A/N: I own no part of Twilight. Okay. So I think I'm about 2 chapters behind on my schedule. I'll catch up somehow. I hate falling behind, but I've been so busy with school and work and... life. I've also been reading a lot, some for pleasure and some for business. So I've been busy, but I really appreciate the feedback you guys have been giving me. Last chapter was one of my favorite ones so far (after chapter 22, of course), and I'm glad you guys have enjoyed it. But today's a new day, and this chapter, chapter 37, is also new. The perspective shifts back to Emily, but I swear she's okay this time. There's also some more of good guy Embry Call. (If you think Emily and Embry never had some sort of background relationship, please refer to chapter 2. Like I said, anything and anybody can come back in this story.)

Enjoy.

XXXVII.

finding time to make my words better

Life after Venice—life on Earth—picked up for Emily rather abruptly. She had things to do. Not many things, but worrying wasn't one of them. She hadn't totally forgotten about it like Leah and Bella had, but she didn't continue to live in fear because of it like Kim did. As always, Emily was right in the middle. Sometimes Venice and its events haunted her, but she just needed to focus on something else and keep moving. It was one of the bravest decisions she'd ever made.

August arrived, and she found herself doing the same old thing, but in different ways. Was there a word for that? She had decided she didn't even really like the cello. She was writing again, not because she was particularly sadder than usual, but because she needed the cash. She discovered online magazines and how much they needed people to write short articles for them, and she had been consumed since. She had long left her old waitress job since she had moved to La Push, so she was trying to work between home and other odd jobs now, but Sam was often gone. She would have been worried if it weren't for the fact that when he came home, it was with a paycheck. He was busy not drinking and she was busy not getting pregnant. He was out of the house and out of trouble. She stayed at home, occasionally day drinking to curb her usual tensions, and wrote. For Sam and Emily, it worked.

She picked up her novel yet again that August, but it must have been a bad idea. The first day she began a new document to start a new outline of the story, her laptop crashed and froze. She immediately knew who to call.

"Piece of trash," she muttered at her computer as she scrolled through the contacts on her cell phone. She didn't have to look very far for the right person, thankfully.

Embry picked up on the first ring. "Yeah?"

"My laptop's fucking up again," she said.

"I'll be over in five."

He was at her front door in three minutes, tops. They sat on the living room couch with her laptop on the coffee table. She leaned forward, acting like she knew what was going on.

"What happened?" he asked.

"I was trying to open a new document," she explained, "and at first it crashed on me, so I tried to close everything with the task manager, and then—wait, what just happened?"

Embry had pressed some keys, and now the laptop screen was a foreboding dark blue. He remained quiet, still pressing keys. Text started to quickly move down the screen, but it didn't help.

"Your hard drive is one hundred percent messed up," he stated, turning his head to her.

"Oh, God," she whispered.

"I hope you didn't have your birth certificate on there."

"I didn't have anything important," she told him. "I usually keep everything on a flash drive."

"Okay, good."

She couldn't keep her eyes off of the piece-of-shit device. "So it's broken."

"Yeah, pretty much. When I came by about a month ago, it seemed to be coming to its end."

"Rest in pieces," she mumbled.

He chuckled. She didn't want to admit that it was a lovely sound on him.

"I know a guy," he began. "I can bum a cheap but good laptop off of him."

"How cheap?"

"I don't think you'll need too much power," he observed. "You just read and write articles, right? Use the Internet?"

She nodded. "And download music, but don't tell the feds."

"Wouldn't dream of it. So you need a computer that works for a college student," he said.

"Don't even remind me," she replied. "I still have to get my shit together for September." Her second year at Peninsula College was about to start, and she'd be taking up online classes this time. She wasn't very confident in how well she'd do.

"Me, too," Embry said. Even though it hadn't been necessary, he'd taken a gap year like everyone else his age before moving on to community college. He felt really behind, but he'd had other things to focus on. For one thing, he, Sam, and Seth (but mostly him and Seth) had been trying to locate his father for the longest time, constantly meeting between work hours and Seth's high school hours, constantly online looking for clues and paths, and they'd come up with nothing. Straight dead-ends. Last week was when he'd decided that maybe he didn't need to know. If the guy hadn't taken the time to meet Embry after nineteen years, he had to be a real asshole. Embry would save himself the time; he only wished he could get the effort and sleepless nights back.

"How much will it cost?" Emily asked. "The laptop?"

"I've got it," Embry told her.

"I can pay you back," she said.

He shook his head. "No, no. My treat."

Wow.

"Thank you," she said. "I really appreciate it."

"No problem. From a friend to another friend. I'll get it to you tomorrow."

She sat back on the couch and propped her feet up on the coffee table. "Since I guess I have no more work to do," she began, "do you wanna get something to eat? I'm starving."

"That sounds like a good idea," Embry replied easily. "I know a place in Port Angeles."

"Which one? There are only so many decent places to eat."

He was always trying to outdo somebody, show them something new. "A pizza place," he said. "You haven't been there."

"Try me."

"Floriano's. It opened about three weeks ago."

She didn't want to ask what they were waiting for. She didn't want to rush into things anymore—she had no reason to. All she told him was, "Let's go, then, if you want to."

