Chapter two: By My Side

Title: Promises to Keep

By: Cheddar the Cheese

Summery: A single moment can mean nothing or everything. Bella finds a way to live after a part of her dies.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything you recognize from Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series. I do own the plot and any original characters that may pop up.

Note: I know that is chapter is short, but it needed to happen or the story isn't going to go anyplace. I promise that the last chapter will make sense soon. Or at least by the end of the story ;-) Please leave a review!

Now I ain't sayin' it's right, or it's wrong
But maybe it's the only way
Talk about your revolution
It's Independence Day...

Let freedom ring
Let the white dove sing
Let the whole world know that today is the day of a reckoning
Let the weak be strong
Let the right be wrong
Roll the stone away
let the guilty pay
It's Independence Day

Roll the stone away...

It's Independence Day...

-Independence Day by Martina McBride.

It was clear that Charlie did not really believe the lie that we fed him. It didn't make sense in his mind. Drowning victims don't have gashes across their chest. Never mind that by the time Jacob had finally died, the cuts had healed until they looked like shiny pink scars. Charlie refused to believe that we had told him the whole story, but I refused to care. Sam invented the story and fed it to him. I just stuck to my simplified- I didn't see what happened- story, but it hurt to lie about it.

The night before the funeral, I didn't sleep. I paced the floor in my room until I knew every grain in the floor. I played all the CDs that we had listened to together as soft as I could so I didn't wake up my father. I wrapped myself in an old quilt and pretended that he was there; making me laugh at the stories he was telling me. I kept looking out my window. I wanted to leave before the sun came up. I didn't know where I would go or what I would do but I wanted to get out of the house.

A plan was forming in my mind and I moved without thinking. Clothes- I would need clothes. I looked around the room and found one of the large duffle bags I had brought with me from Phoenix. I began to throw clothes into without paying much attention to what I was grabbing. Shoes were next and then down to the bathroom: toothbrush, shampoo, in it all went. Back upstairs for another look around. I grabbed my pillow and the old quilt I had been wrapped up in earlier.

Downstairs again I looked around for anything else I wanted. A muffled sound came from Charlie's bedroom. Charlie! I couldn't just leave could I? What about Charlie?

I shook my head. No. This was going to be about me. I had always put everyone else's problems and concerns in front of my own. It was time to do what was right for me for a change.

I left a note. I know how cliché, but I didn't have the strength to face him. He would know soon enough anyway.

Dad-

I had to get away for a while. I can't stay here anymore. There's nothing left for me in Forks. Don't be mad and don't worry. I will call you soon. I love you.

-Bella

And I was gone. Into my truck and roaring off into the night. I headed east, driving all day until I was too tired to keep my eyes open. I pulled off the road and parked deep in the woods and slept in the truck. I woke up as the sun was setting and kept going, leaving a blazing sunset behind me.

I wandered for a week or so before I broke down and called him. He wasn't mad. I think all the mad had gone out of him by that time.

"I just want to understand why, Bella. Why wasn't I enough?"

"I'm sorry, Dad. Really, I am. But I need some time for myself. I need to figure some things out and I can't do it there. I need to be away from all those memories for a while."

"You call me every week, do you hear me? I want to know where you are. And if you need anything, day or night, you call me."

"I will, Dad. I promise."

And so it went. I called him on Sundays and we talked. Occasionally he would try to talk me into coming home but I told him in no uncertain terms, that I was going to do this my way.

I traveled across a lot of the Northwest United states for the first month. By June I was heading South. And the further South I got, the better I began to feel. I was feeling like my old self. The pain that I had wrapped around myself for so long was beginning to lessen. I woke up every morning and I found that I was excited to be moving. Life in Forks never really changed and the people in it were just the same. I was ready to change.

With every mile and every day, it got easier. I found that thinking of Jacob no longer brought a stab of pain to my heart. I was glad to have known him- for however brief a time. I had known him and he had saved me in every way that a person can be saved. He was my Jack Dawson and I intended to be Rose. I would go riding on the beach and when I was old, I would surround myself with the pictures of the life that I had lived for us both. I would keep my promise to him. And every day when I got up and started my truck, he would be there, telling me I needed a new car and a place to stay- that I needed to stop driving and start living.

My truck died. That was how I finally faced the facts that it was time to stop looking for life and let life come for me. I found myself in Galveston Texas on a bright Fourth of July morning and fell in love with the city. I spent the day wandering the beaches and shops. The air here was so clear that it felt like the sky went on forever and ever. The water was so warm that I almost, for a brief moment, considered going for a swim. But I didn't. The water, any water, still held that edge of fear for me. But as I walked, and watched as little children pulled hermit crabs from the shallows, I almost went in. Almost

Looking around at all the happy people, I made up my mind to stay, at least for a little while. I could find a job and a place to live. I was getting tired of moving all the time. It would be nice to have some people my own age to talk to and be normal with for a while. I could be happy here and I could pretend that I had never moved to Forks. And so I did.

I took my truck to a local man who said he could fix it but it would take a while. The parts on a truck that old weren't just lying around you know. I told him not to hurry. He grinned. It was the kind of project that he loved, I could tell. Looking around his shop, I could almost see Jacob poking his head into every corner and telling me what it all was. I smiled as I left Mr. Lawson's garage. I knew my truck was in good hands.

I found a place to live not too far from the beach and found a job working in one of a dozen cheap shell shop down by the pier. It was nothing fancy, and that suited me just fine. The pace of the city suited me. The people were friendly without asking too many questions. I think that most of them assumed I had graduated last year and was now looking for something to do with the rest of my life. I didn't correct them.

In August when the local High Schools started back up, I decided against going. I'd had enough of schools for a while. Charlie wasn't happy when I told him and he threatened to come and get me but somehow I convinced him that it was all going to work out. I'd get my GED and I had already found a job waiting tables at a hotel near my apartment. Between the two jobs, I would be fine. I was happier here than I had been in a long time. I think in the end, it was the thought that I was happy that made him not push the issue.

And so I found myself in Galveston, working two jobs and studying for my GED at night. And I really was happy. I even began to make a few friends with the people I worked with: Annie and her boyfriend Rick, who lived across the hall from me, and Emily who worked with me at the hotel. And Ian. Yes, I guess that as much as I'd like to forget Ian, I can't very well tell the story without him.

Every morning that summer and into the fall, I woke up early and went walking on the beach just to clear my head. It was a time when I could be alone- away for the world and the pain and the memories.

Ian was one of the lifeguards. I passed him every morning when he went swimming in the warm gulf waters before starting his day. We would wave or smile at each other as we passed but as time went on, it was a hello and how are you? One day, after about a month of this, he asked my name.

I was almost late for work that morning we had talked so long. Emily saw my face when I came in and wanted to know all about him. So I told her about the cute lifeguard on the beach and found myself confused. I didn't know what to feel any more. For a moment, I felt like getting in my truck and leaving. But I didn't. I went back to work and at the end of the day, I went home and lay in my bed, not moving, for hours.

I didn't know what it was that I was feeling for Ian, but it felt somehow like I was betraying my feelings for Edward. I groaned. It didn't matter what my feelings for Edward were, he didn't love me. He never had. It was all just some kind of lark for him- his human girlfriend. I didn't mean anything to him. I sighed and rolled over to watch the clear moonlight spill across my floor.

So if he never loved me, I wasn't really betraying anything by having feelings for Ian- even if nothing happened- that night, far away from Forks and all the pain of the past few months, I was finally free of Edward Cullen.

TBC??