A/N: Lately time flies before I even notice. My apologies for that. Longish chapter again though. Yay?
Iponeddyou is wonderful. And she sends me Rob pics and speeshal wallpapers to boot!
Lemon Muffins/Muff'Nbutter is also awesome, simply because she is.
Disclaimer: Twilight character names, not mine. Parts of the plot based originally off of the movie The Shop Around the Corner, not mine. What's left after all the crap that's not mine and this bag of cheetos, soo mine!
*** Bella's POV
But apparently his hand was actually helping me, because without it there, I fell quickly to the side almost as soon as I pushed off. It was a brief fall. I sprawled awkwardly under the bike, one leg still above and one hand still on the handlebar.
"Bella!" too many voices for me to count shouted.
My exposed legs kind of stung, or at least the one underneath the bike did. And the arm I'd landed on after trying to throw it out to hinder my fall, did too. Thankfully, my head felt fine, even if my eyes did sting from tears I refused to shed and the dirt now kind of swirling everywhere.
"Oh my gosh, are you okay?"
"I tried to stop it! I swear!"
"That looked like it hurt!"
"Can you move?"
"That was awesome! She was all 'screw you!' and took off and bam!"
"I couldn't get to her in time! I saw it about to happen, but she was out of my reach! Shit!"
"Bella! Can you speak?"
"Oh my gosh! What if she's paralyzed!"
"Or brain dead!"
"This is all my fault!"
"Dude, I bet Felix is totally gonna get sued by her parents."
"This is not a time for joking! What if she's really hurt?"
"Shut uppp," I groaned to the cacophony of voices that were making my previously fine head start to ache.
"She's alive!"
"Are you okay?"
"I told you she'd be fine."
"You did no such thing!"
"I'M FINE!" I yelled, hoping that would get them to shut up.
"Where does it hurt?" someone asked, their voice moving as they, presumably, kneeled next to me. I didn't open my eyes.
"It doesn't really hurt, just stings a little." The bike was lifted off of me, the leg that had been over it gently laid down next to the other by a hand. "I'll be fine. Really. I don't think I even got any cuts or anything. I'll be fine." Feeling like I'd repeated myself and that stupid 'f' word enough times, I moved to get up. What felt like ten hands helped me, making the process ridiculously easy; I felt as though I didn't do any work at all in standing up.
"Maybe we should take you to Uncle Felix's practice track first," Alice said from right beside me, her hand rubbing circles on my back. "If you still want to bike that is," she hurried on to say.
"There's a practice track?" Why am I never told these things?
"Yeah." Jasper shrugged, standing right in front of me. "If we'd known you...well, we would have mentioned it earlier if we..." He shuffled his feet, looking nervous.
"It doesn't seem like she even has any scratches or anything," I heard Edward murmur from somewhere, what sounded like awe in his voice. I glanced around, not seeing him, until I felt a touch to my calf and looked down. Oh. There he is. "You're sure nowhere else hurts?" he asked, eyes on my face now. "Nothing feels broken or anything?"
I shook my head no.
Stupid idiot. Don'tcha think I'd have said something if anything felt broken?
Emmett's firework-like laugh-slash-chuckle-slash-whatever came from behind me before his hand clapped me on the back of my shoulder. "This girl is lucky!"
Ow. Well now my shoulder hurts, Edward.
Between Emmett and Rosalie, I'd bet my beloved stuffed-animal lamb they had one hell of a high-five.
"The practice track's just behind the building," Alice murmured as everyone else drifted away to gather the bikes. I almost protested that I could walk my own bike to this 'practice track,' but Jasper took over the task before I could get a word out.
It turned out the infamous practice track they all spoke of was actually a marginally small swatch of grass into which an oval-shaped ring had been worn.
"Yeah, Uncle Fee drove his car in circles—"
"Ovals," Edward interrupted Emmett, seemingly without thinking about it at all.
"—for hours on end to make the track."
"Really?" Curious, I looked at Emmett, now walking behind me a little. He laughed but didn't answer my question.
"Alright, Bella." Jasper walked my bike to right in front of me. "Here we are. If you fall here, it probably shouldn't hurt too much." He shrugged, looking nervous again.
Alice nodded her head firmly as she took a step back from me. "Okay. Mount it, Bella."
"Alice!"
She only giggled at Rosalie's admonishing.
Just slightly shaky now, I took up my position on the bike, fighting everything to not wobble. Alice's hand was suddenly on my upper back at the same time that her face appeared beside mine. "It's not hard, Bella; don't tell yourself that it is. You can do it. You just have to try."
I smiled weakly at her. Having an audience for this embarrassing as all get out moment was not exactly what I wanted. I understood that Alice was the one really trying the hardest to include me, to welcome me into their knit of friends, and I appreciated that more than I probably could have told her. But that didn't mean that I didn't feel like every cell of my body was screaming at me to give up and leave, to walk away from having to do this.
Cracking my jaw once, I narrowed my eyes at the track as my grip on the handlebars tightened.
"Atta girl," I heard Jasper murmur what sounded like proudly from the side opposite Alice.
If they have faith in me that I can master this child's play activity, then I can have a little faith in myself too.
In a patient-sounding voice Alice said, "You already know what to do. You just have to learn the balance part."
Balance. Yeah, sure, no problem. What else ya need? A solution to the eating of cows? No problem either.
"Um, pedal, Bella," Jasper said.
Oh. Right.
My feet applied pressure to the pedals, the bike moving forward steadily rather than, well, unsteadily, thanks to Alice and Jasper's steadying hands.
Shit, I hate that word now. What's another word for steadying? Stabling, supporting, stabilizing, sturdy-ing. Wow. That's a lot of 'stuh' sounds.
"The key is to keep your balance, while pedaling and steering." Alice nodded toward where the track was about to turn for the second time (obviously, they had helped me steer through the first one). "Steer the corner," she commanded.
Still pedaling in a regular rhythm that was fast enough to keep me going, but slow enough that my balancers didn't have to jog, I twisted the handlebars.
"Whoa!" someone shouted from behind us, where I assumed the others were waiting and watching.
Alice chuckled breathily as her hand tugged my handlebars straighter again. "You don't need to turn it that far, Bella. It's subtle. Like...driving a car."
I nodded, making mental notes while chanting 'I can do this, I can do this!'
"Yeah! That's a great analogy, Alice!" Jasper said enthusiastically a little too close to my ear. I moved my head away from his out of instinct. "Think about driving on the interstate, Bella. Your hands on the steering wheel, poised and ready and controlling. You have to keep your foot balanced on the gas at the right speed you want to go. Now your exit's coming up. You have to merge off and turn the slight corner of the exit ramp."
I hadn't realized I'd closed my eyes, imagining the scene Jasper's words painted, until he stopped speaking and I opened them again.
"You follow me?" he asked.
Smiling now, I nodded again.
