The Man With Few Words

"Color possesses me. I don't have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one. I am a painter." –Paul Klee


Chapter Three

Jan-U-airy Jansen did not call him 'Jake'. She didn't really revert back to calling him 'Jay-cub' either. Instead, she gave him a new name. She affectionately dubbed him as...Oh God...Jacob can barely get it past his lips. Dear Lord, he cringed every time he thought about it.

She called him...Jacoby. Juh-co-bee. Like some character from Aladdin.

He can't recall when she came up with this nickname or why. But most importantly, Jacob Black could not remember—not for the life of him, when and why he started responding to it. It came naturally. And he could not control himself. He would promise himself that he would never respond to that God-awful name but whenever she chimed it in her clean accent, he just can't stop himself from answering.

January: Juh-co-bee?

Jacob: What?

It's just as simple as that. Often, he is unaware that she had called him that until he reflects on their conversation later on. It reminded Jacob of when he was young and his mother called him 'Jay-bear' and it was an awfully embarrassing nickname but over the years, he had grown accustomed to it. Having no one call him 'Jay-bear' was something Jacob had yet gotten used to.

Juh-co-bee and Janie. He supposes they were quite a pair.


When January Jansen told Jacob Black that her house was right by the beach, he didn't think that she meant it that seriously, after all, the weather is terrible in La Push anyways, why would you go set up camp down in the fucking beach? With the icy wind and constant dampness and dreary skies, it was more like...people wanted to escape from it.

At least Jacob Black did.

He had ran to her house, an elegant little neighborhood with huge green yards and neat sidewalks, appropriately named 'Oceanside Estates'. He thought the whole landscape was rather comical, for it looked like something straight out of The Hobbit. If Jacob ever imagined how the Shire was like, it would've been Oceanside Estates. And January's home would be Bilbo Baggins' cottage.

He wondered if this made him Gandalf by association.

He found colorful Janie sitting Indian-style on her front lawn, her long dark hair billowing in the howling wind. She had on a bright turquoise gypsy skirt that went all the way down to her ankles, recognizable even from half a mile away. Her plain white t-shirt had a 'v' collar and matched her paper-white skin. Its tattered hem rode high on her stomach so that whenever she stretched, it would ride upwards.

When he approached her, cautiously walking a bit closer, he was surprised to find her staring intently at the floor with a sketchpad in her lap and smoking a cigarette. He had found it surprising because she seemed like the 'flower-child' type. The hippies that loved nature and wore tie-dye.

But instead, her ankles were looped with golden bangles. Her fingers, which for the first time, is exposed to the cold as he can see, are slender and pale, each one adorned with a large ring with a gemstone. Her thin wrists are covered with bracelets made of yarn and shells and beads. Every movement she made caused a symphony of sounds.

Jacob felt his mouth go dry. Discomforted, he automatically reaches up to rub his chest, which was beginning to ache again. He was tingly and hot all over. He can't quite explain the oddly satisfying sensation. It was like having fireworks go off inside of you. Or the sun on your skin.

"Janie?" He whispers, sealing the distance between them slowly. He didn't dare raise his voice around her. His booming baritone might shatter her lithe, agile frame.

She glances up, a bit startled, her dove gray eyes are endearing and soft as they focused on him. She shakes away her bangs, tucks her cigarette behind her ear, and smiles up at him. "Hullo, Jacoby."

January Jansen had been drawing a turtle, one that just stood there proudly atop a rock like he owned it, his little tail and his little head sticking out. Examining her sketch, Jacob noticed that it looked nothing like reality. First of all, the turtle's shell was colored coral pink. It's eyes were unusually big and its paws were the size of apples.

He found it cute.

He steps closer and the turtle, sensing his alarming heat probably, shrunk back into its shell hurriedly. January's brows puckered together and her mouth dropped into a frown. She accuses him, "Oh no! You've frightened it!"

He taps at the parchment, "I think you scared it off with this portrait."

She huffs indignantly and pushes herself up to her feet. All her bracelets and rings clacking as she straightened. She retrieves the cigarette from behind her ear and takes a deep puff. As if she was afraid she was being rude, she pulled out another one for him from a rumpled blue packet.

