Twilight: But it's a Thriller and I Never Read Twilight

Chapter 12: Warning Signs

It took a week for me to work up the nerve to talk to Jessica again. In all that time, I had eaten lunch with the Cullens every day. They sat there with an apple or a water bottle between each of them, trying to look like they ate, but really, they just sat and talked. Edward would watch the students, occasionally telling the group what they were thinking. Emmett would try to guess. He was pretty good at it despite my initial thoughts about him.

They warmed up to me fast, at least Alice and Emmett did. Despite appearances, they cared about their brother enough to take notice of his new girlfriend. Rosalie and Jasper were still quite aloof. They held themselves at distance from me, and I wondered if they were just wary of humans. Maybe they thought I would tell someone, that having a human around was dangerous for all of them. I couldn't understand it, but I let it be. I figured that eventually, they'd see I wasn't going to tell anyone. They'd see I was safe.

It took another day of sunshine for me to talk to Jessica or Angela again. After Edward invited me to sit at his table, I hadn't thought about my friends and the fight we'd had. I hoped it would blow over, and Jessica would start talking to me again, but after a week, she still hadn't looked at me in our P.E class and Angela hadn't said much to me either.

At lunch that day, with the Cullens gone—safe in their house of glass where no one could see them—I wandered over to my old table with my lunch tray in hand and paused as Jessica looked up to me. Her gaze quickly turned sour as she recognized me coming to join her. she looked away, pretending she hadn't seen me at all as I placed my tray down next to Angela.

"Well?" she asked, poking a fork through soggy green beans.

I sunk my shoulders. "I was wrong," I said. "Edward's not evil. I overreacted."

Jessica still didn't look at me. "I told you what I saw."

The car crash. Edward had run across the lot to save me, and she's seen him do it. I had to hope I could convince her it was a trick of the light or something, or that she'd forget all of it. After I'd confided in her, though, it didn't seem like she was going to drop it.

"I know," I said. "I thought I saw the same thing, but he did save my life."

Angela looked between us, confused about our fight. "Is it really a big deal if Bella has a boyfriend? Why can't we drop it?"

"Jessica." She still wasn't looking at me. Part of me wanted to grab her and shake some sense into her, shake those memories out of her head like they never happened. "I promise I'm okay."

Finally, she turned her gaze to me, meeting my eyes head on. After spending a week with mostly vampires, it was good to see her blink away her tears. It was something human to look at. "I trust you, Bella. If you really think he likes you and you like him back, okay. But if he tries any shit—"

"I already have my Dad for that," I offered, but she shook her head.

"Your Dad will just kill him. No, I'll ruin him socially," Jessica argued.

I almost laughed. "I really don't think he cares about that." The Cullens were outcasts anyway. If she really wanted to hurt him, she'd have to tell everyone he was a vampire, and she'd have to know that first. Even if we broke up, I didn't think I'd tell her. I made that promise. I wasn't going to break it just because Edward fell out of love. I cared about him too much for that.

"I'll figure something out," she said. "I'm resourceful."

I smiled at her, and she smiled back, a real and human smile, filled with flaws and red cheeks. For as long as I lived, I'd never get used to the way the Cullens smiled with their mouths closed or only half showing and their cheeks faint and pale as the rest of them. They never got a burst of red from embarrassment or cold. They always held themselves with this godly grace. With Jessica, there was flesh and blood there, a beating heart. I dropped the tension from my shoulders I didn't know I was holding as we ate lunch together.