Rosalie grabs her umbrella and steps out of her car into the icy shower of rain.
Compared to New York winters, this is nothing.
Esme's waiting for her under the eave of an ice cream shop, bundled up in a hooded Burberry trench coat and scarf.
Despite the winter weather that tends to make most people go crusty and dry, Esme's skin has a radiant glow to it. Rosalie wonders if she's been seeing a new esthetician lately and makes a mental note to ask where she went.
"I know this isn't the best day for walking around outdoors, but there are a bunch of really good restaurants and things around here if we need to take a break," Esme says as Rosalie approaches her.
Rosalie surveys the street full of small, independently-owned shops lined with parked cars. "I'm used to the rain, it's fine. Do you normally come all the way out to Ballard for the farmer's market?"
"No, but this one's close to you. The Bellevue one is seasonal, so it isn't open now. Normally I just go to the University District market with Alice, though."
They start walking in the direction of the produce stands and food trucks at the cross street.
A cafe catches Rosalie's eye. "Do you want to grab a coffee?" she asks.
"I'm trying to cut back on caffeine, but we can go."
"Oh, never mind then. I had a cup before I came, so..."
"Are you sure? It's fine with me."
Rosalie shakes her head and walks past the comforting, robust smell of coffee wafting out of the building.
"So there's something I need to tell you," Esme says, smiling, brimming with anticipation. "I have some news."
And there it is. Rosalie's heart rate rises. She immediately knows what she's going to tell her.
The glowy skin, the not drinking caffeine, and when was the last time she's seen Esme with a drink? Was she drinking on New Year's Eve? At Christmas? She remembers her pouring champagne for others, but not necessarily having any herself. There's only one possible reason for all of this.
"I'm pregnant!"
"Oh, wow!" Rosalie forces a smile, baring her teeth. "Congratulations! I'm so happy for you!"
An acidic feeling of jealousy and sadness spills through her chest down to her stomach, followed by a confusing surge of happiness for her friend.
There isn't a doubt in her mind that Esme will be a great mother, and that she deserves nothing less than a perfect baby to complete the perfect marriage she and Carlisle seem to have.
It's difficult to place her feelings.
She has to sit by and watch as another one of her friends gets to experience the wonders of marriage and motherhood while she's still not even sure if she'll be able to maintain her sanity through the rest of the year.
But she'll also be the auntie to another one of her friend's babies, and she loves that.
She misses little Henry. Vera told her he was doing a great job learning how to walk around in their last phone conversation.
He probably won't even remember Rosalie the next time she sees him.
Esme beams. "Thank you! We've been trying for a while, and I didn't want to announce it too soon, but I've been dying to tell you!"
"When are you due?"
"The first week of September. I'm exactly twelve weeks along. Oh, I'm so excited! I'm going to fix up the upstairs guest room into a nursery!"
Rosalie walks beside her friend as she enthuses about cribs, diaper genies, and wallpaper options. She listened to Vera go through all of the joys and horrors of pregnancy and raising a newborn already. It's nothing new.
"To tell you the truth, I'm really anxious about it." Esme sighs. "Because I wasn't able to carry to term last time. And I'm working now, so I have a lot of projects to finish before the baby comes...Even if Carlisle keeps telling me I can take on less work. I feel bad that he's already pulling extra hours."
Pushing her envy aside, Rosalie says the same thing she did last time. "I'm sure everything will be fine. And I can watch the baby whenever you need a break!"
"Really? Aw, thank you! You're so sweet!"
...
Emmett grabs his towel and heads for the showers. They had a solid practice today, and he's ready to get clean and get some food.
"Do you have any sports tape?" Riley asks, rubbing his knee. It looks like he pulled it again. "I left mine at home."
Emmett motions back towards the lockers. "Yeah, it's in my bag."
"Thanks, man."
Continuing on, he turns on the shower, gets in, and starts sudsing up his hair with shampoo before scrubbing his body with soap.
He can hear the sound of some of the guys proclaiming their love for cheese puffs outside of the showers. Raoul is singing a silly, taunting chant at Diego, loudly and off-key. It prompts several of the others to laugh.