His voiced sounded adorably smug. "Excellent."
The next curve was in my sights, quickly approaching. Out of nowhere Jasper's hand disappeared from my handlebars. I tensed, waiting for the fall, but his voice sidetracked me from too much panic.
"My hand wasn't doing any of the work."
Alright, okay, he must have a point there or he wouldn't have said it. Right?
I was about to turn and look at him, hopefully to see if he was just pulling my leg or not. Alice's hand slid lower on my back though, distracting me.
"Don't turn around. It's hard for even me to keep my course straight when I turn around."
Still unable to speak for some reason, I could only nod my head once more.
I rounded the bend, somehow managing not to kill myself, or at the very least fall off the bike, in the process. With this new angle, I could clearly see Emmett, Edward, and Rosalie standing back where we'd started. As I watched, Edward leaned to the side slightly and said something to Emmett. Something which had Emmett laughing loudly. Rosalie looked at them, confused and obviously wanting to be let in on whatever was so funny, but Emmett just shook his head at her.
Clenching my teeth together, I forced myself to keep my hands on the bike and not around Edward's long neck, stealing his breath right out of him.
Of course, I thought acerbically to myself. How could I possibly think he'd go ten minutes without being a jackass poking fun at the grown woman who had trouble riding a stupid bike?
Fucker.
Still seething just a bit, I pedaled a tad faster, taking the next curve of the practice track without hardly any effort at all. It wasn't until I'd gone across the straight section connecting the two bends that I realized Alice was no longer beside me.
Confused, I stopped the motion of my feet and legs, letting them come to rest on the ground as I glanced around me.
Alice stood back by Rosalie and the guys, now joined by Jasper, grinning smugly at me. Well, at least it kinda looked like smugness. Now, whether it was smug for me, or smug for her coaching skills, I couldn't be sure. But it was smug nevertheless.
I started back up, making it around the rest of the track with ease until I stopped before the others.
It was quiet for several beats until Alice started clapping. Mortified and embarrassed, my eyes widened as I suddenly avoided eye contact with anyone and everyone as though their eyes would give me the plague.
When the clapping had, blissfully, ended, I cleared my throat. "So, um, are we going to do this trail thing or what?" I may not have believed I could enter a bike race and win first place, but I now had the much-needed confidence to believe I could tackle one day of bike-trail riding.
Rather than answer me directly, everyone got on their respective bikes and headed back the way we'd come. This time though, as opposed to stopping anywhere in front of the store or near the cars parked in the grass, we continued past them all. After a second I noticed we were aiming for a break in the woods that looked to have been carved be a really really big cement pipe attached to the front of a tractor or something.
It took me another couple seconds before I realized our tunnel, while large, was actually only big enough for two bikers to ride side-by-side comfortably and safely. And then, to my horror, Emmett and Jasper...paired up, for lack of a better term, with Rosalie and Alice.
Death to the world. Gruesome, killed-with-a-very-dull-butter-knife death.
Briefly, I considered letting myself fall back in line a little so that I wouldn't have to ride next to Edward. But, despite it all, I didn't want to be a rude jackass who refused to take a hint and ride in pairs as everyone else clearly was.
So, for my sanity, I ignored the sounds of Edward's bike navigating the ground right beside mine, the rustle of clothing and shift of dirt as he pedaled next to me. Instead I focused on how easy this was, how I'd foolishly deluded myself into thinking riding a bike was difficult, and best of all how the wind brushed against my face.
I could see the path start to dip in front of us, and happily braced myself for the downhill ride.
"Don't pedal downhill, you might lose control."
Forgetting what Alice had said before, I flicked my gaze to Edward. He was leaning back casually, his knees easily rising level with his hips one after the other, and only one hand on the handlebars.
Fucker.
"I think I'll be able to deal with one little hill." I tried to keep my sneering, in both face and voice, down to a minimum, but I wasn't at all sure how well I carried out that excellent plan.
He shrugged, moving his free hand from his bobbing-in-tandem-knees to scratch absent-mindedly at his chest. "Suit yourself. Just don't slow down too much on the uphill unless you change your speed, or you won't make it."
"Speed?" I cursed myself when the question automatically popped out.
His eyes glanced to me even though his head barely moved at all. "Yeah...That's an eight speed you're straddling right there."
Shit, why are my thoughts suddenly in the gutter?
Shaking my head and a bit unsure and confused, I stared down at the little knobby things on my handlebars. There were two of them. I had no idea which was which, or, furthermore, what the Frankenstein either of them did. And the hill was quickly approaching.
Moment of truth: did I ask Edward for his help, or tackle it by myself and hope I didn't go crashing into the woods to be eaten by an all-to-happy supercroc or giant anaconda?
I swallowed, really wishing I had more time to build up my courage-o-meter before saying what I was about to say. "What do they, um, do?"
Honestly, I thought for sure he'd laugh and/or scoff in my general direction. But did he?
Nope.
He switched hands, his left one now free, and drifted slightly closer to me. We weren't exactly going fast, just a leisurely pace, so I didn't feel all panicky that our bikes would collide and we'd go sprawling. Eyes darting back to the path intermittently, he extended a hand across the space between us, reaching over my own right hand to touch the knobby thing that had a tail.
"This is the only one that really matters for right now. See how it's on three at the moment?"
When he didn't continue, I realized he was waiting for an answer. Right, like I wouldn't be able to see it was on three. Idiot. "Yup."
"That's a middle pace, a good one. The lower the number, the lighter the resistance on the pedals." That sounded kind of awesome, honestly. "But the more you have to pedal to actually get anywhere." Figures. "The higher the number, the more resistance on the pedals, but the less you have to pedal to get where you want to go."
Alright, and what does this have to do with going uphill?
I could see we were only a couple yards from the downhill, which directly meant the uphill.
"When you want to change it, just reach your thumb up and move the tail to whatever number you want. That'll move the chain, and you'll feel it in the bike underneath you, but don't stop pedaling."
"But what does all this have to do with going uphill?"
His hand retreated, resting again on his thigh. His long thigh.
He shrugged in answer to my question. "Some people like to go lower speeds up hills, some people like a higher speed."
"Well, what's better?"
"It depends on the rider's preference."
Helpful. Really freaking helpful.
I didn't have a chance to voice my sarcasm though because we dropped down the hill. Maybe dropped wasn't exactly the correct term, because it wasn't as if the hill went straight down or anything. But with the way the forced breeze blew my hair out behind me, it kind of felt straight down to me.
I couldn't help the laugh that spilled from my mouth, exulted by the speed and the feeling of freedom that suddenly washed over me.
To my terror, out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Edward close his eyes as he smiled and fling his hands outward. Both his hands.
"Oh shit!"
His hands abruptly seized his handlebars again, his eyes snapping open. "What?" Embarrassed, I watched as his eyes scanned me up and down, and then over my bike.
