Originally I thought to myself: This is kind of a non-conventional way to write Eddie and Bells. But, you know what? After reading all of the amazing stories on the site—that put these characters in every place and time we could imagine—it feels not so much so. There's a lot of me in this story; I wanted to write these characters as very REAL people-- a little messed up like we all are, but ultimately sweet and loving and passionate like Stephanie Meyer so beautifully intended. I'll be interested to hear what you think.

A few notes:

I hope this excites you lemon-lovers: I wrote a huge chunk of this chapter while looping Kings of Leon's "Sex on Fire" on repeat. Now, now, no one's sex is all on fire in this chapter. But that should give you an idea of where I'm headed. If you've never heard the song, stop reading this and go find that first. A little extra incentive: I read somewhere that Rob Pattinzzzzzzon loves the song too. But I won't let him just all have it and such; that song's been my inspiration for quite awhile.

Stephanie Meyer created the lovely characters from the Twilight Saga. I use their names and situations here, but I do not own one single piece of the sexy little things. I do, however, own my writing and any situations NOT relating to the Twilight plots.

Nothing ever works out quite the way you planned, does it?

The alarm on my cell phone went off right beside my head for what I think was the fifteenth time that morning. Why had I ever thought that setting the snooze timer at one minute intervals was a good idea? My body has never been able to wake up in one minute. Sometimes it takes thirty. Sometimes its noon and I still haven't woken to the world just yet.

Which is probably why being a perpetual student was a good thing for me. And one of the ONLY reasons I could think of lately that made it a good thing.

I hit "dismiss" on the damn thing one last time, rolling over to huff and puff into my smushed pillow. I was hard on pillows...maybe all the tensions in my body made me press more deeply into them in the night. At least it made them soft, though, soft and worn in. I briefly considered that Jasper might want to murder me and my phone and my pillow one room over. Our walls were not well insulated at all; an architectural misfortune that we'd discovered soon after moving into this house. I spent many an evening earplugged to the not-so-subtle noises produced by Jasper and his spunky little girlfriend Alice. But I could never be angry. It wasn't their fault that the plaster was so thin. And as much as I'd TRIED to dislike Alice in the beginning, mostly because I'd harbored some strange possessive feelings for Jasper that I once even mistook for love I think, I just couldn't. Yes, she was loud and spoke her mind and had more energy in the span of five minutes than I did all day. But she was also thoughtful, and a great guest chef in our kitchen, and smart and practical as hell.

I managed to swing myself into an upright position, surveying my fresh from bed look in the mirror that hung above my dresser.

Ugh. My hair was a absolute bird's nest, yesterday's curls now a mess sticking in all different directions. I rubbed my eyes and resigned to the morning light coming in through the windows. I needed coffee. Lots and lots and lots of strong coffee.

When Jasper and I moved into our little bungalow, I quickly claimed the bedroom nearest the kitchen, often regretting its distance from our one tiny bathroom but always thankful for how close it put me to the coffee pot in the morning. Jasper didn't even drink coffee; he managed to make it from the sleeping stage to dressed and awake and ready in ten minutes flat most mornings. Men seemed to be better at that in general.

"Morning, sunshine."

I growled as I stepped gingerly into the kitchen and heard my roommate's chipper greeting.

"Shut it. I'm not awake yet." I scrunched my eyes at him and shuffled towards the coffee. Nothing better than the sound and smell of fresh brewing.

"Bella, how in the world could that alarm NOT wake you up properly? It could wake twenty people up." Jasper smiled at me, teasing. He was too good natured. Sometimes that could be annoying. But mostly it was why we had become such close friends so quickly last year. Jasper had an uncanny ability to calm anyone down, and particularly me. He didn't take anything seriously.

And it would have been so easy for someone as good-looking and smart as he was to be the opposite kind of person.

I glanced over as he placed a baking sheet of biscuits into the oven. He was such an elegant person, even in his movements. He wasn't buff or even that tall. But he had a manly elegance about him, all sinewy and lean. His skin was luminescent almost, perfectly matched with the honey color of his hair, which he kept a little on the long side.

