[Disclaimer] Everything Twilight belongs to Mrs. Stephenie Meyer.

[A/N] Thanks and hugs to every one of you who decided to give this story a try. I was thrilled that so many of you liked the idea of it. Let's see how things turn out.

I have decided that I won't make Bella lose weight in this story. It just didn't feel right to me. I refuse to believe that you have to change yourself to be worth to be loved.

However she will struggle with her weight, like most women do.

**Chapter 2**

For a long awkward moment we just kept staring at each other, unable to move one single inch.

"My baby is finally home!" Esme called out cheerfully and wrapped her arms around the delicate girl in front of us.

"Mom, I'm happy to see you too, but you're going to break my ribs if you don't let me go now."

My mother-in-law dropped her hands wiping away a single tear that had escaped her brown eyes. Then she planted a kiss on her daughter's forehead and sighed deeply.

"What did you do to your beautiful hair?" Esme asked her and started stroking the spikey ends of it.

"Don't you like it? I had it cut last month. It was sort of a fashion experiment."

"Well, it'll grow back soon. It's so good to have you back home." She told her with a shaking voice, obviously trying to fight back more tears. Then she turned to me.

"This is Edward's wife; Bella."

Mary Alice's lips twitched for a split second, as if Esme had told her some horrible news. Then she held out her hand and smiled at me, exposing a row of perfect pearl-white teeth.

"Hi, I'm Ali, the black sheep of the Cullen family." She grinned so impishly that I couldn't help but smile back.

"It's nice to meet you." I told her and squeezed her hand for a moment. Her skin felt smooth like velvet.

Esme cleared her throat before she spoke up again.

"Your father is sorry that he can't be here right now. He had to cover Dr. Brannon's shift in the hospital."

Mary Alice rolled her eyes and frowned.

"Mom you don't have to lie to me. I knew that he's not too keen to meet me."

"Mary Alice, you know that's not true. Carlisle is really happy that you decided to move back to Seattle."

We walked back into the kitchen and Esme poured her a glass of orange juice that Mary Alice emptied in one gulp.

"Yeah right mom, that's why he wanted me to live at Edwards' house and not at home…because he's so happy that I'm back." Her beautiful bell voice had a bitter, sarcastically hint in it that I didn't like at all.

"Well, it's just for a few weeks anyway." She continued after a while and sighed deeply.

"You can stay as long as you like," I told her and twisted my hair into a ponytail.

Esme started biting her fingernails. It was a disgusting, nervous habit that both my husband and my daughter had inherited from her together with the pretty, copper colored hair. Then she sighed deeply, desperately trying of a good way to distract her daughter.

"I'm sure you and Bella will be great friends. Your brother is barely home. The poor boy is working too hard for that law firm."

I nodded my head and bit my own tongue. Right now he was probably working hard on that skinny bitch Tanya. God, I hated her more for being thin that for fucking my husband. Some wife I was.

XXXX

"You are not like I imagined you to be like; not at all." I stepped on the breaks so abruptly that the wheels made a squeaking noise on the dry asphalt.

Then I grabbed my hands so tightly around the steering wheel that my knuckles turned white. It wasn't the first time that a member of Edward's family had told me something like that.

"Yeah, I know." I mumbled between greeted teeth. "Your sister wasn't too happy to when Edward introduced us." I tried to make my voice sound casual, as if it didn't matter to me. It shouldn't matter to me.

Somehow she seemed to notice my discomfort anyway.

"Rosalie doesn't really know what's good for our brother. She's a little bit superficial."

"A little bit?" My voice raised two octaves.

"Okay, right. My sister is the most superficial person on earth. When I came out to her she said something like '…but Ali, how can you be gay? You're so pretty.' It's not her fault though. I blame my parents. Edward was always the smart one to them. I was the baby and she was the beautiful."

I raised one eyebrow and stepped out of the car.

She giggled and lifted the two huge suitcases out of the trunk. I wondered which kind of clothes she was designing. Not that I would ever be able to fit into any of them.

"You see, usually Edward has terrible taste in women. I didn't really get along with his ex-girlfriends so I was horrified when he suggested that I could live with him and his wife."

"Why didn't you like them?" I asked her as I opened the front door of the house that Carlisle and Esme had given us as a wedding gift.

"Well, basically they were all the same; blonde, bony and brainless."

"Hmm, and I am brunette, big and brilliant."

She shook her head as we entered the living room.

"You seem nice and just for the record - you're not that big."

"Thanks," I mumbled and felt my cheeks getting warm. It was obvious that she was lying but I knew that she was doing it in order to be nice.

"Let me show you your room." I suggested and took one of the suitcases. Geez, that thing was heavy.

"It's pretty. So light…"

"Edward thought that you need one with good light in it. Designers do need good light to work, don't they?"

"Yeah that's right. I don't really have money to get a proper atelier right now. So, I guess I'll have to work here."

She sat down on the edge of the queen size bed. Her eyes caught the small teddy that was sitting on top of it.

"That was Lilly's idea." I told her. "Edward always called you his 'baby-sister' when he spoke to your mother on the phone. She probably thinks that you're close to her age."

"I think it's cute but I hope that she won't be too disappointed when she finds out that I'm an adult. At least that's what my ID says."

