Summary: Edward will never understand how he ended up in a threesome with Jasper Hale and Bella Swan.
Carnal Desires
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Bella graduated from NAU last year, and as far as Edward knows she's taken over her father's company. But that's just a supposition from the plans she told him years ago — in reality he hasn't seen or heard from her in about as long. He keeps to himself, working at McCarty's car shop. After all, he's just another delinquent trying to get by. He hasn't heard any rumblings about her, and almost wonders if she's moved away completely. Jasper, on the other hand, is harder to ignore. He sits still as the world rushes past him, still in the same penthouse that his parent's money bought for him, still "going to college" by way of drinking and skipping class. Every week, like clockwork, another story of Jasper Hale being a drunken asshole to some unsuspecting townsperson will circulate, until they all start to blend together and look like one huge swirling mass of self-pity.
He runs into Bella at the grocery store, late on a Thursday night. The entire situation is wholly surreal — the bags under her eyes, the ring on her finger, the bright fluorescent sheen that makes it impossible not to see one another in stark detail. Edward fidgets slightly, wonders what she sees when she looks at him. Something pleasant, if the way her eyes light up at the sight of him is anything to go by.
"What are you doing here?" she cries, lunging forward to capture him in a hug. Edward squeezes her probably tighter than necessary. When she releases him, he holds up the cough syrup in his left hand.
"My sister's kid," he explains. "Been coughing so hard her little head is rattling."
"Alice?" she asks. Edward nods, he had almost forgotten that she knew that part of him. He clenches his fist, hoping that she doesn't pry further. The last thing he wants to do is talk about his dead parents in the middle of the pharmacy aisle. Then again, this is Bella Swan — he's never known her not to pry. Thankfully, they're interrupted by the trill of Bella's phone. Edward scans the rows of multicolored vitamins as she carries on her conversation. It's short and to the point, and she ends the call with a deep sigh, reaching for a bottle of aspirin. "I have to get going," she says. Regretfully, he likes to imagine.
"I'll see you when I see you," he says with a shrug, ready to chalk the whole thing up to a bizarre coincidence, but Bella catches his arm as he turns. Her small palm is warm against his bicep.
"Why don't you come over to Jasper's tomorrow?" she asks. "Have dinner, we can catch up."
He should say no. He needs to say no, for a thousand different reasons. Not least of which is the fact that this small touch shocks him back to all of the reasons he fell for her so many years ago.
He should say no, but what he finds himself saying is, "What time?"
Bella smiles up at him and he's glad he made the right decision.