Ice Dancer

banner by FrozenSoldier

ICE DANCER

Vancouver, Canada … 2010 Winter Olympics

“Please, please, please, please.” I bounced on the cushion next to my brother, begging him with everything I had. “Please, Emmett, won’t you go with me? Please?”

“No, no, no, no.” He kept flipping through the Men’s Fitness magazine that he’d seemingly pulled out of thin air. “No, Alice, I won’t go with you. No.”

“Aw, come on,” I moaned. “It’s only for a couple hours.”

He wouldn’t look at me, the rat bastard. “Get Edward to go with you.”

“Can’t. He’s too busy mooning over Bella at the media center,” I grumbled. “Dad’s on call at the luge track and Mom wants to go with him. She said she’d go with me, but I don’t think she wants to. I know you don’t have plans.”

He finally closed the magazine and gave me his full attention. “Pipsqueak, I may not have plans set in stone, but that does not mean I want to spend an afternoon at the Olympics watching ice dancing practice. Ice dancing is boring. If it were the competition, maybe I’d take you. Why do you want to go to practice anyway?”

“The Hales are practicing this afternoon,” I answered simply – it was enough explanation for me.

“Don’t know who they are,” Emmett said. “But I’m getting the idea that you’re going to pester me until I give in, so fine, let’s go.”

I squealed and leapt off the sofa, snatching my boots, coat, and bag in one quick swoop. “Thank you, Em, you won’t regret this. I promise.”

“Whatever,” he said, locking the door behind us after I’d danced out. “But if you skip all the way there, I’m pretending like I don’t know you.”

I linked my arm through his to keep myself from skipping. On the walk to the ice arena, I chattered away about the ice dancing competition. Emmett wasn’t listening, but that never stopped me from talking. I had my reasons for being desperate to see the Hales, the US ice dancing national champions, practice for their original dance; the main one being my massive crush on Jasper Hale. I knew Emmett would thank me for making him come once he saw Jasper’s twin sister. He’d be an ice dancing fanatic in no time.

When we got to the arena, I pulled Emmett as close to the ice as we were allowed and plopped into a chair.

“I’m gonna kill Edward for mooning over Bella instead of coming here,” Emmett muttered morosely in the chair next to me. “He won’t even ask her out, the idiot.”

“We can’t all be as nutty and outgoing as you,” I giggled. “Now be quiet and watch, unless you want to ask me what’s going on. You need to pay attention.”

His only answer was to roll his eyes.

The American teams were sharing the ice with the Lithuanian teams. Tanya Varniene and Demetri Kazlauskas were evil in my opinion; they’d won the last two world titles, the most recent time in a hotly debate defeat of the Hales after the Americans had led through the compulsory dance and the original dance. There were even rumors that Demetri had tried to seduce Rosalie Hale during the competition to distract her from her performance. The better part of the rumor was that Demetri had barely recovered from a well place knee to his family jewels to compete and win.

“Personally, I think it’s so unfair that they have to practice together,” I announced, having finished filling the sort of interested Emmett in on the soap opera that was ice dancing world. “Don’t you?”

“Yep. Sure.” Emmett leaned forward in his chair as the five teams skated onto the ice. “Who’s that?”

I knew who he was talking about, of course, but I couldn’t resist teasing him. I owed him for seventeen years of teasing me. “Who’s who?”

“The blonde girl in the black leggings and turquoise top thingy,” he explained vaguely.

“Tunic, the turquoise tunic,” I said, unable to resist the urge to drag him on a little longer. “That’s Rosalie Hale. Aren’t you glad I pestered you into coming with me?”

“Yes. You have tickets to everything else she’ll be at, right?”

I was laughing hard when I answered him. “Yep. But the compulsory dance already happened and the Hales placed first. But there’s still the original dance, more practice, and the free dance. I’ve got two tickets to all of them. Why? Did you want to come?”

“Hell, yeah. Mom can go watch curling or something. There isn’t anything I’d rather do than escort my little Pipsqueak to ice dancing.”

The fact that he’d said all that with a straight face had me dying in my seat. I couldn’t speak for wheezing, so I waited until I’d calmed down and then turned my attention to the ice. I couldn’t help but focus on one particular part of one particular skater – Jasper Hale’s ass in his black skating pants.

When the practice was finished, I grabbed Emmett’s elbow and pulled him out of his seat, towing him along behind me as I weaved through the small crowd and made for the exit. “Come on, Shrek, maybe we can catch them when they leave.”

Surprisingly, he picked up the pace. “Okay, Pipsqueak, I can stalk her for awhile,” he admitted bluntly. “Hey, you aren’t stalking her brother, what’s-his-name, are you? He’s too old for you, if you are.”

“His name is Jasper, yes I am, and no, he’s not,” I said, answering every question at once. “I’m almost eighteen, he’s almost twenty-one – we’re good. And you know, they’re twins so Rosalie’s almost the same age as you.”

That shut him up and I found us a prime spot right by the door that I’d already scoped out as the skater’s exit.

The Hales were the last to leave the arena, but I couldn’t have left even if I’d wanted to – Emmett wasn’t going anywhere. There were about twenty fans and a few press people gathered and they went along the line, signing autographs, posing for pictures, and answering questions. Emmett had moved us, by lifting me an inch off the ground by the back of my jacket and carrying me, to the end of the line to wait for them.

The moment Rosalie came into view, Emmett started flirting. She apparently didn’t mind a bit, making a beeline for him with Jasper close behind. That was, of course, just fine with me.

“Aren’t you Alice Cullen?” he asked, stopping in front me.

The fact that Jasper Hale knew who I was left me completely unable to do anything other than nod that I was Alice Cullen. I felt like an idiot, but it couldn’t really be helped.

“I remember your long program at Skate Canada,” Jasper continued. “It was really good, you should have at least placed third. Why didn’t you compete at Nationals last month? Jessica Stanley was telling one story, but I’m guessing you got hurt.”

If Emmett hadn’t had a grip on the back of my coat, I would have melted into a puddle right then and there. I’d competed in the ladies competition at Skate Canada after Whitney Lee was injured and a spot opened up. It’d been my first time competing at the senior level internationally and I’d been so nervous that I could hardly remember my how I’d skated. More importantly, Jasper Hale thought I deserved the bronze medal!

I knew the rumors that Jessica Stanley, the reigning US champion and all around frigid ice queen, was spreading about me. Edward, my sometimes idiot brother, had turned her down a half dozen times and she had it out for me. So she spread the rumor that I missed Nationals because I got knocked up by my coach. It wasn’t true at all. I’d slipped a disc in my back when I fell attempting a triple axel on what would forever be known as Black Friday in more ways than one to me.

I told Jasper about my injury and he reached over the barricade to hug me lightly. “Are you okay now? Will you be able to compete in the fall?”

“I hope so,” I said, hoping my voice sounded less like the nervous whisper to him than it did to me. “My dad’s an orthopedic surgeon, so I know I won’t screw up my recovery. I just hope I can jump again.”

“There’s always ice dancing if you can’t,” he offered. “I may be biased, but I think it’s harder than singles.”

I knew that Jasper had balanced a singles career with his ice dancing until three years earlier. He’d been good, too, and the skating world was shocked when he opted for the discipline that Americans never won. So I didn’t doubt he knew if dance or singles was harder. “I’ll remember that,” I promised.

“Come on, Jas,” Rosalie said, interrupting us. “We’ve got to go to that team meeting.”

“See you around, Alice?” Jasper asked as he followed his sister.

I giggled out what I hoped sounded like an agreement.

“Pipsqueak,” Emmett said, sighing deeply as he stood next to me, “do not let me miss the next thing that she is supposed to be at. Got it? I will be there.”

==/==\\==/==\\==/==\\==/==\\==

The original dance was the very next night.

“Are you going to complain until Rosalie skates?” I asked Emmett as we settled into our seats across the ice from the judges. We weren’t right on the ice, but about halfway up – the perfect location.

“No, I’ll be good because I know she’s coming,” he promised, winking at me. “When does she skate?”

“They skate second to last because they’re second after the compulsory dance,” I said. “And, just so you know, there is a theme of sorts to all the programs. Every team has to skate to music that is native to the country that they represent. So it might seem strange at times.”

“What’s Rosalie skating to?”

I could barely believe my ears. Emmett was actually taking an interest in skating beyond just the girls. Sort of. “Rosalie and Jasper are skating to Cherokee Morning Song. They even spent three weeks with the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma to learn how they could incorporate traditional dancing into the program.”

I expected to have to keep waking him up, but I didn’t. He spent a lot of time playing Angry Birds his iPhone, but he stayed awake. Birds were completely forgotten when the Hales took the ice.

Their program was magical. Skating programs were usually fast and furious to up the difficulty level, but Jasper and Rosalie kept their program incredibly difficult while skating far more slowly to the exact pace of the music. Their scores vaulted them ahead of Canadian team that skated just before them. The only question was where Varniene and Kazlauskas would fit in.

They placed behind the Hales.

“I’m in love,” Emmett sighed as the seats around us emptied quickly.

I sighed too, accidentally imitating him. “Me too.”

“Come on, Pipsqueak, let’s see if there’s any chance we can talk to them,” he demanded, hopping to his feet and grabbing my hand.

“Aw, Shrek, did you get her phone number yesterday?” I groaned. “Are we supposed to meet them somewhere?”

“So what if I did?” he asked as we walked along the concourse. “You got the hots for Jasper and I like her. She just texted me and said to meet them in the same spot. Don’t you want to go?”

“Shut up and let’s go,” I muttered. I couldn’t let him know how excited I was by his forward, blunt nature in that moment – he’d gloat about it for weeks.

==/==\\==/==\\==/==\\==/==\\==

The four of us ended up at the Medals Plaza. With embarrassing instructions that I stay where he could see me, Emmett the ogre wandered deep into the crowd with Rosalie. I was never big on crowds and I was a little worried that I’d get jostled and hurt my back again, so I hung on the fringes of the crowd. Jasper stayed by me.

“Would you like some hot chocolate?” he asked, gesturing toward the cart that was selling it. “It’s cold tonight.”

