A/N: Chapter 52!

Thank you to everyone who read, reviewed, or added my story to their alert/favourite list. Again, koko23cat deserves credit for the shit she's helped me with in this chapter.

Right, this chapter has a slightly different format. It starts on the 4th October, and goes backwards from there. I didn't write the date on each section, instead I put 'Day Thirty-Three', 'Day Twenty-Five' etc. That is to show how many days have gone by since their argument. Hope that doesn't confuse anyone.

Disclaimer: In my crazy mind, I own everything. In reality, I own nothing. What a sad realisation that is.


Chapter 52 - Thirty-Five Days

4th October 2009

Jasper POV

I mashed the cereal around the side of my bowl whilst staring at the calendar. It was stuck to the fridge with two, flowery magnets. I ignored those, and instead, I counted the days. There were thirty-five, altogether. Thirty-five days since I'd last seen Alice, since we argued with each other.

My gaze travelled two days to the right of today and I sighed, pushing the bowl away and running my hands over my face. In two days, it was going to be the first anniversary of Robbie's death. I'd promised Emmett I'd be there for Alice, and I knew that Bella, Edward and Rosalie all expected me to be there, too.

But I'd promised a few things in this past month, and so far, I hadn't followed through on any of them.


Day Thirty-Three

I scowled at my phone, knowing exactly who was going to be on the other end of the line. Edward was becoming annoyingly persistent at the moment, and I had the right mind to tell him to piss off. I wouldn't do that, of course, as I knew he was just trying to help, and in a way, he was helping me.

Edward was smart, but I knew the game he was playing. He was trying to annoy me by constantly telling me to talk to Alice, to tell her that I was sorry for shouting at her and that I shouldn't have said what I did. He was telling me to apologise first, so that she would – hopefully – apologise back to me.

He was waiting for me to snap and do as he said just to shut him up. Like I said, Edward was a smart, albeit a sneaky son of a bitch who knew exactly what he was doing.

But it was all well and good telling me to go talk to her, he'd done that a month ago, and where had that gotten us? All it had achieved was for things to be blown up in all our faces.

Well not again. I might have had a low tolerance for irritating, persistent things, but I wasn't going to give in to him. Not because I was stubborn, but because I didn't know how Alice was going to react. I'd apologised last time, and she'd flipped out. In retrospection, I knew why she'd reacted that way, but that wasn't what I worried about.

It was the fact I'd insulted Robbie, yet again, and worse than that, I'd insulted her, too. I didn't know how I was going to make an apology for that at all. On top of that, she had her own shit to apologise for, and briefly, I found myself wondering if she had the same thoughts running through her mind.

The ringing tone started up again, and I sighed, picking it up. Of course: Edward Mobile.

"Yes, Edward," I said in an almost bored tone.

"Don't use that tone of voice with me," he muttered. "You know why I'm calling. Have you talked to her yet?"

I scrunched my eyes shut, not wanting to hear his usual speech. "What do you think?"

He exhaled loudly. "Why haven't you gone to talk to her? Do I need to come back to Forks and make this happen? I will, if I have to. Come on, Jas, you promised you would."

Edward, trying to solve my shit has turned you into a fucking agony aunt.

"I know I did, but it's not that easy," I replied curtly, still not opening my eyes. I needed him to understand that it just wasn't as easy as going up to her and talking anymore. "I don't know what to say to her, for a start, and what if she doesn't want to talk to me? I know what I'm like, Edward, if she starts something, I'm going to retaliate, and look where that got me last time."

"Yes, and I know Alice," he said in a simple manner. "It's been a whole month since you argued; she's not the type to hold grudges."

He was right, in some respect. Alice wasn't the type to hold grudges. "But what about when the source of her anger was because someone insulted Robbie? Don't you think she'd hold a grudge then?"

Edward was completely silent on the other end of the line. With that one question, I'd gotten him, and we both knew it. Maybe I'd have been more positive if I knew I hadn't lost control so badly and insulted the one thing she clung onto and cherished with everything she had.

