Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. I am in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise, I just use their creations to have my wicked way with them. No copyright infringement is intended.

LadySharkey1 rocks my world by being the most amazing, kick-ass beta I could ever imagine.

Chapter 26

When happily ever after is so close, and yet, so far away…

"I need your help."

Scratching my head as I tried to blink the sleep out of my eyes, I stared mutely at Rose who was standing on my doorstep dressed in her wedding gown with a bottle of non-alcoholic mojito in one hand and a couple of shot glasses in the other. "Rose, sweetheart, you do know it's two in the morning, right?"

Rolling her eyes, she pushed past me, her feet already thundering up the stairs before I could warn her not to make any noise because I had a kid sleeping only a few doors down the hall. "This is an emergency," she claimed. "It's the night before my wedding and my feet are completely frozen. Normal rules don't apply."

I arched my brow as I followed her into the house, making sure to close the door so that I could keep the noise as low as possible. "Cold feet, Rose. Really?" Sighing, I shook my head as I shepherded her into my bedroom. "Let's get you out of this dress first before you stain it."

"Fine." She sighed, her eyes sad as we peeled away the intricate construction of millions of little buttons before she managed to squeeze herself into some of my pajamas.

"So," I concluded, carefully hanging the dress before turning around to face my friend. "Wanna tell me what this is all about? Why the heck are you wearing your dress in the middle of the night?"

She shrugged. "It seemed like a shame if I never wore it outside the shop."

"So you're really having second thoughts?" I gasped, enveloping her in a hug for as long as she'd let me before she pushed me away and started moving towards the living room. "What happened?"

Sighing, she flopped down onto the couch, dramatically brushing her hair over her shoulders before she complained. "Do you know that every single person I've told about my wedding reacted the same way?" She paused, pouring two non-alcoholic shots into the shot glasses and throwing her own drink back with a grimace before she went on. "It's always 'You are getting married? You're so not the type of person to settle down!' Well, fuck them!" Reaching over, she grabbed the second glass before I could take it and downed that drink as well. "It's like everybody thinks I'll suck as a wife!"

"You won't," I insisted.

"But what if they are right?" Rose cried. "Hell, I can't even blame them, because if you'd have asked me a couple of months ago, I would have said the same damn thing! I'm not cut out to be a wife but because of all that weird voodoo shit Emmett does to me, here I am: spending money I don't even have on a wedding I never thought I wanted!" Jumping up from the couch, she started to pace the room, throwing her hands up into the air as she exclaimed, "I don't even know what the fuck I'm doing here, because it's not like this fake drink can even get me drunk. Ugh!"

"Do you want to get married to Emmett?" I asked calmly so I wouldn't spook her anymore than she already was. My neck strained as my head moved along with her like I was following a tennis match.

"I don't know!" Looking at me, her eyes were wide with shock at her own admission. "I just…fuck!"

"Then do you need me to drive the getaway car?" I suggested, really hoping I wouldn't have to make good on my proposal. Please, for Emmett's sake, let this all turn out right!

For a moment, it almost looked like she'd take me up on that offer but in the end she bit her lip, shaking her head as she muttered. "No."

I smiled, patting the space on the loveseat beside me. "Then will you please sit down and tell me what the real problem is?"

"I'm not the type to get married," she spoke, gingerly settling down next to me. "I never even wanted to be in a relationship. Freedom suited me just fine…until I met Emmett. God…he's just so…" Her voice trailed off as she stared out in front of her, her lips curling into the first real smile I'd seen ever since she marched into my home. "He makes me want to be a better person just so that I can call myself worthy of him."

"Those are good things, aren't they?" I hedged. "Then why the doubt?"

"It's all so fast!" she explained. "One moment we were having great sex and everything was just fun without expectations, the next I find out I'm pregnant and we're shopping for wedding dresses and planning to spend my life with him! And now with everyone being so damn surprised, I can't help but wonder if maybe I'm rushing into this…like I'm only doing this just because it's what I should be doing or because I think he wants to do it, not because it's what I really want to do."

I let out a deep breath. "Rose…" I started to warn, my heart hurting at the sight of her, so distressed and at odds with herself.

"I want to do it, Bella," she interrupted me, her eyes frantic as she angled her body towards me. "In my heart there's nothing more I want than to be his wife; be a family… But it's just that I'm so afraid I'm going to break his heart. I'm afraid that in the end, if everybody's right, then I'll know I was never really cut out to be somebody's wife."

