A/N: Once again, thank you to KBelle1 and TheEagerScribbler for beta reading this chapter.
February 8th, 2010
Since I had begun working, it wasn't often that I got to experience a lazy day of sitting around and doing nothing. When I did, it was more often than not spent with Embry.
Today, however, Embry had class on the same day I was off from work. I had planned to use the opportunity to spend time alone and think about things or whatever it was I'd used to do when I spent a good deal of time alone. I couldn't remember anymore.
Instead, I'd somehow wound up at the apartment that Embry, Quil, and Jake had begun to share. I spent a lot of time here, but I hadn't expected to come over when Embry was gone. Jake, too, was absent, off at work. Quil, like me, had the day off and was using the opportunity to spend time with Claire.
Somehow, I had crashed that party, a product of getting bored with my own self after a couple of hours. I hadn't warned Quil with a phone call or a text message. I'd just shown up and demanded to be let in, and he'd given in without a complaint, showing how far we'd come since the days when Quil had been one of the wolves most vocal about disliking me.
Claire was dressed to the nines in a big, puffy green and yellow dress that I thought might be modelled after the latest Disney princess. She had brought her favorite stuffed wolf along with her to visit Quil, and it remained locked in her grip as she sat on the couch and tried her hardest to play her toy keyboard with a modicum of talent. The 'music' screeched in my ears, and I had to bite my tongue to prevent myself from telling her to shut up.
Quil wasn't bothered by the noise, probably from a combination of having grown used to it and being unable to feel annoyed with Claire. She could have banged her fingers onto as many keys as possible in one fell swoop, and Quil would have declared it Mozart.
"When was the last time you went more than one day without showing up at our humble abode?" Quil asked, reaching for the remote so he could turn down the volume of the television enough to make casual conversation possible over Claire's continued noise.
"I don't come for you, Ateara."
An amused grin appeared on Quil's face. "Last time I checked, Embry and Jake aren't here, and neither one of them are meant to be here for hours. That means you're either here for me or for Claire. Or for both of us."
"You're a joint package anyway," I grumbled, not answering Quil's accusations. His grin grew larger, and I looked away from him and towards Claire, who was trying to play along to Old MacDonald as a recording of it played from the keyboard.
"She's been practicing all day."
I couldn't detect any annoyance in Quil's voice. To be fair, I had never known Quil to be annoyed by much of anything, so for all I knew, it was Quil's own personality and not the imprint that led to him easily dealing with Claire. I thought the best explanation for them was that he'd been the member of the pack to imprint on a two-year-old precisely because he was the best equipped to deal with a two-year-old.
Claire looked up at us and beamed at Quil's compliment. "I'm taking piano lessons soon," she informed me.
I almost made a comment about how I hoped the lessons would make her playing less excruciating to listen to, but I managed to hold myself back. At least she was calmer these days than she had been in the past. When Quil had first imprinted on her, she'd been a bundle of energy at all times. Now that she'd started school, it was possible to get her to sit still, and she used her inside voice more often than her outside one. That had been a welcome change.
"That's cool," I told her, trying to summon up a modicum of enthusiasm that I did not possess.
Quil was a natural, saying, "She thinks she might want to be a pianist when she grows up, but I reminded her that it's too early to narrow her options."
A subtle way of hinting that music wasn't her talent, I thought as she hit a particularly cringe worthy group of notes.
"Right," I said. "Wouldn't want to rule anything out too soon. Just don't become like me and have no idea what you're doing with yourself when you're in college."
"Don't listen to her, Claire. You take all the time you need to figure yourself out."
I rolled my eyes, imagining Quil fifteen years in the future when Claire was in college and distraught over what she was doing with her life. I imagined her as a much more outwardly dramatic person than I had been while going through the same struggle.
"You know, I like having you around, Leah."
Quil made the comment out of nowhere, and I was startled when I heard it, turning to him with wide eyes. It was the first time in my memory that Quil had outright admitted that he enjoyed my presence, although by now I had known as much. We'd given up the pretense of not being friends a long time ago.
"Uh... Thanks I guess."
