Our sincerest thanks to Maplestyle and myimm0rtal for their assistance.

Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate.

Thanks for reading, friends! Lots of love, BelieveItOrNot and thimbles.

Chapter 10.

Jacob carries two mugs in one hand, a paper bag in the other. With the back of his wrist, he nudges the crammed pen holder to clear a spot on my desk. He sets his bag there. "Horrible weather."

I dump a stack of manila folders into a drawer to give him more room. "I kind of like it."

The thick, gray clouds are a striking contrast to the blue skies and glaring sunshine I enjoyed all weekend and parted with this morning. The guys were already guzzling water when I left them digging up my lawn. "I like that it can be eighty and sunny at home, and then on this side of the bay, it's barely sixty and pouring. It's like the city refuses to yield to the surrounding weather systems."

"I forgot you commute," Jacob says. He pushes one of the mugs across the wood. The scraping noise scratches at my spine, and I cringe.

I pick up the cup. For once he isn't offering me tea, and coffee is exactly what I want right now.

"Alice was in there." He jerks his head toward the break room. "She was under the impression that she and I are the only people in the company who drink Earl Grey."

I almost cringe again. "Sorry."

"You're sorry? I've been bringing you a drink you didn't even want for the last year."

"It was really thoughtful of you."

"Yeah, I was thoughtfully making myself look like an idiot." His tone is light. "Next time I bring you something you don't like, just say so."

"I know. It's just... the first time I thought it was so nice of you, I had to accept it. Then I... too much time had passed so I... it was easier to just take the tea."

"Easier." He draws his eyebrows together, puzzled, doubtful.

The mugs are from the growing collection of random ceramics in the break room. Mine is white with black lettering. There's too much blood in my caffeine system, it declares. I lift it to my lips.

Jacob picks up his mug: Coffee! Because vodka isn't allowed at work. The tab of his teabag flutters in the air-conditioning.

"You're getting through it all?" He gestures toward the pile of papers on my desk with his mug and I imagine brown liquid slopped across the pages. "Not too much for you?"

"Way too much. I think I'm going to have to quit. I'll get a job writing cheesy jokes on coffee mugs." Fingertips on the rim, I turn my mu to show him the slogan. Steam hits my palm. "How long do you think it took someone to come up with this? I wonder if there's a process, or if it's more like a lightning bolt of lameness strikes you."

"It's probably fundamental lameness. I hear it's a hard industry to break into, though."

"But I'm pretty good at making lame jokes. Or making good jokes lame. I can't remember which."

"I don't think you have the necessary qualifications, girl. You're not my dad, for one."

"Stop trampling my dreams." I stab a finger toward him. "I think you just want to keep me here, taking up your slack."

He sets his mug down and holds his palms toward me. "You got me. No one does this job better than you."

He means to compliment me, I know, but the words deflate me. I am good at what I do. I'm efficient, compliant, and I go out of my way to assist our clients and my colleagues. I'm also bored out of my mind. The jokes on our mugs might be lame, but they at least induce a snicker or half a smile.

Jacob points out a chip on the lip of his mug. "Mugs break. Costs you five bucks to get a new one. Here, contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars pass across your desk every day. You get to help people buy their dreams." There's something evangelical in Jacob's tone. He truly believes in what he does. In what we do.

"Yeah. Their dreams," I say. I'm helping strangers' dreams come true. And if I wasn't sitting here doing it, someone else would be.

Jacob falls silent. He devours two glazed doughnuts while I complete contracts for other people's dreams. Edward comes to mind, and his early sketches of my yard, all from scratch, another kind of contract. Art overtakes blank paper and later comes to life on blank earth. I remember the Warhol prints above Edward's bar and that quote. I pick up my mug. The typography is amateurish, the sentiments trite, but "art is anything you can get away with," and someone has gotten away with these mugs.

I'm about to tell Jacob that mug-writing is actually an art, if you really think about it, when he speaks up first. "Now that I know you take coffee over tea—" he clears his throat and fingers the knot of his tie "—can I take you out and see if you prefer beer or wine?"

"That sounds like a date."

"Not like a date. A date."

I set my mug back on my desk a little hard. It resounds in my ears like a judge's gavel. "Wh-what about Tanya?"

"She's great, but there's nothing there. You know how it is."

I remember saying something similar to Emily when Liam was in Costa Rica for the semester. He was building houses for the underprivileged and taking classes as part of an exchange program. Emily and I were in the residence hall laundry room. Somehow one of Liam's shirts had ended up in my hamper. We'd had no contact in three weeks, and he hadn't crossed my mind until I pulled the plaid shirt from the basket and held it up. Emily noticed it and asked how it was going with Liam, long distance. "I don't know. He's awesome, but…"

"But...?" She measured out a scoop of laundry powder as she waited.

