Girl Talk

I listened to Billy Black tell the legends of our people for oven an hours. When Billy's ancient voice began to fade Old Quill Ateara continued where Mr. Black left off. Although it was late and my body and eyes felt heavy, I did not sleep. I had heard some of the stories before, but only parts of them. Perhaps Orson did tell me the stories but I had forgotten them. I could never be sure. As much as I never wanted to forget Orson, it had been so long.

By the time the story had finished the fire was just embers, everyone seemed to be getting up in slow motion. A couple of the people there had to be woken up, but it looked like everyone in the formal pack had stayed awake the entire time. I exchanged pleasantries with those of them that were still awake and we made plans to meet again in three days. I shook hands with Sam, Old Quil, Sue, and Billy Black. I couldn't help but flinch when I shook Billy's cold hands. He seemed so small and weak compared to the others there. I nodded to Jacob as he walked his father back to their house. Embry held out his arm for me and I took it gratefully, not being able to see very much. I tried to make a joke about it.

"It is pitch black," I said in a monotone voice. "I am likely to be eaten by a grue."

He laughed, "a what?"

"A grue," I repeated, switching back to my normal voice. "Don't you remember what a grue is?" I asked.

"Not at all. Should I?"

I thought about it. He looked to be about twenty-five years old, that would make him born sometime in the eighties. "Oh I guess you wouldn't remember it then. It was from an old video game, Zork. It came out in the 70's. How old are you exactly, Embry?" I asked, not able to conceal my curiosity anymore.

"Nineteen," he answered immediately. My eyes widened, I was too tired to try to conceal my reaction. "What?" he asked.

"Nothing," I lied, still reeling at his age.

We reached the car and I think I was asleep before we even left the rez. I woke up when the door opened and cold hair raced over my face. Embry made like he was going to pick me up and carry me, but I put my hand up and insisted that I could walk. He walked me to the door but I told him goodbye before he insisted on walking me in. Lucas was sitting on the couch fiddling with an old acoustic guitar, trying to look nonchalant.

"Where'd you get that," I asked shutting the door behind me and yawning.

"It's Emmett's," he told me. He began to strum the tune for Norwegian Wood by the Beatles. I smiled. He knew that it was one of my favorites.

"Thank you, by the way," I told him as I sat down next to him.

"For what?" he asked turning to look at me with his red eyes without pausing in his song.

"For not annoying me the entire time, like you did when I went for a walk with Jacob earlier."

He turned back to his guitar, watching his hands move across the strings and shrugged. "Yohannah made me promise," he told me. I couldn't help but laugh.

We didn't speak any more that night. He sang softly as he played the guitar until I fell back to sleep.

The next thing I remember was waking up back in the golden room on the third floor. I could see the sun rising over the mountains to the East. I had only gotten maybe four or five hours of sleep and I still felt exhausted. Yohannah was lying on the other side of the bed beside me but on top of the blankets. She had out her pastels and was sketching black and white nature scene. "Hey Nannah," I mumbled sleepily and leaned over to see what she was drawing. She was drawing a large wolf running through the forest.

"Hey Baby, how was your party?" she asked.

"Interesting," I told her.

"You want to tell me about it?" she asked. It was a real question. She didn't assume that I was going to tell her anything.

"Not much to tell. We sat around the bon fire joking around for a while. I kind of wish that I could still play guitar," I thought wistfully remembering how beautiful that Lucas was playing last night on the couch. I used to be really good at the guitar myself before I had hurt my arm. "And then I told them Orson's story, and they told me their old legends. It was really nice."

I looked around the room. It was done up in different shades of gold with black accents. The bed that I was laying on was huge, it could probably fit four or five people onto it. I scanned the room, checking out the CDs all along the wall, but I couldn't read what they were from where I lay. I looked back to the bed and noticed the pretty pattern on the gold bed spread and the beautiful cast iron roses on the headboard. The pattern looked empty in one spot. When I looked closer I noticed that one of the roses had been ripped off.

"What happened there," I wondered out loud. Yohannah lifted her eyebrow at me like I was missing something obvious. Apparently, I was.

She began speaking to me the way one does to a child. "You know, Meri, when a man and a woman love each other very much…" she began as if teaching the birds and the bees to a five year old.

"Oh! Ew, never mind," I told her, blushing like crazy. She just smiled up at me.

"So Meri," she began, "do anything interesting with that Embry guy?"

"No. Of coarse not," I told her, blushing even harder. Where did that come from?

"I think he likes you," she prodded continuing with her drawing.

"Well, I like him too, but not like that."

"Don't you think he's hot?" she asked me and then added in silently. "I do."

