Disclaimer: S. Meyer owns it all.

Chapter One - Remember to Breathe

"Remember to breathe… and everything will be okay"

-Dashboard Confessional

February 2009

I woke up, startled by the poor, pathetic voice and face of my dream. Scrubbing my face with the heels of my hands, I groaned when I saw the alarm clock: there were a good two hours before I actually had to get out of bed, so I tossed and turned for a while before giving it up as a bad job. I threw off the covers, earning a low mewl from Elton John, my long-haired Siamese cat, and shuffled toward the kitchen to make coffee. EJ followed, nipping at my heels and crying.

"Too early for breakfast, bud," I told him, and he stretched Slinky-like before he jumped onto the counter. I shook my head but left him there as I threw some coffee on to percolate. EJ jumped from the counter to the island in the middle of the kitchen; I leaned against it and scratched him behind the ears. He purred louder than the coffee maker, then collapsed in a heap on the marble, tilting his head up so I could scratch under his chin. I had to admit that I hadn't been too happy when my sister Alice insisted I get a pet one day, and found her at my door with the huge furball the next. She spent the first part of her visit telling me how incredibly lonely I must be and the last making sure that EJ (she named him, not me) would be the most incredibly spoiled housecat on the continent of Australia.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and dragged my papers from my briefcase. Five years ago, during my senior year at Washington State University, I was awarded a very prestigious internship at Morgan & Morgan Architecture and Design, after which they decided to hire me on full-time. I was still working my way up the corporate ladder, so to speak, so I didn't always get my pick of the projects. Recently I had been working on a children's wing for a prominent hospital in Sydney. Needless to say, it was kicking my ass. It was ironic that they'd thrown the children's-wing project at me, given that I was a single twenty-seven-year-old dude whose overweight, spoiled housecat was the closest I'd come to a kid.

I stared at my sketches for about twenty minutes before changing my mind about working and deciding on taking a shower. I couldn't concentrate on anything anyways. The face from my dream haunted me, still. I'd been dreaming about him for about two weeks now, almost every night. He called to me and I searched, but I always woke up once I found him, not getting to learn more. His face was sad but… familiar. His eyes and hair were exact matches to mine, but his skin tone and the shape of his face were so like hers…

I showered quickly and dressed, only to realize it was still only 7AM and I had another hour to kill before I even had to leave for work. I perused the room for something to do besides work and noticed the red light on my answering machine blinking. I pushed the button and turned to freshen up my coffee, but stopped short when her voice came through the tiny speaker.

"Edward, hi," her voice was nervous, timid even. "It's Bella," she cleared her throat and spoke a little louder. "I'm sorry to be calling so early or late… Um, anyway, it's about 1 o'clock on Sunday in Forks and I was just wondering if you could give me a call back. I need to speak with you about something. Thanks a lot." She went on to list her number, then hung up.

I didn't notice I had dropped my cup until the lukewarm coffee began to seep through my socks. It didn't matter though. I couldn't move. I hadn't heard her voice in over five years and the shock it brought upon me was like none I had felt before. I couldn't even bring myself to question why she was calling. I didn't care. I was almost giddy at the fact that she actually had called, all these years later, even after what I did. The love-struck boy in me wanted to call her back, that very second, but the somewhat smarter, more logical man told me to wait and not do anything rash. He also suggested that I should call my sister—after I wiped up the puddle of coffee on the floor.

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I rambled a hasty voicemail to Alice on my way to work, begging her to call me, forgetting that it was eight hours earlier in France and that she was most likely sleeping. The excitement from hearing Bella's voice was long gone and in its place was a deep, burning ball of fear. Why is she calling me? I couldn't help but think that something horrible had happened.

Maybe Charlie or Emmett had been injured in the line of duty. Maybe someone was sick. Or maybe she had finally moved on and wanted to let me know. Not that I had any right to know any of those things. I left five years ago without so much as a backwards glance, no letters or emails, and no phone calls. I gave absolutely nothing to the person I had loved nearly all my life or her family, my second family. I didn't deserve to know what was going on because I hadn't tried to keep in contact with them, and I'd asked my family to do the same. I was too wounded by her refusal to come with me, too infuriated by her stubbornness, and too disappointed in her lack of support in my following my dreams. I could still remember that day like it just happened…

I drifted through the day remembering things on and off; I don't remember what I had for lunch, or who I talked to, for that matter, until the buzzing of my phone in my pocket broke me out of my reverie around two in the afternoon. I opened my phone to a text message from Alice.

-WTH, Pinky? Get your time zones straight!

I snorted at the nickname and wrote her back quickly.

Sry, Brain. I was having a meltdown. Forgive me?

-Of course. Now, what's got your panties in a twist?

Bella called.

