Chapter 16: Unsatisfied

I was half-awake even before I felt Alice stir beside me. Or, at least, I thought I was awake. Really, I hadn't so much as shifted a muscle yet, so who can say. I was curled up into a painfully tight ball, trying to stay warm enough with too few covers over me; I'm sure I'd started out with enough of them but I must have kicked my way out. Running hot and cold. Most of the problem was Alice: until she'd gotten up she'd been like a block of ice wedged up against my side.

I heard her talk to Jasper about me, but I didn't know where he was or what exactly she was saying to him. The next thing I knew was her sing-song voice in my ear welcoming me back to Earth, accompanied by the sweet jostling jolt of her touch through what was left of my covers. I groped outward blindly, my fingers finding the soft, cold, stony expanse of her belly flesh; the hard peaks and valleys of her ribs were a tactile cacophony. Her ribs stood out in stark contrast with the rest of her, abnormally pronounced; they felt uncomfortable to my touch, or maybe I was just uncomfortable touching her still.

In a light teasing way she grabbed my forearm and guided my hand directly upwards to even more foreign territory. Here there be dragons. I gave an involuntary squeeze, trying to convince myself I didn't know where my hand was currently resting. She was firmer than I was expecting, firmer than I was anyway, which was my only real point of comparison. She didn't have quite as much there to grip and hold onto, but she offered up a soft yielding handful anyway. It was kind of mesmerizing. On my third squeeze I experimentally led with my palm instead, pressing in and up, gently rolling my hand in a kneading caress that ended with my finger tips. I felt her hard nipple brush past the side of my middle finger as she pulled away.

I sat up in bed with some muddled idea in my head of chasing her, the previous day slowly trickling back into my awareness, only to have our hotel phone blare out its ringing wake-up call at exactly the same moment. I glared at her through half-lidded eyes, both for the tease and for the painful racket, until the ringing went away with the clatter of a phone being picked up and then dropped again in its cradle. It was a cute trick and Alice had the most perfectly smug smile on her pretty little face in the half-light of the television.

Truth be told, my head was pounding, my throat hurt, and, at least now that I was sitting up, my stomach was trying to roll out from beneath me as well. I stumbled to my feet and teetered forward a few steps with Alice's hand gliding around my waist to guide me.

I recognized Jasper in the chair across the room. He was still reading somehow. He touched his temple solemnly in recognition of my presence and then casually flicked two fingers out towards me with an insolent little twist of his wrist. It was a motion I abortively recognized as an imaginary hat tip. It looked like he had at best twenty pages or so left of Wuthering Heights.

I was… I was pretty naked. I was standing in the middle of the room in just my panties feeling like a total dumbass. Also very very hung over. I had this throbbing dull ache that was localized somewhere just above my left temple. My lips were dry and cracked. I guess no one had thought to have me drink some water before bed. Why would they? Who knows how long ago it was that Jasper had been drunk for the final time.

I glanced over at Alice ghosting along beside me, a diminutive waxen shadow at my flank. I hated myself a little for how happy I felt at seeing her first thing in the morning. I hated myself for the excited tingle still resonating in my palm from only moments ago. Some other surlier part of my teenage brain just wanted her to back off and mind her own damn business. I was barely out of bed and already I felt like a total fuckup.

"Hey. Mornin' Alice," I managed to mutter as I leaned on her a little harder, "Not gonna lie, being awake isn't the greatest right now."

She laughed, easy and fresh in the stale little room, "Yeah, I get that. You look a little green around the gills this morning. Don't worry about it, I'm here for you."

I coughed and the coughing only made the pain in my head spike and sway, "I appreciate that but I think what I want right now is for my clothes to be here for me. Help me find them, yeah? This," I gestured vaguely with my hands, "is all a little much for me right now."

She walked her finger tips up my side, making me painfully aware of just how vulnerable I was feeling at the moment. "How about me, huh," she asked, "am I part of the this that is bothering you? Or am I naturally exempted because of my obvious charm?" I didn't get it at the time, but it's obvious now that she was feeling vulnerable too.

I tried to smile but I don't know if I pulled it off, "You're like four foot nothing and way too thin but I still feel like I've barely got a handle on you most of the time. I don't know. This morning after stuff is bullshit. I've never done this before. Any of this. I don't know. I just need a human minute I guess."

"Oof. Well, good morning to you too sunshine!" she goosed my side and unwound herself from my hip, giving me space, "I told you I'm here for you right now, and if that means being a little less here for you then I can do that too. Also, I'm not thin by the way. The word you're looking for is 'emaciated.'"

"Oh, um," I started, but then faltered, "right."

You're way too thin. Was I trying to pick a fight? Possibly. Maybe? She just… she kept touching me. And when had that become an alright thing for her to do?

She sounded defensive in a forced cheerful way, "I'll tell you what though, it really stinks. If anything I should be jealous of you. You look healthy, while I'm always going to look like a scraggly little skeleton." She gestured at herself, encompassing all of body with the motion, at her smallish breasts and her slight height.

The room was warm enough but I couldn't seem to get my heat back. My words had made her physically withdraw for the moment but I didn't feel exactly good about it. I hugged my arms around my chest, "Oh. Well shit, I'm sorry. I don't know why I said that." There was a beat of silence as I hoped she'd say something and bail me out but she just left it like that. The moment dragged on until I couldn't take it and figured I should just keep going, "I just woke up so you shouldn't worry about it. You're terribly pretty and it's not all that noticeable. It doesn't make me like you any less. Like you're just on the borderline of it being a noticeable thing. Is it a medical issue?"

