Best friend - noun - the one friend who is closest to you.
In the next few months that followed after that encounter, Amun had been keeping a close eye on Benjamin. The younger vampire had only managed to escape twice, and after that, he was on lock-down with people watching him twenty four hours a day. And though the constant vigilance was both annoying and unnerving, it was also entirely unnecessary; each time that Benjamin had gone out to search for the mysterious blonde that he'd seen, she wasn't there. He had scoured the entire city for her, but there wasn't a trace of her and he couldn't track down the scent of her blood. Finally, after his second attempt at trying to find her, he had to accept that he wouldn't be seeing her again. The mere admittance of that itself had broken him considerably. After all, she was his blood-singer and she was gone.
While stuck in the palace, he had taken solace in going the one place where Amun and Hebi couldn't follow; the bathroom. It was often that he filled up the large, marble bath and soaked in it, leaving himself to his own thoughts. Those thoughts really only consisted of the mysterious blonde and where she might have gone. He considered that maybe she'd been freaked out by him, so she'd quickly told her parents to leave. She'd told them the horrors of seeing a man with blood red eyes and her parents, spooked by their daughter's encounter, decided to leave immediately. Or maybe she was one of those people that traveled around the world, never settling in one place for very long before she was up again, moving to another place to experience new people and new adventures that didn't involve him and didn't involve being stuck in a palace with two vampires watching her every move.
Or maybe, just maybe, she was still there, and he was missing her. Maybe she was still out there, waiting for him to come and find her, waiting for him to know her name and her favorite color and what her voice sounded like and where she came from. That notion alone was what killed him, because he wanted to know all about her; he wanted to know where she got that small, faint scar on the left side side of her chin, to know why she was there, what she thought of him, and how she would react to him being a vampire. More importantly, though, he wanted to know if she would even like him at all, or if she would've rejected him, maybe even denounced him as a monster and had him and his entire coven killed.
At that thought, he sunk his head under the water, willing the thought to leave his mind. While the thought made him consider that maybe meeting her wouldn't have been such a bad thing after all, something about the gentle, curious look in her eyes told him that she wouldn't have done that, and that only made him want her more.
"Calypso! Cal, sweetheart, can you please help me bring in the groceries?"
The blonde trotted down the stairs, meeting her mother at the door, who currently had an armful of paper bags. Scolding the woman for taking so many at one time, Calypso took some from her, carrying them into the kitchen where her father was currently reading an article online. Hearing the two women enter, he looked up from his laptop, glasses balanced lazily on his nose. His eyes moved from her face to the groceries in his daughter's arms and asked, "Groceries?"
Calypso nodded her head, setting them down on the countertop. She followed her father outside, the three of them easily carrying the remaining groceries inside, finishing the chore quickly.
"So, what do you have planned for today?" The older, blonde woman questioned, putting boxes of cereal into the cabinet over her head. She tried to reach unsuccessfully, which made her husband reach over and take them from her, easily putting them into the counter. "Thank you, Richard." She said gratefully, kissing his cheek.
Calypso tried to ignore the show of affection and replied, "Paul said he wanted to hang out." Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand after she'd chugged down a glass of milk, she sent a shit-eating grin when her mother gave her a disapproving look at the action, which made her mother chuckle and shake her head. "We were planning on just sitting around his house and playing some games or something. He said we'll probably order pizza. I'll be back around six-ish."
"And what time were you supposed to be meeting Paul at his house?" Her father questioned, raising his brows at his daughter. Both of the parents knew that despite Calypso's good intentions and intelligence, she was forgetful and terrible at keeping herself on task. "Because I have a feeling that you're late, hun. Call it intuition."
"Intuition?" His daughter frowned, shifting her weight to one foot indignantly. "He said I should meet him at two! And it's only-"
"Two forty seven right now, short stuff." Paul replied from behind her, effectively cutting her off and making her jump in her skin. In turn, she spun around and slapped his arm, glaring at him while he laughed at her.
"Not funny, you ass." She grumbled, making Paul laugh even harder when her mother corrected her for her language.
"So, how was the trip, Helen?" Paul questioned as he opened a bag of chips and dug right on in. He wasn't afraid of imposing or being rude. He'd known this family ever since they'd moved in when he was around eight years old. He remembered meeting Calypso for the first time and teasing her about her strange name. She then announced that she was named after a woman in Greek mythology, who was a nymph. Paul then proceeded to ask her what the hell a nymph was. She then kicked dirt into his face, which oddly enough started a wonderful friendship.
If there was one thing that Paul wasn't, it had to be a people-person. Sure, he had his pack, but Paul wasn't too fond of spending his time around too many people. They tended to piss him off, which tended to set off his temper, which obviously wouldn't end too well. Of course, he'd phased in front of Calypso before. It was how she found out about his secret, and how she became the closest person in the world to him. They'd been fighting about a guy she was dating that ditched her to hang out with some of his friends. Paul told her to dump him, but she refused. It resulted in a fight, which resulted in him getting angry, which resulted in him phasing and Jacob having to come and break it up. It took her a week, but she finally was okay with it. After a while, it just became a second nature kind of thing. In fact, she often called him Fido and made jokes about it.
