A/N: You're going to find out a LOT about the characters in this chapter, so read carefully because I'm leaving clues... Enjoy!
"You get creative within the game, dingus. And just for that, you are going first."
Jasper's expression didn't change as he thought about what his cousin had just said. Alice watched as something exchanged between the two, the crease in their brow clearly part of their blood. For a moment it seemed as if they were having a standoff. But, Jasper, unexpectedly, simply leaned up against the back of the sofa, beer in hand, and casually remarked that "Rose, you obviously want to know something. What is it?"
Rosalie just pouted slightly, but it was clear that Jasper had hit the nail on the head. "Nothing," she said.
"Mhmm," he replied under his breath.
In contrast to his expert indifference, Alice was mentally hyperventilating. She wasn't prepared for this. Short of being dared to do the hokey pokey on her own when she was six, her experiences with truth or dare were comparable to the number of blue flamingos in Australia: zero.
Did truth or dare really result in girls having to kiss each other? Was she going to be dared to strip down in front of them all? Were they the sort of people to encourage illegal activities? Should she have planned an emergency escape route?
Alice was sure then that the nausea was going to take over, her stomach feeling as though it did an actual flip-flop. What were they going to ask her to do? Could she keep up, or was this the point where they rejected her friendship for not being carefree enough?
"Jasper," Rosalie began, "are you still in contact with Maria?"
He tipped his head forward to look at her. "You didn't ask if I wanted to do a dare..."
"You don't. Now, answer the question."
He waited a moment, gnawing on his tongue, while the others sat, hungry for his response.
Rosalie suddenly looked at Alice to side-note that "Maria is Jasper's ex-girlfriend".
Alice nodded her head in understanding, though she'd already learned that somewhere along the line previously. Other than that, she didn't know much about this famed ex-girlfriend.
"Well?" She pushed again when her cousin didn't respond.
He sighed. "Kind of..."
The girls gasped quietly.
"Dude!" Emmett exclaimed. "No! Why?!"
Jasper just shook his head and took another sip, as if that would answer more questions than it created. "It would be stupid to not know where she is at all times. I can't avoid her if I don't know where she is..."
Emmett's bulging eyes retracted as his face dropped. Alice wished that she knew why. All that she could decipher was that Maria and Jasper had broken up a while ago and it hadn't been amicable. Apparently, that wasn't even the tip of the rocky-road sundae.
Jasper turned to look at Bella over by the coffee table, and Alice saw that he had done that thing with his face again where all traces of what had been there were now gone.
When he grinned at her, she rolled her eyes. "Truth."
"Who did you get mono from, exactly?"
"You know who..."
"Yep. But, we want to hear you say it."
Bella groaned. "Jacob. I went to visit him and he kissed me, okay?"
Jasper laughed, mostly to himself, because he knew that Edward was going to lose Bella if he didn't man up and give her what she wanted. She'd already begun to go astray because he refused to be anything but a nineteenth century gentleman. To each their own, he had to tell himself repeatedly.
Again, such pretences just didn't make sense to him.
Alice, on the other hand, barely paid attention to them. She was sure the ringing in her ears would cause permanent damage if she couldn't get a grip of herself. Apparently, these guys did not dance around any subject. What were they going to ask her? How blunt were they going to be about it?
By the time the heartbeat in her ears died down to only a mildly distracting thudding, the others had moved on and Bella had asked Emmett her question. "Have you and Rose ever filmed yourselves in the moment?"
Rosalie groaned and dove her face into the security of her hands.
"A sex tape?" Emmett clarified. "Sure, plenty of times. I have one on my phone right now."
At just his tone, Alice involuntarily cracked a real smile. It may have been beyond her understanding at how someone could so casually say something like that, but the lack of judgement from the others made her feel better about any forthcoming questions she may face.
"That's not even close to a secret!" Jasper whined.
"Too bad, so sad," Emmett said quickly, dismissing his friend's disapproval. "Alice, the newbie... Truth or dare?"
She did the math. No one had done a dare yet, so she didn't know how far they went with them, and so far the truth questions had been about sex. If the decision were a seesaw, she needed the side with less baggage. "Truth..."
"If you had to pick between Mike Newton and Jasper, based on looks alone, who would it be?"
Bella giggled lightly and Jasper turned to watch for the answer.
Truthfully, to be completely honest with herself, it was Jasper. But, she couldn't tell them that. "Mik-"
Jasper interrupted her swiftly. "Let me just remind you," he said, eyeing her pointedly, "that you need to give a truthful answer. Lying is punishable."