He declines politely.

She leads him up to the house with a smooth beckoning of her arm. She pushes open one of the double French doors gently, slipping into the warm, heated room and Jacob followed. He follows her command to close it after him and stepped into the cozy living room. In fact, her whole house seemed cozy. And everything looked small to him, as if he had just fallen into a real-life version of Alice in Wonderland.

The couches are made with linen, cream pinstriped with cornflower blue. The wooden coffee table is littered with magazines and receipts and spare change. A lamp in the shape of Winnie the Pooh lit up the dim atmosphere. Over to the right is the open kitchen and the dining room consisted of a small glass table. The fireplace cackled occasionally, drowning out the need for a heater.

January leaps to the kitchen with staggering grace, "Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Lemonade? Can I blend you a smoothie?"

Jacob shakes his head, tangled locks flying, "No. It's all right."

Janie looks skeptical, she tilts her head and pulls on her jet-black waves, "You sure?" Her ever-alluring mop of onyx is as savage as ever, spilling wildly over her shoulders like some tumultuous waterfall and her lash-skimming fringe made her appear even more elfin.

Jacob grinned ghostly as his sunken, dark eyes found the electric blue ribbons wove into her hair. He found himself wondering what it would be like to run his fingers through it. Would it be as silky as it looked?

"Yeah," He answers, "I'm sure."


January Jansen's bedroom is a void. The walls, most of them blank except of splotches of test-colors drew on in thin, long lines. The soft shag is covered with a misty, flimsy cover to prevent the paint from penetrating. Buckets of paint scattered across various corners. Jacob wasn't sure if they were paint for painting or paint for house-painting.

A lone, blue mattress sits in the middle like the warm center the rest of the world crowds around. The lemon yellow pillows are cute; the strawberry pink sheets are charming; and the plaid quilt is comforting. There's nothing else except an old, mahogany wood, vanity table.

Jacob thought it looked cozy.

"Well, this is it!" Janie flapped her arms up in the air, whirling. "Now," She bounces over to retrieve a little circular cardboard and sticks it under his nose—well, more like his chest because she's not quite tall enough to reach his nose. It was a color palette. She's chattering animatedly, "I was thinking either this yellow here…you know, this light one, or maybe this orange…how about this light green? What do you think, Jacoby?"

He wasn't sure why she was asking him. After all, this was her room. He felt a little uncomfortable all of a sudden, as if he's starting to get the sense that this isn't such a good idea.

She blinks her tinsel-silver eyes at him and he willed himself to find those ribbons in her hair annoying. He couldn't. He willed himself to walk out of the room. He willed himself to run away, like he did so many times in his lifetime. He couldn't.

All Jacob Black; Jacob Wolfe; Jacob-you're-my-best-friend-and-I-love-you-but-I-love-him-more, can do is point to the baby blue slot and pick up a paint roller.

"Do you need a stool?" January asks earnestly, her eyes wide as Jacob was getting ready to start on the ceiling. If she wasn't so silly and innocent, he might've thought she was iffy in the head. But since she is and she just seems so sincere that all Jacob did was nod. And she scurries out of the room.

Once she was out of sight, he could still hear the padding of her feet. It's steady and clumsy. He smiled lightly, the corners of his lips twitching painfully. He extends his arm and leaves a wet, slick trail of blue across the ceiling. The shade is vivid but warming. He checks the tin bucket for a name. Carolina blue.

How fitting, he muses to himself. He dips the paint roller into the bucket again and touches it to his previous stroke. Biting his lower lip, Jacob scrunches his great brows and concentrates of getting the roof to look even. Occasionally, excess paint would drip down onto his forehead or down his bare chest but he wouldn't care.

When Janie returned with a small wooden stool, he was just about done with the ceiling. She sets it down wordlessly and for a moment, he feels guilty for making her get it when he obviously didn't need it. But then she steps on it herself and grabs a brush.

The walls, she had decided silently, were to be sunflower yellow.


January Jansen had found it impossible to reach the upper corner of her room. She's standing tiptoe on her stool, arms straining, and shirt lifting. And so, Jacob Black declared it to be his responsibility and painted it for her.

He attempts a laugh, it sounds like a cough. "You shortie."

