Chapter Thirteen: Party

I twirled in the mirror, feeling like a two year old, but I giggled. I was going to Seth's birthday party today and was excited as hell. I was finally going to meet his pack and other 'cool people' that he had been telling me about for a while now.

I was excited about something for once, and I wasn't going to waste the opportunity of my mother being gone from home for about another week. I was wearing a t-shirt and jeans, and actually worked on my appearance for once and curled my hair, for a reason that was foreign even for me. For some reason I wanted to make a good impression.

God, I needed to be slapped.

I heard a honk outside my house and flew down the stairs, anxious to get to Seth's car as fast as possible. As soon as I got to him I went and gave him a big hug, and he laughed at me. "What's your problem?" he asked me.

"I dunno, I'm just really excited, that's all."

I decided to turn up the music, too jittery to talk. "Ugh, Seth. Eighties music? I would have pegged you to have better taste than that!" I exclaimed, wrinkling my nose in distaste. But soon a familiar song came on, and I couldn't help sing along to the chorus.

"Don't stop believing/Hold on to the feeling/streetlight people," I sang, and Seth winced dramatically.

"Sophie, you suck," he told me cheerfully, and I took a swipe at him. That was a bad idea; I think I sprained my hand.

"Fuck!" I yelled, and Seth immediately slammed on the brakes.

"Are you okay?" he asked me so worriedly it was almost funny. I would have laughed at him if my hand didn't hurt so much.

"Yes, I'm fine, let's go, let's go, let's go," I told him excitedly, jumping up and down in my seat a little. I wasn't about to miss this part for my stupidity.

"Are you sure?" he asked, and I nodded. My hand only throbbed a bit now, and he wasn't going to take me to the emergency room like I could tell that he was contemplating right now.

"Are you positive?" he asked again and I exploded on him.

"Yes, goddamn it! Now leave me alone, and let's go!!!"

"Okay," he told me with a laugh, and I felt the need to change the subject.

"So who's all going to be there?" I asked him curiously. He never gave me a definite answer; evidently things weren't planned out very far in advance for werewolves.

"Well Collin and Brady are definitely going. And so are Sam and Emily, Jared and Kim, and Embry, me and you, obviously. Paul is going, but Rachel isn't going to be there, Rachel is his imprint, she's over at UCLA for an extra year of school or something. Mom and Leah aren't coming, Mom went to go visit Leah's dorm for a while. Quil and Jacob both wanted to come, but they couldn't."
"Why?"

"Because Quil hasn't told Claire about his being a werewolf yet, because she's only six, and he wants to take her to the zoo or something. And Jacob and Nessie can't come because they've got… complications to deal with," Seth explained, and I understood. I could understand Quil not wanting Claire to know, but she was going to find out eventually anyway, and then they'd be happy, I hoped.

So ten people were going to be there, and to me that seemed to me like a lot. I haven't been in a group of people that large in a very long time.

I began to get butterflies in my stomach and not the good kind. I was suddenly very nervous, and had the strangest urge to start chewing on my fingernails. "What's wrong?"Seth asked as he watched my emotions play out on my face.

"I'm just nervous," I told him.

"Why, everyone will love you," he told me, and that was amazingly exactly what I wanted to hear. "And if they don't like you then I'll kick all their asses for you."

"Thanks," I told him sarcastically.

And then we were there. We were in front of a tiny house right by the beach, I could hear the waves.

"Are you ready?" he asked me, and I nodded silently.

I gripped his hand for reassurance as we stepped inside the door.

~*~*~*~

The party seemed to be in full swing by the time that we got there, even without the birthday boy in attendance. There was a huge food table in the middle of the backyard. The music was loud, and everyone was in a shape resembling a circle talking and laughing. They looked like one big family, and I felt like I was an outsider of the largest degree.

I felt Seth give my hand a reassuring squeeze as we neared the large group of exceptionally large people, and I breathed in my nose and out my mouth trying to relax. I felt myself start building up that façade that I hadn't had to use in so long, and I struggled against it. I was not going to ruin this for myself. I tore down the wall a beautiful girl with long dark hair grabbed my free hand and introduced herself.

