After a hearty dinner of chicken lo-mien topped off with an embarrassingly lame fortune cookie, I flopped down on my couch and turned on the TV. Luckily for me, my pixie of a housemate, Alice, was out courting our upstairs neighbor, Jasper. The apartment was mine for the night, thankfully.

Just my thoughts and me. Nice and quiet. Well, maybe not so quiet after all. With every change of the channel, another scene from my day flashed through my head. 64, Edward was sauntering over towards my desk. 65, he was leaning in towards me. 66, my name on his lips. 67, his lips on mine…I slowly began to drift off as my fantasy played out in my head.

I was probably drooling or mumbling incoherently when Alice shook me awake.

"Bella…Bellaaa," she sang as I opened my eyes. "Hello there, sleepy head!" she chirped happily.

"Alice," I groaned as I looked at her sternly. "Edward was about to profess his undying love for me and I would rather not have been woken up, thank you very much." Her eyes lit up when I mentioned his name.

"Dreaming of your little work boyfriend again, are we?" I rolled my eyes at her. She was seated on the arm of the couch, her feet resting in the cushions.

"Yes, but don't get any ideas Alice. I really don't think anything will ever come from my strange infatuation. I mean it isn't like I haven't already tried the whole workplace romance. Look where it got me."

"A raise? A better job?"

"Well yes, but no. An unpleasantly awkward situation with James."

"Oh, come on Bella!" She threw her hands up in the air. "At least he doesn't send you notes or flowers anymore…" She stood up and put her hands on her hips. She walked towards her room. "Bell, it could be worse."

"Oh yeah? How? He kissed me today, Alice. It was awful. Forceful and awful." I gagged a little bit at the thought. Alice laughed. "Give it up, pixie."

"For the sake of time, I will. But don't think I'm actually going to give up on you and Edward. I see good things happening. Put whatever James did behind you, Bella. You aren't doing anything good for yourself by sitting around dreaming about him. I see good things, Bell, good things." She tapped her finger to her temple and smiled.

"Alright, Alice. Goodnight." She was behind her door and poked her head out when I called after her. "Oh! How did your date with Jasper go?" I dragged out his name, mocking her crush on him. Instead of a reply, I just got a wink as she closed her bedroom door. I shook my head and laughed to myself. Obviously her day had gone better than mine had, but it was bound to go well. After all, it was Alice and her undeniable charm. I don't think Jasper knows what he's getting himself into.

I lifted myself off the couch and walked over to the kitchen. I poured the rest of my wine down the drain as I thought about what Alice had said. Good things. She had an uncanny ability to feel her way around situations. Trusting her was my best bet at this point. I flicked off the T.V. and headed to my bedroom. It was late and I was tired. Not to mention I had a dream to get back to.

Edward's hands pushed mine up against a wall, pressing my back against the wall by pushing his whole body weight against me. He was kissing my neck and his hands were caressing my body. I wrapped my leg around his and pulled him closer. My pulse was racing and we were both breathing heavily, now skin on skin with no clothes to interfere. We had moved to the bed and he was kissing down my torso. I moaned his name and he looked up at me.

My fantasy quickly turned to a nightmare when James's face flooded my dreams. I wriggled away from him in my dream, tossing and turning in my bed. His hands were all over me and my skin was crawling wherever he touched me. Not like when I dreamt about Edward's hands. James just smiled up at me and kept doing what I wished so hard that Edward would do. He kissed me, forcefully again, like he had at work but this time I kissed back. I felt utterly betrayed by my own mind and tried as hard as I could to wake myself up. Once I woke up, I turned over to look at the clock. 4:10, wonderful. Another 3 hours until I needed to officially get up and out of bed. I shut my eyes tight, trying to fall back asleep and tried to will myself to dream of Edward again.

The shrill ringing of my alarm clock woke me up from a dreamless sleep. I groaned as I sat up and spun my body around to put my feet on the floor. I clicked my alarm clock off and stretched. I glanced at the calendar on the wall. It was Friday, finally. That meant assignment day.

I generally like assignment days. I get to meet with all the heads of all the departments and we are given a stack of assignments to hand out to our writers. Then I get to have a meeting with my section, thanks to James I head the "Community" department, and discuss who gets to go where and report on what for that week. I'm fairly lenient with my group and I let them choose their assignments instead of dolling them out and playing favorites. Sometimes I get to write an article if there are too many "Community" assignments for my writers. I'd rather write the articles all the time and not have to deal with James at all, but Alice was right. I do have a better job and make more money thanks to him. I felt like this assignment day would be different, though. Granted it's Alice's feelings that I usually relied on, I was willing to bet that my feelings about today's assignment day were right.

I finished my morning ritual by 7:45, a new record for a Friday, at least, and was in my parking spot by 8:25. I got out of my car just as I saw the shiny, silver Volvo pull into the spot across from mine. Not just any silver Volvo, it was Edward's. I couldn't even count the number of times I've thought about that car and all the things I would love for him to do to me in it. I turned pink at the thought, as if he could see into my mind. It was a ridiculous idea that he could read my thoughts, but I turned red thinking of all the things he would have heard had he been able to get into my head. I walked quickly towards the door, my heart beating in time with the click of my heels on the cement.

Once safely inside, I made it to my desk and sat down. There was a post-it note tacked to my computer, James's handwriting scrawled across the small yellow paper.

It read, "Izzy, the article was amazing. Don't make any more exceptions. We need to talk. xo" I cringed. We do not need to talk, I thought. I crumpled the note and threw it away. Well, I tried to throw it away, at least. It missed the garbage can by three inches. I heard someone laugh quietly behind the partition. I peered around the wall to see who it was and saw Edward looking back at me. Instead of getting up and throwing the paper away like a normal girl, I rolled backwards about a foot and tried to lean sideways over my chair to get the note. I stretched my reach as far as I could then felt myself falling. Shit!

I fell to the floor, barely catching myself as my chair spun away from me. I would give my year's salary to be able to go back and stop myself from doing that or to just melt into the floor and be forgotten forever. I generally tried not to make it known in my office how clumsy I really was, but anything that I had kept under wraps was now out in the open for everyone to see. Isabella Swan lying on the floor in her office. I heard some laughter, as was to be expected.

Before I knew it, or could react to it for that matter, Edward was by my side. He took my hand and pulled me upright again. I was probably making mountains out of molehills, but it felt like he held my wrist and my body closer to him for longer than necessary. I looked up at his face and found that he was looking back at me. Our eyes locked for a moment. He cleared his throat and quickly looked away, letting my hand go. I took a step back and frowned.

"Ms. Swan, are you alright?" he asked. His voice was not its normal, smooth tone. He sounded…nervous? Was Edward Cullen nervous to be around me? I turned bright red. Oh God. I realized he had just rescued me from the floor and wanted to melt again. My face was hot and probably redder than a tomato. I swallowed hard and chewed on the inside of my lip as I nodded.

"Thank you," I said under my breath. He bent over and threw away the post-it.

"Not a problem, Isabella." He nodded at me and turned back towards his own desk. He called to me from across the room, "Oh, Ms. Swan! Assignments today?"

I tried nodding back at him, but realized the whole department was probably asking the same question. "Yes," I called back. "9:45 in the conference room."

By 9:30 I was back downstairs with my assignments, 12 in all, after expertly avoiding James's "talk." I thumbed through my papers, a school carnival, library rededication, I wasn't expecting a breaking news story, but something better than the normal would be nice for a change. I unlocked the conference room and flipped on the lights. I laid out each assignment on the table individually and heard the door click shut.