So this story was all going to be told through Bella and Edward’s eyes but Alice demanded that she get a little say about the laziness of the Cullen men on the big wedding day. They’ve been driving her nuts and their lack of concern over things of MAJOR importance to Alice has her wanting to share her view. Plus, she needs to have a talk with her new sister.
APOV
Lazy, incompetent vampire men! You ask them for one little thing and they act like you’re being unreasonable for wanting it done in a timely fashion. Never mind that this whole wedding is on my tiny but oh so attractive shoulders! Never mind that because this event is half human my hands are tied and much has to be done on the final day! The human element really is quite frustrating! I could have had the flowers set up in the middle of the night but no, I had to wait for the florist to get here. I could have had the food all prepared except that I didn’t eat food, so how was I to know if it was right or not? So I had to wait on the caterer too. And still, none of that is as annoying as my precious family’s lack of urgency in completing the few reasonable tasks I ask of them! Only Esme was doing her share of the load, checking on the flower arrangements and making sure the house was spic and span.
Carlisle faked a “medical emergency” just to get out of the house for awhile. Does he really think that I don’t know there is no emergency? Rosalie was not about to put herself out for this “farce” as she called the wedding. I was so sick of her attitude; maybe she’d get over Bella’s presence in our lives in the next decade or two. My beloved Jasper was doing everything I asked but he was doing it with a sense of resignation; I could tell when he thought I was being ridiculous even if he loved me too much to say it. Emmett was beyond annoying; questioning everything I requested and acting like I was the one being unreasonable! And Edward! The groom, my beloved brother, was doing things like playing the piano instead of making the grounds shine for his own wedding!
Okay, yes, it was sweet that he played Bella her song. She’d actually still been sleeping and woke to it, mumbling Edward’s name and reaching for him. It was quite cute, really. I think Jasper and I will have to play “human” sometime and he can find some sweet way to wake me…or maybe a sexy way. Hmmm. Oops, I’m getting sidetracked.
Clearly nobody but Esme really understood the importance of this event; especially the clueless vampire I was doing it all for. Edward thinks I’m being overly dramatic about the whole thing. As if you can be overdramatic about the most important day in 108 years of living! Is it wrong to want perfection for your favorite brother on his big day? He’s been waiting for so long to find the one who would complete him. Even if he wasn’t aware of it, I sure was. He didn’t know just how unhappy and dissatisfied he really was until Bella came into his life. The smile she brought to his face, the joy none of us had ever seen before…this day, their official coming together could not be more important. Why could nobody see that but me and Esme? But no, I got attitude and avoidance from the remaining members of the Cullen family.
My phone buzzed with an incoming text message. You’re right, Alice. I’m sorry for laughing at your over exuberance when it comes to the wedding. Know that Bella and I really do appreciate everything you’ve done, even if we’re both guilty of not acknowledging it. I love you. Always.
I sighed, sending my thoughts instead of a text. You’re forgiven, Edward. I’m just excited because I love you both so much and I want you to be happy.
I couldn’t be happier than I am today, Alice. Thank you for your part in helping Bella and I come together and stay together. If it hadn’t been for your assurances, I would have run from her before we even started. I can never thank you enough.
Well now he did it. I was completely mollified. If I could cry, and it wouldn’t ruin my already flawless makeup, I’d be doing it right now. I never would have let you run from this, Edward. You finding your happiness means the world to me. I love you. Now finish making yourself devastatingly handsome and get down and greet the guests.
I laughed at the next text. Aren’t I always devastatingly handsome? That’s what Bella says! I’m on it, sis, and thanks again.
Well now that the groom was on the same page as me, it was time for the bride to get her act together. “Bella, how are you doing in there? Are you about ready?” How long did she need to bathe anyway? I only had so much time to make her completely, breathtakingly beautiful.
“I’ll be out in five minutes, Alice!” More waiting. Humans!
I ran down the hall to check on Charlie since Bella was making me wait. Could not one person do what they were supposed to? Charlie was still wearing his jeans and t-shirt, sitting on the bed and watching ESPN. Really? “Charlie Swan!” He jumped like I’d just fired his gun at him. “What do you think you’re doing?”
He, unlike my brothers, at least had the decency to look somewhat apologetic. “Well there are still a couple of hours, Alice. I don’t really need to be changed right this minute, do I?” I did my best to rein in my temper.
