A/N: I don't own Twilight. So, anyway, here is chapter 65 of Static. It's shorter, but it was kind of cathartic to write it. It kind of means a lot to me.

Enjoy.

LXV.

i'm the one who had to learn to build a heart made of armor

A few days later, Charlie and Sue called up Bella, Leah, and Seth, inviting them to dinner. They all met up at Charlie's house and soon after sitting down at the table, pizza boxes ready, Leah took a look at Sue's left hand. On her ring finger sat a pretty little diamond.

"Are you kidding me?" Leah blurted out.

"Dang, Lee," Seth said. "You could at least act like you're happy for them."

Leah sneered at Seth and then glanced at Bella. She didn't even look surprised; she actually looked excited. Leah was warned, after all.

"No, no, I'm totally happy for you guys," Leah said to Charlie and Sue. "When did this happen?"

"Last night," Sue replied, a huge grin on her face.

"We just thought we'd have the family over to celebrate," Charlie added.

The family. Leah almost threw up a little in her mouth. She tried to take the feeling back, though. She tried to be better.

"Congratulations, you guys," Seth said.

"Yeah, congratulations," Bella echoed.

"So when's the wedding?" Leah inquired. "Is it soon?"

"We haven't really worked those details out yet," Sue replied, "but we're just thinking of going to Vegas."

"That sounds fun," Seth said. "I wanna go."

"Yeah, right," Leah said to him.

Even though she was kind of surprised, Leah wasn't against any of this. The death of her father still felt fresh to her—it might always feel that way, she had decided—but things were looking up for Sue. It had been over three years now since Harry had passed away. Sue had been through a lot in recent times, but things were looking up. Who was Leah to judge for moving on?

She looked to her left—Seth would always be her brother. He'd just always be there for her. He was her best friend. Then she looked to her right—calling Bella her stepsister would be a stretch. She didn't hate her, exactly, but that didn't mean she particularly liked her. And it wasn't like they were little kids; they wouldn't have to live with each other or anything.

But Leah and Bella would have to coexist, and they'd have to do it peacefully despite their current alliances. Separately, they were okay people; it was when they were together that things could get touchy.

That was why Bella and Paul made so much sense together.

Leah tried not to think about them together, or how inadequate she must have been for him to choose someone like her. It worked for a little while.

After dinner, she went home to her condo and broke the news to Kim, who was both excited and slightly skeptical. Neither of them had anything to do, so they fell into their old routine and decided to watch Selena. Before they could start, they had to have an appropriate amount of snacks, and that was when Leah made her way to the pantry.

"Lee?" Kim called from the living room.

"Yeah?"

"Is there anything else you wanna watch tonight? We always watch Selena."

"You know that's my comfort movie," Leah said as she scanned the pantry. All she found were one-and-a-half granola bars and an empty Pop Tarts box that had to have been there since 1995.

"Well, do you have any other comfort movies?" Kim asked.

Leah left the pantry and looked to the refrigerator, as well as the pictures of her three favorite singers taped to it. "I'll have another comfort movie when they finally make something about Amy Winehouse," she said.

"We don't need an Amy Winehouse movie," Kim said. "I mean, we have Adele."

Leah peered into the refrigerator. All she saw were eggs and a half-empty bottle of spicy mustard. "Adele is a fuckin' fraud."

"Okay, so I guess we're watching Selena tonight."

Leah closed the refrigerator and went to the entryway, looking for her sandals. "I'll tell you what," she began. "I'll blow a bunch of money on snacks from the grocery store while you look for something else to watch."

"Is there anything you're specifically looking for?"

Leah looked at Kim and smiled. "I love a good femme fatale."

"As if I didn't know that."

Tonight, Leah sought more variety in her snack endeavors, but she quickly found herself idly strolling through the junk food aisle of the Thriftway. She had one earbud in, listening to one of the forty songs she had on her little MP3 player, as she examined every item in nearly every shelf. She made a mental list of things she should get later when she'd have more money.

She was having a good time. She was having a perfectly good, absentminded yet blissful time in the Thriftway, minding her own business and doing her own thing until she bumped carts with somebody.

Taking out her one earbud and looking up, she realized that she couldn't get too far away from Paul even if she tried.

He was wearing a leather jacket and looking older since the last time she'd seen him. He looked exhausted. Overwhelmed. Too unlike the time he'd been with Bella at the restaurant. He'd seemed carefree back then.

"Hey," Leah said, her voice quiet and serene and cold as snow. "Watch where you're going."

He didn't have the energy to play around. "Hey, Leah," he said. "How've you been?"

"I'm fine," she replied curtly. "You?"

"I'm alright."

"So what do you want?" she asked, not caring about how rude she sounded. (She was allowed to be honest with him.) "Because you didn't have to knock your cart into mine to get my attention."

"I just…" He looked genuinely lost. "I just wanted to talk."

"I'm not in a rush," she said. "I guess we can talk, then."

He was a living contradiction as he fell silent. He made her fill the void like she always did.

"How's Bella?" Leah asked.

"We both know damn well that you Bella doesn't mean shit to you," he said.

"She kind of has to mean shit to me now," she replied. "She's gonna be my stepsister pretty soon."

Paul's eyes widened.

Leah cocked her head to the side in response. "What, you didn't know?" she asked before he could say anything. "Was she too embarrassed to tell you?"

He didn't respond to any of her questions. Instead, he just closed his eyes, took a breath, and became present again. "Bella is fine," he told her. "She's beautiful and amazing and… just fine."

Paul wasn't the most articulate man, but he could always say gorgeous things about the woman he was infatuated with at the moment; it was his specialty.

Leah held her tongue. What was she supposed to say? That he was wrong, and that Bella wasn't right for him? She could never tell him he was wrong; he'd never believe it because he was the most righteous man on the planet.

