A/N: I do not own Twilight. My original plan for this chapter was pretty empty, so I expanded on something that was left open-ended the last time we saw them together. My four central characters (Leah, Jacob, Bella, and Paul) have all interacted, but in different ways. Leah x Paul have always been OG. Leah x Jacob are starkly different. Leah x Bella have also been OG in their own way. Bella x Jacob have gone through a lot with each other. Jacob x Paul are wildly different. But Bella x Paul? We've seen them interact only twice. I decided to change that, and I hope you enjoy what I've created. It's one of the lengthier chapters.
Also, did you see the new book cover for the story? I'm really proud of it, not gonna lie.
Enjoy.
LIII.
if i wasn't me, would you still feel me?
like on my worst day?
Life for Bella Swan continued rather plainly after the car accident she had been in with Paul. She went to school at the Peninsula College, except she drove alone since neither Jacob nor Leah wanted anything to do with her. Then she went to work. She received more hours, too, but she wasn't crazy about it. A job was a job. All she did was go to school and go to work and not get into trouble with guys.
And somehow, this wasn't good enough for Charlie.
They were eating a dinner that she had prepared one Monday evening towards the end of January, and he was being testy for no reason whatsoever. Charlie was the type of man to usually remain unbothered, but he was so, so bothered all of a sudden.
"So you want to go into teaching?" he began.
"Yeah, I think so," Bella replied absentmindedly. Work today had been a huge pain in the ass, and she'd even been puked on. Her mind and body were exhausted.
"Would you say this job is a stepping stone to where you want to be in life?"
She shrugged, her eyes down on her food. "I don't like little kids." That wasn't a full lie; she thought little kids were interesting and the condition of their upbringings was absolutely crucial, so it was her job to make sure they had the opportunity to grow into decent adults. But that still didn't mean they weren't gross.
Charlie was silent, and then he set down his fork. "Bells, what are you doing?"
She looked up. "I'm eating dinner…?"
"No, what are you doing? With your life?"
"Dad, I'm honestly just taking things one step at a time. All I do is go to school, then work, and then come home. I'm just chilling."
"You seem to just be hanging around," he accused.
"Excuse me?"
"That's what it looks like, kid."
Bella's tone became sharp. "How?"
"Back when you were out all the time," he began, "I hardly saw you, but at least you were active. I know you're out all the time now, but you seem bored."
"I don't understand what you want me to do," Bella replied. "I don't like partying that much. I literally just go to work and school and keep to myself, so it's super unfair for you to be unhappy with me doing that."
"But you don't even know what you want to do with your life yet."
"I'm not gonna figure it out by screwing around with Jacob or Leah or anyone else out there!" she exclaimed. "I can't believe you're telling me all this when this is probably the best I've ever been doing in my entire life."
"Maybe Jacob and Leah are good people for you," Charlie said, and Bella realized that she had never known how out of the loop he was.
"Jacob and Leah aren't good people, period," she practically shouted. "They hate me, Dad! And I hate them."
"Bells, I'm trying to help you," he said calmly. "I just want you to be okay. I know how you get when you're all alone—you get sad. I love how you're into working and getting an education, but I want you to be happy with what you're doing and who you're around. And besides, Jacob and Leah are good people."
"You've known them since they were kids. They don't like me. I don't like them. We're not some big happy family like you want us to be, Dad. And I get it—you don't want me to try to kill myself again. But they're not the solution. They're really not."
"You guys used to hang out a lot, though, just last month. I thought you were happy."
Bella groaned. "That was when I was still dating Jacob and when we had to go to the hospital, like, every night to see Sue. I didn't want to be around them all the time." The last part was false; Leah and Bella had been on great terms then, and that was before Jacob had gone dull on Bella.
"Why do they hate you all of a sudden?"
"Dad, that's beside the point! You can't start a conversation with me asking what I wanna do with my life and suddenly have it revolve around Jacob and Leah. What, are they your kids now?"
"I asked one question!" he exclaimed. "You can't accuse me of thinking they're my kids because I asked them why they hate you."
"Well, Jacob hates me because we broke up, I guess. Maybe I wasted his time or something, but me and him… we don't work out. And Leah has never liked me." Also, I kind of fucked her ex-boyfriend at a party and she probably knows about it.
