A/N: I feel the need to address a question that has been posed by a few reviewers: yes, the past segments of the EPOV chapters will revisit the events that took place between Edward and Rosalie. There will not be graphically detailed description, but the events do reappear in later chapters. If that's not something you feel prepared to read, this is your heads-up.

Thanks for reading. xo

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March 2, 2013 – Word Prompt: Document.

. . .

A month. It's been nearly a month since I said goodbye to Bella back in Forks, a month since she hugged me, since the smell of her invaded my nose and the feel of her pressed up against me assaulted my sensory memory with the subtlety of an express train. All of the trees save the evergreens are bare, the stores are alive with holiday music and Christmas decorations, and the ambiguity of her request for time is driving me mad. It's hard to understand, given the fact that it's been six years since we had any kind of role in each other's lives, but it's as if the mere prospect of being her friend again has ignited in me a spark of possibility that I can't seem to extinguish.

It occurs to me that I could have sent her a Christmas card, but the holiday is three days away and there's no chance a card is going to make it from Seattle to San Francisco in three days, especially not at this time of year.

I'm willing to admit to being disappointed that my parents have opted to spend my father's Christmas vacation on a second honeymoon in Italy in lieu of hosting the annual Cullen Family Christmas: a Hollywood-worthy week of festivities, in which my mother buys us all new flannel pajamas and the five of us bundle into the car on Christmas Eve to drive around and look at Christmas lights and every night comes complete with steaming mugs of hot chocolate and a different holiday movie. My mother saves our birth year Christmas ornaments until we arrive so that we can put them on her otherwise already decorated tree, and my father gets a thrill out of sending my brothers and me out in turns to retrieve firewood from the pile at the back corner of the lot. On Christmas morning, my mother documents the opening of gifts with a top-of-the-line digital SLR camera, taking frame after frame of photos that will wind up printed and in an album by the second week of January. In short, my parents spend the holiday season channeling Martha Stewart and Clark Griswold. I don't have the heart to tell my mom that I sleep in my boxers these days and that I haven't been able to sip hot chocolate without tasting guilt in years. There have only been two women in my life that I could never bear to disappoint, and my mother's one of them. The fact that I more than disappointed the other only makes me more desperate not to fail the one who still thinks I'm worth loving.

. . .

I can't put my finger on what's different. She's the same girl I've known since I was a toddler, the same girl who's thrown snowballs and climbed trees and played board games and watched movies with me. But it's as if watching her step across the threshold of Forks High has changed everything, and I can't stop seeing her in ways I've never thought to see her before. I never really noticed the small spray of pale freckles across the bridge of her nose, or how small her hands are. And, for the first time in my life, when I see her smile, I can't stop my brain from wondering what her lips taste like.

I stir the hot chocolate gently, watching as the powder dissolves slowly into the milk, muddying it and turning it into something entirely different. I can feel her beside me, watching, and she's been next to me a million times for a million years, and why am I suddenly so aware of her? It's as if she's a ball of static electricity and the tiny hairs on my arms and the back of my neck are all standing on end, straining toward her; idly, I wonder: if we touched, would I feel a spark?

When steam starts to curl over the cocoa, I retrieve two mugs from the cupboard to the left of the stove; when I've filled them, I reach for the can of whipped cream near my elbow and squirt a blob on the top of each one. Bella reaches a small hand out for the mug nearest to her – an American Medical Association mug – and it's only now that I realize the other one is a cheesy souvenir mug that my dad bought for my mom one Valentine's Day. Someone in Forks, WA loves me.

"Nope," I say quickly, reaching out for the navy blue AMA mug. "That one's mine."

Confusion flickers across her features as she hands it to me; in return, I hand her the mug with the big red heart on it.

For the first time in my life, I don't have the courage to meet her eye.

. . .