The Only Girl I Ever Loved: A Tale Of Concussion, Stupid Girls, and Vampires* – Part 2

* But not THAT tale of concussion, stupid girls and vampires – this one predates that one by eight years. Also, it is real. This story was originally called “Shut Up, Stephanie Meyer”.

Three Unexpected Twists

In the weeks that followed, I kissed Bella a lot. As frequently as possible in as many places as possible. Wait, let me try that again. As frequently as possible, in as many locations as possible (you perverts). The Friendship of Jasper and Bella (yikes, it’s like actual Twilight fanfic up in here) was quickly becoming The Kissing Friendship of Jasper and Bella, and I knew it was only a matter of time before we would become boyfriend and girlfriend.

Alas, this was not to be. At least not yet. As it turns out, Bella didn’t believe that kissing someone meant you had any extra feelings for them. It was just something you could do because it was fun (I would later learn that the medical term for this condition is being a big slut). In fact, not only was the Friendship of Jasper and Bella going to remain exactly as it already was…

…but Jasper was going to get to meet Bella’s new boyfriend! (And what the hell - in for a penny, in for a pound – let’s call him Edward.)

I was devastated. She had spent so long trying to get under my skin, for what? So that once she got in there she could burst out of my chest like alien spawn, taking my heart with it? She confused me. She crushed me. (And she kicked off what has become almost a habit of falling in love with people I can’t have.)

Luckily, being that I was only a fifteen year old boy, was still fairly resilient, and also had the attention span of – well, of a fifteen year old boy; I got over it pretty quickly. And Bella and I were back to being friends.

Edward wasn’t even hateable. He wore a leather jacket, and had the thickest, shiniest hair I had ever seen on a guy. It was like an entire shampoo commercial was sitting on his head at all times. Sometimes the three of us even hung out together. Not often, because he didn’t go to the same school as Bella and I, so we only hung out on weekends – but we hung out enough that, despite still being quite smitten with Bella, we were all comfortable with each other.

It was during one of these weekend times, hanging out at Bella’s house, that the topic of her and I kissing came up. Edward knew that before they had started dating, Bella and I had spent a few weeks making out with alarming regularity. Edward joked that he had kissed Bella, and that I had kissed Bella - so the only two people out of the three of us who hadn’t kissed were he and I. As a savage bolt of (at the time completely inexplicable) thrill shot through me, Edward merely snickered. “Interesting,” he said.

Later that afternoon Edward had to go, so we went out to Bella’s front yard to say goodbye to him (he was seventeen, and he had his own car. It was the ugliest, rattliest jumble of light blue metal you ever did see – but it was a car, so we thought it was the coolest thing ever). Out of politeness, I turned and took a step away when Edward leaned down to kiss Bella goodbye, so that I wasn’t looking right at their PDA (I might have been at ease with the situation, but that didn’t mean I wanted great dirty teenage pashes all up in my face).

I was putting such a concerted effort into not looking or listening that I was completely unaware that they’d stopped, and that Edward had walked up behind me. What happened next took me by complete surprise: Edward put one hand on my shoulder, spun me around, grabbed the back of my head with his other hand and started kissing me. It was all done in one quick, fluid motion and I had no time to react, or process, or do anything…except kiss back.

That’s right, the first boy I ever kissed was the first girl I’d ever kissed’s boyfriend. I guess the upshot is at least it was convenient.

I’d like to say that kissing Edward completely blitzed any feeling I had for Bella, and opened me up to a whole new world where I could discover who I really was – but no. At that point I was still eight years away from coming out of the closet (what a waste), so all it really did was confuse the hell out of me.

And it didn’t even pave the way for some kind of crazy, three-directional make-out friendship, either – because it wasn’t long after that that Edward and Bella realised they were, in fact, vampires.

[TO BE CONTINUED...]