"Earth to Bella Swan." His hands were in front of my face, fingers snapping.

"Geez." I smiled, shaking my head to attention. "How long do you have to co-habitate with me before you realize I'm not a real person in the morning?" I reached for a mug from the top shelf of our cupboard and asked him to pass me the cream from the fridge. I had a very ritualistic coffee-assemblage exercise. He also knew to pass me the sugar and a teaspoon before I even had a chance to ask.

"Thanks, dearie." I laughed and leaned against the counter once my coffee was just so, savoring the first sip. That was always the best one.

"Agenda for today?" He took the spot next to me, crossing his arms, eying his biscuits through the over door.

"Usual. Everything or nothing, depending on my level of motivation." I took another long sip and then looked sideways at him. "I wish sometimes I could go back and re-do the stage you're in. Learn to be more disciplined while I still had the chance."

"Hell, I'd trade places with you, darlin'. The grass is always greener." He always smiled a little crookedly. And that southern drawl...well, it made anything sound soothing. Jasper was from a small almost-not-a-town near Greenville, South Carolina. He'd done his undergraduate work at USC, and then it wasn't a long haul at all for him down here to Georgia. Just a couple of hours away from his family—the Hales, who were old southern money in the most stereotypical ways possible. They had it all. A huge house with porches that stretched on for days. Rocking chairs and mint juleps and sweet tea and decadent balls...I had never thought any of that was real until I moved down to the South. And Jasper's family cemented the image in my head. Of course Jasper's disposition proved that any imagery of an Old South was just that—old. He was well aware of where he came from but also equally aware of how, with each successive generation, the prestige associated with what his family's money had once meant was dissipating. And rightly so.

I'd moved here from a sluggish little town in Washington state called Forks. It's one of the wettest places in the continental U.S., buried under a constant cloud cover and a chilly drizzle. It's beautiful, don't get me wrong—soft and fragrant and lush. I miss it most days. But there were parts of the southern climate I had definitely become spoiled by. The heat, first and foremost. I'd spent my childhood in Phoenix with my mom before moving to Forks to live with my dad in high school. I'd gone to college at Washington State. So, sufficed to say, it was nice to be in the sunshine again.

Jasper and I were both PhD students in the English Department at the University of Georgia, here in Athens. I came in two years ahead of him—which basically means that, since coursework is over, I spend my days trying to convince myself that I can write a little thing called a dissertation. It's weird. Just a couple of years earlier I considered myself young. Full of life and eager to learn. And now, at 25, everything seemed so sluggish. Some days I worried that I'd taken the wrong path. Jasper exuded passion for his work still.

"Well, you are so welcome to write a chapter for me." I smiled and made a face. "You just let me know."

"Bullshit." He threw me a crazy look as he searched for oven mits. "Bella, you're the best writer I know. If you'd just get back into the right state of mind, you'd blow everyone and everything out of the water. You have a way with words that we're all jealous of."

Whatever. Maybe he was right. I was a good writer, I knew that. But I didn't think I was an intellectual. Jasper totally was. Theory sprouted from him like water from a pail.

"Just serve the best writer you know breakfast, and we'll call it even for now," I winked and left the kitchen, headed to grab the newspaper from the porch before coming back to enjoy some of his world (well...okay house) famous biscuits.

"You got it sweet cakes."

An hour later, I was fed, showered, and clothed. My days had started to look very, very similar. Mornings were slightly promising work-wise, as the day stretched ahead of me. I typically headed to a coffee shop with my laptop, which is where I was headed this particular morning. I applied a quick coat of lip gloss before I packed my bag, waved goodbye to a at-his-desk-working-with-discipline-Jasper, and began the day.

