The Other Way : Seventeen

On Track To Rival The Sun 

-

“Nice earrings.”

Alice was staring at the spots where the lowest falling pearls were sweeping softly at the skin stretched over my collarbone, eyes wide and glassy as though she was being hypnotized, arching back and forth like a metronome. I knew the feeling.

“Jasper. He can’t help it. He’s addicted.” The earrings knocked against my bones as I shook my head.

“Good taste in shoes. Good taste in jewelry. Girl, you bagged yourself a winner.” Alice winked at me and drug me to the table, depositing me between her and Esme, both of them twittering over my ensemble while the boys all smoked cigars on the patio. I’d worn the draped dress that was the color of a thundercloud, rainy grey and overcast blue. It fell loosely to my knees, held to my hips with a thick black belt, feathery scraps of the whisper-thin fabric at my shoulders fluttered with even the smallest of movements. It sort of paralleled my mood, full of static lightning and boiling just under the surface, ready to crack open at any moment and release a holy torrential downpour.

Carlisle waited until we were all finally seated before raising his glass and toasting to Jasper so efficiently that even I was blushing by the end of it. His rising star, a kid he’d taken an uncertain chance on, had proven himself to be one of the shooting varieties. He officially announced the company’s plans to keep the island and his intent to make Jasper a shareholder rather than a top-tier employee.

“Happy anniversary, you two.” Carlisle tipped his glass toward us and Jasper leaned in to kiss me, tasting of whiskey and cigars, everyone clapping soundly except for Edward.

As usual, he was staring at me.

Or glaring at Jasper, depending on which moment you caught him in.

The tension between the two of them was practically unbearable. I still couldn’t tell if Jasper was mildly attracted to Edward, or secretly hated him. Edward was obviously not a fan of Jasper, even though he pulled his lip rings into his mouth every time he so much as glanced at him, which I thought he only did when he watched me. The air spanning the table was tainted with frustration and greed, barely tempered rage and sharpened judgement. Alice offered me a momentary escape just as our salad plates were being cleared and we hightailed it for the bathroom. I needed to get out of there for a moment, completely unsure what was going on. I stood at the sinks and fanned my face while Alice disappeared into a stall. My skin was blistering red, fevered and warm, and I blamed it all on those two boys.

Between the burning tattoo from Edward and the warm heat I always got off Jasper, I was on track to rival the sun.

“That was some toast.” Alice spoke up from behind the door and I rolled my eyes, but only because I knew she couldn’t see me. “Not everyone seems to agree with Jasper becoming the new Golden Boy.”

“Edward,” I said flatly, not asking because I knew. If looks could kill. He had been launching death glares across the table as though he was playing war. Alice pranced out of the stall and washed her hands, examining herself in the mirror.

“Yeah, well . . .” She pinched her cheeks, making them go pink. “If I had been left behind like that, I’d be pissed off too.”

“He got left behind?”

“You didn’t know?” Alice furrowed her eyebrows at me. “What did he tell you?”

“That he had a headache. Drank too much bourbon with you.”

“Bastard.” She scowled at her reflection in the mirror gaze drifting thoughtfully across her arms.

“Why didn’t he go?” I asked and Alice’s eyes met mine in the mirror.

“His father asked him to sit this one out.”

“Carlisle?” I gaped at her.

“Yes, but only after Edward refused to take out his lip rings,” Alice snickered.

“He has a problem with them?” I was mostly certain that Carlisle didn’t even see Edward and Alice’s tattoos, much less care about them. His eyes glazed over them without ever getting stuck, the way mine did, and for all intents and purposes he seemed to be accepting.

“Carlisle might hide it well, but deep down he’s not too pleased about all the ink. Or the metal,” Alice tacked on and unconsciously licked her bottom lip. I wondered if she was remembering what Edward’s lip rings tasted like.

“He seems fond enough of you.” I tried to keep my eyes off her mouth and failed.

“I just rub his face in it,” Alice declared bluntly. “Flaunt it, blatantly, because I’m proud of it and he’s thankfully come to see that.”

“Edward seems secure enough to do the same.” He sure seemed to enjoy rubbing his prickly surface up against everything else, if you asked me. Just like fine-grain sandpaper.

“Carlisle has a harder time with Edward. And Edward’s always said that if he was ever refused for a job that he was the best person for because of his looks, he wouldn’t want to work for the judgmental bastard anyway. Except this time, it’s his dad.” Alice’s face went suddenly slack and she gaped at me under a glow of comprehension. “That’s why you’re doing it, isn’t it?”

Her voice was so small and sure and sad that I nodded halfheartedly.

“More or less. But it’s not just Carlisle, there are a lot of them. All of them, really. Even the guy who got him the interview in the first place . . .”

Marco, or Marcus or some other M name. He was our passport to the upper-crust we were currently masquerading through; aging generations of men with every flavor of wife and not a care in the world as to what that wife did behind their backs just so long as there was something pretty to hang off their arm when needed. One good word from M and Carlisle was sold, Jasper sucked into the wave and even I’d gotten caught up in the drag. Pulled out to sea in a riptide of wealth and privilege and secrets. I liked to think that we were using them, brushing our roughened edges up against their soft ideals in a secretive, naughty sort of way, but really . . .  we were both just catering to their desires.

