Emmett throws a scoop of pre-workout in the blender along with an assortment of random frozen produce he finds in the freezer and hits the power button.

VRRRRRRRR.

On the other side of the kitchen island, Rosalie scrolls through her phone in navy blue scrubs. Her hair's pulled back sleek and low like she usually wears it for work. A piece of toast and yogurt sit in front of her.

Having her around the house on a morning when he has class and she has work is a strange new development. Especially when she's been ignoring his texts at a higher than usual rate, too. He didn't expect her to show up out of nowhere in the middle of the night like she did.

"Do you think she's prettier than me?" Rosalie asks as soon as the blender stops.

"No," he answers immediately. "Who?"

"Bella."

She's insane if she's seriously questioning his opinion on this. "No," he repeats.

"That's it? No?" she presses.

"She's okay. I wouldn't call her ugly, but she's not my type. You're way prettier and better at sports, babe."

She takes a bite of her yogurt. "One of the other nurses just announced she's getting married this week, too."

"Carlisle and Esme are the only ones I know doing the whole settling down thing."

"My best friend back home is married with a baby, and most of my old classmates are either engaged or married," she says. "I'm the only one who isn't."

"Do you only hang out with people older than us? Most of my friends from football have trouble keeping a girlfriend longer than a few weeks. Even Edward was single up until this past year. And Alice thinks babies are gross." He laughs.

Her eyes narrow. "Why would anyone think babies are gross?"

"Because they kind of are. They drool, throw up, and poop on you all day, then cry about it," he replies frankly. Alice is particular about her clothing staying in pristine condition. Everyone who knows her knows that.

"I love babies. They're so cute, and they smell good." Rosalie rests her chin in the palm of her hand, not a trace of humor on her face. "I'm happy for Esme especially. She's going to be such a great mother."

"I don't doubt that, but I can't say I envy her and Carlisle."

This catches her attention. "You don't want kids?"

He doesn't even have to think about it to know his answer. "Not anytime soon. They're a huge money and time investment."

"Fair. When do you think you would?"

"I don't know. There's still a lot I want to do, and most of it doesn't involve being a dad right away."

She looks at him like he just told her he eats pieces of drywall for fun.

"Why? When would you want kids?" he asks. They've never discussed anything serious like children before. Her plans can't be too drastically different than his own; they're the same age.

"Whenever I get married. Ideally by the time I'm twenty-five."

He takes a swig of the smoothie he made and tries not to choke on it as he contemplates this shocking new piece of information. A three-year goal—not to mention the fact that she would have been married by now, had things worked out with her ex-fiancé—means she wants them as soon as possible, if not yesterday.

"What's the rush?" he asks.

"There is no rush. It's just what I want to do." She gets up from her seat. "I have to go to work."

He can tell she's not happy with his answer. "This isn't going to make things weird is it?"

He knows Rosalie specializes in pediatrics, and she did spend a ridiculous amount of time online looking at clothes and things for Esme's baby shower, but he didn't think she wanted one herself right yet. Even if the little shoes are pretty cute.

"I'm going to be late. We'll talk later," she says, rinsing her dishes in the sink and continuing toward the front door.

This is definitely going to make things weird.

...

"Thanks, man," the scraggy brunette guy says as he hands Jasper a fifty in exchange for a baggie of tablets.

They had a math class together last year but never spoke. Jasper doesn't recall his name. "Yeah, no problem."

He picks his beer back up from its resting place on the stair banister and takes a drink as his latest customer disappears off into the party.

Hanging from the roof of the big warehouse is a congratulatory banner for the graduating class. Colorful banners, streamers, and balloons litter the dingy grey building to mark the occasion.

The only familiar face he can name is Peter's, despite there being a few hundred party goers packed inside. Jasper had to get a ride with him because he's still too buzzed from the party they just came from.

Peter's talking about wanting to move into his own place, maybe somewhere out of state now that he's finished with school. He's asking about some of the juniors Maria's been keeping in their rotation. He knows the one Peter really wants to ask about is Charlotte; but, Jasper doesn't care to tell him anything. He just wants to find a spot to sit down for a while.