I said I did and walked with him to the buy it; he paid for mine and got a cup of his own. “Are you going to get in trouble with your coach for being out tonight?” I asked shyly.

Jasper shook his head and led me to a bench at the back of the crowd, sitting down only after I did. “No. Vladimir competed in the 1984 Olympics and the USSR team didn’t let them do much of anything. His theory is that we’ve trained enough; sitting in our hotel rooms or practicing extra now would be like cramming for a test – counterproductive. And then he muttered something about not seeing the Olympics making us grouchy in our old age. He’s so strange. Not to mention grouchy.”

I laughed and blew on my drink to cool it. “I’ve heard that about him.”

“Grouchy and strange or not, he’s pretty much a genius at what he does,” Jasper said, laughing as he sipped his hot chocolate. “I meant to ask you, is your father one of the Team USA doctors? It took me awhile, but I think I finally put all the pieces together.”

I smiled and nodded. “Yep. He’s working mostly with the luge, bobsleigh, and skeleton teams though.”

“My neighbors in the Athlete’s Village are both on the skeleton team and we made a deal that they’d come to the free dance if I went to the skeleton finals. Are you going?”

Butterflies promptly took flight in my stomach. I knew it wasn’t a date – my dad was the team doctor so it made sense that I might be going and Jasper had already promised to go, but he was still interested in whether or not I was going. “Um, yeah, I am,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound like a giggling schoolgirl. “I’ve always wanted to try skeleton, but I’m too small. And it’d probably give my coach and my parents aneurysms.”

Jasper’s smile and twinkling eyes turned the gentle swarm of butterflies into mad rush of beating wings. “Makes sense, I suppose,” he agreed. “Anyway, I don’t know if your father gets tickets or not, but I can get a guest pass with my ticket. If you want to come with me, that is.”

“Yeah, that’d be really great,” I said, still hoping I didn’t sound like a silly little girl. “Thank you.”

Emmett and Rosalie found us again a little while later; they’d already made plans to go to Whistler and watch some of the alpine skiing events after the ice dancing competition was finished. Emmett and I walked Jasper and Rosalie as close as we could get to the Athlete’s Village and then made our way back to our hotel. Edward, our sadly missing in action brother, was actually in the café in the lobby. He was still mooning over Bella as they had coffee and talked, but he’d been spotted. That was a definite improvement.

Emmett snickered as we stepped into the elevator. “He’s going to become a journalist just so he can hang out in the media centers with her, isn’t he?”

“Mom and Dad will be glad he finally picked something to do,” I deadpanned, giggling before I turned serious. “Shrek, Jasper bought me hot chocolate and offered me a guest pass to skeleton. Did he ask me on a date?”

Emmett faked a sniffle. “My little Pipsqueak is growing up. So sad. But seriously, yes, it is a date. You’ve spent too much time in an ice rink,” he said, shaking his head ruefully. “Being eighteen and having to ask your brother if you got asked out on a date, it’s just wrong.”

He was being annoying, but I didn’t care. Jasper Hale had asked me on a date! I didn’t even care that my parents were going to be there.

==/==\\==/==\\==/==\\==/==\\==

I punched Emmett the next morning when he woke me up before nine. My hand hurt and I wanted to kick him for good measure, but then I remembered that we were going to watch the Hales practice for their free dance.

“She’s got a date,” Emmett explained to my gaping parents as I raced around the hotel room to get ready in record time. “Well, for skeleton later, but the guy’s practicing this morning.”

“And you’re going to watch ice dancing?” my dad asked, perhaps more shocked by that than how fast I was moving. “Again?”

“Yep,” I answered for him. “Shrek’s got it bad for my date’s sister slash partner. They’re going to skiing after she’s done competing.”

My mom was still speechless, so my dad was left to answer again. “Okay. Have fun.”

Edward rode down to the lobby with us, no doubt seeking about one Miss Bella Swan. “You two are strange,” he said, shaking his head as he leaned against the wall, “getting up early to go to ice dance practice. I never saw it coming, Em. Not from you.”

“This is rich,” Emmett groaned. “The stalker is calling us weird for supporting Team USA however we can. What’re we going to do about this, Pipsqueak?”

I winked at him and Edward promptly started begging us not to do anything. Emmett understood my wink and, when we got off the elevator, I put the plan into action. Bella was there – waiting for him, I could only imagine. I threw my arms around Edward and tried to keep a straight face. “Bye, Sexy Eddie,” I squealed, letting go of him and darting to Emmett’s side.

“Yeah, see ya later, Sex Ed!” he bellowed across the lobby.

The look on Edward’s face was priceless and, luckily, I captured it with my iPhone for all eternity. “We are in so much trouble, Shrek,” I laughed as we headed out into the cold Vancouver air.

“Two against one, Pipsqueak,” he assured me, laughing even harder, “we’ll never lose. Oh, and put that on Facebook right now.”

==/==\\==/==\\==/==\\==/==\\==

Emmett was weirdly entranced by the free dance practice, so I snapped a picture of his version of Edward mooning over Bella and put that on Facebook too. If there was one thing that was totally true about Alice Cullen, it was that she didn’t play favorites when it came to her brothers. They both knew it too – it was all good. I expected that there’d be a photo of me looking all dopey while Jasper practiced posted by the end of the day.

I watched everything, mostly to gauge what Jasper and Rosalie would need to do if they were going to capture the gold. Most of the other teams at that practice session, Tanya and Demetri included, ran through their programs at least twice, but the Hales didn’t. Instead, they picked out certain parts and ran through only those.

I knew the psychology of it perfectly. They wanted to make it clear that they weren’t worried about the competition, even if they were. It was strange that the Lithuanians didn’t do same.

The Hales even went so far as to leave practice early, motioning me and Emmett to follow them.

“Don’t they have family that should be hanging around instead of us?” Emmett wondered while we stood as close to the locker rooms as the burly security guard would allow. “Like parents or something?”

I shook my head. “They were orphaned when they were twelve,” I explained, making a mental note to never let Jasper know that I’d googled him rather extensively. “They lived with their grandfather, but he died four years ago. So no, no family. And don’t tell Rosalie that I told you all that. You either looked it up yourself or play dumb until she tells you.”

He saluted me. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Come on,” Rosalie said as she breezed out of the locker room. “A friend of mine told me about a coffee shop that’s pretty much undiscovered by the tourists and athletes. I need quiet and I need coffee.” She linked her arm through Emmett’s and led the way out of the arena.

Jasper shrugged, twirling his finger around his ear to silently tell me that he thought his sister was crazy. When I clapped my hand over my mouth to hold back a laugh, he bit his lip to do the same and held his hand out to me.

“You don’t have gloves?” he asked when I put my bare hand in his. “It’s freezing out.”

“I don’t think skaters feel the cold in their fingers so much after so much time in ice rinks,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t make Rosalie give me gloves – I liked holding his hand. “You don’t have gloves either.”

“Touché,” he allowed, holding the door open for me. “Did you want go for coffee or go somewhere else? They seem like they have more private in mind.”

Rosalie’s hand had dropped to Emmett’s ass and his hand was venturing away from her shoulder and toward her chest. It seemed caffeine and serenity weren’t all that she needed.

“Yeah, we should leave them alone,” I agreed warily. “I don’t have any ideas about where to go, though, and you’re the one who has to compete tomorrow, so you pick.”

“We’ll go to the coffee shop. They can go where they like. Just not to my room!” he yelled as Rosalie and Emmett wandered away. When I looked at him curiously, he shrugged. “I don’t have a roommate, she does. And a key to my room. I think it’s pretty clear what they’re going to be doing.”

We went to the coffee shop, making small talk along the way, and were both happy to discover that it was relatively undiscovered by tourists and athletes alike. I led the way to a small table in a corner that was walled with shelves filled with old books. “Is this okay?” I asked nervously, wondering if perhaps had been right and I had spent too much time in an ice rink.

“Yep, nice and private,” he agreed. “What kind of coffee do you want?”

He refused to let me insist on paying, I claimed it was only fair since he’d bought my hot chocolate, and ended up buying me a peppermint mocha.

It was a little bit more than small talk while we drank our mochas. The only rule Jasper insisted on was that we not talk about skating in any form. It was an easy enough rule to abide by. It turned out that we had many, many things in common. So we talked about books, movies, music, and then we went through each other’s wallets on the theory that you could learn a lot about someone by doing that.

“You’re very neat,” I complimented him when I’d finished my inventory of his wallet. “But I saw you slip something out before you gave it to me, that’s cheating.”

“It was a, um, condom,” Jasper said, dropping his eyes to his cup as his cheeks reddened. “I, uh, didn’t want you to get the, um, wrong idea.”

I put my head down on the table and tried not to groan too loudly.

==/==\\==/==\\==/==\\==/==\\==

Our impromptu date ended better than it was at that moment. We ended up staying until Rosalie and Emmett came looking for us. Given the state of disarray they both arrived in, there had been no hidden condoms between them.

I was up at the crack of dawn the next morning, bouncing nervously on the sofa bed that I slept on in the suite I shared with my parents.

“You do know you’re not the one competing, right?” my dad asked as he poured himself coffee. “And, before you ask, given the amount you’re bouncing already, you can’t have any coffee.”

I scowled at him and made a beeline to get my own coffee. “I know I’m not competing, but if Jasper doesn’t do well, he might think I’m bad luck,” I whined, snatching at a sugar packet before he could hide them from me. “What would I do then?”

“Do about what?” my mom asked as she emerged from the bathroom.

“Don’t ask, Esme,” my dad warned her. “Unless it’s a ‘girl thing’, I really wouldn’t recommend asking.”

I stuck my tongue out and took my coffee into the bathroom, stealing the shower before he had a chance to protest. As I shut the door, I heard my mom declare that I was in love. My dad replied that he was going to ask Emmett to keep a close eye on me. Little did he know about what Emmett preferred to keep a close eye on.

==/==\\==/==\\==/==\\==/==\\==

Once again, it was only Emmett and I that went to watch the ice skating. Our dad was on duty at the moguls event and Bella was covering women’s ice hockey so Edward had naturally followed her there.

