Chapter 11- Watching the Flames
The sun was starting to go down, even though it wasn't even 6 o'clock yet, but that's normal for Forks.
"It's getting dark." Jake says to everyone. They all nod and smile. "let's make the fire now." he says walking over to the box. He grabs a bunch of twigs and bark out of the container and drops them near the fire pit. Edward starts making a T-P out of the sticks, putting the bark in the center so it'll all catch. Jake walks back over to the wood box and reaches into a metal compartment on the wall of the outside. He tosses them to Edward and he quickly lights one and puts it in the center of the tent he made. A fee minutes later a small fire was burning. Jake would bring over more twigs and bark, then Edward would add them to the fire careful not to smother it. I take a handful of goldfish out of the bag Bella was holding and start eating them one by one. I hold one up in front of the flame and move it to look like it was swimming before eating it. Bella laughs and throws one up in the air and catches it in her mouth. They all start laughing.
"didn't your dad ever tell you not to play with your food?!" Emmett laughs at Bella and she smirks.
"Of course not!" she yells. We all laugh and share snacks as the fire gets bigger. The fire pit was about 1/2 ft deep and 3 ft in diameter so after 15 minutes the fire was really big. "time for s'mores!" Bella says as she pulls the bag diagonally between 2 of the logs. She walks to the wood box and grabs 5 sticks, each of which where at least 1 1/2 ft long. She hands one to all of us. Emmett takes a bag of giant marshmallows out of the duffle bag.
"holy crap! Those marshmallows are huge!" I say as Emmett gives me one. I inspect it for a minute looking it over. It must have been 3 inches tall! Finally I do what everyone else is doing and put my marshmallow on the end of the stick. I think back to the last time I had s'mores. I must have been 12 years old. My family was camping in Maine and my brother freaked out when his marshmallow caught on fire. I laugh remembering it. I put the marshmallow near the bottom of the fire and held it there for a while. Every few seconds I would turn the stick to keep it from burning. I look at Bella and she starts laughing. I quirk an eyebrow at her and she tilts her head towards Jake. I start laughing at what I see. His marshmallow had caught on fire and we was frantically trying to blow it out. Emmett and Edward almost fell back laughing. When Jake finally managed to blow it out , the outside had turned black. He looks at it pouting and we all laugh some more. Bella finally takes pity on him and trades sticks with him. She starts eating the marshmallow. We all take our sticks away from the fire and blow at the marshmallows until they're cooled down enough to eat. The marshmallows were way too big to make s'mores out of right away so we all had to eat 3/4 of it before putting it on a graham cracker with chocolate.
"Hey does anyone want a soda?" I ask getting up and they all nod. I go into the hideout and grab 5 sodas out of the fridge while Bella makes me a s'more. I get back to the fire and hand out the sodas before sitting back down and taking a bite of my s'more. It was just as good as I remember it. I always had an almost addiction to chocolate. My house had to have a chocolate supply so I didn't die. I guess thats an over statement, I could probably live without it, but who would want to?! I look into the bag and find 4 more bars of chocolate. I take one and split it with Bella. After we had all eaten we throw our sticks in the fire and sit there talking about school and stuff. Emmett gets up a few times to put more wood in the fire. Jake stands up and looks at us all.
"who's up for manhunt?" he says. We all jump up and declare he goes first. We all run and hide as he grabs a flashlight. Bella and I run in the same direction. Edward and Emmett both went another way.
"come over here." he whispers as she leads me to a large pine tree near the clearing of the meadow. "they never find me here." she whispers and I nod. She pulls back a branch and it opens to an almost hidden space around the trunk of the tree. Branches go down and cover the base of the tree al around making it an awesome place to hide. "you having fun?" she asks.
"yeah, the most I've had in a long time!" I answer back smiling. We sit with our backs against the tree trunk. She puts her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. She places her chin on her knee thinking. She looks at me for a moment.
"did you mean what you said this morning?" she asks biting her lip nervously. I think about what she means before remembering what I told our friends this morning. I replay it in my head. Had that been her way of asking me out? I watch her nervously put her legs out and her hands resting on either side of her waist, looking down at the ground in thought. Then she looks at me waiting for me to respond to her question. She must've seen the puzzled look on my face. "will you be my girlfriend Alice?" she asks just loud enough for me to hear what she said. My heart stopped. Did I just imagine that? The look on her face told me that I wasn't hallucinating. She's serious. I put my hand over hers.
"of course I will." I answer quietly as I move closer to her. She smiles and leans in and kisses me. I move closer to her and lay down next to her resting my head on her shoulder. She wraps her arms around me and I could almost fall asleep from the warmth radiating off of her. She smiles down at me and kisses my forehead. I nuzzle into her and we lay there for 10 minutes before Bella gets a text from Jake saying we win. We get up and walk back to the hideout. We find the boys sitting around the fire. We walk up to them smirking before we start to sing "we are the champions." After doing our victory dance we sit back down and start roasting more marshmallows. We sit there for 10 more minutes finishing our food before packing up. Emmett dumps a bucket of water on the fire and we leave. We redo the process of getting over the river only we had to be very careful not to fall in because of the dark. We finally got back to Jake's house 20 minutes before 8 o'clock. We all say bye to Jake. Edward and Emmett get in the mustang and take off. Bella and I get on her motorcycle and head for my house. We get there with a few minutes to spear thanks to Bella's fast, yet careful, driving. She park's in the driveway and walks me to the door. I hold the strap of my backpack so it stays on my shoulder and look at her. I don't want her to leave. She kisses me good night and tells me she'll be by at 6:45 tomorrow morning to drive me to school.
"hey maybe you could come by at 6:15 and eat breakfast with us." I say biting my lip looking at her with my puppy dog eyes. She chuckles.
"alright, 6:15 I'll be by for breakfast ok?" She says. She cant say no to me, i know that. She smiles and kisses me one last time before I put my hand on the doorknob to go inside. "good night Alice." she whispers and smiles.
"good night Bella." I say before opening the door and going in. I stand in the front room and look out the window until I can't see her motorcycle anymore. I smile with a sigh and head upstairs to start my homework.