A/N: Back at work after a four day weekend. Blargh. How about we all play hooky and go to the beach?

"I just didn't know what to make of it—you walking off that ride with a stranger in that shirt. It threw me off. That's why I stayed even after I saw you were okay, but I didn't follow you. I swear I didn't. I spent the day wandering around aimlessly. It was only chance that I saw you again at the show."

Bella closed her eyes and slumped forward, her head in her hands and her elbows on her knees as she sat cross-legged on her bed. Jesus, it was way too early for all this shit.

"Bella."

"Fine," she snapped, glaring at her cell phone. She'd put it on speaker when Jasper called for the third time that morning. She kept hanging up on him, which she knew was childish, but dammit, she was pissed the hell off. "Fine. You weren't stalking me. I believe that." She did. It had been a little far-fetched to believe she wouldn't have seen Jasper, so intimately familiar to her, all day long if he'd been following her the entire day. "Are you happy now?"

"No. No, I'm not happy." On the other end of the line, Jasper made an exasperated and pained noise. "I hate what Peter said about you. I didn't say any of those things. I was drinking, and I was talking out loud because none of it made sense, Bella. I didn't understand what I saw."

"You do remember the part that came before that, right? The part where you decided that the last nine years of our lives was a great big lie, you actually do want to work in an oversized box with four walls and walk around with a stick permanently shoved up your ass like your parents have your entire life. And to do that, it requires a break up in the gospel according to Saint Jasper. You broke up with me. Did you not understand what those words meant?"

"Bella—"

"You don't have to understand what you saw. You don't get to understand what you saw. You broke up with me. You forfeit the right to know anything that happens with my life ever again."

He mumbled something Bella swore sounded a lot like, "That's not what I want."

"What did you say?" she asked, sure he couldn't possibly have the audacity to want something from her after all this.

He paused and sighed. "I didn't want it to end like this."

"Oh, okay. That makes sense, seeing as you were the one that ended it this way."

"I didn't have the right words. I couldn't find the right words," he said quietly.

"I'm hanging up now."

"Bella."

She huffed. "What?"

"I just…I didn't get to kiss you goodbye. I don't know. I thought we would get one last kiss."

She saw red at the same time her eyes filled with tears. "I have to go, Jasper." She used the back of her hand to wipe away her stupid tears and looked at her phone. "I'm going to the beach with my fucking fiancé."

With that, she hit the disconnect button on the phone and covered her face with her hands. She took a few deep, shuddering breaths, her jaw clenched as she tried not to cry. She was so sick of crying. Then again, crying would be preferable to hurling the phone across the room, which was the other thing she really wanted to do. Her phone was expensive. She had to remind herself of that several times before the desire subsided.

She picked up her phone again, rereading Edward's message from a minute before, asking her to come to the beach with him. She waged a brief war in her head, trying to tell herself that she should be responsible and go to work. This guy was a near total stranger, anyway.

But fuck it. She had enough sick time. She texted Edward back.

Bella: Sure, okay. A day at the beach sounds great.

~0~

As she pulled into a small parking lot a short walk away from the Hotel del Coronado, a tiny twinge of nerves fluttered in her belly. She had no earthly idea why. Just like she had no idea why she put the mirror down and started finger-combing her hair.

Nothing wrong with a little grooming. Edward was a random stranger, but he was a handsome random stranger. She could at least not look as wrecked as she felt in front of a stranger who was going to look as he had the other day—disheveled in that attractive way.

Anyway, it was nice to think of something benign in her sea of otherwise overburdened, dark, painful thoughts. She hated how her head felt clouded and her shoulders so heavy. She hated the way her mind kept replaying memories.

They'd been happy. She knew she hadn't imagined that. And they'd been excited for the life they were building together, excited for their chosen careers. How had he arrived, in the space of a few days, in a place that took his life to the opposite end of the universe from where he'd wanted to be?

Bella closed her eyes briefly, breathing in the sea air and letting the steady tempo of the waves center her. This was where she felt most at peace—on the ocean. It had made her happy that her new friend thought of the beach as a good place to go when your heart was broken.

Edward had told her to meet him at the lifeguard station right in front of the hotel. It was a good landmark. She wondered—

"Oh, whoa." Bella stopped short, stunned by the sight in front of her.

Not only was Edward already there, but he was already dressed for the beach. He was off to the side of the lifeguard station, clad only in red swim trunks. He was standing with his back to her, looking out at the ocean with his clasped hands stretched high above his head. In the space of one second, Bella discovered she had a thing for shoulders.

And backs.

She already knew about her thing for asses, especially ones that looked like that one did.

Bella shook her head hard. Right. Thinking like that in passing was fine, but she had to spend time with this guy. As discombobulated as she was right then, she was likely to let a Freudian slip slip.

