Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns the characters. I'm borrowing them.

Err, hi guys!

So it's less than 4 years! That counts, right? Maybe?

Okay, I'm sorry!

I come bearing chapter three… finally… and I'm so, so, so thankful for all of you wonderful, amazing people that have kept reading and kept sending me messages and asking about when I was going to post the next one. I owe all of you some kind of baked good.

Cookies? Cinnamon sugar cheesecake squares? Strawberry shortcake? A full cheesecake?

I won't make promises about when the next chapter will be here, as I'm sure you don't want to hear them anyway. Just know that I haven't forgotten about you or this story, and will do my best when real life allows.

Thank you all for being so amazing. Especially to my wifey, who has stuck through everything and then some and doesn't get nearly enough credit.

"Bella!" Tanya exclaimed, grinning as she popped off the couch with her perfect heels and walked to me with her arms open and her bracelets jingling. "I didn't expect to see you today! What are you doing here?"

"I crashed at her place last night," Edward blurted out.

I glared at him over Tanya's shoulder and felt her stiffen as she pulled back from me. Well, I suppose that was one way to get it out. Maybe not the best way to do it, or the way I would have preferred it—that being never.

"Oh?" she asked, arching one perfectly groomed eyebrow.

"We share a group of friends," he snapped, his jaw twitching. "Bella didn't have plans. She wasn't spending Christmas alone."

"That doesn't explain why you spent the night."

For once in the entire time I'd known her, her smile was razor sharp and I was actually a little scared of the woman. It was at that moment I realized how she'd gotten so far in her career; with terrifying looks like that, I'd probably rule the world, too.

"We were talking, I fell asleep, and instead of waking me up, Bella let me sleep."

They were talking as if I weren't in the room and until that sentence, I was completely okay with that. I was actually two steps away from backing out the door when Tanya's eyes snapped to mine and I immediately laughed nervously.

This was such a bad idea. I shouldn't have let him talk me into coming with him. I should've paid attention to the extra car in the driveway.

So many little things I should've done that would've kept me from this moment. So many little things that would've kept me from being pinned underneath her gaze the way I was, pinpricks of fear crawling up my spine the longer she stared at me without saying anything.

"Well." Tanya seemed to relax and the terrifying edge to her disappeared as she held out her hand for mine. "It's good that we have you in our lives, Bella. I'll make you a screwdriver."

"What are you even doing here?" Edward asked as he followed us.

She was quite literally dragging me down the short hallway and I looked over my shoulder, pleading with Edward to make this stop.

This was all wrong.

"Your parents invited me. I've been part of this family for 12 years, and they wanted to see me. They tried getting a hold of you." She shot a look over her shoulder as she practically shoved me onto the couch. "This is about more than you and I, Edward. There are other people involved in this."

I suddenly couldn't breathe.

12 years.

12 fucking years.

I felt sick.

"The minute you said it wasn't working, you forfeited the right to be here for holidays." Edward stood very close to her, motioning with his pointer finger to the floor. "The minute you kicked me out, you gave up the right to call my family, yours."

I felt it rising in the back of my throat and leaned forward, resting my hands on my stomach and doing my best to take deep breaths. Their arguing died out with the blood rushing in my ears and I swallowed convulsively between the breaths that weren't doing a damn thing to help me.

Oh, fuck, what had we done?

"Bella? Bella, what's wrong?"

I jumped when I felt hands on my shoulder and looked up to find that Edward was kneeling in front of me. I looked a little further and found Tanya behind him, looking like one of my very good, concerned friends wanting to know if I was going to be okay.

That made it so much worse and I jumped up, running back down the hallway and slamming through the front door. I leaned against one of the pillars, doubled over as I tried to keep breathing normally.

"Hey."

I managed to look up to see Edward, the door slowly closing behind him as he awkwardly stood next to me and played with his lip ring.

"12 years?" I croaked, swallowing hard and standing up straight. The sick feeling was still there, but wasn't as intense as it had been while I was sitting there with them. "You were together for 12 years?"

He nodded, kicking at the ground and shoving his hands in his pockets. "So?"