"I can't really fix the Leah part," he replied, "but do you want me to talk to Jake?"
"Don't waste your time," she said. "I don't want to be around him anymore."
"Did he hurt you?" he asked, his voice serious.
Bella was about to scream. She just took a deep breath instead. "No," she said curtly. "If anything, I really hurt his feelings, but that's it."
Charlie leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. "I guess it's better that you broke his feelings before I break his nose."
"I could probably do that, too." She trailed off. "But, anyway," she continued, "I don't know whether you want me to be good by keeping to myself, or be bad by wasting time with the rest of them. I don't know if you want me to get my life together, or have fun because you think I'm depressed. Just know that I'm taking care of business at my own pace instead of running off and getting married because I've got a baby on the way. I'm doing really well right now, and all I'm doing is minding my own business—you should try it."
Charlie was surprised at what Bella had just told him, but Bella was even more surprised with herself for packing a bag and leaving without turning back once.
Bella had some money saved up for things like this. She didn't like having to call up her stepfather for eight hundred dollars because she needed to run away. She wasn't running away from anything. She definitely wasn't running because she stole from and semi-cheated on her boyfriend. She didn't feel guilty. She just felt fed up.
She sat on the edge of the dingy motel room bed, flicking her lighter on and off, toying with it in her hands. The lighter was all she had since she had left home and escaped to this motel on the edge of town, besides her phone and a change of clothes and her vibrator. She'd left so fast that she hadn't even brought a book with her, and the box television in the room was mere static. Just like her. She heard a faint laugh track playing, but it quietly echoed. It taunted her.
The spark appeared and disappeared before her. It was dying. Regardless, Bella liked lighters more than anything she could light. She was strangely attracted to fire and heat—she'd been that way since she was a kid. She wasn't afraid of being burned or getting too hot. She absorbed it. A little heat never hurt anybody before.
She quickly ran her finger over the dying flame before she could feel it. She did that back and forth, a couple of times.
Bella always became attached to lighters, but never cigarettes. The little convenience store lighters she was attached to weren't good for blunts, but she would never, ever waste them on cigarettes. She was just like the rest of the people she knew: I smoke weed, but cigarettes are disgusting.
Paul didn't care, though—Bella knew that, for sure. Paul smoked cigarettes like nobody's business. His old car, the one that Bella had wrecked, had reeked of them. He hardly smelled like them too much, though. He had a very neutral smell, but the undertones of tobacco and peppermint still lingered.
Bella had found out—just like Leah had years ago—that Paul smoked to look cool. He smoked after sex. He smoked when he was stressed. He smoked everywhere, and moments prior to them crashing into a truck, she had reprimanded him for smoking with her in the car. It was so disgustingly unfunny now. Who cared if Paul was a fake? Who cared if he would rather destroy his lungs and look cool rather than come off as even a little ordinary? The car crash had been very real, and maybe he was real, too, just for being able to stay so pretentious for so long.
She knew what he thought of her. A while ago, not long before she'd broken up with Jacob but not long after she'd stopped feeling him, Jacob had told Embry who had told Seth who had told Bella that Paul didn't like her for Jacob. And Bella hadn't given a portion of a fuck of what Paul had to say to her, partly because he didn't know her, partly because she didn't know him, and partly because it was none of his business. But it was interesting now how, even though Bella had managed to be a fuck toy for Jacob, she hadn't been the same for Paul at the New Year's Eve party. As if she had changed him. In that case, he was just as stupid as Jacob, and that was all Paul's fault.
Paul seemed to be happy in his egotism, though. Bella could assume that he'd been called out on it before, but he obviously kept going. Maybe she could dabble in it. It wouldn't hurt anybody but her, anyway. She'd already hurt her father just by being her.
Bella hadn't realized how late it was until she left the motel, and the cold air slapped her right in the face. It was always cold around this time of year, but it was so late now that warmth just didn't exist.
The heater in Bella's truck stopped working a long time ago, so she now drove with a quilt over her lap. She didn't know where she was going, but she lived for the red lights, in which she could rub her hands together under the quilt and feel a little less dead.
The night was dead silent. Her radio had turned to static, so she had given up on music altogether. All that reached her ears was the rumble of her truck.
She stopped driving when she ran out of gas, which didn't take very long. She still seemed to be in the middle of nowhere when her gas light came on and she pulled into a gas station that was lit up like a Christmas tree.
