Disclaimer: Characters belong to Stephenie Meyer
A/N: SORRY. I know I am an atrocious person for making you wait so long. I truly appreciate your enthusiasm for the story, though, I swear!
Chapter Ten
Quil was avoiding me. Or at least that's how it seemed. It really hurt me that he didn't come around for the rest of the day after that amazing morning. Sure, it was only the next day, but every time a car door slammed on the street I would jump up and rush to the window, only to be disappointed.
Being apart from Quil had always been hard, but now that difficulty was made tangible. There was actually an uncomfortable pressure on my chest- like a weight that made it impossible to take a full breath, or even to laugh properly. And the ache would twinge really badly when I thought about how his hot lips had felt crushed against mine…
"Claire!"
"Uh, yeah?" I responded to the annoyed voice. I looked around to see Riley glowering at me, pulling on her zebra striped sweatpants.
"Snap out of it! Jeez, what's with you? You were so like…absent during rehearsal today. Is it Patrick?"
"Umm…" came my brilliant response. I didn't know what to even say about the whole Patrick situation.
"I'm sorry, Riley," I apologized. "I just couldn't focus today."
She huffed and blew some pieces of her bangs away from her face. "Whatever."
Great. Not only was I hurting from missing Quil, but Riley was still mad at me. God, I had really messed things up. I had put Patrick before my best friends in the world.
Riley tied the string to her sweatpants and stood up, grabbing her duffel. "See you at school, Claire."
"Wait!" I called, still thinking about how awful I'd been to her. She was basically the only friend I had within ten years of my own age. "Do you want to sleep over tonight?"
"We have school tomorrow," Riley said, but she looked like she might want to.
"Please? I know we haven't spent much time together lately."
"That's an understatement."
"Riley, I really am sorry. I promise we can stay up till at least two am talking about everything."
Riley's eyes sparkled momentarily with the promise of gossip. "Oh, alright. My Mom's here to pick me up, but I'll talk to her and then come over to your house later with all my stuff for school."
I grinned widely. "That sounds awesome! Oh, and I rented Juno!"
Riley smiled in spite of herself. "I love that movie!"
I stood up too, and went to join her by the door. "I'll see you soon, then, Riley."
I left the studio feeling lighter than I had all day. I missed Quil, of course, but I finally felt like my life was back on the right track. I needed to start picking up the pieces.
An hour and a half later, I was sitting on my front porch waiting for Riley's mom to drop her off. It was almost summer, and the crickets had decided that it was time to get down to business, humming loudly in search of a mate. That sound is so annoying, I thought absently, a bunch of horny crickets singing all summer long…
Before I could start to wonder if Quil was planning on being a part of my summer, Riley's mom's electric blue hybrid sedan pulled up, seventies rock blaring. I helped Riley carry her mountains of stuff into the house, and trailed after her while she saw her mom off.
Watching Riley and her mom interact is quite possibly one of the more entertaining things you will ever see in your life. Riley's mom's first name was Dawn, if you believe it. Dawn was actually pretty young, like maybe only thirty-five or something. Her hair was long and perfectly straight, with two small pieces of reddish hair pulled back, like something out of a hippie movie. She always wore loose fabrics, and ate only organic foods. She also owned the only record store in La Push. Anyway, her and Riley are pretty funny together. Here's this fifteen year old girl talking to a woman who looks almost as young as she is, both in chunky bracelets and with hand woven bags. And get this- they don't speak English. Yes, they are both Caucasian Americans. But every couple of years, they start to study a new language, and speak only that language at home until they've mastered it. So far, Riley knows Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese, English, and she and her mom were currently chatting in what sounded like Arabic.
Finally Riley managed to extricate herself from her worried mother, giving her a kiss.
"Bye, Dawn," Riley said as her mom drove away.
"Bye Riles!" her mom called back, thrusting one hand out the window behind her in farewell as she sped off.
"Is that one new?" I asked Riley, pointing to the least grimy bumper sticker on the back of their sedan.
"Yeah, she just got that one last week."
"Huh." It was black and had the numbers "1.20.09" written in white. Underneath that were the words "Bush's Last Day." I had to hand it to Dawn- she didn't do anything halfway. You would understand better if you saw her house- did I mention it was the only pink house with a yellow sunset mural in La Push?
After we walked up the stairs and into my room, Riley dropped her bag in the middle of the floor, spun around on her heel, and arched one eyebrow at me. She actually looked sort of scary, like she was expecting me to confess a murder or something.
"What, Riley?"
"Oh come on, Claire," she whined. "I've been promised some gossip and movies, now start talking and I'll put in the DVD!"
I laughed; unfortunately it sounded too high and strained to be natural. But Riley wasn't my good friend for nothing; she dropped she playful face and steered me to the side of the bed.
"Oh God, babe, what happened?"
Suddenly, everything that had gone on the past couple of days weighed on me. The confusion with Quil, the awful memories of Patrick, feeling lost… I tried to wipe away the tears that kept flowing down my face while Riley patted my shoulder awkwardly. She was a good friend, but she was a little bit socially awkward. That was okay with me, though; neither of us fit in really well.
"I-I was just so freaking stupid Riley. I let everything get all messed up, with you, and with Quil and I wasn't even paying attention I was just trying to be what I thought I wanted to be and then I started to lose you guys and I didn't know what to do and then Patrick was—was—" By now I was blubbering like a big baby. My nose was even dripping a little bit. It was a mark of how strong our friendship was that Riley didn't scoot further down the bed in disgust.
"Sh, Claire," she said softly, still patting my shoulder in an uncomfortable way. Riley wasn't good with sad- I think that's because Riley doesn't know how to be sad. She's either super enthusiastic and funny, or really moody and angry. There's no in between with her.
