A/N: Just couldn't stay away from my keyboard. This is very different from my other B/J story. There is sadness in this chapter. Please DO NOT EXPECT A SET UPDATE SCHEDULE. I truly, truly suck at updating. Please no flames because of something you're being warned about in advance. I don't really know how long this will be. The characters tell me what to do. i just write it down.
I never thought I'd be back here. Not to stay, anyway. My life was going other places, with other people. The outcome was supposed to be so much different. I suppose I should just count my blessings and be grateful that I have a place to come to, a place to start over, a place to heal surrounded by the familiar. At the moment, I can't find a way to do that. At the moment, I just feel suffocated by that familiarity. The people surrounding me are smothering me with their concern. Smothering me with their own need to help. I don't want help right now. Right now, I want my life back. But that life is gone.
After I moved in with my Dad in my junior year of high school, I learned to love Forks. The transition from my mother's home in Phoenix to small town Washington with my dad was not exactly easy, but it's not like I came into an entirely unknown place. I'd spent summers and alternate Christmases here since I was four. A lot of the close friends I made in high school were kids I knew from those visits.
I'd known Paul, Jake, and Leah from summer days in La Push at First Beach. They're Quileute and I'm not, but that didn't mean anything to us. My dad was best friends with Jake's father, Billy Black, and Leah's parents, Harry and Sue Clearwater. We played in the water and sand and dug for snails. When we got older, we dug each other and learned how to kiss. Paul taught me. Being the oldest by a whole year, he figured he was an expert. He wasn't bad. It meant not a thing to the two of us, not really. Jake and Leah practiced together. It meant the world to Jake but not so much to Leah. He pined for her all throughout adolescence. He got her to realize she really did love him, too. Eventually.
After Leah and her little brother Seth's father died, we saw less of them. Their house became quiet. A lot of time passed. And then my dad, Police Chief Charlie Swan of Forks, Washington, pulled up his big boy pants and got the nerve to ask Sue Clearwater out on a date. They got married just before I left for college. So I have a brother and sister now.
Edward, Emmett, Alice, Rose, and Jasper were the children of my dad's fishing buddies. Our families had little else in common. Edward and Alice Cullen are twins. Their dad is the chief surgeon at Forks's little hospital; their mother is an interior designer. Emmett McCarty's dad runs wilderness tours. Jasper Whitlock's parents own a garage. Rose Hale's family owns most of the town. We were cool, though, to be left alone with a mom or two on Saturdays while our dad's were pulling in the fish.
These kids were constants in my life in Washington. Year after year, we hung out, marveled as only kids can at all the minute changes since the summer before. By the time I moved, Edward and I really liked the changes we saw in each other. We dated from almost the day I moved until almost the day I left. He was my first. Not my first kiss; that was Paul ,and sometimes he said that out loud just to piss Edward off. But he was my first everything else. I loved him as much as my teenaged self was able to. I always knew, though, in the back of my mind, that he probably wasn't the one.
I was happy at home, popular in school, content with my boyfriend. I had a lot fun and raised a little hell. Still, I never quite envisioned Forks being the last stop on my tour of the world. When it came time for college, I knew I had to strike out on my own. But not too on my own. I still wanted to be close to the little bit of family I had. My dad and I had just settled into a close relationship, and Mom was moving around a lot with her ball playing husband, so I chose to stay in the Pacific Northwest. But not Washington; that defeated the "getting out there on my own" feel of the move. I chose Oregon State University and said goodbye to my dad, my friends, my boyfriend. I became a proud Beaver. Yes, the most awesome school mascot ever. No jokes there from my friends at home.
I loved Corvallis. Oregon had much the same feel as Washington, and the small yet bustling town vibe Corvallis projected was just what I was looking for. I was away, but still comfortable. None of my friends from Forks chose OSU, so I was forced into overcoming any lingering introversion and meet new people. I joined a sorority and learned to socialize like a big girl. There wasn't too much time for that, though. I double majored in English and education. That's about as easy as it sounds. Books were my life, for the most part.
And then I met Riley Biers in sophomore year.
Tall, blond, soft spoken, fun, smart, baseball player, broad shoulders, and a great ass. What more could I ask for? Nothing, that's what. We met at a party thrown by his frat,Chi Phi. They were jocks and partiers, he was a legacy, and he fit right in. They threw the best parties; there was a pole on the dance floor. I may or may not have taken a spin. Had to get his attention, right? Not naked. NOT naked. Just drunk, but my sorority sisters were there, so I felt safe. As a member of Kappa Delta, it was strange that I hadn't met him yet, but I really did study a lot. While some of my sisters were more frequent attendees at the Chi Phi house, I'd only been a couple of times. I found out later that Ri wasn't always there either. Majoring in Environmental Engineering took a lot out of the guy.
