It was a Friday night, just under a month since the Masquerade, and what was Marietta doing? Why, responding to another letter of Alec's of course! But slaving over her desk was pretty common for a Friday night, that is, if she didn't have rehearsals. She scribbled in pink ink, then sat back, frustrated at not knowing how to word things.
Her frustration was interrupted by a banging at her door. "Marietta!...Marietta I know you're in there!"
She perked up and answered the door, "Seth!" She squealed throwing herself on him.
"Long time no see!" He swung her back and forth, squeezing tightly.
"Well…" She glanced back at her pen, "I've been…busy, homework and-"
His eyes followed hers, "Hand written, pink homework?"
"Uh…well I write-"
"You HATE writing!"
"Do not!"
"Do too! And if you ever HAVE to handwrite something, you complain about your handwriting being awful!" He grinned, "And I thought girls were supposed to have pretty handwriting."
"And I thought boys were supposed to be gentlemen!"
"Maybe in Georgia, but 'y'all' were loyalists and I'm Native American and proud."
"In Italy too!" She laughed, not being able to help herself.
"Oh really? So anyone from the ball I should know about?"
Marietta froze, thinking. Before the party, she'd been slightly interested in her best guy friend Seth, considering pulling him out of the friend zone even. Now he suspected there was someone else. There was of course, but she didn't have the heart to tell him. Not like she was still interested in Seth, but after what Renesme said, she intended to keep her mouth shut. "N-no," She stammered, "But um, I have more 'awful handwriting' to get to, so if you'll excuse me-"
"Nooo way I'm letting you sit up here alone on a Friday night! As your best guy friend it's my job to get you out there! Besides, Nessie and Jake sent me. We're having a little pow-wow tonight and I think you'd really like it. Friendly people,"
"I don't like people."
"Good food."
"I don't eat."
"Awesome dancing-and don't even deny that! You do musical theatre and go to balls, you're an AWESOME dancer!"
"Not INDIAN dancing."
"The term is Native American, makes my people sound more distinguished." He puffed his chest.
"Yet you call MY people leeches." She retaliated.
"Touché, but Indian-"
"Native American!" She corrected sarcastically.
"Whatever! The dancing is easy! You've messed around with stomp team during rehearsals haven't you?"
"Yeah but,"
"And you can twerk can't you?"
"Oh you WISH!" She pushed him giggling. "Give me five minutes to get my jacket with the fringe, matching purse, boots, lipgloss-"
"I knew you'd agree!"
"Shut up!"
A couple of minutes later, they were jumping the river that separated the Cullen's territory from La Push. Marietta fixed her hair and straightened her hair, "So I take it since Jake screwed things up and let Bella hang, you guys are pretty laxed about outsiders hm?"
"Kinda. And the whole Jake imprinting on Nessie, and us protecting them from the Volturi, yeah."
She shuddered, they were worse than she thought. There was a group of people chanting around the beginning of a bon fire while children played in the grass and some women rushed around with plates of food and some guys wrestled in the clearing. "Wow," This reminded her of the Western Art festivals at local museums in the Atlanta area. She used to face paint at those.
"Marietta!" Sue called running up to hug her, "There's my favorite pale face! How are you?"
"Great! What about you?! How's Mr. Swan doing?"
"He's doing great! But he's set on changing my name to Mrs. Swan." She sighed, "Marrying him was one thing, but changing my name from Clearwater is another entirely."
"I understand."
Seth hugged his mom before running to some of the other boys. "Seth! You're just going to leave me in the middle of-"
"Don't worry! I gave them warning, come on!" He grabbed her hand and drug her to say hi to the rest of the pack.
After catching up with everyone over the dinner Marietta couldn't eat, playing keep away with Seth's hoodie, dancing for near two hours around a raging fire, and listening to Billy Black tell tribal stories, it was approaching her curfew.
"Alrighty, well, sorry to bug early, but I've got to get home." She said, standing from the lawn chair by the fire.
