I had been watching him all night. Like a hawk. No, not like a hawk. Hawks could be lax for all I knew. I watched him like a werewolf watching his imprintee's boyfriend. He hadn't tried anything though. Luckily for him. If he had, I would have gone rabid canine on his ass and mauled that pretty boy's face.
Unless she was happy with him doing . . . whatever it was he would be doing to her. With her. I really didn't want to think about them in specifics, or knowing my luck, I'd lose the contents of my stomach.
It was about four thirty in the morning now, and my brain was telling me that now was the time to turn human long enough to open the door and slip out into the night . . . Or into that guy's closet to steal some more clothes. It would most likely be a little suspect if I wore the same shirt and shorts every day.
With these thoughts in the front of my mind, I snuck out into the hallway (after pointedly ignoring the extreme awkwardness of me being in my birthday suit while Chrissy and Caleb were sleeping just two metres away. (A/N: The equivalent of about 6.6 feet – according to my converter anyway)
As the door clicked quietly shut, I heard Caleb grunt in his sleep before creeping out the other door onto the beach. Dang, if I had been just thirty seconds slower . . . I shuddered. How, exactly, I would have managed to talk myself out of that one, was a mystery.
Chrissy had just arrived at school and was perched on the front sign. It now read "BALL HIG SCHOOL", because her legs were dangling over the H.
She had the two white earphones of an ipod drowning out the chatter of the people flowing past her into the school.
I - like some deranged stalker - was not-so-subtly staring at her, a fact that probably didn't escape her notice. What she was oblivious to though, was that pretty boy was also watching her. He was seated in the front passenger's seat of a shiny car, being given a pep talk by his not-so-gay friend.
"You kissed her, right?"
"Well, yeah. Were you not listening to me all the way from my place to here?"
"And she kissed you back." That was a statement, not a question and Caleb seemed to know it, sitting silently, waiting for the next wise announcement.
"Then it's simple. Ask her if she'll be your girlfriend, sweetheart, lover, inamorata, beau, significant other, shorty, main squeez-"
"I get it."
"Then get your skinny ass out there and lay claim to your girl! Go man!"
So he did. He was out of the car in a flash and swaggering smoothly up to Chrissy, sliding on a pair of black, designer sunglasses. That was quite pathetic. It was barely sunny at all yet, but the hunk of plastic seemed to up his 'cool factor'.
When he reached her, he grabbed her face with both hands and planted a kiss right on her mouth.
"It's a lovely morning, Chris!"
"What are you doing?" She hissed, not missing all of the gaping stares that they were receiving.
"Laying claim, Chris. Be my girl."
"What?!"
"I love you, Christina Amanda Preston. Be my girlfriend."
"What?!"
"Sweetheart?" Caleb said, loosing his nerve now. "Lover, significant other? My beau, my shorty, my inamorata?"
"I know what you mean," she said, rolling her eyes. "But do you mean becoming . . . official? Sticking to one girl, staying true, not womanizing and not going on multiple dates per night?"
"Yes." Caleb answered straight away with no hesitation.
"Well then . . . okay . . . boyfriend," she said, stressing the new title.
I didn't know how to feel. I'd imprinted on her. That had to mean something, right? But like I'd explained to Bella, imprinting wasn't always a romantic relationship. It was about making your girl happy. And she was happy with him. But it still felt wrong. Imprinting was to secure the future of the pack, or to put it in animal terms, to ensure the next litter of puppies to bulk out the ranks.
And she was with another guy. It was like two sides of the imprinting penny. The only question was which way it would fall.
"Jakey!" A high-pitched voice said, grating on my ears. I winced.
"Beatrice."
"That's not my name, Jakey. I know that bitch may have, like, made you think that, but it's not true! Beatrice?! That name is so . . . like, uncool! Obviously it couldn't be mine."
"Whatever you say."
She pounced on me, snaking her skinny arms around my waist. "I sooooo knew that you wouldn't, like, fall for her lies! Onto cooler things! Are you excited for prom?"
"Ecstatic."
