A/N: Hey guys! I know that I shouldn't be posting another story while I already have one incomplete one, but AH! I just can't help myself. I wrote this months ago, and I need need NEED imput from my fellow writers. So let me know what you think!
Far as I could tell, the first week of summer had been basic routine since the new threats had shown up on our radar: wake up; patrol from sunrise to before noon; hang with the boys and/or Claire, Emily and Kim; patrol or council meeting from sunset to almost sunrise.
I had been getting about three hours of sleep per night, and then about another hour or two if I decided it was safe enough to nap during the day. Most of the time I chose to spend time with Quil or Embry simply because one, they were my boys, and two, I always had back up if danger came up anywhere. So I was fundamentally going through my days in a sleepy blur, not really looking forward to anything, not anticipating except the possible attack looming over our horizon. But even that wasn't that big of a deal to me now.
So this was just a regular Saturday in Forks for me, including the early rising and patrols until lunchtime. I emerged out of the woods near my house, shaking my head and blinking hard to try and get rid of the tired feeling that was following me everywhere. I had already planned on raiding the fridge for leftovers and then passing out on the couch for as long as I could, but as my eyes cleared a little I saw Quil sitting on my front porch, leaning up again one of the posts.
"Hey man," he greeted once he realized I was there. He stretched his arms over his head before hopping up and moving toward me. I slapped him on the back in welcome.
"Unca Jay!" little Claire called from out in the yard. I should have known she would be with Quil; it was his day off patrol, so it was only natural he'd want to spend it with his favorite person in the world. I had finally gotten to the point where the whole imprint thing didn't make me want to vomit, but it didn't exactly put me at ease, either. But I was dealing with it.
Claire waddle-ran toward me excitedly, and I saw that small yellow bulbs were captured in her pudgy, three year old grip.
"Hey, Claire Bear. What ya got there, kiddo?"
"Pwetty pwants!" she exclaimed happily. I bent down to her level to better examine her "pretty plants", and I saw that she had picked almost all the little yellow flowers out of my yard. I just laughed and patted her on the head before standing back up to face Quil.
"So, Emily's letting me take Claire down to that festival by the beach today." Quil said when we made eye contact. I nodded absently, resisting the urge to lay down right there in the May sunshine.
"It should be fun." He continued, and I just nodded again. "Which is why you're coming with me."
This time I didn't nod my head, but I snapped it up and looked at my pack brother like he had eight heads. "You mean that tourist trap down by the water? Oh no, no, no. Forget it, man."
Quil stepped forward once. "Come on, Jacob. You haven't actually done anything for like past, like, four days. You really need to get out in public and not just hiding out in Emily's house with the pack."
I was shaking my head repeatedly while he spoke, not wanting to hear it. The Forks mayor had though it a good idea to set up a little arts and crafts festival type thing by First Beach, hoping to lure in the summer tourists and their cash-money. I knew, as a local, it would be nothing but sun burnt vacationers in Hawaiian shirts and their screaming, whining little kids asking for everything they knew they couldn't have.
And I was sure as hell not putting myself, a sensible person, into that mess.
"Jake," Quil began, but Claire cut him off.
"Unca Jay comes, Unca Jay comes!" she tugged on the bottom on my jean shorts and her expression turned into the dreaded puppy dog pout. "Pwease?"
I looked up at the sky and groaned, knowing the little monster had me caught dead in my tracks. There was just no way I can resist the puppy dog pout.
I heard Quil snicker pull out his keys. "Hop in, I want to get there before it gets too crowded."
Jacob
The festival was all I had feared and more.
The usual sounds of First Beach—waves slapping against the rocks, gulls calling to each other as the swooped over the gray water—had been replaced with loud modern rock, mixed with some country music, which I found kinda weird considering our northern location. People were talking and laughing noisily, and buzzers would sound every now and then if someone was to win a prize at one of the booths. The smells weren't any more subtle; the scent of smoke from a grill, burgers and hotdogs, and the normal beach and sunshine aroma. There was something else there, something light and sweet, but I couldn't exactly make it out.
