I do not own Twilight

Chapter 2

EPOV

"You've got to be fucking kidding me. I cannot believe you smuggled that shit into my car. What if a cop sees us?" I say, glancing around with growing paranoia.

Why did I agree to a road trip? At this very moment, I could be at home, sleeping on my couch. Instead, I'm driving seven hundred miles away from my couch for the sole pleasure of my so-called best friend. I'm too nice for my own good, and Emmett reminds me of it every single day.

"Edward, try to calm the fuck down. We're almost to the beach, and when we get there and you see all the fine-ass beach bunnies, you'll be thanking me for talking you into this," Emmett says, rolling his unwelcome marijuana into a thin leaf of paper.

"Why did you have to bring pot? I don't even want to guess where you found it. If we get pulled over with that shit, I'm the one getting nailed for it, not you. And you better pray to the god of over-sized morons that you don't put a single burn mark in this car because if you do, you're a fucking dead man," I say, and God help me, I mean every single word of it, too.

I miss my couch.

"I'm doing this for you, dipshit. We have one more summer of freedom before the real world kicks us in the ass. We need to let loose—do something crazy. And you need to pull your head out of your ass and relax. That's why I brought the pot. You're only twenty-three, man; you need to stop acting like such an old, douchey asshole. This is our last hurrah. Before you know it, we'll be in med school and you'll never let us have fun again."

"You got that right," I say with a sigh.

We crossed the border into Florida not too long ago and only have another hour or so to go before we reach the beach house that cost me a month's wages to rent on such short notice. Emmett has absolutely no reason to partake in the car—a convertible at that. Right out in the open for the mother fucking world to see. Fuck, whatever. There's no point in fighting him about it. Arguing with Emmett, I've learned over the last fifteen years, is beyond pointless. All it does is irritate the shit out of me, and somehow, he always wins.

When he gags, coughs, and chokes on the smoke, I smirk. Serves him right. Neither of us has touched the stuff since our high school days. Once we got to college and had constant access to alcohol, we had no use for pot. I don't know why he's suddenly so nostalgic for the worst four years of our lives.

Well, they were the worst four years of my life, anyway.

Emmett was the king of our Cincinnati high school; I was not. His family moved in next door to mine when we were both eight years old, and we've been best friends ever since. Until ninth grade, we were pretty much on par with each other socially. We both loved comics, super heroes, and just about everything else that anyone without a life would find interesting. We were dorks, but we were dorks together. I almost cried when Emmett told me he'd be spending the whole summer before our freshman year of high school at his grandmother's house in Pasadena. I was miserable without him and counted the days until his return.

When he finally did come home, I hardly recognized him. Puberty had hit Emmett. Hard. He was almost a foot taller than when he left, and suddenly, he had muscles. His voice was deeper, too. To make matters worse, he'd gotten a tan from a summer spent in the California sun, while I, on the other hand, hadn't changed one iota. I took one look at him and literally felt my testicles crawl inside my body in shame. In three short months, Emmett had become a man, and I was still the same scrawny, pasty, brace-faced, pimply, squeaky-voiced loser I was before he left.

Despite his transformation, nothing else changed between us, and for the first two years of my miserable existence in high school, Emmett was my bodyguard. I'd always been bullied for being smarter than everyone in my class, and Emmett had been bullied merely for being the chubby kid who hung out with me. But when we returned to school that fall, no one dared to mess with Emmett, and he made sure no one messed with me, either.

He will always be my best friend, my brother.

Once I finally matured the summer after sophomore year, things got a little better for me. I was still a skinny fuck, just a tall skinny fuck. I tried hard to make something of my body, and Emmett and I would spend hours working out in the high school's weight training room. This became an almost daily ritual for us that we still carry on to this day. I am, by no means, the muscle-head that Emmett naturally is, but I've worked hard and have a little something to be proud of. I can even hold my own when we wrestle.

Yeah, we still wrestle. What?

We pull up to a stoplight, and Emmett attempts to hand me the oversized joint he managed to roll on a CD case in his lap. Just like high school.

"Get that thing out of my face. We're at a stoplight; everyone can see what we're doing," I say with shifty eyes.

"Dude, no one's around, just a quick one; come on, it's been years. Have a little fun for once, cock breath," he says, laughing like a stoned hyena.

Grudgingly, I look around and see that we're alone at the intersection. Grabbing his wrist, I take a pull off the joint for the lone purpose of shutting him the fuck up.

