A/N: Here we go with the fourth story in the Forever series. A huge thank you goes to KBelle1 and TheEagerScribbler for beta reading this chapter. I hope you all enjoy it!
January 13th, 2010
Packing up boxes wasn't typically a tearful event. Rachel also wasn't typically a tearful person.
Today was an exception.
My eyes shifted to where Rachel was packing up dishes, a simple task that shouldn't have required much emotion to accomplish. Despite her back being towards me, she reacted as if she felt my gaze, stiffening and staring into the box as she rearranged it again. I knew that I had agreed to lend a hand, but I couldn't help but feel uncomfortable. I didn't handle other's tears well, and it became more difficult when the tears were coming from someone I had never seen cry before.
Actually, that was a lie. I had seen Rachel cry once, and that had been at her mother's funeral. Packing up a house she'd lived in for less than a year seemed inconsequential in comparison, but I understood that she wasn't crying over the house.
I fiddled with the DVDs I was sticking into boxes, wanting the task to take longer than required. The longer I worked on this, the longer I could go without speaking and pulling Rachel out of her emotional packing. There were only three DVDs left on the shelf in front of me. My eyes flickered over to Rachel again, managing to catch the glint of light off the ring that had been newly placed on her finger.
With a sigh, I dropped the last three DVDs into the box and closed it up. I stood slowly, still trying to capitalize on time. Rachel had been hunched over the same box in the time it took me to pack three. She didn't hear my footsteps as I moved towards the kitchen. I watched her as she continued to rearrange the box like she wasn't ready to close it up. Of course, my eyes were drawn to the ring again. They had been a lot when I'd seen Rachel over the past couple of weeks. I still couldn't believe it was there, and it made focusing on anything else difficult.
Once upon a time, I had considered Rachel Black to be the easiest person to understand in La Push. Even though our lives had gone down different paths, there had been something about Rachel that I just understood.
Recently, I had struggled and struggled to achieve the same understanding that had once been natural between us. As soon as I thought I had figured Rachel out again, she did something else that threw me off course.
Buying a house in Forks. Accepting a job in Seattle. Accepting Paul's proposal less than a month before she moved away for said job. I couldn't keep up with each of the decisions she made that hinted at different wants.
Rachel looked up from her box, and it was too late for me to divert my gaze from the ring before she saw what it was I had been looking at.
I felt sheepish as Rachel gave a short, wet chuckle. "Is it that mesmerizing?" she asked sarcastically.
It wasn't. I could tell that Paul had bought the ring in a panic when she told him she was leaving. Although he had to have been saving up in order to afford it, it wasn't that remarkable of a ring.
I knew that wasn't the point. The ring was an unspoken statement Rachel and Paul were making, but I wasn't sure who it was for: themselves, each other, or their friends and family. I did know that I wanted to believe the statement and that Rachel needed to believe the statement.
For once, I thought I did believe it. If there was one relationship that I was rooting for beyond my own, it would have been Rachel and Paul's. I needed them to be okay in the end. It had become this desperate need in the pit of my stomach as if it would somehow prove something that I needed to be proven.
When I didn't answer her, Rachel sighed and stood from the kitchen floor, picking up the box and setting it on the counter between us.
"I know I've been avoiding asking you this," I began, feeling like I needed to say it, "but why? I just...I just want to try to understand because I don't get it."
Rachel grinned, but she also shifted from foot to foot a few times before settling down again. "Neither do I to be honest," she admitted. "I mean, I do in that I obviously said yes because I have every intention of marrying Paul, but yeah, everything's kind of…" She waved her hands around in the air in lieu of choosing a word. I wasn't sure there was a good one to describe this whole 'thing'. It seemed incapable of being contained in one mere word.
I began fiddling with the roll of duct tape that sat on the counter, folding the edge down to create an easy place to peel it from. It gave me something to do.
