"Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets."

— Arthur Miller

God, when did everything change so much? Gone is the playground; buildings now scrape stars from the sky and yet they cannot hold them, aching. The small diner is empty, a sign for another office block already plastered across the once proud establishment that was powered by youthful smiles of those who lingered on the way home from school. The man with the hollow smile does not search her eyes knowingly at the corner, vanished. She finds herself missing the almost paralyzing understanding in their distant connection. She almost wishes she’d spoken to him, even once, but he’s gone.

For the twentieth time in the past ten minutes, she wonders what she’s looking for here. Nothing’s the same. Hell, she’s not even the same. She’s worked so very hard not to be. Faceless suits look across her as she jostles her way through the downtown rush that never used to exist here. It’s all too easy to forget herself and exploit the anonymity of their interactions, or lack of. No one will recognise her here; no one will want to. She’s not sure whether that renders her relieved or heartbroken – the fact that no one would remember her face.

But no, she chose this. And still, the weak, but ever strengthening voice in the recesses of her mind questions why she’s returned now, returned to the town she fled from in order to escape the familiarity she now sought. She tried so hard to lose herself and only now fears the yearning, the longing, to be found. She shakes her head. If only she could abandon this desire as easily as she abandoned herself, then she’d be just fine.

A boy with a smile all mischief and charm casts a wink at her across the milling crowd, breaking both the comforting and frustrating anonymity of the city. She smiles vacantly back, remembering the French boy who murmured wickedly sweet nothings into her flesh and lit a fire within her, melting the icy veneer she held her body captive with. Neither one of them spoke a word of each other’s language, speaking the Braille of fingertips and tongues. She thought him lovely, roguish smile and lowered eyes that spoke of candles and tangled sheets. She had tried to love him, tried so hard that sometimes she felt she almost did love him, but each of the murmurs, all the arching of her body lasted only a moment, and when the climax faded and the sweat dried, she realised he didn’t make her feel as much as the fantasies she coveted of the boy she never had. And so, for the first and last time, she heard him speak in English.

”You I adore, but love I cannot when you cannot love yourself.”

And so she left him with a kiss brushed against his sunlit stubble and thinking of another.

The boy is no longer there when she comes back to reality and she walks further into the city, avoiding the cigarette butts and chewing gum littered colourfully against the grey. With a surprising bubbling of laughter, she reads the garish sign of the warehouse in front of her:

Newton’s Outdoors Supply Store

A weary, automated chime signals her entrance, and she looks around dizzily at the store, both so similar and contrary to her youth. Everything is bigger and more and brighter, almost irritatingly so, but she feels a small surge of pride for her school friend. As if summoned by her thoughts, a man looks out from behind the counter and smiles at her. His face is harder, having lost its boyish roundness, but his eyes still retain the warmth and friendliness of years ago. Mike clears his throat, and she interrupts her blatant staring, smiling back at him.

“Can I help you?” he prompts kindly.

She stumbles over her words. “Uh, no. I just wanted to check…to see how everything looked. Different.” 

She waits for the recognition to flare in his eyes, but it doesn’t. She tries to congratulate the success of her change from who she was, so much so that Mike doesn’t recognise her, but it rings hollow and weak in her mind.

“Oh, well, okay. Just call me if you need anything.” He gives her a concerned glance before returning to the counter.

She wanders around the store, chuckling quietly as she spies the step ladder she so frequently stumbled from during her school years and at the slight dip in the wall where Mike landed after trying to catch her from falling. She remembers the number of times he asked her out (fourteen) and how awful she felt for wanting the boy that didn’t want her. And yet Mike doesn’t remember her.

Every now and again, she glances at the counter and sees him quickly clear his throat and busy himself tidying papers or typing something on the computer, his brow furrowed. She smiles sadly to herself, but can’t resist saying goodbye to him. He was always nice; far too nice for the likes of her.

He smiles back at her, confused, and she bites her lip to stop the looming pressure behind her eyes. He utters a small oath before speaking,

“Bella? Bella Swan?”

