PSA: In this chapter, I'm not Bella bashing - I referenced her behaviour from the way she acted towards others in New Moon, trying to work out how they would see it, and many of these are her actual arguments to herself about Jacob. Never thought I'd end up feeling sorry for Jacob Black, but here we are...
Chapter 12
"What d'you mean, you've sold the house?" Carys queried, trying to not sound as horrified as she felt.
She pushed the lid back down on her Tupperware and returned it to the fridge as she spoke into her cellphone; she'd suddenly lost the appetite that had been knawing at her for the entire morning.
Amy's voice lost its cheerfulness as the line crackled. "We found (oh, Shauna, not the-! no, yeah, can you take her-? Thanks love) sorry, I'm back. We haven't sold it just yet. We've got an offer over asking."
Carys tilted the receiver away from her cheek for a moment and tried to control her breathing. Her house had been on the market since the end of January, but she hadn't expected it to sell so quickly.
"But... But you said. Didn't the realtor say it would be hard to shift?"
"Yes, which is why we kind of need to do it now - there might not be a better offer down the line. You know how these things are."
Carys' heart sank further. She'd expected this. She'd known her parents were planning to sell for well over a year; she'd had more than enough time to prepare. And yet, she'd thought she had time to work out how to swing a mortgage on her lowered salary.
She'd begun to take it for granted, but the thought of losing her little house so soon was almost too much to bear. Almost every first she'd had in Forks was tied to that house.
"I could buy it instead?" Carys quickly offered again. "I've got savings and investments, and-"
"Sweetie," Amy sighed, "They're paying a lot over asking, and you know what the bank said last time."
"Well, how much? I could look at other banks, or-" she broke off. A car to replace the one his family had had to destroy to cover her injuries was one thing, but she wasn't willing to ask Carlisle to buy her a house she would only be living in for a few months.
"They're offering $400,000, Carys." Amy hesitantly cut in. Carys could easily imagine the sympathetic expression that went with the words. "Something to do with the land; they're looking at a couple of houses on the road... If you could somehow come up with-"
"I can't," Carys muttered, turning her back on the coffee pot so that she could rest against the counter. It was far too much money to ask someone for. Even though she'd started out with about a tenth of that in September, she'd eaten into the nest egg a little to top up her part-time salary already. "When?"
"I'm sorry?"
"When? When would I need to be out?"
"Carys..."
Carys rubbed her eye. "It's fine, mum, really. I'm sorry I'm being like this, I just... I dunno," she sighed. "I knew it was coming, just didn't expect it would be so soon." She straightened and smiled to brighten her tone. "Listen, I need to get back to work before I'm missed, but we'll talk again later?"
"I'm not sure when I'll be free tonight, but I'll call you in the next few days once its had a bit to settle in?"
"Sounds good!" Carys called out, as happily as she could manage.
"It's not immediate, Carys, we've not finalised anything or signed on the dotted line. I just wanted to let you know so you had time..."
"I know, thanks, mum. I really appreciate it. Look, I've really got to go now, but I love you, speak soon."
"Speak soon, love you too."
Amy hung up a split second before Carys.
Tempting as it was to fall back on the family and ask them to help her out, she couldn't - no, she wouldn't do it.
Carys pocketed her phone, returned to her table, and found it as difficult to think about when she was alone as it was when she'd been on the phone to her mum. She tried to remember the few places she'd looked at in town. All of them had been long lets - which, she could do, and then buy herself out once the Cullens were back, but... She was too tired from almost a week of nightmares to get her mind to work properly.
She pushed the thoughts away for the moment and pulled out her book, trying to distract herself. She had four days off coming. She just needed to get to the end of the workday, and then she could sleep and worry about things when she had the brainpower to do so.
Carys ran on autopilot through the afternoon, until she could set off for the walk home. Home, for now, she corrected herself.
