A/N: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. However, I, under the penname listed above, do own this story, plot and its variations. I prefer it not to be plagiarized and thank you in advance.

This spot will always be for Quoda or as you all know her, QuothMe. That's my beta bitch! (Er... I mean, that's my beta, bitch. Commas are important!) She is kind, supportive and brilliant.

Chapter Six

There was a time when Edward could walk through Forks High unnoticed for the entire day, save for when attendance was called in classes. In fact, it was only a short time ago, hardly a few months, when Bella, who nowadays was never far from a straying thought about him, barely acknowledged him.

Back then, it was more than typical, but rather inevitable, that Edward would be alone during lunch, his free period or generally any time not spent in class. One such day, Edward had sat on the bench, watching students pass by him as if he was sequestered, rather than sitting out in the open. Behind the safe solace his thick glasses provided, his eyes darted from student to student, almost like a plea for someone to meet his gaze. He drank in everything he saw, ears lapping up every word he heard. Years of solitude had made him a keen observer of social circles rather than a joyous participant. But no one noticed him, too busy with their friends, lives and loves to see the invisible boy in the corner. This Edward was still molting, not yet reborn, not yet risen, skin still ashy, plumes still muted, legend still dormant.

He sighed, a strand of hair leaving its greasy mates to rest at the apex of his lips. He adjusted his kaleidoscopic-colored sweater, running his hands down each arm, remembering how the infomercial had boasted that the material "became softer the more you stroked it." He snickered, thinking how that was exactly the opposite reaction that was generally expected. Sighing, he stooped over the open book in his hands, interspersing Mr. Wilde and Mr. Gray's comments on life and social status with darting looks to see if he could locate the person he had abandoned his usual post in the library for. He read as the titular character shamelessly sought sin after sin, embraced hedonism head on and flouted fate to follow into his Faustian-bought future.

"When we are happy, we are always good. But when we are good, we are not always happy," Dorian proudly boasted. Edward wondered what it would be like to live like Dorian—to be not good. He wondered what it would be like to be seen and sought. What it would be like to have a casual conversation with a classmate. What it would be like to have a friend, just one single person. But as he wondered and his thoughts wandered, his attention was handily returned back to the sight in front of him.

Bella Swan, with all the grace both her names would suggest, was walking with her friends, Alice and Rosalie, and the latter's behemoth boyfriend, Emmett. Emmett's undeniable presence caused Edward unease as he didn't want to approach Bella with him around. Emmett had never picked on Edward, never shoved him into a locker, or given him a wedgie. No, for that to have occurred, Emmett—or anyone else for that matter—would actually have to notice him. For all his prevalence (or rather lack thereof), Edward might as well have never moved back to Forks. His anonymity was acutely, achingly astounding.

But Edward was in luck, as Emmett bid the girls goodbye and dashed off in the opposite direction. He watched surreptitiously as Emmett rounded the building, out of the girls' eye line but still within Edward's, and slung an arm around Lauren Mallory. As if fated, the three remaining girls stopped a few feet away from where Edward was seated, but paid him no mind. He couldn't help but appreciate the sight in front of him—three beautiful girls, all of different shapes, shades and sizes, each as stunning as the other. It made his task of approaching one that much harder, but he valued his grades—the only thing going for him at school—too much to let it slide.

"Uh, Bell—Bella?" Edward had to clear his throat mid-sentence, almost as if he had forgotten how to speak from disuse of his voice. All three girls turned to him, but Rosalie and Alice barely afforded him a glance before turning back to Bella. Without bothering to give them a reason why Edward was calling her—for Rosalie and Alice didn't really care—Bella took the few steps toward his table.

"Hi, Edward." Her voice was neither dismissive nor welcoming. Despite the desperation that dripped from Edward to be noticed by her, absolute indifference dominated her tone.