"Well yeah, he's hot," I told her silently. "But I wasn't looking at him like that," I added out loud, in case anyone was eavesdropping on the first part of our conversation. I'm certain that anyone in the house would be able to hear our conversation if they really wanted to, no matter now low we talked.

"Well I sure did," she told me, slipping back into silence, taking the hint. "He looked good."

"I don't disagree," I told her, blushing a little. She took that as the go ahead to keep talking about it.

"He looked strong too. I bet it would feel good to have those arms around me."

I smiled. She is going to love this little bit of information. "He put his arm around me at the bonfire," I told her. She made a little gasping sound and put down her pastels.

"Tell me everything." She said out loud leaning towards me on the bed. I put my finger to my mouth to tell her to hush and took a quick look around the room to make sure it was just the two of us in there.

"It really wasn't anything," I told her. "It was just really cold and so he put his arm around me while I listened to the elders tell their stories."

"Did he rub your shoulders?" she asked, sounding like an excited high school student.

"No."

"Did you lean your head on his shoulder?"

"Near the end, I was kind of sleepy," I reluctantly admitted. "But not on purpose. I told you I wasn't thinking about him like that."

"Are you now?" she asked, raising her eyebrow. I blushed.

"No," I told her, not knowing if it was a lie or not. He was pretty cute.

"Mmm-hmmm," she said skeptically.

"I'm not going to either," I insisted. "Do you know how old he is?" I asked her. She raised her eyebrow at my rhetorical question. "He's nineteen."

She giggled. "A teenager?"

"I know! He's just a kid."

"Peak performance though," she told me thoughtfully. "He's only going to get hotter. Plus he really seems to like you."

My heart beat a little faster in my chest at the though of him "liking" me but instead of allowing myself to follow that train of thought I rolled my eyes at her. "Pedophile," I accused.

She laughed out loud, "He's legal."

I laughed too, "I didn't mean that literally. You know what I mean, he's just a kid, you know. I wouldn't want to corrupt some poor little boy." I teased.

"I sure would." Yohannah told me. I laughed again. "You know, if he didn't smell so bad." She added, wrinkling her nose. Great here come the "you smell" jokes.

"Well, I think he smells delicious." I told her.

"Delicious?" she asked out loud, sounding like she didn't believe me at all. I blushed and covered my mouth and laughed at her tone. Delicious wasn't exactly the word that I wanted to use, but it worked. She covered her mouth as well. "Sorry, I didn't mean to say that out loud," she told me.

"Very delicious," I continued silently, just to see her reaction.

She chuckled. "Well then there's really nothing stopping you, is there?" she teased.

"Ugh!" I told her out loud and then rolled away putting the pillow over my head to hide my red face.

"What are you two giggling about?" Lucas asked from the doorway. I ripped the pillow away from my face to give him a dirty look for sneaking up on us.

"Nothing," Yohannah and I said at the same time and then we started giggling again.

"Uh huh," He told us suspiciously as he walked over to Yohannah's side of the bed and lay next to her. "So what are we talking about?"

"You are not a part of the collective 'we' here, Lucas," Yohannah scolded. I giggled. The phone in his pocket vibrated, loudly.

"Who the hell is calling this early?" I asked incredulously.

"Its three hours later in Boston," he told me rolling his eyes and answering his phone. He put his arm around Yohannah and started rubbing his hand along the side of her belly. I did not want to see where this was headed so I crawled out from under the gold colored blankets and placed my feet on the thick gold carpet.

"Ugh, there's gold everywhere," I told Yohannah silently.

"I was thinking the same thing," she told me her voice sounded dreamy. She was apparently distracted by Lucas. I tried to ignore it.

"Do you think whoever decorated this room knows that there are other colors?" I asked her silently, looking around at the gold and black room.

"Maybe they're colorblind," she suggested, stifling a giggle. Lucas went on talking with whoever was on the phone.

"The rest of the house isn't like this. It looks like a vat of mustard exploded in here."

She at with me until a voice from the doorway chided us in mock outrage. "Hey, this was my room."

I looked up to see Edward standing in the doorway, his arms around his pretty wife. My face became very hot. Damn, I forgot that our private conversations weren't as private as they usually are. I really hoped that he hadn't been listening in when we were talking about Embry. That would have been beyond embarrassing. Yohannah and I chuckled nervously.

"Ummm, so did King Midas throw up in here, or what?" I asked. Even Edward laughed at that. Bella giggled from his arms and he tightened his arms around her and whispered something in her ear, which only made her giggle more.

"Well I'm hungry," I told them rising off the bed to head downstairs. This was starting to get awkward.

AN: Had a bit of writer's block, so I wrote around it and got on a roll. I hope you enjoyed the fluff. I sure did.