If the red truck parked outside the house when she got there wasn't enough of an indication that she wouldn't be snuggled up in bed as soon as she'd hoped, the brown-haired teen waiting for her on her doorstep was.
Bella, who at the very least looked less drawn and lifeless than the last time Carys had seen her, pushed to her feet and shoved her hood back the instant she saw Carys, announcing, "I need to talk to you."
"What happened to the whole "we shouldn't spend time with each other" thing?" Carys questioned when she drew level, sounding about as done with the day as she felt. Finding the right key, she unlocked the door, and was about to ask if they could do this another time, when Bella pushed past her, threw her coat over a hook, and toed off her shoes. "Erm, I'm sorry. Who's house is this?" Carys asked, shocked at the sheer audacity of the move.
"It's about Jake," Bella told her breathlessly, settling herself on the sofa as if she'd answered any questions Carys might have about the intrusion.
"Look, Bella..." Carys began slowly. "This isn't a great time right now."
"But Jake's been ignoring my calls for days," Bella objected.
Carys swung her door shut behind her, and continued to stare at Bella as if she'd lost her mind whilst she too toed off her shoes.
"And that's my issue, because...?" she asked carefully, drawing out the word as she crossed the room and hovered to one side of the sofa.
"Because. You said I could come to you if I needed advice," Bella told her, using the same its-really-quite-obvious tone. She waited for a beat before she launched into her tale. Launched was perhaps not quite the right word. It was more of a built-up roll, as there didn't appear to be much urgency in the way she spoke. "We went to the movies on Friday. Mike was there-"
"Mike," Carys echoed, her tone flat.
"Mike," Bella repeated. "Newton. I work for his parents."
"Gotcha..." But Carys didn't really get it at all. She didn't get why Bella was there at all, let alone coming to her about some issue with Mike Newton and Jacob Black. She cut Bella off again before she had a chance to launch back in. "I'm sorry. You remember you've not spoken to me for weeks, right?"
"Yeah, but-but you..."
"But I what, Bella?" Carys asked, crossing her arms and arching a brow. "You can't just drop people when you want and pick them up again when it suits you."
"I've been busy..." Bella blinked, her large brown eyes widening. Carys was thrown straight back to a conversation they'd had months ago, when she cautiously went on, "I've got the cafeteria crowd at school, and it's not just Jake on the Rez, if you still think I've been isolating myself with him too muc-"
"And that makes you too busy to pick up a phone?" Carys sighed, finally pulling her coat off.
Bella retained a wary silence as Carys threw the garment over her the back of the rarely used armchair and slumped into it, dropping an arm over her eyes. A minute or two later, Carys sighed again, more heavily this time, and waved her hand to indicate Bella start talking. Maybe it was something about the chair being Carlisle's that gave her just enough patience to go on.
"I've been busy," Bella protested again.
"Yeah, I get it," Carys muttered, sliding up in her seat so that she could drop her head to her hands. She propped her cheek on one, and said, "Okay. So you went to the movies with Mike, who clearly has a crush on you, and Jacob, who clearly has a crush on you. What, did they get into a fight or something?"
Bella started, almost as if she hadn't expected Carys to remind her of that. She shook her head in vehement denial when Carys continued to watch her.
"No. Mike ended up being sick and had to run out of the movie so we had to bail in the end. But Jake felt really hot when he drove me home-"
"He was really hot...," Carys interrupted.
"Physically."
"We talking about the same kid here...?" Carys queried, raising her eyebrows.
"What?" Bella asked, clearly confused by the question until she slowly cottoned on. "No, literally hot."
"Ooh... Okay. So Jacob Black is hot... Go on."
"Literally. He was burning up."
"Oh, I bet he was."
"Carys! It wasn't like that!" Bella snapped angrily. "He was sick."
Carys gave up her one chance at finding any amusement from the situation.
"Sorry. So they were both sick," she reminded Bella hollowly. "And then what?"
