A/N: Shorty chapter is short, but I lost my stride with this fic for a moment. Hopefully we're back on track now.

As Edward expected, his sister showed up before noon the next day to find out what had happened on his date. She was already half convinced he and Bella were destined. He had to admit it would have made a good story. Mutual high school crushes meet again. It was sister-assisted destiny, and she was probably already planning the wedding.

He tilted his head back, though Alice was just a blur. In his current position, sitting upside-down on his couch, his glasses were resting on his forehead. Still, he could see well enough to know she had her hands on her hips.

"What did you do?" Alice asked.

"What makes you think I did anything?"

"It obviously didn't go well."

Edward sighed. "No, it went surprisingly well." Surprising, because it should have been awkward as hell after Bella called him out about his hypocrisy. But Bella had changed the subject and, after he'd had a chance to catch up, they'd slipped into much easier conversation.

"So what's the problem, little brother?"

He told her.

Alice opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it. "Oh." She walked over to the couch and settled next to him, also upside down.

That was how Jasper found them a few minutes later. He came in and looked at them, hands on his hips. "Sugar, I can understand if your brother needs help rerouting his blood to his big head, but what are you doing?"

"Bella has a soft core porn website," Alice said.

"Of which she's the star," Edward added.

For three seconds, there was silence. "Huh," Jasper said. His expression was far off.

"She wants to date Edward."

"Uh huh." Jasper moved to the recliner and sat, like them, upside down. "You didn't say no outright, I take it. That's interesting."

Edward huffed. "I should have, but… I don't know. I don't know why I didn't."

"So it's not a deal breaker."

"It should be. I thought it was." Edward righted himself on the couch and rubbed at his temple, dizzy.

"This is stupid," Alice said, getting her feet on the ground. "I'm sitting here trying to decide if this makes me feel differently about her. I like Bella. I liked her when we were kids, and I've liked talking to her since we found her again. Yet I'm sitting here, trying to decide if this changes how I feel about her like I found out she sold drugs to kids. Why is this so bad? She's not doing anything wrong. She's not even doing anything illegal. What the heck?"

"Friendship is one thing. I don't have a problem being her friend." Edward tilted his head back and forth, stretching his neck. "I mean, as a friend, I would worry about her safety. And why she's doing this, but it's different. I'm not the kind of guy who can share."

"What exactly do you think you're sharing?" Jasper asked.

Edward fixed him with a look. "Come on. Would you be comfortable if anyone with a credit card could see Alice's bare ass whenever they wanted?"

Jasper grinned at him. "Hell, Edward, we gave it away for free."

"What?"

Alice chuckled and shrugged at her boyfriend. "Give him nightmares."

"When we went to France last year, Alice and I spent a bit of time at the nude beach. I didn't feel like I was sharing her then." Jasper raised an eyebrow. "You said softcore, right? No penetration?"

"Nobody else is involved. It's just her in the pictures."

Jasper hummed and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "Okay, let's play with this. There's nothing concrete about the idea that what Bella is doing is wrong. It's a cultural thing, pure and simple. America is a lot more prudish than other countries and for no good reason. I mean, we're not better off for it.

"My dad travelled a lot for work. He would tell me about how, in other countries, you didn't have to go to the premium channels to see nudity. Yet those countries have lower rates of teen pregnancy, STI's, all that good stuff."

He waved his hand. "Anyway. It's worth thinking about at least. If we'd been born in another country, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all."

"That's another thought," Alice said. "If Bella was an actress, like in movies or on HBO, she'd probably have sex scenes. Or hell, she'd definitely have kissing scenes. WIth other people, presumably. Would you feel differently if she was a movie actress?"

Edward frowned. Inherently, acting as a profession didn't set off any alarm bells in his head. "I wouldn't like her kissing someone else even for art," he hedged.

He couldn't pinpoint why nudity in the context of porn bothered him much more than the idea of Bella being an actress, pretending at loving relationships for an audience's entertainment with a person who wasn't him. What she was doing now should have bothered him less seeing as she was alone in her videos and photos now.

"You're not going to like everything about her or everything she does," Alice said. "That's a given."

Edward narrowed his eyes. "There are people going online right now specifically to masturbate to her nude body. You think I should be okay with that?"

Jasper snorted. "You know as well as I do it doesn't take a naked body to provide, err… material. You remember that little barista at the coffee shop when we were in school." He whistled. "Damn that ass."

Alice crossed her arms. "Oh, really. Do tell me about this barista."

Her boyfriend smirked. "Honey, you know yours is the only ass for me."

She let him sweat another second before she smiled and looked back at Edward. "And you think my fantasies were limited to the guys I dated? Let's put aside the fact I can picture them naked any time I want-so technically you're never going to have a girlfriend who someone doesn't know what she looks like naked, doing...things. But beyond that, I can tell you, while you were ogling baristas, I had a graphic imaginary sex life with my hot German professor. Damn."

"Ew. A Professor?" Jasper made a face. "Don't make me want to punch an old guy in the face. It's unsettling."

"He was thirty-two, first of all, and secondly, let's tone down the jealous urges, bucko."

Jasper saluted her.

"It's...Maybe it's the money thing," Edward said. "She sells her body. That seems so cheap."

"As opposed to the things the rest of us do for money?" Jasper snorted. "The shit we put up with from customers and superiors and pain-in-the-ass coworkers all with a smile on our face. Theoretically speaking, modesty is the least of what we've sacrificed in the name of a little green. Most of us, anyway."

"So you're saying I'm overreacting? There's no reason I should have a problem with this?"

