A/N: Oooh, let's see what these kids are up to.
Bella wasn't gone. She hadn't left her number, but she'd stolen his.
It had been two weeks since the hospital. It was enough time for Bella to say yes to coffee again because she truly wanted to, not just as a reaction to seeing someone you used to love cut down by Zeus himself.
At least, that was what Edward told himself as he entered the coffee shop, heart in his throat as he looked around the place. It was new to him. He'd let her pick where they would meet again, wanting her to be on her own turf for whatever this turned out to be.
He didn't think he was strong enough to lose her again, but that certainly wasn't her problem.
Bella sat in the middle of the shop. The first signal, no doubt. She certainly wasn't ready for cozy, intimate corners.
They'd spent so much time in cozy, intimate corners in their first lives, curled into each other on the same side of the booth.
She sat up straighter when she spotted him. Her expression was cautious, her hands cupped around a mug in front of her. But she offered the barest hint of a smile and the tiniest nod at his presence.
Edward nodded back and turned to the counter. He was equal parts eager, nervous, and terrified. He doubted his roiling stomach would let him take a sip, but he knew he needed to order one anyway.
I keep wondering if this would be easier if you were just a guy who I'd hit it off with on Hinge, she'd texted when they were trying to sort themselves out. It's just coffee, right?
So Edward had told her they could pretend. And if he was cosplaying a guy on a low-stakes first date with a woman he'd met on his phone, there was no reason not to order a beverage in a shop that existed for that purpose. He forced himself to calm down, to take in the whole menu, and ordered one of their unique coffee blends.
Bella quirked an eyebrow when he sat across from her, his own mug cradled between his hands. "You got a coffee," she said.
His lip twitched, and he wondered if he'd gotten it wrong despite his best efforts. "Uh, yes? It's what one does at a coffee shop, I hear."
"It's not what you do at a coffee shop."
"Oh, right." How strange. He'd spent all these years with the memories of their relationship replaying in an endless slideshow. He hadn't known it was possible for some tiny detail to go unremembered. But when she said the words, he suddenly remembered the way she'd teased him. He drank coffee when occasion called for it, but for the most part, he was a tea drinker. He'd found it soothing for most of his life, and he liked the frou-frou tea concoctions they came up with in independent coffee shops.
"I… Maybe you remember the panic attacks?" He glanced at her from under his eyelashes.
Her bemused expression fell. "Of course."
Right. He'd had them sporadically since they were both teenagers, but they'd gotten really bad right after his parents died. "Well, after I went to therapy, figured out some coping mechanisms, they were better. Less severe. Less frequent. But when I would get to the point where I might have had a panic attack but didn't, the tightness in my chest lingered longer than anything else.
"I heard from a few people that coffee was a good way to stimulate my airways." He shrugged. "I like taking deep breaths more than I like fancy tea, I suppose."
Her expression turned pensive, her eyes sad before she ducked her head, hiding them from him.
"Bella?"
She shook her head hard and made an obvious effort to cast off the dower pall that had come over her. "Sorry, I…" She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, blinking several times as though she were holding back tears. "It's just that I hate that you had to do all that alone."
It was ingrained in his muscle memory to reach for her when she was upset. His hands reached out, and Bella pulled back almost as quickly.
Which, of course, she did.
He hadn't won the right to touch her again.
He pulled his hands back, cradling his cup and the cooling coffee it contained. He risked a glance at her and a small smile when he saw the conflict on her face. "Don't look now, but we're failing miserably at this simple Hinge date thing."
She was, and always had been, the brightest star in his sky. She was a meteor whose brilliance had burned his retinas, leaving his world pitch black when she was gone. Pretending he didn't know her when she was punched into his genetic code had been an exercise in futility.
Yet it was simultaneously true that they were strangers. He wasn't the man she'd married by a long shot. From the insignificant nuances like what he ordered in a coffee shop to the bigger picture, he was forever changed.
Bella let out a shaky laugh. "Turns out baggage is hard to ignore."
He considered her for a long moment, his heart giving a painful beat for what he was about to do. "Bella, I don't know if this needs to be said, but in case it does… you don't owe me anything here. If it's too much, if you've changed your mind, you can walk away."
"Yeah," she said under her breath. She reached out, her fingers skimming briefly over the lightning burn. "And then what? You fall down a flight of stairs and land at my feet?"
"Are you saying you're only here because you think I would die if you weren't?" It wasn't all that far from the truth, but he kept his tone relatively light somehow.
She smirked—a tiny, shy thing. "It's not the only reason." Her brow furrowed, and her features grew furtive. "This is just confusing." She searched his eyes. "Is it for you? Confusing?"
He considered. "It's…" He debated the merits of honesty; he didn't want to scare her. But in the end, what else did he have to give her but that? "It's a miracle." He kept his eyes trained on his cup. "It's like asking for a pony for Christmas. If you get it, you don't question the logic. You just—"
"Get on the horse?" Bella asked.
They both glanced at each other with pink cheeks and laughed—genuine but nervous.
"Well, with that being said, I have to admit I've never ridden a horse before," Edward said. "As far as dates go—first or otherwise—I'm going to have to follow your lead. And you know, this doesn't really have to be a date. It's not… that's not necessarily what we're doing h—"
"You've never been on a date?" Her voice was sharp and just a little too loud. They glanced around, and her cheeks flushed when she realized a few people were looking at them. Her shoulders hunched. "Sorry," she said, softer. "But seriously? No dates? At all?"
"I, er…" He laughed, the sound just a little maniacal. "Fuck. This is a disaster." He looked up, his smile huge despite how desperately awkward this all was. "See? I'm not supposed to admit that, right? But does it count? I'm not trying to be smooth. Charming. I'm not trying… The things people are usually after with first dates… I just mean, it's not what I'm thinking about."
"You're not?" She sounded amused, but curious too.
He grimaced, then sighed. "Miracle, remember? You're here. Wherever this ends up, it's more than I expected or deserved."
Bella sighed. She had a lot to say; he could see it in her eyes.
But this wasn't the time for that. This wasn't the time for baggage.
"Let me try again," he said quietly. "With the small talk." He cleared his throat and sat up straighter. "So. What do you do for work?"
She opened her mouth, but then grinned. "This is impossible," she said under her breath. "It's no use. Even small talk comes back to you."
Edward cocked his head, confused.
"It did piss me off, in the beginning." She breathed in the scent of her coffee and blew out slowly. "I hated that I owed you anything, but the experience I gained at your company was what kept me gainfully employed. So, I guess you know what I do. But, I'm working on that too. I went back to school. I'm studying sociology. I got my bachelor's and I'm on my way to a master's in sexology."
His breath left him in a shaky gust. "Sex…what? Really?"
"Yeah, that's a long story."
He sat back in his chair, bringing his coffee cup to his lips and raising an eyebrow in invitation over the rim.
Bella rolled her eyes fondly and started to tell him of the first of many journeys he'd missed.
A/N: So. It's a start.
Thank you to Di and May for looking over this little ditty.