"I never wanted to be Emily," Rachel continued. She turned away from me to begin putting silverware in another box, and I was confident that it was to avoid looking me in the eye. "Marriage was never a be all, end all for me. It was something I would do if I met someone I loved enough, but I've never needed it like Emily does. For all I know, Paul and I will be engaged for, like, ten years or something. What I do know is he's the only person in this world I would bother to marry. We might as well be engaged. We both knew it was leading to that anyway."
She hesitated, moving some forks to the opposite side of the box, before she continued speaking. "And I know that Paul needs this, needs the reassurance. I wish he didn't, honestly, because he should know that I'm not leaving him, but as it turns out, an imprint doesn't mean unwavering confidence in your relationship all the time. Proposing made him feel better, and it doesn't change anything, so of course, I accepted the ring."
"I get all that." And I did. It all made sense to the point that I wasn't sure what was still bugging me, but there was something there. "It just feels like such strange timing."
Rachel smirked, glancing back at me. "Because it is," she admitted. "No one would argue that, but you know what else was strange timing? Me being imprinted on during my first visit home in years when I didn't know wolves and imprinting existed. That threw my entire life through the shredder."
I stared at her. She was right, and now that I thought about it, the confusion I had felt watching both events unfold had also felt remarkably similar.
"I've stopped trying to figure it out, Leah. I'm doing whatever the hell I can at this point."
There was a surprising lack of bitterness in her voice. I'd have felt rather hopeless if our situations were reversed, but Rachel sounded like she had moved beyond being resigned to having embraced the situation. Despite her continued tears as we packed.
"I wish I could stop trying to figure it out," I told her. "Blame Embry. I swear I didn't care this much about figuring out fate and the meaning of life or whatever shit he goes on about until he got ahold of me. Now I obsess over the pointless."
Rachel's smile softened as she looked at me, but she didn't offer any response to my complaints about Embry.
"Can you take care of the pots and pans in that cabinet by the oven?"
I took up the task without verbally agreeing to it, taking the largest of the empty boxes with me as I went. The clanging of the metal as I worked was some of the loudest noises I'd heard in the house today, and I wondered if Rachel had given me this task to shut me up. There was a possibility that she was also clanging the silverware around more than necessary.
Once she had closed the box of silverware though, Rachel began to speak as if our conversation had never come to an end. "I admire how Embry tries to figure everything out. Even if it's a little on the intense side."
I snorted. "A little," I repeated. "He's always trying to figure something out."
Rachel nodded and offered a shrug. "Different people have different approaches to life."
There was no way I could disagree with that after the conversations I'd had with Embry over the years.
"You agree with me though, right?" I asked. "That trying to figure everything out is useless. Because Embry never accepts that, but you and Paul seem like a testament to everything I've told him."
There was this small grin on Rachel's face that I thought might have come from hearing me talk about Embry, but I chose to ignore it. "I don't know," she admitted, and my shoulders sagged in disappointment. I had expected easy agreement, for at least one person to back up the arguments I had to support on my own when I was talking to Embry.
"I mean, he is always trying to figure out stuff that he'll never actually figure out," Rachel continued. "I'll agree with you on that much. What I don't understand is why it gets you as worked up as it does."
She analyzed my face as if looking for something specific, and I couldn't help but shift under her gaze, glancing away. I wasn't sure why I felt embarrassed because I didn't know the answer either once I stopped to think about it.
"I just-" I stopped to collect my thoughts. "It's just that, like you said, he'll never figure it out." It was the only way I could think to justify myself. "None of us will, but every time he brings it up, it's like I'm being taunted by fate. It would be easier to not think about it at all."
I thought I was telling the truth, but to be honest, I couldn't be sure. I'd always thought Embry made me think about things, but he'd never made me question the emotions behind certain thoughts like Rachel currently was. It was like confronting another thing I didn't want to think about, even if I didn't understand why.
Rachel gave a short nod as if I'd given her a clear answer. "You're someone who doesn't want to discuss what you'd rather forget. Embry, on the other hand, wants to analyze them and understand them to make them less intimidating."
I blinked at her, knowing that she was right. I'd always known that much. It shouldn't have felt like a revelation. I was sure I'd said the same thing in different words more than my fair share of times. It was just, like Rachel said, that I didn't like to give it more thought than I had to.
