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Ch. 11 Dumbass

(BPOV)

"What are you talking about?" I stared dumbly at the clearly insane vampire sitting across from me on my sofa.

"He—" Jasper opened his mouth to offer what I'm sure would have been a wonderful explanation to excuse his brother's abhorrent behavior, but I cut him off, abruptly altering my course because it had occurred to me only moments after doing so that by inquiring about either Alice or Edward, I would be entering territory which was none of my business. Humans were my business. They—the no good, lousy, piece of crap vampires—could solve their own supernatural problems. They didn't need a lowly, flawed human like me slowing them down.

"Actually, you know what? Never mind. I really have to get going. I haven't been late or missed a day of class since coming here, and I'm not going to start today. It was nice to see you, Jasper. Thank you for all of your concern, but I'm really fine. I wish you the best, and hope you get things sorted out with your...family." This facade was mostly for show as I coaxed the throbbing in my chest to still. 'Be cold. Be aloof. It's what they would do,' I told myself.

"Bella?" Jasper called as I snatched my Birkin off the console table, rustling around in it to ensure that my school books were as they should be.

"You can see yourself out, Jasper. Have a good day." I called over my shoulder, meaning to storm off with fierceness and confidence, but the tie around my waist hooked onto the door handle just as the door would have closed. I sighed heavily and closed my eyes. I knew this would not be a good day, but it could only get better from here, right?

I released the cotton rope, untangling myself, and shut the door. I knew the barrier the hollow wood created between us was nothing, but it felt symbolic. I was literally and figuratively shutting the door on that part of my life.

With the ping of the elevator chiming to let me know that I was in the parking deck, I stepped onto the asphalt still digging through my bag in search of my keys. "Crap." I muttered when I remembered that I didn't have my Civic. It was still in the gas station parking lot where I had left it the night before. Which meant my only mode of transportation was my other car...my baby.

Back in Forks I had never really cared about the model of car that I drove, the older and more...durable, the better was my motto, but once I had a bit of my own money to play with, I decided why not?Edward liked fast, shiny cars, so in my quest for self-improvement, I needed a fast, shiny car too. Enter my Bugatti. She was beautiful, black and glossy exterior with red, leather interior, absolutely perfect with all the bells and whistles, and after driving this beautiful piece of machinery off the lot that first day, I began to understand the Cullens' draw to powerful, luxury sports cars.

But it was rather conspicuous. I snorted at the thought because it was exactly how Edward had described Rosalie's BMW. 'Ugh! Shut up about—'

"Edmund." My mouth drooped open, and I came to an abrupt stop fifteen feet from my car. Edward was there, pacing back and forth, combing his hands through his hair maniacally.

He stopped and looked right at me, or rather, through me as if I weren't standing right there too. I almost hissed at the burn that shot through my center, but I held the reaction in and instead shook the stupidity off my face, narrowing my eyes.

"So you're a stalker? I'll have to invest in better security." Why the hell was he here? I didn't have time for all these Maury-worthy reunions today. "You're blocking my car. Don't make me call the police." Not that they could do anything, but so long as he was going to be ridiculous, so was I.

"Pardon? I'm not stalking you. I'm waiting for someone. I didn't know you lived in this building. You never even told me your name." He appeared genuinely bewildered. His demeanor had shifted so sharply from the time he noticed me that I could only blink back at him.

How was I supposed to respond to that? So he honestly didn't know it was me? Was there actually something wrong with him as Jasper had suggested? "Look, can we just stop with this back and forth already? I don't even understand what game we're playing here. You've found me, so now what? Is there danger lurking around the corner? God, Edward, what is it?" I wished he would just spit it out. I didn't like having to play the "never know when one of the Cullens might show up" game.

"Danger?" His voice was laced in suspicion, and he was almost glaring at me.

I flinched at the severity of his expression. "Look, I need to get out of here. You're blocking my car. Please just leave me out of whatever you and Alice have going on."

"You know Alice?"

"Of course I know Alice! What the hell?! Move! I'm going to be late!"

"This is your car?" He turned around and I watched as his eyes slid over the immaculate gloss of my baby. He then looked back to me appreciatively.

"Figures you like the Bugatti..." I murmured under my breath.

He only smirked. "It's a beautiful car. Are you a collector?" He asked, taking a step in my direction, and my heart stuttered.

It was an involuntary response to his nearness. I almost moved forward myself as his lips alluringly shifted into the crooked smile I had loved so much before...before... 'Wait! He's doing it again! Gotta get outta here!'

"What is this? 'Getting to know you?'" I snapped. "I'm leaving now. I told you that I'm running late." He wasn't going to stand here, blocking me in while he tried to dazzle me. 'He doesn't love you! He's playing a game!'

