We decided on the diner. It was late in the evening, a little after 11:00, and the promise of peace and quiet won over trendy and loud. The drive over was comfortable enough, the short distance between the diner and Bill's not allowing much time for any awkward pauses. Our conversation was surface level, at best, and it seemed that was as far as either of us intended on taking it.

For tonight, at least.

I tried to focus on our conversation even though my mind was taking in everything about him. His smell, the soft cadence of his voice, the sound of the steering wheel grazing against his fingertips as he drove us through the empty and dark streets to the diner.

For now I was still trying to wrap my head around him and me and us being in such close proximity to each other again. I had pictured myself being, well, myself: a mess of the hot variety with word vomit flowing like wine. In actuality, I was quite impressed with myself and the level of ease I had managed to conduct myself. I decided to play it safe and not dive deep into this upcoming conversation with Edward just yet.

He parked the car in the closest spot, and I stepped out, wrapping my coat tighter around me. I avoided any fresh patches of ice, my boots having a slight heel not helping in this situation. He held the door for me with a small smile, and we headed in silently, following the hostess a few moments later towards a corner booth in front of the large window. The diner was still fairly busy this time of night, filled with young teens with nothing else to do.

Edward nodded his chin at our booth as our hostess walked away. "This okay?" He shrugged off his coat and tossed it gently in the seat.

"Yeah, it's fine," I replied, and slid into the booth across from him. I took a second to remove my jacket and placed it beside me. "Things haven't changed much, I see."

He looked around us, eyeing the booths and tables around us filled with youth and carelessness. We smiled at their teenage humor, shaking our heads at how it seemed like yesterday that we had occupied those very seats. Friday nights at the movie theater followed by the diner was how we spent most of our middle school and high school years.

"Yeah. Not much for them to do around here," Edward answered, his eyes leaving the teens and focusing on the wrapped silverware in front of him. I knew that in my time away from Forks, not much had been added to the town in terms of teenage entertainment. It seemed that the entertainment factor had been extinguished permanently since The Rec had closed its doors.

"Reminds me of all of us," I added, and the way he laughed made me momentarily forget to breathe. The lighting of the diner was brighter than that of the bar, and it allowed me to really see him. I compared the Edward that existed in my dreams and memories to the Edward sitting across from me now. His hair was still the same rich color of copper, the strands not as erratic and loose as they once had been. It was shorter, tamer, and I imagined that an inch or two could stand between my fingers if I ran them through the silky texture.

Not that I was imagining anything like that.

I continued staring, taking in the slight laugh lines next to his eyes, and I prayed that the years between us had found him laughing, like he was doing now, his smile lighting up the booth around us. A guy with a past like his deserved to have a happy present, regardless of it was with me or without me.

"How were we able to come here all the time and not get kicked out?" He asked, his words bouncing with laughter, and he moved backwards politely as our waitress came over to hand us a couple of laminated menus. She placed them in front of us and left quickly again to reign in the table of kids next to us.

I shook my head in all seriousness. "I have no idea. Remember when Eric paid his whole bill in quarters?"

I watched as Edward tapped his hands on the table as he remembered, his shoulders shaking at the memory. "Yes! I try not to think about all the shit we put those poor people through."

"Were we really this loud though? And annoying?" I pointed towards the table across the way, shaking my head at their immaturity and tried to remember how seventeen your old minds worked. It was times like these that made me think about how much time had lapsed since I had been that young and carefree.

"Maybe not all of us, but most of yes, absolutely. It comes with the territory of being a teenager, unfortunately." He shrugged it off and moved again as the waitress returned with two cups of ice water.

"Yeah, I guess. I don't really think I've been around one since I was one myself," I pondered, realizing with a soft chuckle that even though I was surrounded by thousands of people on a daily basis in New York, my circle really was quite small.

"Do you need another minute?" Our waitress returned, her pad and pen poised in hand ready for our order. Edward closed the menu softly.