The last group of teams to skate had just left their warm-ups when my phone buzzed in my pocket.

I see you in the stands. Kiss me for good luck?

I looked down at the area near the kiss and cry. Jasper saw me and put his phone to his lips. I laughed and copied him, kissing my phone and earning strange looks from Emmett and the woman sitting on the other side of me.

It vibrated again while it was against my lips.

Thanks. I hoped you would do that. No pressure or anything, but do you want to be my girlfriend? Text YES or NO.

The squeal I let out earned stranger looks than kissing the phone had.

YES. Of course.

I could see his smile from my seat.

==/==\\==/==\\==/==\\==/==\\==

Jasper and Rosalie, they were no longer simply the Hales to me, skated last, just after Varniene and Kazlauskas got sort of presumptuous and performed a program to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. The Lithuanians scored high and vaulted into first place.

My stomach literally ached in two minutes it took for Jasper and Rosalie to begin their program. I knew Emmett felt the same when I glanced over and saw that his knuckles were white as he gripped the armrests on his chair.

“Can Rosalie win?” he asked, leaning close to me as the crowd roared over Varniene and Kazlauskas’ scores. “Honest opinion, Pipsqueak, can it happen?”

“I don’t know, Shrek,” I moaned pitifully. “I hope so. Honest, I do, but I don’t know. The new scoring systems are supposed to keep out any chances of favoritism, but we’ll see.”

Emmett, ever the softie at heart, blew Rosalie a kiss when she glanced our way.

Jasper and Rosalie skated to Hans Zimmer’s 160 BPM from the Angels & Demons soundtrack. It wasn’t classic ice dancing music by any means, but it worked for them. It was edgy and new, something that wasn’t all that common ice dancing. In other words, they’d have to skate perfectly to convince the judges.

And they did skate perfectly.

I hopped out of my chair before they finished, Emmett right beside me.

It took the longest time for the scores to come up. My stomach went from aching to outright hurting. I didn’t want to think about how Jasper felt just then.

In the end, though, Jasper and Rosalie defeated Varniene and Kazlauskas, becoming the first Americans to ever win ice dancing gold at the Olympics.

Rosalie cried on the podium, I cried in the stands, Jasper blinked a lot on the podium, and I heard Emmett sniffle next to me.

It was very strange, indeed.

==/==\\==/==\\==/==\\==/==\\==

I didn’t get to see Jasper much over the next couple days because of the press and promotional things he had to do, but we did finally meet up properly at the skeleton event as promised.

Thankfully, my parents didn’t embarrass me when I introduced them to Jasper. They just congratulated him and told us to have fun.

“So do I get to be nervous watching you skate in Sochi in four years?” Jasper asked as we found our seats in the stands.

“You’re quitting!” I exclaimed. “Sorry, but probably not. My dad and the other doctors aren’t sure that my back could hold up to another injury like that.”

He put his arm around me and hugged me gently. “I don’t really want to quit, but Rosalie does. Well, she is.” His foot was bouncing nervously as he tried to figure out how to say whatever it was that he wanted to say. “I hope this doesn’t come out wrong, since you’ve only just agreed to be my girlfriend, but do you want to try ice dancing?”

“Me? Ice dance?” I thought I knew what he was asking, but I had to be sure.

“Yeah, with me,” he clarified, proving I knew what he was trying to say. “Rosalie’s quitting and I don’t want to. You aren’t sure about going back to singles. So why not try ice dancing with me? There aren’t any jumps and the lifts aren’t as dangerous as pairs. I could teach you.”

“We’d be spending every moment together,” I pointed out. The very thought made me a little bit giddy.

“Mm-hmm,” Jasper hummed. “There’s that added bonus. You can think about it, if you want. You don’t need to answer now.”

“It can’t hurt, can it? Let’s do it.” I grinned at him, my eyes widening in surprise when he leaned close and kissed me.

==/==\\==/==\\==/==\\==/==\\==

“SHREK!” I screamed, bounding into my brother’s hotel and room and pouncing on him.

“‘Sup, Pipsqueak?” he asked lazily, moving his laptop before I broke it.

“Jasper kissed me, I’m going back to skating, I’m going to try ice dancing with Jasper, and Rosalie’s quitting.” I took a deep breath and scooted off his lap. “Did you get all that?”

“Yep,” he said, laughing. “And, aside from the kissing bit, I know Rosalie’s quitting and I knew Jasper was going to talk to you about that. He kissed you?”

I laughed at Emmett’s narrowed, suspicious eyes. “Do you think Jasper did that after what you did with Rosalie?”

“Shhh!” he hissed, clamping his paw-like hand over my mouth. “Mom’s in the bathroom.”

I licked his palm and scrambled away from him. “Aren’t you glad I pestered you into going to ice dancing practice?”

Puffing out his chest and cringing like what he was about to say would surely be painful, he nodded. “Yeah, Pipsqueak, I am. Thank you. But now,” he said, shakily his head sadly, “we must focus on sibling retribution. Edward was at the ice dancing finals and got a picture of me with a drop of water on my cheek during the medal’s ceremony. He posted it on Facebook. He must pay.”

Drop of water on his cheek? I’d let him pretend that if he needed to, but he’d never live it down.

“Come on, Shrek,” I said, pulling him off the bed. “I’ve got just the thing to get back at Edward…”

THE END

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

First Time Again

First Time Again

 -|-Esme-|-

I twisted the thin gold band around the third finger on my left hand. Carlisle had offered to buy me a bigger ring when we were married, one with lots of sparkly diamonds, but I declined. Charles had given me a gaudy, ostentatious ring and it’d been a stretch to call what we had a true marriage. I wanted something different with Carlisle, so I’d insisted that we keep it simple and pure. He’d simply nodded and later purchased a delicate gold band etched with a tiny leaf and vine pattern that most humans probably couldn’t see.

I’d guessed correctly that he did the etching himself. I fell in love with him all over again; something I happily seemed to do every day. He explained that the vine represented something that constantly grew and strengthened its hold on whatever it wanted to call home. That reminded me of the small cottage on the edge of my parents’ farm that had slowly been covered in ivy. I loved watching as more and more of the walls disappeared until it was almost completely wrapped in the hearty green foliage. I never told anyone, for fear of being called silly, but I always thought the cottage was stronger for having the ivy on it.

Carlisle meant that his love for me was like ivy, ever spreading and growing. I’d never told him about the cottage on the farm, he just knew me. I felt so light and happy that I might have floated away, had the wind blown just then.

But I’d begun to worry that maybe my ivy wasn’t as strong as his.

We’d been married almost two years; as a three year old vampire, I was beyond even blaming my troubles on my newborn phase. I worried I was simply mentally unfit to be the wife of, and loved by, someone as wonderful as Carlisle Cullen.

I knew that part of being a wife was pleasing a husband in the most intimate of ways. I knew that Carlisle would never hurt me as Charles had done so often. But I still couldn’t bring myself to accept him in that way. I wanted to, more than anything. I simply hadn’t been sure how.

I’d resolved to change that, though. And tonight was the night.

I had exactly twenty minutes before Carlisle returned from his shift at the hospital. I knelt on the floor and dug through the deliciously soft silks and laces that my lingerie chest contained.

Carlisle didn’t know it, but I’d ordered some things on my own from catalogs. Edward had picked up the packages when he was in town, always turning them over to me with a weary sigh that was always followed by the plea that I give him fair warning before I put my purchases to use.

With fair warning, he was spending the night in the forest.

After much indecision, I selected a silk, blush-colored gown that had been made in Paris. It was sleeveless with a scandalously deep v-neck and an empire waist that sent the heavenly fabric floating to the floor. Out of habit, shyness, and uncertainty, I added a matching, long-sleeved, lace dressing gown adorned lacy flower pattern. By the time I’d brushed my soft caramel-colored hair, piling it into a loose bun on top my head, I heard Carlisle come in downstairs.

-|-Carlisle-|-

“Esme?” I called out, surprised that neither she nor Edward were downstairs. “Where are you?”

“Upstairs,” she replied in a soft, nervous voice. “Would you come up here, please?”

Only half noticing a note on the mantel from Edward, telling me that he was hunting alone for the night, I followed my wife’s voice to the bedroom we shared. “Is everything alright?” I asked as I pushed the door open, stopping only when my breath caught in my throat.

The late afternoon sun was spilling in through the western window, making her porcelain skin sparkle in tandem with the soft sparkle of the pink silk that clung to every curve of her body.

“Everything’s fine,” she assured me nervously as she stood at the foot of the bed. “How was your day?”

In that moment, I couldn’t remember a thing about my day. Settling for mumbling incoherently, I took two steps toward her. “How was your day?” I parroted when I’d recovered the ability to speak.

“Fine,” she murmured, tugging the delicate lace more closely around her. She took a deep breath and seemed to summon something from deep inside herself.

Taking her own two steps forward, she held out her hand to me. “I’m sorry this has taken me so long, Carlisle,” she whispered seriously. Her nerves of a moment ago had been replaced with a reverence of sorts. “I’m ready now. I want … to be your wife, in every way possible.”

I put my hand in hers, feeling a spark as we touched. I stared down at our joined hands as it flowed through me.

“I felt that, too,” she whispered, closing her fingers around my hand. “It must be a sign that this is right.”

“Esme, you don’t need to be ready now,” I protested, worried that she was doing this for me. “I can wait. I will wait. Just say the word.”

She pulled me forward until the tips of my shoes were touching her bare toes. “I want this, Carlisle,” she told me with a firm tone in her hungry voice. “Now.”

-|-Esme-|-

I was, honestly, a little surprised by the tone of my own voice. It sounded almost like it did when I badly needed to hunt. I could feel a ball of tension building deep inside of me and it was making me hungry – for Carlisle.

Raising my hands to the buttons on his crisp white shirt, I saw that my fingers were trembling almost imperceptibly and I tried to still them. Sensing my frustration, Carlisle caught my hands in his and placed a chaste, fluttering kiss on each one before letting them go again.

My hands didn’t shake as I unfastened each button on his shirt, slipping it down from his shoulders and draping it over the back of the closest chair without ever taking my eyes off him. He wore no undershirt and I was left with little to do but trail my fingers over the muscled lines of his chest, learning every curve and bump that was forever frozen in perfection.

