Author's note: Firstly a huge thank you to the lovely SunflowerFran for being my beta on this. It's been the boost I needed to come back to this and dedicate some time to getting a new chapter up.Secondly thanks for some lovely reviews. I'll carry on at least to the end of this story and I'll do my best to post a new chapter every couple of weeks.And finally as usual, none of the recognisable characters belong to me etc.Right let's get back to it. Catch you next time x

Edward Cullen! Edward fricking Cullen?!

I hadn't seen this man since our final year at King's, and now he shows up at my sister's wedding venue and steals my sofa!

Calm. Find your calm, Bella. That's not what you meant. That's insane. It's not your sofa. What the hell? Years go by, and the first time you see him, it only takes a second for you to let him back under your skin. And then, in a few seconds, you go and do something stupid like claim a sofa that's clearly not yours.

Taking a breath, Bella looked up to see the infuriating figure from her uni days leant against the sofa with his arms crossed, looking like he stepped out of a magazine shoot. The fireplace and sofa provide the backdrop. His charcoal suit trousers, almost artfully rumpled white shirt, and slightly loosened green tie reflected the colour of his green eyes. His hair, always distracting with its bronze colour throughout, seemed to move in the firelight and the familiar crooked smirk on his lips.

"Fine." Bella heard herself still sounding petulant. "I'll concede on that point; it's clearly a communal space...but will you be here long? Or could we perhaps swap for a bit? I only have an hour before I have to head over for drinks, and I really wanted to sit there!"

Edward laughed at her again, then stepped around the sofa to sit, throwing his arm over the back of the seat, and opened a hand toward Bella.

"Come sit then. There's plenty of room for us both."

Growling under her breath but seeing no polite way out of it, Bella walked over and took a seat at the other end of the sofa. Curling into the corner, she grabbed her book and slid off her shoes so she could tuck her feet under her legs.

"Thank you," she mumbled and turned to read, feeling the warmth of the fire relax her.

Immediately caught up in the novel she was already a quarter way through, Bella was transported to a world and time far away from the country hotel. Her current read was historical fiction about a group of women who were part of the French Resistance during the second world war. She loved the way the story explored the relationships between the women, and she heard the (probably terribly inaccurate) French accents as she moved through the dialogue. There was something wrong, though. She was reading slower than usual; she wasn't falling as quickly into her fictional world as she would like. In fact, she'd read this half-page three times already.

Bella could feel the side of her face heating up, and it appeared to have little to do with the fireplace. She couldn't hear typing; in fact, she'd not noted any movement whatsoever from the other side of the sofa. Glancing up and to her left, she saw Edward, his body turned toward her, still looking at her curiously with his head in one hand propped on the back of the sofa.

"Don't you have anything better to do than watch me read?" she asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Not currently, no." he retorted.

"Do you think you could try to find another pastime? It's distracting, being watched."

"More or less distracting than running into an old friend at a conference."

"More! Clearly! And I would say friends is an interesting choice of words, Mr Cullen. I don't -"

"Doctor."

"What?" Bella huffed, annoyed at being interrupted. She marked her place and put her book on the coffee table, now angling her body to face Edward and mirroring his pose. Clearly, she was not going to get to read her book before dinner as she'd hoped.

"It's Dr Cullen, now, not Mr." Edward winked at her before continuing. "And I don't think friends is too much of a stretch. I very much enjoyed our discussions. It was refreshing to have a challenging debate to engage in, rather than an echo chamber. Or would you have been more comfortable having everyone in the room agree with you every time?"

"Of course not!" spluttered Bella. It wasn't the fact that Edward had challenged her that she fought against. He was right in that respect. It was good to have a worthy opponent. But it was the way he held himself, the cocksure grin; it seemed so smug and maddening from the opposite side of the room. "I'm perfectly capable of rising to the challenge, as you well know."

She mentally stuck her tongue out at Edward on that point. She had gained the upper hand in their debates almost as often as he had. Her arguments for reforming the electoral system or the importance of a free press had just as much of an impact as his positions to open up the end-of-life care choices or the right of people to choose what their own freedom reflected.

"So...in that case, can we consider ourselves friends?" Edward pressed. "Especially seeing as I can't see us taking to the class floor to hash out moral dilemmas again anytime soon."

Bella pursed her lips and took a second to look at Edward. His face was earnest, and he leant forward, awaiting her answer. Bella tried to think back about the time they had spent together. It was mainly in the classroom, the odd moment or two in the SU bar or coffee shop on campus. Nothing stood out to her to mark them as either adversaries or friends. So a new-old friend would not be the worst thing in the world, especially this weekend.

"Friends, it is." Both Bella and Edward smiled softly at each other. Bella relaxed on the sofa a bit more, and Edward let out a breath.

"Well then, friend, tell me, what have you been up to since graduation?"

