Your Biggest Fan - 18/?
Title: Your Biggest Fan
Chapter: 18/?
Fandom: Twilight
By: bythedamned
Rating: NC-17 overall
Chapter Wordcount: 9,138
Genre: AU, Slash
Pairing: Edward/Jasper
Summary: Throughout high school, the shy and over-burdened Edward Masen threw himself into work and raising his baby sister. He's always felt lucky just to be friends with track star Jasper Cullen. Now, he doesn't know if just friends is enough. AH AU Slash.
Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns, I just play
A/N: Thanks to my awesome beta, elveys_stuff
I leaned in the open doorway, watching as Jasper got the mail.
How did others see him? I wondered. What would they think if they could see him through my eyes? Those broad shoulders, the long lines of his back, those sometimes-curls… If when I was much older, someone asked me to reflect on my first love, how could I make them understand? Would I be able to do him justice?
That was a stupid thought and I shook it away. My brain kept coming up with these little scenarios where I had to explain what I felt for him, to put it into words. Because lately, the right words had been more elusive than ever.
“It’s too early,” I called out to him, just as he shut the mailbox. “Give them another week.”
“Just checking,” he said, playing it off with a shrug. Cornell’s Early Decision responses were due by mid-December, but it was only the fifth and he insisted on checking anyway.
Casually, of course.
I goosed him on his way in, just to distract him. He jumped a bit and dropped the mail on the entryway table before he looked over his shoulder to stick his tongue out at me. Quickly slipping my hand into his back pocket, I let him lead me to the kitchen, where Esme was setting the table.
“Any word yet, sweety?”
“Nope.”
He said it like it was no big deal, and it probably wouldn’t have been if Esme would stop asking him every day.
On Monday, when Jessica asked him too, he gave her the same indifferent answer but refused to say any more. Or maybe he just never got another word in edgewise, because she was chattering away.
She had been dropping by our table more and more with Lauren, first to basically tell me how smart my essay idea was, even though I’d told her it was Esme’s, and then to just talk about colleges in general. Anything and everything about them - admission statistics or interview techniques or whatever else seemed vaguely related. Mike threw in a couple of responses from time to time, especially in the gaps left by Jasper’s silence, but Jessica made it pretty clear that now that I’d opened my mouth, she expected me to join in the conversations.
I wished I never had.
During lunch we were pretty much sitting ducks. It’s not that she wasn’t nice, I reminded myself, she just took up a lot of time. Especially since it was clear that Jas never felt like talking when she and Lauren were around, and it felt like I was giving up time with him for time with the girls. And that wasn’t a trade I’d willingly make any day.
So we’d started bee-lining our way to History in the morning and heading straight to the gym after sixth period.
That afternoon, though, just after our last class was over, I was sidetracked by the sight of Charlie’s cruiser in the parking lot.
“Hey,” I said quietly, nudging Jasper’s side. When he looked up, I tilted my head towards the parking lot and we shared a look of intrigued confusion before veering off towards it.
Alice caught sight of us first, just as they were getting to the cruiser, and elbowed Bella.
“Oh, um, hi,” Bella said, turning back into the slightly-pink, stammering girl she’d been when I first met her. Except now I knew why, and that made it pretty awkward.
Clearly, I would never have a comfortable conversation with a girl again.
I tried to be as neutral as possible. “Hi, Bella. How are you?”
“Fine,” she said, “I’m fine. How’re you?”
I nodded back, trying to think of something suitable to say, but couldn’t. “I’m fine.”
There was a beat where no one said anything, but luckily Jasper’s silence didn’t extend to these girls. “So Bella,” he asked, “are we gonna see you on closing night?”
She relaxed, so I relaxed, and Alice’s grin light up like a spotlight.
“Of course,” Bella said, giving Alice a playful eye roll. “Dad and I are both coming. Ali wouldn’t let us see it before then.”
“Great, we’ll see you there,” Jas said, as I leaned down to the driver’s side window just as Charlie was rolling it down.
“Hey Charlie, off early today?”
“Well,” he said, fiddling with his mustache, “your sister and I have a meeting.”
“Oh?” I asked, looking up to Ali.
“I looked for you this morning,” she said, stepping away from Bella and leaning against the side of the cruiser so the three of us could talk.
“Oh. I was sort of hiding.”
“From Jessica Stanley?”
“How’d you know?”
She smirked and I smirked back. Even though they were all very nice girls, Alice had never been particularly impressed with the cheer squad either.
“Anyway, what’s this meeting?”
Alice tugged on a spike of hair and looked to Charlie, then back at me. “Some guy is gonna come interview us, just to check out the situation, so he can report back.”
“It’s all routine social services stuff, Edward,” Charlie threw in. “The guy’s just doing his job.”
I fidgeted, leaning myself against the car too. “I didn’t realize you guys had gotten that far.”
“Charlie put in the paperwork a little while ago,” Alice said, and Charlie nodded, “but this was sort of last minute.”
“Do, uh, do I need to be there for anything?”
“Don’t you worry ‘bout a thing, Edward. S’routine, like I said.”
My gaze flickered back and forth between him and Alice. “What about- I mean, did anyone try to-”
Charlie cleared his throat noisily, cutting me off. Then he shifted around his seat propped his elbow up in the open window before saying, in a very professional voice, “Your father failed to respond to any form of contact at his current address, court-issued or otherwise.”
All I could say was, “Oh,” and watch Ali tug away at her hair.
It was probably a good thing. If he couldn’t even be bothered to write back and defend his own parental rights, he didn’t deserve to be our father anyway. Plus, then Charlie would get guardianship no problem. It was, for sure, a good thing.
But it still sucked.
Ali had worked one strand of hair so much that it lost its spike, and she started patting it down behind her ear.
“Your hair’s longer.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, untucking the strand. “It’s sorta awkward right now.”
“It looks okay.”
“Cute, Edward,” she said, giving me a playfully exasperated smile. “You tell girls their hair looks cute.”
“It does,” I said quickly, “it looks cute,” and she actually laughed.
“Alright, guys,” Charlie said, thumping his hand audibly on the side of the car. “Don’t wanna be late.”
“Right,” I said, backing away from the car as he started the engine. “Let me know how it goes?”
“Sure. Come on, Bella.”
Bella and Jas looked up from their own private conversation several feet away, and she said something quiet to him before climbing into the back too.
Then we all said our goodbyes, and Jas and I headed for track before they were out of the parking lot.
I did get a text from Ali that night letting me know that the meeting really was ‘fine’ but I still looked for her the next morning while Jas headed to class.
She and Seth were hanging out by her locker, but when she spotted me she said something quietly, and then balanced herself with a hand on his chest to give him a kiss.
He got the message, whatever it was, and gave me a quick nod before heading off to his own class.
“Hey,” I said, stepping up to her.
I wondered how long I should beat around the bush. She didn’t make me wait long, though, because as she leaned against her locker she had a very knowing smile.
“It went totally fine, Edward. Nothing to worry about.”
“Oh, yeah? Good. That’s good.”
“It was really mostly an interview for Charlie. I mean, to make sure he’s fit, or whatever, and of course he is.
“Yeah, of course he is,” I repeated. “So, that’s it?”
She took a deep breath, pushing her not-so-spiky-today hair behind her ears, and her smile shifted slightly. “It doesn’t feel like a ‘that’s it’ kind of thing. I mean, Charlie’s already done a lot, and the guy wants me to have my own bed and stuff, but Charlie said that’s fine. Now, we just need someone to sign as a secondary guardian.”
“Esme said-”
“Oh yeah, I know,” she said, too quickly.
There was a moment, then, where I didn’t know what to say. Alice was staring up at me just like I was staring at her, and I knew we were both thinking the same thing.
I hadn’t offered myself.
Esme had said, countless times really, that Alice was always welcome and she’d do whatever she could to help. And it was really a moot point anyway. But…
I guessed I really had given up the idea of being some sort of guardian. Or maybe I’d just really latched onto the idea of getting out of Forks with Jas. Either way, I wasn’t as eager to shoulder that responsibility anymore.
I cleared my throat, just as Ali said, “Anyway.”
“Anyway.”
“So, how’s things at the Cullen’s? Still all glowy?”
I looked back over my shoulder, towards the H building where Jas would be sitting in class, and took just a moment to think of it.
Yes… with Jas, I definitely still felt like glowing, even if that feeling suddenly had a new name, and even if I had no idea how to share that new name with him. I was certain he felt it too, when he would hum against the skin of my neck, or give me his brilliant crooked smiles. But then he would stick fastidiously to the word like - he liked coming home with me, he liked curling up with me, he really liked me - and I would just deflate. How could I tell him I felt something more than like?
What if he couldn’t say it back?
I looked back at Ali, eager for a distraction from those thoughts, but froze at the look on her face. Her eyebrows were launched as high as they could go and she looked almost amused.
“What?”
“What, yourself,” she said, grinning. “You’ve got your patented freak-out face on.”
I sighed. Damn my face, it was such a bad liar.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” I said, running a hand through my morning hair.
“Well,” she said, still amused and way too intrigued, “have you told Jasper about this nothing?”
“No, I just said, it’s nothing.”
“Yeah, I know, but I think you should tell him anyway. That’s what-” she dropped her voice, “boyfriends are for. You can tell them anything.”
“Yeah?” I asked, trying to casually change the subject. “Do you tell Seth everything?”
Except as soon as I said it, I knew it was anything but casual. Ali turned away, fiddling more with her hair and backpack, but then she did something that surprised me. She answered.
She took in a deep breath and let it out on a slow sigh. “Actually, yeah. These days, I do.”
I waited for her to elaborate because, okay, I was a little skeptical.
“Seth’s really big on communication,” she continued, and the way she over enunciated made it clear that that was a buzzword in their relationship. “So after the whole… misunderstanding, yeah. I tell him pretty much everything.”
I was both relieved and jealous, all at the same time, but I knew it wouldn’t do to let either of those show. Instead, I nodded along and said, “Good. That’s good.”
“He wants to talk to you, you know.”
“Why? About what?”
That’s when she started to smile again, and she even rolled her eyes. “Not like that. He just said that if he’d known… well, you know, he would have tried to get to know you better. Since you’re family, and all.”
I said, “Alright,” only a little begrudgingly. He’d been an asshole every time I’d talked to him before but, then again, if his main priorities were communication, family, and Alice, it was hard to just write him off.
“Anyway,” she said, back to the typical too-chipper too-early self I remembered. “I’ve gotta get to class. Don’t freak out too much. Or better yet,” she said over her shoulder as she turned toward the doorway, “just tell him. See you later.”