Yet somehow, she got the impression that he was lying. She could see right through him because nobody loved him like she loved him. Nobody had the capacity to know him like she knew him.

She felt like a fucking fool because of all this.

She just gave him a look, and despite the fact that this "conversation" had been started by him, he left the direction if it to her."Lee, what are you trying to get at?" he asked her.

"Lee, what are you trying to get at?" he asked her.

"I just want closure," she admitted. "I saw you and Bella together the other night at the burger place, and you looked so… carefree. I want you to be happy, I really do, but I can't help but wonder what is it about Bella that made you finally want to stay. You hold her hand in public. You haven't even abandoned her yet because you know she can't stand being single. What does she give you that I never gave you?" Besides a quick fuck, an upper hand, and mindless devotion.

"You and me aren't the same people right now than when we were fifteen, sixteen," he stated, avoiding her question completely. "We've changed."

So full of shit, Leah thought. Paul, who avoided personal growth like the plague, is admitting that he's changed?

"No, I know that already," she replied. "We have changed, and I'm not even afraid to admit it. I'm better now; you're just something else. And don't think that this is some desperate plea, 'cause I don't want you back. Just know this—me and Bella are two different people. You may have fucked me over plenty of times, but I'm still here. You're gonna have a lot more blood on your hands if you ruin a girl like her, and in the end, it won't even be your blood."

They were silent for a moment. She hated it. She also hated him, but she wanted him to fight back. She didn't like him letting her win.

"You know why I didn't ask about you and that fool Jacob?" Paul asked Leah.

Leah pursed her lips. "Because you don't care whether or not I'm happy with him," she assumed.

"Not even that," he told her. "It's because I know you're happy with him."

"So what makes him a fool?" Leah challenged.

"His dumb ass should've started fighting for you years ago."

Leah scoffed. "Better late than never, right?" she asked, putting more junk food into her shopping cart. "Maybe your dumb ass should've stopped playing me years ago. Ever consider that?"

She put her earbud back in and began to push her cart and walk past him, but he grabbed her by the arm, holding her back.

"Leah," he said.

She looked up at him. "What?" she demanded, clearly annoyed.

"I'm just glad Jake didn't make you all soft."

"Nobody makes me all soft anymore," she assured him. "You know how that shit goes."

He looked clearly ashamed. She wanted to laugh in his face, but she knew she was better than that.

Instead, she just shrugged out of his grip. "Go home to your girl," she told him. "It's getting late."

She began to push her cart again, and he finally let her go.

Paul didn't want to admit it—because he loved Bella, he really did—but he was finally facing the repercussions for mistreating the most important person in his life. Leah was just the kind of girl that a guy would meet when he was young, too young to know how to treat her right, and too senseless, too selfish to know how to keep her. Leah was the kind of girl who could haunt a man forever, having him thinking about the endless possibilities until the end of his days.

Without batting a lash, he watched her leave, and he knew he wouldn't get her back ever again.

Paul wasn't as badass or mysterious as he had hyped himself up to be for years now, and Leah could definitely read deeply into people, but she hadn't been right about everything.

Paul was still into Bella, of course, but since he had taken her to that party and she had confessed her feelings to him, he had been avoiding her. Not in a full-time way, where he would actually leave and maybe come back, but he would be emotionally present for only part of the time. He would listen to part of what she had to say. And of course, he would return part of her calls.

Paul and Bella were physically compatible, but they had different values. They had two different things going on in the head. He hadn't meant to sort of denounce her feelings. He just never thought someone would get so attached to him. Bella had real feelings for him, but he found himself having real feelings for her, too. That was where he was all messed up.

They weren't that compatible, but their connection ran deep. Why couldn't he just accept it without a fight?

When he left the Thriftway that night, he felt awful, which was a feeling that didn't come around too often. In the near-empty parking lot, he looked through his shitty flip phone. He had three missed calls from Bella. He wondered how many more ignored calls would pass before her blood became an issue.

She had left him a voicemail message about three minutes ago. He brought his phone up to his ear and decided to listen to it.

It was silent at first, and he almost ended it, but then Bella's tipsy voice came crooning in like a swan song. He stopped breathing.

"Hey, Paul," she said. "I miss you with my entire heart right now. Where have you been? No, no, fuck that—where did you go? Because I've been looking for you and I… I can't find you anywhere. I think you got too far ahead of me. I can't keep up. And I know what you're thinking—how drunk is this girl? Well, I haven't been very bad without you here with me, but I might just have to turn it up a notch. No matter how fucked up I really am, just know that it's never going to change how I feel about you. You know that? 'Cause even though you fail to call me back, I still miss you. You could come back right now and I'd still miss you. So come through for me, just this once. Come through for baby girl. I love you."

The message ended. Paul looked up at the bright lights of the Thriftway, and he found himself running back in like the fool he was. Miraculously enough, though, he didn't have any regrets. He knew where he wanted to be now.

Paul stopped at the entrance of the Thriftway, approaching the wall of flowers leftover from Valentine's Day. This was the longest February of his entire life.

He called Bella back, and she answered on the seventh ring. "You called back," she said softly, slowly.

"What kinda flowers you like?" he asked quickly.

"Flowers are cheesy."

"But what do you like?"

"...Roses," she admitted.

"That's boring."

"I'm boring."

"No, you're not. Love you." He hung up, purchased the prettiest bouquet on the wall, and rushed back to their little house in La Push. She was waiting in their bed, looking like a goddamn dream. He embraced her, and she felt like home.

Paul was the type to not belong anywhere, but the world was moving again and they were on the same page.

It was all happening, and he was right in place.

A/N: Thanks as always,

HS