"We're going to look so totally cool together!" She tugged on my hand pulling me towards our first class, that we unfortunately had together. "You know, I think that we're going to be prom queen and king this year!"
"I was going to be anyway," I said suddenly, remembering the expression on Embry's face as he bribed the girl in charge of the prom committee. "My friends rigged the votes, back at my last school. They thought it was hilarious that I'd have to wear that piece of crap, plastic crown."
"You had a prom coming up?"
"Obviously."
"We should, like, totally go and crash it! Make all your stupid, little old friends jealous of your totally hot new girlfriend!"
"Hold it!" I said, stopping. It was one thing for her to make a fool of herself, but completely another for her to assume a relationship with me. "You are not my girlfriend. You will never be my girlfriend. Hell, I don't even want to go to prom with you!"
Beatrice froze, her eyes flicking from side to side. Then a look of resolve crossed her face and she reached up to tap me on the nose. I flinched. "Now someone's a little cranky today, Jakey! Did you get enough sleep last night, hot stuff?"
French had become my favourite subject, as of ten minutes ago, when Chrissy and Caleb had pointedly saved me from the evil clutches of Beatrice and repositioned my seat at the front of the classroom. Now I was sitting prominently on Chrissy's left side, while Caleb was on her right.
Admittedly, I was in no way a part of their conversation, but it was still just as good to be near her. To hear her speak. To see her slap the pretty boy hard on the arm.
"That's just revolting, Cal!"
Oh, yes he is.
"Now, today you're going to be revising the new vocab list," the teacher said from the front of the class, slurping loudly from a coffee cup. "But before that, you're going to need to know about our up and coming field trip. We'll be travelling to Houston to see some real french opera in action. You'll need to fill out a permission slip but no fees this time around. It's on the school. Hooray for government funding and all that jazz. Now open your textbooks to page one hundred and eleven . . ."
The amazing thing about the teacher was that everything he said was in one long monologue, his tone never moving up or down, just droning on and on; like a vacuum cleaner. It practically encouraged you to fall asleep, especially when you hadn't got any the night before, due to a certain horny teenage boy sleeping right next to your imprintee.
"Do you want to pair up with us?" Chrissy's sweet voice penetrated my doom and gloom musings.
"Wha-? Yes. Of course," I said. "Wait, sorry, I wasn't listening. What for?"
"The project. That we need finished before we go to Houston. Cal thinks that we'll be able to polish it off in a couple of nights."
"Yeah, yeah. Sure, I'd love to. Thanks for asking," I heard myself burble. Niiice. Really smooth. "When's our first study group meeting?"
She bit her lip in the cutest way, obviously trying to decide what my reaction would be. "We were actually thinking, uh, this afternoon? Because Cal was coming over anyway and-"
"This afternoon's fine. When am I showing up?"
"We can give you a lift," Caleb said, his nose scrunching as he smiled slightly wider on the word 'we'. "But Chris is going to need her sugar fix of the week. Meaning we sit around awkwardly in Starbucks as she slurps at a bunch of chilled drinks."
I stared at her in shock. I'd thought that the Pretty Boy was exaggerating, but he really wasn't. Chrissy was matching me drink for drink. Somewhere after the fourth, she had looked at me with an indescribable glint in eye. We had an unspoken competition going; who could drink more. There were no prizes, but I was fairly sure that the winner got eternal bragging rights.
Having her mock me forever wasn't what I was worried about. It was what the pack would say when they found out that I was out-drunk by a girl. So it wasn't going to happen.
Pretty Boy sucked noisily on a straw. It was only his second. "Where do you guys put it all?" He said in wonder. "I mean, look at Jake. He's a giant, that's understandable. But Chris?! You're outdoing yourself this week. Keep in mind, you did insist on paying for all of this. The more you drink, the higher your bill. And you know that they have ridiculous prices here."
"Cal. Seriously," Chrissy gulped at something white and chocolatey. "Do you not remember what my last bank statement said? I can afford it."
"Huh. Yeah, I guess so," he said, then paused thoughtfully. "Does that mean if I wanted food you'd throw that on your tab too?"
