Over a hundred readers and no reviews? Ouch. It's okay, though. It's comforting to know people are actually reading this in the first place! This is looking more like 4 chapters now that I've properly outlined it.
Once again, thanks to my beta, erosazul, because she's cool like that.
Ahem, I won't forget the disclaimer this time.
I own nothing of Twilight or its characters.
Enjoy!
"It's so freaking cold in here. Could you crank up the thermostat for me?" Alice had swathed herself in the wool throw blanket she kept on her living room couch, attempting to ward off the draft that had entered her warehouse converted apartment.
"I've got news for you, sweetheart. This is Chicago, the city you moved to two years ago." Alice's closest friend Bella smirked back at her, lounging in Alice's overstuffed olive armchair with both legs hitched over the arm. "No amount of cranking is going to make the wind disappear and deliver you back to San Francisco weather."
Alice shrugged, the hood of her sweatshirt falling behind her as she dug deeper into her seat. In celebration of Alice's minor success in completing her first night solo on the job, Bella had promptly arrived, unannounced, at Alice's apartment with a bottle of Shiraz and a plea to come inside from the cold.
That was almost and hour and a half ago. It was nearing one in the morning, and Alice couldn't be more grateful for the company. The headiness of the wine wrapped her in a soothing haze, warding away the dark thoughts that threatened to overtake her.
Alice stared into her wineglass, the light glinting off the surface of the deep red. Coupled with her prior exhaustion, the effect was hypnotizing.
"Hey, I could have brought white if you preferred." Bella shifted uneasily, as she noticed Alice's intense, almost angry, stare into the glass.
"What, no, no." Alice righted herself and gave Bella a deprecating smile. "It's not the wine. I'm just considering the fact that half of the kitchen staff probably wants to eviscerate me with a Nakiri blade after tonight. I also managed to scare the shit out of the maitre d'." The lie slid so easily from her mouth that she almost surprised herself with her words.
"Ooo, Alice 'the heinous bitch' made an appearance?" Bella chuckled in empathy as she adjusted the black, square rim glasses' frames on her face. "I have no idea what a Nakiri is, but it sounds painful."
"It's a Japanese sushi knife."
"Ahh."
There were a few moments of content silence, before Bella snorted into her wine.
"What?" Alice quirked a curious eyebrow. She persisted in her question when Bella just shook her head, still snorting. "What?"
Bella waved her hand dismissively, tipping her glass at a precarious angle. "I was thinking I would pull some strings and send Mihir, our food critic at The Journal, to Le Bon so he can interview you in the kitchen." Alice rolled her eyes. Bella was still vying for a chief editor position at her publication and Alice was grateful she didn't have the right pull just yet. "Just to scare the living shit out of him."
"I'm glad I'm so entertaining."
"Aw, come on, don't be like that. I'd be doing you a service. If word got out that you don't put up with nonsense, then people know not to piss you off. In fact, they'll respect you all the more for it." Alice shot Bella a withering stare. "We could even publish you with your very own moniker, you know like…'Iron Fist Brandon.' It'll become a household name." Bella dissolved into laughter as Alice cracked a grin at the absurd title.
"Uh, no thanks, really." Bella, still letting out an occasional guffaw, placed her glass on the glass center table and headed in the direction the bathroom. Alice pulled her sweatshirt even closer and inhaled deeply. After countless washings, it still smelled warm and of home, of small town Mississippi where she had grown up with her elder step-brother Emmett. It was his much too large varsity football sweatshirt that she was drowning in now, the one she had nicked the day he left for college. He had left it in her possession, and the feel of it reminded her of simpler times, when she had been so eager to skyrocket out of her hometown and begin her future.
On some days, she would have given anything to go back for a nostalgic slice of 'uncomplicated.'
Emmett and his wife Rose were in Raleigh, North Carolina now. She hadn't spoken to them since they had given her some good news almost a month ago: Rose was pregnant after almost five years of marriage. Alice could barely contain a jaw-aching smile when their jubilant voices echoed over the phone.
A baby, Alice had thought. The rest of that day Alice couldn't brush off the nagging voice in her own head that questioned where her own life was headed. She had never really given thought to kids, but the more she contemplated it that day, the more she found she wouldn't mind. It would, of course, happen when things settled down for her professionally. Unlucky for her, the future wasn't something that was ever clearly sketched out.