"And then nothing," Bella worried aloud, her ire doused. "I had it on Saturday - the stomach-flu's going around." She sounded bitter, as if one of them had given it to her. Which, to be fair, they might well have. "Then I called Jake's house, and Billy said he was too ill to talk. That was Sunday."
It was now Wednesday, which meant Bella had lasted half a week before seeking her out. Carys pulled out her scrunchie and swung one of her legs over one arm of her chair as she shook the frizzy mass of curls she'd released over the opposite arm.
"I assume you're planning on calling him again?" she asked when settled, pulling Bella out of the thoughts that caused her brow to crease.
Bella looked up, eyes shining. "I've been calling. Every day," she assured her softly.
"Maybe he's just too sick to talk still?" Carys supplied easily, not quite following the reasoning. It seemed like a cut and dry issue. "It's only been what? Four days?"
Bella pulled her knees to her chest and rested her chin on them.
"Then why wouldn't he tell me that? Why couldn't he talk - if he was just sick?" she whined.
"There're plenty of illnesses that bed-bound you for a bit, Bella," Carys advised.
"Why can't Billy take the phone to him?" Bella countered, apparently lost in thought.
Carys slapped her palm repeatedly over her forehead, then turned a wide-eyed pointed stare on her startled uninvited guest.
"Bella! Is your house phone cordless!?" she asked bluntly.
"Erm... No," Bella accepted. "But... He can't still be too sick to talk to me? Mike's back, and I'm not sick anymore."
There are several moments in the Lethal Weapon franchise, when Danny Glover complains: "I'm too old for this shit," and at that moment, Carys found a new understanding and appreciation for the line.
She rubbed her temples and tried to get back into the mindset of a teenager, rather than an almost twenty-four-year-old with far more pressing issues on her plate than a friend being too sick to see her for a week. Half a minute later, she abandoned the effort and asked:
"Do you see the irony here?"
"Irony? Wh-what irony?" Bella asked.
The longer Carys stared at her, the more surprised she was to see that Bella truly appeared as non-plussed as her response suggested.
"You coming here to talk about someone who's now not answering you? After you kinda treated this person-" she swirled her free hand around her head. "-the same way."
"It's not the same," Bella disagreed. "This is Jake. He's the only person I don't have to try with. He makes me feel almost normal...," she trailed off as if she'd said too much. "You didn't like me spending so much time with him," she added needlessly, her eyes widening when she realised the implications.
"That's wrong on a multitude of levels."
After Bella had started spending more and more time with Jacob at the beginning of January, she'd all but cut anyone else out of her life. Well, she'd all but cut anyone else who wasn't in some way essential, at least. Carys hadn't been on the list of essential distractions. In fact, she'd apparently been on the list of things Bella needed to avoid as they reminded her too much of the pain she was going through.
At first, Carys had been so happy to see Bella coming out of her hollow shell and spending time with a new friend, that she'd not noticed how attached Bella was becoming to Jacob, or Jacob was to Bella. Not until she'd seen the way Jacob looked at Bella one day, and the way Bella didn't look at Jacob.
When Bella was sent to the emergency room twice in less than a week, Carys had felt she needed to say something about both their "secret project", and the way Jacob was clearly infatuated with her. That had started an argument which led to their current situation.
Bella hesitated, seemed to mull over a potential argument, and then shifted her gaze away.
"... I just need help with him," she murmured finally. "What do I do?"
"I-I don't really know what to say, t'be honest with you, Bella. Keep calling? Don't give up? Pretty sure you'll be doing that anyway."
"Well..." Bella's expression was one of such sheepishness that she didn't really need to verbalise her request, but Carys was curious enough about how she would ask that she waited, feigning ignorance. "Has Leah said anything?"
Whoomph! There it is! Carys sang to herself sarcastically, taking a deep breath to cover her disappointment at being proved correct.
"Said anything about what?" she inquired, her gentle tone at odds with her thoughts.
Bella shifted uncomfortably. "About Jake not being at school this week?"