It made me think about what I'd have done if the tables had been turned, and instead, she'd said something about Maria. Very little thought had to go into working out how my reaction would have panned out. I'd have gone ballistic, I knew that already.

Insulting Robbie the way I had was a low blow, and I was appalled that I'd even done it. Alice had made her own mistakes, and I couldn't ignore what she'd said, or deny that it was her fault I'd gotten so angry.

But the blame was solely on me when it came down to whom it was that made the bitter comments. My loss of control was the biggest regret I had, and if I had the chance to go back and change it, the outcome would have been so very different.

Or just maybe, I wouldn't have gone to see her at all.


Day Twenty-Five

Work was slow, tiresome. I'd been two seconds away from telling Karen to stick her fucking job where the sun didn't shine. But I had to rein it in, knowing that was the last thing I needed. I couldn't lose this job, it was the only thing keeping me sane and actually getting me out the house in the past few weeks.

Karen had told me to shave, to clean myself up – look more presentable, as she'd put it. So I hadn't shaved nor slept properly for just over two weeks now, but what fucking difference was it going to make to customers walking into the shop? Were the dark circles under my eyes going to scare them away?

Even then, it wasn't as if I'd been standing outside, beckoning people to go in. I was in one of the back rooms, sorting out stock at Karen's order. If I really thought about it, she'd probably sent me back there for that exact reason.

It was bullshit, and I'd been half tempted to tell her that she needed to open her fucking eyes and realise life wasn't all perfect and not everyone looked well presented and happy all the time.

When my shift finally came to an end, I'd gladly left without a second thought. I felt exhausted as I walked, as if I was dragging myself along. But the anger I'd been feeling towards Karen was still swimming around inside, and the first thing I wanted to do was sit back, eat something and try to fall asleep slumped on the kitchen table.

But when I opened the door, I was greeted by noise. Emily was in the main room, the television turned up to a loud volume, and in the kitchen, I could hear someone pottering around.

Great, looks like I won't be getting any sleep today, then.

"Jasper, is that you?" Mom asked from the kitchen. At first I wanted to ask her who else it was going to be coming into the house, but then I remembered that it wasn't just me, Mom and Emily anymore. It could quite easily be my father coming in these days.

Though, in saying that, I hadn't caught even a glimpse of him in nearly a week now. Mom must have seen him in that time, but I knew she was telling him to keep his distance from me. After our initial talk back in August, communication seemed to be better between us, and we'd had a talk about whether or not I wanted to see him right now. I told her I didn't, and she respected that, as I knew she would.

Mom knew all about Alice and what happened between us. She and I both knew that I was coming to the end of my tether once again, and the last thing I needed was another confrontation with my father to push me over the edge once more.

"Yeah, I'm back," I muttered, slowly pulling off my worn out boots and throwing them to the side. I trudged into the kitchen then and sat down on the nearest chair. My limbs felt weak, as if my puppet strings had been cut away all of a sudden.

That, of course, was down to fatigue.

"How was work?" she asked, looking at me over her shoulder. "Would you like me to make you something to eat?"

I shook my head quickly. "I'm not hungry, and work was…" I paused, trying to think of suitable description that wouldn't taint the walls with my foul language. "Karen doesn't think I look…presentable."

Mom stopped what she was doing, turning to look at me completely. "She told you that?"

I nodded. "She wants me to clean myself up."

"Are you going to?" she continued, raising her eyebrows in pure interest now.

"No."

She let out a quick sigh and I saw her appraising me for just a moment. I could see it in her eyes; she wanted to tell me to smarten up, too, not because of what others would think of me, but because seeing me like this, it worried her. She knew I was suffering, and even with her best attempts, there wasn't anything she could do.

But instead of telling me this, she kept quiet, knowing that it was the last thing I wanted to hear right now.

"You should eat something," she said to me instead, turning back to whatever she was making only a moment ago. "You've lost weight."

There was a worried intonation to her voice, now, and I knew what she was saying was true. I had lost weight; I'd noticed it, too. It was only subtle changes, but we both noticed them.

