A/N: Why yes, it is another chapter. You're welcome and thank you, Christmas Break. So much free time

"Kim, your phone is ringing!" My aunt called up to me from downstairs. After a pause, she added, "Again!"

I stormed down the stairs, grabbed it off the table and pressed the reject button for what had to have been the sixtieth time in the last three days. Jared had given up on trying to call me from a blocked number, or from someone else's number, and he clearly just kept pressing the redial button now. He was getting desperate.

Sure enough, it lit up again and started ringing. In frustration, I threw it against the wall and it shattered into a million pieces. My aunt stared at me for a minute, shook her head and walked away mumbling, "Note to self, don't piss off Kim."

I sighed to myself and started cleaning up my mess, instantly regretting my moment of anger. I hadn't given Paul my mother's number, so that was the only way he knew how to reach me. In fact, that was the only way I could talk to any of my other friends.

Wait, what other friends?

I laughed to myself for a second, before picking up the landline and dialing Paul's number, which I had thankfully memorized. Being good with numbers had finally come in handy.

It took me ten seconds to realize that calling him was probably a bad idea, before he picked up. "Hello?"

I paused, debating on whether I should hang up. Instead, I took a deep breath. "Hey, Paul. It's me."

"Oh… Hey." By the way he skirted around saying my name, I could tell where he was. Or rather whom he was with. "I didn't recognize the number."

"Yeah well, I threw my phone against the wall and shattered it. I'll probably get a new one sometime this week with a new number. I just wanted to let you know." I mumbled in what I hoped was a low voice.

He gave a short laugh. "You threw your phone at the wall? I guess you took my temper with you when you left, huh Kim?" and then I heard him swear and the sound of shuffling. "She doesn't want to talk to you, now screw off! No, seriously." A pause. "Do you want me to kick your ass, again?"

Before I could regret my decision, I spoke loudly. "Paul? Paul!" I called into the phone. "Give him the phone."

"No, Kim you don't have to talk to him."

I don't have to, but I should. I need to get this over with. I sighed. "I want to. I need to. Give him the phone."

It didn't take very long for the phone to change owners. "Kim." He breathed.

I flinched upon hearing my name, hearing his voice. I hated the way my body felt when I heard it. "Stop calling me." I said stiffly. "I don't want to hear from you, or talk to you. Just stop calling me."

"Okay, I understand that you need time. When are you coming back? We can talk then and work things out."

"Don't you get it, Jared? I'm not coming back, ever."

He was silent. "What?" He whispered eventually. "You can't leave… You promised that you were staying. You said you wouldn't leave."

I gave a short laugh, only to stop the tears that were threatening to be released. I stared hard at my feet, refusing to cry. I had cried every night for the past three days and I wouldn't cry anymore, not for him. "How can I stay? When you betrayed every promise? When I gave up everything for you? How can I stay when I can't even look at you anymore?"

"You're my imprint." He said quietly. "We aren't supposed to be apart. It will kill us."

"Maybe you should have thought of that before. And I can't speak for you, but I can speak for myself when I assure you that I will be just fine without you. I hope you get everything you want in life. This is the last time you will ever hear from me. Goodbye, Jared."

I went upstairs to my room and sat on my bed, trying to compose myself and get rid of the ache in my stomach. I felt sick and miserable.

A couple minutes, or a couple hours later, my mother called me. "Kimberly, come downstairs!" She yelled. "There's someone I want you to meet."

"Just a sec!" I replied, running into the bathroom to wash my face and fix my hair. I just hoped it wasn't another "nice boy from the neighborhood" that she was trying to set me up with. It's only been four days Mom; give it a rest with the matchmaker. But I put on my fake smile and went downstairs anyway, only to find a petite blonde girl, although she was taller than me, sitting at the table. She looked pretty comfortable, so she had clearly been here before.

"Kimberly, this is Elliot. She lives next door and she watches Lakota and Jackson occasionally. She's graduating next year too, so you'll be going to school together." My mother introduced us politely.

I said, "Its just Kim," at the same time that she said, "Just Ellie is fine." We looked at each other and laughed, shaking hands.

"Kim is a bit shy," My mom said and I rolled my eyes and blushed. "But she's a wonderful girl once you get to know her."