She smiled a thin smile, "Sort of. Just another thing I woke up with a long time ago. I can no more change my current weight than I can grow another five inches or alter the length of my hair. Best I can do is spike it."

I shivered in the open air, dimly aware again of how exposed I was. Alice brushed past me, a thin air gap present between our bodies as she moved, to go rustle around in her backpack where it had been stowed in the hollow beneath the night stand.

I heard Jasper's voice from off to the side, "Just so you know, she was probably institutionalized somewhere. That's our current best guess about her background. She's stuck looking malnourished from it, as you were so kind to point out, and her hair is shorter than I remember women wearing theirs in the '20s. So probably she had her head shaved for delousing and then it grew out again a bit, meaning she went through intake somewhere and then spent some time there. It would have been on a case by case basis as to which places still did that sort of thing back then. Hard to say. Might have been she was in prison, in an orphanage, or in an insane asylum. If she had any Indian in her it might have been a residential school instead. All of those being places that our kind could have easily gotten her, so that much at least makes sense. That's about as far as that line of inquiry is likely to ever get us though."

I glanced at him as he shrugged, licked his finger, and turned a page in his book, but then he thought better of it and added to his explanation, "You see, if we had an idea of which state she started out from we might eventually make some headway on investigating, but after she was turned she wandered randomly for about two years or so, so as it is it's impossible to narrow things down in a meaningful way. So there you have it."

I'd mostly watched her as his words washed over us, narrating her imagined past, his voice cold but not unkind. She was in a crouched position and the low kaleidoscopic light of the television highlighted every last link of spine clearly. Her bones slithered down her back like a skeletal snake and they took off in stripes at the back of her rib cage like macabre wings. Her clipped black hair hung down messy and loose around her face and her eyes stood out like black welts without her makeup on. A gentle innocent smile graced her perfect gray lips; apparently she was enjoying Jasper's assessment of her. She looked like some imagined monstrous siren escaped from an old black and white German expressionist movie. The kind of beautiful dark eyed woman who would just absolutely fucking wreck the hero into making dumb and terrible choices about his life. Like me. She was so damned lovely and it was freaking me out a little at how normal this all felt. A stranger had woken me up and gotten me out of bed. Jasper was talking about life a century ago like it was perfectly normal. I was watching my schoolmate that I'd known only a matter of days now go about her morning toilet in the nude. For Christ's sake, I had my damn tits out and Jasper hadn't even glanced at them as far as I could tell. Not that I could take my eyes off Alice for very long to make totally sure of it.

I was deeply deeply uncomfortable with this level of comfort. People, clothed people under regular circumstances, got under my skin after only just a little bit. This was something far beyond that. I didn't like anyone. Or I didn't like to like anyone. So what was I doing in this room with these two? How many hours now had we been in pretty much constant company?

I licked my lips, my throat felt dry again, and I addressed her, "We really should get dressed or something, don't you think?" I practically croaked it out. Shit, I sounded ghastly.

She waved me off as she pulled a blue tub of styling product from the backpack's rent innards, "In a bit. Told you, I got to spike it first. I don't want to get product on what little clothing I've got with me."

I forced myself to continue, "I don't know about you, but waking up in a hotel room together is super kind of awkward, right? Aren't you even a little embarrassed by this?"

She'd turned as if to walk past me but she paused at my question. She stood there unabashed, totally self possessed, as she watched me eye her up and down. A confident grin played at her lips. She put her hand on my stomach and traced lightly up my ribs, mirroring where I'd touched her earlier.

"Why? Should I be?" She asked it lightly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "You're not really all that embarrassed either if we're being honest. Not that you're very good at that."

I felt frustration bubble up inside me, coming out as a whine, "Come on Alice. I have no idea what I'm doing."

I didn't try to stop her as she put her hand on my breast. She gave me a quick squeeze that put prickles of gooseflesh on my arms and drowned out my headache with pleasurable white noise, "Yeah. Don't worry about that. I've got you," she murmured.

More deliberately than I had, she caught my nipple between the open spread of two of her fingers and gave it a tugging pinch as she withdrew. I think I let out a gasp at the contact and sat down hard on the bed. That's a lie, I definitely gasped. Alice, apparently satisfied after a moment that I wasn't going to topple off of the bed and onto the floor, gave a half-snort giggle at my reaction and flitted away finally to see to the rest of her morning routine.

I was tempted to let go and collapse backwards into bed. No one could have blamed me for it. I should have told them both to fuck off and gone back to bed until we needed to check out. They could fucking deal with everything. What did they need me for? But with great effort I wobbled to my feet again a minute later. I was still no warmer or less hung over, but as I replayed over and over in my head the way I'd gasped at Alice's touch, that missing bit of embarrassment was really starting to sink in. What was I doing here?

"Alright, to hell with this. Where's my bra?"

Jasper glanced up from his book again to look at me, failing to hide a bemused smirk at my flustered yearning after Alice, and then he kicked something with his foot, "It's right here darlin' but I think you mighta killed it last night."

He flipped its dead gray carcass over with his toes and a glance told me that I'd fucked it up irretrievably.

Not satisfied, Jasper picked it up and examined it, "You pulled the hooks right out of the fabric. Huh. How'd you manage that?" He sounded genuinely puzzled at this.

There were some fuzzy parts of last night, mostly after the shower, but that part came back to me easy enough. The answer is I twisted the whole thing around backwards, got both arms underneath the band, and then forced my arms apart with every ounce of drunken loutish strength I had.