Floriano's was everything and more. It'd be Emily's favorite place for forever and a day. She could see it like that easily enough. She'd eat real Italian pizza ("none of that fake-ass Pizza Hut shit," according to Embry) and drink soda and stare at him half the time and at her notebook for the other half. And somewhere in between, she'd stare out the large windows behind him, where the people of downtown Port Angeles carried on with their lives. She was still into people-watching.

Emily liked Floriano's so much because it was a vacuum. Time didn't pass there, and maybe it had to do with her. Maybe it had to do with Embry. He wasn't into rushing her, reminding her that he was on a strict time schedule. He had time, and she hated to compare him with Sam, but Sam never, ever had time, nor would he give it to her (in all meanings of the saying). It was sad, really, but so was Sam. And so was Emily. And so was Embry. They were all just sad, sad, sad people.

Embry made Emily less sad, though. He did.

They got home from Floriano's later that afternoon, and life in the badlands resumed. He told her that he had to go to work, since he had the odd afternoon-to-late-night shift at the diner tonight. The place was still recuperating—it'd be a slow process for the restaurant and its employees alike. Everything was slow around here whether anybody liked it or not.

"I'll get your new-ish computer to you tomorrow morning," Embry said to Emily at her front porch. She was against the front door, and he was balancing on the bottom stair, looking up at her. "Promise."

"Do you work tomorrow?" she asked, careful not to sound too desperate too soon.

"Yeah, from nine to five," he replied.

"Maybe I'll come see you. If you want to, of course."

He nodded, also careful not to sound too desperate too soon. "Trust me. I want to."

She smiled at him. "Thanks again."

He stepped back and off the stair. He waved as he back away. "Catch ya later."

The next morning, when Emily went to check the mail, she nearly stepped on the tightly-packed, relatively heavy cardboard box on her welcome mat. Taped onto the bottom of it was a sheet of paper. In scratchy, boyish handwriting, there was a message.

From a friend to another friend.

The becoming of Emily and Embry was a slow and steady one. Once they got over the glaring similarity in their names (and Emily just decided to be Em around him), they became comfortable. It was all she could really ask for.

In between her subtle day drinking (which he noticed) and his work hours, they didn't date so much as they enjoyed each other's company. It wasn't awkward. It wasn't weird. It was just them.

It was the first stormy day in a while when they found themselves stuck in her car. They had planned on going to see a drive-in movie all the way in Sequim, but it was definitely going to be rained out. It was typical of Washington weather, but it had been so easy to forget. Instead of driving the two hours back home, they took coverage at the movie theater in Sequim. It was bigger than the one in Port Angeles, and Embry was having a ball just existing there.

The movie they decided to see—a somewhat funny one that had gotten decent reception from critics—wouldn't start for another forty-five minutes, so Emily took out the journal she always kept with her in her car. There on the bench in the lobby, she folded her legs and started to write.

"Sorry," she said, even though she wasn't. "I just came up with something good."

"How's your novel going?" he asked.

She looked up at him, remembering that he knew something so close and personal to her. Was he deserving now? She still had to figure it out.

"I don't know if it's going at all," she told him honestly. He was good with truthfulness. "I've started over too many times to count. I've probably got seven novellas under my belt now."

She'd gotten the initial idea years ago, when she had been in the eighth grade, when she had felt her mental health had started to deteriorate. She tried not to think about the end of middle school to the beginning of high school. She didn't have fond memories of her scene kid haircut or her scared silence or the competitiveness that came with playing the cello, which ultimately destroyed her. She didn't like the feeling of being conformed. That was why she had started writing her novel. But six years was a long time. She wondered what she would say to old Emily. Younger Emily Young. Guess what, kid? You've gotten pregnant twice and you haven't killed yourself yet. Gotta love it.

"Prolific," Embry commented.

"I'd say pathetic."

"Hey, don't knock yourself. The longest thing I've ever done was stay in my house for a whole summer, watching movies online."

She raised her eyebrows. "At least you finished the movies."

"Movies are movies are movies. Yeah, they're everything, but they're just movies. You've got something to say, and even if it takes longer to say it, it's still more important."

She wanted to cry. Really, deeply wanted to sob and say, You understand me. Somebody understands me—finally.

The thing was, though, she was bad at speaking. She'd always been awful at verbally communicating with other people because she was afraid of her point not being clear. That reason alone was why she had picked up writing. It was easier to write the wrong thing and be able to erase it than to say the wrong thing and have it resonate in the listener's ear forever, ugly and misunderstood. And if there was one thing she would vow not to be, it would be to be misunderstood.

So she wrote. Not immediately, but after the movie, after hitting up Floriano's, and after getting home and realizing that Embry was here to stay.

Her side of her right hand slid across the small page, getting as dirtied as the page with the rough, black ink. She had been writing a lot, and not in fiction, but more in how she felt directly. She hated the word diary, but she had started one. Her diary was already looking a lot like the loose moments of her novel lying around. She'd have to remember which one was which, since the lines between the real and the fake were getting so blurred now.

When she thought she was finished for today's entry, she read over the smeared handwriting. Her hand hurt and she could hardly read it, but writing had never felt or looked so good.

The thing is, though, I think this is going to be alright. Embry's really something—something special. Real, real special. He's not just the kind of guy I want to read about. That would be too easy. No, no, Embry is something more. Something real, as well as special. He's the kind of guy I want to write about. And I don't know how much more important that is, but it is. Significantly.

A/N: I'll try to update Friday. Up next: Kim, Quil, and dark times.

Thank you,

HS