CHAPTER TWO
We spent the first week in a motel in Forks while Dad found an apartment to rent for a month. He intended for us to live in La Push, but needed some time to look for a house to rent there and his new job started the following Monday. He enrolled me in Forks High School to start after the summer holidays in September and in the meantime I was left to my own devices.
I spent a couple of days exploring Forks and then took the bus over to La Push. It was close to fifteen miles away and the journey took almost an hour, with the vehicle stopping repeatedly along the route to pick up additional passengers. Apparently the presence of bus stops wasn't relevant - the driver simply pulled over for anyone who stuck their hand out. When it eventually reached the final stop right by the gas station in La Push, I jumped out and made my way to the beach. I couldn't quite believe we would be living here in a few weeks and I began to remember my stay the previous summer as I sauntered along the sands.
I realised I was more or less on the exact spot where the bonfire had been and I walked down to where the waves nibbled at the sand as the tide began to come in. I followed the strip of damp sand to the rocks, where I'd sat drinking whiskey; kissing that boy. I remembered it like it was yesterday; his long silky hair, his soft lips on mine, the heat of his mouth. He said he spent a lot of time on the beach and I reasoned that I was bound to run into him again sooner or later. He lived here, didn't he? My pulse began to quicken. I just wished I knew his name.
I climbed onto the rocks and sat down, daydreaming, and perhaps an hour passed almost before I realised it. I got to my feet again and made my way back down to the sand, which was a considerably narrower strip now with the tide all the way in. I walked along, staring down at my feet, completely unaware that someone was approaching until they halted a few feet away from me.
"Hey. New around here?"
I jerked my head up and found myself facing a guy around my height and age; obviously a Quileute.
"Yeah, me and my Dad moved here from Tacoma last week," I said. "He was born here."
"Where are you living?"
"Forks, but my Dad's looking to rent here in La Push."
"I guess I ought to say welcome home, then," the boy said with a grin, sticking his hand out for me to shake. "I'm Jared Cameron."
"Paul Lahote." I shook his hand.
"What did you do to yourself?" he asked then, looking at the cast on my left arm.
"Oh...uh...I had an accident back home," I shrugged.
"Are you going to Forks High in the fall?" Jared asked then.
"Yeah. You?"
He nodded. "You want me to show you around La Push?"
"Ok," I agreed. "I was here for about a month last year during the holidays." I followed him off the beach and we spent another hour or so wandering around the reservation. He seemed pretty nice and when I caught the bus back to Forks he said he'd watch out for me at school if we didn't run into each other any more over the summer. At least I had managed to find one potential friend already.
I went back to La Push again a couple of days later and walked along the cliff path looking down at the beach. I couldn't seem to stop thinking about that kid; not Jared - the other one. The one whose name I didn't know; the one I would have given almost anything to see; to talk to again. He probably wouldn't even want to know me and I would only be asking for trouble, getting myself tangled up with a boy. As if one arm in plaster wasn't enough. I just couldn't help myself.
I stopped at the edge of the cliff and looked down at the sand and the rocks below, waves rolling gently up the beach. Someone was down there. I was close enough to see that it was a young guy; a young Native guy with long hair hanging halfway down his back. He was wearing cargo pants, t-shirt and boots and as I watched he began to strip off his clothes until he was naked except for a pair of tight grey shorts. Then he began to wade into the water.
My heart hammered. What the hell was I doing, standing up on the cliff watching when I could be down there with him? There was a good chance that was him; the kid from last summer.
"Jacob! Hey, wait up! Jake!"
I switched my eyes to the left and saw two other boys running up the beach, one with equally long hair and the other with short curls. The one I had been watching turned to look at them for a second and then carried on moving deeper into the water.
Suddenly I remembered something that in my drunken haze the year before I hadn't been able to. I was on the beach with that boy, kissing him and he jumped away from me at the sound of his friends calling out to him. 'Jake! Where the hell are you?' Then he had hurried away to join them.
Jake? Jacob? It had to be the same guy, it wasn't like it was a very common name.
I smiled to myself and watched as he dived head first into the waves and began to swim. I couldn't very well go down there now with his two buddies about to join him, but at least I knew he was still here and I knew his name. Jacob.