"I was just wondering," he said, but stopped when he realized she wasn't looking at him. That was nothing out of the ordinary—Edward sometimes wondered if the entire student body was allergic to making eye contact with him. What stopped him was the salacious stupor Bella was in, staring over his shoulder like she had seen the savior. As he turned to see what had stolen her tenuous attention, he realized he wasn't so far off—Forks' lord of the lay, Jasper Whitlock, was running on the field, sweaty and breathy.

Edward frowned. "Bella? Bella!" With a start, she turned her attention back to him, but her eyes kept darting over his shoulder. "I was just wondering—do you want to work on our History project after school? We haven't even chosen a myth or legend yet and… um, Bella? May I, um, may I please have your attention? For just a second?" Edward's attempt at assertion was rather abysmal.

"Um, yeah, sure, Edward," Bella replied dismissively.

"Yes, I can have your attention?" Edward asked, somehow tentative, hopeful and skeptical all at once; despite her answer, Bella's eyes had barely wandered from over his shoulder.

"Um, no," Bella replied. Then, realizing what she had just said, she shook her head slightly and continued, "Uh, sorry. I meant yes, let's work on it after school. I'll meet you in the library?" Before Edward could nod, she had turned back to her friends, giggling and glancing over her shoulder, right past him.

He sighed, watching her walk away before returning his attention to his book to find Oscar Wilde asserting that, "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." He found himself wholeheartedly, desperately agreeing.

So, yes. There was pretty much an entire year during which Edward and everything he did went unnoticed. Suffice to say, as he ran laps after school to make up for a gym class he'd missed, shirtless in the rain, that was no longer the case.

When some people run, they look a little strange. As if maybe their limbs have detached slightly from their sockets, causing a gangly mangle of angled arms and legs. Some look as if perhaps one side of their body weighs more than the other, giving them a laughable lilt. Others are like a newly born fawn, fighting with the tugging of gravity and struggling with their own mass, on shaky knees and quaking ankles.

Edward Cullen was none of those people.

Edward Cullen was poetry in motion.

Correction. Edward Cullen was shirtless, perfect poetry in misting, rainy motion. He ran in a nimble, limber lope, one foot lifting off the ground just as the other began to fall toward it, a perfect, measured cycle. The drops of rain mingled with the sweat across his chest, sliding down in lucky, linear lines along his body. Six plates of hard muscle stayed stoic on his abdomen as the rest of his body moved, as if cleaved and carved by a creative crafter for aesthetic arousal. His body was liquid gold, smooth and solid except for a light line of tawny hair, flattened and spread greedily against the soft skin of his hard belly, veering down vertically into the waistband of his shorts. The diamond-cut dimensions of his jutting pelvic bone pointed in the same direction. His back stretched and shifted, golden gossamer skin like a blanket covering trembling tendons and ligaments as they rolled and rocked with his movements. His spine stretched down, a perpendicular horizon reaching from the base of his neck, each ridge minutely marking a step on the path down to his derriere.

Bella, who had decided to study late that day, stepped out of the library into the drizzle just as Edward completed his last lap. Holding a water bottle, he guzzled some of its contents, then opened the top and dumped most of it on his matted hair. Bella watched the sight with a sigh drifting out of her open mouth, feeling perverted yet privileged to be privy to the visage before her. The sight in front of her was so primal, so… practically pornographic that she felt the need to look down and away, lest her corneas be burnt off from directly looking at the scorching sight of Edward. But she couldn't help but look up again. And again. And again.

And again.

Finally, she realized that should she continue staring, there were two things that might happen. One, Edward might catch her—which frankly didn't embarrass her too much. If Forks High School had been the Louvre, a most incongruent comparison, Edward would have been the Mona Lisa; if it had been the NFL season, Edward would have been the Superbowl; if FHS had been a sexual encounter, then Edward was the climax. He was the main attraction, meant to be stared at and admired. No, she thought as she began moving quickly across the campus towards her vehicle—the danger would be from the fact that Edward would most likely attempt to talk to her with no care as to his state of undress, which had currently caused her to regress to a drooling, mentally babbling idiot who could barely string two thoughts together, let alone several words.

