Completed Fic of the Week: 5/23 - 5/29

May 24, 2011

True Companion by bellamarie117
Review by anonymouslysufferingfromOCD

Rating: M
Genre: Romance, AH
Characters: Edward/Bella

Summary: Bella Swan always believed in happily ever afters.When she marries her high school sweetheart & starts her own wedding business, she thinks she's living her dream.Then it all comes crashing down.Can a handsome photographer help her believe in love again?

First I have to say, I am really excited about this week’s fic, I love bellamarie117, she truly is one of my favorite FF author’s of all time. I loved her first story Take the Ice, I mean it was a masterpiece.

So on to the main event, True Companion, is a great short story. It is completed and six chapters long. I know that we have read stories where Bella is a wedding planner, but I promise you, this one is different. The first difference is that Edward is not the groom!

That’s right, in this wedding planner story, Bella is the wedding planner who always believed in the fairytale, and Edward is the photographer, to make sure that she gets to live it.

Bella is a planner. She does everything right, meets her first love, Jasper, in high school. They date, fall in love, are each other’s first everything’s. They go to college, get engaged, and get married; everything should be perfect, right? Bella and Jasper face normal newlywed issues, like money and no time for one another, but those are easy problems to work through until Bella arrives home one day to a distraught Jasper asking for a divorce because he has met someone. I am sure we can all figure out who it is too.

But still, I always thought we were just going through a rough spot, that things would get better. He was still my best friend and the love of my life.
 
Or so I thought.
 
I came home one evening after running a rehearsal for that upcoming weekend to find Jasper sitting in the dark at the kitchen table, his head buried in his hands. When he looked up at me, there was so much pain in those gorgeous eyes. He looked haunted.

Experiencing this life-changing event is hard on Bella, it would be hard on anyone, but add to it that it is Bella’s job to make sure that the brides she works for have perfect weddings. It makes it very hard not to become a cynic.

We meet Bella a year after her divorce, as she is in the midst of wedding day hell with a true Bridezilla, Lauren Mallory, having a breakdown about her hair.

"Alright, Lauren, let's just take a deep breath," I said in a soothing voice. "We'll get this all worked out."

"There's nothing to work out! I'm the bride, it's my day and I want the fucking stylist that I paid for!" Lauren screamed, towering over me as she continued to poke at my chest.

Bella finds that the one true bright spot to an otherwise crappy day is the top photographer in the area. While she has worked with the genius that is Edward Cullen before she has never seen him in the same light as she does on this day.

Shoving my hands into the pockets of my navy cotton dress, I played with the case of my phone while I crossed over toward him. As I stepped through the grass, the cool blades tickling my feet through the gaps in my flat sandals, my stomach started anxiously churning again.

Weird.

I shook it off as nerves. It was a huge wedding, after all, one of the biggest I'd taken on since starting up my business. It was understandable that I'd have a tougher time keeping my cool than normal. Still, I couldn't ignore the feeling entirely, nor the fact that the can-can line started up the moment I spotted Edward Cullen.

Bella, the consummate planner, spends the day facing crisis after crisis as her Bridezilla drives her literally to drink. While through it all, a casual smile from Edward seems to make it all seem better as he becomes the one bright spot in her day.

While I strolled around the room, keeping a lookout for anything that went awry, I found my gaze drifting back to the vendor table far more than necessary. Edward was sitting with his assistant and my team, shoveling down his meal while keeping everyone laughing with some sort of funny anecdote. More than anything I wanted to go sit and just listen to him talk, to hear the words that went with the expressions playing across his face and the gestures of his hands.

As the day finally ends, Bella finds herself talking to the man who just may be able to restore her belief in the fairytale she always wished she had.

"Do you think you'd ever want to get married again?" he asked. His eyes darting up to mine, wide with shock, and he quickly looked away while he tried to backtrack. He obviously hadn't meant to ask that question. "Just, uh, generally speaking. Someday."

"I'd like to think so," I responded after considering the question. "You're right; I'm not a cynic. There's still that little girl inside of me who believes in fairy tale endings. I'm not ready to give up on her completely yet."

This one is a quick 6 chapters, but you will love it from beginning to end. We get some important flashbacks mixed in with the wedding from hell, always in the perfect spot. As always bellamarie117 does a great job with the overall writing and context of the story. If I had to complain about anything it would be that I wish it was longer, but honestly, it covered everything it needed to and there is a hint that we could possibly get a future-shot later on. I do hope that you will read and enjoy this one as much as I did, and don’t forget to leave a review!

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