"I'm sorry, I just..." Crap crap crap. How did I explain that Panicky Bella had a moment of panic just a second ago? "I saw you let go and I..."
Edward's eyes narrowed at my trailing off. Or at my apparent lack of confidence in his biking skills. It had to be one or the other, right?
"What?" he questioned in a mocking voice that didn't sound one-hundred-percent amiable and cheerfully friendly. "Thought I'd lose control, fall, crash into you?"
"Jeez, I'm sorry, alright? I saw you fling your arms out, completely away from your handlebars, I might add, and I sort of panicked."
Unfortunately for me, the uphill was there out of the blue.
For every high, there's always a directly corresponding low.
Whatever speed Edward had kept me on helped. Sort of. I preferred to thank the downhill for my somewhat-ease getting up the hill.
"By the way," Edward said when we were back on flatter ground, "it is possible to ride with no hands. Just because you can't do something, doesn't make it in impossible."
Before I could think, I laughed scornfully. "You think I don't know that? I can't fly an airplane, doesn't mean airplanes can't be flown. I can't put my feet behind my head, doesn't mean I haven't seen that shit on Whose Line Is It Anyway. I can't perform bypass surgery, doesn't mean I don't have an uncle whose surgeon did it. I can't play the harp, doesn't mean I haven't sat there and watched someone do it."
Annoyed and...something else I wasn't about to take the time to identify, I shook my head at the end of my spiel, focusing back on the trail.
When Edward didn't say anything in reply, I occupied myself by wondering how long this nature trail would go and when the city slicker one would start. Don't get me wrong, I was fine with the whole Little-Black-Riding-Hood going through the woods thing, but I kind of wanted something firmer underneath me. Cement rather than dirt.
And it'd be awesome to feel a real breeze paired with the one my bike helped create.
I belatedly noticed that somehow we'd fallen behind Alice and Jasper, who were in between Edward and I, and Rosalie and Emmett. Feeling even more confident than I had before, I stepped up my pedaling pace, enjoying the simple act of riding a bike even more than I thought I would.
"Is there a particular reason why you're speeding up? A death wish perhaps?" Edward said calmly from beside me. Yeah, that's right, said. The words were arranged as a question, but the tone turned them into statements.
"We've fallen behind Alice and Jasper. I'd like to keep up, if it's all the same to you."
In response he sped up, moving partially in front of me versus right next to me.
So...I sped up too. I couldn't let him outdo me, after all.
We kept at it like that, a constant back and forth of one of us being in the lead, until we'd caught up to Alice and Jasper.
"...and she said, 'It's cheesecake.'"
Jasper laughed loudly at Alice's words, obviously having heard the rest of her tale that was quite clearly needed to understand whatever the hell she was talking about.
By some sort of mutual unspoken agreement, Edward and I ceased our childish racing antics so that we were simply riding side-by-side once again.
"I think the CS is coming up soon!" Emmett's voice called back over the wind in my ears.
Without really meaning to, I asked aloud, "CS?"
"City Slicker," Edward said instantly. "You know, the city slicker trail that takes us on sidewalks and such?" He slanted me a derisive glance out of the corner of his eyes.
I adopted a brainless and breathy, southern-ish dumb-chick accent, "Oh, really? Wow. I had no idea!"
Apparently Edward wasn't too keen on my perhaps-over-the-top sarcastic response. Or maybe he just had family who lived in the south and didn't appreciate my stereotyping. Either way, he still didn't say anything in reply to me. I couldn't decide which I found more of a jackass: Edward who wouldn't stop retorting, no matter how lost the cause was, or Edward who refused to even acknowledge you'd had a riposte at all.
Maybe I'd make a pro-con list of both when I got back home.
Several minutes later, out of seemingly nowhere the path turned, curving away to the right.
But we didn't.
Nervously I followed the lead of the four people in front of me, trailing them as they broke away from the path and went left through an evident opening in the woods. We emerged on the other side on a light-gray sidewalk, narrower than what the previous path had been.
I worried slightly as Edward stayed beside me. The sidewalk didn't look quite big enough for two bikes. Thankfully, there was about two feet of grass on the left before you hit actual road, which eased my fears some. If Edward happened to swerve, I'd have enough room to ride without having to do it in the road.
Being roadkill was not exactly on my list of life goals.
"I think I like this better," Jasper said in front of us, obviously to Alice but close enough to me that I could hear what he said. "It's...smoother."
"Bite your tongue!" Alice stuck her tongue out after her words. "The trail affords so much more stuff to keep you occupied!"
"I don't agree with you there, Alice," I, perhaps a bit rudely, butted in to the conversation. "There's not as many bugs or leaves out here and the breeze is nice. Plus, look!" I nodded my head rather than risk removing a hand from the handlebars. "Buildings to keep you occupied!"
Shaking her head, Alice chuckled with a big grin. "Not much of an outdoorsy girl, are ya Bella?"
I purposely raised my eyebrows at her, though she couldn't see it. "And you are?" When I thought of Alice, outdoorsy was definitely not what came to my mind.
"I am, actually," she answered what sounded like defensively. "A girl can like to look nice and still appreciate a good hike."
"Ew. Hiking."
Now Jasper laughed along with Alice. "What's wrong with hiking?" he asked.
"Bugs, humidity, falling, cliffs, snakes, dirt in places it shouldn't be, sweat, animal feces, bears, grunge, spiders—"
"Okay okay," Alice practically shouted even as she laughed. "It's not that bad though."
"Sure, sure," I responded, stealing my brother's probably favorite saying.
She said something to Emmett or Rosalie up in front of them that I didn't pay any attention to, mostly because Edward had started to partially drift toward me, scaring me sort of.
"Hey Jeff Gordon, wanna stay on your side there?" I told him, eyeing him out of the corner of my eyes. Which was about as much as I'd allow myself to take my eyes off the sidewalk in front of me.
"My side?"
"Yes, your side."
"There's designated sides?"
Annoyed a little, I heaved a sigh. "This is my side, that's your side." I gestured vaguely with only my head.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I can't see the line that defines sides because I forgot my glasses."
I knew he was just being condescending, but before I could control my mouth or brain, they blurted, "You wear glasses?" I shook my head, keeping my eyes open of course, to rid it of the mental image and continued on without giving him a chance to answer. "And you don't need glasses to see the line because it isn't really there. It's an invisible line. But it's there all the same."
I hoped to hell I sounded less ridiculous and insane to his ears than I did to my own.
Highly unlikely.
Five...four...three...t—
"That doesn't make any sense."
Damn! I'd been one countdown count off.
Ooh, count. Now I want some Count Chocula...
"Does the bouncing of the third wheeled eye make sense to the raspberry moon's lighthearted child?" I responded, just plain fucking with him now.
"What?"
