Hey guys! Forgive me for skipping a week. It's been busy for me. But here's a chapter with plenty of Jake in it! And for those of you in the northern hemisphere, Happy Winter! (Happy Summer to those in the southern hemisphere!)

Nessie's mom and her aunts and her grandmother have all gotten it into her heads that having a boyfriend is an indicator of kinda-sorta growing-upness, and they all want to start doing kinda-sorta grown-up things with her. For Grandmother, that means redecorating her room so it stops screaming "Little girl! Little girl!" and starts screaming "Tasteful young adult! Tasteful young adult!"

For her mom, it means a lot of long, boring lectures on how just because she has a period and a boyfriend doesn't mean she needs to rush anything, and to remember she's still only six years old and if she isn't very, very careful about her actions she will get Kevin sent to jail, and we wouldn't want that now would we?

It actually takes Nessie a long time to figure out where her mother is going with this, but when she does she bursts out, "Oh my god, are you talking about sex? Calm down, Mom, I'm not there yet." Whereupon her mother looks incredibly relieved and the awkward, forced young-adult conversations are allowed to subside.

For Rosalie, Nessie's budding adulthood represents a chance to do all things human. They listen to music and dance around the house together and they both sign up for a triathlon and they do some community theater in the spring and Rosalie takes Nessie out for lunch on weekends.

And for Alice, it means clothes. So many clothes. Clothes coming out of Nessie's ears.

"Okay, try this one," says Alice, holding up a chiffon blouse with a silk bustier attached..

"Aunt Alice," groans Nessie, "I'm still half-human. I still get tired sometimes."

Alice furrows her brow. "But we've barely even started! Let's just do this last pile-"

"Alice, this next one makes seventy-eight blouses I've tried on. I needed to take a break like, fifty shirts ago! I like doing this stuff but I swear my boobs are starting to chafe."

"I'm sorry, darling!" exclaims her aunt, tossing aside the bra and zipping over to Nessie with a bottle of water and a sandwich that, as far as Nessie can tell, just came out of nowhere. "I didn't even notice. I was having so much fun!"

"I was too," says Nessie. "Let's do it again. After breakfast, maybe?"

Nessie likes dating Kevin...or whatever it is they're doing instead of dating. They don't actually go anywhere. But they spend the whole summer before her junior year sucking face outside of various ice cream parlors in Sooke. Making out is fun! It's sort of squishy and if Kevin hasn't brushed his teeth in a while is a little sour, but generally it just feels exciting and new.

But after school starts back up, it stops being fun. Kevin gets sort of clingy. It's annoying, frankly. She is a junior now-an upperclassman, at last! And everything should be awesome. She feels so much more confident than she did two years ago. Under Alice's guidance she has crafted a personal style; with help from her father she is an adequate singer; under Emmett's tutelage she has gotten really, really good at looking cool while she does ordinary things like walk to class and buy gas for the Volvo.

Her late-night conversations with Jake have become a tradition of sorts. So she can only see him once every two weeks? No biggie, she'll talk to him for four hours a night after her family has gotten involved in their seedy nighttime activities. And Jake never talks down to her anymore, although he's the only one who doesn't. He actually treats her like a grown-up, or at any rate like an almost-not-teenager-anymore.

"How's the boyfriend?" he asks her one evening. He called her this time, as she was settling into a bubble bath. She can hear him chewing something crunchy on the other end.

"He's okay," she says. "He's not exactly...well, I don't know."

"Uh oh," says Jake. "What's the problem? What'd he do?"

"Nothing, nothing," sighs Nessie. "I just...I don't look forward to seeing him any more. I mean, no matter how many times I see you I'm always excited to see you again. Shouldn't it be like that with Kevin?"

"Well," says Jake, "Maybe the magic just isn't there. You don't have to stay with someone who doesn't interest you, Ness."

"I don't want to hurt his feelings," says Nessie. "He's really sensitive. I think he gets jealous."

"Oh?" says Jake-carefully again. "About what?"

"Well, he gets really quiet when I talk to other guys for a long time. Even if I'm not flirting or anything! And he used to love when I would wear really cute stuff but now he's always telling me how much better I look in sweatshirts and jeans."

"Nessie," says Jake, very seriously. "Does he ever try to keep you from seeing me?"

"From seeing you?" echoes Nessie.

"Or anyone else, maybe your family or your other friends?"

"No," says Nessie. "I mean, he doesn't like that I always ditch him every second weekend...but what can he really do?"

"A lot," grumbles Jake. "Ness, I want to see you. As soon as possible. I want to talk about this more and it's hard to do on the phone. Can I come up there this weekend?"