"It was wonderful, wasn't it, Calypso?" Helen gushed, excited. She and her husband were world famous explorers, having written many books together before Calypso was even born. After she was born, they decided they needed to settle down somewhere, but also agreed that it had to be somewhere with a lot of interesting history to it that they could study while they were there. They chose La Push, and they often remarked about how it was one of the greatest choices they'd ever made. However, they often missed their exploring days, which resulted in vacations. "Oh, we visited the Pyramids, and the Sphinx, and I got so much information from the locals. They welcomed us with open arms. It was splendid, really."
Because she was born in Liverpool, England, Helen had a British accent. It was very pronounced when she spoke, giving her an even more elegant feel than she already had, although she also had an extremely motherly feel to her as well. It was something that Paul made fun of time and time again, resulting in disapproving looks sent to him by Mrs. Stewart, though they weren't ever serious. She didn't mind Paul's teasing much, knowing that it was purely playful. Besides, having a tough mom himself, he knew when to cut it out.
Meanwhile, Mr. Stewart, or Richard, had a New York accent, having been born there. He was tall, burly, and loud, commanding attention in every room he entered. Of course, he wasn't as tough as he seemed; really, he was a big teddy bear, as Calypso liked to put it. He was a fairly docile man and only became threatening when it involved protecting his family.
"She's making a bigger deal out of it than it actually was, seeing as she's seen it ten times already." Calypso replied teasingly, spitting her tongue out at her mother, who looked mildly annoyed. "I'm just kidding. It was pretty cool, though."
With a frown, she slapped Paul's hand away when he went to grab at the pre sliced ham sitting on the counter which was just waiting to go in the fridge. "Oi, black hole, we need to get to your house soon if we're going to actually do anything today. You can come and eat my every single solitary piece of food in my home later, I promise."
"Alright, alright. No need to blow a fuse there, short stuff." He teased in response, ruffling her blonde hair fondly.
Though she was used to it by now, she still gave a roll of her eyes, an impish smile teasing the corners of her lips. While Paul teased her to no end and she, in return, teased him, she wouldn't trade him for anyone in the world… usually.
She slapped his hand off of her head, fixing her hair. "Bite me, Fido." She turned back to her parents, ignoring the confused looks on their faces, kissing each of them on the cheek. "Bye, Mom! Bye, Dad!" With that, she and Paul left.
As she walked to his house, she remembered something about the vacation that she hadn't told him about. She hadn't forgotten about the man that had been staring at her, the one she hadn't been able to look away from, although she'd tried with everything she had in her. It was the very same man with the piercing red eyes.
While the color of his eyes frightened her, it mostly intrigued her. Had it not been for the trio hurrying through the town in order to make it back to their hotel to catch their flight, she probably would have stopped him and asked him some questions. Sure, maybe it wouldn't have been the smartest move to talk to the guy in a hooded cloak with bright red eyes, but it wasn't in her nature to be overly-cautious. She had what her mother liked to call a dangerous curiosity. If something intrigued Calypso, she would do everything in her power to figure it out despite any harm that could or would come her way by doing so. It bothered her parents to know end and it really pissed off Paul who had taken the duty on to be her protector since the two had officially become friends when she moved to Forks. Paul telling her his secret had only made her that much more curious, which in turn made Paul that much more protective of her.
Because of this, the two were absolutely inseparable. Calypso was always going off to investigate who knows what at God knows where, and Paul always tagged along for the ride to make sure that she was safe. This, of course, had sparked rumors in the small town that the two of them had to be an item, though those rumors had been mostly quelled when Paul began dating Rachel Black, Jacob's sister. Paul had explained to her that he had imprinted on Rachel, a process that had been explained to the blonde previously when she first learned about Paul's furry little problem, as she liked to call it. After meeting Rachel, Calypso deduced that she passed the test to be Paul's girlfriend and deemed her worthy. In fact, Calypso had even joked that she was too good for Paul.
Apparently, Jacob agreed and didn't really want Paul dating Rachel. Long story short, Jacob and Paul were frenemies, mostly because Paul was prone to fits of anger and Jacob didn't like that, especially not around his sister. Jacob also didn't like how Paul supposedly hung out with Calypso more. Supposedly.
"I got a new controller." Paul was saying as he opened the door to his house, keeping it open for Calypso as she strolled on in behind him. He let the screen door swing shut on its own and followed in after her, walking into the kitchen instead of the family room where the game system was set up. "It's specially fitted for sniping, which means that I'm going to fucking kick your ass." He called from the kitchen, no doubt getting food for (mostly) himself to eat as they played. Calypso kicked her flip flops off, plopping down on the couch then. Numbly, she thought that maybe she should bring up the man with the red eyes to Paul, that maybe there was something that Paul knew. After all, he was a shape-shifting wolf.
However, as he walked in and set bag after bag on the table, she finally deduced that she had probably just seen a guy with some good colored contacts and tried to immerse herself in the game with her best friend. Tried.