I was sitting on a bus last week, listening to 'All of This' (that wonderful Blink 182 song with the haunting Robert Smith vocals) and thinking how brilliantly it would fit Jake. If Jake had ran across America instead of to Canada, if he had never come back to see the wedding and simply assumed that Bella had been turned right afterwards.
Rights of the song to Blink 182, and the character of Jacob to the amazing Stephenie Meyer.
Enjoy! And reviews are always nice...
With all of this I know now
Everything inside of my head
It all just goes to show how
Nothing I know changes me at all…
The apartment was small, grotty. The living room doubled as the bedroom, the kitchen the size of a bathroom. With a sigh, he pushed himself off the futon, and kicked it back into couch-form.
It was 6pm. He hadn't made it into work again today. He wondered idly how long it would be before this employer lost interest and got rid of him. What had it been- four, maybe five days now? He couldn't remember for sure. The days had once again started to become an unsubstantiated mass, each one indistinguishable from the last. He could feel the itching beginning underneath his skin, the itching that always directly preceded a sudden departure for an identikit city in a nearby state. Working his way across North America this way, he had never lasted longer than six weeks in any given place.
Working his way across North America…
He laughed shortly as he registered the thought. His laugh was always bitter now.
He wasn't working his way across North America. He was fleeing, admittedly from nothing at all. But fleeing just as surely as he would be if his worst fear was breathing perfumed air down the back of his neck.
He threw on frayed black jeans, the first shirt his fingers touched.
He was fleeing so he didn't have to think. Knowledge was an awful thing. The knowledge he was running from was inside his head; he could never truly escape it. He was aware of this. The awareness wasn't enough to quench the desperate need to run.
He was fleeing so he didn't have to feel.
Again, I wait for this
To change instead
To tear the world in two…
He propped his elbows up on the bar, tipped the glass of whiskey into his mouth and grimaced as the burning slowly made its way down his throat.
The room was dark. If he was looking, he would have been able to make out the dark forms huddled around small tables, murmuring softly to each other. He wasn't looking.
His eyes were vacant as he knocked back another whiskey, waiting.
A door opened in the far corner of the bar, catching dust motes in the air and sending sparkling whirlwinds through the patches of light. He squinted his eyes, following them. If he looked at her with the same expression: eyes half closed, gaze lethargic: she almost looked like…
She walked towards him across the dim room, the closing door shutting out the light previously framing her entrance.
Short in height, slim in stature. Pale for California. Brown tresses falling down her back.
She slid into the seat beside him, watching in wait for his greeting.
It was all wrong now.
When she had walked over to him, the walk was far too pronounced. The self-confidence was obvious in it. When she motioned to the barman, the silver bracelets around her wrist clattered into each other. The tinkling echoed in the quiet room. When she looked up at him, the eyeliner was thick and the lips an unnatural ruby-red.
It was all wrong now.
Another night with her, but I'm always wanting you.
He sat back against the futon. She walked slowly towards him.
He wanted to stop her before she got too close. He wanted to freeze her in the moment, keep her within the realms of fantasy while he looked at her with his half-shut eyes. Believe that she was his worst fear and most desired hope, finally come for him.
But he didn't stop her and she kept walking, wrecking his fantasy and breaking his already trashed heart with her nearing proximity.
Straddling him now. He could smell the alcohol on her breath as she leaned into him, see the eyeliner smudges and droplets of sweat on her forehead.
Her mouth covered his, and he was on his back.
Use me Holly, come on and use me
We know where we go.
He pushed deeper inside her and she responded with a load groan and dragged her nails down his back.
Just like she had every night for the past three weeks.
It was her escape; the only one she had right now.
The only time when she wasn't seen as a single mom right out of her teenage years, stuck in a dead-end job to make ends meet, relying on her mother's charitable babysitting to give her some small semblance of a life.
To him, she was none of those things. She doubted he even knew her name. But that was okay.
She was using him, to put it bluntly. Using him to forget, if only for a small period of time each night. Using him to be someone else, to be anyone but herself.
A sweet, burning perfection was spreading through her like wildfire, and then it was done. She rolled off him and stared at his face.
Every night, he got the same look in his eye. It was so full of heartbroken resignation that she felt something snap inside her each time she saw it.
