Disclamer: I do not own this or the movie Amelie.

Okay, this one is going to be a little different. As always italics will be Bella's thoughts, but italics in "quotes" is the movie translated from French. I'm sure that some of you out there speak French, but I thought it would be nicer if everyone knew what point I was trying to make. Besides, Bella is reading the subtitles, if you would like to think about it that way.

Chapter 12

Reality Check

Alice was fluttering around my house. She could not control her state of panic. Tonight being Alice's last night in Forks she had been invited back to the Hale's for dinner again. She was terrified because tonight she would be meeting Jasper's grandmother. According to Edward, Jasper's grandmother didn't approve of much, so she better watch out.

Alice couldn't stop bouncing and waving her arms in the air. "She's going to hate me. And somehow I'll never be allowed to see Jasper again."

"Don't his parents like you?" I asked lazily. It was one in the afternoon and I still hadn't gotten out of my pajamas.

"Yes," Alice looked out of the kitchen window intensely.

"Then what's the problem? If they like you then it shouldn't matter what some bitter old crone thinks about you."

Alice gave me a pained look and began to pace again. I rolled my eyes.

The phone rang. I ran into the kitchen to get it.

"Hello?" I squeaked into the phone.

"That was a weird noise," Edward's voice said on the other end.

"I wasn't thinking when I got up," I grumbled. "I moved a little too fast to grab the phone."

"You didn't hurt your ankle again? I could have waited." He sounded exasperated with me.

"I didn't know that it was going to be you," I tried my best to sound frustrated, but I couldn't help my smile.

"Then why else would you have ran to get the phone?" Edward asked cheekily.

I had a brief urge to hang up for this comment, just to put him in his place, but Edward's joking tone did no more than make me blush furiously. "What do you want?" I snapped.

"World peace, a steady economy and an Aston Martin. Why? Are you some kind of genie?"

"No. What was the last one?"

"It's a car Bella," Edward sighed.

"Why a car?" I couldn't help but ask.

"I like shiny things." I could almost hear Edward roll his eyes. "Now what was your question?"

"Well you obviously had some motivation in calling me, is it too much to asked what that is?"

"I was wondering of you wanted to do something tonight."

I noticed that Alice had stopped pacing. She was standing right across the counter from me, doing her best to hear Edward's voice. "Sure. I guess it's just us again tonight. What do you want to do?"

"I don't know. You're always welcome to come over here, if you want."

While Edward was talking Alice ran around to the fridge and pointed to a yellow piece of paper held up by a magnet with a Chinese food restaurant number on it. I looked at the piece of paper. It was Charlie's schedule for the month. She was pointing to that days date. Charlie was working until midnight.

"Why don't you come over here," I said automatically. Alice grinned at me.

"Sure. That sounds like fun."

Edward was coming over to my house. He was going to be alone with me in my house. Why was I freaking out? We had been alone together in my apartment. I guessed that I had just gotten into the habit of freaking out whenever Edward was involved in anything.

"I can cook, I guess. Oh, and I have this movie here that I've been meaning to force you to watch."

"Oh boy," Edward's voice teasingly lacked enthusiasm. "When do you want me?"

What an unfortunate question. I hardly thought that 'Right now,' would be an appropriate answer.

I grabbed a notepad and wrote What time are you leaving? and handed it to Alice. Alice took my pen and wrote 6:30 under my question.

"Is seven okay?" I would need some time of my own to freak out.

"Sounds great, I'll see you then."

"Bye."

I was barely able to hang up the phone before Alice's shriek of excitement pierced through the kitchen.

"This is it," she said with wide eyes. "This is the night. Tonight, Bella. I can feel it." She bounced on her toes.

"Alice, how can you tell?" I 'm sure that the exasperation was clear in my voice.

"I don't know," she sang, "but I just do. Oh, I've got to find you something to wear." She hurried towards the steps.

"Alice wait," I stopped her. She unwillingly turned to face me. "Look, Edward is just coming over to my house. I'm not meeting any parents or anything. Dress me if you must, but PLEASE keep it casual."

Alice looked distant. I wasn't sure of she and even heard me.

"I have the perfect outfit," she murmured and disappeared up the stairs.

********

Alice was right; she did have the perfect outfit. For once Alice and I agreed on what I was wearing. She had just put me in a normal pair of jeans and a dark blue v-neck sweater. I looked pretty, but not overdone. I was happy.

I hadn't even started cooking anything when Alice had left. I didn't know why, but I wanted to be busy when Edward arrived. If I didn't have anything to do then I would have been sitting at the window waiting for him to drive up, and that screamed desperate.

Edward knocked on the door while I was busy cutting carrots.

"It's open," I yelled. Running to the door would also look desperate.