"Coffee, please." He returned politely, handing her the menu.

"I'll have the same."

I hoped my eyes didn't give away that the thought of having a regular coffee this late at night terrified me. At that moment, I felt like I had aged a hundred years rather than ten.

"And an Apple Cobbler." He added abruptly right before the waitress walked away. "We can share. Only if you want."

For the first time all night, I saw a brief dash of doubt, or nervousness, cross his features. It was so quick that to most it would have gone unnoticed, but I saw it before he flashed me a hesitant, one sided smile.

Apple Cobbler sounded delicious all of a sudden. "That sounds good." When the waitress disappeared back into the kitchen, I turned to face him and gave him my best look of feigned shock. "Since when did you become an Apple Cobbler kind of guy?"

"A lot has changed around here, Swan," he offered, shrugging his shoulders with a snicker. "Somewhere along the line this sweet tooth just came out of nowhere."

"How often to do you indulge in this sweet tooth of yours?"

"Whenever I feel like it, pretty much." He shook his head in defeat. "I'm trying to quit, I really am. I thought I was good until I saw that guy over there."

I turned around to see what he was motioning to with his chin, and sure enough, the guy a few tables down from us was making the Apple Cobbler look beyond appetizing, which was saying a lot considering I was watching a stranger devour a dessert into his mouth.

The waitress returned with our coffees and cobbler before I could respond, interrupting our dessert-fueled banter. I turned back to our table and started to unwrap my silverware.

"Sugar?" Edward asked, his hand pausing over the sugar canister waiting for my response.

I nodded appreciatively. "Sure, thanks."

I watched as Edward took the canister from its spot near the window and brought it over to my steaming cup of coffee, telling me to tell him to stop when I reached my max level of sugar capacity. Before he could even begin to sprinkle the contents into my cup, a rush of sugar poured out into the cup and onto the table, a mountain of sugar and a puddle of coffee splashing onto the table between us.

I could not have stopped the laughter escaping my mouth if I tried, so I didn't bother. The table of teens across from us couldn't stifle their own laughter either, not bothering to hide their pride at being able to trick us almost thirty year olds at a classic diner prank.

Edward wasn't laughing as much as I was, but a small smile tickled at the edges of his mouth as he tried in vain to smother the mess with the limited number of napkins we had at the table.

Eventually, he admitted defeat at the mess once his little napkins had reached saturation, and began laughing as hard as I was. He took the one last napkin and waved it up in surrender. "Or maybe I should ask if you'd like some coffee with your sugar," he adds sarcastically, shaking his head. "I can't believe they got me. Little shits."

"We used to be pros at diner pranks."

"Karma. That's what it is." He shook his head. "How many times did Emmett go around and loosen the tops off the sugar canisters? I should have seen it coming!"

"You have other things on your mind," I countered, and pointed towards the untouched Apple Cobbler that had started to crumble beneath the weight of the vanilla ice cream sitting atop it. I slid a spoon over to him, around the mess that was at one point going to be my coffee.

"Sorry." He finally managed to track down a pile of napkins and threw them on top of the pile. His general positive demeanor seemed to take a hit, his smile disappearing and a slight frown taking form on his seemingly perfect lips.

Again, not like I'm thinking about those types of things.

"What are you apologizing for?" I asked him, persuading him with a look to drop the napkins for fuck's sake and pick up his spoon. He reluctantly agreed and took a spoonful of cobbler into his mouth, and I tried not to melt into a puddle across the booth like my coffee on the table.

"Spilling your own coffee all over you was not exactly what I had in mind when I asked you to come here," he muttered softly, his voice taking on a more serious tone for the first time all evening.

"Stop it. You didn't even spill it on me at all." I gestured towards the mess and back towards me, hopefully showing that the two areas did not collide. He hesitated to agree with me, but once he acquiesced, I asked, "What exactly did you have in mind bringing me here?"