She freezes, illogically happy, and watches the smile stretch across his face.

“Holy hell. Bella Swan. I never- Where the hell have you- Oh, my God!” he grips his hair and stares slack jawed at her, laughing breathlessly.

She can’t help but laugh with him. She never realised how much she craved this history with people.

“Yeah, I’m back,” she says quietly. Mike reaches suddenly across the counter and pulls her into a hug so awkward and exuberant that it feels as if she’s seventeen again.

She likes the way it sounds, so she rolls her tongue and tastes it again. “I’m back.” 

---

He was just an ordinary boy, with ordinary loves (warm sodas, car engines, sleeping in late) and ordinary hates (dishonesty, asparagus, maths), but to her this was what made him extraordinary. He was always Jacob, comfortable in his skin and never feeling the need to be anything but. And to Bella, who had never felt at home with herself, this was exceptional.

She knew he wanted her - loved her - but she was so vain and scared that she took him for granted. She took him, took in his affection, blurred the lines and danced out from his fingertips every time he reached. She feared the day the stars would disappear from his eyes, replaced by an apathy she could not - would not - deal with. And so she pushed him away, whilst pulling and dragging him closer, down into herself until he was consumed. But the thing about being consumed is that it doesn’t last too long.

So he chose her contrast, and at first she didn’t understand the tight tense line of her mouth, didn’t recognise the acerbic clenching of her stomach or the slight breathlessness that clenched her heart. Until it was too late. She was both green and jaded, wallowing. Cursing his blindness, but really cursing her own. Her own foolishness. The distance was swallowing her whole. She’d never appreciated, or registered, the nights when he’d stay on the phone until she fell asleep, never missed the drumming of his fingers on her knee, never noticed the exuberant and slightly ridiculous huskiness of his laugh, never registered the arch of his eyebrow before he’d tease her or the way he always pointed with his ring finger and never the index. Never registered him. Not until he wasn’t hers. Had she even known him?

He became a shade, a washed out parody of his previous splendour and life. Where was the passion? Where was the boy that spoke in philosophies and poetry and made her cry from the passion of his words, even if she didn’t truly understand them? Where was the smile she knew she’d earned when it caressed her skin, painting warmth so that she had to celebrate with him, because he would never fake it. Maybe she had taken that, too.

She wanted to hate the girl with buttercup hair and the torrential rain of her smile, but she couldn’t, because the girl made him happy. There really wasn’t enough to the girl to hate, her personalities derived from the Country Living magazines that Bella’s mother purchased when she was in one of her ”domestic” moods. Only in the darkest of her moments could she truly find it in her to hate, and even then it was hate’s weak cousin – envy. She did what Bella couldn’t and Bella envied her for it. Didn’t she ever get tired from lifting that smile all the time? Didn’t being nice just get plain boring? And since when had he liked nice girls? But this wasn’t really the question she was asking, and everybody knew it. She kept telling herself that everything would be fine, that he’d get bored and come back to her.

There were no longer any discussions of life and passion, just the English homework due next week and the shallow questioning after one another’s weekends. And then he began the monosyllabic answers to her questions and the God damn shrugging of his shoulders that made her want to slap him. It seemed the more she pushed, clung, the farther he was from her. And she couldn’t stand it. She tried being nonchalant, teasing, sarcastic, cold, but the only emotion that she could taste was bitterness. It suited her well. Too well. And then he stopped talking to her altogether. And all she could feel was anger.

---

“You’re jealous.” It was the most personal thing he’d said to her in five months. He stood in the draft from the open window, and she tried to ignore the bead of moisture quivering upon his parted lips.

She scoffed. “And you’re delusional.” But she’d taken too long to answer, and she’d breathed a little too much into the syllables, the edges of her joke smoothed by the anxiety in her tone.

He just looked at her. And those God damn eyes saw right through her.

 “I’m over it. I’m out of here,” she muttered, shoving past him only to trip on his words. 

