Eliana didn't do parties, really, or any kind of social events for that matter. Hence that week she spent at the Cullen household couldn't have gone by much slower.

Since she had nowhere else to go, that seemed to give Alice the perfect excuse to drag her out dress shopping just two days before the graduation party. No matter how much she insisted that she didn't need a dress, reasoning with someone with a willpower like Alice's was just not worth it.

They'd gotten through dozens of dresses in the 2 hours they spent in that store, all of which were either tacky and instantly discarded by Alice, not Eliana's thing, or just plain awful. By the end, once Eliana was simply far too tired to argue, she agreed on the next dress that was handed her way, a mid-thigh length short-sleeved baby blue dress with a floral print, fitted snugly around her bust. It wasn't terrible, at least, and she'd managed to reason Alice out of making her wear any kind of heels, so all-in-all things could've gone plenty worse.

It was to the point where the only positive aspect of the whole trip seemed to be that she was getting far better at Wii Sports than she used to be. Obviously, playing any kind of video game against people with reflexes ten times better than a human's was never going to be fair, but at least she wasn't consistently losing quite as badly as previously.

The morning of the graduation, she had no idea that it was the morning of the graduation, or what day it was at all for that matter. She'd somehow allowed herself to stay awake until 5am playing Wii Sports Resort with Jasper, and she was pretty sure that her motivation from that was mostly him manipulating her emotions to keep her excited to play.

"Eli, if I have to tell you to wake up one more time, I'm not gonna be happy."

Alice yanked her curtains open as far as they would go in one clean swipe. All Eliana did was groan and pull the covers over her head.

"Why?" she muttered, knowing that she'd be able to hear her anyway.

"Because it's graduation day! Now I have to take this," She heard her lift up what sounded like a box, "to Bella, so go and get ready. I can't wait to see the dress on you!"

Eliana couldn't exactly say she was listening for the last half of her sentence. She'd completely dozed off again, only waking up properly when it was about 10 o'clock in the morning. She was pretty certain that they'd be leaving for the graduation at literally any moment, so she very reluctantly rolled out of bed and got herself ready.

By the time she was down the stairs, yawning as she went but being mindful to not smudge her makeup, everyone else was already completely ready to go. It seemed that she'd walked in on Alice, Jasper, and Edward having their photos taken, but acting as though she hadn't seen them in the first place, she made a beeline for the kitchen and grabbed a brioche roll.

Edward stopped by her on his way out of the house. "Nice dress," he commented. "Did Alice get to you?"

Eliana simply nodded and took another bite out of her brioche. "Unfortunately," she replied, covering her hand with her mouth to avoid spewing out any crumbs as she spoke.

"I heard that!" Alice snapped from the other room.

She stared tiredly in the direction her voice had come from. "Good."


Since Eliana was still fairly delirious throughout the graduation ceremony too, she found herself mostly zoning out through the entire thing. The sheer boredom of it really didn't help, what with tedious speech after tedious speech, followed by each and every name being called out one by one.

Other than clapping for Edward, Bella, Alice, and Jasper, she pretty much daydreamed into the distance for the rest of it. At one point, a bird outside in the window caught her attention before it flew away freely. Oh, how she could only long for that kind of freedom.

She could only thank the heavens above when the graduation party finally rolled around and things were destined to get interesting. She'd had two cups of coffee as well as a glass of punch she was 90% sure had alcohol in it if her sudden mood change was anything to go by. Now was her moment to enjoy herself (before she'd inevitably crash and burn later).

Navigating her way through the crowd of people in the house was easy enough, especially since all she had to do was look for the only girl in jeans. Eventually she did stumble across Bella chatting with two of her friends, not that she exactly knew who they were.

Eliana tapped her on the shoulder to grab her attention. "No dress then?"

Bella only scoffed. "As if."

"Do I know you?"

Eliana turned her attention to the two girls ahead of her. It was the look they gave her, that look of complete confusion and disinterest, that reminded her exactly why she hated being at school.

She forced a smile. "No, I'm Eli. I'm just here visiting."

"Oh. My. God. You're Bella's British friend!" one of them exclaimed in shock with a small laugh. "I thought you were made up for a while! I'm Jessica by the way."

"And I'm Angela," the other girl added. She adjusted her glasses on her nose a little. "I love your accent by the way."

"Oh, thanks-"

"What did you think of my speech?" It took Eliana a moment to realise the conversation was no longer about her, but now instead about Jessica. "Too easy-breezy, too self-helpful, you hated it?"

Bella paused for a moment in thought, seemingly just as bewildered as Eliana was. "N-no, I think you pretty much nailed it."

"Yeah, it's like I was born to lead, right?" Jessica agreed.

Eliana simply watched dumbfounded as Angela dragged her away into the crowd as another song came on. She turned back to Bella with an eyebrow raised. "Those are your friends?" She laughed a little. "Talk about fishing for compliments."

"Hey, they're not that bad," Bella defended them weakly. ". . . And what other friends do you recommend? Have you seen the size of Forks High School?"