Bella laughed and filled Edward in on her post-grad training to be a secondary school teacher in English literature. She told him about the class that hid her smartboard controls for the first month of training. She shared the feeling she had standing in front of a classroom and watching the children engage with subjects they had no interest in and the frustration of watching students limit themselves and lash out. She told him about moving to South London to work with struggling schools, about the struggling students and the mountains of work outside the classroom. Her flatshare in Lewisham, her flatmate Rosalie and her boyfriend Emmett (also teachers), and the late nights drinking cheap wine and watching trash TV while marking homework until the early hours.

Edward responded by trading stories of unruly and sometimes downright crazy patients, nurses who could cut you with their words after a long shift of impatient patients, and department heads who had seen too much and remembered too little.

Both traded stories of the concerts and festivals they had gone to in the area. Both had caught up with one of their favourite bands who played the SU bar on the same night.

"Wow! I can't believe I didn't see you there. The academy is a small venue." said Edward.

"Ha! I'm very good at blending into the crowd...or wall, I guess." Bella snorted. "It'd be very easy to miss me."

"I can't believe that could be accurate. I would have definitely noticed if you walked by me. After all," Edward cleared his throat and continued. "How could I miss the opportunity to challenge you again?"

"You're that ready to be proven wrong again?"

"You're hilarious! I've had years of practice. You don't think they cover difficult conversation partners in medical training?"

"You don't think I'm used to arguing after training to teach teenagers?"

Edward chuckled and raised his hands in a truce.

"I think we're still evenly matched, no?" he offered.

"Okay, I reckon so."

"So, what are you doing here anyway?" Edward changed the subject and shook his head as if to clear it. "I thought you might be here for the medical conference too, but now, after hearing all your classroom stories, I'm at a loss."

"My sister's getting married here tomorrow. She's got the whole thing set out for the weekend. Rehearsal dinner tonight, wedding tomorrow, and breakfast on Sunday."

"Nice! Hey, I don't suppose that means free fireworks tomorrow?"

Bella threw her head back and laughed. "Actually, it does," she said. "Can't have bonfire night without fireworks. I convinced Ang it was an absolute must if she had it this weekend. It wasn't a hard sell."

"Ah, cool, you'll have to let me know what time they're starting. We've got a dinner tomorrow, but I'd totally ditch the speech for that show."

"So a medical conference, huh? That must be the group of hot doctors Jessica was gushing about earlier." Bella smiled to herself and, realising what she had said, turned pink, flushing from the tips of her ears down her neck.

Edward smirked and folded his arms across his chest, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Well, I'm not sure all of us would be classed as hot, but-"

Bella reached out a hand to push Edward lightly away as he leaned in to finish his sentence effectively cutting him off.

"Still very full of yourself, I see."

"I have a healthy level of self-esteem."

"Oh my god!" Bella rolled her eyes.

"Not quite," responded Edward quickly, unable to stop himself from laughing at his own joke. "But seriously, Bella, fireworks. Please, please let me know when it starts. Send me a text or whatever, and I'll come right out. I was annoyed to be missing the display in Blackheath this weekend. This would definitely make up for it." Edward's face looked eager and boyish as he imagined the bright coloured explosions in the inky night sky. He reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved his phone. Unlocking it and handing it to Bella, he smiled up at her.

"Give me your number; I'll call your phone, then you'll have mine too."

Bella looked down on the screen. A quarter of the glass was taken up by a digital clock on the home screen.

18:12!!

"Oh crap!" Bella shouted, dropping the phone on the sofa cushion.

"I'm so late. Mum will kill me!"

"Late? For what? The early bird special?"

"No, smartass. The pre-drink drinks Mum arranged to catch me up on the wedding plans." Bella laughed despite herself. "Apparently, I missed some key decisions at lunch."

"Of course, pre-drink, drinks," Edward scoffed. "You know, if you were having that bad a time catching up with me, you could have told me."

"Ha! If I was having that bad of a time catching up with you, I would have said so. Don't worry; I won't spare your feelings."

"Good," Edward retrieved his phone from the sofa cushion and handed it back to Bella. "In that case, can we continue where we left off? Phone number please, milady, and I promise to let you run off to your pre-drink drinks without complaint.

Laughing again and tapping her number into his phone, Bella hit send call and handed it back. She grabbed her bag and stood up to leave.

"I'll be seeing you, Dr. Cullen."

"I'll be in touch, Miss Swan."

With a smile playing across both their faces, Bella hurried out of the room towards the bar. If she were lucky, she'd be able to slip in for dinner without her mother noticing. She would hardly kick up a fuss about her tardiness in the middle of the first course being served.

Running into Edward tonight had started off as an irritation, but the reality was Bella had enjoyed talking to him, and she was beginning to wonder if she might have misjudged him when they first met.