"Honestly? No, Jacob Black's health isn't really our go-to. It's more college, and Carlisle, and stuff."
Stuff was about the understatement of the century as it encompassed the majority of the topics they discussed, but Carys didn't want to share anyone else's business with Bella.
"Carlisle?" Bella asked, perking up immediately, a faint blush staining her cheeks. Carys narrowed her eyes, so Bella rushed on, "I thought-I mean, Charlie said-" she cut off her blush deepening. "I thought you hadn't seen him for a while?"
"I haven't...," Carys conceded, brushing a hand over her middle to try and push away the strangely defensive reaction that tightened her core. "Not since Christmas, but he's working on it."
"He's still coming back, you mean?" Bella pressed.
"Yeah." Carys covered the narrowing of her eyes by glancing down at her watch. It was nearly dinner time, and she hadn't eaten all day. Perhaps that was what her issue was.
"Have you heard from the other Cullens?"
Bella asked so smoothly and casually that to someone who didn't know her better, it could almost have passed without notice.
"Only really Esme, once a week or two now," Carys responded, feeling a little more out of sorts that she was being interrogated on the subject.
She could very well understand why Bella was asking, just as she could understand each time Esme mentioned Bella and her needs over hers, and just as she could when Carlisle had decided to go after Edward. None of it stopped her from feeling rather like the piggy in the middle.
"Yeah, of course," Bella murmured, hanging her head. "Does she still ask about me?"
"Every time."
Bella brightened a little again at the news, and Carys' feeling of selfishness increased.
"Why don't you talk to your mum about this?" she suggested, part of her trying to ease her guilt, another part struggling with the situation she found herself in. "See what she thinks?"
"This isn't-i mean, it's not... It's not really something I can talk to her about," Bella explained, her smile disappearing. "She doesn't understand everything I've been through."
Something about Bella's words struck an uncomfortable chord with Carys, and she couldn't help but ask, "I suppose what I really mean is, why are you coming to me about it?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, I seem to remember something about me being around causing you pain, followed quickly by Jacob doing the opposite? Surely your mum can't be as bad an option?"
Bella shook her head, rubbing her chin against her knee.
"She wouldn't understand...," she said, "I can't lose him too, Carys. Not after everyone else."
Carys wriggled up and jabbed and waved at herself again.
"Sitting right here!" she cried, before dropping back to grumble under her breath, "Not like I'm bloody easy to miss or anything."
Although, sometimes she wondered if she was easier to miss than anyone- she stopped herself before she started to sound like Leah. Leah had a reason to sound like that. Carys, as she sometimes had to remind herself too often, didn't have that reason.
"I'm sorry," Bella appealed, shuffling across the sofa on her knees to be closer to her. "You know I didn't mean it like that."
"Do I?" Carys whispered, before rolling herself off the chair and onto the floor, where she knelt for a moment before straightening and brushing off her knees. "Well if you're here anyway," she huffed, heading for the kitchen, "you can talk while I cook us dinner."
"Oh no," Bella called after her, a touch of awkwardness in her voice, "no, I should be getting back. I need to make Charlie's dinner."
Carys popped her head back through the door. "Charlie spent over sixteen years on his own, Bella, and what about all that time you spent in the hospital, or with-other people? He'll be fine making his own dinner for the night."
"There aren't any leftovers to serve him, so-"
Carys strode back to the living room and grabbed her house phone from the table.
Charlie picked up after the third ring.
"Hello?" His gruff voice sounded scratchier than usual; he must have been about as tired as she was.
"Hey Charlie," Carys called down the phone, fixing Bella with an arch look as she did so.
"Carys?"
"How many English women do you know who'd be calling you at this time of the evening?" Carys teased, a little sarcastically. "Do I have t'get jealous?"
"Good point."
"Just calling to check - how many years did you fend for yourself before Bella came back?"
Charlie cottoned on fast. "She's at yours?"
"Right here. But says she can't stay for dinner 'cause you're expecting her?"
