Last time...
My heart pounded furiously. I felt lightheaded, and I couldn't tell whether it was her or Maria disrupting my nervous system. I wanted to find a way to avoid the situation. Bella might be able to deal in truths, but I wasn't so sure about myself. I lived in lies. The truth could kill me.
She followed my gaze when I didn't speak. "Is this you being upset?" she asked as if stumbling on the Ark of the Covenant at the local supermarket. "If you're upset, Jasper, I can do upset. But this I can't deal with."
I didn't know what to say to that. How was I supposed to react? Anyone else would know how to act, but nothing I did came out right. I couldn't even think of an excuse that Edward would have used. I didn't need all this stress.
Bella let out a frustrated breath and stood. I tugged on her pant leg before she gained a step, my eyes shifting from the heavy clouds in the sky to her. "Don't leave," I said, almost absently. "Please?"
Intox 56
She stayed. Maybe my words wavered and she heard the sincerity in my voice, the weariness. Maybe it was when she looked at me and I met her gaze – really met it - for the first time all day. Maybe she looked into my eyes and understood.
I needed her.
Bella helped me to my feet and led me inside. We held hands, our fingers entwined, as we walked up the stairs, past the living room, and continued to the second floor to my room. For privacy. So we could talk with a door between us and the world.
My room was a disaster zone. The floor was strewn with unsorted laundry arranged in unsightly piles that I couldn't believe I'd subjected my girlfriend to. I kicked them into the corner, disgusted. The air reeked of stale cigarettes, neglected clothes and empty promises to Carlisle that, no, I wouldn't smoke inside.
Bella plopped down on my bed, which, though probably a Petri dish for some new super virus, was the cleanest spot available. She picked up my favorite pillow by the corner and sniffed it curiously. I watched from the corner of my eye, pretending to fuss about as she smiled to herself and crushed the pillow against her chest.
Fucking. Adorable.
When I had procrastinated too long, I turned around and saw her watching me. Waiting. Wanting an excuse to stay but afraid I would give her a reason to go. I sighed softly.
"I'm not avoiding you," I announced to the air.
From across the room, Bella raised an eyebrow. It said enough.
"Okay, maybe I am," I conceded, "but I'm a moody shit sometimes. Things rattle around up there-" I gestured to my temple – "and it gets bizarre. Really fucking weird."
She nodded as if she understood, and that's when I decided to give her the Mickey Mouse version of events. It wasn't a ponderous choice made with an angel on once shoulder and a devil on the other (though if it had been, my conscious would've dressed and looked a whole fuck like Edward). No, it was spontaneous. Euphemisms. Bella believed in me, and I wanted her to keep that. Someone had to have faith in me. If she wanted hard facts she could look them up in a dictionary. Jasper Hale dealt with truth in euphemisms. It was that simple.
"So I had this –" I tripped over the word – "girlfriend who was a bit of a nut job. And when I say that, just be aware that I'm saying it, okay? You've got to understand the context of the mess I got into and the shit storm that was my life when I say she had crazy eyes."
Bella frowned but remained still. "Psycho. Got it." She patted the empty space next to her. I shuffled across the room and flopped down on the bed, grateful for the reprieve from her gaze.
"It got real physical, real intense – and I mean screaming, fighting – really fast. It was just… raw. I don't know if you've ever-" I glanced over but Bella's face was already crimson, her mouth a small "o" as she digested what I was saying. She ducked her head.
I wanted to slap my forehead. Go figure I'd be telling this story to a virgin.
She shook her head.
I sighed. "She liked to play mind games, trick you into believing lies, guilt you into doing what she wanted - like, if you didn't, you'd get hurt." I wrung my hands. "I don't like getting hurt, Bella."
She leaned her head on my shoulder, hugged my arm – the one pocked with scars and fading track marks – and whispered, "I would never hurt you."
The air felt hot, stuffy, oppressive. I shrugged out of her arms, crossed the room and slid the window open. I breathed in the cool air for a minute then settled myself on the floor in front of a stack of papers. With Bella's eyes on me, I couldn't look up. Where this conversation was going, I didn't want to see her expression.
