Day 1: Part 2

The Arrival of Edward, Master of the Testosterone World

I was staring at Jasper, but he refused to look at me. At first, I stared because I knew he wasn't looking at me and wouldn't look at me and I was safe to stare. Then I stared because he wouldn't look at me. I even let out a string of unnecessary profanities, but he didn't so much as blink. Just looked vaguely in my general direction.

He was odd. He moved as quickly as a normal person, I was sure, but his movements were so linear and flowed so evenly, he seemed to be moving in slow motion, like the roll of a gorgeous, curly-haired wave. He also spoke weirdly. He never used contractions, pronounced each word fully and with a sort of odd reverence, like the way a poet might speak of his work.

I didn't like it.

Rosalie, Emmett, and Jasper were having some sort of political conversation about the treatment of World War Two veterans in France and I had just managed to tug the front of my t-shirt down to reveal some cleavage before Tanya sidled up next to me and began talking incessantly about her house.

"Trellises, lots of trellises," she said, sighing in a contented sort of way. "It's beautiful, you should just see it. Ivy all over the place. It's ridiculous."

"I'd love to," I said absently, now playing delicately with my collarbone the way that a women's magazine once suggested. Nothing; Jasper wasn't so much as glancing at me. "So, Jasper," I blurted and my voice sounded angry. "Please, tell me a little about yourself."

Rosalie sighed, a deep, throaty, tired sigh. Jasper, who was staring at Emmett, paused for before slowly bringing his eyes to me.

"What would you like to know?" he asked in a smooth, velvety tone. Not a single muscle in his face resembled anything but bored indifference.

I frowned. "I don't know, surprise me." When he didn't say anything, only looked at me with a concentrated, blank expression on his face, I sighed. "What's your middle name?"

He cocked his head slowly to the side, one of his eyebrows raised. But still he said nothing. I scowled at him.

"All right," I said. "Let's try another one. Where were you born?"

"Texas," he said, simply and without effort.

"When did you come here?"

"At the age of twelve," he said and then he smiled delicately. "If you will excuse me, Bella, I was speaking with Emmett."

And then he looked away. I opened my mouth to ask him why he was such a fucking ass, but Rosalie gripped my forearm and dragged me, bodily, out of the kitchen.

"What is your problem, Bella?" she hissed when we reached the living room, throwing me onto the couch. I winced as the buttons on the back of my jeans squeaked against the dark leather. Her eyes were doing that buggy thing they do whenever she was pissed "Why can't you keep your mouth shut?"

"He's being an asshole," I snapped back, crossing my arms against my chest. "Why do you like him so much?"

"Because he's important and a good friend of ours and you need to respect that."

I opened my mouth to give her one hell of a scathing retort, but shut it when her expression changed. Her tight lips loosened a bit and she pressed them together in a gesture that resembled a fine mix between a pout and a frown. I looked away.

"Fine," I mumbled, picking myself up from the couch. "I'll go smoke instead."

She let me leave and I slammed the front door behind me in a very petulant way.

Twenty minutes later and people began to arrive for the party. There was an odd streamline quality about the rows of silver and black cars lining the edges of the street. The lack of automatic porch lights allowed me some false sense of privacy on the cement steps, and so I sat there, chain smoking and fretting about the devastations of my life, watching people park, leave their cars, and walk up the driveway. Emmett had a metal unattached garage on the side of his house where he hosted his parties and I found it inexplicably amusing to watch the guests climb their way from the streets and past the far wall of the walkway, before disappearing behind it. I was three cigarettes in and cursing my phone for not having a decent game selection when Tanya finally found me.

"Hey, you," she said and I didn't dare look at her. Between a nicotine overload and a half hour of Jasper pointedly ignoring me, I wasn't completely sure I wouldn't unleash some unwarranted, biting remark about her masterfully stupid choice of headdress.

"Hey," I said, blowing a tight ring of smoke up at her. "What's up?"

"Edward?" she asked.

I pointed at my chest. "Bella."

"Edward, what are you doing here?"

I lowered my head and followed her line of sight to see a lean, staggeringly attractive man making his way up the walkway towards us. His walk was brisk and jittery and though it was cold enough outside that even through my jeans and jacket I had a decent shiver going on, his shaky steps were clearly ones of anger.

"Why isn't he answering his phone?" he growled, approaching the porch. "I've called a dozen times in the past few hours. I need that goddamn graph for - "

"Edward," Tanya said.