"So basically what you're afraid of is that the old biddies—whom have never in their lives been right about anything, mind you—are correct with their condemnation of your wifely qualities? You're thinking they are right when they don't know you. You do realize that out of the two of them, only one has been able to land herself a husband who, I might add, promptly ran off with his secretary after two years of marriage?" I surmised, snickering as Rose looked at me like I'd gone completely crazy.

In the end, though, she chuckled, obviously bowing down to my superior intellect as she nodded. "Okay, you may have a point there."

"Then what the fuck is stopping you?" I challenged. "You want to get married and since you said yes, I have a feeling you think you're up to the challenge, right?" I waited before she'd nodded, though be it very hesitantly. "And I don't have to look at Emmett to know he's chomping at the bits to make you his wife. Hell, he'd have flown you to Vegas the minute you said yes and married you right there on the spot!"

"But what if it all goes wrong?" the watery smile that came from her worried face all but broke my heart.

"Then it won't be for lack of trying," I insisted, wrapping both my arms around her. "The way I see it, you're both stepping into this with your eyes open. You're both determined to make this marriage a success and know that it takes work to do so. Sure, it may go wrong, as so many marriages and relationships do, but that shouldn't stop you from trying. I mean…what if it doesn't go wrong? Are you really going to deny yourself the closest shot at a happily ever after you're going to get?"

She shook her head against my shoulder, her grip on me changed from weak to determined. "I guess not."

"Good." I nodded. "Now, you're either going to march your pretty butt into my spare bedroom or schlep your ass back downtown to your own, because I'm wiped out. And if I want to get through this wedding tomorrow, I'm going to need some fucking beauty sleep."

"Yeah," Rose sighed, chuckling lightly. "I suppose I do, too. I mean, nobody's going to be impressed by a bride with raccoon eyes who's half asleep when she says, 'I do'."

oOo

In the end we both managed to get some sleep even though Charlie had quite a blast when she woke up in the morning and found both Rose and I crashed on top of the bed in the guest room. We'd wandered in there after she'd decided to stay and spent some time reminiscing about the days when she was making out with half the football team behind the bleachers, while I had been completely freaked out by the sudden appearance of boobs on my chest and the draw they seemed to have to boys.

"I still don't get why you didn't wake me up when you decided to have a sleepover with Aunt Rose," Charlie pouted, playing with the buttons at the bottom of her jacket sleeve.

"It wasn't really a sleepover," I tried to placate her. "There were no movies or jokes or anything. Rose just showed up after you were asleep, to ask me some questions about the wedding and then decided to sleep here so that she wouldn't be too tired for the wedding."

I could tell by the look on her face that Charlie didn't exactly believe me but, for the time being, she at least stopped complaining, which was a rather nice turn of events since her remonstrations had been going on for hours. Or, at least, it seemed like it.

Like me, my girl wasn't exactly a morning person—with having her alarm set for six in the morning on a Sunday so that I could get her and myself ready in time, before heading over to the Lodge with the cake to help set everything up—wasn't exactly fun.

And then I had to brush the tangles out of her unruly hair and craft it into something fit for a wedding.

Usually Charlie's hair did quite well on its own, but it was unruly like her dad's. On most days the riotous mop of curls bouncing around her face was left to its own devices after a thorough brush through. This morning, though, I'd made the very ambitious plan to try and work it into a braid, which was where all the problems started. Because even though Charlie was fully on board with my idea, her hair definitely wasn't. It fought back every step of the way.

And I was ashamed to say: it won.

After about an hour and a hefty donation into Charlie's college fund swear jar, I'd finally thrown in the towel and rushed through getting ready myself, before strapping my kid into the car. Carefully and with a surgeon's precision, placed Rose and Emmett's cake in the back before making my way to the Lodge.

I looked tired and half asleep, and Rose seemed to not have suffered at all from her nightly excursion; the sound of her voice directing traffic as everybody rushed to get the place in order greeting me the minute I walked through the door.

"Ah, Bella!" She squealed, her exuberance a start contrast to the scared, doubting girl who'd been standing on my doorstep only hours before. "You're here! Can you please take over and stop these people from making this wedding all cute and girl while I go upstairs and do my make up?"

Flashing a pointed look across the room towards a few members of staff who already looked thoroughly intimidated she added. "If I see as much as a bow or a single strip of tulle, I'm going to demand a refund, okay?"

