All recognizable characters are the property of Stephenie Meyer. All other characters and storylines are the property of ElizabethMN. Thank you for respecting copyright law!

It was just so fucking typical.

My car died on the way home. I walked into the house and discovered my cat threw up. To top it off, the crème de la crème, I had two voicemails on my house phone.

This could mean several things:

My mom was drunk and was bawling about either being a terrible mother she is or what a terrible daughter I am.

Jake wanted to talk about our 'relationship.'

My boss was unhappy with me and chose to call my home on a Friday instead of waiting until Monday to tell me this.

I dropped my bag to the floor and kicked off my shoes. I shrugged off my coat and let it fall on top of the shoes and bag. I just didn't care right now. I didn't have it in me.

I dived onto the couch and closed my eyes. I'm just going to ignore all of it, and maybe it'll go away. Yep. That tactic had worked so well in the past, I snorted quietly.

The Smith's Girlfriend in a Coma sang out from my pocket. Renata's ringtone. I smiled for the first time that day. "Ren, hey!"

"Yooooooo," Ren boomed acrossed the line. I laughed.

"I'm glad you called. What's happening?"

Renata sighed. "Many things, but too many for a phone conversation. Want to go out with me tonight? Nothing big, just to Earle's?" Earle's was a small dive bar a block away. Renata knew that her odds of getting me out of my apartment increased expontentially if it was easy for me. I'm selfish that way, she's unyieldingly accommodating that way. Renata was oddly good at keeping the creepers away from us. I have no idea what vibe she worked to do that, but I'll say this – it worked for me. They'd stumble towards us, Renata would glare, and they'd stumble away. It was glorious, really.

"Sure, when?"

"Whenever."

I glanced at the clock. 6:45. "Just let me change my clothes. Say, a half hour?" Renata agreed.

Earle's was a little more crowded than usual when I got there. I pushed the door open, welcoming the familiar blast of hot air against the cold night and smell of cheap booze.

"Oy! Bella!" Apparently Renata was going for her 'Man U hooligan' stylings tonight. This usually meant heavy intoxication, a terrible accent, and loads of aggression on her part. For me, it meant heavy intoxication and bail money for her. I spotted her in the corner of the bar, her head in her hand. Not a part of the hooligan character. Huh.

I wove my way through the crowd. "Renata, hey."

She looked up. She looked terrible. Dark circles ringed her pretty brown eyes. The lines in her forehead looked like she etched in them with eyeliner. This was not the wild girl I knew.

"Rennie? What's going on, girl?" I pulled my bar stool close to her.

"Remember Garrett? We're done."

I blanched. "Gigantor? You ended it with Gigantor?" Renata dubbed him Gigantor for obvious reasons. I was shocked.

"No," she said quietly, "his wife is in remission and he wants to try again with her."

Oh shit, I thought. This is going to be messy. Renata was tall, blonde, gorgeous. Smart. Educated. And a prostitute. I met her six years ago, in another lifetime, in New York. As a fresh college graduate, she couldn't find work that paid well enough to afford her apartment in Brooklyn. She hit the internet and trolled for 'sugar daddies.' She found them.

She found Garrett.

Renata specialized in men with messed up marriages. She preferred them married, 'so they don't get any funny ideas about some whacky relationship.' She said she was sexually liberated from the confines of the patriarchy. Maybe, but that didn't erase all her daddy issues. She talked about her men with an almost maternal fondness. Renata believed she was a good outlet for their sexual frustrations, emotionally unavailable, a sexual therapist of sorts. She was paid very well for her methodology.

Garrett started out like the others. He was locked in a dead marriage to a woman dying of cancer. He and his wife fell out of love years ago, but they retained some weird sort of friendly intensity. They kept together but slept apart. When she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, Garrett started seeing Renata.

I saw him once as he was leaving her house. I pulled up just as he walked out the door. He was handsome in a 'I like to kayak and shit outdoors' way. His brown hair pulled into a ponytail, Tevas strapped to his feet. Something about him screamed honesty. Renata was urbane, snarky, sneaky. I couldn't see them together at all, but opposites, of course, attract. When he left her house that day, Garrett looked at Renata with real tenderness. "See you soon, gorgeous," he said, cupping her face in his huge hand. Renata fucking tittered, her eyes aglow.

And now he was back with his apparently no-longer-dying wife.

I put my arm over her shoulders and held her tight. She leaned into me and exhaled slowly.

"Please don't say anything right now," she whispered.

