Bella lingered at the kitchen sink, dragging a dish towel along the rim of the bowl she'd just finished washing and straining her ears.

The piano sang out. Notes dispersed hesitantly into the quiet that had settled upon the house, the melody so soft and fragile-seeming that it did not so much break the silence as harmonize with it. She didn't know the song. Not right away. She stood still and kept listening, bidding her imagination to follow along with the keystrokes, hoping the path they wound through the air would lead somewhere familiar eventually.

Edward added accompaniment as the melody line grew louder and more confident. They were heavy bass chords, forcefully struck and drawn out. The impression created by the piano became stormier, spiked with dissonance and aggression.

Bella was abruptly whisked back to her old room at Charlie's, headphones squeezing her ears too tight to her head, a throbbing ache at her temples as she groggily resurfaced from a bottomless sleep brought on by a gratuitous dose of cold medicine.

No sooner had the muddled swirl of past sensations come crashing over her than the music dwindled to nothing. The piano halted mid-phrase, mid-note even. The swelling momentum brought on by the increasing fervor of each crescendo suffered an unfitting, unfulfilled end.

The house lapsed into silence again. It had been going that way ever since Edward left her to eat her breakfast. She'd been shoveling bites into her mouth, trying to make a dent in her corn flakes before they got too soggy, and had glanced over to find herself with a view of Edward's retreating back as he drifted away from her, his movements so soundless she hadn't realized he'd abandoned the spot where he was standing before.

"Hey," she'd said around an awkward mouthful, not worried about repulsing him with the sight of half-masticated cereal at that moment, just wanting him to stop.

It worked. He had paused immediately to look behind him, his brow lifting in an unspoken question.

Bella finished chewing. Swallowed. "Where do you think you're going?"

She had tried to make her tone light, but there was genuine anxiousness underlying the teasing, and her voice came out sounding more brittle than she intended. She always wondered if there would ever come a point when Edward would grow tired of the intermittent scraps of a connection she offered. When she caved, each time she asked to see him now, it was with the awful awareness that it would be better for both of them if he told her no, if he found the strength she couldn't seem to maintain and withdrew his willingness to fulfill whatever purpose in her life she wished for as long as she wanted.

But he was determined to leave her alone in the driver's seat. And she couldn't seem to avoid spinning them around in circles.

"I thought I might play while you eat," Edward had said. He studied her for a moment. "If that's all right?"

"Oh, sure." Bella was instantly eager. She hadn't heard him play in what felt like eons. "Yeah, go ahead. I'd love to hear you."

His eyes seemed to smolder for a fraction of an instant. Then he had looked away, looked down, as though her obvious delight at the prospect overwhelmed him somehow. But he turned and went just the same.

Edward had begun with Esme's favorite. Bella knew the piece well enough to recognize it within a few seconds, and, as it progressed, she had found herself swept up in the joyful radiance of it. She took note of all the beauty still surrounding her. With the music playing, the dining room did not feel as empty or cold, did not look quite so long neglected. Cobwebs hung from the chandelier on the ceiling, but they were delicate, silvery. Almost complimentary to the dull, hanging crystal. Sun even shone through the windows.

Halfhearted sun, granted. Muffled, muzzled sun, the rays sparse and diluted through clouds. It had nothing on Phoenix's sun.

Still, it was a nice day by Forks standards, and Bella had felt uniquely poised to appreciate the break in the weather as she sat at the head of the Cullens' dining room table, her head swaying slightly from side to side as Esme's song rose and accelerated. It built to a layered pitch, high notes wavering prettily overtop a tapestry of lower notes, and she had been struck by the unabashed happiness nearly overflowing from it.

As much as she adored her lullaby, its beauty was distinctly bleaker, the joy it contained feeling more precarious and shaded by tinges of melancholy. She guessed it might have been written in a minor key or something. And she wouldn't have it any other way. It was perfect as it was. It was the most stunning, intimate thing anyone had ever created for her, but she caught herself wishing that she could be the inspiration for another piece one day, one that was as purely ecstatic as what Edward had been moved to compose for Carlisle and Esme.

But that would probably require having a love as uncomplicated and accessible as theirs.

That Edward elected not to play the song all the way through hadn't been a surprise. He often played like that when he'd performed for her in the past, leaving off endings in favor of seamless transitions into other pieces. He made a patchwork quilt of his melodies. The effect was almost like a musical stream of consciousness, but the arrangement always seemed to be woven together with deliberate care and sounded well thought out. Changes in tempo and mood were smoothed over with precisely calibrated bridges. There were never any audible gaps or holes.

So it had been surprising when Edward left off just as Esme's favorite was bursting into full bloom, left the music dangling, as if it had sprouted up on a cliff face.

Bella had thought he must have gotten distracted, must have suddenly remembered something else he wanted to say or do. She watched the doorway with anticipation, but then the piano started up again, easing into a classical number she felt sure she'd heard in a lot of TV shows and movies over the years but had never learned the name of. He played that for a little less time than he'd played the first song, then stopped right as it was picking up, just as abruptly. He had done the same with the next song he attempted. And the next.

Bella frowned and put her clean dishes into the nearest cabinet, dropping her spoon carelessly back into the bowl with a ringing clatter. She wiped her damp hands on her jeans as she made her way to the alcove where the piano resided, her pace made swift by confusion and a pang of concern.