"But you don't sleep."
"I DO however need to get the smoke smell out of my hair. So thanks for inviting me, it was lovely really."
"At least let me run you back."
"If you can keep up!" She darted towards the trees and he tried to keep up. By the time they got to the river, she was almost a hundred yards ahead of him.
"Stop!" He panted, "Need, to catch, my breath."
Marietta sighed, "Fine," And stopped.
He was panting, well, like a dog, before he fell over into the grass, "If I wanted to go wolf, I could TOTALLY cream you."
"Whatever lap dog!" She teased, dropping beside him.
They laid still and quiet for a moment. "Man, I could sleep outside every night and I still can't get over how pretty the sky is."
"Yeah, I guess it is…I mean I'm not an outdoorsy person so I'm only outside to hunt at which point I'm too busy slaughtering a cougar, NOT looking at the stars. The last time I looked at the sky was…in Italy." She stopped, thinking about Alec. She wanted to tell Seth, it would probably hurt him. Hopefully he knew he was friendzoned. She pushed onto her side to look at him. He was gorgeous of course, in the Indian way, but she was in love with someone else. So if nothing way going to happen she could lie there, she rationalized, staring up at the tree branches above her. The pine trees smelled amazing and thanks to her vampire senses, she could hear every bug and see every needle on the trees, then closed her eyes. Her vampire senses didn't however tell her to use her abilities. If they had, she would have known that Seth wanted to kiss her, and she would have dodged. Instead, something brushed against her lips, and after her encounter with Alec, her immediate reaction was to kiss back. It was when she felt a hand on her waist, she remembered who had his hand on her waist last, she snapped out of it.
Marietta gasped and shoved him off, "Seth!"
"Rough? I'm sorry-" He leaned back in. She blocked him with her hand.
"No," She sighed, "I'M sorry…I knew this day would come."
"What's wrong?"
She stood up and shook her hands in frustration, "WHY did you have to do that? I don't want things to change between us."
He rolled to his feet, going for her hands, "Shhh, they won't."
"No no, they just DID."
He read her face, "Oh my God, I just stole that special-"
"No you didn't! That's the point! You're right! I met someone in Italy! But even if I didn't…" She prepared herself, "I know you like me. I've KNOWN, but I've tried to dismiss it, so I'm going to spare your feelings and make this quick, 'cause, no lie, I've rehearsed this in front of the mirror. First off, I'm a vampire; we can't eat at the same table and I'm an immortal who's gonna look like this forever. Meanwhile, you're gonna get old and you always smell like dog. Like after that, I can taste it, and I'm getting nauseas. We're BEST friends and it should stay that way. Please don't be mad at me. You may feel bad NOW, but that's good! BECAUSE you didn't imprint on me! Meaning someone else is out there who you might be missing out on-"
"Marietta stop, we can talk-"
"No we can't!"
"Why are you rushing?!"
"BECAUSE! Because this isn't some movie! This isn't a stupid love triangle! This is yet another friendzoned dude who's pissed about it! Grow up! Move on! Imprint on somebody ELSE! No tears! No long debate, tortured choice, or speech! I'm in love!"
"I am too!"
She almost teared up, "But you CAN'T be with me! Because I'm involved with a very dangerous vampire who you do NOT need to get tangled up with!"
"Did someone hurt you? Are you being victimized-"
"No! See?! This is why I didn't tell you!" She ran her hand through her hair angry, "I'll give you some time to heal or whatever but we should go bowling or something after that ok?"
"But Marietta," He stroked her face. She jerked away. "Look at me."
"Go home Seth."
"I-"
"I'm sorry to have to threaten, but go the hell home before I get Emmett out here." With that she turned in the direction of the Cullen's house and made a break for it. She wasn't confused, she wasn't rethinking Alec. She was thinking ABOUT Alec. True, she was upset seeing Seth upset, but there was no way he was even bumping up to the loosing side of a love triangle. He'd have to learn to love the friendzone AGAIN.