Jessica turns at to the source of the noise, anything to cure her boredom, just in time to see Edward strut in like he's on a runway.
Suddenly wide awake, Jessica follows his form, head turning like a dog who's just spotted the mailman. She passes a hand over her mouth to wipe off any excess drool from her fantasy of him seconds prior.
Holy shit. Did I summon him? Is this a speak of the devil and he shall appear moment?
Edward glances at her for a moment and Jessica straightens in her seat with an inviting, come hither smile. She meets his eyes just in time to see the expression on his face melt away into sheer apathy at the sight of her.
Damn it! Corporal, we're losing him!
"You're late, Mr. Cullen," Mr. Molini says with disapproval. Edward smoothly steps up to Molini's desk and apologizes in quiet tones. Jessica tries not to make her strained ears too obvious as she listens in.
"That's alright, Edward. Just don't do it again," Molini seems like he's suddenly in a very forgiving mood. Jessica wishes she could wield that much power with her teachers - maybe then she wouldn't be in detention in the first place.
Then again, how bad can it be considering my current choice of company?
Edward turns away from Molini with more grace than a ballerina (To be fair, ballerinas aren't actually a very good measure of grace - Jessica knows that first-hand from personal experience. No, she doesn't want to talk about it.) and smoothly pulls out a chair at the table across from hers.
Shoot your shot, Jessica! Her inner-Lauren cheers. Jessica waits until the Molini goes back to grading papers.
"So what are you in here for?" She whispers.
A curt reply: "I was late to class."
Oh yeah. Jessica remembers wondering where he was before Mike distracted her by throwing errant bits of pencil lead into her hair. Idiot. Jessica would've thrown the lead right back instead of being the bigger person and telling him to stop fucking around if she had known the act would lead her to get detention.
Jessica reinforces her smile and sympathizes.
"Yeah, Molini can be really strict about that." Jessica moves closer with a furtive look at the teacher, who's still grading.
She twirls a strand of hair around her finger idly, just like Cosmo magazine said she should.
Edward doesn't look entirely disgusted with her so she counts it as a win. She continues.
"I was late to class by three minutes once and the door was already
Edward is starting to look bored so Jessica hastens to finish her explanation and move on to a better topic.
"You wouldn't remember it. You weren't there that day because it was pretty sunny."
"What?" Jessica straightens and lets the strand of hair fall. Edward's eyes are fully focused on her now and the steely tone of his voice, coated with quiet surprise, is unusual - but still attractive.
"Uhm, yeah, you weren't there. You Cullens usually go hiking or something on sunny days, right?"
Edward knows Jessica unofficially initiated herself as the school gossip near the start of her freshman year. She's always prided herself on keeping an eye on the people around her and an ear out for any new hallway chatter about who what when where and why.
For her to know a detail like shouldn't have caught him as off-guard as it did. He shakes off the surprise like water. This can't have been the reason Alice had mentioned Jessica. There has to be something else...something he's missing, besides the girl's painfully obvious crush on him.
Edward knows if she knew what he really was, she'd go running for the hills. There are times when he is tempted to flash his fangs if it would get these stupid, naive, hopeful girls off his back, but he learned a long time ago that humanity never knows what it should be running from.
Edward breaks eye contact for a moment before looking at her again through his lashes. He sees Jessica's cheeks swell with blood and change color to a ruddy red under his gaze.
"Carlisle and Esme have always loved nature," He says, "They want us to follow in their footsteps."
Edward sees Jessica's mouth almost twitch into a frown before she smooths it back out, determined to be positive and giggly in his presence.
That sounds like a canned response, she thinks. Edward hides a frown.
This is going worse than he planned. Jessica shouldn't be able to catch him off guard as often as she does, but it seems like every time he's settled down around her and fallen into the same conversational rhythm as most of the humans he surrounds himself with, she pulls out some kind of surprise.
"I wish my parents were like that," Jessica says. She's still looking up at him through her lashes, but it looks a little painful for her now.
She's determined to be sexy, but Edward wishes there was a polite way he could tell her to stop trying. He opts to ignore the looks she keeps sending him.
"Miss Stanley, Mr Cullen," Molini says. Edward sends out a silent half prayer to a god that no longer believes in him. "Please separate. This is not social hour."
Jessica does so with a mournful sigh. Edward stays in his seat and tries to find something of interest in her head. Her propensity for paying attention to her surroundings aside, he doesn't see anything in her that could be of any interest to Alice, or by extension, to himself.
There's still twenty five minutes left of detention, but Edward has all the time in the world. He sits and waits.
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