Author's Note: I want to give a huge thank you to those who have followed/favorited this story story far! Also, a shoutout to my first set of reviewers, Lily, Kiwiflea, and lizzolukosko. I appreciate your kind words and comments more than you will ever know! Now, time to enjoy some Embry thoughts! Hope you all enjoy this :)

Chapter 2 - Embry's POV

I knew that I looked like an idiot, but I couldn't stop smiling. My thoughts drifted to her. I just couldn't believe that I had actually imprinted. Me, of all people, and today of all days. Today had started as such an ordinary day; I'd woken up in the same bed, dressed in the same clothes, and worked on the same cars that always came in for the same servicing.

In fact, I wasn't even supposed to be in Port Angeles originally, but one of those very same cars actually needed a part that we didn't have at the shop. I'd driven into town looking for the bigger auto parts store. To think, I'd tried to get out of making the trip too…if it hadn't been for Sam, who owned the the auto shop I worked at, telling me to go, I probably would have skipped out and made someone else go.

If Sam wanted me to go and run an errand, I would do it. It was because of him that the other wolves in our pack and I didn't get into too much trouble over the years. Sam had been the first one of us to phase in generations and he knew just how hard it was on everyone if there was no support system. Over the years, he'd taken to becoming kind of like a big brother or father figure to those who needed it. Sam would hire anyone who needed the job and would bring anyone into his own home if they needed a meal. I respected the hell out of him and made sure to do my part with helping out.

Thinking of my pack brothers, my smile faded slightly as I thought of the troubles all of them had gone through or were currently going through because of imprinting.

There had been all kinds of issues with the various imprinted couples…Sam and Emily, Jared and Kim, Quil and Claire, Jake and Nessie, Paul and Rachel…between age differences, pre-existing relationships, and pre-existing impressions of people (it had taken a while for Kim to take Jared seriously), there was a whole slew of things that could and probably would go wrong at the beginning stages of relationships with imprints. I wasn't sure how exactly I felt about it. While I was happy for everyone and how things had eventually turned out, I was still kind of cautious. I'd seen in my friends' heads just how badly this could go.

Anyone who knew Leah Clearwater could attest to that. With all of the drama that had gone down between her, Sam, and Emily, she was a ticking bomb that waited to explode at anything or anyone for years. As soon as enough new kids had phased and filled out our numbers a bit, she'd taken off to Seattle and hadn't looked back. It was only with her mother and brother's begging that she came back to La Push for holidays.

I'd never given too much thought as to what could happen if I were to imprint. We'd been told that it's supposed to be a rare occurrence, so I'd never given it any further thought. My life had been fine before, if just a little routine. I went to work, I patrolled, I slept, and I'd fit eating somewhere into that schedule each day. On a rare night off, I'd sometimes bring home a girl for a little extra fun, but those occurrences were few and far between. I'd never been the guy that could have a bunch of meaningless one night stands, especially with the strange hours that accompanied my lifestyle.

I realized now that there had been something missing this whole time. Since meeting Olivia (my heart skipped a beat thinking of her name), the world seemed a little brighter, my vision clearer. Even though I didn't know much about her, I couldn't wait to learn how we fit together in each others' lives. Closing my eyes, I could still smell what must have been her perfume or shampoo, something floral and light…

A loud honking behind me ripped me from my thoughts and I jerked my car back into the lane from the emergency shoulder. Glancing down at my speedometer, I realized I also was doing 10 under the speed limit. Whoops.

All I wanted to do was talk to her in some way…texting, calling…she'd probably be in class though. I glanced at the clock in the car and noticed it's only been 40 minutes since I had dropped her off at the school.

I wonder how long night classes last? I groaned at not knowing the answer. It wouldn't be weird to text her tonight, right? I didn't need to appear desperate, I just have to keep it casual. Yeah, I would just play it cool and see how she responded to me. I needed to text her before I lost my nerve or decided to do something crazier, like phase into my wolf form and sprint all the way back to Port Angeles.

Realizing that I should probably get home first to text her, before I caused any traffic accidents anyway, I slammed my foot onto the accelerator and drove 15 over the speed limit for the rest of the drive.

I pulled into my gravel driveway with a slight skid about 20 minutes later, still going too fast. I burst out of the car so quickly that I had to double back and actually close the door before sprinting up the stairs of the little cabin that my best friend, Quil, and I shared.

I had been thinking of the perfect way to start my text to her.

