Thanks so much for checking out my story! It's been a while since I've written anything but this idea just came to me one day. Really look forward to you guys' constructive criticism. No beta so all mistakes are my own. Don't own the characters.
Everyone has a best friend. Someone they would do anything and everything for and get the same in return. I do too, or well, at least I did. My name is Sookie Stackhouse and Eric Northman and I have been best friends since the day he stuck up for me against bullies. I was eight and he was nine. My child hood was to say the least pretty rough. My parents and brother died when I was only six years old from a freak flash flood. My Grandma and Grandpa, Adele and Earl Stackhouse, took me into the Stackhouse plantation home when I had nowhere else to go. You see, I have no other family left. My grandparents had one other child, Lisa, other than my father and she passed away from cancer before my parents died. My cousin Hadley, Lisa's daughter lives with my Grandparents and I also.
Living in Bon Temps means all this is public knowledge, and it kind of makes us the outcasts; the weird family because I didn't have parents. That made me an easy target for the school kids, the constant teasing and antagonizing of being different made it difficult to find friends; but it introduced me to my best friends, Tara, Lafayette, and Eric. Tara and Lafayette are black and being in the Deep South made it hard for them to find friends too, so we all stuck together and soon became inseparable.
It wasn't until the third grade when Eric moved from Scandinavia to our little corner of Louisiana. He fit into our group of misfits immediately what with being lanky, skinny, and foreign causing him to be labeled as strange immediately. We welcomed him with opened arms. He and I became the closest of all because of the first day we met. I was being bullied by Andy Bellefleur, the usual bully, he was making fun of me for not having parents and right before he could push me down, Eric stepped in and pushed Andy down and told everyone else, "If you're going to do anything to her, you have to go through me first.". Ever since then we've been tighter than glue. One day after a particularly tough fight Eric had gotten into in the sixth grade, we had been sitting in the tree house and while I cleaned his cut up hands, we made a pact. A pact that we would always stick together no matter what, and that one day we would be together, for real and then he pecked me on the lips, real sweet like and chaste and told me that he would see me tomorrow at school. I can't say I never had a crush on him because that would be a lie. I try my best to live by God, but I make mistakes and sin just like everyone else, yet that would be the biggest lie I had ever told.
High school might've been the toughest time of my life, Freshman year, my beloved Grandfather disappeared while on a fishing trip and we never heard or saw from him again. Bon Temps had sent out a diving crew to search the swamps, but if he had been out there, the gators probably would have already gotten to him. He was there one day then gone another. After two years we filled an empty casket with his favorite things and buried them in a plot with his tombstone, but my Gran never gave up hope.
High school was also difficult because Eric had changed. Physically and mentally; he joined football and became the school's star quarterback, at 6'4" with blonde hair, cerulean eyes, a jawline that was as sharp as a knife and huge muscles, the girls followed him around everywhere. He befriended the people that had picked on us our whole lives, and that for me was the hardest thing to understand.
I'm not ugly by any means, I've got curves in all the right places and bright blue eyes and long blonde hair, the guys don't make it any secret about wanting me, but I've still never dated anyone. None of the guys are the guy I want to be with. I could never be with someone that had tormented me when I was a child. Unlike Eric, I remember the hell I was put through and how cruel other kids could be. So I stuck with Lafayette, who came out as gay and his cousin Tara when Eric went off. We still hung out all the time there for a while. He would come over for dinner and I would go to his house and study with him. Eventually those days just started becoming less and less.
He was always going on dates with different girls, and I'm not naïve enough to believe those were just dates and that nothing happened, he became, for lack of a better word, a manwhore. He told me the day that he lost his virginity to one of the sluttiest girls in our school, Dawn Green. He didn't even think anything of the fact that he just broke my heart into pieces. No matter how much I deny it to Tara and Lafayette, I always believed that we'd keep that pact that we made back in the sixth grade sitting in my treehouse.
Now, it's the summer before junior year and Bill Compton just moved into town. I'm working at Merlotte's the local Bar and Grill. My cousin Hadley and Lafayette work here as well, it also really helps Gran out with the bills. On the hottest day of the summer, Bill Compton walked into our run down establishment and was seated at my table.
"Howdy-do, can I get your order?" I said as I pulled out my notepad and pen.