“You’ve seen me without a shirt before,” he pointed out, his hands fisted at his sides.

I shook my head and continued my exploration of his chest. “I have. But I’ve never touched you without a shirt before. It’s quite different, Carlisle.”

“Is it?” he said, sucking in a breath as I allowed my fingers to trace down and over his washboard stomach.

“Very much so,” I assured him, threading my fingers around the buckle on his belt, smiling to myself as I watched him jerk back, just a little, from my touch. “Be sure to tell me if I do something that you don’t want me to do. I want it to be right.”

He caught my hands and moved them from his belt. “I very much doubt that you could anything wrong, Esme,” he murmured huskily. But I don’t want this to be you giving to me, I want to give to you as well.”

Having said that, he tugged on the slender tie that kept the lace dressing gown tied just below my neck, opening it the rest of the way down. With incredible slowness and gentle attention to my body, he walked around me, sliding the lace free from my arms before draping it over his shirt on the chair.

Carlisle stopped behind me and pressed his mouth against my neck. “You are extraordinarily beautiful, Esme,” he hummed against me. “I don’t think you realize how beautiful you are.”

“No one’s ever told me that,” I murmured, unable to control the content sigh that escaped. He wrapped his arms around me from behind, pulling me closer against his bare chest.

“The world can be cruel, can’t it?” he mused, still speaking into my neck and sending quivers of electricity through my body. “No longer, though. I shall tell you every day how beautiful you are and how very much I love you.”

I chewed my bottom lip and turned around in his arms, gasping just once when I felt him brush against my hip. I recovered my composure quickly and looked into his tawny eyes. “I wouldn’t be opposed to that at all,” I admitted honestly.

-|-Carlisle-|-

Her admission made her bold enough to return the attention of her hands to my belt. She had it unbuckled in an instant, pulling it through the fabric loops with one fluid, snapping motion. More gently, she tossed it toward the chair where it joined the other bits of our clothing. When she unfastened the button on my pants, it was all I could to not pull both of us onto the bed and move things much faster than they should.

Instead, I moved my lips back to her neck, distracting her with a line of kisses across her collarbone. Her skin was as smooth as a river polished rock and the warmth of her body made me ache with desire for her. But I would do this properly; I would do right by her.

I continued paying intimate attention to the area of her chest bared by the v-neck. I moved up to her throat and she gripped my shoulders, throwing her head back. Caramel colored curls escaping from her bun, tickling my arm as I held her.

“Tell me if I do something you don’t like,” I murmured into her ear as my teeth found gentle purchase there. “Promise me that, Esme.”

She whimpered and used her shoulder to nudge me away from her ear, before baring her neck for me again. “I don’t like that you stopped kissing me,” she informed me bluntly. “Don’t stop. Please, Carlisle, don’t stop.”

I gave her exactly what she wanted, covering every available inch of her with the kisses she loved so much. Only when I’d completely run out of room did I take the initiative to change things. In an instant, I had her off her feet and cradled against my chest. “I won’t hurt you, Esme,” I promised when I saw the barest hint of fright in her butterscotch eyes. “Not now, not ever.”

Carrying her around the bed, I laid her gently in the center and moved closer to her. I returned to my task of learning every inch of her body with my lips.

She moaned softly and tried to roll into me, desperate for me to speed the pace of things.

As a compromise, I pulled the silky pink fabric up far enough that I could trace my fingers over her most delicate, sensitive areas while I focused my lips on hers.

Humming into my mouth, and allowing my tongue access to hers, she bumped against me, seeking more attention from my hand beneath her gown.

She so warm and so very soft beneath my fingertips, and the silk of her gown felt nearly as velvety on my arm. Oddly, I like it right where it was.

“Don’t you want me to take this off?” Esme asked, bucking against me as she spread her legs further, allowing me more access. “I will.”

I shook my head, keeping my hand beneath her gown and teasing her as I slid my pants off and kicked them to the floor. “I like the silk between us. Is that strange?” I asked, groaning as she bit my lip. “Is there a tie on the shoulders?”

Esme laughed softly and squirmed against me, thoroughly enjoying my teasing. “There are ties on both shoulders,” she said, reaching up and pulling the strings before pushing the fabric down so that her breasts were bared completely. “I like the silk between us, too.”

-|-Esme-|-

Carlisle was driving me mad with his teasing. The ache that had begun in my abdomen was forgotten and overpowered by the desperate throbbing where his fingers played.

I did like the feel of the silk against my stomach and hips but I wanted to feel him against me too. As if he’d read my mind, he slid away from my mouth and down lower on the bed. I could feel his hands running up my thighs and cupping my hips, but I didn’t know just what his intentions were until I felt his breath against the inside of my thighs. Even then, I didn’t understand, but I very much wanted him to continue.

I forgot my name when I felt his tongue replace his fingers in teasing me.

Waves of happiness rolled through me as my body reacted to his ministrations. I whimpered pleadingly as the ball of anticipation and desire grew and grew deep inside of me. I needed it released and I needed it desperately.

Carlisle gave it to me with a single flick of his tongue against my most sensitive of spots.

I arched upward as fluid flowed from me. I was only vaguely aware that I’d ruined the sheets, twisting them in my hands until I’d ripped them completely. I attempted to speak, but it wasn’t coherent at all. I’d never experienced anywhere such pure delight, and I very much liked it.

I was panting as Carlisle lowered me back onto the bed. “I love you,” I murmured, having found my human voice.

Above me once again, he smiled tenderly. “I love you too, Esme,” he whispered before pressing his lips to mine once again.

He tasted different this time, and I knew it was because he tasted of me. The very thought sent shivers of pleasure through me that were intensified by a thousand when I felt him between my legs.

I blinked up at him, focusing intently on his ocher eyes. The last few minutes had been blissful and I wanted nothing to make the next ones any less than that.

“I won’t hurt you,” he promised again, watching me just as intently as he slowly pushed himself inside me.

He remained braced on his arms above me, not touching me until he was all the way inside. Only then did he lower himself so that he could support my back with his arms. Carlisle returned to covering me with gentle kisses, starting with my firm, ready breasts. He seemed to have a fascination with the spot he’d bitten to make me immortal and was busily attending to it when my body began to react to the part of him inside me.

It felt wonderful to be filled with him, but I knew instinctively that it would feel even more magnificent if he moved inside of me. Since he didn’t seem inclined to move, I moved around him.

I found my rhythm quickly and easily, rocking against his hips and biting my lip as each movement awoke a part of me that I hadn’t known existed. Soon enough, he picked up my rhythm and used his body to keep me still and let him do the work for us.

The knot of desire was back, clawing at me so fiercely that I was certain it would break me into pieces. I knew from Carlisle’s increased breathing that he was feeling the same thing. I didn’t want it to end, but I wanted to know what happened next in this strange, new world I was experiencing.

“I don’t want this to end,” Carlisle moaned against my neck, reading my mind once again.

We couldn’t have stopped or slowed it if we’d tried, or really wanted to try. Our basic instincts, our animal natures, took over as we moved toward the ultimate bond of mates and lovers.

I clawed at him, trembling and shaking as the end drew near. I brought my legs up and crossed them around his waist, ensuring that he could be no deeper inside of me. I couldn’t focus on a single thought, save for Carlisle himself, as he continued to move in me.

He buried his face in my neck and groaned. “Esme?”

“I love you, Carlisle,” I murmured back, only vaguely surprised that my voice shook with emotion and need.

It was all the permission either of us needed.

We found euphoric release together as I absorbed everything he had to give. Wave after wave of pure ecstasy rolled over me as I held on to him with everything I had.

It was truly an out of body experience and I don’t know how long it lasted. I only know that, when it ended, I was quite convinced my bones had turned to rubber. I didn’t move, I couldn’t, until Carlisle disentangled himself from me and ever so gently arranged us so we were on our sides, facing each other.

He looked sweetly satisfied and yet concerned at the same time, so I snuggled close to his chest, fixing the silky gown so that it covered me and was still softly between us. “I love you,” I said again, hoping to ease his worry. “I’ll never get tired of saying that.”

He smiled at that, and relaxed as he leaned in to kiss my lips again. “I’ll never tire of hearing it,” he vowed with a firm but soft reverence. “And I will say it back every time. I love you, Esme.”

-|-Carlisle-|-

After a few moments, Esme turned so that her back was to me. It took me a moment to realize that she was crying softly into her pillow. I reached out and gently touched her shoulder, sighing when she tensed. “Esme?” I murmured hesitantly. “What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”

She rolled over quickly, tucking her hands underneath the pillow as she looked at me with mesmerizingly beautiful, butterscotch-colored eyes. “You can’t hurt me, Carlisle,” she reminded me. “It was one of the first things you taught me three years ago. You haven’t forgotten, have you?”

“Of course not. But that isn’t what I meant, Esme.” I touched my thumb to her cheek, as if I could wipe away the tear that would never fall there. “You’re crying. I want to know if you’re crying because of something I did.”

Esme shifted nervously, twitching one hand from under the pillow to pull the sheet further up around her shoulders and smiled shyly when I helped tuck it carefully around her. “I was just … surprised. I didn’t know … that it … that sex … that making love … yes, that making love could be like that. So gentle and … enchanting.” She dropped her eyes from mine and laughed softly. “That’s probably a silly word to use, but I can’t think of any other.”

I moved my hand and nudged her chin back so I could see her eyes again. “It isn’t silly, Esme. It’s perfect. I’ve been enchanted by you since the day I set your broken leg, though never more so than I am now.” I smiled as she scooted closer to me, sighing happily when I put my arm around her. “Your tears then, they’re good tears?”

“Yes, they’re good tears,” she admitted before looking at me with traces of worry etched in her eyes. “You aren’t ever going to change, are you? You aren’t going become rough and demanding, are you?”

Though it broke my heart that my wife had to worry about my continued devotion to her, that her past experiences would return and repeat, I knew simple words formed into vague promises and vows wouldn’t give her the peace of mind she so badly deserved and needed. So I used words to make a firm promise that it would take years to prove true.

