Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters are not mine. Copyright infringement is not intented.
Today was supposed to be just a regular day. I'm sure you know the type—you come in for work, sit in your little cubicle at your little desk looking at paperwork and staring at a computer screen all day—the kind of day where everything is generally monotonous and slightly boring but normal. I suppose I should have known better than to ask for a normal day in the midst of constant chatter about the upcoming Bennett & Hastings Publishing dinner party. I wasn't planning on attending the event—dinner parties really aren't my thing. There's something about putting on a slinky, fancy dress and uncomfortable shoes and eating with a group of highly irritating people that never really sat well with me. Of course, I was informed just as I was leaving the office today that three very important, very famous and influential authors were signing on with Bennett & Hastings and would be at this party hoping to meet some of the underlings and perhaps take one on as a junior editor. I had to go. It was the only way I was going to get out of my stupid cubicle and into what I really wanted to be doing—editing books.
Frazzled by the news, I practically sprinted to my car, my mind reeling. The stupid dinner party was in two days and I didn't have anything to wear. More importantly, I didn't have a date. If I was going to show up at this stupid dinner party, I was at least going to need a date to take my mind off of things. I considered asking my best friend Jacob Black to come with me for shits and giggles, but I had a nagging feeling that he would think it was a real date. I love Jake, but… more as a brother than as anything remotely romantic.
By the time I got to the small but cozy two bedroom apartment that I shared with Alice Brandon, my other best friend, the panicky feeling that had sprouted in my chest back at the office had spread throughout my body and I was a completely dysfunctional wreck, sitting in the corner of the shower bath—that had been my panic spot since Alice and I first moved into the apartment before our junior year at the University of Washington. Luckily, Alice was well acquainted with my panic spot and came straight into the bathroom when she heard me slump back against the wall.
"What happened?" she asked, rocking back in her ahead of the trend Jimmy Choo boots. Alice worked as a fashion correspondent for Vogue—she knew everything there was to know about the latest trends and she was always trying to force me into them. It was like she never got to play with Barbies as a kid and was trying to compensate by playing Bella Barbie.
I lifted my head from the back wall of the shower and looked helplessly at my tiny, pixie-like best friend. "Alice," I groaned, pulling my long, dark brown hair out of the prim bun I'd packed it into earlier that morning. "Remember how I told you about those three authors who are switching their publishing company to Bennett & Hastings?" Alice nodded. One of the many reasons I loved her so much was because she actually listened to me when I spoke—well, she listened most of the time, at least. "And you remember that stupid dinner party I was telling you about?" Alice nodded again, a mischievous glint flickering in her eye. She was catching onto my dilemma and I knew she wouldn't be as torn up about it as I was. "Well, the authors are coming to the party to meet the peons of the company and are each picking one to be a junior editor. I need to go to this dinner party but I have nothing to wear and I don't have a date and I really loathe dinner parties."
As expected, Alice grinned at me and extended her hand in my direction to help me out of the bathtub. I knew what was coming next and couldn't even do anything to stop it. "I can help you find something to wear, silly!" she exclaimed, dragging me toward her surprisingly normal sized closet. The catch was that she had a dresser and a ridiculous amount of those plastic storage drawers that you can get at Walmart all entirely filled with clothes. That was Alice, though. "As for the date thing," she said, throwing open the doors to her closet and lunging toward the area sectioned off for formal dresses. "Why don't you just ask Jake?"
"Jake will get the wrong idea if I ask him," I admitted sheepishly. I didn't really like to talk about the whole situation with Jacob, even with Alice. Our dads were best friends back in our hometown of Forks, Washington and we'd grown up together. Jacob was there to see me when I was a round faced third grader who thought she was Laura Ingalls Wilder and wore pigtail braids to school and I was there the day Jake's voice started cracking when he was thirteen. He skipped Junior Prom with me in favor of a trip to visit my mother in Jacksonville and he convinced me to begrudgingly attend my Senior Prom with him. He brought chicken soup over when I was sick and I frequently stopped by his place to cook him dinner because he still didn't know how to make anything except for scrambled eggs and pasta. To me, Jacob was like a brother only better. I definitely wasn't like a sister to him, though—I figured that much out the day he tried to kiss me in his backyard. Everything would have been perfect except for one small detail: I definitely wasn't romantically interested in him at all.