Quil smiled with satisfaction that he'd succeeded in throwing me off my game. Most other people would have responded that they liked having him around too, but I was so thrown off by his comment that the thought didn't occur to me until it was too late to say it. I doubted I would have said it if it had come to me sooner though. Quil was the last person that I needed to make more obnoxious by stroking his ego.
It wasn't that Quil was arrogant so much as it was that he pretended to be those things for the hell of it. Either way, I didn't like encouraging the behavior.
A silence fell between us that was only interrupted by Claire's music. I wasn't sure how to proceed with the conversation, and I waited for Quil to do anything to give me a chance to reply.
He sighed as if he knew he was about to say something that would make it more awkward between us, and I could feel my stomach tighten before the words were out.
"Also," he hesitated one last time, "I wanted to say that I'm glad you and Embry got your sh-stuff together." He glanced at Claire to see if she'd noticed his close screw up. She didn't glance up from the piano keys. "I realized I hadn't told you that. Mostly because I don't think you want to hear it, but it's true. Both me and Jake are."
I stumbled over my first attempts at speaking, not having expected anything like this. Neither of us were sentimental by nature, and I almost thought that someone else had put him up to this. This couldn't be Quil Ateara saying these things. The most I'd ever heard real emotions from Quil was when he'd gotten upset years ago when Jake and Embry both phased before him and he'd been left with no clues as to why his best friends had deserted him.
"Thanks," I whispered. It was all I could say. I didn't want to respond at all. Quil shutting up would be preferable.
"Yeah." Quil was starting to get on a roll now that he'd figured out what he wanted to say. I could tell, and I didn't like it. "Embry was always cautious when it came to girls, you know?"
"I...guess." Back when we were younger, Embry had been nothing more than an annoying kid to me. He was four years younger, which had felt like an eternity and also meant we were never around each other at school. Until we were both wolves, I'd only known him as the kid whose paternity was speculated about and the kid who hung out with the younger brother of two of my friends. I'd hardly spared any thought to the little boy I'd played with while our mothers visited with each other. "It's not like I was monitoring any of your love lives."
Quil gave a short laugh. "No, I'm not sure you knew our names then."
I had. Everyone in La Push knew Embry because of the mystery he had brought with his birth, and it would have been difficult to forget Jacob when Rachel and Rebecca often complained about him being a nuisance. Even Quil's name had been difficult not to know when he was named after his grandfather who was a pillar within the community.
I didn't assure Quil of any of that. Instead, I let him continue talking.
"We saw you a lot though," Quil told me as if I couldn't remember when we had both spent time at the Blacks' house. "We'd be playing around or whatever, and Rachel or Rebecca would start yelling at us about making too much noise. Funny how you never did say anything considering how much I've listened to you complain since."
"I wasn't the same then," I reminded him. "Less jaded. I don't think I complained about much of anything then."
Quil shook his head. "None of us thought you did either. When you were around, you never said anything to us, but we always had a feeling that you were telling Rachel and Rebecca to go easy on us when we weren't around."
I felt a blush color my cheeks because it was true. I hadn't given it a thought in years, but I remembered comments here or there when I'd cautioned them that, maybe, they were being harder on the kids than they needed to be. It hadn't been often, and I had never expected any of the three guys to remember such a thing.
Those moments were vague in my own memory.
"I guess it's not that surprising that Embry fell for you."
It took me several moments to have a reaction to Quil's comment because my initial thought was that he was referring to everything that had happened while we'd been wolves. Then I took the time to think about it, and I realized that didn't seem to be what he was saying at all.
"What?" I asked, not sure what answer I should have been preparing myself for. My mind worked on overdrive.
Quil regretted saying it. I could tell from his wide eyes and the way he was unable to sit still. Even Claire had paused her piano playing, and the absence of music made the silence feel starker than it would have otherwise.
The comment hadn't been about Embry's recent feelings for me. Quil had still been in the past, and my mind struggled to comprehend what that meant.
"Quil, what are you talking about?"
He floundered for a few seconds, and at first, I thought I would have to prod him further, that he would refuse to explain despite the fact that there was no acting like I was clueless anymore.
When he did speak, it was in a rush. As if he could keep me from understanding the words.
"Embry had a crush on you when we were kids."
All I could do was repeat, "What?" Quil's words reverberated in my ears. How had I never heard about this before? For years I had considered Embry my best friend, yet such an important detail had never been revealed.