"So?" I laughed sarcastically, digging my hands in my hair and shaking my head. "Are you—Edward."

"Bella, you knew…"

"Not 12 years! She's my friend," I hissed, dropping my hands and pointing to the door. I quickly made sure no one else had followed him. "I didn't know it was that long. I've known you for 5 years, tops. I didn't think you were with her for 12 years!"

"It didn't make a difference to her," he sneered, glaring at the ground.

I tried to take a step back, only succeeding in pressing myself against the pillar as something clicked painfully into place. I started to feel sick for a completely different reason.

"So this is just revenge?" I breathed, feeling like he'd just punched me in the stomach. "This is just to get back at her? I'm just… oh, my God."

I threw my hands at my sides, shaking my hands out as if something had burned me while I all but flew off the porch and started walking towards my truck. I didn't care if I didn't really know how to get back home because I'd been too busy staring at his bumper as I thought about all the ways this could go wrong.

Crazily enough, this hadn't been a scenario.

Thankfully, the town wasn't that big and once I got to the end of the driveway, I'm sure I'd be able to find my way out. I didn't care if I went in the wrong damn direction; I needed to go.

I was mostly okay with being his friend with benefits. It was gonna suck until I could get my emotions under control and got my heart to understand there was nothing more that was going to happen, but I was not okay with being used as revenge. I refused to go down that road.

"Bella! Bella, please, wait."

He grabbed my arm, spinning me around and I punched his chest, stepping back from him once he let me go.

"Why?"

"You're not revenge."

I rolled my eyes and turned away from him, intent on grabbing my keys from my pocket and getting the hell out of here.

"No, Bella, listen to me!" He jumped in front of me and I glared at him, fully ready to knock his lights out if I had to. "I'm not that guy!"

I rolled my eyes and scoffed. Of course he'd say something like that right now.

"I didn't think you were but now I'm not so sure about anything."

"Bella, you know me." He grabbed my hands and placed them on his chest, bending his knees so that his eyes were level with mine. "That's not what I meant."

"Do I? Do I really?" I challenged, narrowing an eye at him.

"Yes! You probably know me better than Tanya!"

I glared at him, very tempted to slap the shit out of him and leave him to clean up the mess I'd walked into. I was also very intrigued on why Tanya apparently wasn't the one that knew him best when he was ready to pledge the rest of his life to her a mere few weeks ago.

I feel like that's a somewhat important part of a relationship when you decide you want to get married.

"Explain. Fast."

I pulled my hands from his and crossed my arms over my chest, staring down at his feet.

"I don't know how to do this," he admitted quietly, and I saw his feet shift as he stood up straight. "I didn't expect her to be here today, and I don't know how to navigate this. I'm sorry, Bella, but you're not just revenge. I promise you that."

I looked up and stared levelly at him, running my tongue along the backs of my teeth as I tried to sort things out in my head.

"I need time to think," I finally decided, my voice lowering when I heard gravel crunching behind us.

"You got it," he said quickly, holding his hands out at his sides and taking a step back from me.

"Bella? Are you okay?"

I turned to see Tanya standing behind us, her cream pea coat wrapped tightly around her body as she looked worriedly at me.

The knife turned a little bit more into my chest and I swallowed hard.

I'm an asshole and deserve to go straight to hell.

"I told you to stay inside," Edward grumbled.

"I don't have to listen to you anymore," she snapped.

"Clearly."

"Can we cut the fighting?" I finally asked, defeated as I dropped my arms to my sides. "It's Christmas and it already sucks so can we just… not?"

They were both quiet and I looked between the both of them as they snubbed their toes into the ground and looked down at their feet like children that had just been scolded. Well… I guess that was pretty close to the truth. I sure as hell felt like the only adult outside at the moment, despite my terrible, terrible choices from the past 24 hours.

Details.

"Fine," Tanya finally conceded.

"Fine," Edward mumbled.

"Tanya? Edward? What are you two doing out here? Who's that with you?"

