Her life's written poorly like a bad episode of some telenovela, she thinks. With a touch of supernatural madness and a whole ton of teenage drama. The cheap imitations of Shakespearian love of all ages. That type.
Somewhere her own soap opera was hijacked by the new pretty white girl. Her life. Jacob's. Sam's. Her brother's.
They're just the minor characters. Well, not Jacob. She is. It certainly feels that way.
Another subplot left unresolved.
This is the clichéd part—a staple of any high school romance drama. The rejected lover broods by the sea.
Leah sits, ripped jean shorts and long legs dangling, over large and jagged boulders. Cool water nipping her feet in little feline bites as the foaming sea waves lunging at the shore. The breezy wind ruffling though her tangled ebony locks.
She squints at the aestival sun peaking behind grey clouds streaking the white canvass skies. A stray pebble whizzing across the ocean's restless waves before it sinks.
"I don't think that's how this is supposed to work," Leah points out, tosses a fleeting gaze at Jacob.
The sun casts a fleeting summery glow on him. Highlighting a face polished by puberty and weathered by the world. Dried tears colour his cheeks. He tucks a loose strand behind his ear, black hair slowly growing out from cropped hairstyle.
"I don't care," Jacob sneers, "It's not like the world's going to end if I throw them the wrong way." His forehead creases, swings his muscled arm and another stone flies into the horizon. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. His white dress shirt—a size too small on him—untucked. A red bowtie jutting out from his black trousers' back pocket.
"That's a fair point," Leah concedes, returns to stare the undulating waves.
The silence between them isn't awkward. It's the kind of the quietness that wraps you with a fleece blanket of peace. Cocoons you from any illness that troubles you—Sam, Bella. Drowns all that sounds into a symphony crafted by Mother Nature's composing hands.
Leah closes her eyes. Thinks back to first time she laid eyes on him. He, tousled bedroom hair and duck-printed pyjamas, stood at the far back of the room, almost forgotten as grief descended on the Blacks like a heavy downpour.
His father clutching his mother's cold, lifeless hand—begging for his wife to wake up. His sisters, hugged each other tightly, sobbing so hard that their cries are etched in Leah's thirteen year old memory.
Only nine years old, and his whole world gone off its axis. In a normal way. Before the crazy weirdness exploded into their lives.
(Leah still loomed over him then. Her mother told him to hug the boy. Leah did, but he stood so still—he could be a tree. He never cried once.)
Some things changed. The chubby boy who loves video games and motorcycles, now wears the skin of a mystical protector. A man with leadership inheritance weighing down on his spine.
It took some time to get used to glance up into the chestnut eyes of a boy who once stained her best Sunday dress with his funeral tears. He's too tall, towers over her like he's the elf to her hobbit. Built like an Olympic swimmer.
But really, deep down—they're just lonely.
Nobody wears loneliness better than a couple of broken-hearted wolves. She got an ex-lover and a scarred cousin locked in a genetic binding. He's learning the harsh truth that first loves are so overrated.
It's when Jacob runs out of pebbles, Leah pats the empty space next to her. He sits without protesting, crossing his legs.
Silence can only keep the troubles at bay for so long. Trouble has a way of catching up. Fury disappointment will flood his mind, paints his thoughts in fangs and red. No one will be saved from being engulfed by the acrimony of another brother.
He's twiddling his bowtie, creasing the fabric. To the point of ripping Billy's bowtie. She doesn't reach out and stop him from destroying the innocent bowtie.
"So I met Taylor Jones yesterday," Leah says, drawing away from the thunderstorms brewing inside his mind.
There's nothing special about Taylor Jones. Just a name that intersects their lives together. One of those dust-clouded memories long before Bella blows out the normalcy from their lives.
"Which Taylor Jones?"
"There is only one."
He struggles to recall. Does that thing with his lips, where he chews on them when he's thinking. His black hair flopping left and right.
"His father owned a mattress warehouse in Forks," she offers. She doesn't say, that the Jones boy tore her favourite backpack. Or that Jacob with his six year-old glory attacked him. Or the fact after Taylor left running for his father, Jacob wrapped his tiny arms around her, patting her back.
"Ah," Jacob says, slapping his hands together, "the boy who cried after you got into a fist fight with him."
"That's the fucking one," she replies, lips parting to a smirk. "He's been grooming to be the next mattress king in Forks."
His eyebrows nearly reaches his hairline. "Him?"
"Yes, him. When he's finally acquired the throne to the mattress empire, you get bragging rights to say you bit his ankle in a fit of rage."
He scrunches his nose in confusion. "I bit him? I don't remember."
Leah snorts. "Of course you don't. You were only six. It's a life without her." Her words aren't harsh. Jacob still winces at the slightest reference to that leech lover.
His stories are different than hers. Made clear by the plots they went through. Ask her how she sees her and him. Leah will answer, they're two people with intertwining paths but hardly connected by the main roads. This is not about her.