Edward walked into the kitchen behind me but I did not immediately turn to look at him, choosing instead to keep my eyes trained on what I was doing.

"What are you doing?" Edward peered over my shoulder.

I motioned to the chopped baby carrots in front of me. "Food. I'm making it."

Edward looked around. "You are cooking without supervision?"

"Yes?" More of a question than an affirmation. I knew that he was trying to tease me, but I wanted to see where it was going.

"You might set something on fire. Look at that knife you're holding. You still have all of your fingers, right?" He reached out and grabbed my wrist. I batted him away. He was laughing.

"Yes, I do Mr. Smarty-pants." I pointed the rather large knife at Edward. He stopped laughing. "And for your information I have been cooking since I was twelve and I have yet to have an accident."

Edward threw his hands up in surrender and backed away from me. I went back to my chopping. Edward seated himself across the counter from me, carefully watching the movement of my knife.

"So what are you making, exactly?"

"Spaghetti," I shrugged. "Nothing fancy. Charlie doesn't keep a lot of stuff in the house for me to work with."

Edward's fingers slowly crept across the tile counter. I smacked them with the flat of my blade before he was able to steal away any pieces of carrots. Edward pulled his hand away, a look of shock at my cat-like reflexes. I grinned at him.

"Don't mess with me," I waved the knife around again.

Edward laughed.

I tried not to look too smug as I swept the carrots off of the cutting board and into a bowl of lettuce.

Edward and I chatted while I finished cooking. The talk was our normal stuff. We made plans for the next day. Edward noticed that I wasn't limping and I got to say "I told you so" to him, which made me very happy.

When the food was ready I just tossed the plate across the counter to him, sitting down at the table just suddenly felt way too formal. Edward seemed to be impressed with my cooking, although he did not say much. He kept staring at his plate as though the secrets of the universe were written somewhere in the spaghetti sauce.

I desperately wanted to know what was going through Edward's mind, but I knew not to ask. If I did I would just get a smile and a kind "oh nothing." It wasn't like he was thinking about me anyway, so why did I care?

For some reason everything that we did that night had an awkward aura hanging around it. Maybe Alice was right; maybe this was the night, the night when all of my fantasies came true. Maybe that was why I couldn't stop blushing. Maybe that was why my imagination was running away with me.

I tried to hide my blush as I settled next to Edward on the couch. This had never seemed strange at my apartment, there must be something going on.

The DVD menu came up and I clicked through it to make sure that the English subtitles were on. I didn't know about Edward, by my French was pretty pathetic.

Amelie had been my favorite movie about five minuets into the first time I saw it. I identified with the French girl. She had very few friends and retreated to her imagination. She would rather live in a world that she created then try to deal with her real problems.

The movie had actually scared me a little bit the first time I saw it. The comparison to my own life seemed uncanny at the time. But at that moment, sitting on the couch next to Edward, it scared me even more.

Sometimes I forgot that Amelie was a love story. There was so much other plot that sometimes you forgot. But now I remembered. I remembered Amelie's awkwardness. I remembered her improbable fantasies. And I remembered how she was too afraid of ruining the fantasy to gain the reality. "The last thing Amelie wants is a reality check."

"You mean that she would rather imagine herself relating to an absent person than build relationships with those around her?" Yeah, that line always stuck with me. That line had described me in high school.

Somewhere in the movie I had become so entranced that I had slid off the couch and positioned myself of the floor, my knees pulled up to my chest in order to fit in the small space between the coffee table and the couch.

Edward had slid to the floor next to me, casually throwing his arm across my shoulder. I mentally thanked that waitress, Jessica. Without her I wouldn't be sharing this newfound closeness with Edward.

On the screen Amelie and the glass man were looking at the painting that showed up in quite a few of the scenes.

"So that's the one, there, the guy who raises his hand?

"Yes."

"She's in love with him."

"Yes."

"The time has come for her to take some real risks."

"Well yes, she's thinking about it. She's thinking of a stratagem."

"Yes, she likes stratagems, doesn't she?"

"Yes."

"She's a bit of a coward."

I shook my head. For a brief moment I had thought that the movie was talking about me. I was the one who was in love. I was the coward. I was the one who was afraid to take risks. The man I loved was sitting next to me with his arm around me and I was too scared to do anything about it.

When I shook my head Edward gave me a funny look. For a second my heart stopped. Maybe…No! I gave Edward a shrug and returned to stare at the movie screen. He probably thought that I was just going crazy, I felt like I was going crazy.

I managed to kick my insanities out of my head for a little while. I was even able to let some insecurities wash away from me and lean my head against Edward's shoulder. Edward twisted his fingers through my hair. I suppressed the shudder that ran through me when Edward's fingertips occasionally came into contact with the back of my neck.