"There you go, man! Here, take another," he said, holding it up to my face. In the rearview mirror, I see a car approaching in the distance and smack his hand away. He loses his grip on the joint and it falls to the floorboard at my feet.

"What the fuck, Emmett," I yell, growing more and more pissed by the second as Emmett continues laughing his ass off. At this point, it's really just wheezing. "Quit laughing and get your ass down there! Get it before it burns a hole through the bottom of my car!" I'm yelling in such a manner that Emmett looks like a scolded child.

"All right, dude; take it easy," he says and leans over, searching with his hand. "I don't feel it."

"Well you better fucking find it, or I'm going to make your dick useless to all those beach bunnies you're looking forward to banging over the next three weeks."

His eyes go wide and he's on his knees in his seat in a flash. His face is smashed to the floorboard between my feet. "I see it! It's under your seat. Hold on, I almost got it."

I close my eyes and press my head to the back of my seat, silently cursing the day we met. My first brand new car—a graduation present from my father—and he pulls this shit. He'd better pray . . .

The car I saw behind us pulls up to my left, and I instinctively turn my head to look. My heart stops beating when I lay eyes on the most gorgeous brunette I've seen in all my twenty-three years. Perfection is in the driver's seat, and I have a great view since whoever's in the passenger side has reclined their seat all the way back.

I practically have to yank my jaw off the back of Emmett's head when the brunette notices me. She stares at my dumb-ass for the most fleeting of moments and immediately takes her dark eyes away to face the road. My stomach does summersaults when I see the corner of her mouth turn up in a smile. I know my staring is excessive and probably a little creepy, but I just can't look away.

She turns back to me, and when she looks into my eyes and graces me with a perfectly crooked smile, my heart finally revives and is now threatening to pound out of my chest.

I smile back and wave to her. She blushes—oh God, she's so lovely when she blushes—and mouths 'hi' to me. Just then, because I'm pretty sure God created me to be a walking punch-line, Emmett pops his head up from in between my legs, sweaty and out of breath.

"Finally! God, that took forever," he says loudly . . . too loudly. I've never wanted to divorce him as a friend more in my life than I do at this moment.

Aphrodite's eyes are now wide as saucers. "Oh, my God!" she blurts out, and her passenger sits up, instantly awake.

Emmett snaps his head in their direction, and then we look at each other. I can hear my mahogany-haired goddess laughing at us, and I want to die. I squeeze my eyes shut before sneaking a glance at her from the corner of my eye. Fuck me. She's pointing at us and explaining to her friend what she thinks she just witnessed.

Emmett is still dazed and confused in my lap, and I heave him off me with a rough shove. When the penny finally drops, and he fully understands the compromising situation we're in, we both stammer over each other as we stupidly try to explain ourselves.

"No. No, no!"

"It's not—he wasn't—"

"I'm not…"

It's no use. The girl of my dreams is laughing too hard to hear us, and her blond companion points across the intersection.

"There's a Motel 6 right over there, boys. I'm sure they have hourly rates," she says, and they both erupt in laughter once more.

"But we weren't—we aren't—"

The light changes before I can string a coherent sentence together, and the two of them speed off, leaving us to eat their dust.

"What the fuck!" I yell, taking it out on my steering wheel. When the car behind me honks, I gesture rudely and begin to move again.

Emmett isn't at all fazed by my hysterics. "Man, did you get a load of that blonde? Fuck, she was incredible. Definitely a ten," he says, still in awe.

"Yeah, I did. And you know what? She thinks you were sucking my dick," I yell again.

"Relax, bro, we'll never see them again in our lives. It's a damn shame, too. That blonde . . ." he says with a low whistle, passing me the joint again.

Fuck.

My.

Life.

00000

Thanks for reading, everyone! I hope you liked your introduction to Ed and Em. Geez, Edward has quite the stick up his ass, right? Well, hopefully, that won't be the last he's seen of Bella. Maybe he'll be able to relax a little when he sees her again. Then again, she does think he's gay …

Big thanks to Fran for betaing, and to Alice's White Rabbit for providing a shoulder to cry on last week when my house was burglarized and my laptop was stolen along with EVERYTHING I've ever written. I was able to spare a couple important pieces, including this story, thanks to email chains, but nevertheless …

I'll see you all next week. I'm off to go spend some time doing my new favorite pastime, wound-licking.

XOXO,

AshesAshes