It didn't seem to be that sketchy, but at the same time, Bella didn't really care. She walked right in and went to the counter, where a strung-out white boy with long hair sat on a stool, collecting dust.
Bella ran a hand through her hair and slid a crumpled up twenty dollar bill to him, waking him up. "Twenty on pump eight?"
"Yeah, yeah, no problem," the cashier replied.
A brown hand suddenly slid another bill onto the counter. Bella turned, and it was none other than Paul.
"Make it forty," he added.
"Alright," said the cashier. "Anything else?"
Bella turned to Paul. "Newport or Marlboro?" She couldn't remember what he liked for the life of her.
"Marlboro."
Bella slid over a ten dollar bill, and the cashier handed her the pack without even asking for ID. That was how she knew she was in the middle of nowhere.
Bella and Paul went back out to the cold, and she filled up her tank. Leaning against the front door, Paul lit up, the flame temporarily illuminating his face. She'd never noticed his intricate bone structure like that before.
"You're gonna kill us," she said. "You're actually gonna kill us."
"Not yet," he replied, finally exhaling after a long drag.
"Not smoking at a gas station is, like, the biggest rule there is, Paul."
"Fuck a rule."
And suddenly, she didn't know why she even cared about the rules to begin with.
Her eyes wandered away from the smoke, and she realized that there were only two other cars at the station. "Which car's yours?" she asked him.
"Definitely not the busted little red one," he replied.
Bella snorted. "So the busted little blue one?"
He nodded. "Yeah, she's a beaut. Not quite the pimp mobile, but I'll live."
"I said I was sorry!" she said. "You're never gonna live that down, are you?"
His tone was slick—almost too slick. "You almost killing me on our first date?" he replied. "Never."
"What are you doing out here, anyway?" she asked.
"I needed to clear my head, so I just started driving. I don't know. What about you? It's a little dangerous for a pretty white girl like you to be out here by yourself."
Her eyebrows jumped. "Well, I wouldn't worry about it if I were you," she said, "since I'm not worth shit, remember?"
"Hey, hey, hey, where'd you pick up on that?"
"I'm not as stupid as you think I am, you know," she muttered.
"What do you mean?" His voice was hard.
She just looked at the gas pump ticking up, up, up. It was at thirty-two dollars now. Smoke blew past her face.
"C'mon, what gives?" he asked.
"You don't know me well enough to be calling me worthless and saying I ain't shit," she said, still not looking at him. "You don't know the first thing about me."
"Okay, but I ate your pussy."
She shrugged. "But can you say you know my middle name?"
Click. The gas stopped running the moment it hit forty dollars.
"Old Jacob does, right?" he asked, his voice quiet. "I bet he knows you inside and out."
She removed the pump and put the gas cap back on. He blew more smoke in her direction, and she knew it was on purpose this time.
"Yes, he does," she finally replied.
He had a wolfish grin. "Okay, Bella Elizabeth. Or Ann. How about Marie?"
"Marie."
"Bella Marie Swan," he said. "That's pretty."
"For a pretty white girl like me?" she asked, playing along. She didn't usually like guys like him—she wasn't sure if she liked him at all.
"As pretty and white as snow."
"So what do you want?" she asked. "Because I've got places to go and I don't think we're exactly friends."
"I wanna be friends," he said. "I mean, since I just figured out your middle name and all. I know the first thing about you now."
"Paul," she said. "It's cold as fuck out here."
"Then come on, baby girl," he replied. "I'll keep you warm."
They ended up sitting down on a cold merry-go-round in a playground, hip to hip. Bella stared down at her swinging legs. Paul lit another cigarette.
"I'm sorry for talking all that shit about you to Jacob," he said.
"It's okay," she said, even though it wasn't. "It was probably true."
"He's a real sorry motherfucker. He spends too much time trying to be somebody else."
"I didn't think I was saving his life by being with him," she replied. "I just wanted to have fun."
"Fair enough."
"Have you ever been with a white girl before?"
He shrugged. "Sure."
"What do you mean?"
"You're not a special breed or anything. There's a lot of you out there."
She chuckled. "Damn, I thought I was special. I'm a Virgo, you know."
He smiled, and his teeth were bright even in the pitch blackness. "I know for damn sure that you're not a virgin."
