Mind The Gap / 7

Jasper met Alice the day I finally topped the Passion Pit and he was just as fucked as I predicted he’d be.

Struck dumb enough that he missed my ascent, something I wasn’t sure I was going to ever be able to forgive him for. It was probably because she showed up in a costume that put the outfit I’d seen her sporting in the nursery to shame. This one looked like the costume from a play about small singing forest creatures and an orphan who is raised by talking flowers. There was moss-green fluff around her waist and I swear she super-glued the entire fake flower section of the craft store to her top. She was wearing black boots which protected her kneecaps but kind of made her look like a land-stranded pirate and she marched right up to Jasper with an irritated smile on her face as though she’d just spent the last hour searching the woods for him.

“Look at what I just found.” I saw her hold her hand out but was too far away to see what she was holding. It wasn’t until I was back on the ground that I spotted it, a grey rock flecked with spots of silver and an odd red color that reminded me strangely of blood. I wondered if Bella had told Alice about Jasper’s sparkly rock fetish, or if her own had taken over.

Those two were destined for each other, no doubt.

Jasper’s suggesting of campusing that lip and ascending from the right side rather than the left had been a stroke of genius, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I barely remembered a single moment of my climb from the time I set my fingers against that jutting face of stone until the moment I stood upright on the rock. A surging wave of fear had washed through me that I fought hard to put away. I was about to dangle myself nearly ten feet off the ground and I knew for certain -- even though I really didn’t -- that this was probably where James had fucked himself up. The entire lip of stone was a series of dead-points, delicate holds along the stone that you either found, or you didn’t.

Not here, not there, but right there.

And only there.

I wanted to try it again as soon as I was done but there was so much blood pumping through me, trailed by varying waves of anxiety and exhilaration, that my muscles feel loose and flaccid. There was no way I was climbing again today and it looked as though I wasn’t the only one. Jasper was seemingly shutdown as well, too enamored with Alice to pay attention to much else.

I took Bella back to her current problem, though I tended to avoid the climbs wedged up against the base of the cliff, and for good reason. Nothing around here was stable enough to rely on and every so often you could hear the far away noise of a rock falling, miniature landslides that sent tumbling bits of scree hurtling down the steep slide area. I hadn’t seen anything larger than a basketball fall from the cliff, but considering the size of the boulders we climbed, it was not improbable that something bigger wasn’t next. The fresher rock, newly fallen, had edges that were much sharper than the older residents back in the trees and I warned Bella to test each hold before putting her full weight on it, worried she might slice right through her hand.

That didn’t turn out to be her problem though, it was her clothing that caught her up. The whisper thin cotton t-shirt she had knotted at her waist, a triangle of skin flaunting the two dimples at the base of her spine. It was snagging against the rougher rock, holding her back, and even though I’d been half naked in front of her more than half of the time, I still hesitated to lure her out of her own clothing.

Not that I didn’t want to see it, because I did.

I just didn’t think she’d go for it.

But once again, the girl was chock fucking full of surprises.

“Take this off. It’s snagging on the rock.” I fingered the hem of her t-shirt, watching in equal parts disbelief and fascination as she stripped it off. She had a sports bra on, one cut down low to display the soft spot of skin between her tits a delicate crisscross of straps across her back. In her tiny shorts, lycra and skin tight with nearly every inch of her legs on display, I could almost imagine her naked.

Cut it out, Cullen.

She made it further up without her shirt on but the rock started to gently overhang on itself, the wall looming out over the ground and I saw her falter as the angle shifted. She’d never tried anything with such a slant to it and I could sense her unease from the way her breath stopped up in her chest. Just as she moved to set her hand into the next hold, I put my fingers lightly against the skin on her back to give her some reassurance that I was there if she needed it.

She fell almost instantly.

Back to my chest in a searing flash of heat.

I set her down and pulled away, searching through my bag for my brush to disguise how flustered I felt all of a sudden, meaning to clean up that hold for her. My skin was flaming as I scrambled up to the spot with the brush between my teeth. The rock out here needed a little extra attention and she’d responded so reflexively the moment her fingers touched that next hold, pulling her hand from the rock with a sudden jerk, that I was sure she had put them down on something sharp. I dipped the toothbrush in my chalk bag and started rubbing at the surface when Bella spoke up.

“You climb like a mountain lion.”

Considering the mind-numbing beauty of that wild creature I’d spent a second or two face to face with, sure for a moment that I was talking to God, I took it as a compliment.

“Well, you climb like a ballerina.” I responded, fully appreciating the fact that she damn near danced up half the rocks she climbed.

“I do not.”

“Yeah, you do. Just like Rose. It must be a girl thing.”

---

“What are you daydreaming about, Doll-face?” Rose nudged me at the dinner table, using the name she herself had bestowed upon me. I hated it, but didn’t have much say in the matter. No one did when it came to Rose. When she called tonight and demanded that I let her feed me a decent meal, I couldn’t say no.

“Sparkles.” Emmett grinned at me from around his fork.

“Who or what is a Sparkle? Is that some secret code word?” Rose asked, eyes bouncing between me and Emmett. She knew us too well.

“His Gumby,” Emmett snickered and I tried to kick him in the shin but missed and smashed my toes against the leg of the table instead. Ow.

“No, his Gabby.” Jasper replied before I even had a chance to get over my foot. “She on-sighted the Lock and Key.”

All three of them turned to stare at me.

“It’s true,” I shrugged. Rose smiled at me, a girl who launched herself into sister mode precisely four days after I met her, and winked in my direction.

“I want to meet this Sparkles. She sounds like she’s just what you need.”

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