I watched him watching me. With a shrug he let the bra drop back to his feet. He looked about as relaxed as I'd ever seen him. He was relaxed enough that his Texan was coming out a bit. In public he always held himself defensively, but now he was practically lolling his way out of the chair. His scarred chest glimmered in the weird light, like the silvery cratered landscape of some alien planet. I felt a guilty flush at the sudden notion that I could basically just crawl up into his lap with him positioned like that and I bet for once he'd be soft and nice to be around. I bet he'd let me do it too. That would be so stupid if I did that. Now was the moment if I was going to.

I shrugged, my body posture closing off once more, "It took some doing to wreck it."

From right close behind me I heard Alice quip with a laughing voice, "You're a rockstar Bella! Keep up the good work." I shifted uneasily at her misplaced enthusiasm for me; a stray marshmallow squished moistly against the arch of my foot as I set it down again in a new place. I was disgusting and this room was a pit. This was all my fault.

Okay, focus, so my bra was a bust. What else did I need that counted as clothes? My throbbing head forced me to once again take stock of the fact I was standing there in the middle of the room freezing my buns off and failing to find clothes or painkillers or really to do anything useful. Right, so priority two after clothes would be finding that bottle of aspirin or whatever that had been on the nightstand last night. It looked like a tornado had rolled through here. It was me. I was that tornado.

Jasper tilted his head and watched me thinking, the bastard was probably testing the edges of my emotions, taking in my disheveled disarray and my subdued glacial panic.

"I'm sorry," I addressed him again, looking down and to the side, letting my hair fall over my face, "I'm a bit out of sorts I think. This is all kind of terrible right now, isn't it?" My throat felt increasingly raw. Had I vomited in the night? I remembered waking up several times and that both of them had been oddly kind and attentive to me, but I didn't remember doing that.

Basically these last twenty four hours had been a nonstop horror-show parade of vomit, tears, snot, blood, fear stink, and an unusual amount of showers to cover it all up again. Thankfully our adventures thus far had contained not too much blood given my phobia and, as of yet, zero semen. Thus far. Ok, yeah, nope, not taking that thought any farther. Basically every anxious worry I'd ever had about making a good impression had become manifest like the work of an evil genie with a grudge and a prurient interest in the scatalogical. It was a wonder they could still stand to be in the same place as me.

Actually, I want to pause and talk about that a moment. It's crazy how little perspective you have about a situation when you're stuck smack dab in it. It was only much later that we finally got around to talking about that first week, I mean there were lot of things about it that were pretty sore topics, but the thing is that it never remotely occurred to me as a teen that they had both felt at various points like they were totally blowing it too. Jasper in particular. He told me that if we'd had a working car he might have actually bolted before I woke up and simply left Alice to deal with me. Thankfully her foresight precluded that outcome, as did his given word as a gentleman that no one would go anywhere in the night. Imagine that, how different things might have been if Jasper had removed himself and run away the same way Edward did. Would I have behaved more or less terribly that week?

It's easy and tempting sometimes to lay my own awful behavior from then at Jasper's feet simply because he was there, but I think with only Alice and I it would have been much worse. With her instead I might have actually struck a blow that she couldn't walk away from. The important thing is he stayed that night and calmly read his book instead so we could face the coming morrow. Could-have-beens are a fool's game, as Emmett likes to remind me, so I'll let the past lie dead and linear and be thankful for what I do have now instead.

He nodded past me to the depths of the hotel room, "Don't know what you're apologizing for, but you're fine. Looks like you're trying to get ready; your bra might be a bust, but the rest of your clothes are all hung up in the bathroom."

"Oh thank God!" I blurted out. I quickly turned towards the bathroom. As I did so I caught sight of Alice again. She was perched in a chair that was right the fuck in front of the TV and she was styling her hair while the Cosby Show played at a very low volume. Her hands were covered in blue goop and she had a couple of hair ties hanging from her lips as she worked her hair into her trademark messy spikes. She paused in her work and flashed me a silent thumbs up.

Let me revise that to-do list. Clothes and painkillers were actually items two and three. The first item was something I could only do before I got dressed. Something that had been bothering me for a few minutes now. Or like for a few years now depending on how I was gonna count it. Something to do with Jasper. Or Alice? No, Alice was too dangerous. Ok, I had to do this. Gnawing self doubt won out over mortification. I froze like some manner of panicked woodland quarry and turned back to Jasper again, yanked backwards by my own inner-crazy pulling on my strings.

"Um, hey, can I ask you something a little weird?" I asked him, which is a classic question, in that it does the very thing that it's inquiring about.

"Sure. You're already a little weird so knock yourself out."

"Do my breasts look alright?" I didn't just say that, instead I practically vomited those words out in one whole chunk as fast as I could.

He raised an eyebrow, "Excuse me?"

I clammed up and my voice got small, "You heard me. Don't make me repeat it. Please."

He set the book down on the table and looked me over again. I flinched but tried to stand firm. I cupped my boobs from beneath, presenting them, what little they were. I could only look at the ground, and as I looked there all I could see was my own hair in front of my face hanging down. I was completely unable to bear the thought of being noticed for once, even though I'd asked for him to look at me. I was terrified to be judged, because every time I judged myself I came up wanting.

Gently, very gently, he said "Yes, I think it's safe to say I like them quite a lot. Look, Bella, you have fantastic attractive squeezable breasts and I realize it's very early in the morning and you're feeling rather vulnerable right now, but everything is more or less fine for the moment so maybe try letting some of that anxiety go? You're a very beautiful woman. You don't need me to tell you that. We all survived to see another dawn, and I mean that's something, right? And you made it through with both your chastity and your heterosexuality arguably intact. So there's that too. A big hand for everyone involved! Or at least a hand from me, since you and Alice have already taken the chance this morning to get handsy with each other. If you want to flash me again some other time and get a more thorough opinion, well, I certainly won't dissuade you from it, but for now why don't you run along and get dressed."