He reached for another spoonful of cobbler and I could tell he was starting to come out of his own world again. He shrugged, "Just to talk, really." He took a pause from staring at our dessert to look at me, and I tried to remain present and not lose myself in him like I had done so easily for so long when we were kids. "Well, to talk without an audience," he clarified.

I nodded slowly in understanding, tucking a piece of hair back behind my ear. "I see."

While some things between us had definitely changed, I was glad to see that the way he ran his fingers through his hair when he was nervous was not one of them.

He took a deep breath, and unconsciously I did the same. "I just wanted you to know that I would never want to make you uncomfortable by being here for the wedding."

"I know that, Edward." I may not have known much about his later years, but a part of me knew that his innate sense of goodness could never have disappeared.

He looked at me strangely and shook his head doubtfully. "I didn't think you did. The last time we talked I was a pretty big dick to you."

"Yeah, you were," I agreed with a laugh and he responded with a sheepish smile of his own. It was my turn to take a dig at the cobbler. "I know you wouldn't do that to Jasper."

He shook his head quickly, effectively cutting me off with a quick wave of his hand. "It has nothing to do with Jasper."

He took a quick sip of his coffee and met my eyes from across the booth, the green of his gaze brightening in the midnight hour. "I was eighteen years old and I thought I knew what I was doing. I'm sorry for that, Bella."

I returned his gaze and eyed him quizzically. "I didn't come here expecting an apology."

Answers and explanations? Yes. Closure? Yes. An apology? I wasn't so sure.

Being eighteen years old came with room for error. Room for stupidity, even. Perhaps that was why I didn't expect Edward to apologize to me. Maybe it was just expected to make stupid mistakes and have those certain mistakes brushed aside as a rite of passage.

Either way, it was nice to hear it. No amount of time could erase the hurt that he had put me through. When I was younger and I had had to face living in a world where Edward didn't exist, I never would have allowed myself to give him the time of day to explain himself. I had wanted nothing to do with him, and the thought of sharing a booth with him in the future would have been unheard of.

But now that we were here, and he was sitting across from me ten years older than the last time we had seen each other, I saw how much I had grown during my time away from here and from everything this place brought.

The gift of time had given me perspective. Maturity allowed me to view all sides of the story, separate fact from fiction, and it hit me like a freight train that not everything had to be in the black and the white that I preferred.

Edward Cullen lived in a world of gray, which was why my brain and heart never were in sync with the other when it came to anything that involved him.

"Why wouldn't you, though?" He questioned, looking at me as if I were crazy. Maybe I was but I had to give up on the thought of rationalizing all things in life into one perfect little box. He continued, "I owe you one. An apology. You were the one person in my life that never gave up on me, even when we were ten years old and knew nothing about life. And what did I do? I pushed you away when things started to get hard."

"I forgave you a long time ago. I think."

He quirked his lips into a slight smile and the eighteen year old in me swooned like the little vixen she was. "You think?"

"Yeah, I think." I returned the smile, hoping that he knew that I also had no intentions on making my time here miserable. I slowly let my smile slide off my face, and replaced it with a look of confusion. "I still have questions, though. So many questions. It's confusing to feel like I've forgiven someone and still have so many unanswered questions. "

Edward leaned forward into the booth, making me think that if I were close enough for him to grab me by the shoulders to shake some sense into me, he would. Much to my disappointment, he remained a gentleman and didn't put his hands on me.

Not like I'm imagining that, either.

"I'll answer them for you. All of them."

"Not tonight." I shook my head hard enough for the piece of hair I had tucked behind my ear to become undone again and I watched and tried to ignore Edward's eyes soften at the sight. Just as quickly as before, he morphed his face back into indifference. "Tonight I just want to enjoy the diner and this cobbler."

With a smile that could melt the snow, he motioned toward our waitress and pointed back at me. I'm pretty sure my own smile matched his. "We'll need another coffee."