"Please," she scoffed the way she did when she conversed with Jasper, "Like you could scare me with an empty threat..."
They exchanged condescending smiles and his face made her want to cause a little trouble. "Jasper," she mock-reluctantly admitted. Before they began the wolf-whistling and howls of approval, she added "It's not a hard decision - Newton is practically a brussel sprout."
They all burst out laughing, Emmett cocking his head to the side as he tried to make the visual comparison in his head. When his mouth turned down into his best Obama not bad pout, she also had to laugh.
For answering truthfully, Alice was awarded the opportunity to goad her friends. But, she didn't want to be too nosy - she was still new to the world of a social circle. So, she decided to reiterate a question she'd heard Rosalie ask a few days ago that hadn't received an adequate response. "Why did you get called into the principal's office this week if it wasn't for a suspension?"
Yet again, Alice caught poor Jasper off guard. This was a question that he couldn't possibly have anticipated. "He... uh..." What was that lie he had concocted again? He slipped around like an elephant ice-skates, trying to think of some reason that would put the matter to rest. "He just... wanted to check up on me and distance myself from more trouble, like Emmett."
"Objection!" Emmett cried. "Hubert doesn't even check up on me, and my record is way worse than yours."
"He doesn't need to check on you because you're in there so often!" Jasper reasoned instantly.
It seemed reasonable, but Alice suddenly wondered if her question had been more loaded than she would have ever thought.
As the game went on, Alice learned that Rosalie had had another pregnancy scare recently (along with another four over the span of a year), Emmett had been the one to proudly leave a butt print in the snow on the principal's windscreen last winter, Jasper lost his virginity at fourteen, and Bella was moderately obsessed with the paranormal. Also, Edward had to dress up as a fabulous Peter Pan in very tight pink tights for Halloween last year thanks to Jasper and Emmett's insistence.
They learned nothing more about her until...
"Alice, truth or dare?" Bella asked.
"Truth."
"Why did you come to Greenview?"
Easy question, right?
Not really. That was something that she hadn't told anyone yet. "Uh... um..." Frankly, she wasn't even sure that the school was aware of her current situation since it was settled only recently. "I... uh..." she fumbled. She sighed. In that single stroke of courage, she decided this was not something worth keeping a secret. "I moved out of my parents' place about four months ago and I tried to get as far away from them as I could. So, I found an apartment and ended up here."
Bella's head tilted curiously after a moment of complete silence in the room. "So... you're living on your own?"
All eyes turned to Alice on the couch. She knew that they had not been expecting that kind of news in any way, but she figured it wasn't something that would harm her social credibility. "I am legally emancipated, yes."
It sounded strange to say it out loud.
She was actually legally free of her parents now. Yes, free was the correct word.
Typically, Emmett spun it around. "You mean that you have a place for unlimited parties?" he exclaimed.
Alice wanted to laugh, but was queasy at just the thought of having strangers at her place. She didn't even have a table yet. "Uh, no... I have neighbours," she said.
"Ah, true..."
This naturally flowed into a few more questions they had. They asked about when she became emancipated, how she could afford to live on her own, and how awesome it was to not have parents breathing down her neck.
Thankfully, nobody asked why she had to get away from her parents.
When they had exhausted the topic, animated by learning something fascinating about the newest member of their clan, Rosalie took hold of the wheel and turned back to Jasper. She was clearly on a mission.
"Why were you really in Principal Hubert's office this week?"
Jasper blanched for a moment, and then took a long breath in. After the things Alice had said, his problems seemed so little and trivial. With all the thoughts swirling around his head, he couldn't think straight. He couldn't think of any other lie to weave and he decided that he didn't really care anymore. He took another swig of liquid courage. "He called me in to check on my grades."
"Why? Are you failing?"
"Not exactly..."
"Do you need a tutor?" she asked, an air of smugness setting her shoulders rigid. There was an underlying offer of services in her question, for sure.
Jasper didn't like her tone, and something inside of him let go of the facade he'd been holding on to all those months. All of a sudden, secrecy and protecting his reputation meant nothing to him. He may have liked to be an underdog, but he hated being undermined and so putting Rosalie in her place was suddenly more important. "Why would I need a tutor?" he asked. "I have a GPA of 3.9."
There. That was his challenge to her, laid out plainly for everyone to see.
Rosalie took the bait. "You can't. My GPA is 3.75..."
"So what does that tell you?" he bit back.
He did feel a tad regretful after saying that, realising that Rosalie was under the assumption that she would graduate with top honours and that he had just publicly declared her wrong. Jasper was completely aware that he had dented Rosalie's ego. If he was the top scorer of their high school, then she wasn't. Giving her a false sense of security hadn't been his intention all these months, but it was a perk in that particular moment.