"But…" I shook my head. "I haven't really thought about him until now." I tossed his shirt in the washing machine. I told myself my crazy schedule had taken over my mind. But that didn't ring quite true. "I should miss him, right? If this was going somewhere, I'd be, like, moping and stuff, wouldn't I?"

"Not moping." Emily slammed the lid of the washer and twisted the dial. She looked up at me, her dark eyes thoughtful. "But, yeah, I think you should feel a Liam-shaped space in your life."

I tell Jacob I know exactly how it is.

"You said you wanted to check out Vini," he says. "Friday night work?"

It was only last week I saw him holding Tanya's hand. I haven't picked up on any animosity between them, but I've been so busy keeping on top of the Marina contracts. They could have had a noisy break-up in the hall outside my office and I might not have noticed. Still, how would Tanya feel about a co-worker—me—dating her ex?

"Come on," he says. "Worst case scenario: we have a good time. Don't we deserve some fun?" He leans forward and thumbs through the stack of papers on my desk. I drop my highlighter on top of them.

We do deserve some fun. I deserve some fun. Tanya's had hers.

.

I shoot Emily a text when I get home. I have a date on Fridaay.

Her response is immediate: ? !

I type out my reply: Jacob from work, then pause, my finger over the send button.

I know what comes next. She'll remember he was seeing Tanya, and I'll have to explain that they've split. And then it'll be Be careful, or Don't get hurt, or some other warning I don't want to hear.

I'd noticed Edward's truck at my curb when I pulled up. I step out back to see the progress while I work out a reply to Emily. My eyes are drawn to Edward. His back is to me, phone to his ear.

He ends the call and turns around, his face red. Startled to see me, he takes a step back.

"It's so different out here." Ugly, really. Half of my yard torn up, the other half still what it was.

"Yep. That's the plan." He moves closer. "You asked for different. Remember?" He's ribbing me.

There are streaks of dirt on his white shirt that look as though they've been layering themselves on since morning. His cap is on backwards, strands of hair sneaking out from beneath, curled with sweat.

"You work late."

"I hope that isn't a problem. After everything's out, it'll mostly be just me here. Collin and Raoul are starting another project. As long as there's sun, I can work. Weekends, too, when I can. Get it done as fast as possible for you."

"You don't have to. Weekends. Your–" the word is sour on my tongue "–wife."

"My wife..." Am I imagining he says it with the same distaste? He looks down at his phone as if she's inside it. "She won't notice. Wife. What a joke." He scoffs. "I'm in exile. I sleep on the couch." Quieter he says, "Sorry." Maybe because he nearly shouted the word, or maybe because he's said more than he meant to. "It's actually comfortable." He finishes with a half-laugh.

"Why are you two still…" I stop myself.

"Used to be a lot of reasons. But I can only think of one right now."

"Do you think—Can you work it out?" I let myself ask the question even though it makes my palms and underarms sweat.

"I don't know."

Does he want to work it out or are they just prolonging the end? I blurt out, "You're young."

"Yeah." He slips his phone into his back pocket. "But there's a lot, a lot of—Well, you think your place has a weed problem?"

He mistook my statement. He thought I meant they had time to work it out—which is probably what I should have been saying—while I was actually suggesting that he might be wasting his time, his youth. I can't continue this conversation. My reactions and responses are all wrong.

"I have to answer this text." I shake my phone at him then walk toward the house, glancing back once to offer what I can of a goodbye. He stands there, staring after me, fingertips in his pockets, soil under his feet. He looks so alone.

"Bella?" His voice is ragged, even in that one word, and I stop. "I screwed things up here, didn't I?" I start to shake my head, but he continues. "You should be comfortable around me, enough to talk about plans for your yard. But you're not. I should keep my mouth shut. I don't know why I didn't. Sometimes we're so into it we forget there are other things outside of us. It's the wrong way to treat... everyone."

I understand how that happens, how words can seep out of a person the way sweat seeps from overworked bodies—keeps coming until we pause and sop up the mess.

"It's–it's okay. But I have to—"

At his house I'd pressed him for answers, and here he is opening up to me and then blaming himself for my issues, and I walk away, shut the door behind me. Great friend, Bella.

I don't glance back this time, don't submit to my curiosity to see if he's still standing there, or if he has gone back to work, or started packing up his stuff.

Maybe my instincts were on the right track out there. Maybe honesty was the road to take, the way to be a friend. Take my parents, I could have said to Edward. Together for years when they do nothing but argue or ignore each other. Sleeping on the couch? Try permanent separate bedrooms, separate bathrooms. I bet they'd use different kitchens if they could. But not different houses. Never that.

Decades of unhappiness, and accepting their unhappiness. That has to be worse: accepting it, deciding, "This will be my life." And why? Because it's easier than the alternative—leaving, moving on?

