POV: Bella

Summary: Bella meets Edward in college. Anything else would be giving away plot.

Disclaimer: I am not Stephenie Meyer. I do not own the Twilight series.

Chapter 1

First Impressions

I had come to believe that the only man that I would ever love was inside a book. In all my life I had yet to fine one guy that I could stand to be around for more than five minuets. In high school all of the boys were uncouth and unintelligent. They thought that the stupidest things were funny and that a "C" was an acceptable grade in a class.

Early on I had become frustrated with males as a species. The only desirable men seemed to live between the pages of a book, and of course most of these men had been conceived by women. The prefect man was created by women like me, women who couldn't stand how men really were and fashioned the way that they should be. They were all handsome, intelligent, kind, romantic and so forth. The more young girls read these kinds of books the more it became obvious that to accept anything less than the perfect man was ridiculous.

Upon entering college I noticed a flaw in my reasoning. If women were to only accept the kind of men that existed in books then mankind would cease to exist. It was quite a conundrum and I realized that if I truly wanted to find some sort of significant other then I was going to have to set my sights a bit lower than the ideal created for me by the literary world.

I still wanted specific things, though. Intelligence was a must; I had to find someone that I could have a conversation with. A good sense of humor; I liked to laugh. And I must be attracted to this person. Physical attraction was nature's way of saying "this person and I would have pretty kids." It was not a shallow thing to want to be physically attracted to ones partner. It was part of nature.

My first two years of college had passed without any luck. Most of the guys that I interacted with seemed to be the exact same as the ones that I had previously attended high school with. I had begun to believe that the only corporeal males that would ever be a part of my life would be the fifty or so cats that I was sure to collect once I got a bit older.

I slugged into my second class of the day. It was the first day of the spring semester of my junior year of college. I had long since given up my search and was now focusing on nothing more than getting my degree and finishing school. I enjoyed taking classes that had nothing to do with my major, though. One could only take so many English classes before one loses ones mind and begins to fantasize about stabbing oneself in the eye with a pencil. This semester I was breaking up the monotony with a class in South American history.

When I entered the classroom there was only about three other students there. It was one of the smaller rooms, which made the class size roughly thirty people. Rules of etiquette stated that if there are twenty-seven other seats empty you do not sit right next to someone, but I had to sit in a certain spot in the class room.

I liked to be front and center. Most shy people would always hang towards the back of the classroom, but I had discovered that the front was really the best place to be. Teachers tended to not call on the students in the front row as often, assuming that they had no choice but to pay attention. And in the occasion that a teacher would call on me the only people who would be able to see my blush would be the teacher and the people on either side of me. If you were answering questions in the back people tended to turn around in their seats.

There were six columns of desks in the classroom, creating two center rows. A guy that I did not know occupied the front desk of the middle right row, and I was forced to take the seat to his left.

He didn't look up at me as I sat down, most people would glance up in the hopes of knowing the person next to them, but not him. His eyes were glued to a rather thick paperback book, the spine of which had been tapped back together with scotch tape, the title unreadable.

I pulled my binder out of my backpack and sighed, waiting for the teacher to arrive. Normally I would carry a book with me to prevent situations of boredom, but I had not brought one that day. Taking all English classes you begin to recognize people and conversations come pretty easily, even to the shy. It was the first day back after winter break and I had known that there would be catching up to do with my fellow classmates, so I hadn't bothered to bring anything to read. What I had forgotten was that I didn't know anybody in the History department. And I was terrible at beginning conversations.

I glanced at the boy sitting next to me. He looked tall and gangly. He looked lost in the large sweater that he wore. His copper colored hair stuck out in every direction making it appear as though he had just gotten out of bed. His face stuck me as odd. Most boys that looked like him had acne covered faces that were still round and childlike. This boy's face reminded me of a Greek sculpture that I had seen in my roommate's Art History book. His skin was as almost paler than mine, but didn't appear sallow, more like carved alabaster.

