Chapter 2
The year I turned 13 I threw a big sleepover birthday party at my house. I had just redone my room, changing from the powder blue that it had been since before I could remember to a pale, feminine pink. I know, right? But cut me some slack, I was 13 years old for shit's sake. The twin bed got traded in for a double and my mom gave me the tall dresser and matching dressing table with the big round mirror she'd had in her room. I got rid of all my stuffed animals, except of course my purple Popple, which I still sleep with every night. It was a physical representation of the transition from childhood to adolescence, which at the time felt like adulthood.
I invited pretty much anyone I considered even remotely a friend; surprisingly they all accepted. The day before the party I saw Jane Hytower in the hallway and impulsively asked her to come. She was even a bigger social outcast than me, not really a part of the clique I was on the fringes of, but not part of any other cliques either. She was a loner, and when I saw her standing by her 7th grade locker all by herself while a group of us giggled excitedly about the next night's plans, I couldn't seem to help myself. As everyone else headed off to class, I invited her over for the night. I don't know that I've ever seen eyes light up like that. I think it may have been the first time anyone had ever invited her to a group activity. I could relate.
So began the friendship between myself and Jane. Overnight we became "best" friends, as 13 year old girls tend to do. My older cousin Marcus had been staying with us that year as he did on and off, and Jane fell head over heels for him the second she came through my front door. Marcus, being the whore that he was, was never one to waste an opportunity. Operation get in the virgin's pants commenced immediately. Nothing more than harmless flirting occurred at my birthday party, but seeing him again plus her general loneliness was great motivation for Jane to quickly become my BFF.
What was my motivation? Well, when I first accepted her invitation for a sleepover the following weekend, it was simply my own loneliness. The second I walked into her house and caught sight of her older brother, Alec, heading up the stairs to his room it became a little more self-serving. This was why our friendship didn't last like mine and Rosalie's did. We were friends and confidantes and we both came from families that were fucked up in one way or another so we had a lot of common ground, but a lot of our relationship was based on a simple concept of access. When we hung at my house she had access to Marcus. When I was at her place, I had access to Alec.
Jane was a year older than me, Alec five years my senior. My birthday was near the end of the school year, so I met him and our "relationship" (for lack of a better word) spanned most of the summer between 7th and 8th grade. Jane's mother hated me. She said my family was from the wrong side of town, but only when I wasn't around. When I was she was so condescendingly snide that I wanted to smack the thick layer of make-up she always wore right off her face. It was especially ironic since she and her husband were both closet alcoholics and seemed to really hate each other, but stayed together for appearance's sake. In order to bribe her into letting us have a sleepover, Jane and I would clean the entire house, including vacuuming and mopping. It was my summer of slave labor.
Obviously she wouldn't have approved of me as a girlfriend for her golden boy, and she made no secret of the fact that she favored Alec over Jane. Like the old dog she was, she seemed to have a sixth sense for the attraction between Alec and myself; she watched us like hawks whenever I was in the same room as him. It's kind of funny to me now to think of how she seemed worried that I was going to lure him into debauchery with my feminine wiles. I was an inexperienced virgin at the time and he certainly was not. Her attitude just forced us to be extra-stealthy in our contact, which just added to the romance in my 13 year old mind. An illicit love affair, forbidden by our parents, fighting against all adversity to lead to our happily ever after. Yeah, I can admit now how totally fucking naïve I was at some point in my life.
Our entire relationship was one big cliché. Alec wanted into my pants in the worst way. I still thought I would save myself for marriage. I remember we'd talk on the phone at night after his mother went to sleep, but I can't remember for the life of me what we could possibly have talked about. Probably a lot of blithering about how much we loved and missed each other.
When together, it was always the same: him pushing against the limits I'd set, me constantly saying no, but going a little further every time. He'd show up at my window late at night and I'd sneak out to roll around in the grass in the back yard. He'd drive over to my house during the day and I'd go out to his car to mess around in the backseat. We'd wait until his mother was passed out drunk, and then he'd tap the wall between his and Jane's rooms as the all clear to sneak into his bed to fool around.
