A/N: Read with caution. Not my typical Blackwater love story. But, a love story nonetheless. Read and review. I've missed you all and hopefully, depending on how this is received, I'm back for good!
It wasn't that I didn't love him. Jacob. I loved him so much. I truly thought my life would end with him beside me. I thought I would walk down the aisle to him, that I would be squeezing his hand in the delivery room, that he'd be the one giving our daughter away so many years down the road.
But the thing about life is that it's full of people. And the thing about people is that they have hearts. Hearts that beat and break and bleed and feel like they'll never recover until one day they do.
I loved him so much. Jacob. But before him, I loved Sam. And I loved him so much, too. And at one point I saw myself walking down that same aisle towards his bright, smiling face. There was so much love in both of the pairs of dark brown eyes. It was the same love that reflected in my slightly-lighter ones.
It wasn't that I didn't love them. I loved them both so much. With Sam, losing him, it was almost unbearable. I was a kid and I thought that finding the guy you wanted to walk down that aisle towards; I thought that was the be-all, end-all of my young life. And loving Jacob changed that about me, it made me see that you could fall in love with someone and have it not be the end of the world, the end of my world.
Jacob healed me in ways I didn't know I needed healing. He made me see that love didn't have to be about the end of the world, and that it could be simple. He made me see that simple people, normal people, could feel just as much as the romantics. Because with Jacob it wasn't about the romantics, it was about the everyday. Every day I would see him and he would make me smile and my cheeks lifted a little higher and my soul felt a little lighter. He didn't always understand my need to brood once in a while, but he understood my greater need to laugh every day. He understood that I couldn't say "I love you," first but that didn't mean I didn't feel it. He took me fishing because he loved fishing, and we rode bikes because sometimes being reckless is easier than being anything else.
With Jacob, it wasn't the be-all, end-all but in a way it was bigger than that. We were people and we were simple and I could have gone on like that forever. I was ready to be ordinary. Happy.
It wasn't that I didn't love him, but sometimes I would lay awake at night, sleeping beside the only man I'd ever shared a bed with, and I would cry. I was quiet. Jacob never saw, but I think he suspected. And the night that I got out of shower and sat on the floor, naked except for one of his dingy green towels loosely wrapped around my tanned limbs, I think then he knew. He knew that I could go on forever simply, ordinary, with him as my person. But that I didn't want too.
After Sam, I had these big dreams of more. I went to school, I made the tribe proud. And I came home because I felt something pulling me into that little Northwest corner of the map. When I got home, I thought that something pulling me was Jacob.
"You haven't touched me in weeks."
Jacob rolled his eyes. He was in his twenties now, but talking about sex still made him feel like he was back in sixth grade at tribal school.
"I'm working sixty hour weeks. I'm exhausted. That doesn't even cross my mind right now, Lee."
"So if Bella walked in naked as a bird, you'd offer her a coke and ask her about the weather? I doubt it."
"God, you're always comparing yourself to others. Always fucking comparing. I'm with you. I'm tired. That's all."
It was the fourth time I'd brought it up that week. Friday night I'd gone to his apartment after work and had cleaned it from floor to ceiling, scrubbing oil stains from carpet and couch, then had waited in nothing but one of his shirts for him to get off his twelve-hour shift. When he walked in, he nodded in my direction, grabbed a Budweiser from the fridge, and stalked towards the bathroom. I changed back into my jeans and was on my way home before he had turned off the shower.
"I don't know if I can do this anymore. I'm just, I'm not happy."
"You think I am?" he went to the fridge. "You make me feel bad about everything. You make me feel bad about my job, about my shitty apartment, about the way I don't cuddle in bed, the way I don't hold your hand in the car. What do you want, Lee? You want me to be perfect?"
I stayed silent knowing he wasn't finished.
I can't cuddle in bed if I'm asleep before my head hits the pillow. I can't hold your hand in the car if we never have time to go anywhere together. I can't clean if the only time I'm home is to sleep."
"Then quit the goddamn job, Jake! If you're so miserable, quit!"
He laughed and scrubbed a hand over his bloodshot eyes.
"This job is my dream. You know that."
"You used to say I was your dream… You used to say you couldn't believe you had me. That I was it."
"That was before I was put on this shift! I can't help it. You can't make me feel about my responsibilities!"
This time, I was the one laughing. "If you loved me, it wouldn't matter how little time we had together. We'd make it work. We'd figure it out. You'd want to hold my hand every chance you got even if it was just for five minutes as we fall asleep on the couch."
"Lee, I know you were always a dreamer but this is ridiculous. This isn't some Taylor Swift fairytale. This is life. I'm tired, and I don't want to hold hands on the couch like a high schooler. Grow up."
By Monday, I was gone. When Seth asked me why I was leaving and I had to explain to my baby brother, who always would believe in love and fairytales and forever, I simply said it wasn't that I didn't love Jacob, he just wasn't the guy for me.
"Do you mean that, sis? Or are you just pissed? Because I don't think he'll easily forgive you running off while he's stuck at the shop."
I looked at my brother, then back out the window of our parent's kitchen where I had spent afternoons dreaming up happy endings instead of working on constant pile of math homework. And I smiled, because I knew he would understand.
"I mean…. I mean that I don't want to feel ordinary for the rest of my life, even if I am. And sometimes, you need the people you are with to make you feel extraordinary when nothing else can. So he can't be the guy for me. He doesn't make me feel extraordinary. Maybe never did."
It wasn't that I didn't love him. Jacob. I loved him so much.
It was that I loved me more.