First real chapter. Excited much? Emmett and Alice are totally cute together! Thanks LMD, my awful spelling would remain for the world to see without you, lol.

So I've been head over heels in love with him forever, he feels the same about me and has proved it, he was and is the best friend I'd ever had, and obviously this was a long term thing and not some high school fling. But how was I supposed to know when it was appropriate to say those…words. Those words. The big L. However you want to say it.

I mean, we'd been together for a month, practically. I didn't know if the others had said it to each other yet, but I hadn't heard it. We were the newest couple! This boy was perfect and crazy and absolutely mind boggling! I didn't know if I was ready for the 'next step' which this felt like.

So my response? I was too much of a wimp to say anything. At all. So I pretended to be asleep until I heard the grind of his snore. Then I mentally flipped out. So that's where I am now, two weeks later, on the Hale's floor, holding him like a life preserver, still flipping out in my head. Yup. I need to stop having these inner monologues…

I woke up to Emmett nudging me and whispering "Wakey wakey wakey…"

It was highly annoying.

"Pixie Princess, wake up, please!" he begged quietly.

I lifted my head, glaring at him, hissing, "Why?"

"Because your elbow is on my stomach and if you don't move and let me up me, you, and this air mattress are going to be wet!" he hissed back.

That made me move, to the least…

While Emmett made his getaway, I looked around to see what I could see. Edward and Rosalie were obviously awake and not in the area, and Bella was asleep in an armchair, where Jazz had covered her with a blanket and tucked her in sweetly. I got up and stumbled to the kitchen, where I was promptly shoved into a seat and given a plate piled high with food by Jamie.

"Eat up, today is your first day of break, make the most of it," he said, putting a coffee cup beside my plate, setting down the coffee pot for good measure.

I raised an eyebrow at Jasper, who shook his head, mouthing 'don't ask.' I just grinned and dug in. Now that stress was absent from the group, Jamie's food was enjoyable again. Emmett came into the kitchen a few minutes later, rubbing his chest a little, attempting to be discrete. He sat next to me and tried to hide a pained expression, but nothing could get by me.

"You okay, Em?" I asked quietly, passing him the empty coffee cup Jamie practically threw on the table.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," he said unconvincingly. "Just stiff."

"And sore," I said, glaring at him for attempting to lie to moi. "Did you take your medicine?"

"I was going to after breakfast?" he said sheepishly, lying again to me, and himself.

"You forgot," I corrected, hopping up before he could object and ran to the living room, where his overnight bag with his medications were in. I'd made it my personal duty to learn his schedule, and to make sure he stuck to it. Yeah, I'm obsessive compulsive. Sue me.

He rolled his eyes when I handed him his morning medicine-a pain killer for the broken bones, an antibiotic for the cuts, and a multivitamin for his immune system, since the other medicines were doing so much to him. (Okay, so I'd passed obsessive compulsive and skipped to anal. Again, sue me.) He took the medicine, chasing it with orange juice and one of Jamie Hale's strawberry waffles. Then he continued on filling himself passed the limit of a normal human being, nearly four times as much as I could manage before getting queasy.

After breakfast, the girls went shopping with the moms while the boys watched football with the dads. I had quite a bit saved up from doing odd jobs around the house no one else wanted or had the ability to do. Organizing the crawl space in the attic was easy, but I was the only one that fit through the door to sit in there instead of just reaching and pushing.

We drove all the way to Seattle, to a big mall there. With the promise that we'd all stay together, we left the moms in a home furnishing store and went for a clothing store. Rosalie and I forced Bella to try on various clothing items. Really, we were testing to see what looked best on her, then sent her on a wild goose chase trying on about six outfits while we each bought her birthday gifts. Rosalie a red spaghetti strap dress that we were going to talk her into wearing to the winter formal, me a knee length ruffled blue skirt with a matching long sleeved top with ruffles down the front from the sweetheart neck to the hemline.

When she emerged red in the face and annoyed, we gave into her begging and went to a book store. While she was looking through a volume of classics, I spied something that was so perfect, so incredibly Bella that I had to buy it in addition to the outfit. A black leather bound journal, decorated with golden vines drawn in a square on the front, leaving room for me to have 'Isabella Marie Swan' written on the front. It was perfect, and Rosalie said it was all the better, so she'd have an excuse to buy her new shoes as well.

We decided to go into the sports shop just for kicks, where I saw a fantastic gift for Emmett. A plaster football, made to look slightly deflated, leaving room for a picture frame to be inset in it. The lady at the counter that asked if I wanted any personalized words on the back looked weirded out when I asked her to write "Teddy Bear + Pixie Princess", but she complied none the less.

We got back to my house, where the guys had set up camp, laden with bags and down a chunk of change or two. Emmett was sitting on the edge of his seat, shouting along with Jamie and my father some team chant, then the three erupted in cheers as some tall dude rolled around in spray painted grass with a bunch of other tall guys nearly crushed him. I will never understand football…

I sneaked up to my room and got my laptop with all of my favorite photos. I pulled up my favorite of us, taken at the Halloween carnival. We were sitting on a bale of hay, cheeks pressed together, sticking our tongues out at the camera to show our colorful mouths from the lollipops we'd been inhaling. My tongue was purple, his green, and our hands were twined together. I wasn't sure what was so interesting about the picture, but my gut told me this one.

I quickly ran to the home office and used the photo-printer to get the picture out, then I wrote the date it was taken on the back. In a few moments, his gift was completed and hiding in my closet with Bella's gifts. I went downstairs to the living room, even though all the other females were in the kitchen.

"Hey Em," I said, wrapping my arms around his neck where he was leaning back in his seat.

"Hey Al," he replied, kissing my wrist where I was brushing his curls on the side of his head. "There's only ten seconds left."

"Football talk meaning another twenty minutes?"

"Five, then I'm all yours," he laughed, focusing his attention on these funny colored line that kept disappearing and reappearing on the field.

"Whipped!" Edward coughed from nearby.

I cast him a glare, then kissed Emmett's cheek and traipsed into the kitchen.

"Want some cocoa?" Mother asked, filling a pot with water.

"Sure, thanks Mom," I said, going to the cabinet and digging around.

"What are you looking for?" she asked, not looking up. Dumb eyes in the back of her head…

"Cookies."

"Why?"

"I want cookies."

"Fine, but only a few, I'm making an early dinner in a bit."

"Fine," I said, grabbing the box of chocolate chunk and dumping a few onto a plate. I went to the kitchen table and offered some to the others.

After a few minutes of idle chit-chat, a new hand came down and grabbed a cookie while another hand covered my eyes. "Guess who."

I smirked and pulled Emmett's hand off my eyes. "Game over?"

"Yep," he said, pulling a chair up to sit next to me.

"Who won?"

"Does it matter?"

"Other team?"

"We got destroyed," he said, huffing. "Charlie, Edward, and Jasper are being obnoxious."

I laughed. "Well, we'll find something to do without them."

'Something to do' ended up being 'fashion show and bore Teddy Bear to sleep.' I insisted he see all my new purchases since I had to watch him play video games all the time. As I was modeling the third and final outfit, I noticed that he had fallen asleep. Nice. I simply changed back into my normal clothing and sat next to him, watching him sleep.

A/N: Eep, ready to review? I hope it makes more sense now.

~Sidney