“Yes, actually you do. You need to get downstairs within the hour to greet the arriving guests. You are the father of the bride, you know!”
“Hey Charlie, have they shown Mariners highlights yet? I snagged you some food from the buffet, just don’t tell Alice!” Emmett stepped into the doorway and then came to a standstill when he saw me. I gave him my best death glare while he stared at me like a deer in headlights.
“Emmett, why aren’t you dressed yet?” What was with these guys?
“Come on, Alice, it’ll take me two minutes to put on the monkey suit! I’m just going to chill with Charlie while he eats and then I’ll get ready.” He then spoke in a voice too soft for Charlie to hear. “You needed a food tester, right? Well Charlie can be your guinea pig instead of me!”
“Wow, that looks really good. Aren’t you going to have any, Emmett?” Charlie took his plate and started to dig in.
“Yeah, brother dear, a big like you guy ought to be starving by now!” If he thought he was going to try to pull one over on me, he had another thing coming.
His eyes narrowed. “Actually, I already chowed down before I came up here. It’s all excellent though. Enjoy Charlie! I think I’ll go get ready now after all!” He backed out of the room as quickly as he could without dropping the human façade, his golden eyes watching me carefully.
I huffed and turned back to Charlie. “After you eat that food, you wash your hands and get dressed! No more dawdling! If I come in this room again and you’re not ready, I’ll be happy to assist you in dressing.” Charlie swallowed his food quickly and started choking. I sighed and walked over to pat him on the back.
“Are you alright?”
“Fine, I’m fine!” He choked out. “I’ll be ready when you come back, I swear!” Ha, the threat of me physically dressing him was enough to move the man to action. If only everybody would fall in line so easily.
I went back to my room and found Bella wrapped in her white silk robe, gift from yours truly, pacing anxiously by the bed. “Bella, relax!”
“I can’t help it, Alice. Everyone is going to be watching me walk down that aisle, waiting for me to fall.”
“You’re not going to fall, Bella. I’ve seen it, remember?” Jeez, would people start respecting my visions? I wasn’t going to steer her wrong on her big day. “Now stop pacing and sit down at my vanity, I’ve got to get to work on your hair.” I pushed her gently into the chair and got out my curling iron.
“Alright, so maybe I won’t fall. But I will stammer and I’ll blush and I’ll embarrass myself and Edward. Everyone will laugh. Jessica will have a field day!” God save me from overdramatic brides.
“Bella, everyone has seen you blush, you blush at the slightest provocation. Nobody is going to find that funny; it will actually be rather endearing. You’re not going to stammer, you just have to say two simple words. I do. Takes less than second! Calm down, will you?”
“Alice, I am going to be the center of attention. You know I hate it. Why did I let you and Edward talk me into this? We should have just eloped.” She moaned and tried to bury her face in her hands. It might have worked had I not been brushing out her hair at the time.
“You listened to me because you know how important this is to Edward. And though you can’t seem to grasp it right now, it’s going to be just as important to you down the road, remembering the day that you became Bella Cullen.”
“It still would have been important to both of us even if we married in Vegas.” She grumbled.
I’d had it. “Bella, just stop! This wedding is for you and Edward but it’s also for all the rest of us, too. Your father, who gets the chance to walk his little girl down the aisle. Your mother, who will get to see that someone else will care for and take care of you. All of us, who have watched Edward live alone for all these years and saw him truly come to life when he met you. Would you really be happy depriving us all out of something so special?”
Bella looked stricken and her face flushed. “You’re right. It wouldn’t be fair to you guys if we had eloped. I’m sorry, Alice. I’m just so nervous.” I wound Bella’s luxurious mahogany locks through the curling iron as I studied that guilty face. I’d made my point and now it was time to distract her.
“Is the wedding all that you’re nervous about?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you nervous about something else maybe?”
“Isn’t the wedding enough to worry about?” She scoffed.
I shrugged. “I’m sure it’s enough to worry about, I just don’t think it’s all you’re worried about.”
She wouldn’t meet my eyes in the mirror. “What else would I possibly have to worry about?”
Beating around the bush was clearly not going to work with Bella, plus it just wasn’t my style. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe the wedding night?” Bella’s head snapped up and her mouth hung open in an “O” shape.