Athens is perhaps the best place in the world for someone like me to blend in or, on bad days when I need to, even go unnoticed. It's a college town, so there's this weird perpetual balance in the population between overly eager, overly sexed, designer-denim wearing undergrads (most of them the sons and daughters of Atlanta's suburban elite) and academics—professors and grad students, all a little older, a little less shiny, a little more cultured. My mom and I always joke that I moved to the wrong place to find a man. With sexy, perfectly sculpted, impossibly perky nineteen-year-old girls at every corner, even the older grim dudes want them. They're intellectuals until it's time to hit the bar after 10pm. That leaves the non-undergraduate female population in the "sore loser" category most of the time. My mom, Renee, is biased, of course, but she claims that I have a skewed vision of myself because of where I live. She claims that if I were anywhere else in the world (well, and sprouted more much-needed self-confidence), I would be fighting princes and thieves alike off with a stick.

I'm in tune with myself enough to know that I'm pleasant enough looking. Long brown hair, thick, in waves, that people have always seemed envious of. But an average everything else—brown eyes, nothing spectacular there, slim build, average-at-best breasts...you name it, I had the average version of it. Maybe if I managed to have better style...lord knows Alice had tried lately to get me into some sexier stuff. But most days jeans and flip-flops and a soft cotton shirt offered the most comfort.

I just never have too many people to impress. Sure, I'd gone a little wild when I first moved here. I'd bar-hopped with the best of them, trying to make friends. I'd dated a couple of losers for very short periods of time. But then there was Mike. He was in my department, a couple of years ahead of me, ten years older than me. Charming and brilliant and going a little bald, he wore chinos with Ralph Lauren dress shirts everyday and took me to lunch at the swankiest little places in Athens and Atlanta. I was in love. Or, at least, at the time I thought I was. We were just a fit of passion, and we didn't disentangle ourselves from each other soon enough—too fearful, or too stubborn maybe, to realize that we had fizzled into nothing.

Looking back, it was easy for me to realize now that he was extremely full of himself, high on himself, and I had fallen under his spell just as he had probably imagined that I would.

I guess you could argue that Athens was also the best place to be single, though. Easy to hide in the crowd, easy to pass your mid-twenties off as a time for school, and fuck-ups, and sleeping in. But there was something else on the other side of it, and I was becoming increasingly ready to get there. Something that was more than what my parents had found—more than a simple life of get up, go to work, make dinner. Some of that was nice. I wanted some of that. But I also crazed some excitement, some big change. I had a lot of work to get done first, though. Or I'd have spent the last three years in absolute vain. Right?

I found myself ambling down Broad Street like so many mid-mornings. Downtown kept quiet until lunchtime. Most of the businesses—little jewelry shops, a nature store, clothing boutiques that catered to the sorority population—didn't open until 11. And the lunch crowed wouldn't hit for about another hour. This was morning Athens—just those of us seeking a cup of coffee and a place to plug in our laptops.

There had been a lot of rain this April. Plenty of gloomy days. But today, I could feel summer and early May peeking through, hot and muggy; the sun was tentative but making a comeback. And pretty soon we'd have 90-degree weather every day.

"Bella!"

I turned around, jumping a little and knocking my bag against my hip.

Alice.

I saw her little shape running toward me from across the street where Broad Street met the entrance to Old Campus. She always managed to make dodging traffic look graceful.

Alice Cullen was 22, perky, stylish, but in every other way the complete antithesis of most of the undergraduate females running around this town. She was a senior and took school really seriously, as well as her part-time job teaching children's dance classes at the local Y. She was a business major and wanted to own a boutique someday. Or a bakery. She was always changing her mind. She was from seemingly endless old southern money like Jasper, but also like Jasper she never mentioned anything about it, really didn't ever seem to think of it. Her clothes fetish was really the only red flag. Well, and her car.

Today she looked flushed and happy, but a little tired. She wore a knit black dress that hugged her tiny curves perfectly. She barely rose above five feet tall, making even me look like a giant next to her when she wore flat shoes. Jasper was head over heels in love with this little pixie, and honestly, most days I could easily see why.

