I don't own Twilight.

~ III. ~

Tuesday, June 23, 1931

She came to the library today. At first, I wanted to be mad at her when she strolled toward my table looking pretty and cool as a breeze in a flowery silk dress, clutching a straw hat and carrying a basket. But how could I?

She'd given me no definite time or date, and she has no need to come here to study. I'm sure she has plenty of men attempting to court her, following her around to amuse her. I'm also sure I'm but one of many who are smitten with her. So instead of being mad, I smiled at her as she sat on my table.

"Well, I'll be damned," she murmured, bending forward and leaning her head on her hand for support. "You look like a walking corpse, Edward. Ha! A vampire. Let's get you out of here."

I laughed out loud at her words. If she only knew . . . My laughter garnered me some disapproving looks from the middle-aged, broad-hipped librarian and some other students who were obviously more focused on studying than I was. Bella moved to stand next to my table and started laughing with me, the sound of her amusement ringing through the high vaulted ceiling of the reading room.

We walked out of there, both smiling, engulfed in a bubble of our own private delight. With her arm swinging next to mine, we rushed down the steps into the hot summer air; I desperately wanted to reach out to hold her hand and feel her skin against mine.

"So what would you like to do, Bella?" I asked her instead of taking her hand.

"I brought lunch along for both of us," she said, holding up the basket in her other hand.

Staring at the picnic basket in her hand, I could feel my smile disappear. The thought of her considering me a charity case that needed saving made my guts churn. She must have noticed my unease, and for the first time since I'd met her, she looked insecure. I didn't want to be the cause of her discomfort and pushed my fears away.

"Where are my manners?" I mumbled, reaching for the basket. "Thank you. This is very thoughtful of you." She let me grab the basket from her without protest and her smile reappeared. "Shall we?" I offered her my arm and she latched herself into it, leaning against me as we walked to a shaded spot under a tree.

She let go of my arm, took the basket from my hand, opened it and spread a blanket on the grass before unpacking our lunch. I sat down across from her and she handed me a sandwich.

We ate – or rather I ate – while she picked at her food without exchanging another word for some time. When I looked up at her again for a second, I noticed a small, satisfied smirk playing around her lips. The food tasted better than anything I'd had in a long time, and suddenly I felt self-conscious for greedily scoffing down the lunch she'd brought without talking to her first.

"So what would you have done with all this food, if I hadn't been here today?" I asked in an effort to play off my lingering discomfort while taking another bite of something she had handed me.

"Would you like the honest answer – personally not always my favorite choice – or the polite one?"

"What's wrong with honest answers?"

She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, as if contemplating her response.

"Nothing, aside from the fact that they tend to be disappointing and nobody wants to hear them."

"So you'd rather be told a polite lie than the truth?"

"Yes, most of the time, I find it preferable. You know what they say: ignorance is bliss, and sometimes I would rather be happy than wise. A girl is better off anyway being a beautiful little fool."

"You honestly believe that?"

"I do." She paused for a second, shrugging her shoulders while I waited for her to continue. "You see, it's like when I thought about applying to Cornell University for college and asked my father if he'd let me attend if I got accepted. He didn't want to answer me and tried to shush me by telling me I shouldn't 'worry my pretty head with such things.' But I insisted on an answer. So he folded his hands over his chest and asked 'Do you want the honest answer, sweetheart?' and I said, 'Yes, of course, Daddy!' Do you want to know what his answer was?"

I nodded.

"He said, 'you, little girl, will attend a mixed school over my dead body. I don't care whether it's the best school in the whole damn country. Heck, for all I care it could be the best school in the whole wide world, and I'd still not let you go there. Get it out of your head now. Since you won't get in, I don't see the point of discussing it,'" she said in a deep voice with a heavy southern accent, trying to imitate her father, I presumed.

"Well, would you have felt better if he'd lied to you and then not let you go after you'd already been accepted? I believe that would have been more disappointing."

She laughed and winked at me. "Oh, I applied alright and even got in." She sighed before reminiscing, "In those days, I used to have more hope and so I argued with my father. Of course, he wouldn't hear of it. I was banned from eating at the dinner table with my parents for two months in a row because of it."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Where did you end up going to school?"

"That's nothing for you to be sorry about. I'd always preferred eating in the kitchen than at the dining room table. Beside, it turned out fine. I got into Radcliffe College and I liked it, even though I wasn't allowed to attend classes at Harvard. Enough about me! I'm such a bore these days. Do you want the honest answer and or the polite lie?"

"I'll always pick the truth."

"Fine." She smiled, batted her long dark eyelashes once and pursed her lips, seemingly trying to figure out how to be polite about her honest answer. "If you hadn't been here today, I would've been annoyed with you, Edward. No, I think I would have been downright boiling mad at you for making me drag all this food out here for nothing, and I wouldn't have bothered coming back, ever! Oh, and I would have possibly tossed the food in the nearest garbage bin before I walked off."

I laughed.

"I apologize. You have to forgive me! I did neglect to mention that I have a bit of a temper."

"There is nothing to forgive. I am curious now. What would have been the polite lie?"

"Well, I could've told you, like any responsible girl I would have dropped the food off at a soup kitchen. Then I would've come back … hmm… maybe tomorrow to check whether you might be around to discuss recent advances in modern medicine with me."

"But you wouldn't have done that?"