Enjoying this perhaps a little too much, I addressed Alice, "Hey Alice, how long does this thing last? Does it like...circle back around to our starting point?"
"Well," and she proceeded to launch into a kinda-lengthy, confusing speech about where exactly we were going, and how we were going to get there.
Even though her words left me puzzled, I smiled happily at the fact that I'd pissed off Edward. I could practically feel the pissy-ness rolling off him in choppy waves that crashed into me as though I was at the beach standing in the ocean.
I liked it probably more than I should have.
The waves of pissy-ness kept churning from Edward for the rest of the ride, even when we were finished with the sidewalk bit and back on the woodsy trail. Unfortunately, by the time we made it back to our starting point, I was annoyed at the pissy-ness rather than amused by it.
I distracted myself from that annoyance by studying Felix, Mr. Felix? Uncle Felix? Felix sir?, who was standing outside waiting for us when we rode up. He still wore the same cargo shorts and pink flip flops, but he'd changed his shirt into some sort of short-sleeved button down that had pineapples and flowers sprinkled all over it.
He pulled his hands out of his pockets as we all dismounted our bikes, rubbing them together in what seemed to me to be glee. Wow, that's a lot of 'ee' sounds...
"How was the ride, kids?"
"We're not kids," Edward grumbled, apparently still feeling the effects of my fucking around with him. I mean on him. Shit, no, fucking around with his brain.
Uncle Felix raised an eyebrow, looking so much like Alice in that act that I couldn't believe they weren't actually related. "Until you've been married, had a kid, been laid off, had to worry how you'd pay next month's bills, and bought a hair-growth product off late-night television, you're a kid."
"You've never been married though," Jasper took that moment to point out.
Uncle Felix laughed. "Good point, my boy."
Emmett changed the subject. "I like your shirt, man!"
"Oh don't even think about," Rosalie said immediately. "You are not getting one of those."
"What? Who said I wanted one."
"I could see the look in your eyes."
He smirked. "Oh really?"
"And that is my cue to take these bikes inside," Uncle Felix said quickly, grabbing a bike with each hand and wheeling them back towards the main building.
Jasper took my bike away with him as he turned around, "Me too."
"You guys are wiiiimps," Emmett called after them, dragging out the word to taunt them.
"It's not like we were going to start dry humping right here in front of everyone," Rosalie muttered.
This time it was Alice who changed the subject. "It's still kind of early, so what are we going to do after this?"
Rosalie shrugged. "Beats me."
I was glancing around at everyone as though in a stadium watching a basketball game, but on one of my passes between Emmett, who didn't have any suggestions on what to do either, and Alice, I noticed Edward. More precisely, I noticed him staring straight at me. Jeez dude, way to be creepy motherfucker of the week. It wasn't exactly glaring, but neither was he smiling at me.
Whoa, weird thought, had I ever seen him smile?
Shut up, you saw him smile when he was going down the hill on his bike. Before you ruined his moment, that is.
Oh, right right. He had a nice smile...
I was torn out of my thoughts when someone said something, tearing Edward's eyes away from me and freeing me.
Wait, what? Freeing me? What the hell?
I've suddenly joined the cast of a cheesy fantasy book, that's all.
Uncle Felix and Jasper had returned, the former grabbing the last two bikes from Rosalie and Edward and disappearing again.
"How about you, Jasper," Alice asked, "what do you want to do now?"
He let his eyes linger on her for only a second before he looked around. Somehow we'd all unconsciously formed a standing circle.
"Ice cream?" he shrugged.
Eyes all around the circle widened before heads started nodding so eagerly I was slightly afraid one or all of us would break our necks.
"Ice cream!" Emmett and Rosalie called out at the same time like little kids again.
Alice asked, "Edward?"
He flashed a very brief, terse-looking smile. "Ice cream sounds great."
Apparently Mister Poopy Pants hadn't quite gotten over me messing with him yet. Hold a grudge much? Sheesh.
"You riding with me, Bella?" Alice called over her shoulder, and I realized everyone had started to walk away while I just stood there looking stupid.
"Oh yeah! Of course." No way in hell I was riding with Sir Ass-a-Lot.
"Where are we going for creamed ice?" Jasper asked once we were in Alice's car again. I was in the back this time, thanks to my slow-working brain and Jasper's long legs.
"You're such a dork," Alice laughed.
"Still didn't answer my question," he practically sang.
"Well, since Edward is in front of us, I guess we'll just follow him."
Fantastic, I almost muttered aloud but caught myself before I did. The last thing I wanted was to be a party pooper who ruined the fun.
"I like big...butts and I cannot lie, you other brothers can't deny—"
Alice picked her phone up from the cup holder, answering it without skipping a beat in her driving. "What?"
"Wow, that's such a nice greeting for whoever's on the other line," I giggled.
"It's Edward," Jasper responded matter-of-factly.
I held back a snort. Perfect ringtone, I'm sure.
Hey, wait, did I just call myself big-butted?
"How am I supposed to know these things?" Alice said into her phone. "Ha. Ha. Don't play that with me, bucko." She paused. "Look, I don't care what's gotten your panties in a twist, don't take that tone with me!" Another pause, where Edward obviously apologized for what he'd said to make Alice angry-slash-annoyed. "Forgiven. Now have you decided on a place?" Cue pause. "Pale and Bucket? Yeah, that's fine." Yet another pause. "Alright, see you there." She laughed quietly. "I know you do."
"Everything okay?" Jasper asked softly.
Alice turned to look at Jasper for a moment, smiling at him. "It is, yeah."
"And we're going to Pale and Bucket?"
Alice only nodded this time.
"Um," I started nervously from the back, "what's this pail and bucket?"
I was positive Jasper's as well as Alice's jaw dropped.
"You've never been to Pale and Bucket?" they asked in loud voices at the same time, which was honestly quite funny.
"No?" I sounded very confident in my answer. Bravo, Bella. Truthfully, I'd never even heard of the place. It didn't exactly sound like it sold ice cream though...
"Oh my virgin, we have got to remedy this, Bella!" Alice exclaimed.
I chuckled, somehow managing to only sound a bit wary. "I take it you're gonna pop my cherry of this place?"
She laughed loudly. "Definitely!"
"Soo...is this place some sort of...beachy-themed gift shop or something that just happens to sell ice cream?"
"What?" Jasper asked, turning so he could look at me from his position in the front seat.
"Well, a store named after a pail and a bucket doesn't exactly sound like it sells ice cream to me…"
"No no no," Alice spoke before Jasper could. "It's pale, not pail!" she put an over-exaggerated emphasis on the two words that sounded exactly the same. "Pale as in not tanned. P-a-l-e," she spelled.
"Ohh, I see." And I did. Sort of. "It's a play on words because most ice cream, unless you get the really colored stuff that's just chocked full of dye, is pale."
It was quiet for a moment before Jasper said, "Dude, you totally just ruined it for me!"
