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Chapter 4 – Pseudo-date

High School. I'd built it up to be such a big deal. I'd been sure that by the time I got here, I would be a man. No one would be able to treat me like a little kid, easily dismissed and ignored. Most importantly, I would finally be on equal footing with my brother. The reality?

"Out of the way, mini-Cullen! Move it, or lose it!" Peter Henderson, one of Jasper's friends, yelled at me just before slamming me into a locker.

"Geez! Watch it, Henderson!" I exclaimed as I righted myself and discretely moved my injured shoulder to assess the damage. It was just a little sore – I'd live.

This would be how my first couple of weeks of high school were going.

I was a freshman, low man on the totem pole, someone to make fun of and be pushed out of the way by upper-classmen…usually my brother or one of his stupid friends. All in all, you could safely say that it wasn't exactly shaping up the way I'd planned.

One thing was for sure, this year was definitely turning out differently than my past three years in Forks.

The thought brought a secret half-smile to my lips as the memories cascaded through my mind.

When we had first arrived I hadn't known what to expect – I'd never had to start over in a new school before. The prospect of starting over from scratch, of not knowing anyone, of most likely being stared at like I was some sort of freak admittedly made me nervous. This was such a small town. Not only did everyone know everyone already, but their parents and even their grandparents had been toddlers together.

I knew I would have been odd-man out…if it hadn't been for Bella.

She had been my salvation. I hadn't had to face that first day at Forks Middle School alone. Bella had been right beside me.

She'd shown me where my classes were and put in a good word for me with my teachers. She'd sat next to me in the classes we had together and walked with me in between classes whenever she could. She'd made sure to always save a seat for me at lunch and introduced me to the other kids.

With Bella beside me, it was almost like I wasn't "the new kid" at all.

Everything was different with Bella in my life. I was different. The Edward I was with her was nothing like the Edward I'd always been before. I was happier for one thing. But that wasn't all. She gave me confidence and a sense of security that I'd never had. And that meant I was finally able to figure out who I really was.

I wasn't just Jasper Cullen's little brother anymore.

In fact, my new friends were barely even aware that I had a big brother.

For the first time everyone in my life got to know me…the real me. I wasn't just a pale imitation of Jasper.

Finally free of my need to keep up with Jazz, I realized that I didn't really like the things I'd been doing. I'd been living my life according to Jasper. Spending my time on things just because he liked them and I'd wanted to tag along, hoping he'd pay attention to me.

Bella was the one who'd made me see that.

My smile widened as I thought back to that day I'd taught her to play catch. And then felt myself blush.

Looking back now, I couldn't believe that I'd actually asked Jazz if he wanted to have a three-way with Bella and me.

Had I really been that innocent? I shook my head in disbelief.

Obviously I had been, but it was embarrassing to have to admit it.

No wonder Jasper had almost swallowed his tongue when I'd asked him that.

I chuckled to myself as I remembered how his eyes had bugged out while he choked on his soda. I guess there's nothing guaranteed more to make you shoot Mountain Dew out of your nose than thinking your little brother just propositioned you for a ménage à trois.

Of course I had to chuckle just to keep from wanting to vomit. Can you say Eww? There was no way in hell I wanted to even picture my brother naked, let alone doing anything remotely sexual in my presence.

Luckily my brain tended to shut down and reboot itself before the image of bare-assed Jazz could actually compute. Thank God.

Yeah, when I thought back to that day, I always did my best to just forget about Jasper completely. Instead I thought about Bella…throwing a baseball with me as she neatly redefined my life.

It had been awkward at first until Bella had gotten used to the mitt on her hand. She had been clumsy with it, and it took her awhile to figure out how to handle the baseball with the glove. Eventually, she started to get the hang of it though.

She hadn't been throwing the ball right either on her first few attempts.

I'd wanted to help her. Honestly, I had no other agenda. Not another thought in my head.

Not at first anyway.

I'd just wanted to show her how to throw. So, I'd stood behind her and taken her hand in mine to show her what she should do.

That's when things started to get weird.

