A/N: I don’t own Twilight or its characters. I’m just messin’ around with them. AH AU OOC

I’m trying things this time around with the lovely Kalejay acting as my beta.

And… away…we…go!

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I dropped my bag on the end of my bed, and lugged my suitcase to rest near my closet door. With my hands on my hips, I turned a slow circle and inspected the room around me. A fine layer of dust covered my desk and bookshelf. Everything seemed to have been left untouched in my absence.

“Thanks for tidying up, Charlie,” I mentally complained. Though, I wasn’t really surprised that my room was in that condition.

My father was the Chief of Police, here in the tiny town of Forks, WA. The population was small, but the job kept him busy. He really wasn’t home all that often. He liked to watch baseball on the couch in the evenings when he could, and his days off were, more often than not, spent at his favorite local fishing spots. I couldn’t imagine that schedule had changed much since I went away to college.

I bent to strip the comforter and sheets from my bed, but stopped when my eyes landed on the simple white house beyond my bedroom window. I knelt on the bed with a smile on my face, and touched the frayed red piece of yarn that was still tied in a knot to the thumb-tack stuck in my window sill. At one time, that piece of yarn was much longer, and connected two tin cans. It was a super-secret messaging system that ran between my window, and the one facing mine on the house next door. The string broke, and the cans were eventually replaced by cell phones. But I always kept that little piece stuck on the tack, to remind me of those times.

Jasper.

I grinned widely and jumped from the bed, concentrating on the task I had begun. I carried my bed linens downstairs and put them in the washing-machine with a hefty shot of detergent. They smelled musty and stale. I needed to clean the room before I slept in it.

Jasper- or Jazz, as I had nicknamed him- was the reason I was back home in my old house. He begged me to spend two weeks of summer break with him. I grinned widely as I picked up a towel and some cleaning supplies and carried them up the stairs.

Jazz and I had been best friends since we were five years old. Up until then, I lived with my mother in Phoenix. That was the year that my Mother re-married Phil, a minor-league baseball player. She decided to travel with him, while he pursued his big-league dreams. I was shipped to live with my father in Forks.

Charlie, God love him, seemed totally clueless about how to care for a child. He did well-enough. I never lacked for love or his total over-protection. But he had over four years to get used to living the life of a bachelor. I learned very early to fend for myself. And of course, I was lucky enough to have had the help of the Whitlock’s who lived right next door.

Larry and Joy Whitlock were good friends of my fathers. They owned the local diner and favorite hang-out for Fork’s teens. They had two sons already, but added me to their fold immediately.

Their youngest child was Jasper. He had unruly, wavy blonde hair, dark blue eyes, big front teeth, freckles, and glasses that always seemed in danger of sliding down his thin nose. He was six months older than I, and never tired of imparting his aged wisdom and ‘the oldest is the boss’ rule. We quickly became inseparable. He called me Izzy… I called him Jazz… and together we planned adventures and dreamed of taking over the world.

And then there was Edward.

Edward was Jasper’s older brother. He was almost four years older, to be exact. And he didn’t share the Whitlock’s last name. Oh- he was their son alright. Loved and adored every bit as much as Jasper. But he had been adopted into their family about a year before I came to Forks.

He was, the prettiest boy I had ever seen.

Unlike Jasper’s blonde waves, Edward had thick, straight, bronze-colored hair that stood up in a wild mess that always seemed to dare his mother’s hands to just try to tame it. Impossibly long, dark lashes curtained his jade-green eyes that somehow always managed to light with a smile a second or two before his mouth caught on to the notion. He was always tall for his age… and kind… and sweet… Edward Cullen was my very first crush.

I shook my head to chase away the memory. My smile dimmed, but refused to be put away. It felt good to be home.

When my room was clean and my bags were unpacked, I went downstairs and threw together a quick and easy dinner for Charlie. I had just taken the chicken out of the oven when his cruiser pulled into the drive. I took off the oven-mitts and walked to meet him at the front door.

“Isabella!” My dad wrapped his arms around me and picked me up off the floor. He could hug like no other.

“Ugh… badge… making a permanent… impression…” I grunted.

Charlie laughed and lowered me back to my feet.

“It’s good to see you,” he smiled.

“It’s good to be home, Dad.”

During my sophomore year of high school, Phil landed a job coaching a baseball team at the University of Florida, in Gainesville. I began spending my school breaks with my mother, attempting to forge a relationship there that had sadly lacked while I had lived with my father. And after graduation, I moved to Gainesville to attend college. Phil’s employment got me a discount in tuition that was impossible to pass up.

Now, it was Charlie who saw me during breaks. I grinned widely and held his hand as I walked with him toward the kitchen.

Over dinner we talked about my past semester, my plans to graduate in another year, and the local town happenings. I was actually very tired from traveling, and cleaning, and managed to yawn rudely throughout our meal. Charlie smiled and waved-off my apologies. When dinner was finished, Charlie made himself comfortable on the couch with his remote in hand. I kissed him affectionately on the forehead and excused myself for bed.

After a quick shower, I flopped face-down onto my freshly-laundered comforter, closed my eyes, and fell asleep.

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I blinked my eyes, initially confused about my whereabouts. It only took me a moment to remember that I was back in my old bedroom in Forks. But it was obviously still the middle of the night and something had brought me out of a very good dream. I glanced with bleary eyes toward the angry red numbers on my bedside alarm clock. Two a.m. I winced at the ungodly hour and closed my eyes to go back to sleep.

