Becoming Mr. & Mrs. Hale

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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.