Leah's out sick today, supposedly not from nervous drug abuse, so evening Eric is managing front of house on day shift. He's an amiable balding man, the kind you feel sorry for because he's probably only early 30s and there's no way he's had a full head of hair since high school.
His hair situation, the lack of it, it's not stopping him from working Alice. I mean, he's embarrassing. Jesus, I hope I'm not that embarrassing about Edward. Am I that embarrassing around Edward?
Alice wore booty shorts, those retro high-waist ones, with some kind of strappy little half top and platform wedges. She's all Nantucket in the summertime and Kennedy cool. She looks a metric fuck-ton better than Taylor Swift ever did in it.
Anyway, Lauren has taught me to do the bottle check out thingy, so I'm hanging out with a three-ring binder and a bunch of sticky empty well bottles – mostly off brand rum, vodka, and whiskey. Whiskey is popular here. I've probably checked thirty of those out already.
Alice gives me the signal, a bird in the hand when she's asking for a pop, and I point out a pretty neat local bookstore nearby and a pawnshop that might be of interest. She's gone before Eric can start mentally figuring what hair plugs might cost him.
Jasper breezes through just before the lunch rush is due. He's pulling at his hair, which is longish on top like Edward's but lighter. He's like the Diet version of the Real McCoy.
"Rough morning?" I pour him a Diet Coke and stick in the straw.
The straw goes between his teeth, just like Edward's. He orders Roadhouse Fries, and produces several thick textbooks before he answers, all easy on his words. Maybe he's not Cullen Light. Maybe he's Cullen High, I don't know. He takes laid back to clinical levels.
"Lotta work, but I got it," he says. "Just gotta ride. it. out."
Alice sweeps in the front door as he's exhaling slow on "out." The merciless Chicago wind has her black hair, which is flying around her bare shoulders as though it is constantly programmed for camera angles, which it probably is.
He turns and that smile, it spreads over his face, out from his lips, across both dimples, lifting his cheeks, his brows, his forehead, up and into the curls of his wild hair. He's a river, and she's the thrown stone. Brace for impact, Jasper.
"You didn't tell me his brother was hot."
Alice is hissing at me while Jasper's in the bathroom.
"You didn't ask, remember? You were too bent on 'Stay away, abandon hope all ye who enter Cullen's Hell."
I grab a bottle of Malibu Rum and try to flip a page in the binder but my sticky fingers snag and I rip it. Mother fuck.
"Seriously? What's the oldest one look like? Are they like, Thor and Loki? Who's hotter than Loki? Captain America?"
We both shake our heads and giggle. We say it together, like kindergartners jinxing each other for a Coke, "Iron Man!" We keep trying to straighten up, but it's tough. She's so right. Emmett's probably RDJ, complete with gadgets of gorgeousness.
Jasper returns, carrying the basket of food he ordered himself, and slides onto the stool in front of me, right next to Alice. Boy, girl. Cozy.
"You didn't tell me you had beautiful friends, Bella," he says, unrolling his silverware. He's watching Alice instead of the fries, and my, my, there is some real hunger there.
"Yeah, well. Just one actually, and she's like the wind. She blows in, and she blows out." I am searching for tape now, ransacking the drawers by the register so I can fix the stupid book.
"You travel, Alice? Work or pleasure?"
I try not to snort. He said 'pleasure,' and she's gone. I can see it in the way she sits up straighter, pulling her shoulders back a little and the girls up.
Aha! Scotch tape, somewhat yellowed but usable.
"I travel for work." She's sipping at her Diet Coke, trying to keep her hands still I bet. "I'm in the air more than on the ground, I do believe."
Jasper blinks. "Ah do believe? Where are you guys from?"
"Atlanta." We're doing it again, talking together, like twins. George and Fred Weasley have got nothing on us. I mean, except that awesome ginger hair. One of these days I want to be a redhead, or at least sleep next to one. Jasper, go tell your brother I need a volunteer from the audience, please.
Jasper has his fork in those fries, which Tyler has already made clear to me are the pride and joy of Cullen's. He removes his black straw from his mouth, and he's tapping the edge of the red wire basket and leaning in to Alice's bare shoulder.
"Southern girls. Well, then, you must appreciate great food." He cuts a generous portion of the heart attack in front of him and holds it up on our eye level. "Roadhouse fries, crinkle cut. Cheddar cheese sauce. Crispy bacon, and for the crowning glory–" he dunks the fork in a dressing container, "Cullen-made ranch." He nudges Alice's shoulder. "Try a bite."
There's no way. I guess everybody has a walker moment, when you either pull out a chair and get comfy with a possibility or you walk, and this is it for Alice and ol' Jasper. There's no way in billy hell she'll eat any of that today.
Of course, I'm right because she's shaking her head, flipping her hair over her shoulder and using one hand like a shield to put distance between them. "Oh, no, no. I really shouldn't. But thank you kindly."
"Thank you kindly? I don't know what I need to do to get you to say that again, but you still need to try these. I mean you have to. You don't want to insult a Cullen, do you? These are the secret to the family's success. They're putting me through college."
