Alice often wondered why she'd had to be gay.

There was nothing particularly wrong with the sexual orientation and she wasn't even opposed to her connection with it. It just, on days like today, made her life very, very hard.

At first, Alice had been grateful for her total inability to be attracted to men. It had made meeting Mrs. Cullen's nephew easy. He was aesthetically pleasing enough, although maybe not conventionally; his hair was disheveled in the way that was currently the fashion and his blue eyes had a sort of darkness to them that Alice knew through reading young adult romance novels straight girls found attractive. His presence in the house — or the office, whatever you wanted to call it — might have been distracting had she felt even the slightest inclination to go after him.

Not that she really saw the members of the Cullen family who weren't Mrs. Cullen herself. Her offices were only kind-of-sort-of connected to the rest of the house and it was only when Alice was running around making coffee or fetching coffee cake or doing some other coffee-related intern thing that she ever saw them. Or him, really. It was usually only Doctor Cullen. So it was totally by chance she even met Jasper Hale, anyways. He just happened to be in the kitchen one day and Alice had had the good grace to introduce herself and ask his name. She'd known that Doctor and Mrs. Cullen were having twins of some relation stay for the summer.

Alice had, of course, assumed that the twins would both be male after she'd met Jasper. Twins: identical until proven otherwise, as the saying went. Or her saying did, at least.

So, when Alice had met Rosalie Hale, she wasn't prepared.

If Jasper had been conventionally attractive, Rosalie was literally the definition of beauty. Honestly, if Alice hadn't been one-hundred percent sure she was awake thanks to the four cups of coffee Mrs. Cullen had insisted she drink so far that morning, she might have thought she was looking at a goddess. Her hair fell in glossy blonde waves to the middle of her back and her eyes were a deeper blue than Alice had ever seen. She was tall, statuesque, and she moved with all the grace of, well, the goddess for which she could easily be mistaken.

Alice couldn't shake the thought, though, that the colour of her lips was startlingly similar to that of blood.

At least she was statistically very unlikely to be a murderer. Or a cannibal. Or a vampire.

Alice shook the thought in time for Mrs. Cullen to come over to the little desk she worked at, niece in tow. She sprang up from her seat, nearly knocking the chair over.

Calm down, Alice. It's not like you're meeting the Queen or something.

"Alice, I thought that since you'll be here all summer you should be introduced to both my niece and my nephew. Jasper says you two already met the other day, but I don't believe you've met Rosalie," Mrs. Cullen said, waving her perfect, perfect niece forwards.

Rosalie took a step towards the desk and offered a hand over top of it, her face impassive. Regardless, Alice still felt nervous under her gaze. She looked like she was about her age, maybe a year younger — old enough to pass serious judgement.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," she said, sounding as if she were reading from a script. (Knowing Mrs. Cullen, she probably was. That woman had a thing about manners.)

"Oh, um — thank you. It's nice to meet you, too," Alice managed, slipping her hand into Rosalie's and shaking it. She couldn't help but notice how nicely her little one fit into- no. She dropped her hand as quickly as she could without seeming rude and took a little step back.

Her eyebrows pulled together at that and she honest to goodness gave Alice a once-over, slow enough that she had to notice the pink tinge entering her cheeks.

If she did, though, she didn't say anything. Instead, she said, "Aunt Esme, weren't you going to show me your new Victorian design?"

"Yes, right," Mrs. Cullen said, spinning on her heel. "Oh — you can take a break, Alice."

Alice could have collapsed into a little puddle of gratefulness at that last sentence. She didn't think she would have been able to focus on her work with the image of Rosalie Hale at the forefront of her mind.

Why did girls have to be so pretty? There was just so much to look at, so much to think about, so much to admire, moreso with Rosalie than with any other girl Alice had ever seen.

Why, why did she have to be gay? It would have been easier to have a thing for the boy, Jasper. That would have at least been expected of her and seen as cute (if not a bit pathetic— latching onto your boss' nephew did not reflect well upon one's character).

Besides, the girls Alice liked were never queer. It just seemed to be a law of the universe. (She was still holding out for Natalie Portman, but she knew that was something of a lost cause.)

It was with these things heavy on her mind that Alice excused herself from the workspace and, after pouring herself several glasses of water and downing them in hard gulps, went to sit in the office bathroom. She considered just locking herself in the stall, but decided it would be inconsiderate of her to take up a perfectly good stall when all she wanted to do was sit and think about how beautiful Mrs. Cullen's niece was and how nice it would be to wind her fingers through her golden hair, to press her lips against her perfect alabaster skin-

"Do you always take your breaks on the bathroom counter?"

Alice nearly toppled off the counter in question.

Another problem with being gay — the girls you found all too attractive could interrupt your bathroom meditations.

"No," she said, bunching the fabric of her pants nervously. "I just — um — it's sort of hot out there and it's always cooler in here?"

"It is rather hot, isn't it?" Rosalie Hale asked, stepping further into the bathroom and shrugging off the cardigan she had been wearing and letting it drop to the ground, leaving just a light pink, very tight tank top.

"Yes. Um. Very."

Those red lips turned up in what Alice swore was a smirk.

"You know, if you leave that lying there it's going to be really wrinkly later," she said in way of breaking the silence that she suspected Rosalie would have let drag on.

That wrung a laugh out of her, but something about it made Alice uneasy.

"You're cute."

Alice would have liked very much not to have been prone to blushing right then, but she could feel the blood creeping into her face.

"I get told that a lot," Alice said, avoiding her eyes, which were fixed very decidedly on her. It was sort predatory, but Alice didn't feel intimidated, necessarily. Actually, she sort of felt- it was kind of- Her blush deepened.

Rosalie leaned against the counter, less than a foot away from her.

"I imagine that's because it's true." Another once-over. "It's particularly true when you're flustered."

"I'm not flustered."

"Aren't you?"

Alice fidgeted and looked away while Rosalie leaned forwards as if she needed to get a closer look to determine if Alice really was flustered — like there was any real question.

"Um."

Rosalie put a finger under Alice's chin and tilted it up so that she had to look at her. Alice felt like her face might have caught fire or something with hot it got at the simple touch. Had she ever been this close to someone this attractive? Probably not. Would she ever be again? Doubtful. By all means, she should have been enjoying the contact while it lasted, but really she just wanted to melt.

"Whatever you have to tell yourself, pretty girl," Rosalie crooned in a manner that came across as extremely… not straight.

But before Alice could think on it any longer, Rosalie dropped her and and disappeared from the room, hips swaying all the while.

Alice decided that she was in deep, deep, deep trouble if she was going to be working in the same building as Rosalie Hale.

Why did she have to be gay?