My heart had begun to pound as I stood so close to her, my fingers wrapped around hers. I'd been so naïve. I hadn't even realized why my body was reacting that way. Then I'd caught the scent of strawberries coming off her hair. It must have been her shampoo that made her hair smell that way, but I wasn't thinking about that at the time. No, all I could think about was how much I loved that scent, how mouth-watering it was, and I leaned in to discretely breathe it in more deeply.

Yeah, I'd gone there. I'd actually smelled her hair.

I hadn't wanted to move. I just wanted to stay right there, with Bella in my arms, completely surrounding her with my body just as I was being completely surrounded by her scent.

It took several long moments before I found the strength to step away from her. Thank God, she hadn't noticed!

A little freaked out about what had just happened to me, not really understanding it, I'd quickly put some distance between us.

Striding several paces away from Bella, I turned and held my mitt out.

"Ok, let's see what you've got, Swan," I challenged with a grin.

I didn't know if I was trying to convince her or myself with my nonchalance. I wasn't sure what in the heck had just happened to me, and I definitely didn't want Bella to know about it. She might laugh.

Bella took a deep breath, stepped forward, and threw the ball. It was a little wobbly, and I had to lean to the left to catch it, but it was her best effort by far.

Her eyes widened before an adorable, excited squeal escaped her lips. "I did it! I actually did it!"

I smiled widely at her enthusiasm. "Yes, you did. Great job, Bella! Now catch," I instructed throwing the ball back to her.

Bella improved with each throw, and soon we had developed a rhythm. I couldn't seem to stop smiling. This was fun, watching her experiencing something new, being the one to teach her. I was honestly having a great time just being with her.

After a few minutes of throwing the ball back and forth, Bella said, "You know, Edward, I don't know much about this baseball thing, but you seem to be pretty good at it."

I shrugged. "I'm okay, I guess."

"Do you play a lot?" she asked me.

"Not too much. I used to play pick-up games with Jazz and his friends sometimes. When they'd let me, that is. It was usually only when they were desperate for players."

She frowned. "So you never played on an actual team?"

"I played a few of years of Little League," I told Bella as I threw the ball back to her.

"Why'd you stop?"

"Well," I answered, "I wanted to concentrate on basketball and football. Those things didn't come naturally to me, and I had to work hard just to be okay at them. I never had to work at baseball. I always just knew how to play."

Bella raised an eyebrow at me before throwing the ball back. "I'm a little confused here, Edward. You're better at baseball than those other sports? So why not just concentrate on what you're good at? Judging by the smile that's been on your face since we got here, you really enjoy this. Do you like football and basketball better?"

I smiled wryly. "Umm, no. That's not why. Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of anything but baseball. I'd rather play it than anything else."

Bella's scowl deepened. "That doesn't make any sense, Edward. If you'd rather be playing this, then why aren't you?"

Without thinking I said, "Because Jazz plays football and basketball."

I could see the challenge in her eyes. "So?"

"You lost me, Bella. So what?" I asked.

She smiled at me. "My sentiments exactly. So what! So what if your brother wants to play something else. Why does that mean you have to? You should do what makes you happy. If baseball makes you happy, then you should play."

Huh. I'd never thought of it like that before. Why? I wasn't sure. But for whatever reason, I'd needed Bella to point out something that should have been completely obvious. There were no rules saying I had to be just like my brother. It was my life I was living and not his.

I looked at Bella and raised one eyebrow at her in a vaguely incredulous way, "Hmm…you know, Swan…you may be right."

And then she gave me a knowing, slightly wicked grin. "Oh, Cullen…I almost always am."

Coming back to the present I bit my lip to keep from laughing out loud. She'd been teasing me at the time, but she'd definitely been right.

I'd gotten back into playing baseball. Really playing, not just pick-up games. I had been the starting pitcher of the Forks Middle School team, and I had confidence that I would be on the Forks High freshman team too. I was a pretty damn good pitcher, if I did say so myself. All because this girl had challenged me to be true to myself.

Bella.

She was the best friend I'd ever had.

And there was the rub.

Bella was my friend – just my friend.