A quick check of my phone told me I had better hurry to class, but it didn’t matter if I was on time. It turned out, I was too distracted to remember the first half hour anyway. I spent it staring at Jas’s curls and thinking about the four letter word camped out on the tip of my tongue.
Alice said to just tell him but… how? Just the idea of it made my palms sweat. I just couldn’t fathom telling him without knowing, for sure, that he felt it back. What if he just answered with silence or, worse, ‘thank you?’
The longer I thought about it the more worst-case-scenarios I came up with, and I sighed heavily while I pretended to take notes.
Why couldn’t things be like old times? Like way old times, where I could just club him over the head and drag him back to my cave, and he’d know I’d chosen him. Or should he be the one clubbing me? Whatever - we could club the crap out of each other, but we’d know it was love.
No, I couldn’t risk it. And if I ever did, I couldn’t just say it. I had to show it, to make some gesture that would win him over… or something.
Jas was pretty quiet over the next week, especially since he was tied up with the second phase of his bio project with Ty. I didn’t really mind though, because it gave me time to ponder the perfect romantic gesture, mostly in the form of staring - lots of staring. Sometimes he would catch me and smile before raising a curious eyebrow, but I’d just shake my head so he could get back to work. As his deadline got closer he stopped asking, which was good because I stopped having to make up lame excuses for why I was so distracted.
Not that all my hours of contemplation were doing me any good. I laid awake at night, searching for some kind of romantic gesture that would make him happy but wasn’t over-done or lame, and ended up scrapping every idea. Sometimes it’d be the thought of rain, or the possibility of him misinterpreting a gesture, but I eventually found a flaw in every plan. It was a scary thought, that I just wasn’t romantic - or romantic enough, anyway - but it seemed to be true. So instead I resigned myself to wait for inspiration to strike, and tried to get some sleep in the meantime.
The meantime really stretched on. Before I knew it Jasper and I were heading to Ali’s play.
I had decided to dress a little nicer than usual, with a button down shirt and a sweater. It obviously wasn’t a date or anything, since we were going to the high school, and would be surrounded by people we knew, but still. It was Saturday night and Jas and I were going out. It warranted a collared shirt.
I think he liked it, too, ‘cause he’d thumbed the tips of my collar and given me a kiss before we left.
Alice was actually right about the turn out - most people seemed to have waited for closing night, so the auditorium was nearly full. Some of the younger students I recognized from Ali’s lunch crowd were working the snack table, and even more were handing out photocopied programs at the door.
I didn’t spot Alice until we were looking for seats, and she and Bella and some other techies were sitting near the front. Jas and I headed over, but ran into Charlie first.
“Hey, Charlie.”
“Hey there, Edward. Jasper. You guys remember Seth and Leah’s mom?” he asked, turning to the woman beside him. It was sort of hard to reconcile this woman with the Quileute nurse I remembered, with her pitch black hair in loose waves all the way down her back and the bright turquoise top, but it was nice to know she didn’t give off that school-teacher vibe all the time.
“Sure,” I said. “Hi Mrs. Clearwater.”
“Please,” she smiled, “just Sue. How’s that leg doing?”
“Good as new.” And to further make my point, I jumped a little from one leg to the other.
Then, of course, I felt stupid for doing it, but she just smiled wide enough to make little crinkles near her eyes and said, “Oh, I’m so glad. The meets just wouldn’t be the same without you. Or you,” she added, turning to Jas. “No tumbles for you, I hope?”
His mouth quirked up a bit on one side, probably because when runners wiped out it wasn’t just a ‘tumble’, but he just said, “No, I’ve been alright.”
Sue started to say something else, but I couldn’t make it out over a high voice calling, “Edward! Jasper!”
I knew who it was without looking, and Sue curled her hand around Charlie’s arm and led him to their seats, leaving us alone.
And at Jessica’s mercy.
“Hey Edward,” she said, stepping up to us with Lauren in tow. Her cheeks were red and she looked excited about something. “Where are you guys sitting?”
Jas pointed noncommittally towards the back of the auditorium, where there were still empty seats, but Jessica just shook her head.
“We have better seats saved up front, come on.” As the overhead lights flickered she grabbed my arm, tugging me towards the stage.
I looked at Jasper and he looked at me, but he had his neutral face on and I couldn’t think of a decent argument, so I didn’t put up a struggle.
She was right, their seats were a lot better. I had been instructed to ‘watch how the trees change’ and to ‘look for the moon’, whatever that meant, and sitting in the fifth row meant I might actually notice the handiwork Alice wanted me to see.
Lauren tripped over several people’s feet to get to the open seats, followed by Jessica and me and Jas, just in time for the lights to go out. In the brief black-out before the play started, Jessica leaned over and whispered, “You look really cute tonight, by the way.”
I tried to say something about what she looked like, because I’d figured out lately that that’s what girls wanted to hear, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what she was wearing. A sweater, maybe? Actually, I didn’t really care, so I didn’t say anything at all.
The play was… chaotic. I knew Jasper understood more than I did, because he laughed at several archaic jokes I didn’t get, but the sets and costumes were really vivid, and the love triangle - rectangle, I guess - was easy enough to get. I think Jessica was better with that olde-english stuff than I was too, because she kept gasping during speeches and grabbing my wrist in surprise. Even when it was in my lap.
All the backgrounds looked great - especially the trees, which seemed to have real leaves mixed in among the painted ones, giving the whole set an especially realistic appearance. It was obvious a lot of time and care went into making each backdrop multifaceted so that it would make sense in several scenes, and I had to applaud Alice’s efforts. Still, though, I couldn’t help but think that she should have been in the cast.
The fairies were all in these bright, flowy costumes, running around trying to mimic the grace that Ali had naturally. If she couldn’t get a speaking role, she would have at least been great at that. But then again, she seemed to really enjoy the designing and painting, so I was going to keep my mouth shut.
Through the entire first act, I was hyper-aware of Jasper sitting next to me. What I really wanted to do was find some way to press a hand or foot or something up against him. But unfortunately, with all of us crammed into those tiny folding chairs, it was nearly impossible to do anything undetected. Plus, the way Jessica grabbed at me was pretty jarring, and I didn’t want to keep jostling Jasper through the play too.
During intermission Jessica talked my ear off while Jasper excused himself. At least I didn’t have to say much, but sitting with the girls was dull and ate up my time to find Ali, and I wished he’d taken me with him.
He didn’t even bring any snacks back.
The second half went pretty much like the first, with Jessica grabbing at my wrist again while some fairy-folk were talking, except that that time she didn’t let go.
Her palm was warm and slightly moist, and her fingers wrapped all the way around my wrist to press against my pulse. It wasn’t tight or anything but, still, she wasn’t letting go.
What was she doing?
I tried not to draw attention to it, looking at her in my peripheral vision, but she seemed like she was just watching the play. I wriggled my hand a little, in case she’d forgotten she was holding onto me or something, but then she just slid her fingers forward, trailing them along my palm until her fingers slipped between mine.
No, really. What the fuck was she doing?
I shifted my hand again, and my whole arm with it, but I couldn’t easily pull away. Then she just started sweeping her thumb across the back of my hand in a very Jasper-esque gesture, except when she did it, I didn’t like it.
One sidelong look at Jas told me he was obviously aware of what Jessica was doing. And If I hated Jessica grabbing me, I hated it even more with him watching.
Next, I tried a different approach, letting my hand go as limp as possible, so that her curled fingers actually looked like an empty cage around my hand. It was getting ridiculous but I couldn’t think of a way to extract myself without making a fuss or upsetting her. Come to think of it, those two would probably amount to the same thing.
It wasn’t until a minute later, when Jas moved to get up, that I had a decent diversion to pull away.
I caught his sleeve and whispered, “Where are you going?”
He mumbled the word bathroom and then slid away, stepping past several people in the row who craned their necks around him as he passed. That struck me as weird, because for some reason I’d thought he’d gone to the bathroom during intermission. And when he still didn’t come back after a whole soliloquy, and then a whole other scene after that, I was sure he hadn’t just gone to pee.
What if something was wrong? What if he was sick? Or, I had an even worse thought… what if he wasn’t?
I stood up and inconvenienced all the same grumpy people, completely ignoring Jessica when she tried to whisper-call after me, and made my way to the bathroom.
He was in there, which was a relief, but I was right. He wasn’t peeing.
He was leaning his hands on the sink with locked elbows, letting his head hang forward so that his shoulders hunched up like goal posts. I reached for him, stepping up behind him quickly, but when he heard my steps his head snapped up and we could see each other in the mirror.
It was smudged with soapy handprints and other grime I didn’t want to think about, but even in the dim light I could still make out his face. He was exceptionally pale, and the tips of the curls that hung in his face were dark and wet like he’d been splashing himself with water. His eyes were narrowed as he watched me, his lips were tight, and he looked more nauseous than anything else.
A quick scan of the urinals and gaps under the stalls told me we were alone, so I didn’t bother to hold back. I ran one hand up and down his back and laid the other on his shoulder, trying to turn him towards me.
“Are you alright?”
He kept his eyes locked on mine in the mirror and took a moment before he gave one short nod.
“Are you sick?” I ran my hand up his neck, tucking his wet curls behind his ear and trying to get a better look at him.
“I’m fine,” he said in an exhausted voice, but his body was tense underneath my hands and he seemed anything but fine.
“Jas, it’s okay. We can go if you’re not feeling well. I can get the car.”
He rolled his shoulders, dislodging my other hand from his back, and stepped away. “I said I’m fine.”
In that moment, with that tone of voice, I knew he wasn’t sick. I knew there was something else wrong - something between him and me - and that’s when I started to get a burning weight in the pit of my stomach. It felt like my own organs had doubled in size and were twisting themselves into knots.
I thought about it, I guessed I could see how he’d be angry with Jessica’s antics and all, but I didn’t see why he would be mad at me. The thought made me nervous, like a kid who couldn’t remember if they’d cleaned up all their toys like they were told.
I swallowed, hard, but it only seemed to make my mouth drier. The silence stretched on and even though I could probably reach out and touch him, there seemed to be a chasm between us. He felt so damn far away that I almost thought I’d have to yell to be heard.
Except my throat felt too tight to do anything but whisper.
“Jas?”
No answer but his tense back.
“Jas? Are you mad?”
I watched him deflate, sloping his shoulders as he let his head hang forward again with a sigh. Even from behind he looked so utterly defeated. I just didn’t understand why. When he finally turned towards me, it was to brush past me without even looking up.