I looked behind Tanya to see a tall, copper-haired woman standing in the doorway with her hand above her eyes to shield from the non-existent sun.

"And so begins Christmas," Edward grumbled, walking up beside me and stopping to look down at me. "Ready?"

"Here goes nothing," I breathed, squaring my shoulders and looking at Tanya.

My heart broke for her as I watched her knuckle away a tear before she twisted on her heel and wordlessly started back to the house. This was quickly making its way to the top of my 'worst Christmases list' and I was desperately wondering if I could actually outrun Edward to jump into my truck and head back to my apartment.

When he quickly walked past both of us and up to hug his mother tightly and enthusiastically, I decided that I probably couldn't and sighed heavily as I straightened out my shirt and plastered a fake smile on my face for his mother.

Here we go.

I dropped my purse on the floor as I flung the door to my apartment open, simply staring in at the messy living room as I contemplated my next move.

I could either start packing now or face the disaster my life had become since last night.

Okay, maybe I was being a tad bit dramatic, but it sure as hell felt like everything had gone up in smoke.

I had ignored Edward throughout most of the afternoon, only interacting as much as I had to so as to keep his wonderful, clueless parents just that –clueless. Tanya had up and left before dinner had been served, citing that she needed to go spend time with her parents, but kept her head down and her face completely devoid of any other emotion that didn't seem reasonable on Christmas. And Edward… Edward had continued to sweat bullets, all but pull his lip ring out and put it back in a million times and nervously look between me and whatever may have been in his lap at the moment before something completely absurd had made its way out of his mouth; "Have you seen the latest Avengers movie?", "Do you think penguins have knees?", "How uncomfortable do you think it has to be to work on a movie with a ton of CGI?"

I gave up trying to smooth things over after the last question and let his mother ask him what the hell was wrong with him. I had officially run out of interference energy.

I snapped out of it when I heard my phone ringing from my bedroom. Groaning, I finally stepped into my apartment and headed towards the bedroom to retrieve the phone I'd left to charge.

With everyone else doing the Christmas thing, I hadn't bothered to bring it with me.

Snatching it off my bedside table, I made a face when I saw Edward's number flashing on the screen.

"What?" I snapped, stomping back to the living room and slamming the front door shut.

It felt good to stomp and snap and slam things after today.

"Still mad, huh?"

"It's been less than 4 hours, Edward. Tell me that I need to be over things in less than 4 hours and you will be choking on your own goddamn teeth."

"I didn't mean it that way!" he exclaimed quickly. "I was just wondering if maybe I could come over so we can talk."

"About what?"

"You're not revenge, Bella, and I really hate that you think that." I opened my mouth to retort and stopped when he quickly added, "I hate that I indirectly led you to that."

"I don't know if this is a good idea." I shook my head, staring blankly at the wall in front of me. I crossed one arm under my chest. "Maybe it's just better left as a mistake."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean maybe we should just leave it as it was."

"Speak in English, Bella!"

"I don't know if we should continue this friends with benefits shit," I blurted out, swallowing hard.

Which also meant that I'd be forever avoiding him, and the bowling alley would be strictly off limits for the foreseeable future.

I'd need to get new friends.

Fuck.

He was quiet and I sighed heavily, starting to pace around the arm chair as I listened to him breathe.

"Are you still there?" I asked quietly.

"Yeah," he answered, just as quietly.

"Are you going to say anything?"

"I don't know what to say."

I had a pit in the middle of my stomach that seemed to grow with each round I made around the chair. Knowing that earlier today was the last time I'd see Edward for a good long while was settling in and I didn't think I liked the feeling.

"I'll see you around, Edward," I whispered, my voice surprisingly unsteady.

"Yeah, sure. See you, Bella."

I hung up the phone and stared at the screen for a few seconds before lowering myself to the arm chair. I had nine text messages and a missed call notification on the bottom of my screen, but all I could focus on was the fact that I wouldn't be able to see Edward again. At least, not without having to tell all my friends why I couldn't show my face at the bowling alley, or why I couldn't look Tanya straight in the eye if she ever came around again.