With that reasoning, she breathed a sigh of relief as she reached her truck and peeled out of the lot—but not before she decided that she should tighten her shoelace immediately. She stooped down to do so—coincidentally at the edge of the parking lot, which had a vantage view of the track. This was purely incidental, of course. As was the fact that she was wearing rain boots.

Despite the weirdness of the previous week, or perhaps because of it, Bella had woken up the Monday following the culmination (and failure) of her intrepid incubus experiment with a new attitude. As she turned off her clock radio, she had sat up in bed and contemplated the room around her with her eyes, while contemplating life with her mind. She did her best to shrug off her wary, wandering feelings about Him and decided to embrace life as it was—fairly good. She was cherished by her parents, she was in good health and she had a safe, happy home. She was one of those rare teenagers who actually enjoyed learning and didn't look at high school as the bane of her existence. She had great friends in Alice and Rosalie (who He had slept with), she was fairly pretty (but not pretty enough for Some, apparently) and while she had not found the love of her life, she had, in her past experiences, known the tremulous tug of tender teenage infatuation. She had no current prospects (maybe if You-Know-Who stopped sleeping with everyone who wasn't her and showed some unambiguous interest)…

And then Bella had sighed and flopped back down on to her mattress. Like her experiment, her efforts not to think of the boy she had vowed not to think of had failed.

Of course, the universe is not without a sense of irony. And so it was the same day that Bella made the resolution not to think of Edward that he decided to conveniently run shirtless after school, the same day that Bella had stayed late to complete some work in the library.

And, as if that image constantly running around her pathetically aroused teenage mind wasn't enough to break her will, she was greeted with a similar, albeit less titillating sight a few days later: a soaked, but fully clothed Edward at her front door. He had been driving when the heavy rain—the same weather that had detained Charlie at work—had begun and did not want to risk an accident.

And so Bella found herself in a situation she had never imagined—her and a probably partially naked Edward Cullen under the same roof, separated only by the thin wooden door of the guest bathroom. Which she currently was standing outside, her feet unmoving as if molded into the hardwood flooring. Even by Forks' standards, the rain outside was blanketing, coming down in blinding sheets that would blindfold any driver. It was a lucky coincidence that Edward had decided to stop driving through it right outside her house… wasn't it? As she heard the slippery slap of what was most probably Edward's soaked shirt hitting the counter, she decided it was serendipity (most probably a woman herself who could appreciate the sight of sodden Edward) that had brought him to her door. But now, she had a little problem. Now that he was here, she hadn't the faintest idea of what to do with him.

Alright, she had some ideas, and just imagining them did make her a little faint. Bella reeled her imagination in before it veered too far down that particular path.

Settling for a more… tame option, Bella put on a pot of tea and hoped that Edward would be satisfied with watching a Gossip Girl marathon under a warm blanket, as she had been doing before he arrived. When he emerged, swathed in one of Charlie's old t-shirts, running the towel she had given him through his hair, he thanked her for providing him shelter. She replied by handing him a cup of tea and telling him that he would pay a price—he was about to be subjected to watching the hyperbolic, campy misadventures of a group of so-called teens who looked and acted like they were in their mid-20's. He laughed his acquiescence and they settled down in the living room, her on an old worn arm chair and him making the most of her hospitality and stretching out on the couch. The smug narration of the show and splattering of the rain on the roof was the only noise between them.

Edward seemed comfortable enough, lying down and watching the show, but the lack of conversation was unnerving Bella. She was hardly one of those people who had the incessant need to fill silences—she was, after all, Charlie Swan's daughter. But having Edward here to herself, with no biology labs, no staring squads, no other girls, seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass up. This might be the only chance she would have to have a real conversation with Edward.

Unfortunately, Bella wasn't so good at "real conversations" and even poorer at starting them. So she relied on something slightly less mature, a little more whimsical. She ventured into the conversation the only way she could think of.

