I know you've been waiting for her ;)

Bella

"I cannot believe this is happening." I rummage around the kitchen table, moving dirty mugs and finding more and more letters stamped with 'urgent' and 'last notice'.

As I glance at my mom in the recliner, snoring softly to her afternoon game show, I remember why I don't come home that often.

But I'm out of options right now. There's no one left after Jake threw me out on the street with nothing but my duffel full of clothes and a heart that's been ripped to shreds.

I open the banking app on my phone and sigh at the three hundred dollars I have left. There's nothing else but that. It's the fifteenth of the month. And no Jake means no job, either. And if I don't pay these fucking bills I may have no home. Yet again.

After an hour of cleaning up my mom's mess, the place is finally liveable again. I sink down into the chair outside on the porch, the one my grandma and I used to spend hours on end in. I trace the paint that is chipping away, only feeling the memories of my loving grandma as I do. If it wasn't for her and us living here I think I may have tumbled into the system. But I guess what happened instead didn't make it much better. In hindsight, I may have ended up in a better place if CPS took me with them.

Then again, what do I know? I'm a high school drop-out who ran away for love and ended up in the same place I was in at sixteen. Here. Inside of my grandmother's old house. Caring for my sappy, drunk mother who doesn't care about anything in the world. I was stupid enough to drop everything for Jake, to work my ass off for his dream. I worked seven days a week, twelve hours a day if not more just so the mechanic shop he inherited from his father survived. Only it didn't survive. It thrived, grew out of proportion and people from all over the state wanted Jacob Black to work on their muscle cars, they wanted Jacob to build their dream vehicle. Which he did. Until he met Leah, that fucking bitch who eventually not only stole his time to have him under a contract to take care of Clearwater Inc's entire fleet but stole him away entirely. As in she fucked my boyfriend and got him to leave me. Great.

Not only did I lose what I thought was the love of my life, I lost the home that I built over the course of ten years, I lost the job I loved at the shop and the friends I made. I basically lost everything and am back at square one. We never got married, of course, because everyone and their uncle was tying the knot, which lead to me losing half of everything I ever worked for, every penny I saved. Everything.

I could cry for hours but I'm just not letting myself go there. It'll only make things worse.

As the hours tick by, I get cold, goosebumps rising on my skin, making my thin sweater feel prickly and uncomfortable. The sky has turned this beautiful pinkish color, hues of dark blue and red swirling into the air above, and I let out a deep sigh as I hug my knees to my chest. I always knew the good wouldn't last. It never does. Except I don't know why I'm so disappointed, why my heart feels so hollow and my eyes burn from the unshed tears. I don't know why I let it get to me. I should be angry about all that Jake has done and instead I catch myself staring at my phone, longing for an incoming call, for that one text telling me he's made a mistake.

But Jake isn't the one with the mistakes. It's me. I was naive, blind to the shared attraction between him and Leah. I wasn't careful with my heart, with my wallet, and I did everything for that one person I thought I was going to spend the rest of my days with. When you don't get affection as a kid, you learn to adapt to whomever it is that willingly gives you their attention and morph into what they want. You do whatever it takes to earn that love, to get that hug, to feel their lips on yours, to feel their body react to you in the way that you wish it could. You do all of that, neglecting yourself until you do feel it. Until you do get the attention and the affection and the everything you've always dreamed of.

Well, not any more. I'm not changing who I am again. Not for any man on this planet. Right now, I don't even fucking know who I am anymore. And I need to find out before I end up like my mother.