"I still don't get why understanding something you can't control makes any difference."
With a shrug, Rachel reached out for another box. "I don't get it either. I just know that it's what Embry seems to do."
She had nothing else to say about Embry. I could tell by the way her attention had shifted away from me. She brushed past the counter that I stood at, walking into the living room. The bookshelf had already been shuffled around when I arrived. The items that had been occupying it were grouped together in patterns that showed they were being prepared to be packed away, not to look nice on the shelf. Rachel started placing some books into the box she'd carried over.
Since I hadn't been given any instructions, I turned around to face the living room and Rachel, leaning back against the counter. I felt tired despite the fact that I hadn't done anything that could be considered heavy lifting while packing up these boxes.
Rachel's ring glinted in the light as she moved, and I couldn't help but wonder for a moment what the future would look like. I knew Rachel didn't have any answers to give me, but I could remember Embry's speculations over the last month. They ran through my mind as they had often over the past weeks.
But I couldn't change anything, and Rachel had been right: I'd much rather not think about it.
January 22nd, 2010
"Last one," Paul grunted as he carried a large box out the door of what had been his and Rachel's house. I wasn't sure how to refer to it anymore. They still owned it. I was pretty sure a mortgage was being paid by someone even if I didn't know the ins and outs of it.
Neither Paul nor Rachel would be living there anymore, and their plans with the house had been one of the countless things they had both stayed quiet about. I'd kept expecting Rachel to bring up selling it over the days I had talked to her about the move, but either they hadn't given that any thought or she didn't want to talk about it with me. Both Rachel and Paul tended to close down and start avoiding questions if anyone remained on the subject with them for too long.
I watched from the backseat of Sam and Emily's car as Rachel directed Paul on where to fit the box into the trailer hitched to her car, which was parked in front of us. Kim in the backseat beside me and Emily in the driver's seat both watched too. While I couldn't say for sure, I was confident that they felt as much trepidation over agreeing to this trip as I did.
Rachel stood on her tiptoes to kiss Paul goodbye, and I averted my eyes, not glancing back up until I heard Rachel open the passenger side door of the car we sat in. Paul had already disappeared into the other car with Jake, Sam, and Jared. I settled back into my seat, trying to prepare myself for the three and a half hour drive to Seattle.
There was this ominous atmosphere in the car that I didn't think was coming from me. Kim was twitching; I could see her out of the corner of my eye. She was always sensitive to the moods of others.
Emily put the car in drive, following the guys down the road, and none of us said a word. I was both tempted to break the silence and worried that I would ignite a fire if I did so. While Emily and Rachel had been making progress towards repairing their friendship, Rachel accepting this job had turned Emily cold again. A fact that Rachel was ignoring.
We'd made it several blocks down the road before Rachel flipped the radio on, keeping the volume turned up high enough to fill the awkward silence.
I knew that, if any of us were going to speak, it would be Emily. Neither Rachel nor I would have been keen to get Emily talking when it could lead to conflict, and it was a rare day when Kim instigated a conversation on her own. I could see her flipping her phone over in her hands as if it were a nervous habit.
Originally, Emily wasn't supposed to come with us, and I knew that decision had been purposeful. Rachel hadn't wanted her here, but for days, Emily had insisted that the more help, the better. A saying that I didn't find truthful in most situations and that I especially didn't buy in this case. I knew Rachel didn't either, but in what must have been a desire to stay on Emily's good side as much as possible, Rachel had given in and agreed that Emily could come along.
Now I was going to have to sit through more than three hours of Emily's last ditch efforts to convince Rachel that she was making a mistake.
Emily shifted in her seat as if she were preparing to speak, and Rachel turned the volume up two notches on the radio. I heard Emily's sigh as I watched her shoulders sag from my seat behind her. She kept her eyes on the road, giving no other indication that she had made an attempt that was squashed.
