Chapter ThirtySix

"Are you sure this dress is the right colour, Rosalie?" Alice asked, doing about her seventieth twirl in front of her big dressing room mirror. Bella, from where she was sat on the bed, groaned.

"Alice, for the thousandth time-"

The youngest Cullen frowned and looked at her friend. "Am I annoying you?" she asked, raising her eyebrows cheekily. Bella rolled her eyes.

"You look wonderful, Alice. A hundred times better than me." Bella recited, and Alice frowned again, but her eyes were sparkling.

"I know you hate things like this, Bella, but please… you don't look terrible. You look lovely. Edward…." She fastened the last decoration in Bella's hair with a flourish, "… is going to love it."

Bella gave a small, world-weary smile, and shrugged.

"What do you think, guys?" Rosalie said in a small voice from the doorway of Alice's bathroom, stepping through.

Both jaws dropped. If either of them looked beautiful, Rosalie was Aphrodite, goddess of beauty. The dress she was wearing was long, tight fitting at the bodices and fishtailing out at the bottom, and was the most beautiful deep red colour. Her hair had hardly been done, simply half of it pinned up behind her head, the rest falling in gold curls over her shoulders. As yet, she had no makeup on, but it almost wasn't even noticeable. The gold of her hair, and cream of her skin and the red of her dress complimented each other perfectly and for a moment there was complete silence. Then Alice groaned.

"You look so much better than me, Rose!" she laughed, and smoothed down her own dress, a long, emerald green one with black beading across the bodice. "It isn't fair."

"I don't even know why I bother." Bella laughed, her plain black dress falling far short. But the other two girls had laughter, light and admiration in their eyes, and when Rosalie caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, even she was slightly taken aback, but not for the same reason as her friends. She did look beautiful, but then she always looked beautiful, there was no change there. The dress just made it more obvious, more overt, more in-your-face.

But for the first time in her life, as she stood in the bedroom of the sister of man she loved, with two girls who had befriended her not for her money or her looks, approximately two hours before Prom, she didn't resent her beauty. She didn't want to mask her face in makeup and hide from the beautiful girl that had drawn the wrong kind of attention from Royce King and his friends. She didn't want to retreat within a shell, close over, pretend that Rosalie Hale was only half a person. She… she brushed a tear away from her eye as she realised she was, in that moment, completely and totally happy, without condition.

"Uh… wow." Was all that escaped Emmett's mouth when the three of them walked out of the living room into the hall where the girls were waiting. Alice was grinning, Bella looked positively pissed off, and Rosalie… Rosalie looked radiant. He'd never seen anyone looked quite like it, quite… wow, even his thoughts were struggling to be coherent. She gave a beautiful, demure smile and took his hand.

"Wow." He whispered again, but this time followed it with, "You look…" he was going to say beautiful, but that was a given, with Rosalie, and he understood her more every day, and knew, although he wasn't sure how he felt about it, that she didn't thank him for saying she looked beautiful. "You look… happy."

And her radiant smile told him that was the best compliment he could have given.

Alice had hired a limo, because although Edward had been happy to take Bella in the Volvo, and Emmett couldn't have honestly cared less about what car he drove in, this was their last (and only) Prom together, and Alice wanted them all together on the way there and the way back, smiling and taking photos in the back whilst she blared out loud, bad music and Emmett stuck his head out of the window, until Rosalie pulled him back in, trying to tame his now mussed curly hair, and laughing lightly when it stuck right back up again when she flattened it.

She wanted to take in the three couples, all six of them sat together, but each other them clearly separated into their pairs, sat a tiny bit closer to their other half, but subtly, so the group blended together. She wanted to feel a warm feeling creeping around her as she watched Edward lean down to whisper something in Bella's ear, something that made her friend's cheeks flush red, and she wanted to feel Jasper relax by her side as he saw how happy Rosalie was with Emmett. She wanted to smile between them and fix the perfect moment in her mind before everything changed, because although she had Jasper with her right now, it wouldn't be the same without Emmett and Rosalie, and there was only one more year until she and Edward and Bella finished at Forks High School anyway, and then she had no idea where they would be – all of them. So she needed this moment, this here and now, to hold the memory tight in her mind, to stop her from ever forgetting.

She wanted to step out of the limo onto the red carpet that was lined out, and take Jasper's arm, and walk behind Emmett and Rose, with Bella and Edward behind, and feel beautiful and loved and together all in one moment. She wanted to sip decidedly non-alcoholic, slightly flat sodas, and nibble on bad, lukewarm food. She wanted to dance to bad music with Bella and Rosalie, even if she had to drag Bella onto the dance-floor with someone else pushing from behind. She wanted to feel Jasper's arms around her in the slow songs, and she wanted to stumble out at the end, feet hurting like hell from the ridiculous shoes she'd worn, but smiling, happy, satisfied.

Alice's wishes were granted.

Emmett was very good, Rosalie thought, he'd danced with her to nearly everything, even though she could tell he'd clearly rather be somewhere else, most likely playing football out on the field, or walking through the forest with her, or something – anything, really, other than Prom.

But he, ever the gentleman, ever her gentleman, didn't complain once. He danced with her, danced with Alice, even forced Bella into something that barely resembled a dance. But when they danced together, at the end, to the final song, he put his arms around her, and his eyes bore into hers and they were solely, genuinely just for her.

"I love you." He mouthed, as he pulled her closer, and she was shocked, and then gave a light chuckle to see his eyes sparkling, ever so slightly, with emotion. "I… you've changed my life."

That choked her. She hadn't expected anything like that, not on the middle of the dance floor, at Prom, which Emmett wasn't exactly the biggest fan of. She gave him a small smile, and he seemed to understand that she was literally physically incapable of replying. She rested her head on his shoulder lightly – he'd shed the tux a lot earlier in the night, and she could smell the scent of him through the thin cotton. He placed a light kiss to her hair, and as she smiled he felt her lips move, through the single layer separating skin from skin.

As he held her, Emmett considered. This time last year, he'd never even heard of Rosalie Hale. He didn't even think, stupid and clichéd and downright corny as it sounded, that he had understood love. He didn't think for one minute that in merely twelve months he would have found someone… and he didn't really like to even think it, for fear it might waft away with the thought and not be real anymore… someone he might want to spend his forever with.

A/N: Agh, a lot of that was very Alice-y!!?! I hope that was ok with you :)

One more chap and an epilogue to go now, guys. Pass the tissues…

Because it seems to be what most of you want, I'm gonna pick up Veiled Thorns straight away, whilst I've still got these characters in my head. I haven't got a solid plan for it yet, though, so it might be a bit slow off the starting blocks, but I'll get it going as soon as I can!!!

Review, please, I'm ever-grateful.