“Come on,” he mumbled, “let’s just get back.”
He reached for the door and my stomach seized up even more painfully. I couldn’t let him walk back out there, to that black expansive room where we’d be so close but still unable to talk. I just couldn’t.
I cleared my throat, just so it would work, and asked uncertainly, “Are you gonna stay this time?”
He stopped, fingers already curled around the door knob, and slowly looked back across his shoulder. The disappointment in his eyes was both chastising and dismissive, and his words were biting.
“Are you gonna hold her hand this time?”
“Jas, no,” I said, halfway relieved he’d brought it up and stepping towards him, but he just turned back to the door. “Jas,” I insisted, “that’s not what happened.”
His voice was low and icy. “That’s what it looked like.”
“She kept grabbing my hand, okay? It wasn’t me. Why would I do that?”
The longer he kept his back to me the more frantic I felt, and his slow, even words were just proof of the distance between us. Even though he never raised his voice, I still felt stung like he had.
“I don’t know, Edward. Why would you do that?”
Internally, I groaned. That was not how this conversation was supposed to go. This conversation wasn’t supposed to be happening at all. I reached out for his shoulders, thinking that if I could just wrap my arms around him I could make it all better, but he so obviously didn’t want to be touched that I couldn’t even make contact.
I did step up behind him, though, trying to keep my voice low and unwavering like his. “I wouldn’t. I spent that entire time trying to figure out how to get my hand back, I promise.”
Finally, he looked up again, half-turning towards me, but his face was no less strained. “But why did it take you so long, Edward? And why’d you let her in the first place?”
“I just didn’t want to hurt her feelings.”
“Why not?” he demanded, and I was taken aback by what an un-Jasper thing that was to say.
“What do you mean, why not?”
His eyes narrowed meaningfully. “I mean, why are Jessica Stanley’s feelings suddenly your top priority?”
He waited once he’d said it, watching me in absolute stillness. My first thought was that the answer was obvious: because we were nice boys. If we weren’t so nice I might have given half the school the finger back in ninth grade, but I didn’t because that’s not who we were. Jas and I, collectively, were decent people who would never upset or offend anyone who didn’t deserve it. And Jessica might be intrusive, but she wasn’t cruel.
With my next thought, though, the writhing in my stomach slithered all the way up into my chest. The logic unfolded gradually in my brain, emerging from a haze and rippling down my spine with a slow horror. If Jas didn’t think of us as a cohesive ‘we’, if he didn’t know that I was loyal to him above all else, that I had been waiting all week for him to interrupt Jessica’s long lunchtime rants, then he would think I chose her feelings over his.
That I chose her.
Jas’s posture crumpled, and I wondered what he had or hadn’t seen in my face that bothered him so much. He had his back to the door, but his shoulders were still so hunched that he looked like a strip of cracked paint, slowly peeling off an old wall.
“Edward,” he whispered, more to the floor than to me, “… damnit.”
I hovered in front of him like I didn’t know where to touch him, or how. “You’re my top priority, Jas. I promise.”
“Then why?” he asked, in the same defeated whisper. His eyes would dart up to me every so often, but he wouldn’t let me hold his gaze. “I don’t know what to think, Edward. Even at home you’re…”
He trailed off, letting his words and eyes drop, and I felt like no matter how close I stood I couldn’t get through to him. He had obviously convinced himself of something, something I didn’t even know was a concern.
Pressing my hands against his arms, I hoisted his shoulders back up against the door so that we could finally be eye to eye. Softly, with what I hoped was my most tender, encouraging voice, I asked, “At home what?”
At home, with just the two of us, everything was still great. Wasn’t it?
He shook his head, trying to look anywhere but at me, but finally whispered, “You spend all this time in your head, and I don’t know what you’re thinking about, or why you won’t tell me anymore.”
It was like staring at one of those trick drawings, where you think it’s a young girl and then someone points out the ugliness and suddenly it’s an old hag. Jas had no idea what was going on in my head, and it was painfully clear that I’d fucked up. I’d been trying to find the perfect romantic gesture to show Jas that I could be a great boyfriend - that I was worthy of his love, if he ever wanted to give it - and instead I’d completely missed him unraveling right next to me.
In my rush of alarmed thoughts, I realized I knew one way to fix this, to convince Jas not to shy away from me. Except, this wasn’t how I wanted to do it. Not here, in a dingy boy’s bathroom at school, with everyone we knew sitting just outside the door. And certainly not with him practically melting in front of me.
He kept pursing his lips, like he was trying to hold something back, and maybe it was all in my head but for just a moment I thought his eyes looked extra-glossy. He just looked so pained, and I knew that every worry that had carved out a line on his face, every shred of self-doubt going through his mind, I had put them there. All of them. I had let him carry this misery all week, or maybe even longer, without even knowing.
And it had gone on long enough. I just couldn’t let him tough out another night thinking I would choose anyone but him. Even if he couldn’t say it back, at least he wouldn’t have to doubt me. Us.
“Jas, look at me.” He didn’t. “Please?”
He tilted his head, obliging me just the tiniest bit, and watched me with every bit of guarded pain visible in his eyes.
“I have been thinking a lot,” I began, and now that I was about the say the words, they were thick in the back of my throat. “About you-”
He cringed, ever so slightly, but I gathered up all my courage in one breath and soldiered on.
“I’ve been wanting to tell you that… Jas, I love you.”
I strained my ears against the silence for his answer, but as soon as I’d said it, time seemed to stop. The earth stopped spinning, I held my breath as Jas stared at me with a completely unreadable expression, and even my heart stopped beating. I know it did, because I felt it come thudding back the instant Jas moved.
He slammed into me with so much force that I stumbled, and I felt him dig his face into my neck. It wasn’t a soft gesture - he buried his head so hard I didn’t know how he could breathe, and his whole body gripped me, clung to me, radiating tension.
Tentatively, I reached my hands around his back, but he didn’t respond. I had no idea what was going though his head. He had hidden his face from me, and it left me at a complete loss.
“Jas,” I said into his ear, because that’s all I could reach, “I didn’t-”
“No,” he ground out, curling his fingertips into my skin, “don’t you take it back.”
“No,” I swore, hugging him close. “I, I didn’t say it for you to say it back. So, so it’s okay. You just had to know, because, I mean, I thought we were on the same page. You and me. And Jessica’s not on that page.”
Ugh, I wasn’t even making sense. I raised one hand into his hair, wishing I could convey my sincerity with just my touch.
“What I mean is, we’re in this together. And I couldn’t let you walk out there thinking anyone could get in the way of that, because they can’t. Not for me, anyway.”
I felt the moist warmth of his breath on my neck before he raised his head and pushed himself away. His eyes were wide and cautious, but held none of the desperation from before, and at least he was looking at me.
“I just wish you wouldn’t let her think you were available.”
I opened my mouth to answer - he knew how I felt about coming out - but he cut me off.
“You spend all of lunch talking to Jessica, and now you’re letting her hold your hand in front of me. And I know it’s mostly her, okay? I do. But I don’t know why you let her. I don’t know if you like having girls flirt with you because you feel more like a guy, or if being pushy is all it takes or-”
He looked away again, hiding the anguish on his face, and I knew that as he talked he was convincing himself of all his doubts all over again. It was so unlike him, my cool, confident Jas, to let these things fester. I had never seen him do this before but then again, I reminded myself, I’d never seen him in a relationship before either.
There was a tremor to his voice that made his whispers even more heartbreaking. “It just makes me wonder, Edward, if we happened because I was just… pushy.”
As soon as he said the word, faint though it was, my breath caught audibly in my throat. So that was it - he though I saw our relationship as something I was roped into, as something to be compensated for. I was mildly offended that he thought I could be so easily swayed, but also horrified that he felt so… disconnected.
“Jas, how can you think that? I’ve told you how happy I am. I mean, I just said-”
“I know,” he admitted quickly. “And I don’t think it all the time. But sometimes, like tonight, I can’t help but remember that, at first, you never really said you wanted to be with me. In the beginning, the only thing you actually said you wanted was to keep it a secret.”
I remembered that conversation, when we’d agreed we were boyfriends, and I remembered the real beginning too, when he’d held his lips just barely off mine and told me to cut the miscommunication crap.
In retrospect, it was true that I hadn’t given him a straight answer. And in all this time, it seemed, I hadn’t gotten any better at communicating. These insecurities had been haunting him intermittently for who knew how long, all because I never got around to saying the right words. Which was terrible and negligent of me, because if there was one thing I knew for certain it was that I wanted him.
“Jas,” I whispered, pressing one hand to his cheek and gently guiding him to turn toward me. “I’m sorry. Okay? I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I never said it out loud, and I’m sorry I never told you that I wanted more before we kissed, or before I hurt my leg, even. And I’m sorry I’m not comfortable coming out, but that’s not about you.”
With my other hand, I pressed the crook of my finger under his chin and tipped it up, urging him to look at me and really hear what I was saying. I hoped that all my love and earnest devotion showed when I said, “I know it took me a lot longer than you to figure out what I want but I’m telling you, Jas, it’s you. Only you.”
He was staring at me so fixedly, so openly, and it sparked the hope that I was actually getting through to him. I felt flushed with urgency, and with what I was about to admit, but it was worth it just for the peace that was spreading across his face.
“I don’t think you know,” I added softly, “that when I told Ali about us, she called me out for glowing. Or that when I’m too wound up to sleep I, well, I remember you laying next to me. And it helps.”
His voice was barely a whisper. “I didn’t know.”
Even in the dull light of the bathroom, the way his eyes were fixed on me made them look so intense, and so blue. The little creases around them had finally eased away, and he watched me with a brightness and hope that I realized had been missing lately. He slipped his hands up to my chest, his fingers inching up towards the hem of my shirt, and asked, “Will you say it again?”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, not that.” The corner of his mouth quirked up, just the tiniest bit, into a smile that was both excited and indulgent, and I knew what he wanted.
I had a flash of self-consciousness at having to say it again, face to face, but his thumbs slipped up to swipe across my skin, and I took comfort from the affectionate gesture.
“Jas,” I said, taking a deep breath and looking into his eyes, “I love you.”
His fingers reached higher, lightly rubbing that spot behind my ear, and he gave me the most intimate and tenderly lopsided smile I’d ever seen. “I love you too.”
Then he kissed me, holding my face as I held his, and I focused all my energy into those few points of contact. His kisses were long and deep, barely leaving me time to breathe, but I was perfectly willing to give up air. I pressed myself against him even harder as, slowly, he wrapped his entire body around me. He tangled our arms and legs, and I thought that maybe if I held on tight enough we would never have to separate. His embrace held none of the desperation or tension from just minutes before, and was instead imbued with warmth and passion and love.