But I'd done the right thing. This was too much drama and they'd been together for 12 years—I couldn't be more to him than revenge, right? He didn't want anything serious and we'd get over this eventually… go back to being friends again… right?

Right?

It was 2 in the morning and while I was exhausted in every sense of the word—both of my parents had decided to call me and tell me how great their vacations had turned out to be for more than an hour—I couldn't sleep. I'd close my eyes and a few seconds later, they'd pop back open again.

I could smell him on my pillow. Upon realizing that, I started to remember how he felt, how he made me feel, how he reacted to the things I did to him…

I'd already taken two cold showers. I couldn't put myself through a third. Even though I didn't have to work until 1 that afternoon, I'd still need some kind of sleep before the massive crowd of after-Christmas shoppers descended upon the store.

Apparently, that wasn't going to happen anytime soon.

Growling in annoyance, I shoved the blankets off of me and popped out of bed. Flicking on lights as I made my way into the kitchen, I angrily opened the refrigerator and searched around until I found the bottle of wine hiding behind the expired milk.

I needed to go shopping.

Just as I found a wine glass that wasn't plastic—or dirty—I heard a knock on the door. Standing up straight and craning my neck to try looking around the corner, I set the bottle on the counter and slowly walked into the living room, only giving a fleeting thought to the fact that I was wearing nothing but an oversized concert t-shirt.

My obituary would be interesting, that's for sure.

"Who is it?" I called out, wrapping my hand around the base of the lamp closest to me.

Nothing.

"I'm calling the police!"

"Bella, it's me!"

I let the lamp go and sighed heavily, running a hand through my hair as I padded over to the door and unlocked it.

"Come in," I mumbled, turning back to what I'd started.

Wine might help me sleep. And if I just so happened to fall asleep while he was talking? Well… he knew the way out.

"Where—Bella?"

"Do you want some wine?"

He wasn't getting any wine.

"What? No, I don't want—why are you having wine?"

"I can't sleep." I poured my glass and turned to see him standing awkwardly in the entryway, a stark contrast to how he seemed to feel completely at home there just this morning. I snorted. "So I'm hoping that wine will help me with that."

"At 2 am?"

"Why are you here at 2 am?" I countered, lifting the glass to my lips and raising an eyebrow at him.

He shuffled his feet and sighed heavily. "I've been here for a few hours. I saw your lights come on and figured…"

"You're stalking me now?" I started laughing. "I could barely get you to make plans to hang out outside of the bowling alley and now you're damn near sleeping in my driveway. What is my life?"

"I need to talk to you."

"You need to go home," I laughed, motioning with my wine glass toward the door. "There's nothing more to say here."

"You're not revenge!" he blurted out, holding his hands out at his sides. "You're stubborn and a royal pain in my ass at the moment, but being with you was never about revenge!"

"Then what is it about, Edward?"

"It's about having fun with one of my really good friends. It's about remembering how to have fun with one of my really good friends. It's about making one of my really good friends feel really good about herself."

I stared at him, carefully watching him as he slowly started inching toward me.

"She doesn't do a lot for herself and always pretends that she doesn't need anyone else, but she's lonely and I just don't want her to look in my eyes and see how sad she is when she has to go home to an empty apartment."

"I can take care of myself," I snapped, wrapping my free arm around my waist and sipping off my wine again.

"I know you can." He was in front of me now and I didn't think I approved this. "I'm very much aware that you can, or you wouldn't have called it quits with me today. You're so much stronger than we've ever given you credit for."

"You can't compliment me and expect that I'll forget everything."

"I'm telling you the truth. I don't expect to get anything out of this except for my friend back."

I stared levelly at him, slowly sipping from my wine.

"You didn't tell me it was that long with her," I finally said, quietly.

"I didn't think it would matter. You've got to know that I didn't expect her to be there today."

"Why was she there?"

"My parents invited her. They thought they were helping." He sighed heavily and ran a hand through his hair. "They want us to get back together, and didn't believe that it wasn't going to happen until today." He reached for me and I twitched away. If he touched me, I was doomed. He quickly placed his hand at his side and cleared his throat. "I don't want someone that doesn't want me."