“Esme Anne Cullen, I love you. I love you more than you’ll probably ever know. I could never hurt someone I love. You deserve to be cherished, honored, and loved. I will do that for the rest of eternity. You don’t have to take my word for it now. Let me show you every day of our life together how much you mean to me.

“You need never fear that I might hurt you or stop loving you. I won’t. I couldn’t if I tried. All I ask is that you let me love you.”

In answer, she reached up and cupped her hands around my face, pulling me down until her lips were pressed gently but passionately against mine.

The End

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Becoming Mr. & Mrs. Hale

banner by TwistedInMasen

Becoming Mr. & Mrs. Hale

(Jasper)

“You’ll be fine, Jazz,” Alice whispered, leaning across the center console to plant a supportive kiss on my cheek. “You already had the interview and got the job. I’ve checked a hundred times, nothing bad will happen on your first day at work.”

“Check one more time?” I asked quietly, closing my eyes and leaning back against the passenger seat of her new steel blue Ford, a definite economy car for her but important to fit in as a young married couple. “It doesn’t hurt to be overcautious, does it?”

“No, but you’re beginning to sound like Edward,” she murmured before I heard her breathing still as she looked at my future. After a tiny, triumphant sigh, she spoke again. “Everything is still fine, Jazz. Your day is going to be perfectly boring. Don’t you trust me?”

I opened my eyes and let myself get lost in her wide, beautiful butterscotch eyes. “Always, Alice, always.”

She giggled and grinned, flipping the switch to unlock my door. “Good. Now go to work. I didn’t get a job yet, so you need to be the man in the family, earn a living, and put food on the table.”

We had more money than we knew what to do with; aside from Alice knowing how to shop with it, and the one place our food didn’t belong was on the table. It was very strange actual want to have a job considering all of that, but I did.

“I’ve got five minutes,” I reminded her, gesturing toward the still dark building across the street. “What are you going to do today?”

“Well, I thought I’d start by searching downtown Eatonville for any place willing to believe I’m old enough to get a job without my parents’ permission,” she muttered darkly. “But I’ll never be far enough away that I can’t get to you if you need me, Jazz. I promise you that.”

It was hard to believe, but six people had already accused Alice of being a teenage runaway with a fake ID. Either Jenks was getting sloppy or the human population of the Pacific Northwest was getting much more aware of their surroundings. Either way, she kept going to interviews even when she saw the result in the hopes that something would change. Based on her tone and her emotional state, things didn’t look promising for today.

She shook her head and smiled. “Never mind that, Jazz. You’ve got your first day of work to get started on. Try and relax, okay? You know Carlisle’s theory is that if you can be relaxed but aware at the same time, it’ll be easier.”

“Right,” I nodded, filing that away with all of the other wise thought slightly roundabout theories on living as a vampire in the human world that Carlisle had. “Anyway, kiss me goodbye. On the lips, if you please, Mrs. Hale.”

“Okay, but only once,” she laughed, “otherwise you’ll never get to work.”

Duly kissed, I climbed out of the car and trudged through the sleeting rain toward Eatonville Library. It wasn’t a big library by any means and most of the staff seemed to have chosen it as their post-retirement job. The woman who’d interviewed me had proudly shown me pictures of her two young great-grandchildren. Going by my human age of nearly twenty-one, I was the youngest employee by a quarter century.

“Good morning, Mr. Hale,” a woman called from beneath her umbrella. “I’m Carolina Ellerbee from the mayor’s office. Mrs. Petrie from the library called and asked me to let you in. Her hip is acting up in all this freezing sleet and rain, so she’s hoping that you won’t mind working by yourself today. It’s Wednesday, so I don’t think it should be too busy, and Mrs. Petrie said that there are instructions by every machine that you might need to use and a to-do list that she planned to help you work through. We’d both understand, of course, if you didn’t want to. I can just close the library for the day.”

When she’d finished everything that she had to say, or so I hoped, I shook my head. “No, I should be able to handle everything,” I assured her. “If it gets to be too much, could I call you to come back and close it then?”

“Absolutely, Mr. Hale,” Carolina Ellerbee said, smiling from behind far too much makeup. “I like that first day of work ethic. Let’s get out of the rain, shall we?”

Knowing Alice had heard all of that, and hoping that she’d visit the library at some point during my nine hour day, I turned and waved to her. Catching the kiss my wife blew me from inside the car and pocketing it, I followed my guide inside the modest library.

Carolina Ellerbee’s tour took all of three minutes; I learned where the light switches, the thermostat, the coffee pot, the fuse box, and the bathroom were. I could have found them all myself and she didn’t seem to know anything beyond showing me where those things and the main computer were.

“Any questions?” she asked cheerfully, having made sure that I knew where the to-do list was. When I didn’t have any, she smiled impossibly wider and wrote her phone number down on a scrap of paper. “Here you go, then. If you have any trouble or want to close up, just let me know. Oh, and I can come back after three and give you a break to go and get something to eat, if you want.”

Alice’s insistence that I carry a messenger bag was suddenly made clear. “That’s alright,” I told her, sensing from her body language and emotions that she was most interested in having lunch with me. “My wife packed a lunch for me.”

Just as I expected, her face fell and she beat a hasty retreat into the relentless rain. I was going to have to apologize to Carlisle for teasing him about the nurses and how he had to have Esme visit the hospital at least once every few months. For the moment, though, there was a rather extensive to-do list that needed to be done and I had to figure out how many of them would get done if it were an ordinary human doing them.

My phone vibrated in my pocket as I vacuumed the carpet in the children’s section, sucking up the remnants of some crafts project or another.

I didn’t know you’d be by yourself, but I told you that you’d be just fine. 

I laughed and quickly sent a reply of my own.

Anything else I should know, pixie? What are you doing?

Her response was quick, vague, and hopeful.

You. Will. Be. Fine. Jasper. I. Promise. I’m filling out an application at the café on Washington. Wish me luck! 

I didn’t have the foggiest idea why she’d want to work at a café, of course there weren’t a lot of job openings in Eatonville, but I wished her all the luck in the world.

I’d surprised her when I suggested that we try, for the first time, to live on our own away from the family. Having barely survived a confrontation with the Volturi, it may not have seemed like the most likely moment to break away, but it was for us. I’d seen changes in Alice fairly quickly after Renesmee’s birth. She adored our niece, but she missed the relationship she’d had with Edward and Bella as separate pieces rather than as a couple who had a daughter. I’d even noticed her watching Rosalie and Bella with a mixture of sadness and jealousy. I couldn’t let my wife be unhappy.

She’d seen the Volturi coming before I could talk to her and we went to South America, searching for some invisible piece to the puzzle that, once completed, could save our family. Nahuel had turned out to be the missing link, and we’d had a lucky escape from the Volturi. Though they remained a large threat, we couldn’t stop living. When I saw that Alice still wanted more from what was available with our family in Forks just then; the others planned to stretch their stay for two years for Bella and Nessie, I asked her to try living on our own.

Bella hadn’t reacted well, accusing Alice of deserting her while she needed her, and it was only my stepping front of my wife and Edward carrying his wife away to the cottage that stopped it from going any further. Rosalie and Emmett understood, telling us both in no uncertain terms that they thought it was about damn time and offering to come visit or stay close whenever we needed them.

It was the support of Carlisle and Esme that we needed most and they supported the idea with a reluctant sort of confidence that I had to imagine any parent felt when their children left home for the first time. They helped us find Eatonville, a town not far from Mount Rainier National Park and a small house with lots of open forest land between it and the park. Out of a reluctance to leave rather than a lack of confidence in us, they’d both stayed with us the first three days before Carlisle had to go back to Forks or risk losing his job. Esme was due back that very weekend.

By one o’clock, a mere two hours into my day, I’d vacuumed, cleaned both bathrooms, and had just moved on to sorting through the newspapers and magazines to find ones dated more than a month ago. Apparently, I was to photograph them so that they could eventually be put in the library’s microfilm files. Before I could pick up the camera, I heard the door open and a chorus of small, childlike voices filtered in to the library.

“Is Mrs. Petrie not in?” a brunette woman at the head of two dozen children asked me.

“No, ma’am, she didn’t feel well today,” I told her, trying not to panic about why there were a bunch of kids staring at me expectantly. “Can I help you with something?”

“Carolina Ellerbee let you in then?” she asked, smiling when I nodded in confirmation. “I’m Koko Mabry, Carolina’s sister, and this is my first grade class from Eatonville Elementary School. We always come to the library on Wednesday afternoon for a reading hour.”

“And Mrs. Petrie always reads one book to us!” a small blonde haired girl announced loudly. “Then she helps us find the book we wants to take home for the week!”

“Lila, indoor voice,” Koko chided her before turning back to me. “I can read to them and help them find books if you can just check out the books.”

Letting her do what Mrs. Petrie did would be letting her do my job and, as nice as that sounded, I couldn’t take the easy way out on the first day. Alice had to have seen this and known I would be fine. I couldn’t let her down.

“No thank you, ma’am. I work at the library, I’ll do the jobs that come along with it,” I assured her, following the kids as they hurried toward the newly vacuumed children’s section. “Mrs. Petrie didn’t have it on her to-do list, but I’m sure she didn’t mean to call off today.”

A small boy with a dripping nose smacked a book into my leg. “Read this one, Mister!”

I took the book from him glanced at the cover. A lizard dressed in a trench coat, fedora, and two toned shoes while carrying a magnifying glass was not what I expected but, then again, I had scant little experience with children’s books. “Private I. Guana: The Case of the Missing Chameleon by Nina Laden,” I read aloud, a little disbelieving that the words were even coming out of my mouth. “This is the book I should read today?”

Apparently it was, because, amid of a chorus of Yay! Guanas!, each child folded themselves onto the brightly patterned carpet in a half circle around an adult sized chair.

“You’re nervous,” Koko whispered, catching my elbow. “Don’t be. They’re six, at most. Just tell them your name, and I don’t care if it’s Mr. Whatever or your first name, and read the book. Take some time on each page so they can see the words and the pictures. They’ll probably ask questions that seem silly, but they’re serious to them so try and answer as best you can. I’ll be right over by the newspapers if you need me. You’ll be fine.”

