A/N: I wanna tell you guys a secret: I've always wanted to write a story using the names Ryder and Wes. I think they're cool names. My wish has come true. And I was afraid you guys wouldn't really like Wes, haha. Thanks for being supportive and sticking with me. Only three chapters left!
XI
Leah doesn't mind saying she's in love with Wes Beaufort. Love shouldn't be difficult, and finally, it isn't for her. She once heard somewhere that it's not fully important to fall in love, but to rise with it. That makes a lot of sense. It's the first thing that really makes sense to her in years.
There are plenty of things that Wes is—exciting, fearless, and easygoing at the same time, to begin with—and there are plenty of things that he isn't—pushy, tenacious, or lazy—and not only is Leah ready to be with him, but she is ready to rise with him. It's like she doesn't have to think about it.
So on a so-fucking-hot-you-might-as-well-die afternoon in June, on her lunch break at Starbucks, Leah calls her mother. She clearly remembers the harsh words she was told, back on Seth's wedding day ("Silly girl. Won't you ever figure out how to not be lonely?"—stings like a bitch), and she's ready to tell her. She's not lonely anymore. Bam.
"11. You are allowed to be angry. But the world is not working against you. The flowers do not bloom for you and when your mother shouts ask her if she is okay instead of thinking she hates you. She never will. The world walks beside you and is silent. It does not trip you up or carry you."
There are people who are lonely, people who are destined to be lonely, people who are forced to be lonely, and people who choose to be lonely. Leah has been all four of those people and zero of them at the same time.
Loneliness is a funny, crazy thing; people who want to be alone tend to crave solitude, but what is solitude? Has Leah ever really been alone? Surely, she has been before—alone in her bedroom for her first suicide attempt and alone in the woods for her second—but alone in the world? Maybe not. She's learned that her loneliness doesn't come out of hating everybody; it comes out of being disappointed with those who come her way. Her being depressed wasn't a werewolf thing, for the most part; it was half-and-half, and one of those halves was a Leah thing. At thirty-and-a-half-years-old (Christ, she's aged) she can't remember who she really was before her life went to shit, and she doesn't want to, but at the same time, she really, really wants to. She has to. What's the point in finally understanding yourself so well when you haven't taken all of you into consideration?
Wes has, though. Wes knows and accepts all of Leah. He hasn't shied away from her or even expressed fear. That's what she loves the most about him. He knows her, and he's not ashamed of the fact.
Leah's figured out how to not be lonely, and it all just takes a couple things: a change and some time.
As she excitedly dials her house phone in La Push with her cell phone, Leah has a thousand things to tell Sue. She's ecstatic just thinking about it—she almost wishes she were in La Push now to see her face. She would be practically singing to her mom, "Guess what? I'M NOT LONELY. LONELINESS ISN'T PERMANENT. I AM FABULOUS. I AM IN LOVE. I MIGHT JUST ELOPE BECAUSE YOU TOLD ME NOT TO BECAUSE I AM FABULOUS." Then she would dramatically flip her hair and strut out of there.
If only such things weren't judged in society…
Leah eats at a table outside, with a lovely view of the ocean right in front of her eyes, and waits for her mother to pick up the phone. She doesn't answer, and instead of leaving a message, Leah calls again. The phone is picked up on the third ring, and a very flustered-sounding Sue answers, "Hello?"
"Hey, Mom," Leah says.
"Oh, hey, Lee," Sue replies. "What's going on?"
"Do you have time?"
"Not exactly." The background noise is filled with chaos. Her voice is distant when she yells to someone other than Leah. "Oh, goddammit, Elijah!" she shouts. "Could you stop spilling for once!?"
Leah shifts the phone to her other ear and takes a bite of her sandwich, chewing thoughtfully. Sue has other, more important things going on; Leah just may not get a word in, after all.
Another distant voice screams, "Don't yell at the baby, Sue!" It's female, so it must be Alaska, Sue's first child-in-law.