She opened the first suitcase and pulled a bottle out of it.

"You bought the wine that I suggested."

"Hmm, yeah I did. It was meant to be a gift for my sister-in-law" Somehow she seemed embarrassed. Maybe because she knew that I knew what it had cost or maybe because she had tried to ask me out in the supermarket.

Our fingertips touched when she handed me the green bottle and something that was comparable to an electric shock, only way more pleasant, went through my entire body. I was sure that she had noticed it too because suddenly she pretended to search for something in her suitcase.

The phone started ringing and I cleared my throat before I answered it.

"Hello?"

The smooth, dazzling voice of my husband greeted me on the other side of the line.

"Hi Bella, how are you? Did everything go okay with Mary Alice?"

"Yeah it did. She's here. Do you want to talk to her?"

"No, I don't really have time right now. I just called to let you know that I've to stay in Anchorage longer than I planned."

"Hmm," I mumbled. "How long is longer?"

"Probably another six or seven weeks,"

"Don't tell me that you won't be here for Lilly's birthday next month." I whispered. Of course it also meant that he wouldn't be here for mine too, but I wasn't really looking forward to the big, ugly three in front of my age. Soon I would be fat and old. Live couldn't get any better. Tears started burning in my eyes, and I swallowed hard to keep them from falling. It would be too abasing to cry in front of Ali.

"Bella look, I'm really sorry but I already bought a lot of presents for her to make it up. Tanya will send them over in the next days. Lilly will be thrilled."

"Fine," I croaked out.

"You're angry at me, aren't you?"

"No, I'm not." I lied and cursed myself for the slight trembling in my voice.

"Bella, I have to work here. It's not like I'm having a holiday in Alaska."

"Try to tell that our four year old."

"I will if you let me speak to her. Give her the receiver."

"She's not here right now. Lilly is at the zoo with Rose and Emmett."

"That's good. Tell her I love her. Will you?"

Automatically I nodded my head.

"Yes I will. She loves you too you know. You're the good parent who sends awesome presents from Alaska and I'm the bad one who forced her to eat oatmeal for breakfast."

There were several voices in the background but I couldn't really understand what they were saying.

"I'll have to go now, Bella. I love you."

"Ditto," I murmured a split second before he hung up.

I sighed deeply and stood up from the bed.

I heard the bed squeak behind me and then I felt a warm, dainty hand on my forearm. The strange tingling in my stomach was back again. What the hell was wrong with me? Perhaps it had to do with the appetite suppressant I had swallowed secretly in Esme's bathroom.

"My brother isn't coming back for the birthday of his only child? That's so stupid. In a few years she won't want him to be around at her big day. Then he'll regret having missed a single one of them. I know our father did."

"Edward has to work. It's not his fault that the law firm keeps sending him to Anchorage so often." I murmured.

"Jeez, is he married to you or the stupid law firm?"

"Me of course, why are you asking?"

"Because you seem so unhappy right now; is everything okay?" she asked me, sounding far more worried than she should.

I nodded my head.

"Yes it is."

Her caramel eyes narrowed into tiny slits.

"You don't look as if everything is okay. Your eyes look like melted chocolate...all glassy."

"Stop looking at me." I hissed out and tried to turn around because I could already feel the tears burning in the corners of my eyes.

She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me close to her pixie-like body. I took a deep breath through my nose and realized that she smelled better than anything I had ever smelled before. Like a perfect mixture of vanilla, sweet red apples and a flowery third component that I didn't really have a name for, something that was probably just her and nothing else.

"You can cry if you feel like it." She whispered into my messy hair and started stroking up and down my spine with her fingertips.

A sob escaped my throat and then I tasted something wet and salty on my lips. I couldn't remember the last time I had allowed myself to cry in front of someone else and now that I had given in, I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to stop.

The strange thing was that I couldn't really cry for long. Maybe because the sweet scent that seemed to be steaming out of each of her pores was starting to make me feel dizzy. Maybe because it was more difficult to cry while the spikey ends of her short hair tickled my neck so pleasantly. Maybe it was because she continued humming some lullaby-like song to comfort me.

Whatever it was, if a single one or a combination of the three of them, it was working. I pulled back and sniffed. She handed me a tissue and I cleaned my nose loudly.

"Sorry," I croaked out.

"Don't have to be. I can understand that you're sad."

"You can?"

"Of course, Edward is your husband. It's normal that you're disappointed when he's always gone for so long."

He's also not here when he's here, I thought bitterly and suppressed the urge to bite into something sweet or fatty. Damn it Bella, why do you always have to think about eating? I had thrown out all my candy this morning and was already starting to regret it.

"Let me help you to unpack and then I'll show you the rest of the house."

I pulled a small purple colored bag out of her suitcase.

To my astonishment her cheeks reddened when she realized what I was holding.

"What's in there?"

"Nothing," she stumbled out.

"You blush because of nothing?"

"Give it to me. That's none of your business. Just forget it…Jeez, this is so embarrassing."

"Oh come on. How bad can it be? Just tell me."

"I think I better show you. You probably won't know what it is if you don't see."

XOXOXOXOXO

[A/N] So what do you think is inside that bag? If you want to know please remember that reviews encourage me to write faster *smile*