I turned to flee to the safety of the bathroom. Alice looked like she had something to add to this conversation but I didn't want to hear it. I couldn't stand to hear it. I closed the bathroom door to shut her out, to shut both of them out, before she could offer her two bits. A very beautiful woman? Where did he get that idea. I felt a little trapped, forced to take refuge in the paper thin seclusion offered by the rickety ply-board bathroom door. The door was so flimsy! How could it possibly stand up to the weight of them out there making up their minds about me?

Jasper knocked several minutes later and gave me a heads up that this was my fifteen minute warning. The taxi would be there soon and that I should plan on heading out with Alice to go pick up the car.

I'd gotten dressed, used the bathroom, all that good stuff. I'd thought about calling Jake but I wasn't sure if he was at school already or what. Sat on the toilet for a while and focused on progressive relaxation and breathing, mentally feeling each part of my body and then tensing and untensing all the muscles there in turn, just sort of working on calming down and not losing my shit. It was a trick Billy had taught me, and it really did help on the rare occasion that I actually stopped and did it.

Spoilers: I shortly thereafter totally lost my shit and all that time spent on relaxation was basically wasted.

The three of us had been calling this a hotel room, probably because I'd actually worked in a hotel and that was the word that I'd been using, but being honest here this was really a motel at best and, as such, it had a very standard motel layout. Like many motels it had a big mirror above a sink right outside the bathroom, sorta in an offset area at the back just beyond the main section with the beds and television but opposite the front door and the window. Seeing as the mirror and sink existed just outside the bathroom door, they would need to be passed immediately upon exiting it, and if one were to leave the light on in the bathroom and walk out they'd be in a pretty good position to see themselves clearly, possibly for the first time that morning.

I left the light on in the bathroom and walked out into the main area. As I passed the mirror above the sink I saw myself clearly for the first time that morning. It wasn't good. It was very not good. I looked like I'd been fucking murdered.

I stopped and stared. I think my mouth was hanging open. My whole neck was a mottled purple mess of bruises and love marks. I've seen hickies in movies and stuff and they didn't really look like this in fiction. In fiction they're always sort of, reasonable looking? Is that a good word for it? Instead, this was a panoply of unreasonable choices spreading out on my flesh. These weren't cute little dots of devotion, no, these were big splotchy patches of devouring desire. They spread down my neck and shoulders in a rolling wave and they were about as obvious as if I were Hester Fucking Prynne just marching about town with everyone knowing my goddamn capital A slutty business.

I pulled the green strap of my tank top aside to see how far they went. As I did so, something impossibly cold stabbed me in the exposed skin on my back and I screamed in pain and fear. No, that's not right. As soon as the scream left my mouth I realized it didn't actually hurt at all, it was just very sudden and very cold instead. I whirled around and Alice was there with her hand drawn back like I'd bit her and a hurt-upset look on her face.

"Sorry," she said with unusual reserve, "I didn't mean to scare you. I never mean to upset you but I seem to keep doing it anyway."

It's a very human thing to act as if we've been hurt before we know for sure if we have been or not. I'd fallen into that sensory trap of conflating cold, shock, and pain all as the same sensation. What's more, I hadn't seen her approaching in the mirror at all; the static of her body simply hadn't registered to my eyes. I knew already that she'd never intentionally hurt me, not in any way. I wanted to let her know that I understood that. That's what I would have wanted, but I was in no state do or say the right thing.

What I said was, "Alice! What the fuck did you do to me?"

In a broader sense I was scared and in shock, and it was making me act like she'd hurt me. I was drowning in a deep existential terror unleashed by the marks on my neck. I wasn't a good liar, but that didn't mean I couldn't try most of the time with most everyone I met. Looking at my wounded image in the mirror, looking at Alice, the strange and beautiful girl who'd slept at my side, I was having a very hard time keeping up the lie to myself.

Sometimes you can know a thing without totally having to know it. I'd known for years now that I had a problem with certain girls. It was just a thing. It was something that I could have almost sortof joked about with friends, if I had friends, while still totally being convinced it was only ever a quirky little joke. A weird Bella idiosyncrasy that didn't mean anything. Except here was Alice, and there I was with a neck full of love marks. Here in the light of day, Alice was starting to look like a mesmerizing compelling big serious problem, and what was the worst was that I was starting to need to acknowledge and know it know it.

"I only touched you. I forget sometimes how different we are. I'll be more careful in the future."

"No, not that. I mean what did you do to my neck? It looks like you mauled me!" I knew perfectly well what she'd done. I even remembered her doing it on the walk over. At the time I'd never wanted her to stop. But in the here and now I was so upset and uncomfortable at everything. Mostly at myself. Almost entirely at myself. Honestly, I'd think they looked gorgeous if I weren't so entirely freaked out by what they kind of most certainly meant. If I could have kept them private from the world and lived in this crappy little motel room until they healed, I'd have tackled Alice into bed and loved them with all my heart.

She wrinkled her nose and then tried to smile a little, to turn this around, "I guess I sorta did maul you, huh? They're just hickies though. You liked the roughhousing marks Jasper left on you so I thought you'd like these from me," she paused to stop there but she couldn't help herself and her smile took on a slight vindictive edge, sharp at the corners, "you definitely liked them while I was giving them to you. I guess someone didn't have her eye on the future?"