"Probably not, no. I know it's unreasonable and stupid to be this easily disappointed," she said with another shrug of her shoulders. I looked at her, wanting to contradict her. But then I caught the reflection of some hidden feeling in her eyes; a shadow of dejection flickered deep within them, and I hesitated for a second too long.

"Admit it; you liked the polite answer much better!" she exclaimed triumphantly before I could contradict.

"Bella, I don't like you less because you have a temper, if that's what you are inferring. And I wouldn't call you unreasonable and definitely not stupid. I would've come here, nevertheless, every day in the hopes that you might show up again," I admitted.

"That's so sweet of you to say!"

"It's the truth."

And it was her turn to laugh.

When we finished eating, I thanked her for the food and handed her the rolled up drawing I had completed.

"I think this is for my private viewing pleasure only. Thank you!" She winked as she took it from my hands, but some sadness remained in her eyes.

When I dropped her off next to her shiny, new car I was tempted to ask her why she was so unhappy if she had the world at her feet. But I didn't. In retrospect, I'm not sure whether the sadness had been there all along or whether something I'd said caused it.

I think about her eyes as I lie in my bed now and wonder what she sees when she looks into mine.

~000~

Saturday, June 27, 1931

It's Saturday, the sun is out and I don't have to work. I should be happy, except I am not because I won't see her today. She told me she had somewhere to be and wouldn't be able to meet me. She promised to return to the library on Monday.

Bella came to the library every day for the past week, always bringing lunch along. I told her when she showed up on the third day with the basket in her hand that she didn't need to do this; that I did have a job, which paid enough money to buy food. I know it's a polite lie and not the truth I proclaimed to prefer, but the last thing I want this girl to feel for me is pity.

I was pretty certain she was lying when she nodded and said that she knew that, but she was just bored and liked to cook. The girl is really a lousy liar for all her talk of how she prefers to be lied to rather than told the truth. She looked downright uncomfortable and blinked a lot. I guess it was one thing to be lied to and another to tell a lie, but still.

My guess is that her aunt has an excellent cook on staff and Bella noticed my worn out clothes, gaunt face and tired eyes the minute she saw me. She's made her assumptions about why I look this way, and I can't refute them. I still don't know what she sees in me and what makes her come back. Damn, I hope it's not pity. I'm trying to follow Felix's words of wisdom on being patient.

It's hard most of the time. By nature, I am not a patient man. I want to ask her where she lives, whether she'll go to the movies with me or whether she'd let me hold her hand. I can sense she's not ready to give me the answers to these questions; at least not yet and maybe not ever, and so I hold back.

I did get to ask her a lot of other questions when I saw her. She willingly answered all of them with honesty. Bella loves books, and she's definitely read more than I have. In fact, I got the feeling she might not have exaggerated when she said she'd read half the books in the library. She's here for the summer visiting her aunt who is suffering from migraines. Bella would love to get a job, but her parents won't allow it. From the way she talks about it and the way her eyes lose their shine when she mentions college and how she wasted – her exact words, not mine – three years of her life studying, I venture to say that that's why she's often sad. I checked for that sadness in her eyes every time I saw her and, indeed, her eyes were always equal parts happy and gloomy.

I even solved some of her riddles. Her family is Catholic and her mother gave her the cross. She said she's not sure she believes in God and never goes to church. She would never admit that to her parents though, because she's afraid they'd not only make her eat in the kitchen for as long as she lives with them, but also disown her even though she is their only child.

I also found out the story behind her hair. Bella's mother is old fashioned and doesn't want her to cut it, so she doesn't. She said she wants to, though. She told me she hates her long hair, and I told her I think it's pretty one afternoon while we were eating peaches after lunch.

"I know," she snapped back. "But it's not as pretty as in your drawing!"

I'm not certain she sees herself clearly. The more I look at her, the more I think the drawing really didn't do her justice.

She told me she doesn't have any real friends, just acquaintances. I don't believe her.

"You're too pretty and charming to have no friends," I said.

"You're not half bad looking yourself, Edward, if I may say so myself. In fact, some people might say you're devilishly handsome. Yet, I've never seen you socializing with any other people. Don't you have friends?" she asked with a wink, emphasizing the word 'friends' as if it had a hidden meaning.

I shrugged my shoulders in response. "Not really," I answered casually.

While she has freely answered all of my tedious questions, I've become an expert at avoiding answering hers. I'm afraid, if she sees me for who I really am, she'll run for the hills, never to return.

"Why? I know I don't have friends because I was painfully shy and odd when I was a little girl, and most people I know still remember that odd girl. So they don't really want to befriend me. What's your story, Edward? I bet you have one," she said in a voice so low I felt like leaning closer to her to catch her words.

"I don't know. I guess I just don't like people. That's all. Not much of a story there," I answered disingenuously.

"Really? You don't like people at all? Or just not us southern girls?"

"I like you, Isabella."

"I like you too, Edward. Does that make us friends?"

"Yes, I hope so." That was another half-truth I told her.

I hope to be so much more than a friend to her. I know that with certainty already. It's as if she's mixed some magic from her bayou lady into the food she has been feeding me. I feel bewitched by her charm, her beauty, and her mind. It sounds strange even to me. I want to take the sadness in her eyes away and tell her she can do anything she wants with her life. She's gone from being the girl of my nighttime fantasies to the woman I want to be everything for if she would let me.

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