“It’s always like that with you, isn’t it, Bella? You’ve always got to put up that shield to ‘protect yourself’, avoiding the God damn truth. How can you not see how much it’s breaking you apart? How much it’s breaking me apart?” 

The colour rose in her cheeks, and she whirled on him, unable to hide it any longer. 

“Oh please, you’ve been avoiding me for months! Far too busy with your perfect little romance. I’m so sick of your pretenses, just ditch me already! Tell me you’re sick of me! Just have the guts to do something.”

She could feel the sneer warping her face, so she pulled it down, kept it and etched it deep into her soul. 

“Fine. You want that? Really?” 

She almost told him “no.” Almost. Because she could feel that some way or the other, this could break them or make them. His eyes snapped to hers, and she saw the end. 

“You’re dragging me down. Everything is so much with you. There are no in-betweens. I need some simplicity. I need to talk to someone who isn’t all fire and darkness and spirit. She gives me that. She gives me a comfort and ease you never did. It’s just not in you, Bells. And I can’t begrudge it, because that’s part of you, part of my love. I need to let you go, and I can’t when everything I breathe is you. You’re not mine, and you never were, so please stop pretending any different.” 

A staggered breath. Everything burned, a deep blood red seeping into her pulse. And she hated him in that moment. She hated his assumptions, and she hated his words and she hated his outstretched hand that directly contradicted the supposed need for distance.  

“Please leave.”

“Bel-“

“Get out. You want distance? Hopefully, the rest of our lives should be enough distance for you.” 

And those were the last words she spoke to him.

---

And so they drifted. She went to Paris, and he stayed. Charlie begged her not to leave, offered his services and shotgun to shoot the boy, and Renee, words fluttering, exclaimed that she’d be on the next flight to come and bring her home. She declined both and handed Charlie a folded note before dragging her suitcase to the curb. She secretly hoped Jacob would come, then. Demand that she stay, kiss her, his breath becoming hers, declare his love. But that was another story, something she’d heard in a song or read in a book. As she closed the cab door, she felt a terrible compression of her ribs and closed her eyes the entire ride to the airport. And then she was gone.

It was all very Casablanca, her desire to go to Paris. The city confided secrets in its cobbled streets and small alcoves that witnessed thousands of forms of love and heartache. Her small apartment in the seventh agrandissement, smelled of cats and suited her just fine. She made a few friends besides her French boy, Romain: Antoine the one armed piano player, who played honky tonk at the small bar, women half his age doting upon him due to his debonair smile and devastating charm. Adele, the aspiring actress that danced along the streets of Paris, an umbrella in her hand, serenading strangers and inquiring after their day. And Rachelle and Pierre, the strawberry shortcake twins of the war widow downstairs. The widow whose only signs of life were the screams that haunted the midnight hour.

But despite these friends, she was constantly hounded by memories from a different time, across the ocean.

And so she returned.

---

She winds the window down, despite the cold frigid air, just to smell the salty tang of the ocean that whips around her, as if chastising her for being gone so long. She remembers the old, driftwood stump they claimed as theirs, the surface worn with the imprints of other teenagers just like them. She wonders whether it’s still there. She wonders whether Jacob ever thinks of it. Ever thinks of her. The horizon greets her, the ocean a turbulent chaos surrounded by the cliffs that now, she cannot believe she ever jumped from. And for fun, too. A few keen surfers paddle out over the crest and disappear from view as she turns down a road still familiar to her. She stops out front of the old, timber frame house, half expecting the fluttering of a curtain at the window and a youthful Jacob to come bounding from the front door, all gangly limbs that don’t translate well into movement, burnished skin and contagious grins. But there’s no movement at the window, and the front door remains closed, so she steps from the car and walks slowly to the porch. She holds her breath as she attempts to knock against the screen mesh, knuckles scraping slightly. No answer. Walking around the side, her heart clenches as she registers the boarded up garage. Another phantom Jacob flashes through her mind.

She treads back to the front porch, and knocks another time, not expecting an answer.

