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IV.

It figures she almost gets herself killed moments after another confrontation.

She'd been walking towards her house but had chosen to take the long route in hopes of avoiding her mother - who should be heading out for her long night shift within the hour. Her mind was tired from the rush of thoughts and emotions and effort it's been through the past days (and months really). And since it was not yet dark enough for headlights to be needed, there was no visual cue.

So the truck seemed to come out of nowhere to her. It turned from one of the residential areas on the reservation and she'd been in the midst of crossing the road it was heading down.

It was like one moment she was trying to shake her mind out of the spiral of frustration it was lost in and in the next she's looking wide-eyed towards the front of a cherry red truck. She'd frozen up at the sight of it but the driver saw her with more than enough time to press down on the break and still have a few feet of space left in between them.

Logically, she knows that she hadn't really almost gotten run over but it felt like it, her heart pumping rapidly at the shock she'd just gotten. If the driver hadn't noticed her, though, she's sure she would've been hit.

And as she's having a mini-panic in her mind about how her shocked pause could have ended up with her crushed by a truck, the driver hops out and it manages to bring her attention to them instead. She notices then that she actually knows them, but they're not from the reservation.

"Bella?"

She calls out in question and gets a brief sense of déjà vu in the moments before she receives a reply. She knows their positions are reversed this time around, but it feels like they've gone through this exact moment already. A vehicle, a road and a near impact common factors in their meetings.

"Leah, I'm so sorry. I wasn't paying atten - "

The other girl stood before her with a hand rubbing at the back of her neck and her gaze falling to the ground every other second as she spoke. But she knew that it wasn't really her fault so she interrupted her before she could finish, saying, "Oh no, you're fine Bella, I had more than enough time to cross. It's my fault, really."

Bella's hand falls from her neck and she looks up at her with a small lift of her lips in acknowledgement of her words. Looking further out behind the girl at the direction Bella had been coming from, she makes a guess as to what she was doing here, already knowing she was right.

"So you're here to see Jake?"

Oddly enough, his name seems to make the other girl tense up. She watches as the hand that had dropped from her neck now makes it's way to her arm and squeezes while she nods her head in reply to the question. Her eyes lowered once more.

"Yeah, but I was just leaving."

She tries to catch Bella's eyes to see what was going through her head but she does a good job of keeping her gaze averted from her. She remembers how quiet and despondent the girl had been when she had almost ran her over the other day and she doesn't seem to be any better now.

"Oh, so were you here long then?"

Another question that would have been considered harmless for any other person seems to cause Bella to deflate even more, and she feels more concern bubbling. She wonders what's going on with the girl as she hasn't seen her look anything other than... down, for lack of a better word.

"Not long."

The reply is spoken so low she has to strain to catch the words, but she does and it only further concerns her. A moment of hesitation in which she questions whether she should speak passes but she decides to continue on and ask her anyway.

"Bella, are you okay?"

The reaction is instant. And she can tell from the way Bella's form straightened up immediately at her question that she's going to lie and brush away her query with a yes. But then something seems to come over her. Instead of spewing falsities about being just fine, Bella looks up directly into her eyes and seems to just let all her turmoil show as she softly replies.

"No, I'm not."

She steps up closer to the girl to lay a comforting hand on her shoulder, asking, "Did something happen?"

"I- I don't think Jake is my friend anymore."

And with those words, her newfound care for this girl who she'd barely known as more than an acquaintance is cemented. She understands what it's like to lose a friend, especially one who seemed very close to the girl and she herself had lost as well. And the fact that Jacob is a part of that little gang only adds to her need to comfort her.

"Trust me, you'll be okay without him Bella, but why do you think that?"

There's a few moments of pause. She keeps her hand on her shoulder and tries not to speak up again in case there's a reason for why Bella's taking a while to respond. And it seems she'd been right not to do so.

"I got back together with my ex and Jake doesn't like that I did. They don't really care for each other."

"That's not a good enough reason to break off a friendship, though, Bella. Did something else happen? Were you with him while the Cullen boy was gone? Or is he just jealous of him?"

It's the only reasons she comes up with that could explain why someone would cut off a friend just like that, if they liked them and was jealous they weren't dating them instead or if they'd been broken up with for someone else. But Bella shakes her head adamantly in a no.

"Me and Jake are only friends. They just have a history and because of it they don't want me to hang out with the other."

"Ah, I see."

She's not sure that's much better, but she also doesn't know the history she's referring to. What she does know is that one's friend can't stop them from hanging out with someone else. She's pretty sure that's what Sam tells the guys that join him, excluding everyone not a part of the group, and it's annoying.

"Well, I know how you feel. All my friends have up and bailed on me, for my ex of all people," she tells Bella, frustration at the situation leaking into her voice.