I could have told Edward that he doesn't want to end up with a sixteen-year-old daughter who pinches the keys from her mother's purse and sneaks out the garage door, not to steal the car, but to lie on her stomach in the backseat and study. For peace of atmosphere and mind. Because parents' silence toward each other can be as obnoxious as their arguments. And I could have told Edward that he doesn't want to be so caught up in his spousal weeds, as he might call it, that the only evidence of his daughter's actions is that one morning the car won't start because "someone" left the overhead light on. I could have told him there's no crime in venting. Everybody does it. Maybe not to a client, but surely to an old friend, and he had called us that, old friends.

I could go out to him and say all that. I could maybe talk about my relationships, too. Make him feel better about what he had said. Spill my guts to my Old Friend, Edward. "Can you believe it?" I could say. "This guy from work asked me out, and—get this—he wants to take me to the same bar he took the last girl he went out with. Who just so happens to work with us."

But I wouldn't know what to say to start the conversation. How awkward it would be to go back out there, face him, and bring up a subject not only dropped but deserted. I was never good at saying what I wanted to say to Edward. Not like the other girls who liked him. Not like Jane.

She would wander into our class from the adjoining ceramics room—an easy thing to do, kids wandering between the two classrooms. She would chat with Edward, or flirt, but always find some way to include me in the conversation, as if she had come to talk to both of us. I remember she put her hand on his upper arm in such a natural way that it appeared she hadn't thought the action through beforehand and that she wouldn't think about it afterwards. She looked intently into his face. "You have gorgeous eyes," she said.

I thought so, too, but had never told him. Words, they're simple things. Just letters mushed together to form sounds that have definitions useful to express thoughts and feelings. Not so simple, after all. I wouldn't have been able to tell him his eyes were gorgeous in a thousand years. I doubted I could even bring myself to put my hand on him like that, and certainly not without over-thinking where I would touch him, how lightly or firmly, and what he felt like beneath my touch. When Jane left our table she waved her fingers at me. She was like a breeze. I could see why he liked her.

Maybe I can do that now, be like a breeze to Edward. Or maybe not. As it is, in trying to keep Edward out of my heart, I spend all day with him in my head. Every word, every gesture, every facial expression. Being friendly, opening up room for conversation, might only make it worse.

.

The dishwasher is half-unloaded when there's a knock at my front door. I dump some knives in the drawer then sidestep the open dishwasher, barely avoiding another bruise to my shin as I move to answer the door.

Edward stands on my porch. The setting sun leans over his shoulder, reaching into my hallway. I flick the porch light on.

"You're not here to sell me a vacuum." Not here to sell me a vacuum?

He lifts his hat and runs a hand through his hair. "It's in my truck. One more sale and I'm on my way to Disney World. What do you say?"

"Hang on." I yank the door handle, but it doesn't budge. I swear under my breath. "Sorry. This stupid door is just…" I rattle the handle and finally, it swings open. Of course, I use too much force and stumble forward. "God!"

"You all right?"

"Yeah." My face burns. "Happens all the time."

Echoes of our earlier conversation ring in my ears, but Edward seems deaf to them. He gestures to my screen door. "Maybe it needs some WD40."

"I've used, like, half a can on it. But be my guest."

He drops his hat and keys on the stoop and crouches down to inspect the locking mechanism. My arms hang heavy and strange at my sides so I fold them across my chest. Edward flips the lock to unlocked and back again, then says, "Just watch out," as he swings the door.

"Door's not hung straight," he says and steps inside. He brings with him the scent of dust and sweat and something deeply lush. The scent of foliage. It's far from unappealing. I take my next breath through my mouth.

He works the lock again before he closes the screen door. He looks over his shoulder at me. "Let's hope I don't get trapped in here, huh?" He pretends to shudder, and I bare my teeth, feigning terror around an unfolding fantasy of what it might be like to be trapped here with him.

We smile at each other, and it's like this afternoon never happened. So that's how it works. You just pretend things aren't weird and it becomes true. Fake it 'til you make it, and all that.

The lock sticks. "Uh-oh." He pulls on the handle, forearm and biceps taut. The door won't budge. He relaxes, but his muscles are hardly less defined. I marvel a bit too long at the way they keep their shape against his skin while doing nothing at all. His arms look just like this when he sleeps, I think. Rolling hills under grass.

If I measured his biceps with my hands, I bet my fingers would barely curve around the back of his arm. I remember his arms when he swung the bat. More slender, but similar. Young muscles, immature.

I snatch the key from the sideboard and say, "Here. Try this."

He has to unlock it, re-lock it, then unlock it again before it finally opens. With his foot, he nudges his cap between the door and jamb. He turns to face me. "Easy enough to rehang it. But this—" he tugs on the handle "—you're gonna need to replace. Can't figure out why it's sticking. Could be some tiny part in the mechanism is broken."

