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“No, I always liked you, even in high-school,” Jessica said, picking at her takeout box.
“Jess, I’m giving up my big, shitty, third-hand IKEA desk for this place,” Bella murmured, hunched over the lease papers, “Nothing you say will make this easy for me.”
Jessica smiled wanly and said, “Honestly? I didn’t think I could compete, so I just put it away. Not the desk, the...you know.”
Bella gave her a look, and hunched back over the paper with an annoyed huff. Always so disbelieving. For a moment, they might as well have been sitting in the cafeteria in Forks. Jessica shrugged and poked at a lonesome piece of chicken half buried in the fried rice. She swallowed, her mouth empty and dry. She plucked her beer up and took a swig.
“By levels of unattainability, it went like this,” Jessica said, and lowered her hand to below her knee.
“Mike, everyone else, a big gap, Edward Cullen, Alice, Rosalie, and,” Jessica said, raising her hand as she went, and paused, with her hand above her head.
“...you know,” she murmured finally, grabbing another swig of her beer. She watched the thoughts flit across Bella’s face. She could almost see all of high-school, every awkward graze and touch, every stilted conversation replay and unravel on Bella’s face in real time. Bella opened her mouth, and shut it. Then finally, she said,
“...you put Alice below Rosalie?”
Jessica scowled, like she’d bitten into the jalapeños Bella kept sneaking into their Subway takeouts. “Ugh, I so knew you had a thing for her. All those dresses you’d wear for her,” Jessica said, and rolled her eyes, “But fuck, It made seventeen year old Jess hopeful.”
“I just,” Bella said, and swallowed. She hadn’t been to Forks in years. Come to think of it, she could remember very little of the way the cold fog would drift in through her open bedroom window, strange fingers reaching for her on her warm bed. And come to think of it, she hadn’t worn a dress in years either. “I just wanted someone to…”
She looked back down at the papers, and at the ink blot she’d left in her distraction.
“Shuck-buckets,” she hissed.
“It’s fine,” Jessica murmured, “It doesn’t matter.” And then she plucked that last piece of chicken from the box and reached across the table. Bella’s lips closed around the chop sticks with a quiet smile.