"I know that, too. I said I'm a Virgo. Like, the zodiac sign."
"You believe in that shit?"
"It's all real, you know."
He chuckled. "Yeah. Okay."
"Well, have you been with someone like me before?" she wondered.
"White girl with ass for days? Nah. Only you."
"That's actually kind of rude."
"My bad."
"You're not even sorry."
"I know."
They laughed.
"You're a real asshole," she told him.
"So I've heard."
"No, but seriously, you are. The first things guys—and girls, too—ever mention about me is my ass. Like, 'Oh, you mean Bella with the big ass?' Not 'Bella with the brown eyes' or 'Bella who reads books.' Always 'Bella with the big ass.'"
"Do you get offended when people think of you like that?" he asked.
"I used to," she admitted, "but I don't really care. It's been like that since I was, like, fifteen. I'm all hips, anyway."
He laughed.
"Really, though," she said. "I just wish I wasn't known for that. I kind of wish I was Native."
"Why?"
"Because then I wouldn't be boring."
"Damn, Jacob would have loved to hear that," he scoffed. "His brown ass would finally feel so special."
"Jacob doesn't see race."
"Jacob's a fucking pussy, that's why. But enough about him. Why do you want to be Native so bad?"
"I don't know. You guys just have a lot of history. And I get that it's constantly being erased and destroyed by white people, but still. You guys have been through a lot. It's admirable to see how resilient you are."
"You just sound like you wanna be oppressed so bad."
"Why do you always argue with people?" she demanded.
"I'm not arguing. I'm not Leah."
"Leave her out of this."
"Okay."
Their silence was filled with the subtle squeaking of the merry-go-round as her legs continued to swing.
"You've got a lot of big words to say," he said. "And big ideas. Now tell me, what are you doing out here, this late, all alone?"
"I had to run away. My dad was being a dick."
"I've run away before," he said. "What'd your pops do?"
"Nothing crazy. Just got on my nerves. Yours?"
"Mine was fucking nuts. He beat my ass."
"I heard about that."
"Then I beat his ass."
"I heard about that, too."
"Really, now?"
"Paul, you're a legend."
"You're shitting me."
She giggled. "Yeah."
"Shit, Bella, you play too much."
"Yeah, I do. It's kind of becoming a problem now."
"What do you mean by that?" He rubbed out his cigarette onto the merry-go-round.
"I mean..." She sighed. "Everybody hates me right now."
"I'm sorry," he said.
"It's not even your fault."
"I know. I'm still sorry, though. I get how you're feeling, though."
"I've just never felt this hated before."
"You fucked up. Shit happens." Then he paused. "You know how I stop thinking about it?" he asked.
"How?"
He handed her a Marlboro. "Have a smoke."
"I don't like smoking."
"Just try one."
She put it between her lips and took her lighter out of her pocket. She tried to ignite it, but it was just useless, pathetic sparks. It was dead. "I'm out."
"Hey, hey—don't worry about it." Then he lit it for her with his own lighter. It was fake-deep and fake-romantic.
She removed it from her mouth and started coughing immediately.
"There," he said. "At least you're thinking about how your lungs are dying instead of everyone hating you."
"Shut up," she replied. "That didn't help at all."
"Well, shit—at least I tried."
They were silent for a little while longer, and he got started on her cigarette.
"Hey, Paul," she said in a near whisper.
"Yeah?"
"Don't be like everyone else."
"After our first date? Nah."
"I'm still sorry for all that," she replied. "I think I have a problem. I almost killed two people within six months of each other."
"Shit happens," he said again. "But I don't hate you."
"Because you ate my pussy, right?"
"Partly. But partly because you're an alright person, too."
"Do you think we can just be friends after that?" she wondered.
"Yeah." Then he pondered on that. "Yeah," he repeated. "We don't have to link up just because I ate your pussy or just because we almost died together."
"That works," she agreed.
"Yeah, that works. You're good to talk to, you know that?"
"You, too, Paul."
"But can you do something for me, Bella?" Her name rolled off his tongue like water.
"Yeah?"
"Stay alright."
Bella returned to her motel alone that morning, and it didn't feel wrong.
A/N: Thanks as always. The next chapter has a little throwback to something else I've written, but it's gonna be better, I promise.
Thoughts?
HS