The Twilight Twenty-Five
Prompt: Collide
Pen name: LightStarDusting
Character POV: Bella
Rating: M

Chapter 4 – Fool on the Hill
1999

It was the first Friday of classes.

I had rolled out of bed. Quite literally, I rolled from my extra long twin bed and onto my hands and knees on the floor. Ugh! My head pounded relentlessly and my mouth was dry and felt like it was stuffed with cotton balls. Mmmmm tasty.

Why do people feel it necessary to drink far more than they should? Furthermore, why am I one of those people?

With that thought, I made a solemn vow to myself to never drink again. The same vow that many a hung-over person has made and stayed true to until at least the next night or the hangover was gone, whichever came first. As it turned out, I wouldn't touch a drop for awhile, thanks to a promise I made to him. With him.

I had an eight a.m. class that morning. I truly believed (and still do) that early morning classes were created by Satan himself to torture me and the other twenty souls damned to attend it. If not by Satan, then by his incarnate: the Registrar's Office. Those butt-crack of dawn classes are offered as some sort of sick joke for their newest students. Freshmen always get the bottom of the barrel when it comes to picking classes, it's a college rule, and this particular class was all that was open.

One of the first things I learned in college was that drinking and eight a.m. classes don't mix, a fact that I realized when I woke that Friday morning. Since it was my first week of classes, I was well aware that skipping would not be wise so early on in the game. There were syllabi to get and good impressions to make. Plus if the events hadn't played out the way they did, he and I might have never crossed paths in the way that we did. I don't know if it was fate or happenstance but perhaps I should be grateful for having that eight a.m. class. It was the prelude to us meeting that morning.

Pushing my hair out of my face, I began to crawl across the room to my closet to get my bathrobe and toiletries. While I had come home alone, one glance at Lucy's bed while I was crawling past showed me that she did not. Not at all. I came face to face with a very disturbing sight.

A bare ass.

Now, the ass in question was definitely not Lucy's bare ass. It was a guy's bare ass. I didn't need to be pre-med to know what that meant; if there's a bare ass, there's a bare front. I really didn't need to be seeing any of that at seven in the morning. My poor hung-over self just couldn't handle it.

I silently raised my eyes from the ass and peeked toward the head of Lucy's bed and saw the face of the guy who had his tongue down her throat the previous night. Well, at least she's a one-guy-a-night type of girl.

I stood up once I got to my closet, to grab all of the necessities and immediately fell back onto my knees. HOLY HELL. There was someone playing a pounding percussion solo in my head and I was pretty sure his first name was Jungle and his last was Juice. Slowly I worked my way up to my feet and grabbed two more necessities: Tylenol and a bottle of Gatorade from our mini-fridge.

I briefly considered just going to class in my pajamas. I'd seen others do it in the short time I had been a college student but I didn't have that type of familiarity with my classmates. It was the norm for people who had early morning classes, but at that point I wasn't ready for the collective student body to see me in my flannel pj pants and fleece pullover. That lasted all of about three weeks, and then another three weeks before I expanded my comfort-level to include afternoon classes.

I can honestly say I couldn't name what was worse in that moment: the communal bathroom or Bare Ass (and I had to call him that because I never found out his name). Either way, the thought of leaving both as quickly as possible worked for me. Weighing my options, I decided to be bold and take a gander at the mirror in the bathroom. In a word: scary. I had to admit that I was just vain enough to be really happy that no one else was up at the ass-crack of dawn to see morning-after-drinking-Bella. Not my finest hour. Although, technically speaking, neither had been my previous five to eight hours.

I stood in the shower stall, holding onto the bar and trying my best to not throw up. The walls spun around me a bit so holding onto the bar just made me feel like I was on the Gravitron ride. Why do people pay to go on that, anyway? As I held the bar and pushed my body against the cool wall of the shower, I tried not to think about the fact that I was, in fact, pressing my bare skin against a communal shower wall. I had flip-flops on my feet to protect me from the floor grunge, but was somehow clinging for dear life to the wall grunge. I closed my eyes and tried to push away the queasiness brought on by drink and by the risks to my hygiene.