Emmett finishes up and walks back to the lockers just in time to witness Fred crop dusting the entire team, making them shout and wave around various objects to get the disgusting smell of butt away. "Sick! Dude, no!"
It lingers in the air as he gets dressed.
"Hey, Em, where did you go last night?" Logan asks once it's safe to breathe again.
"Uh, more like where did you guys go," Emmett replies. They left him without saying anything when they got to the third bar.
Diego tosses a granola bar to Fred, misses, and it rebounds off one of the lockers with a metallic clang. "I bet Rose texted him so he dipped," he says. "He's gotta keep his girl happy."
"Yeah, but only after I sat around waiting on one of you to show back up. I got bored," Emmett says, straightening out his t-shirt and joggers. He also tried getting her to come out first, but she was too tired from her morning shift.
The nice thing about Rosalie living near downtown is that it's not a far trip to her apartment. It sure beats having to take a rideshare all the way back over the water to the east side in the wee hours of the morning.
Coach Steve comes out of the back office, interrupting their conversation. "Emmett, come here a minute. Bring your things."
Emmett slams his locker shut, grabs his duffle bag, and follows him into the room. "Hey, how's it going?"
"Have a seat."
"What's up?" Emmett asks, hoping this isn't going to take long. He's supposed to go over to Rosalie's house for dinner, and she said she would be cooking.
"It's about the combine."
Emmett's hopes skyrocket. "Did I get an invite?"
Coach sighs. "No, I'm afraid not."
"Shit. Really?" That sucks.
"And there's another thing. I'm going to need to take a look in your bag."
Emmett cocks a brow, baffled by the request. He sets his duffle on the desk between them anyway "Why?"
All that's in there is his water bottle, some rank-smelling socks, protein powder, and snacks.
Coach Steve rummages through the pockets and pulls out a small, plastic baggie of white powder. He gives Emmett an unimpressed look. "I didn't want to believe it, but it's true."
"Wait, that's not mine!" Emmett stands up. "I know that it was in my bag, and that sounds stupid, but I have no idea how that got in there. Do college students even do coke? I thought everyone moved on to snorting Fun Dip and drinking expired Kombucha."
"You know we have a zero-tolerance policy on this team."
"Right, but it's not mine! I swear on my life. You can ask any of the guys."
Coach shakes his head. "I don't want to hear excuses. I received multiple tips over the past month stating that you've been engaging in a variety of...activities such as driving under the influence and taking recreational drugs. This just confirms things. This was your last practice."
"What do you mean my last practice? It's senior year. There are only a few months left. Can't I stay through recruitment season?"
"I can't have you representing our school like this. Even if you don't care to acknowledge it, this affects the other players as well. Clean out your locker."
Emmett's eyes widen as he thinks through everything that's going to be affected by him being kicked out of the football program. "What about my scholarship?"
"It'll carry through winter, but you'll have to figure something out in the spring."
Slinging the now drug-free duffle back over his shoulder, Emmett exits the office with a sigh. "Fuck."
...
"Are you sure you're ready to head back to Seattle?" Jasper asks.
"Yeah, unless you think we should go see the psychiatric ward I was put in," Alice says with a note of humor in her voice. "Do you think they'd recognize me? I technically only got let out on a day pass."
He laughs. "Well, it's been more than a day. I don't remember you saying you escaped."
"Oops...well, it's over by the train station, so I just walked out and bought a ticket. I think one of the caretakers logged that my aunt was coming to get me or something," she explains softly, sounding like she's still not quite woken up. "Don't take me back there, though. I'm only kidding."
"I figured."
They already spent a good portion of the weekend wandering through town. They tried going by her old dance studio Friday night, but it's closed for renovations until next month.
It doesn't seem like she has anywhere else to go, but she insisted that they still needed to find something. She wouldn't say what. He isn't even sure if she knows.
He feels restless from their aimless searching, and the headache he's had brewing over the past three days isn't helping.
Alice chose a nice hotel, at least. He noticed the minibar didn't come stocked. While grateful, he couldn't help but think how nice a drink sounds.
A whisky on the rocks. Or bourbon. Hell, he'd go for anything at this point.
He feels a pang of guilt when he remembers what he said to her the other day. He's almost two months sober. With the exception of a night here and there.