He points out a few screws. "You can undo these," and mimes pulling the lock out, "and put a new one in." Behind him, on the other side of the screen, a moth throws itself at the porch light. It drops, catches itself, then loops around to try again.

"Or I could replace it."

"Well, yeah…." Dirt has settled into the creases around his eyes and along his hairline; his cheeks and forehead are shiny with the day's sweat. "You could definitely do that." He rubs his knuckles over the stubble shading his jaw. "You know, if you get one-way mesh, you could leave this open in summer." He nods at the wooden door. "Let the breeze in. You don't get a lot of road noise here."

"It is pretty quiet."

"It's a good neighborhood."

"That's why I bought here."

"Remember Jasper Whitlock? He just bought a place in Sausalito. You wouldn't believe how much he paid for it. That's what you get for wanting to be close to the city, huh? You'll pay a shitload unless you're willing to move to farm country." He nudges me with his shoulder. "But you'd probably know more about the housing market than me." He opens the door and I follow him onto the porch.

"You still see Jasper?" I don't want to talk about the housing market. Not with Edward.

The door swings closed behind me and I gasp as I lunge at it. I'm not fast enough to catch it, but Edward's cap is still in place.

"Lucky." He leans against the porch railing, crossing one ankle over the other. "Yeah, I see Jasper sometimes. He's the same."

"I didn't know him that well. He was weird, though. A clown."

"Yep. Still like that."

I grip the railing and lean back. "Do you see anyone else from school?"

"Not a lot. Saw James…" He taps the railing as he thinks about it. "Man, it must've been about a year ago now. And I haven't seen Lee since—well, it's been about five years. Last I heard, he's doing time."

"You're joking."

"Someone had to end up locked up. Statistically or whatever. But him? Crazy."

"What did he do?"

"I heard he was working for his old man and had somehow been skimming the profits. Whole family fell out over it. And Lee ended up in a cell."

"That's–" I almost tell him Lee is the second person I know who's landed himself in jail, but I can't tell him about Sam without talking about what he did to Emily, and I won't do that. She hates when people know about what happened to her before they even know her. "That's bizarre."

"It is."

"Always the quiet ones." I mean it as a joke, but Sam flickers through my mind again. He was quiet, too.

"You went out with him, didn't you?"

"Lee?" He remembers that? "Once." I wince. "It was the worst." He'd been too shy to ask me out, so James had asked for him. That should have tipped me off. "I think we said about three sentences to each other the entire night. One of them was probably, 'Pass the ketchup.'"

"Sounds like Lee."

Awkward dates, terrible timing, missing chemistry—one faltering step after another. "Sounds like me." I put my tongue between my teeth and bite down.

"You were pretty quiet," Edward says.

That's not what I meant, but I let it slide. Crickets fill the silence that stretches between us. They seem to grow louder as night gathers around us. Maybe our silence is getting quieter. A mosquito whines as it zips past my ear, too fast for me to swat it.

Edward clears his throat. "At least it can't get worse than that."

I huff a laugh, more surprised than amused by this turn in the conversation. "You'd be surprised. Some have been much worse."

Disbelief is clear in his eyes.

I look away. "I don't…"

"You don't have to–"

"It's okay. I've... banished a lot of it from my memory." I hurry on, not wanting to dwell there. "But get this. This guy at work asked me out today." I tell him what I'd thought about telling him earlier, about Jacob wanting to take me to the same place he took Tanya.

"That's just wrong."

"Like, who does that, right?"

"What a fool. Gotta have more imagination than that for a girl like you."

Imagination. I stare at him. One word, and it's exactly the right word. For a second I wonder how he has this figured out. A second before I remind myself, this is Edward Cullen. He knows how to land any girl he wants.

He lifts his hat from between the doorjamb and holds the gate open until I take over. Hat back on his head, he walks toward his truck with a goodbye. The crickets hush with Edward's movement. They match our silence as I watch him go.

.

In the morning, I bypass my office and head straight for Jacob's. He's on the phone and holds up one finger to show he won't be long.

As soon as he lowers the receiver, I speak. "I can't. On Friday."

"Okay..." He leans back and the chair creaks. "Saturday, then?"

I shake my head. "No. I mean, I can't. I–I'm not in the right place to–to see anyone."

His smile changes somehow, becomes sympathetic. Or it could be in his eyes, I don't know. "Do you need a shoulder?" He points at his right one. "It's yours."

"I'm okay. Thank you, though, for understanding."

Jacob folds his hands behind his head. "No problem. We'll take a raincheck."

I agree to let him know when I do feel up to an evening out. Only as I'm heading back to my office, the prints that line the hallway a pastel blur in my periphery, does it occur to me Edward never explained why he knocked on my front door yesterday evening. I never thought to ask.