-tr-

By three in the morning, even the caffeine in our coffees was no match for how loud my bed was calling my name. I couldn't break the moment, much like back when we were in high school and we had talked ourselves to sleep on the phone into all hours of the night. The cobbler had long been taken away, our check collecting dust as it sat ignored on our table. The crowd had dispersed to just a few regulars working swing shifts.

The heaviness of our conversation had come and gone throughout the hours together, every now and then reappearing before we could stop it. We didn't talk about us, or what had gone wrong, or even The Rec, but we did surround ourselves in warm memories of our years growing up.

We talked a little of our present lives, leaving out any mention of Tyler or anyone in his life. I told him of my job letting me go, and he told me that he had followed in Carlisle and Esme's path and became a Social Worker.

At first I was shocked. I thought that the minute he turned into a legal adult would have been the last time Edward would have anything to do with the system in which he had found himself lost in for his whole childhood. The more he explained himself, the more sense it made. Who else to find ways to better a broken system than by someone who had lived through and survived it?

With a quick glance at his watch, we started to emerge from our spot in the corner to head home when the doors chimed open and in walked a loud foursome that we knew so well.

"Oh, Christ," our waitress mumbled and disappeared into the kitchen, Jasper, Alice, Rose, and Emmett tumbling into the booth around us. The booth was just big enough for all of us to squeeze into, not one of us comfortable in the least bit but none of us caring.

They smelled like a brewery, even our DD Rose, though she swore it was because she was surrounded by idiots.

"I need to sober up," Jasper said, rubbing his hands across his face. "I have to work in a few hours."

"There's no way you're going to work, dude," Emmett slurred. "Face it."

"You actually thought you were going to work?" Rose questioned, her eyes lost in a menu that our waitress begrudgingly had plopped onto the table.

"I have to work, too," Edward admitted.

"Really? We didn't have to stay out this late then," I spoke to him and he dismissed me with a flick of his fingers.

"Does it look like I'm complaining?" The look on his face was the opposite of someone bothered. For a moment the four of them are invisible around us and it was just Edward and I sharing a moment.

"I took off," Rose said with a shrug.

"I'm off for three," Alice added.

"I'm off for good?" I offered, and Emmett raised his glass of water in the air. We all meet his glass with our own.

"Cheers to being laid off!"

Once we're done being the loudest in the diner, Emmett looked around our empty table in disgust.

"You guys have been here for, like, twelve hours and you have nothing to nosh on?"

"We did but like you said, that was twelve hours ago," Edward responded with the perfect level of sarcasm to make my Sense of Humor meter beep. He was on Jason Bateman level of Sarcasm, and I fucking loved it.

"Did you get cheese fries?" Alice slurred, leaning her head on my shoulder. I laughed and shove her off of me and into Jasper. In two weeks, it would be his job officially to provide her with all the cheese fries she wanted.

"I could go for a burger the size of my head," Emmett said, and tells our waitress as such.

"Can we get cheese fries?"

"Hey, remember that time we snuck in those Special Brownies at The Rec?" Jasper quipped and we all lose it.

Between laughs, Edward managed to speak. "The key was giving them to Felix and Carlisle first. After that, they didn't give a shit what happened that night."

"Was that the night we stole Carlisle's car to go that party at La Push?"

"Yeah but we didn't get far. Remember Carlisle and Esme were in the backseat?"

Another round of laughter. "How did we not see them back there?"

"Special Brownies," Rose answered, and we all clink our waters in the air again.

"God, that place was the best," Emmett said after a minute of quiet reflection among all of us.

"Have any of you been there at all since?" I asked out of genuine curiosity.

"I used to before I moved closer to work. It's been years though," Rose pouted.

"Let's do it," Emmett suggested.

"Now?" Alice mumbled from against Jasper's shoulder. I wasn't sure if her eyes were open anymore.

"Why not?"

We settled our checks rather quickly for having six people, not leaving much time to be talked out of it. The four of them piled back into Rose's car, leaving Edward and me to follow behind them in Edward's.