The ranch is dribbling off the fork into his cupped open palm beneath. It pools there as he lifts the fork toward her again.
As it turns out, I know jack shit when it comes to how anybody ought to react to a Cullen, because while I'm calculating how hard she's going to come down on him, she's done it. Alice leans forward and closes her deep red-stained lips over his fork and eats the whole damn bite.
He's cleaning the ranch off his hand and watching her chew, slowly, like she's never had fries before in her life, like she hasn't eaten in two weeks and these are the finest chocolate truffles in Switzerland, just savoring all that cheese and grease and fat. He takes his thumb and swipes the corner of her lips, taking away a tiny smear of ranch and oh, hell, did he really just lick his finger? He did. That is just too hot to be gross. Okay, it's still a little gross, but mostly hot.
"What is it you do for a living, Alice –?"
Poor Alice can't speak. The finger trick and food porn have apparently rendered her senseless because she just sits there on her stool, blinking at him.
"Brandon," I say. "She's Alice Brandon, and she's a model."
That smile is back, and all 150 watts of it are trained on my worldly, sophisticated, twitter-pated bestie.
He cuts more fries and pushes the basket over to her.
"Well, of course you are."
Jasper, as it turns out, has a world of talents between his mouth and hands. He's ordered food for Alice, which she is enjoying relatively guilt-free (a Southwestern salad with grilled chicken, chunks of avocado, salsa, and a small handful of crushed Cullen-fried tortilla chips), and now he's talking away, proving a better informant than if I'd actually paid him for his trouble.
"I'm going to graduate early so I can get started on med school. I mean, Edward and Em have pretty well got the family businesses covered."
"Med school?" Alice whistles. "That's ambitious."
He polishes off the last of their fries, his knees knocking hers on the stools. I don't know what happened to Alice's bubble, her sphere of personal get-the-fuck-outta-my-space, but it's gone, popped, penetrated. Heh. "Right. Paris, Milan, and New York." He ticks the cities off on his fingers. "You're not ambitious at all, are you?"
"I get paid to smile and walk. Okay, glare and walk."
"And I bet you do it so well."
I clear my throat. "What does Emmett do? I've never seen him here."
Jasper tears his eyes away from Alice and the salad of sin. "Oh, he manages our Michigan Avenue location. Cullen's Café? It's fancier, but you know, we keep the Roadhouse Fries."
"Oh."
"Yeah, Edward's up there on Tuesday and Friday. And Jessica really likes it up that way."
Jessica? Jessica. Ugh, how unbelievably mundane. She already sounds like trailer trash. Does Chicago have trailers or just tenements? I don't know. Don't care. I don't like her.
Alice pauses, a healthy chunk of avocado nearly to her red lips, and fixes Jasper in her sights. "Oh? What does Jessica do there?"
Jasper's smile drops away from his face for the first time since Alice walked through the door. He steals a piece of chicken from her salad and chews slowly. I recognize a distraction when I see one, and think about speaking, but apparently Alice has recovered and is back to doing what she does best – being a pro.
"Does she work for the Cullen's, too? That must be really nice, being so close to her boyfriend every day." She's licking a bit of that chili lime dressing/nectar off one nail and leaning closer to Jasper. It's his turn to blink. Chicken chewed, he cannot escape the tractor beam of her eyes.
"Oh, no," he ducks his head but his attention is back on her almost immediately. "She doesn't work. She used to be a clerk or something, but not now. She just really likes that area so she hangs out when Edward is up there."
She doesn't work. Like, at all?
"Oh, that must be nice," Alice says, all sweet and sugar and not a bit judgmental, although I know that in her mind, she's screaming, 'Wtf? He's not old enough to be a sugar daddy,' just like I am. "I like my work, but it can get tiring, living out of a suitcase."
"I think life tires Jessica," Jasper says, and then realizing maybe that's he's calling out his brother's girlfriend to near strangers, he straightens and turns the conversation like a master sailor cutting away from a storm. "But that's why we all need vacations. I should take one, sometime. Have any recommendations? Where's your favorite place you've ever been?"
She doesn't think about it. "Nawlins."
"Say again?"
"New Orleans," I say, stressing the second half of the last word out, like Ore-leans. I drop six more bottles of vodka into the giant trashcan next to me, and shelve the liquor checkout binder. "You may need an interpreter sometimes. We speak Southern American."
"You know who loves a southern accent?" Jasper hands off his Diet Coke for a refill.
"Who?" I stick in another black straw even though he already has one. It's looking ragged, that straw.
"Edward." He pulls out the old straw and starts defiling the new one with lips that favor his brother's, full on bottom, thinner on top, well-defined arch. "Yeah, he's a sucker for 'em. Has been since he discovered Daisy Duke as a kid."
I just smile, and he chews his straw, kind of appraising me.
"Well, I declare. He must get a mighty big kick out of us." Me. He can get a kick out of me, or a push into me, whichever. Whatever.
"Yeah," Jasper says, swiveling his stool around between Alice and me. "Yeah, maybe he will."