Hey, this is Embry. How's it going? That sounded stupid.

Hi Olivia, this is Embry. Hope you're doing well. This wasn't much better; it sounds kind of pretentious and like we'd connected at some networking event or something.

I went through more iterations of various hello messages, but nothing seemed right. Deep in thought, my body went through the motions of digging through the refrigerator for some food. As I turned around, arms holding a pizza box and a beer, I about had a heart attack as I noticed Quil and Claire sitting at the kitchen table.

They were both facing me and trying not to laugh, but I could see their cheeks twitching. Quil finally couldn't hold it in anymore and burst into loud and raucous laughter. This idiot was literally pounding his fist on the table with tears coming out of his eyes. This only set Claire off, but seeing how she was the most dramatic 14 year old I knew, she went the extra mile and fell out of her chair laughing.

I just rolled my eyes and went to sit at the table with them.

Quil was trying to pull himself together with little success. "D-d-dude, you were totally out of it! We've been sitting here the entire time and you're walking around muttering to yourself without even knowing we're here!" The thought of it sent him into another round of laughter. I ignored him and Claire, who was now rolling on the floor. Damn drama queen.

I decided to let them settle down and dug into my food. I was on my third slice of pizza by the time Claire picked herself up. On my fourth slice is when they both were finally able to hold a conversation with me.

I eyed the two of them critically. "Are you guys done? If not, you don't need to hear my news." I could practically see Claire's ears perking up. Nothing ever really happened in our neck of the woods so any news would be interesting to her.

Quil quirked an eyebrow at me. "So there is news? Not just you acting like a dork?"

I shoved him with my shoulder. "No dumbass, I have news. Do you want to hear it or not?" It was Claire's turn to shove Quil. "Shut up Quil! I want to hear what the news is!"

He settled down with a disgruntled look, but his eyes quickly bugged out as I finally declared, "I imprinted today!" Claire immediately squealed and I had to slap my hands over my ears at the pitch.

Quil finally processed what I said and proceeded to cover Claire's mouth with his hand. She immediately stopped squealing and licked his hand instead. "Yuck!" He brought his hand back and shook it excessively before wiping her saliva on the back of her shirt. She looked like she was about to retaliate when I cleared my throat loudly; if I didn't stop them now, who knows how long they'd go on. They both turned back to me and Claire let out a short squeal again.

As Quil held his hand up to put it over her mouth again, she stopped quickly and said, "I'm done, I'm done! But Embry, this is so exciting! What's her name, where did you meet her, when are you going to see her, when can we meet her, how-," I cut her off before she kept rattling off questions.

"Her name is Olivia Baker, I accidentally ran into her and made her drop her things, I drove her to her night class, I'm not sure when I'll see her again, and you will meet her when you learn to speak like a human being and not an alien with expanded lung function!" My lungs were quick to suck in some oxygen after that winded answer.

Quil raised an eyebrow at me. "You ran into her and made her drop her stuff?"

"Well, it was more like she ran into me and bounced off."

Claire piped up, "How did you end up driving her to class?"

Trying to give as much detail as possible so that they could help me, I regaled the entire magical meeting. Throughout my story, Quil and Claire ooh'd and aah'd at all of the right moments. Claire even pretended to swoon at the part where I got Olivia's number.

When I was done, Claire immediately asked, "So when are you going to call her? You need to see her again!"

At the idea of seeing her again, my heart kicked into high gear. Quil sent a cheesy grin my way as he noticed it. I threw a crumpled napkin at him and focused my attention back to Claire.

"I'm not sure that I'm going to call her first. I was thinking of texting her and trying to stay kinda casual for now." I slowly rubbed a hand on the back of my neck.

Claire looked like I'd personally offended her. "But that's not romantic at all! You need to call her, ask her about her day, talk with her all night until the sun rises!" She had her hands held over her heart and was swaying slightly in her seat.

"No way, Claire. That's coming off way too strong; I don't want to scare her away before we get the chance to know each other!"

She pouted. "That's what they do in all of my books though!"

"This isn't a book or story, this is my real life. I can't afford to mess this up." My voice softened towards the end.

Claire and Quil looked serious for the first time at my tone. They looked at each other and seemed to have a conversation with no words. Waiting on them to notice me again, I idly wondered if Olivia and I would have that same kind of connection with each other some day.

They turned back to me, Claire with a determined look in her eyes. "Alright Embry, let's get the girl!" She punctuated her statement with a fist pump into the air and Quil slapped a hand on my back with a grin.

