a real conversation in months. Yet, it was almost automatic when I opened the sliding glass doors and stepped into the backyard. I quickly scaled the fence separating our yards, the way I had since about age ten, and Bella would follow me, and being too tiny to do the same, I'd end up carrying her over the fence.

Now, she was alone, another rarity these past few months. The weather still wasn't warm enough for the pool, but as I made my way toward her, I saw that she was lying back on a pool chair in shorts and a short tee shirt, with her face up to the sun, eyes shut, and her head and shoulders moving in a way that made it obvious she had pods in her ears.

She didn't hear my approach, nor did she notice when I took a seat on the chair next to her.

"Bella," I said, smiling to myself when she didn't react. I could hear the music blasting from here. But then…I noticed that she looked older, which of course, she was since the last time we'd been this close to one another. At the end of that summer, Bella would turn fifteen, and her hair had grown longer, longer than I remembered it ever being and somehow a richer shade of brown than I recalled. Splayed wildly on the chair's headrest, it caught and gleamed in the sunlight in a way I'd never seen it do, and the sun brought out red and golden highlights I'd never noticed she had.

Her limbs looked stronger, too, not as skinny as they'd been before she joined the swim team but more muscular. The tiny shirt she wore rode over a stomach which wasn't merely bony but displayed the tightness of an athlete. And her face…her face had always been round, but now, the shape of it seemed altered; her cheekbones were higher and more defined, almost as if the fulness of childhood was slowly etching away.

"Bella."

She still didn't hear me. Instead, she kept moving her frame to the music. I leaned in closer, shading her from the sun, and noted that she even smelled differently. Inhaling, I tried to figure out what it was. Was it her shampoo? A new cream? Was she wearing perfume nowadays or-

Her eyes popped open. "What the hell?"

I pulled back instantly.

"You fucking startled me," she continued, sitting up and yanking the pods out of her ears.

"Sorry, sorry." I offered her a sheepish chuckle. "Man, it looks like a year of high school has added a few choice words to your vocabulary."

Her gaze remained impassive.

"It was a joke," I explained.

"I gathered that was your intent, yes."

"Ah," I nodded, "You just didn't see the humor. Fair enough. How are you, Bella Marie?"

"I'm fine." She paused, then added the next words almost begrudgingly. "And you?"

"I'm okay," I smiled, swallowing back inexplicable nerves roiling in my stomach. "I hear you're doing well on the swim team."

In my periphery, I saw her bend one knee, and strangely enough, my eyes wanted to take another look at those muscles, but I kept them on her face.

"Your hearing works well then if that's what you hear."

I chuckled. "I see you still don't lack for retorts. And how…how have your classes been?"

"They've been interesting," she smirked.

"They can't be that interesting if that's all you have to say about them."

"Sometimes, the less said, the better."

"I'm not sure if that saying applies to a description of classes," I grinned.

"Maybe it doesn't, but I'm sure you don't really want to sit here and listen to me describe my freshman high school classes in detail."

"If I didn't, I wouldn't have asked."

"Mm," she nodded. "So, you always say what you mean and mean what you say."

"I try to."

She smiled for the first time since our conversation began, but it was a strange, cold smile that only made my stomach all the more uneasy.

"Interesting. I'd wondered…but there you go, straight from the horse's mouth, once again."

"What?"

"Never mind. Congrats on Northwestern, by the way."

"Thanks, Bella Marie."

"Your dream came true. Now, you can finally leave behind this…what is it that you've always called our town? The Boondocks. A one-horse town. Bumfuck Nowhere."

"Bella, they were terms of endearment," I joked.

"Terms of endearment, huh? You have strange terms to show endearment. Look, Emmett isn't home, so if you're looking for him-"

"No. No, I wasn't looking for him," I said. "I just, I saw you were out here, and..and I wanted to catch up."

"You wanted to catch up," she echoed, her features abruptly hardening, nostrils flaring. For one long moment, it seemed as if she was preparing to say something.

The sliding door to her house opened, and Alice peeked out her head.

"Bella, we're all here, and-"

She cut off when she spotted me, narrowing her eyes.

"Hey, Alice."

All I received in reply was one of those half nods with the jutted chin.

"Well, since we're all caught up, I've got my friends in the house waiting for me."

There was a slight inflection to the word 'friends' that I didn't fail to miss.

"Oh. Okay. Well, it was good catching up with you."

Without another word, Bella stood and walked into her house.

OOOOO

On the day when Emmett and I left for Chicago, we all stood at the airport, huddled together in a corner a few feet away from Security. Our moms were coming with us to help us settle into the campus, so when the goodbyes began, Emmett pulled his little sister into a bear hug. Whatever he whispered made her swallow hard and nod, but as I've said before, she didn't shed a tear – not anymore. Instead, she chuckled and hugged him tightly.

"I love you too, Emmett," I heard her whisper.

Meanwhile, I was hugging my dad. Then, I shook the Chief's hand. And, while Emmett did the same in reverse order, I approached Bella, who'd walked away from our circle.

She watched me with that same impassive expression she wore only around me now.

I'm not sure what I'd wanted to say. Still too immature to realize what I was leaving behind and exactly why I was in such a rush to leave it just then, and lacking the foresight to see the full extent of the many missteps I'd taken over that past year, I didn't have the right words in my head, much less at the tip of my tongue. It would be…a while before I had the right words or anything approximating them. It would take time before I was in the right state of mind even to begin to earn that painted image that was still simply a blank canvas.

I smiled and swallowed. "Bella Marie, I know our friendship hasn't been the same this-"

"Take care of yourself in school, and I hope you find everything you're looking for over there."

With that, Bella turned around and walked away.

And, the next time I saw Bella Marie Swan, she was a completely different woman from the girl I last saw at that airport.

A/N: Thoughts?

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