"You can't be Valedictorian if you cheat. That's just not fair."
Again, he didn't like to be undermined. "Here's another free secret for you:" he added impulsively, "Contrary to what people think, I have never once cheated on a test."
That seemed to be the magic card, because Rosalie's spirit lowered palpably at his confession. It was obvious enough to make Emmett intervene and pipe up to steer the situation in another direction. "Jazzy! Jazzy! Truth or dare?"
"Um, it's my turn..." Jasper reminded him, feeling a weight lifted off his shoulders.
"Trust me, I got a really good one... Pick dare."
"Finally!" he cried. "Something interesting... Dare."
With the toothiest grin known to mankind, Emmett made his proclamation. "I dare you to kiss Alice."
The room turned green and flipped itself upside down in her head. Literally.
"Is that really the best you can do?" Jasper moaned, shaking his head.
Emmett just eyed him pointedly. There was a twinkle in his eye that Alice would've sworn was part of some sick bro code. It was as if Emmett was doing Jasper a favour.
Only, neither her or Jasper saw it that way.
Jasper looked at Alice sitting beside him, and then back at Emmett. "Mmm... no."
Having never been one to turn down a dare, he didn't really know what to make of the situation. On the one hand, he wasn't worried about doing the dare itself. He'd done it plenty of times in stupid dares with equally silly girls. On the other hand, it didn't feel right. He wasn't interested so much in kissing Alice in this context.
Alice didn't like that small crease forming between his eyes. Instead of interpreting it as his own confusion or respectful reluctance, she saw it as a sign of disgust and everything from her previous world came flooding back. Those looks were something she was used to back in Mississippi, but here she was different. Here, she had worked to change herself, to structure her life in a way that was appealing.
She would be damned if she let some arrogant cowboy change that.
Emmett smiled cheekily at Jasper, the amusement clearly a one-way street. "Well," he said. "That means you have to do a double dare."
But, then, with an unforseen gleam of something fierce in her eyes, she changed his mind for him. She asked, "What's wrong? Scared of a little dare?"
That kind of ribbing was expected protocol from Emmett, or Rosalie, or even Bella, but not Alice. Jasper got the sense that she was not exactly from the same sort of circle she found herself in now. He didn't know if her experiences encompassed these kind of antics. For him, it was commonplace, for others, not so much.
But, whatever that gleam in her eyes was, it was kind of hot. "Are you daring me now, too?" he asked.
"Just do it!" Emmett cheered.
Jasper's brow furrowed and then released. He had been given permission to do so from everyone's angle, so what could possibly be the harm?
"Come here," he growled, leaning over the space between them, and almost lunging at her.
And that was how it started.
His hands were on either side of her face, tempting, with their warmth, her into him. Their knees were so close, they were practically touching. And, then, bam. Alice felt the foreign sensation of another's lips on her own. Involuntarily, probably from watching so many movies, she closed her eyes. Surely it would make it all seem less strange if she couldn't see it.
She was wrong.
When she was just relying on her sense of touch, there was so much to concentrate on. The heat pressed up against her skin was nothing she had ever felt before. Unpleasant at first, but then completely spine melting at the first sign of movement.
For what felt like a whole minute, nothing happened. There was just a weird, soft sponge pressed up against her lips. But then he moved, and the a fuse was let off in her toes. She didn't know what the hell she was doing, so she tried to copy him. But, as the sparks drew up her body, focusing on the actual became impossible.
Thankfully, when he started to pull back, a small breeze brushing up against her wettened lips, she knew it was also time to pull away and open her eyes. From then on, she understood what seeing the world through rose coloured glasses actually meant.
Everything was now a lovely shade of warmth and softness.
The crowd - a rowdy 3 in total - alternated between laughing and cheering at the sight before them.
He wasn't sure, but Jasper thought he may have let his hands linger a little bit longer than he should have. She had really soft skin. Really soft.
Internally, he was slapping himself for thinking that about Alice, of all people.
"Not bad, bro," Emmett commented, nodding in approval. Again, there was a sly wink he offered to Jasper that definitely made Alice feel like she may have been taken for a ride.
Nonetheless, she knew she had to commit to her confidant persona and so, she just rolled her eyes, trying to brush it off as if she had done this kind of thing before.
Inside, though, she could have sworn her lungs disintegrated into a pile of wonderful, weightless glitter.
"I guess it's your turn, then," Emmett said to Jasper.