His vision's starting to darken and fuzz out at the edges. His body feels like it's underwater.

"It's about time you got here," Maria says as she saunters over to him. She's in her favorite black dress—the one he's seen her in too many times to count—and her red lips curl up in a mischievous smile. "We need to talk."

Listlessly he follows her through the crowd, past laughing and dancing people too drunk to know what indoor voices or personal space are, to an empty supply closet.

"Hurry up," Maria says, pulling him inside and shutting the door behind them.

While it is quieter inside the little room, it doesn't seem like she wants to talk about anything. Her long, burgundy nails are already working at his belt.

"I need you," she lilts, pulling him with her as she leans back against the wall. "Now."

It's a routine interaction. They've done this countless times.

One of her high heels digs into his leg. He wonders why he's going along with this still.

When she's finished, he sets her back down and pulls his jeans up, runs a hand through his hair to smooth it. He shouldn't have done that.

It doesn't matter how much he intoxicates himself or how many times they hook up. He's never going to feel okay about their relationship.

He loved her. He thought she would come to terms with the fact that they're more than just...whatever it is they are. But that won't happen. He's wasted over five years screwing up and screwing over himself—and just about everyone else he's ever met—in the hopes of finding some elusive happiness with Maria while she's still in love with her real boyfriend.

There's no end goal or destination. There's only an abyss of inadequacy and inebriation. His entire body feels so numb.

Maria eyes him curiously. She looks almost worried. Afraid. "Are you—"

Are you okay? No, she wouldn't ask that. Are you going to betray me? Maybe.

A sudden shrill scream comes from outside. "Aaaaah!"

They follow the sound of commotion and see an opening in the crowd. The guy he sold pills to is sprawled out on the floor shaking. Vomit runs down his face and shirt.

Jasper already knows what's going to happen next.

He grabs his phone and starts to dial 911 anyway, but he can't find the right buttons. It's all so blurry. He tries to remember where they are on the number pad. Top left? No, right. The center button, maybe?

"Hand whatever you have left to Charlotte and let's go," Maria's voice says in his ear.

The room is getting cold. People are leaving. The lights are fading.

Peter grabs Jasper's phone out of his hand. "Hey, we gotta go. Police are on their way."

"He's dying," Jasper says. His stress levels rise.

Sirens start to wail outside, coming closer.

He hears Charlotte's worried voice cut through the noise. "Peter..."

Peter claps him on the shoulder roughly. "Last Chance, Jazz."

Jasper can't leave even if he wants to. He's glued to the spot.

How many others has he done this to? How much longer until he's in the same position?

Nettie screeches, her heels clicking across the tile floor. "What the fuck, Maria?! Wait!"

"Jasper!" Lucy calls from across the now empty warehouse, her voice echoing harshly off the steel and concrete. "Where did Charlotte and Peter go? Did you drive?"

The nameless guy isn't moving anymore. He stopped breathing.

He's out of time. It's over.

Red and blue flashing lights flood the room. The sirens and music still playing over the venue's speaker system are getting unbearably loud.

Waaaaah! Waaaaah!

Jasper wakes up to the sound of a French pop song, the string-heavy melody whimsical and weaving.

He's in his room in Seattle. The sun outside his window hasn't risen yet. He remembers he has class later.

Alice stretches beside him, yawning as she sits up and turns off her alarm. She rubs his shoulder, urging him to get up too.

"Morning," she murmurs.

...

"Edward, a moment?" Carlisle asks between sips of coffee. He's standing beside the kitchen sink, still dressed in pajamas. It's his day off.

Edward pauses mid-stride on his way through to the garage. "What's up?"

"How are you doing?"

Not again. He's had to answer the question almost nonstop since returning home. "Great, I'm going to pick Bella up on the way to campus because her truck has been having issues."

"Have you booked an appointment with Dr. Richardson since you've been back?"

"I don't need to go to therapy again," Edward says with a shake of his head. "I feel fine."

"I see. Well, I'm glad you're feeling better." Carlisle takes another sip of coffee. "I'm still slightly concerned. I understand you're dealing with a lot of major life changes at the moment, including getting engaged, and it's only been a few weeks since you, well..."