Quil looked like he would have rather been anywhere else in the world than right in front of me in that moment. He cowered into the couch to get further away from me. Claire had pushed her keyboard to the side, and she crawled up onto the couch next to Quil, putting a hand to his arm like she didn't know what else to do.
"Embry had a crush on you when we were kids," Quil repeated. This time the words were said at a normal speed, but I could hear a quiver in Quil's voice as he worried about what he had done. His eyes stayed trained on me, watching every move I made. It looked as if he was scared I would run after hearing something like this, and I wasn't sure how that made me feel.
I wasn't even sure how I felt about the words themselves. This wasn't a bad secret by any stretch of the imagination. I could understand why it would have taken Embry a long time to tell me. That was why I wasn't sure if I was angry or not. What I did know was that I was perplexed and thrown off track.
"You were always over at Jake's," Quil continued, knowing that the whole story would come out eventually and that there was no point in trying to conceal it any longer. Part of me thought I should stop him to get the story from Embry himself later on, but I didn't. I was too curious to hear it. "But whenever you were over, you stayed locked away in Rachel and Rebecca's room. We bothered you guys because we thought it was hilarious to torment Embry whenever he was in front of you. We were trying to annoy him more than you guys."
Suddenly, I had a flash of a memory from years ago. I was sitting beside Rachel on her twin bed with Rebecca across from us on her own. Rebecca was going on about how Jacob and his friends always seemed to be at their most annoying whenever I was over.
I had thought nothing of it at the time, but there it was, pulled into my consciousness years after it had happened.
"You tormented him about me? When I was around?" I asked. I'd never suspected Embry of having a crush on me then. I'd never noticed him acting strange in my presence. In those years, he'd gone quiet, which had been a bit of a contrast to when he was younger and I had been dragged to the store and forced to spend time with him. I had noticed that, but I'd never attributed the change to anything other than puberty. Kids changed as they got older.
"Depends on how you define 'torment'. We never teased him in front of you. We didn't have to. We thought it was hilarious enough when he would get flustered around you and not know what to do."
All of which sounded like things that I had attributed to Embry's personality, not a crush. I wasn't sure if I'd given him enough time of day to consider the possibility of him liking me.
"How long?" I asked, the words feeling hard to get out.
Quil almost answered, but then he hesitated, looking like he was yet again regretting having brought this up.
"Maybe you should wait and talk to Embry about this yourself. That might be better."
"Quil-" I cut myself off from protesting. I knew Quil was right. I'd had the thought myself already, but Embry wasn't there. Embry was all the way in Port Angeles where I couldn't get to him, and I felt an urgent need to receive answers. "Please just tell me when he started liking me. How old was he?"
That wasn't much information, but I felt like I had to know something more before I let Quil drop the subject.
"Like, five. Maybe." He tapped his fingers against his knee as he tried to think back, but he seemed to be having difficulty. "To tell the truth, I don't know. For as long as I can remember it's been a thing."
I sucked in a sharp breath. Because Quil had known Embry for a long time. His memories of Embry should have stretched back as far as he had memories. That would have meant...Well, that was even more than I had thought I needed to prepare myself for.
But that might not have been what Quil was saying. Maybe the memories of when the crush developed hadn't stuck around in his brain. That didn't mean the crush had been there in the earlier years. Quil just didn't have a clear memory about when he had first learned of it. Over time, it had become a thing that Quil thought defined their entire childhood.
That belief was easier to handle, so I would choose to believe it until I was told differently.
It was hard to keep my word and not press Quil for more information. He went to the kitchen with the task of getting Claire a glass of juice that she hadn't asked for. The seven-year-old went along with it, sensing that Quil wanted her to. Only recently had she begun to respond to Quil's wants the same way he had responded to hers since the imprint. She'd always gotten him in a strange way considering her young age, but now there was more evidence of it. She followed him right into the kitchen, acting as if she had requested a drink.
