Infinite Bliss || Volturi Kings [1]

chapter 23

That week I spent in Forks went by much faster than I expected. Although I was stuck at the Cullens' house while they went for their final week of school, it did actually give me a lot of time to perfect my Mario Kart game, so now I was basically unbeatable.

Alice had taken me shopping on Tuesday evening to buy a dress for the graduation party I was being forced to attend. After many painful hours of rummaging through clothing racks and getting sidetracked by shoes, we eventually settled on light blue short-sleeved dress that ended mid-thigh with a v-neck. I wasn't exactly a dress kind of person, so it took a lot to get me to agree to anything in fairness, but Alice had tried to talk me into many...revealing items, including a baby pink vinyl spaghetti-strap mini-dress with panels cut out along the sides.

"Alice, what the fuck is this?" I hissed almost silently.

She pulled back the dressing room curtain and looked me up and down with a shrug. "What's the issue?"

"The issue is the fact that there is way too much skin showing. Look," I gestured to my side, "my ass is going to pop out at any second!"

"But it looks so good on you though," she insisted.

"Alice, come on," I turned around to the other side, "how am I even supposed to wear underwear with this?"

"We can work around it."

"Ugh, Lord give me strength," I muttered and shook my head, pulling the dressing room curtain closed again.

On the plus side, I did manage to talk her into allowing me to wear trainers with my dress, as she'd chosen out a really nice pair of white Nike shoes for me. As much as I did appreciate Alice's love affair with clothing, my patience had limits with that child.

Before I knew it, the day of the graduation had finally arrived. I was fast asleep in the spare bedroom after staying up for way too long playing Mario Kart with Jasper, when the room suddenly lit up brightly.

"Why?" I groaned into my pillow.

"Eli, its graduation day!" Alice's voice squealed, "I've got to go and take this," she gestured to a large white box, "to Bella. Go and get ready, I can't wait to see the dress on you!"

"Fine, fine, I'm getting up," I waited until she left before finishing my sentence, "in twenty minutes."

Twenty minutes later, I finally rolled out of bed and pulled the dress out of the pile of clothing we'd bought the other day. Quickly cutting off the tag, I tiredly stumbled into the bathroom and locked the door in case anyone was to barge in without knocking. Fortunately for me, the dress was quite modest so I wasn't really worried about wearing it during the graduation while, if it was the mini-dress, that would be a whole different story.

After quickly French braiding my hair down my back, I put on the new trainers Alice had bought for me and headed down the stairs, greeted by Esme who handed me a plate of freshly-cooked pancakes.

"For you," she smiled.

"Thank you Esme," I responded and settled down at the table.

Rose and Emmett had managed to talk their way out of coming to the graduation, and were currently out of the house doing god knows what. Edward was on his way out past me when he stopped and glanced at my dress.

"Nice dress. Did Alice get to you?" he asked humorously.

"Unfortunately," I giggled, bringing my plate back into the kitchen and placing it in the dishwasher.

"I heard that," Alice spoke while she tugged my hand to get a better look at the outfit she'd chosen, "you should wear blue more often, it really matches your skin tone."