Disclaimer: I wish I owned Twilight, but not so much.

So we left Bella with Emmett and alcohol. What will happen next?...Read On!

Chapter 6

The Morning After

I awoke with a start. Fear rushed through me as I took in my surroundings. I had no idea where I was.

Calm down Bella, I said to myself. Relax.

I took a moment to gather as much information as possible. I was in a strange room that I had never been in before. I had a massive headache and the clock in the corner of the room told me that it was almost ten thirty. I was still wearing all of my clothes. I lifted up the blanket that I as wrapped in just to be sure, the only thing that had been removed were my sneakers.

The room I was in was rather simple. Plain white walls and boring curtains. The walls were lined with shelves, which were overflowing with books and CDs. An open laptop was sitting off on a desk and in the far corner stood an old battered upright piano, sheet music crammed into the bench.

Part of the night came back to me. I remembered the games. I remembered having a conversation with Edward. And then I remembered Emmett waving a bottle in my face.

I groaned. As a rule I did not drink. I knew my mother had a low tolerance for alcohol, which I shared with her. I did my best to avoid the institution.

It became clear to me that I must have been in Edward's room and I suffering from a hangover. I buried my face in my hands.

"Sleeping Beauty awakes."

I looked up to see Edward smiling at me from the door. I was so embarrassed that my brain didn't ever register that he had just called me Beauty.

"How are we doing this morning?" he asked me, a teasing smile on his face.

"My head hurts," I muttered.

"I thought it would." He handed me two baby aspirin and a glass of water. He sat down on his desk and watched me as I tossed back the pills.

"How bad was I last night?" I asked him, afraid to look him in the eyes.

He laughed softly. "You were pretty interesting."

Interesting could mean a lot of things. It could mean that I became incredibly intelligent and figured out a way to solve world hunger. It could me that I told Edward just how much I liked him. It could mean that I attempted to molest him. It could mean that I succeeded in molesting him.

"How bad?" I asked again. I needed a clearer definition.

"Well," he thought for a moment. "What was the last thing you remember?"

I remembered Emmett explaining to me how this game was different than the version I had played back when I was eleven. This was the adult version. In the kid version every time you had done something that the person said you put a finger down. In the adult version you took a shot.

The content was also much more mature. I remembered Emmett starting us off with "I have never had a sexual fantasy set in a library or bookstore." We weren't starting out easy I had thought to myself as I blushed and tossed my first shot back. I remembered that Edward had done the same, which made me smile. A couple of questions into the game things began to get a little hazy.

"I don't really remember much after you said that you've never held hands with a girl."

Edward's ears turned red but his face stayed totally natural. "That was pretty early on," he informed me. "You still had a ways to go."

"How did I drink so much?" I asked. "I've never done anything!" I was embarrassed by the thought that I might have confessed to doing something that I had, in fact, not done.

"Yeah, I know. Emmett was kind of cheating. Saying things like 'I have never not had sex.' He was using a ton of double negatives to get you drunk."

I groaned into my hands. At least Edward still saw me as innocent as I was. I didn't want to him to think that I was more experienced than I actually was.

"He was also giving you about twice as much as everybody else," Edward admitted. "I tried to stop it, but Emmett wasn't letting up. He actually got you to the point where you were taking shots before anybody had even said anything."

I swore. And then I began to remember the night of my twenty-first birthday. It had been the first and last time that I had ever had any alcohol. That night hadn't gone very well.

"Did I throw up?" I cringed, waiting for an answer.

"No," Edward shook his head. "I got a couple of glasses of water in you before you passed out."

"What about Alice?" I asked. If I was still here then where was she?

"She stayed to. Neither of you were in any shape to drive last night. She stayed with Jasper and I slept out on the couch."

I rubbed my temples. "Remind me to kill Emmett if I ever see him again."

Edward smiled. "Think of it this way, last night you made a few new friends, and now you never have to worry about embarrassing yourself in front of them."

"Thanks," I said sarcastically. "That's really what I needed to hear." I swung my legs out of the bed and stood up. "Where's Alice? Is she still here?"

Edward looked a little embarrassed. "Yeah, she and Jasper are out in the kitchen."

When I went out to the kitchen I discovered the reason for Edward's embarrassment. Alice was dancing around the kitchen, humming to herself; wearing nothing but a plain white t-shirt that was so big on her it fell to her knees.

She smiled brightly at me. "Hey, you finally joined the land of the living."

I found my shoes under the kitchen table. "I'm heading home. I can't take the embarrassment. You stay, I'll walk. I need the air. You are going to tell me everything when I get home."

Alice smiled goofily at me.

I usually didn't care to hear about Alice's escapades, but I decided that if I had succeeded in alienating Edward the night before, then I was going to need all of the vicarious relationship stories that I could get.

I pulled on my jacket and found my bag. I walked back to Edward's room to say goodbye. He was sitting on the bed where I had just been sleeping. He looked deep in thought.

"Edward." He looked up at me and smiled. I was still too embarrassed to notice. "I'm going to head home. I'm leaving you with an Alice infestation. Sorry."

Edward stood up. "Do you want me to drive you?" He looked eager and apprehensive but I was too embarrassed to notice.

"No." I needed to get away from him before I found something even more horrifying to do. "I want to walk. It's not too far."