I took the time they were gone to try clearing my head, but the only thing I could focus on were memories. Ones that I hadn't recalled in years. My mind tried with great difficulty to piece the story together, to take what it had known and figure out Embry's crush for itself. But it couldn't. Try as I might, my own memories didn't reveal anything new. Yes, I remembered Embry becoming bashful around me, but it was the only version of Embry my memories had from that age. That had been how Embry Call acted, and I was struggling with the realization that I might have been the only person to elicit that behavior from him.
Quil and Claire came back, Claire clutching a sippy cup in her hands and dutifully taking a sip once she had sat back down on the couch. Quil watched me with trepidation as he retook his seat.
I'd pulled my phone out of my pocket under the pretense of checking the time. There were hours until Embry would be back. I'd known that before I looked, but the time was only part of the real reason why I was holding it. So much of me was tempted to send Embry a message. The problem was that I didn't have a clue what to say in it. Everything I could think of was better said in person than through a phone. I didn't want to alarm him while he was in class. That was a surefire way to make things worse than they were.
Noise startled my thoughts away from the phone I had taken to staring at. I glanced up to find that Quil had turned the volume up on the television. Some cartoon played on the screen. The kind meant for the really little kids where all the characters talked too slowly for any adult to stand. Even I knew Claire had outgrown this level of programming. Quil flipped up a couple of channels to another cartoon, and from the look on his face, he enjoyed this show as much as Claire did.
At least the characters talked at a normal speed, I thought as I resigned myself to watching it.
And watching it and watching it. That's what it felt like after the fifth episode. I hadn't realized at the beginning that I was getting myself into a marathon. After two episodes, I'd almost gotten up and left, but I reminded myself that I would feel restless at home too.
I needed to see Embry as soon as I could, so I would stay put.
Embry showed up two episodes after I'd memorized the theme song. He entered the apartment as if it was any other day, not looking surprised to see me there. Claire greeted him first, babbling on about what had happened to her that day, and Embry listened while managing to throw me a grin every so often. I smiled back, unable to do otherwise.
"I think we need to be getting you back to Emily and Sam, Clairebear."
Claire pouted, but she didn't resist Quil, heading for the place by the door where her coat and shoes resided.
This was the usual time of day for Quil to take Claire back to her aunt and uncle's, but I also knew that the action held a special significance today. Quil didn't want to stick around for whatever he felt was about to transpire between Embry and me.
Quil helped Claire with her coat while Embry disappeared down the hall towards his bedroom. For once, I couldn't tell if he sensed that something was off. When the door closed behind Quil and Claire, I could hear Embry dropping his backpack onto the floor. He reappeared in the living room a few minutes later.
I didn't say anything as he settled down next to me on the couch. Embry closed his eyes and leaned his head against the backrest. It only took a minute for him to realize that something was off from the way I hadn't moved or said anything. I watched one of his eyes crack open to look at me, and I didn't respond, still trying to figure out how to bring it up without making him feel humiliated.
Opening both eyes, Embry lifted his head to look at me, brow furrowed.
"What's up?" he asked. I felt his hand come to rest on my thigh in a comforting gesture.
With a sigh, I readjusted myself on the couch to be better able look at him as we talked. I never felt like I was talking to Embry unless I could see his facial expressions. It was often the only way to understand what he meant.
"Quil said some things he might regret today."
My heartbeat sped up in worry over Embry's response, but in reality, the statement hadn't been enough for him to get what I was talking about. I watched as he became confused as to why that would be significant.
"Quil always says things he should regret," Embry said, and that much was true. I would agree. Quil had never learned when to keep his mouth shut.
"This time I think he's worried that you'll be mad at him though."
There was still confusion on Embry's face, but there was a glimmer of something that might have been recognition as well. It was as if the right possibility had occurred to him, but he wasn't sure if he'd stumbled upon the truth.
"Why would that be exactly?" he asked, sounding more cautious than before.
I sighed, reaching out to place a hand on Embry's chest. My hope was that it would help comfort him when I said it. I wasn't sure how embarrassed he would feel, but judging by Quil's initial response, discussing Embry's childhood feelings for me had been declared off limits. Embry hadn't wanted me to know.
"He made a comment about feelings for me that you may or may not have had much longer than I'd thought you had."
Wanting to see each emotion and thought that flashed in his eyes, I watched him. Embry, being Embry, managed not to reveal as much as I would have thought. He looked in control of his expression, and I wondered if I'd overestimated how embarrassed he would be about having been found out.