“I hope you enjoy disappointment if you think anyone’s going to answer that door.” Bella turns sharply to find Leah Clearwater smoking lazily as she regards her through narrowed eyes, a cynical twist to her mouth.

“The Blacks are gone?” Bella says nervously. Leah never did like her much, or anyone for that matter.

“I would think that was obvious, Swan.” Leah sighs melodramatically, rolling her eyes before taking another drag of her cigarette.

“Any idea where they might have gone?” 

Leah shrugs, almost too casually, before saying, “Not really. Billy died a few years back, and Jacob kinda took off before that. No one’s been in that house for a while now.”

Leah levels her gaze, eyes calculating, and Bella can see the unasked questions brewing in them.

She quickly drops her gaze, wanting to leave, but not wanting to let go of the last link to Jake.

“How are you?” she inquires cautiously.

Leah gives one, sardonic laugh, “Oh, just great. Just peachy.”

Bella stands awkwardly, not knowing what to say.

“Emily’s pregnant,” she says coolly, pain crossing her face before she smooths it into remission.

“Oh.”

“Oh, indeed,” murmurs Leah, before her eyes dart quickly back to Bella.

“You look different,” she says, taking in Bella’s short hair.

“You don’t,” Bella replies unthinkingly. And it’s true, she’s still terrifyingly beautiful, her face reading like a tragedy written in the jaundiced tilt of her mouth and the disenchanted detachment of her eyes.

Leah laughs again, the sound empty.

“Every girl’s dream, right? Four years pass and you still look the same. Unchanging.” Her voice breaks a little, but she quickly clears her throat.  “Why’d you come back?”

“I should have come back a long time ago,” Bella replies.

Leah smiles ruefully at her blatant dodging of the question. “What are you going to do now?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Sounds like a great plan you’ve got going there, Swan.”

Bella nods.

Leah shifts and looks at her shrewdly. “I know why you’re here. And I wish I could give you something, but I haven’t a clue where the hell he ran off to. If I did, I’d tell you. I don’t like stringing people along. Maybe Sam knows something.” Her face contorts as she says his name, and she looks across to the ocean.

“Thanks, Leah.”

Leah waves a hand at her dismissively, eyes still on the ocean.  “Don’t mention it. Let me know how it goes, that great plan of yours.”

---

The unabashed gloss of unshed tears in his eyes makes her embarrassed, and she awkwardly squeezes his shoulders before stepping back. He clears his throat, smoothing a moustache that’s more grey than brown now, and crams his hands into his front jean pockets, rocking on his heels.

“I’m glad you’re home, Bells. I’ve missed you.” The gruff sincerity of his voice makes her feel safe.

“Missed you too, Dad. It’s been a while.”

There’s a beat of silence that’s so Charlie and Bella that she almost laughs.

“So, how was the land of the frogs?” he says with a laugh.

“Good. I didn’t eat frog’s legs every day, though. Kinda disappointing at first,” she jokes.

“I’m sure.”

“Do you want me to cook you something?”

“God, I thought you’d never ask!”

It was like she’d never left.

---

She’s not sure how to broach the subject, but she figures it’s best done when he’s mellowed by a beer and a full stomach.  Bella perches awkwardly on the edge of the sofa, pretending to be interested in the strike out of some baseball player while Charlie mumbles his protest.

“Oh, come on! Bella could have hit that!” He sneaks a glance at her out of his periphery that he probably thinks is coy, and she rolls her eyes and smiles.

The game finishes half an hour later, and Charlie shuts off the television, tossing the remote into the depths of the sofa. And he wonders why he can never find it?

“I’m sorry about Billy, Dad.”

Charlie looks at her slowly, rubbing a hand along his jaw before looking at the ceiling.

“Yeah, me too,” he sighs, before looking at her knowingly. “Was there anything else you wanted to ask me, Bells?”

Charlie always was far too perceptive.

“And Jake?”

“I wish I had more for you. Last I heard, he told Sam he needed some time away from it all. I don’t know after that.”