"Yeah no shit! I was drinking Alice, and now my future is that I have to show my face at school and it looks like you fucking strangled me or something!"

She laughed, a strangely harsh sound compared to her normal musical vocal tenor, "News flash Bella! I did strangle you, remember? We did plenty of stuff. I was very careful though, so, I promise, the marks on your neck are purely an oral affair." I both knew and didn't know how hurt she was feeling at how I was acting. I knew because I was trying to hurt her. I didn't know, because if I'd taken the time to fully processed the pained look on her face there's no way I could have continued to be so belligerent.

"You thought I'd want this? What's wrong with you? In case you forgot, this is still my first week at school. I can't show my face like this. Lauren Mallory will take one look at me and eat me alive. My school life will be over and I'll never recover!"

Alice, tiny cute Alice, had a fierce look on her face at Lauren's name. It was the kind of expression I would have expected from Jasper instead. "Fine then, here's how it goes," there was a husky roughness to her tone, a hint of bravado, of macho chivalry, "I throw my arm around your shoulder and we march into the lunchroom together. Forget everyone having to guess, we just go for it and don't hide anything. And if Lauren comes up to us and says even one little word that displeases you, I will personally headbutt her and split her pretty little nose open because I am a bigger badder bitch than she will ever be, and, for you, I'm willing to remind everyone of that fact."

I was exasperated, flattered, and alarmed, "And then what? I forget about fitting in and pretending to be normal? I forget about making friends and not being a fucking outcast? Just throw everything I've got into Team Alice and go live at your lunch table with you and your charming perfect family? Get rides to school in a luxury car from you every morning? Live happily ever after, I don't know, dyking out with you or something? Yeah, sorry, that's not going to happen."

Alice looked pissed. She didn't want to admit it, but I'd just skewered her private little fantasy of having me all to herself. It was a dream that was about as obvious as it was unreasonable, which she later begrudgingly admitted to me, but for the moment it made her get in my face itching to fight me but knowing at the same time that she had to physically treat me with the gentlest of kid gloves.

Jasper physically stepped between us, "Hey, why don't you both just chill out a little?" He showed me the palm of his hand before placing it on my shoulder. After a moment I could feel the stew of emotions inside me go from a boil to a low simmer. What's funny is I can't imagine how that would have ended if he hadn't stepped in. Would we have had a stupid girly shoving match? Would we have angrily made out? Maybe a little of both? Whatever we did there's no doubt it would have been ungainly and awkward and I would have regretted it, so yeah, probably both.

Alice had a frustrated look on her face like she still wanted to rip into my outburst even with him siphoning off the tension, but Jasper shot her a glance that made her close her mouth. I backed down too, not sure what to say now that I actually had to be responsible for my words.

"Now," Jasper began, "Alice, I'm guessing you might be tempted to argue that Bella could blame this all on me instead, the hickies and such, which is a pleasant enough notion in a way, but it's still missing the point. For now, most likely a little discretion is in order instead. Our family is used to hiding and skulking, so why should it surprise you that Bella is any different? We're all three cut from the same cloth here."

With the fear dissipating down to a low steam it was shocking how much clearer I could think. I felt a little sheepish about it now, "I don't really mind that it happened, I guess. I just don't want anyone to know. It really scares me. Also, if my dad sees these, he'll never let me hang out with you both again. That would really suck."

Alice seemed a little rattled still but she was recovering quickly, "It'd suck more than I did to your neck last night! Sorry, bad joke. Look, I, uh, I can be a little possessive at times. I'm used to getting my way. Jazz might spoil me a little. But, yeah, sorry, you're right, it's not my call to make."

I blushed across the gap at her, "Since the very first moment you've been the person I've been the most interested in. But I also want to have other friends and to have a school life. My mom was an all consuming kind of person and I just got away from that. I think it'd be really easy for me to fall into that kind of dysfunction again."

Jasper squeezed my shoulder affirmingly, "And I'll just continue to be chopped liver over here then. It's actually quite pleasant knowing where I stand."

I laughed and put my hand on his chest to push him away, "How about shut up? This is about my weird obsession with your wife. This barely even concerns you."

With slow deliberate panache he leaned down and stole a kiss from me. "Good," he murmured, "I'd be concerned if I thought I were mixed up in all this in any way. And just so you know, we'll get you some makeup for your neck when we get back to town. A good foundation really does wonders, you'll see."

Some of Alice's natural bubbliness had come back and it was only a moment before she was pulling Jasper away to talk to him, completely ignoring the kiss that had just happened.

"Hey, did you finish that book you were reading?" I heard her start as I turned back to the mirror to look at my neck one more time, "Because, Bella's got a theory about that. About which characters we all are I mean."

The baritone laughter of his voice warmed away the cold handprints they both had left on me. He sounded excited about that idea, "I call dibs on being Catherine! That crazy bitch is about my speed. What was the line as she was dying? 'half savage and hardy, and free, and laughing at injuries,' yeah, that's me! My ability to live in civilization is a thin facade at best," the un-image of him in the mirror shifted fractally and I got the impression he was looking at me, "plus of course, my own overriding obsession with you, my dearest Alice, to keep me going after a life of all the wrong choices."

My neck was a mess. I was a fucking mess. I didn't mind it as much as I thought that I should. I looked at my reflection and I was able to grin through the irritation and pain of it all. Headache. Headache pills next. What exactly was this thing that the three of us had going on here?

