Disclaimer: I'm not Stephenie Meyer, I don't own Twilight, and I'm definitely not making any money out of this. I'm just having some good-natured fun with her characters.
I looked up when the train lurched to a stop – outside my window, an endless field of brick houses stretched out behind the station, grey in the drizzle, just another nondescript town along the way home. Through the window on the other side I could see a vast military complex – rows upon rows of barracks, iron fences, men exercising out in the damp. Not even summer sunshine would have made this place welcoming. Then again, it didn't really matter. In a minute, the train would be speeding away from here, and it would be as if this dreary town had never existed to me.
Turning back to my book, I searched for where I had left off and sank back into the world of nineteenth century England, back to dances in the assembly hall and courtship and rules of conduct. Reality slipped from my mind, the train, the uncomfortable seats, the rain outside, the other passengers, all that got lost as I skipped, twirled and clapped along with the other dancers at the ball, gossiped with my friends and speculated on whom the eligible bachelor would ask for the next dance...
A roar of insanity yanked me away from the dance. Three rows away from me, a group of men laughed like maniacs at the story one of them was telling, waving his hands and feet and pulling faces for emphasis. Their identical haircuts and camouflage duffel bags betrayed their provenance – fresh off base at that depressing place we'd just pulled away from, hurtling towards God knows where, home for the weekend, perhaps, or deployment. Home, more likely.
I looked at the man telling the story – even sitting down he was obviously the largest of the group, tall and insanely muscular, he seemed as if he were made for push-ups and sit-ups and pull-ups and other kinds of -ups I couldn't think of. The crew cut suited him, hell, the whole military getup suited him, I could see him sprinting across a firestorm with a wounded comrade on his shoulder without being hit and without breaking a sweat. In a way, he was beautiful – I could appreciate the harmony in his muscled body, even if I generally wasn't attracted to muscles. Less muscle, more brain for me, thank you very much.
Compared to this tank of a man, his companions seemed almost slight – even though I could tell that the guy sitting next to him could probably still carry a damsel in distress under one arm and a horse under the other. Jet black hair, black eyes, olive skin – definite underwear model type, judging by the way his shirt clung to his well-defined chest. But just like his tank friend, though the rippling muscles were hot in a primal way, he was not for me. The man sitting opposite them was more my type – bronze hair, green eyes, lightly muscled, but definitely more the brainy than the brawny type. When imagining him in action, he seemed more like the messenger or medic type than the guns-and-ammo type.
A chuckle formed in the back of my throat when I realised how I was appraising each of them – as if there was any reason to rate them, as if any of them would ever look at me with interest anyway. We were strangers on a train, by the latest in two hours we would part and would never waste thoughts about each other again. They definitely wouldn't, seeing that they didn't even know or cared that I existed.
It was then that he caught my eye. Sitting closest to the window, he smiled at his comrade's antics, but didn't join in the laughter. His crew cut was growing out ever so slightly into honey locks, his amber eyes sliding from the window to his friends and back again. The scars on his face – crossing his eyebrow, cleaving his chin, pulling up the corner of his mouth – told me he'd seen action, seen blood and terror and hopelessness. Seen it all, and yet, he hadn't left service. I found myself aching for the horrors he'd seen, and admiring his perseverance. But maybe he just didn't have anywhere else to go.
That wasn't why I was lost, though, why suddenly I was hurtling through space like a meteor, on fire as I crashed through the atmosphere, dreading the moment I would hit the earth and yet craving that instant that would shatter me into a million tiny pieces. It was the smile, my smile, that curved on his lips and made me forget everything, my book, my destination, my freaking name. That smile that I'd seen, so long ago, on somebody else's face, that smile that I'd loved, that smile that I dreamed about at night, that smile that I hadn't seen in what felt like a thousand years. Just a small smile, raising one side of his mouth, showing off a dimple and a small mole on his cheek that punctuated the expression like a sentence. I loved him for that smile. I loved them all for being there and making him smile that smile, but most of all I loved him, with a burning intensity I hadn't felt ever since I had lost that other boy, that other smile, that same smile. If he had got up and walked over to me and asked me to jump off this train and run off to Vegas and get married I would have said yes in a heartbeat.
