A/N: For those of you who know me from my SVM stories, the fact that this is late is no surprise to you. It's typical Zigs. To those of you who only read this and are feeling bewildered or betrayed by my tardiness, I apologize for the rude awakening. I'm not perfect.

I know, shocking.

But enough about me, let's read about Bella! Yay. Riri, as always, cleaned this dirty chapter up. And when I say dirty, I mean completely innocent and filled with adorable times on porch swings.

The songs in this chapter are as follows: (in case you want to youtube that shiz)

Joni Mitchell - Case of You
The Beatles - Blackbird


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I knew I shouldn't have gone back outside; I knew it. But he was sitting there looking lost on my porch, and I couldn't help by try and reach out to him in some way. It was, of course, stupid of me. I still hated myself for caring, but he was so solitary out there on his own, and I felt lonely in my house with no one but Loretta to talk to. We were two people separated by nothing much other than a door and a shared fear of getting in too deep. The problem was, we already were—up to our shoulders deep. There wasn't much point in keeping him at an arm's length anymore, so I gave in. Again.

God, I was so weak.

We sat together for hours it seemed. The sun dipped below the horizon and the air chilled, along with the tea I had brought him, and still we sat. Jasper never stopped rocking us on the swing, and I almost fell asleep from how peaceful the noise of the creaking wood and the crickets sounded.

When Jasper got up to leave, I sighed, saddened. Jasper's presence—when he wasn't busy trying to charm me or clouded with drink—was calming and addictive. It was an alarming realization, but it was a truthful one. I found myself trying to appease him, make him feel some of the comfort he had inadvertently brought me, but all I could muster was a simple "goodnight."

Later that evening, and well into the early hours of the morning, I relished the few hours of peace I had found on the porch, since it was obvious sleep was not going to come to me. I sat with my mother's guitar in my hands and strummed lazily, not thinking of words or chords, but merely lulling myself with the soft hum of the strings.

In a way, I was as bad as she was. Except my addiction was the memories I refused to let go of, and this damn guitar I couldn't part with. Both tethered me to her and kept me under the current that constantly threatened to drag me out to sea. It was a catch 22: I didn't want to forget so I could avoid repeating the same mistakes, and yet I yearned to not remember each night I sat awake reliving the past.

What was the point of wanting to remind myself of my old mistakes if I was simply going to ignore all I'd learned and start over again with Jasper? I'd already wedged myself into his life too securely, and I knew that those weeks he'd spent tending my garden and hanging around like a puppy weren't for the sake of wasting time. He wanted to be around me.

It was a scary, scary thought.

Only time would tell, I supposed. Tonight I'd given him my ultimatum. If he wanted to be a part of my life, he had to let go of his self-destructive ways.

I had expected him to put up a fight, but instead he closed in on himself and pondered for hours on my porch.

He was right, he wasn't like my mother. My mother would have screamed and cried, and kicked and cursed. She would have rampaged and thrown her nicknacks and belongings around the room until there was nothing left but a kaleidoscope of shredded color and tears.

Jasper sat with his arm slung over my porch swing and a distracted look on his face to take in what I'd told him. He barely spoke, and hardly moved, save for the constant pushing of his right leg to keep us rocking. He was a self-contained being; a contradiction to my prejudice.

In a small voice, I found myself singing. The slow strums of my hand turned into plucks, and my lazy fingers on the frets found chords to accompany my hums. I had fallen into the middle of a song, and sang it softly into the darkness of my living room.

"...go to him, stay with him if you can, but be prepared to bleed.

"Oh, you're in my blood like holy wine, you taste so bitter, and so sweet..."

It was Joni Mitchell, one of my mother's favorites. I found it ironic that the song used a metaphor about drinking to symbolize the pain of a relationship. I closed my eyes, ignoring the Freudian connections that might have been evident in the lyrics and continued to sing, a bit louder as I fell farther into the rhythm.

After another verse I found myself scowling as I sang, and abruptly stopped. I didn't want to think of my mother anymore. Tonight hadn't been about her for the most part, and I shouldn't have let myself wallow in the dark as I was.

I stood up and brought the guitar with me to walk out onto the back porch. It was early, 5AM and the sun was just starting to streak the indigo sky with soft blue light. Soon the early gray would shift to yellow and orange, and the crest of the sun's head would show above the ocean's waves. This was my favorite time of day: the early morning when everyone else slept and I owned the sky.

With the morning light just starting to tint my eyes, I sat down on an adirondack chair and started to hum and pluck.

"Blackbird singing in the dead of night...take these broken wings and learn to fly...

"All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise..."

I stayed there on that back porch for another hour, watching the sky lighten as just the tip of sun begin to show, repeating the pluckings of the main harmony and switching back and forth between singing softly and humming.

"...you were only waiting for this moment to arise..."

In order to watch the ocean, I had to look past Jasper's own back porch and the bottles I'd lined up along the bottom of the railing. I hadn't dared to drain their contents, but I didn't want to leave them in the house. It was a futile attempt to make a point, but it was all I could muster. His anger was not something I sought to ever see.

The sun's light cut the dark gray sky with a slash of red across the horizon, coloring the ocean tangerine and blue. It cast shadows across the pillars of Jasper's porch and my own, seemingly connecting the two.