This straggling train of thought brought her back to the memory that she had never wanted kids with Peter, and the cycle of guilt succeeded in crushing her once more.
"Hey," Bella's subdued voice struck through the self-imposed curtain of despair, circling away the black with the warmth of concern and friendship. Alice hadn't even noticed she returned to the room. "Where's your head right now?"
Alice opened her eyes and shrugged off the question with a non-committal laugh.
"Not anywhere too deep. I'm just contemplating the continuation of the Brandon-MCarty legacy through Emmett and Rosalie's offspring. Poor kid's going to have to suffer through a genetic predisposition towards beer helmets and road rage."
Bella was skeptical. Alice could see it in the way her mouth twitched to the side.
"So what you mean is, the fact that their pregnant brought you back to Peter." As always, she hit the heart of the matter, where the deepest ache resided.
"I never said that."
"You didn't have to." Bella moved off the wall and propped herself on an unoccupied cushion of the couch. Alice curled her feet inwards.
"Have you…" Bella mulled over her words before she slowly spoke them, not wanting to come off as insensitive. "Have you ever thought of maybe getting out there a little more? Maybe moving forward a little? Go on dates. Have crazy, meaningless one night stands. Anything?"
Alice snorted at Bella's assessment of what moving on would entail.
"Yea…I mean no…I mean…" She gave Bella a pointed look. "I work hard, you know that. There's a reason I moved to San Francisco from New York. For Peter. And there's a reason I moved to Chicago. For work. I concentrate on work, and there's no room for what happened before." she finished softly.
Bella nodded her head in understanding, not wanting to push the 'moving on' agenda further than Alice was comfortable with.
"And here I thought you moved because you missed my gorgeous, bitch ass." She joked, wanting to lighten the atmosphere.
"Ha, obviously that, too." Close friends over long distances didn't seem to cut it for them. They had grown lax in their communication before Alice moved; only visiting on the rare occasion. One of those times had been Bella's wedding to Edward back in New York, before he had switched medical residencies to accommodate her new job in Chicago. She remembered Peter hadn't offered to come as her date.
Peter's increasing dismissals of Alice towards the end of their relationship had spurned a whole set of questions to agonize over after he was gone.
"How did you know, Bella?" Alice blurted, not wanting to channel the heroine of a romantic comedy, but needing to know otherwise.
"How did I know that you like to throw random non-sequiters my way?" Bella grinned cheekily, pleased with her teasing.
"About Edward. How did you know…about Edward? About wanting him?"
The mood noticeably shifted, and Bella could no longer ignore the obvious melancholy that engulfed Alice. Where was this heading? She gave Alice a half puzzled, half pensive stare as if it was a question that you could ruminate over for years and never possibly reach a neatly packaged answer at the end.
But despite her blatant acknowledgement of what had transpired as wrong, Alice's conscience struggled to unburden itself with some indirect justification. Even if only marginally so.
"Wow, that's a loaded question. I don't know. Um, we found each other young and then we were too lazy to see if there was anyone else we were compatible with. Okay, easy, I'm joking." Alice's glare prompted her take a more serious approach. "Let's see…oh yeah, one day we were reorganizing his collection of vinyl records in his crappy apartment and he was being anal as usual. All, Handle that carefully, it's priceless and Don't carry it like a CD." She gave a little laugh at her poorly executed Edward impression. "But I was kind of careless and sliced my finger on the edge of a case. It was a little deeper than I had first thought, and there was all this blood on the indispensable vinyl and his bed-sheets… and ugh, you know how I get around blood. Not only that, I thought he was going to eat me alive over the record. So while I was freaking out, he handed me a tissue to stop the bleeding, had me lie down, cleaned up the cut with a wet towel and then held me until I felt less nauseous. He kept saying HE was so sorry, it was his fault for distracting me, which was stupid." She rolled her eyes and shrugged. "But weirdly enough, after that day, I couldn't imagine my life without him. It was like if I tried picturing my life five years ahead, cutting him out of the scenario, I would draw a blank. So there you have it. It's not a great answer, but it's mine."