Did I ever wish she was more than a friend?

If I was being honest, sometimes I secretly did. I mean, Bella was beautiful, smart, funny, and extremely warm and caring. How could anyone not love her?

I just used the L-word, didn't I?

Ok, so I loved her.

And I knew that she loved me…as a friend. Damn it!

Alright, I think it had been firmly established that absolutely nothing romantic was going on between me and Bella. And I wasn't very happy about that fact.

The question was what could I do about it?

I guess I could try and cross that line with her. There were definitely times when I fantasized about telling Bella how I felt about her – or maybe just planting a kiss on her if the opportunity ever presented itself. So, why hadn't I?

Jasper, in his usual, colorful way, would have said it was because I was a huge pussy.

Unfortunately, I didn't completely disagree with him. Honestly, the idea of putting my feelings on the line with her scared the shit out of me.

No, the bottom line was this – I couldn't cross that line. Ever.

The reason was simple. I couldn't go there with Bella because I didn't want to lose her.

I wasn't one hundred percent sure of her feelings. It could be that maybe, deep down, she really did love me too, as something more than her best friend.

I certainly hoped that was the case.

But if she did, she was a pro at keeping it a secret. At least, she was a whole lot better than me.

I didn't really believe that was true though. Bella just didn't see me like that.

And I was afraid if I ever told her how I felt I would not only lose the girl I loved, but also my very best friend. She meant too much to me to ever risk losing her altogether.

So that was that.

It didn't matter how many times I couldn't help staring at her when I knew she wasn't looking. It didn't matter how often I lay awake at night wishing things between us could be different. And it certainly didn't matter how much I dreamed of her, which seemed to be every night.

Bella and I just weren't meant to be. At least, not now.

I'd be lying if I said that it didn't hurt, knowing that she might never love me the way I did her. It did. A lot. But I comforted myself with the fact that she liked me so much.

I knew without a doubt that she liked me better than all the girls she was friends with. More importantly, though, I knew that she liked me better than any other boy.

That was what let me stop envisioning Bella on my bedroom ceiling and finally close my eyes each night.

She was friendly with other boys of course. Bella was such a sweet girl. She would never be purposely unkind to anyone. So the boys who crowded around her were treated as good chums and nothing more. But she didn't have a deep, intimate friendship with any of them. Only me. And that made me feel like I was about ten feet tall.

She also never noticed that those same boys would have killed to have something more than just her friendship. Not that I could really blame them since I was one of their ranks in that respect, but it was definitely good for my sanity that Bella remained blissfully unaware of what they really wanted from her.

Bella still didn't seem to notice guys that way. I didn't know how long my luck on this front would hold – she had just turned fifteen after all – but as of right now I was just going to be grateful that Bella had never fallen in love with some other guy. In fact, in all the time I'd known her, she'd never even seemed to have a crush on anyone. If she had, I'm sure I would have noticed. Or at the very least, she would have told me, right? That's what best friends did.

No, I was sure that she just hadn't found a guy she wanted to be with. Which was great for me, because it gave me time. Time to try and convince her that I should be that guy. Her guy. And in the meantime, I got to be her stand-in.

I was always the guy she hung out with and went to the movies with and was her date whenever she needed one. For all intents and purposes, I was her boyfriend…just without the soft kisses, the tender touches, or…

Okay, I needed to stop that train of thought right now. I was in the middle of the school day, for God's sake.

The last thing I needed was to have to hide behind books and desks and anything else I could find until little Edward decided to settle himself down.

"Edward!"

I looked around at the sound of my name, and there she was.

My Bella.

My breath caught. She was just so damned beautiful.

Bella never had been a girly girl. She was always most comfortable in jeans and a tee shirt. But damn, she filled out those jeans and tee like no other girl alive. She was still slim, but her body now curved in all the right places. Her hair fell in waves halfway down her back, framing her heart-shaped face to perfection, and I couldn't help but notice the lock that fell over her shoulder and curled provocatively against her breast.

