A/N: This is for mujisan. Love to her for the ideas and for letting us share.

-Edward-

At first it was an obligation, like I was indebted to her.

I slid into the seat next to her on the bus one day and handed her a few magazines. She looked at me with a crinkled brow.

"You didn't have to buy me anything."

"I know. I just thought you might like them."

"I don't need them." Her voice, her posture, everything about her was indignant. I'd never known a girl like her. Even back when I used to date, all the women I'd been with expected gifts rather than refused them.

"Bella, it's not like I'm going to read them. I was at the store, and it was an impulse buy."

A few moments passed, but her face never softened. She took them, but her hands reached out slowly, as if she feared touching them. I learned something very important about her then: she was proud. I liked that…a lot.

As time passed, I got a little more creative in my payback.

"Let me get this straight. You want me to go in there, order a Coke or something and leave twenty bucks on the counter as a tip." This dorky little blond kid looked from me to the money the whole time he talked.

"Yup," I said.

"And you'll pay me another $20 when I get out?"

"You got it."

I found him just standing near the café where Bella worked. He didn't look like he had anything better to do. He was probably about fifteen, with no car, a lot of time on his hands, and happy to do a few minutes' work for a few bucks.

"Okay," he said with a shrug that clearly indicated he thought I was nuts. Maybe I was. I watched through the window as the kid took off. Once Bella noticed the change sitting there, and she quickly looked up and scanned the area. She even walked to the front of the cafe, and looked out the door. I had to duck out of the way to make sure she couldn't see me near the bus stop across the street.

Once she finally realized that the money was hers, when she didn't see the kid anywhere, she pocketed the cash, and I saw the smile that spread across her face.

I didn't intend to keep it up. At some point though, it wasn't about paying back a debt. I just liked to see her smile. Unfortunately, the stress in her life was more evident than the joy most days. That was pretty common on the bus.

I'd noticed that people collapsed into their seats, as if this was a place where they could let it all out before they had to walk into the next challenge, whether it was work, home, or school. Sitting next to her more often, paying closer attention to her, I felt affected by the invisible strings that pulled her in every direction. Some days, Bella seemed especially weary, and it was such an unwelcome contrast to her bright features, to her hopeful disposition.

I began to gather more information about the depths of that hole she'd referred to.

"I know, Dad. I'm working on it." She huffed into the phone. Her voice had escalated, but after a deep breath, she lowered the volume and calmed her tone. "I won't let them turn off the electricity, I promise."

After she hung up though, she closed her eyes, and I could tell she wasn't sure how she'd keep that promise.

I acted on instinct. In retrospect, it was probably a little creepy, but I didn't know what else to do. It wasn't like I knew her phone number, or even her last name. I followed her after she got done with work one day. From there, it was easy.

The next day, she anxiously sat down in her seat, whipping out her cell phone before the bus even began to move again.

"Hey Dad, how, um, how did you pay the electric bill?" She waited for a response.

"What do you mean? You had to." There was another pause. "No, I just checked the balance when I was on campus. I was going to pay what I could, but it was zero."

They talked for a few more minutes, ultimately concluding it had been a lucky mistake in the computer system, hoped no one would find it until at least the end of the month, and hung up.

She was smiling. It was contagious.

"Got big plans for the weekend?" I asked when we were only a few minutes from her stop.

Bella looked up from the book she'd begun reading after she hung up with her dad. We'd become comfortable with small talk in the past week, but we danced around anything that might have been more personal. She'd ventured a question or two about my time in the Army. I'd dipped into inquiries about her dad's health. Our answers were always informative, but cautious.

"I have a couple of shifts, and some homework to catch up on. Sometimes I wonder what it'd be like to have a normal nine to five kind of job with actual weekends to look forward to. You?"

Absentmindedly, her right hand snaked up the back of her neck. Her fingers wove themselves into her hair, and she began combing through it. Like many other actions, I'd come to know these little subtleties as symbols of her lack of pretense.

"Not much," I said. Between what she'd heard of my conversation with Jasper and the brief snippets of our daily routines we'd shared, she knew enough to draw some conclusions.

"Oh come on, you're in college. Won't you be out partying all weekend?"

I laughed. We both knew that not all college students were created equally. After her light ribbing, I wasn't prepared for the change in her tone.

"Gonna see your family?" she asked quietly.

I shrugged.

It could have been the end of it: that was, after all, where our comfortable small talk normally would have stopped. For a minute, I thought it was, but then Bella spoke again.

"You haven't seen them since you left?"

"No."

She nodded thoughtfully. "I think you should."