"I'm not hungry."

She didn't respond because she knew it was a losing battle. I was a stubborn son of a bitch, and if I told her I wasn't hungry, then I certainly wasn't going to eat anything she put in front of me.

The room fell into silence after that, and when she didn't move around to face me anymore, I closed my eyes, resting them. It felt good to close them, to shut everything out.

If only there was a way to shut out my thoughts, too.

"I saw Alice today."

My eyes opened slowly and moved to stare into hers. I had been wrong earlier; this topic right here was the last thing I wanted to listen to. But unlike before, she didn't stop talking.

"She came into the shop to talk to the manager," she continued, a slight cautious tinge in her tone. "I think she's applying for a job."

Mom paused, giving me enough time to remark on what she'd said. But what was there for me to say? Did she expect me to congratulate Alice on moving on with her life while I was here, finding it hard to function properly?

A sigh escaped her lips as she sat down, reaching for my clasped hands across the table.

"Jas, she looks worse than you do," she murmured, her voice gentle now. When her fingers tried to close over mine, I drew my hands back.

"I don't care."

I stood up, and she stood up with me. "Don't lie to me, Jasper. Maybe you think after all this she doesn't want to talk to you, but those dark circles I saw under her eyes are worse than yours."

My gaze hardened as I looked at her. "So?"

"So that means she's dealing with this about as proficiently as you are," she replied, the gentleness in her voice a little weaker now that she was trying to get her point across. "You need to talk to her and work things out between you. Do it for the sakes of yourself and those around you."

I ran my hands over my face, ignoring the roughness around my jaw. "Please, Mom, for my sake, can you stop talking about this. I don't want to talk about her; I don't want to hear what she looks like, or what she's doing."

She stared at me for a long moment, looking disheartened, and then she let out a sigh.

"Jas, I'm not going to pretend I'm happy with the damage your friendship with Alice has caused you. I know she's going through a lot, but that doesn't excuse her behaviour. But, on the other hand, I can see how much you need each other. So please don't make this harder for yourself. You both need to get passed this."

I just looked at her. I didn't understand why she was telling me this now. I didn't understand anything anymore; it was all just such a fucking mess. I didn't even know why I didn't want to think about Alice, I just knew thinking about her made things worse, it hurt. It hurt so fucking much.

I missed her, too, and I didn't understand that, either. There was just no logical reason. She'd hurt me, pushed me to my limits and after all that, I still fucking missed her. Why? It didn't make any sense whatsoever.

A voice in the back of mind told me that I couldn't live without her, as if that explained everything, but I still didn't get it. She'd come storming into my life just over a year ago, changing everything. The impact she'd made was so immense that it frightened me.

It scared me so much that my instincts drove me to hide from it; I just didn't want to admit to any of it. Making out I didn't care, acting indifferent...I honestly believed it would convince Mom not to try and talk to me about it. Talking about it would make it too real, too hard to deny.

But Mom saw right through me, just like she always did, and now I had nowhere left to hide.

"Jas…" She moved around the table towards me, but I held my hand out, halting her.

"Please, just stop."

Her brow pulled together at the same moment her shoulders sagged in defeat. She shook her head slowly, looking down at the floor.

"Why are you doing this to yourself?" she whispered, her voice pained. She looked up as she finished, and for a long moment, neither of us did anything.

I don't know.

I turned away then, knowing I couldn't continue with this. She didn't stop me as I walked from the room and made my way towards the stairs. The noises from the television were still loud, but I couldn't bring myself to act cheerful in front of Emily just to ask her to turn it down.

When I got to my room, my eyes landed on the cell phone sitting on the bedside table. I wasn't even taking it with me, anymore. The only calls I got were from Rosalie, Bella, Emmett, and Edward, all asking me how I was, if I'd talked to Alice yet. I couldn't deal with that shit, so I left it behind.

It made me wonder if they were doing the same thing to her, too. But I knew I would never ask them because that would mean I'd have to talk about her, to actually say her name.

