Bella smoothed her hair and stared at her reflection in the mirror, her hair was much shorter, her skin paler, she was wearing a floor length blush dress, and she barely recognized herself. Her eyes moved to the reflections of the two women sitting behind her and she sighed.
"Oh, Bella, I think it's perfect!" Alice's voice was full of excitement, the scared, nervous girl who Bella met with yesterday completely gone. Bella risked another look at herself, holding the dress up around her chest. Of course Alice thought this was perfect. It was pink…it was a dress…and it made wearing heels a necessity. Bella nodded, trying to convince herself of its perfection, and placed a fake smile on her face, large enough to please Alice.
"You're right, Allie." She swallowed hard, staring into her own eyes in the reflection. "It's perfect." She turned to face the two women. "Do you think there will be enough time to fit it?"
Alice shrugged her shoulders and waved her hand passively, rolling her eyes. "They can do anything."
Alice had ordered the dress for Bella long before she had the courage to ask her to be in the wedding. She ordered it in a size 2, the size she had always remembered Bella to be. At the time, she had no idea how much weight Bella had lost, but the already small dress hung off of her as if it were a drape. Losing Edward must have really been hard on her.
Esme broke through Alice's thoughts when Bella came back out of the dressing room, clothed in her own jeans and oversized t-shirt. "Alice, baby, why don't you go put your dress on for Bella?" Alice's eyes lit up, the excitement once again obvious in her eyes. Alice had tried on her dress a million times, to show her mother, to show Jasper's mother, to show Rose, but this time was different, she had never shown her best friend. Alice hopped up without a word and zoomed toward the dressing room.
For a while, Esme and Bella sat in silence, the awkwardness floating around them. Bella didn't know what to say, much less how to act. How did you talk to someone's mother after you totally crush them? How did Esme feel about her now that everything had changed? She watched the older woman out of the corner of her eyes, Esme's fingers tapping against her knee as if she were holding herself back from saying something. The two sat in the silence, both avoiding conversation for different reasons, one scared of a mothers wrath, the other just not knowing what to say.
"You know Bella, we all miss having you around." Esme was quiet at first, much like her daughter was when she first came to see her. "None of us know what happened between you and Edward, and non of us blame you for it." She turned to face Bella, her eyes swarming with tears. When her son and Bella called it quits, she lost the both of them, she felt like she lost two children instead of just one. Her hand slid over to pat Bella's, something she did often when she knew the girl felt uncomfortable. "We just want you both to come back to us." Bella opened her mouth to apologize, to say something, anything, but was cut off when Alice came out in her gown, and God, she was beautiful.
Alice had an un-Alice like shy smile on her face, her hands nervously straightening the perfect white fabric. "So this is it." She said it so simply you'd imagine the dress to be just that, a dress, but it wasn't. Bella's eyes glistened with tears, Alice was beautiful, the dress was beautiful, and everything about the moment was utterly beautiful. Bella's eyes scanned over the gown, the sweetheart neckline, the intricate lace pattern, the way it hugged Alice's perfectly slim body, showing off the curves that made her a woman, all the way until her knees where it flowed into a mermaid or trumpet look. She had no words. Nothing other than pure beauty.
"Alice, it's…." Bella was again at a loss for words, her mouth hanging open and nothing came out, but the look on her face was enough to prove to Alice that this was the right dress. The tears trailing over her slightly flushed cheeks was enough. Alice felt her own tears escape and run down her face and she immediately knew this is what she had been missing. Having Bella here, having Bella look at her like that, like the years of silence hanging between them wasn't real, like the pain and hurt was nonexistent, like they had always been best friends, like nothing could change that, they'd be that way forever, for the rest of their lives.
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