AN: This is my first foray into fanfic. Reviews are love.

Disclaimer: I own plenty. Just not Twilight.

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Chapter 1 – What a dish

BPOV

The perfect combination of salty and tangy was dancing lightly on my tongue and down my throat. I had waited months for this taste and was finally satisfied.

"Did you like that Bells?" Jacob laughed lightly.

"I can't even begin to tell you. The taste was well worth the wait." I replied, my head still reeling.

"Well, make sure to put that in your review. You know they love it when you're as descriptive as possible. The big guys like to call you 'Hemingway.' Did I ever tell you that?"

I put the fork down slowly. "Hemingway? I wouldn't go quite that far. I guess I just can't help myself though. When something is this amazing, I want the readers to feel like they are there with me, enjoying the flavors and aromas in the same ways."

The waiter came over to ask us if we'd like more wine. As usual, Jacob asked for another glass. One was my limit if I wanted to remain coherent. As the kitchen doors opened for the waiter to pass through, I saw the Sous Chef, Demetri, pacing nervously while we finished our meal. Poor guy. It had to be difficult as a chef. Every single time you enacted your craft, there was a chance something could go wrong. You could burn a sauce and leave the entrée tasting of smoke. You could undercook a meat dish and ruin your reputation in a single evening. It had to be torturous.

Luckily, Demetri and Felix, the Executive Chef, were at the top of their game. This mushroom and mascarpone ravioli was fantastic. The pungent flavor of the mushrooms was offset by the mellow creaminess of the sauce that the ravioli were nestled in. It was sure to be one of their signature dishes. Both chefs had come from two separate establishments where they were hindered and not allowed to fully express themselves through their cooking. For a chef, that is a nightmare. They wanted to put their hearts and souls into their food, so they formed an alliance.

Volterra was a beautiful Italian bistro in downtown Durham, North Carolina, and was doing very well. Good Italian food was hard to come by in the dirty South and it had very little competition. Maggiano's at the Southpoint Mall was their only real rival and the mall was on the outskirts of town near the suburbs.

I was proud of them. I had reviewed their work at their previous restaurants in Charlotte, three hours west of Durham, but nothing compared to Volterra. They had the winning combination.

"Are you almost done?" I asked Jake.

"Sure, sure. Do you have your notes? Can't leave without the golden goose's notes," he chided me.

Golden goose my ass. This was my first job out of college and I was just happy to be doing what I loved. I had interned for Jacob during college at a small independently owned publication that reviewed locations, activities, and events in and around the Raleigh/Durham area. Jake oversaw locations and that included my specialty, restaurants. When I finished up my double major in Culinary Arts and Journalism at NC State, he immediately offered me a position at "Locality, NC." Since then, I've finished up an MBA at UNC and I'm looking forward to climbing the ladder in a few years.

Jake and I waited outside for the valet to bring his car around. He stood there, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other.

"Do you want to go get a drink or something?" he asked.

"You just had three glasses of wine. What's left to drink?"

"I don't know," he sighed. "I guess I'm just not ready to go home yet."

"Leah again?"

He looked away, ashamed. "Yeah, well, I mean, come on. I'm only 32. I'm not sure if I want to settle down yet, you know?"

"Well, I'm only 26 but I guess if I was 32 and with someone for over three years, I'd want to settle down too. I can't speak for you two though. I don't know her well enough."

"I just," he sighed, "sometimes it feels like she just wants to be married. Not like she actually wants to marry me. Heh, guess I should have thought about that before I proposed, no?"

"Maybe. Sex does stupid things to peoples' brains."

"No doubt," he agreed vehemently.

The valet brought the car around. Jake was fidgeting and after a few minutes, I snapped a little bit.

"Dude, seriously! If you aren't sure then don't do it, it's as simple as that."

He sighed and glanced over at me. He looked beaten down.