The hand that had rested on my thigh moved, and Embry instead repositioned himself so that his body was turned towards me on the couch. The same hand found my hand instead, lacing our fingers together.
"I'm going to kill him tomorrow," Embry replied in a joking tone.
I grinned at him. "Can you at least explain it to me before you wind up behind bars?"
Embry nodded, his eyes glancing away and showing what I thought was a hint of nervousness for the first time. His hand that wasn't holding mine twitched, and I knew then that I'd been right that he hadn't wanted me to know.
"What did Quil give away exactly?"
"Not that much," I assured him. "Once he realized that he'd said something he shouldn't have said, it was hard to get him to talk."
"Good," Embry shot back. This time he sounded more serious than he had before.
"Why didn't you want me to know?" I asked, eager to know the answer to that question more than I was the facts of the past.
Embry shrugged, taking a deep breath as he looked me in the eyes. "It wasn't supposed to be some huge secret that I kept from you, not once you knew I had feelings for you anyway. It's not like I was worried about you knowing. It was more like I was scared to explain and lay it all out for you how embarrassing I was in the past."
"I don't know if you can consider your past self embarrassing when I never managed to figure out that you had a crush, sweetheart." Embry poked me in the side over the sarcastically used endearment. "Really though," I continued on in seriousness, "I never knew. That's way more than can be said for most childhood crushes. It's actually impressive. How the hell did you manage that?"
Embry shrugged. He wasn't acting like he was eager to share the information with me, but he also didn't hold back. "Whenever you were around, I was too nervous to do much of anything. I froze up. So maybe I couldn't embarrass myself in other ways, but I feel like I was obvious. Even then I thought I was obvious."
"Maybe I'm the one who should be embarrassed. If I didn't realize."
Embry shook his head, not wanting to hear me joke about it. "Even then I knew why you didn't. I was four years younger, Leah. When you were a freshman, I was in elementary school. It wasn't like I stood a chance."
"When did you start to like me then? Because Quil never said. All I know is that you were young. I can remember, now, when I used to go over to see Rachel and Rebecca, and you, Jake, and Quil would be there. I can remember it, but I was always going over there. A lot of my childhood happened at their house, and I can't figure out when you started acting shy around me."
Embry smiled, apparently at some memory he was recalling in his mind. "Before either one of us was going over to the Blacks' I think. It was back when you came to the store sometimes. Even then I got that you played with me because Sue told you too, but I didn't care because it meant that you paid attention to me. I looked forward to those visits. I didn't realize it until later, but I think my mom knew that too. I think she invited Sue to talk sometimes just because she knew that seeing you would make me happy."
"You can't be serious," I exclaimed. My mouth had dropped open as I listened to Embry speak. I'd been banking on the slight change in demeanor around me to be the differentiation I needed between the Embry who had had a crush on me and the one who didn't. I hadn't believed that, even when he'd been little more than a toddler, he had liked me like that.
"It wasn't like later," Embry insisted. "I didn't have a crush on you then per se. Do three-year-olds even know what crushes are? I just thought you were this pretty girl who was nice to me, and I liked that. Maybe saying I admired you would be better."
"Then when did you get a crush on me?"
Embry was growing bolder, maybe spurred on by my reaction so far. He leaned back into the couch, and I mirrored him, waiting for him to say more.
"Maybe fourth grade," he admitted. "I don't know if I could pinpoint the date, but fourth grade sounds right. I never stopped looking up to you from when I was little, really, but you stopped coming around the store, which meant I stopped giving you much thought."
"Thanks," I interjected, making a smile appear on Embry's face.
He shrugged it off by saying, "Out of sight, out of mind, you know?"
"Right." I pinched him in the side, causing him to squirm away and snatch up what had previously been my free hand.
Cupping both of my hands in his own, he continued, "Anyway, it was around fourth grade, and the three of us were starting to understand why people went on dates and kissed. I think we all had our first major crushes that year now that I think about it. That was also around the same time our parents started giving us more independence. We got to go over to each other's houses after school instead of going straight home most days, and we took advantage of it.