We started dating casually. Well, it was casual until the afternoon one of his teammates asked for my number. Riley heard it and chucked a baseball at his head. Good thing he wasn't a pitcher; the guy would have died. After that it was exclusive, and except for one drunken fuck up with a chick named Bree - and the two months of penance I put him through - Riley and I never parted. My mother thought it was just fabulous that we were both in love with ball players. Dad liked him as much as he was capable of liking his daughter's boyfriend.
All of my friends had met him and most of them liked him, at least what little they were able to get to know him the few days we all spent together over holidays back home. Edward had a harder time than the others, I think. Old boyfriend meets new can't be comfortable. Alice loved him immediately and simply treated him as one of the gang. I don't think he ever did figure out if that was a good thing or not. Jasper was as good natured as he'd always been, but underneath he seemed wary. Jasper seemed changed by his years away, not as open, but he always tried his best to make Riley feel included when the in-jokes started to fly. Seth and Leah were family now, but Paul and Jake only met him a couple of times. Neither were impressed. He didn't work with his hands, and they had a hard time respecting that. They didn't dislike him, they just saw him as soft.
We pushed and supported and encouraged each other through school. He graduated and immediately started working for an environmental consulting firm just outside Portland. I graduated with degrees in English and Education, complete with teaching license. There was never a doubt that I would follow him. At least, not in our minds. My dad had to take a minute to get used to the idea. I think he always held out a little bit of hope that Forks would call me home. Ri's father died when he was young, and his mother lived her own life. She didn't really care what we did, as long as we did it somewhere else.
Ri proposed to me our first night in our new apartment in Portland. We got married in Forks a year later. It was the wedding of my dreams. Every moment sprang fully formed from my childhood fantasies. From my gown, to the bridesmaids, to the cake, Alice, now an event planner, surpassed herself. It was more than I realistically hoped for. Ri told me not to be realistic, just this one day, and I paid attention. I was a queen and Forks was my kingdom for the day. The only dragon in my kingdom was Riley's mother Victoria's bitter reaction to the little bit of news we included in our thank you toast. We had just found out that week that we would be welcoming a prince or princess into the family. My dad slayed that dragon simply by the force of his happiness. My mother cried, whether in joy or fear of that ogre of a word, grandmother, I'll never know.
Tabitha Grace Biers was born on a dark and stormy night. Her daddy used to tell her that's why we named her after a witch. Really, I just loved the name, but we bought her Bewitched on dvd and she watched that far more often than Yo Gabba Gabba, thank God. She still watches it, though she knows every scene, word for word. My perfect little pink princess shined through the darkness that night of her birth, and made herself heard above the thunder. Tabitha Biers has never been one to be overshadowed. Or unheard. She gets that from me. From Riley she got a mind so quick it's scary. She's witty and fun and sarcastic and a real handful. She has my eyes and her daddy's hair.
We had it all. Riley and I together were bringing home more than $100,000 a year. Not bad for a couple just figuring things out. We bought a townhouse in Beaverton, a suburb of Portland, after the baby was born. It was big, and beautiful, and a great place to raise our daughter. We spent our weekdays at jobs we loved. The baby went to the daycare across from the school where I taught fifth grade. We would come home and make organic dinners with vegetables from the farmers' market that would be ready when Riley got home at 5:30. We spent the evenings and weekends playing games and taking walks with Tabitha. Or Shortcake, as she soon became known.
The love our girl had in her heart for the nose-wiggling witches of Bewitched was surpassed only by her passion for Strawberry Shortcake and Friends. I've never asked Seth where he found those cartoons, but they amazed and entertained her like nothing else. Best presents ever, to hear her tell it. Leah loves that niece of hers, but Seth is Tabitha's heart, plain and simple. He might just be her favorite human being. He pretty much feels the same. Tabitha insisted I wash her hair with the same strawberry shampoo I had been using since I was a kid myself. She liked to smell like the dolls Uncle Seff bought her. I cannot express how happy Ri and I were that the toys and the series had somehow come back in style and were easy to find at Toys R Us.
And then one night it rained, as it often does in Oregon. And Riley drove home, as he did every night. Only this night was different. This night changed everything. Forever.
Riley's been gone two and a half years. It took me a year to think straight enough to put the house on the market. It was too big for me and Tabitha. It took over a year, and two failed offers, to get it sold. Between the sale of the house, Riley's life insurance, and a small family inheritance that passed to Tab at Victoria's request, I was all right financially. But without the house that was my last anchor in Oregon, I felt adrift.
I decided finally to heed Dad's and Sue's pleas, and come home. Just for a while. Just a little while. So I packed up my SUV, quit my job, sent my things to storage, strapped my seven-year-old into her booster seat, and drove my thirty-year-old self back to my dad.
I never thought I'd be back here. Not to stay, anyway.
A/N: I would really like to know what you think of this one. It won't stay a downer, I promise. And I believe in HEA…
