Epilogue: Together

The light in Rome is different than Seattle. Sunny mornings are just dripping in gold, all warm, sepia tones pouring in through our window. Back home, when we were lucky enough to wake up to sunshine, the world was still vaguely tinted with blues from the water and greens from the woods, but here. It's all yellow, sunshine ricocheting off ancient cobblestone streets.

I find the morning sun in Rome so pleasant, that I don't even mind when it hits my eyes before my alarm goes off, pouring through a crack in the drapes where I didn't pull them shut tight the night before. We were out too late last night, wrapped up in a long, lazy dinner in a tiny little hole in the wall restaurant we discovered a few blocks from the Pantheon.

Ordering a whole bottle of wine was not a great idea, in the harsh light of morning, but I'd probably do it all over again. Good food, good wine, and good company, Edward's smile getting wider and wider with each additional drink. There's nothing so perfect as that.

The warm little patch of light is nice on my cheek, but eventually I decide I'd rather be sleeping than warm. I roll over, blindly searching for Edward next to me, until my face is firmly in his armpit, hidden from the morning light.

When Edward chuckles, I feel it rattle his ribs under my cheek.

"Morning," he says, voice low and croaky.

"Shush." My voice is whiny, and I reach up to cover his mouth with my palm. "Sleeping."

Edward, despite all the growing up he's done since I met him all those years ago, actually licks my hand like he's twelve. Why he thinks I'd have a problem with this, when he's licked every inch of me, and I've enjoyed it so, is a mystery.

When he sinks his teeth into my palm, I squeak and jerk away. Edward's laugh rattles my cheek again, and then he hugs me closer.

"The alarm's set to go off in two minutes, love. You're just delaying the inevitable at this point."

Keeping my eyes firmly closed, I grumble under my breath and press a kiss into his ribcage. He runs his fingers through my hair and lets me have my two more minutes of near-sleep. When the alarm sounds on his phone, he rolls away to silence it and I groan like it going off is a big surprise.

"You used to be better with waking up in the morning." Edward's chipper as anything, already rolling out of bed buck naked.

"I'm getting old," I mutter into Edward's pillow, opening one eye to ogle his butt as he bends and picks up a pair of athletic shorts on the floor.

"It was a year ago," he says, reminding me of last summer, when I was up early for class, and he was staying up until long after midnight. We couldn't quite manage to get on the same schedule, but made it work anyway.

"It was a big year," I inform him.

Edward just laughs at me, pulling on the shorts as he walks out into the hall.

"I'm making coffee!" he yells from the kitchen, only a handful of steps away.

"You better," I whisper.

"I heard that!"

Of course he heard that. Our apartment is the size of one of Esme's closets at her home in Argentina. It might even be slightly smaller than the place Rose and I shared in Reñaca, but we're only a couple of blocks from the Villa Ada Savoia and a quick walk to my office on campus. The big windows in our small bedroom, and even smaller kitchen, make up for the way Edward and I constantly bump into each other when we're both home.

Four months since we moved here, and I still catch myself gazing out the windows when I'm supposed to be cooking dinner, marveling over the history right outside my front door.

Everything is so ancient. I adore it.

Rome was really all Edward's aunt's doing. While we were spending Christmas with Esme in Mercedes, his aunt emailed me with contact information for a professor at the Libera Università Internazionale in Rome. Kate, who previously seemed to despise me with every ounce of her overly glamorous being, wrote me three sentences that changed all our post- graduation plans.

For English job in Rome, send email to this address at your convenience. Make sure to use my name. She is a former lover and owes me.

Edward sighed and rolled his eyes while I emailed this former lover, but I didn't hear anything back from her for months, until Edward and I were nearing graduation and seriously considering job offers in Hong Kong. The professor finally replied, requesting my CV and setting up a Skype interview. A week later, I had a job offer at a university in Rome, and as appealing as Hong Kong was, I would've had to go back to working with kids.

An actual job at the college level, in Rome of all places, was just too good to pass up.

So, after graduating and then a truly spectacular South Asia Adventure – starting in Kathmandu and then winding our way through New Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai, and Goa, before ending up in Sri Lanka for a week – we moved into our tiny Roman apartment, and I started at the University.

College students are not quite adults, but they are far better than kids, and I'm enjoying my classes. Still, it's an adjustment. Every culture is different, and I've got to adapt my teaching style accordingly.

So many of my Italian students can turn in masterfully written essays on literature, art, and politics, crafted with a deep understanding of the grammar, but the second they open their mouths for a real conversation, it's all garbled English and nonsense sentences. It's the strangest thing, this huge difference in skill level, between writing and speaking.

The culture here prioritizes grammar so much that I ended up embarrassing myself pretty badly on my first week teaching, when all my students knew some obscure rule I'd forgotten.

So I've taken to brushing up on my grammar after work, with a glass of wine at the cafe beneath our apartment. I sit outside under the shade of an awning at the edge of the park, turning pages of a grammar book and waiting for Edward to get home.

Edward's work is less glamorous. He's translating all sorts of documents from a plethora of languages to Italian or from Italian to a plethora of languages. It's keeping him on his toes, language wise, but he's getting paid by the word, in most cases. Although it's a decent living, for once I'm the one with money in this relationship, as Edward has decided to live without the cushion of his trust fund. (With the exception of airfare, of course.)

Some nights, he'll crawl into bed late, agonizing over what synonyms in English will best hold true to the feeling of the original Italian. This is an especially fun conversation for me when Edward's translating romance novels. The real bodice rippers sound particularly moving in Italian, and listening to Edward list Italian synonyms for thrust never gets old.