The bus was slowing, and I could see her stop. She clutched her bag closer.

"Hey, Bella?"

"Yeah?"

"You wanna see a movie or something?"

-Bella-

He asked, and I said yes. That's why I was sitting at the dining room table, nervously gnawing my fingernails to the quick.

"Where are you going on your date?" Dad asked, his mustache quirking up on the right side of his mouth. He always liked to goad me when he knew I was already wound up.

"It's not a date."

"You're dressed like it's a date." He popped a strawberry in his mouth as I looked down at the black skirt and light-blue knit shirt I was wearing. Did I look like I was going on a date? Edward didn't specify it as such, and I wasn't sure he thought of me that way. But he usually saw me in jeans and a t-shirt, and I wanted to look nice—for him to think I looked nice—even though I wasn't quite sure why.

"And you look nervous," he said, his lips breaking into a full smile.

"I'm not nervous," I replied defensively, smoothing the fabric of my skirt.

"You're my baby, Bells," he said. "You look just like you did right before you barfed all over the stage during your kindergarten play."

"That was stage fright!"

"Who's this boy you're going to meet?" Dad's face was all seriousness, full of years of law enforcement and caution.

"His name is Edward. We go to school together," I said, standing up to wash my hands. "Are you going to be okay for dinner?"

"Mmm-hmm," he replied, and I wasn't sure if he was talking about dinner, or Edward.

"This is his cell?" Dad turned the envelope that I'd written Edward's number on around and around in his hands.

"Yep."

"His last name is Cullen. Is that German?"

"Dad…I don't know. I'll ask him for a copy of his family tree at dinner, okay? Want me to ask for his social, too?"

"Smartass," he said, leaning over to kiss my cheek. "Have fun, and if you're not home by midnight, I'm calling you every two minutes until I see this face walking through the front door, got it?" He patted my cheek.

"I'm too old for a curfew," I said, wrapping my arms around his neck. "And be careful. I don't want you hurting your leg again."

Dad rolled his eyes at me and grinned as I turned to walk out the door.

The ride downtown was full of twists and turns, half of which were from the bus, the other half from my stomach. I nervously glanced down at my watch every few minutes to see if I was still on time, while my knee bounced against the back of the chair in front of me. I'd noticed some of Edward's Army-like ways on occasion, and I got the feeling that he wasn't just punctual; he was ten minutes ahead of everyone else, and I didn't want to start things off by being late.

Sure enough, when I stepped into the Italian restaurant where he'd suggested we meet, he was at a small table in the corner, his hands clasped in front of him. I motioned toward him when the hostess asked me if I'd like to be seated. When I was halfway to the table, his bright green eyes met mine, and he smiled.

And I don't know what happened in that moment—between the clinking of glass and the waiters bustling around us—but that warm, nervous smile melted away all the cold looks during bus rides, and all of my misapprehensions about the kind of guy he was. That smile made me want this to be a date.

Edward stood when I got to the table, and he looked so handsome in his perfectly pressed pants and light-blue shirt.

"Hi," he said, as he walked over to pull out my chair.

"Hi."

When he rounded the table to sit back down again, he smoothed his shirt, and said, "How are you?"

"Good."

"Did you find the place okay? The bus ride was okay and everything?" His mouth went about a mile a minute, and I wasn't used to him being so…flustered?

"Yeah," I said, my voice sounding all quiet and breathy. "Did you? Have a nice bus ride, I mean."

Edward nodded quickly.

"Yeah." Then he placed his hands on the table, like the flat surface was giving him leverage, keeping him from falling. "You look…really nice," he said. His face was so earnest; I couldn't help the warmth that burned my cheeks.

"You look nice, too."

"Thank you," he said as he reached over to the seat next to him, and placed a gift bag on top of the table. He slowly slid it over to me.

My stomach knotted, because I didn't expect him to bring me anything, and I felt the unmistakable pull of charity as he looked at me hesitantly. I hated the way that felt, even though I knew his intentions were nothing but good. The magazines he brought me on the bus, the larger-than-normal tips he'd leave when he stopped by the café for a drink.

Edward's financial situation was hard to read; he didn't have a job that I knew of, and he rode the bus every day just like I did. And while he didn't seem to be hurting for money, I didn't want whatever money he had to be spent on me. I felt awkward enough accepting the invitation for him to treat me to dinner and a movie tonight. I couldn't help but say yes though, because despite how hard I tried to fight against it, I really did want to get to know him.

"Edward, you shouldn't-"

He playfully rolled his eyes, and smiled a knowing smile. He'd been expecting me to argue with him.

