This is my first shot at a fic.

Rated M for mature content, language, adult situations. Lemons, people! Don't read if you're under 18!

I don't own anything Twilight. SM owns it all, I'm just messing around! I hope you enjoy it.

It's been a year almost to the day that the Cullens took off. Edward spouting some bullshit about him not being human enough for me. I deserve a normal life...I live in Forks you jackass. There is no such thing as normal here.

I was sitting on an old driftwood log on First Beach in La Push, waiting as Leah ran to the refreshments cooler to get us another can of coke. My mind wandered as I watched the deep gray-blue waves of the Pacific reach for my bared feet on the pebbled beach. The sun was high in the sky, though inevitably hidden by fluffy gray clouds. My cream colored henley top and denim skinny jeans kept the chill at bay until my space heater returned with the drink.

I looked back to the beginning of how all this came to be, and I couldn't find it in myself to be angry. He left and I, of course, completely lost my mind, though no one knows that. I spent four months locked in my own purgatory, sitting in the weathered rocking chair in the corner of my room. The same chair Edward occupied during his nightly visits. The only time I had retreated from my self induced psychosis was to pretend I was alright for Charlie and for school. It wasn't very hard to convince people that I was okay. I had never really been a gossip queen or social butterfly and people left me alone for the most part.

A couple of people from school were ballsy enough to straight up ask me how I felt about Edward "ditching me", but all I told them was it wasn't his fault his family had to move to LA. That, of course was a cover. They didn't move to LA, but I couldn't deviate from their story. I'd promised them all that I would keep their secret and I wouldn't break that promise.

Four months into my purgatory, Jake showed up, rolling Billy into the kitchen and up to the table with a shit eating grin on his beautiful face. I'd had my back to the entryway when they entered, but when I heard the squeak of the wheelchair, I turned in time to catch a wink from Billy and see Jake's smile.

Uh oh. I thought to myself. They have something up their sleeves.

Meddling troublemakers. I had a feeling my father was in on this...Probably even the instigator.

I braced my hands against the yellowed linoleum countertop and leaned my butt against the cupboard behind me while I watched Jake finish pushing Billy up to the dining table. Jake's long muscled arm reached down, pulling the brake of the wheelchair, before straightening himself up to his...really tall height!

Woah

Jake grew...a lot! Where four months ago he had been barely a head taller than my short five foot four, and skinny as a rail, here standing before me I watched slack jawed and wide eyed. He had to be almost six and a half feet tall. Jake's grin, oddly enough, stretched wider as he saw my incredulity.

"Like what you see, Bells?" He asked me as he made his way the few short steps from behind Billy at the table to me at the counter. Even his voice, which had been just this side of puberty, had deepened to a honeyed bass. He held his hugely muscled arms open, his palms up, long thick fingers wiggling. "Come on, I ain't got all day. Gimme a hug!"

I internally shook myself out of my incredible stupor and launched myself into my best friend. He enclosed me into his chest, trapping me against him with his burliness. I snuggled my face into his neck, breathing him in. I'm not sure why, but he made me feel whole. The throbbing intensity in my chest had vanished completely in the Quileute's arms. This was the most life I had shown in four long months and I had a sneaking suspicion that this was exactly why Charlie thought to invite the two tribesmen over tonight.

Charlie wasn't big on words. He knew I was hurting over my loss, though he appreciated that I didn't go catatonic on him like some overly dramatic teenage pansies tended to do after a breakup. No, I kept my pain locked away, only to emerge when I sat in that rocking chair in the privacy of my own room.

"Jake!" I gasped into his neck. His hold tightened around my waist. My legs dangling many inches off the floor as he held me close. I couldn't squeeze another word out. Not for lack of air but because my emotions got ahold of me. I was so grateful to see him again. It had been far too long. Edward was never confortable with my going to La Push with Charlie. He had never told me why, but I appeased him as often as I could. I loved Edward with all that I had and I just couldn't bear to see the pain in his eyes when I would hop in the cruiser with my father to go to a bonfire or barbeque at Billy's.

That was over now. There was no Edward to give me his overly pleading expressions and in Jake's arms, there was no pain from him leaving me behind. There was only rightness, strength, and completeness. I didn't understand it, but I accepted it wholeheartedly.

Jake's arms slackened slightly and I slid down the length of his body before my converse clad feet touched the tiled floor of the kitchen. I glanced at Billy who was watching us with a twinkle in his eye and he winked again when he saw me looking. His tanned elder features alight with a mischievousness that I've never seen from him before. Billy was always very cordial, almost fatherly to me, but once he had tried to warn me against having Edward as my boyfriend and I didn't heed his warning, he'd grown distant. Almost cold. It was refreshing to see this happiness from him.

"Hey, Billy." I said as I stepped back from Jake and walked to the older man, bending slightly to kiss his cheek. His sleek black hair hung loose over his shoulders and I brushed it back with my hand as I hugged him close. His strong arms came up around my shoulders as he hugged me tightly.

"It's been too long, Bella. You've made an old man sad." His eyes still held the mischief, but I could see the truth of his statement clear as day. I looked to him with apology in my eyes as I straightened back up, once again running my fingers through his silky smooth hair. "No, Bells. Don't look at me like that. Everything happens for a reason and everything will be okay now. I love you like my own daughter -"

Billy was cut off by a loud snort coming from the kitchens entryway. We all turned our heads to see Charlie standing there, shoulder leaning against the door jamb dressed in his Forks Chief of Police uniform.

"You can't have her, old man. She's mine." His moustache twitched as he tried to keep his features stern. His deep brown eyes darted from Billy's to mine and back before he let out a low short guffaw.

"Keep it up, Charlie and you won't have a choice but to give her to me. You should've seen the greeting between these two!" Billy waved his hand between Jake and myself and I could feel my face heat up from my blush. Jake smiled widely as he threw his enormous arm over my shoulders and pulled me close to his side. Charlie's moustache lifted as he smiled a real smile for the first time in months. I smiled with them.

That was the first day I had felt whole. My world had been in the proverbial gutter but Jake, as always, made it beautiful.

I was brought out of my thoughts as Leah plopped herself down onto the driftwood next to me, hand stretched in my direction holding an ice cold can of coke-a-cola.

"Where the hell were you just now, Swan?" She asked me as she opened her own soda before taking a long pull of the fizzy liquid. Leah's short inky hair was cropped into an asymmetrical bob, longer on the left side by a couple of inches, shorn in the back. Her long tanned legs were displayed in her short cutoff denim shorts and her blue lace cami covered her top. She was barefooted also.

I glanced sideways at her before taking my own drink. Licking my lips, I pushed a strand of hair off my face and answered her, "Just remembering how Jake saved me from myself."

It was good an answer as any. It has been a year. I turned nineteen today and three days from now it will have been exactly a year that Edward broke my heart. I am whole now, no longer escaping to my own personal purgatory, but sometimes I still feel a twinge. An ache I can't explain. I don't miss Edward. I don't miss his love and my friends know this, but they are aware that something is missing for me. That something hasn't taken from my day to day life, but it's there sometimes nonetheless. I've been feeling it more and more as the anniversary of the start of my purgatory comes closer.

Leah stood and held her slim hand out toward me. Grasping onto her, I let her pull me up to standing and she pulled me into her side as we turned toward the parking lot of First Beach.

"Let's go get ready for tonight." She said to me.

Welp, I have no idea what I'm doing, but IF you want to read more, review!