Above all, love.
Finally taking a breath, I took in his thousand-watt grin and reached up to tuck his untamed curls behind his ears.
He was about to say something when we were both knocked off balance and forced to spring apart to catch ourselves. I looked up, startled, to see an elderly man poking his head through the bathroom door. He was stooped over, with not enough hair on his head and too much in his oversized nose. He looked at us apologetically, pulling the door back as if keeping it away from us now would make up for swinging it into us.
“Sorry there. Did I hit you fellas?”
I said nothing, silently wondering what this man had seen, but he shuffled stiffly to the urinals without waiting for an answer. As he unbuckled his pants he said, without looking up, “You boys might as well see the end of the show.”
Taking that as a good excuse, we both slipped out the door without another word. I walked closely beside Jas down the corridor, pushing thoughts of the geriatric man from my mind and recapping everything else that had happened in the bathroom.
“Edward?”
“Yeah?”
“You do look nice tonight.”
“… It was for you.”
“… Thanks.”
I walked a little closer, letting my shoulder bump his, before we reached the main auditorium again. We found seats - new seats - in a mostly empty row in the back. I sat casually, letting my knees fall wide, and Jasper did the same so that I could discretely slip my hand between the two seats and curl my palm around the back of his calf. As I did I heard Jasper hum, and it was only after he leaned more heavily into my hand that I started paying attention to the play again.
There were a bunch of people on stage in ill-fitting costumes. There was some girl - or guy, maybe? because even from the back his boobs looked uneven - who was making a big scene of absolutely refusing to die, and kept interrupting everyone else with “adieu!” over and over again. I was relieved to see some guy in a giant hat decorated like the moon, just in case Ali asked about it later.
After some dancing and a little bit more talking, the actors took their bows and did their call-outs to the drama teacher and the tech crews. There was a very localized burst of cheering for the lighting crew that I assumed was a Clearwater/Masen/Swan effort, and then finally the lights came up. I gave Jasper’s leg a squeeze before pulling away, just for good measure.
We waited for most of the audience to spill out of the auditorium, and when I saw a clear path to Alice I jumped up to say a quick goodbye before she disappeared backstage. She was in a huddle of drama people, chatting, but spun away from them when she spotted me.
“Hi,” she called excitedly, waving the hand that wasn’t holding a bouquet of pink and yellow daisies wrapped in paper.
“Nice flowers,” I said uncertainly. I’d thought flowers were just for the actors.
She beamed. “They’re from Seth. He said it was a reminder of all our hard work, even after the play was over.”
I had to give it to him, he knew how to make her happy.
“They’re beautiful,” I told her, eyeing them. Up close they weren’t just daisies, but I could only really name half of them. “And so were your sets.”
“Yeah?” she asked, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. “One of the trees actually fell down during the dress rehearsal yesterday, and there was this huge crack and we all thought it would totally ruin the panel ‘cause we didn’t have enough time to paint a new one so Katie said what about real trees,” she paused for a breath, “but that was impossible but branches weren’t so we cut a whole bunch of branches from the woods and they looked even better than ever, don’t you think?”
I laughed to myself when I realized the end of her speech held an actual question, because so for that moment it really felt like the old Ali was back. She would probably be like that all night, and I hoped Seth would be able to keep up with her. I told her again that her sets were great, and the moon too, and that launched her into recounting the design process besides that costume until her friends called her name.
“Oh,” she mused, craning to look back over her shoulder. “I gotta run, Edward.”
“Alice, wait.”
“What?”
My eyes flickered to her bouquet again. “Could I, could I have a flower?”
She turned back toward me, finally still for the first time all night, and raised one eyebrow.
“Not for me, obviously.”
She considered it for a moment, then asked, “Did something happen?”
I shook my head. “No. Sort of.” I looked over her head and around us, wondering if anyone was listening in. “I just wanted to make a gesture, but it’s okay. Never mind.”
She rolled her eyes before grinning conspiratorially at me. “Of course you can have a flower. I was just curious. Which one do you want?”
“Not pink?” I said, hopefully.
“I wasn’t going to assume,” she said, primly.
Wiggling her fingers into the stalks of the bouquet, she grabbed one and started to pull out a yellow lily. It was wide, with a freckled orange center that faded out to yellow, tapered petals, and had several dark pollen buds sticking up from the center. It was vibrant, but not too feminine. It was perfect, but it seemed like the nicest flower in the bunch.
“Ali, it’s okay, you can just give me a daisy.”
Again, she smirked, and then pulled it completely free. “I’m pretty sure he’ll like this one better.”
Her friends called again from up on stage, so I said, “Alright. Thanks, Ali.”
“No prob, Edward. Use it well.”
I made my way back down the center aisle looking for Jas, but was cut off once again by the most persistent branch of the cheer squad.
“There you are,” Jessica huffed, sliding awkwardly down a row of chairs to meet me. “You disappeared.”
“Uh, yeah. We found seats in the back.”
Lauren, who was hovering just behind Jessica, asked, “Who’s the flower for?”
“Umm,” I stalled. “Alice. She worked really hard.”
Please, please, don’t say you saw me get it from her.
But Jessica didn’t know where I got it, because her already exasperated face fell even farther. “Oh.” She tugged at a strand of gelled frizzy hair and sighed lightly. “I thought they might be for, well, someone else.”
“No. Why would I want to give it to anyone else?”
The girls exchanged a look, a mix of disappointment and anger, and I made it my sudden mission to get as far away from the conversation as possible.
“I gotta go,” I said, before turning on the spot and hurrying down the aisle. As I walked, I tucked the stem into my coat, letting the flower poke out at the top but covering it loosely with my scarf. I didn’t need anyone else asking who the flower was for.
I found Jas in the hallway outside the auditorium talking with Bella, Charlie, Sue and Leah. Bella was promising to send Seth right out, and waved as she slipped back into the theater. I spent a moment exchanging pleasantries with Leah over how well the play had gone before I politely announced Jas and I had to go.
“What’s the rush?” he asked as we pushed ourselves out into the near-freezing night.
“Uh, Jessica was kinda pissed that we disappeared.”
“Oh.” He looked serious, but unperturbed. “Is it alright if I’m not sorry?”
“Yeah,” I sighed, “it’s alright.”
My car was on the far edge of the lot, against some trees, and I told Jas I’d pull forward so he didn’t have to crawl through the brush. As I leaned to get into the car, though, I felt the long stem of the lily push into my stomach and I immediately straightened back up. I definitely didn’t want to end this night by giving him a molested flower.
He looked at me questioningly as I stood up, and even more like I was crazy as I unzipped my jacket, but the look on his face when he saw the lily was worth braving the cold. The petals were still unmarred, and were the only splash of color in the otherwise dark lot. Jasper’s eyes were fixed on it, his mouth slightly open in surprise, but he didn’t reach for it even after I offered it.
“It’s for you,” I said, redundantly.
Finally, he reached out, pinching it delicately between two fingers, and lifted it up to his nose. I hadn’t even thought to smell it.
“It’s beautiful,” he told me softly, raising his eyes to catch mine over the flower.
I tried to figure out the best thing to say next, some way that wasn’t too cheesy to tell him he was even more beautiful, but when he tilted his nose out of the flower and had its dark pollen smeared all over his face and I laughed instead.
“Come here,” I said fondly, and slipped my hand under his jaw to steady him.
As soon as my fingers made contact, he pulled away, laughing and complaining, “Cold! Your fingers are cold.”
I smirked and reached for him again anyway. “You’re strong, you can take it.”
He did actually let me wipe the rest of the pollen off, but not without a petulantly inconvenienced look that I knew was all for show, and a mumbled mention of extreme torture.
“There, all better.”
“My savior,” he drawled out with playful sarcasm and a smile, and I laughed again. Then, with a sly look, he got the idea to reach out with his own icy fingers, and I quickly slid out of his reach and into the car.
I was expecting more retaliation when he slid into the passenger’s seat but instead he was sniffing the flower again. I noticed it was suddenly pollen-free, and he wiping his free hand on his jeans.
The ride home never warmed up, since the heater in my car was glitchy at best, but I sat on my free hand while Jas offered the flower up for me. It really did smell nice. Of course, he had to go and ask the one question I’d hoped he wouldn’t - where I got it - and after a few failed evasion tactics I told him Alice gave it to me.
He snorted. “You just took it?”
“Commandeered. Nicely. Besides,” I added, glancing at him as I turned onto the main road, “it was worth it.”
I thought he might laugh, or scold me some more, but instead he just tucked his nose into the flower again with a look of contented self-indulgence.
“So, should I be thanking Alice or Seth?”
I turned to him, dismayed, and he let out a soft chuckle. Slowly, he slipped his hand across my thigh.
“You, mister, will get no thanks until your hands are a decent temperature.”
I pulled my hand out from under my leg and wiggled my fingers menacingly at him, but since I’d been sitting on them he didn’t flinch away when I brushed the back of my hand against his cheek. Instead he let his eyes fall closed with a soft hum and leaned into it.
The first thing Jas did when we got home was pull down one of Esme’s slim vases and start the tap. He cut the stem down under the water - something I didn’t even know you were supposed to do - and then carried the flower to his room.
I slid up behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist and nuzzling against his neck. If my nose was cold, too, he didn’t say so.
“I’m glad you like it,” I whispered.
“I do,” he nodded, pressing back into me. “You didn’t have to assault Alice’s bouquet, though.”
“I wanted to do something. My idea of romance doesn’t usually feature the men’s bathroom, you know.”
“Edward,” he said, spinning around in my embrace and rubbing his hands across my chest. “I don’t care where you say it, as long as you do. And you mean it.”
“I do,” I promised, brushing my lips against his. “I really do.”
Our next kisses were soft and sweet, languid but sincere. His plump lips slid across mine as just the tips of our tongues met. Each kiss felt like a tiny memento of affection, making my chest swell against his. When he leaned away, his eyes were a bright gas-flame blue that seemed to mirror all my happiness directly back to me, and I basked in it.
His soft smile tilted to the side as he added, “Besides, there are worse places.”
I raised one very skeptical eyebrow.
“It could have been the ladies’ room.”
“Why the hell would we be in the girls’ bathroom?”
“See,” he said, looking smugly triumphant. “So much weirder.”
I grinned broadly and shook my head. “You’re ridiculous.”
“But?”
I shook my head again. “No but - and. And, I love you.”
He brought his lips back to mine and whispered, “And I love you, Edward.”