His eyes were a dark green, like emeralds. Even in the florescent lighting they seemed to sparkle. Then I realized that in order for me to be looking into his perfect eyes, they must have been looking back at me. I realized that he was staring at me, not in an interested way. He was staring at me because I was staring at him. His face looked blank of expression. I quickly looked the other way and he went back to his book as though nothing had happened.

I could feel my face hot with embarrassment. I made an attempt to focus on the map of Brazil on the wall until the blood had dissipated from my cheeks. I thought of saying something to him. What would I say? "Sorry I just ogled you"? That would never do.

The class filled in quickly and before long the teacher walked in. She was a young woman in her mid thirties. She was very excitable and passionate about what she was teaching. As she took role she wrote all of our names down on a seating chart. "I hope you all like your seats," she explained, "because you are stuck with them for the rest of the semester. I'm terrible with names and this will at least allow me to pretend I know who you are. You will also be working in partners quite often so I hope you like the person you are sitting next to."

People's heads turned from one side to the other, attempting to figure out which person they would be stuck with. I refused to move my head, fearing eye contact again. I was sure to turn red again if I locked eyes with the statue sitting next to me.

Without any more explanation she quickly moved on to the syllabus and explaining the rest of the class. With a quick "read chapter one in your textbooks," she dismissed us for the day.

I rushed to my next class and settled into my seat. I was just getting ready to bang my head against the table when Alice, my best friend and roommate glided into the room. She was a dance major, but had decided to take the poetry class with me for fun. I was relived to see her smiling face.

"How were your classes?" she beamed at me.

I took a deep breath before I answered her, taking the time to imagine all of the worse things that could have happened. I could have been staring with my mouth open. I could have said something really embarrassing. I could have blushed so much that my face could have caught on fire. Spontaneous combustion would have been a lot worse. "It was all right, I guess. No catastrophes. You?"

She pouted. "There are never any straight guys in any of my classes."

I resisted the urge to say, "That's what you get for being a dance major." I turned in my seat to examine the few males seated behind us. They were dressed in all black in the typical "emo" fashion that one would find in a poetry class. "How about them?"

Alice rolled her eyes. "I think that I just wasn't destined to meet the man I will love at this school."

It was my turn to roll my eyes. Alice was always talking about her destiny. Thankfully she was not one of those girls who read her horoscope everyday or attempted to tell her future with badly illustrated tarot cards, but Alice was a firm believer that the future had specific plans for her. One action always led to another.

She was beginning to worry that maybe she had chosen the wrong school and that she would never meet the man of her dreams. "But then I never would have met you," she would always say when she tried to justify her choice of schools. "I knew the moment I saw you that we were supposed to be friends. You are going to be a big part of my life in some way or another."

I tended to tune Alice out when she went on like this. The only thing I believed that I was destined for was to blush and trip a lot.

"See you later?" I asked as we walked out of class. Alice and I shared an apartment together just outside of the school, but sometimes she would go out with some of the girls from her classes. She had other friends. I didn't.

"I think so," she nodded. "No plans were made in Ballet and I doubt that anyone is going to want to go out after Jazz."

"So you'll be home in a few hours?" I hated it when Alice went out. Evenings spent alone were rarely fun for me.

She smiled up at me. "Count on it."

I was only taking three classes that semester, so I was done for the day. I headed out to the parking lot. I paused by my old rusty truck to fish my keys out of my backpack and when I looked up I saw the guy from my history class walk right past me.

I ducked behind the hood of my car, but I doubted that he would have noticed me anyway. He didn't seem like he was paying any attention to anything except the path to his own vehicle.

Once he was safely past me I jumped in the cab and got out of there as quickly as possible for someone who drives as slowly as I do.

Show of hands, how many people have had this happen on the first day of class? No plot as of yet, sorry. It takes a while to establish.

Thanks for reading! :)