“Um, why should I be worried about that? You already told me everything was going to be okay, right?” She squeaked it out, clearly not displaying any of the confidence her words attempted to express.
“I also told you the wedding itself would be fine but you’re still nervous about that.” Alice 1, Bella 0. I met her eyes in the vanity mirror and held steady until her gaze wavered.
“Alright, so I’m nervous about tonight too! How could I not be? I’d be nervous about sex under any circumstance, but you must admit that our circumstance is pretty unique and even scarier!” Now we were getting somewhere. I finished with the curling iron and began arranging Bella’s hair so that most of it was pulled back but a few tendrils framed her face.
“Are you afraid he’s going to hurt you?” He wasn’t, I had seen that vision many times over and each time Bella came out of it unscathed and perfectly content. Not that I really wanted to see the two of them making love, but I was concerned enough about Bella to keep checking anyway.
Her eyes widened. “Oh no, Alice! I know he won’t hurt me, at least not that way. I’m just afraid because I have no idea what I’m doing. I may be the most virginal virgin ever.”
I snickered. “No, that title would probably go to my dear brother!”
“Not helping, Alice!” Alright, that was true.
I turned her to face me and began to go to work on her makeup. “Did you know that I was a virgin when I was with Jasper for the first time?”
“I…I guess I never really thought about it.”
I smiled at her. “There’s no reason that you would have. I wanted to discuss this with you last night but I thought it would be better one and one.”
“Were you scared?”
Like lightning my mind shot back to that first time with Jasper, so many decades ago but it seemed like yesterday. The look of love in his eyes as he reached out and cupped my face; the gentleness of his touch; the feel of his body moving above mine and the completeness I felt when he made me his. “No. I think I would have been, with anybody else, but he was my Jasper. Looking into his eyes gave me all the confidence I needed.”
“Did it hurt? I mean, I guess it’s probably different since you were a vampire, but I was just wondering…”
“I don’t know that it’s that different. A first time is a first time. And yes, it did hurt for a minute; once I got past that though it not only didn’t hurt, it felt wonderful. Would you like me to tell you about it?”
Bella gulped. “Yeah, if it doesn’t make you too uncomfortable.”
“How could talking about the most beautiful moment of my life with my best friend and almost sister make me uncomfortable?” Her eyes softened and she nodded at me to go on. “After I found Jasper in that diner, we walked out and went to a nearby hotel.” Her eyes widened at that. “Not to have sex, silly girl. Just to find a place to talk. Though we were meant, we really needed to get to know one another a little first! What kind of girl do you take me for?”
Bella giggled. “We talked for hours. Days really. I couldn’t tell you how long we talked, except that we were both starving when we were done. Jasper, of course, had never hunted an animal before. I had, because when I had my first vision of the Cullen’s and knew I’d be headed to them eventually, I decided to learn. He and I went out to a forest and I showed him how to hunt deer. The look on his face when he tasted the blood of the stag he took down! It was pretty priceless! I told him that if we wanted this life, this better existence, that we’d better both learn to like it. He still struggles with that, but he did it for me. I never forget that.”
Bella smiled. “He truly loves you; you both just fit together like…”
“Like you and Edward? You two come the closest to what we have. It’s different, obviously, all situations are, but your love and devotion reminds me of ours. We didn’t have to fight to be together the way you two did, but we’re more similar than you might believe.”
Her eyes glowed. “It makes me happy to hear you say that. You two just fit.”
“As do you. Now where was I? Oh yes, our first hunt. After I convinced him that this lifestyle would be worth it for both of us; he reached out and took my hand and told me he’d do anything for me. He didn’t have to tell me, I felt it, but that moment and those words moved me. We didn’t even talk about it, we just came together. He reached out and took my face in his hands and leaned forward and kissed me so softly. That was my first kiss, at least, the first one I can remember. I was probably too young when I was institutionalized to have had one as a human…I’d rather have only kissed Jasper anyway so that’s how I see it.”
“Edward was my first kiss. I wish he was my only but Jake…”
“Bella, Jake doesn’t truly count. You kissed him out of obligation and fear. Edward is your only, just as Jasper is mine.”