Chapter 19
Chapter: 18/?
Fandom: Twilight
By: bythedamned
Rating: NC-17 overall
Chapter Wordcount: 9,138
Genre: AU, Slash
Pairing: Edward/Jasper
Summary: Throughout high school, the shy and over-burdened Edward Masen threw himself into work and raising his baby sister. He's always felt lucky just to be friends with track star Jasper Cullen. Now, he doesn't know if just friends is enough. AH AU Slash.
Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns, I just play
A/N: Thanks to my awesome beta, elveys_stuff
I leaned in the open doorway, watching as Jasper got the mail.
How did others see him? I wondered. What would they think if they could see him through my eyes? Those broad shoulders, the long lines of his back, those sometimes-curls… If when I was much older, someone asked me to reflect on my first love, how could I make them understand? Would I be able to do him justice?
That was a stupid thought and I shook it away. My brain kept coming up with these little scenarios where I had to explain what I felt for him, to put it into words. Because lately, the right words had been more elusive than ever.
“It’s too early,” I called out to him, just as he shut the mailbox. “Give them another week.”
“Just checking,” he said, playing it off with a shrug. Cornell’s Early Decision responses were due by mid-December, but it was only the fifth and he insisted on checking anyway.
Casually, of course.
I goosed him on his way in, just to distract him. He jumped a bit and dropped the mail on the entryway table before he looked over his shoulder to stick his tongue out at me. Quickly slipping my hand into his back pocket, I let him lead me to the kitchen, where Esme was setting the table.
“Any word yet, sweety?”
“Nope.”
He said it like it was no big deal, and it probably wouldn’t have been if Esme would stop asking him every day.
On Monday, when Jessica asked him too, he gave her the same indifferent answer but refused to say any more. Or maybe he just never got another word in edgewise, because she was chattering away.
She had been dropping by our table more and more with Lauren, first to basically tell me how smart my essay idea was, even though I’d told her it was Esme’s, and then to just talk about colleges in general. Anything and everything about them - admission statistics or interview techniques or whatever else seemed vaguely related. Mike threw in a couple of responses from time to time, especially in the gaps left by Jasper’s silence, but Jessica made it pretty clear that now that I’d opened my mouth, she expected me to join in the conversations.
I wished I never had.
During lunch we were pretty much sitting ducks. It’s not that she wasn’t nice, I reminded myself, she just took up a lot of time. Especially since it was clear that Jas never felt like talking when she and Lauren were around, and it felt like I was giving up time with him for time with the girls. And that wasn’t a trade I’d willingly make any day.
So we’d started bee-lining our way to History in the morning and heading straight to the gym after sixth period.
That afternoon, though, just after our last class was over, I was sidetracked by the sight of Charlie’s cruiser in the parking lot.
“Hey,” I said quietly, nudging Jasper’s side. When he looked up, I tilted my head towards the parking lot and we shared a look of intrigued confusion before veering off towards it.
Alice caught sight of us first, just as they were getting to the cruiser, and elbowed Bella.
“Oh, um, hi,” Bella said, turning back into the slightly-pink, stammering girl she’d been when I first met her. Except now I knew why, and that made it pretty awkward.
Clearly, I would never have a comfortable conversation with a girl again.
I tried to be as neutral as possible. “Hi, Bella. How are you?”
“Fine,” she said, “I’m fine. How’re you?”
I nodded back, trying to think of something suitable to say, but couldn’t. “I’m fine.”
There was a beat where no one said anything, but luckily Jasper’s silence didn’t extend to these girls. “So Bella,” he asked, “are we gonna see you on closing night?”
She relaxed, so I relaxed, and Alice’s grin light up like a spotlight.
“Of course,” Bella said, giving Alice a playful eye roll. “Dad and I are both coming. Ali wouldn’t let us see it before then.”
“Great, we’ll see you there,” Jas said, as I leaned down to the driver’s side window just as Charlie was rolling it down.
“Hey Charlie, off early today?”
“Well,” he said, fiddling with his mustache, “your sister and I have a meeting.”
“Oh?” I asked, looking up to Ali.
“I looked for you this morning,” she said, stepping away from Bella and leaning against the side of the cruiser so the three of us could talk.
“Oh. I was sort of hiding.”
“From Jessica Stanley?”
“How’d you know?”
She smirked and I smirked back. Even though they were all very nice girls, Alice had never been particularly impressed with the cheer squad either.
“Anyway, what’s this meeting?”
Alice tugged on a spike of hair and looked to Charlie, then back at me. “Some guy is gonna come interview us, just to check out the situation, so he can report back.”
“It’s all routine social services stuff, Edward,” Charlie threw in. “The guy’s just doing his job.”
I fidgeted, leaning myself against the car too. “I didn’t realize you guys had gotten that far.”
“Charlie put in the paperwork a little while ago,” Alice said, and Charlie nodded, “but this was sort of last minute.”
“Do, uh, do I need to be there for anything?”
“Don’t you worry ‘bout a thing, Edward. S’routine, like I said.”
My gaze flickered back and forth between him and Alice. “What about- I mean, did anyone try to-”
Charlie cleared his throat noisily, cutting me off. Then he shifted around his seat propped his elbow up in the open window before saying, in a very professional voice, “Your father failed to respond to any form of contact at his current address, court-issued or otherwise.”
All I could say was, “Oh,” and watch Ali tug away at her hair.
It was probably a good thing. If he couldn’t even be bothered to write back and defend his own parental rights, he didn’t deserve to be our father anyway. Plus, then Charlie would get guardianship no problem. It was, for sure, a good thing.
But it still sucked.
Ali had worked one strand of hair so much that it lost its spike, and she started patting it down behind her ear.
“Your hair’s longer.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, untucking the strand. “It’s sorta awkward right now.”
“It looks okay.”
“Cute, Edward,” she said, giving me a playfully exasperated smile. “You tell girls their hair looks cute.”
“It does,” I said quickly, “it looks cute,” and she actually laughed.
“Alright, guys,” Charlie said, thumping his hand audibly on the side of the car. “Don’t wanna be late.”
“Right,” I said, backing away from the car as he started the engine. “Let me know how it goes?”
“Sure. Come on, Bella.”
Bella and Jas looked up from their own private conversation several feet away, and she said something quiet to him before climbing into the back too.
Then we all said our goodbyes, and Jas and I headed for track before they were out of the parking lot.
I did get a text from Ali that night letting me know that the meeting really was ‘fine’ but I still looked for her the next morning while Jas headed to class.
She and Seth were hanging out by her locker, but when she spotted me she said something quietly, and then balanced herself with a hand on his chest to give him a kiss.
He got the message, whatever it was, and gave me a quick nod before heading off to his own class.
“Hey,” I said, stepping up to her.
I wondered how long I should beat around the bush. She didn’t make me wait long, though, because as she leaned against her locker she had a very knowing smile.
“It went totally fine, Edward. Nothing to worry about.”
“Oh, yeah? Good. That’s good.”
“It was really mostly an interview for Charlie. I mean, to make sure he’s fit, or whatever, and of course he is.
“Yeah, of course he is,” I repeated. “So, that’s it?”
She took a deep breath, pushing her not-so-spiky-today hair behind her ears, and her smile shifted slightly. “It doesn’t feel like a ‘that’s it’ kind of thing. I mean, Charlie’s already done a lot, and the guy wants me to have my own bed and stuff, but Charlie said that’s fine. Now, we just need someone to sign as a secondary guardian.”
“Esme said-”
“Oh yeah, I know,” she said, too quickly.
There was a moment, then, where I didn’t know what to say. Alice was staring up at me just like I was staring at her, and I knew we were both thinking the same thing.
I hadn’t offered myself.
Esme had said, countless times really, that Alice was always welcome and she’d do whatever she could to help. And it was really a moot point anyway. But…
I guessed I really had given up the idea of being some sort of guardian. Or maybe I’d just really latched onto the idea of getting out of Forks with Jas. Either way, I wasn’t as eager to shoulder that responsibility anymore.
I cleared my throat, just as Ali said, “Anyway.”
“Anyway.”
“So, how’s things at the Cullen’s? Still all glowy?”
I looked back over my shoulder, towards the H building where Jas would be sitting in class, and took just a moment to think of it.
Yes… with Jas, I definitely still felt like glowing, even if that feeling suddenly had a new name, and even if I had no idea how to share that new name with him. I was certain he felt it too, when he would hum against the skin of my neck, or give me his brilliant crooked smiles. But then he would stick fastidiously to the word like - he liked coming home with me, he liked curling up with me, he really liked me - and I would just deflate. How could I tell him I felt something more than like?
What if he couldn’t say it back?
I looked back at Ali, eager for a distraction from those thoughts, but froze at the look on her face. Her eyebrows were launched as high as they could go and she looked almost amused.
“What?”
“What, yourself,” she said, grinning. “You’ve got your patented freak-out face on.”
I sighed. Damn my face, it was such a bad liar.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” I said, running a hand through my morning hair.
“Well,” she said, still amused and way too intrigued, “have you told Jasper about this nothing?”
“No, I just said, it’s nothing.”
“Yeah, I know, but I think you should tell him anyway. That’s what-” she dropped her voice, “boyfriends are for. You can tell them anything.”
“Yeah?” I asked, trying to casually change the subject. “Do you tell Seth everything?”
Except as soon as I said it, I knew it was anything but casual. Ali turned away, fiddling more with her hair and backpack, but then she did something that surprised me. She answered.
She took in a deep breath and let it out on a slow sigh. “Actually, yeah. These days, I do.”
I waited for her to elaborate because, okay, I was a little skeptical.
“Seth’s really big on communication,” she continued, and the way she over enunciated made it clear that that was a buzzword in their relationship. “So after the whole… misunderstanding, yeah. I tell him pretty much everything.”
I was both relieved and jealous, all at the same time, but I knew it wouldn’t do to let either of those show. Instead, I nodded along and said, “Good. That’s good.”
“He wants to talk to you, you know.”
“Why? About what?”
That’s when she started to smile again, and she even rolled her eyes. “Not like that. He just said that if he’d known… well, you know, he would have tried to get to know you better. Since you’re family, and all.”
I said, “Alright,” only a little begrudgingly. He’d been an asshole every time I’d talked to him before but, then again, if his main priorities were communication, family, and Alice, it was hard to just write him off.
“Anyway,” she said, back to the typical too-chipper too-early self I remembered. “I’ve gotta get to class. Don’t freak out too much. Or better yet,” she said over her shoulder as she turned toward the doorway, “just tell him. See you later.”
