A/N: Yes! I have broken through the unwillingly self-made barrier of only being able to write miserable twilight fics! Ha ha – gothygeek strikes again! By the way, this is set after Twilight but before New Moon. I.E. Edward has never left the still-human Bella, and Jacob is nought but a background character… However, it has been so long since I started this story that the Alaskan characters are as they appear later.
Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. I own this story. Hence it is not in a properly bound book.
"Come on Bella!"
"Tell me you are joking." Oh, I beg of you, tell me you are joking. I stared woefully into Edward's face and he laughed.
"My family will be terribly offended if you didn't come with us. We go at this time every year. It's fun. Remember that word?"
"Oh, I know fun. Fun is being with you. Fun is curling up on a nice hot day with a good, thick book. It is not a word that I connect with going skiing with a bunch of vampires out for kicks."
The amusement in Edward's eyes betrayed him as he frowned, mock-angry with me.
"But it is the American pastime!"
"I thought that was baseball."
"But it is an American pastime, Captain Pedantic!"
I saluted.
"Yes, and you never let me play baseball with you, and I see no reason to change that rule…"
"We'll avoid you – we're all good skiers." That didn't surprise me in the least. "Why do you not want to come?"
"List what comes to mind when you think of skiing."
"Snow, fun, family (well, adopted family anyway), speed, the wind in your face…"
"Right. To answer your question; snow, hyper vampires, speed, cold, wind making my face cold, falling over on a steep mountain which, knowing me, I'll fall down, smash my head open on my skis several times and then smash the rest of my body on the handily placed treacherous rocks at the bottom. Then again, then you'd have to change me. Ok, I'll be there!"
"Bella…" Edward growled, his amusement instantly gone. He took me by my shoulders. My heart-rate sped up. He looked into my eyes. Now my heart-rate was speeding up even more, it was sprinting for the finish line, going for bronze, no, silver, no, would it make it in time for… "I could never do that to you. I wish that you would stop bringing it up."
"Alright, alright, rush of blood to the head. Incident completely forgotten. Along with all mention of skiing."
"Completely wiped. But come on… snow is fantastic."
"Snow is cold. Cold is not fun, cold is not fantastic. You haven't felt cold in what, a hundred years?"
"Alright, snow is cold, I won't deny that…"
"Hey, Bella!" Alice walked through the door of Edward's room. Jasper and Emmett followed.
"Hi!"
"Are you coming skiing with us over the holidays?" Jasper asked.
"Oddly enough, Bella is worried for her safety in respect to skiing," Edward said in a snobby voice.
"Aw!" Emmett protested. "Skiing is the best! One time, Rosalie and I were holding hands and going really fast. Like, really, really fast. Fast for us, fast. Then, this mighty great tree pops up out of nowhere and the ground just before it is flat, so we do this massive jump… This isn't going to be the winning argument, is it?"
"Are you ok, Bella? You look kind of… pale," Alice asked.
"I'm fine," I replied. And I decided everything was fine. I would go skiing and it would be fine. "Fine, I'll come, maybe – Hang on." I glared at Jasper, who raised his hands and smiled sheepishly.
"Guilty. But I was provoked. You have to come skiing, it'll be great."
"That's what everybody's saying," I said, crossing my arms.
"Must be true then," Alice said triumphantly.
"Come on, Bella," Edward repeated, leaning in to me. I momentarily forgot to breathe.
"Edward, ease off, she's starting to turn blue," someone said. I hurriedly took a breath, but didn't look away. He ignored them altogether.
"Come with me."
Why did he have to have such beautiful eyes? My mind struggled to put some form of sentence together.
"I…uh…n-no," was all I could manage.
"Do you trust me?"
"Yes."
"So come with me."
"Yes."
He leaned back, and it took a second for my eyes to clear. When I did, I saw that Alice had left the room.
"You cheated," I said, sulkily. "Where did Alice go?"
"She went to inform Carlisle of your decision," Edward said smugly. I paled and started to move toward the door. "Carlisle's partway through a conversation with your dad. He's…confirming details now."
I thumped back down on his sofa, pouting. The others laughed.
"Laughing at the human's expense – I could get used to this," Emmett said between peals.
"I think you're going to," I muttered sulkily.