"Bella! I missed you this morning! I had to leave early for a meeting. What are you up to?" She fell in line beside me. I smiled and waved my hand around my head.

"The usual. Cozy nook for writing is in my immediate future. Where are you headed?" We ambled along as Alice tried to catch her breath.

"I'm headed back to my car. I'm driving to the airport to get my brother. I'm so freakin' excited," she clasped her hands together as she spoke. "Oh, Bella, you guys are going to love him."

Oh yes. The brother. Alice had been talking about this visit for months. Her apparently slightly-brooding older brother, currently halfway through medical school at UCLA. Somehow he also found the time to head up a jazz band. Overachieve much? I would never dream of putting a damper on Alice's excitement, but I just couldn't imagine that this honey-dripped brother would find much to amuse himself in Athens. He'd obviously made a bee-line for the West Coast to get OUT of the languid South.

"Alice, I feel awful. Tell me his name again. You know I don't remember those types of things. Grad school took away my short-term memory," I laughed and looked at her expectantly.

"Edward. I called him Eddie when we were little, but he hates that now of course." She scrunched her nose in a funny little smirk. "Oooh, he used to terrorize me when we were kids. He deserves so much payback he never got. I'm still working on it. It's hard to get him. He's too smart."

I laughed and bit my lip, chewing on it lightly. Edward Cullen. Stately name for a stately asshole? Hard to believe that Alice could be related to an ass, though.

"Well, bring him over tonight. I could cook." Cooking was really one of my only true solaces. I showed a good deal of love and friendship through food and drink these days.

"Well, you don't have to, but that would be lovely. I know Edward will be so thrilled to meet you. I've told him a lot about you. And Jasper of course." She looked like she was going to burst, with pride, excitement, about a million different emotions.

"Alice, really, though. What could you have possibly told him? There's nothing to tell." I laughed, a little crisply, and stopped in front of Walker's—a little coffee shop by day, bar by night that had great outdoor seating in the back. I needed to get to work. Particularly if my afternoon and evening were going to be consumed by meal-making and brother-meeting.

"Your work of course. He's really into Thoreau. You'll be amazed. He might be in medical school, but he knows a little bit about fucking everything," she paused a blew a strand of hair from her face. When I met Alice, she had a little cropped pixie cut. But she'd grown her raven hair out a little recently; it fell across her eyes in thick strands. "I've spent half my life trying to live up to the standards he's set. I used to think I must have been the one adopted. Seriously."

Edward was adopted? I hadn't known that. I was curious at that information, but I kept my mouth shut. Better not to pry.

"Now you've got me nervous." I bit my lip. "Our little group isn't exactly a bastion of hard-core intellectualism. We're pseudo if anything."

"Whatever." She touched my arm and smiled once more. "I'll call Jasper later and confirm a time. I have to get on the road. Don't go to too much trouble with food. He's a healthy eater...I mean....he'll eat anything, and lots of it." Maybe he was fat? A chub. Maybe that was the one downfall of this apparently perfect human being. Hmmph. Probably not.

She disappeared as quickly as she had appeared. Alice hardly ever really stopped moving. I sighed and laughed at her retreating figure, turning to the door. I needed a latte. And maybe a blueberry muffin to get me going. My mind was rapidly distracting itself with the menu for the evening. Indian? A Thai curry? Maybe something simple and hearty like pasta?

Henry David Thoreau was at once both the great American dreamer as well as (and this is quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, who gave Thoreau's eulogy in 1862) nothing more than "the captain of a huckleberry party."

I grapple with this paradox everyday when I write about Thoreau. He's around every corner of the nineteenth century mind. He is there passing along the Charles River in 1849, disgusted by the roar of the Lowell mills and, thus, the first brazen manifestations of how quickly and impersonally industrial capitalism was marking the American landscape. He took us to Walden, and created our questions of wildness and rugged individualism, but there he was never, ever truly alone. And there he was an abolitionist, defending John Brown and damning the Fugitive Slave Act, on the razor-sharp cusp of a bloody war for freedom that he would not live to see the end of.