I sifted through the papers aimlessly so I didn't have to think about how Maria hurt me. How I hurt my family. How she looked at me that last day as if my leaving was an inside joke, as if I'd be back, as if I couldn't survive alone, and how that hurt the most because it was true.
"I hung around with a bad crowd," I said in a low voice. "That's where most of the rumors here come from: Lauren's cousin or something."
"Like, people saying you're in a gang?"
I grimaced. "Among other things."
Bella snorted. "As if."
"The point is that I wasn't where I should have been, and Rose got hurt because of me." I closed my eyes and took a breath before muttering, "But you know that story."
"Oh. God."
I was relieved that I didn't need to explain how I'd been fucking my abusive girlfriend the night by sister was raped. We sat quietly on our respective sides of the room. I don't know what was on Bella's mind, but I knew I had probably made her day a hundred times worse. Why couldn't we have one normal day? Just one day – hell, one hour – that I didn't ruin?
"This explains things," she said, her voice muffled. I looked up and saw that she'd crushed my pillow against herself.
I nodded, my gut twisting. I felt sick.
She mulled it over some more. "You aren't mad at me."
I shook my head. It wasn't Bella, couldn't be her. It was me. I'd already made a promise. I couldn't break it, couldn't make an exception – even for her. Accepting gray areas, half-decisions, was an easy way for the rational order of the world to fall apart, and I needed order. I was scared of her.
Bella curled her finger, beckoning me over. I climbed to my feed and shuffled closer, and she pulled me tight, her face pressed to my chest. Either my balance wavered or she pulled me down to the bed, but I caught myself inches away and our breath stopped.
I pressed my lips to hers softly and rolled onto my back. Bella settled atop me but didn't move to kiss me again. Instead she stretched across my body, her ear pressed to my chest as she listened to my heart. My fingers skimmed the exposed skin of her back. She was warm, like the touch of springtime sunlight.
She hummed, and the sound reverberated through my body. "Are you okay?"
"No, I mumbled. "I'm very not fucking okay."
"What was her name?"
My body flexed, gripping her tighter, but I forced myself to respond.
"And what you're trying to say is that you had sex with her."
"Mhmm."
"But what you don't want to say is that you won't with me. Because of what happened. That's what this is about."
She made it seem so simple. I chuckled. "Yeah, I guess so."
Bella let out a long sigh that sounded to me like a balloon deflating. For minutes she ran her fingers over my shoulder and said nothing, her nails gentle through my shirt. It would have been heaven except that I wanted to anticipate what she would say next. My brain rambled, but – as usual – I misunderstood her.
"I think we should actually talk about this later," she said.
I opened my mouth, but Bella kissed me before I had a chance to argue. My hands found her waist and pulled her closer. She was right, after all. We could talk about it later.
/MI\
No one really remembers falling asleep. The moments leading up to it are always hazy. Sometimes you fight it; you blink a little wider or try to keep your peepers open longer. But then the comfort sneaks up from behind, and it is impossible to fight against something you can't see coming.
I don't remember falling asleep, only waking up. I felt warmed to the bone, the cozy sleepy feeling that keeps people under covers on a winter morning. Without opening my eyes I could tell that Bella hadn't left; her presence was unmistakable. Thinking back, I still try to convince myself that it was just physical comfort - but I'd be lying; my brain was in tune with the lazy rhythm of my body, drifting in a blissful haze that only happened once in a million moments. I think I was happy.
The sensation faded as my brain rebooted. More alert, I could hear the quiet conversation that had been dreamlike silence a second before. A voice spoke, laughed, in the distance; Bella shushed it. I rolled into my blankets, chasing a moment that had already gone.
I opened my eyes and propped myself up on my elbows. The room had gotten darker, the weak light from the window almost extinguished by nightfall. My table light was on; Bella sat beside it with my book on her lap, but she was looking toward the figure in the doorway.
Edward straightened when he saw that I was awake. In an instant, he went from leaning against the door frame to standing at full attention, and I had a second to wonder whether it was because of me before he spoke. Even in the lowlight I could tell he was embarrassed. "Mom sent me up to, ah, check if you were ready for dinner," he said.
