A/N: One of those depressing, second-person drabbles that come spilling out sometimes. Enjoy, I suppose.
--
You're drowning in your own skin.
The days aren't so bad; not really. You have a life even when your friends are still telling you to get one, and you still have the biggest smile and the loudest laugh.
(Not loud enough. It's just a memory of what you used to be)
Every girl you see reminds you of her. One has the bow of her lips, another holds the crease between her eyebrows when she's thinking. Long brown hair greets you at every corner (never dark enough, or shiny enough, or quite the right consistency), and the pallid tone of her skin pokes out at you underneath the fake spray tans.
You close your eyes and pretend you're dead.
--
The notes start to come three years after you leave La Push (the pack doesn't need you anymore. You're useless like this, no longer their Jacob—you don't belong to anyone but her), four years after you last saw her (a hard face and still-red cheeks, she made you smile even when you felt like crying), five years after the bloodsucker returned.
Each one breaks your heart, but you unfold them with shaking hands anyway.
Jake,
I miss you. I know we can't be friends, but maybe our pens can.
Bells
You write back in careful letters. You try not to let yourself seep through; you try not to admit to her exactly how broken she makes you, and exactly how happy you are to know she still cares.
No more, Bella. I can't.
--
The letters continue to come all the same. You wonder vaguely how she knows your address (Charlie? Billy? Quil? You kind of doubt any of them would give it away. Even Chief Swan knows that you need to be left alone), then decide that it doesn't really matter.
It doesn't take long for you to give in. Your words are still clipped, but you can't help but give her snippets of your life all the same. You have enough self-control to keep in the bad parts—you can't let her know you're hurting (she knows you can't live without her all the same).
I went out with my friends last night. I met a girl and I kissed her and I saw only you.
It's not fair.
--
The day after your twenty-fourth birthday, there's another note in the mail.
Jacob,
I left.
Bella
You try to remember to breathe when you read it. It's only four words but your heart is beating out of rhythm and you feel like you're going to throw up.
I left.
It's everything you've been waiting for and it doesn't make any sense.
You don't know what to do.
(You never have. You add it to your list of inadequacies and remember the feel of her hand in yours)
--
She shows up two days later. You want to kick her out; you want to burn her fucking letters and her fucking love and her stupid fucking blush, but then she opens her mouth and all you want to do is hold her.
"I love you."
It only takes those three words, one less than last time, and now you really aren't breathing.
The only thing you can do is press your lips to hers (even when you want to tell her that you can't, you want to tell her to leave, you want to tell her that it's too late). She melts inside of you and you can feel her hands on your chest and her mouth and her tongue and everything, and she is a part of you and inside of you and she loves you.
It doesn't take much to win your heart. Not when it comes to Bella.
It takes even less to break it.
--
You wake up the next morning and you feel drunk, even though you're a werewolf and you can't even get drunk anymore. You keep your eyes closed for as long as you can and you remember warm skin and quiet sighs and my Jacob and you're perfect.
Then you get up and you see the note by the door.
I'm sorry.
It's two words that do it this time. You feel the irony on the tip of your tongue and it tastes a little bit like blood.
The worst part is that it doesn't even surprise you.
You're used to it by now.
--
You close your eyes and pretend you're dead.
Every girl you see still reminds you of her. You continue to count the number of brown eyes (sometimes the gold ones, too) and your dreams don't get any less vivid. You still wish for the life that was supposed to be.
(The problem is that it isn't. You keep thinking in terms of fate and normalcy when the truth is that there is no such thing in your life. Somewhere, there is Bella and Jacob and those beautiful black-haired children, but in this world there is only love and loss and Jacob Black, the werewolf, the Alpha, the sixteen-year-old boy with a broken heart)
Forever.
It shouldn't surprise you that it's only one word. You keep counting down in the darkness until everything is gone.
--
END