Forever seemed easy seven years ago. Loving him used to be the only constant I had, people came and went, they changed, I even changed into the unfathomable and yet my body would still ache for his so much that I was never satisfied with how close we were. I was never comfortable. If we were apart, I needed to find him, if we were together I felt this lack of worth- that I never could amount to all he wanted. So these feelings of love and anxiety added up to matrimonial bliss that I thought was like nobody else's. Our love was timeless, epic, and I would always need him. But what I hadn't counted on was that after less than a decade of marriage, I would be irrevocably bored with Edward Cullen.
High School wasn't any better the third time around. Four years in Forks. Two years in some forsaken Alaskan town in a high school with 32 kids. Four blissful years at Dartmouth and now I was starting my junior year at a small high school in Louisiana, after recent reports of New Orleans having some of the greatest amounts of rainfall in the United States and because Emmett had a strange fascination with Mardi Gras.
I heard the door open as Jacob let himself in. He definitely couldn't pass as a high school student, so he acted as our chauffer out of lack of better things to do.
"Hello, Bella," Jacob said as he shut the door behind him. One of the worst and weirdest things about the past decade was how my relationship with Jacob had changed. I hated it. I didn't feel like his friend anymore, I felt like what I basically was- a mother-in-law. What I could never admit was how much I missed Jacob. I longed for his companionship, but I knew that he would never want to be with me the way I wanted to be with him. Although I had chosen Edward, I still loved Jacob. When he "imprinted" on my daughter, I thought that I could love him in a different way, one that would make my family function as normally as possible. But, time passed and I began to miss him again. The worst part was that I harbored resentment towards Renesmee, even though it wasn't her fault that she was destined to be with Jacob. How lame was that? That I was jealous of my own daughter.
The reaction as we entered our new school was the same as usual. We were new. We were different. We were beautiful. Rosalie was the only one who never got tired of the attention. I tried to stay as discreet as possible by wearing the blandest clothes I could. Alice would bring home trunk loads of clothes especially for me, but they ended up sitting under my bed, never unfolded or even looked at. My wardrobe consisted of the colors brown, black, grey, and this really ugly shade of green. It didn't really help, because I was still stuck with these stupid, alluring looks. Who would have thought that being gorgeous would completely suck.
I sat down in my Chemistry class, ready to learn about amino acids for the twelfth time, when I saw a thick mane of curly, black hair sit next to me. I couldn't see his face because he kept his head down as he scribbled in a spiral notebook. When he finally looked up, I couldn't stop staring. His irises were this shade of blue that the human eye couldn't appreciate and he had freckles sprinkled across the bridge of his nose. His nose was perfect like Edward's and his skin couldn't be mistaken for porcelain, but something about him drew me in. He may not have been perfect, but for some reason that made him even more beautiful.
Forever was over as I knew it.