CHANCES

CH. 2: From Afar

I never read the office but my story is not about an office relationship it is merely where they meet. Please hang through the first couple chapters, I promise it is going to get interesting. I will try to get all the introduction stuff out of the way quickly! Thanks to all of you for reading! Please review! Btw I still don't have a beta for this story so please be patient with my errors.

Disclaimer: I do not own twilight or any of its characters they belong to Stephanie Meyers

BPOV

I have been working at Pattinson Distribution for almost five months now and today was the first time he noticed me. I tried to hide, but it seemed that today I wasn't meant to. At least I didn't make eye contact. I couldn't believe that of all the times he was going to notice me, Edward was going to see me doing something embarrassing. When he approached Alice and I picking up my papers, after that jackass Newton plowed into me running after his whore Jessica, I was so humiliated. I had to get the hell out of there. I didn't even bother putting my hair back today and really didn't look good. I wanted him to see me at my best not my worst. As if that wasn't bad enough, at lunch, I normally have a pretty good instinct as to where Edward was and I didn't even know he was outside with me today. Of course this would also be the day where I am craving cheese puffs and manage to get it all over me while trying to play a game on my phone. I heard him laughing and I didn't know if it was at me getting mad or at the ducks. I was certain I saw him looking my way. Once again, as soon as I saw him notice me, I bolted. I ran straight for the bathroom in the lobby. I needed to go in there and wash my cheesy hands anyway and pull the grass pieces out of my hair. I guess that was karma kicking my ass for yanking the grass out and trying to throw it.

I needed to get back upstairs and back to my desk before I got in trouble for being late from lunch. I checked myself over in the bathroom mirror one more time to make sure I got all the grass out and then headed for the elevator. Once I got back upstairs I went straight back to my desk and sat down hoping that Tanya wasn't back from her lunch yet. I removed the new requisitions from my mail box and started filling out the orders for the new supplies. I always paid special attention to Alice's personal requisitions because she ordered a lot and I really liked her and wanted make sure she had everything she needed. Edward's requisitions were also in my in-box. He always got them to me just before lunch on Mondays which happened to be the last possible time to submit them in order to get the order by the following week. I only submit orders at the end of the day on Mondays so they will arrive Friday giving me the day to go through them and get them ready to be delivered first thing Monday morning to each person.

I used to get really irritated with Edward for waiting till the very last minute every Monday. I went to talk to him about it a couple weeks after I started working here. I walked over to his office and couldn't go in. I saw his gorgeous green eyes and his messy bronze hair and I melted. I couldn't get mad at him, I doubted that anyone could. He was a God and I was just a mere mortal and I was afraid that if I looked him straight in the eyes that I would turn to stone. It was silly I know but he was just so perfect.

After that first time I saw him, I couldn't get enough. Every time I walked to his side of the building to hand back the requisition copy receipts, I made sure that I kept an eye on Edward. I couldn't help it, I was drawn to him. I knew the way he walked, talked, and smelled. I wouldn't say that I was stalking him, more like appreciating from afar. Worshiping even would work. I stayed a distance a way and never even talked to him. I gave all his req receipts to Alice and she was so fun and perky that I loved going over there just to see her. Unfortunately my trips to catch glimpses of Edward had also brought Jessica's disgusting trysts into my first hand knowledge. People who used their cubicles for sexual exploits were nasty. She invited me into it one and I had to decline just based on being afraid that I might contract in STD just by touching her desk.

I might have stopped checking up on Edward so often after that if I hadn't noticed something fascinating about him. I was walking around trying not to watch him one day and noticed him leave behind a pair of scissors that he was carrying. He set them down on a ledge outside his office and then just walked off. I picked them up and went to give them back, but panicked when I realized that I would have to look him in the face to do that. I didn't know what to do so I kept them. After awhile I didn't even think about it, I just started collecting his stuff. As far as I could tell he would have lost them anyway. I would call it stealing after all I wasn't taking them home or anything. I mostly just used his things on my desk and they were all pretty generic like the rest of the office supplies we buy here. I was pretty sure that Alice's requisitions were always so large because she was replacing those items. When I started getting too much stuff I would just cycle them back out. I didn't have to buy new stuff with the requisitions, I just had to make sure the item was given. We couldn't very well keep ordering things that there were plenty of lying around. Staplers and tape dispensers were something we had a lot of so I would just get those out of the storage room. Sometimes there were scissors and other things in there also. I made regular trips in there to check how much was there. When people would get fired or retired or even bought there own stuff, someone would collect the companies supplies and put them in the store room. Not constantly buying new stuff was my money saving idea to the company when I applied. It was what got me my job in purchasing instead of having to work in one of the tiny cubbys. Once Edward's stuff stopped smelling like him, I had no problem returning it to Alice as part of her order. I kept all the pens though. There were plenty of those.