"Hell, I don't know," Jasper said. He took Alice by the arm and pulled her down with him on the recliner, studying her features for a minute. "Thing is-we do live in this culture. We have whatever ideas we have in our heads. I wouldn't like it. It wouldn't be an easy thing to deal with."

"You only need to know if you're interested enough in her to try," Alice said. "That's all dating is. Trying people out to see if they fit." She nuzzled the side of Jasper's head.

Jasper turned his head to press a soft kiss to her temple, but then he chuckled.

"What?" Edward asked.

"Just… this was every boy's fantasy, wasn't it? When we first stumbled on porn, glorious porn. Every boy had that fantasy to fuck the centerfold girl. You can do it."

"Crass asshole."

"Oh, give me a break. Don't try to tell me you haven't thought about it."

Edward had thought about it. That was half the problem. He'd been thinking about Bella and sex in some form or fashion since he was a teenager. He'd imagined how she'd blush when he touched her.

It was jarring-and yet so titillating-to think of her in the role of the wild cat. Edward had more than one fantasy about her pushing him back on the bed-the couch, the backseat of the car-and straddling him.

He leaned forward, rubbing at his eyes.

"Twin, if it's going to give you this much angst, you have to go for it," Alice said.

Edward stared. "What the hell kind of sense does that make?"

"She's under your skin. You walk away now, without knowing what you're missing, you're going to wonder for the rest of your life. And you're not good at that."

~0~

He tried to forget her. There was no reason she should be so important. She was a high school friend whom he'd recently reconnected with. That was all.

Why couldn't he just tell himself it was a bad idea and be done with it?

It was the weekend, and Edward was well aware of the traffic conditions on the way to Orange County. He'd looked. For once, traffic would have cooperated. He could be there in thirty minutes. He could surprise her.

Instead, he turned on the TV and flipped channels. There was a Firefly marathon on that caught his interest. Space cowboys and government plots were a good distraction until he remembered Inara.

Inara who was a prostitute in a culture where that position was valued and respected. In the Firefly universe, for a companion to choose you as a client was a high honor, and an asshole who forgot himself would be blacklisted. Edward had seen the series before, but he hadn't given much thought to Inara's profession other than to feel sorry for Mal for being in love with her, and that was a vaguely misogynistic idea now that he was overthinking things. He'd never thought to express sympathy the for the female characters who fell for players.

So this was how it was going to be. Every song on the radio, every TV show, every movie was going to remind him of her.

"Point to you, Swan," he muttered, digging out his phone. He sent a text.

Do you like mini-golf?

He felt like an idiot the second he sent the text. Mini-golf? Why would a girl like that like mini-golf? But it was one of his go-to dates.

Edward was about to send a retraction when he got a text back.

The one sport in the world I can play? Cullen, be careful what you're starting. I can and will kick your ass at mini-golf.

His cheek twitched as he tried to imagine competitive Bella, fierce in battle with loop-de-loops and swinging pendulums. He wondered if she would bounce up and down if she got a hole-in-one. The woman was a mystery to him, equal parts adorable and vixen.

An adorable vixen.

Alice was right. He wasn't committing to her. And apparently he was interested enough to try and figure out his mixed feelings about how she made her money. That as all he needed to know for now.

Remember you said that when I'm kicking your ass. Are you free tomorrow?

Is this a friends thing or is this a date?

Edward snorted. She was direct, and it charmed him.

A date.

Are you busy tonight? Gotta admit when I mini-golf, the words balls and stroke tend to come up in conversation.

Edward banged his head on the back of the couch, laughing at himself and how amused he was. Shaking his head, he tapped out a response.

I'm sorry. Are you a twelve-year-old boy?

Fifteen strokes to get it in the hole. Come on.

He was busy thinking up a good comeback when his phone chimed again.

Don't judge me just because sports are sexually suggestive.

Reading between the lines, he wondered if his apparent silence had made her self-conscious. Maybe she wasn't as blasé and confident about everything as she appeared.

The idea she was just a little flustered about him did wonders for his ego.

I'm only going to judge you if it takes fifteen strokes to get it in the hole.

Please. That was my prediction for you.

I'll be there in forty minutes, Swan. Be ready.

Are you going to impress me with your ball and stroke skills?

Again, Edward had to laugh, but he couldn't deny the twinge of discomfort that curled in the pit of his belly.

The rub of it was, if Bella had been any other girl, he'd have just chalked her words up to normal flirting. But then again, on a second date, he wouldn't have known as much about Bella as he did. Whenever she was suggestive, it was Ramona Ryder he pictured not Bella Swan. The image stoked something hot in the pit of his belly, but at the same time…

Edward sighed. He didn't know. He didn't know what the heck he was doing.

Forty minutes. Then we'll talk about my ball and stroke skills.

It only took him a few minutes to get ready-better jeans, contacts rather than glasses. Before he left, curiosity drove him to refresh his tumblr feed. Sure enough, Ramona had posted. It was a selfie pic of her, head cocked, smiling at the camera with bright eyes and a secretive smile.

I just feel pretty today, the caption read.

He smiled and thought maybe her feeling pretty was connected with him asking her on another date. It didn't have to be. It was a fact, after all. She was pretty. More than merely pretty, she was beautiful.

Refreshing the post, his eyes strayed to the like and reblog count.

She was beautiful, and he wasn't the only one who thought it.

"Here goes nothing," he muttered, fishing his keys out of his pocket and heading out the door.

A/N: My thanks to Barburella and songster for their loveliness.

How we doing, pretties? I missed you.