"You're still hurting."

"A little," he admitted. "It's hard not to be."

I nodded my agreement and looked down at my almost empty glass. "Would you go back to her?"

"I…" I looked up at him and saw that his eyes were closed and he sharply shook his head once. "I can't answer that."

"Because you don't know or you don't want to tell me?"

"Because I don't know."

I nodded once and turned to grab the bottle of wine, pouring one more glass. "Thank you for your honesty."

"Doesn't change anything, huh?" he whispered.

"I don't know," I admitted softly, turning back to face him. "This is all pretty new to me, too."

"Do you think we can start over? Pretend that today never actually happened?" He took one step into me, close enough that he could touch me if he wanted to. "I just… everything went sideways so quickly today."

I wanted to touch him. I really wanted to run my fingers through his hair, fuse my mouth to his, pull at his lip ring and jump him to forget this day ever existed.

"It did," I agreed, cupping the wine glass in both hands to keep them occupied. "I just… Edward, I don't…"

His hand was on my cheek and my nerves were alive and jumping before I realized what was happening or remembered what I wanted to say.

"Tell me to stop," he whispered, his hand trailing down to my neck and over my shoulder. "Tell me to go home again and I will."

"Go…" I cleared my throat and one hand started pointing towards the door before it came into contact with his arm. "Edward, you need to..."

His hand was in my hair and my hand was curled into his jacket, unconsciously pulling him closer.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, his face suddenly very close to mine. "I didn't want to hurt you."

"Then don't be dumb," I whispered back, tilting my mouth toward his without giving myself full permission.

Did he do this on purpose? Of course he did this on purpose. This wouldn't help either of us; as fun as sex with him was, it wasn't going to solve anything. No matter how good he was, or how good we seemed to be together… God, we were good together.

I was playing right into it and wasn't entirely sure I gave a damn.

"You did this on purpose!" I exclaimed, snapping out of it long enough to push him back a little. "Didn't you?"

He hung his head and looked up at me through his lashes, his lip ring hanging out further as he pouted.

"I really am sorry."

I glared at him and finished off my wine, slamming the glass down on the counter behind me as hard as I could without breaking it.

"This has gotta be strictly business between us from now on." I waved a hand in the small amount of space between us. "We're friends who sometimes have sex. We're not friends who sometimes have sex and then bring them home to meet the parents. And if either of us decides to start dating again, we cut this out."

"Who said anything about dating again?" he asked quickly, his eyes growing wide.

I stared at him.

"I do eventually want to settle down and have a life with someone," I said dryly, almost feeling badly for the way he winced a little. "Just because you don't doesn't mean I don't."

I added that last bit a little more softly, realizing that I shouldn't be a total bitch just because I was ultimately giving in to him and wasn't entirely sure how I felt about it just yet.

"That's fair," he said, his voice a little rough. "Your terms are fair."

I nodded and leaned back against the counter, quietly studying the top of his head as he continued to stand there with his head down.

He didn't seem very thrilled about it.

"Do you have any terms you want to add?"

"I don't think so."

He barely moved, shuffling his feet against the linoleum and playing with his lip ring.

"Dude." He finally looked up, his lip ring in between his teeth now. "You're acting like I just shot your cat." I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling insecure and wondering if I'd made another, bigger mistake. "Did I-?"

He slowly reached out and grabbed my arm, pulling me close to him.

"I really thought I lost you today." He wrapped his arms around my waist and I placed my hands flat on his chest. "In all aspects."

"You almost did."

"The scariest part was thinking that we wouldn't even be friends anymore. I didn't move from your driveway because I couldn't make myself believe that I'd fucked things up that badly within 24 hours. I know we didn't really hang out a whole lot before, but when we did…" He took a deep breath and ran his hands up and down my arms. "You've always been important to me, Bella, and I was terrified that I'd lost that."

"So don't be dumb," I repeated softly, tapping my fingers against his chest.

"I can't make promises." His arms were back around my waist and he pulled me tight against him. "Do you forgive me?"