Edward, oblivious to her ogling, sank down, stretching one leg all the way out on the sand. Oh, so he was limber. Well, wasn't that a pleasant distraction from all the bullshit flying around in her head. Also, he was doing this popping thing with his ass. He switched, stretching out his other leg. He bent his body over his extended leg, his muscles doing a rolling thing up his back to his shoulders.

Right. She actually had a standing invitation to get closer. She stepped off the sidewalk and crossed the sand to him. He was still down on the sand when she came to stand over him. "Hello, future husband."

His grin spread wide as he pushed up to his feet. "Hey there, future wifey."

"I've decided on a date."

He cocked his head, confused. "Date?"

"For the wedding. I was thinking August thirteenth. It's a month before my birthday so I figure that would make it easier to remember."

He chuckled. He had a nice laugh. "Can't argue with logic like that."

Bella leaned on the lifeguard station, letting her veneer of levity fall away. "You were really cool about today. I'm so sorry that happened."

He mimicked her stance, leaning against the station. "Quit apologizing. None of that was your fault." He tilted his head toward her. "All things considered, Peter probably did me a favor. I know of at least two relatives who were planning to do me the favor of setting me up on a date at the next family get-together, including my mother."

Bella blanched. "Wait. Did your mother see that whole thing?"

His lip twitched. "Of course she did."

"Oh, no." Bella slumped against the station, covering her face with her hands.

He laughed. "She called me up and said, 'Give me the condensed version of the real story so I can give you either the "Follow your heart; when you know, you know" speech or the "Son, you know I love you, but maybe you want to walk back your latest act of total lunacy" speech.'"

Bella choked on a laugh. "So you're a lunatic? Well, that's good information to have."

"Ah, could come in handy." He patted the side of the lifeguard station. "You mind if we climb up?" He gestured to the front of the station where the stairs were.

"Climb up?"

"If you want to go straight to the water, I'd understand. I have to hang back here, though."

"No, I mean don't you think the lifeguard station is off limits?"

Edward gave her a bemused look. "Not for the lifeguard." He turned, grabbing the metal bars and pulling himself up through a space in the railing. He sat with his legs dangling off the edge, looking down at her.

"You're a lifeguard?" She was a little slow on the uptake today, and he wasn't helping with that stunning display of biceps. That she extended her hand to him so he could help pull her up rather than use the perfectly good set of stairs was also the biceps' fault.

"It's not my day job, if that's what you're asking. But, I do it as a favor to my sister when there's a need." He gestured at the hotel behind them. "She's currently Assistant Director of Banquets, but she used to work with the team out here. This job was my first job after I ran away from my parents."

"Including the mother who thinks you're a lunatic?"

"My parents are good people, but you know." He shrugged. "I was seventeen." He wrinkled his nose. "And it was Alaska."

Bella's eyes went wide. "You lived in Alaska?" Looking at him now, she would have thought he was born tanned. She couldn't picture him in the snow.

"Technically, I was born in Chicago, but yeah. We moved to Alaska when I was a baby, and by the time I was seventeen, I'd had enough, which is why I never went with Kate," he said with a shake of his head. "Anyway, at the end of my senior year, I set down my pencil, turned in my last final, got in my car and drove."

"You drove from your high school parking lot down here?"

He nodded, a fond smile on his face. "Alice understands me. She knew what it was to need to be away from our tiny town and away from their well-meaning but way-too-involved parents. She installed me on her couch, handled the phone calls from our father who couldn't comprehend that I wasn't going to go on to his old alma mater. Then, she set me to work on the beach."

"That's a sweet story."

"Alice has her moments." He rolled his eyes. "She's also extremely nosy. I don't know if you're checking your Facebook after that debacle, but she sent you a friend request."

"I haven't checked them, but I noticed I got quite a few of them."

"Me too." He pulled his cell phone from his trunks' pocket. "So, which friend requests should I accept, and which did Jasper get in the divorce?"

Bella flinched, but the question caught her so off guard that she was almost instantly distracted. "You want to be friends with my friends?"

He looked away from his phone to her, his pretty green eyes studying her face. "Unless you think it's too weird. That's the original point of Facebook, right? Networking?" He shrugged. "No big deal if you don't want me to, but I think you're cool so at least some of your friends might be worth knowing too." He bumped her side lightly. "All of this bullshit sucks right now. I mean it reallysucks. But years from now, you and I are going to be hanging around with some of these people, laughing our asses off because it's also really ridiculous."

Despite the ache in her heart, her chest felt warm at the idea he was already assuming they'd be friends for a long time. Edward was so easy to talk to.

They sat together, watching the waves and the people milling on the beach. They discovered they were in related fields—him in coastal engineering and her in marine biology. They shared a deep love and respect of the ocean. Edward, of course, was also a surfer. When he found out Bella had done barely more than sit on a board, he started talking about teaching her.

