A/N: Hi! So my dividers didn't work on the last chapter, I'm now just using 'xxx' to divide pieces of the chapter. Also, I'm aware that Jacob isn't actually eighteen with the timeline I'm using, but for my purposes, he must be eighteen. Also, I still don't own Twilight or these sexy characters, or any of the other characters either. Enjoy :)
Two days later, Leah is back.
He hears her Jeep struggling up the street from miles away. His werewolf hearing is still acute, but since he hasn't been shape-shifting, he's noticed it's started to fade a little bit. He can tell just by listening to her car that she isn't taking proper care of it. Maybe he should offer to help.
She lets herself in – no one in La Push bothers to lock the door - and calls "Billy?"
Jacob doesn't say anything. He's lying on his bed, poring over a Road & Track magazine and enjoying the fact that the house is so quiet and empty that he can hear the rain thrumming on the roof. He wants to feel irritated that she's wrecking his peace.
She appears at his door with rainwater dripping from the ends of her hair and an enormous bag of groceries balanced on her hip.
"Billy not around?"
"He's with Charlie."
"Oh," says Leah, "I wanted to make dinner for him."
"You could make me a sandwich instead," Jacob suggests.
"Don't you think that joke's getting a little bit tired?"
"Asking you, Clearwater, to make me a sandwich, is never going to get tired. I'd invite you in, but you look so much more comfortable standing awkwardly in the doorway."
"What a gentleman. So he's not gonna be back anytime soon?"
"I really doubt it. There's a Mariners game on and it just started twenty minutes ago."
"Huh." Leah says. "You know, I kinda miss Charlie. He's a nice guy. I wonder what on earth he did to produce that little wretch –"
"Don't start, please, Clearwater, I don't want to talk about it."
"Are you actually defending her? After all that shit she put you through?"
"What about letting bygones be bygones, Leah? It's time to grow up. I don't want to get into this."
Leah shifts her groceries to her other hip. "You're making me want to get into it. Have you really forgiven the wench for all that crap?"
"You know what, I figure she was just a girl who was crazy in love with a guy, same as I was just a guy who was crazy in love with her. I can't hold it against her."
Leah stares at him for a moment with a hard look on her face, leaning forward a little bit. It's a very combative position.
Then she straightens up. "Okay, well... I guess that's fair enough. But you aren't still in love with her, are you? I never understood that in the first place. She was such a bland wretch."
"No, I'm not in love with her anymore. Thanks for not making me talk about it, though, Clearwater, I appreciate it."
Leah gives him her new, signature wry half-smile. "If that's the case, maybe I'll be able to tolerate being around you."
After a remark like that, he expects her to stay, but she spins around and momentarily he can hear the gravel crackling in the driveway as her ill-cared-for Jeep sputters to life.
xxx
Jacob has a summer job. He's a grunt at a mechanic's in Forks, doing crummy jobs suited to men with much less experience with vehicles. It pays, by no means well, but it allows him to keep up his hobby of fixing old cars. It doesn't, however, make the summer pass any faster.
It's a week before he sees Leah again. He is in a foul mood this particular Tuesday evening, having endured a day of rude remarks from the mechanic that owns the place, John Dowling, and his sense of integrity is injured by Dowling's expectation that he regularly fleece the hell out of innocent customers. He's been threatened with the loss of his job. To add insult to injury, there is no air conditioning in the shop, and it holds heat like a silo, ending up ten degrees hotter inside than it is outdoors.
He doesn't see Leah's muddy black 4x4 in the driveway or her fraying summer shoes on the stoop. He stomps in the front door without even looking at Billy, and barely notices Leah at the table across from his dad. He doesn't say hello, just goes to his room, tears off his dirty uniform and puts on some shorts, not bothering with a shirt. He lets himself out the back door and trudges out to the garage.
It's a half hour before Leah wanders outside and into the garage.
"It still doesn't look like a car," she says, by way of greeting.
"Hello to you, too," Jacob grunts, without looking up. He's not in the mood.
"I certainly won't be taking any rides in this thing," she says conversationally.
"That's funny," Jacob snaps, "I don't remember inviting you to."
"Is it even going to run? I mean, don't quit your day job or anything."
"You know," Jacob says, finally looking up, "that pie you made was terrible."
"Fuck you. Next time you can't have any," she replies. "Do you want a Midol? I have some in my car."
"If you're going to be this much of a bitch, why don't you fuck off?"
He glares at her. She doesn't move, just looks at him. Her outfit is essentially the same as always, a large plaid lumberjack shirt and beat-up jean shorts that expose a lot of lean, tanned leg. Maybe he stares away from her eyes for just a little too long.
"Take a picture, it'll last longer," she tells him before flopping down on his couch once again.
"I thought I told you to fuck off?"
"I heard you. Do you bring your girlfriends in here?"
Jacob sighs and turns back to his car. "Girlfriend is a pretty loose term; I don't know that I've ever had one of those. Yeah, I've brought girls in here. Billy's wheelchair can't make it back here."
"Naughty boy. Do you mean you actually convinced a girl to have sex with you?"
"Girls, plural. Yeah, of course. Why do you think I warned you about that couch?"
"Oh, that's fucking vile, I thought you were only talking about rats!"
"Sorry."
She looks at him speculatively. "You seem like you'd suck in the sack. Have you ever called one of them 'Bella'?"
"Not yet."