As I walked down the street I began to think that turning Edward down might have been the wrong thing to do. I had gone over our conversation several times in my head in order to deduce his reaction to my inebriation. He had been kind, there had been no sarcasm in his words, and he had been understanding. He spoke as if what had happened to me could have happened to anyone. He didn't find my display as uncivilized as I did.

My brain finally clicked into some of his words. The fact that he had called me "Beauty." The way he had blushed when I mentioned that he had never held hands with a girl before. Well, we may not have held hands, but he did have a rather drunk girl in his bed last night. Of course, he wasn't in it, but that was beside the point.

I vaguely remembered saying that I had never slept in a member of the opposite sex's bed. I guessed that I could cross that one off the list. I hadn't been specific about the details. I assumed that passing out and being carried there still counted.

By the time I arrived home I still hadn't made up my mind whether I should have been embarrassed or not. I had every reason to never want to show my face again, as far as I was concerned, but Edward's reaction to me didn't fill me with the horror that had always been implied with the thought of Drunken Bella. It all seemed so normal and understandable. Weird.

********

Alice had come home late Saturday afternoon. I didn't want to pressure her, but I needed to know what had happened the night before from someone who wasn't going to lie to me to keep me from being embarrassed.

"Alice, I need to know what happened last night. What I said, what I did, how I got into Edward's bed, anything that you can remember. Please, the fact that I don't know is killing me." I'll admit that I was being a little over dramatic but I needed Alice to understand that this was important. I couldn't let her brush me off.

Alice sat down on the couch clasping a cup of tea in her hands. "Well, you really weren't that bad Bella. Maybe a little silly, but—"

"Let's start easy," I decided that I was never going to get the answers I wanted unless I prompted her. "What did I say in the game?"

Alice thought for a few moments. "Nothing too bad. In fact, if you hadn't been drinking twice as much as we were you would have won. You took us out. Things like, 'I've never been kissed,' and 'I've been in a relationship.' The only person you weren't forcing to drink every time was Edward. He's just as bad as you are." Alice rolled her eyes. "Made for you, I tell you."

"What other things did Edward do? Or not do?" I wished that I could remember what he had admitted to. That had been a chance to learn more about him and I blew it by being utterly intoxicated.

"Well, aside from never having a girlfriend and never being kissed, Edward admitted to fantasizing about one or more fictional characters, but don't be think that it's weird because you did to, as did Jasper. He, uh, has never had a girl that wasn't Rose over to his house, his parent's house. Nor had any girl other than Rose ever been introduced to his parents." Alice shrugged again, shaking her head. "That's all I can remember. Edward is pretty boring."

"Boring like me," I smiled. Edward and I were the same, both innocent and inexperienced. "Okay, how about my interactions with him? What did I say and do? Please tell me that I didn't tell him how I felt."

Alice sipped her tea. "No," she shook her head, smiling. "There were no love confessions last night. You did get a little silly with him. You kept punching him in the arm and calling him 'Buddy'."

I cringed. Well, it could have been worse. There could have been molesting.

"Then you leaned your head on his shoulder and said that you weren't feeling well. He dragged you over to the kitchen table and forced you to drink about three glasses of water so you wouldn't throw up. Then he made you lie down on the couch. Once he was sure that you were asleep he carried you to his room. He put you into the bed and came right back out."

I pondered Alice's words for a moment.

"How did he know I was asleep?" It didn't seem like it would matter. Either I was asleep or I wasn't. There was something off about the way that Alice had said that.

She made a face. I could tell that there was something that Alice had been planning on not telling me. "Well, you kinda—said his name." She cringed, preparing for impact.

"What?" I shrieked. I knew that I talked in my sleep. What had my drunken mind spilled out while I was unconscious? Would I really never be able to be in the same room as Edward again?

"No, nothing crazy," Alice reassured me. "You just sorta sighed his name. You had this cute little smile on your face. He thought that you were awake and asking for him, and I mentioned that you talked in your sleep. Sorry." She looked apologetic. "But he didn't react badly. He didn't seem weirded out or offended that you had said his name. He smiled to himself. He seemed to like the idea that you were dreaming about him."

I leaned my head back on the couch, staring blankly at the ceiling. So in my drunken state I had not admitted to any feelings for Edward, but I had said his name in my sleep. I tried not to freak out. At least I got a positive reaction from him. That made the urge to kill myself lessen.

It could have been worse, Bella, the little voice in the back of my head reasoned. Be thankful you woke up with all your clothes on and that you didn't tell him anything.

I sighed to myself. It could always be worse.

Sorry, to those of you who wanted to see what Bella was like drunk. As I have never been drunk myself I didn't feel comfortable writing it from first person. But, maybe if you are all good you might get to read it from Edward's point of view at some point in the future. ;) I recently just spent some time with a rather large number of drunk people, so I do have a few fun ideas if I choose to give Edward a say at some point.

So, as you probably observed, we are going to witness a large change in Edward's personality. He's much more fun now and much more shy. If you knew, like I do, what's going on inside his head you might have liked him a bit better earlier to.

Anywho, drunken awkwardnesss. So much fun. I must say that drunk people are a lot of fun to hang out with. They keep giving you hugs and telling you how great you are, even if you just met them. I'm just rambling now. Until next time...

Thanks for reading! :)