I picked it up now and switched it on. A minute after it loaded, it vibrated once then again a second later. I had two new messages – one from Emmett, the other from Bella. It was Emmett's I opened first; he asked me how I was doing, what I was getting up to. No mention of Alice this time, but still, I quickly moved onto Bella's.

She wanted to know what I was doing, too, and offered to talk if I needed to. I shook my head to myself, closing the message application altogether. Bella was making an effort, just as we promised to try again with our friendship before she left. The only problem was that I wasn't holding up my end of the bargain. I wasn't making an effort at all.

Holding the button down, I switched the phone off.


Day Fourteen

Dreams were elusive, hard to understand. Some dreams you remembered the moment you woke up, and you wished to fall asleep again, just so you could fall back into the same dream. Other dreams you didn't remember until later, only when something around you triggered the memory.

They latched onto your happy memories, or your most horrible ones. They focused on the worst fears and strongest desires. Dreams provided you with a release, and gave you things you want to see. Or sometimes, they provided you with a harsh reality and something you dreaded the most.

My dream, in some respect, fell into the latter category.

I was in a hospital, maybe it was Forks General, but I couldn't quite tell. The surroundings were too blurry, too obscure to really make note of which hospital I was in. All I knew I was looking for someone.

My legs carried me further and further through the empty corridors, as if something was pulling me along. I didn't know where I was going, but there was an invisible rope around my waist, leading me.

Then as I passed a closed door, I stopped, turning back to it. It seemed familiar to me, somehow, and there was a sense of enticement, drawing me in. I pushed the door open, walking inside the empty room. My eyes trained on the bed, and I walked towards it, staring at the pile of clothing that lay upon it. There was a bag next to it, but it was the clothes I looked at.

I sifted through them, only stopping when I realised whose clothes they were. They had been the clothes Alice wore the day we argued, and when my gaze turned to the plastic bag beside them, I saw the rest of her belongings.

A watch, her charm bracelet and even her cell phone sat inside the bag. The bag was waiting, waiting for a relative to come by and retrieve it. I'd seen this all before, with Maria.

"She's gone."

My head snapped up to see Robbie standing across the bed from me, his eyes blazing with an undying fury. Before I could demand for him to tell me what happened, he pushed forward, ramming the bed into my gut.

The force of it pushed me backwards, and with a start, I woke up.

At first I was completely still, and all I could hear was the sound of blood rushing through my ears. Then a moment later, I kicked the blanket away from me, ripping my t-shirt up and over my head. I was sweating, my skin was clammy, and just trying to remember what exactly happened in my dream was making my heart beat at a quick pace.

Robbie had been there, Alice's belongings…in a hospital, and as the hospital itself came back to me, I realised why it seemed so familiar to me. It had been the same room Alice had been in on Robbie's birthday last year.

Then as that piece of information came to me, the most vital part finally made itself clear. In my dream, Alice was dead.

But…how was that possible? What the fuck…What was my subconscious trying to tell me? That I'd lost Alice? That I was to blame for losing her? I couldn't fucking handle it. These dreams, they were fucking with my mind, and I wanted, needed, a way out.

My hands tangled into my hair, pulling at it. Not only did I need a way out, but I also needed to get those thoughts out my mind altogether. Knowing that a distraction was necessary, I stood up and left the room, heading for the bathroom. It was in the early hours of the morning, but it didn't stop me.

I stripped the remainder of my clothes and left them in a pile by the door. I then switched on the shower to full flow and sat down under the torrent, resting my head against my knees.

The sound of the water pounding against my back and the shower wall was loud, too loud to hear myself think.


Day Two

The ringtone to my cell started to play once again, just as it had done the two other times today. I'd ignored them both, but now that it was ringing again, I knew I had to answer it.

I grabbed the phone from the table and studied the screen. The caller ID showed it was Edward, and it didn't surprise me at all to see he was ringing. He'd told me to call and tell him what happened between me and Alice.

That had been two days ago, and I still hadn't told him.