"Huh?"
"I love that funkily colored ice cream! Or, well, I used to," he sulked, crossing his arms.
"Think about this way," I mused, "if you've been eating it for this long, the dye probably isn't gonna kill you."
"At least not until you're fifty," Alice added, laughing.
"I'm sitting shotgun, and yet you guys still suck." Jasper angled himself away from us and toward the window. He stayed that way for the rest of the ride, making it awfully quiet until we pulled up into a relatively small parking space.
I took in stock of the building. It looked normal, average. The sign on the modest-sized building said Pale and Bucket, with the 'Bucket' part being written inside a very large rendering of the kind of container you'd generally get ice cream in from a place like this.
Once again, because it seemed to be the trend of this day, what I'd for some reason been expecting turned out different than what actually was.
"You guys are slooow," Rosalie teased when Alice, Jasper, and I got out. Judging by how casually they were reclining on Edward's car, they'd gotten here a bit before us.
Alice's comeback: "Nuh-uh, you guys are just fast."
"Speed limits, schmeed limits," I muttered to myself, making Jasper, who was standing right beside me, laugh.
"What?" Emmett questioned, eyes on Jasper.
Jasper explained, "Bella's funny."
"She is?"
I had to clench my fists to keep from saying something in retort to Edward. At least I had enough manners to not be an arguing jackass in front of everyone. I knew to keep that stuff for when no one else was around.
"Hell yeah she is!" Jasper called out, reaching down to his left and ruffling my hair.
Okay, that was a little weird...
And thank goodness Alice is shorter than I am so I'm not the shortest in this group. Second-shortest is bad enough, thank you very much.
Alice smirked. "I haveta agree with Jazz on this one."
Rosalie laughed at that, earning a glare from Alice I didn't understand.
"Well I came here for ice cream, not to flap my lips," Emmett said out of nowhere. I was kind of figuring that 'out of nowhere' was practically Emmett's conjoined twin. Or he just had a watered down, in the sense that he didn't spout cusswords, case of Tourette's.
Jasper gestured out in front of him, right hand going to Alice's back, "Shall we?"
"We shall indeed," Edward answered instead of Alice, which made me giggle like I was high or something.
Emmett held the door while we all trooped through. To the immediate right of the door were two doors with crude, made-with-a-sharpie drawings of a stick-figure girl and boy on each separate door. Bathrooms. In a little farther and to the left were a couple tables, situated right next to the window that led out to a small patio section with more tables and big umbrellas shading them. Across from the seating, past the bathrooms on the right, was a rather long, sloping-glass-covered-in-some-sections ordering counter.
"Do you know what you're getting yet?" Rosalie asked conversationally to Alice, or maybe Jasper. Both? I couldn't tell.
Before either, or both, of them could answer, a man in a slightly-dirty, white apron walked out from the back, wiping his hands on said apron. He was tall, tanned, with a short-sleeved burgundy shirt underneath his apron and black, moderately-short (but not crew cut) hair.
Wait a tick...
"Paul?" Sometime I'd stopped walking, choosing instead to stare straight at the familiar person.
His dark eyes shifted from the whole of the group, to me. A smile started to work its way across his face. "Bells?"
"Oh my gosh!" Before I knew it, I was in a bolt across the small space, going past the counter and into the area behind it. Paul caught me up in a hug as soon as I'd passed through the narrow channel in the counter.
His hug lifted me off my feet, spinning me around in small circles as I clutched my arms firmly around Paul's warm neck. All exactly as I remembered it.
"I haven't seen you in forever!" He squeezed me tight as he practically laughed his words.
I laughed back. "Same here!" Once he settled me back on my feet, I continued, "I didn't know you owned an ice cream shop!"
He looked down, a hint of a smirk playing on the edges of his mouth, before looking up again. Not shy, Paul had never been shy (and I meant that in the someone-pulled-his-pants-down-as-a-prank-and-he-just-stood-there-letting-everyone-gaze-upon-his-lower-half-naked-self way), but flirtatious. "I don't exactly own it. I just run the damn place."
Paul was a blast from my past. He'd lived on the reservation with me and my family, had been one of Jake's close-but-not-super-duper-close friends, and I'd lost all touch and thought of him when he'd graduated high-school and moved away a year before I did.
Oh, and he was also always known as the bad-boy type, even though I suspected what lay in the center of his hard candy-shell (meaning sweet, sweet, sweeeeet) coating was a soft and gooey tootsie roll.
"You run it but don't own it?" I asked, only slightly teasing. "Kinda like the middle brother in a family business?"
He laughed the same laugh I'd always remembered: deep, throaty, and lip-biting, eye-squinting hot. "Yeah, kinda like that."
A sneeze from behind me reminded me that I hadn't come in here alone, and I quickly turned around.
Emmett sneezed again, his whole head flopping forward as he did.
"Eww, Em!" Rosalie pushed on his shoulder, grossness written all over her face. "Sneeze into your elbow, you loser!"
"Did she just call her boyfriend a loser?" Paul asked, now behind me.
I looked at him over my shoulder as I made my way back to the customer side of the counter. "How do you know he's her boyfriend?"
He shrugged, far from innocent. "They've been in here before." He didn't say anything else, as if that explained just how he knew Emmett was Rose's beau.
Once I'd rejoined my group, Alice grabbed my arm. "Who is he?" she whispered what I hoped wasn't loud enough for Paul to hear. The last thing I really needed at the moment was him to overhear me and my friend talking about how fine a piece of ass he was. "He is delicious!"
"I know, right?" I made a little choking sound as I attempted to keep my giggle from bursting forth like an alien baby out of a human's body.
"He's not that, good-looking," Jasper grumbled, still on Alice's left.
"No, he's not," Edward added in almost the same tone.
I told Alice, "He's an old friend. From mostly my high school days."
"Did you date him?" she questioned hurriedly, her eyebrows waggling up and down and her mouth firmly grinning.
"He wishes!"
We both dissolved into (hopefully quiet) girlish giggles.
"Are you guys ever going to order?" Jasper interrupted with more than a little note of petulance in his voice.
I stifled another round of giggles, even as Alice said, "Yes, we are. Bella needs a tour first though."
"A tour?"
"Yes, a tour," she confirmed to my question in a comically prim voice. "These things have to be done properly, you know."
I smiled at her adorable ridiculousness. "Shouldn't the proprietor," Paul coughed loudly from his place behind the glass counter, forearms rested casually on the top of it, damn he's taller than I remember, "or manager give the tour?"
Alice barked a laugh, making Paul, much to my amusement, sober up like a dog being scolded. "Nonsense! I probably know this place better than him!"
"Hey!" he inputted, not rudely. "I'll have you know we added four new flavors since the last time you all came in!"
Alice blinked at him, seeming astonished. "You remember us when we come in?"
Paul grinned now. Widely. His forearms stopped tensing on the top of the glass case. "Course I do."
