My eyes flew open.

“Oh my God” I breathed aloud. A high pitched melodic chuckle sounded from across the room.

“Edward’s right.” She commented as she stood and crossed to my bed. “You do talk in your sleep.”

I blushed.

“And you-” She poked my nose playfully with her tiny finger “are much more excited about this wedding than you let on You must have said ‘I do’ about ten times since I’ve been here!”

I blushed harder and struggled to change the topic.

“How long have you been here?”

“About an hour. It took a lot of effort on my part to get Edward to leave. He wasn’t very happy with me, but he’ll get over it soon enough.”

I smiled, to picture tiny Alice forcing Edward out of bed and out the window was an absurd thought.

“Oh Bella!” Alice grinned, “you are going to look so beautiful tonight.”

Oh God. Tonight… not even tonight, actually, it was more like this afternoon. 2 o’ clock, to be exact. I threw a brief glance at the clock on the wall and my stomach suddenly became filled with butterflies. It was 10 now. 4 hours.

So many questions I had for Alice, about things she had foreseen about the wedding.

“Alice, can I ask you something…..well, actually a few things?”

“Yes.” she replied warily.

“Is Renee going to be there?”

“Yes.”

“Is Charlie going to be there?”

“Yes.”

“Jacob?” I knew the answer was a no as soon as I asked. If he was going to be there, Alice would not have been able to see it. He must have changed his mind about attending, and I was much more upset about that then I should have been. I didn’t blame him though.

She shook her head to respond to the question that I had already worked out the answer to and then she changed the subject.

“Charlie is waiting for you downstairs.”

“Crap.” I muttered. Charlie’s teary and heart-felt apology last night was awkward enough while I was faking sleeping, I couldn’t imagine how much worse it would be if I had to be coherent and responsive to it a second time

I grimaced and descended the stairs.

Charlie was in the kitchen sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. A creaking floorboard gave away my presence and I froze as he turned around to face me. I ran through the scenarios in my mind. Maybe I dreamt his apology and he was really just waiting to scream at me some more, or maybe he was going to be all mushy and supportive again. As his eyes met mine I tried to study his expression for some sort of hint as to what to expect, but nothing could have prepared me for what he did. In fact, it wasn’t until he was across the room, enveloping me in a tight bear-hug that I even realized what was going on myself. My jaw dropped in astonishment. Wow, he was actually sticking with this.