"I'll help you. I'll show you how to balance." His eyes twinkled as he winked at her. "And hey, if you fall off, you know I can save you."

A handsome, geek of a man with life saving skills. Of course that explained the twitter in her stomach, right? The little flutter of nerves and the surge of pleasure? She was only human, after all.

Edward was called to work then, when a family ambled up to his station with questions and concerns. Bella pulled her legs up onto the wood platform, staring out at the waves again, lost in thought, irritated at the pang of guilt she'd felt at wanting to spend more time with Edward. It was strange that she felt so easy with the man when they were barely more than strangers.

She'd felt as though she'd known him forever. Where that bit of information stood amidst everything else going on in her head, Bella didn't know. She didn't know much these days except that her heart hurt and her head ached, and she wasn't quite sure which way was up.

"Hey."

Edward's voice, quiet near her ear, sent another thrill of electricity down her spine. She took a deep breath and turned, stunned to find him so close to her. She hadn't even noticed that he'd sat beside her.

"Are you sure you don't want to go out in the water? You don't have to entertain me," he said, his voice light but his eyes etched with sympathy.

"It's probably not a good idea. I'm so spaced out right now, I'd probably get swept out to sea. Then you'd have to rescue me. How embarrassing would that be?"

And why did she suddenly get the image of him pulling her dramatically out of the surf, laying her limp form on the sand and performing mouth to mouth?

"I'm off in half an hour anyway. We can wander the hotel shops, if you want, or…"

"Or?"

He looked sheepish. "Alice invited us to a late lunch. I can tell her to fuck off."

"Well, that'd be rude, wouldn't it?" Bella considered a moment. "No, lunch would be good. Especially if your sister is one of the people we'll be laughing about all this with in a few years."

Half an hour later, after Edward had changed into a shirt—damn—and longer shorts, they wandered the shops of the hotel as he'd suggested. They spent entirely too long in Spreckels, debating the merits of chocolate with various things in them—potato chips, strawberries, peppers—and the ginormous sour gummy snake. The two-foot long snake won, and they shared, spoiling their lunch as they continued on.

Bella needled Edward until he told her any and all Kate the Ghost of Hotel del Coronado stories he knew.

"Wait. Wait," Edward said when she razzed him about his own story of flickering lights and disembodied shadows. "You're the one who forced me to tell you my Kate story, and now you're mocking me mercilessly. You don't believe in ghosts?"

"I don't notbelieve in ghosts. You ever notice that old hotels always have female ghosts? Most of whom killed themselves over a man?"

"But our ghost has been documented by many ghost hunters with all their flashy equipment. There are shows."

"Oh, then it must be true if it was on television."

They'd arrived outside a large banquet hall where they were supposed to meet Alice. The doors were open and what looked to be an overly fancy wedding was in full swing. Bella peered in, curious.

"Alice said she'd be about ten more minutes," Edward said.

"That's cool. I'm being a looky-loo anyway. Look at how swanky this is. Have you ever seen a full orchestra at a wedding?"

"Well, yes, but I've worked here for a lot of years."

Bella hummed an acknowledgement and then sighed, swaying as the music turned to a slow, romantic song.

"May I have this dance?"

Bella's head snapped up and she found Edward looking down at her. Her breath caught at the tiny smirk and his pretty eyes and the music and...

"Yeah," she said without thinking about it.

As easy as that, he pulled her into his arms. It felt remarkably good to be this close to him. He was graceful. Of course he was. He was in the California dude outfit, shorts and all, but moving around the hallway like he was damn Fred Astaire.

And then, he started to sing. "You must remember this. A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh. The fundamental things apply. As time goes by."

Bella felt dizzy somehow. She was glad his arms were around her, anyway. His voice was velvety, and the way he was looking at her…

What the hell was happening here?

She swallowed hard, dizzy for different reasons now. This whole thing was surreal. Just this morning she'd been defending herself because how dare anyone think she'd gone from one relationship to another in the space of twenty minutes?

"It's a date,"Edward had said when shesuggested they go on his Disneyland engagement day together.

And now? Spending the morning on the beach, sharing dessert, dancing to slow-dance love songs.

He was looking at her lips.

She was looking at his.

She tilted her head up.

"Ahem."

They flew apart. Bella blinked, focusing on a woman with Edward's smirk, his green eyes—about a thousand times more mischievous at this moment—and jet black hair. "Hey, little brother."

"Alice."

Alice turned to Bella. "So. We're going to be sisters, huh?"

Bella blushed. This was going to be an interesting lunch.

A/N: Shout out to my group for helping me figure out wtf Edward does. Special shout out to Rhiannon Wescott who's helped me out on jobs a number of times. Pffft. Making Edward and Bella employed is overrated.