Disclaimer: I don't own the Twilight Saga or of the its original characters.

2: First Impressions

I woke with a start, finding myself in a mess of sweat-soaked blankets as my head began to throb.

Just another stupid nightmare, I told myself. I'd been having bad dreams persistently for the past few weeks and I had so far been putting it down to the stress my parents were causing me. Get a grip, Allie.

Turning onto my side, I saw that pale light was beginning to stream in through my window so it couldn't have been too early. Gram was probably awake already, an early bird practically from birth, and a few minutes later I heard the sound of the refrigerator opening downstairs, confirming my thoughts.

I pushed myself up and quickly got dressed, knowing that I could grab a shower later once the others were up and I wouldn't have to worry about disturbing their sleep. It was a Saturday, after all, and no-one liked being woken up early on the weekends. Myself included, usually.

"Oh, you're up early," Gram noted with a soft smile as I made my way through the doorway to the kitchen. "I didn't wake you, did I?"

"No," I told her. "I think it's just jet lag."

"Of course," she said, nodding to herself as wiped down the counters.

"So what time is this barbecue then?"

"Not 'till this evening, sweetpea. I've got to run a few errands in Forks first, anyway,"

Forks was a town close to the reservation, with a slightly larger population and the luxury of a dozen or so more stores. I didn't remember it very well, except for eating at a diner there the last time I visited and getting food poisoning, but I tried to sound relatively cheery as Gram continued to ask if I wanted to accompany her.

"Sure," I told her with a half-hearted smile.

"We'll head off in about an hour then. Why don't you go grab a shower first and do something with that crazy hair of yours?"

I frowned down at my frizzy waves as I said, "It won't wake Hudson or Brady?"

"I highly doubt it," Gram laughed. "Hudson went out fishing at the crack of dawn with his buddies. Brady, well... That boy could sleep through a damn hurricane!"

Nodding half to myself, I headed back upstairs and did as she said. My hair only ever looked half-decent in a side braid so I settled with that, hoping Gram would, too, and by nine o'clock we were climbing into her pick-up truck.

The reservation was just as small as I remembered it, although there were a few new amenities situated around the marina, as well as a set of traffic lights that hadn't been there before. Gram pointed out a restaurant that was currently looking for waitresses we drove through the tiny town center and I made a mental note to go in there at some point in the week.

During the journey Gram kept me occupied with idle chatter about the healing circle she had recently joined in Port Angeles, as well as all the need-to-know gossip about her neighbors and friends, and before I knew it we were pulling into a dreary parking lot in Forks.

"I've got to go into the hardware store to pick up a couple of things for Hud first," she told me as we got out of the car and into the drizzle.

For the next two hours I trailed behind Gram as she went about her business, picking up new fishing equipment for Hudson, returning books at the library, chatting with people she knew some way or another, and eventually I was told to wait in the car while she went into Ron's Food Mart to pick up a few groceries she'd forgotten to buy the day before.

Thankful to be out of the rain, I headed back to the parking lot without a fuss and got into the passenger seat. After waiting for a good five minutes, I decided to occupy myself by trying to find the radio station I'd liked last night.

After accidentally tuning into a couple that were playing either country music or local bands that were growing popular in Seattle, I found that I couldn't get anything else but static. With a sigh, I turned the radio off and found myself more than slightly taken aback when the static didn't stop. If anything, it was getting louder.

What the hell, I thought to myself, trying to turn the radio on-and-off again in a panic. Did I suddenly have some kind of freaking hearing impairment?

The static didn't stop, though, and after a minute or so it had grown almost deafeningly loud. My head was throbbing worse than ever as I verged on hysterical and then all of a sudden Gram was opening her door and it just... stopped.

"Sweetpea, what's wrong?" She asked before putting her keys in the ignition, frowning at me.

"I don't know..." I began shakily. "I think I'm getting a migraine or something. Maybe tinnitus. I don't know."

"Tinnitus? Like a ringing in your ears?"

"More like white noise," I mumbled, turning to face the window as she started the truck. "It's probably nothing."

"Probably," Gram repeated quietly.

She was uncharacteristically silent for the majority of the drive back to La Push, and by the time we pulled up in front of the house I couldn't help but wonder if I'd done or said something wrong. I didn't push it, though, instead retreating straight back up to my room once we were indoors.

"Hey, are you alright?" Brady asked, poking his head through the door way to my room.