I toyed with the corners of the pages of the book I held in my hands, bending them back then letting them slide between my fingers. Even when I'd picked it up to bring with me, I'd known there was only a miniscule chance that I would any of it. While no one talked, there was a palpable tension in the air that made focusing on anything difficult.
Everyone else had their eyes set out various windows, watching our surroundings as we left Forks behind. I was the only one looking around at the people I was sharing a car with. Even Kim, who was not on the receiving end of anyone's ire, looked like she would jump in her seat if she was addressed.
I couldn't help but wonder what it was like in the guys' car. I imagined it was nothing like this, although I did imagine that the others were frustrated about having to deal with an extra pissy Paul. That didn't sound like it came close to what I was dealing with.
My phone vibrated, and I pulled it out of my pocket, already knowing who the message would be from.
You left?
Only two words, and I couldn't keep away the grin that appeared on my face. I tilted my head downward in case any of the others glanced at me. Hopefully, they wouldn't notice. If they did, I knew that they'd guess the source right away, and for whatever reason, I still felt bashful about how strongly I felt for Embry. I didn't like when other people could observe the effect he had on me.
I typed back, Yeah just out of forks. No ones talking. Save me
:( Sorry. Figures. At least they're not yelling?
At least they're not yelling. It was true. I should have been thankful for the silence.
"Did I tell everyone that Simone's officially potty trained?"
I glanced up, catching Emily's eyes through the rearview mirror. Her voice was peppy, and she smiled at me before she set her eyes back on the road.
"No," I responded, knowing Rachel wasn't going to answer and that Kim had already been told. "You didn't. Last I heard she was having trouble with it."
I couldn't remember when I had been told that tidbit of information. The potty training process wasn't something I attempted to keep up with, but I thought I might have wound up talking to Emily about it before babysitting once a few months back or something like that.
"She hasn't had an accident in more than a week." I wasn't sure if Emily thought it was Simone or herself who had achieved something, but there was obvious pride in her voice.
Rachel had hardly responded to Emily's announcement, but I noticed her head turn a fraction of an inch in Emily's direction as if she were focused on listening.
"You'll have to come to me for tips whenever it's your turn, Kim." Emily flashed her a smile through the rearview mirror, and Kim offered a small grin in return.
It struck me as an unnecessary comment. As far as I knew, Kim wasn't pregnant, and while I would admit that she and Jared could have been trying and I was unaware of it, I didn't suspect that was the case. I had a stronger suspicion that Emily had offered the advice for different reasons. A suspicion that was proven seconds later.
"I could give you some too, Rachel, when you need it. Lord knows I went through so much trial and error. At the very least I can tell you what not to do."
I watched Rachel, seeing her stiffen as Emily talked, but she still didn't look at her.
The thing was, I knew Rachel wanted to be a mother eventually, so the comment wouldn't have been out of line under different circumstances. But I knew what Emily's motivations were, and within the context of the move, it had me shifting in my seat. It also wasn't lost on me that I was the only person in the car that Emily hadn't offered her advice to despite the fact that I had never said anything to Emily about no longer wanting to be a mother since my period had stopped coming.
"I'll keep that in mind," Rachel muttered, not attempting to hide the contempt in her voice. "When I need it years from now," she added, almost as if the words themselves had been an afterthought. She'd whispered them, and I wasn't sure Emily could have made them out over the music that continued to play. She did, however, know that Rachel had said something under her breath. I could tell from the way I saw her frown deepen through the rearview mirror.
Nothing deterred Emily from starting a conversation that no one else wanted though. She chanced another glance back at Kim and asked, "How is the apprenticeship going? You're almost finished, right?"
"Right." Kim had to clear her throat when the word came out scratchy. "I'll be licensed in a couple of months."
"Good, good," Emily muttered. "I'm sure you're both happy to really start your lives then."
Kim averted her eyes to the window instead of answering, but Rachel let out a snort of disbelief. I couldn't believe Emily was trying to take things this far either. The only way I could make sense of her actions was by believing that she was trying to lead Kim to the topic of marriage again as a way of shaming Rachel for not following the same path she and Kim had.