“You think I should ask Sam?” 

“I think Sam’s your only bet.”

 ---

For the second time in two days, she finds herself on a porch in La Push, hand raised to knock against the edge of the screen door. This time someone answers, though. The uninterrupted smooth surface of Emily’s cheek greets her, face turned away as she opens the door.

“Sam! The stove!” she chuckles warmly, before shock flickers across the working side of her face. The scars seem to have faded slightly over the years, their deep rivulets sweeping the length of her left cheek.

“Oh, my gosh, Bella!” she exclaims, pushing the screen door open and attempting to hug Bella across the expanse of her rounded stomach.

Bella laughs  Emily always did know how to make her feel part of the family - and returns the hug carefully. Children, whether in the womb or not, always did make her feel nervous.

“Well, come in, come in!” she ushers excitedly. “Sam! You’ll never believe who’s here!”

Their home is small but welcoming, photos lining the walls of the short corridor, as Emily waddles before her.  Sam is hunched over the small stove, his tall frame looking ridiculous as he struggles to juggle various saucepans.

“Em, we really need to get a bigger kitchen. This is--“ he leaves his sentence hanging as he registers Bella’s hovering behind Emily “--impossible,” he breathes, the pots forgotten behind him.

“I told you that you’d never believe it!” Emily exclaims happily, placing a comforting hand to Bella’s forearm.

“It’s nice to see you, Sam.” She winces at her impersonal greeting, but this isn’t exactly a social call.

“A cup of tea, Bella?” Emily has already salvaged the overflowing saucepans and placed the kettle to boil.

“Um, no thanks. I was wondering if I could talk to you, Sam?” It doesn’t escape her notice that Sam has yet to say a word or to remove his incredulous eyes from her face.

He clears his throat quickly, lightly caressing Emily’s lower back. “Do you mind if I chat to Bella for minute, Em? We have some things to clear up.”

Emily, understanding as always, kisses him on the cheek and flashes a warm smile at Bella.  “Sure thing. Tea should be ready in fifteen.”

And then they’re outside and a tension has embedded itself without Emily’s cheerful demeanour to dispel it.

“You’re back,” Sam intones quietly.

“Yes. I don’t want to intrude, but I think you’re the only one who can help me.”

She knows he never really warmed to her, often warning Jake to distance himself from her, insisting that his feelings were far deeper than hers would ever be. Oh, the irony.

He nods.  “This is about Jacob,” he states, not even bothering to question her motives.

“Isn’t it always,” she jokes, but it falls flat.

Sam looks at her, and she almost wants to hide behind her hands, but she holds his gaze, needing him to understand.

“Look, I just want to talk to him.”

“It’s funny how life turns out sometimes, isn’t it? I mean, you can plan and promise all you want, but in the end it all comes down to life. You burn the dinner; ah well, that’s life. You lose your job, that’s life, too. You break someone’s heart: Is that just life? Or are we just making up excuses, palming off the blame so we feel better about ourselves?”

Sam’s voice is resentful, laced with self-loathing, and she can almost hear the breath of his thoughts.

Leah.

It’s then that she realises just how deep the poison runs in both Leah and Sam over the chaos that was their last days together. It isn’t just Leah that carries the hurt; it’s Sam, too.

“I guess you can see it anyway you want, but it doesn’t change anything regardless of who’s or what’s fault it is. The dinner’s still burnt, the job’s still lost and the heart’s still broken at the end of the day,” Bella says lowly.

Sam hums a quiet agreement or a contradiction, or something in between.

“Please, Sam. I just need to talk to him. I’m not going to hurt him. I’m not going to do anything but talk. Please,” she breathes, unabashedly pleading.

Her words sound needy and desperate even to her own ears, and she really hopes that Sam can’t read between the lines of her desperation and see the truth.

“Please. I need to talk to him. I haven’t seen him in so-“ the frantic tempo of her voice is abruptly cut off by Sam’s exclamation.

