AN: Thank you to Anony for reviewing. I hope you enjoy this next chapter.
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Chapter Sixty Four: Puzzle Pieces.
"So...you and Jacob seem to be spending a lot of time together?" Emily mentioned in a casual tone one Saturday night. I looked up from my book curiously. It took a moment for the words to sink in. She waited patiently for my answer, the television volume on low in the background. Strangely, my cheeks began to warm with a blush and I looked down, for fear of it being construed as something more than it was.
"We've just been hanging out more." I shrugged, not glancing up, the colour on my cheeks burned brighter.
"It must be nice for him to be in on the secrets." She mused aloud, wanting to prompt a conversation.
"I suppose so." Wary of her prying, I fidgeted with the pages of my book, unsure why she was bringing this up now.
"Sam said that you two used to be close." The inquisitive tone in her tone was ceaseless and I sighed quietly to myself. It was apparent that I couldn't avoid this conversation, "Before everything happened?"
"Yeah, we grew up together." I explained simply.
"But in recent years...?"
"Things got...well, the secrets didn't help anything." Biting my lip, I glanced out of the window into the dark night.
I remembered the days before all of the secrets.
Throughout my tumultuous childhood, he had been one of the constants. Seeing me through the death of my dad and growing up with Sam. Jake was the friend that was always at my side at school, protective and playful, and eager to socialise after school when I could do. We'd spend time on the beach in the summer or huddle through the winter chill in the garage at his house, Quil and Embry sometimes with us. Things got harder when Mrs Uley walked out. Sam and I worked as much as we could and had to run the house between ourselves and I found I started to distance from other people my age. They couldn't know the reality of my home situation and would definitely have never understood the difficulties and trials of running a house. But Jake wouldn't let me push him away. He tried to keep up with me. At school, he would try to find every opportunity to hang out. Even if it meant eating lunch in the library while doing homework. But our closeness was being slowly corroded.
As the supernatural secrets crept into my life, it became even harder. My time was even further split into different directions and, as Sam's Pack grew, many of the local teenage boys grew wary of this new 'cult'. Jake was even slightly fearful of this new development. It strained our relationship more. Our shared history seemed to be the only thing that kept him from stepping away completely. We weren't as close as we once were. I couldn't share my secrets with him and he knew I was keeping something from him. Our friendship endured, but it felt like there was a block missing. The essence of love, loyalty, and friendship fractured by the reality of the unspoken division between our lives.
But that difference had now been made a similarity.
Our secrets were shared.
In the weeks that had followed Jake's transformation and incorporation into the secretive fold within the Quileute Tribe, our friendship had rekindled. It was like the old days. Before secrets had stolen our time. We walked along the beach, talking about the benefits and disadvantages of home schooling, Pack gossip, and Jake's adjustment to being half human and half an impossibly large creature. When the rain came, as often it did in La Push, we sat in his garage. He would work on the Rabbit, the car that was his first love and long term project, and I would sit and he'd pretend I was helping, even when I handed him the wrong wrench. I even found myself looking forward to those times where we could disappear from the hub of the Pack and hang out, just Jake and Bells, like old times.
"But now there's no secrets." Emily pointed out, "And you look...well, you look happier." She said hesitantly.
"Yeah, I – uh – suppose I am." I whispered awkwardly in response, not able to think of anything but an honest response.
She finally let the topic of conversation drop then, finally realising I wouldn't be giving her much more insight, and returned back to the television, just as Sam strolled in from his evening patrol. Emily looked up at him immediately. I knew without looking that she would be beaming a smile at him and he would return it, before kissing her sweetly on the lips. Despite the initial flaws in their relationship, they were clearly made for each other. They moved in unconscious synchronisation with each other. As if they were made for each other. Which, as the Imprint relationship is summed up to be, is precisely what they were. Made to mould together and have an extraordinarily happy life together. I felt the dull flare of pain that had come to accompany my recognition of this knowledge; an old hope dying over and over again in envy. But it didn't burn as sharp as it once had and I had hope that maybe it would become manageable, ignorable, even if I would never be over the heartache and loss of its cause for existing.
Later that night, I found myself dwelling on the subject once more.
With Jake finally allowed to know everything and be a part of it all, things felt right again. In a way that I couldn't remember experiencing before. As if our lives had finally found a way to fit together. No longer awkward puzzle pieces, trying to slot together despite holes missing and unsaid truths that stuck out as a barrier to cohesion. Things were finally starting to come together in our complicated lives. It felt like a warm, blossoming of realisation in my chest. Maybe I could find something in this life that could give me happiness, something as easy and simple as pressing two correct puzzle pieces together.