"You want to play 'twenty questions' to get to know each other?" Edward asked. "Isn't that a bit juvenile?"

"No! It's a good way to find out things you never knew about someone," Bella said. Like, hey Edward, ever have a threesome in the AV room? As if she were telepathically projecting her pathetic thoughts, he spoke his next words.

"I can think of another way to find out something you might never have known about someone." He grinned rakishly at her, but upon seeing her stern expression, he quickly retreated away from innuendo.

"I'll ask a few questions and then you can ask a few, okay? And then we'll switch again," Bella's innate organizer said.

"Fine, fine. Ask away."

Bella considered her first question. "Well, I already know who your favorite author is. Do you have a favorite work of literature?"

Edward nodded. "A Picture of Dorian Gray."

"No way, we're reading that in English Lit right now."

"Seriously? I should take this class next semester. A couple weeks ago, Tennessee Williams, now Oscar Wilde—the syllabus reads like my 'favorites' list," he said. Bella was just about to answer when a thought struck her. As long as he'd been at school, Edward had always made the Dean's Roll, the highest academic achievement in school. She had no doubt that his intelligence had not abated, but wondered if his intensive extracurricular activities, like those that took place in the AV room after school or the shop class garage at lunch, had distracted him.

"Alright. I'm getting nosy. Are you still making Dean's Roll this semester?" she asked haughtily. Edward's eyebrow arched and his smile arced, but he said nothing of her tone.

"Um, yeah I think so. I… uh, well I like school," he confessed. It was the first time Bella had seen sheepishness seep into his expression, almost like he was embarrassed to reveal this to her.

"Well, you're really good at it," she said. He was still studying the color of the carpet like it would be on one of his finals, so she decided to give him a bit of a reprieve. "I like school, too." He looked up and grinned at her excitedly, like she had just revealed a love for his favorite band as opposed to education. And speaking of his favorite band…

She swallowed three gulps of air before asking her next question. "Why don't you like Incubus?" Her eyes widened and she quickly tacked on, "the band! Incubus, the band."

Edward frowned at her. "Well, obviously you mean Incubus the band." His next words were deliberate. "What else would you mean?"

"Um, nothing. Just clarifying. You know, Incubus. The band…" Bella trailed off.

Edward laughed. "Yes, Incubus the band as opposed to incubus, a sex demon. That would be an interesting conversation. Hey, Edward, how do you feel about sex demons?" He chuckled, his seeming levity over his words contradicted by the peculiar way he peered at Bella after cracking his joke.

Bella, for her part, was kicking herself, wondering why she had been foolish enough to even say the "I" word around Edward. It wasn't that she still suspected him of being one—it was more that, in the wake of her inane antics last week, she was irrationally, irrepressibly frightened that Someone might have recognized that her madness had a method to it. And she sincerely doubted that there had been a worse method to finding out Edward's secrets, whatever they may be, than hers.

She decided a change of subject was in order. "Why is Dorian Gray your favorite?"

If he noticed or was perturbed by her abrupt question, he didn't mention it. "Well, honestly, I like the moral dilemma that Dorian faces." Bella raised her eyebrow in indication for him to continue. "It's just… if we had that choice, can we honestly say that we would choose differently? The idea of a soul, of morality, it's all so subjective and man-made. When faced with the Faustian choice—a life now for your soul later—it kind of makes you wonder. Does a soul exist? Or is it a manmade construction of religion and doctrine to keep us in line in this life while preying on our fear of retribution in a next life or afterlife that may or may not exist?"

Bella blinked. This was perhaps the most she had ever heard Edward speak at one go. "So you don't think that we have souls, that there is no heaven or hell?"