Alice remained quiet, drawing in her own reaction to Bella's story. There had never been a landmark moment for her and Peter. Maybe there didn't have to be one, maybe it was relationship specific, but she had never experienced it. She then reminded herself that the false hope she took from Bella's words was just that: False. There was no justification.
"Oh, he's also hung like a horse, did I mention that?"
Alice's stunned expression morphed into one of faint revulsion as Bella grinned. The silence grew between them again.
"So then, there's something else? C'mon Alice, your suppressed memories are practically screaming at me."
Alice exhaled in frustration not wanting to confirm or deny anything. There was a small but very damning piece of information that she wasn't ready to share with anyone, including her best friend of six years. She wouldn't be able to bear the expression that little fact would definitely render on Bella's face.
But she rationalized that she could disclose a little, without the whole mess unraveling. She spit out her encounter at the restaurant.
"I saw Jasper." The words rushed out without her even meaning to say them so fast.
Bella sat befuddled a few moments before the words fully registered. Even when they did, the confusion barely left her face.
"Wait, San Francisco Jasper? I mean, Peter's friend, Jasper?"
Alice pinched a string on her blanket and pulled. "Do you know any other Jasper's I'm not aware of?"
"Huh." There was a note of intrigue in her voice as Bella swept her long brown hair off her face and pulled it back into a ponytail.
"Huh, what?" Alice inwardly panicked at what that reaction meant.
Bella suspiciously took in Alice's averted, downwards stare, trying to glean some more information from her words.
"Huh, as in I didn't realize you guys were friends beyond Peter. Huh, as in I didn't realize he was in Chicago."
"He's only in town for business. He stopped by the restaurant. I'm pretty sure he still works as a junior agent for that independent film house I told you about. He actually might be living in L.A. now, for all I know." Alice took a deep pause. "And we're not friends."
That was the truth according to Alice. They weren't friends. Alice still couldn't make sense of what she felt for Jasper, even after two years of self-imposed isolation.
Bella quirked an eyebrow in interest. "But I gather you talked?"
"Yes. He had something of Peter's he wanted to give me." She pulled a little further on the gray string, observing the strands as they began to stretch and unravel.
"What was it?"
"A letter." Alice stated simply.
"Oh." Bella said lamely, clearly taken aback. "From Peter, before he..." Alice gave a languid nod. "Well, what did he write?"
"Don't know. Haven't read it, yet." Her voice was oddly flat, disembodied as if she was mimicking the words of another. The string was reaching its breaking point, holding on by the tiniest of threads.
"O-kay?"
Alice could feel Bella's eyes penetrating through the flimsy veneer of her story. She knew Bella would notice her reticence in discussing Jasper, even after she had brought him up.
Bella's concern grew as Alice refused to meet her gaze. She decided to be as forthright as she could in the situation. There was something else ringing loudly behind what Alice had said.
"Alice, what are you hiding from me?"
The string broke in one clean movement, twanging sharply as it yielded to Alice's fingers.
So much, she answered in her head.
But she outwardly brought her glass to lips, swilling her wine lethargically before she took a mouthful and swallowed. She felt disconcertingly light, as if she was floating without anything to anchor her to the ground.
"Nothing I want to tell and nothing you want to hear." Alice stated firmly, her eyes now fixated on the darkened hallway she was facing.
A silence that could rival a sonic boom followed her statement.
Bella knew to take her cues when she was given them. Now was one of those times. She knew Alice wouldn't be forced into disclosing anything, and until she was ready, Bella could change the topic. She would change the topic.
Clearing her throat, she brought up the first thing that entered her mind.
"So, how about you tell me how much you hate the fact that I'm planning you a big surprise party for your 30th in two weeks, so I can cancel the whole shebang. We can spend your entire birthday getting drunk on that grappa I bought in Tuscany last year."
Alice groaned, flopping her head onto the couch cushion.
"Bella, your uncanny ability to always kick someone when they're down continues to astound me." Alice mentally reminded herself that she wasn't exactly one for laying herself bare, and that she was incredibly thankful for the distinct turn of the conversation.
"Oh it's not so bad." Bella breezily reassured her, as she stood up and slid clumsily back into the armchair. "Thirty is the new twenty, and all that jazz." She smirked as Alice dragged her gaze back to Bella. "Thirty suits me just fine."
