Nobody, Not Even the Rain
"Do you think you could ever love me?
I don't think so.
Because I'm not good enough.
It's not like that.
Because I'm not smart.
No.
Because you couldn't love me.
Because I couldn't love you."
- Jonathan Safran Foer
"I got tired," he tells her. "Worn through, down to the center of me."
Her head spins as his voice carries from his very center, empty and tired and all things worn. It sounds like surrender, and it sounds nothing like Jacob.
Minutes are spread thin, and Bella's eyes are too unfocused to watch him lower himself to the couch her body knows of every curve, to watch the cushioning spill out of the one of many holes, to watch his hands cover his face, elbows on knees. The same hands drift to his hair, bury and stay, head bowed to the pain between them.
To his words her heart does something like stop, and she thinks back to the last thirteen years of her life leading her here.
She remembers being nineteen and loving Edward and following Edward to the end of her world and into his. She remembers how addictive college and late night study groups and shots of caffeine to keep her eyes awake became within four small and too quick years at Dartmouth.
Leaving Edward, she remembers, and the first few steps off the plane in South Dakota. Always loving him and never allowing the love to lessen is the simplest of things for her to recall; that love for him fills her, never fluctuating. Dating to date and trying to love to try to love, she also remembers, and being twenty-five with nothing but a completely human gut-feeling as her guide.
She remembers Jacob most of all and seeing him for the first time in six years striding through luggage return and straight to her. Touring her new home, becoming tourists in her new city, drinking coffee at a place just around the corner, she remembers. His hands on her hips, she remembers, and how they loved her, how lips begged Bells against her neck, between her naked thighs. Watching him leave and visiting Forks for Christmas for the next seven years, she remembers, and making love in his old garage each Eve, and departing each day after.
Most importantly she remembers Jacob inside her and around her and within her and on her, every pore and part his, all but the complete of her heart. Seven years—how did he have that long in him?—seven years for him to grow tired of waiting with the realization of there being nothing to wait for, for maybe their love is tiring.
The cold touching her cheeks brings her to, standing alone in the center of Jacob's old garage with the silent noise of La Push far behind her, going through her, engine oil sharp on her nose.
"I'm thirty years old, Bells." His eyes meet hers. Thirty already? Where had time gone? She let it pass without realizing so. "I'm so damn tired."
The pause is so heavy between them before she speaks a sad truth in all this mess. I can't let you go is her excuse for not being able to love him the way they both want.
He shakes his head, and tears fall down her cheeks. "I can't hold on any longer. God, Bella, I can't hold on; I can't keep this up."
In the dead of winter, Bella stops trying to love Jacob Black for the sake of loving Jacob Black.