"No, I'm not saying that. I don't really know what I believe. What I'm trying to say is—you've read Faustus right?" Bella nodded. "In Faustus, it is the Devil Faustus is making a deal with. Marlow is clearly saying this is wrong. But in Dorian, there is no clear villain. Dorian doesn't ever actually make a deal with anyone—he merely embraces hedonism and it is reflected in the picture. In fact, even at the end, he doesn't become better when he repents—his portrait doesn't heal. It makes you wonder if Wilde was encouraging hedonism."

As Bella fell silent to contemplate Edward's ideas, Gossip Girl took that moment to pipe up from the TV and say, "As you might have guessed, Upper East Siders, prohibition never stood a chance against exhibition. It's human nature to be free." They both stared suspiciously at the TV before Edward turned to Bella, one eyebrow raised as if to say, "see?"

"But Dorian dies at the end," Bella insisted.

"And how does he die, Bella? When he tries to stab the mark of his sins, his portrait. When he tries to rid the evidence of who he really is—I think that Wilde was not criticizing hedonism, but criticizing duplicity—of people who say one thing and do another. Of people—in this case, Dorian in society—who pretends to be an outstanding citizen, while his private persona was something completely different. Wilde, to me, was making a comment on hypocrisy."

Bella cleared her throat. She had always known he was intelligent, but she was furthermore impressed with his take on the story and swayed by the delivery of his argument; he was passionate but not overbearing. "I think I just found the topic for my Wilde essay." She grinned at him and he returned her smile with ease.

"Oh yeah? Are you going to have a Wilde time writing about it? It's not going to be dull and Gray?" Edward waggled his eyebrows at his pathetic puns. Bella tried not to laugh, but resulted in snorting instead, which caused Edward to laugh, too.

She was surprised at the ease she felt around Edward. Despite him keying her up so much of the time, she realized that was when she was just paying attention to his appearance. Edward was disarmingly easy to talk to.

"Alright, alright. Enough of my questions. You have any of your own?" Bella said. She had a split second day dream in which Edward stood from the couch, declared that all his infamous indiscretions were actually pure rumor and that she was the only girl for him. It wasn't a question, but hey, a girl could dream.

Predictably, Edward went in a different direction. "Which chair is your favorite to sit in?" he asked. Bella's brow furrowed at the strange question but she answered him amiably.

"This one, actually," she said, slapping the ragged brown flannel arm of her seat. "But I don't sit in it very often."

"Why not?"

"Well, it's my dad's favorite chair, too, so I let him sit in it. Plus, he's always watching sports and I like quiet. I don't mind. When I'm down here, I sit on the couch. It's pretty comfortable," Bella replied. Edward let out a heavenly hum in agreement and wiggled wildly down into the cushions a little more, causing Bella to giggle. His smile grew at her laugh. "Next question?"

"Nope. No more questions," he said, shrugging his shoulders. He stretched his arms upwards, lengthening his legs and aligning his body into a long, lean line. Bella marveled at his protracted profile, noting how he wasn't bulky but his body gave the look of being fit. He was like a sports car, his aesthetic hiding, yet still hinting at, an agile athleticism.

"You don't have any more questions?" Bella asked, begrudgingly hedging her attention back to their conversation.

"Not really. I mean, your answer told me a lot about you," he said, provokingly pithy in his answer.

"My favorite chair in the house told you a lot about me?" Bella challenged. "What did it tell you?"

"Well, it told me that you're agreeable, sacrificing and empathetic, a bit of a homebody… and that you don't care much for sports," he listed casually. Bella's mouth hung slightly agape. While the first part of his statement was subjective, he was definitely right about his last two statements.

"You got that from 'my favorite chair is this one'?" She repeated her action and slapped on the arm, a habit she had retained from childhood when she used to hit the chair to indicate her dislike for whatever show was on the TV.