" – work at seven in the morning and I haven't even looked it over! Look, I get that you guys are at one of Emmett's little parties tonight, which is why I'm here, but – "

"Edward."

" – I can't just walk into the meeting tomorrow with a fucking graph I haven't even looked over! I mean, seriously, can you go get him so – "

"Edward!"

"What?" he snapped, closing his mouth with an audible crack. "What, Tanya?"

"This," she said, gesturing rather violently at me, "is Bella."

He clearly hadn't noticed me before now, because even in the darkness that sucked out color and turned everything into a pallor of grays and whites, his ears definitely turned pink. I rubbed my legs together in response.

Oh, my.

"You'll have to excuse Edward," Tanya said, "he's usually a sweetheart, but under the right circumstances, he can sometimes be a real ass."

Edward's body seemed to sag in response. His fists, which had been balled and tucked tightly into the pocket of his pants, loosened and he took them out and spread his arms before him. "Tanya, I'm sorry. I just need – "

"Yes, yes," she said, waving a dismissive hand at him. "You need to talk to Sir, hold on." She opened the front door and stepped inside, but turned back to him. "Play nice," she said, smiling and walked inside, closing the door behind her.

"That was quite an entrance," I said, nodding appreciatively at him. I groped blindly on the dark porch until I fingered my pack of cigarettes. I slapped the pack against the side of my thigh until one popped out. I resumed searching the ground for a lighter when an unwelcomed bright light seemed to explode in my face.

"Gah," I said, the cigarette falling from my fingers. "You should probably warn someone before you do that."

He withdrew the lighter. "Oh, sorry. Um, would you like a lighter?"

"I would love one."

I found my dropped cigarette and he lit it for me before producing his own pack from inside his jacket.

"Mind if I sit?"

"You're not going inside?"

He shook his head and I gestured to a spot next to me and he sat, gracefully stretching his long legs out from beneath him. His height allowed for his legs to bypass each of the porch steps and so he sat, crossing his ankles and leaning back sloppily on one of his hands.

"So," I said, mentally shooting multiple pleads at my vag to behave herself. "You're a friend of Jasper's?"

He cleared his throat and looked over at me. If Jasper was gorgeous, then this man was the crown and sash of the testosterone world. His he had a relatively large forehead, only made taller by his unruly mess of reddish hair, which sat surprisingly high on his head. It stuck out infinitely disarrayed angles, giving one the impression that it was purposefully disheveled. His face was a mess of angles and sharp corners, but they followed so evenly and fit so correctly together, that they ultimately softened the planes of his face. He had a straight, linear nose, much like Jasper's, but his mouth was smiling in a crooked, lopsided way that sent my legs jellying.

"Are you his brother?" I asked, before he could respond to my first question.

He frowned. "Yes," he said, "well, I guess you could say he's my adoptive brother."

"So you're not a Whitlock, then?"

"Jasper's not a Cullen."

I raised both of my eyebrows at him in a look that clearly conveyed that I totally picked up on what he said, but he was now looking away from me, drawing in on a lazy puff of his cigarette.

"Sorry," he said after a moment, "that was an awkwardly intimate bit of information I gave you there. I'm annoyed with him at the moment." He slumped forward and stuck his hand out to me. "Edward."

"Bella," I said, shaking it. "You should teach your brother about the proper etiquette of greeting someone."

"He didn't shake your hand," he said, and I could see, by the way he pressed his eyebrows together, that he meant for the statement to be a question. But his voice dropped on the last word and it became a statement instead.

"Ah," I said. "A repeat offender. Is he a germ-a-phobe or something?"

"Something," he said. "And he is currently holding a graph he made for me hostage in his house." He turned to give the front door a pointed look.

I took a deep drag of my cigarette, squinting my eyes at him.

He pulled the edge of his mouth upward when he noticed me looking at him in a way that made me want to spread my legs.

"Yes, Bella?"

"So Jasper really is a douche, it's not just a show?"

He turned his head to me, a look of pure incredulity on his face.

Feeling like I had crossed some sort of invisible line, I amended, "I mean, he seems to treat Tanya with respect."

"He does," he said, taking another long, lazy drag from his cigarette.

I blushed furiously and shifted my feet on the ground. Holy mother of God, I thought to myself, trying to stifle the bubble of panic in my stomach, can you not keep your geedee mouth shut for two fucking seconds? Enough time to not make a complete and utter ass of yourself?

In one, two. Out one, two.

"Um, you all right there?"