A quick check of my phone told me I had better hurry to class, but it didn’t matter if I was on time. It turned out, I was too distracted to remember the first half hour anyway. I spent it staring at Jas’s curls and thinking about the four letter word camped out on the tip of my tongue.
Alice said to just tell him but… how? Just the idea of it made my palms sweat. I just couldn’t fathom telling him without knowing, for sure, that he felt it back. What if he just answered with silence or, worse, ‘thank you?’
The longer I thought about it the more worst-case-scenarios I came up with, and I sighed heavily while I pretended to take notes.
Why couldn’t things be like old times? Like way old times, where I could just club him over the head and drag him back to my cave, and he’d know I’d chosen him. Or should he be the one clubbing me? Whatever - we could club the crap out of each other, but we’d know it was love.
No, I couldn’t risk it. And if I ever did, I couldn’t just say it. I had to show it, to make some gesture that would win him over… or something.
Jas was pretty quiet over the next week, especially since he was tied up with the second phase of his bio project with Ty. I didn’t really mind though, because it gave me time to ponder the perfect romantic gesture, mostly in the form of staring - lots of staring. Sometimes he would catch me and smile before raising a curious eyebrow, but I’d just shake my head so he could get back to work. As his deadline got closer he stopped asking, which was good because I stopped having to make up lame excuses for why I was so distracted.
Not that all my hours of contemplation were doing me any good. I laid awake at night, searching for some kind of romantic gesture that would make him happy but wasn’t over-done or lame, and ended up scrapping every idea. Sometimes it’d be the thought of rain, or the possibility of him misinterpreting a gesture, but I eventually found a flaw in every plan. It was a scary thought, that I just wasn’t romantic - or romantic enough, anyway - but it seemed to be true. So instead I resigned myself to wait for inspiration to strike, and tried to get some sleep in the meantime.
The meantime really stretched on. Before I knew it Jasper and I were heading to Ali’s play.
I had decided to dress a little nicer than usual, with a button down shirt and a sweater. It obviously wasn’t a date or anything, since we were going to the high school, and would be surrounded by people we knew, but still. It was Saturday night and Jas and I were going out. It warranted a collared shirt.
I think he liked it, too, ‘cause he’d thumbed the tips of my collar and given me a kiss before we left.
Alice was actually right about the turn out - most people seemed to have waited for closing night, so the auditorium was nearly full. Some of the younger students I recognized from Ali’s lunch crowd were working the snack table, and even more were handing out photocopied programs at the door.
I didn’t spot Alice until we were looking for seats, and she and Bella and some other techies were sitting near the front. Jas and I headed over, but ran into Charlie first.
“Hey, Charlie.”
“Hey there, Edward. Jasper. You guys remember Seth and Leah’s mom?” he asked, turning to the woman beside him. It was sort of hard to reconcile this woman with the Quileute nurse I remembered, with her pitch black hair in loose waves all the way down her back and the bright turquoise top, but it was nice to know she didn’t give off that school-teacher vibe all the time.
“Sure,” I said. “Hi Mrs. Clearwater.”
“Please,” she smiled, “just Sue. How’s that leg doing?”
“Good as new.” And to further make my point, I jumped a little from one leg to the other.
Then, of course, I felt stupid for doing it, but she just smiled wide enough to make little crinkles near her eyes and said, “Oh, I’m so glad. The meets just wouldn’t be the same without you. Or you,” she added, turning to Jas. “No tumbles for you, I hope?”
His mouth quirked up a bit on one side, probably because when runners wiped out it wasn’t just a ‘tumble’, but he just said, “No, I’ve been alright.”
Sue started to say something else, but I couldn’t make it out over a high voice calling, “Edward! Jasper!”
I knew who it was without looking, and Sue curled her hand around Charlie’s arm and led him to their seats, leaving us alone.
And at Jessica’s mercy.
“Hey Edward,” she said, stepping up to us with Lauren in tow. Her cheeks were red and she looked excited about something. “Where are you guys sitting?”
Jas pointed noncommittally towards the back of the auditorium, where there were still empty seats, but Jessica just shook her head.
“We have better seats saved up front, come on.” As the overhead lights flickered she grabbed my arm, tugging me towards the stage.
I looked at Jasper and he looked at me, but he had his neutral face on and I couldn’t think of a decent argument, so I didn’t put up a struggle.
She was right, their seats were a lot better. I had been instructed to ‘watch how the trees change’ and to ‘look for the moon’, whatever that meant, and sitting in the fifth row meant I might actually notice the handiwork Alice wanted me to see.
Lauren tripped over several people’s feet to get to the open seats, followed by Jessica and me and Jas, just in time for the lights to go out. In the brief black-out before the play started, Jessica leaned over and whispered, “You look really cute tonight, by the way.”
I tried to say something about what she looked like, because I’d figured out lately that that’s what girls wanted to hear, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what she was wearing. A sweater, maybe? Actually, I didn’t really care, so I didn’t say anything at all.
The play was… chaotic. I knew Jasper understood more than I did, because he laughed at several archaic jokes I didn’t get, but the sets and costumes were really vivid, and the love triangle - rectangle, I guess - was easy enough to get. I think Jessica was better with that olde-english stuff than I was too, because she kept gasping during speeches and grabbing my wrist in surprise. Even when it was in my lap.
All the backgrounds looked great - especially the trees, which seemed to have real leaves mixed in among the painted ones, giving the whole set an especially realistic appearance. It was obvious a lot of time and care went into making each backdrop multifaceted so that it would make sense in several scenes, and I had to applaud Alice’s efforts. Still, though, I couldn’t help but think that she should have been in the cast.
The fairies were all in these bright, flowy costumes, running around trying to mimic the grace that Ali had naturally. If she couldn’t get a speaking role, she would have at least been great at that. But then again, she seemed to really enjoy the designing and painting, so I was going to keep my mouth shut.
Through the entire first act, I was hyper-aware of Jasper sitting next to me. What I really wanted to do was find some way to press a hand or foot or something up against him. But unfortunately, with all of us crammed into those tiny folding chairs, it was nearly impossible to do anything undetected. Plus, the way Jessica grabbed at me was pretty jarring, and I didn’t want to keep jostling Jasper through the play too.
During intermission Jessica talked my ear off while Jasper excused himself. At least I didn’t have to say much, but sitting with the girls was dull and ate up my time to find Ali, and I wished he’d taken me with him.
He didn’t even bring any snacks back.
The second half went pretty much like the first, with Jessica grabbing at my wrist again while some fairy-folk were talking, except that that time she didn’t let go.
Her palm was warm and slightly moist, and her fingers wrapped all the way around my wrist to press against my pulse. It wasn’t tight or anything but, still, she wasn’t letting go.
What was she doing?
I tried not to draw attention to it, looking at her in my peripheral vision, but she seemed like she was just watching the play. I wriggled my hand a little, in case she’d forgotten she was holding onto me or something, but then she just slid her fingers forward, trailing them along my palm until her fingers slipped between mine.
No, really. What the fuck was she doing?
I shifted my hand again, and my whole arm with it, but I couldn’t easily pull away. Then she just started sweeping her thumb across the back of my hand in a very Jasper-esque gesture, except when she did it, I didn’t like it.
One sidelong look at Jas told me he was obviously aware of what Jessica was doing. And If I hated Jessica grabbing me, I hated it even more with him watching.
Next, I tried a different approach, letting my hand go as limp as possible, so that her curled fingers actually looked like an empty cage around my hand. It was getting ridiculous but I couldn’t think of a way to extract myself without making a fuss or upsetting her. Come to think of it, those two would probably amount to the same thing.
It wasn’t until a minute later, when Jas moved to get up, that I had a decent diversion to pull away.
I caught his sleeve and whispered, “Where are you going?”
He mumbled the word bathroom and then slid away, stepping past several people in the row who craned their necks around him as he passed. That struck me as weird, because for some reason I’d thought he’d gone to the bathroom during intermission. And when he still didn’t come back after a whole soliloquy, and then a whole other scene after that, I was sure he hadn’t just gone to pee.
What if something was wrong? What if he was sick? Or, I had an even worse thought… what if he wasn’t?
I stood up and inconvenienced all the same grumpy people, completely ignoring Jessica when she tried to whisper-call after me, and made my way to the bathroom.
He was in there, which was a relief, but I was right. He wasn’t peeing.
He was leaning his hands on the sink with locked elbows, letting his head hang forward so that his shoulders hunched up like goal posts. I reached for him, stepping up behind him quickly, but when he heard my steps his head snapped up and we could see each other in the mirror.
It was smudged with soapy handprints and other grime I didn’t want to think about, but even in the dim light I could still make out his face. He was exceptionally pale, and the tips of the curls that hung in his face were dark and wet like he’d been splashing himself with water. His eyes were narrowed as he watched me, his lips were tight, and he looked more nauseous than anything else.
A quick scan of the urinals and gaps under the stalls told me we were alone, so I didn’t bother to hold back. I ran one hand up and down his back and laid the other on his shoulder, trying to turn him towards me.
“Are you alright?”
He kept his eyes locked on mine in the mirror and took a moment before he gave one short nod.
“Are you sick?” I ran my hand up his neck, tucking his wet curls behind his ear and trying to get a better look at him.
“I’m fine,” he said in an exhausted voice, but his body was tense underneath my hands and he seemed anything but fine.
“Jas, it’s okay. We can go if you’re not feeling well. I can get the car.”
He rolled his shoulders, dislodging my other hand from his back, and stepped away. “I said I’m fine.”
In that moment, with that tone of voice, I knew he wasn’t sick. I knew there was something else wrong - something between him and me - and that’s when I started to get a burning weight in the pit of my stomach. It felt like my own organs had doubled in size and were twisting themselves into knots.
I thought about it, I guessed I could see how he’d be angry with Jessica’s antics and all, but I didn’t see why he would be mad at me. The thought made me nervous, like a kid who couldn’t remember if they’d cleaned up all their toys like they were told.
I swallowed, hard, but it only seemed to make my mouth drier. The silence stretched on and even though I could probably reach out and touch him, there seemed to be a chasm between us. He felt so damn far away that I almost thought I’d have to yell to be heard.
Except my throat felt too tight to do anything but whisper.
“Jas?”
No answer but his tense back.
“Jas? Are you mad?”
I watched him deflate, sloping his shoulders as he let his head hang forward again with a sigh. Even from behind he looked so utterly defeated. I just didn’t understand why. When he finally turned towards me, it was to brush past me without even looking up.
“Come on,” he mumbled, “let’s just get back.”