"It's bigger than my old school," she retorted.

"And how many friends did you have?"

Eliana clenched her jaw irritatedly. "Fine, fine. Point proven. You seriously need to work on your friends, though-"

"What are you doing here?" Bella demanded.

She opened her mouth to question if Bella was possibly talking to her, not that that would make much sense, but things were instantly made clear when they were approached by a group of three boys, all wearing almost identical dark-coloured t-shirts and completely identical hairstyles.

"You invited me," one of the boys replied with a sneer, "remember? And who's this then?"

"You could just ask me, I'm perfectly capable of answering that question myself," Eliana interjected, "but I'm Eli. You?"

He looked her up and down dismissively. "Jacob."

"Was my right hook too subtle for you?" Bella snapped at him. "That was me uninviting you."

Eliana was instantly very confused, to say the least. "Sorry, wha-"

"Look, Bella," she was instantly cut off by Jacob, "I'm sorry about, you know, the kiss-"

"The kiss-?!"

"And your hand," Jacob continued, completely ignoring her. "I'd blame it on the whole inner-animal thing but it was just . . ."

"Inner-anim-?!"

"Me being an ass," he finished. Eliana was beginning to question whether she was even visible at all in the first place. "I'm really sorry. But I brought you something. A graduation present. I made it myself."

Honestly, Eliana wasn't entirely sure what was going on anymore. She watched as he pulled out of his pocket a little bracelet, on it a small wolf charm.

Eliana sighed in realisation. "Shape-shifters . . ."

"What did you just say?" Jacob's gaze snapped to her suddenly.

She held her hands up in mock surrender. "I said what I said, Mr. Wolf," she replied nervously. "I know more than you seem to think I do. Actually, y-you know what? I'm just gonna, um, fill my drink."

After making the embarrassing mistake of holding up her empty hand and realising she had no cup to begin with, she was very quick to scurry away from the conversation she'd somehow found herself a part of and track down anyone else she could even vaguely make conversation with.

Unfortunately, that ended up being Jessica.

"Eli, was it?" Jessica smiled at her, and before she could reply, she was being pulled along by her arm towards a group of people in the corner of the room. "Come meet everyone!"

Eliana laughed awkwardly. "Oh, I don't-"

"You've already met Angela, of course, and this is Eric, and Mike."

She motioned to each person in turn. All Eliana could think to do was smile and wave, silently praying that the conversation would move along at a fairly quick pace. It didn't, sadly, and she didn't seem to even have a chance of escaping it either.

"So how long are you in town for?" Mike asked her. "Because, you know, if you're free, we could, like, meet up and maybe, er, grab some food or something, or maybe go see a movie, I don't mind, kinda whatever really . . ."

"Oh." Eliana blinked in surprise. "Thanks for the offer, but I'm actually leaving tomorrow," she lied.

There was absolutely no way in hell she could possibly put up with spending as much as a minute on a date with Mike, and she especially didn't want to think about how Caius would possibly react if he found out.

"Oh, that's a shame," Jessica said. "But Eli. I was meaning to ask, what did you think of my speech? I kinda wrote it in a rush, and it took me a while to even figure out what to say."

"Your speech?" She cleared her throat unnecessarily. "Yeah, it was . . . good. Really good. Really inspirational."

"Really? You think?" Jessica smiled broadly. "Wow, thanks!"

Eliana nodded and downed the rest of the drink she'd retrieved a minute ago. "No problemo," she muttered.


By the time Eliana woke up, daylight was already streaming through a gap in the curtains. She didn't exactly remember much of how, but she was lying across her back in her bed, wearing nothing but a hoodie she was 90% sure was Emmett's judging by the size of it and a pair of shorts.

What only confused her more was the fact that she'd made to get up when a weight pinned her down to the mattress. She looked down to see Bella practically sprawled on top of her, also in her pyjamas, a thin trickle of drool pooling on her shoulder from where her face was pressed against it.

Eliana yawned and nudged her. "Bells." Nothing. "Bella, get up."

Bella made no indication that she'd heard her at all, although her snores did marginally increase in volume.

"Bella, what happened last night?" she mumbled.

As before, she received no response.

Eliana sighed as she wriggled out from beneath her carefully, not that the amount of care she took made any difference to the state Bella was in. "Yeah, I'm asking the wrong person . . ."

Attempting to ignore her throbbing headache, Eliana slowly plodded down the stairs into the kitchen, noting it empty. There wasn't so much as a trace left of the party the previous night, but she couldn't lie that it might as well have occurred two days before instead and she would've been none the wiser.

She opened the fridge and removed an open carton of chocolate milk. She wasn't sure if it was Bella who had opened it or someone from the party, but her thirst for chocolate milk far outweighed her caution.

However, it was just as she'd placed a glass down in front of her and unscrewed the cap that she felt a pair of arms encircle her waist from behind.

Letting out a startled yelp, she instantly attempted to thrash her way out of their grip, knocking her elbow painfully in the process.