Alice snorted. "Uh, that probably has something to do with the fact that you still get to have ridiculously hot sex with your 'well hung' husband."
Bella's cell phone chose that second to chime, the sound echoing deeply in the cavernous, yet strangely sparse area of Alice's apartment.
Bella gave an 'ehh' in response to Alice and smiled as she read the contact on her screen. Pressing a button, she answered in a breathy tone.
"Dr. Cullen, how can I help you?"
Alice heard Edward's static voice reply, deep and husky, uncomfortably so for Alice. She unfortunately had no choice but to listen since Bella had accidentally left her phone on speaker.
"You can help me by getting your sweet butt home because I haven't seen it all day and I want to spank it. And then you can help by riding me until - ."
Bella gasped out a laugh as Alice spluttered on the sip of wine she had just taken. "Jesus Edward, stop, you're on speaker!"
"Wait, Bella, what?"
"You're. On. Speaker."
A pregnant pause followed as the truth finally sunk in.
"Are you still at Alice's place?"
Alice could think of nothing else to do but hold up her wineglass cheerfully in a fit of tipsiness and exclaim, "Hey Edward, we both knew this awkward moment would come someday. Oh, by the way, congratulations on your large endowments…"
Bella cut off the speaker at that moment, reassuring Edward that Alice had not said what he thought she had.
"Yeah, fifteen minutes…Mhm…don't worry, I'm not walking… I'm pretty sure it's hit absolute zero outside…a cab…mhm…love you too…bye." She pressed the end button and turned to Alice in glee. "He's not even embarrassed. The horny bastard."
"And, with that, the vomit seems to have made its way into my mouth." Alice cringed under her blanket from the blatant displays of affection.
"What's the matter, Alice?" Bella bent over to grab her coat and scarf off the floor. As she pulled them on, she began gyrating her hips in small circles. "You don't like to hear that my husband gives it to me daily, nightly, and evaaah so rightly-."
She dodged a throw pillow Alice tossed in her direction.
"Oh my god, please leave. I can't take anymore!" Even through her disgust, Alice's face began to shade crimson from laughter.
As they both quieted down, Bella studied Alice intently, as if she had no idea how to go about telling her that she was concerned that Alice was passive aggressively unleashing two years of pent up guilt and resentment. She took the open bottle of wine and corked it and then walked into the kitchen to set it down. She traipsed back to stand over Alice.
"Hey, go easy on the sauce tonight. You should really get some sleep." Alice wearily nodded in agreement. The uncomfortable lightness she was experiencing was beginning to make her stomach lurch.
"We'll talk tomorrow, okay? If you don't answer my call after three rings, I'm going full out Police Academy on your door." Alice's uneasiness grew at Bella's parting, and she considered for a second if she could be selfish for one night and just ask Bella outright to stay and sleep on the couch. She didn't want to be by herself; she wasn't good company. But she knew Bella would honor that request, no matter if Edward was waiting at home, and Alice couldn't see herself being so…needy. She shook off the idea and gave Bella a small smile and a 'yea.'
Bella began her walk to the door, pausing suddenly as she twirled around with her face set. Alice waited, a little startled by her abrupt turn.
"You asked me before, why Edward?" Alice nodded, puzzled. "It's because, barring the sex and the charm, I love him so much I'd be willing to give up the use of both my legs and a kidney. I'm certain he feels the same about me." She gave a rueful half smile and shrugged. "In the end, whatever happened or will happen, that's all that really matters."
Alice's held her mouth agape as Bella closed the door behind her with a soft click. Had her guilty visage been that transparent?
Alice wasn't sure if that statement even applied to her, and yet the idea that love washed away all sins seemed too easy. Too…redeeming.
She caught a glimpse of her coat out the corner of her eye, but her legs remained motionless, as if attempting to keep her self-preservation intact. The letter had unfolded and was hanging practically halfway out right pocket, winking like a dying star in a sea of black wool. It was technically an easy task, to walk up to the coat, wrench the letter all the way out, and rip open the contents. So easy. So simple. So…so much like tearing at a wound that had never fully healed but had instead scabbed over and festered. She stared helpless, barring memories that would eventually have her reeling, but she was no match. They tore through.
