Renewal [Emmett Cullen] (1)

[06- First Encounter]

I looked up, in front of me was a boy, muscled like a serious weight lifter. I felt intimidated, his build was similar to the girls who put me in the chair. But the dimples on his face instantly made him more approachable, less terrifying. His eyes were black, like coal, framed by short curly hair, so dark it looked black. There were purplish, bruiselike shadows under his eyes. It was like he was suffering from a sleepless night, or recovering from a boxing match, which seemed more plausible given his height and build. The huge grin on his face reminded me of a teddy bear. But what was most striking about him was his devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful looks, like he had just stepped of the cover of any magazine.

I faintly remembered seeing him in the back of the room but like the majority of people in the class, I paid him no attention, hoping they would do the same for me.

"Thanks," I muttered quickly as he passed it to me.

"I'm Emmett," he said, his voice soft like velvet.

"Eleanor," I replied.

"See you around Eleanor," he said, a soft smile on his face, before walking out the door.

Three classes later and it was lunch time. I wheeled into the cafeteria and grabbed lunch, a chicken Caesar salad. I scanned the room and spotted an empty table towards the corner. The old me would have thought sitting alone was the height of embarrassment. But now, being alone was almost therapeutic. I didn't have to meet expectations from anyone.

"Excuse me, do you mind if I join you?" A soft voice asked. I immediately recognised her from history.

"Yeah sure." She pulled the chair out next to me and sat down with her tray, brushing her curls away from her face.

"I'm Jasmine by the way," she said with a smile.

"Eleanor," I replied.

Jasmine was different than I expected. Not once did she ask about my disability, instead our conversation drifted through our favorite books, TV shows, and movies. I was pleasantly surprised when we had common interests in pop culture.

"Who are they?" I asked. As Jasmine looked up to see who I meant — though already knowing, probably, from my tone — Emmett, from the other side of the cafeteria, suddenly looked at me for a fraction of a second and his eyes darted away.

"The Cullens, the big one is Emmett, and the boy next to him is Jasper. The brown hair one is Edward and Alice is the girl; they all live together with Dr. Cullen and his wife," she said.

"They don't look related," I commented.

"Oh, they're not. Dr. Cullen is really young, in his twenties or early thirties. They're all adopted, Mrs Cullen took them in when they were young."

I glanced sideways at Emmett, who was looking at his tray now, picking a bread room to pieces with his muscular, pale fingers. His mouth was moving very quickly, his perfect lips barely opening. The others looked away, yet I felt he was speaking quietly to them.

I pushed the Cullens to the back of my mind, sure they looked weird, all unrelated but shared the same angular features.

The bell rang and I headed to my last class of the day, chemistry, probably my favorite. I rolled into class and Emmett was there. His eyes locked on me as I approached the teacher, Mrs. Waters.

"Today we are doing partner work so you can sit next to Emmett at the front," she said. I nodded and took my place.

Mrs Waters explained the experiment before we began, combustion of fuels, I had already completed most of the course in my advanced classes back in San Francisco.

"Wow second class today," he remarked, "Where are you from?"

"San Francisco. We just moved."

"Why?" he questioned.

I sighed, the story still hard to tell, "I got in a soccer accident and now I'm stuck in this chair. My parents moved us out to start over again." He noticed me wincing and asked a different question.

"What do your parents do?"

"My dad's a surgeon and my mom has a publishing company."

"Oh really, my dad works at the hospital too. I think he mentioned something about someone starting. Do you have a favorite color?" He asked, another seemingly arbitrary question.

"Pale yellow. Not goldenrod or orangey yellows. Not sunshine or dark yellows either. Pale bright yellows make me happy." He raised his eyebrows, a grin itching at his lips.

"It's hard to describe but it's like a feeling. Like whenever I see that color, it warms me from the inside. That was probably way too much information," I smiled sheepishly. "I know it's super specific," I back peddled.

He smirked, "Most people would just say yellow."

I shrugged, "The distinction is important to me."

I couldn't remember the last time I'd talked so much. More often than not, I felt self-conscious, certain I must be boring him. But the absolute absorption of his face, and his never-ending stream of questions, compelled me to continue.

He asked me about my favorite music and hobbies and places I had visited. They were the easy ones. Thankfully the conversation was light. Nothing about back in California, a place that now had brought up a lot of miserable memories.