Edward, dramatically reading the really steamy bits in his most ridiculous Italian accent isn't bad either. It typically has one of two outcomes, laughing so hard our stomachs hurt or making out on our couch.

In bed this morning, I keep my eyes closed for another few minutes and wonder if I'll be able to convince Edward to make out with me for awhile before he gets on his scooter and zips downtown to his offices.

Probably not. The man really loves that vehicle.

Like a true Roman, he got himself a scooter only a day after we moved in and he'd always be tooling around on it if he had his way. I prefer to walk, and when he does manage to talk me into riding on the back with him, I have to keep my eyes closed the whole because everyone here drives like they're invincible.

"Rise and shine, Isabella." Edward reappears, bringing the delectable smell of coffee with him. He's sipping maté out of a gourd this morning, but the mug in his hand is for me. I stretch up a hand for it, but he keeps it just out of my reach.

"Edward," I whine, but that only makes him laugh.

"If you get out of bed, then you can have coffee." He very helpfully tosses a t-shirt in my face, only handing over the mug after I pull it on over my head and sit up fully at the edge of the bed.

"It's not fair that I have to get up when you get up," I mutter, blowing on my coffee and letting the steam from it billow into my face. I might not be able to sleep later than seven a.m. these days, but I need at least 2 hours of lounging around time before I feel prepared for the day, and lingering in bed far less appealing without Edward in it. "I don't have a class on Fridays until noon."

"You were the one that made me promise to get you up this morning, remember?" He joins me on the edge of the bed. He bumps his shoulder into mine, and between the smell of coffee and Edward's cheery mood, I become a little less cranky and a little more willing to be awake.

"Yeah, that was dumb."

"I thought you wanted to get the last of those papers graded so you'll have the weekend free to spend with Rosalie and Emmett."

It's been years since I've seen Rose, although we've done a pretty decent job staying close between emails and Skype. She and Emmett are still in Madrid. They just bought an apartment, so it looks like they are planning to stay, and Edward and I promised to come check out their new home soon, but Rose insisted on them visiting us first.

Neither have actually been to Italy, somehow, and I'm excited to play host for once, to drag them to all my favorite restaurants and all my favorite museums. I'm going to point out everything ancient in this beautiful city and get Rose drunk on cheap, delicious, Italian wine.

"Fine," I admit, sighing, "you're right. You're right. Thank you for waking me up."

I kiss the corner of Edward's mouth, and he smiles down at me, soft and fond. I am even more willing to be awake, with Edward looking at me like that.

We sip our caffeinated beverages in silence for a few minutes, the sounds of the city filtering in through the cracked window. A horn honks. A scooter revs its engine. A couple of men talk every loudly and very passionately about something on the sidewalk below our window.

"Are you going to be done in time to come with me to pick them up at the airport?" I ask when my coffee is gone.

"I should be," Edward says, tucking my hair behind my ear. "Assuming my boss actually lets me have the next week off and doesn't give me anything new and urgent."

I grin. "You're their favorite employee."

Edward actually blushes. "I'm just the new guy."

"You're their shining star."

"Bella," he says, rolling his eyes.

"You're the fastest, more thorough translator. That's why they're giving you more novels and fewer process documents."

"Romance novels. I'm not translating Kafka over here."

"Plus, you're fluent in more languages than anyone else."

"I am pretty good at it, aren't I?"

"Yeah," I say, wrapping my arms around him. He still looks a little surprised by this, as if a part of him doesn't totally believe that he can be good at things outside of what his father always wanted for him. Like he's still not sure that he can succeed all on his own.

Good thing I'm here, to remind him every day.

"You're really, really good."

After we have breakfast and get dressed, Edward sweet-talks me into getting on the back of the damned scooter. The ride is less stressful than usual because campus has less traffic than the surrounding streets.

When he pulls up in front of the English building, I hop off and remove my helmet, slinging it over my elbow by the chinstrap.

"See," says Edward, stroking between the handlebars of the scooter like the thing is a pet, like it's alive and deserves affection for being such a good girl. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"I admit, rides through campus are almost tolerable."

"You like it." Edward grins at me, with that crooked, cocky smirk that hasn't changed at all since the day I met him, on a faraway beach on the other side of the equator. Continents and years away from that day when seventeen -year old Edward collapsed beside me in the sand, and he's still grinning at me. And that grin is still enough to make my stomach flip.

We say goodbye with lazy, comfortable kisses, Edward still sitting on his scooter and me leaning over him. Behind us is a real university building, where I teach college students to carry on coherent conversations in English.

Tonight, we'll meet our friends at the airport, and we'll take them around the city that's currently our home. After dinner, we'll go back to the apartment we share, and we'll wrap ourselves around each other in our bed. We'll get to sleep in a little in the morning, and maybe I'll wake Edward up with my mouth before we go and meet Rose and Emmett for breakfast and a day of playing tourist. Maybe I'll just flee the sun pouring in through our window by hiding my face in his shoulder.

Over Christmas break, we'll fly back to Washington to see Charlie and Alice and all our friends there. Esme already has plans to join us. Carlisle has no similar plans, for which Edward and I are both grateful.

We'll get on these planes together, and we'll come home together, done with our teary, heart -wrenching goodbyes.

This is our life now, and we might not stay in Rome for more than a year or two, but wherever we end up, it's going to be together, always.

So it looks like this is going to be my last Twilight story. It's been so delightful. Thank you all for reading, and for sticking with me, and for making all the years I've written these characters so wonderful.

If you want to stay in touch, my URL on tumblr is jaxington. And I'm still writing fanfiction for different fandoms over at AO3 under the same name.

Thank you so much for reading.