"You're a man of little information," Alice observed with eye-narrowed suspicion.
"Would you prefer that I tell you each and every exact reason as to why I remember you and your group there?" he teased, really flirting it up now. Yup, just as I remembered. "Sans Bella, of course," he added.
She seemed to think over her answer a moment, and I saw Jasper squirm in his place on the opposite side of her to me. "Perhaps not. I am rather hungry, after all."
"Excellent," Emmett hissed happily. "Let's get on with it!"
"Wait!" Alice said, voice a level below shouting.
Edward asked, "What?"
"The tooour," she whined, pushing her bottom lip out for extra emphasis.
Jasper laughed. "Alright alright, give Bella your tour." He gently nudged Alice forward with his hand on the small of her back.
"Yay!" she called excitedly like a little kid. Her face said it all though. It was a face that plainly read: Ha!
As Edward inquired to Paul about whether or not their credit card machine had been fixed, Alice grabbed my hand in a surprising gesture. "Alright, Bella," she began, leading me toward the edge of the glass section nearest to the passage to the back area. "Here you have your classics. You've got your Cotton Candy," she pointed toward the glass and a large white bucket filled with a purple and pink concoction and labeled neatly with the ice cream's title, "your Boston Cream Pie, your Pistachio Almond," she pointed them all out as she said their names, "your Brownie Fudge, your Berry Berlicious, your Pumpkin Cheesecake, your Dutch Chocolate, and your Oatmeal Cookie Chunk."
I had to wonder, if those were the classics, what would constitute the new and inventive ones? Because my ice cream classics where things like chocolate, vanilla, butter pecan, Neapolitan.
I glanced mournfully at the surprisingly long counter looming down the left of me and Alice, suddenly wondering if the many many choices garnered them more customers because of their variety, or less because it took so very long to decide what you wanted.
"And now you get into your more complicated beauties," Alice continued. "You've got World Class, which is white chocolate and milk chocolate ice cream. Watermelon Chip, which is watermelon flavored ice cream with chocolate 'seeds'," she did air-quotes, "in it. Miami Ice, which is lime and pink grapefruit swirled. A little tart, if you're not into that stuff, you might want to stay away. Right above that is the SLB, or Seven Layer Bar, a personal favorite of mine. It's got coconut flavored ice cream, and I'm a total sucker for anything coconut," she added in a conspiratorial voice, "coconut and fudge flakes all throughout it, walnuts, and then swirls of graham cracker and butterscotch. Sounds like a lot, but it melds together rather beautifully."
She continued on like that, and after one or two more descriptions, I started to really get into it, wondering what would taste the best, what I'd prefer to have, if I had any already-formed preferences as concerned ice cream.
"And next you have Jasper's favorite," she threw a look over her shoulder at the man in question. "Psychedelic City. Which is a ridiculous swirl of green apple sherbet, blue raspberry sherbet, fruit punch sherbet, and blueberry sherbet. You really kind of have to acquire a taste for that much sherbet, in my own opinion."
"Yes," Jasper responded from behind Alice, the teasing in his voice matching what had been in hers, "it takes quite a master to be able to down, and enjoy, a large Psychedelic City."
I didn't doubt it. I'd never pick that one. Sherbet wasn't even my favorite normally, let alone when it was four different sherbets all combined into one ice cream.
"And this is..." she trailed off, staring at the buckets behind the glass. "Wait, what is this?"
"Ready for my help yet?" Paul remarked smugly, yet with that same flirty tone from a few minutes ago, leaning on the top of the ice cream's home to see Alice fully.
She muttered under her breath, "Maybe."
"Well," Paul started, "what you have here first, is Batter Up. Yellow cake batter ice cream with pieces of yellow cake scattered throughout. A little," he tilted his head to the side with the word, "on the different side if you're not in the mood for that. And, well, definitely not good for the person that never liked eating raw dessert batter or dough in the first place."
He flashed his teeth in a smile before moving on to the next flavor. "This little baby is Coffee Coffee BuzzBuzzBuzz, for the coffee enthusiast. Coffee flavored ice cream, with espresso bean fudge chunks."
"Ooh, that sounds good." Alice nodded as she stared at the bucket under discussion.
"It is, trust me," Paul chuckled. I wondered how often he sampled ice cream. "Next is Jamaican Me Crazy."
"Say huh?" I interrupted before he could say anything else.
"It's actually quite good too, if you're in the mood for fruity and/or tropical. Toasted nuts, bits of pineapple and coconut," Alice perked up instantly when he said the word, "and rum-flavored ice cream."
Gesturing, I asked, "And the last?"
"Mm," Paul hummed, his eyes darting somewhere I didn't see because it was too fast. "An oldie come back from the grave of retirement. That is Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Chocolate Swirl. Uncreative name, but hey, no one would listen to me." His grin was interrupted by a shriek.
Rosalie came rushing up the glass, almost shoving me face-forward into it with her haste. "It's back?" she squealed.
"Rose has an addiction—"
"Obsession," Emmett corrected Alice's explanation.
"—with peanut butter cups." Alice smiled with several notes of fondness as Rosalie gazed at the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Chocolate Swirl ice cream.
"I take it you're getting that?" Jasper wondered with a small laugh.
Rosalie replied, "Hells to the yeah!" She glanced over her shoulder at Emmett. "And I'm getting a large."
The words seemed to mean something to Emmett, who groaned what sounded to my ears like approvingly.
Weird.
And possibly very ew.
"Let's order then!" Jasper enthused.
Rosalie went up first, letting Paul ring up her order. He did it easily, not having a problem with that whole 'serving someone you know-slash-kinda know' thing I knew a lot of people who struggled with. Emmett was up next, getting something called the Lunar Cheesecake that I didn't think had sounded very good when Alice had described it. I wasn't a huge fan of marshmallow in ice creams, after all.
When I noticed Paul didn't ring up an entire new order for Emmett, I turned slightly to Alice, asking her what was going to be the deal with paying.
"Oh," she waved a nonchalant hand. "Edward already explained that it was his treat."
Great, I muttered in my head. That means I'll have to be all nice and polite and thank him for my ice cream, or be a rude bitch and decline the nicety by paying for my own.
Somehow, I knew option two would not turn out well. Instead, I settled for having to go through with option one.
"I'll have a medium Psychedelic City," Jasper told Paul.
Edward chimed in next, "Miami Ice." When Paul raised his eyebrows, Edward added, "Oh yeah, a medium."
Paul's eyes flicked to Alice, his features instantly morphing into his flirty face, as I liked to call it. "Hmm," she mused, as though she were trying to decide what she wanted despite the fact that her gaze was firmly fixed on Paul and not on the rows of ice cream. "Jamaican Me Crazy, I think."
"Size?" Paul asked as he punched in some keys on the cash register.
