She was staring. She was definitely staring. She couldn't keep herself from staring.
"Hi," he mumbled awkwardly, finally taking note of her attention. "Have we met before?"
He seemed confused, his eyes poring over her porcelain face as though trying to piece her together.
"Yeah," she breathed, "I think we have."
That was all they had time to say before Mr. Banner's lecture began, but she definitely had some questions.
Alice was subdued when she came home from school, Jasper noticed, but Edward seemed to be bursting with excitement.
"Come here," Jasper beckoned from his place on the couch, and with a bit of hesitancy, she sat down beside him.
She was a pool of sorrow and acceptance, mixed with hints of her usual delight. He wanted to ask her about it, because clearly something was wrong, but Edward demanded their full attention, something he did frequently that annoyed Jasper a little bit.
He leaned into her, filling her with as much calm and contentment as he could as they listened to Edward's spiel.
"That's got to be a sign or something. There's no way this isn't a sign."
"A sign of what?" Jasper scoffed, "True love? I thought she stood you up."
"But we were brought back together!" Edward exclaimed. "That cannot be a coincidence."
Something stirred in Alice as she listened to Edward, something that felt kind of like responsibility, and Jasper gave her an inquisitive look.
"Talk later," Alice mouthed.
But every time he began to bring it up, she changed the subject.
They skipped their next class.
"We were supposed to go on a coffee date like, six years ago," Bella laughed.
"I vaguely remember that. I think you stood me up," he said.
"I think so too," Bella murmured. She wasn't about to get into why.
"Well, none of that makes a difference now."
"It sure doesn't." She looked at Edward curiously. There was something there, something handsome in him. She wasn't sure how vampire love worked, but maybe she felt a spark?
"So where have you been?" she asked after a short silence. "You haven't been at school and you weren't at lunch today."
"You noticed?"
"Of course I noticed, hard not to be aware of another vampire on my stomping grounds."
"Your stomping grounds," Edward laughed, "More like my stomping grounds. My coven has had a house here for ages!"
"Your coven," Bella chimed, "with Carlisle!"
"That's the one," Edward said. "How do you know him?"
"We met by chance once in Ohio, on hunting trips that happened to comingle. We talked a while, and he gave me his number. Said to call if I ever needed anything. He seems like a kind man."
"He is," Edward confirmed. He wondered for a moment why Carlisle hadn't mentioned this hunting trip to anyone before, though certainly, he'd have told his wife, Esme.
"Anyways, where have you been?" Bella asked again.
"Long story," Edward began, "Emmett and Rosalie wanted to get married again, so we were all in Paris for a few weeks to celebrate with them. That's on the down-low though, people here don't know how close they really are."
"I take it people here don't know much about you guys at all," Bella nodded. She would have to congratulate the two strangers when she finally met them. Maybe she'd even buy them a bit of a present.
Edward let out a chuckle.
"No, they really don't. Everybody wants to know though."
"That's a bit of a bold assumption," Bella quipped with a laugh.
"Not an assumption," Edward smiled. "I read minds. Try me."
Bella's face dropped for a second in surprise before she recomposed herself. She felt a little threatened honestly. Mind readers were powerful.
But so was she.
"You try me," she insisted with a sly grin. Nothing had gotten past her shield yet, and she hoped this wouldn't either.
They sat in a charged silence for a moment, staring each other down where they both leaned against what she assumed was Edward's car.
"You want to know whose car this is," Edward bluffed, and she giggled.
"A mind reader. I'm afraid you've got nothing on me."
And he didn't. He hated to admit it, but he couldn't read her mind. She was a mystery to him, and he loved a good mystery.
Maybe he could love her too?
A vision flashed through Alice's head: Edward and Bella, sitting close together in the living room of the vast Cullen home. Her legs were draped lazily over his and he had a hand in her hair, twisting her curls as they talked quietly.
She shook it from her head.
Some things just weren't meant to be.
Jasper was struggling. He had come across some hikers on his hunt that morning and he couldn't get the smell out of his head.
God, sometimes he missed his life as a savage, his life before the Cullens, when he could have just—just taken them, had his way.
This "vegetarian" life was hard when you had known human blood so closely, so long.
He stood rigid in the woods outside the Cullen home. He could do it, he could just turn around and drain those people and come back home.
But the weight of their stares, the waves of judgment he could already feel, they kept him still.
He wanted to massacre a whole city in that moment, to drain every body in Seattle like that's all they were: bodies.
And then to massacre his whole coven, the way he used to, to make his own coven, to be in charge for once.
But that wasn't him anymore, he tried to remind himself.
He was better now, if only he could believe it.
Alice believed it, he thought. And he believed in Alice.
God, if he believed in anything, it was Alice.
She was so good, and had been so good to him.
He would be who she needed him to be.
And that wasn't a serial killer. Not anymore.
He groaned as he began to make his way out of the woods, back into what he felt like was a headquarters more than a home.
Someone was there, someone new and he just didn't know if he had the patience for it.
He would head straight to their room, he thought, through the side door and up the staircase.
And had she not been on the staircase on her way down to the kitchen, his plan would have gone off without a hitch.
But he met Bella on his way up the staircase, looked into her honey eyes and stopped dead in his tracks because God, when was the last time he'd felt something like that?
She radiated pleasure as she paused on the steps and he bathed in it, lifting his head to keep eye contact with her where she stood two steps above him. It was surreal, the happiness this girl was made of, the joy she held in her shoulders, the stroke of sorrow she pressed into her spine.
He wanted to make that sorrow disappear, wanted the nostalgia it was tinged with to evaporate so that he could envelope himself in her sunshine.
She had his undivided attention as she murmured shyly, "Hi, I'm Isabella."
He finally let the air leave his lungs as he murmured back, "Isabella. A pleasure. I—I'm Jasper." And had he just stuttered? He hadn't stuttered in a hundred years but—Isabella cut away his train of thought.
"Jasper," she nodded, extending a hand. "Nice to meet you. I'm a friend of Edward and Carlisle's. I don't mean to impose."
Jasper tried to shake himself out of it, still soaking in the warmth of her feelings. Isabella. Edward and—Carlisle's?—friend.
The girl Edward had been raving about.
"She's beautiful," Edward had breathed, "So far just, everything about her."
And Jasper had to agree, she was beautiful. She had deep set eyes in a soft, innocent face, and the bow of her mouth—he was a little overwhelmed.
"A friend of Edward's and Carlisle's is a friend of mine," he found himself saying, even though that was far from the truth. He and Edward almost never saw eye-to-eye and even Carlisle held him at an arm's length. He was the family barbarian, and he skirted around the edges of the coven like he might fall off. Friends were usually kept at a distance. He was the ugly part of the Cullen family, the part people tried not to see.
Even Alice hid him away sometimes, and Alice was perfect, said he was perfect.
But she didn't have to know that just then.
Her eyes sparkled as she responded, "Well that's excellent, I can always use more friends."
Which was also kind of a lie, because really, Bella did all right on her own.
And as he shook her hand he felt a tug in his chest that he couldn't describe, except to say that Isabella was his.
"I was just on my way to grab a hair tie out of my car," Bella said, "But it's nice to meet you, friend."
But they were more than that, he could feel it.
"Absolutely," he muttered, "Have at it, friend."
Because there was Alice.
His Alice of fifty years, his saving grace of all saving graces.
At least—that's what she was supposed to be, what she had been.
What she was, he reminded himself.
And whatever that had been on the stairs well, he was just going to have to get over it.