No sooner than I hit send did the phone at my desk ring.

"Edward Cullen," I answered and was greeted by silence. "Hello?"

"What do you mean, 'Bella called'?" My sister's high-pitched whisper came through the receiver.

"Well, Ali… there aren't many ways that can be defined," I sighed and ran a hand through my hopeless hair.

"Oh Edward," she said softly. "What did she say?"

"She just asked me to call her," I scratched my chin with the eraser of a pencil, trying to act like my insides weren't dancing the conga.

"Did you?"

"No, I called you and you didn't answer!" I said, a little too loudly; the guy across the partition from me stuck his head over and raised an eyebrow. I didn't care.

"Edward, it was one in the morning!"

"I know," I nearly growled, trying to remember that I was talking to my baby sister. "I just… I didn't know what to do. I don't know why she would call after all this time."

"It's okay." Her voice soothing, I closed my eyes and listened. "You'll just have to call her, Edward. It's as simple as that, otherwise you'll never know. You should do it sooner rather than later, too."

"I have an idea. Why don't you call her?" I mumbled, and she laughed loudly.

"I don't think so, big brother. This is your mess, not mine. Or did you forget that you all but forbade me to talk to her?" she asked, her tone teasing, but I knew better.

"I know, Ali. I'm sorry," I said, my guilt getting the best of me. They had been best friends. "I was just grasping at straws here."

"Don't worry so much. It's been five years, maybe she just wants to see how you are. You owe it to both of you to call her back. Hell, Edward, you owe it to all of us."

"I know," I said again.

"Let me know how it goes," her voice worried.

"I will. I love you Brain," I told her.

"I love you, too, Pinky. Oh, but Edward… mind the time, okay?" she said, and I laughed.

"I'll try," I promised, and hung up, feeling minutely better but not at all prepared to call Bella. Work didn't prove to be much of a distraction the rest of the day. I stared at blueprints and sketches, but nothing helped. Even the new intern's attention wasn't enough to get Bella's face out of my head. Over and over I saw her, always the same scene…

Christmas Day, December 2003

We wandered the short trail in the woods, the Swan house still visible. Just a mere 12 hours ago I was planning to propose to her, but then I got the call offering me an internship at a prestigious firm in Australia. I was going to ask her to come with me instead of proposing. I couldn't pass up this opportunity; I hadn't really expected to get the internship when I applied for it, and so I hadn't told anyone about it. She was shocked, hurt, that I had done something without telling her. I pleaded with her to forgive me, but she was stubborn and pissed off, not a good combination for her. It was selfish of me to ask her to come with me, to leave everything behind: school, Emmett, Charlie, all her friends from school. But I needed her like I needed the air I was breathing. With each 'no' she spoke it became a little harder to breathe. She was set in her decision, expecting me to break and agree with her, like I usually did. But I didn't budge either, because this was my dream. She should've understood that. But she didn't, and that's when I broke. I was angry that she wasn't going to support me so I spoke six words that I never thought I would ever say to her, words that shattered everything we had in ways I didn't even know it could be broken. It astonished me the way our four-year relationship fell apart right before my eyes, because the words I spoke were a complete and utter lie. "Fine." I stood, looking down at her; she was sitting on a fallen tree trunk with her arms wrapped around her knees, her face set and her eyes dry. "I don't want you to come," I stated, with no emotion in my voice. It was dead; I could imagine the matching look on my face. I felt nothing at the moment, because I knew everything I'd been living for was slipping away as I spoke the lie that broke us both beyond repair.

She stood up, her face and voice showing no signs of emotion either. "You don't want me?" she asked in a hollow voice.

"No. I don't." I set my jaw and she stepped forward slowly, her tiny fist clenched at her side. Her face was just inches from mine; I could feel her breath caressing my neck as I stared over her head, seeing nothing.

"Then go," she whispered, and I could hear her voice shake. I looked down into her deep, brown, fathomless eyes. Tears were starting to sparkle in them and my own eyes started to sting. I reached up hesitantly to brush away one that had fallen from her cheek. She closed her eyes and held my palm to her face briefly. When she opened her eyes again, they were dead. I had never seen this look in her eyes, and it frightened me. "Goodbye, Edward," she whispered and then turned abruptly, leaving me alone in the forest among the snow and barely living plants. I knew how they felt; part of me was dead, too.

I didn't call Bella that night. Hearing her voice again stirred something deep in me that I hadn't felt or even wanted to feel in a very long time. The memories of the love and the need, the friendships I was missing out on… it had all been buried so deeply. I wasn't quite sure I was ready for it to re-emerge just yet.

A/N: Thanks to Becca Graymoor for being my fuckawesome beta and Messynachos for being my life-twin and reading it all :)

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