"Okay," I whispered back.

We couldn't say anything more if we wanted to, however. A voice boomed through the bar, "BELLA! Hey!"

I groaned and let go of Ren. I plastered on a smile and turned towards the voice. "Jacob. Hi." I kept my voice flat.

Renata muttered, "and the four-year one night stand returns." She glared at him. He tripped on his feet but kept focused on me.

Jake strode up to me and pulled me tight. "I'm glad you got my message. This means… I am just so happy," he said with quiet intensity. He smashed my face into his chest. His cologne was a little too strong. He squeezed me so hard I worried about bruises. Luckily, he couldn't see my confused and highly pissed off face.

Renata asked curiously, "What message?" I pushed myself off him angrily. He kept his arm wrapped around my waist. Asshole. I huffed. Jake remained oblivious.

"It's my birthday!" Jake crowed, "and I wanted all my friends to finally meet my girl. I left a message on her machine earlier. And Bella and I, well…" He turned to me, "I guess we both know what this means, huh?" He gave me a knowing smile.

"Jacob…," I began, exasperated. I was cut off by the arrival of three tall men. They crowded around our tiny bar table, greeting Jake and giving each other shit.

Renata looked amused; I narrowed my eyes at her. She looked pointedly at Jake's arm around my waist and raised her eyebrows. I gave her my full-on hate glare. She laughed.

"Guys," Jake grinned, "this is my Bella and her friend Renata." Jake's friends were handsome. They seemed cool. I was shocked.

"Actually, I just prefer Bella, no title attached," I said wryly.

"We can't call you Bella, Esquire? It'd be as awesome as Bill S. Preston, Esq." the shortest one, Paul, laughed.

I half-smiled at the Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure reference. "Since I'm not a member of Wyld Stallyons, it won't be as excellent."

They all laughed loudly. I realized they were pretty wasted.

"What about Mistress Bella?" the sandy hair one waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Renata broke in, "Nope, I'm borrowing her whip." Again, more loud laughs. I think one of them muttered something about 'pussy whipped' but I wasn't sure.

Jake's friends and Renata helped off-set Jake's presence. I couldn't shake him off though. He kept a hand on me the whole night. He shot me side-long glances I didn't understand. At the end of the night, the steady stream of affection was really pissing me off. That's just not what we did. We weren't a couple, for godssakes. He chased me, I got drunk, we had mediocre sex. Lather, rinse, repeat. Pete and Repeat in a boat. Jacob knew that I didn't want anything serious. Comments like, "Jacob, I don't want anything serious" should've tipped the man off. It didn't.

I managed to shrug off his hand off my back long enough to go to the bathroom. Jake looked like he wanted to follow me, but I just rolled my eyes at him. As I crouched in the stall, I heard two women talking about Jake. He was a regular, a pretty popular guy, so I wasn't surprised. What the women did say, however, almost caused me to tip over.

"So Jake is looking good tonight. It's a goddamn shame." Skank One sighed.

"What a waste." Skank Two agreed. They were silent for a moment.

"I know. I can't believe he's marrying Bella." Skank One said. I stopped breathing. What?

"Seriously, she's like, a huge bitch or whatever. And she's like, super mean to Jake. Whatever, they won't last longer than, I don't know, a year or something." Skank Two opined.

Huge bitch, super mean to Jake I could live with. But as his wife? What put that rumor into the mill? I thought about Jake's furtive smiles, his clinginess. I inwardly groaned. Please God, I prayed as the skanks started talking about Jacob's penis and my lack of personality. Please let this just be a rumor. A huge, easily dismissed rumor.

The knot in my stomach told me otherwise.

As I continued to bargain with God, Skank One and Two slinked out of the bathroom. I followed soon after, feeling completely sober. What should I do? Laugh it off with Jake? Ask him about it? Ignore it? Ignore it, I decided uneasily, I'm acting like the skanks are a reliable source of information. This wouldn't be the first time I'd heard them say something completely false.

I warily made my way over to our table. Renata had sad eyes and her arms around Paul, Jake's friend. The guys were doing shots. My anxiety spiked as Jake looked at me with an enormous smile. No, no, no, no, I told myself, just a rumor just a rumor.

"THERE SHE IS!" Jacob yelled. "MY BRIDE!"

No, I thought as I fainted.