The oddest thing about all that she said was that I was nervous. A vampire who had slaughter dozens of bloodthirsty vampires in less than ten minutes was nervous about reading a book about a detective chameleon to two dozen six year olds.

I took a deep breath and sat down. “I’m Mr. Hale and I work at the library now, so you might see me here,” I said by way of introduction. “Let’s see if Private I. Guana can find the chameleon, shall we?”

The story was cute, as thirty page books about lizard detectives can be, and the kids were thoroughly enthralled by the simple words and colors on the pages. To be honest, it made me sad that my niece went from reading the letters on her wooden blocks to Tennyson in the span of a few weeks.

I gathered they’d heard the story before because questions were kept to a merciful minimum and I only had to re-read three pages before Lila, the girl who’d been reminded to use her indoor voice, jumped up the second I closed the book. “Thank you, Mr. Hale,” she said properly. “We go look for books now?”

I glanced at Koko and, when she nodded, waved my hand toward the books. “Keep the noise to a dull roar,” I told them, “but pick out the books you want and bring them up to the desk.”

“A dull roar?” Koko asked as I moved to stand behind the desk and figure out how to check out books. “I like that. Can I use it?”

“Be my guest,” I said, smiling at her partly triumphant in having found the instructions for the computer. “By the way, is your class the only one that comes in for reading hour?”

She shook her head and flipped idly through a copy of The Smithsonian. “No. There are three first grade classes; I come on Wednesday at one and the other two come in on Mondays and Tuesdays at one. The second graders come twice a month, Thursday mornings, I think. And the third graders come once a month, on Fridays. After that, I guess the school figures they should love the library enough to come back on their own.”

“And do they?” I asked, genuinely interested in the conversation to my surprise.

“I couldn’t really say,” Koko replied, keeping an eye on her class while she talked. “I only started working here in January, after I moved home after college. I don’t remember you, though. And new faces are kind of rare in Eatonville.”

“My wife and I just moved here about a week ago, without jobs, of course. I came here for a book and Mrs. Petrie asked me if I wanted a job.” I sat on the tall stool, crossing my arms loosely over my chest as I tried to lean a little bit away from her. “Here I am.”

“Yeah, she worked here when I was little. She gets pretty desperate during the school year, not that she wouldn’t have hired you otherwise,” she amended herself quickly, laughing when I waved off the comment. “It’s just that during the summer, parents can force the teenagers to work her, but not during the school year. Anyway, did your wife find a job yet?”

I didn’t answer until after I’d scanned one little girl’s copy of Junie B. Jones: Finally A First Grader and watched her return to the carpet to examine her book while she waited for her classmates. “No. She was applying at the café on Washington last time she texted me.”

“Oh, my cousin owns that café!” Koko exclaimed. “What’s your wife’s name? I’ll call my cousin and tell her to hire her. Because I’m pretty sure that the only other places hiring are the gas station, the meat department at the grocery store, and the doctor’s office.”

Alice would not do well in either a meat department or a doctor’s office and hell would freeze over before she took a job at a gas station, so it seemed like the café had won this round.

“That’d be really great,” I agreed. “Thanks, Koko. Her name is Alice Hale. My name’s Jasper, in case I didn’t mention it.”

“You didn’t, but it’s nice to meet you, Jasper,” she said, scrolling through the contacts on her phone. “Ten minutes, guys! Get your books picked out and checked out, please.”

That order unleashed a small deluge of small children forming a not so orderly line as they waited to have me check their books out. They were perfectly polite to me, full of pleases and thank yous, but they were downright rude to each other. It seemed par for the course, though, and there were no tears shed during the hour.

“Thanks for not running when two dozen little monsters showed up on your first day of work, Jasper,” Koko said as she bundled the last kid for their venture into the rain. “And my aunt said that she’s calling your wife right now to tell her she’s hired.”

I smiled at her, surprised at how easy it was to interact when it had always been so hard before. “We owe you one, Koko.”

“Tell you what, Eatonville is horrifically boring but my fiancé wants to go bowling on Friday night, why don’t you and Alice come along? They actually have pretty good food at the bowling alley. Demetri just moved here, too, so I can give you all the secrets.”

“Um, yeah, sure,” I said, startling myself with my answer. “If your aunt doesn’t need Alice to work, I don’t see why we couldn’t be there.”

“Great,” Koko said, smiling widely, passing me a scrap of paper with a phone number on it. “There’s my number if you can’t come or need anything at all. Seven o’clock at the only bowling alley in town?”

“Sounds great,” I said, pocketing the paper before I waved to the kids. “Bye, guys. See you next week.”

They waved at me as they filed out the door and into the rain. I had only forty-five seconds after the last little boy, the one with the runny nose, shut the door when it opened again and the most beautiful thing in the world danced into the library.

Alice launched herself into my arms and I swung her in a small circle. “I got the job at the café!” she trilled ecstatically. “And I know the girl we’re going bowling with called in a favor, but I don’t care.”

I kissed her lightly on the lips, conscious of the security cameras in the library. “Did it surprise you when I agreed to go bowling?”

Her eyes went impossibly wide as she nodded almost violently. “Yes! I almost crashed the car into a pole! I knew she was going to ask, and I wanted you to say yes, but I didn’t believe you would.”

“Doubting me,” I scoffed playfully, setting her back on her feet. “I suppose you saw me reading first graders a story, too?”

“Of course I did,” she giggled. “It was adorable, Jazz. And no, I won’t ever tell Emmett or Peter that you read a book about an iguana who solves crimes.”

I snaked my arms back around her waist and pulled her close to my chest, locking her in place. “You’d better not, Miss Chanel, or else. And now, you’d better be gone. I have work to do, you know.”

Squirming out of my grasp, she let her eyes glaze over for a moment. “It’ll just be little old ladies for the rest of the day,” she informed me helpfully. “You’ll be fine. I have to go buy black pants and skirts and white shirts for work. I’ll pick you up at 8.”

Ever true to her word, the blue Ford was parked outside the library when Carolina Ellerbee, having returned to lock up, finally finished assuring me that Mrs. Petrie would only take the one day off at ten past 8.

“Sorry, darlin’,” I said, sliding into the passenger seat and sighing as my wife sang along with Rihanna’s lines in Umbrella. “And no, I’m not singing Jay-Z’s part.”

“Party pooper,” she teased, turning the radio down and leaning over to kiss me. “Perfectly boring day, right? Just like I said.”

“You didn’t mention that the little old ladies were raging flirts,” I said dryly.

“More flirty than that teacher was?” she challenged me, smiling impishly.

I rolled my eyes and tickled her ribs as she drove east. “We’re bowling with her and her fiancé, darlin’. She wasn’t flirting with me.”

“Whatever you say, Jazz. I know how irresistible you are and she got me a job, for pete’s sake.”

“Not for pete’s sake,” I argued. “Why would she get my wife a job if she wanted to flirt with me? Wouldn’t she try and keep you from getting a job, relegating us to supposed marriage ending poverty so she could move in and pick up what you destroyed?”

“Humans don’t think that far ahead, silly,” Alice stated bluntly, still struggling not to laugh. “She was flirting, not blatantly, but she was flirting. Remember, you told me to keep an eye on you so I saw everything.”

It was time to put an end to this conversation. “Whatever you say, darlin’. Did you get your clothes for work?”

She let out a loud groan that I could only assume had to do with the limited shopping options in Eatonville. “No,” she grumbled. “There isn’t even a stupid box store that I refuse to name because it’s taking over America with Chinese made clothes. Since I’m supposed to be sort of poor, I can’t even order expensive stuff online. Do you mind if we go to the mall in Puyallup? It’ll only take me ten minutes or so to drive there and I know just where everything is so I’ll be in and out before it closes at 9. I have to be at work at 9:30, otherwise I’d go in the morning.”

Smiling at my wife’s mini rant on the rise of Wal-Mart in America, I gestured toward the open road. “Drive on. Although the idea of you shopping for pants, skirts, and shirts in less than half an hour even when you know what you’re looking for is something I’m gonna have to see to believe.”

“Shut it,” she growled, stepping on the gas. “What are you going to do, come into the mall with me just to see if I can do it? Or time me in the car?”

“I’ll come in,” I replied evenly. “Just to make sure you don’t expose us racing through a mall. I wouldn’t want to have to look for a new job in another town.”

Alice ignored me and turned the volume up on her pop station, speeding toward Puyallup. “Do you want to hunt after we finish at the mall?” she eventually said over Rihanna’s instructions to shut up and drive.

“Yes, please.” We’d agreed when we first decided to live on our own that we would had three times a day if that’s what it took to give us the strength and confidence in ourselves to do what we wanted to do. All that being said, I couldn’t resist teasing Alice a little more. “Men expect dinner after long days at work, darlin’, not shopping, so we’d better hunt.”

That broke through her resolve and she dissolved into a fit of giggles as she parked at the mall, as close to the store she need as possible.

The middle aged cashier in the junior’s section watched me warily as I followed Alice on her fast search for what she needed; apparently she looked too young to be with me so late at night.

“Two inches taller and I could shop for work clothes that didn’t have sparkles and embroidery on them,” Alice muttered, half-buried in a rack of black pants and peering at me helplessly. “This isn’t what I expected here, Jazz. I need two black skirts, two pairs of black pants, and three white dress shirts, all in extra small. Help me, please!”

I found the shirts and one skirt, earning myself a kiss from my wife and a glare from the cashier. “She’s thinks I’m a perv,” I murmured, bending low to Alice’s ear. “Can I manipulate her to leave us alone?”

“You’d better,” Alice whispered back, holding a pair of pants in front of herself just like a human would do. “I’m going to see the cutest dress on the way out and when you grab my arm to keep me from going back, she might call the police on you.”

“I hate shopping,” I sighed wearily, staring at the woman until she looked away and gave me the chance to make her at ease with everything but the fact that store hadn’t closed yet.

With a satisfied sigh, Alice tugged on my hand. “All done. Let’s go get dinner, Jazz.”