"Kevin wants to take me to the-"

"Please, Ness? It's important."

"Okay, Jake. Of course."

Kevin is none too pleased to be blown off for the handsome giant, but Jake picks Nessie up from school in his Rabbit and there's not much Kevin can do about it. He gives in with ill-grace, scowling as his girlfriend drives away.

"Where are we going?" asks Nessie. "We aren't going to get ice cream, are we?" She is only half-kidding. Ice cream is for loser babies.

"Nope," says Jake. "Ness, how old would you say you are now? Approximately?"

"Um...like, physically? Cause technically I'm six and change."

"No, I mean how old are you really?"

"I don't know," says Nessie. "Maybe like, seventeen? About average for a junior, I guess."

"Ness, there is nothing about you that's average, but aside from that I'd say you're probably right. I would have said seventeen too. Definitely old enough to drink."

"Drink?" says Nessie in some alarm. "Drink what?"

"Nessie, I need to tell you the facts of life, and that is always easier with a couple beers under your belt. That's how my dad did it, and I was even younger than you."

"What do you mean, 'facts of life'? I'm not a moron, Jake. I already know where babies come from. Hint: it's not storks." Jake laughs at this but turns serious again quickly.

"I don't mean about that stuff. That stuff you'd figure out anyway. We need to talk about relationships."

"What about them?" Nessie truly in the dark right now.

"I don't think your parents are in a position to explain this to you, because god bless 'em both but they are seriously co-dependent. But Nessie-" Jake glances over at her from the driver's seat before looking back at the road. "Jealous boyfriends are not okay. No guy ever has the right to make you feel like you can't be totally, one-hundred percent yourself."

"Ohh," says Nessie, cottoning on at last. He wants to talk about Kevin. "Why not? My mom says I should get used to jealousy because I'm pretty."

"She would say that," mutters Jake. "Ness, I'm sorry to have to do this, but you're mom's an idiot when it comes to relationships."

"Hey now," says Nessie heatedly. "That's not-"

"I'm sorry, but it's true," he says. "She can be excused for a lot of that. Now that I have some perspective, I can see that she and Edward really do deserve each other. They both think everything is so serious; maybe it's a good thing she's with someone like her, so things stay balanced. And I'm not gonna say I have a perfect track record. I was even dumber than Bella when I was a teenager, and to the day I die I'll be ashamed of some of the shit I did then. But the plus side is that now I know how to talk to you about how to avoid people like me. Or at least, people like I used to be."

"Jake," says Nessie quietly, "I'm sure that's not true."

Jake pulls off onto a dirt track that winds into a good-sized chunk of national reserve. He doesn't say anything for ten minutes and more. He pulls the car into a clearing and then starts pulling stuff out of the trunk: a cooler, a blanket, a basket filled with what smells like various meat products.

"Have a seat, Ness," he says. Nessie plants herself. Jake opens the cooler and pulls out two cans of beer. He tosses one to her and opens the other himself. "Cheers," he says, and they knock cans. Nessie takes a tentative sip. It tastes like fizzy Marmite. Not necessarily bad, but she can't figure out why anyone would drink a whole one.

"Okay," says Jake. "Here's the deal. It doesn't matter how pretty you are, or how smart you are, or how generally wonderful you are. If a guy you're dating wants you to behave like someone else so that he won't feel threatened, you dump his ass."

"That's awfully abrupt," says Nessie, raising one eyebrow.

"Sorry, Ness," says Jake, "but I don't know how else to put it. Does Kevin know you're here with me right now?"

"Where's 'here', anyway?" she asks, looking around. Jake shrugs and takes another pull of his beer. "Well, yes, he does. Or at least, he knows I'm with you."

"And what does he think about that?" asks Jake. "Is he okay with it?"

"Well...not really," Nessie admits. "He doesn't like you."

"Why not?"

Okay, this is embarrassing. Nessie knows why Kevin doesn't like Jake, and she knows Jake knows why Kevin doesn't like him. Does she really have to say it?

"He just...doesn't."

"Ness, please," says Jake. "Does he really not trust you with another guy? I mean, we've been best friends since forever. If there is one person you are safe as kittens with, it's me."

"I don't think he's worried you're going to hurt me," says Nessie awkwardly. "It's more..." She trails off uncertainly.

"He's worried because you are a young woman and I am, as far as he knows, a guy, and he assumes that one or both of us has skeezy intentions."

"Skeezy?" Nessie isn't skeezy! "Who's skeezy?"

"You know what I mean."