"Just look inside before you decide you don't want it," he said, eyeing the red paper bag in front of me.

I slowly reached forward; it had always been hard for me to accept gifts, especially when the giver was sitting directly across from me, anticipating my reaction.

I lifted the bag and set it on my knees, pushing a strand of hair that had fallen across my forehead back behind my ear. I peered inside, and smiled at what I saw: a paperback.

What looked like a whole stack of paperbacks, actually. I pulled them out one by one, placing them on the table as Edward spoke nervously.

"I got them at a book fair downtown this afternoon. They're used; I didn't want you to think that I spent a lot of money, I just…I thought you would like them."

The inflection in the last word sounded more like a question than he probably meant it to, and I smiled at him as I looked at the titles of the books stacked in front of me. I'd heard of some of them, like White Oleander, and Irish Rose, but there were others I didn't recognize, like Under the Lilacs, Wild Orchids, and Magic for Marigold. Edward's hands twisted nervously—so out of character for his normally confident self—as he looked at the books. It was then, as my eyes studied the well-worn spines, that I realized it. I couldn't control the way my heart seemed to be beating its way up into my throat.

"You brought me flowers," I said, my lips stretching into the widest grin I'd felt in a long, long time.

Edward nodded, and took a deep breath. "You like them? I wasn't sure you would, and if you don't want them-"

"No, no," I replied. "No. I…I love them. Thank you."

He rested his elbows on the table, and the relief on his face turned into a shy smile as he leaned a little closer to me. "I'm glad," he said. And when he looked at me then, all nerves and newness, with just a tinge of red on his cheeks, I knew it. I knew it.

Edward wanted this to be a date, too.

Slowly, as sips of ice water cooled our frazzled nerves, and small talk about what we'd order faded into small talk about school that bled into small talk about our lives, I got to know a little bit more about Edward Cullen.

I liked him. A lot.

And when we were nearly finished with our dinner, that small talk crested into something big, that started off with one tiny, innocent question.

"So, is it just you and your dad?" Edward asked, taking a sip of his beer.

And there it was: the one thing that I absolutely, positively hated talking about.

"For someone who dislikes talking about his own family, you sure have no qualms about digging into someone else's," I said, sounding much more defensive than I'd intended. I saw the change in his face; the embarrassment, the discomfort. I quickly corrected myself so I wouldn't ruin everything. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

"It's okay if you don't want to talk about it," he said, looking at the table, and not at me, like he wanted to avoid looking at the hypocrite sitting in front of him. The hypocrite who was so willing to stick her nose into his business, but couldn't handle someone else sticking their nose into hers.

"No, I don't mind," I said, smiling at him when I saw his sincere, curious eyes. I took a deep breath. "It's just a sensitive subject."

"I can see that."

"It is just me and my dad now." I saw this flash of pity in Edward's eyes, and I guessed he'd probably assumed that my mother had passed away. I wanted to correct that assumption immediately. "My mom, she…she left us when I was three. She's never really been in the picture."

He watched me intently before he spoke again, his words very tentative and quiet. "So… she wasn't ever around?"

"She was around," I said, swirling the ice in my glass with my straw before I took a sip. "I've always lived with Dad, but she used to come by a few times a year. She's free spirited. A flake, I guess. She'd show up when she wanted to, stick around for a little bit, and then I'd wake up one morning and she'd be gone."

"God, Bella...that's just..."

"It's not the worst thing in the world. I know her, she knows me. She manages to make me a priority in her life every once in a while. But, you know, growing up with just my dad..." I felt the warm sting of tears in my eyes, and I looked down at the table, because I didn't want Edward to see me cry. "I missed out on a lot of stuff. And she chose her boyfriends over me, her art over me. She chose every stupid whim she ever had over me."

When I finally dared to look up at him, his right hand was close to mine, and his eyes were soft with understanding. And that's when I said it. The thing I'd been curious about ever since I'd overheard him at the café with his brother. The thing we danced around when we asked about each other's families. The thing I wanted to know most in that moment.

"I'm kind of jealous of you, Edward," I said, his eyebrows quirking up with surprise. "The one person who should love me doesn't want anything to do with me, and you have four people who do love you and are desperate to be in your life. How can you push them away?"

E/N: Thanks to writeontime for beta'ing. We're really tickled that you all are enjoying this. Thanks to everyone who's reviewing or rec'd the story somewhere. Edward still has issues, but he can be sweet, too. How do you think he'll respond to Bella's prompt? What was the most surprising gift you ever got on a first date? Next update soon!