Thanks for anyone who reviewed or who set story alerts, here's the second chapter, hopefully you'll like it, and if you do please review
The title of this chapter comes from a stroke lyric, thought it was fitting :)
Chapter 2- Anything to Forget Everything
I could hear myself tapping the pen against the desk furiously but I wasn't all that aware of it. I was busy mentally kicking myself and trying, and failing, not to relive my dreaded meeting with him. The him in question being Jasper Whitlock. So rather than being productive I decided to regress back to my teenage years when it was perfectly acceptable to daydream, and recalled the first day I came out of obscurity and into his consciousness.
And once upon a time, as the cliché goes, I was the awkward and studious Alice Cullen, social retard extraordinaire. As all people learn upon entering high school there is a pecking order of sorts, admittedly I wasn't at the top end but I happily resided in the middle with a small group of friends being completely unremarkable. Content with the status quo, I saw no need to change things. I didn't have a boyfriend, living by the policy of grades before groping. I had convinced myself that my other outlets were more constructive for the time being and that once I left high school I would blossom into a social butterfly. That's not to suggest that I hadn't spent the better part of my adolescence making doe eyes at one Jasper Whitlock.
So there I was enjoying my usual routine of morning small talk with the aforementioned friends when he glided down the hall with his group of socially higher ranking lackeys. Ducking my head back into the conversation I sort to avoid, at all costs, the possibility he might actually see or, heaven forbid, acknowledge me. I likened it to seeing your favourite celebrity. Of course you want to be in close enough proximity to shamelessly stare but talking to them could result in two things. Firstly that you might realise they're not quite what you had hoped and secondly that they found you utterly irrelevant. My fear was the latter; understandably, and so there I was ducking my head and avoiding him. However, today my friend Mike had chosen to congratulate me on my first major article in the local newspaper. I had been working there for a few months so I could put it on my resume like a gold star in the hope it would get me into the college of my choice. The piece had been on teenage drinking and the traps young people fall into because of social pressures to mature to early. Obviously I knew that this didn't exactly do much for my geek chic status but no-one from my school was likely to read an article in the local newspaper, apart from my friends, so I saw no reason to worry. This had been proven wrong when Mike, who apparently knew nothing of volume control, started quoting snippets for the listening pleasure of all with ears in a small radius. Now realistically few turned or gave a damn, so I had probably been a tad dramatic but he had turned, and he had apparently given a damn.
In my attempt to survey the extent of damage, I looked up. He was looking directly at me and to my surprise he didn't feel the need to laugh or to revel in my embarrassment. He just listened. I couldn't hold his gaze so instead I scrambled with Mike to wrestle the paper out of his hands and insisted that the humiliation end. Feeling bad looking at Mike's questioning face; he of course was unaware why I was annoyed so I explained that no writer likes to be confronted with their own work but that I was grateful for the support. Seemingly placated, he and the rest of my friends went along to class. I was busy gathering myself by my locker when a voice cut through the influx of thoughts circulating my head.
"You shouldn't be embarrassed about what you wrote, it was brave, I wish more people had the guts to say what they thought." He stated as if us conversing was a usual Monday morning ritual. Except we weren't conversing, I was staring at him saying nothing. In my urgency to end the silence I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
"You read my article?" It was deafening to my ears; the blatant hope and desperation in my voice. He shuffled momentarily, looking for the first time in my memory of him to be less than completely self assured. "Well my dad buys the Sunday paper so..." he mumbled. "Right, yeah of course. Figured a few people might stumble across it when trying to find the real news, with any luck any evidence of it will be gone within a few days unless anyone gets to the collection of cut outs my dad insists on laminating." I was trying to make light of the situation and in the process I was rambling. But he chuckled and smiled, and nodded his head knowingly. "Yeah my mum likes to keep my track trophies in the guest room, think I've managed to convince her that everyone that comes to the door, especially the mailman does not need to see them." And then I chuckled and smiled, admittedly my smile was no doubt dopey and embarrassing but I couldn't have contained it. Wanting to keep the exchange perfect so I could preserve it in my head and revisit it later, I thought it best to leave before I humiliated myself.
"Well I better get going; don't want to be late for the joy that is American history." And I turned on my heal hoping I had handled the delicate situation as best as could be considering I was irrevocably in love with him.
