Disclaimer- I am not Stephenie Meyer. I also sadly do not own any of the characters.

I want to put out a huge Thanks to wifeyandgirls and vjgm for encouraging me to write this story. Also for helping me get my ideas out onto paper, and for correcting my mistakes. Thank you ladies!

Chapter 1 - Bella

I had worked for Vandy's a local retail store in the Peachville Mall for almost 3 years now. I was in desperate need for some extra money for something to get me out of the house and away from my parents' ever-watchful eye, so I started working there right before I graduated from high school.

After I graduated, I had enough money saved up and decided it was time to try living out on my own. No more curfews or doing things just because my parents wanted me to. Complete FREEDOM with the option of visiting home when I felt like it. I was excited by the idea of being out on my own, finally out of my parent's house.

I talked my best friend Angela into moving in with me. The apartment was just what I had needed and what I was looking for. Sure, it was only about ten minutes away from my parents, but that was enough for me. Ten minutes was just far enough that they seemed to leave me alone, but I was still able to go over and visit whenever I wanted to.

I love my parents. My dad, Charlie, has always been the strict one. He was the one that gave me the early ten o' clock curfews. He was also the one to give me what he called "object lessons" to help me learn from mistakes. Like the time when I forgot to fill my car up with anti-freeze and accidentally cracked the radiator block, I learned that it would cost more to fix then the car was worth. For my "object lesson" I had to ride my bike everywhere for two weeks until we could find me a new car to buy.

My mom Renee, however, is my best friend. She is always there for me when I need to talk. Whenever I am feeling down she knows just what to do to make me feel better. Ice cream always seems to fit that bill … Now that I've moved out, my mom and I make sure that we have once-a-week dates, where we go out to dinner and just have girl talk.

This was my weekend off of work, and it had been pretty laid back and uneventful. I had gone out with my mom on our weekly date. We went to one of my favorite restaurants, the Olive Garden, for dinner, and then ended it with ice cream at ColdStone. I swear, their white chocolate ice cream with a brownie and caramel can do wonders! The topic of conversation on this certain date was me and guys. Or lack thereof.

Renee has always been concerned that I am shutting guys off before I even give them a chance because I don't believe in myself. Stupid self-confidence. Who needs it anyway? Renee thinks that the way I see myself is totally off. She's always telling me she sees a beautiful young woman, with deep brown eyes, and beautiful long chocolate brown hair. She, of course sees someone with a great personality, and very easy to talk to. I think all mom's get the same handbook after they have a baby... Chapter 10: Building Self-Confidence in Your Child. It's hard to absorb all of the things she says to me when I don't really believe a lot of them myself.

I see myself as a very plain girl. Nothing special or anything to get excited about here, instead I see someone that is easily forgotten and easily unnoticed. While I was in high school I never really dated. Not that I didn't wantto... a lot of those basketball players were HOT! But it was the same thing as with anyone else. Either they didn't know who I was or know that I was even alive and breathing. I was the nice girl they could ask for answers to questions and nothing more. Why would anyone that good looking and popular ever want to go out with me?

There always were the stupid cheerleaders with their ever-perfect skin and trim bodies to take the place of the plain Janes like me. As much as I hated them, somewhere buried deep inside, I wanted to be like them, to be one of them. If only just for a moment to feel what it was like to be admired and beautiful.

Angela was my one saving grace. She was just as shy as I was so we stuck together, always keeping to ourselves and looking in from the side lines. We had been grade school friends, having sleepovers and playing kickball with the other neighborhood kids in the street until it got dark. She knew just how I felt and we often had long conversations on what we each thought it would be like to be in the popular crowd. Looking pristine perfect everyday for school, hanging out with the boys from the basketball team, riding around town with them in expensive cars, what if so-and-so kissed me? The what-ifs were endless. But every night, after I washed my face before bed, I saw what I really was in the mirror's reflection. Plain, boring, same 'ole same 'ole Bella Swan.

Saturday night, Angela and I decided to rent movies and have a chick flick marathon. Among the stack of movies were 10 things I hate about you, Just like Heaven, Sweet Home Alabama, and then both of our favorites How to lose a guy in 10 days. We watched movies until we both fell asleep on the couch, no doubt dreaming of Matthew McConaughey taking us for a ride on a motorcycle. The only downfall to these movies was the fact that they just confirm that I am a plain girl. I was nothing in comparison to the beautiful Kate Hudson's, Reese Witherspoon's or Julia Stiles' of the world.

I woke up on Sunday, knowing that, Angela spent the whole day with her family. She was always thoughtful and invited me. I have gone with her a few times, but on this particular Sunday, I had laundry to do and if I didn't get it done, I would be going to work wearing my black leggings and the hideous Christmas sweater Renee bought me many years ago. Not a pretty sight. Although I love spending time at the Weber's home, I knew I should stay home and get down to business with the washing machine.

In between loads, I straightened up our apartment and then picked up my well loved copy of Pride and Prejudice. This was about the twentieth time reading it, but I had grown to love this book at an early age so I could read it another twenty times and still love it.

Work was coming bright and early on Monday morning so I climbed into my bed pretty early, my last coherent thoughts were of me standing in the pouring rain cussing out an unknown drop dead sexy man with bright green eyes and telling him I loved him.