Grabbing Charlie by the hand, she marched upstairs while I tried to placate the staff and set up the cake. Now I knew Emmett and Rose's wedding was going to be a small affair but that didn't stop me from going all out. Staying with the outdoorsy feel of the wedding, I'd stuck to a simple, three tiered cake with white fondant covering the chocolate and cherry jam inside before adding chocolate braches covered in green fondant leaves all around it. It looked amazing in its simplicity, even if I said so myself.

I was just done when a pair of huge arms wrapped around me from behind, spinning me high up in the air as I squealed, much to the amusement of everyone around us.

"Put me down, Emmett!" I cried, barely managing to fake anger at being manhandled by my own employee.

"Why?" He grinned, putting me back on the ground. "I thought you'd like this little glimpse into live as a tall person."

I shoved him, my eyes once again wandering towards the cake to see if everything was still as perfect as it had been five seconds before. "I'm fine as I am, thank you very much. You look very handsome, by the way."

He grinned as he rubbed the back of his head. "Thanks." He did look dashing in his suit; a regular black number with a crisp white shirt underneath it; tailored to fit perfectly over his huge, bulking frame. "The cake looks amazing as well and…um…" He fidgeted and his eyes filled with happiness as he continued. "Thanks for being there for Rosie last night. I know she'd be halfway to LA if you hadn't talked her off the ledge."

I shrugged. "It's what friends do. I couldn't let her make the mistake of a lifetime."

"So you think we're doing the right thing?" He, too, looked nervous. His body hopped awkwardly from one foot to another as his eyes traveled across the room.

"Of course, I do," I insisted, patting his arm. "I wouldn't be dressed up in fancy, uncomfortable clothes and come bearing a humongous wedding cake if I wasn't convinced this was going to work."

"Anyway, I'm glad you were there for her," he insisted. "I know this is a huge change for her—for both of us, really—and I was scared she was gonna get spooked. Hell, I'm still scared she's going to somehow bolt from that room upstairs and leave me standing at the altar."

"She won't," I reassured him. "She loves you, Em. Yeah, she may have been a bit spooked last night but she won't leave you hanging. I'm sure of that."

"I'm going to make her happy," Emmett spoke, though I wasn't sure he was talking to me or just himself; the sheer determination in his eyes and his stance made me long to be the subject of such devotion myself. Well, you could have had that, Bella. If you hadn't messed things up, this would have been your life.

"I know you will." Tears were already burning in the corners of my eyes and I knew that once we got to the ceremony, I'd be a complete and utter wreck. "There's nobody I would trust to take care of my best friend's heart better than you."

Hugging me, his voice sounded slightly strained, his lips made contact with the crown of my head as he muttered. "You'll have the same someday."

I wasn't so sure about that, but for the moment, I let it rest as I chose not to concern myself with the failure I'd made of my own life. I wanted to devote myself to making this the best day in the life of my two friends instead.

So I stood there, a couple of hours later, watching as they pledged to love, honor and cherish each other, and tried to stop my tears from falling as I felt Charlie's small, clammy hand slip into mine. I didn't want to cry in front of her, especially not since my happy tears were mixed in with something much more bitter and loathsome.

Self-pity.

Desperation.

Longing.

Envy.

It wasn't that I didn't think Rose and Emmett deserved to be happy, but seeing them so happy and in love, stirred a deep and acute longing to have that for myself as well. The trouble was, though, that I couldn't even fathom how that was going to happen either in the short or the long term.

At the end of the day, though, I still had a blast. With Rose being the anti-version of a bride and her mother fighting her every step of the way, there were some interesting moments during the day. For instance when Rose refused to toss her bouquet, claiming she liked it too much to throw it away when the only single women in attendance were Charlie and myself.

Charlie, meanwhile, was having the time of her life. Emmett's parents were completely spellbound by her stories about growing up in rural Forks while the Hales, whose seen it all from close by, chimed in with stories about me and Rose when we were young.

All in all, it was a great day, even if I was as wiped as Charlie, who lay conked out in the backseat as I drove us home after we'd sent them off on their honeymoon. If the day had made one thing clear, though, it was that I was done settling for second best. I wanted what they had; what both their parents, as well as mine, had managed to keep alive through many years of hard work.

I wanted love.

Real love.

So as I made my way upstairs, my pace burdened by the fact that my ten year old daughter was slumped over me and half asleep as she trudged her body up the stairs, I was already mentally preparing the phone call I was going to make the second I had her safely in bed.

It was a call I could have easily skipped, even though I knew it was the polite thing to do.

After all, didn't we both deserve closure?

Thoughts?