Mind The Gap / 3

I spent most of the morning on the boulders out in the meadow, waiting for her.

The rocks were different out here, mother nature and all of her elements defacing them until they were barely recognizable. The wind and rain had swept them clean of just about every sharpened edge, sanding them down to giant rounded monuments. They were scaled in lacy patterns of lichen, pale yellow and sea-foam green. An oddly burnished orange and one that I swear to god was robin’s egg blue.

When she appeared I had no recourse but to call her Sparkles. I still didn’t know her name. She scowled up at me and I hated to admit that I kind of liked it when she did that. The crash pad on her back looked enormous and dwarfed her completely. I leapt from the rock and told her that I was going to keep calling her Sparkles until she earned a new nickname while I took the pad from her.

At the rate she was going, she was chewing up the Gabby thing fair and square.

I debated where to take her, wondering for a split second if I should let her try Straight Edge of the Blade, a fairly easy climb with a really pronounced lip of stone that would have probably been a better fit for a very first ascent. But I knew how it was, the nemesis rock that you start dreaming about, hating on in your sleep, so I took her back to the Problem Queen, wondering how the hell I was going to help her up it.

She just wasn’t strong enough. There was no way around it.

I watched her try six times, always getting to that sloper and bailing off with a frustrated sound caught in her throat. Her last attempt just might have been successful if Jasper hadn’t ruined it.

As usual, he had spectacularly shitty timing.

My name came barreling through the trees and startled Sparkles right off the rock. She landed with a heavy thump against me, warm and catching me off balance. I took one hesitant step before I set her down, leaving my chalky handprints on the black fabric of her shorts. She looked mad, but I didn’t know if it was because someone interrupted us, or because that someone made her peel off her climb.

“Hey man, what the fuck are you doing way out here? The Passion Pit is back that-a-way.” Jasper stopped in front of us, framed in the black square of his crash pad, his eyes dropping to Sparkle’s shorts. My fingerprints were scattered across her clothing, her waist speckled with spots of white that were barely visible on her pale skin and Jasper eyed me with a smirk on his face.

“Oh.”

Fucker. I tried to temper my urge to hit him by focusing on the dizzying thrill that prickled across my stomach when I saw the chalky marks I left on her.

“Jasper, this is-”  Uh. Shit.

“Bella,” Sparkles offered, letting our eyes lock for the one of the first times all day. She tended to avoid my gaze, as though I made her uncomfortable. “And you’re Edward.”

I nodded and she turned on Jasper in all her vicious-girl glory, launching her response to his sudden startling appearance with deadly perfect aim. Wicked and straight to the point, all with the sweetest damn smile on her face.

“How many rocks you got in your pockets, Jasper?” She purred at him and he blushed instantly, throwing an accusing glare at me. “You should meet my friend Alice.”

I was going to have to watch out for this one.

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