So Leah forges on, talks about the facets of childhood that eludes him. The ones she recalls every detail so vividly, he eagerly takes it in. The memories. To get away from the mess he'd fallen into.
(She'd carried it with for so long. Those days when she's just Leah without the betrayal committed by her own body. Sam's just Sam, the boy whose goofy grin still stirs flutters in Leah's naive heart. Jacob's the boy whose cheeks flushed bright red when Leah talked to him.
Maybe in a different life. An alternate universe. She would had given that six year old boy a chance. But then, she's too rowdy and too outspoken. Far too headstrong than other boys. She's never Bella Swan.
She doesn't think Jacob would look at her the way Sam stares at Emily, the moon to Sam's dark clouds.)
The childhood stories all runs dry. Their rambunctious laughter dies down to the stifling stillness. The silence returns, swallowing them with responsibilities left by ancient men. It's a stark reminder of what a freak show their lives are now.
He's not the little boy who worked on weekends for some motorcycle parts.
She's not the girl who laughed and played practical jokes on her friends and family. Not the girl with heart in her eyes when she crossed path with Sam Uley.
Some things changed. They changed for the worse, honestly.
He's the boy who loves only one girl and worships the ground she walks. Now he cradles his torn heart in large hands. Jacob mourns. Death will claim the girl he loved from afar—it's a wedding and funeral altogether.
She's the woman whose heart are broken into little shards that cuts anyone who tried to piece it back together. And her fingers are sliced and scarred by the fragments left by the man she thought she would spend the rest of their lives together with. Leah's the bitch with her own brand of bitterness that no one wants.
"Can you smell that?" Jacob questions, breaking Leah out from her musing. She turns to him, raising a brow at him. "Smell what?"
He shrugs his broad shoulders. But chooses to explain himself anyway. "I don't know how to describe it. It doesn't smell like La Push for sure."
She catches a singular albatross flying overhead. It carries the Hawaiian breeze on its wings, Japanese evening dew on its webbed feet. The scent of the world marks the albatross and its migration. Part of her, the inner child, wonders how many countries it had been. That albatross must be old—it's huge.
"Let's leave La Push," slips out from her lips like an escaped secret.
"What?" He looks at her, like she has grown an extra head. Leah stifles a snort trying to escape. She draws to her full height, jumps off from the boulder into the sandy ground and dusting sand off from her jeans shorts.
"Let's leave La Push," she repeats, rolling mahogany eyes.
He gets to his feet, covers a hand over his eyes against the bronzed sun and joins her at the sandy ground. Jacob leans against the boulders, narrows his eyes at her. "Why?"
It's her turn to shrug. "Why not? This place sucks."
"We got a duty. We have to protect the tribe." His answers are textbook, indoctrinated and boring. Something that Sam would say.
Leah arches a brow at him, "From who? The leeches will be leaving soon with their shining new toy."
"She's not a toy," he bristles and slams a fist against boulder behind him. His bones crackle from the impact. Sharp edges slicing his skin open, blood oozing out, into the receding waves. His healing properties jumpstart to seal the wound up.
A beat passes and drags on. Unshed tears pooling in his dark eyes. And maybe she overstepped a little bit. She forces herself to break the awkward silence. "I know," Leah mutters, picking stray lint on her jeans shorts.
She doesn't stop there, adding one last light-hearted insult, "But you got to admit they kinda parade her like she's some kind of Barbie doll."
Another beat goes silently like a stealthy zephyr. A snort—not hers—echoes in the ocean air. Her hair whips her face as she turns to face him.
"Not Barbie. Raggedy Ann," Jacob says, lips splitting into a grin. He clasps his fingers together, rapping his hands on his thigh. Dirt and sand clinging to his rolled up sleeves.
"Where do you want to go if we leave?" He spares her a look and back to the flying albatross.
"Not if, but when," she pauses, runs her fingers through her messy hair. She paces away from Jacob, stops short at the waters. Leah lets her feet soaking up the salty sea on her skin, losing herself to several thoughts at once. "I don't know. Anywhere as long as I don't have to see Sam. You?"
"Vermont," he says, joining her by the water. He doesn't crouch, but sits on the wet sand. Ignores the water seeps underneath his black trousers, he traces word 'away' on the sand with his index finger.
She contemplates damp jeans cooling her butt and decides to hell with it. Takes a seat on the sand, sketching swirls on the sand as well. "Why Vermont?"
"I just like to say the word Vermont."
"Vermont's nice," she agrees, wiping her dirty finger against her shorts. Thinks of the lush forest that could hide them away from civilisation. "Lots of places to roam around."
"You bet."
Jacob shifts his sight from the setting sun to her. There's no drop of bitterness on his face. "Let's go. Let's go to Vermont."