"I yelled at my kids and they turned out just fine, Alaska!" Sue shouts back. "Fucking hell, it's like I can't get a break around here!" There's a pause. "No, Charlie, you calm down," she adds.
"Well, shit," Leah mutters.
"What'd you just say?" Sue asks.
"Nothing." It's a swift lie. "How're things going?"
Leah can sense the eye-rolling from two states south. It's so obvious where she got it from; it's kind of funny. "Crazy," Sue replies.
"How so?"
"Seth's been crazy-busy at work and Alaska's been trying to get back to work, too, so she always drops her hollering child over at me and Charlie's place, but she's always coming back, always tending to him. The girl doesn't know shit about raising a child. Sometimes you just have to leave them alone. The reason why Elijah's crying so much is only because his paranoid mama's always coming and leaving."
Leah snorts. The domestic life sounds like a shitty choice. "You're one thug of a grandma," she remarks.
Sue doesn't think it's funny. "Well, I'm fucking trying," she says. "You wouldn't even know. You haven't worked a day in your life!"
Leah is taken back. With her cell phone locked in a vice grip in her hand, her eyebrows knit closer and her mood is intensified a few notches. "A day in my life, my ass," she responds to her mother. "I'm on my lunch break right now, actually."
"Well, color me fucked and surprised," Sue says, "because I've heard nothing of it. How's life going for you, eh? Still alone? You making enough money?"
"More than you," Leah informs her harshly. "My life's going really well."
"Still alone, though?" Sue wonders.
God, if Sue was saying this shit two years ago, she would've seen the worst of it. "I'm not," Leah replies.
"Then where's Ryder, huh?" Her faint native accent is accentuated on some syllables, and it pisses Leah off even further. "It's like you can't keep a good man once you've got one, Leah," Sue adds. "I really don't know what's wrong with you."
Leah's so angry she's shaking. She's shaking so hard that it's like the first time she phased, and ironically enough, she was angry with her mother that time, too. "Ryder. Is. Gone," she says, her teeth clenched.
"Then who is there for you?" Sue asks. "Lee, I want another grandkid that's not of Seth's before I die, you know."
"This isn't about you!" Leah nearly yells. Customers at the various other tables turn and glance at her before quickly looking away. "I am dating a man named Wes and he's great. He's thirty-two and amazing, and the greatest thing about him is that he knows how to listen."
"Well, that's great, Leah," Sue says, though it's almost positive she's thinking the opposite. "When can I meet him?"
"In all honesty," Leah begins, "I don't want you to meet him at all."
"And why's that?"
"Mom, you're a bitch."
"You're going to hell for that."
"And I'll see you there."
Leah abruptly hangs up, and she just growls into her sandwich. Her mother is the worst person she knows, and the worst thing about her relationship with her is that no matter how much Leah doesn't want to, they always make up. It's much easier at home; it's been like this ever since she was twelve. Sue and Leah would fight over something stupid—mostly something rude that the other person said, since neither woman has ever really held back—and they would absolutely despise each other for minutes (maybe even hours) in the worst way possible. They would mutter mean things about each other and call each other a bitch. Harry used to be the median that would make everything okay again, but since he died, Sue and Leah's fights stayed bad for longer. Seth never knew what to do, so he didn't do anything. It was always Sue vs. Leah. Leah vs. Sue. Fire vs. Fire. In the end, though, after those few minutes or hours of hatred, one of them would say sorry (it always alternated) and they would be loving to each other again over trash reality television and fried food only for the cycle to begin the next day, or maybe even later that night. It was a stupid, trivial cycle, but it always happened, over and over and over.
This isn't home, though—at least, not the same home. Leah can't feel like a sorry little girl again and knock on her mother's bedroom door, cry a little bit, say she's sorry, and end up inhaling so-fucking-delicious-you-could-just-have-an-orgasm -right-here-and-now, calorie-filled fry bread ("a foreign recipe," Sue always used to say) in front of Maury.