Charlie's sigh was equal parts weary and disappointed.
"I can damn well cook for myself. Acts like I'm an invalid sometimes."
"First part? Exactly what I said. Hold on," Carys told him, taking the phone from her ear and holding it out to Bella. She shook it at the teen until she reluctantly reached a hand out.
"Charlie?"
Carys returned to the kitchen and washed her hands. She took a moment to herself, rolling her neck to try and wake herself up a little more, and then dried her hands on a towel and set to gathering the ingredients for dinner. She made quick work of preparing the chicken and was washing her hands again when Bella joined her a few minutes later, choosing to hover by the door with her thumbs hooked in her belt loops.
Carys dried her hands again and started collecting jars from the spice rack. "Well?" she inquired without glancing up.
"Uh, dinner sounds nice..."
"And what did Charlie say?"
"That it's not my job to look after him, it's the other way around."
Carys nodded. "Completely right, too... Look." She looked at Bella then, and tried for a moment to work out how to say what she wanted to without sounding too censorious. "There's nothing wrong with cooking dinner, but you're eighteen - it shouldn't be a responsibility you can't shirk at will. Remember that."
Bella ignored the comment and settled her hip against the counter, slowly drifting closer. She looked over the collection of ingredients for a few moments before she quietly asked, "Why do you have coconut milk?"
"I'm making curry," Carys informed her, sounding strained as she wrestled a frying pan from the drawer. "Have-" she began to ask, freeing the pan, and the food processor behind it (her ultimate goal) with a triumphant, "gotcha! Have you ever had tikka masala?"
"No..."
"Well, you're going to love it. It's a national dish-"
"In America?"
Carys tried not to laugh at the expression of shock that all but blanked Bella's face.
"In England. And Scotland. Maybe Wales too...?" she mused. "Whatever. Bet you a tenner if you come across anyone from home, they'll have an opinion on it."
"What about Carlisle?" Bella inquired, sidling closer still.
"Doesn't count," Carys dismissed. She wasn't about to lose ten dollars, or ten pounds for that matter, because Carlisle hadn't formed an opinion on something he hadn't been human to experience.
Bella watched as Carys began to measure the ingredients from memory, adding a little more of this and a little less of that to suit her taste.
"Why? Carlisle's about the most English person I know," she mumbled after a moment, stopping Carys in her tracks.
"Again!" Carys whined, dropping the spoon she'd been using onto a plate, and resting her hip against the counter to face Bella. "I'm right here! Carlisle's so old he hasn't even had tea, let alone a curry! What is it about me that says I don't exist?"
Bella crossed her arms, rested them on the countertop, and mumbled an apology almost too quiet for Carys to hear.
"What was that?"
"Sorry," Bella repeated, far louder, though just as embarrassed.
Carys harrumphed and returned to her occupation, sliding some garlic across.
"He's really never had tea?" Bella asked, staring at the golden powder Carys was spooning into the small pot as she dutifully set to work, peeling the cloves.
"Turmeric," Carys identified, pausing for a moment. "Okay, no, that's a lie; he had it once, but he was changed just after Charles the Second married Catherine, so he missed it becoming popular. Anyway..., you're not here for a history lesson... If you need help with Jacob, are you gonna at least tell me what really happened with him the other month?"
"Jake or- I-I, I don't know what you-what d'you mean?" Bella stuttered, taking Carys by surprise.
Had something else happened with Jacob? Or was Bella startled at having to cover for herself again?
"Well... I don't quite believe you got sent to the ER twice in a week just hanging around in his garage, no matter what Charlie thinks," she told her, watching the emotions flicker across Bella's face.
Defensive won out, her mouth working a few times before she settled on, "It wasn't Jake's fault!"
"Oh yeah?" Carys kept her tone and expression calmly dismissive, as if she wasn't really interested in the answer. Interrogation hadn't worked before. Perhaps that would. "What happened?"
