Yay! Chapter two up! Thanks to everyone who's read this so far, I promise that this is just the beginning! And again, PLEASE R & R!!

BPOV

"Jasper. And Emmett. Well that's a surprise," Alice said. Except that her tone of voice hardly implied she was surprised. In fact, she seemed hardly surprised at all. Emotional, yes, but not astonished to hear Rosalie's news.

I thought back to Alice's almost expectant attitude toward Rose earlier, and immediately I knew what had happened.

"Alice," I replied accusingly, "you're not surprised at all. You knew."

"I had a feeling," she said modestly. "You know how I am about my 'feelings.'"

"And you had to have one on this," Rosalie grumbled back. "I didn't want anybody to see me fall apart like that. It's private."

"Sweetie," Alice cajoled, "your feelings about Emmett have never been private. Why do you think you've dated all those dimwits for years? It's so obvious. And besides, Bel and I aren't just anybody, we're your best friends."

I'd always wondered why Rosalie had such terrible taste in men, but understanding how sensitive Rose was about any of her shortcomings, I'd never brought it up. I curled up on the opposite chair to watch the interaction between my two best friends, who were about to reveal more of themselves to me than I'd ever seen.

Rosalie made a face at Alice, but her tone was kind as she replied, "I know, and I should have told you earlier, or better, I suppose. Especially since Jasper. . ."

"Enough about Jasper," Alice interrupted. "Tell us about Emmett and how you saw him."

I could tell that Alice was lying and that she was dying to hear about Jasper, whoever Jasper was, but she knew that with Rosalie one had to strike while the iron was hot. Rose had sudden, almost quixotic, changes in mood, and she could very well decide not to tell us anything—a perfectly normal state of affairs that would be totally unacceptable to either Alice or me today. I'd never seen Alice so eager to hear anything in the six years I'd known her. She was literally bouncing up and down on the couch. And I couldn't deny that my curiosity was definitely aroused. There was something special about this Emmett and Jasper, and I was dying to know what it was.

To my surprise, Rosalie turned to me, and there was a genuine note of remorse in her voice. "I know you don't understand why I didn't tell you about someone as important as Emmett, and I'm sorry Bel. Really I am. But you have to know that nobody knows about Emmett really anymore. . .I doubt that anybody even remembers, except for me and Alice, of course . . ." I'd never heard Rose sound so bleak and defenseless.

"And Emmett." Alice added, gravely, to Rosalie, while I noticed that the corner of her lips turned up just slightly, for my benefit. She was baiting Rose, and the only one who didn't know it was Rose herself.

"Fine. I'll tell you," Rosalie ground out, clearly getting frustrated.

"You know that Alice and I are from this little town in Northern Washington. Forks. It was intolerably dull there, and I'm sure it still is. I wouldn't go back even if it meant a full set of LV luggage. At least that's the way it was every year except my senior year . . .and that's when this new family showed up. The Cullen family."

Seven years earlier

RPOV

I hate Forks. I spend most every day thinking of all the myriad ways I hate Forks, and all the amazing, awesome, exotic things I'm going to do when I can finally leave Forks behind. High school on its own is usually bad enough. But I was cursed to have to go to high school in the dumpiest, most backwoods environment that could have been invented.

Mr. Roberts' history class is easily the worst I have to sit through. Roberts tends to drone on and on, in a monotone voice, which wouldn't be so bad, except that he does it in an overloud voice. Of course this discourages my typical daydreaming, thus making it my least favorite part of the day.

I'm standing at the end of the hallway heading to the history classrooms and the internal debate in my head is growing louder by the second. I could so easily not go. Roberts is usually reduced to a stammering, brightly blushing idiot with just an acknowledgement of his existence. A few smiles and any absence of mine would be a non-issue. I could go to the library and pour over the latest issue of Vogue. I could even text Alice and have her ditch with me. We needed to make decisions about what to buy when we left this hellhole and visited Seattle next.

Decision made, I turned on my heel abruptly and crashed into a huge wall.

Except it wasn't a wall. . .it was a man. Or a boy. I couldn't tell at first, I was temporarily stunned by how large "it" was.

I was one of the tallest people in the whole school, and I had to crane my neck just to see his face. And what a face it was.

He was gorgeous. Tall but not gangly. Muscled but not too beefy. Perfect, I thought dazedly. A genuine specimen of man candy right in Forks. It was almost too good to be true. I could be hallucinating. . .except even my dreams didn't get this good.

"I. . .uh. . .I'm. . .excuse me," I mumbled, internally humiliated that I could make every male in Forks dissolve into mindless adoration with my charm, but when faced with someone I cared about impressing, I could only babble helplessly.