"Well, yeah." Edward sat up and met Bella's eye. "You actually know which chair you like in order of preference, implying you've spent a decent amount of time in this room. Homebody. You like silence when you study. Homebody—or future librarian, I can't decide. " Bella laughed at his teasing tone. "You like the chair, but you give it up for your dad because he likes it, too, and you like to see him comfortable. Sacrificing. You like to see your dad comfortable most probably because you know he works hard and likes to unwind. That's probably also why you let him watch sports. Empathetic. You're perfectly happy to sit in the second best chair in the house or relocate to study so your dad can do what he wants. Agreeable. You like quiet, basically the kiss of death for any sport except for golf; hence, you're not into sports." He shrugged, as if to dismiss his words, but his attempt at casualness was betrayed by his eyelashes, which fluttered up quickly to see her reaction, whether she agreed or not with his assessment.

Bella didn't know what to say. Edward was actually correct in his guesses about her reasoning—and while empathetic or sacrificing weren't words she'd use to describe herself, she couldn't say they were incorrect either. "Wow… I guess you're right." It was a weak answer but the only one she could give.

"I am right," he said confidently as his eyes met hers. Then, softly, gently, he continued, "I get you, Bella. I see you." And in that moment, she felt like he did see her, clear and to her core, trembling under the force of his sticky and sweet honeyed gaze, making her buzz and bumble. In that moment, she saw the rarest of creatures—a boy who heard her and was able to appreciate the meter and measure of her mouth but listened to her lips like her language was his literature.

She didn't know if this was it—this was that hidden talent that emerged unbidden to charm every woman he met—but in that moment, she knew something else. She knew why she had nearly driven herself crazy and risked giving everyone else the impression that she was already insane to find out what Edward was. Why she was simultaneously disappointed and relieved when her experiments produced no results. Why, despite wanting to major in English, Biology was her favorite class.

Edward was irresistible. She frowned inwardly. If only he had remained the shy, sweet lab partner she had last year, then he would be perfect. What she failed to realize was that was exactly who he had been—and exactly who she had ignored.

Wanting to liven up the mood with levity, she said, "Wow. Ever consider being a psychiatrist?"

Edward let out a laugh. "Maybe. I tend to overanalyze everything. If I ever become one, I'd want a couch just like this one," he said, patting the cushion below him. Their attention was redirected to the television, where it appeared that one character was shrieking about her boyfriend having illicit affair with his stepmother.

With such fascinating drama unfolding in front of them, they both watched the television in silence for the next half an hour or so, half-heartedly paying attention to the show, while contemplating each other. Bella wished they still were asking questions—there was so much she wanted to ask him, both in getting to know him better and about his more infamous escapades, but there was only one question she really couldn't keep in any longer.

"Edward, why?"

Why are you hooking up with all these girls? Why doesn't anybody seem to be able to say no to you? Why haven't you ever made a move on me? And why oh why, despite all that, are you sitting here in my living room being completely enjoyable company? These questions were so different from the "what's" of last week.

Bella audibly asked only the first one, but her brown eyes begged the answers of him. He met her gaze head on, freezing her motions like a deer in two golden headlights and simply shrugged before looking away.

'"Nothing is ever quite true,'" Edward stated ambiguously. It was the kind of non-answer Edward always seemed to give when questions cut too close to him. And in this case, the answer wasn't even his.

"That's a quote from Dorian Gray," Bella stated.

"Well done!" he said with genuine admiration for her literary knowledge.

Bella huffed. "Oscar Wilde is not an answer."

"And 'Why?' is not a question," he shot back. His statement was clear. If you want to handle my answers, you have to handle asking the question. But she couldn't, and so she didn't. Quietly, almost like a sigh, he said, somewhat relenting, '"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.'" But Bella, as she was prone to do, missed the significance of his words.

"You're quoting Wilde again, aren't you?" she accused.

"And you're recognizing Wilde again, aren't you?" Edward retorted. She narrowed her eyes in a faked frustration—truthfully, Edward's immense intelligence had piqued not only her interest but also her attraction. But his habits—both in his prevalent pollination of Forks' panties and his evasiveness—had prodded her ire. She missed the lightness of their earlier conversation but his ambiguity was unbearable.