"Well," says Nessie grudgingly, "He doesn't like you because you're so, you know, tall and fit and like...you know, good-looking." She mumbles this last part. She is sure her face is on fire. She'd have to be blind not to notice that Jake is, by every standard that counts, a looker. But she's worried that saying it will make him think she's like, thinking about him like that. Isn't it one of the million unbreakable rules of teenagehood that you aren't supposed to tell someone of the opposite sex that they are attractive? Or did she get that part wrong? Stupid humans with their stupid social rules.

But Jake doesn't even seem to notice her discomfort. "So he doesn't trust you not to ditch him for someone else."

"Well, I'm not going to!" exclaims Nessie. "He shouldn't even worry about it!"

"No, he shouldn't," agrees Jake. "But he does, because he's possessive. Take it from me, Ness, you can do better than some possessive guy who is too sensitive for you to dump."

Nessie scowls into her beer and then takes an extra-long sip while she thinks. It bugs the hell out of her that Jake is talking about Kevin like he knows him, but she has an uneasy suspicion that Jake does know Kevin. After all, doesn't Nessie tell him everything about her life, every single night? And he's not wrong. Kevin doesget possessive. He only ever wants her to talk to ugly guys or other girls.

"So, what makes you the expert?" she asks Jake a trifle aggressively. "Why do you know so much about it?"

Jake leans back on his elbows and looks up at the sky, which is almost even sunny today. "I used to be such an asshole," he says, not looking at Nessie. "I thought that just because I wanted something I was entitled to it. And I was really territorial. Trust me, Ness, I know the warning signs. I think I was just so testosterone-y right after I started phasing that everything felt life or death. It's leveled off since then, but I can remember what it felt like. I can sympathize with Kevin, I really can. You're a completely amazing girl and he'd have to be insane not to want to hang on to you. But he doesn't get to dictate who you're friends with."

"So, what, are you dictating that I should break up with him?" asks Nessie, sipping away at her beer.

"Not at all," says Jake deferentially. "I'm not here to tell you what to do. But I don't think anyone else is likely to tell you this, so I have to. You deserve to be happy. And you can't live only to make your boyfriend happy. Being nice is one thing, but you don't owe him your freedom. I just...I just want you to think about it, okay?"

Nessie tries to take another sip of her beer and is surprised to notice it's all gone. She blinks at it for a moment, then shrugs and reaches out for another one. Jake is still looking at the sky.

"What if I did want to break up with Kevin?" Nessie says cautiously. "I'm not saying I do, but...well, what if I did? How could I do it so I wouldn't hurt his feelings?"

Now Jake looks at her, if only to give her a disbelieving grin. "Ness, you're gonna break his heart. That's what breakups do. He'll get over it."

"Okay," says Ness. She is feeling suddenly very free and light. Is it because she's finally facing her desire to cut ties with Mother Hen Kevin? Or is it the beer? "So how do I do it? Assuming I want to."

"Oh, god, I don't know...you just tell him you don't want to go out anymore. If I know anything about this guy, he's going to try to convince you not to dump him, but you should stick to your guns. If you do decide to break up. Which you don't have to. It's your choice."

"Well, what do I say?" The beer must have something to do with it, because she even hesitantly asks, "Can I...can I practice on you?"

Jake looks at her, finishes off his beer, and stands up. He gives her a hand and they stand a few feet apart. "Okay," he says. "Go ahead."

"Um, Kevin," says Nessie. "I think we should break up."

"I think we shouldn't," says Jake.

"Well...why not?"

"Because we've been going out for months! You can't just dump me after all we've been through!" Jake wrings his hands theatrically.

"What?" Boy, Jake is taking this role-playing thing seriously. If he didn't have a twinkle in his eye she would think he was serious.

"It's someone else, isn't it? You've met someone."

"No I haven't!" exclaims Nessie. "I just...don't want to date you anymore. That's all."

"Yoooouuuu doooooon't looooove meeeeee!" cries Jake, burying his face in his hands and pretending to sob. "Hoowwww can you doooo this to meeee?"

"We can...we can still be friends," says Nessie desperately. Jake's heads snaps up.

"Ooh," he says in his normal voice, "don't say that. That only makes it worse."

"Why?"

"Because he'll think he can win you back. And even if he doesn't, it's really hard to just go back to being friends. Just tell him you've made up your mind."

"Kevin," says Nessie gravely, "I've made up my mind."

Jake fist-bumps her, and then they both sit back down and talk about other things for a while. When the sun gets low, they pack up the Rabbit and Jake drives Nessie home. She gives him a big hug and goes inside. Then she spends two hours on the phone reassuring her boyfriend that nothing happened, or has ever happened, or will ever happen between her and Jake.

Jake was right: she is tired of explaining her actions to her bossy boyfriend. And so the next day, she breaks up with Kevin.