"You really are in a terrible mood, aren't you? You haven't made one stupid joke yet."
"Do you think you could stop harassing me? I had a bad day at work, all right?" Jacob turns his wrench a little too violently and ends up tearing off a vital piece of the brake mechanism. He swears viciously under his breath.
Leah snorts. "A bad day at work. I'm a waitress, sweet pea. You don't know a bad day at work till you've spent an eight-hour shift on a Friday night waiting tables at a 'family-oriented' establishment."
Jacob groans. Maybe he was better off before Leah decided she wanted to be friends, or whatever this bizarre relationship is.
xxx
It's been a long time since Leah's been inside Jacob's head. She doesn't know quite what to make of him anymore. She wonders briefly how much a person can grow up in the six months since she's had the intimate, shape-shifter connection with Jacob's mind.
She can see that he's grown up physically; at eighteen, he could pass for twenty-seven, a tall, well-built twenty-seven. Spending all the time she had with other naked male werewolves, another woman might be jaded; but Leah still finds his bare chest gratifying. And it has been six months since she's seen him completely nude, but he was certainly never disappointing in the below-the-belt category.
He doesn't honestly look like he'd be bad in the sack.
It's too bad he's in such a nasty mood. She is in a capricious kind of mood, feels like teasing, having had nine days to recover from the blow that was Emily's pregnancy. Little Sam Jr., fuck. It still rankles just a teensy bit.
"Have you seen Sam this week?" Leah asks.
"Yeah. He's absolutely nauseating to be around, though, since he found out about the baby."
"I can imagine," she mutters. "I don't know what's to be so excited about. If I was having a kid at my age, I'd probably hang myself."
"Yeah, well, once you've found your eternal soul mate, for good and forever, what's the point in waiting?" Jacob grumbles.
"Do I sense some bitterness?"
"Oh, please!" Jacob scoffs. "You better not start telling me about bitterness, Leah. How many years did you spend being bitter about that exact topic?"
"The Midol offer still stands."
Jacob wrenches a little too enthusiastically once more, severs another vital piece, sighs, and stands up. "I'm gonna go make something to eat. You want anything?"
"Any of my delicious pie left?"
Jacob feels himself flush slightly. Considering his earlier remark (a complete and utter lie, it must be admitted) that Leah's pie was disgusting, he'd finished it in one evening. "Naw, that went pretty fast."
Leah grins. Not just a weird half-smile like he's used to from her, a big, companionable, impish grin. "I thought it was terrible, Jacob."
He throws up his hands, feeling lighter than he has all day. "I can't account for Billy's warped sense of taste, all right?"
"Do you know that you are a horrendous liar?"
He has to laugh.
xxx
In the kitchen, Leah sits on the countertop and swings her legs like a little girl. The sight is completely alien to Jacob from a girl like Leah. His sisters did that, for fuck's sake.
"Making yourself right at home, are you?"
"Yeah," Leah says, "it's actually all I can do not to go into your fridge and start drinking juice right out of the carton."
"I guess I'm crossing the juice off my list of things I can drink. Were you the one that took a bite out of the last cinnamon bun?"
"I've been spending a lot of time here, actually, with your dad. I don't know how we never cross paths. "
"Because I work, maybe? What the hell do you want to talk to Billy about, anyway?" Jacob throws open the fridge and is disappointed by what he sees. He pulls out a container of hot dogs a few days past their Best Before date. Werewolves bounce back, right?
"Just stuff. Sam, and Emily, and La Push stuff, and Quileute stuff. And about you, and your sisters, and your mom and my dad. Mmm, hot dogs."
He looks at Leah again, long legs swinging back and forth into his cupboard doors. "Have you ever considered that maybe your ass isn't welcome on my countertop?"
"My ass is welcome wherever I say it is, and you'd best keep that in mind, kiddo."
This is a new Leah. It has been six months, so he doesn't really have a right to be surprised. Considering Sam fell in love with her, she can't always have been a bag. Jacob is forced to consider that he knew her not at all before Sam left her. He supposes Bitchy Leah must have been a pit stop on the way back to her current self.
He pops the hot dogs in the microwave – five for him, three for her – and can't help noticing that she's leaned over to look at the package and her shirt's bunched forward a little and he can see –
"I thought I told you something about taking a picture earlier?"
For the second time that evening, Jacob feels his face heat up.
Leah is smirking, but is kind enough not to say anything else on the matter. "Did you know these hot dogs are expired?"
"Werewolves, Clearwater. We bounce back," he mutters, realizing that in his distraction he has forgotten to fork the hot dogs as one of them whistles and explodes in the microwave.
"Jacob, you are something else. You make fun of my pie and you can't even cook a hot dog?"
He chooses to ignore her, popping the door open and placing the hot dogs on buns. He doesn't bother with plates and Leah doesn't seem to care, hopping off the counter and rummaging through the fridge for a moment. She emerges with barbecue and buffalo sauce and proceeds to smother her hot dogs in them.
Jacob watches her in a kind of awe, noting as she starts to eat that she is probably the least dainty female he's ever witnessed. She eats like Paul, to his ill-concealed delight.
Leah eating a messy, large hot dog with barbecue sauce on her face is probably the last sight he thought he'd ever find appealing.
He's almost too busy watching to realize she's stolen his fifth.
"You're a bitch, you know that?"
That grin again.
A/N: Did it turn out okay? Tell me what you thought!