from chapter four: when they attend emmett's halloween party

When Edward finds Bella on the patio, he's already too drunk. Earlier in the evening, he was convinced she wasn't going to show—Emmett had said she never does.

"You got a thing for the girl next door, Cullen?" he had teased him as they were putting Mrs. McCarty's valuables in the spare bedroom upstairs. Edward considers confessing to Emmett but he knows he will tell Rose and then Rose will tell her cronies and he just wants to avoid that situation completely.

He couldn't help but wait by the door, trying to mask his eagerness as people began to filter in. But as time wore on, he started drinking more and more to mask his disappointment. Jasper was joking around with him for a while and that brought his mood up until he disappeared out back. Jessica Stanley replaced him and at that point, Edward was trying to stop thinking about Bella Swan. Jessica is tipsy off of hard lemonade and is asking him to walk her upstairs to the bathroom. She stumbles on one of the stairs and he knows that he can't risk her falling—he would feel incredibly guilty and he doesn't really have anything against her, she's just annoying. So he helps her up the rest of the stairs and waits for her outside the bathroom when Tyler Crowley and the sophomore he's dating are blocking his view of the stairs.

Edward taps his fingers anxiously as Tyler and Kayla or Kate or whoever she is pull him into Emmett's room, Jessica trailing sloppily behind. Between the four of them, the rum is gone within an hour and Edward is feeling less upset about Bella Swan being a no-show. The group makes their way downstairs, Jessica clinging to Edward and when they get to the living room, Tyler trips over a cord and one of the speakers go flying, hitting the floor with a crash. Drunk and giggly, Edward works as fast as he can to leave the scene of the crime, Jessica still holding him tightly. They pass Emmett on the way out the back door and he just shakes his head at them. Rose isn't far behind and she raises an eyebrow at the way Jessica's pink fingernails are locked around his arm.

The cool air feels so good; Edward lets out an elated breath.

And then he sees Bella. She's standing alone on the patio, a cup in her small hand and her hair windblown. Edward wants to run his fingers over her pink cheeks and ask her about her day but he's too far away to do that. Instead he grins and calls her name. He can't see anything else but her and once he reaches her, he can't stop himself from throwing an arm around her. He can blame it on his drunkenness later, but right now he just needs to touch her.

Edward can admit later that he is obnoxious during the conversation that follows and he'll feel a little bad about the way he sends Jessica away but he needs this moment with Bella outside of a classroom. They sit down on a lawn chair, much to Edward's relief, and he has so much he wants to tell her, his head in her lap and her hands in his hair.

He wants to tell her that he thinks about her all the time, that he has pages and pages in his sketchbook devoted to the way her eyes look when she's teasing him and the way she bites her lip when she's concentrating. He wants to ask her what she thinks of Egon Schiele, one of his favorite artists and his biggest inspiration. He wants to know if she can sing and if she listens to the Weepies and what color her bedroom walls are.

Instead he sighs her name, wishing it could be enough.

And then he asks the question that's been burning in his chest for the last two months.

"Why do you like art so much?" he hears himself say but he's already drifting, he says more but he can't remember.

Her answer rings in his ears though, as he falls asleep, her voice is clear and soft and stuck in his head.

"Art helps me find things I've lost."

When he wakes up hours later, he's alone and cold on the lawn chair, though a blanket has been thrown over him. Jasper is kicking his shoe.

"Hey sleeping beauty," he drawls and Edward squints at him though the darkness. Alice is tucked into Jasper's side, yawning.

"What's happening?" Edward asks, disoriented and still a little bit drunk. "Where's Bella?"

"Her light is on," Alice says, pointing to the house next door.

They don't even try to stop Edward as he moves in the direction of the faint glow coming from the window at the front of the house.

"Wait," Alice calls. "Call her, don't wake her dad."

She gives him Bella Swan's phone number before she disappears with Jasper around the other side of the house.

He punches in the numbers and waits for it to ring.