Alright, maybe it was only provocative to me, but that curl was just about to kill me. It wasn't like I really needed a reason to focus on her breasts. I was a man after all. And looking at her was really not helping the little Edward situation.

In fact, he wasn't so little at the moment. I shifted the books in my hands into a more strategic position as she came to a stop before me.

"Hi, Bella. What's up?"

Besides my dick, that is.

Okay, I needed to stop the inner-monologue. Thinking about my hard-on with Bella in the vicinity was only going to make things worse.

"I just wanted to make sure you were ready for tonight," she said with a more womanly version of the wicked grin she'd possessed at twelve.

"Tonight?" I asked stupidly…but in my defense I had no blood left in my brain.

"You know," she said with a twinkle in her chocolate brown eyes, "You. Me. The Homecoming Dance. You're still going with me, right?"

It took me a moment to break the spell of her eyes, but I finally managed to say, "Yeah. Sure. The dance. I wouldn't miss it." I had a horrible feeling that I was nodding like a bobble head.

There it was again, that wicked twist of her lips. Bella took a step closer to me and ran her finger lightly down my jaw, making me shiver. "Good, because I have plans to ride you hard and put you away wet."

I felt my mouth drop open in shock. Did she really just say that? "Excuse me, Bella. What?"

"You know…I'm finally going to use those dance moves you've been teaching me. Tonight's the night, Edward. I'm not going to back down this time."

"Right. Dance moves. Of course. Sounds like fun," I said aloud.

But not as much fun as it would be if you actually rode me hard, my traitorous brain thought.

I swallowed convulsively and tried to keep the lust off my face.

Holy Christ. This girl was going to be the death of me.

~*~E~*~E~*~E~*~

Getting ready for the dance that evening was a challenge, because unfortunately I had to share a bathroom with Jazz.

And if you think that two sisters battling it out for control of a bathroom would be bad, I was sure that two brothers must be worse. Or at least that was the case when the brothers in question happened to be Jasper and me.

You see, it seemed that the two of us – according to Bella, that is – spent an inordinately long time on our hair. She was always teasing me that she could have washed, dried and styled her hair ten times over in the amount of time it took just one of us.

I think that was her not-so-subtle way of saying that Jazz and I were a little high maintenance when it came to our hair, but honestly the hair situation must have been easier on Bella than it was for either of us. Her hair was long and had a natural wave to it, so she didn't do much more than dry it and brush it out. Jasper and I weren't so lucky. Yeah, Jazz had the natural waves and curls too, but the shorter length meant that he had to carefully tame his hair into a style that didn't look like a frizzed out clown's. And as for me, it took a lot of time and effort to get my hair into that nonchalant, just-outta- bed style that Bella informed me the girls called sex-hair.

So every time Jasper and I had a night out planned at the same time, the competition for the bathroom turned vicious. This was why I said that I thought brothers battling for the bathroom were worse than sisters. With brothers, there was always the threat of actual bloodshed. That wasn't the case with girls. At least, I didn't think it was. My knowledge of girls pretty much began and ended with Bella. And since she didn't have a sister, I guess this belief of mine was really more of a theory. Still, I just couldn't imagine girls being any worse than Jazz and me in that final hour before going out.

"Edward! Open this door right now! I need to get in the shower!" my brother screamed at me as he pounded on the door from the other side.

I smiled to myself in satisfaction. I'd slipped upstairs and into the bathroom when my mom had asked Jasper to take out the trash. Was it a little sneaky and underhanded? Absolutely. But when hair perfection was on the line, it was every man for himself.

"Sorry," I called out in a sing-song voice that was anything but remorseful, "Occupied."

"You're going to open up now or face the consequences," he yelled as he renewed the door pounding.

I concentrated on ignoring him as I continued shaving.

"Worse than death, Edward! I promise you worse than death if you don't open this door!"

I scoffed. Or I would have scoffed if I hadn't been worried about the razor slipping and making me bleed. "What could you possibly do to me, Jasper? I'm in here, and you're out there."

He laughed maniacally. "I'm willing to wait for revenge, little brother. You know how patient I can be when vengeance is involved."

