The usual disclaimers apply. I never understood why people always begged for reviews, but I do now. It would be awesome to know someone is actually reading this, other than the super-awesome ayachan698 who reviewed the last chapter. Most of this is un-betaed, sorry. I'll work on posting stuff when I haven't been drinking in the future.

Chapter 2: Lime Green

Green.

Beautiful, intense, mesmerizing green.

Lime green.

Okay, I know I'm really trashed when I want to write an ode to my margarita. In my defense, this place is notorious for their delicious, huge and potent margaritas. Last year, Tyler – who was 6'2 and built – only drank four before he puked in the bathroom and had to be taken home. I was at two and a half and pretty darn pleased with my tolerance. When one attends graduate school in the middle of fucking nowhere, one learns to hold one's alcohol pretty damn quick.

Everyone's papers were done and we were out celebrating. Jasper and Alice were, as usual when they were drunk, being sickeningly cute. They had taken one look at each other on the first day of orientation when we all arrived last year and have been attached at the hip ever since. Rosalie, as was usual for her when she was drunk, was scoping out the crowd looking for her next conquest. I was contemplating my margarita and trying to avoid the gaze of the guy I slept with two days ago.

Edward was chatting with Jessica, a girl who had come into the program a year before we all did. Between all the insanity of the last few days of work and sleep deprivation, we hadn't actually been alone together since… The Incident. I had taken to calling it 'The Incident' in my head, capital letters included.

I still hadn't decided what I thought about it. Could he be one of those people who get up and do all sorts of crazy shit in their sleep? No, he had to have been awake. Was he embarrassed? Ashamed? Regretful? Just as awkward as me? I ended up having to admit to Alice what had happened, although I swore her to secrecy. She knew about my hopeless crush on Edward ever since she found me trashed and sobbing (with no particular stimulus) on our couch one night. Alice is my roommate, as well as my best friend here. She, Jasper, Rosalie and I all rent a house together, just in case we didn't spend enough time together otherwise. She thinks I should go talk to him about it, but that's clearly an absurd suggestion.

My choice for most likely circumstance is that it was no big deal to him – just fun, stress release between friends. I couldn't blame him for that notion. One-night stands and friends with benefits were pretty common in our social group. Not being able to blame him only made the sting of rejection and the deep pain of unrequited love worse.

So what's a girl to do? Avoid, obviously. That had been my plan up until half a margarita ago. Now, however, I was coming up with something new.

"We need to go out dancing!" yelled Alice, who was feeling no pain. She always wants to go out dancing when we're drinking and we usually end up grudgingly agreeing – and then having a fantastic time.

"Dancing! Brilliant! Let's go!" I replied enthusiastically. What I needed was to feel better about myself. What I needed was some fun. What I needed was to grind with some random guy while Edward was there. Even if he didn't have feelings for me, that would have to rouse some kind of instinctive jealousy, right?

Five minutes later, we were all getting our hands stamped at the front door of The Underdog, the bar where our favourite cover band played every Friday night. We wandered over to the bar to buy drinks and Rose, as usual, was scanning the crowd.

Firmly and clearly, she pointed to a guy standing over to the side. "Him," she declared.

I looked over. He was definitely her type, huge and muscular with dimples and a ball cap. Forget Lola – whatever Rosalie wants, Rosalie gets. The poor guy had no idea that his night's plans were already decided. Not that most of her guys mind.

As I started drinking my tequila and orange juice (it's a bad idea to switch liquors in the middle of the evening, everyone knows that), I tried my best to follow Rosalie's example and look for a guy to target. Of course, what I ended up doing was trying not to watch Jessica flirt with Edward. He seemed to be having a pretty good time tonight, too – he had had three margaritas at the previous bar and was almost done his current drink. Not that I was counting or noticing everything he did or anything.

Alice and Jasper had already moved to the dance floor and Rosalie was silently staring at the guy down the bar, like a lioness stalking her prey. I threw caution to the wind and flung myself into the dancing crowd. It would have been pretty fun if I wasn't so busy obsessing. Some guy was dancing next to me and I evaluated him. Generic looking. Probably an undergrad. Looked pretty drunk. Perfect.

I angled my body towards him and continued my slightly awkward but enthusiastic dancing. Our eyes met, and he smiled. I moved closer. He moved closer. We were dancing together. The inanity of the words we yelled at each other over the music didn't matter. Neither did the fact that I felt no spark towards him. I just needed someone to distract me and, if I was being honest with myself (which I usually am), I needed to provoke some kind of reaction in Edward. Positive or negative didn't matter anymore. I needed him to see me – really see me – and if he didn't, well, that would be the end of that. I'd know that the sex meant nothing to him and I could go back, as hard as it would be, to repressing my feelings for him.

I looked over to the bar where he had last been standing and I couldn't see him. Had he gone home with Jessica? The thought gave me a sinking feeling in my stomach. All of a sudden, the room felt too crowded, too hot. The guy I was dancing with let his hands roam a little too far down and I moved away towards the bathroom. I needed a minute to clear my head.

