Wide awake

Chapter Three Double Fudge Rendezvous

B.P.O.V

I had a really hard time staying coherent today. There was no school, because it was a Saturday, so I had to battle to find tasks to occupy my time with. Alice, gratefully, kept babbling in my ear, which made it near impossible to sleep.

“I mean…” Alice huffed out dramatically, “Everyone in Forks High was at that party, Bella!” She said exasperated while I mopped the kitchen floor. “Why the hell wasn’t he there! Do you think it was me? No. No, that couldn’t be it. Maybe he doesn’t like Emmett. But Edward was there, and he’s his best friend! You’d think he’d go to his best friend’s party!” She whined. At the mention of Edward’s name, my attention piqued. I halted my mop and slowly turned towards her.

“Hey, Al…” I started cautiously. How to ask her this without drawing undue attention to myself?

She stopped her tirade at the sound of my voice, and looked at me quizzically from her seat at the bar. “Umm, this Edward guy you talk about? What’s his deal, anyways?” I asked as nonchalantly as possible. I was worried she’d get suspicious and start questioning my motives, so I added, “I mean, if he’s Jasper best friend, I might be more helpful to your predicament if I knew more about the company he kept.” I finished craftily.

Curiously, Alice grimaced at my mention of Edward. “Well… Edward is…” she trailed off, cocking her head to the side, appearing to be trying to find a good word to explain him. I thought I could help with this. Gorgeous? Interesting? Has impressive literature collections and five thousand dollar black leather sofas? “Trouble.” She finished decidedly with a nod.

I frowned. “Trouble?” I hedged. Sure, Edward might have seemed a little… abrasive, but trouble? She nodded then continued.

“He’s… well, lets just say Edward doesn’t exactly play well with others.” She added cryptically. Figures that the one time I could actually benefit from her over abundance of conversational enthusiasm, and she starts walking on egg shells.

“Alice, you could you maybe be a little more specific?” I huffed, aggravated that I actually had to ask her to continue. She rolled her eyes.

“He has issues, okay? He’s a trouble maker. Bad seed. He’s mean to everyone but Jasper, he doesn’t like talking to people, he’s been arrested before, he hates Emmet, he has the foulest mouth I’ve ever heard, and freshman year he scratched my BMW by ‘accident’, and didn’t even apologize.” She spat in a harsher tone than I was accustomed to ever hearing Alice use.

I blanched, a bit shocked at her tone and description of Edward. He didn’t seem so bad last night. Again, a little abrasive, but I know how much sleep deprivation can affect moods, so I can easily write it off. Alice, apparently, couldn’t. I felt strongly compelled to defend Edward for some reason, but knew doing so would give me away, so I stuck to my earlier ruse and continued with my false intentions of learning more about Jasper.

“Hmm, well is Jasper like that too? Mean to people I mean?” I asked, not really caring. I decided to store the information on Edward away for later inspection.

Alice shook her head frantically. “No! No, Jasper isn’t like that at all. He parties some, but no more than Emmet. One time when I stayed the night with Rose, I saw him helping his mom with her work – she’s a professor at the college in Port Angeles – and he was really sweet to her...“ She trailed of in a whimsical voice. I just shrugged and continued mopping the floor while Alice pointed out Jaspers stronger points.

Hoping to get a better impression of Edward tonight, I decided not to judge him based solely on Alice’s assumptions. I knew if he was judging me by other’s assumptions, he probably thought I was completely insane. My shoulder slumped a bit when I realized that was probably exactly what he thought of me by now. How could he not, with all the rumors going around school? For some reason I really did want Edward to like me… or at the very least remain on polite speaking terms with me, which as Alice made quite clear, was more of a rarity than I had originally expected.