EPOV

"She was here to give me invites for the weekend's fashion event, but I was feeling very low at that time." I was planning to call Bella, but Alice had decided to call me. I wanted to talk to her anyway. I was really curious about her reasoning of bringing Angela's name out of nowhere!

"I thought Bella was pitying me. I became very insecure. I started thinking about what I had that she didn't, and I remembered what Jasper had told me about Angela and you a few days ago. He didn't mean anything though! It was just a random comment about when was the last time Esme and you had a huge disagreement over something..."

It still didn't make any sense why she'd try to tell anything about her to Bella!

"I wanted to make myself better, so I..." she paused, "So I told her that you would have married Angela if... I'm sorry, I'm really sorry!"

Brilliant.

"If what?" I asked.

"I'm sorry! I told her that you would have married Angela if you were brave enough like Jasper! And I also implied that there was a possibility that you're cheating on her with Angela."

Wow.

"Wow! I'm honestly speechless, Alice!" I said.

"I'm really sorry, Edward."

"What exactly did you achieve by this?" I asked, "Are you feeling better about yourself now?"

"Edward, I'm so sorry. I'm really feeling bad!"

"So that didn't work I guess! What you did is really, really disgusting! I honestly thought you were a nice person!" I said and disconnected the call.

I hated to agree with Mom on any non-business related matters, but well, I had to agree with her today - Alice was an idiot! Why would a sane person would do anything like that?

I guess I didn't try to understand Bella's feelings when she had mentioned that Alice had tried to humiliate her! I was a moron! I made it worse by the way I reacted.

Okay, I needed to call her as soon as possible.

"Hello?" she said. I was glad she answered my call!

"Bella, I'm really, really sorry for behaving the way I did." I said, "I'm not having any affair. Yes, I was in love with her and I wanted to marry her, but that was four years ago. I swear, I haven't met or even thought about her in years. You can ask me as many questions as you want. I promise, I'll give you the honest answers!"

I said everything before I could do anything stupid again!

"That's fine. You don't need to apologize." she said.

That's fine?

"No, I was way out of the line few times. I'm sorry!" I said, "Alice called and she told me about what she told you."

"I know." she said, "She called me, too. I'm sorry for not trusting you. May be I overreacted."

"No! Look, she tried to misguide you. You wouldn't have overreacted if I had handled it properly." I said.

"No, I think I overreacted. To be honest, that's your personal life. You can do whatever you want."

Personal life? Okay!

"Bella, I'm sorry, I should have realized this earlier, but you're my wife! You have every right to get clarifications about everything you want!"

"No..." she said, "I think something has changed between us since the last few days, and I don't like it! I'd like to go back to what we had earlier. That was much better! The whole point of our marriage was that we didn't want any conflict. I guess the conflicts are unavoidable once we start to care too much about someone else. I don't want that. I didn't sign up for that."

Okay?

"So what do you want?" I asked.

"I want to go back to how we were at the beginning. We need to maintain a distance." she said.

"Are you sure?" I asked. To be honest, I also thought it was better that way!

"Yes."

"Okay, I agree." I said.

"I want to say something more." she said, "Whatever happened today, it doesn't have any impact on the conditions we had defined earlier. I still don't mind the casual affairs."

Okay?

So she still thought that I'd be having those! But I guess that was for the best if we don't have any expectations or don't try to deviate from our initial agreement. The whole point was about maintaining the distance and not caring much about what other person was doing!

"Okay, same here." I said.

"So we're good?" she asked.

"Yup." I said, "So where are you right now and when are you coming back?"