Alice stood outside Jasper's apartment, fingering the strands of hair that had grown to the middle of her back. She wondered why she had allowed it to get to this point as it was starting to get in the way at work. Work. That reminded her that she needed to ask for extra time off at Le Deaux so she could go away with Peter this weekend. This was a weekend she had worked hard towards, booking reservations at a bed and breakfast in Napa and clearing Peter to see if he would go along with the entire thing. She basically had to pull his two back molars before he finally acquiesced, but even then she noticed the resentful hints he had been pushing towards her all week. And here she was again, doing all the work, pulling all the weight just so she could heal the breaks in their relationship; get them back where they used to be.
The door flung wide open and interrupted her musings. But it wasn't the door that had startled her. It was more the man she was currently facing that was unexpected.
"Jasper, what are you doing here?"
He cocked an arrogant eyebrow, smugly leaning one shoulder against the doorframe. "Uh, I live here Ms. Alice."
"No, I know that. I mean..," She huffed as she ran a hand nervously across her face. She was never sure what she meant anymore. "Peter told me he was spending the afternoon at your place, to use your darkroom…and he said you'd be out." She added, her voice tapering off as his face darkened.
"Yeah. He wasn't around for long. I took my work home, so I'm actually pretty busy…" Jasper flexed his fingers around the knob of the door, coming frighteningly close to catching her hand in the hinge as he moved to shut it. She was so sick of half explanations, of brushed off dismissals at her efforts at rebuilding. A fucking door always being shut in her face.
"Jasper, what?" Alice's petite, sneaker clad foot kicked the door to a halt, the pressure of her tiny leg countering the surprised falter of his arm. "What is it? Is this about Peter? Did he put you up to this?" It wasn't like Peter to mobilize anger directed at her through the loyalties of his friends, but after the way he had been acting, she wasn't exactly going to rule it out.
Jasper remained in the throes of shock, unsure of how to proceed. Had she honestly just kicked his door in with him half-behind?
Alice's balance stuttered slightly as her leg remained raised and planted. "Because I'm not the one who fucked up. I work, and I work, and I slog to make sure everyone is happy. To make sure that every-fucking-one is happy. Everyone, except me! And now you…"
"What do you want from me Alice?" Jasper's hands rubbed over his eyes and he abruptly turned, causing the door to crash loudly against the wall and Alice to lose her leverage. She managed a recovery from her potential fall. "I'm not interested in being tangled up in whatever little… "
"Don't act like I don't know exactly what you've been doing." She shook her head accusingly, attempting to afford a few judgmental moments before he conceded defeat in his actions. It was so easy to place blame on the periphery of her relationship breakdown. She bit her lip hard, shielding her watering eyes with the action of massaging her forehead.
"What, you're going to cry?" The insensitive needling of his words did little to stem the flow of emotion. But in reality the anxiety that crept into his words signified that he cared if she cried, especially at his hands.
He covered his lapse in sensitivity with further questioning, weary and unsure of how to proceed.
"This is really absurd, Alice. What have I done?"
"You've been avoiding me." Her glance dared him to contradict her and her frustration built as he didn't move to defend himself. She hoped she had been wrong." I just…I thought… I haven't gone two days without talking to you since I moved here." She threw up her hands in resignation. "And now you just…I don't know. You're so accusing…and cold. Are you picking sides?" The hurt and anger that had developed like a piece of sun bleached film finally spilled over. She wouldn't take any more falls for Peter, that wasn't her style. "I'm so damn sick of this. You both need to grow up…"
"That's fucking hilarious coming from you!" The exclamation was a departure from his bemused sarcasm and the intensity of the feeling behind was not lost to her. It had also apparently caught the attention of a middle aged man in a suit, who rattled his newspaper uncomfortably as he passed apologetically by the open doorway in response to their blank stares.
The hall was now as barren as the conversation between them. Jasper didn't move to close the door. He was obviously fed up of dancing around his glaringly obvious issue with Alice and Peter.
"What is that supposed to mean?" He paced and he immediately regretted the bender he had been on this afternoon. He had just finished attempting to hold in a decent conversation about Alice with Peter while wearing a hard, forced smile and a drowning himself by way of seven Blue Moon's. And now this. He was saying so much, and explaining so little to the woman in front of him. She wouldn't understand.
Alice could almost see the inebriation swirling around him, causing her suspicious face to blur into an indistinct shape through his heavy eyes.