I felt only slightly better after showering and brushing my teeth. I moved in slow motion, attempting not to rattle myself or my head too much. I slowly dressed, slowly grabbed my books, and slowly headed down the two flights of steps to face what the morning had in store for me. Slowly was looking like the word of the day. First things first, I needed coffee. I always needed coffee, but that morning I needed coffee. I would have made some in the room but I didn't want to rouse Sleeping Beauty or Prince Ass-is-Bare. Surrounded by other students, I trudged toward the Student Union to pick up my first cup prior to class. The huge brick building housed all the essentials for the students: coffee, food, laundry, mail. Coffee was always at the top of my list. While there I also grabbed a bagel, in hopes that it might soak up any alcohol that was still sitting in my stomach. I grunted greetings at those I passed and headed to my class in the first building built on campus; a nugget of information that I had learned during orientation.

While I walked and sipped the too hot coffee because I was too impatient to wait, I tried to piece together the events of the previous night. I groaned thinking about the laundry list of stupid things that went down, especially remembering the end of the evening when I tried to go into the wrong dorm.

This is why I can't have nice things.

***

An hour, a syllabus, and a brief introduction later, I walked out of my class and once again headed back to my dorm. On the way I stopped at the Student Union to pick up yet another jolt of caffeine at the coffee bar. I was able to form the word hello that time around, rather than just grunting at the barista. It was a lovely advancement from the first visit and I was secretly proud of my progress.

Since I was a bit more awake I was able to pay attention to things around me while walking to the dorm and taking in the sights and sounds of the campus. Passing the basketball courts, I noticed a tall blonde with her hair in a ponytail and someone I assumed was her boyfriend, attempting to hang up a sign. "If you're going to talk the talk, you better walk the walk. Vote Rosalie Hale for Junior Class President!" I overheard her calling directions from her end of the sign. "Emmett, move the top left a bit. No Em, your other left! I think it's rippled. Can you flatten it out?" I could tell the large football player-looking man was doing his best to play along and placate her. I remember thinking: She definitely could handle the responsibility of Junior Class President. She doles out those directions quite well. The elections happened a few weeks into the semester and I noticed that those running campaigned hard-core. I never thought elections would be so serious in college but I learned quickly that the Student Government really had a strong and active voice; if you weren't involved, it was a good idea to have friends in high places.

I found my dorm that morning with little trouble, as opposed to the clusterfuck of the previous night. Not exactly sure what I'd find when I returned to my room, I was more than a little apprehensive. I considered turning around and heading back to the Student Union or library but instead I continued on my path, walking into the open-air courtyard of my dorm. I had an asinine thought that maybe I'd be able to see through our second floor window from the courtyard, be able to see if there was any movement in the room. Or a sign that said "Lucy and Bare Ass are having sex: DO NOT ENTER!" Anything that would have given me a heads up.

I stood on one of the benches and attempted to see into the room. I even rose up on my toes, risking falling off the bench given my clumsiness record, but I was unable to see anything. I heard a low chuckle behind me and I cringed a bit, knowing I had been caught. I slowly turned around and jumped off the bench, looking to see who had found me in my act of insanity. Our eyes met and I couldn't help but blush. I picked up my coffee cup from the bench and fiddled with the lid.

I know him.

I'd met so many people the first week of the semester, yet I remembered him from before that. This was the guy who handed me the pencil at freshmen orientation and rescued me without even knowing it. I had noticed that he was in my Public Speaking class earlier in the week as well and made a point to pay attention while the professor had us stand up near our desks and introduce ourselves. She said something about it being good practice for the semester. My brain was still a bit fuzzy from the previous night's imbibing, but I remembered his name being something… different.

On the tip of my tongue…

He looked at me while inhaling his… cigarette? Cigar? What the hell is that? He assessed my appearance and the coffee cup I clutched in my hands like a lifeline. Then his eyes slid back to my face again and he exhaled slowly, the smoke wafting away from us and drifting behind his head.

"Friday's a fickle friend, huh?"

The moment I heard his voice, it hit me.

Jasper.

A/N - This end note will have be professing my love for my loves. Being that Valentine's day is here, I feel this is only appropriate!

KrisB is my lovely beta love. I love her because she a lovely little love. ;)

ElleCC and miztrezboo are my pre-reader loves. They leave my characters love notes.

LoreliD is my fic-wife and her pup-love is going for a title this weekend. Good luck Lily!!! TheHeartofLife is my fic-wife (what - we have an open relationship!) and the owner of my embarrassing drunk emails and even more embarrassing morning-after emails.

He knows that they're the fools - The Beatles