Historians and writers and journalists return to him, over and over, because his sometimes rambling but oft heartaching prose serves up the most important (and most baffling) questions of our country's very tender post-partum era. Empire building, individualism, industrial revolution, mass communication and the growth pains of culture, imperialism and an ever-moving, ever-fleeting frontier. He wasn't alone at Walden; he was of the world as well as outside of it.

Did Thoreau lack ambition? Maybe. He was a writer, and writers tend to amble. I mean, look at me. But how do we measure someone like him? In huckleberries? In money? In Emerson's pained eulogy?

Hell if I can really figure any of it out.

These are thoughts in my head as I run. Just for half an hour around our little neighborhood. Some days I listen to Van Morrison and space out. Some days I think about all of this shit.

Had I become the captain of a huckleberry party? My little life on Hill Street. My beautiful if predictable friendship with Jasper. My pained attempts at fitting in with academics who had their noses half in the air and their hands in the organic cookie jar.

I tripped a little as I walked inside. Only Bella Swan can trip ON herself, with nothing in her path.

I collapsed on the couch in our living room, reaching with an ache in my arm to untie my tennis shoes. Jasper heard me and joined me, a little smirk on his face.

"Oh, you are really going to love this."

"What?" I must have sounded exasperated. People like me weren't meant to be runners. I could barely regain my breath. I flung myself dramatically over our throw pillows and sighed. "Lord, just tell me, please."

He came to sit on the armchair across from me, poised on the edge.

Eyes sparkling. Smirk. This was definitely a smirk.

"Guess who has a grand design to set you up with a future doctor?"

I knew it. Holy fuck.

"Jazz...you know. I knew it. I did. The way she was talking about him today." I buried my face in a pillow and growled. He just laughed. He knew me well enough to know that my frustration was at least half put-on. "It's fucking ridiculous. He lives literally all the way across the continent. It's pointless. And besides...it doesn't sound like I could have anything to offer Edward Cullen. His life sounds pretty perfect as it is."

"Are you done with your rant yet?" Jasper folded his arms across his chest and shot me a patient smile.

"I guess." I re-situated myself in a sitting position. This evening was going to be interesting.

"Alright. I agree. It's ridiculous." I shot him a nasty look. "Bella, not about you not being able to offer him anything. Love, you have everything to offer. I agree about the long distance thing. It seems like a moot point. But let's humor Alice. Please? Just be nice."

Of course I would be nice. I'm never not nice. I'm often too nice.

"You got it. Unless she goes overboard. Like trying to dress me."

"Well..." He had a conspiratorial tone. "Alice did SUGGEST that I tell you to wear your baby blue dress. She said the strapless one."

"Jasper. You are so whipped I can't even see straight." I laughed. "I'll wear the damn dress for her, not him." I shot up from the couch and headed the short distance toward the kitchen. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a curry to attend to. I hope the surgeon enjoys toasted cashews and eggplant."

"I like the spunk, Bella." He clapped his hands and stood up to give me a little bow. "By the way, Charlie called on the land line."

Of course. Charlie Swan. He insisted we have a land line. For emergencies. But the only time we EVER used the damn thing was when HE called. And if I ever had an emergency, you'd better believe that I'd dial 911 from the cell phone next to my bed. Why would I traverse into the kitchen to report an intruder? Charlie refused to join the cell phone revolution. But that's one of the things I loved about my small town police chief father; I wouldn't ever want him to change.

"Thanks. I'll call him back from the cell to drive him crazy." I chuckled and threw myself into kitchen prep.

An hour of eggplant-chopping, cashew-toasting, chicken-sauteeing, and curry-assembling later, I happily breathed in the fragrant aroma. I hummed a little to myself as I set the rice in its cooker, deciding to err on the side of caution and make a huge batch. Alice did say that her brother ate a lot of food. I'd bought a cake at the grocery store with that in mind as well—a dark chocolate one, to be precise, all gooey and rich.

