Kk1999: Thanks. It's proving to be a little more work than I expected when I got the idea originally, but I'm on a bit of a roll right now, so things are flowing nicely.
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Narrator POV
There was actually a smile on her face, a fact noted with some surprise. Jake, Bella thought, Jake and his friends. Quil might be a little much to take on a regular basis, but Embry was nice. And he'd cooked and cleaned up, which she didn't think most teenage guys did. When was the last time someone had done something like that for her? It took her a moment to remember…And just that easily and quickly, she dropped back down once more.
Charlie mentally groaned when he looked in on her in the morning. She'd looked so much better last night, after Jake and his friends had left, and yet now she was just as bad off as ever. In a near-panic that he wouldn't allow himself to give into, Charlie called his friend Harry and asked for Harry's wife, Sue.
"What's wrong, Charlie?" she asked, and he filled her in.
"As much as we all want recovery—no matter what kind—to be a smooth upward climb, the reality is that there will be downs as well as ups. 'Two steps forward, one step back'", Sue added.
"What do I do?" Charlie begged.
"Leah says Bella has done alright with her. Has she spent time with anyone else?"
"Couple friends from school have been by a few times, and Jake and his two friends were here yesterday. I almost think I saw her smiling last night around them, but by this morning…"
"Where has she gone since she left the hospital?"
"Nowhere," he admitted. "Dr. Gerandy did me a favor and stopped by a couple days ago so we didn't have to go to the hospital for Bella's checkup."
"Charlie!" Sue scolded. "Bella has to get out of the house and see and do things. Granted, not so much that she exerts herself into a relapse, but she needs to be part of the world and not turn into a recluse." Sensing that her husband's friend was at a loss, she continued, "You said she seemed to enjoy being with Jake, Quil, and Embry yesterday, so…why not see if any or all of them are free today and drag Bella down to see them?"
"I don't want to force her to do things…" Charlie trailed off.
"I'm not saying to put a gun to her head and drag her outside by her hair, Charlie. Really. All you'll be doing is giving Bella a jump start and a change of scenery."
"I think maybe I will."
Resolved, Charlie called to set things up with Billy and then marched upstairs to order Bella out of bed and into the shower. While she got ready, Charlie fixed her a simple breakfast. Once Bella was dressed and fed, he helped her out to her truck—figuring she'd like riding in that more than in his patrol car—and got them on the road to La Push.
Three boys came out of the garage that sat off to the side of the house. Jake ran to meet them while the other two hung back a little.
"Hey, Bells! Hi, Charlie. Bells, come on and see the awesomeness that is—or will be—my car," Jake grabbed her hand and pulled her after him toward the garage that was his private domain. Charlie watched them all for a moment before turning in the direction of the house.
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"I just don't know what to do, Billy," Charlie rubbed a hand over his face in obvious frustration.
"Bella?" Billy asked, although he didn't really need to.
A nod.
"Is she not getting better?"
"I wish to hell that I knew. Leah says Bella's showing improvement, she seems to like spending time with friends, but she gets so withdrawn in the evenings, and I hear her tossing at night. She still isn't really gaining back the weight that she lost being sick. My little girl just looks so lost and pale. She's so…if I didn't know better, I'd think she was on drugs and in withdrawal."
And Charlie might not be far wrong, Billy thought, though he couldn't say anything. The stories he'd grown up with told how the leeches could entrance humans and Billy was becoming even more convinced that the Cullen had done just that to Bella. A responsible level-headed girl lying to her father right and left? Falling apart because of an apparently normal teenage breakup? He could only that spending time with Jacob and his friends, and the other friends rallying around her, would help Bella—and soon. He hoped that at least some—if not most—of it could happen without Jacob having to phase, but it might be that only the imprinting would fully heal Bella.
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Embry POV
Quil and I headed over to Jake's place on Sunday morning, figuring he'd been in his garage like usual. He wasn't, so we just walked into the little red house that had always been our second home.
"Sorry, guys," Jake apologized when he saw us. "Late start. And it looks like we'll have an audience this time. Charlie's bringing Bella down."
He was obviously excited and it showed. For some reason that I didn't know or care to dig into, I was also happy she'd be hanging out with us again.
"Now, don't put her to work, Jake," Billy warned. "Charlie thought she needed to get out of the house and boost her spirits, so be nice." It might have just been my imagination,but Jake's dad seemed pleased about the soon-to-arrive visitor, too.
Even a fool, and I was no fool, could see that Jake liked her—really liked her. So the "bro code" demanded I step back. It was surprising how much I didn't want to do that and I wasn't sure why. Jake was a great guy—one of my best friends—but him and Bella? I'd wait and watch…and see.
"So what do you think?" Jake asked her, proudly extending an arm toward his prized possession.
"Um, it looks great," Bella lied badly.
"You can be honest, Bella," I teased. "It looks like crap."
"It'll really be something once I'm done with it," Jake retorted. He gave me a glower that I ignored, and tugged Bella forward and over to a worn couch set to one side of the garage. For a while, Jake kept up a running commentary of what we were doing and why. A glance over at Bella told me that her eyes were glazed over in incomprehension; another look a bit later showed that she'd fallen asleep.
"Don't think she's listening anymore, bro," I commented.
He followed my gaze and shook his head. "Bella, Bella."
When she woke up, Quil made her blush by exclaiming, "Hey, Sleeping Beauty woke up."
"Ignore him," Jake advised. "He's right—but ignore him."
Bella blushed and rubbed sleep out of her eyes. "Um, okay."
"You hungry?" he asked her.
