Jacob opened the garage door as I gingerly got into the truck's cab and strapped myself in. Within moments, Jacob was also inside the truck and buckled his seatbelt. I started the truck with a enormous, but strong roar. The truck was old, but still had some kick in it. I backed out of the garage and into the road and it wasn't long before Jacob tried to initiate conversation.
"So, I know this might be nosy and all, seeing as you just got here, but what made you change your mind and decide to live with Charlie? Not that I'm complaining of course," he said with a wink, "but I have never seen Charlie so excited. Billy says that this is the best he's seen Charlie since he was, well, since he was married to your mom." I focused steadfast on the road before answering.

"Well…I'm sure you know about why my mother divorced Charlie and all, right?" Jacob shook his head. "She got tired of living in such a small, rainy town, and after a while, she began to fall out of love with Charlie. I was really small at the time, so I didn't know exactly what was going on, I just knew that I was going with her to somewhere that was much drier and that I wouldn't see Charlie very often. So, now, thirteen years later, she met this guy named Phil. They fell in love, and since he's a ball player, she had to constantly choose between going with him to games, or staying with me. I didn't want to make her choose, and I wanted to kind of reconnect with Charlie. So, I decided to come here." He mulled this over quietly for a few minutes.

"It's good that you're trying to be a part of both of your parents' lives. A lot of kids underestimate that." He seemed at a loss for words, so I decided to try and change the topic.

"So, what can we do around here?" He scrunched his brow in thought.

"Well, there's a few things we can do. If you keep taking this road until you get to the highway, we'll get to Port Angeles a lot faster, and I can direct you to places from there." I nodded.

"Sounds good to me. What kind of 'things' can we do, exactly?"

"Port Angeles has a mall, mini-golf, bowling, and a few resteraunts scattered around. Dinner's out, because I'm guessing you already had something?" I nodded quickly. "So, that leaves the mall, mini-golf, or bowling. What do you feel like?"

"Well, bowling could be catastrophic, seeing as I would probably drop the ball on my foot." Jake looked at me oddly. "I'm not exactly coordinated." A light of understanding swept into his eyes. "And the mall is probably going to close semi-soon seeing as it's almost 8…so that leaves mini-golf?" He smiled.

"This should be interesting…." I looked questioningly at him from the corner of my eye. "Well if you're not coordinated, you'll probably end up hitting yourself on the head with a golf club." I winced. I hadn't considered that. "But since you're so little, you'll probably get a smaller golf club that won't hurt as much." I glared. He was right of course, because I was petite, I probably would end up hitting myself on the head.

"Nevertheless, we will play mini-golf, and I'll have fun beating you!" I announced triumphantly. He smirked.
"We'll see about that." As we took the exits he instructed, and playfully talked about beating each other in mini-golf, we finally drove up to a little miniature golf and ice cream shop. There was literally nobody else around, although it looked like it had a variety of different holes to shoot into. There were the traditional water traps, and windmills and castles, and also a little forest as well. We pulled into the parking lot, and got our golf clubs from the girl behind the desk. As was expected, I got a small pink golf club, while Jake got the adult black golf club. We took our golf balls, mine a navy blue, and his hunter green, and went onto the course. At the first hole, he took three tries to get his ball through the narrow path that led up to a castle, and another two to get it in the actual hole. I took half of his shots, and we marked it on our scorecard. He quickly caught up, as he got a hole-in-one, and was able to get exactly my strokes for each hole, or one below it. As we got to the eighteenth hole, we were tied, more or less.

The eighteenth hole was a water trap. Not a small one, where you have to shoot the ball over a tiny river, a big one where water pumped from a waterfall across the hole, and across to it's drain. There was easily four feet of water inbetween where the ball left the Astroturf to the other side. Because of such a gap, a bridge had been made for golfers to cross over to the other side. Jake easily got his ball across, but it wasn't as easy for me. As I hit it, it immediately 'plunked' into the water, and as I reached into the water to get it, my feet began to slip on the wet Astroturf, and into the river of water. I landed on my butt and was sitting waist high in water. Needless to say, I was soaked.

Jake started laughing hysterically. He pulled me out laughing so hard that he was almost crying. I sent him a dirty look to convey my feelings about it. He finally slowed his laughter to throaty chuckles, and shook his head at me.

"You weren't kidding about the uncoordination, were you?" I glared upward.

"It could have happened to anyone." I said, crossing my arms indignantly.

"Yeah, but it happened to you." He laughed briefly again, and then looked at me, "Are you okay? That looked like it might have hurt." I shrugged, it certainly wasn't the worst I had ever done.

"I'm fine, I'm just soaked." I let out a brief chuckle at myself. Jake began to take off his jacket and wrapped it around my shoulders. "Jake, what are you doing? I don't need this-" He cut me off before I could interrupt.

"Bella, it's nine o'clock at night, and you're soaking wet. If you catch a cold, I'm going to get blamed. Let's finish off our round of golf and then get back to Billy's." I nodded, and burrowed into his jacket. It was thick fleece, and was a deep chocolate brown, which was just a shade darker than his eyes. It smelled like bonfires and vanilla, in an oddly comforting way. We finished the game and got into the truck right before it started to rain.

As we talked in the car, time seemed to literally fly by. He talked about his friends in school, and two of his best friends, Quil and Embry. He told stories about some embarrassing moments that they'd gone through together, and some of them made me laugh so hard, I had to remember to focus on driving. We literally arrived back at the Blacks' in no time, and as we drove into the garage, we sat there for a minute. Jake put his arm around the back of my seat.

"I had a lot of fun tonight," he said, with a slight twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face. I picked at his jacket's sleeves.

"Me too. We definitely have to hang out again soon." His smile grew bigger.

"Definitely." I suddenly noticed I was still wearing his coat. I shrugged out of it and handed it to him.

"Thanks for lending me your coat when I erm…feel into the water trap." I blushed at the memory of my uncoordination. He laughed at the mention of it.

"No problem. Just be more careful next time, okay?" I nodded, and we got out of the car and into the house. Charlie and Billy turned around at the sound of our footsteps, and their eyes widened slightly at my appearance.

"What…?" Charlie began to ask

"Water trap." I said sheepishly. He shook his head as Billy let out a small chuckle.

"Alright…we'd better get going. You probably have to unpack some more Bells?" I nodded. "Okay, see you later Billy. Is it okay if we leave the truck here for now? We'll pick it up next time we come down." Billy nodded.

"Come by anytime, Charlie. We're always glad to have you and Bella."

"Great. We'll go fishing next Saturday. Prepare to be beaten!" Charlie made a show of fake casting a fishing rod as we walked towards the door. "See you later Jake!" I waved shyly at Billy and Jake.

"See ya!" Billy and Jake chorused as we walked out the door. When Charlie and I finally arrived home, I quickly showered, changed, and immediately fell asleep on my bed. Right before I went into my world of dreams, I ran through the memories of the day and saw Jake's smile one last time. Maybe Forks wasn't as bad as my mom had said it was.