This isn't that home at all, and Leah knows for a fact that Sue is definitely not going to apologize first. It doesn't matter what she initially said; she was called a bitch and Leah was the person who hung up first. Leah's got the shit end of the stick this time, and it fucking sucks.
Sweaty and almost late back to work, Leah tries to get over the little dispute she had with her bipolar (God, she hates throwing out terms like that derogatively but it's probably true) giver of life. She gets lost in the Dewey Decimal System. She helps little kids sign up for summer reading programs with tacky prizes. Nobody stops by to ask for a surf book, which is good; she couldn't stand to fall in love all over again. That's just not healthy.
Leah doesn't have a surf lesson today, and even though she wouldn't want to admit it, all just to keep Wes' feelings intact, she doesn't mind. Wes is trying to train her like a champ, but she surfs recreationally. She's not very good at it, but she's learned a few things, one of them being to always wear a wetsuit since string bikinis are faulty and the entire beach shouldn't get to see her boobs. Wes is a competitive guy—especially in surfing—but he just hasn't grasped that Leah's not aiming for that.
However, when she visits his house that night, he has other things in mind. Maybe Leah won't have to get so competitive, after all.
Leah prefers Wes' house much more than her own; her own place is neat—too neat—and a bit boring. It's characterless, which is probably the strangest thing about Leah. She likes to think of herself as a real person; it's a shame that her home doesn't speak for that.
But Wes' house—Wes' house is different.
Wes' house is a house of achievement and victory. It's also personal. In his two stories, he has a wide, spread-out living room with a nice kitchen that he barely knows how to use. His room takes up the entire next floor, which is also spacious. It has what looks like hundreds of surfing trophies, which is pretty impressive. He even has family pictures, and his parents and older sister look as preppy as they sound. It's kind of funny. Wes doesn't consider the roof a floor, but it's a loft of sorts, and it overlooks the ocean. It. Is. Glorious.
Yes, Wes' home is much cooler than Leah's.
Leah and Wes cook dinner together after work, and it feels natural. Leah's used to cooking for herself, but Wes is great help. He says he "supervises," which only causes Leah to throw diced tomatoes at his face, which leads to an all-out war. It's like Leah never felt like absolute shit in the first place. Wes does wonders for her.
It's a Friday, and Leah doesn't have work tomorrow, so she spends the night at Wes' place. She doesn't go back to her own house to retrieve clothes to sleep in, so she sleeps in one of Wes' shirts. He thinks it's sexy; she wholeheartedly agrees. He suggests they sleep in his room, but she wants to sleep on the roof. She takes his hand as he leads the way, blankets slung over his shoulder. The roof is already her favorite thing of Wes' house besides the primary residence himself.
It's one thing to make love to the man you love, but it's another to do it on a hot summer night under the stars. It's cheesy, but it's fucking beautiful. It's wonderful and celestial and all kinds of brilliant. It's superb. Mesmerizing.
And that's what Leah and Wes are, together: wonderful, celestial, brilliant, superb, and mesmerizing. There's no doubting it.
After a hot and sweaty session, Wes tells Leah that he got an opportunity.
"What do you mean?" she asks, wiping wet strands of hair back from his forehead.
"We can move to Gold Coast," he states with a faint smile on her face, like he's thinking of living there—wherever that is—already.
"Where's that?" Leah wonders. "Aren't we already on the golden coast?"
Wes laughs and shakes his head. "No, no, Gold Coast, Australia."
"Australia?"
"It's the best surfing place in the world. My cousins got the opportunity to go, but they need to stay for business. I've got two tickets, and I had this wild, amazing dream that I could live there with the lady I love."
"What a lucky lady," Leah says goofily.
"So, would you like to escort me to Australia?" he asks. "Please?"
"You don't even have to ask me twice," she replies. "We're going to Australia."
"We're going to Australia?"
Leah's voice echoes in the night when she yells, "We're going to Australia!"