It was almost like Edward could read her mind all along and had just pretended she was the exception to his gift. Picking the one thing that could possibly make Bella hesitate to saying yes, or to even say no. Waiting one or even two years was unbearable enough for a girl who didn’t even want to come close to that twenty year mark. She wanted to be changed and she wanted Edward to be the one to do it. Only the stupid vampire had his own condition or, well, his demand. Marriage. Engagement. The others were just requests. She says the words like she's the one under some direct order not to say them. They’re that hard for her.

He just didn't understand. He didn't grow up with Reneé for almost seventeen years. She wasn’t that girl. She wasn’t supposed to be girl from the small town who gets married right out of high school. Except that’s exactly what she was becoming. Just with a few minor differences. Like immortality, for one.

Eventually, Bella agreed but of course with some reluctance and some conditions of her own. Well, just the one. One that Edward still wouldn’t agree to unless after the whole do you take this man, etc etc. Who ever would have thought that a century-old vampire would have more morals than a human. That was where Bella relearned the meaning of the word “compromise.” Matrimony first. His demand. Sex as a human, as Bella, second. Her demand.

So. Marriage. He promised her something small, something fast, and something that definitely wouldn’t attract much attention. They’d run off to Vegas and have it done before anyone else was the wiser. Except there was one problem. Alice and her visions that always seem to hurt Bella’s plans. Goodbye Vegas chapel and worn jeans.

A big, fancy wedding was the last thing Bella wanted, but she agrees. Partly, yes, to make everyone else happy but also because she knows that they deserve this from her. Charlie, Reneé, Alice, and especially Edward. Even when he told her the deal was off and she could have had him right then. Bella had made up her mind that she wanted to to this the right way. Her right way.

Bella Swan was going to get married, have sex with a vampire, and become immortal. In that order.

At eighteen years old, I can positively say that I've been in love twice. Say what you want about someone my age not being old enough to know what love is because your opinion simply won't matter to me. The first time, with him, it was fast. Not weeks after knowing him, or at least weeks after he stopped acting as if he hated my existence, I knew I was in love with him. It was the intense kind of love that you can't help but be wrapped up in completely. It hurt when he wasn't there and everything was perfect when he was.

So what if he was a vampire? Apparently, I have this thing about having danger following me around so I guess I decided to turn the tables and follow danger around instead. I was in love with a vampire and I never wanted anyone else. He was my world.

Until he physically pulled himself out of it and left.

I spent months being a zombie. Funny, right? I, the human girl who was in love with a vampire, became the dead zombie after he decided that I was better off and safer without him. Kind of ironic if you ask me, but what do I know? I'm only human.

So many months passed and even though the rest of the Cullens stayed in Forks, there was still a huge piece of me gone that ached all the time without him here. Like I was constantly trying to hold myself together so that I wouldn't literally fall apart. I started getting out of my zombie stage when Charlie, he's my dad, threatened to send me to Florida. I didn't want to leave. Maybe not because I knew this as home, but I didn't want to leave the places we'd spent together. His family was still here and even though being around them was painful sometimes, it was still a part of him that he left behind. Just like me. If I was really ever a part of him at all.

Jake was like the sun in my pathetic life after that. That boyish smile that I couldn't help but smile back at whenever he turned it on me. He helped me find a new kind of Bella that I never was able to be with .. Edward. A younger Bella, a more reckless Bella. It started out that I was riding motorcycles and wanting to jump off cliffs because I heard his voice in my head. That it was a way for him to be there to tell me what to do and protect me when he wasn't really there to do so.

The day I jumped off a cliff, no it wasn't to kill myself despite popular belief, I found out that I had a new protector. I think I'd known it all along, but this was different. Jake could be there to help me enjoy being a little more carefree, but he would always be there to make sure I didn't wind up dead because I guess I have a problem with doing stupid things or something.

For weeks he'd been telling me how he felt about me and I'd constantly told him that it wasn't anything more than friendship for me. Jacob Black was my best friend in every way and I wasn't whole without him. I was me again when I was with him. But then I finally realized I was in love with him too. That he wasn't just my best friend Jacob. That he was my Jacob.

Oh yeah, and he has this thing where he's a werewolf. Nobody said I couldn't stop following danger around, right?

Ever since she was a little girl, Bella has had the problem with being a klutz. No matter how hard she tries to avoid catastrophe, she ends up in the middle of it somehow. The first day of school in Forks proved that much when she sat beside her new lab partner, Edward Cullen. He'd acted as if she was some sort of demon about to strike and Bella had no idea what she'd done to the guy she'd never even spoke to at all.

Turned out that she had that backwards. Edward? Was a vampire. Yeah, in the literal sense of the word. Immortal, guy who drinks blood vampire. Except he didn't life in a coffin and garlic really had no affect on him whatsoever. Bella was so attracted to Edward, but how could she not be? To say that he was beautiful would be the biggest understatement of the century. Just like the rest of his family. They were all so amazingly beautiful and those velvet voices and skin that.. well. He was pretty. And Bella was in love with him.

Only the fairytale didn't end there. Of course not, because this fairytale wasn't so much of a fairytale as it was a horror story. Complete with blood thirsty vampires and other family members who instinctively tried to kill her at the drop of her blood. In the fairytale, the prince saves the girl. In Bella's personal horror story, the monster she was so in love with breaks her heart and runs away.

Not long after her birthday it went sour. He left and made it clear that he would never be coming back. Like he never existed. Yeah. Right. Months of just existing went by and it didn't go unnoticed. Eventually, she was able to pull herself out with the help of another mystical creature. A werewolf. Go figure.

Jacob brought Bella out of her apathy and finally was able to become herself again. A couple months went by and she realized that the vampire wasn't the only one who could own a piece of her heart. She was in love with a werewolf. Jake always told her that he would never hurt her. That he would never leave her. After hearing the same thing from Edward, she wasn't sure what to think about the words. He'd said he would never hurt her, but he committed the ultimate crime in leaving and hurt her in the worst way possible. But then when Bella curls up in Jacob's warm instead of cold arms, she believes him. He's her protector and best friend. He's never going to leave.