Emily's eyes had grown as wide as golf balls when she'd noticed the ring that morning upon arriving at the house, and I'd been able to see the hurt there, too, that came from not having been told about the engagement sooner.
I also knew that it had given Emily more hope that Rachel wasn't making as big of a mistake as Emily thought she was. Emily needed to confirm that for herself, and she wasn't going to like how Rachel responded.
"When did it happen?" Emily asked. We all knew the question was meant for Rachel, and no one pretended to be clueless about what Emily was referring too.
Kim straightened up beside me, although I knew she had already known about the engagement. She hadn't had the same surprised reaction Emily had had that morning. Someone, whether it was Rachel or Jared or someone else, had told her before today. I hoped Emily didn't discover either that or my own previous knowledge because I couldn't imagine it going over well with her.
Few things that pertained to Rachel did these days. The longer this went on, the more apt Emily was to find fault in every single one of Rachel's actions.
"A couple of weeks ago," Rachel answered. I could detect Rachel's hope that Emily would offer her congratulations, not judgment. Something that I wouldn't have been idealistic enough to hope for in her shoes.
Emily nodded. She was trying to work out how many times she had talked to Rachel since the engagement (which could have been zero to the best of my knowledge) and decide if she'd been deliberately looked over as someone to share the news with. I could also tell that she was frustrated that Rachel was answering vaguely instead of offering up the entire story.
"Oh." She paused, glancing at Rachel to give her one last chance to speak up before she continued. "I just...wasn't expecting it. Because of everything else, you know?"
I watched Rachel turn her head to look at Emily in slow motion, and it was hard to fight back a groan.
"Why's that?" she asked through gritted teeth.
Emily shrugged in a terrible attempt at nonchalance. "There's already so much going on. I didn't expect the two of you to add to it. I mean, planning a wedding takes a lot of work, and with your job and everything else…"
"I'm not planning a wedding, Emily. Not right now."
"Oh." This time there was genuine confusion in her voice. Rachel had surprised her. Again. "Really? Because the ring and-"
"I didn't saw we're not engaged," Rachel said, close to reaching the end of her patience. "I said I'm not planning a wedding as in I'm not planning it in the immediate future. We will, eventually, but like you said, I have to adjust to my job first."
"Right. Well, then, let me know when you're ready, yeah? Because I can offer you some advice on that too, help out however you want."
"I don't think you should hold out for that, Emily," Rachel continued. I could hear a hint of pleasure in her voice, and I knew that she'd moved into deliberately provoking Emily. "It's going to be a while. For now, I have my job in Seattle. Paul has the pack in La Push. Until that changes…"
I was surprised that Emily didn't growl in frustration. She didn't do much of anything except keep her eyes on the road and continue to drive. I wondered if I should say something about being willing to drive instead, giving Rachel and Emily a chance to duke it out without killing us—well, all of us except me—if we were to crash.
"Of course you won't," I said, not able to stop myself from offering Rachel support. I heard Kim sigh from beside me, and I couldn't blame her. "Anyone would want to wait until they can live together."
Emily shook her head but didn't speak. Rachel latched onto my words though, and I wasn't sure if she was still trying to anger Emily. I thought she might have begun to talk about her feelings that she hadn't gotten a chance to share before.
"Right. I know we could do it now, but it wouldn't be the same. I don't see the harm in waiting for a few years for things to feel convenient. Obviously, nothing will ever be perfectly easy, but I can feel that now isn't the right time, you know?"
"Yeah," I responded, and I did know. I might have been the only one in the car who got it. Emily had wanted nothing more than to get married for most of her life, so there had never been a question about what was or wasn't the right time. I didn't know Kim well enough to know if she had held the same dream from childhood, but considering how soon after graduation she and Jared had gotten married, I figured she had.
So many people in my hometown considered getting married a crucial part in the journey to becoming an adult, and for many people, a working adult holding off on marriage didn't make much sense. But I got it. My entire life I'd seen Rachel as different from the norm of La Push, and this was only another facet of that.