Then I heard the noise again. The pinging sound repeated at my window. I rolled to my knees with a wide smile on my face, and knelt on the foot of my bed to unlatch the lock. The window lifted in its frame with a groan. It hadn’t been used in a while. I was sure that would change.

A shadowy form stood below me in the grass with his arm bent up. He’d obviously been ready to launch something else at my window when he saw me there.

“You better be quiet, or you’ll wake the Chief!” I whispered loudly. “Don’t you know, my Daddy has a gun?”

“Then get your skinny ass down here, Izzy… before I have to climb up there and get you!”

I left the window open, but sprung from the bed with a laugh and ran down the stairs quietly. Throwing my front door open, I ran across the porch and around to the side of the house where I jumped up on Jasper’s back and wrapped my arms and legs around him.

“Why didn’t you climb down?” Jasper laughed while he grabbed my knees at his sides. “Afraid you’re so old and out of shape that you can’t do it anymore?” I giggled and kissed him loudly on the cheek from behind.

“No! But I’m still half-asleep and I would have probably fallen out of the tree if I tried. I didn’t want to provide a literal injury to the term ‘summer break.’”

Jasper dropped my legs and I slid down his back until my bare feet were in the cool grass below us. He turned almost immediately and threw his arms around me for a hug. He had to bend quite a bit to do so. Jasper was tall, since his growth-spurt in ninth grade. He towered over my meager five foot two inches. When he stood, he had to push the trendy frames of his glasses back up into proper place.

“Let me look at ya,” he said, brushing my sleep-mussed hair away from my face. I grinned goofily up at him. “Nah,” he wrinkled his nose. “Just as ugly as ever.”

“Hey!” I punched him lightly in the stomach and he jumped away. “It’s not like you are any comparison to Johnny Depp! Who, I will inform you, is quite upset. We were about to do very naughty things before you woke me up so rudely from my dream!”

“Still a smart-ass. Nice to know some things never change.”

“You make it sound like we haven’t seen each other in years,” I scolded.

“It’s always too long,” Jasper said. He threw his arm around my shoulder and we turned toward the back yard.

I agreed with his sentiment. Since going away to college, Jasper and I made a point of traveling to spend time together whenever we could. We met in St. Louis just last Spring Break, and learned how to skydive at a local facility. Late nights at muddy-river bars on the waterfront rounded out our week nicely. Jasper and I communicated through letters, email, text messaging, and frequent phone calls. Because of our efforts, our relationship never suffered. We remained best friends, just as we always had been. But getting together with Jasper always reminded me just how much I had missed him while we were apart.

“How’s Alice?” I asked. His adorable girlfriend had joined us on our skydiving adventure. She and I had hit it off immediately.

“Beautiful.” Jasper’s bright smile lit up the darkness, and he dropped his arm to grab my hand as we made our way toward the old tree house in his back yard. The swings below it hung in a decrepit state. It was hard to believe the old structure above still stood.

“We planned most of our greatest adventures in this old tree house,” I smiled, looking up at it.

Jasper rested his body on a swing, and tentatively tested the strength of the ropes while he continued speaking. I moved to sit in the swing beside him.

“That’s actually why I wanted you to come home… to spend this time with me here.”

“The tree house is the reason?” I asked. “I’m confused.”

Jasper had his head lowered to watch the ground as he pushed his toes into the dirt. The moonlight shone on his golden-blonde hair and turned the tips silver. Jasper looked up at me, took a deep breath, and straightened his glasses nervously before smiling.

“I’ve asked Alice to marry me, Izzy.”

The look on his face was open, and happy. Yet he seemed, almost hesitant. It was like he was worried about having my approval.

“Oh… Jazz…”

The tears ran, unhindered down my cheeks. Jasper pulled a folded handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to me. Leave it to Jasper, to actually have something as old-fashioned and sweet as a hanky to offer. He gave me a moment to compose myself.

“Well? What do you think?” he breathed. I smiled over at him and returned his handkerchief.

“I think it’s wonderful,” I replied truthfully. “I’m so… so…happy for you.”

Jasper held out his arms, and I left my swing to sit across his outstretched legs. I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him tightly while he used his feet to twist us back and forth.

“I love her so much.”

“I know!” I sniffed and smiled up at him. “She’s perfect for you. Really she is!”

Jasper had met Alice in one of his music courses. He wanted to be a music teacher. Alice had always dreamed of opening a school for the arts. They fell almost instantly in love, and it was a match made in heaven.

“She wants at least a year engagement,” Jasper said, looking past me into the darkened tree-line ahead of him. “We’ll get married after we graduate… at the end of next summer.”

“Are you scared?” I whispered.

“Shitless,” he nodded solemnly. Then his smile cut across his serious expression and he patted my back so that I would stand. He rose after me, and we both moved toward the tree house steps.

Old planks hung by rusty nails hammered into the tree. Jasper broke a piece of the rotting wood with his hand and frowned.

“I’m going to come out here tomorrow morning, and see what I can do about fixing these,” he said. “I’ll bet we could still sit up there, if we had a way to get up.”

“I’ll help,” I smiled. “But you never did tell me what the tree house has to do with anything.”

“I figured it would be the perfect place to plan my next great adventure.”

“I live for adventure,” I recited from memory. It was once painted in bright red on the inside of the tree house door.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Jasper grinned.

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