I smiled at my reflection in the mirror. This wasn't an original threat. I'd heard it all before.

"You will have to sleep sometime, Edward."

"Uh huh," I agreed carelessly. I wasn't worried.

"How would you like to wake up one morning and find yourself bald?" he asked before mimicking the buzzing sound of electric shears.

Well, I'd heard it all before…except for that.

I wrenched the door open – one side of my face still covered in shaving cream and a towel around my hips.

"You wouldn't."

He raised one eyebrow and stared unflinchingly into my eyes.

"You would."

He gave an almost imperceptible nod in acknowledgement.

"Mom would ground you for life, you know."

"Ah, Edward. It would be a small price to pay to get even, don't you think?"

I opened the door wider and let him enter.

He brushed past me with the supreme confidence of one who knew he'd just emerged the winner. Unfortunately, it was pretty much a standard Jasper pose.

"Can I at least finish shaving before you completely take over the bathroom?" I asked him grudgingly.

He stroked his chin thoughtfully as if he was taking it under advisement. "Yeah, I guess that would be okay. Although I don't know why you even bother – it's not like you really have anything to shave anyway."

I didn't dignify that with a response. I just made a kind of noncommittal noise that Jazz could take however he wanted. I wasn't going to debate the existence of my facial hair with him. I knew it was there, that was all that mattered.

He walked over to the shower, pulled open the door, and inspected inside. "You didn't whack off in here, did you? I refuse to shower with your drain babies, Edward."

Seeing a perfect opportunity to get back at him a little, I looked at him in the mirror and allowed myself a sly smile. "I'm sorry, Jasper. If you had a problem showering with my spunk, you really should have said something before now."

His head snapped up and he glared at me through narrowed eyes. "You are joking, right?"

I gave him a mock-innocent stare. "Of course. I would never masturbate in the shower. That's the last place guys our age do that kind of thing, right?"

Jasper surprised me by laughing. When he finally spoke, there was a mocking edge to his voice. "Guys our age? You do know that some of us – and by us I mean me – don't need to spank it, Edward. I can actually get laid, fuck you very much. And do quite a lot too."

I put down my razor and splashed water over my face to remove the remaining shaving cream. "Ah yes, which one of the skanks is it this week?"

Striding back to the bathroom counter, he picked up his toothbrush in one hand and the toothpaste in the other. "I'm going out with Lucy tonight. And there's no need to call my girls names just because you're jealous."

I stared at him incredulously. "Jealous? Please. You have meaningless sex with a rotation of girls you don't even care about. That's not what I want in my life, Jasper."

He removed the toothbrush from his mouth and spit out toothpaste in the sink. "And exactly who is your date for the night, baby brother?" he asked in a nasty, knowing tone. "No, wait. Don't tell me. Bella, right? That girl whose panties you would kill to get into. But you don't have a chance in hell of ever going there, do you?"

I didn't answer him. I couldn't.

I felt like Jasper had just punched me in the stomach. All the air had left my lungs, and I felt sick.

I had never told him about my feelings for Bella, so how did he know?

Was I really that obvious?

This was what I'd always worried about. It was actually my biggest fear. That everyone, especially Bella, could read me so easily.

Did Bella know?

Was she laughing at me?

Or feeling sorry for me?

I wasn't sure which of those options would be worse.

I pushed myself away from the counter, desperate to get out of there, to put as much distance between him and me as possible. "You're wrong, Jazz. You don't know what you're talking about," I forced out through numb lips before turning and making my way to the door.

As I left the bathroom and walked down the hall, I heard Jasper's mocking voice following me. "Whatever you say, Edward. Have fun on your pseudo-date."

Sorry for the long hiatus! I'm afraid real life happened in a big way over the summer. But I'm back now, happy to be writing again!

Thanks to DeltaSwan90 for her beta expertise and to Vican for making the Destination Wedding banner!

If any of you have any questions or comments about Destination Wedding, you can find me on the Destination Wedding thread on twilighted. http:/www(dot)twilighted(dot)net/forum/viewtopic(dot)php?f=44&t=14195&start=0