"Thanks for pimping me out, Mom." I joked half heartedly, smiling at "Ellie."

She wandered off and I sat down next to the girl, trying to casually strike up a conversation. After a couple of minutes of awkward small talk, she says, "So how good are you at the Wii?"

I found that I couldn't control my laughter anymore. "Did anyone ever tell you how horrible you are at Mario Kart?" I joke, enjoying the look of frustration I received.

"It's not fair!" Paul whined as he dived off the edge of the level again. "They don't make these things for my giant hands! You try pressing the buttons with fingers three times the size of them! Plus Lakota is tugging my hair and distracting me!"

Ellie chuckles from his other side. "You're going to blame your loss on a five year old? That's really nice, Paul."

"Shut up, Elliot." He grumbles, throwing down the remote. "I quit. Is there any more pizza left?" And then he gets off and wanders into the kitchen, where Aunt Jean promises to heat him up a couple, or ten slices.

It's almost March, and I would think my Aunt would be sick of trying to feed Paul's bottomless pit by now. I guess it helps that he doesn't really come up as much anymore, especially now that he has Rachel and school and pack duties all piled up into one. He tries to come twice a month now, and he usually brings her down. In fact, this is the first Saturday since the big "vampire showdown" that he hasn't brought her with him.

My family doesn't really mind feeding Paul, because they absolutely adore him and Rachel both. My mother thinks Rachel is just fantastic and my Aunt thinks that Paul is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

I adore Rachel too. Don't get me wrong. She's basically an older, girl version of Jacob, considering they are brother and sister, except much less whiny and annoying. Well, he's less whiny now that he has Nessie to keep him company. And he and Leah have been getting pretty close too, so I'm told. But having her around cuts in on the little Paul time that I have, and I hate watching them together.

It's not like he flaunts their relationship in front of my face. He's actually really good with how he acts when I'm around. They barely touch. But it's the way that he looks at her when she laughs, or when she brushes her hair out of her face and the way that his eyes follow her across the room that makes the ache in my heart throb painfully.

Ellie picks up Paul's discarded controller and hands it to Lakota, who is also better at Mario Kart than Paul. She notices that he's made a dent in the wheel and she rolls her eyes. "You could try to be a little more human." She says sarcastically.

I just smile along with her. It had been quite the shock for her when Paul had lost his temper and phased in front of her by accident last month. She took it basically as well as me, which means that she didn't take it well at all. Eventually, just like I did, she came around and learned to accept it.

She likes to make jokes about it, but I think she's secretly still terrified on the inside. Paul likes to joke that if I ever brought her to La Push, one of the guys would imprint on her. The thought terrifies me. Both her being imprinted on, and going back to La Push, so I try not to think about it.

I know Ellie is curious about my "pack friends" as she calls them. I have a picture of Embry, Jake, Quil, Summer and I framed on my wall, and one of Paul and I from my semi formal that he took me to after Ellie basically threatened his manhood if he didn't go with me so that I would have a date.

She knows about Summer, the best friend that was and the girl who I never talk to. But out of everyone else, she has only ever met Jake, who came down to celebrate my 18th birthday in February with Paul and Rachel. Rachel was absolutely thrilled to take the car ride with both of them in the same car together and I say this with the most sarcasm that I can muster.

Paul says most of them ask about me, especially Emily. I miss them all a lot because for a while there, we were basically family. But it hurts too much to think about now, and the idea of them as a whole is just a reminder of everything that I lost.

Well, excluding Paul, who is coming back into the room with a mouth full of pizza and another one in his hand. He throws his free arm around my shoulder and smiles at me, teeth full of tomato sauce. I shake my head and push him away, laughing in disgust.

I won't lie when I say that I've tried to cut Paul out of my life a couple times since June. But, he won't have it. And he always finds his way back into my life, determined to bug me forever. He's watching the screen now, with his eyebrows furrowed and I can tell that he's somewhere else by the way that his eyes are glazed over. I know he's thinking about Rachel, and I look at the clock and realize it's almost seven and he's been here since twelve, which means he left to run probably around seven this morning and it will take him a while to get back. I know he's missing her, and that he wants to see her.