"Carina, stop, it's just me."

She was spun around by her shoulders so that her gaze met Caius'. He seemed to be a combination of amused at her reaction and concerned about the way she was grabbing her elbow with a pained expression.

"Don't scare me like that!" she said breathlessly with a grimace.

Caius only chuckled under his breath as he pulled her into his arms. "Consider that retribution for every argument this last month," he retorted, a gloved hand carefully holding her injured elbow. "And be careful next time."

"I was careful!" she snapped. "You're the one who scared me half to death, showing up out of nowhere!"

It was very obvious that Caius was definitely not taking her irritation seriously, likely partly to irritate her further. "You're cute when you're angry," he commented, his smile only widening as she narrowed her eyes at him and huffed.

"Damn straight, I am," she muttered bitterly.

"Caius, did you have to goad poor Eliana within the first minute of our arrival?"

By the time she'd peered around Caius, she was being held close in Aro's arms, one hand around her waist and the other in her hair.

She tilted her head up and reached onto her toes for her lips to actually reach his. The kiss was brief — they knew they could certainly continue later — but it was still deep enough to leave her slightly breathless, and long enough for him to take a glimpse into her mind.

"I missed you," she murmured once they'd pulled apart.

His hand cupped her cheek. "The feeling is mutual, bellissima."

"Do I get close to as much of a welcome?"

"Marcus!"

Eliana had launched herself into his arms far faster than she thought was possible. Her arms were wrapped around his neck and her legs around his torso as she rested the side of her face against his shoulder. With a light chuckle, he kept an arm underneath her to support her weight while the other held her by her waist.

Caius raised an eyebrow at the scene. "And why were you far more excited to see him than me?"

She looked up from Marcus' shoulder at Caius. "Because Marcus isn't annoying, and he doesn't scare me half to death when I'm just trying to pour myself some chocolate milk."

"Maybe if you hadn't been so disagreeable all month, that wouldn't have been an issue," Caius argued. "And "Marcus isn't annoying" is the most bullshit I've heard all year."

"Caius," Aro snapped impatiently.

"Wouldn't you agree though, brother?" he continued. "The man was far more tolerable when he said nothing."

"What did you say to upset him?" Eliana asked Marcus.

"Nothing specific. Caius only has a superiority complex, and if anyone else's existence so much as challenges that, he crumbles," Marcus answered evenly. He looked back at her and kissed her cheek. "Did you want me to put you down?"

It was only then that she remembered he was still holding her. With a shake of her head, she pulled herself closer to him. "I'm comfortable now."

"Marcus, this is the very definition of monopolising," Caius insisted.

Eliana rolled her eyes and pulled away from Marcus enough for him to get the message and set her back down on her feet. She walked directly over to Aro instead of Caius and pulled herself close to him. Getting the idea with a laugh, he swept her off her feet so that she was being held by him the same way Marcus had been holding her.

"I didn't expect you to arrive this early," she noted, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

Aro turned around and sat her down on the kitchen counter, although his arm was still around her waist. "We wanted to surprise you. Unless, of course, you aren't ready to leave today."

"No, I am," she assured him. "It's been a long week, to say the least." She then glanced over at a slightly dejected Caius, his arms crossed and a sneer on his face, and held her arms out for him. "Caius?"

Aro was pretty much instantly replaced by him. He kissed her so hard, with so much hunger to it, that she was sure she would've lost her balance if not for him holding her upright. His left hand gripped her right thigh as he pulled her closer, close enough for them to be completely pressed against each other.

Due to where he was positioned, he subconsciously rocked his hips forwards into hers, causing her to moan into his mouth as she moved against him. His hand on her thigh only inched higher towards her shorts.

"Brother," Marcus stood beside them, leaning back against the countertop with his arms crossed, "please don't tell me you plan to — excuse my bluntness — fuck Eliana over the Cullens' kitchen counter."

Eliana gasped and pulled away, a blush spreading across her cheeks from both breathlessness and embarrassment at the thought. Caius, however, still hadn't moved his hand from her upper thigh.

"As pleasant as that sounds," Caius began, noting her quickened heartbeat, "no, I will not. I'm sure Eliana wouldn't enjoy that very much. Would you, carina?"

Still a little lost for words at what had just happened and how she'd just reacted to it, she simply swallowed and shook her head.

Caius simply laughed. "It's flattering to see how easy I fluster you."

Now she was back. She rolled her eyes at him and willed any sign of her mild embarrassment to vanish. "Sh-Shut up."

⊱ ────── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ────── ⊰

Author's note: Part of me wonders if maybe I'm just projecting my own social awkwardness and hatred of parties onto Eliana, but another part of me doesn't care because I think it's funny lmao. I'm also beginning to see that this rewrite doesn't have nearly as much Cullen content as the original did, but in a way I prefer it like that. It gives me way more space to work on the scenes I want to include.

Anyway, thank you so much for reading, stay safe, and ily lots!