Emily tapped her fingers against the steering wheel for a moment before speaking again. "Sam told me that Paul's trying to quit phasing."
This was news to me, but I could tell from Rachel's lack of a reaction that it wasn't for her. Kim didn't have much of a reaction either, forcing me to realize that I was the only person in the car who hadn't heard about this.
"It's been a week," Rachel said. "At least, I think it's been a week. Sometimes I wonder if he's phased and not told me because he doesn't want me to know how difficult it is for him."
For the first time since getting in the car, Kim spoke. Her voice sounded more confident than her demeanor would have suggested. "He wouldn't have been able to keep it from you. Especially not if you talked to him about it. He would have been telling the truth."
Rachel shrugged, but I could detect relief in her eyes. She wanted Paul to be telling the truth, but part of her thought that him not phasing, even for as little as a week, was too good to be true. Hell, after everything the two of them had gone through and the way the imprint had rocked Rachel's life plans, it probably did feel too good to be true. If Paul could leave La Push, then Rachel would have everything she had dreamt of since she was a little girl.
"Kim's right," Emily said. Her voice sounded comforting for the first time. Rachel had managed to hit the soft spot that Emily had been trying to lock away from Rachel in recent weeks. "And I know Paul's telling the truth because Sam said the same thing too. We were talking about it the other day, and I think he said it had been ten days.
"Actually," she continued, and I could tell that she was becoming comfortable with the conversation, "he said he was impressed. Him and Jared were worried at first that Paul wouldn't manage it and would start feeling discouraged, like he'd become convinced that he'd failed you or something." Rachel's frown deepened, but she didn't say anything. "Instead he's managing better than any of them expected."
"Jared said that he's seemed calmer since he decided he was doing it," Kim said. "According to Jared, it was like Paul knew that losing his temper would ruin everything, and suddenly, it became harder to get him angry. He said that they could see him getting frustrated, but he never reacts anymore, and it's gone quicker than it used to be."
Rachel had begun nodding along as Kim spoke. "He has," she agreed. "I knew he was doing well with that. I actually, uh, brought him along to my therapist, and she was the one who gave him the techniques to use when he lost his temper. I never thought I'd be able to convince him to go, but he didn't put up a fight."
Because he wanted to make Rachel happy, and he thought going was the only way he could do that. Rachel knew that too, even if she'd been initially surprised. I couldn't say that I was. At some point, Rachel and Paul had become unable to surprise me. No one but Embry defied my expectations more often.
That was why, while I hadn't known Paul had stopped phasing, I couldn't say I was surprised that he had. Years ago, I would have pegged Paul as the last of us to stop phasing. There was no way he'd be able to quell his temper for long enough periods of time to stop phasing, I would have said. But I'd known for a long time that, if Paul was terrified of one thing in life, it was disappointing Rachel, and I was unsurprised that that was enough to make not phasing an accomplishable goal for him.
He wasn't going to phase again. I could say that with confidence that the others around me didn't seem to share. All of them, even Rachel, were more incredulous than anything. It was a feeling that I couldn't share, though I did feel a twinge of pride for Paul that I never would have admitted to out loud.
I fiddled with my phone, typing out Did you know about Paul? and sending it to Embry.
His answer came quickly considering that he was in class.
What about Paul?
Of course he hadn't. If Embry had known, I would have known. I also figured that Sam's pack was keeping it quiet at Paul's request. No one wanted him to screw up and then feel like a failure in front of everyone. I typed out a message explaining it, keeping one ear trained on what was happening in the car.
Everyone had gone quiet, yet the wall between Emily and Rachel had fallen at least temporarily. For the rest of the drive, there was scattered conversation, none of which was hostile.
Rachel had tapped into Emily's sympathy, and that appeared to be enough for Emily to go easier on Rachel over this move.
Once we reached Rachel's new apartment, the guys were out of their car and unloading the trailer before Emily had put our car in park. I trailed behind the others as we got out to help them, looking around at the building that no one else was as interested in as I was.
