All the reviews (and a new laptop for Christmas) have totally reinspired me!

I do hope you are all enjoying this story.

Thank you binky911 for beta'ing at light speed!

Chapter 14

~ Edward POV ~

The sun coming through my window was entirely too bright and I hadn't even opened my eyes yet. I had barely gotten one eye open to look at the clock beside my bed, it was 8:53 a.m. and a brief moment of panic hit until my brain registered that it was Saturday. If I hadn't needed to pee so badly I would have hauled the comforter over my head and tried to go back to sleep but nature was demanding my immediate attention. The second I sat up the headache started. Thump thump thump. Ah yes….now I remember. My dear friend Johnnie Walker and I got better acquainted last night. The previous evening's events were slowly coming into focus.

After popping two pain killers I debated whether the phone call from Bella had been another one of Johnnie's cruel tricks or had it really happened? I tried to think it through logically as my heart pounded. The phone rang in the middle of the night and it was Bella. I'm sure of it. I think. I searched for my cell phone which had fallen off the nightstand and under the bed. There it was in my call log. I had received a call from Bella and if memory served me correctly I'm pretty sure I asked her to move to LA?

I felt anxious, elated, paniced, excited. My body was running through a spectrum of emotions. Bella would be close and at the very core of it that is what I wanted. I needed this…this… hell I didn't even know what this was. But I did know that this woman had bewitched me somehow like no other woman ever had and this needed to be explored.

I threw on some clothes and headed for the door. I had things to accomplish if Bella was going to come and I had to get busy. I jogged the block to the Starbuck's closest to my condo and picked up a coffee and a bagel then grabbed a newspaper. Bella would need a car, a place to live and a job. I promised her I would take care of things and that's what I meant to do.

~ BELLA POV ~

"Bella….. Bella….. Bella….." Who was this annoying person whispering my name? "Bella!" The annoying person was now shaking me.

"Go away. Sleeping."

"Isabella Swan!" Jessica was no longer whispering. "We have to get going. It's almost check out time and they'll charge us another night if we aren't out of here."

I grumbled something unintelligible and tossed my legs over the side of the bed. "Okay, okay, I'm up." My mouth felt like the Sahara. I took a sip of the bottled water I left beside the bed last night and as I reached past my phone I remembered it all.

I had spoken with Edward last night.

I told him I was moving to LA!

…and oh shit…I had kissed James and run out on him.

As if on cue Jessica started up. "So….when were you going to tell me that you kissed James?" she asked as she crammed her things in her overnight bag.

"Well I didn't really kiss James. He sort of kissed me."

"Whatever, same diff. I'm so excited for you. James is a really great guy and he is sooooo into you." She gushed. "He came by the room to check on you and gave you the sweetest kiss on your forehead. I'm pretty sure he would have slept on the floor beside your bed if I hadn't kicked him out."

I felt the sudden urge to wipe my forehead. In fact, I was getting up to wash my face. I shuddered as the fog in my brain started to clear and I remembered that kiss from the dance floor. He was sweet and gentle and leaned in but the second his lips touched mine it just felt… I wasn't sure how to explain it… but just wrong. In that moment all the electricity I had felt with Edward flooded back to me. Now that I'd had a taste of that feeling I never wanted to let it go and nothing else would do.

Jessica continued to ramble about James' attributes, mostly the physical ones as she paced back and forth across the room. She was packing my things, now having finished with her own bag. Her talking became a hum in the background of my brain. I couldn't really blame her. She didn't know anything about my recent tryst with Edward. I had kept that private. She knew I had seen him but knew nothing of the new and improved Edward. She naturally assumed he was still that sort of nerdy teen that we remembered and I did nothing to dispel that image. He was my private fantasy.

"….well, don't you?" I just caught the end of her question.

"Don't I what?"

"Don't you think that James is a great catch?" she asked again, "Bella have you not heard anything I've been saying? Mike told me that James talks about nothing but you. He is so head over heels."

"Yeah I guess he's a great catch but just not for me, Jess."

Jessica stopped her pacing and stared at me, incredulous. "Why not for you? What are you talking about?"

"I've made a very important decision. I'm going to pursue my dancing and I'm going to move to LA to do it." I knew it wasn't the full truth but now that I had blurted it out it seemed more tangible and not just an idea.

"I don't want to waste the rest of my life like my Mom did in this small town. Even you are getting out! You'll be leaving me in the fall to go to UO. What am I going to do? Work at Mike's parents place for the rest of my life? I have to get out of here and if I don't do it now I might never do it."

I hadn't realized I felt so strongly about those other things until I started talking. They had all been lurking just under the surface. This was my chance to get out of Forks and this was my 'public' reason. No one else had to know that the bigger 'private' push had been that the idea of being closer to Edward eclipsed all others.

"How are you feeling today? I was worried about you last night." James said as he threw his arm around my shoulder in the back of the car. This drive was going to be unbearably uncomfortable.

Jessica was glaring at me in the rear view mirror and I diverted my eyes. It wasn't that she disagreed with my wanting to do something with my life. She questioned the timing. In her eyes, I had finally found a great guy and she felt I should give it some time and see what would happen. She thought that we could both move on from Forks together if things worked out.

"I'm feeling much better now, thanks. I had entirely too much to drink last night. The pain killers I took this morning are helping my head but my stomach is still feeling a little queasy." He loosened his grip on me just then.

We had never established that we were a couple but I felt that he naturally assumed that we were. It hadn't helped that I was dancing so provocatively with him last night. Dumb Bella! Very dumb!I pretended to fall asleep on his shoulder. That would at least keep the conversation to a minimum. I really didn't know what to say to him. I spent the ride trying to sort out how I would let him know that I was leaving. He slowly traced his finger up and down my arm sometimes, kissing the top of my head. This was going to be difficult.

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