Trying to justify it to himself, he thinks of how it was just a fifth of vodka and a bottle of wine. He was up by noon the next day on both occasions. It wasn't at all like how he was before.
His grades are a lot better. His Xanax dosage is down significantly. Considering how low the bar was set, he's virtually clean.
He doesn't want to lie to her, but he also doesn't want to let her down. He's stuck between a rock and a hard place.
"We should find a drive-through coffee place," he suggests. Caffeine will help.
"Yeah, sure."
Once they make it downstairs to the car, he helps her put her things in the trunk. He pulls out of the parking lot and heads toward the freeway at an easy pace.
Alice is still in the spacey mood she's been in all weekend.
Her hand reaches to the climate control, her glimmering white nail polish catching the sun and reflecting it back around the cabin. She turns down the air but turns up the stereo. Jasper doesn't recognize the alt-pop song playing.
"Can we stop here?" she asks abruptly.
They're only a few blocks from where they started, and the only thing around appears to be a cemetery. She's looking at it with wide eyes, fixated on the tall, mossy trees and headstones encircled in low, brick fencing.
He pulls into the drive.
The temperature is pleasant, drastically different than Seattle's, and the sky is unmistakably blue as Alice wanders through the rows of graves, pausing to read one every so often.
Something seems to catch her eye. She's looking ahead, watching a small girl dressed in a cardigan and jeans kneeling at a tombstone a few rows over.
The girl stands and begins to leave, her long, black hair blowing in the wind. It takes him a moment to place where he's seen her before. She's the girl from Alice's picture, only a bit older now and just barely taller than Alice.
"Cynthia," Alice calls out.
Her sister takes one look at her and turns the other way, walking briskly in the opposite direction.
"Cynthia, wait! I want to talk to you!"
Jasper doesn't have trouble keeping up with them, lagging behind the two as Alice chases after her sister. They're not particularly fast-moving, and he's not about to run to stop her—it would surely only scare her off more.
Cynthia shakes her head, slowing her pace. "You're not supposed to be here."
Alice catches up to her and Jasper sees her saying something too quiet to hear, seemingly trying to mitigate the girl's alarmed reaction. He hears her say something along the lines of I don't understand what you mean and can we go talk someplace?
"No, get away from me. You should be locked up like Papa and Anna-Marie. You're crazy." Cynthia jerks away from her and runs behind a cluster of trees out toward the parking lot.
Alice doesn't follow her this time. "I'm...fairly certain I didn't do anything bad before...and I just wanted to know how she's doing," she says, her shoulders drooping slightly. "Maybe I should have tried writing her first."
He nods sympathetically.
"I don't...have her contact information, though. And I don't think she wants me to have it now."
He nods again and his throat feels tight. "I'm sorry."
Alice returns to the grave Cynthia was at before, staring at the stone slab that reads Lillian Brandon in silence for several minutes, her expression indifferent.
He puts an arm around her shoulders, feeling the need to console her. He's uncertain if it's more for his sake or her own, but he can't imagine she's at all pleased with this turn of events. Like with most things, Alice went into their trip with an overabundance of hope and optimism.
"Okay. We can go home now," she says breezily, ducking under his arm and languidly plodding through the grass back toward the car.
She pulls the passenger door handle of the Aston Martin impatiently while she waits for him to unlock it.
The peppy music they were listening to resumes playing as soon as he starts the engine. Alice turns it off promptly with the tap of her knuckle against the volume dial.
"We should still be able to get back to Seattle before Wednesday," she says.
"You sure you're ready?"
"Yeah, we're watching My Fair Lady in my 10 o'clock class. I've seen it before a million times, but it's one of my favorites, so I don't want to miss it. The costumes are so fun." She pulls the visor down and looks at herself in the mirror briefly before flipping it back up. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
He hadn't noticed he was looking at her any sort of way, but he feels himself frowning. "Sorry. I'm still thinking about what just happened. I feel like this trip was..." He doesn't end his thought.
"Yeah, me too."
...
The door to Rosalie's apartment swings open as soon as Emmett's knuckles knock against the surface.
"Hey. You're late," she greets in a bored tone.
"I know, sorry. Something came up."