"You're watching me sleep?" I groaned and flopped back into a full body stretch. "That's creepy, bro."
He shrugged in acknowledgement, and I bit back a laugh. "I'd invite you in," I said.
Edward shook his head. "I'd rather not catch a disease in this war zone."
"Fuck you!" I said, but I was amused. "Tell her we'll be down in five."
I was still rubbing my eyes when we joined Edward and Alice in the living room for a game of Rummy. The absence of television created a distinct silence; I could hear pans and utensils clinking in the other room. Alice looked at me disapprovingly when I sat on the couch, as if you can't play fairly with a height advantage. I rolled my eyes and slid to the floor as Edward began to shuffle.
/MI\
Bella stayed for dinner, which turned out lucky because I didn't see her again until lunchtime Monday and then only to go over our presentation a final time. It had come together well; Bella had divided the speech into two parts. She related the environment to the human body, connecting health to the delicate balance of the Olympic ecosystem. She had assigned me to compare disease to environmental pollutants. We went over printed slides for the entire period, her making adjustments and me nodding in approval or suggesting a picture adjustment. She gave me note cards, complete with in text citations, to study. I did my best to smile.
Edward stayed at school late for community league baseball, which was just starting up and looking for members. I was surprised that he was trying out for it – not because he was bad, just that he hadn't gone to try-outs last year. Or maybe he had. Christ, I thought with sudden alarm, had he made the team last year, too? I was too embarrassed to ask.
Bella gave me a ride to Andalano's office. I didn't want to go, but it would make for bad table conversation if I skipped and, besides, Bella was meeting her dad for dinner. Chief Swan had said she was spending too much time in the kitchen fussing over his diet and not enough in her room studying, so he had decided to take her out for dinner. She wrinkled her nose slightly during the retelling, and I understood why. His restaurant of choice was the home town diner down the street, a small place where older men chewed the cud while teens loitered in the parking lot; the fries were as greasy as the burgers, and there was never enough ketchup to go around. I thought about warning her that they didn't serve salad but didn't want to cause alarm.
Andalano wasn't behind his desk when I walked into his office. The emptiness alarmed me; I stopped and double-checked the name on the door. My chair was in its place. The drapes were pulled back, leaving the customary opaque veil between me and the view I'd never seen. It was the same room as always but different.
I walked around the desk and tried looking at it from another angle. There was a great view of the door and the shelves and the chair where I usually fidgeted. I sat, squirming side-to-side in the doctor's oversized chair and scooting myself around on its metal castors. The clock was visible from one position, gone from the next; I wondered how aggravating it must be for him to have a clock visible while boring patients rattled on. Was I boring? I rejected the thought almost immediately and drew back the curtain so I could look out his window. I was fucking delightful.
The sky was overcast. It was always overcast, always gray and hanging over your head like a tragedy waiting to happen. It made the asphalt gray and the sidewalk crack; it bleached the color out of everything but the distant green mountain and the orange truck visible in the lot down the street.
I hadn't anticipated seeing Bella's truck from here, but there it was. I waited, expecting to see her in the door or a window or a reflection at any second, but all I spotted were some of the guys from Bella's old lunch table tossing a football in the side lot of the diner; they were never up to any good. I was disappearing into the sheer curtains, leaving Andalano's office behind. It felt like leering, but I couldn't stop myself. If there was a chance I could see her, I had to take it.
Chase threw the ball long. I held my breath as Mike sprinted, barely making the catch, and nearly plowed into Bella's truck. Eric was doubled over, pointing to the diner's window. Mike raised his hands and back away from the car. I thought that would be it, but a second later he was shaking his ass and dancing like an idiot in front of the window. There was only one person I could imagine him doing that to. Bella.
"Oh, I'm going to kill him," I growled, standing.
"Kill who?" said Andalano from behind me.
"Sonofabitch!" I jumped and spun toward the sound but caught myself in the stupid fucking curtains and ended up on my ass in his chair.
I'd forgotten I was in his office. He was sitting in my chair with one meaty calf crossed over his knee. He smiled at me and repeated his question.
I couldn't kill him now. My psychiatrist would know who did it. "Mike," I snapped, my fists clenching.