After getting back from Alice's house, I'd gone up to my room and stayed there. When dinner had been served that night, I hadn't gone down to eat anything, and when Mom came up to check on me later, that's when I'd told her about our argument.

It had been easy to tell her, easier than I thought it was going to be. But to tell Edward, that was a whole different situation. However, I had to do it, or else he'd give up and call Alice.

Maybe he already had.

I pressed the call button, and put the phone to my ear. "Hello."

"Finally," he muttered a little impatiently. "What's going on? Why haven't you answered your phone?"

My mouth opened to lie to him, to tell him that I hadn't been near the phone each time it rang, or maybe to tell him that I just hadn't heard it. But I stopped myself before I could even a single word.

"Jasper, are you still there?"

I blinked quickly, knowing I'd zoned out. "I'm here…what did you want?"

"How did things go with Alice the other day?" he asked, getting straight to the point. "I didn't hear from you afterwards, so I thought I'd leave it a day. Did you manage to talk to her?"

"Yes, I talked to her," I told him, my voice quiet, distant.

At first, he didn't say anything, and then slowly, he said, "Something went wrong, didn't it?"

A part of me wanted to laugh, to ask: How did you guess?

"Jasper, talk to me." He paused, sounding worried. "Tell me what happened, please."

I kept my eyes tightly shut, as if by keeping them closed, I could block him out, too. "I apologised to her, like you told me to, and she reacted badly. We fought…she slapped me."

I gritted my teeth as I ground out the words. There, I'd said it, I'd listed it, listing was good. I couldn't handle the details, they were too much to process right now. But, in the back of my mind, I knew that I hadn't said enough, Edward would want more.

I gripped the phone tighter in my hand as I waited for his response.

"You argued?" he said finally, his voice quiet now, far less certain. "I can't believe…How bad was it?"

I grimaced as images of that afternoon bombarded me. "Very," I muttered tersely. "I said some bad things to her, Edward, we both said shitty things in the heat of the moment. All of it's just so fucked up now. I don't see it getting better, not after this."

The silence that passed between us said it all.

"You don't know that," he finally whispered. I could hear it, I could hear how he was reaching for something positive to grasp onto. "If you talk to her again, maybe things would change."

I stared ahead of me, confused. Had he not been listening to me? Maybe he was ignoring the part where I said she slapped me. I was the last person she wanted to see for a long time, and honestly, I wasn't sure I wanted to see her either.

A part of me wanted to ask him why the hell he was so adamant about talking to her, anyway. Did he believe that talking solved everything?

"Promise me you'll talk to her," he continued as if he'd found the positive he was looking for. Promise him? But…how could I promise him I'd talk to her when I was sure I wouldn't?

However, he sounded so certain; he had hope left in him. I couldn't squash that hope, not when there was so very little between me and Alice now.

"I promise."

I just hoped, as I finished those two, false words, that he wouldn't know that I wasn't in the right frame of mind to promise anything even remotely similar.

"Good." He let out a sigh. Relief? "You both need to work through these differences. Jas, there's something between you and Alice, and that can't be lost. Robbie's anniversary is in just over a month; I think she will need you to help get her through the day. But I have faith in this, it will work out."

My eyes closed at his words. Good, hopeful Edward, his faith was so misplaced, so wasted. I wished I had even a shred of his belief in me.

Maybe he was waiting for me to respond, but when I didn't, he went on. "A lot can happen in a month, you know that."

Yes, a lot could happen in a month. But nothing was going to happen, I could see that already.


A/N: Jasper really lost his faith there at the end. But remember that was set only two days after the argument. Not gonna lie, a scruffy Jasper totally does it for me *wink* Okay, serious again, I hate (and LOVE) writing these scenes, just because I don't like seeing Jalice apart. But there is Alice POV next; you get to see how she is dealing with all of this.

Teasers go out to anyone who reviews. Aim: 808. Epic love and an extra teaser will go out to reviewer #800.

Random question: How many chapters do you think there are left of this story? I'm interested in seeing what you guys think.