The building that included Rachel's future apartment wasn't impressive. It appeared to be a little rundown from the outside, but it looked as well maintained as I could expect such a building to be. Overall, it wasn't remarkable in looks, yet it was helping Rachel get a step closer to achieving her dream.
I stepped into the trailer to grab some boxes. Rachel, moving quickly, had already grabbed a small box of her own and hurried into the building to unlock the apartment for the rest of us. We followed her in a spaced out trail, with Paul and I taking the lead behind Rachel. I watched him as we walked, wondering what he was thinking.
I'd seen Rachel often over the previous weeks, and that had meant seeing Paul too. Yet, unsurprisingly, I had little information about how he was handling this. He acted quiet and withdrawn, a side of Paul I never thought I would see before this happened. It scared me more than I would have liked to admit. Especially after what I had heard in the car, I couldn't help but worry about what effect this was having on him.
Rachel was all smiles as she let us into the apartment. In terms of size—the first thing I noticed—it was a downgrade from the house Rachel had lived in for the last year. As I continued to inspect my surroundings, I came to the conclusion that nothing about the apartment was remarkable, but it was also bare. Rachel had yet to get her hands on it and complete the same decorating magic she had worked on the house.
She'd already set to work, directing each of us on where to set our boxes based on the contents and where she planned to put them in the apartment. Paul, Jake, Jared, and Sam went to get another load of boxes while Emily, Kim, and I got trapped helping Rachel move the boxes around inside the apartment itself.
Reaching the apartment had put her in her element. She was no longer closed off and quiet like she had been that morning. The negative emotions had disappeared for the moment. Paul, too, appeared almost happy each time he dropped off a load of boxes, like he was feeding off Rachel's positive energy.
Moving in boxes didn't take much time when you had five wolves helping you. We wound up perched on the still full boxes not long after we'd arrived, almost as many pizzas as there were us scattered around the room. I kept trying to predict how the mood in the room would change as it got closer to time for us to head back to La Push and leave Rachel behind in Seattle.
For the moment, everything was fine, chipper even, but there was little hope that would last once the reality that Rachel would be gone set in. For now, I tried to appreciate that Rachel and Emily were smiling genuine smiles at each other and laughing with no pretenses. I wasn't sure if it was a permanent fix, but at least they were no longer like they had been in the car that morning.
"It's nice, isn't it?" Jake asked from the box closest to mine. I turned to see him looking in the direction of Rachel and Emily too. "For them to not be fighting today of all days."
"They got it out of their systems while we were in the car," I assured him. "But you know that Emily can never stay angry for that long. She always gives in before the other person."
"Yeah, well, no one was ever going to get Rachel to give in first. You and I both know that she's still angry." He'd brought his voice down to a whisper despite being easily heard by the other wolves in the small, empty space.
I nodded. Rachel was always one to dwell on things and hold grudges. She would act fine for periods of time, but you'd never resolved anything with her until you had flat out resolved it. She hadn't achieved that with Emily. Now that she was living in Seattle, I wasn't sure how long it would take for them to work out their issues with each other.
"I'm happy for her," Jake continued, shifting gears. "I really am, but there's also this part of me that doesn't want to be here."
"I know the feeling," I said with a sigh. Jake nodded, looking around at the walls and ceiling of the room that surrounded us.
"This feels like the apartment we moved her into when she started college," he told me. "The layout's different, but kind of the same too."
"Every apartment does have the same basic rooms," I reminded him.
He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, but what I meant is that the layout's the same except for where the bathroom is."
He motioned towards the door that led to the bedroom and the attached bathroom that you could only get to by walking through the room.
I shrugged. "Not like there's a multitude of options for how to layout so few rooms."
"I know, but that doesn't mean it's not strange doing this all over again. Dad thought she would stick around La Push this time, and now… It's bittersweet I guess."
I nodded, getting what he was trying to tell me, but I knew he possessed a disappointment that I was finding it difficult to feel. Rachel Black was never going to stick around La Push, and eventually, everyone was going to have to accept that.