Rewarded, generously, but only after a significant sacrifice.

“Edward and Jasper have more in common than they think.” Alice sounded as though she was seeing the future and drug me out of the bathroom before I had time to ask her what she’d seen.

---

I snapped out of my lavender high to find myself staring at Edward’s arm.

Esme had begged out directly after dessert, still nursing her sunburn, dragging Carlisle along with her. Emmett had spent most of the evening with his phone firmly attached to his ear, pacing the patio with a big goofy grin on his face, and I had the sneaking suspicion that he was talking to Rose. We’d vacated the restaurant for the piano in the lounge and I was lying up against Jasper on one of the big couches, letting Alice take the stage, her black bird flexing its wings in a slow motion glide as she played.

Ravens were know for collecting shiny objects and being too smart for their own good.

She repeated the same song I’d heard her play this morning before moving onto another tune which was much more lighthearted than the previous melancholy. She faltered halfway through, getting caught up on a finger-numbing series of notes that tripped her every time she tried to move beyond it. Edward ended up leaning against the side of the piano, coaching her softly through it until she mastered the progression, his elbow resting on the lid and his feet crossed at the ankle.

He still looked uncomfortable in his business attire, stiff in his button downs and shiny shoes as though he felt forced to assimilate. His shirt sleeves were pushed up again and I’d only just noticed that the bottoms of the buildings on his left arm stopped mid forearm in a trio of thick black bands. They were strung with dangling light bulbs, all of them falling unevenly down his arm and onto the back of his hand. The bulbs were different shapes, small and large, plain and ornate, some burning brightly while others were burned out entirely. A tapered chandelier bulb graced the side of his palm, another rather standard orb sat heavily on the soft inside of his wrist. The lowest falling bulb nosed up on the knuckle of his ring finger, a curved art-deco piece that was neither alive nor dead.

Dormant.

Jasper’s grip on my hand suddenly clenched down hard enough to grind my bones together and I tried not to hiss in pain as I wrenched my eyes off Edward.

Jacob was standing in the entryway.

Hands clasped together and his eyes on his shoes, that beautiful caramel skin and his eyes gone golden. I glanced at Jasper, who wrenched his eyes off Jacob with his lips pressed together to peer at me. He was obviously torn, poised to bolt although he didn’t relinquish his death grip on my hand.

Wanting to go, but unwilling to leave.

“Go.” I mouthed the word silently, meant just for him, Alice’s song swallowing up all the loose noise. He gulped and pressed the back of my hand to his lips hard enough that I could feel his teeth behind them, cupping his hand to my neck and pressing all those pearls into my pulse, hard and hot.

“I fucking love you,” he whispered as he stood, his palm slipping from my face and he walked briskly toward Jacob. I caught a two-second glimpse of the wide, easy smile that blossomed on the boy’s face before I forced myself to tear my gaze away.

Edward was staring at me again.

Looking angry enough to overturn the piano.

He glared in the direction Jasper had disappeared, then back at me, still puddled in my cloudy grey dress on the couch where I’d been left. He pulled his eyes away and scowled at the floor in front of him for five solid seconds before rounding on his heel and storming out the doors toward the beach, blowing by Emmett and disappearing into the dark.

Alice’s song stumbled to a halt the moment Edward stomped off, her eyes finding mine in confusion. She’d missed everything, Jasper’s departure and Edward’s sour faced stalk out the doors. I shook my head at her, unable to put my situation into words and really wishing she’d just put her mind-reading powers to work and explain the enigma that threaded through my life tightly enough to render it completely unreadable.

---

She took me home with her instead.

Plucked me from my spot on the sofa, reassuring me that my legs would work and talking me through the darkened jungle, distracting and giggly and holding me upright most of the way. Her villa was done up in gold and silver, wood floors that were nearly white and creamy gold furniture atop a star colored rug. Her bed was rumpled, gold coverlet discarded on the floor and the pillows scattered across the mattress, the entire thing draped in more of that ever-present mosquito netting. The layout was similar to mine, though a bit smaller and set lower to the ground. The large glass doors opened right up to the smooth sand, potent ocean water lapping at the beach not four feet from her door. The counter in her little kitchen was clustered with a collection of rounded clay pots, all roughly the size of baseballs with lids nestled into the tops. The surface of each one was spiked with little bumps of clay, rough and pebbled, and I picked one up, surprised by its weight.

“What are these?” I marveled, examining the pot. Each individual bump was coated in the fading pattern of some stranger’s fingerprints, set there forever into the clay.

“My medicine pots.” Alice fingered the stippled surface lovingly. “I keep my jewelry in them now.”

“They’re for medicine?”

“The spiked surface . . . warns that the contents could be dangerous, you know?”