Neither of us had budged. He stood there, smile frozen in place, and if I knew any better, I'd have guessed he was as immobilized as I was. I was still way too close to him, but I couldn't bring myself to step away. He oozed sex appeal and warmth and I wanted to wrap my arms around his lean muscled form and never let go.

Who knows how long either of us could have stood there. My mind was churning and I was determined to come up with something clever and witty to say before I stepped away from him and let him see the full force of my beauty. Then I'd walk away and make him come begging after me. He probably wasn't the begging type, but all I knew is that my body and my brain had never failed me before, and now was not the time for them to start.

But before I could even get a word out of my mouth, a familiar and endlessly cheerful voice echoed down the hallway.

"Rosalie! What on earth are you doing not in class?"

I heard the voice before she could even come into view, but I heard her gasp of surprise when she saw me. Managing to regain motor function I stepped sideways around The Mountain, and I saw Alice, jaw dropped to the dirty linoleum floor, standing directly in front of us.

It was then that The Mountain decided to speak. "Hi," he said, in a deep, gravelly voice, tinged with almost as much sunshine as Alice's, "I'm Emmett."

I took a deep breath in order to gather what little wits I had left, hoped he had selective memory loss, and extended my hand toward him. "Rosalie. Rose for short." I beamed my strongest smile at him and to my delight, it hit him full on like a two by four. His hand was warm and hard, and it almost completely encased mine. And best of all, he didn't let it go.

"And this is my cousin, Alice," I added when she sent me a half-hearted glare.

Emmett gave a slight nod in her direction but his dark cobalt eyes never left mine, and his hand still held mine, tightly. My heart wouldn't stop racing and if he didn't release my hand soon, Alice was going to have to clean me up off the floor. Never in my life had I felt more a woman, which probably would have surprised quite a few of my admirers around Forks. What they didn't know was that their abject and on-their-knees approach made me feel more like a witch than a woman. Emmett's presence made me remember that I wasn't meant to be admired from afar.

"Rosalie," Alice hissed. Like he couldn't hear her too. He was closer to her than I was. "Aren't you going to class?"

Class. Class. Oh, that's right. That's what I was doing in this hallway. Class. The longer Emmett held onto my hand and his eyes held mine, the more my brain melted.

And almost if he could read my thoughts, that was when he released my hand. I was immediately caught up in all the things I was going to do to Alice after this, all for her untimely interruption.

"I shouldn't detain you," Emmett said, still looking at me with what had to be wonder in his eyes.

"I. . .uh. . .I . . .you're not." Great, Rosalie, impress him with your verbal skills.

"Is your class this way?" Emmett pointed the way down the hall, toward Mr. Roberts' classroom.

I started to nod, only to catch Alice's astonished stare. She knew I'd been about to ditch class. She knew how intolerable I thought Mr. Roberts was. All thanks to her very informative "feelings," as she liked to call them.

"Well then. It was nice to meet you, Alice." Emmett spoke with authority, as he turned to head down the hall, expecting, I suppose, that I would follow.

I wouldn't call myself a good follower. In fact, I like to think of myself as the epitome of a leader: fearless, fierce and fashionable. The 3 F's had never failed me before, but I still found myself on the cusp of doing exactly what Emmett expected of me.

I stopped just in time. Of course I couldn't do what he expected. I was Rosalie Hale.

Giving him one of my patented, charming smiles with just the right amount of attitude, I instead shook my head regretfully.

"Nope, class is the other way. Catch you around, Emmett." And with just the right swing of my hips, I was already heading down the hall after Alice and the new Vogue, leaving him looking both amused and a little bit shell-shocked.

BPOV

"Phew. That's. . .incredible," I enthused to Rosalie, who seemed to regard my enthusiasm with her trademark cynical amusement. It was funny though, that this cynicism had seemed to slip a little during her retelling of their first meeting. In fact, it was downright suspicious.

So Emmett was clearly the one member of the male sex who had been able to throw Rosalie. I imagined how downright delectable he must be to have captured Rosalie that way. She was the most immune woman to male beauty that I'd ever seen. She appreciated it, of course, but in a very clinical, almost objective way that seemed to wring out every ounce of emotional sex appeal. And obviously the reason for her behavior were her lingering feelings for Emmett.

And it was clear that they still existed. After her reaction to him this evening, you could hardly even term them lingering. But of course, Rosalie had done everything in her power to assure us that running into Emmett was just surprising and that's what had caused her reaction. Not any kind of leftover emotional attachment. And I'd believe that just as soon as I'd believe that vampires walked the earth.