As annoying as my friends could be, I wouldn't trade them for anything.

With the way we were talking and planning, you'd think we were strategizing war maneuvers. At one point Claire wanted to bring out a whiteboard and actually write out steps and methods, but Quil gently shut that idea down.

I just wanted to send a simple text for crying out loud! I figured once I initiated the conversation then we could let everything flow downhill from there.

It was getting late; it had already been a couple of hours since I'd first come home and I wanted to get this one text out so I could just go to sleep. Claire had loudly informed me that anything sent after midnight was "booty call" time and I was expressly forbidden from disrespecting my imprint like that. This led to a side conversation of Quil hotly asking how she knew about "booty call" time and her trying to explain she was all grown up now.

I let them argue and I pulled my phone out. I had to get something out before I just lost my nerve entirely.

Hey Olivia, this is Embry. I hope your class went well today. Here's hoping that I'll "run into you" again sometime soon.

This could work, right? It had my name, wished her well, and shows that I'm humorous and not as dry as desert sand. I was wondering if there was a better way to word my message when Claire bounced over, grabbed my phone out of my hand, scanned the text quickly, and then hit send!

I moved as fast as I could to grab the phone, but it was too late. Is it getting hot in here? I could feel a light sheen of sweat pop up across my forehead. I glanced at Claire who was walking away with a sense of fulfillment. She went to the living room intending to start a movie and lay down on our couch. Quil just shrugged at me, gave me a thumbs up, and went to plop down next to her.

I floated to my bedroom feeling like a ghost who'd recently left his body. I started to get ready for bed and couldn't help but check my phone every other minute. I panicked every time I felt phantom vibrations of a text alert and cursed internally every time it was nothing. The one time it actually was a text message, I almost broke my phone grabbing it so tightly, but it was just Sam asking if I was coming to his and Emily's house for dinner soon.

I felt like I was losing it. Maybe she was busy? Busy with family? Or with another guy. I shook the thoughts from my head before I lost what little sanity I felt like I had left. She was probably just busy or asleep already, it was kind of late after all. I'm not sure how long her class was, but she would most likely be tired afterwards.

Satisfied with that answer, I finished brushing my teeth and stripped down to my birthday suit. Since my temperature ran higher than normal, it was very uncomfortable to sleep in pajamas.

Remembering that Claire was in the house though, I grumbled and put a pair of basketball shorts on. After she'd accidentally seen me in the nude when she was about 8 years old, Quil had created and enforced a rule of not sleeping in the buff when she stayed the night. I shuddered at the memory.

I settled down in my queen sized bed and held a fluffy pillow to my chest. I could feel myself start to doze off when I got a text notification. Peeking an eye open, my heart flew into my throat as I saw that it was from her.

Hi Embry. Class was ok, but glad it's over. It might be nice to run into you again…Buses are very notorious for not being all that reliable, so maybe you have a solution?…

Holy shit. Did I read that correctly? I rubbed my eyes vigorously and blinked a few times to make sure I wasn't reading this in the wrong way. I scanned her text word by word and couldn't believe it. She was basically saying that she wanted to see me again!

I quickly wrote out another text to her, not caring if I sounded stupid. The Embry Call taxi service is very reliable, 5 star reviews on Yelp. Maybe you'd be interested in giving it a try?

Several minutes passed and I could feel disappointment bubbling up. Knowing how irrational that was though, I tried not to let it bother me and just closed my eyes again thinking that she'd gone to sleep already. My phone buzzed and my eyes shot open a second time.

Maybe we can negotiate a free trial or something because I'm on Yelp now, and let me tell you pal, there's no Embry Call taxi service that I can see!

Knowing that she obviously has a sense of humor made me feel like the luckiest guy in the world. My imprint was beautiful and funny!

I'm sure that we can work something out. I aim to please.

Was that too inappropriate? I sent it anyway, just to see what she would say back. This time, I could see the little bubbles on the screen indicating that she was texting me back at that moment.

I look forward to it then. Goodnight :)

Disappointment flowed through my body as I realized we would be done texting tonight. I felt like I could stay up for hours just texting with her, but knew that she'd probably had a long day. I needed to get some sleep too so I wouldn't be a zombie tomorrow.

I sent her one final text. Goodnight Olivia, sweet dreams.

Shutting my phone's screen off, I closed my eyes and drifted off while thinking of beautiful brown eyes gazing softly at me.