I lifted the lid off the little pot, sparkling silver and hints of onyx earrings inside. They were extraordinarily large, all the size of silver dollars, some with pretty patterns and others just simple hollow rounds. One pot held her spangled hair clips, another the replacements for the diamonds by her eyes. The last pot, the smallest, closer to the size of a tangerine, held the Devil’s Claw. Both horns were broken, making it look vulnerable and weakened in its hollowed out hiding place.

“Why did you keep it?” I fingered the seed pod, rolling it around with my finger.

Alice shrugged, tonguing something in her mouth that looked as though it tasted bad. “I wanted it. I don’t know why.”

“Edward seemed to think that was a bad idea.” So did I, now that I knew what it meant.

“He has issues,” she grumbled.

Under fucking statement.

“Care to elaborate?” I huffed.

“He’s angry about a lot of stuff.” More shrugging.

“You’re being annoyingly vague.”

Alice sighed heavily and cocked her head to look at me, jaw defiant for a moment before she softened. “He didn’t want me to use anything traditional. He wanted antibiotics and bags of fluid. He didn’t agree with my decision.”

“And he’s holding it against you?”

“No. But, I think he wants to.” She shoved the medicine pot she was fingering back amongst its companions and took my hand, eyes on the verge of watering, glistening right up against her diamonds. “This is too heavy for me right now. Let’s go for a swim?”

“I don’t have my suit,” I stumbled, caught off guard by her drastic change in direction. Surprised by her blunt acknowledgement of her incapacity to handle that recently buried trauma. She did this to me a lot.

“It’s just me.” She smiled cheekily, having seen most of it already. “Besides, it’s dark out. No one will see.”

I probably would have refused again, come up with some lame excuse, but she perched up on her toes and kissed me, open mouthed, hot tongued and fully fucking persuasive. I melted into her without meaning to, my hand between her shoulders blades to keep her close and my head nodding dumbly along when she pulled away with the silent question on her face. We left a trail of clothing behind us, shedding skirts and tops, dresses and bras into the sand. The silvery moonlight made all of Alice’s tattoos look twice as dark, a spotted leopard slipping into the ocean. The water was surprisingly warm, bath water rather than the vast chilly sea and my muscles went slack in an instant. The lavender kick was twice as potent in the dark and I submerged myself completely, coming up for air in a gulp, Alice’s fingers already finding my skin.

Head already swimming around in a boiled down goo of kisses and drugs.

“What happened back there? Everyone left in the middle of my song.” She pulled me up close to her, our feet meeting in the sand, her skin even warmer than the water. She pushed all my hair out of the way and planted her lips in a trail up my neck and my head was reeling from her, or the lavender, or Jasper’s whiskey-flavored kiss, or the pain from Edward’s flowery scars. Maybe all of them. I was fucking trashed.

“Jacob showed up. I told Jasper to go with him,” I whispered haltingly.

“And Edward?” she prodded.

“Wasn’t happy about it.” I kissed her this time. A first. Mostly just to shut us both up, partly because I didn’t want to think about Edward anymore. I lunged at her mouth with my own wide open and ready, trapping whatever she had to say between our tongues.

Each time we did this, it only left me wondering why I thought I could ever do without this feeling. What had possessed me to believe that I could go it alone like I had been, drifting through life without even simply enjoying it? This was unparalleled, something that couldn’t be glossed over or replaced by a saccharin substitute. Alice pulled me close and let her hands roam, swimming over my hips and up my sides. Sending my insides shivering with her palms to my tits and fingers held firm to my ass. Every single inch of me was on fire despite the water, an impossible mixture of the two.

Calm water to boiling churn. Collected girl to panting, needy mess.

Thoroughly doped up on eau de ocean, boosting it with hits from whatever medicated bliss Alice kept a stash of underneath her tongue.

I trailed Alice into her villa nearly an hour later, dripping wet with sandy feet and my mouth full of her taste. She had a thick garter belt banding her right thigh, satiny violet ink that looked so real I was tempted to reach out and touch it, sure that I’d feel rumpled ribbon beneath my fingers. There was an elaborate laced border on either side that was done in white and pale grey, delicately sheer against her skin. A silver handgun was tucked beneath the belt on the outside of her thigh, short and squat and just the right size for her hand. Just as I was about to confirm my suspicions and get my fingers on that silky ribbon, a shadow across the room, stopping us both in our tracks. Edward sauntered out of the bathroom in nothing but a pair of grey slacks and a bunch of splashy pictures, a half-empty bottle in his fist and his hair rioting against him.

Shirtless and hollow cheeked, tired eyes finding me like a goddamn homing beacon.

“What are you doing here?” Alice stopped so short I all but ran into her and she just stood there while I tried to ungracefully shield myself behind her. I was still convinced that Edward’s eyes could burn tattoos of scar tissue into my skin if I let him look at me too long and I was glad I had so much hair, letting it drip all around my feet and cover most of my tits like a shield.

He stared hard at her, then me, face compacted and mouth tight.

“Waiting for you.”

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