"I guess. Maybe. I can—"
"Play chef mentor, like on Next Food Network Star while I pull lunch together," I interrupted. "What?" Everyone was giving me funny looks. "My mom really likes that channel," I defended.
"Alright. I ought to say hi to your dad, Jake."
"Ready?" I gave her a hand up and we headed to the house. "It's probably just healthy options," I warned, "unless we raid Jake's stash of junk food or Billy's supply of Vitamin-R."
"You can't be old enough to drink," Bella exclaimed.
I grinned. "We're all seventeen. And it's a teen guy rite of passage to steal Dad's beer and skin mags—though in our case the magazines were from a classmate. But Billy gave us a lecture when we woke up and another when we sobered up."
"Did it sink in?" she wanted to know.
"Yeah. Honestly, I'm not sure what the big deal is about beer—it was gross."
"Me, either."
"Hi, Billy," I greeted as we came inside the red house Jake and his sisters had grown up in. Bella echoed me.
"Hey, kids," he replied.
"I'll be right back," Bella whispered, turning to head down the hallway, probably to the bathroom. I asked Billy what he wanted for lunch, then went to survey the other options for the four of us.
"What can I do to help?" Bella asked from behind me. I almost said she could take it easy and let me do the work, but the look on her face and recall of how she'd said she hated being helpless made me nix that idea.
"If you grab a knife from the drawer, you can spread Miracle Whip on the bread. I'll follow behind you and add the meat and stuff. I know what the guys like, so just tell me what you want on yours."
"Thanks," she told me, as we carried the food back out to the garage.
"That's what friends are for."
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Bella POV
The next couple weeks passed in a similar pattern to the first one. I spent my weekdays with Leah, Angela, and Jessica—either just one or a combination—and my weekends with Jake and his friends. Before long, I was actually able to laugh at some of the antics the three guys got into together.
With all of them, and my parents, and the therapist my dad insisted I go to, I was starting to feel a little more like myself. I did backslide sometimes, like when my dreams edged into a nightmarish recall of the night in the woods, or when I looked at the calendar and realized it was his birthday, but usually there was someone around to snap me out of it. Granted, I couldn't tell the therapist everything—not if I wanted to stay out of a mental hospital—but I could, and did, talk about the normal stuff: being dumped, getting sick, and stuff like that. Dr. McKenzie really worked to make me understand that I had no responsibility for what had happened to me, and punishing myself as if I were to blame was a destructive and dangerous behavior pattern to sink into. When I talked about the people I was spending time with now, the therapist reminded me that all of them saw something special and worthwhile in me, and that it was unfair to everyone to let one person's negative view of me color everything else.
So overall, I was getting better; not that I didn't try to push people away a few times, especially in the beginning. But they were all as stubborn as me, and it didn't work—a fact I ended up being grateful for, and that affirmed what Dr. McKenzie had said. Jake and his friends were certainly stubborn about making me sit down and watch the Godfather movies with them. "Only the first two, Bells," Jake promised. "The last one was a total money-grab and should never have been made. We watched all those episodes of Friends with you, now you watch these two movies with us. With a running commentary of what stuff really meant and why the characters acted the way they did, I could have a little bit of appreciation for the basic story premise of a family living and working under a structured set of rules and expectations, albeit violent ones.
As he saw me improving, Charlie gradually let me take back some of the things I'd been doing around the house: cooking and shopping only, for now, and cleaning my bedroom. "I let you take too much on when you moved up here, Bella. That's not fair to you. You're a teenager, and you should act like one." He paused and gave me a long look. "Not that this means I want to see you into drugs or drinking or breaking curfew, or stuff like that. But you should have fun."
So I tried. I went to Port Angeles with all three of my girlfriends to see a movie, and visited the beach and tidal pools on the reservation with Jake and Company. Usually all three guys were together, but sometimes it was just two, or only one, depending. As members of two important tribal families, Jake and Quil sometimes had stuff to do with that.
"Where are Jake and Quil? I asked Embry one day, when he'd been the only one to meet me at First Beach.
"Tribal stuff," he answered. "Jake's dad and Quil's grandpa said there are things they need to learn. 'You'll be leading the tribe one day.'"
I laughed at Embry's accurate rendition of Jake's obvious quotation of Billy's words. "Bummer."
"Oh, I don't know. Makes me glad to be an outsider—no pressures. Plus, now I've got you all to myself," Embry gave a mock-evil laugh.
I felt my face flame, even though I rationally knew that there wasn't any reason I should feel embarrassed. We were just two friends hanging out, a smaller subset of our usual group. I gauged the ground in front of me to cover my blush, and rushed into continuing the conversation. "Really? Oh, I remember now: you're not from here, right?"
"Not genetically. I've lived here all my life, but I'm not Quileute. The tribes up here all get along now, so the fact that Mom and I are Makah isn't a major issue, not with as long as we've been here. But, I guess being such good friends with Jake and Quil does help—no one's going to piss them off by making a big deal about me."
"Do you wish you'd grown up with your dad, too?"
"Sometimes, sure. But Mom and I do okay on our own. And I had Quil's dad before he died, and Jake's dad before and since, so it's alright."
Since I thought a part of him might have been a little uncomfortable with so much sharing, I returned the favor told him about going back and forth between my parents, and with all my mom's moves, and my relocation up here.
"Pretty brave of you," Embry observed. "But with everything…do you wish you hadn't come?"
I gave the question the attention it deserved, staying silent for a while as we walked barefoot along the beach. Finally, "If I think about parts of it, yeah, maybe I do. But that's not everything that's happened to me up here. There are good things and good people here, and I have to try and focus on that and not on the hurtful stuff."
Embry slung a casual arm across my shoulders. "Great idea."
