Chapter 14: Home is Where You're Happy

That moment stretched out before us, something poised and awful. We hovered there for what felt like a very long time. I couldn't take my eyes off her; that heaving, straining wraith of a girl who held me in her jaws. What finally changed was the quality of the light as someone stepped up to Alice's side and his shadow fell over me.

"Come on, ease up Alice," Jasper murmured with his hand on her shoulder, trying to get through to her, "I know you're right there near the surface. It's fine to let go when you're ready. Gently does it. Just back it off slowly. That's right. No biting Bella on the first date now. We're still just getting to know her. Let's not do anything we'll definitely regret later."

He applied steady gentle pressure to Alice's shoulders until he'd pulled her off of me and set her back onto her floor pillow where she lolled her head back and sat there panting.

I blinked. My brain tried to reboot itself.

Fuck.

"Deep breaths Bella," he insisted as he offered me his hand.

I reached out for his help and he pulled me to my feet in one powerful motion. He turned me sharply to the side and examined my shoulder under the light as best he could. His level of intensity about this was worrying me. I wanted him to say something more, to let me know this was all just a hilarious misunderstanding.

"Are we cool, Jazz? You're not mad about any of this are you?"

I waited for a response but he didn't even blink. Nothing. I couldn't handle the silence and started pestering him again after he pinched my shoulder near where Alice's mouth had been, "Hey, so, everything okay over there? You guys don't have, like, acid saliva or anything that I should be especially panicking about?" I tried to keep my voice down, even with the touch of hysteria that wanted to escape. I had no idea how he felt about any of this. Hell, I had no idea how I felt about this. I just knew that if some strange girl bit Alice in front of me, I'd be furious at least.

"You'll live," he said finally. "She didn't break the skin." His voice was cold and far away, either upset or distracted.

"Hey, answer me. Are you angry? I kind of need to know right now." Well, that sounded a lot more hurt and pathetic than I'd hoped for, except, just, he was freaking me out a little. Us being fine was the base I needed before I could turn away and worry about other things. Like that waitress.

He blinked and responded finally, "What? No! I just—please, can we just get out of here," he did sound several shades of unhappy, but angry wasn't one of them. A moment ago he'd been looking at me with that thousand yard stare of his, seeing me in the abstract, but he'd seemingly shaken that off and I felt like he was seeing me again.

Good. I followed his advice. Deep breaths, deep breaths.

Alice waved at me with something approximating a big sleepy smile on her face, "Hey there beautiful. I like your face."

I waited for more from her but apparently that was as far as coherent thoughts went at the moment. Great. There was another thing I wasn't sure how I felt about.

After a solid couple of breaths to calm down I responded finally to Jasper, "So, in a word, yes! Holy shit yes! I am so ready to leave. Basically everything about this whole thing could have gone better. Right?"

I expected him to give me an "Amen" but he shrugged instead, "Better? No. Not really, I suppose. It was always going to be like this. That's kind of the whole point of Alice having that vision earlier. She promised us a sure thing and we took it. All three of us, we bought our tickets and we took the ride. It was a little rough, but we're basically okay. I say we count our blessings and get the hell out of here. Is there anything else you need before we go?"

Ooohh, so it was just a really stupid plan all along. It was probably saying something if what we'd lived through was the best of all possible worlds for this dumb-ass idea. I gestured at the nearly untouched plate of food in front of me, "I think I need a doggy bag."

A feminine giggle met my words. "That's fabulous! So that's what you'll need to leave the table for," Alice said dreamily from over to the side, "I'd been wondering about that part. That's a good reason."

"Yeah, good call," Jasper answered me, "go grab one. Alice seems like she'll need another moment or two to put herself back together. She's usually got good control, and when she does lose it she doesn't go as deep as the rest of us, but her recovery time is abysmal."

"You certainly came back quick enough," I remarked. "So, hey, thanks for that by the way. You saved my life again I guess? Not precisely clear on that point. Plus, I'm not sure if the save totally counts this time, I mean, given the circumstances."

He thrust his chest out pridefully, "I've been in enough fights that I know how to come back. I'm always the first one to leap back into the fray. It's a good skill to have, but not particularly useful in my current life where it's more important to hold out."

Alice snorted at this and sat there smirking to herself until we both looked at her pointedly with confused curiosity, "Good one Jazz! Real classy there bragging about your refractory period. And you don't even know yet Bella! He is am~azing!"

Jasper frowned, "We weren't talking about… I think you're conflating… Er, right. So, Bella, on that note…"

"Yeah… Hey, be safe Alice. I'll be right back!"

She offered me a loopy grin and imitated Jasper's deep voice, "Sure thing, darlin'."

I made a bee-line over to our waitress. I don't know when, but I'd decided I was going to take care of this myself. A part of me was worried she'd be a mess on the floor still, but I found her leaning against the sushi bar pretending not to be a mess instead. She had a washrag in her hand but she was just letting it rest there, dirty water leaking out on the counter top.

This was good. This mean she was probably too dazed to have listened in on us after things cooled down. It occurred to me that I didn't have a clue what to say to her. I ended up just standing there awkwardly until I ran out of time and she looked up at me.

I opened my mouth. "I'm so sorry. My boyfriend is a real asshole sometimes." Apparently I went with that line. She did a double take in surprise, her honest face wide open and unguarded. Turns out she'd been lost in her own thoughts and hadn't actually seen me yet.

"Oh. Uh, thank you I guess," she stumbled. "And your girlfriend?"

That word struck me. For an instant it felt like a spike of ice had been shoved through my chest.

