"What is it that upsets her?"
He sighed deeply. "Rosalie struggles the most with what we are. It's hard for her to have someone on the outside know the truth. And she's a little jealous."
"Rosalie is jealous of me?" I asked incredulously. I tried to imagine a universe in which someone as breathtaking as Rosalie would have any possible reason to feel jealous of someone like me.
"You're human." He shrugged. "She wishes that she were, too."
"Oh," I muttered, still stunned. "Even Jasper, though."
"That's really my fault," he said. "I told you he was the most recent to try our way of life. I warned him to keep his distance."
I suddenly remembered the reason for that, and shuddered.
"Esme and Carbomb...?" I continued quickly, to keep him from noticing.
"Are happy to see me happy," he said, completing my sentence. "Actually, Esme wouldn't care if you had a third eye and webbed feet. All this time she's been worried about me, afraid that there was something missing from my essential makeup,305 that I was too young when Carbomb changed me... She's ecstatic. Every time I touch you, she just about chokes with satisfaction."306
"Alice seems very... enthusiastic."
"Alice has her own way of looking at things," he said through tight lips. "Her own way at looking at... you."
305. The straight gene.
306. A symptom of rapidly diffusing gay panic.