Jasper tried not to look at Alice out of the corner of his eye. It had been a while since he had kissed a girl, and he now realised that he missed it. He knew he'd start wondering things that he shouldn't if he dared to look at her - and there was no way that Alice would return the sentiment. So, he didn't.
"Bella!" he said, trying to hide any amount of accumulated intrigue under the class clown facade. "Emmett and I have a bet riding on this one, so you better answer correctly..."
"Oh god..." she groaned. "Not this again..."
"Have you and Edward done the deed yet?"
Her cheeks turned such an impressive shade of beetroot that purple didn't seem to cut it. With an uncomfortable grimace, she sunk her gaze down to her feet. While Alice thought she would take a moment to try and refuse the question on grounds of x,y, and z, Bella just simply shook her head in response. "No..." she mumbled. She sounded almost disappointed.
"What!?" Emmett blurted.
Jasper started laughing and clapped his hands together. "I told you! I knew it!"
Emmett sat there, mortified. "No way! You're lying!"
Bella just shook her head again and raised her head, still not meeting the pressing gaze of anyone in the room. "He wants to wait until we're married..."
"Ew!" Rosalie interjected. "That's the gayest thing I've ever heard."
"There's no need to advertise your sluttiness, Rose," Jasper quipped. "We all know it."
Alice wanted to laugh along with them, and forced herself to at least crack a smile, but she was kind of preoccupied with herself. She had just had her first kiss, and barely had a moment to prepare or recover from it.
She felt more like a normal person now.
Although she was convinced that that small three second experience had made her infinitely wiser about intimate relations, it hadn't. Each person had already been asked something about sex and it was something which she could not provide any sort of insight for even though she had now kissed a guy. That brought her clouded mind down to Earth a little. What if she was asked about it next time around?
Bella was the only other person who was in the same boat as Alice, and it apparently wasn't by choice. Alice knew it wasn't normal, but she'd had virtually no interest in sex until now. She hoped that she was just a late bloomer because not wanting sex officially put another check mark in her crazy column. She couldn't afford that.
There were a few light quips back and forth about Edward and Bella's future together as the Virgin King and Queen of Greenview High until, eventually, Bella put a stop to the bantering by announcing that she was ready to ask her question.
She turned to Alice. "Alice?" she said sweetly, not knowing the full effect of the question she was about to ask. "When was your first kiss?"
An innocent enough question, right?
Alice's heart stopped, and she had to cough to get it started again. It was such a cliché question, and yet it was something she hadn't prepared herself for. Was it cooler to own the fact that she had no previous experience, or should she lie and make a bunch of vague references about things she'd seen in movies? Had her first kiss been years ago with a liquorice ring in a ceremony on the playground? Did she really want to be keeping unnecessary secrets from this group? After all, they had accepted her thus far.
It may have been the happy bubbles her brain was steeping in, but she thought this was a no brainer: she would tell them the truth.
Surprisingly, she couldn't feel her face going hot. She didn't want to be embarrassed by what she was going to tell them. "Uhh..." she said, toying very briefly with a chipped nail on her hand. "About... five minutes ago..."
The two girls just gasped instantly and dropped their jaws with Jasper.
Emmett knew that he was in trouble without even looking at the scorn coming from a judgemental Bella on the floor.
"Wait... are you serious?" Rosalie asked.
Jasper looked just as horrified as he spied her out of the corner of his eye.
Alice just nodded and said "yes" meekly.
Jasper turned to Emmett, using a more accusatory tone that any indifferent individual would have. "Dude... Why do you always have to be so stupid?" he almost barked.
Emmett held up both hands in defence. "Hey man, you didn't have to do it." Then he turned to Alice. "Yeah, Alice, woah. Sorry. I didn't-"
"Doesn't matter," she cut him off. They stared curiously. "What's the big deal? Isn't it normal for people to have their first kiss during truth or dare?"
Wanting to get the burden of blame off his chest, Emmett just nodded and said "Yeah... It does happen that way!"
Jasper couldn't say anything. He sat there, and he wouldn't even look at her. And, again, she misinterpreted that as disgust. He was merely mortified by what he had done. He knew girls had these strange ideas about first kisses and their first time being magical, and so on. It was never something he subscribed to, but he'd always been brought up to respect that people were not toys nor were they in tune with his own thinking.
What had he just done to Alice?
Not sure how I feel about this chapter, but hopefully you got a bit of a laugh out of it.
Now for some good news:
1. There is going to be another round of truth or dare questions, so what do you want the characters to answer/want to know?
2. The next chapter will probably be up by the end of the week because I'm going to make myself do it. So there.
You know what to do! Run.