She wondered what he was using her for. But she would never ask.
She doubted he even knew her name.
Use me Holly, come on and use me
We go where we know.
He pushed deeper inside her and she responded with a load groan and dragged her nails down his back. He barely felt it, but he responded to the fever in the action.
He closed his eyes, as he always did.
He imagined that she was someone else. He imagined that she was the someone else. The only someone else who was ever in his head.
He was using her, just as she was using him. Only he was using her to stay alive. His pretences were enough to keep him moving, keep him living. Enough to keep him hoping that one day he might not have to pretend anymore, that this closeness he shared with a sea of faces over the continent could be shared with the only one who mattered.
The burning spread through him as it had her, and he was lost for a moment. He forgot everything: who he was, what he was, what he wished for more than anything. He grasped the perfection of complete ignorance for the shortest period of time, and then it was gone. He was himself again and he opened his eyes.
He was using her, just as he had used them all, for that one solitary moment where he could be free.
She rolled off him and looked into his eyes.
He couldn't remember her name.
With all of this I feel now
Everything inside of my heart
It all just seems to be how
Nothing I feel pulls at me at all…
He told her he wouldn't be at the bar the next night while she pulled on her clothes. He never allowed her to stay the night. She never wanted to, anyway.
Her face remained impassive while she processed the news. He walked her to the door. She walked through the frame, and he moved to shut it behind her when she pushed her way back in.
Before he could think, she had kissed him and was gone.
Not the rough, angry kiss he was used to. A soft kiss, a sweet kiss.
She had never kissed him at the door before.
He understood that it was her way of saying goodbye, and thought about what kind of life he was sending her back to. But he couldn't bring himself to care very much.
Again, I wait for this to pull apart;
To break my time in two…
Another city, another dinghy motel room.
His first night, he wandered around aimlessly for a few hours, like he always did. Hoping and fearing at the same time, praying to come across some trace of her and apprehensive about the reaction it would release within him if he did.
He never found anything. His attempts became more half-hearted with every failed city. The first time he stopped running after La Push he had spent the entire night looking for her scent. Tonight he was lucky if he lasted three hours.
Another city, another bar.
He sat on a stool at the bar, facing out towards the rest of the room. He watched the couples sat across from each other, gently stroking hands or bumping knees under the table. He watched coquettish girls bat their eyelashes to groups of men. He watched a small group of friends laugh raucously, already a little drunk despite the early hour.
He felt eyes burn into the back of his head, and turned slightly. From the corner of his eye he took in the group of three girls, two tall and blonde, and their shorter dark-haired friend.
He smiled slightly; the darker one could work. He turned back to face the bar and ordered a drink.
He felt someone tap his shoulder, and looked up to see one of the blondes.
She sat down next to him and he was about to dismiss her when she looked him straight in the eye.
"Hi, I'm Bella."
Another night with her but I'm always wanting you.
This time he could let himself go completely. Shut his eyes and gasp out her name, kid himself that she was the one writhing beneath him.
The images exploded in his mind as her name went spinning around in circles. He collapsed into her when it was done, opened his eyes to see a pool of long blonde hair.
He couldn't help himself, he jumped up as though electrocuted. She watched him in confusion. He grabbed his clothes and threw them on, and ran out of her apartment.
She's all I need…
He paced the streets, stopped in a dark alleyway to throw up.
She's all I dream…
Collapsing in a heap on the cold ground, he wept for the first time in three years.
She's all I'm always wanting.
He sobbed for everything he'd left behind in La Push. He sobbed for Billy, and for Sam. He sobbed for the rest of the pack. He sobbed for Charlie, losing his daughter like he'd lost his best friend. He sobbed for all the time he had lost, for what he might have been.
She's all I need
She's all I dream
She's all…
I'm always wanting you.
Most of all, he sobbed for her.
He sobbed for her, for the loss of her humanity, for the loss of the person she would have become. The person he would have become if she had been there to help form him. The couple they would have made, the children they would have had.
He sobbed for all he had lost because of her, sobbed because he couldn't blame her for it.
He wasn't over her, he would never be over her.
He ran so he wouldn't dwell on his thoughts of her, wouldn't end up in cold alleyways sobbing endlessly while the thought of her name smashed up his insides.
I'm always wanting you.