Nope, nope, nope, not happening.

I stumbled for words but rolled with it, "She's got no sense of decorum and she climbs on the furniture? Look, I'm really really sorry about them. I didn't know they'd mess the place up so much."

"I appreciate that. It's no big deal, really," she was saying the right words but there was a halting haunted distance in her voice. She wasn't raving at me or talking about calling the cops so I probably could have left it there.

"Are you alright?" I asked, still not knowing when to look away.

"I just… I thought I saw..." her voice trembled.

I thought I saw. I knew that feeling. I thought I saw back in Newton's Olympic Outfitter's. There had been something wrong with Alice's teeth then. Too many of them or something. I thought I saw. That boy in the tunnel. His mouth had opened wide like a beast's. Like a wolf's maw. They were just passing impressions each time, barely enough to register, but I thought I saw something I wasn't supposed to. I thought I saw that the cold ones were something terrible and unnatural, something sharp and sinister, all of it hiding just behind a pleasant smile.

"Please don't tell anyone! You weren't supposed to see that," I blurted out. Oh, goddamn it! Real smooth Bella.

"I don't really–" she started to say, but I cut her off. Maybe I could salvage this. Play it off as a weird sex thing, maybe? I mean, wasn't it?

"No one back home knows about us. We just wanted to go out and have a good time. I'm so sorry. I wouldn't normally act like this. I'm such fucking garbage."

Oof, now that was way too real. The booze was creeping up on me. Suddenly I felt disgusting. This was real, wasn't it? I'd been ready to eat out of Alice's hand. What the fuck had I been doing? Even worse, much much worse, someone had seen us. The waitress probably thought all kind of horrible things about me now. I didn't need people thinking that kind of stuff about me. There was nothing to think about.

Rebecca stumbled for words. I watched her face as she wrestled with it and was rewarded when I saw her features crumple under the strain as she gave up on trying to recall or articulate what it was exactly that she'd seen. She'd glimpsed something earlier and it had scared her more than anything else in her life ever had, but, even now to herself, she couldn't really put it into words or give it any sort of context. I'm sure that a big part of it was that I was just too immediate and miserable in front of her to reconcile my existence with the half seen and phantasmagorical.

Her eyes lingered over my bruises, noticing them for the first time, trying to sort out what they meant or if they connected, "We have a telephone if you need to call anyone. Otherwise I don't see how it's any of my business what you all are up to. I don't really know what I saw." There was a coldness to her tone now. With her mind made up, perhaps she was starting to hate me the same way she instinctively hated Alice and Jasper.

I thanked her again, feeling relieved and embarrassed and like the room was really light and wobbly. I grabbed our bill off the counter where she'd forgotten it and I started to walk away. She called out to me after only a few steps.

"I'm sorry, I just have to ask, you're not really twenty-one, are you?" She sounded tired. Tired like I was tired.

I shook my head without turning to face her, "No, not quite yet."

"I don't know why I thought you were," she said it quietly, more to herself than me. She sounded puzzled, but maybe also relieved that she wasn't going crazy. Then in a firmer voice she said, "You three pay up and get the hell out. Don't you ever come back. You hear me? I don't want to see any of you again. Ever. I pointed you out to the chef earlier and he's been here since this place opened; he'll remember you. Seriously, don't come back."

I just kept walking. Back to the alcove where Alice was pulling out a pair of crumpled hundred dollar bills to leave on the table. Where Jasper was holding up my plate of food in one hand while wiping down the spilled water on the table. It was the first day with all three of us hanging out, it was our first meal together, and it was the first time we got kicked out of a place for well deserved reasons. We had all privately flirted with the idea that this had evolved into a date of sorts, but it would be a long time before we could look back together and admit that it definitely had been. Despite my trying things out by calling them my boyfriend and girlfriend, (to a dead cold one and a traumatized waitress,) it wasn't really a relationship yet. As I moved to take my place beside them again I wasn't even totally sure that I wanted a relationship or could handle a relationship, but in my drunken stumble up the three steps towards them it still felt like it was the three of us against the world. What an amazingly cozy feeling to be part of something. It made me uneasy but at the same time it was everything I wanted.

Alice had offered to carry me back to the hotel but I'd chosen to walk. She'd carried me a little earlier so I knew she could manage, but the mental image of a tiny thing like her picking me and haling me bridal style down the street was too funny and I kept on breaking into a smile about it. Jasper was walking on the outside again, holding my whole plate of sushi in his hands. I'm sure we weren't allowed to take that but none of us cared by that point. I'd forgotten to ask for a doggy bag and it was easier for us to just leave rather than facing our waitress again.

We walked in silence for a bit, deflating down after the excitement and sorting through our thoughts. My head was mostly static. I felt a bit stumbly but not bad. Or maybe really good. The streetlights were halos and I was practically floating between them.

"Thanks for handling things back there," Jasper said, apropos of nothing, "with how that woman was feeling about the two of us, I'm not sure we could have done any better."

"Is she going to be alright?" I asked, to no one in particular.

Alice shrugged, "She's going to go home to her apartment, give her dog a very long hug, and fall asleep holding a baseball bat. I don't know how she'll feel in the morning. She hasn't decided yet. But in the long run? Who knows?"

"More importantly," Jasper cut in, "are you going to be alright?"

The stars had come out and the night was cold. I looked out over the bay.

"I think I saw something back there," I said decisively. "Do you both always look how you look?" I couldn't think of a better way of wording that.

Alice smiled sadly, "No, we don't."

"What do you really look like then?"

Alice held her arms up in an X while saying, "Nice try. Wrong question though."