Alice looked pensive for a moment, as if she was reviewing my claim and trying to decide whether that was true or not. "I guess he would," she finally said, her voice slightly sullen. I knew she'd always wanted me to at least give Jake a chance when it came to dating, mostly because, 'Bella, haven't you seen his abs? The man is a work of art.' However, after just a second, Alice perked up as if a light bulb had just turned on magically in her head. "But I know where you can find a date!" she exclaimed, bolting out of the bathroom.
I sat still in my panic spot, slightly stunned by Alice's sudden departure from the room. After five years of living with her, I probably should have been used to it, but her crazy, sometimes mildly erratic way of life still shocked me from time to time. I loved her, but there had to be a way to make her calm down.
"Jazz gave me this the other day," Alice announced, unfolding what appeared to be a flyer. "Two of his friends—they're brothers, I think—came up with this side business just for the hell of it. I kind of think it sounds like a business for the express purpose of meeting women, but whatever. And, okay, I know what you're going to say, but I'll tell you right now, it's really not like an escort service." I shot her a look that was a cross between a glare and a very confused look. Why would it sound like an escort service? What the hell was she trying to get me to do? "Okay, basically the guys—Emmett and Edward Cullen are their names—will come and step into certain situations to help other people out. For example, a pretty, young girl working at a publishing company needs a date to a dinner party, perhaps? One of them step in as your—er, her stud-muffin date and all is well!"
I hadn't moved since she came back with the flyer—I was still trying to comprehend what she'd just suggested and how it wasn't like an escort service. "Alice? How is that not exactly like an escort service?"
Alice rolled her eyes and put her hands on her tiny hips, looking at me as if I was a petulant child. "Just trust me, Bella. Jazz knows these guys and he told me that they're really great. I think you should give it a shot." Of course she thought I should give it a shot. In Alice Land, I would take the flyer and call up the boys and one of them would come to help me out and sweep me off my feet. She was always getting on my case about getting a boyfriend, or even just having random, meaningless sex with somebody just to unwind. In case she hadn't noticed, I was never the meaningless sex type.
Apparently unwilling to keep arguing with me, Alice dropped the flyer into my lap and sashayed out of the room—no doubt to call her boyfriend Jasper and tell him all about how I was going to call his friends. I never actually agreed to calling the boys, but Alice always seemed to know what I was going to do before I actually decided I was going to do it. She knew I would eventually decide to call Jasper's friends—I was desperate and it was last minute, there was nothing else I could do.
Running a hand through my hair, I buried my head in my hands for a minute, putting off calling as long as I could. Was there a reason that this had to happen to me? I didn't even enjoy dinner parties! The authors would be there to pick their junior editors, though, and I absolutely had to be there if I was going to move up from being an underling coffee girl in the next two years. It wouldn't be so bad, though, right? I'd just show up with one of Jasper's friends, we'd eat and I'd leave as soon as I could. Besides, Jasper promised Alice that his friends were great people—hopefully he was telling the truth about that.
"Okay," I sighed to myself, unfolding the flyer Alice had dropped in my lap and pulling out my cell phone. "I can do this." Self-affirmation had never really been my thing—it wasn't surprising that talking out loud to myself wasn't helping at all.
The flyer read "AT YOUR SERVICE" in big block letters with the names of Jasper's friends under it, some information about their little business thing and their phone number. It wasn't a big deal, I reminded myself. I'd never have to see whoever ended up taking me to the dinner party again, anyway. Well, unless Alice and I hung out with Jasper and his friends one night, but that almost never happened, so I wasn't really worried.
With one final sigh, I flipped my phone open and dialed the number at the bottom of the flyer. When a male voice answered the phone with a suave greeting, I felt my face reddening as I struggled for the words I was looking for. "Er, hi. My name is Isabella Swan and… and I was wondering if I could use your, er… services two nights from now." I held my breath, waiting for a response from the guy on the other line. Everything would work out, just like Alice said it would. Right? Of course right.