I pushed passed him to leave, trying my best not to let my chagrin show, but when I did so, the back of my hand brushed ever so slightly against his, sending that all too familiar shock through my body. He jumped back a few inches, staring at his own hand in surprise.

I was taken aback by the wave of emotion the feeling brought with it, memories of us together back in Forks...listening to indie music in his room, exchanging goofy childhood memories, lying in the meadow that first and only summer under a high sun as he sparkled in the rays and tormented me with peppered kisses up and down my neck...I shuddered with unwelcome pleasure, and and it was suddenly ten times harder to breathe.

"Are you alright?" Edward asked and reached out for me.

I jerked myself backward, landing squarely in reality. That was then. This was now. He didn't want me. "I'd be better if you weren't still blocking my only exit. Excuse me." I hated the quake of weakness in my voice. I wanted to be strong. I didn't want him to see through my faux wall of fortitude.

Edward's brow knitted together as I dismissed him again, but he turned around, gracefully opened the driver side door, took another step away from my car, and waved me in. I could only stand back and watch him with a discerning eye.

"Have a nice day. I'm sorry to bother you." He said with a tight grin.

Ugh! I didn't even care anymore what was going on with him. What. An. Ass.

—Imperfect—

(EPOV)

"Edward, are you alright there, man?" I looked up to see Jasper walking in my direction. His thoughts were split between concern for me, and confusion about Bella. I was about to go up to see her when his thought invaded my mind.

"What? Jasper? Where's Bella? What are you doing here?" I demanded.

"You zoned out again. Bella just stormed passed you. You watched her leave. What's up with you?"

"She—" I cut my intended reply short as the fogged disarray of remembrance returned to me. Bella...it had happened again. My God. "No..." I whispered, my voice rich with denial as I brought my hand up to cover face.

"Yes...and I hate to break it to you, but she was not feeling so great while I was talking to her. Lots of negativity—insecurity, sadness, anger, frustration, anxiety, doubt..."

"Why? What did she say?"

"Not much. She's pretty tight-lipped about everything. She was very gracious about the...err...birthday party incident, but didn't seem too interested in talking about...other things."

Me. I saw in his thoughts that she didn't want to talk about me, and I groaned in shame. "What have I done..?" I asked aloud.

I meant the question to be rhetorical, but Jasper clearly didn't think that it was. "You've screwed up. Big time. We're talking life-altering, might-never-find-happiness-again mistakes..."

"Thank you for clarifying." The rumble in my chest would have been intimidating if I didn't want so badly to cry.

"I said might." He replied with a sigh, and he came to place a hand of comfort on my shoulder. "Look, it was just a flicker, a tiny blip really, but there was something else I felt come from her when we were talking about you."

"What? Hate? Disgust? Misery? Vengefulness?" I listed off as my thoughts took a turn for hopelessness.

"Some of those, yes." He chuckled, back to enjoying my discomfort. I didn't see the humor in any of this, but at least someone was benefitting from my turmoil.

"Wonderful." I spoke sardonically through my teeth.

"I'm kidding...it was desire, loss with longing...a yearning." He looked at me pointedly.

But my head jerked up in disbelief. "Yearning?" I couldn't help the incredulity in the question. He must have misinterpreted.

"Yes, it was quick and very fleeting, but it was there. And it was powerful. And as I said before, you are a dumbass."

I could say nothing. I was, in fact, the most substantial dumbass there ever was. I had no doubt that my given name would be listed under examples of the term in the dictionary. Years ago, I might have disputed that fact in all my selfish arrogance, but now, humility, remorse, and mortification were my constant companions.

But yearning? Surely this was some remnants of emotion tied to a cursory thought. Jasper was clearly the expert in identifying moods and emotions, but without the thoughts to fully interpret what he was reading, the ability was almost pointless in some situations, this being one of them.

"You're mistaken. She's interested in Eric Yorkie. It was probably him that she was thinking of. Your conversation surely reminded her of all the pain and suffering I put her through. I wanted to hate him. I wanted to be angry with the human who can have everything that I so desperately crave, but he is kind, driven...noble even...just the kind of man Bella should have in her life." My volume had lowered to a point at which I wasn't sure that even Jasper could hear, but he still responded.

"I know how my actions have negatively affected your life, and I'm sorry for that. You of all people understand how much contempt I have for this part of myself that I struggle to control every day, but this is my gift. I know that Bella still cares for you. It may be buried deep under that anger that she's so good at projecting these days, but there was absolutely no misinterpreting what she feels for you. That level of pain, heartbreak...rejection..." he rubbed absentmindedly at his chest, and I saw Bella doing the same in his memory. "That doesn't just stick around for years from one bad break-up. It doesn't just appear or come and go, not at that intensity. That is the kind of feeling that festers and grows with time and dedication. She loves you."