It was a perfectly normal thing to say and seemed to help ease the cashier’s fears, although the thing that distracted her most was the fact that Alice flashed her ID when she used a credit card to pay.

I spent the time examining the racks nearest the doors in search of what dress Alice had been talking about – we would be avoiding that door if I played my cards right. And I did, steering her through the door closest to the men’s underwear section as she grumbled about the lost opportunity. “Later, darlin’,” I reminded her as we walked through the wet parking lot. “You have to work in the morning and the mall’s closing.”

She went to the passenger side, tossing me the keys, and stopped. “This is weird. We sound so human.”

(Alice)

Jasper wrapped his arms around me and sighed, sending waves of calm over me. “You’re gonna twitch a hole in the floor, darlin’,” he murmured, picking me off the chair and sitting down beneath me. “Can’t you relax at all?”

“Uh-uh,” I said, shaking my head quickly and wondering how I could possibly relax when it was my first ever day of work in a few short hours. “Help me, Jazz.”

“If I calm you down now, it’ll wear off long before you get to work,” he said, nuzzling my ear. “And I have to work half an hour after that, so I can’t hang around and keep you calm. How can I help you, darlin’?”

The feel of his warm breath on my neck made me squirm in his lap. “You’re the emotional expert, Jasper,” I sighed slowly, “how can you help me?”

Dropping his head to bury his face in my neck, he trailed his fingers along my thighs, his touch through the fabric of my jeans pleasing in an entirely unexpected way. “Well, based on what I learned in a psychology class about Freud or someone once,” he whispered teasingly into my shoulder, “the release of sexual tension can do a lot to calm someone down. Tell me, Mrs. Hale, do you feel any sexual tension at the moment?”

Sexual tension had been the furthest thing from my mind when I’d started twitching. Now it was the only thing on my mind. “A little,” I admitted, putting my hands on top of his as he continued his invisible drawings on my legs.

“Just a little?” he asked, his chuckle against my skin sending tremors of electricity through me. He moved his hands up to my waist and beneath my satin blouse. “I don’t know if releasing just a little sexual tension will help calm you down. What do you think?”

I sucked in a breath as he traced a series of hearts across my bare stomach. “You’re going to increase my sexual tension, aren’t you?” I asked quietly, dropping my hands to his hips. “So that I can be calmer.”

Jasper raised his head and put his mouth over my ear, exhaling a deep breath of warm air. “As the emotional expert here, I do believe that would be best for your future emotional state,” he stated with a husky sort of confidence. “And I’m going to do everything I can to not make decisions of any sort. I think that would be best for you.”

I dug my fingers into his hips when his hands cupped my breasts, his fingers fluttering over my delicate skin. “Do you now?” I asked, my eyes closed as I prayed he would succeed at not making decisions. In most things, I did not like surprises. In most things…

“I do,” he confirmed. “Do what I tell you, Alice. I promise you will feel calm and relaxed when I’m through with you. Satisfaction guaranteed.”

In submission of sorts, I leaned back against his chest, my head resting in the crook of his neck and my fingers still dug into his hips.

Keeping one hand underneath my shirt, teasing me continuously, he moved the other back down to the waistband of my jeans. In an instant, he had them unbuttoned and slipped his hand inside my pink lace panties.

I shivered involuntarily when he discovered a part of me more sensitive than what he’d already been teasing. “Jazz,” I whimpered, pressing my lips to his throat.

“Hush, darlin’,” he scolded me. “That’s the only word you’re allowed to say, understand?”

I bit my lip and moaned as he dropped his hand and lifted me up just long enough to slide my jeans out of the way, leaving my panties where they were, more than willing to work around them for effect.

For half an hour, we sat just there. I kept to the rules and never uttered a word that wasn’t his name while he slowly but ever so surely increased my sexual tension to an unbearable level. The fact that he used nothing but his hands to bring me to that point made me squirm all the more.

Too soon I couldn’t take it any longer, and I bounced against his fingers.

Knowing what I needed, Jasper took pity on me and hooked his finger to catch the magical spot inside of me that gave the sweetest release of all.

When I finally finished shuddering against him, he wrapped his arms around me and stood up, carrying me into the bathroom and depositing me in the tiny shower. “I’m not staying, darlin’,” he said, handing me my vanilla scented body wash. “You have to shower and get ready for work.”

“Your hand,” I said, reaching out and grabbing hold of his arm before he could disappear. “It needs washed too.”

“I’ll wash it in the kitchen,” he said, smirking playfully at me. “Check the future, Ali. What happens if I get in that shower with you?”

I let my mind scan ahead and groaned loudly. “I’ll be late for my first day of work,” I grumbled petulantly. “Go away, Jazz, I’m taking off my clothes now and if you’re still here, you won’t leave.”

He was laughing as he left.

Forty-five minutes later, our roles from Wednesday were reversed and I sat in the passenger seat of the car while Jasper tried to coax me out and into the café where I’d got my first job.

“Why did I get a job in restaurant?” I moaned. “That’s the dumbest place for a vampire to get a job.”

“Actually, that would probably be a blood bank. Or maybe a blood bank would be the smartest place for a vampire to get a job. A normal vampire, anyway,” Jasper mused thoughtfully, earning himself a punch in the shoulder. “Sorry, Ali. You got a job in a café because your other choices were a gas station or a doctor’s office, remember?”

I sighed wearily. “I can’t wear coveralls,” I said, shaking at the very thought. “They probably don’t even make them that small.”

“Only for Halloween costumes,” he agreed, in rare, joking form at the strangest of times. “You haven’t seen anything bad happen today, have you?”

“No, you’re day will be boring again. Well, except for the old guy who comes in looking for the Kama Sutra and then misses the toilet when he goes to the bathroom. You have to clean that up,” I told him, cringing a little when a look of irritation flashed in his eyes.

“I quit,” Jasper declared before rolling his eyes and sighing deeply. “I won’t quit, don’t worry. But I didn’t mean my day, darlin’, I meant your day. Does anything bad happen during your day?”

I shook my head and absently picked a tiny white thread off my black pants. “No, not so far. I think the smell of the human food will safely drown out any and all tempting blood smells.” I wrinkled my nose at the idea and saw that I had exactly six minutes before my 9:30 shift started. “I’d better go inside.”

“Mm-hmm,” he agreed vaguely as he switched the radio station. “You get off after me, right?”

“Yeah, half an hour. Come pick me up.” I opened my door and got out. Then, just as I was about to walk away, I turned around and leaned back in the window that he’d rolled down. “You know I’m good at keeping my emotions from you, you never asked if I was calmer after you helped me release my tension.”

I’d never seen him look quite so smug as just then when he smirked at me.

“You’re not that good at it, Ali,” he replied, winking at me. “I know you’re calmer. You’re actually trying not to be calm, but you’re just a little nervous. Trust me.”

I leaned further in and kissed him quickly before pulling back and sticking my tongue out at him. With that goodbye, I marched into the café.

The woman who owned the café, Tonesha, greeted me warmly at the cash register. “Thanks for starting on such short notice, Alice. Did you have any trouble finding clothes? I know Eatonville doesn’t offer much in the way of shopping.” The look on her face told me that she was just as mournful of the fact as I was.

“My husband and I ran to Puyallup after he got off work.” I waved my hand over my outfit nervously. “Is this okay?”

“Perfect, sweetie,” Tonesha said, motioning me to follow her behind the counter. “I’m going to have you be the hostess for now, okay? Such a little think like you could hardly carry trays full of food. Have you ever been a hostess at a café or restaurant?”

Fighting the urge to scowl at her mention of my size, I shook my head. “No, never.”

“It’s simple really,” she assured me. “You’ll just be queen of this area back here. When people come in, give ‘em a big smile and welcome them to Tonesha’s Tea House and Bakery. We let customers seat themselves here, so you just hand over a menu and let them be on their way. Some will sit right here at the bar, and you’ll have most to do with them. You’ll get them coffee, tea, and whatever else they want to drink from the machines over along the back wall. If they order food or baked goods, you just pass the order right back to the kitchen and give it to the customers when it’s ready.”

I followed through a swinging door and into the kitchen where she introduced me to Jensen, the ‘one who cooks the things that don’t need baked’ – apparently Tonesha did the baking herself. Jensen seemed nice enough, smiling and making motions with his hands to imitate how much Tonesha liked to talk as she led me back out of the kitchen.

“When I’m not baking, I do some of the waitressing myself along with another girl, Paula,” my new boss continued. “She’s not coming in until later, though. Basically, we’re just a small café and we each have a job to do, but we do whatever job needs done. Jensen’s even been known to wait of a few tables, haven’t you?”

“Only when you take over my kitchen,” he called back good-naturedly. “Just shout if you need any help, Alice. There’s a lot of down time here, no offense, Tonesha, and I’m literally two steps away if you need me.”

“None taken, handsome,” she replied, winking at me. “Paula’s got her eye on Jensen, but he’s making her work for it, poor girl. Koko said that you and your husband, what’s his name?”

“Jasper,” I supplied, following her lead in arranging flowers in vases on the dozen tables in the café.

“Right, Koko said that you and Jasper just moved to Eatonville. I forget already what you wrote on your application; then again, I may have been desperate enough for a hostess that I didn’t really read it yet, where did you move from?”

“Forks. Have you heard of it? Most people haven’t.”

Tonesha laughed. “I have, actually. I went whale watching two years ago near La Push and managed to slip and break my wrist. The closest hospital was in Forks and the sexiest doctor I’ve ever seen, he really did put that McDreamy character to shame, fixed me up. I seriously thought about breaking my ankle or something, just so I could go back. I think his name was Dr. Cullen. Do you know him?”

“Um…well, yeah,” I stuttered, coming as close to blushing as I ever would. “He’s my adoptive father.”

“And things get awkward,” Jensen muttered as he wrote out the lunch specials on the chalkboard over the counter. “Don’t mind her, Alice. She’s addicted to whichever show the McDoctors are on. Paula and I can’t figure out why she opened her café so far from the nearest hospital.”

“Shut up and go cook something,” Tonesha ordered him before turning to me with an apology etched in her face.