"I just wish I knew if it was the right decision, you know? Out of all five of my brothers, only Sam, Quil and Paul are still with their wives. Embry and Jared went through such horrible divorces. I don't even like thinking about it. I really only want to do this once, so I want to do it right."

He seemed to be ending the conversation with that thought so I just nodded my head and sat there looking out the window at the passing trees and houses.

**

Jake drove me home to my condo in Woodcroft. I had bought it the year after I finished my MBA and had worked diligently on making small renovations that would hopefully make a big impact whenever the housing market bounced back. Woodcroft was a prime location – within a half hour drive of the three major universities in the area: University of North Carolina, Duke and NC State. If I could modernize its twenty-plus year-old fixtures, remove the hideous popcorn ceilings and give it a fresh coat of paint, I could sell it for a pretty penny and make some young graduate very happy.

I said goodnight to Jake and walked up the stairs to the second floor. My parents had always taught me that if you are going to live alone, you must always live on the second floor or above for the sake of security. Thieves, rapists, and murderers, didn't want to deal with stairs, they had told me. I figured I had a built in defense for the rapists seeing as I was a plus-size girl. You always hear about rapes occurring because the perpetrator said their victim "was askin' for it" by wearing suggestive clothing. That was not a problem with me. The only thing in my life that I was shy about was my size 16 body.

My parents' hypothesis proved false last year, however, when my house was broken into while I was at the office. They made off with over $3,000 in jewelry, electronics, and power tools. They could have it all, because they didn't harm the one thing in the world that made me smile on a daily basis. Jessie. My beautiful little dachshund.

Jessie was 3 years old and the light of my life. I got her from Independent Animal Rescue when she was just a little pup. She was all black except for some tan markings over her eyes, on her muzzle, and on her paws. Jessie greeted me at the door every single time with such excitement and abandon that I knew I could never settle down with a man who couldn't afford me the same treatment. A five minute absence to run out to my car was met with the same wild wiggling of her body as a full day out of the house. When she was younger, she would get so flustered that she would pee a small bit when I came home. I wouldn't hold a man to that, though. That would be weird.

Scrappy little girl barely let me disarm my security alarm (installed exactly 15 hours after I'd come home to my ransacked house) before she was under my feet and jumping up on my legs to get my attention. As if I could ignore her. I loved this part of any day.

Rosalie, my friend and roommate, however, was not so keen on having a dog. She was very particular about how she wanted things and a dog was somewhat unpredictable and too rowdy for her perfect ideals. Aside from this glaring faux pas in my eyes, we got along pretty well as roommates. I was afraid at first. They say you should never live with a friend for fear of ending the friendship. We had both gone to East Chapel Hill high school, although she graduated two years earlier than I did.

**

I'll never forget the first time we met on my first day of sophomore year. The high school was tenth grade through twelfth so I had a new locker as well as a new school to adjust to. My locker hated me. Upon getting the lock combination from the secretary in the office, I tried it only to figure out that she must have given me the wrong one for that lock. Another trip to the office got me the right combination, but then the lock jammed and I found myself pulling on the lock and cursing loudly in the middle of the hallway.

"You have to push it up first and then pull on it."

I turned around and glared at her. She was 5'9", 120 pounds, and platinum blonde. If you looked up the word "knockout" in the dictionary, you'd see two pictures – Muhammad Ali and Rosalie Hale.

"How do you know?" I replied testily.

"I had that one last year. I pulled so hard that I lost my grip and flew backwards into Mr. Banner. Let's just say English class was not so great that semester. I'm Rosalie," she held her hand out to shake mine.

"Bella Swan."

"Swan? Your dad's a cop, right?"

"Yeah, he's the chief," I bragged.

"I know. He busted me and my friends last year for drinking under the bleachers at the stadium." She looked pissed.

"Oh."

"Heh, I'm just fuckin with ya. Don't worry about it. We just had to be more creative with our meeting spots."