"Are you drunk?"
"That's not the point!" He staggered slightly, catching himself and restricting the shallow heaves of his chest. She stepped forward instinctively and he growled out that he was fine. He was always just 'fine'. A few moments passed, jagged breaths breaking the silence. "It's hilarious that we need to grow up, Alice. You knew Peter. You knew what he was like. And you went ahead with everything. He won't grow up for you. He won't do that for anyone. He can't give…Alice, he can't give you…"
Alice never thought Jasper shared her opinion of Peter's shunning of responsibility in their relationship. Even so, he wasn't making much sense. Confusion overrode any further dissection of his words. "Jasper, what are you talking about? Can't give me what? "
She would never see and he was so very, Fed. Up.
"This will never work. We don't work like this, Alice. I'm done." He gestured in the air between them, as much a coward and a liar in that moment as he internally accused her of being. "Leave. Just…fucking leave."
"What is there to work out?" Alice hand now ripped through her hair, her fingers catching in snarls and painfully coaxing the roots out her scalp. Jasper was her friend. Jasper was her friend. Jasper was her friend.
"Jasper, you're my friend." He didn't raise his eyes to acknowledge her statement. "You didn't have to be, and yet here we are. Please don't take that away from me." He had been so accepting, so warm and laughingly charming that she couldn't resist the closeness he offered her. Her recollection of Peter's growing distance didn't seem so impossible to confront, didn't seem so hopeless, with Jasper's encouragement. He knew Alice. Knew her enough to understand how secretly afraid she was of losing the last thing that kept her anchored to this place. That kept her anchored to Peter. "Do you understand or do I have to spell it out? You're the only-."
"I don't want to be your friend. I am not going to be the man you lean on when you're trying to work out your problems with Pete. I am so sick of being that guy." His responding whisper was soft, menacing, and final as it cut through her declaration. "The last thing in the world I want to be is your goddamn friend."
But why? She was alone, constantly fighting a battle with herself for allowing such a drastic change in her life, for a man who understood her as little as she understood herself. She was holding fast to a reality that was surely separating at the seams, and Jasper had solidified her fear of this. Peter would leave and the Jasper she had been so foolish into believing she could trust would follow him.
She was alone. Nobody wanted her, a truth she should have recognized before it came to this point, and now it was her fault that she was alone.
The shock of his statement left her very little time to notice his eyes betraying the agonized gleam of words unsaid.
"Don't say that. Please, don't say that." She incoherently pleaded in a painful whisper, her eyes one again filling with a renewal of hot, stinging tears that refused to fall. Her fingers reached out to graze the smooth skin of his wrist. She simply succeeded in causing him to flinch, that flash of contact incensing him even more into a quiet ball of fury.
Why was he so angry?
Alice didn't regain rational thought, his words like gravel scraping over her knees, until she felt the harsh, heated clasp of his hand over her wrist.
Jasper, don't throw me away. Please.
There was no farewell and the door gave a merciless reverberating thud as it slammed in her face. She was left standing where she had started.
When she finally reached home, she dialed a number into her phone, still dazed as she sat motionless and apparently, friendless, in her living room. She pushed the green send button.
"Napa Old World Inn. This is Mina speaking."
Alice hesitated before the words left her lips in low and defeated tones.
"I need to…need to cancel a reservation for this weekend. Under Alice Brandon."
The cheerful voice on the other end faltered a little in a disappointment but still retained its professionalism. .
"Oh, well we're so sorry to hear that you and your guest won't be joining us. Was there a specific reason for the cancellation?"
Alice sat silent, even as woman repeated her question, a hint of worry creeping into her tone.
Alice could honestly not think of an excuse to give.
Even as the lights burned low and dim from the ceiling, Alice felt uncomfortably cool. The warmth that had presented itself in the form of her sweatshirt and Bella had dissipated. The cold condensation of a nervous sweat settled on her skin and the chill had begun to burrow in her bones.
Cold and clammy and so tired. And yet her eyes wouldn't close.
"I didn't see." Tears were not something Alice usually indulged in, but she gathered her knees to her chest as they fell freely down her face. Alone and in the near dark, no one would ever have to know.
Reviews are the Calvin to my Hobbes. Or something like that.