When his lips upturn, just a bit wider—even on a face that's aged years—she catches a glimmer of that boy who once wore his sisters' dresses for Halloween.
He bumps her shoulders with his. Leans a little close that Leah could feel his warmth tingling on her skin.
"What do you think you're doing?" Leah blurts out, arching a brow and leaning away from him. Her lips twitching into a smile.
Embarrassment paints his cheeks blushing berry. "Kissing you," escapes from his throat. Jacob covers his face with his hands, mortification settles on his face.
"T-that wasn't right," he stammers. The flush of embarrassment spreads to his ears.
"You're not eighteen," Leah says, coolly. She chuckles and continues, "And I don't want to get charged with doing anything frisky with a minor."
"I'll be eighteen soon," he retorts a little too quickly, without hesitation or chagrin. A smug grin broadening on his lips. "And I don't look seventeen," he adds, flicking his chin-length hair at her. He doesn't look young—not when he's taller than Sam and looms over everyone in the pack.
"I'm four years older than you, Jake," Leah counters, half-heartedly. She learnt her lesson from falling for a member of the pack—heart-broken and perpetually bitter. She's not about to embark another journey of potential crushed feelings.
He waves his hand absentmindedly, "Age doesn't matter once I'm eighteen."
"In two years. You, me and Vermont," she reiterates for him, ignoring the faux-declaration of his long lost crush on her.
"Why wait for two years? We could go now."
"We need a plan. We don't have fat cash lying around in the house," Leah sighs, playfully smacking her face with her palm. She points out the obvious, "Plus, you're still schooling."
"I can transfer there. No big deal," he replies, flippantly. "And I got a motorbike," he says it, like it's the golden ticket to whatever problems they'll face.
"We're not going to Vermont on that bike," she scoffs, rolling her eyes.
He raises both beefy arms in defeat. "Alright. I'll try to get something other than a lousy pick-up truck. I could sell some cars that Bella left me."
"At least we have half of a plan," she admits. The idea of leaving La Push sinks into her bones, hooking around her spine with intense wanderlust and yearning for a new beginning.
Just then, she's reminded of her mum. Seth. Her mum's a tough lady who could deal anything that life throws at her. Seth's a sweet kid who protects mum as fiercely as he does with the tribe. They don't need her, as much as she needed them.
"What about your dad?"
"Rachel's staying to take care of him. She's starting Paul on how to be Jacob 2.0 for the inevitable father and son-in-law bonding."
Leah snickers. Jacob hacks several coughs after laughing too hard. Billy in the wheelchair, ordering short-tempered Paul around the house is worth the coughs, the laughs and the tears.
"Vermont. I can't wait for it. Maybe take up nursing in a community college. Mum will be proud," she says, more to herself.
"It's better than here. Maybe I'd be a state-trooper. Bet I would rock that hat."
They share more laughs. She could almost picture it. Jacob in all his six-foot-seven glory, wearing the uniform and the hat. She has to admit, he could look cute in that. Menacingly cute, maybe.
"It's getting late. The pack will be suspicious."
"Relax. They'll be fine."
Jacob's lips spread into a goofy grin. He shrugs his broad shoulders. "Who am I kidding? It will spread in a week."
The sun dips lower until it disappears into the distance, leaving the skies a shade of navy blue spreading out from the horizon.
"I was thinking I could ask Sam about letting some of the kids go. Finish their schooling first before getting saddled the role of a lifetime."
Jacob stretches out his legs, both of his hands planted into the sand. "You think he'll let that happen?"
Leah draws her knees closer to her chest, hugging them. "The Cullens are gone. The leeches aren't going to flock here like we're some kind of mystical Disney land. It's high time they get to be real kids."
"They have a shot at better futures now," he retorts, "They're the writers of their futures."
"I like that."
He hunches, takes a deep breath twice and clears his throat. "Can I kiss you again? I promise this will be the last. To get me through the two long years," he rushes through his words, it's almost undecipherable. He blushes harder than before. His ears, cheeks and neck are covered in red.
"You're not going to fall in love with me, are you? A lot can happen in two years. You could meet someone new or I could end up with a lesbian lover," she snickers.
Or he could imprint on another. Imprinting being rare as hell is really bullshit. It seems like everyone's imprinting now these days. It's better to set up the boundaries right here in the sand.
He purses his lips to consider, less than ten seconds before he shrugs. "It doesn't matter. As long as you're still my friend."
"I can deal with that."
"That's what I want to hear."
He pecks her lips—a chaste kiss.
Leah busts her gut laughing, wondering why she thought he'd go for more tongue. He's the one worried about her seeing him naked once. And now, she's a little rueful that he didn't kiss as fiercely as Sam did. But that's hardly the point. She finds his kiss endearing.
Getting to her feet, Leah Clearwater lends a hand at him and hauls Jacob Black to his feet.
Sometimes, cliché endings are just inevitable. And Leah's fine with clichéd endings.