I woke up suddenly, disoriented. I whipped my aching head around. I was on Renata's couch with a massive headache. The late morning sunlight peeked through her white sheer curtains. My face was lined by the creases in her pillows and my head ached. I wasn't sure, but I think Renata put her living room set on a carousel. I was rank with the smell of old alcohol and the lingering scent of cigarettes in my hair. Gross. I wiped a little drool off my chin, embarrassed. What happened?

Renata ducked her head out of the kitchen door. "Coffee's on," she whispered.

"Ooooh," I moaned, dropping my head in my hands.

Renata blanched. "Seriously, girl, keep it down. And drink some water."

A half-gallon of water, two Advils and one hot shower later, I was approaching feeling human again. I made my way into Renata's kitchen wearing some of her clothes and found her nursing another cup of coffee, an empty cereal bowl in front of her. She looked hung-over and sad. It broke my heart a little to see her like that.

"Girl, you are bleary-eyed!" she snorted.

"Yeah. Okay. I admit to that. Now what exactly happened last night?" My head felt like it was underwater.

Renata's eyebrows shot up. "Before you fainted or after?"

I thought for a moment. "I remember someone picking me up off the ground. I remember starting a lot of shots. Then I remember waking up here this morning massively hung over. I feel like I'm missing some pertinent details in that middle section."

Renata laughed, "Yes, some salient facts are absent, Ms. Smarty-pants."

I stopped, mid-pour of another cup of coffee. "Did… Am I making it up… Did Jacob say we were getting married?"

Renata's smile slid off her face. "Uh, yes. You, sweet girl, are in a fucked up situation. Why'd you let it get so out of hand?!"

I didn't have an answer for that. I sighed. "I have some guesses, old therapists probably have more guesses than me, but really, I have no idea. Question is, what the hell do I do now?"

"Hello – you tell him NO."

I squirmed. "Yeah, but how?" A thought shot into my head, "And how did Jacob think we were getting married in the first place? When did I say yes?" I slammed my coffee down a little too hard. It sloshed over onto the table.

Renata pursed her lips. "Check your machine."

"Oh hell to the NO. Renata, no one proposes on an answering machine. Seriously. Nobody. Not even Jacob is that dense."

Renata spoke very slowly, "Check. Your. Machine. Bella."

I picked up her cell phone on the table and called my house. I punched in my code and my breath caught when Jacob's usually booming voice came across the line. He sounded somber. The man didn't do somber. Shit, I thought. I should've listened to the stupid voicemail. It would've been so easy! Dang.

"Er… Hey. Bells. You know, it's me… Jacob."

Duh.

"Anyway, so I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. You know, about the future. Or whatever. And… and… I want you in my future, Bells."

My stomach sank.

"So, I know you're… not so good with confrontation… or direct questions…"

True, Jacob. Fair point.

"And it's kind of hard to read you sometimes. So, I thought this might work for you."

BEEEP. The machine cut him off. I skipped forward to the next message.

"Whoa. It's Jake still. Hi Bells. Okay, so anyway, I'm going to Earle's tonight. If you show up, then I know our relationship can… go to the next level. I mean, not immediately, but someday. Someday soon."

His voice deepened.

"Bells, I know we've never said it to each other, but we go way back… And I know your dad would be happy with us… and I love…"

BEEEP. The machine cut him off again. I dropped my head to the table. "Renata, did you know about that?" I asked, my voice muffled.

"Well, I learned about it last night. Jake explained it as you worked your way through many, many shots. Also, I learned you are very flexible."

My face went white. "What?"

"Yeah. You demonstrated your flexibility for the bar. Jack-off Jacob loved it. I got you off the table." Renata shot me a hard look. I can be kind of belligerent when I drink. Oops.

"So," Renata continued, "What are you going to do?"

"You know, I don't know. I do know that I'm entirely too hung-over to deal with this right now. I think I'm going to head home."

Renata's forehead creased, "Listen, your drama is easier to deal with than mine right now. Are you sure you don't want to hash this out?"

Guilt washed over me. "God, listen to all this talk about me. How are you? Do you want to talk about Gar-"

Renata cut me off. "Don't even say his name." Her voice cracked. "I just can't…" She looked over my shoulder, out the window.

Her eyes fixed back on me determinedly. Oh shit. This could be either really a good thing or a bad thing. "I need to leave town. Like, right now."

"What?"

"I want to flee. Turn my tail and run. Quit when things get tough. Take the easy way out."

"Okay, Ren, I catch your drift, but just… what? Where do you plan to flee? What's your fleeing destination?"

Renata took a deep breath and said exactly what I never expected her to say.

"Northern Minnesota. You and me. We're going."