I tried to take her hand again right away but she was already busy digging around for something and when she found it she gave it to me. I took the thing with one hand and gratefully threaded the other back into her grip.

I held the object up in the lamplight and saw it was her fake driver's license. In this fictitious reality she was 25 year old woman called Rachel Lee. That struck me as a pretty crap fake name. The card also contained a decent likeness of her.

"It took a photorealistic painter two hundred hours to paint me like that during sittings. That's a lot of work only to have the portrait get shrunk down to that tiny little postage stamp sized thing that you can barely see. If you ever come over to the house I'll show you the original some time. But that image of me right there, that's what I see when I think of how I look. It's how I see myself in my visions too, well mostly."

"That's not really what I was asking," I protested.

"Sure, but it's a distinction worth making," Jasper rebutted, "that we are who we are. Sometimes we look different but that doesn't make it more real than this. Without our glamour we're simply less glamorous. That's all."

Glamour. That was an interesting word for it. Apt too. I remember reading a children's story about a woman who rubbed fairy ointment in one eye so she could see the true nature of things and peer through all the illusions common to faerie kind. This being a cautionary tale, the price she'd paid for seeing too much was that she was struck blind in that eye once the faeries caught on to her games

Alice beamed and took both of my hands in hers now, "Just think of it like a Cyrano de Bergerac kind of situation maybe. Here, close your eyes and feel my face. You'll see!"

I humored her and blindly ran my hands over both sides of her face. I wasn't sure what I was feeling for; I felt all numb and hot from drinking. I brushed my fingers across the smooth expanse of her forehead, ran the tip of my middle finger down the pert line of her nose, and traced the sharp point of her chin with my thumb. All of it just felt like a normal human face, granted, one that was impossibly cold, unnaturally soft, and unbearably cute to me. Nothing hidden so far. I did know where I could find a difference though. I began to trace the curve of her bottom lip.

"Hey, be careful, ok?" Her voice was husky with concentration and she moved her head slowly as she talked, very aware of where my fingers were. "My teeth are real sharp. With how far we've come it'd be silly to mess up now."

I gently worked my pointer finger into her mouth, tracing along the slick line of her gums to the hard dangerous bump of her canines. Holy shit! They were very real! I opened my eyes to peek and just saw normal human teeth behind her pulled back lower lip. I squeezed my eyes closed again as hard as I could when my head started to hurt from the jarring disconnect between my vision and my touch. I could feel them with my fingers clear as day. Even if I couldn't see them they were still there. I ran my finger tip up and down the wicked curve of her upper fang and a shiver of excitement passed through me.

"That's what I saw," I whispered to her with a hitch in my breath.

"Not so scary up close like this," said Jazz, basically right behind me in my ear.

I turned around with my eyes closed still. I felt him nimbly move the plate of food out of my path as I closed the distance. I put my hands on his cheeks and then rubbed the finger that had just been in Alice's mouth across his lips. I felt him open for me and I got bolder. Alice impishly pushed me into him from behind and I put two fingers into Jazz's mouth to explore.

I gingerly felt for his incisors first. There they were up front, diminutive yet menacing. Was six the usual number for these things? It seemed off somehow. He got impatient and closed his lips around my offered digits, sucking on them softly. I felt the brush of his tongue and curved my fingers deeper past his long canines, stroking along the back molars. The molars were probably the most human part of his mouth so far, but they felt a lot more serrated than what I remembered my own back teeth feeling like. He let out a panting moan as I withdrew my fingers.

"Being my type isn't a good thing, you know," he growled very quietly.

We were pushed so close together and I could feel from where his pelvis pressed against my stomach that I had his complete and straining attention.

I felt Alice's lips on the back of my neck in a kiss. I imagined them black and filled with fangs. She broke the kiss so she could speak, "Oh please Jazz. You aren't going to hurt her. I'm sure you could, but I just don't see it happening."

He smirked, "Is that a prophecy?"

"No, those are just my thoughts as the one who knows you best."

I felt someone's fingers slip up under my leather jacket, rubbing little circles along my side as we stumbled down the sidewalk together. I had no idea which one was doing it. It was the most I could do to keep my feet moving. I could barely catch my breath.

We broke apart a little so we could walk properly, the both of them on either side of me keeping me on my feet and moving forward, except all the distance between our bodies had been removed and we brushed against each other with every step. I wanted to get even closer maybe.

Jasper let out a little groan of lust and looked past me, "I know I haven't said it yet, but I love that red jacket on you Alice. It's too perfect. It makes me want to do wicked terrible things to you tonight."

"I can see that," she said with a laugh, and I was sure on some level she really did see it in some future-sense of the word.

"It's my red raincoat," I said defensively, wedging my way in verbally, "if I were wearing it, would you want to do terrible things with me too?"

"In the dark, in the woods," he purred. My whole body tingled like the static in my head was running through me in every place that I touched them.

I laughed nervously, "Oh man, how did I not notice it earlier? That jacket, it's totally a Red Riding Hood type thing, isn't it? Is that your fantasy? Do you want to be the big bad wolf and tempt me off the path."

"Not that I'd ever admit it," he chuckled wryly at the admittance, "but there is something beautiful about the thought of driving you ahead of me through the woods. Fear streaked and panting, running like your life depends on it. A wild dangerous chase that can only end in chaos and devastation. The black dog. The gentle sheep. The forest. The darkness. And in the end so much blood."

"Oh my, what big teeth you have," I think I'd intended that to be seductive but I couldn't say that straight so I kept sounding like I was about to laugh through it. Just the same, my breath caught after I finished the line.