"Nothing."
"Bella?" she coaxed gently.
"... I... I got us... We were working on a car, and you know how clumsy I am."
She was lying. Bella was almost as bad a liar as Edward sometimes. Carys debated, but let it lie. For now. She now knew it had to do with something Bella had "got" them, and that was a little more than she had to go on before. She didn't fancy losing Bella to it when she finally had someone to talk completely freely with again.
Almost.
Who was in her house, at any rate.
An interloper confidant.
"Fine. But don't consider this over." Over the whirr of the processor, she asked, "Was Jacob acting weird before he got sick, or just after?"
"No, he was fine!" Bella called, dropping the volume when the sound came to an abrupt stop. "I mean, he wasn't too sure about going to a movie with the cafeteria crowd when I suggested it, but-"
"The cafeteria crowd? I thought it was just you, Jacob, and Mike?"
"Yeah, well uh-everyone one else had to cancel."
"How come?"
Bella either couldn't or wouldn't meet Carys' eye. "Well, they... So, Ang got sick right before we left - the stomach flu, so she was out, and Ben didn't want to come without her, so he was out too..., but Lauren and Jessica didn't want to go when they found out I was involved, and they got to Tyler and Connor before Mike. Katie and Eric had their three-week anniversary-"
Carys stopped what she was doing. "Excuse me, their what?"
"Three-week anniversary."
"Oh-oh-oh-okay..." Carys spluttered, trying to recall whether there was ever such a thing when she was at school. She didn't think so. Carlisle had missed their one-year anniversary, and so celebrating three weeks felt odder to her for that very fact. "But break it down for me. Laura-"
"Lauren," Bella corrected, "Jessica, Tyler, Connor-"
"Yup, got it. Them. Why didn't they want to go when they knew you were?" she asked, frowning her confusion. "That's not very nice of them really... Are you sure these people are your friends?"
"Yeah, no, they are." Bella couldn't have sounded less convinced if she tried. "I've just... I've not been great company lately, and I guess I've been spending most of my time with Jake, so-"
Carys was so focused on not punching the air in solidarity and yelling triumphantly that she missed the end of Bella's explanation, and so nodded appropriately at the expected intervals.
She was right. Monica was right. It wasn't just Carys, it was everyone.
Carys pressed her lips together and held her tongue whilst she tuned back in to Bella's rundown of the movie incident, feeling suddenly less triumphant; she was right, and after the momentary urge to yell "I told you so!" from the rooftops, she realised that being right about this was the opposite of what she really wanted.
She had to bite her tongue several times during the explanation in the end.
Apparently, in order to cover herself from having accidentally agreed to go on a date with Mike, Bella had made it a group outing. Then, she'd invited Jacob and his friend Quil (Carys made a mental note to ask Leah about Embry, who had apparently recently joined Sam's gang) along as well.
Carys found Bella's description of having promised this Quil that she'd bring senior girls for him to talk to was one of the least palatable parts of the story. One of, because when Bella admitted she'd been thankful Mike could make it at first because she'd not wanted to end up alone on a date with Jacob, Carys had to stop her.
"Excuse me butting in a second, but, uh, was that you admitting you know how Jacob clearly feels about you?"
Bella hesitated and let her hair fall, blocking her expression from Carys. "... Okay, fine. Yes, he likes me, but I don't feel that way about him. Or Mike," she added as if an afterthought.
"Then why don't you tell them that?"
"I have told them that," Bella promised. "I mean..., I've been trying to let them down easy about it."
"Maybe now's the time to be a little more pointed?"
"Oh, I was. I mean, more so with Jake than Mike."
The penny dropped. Carys thought about it for a moment, then after checking the pot and deeming it ready to simmer, ushered Bella back to the sofa.
"Bella... Have you thought maybe..."
"Jake's avoiding me 'cause I just want to be friends?"
It was clear. That was the crux of the issue.