"I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Bella and thought I wouldn't be able to. Now that I am, there isn't an issue."

Carlisle gives him a doubtful look. "I think it might be wise to schedule time with a professional even if you feel that way."

"You're the one always telling me how great being married is," Edward accuses. "Is this because Alice said something?"

He's doubtful she would try to betray him now of all times—especially since he just paid her off with a brand new sports car—but she's known to play by her own rules.

"No, why? Did you get into another fight?" Carlisle asks.

"No, how would I? I've seen her twice in the past three weeks. Does she even live here still?"

"Yes, I saw her yesterday."

"Because I told her to come by so I could give her the Porsche!" he groans. "It was Esme, then? Tell her she doesn't need to worry."

"I don't know that there's anything I can say to make her not worry about something like that," Carlisle replies with a frown. "Though I've certainly tried."

Carlisle worrying about him is one thing, but Esme is entirely another. When Edward first returned home, she was extraordinarily distraught. He hadn't even thought of how Esme would react to the news when she heard he was trying to jump to his death. He was selfishly focused only on himself and hisi relationship with Bella.

Guilt twists in his chest. He turns on his heel and heads back through the living room and up the stairs to Carlisle's office.

He knocks on the door, anxious to explain himself.

"Come in," Esme replies.

The furniture has all been pushed to one side in preparation to move it downstairs to the library. Boxes and bins of baby stuff are piled up around the floor.

Esme's sitting at the desk painting a woodland scene in watercolor. "Oh, good morning, Edward."

"You know I'm okay, right?"

"Of course I do." She turns in her seat toward him, and her brows pull up in the middle slightly. She must not believe him.

"I'm not going to do anything drastic. I'm one-hundred-percent fine."

She nods, but she's still frowning.

"I'm serious, Esme, I won't. I don't know what I was thinking."

"I do," she says, her eyes getting watery. "And you would have regretted the decision the second you made it."

His shoulders slump. He's a terrible person for making Esme cry again. He feels the same way as when he would make his mom cry. Even when he's an ass and causes trouble around the house, she's always treated him with the utmost kindness. She's practically family.

And this time Esme's pregnant. The stress he's adding onto her plate isn't good at all for her or the baby. He needs to find a way to quickly put a bandaid on the situation.

"I'm going to go back to therapy later this week," he lies.

"Oh, good. That's good! I've...been going twice a week. Once with Carlisle and once without. It's helpful to go even if you think everything's fine..." She dabs her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater.

"Is, um, everything going okay?"

"Yes, the baby's healthy. I'm healthy. There's just a lot of things to do before September."

Slam.

Emmett comes barging into the room suddenly. He's sweaty like he just came back from his morning jog. "Esme, is baby fever contagious?"

"Sorry, what?" she asks, still trying to dry up her tears.

"It's not a real illness, idiot. It's like senioritis," Edward answers.

"I have senioritis, Edward! My academic counselor diagnosed me with it last quarter."

"He was telling you that your grades suck."

"Yeah, well, you wouldn't know what it's like. You're not even a real senior," Emmett argues back. "Hey, you didn't make Esme cry, did you? Esme, do I need to kick his ass again?"

"No, no fighting!" she objects with a laugh. "I was just talking with him about how happy I am that he and Bella are engaged."

Emmett drops his comedic tough guy act. "Oh, yeah! I saw Alice got a Porsche. Where's my best man gift?"

Edward rolls his eyes. "She's not Bella's maid of honor; she's just helping with planning, but what do you want?"

"Pizza every weekend until the end of summer and proofread my resume?"

"Done. Email me it, and I'll look at it this weekend."

"Thanks, bro."

Edward looks down at his watch. He'll have to speed if he wants to get Bella and himself to class in time. "I have to go. I'll see you both later."

"Yeah, yeah, everyone's always gonna be late. Have fun with your future wifey," Emmett teases.

...

Jasper gets into the passenger side of Alice's new yellow Porche. She's already behind the wheel smiling, picking a song on her phone to play over the sound system.

Her newfound level of excitement and happiness hasn't wavered since she picked him up from class yesterday afternoon. It's great to see her so elated and bubbly.