"Why are we killing him again?"
Well, the answer to that one was obvious. "He deserves it."
"And?" Andalano pressed.
"He's a public menace," I snarled, "and he insulted my goddamn girlfriend!"
"Just now?" He was trying to provoke me now.
"Yes."
"You witnessed it just now?"
I slammed my palm against his desktop. It stung. I took a deep breath and used the pain to anchor me before I spoke. "Yes, right fucking now, down the street." I told him what had happened.
Andalano sat back. "Well that changes things," he said.
The mockery in his voice stung me. I frowned. "What did you have in mind then?"
"Meditation," he said evenly.
I stared at him for a full five minutes without saying anything – I should know, I had the clock on my side. Andalano had never struck me as the meditating type, but now he wanted to be my stress coach. Clearly he was trying to distract me. As soon as I'd processed this I started off belligerently – it was useless, I argued, because my brain controlled its own pace. I only relented when he said I could kick off my shoes and stay in his chair. You can't buy that kind of privilege.
Instead of practicing for Alice's gallery opening that evening, I went to my room as soon as I got home. I opened my textbook and began reading all the notes Bella had made. When Carlisle knocked on my door for dinner, I told him that I wasn't hungry – and it wasn't a lie. My hands were trembling; he would have called me out for low blood sugar and made me eat, but I couldn't have eaten even if I'd had an appetite.
/MI\
"I think I'm going to be sick," I said desperately and turned to Bella, who was trying to set up her slideshow on Mr. Banner's outdated projector. Our audience looked restless, shuffling papers and avoiding eye contact as they waited to be bored – to see me fail.
Bella rolled her eyes and nudged me away from the power cord. It had taken her five minutes to position the frayed bundle of wires so that the projector stayed on. Hovering so close, I was in danger of undoing all her work. "You didn't eat," she reminded me for the fifth time.
I knew that, but somehow it didn't help. I took a step back and crossed my arms. "I feel dizzy."
"Because you didn't eat," she said, sorting through her slides a final time. I swear she'd double-checked them three times before. "Try picturing everyone in their underwear."
"Does that include you?" I joked.
"If it helps," she said, giving me a crooked smile.
I gulped. My mouth had gone dry.
Bella started us off well; our presentation showed promise until it was my turn to speak. I forgot half the note cards and resorted to gesticulation and wild analogies to explain myself. At one point I left the slides completely. I rambled on about the aftereffects of oil spills I'd seen in Alaska and the zinc contaminations Alice told me about in northeast Pennsylvania. Bella saved me, interjecting with anatomy comparisons that brought me back to the topic; I fed off her energy as I stumbled through the presentation.
Bella caught up with me after the final bell rang. We walked together as far as the parking lot, our strides matched. I smoked while the buses pulled away from the curb. Bella was assuring me that our presentation had gone well, but she couldn't know that until grades came back at the end of the week and I didn't want to think about it anymore. I tuned her out.
Mike emerged from the main building. My eyes tracked him as he left the sidewalk, crossed the median and headed toward his car. I was looking for an excuse but couldn't say I'd overseen the incident. Mike felt my stare just as Bella turned to see what had my attention. He grinned; Bella huffed and turned around. Just like that I had my excuse.
I glared at Mike. At least I could play the omniscient boyfriend card. "What'd he do?"
Bella looked at her feet and denied everything. She was a terrible liar. Something was bothering her, and I wasn't going to take no for an answer. Communication was the key to a healthy relationship, after all.
Finally, she snapped. "Can you let it go? It's embarrassing, Jasper!"
"Sure thing. Won't happen again," I said. I played it cool, but inside I was rejoicing at her reaction. She'd basically given me the go-ahead.
"You're not going to beat him up in the lunchroom, are you?" She sounded nervous now.
Why did everyone think that? Andalano had talked me down. After a quick meditation session, he'd given me some good advice that set my mind at ease. Finally.
"Of course not," I said as Mike's car left school grounds. I'd decided to be practical. I didn't want to be expelled, and Forks was a big town. Geography was on my side. There were plenty of places besides the lunchroom to make sure he never bothered her again.