“Don’t apologize,” I said quickly. “Believe me, I know that everyone likes him. It’s really okay. My mother has to go to work with him every couple months just to prove to the nurses that he really is married. It’s kind of funny, really. Maybe not to my mom, but to me, anyway.”

“Thanks for understanding that, but I am sorry,” she blurted out, looking relieved when the door opened and a girl about my human age hurried inside with an umbrella that’d been blown the wrong way. “There’s Paula. She knows you’re new and I have to go bake some pies for a meeting at the high school tonight. She’ll help you through the lunch rush.”

“Is Tonesha traumatizing you already?” Paula asked as she tied an apron around her waist and motioned me to follow her to the machines behind the counter. “Come on, I’ll teach you how to use the coffee, cappuccino, and espresso makers.”

If my immortality hadn’t blessed me with a perfect memory, I would have been one very confused girl with a lot of unhappy customers. I was fairly sure I would have been fired in the first hour. As it was, Tonesha, Paula, and Jensen were just impressed with my ability to remember orders. They didn’t know that the machines confused me more than the humans telling me what they wanted to eat and drink did.

The lunch rush was crazy. I gave silent thanks that I didn’t have to work the dinner shift, and ran out of the café and into Jasper’s arms as he waited next to the car.

“Rough day?” he asked dryly, holding me as I nuzzled against him.

“I almost quit,” I moaned pitifully. “I never thought a tea house and bakery in such a small town would have so many customers for lunch of all meals.”

“Based on my library studies of the last two days, there are a lot of bored, retired, old people in this town,” Jasper quipped. “They need something to do between the morning rain showers and the evening thunderstorms.”

I giggled and quickly clapped my hand over his mouth as just one of those people tottered past, cane in hand.

“Fine,” Jasper sighed wearily, his voice muffled by my hand. “What human things do we have to do tonight to keep up appearances?”

“Grocery shopping,” I said, wrinkling my nose at the prospect of being around more human food. “I heard two women gossiping about how the new young couple in town haven’t been seen at the grocery store.”

We spent almost an hour fumbling around the grocery store, buying things we remembered seeing Bella and the wolves eating and things we knew would keep until we donated them to the local charities. It took far longer than it should have and we probably bought a lot more than we needed.

“Don’t worry about,” Jasper murmured as he paid the bill at the cash register. “We just look like a young, poor, married couple who can only afford to eat out of cans and boxes. It fits.”

“You know we have a sale on fresh fish this week,” the bored teenager behind the counter repeated dully, as though she were reading from a script. “Comes in fresh from the Puget Sound every Thursday.”

I smothered the urge to laugh at her extreme boredom. “Thanks, but he’s allergic to fish,” I told her.

“Sucks to live around here then,” she mumbled in reply, handing Jasper the receipt and his change.

I knew it was only Jasper’s help that kept me from bursting into laughter before I was safely in the passenger seat of the car while he put our groceries into the trunk.

“I told you we didn’t have anything to worry about,” he said, smirking smugly as he pulled out of the parking lot. “Anything else tonight? Or should we put away the food we’ll never eat and then go for a quick hunt?”

That sounded perfect to me and that is just what we did. The only variation from Jasper’s plan was my reminder that the food would not spoil and we could hunt first. Of course, having hunted nearly every day for the last two weeks left us both full to the point of not needing more than two rabbits a piece.

“Jazz!” I said, gasping as we ran back to the car and a sudden realization hit me. “We’ve lived in Eatonville for an entire week, you know. And we have a bedroom with no one else in the house and no neighbors for half a mile. Why have spent all our time in the forest?”

“Good question,” he said, his voice deep with desire as he swept me off my feet and ran me to the car. “Let’s remedy that right now.”

The next day was a repeat of the last for the most part.

I worked from eight to five at the café, and quickly discovered that the breakfast rush was ten times worse than lunch because younger people were far more impatient than older people. Jasper, meanwhile, worked at the library from eleven to six and assured me afterward that his day had been perfectly boring. He laughed when I growled at him.

I scowled at him, before leaning over the seat and into the back of the car. “Did you bring the outfit I told you to bring?” I asked, pawing through a bag that he’d left there after making a trip home before coming back to pick me up. “I’m not wearing these foul smelling clothes to go bowling.”

“White tee, turquoise hoodie, and dark jeggings,” he said, reaching over to pat my butt as I left it in the general area of his head. “I can’t believe I just said that word, but they’re all there. You aren’t changing in the car, are you?”

Satisfied that my clothes were there, I slid back into the passenger seat. “No. Drive east into the woods. You’re going to hunt before we meet Koko and Demetri at the bowling alley. I’ll change there.”

“You’re not hunting?” he asked as he followed my directions.

I shook my head and kicked off my black shoes and socks that wouldn’t match my bowling outfit. “I’ll pop if I drink more. You’ll be in a better mood when you catch the buck. But hurry, we don’t have too much time.”

I was changed and waiting behind the wheel when Jasper returned, his eyes a sparkly golden color, exactly eight minutes later. “Fast enough?” he asked, smirking smugly.

“No,” I replied, confused by why he was so smug, as I turned back onto the paved road. “I saw you’d only be five minutes. Why did it take you eight?”

“I watched you change,” he answered, shrugging nonchalantly. “Let’s go bowling.”

Koko was waiting outside the bowling alley with a tall, fit guy with spiky blond hair. It had to be Demetri and, if not for the more angular features, blue eyes, and tanned skin, he would have looked a lot like Jasper. But Jasper was still leaps and bounds sexier, to me anyway.

I thanked Koko profusely for getting me the job at the café after Jasper introduced us and she introduced us to Demetri. I tried not to say anything about what I didn’t like until she told me that she’d worked there through high school and promised me that it was an acquired taste. I didn’t think I’d ever acquire a taste for a job that involved food that I would never want to eat, but I kept quiet about that.

The absolute worst part of bowling, before I even set eyes on a ball, was the shoes. To put on shoes made of countless synthetic fabrics that who knows how many other people had worn went against every fiber of my being. Things were not made better when the pudgy man behind the shoe counter informed me that they didn’t carry adult shoes in my size, but he happened to have a pair of pink Disney princess shoes that would fit me.

“Little girls probably have cleaner feet than adults,” Jasper whispered in my ear as we sat on the bench and donned out shoes. “And remember, you can’t get germs, even if the shoes are ugly.”

I bumped his arm in thanks and stood up, ready to pretend like bowling balls were heavy and that I couldn’t get a strike every time if I wanted to.

“So how do you guys like Eatonville?” Koko asked as we sat at a booth and Jasper and I tried not to eat too much pizza while we took a break from bowling. “It’s boring, isn’t it?”

“She keeps talking about how boring it is,” Demetri said before we could finish grimacing, “but yet she convinced me to move here after we finished at UCLA. Go figure.”

“I like my family and you hate yours,” she said, shrugging. “I can’t help it if my family lives in a stupidly boring small town.”

“It’s bigger and more exciting than the town we moved from,” Jasper supplied. “Have you heard of Forks?”

“Of course, you eat with them,” Demetri answered, completely confused.

Koko rolled her eyes. “It’s a tiny town on the other side of the Olympic Peninsula. We drove through it once when I was little. My sister threw my colored pencils on the floor of the car just before we got to Forks and we were through it before I finished picking them up, I think.”

“That would be Forks,” I confirmed, laughing at the story and how very true it was. “What about you, Demetri, where are you from? Sorry if I’m being nosy, but it doesn’t sound like you’re American.”

“That would be because I’m not,” he replied, making his English accent more pronounced. “I was born in Athens and sent to boarding school in England at the tender age of eight. And, as Koko mentioned, I hate my family for many, many tedious reasons so I gave up Cambridge in favor of UCLA. So here I am in rented shoes, bowling in small town America. Naturally, I’ve been disinherited, so I took the job at the doctor’s office that you opted out of.

“I wouldn’t trade a thing, not for anything,” he finished quietly, fixing an intense gaze on Koko as she blushed and played with the straw in her soda.

“Come on, Alice,” she said, jumping up suddenly. “Come to the bathroom with me?”

Faking human activities in the bathroom was worse than faking eating. It was only when we moved to Forks that I overheard Angela Weber telling someone that she hated the sounds that happened in stalls and always flushed the toilet before she went. It worked perfectly for those of us who didn’t need to ‘go’ and I had to hold back from kissing her right then and there. So I followed Koko and did just that.

“I feel bad sometimes, that Demetri gave up so much to follow me here,” she admitted shyly while we stood at the sinks together. “What if it doesn’t work out?”

Focusing on my soapy hands, I quickly checked the future for her. She was going to make the cutest bride, baby bump and all, in a year’s time. To my delight, I was one of the two bridesmaids along with her sister, Carolina. “It’ll work out,” I told her confidently.

“How can you be so sure?”

I dried my hands and tapped my temple. “I just know these things, Koko, trust me. Think about it, my parents adopted me when I was five and Jasper moved in when I was seven. I knew that very day that we’d be together, one way or another, and here we are. If you want it to work with Demetri, it will.”

“Thanks, Alice,” she said, reaching out to hug me. “I feel like I know things too and I know that we’re going to be great friends, even though we only just met.”

If it wouldn’t have attracted too much attention, I was fairly confident that I could have floated out of the grimy public bathroom. It was the strangest place to come to the realization that I really could do this; I really could fit into the human world, even if it meant working at as a waitress, wearing mass produced clothes, living in a house that was smaller than some of my closets, and driving a ‘normal’ car.

We bowled another game; girls against boys and I’m pretty sure Jasper and Demetri let us win, but we didn’t care. I hadn’t had so much pure fun in a very long time. We made definite plans to go to the movies and tentative plans to go to an antique sale in Puyallup the next weekend. It was beyond perfect.

“Happy?” Jasper asked, coming up behind me and wrapping his arms around me as we watched Koko and Demetri pull out of the parking lot. “As if I need to ask.”

“Are you happy?” I asked, turning the question on him.

“More than you know,” he assured me in a whisper, letting me feel just how happy he was. “We’re really doing this. I love you, Alice Hale.”

“We’re really doing this,” I repeated, almost not believing what I was saying. “I love being human. And I love you, Jasper Hale.”

END

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.