Despite the joyous mood of the morning, though, he's having trouble shaking the melancholy his earlier dream brought.

"It drives so smoothly!" Alice comments as she pulls out from the side of the street carefully, focused on keeping her new car in pristine condition.

"Yeah, it's a nice car."

She's surprised by his unintentionally sullen tone. "What's wrong?"

"Slept weird. Bad dream."

"I get those sometimes too. They usually come true," she says in a way that surely is meant to be more reassuring than it is. "What was yours about?"

He looks down at his hands, his shoes, anything to avoid eye contact. "A party I went to last year, I guess. I keep having ones about things that happened already, but they're not quite right. Something's always off."

"Are they really scary?" she asks, changing the song on the radio with a tap of her manicured sunshine yellow nail. She coincidentally—or maybe not coincidentally—had them done in the same color as the Porsche earlier that week.

"No, not scary," he replies, shifting his gaze out the window at the bridge and lake they're crossing over. "They're more like anxious, I guess. Or sad. Do you ever have dreams like that?"

"Hm...I don't think so. I don't have much to relive, I guess." She shrugs. "Oh! I had an interesting vision-y dream earlier this week where you told me you kept having dreams about Maria. And it was in this car. And the weather was just as sunny. And you were wearing that shirt."

The guilty feeling he was slowly attempting to work through all morning is back in full force.

She's concentrating on the road, seemingly unaffected by his inner turmoil and the truth of the matter. Her pastel yellow eyeshadow brings out the little yellow-centered daisies embroidered into the fabric of her ivory sundress. A pearl clip pins back one side of her short, flippy hair.

"That was what you were talking about just now, wasn't it?" she asks.

"Yeah."

"She lives on the other side of the country, so you don't have to see her again if you don't want to." Alice shrugs. "I don't know what it feels like to be in that situation, but she can't be all bad if you were friends and liked her all those years, though, right?"

Alice isn't wrong. The difficult part was that it wasn't all bad. He had a lot of fun over those five years with Maria. It just wasn't enough to out weight the cost of that fun.

Over the summer and into a good portion of the fall, he missed her quite a lot, but that feeling's faded since then.

If the constant feelings of anxiety, depression, and emptiness during his and Maria's trysts weren't enough the first time around, the night terrors are enough to get the message home. They wanted very different things throughout their non-relationship.

But back when Peter and he were just roommates, and Jasper didn't have any close friends to speak of, Maria was there. It felt like she was the only one who cared. She took him in, gave him a job, helped him become friends with Peter, and still, he feels nothing but pain when he thinks back on it all.

It hurt to be with her, and it hurt to leave her.

Maria was the first girl he'd ever kissed or slept with, the first one who'd seen his scars, the first one he'd gone to college parties with, drank with, did hard drugs with, and got arrested with.

She provided him the opportunity for a means to live and a means to die.

Jasper feels Alice nudge him in the bicep with her hand. "Are you freaking out?" she asks.

"Sorry, thinking."

"Maybe we should go back to sleeping at the house. I think you sleep better there," she suggests, reaching out blindly for his hand. He takes it and lets her lace her fingers through his. "I talked with Edward about having you over, and he's agreed to a truce."

"He has?"

"Yep! I finally got a chance to sit down and talk with him about how great you are," she affirms. "Plus that class that you have together and us hanging out all together seems to have helped him chill out."

"Does he put everyone through the wringer when he first meets them?" It's strange he had such a drastic change of heart.

"Well, he was upset that I stole his room for like a minute, but he got over it as soon as he learned I can see the future and we have a mutual love of David Bowie and late Victorian aesthetics," she says. "I wouldn't take his stubbornness personally. It takes him a long time to warm up to people."

He nods, thinking over the conversation he had with him on Monday. It was the first actual conversation they've had.

Alice looks over at him, smiling. "How long has it been? Just over four weeks now?"

She's referring to his sober streak.

"Yeah," he answers. "Thank you for always checking on me."

"Of course. I love you. Maybe even more than this Porsche. You know how much I love this Porsche."

He breaks into a smile, too, laughing. "What an honor. I love you, too."