 “He’s married, Bella!”

Her world collapses.

“What?” she can barely breathe.

“He’s married, or was the last I heard. Happily married in Santa Fe,” he elaborates.

She knows it will only break her further, but she asks anyway. “Who?”

“Same girl as in high school. You knew her, right?”

“Yeah. I knew her.” 

I just never knew it would end like this.

---

As far as she sees it, she has two options:  Forget this. Forget she ever came back or even knew a boy named Jacob. Forget her past. Or two, go to Santa Fe and make amends in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, that will give her the closure she needs to move on.  She doesn’t know who she’s trying to fool, but for now it’s a good distraction.

Charlie isn’t happy as she packs her meagre belongings into the truck.

“Bells, don’t you think it’s time to move on? You’re young. You’re pretty and smart. Find a nice fella with no baggage and have fun. I know you love Jake, and I thought once upon a time you two’d end up together, but I think that time’s passed. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

It’s the longest string of syllables that may have ever exited Charlie’s mouth, so she gives him a watery grin.

“It’s okay, Dad. I’m a big girl. I just need a bit of closure, that’s all.”

“You never did tell me where he ended up,” Charlie queries warily.

She ignores the ribbons of memories past that constrict her breath and chokes out, “Married. Santa Fe.”

“Married? I thought he just needed a bit of space,” Charlie says bewilderedly, scratching his  head.

“Well, 2033 miles is a lot of space.”

And a lot of distance.

---

She’s circled his house nine times. White picket fence, mowed lawn and a wide verandah, she can hardly stand to look at. She leans her head against the wheel, dragging breaths pulled through the tight line of her mouth. One last glance at her solemn reflection in the mirror and she steps from the car, treading the paved path to the yellow door. Her hand hesitates on the knocker, another breath. Echo.

No reply.

She tries again and a confused sigh escapes her. Disappointment and relief. She walks away from the lovely house, trying to sear the image of the small child’s bicycle from her mind.

She can’t.

---

The bicycle swims to the forefront of her mind. Red, shiny and perfect. The car swerves as she bows over the wheel, great wracking sobs dragging from her mouth. They won’t stop. Because she’s mourning a death four years in the making, the death of a friendship and a love expected but never fulfilled. And she knows what they say; that to have loved and lost is better than to have never loved at all, but right now all she can wish is that she’d never loved him, that she’d never blurred those damn lines she guarded for so long. Because the pain she feels right now does not feel better than the ignorance of never loving him.

It feels as if she’s never going to breathe again.

---

Eventually her tears are exhausted, her shaking hands returning to the wheel. So preoccupied with trying to suppress the shuddering of her limbs, she almost doesn’t notice the small boy lifted to the sky by the russet skinned man with the honest grin. Her breath stops and she rubs the heels of her hands to her eyes, not sure if it’s her imagination.  

It’s him. A small sob of confused emotion escapes her as she watches the small boy’s face, flushed with colour, bury into the crook of Jacob’s shoulder, closing his eyes, angelic mouth upturned. She feels a never before acknowledged ache deep within her as she watches the large hand cover the crown of the little head, a kiss brushed at the temple. She remembers her vision she harboured over the years, the bobbing heads of two black haired children, their father’s grin and their mother’s eyes, as they hide behind her skirt, their father planting adoring kisses despite their squeals of protest. The vision fades, and she stares at the small hand clutching a fistful of ebony hair. She barely recognises him anymore. He’s not her Jacob, but it looks right. A calm settles over her then, acceptance granted by the little boy safely encased within the sanctuary of his father’s arms.

It’s then that she realises what it truly is to love.

And let go.

---

Years have passed. The Twenty First. College. The Wedding. The Christening. The Funeral.

A warm hand encases hers, and she takes in the blown glass eyes that have been there for the past fifteen years. A part of her sorrow lifts as she bestows a trembling kiss to the bow of his lips, borrowing his calm and swallowing his scent. Thumbs sweep under her eyes, another brush of his lips and she gains the strength she needs to open the door to her grief.