"I'll have a Lafayette Burger, please" replied Bill shyly, which I found rather endearing. His dark brown shaggy hair and dark eyes gave off a mysterious vibe. It pulled me in and made me want to know more about him.
"Great! I'll take this back to our cook and be back in a jiff with your order!" I said with my brightest smile and practically bounced all the way to give Lafayette the order.
"Hooka who's gotten you's all excited, huh?" He glances around the bar and sees Bill sitting in the corner. "Ah. Honey do you's got your eye on that hunk of mystery over there?" He asks with a leer. Giggling I reply, "Maybe, what's it to ya?" While winking at him, and checking back over my shoulder, I see Bill is still staring at me. I could see myself really liking him, shy and gentlemanly; he also wasn't around torturing me when I was a kid either. I feel those pesky little butterflies start to flutter at the prospect. I know, how desperate sounding right, the first guy that I could possibly see myself with I'm already nervous and excited and nothing's even happened yet.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Eric and his group of "friends" enter the bar. They also sit in my section and I stiffen when I see Maudette Pickens sit herself right down in Eric's lap. They were an off and on type of thing, really the longest thing that Eric had ever had with a girl. Lafayette calls my attention that Bills food was ready and I pick it up and scurry over to him.
"Here you go! Hope you enjoy the meal!" I say cheerily with my best smile in place and making eye contact with him. He blushes and replies "Thank you. It looks delicious! Are you Sookie Stackhouse?" he asks sweetly.
"Why, yes I am! You're Bill Compton, right? We live right across the Cemetery from each other!" I answer. His face changes and contorts to a look of embarrassment and he asks "If this is too forward I understand, but I was wondering if I could call on you sometime?" His blush skyrocketing and causing me to smile even wider, he was just so darn sweet!
"Of course! I would love that!" I reply back sweetly. I make myself scarce to allow him to eat his meal, just occasionally checking in to see if he needs anything. Once he's finished and paid I notice he left his phone number on a napkin. I quickly slip it into my pocket and proceed to clean up the table. When it looks like Eric's group is ready to order I walk over to their table and pull out my handy dandy notepad and pen. I had notice Eric trying to grab my attention since he walked in but I ignored it.
"Are you guys ready to order?" I asked with my fake smile plastered on my face. The one I use with rude costumers, Eric could also tell the difference between smiles. He always could.
"Yeah, we just want the usual, right guys?" Eric asks and the guys reply with grunts of acceptance and the girls cheerily pipe in a 'Yep!". Before I can head over to give Lafayette Eric reaches out and grabs my hand, disrupting the girl currently residing on his lap, "Can I talk to you, when you go on break?" he pleads with his eyes, knowing how I can never say no to him I reluctantly agree and tell him, "It's gonna be 'round forty-five minutes." He nods is assent and I make my way to Lafayette with the order, who gives me a pitiful glance, which immediately makes my irritation prickle "Just don't" I say before he gets the chance to say anything to me about it.
The next forty-five minutes seem to crawl by at a snail's pace. I notice Eric glancing my way, as if to make sure I don't somehow run off before he gets a chance to talk to me. When it's time for my break I signal him to follow me and we head out back so he can say whatever it is he needs to say.
"Hey Sooks, who was that guy you were flirting with?" he asks suspiciously while eyeing me the whole time. "It was Bill Compton, he just moved in across the cemetery from me. Why?" I ask with equal suspicion and a raised eyebrow, which I actually got from him. "I don't know" He rubs the back of his neck with one hand while looking down, and then he looks back up and says "just want to make sure he wasn't, uh, I don't know. I was worried about you. You don't flirt with guys usually. I was just wondering if something was wrong" he said.
"Why do you act like I've never been interested in a guy before?" I ask with irritation lacing my voice. "Besides he's a gentleman and I plan on getting to know him better anyways, so I guess you can get used to seeing me flirt with him" I say and turn to head back towards the door, "My breaks just about over and I'd really like to grab a bite to eat first. You should probably get back to being Maudette's chair." I say sarcastically.
He grabs my arm again with a strange look on his face, but it soon disappears and he says "Just be careful ok?" I nod my assent and we both head back in. When I start back to work I see Maudette has found herself an actual chair instead of using Eric as one. Maybe this night wouldn't be so hard to get through.