"Just chastising myself for being helplessly inappropriate," I said, attempting to shrug in a nonchalant way. I rubbed my face in an effort to calm it down.

The front door opened and Edward and I both turned to it as Jasper emerged. I stood up immediately, but when Edward didn't move, I sat back down and then blushed angrily. Jasper was leaning stiffly on the frame of the door, one foot planted on the ground, the other crossed at the ankle so the weirdly pointed toe of his boot rested on the marble slab in front of the wooden floor of the foyer.

"Where's my graph, my dear brother?" Edward asked.

Jasper blinked once, but then he smiled and the gesture sent a flurry of goose bumps up and across my arms. The light coming from the inside of the house that spilling onto the darkened porch muted Jasper's body and turned it into a silhouette. Aside from the white of his teeth and the soft halo of light that the slight frizz of his hair caused above his head, he was completely shrouded in shadow.

"The graph is at the manor," he said and I scoffed, much louder than I had intended, which caused both men to look at me.

I pressed my chin against the thin fabric of my knees. "I'm sure it's a beautiful manor," I mumbled.

"Here," Jasper said. He delicately tossed a set of keys to Edward, who caught them. "Tanya and I will be staying here well into the evening. Please bring them back when you are finished. The graph is in the office in the north wing."

"Thanks," Edward said and we both watched as Jasper bowed to Edward, turned slowly on his heel, and reentered Emmett's house, closing the door softly behind him.

"Care to take a drive?" Edward said, dangling the keys near my face. I swatted them away.

"Yeah, I don't really know you," I said. "You could be a . . . serial killer or something. You know, take me away in your shiny car, tell me I'm beautiful, and then lock me inside your creepy house in a stone pit with a bottle of lotion asking me to – "

Edward chuckled lowly and from our delicious proximity, I could almost feel his chest rumble. "All right, all right." He rose from the porch and wiped the back of his ass of with his hand. "It was good meeting you, Bella."

I nodded at him and watched as he made his way back down the walkway. I collected my purse from the porch and scampered to my car. I threw my bag into the passenger seat and hopped into the driver's, sticking the key into the ignition and smiling slightly as the monstrous truck roared to life. I pulled out of the driveway as my phone trilled loudly, signaling a text message. I flicked it open.

Is that you I hear leaving?

The text was from Emmett.

Yeah, sorry. Not really feeling the party tonight. I had a good time tough, thanks for the invite.

He replied a moment later.

She would not shut up about how much you loved her hat. You're a good friend, though I'm a little worried about your Christmas present.

I sighed and wiggled my finger over the keyboard of my phone.

Not a problem, don't plan on seeing her again.

Oh? Why not.

Well, Jasper is an ass and Tanya's just too . . . I don't know.

For fuck's sake. You know you want this, Bella. I thought this was the whole point. To meet people. There are a lot of friendly and good Doms here, quite a few who aren't with anyone. You sure you want to bow out like this?

I could almost hear the derision in his words and I shifted in my seat, a little uncomfortable. I had been reckless with Emmett and Rosalie's gift; finally getting the balls to attend one of their parties only to leave after a couple of hours. I had come, in some odd way, to rediscover the part of me that had been so indelicately ripped from me after James, and had left just as confused and frustrated (though a bit more sexually excited) as I had come. Perhaps this isn't what I wanted at all.

But then I thought of Jasper. Well, not quite Jasper, but the way that Jasper and Tanya interacted. The sweetness, the almost palpable love and affection, and I gritted my teeth together.

That's what I wanted. Wanted it so badly that I could almost feel a ghostly pressure on my chest knowing I didn't have it. A pressure of want, need, desperation, and longing, all wrapped up in the pleasant realization that I was going to have to work my ass of to get it. Attending the party was a decent, though failed, first step.

I hesitated for a moment before blindly punching in the keys.

Does she have my phone number?

A moment later, my phone trilled again.

I already gave it to her!

Fuck you.

I felt like an outsider. Again. After my decade-plus long friendship with Emmett and seeing his constant interaction with Rosalie, James's appearance in my life had given me what I had been witnessing between the two of them: unyielding love and a sense of purpose. But even as a sub, I was difficult. I was crass, too witty, and generally too tactless to ever be properly considered as a "good" sub. Jasper's reaction had cemented it and now I was at an even greater loss in my purpose than I had been after arriving.

I drove to the only gas station in the area that sold my cheap-ass menthols and paid for the five-dollar pack with two single bills and three in loose change. On my way out the door, I swiped a bottle of Dewar's from a display case near the exit.