I put my hand on his arm. "Its okay." I say quietly. "You can go." He looks at me and I can tell he's feeling guilty. But he nods, says goodbye to my Aunt, Uncle and Mom in the kitchen, ruffles Ellie's hair and takes my hand so that I walk with him out the door. "It's okay." I say again, before he can even get out the first part of the apology that he was about to give me. I know this, because it happens every time.

He stares at me for a long minute, and then wraps me up in a tight hug. Out of everyone I know, maybe excluding me, Paul has changed the most. He still loves to bug Jake, and he occasionally loses his temper now and then, but the heartless and arrogant Paul that I used to know is, for the most part, gone when he's with me. The only thing I feel with him is comfort and familiarity, and the feeling of warmth rushes over me so fast that I can't control the tears that fall from my eyes. "Please don't cry, Kim." He says. He sounds surprised, probably because I haven't cried, well at least in front of him, in a while. Even though I had swore to myself I wouldn't cry anymore.

I quickly wipe my eyes and I pull back from him. "When am I going to see you again?' I ask.

"As soon as possible." He promises. "Are you really not sick of me yet?"

I smile. "You're one of the only things that keeps me sane."

"That's a scary thought." He says and I laugh with him, my sadness momentarily forgotten. "Are you going to be okay?"

I know he means now, and I also know that somewhere deep down inside of the question, he means in general. "Yeah, I'm going to be fine."

He looks at me like he doesn't believe me and I know it's because sometime around October I told him that I would probably never be okay again. But I smile at him, to reassure him and he nods. Being with Paul is always so bittersweet, because I know that when he goes home, Jared can see every aspect of my life. He gets to see me smile and cry and know that he basically broke me. He hears every word that I say and every conversation with Paul that I wish was private.

But Paul is my lifeline. And even though I have Ellie to talk to, she would never understand like Paul does.

So I bid him farewell, just like we usually do, and I work on convincing myself that I'm going to be just fine. I don't want to lie to Paul anymore.

It's late June now. I've been living here for a year. It's my graduation day.

I'm sitting next to Ellie during the ceremony, after she had snuck out of the alphabetical order line to sit with me. She's holding my hand and smiling, and I smile back at her. This isn't what I pictured my graduation to be like. In La Push, Ellie, whose last name is Pederson, would probably be sitting next to me anyway. There wouldn't be this many people all jam-packed into one place and the ceremony wouldn't have been this long. It would have taken probably fifteen minutes to give everyone his or her diplomas.

Our row is standing up now to line up, and Ellie is letting go of my hand and racing ahead to find her real spot in line. I look back into the crowd and I can see Paul's head, towering above everyone else. He's sitting with Rachel and my family and he sees me looking and waves.

He graduated two days ago, by the skin of his teeth. I'm so proud of him and I'm feeling a little guilty that he was at my graduation, but I didn't go to his.

I still can't go back there.

My name is called and it takes me a minute to realize it, before I get my legs to work and walk across the stage. I shake hands with the principal that I barely know and as I receive the blank piece of paper, Paul stands up and starts blasting an air horn as he cheers for me.

At first, I'm embarrassed, but then I'm laughing and I thrust my diploma up in the air back at him and you can hear his thundering laugh echo across the room and it's contagious and suddenly the whole crowd is laughing with us and I feel happy for the first time that day.

The ceremony is finally over and my mother is snapping pictures like crazy. Ellie and I with our diplomas, Paul swinging me around in the air, one with the three of us and I can tell my cheeks are bright red because I can't stop smiling.

Ellie is going on about this after grad party that we're going to and she's trying to convince Paul and Rachel to come, but he declines because they have a long drive ahead of them. He comes over to give me his famous bear hug and then he hands me an envelope from Emily. He kisses my cheek, promises to see me in a couple of weeks and then departs.

I don't open the letter until the next morning after I'm done nursing my hangover thanks to Ellie who decided to force-feed me tequila shots.

There's two parts inside of the envelope. One is a letter wishing me a happy graduation from Emily and at the bottom she begs me to just consider it. I'm confused, until I look at the second part.

It's a wedding invitation addressed to me. For her and Sam. It's dated July 30th of this year.

I stare at it for a long time before I throw it under my bed.