Edward was like a shadow, allowing her to get close enough to give the illusion of proximity, and then dancing away, leaving her with nothing to do but chase him. And she was frustrated. She was frustrated with his behavior and his brilliance and frustrated with her disdain toward the former and her desire for the latter. His next words interrupted her thoughts.

"Looks like the rain has let up. I'm going to head home," he said. Before she could say anything, he was up and heading toward her front door. She stood and followed him.

He bent to slip on his black Converse, lined up neatly next to Bella's matching pair. Instead, he turned to her. An insensible amount of delight in his eyes belied his serious tone.

"Do you know what this means, Bella?"

She looked at him blankly. "What?"

He reached down and picked up her left shoe and his right, holding the bottoms against each other.

"We're sole mates!" He began laughing, almost maniacally, at his horrid joke, instantly dispelling the tense atmosphere. Bella tried to keep a straight face, but his mirth pervaded, causing her to shake her head as she grinned at him.

"Does anybody else know that you crack really bad jokes?" Bella asked between laughs.

He was suddenly serious again. "I don't really talk to anyone else." If Bella could have known him back then, she would have recognized the little boy from the swings, the one who sat on the bench unseen. As if by divine intervention, the narrator on TV, the pithy, witty Gossip Girl, intoned, "What was it we say about appearances? Yes, they can be deceiving. But most of the time, what you see is what you get."

Both their eyes slid over to the TV, which hadn't seemed so loud even when they were sitting in the living room. By the time Bella turned back to Edward, he was out the front door, waving goodbye to her.

"Drive safe, Edward!" she called out.

"Thank you!" he replied. He paused with his body half in and half out of the car. "I had a nice time getting to know you, Bella." And then he grinned, wide and toothy, nose scrunched, eyes squinting, tiny laugh lines emanating from their apexes. It wasn't his most beautiful smile, but it was one Bella had never seen before, and it stole her breath in an altogether new way.

She shut her front door, sagging against it as she heard him drive away. She really had had a nice time getting to know—if one could call it that—Edward. Sweet, intelligent, easy to talk to, Edward.

If only he hadn't been the town bicycle, with every girl having a ride. Or at least, if he had maintained some sort of subtlety about it—for God's sake, she had heard about so many of his conquests from the girls in her school, she felt like the Forks High hallway was one big locker room.

If not for those things, Bella thought that Edward might have been the perfect man for her.

A few days later, she was sitting with Jacob when the topic turned to Leah Clearwater and a long-standing joke among his friends that she may have a demon akin to a succubus herself. That was when Bella should have realized that while her instincts may have been right, she had been looking left. That instead of observing Edward, perhaps Leah, and possibly Seth, and that mystical, mid-summer makeover might have been the key to unlocking Edward's mystery.

But she hadn't realized it then, too enamored with possibility, too excited to see the beautiful boy who only talked to her. No, she hadn't realized till much after that conversation with Jacob, at a point where it may have been too late.

But that was still days and weeks away. For now, it was just Bella, the gentle patter of light rain and the spookily omniscient narrator on the television as she intoned, "In life, as in art, some endings are bittersweet. Especially when it comes to love. Sometimes fate throws two lovers together only to rip them apart. Sometimes the hero finally makes the right choice but the timing is all wrong. And, as they say, timing is everything."

[-]

Let your soul take you where you long to be,

Only then, can you belong to me.

A/n: As always, first and foremost, thank you for reading.

I caved and am on Twitter now. Follow me whatsmynom. I'd love to hear what you have to say, whether its about Legendary or not.

A special thank you must go out to SunKing who has shown much support to my story and much kindness to me. She is truly a star, who recently won a Judges' Choice Indie for her short story, Brave and writes Pretend He's Not There, a lovely, original fic that has me on the edge of my chair/bed/whatever I'm sitting on when I read.

Another rec: the woefully under-read C56 by ss10. I love C56's Edward.