In the kitchen, the island is already set with two plates of pasta topped with grilled chicken.
"What happened?" she asks as she pries open a bottle of sauvignon blanc with a corkscrew. The cork breaks, dropping into the bottle. "Ugh, seriously?"
He takes a seat and leans his elbows on the countertop. "I got cut from the team because Coach found someone's drugs in my bag."
"Why were their drugs in your bag?" Her face twists into a displeased grimace. She shakes the wine bottle vigorously, making the cork crumble more. "You'd have to be dumb to let them do that."
"I didn't know they were there! That's the thing. I didn't even know anyone on the team did coke." He groans. "Now what am I gonna do? Not being on the team ruins any chance I have of being scouted on the field, and I didn't get an invite to the combine, and—Shit. Am I gonna have to become a high school football coach and teach algebra?"
Rosalie scrunches her brows as she pours two glasses of wine, cork and all, and takes a seat across from him. "Have you seen Jasper lately?"
"Yeah, he was at the house this morning."
She's thinking about something, and for the first time since arriving, Emmett has a chance to get a good look at her. The fitted white sweater dress she's wearing shows off her shoulders. Her lips are their natural pink shade. Her hair isn't as done-up as usual, but she's still super hot. Tired-looking, but in a sexy way.
"Isn't your degree in business?" she asks.
"Great, I'm going to be the personal finance teacher that everyone hates? I can't even write a check, Rose, how am I supposed to teach children to?"
She rolls her eyes. "No, I mean you have other options besides football. You can do a lot with a business degree."
He's not convinced. Business is the degree for people who want to party but don't want to major in liberal arts. "I suck at stocks. Alice tried to teach me with one of those simulation apps, and I went bankrupt within a month." Not to mention it's boring.
"Or marketing, merchandising, analyzing, consulting, entrepreneurship..." She sets down her forkful of pasta and drinks the rest of her glass, grabbing the bottle to refill it exasperatedly. "Did you pick a specialty?"
"No, that would require taking the specialty classes that are 400-level, and I don't want to do all the big presentations."
She gives him an annoyed look. "You need to schedule a meeting tomorrow to see what internship options are available. Once you find some, you'll have to ask your professors for references. There's still time to find something for Spring quarter."
"That's so much work."
"Yeah, well, you don't have a teaching degree, and that would take another two years of school, so you're going to have to figure something else out besides high school football."
Emmett nods and takes a bite of the meal she prepared. It's creamy, cheesy, and delicious. "You made this? It's actually really good."
"I'm glad it exceeded expectations," she says sarcastically.
"No, I mean, like I just assumed you didn't cook since we eat out all the time."
"Whatever," she replies, refusing the compliment. "I assume Esme and Carlisle already told you the news?"
"Oh, yeah! Oh my god, okay, do you think the baby's going to come out speaking in a British accent? Or do you think it'll talk like Esme?" he asks excitedly. "I'm betting that it sounds just like Carlisle!"
She doesn't seem interested in a potential accent. "So you're going to be roommates with a baby?"
He laughs. "I already am. Well, he's still in Italy, I guess. He'll be back soon, though, thank god. He's gonna freak when he hears that I got kicked off the team."
Rosalie nods disinterestedly, getting up from her half-eaten meal and going to the couch to sit in front of the TV.
Emmett spins around on his barstool to face her, continuing the conversation in a new direction. "I've been meaning to ask you about your trip coming up. You're going to New York again, right?"
She picks up one of the throw pillows and hugs it to her chest. "Yeah, I fly out Friday morning. Third week of March."
"What about I go with this time? I haven't been before, and you're not in meetings the entire weekend, right?"
She answers immediately. "No."
"No, you're not in meetings all day or no you don't want me going with you?"
She sighs. "Both. You need to work on a post-grad plan, and I don't want you coming with. You'll get bored."
"You're going to see your parents still, right?"
"Yes, and I'm sure it's going to be a mess." Her voice raises ever-so-slightly. "Besides, I thought you're welcoming Edward's back home. Finals will be over by then."
She has a point, and now he can't say he didn't try. "I do want to roast him as soon as he walks through the door."
Fortunately or unfortunately—he can't decide—this is one of the rare times that he was right and Esme was wrong.