The sound of my alarm jolted me out of my peaceful slumber. I reached over and gave the thing a good whack to shut it up and prepped myself for another day of frustration. Instead, I found that I was actually in a really good mood and full of energy.

Strange.What was the last thing I thought about before falling asleep? Green eyes... the rain? Oh. Sweet Home Alabama. Of course. But those eyes were haunting... so intense in their stare.

Physically shaking my head to clear the fogginess, I jumped out of bed and went straight for the shower. I quickly washed my hair with my favorite strawberry shampoo, soaped down and rinsed off. I jumped out of the shower and noticed that I had plenty of time to blow dry and flat iron my hair. Once I was done with my hair I looked into the mirror. If I had been any other person, I might've thought I looked pretty.

Back in my room, I found my favorite work outfit clean and smelling of Downey. It consisted of a pair of fitted black womens dress slacks, and a blue v neck shirt, finished off with a pair of black flats. Comfortable was what I was all about, especially for work.

Dressing quickly, I hurried out to the kitchen and I poured myself some cereal and ate my breakfast. I don't know why I was so happy this morning. It must have been the relaxing weekend, or maybe that dream I vaguely remembered was a really good one. I don't remember what it was about, but I just kept remembering a pair of gorgeous green eyes so focused and intense. I finished the cereal, rinsed out the bowl and spoon and put it in the dishwasher. I grabbed my purse, took one last once-over in the hall mirror and was out the door with a little hop in my step.

Right as I walked into work, my high strung store manager Cheryl started bombarding me with all of the things that had happened over this weekend.

"Well because of the sale that we had Friday and Saturday the store is trashed. The team tried to get it all pulled together on Sunday, but you should see your shoe department. It's a total mess. You probably have mis-mates all over the place, and you have freight from Saturday with another truck coming tomorrow so you need to get that done. Oh, enough of me talking. Just go down there, and make it look great like only you can do."

This so called "pep talk" was a daily occurrence. No matter what sale we were having or how good the shoe department looked, it was never good enough. Things were ALWAYS a total mess in Cheryl's eyes.

Storing my things away in my locker, I took a deep breath and started preparing myself for the worst. Although I found that my strange happiness couldn't be dampened by Cheryl's rambling or the supposed "total mess" that awaited me downstairs.

When I got down to the shoe department, I was not surprised to find that it was not a total mess. Cheryl was always making things out to be much worse than they really were. Sure, there were areas that needed straightening and areas that needed more shoes to fill the holes, but nothing like what Cheryl had described earlier.

The disarray I found could be quickly pulled together and I made quick work of it. Starting by picking up all the shoes on the floor made a big difference. It also left me with the mates to shoes without one. That made putting the mis-mates together an easy and quick job. Freight was next on my list. Having worked at Vandy's for so long, putting out and displaying the new styles of shoes was also an easy task. Everything Cheryl was so paranoid about earlier was completely taken care of before the store meeting an hour later.

As I made my way to the meeting spot, I found myself almost light hearted about starting the day. I hadn't been in a mood this good for a while. Strange, but nice.

"All right guys, I just wanted to say first off, the store is a total mess, we had a very busy weekend and it got out of hand. So I need everyone to focus on getting everything snapped back. Also we have a new Loss Prevention starting today. He's coming to us from our Lemon Grove store. When you see him please be nice and welcome him to our store. Also team," Cheryl droned "today our credit goal is 15. Last week we came in at 102 but I know that we can do so much better than that. We need to make sure that we are asking every single customer if they would like to open a Vandy's card with us. It is your job to sell the card and tell them of all the benefits. I need to have everyone get at least one credit account today. Remember it is your job.!!"

These store meeting were ALWAYS so inspirational. Cheryl was always telling us she knew we could do better, or what we needed to do, instead of going for the positive approach on things.

Very motivational. Especially with a staff made up mostly of high school kids or those just out of high school. Her obviously fake enthusiasm was almost insulting, as if she thought we didn't see right through her little performance every morning. But that was Cheryl for you. Always trying too hard to keep track of everyone and everything. As long as you know how she works, you were OK. You could learn to expect her reaction to things and keep yourself and your sanity in check.

After the store meeting I went back to work in the shoe department. I worked on writing down assignments for those working in my department that day. Also helping the few customers the store had this early in the morning. Most customers this early are either here to just look, because they are walking the mall, or they all ready know what they want and they are in and out.

By the time it was around ten am the store traffic had picked up a little. I had a few customers in my department so I went around to make sure everyone was finding everything okay.

Seeing a somewhat frazzled looking woman with four kids running all around, I thought I could help her. If not for finding shoes, then maybe to rub off some of my good mood. She was looking for sandals for all of her kids, and seemed to have found something for each of her kids. When she eyed a pair for herself, she frowned a little when she saw we didn't have her size out on the floor.

"Can I help you find your size in something?"

With a tired sigh and a weak smile, she answered, "Well, I like these but I don't see an eight."

"Let me see what we've got in the back for you." I checked in our system for her size, and then told her, "It looks like we have some, let me go grab them real quick, I'll be right back."

The tired woman's face still on my mind, I walked through the back stock door a little preoccupied. When I looked up to find the right shelf, my heart skipped a beat as I looked into the most gorgeous green eyes that I had ever seen. They seemed vaguely familiar, but why would that be? I'd definitely remember this guy... he was gorgeous. But, oh, those eyes!They were breath taking.

Please RXR. Let me know what you think.