At the time I had never thought to read into his comments. Never thought to question why Jasper, of all people, would think to read an article preaching about underage drinking, an activity I presumed he partook in, by a girl that wasn't even on his radar. Except I had been. Remarkably, unbelievably, defying all logic, I had been very much in his line of vision. A fact that would elude me for some time.
Seeing him, accidental as it was, was a huge mistake. I broke the only rule I had set myself and had abided by for the better part of a decade, I had seen Jasper. A luxury I had forbid myself from so many years before, in an effort to move on, distance myself, because it was healthy, because it was right. A mantra I had chanted to myself every time I felt the pull, when I felt myself drifting back. Jasper was to be avoided where my heart was concerned; my heart which I had found out was so very easily broken or maybe he just knew how to do it.
Seeing him had reminded me it had all been true, that the time spent with him wasn't the product of an over-active imagination. For some time now I had pretended to my easily persuaded mind that he was gone, simply failing to exist, then he had to go show up and flash the harsh reality in my face by means of his wavy hair, and rosey lips and...well his everything. My biggest fear was that now he had so intrusively thrust his way into my consciousness again that he would then persist to barge his way into my life. Unlikely as it was, the prospect of another encounter with him made me feel exhausted, because I feared now more than ever that I didn't have the strength to confront him but more disturbing still was that I knew that I didn't have the strength to walk away. I wanted to see him again.
I needed a cold bucket of water thrown over me. One that reminded me that I had a deadline and that I was a twenty nine year old woman who should be beyond the temptation of daydreaming. That cold bucket of water came in the form of my best friend Rosalie. I waited for her to pick up. "Alice aren't you supposed to be working? I know they're paying you for something" I heard her voice breathe through the receiver. "Stop pretending like you're not glad I called and listen" I should have known ordering her around only delayed matters, Rosalie was inherently bossy, a quality I could usually find charming but not today. "I'm going to let that one slide Alice cause you're obviously pmsing but remember you only get one of those so I'd use at your own discretion! Now tell me why you called?" I took a deep breath "Everything got complicated, I was fine and then everything got complicated and now I'm not." I could practically hear her confusion so I simplified things "I saw him Rosalie, I saw Jasper." I had rendered her speechless, a seemingly impossible task; Rosalie prided herself on bestowing her opinion on you without even the need for you to ask.
"When?" was her reply. Rosalie wasn't one for being monosyllabic either.
"At my work's party Saturday, I have no clue why he was there. We spoke, it was...difficult. It wasn't like one of those 'we loved, we lost, no hard feelings kind of deals' it was more like 'I've been sitting on ten years of resentment and I'm looking for someone to blame' sort of encounters.
"He said...he said he'd given me everything, given himself and that I didn't even spare him a goodbye." I could hear the words resonate through my head, the anger in his voice as he all but spat them from his mouth, as if he'd been saving them just for me.
I'd known it would hurt him. I knew as I packed up my clothes. I knew as I snuck out of our room. I knew when I took the picture of us out of his wallet, pretending I was doing it for him, to help him move on without the memory of me staring him in the face every time he opened it, but mainly it had been for me, so I could remember. Or torture myself, one of the two. I was brought back to some kind of reality by the sound of Rosalie's voice.
"Are you still breathing?" it was a loaded question.
"I think so, mostly." She sighed
"Well then that's more than we expected right? You survived, I'm proud of you, I couldn't imagine..." but she didn't finish. "Next time you have to go play nice with your colleagues I'm coming, we'll make an appearance and then ditch them to go hang out with interesting people" I had to laugh, I knew what this meant, she was going to babysit me for a while and not just at work parties.
Right on cue. "I'll be at your door at 7pm with wine and the customary shoulder to cry on, metaphorically of course, there will be no crying. Don't cook we'll order in, give your kitchen a rest for the night, I have to go now Alice but remember your not 19 anymore and you're stronger than you know so don't sit there and curse yourself for thinking about him because.... for what its worth you did good."
Then there was the dial tone and I was all alone again. I decided to focus, or try to the best of my ability to achieve some level of concentration on the task at hand, which was my column.
It needed to be in by 2pm and I needed to get a grip so I went on about my day not quite managing to push thoughts of Jasper out of my mind.