"The better to ravage you with," Alice murmured low and sweet.

"Just forget about it," said Jasper switching suddenly with bratty dejection in his voice, "it's a universally bad idea. Completely unworkable." He tried to pull away but I turned towards him and reached inside his hoodie to put my hands on his sides. For whatever reason he stopped. Perhaps he couldn't bear to retreat from my thumbs caressing his scars.

I moaned as Alice reached up to cup my breast, sucking a hickey into the back of my neck. I kept imagining her fangs. I wished I could feel them against my skin but she was being too careful for that. Pretty little fangs. What had I wanted to say? Couldn't let him get away. She eased up on the suction enough that I could think and talk a little.

I couldn't tell if I was drunk, stupid, or just plain horny, but I knew one thing with all my heart, "You don't scare me. Neither of you do. Not really. So. The forest. I can't really run all that well, but maybe we could do it slasher movie style where I stumble around and you keep a steady menacing pace behind me? You can be intimidating as all hell when you want to be. I think I'd panic. It'd be fun."

It was true. I wasn't scared of them, or at least not in that way. They could do frightening things, they could unnerve me and set my heart racing, sure, but that wasn't the same. I don't know when, or how, but it was like we'd started the day with the two of them on one side of a one way mirror and with me on the other, but at some point I'd tripped through it without breaking things and ended up on the same side with all of us staring out at the world together.

They had the power to hurt me, true, but they also had the power to keep me safe. El Cadejo. Both the black dog and the white dog. We were being reckless, and circumstances had made it way too easy to move too fast, but mostly I just felt safe enough to simply let go and run with all my impulse. The more we ran the less I had time to think about it and talk myself out of all the things I wanted.

"I don't know how to end it," Jasper objected, "if I really were to catch you that is. I wouldn't know if I wanted to fuck you or kill you. After a chase like that I wouldn't trust myself to pick right. Plus, not to be crass about it, but anything penetrative is strictly off the table for the foreseeable future. God help me for saying that. I don't know much about keeping a human alive but my singular goal for the moment is to keep your heart beating."

I wanted him to shut up so I moved my hands up under his hoodie and pulled him down for a lingering kiss. His free hand pressed against my breast over Alice's, his larger rougher fingers fitting in between the grooves of her small delicate ones as they grasped me together.

Alice's tongue flicked across the lobe of my ear and then I heard her breathy voice, speech racing with excitement, as she accepted her own invitation to the hunt, "I know! I say we do it like swing dancing, where you can double partner up, and then we simply switch your part out for mine right before the end."

I was having trouble thinking. I tried to put it into a form I could feel, make certain this was what I thought it was, "Sure, like with a film reel. Like with Fight Club. We'll do a change over. We switch you out for me and the film keeps going. And if I twist my ankle or something dumb we'll just go home and laugh about it. It's probably not going to work anyway. I don't think it'll work. I don't know. Could this work?"

I felt her grin pressed against the side of my neck in a nuzzle, her soft lips curling back like she was an over eager kitten and I was being scent-marked with her saliva. In this position just the lowest edge of one of her fangs bumped gently against my skin. Oh fuck. That was what I'd wanted. I was about to cream my panties for this girl.

I heard her melodic voice vibrate through my neck muscles right into my skull, "Trust me, that boy knows well enough what to do with me in a moonlit clearing."

I turned around, forcing their hands to break and reform in other places on my body. Someone was rubbing my ass and talking was getting impossible.

"Okay," I moaned, "but I get to stay and watch."

I kissed the crook of her neck repeatedly, a place I intuited should have been very warm but instead was icen silk beneath my lips. In a hazy way I realized that wasn't a real word. Ice like? Frozen? Alice was icen, it just felt right.

She was thinking. Several time we'd come right up to the very edge of a line we wouldn't be able to step back from if we crossed it. We'd had our toes across that line all night. Right now we were all practically daring each other to stumble across it, knowing, I think, that we wouldn't yet. This was different. Even if all I did was watch without joining in we'd still be changing things in a definite way. Or had we already crossed it back in the car? Or maybe further back? When I'd pulled Alice across the doorstep and into my foyer? Or a little later, joining her in the bathroom? Even that far back, hours and hours ago, wasn't I already making my choice?

Words kept slipping for us; what had started as some banter about Jasper and desire had turned into planning and was now verging on a promise. The long silence between us resolved itself as she simply said, "Okay."

She pushed me up against a wall, no a door, and her mouth was a burning brand at my neck as she sucked another bloody-bruised circle of sublimated damage onto my flesh. Jasper's lips found mine again and he was so fucking hungry for me.

I felt like I was sinking into them. There was too much going on and I had no idea what to do with my hands now. Alice did me the favor of pinning me up by my wrists so I could stop worrying about it, no mean feat for someone so short. If a stranger had walked by would it look like I was being mugged? Jasper's lips were aggressive, demanding, bruising, pretty much the opposite of how they'd been in the hotel room. If he was holding anything back now it was only by a thread.

Abruptly he broke away, "I need to go kill something. Like, right away."

The whole street spun as I reached out to him, "Huh? No, please stay. I just want you both to stay," I was whining like the teenager I was. Just, it felt really good with them.

He flashed me an apologetic grin, "Dinner wasn't quite as filling as I was hoping for. I'm sorry. Much as I might like to pretend, I'm not made of stone Bella. I think we've traveled as far as we can tonight. I need to go eat. You need to sober up." I moaned in pent up frustration and he flashed me another subtle smile. "So we'll ease back a little I guess, and if we have anything to regret tomorrow morning, it will only be the things we didn't do."