Her words lead Bella to look up at her with furrowed brows and she's glad that the girl no longer looks so distressed with thoughts of Jacob and her boyfriend. Who would have thought she'd have something in common with Jake's friend, and that that something was Jake's lack of friendship. It's not a great thing to bond with someone over but it's their situation.

"What happened?"

Somehow, she didn't anticipate being asked about it. Since it all first occurred, she hasn't really talked to anyone about everything. She used to talk to Sam, or her cousin, or even her mother despite the fact she was her mom, but not since then. But she remembers how she just told herself to let go, and maybe telling someone can help her let a bit of all the anger and sadness out.

So she tells Bella that her ex boyfriend had left her for her cousin but hadn't told her he was doing so until she found them out. Tells her that the little bit of friends she'd had left since then had all joined up with him and stopped being her friend. That Jacob was one of those friends, and she only talks to him rarely when they run into each other.

She tells her in as little detail as she can manage while still letting Bella know she can relate to shitty experiences. And then she waits for a response to her words. Maybe some commiseration. Maybe the tale of the history that had been mentioned. Something like that.

But it doesn't come.

Bella has instead been looking down towards the ground with seeming contemplation since she'd gotten through with her recount of events. She's not sure what about her story has the girl looking so thoughtful but the continued silence is starting to bother her. Before she can break it, however, Bella finally speaks up in a rush of words.

And what she says surprises her into her own silence.

"Want to go out with me?"

.:.

She realizes how it sounds as soon as the words leave her mouth but is unable to do anything except gape at Leah in shock.

It wasn't what she meant to say. At least, not the way it was worded.

She had been trying to just get home to pass out on her bed and cry until sleep claimed her. But then she'd noticed there was someone on the road and had to stop her truck before she hurt them, and so her plan was derailed. Seeing that it was Leah once again only caused her to blink twice in quick succession before rushing to ensure she was okay.

And then Leah had become concerned for her and she knew she must have looked like crap to draw attention from someone she barely knew. So she had to figure out how to explain without revealing that her boyfriend was a decades old vampire and Jacob was a weeks old werewolf, and the two were natural enemies.

And she'd managed to do so pretty easily.

(Due to practice from months of trying to act like a future with a vampire family hadn't been taken from her after a near death incident with another vampire, she's sure.)

But then Leah had opened up and revealed far more than she herself had. She had connected the dots and realized that they both had been crapped on by the supernatural, the other girl even worse since she didn't even know what had really happened.

Jacob had told her when she met Sam and Emily that they had imprinted and gotten together while Sam was in a relationship with her cousin, and she now knows that cousin had been Leah. And it's even more fucked up to her.

It's the reason she could never bring herself to be with Jake even though it had become obvious to her he liked her (and she'd been outright told by his friends that he did).

She doesn't want to be the one tossed aside when he finds his own imprint.

And now she knows the girl who had been put through that unknowingly. Had been told by the girl herself in a very diluted way. And Leah had lost more than just a boyfriend and a cousin, she'd lost friends to the supernatural.

All she could think after Leah had finished was that she knew the truth but couldn't tell her, and that makes her feel awful.

Until she realizes she could help her find out herself.

It didn't take much for her to figure out the truth, especially with the Quileute tales Jacob had told her. So she figures that with her giving even more hints, Leah could come to the conclusion that it was all real herself. And when she asks her, she'll confirm it and tell her the rest.

And all that leads her to the realization that she wants to befriend Leah because they could understand one another much better than anyone else as two people who weren't supernatural but had been marked by it.

So she had asked to hang out with her.

Except, it hadn't come out like that and she's now trying to backtrack and explain herself.

.

"I didn't mean it like that!"

She shouts it out into the silence that had fallen once she can finally bring herself to speak up again.

"I just think we could both use a friend because we both were ditched by people who we hadn't ever thought would do so and so I wanted to know if you wanted to hang out, with me, but just as friends, new friends, not like.. that."

"Oh."

She's not sure why Leah's response sounds so, well, flat. But she hopes it's just her processing and she hadn't messed up the opportunity to gain a new friend. A friend that could actually know about the supernatural since she's protected as a Quileute.

There's another moment of pause before she decides to ask again.

"So do you want to? Hang out sometime that is."

"Oh uh yeah sure. Sorry, I just wasn't expecting all of.. that."

Leah smiles at her a bit sheepishly and she relaxes at her answer.

"Okay great, how about - "

The sound of a horn bursts through the air, shocking her into silence as she realizes they never moved from the middle of the road. And for the second time in a few days to boot.

"Oh crap, I have to move my truck."

"Yeah, I should be heading home but we can definitely hang out sometime, Bella. See you later."

Then Leah is off down the sidewalk before she can say anything further. And she's left to hastily get into her truck with apologies to the man who's stuck behind her in the very narrow one-way road. And her thoughts are jumbled but her emotions aren't anymore.

And in that moment, she's not so down.