She waved her hand impatiently, rolling her eyes. "Grab me another one of these, too. And another one of Jake's?"
"Yeah. I'm done with this one," I muttered, tossing back the last of it. It felt like I was doing a shot, except in a bigger glass and the liquid didn't have that distinctive burn. Also, if I were doing shots, I would have definitely suggested some extra salty body shots by now. (A/N: Inspired by "Boycotts and Barflies" by vjgm - if you haven't already, read it.)
"So, Jacob. Where did you shift here from? Your accent doesn't sound southern . . ."
"Unlike yours," I said, trying to deflect her from quizzing me too much. I wasn't going to lie to her, but I didn't want to tell her too much about that yet. It was pathetic really. I could tell her that I was a werewolf. But 'I can morph into a giant dog at will. And I may have slept in your bedroom a couple of times' didn't exactly roll off your tongue. Also, the tiny romanticist in me wanted her to want me because she liked me, not because she felt compelled to entertain the mythical creature.
"I admit, I have a slight twang. It's not as bad as Cal's though. Stop avoiding my question."
"Washington. I'm from Washington state. I lived near the beach there too. It wasn't nearly as sunny though."
"A chilled beverage for my beautiful lady," Caleb said, shoving it on the table and leaning on to kiss her. I couldn't tear my gaze away. It was lingering and by the looks of it, extremely wet and just a little sloppy.
"Caleb?"
I looked around for the speaker. She was tall, her hair was long and shining and she had a pair of purple framed glasses balanced on her nose.
"Hey, Georgina." Caleb and Chrissy exchanged knowing glances and I thought back to yesterday's conversation.
'Georgina turned into a stalker.'
"Who's that?" the librarian asked, pointing on long-nailed finger at Chrissy.
"This is Chrissy, my girlfriend. Chris, this is Georgina."
"You two-timing bastard!" She snatched up my drink and in one flick of her wrist, threw it over Pretty Boy. I saw it in slow motion, the thick, pink fluid arcing gently towards his widening eyes. The first drop hit in the dead centre of his forehead.
Chrissy's mouth opened slightly and her head tilted a little to the right. Then she swiped her finger along his nose and tasted it.
"Oh, that's good. Can we get one of these to go?"
"Is that sort of thing normal? You didn't even blink when he got splattered," I said to Chrissy, watching her tap at her keyboard.
"Oh yeah. Don't you remember me telling you that he was a player? It used to happen all the time. My favourite has to be the plate of spaghetti. But that was all before they started realising that he was only in it for the short-term. After that it was more of an accomplishment. He's very picky. Once, in the locker room, Trixie just burst out with it. 'I screwed Caleb'. She was invited to three parties within ten minutes and the devil incarnate was born."
"Beatrice. You should call her Beatrice. I do," I said.
"Well you have the social standing to be able to do that. I don't. I am in the average at school. Just look where people sit. It seems very elementary school, but it's true. The cool kids sit at the back. The closer to the front, the more geeky you are. The more geeky you are, the more you get shoved into lockers and called names. Except for Cal. He's the one who doesn't follow the rules. He prefers to not associate with them, so he sits at the front. Also there's the fact that he's too good for them, so they reject him anyway. It's a hard world, Jacob. Life sucks and then you die."
Yeah, I should be so lucky. But god. It hurt that she thought that. I wanted to wrap her up in cotton wool and hide her in a cosy laundromat somewhere, and make her feel loved, wanted and know that life most certainly did not suck.
"Look, Chrissy," I began, looking deep into her eyes. They were beautiful eyes. Soft and sharp, all at the same time. "Life shouldn't suck for anybody, let alone somebody like you."
She leaned closer to me, but looked away from me. At that moment, her eyelashes seemed so impossibly long.
"You're a good person who deserves and will get a good life. There's someone out there for you who will make your life so worth all the crap times."
Her face drew closer to mine and I wanted to reach out stroke the side of her face, very gently, just to show her that I could be her somebody, if she wanted me to.
"Chris?" Caleb asked from the bathroom door. Our heads snapped simultaneously to him.
"Where's the shampoo?"