BPOV
3.34.
The red numbers glowed from the alarm clock on my bedside table. I'd been lying in bed since midnight, tossing and turning. Just trying to get to sleep.
Since it obviously wasn't working, I got up and turned on my laptop. While waiting for it to come on, I got up and shuffled downstairs to make a pot of coffee. Looking around my black and white kitchen, I glanced at a picture on the fridge. It was of Rose, Alice and I, taken last year at Halloween.
We had dressed up as the Three Musketeers, the female version. Alice and Rose had tore up their costumes a bit, making it a bit sexier. I refused, but somehow got conned into wearing 5 inch heels. The night ended with me in the hospital with a sprained ankle, and Alice and Rose with dates for the following weekend, with two hot young interns.
"Stupid bitches get all the luck," I thought to myself bitterly. My two best friends were gorgeous. Rose is beautiful. Leggy, long blonde hair and a killer smile. She was the kind of girl you would hate if you didn't know any better. She was fierce, too.
Alice is just as beautiful. She's 5'1", with short black hair that she always wore flipped out, and extremely pixie-like. The girl danced when she walked, I swear.
Now, I'm no coyote ugly myself, but those two sometimes make me feel like a dog.
The three of us have been best friends since our freshman year of college; Alice had danced up to me and said – more like sang - "Hi, I'm Alice! I love your shirt! Would you like me to do your hair for you?"
As if I wasn't intimidated enough, a gorgeous blonde walked into the room and came over to us, saying to the pixie, whose name was apparently Alice, "Geez, Alice. Give the girl some room to breathe!"
Then she turned to me and said, "Sorry about her. You better get used to it, because she seems to like you and she only gets worse. I'm Rosalie, by the way – you can call me Rose."
After introducing myself to them as Bella – never Isabella - they took a seat on either side of me. After class, we went out for lunch.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Turns out Alice and Rose had been best friends since high school, but they soon accepted me as if we'd known each other forever.
Tearing my eyes away from the photo, I realized the coffee was done. I walked back upstairs, coffee in hand, and checked my email. After finding nothing of interest, I browsed the internet for a while. It's late August; Christmas would be here soon enough and I still didn't know what I was getting anyone.
When that became boring, I signed into my Facebook account and went to see what was new.
God, I hate Facebook, I thought to myself. The only reason I had an account at all was because Rose said it was fun and you could meet new people. After being hit on one too many times by an old classmate, Mike Newton, I was beyond ready to delete the account.
A flash of color caught my eye at the bottom of the screen
It was an ad for a pen pal exchange program.
Pen Exchange, I read, where you can meet people from all over the world and of different cultures.
Intrigued, I clicked on the link to take me to the site. It had pictures of a girl from Poland, a guy from Russia, and a different guy from England. I clicked on the English guy's profile and went straight to his pictures.
After seeing a particularly shocking picture of him kissing another guy, I went back to his profile and found out that was his boyfriend.
Ah, too bad, I thought to myself. I had a bit of a thing for Brits. Since I really wanted to meet new people and Facebook sure as hell wasn't cutting it, I went back to the home page and registered.
After filling out all the necessary information, I stopped short at the username part. After a few moments hesitation, I typed in "LiteratureLover123."
Finally tired enough to sleep, I logged out of the account, and shut down the computer.