A/N: short chapter. let me know what you think. i'm depressed after reading the latest WA chapter and knowing that this fanfic will and can never compare with that, but reviews make me feel better :)

BPOV

"Bella, I'm coming over," Alice squealed into the phone. I rubbed my tired eyes, groaning a little as I read the ungodly hour on my alarm clock.

"Alice, it's 8:30 on a Saturday. Can't this wait?" I growled. It wasn't like me to be so rude, especially since I didn't know Alice especially well yet, but she didn't seem to mind.

"Oh, suck it up. I'm on my way," she chastised, hanging up abruptly. I was dumbfounded. Sleep was coming easily to me now that I was living in Forks, the rain making steady patterns on the roof that lulled me into steady, peaceful oblivion. But I had been shaken from my dreamless stupor when my phone began screaming at me, playing the embarrassing Journey song that Renee had insisted I buy to match hers.

Alice, the caller ID had read, and I assumed that it was an emergency. Oh, how I had been wrong. Jasper had taken Alice the night before to Port Angeles to watch a movie and get dinner, and Alice had taken every opportunity to text me at regular intervals, gushing about the color of his eyes and the tightness of his jeans. It made me uneasy—Alice always went into way too much detail. But she probably felt the need to explain to me in person, and I resented her for that.

"Ugh!" I grunted, flopping back into my pillow. It was dark in my room still beneath the heavy covering of clouds, and it was just be too easy to close my eyes and forget all about Alice. Charlie was out fishing with his friend Harry, and I knew that if I weren't downstairs to let Alice in, I could be left alone for a few more hours of uninterrupted slumber.

But not even five minutes later, just as the edges of my thoughts became hazy with unconsciousness, a pounding rattled on the storm door down the stairs. My brain was heavy in my skull, pounding from lack of sleep and the impending doom that was Alice at my doorstep. I snapped my eyes open, tasting the annoyance on the back of my tongue. I was usually a calm being, fading into the background and rarely getting genuinely upset about things. But right now, I was, quite frankly, pissed off at Alice Cullen.

"What is it, Alice?" I grouched as I yanked open the door. Alice skipped over the threshold with a tight little grin on her lips.

"God, Bella," she scoffed. " You look like hell." She gathered a lock of my dark brown hair between her fingers and inspected it, undoubtedly searching for split ends. I yanked away from her, padding drowsily into the kitchen.

"I wonder why?" I mumbled sarcastically, pulling open a cabinet to search for a coffee filter. Alice hummed thoughtfully as she folded herself into a wooden chair beside the small kitchen table.

"There are a lot of adjectives that I could use to describe you, Bella, but cynical was never one of them before now." I eyed her incredulously as I poured the grounds into the filter.

"I was asleep, Alice. What do you expect? A nice song and dance?"

"How was I supposed to know? I left you plenty of text messages," she shrugged with a lack of sympathy. "But at least now I know never to mess with you before noon if I want to keep my head." I sat across from her as the coffee brewed, gathering my thick mess of hair at the nape of my neck and securing it with a grocery store produce bag twistie. She winced at my obvious fashion mistake.

"Sorry, I'm just tired," I said, clearing my throat as I peeled a banana. I wasn't going to tell her why, of course. I planned on keeping that secret.

"Why are you so sleepy? All that Chem homework dragging you down?" she asked, picking at a cuticle. Alice seemed to think that I was virtually incapable of having a social life, and I would just let her keep assuming such things.

"Yeah, Alice," I muttered scornfully. "I obviously have nothing better to do with my Friday nights than to just study." Her eyes met mine, and the greenness of her irises reminded me suddenly of Edward. Not like a little piece of my brain wasn't already thinking about him. And his perfect body. And the cute little way he'd lounged across my bed just hours earlier…

"You know I don't mean that," Alice said softly, breaking my thought process. She looked so troubled, so upset that she may have offended me that I had to hold back a laugh.

"I know, little Alice," I snickered in spite of myself, patting her hand. "I'm just crabby in the mornings, that's all." Because your beautiful brother thought it would be a good idea to crawl through my window at one in the morning.. I smiled hugely as I poured myself a cup of coffee.

"Okay, then." Alice looked at me as if I was crazy. "I'm going to ignore your little mood swing and get right down to it. Jasper Hale has the lips of a fucking god." The coffee pot nearly slipped from my grip as I turned to stare at her. Alice never ceased to shock me.

"He kissed you?" I blurted, jutting my chin out in surprise. She nodded excitedly as she bit her shiny bottom lip.

"Yes!" she exploded, jumping from her seat. "He did! I never though he would do something like that! With me, I mean. But he just leaned in and did it! And he didn't even try and push me away when I straddled him and—,"

"Please, Alice, spare me the details," I cautioned, lifting a hand. If I was uncomfortable even having Edward in the same room as I was, I certainly wasn't comfortable hearing all about Alice Cullen's sexcapades. She threw a balled up napkin at the back of my head, scowling.

"Oh, relax. We didn't do anything bad. Not really," she admitted impishly. My shoulders loosened and I tried my best to give her a believable smile. That's what the wanted, after all. My congratulations.

"Way to go," I offered, turning to the sink when the stretch of her smile faded.

"Could you be a little more enthusiastic, here? You're the only one I can tell about this kind of thing. What with Rose being Jasper's sister and all…" I knew she was right. I'd known Alice for all of a week, but she needed me to be a good girlfriend to her. I'd just have to suck it up and squeal and jump around with her until she got tired and decided to go home. Then it would all be over.

Alice gave me the play-by-play of her outing with Jasper, sparing no details, and I "oohed" and "aahed" and gasped and squealed at all of the right times. She looked satisfied when she finally climbed in the Volvo to go home, and I was pleased with myself that I didn't spill the beans about Edward's last night trek to the Swan household. I was legitimately happy for Alice, even though the whole descriptive thing was sort of weird for me. But she deserved Jasper, and Jasper deserved her. In the short amount of time that I'd known the two of them, they seemed well fit for one another. Jasper was terrifying, and Alice was sweet. Jasper was calm where Alice was crazy, and he was attentive where she was spacey. It was kind of like yin and yang or whatever.

But throughout the entire conversation, in the midst of Alice's thorough description of the movie and the flavor of the food and how Jasper's skin felt beneath her fingers, I wondered something. Why had Edward come to see me last night? At school, he was decently nice to me, but I always seemed to get under his skin. My existence sometimes seemed to burden him, like when he'd have to fight off Stanley and protect me from Rose. He seemed to be reluctant to go anywhere after school with everyone, and I asked myself if maybe it was because I would be there. Maybe he had some sort of aversion to me.

But none of this made sense as he lifted himself through my window, his rain-soaked hair leaving little puddles on my carpet. None of this made sense as he closed the small space between us, taking my bottom lip between his as his hand moved against my hip. I smiled wickedly to myself.