Just another hs story, but not really, since Bella's the one telling it and she's in her early twenties now.

Many, many thanks to my awesome friends who listen to me talk all day about the stuff I'm writing – my beta Nina, Tracy, Indira, Belle, denverpopcorn, Becklyn, Tor, Anya, Helenah, Michele, and probably everyone on Twitter.

I don't own Twilight

Your once and future lover has made himself a home

Rives

Life is made up of moments. If I could go back to a single moment when everything was perfect, when I was truly happy, I'd go back to that morning in New York, when Edward snuck into the hotel room I had been sharing with his mother. Esme was already downstairs, ready for breakfast and tours and street pretzels and shows. I had begged for the morning off, and Edward had ten minutes which he turned into twenty, thirty, until his parents gave up and let him stay behind.

That morning, everything was right. We were so far away from Forks, from eyes and ears and honey-hued legs and voices that kept me up way into the night. That morning, Edward made love to me for the very first time. I don't think I've rewritten history or retouched it with fantasies and dreams and ruffles and giggles and prettiness. They were all there with the January sun so, so bright, and his hair so soft, and our skin so damp with sweat and the wetness kisses leave behind. I remember thinking—this isn't what sex is supposed to be, but wouldn't it be nice to be wrong? It didn't have that rhythm, it lacked the guilt, nothing felt like it should be kept a secret, or shared with everyone with the kind of pride that's always made me a little sick. I felt like a child, and I was a child, but a child who felt like a kid on an endless summer afternoon with her favorite friends, just playing and laughing and knowing maybe this ends, but not now—the sun is still out and it stays out late in the summer. That's how it felt, and it was familiar, because I had over fifteen years of summer afternoons spent with Edward to remember, relive, eventually forget, but not because I wanted to... Some memories just fade, and it takes a word or song or smell to bring them back years later, and when one of them comes back like that, sometimes you decide it's one you want to keep.

Or you write about it, because I think that's why writers write, and why they are. Some thoughts or words are that special, or if they're not, they have potential. And you're greedy and want to keep them somewhere, make them real, tangible, give them life.

But I'm not a writer. I just think the words; I don't put them down anywhere or give them form. If they go, they go. If they stay, I can think about them again.

I think about how he got up, and how I tried to keep him there, but he was wearing no clothes to grab onto, no waistband to pull on, and my hold on him was weak and brief and it made him laugh. He just wanted to see if he could turn down the heat. He couldn't. It's okay, I told him, the heat will just make us dizzier, and dizzy is good. But he wasn't dizzy. It was just me. And I think ultimately, when it came down to it, that was the problem.

XxXxX

I act like decades have passed, but that's not the case. And not much has happened since that morning. Just the usual—college, grad school, internships. Boyfriends who were never really boyfriends, friends who were not always friends. New homes—and that's a term use a little loosely, because I consider any place "home" if I have a bed there, some books, and, most importantly, a cord for my laptop. New cities, of course, including two years in the city with the bright morning light that was too harsh for January. Or just too harsh in general.

And now I'm home again, which is probably why I'm thinking about him at least twice as much as I usually do. I'm back in the house my father bought for my mother. The one she took care of like it was her second child—sometimes like it was her first. It's a beautiful house, but not beautiful enough for some of us. Not everyone wants to be in a place where everything has a voice and a story to tell. Like the stairs that lead up to the room where Edward first kissed me. The door Dad shut quietly behind him the night Royce King came back. The phone Mom dropped days later. The same one. I want to understand how she's kept it, how she uses it every day.

I would have thrown it out. I was only seventeen then, and I wasn't allowed to make decisions like that—the phone wasn't my property. But I look at it now and it's old and scratched, and it's in my hand, and I hate everything it represents. I picture myself hurling it against the wall, and this makes me laugh. The wall doesn't deserve that. If I had better aim I'd try throwing it against the picture of the three of us, or the one to its left, of the little boy and the little girl who had smiles so big his dad used to say it hurt to look straight at us. But I'd never do it, because that little boy was the best thing in my life, and my memories of him are always bright and happy and nothing is his fault.

I know… short chapter. The next one is longer, and I'll have it up soon. Share your thoughts if you have any. Thanks so much. I've missed you guys.

mwah