"What about you, Alice?" I panted to the girl who was working her way down my neck in slow bliss-painful rings of fire.

"Actually," Jasper answered for her, "I was hoping you'd be alright if I took her with me. She could probably use a snack too if we're going to be cooped up with you all night. We'll kill two birds with one stone, be back in an hour, and then we can all settle in for the evening together and no one will have to go anywhere again until morning."

I didn't want to be alone. I didn't want to let either of them go. But the idea that one or both of them might choose to creep away in the night while I was asleep was so much worse than the idea of being a little flexible right now.

Alice's mouth left my neck and she rubbed her whole body up against me like a cat until she was standing on her tiptoes. So soft and sweet she whispered, "Hey lovely. I'm going to go get lucky now. But don't worry, I'll be thinking of you the whole time. I promise. Can't get you out of my head."

"You could stay," I offered. Yeah, there was that line again. Clear and bright.

She laughed and her laughter was music, "Nah, you're whiskey frisky and you already turned me down for the night. You can start over on trying to get into my pants again tomorrow. Besides, this way I can honestly claim that I'm not the kind of girl who goes all the way on a first date."

"I've never had a first date," I mused. Despite starting to pull back, she really hadn't gotten any less handsy with me.

"This is only my second time having one," she said in her pretty sing song.

Jasper laughed at my horny distress, "Her and I went nearly this far the first time we met too. She kissed me within minutes of knowing me."

"That was just to distract you enough to keep you from killing our waitress," she retorted, sticking out her tongue.

"Yeah, but it was electric. Like a lighting strike. You pulled back from that kiss and I felt like a Tesla coil that had just found out that it was part of a matching set."

I laughed too, starting to be okay with letting them go for now, "So, this whole restaurant fiasco must have been really nostalgic for you both?"

"Yeah darlin', I guess it was." The way he said it, it was something deeper than merely being sincere.

Alice pulled back, clapped her hands, and then rubbed them together, "Well then, let's go hunt us up some dessert. If you want us back sooner Bella, we could go see if anyone in town has their dogs tied out for the night. Otherwise we'll probably have to go into the forest and it'll take a bit longer," she was teasing me I knew, the way her lips curled up at the edges, but I couldn't help rising to the bait.

I was glad there was a wall (door?) behind me because I felt like I'd collapse now on my own without their hands there to keep me animated, "Yeah, fuck that. If I ever find out you've been eating dogs, or, like, any kind of housepets at all, I swear I'll never kiss you again."

She darted forward and stole a kiss, quick and soft as a garter snake bite. I might have let her just a little. Or a lot.

She grinned at me, "Read you loud and clear. Dogs are a hard no. Humans are a maybe. Come on Jazz, let's roll!"

She opened the wall behind me as I slid to the side. I tried to focus and actually take a good look around me. We'd walked all the way back to the hotel somehow. I really hadn't been paying attention since like the halfway point. I'd been a little distracted, imagine that. I guess one of them had been keeping an eye out. I touched my nose and it felt a little numb and tingly. I loved how easy things felt right now, how graceful and surefooted I was. Maybe?

Jasper handed me the sushi platter. He tossed his hoodie into the room and then more gently set his collar inside the door. He was left just wearing the pajama pants. Right there in the parking lot Alice stripped down to her only her panties (hello again you small pink-striped piece of heaven) and kept my crimson rain jacket over her otherwise naked torso. I kept getting intriguing little flashes of her as she bounced on her heels, impatient for Jasper to get moving.

He gave me a quick kiss on the lips, seemingly embarrassed by the domesticity of it as well as all that it implied, "For real Bella, sober up if you can. Maybe draw yourself up a bath. Sit back and listen to the wireless or something. We'll be back before you know it," his smile was reassuring but concerned.

Who in the fuck calls it a wireless? It's a goddamn radio. Had he really called it that, a wireless, back in the day? Or was this yet another weird affectation of his? Possibly both? That boy left me so confused. The possibility existed, continually, that he was absolutely fucking with me at every turn in the most deadpan way possible. Not that I wanted him to stop, exactly.

He walked over to Alice and gave her a hard slap on the ass. She yelped a cute little squeak and then plastered herself around his arm. Jealousy curdled in my stomach like a belly full of rancid meat. I forced myself to keep it down. No big, they're just off to have crazy nighttime forest sex. Possibly immediately before, or immediately after, killing and sharing a deer together. Or whatever. Pretty standard really. They'd been doing this sort of thing for, what, how long? I had no idea how long. Maybe since literally before I was born? I was halfway to drunk and already I was way too sober for this shit.

The last I saw of them they'd got to the end of the parking lot and he'd pushed her up on the trunk of some stranger's car to kiss her exactly like he'd been kissing me a minute ago. My own desire had fled with them and I realized I'd been left out in the dark holding a plate of raw fish. I turned and let myself into the room. If they were waiting to make sure I was safe, now at least they could move on without having to think of me anymore. Fucking goddamn it.

I drew myself a bath in the bathtub-shower unit combo ubiquitous to these places. It was clean enough for a hotel room I guessed. The thought did flit through my mind to go somehow steal a cleaning trolley and scrub the hell out of the thing first, but I realized that I was probably way too drunk to pull off such a stunt and kind of also too drunk to care.

When I'd first gotten back in the room I'd had the brief impulse to fuck myself silly on top of the beds. I knew that the two of them had super good noses so I'd make them fucking sleep in it. In the end I crushed that little imp of the perverse under my heel too and moved on. I really wasn't in the mood anymore. I kind of hoped Alice was thinking of me though. Maybe they were both talking about me right now. What a weird fucking feeling that was.

