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LadySharkey1 rocks my world by being the most amazing, kick-ass beta I could ever imagine.

Prologue

The first time I was forced to listen to The Talk I was twelve years old and only hours into my first period.

Embarrassing!

Still traumatized by the sudden onset of blood, my mom—hippie extraordinaire who believes that people should be just as free to talk about their bodily functions as they were about the weather—sat me down to reassure me that I wasn't bleeding to death. Then, as if that wasn't enough, she proceeded to tell me all about penises and vaginas and the disgusting things she and my dad were up to when I thought they were sleeping.

Cycles.

Tampons.

Sperm.

Condoms.

I was in shock!

Needless to say, I decided right then and there to not date boys.

And I was definitely never having sex!

Oh, and I was never going to go into my parent's room again. Gross!

I would have preferred to stay happy in my ignorance and just continued to believe in storks that delivered those little baby girl or bouncing baby boy poop factories to the doors of happy parents worldwide.

Childhood dreams were better than messy realities.

And it wasn't even like I needed that talk or anything when I had Rose Hale—my best friend who was a two years older than me and a fountain of wisdom on all things concerning kissing and stuff.

Two years after telling me how babies were made, and a good three months into my first real relationship, my dad cornered me in an unexpected moment and had his say about boys. While my mom's speech had been disgusting because she'd used way too many examples from her own personal experiences—yuck—my dad's rant about 'teenaged dirtbags and their one-track minds' was equally unsettling. Especially since the dirtbag in question was my fourteen year old boyfriend, Edward Cullen. Who also happened to be my next-door neighbor and his godson, although my dad pretended like he was a villain trying to steal his daughter's virtue.

Trying like hell to protect my sanity during his one-sided conversation, I faked paying attention while humming Hollaback Girl in my head and looked for the quickest, safest exist strategy.

As it turned out, I really should have been paying attention, though, because another two years later, I turned into the most epic teenage cliché of my time.

The teen mom.

Yes, the girl who'd said she'd never have sex was sixteen, pregnant, and everything else you'd find when watching MTV. Man, did I hate being one of those girls!

It wasn't just the fact that my baby girl was unplanned or that it really messed with all the plans me and Edward had been carefully crafting our futures around. It was the judging looks and the whispers I got whenever my ever-growing belly went into town. They were the kinds of whispers that are merely disguised as whispers but are actually intended for you to hear.

Luckily, my pregnancy hormones soon managed to garner such a reputation that after a couple of weeks most of the townsfolk were too damn scared of me to keep up their antics. Though my father did have quite a day job smoothing stuff over whenever I, and on occasion, my mom, flew off the handle.

The pasta sauce incident in the middle of the local 7Eleven had taken on almost mythical proportions in the small town gossip over the years. Let's just say that Mrs. Carter would never forget that day, either.

I was still proud of myself.

We made the most of it, though, redesigning our futures with the help of our amazing parents as we brought our little girl into the world. Charlotte Cullen—Charlie—had been my entire world from the moment I found out she was growing inside of me. When I got to hold her in my arms for the first time, I knew everything was going to be alright.

And I was right.

There was only one thing that had gone wrong along the way, though—one tiny blemish on my otherwise so perfect life.

Our relationship didn't survive.

Whether it was my stubbornness or his failure to communicate, I wasn't sure, but somewhere along the way, we grew apart. As we both struggled to combine parenting with our college educations—he was pre-med and I chose the culinary arts—somehow we lost sight of each other. From that point, it only took something so small and childish, and very insignificant, that we'd both forgotten what exactly happened to finalize our break up and turn us into another epic cliché.

A broken home.

Not that we were fighting all the time or anything. We just became roommates who happened to have a kid together.

For Charlie's sake, we put her needs before ours, even when our young minds didn't want to, and set rules both for her and ourselves that had managed to keep us talking. Somehow we even end up as friends in the end.

At least we didn't end up being exactly like an MTV show, thank goodness.

Not that my heart still didn't hurt, though, to know that he and I no longer belonged together.

The one thing that I had been missing in my life over the past couple of years was his love. But hopefully not for much longer, though. When he announced to his family that he'd managed to secure a residency spot at the local hospital and was moving back to Forks, Washington in Fall, there was only one thing I knew for sure.

That was my chance to win him back.

Thoughts?