It was almost time to go home when I finished up the order. I put it in Tanya's box to sign off on and began my rounds to hand back all of the requisition receipts. I always started on the first floor and worked my way back up to here to the fifth floor. It made the most sense that way I could grab my purse and jacket when I was done and could leave. I was usually done at about the same time every Monday so my routine was pretty much set. I always gave myself a little bit of extra time for the fifth floor so I could see Edward a bit longer. Thankfully his walls were glass so I could see in there from almost everywhere on his side of the building. The cubicles were just tall enough to hide me from him but not the other way around. He had shades on the windows but I had never seen them down.

On the first floor, was the lobby and human resources. Not too many people worked in there so it was a quick trip for me. The second floor was just as easy because it was where the storage room was and the personnel office. Only a total of four people worked on the entire floor. The storage room was pretty large and only one person worked in there. I felt bad for her having to work all alone. "Hi Angela," I called to her. I couldn't see her but I knew she was here because there was some low music on. Angela was in charge of organizing and cataloging all of the furniture and supplies inside the storage room. I spent a lot of time with her, especially on Fridays when the shipment came in. Some items had to be purchased in bulk so we would unpack everything and she would catalog and store all the excess supplies. Angela was a really sweet girl and was my favorite person in the office, apart from Alice. She walked out from behind some shelves of toilet paper and other bathroom supplies. She had an armful of paper towel bundles.-*

"Hey Bella, how are you?" Angela was tall and thin with long waving dark hair. She worse glasses and I always thought that if she pulled her into a bun, she would look just like a librarian. I suppose in a way she is a librarian of sorts. Instead of organizing books, she is organizing supplies. It was just as quiet in here as it is in a library too.

"Good, Newton was running after Jessica today. It would have been pretty funny he hadn't run right smack into me and made me drop all my paperwork. Tanya was really mad when I had to sort through them all before I left for lunch. I don't think it would kill her to leave for lunch a little before me, but you know she couldn't possibly here for five minutes alone if I were still on lunch when she got back." Angela started laughing at that and set her paper towels in front of me.

"I know right? It might kill her if she had to answer her own phone. Heaven for bid if someone actually had a question about an order or something. Knowing damn well you do all her work and she really has no idea what to do with all the purchasing stuff." We both laughed and I handed her the receipt for her order.

Angela was responsible for making sure we always had plenty of regularly stocked supplies. Things like toiletries, copier paper, paper clips, and printer paper were all her responsibilities. I took care of ordering everything as well as keeping tabs on how much everyone ordered. It was my job to make sure that if anyone was ordering too much stuff on a regular basis that management was notified so they could investigate. Tanya told me once that companies lose lots of money on employees stealing office supplies. Little things like pens weren't a big deal because they get stuck in someones pocket and taken home by accident. We fired a guy two weeks ago for taking home reams of computer paper every week. I had done the math on his purchases and he had cost the company close to five hundred dollars in a month. This is a big company and most people don't realize that there purchases are being tracked. This company does a lot of charity work and gives a lot of donations. It may seem stupid, but to me, when you steal from a company that gives as much as this one to the community, you are basically stealing from the community. Last year, Pattison Distribution had to cut back on how much money they gave to the Twilight police department due to $6,500 in employee theft. Someone had a actually stolen a copy machine and a company computer without anyone knowing. This was one of the reasons that I got this job. I had been working for another company, New Moon Music, and had worked out a huge problem within their company. They also had a problem with employee theft, but there's was a little more obvious. Someone had been stealing unreleased music albums and selling them online. The early online sales cost the company close to a million dollars over the course of two years. The problem at Pattinson was nothing compared to that, but they were a smaller company so it effected them almost as much. Honestly, if I wasn't collecting and recirculating the items Edward lost, he would probably be investigated for his orders too. Then again, I would never let that happen. If the possibility ever came up, I would have to talk to him directly even if I did turn to stone. I couldn't let him get fired.

"Bella would you mind dropping these paper towels off to Ben on your way to the third floor. He says he is getting tired there not being any in the men's room up there and wants to keep some at his desk. I don't know what's going on with janitorial up there but I told him he could have a couple bundles." I nodded and picked up the three bundles. It was a little tricky to balance the three bundles and keep my papers in order but I managed.

"No problem Ang, would you like me to give him your cell number while I am up there?" Angela has had a crush on Ben for as long as I have known her. I was pretty sure he liked her too by the way his face lit up every time I gave him something from her. Ben was always finding little things to call Angela about. She blushed and shook her head no. "Alright, see you tomorrow."