Of course, he didn't. He didn't even know I was there. He most certainly had no idea of the crazy things that were going on in my head, of how I was being crushed by the memories, or of how I was imagining the lives we could have, should have, and how they all ended happily ever after. I was drowning and spontaneously combusting at the same time not fifteen feet away from him, and he had no clue.
"... and then she leans over to me all sexy and stuff and whispers in my ear 'do you want fries with that?'" tank-man was saying, and they all started guffawing again and slapping their thighs and shaking their heads. All but him – the corner of his mouth pulled up a little higher, but his lips didn't part.
"Aw, man, Jasper, don't be so boring. Here I am, telling you my sexcapades, and all you do is grin that ugly grin of yours!" the tank exclaimed, reaching across the space between them to punch my smiling God lightly into the chest.
Jasper... the name echoed around my head, churning up my previous thoughts, adding details, multiplying the scenes. Him and me, sitting under a huge oak, my head on his shoulder, and him saying "I love you, Alice", and me replying "I love you too, Jasper"... Me, walking down an aisle, coming to stand next to him, and the minister saying "Do you, Jasper..."... Him, holding our first child to him, looking at me and choking out "Alice, she's so beautiful"... Us, lying in bed together, years and years from now, and falling asleep for the final time, together...
"Leave him be, Emmett. You know you ain't gonna get any more out of him anyways" the bronze-haired man told tank-man. The corner of Jasper's mouth twitched, but he kept his eyes trained on the landscape whirling past. Look at me, I thought, not at those trees and electric poles and random crap passing by...
And like a miracle, he did. For a split second, our eyes met, before I looked away like the chicken I was, and tried to pretend I hadn't been staring at him for the last half-hour or so. I stared hard at the window, and tried to see his reflection instead, because I couldn't not look at him – there was so little time to see him and his smile, I needed to see as much as I could, needed to burn his image into my brain so that I could take it with me to bed and wrap myself in the memory and hope it would keep me warm in his stead.
After a few minutes, I dared to peek at him again. He had leaned his head against the window, and was nodding at something the olive-skinned guy was saying, but his eyes kept straying my way. Great. He'd caught me staring and now he was staring back. So much for my seeing as much of him as I could – I wasn't going to humiliate myself further by continuing to look his way. My book seemed insanely interesting again, and I buried my nose in it quickly, determined not to let my eyes wander anywhere but the pages. Will you do me the honour of reading this letter... reading this letter... Will you do me the honour of reading this letter... Will you do me the honour... All right, so I wasn't managing to actually read, or to absorb what I was reading. Tough luck, I'd still keep my face in the book. Anything not to be caught out again.
Just one peep... but he was gone. His friends were still there, Emmett and the olive-skinned man and the bronze-haired guy, but he was gone. He couldn't have got off the train, we hadn't made any stops. He was probably in the restroom or something, and besides, I wasn't going to look at him any more anyway. Instead, I closed my eyes, let my mind go slightly out of focus, and allowed the image of him to float before my mind's gaze. For a moment, I saw the other smile, the other face – pictures from another life, another planet. That man was gone, long, long gone, and wouldn't be coming back. I hadn't seen him in five years, and he hadn't spoken to me during the three years before that. Who cared. I had Jasper's smile to keep me company now, and since we'd never actually meet, he would never reject me either, never stop talking to me, never stop smiling. Perfect bliss, eternally conserved in my memory. I almost sighed in contentment.
My seat shifted slightly with the weight of someone sitting down next to me. Not wanting to let go of my little dream just yet, I pretended to be asleep. I couldn't ignore the smell though – the sweet fragrance of aftershave and rain and a hint of tobacco, and most of all, of man. Heavenly.
"You look pretty when you try not to look at me" a southern accent drawled. My eyes snapped open. His voice was pure ecstasy – deep and caramel-smooth with a hint of amusement. I realised I hadn't turned my head towards him yet, paralysed as I was. When I finally did, I was looking straight into his eyes – from this close, they weren't amber, they were so much more, swirls of gold and brown and umber, flecked with chocolate. He smiled, smiled right at me.
"Hi. I'm Jasper."