He reached for the door and my stomach seized up even more painfully. I couldn’t let him walk back out there, to that black expansive room where we’d be so close but still unable to talk. I just couldn’t.
I cleared my throat, just so it would work, and asked uncertainly, “Are you gonna stay this time?”
He stopped, fingers already curled around the door knob, and slowly looked back across his shoulder. The disappointment in his eyes was both chastising and dismissive, and his words were biting.
“Are you gonna hold her hand this time?”
“Jas, no,” I said, halfway relieved he’d brought it up and stepping towards him, but he just turned back to the door. “Jas,” I insisted, “that’s not what happened.”
His voice was low and icy. “That’s what it looked like.”
“She kept grabbing my hand, okay? It wasn’t me. Why would I do that?”
The longer he kept his back to me the more frantic I felt, and his slow, even words were just proof of the distance between us. Even though he never raised his voice, I still felt stung like he had.
“I don’t know, Edward. Why would you do that?”
Internally, I groaned. That was not how this conversation was supposed to go. This conversation wasn’t supposed to be happening at all. I reached out for his shoulders, thinking that if I could just wrap my arms around him I could make it all better, but he so obviously didn’t want to be touched that I couldn’t even make contact.
I did step up behind him, though, trying to keep my voice low and unwavering like his. “I wouldn’t. I spent that entire time trying to figure out how to get my hand back, I promise.”
Finally, he looked up again, half-turning towards me, but his face was no less strained. “But why did it take you so long, Edward? And why’d you let her in the first place?”
“I just didn’t want to hurt her feelings.”
“Why not?” he demanded, and I was taken aback by what an un-Jasper thing that was to say.
“What do you mean, why not?”
His eyes narrowed meaningfully. “I mean, why are Jessica Stanley’s feelings suddenly your top priority?”
He waited once he’d said it, watching me in absolute stillness. My first thought was that the answer was obvious: because we were nice boys. If we weren’t so nice I might have given half the school the finger back in ninth grade, but I didn’t because that’s not who we were. Jas and I, collectively, were decent people who would never upset or offend anyone who didn’t deserve it. And Jessica might be intrusive, but she wasn’t cruel.
With my next thought, though, the writhing in my stomach slithered all the way up into my chest. The logic unfolded gradually in my brain, emerging from a haze and rippling down my spine with a slow horror. If Jas didn’t think of us as a cohesive ‘we’, if he didn’t know that I was loyal to him above all else, that I had been waiting all week for him to interrupt Jessica’s long lunchtime rants, then he would think I chose her feelings over his.
That I chose her.
Jas’s posture crumpled, and I wondered what he had or hadn’t seen in my face that bothered him so much. He had his back to the door, but his shoulders were still so hunched that he looked like a strip of cracked paint, slowly peeling off an old wall.
“Edward,” he whispered, more to the floor than to me, “… damnit.”
I hovered in front of him like I didn’t know where to touch him, or how. “You’re my top priority, Jas. I promise.”
“Then why?” he asked, in the same defeated whisper. His eyes would dart up to me every so often, but he wouldn’t let me hold his gaze. “I don’t know what to think, Edward. Even at home you’re…”
He trailed off, letting his words and eyes drop, and I felt like no matter how close I stood I couldn’t get through to him. He had obviously convinced himself of something, something I didn’t even know was a concern.
Pressing my hands against his arms, I hoisted his shoulders back up against the door so that we could finally be eye to eye. Softly, with what I hoped was my most tender, encouraging voice, I asked, “At home what?”
At home, with just the two of us, everything was still great. Wasn’t it?
He shook his head, trying to look anywhere but at me, but finally whispered, “You spend all this time in your head, and I don’t know what you’re thinking about, or why you won’t tell me anymore.”
It was like staring at one of those trick drawings, where you think it’s a young girl and then someone points out the ugliness and suddenly it’s an old hag. Jas had no idea what was going on in my head, and it was painfully clear that I’d fucked up. I’d been trying to find the perfect romantic gesture to show Jas that I could be a great boyfriend - that I was worthy of his love, if he ever wanted to give it - and instead I’d completely missed him unraveling right next to me.
In my rush of alarmed thoughts, I realized I knew one way to fix this, to convince Jas not to shy away from me. Except, this wasn’t how I wanted to do it. Not here, in a dingy boy’s bathroom at school, with everyone we knew sitting just outside the door. And certainly not with him practically melting in front of me.
He kept pursing his lips, like he was trying to hold something back, and maybe it was all in my head but for just a moment I thought his eyes looked extra-glossy. He just looked so pained, and I knew that every worry that had carved out a line on his face, every shred of self-doubt going through his mind, I had put them there. All of them. I had let him carry this misery all week, or maybe even longer, without even knowing.
And it had gone on long enough. I just couldn’t let him tough out another night thinking I would choose anyone but him. Even if he couldn’t say it back, at least he wouldn’t have to doubt me. Us.
“Jas, look at me.” He didn’t. “Please?”
He tilted his head, obliging me just the tiniest bit, and watched me with every bit of guarded pain visible in his eyes.
“I have been thinking a lot,” I began, and now that I was about the say the words, they were thick in the back of my throat. “About you-”
He cringed, ever so slightly, but I gathered up all my courage in one breath and soldiered on.
“I’ve been wanting to tell you that… Jas, I love you.”
I strained my ears against the silence for his answer, but as soon as I’d said it, time seemed to stop. The earth stopped spinning, I held my breath as Jas stared at me with a completely unreadable expression, and even my heart stopped beating. I know it did, because I felt it come thudding back the instant Jas moved.
He slammed into me with so much force that I stumbled, and I felt him dig his face into my neck. It wasn’t a soft gesture - he buried his head so hard I didn’t know how he could breathe, and his whole body gripped me, clung to me, radiating tension.
Tentatively, I reached my hands around his back, but he didn’t respond. I had no idea what was going though his head. He had hidden his face from me, and it left me at a complete loss.
“Jas,” I said into his ear, because that’s all I could reach, “I didn’t-”
“No,” he ground out, curling his fingertips into my skin, “don’t you take it back.”
“No,” I swore, hugging him close. “I, I didn’t say it for you to say it back. So, so it’s okay. You just had to know, because, I mean, I thought we were on the same page. You and me. And Jessica’s not on that page.”
Ugh, I wasn’t even making sense. I raised one hand into his hair, wishing I could convey my sincerity with just my touch.
“What I mean is, we’re in this together. And I couldn’t let you walk out there thinking anyone could get in the way of that, because they can’t. Not for me, anyway.”
I felt the moist warmth of his breath on my neck before he raised his head and pushed himself away. His eyes were wide and cautious, but held none of the desperation from before, and at least he was looking at me.
“I just wish you wouldn’t let her think you were available.”
I opened my mouth to answer - he knew how I felt about coming out - but he cut me off.
“You spend all of lunch talking to Jessica, and now you’re letting her hold your hand in front of me. And I know it’s mostly her, okay? I do. But I don’t know why you let her. I don’t know if you like having girls flirt with you because you feel more like a guy, or if being pushy is all it takes or-”
He looked away again, hiding the anguish on his face, and I knew that as he talked he was convincing himself of all his doubts all over again. It was so unlike him, my cool, confident Jas, to let these things fester. I had never seen him do this before but then again, I reminded myself, I’d never seen him in a relationship before either.
There was a tremor to his voice that made his whispers even more heartbreaking. “It just makes me wonder, Edward, if we happened because I was just… pushy.”
As soon as he said the word, faint though it was, my breath caught audibly in my throat. So that was it - he though I saw our relationship as something I was roped into, as something to be compensated for. I was mildly offended that he thought I could be so easily swayed, but also horrified that he felt so… disconnected.
“Jas, how can you think that? I’ve told you how happy I am. I mean, I just said-”
“I know,” he admitted quickly. “And I don’t think it all the time. But sometimes, like tonight, I can’t help but remember that, at first, you never really said you wanted to be with me. In the beginning, the only thing you actually said you wanted was to keep it a secret.”
I remembered that conversation, when we’d agreed we were boyfriends, and I remembered the real beginning too, when he’d held his lips just barely off mine and told me to cut the miscommunication crap.
In retrospect, it was true that I hadn’t given him a straight answer. And in all this time, it seemed, I hadn’t gotten any better at communicating. These insecurities had been haunting him intermittently for who knew how long, all because I never got around to saying the right words. Which was terrible and negligent of me, because if there was one thing I knew for certain it was that I wanted him.
“Jas,” I whispered, pressing one hand to his cheek and gently guiding him to turn toward me. “I’m sorry. Okay? I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I never said it out loud, and I’m sorry I never told you that I wanted more before we kissed, or before I hurt my leg, even. And I’m sorry I’m not comfortable coming out, but that’s not about you.”
With my other hand, I pressed the crook of my finger under his chin and tipped it up, urging him to look at me and really hear what I was saying. I hoped that all my love and earnest devotion showed when I said, “I know it took me a lot longer than you to figure out what I want but I’m telling you, Jas, it’s you. Only you.”
He was staring at me so fixedly, so openly, and it sparked the hope that I was actually getting through to him. I felt flushed with urgency, and with what I was about to admit, but it was worth it just for the peace that was spreading across his face.
“I don’t think you know,” I added softly, “that when I told Ali about us, she called me out for glowing. Or that when I’m too wound up to sleep I, well, I remember you laying next to me. And it helps.”
His voice was barely a whisper. “I didn’t know.”
Even in the dull light of the bathroom, the way his eyes were fixed on me made them look so intense, and so blue. The little creases around them had finally eased away, and he watched me with a brightness and hope that I realized had been missing lately. He slipped his hands up to my chest, his fingers inching up towards the hem of my shirt, and asked, “Will you say it again?”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, not that.” The corner of his mouth quirked up, just the tiniest bit, into a smile that was both excited and indulgent, and I knew what he wanted.
I had a flash of self-consciousness at having to say it again, face to face, but his thumbs slipped up to swipe across my skin, and I took comfort from the affectionate gesture.
“Jas,” I said, taking a deep breath and looking into his eyes, “I love you.”
His fingers reached higher, lightly rubbing that spot behind my ear, and he gave me the most intimate and tenderly lopsided smile I’d ever seen. “I love you too.”
Then he kissed me, holding my face as I held his, and I focused all my energy into those few points of contact. His kisses were long and deep, barely leaving me time to breathe, but I was perfectly willing to give up air. I pressed myself against him even harder as, slowly, he wrapped his entire body around me. He tangled our arms and legs, and I thought that maybe if I held on tight enough we would never have to separate. His embrace held none of the desperation or tension from just minutes before, and was instead imbued with warmth and passion and love.
