She said, I was seven and you were nine
I looked at you like the stars that shined
In the sky, the pretty lights
For as far as Jacob Black knows, love stories begin with the very first moment the couple meets. Faces looking up in slow-motion, eyes widening as though recognising each other even though they're two strangers. Then a hesitant smile follows, and a voice-over starts giving a horribly cheesy description of the relationship, while a compilation of short moments through the years plays.
At least that's what his sisters' movies told him.
He can't remember the first time he met Bella Swan. All he knows is that she was always there, that their parents gave the two of them one of those looks, that they always laughed when they saw hem holding hands or making mud pies. That his sisters teased him about it, that his friends were slightly offended when they found out the chief's daughter's presence was preferred to theirs. That the beach seemed better when she was there, that shells he found in the sand were only pretty when she said they were.
He does remember how they used to lie in the wet grass of his font yard and look up at the stars. She was counting the stars in the sky, he was counting those in her eyes. Neither ever knew how many there were. From a distance, he was told when he was older, their parents watched them and joked about how they were going to get married.
The one time she bragged about being taller than him - years ago, obviously - and how he'd felt offended and sworn he'd one day be taller than her.
And maybe, way back then, it really was just an innocent, cute little crush that parents could joke about. She was the older girl with the long shiny hair and brown eyes that sparkled like stars in a night sky, and he was the smitten little boy.
Well, I was sixteen when suddenly
I wasn't that little girl boy you used to see
But your eyes still shined like pretty lights
Nine years since the cute crush and Jacob Black still harboured it, slightly mortified about how he still had it bad for the girl with the pink cheeks and the brown eyes. His sisters, friends, and dad still teased him about getting married, but really, what chance did he have? What did a childhood crush matter when she could go for the boy with the nice car and the face that belonged on the cover of GQ Magazine?
Not that much.
Still, that didn't stop him for staring longingly at her when her head was turned the other way, remembering the stars in the sky and thinking that he did have a point back then. It didn't stop him from enjoying every smile he got out of her, it didn't stop him from pulling her out of that funk. She hadn't forgotten about the pale boy, not yet, but he'd waited for nine years, he figured he could wait a little longer.
If he'd thought fixing her made him feel amazingly good, then knowing she didn't mind his furry issues practically made him burst with happiness. He thought that it had ruined everything, but Bella turned out to be good with weird.
If anything, it only helped her out of her funk even more. Jacob could barely stand the morning light whenever he woke up, because he knew another sucky day was waiting and he'd barely slept and as long as the red-headed bitch was still running around, nothing was bound to change. But after she found out, Bella was there for him after patrol. Instead of fixing cars or Bella, he spent his afternoons sleeping on her couch while she was reading or studying. For once she did the talking. Usually about stuff that wasn't really interesting, but it turned out she could change pasta sauce into a tremendously good subject. Despite being asleep half of the time, he knew this.
She still had her quiet afternoons, the ones on which the bags under her eyes were a little darker and her smile a little less genuine, her face a little less expressive whenever she did talk.
He was sixteen and she was eighteen, but neither seemed bothered by that. She could choose to date other guys, ones that could offer her a better, normal life, but he was the one she kissed on a particularly rainy afternoon. It took them another two weeks to kiss again, but it was a start.
When a surprisingly warm Saturday morning rolled around, they went to Port Angeles. They watched people, chatted about everything and nothing, held hands and felt normal for the first time in what seemed like ages. His original plan was to kiss her once she was back to being herself again-the happy, shy girl he'd met on the beach over a year and a half ago-but that afternoon in Port Angeles he realised she was never going to be that girl again.
As he was never going to be the innocent, smitten boy he used to be; she was never going to be the little, happy girl again. She'd grown, she had her heart broken and she'd been depressed. His mum had died, his sisters had left, he'd gotten shit for all sorts of things he couldn't even help and top it all off, he was a werewolf who was supposed to take the responsibility to lead the Pack.
Not long after that day, they had their first fight as a couple. Thinking that phrase always made his stomach turn in a good, tingly way, but during the fight he couldn't have cared less. Yet the moment she slammed the door behind her back, he slumped down on their front porch and pathetically waited the entire night.
It dawned on him that, even though they'd both matured a little, next to nothing had changed when it came to his love for her.
A few years had gone and come around
We were sitting at our favourite spot in town
And you looked at me, got down on one knee
It only seemed appropriate to go down on his knee and ask her on the beach, to surprise her with a small golden band on their spot. But when the moment arrived, he couldn't summon the courage and his heart beat somewhere in his throat, blocking the ability to talk coherently.
After this failure of an attempt, he took his time to regain the courage.
It never got that far. No one was more shocked than Jacob when his girlfriend went down on her knee and popped out a simple ring. The gleam of the jewellery matched the sparkle in her eyes, he thought, and again, it seemed nothing had changed.
Take me back to the time when we walked down the aisle
Our whole town came and our mamas cried
As he said "I do", he registered an all too familiar pang of loss when he realised, in the back of his mind, it should've been two women blubbering about how their little sweethearts had grown up in the blink of an eye, not one. The thought isn't pushed back into a dark corner, though. The moment he sees Bella's blindingly beautiful smile, an action that stopped needing his coaxing a long time ago, the thought is shushed because he needs to kiss his wife.
I'll be eighty-seven; you'll be eighty-nine
I'll still look at you like the stars that shine
In the sky, oh my my my...
For as far Jacob Black knows, his love story begins with a pair of brown eyes, still shining like stars. The owner of the eyes is now holding her grandchild, making weird, incoherent noises and gushing over her son's baby girl. She looks up at Jacob with a look that seems to say "How could I have ever thought of throwing this away?"
Her face is not young and pale anymore. Although still not tanned, it seemed to finally show the sun's effect after all these years. Crinkles and wrinkles can be clearly seen in her face, something she'd initially freaked out about, but gotten used to as time passed by. Her hair is greying, naturally, but to his surprise she decided to keep dying it a chestnut brown. "It's a little piece of who I used to be," she'd said, and it shouldn't have surprised him, given she'd always had this slight obsession with being and looking young, despite being a mortal human.
He doesn't really care what colour her hair is, though, or what shade of pale her skin. He can see all the Bellas, through the wrinkles and the grey roots. He sees the pretty, little nine year-old, he sees the shy seventeen year-old, the lost eighteen year-old, the nineteen year-old in love, the nervous twenty-two year-old glowing with happiness, the thirty-six year-old filled with motherly pride, and finally the current Bella, the wrinkled one who's smiling more broadly than her son because of the birth of her grandchild.
He still loses himself in her eyes, counting the stars in them, like he's always done. Nothing has stayed the same, yet concurrently, nothing has changed at all