She turns to him, irritated and flushed. She grins a little then pushes her long hair over her shoulder. Her cheek's smeared vanilla. "I'm perfectly normal. It's you La Push boys. Ya'll are all huge." She frowns, her roller halting in mid-stroke, "What are you? 6'5", Jacoby?"

Jacob gave her a scandalized look. "6'9"." He corrects, sneering, "It's not my fault you're like...three feet."

She chuckles, a crisp chime. "I'm not an elf." She tosses back, her bangs flopping against her forehead childishly. She pulls off all her rings and bangles and sets them on the vanity table. Then she dips her hands into the gooey red paint.

"You look like an elf." He states blankly. He wasn't really sure what prompted him to say this, for he didn't really have a purpose. He supposes this was just another one of those brain farts he's been experiencing with.

But Janie really did look like an elf. She was about three feet tall and weighed maybe fifty pounds. Her hair came curling down to her waist and she was agile with delicate features. Although he's never really seen her with her raven tress up, he was sure that her ears had to be somewhat pointy.

"I'm not an elf." She repeats patiently.

Jacob didn't know what she was doing at first because she was just pressing bloody handprints onto his perfectly colored walls. Yes, his perfectly colored walls. She pressed her palms onto the smooth surface and pressed around in a circle. She drew a long line down to the ground.

Jacob Black blinks. He follows her actions. He dips his hand into pure white paint then pushed his handprint into the wall, repeating until he's formed a circle. The yellow wall providing the perfect center.

They take a collective step back. A blood red poppy and a great white daisy. They matched. And that made Jacob Black smile.


They worked in silence a lot. But it was a comfortable one. It wasn't that they didn't have anything to say to each other. It was just that they were both comforted by each other's presence. They were at peace.

At least, the man with few words was at peace.

With Janie humming along to some Oldies station on the radio—unfortunately, her dirty rap channel was overcome with static—the whole atmosphere was warm. Warm and cozy. They worked steadily and quickly. Jacob was in charge of painting in general while Janie donned herself in a creative mood and ran streaks of color over his area ever-so often. She entertained herself and Jacob by drawing little pictures.

"What is that?" Jacob's brows knit in confusion. "A snail?"

January looks absolutely offended. She squints at her picture then turns to Jacob, "It's not a snail!" She refutes indignantly. "It's suppose to be you!"

There was a small part of Jacob that's telling him that he's acting like an ass. Yet, for the most part of him, he was insulted. There was no way that unidentifiable blob of color was him. For one, he didn't have three arms. Second of all, he simply wasn't a snail.

"Look at this! He's got your hair...and that's your nose...your eyes..." She outlines the picture for him. "Can't you spot the resemblance?"

Jacob Black tilts his head. Squints his eye. Then closes the other one.

Yeah, he can see it. Sort of. "Um..." He didn't want to lie to her. But he didn't want her to feel bad either. He doesn't know why; he just cared for her feelings for some reason. "A little bit..." He replies hesitantly.

She looks to him, silvery eyes light. She looks to the painting. "Yes," She murmurs in her crisp soprano. Her lips curved as she drew on a wide smile beneath his sunken eyes. "Exactly like you." Janie decides.


End Note:

I do apologize for the long wait, guys. Really, but with finals week, not to mention the difficulty this chapter was giving me. It was one of those dreaded moments where I simply didn't know how to go on with it, you know? Like...the characters are introduced, plot is in action. I'm sitting back against my chair, feeling pretty damn satisfied with myself until that little cursor blinks and I go 'now what'?

So I decided to go with it how I usually approach these situations, which is to write in snippets. I had originally wrote it in this continuous long stream then I decided, 'no, maybe I'm moving too fast' so I shifted back to writing about the grocery store. Then I was like...no, maybe I need to hurry it up so I skipped the house-warming and went directly to them actually developing a growing friendship. It's just a huge, confusing blubbering mess because finally ending with this product, which I'm quite satisfied with.

But I hope you guys enjoy this short little 'interlude' kind of and you know, it's the beginning of a beautiful friendship!

Question of the day: Where would you like to see Janie and Juh-co-bee go on their first date?

--Kitty