After that first day, I would see Rosalie all the time in the halls between classes. She was one of the few seniors that would actually deign to speak to a sophomore. Her twin brother, Jasper, was pretty fantastic himself. He took to me like a big brother to a little sister and chances were if I wasn't with Rose, I was with Jasper.

It broke my heart when they graduated ECH, but Rose started working for her dad at his car dealership on route 15-501 and Jas was a few miles away at UNC studying occupational therapy, so I still got to see them pretty frequently. He was a little disappointed, however, when I decided to go to State instead of UNC. My family just didn't have that kind of money and UNC was almost double State. Honestly, the only thing that allowed me to go there for grad school was that I had earned some financial aid and the company paid for the rest.

Rosalie started out at the dealership as a floor associate, trying to get the attention of any prospective buyers before they had a chance to say "Just looking." Now, over ten years later, she was the supervisory mechanic. Who would have ever thought that Prom Queen Rosalie Hale would ever even think about touching the inner workings of a vehicle, let alone master them? Thanks to her, though, my car was in tip top shape and I never needed to pay for an oil change or a tire rotation. I couldn't argue with that.

It was an easy decision to live together when I bought the condo. She had been an older sister to me, a protector. Her boyfriend, Emmett, was a laugh and a half too, so that didn't hurt. He was always over and definitely had the protective big brother thing going for him. They had met when he walked into the dealership and demanded to speak to the mechanic about a brake job that he had done there. When Rose sauntered out in her little jumpsuit, his anger toward the mechanic turned into lust for the manager in the blink of an eye. Instead of someone's head on a stick, he walked out with Rosalie's phone number.

The first time I met Emmett was three months later and the first words out of his mouth were, "Whoa! Bella got back!" Rosalie smacked him in the chest and I put my head down, ashamed that he was so open about saying my butt was so big.

"Hey, I like it. You're a hot little mama! If you got it, flaunt it!" he said as he pulled me in for a hug. A few more hugs and some noogies later, and Emmett and I were friends. We've all been hanging together since and it's been a blast so far. A girl couldn't ask for more. Her own home, a furbaby to come home to, a fantastic job she loves, and friends to share her life with. Yeah, I was one of the lucky ones.

**

I got Jessie's harness and leash on her and walked out the door. Jessie immediately ran next door to Angela's condo. She was away on business again and since we had become close after being neighbors for so long, I helped take care of her pug, Laurie, since her live-in boyfriend Ben often worked long hours. Our two girls were in love with each other. They would sniff everything together and if there was a noise, they would back each other up as they went to investigate. It was precious.

After a nice long walk on the Tobacco Trail, I dropped Laurie off at Angela and Ben's and Jessie and I settled into our little home. Rose was gone, maybe out with Emmett. I was procrastinating writing the review up so I decided to catch up on some fanfiction. I had found a new set of books that I was absolutely enamored with and some of the fanfic they came up with was addictive.

I read a few chapters of ones on my favorites list that had been updated. Then, I finally came to grips with the fact that I should write up my review while it was still fresh in my head. Notes or not, sometimes you need something to be at the forefront of your brain in order to be able to explain it properly.

I got a glass of wine and began to type. The words flowed from my fingers like a waterfall. I couldn't imagine living in any other time but this one. I loved the ease with which I could get the thoughts out of my head and out onto digital paper. I was maybe halfway done with my outlined bullet points when the screen blinked. The notebook began to whirr softly and before I knew it, my beautiful half-review was replaced by these weird vertical lines covering the entire screen!

I. Flipped. Out.

Once I found the number for the local Apple store, I dialed the number for their Applecare. The voice on the phone let me know that I should be waiting to speak to someone for exactly eighteen minutes due to high call volume. Eighteen?! Macs are supposed to be indestructible! What fuckery is this!

Finally, after some ridiculously bad musak, I heard a click and a live voice came on the line.

"Thank you for calling Applecare. My name is Edward. How can I help you?"

**

Ok...good/bad/indifferent...just let me know? Ty :oP