She smiled shakily and fought back the tears that were brimming in her eyes. “I won’t take you through every moment, but I will tell you that he touched me the same way I’m sure Edward will touch you. As if I was made of the most breakable glass…so softly. He cherished me, but when he laid me on the grass and held himself over me, I had a moment of panic, Bella.”
“You did? Why?”
I laughed. “Because I got nervous. I’d never had sex before and I knew Jasper had.” She gasped at that. “He was alive for a long time before he met me, Bella. Anyway, I was intimidated by that and of course afraid because I had no idea what I was doing. All I knew was that I was overwhelmed by all these feelings of desire and love. It was scary.”
“It is scary. I know Edward has never been with anyone before but I still feel like he knows so much more than I do.”
“He doesn’t, Bella. He knows minds but not hearts. You’re his first experience with love, his only experience. It’s new for both of you, trust me on that.”
“I do trust you, Alice.”
“I know, sweetie. So trust me when I tell you that though you will feel nervous and awkward, so will he. It won’t matter though. Jasper was nervous too, though I didn’t realize it at the time. He’d never been in love before, so it was new to him as well. We were both awkward. I won’t get too graphic here, but I will tell you that he tried to move in one direction while I was moving in the other and I accidentally knocked him into a tree.” I laughed at the memory. The look of surprise on Jasper’s face and the mortification of my own. “It fell on top of us. All I could do was laugh, and then he started laughing and pretty soon we were in hysterics.”
“No! Really?”
“Would I lie about that, Bella? I was embarrassed for all of a second before the hilarity struck me. Then you know what we did?” She shook her head. “We lifted the tree off us and got back to it. While there was still an occasional awkward movement, we got through and we learned about one another. It was still the most beautiful moment of my existence, even if it wasn’t the most graceful love making ever to happen.”
Her big brown eyes looked at me imploringly. “Will it be that way for me, minus the tree uprooting?”
I laughed. “I can’t see how you feel at the time, not exactly anyway, but I can tell you that you do seem to enjoy yourself. And you love Edward and he loves you, that’s really all that matters.” It was only natural that she’d want to know.
“I hate asking all this, Alice, but really you’re the only person I could ask. And it’s not because you’ve seen it, but because you’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a sister.”
“Oh, Bella! You are my sister!” I had to give her a hug, it was really the sweetest thing she’d ever said to me and it made me feel wonderful to know she felt the same way about me.
She bit her lip. “I hope our first time can be like yours was. I guess I just worry that it will be like Jessica described.”
“It won’t be! This is you and Edward, not Jessica and Mike. Hormonal high schoolers are quite different from two people deeply in love and expressing it physically. You’re no Mike and Jessica, thankfully!”
Bella still looked at me with eyes full of nerves and doubt. “I just love him so much. And I want him so badly! This just feels like such a big deal since we waited until our wedding night. If only he would have given in when we got engaged!”
I couldn’t help it; I had to let out a giggle. “Yes, doing it in the heat of the moment would have been easier than planning it out, but it also would have been less special. I’m not going to give anything away here, but I know Edward has really put a lot of thought into making tonight romantic for you.”
Some of the nerves melted out of her eyes with those words. “He would do that, wouldn’t he? How did someone so amazing fall in love with me?”
I wrapped my arms around her. “I’d say that he found someone equally amazing to share his life with. We’re all better for having you in our lives, nobody more so than Edward.”
She took a deep breath. “You swear that everything is going to be okay?”
“Bella, I’m sure of it. The only thing I’ve ever been surer of is Jasper. And you know how that turned out! Now stand up, it’s time to put on your dress.” I couldn’t keep the excitement out of my voice. I couldn’t wait to see her all done up, visions were only so satisfying. I slipped the dress on her and turned her around to zip her in. “Oh Bella! You’ve never been more beautiful!”
I pulled her up to the large mirrored closet and let her see just how stunning she was. Her jaw actually dropped open. “Alice, I don’t know how you did it but I look good!”
I shook my head. “My brother is right, you don’t see yourself clearly! Look at how gorgeous you are!”
I watched her eyes change as she stared at herself. Confidence started to replace the fear. “You’re going to blow my brother and everyone else down there away when they see you.”
Bella took a deep breath. “Thank you, Alice. I’m ready.”
I knew she was just talking about for the wedding anymore. “Yes, you are.”
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