Mind The Gap / 5

I rounded an aisle of tomatoes with a bag of fertilizer under my arm when I saw Sparkles in disguise. I barely recognized her at first, out of the element I was used to seeing her in, plopped into the real world as though everything else was just some elaborate fantasy. She looked so unassuming, a girl I probably would have admired but not thought twice about if I saw her here without all our previous rock-themed interactions.

I watched her for a while, tailing her through the nursery from a safe distance away. Her cart was already overflowing with a colorful variety of plant life, and she stood in one spot for a while with a pot in each hand, looking confused before I finally worked up the courage to talk to my fairy-tale in real life.

I hoped she wouldn’t disappear.

“Hey there, Sparkles. It’s about time we met in the real world.”

Bella gasped when I spoke and whirled to face me, blushing for some reason. She’d straight up dropped one of the pots and was now clutching the other up against her stomach. Her fingers, usually the part of her I found the sexiest covered in chalk and bruises and blood, were scrubbed clean and topped with fancy painted nails that looked out of place on her newly worn hands.

“Hi.” She shuffled her feet and I reached forward to pull one of her hand towards me. While her skin looked red around her cuticles, it was the hardened sheen of painted nail that had me worried.

“What did you do to your hands?”

“I was threatened with death and dismemberment,” she laughed even though she sounded completely serious and I knew instantly we were talking about Alice with the glitter. I clutched Bella’s hand in mine, studying this new novelty. The edges of her nails extended way past the ends of her fingers and I shuddered inwardly, thinking about how terrible it would feel to scrape them up against a rock, your entire body weight on that tender attachment.

Not having arms would suck too, but ripping off your nails almost seemed worse.

“That would have made climbing hard, yes, but these might make it harder.” I pressed my thumb down over one of those painted nails and Sparkles opened her mouth to say something when another tiny girl, this one with short black hair and wearing what appeared to be a tutu, came bounding around the corner.

“Hey Bell- . . . Well, hi there.” The girl took one look at me and forgot Bella was even there, I swear. She pranced over to us, looking like a four year old at a ballet recital who just got hopped up on a double dose of estrogen.

“Alice.” Bella snatched her hand from mine, clutching it in her other hand as though I’d burned her and breathing raggedly.

“This is Alice? I’ve heard so much about you.”

I inspected Alice a little closer, every detail only confirming that Jasper would be a wreck if he ever met her. Her top was a pale pink sweater, soft and light and woven through with a silver thread. The tutu didn’t jut out at her hips like a legit one, but fell loosely from her waist in a puffy fluff of pale purple and blue and white. Her tights were spangled with tiny diamond sequins, her shoes looked like some first grader’s glitter-dunked art project, and even her purse was covered in an iridescent flurry of light.

Jasper was totally fucked.

“You have not. You’ve just heard me complain about her,” Bella grumbled and her eyes suddenly narrowed, a look I’d come to dread just a little. It meant that she was being far too smart for her own good and was probably piecing something together that I wouldn’t like at all.

“What’s a Gabby, anyway?” She poked her chin out and straightened her spine, giving her a couple of inches but not enough to even make it to my nose. Despite her lack in height, she was a little terrifying when she was mad.

“I thought it was Gumby?” Alice asked and goddamn it, they’d been talking about me.

“It was,” Bella huffed at Alice without taking her eyes off me. “Now it’s Gabby. Whatever that means.”

“It just means that you have potential.” I shrugged to hide the fact that my ears were burning and I knew that she’d take it the wrong way if I told her what that word meant.

“And?” Bella pressed, stubborn as a fucking rock.

“And?” I shook my head at her, hoping she’d just drop it, but she just stuck her chin out farther.

Fine. Fuck. “And you’re a girl. So what? I didn’t think that part was important, but you made me say it out loud.”

“And I’m yours, huh?”

My stomach bottomed out clear to the soles of my feet when she said those two words. Strung together like beads on a string and rubbing up against one another, I’m yours. I managed to nod and before I knew what was happening Bella had said goodbye and was dragging Alice away.

“That’s the guy you met climbing rocks?” I heard Alice squeal and Bella glanced back over her shoulder at me just before they rounded the all those burning red tomatoes and disappeared.

I swear to god she was smiling.

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