"We wound up at Jake's house way more often than mine or Quil's because Rachel and Rebecca would walk us there after school and babysit us. Not that we called it babysitting at the time. We swore that we didn't need to be watched."
I listened as if Embry was reciting Shakespeare to me. So far, this recount of the past wasn't surprising. It was information that I either knew or could have guessed, but I hung on Embry's every word, wanting to know what would come next.
"You know most of this because you were there all the time too," Embry admitted. "But being around you every day… I don't know. I developed a crush eventually. A crush that lasted a lot longer than any of Jake's or Quil's crushes. I think that's why they liked to tease me about it so much. We knew it was doomed-"
"Doomed," I said. "Thanks for the compliment."
Embry's thumb ran over the skin on the back of my hand.
"You were fourteen, and I was ten. I think 'doomed' is the perfect word to describe it. Even then I knew it. Not that it stopped me from dreaming.
"Jake and Quil put up with it for years. I don't know if 'put up with' would be accurate. I never talked about it, but a few years passed. You started dating Sam. Quil and Jake both dated girls, although 'dated' might not be the word I would use for it these days. I didn't do any of that though. I was too caught up on you, but by then everyone thought you and Sam would wind up married, and Jake and Quil started bothering me about not getting over you.
"Eventually, I 'dated'," he pulled out air quotes for the word, "this girl in our class. She was nice. It took a while, but I managed to get over you. At least I thought I did."
My breath caught in my throat as I listened. I could feel excitement causing my stomach to tighten.
"Then I phased." We were reaching the part of the story that I'd already been told. "Sam was still reeling from the aftermath of your breakup, and when I saw his thoughts, I felt angry about the whole thing. I didn't get why at first, but I couldn't control my thoughts back then like I can now. The guys caught on, and they took to teasing me. The whole thing brought my feelings back to me like they'd never left despite me being sure that they had."
Tears stung at my eyes no matter how much I attempted to blink them away. Part of me couldn't forget my heartbroken self from back when I'd first phased. I'd been convinced back then that I would never love anyone the way I had loved Sam, and that had terrified me.
When the realization hit me, it hit me hard. I was in love with Embry. That was what had me like this. This story wouldn't have affected me as much if that simple fact weren't true. I had been convinced after Sam that I would never love again, a combination of dejection and a stubborn refusal to put myself through heartbreak again. Despite thinking I'd moved past that ages ago, a small part of myself had continued to think that way, and that, perhaps, was why I'd been oblivious to how strong my feelings for Embry had become.
I wiped a hand across my eyes and tried to not look panicked. Telling him wasn't an option. I knew I would have to someday. There was no other option in the long run, but it was also something I wanted to deal with in time.
For now, I would keep it locked inside like a secret. I couldn't tell if I was motivated by nothing but fear or if I was making a smart move by letting myself adjust to the truth before sharing it.
Instead of saying the words, I lifted myself up from where I was sitting and maneuvered myself onto Embry's lap. Our faces were inches apart, and I leaned in to drop a kiss on his lips, causing him to grin as I pulled away.
"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" I asked. It was the one question that remained for me. "I already knew you used to have a crush on me. Why not tell me the whole story?"
Embry shrugged, casting his eyes downward until I lifted his chin and made him look me in the eyes.
"It felt strange to bring it up," he admitted. "I didn't know how to go, 'Just so you know, I liked you for years as a kid,' one day while we were talking. I guess part of me was worried that you'd be put off by it."
"Why though? We're together. I like you. I like you too much honestly, so why were you worried that I would care?"
"Leah, I know you think that I overthink things all the time, and maybe you think that means that everything I do is rational, but it's not. I don't know what my answer would be other than that it was embarrassing to have to the say the words."
"You've managed pretty well today," I told him, poking him in the cheek and causing him to grin.
"I guess. I'll admit it was easier than I thought it would be."
"I'm still here and everything."
"A miracle," Embry whispered, and it was too close to sounding reverent instead of a joke that I leaned in to kiss him and shut him up. Embry kissed back, and soon, we lost ourselves in it. For a while at least, all I did was feel and words such as 'love' didn't matter.
February 26th, 2010
"Ness, at some point you have to eat or drink or something."
