He looked away fast, faster than I could convince my own eyes to fast from the glorious buffet that was his face, and hair. It was almost as if she had called his name, as if somehow he'd heard her thoughts or seen her intentions, and he'd looked up in involuntary response, already having decided not to answer.
My neighbor giggled in embarrassment, looking at the table like I did.
"That's Fredward and Emmett Cullen, and Rosalie and Jasper Hale. The one who left was Alice Cullen; they all live together with Dr. Cullen and his wife."32 She said this under her breath.
I glanced sideways at the beautiful buck, whose eyes were on his tray now, picking a bagel to pieces. His mouth was moving very quickly, his perfect lips barely opening. The other three still looked away, and yet I felt he was speaking quietly to them, perhaps in another language I didn't understand.
Strange, unpopular names, I thought. The kinds of names grandparents had. But maybe that was in vogue here—small town names? Hundred-year-old names? Names that had been popular a hundred or more years ago? I finally remembered that my neighbor was called Jessica, a perfectly common name. There were two girls named Jessica in my History class back home.
"They are... very nice-looking." I struggled with the conspicuous understatement.
"Oh, yes!" Jessica agreed with another giggle. "They're all, like, together though— Emmett and Rosalie, and Jasper and Alice, I mean. And they live together." Her voice held all the shock and condemnation of the small town.
32. Esme Cullen: the vampire wife of Dr. Carlisle Cullen.