I didn’t know how long I’d been waiting. But it didn’t matter. I had to see him. Well, I’d already seen him, but I mean in person. In the glorious flesh. I wanted to meet him and know I wasn’t alone. I’d been alone for too long and I will admit, I was giddy with the idea of meeting another of my kind. And no matter what, the hope of not being alone was well worth the time I’d waited. But I’d lost track of time and this irritated me. I should have worn a watch or something. Then again, when you can live forever, losing all sense of time was an easy thing to do.
When I’d had the vision only about five or six hours earlier, I’d known something was special about him. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what he was because I knew the second I saw him that he was like me. But more than just the fact that we were the same, I was incredibly anxious to meet him. He was, after all, gorgeous. I mean drop-dead, fall-on-your-knees-begging-to-kiss-his-shoes gorgeous. With hair the color of honey and tawny eyes, I still had that image in my head. But I would never go to such antics as those human girls’ might. No, I couldn’t; I wasn’t like them so I couldn’t afford to act like them.
As I waited for him to walk in the door that I had been glancing at every three seconds for the past six hours, I sighed, resting my chin in my cupped hands. I knew that there was, of course, a chance that he might never come. He might change his mind at the last second and turn onto a different path…one that didn’t lead to me. And this thought saddened me, making me even more doubtful about my “gift”. Not that it wasn’t bad enough to have visions of people being hit by cars or children dying young but now, I was waiting for a vampire who I’d never met in my entire life in a diner in Philadelphia wearing this stupid buttoned, cotton dress. In my opinion, red had never been my color.
After a little while longer, I decided that he wasn’t coming. With a disappointed frown on my face, I paid for the coffee I hadn’t drunk and got up from the swivel stool to make my way to the door. By that time I could tell what time it was because of the church down the street and it’s damned bells. Three o’clock in the morning. I sighed one more time before grabbing my coat from the coat rack near the door and looked back one last time. But when I faced forward towards the road, I found a figure blocking my way.
“Excuse me, but could you move? I’m trying to lea-,” I stopped speaking because the figure in front of me was the man of my dreams. Or visions, rather.
He was truly stunning, much more so in person than in the image in my head. His hair was longer than most men, coming down to his ears and falling over his face. But even with the hair obstructing my view of his face, I knew that his face was chiseled and handsome. He was tall, taller than me though that wasn’t a hard thing to be, and had a muscular physique without looking bulky or overly toned. His chin was strong and his face was expressionless…well, expressionless with the exception of his eyes. In his eyes, I saw everything.
Trying to catch my breath and be charming at the same time, I smiled and looked up at him from my level (I’d always been “height-challenged” so to speak) as he looked down at me. His eyes, tawny in color, were entrancing but I wasn’t going to let myself be fazed by him; I did, after all, have just as mesmerizing eyes as he did. We just stared at each other for a moment before he smiled and revealed pristinely white teeth. Coyly, I finally spoke.
“I’ve been waiting for a long time,” I said, breathlessly.
He hung his head low as if being chastised, though the telltale smile that he wore was a dead give-away that he wasn’t ashamed of anything.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he replied in a euphonious Southern accent that reminded me of Rhett Butler.
I smiled and motioned to a booth down on the other end of the diner where there was more privacy.
“Would you like to sit down or do you want to just stand here all night?” I asked humorously, receiving a low chuckle from his perfect mouth.
“It’d be my pleasure, ma’am,” he answered as I turned to look at him.
“Please stop calling me ma’am. It’s Alice,” I insisted, still smiling as warmly as possible so as not to make him think I am some high-strung vampire who hates formalities because, in reality, I though him calling me “ma’am” was the most adorable thing I’d ever heard in my entire 47 years on the planet.
“Sorry, ma-, I mean Alice,” he said, catching himself and tucking a fallen lock of golden hair behind his ear. Bowing his head slightly so as to show respect, he added, “Jasper Whitlock. It’s an honor.” I had to suppress a laugh because of his formal behavior.