I watched the girl as she sat, pouting, at the kitchen table. Jake sighed, his frustration growing the longer she resisted. Not much could have aggravated Jake when we were talking about Nessie, but Nessie's attempts not to eat or drink anything had achieved it. I could tell from the way Jake twitched that he was terrified of Nessie starving herself because she didn't want to eat one meal. When it came to their imprints, wolves always jumped to the worst possible scenario each time they perceived danger.
Jake was no better.
"Leaver her alone, Jake. She's not going to eat it," I snapped.
He glared at me, and it was almost a look that could have led to a confrontation if I allowed it to grow. Instead, I rolled my eyes.
"She needs to eat, Leah," Jake spat out at me. This wasn't usual behavior for him, but I knew it was usual wolf behavior when they worried about an imprint.
"It's one meal. She'll be fine. Kids do this all the time. It's like a right of passage. If she didn't try to go one night without eating, then she wouldn't be a real kid."
Jake didn't agree with my line of reasoning, even going as far as to growl low in his throat when I insinuated that Nessie could be anything other than a 'real kid'. He had always been touchy about her being seen as different, though he tried to conceal it. On one hand, she should be regarded as special in every way. On another, Jake held a strong sensitivity to Nessie's differences being pointed out as strange.
Nessie watched our exchange, not taking her eyes off of us, but she did so while also looking detached from the events in front of her. She wasn't interested in contributing to the conversation. She hadn't said that many words since I'd shown up at Jake's apartment and found him having this battle with her.
"Nessie," Jake began again, but this time, Nessie cut him off with a sharp, "No."
Jake and I both looked at her in surprise. I could tell that Jake was as shocked as I was that she had been short with him. Never before had I seen her take that tone with anyone, let alone Jake. Looking at her, I could see how set in her actions she was. Jake was never going to get her to eat the food that sat in front of her. There was no way it was happening. Nessie's arms were crossed against her chest, and she frowned down at the wood of the table, looking guilty for being harsh but not looking any more likely to eat than she had been before.
"Remind me again what's going on," I prompted.
"I told you," Jake began, taking his frustration out on me instead of his imprint. "Carlisle and Esme are gone."
"I know that," I retorted with a roll of my eyes. "Everyone knows that, but why, exactly, has that led to you not eating, Ness?"
She glanced up at me with a sad look in her eye. "I don't feel like eating." The words were nothing more than a whisper. "I just don't want to."
Jake shot me an exasperated look. One that seemed to say 'do you see what I'm dealing with?' and act as a way of looking for me to sympathize with him, to tell Nessie that she needed to eat her dinner.
Instead, I shrugged. Leaning my chair back onto its rear legs, I observed Nessie closely.
"She's not going to eat it, Jake. You heard her. She doesn't feel like eating."
"Leah." Each time he said my name, it became more likely that he was going to fight me. Nessie might have been the one thing holding him back. "It's dinner. It's an important meal. She hasn't had any blood either. She has to eat something. It's not healthy-"
"It's one meal, Jake." He had to have heard that a million times at this point, and I knew as I said it that he wasn't going to take me seriously.
He began rambling to himself about bullshit. "She skips one meal at first. Then she skips another. What does it say to her if I let her not eat? How would Bella and Edward feel when I bring back a starving child-"
"That's an exaggeration." So much so that I couldn't take him seriously anymore either.
"I'm not setting a precedent for unhealthy eating. She's growing. She needs nutrients if she-"
"Can you stop talking about me like I'm not here? Thanks."
Jacob and I both stared at Nessie with wide eyes. It was the only time in my life that I'd heard Nessie Cullen sound...bitter. It wasn't a good look on her, and she'd realized it too. She looked like she regretted the comment itself, but she didn't backtrack as she continued talking.
"I know eating's important," she told Jake. I could tell that she was trying to make herself sound as mature as possible. "But not eating once won't kill me. I could not eat for a while and still live, like in the stories about when Grandpa Carlisle first transformed, but I'm not going to try that, Jacob. I just don't want to eat tonight. Please?"
Jake did nothing but blink at her for several seconds. He appeared taken aback that Nessie was not only defying him but was arguing against him. This was new. Nessie has always been an agreeable child, willing to do anything asked of her. Never before had I seen her refuse to do something she was told to do, let alone speak out against it. Jake hadn't either, and the moment had thrown him off so much that he no longer knew what to do.