"So, my little Amelie, you don't have bones made of glass. You can take life's hard knocks. If you let this chance pass, eventually, your heart will become as dry and brittle as my skeleton. So, go get him for Pete's sake!"

The words sunk into my brain. I didn't even register the end of the movie. The cheerful accordion music and happiness failed to penetrate my conscious at I swirled these words around in my brain.

I didn't even realize that the movie had ended until I heard Edward say my name.

"Bella," he waved a hand in front of my eyes. "Are you in there?"

I stared at him. Stared right into those emerald green eyes that I loved so much. Stared right through Edward. I realized at that moment that if the something that I had imagined was going to happened tonight, then I was going to have to be the one to instigate it.

Summoning a bravery that I didn't know that I had access to, I leaned forward and pressed my lips into Edward's.

There were numerous reactions that I had taken into consideration before I kissed him, but what I got wasn't one of them. Edward had turned to stone beneath me. Almost instantaneously I pulled back, knowing that I had done something wrong. Edward wasn't responding.

I looked into his eyes. They were blank. Blank like the first time I had ever saw him, when he had caught me staring. Blank as in devoid of any human emotion. Edward had turned completely into a statue.

Reality threatened to crush me then and there. What had I done? Edward didn't like me. Had I just ruined what could have been a perfectly good friendship?

My hand flew to my mouth. "Oh god," I gasped, getting to my feet.

Edward seemed to register my movement and come back to life. He looked up at me, his expression confused.

"I'm so sorry," I whispered. I backed away from him, tripping on my father's armchair.

"Bella," Edward said softly, his hand reaching out to me as I righted myself.

I didn't give him the chance to say anything. I couldn't handle the embarrassment and the rejection at the same time. I had to get out.

I ran up the stairs and into my room, managing somehow not to trip. The tears spilled over the second my door closed behind me. I collapsed onto my bed and sobbed, the dry heaving kind of sobs that hurt your chest. I could feel my whole body shaking. I had done it; I had wrecked my life. I could no longer have that simple friendship with Edward. I had destroyed any chance of being just his friend.

Edward had rejected me. Edward didn't have those kinds of feeling for me. Of course he didn't. Why would he? Why would he want a girl like me when most girls where treating each other apart to get his attention. I was just his friend. He had said so numerous times. Friend Bella. Didn't you hear that? He wouldn't have called you that if he hadn't meant it. Edward is just your friend.

I didn't know how long I had been crying before I registered the sound of voices coming form downstairs. I didn't bother trying to decipher how many voices there were, I just kept crying.

The bedroom door opened.

"Bella," Alice's voice was quiet and weary. She knew that something was wrong. I felt her weight press into the mattress as she sat down next to my feet. "Bella, what happened?"

"Nothing," I lied, muttering into my pillow. I attempted to dry my eyes on the pillowcase, knowing that any attempt to hide my tears would be pointless. Alice was much smarter than that.

"Bella, if nothing happened then why did Edward call me saying that he screwed up and that I needed to get over here now? What did Edward do?"

"Nothing," I laughed. This time I was telling the truth.

"Bella," I could hear the warning tone in Alice's voice. She was trying to be patient with me because I was upset, but she was already wearing thin.

I turned over and sat up, clutching my pillow to my chest. "It's true. Edward didn't do anything. I kissed him and he didn't do anything." Alice gasped, but I ignored her. "He just stared at me like I was some kind of alien or something. But he didn't do anything. Nope, that was all me."

"Bella, you didn't." Alice sounded almost as upset as I felt.

"I did," I nodded. I let out another laugh. The devastation had crushed me entirely. Alice was going to have to put me in a little padded room with one of those self-hugging jackets. I could be heavily medicated for the rest of my life. Maybe Edward would feel bad and come and visit me twice a year on my birthday and at Christmas. That was the future I now had to look forward to.

"Bella," Alice said carefully. "I have to go downstairs. Are you going to be okay for a few minuets?"

"Yep," I said in the overly cheerful voice that I had adopted. I lay down on the bed and made a big show of pulling the blankets over myself, despite still being dressed.

Alice nodded slowly and stood up. "Okay, stay here. I'll be back in a few minuets."

The calm way that Alice walked out of the room momentarily made me fear for Edward's wellbeing, but all of the energy I had lost during my crying bout had caught up with me and I fell asleep long before Alice came back into my room.

Ooo, sorry. That was mean, I know. Well, they can't have it easy. These things never are (so I've been told). Maybe these kids will get lucky and it will work. Or maybe not. You wont find out until next time. Ha ha ha! (I'm practicing my evil laugh)

BTW, Amelie, fantastic movie. If you haven't seen it go out and get it. Really really really amazing. Yes, it's in French and you have to read the subtitles, but that's no excuse. Skip fan fiction for a night a watch a really fun movie.

Thanks for reading! :)