Above all, love.
Finally taking a breath, I took in his thousand-watt grin and reached up to tuck his untamed curls behind his ears.
He was about to say something when we were both knocked off balance and forced to spring apart to catch ourselves. I looked up, startled, to see an elderly man poking his head through the bathroom door. He was stooped over, with not enough hair on his head and too much in his oversized nose. He looked at us apologetically, pulling the door back as if keeping it away from us now would make up for swinging it into us.
“Sorry there. Did I hit you fellas?”
I said nothing, silently wondering what this man had seen, but he shuffled stiffly to the urinals without waiting for an answer. As he unbuckled his pants he said, without looking up, “You boys might as well see the end of the show.”
Taking that as a good excuse, we both slipped out the door without another word. I walked closely beside Jas down the corridor, pushing thoughts of the geriatric man from my mind and recapping everything else that had happened in the bathroom.
“Edward?”
“Yeah?”
“You do look nice tonight.”
“… It was for you.”
“… Thanks.”
I walked a little closer, letting my shoulder bump his, before we reached the main auditorium again. We found seats - new seats - in a mostly empty row in the back. I sat casually, letting my knees fall wide, and Jasper did the same so that I could discretely slip my hand between the two seats and curl my palm around the back of his calf. As I did I heard Jasper hum, and it was only after he leaned more heavily into my hand that I started paying attention to the play again.
There were a bunch of people on stage in ill-fitting costumes. There was some girl - or guy, maybe? because even from the back his boobs looked uneven - who was making a big scene of absolutely refusing to die, and kept interrupting everyone else with “adieu!” over and over again. I was relieved to see some guy in a giant hat decorated like the moon, just in case Ali asked about it later.
After some dancing and a little bit more talking, the actors took their bows and did their call-outs to the drama teacher and the tech crews. There was a very localized burst of cheering for the lighting crew that I assumed was a Clearwater/Masen/Swan effort, and then finally the lights came up. I gave Jasper’s leg a squeeze before pulling away, just for good measure.
We waited for most of the audience to spill out of the auditorium, and when I saw a clear path to Alice I jumped up to say a quick goodbye before she disappeared backstage. She was in a huddle of drama people, chatting, but spun away from them when she spotted me.
“Hi,” she called excitedly, waving the hand that wasn’t holding a bouquet of pink and yellow daisies wrapped in paper.
“Nice flowers,” I said uncertainly. I’d thought flowers were just for the actors.
She beamed. “They’re from Seth. He said it was a reminder of all our hard work, even after the play was over.”
I had to give it to him, he knew how to make her happy.
“They’re beautiful,” I told her, eyeing them. Up close they weren’t just daisies, but I could only really name half of them. “And so were your sets.”
“Yeah?” she asked, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. “One of the trees actually fell down during the dress rehearsal yesterday, and there was this huge crack and we all thought it would totally ruin the panel ‘cause we didn’t have enough time to paint a new one so Katie said what about real trees,” she paused for a breath, “but that was impossible but branches weren’t so we cut a whole bunch of branches from the woods and they looked even better than ever, don’t you think?”
I laughed to myself when I realized the end of her speech held an actual question, because so for that moment it really felt like the old Ali was back. She would probably be like that all night, and I hoped Seth would be able to keep up with her. I told her again that her sets were great, and the moon too, and that launched her into recounting the design process besides that costume until her friends called her name.
“Oh,” she mused, craning to look back over her shoulder. “I gotta run, Edward.”
“Alice, wait.”
“What?”
My eyes flickered to her bouquet again. “Could I, could I have a flower?”
She turned back toward me, finally still for the first time all night, and raised one eyebrow.
“Not for me, obviously.”
She considered it for a moment, then asked, “Did something happen?”
I shook my head. “No. Sort of.” I looked over her head and around us, wondering if anyone was listening in. “I just wanted to make a gesture, but it’s okay. Never mind.”
She rolled her eyes before grinning conspiratorially at me. “Of course you can have a flower. I was just curious. Which one do you want?”
“Not pink?” I said, hopefully.
“I wasn’t going to assume,” she said, primly.
Wiggling her fingers into the stalks of the bouquet, she grabbed one and started to pull out a yellow lily. It was wide, with a freckled orange center that faded out to yellow, tapered petals, and had several dark pollen buds sticking up from the center. It was vibrant, but not too feminine. It was perfect, but it seemed like the nicest flower in the bunch.
“Ali, it’s okay, you can just give me a daisy.”
Again, she smirked, and then pulled it completely free. “I’m pretty sure he’ll like this one better.”
Her friends called again from up on stage, so I said, “Alright. Thanks, Ali.”
“No prob, Edward. Use it well.”
I made my way back down the center aisle looking for Jas, but was cut off once again by the most persistent branch of the cheer squad.
“There you are,” Jessica huffed, sliding awkwardly down a row of chairs to meet me. “You disappeared.”
“Uh, yeah. We found seats in the back.”
Lauren, who was hovering just behind Jessica, asked, “Who’s the flower for?”
“Umm,” I stalled. “Alice. She worked really hard.”
Please, please, don’t say you saw me get it from her.
But Jessica didn’t know where I got it, because her already exasperated face fell even farther. “Oh.” She tugged at a strand of gelled frizzy hair and sighed lightly. “I thought they might be for, well, someone else.”
“No. Why would I want to give it to anyone else?”
The girls exchanged a look, a mix of disappointment and anger, and I made it my sudden mission to get as far away from the conversation as possible.
“I gotta go,” I said, before turning on the spot and hurrying down the aisle. As I walked, I tucked the stem into my coat, letting the flower poke out at the top but covering it loosely with my scarf. I didn’t need anyone else asking who the flower was for.
I found Jas in the hallway outside the auditorium talking with Bella, Charlie, Sue and Leah. Bella was promising to send Seth right out, and waved as she slipped back into the theater. I spent a moment exchanging pleasantries with Leah over how well the play had gone before I politely announced Jas and I had to go.
“What’s the rush?” he asked as we pushed ourselves out into the near-freezing night.
“Uh, Jessica was kinda pissed that we disappeared.”
“Oh.” He looked serious, but unperturbed. “Is it alright if I’m not sorry?”
“Yeah,” I sighed, “it’s alright.”
My car was on the far edge of the lot, against some trees, and I told Jas I’d pull forward so he didn’t have to crawl through the brush. As I leaned to get into the car, though, I felt the long stem of the lily push into my stomach and I immediately straightened back up. I definitely didn’t want to end this night by giving him a molested flower.
He looked at me questioningly as I stood up, and even more like I was crazy as I unzipped my jacket, but the look on his face when he saw the lily was worth braving the cold. The petals were still unmarred, and were the only splash of color in the otherwise dark lot. Jasper’s eyes were fixed on it, his mouth slightly open in surprise, but he didn’t reach for it even after I offered it.
“It’s for you,” I said, redundantly.
Finally, he reached out, pinching it delicately between two fingers, and lifted it up to his nose. I hadn’t even thought to smell it.
“It’s beautiful,” he told me softly, raising his eyes to catch mine over the flower.
I tried to figure out the best thing to say next, some way that wasn’t too cheesy to tell him he was even more beautiful, but when he tilted his nose out of the flower and had its dark pollen smeared all over his face and I laughed instead.
“Come here,” I said fondly, and slipped my hand under his jaw to steady him.
As soon as my fingers made contact, he pulled away, laughing and complaining, “Cold! Your fingers are cold.”
I smirked and reached for him again anyway. “You’re strong, you can take it.”
He did actually let me wipe the rest of the pollen off, but not without a petulantly inconvenienced look that I knew was all for show, and a mumbled mention of extreme torture.
“There, all better.”
“My savior,” he drawled out with playful sarcasm and a smile, and I laughed again. Then, with a sly look, he got the idea to reach out with his own icy fingers, and I quickly slid out of his reach and into the car.
I was expecting more retaliation when he slid into the passenger’s seat but instead he was sniffing the flower again. I noticed it was suddenly pollen-free, and he wiping his free hand on his jeans.
The ride home never warmed up, since the heater in my car was glitchy at best, but I sat on my free hand while Jas offered the flower up for me. It really did smell nice. Of course, he had to go and ask the one question I’d hoped he wouldn’t - where I got it - and after a few failed evasion tactics I told him Alice gave it to me.
He snorted. “You just took it?”
“Commandeered. Nicely. Besides,” I added, glancing at him as I turned onto the main road, “it was worth it.”
I thought he might laugh, or scold me some more, but instead he just tucked his nose into the flower again with a look of contented self-indulgence.
“So, should I be thanking Alice or Seth?”
I turned to him, dismayed, and he let out a soft chuckle. Slowly, he slipped his hand across my thigh.
“You, mister, will get no thanks until your hands are a decent temperature.”
I pulled my hand out from under my leg and wiggled my fingers menacingly at him, but since I’d been sitting on them he didn’t flinch away when I brushed the back of my hand against his cheek. Instead he let his eyes fall closed with a soft hum and leaned into it.
The first thing Jas did when we got home was pull down one of Esme’s slim vases and start the tap. He cut the stem down under the water - something I didn’t even know you were supposed to do - and then carried the flower to his room.
I slid up behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist and nuzzling against his neck. If my nose was cold, too, he didn’t say so.
“I’m glad you like it,” I whispered.
“I do,” he nodded, pressing back into me. “You didn’t have to assault Alice’s bouquet, though.”
“I wanted to do something. My idea of romance doesn’t usually feature the men’s bathroom, you know.”
“Edward,” he said, spinning around in my embrace and rubbing his hands across my chest. “I don’t care where you say it, as long as you do. And you mean it.”
“I do,” I promised, brushing my lips against his. “I really do.”
Our next kisses were soft and sweet, languid but sincere. His plump lips slid across mine as just the tips of our tongues met. Each kiss felt like a tiny memento of affection, making my chest swell against his. When he leaned away, his eyes were a bright gas-flame blue that seemed to mirror all my happiness directly back to me, and I basked in it.
His soft smile tilted to the side as he added, “Besides, there are worse places.”
I raised one very skeptical eyebrow.
“It could have been the ladies’ room.”
“Why the hell would we be in the girls’ bathroom?”
“See,” he said, looking smugly triumphant. “So much weirder.”
I grinned broadly and shook my head. “You’re ridiculous.”
“But?”
I shook my head again. “No but - and. And, I love you.”
He brought his lips back to mine and whispered, “And I love you, Edward.”
Chapter 19