I went back and locked the front door. I took a moment and looked out through the front window at the quiet desolation of the parking lot; unbidden, my brain flashed back to that cold one dragging me by the arm across the road. I was the sweetest flower of all. Those bloody terrible eyes. I shuddered and pulled the curtains tight. Then I carried the chair from the desk and wedged it in front of the door under the handle to slow down any hypothetical would-be the door open inward or outward? I couldn't remember. Whatever. This shit worked in movies at least. My jury rigged blockade still wasn't enough to get rid of the red eyes in my mind.

I opened a can of beer and started drinking it. It wasn't exactly terrible but it wasn't good either so I tried to hurry it up. Said fuck it and brought the rest of the case of beer and the hotel telephone into the bathroom and loosened the toilet tank lid. Paused to finish my beer. The aftertaste was kinda nasty and my burps all tasted like it. I put the lid back in place askew so I could grab it and swing it around if anyone barged in. It was a stupid but satisfying thing to do. At some point my clothes had come off all over the room. My bra had fought me but I'd pulled a Jasper Whitlock on it and defeated it totally. While I was destroying stuff I'd also picked up the bag of marshmallows and ripped it in half dramatically so that they went all over the beds and floor. I can't really justify that one, it just felt right. The plate of sushi went on the closed toilet seat lid. With the night that I'd had, why not? Then I settled into the bath and called Jake.

I cracked open my second Rainer beer while the phone was ringing. When the line picked up I was, "Jake! Jake, my man! I'm so happy to talk to you!"

He was, "Bella? Yeah. Happy to hear from you too. How are things? Are those two spooks still with you?"

"Nah, they went away for a bit. It's cool. I'm in the hotel bath right now eating sushi and getting drunk. This is some Franny and Zooey level bullshit right here."

Jake is the best. He has the best irritated voice, it's just soooo good. "Oh come on Bella, wasted or not, you know that I have no idea what that means."

"It's J. D. Salinger. If I said this was some Gummo level bullshit would that make more sense? No, forget it. Jake. Jacob. I really love you man. I don't think I say that enough. You're the best. You're like actually the best. I super don't deserve you and I'm sorry I'm such a shit all the time."

"Yeah, love you too Bells. Shit, you really have been drinking, haven't you? So, uh, how did everything go? How are things? Did you all figure out if it was a date or whatever?"

"Things are-" I took a sip of my beer, "things are good. Things are amazing, that is when they're not just the absolute worst. I don't really know yet, but there's a chance, a real chance, that things might end up being so much better than I could have hoped for. So long as the wheel of fate doesn't decide to crush me on the downswing," I thought that was hilarious and started giggling. No, it was really funny. It grew on me to the point where I kicked the wall I was laughing so hard.

Jake eventually sighed over my noise, "Yeah, I don't get that one either. Enough with the literary deflections already and just talk to me."

"Rota Fortunae? The circular nature of fate that will raise you up and crush you down as the wheel spins? Like Wheel of Fortune? Or like Wheel of Fish? Come on, you love comic books. If ever there was an appropriate venue for this concept, it's in the shit you read."

"Nice Bella. I get it. Look, we can talk bullshit all night if that's what you really want to do. I'm game. But I thought maybe there was some stuff going on that you might want to get off your chest. I'm here for you if you want that. Plus, I don't know, I guess I'm curious? Horrified but curious. All I really know is what my dad says about them and what your dad says about them. And, honestly, I'm not sure I trust either of our parents on this one. So? What are they like?"

He really was a good friend. And he really did want to be there for me. And he really was dying of curiosity. Maybe especially that last item. Except… I was fading fast and I was feeling bubbly, but also I've know Jacob just way too fucking long. His voice dipped a little on the question at the end; there was the faintest hint of that rancid smell on his tone. I couldn't do that to the poor kid. He'd been hanging around all fucking night for me. I wasn't going to make him choke on his fucking friendship just so I could gush about my new crushes to someone. He deserved better than that. Jake will always deserve better than me.

"Uh, they're cool. Jasper talks some mad shit all the time but on the same hand he's weirdly straightforward about what he really means with it. Alice is super nice and easy to get along with except I think she maybe likes playing dumb a bit and drawing people out. She looks so little and cute but she is scary competent. And she's really pretty and really talented. She draws and she showed me some sketches. But fuck it. I've been hearing and talking about nothing but those two assholes all day. And right now I'm drinking to forget about my day and how the two of them are off fucking somewhere. Oh. I didn't mean that in the sense that I don't know where they are. I mean that like, they are actually out fucking. Hopefully having a grand old time of it. So fuck 'em too. You'll meet them on Saturday anyway and you can figure it out for yourself. Now, I'ma eat some of this sushi and I want to hear about your week. What've you been up to since we talked last? I think it was the day before the move? Why'd you invite them to your party anyway? Your dad is going to flip you know."

"Maybe I want him to flip? I don't know. How do I put this? Look, ignoring the supernatural aspect of this for a second, Bella, I know you. I know you and the last time you tried to make friends with a girl she was all you talked about for like three weeks until she started avoiding you with made up excuses and then you got all salty about the whole thing and tried to make me read The Castle of Otranto as a distraction, and it was a really stupid book and we mocked it a bunch together but I really did read it. That was Cassie, right? Around when school started this last fall?"

I protested, "That was closer to two weeks, wasn't it? Cassie and I were never really friends even. She was just part of the people I usually sat with at lunch, when I wasn't up hiding out in the third floor stairwell. I don't really know what all happened there."