"Well, I'm not really in the mood for a big one, so...let's go with a medium."
I had my mouth behind my hand in hopes that it would muffle my giggle at Alice's words.
"Bella?" Paul wondered aloud, pulling me from the gutter.
"Huh? Oh, yeah. Um..." I actually did look back down the lines of ice creams, pondering what I wanted to get. Boston Cream Pie sounded good, but then so did Pumpkin Cheesecake. I'd always nibbled on cake batter and cookie dough, so I thought about getting Batter Up. Then again, I also loved coffee.
"Watermelon Chip," I decided in the end. Because, well, watermelon ice cream was just too curious to pass up tasting.
Paul stared at me, looking for all the world as if he were waiting for something. What, I couldn't imag––
Oh.
"Er, a medium?" Since it was what I'd been hearing the most, it popped out before I could stop myself. The part of me that wasn't quite used to and comfortable with people buying me things wanted to say small, the least expensive so as to be less of a burden to the person giving the treat of free-to-me ice cream. But my mouth and stomach were firm about wanting more than a small.
"You sure about that?" Paul teased, grinning at me as he waggled his eyebrows once.
I scrunched my nose and stuck my tongue out at him in response. "Bite me."
"Ew, gross. No thanks."
Oddly enough, I was slightly offended by his refusal. I'd been expecting a 'gladly' or 'when?' or 'is that an invitation?', not an 'ew gross'. "Hey!" I said, hoping I didn't sound as indignant as my thoughts were. Paul shrugged an 'ah well' gesture instead of actually saying anything.
I heard a scoff behind me and turned on the spot to glare at Edward. Bastard had probably heard every little ounce of indignation in my voice and was now enjoying quite the amusement at my expense.
Our eyes locked for three speeding, tightening heartbeats before he glanced away and strode up to Paul, handing him what I had to assume was payment.
It was so contradictory. One minute he was scoffing and laughing at me, the next he was paying for all of our ice creams. And in a place like this, I couldn't imagine that they were cheap.
He's going to give me a migraine.
Paul waved us all off with a "Sit sit!" before grabbing a bunch of containers from somewhere below the counter, sliding the glass away from one section of the ice cream, and diving in.
"Outside or in?" Rosalie asked, nodding toward the patio and then toward the tables a few feet in front of us.
Glances traveled around, heads nodding as, in unison, we said, "In."
Edward and Jasper joined two of the small tables so we could all sit together, grabbing the chairs from where they'd moved them out of the way and dragging them back. Jasper held out a chair for Alice, and I noticed unhappily that Edward was doing the same for me.
"Thanks," I uttered grudgingly as I sat down in the proffered chair next to Alice.
Edward didn't say anything in reply.
Emmett sat across from me before Rosalie sat down, and she smacked him on the back of the head. "Ow, Rose!"
"You'd make an awful medieval knight," she grumbled, pulling out her own chair.
"Would not," he argued. "Look at how big I am!" He flexed his biceps. "I'd be a champion."
"Yeah, a champion in the fight who'd stay unmarried forever because he was no gentleman."
"Bet the castle whores would love 'im though," I chimed in without thinking about it.
My eyes widened and I once again slapped a hand over my mouth, horrified at what I'd just said.
It was quiet for a moment before the entire table, or rather, tables, broke out in laughter. I danced my gaze around cautiously with more than a small bit of wonder.
"Oh my gosh," Emmett wheezed between laughs, "you're a genius, Alice! This girl is priceless!"
She beamed over at me, her shoulders still shaking with the occasional chuckle.
"Order's up!" Paul called from behind the counter, interrupting the waning hilarity.
I smiled at him as we approached the piled-high containers of ice creams lined up on the top of the freezer thing, amused by how he treated his job.
He continued, "In order of, well, order." He gestured down the line of ice cream cups.
Rosalie snatched hers up quickly, blowing a kiss at Paul. "Thanks, doll!"
Emmett grunted and grabbed his, snaking an arm possessively across Rosalie's shoulder before they walked back toward our seats. Her smile was wide, wicked, and pleased.
"You're going to eat that?" I stared at Jasper's cup, quite openly gaping at the heap of color that did not look appetizing to me at all.
In answer, Jasper grabbed a spoon from the box on the counter and shoved a big bite in his mouth. "Mm-mm good," he mumbled around the frozen treat in reproduction of a Campbell's commercial.
Edward's looked tasty at least, the green and light-pink swirls mild and pleasing to the eye. I wondered idly if he'd let me try a bite.
Alice's was yellow-ish in main color, and bits of different colored whatcha-ma-call-its floated throughout it. Looked a little strange, but not exactly gross.
Mine was far from light-pink, the red of the watermelon it got its name from over-exaggerated in only the way you could ever find in imitation-watermelon. I didn't even wait till we meandered back over to the tables before I tasted it.
Holy hell.
I moaned around the spoon as I took my seat, hoping it was quiet but knowing by the amused grins and raised eyebrows of the people surrounding me that it had been anything but.
"This is delicious!" I all but squealed by way of explanation.
Five spoons descended immediately on my cup sitting in front of me on the table, arms crisscrossing over and under others.
"Hey hey hey!" I tried to swat them away, but they were too fast, and before I knew it almost all of my top scoop was gone.
Well at least they had the decency to take small spoonfuls...
Heads all around the two tables moved, some in a yes, some in a no.
"That is good," Jasper started the reviews.
Alice said, "Eh, too watermelon-y for me."
"Needs more chocolate," Rosalie observed.
"Chocoholic," Emmett muttered without fire, shrugging as his only assessment of the ice cream.
"I wouldn't want to get it every time," Edward began, "but it's not gross or anything."
I didn't know how I felt about that fact that all five of the people surrounding me had each stuck their spoons, which I knew had already been in their mouths, in my ice cream. Staring down at the bright red frozen treat with chocolate oblong shapes littered throughout, testing out my feelings, I decided I honestly didn't care.
I shrugged once, digging my spoon back in for another bite.
"Ooh, remember that one time when they did that experiment with fudge, pineapple, and blueberries that soo turned out wrong and gross?" Alice laughed at the memory.
Hums of acknowledgment and sorrowful head nods echoed around our little rectangle.
"Hey, I actually kind of liked that one!"
Everyone else, excluding myself, shrunk back from Jasper, eyes roaming up and down as they made disgusted faces at him as though he were a hobo from the fifteenth century wandering around the Whitehouse.
"Off with his head!" Emmett shouted, motioning the act on himself with his spoon.
"I don't even know you!" Rosalie joined in, pointing an accusing finger at Jasper.
He only laughed, shaking his head as the excitement of his outburst died down.
Quiet munches and the cars on the highway outside were the only sound for a bit, before my curiosity of everyone else's ice cream got the better of me. "Since mine was pilfered, it seems only fair that I get to try all of yours," I gestured around the tables.