He used all the lame-ass lines that I was warned about too late for the knowledge to actually have helped me out. "I love you so much." "It hurts me so bad when we have to stop." "If you loved me, you'd show me." "You know I can get really sick from stopping without release?" Did I mention that he was almost always in some state of drunkenness? Yeah, the alcoholism gene was really strongly expressed in the Hytower family. Jane had some issues with it later in life. I still get nauseated by the smell of alcohol breath mixed with toothpaste.
The beginning of the demise of our love – hopefully you can hear the sarcasm there – happened near midsummer. On one particular evening, we had not managed to make it all the way to Alec's bed. Instead we were lying on his carpet not far from his door. It was the same old shit, different night: Alec drunk as a skunk and desperately fondling the little bit of breast that I had and declaring his love for me as he tried to get his hand down my sleep shorts. My protests repeated timidly while I tried to keep his hands above my waste. In the end I seemed to lose the battle, mainly because I thought I loved him and was desperately afraid that he'd get sick of my always denying him. He got my shorts pulled down and shoved his penis between my thighs, in and out, in and out, while I laid there complacently, vaguely wondering what he was doing. Suddenly, he pulled back from me and I felt him twitching against my lower thigh while wetness spread across my leg.
In some recess of my mind, I guess I understood that he had ejaculated, but really I didn't know enough to label it with terms like coming or getting off. He got off me and crawled into bed. I went back down to Jane's room and crawled in with her. She took one look at my face and asked me what happened. I responded with, "I think I just had sex with your brother."
After a bit I went back in with Alec. I sat down at the edge of the bed and looked down at him in the darkness. I finally worked up the nerve to ask him if we'd had sex. He said yeah. I put my head on his chest and started to cry a little. He asked what was wrong. I told him I thought 13 was a little too young to have lost my virginity. He patted my back a couple of times and told me he was really tired. I went back to Jane's room and she held me until I fell asleep.
It wasn't until later, after I'd actually had something in my vagina for the first time – James' finger – that I realized I hadn't had sex with Alec. He'd just masturbated himself using my thighs. I wondered for a long time if he realized that we hadn't had sex and just said we did in hopes that I would give it up more freely then, or if he was really too drunk to know the difference. In the end I decided on the latter, because after that night, he hardly ever called anymore. I'm pretty sure he thought he'd gotten what he was after. When I called him, our conversations were short and unfulfilling. He stopped responding when I'd tap our signal on the wall between his and Jane's room. If I kept trying I'd hear his voice through the wall telling us irritably to knock it off. He never came right out and said he was done with me; he just started ignoring me and brushing me off.
Around the same time, my mother's friend Esme asked me if I could stay with her for the rest of the summer to watch her daughter Bree. Esme's son, Emmett, a tall skinny nerdy guy six years my senior, was going overseas to see his father for a few weeks. Bree was 8 and couldn't go because Esme didn't trust her ex-husband to actually send her back when the summer was over. Bree needed more of a companion to keep her occupied and out of trouble than she needed a babysitter, so Esme hired me. She talked my mom into letting me move into Emmett's room for those weeks so I wouldn't have to get up early to be there when Esme left for work. I was surprised that my mother agreed, but such was the power of friendship. She didn't trust me much, but she trusted Esme just fine.
My summer was coming to a close. I was heartbroken for the first time in my life, believing I had given myself to a boy who suddenly wanted nothing to do with me. I was desperately trying to hang on to him, even as he started dating a girl only two years younger, a girl his mother approved of, a girl from the right side of town. I was calling him at night and then crying myself to sleep when he'd tell me he couldn't talk. I was depressed and feeling pretty shitty about myself. And that was when I met Emmett and Bree's cousin, Edward Cullen.
All this sordid ancient history went spiraling through my mind as I made my way across the deck towards the bathroom, veering for the doors further away from where Edward was leaning against the inside wall talking to a group of friends, a longneck clutched in his hand. Despite my inebriated state, I was desperately trying to figure out why he still had this effect on me after so many years had gone by.
I replayed the scene when I first saw him in my mind as I went, making sure to keep my hair down over the side of my face enough to block it from his view while still being able to keep him in my periphery vision.