We entered under an arch of brightly colored balloons and made our way down through the sea of people. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Claire gasp and dart off toward the ring toss, where they were holding an enormous stuffed bear as a prize. Quil laughed once and kept close to her heels, leaving me alone in the midst of tourists. I just shrugged and followed the scent to the food court; might as well enjoy something here, right?
The vendor, a big guy sporting a long gray beard and looked like he could easily be in a motorcycle gang, gave me a weird look when I ordered my five hotdogs and a cotton candy. I ignored him and grabbed a wadded up ten dollar bill out of my pocket, slammed it on the counter and moved over to a partially secluded corner of a tent of which I leaned against.
While I stuffed my face, I looked around. I had found that one of the most interesting things to do in a place you've never been is to watch the people. If you observed close enough, you could pick up their weird habits, their body language, and even sometimes their thoughts if they're written plainly enough on their faces. Some people are just like that. I was scanning the crowd, seeing nothing but a married couple arguing over cholesterol and a few ten year olds who seemed to be daring each other that would say the "dirtiest" word the loudest, when I noticed a large bubble of space forming in the middle of the wide walkway.
My stomach leapt into my throat unexpectedly, and I found myself moving to the front of the crowd as if being pulled by a tight string tied to my chest. I pushed through people almost urgently, my pulse quickening the closer I got to the clearing. I didn't know what was going on and why I was reacting so oddly, but something told me the answer had to do what everyone had gathered for. I squeezed through the final people with a grunt, and toppled into the center of the circle, barely stopping myself before I ran smack into the main attraction.
I wasn't sure why the four girls were so amazing to these tourists, other than they were all very pretty and in attire that wasn't exactly normal. All four were wearing brightly colored antebellum dresses and wide brimmed hats with lace ruffles that matched the dresses. I had nearly trampled the one in yellow, a sweet looking girl with black hair. Beside her, a curly-headed blonde in the pink and a taller blonde in the light green snickered into their gloved palms. The one in blue, a light-skinned black girl, gave me an odd glance before rolling her eyes.
They were all extremely pretty, and if Embry had been here he would have been sure to make a show, but I still had that tugging feeling in my chest that kept me from admiring any of them. If she hadn't cleared her throat and repeated herself, I wouldn't even had noticed that the one in yellow had been talking to me; I was so focused on trying to figure everything out.
"Sorry, what?" I asked her, still a little distracted.
She laughed once. "I said, are you okay? You look kind of disheveled."
I nodded, more to myself than to her. Disheveled was a good word, I decided.
"Can I help you with anything?" the girl addressed me again, and this time I noticed the extra bat of her dark eyelashes. I turned away quickly, waving off her help.
"No thanks, I got it." And with that I melted back into the crowd. I felt bad for blowing her off like that but I was overwhelmed by a strange feeling as I walked back to my corner, a kind of emptiness, like disappointment. I crossed my arms and leaned back against the post again, still thinking about what the hell was going on here. Maybe the whole wedding thing was throwing me off more than usual; Bella and the leech were getting their happy ending, and where did that leave me? Alone, cold, and desperate. I had been throwing myself into the investigation with more effort than needed, trying to keep my mind off things. So this could just be a side-effect of depression, lack of socialization and sleep.
The crowd had thinned where the girls had been, and I could just see their colored hats above the people's heads. They drew my attention still, and I watched as the ruffles bobbed above the throng; pink, yellow, green, blue….and a fifth color, lavender. My heart jolted harder than before, almost painful this time.
"Good afternoon, Forks, Washington!" a voice boomed out of the speakers, replacing the music that had been playing. "It is my sincere pleasure to welcome the Dogwood Trail Maids to the first annual Festival at First Beach! These beautiful young ladies are all the way from Alabama as representatives to their county. Let's give them a big round of applause, shall we?"