Five pairs of eyes stared straight back at me after my words. I realized dimly that I'd have to get used to that. Five people in this group of friends that, somehow, managed to stick together. I still hadn't figured that bit out yet.
"She's got balls," Rosalie finally said, eyes never leaving me. "I like it."
"Me too," Emmett agreed, staring at me as well.
My grin grew impossibly huge as five buckets of ice cream were pushed toward me from various places around the table.
I went counterclockwise, starting with Alice. Hers was okay, left a nice lounging-on-the-beach taste in your mouth. I nearly gagged on Jasper's, chewing and swallowing as I shook my head no. As in no freaking way. He chuckled and, shaking some hair out of his attractively oceanic eyes, retracted his container to tuck his own spoon in to it.
"Jeez," I coughed a little, "how do you eat that, Rosalie? It's so sweet!" Absently, I noticed that was the first time I'd ever addressed her by her name.
She grinned broadly at me. "Takes quite a sweet tooth."
"Ew," I said as I tasted Emmett's, "marshmallows should not be in ice cream."
He gasped dramatically. "Bite your tongue!"
Giggling a bit at him, I moved on to the last one, Edward's. I pursed my lips as the flavors hit my tongue. "It's kind of tart."
He nodded, eyebrows raised at me and what I thought was a small smirk playing across his lips.
"Told ya so," Alice sang from my right, savoring another bite of her beachy, minus the sand of course, ice cream.
"Oh," Jasper groaned from the end of the table opposite Edward, pressing a fist to his forehead. "Brain freeze."
I fought the urge to giggle again. As if we couldn't tell it was a brain freeze.
"Stick your tongue on the roof of your mouth," Alice instructed.
"Pssh," Emmett scoffed. "That doesn't work. Make out with someone!" he instructed instead.
Jasper eyes popped wide in his grimacing face, his mouth opening a little in shock.
Rosalie joined me in my quietly escaping giggles. "Look at his face," she said, snickering.
After a moment that face returned to normal, his fist lowering from his forehead.
"That'll teach you to eat your ice cream too fast," Edward said mothering-ly.
"You sound like a mother," I blurted, sniggering some more.
"I do not," he muttered, tacking a rather large bite of his ice cream.
Mockingly, I said, "Better be careful, or you'll get a brain freeze."
The chatter was aimless and mostly harmless after that, though still funny. I'd planned to give Paul a hug and my address and tell him to drop by some time before we left, but he was busy with some customers. I settled for waving instead, making myself a mental note to come back some other day.
"Well," Alice began with a pleasant smile and curious eyes when we were outside hanging around the building, "what did you think of the popping of your Pale and Bucket cherry?"
I nodded approvingly. "It was good. Really good!"
"Excellent," Jasper declared, with a grin matching Alice's. "We've got ourselves another convert."
Laughing, I said, "Thanks for bringing me." I turned slightly to my left, where Edward stood leaning against the side of the building with his arms casually crossed. "And for the ice cream, Edward." I smiled at him, hoping he could see the genuine feeling of thanks that lived behind it.
He inclined his head toward me. "No problem."
I detected an implied 'anytime' in his words, but couldn't decipher if it was real or just my imagination.
"Tomorrow's your day off, right?" Alice asked as she pulled up in front of my apartment, which she'd easily found with little direction on my part. I'd gotten to the car first that time, leaving Jasper to climb in the backseat as I'd cackled in faux-evilness.
"Yeah."
"Alright, well then I'll see you Tuesday." She smiled.
I couldn't help but smile back, even as I wondered if a hug or something would be too forward of me. "Sounds good." Screw it, I decided, leaning over and quickly pecking a kiss to Alice's cheek. "Thanks for asking me along today, Alice! I had a great time."
Her smile grew bigger. "Anytime, Bella, anytime. And I mean that!" Definitely no implied there; it's full-on direct. She waved as I got out and started up the stairs in front of my house.
I could feel my legs channeling their inner fortune teller by informing me that they would be none-too-happy in the morning thanks to the two-hour bike ride.
Trudging through my door, I headed straight for the kitchen and sustenance since I didn't expect Jake home for another hour or so. Imagine my surprise when I found him home early, his whole body practically stuffed in the fridge.
"Jake?" Yes, I had to ask. Because I wasn't sure those ratty jeans with the remnants of his only attempt at cigarettes in the form of a hole right near the butt region, actually belonged to him.
Scaring (and amusing) the crap out of me, he shrieked and bumped his...well, something loudly on a shelf of the fridge. He quickly backed out from said fridge, rubbing the back of his head.
"Bells?"
No shit, Sherlock. But I only lifted my eyebrows in response.
"How was the biking?"
I chose not to answer that question. "Aren't you home a little early?"
He shrugged. "Got kinda boring, so I left. We have no food in this house, by the way."
I snorted. "Of course we do. We have tons of food."
"Oh yeah, there's some Yoplait yogurt-y girly shit in there, like fifty-bazillion cucumbers and bananas, but is there any leftover lasagna? Nooo."
"Since when is yogurt girly? And my gosh you're awfully picky."
"Picky?" He scoffed like a fourteen-year-old boy again. "Shit, I am not picky. I'm just feeling a little like the female race is taking over the fucking world."
"Potty mouth," I mumbled half-heartedly. He rolled his eyes but chuckled like I knew he would. "And why do you think the female race is taking over the world?"
"So how was the biking?" he deflected.
"I don't wanna talk about it." It'd been a long and odd day, and I wasn't precisely sure exactly how I felt about all of it. And until I was sure, I didn't want to go into detailed discussion about it.
"Well I don't want to lament about females to my female sister. Which is part of the problem anyway."
I raised my eyebrows again briefly, leaning back carelessly against the counter. "You're having a problem with the fact that I, your sister, am a female?"
"Duh, isn't that what I just said?"
"Yes, it is. But I repeated it so you could hopefully see the ridiculous stupidity of your statement."
"I know you are, but what am I?" he mocked in his attitudinal, whiny voice.
I laughed before motioning toward the cabinet directly behind him. "There's cereal."
"But I had that for breeeakfast, Bells!" he whined some more.
"Is that my problem? Maybe you should have had toast for breakfast, that way you could have cereal for dinner."
He appraised me for a moment before matter-of-factly saying, "You suck."
I pretended to be disinterested, but I was smiling, and not only because that was not the first time today I'd heard a grown man tell me I sucked.
Apparently unsatisfied with my food help, Jake grumped his way out of the kitchen and into the living room. I heard the beep of the TV coming on before Chuck Woolery's announcer voice explaining the rules of Lingo broke the previous relative silence.
Sighing quietly yet contentedly, I made my way to the freezer. Despite the fact that I'd just had ice cream not half-an-hour ago, I pulled out a Fudgsicle, dropping into a kitchen chair before slowly unwrapping it.
Ah, sweet relief.
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