I twisted my lips to the side, humming and reaching up to tap a fingertip against my chin.

"I don't know…"

"Bella!"

He shook me once and I laughed, shrugging easily and dropping my arm.

"Yeah, I forgive you. Just seriously, don't be dumb. If I'm the one that supposedly knows you so well, maybe don't leave something like a 12 year relationship unmentioned."

"You knew I was with her. I didn't think it mattered about the length of time."

"Oh, it matters."

"I know that now. I still don't get why, though."

"You consider Mike a friend, right?" I asked, turning from him to grab the wine bottle again.

This was gonna take a minute and I'd need more than the two glasses I'd already had.

"Yeah…"

"Say I'd been with Mike for 12 years."

I heard the kitchen chair behind me scrape on the floor as he sat down.

"Okay."

"Say we decided to start this, knowing full well that I wasn't over Mike and maybe he had other reasons for leaving me that I haven't disclosed to you just yet."

I turned back around, my full wine glass balanced carefully in the palm of my hand. His head was resting on his hand and his tongue was playing with his lip ring as he stared at my legs.

"Edward!" I snapped, stomping one foot.

"I'm listening! Can't I ogle and listen at the same time?"

"No!"

He huffed and looked up at me, raising an eyebrow. "Continue."

"Tell me that dealing with the same situation I had to deal with today wouldn't put you off a little bit? And you're a man so you're way more stubborn than I can be, so you wouldn't even answer the phone or let me in if I called or showed up. Tell me that it wouldn't bother you seeing your friend upset and hurting over the girl you're currently sleeping with and let me know how that feels for a minute."

He twisted his lips around, his eyes rolling slowly toward the ceiling as he tapped his fingertips against his temple.

"Tanya wasn't upset," he finally said quietly.

"You didn't see her face when we went back inside."

"She left me," he whispered, still looking up at my ceiling.

Something had shifted in the millisecond it took for him to make that comment and I licked my lips, watching him closely.

"I know," I said softly, slowly pulling out the other chair and carefully sitting next to him. I placed one of my hands palm up between us, watching as he worried his lip ring. "You wanna tell me something?"

"We weren't the same people," he whispered again. "We weren't the same people we were when we first got together. Her career came first most of the time and since I don't really have one… we fought a lot." He cleared his throat and quickly sat up, his eyes landing on my hand. "She's driven and I'm not."

"Yes, you are. Just because it's not the same way that she is, doesn't mean you're not."

"I tend bar at a bowling alley, Bella." He looked up at me, quickly averting his eyes back to my outstretched hand. "I never went to college so I don't have a degree for anything."

"You can still go, if that's something you want to do."

"I don't want to go to college." He shook his head. "I don't know what I want to do."

"It's okay not to, you know."

His eyes finally met mine again and my heart broke once again. He looked incredibly lost and vulnerable and all I really wanted to do was hug him until he smiled again.

"She made me feel like I needed to have it all figured out right now; like I was wasting our time trying to discover what was right for me, but didn't understand it when I said I wasn't sure where I should start. She's always had such a clear path, and that's what I loved about her." He smirked sadly, shaking his head. "I didn't realize it would also end up being what destroyed us."

He placed his hand over mine.

"This isn't where I thought this night would go," he laughed weakly.

"Yeah," I agreed quietly, nodding. I stood up and left my wine glass, tugging on his hand and nodding toward the bedroom. "Let's go to bed."

"I'm really not in the mood for—"

"You think I am?" I snorted out. "I've gotta work later and just wanna get some sleep."

He smirked at me and nodded, standing up and quickly pulling me into him. He buried his face into my hair and I quickly wrapped my arms around his waist.

"Thanks, Bella," he whispered, pressing a kiss against my neck.

I kissed his cheek and stepped back from him, wordlessly grabbing his hand and walking into the bedroom with him. I climbed back in bed as he undressed, getting comfortable and closing my eyes as I waited.

I was an idiot. A doomed idiot that was already going against the 'strictly business' rule she'd put in place less than 15 minutes ago.

Fuck me.