Back from a family vacation to Gatlinburg (GatVegas as it has now become). Did you know it there are 13 miles between Sevierville and Gatlinburg? And in those 13 miles there are 15 restaurants that serve exclusively pancakes? Are people really that deprived of pancakes? But I digress...
EPOV
I hung up with my sister feeling pretty much like a jerk for the way I had treated Bella. At the time, I had been more focused on the fact that my parents thirty-year marriage – a marriage I had idealized as the epitome of what all marriages should be – was seemingly going up in smoke right in front of my face. I had never really give much thought how uncomfortable blind dates were or what I would have done in a similar situation. I guess since I mainly interacted with computers more than I did people, I could slip into being a complete ass in social situations. I grimace and my thoughts go back to Tayna.
She always pointed out how awkward I was around her friends, how I never started a conversation or never focused on what was being said. Whenever I'd try to be honest and tell her that I found her friends vapid, shallow and boring, she would get angry and tell me that I was the boring one, that she was doing me a favor by introducing me to people who actually knew how to have fun. Tayna refused to believe that I could have fun playing video games or watching YouTube videos. She didn't get my Internet or meme references, which I could understand. What I couldn't understand is why she thought stories about getting drunk, random hook ups, and scoring weed, coke and prescription drugs during a Spring Break trip to Mexico were fun. All of her friends only wanted to go out to clubs, to party, to let their inhibitions go and spend their mornings deleting pictures on Facebook that could get them fired.
Tayna wasn't the type of girl you could take on a romantic picnic to the park. I tried once and she told me I was being a cheapskate. Tayna didn't want to go to places like the symphony or to see plays or to even let me play the piano for her. I tried once to romance her with a little piano music and she asked me if I was "turning gay or something." Her idea of romance was eating half a plate of food at a pricey restaurant followed by going to a club with an outrageous cover charge so we could get overpriced drinks and she could sort of grind up against me to a headache-inducing bass beat. Now that I reflected back on it, I wondered what we had ever seen in each other. Our conversations were never that good anyway. I always wanted to talk about some new upgrade for my computer or something interesting I had read in Wired while Tayna wanted to bitch or gossip about her friends or talk about herself.
Somehow, my thoughts again drifted back to Bella Swan and the emails she had exchanged with my father. She was very articulate and perhaps a little old-fashioned in that she could respect and discuss the finer points of classic books and movies. I doubted very much Bella would be opposed to a date at the symphony or to see an indie film festival or just to hang out in the park and throw a Frisbee around. And even though she seemed like the person who enjoyed those things, she also seemed like the kind of girl who could also appreciate staying in, ordering some take out, drinking a beer and playing a board game or something. It only exacerbated my ire that someone as self-absorbed as Tayna was now married and settled down to a guy I wagered was a complete douche while introspective and intelligent people like Bell and I seemed to be on the fast track to dying alone.
Taking my mind off Bella, I ordered a pizza, grabbed a beer out of the fridge and sat down to begin work on some basic sketches for my sister's site. Usually, I didn't do work over beer and pizza, but I needed a least a slight buzz to integrate patterns from Gone with the Wind dresses into a website devoted to my sister marrying a guy who possibly knew at least one recipe containing squirrel or possum. I stayed up until about midnight working on an early draft of Alice's web site, hoping she would realize that I didn't have all the time in the world to focus on her site. I knew Alice would want something over the top, but she would need to understand that there were even limitations to over the top.
After drinking two beers and spending three hours on preliminary design for my sister's wedding website, I was pretty much ready to hang myself. As much as I love my sister, I was seriously contemplating taking Jasper aside and making sure he was fully aware of what spending the rest of the life with my sister would entail. It was just part of guy code, I guess. I mean, I wasn't best buds with the guy, but I would still try to stop him from jumping into an active volcano or something. The twenty-four years since Alice's birth had pretty much desensitized me to her, but she had Jasper had only been together two years. I wondered if being a not-so-closet Confederate gave him thicker skin than the average guy. I had to admit that of all the guys Alice had brought home, Jasper seemed the most likely to be able to deal with her hyper-activity, shopaholic tendencies, demanding nature and the entitlement complex she seemed to have gotten from being the baby of the family.
I went to sleep, woke up earlier than I really wanted to the next morning, and went in to grab some breakfast. After polishing off the last of the milk and the final three Poptarts in the box, I realized I would have to hit up the grocery store to replenish my food. I grabbed a pair of worn sweats, a t-shirt and a jacket before searching aimlessly for my keys. I didn't bother to make out a list, instead trudging down to my car and heading toward the Safeway a few blocks up. There were other grocery stores in the area, but the Safeway was cheap and its cashiers didn't judge me for the copious amounts of soda and beer I purchased.
