The Twilight Twenty-Five
Prompt #: Eight
Pen name: TRDancer
Pairing: Bella/Jasper
Rating: T
Photos for prompts can be found here:
community[dot]livejournal[dot]com/thetwilight25/13912[dot]html
Nala: What made you come back?
Adult Simba: I finally got some sense knocked into me. And I've got the bump to prove it.
"What do you want?" Bella Swan asked of the blonde man standing in her doorway, shifting the light-haired toddler in her arms to her other hip. "Here to sell me a new vacuum?"
He shifted awkwardly, holding his hands behind his back and glancing between her face and the floor. "Hi, Bella," he said quietly. "It's me... Jasper."
And with those five words, her world turned upside down.
!~!
"Damn, I don't know if I can find a parking space," Rosalie mused, craning her neck to look through the rear-view mirror at the couple sitting in the backseat.
Bella shrugged non-committally, but Jasper was on top of it. "There—quick!" Rose followed his point and spotted the just vacated spot right next to the entrance, spinning the steering wheel sharply to the left and executing a perfect park. She threw the car into park and turned in her seat to give her twin a high-five.
"Awesome one, Rose," Jasper complimented.
"There is an insane amount of people here," Emmett, Rosalie's boyfriend, commented from the passenger seat.
"That's what we get for coming to the beach mid-afternoon on the hottest day of the year," Bella teased.
"What are we waiting for?" Rose asked, throwing her door open and jumping out, her flip-flops making a crunching noise as they landed on the gravel. The rest of them followed suit, gathering up their cooler, towels, and assorted flotation devices from the back of the car.
They staked a claim on a piece of sand right in the middle of the beach, spreading out their towels and sprawling across them to soak up the sun. Despite their being only sixteen and seventeen, their cooler had a fair amount of alcohol hidden beneath the ice and misleading fruit, and they weren't discreet about drinking it.
They hung around the beach for hours, alternately lying on their towels, floating in the water, playing beach volleyball or soccer, and making terrible approximations to sand castles that they promptly stomped on. By the time the beach had mostly cleared of people, the four teenagers were more than little drunk and ready to start a party right there on the sand.
They would have done so, but they didn't have any source of music, nor anyone else there to party with.
The lack of music didn't stop Bella and Jasper, though—they proceeded to slow dance in the sand as the sun sank below the horizon. Bella buried her head in Jasper's chest and breathed in his scent.
"I love you," she whispered.
"I love you, too," he whispered back, kissing the top of her head.
!~!
Bella tapped her fingers against the fabric of her table cloth. She glanced over to check that the toddler was fine, then she looked back at Jasper, her gaze hardening into a glare.
"What are you doing here?" she repeated.
Jasper stared blankly at the lemonade that Bella had poured him. He considered taking a sip, but didn't. Instead, he looked up at Bella, meeting her eyes hesitantly.
"I missed you," he said.
Bella sighed.
!~!
His hands wrapped around Bella's, holding her in place. She felt the sweat building up between their palms and tried to pull away, but his grip only grew tighter.
"You're not thinking straight," he said, fluttering his baby blues at her. She averted her gaze.
"Jasper, I know what I want."
"No, Bella! You don't! I won't let you do this," he said decisively.
She looked back into his eyes then. "It's really not your choice. I'm keeping the baby, and though I would appreciate your help, I'm sure I can manage just fine on my own."
"But Bells, what about college? What about your life? You can't just give that up."
That moment was when Rosalie decided to join them in the kitchen. She walked casually over the hard tile to the fridge, opening it and staring in. "What's Bella giving up?" she asked conversationally, pulling out a carton of milk.
"Her life," Jasper answered just as Bella replied with a resounding "Nothing."
Rosalie raised her eyebrows. "Which one is it?"
"She's pregnant," Jasper explained.
Confusion crossed Rose's face, then understanding took its place there. There was an awkward silence. The milk carton sat forgotten on the counter next to the fridge.
"She wants to keep it," Rosalie discerned.
Jasper and Bella nodded together, then abruptly stopped when they noticed the other doing it.
"Bella, are you sure? I don't think that's such a good idea. You're only eighteen. Last summer around this time we were living it up on the beach. Do you want that all to be over already?"
"I'm ready to be an adult," Bella said, but there was confidence lacking in her voice.
"I don't think you are," Rose said. "You just graduated high school."
"That's right. I'm on my own now."
"That doesn't mean go out and start a family right this second," Jasper cut in.
"I don't believe I went anywhere, Jazz," Bella shot back, using his hated nickname. "This isn't just my fault, you know."
Jasper's cheeks flushed pink. "I'm not the one set to ruin my life."
Bella frowned, looking between two disapproving faces. Rosalie and Jasper had never looked so twin-like to her.
"If that's how you feel about it." She turned on her heel and walked numbly out of their house.
If the world had turned upside down when she'd discovered she was pregnant, it was right side up again now.
!~!
"I haven't seen you in four years," Bella said point-blank. "If you missed me that much, I would have expected you to show up on my doorstep a bit earlier than now."
It was Jasper's turn to sigh. He turned the lemonade glass around with his fingertips, then delicately lifted it and took a sip. He felt as if he did one thing out of turn, she would kick him out faster than he could say her name. "I just... I wanted to see you. I wanted to see..." He couldn't get himself to finish the sentence, remembering the expression on her face all those years ago.
"The baby?" she finished for him.
He nodded sheepishly. "I wanted to see how you were doing. Your mom said you were fine, but—"
"But you didn't believe her," Bella interrupted.
She had always known him almost too well, he remembered.
"It's late," she pointed out after they were silent for a few minutes. "You can come back tomorrow."
"Tomorrow? What time?"
"One?"
"I'll be here," he said, getting up.
!~!
When Bella had her baby, she had no one's fingers to hang on to, no one to yell at, and no one to revel in the baby's beauty with her when it was all over.
But she didn't mind. The nurses were quick to ooh and aww over her baby boy, and her mother made a brief appearance the next day. Charlie hadn't approved of her decision to keep the baby, either, but Bella had decided not to care.
She was done with anyone that didn't care enough about her.
But there was a tiny piece of her that wished her father would meet his grandson, wished her son wouldn't have to grow up without a father, wished she at least had some friends to depend on.
!~!
It was dark in the coat closet. Bella could feel her upper back being pressed into the wall, while Jasper's arm was wrapped around her waist. Their faces had barely any space between them; Bella could feel his hot breath spread across her face and then recede with each breath.
"You know, I would have been fine without you," she whispered.
He placed his index finger delicately over her mouth, shushing her. "Thank you."
"For what?" she asked, her lips brushing against his finger.
There was a long silence, and then he sighed out: "Everything."
A fist pounded on the door.
"Mom? Dad? I need to get my coat."
They broke apart and Bella pulled her son's coat off its hanger and opened the closet door, handing it to him. "Have a good day at school," she told him.
He snorted. "You'll have a better time in the closet."
"Likely," Jasper confirmed, pulling Bella back inside.
Yeah, I'm a cop-out. Unless you didn't think so.