"Bye Bella and thank-you!" I hurried to the elevator and waited hoping that I could avoid Newton and Crowley while I was on the third floor.

No such luck today, as soon as I stepped out of the elevator, the vultures descended. Crowley was waiting for me with the pretense of using the drinking fountain and Newton wasn't too far behind me. I tried to walk past them with no eye contact but they insisted on my attention. I think that there must be some sort of alarm that goes off on this floor right before I arrive because they always know that I am coming.

Crowley kept telling me about his lunch and I just nodded and said, "mmm." He had gone to a new thai restaurant down the street and gave me a run down of his whole meal. At one point he told me I should go with him there. I responded as politely as I could, it wouldn't be very nice if I threw-up on him, after all, it wasn't the janitorial staff's fault that he disgusted me. At one point he was so animated and waving his arms around that he smacked the paper towels right out of my hands. I managed to hold onto the receipts and bent over to pick up the towels. Crowley didn't apologize but helped pick them up. I swear I heard Newton moan when I bent over. He was so perverted. I made my way to the office assistants with their receipts and to Ben to deliver his receipt and paper towels.

Newton didn't talk to me as much as he leered at me. He gave me the chills. "Thanks for running into me this morning jerk," I told Newton, "you made me drop all my requisitions and then Tanya chewed me out for making us take a late lunch to sort them out."

"Oh Bella I am so sorry, I was in a hurry," yeah I figured that out, he probably did something to upset Jessica and then didn't get his morning blowjob from her. They made me so sick. "You know that I didn't even realize that it was you I ran into."

"You know Newton, it doesn't matter who it was, you should have stopped and apologized. You should have stopped to help clean up the mess you made too. If Alice hadn't come to help me," well Edward wouldn't have almost seen me, "I might have been there all day. Try not to be so damn self-absorbed."

Crowley laughed at Newton and then smirked at him.

"You are so right Bella and I will make it up to you right now and escort you back to the fifth floor." He looked over at Crowley with a big grin on his face as if he had just won some sort of prize.

Dear God no! "That really isn't necessary but thanks for the offer." I hurried to the elevator and prayed he wasn't following me.

"I insist Bella," he called pushing in front of me. The elevator arrived and to my dismay there was no one else in it. We stepped inside and I tried to ignore him. Ben gave me an apologetic look as the doors closed and I frowned at him. He should have tried to find something to distract Newton so I could make a quick escape. "Bella you are so beautiful. You and I would make some great looking kids." Ewww he did not just say that.

"Wow Newton you think a lot of yourself, and I am not interested in having kids.." I started but he cut me off.

"I think a lot of you too and I am not ready to have kids yet either," he obviously didn't realize I was saying that I wasn't interested in having kids with him or anything else. "Please call me Mike, Bella and just because we aren't ready to have kids doesn't mean we can't practice" he was inching closer to me. Luckily the fourth floor was still under construction and we could skip right to the fifth. I needed to get away from him. The doors opened and I practically ran out of the elevator. I thought that Newton would go back down, but he didn't. He started following me around.

I went to Alice's desk hoping she would start talking and Mike would leave out of boredom. "Hey Bella, how are you. Did you get your papers all straightened out this morning. I felt so bad that some jackass ran you over." I glared at Newton and he smiled sheepishly. "Oh it was you," she gave him a cold look and he looked away. She whispered to me, "Is he following you?" I nodded. "Newton, don't you have actual work to do?"

"Nope, Bella is my whole life today. I have to make up for running into her this morning. I am protecting her from other people now." Alice and I both rolled our eyes.

"I don't need protection from anybody but you," I told him walked off hoping he would take the hint. I continued down the hall and could hear him still following me.

"You know Bella I would use protection with you if that's what you prefer, but bareback is so much better." That was it, I was so mad and sickened.

"Newton you have a lot of nerve saying that shit to me. I am not interested in you and I don't want you following me around. Go back to the third floor and leave me alone. I am not Jessica and I am not going to suck your dick so get lost!" Just then I heard a noise behind me and I smelled it. The sweet and yet musky smell of Edward Cullen. I flushed. He sounds like he is right behind me. Shit, we were arguing right in front of his office and he always had his blinds open. I am going to be in so much trouble for yelling like that.

"What the hell is going on out here?" Edward growled. I had never heard him so close, or so angry. I am going to lose my job for sure.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter I promise to post the next one soon. I am sure you can see where this is going though. There is some really good stuff coming up so hang in there.

I still have to work on Blue also because it is just as important of a story to me.

Please review this and let me know what you think so I can make sure its worth while to continue. It take a lot of time to write two fics at a time.