Eventually, he snapped out of his shock. Clearing his throat, he said, "Fine. But just this one night. Promise me you'll eat breakfast tomorrow with your parents."
"I promise," she told him with as bright of a smile as she could manage. As soon as her eyes fell back on the plate in front of her, the smile dropped. Not only that but her entire body sagged. Watching her was enough to make anyone feel somber. She looked like a child who was dealing with death or something equally terrible, not someone whose grandparents had moved away.
But, I reminded myself, Nessie had yet to deal with any greater tragedy than something like this, and it was doubtful that she ever would get much experience with tragedy. Unless, of course, the Volturi did attack the Cullens someday. If they didn't, Nessie could live for an eternity without losing anyone truly important to her besides her maternal grandfather. I felt a surge of jealousy at the thought.
Knowing that she was no longer going to be scolded, Nessie rose from the table and headed for the living room, not bothering to clean and rinse her plate. Another unusual behavior that I'd observed in her tonight. She was always polite to the point of cleaning off her own dishes without being prompted.
Jake didn't react at first. He watched Nessie leave the room and then turned to glare down at her uneaten food. His brow was furrowed as he sat there and worried.
"She'll be fine," I repeated for what felt like the millionth time. I shouldn't have needed to say it in the first place. "She's part vamp, Jake. It's not like it would be easy for her to die."
He jumped when he heard the word 'die' as if it had sent an electric shock throughout his body, but it also seemed to wake him up to the fact that he was glaring at a plate. He picked up said plate and carried it over to the counter, depositing the food Nessie hadn't eaten into some containers so it could be put in the fridge.
"It's not like I think it will kill her," he said unconvincingly. "I don't think it's unreasonable to want her to eat a meal."
"Well, no," I conceded. "You should be encouraging proper nutrition or whatever, but you're going overboard, Jake. Acting like skipping one meal is this irreversible sin or something. She'll start feeling hungry in a few hours and ask for something. Even if she doesn't, she'll eat eventually. One skipped meal isn't something to get worked up over."
Jake sighed, and though he had his back turned to me as he placed the leftovers in the fridge, I could tell that his shoulders were tense.
"It's not just the food," he admitted. His eyes flickered towards the living room door, no doubt worried that Nessie would overhear what he was about to admit to me. "It's more than that. Every time a couple of them move away, she does something like this, and it's gotten worse each time. She's never refused to eat before."
"She'll get over it, and it's not like there will be a next time. Bella and Edward are the only ones left. I assume they're not leaving."
"Not anytime soon," Jake said with a shake of his head. "I've talked about it with Bella. They'll stay until Nessie's full grown, and if Nahuel's experience turns out to be usual for a half vampire, then we have another three years before it would become a possibility."
"By then she'll be older, better able to take it."
Jake pulled out his chair too roughly, making it scrape across the floor. He rubbed his temples as if his head was beginning to ache.
"She'll be seven," he stated. "I don't care whether she'll look like an adult or not, Leah. She'll have been alive for seven years, and I don't think she'll be able to take it better than she's taken everything else. She looks ten or eleven now, but she still does stuff all the time that reminds me that she's not. She's only four."
I knew what Jake was talking about. Sometimes, Nessie's maturity amazed me, even taking into account the fact that she looked like a preteen. At other times, a naivety came through that provided a hint that she was actually much younger. This always seemed to be especially true when it came to larger issues, like her family moving away or other people making decisions that she couldn't understand. Nessie had yet to learn how to put herself in someone else's shoes to view the world their way. Maybe she hadn't realized that she needed to do so. She never understood reasoning that wasn't the same as her own.
"Every kid gets upset, Jake. It would be worrying if she didn't. You can't baby her for the rest of her life. Let her wallow in her pain and sadness for one night."
Jake rubbed his hand over his eyes one more time before sighing. "You're right," he allowed. "Maybe I'm too wound up. It won't be as bad in the morning. For any of us."
I nodded, going along with it.
When the next day came around, Nessie went home before I saw her, leaving me unsure if she had felt better or not. All I knew was that, when Jake showed up for patrol two days later, it was still the only thing he wanted to think about.