I ended up returning to Forks without speaking to him and I didn't get the opportunity for the rest of the summer. When I returned, Dad was in the foulest temper, wanting to know where I'd been all day and giving me the third degree on who I'd been with. I guessed he was worried I was seeking out the Eugene Bentleys of La Push and I reluctantly decided I had better forget about Jacob for the time being. Well, I doubted I'd forget about him, but at least I'd restrain myself from going looking for him again until Dad relaxed a bit.
I hung around Forks for the next couple of days, at a loss for something to do. There was a gym there I would have liked to join, but Dad couldn't afford it right away and I couldn't do much by way of working out with my arm in a cast. I stared longingly at the poster inside the front door, advertising what they had in there; CV equipment, cable machines, free weights, various classes and a swimming pool. I'd rather swim in the sea than a pool, but I longed to be able to get in there and use the other stuff. I'd gone to one of the gyms in Tacoma a few times, but it cost a fortune and was always packed to the rafters.
"Hey, thinking of joining?"
I looked up as three white guys came out of the swing doors and halted nearby. Two were blond and the other dark-haired, all about my age.
"Maybe when I get rid of this," I said, raising my left arm.
The one who had spoken gave a short laugh. "How'd you get that? Fighting?"
"Yeah," I said, thinking it would sound cooler than being in an 'accident'.
"New around here?" one of the others asked now.
"Yes, me and my Dad moved from Tacoma a few days ago," I said.
"Why would you want to leave a city to live...here?" wondered the third boy.
"My Dad grew up in La Push; guess he fancied coming home," I said.
"Yeah, of course," the first one said, as if he had only just noticed I was a Native. "I'm Tom. These two are Steve and Bobbie." He offered his hand for me to shake and the other two followed suit.
"Paul," I said, nodding at each of them.
"Do you want to hang out for a while?" Tom asked. "We're going over the road to the diner to get some sodas. Steve's girl works in there for a few hours on the weekends so we get free stuff when her boss isn't looking."
"Sure, ok," I agreed, deciding I might as well kill a few hours talking to them.
We were joined in the diner by Tom's girlfriend Kate and her friend, both of whom were blonde, blue-eyed beauties. The second girl, Melissa, reminded me quite a bit of Caitlin except for the colour of her hair and after establishing she was single, I found myself chatting and flirting with her. If I could get myself a girlfriend, at least Dad would get off my back for a while.
I spent most of the rest of my time in Forks with the 'gang' - Tom and Kate, Steve and Patty, me and Melissa and Bobbie, whose girl was apparently in Europe with her family for the summer. By the time I had taken Melissa back to the apartment a couple of times, Dad left me alone and I actually began to enjoy myself; so much so that I almost - not completely, but almost - forgot about Jacob.
I was quite disappointed when Dad found the house he'd been looking for in La Push, quit the apartment and moved us there two weeks before school started. I'd got used to being able to just get up, go out and be a five minute walk away from my new friends and my girl and now I was an hour's bus ride away. However, Dad was happy for me to travel into Forks with him every morning when he went to work and then ride back with him in the evening. He seemed delighted that I was settling in so well, he liked Melissa and he liked his new job. He hadn't had a drink since we moved and consequently hadn't raised a hand to me either. My arm was out of plaster and rapidly recovering its strength with the help of a series of exercises I was told to do by a doctor at Forks' hospital and Dad promised to treat me to a gym membership when he got his next pay check.
Things were going great with Melissa and I discovered after not too long that she wasn't really anything like Caitlin, in both good and bad ways. The good was that she was a hell of a lot easier. By the end of the summer holidays she was jacking me off regularly and with apparent delight and would let me do pretty much anything as long as I kept my hands out of her panties - for the time being. However, I had an idea she would change her mind about that before too long. She seemed very open-minded about sex and by the way she behaved, I guessed she had probably done it with one or two guys already and was just making me wait for what she thought was a suitable length of time.
The bad thing about her was that she could be a real bitch. Caitlin had had a bad temper, like me, but we would blow up into a quick argument and within ten minutes it would all be over. Melissa would get pissed about something and then sulk and try to make me guess what was wrong and if I didn't get it, she'd lose her temper, accuse me of not caring about her, threaten to break up with me, or simply sulk some more until I invariably did something to get myself back into her good graces. I think the only reason I put up with it was because I guessed she'd have sex with me before too much longer and I was getting pretty desperate to do it by then. Considering how much I'd fooled about with various people, I still hadn't managed to lose my virginity.