Edward was seated on the bench before the instrument, his hands motionless in his lap. He squinted at the black and white keys as if they were variables in a math problem that refused to add up.

"Is something wrong with the piano?"

"It's out of tune."

"Oh." Bella thought back on the song she knew best—Esme's favorite—and tried to pinpoint a part that had sounded bad or off in any way. She came up with nothing. "I couldn't tell."

"It's very slight. Just enough to be irritating to me, probably."

Bella felt a knowing smile tug at the corners of her mouth. "Probably."

Her eyes roamed the length of his back, admiring the lines of it, the refined set of his shoulders. He looked so strikingly elegant on the bench. His clothes were modern, his face would never look a day older than it had in 1918, but the way he conducted himself gave him away sometimes—made him appear a little out of place, a little out of time, a touch too removed from all the blunt, frenetic coworkers and students populating her life currently.

He shifted on the seat, scooting to one side.

Making room for her, Bella realized. She came around to sit, accepting the invitation. Wrestling against the urge to keep her ineptitude contained inoffensively within herself, she reached forward and plucked out a simple scale she recalled from her brief brush with lessons as a kid. Each note seemed to follow tonally on the heels of the last one.

"Hmm," she murmured with mock severity, pressing down on the Middle C. She hit another C higher up, chiming the two notes together to the timing of Chopsticks, and tilted her head as though she just heard something telling. "Huh. I see."

"What do you see?" Edward asked, voice lifting with amusement.

"Do you want my expert opinion?"

"A full and comprehensive diagnosis, if you please, Professor."

She laughed. "Okay, then." She removed her hands from the keys and twisted toward him. "I think it sounds fine. I mean, I know you'd know better than I would, and you can hear a lot more than I can, but you're overthinking it, Edward. There was no reason for you to stop playing from where I was sitting. You've been spending too much time wrapped up in your own head."

Edward seemed to stiffen, becoming a perfect statue.

"Edward?" Bella grasped his shoulder and attempted to shake it a little, but it was immobile stone. It wouldn't budge. "What did I say?"

"You are just shockingly observant, as always."

"Meaning…?"

"Meaning your assessment was very perceptive, like I said." He resumed his player's posture, wrists straight, the tips of his curved fingers hovering over the instrument. "If the tuning doesn't bother you, would you like to make any requests?"

Bella thought of her lullaby. Asking him to play it, though, seemed somehow tantamount to following through on her most selfish desires the night before. Lay with me. Hold me. Sing me to sleep.

How could requesting to hear a song inspired by his feelings for her be anything less than cruel or confusing? Plus she couldn't trust herself to respond to it appropriately. What if she heard it, and all the magnetic instincts drawing her to Edward came bursting to the surface, and she tried to kiss him on muscle memory autopilot again?

Nothing good could come of it.

"What was the last thing you were starting to piece together? It reminded me of something off that CD from Phil."

"Did it? Well, that's reassuring."

Edward launched back into the aggression of the bass chords, picking up at the exact point where he'd stopped.

It was actually really neat to hear how the hard rock song translated through the piano. It wasn't delicate or pretty, but it was powerful with an infectious beat, and Bella found herself transfixed by the rapid, precise movements of Edward's fingers as they drummed repeatedly into the keys. The track had a simple melody on the CD, but he started to embellish on it, improvise, toy with it. And, as he did so, it was like he came to life. The energy of the music seemed to flow up his hands and into his arms and body. He visibly loosened and started to sway. She knew he'd moved past whatever was bothering him about the piano when he leaned in over the keys, his eyes shut and head bowed, completely absorbed in the playing.

By the end, the song became beautiful—not because of how it sounded, but because of the way he expressed it.

The final strike to the keys reverberated through the room, and Bella could do nothing but continue to stare at him, speechless.

"Sorry." Edward interpreted her silence to be disapproving and looked somewhat guilty as he faced her. "That probably didn't sound very much like the music you were searching for last night."

"Don't apologize. I liked your version. You… really felt that."

He snickered in a self-deprecating sort of way, an embarrassed edge to the laughter, and promptly turned his attention to the sheet music on the stand in front of them. "I haven't played in some time. I'm afraid I got a bit carried away."

"That's okay. It's nice to get carried away once in awhile." Bella leaned into his side, her arm brushing against his. She meant for it to be a brief, playful nudge, but even the slight touching of their sleeves sent tingles buzzing from her elbow to her wrist, and it was completely impossible for her not to want to prolong the contact. She neglected to straighten. "Thanks for playing that for me."

"I hope it helped you remember." Edward's response was quiet. He was watching her again. Closely. He left his arm where it was.

The music hadn't helped Bella remember. Not anything about Phil, at least, but the fact that that had been his intention made warmth spread through her chest.

"So," she said in a louder, breezier tone she hoped would clear the heaviness in the room. "Do you have any song requests for me? I used to have 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' down pat."

Edward gave her a slight smile, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Actually, Bella, there is something I've been wanting to ask you about."

"What's that?"

"Speed dating."

With those two words, the heaviness in the room seemed to collapse onto Bella's shoulders, weighing on her like an awkward pile of bricks.