I took a few calm breaths and gave Riley a watery smile. She looked worried, and was chewing her stubby nails even lower in stress. I noticed that they were electric pink this week.
"Sorry, Riley, just a minor flip out."
She ignored how I tried to brush it off. "Tell me what's going on right now, Claire." She looked like she meant business. "I know you too well to believe that was nothing."
I spoke in a low voice, probably because even I didn't want to hear everything that I was about to admit. "I messed up really bad, Riles. I thought that Patrick was okay. And then he- he-" I couldn't finish the sentence. I couldn't say it out loud; the word "Rape" was just too harsh. It was like the word was surrounded in barbed wire and would hurt to force out of my mouth.
Riley's face changed from tan to white to red in the space of about four seconds. She stood up in one sudden movement and headed towards the bedroom door.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to go kill that son of a bitch." Riley didn't scream the words, but they were scary just the same. Scarier, maybe, because her voice was flat and inflectionless; like a statement of fact.
"Whoa, nothing happened!"
"Don't try to feed me that line again-"
"For real! I mean, it would have, and I wouldn't have been able t-to-" Deep breath. "Quil saved me."
Riley's face relaxed, but only slightly. She strode back to the bed and plopped herself down on it, grabbing a pillow and hugging it to her abdomen before starting to pick at the feathers sticking out of it. "Explain."
"I don't know how else to say it. I don't even know what happened. Patrick was being… and then I couldn't… and then Quil was just there. And he saved me."
For the moment, she seemed to understand that now was not the time to press for details. I sighed in relief, hoping that the interrogation part of the evening was now over. Wrong.
"And?" Riley was still picking at down feathers with the patient and wise air of a bodhisattva.
"And, what? And we all lived happily ever after?" I paused for a moment, remembering the black eye that Patrick had been sporting. "Well, not everyone."
Riley's thin lips twitched, too, clearly thinking the same thing. "No, no, purple and green are soooo his color."
We burst into peals of girlish giggles. It was nice to be with Riley again. It was nice just to be fifteen again, for crying out loud.
"Riley?"
"Mmmm?" Smug smile. Damn her and her all-knowing-ness.
"MeandQuilkissedIthink." I confessed in a rush, totally unsure of what her reaction would be.
"What's that?" Riley's voice was playfully sweet. Okay, she was definitely enjoying this too much. I mean, I just told her that I was almost raped for Christ's sake.
"Me and Quil kissed."
Ten seconds of silence.
"Wow, Riley, it's been like, a whole minute since you last spoke. Is that a record or something?"
She was too busy processing to even hit me on my arm for the jab. It had seriously been awhile since her face first froze up like that, though. I debated about whether or not she would be offended if I got my iPod to listen to while I waited.
"Okay," she announced after another thirty seconds.
"Okay, what?"
"Okay, as in, okay. It happened and I accept it. So how do you feel? What are you going to do? Oh my god, did you…?" Her last question trailed off suggestively. Riley was my best friend, but her mom was a hippie, after all. She was just so comfortable asking about these things. No big deal. Like, 'How 'bout them Cubs?' except for 'How 'bout some sex?'
"No, Riley," I blushed furiously. "Just one small kiss. And I feel… good. Happy. And I don't know what I'm going to do."
"Well…" Riley looked at me tentatively, measuring her next sentence. "He's old, Claire."
"Not that old!"
"How old?"
"Um…" Quil was older than me, of course. But I had never really put much thought into it before now. And since the discovery of the picture, I was starting to suspect he might be even older than Riley or I imagined. I didn't tell Riley that, though. She would definitely think I was crazy.
"Claire, honey. You're fifteen years old."
"I know that," I told her irritably. And I was damn tired of hearing it. "But why does it mater how young I am or how old he is? I feel safe with Quil, and he would never hurt me."
"Get real, sweetie." Riley was just brushing this off like a silly crush. She had always known that Quil and I were close, but I didn't think that anyone had even considered us ever being close like this. Even I could see that to an outsider it could look weird. But feeling Quil next to me, holding me… it was so right.
"I love him!" It was the only defense I had. Love conquers all, right?
Riley popped her lips loudly. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I'm sure."
"Okay."
There really wasn't much else to say. I didn't have some brilliant explanation that would make this all work, and she had given up on trying to convince me of my insanity- for tonight at least.
We stayed up watching Juno and some other favorites until my mom came back from her late night shift. As soon as we heard her car pull up in the drive, we promptly dove into the bed and turned off the lights. Mom would flip if she knew how late we were up on a school night.
The next morning was a hectic rush. We both slept through the alarm, or so Riley claims. I have a feeling that she threw her hairbrush at it around six this morning, but I can't prove it. But whatever the reason, we were now whipping our hair into sloppy ponytails and jumping into wrinkled jeans.
At seven-thirty we jammed our feet into running shoes, still choking down the last bits of cereal bars. It was a good thing that Quil was also running late, because he hates to wait.
"Where is he?" Riley complained, glancing at her Hello Kitty brand watch. She bought it vintage last year from a flea market, then bedazzled it.
"I don't know, he's usually-" The familiar car horn interrupted my explanation. "He's here, let's roll."
Riley opened the back door and unceremoniously slung her backpack into the backseat before sliding in herself. I went around to the front door to open it, looking down at my feet the whole way. I hadn't quite had time to tie my shoes yet, and I didn't want to trip over the laces. Plus, it was only now beginning to dawn on me how awkward this car ride could be.
Once inside the jeep, I took a deep breath and risked a look at the driver's side. But instead of Quil's open, happy face was Jacob's bored and solemn one.
"Jake? Where's Quil?"
Not good. Oh bad, bad, bad.