"Right, but you wanted to be friends with her. You wanted it pretty bad. Before that, there was, I want to say her name was Alyssa? Do you remember? Last spring. I heard about her for a whole month and that one ended in actual tears. So now there's Alice. I figure I'll be hearing about Alice several days a week for the foreseeable future, so, cold one or not, I might as well just meet her since I've got the chance to do it this time. Plus, like you said it'll piss off my dad."

Had I really made that big of a deal about Alyssa? I wouldn't have thought so, but I suppose I must have if he remembered her name, "I guess I'm not very good at making friends, huh? I'm a little intense to deal with, I think, when I'm still just getting to know someone."

"Yeah, something like that," he agreed noncommittally.

"I've got a good feeling about Alice. Jasper too. Shit, I'm probably going to talk about him too. I'm sorry Jake. But Alice, I think she's going to last. She's too scary for me to scare her off. I hope. I think. I think she's gonna be my friend. We're gonna be close. She's going to be my very best friend."

"I thought I was already your best friend," he said it so lightly but I was stumbling over rancid meat again with him and the tub water was so hot and I was a little dizzy and I just kept saying things and talking about them like an asshole even though I knew I was going to fuck things up with him if I did it.

"Nothing has to change. You're still going to be my best friend too. I mean, you and her, this and that, them, they're two different things anyway, entirely."

"Are they different things? Are they really? I'm Sorry. I'm being a pain. I thought talking to you drunk you'd be a little less canny than you usually are and you'd level with me, and I guess you sort of are in a way, but we're still just talking in circles here."

"You'll always be my best friend Jacob."

"I just wish I knew what you thought that meant," he almost stopped there but then hurried on in the same breath, "anyway, switching gears, pun very much intended, I have some updates about the Rabbit restoration project since last week if you want to hear them? I put in about sixteen hours of work on the car between Tuesday and Wednesday, which, uh, is I guess the other reason I didn't call you before today. I was on a roll with it and the whole thing is shaping up finally. I'll probably have to get the parts I don't have yet this coming month but it's going to be worth it."

Jacob Black had saved my worthless hide yet again. I was so grateful to him in that moment for letting me off so easy. I didn't deserve it. I was such a piece of shit. I popped a piece of sushi in my mouth and washed it down with room temperature cheap beer. I sank down into the scalding water and submerged as much of myself as I could while keeping the receiver dry. I let the room spin gently.

I prompted him, "Sure dude, lay it on me. Don't spare any of the greasy technical details. I am so ready for this. Let's take this ride."

"Alright, well you asked for it!"

I could hear the smile on his face as he warmed up to the conversation in a real way. It was pretty much a given that he actually did want me to hear all about it. A project wasn't totally finished, it didn't really mean anything yet, until I'd heard about it and conceptually appreciated what he'd accomplished. I kept all that for him. No one else ever took the time in the same way I did. I was glad once again that Jake was so fucking good to me. I wasn't a good person but the bare least I could do was try to be good to him too.

"How can you possibly be this much more drunk than when we left you?" Jasper's voice was a scratchy irritation that roused me out of the void.

I blinked my eyes open and tried to roll over only to splashy myself in the face with water. Apparently I was still in the bath. So much for my stupid safety measure; I hadn't heard them come in at all.

"Who says I'm more drunk?" I sputtered out through the tepid bathwater. My voice sounded dingy and slurred.

I sat up in the tub, shivering slightly. I looked around the bathroom. The phone was sitting off its hook in the sink. What was left of the sushi was mostly on the floor where I'd knocked the plate over. At some point I'd stood up and pulled down all the towels but now all of them were out of easy reach again anyway. Amidst it all was Jasper, stooped down in the middle of the room picking up my empties which he bundled against his naked chest.

Alice poked her head into the bathroom and when she saw me she broke out into a wide grin, "Hey Bella. You shouldn't fall asleep in the bath like that. It's dangerous."

I did my best to wave her off while death-gripping the side of the tub with my other hand to keep me steady, "Meh. I'm fine. So how'd it go?"

Her smile softened, became more private, "It was nice. Much needed. You'll have to excuse us, we detoured through the bay on the way back so I probably stink like the ocean right now.

She stepped close to me to scratch my head and I think I sniffed her. She smelled like salt and forest moss, but it was nice, no hint of anything yucky. I mumbled that to her.

Back before I'd dozed off I'd wanted to be mad at them when they came back, really I'd tried so hard to hang onto those cross feelings, but in that moment with her hand stroking my head all I could feel was the pleasure of being near again. I probably should have been mortified about getting caught out in the bath like this too, but I couldn't muster up the coordination or the concern to cover myself. On some level I guess I figured that I was probably going to sleep with the both of them before too long anyway, so what did it really matter in the here and now.

Alice's fingers tangled in my hair and I heard her say, "Oh, sweetie, you didn't undo your braid. Here, let me help you with your hair. Jasper, run some hot water would you?"

"Yeah. In a second. let me put this stuff down first."

Before I knew it my hair had been let down and Alice was lathering it a lurch of motion I left the water and Jasper had me hauled up in a droopy standing position beneath the shower jets. The curtain was open and water was going all over the bathroom floor. Fuck though, their hands were super cold skin to skin! Still, there was something wonderfully solid about being held by him so I did my best not to squirm too much.

I watched through unfocused eyes as Alice reached out with a shampoo covered hand, white bubbles on marble skin, and rinsed it out in the stream of water. She was trying to keep the soap from creeping up to the bright red sleeves of my coat.