I had been in the back sun porch of Esme's house playing Mario Brothers with Bree. Emmett was due to leave in a couple of days. I had already started staying the nights over, because Esme was working and Emmett didn't want to have to deal with Bree. It was fairly early still, and I hadn't bothered to change out of my long nightshirt or grab a shower yet. I distinctly remember having not washed my hair yet that day, just wet it down and pinned some back on one side. It was permed back then and my bangs had gotten long, so I had it parted on the side and they hung partially obscuring one eye. I remember all this because when I heard Emmett speaking to someone in the kitchen and stood up with the Nintendo controller in my hand to investigate, I was stunned to see a gorgeous boy standing in the doorway looking back at me and immediately evaluated how much of a mess I must look in my head while we stared at each other. He actually looked just as stunned to see me.
I was vulnerable and broken, having just been used and thrown away like the garbage Mrs. Hytower thought I was and ripe for being swept off my feet by the smallest gesture. Edward was ethereally beautiful, bathed in a ray of sun from the windows that glinted off his bronze hair, and so completely out of my league but looking at me like he hadn't quite figured that out yet. So I understand completely why my heart started racing and the blood suffused my cheeks and my palms started sweating and I had that strange sensation of falling even though the floor was still planted firmly beneath my bare feet.
What I didn't understand was why nine years later, when I was no longer vulnerable or broken or even romantic in any way, seeing him for the first time in at least six years had my heart racing and blood suffusing my cheeks and my palms sweating and feeling the sensation of falling even though the floor was still planted firmly beneath my sandaled feet.
I made it into the women's bathroom still pondering this whole conundrum. Sometime during my record breaking pee, I chalked it up to a combination of the alcohol in my system and the suddenness of his appearance after all these years. Certainly it couldn't be anything other than that. Thirteen year old Bella Swan might very well have reacted with her heart on her sleeve, but twenty-two year old Bella Swan wasn't even sure if she still had a heart. If I did, it certainly wasn't on my fucking sleeve. It was buried down somewhere behind some pretty impenetrable walls where even I couldn't reach it. And that's where it was staying.
After that little fortifying pep talk, I washed my hands and exited the bathroom, again careful to keep my face hidden behind my thick hair. I was only feet from the door to the outside deck, congratulating myself on having made the trek unseen, without too much obnoxious peeking at Edward Cullen, and certainly no embarrassing moments when I suddenly heard, "Holy Shit! Bella Swan!" shouted across the room.
I recognized the voice immediately and a huge smile lit up my face even as my stomach clenched into a knot and my many Tequila Sunrises threatened to make a reappearance. I turned, willing my eyes to land on the owner of the voice and no one else, but dammit if Jasper P Whitlock wasn't standing right next to Edward with his arm around his shoulders. Honestly, fuck my life.
My eyes locked with Edward's like they were bright green planets with their very own force field and his looked as wide as mine felt. Suddenly it was déjà vu; we stared at each other and I mentally assessed the fact that I wasn't wearing any make-up and had my favorite worn-in jeans and faded Ramones T-shirt on and he was still perfect and way out of my league. I had a moment to wonder where the hell the ray of sunlight bathing him and tinting off his bronze hair was coming from when it was pitch-fucking-black outside, before I realized I was combining memory and reality in my mind.
I tore my gaze away from him and settled it on Jasper, my mouth again stretching into a welcoming grin as he began moving toward me through the crowd. "JP!" I squealed as he reached me, planting a big kiss on my lips and sweeping me up into his arms to twirl me around.
I was fucking thrilled to see Jasper, as I hadn't seen him since we graduated but I was also having a bit of trouble breathing because I knew my cover was totally blown. The chances of me getting out of here without talking to Edward were slim to fucking none now. And I so did not want to talk to him. OK. That was an utter fucking lie. I wanted to talk to him so bad I could taste it on my tongue. I wanted to talk to him and touch him and kiss him and take him home and tear off all his clothes and lick him from head to toe. And I was drunk. Which meant I was going to have a whole lot of trouble not telling him exactly that. Yeah, I was so fucked.