I would like to dedicate this chapter to Orelina aka ME, whose reviews have made me feel like my fic is worth writing =) Thanks xx

I had hit a writer's block. My pen hovered over the paper, willing me to provide it with ideas to jot down. I'd finally gotten around to writing my best man's speech. The only problem was; how did you write a speech about two people being in love, when your own love life was in a dark and wretched place? I kept reading over the words I'd already managed to write, hoping it would provoke more ideas. I only succeeded in doubting the success of what I'd managed to scrawl down so far.

"How's things?" Asked a voice suddenly. I jumped and turned to see Lucianne perched on my bed.

"Fine," I replied, despite the fact that I was clearly not.

"Has she texted you again?" Lucianne enquired. She didn't need to say the name for me to know who she was talking about.

"No, not since after the party," I shrugged. I'd received a message from Ellie the day after I'd knocked out her ex, telling me she'd convinced Louis not to press charges. I'd never really had concerns of charges being pressed, since my step father was the chief of the Forks Police Force. What I was concerned about was the fact that she'd completely used me without the slightest hint of remorse. I felt so stupid.

"Would you like me to suck her blood?" Lucianne offered. I pretended to put some consideration into the proposal.

"No, I'd only feel guilty about it afterwards," I concluded.

"Wimp," Lucianne sighed, rolling her eyes. "Are you at least going to be coming out of this room anytime soon?"

"I haven't been in here that long," I protested.

"Two weeks is a long time to stay in one room, and if a vampire says it's long, it's long," she nodded.

"Oh... I hadn't really noticed the time passing," I shrugged.

"God, did you really like her that much?" Lucianne asked, looking at me with pity.

"Well see... that's the thing... I don't think I'm even that bothered about Ellie. I think what I really liked was the idea of having someone you know? I guess you spend all your time with a family of vampires who are all coupled up and the loneliness kind of gets to you. Does that make sense? I mean in a way... you're kind of in the same boat right?"

"You'd think being a nomad vampire I'd completely empathise with that... but I don't." She shrugged. "I like being on my own. I'm more alone than I am lonely. I've tried the whole travelling with other nomads thing, and I only end up getting annoyed and destroying them. I've always thought spending too much time with the same person would drive me absolutely insane. It would just get so boring and predictable, especially when you're serving the sentence for eternity rather than just a lifetime, so I don't really think I am in the same boat. I enjoy solitude, it's peaceful." She explained.

"That makes sense," I admitted. "Carlisle told me that vampires who drink human blood are less... human than the Cullens, so I guess you can't really feel human emotions properly like love and loneliness." A look flickered across her face, almost a sad look, but then it was gone and replaced by a grin.

"Exactly. I'm a monster. Monster's don't have feelings."

"You're not a monster," I argued.

"Please, I'm what haunts the dreams of small children. Tell me you never had a nightmare as a kid about something coming in the night to drink your blood." She challenged me.

"Nah, I was too busy having nightmares about clowns to entertain the idea of vampires," I grinned.

"Clowns?" She laughed.

"Hey, don't judge me! The way they paint those creepy smiles on their faces and make animals out of balloons that don't even look like animals!"

"Now that's not fair, the swans look like swans," she argued.

"Creepy swans," I grinned.

"Shame they're not geese, geese are cool." She nodded. We both paused and then simulataneously gave a loud HSSSSSSS and burst out laughing. It felt like the first time I'd laughed in ages.

"So, was there an actual reason you came up here? Other than to offer to be a vampire hit man and make goose noises?" I asked.

"Not really, I'm bored and wanted to know how your speech thing was coming along," she admitted.

"It isn't really," I muttered. I tried to slyly push the paper under a larger pile of papers out of sight, but was stupid to believe this would be missed by a vampire's sharp sight.

"Let me see!" She demanded, snatching it up. I cringed as her eyes flew over the very few lines I'd written.

"This is... bad," she said, shaking her head.

"It's not bad! It's just incomplete," I defended myself.

"No, it's just bad," she told me matter-of-factly.

"I know," I groaned. "I can't think of anything."

"Well... you better hurry... you have like two weeks left!"

"Help me!" I whined pathetically. She looked at me despairingly for a few moments and then shook her head.

"Okay," she said. "Well first off, you're the best man, so it has to be a little more light hearted than this. You're supposed to be the funny one, her dad's the one who's supposed to give the tear jerking speech. You come along to lighten the mood."

"I'm not in the mood to be funny," I muttered sulkily.

"Ah, you see the negative side effects of human emotion?" She taunted. I scrunched my face up at her.

"So," she carried on. "You need to start with one of those cheesy jokes that people laugh at no matter how much it sucks, cos they're already high on champagne. You know like 'Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen - Let me first say that the bridesmaids look absolutely smashing today, and only rightly outshone by our bride. And, I'm sure you'll agree with me gentlemen, today is a sad day for single men, as another beauty leaves the available list. And ladies, I'm sure you'll agree that today's passing by without much of a ripple.' Something like that."

"Write that down for me?" I asked sweetly. She rolled her bloody irises but wrote it down on the back of the piece of paper I'd been using for my script.

"What else you got?" I asked hopefully.

"No no! I'm not writing this thing for you! You come up with something!" She insisted. I sighed.

"Erm... ladies and gentlemen... before I start... can I ask for health and safety reasons that none of you get up on the chairs and tables during my standing ov- no that's lame." I winced.

"No that was good," she encouraged. "Very cheesy and a degree of cockiness in there, very nice." She wrote it down in her incredibly neat, old-fashioned hand writing. "Now, have you got that list of the things you said to Renesmee in the tree?"

"Somewhere," I replied, beginning to shuffle through the papers on my desk. We spent about thirty minutes working on the speech, and I couldn't believe how many ideas came flowing from me with Lucianne's encouragement. I also couldn't believe that in just a few weeks I'd become good friends with a non vegetarian vampire. I'd always thought of the ones that drank human blood as cold and cruel. This impression was instilled in me from the hundreds of Quilleute legends I'd been taught, starring 'bloodsuckers' or 'leeches' that attempted to take out whole tribes of Quilleute. I'd always thought of this negative impression as too deeply engraved in my mind to ever be dislodged. It was a grudge only made stronger as it had been passed from generation to generation. But I couldn't help seeing a better side to Lucianne. I couldn't see her as the undead creature she was, swooping on innocent people in the night and taking their lives with one bite. I could only see her as... well... Lucianne.

"And then you finish with a 'thank you' and sit back down," Lucianne explained, bringing my train of thought to a stop.

"Well, that was easier than I thought," I noted.

"Everything's easier when I'm around," she nodded. "You were just being a depressed boring person anyway, I bet you've forgotten all about whats-her-face now."

"I had forgotten about whats-her-face," I muttered. "Thanks for bringing it back up!" But it was true, I had forgotten about Ellie, and the hurt remembering her brought. Now my loneliness felt more like a tiny pinprick, rather than someone shoving a huge samurai sword straight through my beating heart. I took on what Lucianne had said, about being alone rather than lonely, and I decided I should start thinking of it less as isolation and more as... seclusion. Peace. I had all off eternity to fill that void after all, I might as well spend the meantime revelling in my time alone rather than loathing it... Right?