"Hi, I'm Emily," she told me with a smile on her face. She was very pretty, on one side of her face. But on the other side were horrible, appalling scars. There were three of them, all of them being thick and a bright red color even though they couldn't have been very new. They looked like claw marks, and I saw that they continued down to her hand. I adverted my eyes politely back to hers. For some reason the scars on her skin gave me a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"I'm Sophie," I introduced myself, and smiled at her a little bit. She smiled at me back, the unscarred side of her face turning absolutely gorgeous with her face all lit up.

"This is Sam," she told me, introducing the man that was standing closest to her. "And here's Collin and Brady, and then there's Jared and Kim, but don't mind them if they start randomly making out and you catch them. It happens all the time," she told me with a laugh.

"That was only once!" the girl who I assumed was Kim exclaimed as she turned bright red with embarrassment, while the man that was by her side, Jared, just grinned guiltily.

"Any who, this is Paul and Embry," she said as she pointed out the last two men in the circle who she didn't introduce. "I don't think that we're missing anyone. It's not everyone, but it's close enough." She smiled at me again, and I dropped Seth's hands when I noticed that she looked at them with wide eyes. I mean, she couldn't get the wrong idea. I mean Seth and me, we weren't, I mean we couldn't be…

The girl named Kim came up to me, interrupting my musings. "Hi Sophie," she said as she came up to me.

"Hi," I told her breaking free of my shyness. Kim was pretty, but it wasn't an obvious pretty, like Emily. She grew prettier the longer you looked at her, and her hair was amazing. I towered over both of them, and I felt like a giant. Why do I have to be five feet eleven? I would have settled for five foot four.

"I thought Seth was never going to tell you. I mean, it took him long enough. Emily and I wanted to meet you a long time before this, but Seth was afraid of scaring you off," she announced to me. This shocked me. That explains it, then.

"Come on Sophie, I can't wait until we can have everyone together at the bonfires again. As soon as it gets warm enough, we have to have another one, don't you think Emily?"

They talked about it for a while before I excused myself to go find Seth. They seemed really nice, but it would be nice to have some familiarity around. I found him with Brady and Collin, no surprise there. They were all bent over laughing and I felt curiosity at something that Seth could find so funny. They sobered up as soon as I walked up, and I frowned for a bit, but then got over it. I was pretty sure that it was something raunchy and I wasn't sure that I wanted to know.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing," Seth answered immediately, and I saw Brady roll his eyes at Collin, and Collin nodded. I smiled at them and they grinned back.

"I'm Brady," one of them said, just as the other said, "I'm Collin." They looked pretty similar. In fact, all of them did, especially from far away. They were all tall and humongous, all with short black hair and chiseled jaws.

"Oh Seth, it's time for you to blow out the candles. Everyone wants to eat it now," I heard Kim call.

"And if you don't hurry your ass up I'll eat it for you," I heard Paul call, and everyone laughed, even Seth.

Seth grabbed my hand as we came up to the table, and I heard Brady and Collin making kissy noises behind his back. I turned around and laughed with them. It was amazing how used I was getting to having his warm hand wrapped around my own. Without it I felt cold in comparison.

We all sang him happy birthday, and when Seth had his face close to the cake as he blew out the candles, Brady shoved his face into it, making him look like he had a icing mask all on his face.

A very predictable cake war rang out until Emily demanded that we all at least pretend that we were adults, since we had more cake on us than actually went into our mouths. I had cake everywhere, seeing as how I got the vanilla icing smeared onto my head by Collin. I didn't care though; it was more fun than I had had in a long time.

"I was glad that you were there," Seth told me when I asked him about his birthday party.

"Why, I'm sure something similar would have happened, even if I wasn't there. I didn't add much to the party," I told him as I adjusted the towel on my seat, since Seth got all anal on me, and wouldn't let any bit of icing touch his car. Frigging douche bag, it's just a car.

"I don't know, but having you with me makes me happy," he told me, and I believed him.