I looked up at him from my book. "Yeah, just a headache. I really wish y'all hadn't gone to all this trouble."

For most of the afternoon I had watched out of my window as Brady and two other guys I didn't know attempted to set up a gazebo under Hudson's instruction, just in case it did happen to continue raining. I couldn't help but feel bad that everyone was putting in this much effort for a simple barbecue, and part of me was almost starting to wish they hadn't at all.

"Don't be stupid, Allie. You should come down before everyone gets here, anyway. I want to introduce you to my friends,"

"Would these be the guys?" I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Only two of them, actually," Brady laughed, gesturing for me to follow him out onto the landing. "You'll meet the rest of them some other time. They can be a bit... Intense, I guess. But I promise Seth and Collin don't bite, OK?"

"Fine. Just give me five minutes, OK?"

Brady nodded and disappeared back downstairs a second later. After finishing the page I'd been reading, I put down my tattered copy of A Tale of Two Cities and headed after him.

I took the stairs two at a time, trying to seem friendly and excited for my welcoming party, and was doing pretty well at practicing my best smile until I missed the last step.

If grace was a virtue then I was sure as hell the epitome of proper conduct. Kidding, of course.

But instead of hitting the floor and twisting my ankle like I expected to, I was caught by something warm and strong. My yelp of surprise was drowned out by something clattering to the ground noisily behind the warm and strong... Person? Yes, the muscular arms holding onto me definitely belonged to a person.

"Huh, it's not every day that I have a girl literally fall for me," came a husky voice and I looked up to meet a pair of smiling brown eyes. Oh, wow.

The guy in front of me, lightly holding me up by my elbows, was the literal definition of "tall, dark and handsome". He was definitely Quileute, I knew that, at least, and he was definitely one of the most gorgeous men I had ever met, with eye lashes so long that they brushed against his cheeks when he blinked and then blinked again as he took me in.

But the smile disappeared in a flash and then he was just staring with an unreadable expression on his face. Self-consciously, I stepped out of his grip and fixed the straps on my blue sundress, noticing that it was an acoustic guitar that he'd dropped.

"Sorry," I offered up lamely. "I promise I'm not weak at the knees for every strange man I meet,"

He didn't say or do anything for a second and I wondered if I had completely put my foot in it, but then Brady came up behind him in the hall and it seemed like our encounter was forgotten in an instant.

"I've been looking for you everywhere, man," Brady said. "Pops is burning every morsel of food in sight and it makes me want to cry - as in little girl cry. God, it's so fucking awful that I had to come in to hide some of the refrigerated stuff!"

It was only when the other guy didn't say anything in response that Brady noticed me on the staircase and the instrument on the floor.

"Oh, Allie, you finally showed that pretty face of yours! This is Seth Clearwater, my self-professed best friend and the poor, pathetic doormat of the reservation. I told you that part, right? Seth, this is Allie, the girl who wanted to probe you,"

I glowered at Brady, and after I few moments I thought strongly about glowering at Seth, too, when he still hadn't said anything.

"Hi, Seth," I finally offered.

Seth shot Brady a similarly dark look before turning back to me and saying, "It's nice to meet you, Allie."

"Is your guitar OK?"

"What? Oh, yeah," he mumbled, frowning as he bent down to grab it by the neck. Then Seth pushed passed my cousin, leaving us both staring after him in bewilderment.

"He seems nice," I noted with a snort.

But Brady was quiet, his brow furrowed as he seemed to be working something out in his head.

"Well," I continued. "I'm going to go find Gram, and get this over and done with,"

"He's not usually like that. In fact, he's never been like that before," Brady commented, half to himself.

I glanced back at Brady from the kitchen door way. His grin was back now, wider than I had ever seen it, as though he had discovered something worthy of a Nobel Prize.

He slipped his arm around my shoulders in a brotherly way. "Don't mind Seth, OK? First impressions aren't everything, after all. I'm totally certain you two are going to be great friends,"

"I just embarrassed myself in front of him and got a shoulder that was colder than Antarctica," I groaned loudly. "That sure sounds like the makings of a great friendship to me!"

But Brady just grinned that silly eureka grin of his and steered me towards a group of locals sat underneath the gazebo, slightly to the side of Gram's petunias. I had forgotten just how beautiful her garden was in the summer; you couldn't tell where the flowers stopped and the forest started.