The car wasn't done when the Alice and I got to the car dealership. It wasn't even started when we got there. At first I thought this was another of Alice's plans, but it turned out she'd just totally forgotten to check the future to see if it was finished on time. I'd always assumed, in a hypothetical sort of sense while bullshitting with Jake and talking about super heroes, that a person who could see the future would use it to check on all the important things in their life all of the time. In reality it turns out that doing that is really boring, unduly time consuming, and also a little pointless under most circumstances. Sure, she does use her powers on things she thinks might go wrong, or on things she especially wants to get right, but generally the Cullens live a life of cautious unobtrusive routine and it's easy to be a little lax about the future, so Alice mostly just uses her powers for trivial little games of her own devising; games regarding timing and chance and synchronicity, with all of us in the world stumbling around as the pieces on her board. When she wins we get pleasantly surprised by strange coincidences and practical impossibilities. When she loses we never know and we see nothing; as the saying goes, there is no sense chasing chould-have-beens.

The dude at the front desk was overly polite but kind of a dickbag about it and didn't know anything about the current ETA on the car. Alice had us keep walking past the desk to the actual garage area where she cornered the first guy in coveralls she could find. He was an old silver fox of a mechanic and he just whistled when he got a good look at my neck; Alice put her arm around my waist in response and pulled me close, and while this was basically the exact scenario I super didn't want to play out at school, under these circumstances, in some random ass garage halfway across the state that I'd probably never visit again in my life, well I could sorta see the upsides of letting her be a little possessive just this once. He explained that they were waiting on a shop across town to open up in another half hour so they could send their parts runner over to get a replacement for our missing battery clip, seeing as how our car was an import and we were singularly and inexplicably unfortunate enough to have an uncommon part like that fall off and go missing right after we got to town and all. According to him, getting the right piece was the hard part, but once they had it it'd take almost nothing to actually install it and get our electrical system working again. We were welcome to hang out by the car if we liked, if staying in the lobby wasn't to our liking, and also provided we didn't touch anything on his workstation.

After a trip back to the front to get me some shitty coffee, we took him up on his offer and found that it suited us just fine. It was a little strange hanging out by ourselves at the far back of an otherwise empty garage. We were like a pair of ghosts, like we didn't exist in the world and were merely viewing it from afar, looking down at a long row of unused bays stretching out between our car and the front of the shop. Some more mechanic types filtered in after a few minutes and the first new customer car of the day arrived with a burst of wind and the blinding rays of the early morning sun coming in through a newly opened bay door. Alice withdrew further into the corner when she saw me wince from the light, as if she were the one with the hangover instead of me. She faded out for a moment and held up a finger to let me know she was having a fit. When it was over, apropos of nothing, she let me know there was a fog coming up soon, which she seemed pleased about at least, not that I really cared about the weather unless it was going to rain again.

We spent our time with me blowing on my coffee a bunch and drinking it a little. I'm not sure how the topic came up but we got into a friendly disagreement about if I was going to pay my share of the hotel room or not. When I say friendly disagreement, I really do mean that, it was nothing at all like the tension that had been there right before we headed out. I could accept them getting me dinner, and that the whole car thing was not my idea and was probably either out of my league cost wise or else already covered, but I at least wanted to pay my fair share of the hotel bill. This whole trip was due to me in the first place and I was uncomfortable with how much money they were throwing around for my sake. Basically I said all of the stuff I'd wanted to say to her in the store yesterday except that I hadn't had the time then that I needed to stumble through it all and she hadn't had the focus needed to listen to it either. Her default position was that spending any time at all ever worrying about money was pointless and that we didn't even need to talk about it. If I did want to talk about it, well they'd caused me a good deal of trouble and this was the least they could do. I tried to impress on her how uncomfortable the money aspect made me, that even if they had money I didn't want them to think I was taking advantage. She pointed out that she could walk into any gas station and buy some scratch off cards with her fake ID and then free money would simply appear out of thin air for her because she could choose to win at any time by picking a card that was going to pay out.

I'd pay one third of the bill, I begged, I'd been powerless so often in the last twenty four hours, but for the cost of a little money I could stand as an equal to the both of them for just a moment. That made her pause. She had wanted to do something nice and give me one less thing to worry about, but it seemed this was causing me stress.

I laid it out for her. I lived and I breathed. I aged and I sweated. I'd held a job and toiled for what I had. My hours on this earth were limited and someday I would die; I was the only one with any skin in the game so my offer to pay was more sincere than hers or Jaspers could ever be. I was going to carry my share.

When the car was fixed she stopped by an ATM for me. She called Jasper back at the hotel to figure out what our bill was. When we realized that we'd just spent the better part of an hour going back and forth over a measly thirty dollars we both burst out laughing. Damn, that really was a cheap motel. I took out a pair of twenties and got another coffee at a nearby gas station to ward off the chill air coming in over the water, also to nurse my hangover, and mainly so I could give her exact change. She accepted it with extra pomp and something like actual gratitude, even though I knew full well she wouldn't stoop to pick up a handful of twenties off the street, but at least it actually got her thinking about stuff like this for a change.

When we got back to the hotel I took an inventory of all my stuff, by which I mean I piled the weird melange of things I'd acquired on one of the beds to make sure nothing had been misplaced or thrown out. This only encouraged the both of them to futz with my horde and to attempt to casually give me some small items they'd picked out for me. I quickly realized I'd made the right choice to limit that sort of thing monetarily once I saw all the small stupid gifts they'd got me at basically every place we'd stopped.

Things I had purchased:

A red windbreaker with a white strip that gave Jazz naughty Red Riding Hood fantasies

A Salvador Dalí poster of Rose Meditative

A variant Clockwork Orange poster so I could worship Alex DeLarge

A high quality, second-hand, blue, down filled winter coat

A used VHS copy of Cat People

Some kind of gift(s) for Jacob's birthday party, but I'm not going to spoil that here

Thing I didn't purchase:

A gray beanie from Newton's Olympic Outfitters (Alice, but when did she have time?)