He doesn’t speak, doesn’t even flinch as her desperate hands create crescent moons upon his skin. Everything’s silent, and she distracts herself with the remembrance of the first time she saw those glass blown eyes.

He was the one she never would have predicted. Vibrant and unabashedly passionate. Uncontained in his love for life and those in it. She knew she was in trouble the second he flashed that wickedly innocent grin at her across the fray of twirling bodies, the lights dimming as she offered him her name and he offered her forever. Provocative where she was conservative, fearless where she was terrified, he drew her in and cast away the shadow of her past love, freeing her breath, except that she could never quite catch it when he was around. They were married within a year, Charlie reservedly accepting, Renee ecstatic and nine months later came the baby girl that blushed like her mother and would later make others blush like her father. The ache she felt those years before was satisfied, and now that baby girl was almost a woman. And her grandfather was gone. Her breath leaves her.

A brush of Edward’s fingertips across her cheek drags her back to the present, the fog of her grief smothering her save for the grip on his hand that she refuses to surrender.

“I think they want us to go in now,” he murmurs gently.

She nods, swallowing thickly.

She almost can’t believe the number of people that fill the small church. She recognises a few familiar faces: Mike, Jessica, Lauren, kind faced Angela hushing three small boys as they clamber to race between the pews, Ben’s amused smile faltering as she gestures exasperatedly after them. Bella makes a note to talk to her after the…after the ceremony. Renee flies to her, sobbing hysterically in the stone embrace of Bella’s arms.

“Oh, Bella baby. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” Bella can barely feel her arms around her, barely hear her voice as she sobs into her shoulder until Phil leads her away.

They sit down, and Bella falters in her stoic control of emotion as she hears Vanessa’s small voiced Mom, the grief etched into her faded eyes and trembling mouth breaking Bella down as Vanessa lays her head onto her shoulder, Edward pulling them both closer.

The ceremony is simple, honest and no fuss and so “Charlie: that Bella smiles. People offer their condolences as they leave, but Bella can’t even register their faces, all blurring in her vision, her only focus the clasping of her hands with her love and her daughter.

“Bella.”

Something grabs her in that one word, pulling her from the numbness that shrouds her. Dark eyes share her pain, drawing it from her, and she smiles at him, all the years and all the distance meaning nothing.

Edward gently squeezes her hand, eyes searching hers, and she kisses his cheek tenderly. He nods, quietly leading Vanessa away.

There’s silence for a moment, and then Jacob steps forward, softly enveloping her in an embrace so familiar that she aches with nostalgia, his hand smoothing her hair, their cheeks searching the comfort of skin. She sags, overwhelmed, and he murmurs her name mingled with broken apologies.

Suddenly, she can’t stop crying, tears bleeding from her eyes and trailing onto his cheeks. And he’s crying, too, but they’re not all tears of grief. Some reflect happiness at having found each other again after all these years, and those fight with the sorrow.

She pulls away eventually, mopping his face with a corner of her sleeve. He smiles sadly at her, and she smiles back.

“I’ve missed you, Bells.”

And there are things they have to talk about, or not talk about at all, but for that moment all of it can wait.

Because the hurt has been separated by enough time and enough distance that it no longer matters who dealt the final blow to their friendship that blurred the lines of love. There’s been enough everything so that now she can hold him without a part of her shying away or dying.

She smiles wistfully as she remembers all the memories, all the smiles, tears, laughter and pain that got them here – got them back in each other’s lives -- and holds him closer for a small moment before pulling away, rubbing at her eyes and smiling at the familiar watercolour of his face. Her Jake. She feels Edward lightly touch the back of her hand and he wipes the pad of his fingertips lightly under each of her eyes before entwining his fingers with hers. And so she turns to her past and introduces him to her present and future, sees them merge then, a clasping of hands.

And she realises that despite all that happened between them, she wouldn’t take back a thing, because look at what she has now.

Life. Love. Meaning.

Everything.