"You've never been back?" I asked him once we were settled on the road. Music played softly in the background, the heat blowing comfortably into the car. Edward nodded slowly, a soft exhale escaping his nose as he concentrated on the road.

"Every now and then." His voice didn't sound as light as it had been over the past several hours. He gave me a slight glance before turning his eyes forward again. "Pretty bittersweet."

If it were possible for a smile to be sad, Edward had perfected it. I felt it again, that desire to protect him and shield him from all the wrongs in his life, but it wasn't my place anymore.

Edward and I had walked that line for years and I didn't know if I even knew how to stop.

"I know what you mean."

The Rec, at one point, had been everything, and literally overnight, it was nothing. Gone completely. That had been a hard pill for everyone to swallow, but I imagined that Edward had taken it harder than most of us. I didn't know for sure, as I had left for New York the following morning with a broken heart and with Edward behind. I had no idea how he had grieved for a loss as devastating as losing The Rec.

It didn't take long for us to get there.

I had thought of this place so many times, and now that it stood before me, I realized that while it had remained a revered place in my mind, it was in fact, not a revered place in reality. It was almost the same as the last time I had seen it, maybe a little smaller as memory has a flaw of perfecting images that aren't necessary perfect.

I had never viewed The Rec as an adult. I had only seen it through the eyes of a child.

It wasn't as big as I thought it was. The soccer field wasn't as impressive as I remembered. It still retained its rustic log cabin quality, but the overgrown weeds and grass tickled my legs through my jeans. There were broken steps leading up to the door. The gravel driveway was covered in mud and uneven stones threatened our ankles with each step.

The six of us stood in a row. Jasper and Alice at one end, Rose and Emmett at the other. Edward and I stood in the middle, and we all lost ourselves in the early morning light around us. There was a harsh wind in the air, and I brought my jacket up to my chin to fend off the chill or to keep away the ghosts of our pasts, I wasn't sure.

Either way we remained silent for a long time.

"Why am I so sad?" Alice broke the silence with a choked whisper. I knew her emotion had nothing to do with the hours spent indulging at the bar. I felt a lump form in my own throat.

"This was our place, Alice." Rose chimed in, her voice a little louder against the wind around us. Her blonde hair blew across her face and she brought up a gloved hand to remove it.

"This was where we met Jasper," Alice said, nudging her way into Jasper's side. He wrapped his arm around her and placed a kiss on her head.

"And Bella." It was Edward that spoke, and I looked over at him to see that his eyes weren't on The Rec in front of us, but rather on what remained of the tree we had spent many hours perched upon. The trees around it had been weathered by storms and time, and our tree had taken a beating, too. Our branch was still there, though, but I wondered if it were still strong enough to hold a grown adult and not two lost adolescents.

"What the fuck happened?" Emmett's words were gruff with anger. Images of his broken and bloodied lip come to mind.

I felt Edward's body shift back towards the building in front of us, inhaling before responding. He shoved his hands into his pockets. "Felix got behind with the rent and the utilities. Couldn't keep up with it and didn't know what to do."

Emmett shook his head, not agreeing with Edward. "Carlisle would have jumped in there."

"He didn't have any idea how to. He was younger than we are now back then," Edward reminded us. We were twenty eight; Rose; twenty nine, Emmett; thirty.

"It shouldn't have ended like this," Jasper reiterated.

We didn't have to physically speak the words but we all said it. Not out loud. Outside, we were silent. Inside, we were screaming.

Maybe it was the hour of the night, or morning, to be more accurate.

Maybe it was the fact that the sun was just coming up and it was hard to see in the contrasting colors of dark of night meeting the light of day.

Maybe it was that we were all too caught up in our own memories of the building before us that none of us noticed that the eviction signs had been removed and the locks that had been in place since the first day of its abandonment were removed, as well.

Thanks for all the love, guys! So glad to see you all enjoying this! If you're in the holiday spirit, check out my other story, Christmas Magic. See you soon!