A logo button from the record shop Quimper Sound (Jasper)

A CD just titled Misfits with a black and yellow skull on the front (Alice)

A Russian pop duo CD on "loan" to me, band is possibly Тату or 200? (Alice with laughter)

A CD of The Aquabats! vs. The Floating Eye of Death! that he'd serenaded me from (Jasper)

A CD of The Fury of The Aquabats! because it's some of their best work so why not (Jasper)

A half empty case of beer and a partial bag of marshmallows (Some dead cold one, looted)

A cute, second hand, black leather motorcycle jacket that makes Alice drool (Alice!)

Two ice packs, a roll of medical tape, a bottle of aspirin (Jasper)

A second bottle of aspirin from the front desk when we still couldn't find the first one (Jasper)

Alice was right and by the time we actually got out of the hotel that earlier hint of sunshine had wholly vanished behind a low lying haze that smothered Port Townsend. Driving through empty streets it was easy to imagine that everyone else in the world had vanished in a blink. If that were only true I thought, the three of us could have been quite happy that way.

Our drive back to Forks started out raucous enough. Jazz was forced to drive nearly the speed limit on account of the fog, and, after Alice and I had settled into a cozy little pile together in the back seat, we all consigned ourselves to the longer ride back by listening to music. Alice voted for her mystery Russian CD that she'd entrusted to my care, but since that seemed like a joke that only she was in on, Jasper and I outvoted her and we picked Alice instead.

The dreamy gravel of Tom Waits' voice slid against the sinuous winding white of the foggy forest roads. The title song was like a melancholy rainy day and there was a big sigh from both me and Jasper when he crooned out, "Baby, all that I can think of is Alice."

And so a secret kiss / Brings madness with the bliss / And I will think of this / When I'm dead in my grave

We couldn't contain ourselves once the song ended and Jazz quickly flipped forward through the tracks to Poor Edward because it seemed like it was a little too on the nose to be listening to it while driving Edward's car in his absence. Despite expectations, the song turned out to be a somber little tune about Edward Mordake, the apocryphal man with two faces who killed himself because the female face on the back of his head whispered dark blasphemies at night, and who I knew about from a childhood misspent on weird fact books and Ripley's Believe It or Not! At least I got to explain about him to Alice and Jasper after the track, who both seemed suitably impressed by my knowledge of this macabre and probably completely untrue medical marvel.

The mood kind of settled down after we stopped at a gas station for me and I fell asleep against Alice for the majority of the ride back. I woke up as we hit the outskirts of Forks, in that almost sixth sense sort of way that happens sometimes at the end of a long trip, and I found myself with my face nuzzled into Alice's neck, her cool arms enfolding me, her cheek pressed against the top of my head.

She was singing very softly to me, a lullaby almost, just her soothing melodic voice over the sound of the road and the rush of wind passing outside the car.

Martian girl from Planet V

Will you marry me?

Wo wo wo wo wo

She came from outer space

She came to see

If earth was good

Wo wo wo wo

Her fingers played with the hair at the nape of my neck, fingernails running up and down through it. My hangover was definitely becoming manageable, finally, after my little nap. We approached the city coming in over the Calawah River, but instead of heading onward to the main thoroughfare we took a hard north that soon led us out of the outskirts again and onto a forest road that was evenly spaced with long driveways and big obscured houses hidden in the trees. I let out a little sigh of contentment and Alice put her lips almost to my ear and sang me her lullaby in her cute soft intimate way.

In the supermarket she got distracted

In the meat department

Wo wo wo wo wo

She's looking at me

She's looking hungry

Think she's gonna eat me!

Wo wo wo wo wo

I hated to have to do it but after the verse I leaned toward the front of the vehicle as much as I could without really losing my spot all curled up against Alice and touched Jasper on the back of his head, "Hey, where are we going? I don't know the town that well, but I don't think there's anything much up this way other than some kind of resort."

Without saying anything he spun the car sharply to the left, straight off the road and seemingly headed directly for the dense treeline at full speed. At the last moment, at least from my limited perspective, he curved his path to follow some bend I couldn't perceive and the trees opened up around us into the flimsiest of dirt roads. Actually, calling it a dirt road would be to oversell it, it was more like a path made out of hard-packed earth that was cleared just wide enough for something about the size of a jeep to pass through without hitting any of the moss laden branches. At first I thought they must have had to cut down quite a few trees to get a road this straight through the forest, but there was no sign of recent variance or disturbance in the sea of weird plant-life around us. I thought of all the talk of about a treaty and the notion struck me that this was probably a road that had been cleared a long time ago and it had lain dead and barren ever since, waiting silently for its time of use to come again.

After my initial moment of bracing for impact I consciously let myself relax a little and Alice pulled me back down into contact with her. She was still singing to me apparently and I came in mid-verse.

She smiled at me as she fixed her hair

And then she kissed me

Right then and there

I started bleeding,

That's the weirdest part

'Cuz this alien's teeth were razor sharp!

Why why did she come from Planet V?

I don't know woh wo wo

"We're just going up to the house for a second," answered Jasper finally with a bit of a smirk in his voice, apparently pleased that I'd fallen for the full dramatic effect of his antics, "figured we'd take the back way up so we don't have to mess around with the front gate and all that."