"You must be Allie," a guy greeted, offering me his hand to shake. He had the same distinctly Quileute features as Brady and Seth, and I quickly recognized him as the other guy who had been helping out earlier. "I'm Collin Littlesea. It's a real shame I'm gay because you are one fine piece of southern ass."

I gaped at him mid-handshake, partly because of how feverishly warm his palm was and partly because of what he'd said.

"It's, err, nice to meet you, too?"

"Jeez, Collin. You couldn't have been a little subtler?" The woman to the right of him laughed. As she turned to face me I couldn't help but notice the ugly scars that marred the right side of her face, and I quickly tried to focus on her friendly eyes instead. "I'm Emily, by the way, and this is Kim."

The slightly younger girl next to her offered me a soft smile before patting the seat next to her.

As I sat down, Brady nudged Emily and said, "Just so you know, Allie's said she'll take up my babysitting duties next week. How kind of her, right?"

"I'm sure she's done nothing of the sort," Emily chuckled. "But just so you know, Allie, you're welcome to stop by my house anytime."

"More welcome than Brady probably is at the moment," Kim said in a quiet voice beside me.

The group exchanged a knowing look and I shot Brady a questioning look.

"He broke Emily's antique coffee table," Collin finally offered.

"I swear to you it was Embry," Brady said with an exasperated sigh.

"Jared damn well saw you so don't even try to blame anybody else," Emily scoffed.

"Yes, of course, because Jared only ever speaks the truth," Brady muttered. "He's always so honest at poker, right?"

Kim turned to him, her pretty face contorted into a dark expression. "Don't you dare try to incriminate my fiance!"

"Brady has got a point there," Seth said and I realized I hadn't seen him approach the table. He looked over at me and held eye contact as he continued to say, "He cheated me out of fifty bucks just last week, Kim. Where did you think he got the money for that pretty bracelet you're wearing?"

The stare-off continued for precisely nine more seconds until I caved, sheepishly turning my attention away from the conversation and to the porch, where Hudson had precariously placed the fiery barbecue against the wooden railing and was attempting to cook what looked like three dozen burger patties at once.

How freaking high is he? I wondered to myself, glad for the distraction.

I realized Seth was still staring as he took the seat across from me. I could feel the intensity of his gaze and I was trying my hardest not to either scowl at him for being so rude before or, more pathetically, blush - which would have been a lot easier if he hadn't been one of the hottest guys I'd ever met.

"So you come from Georgia, right?" Emily asked.

"Yeah," I told her. "Atlanta, actually. The birthplace of confederate values and Martin Luther King."

"Sounds pretty ironic," Collin chuckled.

"Well, I'll bet it's really nice there this time of year," Emily said as sipped her drink. "Sunny, at least. None of this constant wind and rain!"

"Hey, the Sun is shining here for once, don't go jinxing that!" Gram exclaimed as she came to a stop by the picnic table with two much older adults I didn't recognize. "Making friends, Allie?"

I gave her a tight smile but Brady spoke up before I could, saying, "Oh, she sure is! Kim and Emily are taking her shopping at the weekend to find the perfect pair of kitten heels, and then they're planning to spend the evening with two dashing gentlemen called Ben and Jerry!"

Gram tutted reprimandingly, which seemed to be a regular occurrence when Brady was involved. With a sigh, she turned to the stout woman next to her and said, "It's a good thing I don't believe in hitting children, right?"

"I'm nineteen in October! That hardly makes me a child," Brady scoffed indignantly.

"Once a pup, always a pup," the unfamiliar elderly man said, causing everyone to laugh. It was safe to say I'd missed the joke. "Welcome to La Push, Allison. I'm Quil Ateara but most people around here refer to me as Old Quil. This is my wife, not-so-old Darleen."

"You don't seem that old to me," I said politely, and he and his wife offered me a equally big smiles in response.

"So, Allie, what do you think of reservation so far?" Seth asked across the table, surprising me. His dark eyes flickered with genuine interest, almost smiling again like before.

"It's just how I remembered it. Peaceful,"

"You'd be surprised at some of the stuff that goes on here," Collin interjected with a chuckle.

And, as if on cue, there was a loud cry from the other side of the yard and I turned to see Hudson looking in awe at the fire that had taken a hold of Gram's prized rose trellis and half of the back porch. Gram was suddenly cursing at him, completely distraught as she jogged across the overgrown lawn.

"Well," Brady began thoughtfully as everyone turned to watch the flames. "This is incredibly inconvenient."