"No. You're wrong." I vehemently rejected his theory, and it was that, just a theory. He couldn't know this. I saw Bella. I read her face which had always been such an open book to me, despite the mysterious silence of her mind. "She hates me. I saw it. I may not have the gift of manipulative empathy, but I swear to you I practically felt the enmity radiate from her."

"Love and hate are often neighbors in passion." He said with a smirk.

"No—"

"Oh, come on. What do you have to lose? If I'm wrong, you are already alone and depressed. Nothing will change. I know that's harsh, but look at yourself, man. You spend all your days following Bella around, waiting on the outskirts of her life for something to happen. That's no way to exist. If you want things to change, then make it happen. I know the mating bond when I feel it. I have it for myself, and you and Bella have it. She won't ever find that with anyone else, noble or not."

I was stunned into silence. Jasper was a man of few words. He almost never spoke at length or so passionately about anything, certainly not with the seriousness which was so resonant in his voice and expression now. He believed this fiction. "I'm sorry, but I can't accept your judgement as truth. I mean no offense in saying this, but you were incorrect or, perhaps, only partially right when you said I have nothing else to lose. Right now, I may not be able to hold her, to touch her, to even speak with her, but she's there. She's near. She's safe. And with knowing that...there's hope."

"Just now when I approached you, your pain and anxiety were so prominent that I was worried I was going to have to call Emmett to help me drag you out of here. You don't have hope. You have shame and despair. You have fear."

"Oh, and what, pray tell, brother, am I so afraid of?" I scoffed. The bitterness of my response was poorly concealed.

"You're afraid that it might work out. You're afraid that you might have true happiness."

"Why would I be afraid of that?" He didn't know what he was talking about. He thought that his gift and ability made him the expert in every relationship, but I couldn't grant him that credit here.

"Because love means the potential for loss. You lost your parents. You lost your human life, your potential for human growth and development. You lost the future which you had believed was guaranteed to you at birth. And now, if you won over Bella, if you truly accepted her as a part of this existence, you might lose her."

"I've already lost her!" I yelled. He was so wrong that it was laughable. He knew how I felt. He knew there was no darker place than my mind in all those days without my love so near.

"You haven't, though. Your loss was temporary, controlled under your conditions. You broke her heart, pushed her away because you saw where it could lead, would lead. You saw her as one of us. You knew that there was always the chance, no matter how slim, that you could have her fully, and it scared you because then you could lose her permanently." He answered in reasonably calm manner compared to my uncivil shouting.

There was no one around in the parking deck, but I knew that could change at anytime, especially with how conspicuous I was being, so with great conscious effort, my next words were nothing but a hiss. "Of course it scared me! To see her like us? Walking death!" I was pacing and pulling at my hair. I turned abruptly back to him, determined to make him see. "If you could grant Alice the gift of humanity back, wouldn't you? If you could give her a life of change, of children and grandchildren, wouldn't you? If you could give her a soul, WOULDN'T YOU?!" I growled the last two words, unable to restrain the anger I was feeling toward my arrogant, yet erroneous, brother.

"No. I wouldn't." He stated assuredly.

I could only scoff at his confidence. I couldn't believe that he—who had spent so much time in a living hell with the vampire armies of the South—would be speaking this way. He couldn't really mean to say that he would choose this life for anyone. He was just saying these things because he didn't have to consider the horror of watching over a human mate all the time, of having to constantly be on alert to her needs which were many. Bella was so fragile, like a thin piece of glass which might shatter or even just crack with the slightest mishandling. "Yeah, right."

"Those things mean nothing without true love. If I could flip a switch, blink and change it all, I wouldn't. I guess I'm selfish that way, but I don't think Alice would change any of those things either. And if I recall, Bella told you that she didn't believe that way. You dismissed her reasoning. You thought you knew better. She is young, and you had it partially right when you gave her the time to live her life and experience things, but you also destroyed her spirit by doing so. She's a shell of the girl you once new. She reminds me a lot of you, actually. You're not whole without her, and she won't be whole until you can convince her that you won't hurt her again."

"You don't understand, Jasper." I embraced the relief that came with retreating to my now habitual state of forlorn dejection. This was a feeling of familiarity. No more trailblazing in the unknown and fearful paths of actualization and self-discovery.

"I guess you're right. I really don't understand. I don't understand how you can deny yourself love over and over, but, then again, you almost seem to thrive in self-pity. But you've never been one to so openly hurt those you love."

"What are you talking about?" I was growing exhausted with Jasper's riddles. He had been concealing his thoughts pretty successfully throughout this whole ordeal.

"Bella, you're killing her. I don't know what you said or did besides the vague explanation you offered before running off to Timbuktu or wherever the hell you went, but she's on the verge of a mental break. She's barely holding it together any better than you are. The difference is, as you have so thoroughly made me see, she is human. Humans can't manage their pain and devastation the way that we can. And that, brother, is why you are a dumbass."

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