The Twilight Twenty-Five
Prompt: Restraint
Pen name: Amethyst Jackson
Pairing: Edward/Bella
Rating: M

Disclaimer: Neither Twilight nor When Harry Met Sally belongs to me. Please don't sue.

A/N: Thanks to Elizabethan for beta reading!

Chapter Fourteen: Restraint

I knew Alice and Jasper's housewarming party was going to be unbearable. Alice had, at one point, known how to throw a party, but tonight she was playing Betty Crocker or something like that. Martha Stewart, maybe. Domestic goddess, in general. Alice had worked so hard to make this night perfect that we were having the party in June – two months after Alice and Jasper had actually moved in.

And she made us play Pictionary. I hated Pictionary – mainly because I couldn't draw, at all.

I stood exposed at the board. My team was composed of me, Alice, my date, Charles, and Rosalie's husband, Emmett. Edward had somehow lucked out and wound up on a team with Rosalie, Jasper, and his date, Makenna. I wanted to start hurling markers at them.

"It's a monkey!" Jasper shouted his first guess, which made me roll my eyes. I was trying to draw a baby, but clearly, I wasn't doing a great job. "Monkey see, monkey do. Or an ape. Going ape!"

"It's a baby," Rosalie said dryly. She looked like she was dying of boredom. I pointed wildly at her to signal that I was, in fact, drawing a baby.

"Planet of the Apes!" Jasper persisted, gesturing with the beer in his hand.

"She just said it was a baby, moron," Edward groaned. "How about Planet of the Dopes?"

"It doesn't look like a baby," Jasper complained, sitting back sulkily. I started drawing a mouth to go with my prompt – baby talk. How on earth were you supposed to illustrate something like that?

"That is one huge mouth," Edward chuckled. His eyes clearly showed his amusement at my expense. "Mick Jagger as a baby?"

"Who on earth is Mick Jagger?" Edward's very young date asked, and I wanted to use my marker to stab her. Where did Edward find these women?

"I'll tell you later," Edward mumbled, clearly embarrassed for her.

"Baby ape!" Jasper declared, leaning forward again as though he'd had an epiphany.

"Would you stop with the apes?" Edward said exasperatedly.

"Baby's breath?" Rose suggested, scowling.

"Rosemary's baby," Edward threw in with a sidelong smirk at Rosalie. She flipped him the bird.

"Kiss the baby."

"Ooh, baby, baby."

"Baby fish mouth, baby fish mouth!" Jasper cried, so triumphantly and with such conviction that I almost told him he was right, just to see the look on everyone's face.

Edward and Rosalie stared at him incredulously.

"Fifteen seconds now," Emmett choked out through his laughter.

"Baby boom."

"Baby…"

"Draw something resembling anything," Jasper complained. I shot him a dirty look and continued drawing arrows from the mouth on the board.

"Baby, please come home."

"Baby spitting up? Exorcist baby?"

"Yes, sir, that's my baby," Rosalie offered.

"No, sir, don't mean maybe," Edward quipped, finishing the line. His lips twitched with suppressed laughter.

"That's it," Emmett declared. "Time's up."

I dropped my arms in relief and defeat. "Baby talk," I told them.

"Ohh," Edward said, nodding. "Okay, it makes sense now."

"Baby talk?" Jasper said incredulously. "What's that? That's not a saying."

Edward rolled his eyes. "Oh, because baby fish mouth is sweeping the nation. I'm never picking you for my team again."

"Final score!" Emmett announced. "Our team, one-ten, your team, sixty."

"Damnit," Jasper sighed. He didn't take defeat well.

"Thank God that's over," Rosalie said, flicking her perfect blond hair over her shoulder.

"It was fun!" Alice said indignantly.

My date came over to me while everyone in the room shuffled about. "I can't draw," I muttered, feeling awkward and embarrassed.

"No, no," Charles disagreed, shaking his head. "That's a baby, and that's clearly talking. You're wonderful."

I smiled half-heartedly, knowing he was lying and not really in the mood to take his overblown praise. I knew he was just trying to win me over, and I wasn't making it easy for him, but did he have to be quite so cheesy all the time?

"Who wants coffee?" I heard Alice ask loudly, and everyone started putting in their orders.

"I'll help you," I offered, eager to get away from Charles for a few minutes.

As Alice and I worked our way to the kitchen, Makenna stepped forward. "Where's your bathroom?" she asked Alice.

"Just down that hall, first door on the left," Alice told her, pointing in the general direction. I watched Makenna kiss Edward's cheek on the way there and clenched my fists to keep from scowling. Part of me screamed that the girl was all wrong for Edward, and the part of me that wasn't a liar pointed out that I'd never want Edward with anyone but me.

In the kitchen, Alice got the coffee-maker running. She had one of the ridiculous machines that couldn't make a normal cup of coffee, but could make some of the most complicated concoctions Starbucks had ever invented.

"Do you think Makenna is a little young for Edward?" I asked Alice, playing it casual.

Alice snorted. "A little young? I know she's legal, but that kind of age difference should still qualify as jailbait. I have to hand it to her, though – she has accomplished a lot for her age."

"What has she accomplished? She makes perfume," I groused.

"Uh, yeah, five hundred bottles a week," Alice replied.

"Wait a minute…" I turned to Alice, gaping. "Makenna is Eau de Makenna? As in, that pretentious shit they're always spraying at me in Macy's?"

"The very same," Alice agreed. "Stuff stinks, doesn't it? I don't get it. I don't know why she couldn't come up with a more creative brand name, either."

Alice flipped some switches on the monstrosity of a coffee-maker and turned back to me. "So, Charles seems really great."

"Yeah…he does, doesn't he?" I sighed. What a shame that he'd never live up to the man I really wanted.

"Jasper, were you going to show me the cover of your new book?" I asked, interrupting a conversation between him and Charles over whether Bella's drawing of a baby looked like an ape. I didn't care so much about Jasper's book cover; I just wanted to get him alone to ask about this Charles. The guy was a slimy creep, in my book.

"Sure, it's in my study," Jasper said, leading me down the hall to one of the spare bedrooms that had been converted into a home office.

"Your study? Pretentious much, Jazz?"

"Shut up, I've worked hard to be able to call a room my study! Alice wanted to turn it into a spare closet."

"What, the whole room?"

"The whole room. That woman is insane, but I'll be damned if I don't love her for it."

I smiled genuinely. "You're insane, but it works for you."

"So…Makenna seems…uh, nice," Jasper commented, sinking down into the leather swivel chair behind his desk. I shook my head at him.

"She has her charms, I suppose," I said, not wanting to talk about her just now. Truly, she was a bit of a moron, and entirely too young for me. I'd only brought her because I knew Bella was bringing a date.

"What do you think of Charles?" I asked Jasper, fiddling with a paperweight.

"He seems nice enough. You should talk to him, get to know him," he suggested pointedly, his ice-blue eyes letting me know without saying that he knew exactly what I was doing.

"He's too smarmy to talk to," I grumbled. "What's Bella doing dating a guy named Charles, anyway? Her dad is named Charlie. Isn't that weird?"

"Yeah…kinda weird," Jasper agreed with a tilt of his head. "But not a character flaw."

"Don't ruin my fun, Jasper," I growled. "I want to hate the guy."

Jasper laughed lightly, his thoughtful expression turning to a wide smile. "All right, hate the guy. Just try to restrain yourself when you're in the same room with him, why don't you?"

I sighed. "If I must."