"I mean, I don't want to say it, but I really do think it was pretty clear, even a month ago, that something was there on his side... That wasn't there on yours...? Or was there?"
Bella pulled her sleeves over her hands and stared at her pale knuckles for a while before she took a breath and responded.
"The lines blur in our relationship... I mean, we hold hands all the time, and it feels so safe, and-" Bella broke off, and when she spoke again, her tone had changed completely. "We talked at the theatre. I told him I could only be his friend, and he gets it."
"I think the fact you talked about it is good, but... Bella..."
Holding hands? Knowing it was a potential date? Knowing how he felt about her? Carys wasn't sure which one, if any, to bring up first.
Carys had thought Edward or Jacob would get their hearts broken. It hadn't quite occurred to her that it would be Jacob whether Edward came back or not.
"He said he wasn't going to give up," Bella whispered, almost as if she'd forgotten Carys was there. "He said he was going to persist until I was ready to be with him. It doesn't make any sense he's-"
Carys felt as if she'd gone toe to toe with Rocky Balboa.
"Bella. Hold on. Persist?" she whispered, stupefied. "What d'you mean he told you he'd persist until you were ready? You mean, he didn't take no for an answer?"
"You don't get it." Bella met Carys' eye and shook her head, scowling as she stood from her seat. "You don't get how I felt after he left, and how it feels to be around Jake."
"I get that you're-"
"Jake accepts me for who I am now, not who I was. I can't lose him. I know you're going to say it's selfish to encourage him when I can't give him more, because I know it's wrong too, but I need him too much. Can't you understand that?"
"You shouldn't-"
Bella grabbed her shoes and headed for the door without so much as a word.
Carys' front door slammed shut, and she was left alone with her startled thoughts. She wasn't sure who she wanted to kill most. Edward, who she realised must have been the he in the situation, or Bella. Some part of her itched to slap some sense into Jacob, that when someone says they're not interested, you accept that, but she couldn't quite feel it in the same way as she did the others.
Suddenly, Bella and Edward seemed better matched than she'd ever imagined... But Bella was still hurting, she reminded herself to no avail. It didn't excuse what she'd pieced together.
Carys slid to the floor and lay on the cold boards, closing her eyes and letting her mind drift for the briefest of seconds back to a time when everything was simple, and almost everyone was happy.
She woke an hour later to the smell of her burned dinner, dropped her head back, and let out a cry of frustration.
Somewhere in the midst of removing her pot from the stove and putting it in to soak, she felt something rise in her, gripping her insides and twisting.
She needed to get out of Forks.
Immediately.
She just needed to get away from everything and clear her mind.
Without a specific destination, Carys hopped in her car, turned the stereo up to stop herself from dwelling on the house or her new opinion of Bella, and followed the compulsion to drive until the light on her dashboard turned red and her stomach chimed in with its own fuel request.
When she realised she had driven all the way to Seattle, Carys decided it was better for all if she checked into a hotel for the night instead of trying to make it home on the dark roads, half-exhausted.
As it happened, Carys enjoyed leaving the real world behind so much that night, that when she woke up on Thursday morning, she decided to extend her stay to Sunday, with a muttered "fuck it," before she rolled over and went back to sleep.
A/N: officially the last angsty chapter, dears! I hope I made it clear enough in the last chapter that Carys was actually doing really well before, but this really needed to happen to see why Carys might be more compelled to stake out some vampires in Seattle than work out there are wolves on the Rez.
Thank you to: Bimbumel2, Ella (I mean, I honestly hadn't read New Moon for a while, so I forgot/blanked out just how much Bella said and did when it came to Jacob - even when she goes to see Jacob when he's a wolf, she jokes to herself about not having seen Edward for a few days, so she has "a date with Edward, a date with Jacob"... I'm horrified!), chellekathrynnn, Love. Fiction. 2020, Ghostwriter71, souverian, afirewatchersdaughter, and Sting3 for your reviews!
Hope you're still with us after this one!