The crowd erupted into cheers, whistling at the girls as they moved gracefully through them until they were dead center of the festival, close enough that I could make out all of their faces perfectly. My heart was hammering so loudly that I was sure it was bust straight out of my chest, and my adrenaline was pumping through my veins with severe force. I was shaking as the group, now five, lined up as perfectly as if they practiced it every day. My eyes jumped over the first four as if they weren't even there, and landed on the new face right in the middle of them.
The Dogwood Trail Maids took a long, sweeping bow that brought them all the way to the ground before standing back up, and in those few seconds I felt my heart break completely at the beauty, and then mend itself back so that it was ten times bigger, stronger than before. I was suddenly one huge human strainer; fear, hate, jealously, violence, self-pity, rejection, and deception all seemed to fall away, suddenly nonexistent, while all the others –happiness, joy, laughter, enjoyment, pleasure, truth, friendship, caring, love—all intensified inside of me. My veins were filled not with the normal fire of shifting, but a warm glow of comfort. I knew at that moment that the threads holding me to friends, family, the pack, to Bella…..were cut, replaced by thick wires that were now the only thing holding me here.
And those wires led straight to her.
I couldn't move as I watched the girl in the lavender antebellum dress float from person to person with an overwhelmingly beautiful smile, chatting easily and taking pictures when asked. I felt like I should go up to her, but I just needed to take a moment to appreciate just how magnificent she was.
"Jacob, are you okay, man? You look kinda….dumbstruck." Quil had suddenly appeared at my side, Claire clapping and laughing on his shoulders. I didn't look at him, wouldn't take my eyes away.
Almost out of breath, I whispered: "It's her."
I could feel Quil stare at me for a long moment before following my gaze to the Dogwood girls, the one in particular. He removed Claire from his shoulders, and I noticed she was holding a big stuffed bear. I could suddenly appreciate how strong the need was to give that one girl everything she wanted.
Claire gasped loudly, and pointed to the trail maids. That devastatingly beautiful girl in the lavender must have heard her, because she smiled to herself and began to make her way over. My heart was beating about a hundred times too quickly as she approached, and in less than two seconds she was close enough for me to touch.
"Hi there, pretty girl." She greeted Claire with a sweet smile and a soft southern drawl, crouching down so that she was eye level with the three year old. Her dress billowed out around her as she tilted her head slightly to the side, unknowingly letting the light hit her just right so that the dimples on the side of her mouth showed.
"And what's your name?" she asked. Claire just giggled shyly and hid behind Quil's leg. The girl laughed, too. My stomach twisted happily at the light-hearted chime.
"Claire," I interjected without thinking. The trail maid turned her bright hazel eyes up to me for a split second, and blushed a delicate pink before turning back to Claire and saying: "Oh, how lovely! Don't you want to know my name, Claire?"
Claire peeked out from behind Quil's leg and nodded slightly. The girl laughed again, this time sneaking a peek at me from the corner of her eye. My heart stuttered.
"Well, my name is Megan, and it is such a pleasure to meet you, Claire." She said, standing up again and dusting off the lavender material. The mystery scent from earlier—honeysuckle, sunshine, and magnolia blossom, I could easily tell now—was coming from Megan, not as a perfume, but more as a natural smell.
She offered me a small smile, although she addressed both of us when she spoke, and twisted a strand of dark brown hair around her gloved finger. "Y'all's names would be nice to know, too."
"I'm Quil Artera, and this is Jacob Black." Saved again from utter humiliation by my right hand man. It was almost embarrassing how well he could read me; my face obviously had told him that words would have ended in nervous vomit this time.
Megan gave an appreciative nod, "Unique. I like it."
As the girl in the lavender dress shot another curious glance my way, I all but sighed in relief. It was finally her, my reason. My purpose. I could be happy now, happier than I had been in a very long time. I could finally be the same old Jacob again, or at least close to it. I had a reason to smile again.
And that reason was smiling back.