He was still smiling, which was beginning to make me nervous that maybe he knew something that I didn’t. I was beginning to feel vulnerable; I was beginning to feel human. It was the weirdest sensation.
After we sat down, we just looked at each other for a good four minutes before he spoke.
“If you don’t mind my asking, how did you know I’d be here?” he inquired, eyeing me suspiciously.
“I just happen to have a forte for making fairly accurate predictions of what is going to happen,” I said grinning. But then I added, “It is one of the gifts I’ve received from this life…one of the burdens as well.”
A grim air grew over us as we sat in silence for a few minutes, remembering all of the horrible deeds we had done. The people we killed, the guilt we feel after feeding, seeing the life being drained from them, the way we were animals when we give ourselves over to our senses, so to speak. But suddenly, the atmosphere was broken by a late night waitress coming to ask if we wanted some coffee. So as not to draw unwanted attention, we each ordered a cup and sat back in our seats, observing each other with curiosity. As he watched me and every move I made from the rising and falling of my chest with each breath to each time I blinked, I grew more and more self-conscious and hated the feeling more than ever. I guess I was more human than I had originally thought.
“You don’t have to be so nervous, you know,” he said, trying to conceal a smug smile. I frowned and furrowed my eyebrows, wondering how he knew what I was feeling.
“How do you know I’m nervous?” I wondered aloud, trying to play the role of the confident person I had always been. But being near this beautiful man was making that harder and harder to be.
“Lets just say it’s one of my forte,” he replied, grinning like a fiend.
I nodded my head. I understood now that he had a gift like I did, that I was even less alone than ever. After a long minute, I changed the subject.
“Do you believe in fate, Jasper?” I asked, being more serious now.
He smiled. “After all of my time on this green Earth, I believe in fate 100%,” he responded. I was completely falling for the accent by then.
I continued on, tucking the pin back into my hair self-consciously to keep the waves in place and to try to compose myself.
“I think we were brought together by fate,” I blurted out loud, regretting it immediately though I had already opened a can of worms so I had to keep going. “When I saw, you in my vision, I felt that you were important somehow and that it was my destiny to meet you. There was just something about you that I was drawn to unlike anything else.”
Jasper leaned forward and so did I. I could feel his breath on my ear, making the tiny hairs there tingle. My heart was pounding like a schoolgirl near her crush.
“I think I’m in love with you, Alice,” he whispered into my ear, making me feel dizzy and happy at the same time.
“I think I’m in love with you, too, Jasper,” I whispered back, feeling relieved that I wasn’t alone on that front.
Let me tell you something about love. Love isn’t something that is cultivated over time like some kind of common flower. No, it is a rare flower that is either there in the beginning to not there at all. It is something you feel immediately, though many times it is a feeling that is disguised as something else of repressed. But when you feel love for someone, when you first look at that person, it just clicks. And that was how it felt between Jasper and I. We didn’t even know each other but we loved each other nevertheless because that rare flower was present in our lives. We didn’t have to know each other for love to be there because it had been there, waiting to emerge, for our entire lives.
When he kissed me, it was the most wonderful moment in the history of what I can remember of my life. Time seemed to stop and it was like everyone else went into slow motion while we sped up. There was literally a spark that sent shockwaves through my body, head to toe, the second our lips touched. And, my God, he was a wonderful kisser.
He lingered near my lips, brushing them against mine, for a moment before he fully retreated. I stayed in that position for a moment, eyes still closed and lips still moist. The kiss had sealed the deal. This was who I wanted to spend the rest of eternity with. This wonderful, handsome, romantic, man who had taken my breath away, as corny as that sounds. But it was love at first sight. During that kiss, I had forgotten about time yet again that evening. Then again, when you can live forever, losing all sense of time was an easy thing to do.
I think you made her voice a little too much like Edward's, but it might just be my pickiness about Alice.
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