Apologies to Joy Division.

I don't own Twilight. I just have dirty thoughts about its characters.

The music is loud, insistent, infectious.

When I close my eyes I am inside it.

I'm tossing my hair, I'm shaking my hips, I'm moving from side to side, I'm tracing a spirograph circle. I'm dancing in a trance. I am feeling the bass surrounding me and pulsing through me, pulsing through my chest like a heartbeat.

But when I open my eyes I'm suddenly thrust back into reality: I am not a dancing queen, I am an ordinary insignificant dark-haired high school girl with a bulky white cast on one wrist, tagging along to a Seattle nightclub for the first time with three older, curvier, fair-haired, self-possessed beauties: Rosalie Hale, my big brother Emmett's girlfriend; her best friend Tanya Denali; and Tanya's friend Vicky (OK, she is actually a redhead, but close enough). I find I've become a little separated from them on the dance floor, so I shimmy back over towards them. They are grinning at me, not in a mean way, but definitely amused. They are dancing in a circle around their leather bags, like the hen party in that Specials song.

"Go, Bella. Break it down, girl," Rosalie laughs. I laugh back at her and I do break it down, goddamn it, slipping into some aggressive chicken dance–inspired moves and dancing the way I would normally do only in my own living room with the curtains drawn and the stereo cranked up to eleven. I'm making fun of something—myself? Or everyone else in the club? I'm not quite sure.

"Oh my god, Bella, where did you learn to dance like that?" Tanya sounds curious instead of bored like usual.

I don't give her the answer, which is that my mother, Renée, for years was enrolling me in dance class after dance class in a fruitless effort to impart some grace to her clumsy child, but after I had basically flunked out of ballet and then tap and then jazz, she signed me up for afro-haitian dance almost as a joke—but afro-haitian dance and I really hit it off, which was kind of weird considering I am a skinny white girl from Washington State. So I am in my element on the dance floor—but off of it, liable to trip over my own feet and anything else in, or even near, my path. I am kind of a physical idiot-savant that way.

The music changes from something hip-hoppy to something more sultry and Sade-esque, and Rosie and Tanya slip into some fake attention-seeking quasi-lesbian dance thing that makes me want to puke so I tell them I'm off to the bar to get a bottle of water. I am feeling flushed and my top is clinging to my back and underarms, all of which is covered with a sheen of sweat. My thin gray top is a little bit sheer, just showing the camisole I have underneath, but it is long sleeved and it is cotton, sort of hot for this situation. Most of the girls seem to be wearing camisoles only. I was trying to balance out the little black skirt Rosalie lent me to wear tonight, an old one of hers that, for me, is unusually short, exposing my knees—which I've always found to be a little knobbly, so I'm not sure how good an idea this is—and a good couple inches of thigh.

So I'm waiting at the bar to get my bottle of water, and I swear the female bartender is avoiding my eye on purpose, she can probably tell at a glance that I'm underage. Great. Now I'm leaning over the bar and staring at her like a border collie with a tennis ball hoping for a game of fetch but she's helping people who definitely came up after me, when:

"What are you drinking," inquires a velvety voice close to my ear.

I turn my head and find myself looking up at the most handsome guy who has ever spoken to me in person. In fact, I have to internally roll my eyes at the voice in my head that is gushing about how he looks like a Greek god. How clichéd, I think, but between that long, straight Roman nose and that appealingly square jaw and that wild dark blond hair and those light-colored eyes that seem to shine with reflected light and bore straight through me at once…yep, this is exactly what Apollo must look like. You would definitely need to grow bark on your limbs and sprout leaves from your fingers to resist this onslaught of male beauty. Plus, tall…I am standing with both feet on the brass footrest at the base of the bar and still looking up at him, and I'm five foot six. One corner of his mouth is lifted in a slightly hesitant smirk. Oh my god. OK, Bella, stop looking at his mouth.

"I—I don't know," I stammer, endeavoring to meet his eyes again but finding it difficult or possibly dangerous, like looking directly into the sun. I feel like I am fluttering my lashes in an inane manner.

"You don't know? How many have you had?" he teases.

I giggle, probably sounding drunk despite having drunk nothing but water that night.

Suddenly I hear Rosie's voice echoing in my mind's ear. Go, Bella. Trying to be bold, I smile up at him through my lashes and suggest,

"Why don't you choose for me?"

That stops him short. He loses the smirk and seems to suddenly look at me more directly, except that doesn't seem possible, but his look takes on a quality that would be described, in some old noirish detective mystery, as "smoldering." My stomach flops and I feel not only out of my league looks-wise but suddenly very unworldly and inexperienced. I am also suddenly sharply aware that despite his pretty looks, he is exuding maleness, from his appealingly cocky manner of engaging me, a complete stranger, to his stubble-darkened chin to his broad shoulders. And this look he is giving me—I couldn't say in this half-light exactly what color his eyes are but they darken in a way I have only ever read about in schlocky romance novels. On some instinctual level I can tell he likes that coy suggestion I just tossed at him. When Jacob gives me a direct look like that it reminds me of a familiar warm brown-eyed puppy, but this, well, I ain't used to this, with boys my age. Hm. Boys my age.

"Mm," he hums, which makes my stomach flop again. "How about a lemon drop, something sweet and tart?"

He continues, "…for the beautiful klutz."

I gape at him. "How did you know…" I stop myself before actually finishing out loud, "that I'm a klutz?"

He glances down at my cast. "Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions, but how did you get that?"

My face goes hot. Obviously I am not about to tell him that embarrassing story.

He smirks again, enjoying my confusion. "A lemon drop, then? But maybe that's too risky, maybe something without a "drop" involved would be better." He's looking at the cast again.

I feel an urge to crack him on the head with it, or possibly grab his collar and start kissing him.

"I'll try the lemon drop," I say brazenly, tugging my sleeve further down over the yellow wristband that marks me as an Under Twenty-One.

Apollo, or Adonis, or whatever his name is waggles his fingers at the bartender chick, who immediately drops everything to come over and see what he wants. I stare at those long, slender fingers, imagining them tracing up my thigh, and then I consider this unusual reaction in amazement. I am totally losing my mind. He orders a lemon drop for me and a Hale's Pale Ale for himself.

The girl behind the bar goes to work on the lemon drop first, raising the cocktail shaker over her shoulder and shaking it so frigging thoroughly that her boobs are jiggling and bouncing all over the place, before pouring it into the sugar-rimmed glass and handing it to Apollo, who is handing it to me when another hand intercepts the glass. A pale white hand. Belonging to a redhead. A loudmouth redhead. Vicky uses that loud mouth to call out to the barmaid that she should "change his drink to a Kamakazi 'cause he is about to get shot down." Then she turns to Apollo, hands the drink back to him, and says sweetly,

"Sorry, my little friend here is not allowed to talk to strange men, let alone take drinks from them." I am already ready to sink into a hole in the floor but she punctuates this statement by holding up my good arm and pulling down my sleeve to expose the yellow bracelet.

"Come on, my dear," she says, placing her arm around my shoulders and steering me away from the bar. Total humiliation. I glance back at Apollo, who is biting his lip and looking amused. Vicky is hissing in my ear.

"He's a little old for you, isn't he?"

Author's note: Um, in addition to the age difference (greatly reduced from the original!), I think this story is headed into exploring some rawther controversial themes that kind of caught my interest in the books...so if you have delicate sensibilities or are underage please bail (and for god's sake, kids, don't model your behavior on that of anyone in this story). OK fair warning.