So Jess started posting the story in Jenny's b-day thread. But I didn't want it lost in the big thread so I made this one and cut and pasted what she wrote. You can read the updates to it here.
An Angsty Story for Jennyfly on her Birthday. Because she likes the angst. To be continued throughout the day.
Jasper Cullen’s eighth birthday was his last day.
Period.
There was probably a birthday party and things like that. A cake and balloons, probably even a clown or pony rides because Esme doted on Jasper.
But Edward and I didn’t go to his birthday party. I was sixteen and Edward was seventeen and he’d successfully gotten out of attending his little brother’s birthday party. A few moments of that day are very, very vivid and some of course, are lost forever.
Summer had just begun, the days were hot, but it was still cool at night and school was out already. Edward and I spent the days drinking slurpees, covertly taking our clothes off in his pool and taking long, naps where ever we happened to fall.
We’d forsaken our friends for fondling and laughing and whispering in the heat. We played tag with the freezing water from our side by side garden hoses.
He’d take his shirt off when he mowed our lawn for Charlie and I’d run through it with bare feet right behind him, in the fresh tracks.
We didn’t talk about the future or anything like that, because we were young and when you’re that young and happy and in love, you just can’t imagine anything getting in the way.
There is this thing about innocence, that you can’t possibly grasp while you’re still innocent. But the thing is invincibility. It’s not like you consider it or ponder it—you don’t know you’re thinking you’re invincible. It’s not naïve or young to believe happiness will just…continue. It’s innocent, is all.
Edward and I would’ve laughed at that word. We would’ve looked at each other and shared a secret smile and remembered vodka and weed and heavy petting and the uttering of curse words.
We didn’t get it.
So, as it was, we had this innocence on the morning of Jasper Cullen’s birthday. Of course, innocence can be stolen in an instant, and, well, by that night, we had lost the magic we never knew we had.
Innocence.