There was really nothing I could do at that point except wait. I could probably sneak in a half hour's worth of work...but...screw that.

I set the curry on to simmer and escaped to my bedroom. I set out the dress I'd been ordered to wear, fished out some light brown flats that matched it, and hopped on my bed, dialing Charlie's number in Forks.

Two rings, and there he was.

"Bells, you always call back on that damn cell phone. You're going to get a brain tumor. So are seventy five percent of the people in this country. Holding those things to your head all day."

I laughed into the phone. "Dad, I hear you. You've told me that no fewer than fifty times. We could initiate an official bet if you like. But I don't know if brain tumors are the best things to wage bets on."

"Probably not. But mark my word..."

"How's work, Dad?" I decided to cut his rant off.

"Oh, you know, about the same. The rain's been messier than usual, so there've been a lot of animals running loose from the woods and getting hit on the roads. Not a pretty sight."

"Thanks for the visual. That sucks, though." This is how our conversations typically went. A little Forks talk, a little sarcastic but loving humor. My dad was the sweetest thing. As I aged, I realized more and more what a shame it had been that I'd missed having him around during a huge chunk of my childhood. He was so steady, so practical. He didn't hover, but he cared deeply.

I walked around the room as we spoke, filling him in on some goings on in my department, recipes I'd been trying (I always cooked for him when I lived at home), and our impending visitor for the evening.

I zoned out a little as he talked more about work, some about the goings on at La Push—the Quilete reservation near Forks. Charlie was close friends with one of the elders, Billy Black.

I traced the blinds on my windows idly, tugging at them when I heard a car pull up into our circular driveway.

White BMW. Car doors opening. It was Alice. And the...

Fuck.

Perhaps the most beautiful man I had ever seen. Dramatic much, Bella? I swallowed hard, my dad's droning still playing in my right ear. Bronze hair. He had bronze hair, sticking up and outward in five different directions. Sex hair. I watched his jaw line as he closed his car door and spoke over to Alice. She laughed, and he smiled. Oh the bone structure.

He was tall, but not too tall. Lean but not too muscular. He definitely had the half-grunge, half-prepster look working for him. He wore gray-washed fitted jeans, a little worn looking, and some well-loved black vintage Nikes. And a blue oxford shirt, pressed but with the sleeves rolled up and a couple of buttons undone up top. I chewed on my bottom lip as I watched them. They were obviously finishing up a conversation. Edward held a bottle of red wine in his hands, and he was lazily fidgeting with it as Alice continued to talk.

"Bella?"

Oh, gosh. Charlie.

"Dad, sorry. I...I've got to go. Our dinner guests just arrived." I let out a long breath and heard a light chuckle from the line.

"Alright, Bells. Knock em dead with your culinary skills. I sure miss them around here."

"Dad, don't eat too much chili," I laughed and said goodbye, ending the call with a flick of my finger and resuming my peek-post through the blinds. I was still staring idly, my heart in my throat, when he looked up to my perch. Shit. Edward Cullen had caught me window stalking him. I saw a smile form on his lips. That sent my little weak heart a fluttering, and I snapped the blinds closed. Great way to start off the evening, Bella.

I worked to regain my composure as I hurriedly changed into the dress. Of course now I wished I'd spent more time getting ready. I had no idea I was heading into a evening with some sort of bronze-haired god. I guessed my hair looked okay, but I spent a few precious moments applying a little bit of makeup and lipstick. Just as I finished, I heard the doorbell and the telltale sounds of Jasper headed excitedly to the door.

Fuck. Now that I was nervous, I'd be a clumsy, bumbling wreck.

He's nothing to you, Bella. I pressed my fingers to my temples and gave myself a pep talk. He's just visiting. He's nothing. Have fun and let that be that.

But the sight of his eyes flickering up to mine had done a number.

"Bella Swan, get your little but out here!" Jasper stood in front of my bedroom door.

I heard laughter at his request. Alice's chuckle and....something that sounded like golden clanging bells.

Yes, fuck.