Still, I sang.

"You were only waiting...for this moment to arise..."

. . .

"Bella," someone was saying above me in a soft voice that ran like caramel over my sore muscles. I shifted in my seat and groaned.

"Bella," he said again, concern piercing the smooth sound. A hand touched my shoulder, gentle and warm, and my eyes flicked open, blinking into the dim light. "Bella, it's gonna rain."

Sure enough, the sky above me was angry with grey-green clouds. Whatever beauty that had arisen this morning with the sun had been choked out by those low-hanging pests. I scowled up at their menacing presence.

While attempting to stand, I found that the back of my legs were stuck to the paint of the old chair and my neck was cricked to the side at an odd angle. I'd fallen asleep, and felt like shit because of it. Jasper was smiling above me in a sweet way, not teasing, just soft. He hesitantly took the guitar from my arms and then with his free hand, offered me his arm like a gentlemen would. It was an old-fashioned gesture, and I found myself wondering if his grandaddy had passed more onto his grandson than merely a steel-bellied guitar.

I stared at his outstretched hand a beat too long before accepting his help and letting him pull me from the old, sticky chair. The heat of my body, mixed from the heat of the early morning did nothing to help with my groggy composure. My shirt was damp from where the guitar had been laying on my belly, and my face was prickly from the moist air.

"I hate humidity," I said to the sky, glad for the impending storm, knowing it would help cut the heat.

"Try living in Georgia in the summertime. You could swim down the street for how the thick air gets. Everyone thinks southeners are slow talkers 'cause of their lack of intelligence, but really, it's just the humidity. You learn to take things easy when the mere act of opening one's mouth makes you sweat."

I snorted, despite myself. Jasper's accent had appeared with the rain, and I liked the sound of it. We ducked inside rather fast as the first few droplets hit the backs of our legs, as if it were telling us to skedaddle into the house before it was too late.

"That's a beautiful guitar," he said, admiring the toxic instrument in my hand. I loved and hated my mother's guitar simultaneously. Maybe I should have left it outside to warp in the storm? It had probably already untuned itself from the heat, how was a little bit more water going to effect it? I smiled at my evil plan, but quickly handed the guitar to Jasper without thinking before I did something stupid...like break it over the kitchen table.

Jasper took it into his hands with reverence, no doubt knowing how rare a Gibson it was. I bit my lip and folded my arms across my chest. It was always the same with the people who saw it. They oohed and ahhed at the thing as if it were something magical. Surely, that was my mother's intention. She knew what she was doing when she sold our car to purchase the damn instrument. She had taken better care of that piece of wood and string then she ever had with me, and I resented it and hoarded it for that reason.

Ugh, I was so fucked in the head.

"Was this your mother's?" Jasper asked, his tone careful.

I nodded.

"You kinda hate it, don't you?"

I nodded again.

He hummed, agreeing with me, as he sat down at the kitchen table with the guitar still in his hands. "I think I get that."

"It's not the guitar's fault," I offered, trying to explain myself. Jasper smiled.

"You play." It was a statement not a question. I balked.

His smile faltered slightly, "I uhh...heard you last night."

I dropped my arms in shock as my mouth fell open. "Shit." Shaking my head, I apologized quickly, I hadn't meant to curse out loud.

"Don't apologize, Bella, you sounded beautiful."

My toes curled and my head fell forward as a thunder clap sounded outside. I hated compliments. Apparently, so did the weather.

"I don't expect you to say yes, but if you ever wanted to play...I'd really like to hear it. Up close I mean."

I didn't like the direction this conversation was going, and for some reason it made me angry to see my mother's guitar in Jasper's hands so I ignored his proposition. "Let's sit outside."

"But, the storm, Bella."

"The front porch is deep, the roof covers us. I like counting the seconds between the lightning and thunder to see how close the storm is." I was already walking towards the front door as I spoke. If Jasper wanted to come, he could. If not, that was fine. There was no way I was going to stay in that kitchen with the guitar and him in the same room.

It took him three minutes, but the creaking of the screen door eventually sounded behind me. I felt him at my side before he slipped into the adirondack chair next to mine and pulled his legs to his chest, like I had done. The wind in the air had definitely cut through the heat, I was almost chilled from the spray.

When the next crack of lightning flashed across the sky, I turned my gaze to see Jasper's face illuminated before me, and together we counted. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine—" Thunder interrupted our game, sending vibrations of sound through the air, making me shiver down to my toes.

"Nine miles," I said, not daring to blink.

"That's far."

"It'll get closer, though. Soon."

"I'm glad."

"I'm scared."

"Don't be."

"Why?"

"I didn't drink today, Bella."

Lightning flashed again but this time, I saw the lucidity in his eyes, the tightness of his jaw, and the stress present in the way he sat prone on the chair. He was fighting, but for now, he was winning.

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A/N: So, little side note. Right before posting this, I did some research on that old game of counting the seconds between lightning and thunder. Turns out, it's a mile for every five seconds, but for the sake of the chapter I'm gonna ask y'all to please suspend your disbelief. When I was a child playing that game on my Nana's back porch, I thought it was a second to every mile. *sigh* I hate being wrong.

If you'd like to Bella's mother's guitar, it's linked on my profile.

Thank you all for waiting and reading. :-)