What do you say when you see three holes in the ground full of water?

Well, well, well

Don't take any notice of me.

PRIMARY ONE

GREEN

I avoided him for days and pretty much avoided everyone else too. I felt like crap. There I was labeling his father insensitive, while graduating Top of the fucking Class for insensitivity myself. There I was stopping by the wayside to extend a hand to a lame dog, and then once it gave me its paw I kicked it. I didn't how how to make things better between me and Edward and I didn't know if I wanted to make things better for his sake, or for my own. I didn't want to give him any false impressions, I didn't want him to think I pitied him, or that I returned his feelings, whatever they were. What a fucking mess.

I needed to find some way to apologize though. In English Lit I slipped him a note that said "Sorry," and he just shot me an unreadable look with no other response.

I slipped him another note five minutes before the bell rang. It said "Aren't you talking to me now?"

He shook his head. At least that was a better result.

I had time for one more note, and I said, "Will you meet me after school?" I didn't even have a plan, I thought I'd just bumble some badly worded, awkward apology to get it off my chest and then I'd stop feeling like so bad. It was all about me, of course.

Edward shrugged and I spent the rest of the day not knowing if he'd agreed or not, but then later there he was in the school's parking lot standing next to the silver chariot and looking intense and stiff-shouldered like he always did.

"Can I get a lift with you?" I asked, and he nodded. Most days I got a lift with another guy from my home room Tyler Crowley, who drove a van with a mattress in the back. "Just In Case" we called him. I hadn't heard of it ever having come in handy.

"Justin, I'll see you tomorrow," I said, and got into the Edmobile.

"You're still playing the Man Of Few Words game?" I demanded after a couple of miles when Edward hadn't said anything at all.

He shrugged. "Where would you like to go? Or am I taking you straight home?"

"Ah - the park?" I suggested, still with no plan.

"It looks like rain," he remarked, but he took the turn and we got to the park, heading for the children's playground.

It did look like rain, he was quite right, but I offered to push him on the swing and although he snorted at me, he sat on it and let me. I put my hands on his back and shoved and he was pretty heavy and I couldn't move him much.

"Put some muscle into it, Swan," he said and I tried again, grunting with the effort.

"Take your feet off the fucking ground," I growled, "and stop resisting me."

"I'm not resisting you," he said and just as I was feeling relieved that he had his back to me so I wouldn't have to face him as he said that, the rain started. The clouds didn't just leak a few preliminary drops from the sky to let us know it was coming, they flung a deluge and Edward leapt off the swing, shouting "the slide!" and grabbing my hand.

The playground has a slide that's about three feet wide so that two or three kids can go down at once depending on how big they are or aren't, and there's a little hidey-place underneath it with a seat and round portholes in the walls.

We squished in and I'm a skinny girl but I had never felt so wide. I was in close body contact with Edward from my shoulders to my hips to my knees to my feet. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was excruciating.

"Okay, look, can I just say something?" I began, deciding it's now or never. He picked a lock of my hair from his shoulder where it had fallen and twirled it around his fingers. God. His fingers were long and elegant and I'd never noticed them before. My hair looked a different color against them than it did any other time.

"Yes. Please do," he said. "I'm all ears."

"Right. Good. Um. The thing is..." I trailed off, because I wasn't quite sure what the thing was. Luckily there was a sheet of rain only a wall away that I could look at while I tried to work myself out.

"The thing is," Edward said, having decided to help me, "You invited me to go somewhere with you and then I invited you to go somewhere with me and I thought both of those occasions were dates but I got it all wrong and I guess I owe you an apology."

"Huh?" I said, stunned at his view of events. He was saying sorry to me?

"I thought I was the villain of the piece," I mumbled.

"No, I think it was me," he answered.

"Look, it's nothing personal, I just - it's just that - I know I never really talked to you or anything, but now I have and you seem like a pretty good person - but I don't really want to date anyone. I need to concentrate on school, you know? Apparently you're an A-grade genius so maybe you can afford the time to date and still pass exams, but I have to work really hard for my grades and I don't want to be stuck in Forks as a fucking waitress or check-out chick or something. That's what happened to my Mom because she had a boyfriend far too early and I'm not going to have my mother's life, I'm just not," I said to the rain.

"What was so bad about your mother's life?" he asked softly.

"She met my dad!" I said. I turned back to him. He was watching me, and godamnit, he still had my hair in his fucking hand.

"She was so young - she met my dad and it was this whole fucking stupid love thing and I came along and wrecked her whole life and she wanted so much more but they had me to contend with and my dad had to get a steady job and..." I stopped because my own wordspill was so unexpected. I didn't ordinarily bleat.

"And?" Edward said. The light was dim in there, what with the rain and the shadows and his eyes were dark and his red hair just looked plain brown. I looked away.

"She couldn't stand it here. She didn't want to bring a baby up in the rain. This - " I gestured towards the outside surrounding us. "Fucking, fucking rain. She thought things might be better in the sunshine. My dad was so bewildered because he tried his best and he liked it here and she couldn't stay. Why am I telling you this?"

"Because you need to," he answered, and he was so wrong. I was supposed to help him. He'd sounded lost and alone at his parents' party, and I was going to be the helper; he was the helpee. I didn't need to offload childhood trauma - he did. How did this fucking role-reversal happen?

"I don't need anything, Cullen. I'm just fine," I growled. "I won't inherit my parents' difficulties, thank you very much. I'm aware of what went wrong, and I know exactly what to avoid. I'm going to do fucking great in school, go to college and have a career. No boyfriends, no babies."

"Sounds like you've got it all sussed," he said. "Where's your mother now?"

"She's in Arizona. She got her sunshine after all."

"You know, Bella, maybe it wasn't you. Maybe your parents just liked different climates. What about that?"

I was silent. Forks, Washington. Green as fuck. Phoenix, Arizona. Subtle desert colors, nothing vibrant. Rain versus sun. Damp versus dry. Cold versus hot. Cullen, you fucking, fucking bastard.

"You think my parents broke up over the fucking weather?" I yelled at him.

"Easy, tiger," he said. "I don't think anything."

I was so pissed off I stared at him again without caring that it might be weird, and I tried to see why everybody thought he was so good-looking. We've all got the same features yet there's an infinite multitude of possibilities as to size and shape and arrangement. He had stupid hair that he must never have washed in his whole life, he had thick dark eyebrows that looked like giant millipedes, his eyes were of indeterminate color in the lack of light but were framed by those stupid effeminate lashes, his cheekbones were high and his face angular, his skin pale, the beginnings of stubble sparse across his upper lip and his chin and jaw. His lips, if measured on a spectrum from thin to full would be over the halfway line towards full. To be analytical and dispassionate about it I could admit that he was very handsome. To be analytical and dispassionate about it I could admit that his looks weren't important to me. But fuck, I was beginning to suspect that his fucking perceptive, insightful, controversial, annoying brain could be very important.

The rain had stopped and we emerged from our little shelter and made our way back to his car, both silent once again. I was immersed deep in thought about whether love could withstand climate and god knows what he was thinking. It was a lot lighter out from under the slide, and Edward the gentleman opened the passenger side door for me as I looked searchingly at him. His fucking eyes were fucking green, like a forest, like Forks itself.

Anathema to my mother. What about me?

.

.

.