After a few minutes in the store, I had my cart loaded up with the proverbial junk that sits in the fridge and in the pantry of the typical bachelor bad. There was beer, nacho chips, cheese dip, a ton of microwaveable Hungry Man dinners, and several of those easy oven-bake mozzarella sticks, pizza bites, and loaded baked potato bites. I figured I should have some bread and milk, too, since I was out, and maybe one of those pre-made salad kits so I didn't get lectured about my health by my mother, sister or father if they made a random stop by. You would think your dad would be the one who understood why it was fun to eat junk food in your twenties, but not my father the doctor. However, he wasn't so bad as my mother or Alice, who had been known to sneak into my apartment and throwaway food they felt was bad for me, replacing it with healthy, "organic" alternatives.
I turned the corner into the fresh fruit and vegetable section of the store, only to nearly send my shopping cart straight into a carefully stacked pyramid of apples. Of course, I wouldn't have lost control of my cart had I not rounded the corner to see none other than Bella Swan feeling up cucumbers only a matter of feet away. We were the only two people in the produce section of the Safeway at roughly eight on a Saturday morning, so I could understand why she might feel safe squeezing and smelling cucumbers. Even if it was just to pick out the right vegetable, it was awkwardly alluring. I mean, it's not often you run into a woman pawing at vegetables in such an unintentionally sensual way.
To tell the truth, it sort of seemed like the opening scene of one of those really cheap pornos your friend smuggles to you when you're thirteen. You know the one's I'm talking about: hot girl in a tight top and short shorts sensually feeling up the vegetables in the supermarket only to be perved on by the beefy stockboy who mysteriously is wearing a smock but no shirt to cover his bulging muscles. They end up sneaking into the backroom and do it on a stack of Capt'n Crunch or Wheaties or canned tuna. Of course, in this scenario, it was me in sweatpants and dirty t-shirt and Bella in an old college hoodie and loose-fitting yoga pants. Finally selecting the right one, she put it in her basket, only to turn around and flush bright read upon noticing me.
"I...uh…" I began.
"I was testing them for freshness!" Bella squeaked hurriedly. "Rose and I like tossed salads!" I really tried to quell my thoughts, which were wandering to the not-so-innocent definition of "tossed salad."
"What are you doing at my Safeway?" I asked her bluntly.
"Your Safeway? This Safeway is like a block from my apartment," Bella snorted. "I usually just walk…"
"I shop at this Safeway," I replied, childishly. "I mean, it's a short drive and cheap, and…"
"Well, I shop here too, and I think the Safeway is big enough for the two of us," Bella rolled her eyes. She started to embarrassedly find her way out of the produce section.
"Wait!" I called after her. Bella slowly turned around to face me, still pretty embarrassed from my voyeurism into her vegetable testing. "Uh… my parents got back together."
"That's good," Bella smiled. "So, I guess you won't need to borrow the Parent Trap after all?"
"Well, uh, they kind of want to have you over for dinner… thank you…" I stammered out.
"Thank me?" Bella said, confused.
"If Dad hadn't agreed to meet you there that night, he would have never seen mom there and… I don't know. My folks are big believers in kismet," I shrugged. "I guess they just want to thank you for putting both of them in the right place at the right time."
"Okay," Bella agreed.
I balked for a moment. I really hadn't expected Bella to agree to the whole plan that quickly. After all, she had basically seen my family at their worst during the fifteen minutes she had first met them. I personally wouldn't want to get any more involved with those crazy Cullens if I was Bella. She hadn't even met Alice and Jasper yet. My parents were easy enough to put up with when Dad wasn't going all caveman and Mom wasn't swooning over him, but I wasn't sure how Bella would react at my slightly psycho pixie sister and her Southern cowboy secret fiancé. I mean, I'm family with these people and I already spend half my week trying to think of excuses to get out of spending time with them.
"So, when do they want me to come over?" Bella asked.
"Um… I actually don't know. They never set a date or time or anything," I frowned. "Here… give me your phone." She looked at me skeptically, but Bella fished the phone out of her purse and handed it to me. I quickly plugged in my phone number and then sent a text to myself with it. "I'll call my mom and see if I can get some times or something for you. You can tell me what will work best."
"Alright," Bella nodded.
"I know this is super awkward but my parents… I don't know. It's important to them," I shrugged.
"Well… I guess I'll see you next week?" Bella said. I nodded, wondering if she was really just looking for a way to get away from me.
"Yeah," I replied. Bella maneuvered out of the produce section, and I was left with the strange sensation that I had again forgotten to do something important.
Shrugging the feeling off, I turned around to find two old ladies, at least in their eighties, feeling up the cucumbers, whispering and giggling to each other. After catching the phrase "This one reminds me of Morty," I was ready to toss a salad of my own and headed straight through to the check out.
A/N: If you have not been "enlightened" into what a "tossed salad" is, I implore you DO NOT GOOGLE IT. I curse male friends and Urban Dictionary online.