EPOV

It had been six weeks since he had seen her.

Six weeks.

They had struggled through exams together, yelled and screamed at each other, and drank a ton (beer for him, and mojitos for her) to drown their sorrows over their marks. They left their third year of college best friends, and somehow he had let that all disappear. It had been days of rolling out of bed at the crack of dawn for work that turned into weeks and then somehow it had gotten to 42 days without talking to her.

He had never gone that long without hearing her voice.

Edward sighed and ran a frustrated hand through his unruly hair. He threw down his phone angrily onto his bed, the phone hardly making a dent in the thick comforter. Why wasn't Bella picking up the phone? She was always on her phone!

He contemplated running up towards her house, she only lived a couple minutes away. When they were little they practically lived at each other's houses, her little pigtails always seemed to be appearing around corners in his house, and his shoes were a permanent fixture on her doormat.

She was the lightness in his life. The good that counteracted all of his mischievous behaviours. With Bella by his side, Edward could get away with pretty much anything. Any sort of prank around town, if Bella was at the scene of the crime, she just had to bat her eyes and smile and all would be forgotten.

It was that smile that got him, that beautiful smile that made you feel like the only thing that mattered. It lit up her whole face, from the little wrinkles in her forehead, to laugh lines that scrunched up in joy on her cheeks. Bella was one of those girls that never begged for attention the way that the other females at their college did. They pranced around in full faces of makeup, short skirts and shirts with strategic cuts to maximize their cleavage, and don't get him wrong, he enjoyed the cleavage. But there was something so fake about it. Sure, many of them were a good lay, and easy to get, but they never meant anything. He had yet to meet a girl at that college that he wanted to talk to more than Bella.

But Bella was a study of contrasts. For every girl that wore a full face of makeup, Bella kept her face scrubbed bare, her natural blush colouring her ivory skin most of the day. Her dark hair was lush, a thick chestnut colour with shots of gold and copper through it, and her thick eyelashes framed her eyes. Oh man, her eyes. She had the kindest, warmest eyes; a chocolate brown that melted him every time he looked into them. She lived in his sweatshirts, and soccer shorts and leggings. Always looking as if she could fall asleep any minute. And she wore her damn Birkenstocks almost every day, her toes painted dark purple, peeking out of the top.

It had happened slowly. They had known each other since they were kids, constantly seeing each other around town. The cop's daughter and the general surgeon's son. It was inevitable that they would have to talk in their class of 12 on their first day of kindergarten. She had ditched the class to go kick a soccer ball around the field and when he saw her sprinting away from the teacher dribbling a soccer ball with her tiny feet, that was it. He was enamoured.

Years later, they had drifted apart as they went to different high schools and then found each other again at college, where they found themselves in the same degree. She was everything he had remembered; charming, with that quiet confidence that had her kicking his ass in every class they shared. They hung out at each other's houses almost every day, pulling study sessions until midnight, sunset drives to viewpoints and he made her mojitos every chance he could because she was hilarious when she was tipsy. She got drunk off of the tiniest drink, and her laughter when she was tipsy was contagious. She never drank to the point of no return, but she knew how to have fun and they always shared their deepest secrets with each other when they were drunk. That's how he knew she hadn't been kissed throughout high school, and that she wanted to live in a tiny blue house one day with a big family, and that she always felt like an underachiever, even though she was the smartest person he knew. They told each other everything about each other, but never under the scrutiny of the day, no, these reveal sessions always occurred under the glow of a sunset, or at his kitchen table at 1am, when the memories were just a bit blurred, and the recollections were always sweet.

He heard a door slam, and a bag get thrown down to the floor with a thump. "Edward bro! Where are you?"

He sighed again, glancing towards the window. Bella would have to wait for tomorrow.