The road opened up into something that wasn't quite a clearing. It was a large maintained space that was dominated by a row of massive flanking cedars that blanketed the entire lawn in perpetual shade. It was honestly a breathtaking sight, to be so thoroughly dwarfed by these ancient looking trees. Even Alice went silent out of respect.

At the end of the ersatz path was a gorgeous old farmhouse on display at three quarters view with the back end pointed towards the river. Something about the whole situation felt dreamlike, like we'd just left reality behind us at the forest edge and had stumbled widdershins-wise into some little pocket of reality that wasn't really meant for the likes of mortal humans. We pulled around to the front and onto the driveway proper and I got a good look at the place.

The house was easily a hundred years old I guessed with a deep porch and a charming balcony above it. At one point it had probably been a symmetrical structure but additions to the second and third story gave it some visual texture and added tower like rooms to the front left and rear right hand sections. Given its asymmetry the obvious comparison would be the Addams family mansion, but really this was a much smaller building with an aura of honest to goodness hominess surrounding it. It was painted a faded off-white and adorned with ferns and clinging vines; if it were only a little more rustic it probably could have fit in perfectly on a Bob Ross painting. The only discordant note was the large raised garden of blood-purple colored flowers, Blue Metallic Lady Hellebores, that loomed out over the pathway to the front door.

Jasper pulled over and parked the car, "Well come on, lets get you some heavy makeup darlin'. Far as I know the only one who should be home at this hour is Esme, but we can probably evade her if you really don't want anyone seeing you in this state."

Alice popped the door and hopped out while I struggled with my seat belt. She paused and reached out a hand to pull me from the car with a raucous grin, "Hey there, step lively Martian Girl! You came all the way from the deserts of Planet V, so you might as well come see my little world!"

The two of them oriented themselves around me and we moved as one up the path underneath the darkling glare of the bruised purple flowers; they bent down toward the walkway to usher us in. I found the soft delicate rustling sound that was made as we pushed past them to be somehow disquieting.

When we were clear of them and had reached the steps up to the to the porch, Jasper put his arm around my waist and presented the house in front of us with a sweep of his other arm, "Welcome to the Westlands Estate, formerly of the city Sappho, previous home of the Donovan Lumber Company, seized by us not quite a century ago and moved here at great expense, current lair of the Cullen Coven and the seat of their power."

"That's us," Alice added as an aside to me.

Jasper laughed like the charismatic dork that he was and then beamed at me, "Isabella Swan, please be welcome in our home."

Alice primly opened the front door for me and when I hesitated a moment to take a deep breath she pulled me by the hand across the threshold and just like that I was inside.

Author's Note: It has been a while, hasn't it. To anyone reading this, thank you for still being here.

So, funny story, my life kind of fell apart this year. That new job I was excited for? It did not work out. In fact I've had three different full time jobs, I've moved, and I had the most debilitating couple month period of depression I've experienced in years. But that's all the little stuff. The big thing is that my girlfriend of six years broke up our triad and left the other two of us to fare together on our own. I loved her with all my heart; I was sure that this woman was someone I was going to grow old and wrinkly with. She was my editor, my beta reader, and my best friend. Surprisingly I actually did keep writing anyway, but I wasn't much in the spirit to write a dramatic poly romance and progress was slow. I've worked on other projects mostly, some of which might end up here eventually. Still, I've done countless drafts of this chapter, and, also perhaps surprisingly, each iterative draft served to soften the conflict and lower the friction between them until I finally felt good about all of it. With no one to read or edit this in advance I am simply putting this out there, unsatisfied as I may be at my efforts and the final state of the chapter, but it's time to move on with the story anyway. I hope you enjoyed it all the same and that it was worth the read.

I could use a bit of help with constructive feedback. If anyone wants to sign up to help with reading or editing, simply contact me through the site here.

As far as the content of this chapter goes, the main thing I'll touch on is the hickies. Despite this being a very personal story there is very little in this that is directly autobiographical, Bella isn't who I was in high school and she's mostly a composite of people I know who fit the type. Also some bits from my girlfriend that has stayed, because she has an eye rolling disdain of Twilight and I think it's hilarious to make her part of it. That said, I must admit dear Reader, that I was that girl with those hickies. Got way too drunk and picked up a guy in a bar for the first and only time, got home, he was willing to roll with me being trans and we had a frustrated and horny time, and then I woke up the next morning and had the mortified realization that I was super lucky he'd been a perfect gentleman the whole time and that I'd been completely vulnerable and he could have very well raped or killed me when I told him. I showed up at work without realizing how bad my neck looked and my friend straight up asked me if I'd been assaulted last night, and all I could think was that I was so ecstatic that they were just big ugly fuck-off hickies. Anyway, long story short, we did manage to get them completely covered using makeup magic and I didn't get any extra attention or flack from my boss.

I'd always intended when I used the song Chemical Bomb, way back when, to bookend this arc with the song Martian Girl to close it out. Getting to re-vamp (pun intended) the look of the Cullen household was always a big draw for me to write this. I picked up Twilight for Alice, and I was so disappointed with the entire "Bella goes to the house for the first time" section. Did not want a nice clean modern house. Did not want Edward's silly lounging couch. Did not want Edward in general when Alice was so very right there. So here we are finally and I am so excited to get to redo it as the Gothic horror that I had initially hoped it would be. No promises about the next chapter, when it will be, what it will have, or any of that. I've been wrong most of the time about all that stuff anyway. I expect things will get deep to the ugly moral root of things, much as I almost wish I could kick that down the way just a few chapters more, but my darlings here are problematic enough that it's unavoidable in the long run.

Thanks again and come Hell or high water I intend to keep writing this.