All too soon the summer was over and I got ready for my first days at Forks High. I didn't particularly want to go, but I guess I wasn't the only one. I put on the hated school uniform - black pants, white shirt and a tie; I suppose it could have been worse - and went out to catch the school bus to Forks, suddenly wondering if Jacob was going to be on that bus. Shit; I'd almost forgotten about him. He wasn't in the group of kids waiting for the bus with me, but suddenly I spotted Jared walking towards me.
"Hey, Paul," he grinned. "Where have you been all summer?"
"Hey. Mostly in Forks. I got a girlfriend there," I said.
"Already? You didn't waste much time. What's her name?"
"Melissa McLean."
"Are you serious?" It was obvious Jared knew her. "I guess you'll know Tom Stewart's gang too, then," he added.
"Yeah, I've been hanging out with them," I told him.
He frowned now. "You want to watch your step, any one of those guys would stab you in the back if he thought it would benefit him in some way."
"They seem ok."
"Yeah, they will until you piss one of them off."
I took what Jared said with a pinch of salt. I'd spent virtually all summer with Tom and Steve and Bobbie and they seemed genuine enough guys; fun, competitive, assertive; not unlike me I supposed. However, there was one side of them that I hadn't seen and I encountered it in the lunch break on that first day.
It turned out that I was in the same classes as Jared that morning and I shared a desk with him in English and then history. My friends were taking sports and I knew Melissa had art and drama so I hadn't really expected to see them to begin with. After history finished, I abandoned Jared and went looking for them, finding the three guys by the lockers putting away their books and taking out lunches they had brought with them.
"Paul, how's it going?" Bobbie said.
"Could be better, I hate history," I grinned.
"Who doesn't?" Tom slammed his locker closed and leaned against it, glancing down the corridor one way and then the other. "Where the hell are the girls?"
"Art department," said Steve.
"I guess we can catch up with them in the food hall," Tom said, pushing himself away from the lockers now. "Oh, hey, look who it is."
"Who?" Bobbie said.
"The three little La Push fags," Tom sneered. "Make sure you don't run into them, Paul, they'll have your ass."
Something inside me went cold. My new friends were anti-gay. I had better watch out what I said in the future and certainly what I got up to. I hadn't really thought about it since I met Melissa anyway, but then I hadn't been thinking about...
"Fucking Jacob Black and his buddies," Bobbie was saying.
I turned away from my locker, startled. He was walking down the corridor towards me with the two other guys I'd seen on the beach. He had his hair in a ponytail, a few strands escaping around his neck, his tie pulled loose and the sleeves of his shirt rolled up. I had to clench my teeth together to stop my jaw dropping. It was the first time I had seen him close up in daylight and I noticed everything; russet coloured skin, glossy black hair, dark eyes with incredibly long lashes, soft lips, parted slightly. Oh shit. The only word I could think of to describe him was 'beautiful' and I just knew what I was thinking was written all over my face. I lowered my head and delved into my backpack, pretending to look for some vitally important item I had to find right at that moment. My heart was hammering.
"What the hell are you looking at, fag?" Steve demanded suddenly and I glanced up again. Jacob was looking at me and his eyes darted away and switched to Steve, his face suddenly anxious. His two friends didn't look too happy either and they all stopped walking.
"Think he's looking at you, Paul. Must have the hots for you," Tom said and suddenly moved away from us and towards them. I could only watch in horror as Tom advanced on Jacob, grabbed hold of his tie and then punched him in the stomach. He dropped to his knees, choking and Tom took a step back. "Dare to look at any of us again, you'll get more than a fist in the guts," he spat and spun around, marching back to us.
"Jacob! Jake, shit, are you alright?" His two friends helped him up and I stood there, staring into my bag and feeling like I was about to throw up as Tom slapped me on the shoulder, laughing.
"That'll teach the little fag a lesson. Fucking queers, they're everywhere."
Despite the awfulness of the situation his comment struck me funny. 'They're everywhere'. I wondered what he would think if he'd seen me with my dick in Eugene Bentley's mouth. I'd no doubt be the next one knocked to the ground and I laughed loudly, wondering if it was my imagination or if it sounded a touch hysterical. Tom and Bobbie both grinned at me, obviously thinking I was amused by Tom's treatment of Jacob. I risked a glance down the corridor again, but Jacob and his friends had disappeared. All I wanted to do was run after him, but he probably thought I was a homophobic thug like my friends and despite the fact that he had looked at me, I doubted that he even knew who I was. Much as it pained me, I felt that all I could do was let it go and forget about him.