Jasper smirked over at her, "Please dear, take that silly thing off. You look like a serial killer wearing that raincoat in the bathroom. Bella's too sauced to care if you go skins anyway. Isn't that right Bella?"

"Yes please!" I chirped, or possibly slushed.

Alice shucked the coat and returned much less decent. Standing there in only her panties she struck a show tunes kinda pose with one leg up and jazz hands out. She had a big beautiful grin on her face. She looked ridiculous and magnificent and I wanted to eat her up. Jasper flicked one of her pert gray nipples when she stepped closer and she let out a gasp and playfully slapped him on the hip for him to stop. I felt some morose longing emotion bubble up through the haze and the booze but I couldn't quite reach out and touch it.

I think we all took a shower together? It wasn't especially lengthy or sensual or any of that stuff, just Alice getting my hair done for me and the two of them rinsing off the saltwater while they were at it. Except, it was so intimate and familiar. I'd never experience that before. All of us put our pretensions aside for a few minutes and got clean. It was nice. I remember the peculiar sensation of Alice's breasts on my back, cold at first but then warmer and more human after a minute in the hot water. Jasper's hands felt so large and steady at my waist. It was easy to fall against him for support. I always knew he'd catch me. I got away with licking one of the scars on his arm. It tasted like soap. I didn't get away with kissing Alice. I leaned in for it but she put her hand over her mouth and looked all embarrassed, apologizing that she really had to brush her teeth first before I did that. I never did kiss her again that night.

Most of the details are fuzzy here. I don't remember us getting out of the shower but I do remember us all being in bed watching Cartoon Network. Super Milk Chan was on and that's not really a show I like at the best of times. I remember feeling disturbed by the episode. There was something about Furbies, and a running gag about how the characters eyes all kept changing, and something about them taking some geezer to a ramen bar to re-energize him because he wasn't human beneath his skin.

Through most of it I was trying to explain about Tom Goes to the Mayor but I don't think they really got it. They've never lived a mediocre life in an ugly place. They've never gotten swept up in someone else's beautiful dream, wishing they could be special, daring to hope for the future but secretly clutching their mediocrity tight to their heart. Then as the episode goes on you get to see how horrible that dream really turns out to be. And in the end the Mayor forgets Tom and everything was pointless.

Jasper in particular was butting heads with me trying to get me to walk him through why something that sounded so awkwardly animated and cheaply produced would be any fun, and I couldn't explain myself. It's the same way sort of that bad movies can be fun, something unartful and sincere, but you kinda just have to experience it to see. I wouldn't mind getting the chance to show them.

At some point the homo landlord character from Super Milk Chan started monologuing and for some reason we all shut up and listened. He was being a sad sack and complaining like, "We just happen to be born like this ya' know, so we can't help but getting into sad relationships." It just made me so angry for some reason. Alice gave my hand a squeeze and that just made me feel more upset.

Family Guy was after Milk Chan, but Alice didn't want to watch that so Jasper ended up just kinda channel surfing, waiting for Futurama to come on. Alice snuggled in close, Jasper stoked my hair, and I started to drift off. This would be my second night since coming to Forks that I hadn't cried myself to sleep. Maybe, just maybe, I could make a home here after all in this gray wet wilderness of trees. Maybe even someone like me could find a way to be happy.

Author's Note: Welcome back. I think I've pushed the whole abstinence porn angle hard enough that cracks are starting to show on its seams. Eat your heart out Stephenie Meyer! To anyone waiting with baited breath for an actual sex scene to occur, you have my deepest apologies now for how long I know that's going to take to happen.

As far as the writing goes, I thought this would be a quick chapter to get out, but it turns out I've been stuck in a deep black well of exhausted depression due to the fact that company that I work for has been sliding steadily deeper into a mess of dysfunction and bankruptcy. Imagine that, the person who wrote Bella as an anxious depressive is prone to those things as well. Who'd have thought. Anyway my ability to focus has been pretty much shot and writing itself has been sort of hard. Well, all of that, and also the first section just took an unreasonable amount of passes to work out for some reason. Go figure.

The good news: I accepted a new job offer today but it will probably take me a bit to put my life back in order. I'll be publishing a tiny little interlude chapter next week (about 1,000 words) but beyond that I've got no ETA for the next full chapter. At this rate I'm on pace to hit roughly 160k words by the end of the book, with the remaining material encompassing an interlude, five full chapters, and then an epilogue. That's longer than I'd planned but not quite to unreasonable levels yet.

Some notes on the chapter itself: The fairy tale that Bella refers to in this chapter is Fairy Ointment from English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs. That whole book is such a wonderful collection of stories and I can't recommend it enough! I am forever in love with the tale of Mr. Fox.

Most of the things referenced in this story are either obvious, or else their significance is explained in the text, or else they are trivial and can be safely dismissed. The Castle of Otranto is not quite any of those, so I'll say a few words; it is the first gothic novel and the origin of that whole literary genre. It is also, by most accounts, really kind of a silly book. The opening scene is about a giant helmet falling out of the sky and crushing someone to death, and the prince then accusing a random peasant of summoning it with witchcraft and then imprisoning him underneath said helmet. So, Bella reading this with Jacob would be a chance for her to share a foundational part of her literary interest with him, as well as a chance to be absolutely savage with him to a novel she dearly loves.

Oh! Super Milk-Chan was included because that's what was showing on Cartoon Network that night in 2005 during that time slot. And because I'm sometimes a meticulous pedant who likes to play narrative games. The episode in question is number 9, Milk's Story of Financial Decay Peninsula.