The Other Way : Five

Sounds Like A Plan To Me, Sugar

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Jasper was eating leftovers today.

A container of spaghetti topped with one of the giant meatballs we made from scratch last night and my grandmother’s famous spicy marinara recipe.  Two pieces of garlic bread in a plastic bag and a pear from the tiny, stunted tree in my greenhouse, perfectly ripe and only just starting to bruise. I skipped the candied consolation prize, but only because I knew he wouldn’t turn his nose up at the meatball the way he did at anything that came out of the ground.

We were leaving for Jasper’s newest island acquisition tomorrow and my day was going to be full of last minute mundane crap; the gardener, the security company, the little neighbor girl who collected our mail and Rose, who would likely take up most of my time. She was coming over in an hour to pack for the both of us, a lesson I’d learned the hard way the only time I insisted on doing it myself, and then planned to drag me to the salon to hack off my split ends and give me some deep conditioner treatment she wouldn’t shut up about.

Jasper appeared in the kitchen earlier than usual, an armful of folders and his cell phone already attached to his ear. He rushed distractedly through a conversation with Tanya, his secretary, as he stuffed his briefcase full and took the coffee cup right out of my hands to take a sip. He handed it back as he  pocketed his phone, taking a bite from the bagel I had slathered with cream cheese and honey, his old favorite.

“Rose has you scheduled for a haircut at one.” I reminded him and he nodded, licking honey from the corners of his mouth. Playing unfair, as usual.

“Tanya has it worked in. Will you be there?” He sounded hopeful and I smirked at him, well aware that he hated subjecting himself to his sister, one on one. Theirs was a dynamic that teetered a fine tightrope between extreme hate and ultimate love, wobbling precariously in between.

“Yes, Angela demanded time with my nails and Rose didn’t stop bitching about my split ends yesterday until I agreed to come in. I thought maybe we could go out to dinner afterward?” I’d let the refrigerator dwindle down to the bare minimum in anticipation of our departure and it had even been a stretch to come up with the whole meatball gig last night.

“Sounds like a plan to me, sugar. See you at one.”

His fleeting departure kiss left my lips sticky and sweet and I licked it all off the moment he was gone.

---

Jasper breezed into the salon just as Rose was finishing off the fresh set of highlights she’d talked me into, my head full of tinfoil. Angela spent nearly an hour roughhousing my hands, nails scrubbed and scraped and polished to the point of no return, her fancy new manicure making my short stubby fingers look suddenly long and slender. They were the graceful hands of a dancer or a piano player on my completely average, sort of clumsy body. So far out of place. I was admiring them discreetly when I felt his stubbled cheek rasp against my own and his breath landed hot on my shoulder.

“That measly ring just doesn’t do you any justice,” he lamented, curling his fingers under my palm and hoisting my hand up into the air between us. I didn’t tell him that I’d really been admiring my nails and let him press a kiss down over the top of the sparkler he’d gotten down on one knee to give to me nearly half a decade ago. It was pretty, if simple, and though he might find it rather plain in retrospect, I secretly loved the subtle implication it hinted at.

Our humble beginnings.

Judging from the rapid escalation in the luxury of his gift giving, and the new fortunes’ worth of amber and diamonds still hanging around my neck, I knew for certain he wanted to bestow me with an upgrade.

“I love it. I don’t want a new one.” I pressed my temple up against his and gripped his fingers tight.

“Are you certain?” From the edge of disappointment in his voice, I was sure he already had one picked out.

“Yes. This one is important.” Our eyes met in the mirror, a dozen other pairs all focused on us from around the room, which was typical whenever Jasper was around. The salon girls twittered around him like a pack of flustered birds and here he was making a spectacle of us before he’d even said hello. I saw Angela and Lauren turn their faces away the moment they realized they’d been caught staring, but Rose just perked an eyebrow at me through the mirror and nudged Jasper out of the way.

She deposited me under the heater nearest to her station and Jasper settled into Rose’s chair with a wicked grin in my direction, his proximity to his twin obviously reminding him of the images that flooded his phone yesterday afternoon. He swiped his tongue across his lower lip and tightened his grip on the arms of the chair, all bedroom eyes and tousled hair even in the middle of the afternoon.

“Please tell me you bought the silver one.”

Fucker. I blushed a nuclear shade of crimson.

“After much persuasion, yes, I bought the silver one.”

“Ew! That guy? How creepy was he?” Rose choked, pulling her fingers through Jasper’s hair as she decided how short to trim him, obviously remembering our encounter with a muddy, leather-clad Edward in that pristine white dressing room.

“Who was this?” Jasper eyed me carefully without moving his head, pensive and concerned, every unknown possessing every unspoken potential. I waved him off.

“We saw Edward Cullen when we were out shopping.”

“You knew him?” Rose gaped at me, fingers suddenly still against Jasper’s scalp and her face contorted in confusion. We were both good at keeping secrets, so this should come as no surprise to her. I shrugged.

“Not really, we just him met a few weeks ago. He’s Carlisle’s son,” I hedged, pointing out the obvious and hoping she wouldn’t recall that I’d spent most of our encounter with Edward flushed red as a goddamn tomato, next to naked. She wrenched her eyes from mine, finding Jasper’s gaze in the mirror and when he nodded she cast her gaze at the floor. Features compacted into the middle. I knew she was trying to emulsify the image of Carlisle, crisp and polished, with her brief brush up against the prickled, colorful surface of his son, their features echoed in each other so faintly it was almost like seeing a ghost.

“He saw you in a bikini? Which one?” Jasper took only a moment to put his freaky twin vibe to good use, his eyes studying Rose’s face in the mirror as though he could read all her thoughts. He leapt from boredom to territorial pissing in one solid bound. I rolled my eyes, refusing to indulge him but Rose foiled my plan with her big fat mouth.

“The silver one,” she snickered.

Jasper’s jaw dropped, gaping at me for a moment before he swallowed something with his face puckered as though he’d just forced down a burning supernova. “I don’t know how I feel about that.”

“Stop it. You don’t get to do that,” I snapped at him. His grip on the armrests hardened slightly and he narrowed his eyes at me.

“Do what?” He was daring me to say it out loud, backing me into a corner rather than backing down himself, which was what he normally did when we came to an impasse.

“He was there with a woman.” I ground my teeth together to keep a straight face and lowered my voice so that it wouldn’t wobble.

“And her?” Rose butted in again, comb and scissors at the ready, her eyes rolling. “She acted like she was gonna be your new best friend. And what’s even up with tattoos, huh? They’re like fucking potato chips or something. You can’t have just one.”

“That must have been Alice. He talks about her a lot.” Jasper mused, sounding distracted with his eyes firmly closed as Rose continued snipping through his curls. I wondered what he was thinking about, because I was thinking about how much of Alice’s skin was covered in tattoos.

And how much of Edward's . . .

And how Jasper’s hair could never do what his did.

And that Jasper had talked to him.

A lot.

“You’ve talked him? A lot?” I asked without thinking and met Jasper’s eyes. He arched a single brow, suggestive and faintly irritated.

“He’s working at the firm, Bella. I’ve talked him every day for two weeks.”

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