I escaped the crowd and was walking down the short hallway toward the bathroom when I felt a hand grasp my arm. My eyes were having trouble keeping up – I had reached that stage of drunkenness in which my vision gets affected, like lag in a computer game or a video with too few frames per second. So I was already pressed with my back against the wall by the time I realized that it was Edward, his eyes burning and his jaw set. One of his hands was still firmly holding my arm and his body was only inches away from mine.

"Having a good time?" he asked, his voice tight.

"What? Uh, yes?" I was too startled to make a statement that didn't sound like a question. I stared at him. He was a little more mussed than usual – I could tell he was probably as drunk as I was. The silence stretched as he didn't reply and, before I could think about it, my mouth went on polite auto-pilot.

"How's your night going?" It was inane and impersonal. It felt stupid the moment it came out of my mouth, but what's a girl to do when the guy she's been agonizing over for ages is just staring at her like that? Clearly, he agreed with my displeasure over what I had just said. He narrowed his eyes.

"Oh, it's been just great." His voice was heavy with sarcasm. "Tons of fun." He moved his body even closer to me. He was so close now that, combined with his intense expression, he would have seemed threatening if I hadn't been so utterly unafraid of him. Still, I was too confused to react. This anger – if that's what it was – was so uncharacteristic of him. Even drunk, he was unfailingly polite and cheerful. His glare made no sense. A tiny voice that I could barely hear in the back of my head reminded me that I had, in fact, just been trying to make him jealous, but the more rational side of me knew that I couldn't actually make him feel jealous enough to get like this.

"I just love watching grown women embarrass themselves with drunk undergrads." His hands tightened on my arms as he spoke, gripping me so hard it was almost painful. I barely noticed. His eyes held mine and I felt like one of those cobras that swayed out of clay jars when the snake charmer played his pipe. With effort, I blinked and regained a minute amount of mental presence. Just enough, in fact, to be stung by his words.

"And being all over Jessica is less embarrassing?" I snapped. "What do you care, anyway?" I hadn't really meant to ask that and I was pretty sure I didn't want to hear the answer, so I tried to push off the wall with my body to walk away. But his hands didn't slacken their hold on me – if anything, he tightened his grip and he kept me pressed against the wall of the hallway. With the wall behind me and Edward looming in front of me, I felt trapped and helpless and completely at his mercy. A burst of adrenaline rushed through my body and settled between my legs – who knew sweet, funny, brainy Edward had it in him? His expression now wasn't sweet. It was intense, dangerous, furious and ridiculously hot.

"What do I care?" he repeated back to me in a whisper so loud and angry it verged on a hiss. "You're wearing that dress that shows the whole world half of your chest and your ass and you're grinding with some jackass and you ask why I care?" To be fair, my dress was pretty revealing. But compared to the sorority girls who walk around town in half of a handkerchief in the middle of winter, I was well-covered.

Flustered and increasingly turned on, I mumbled and stammered something about it being nothing and that I was just dancing. It didn't calm him down.

"You seem to do a lot of things that mean nothing." His voice was still aggressive, and before I could even respond he went on. "Fine. You want more nothing?" His right hand released my arm but he kept me pressed against the wall by taking a half step and leaning his whole body into mine. Another shock of arousal went through me when I realized that I could feel his erection through his jeans pressing into my stomach. He leaned his head down to my neck, whispering into my ear along the way. "I'll be the one that gives it to you."

As his lips and tongue and teeth went to work on my neck, I had a fleeting thought that it was a good thing that I was pretty drunk – without that chemical damper I probably would have actually come right then, before he even really touched me. His hand landed on my ribcage and was sliding up towards my chest. I wasn't drunk enough to forget that were we in public and most likely in full view of at least thirty people, but it was Edward and I really couldn't find it in myself to care. He put his other hand on my ass and started moving it back and down, on a course that, if he continued, would have ended between my legs. I thought I was going to explode when everything stopped.

"Sorry," tittered the girl who had bumped into us, too wobbly in her high heels to walk in a straight line. Edward had taken a step back from me in his effort not to fall over and when he turned his face back towards me, when the girl had wandered off, his eyes were as shocked as mine at what he had just been up to. Before I could open my mouth, reassure him, tell him to just take me home, Jasper threw his arms over our shoulders.

"There you are! Alice needs to go home."

"What?" I asked. "We just got here!"

"Well, we're heading out and Rose seems pretty occupied. Want to walk home with us?"

I looked at Edward. He wasn't moving.

"No," I said. I caught Edward's eyes and locked on them. "Edward will stay with me, won't you?" He spoke too faintly for me to hear his response over the music, but Jasper replied to him and walked away. This time it was my turn to grab his arm. He looked at me with wide, dilated eyes.

Throwing caution to the wind, I said: "if you think you're stopping now, you're fucking crazy."