Chapter 5: Anxiety, Uninterrupted
In my defense, Mel was already in a state before I climbed through the window. On the other hand, I was the reason she was in a state at all. Really, there was plenty of blame to go around for Mel's losing her mind that Sunday morning.
She was usually a calm, solemn parishioner who gripped her rosary and chanted hymns in a high, vibrant vibrato. She carried her own bible, with multi-colored post-it notes littering the pages, and she had no trouble opening up to the exact line the preacher mentioned on the first try.
That day, however, she was frantic about the state of my hair—which, admittedly, was wild, but no more than usual—and dress, which had shrunk in the wash.
I let her run a brush through my hair and didn't cry out when she pulled the twigs and leaves with a rough hand. I was in a state of anxiety. The questions all piled up on each other until they molded together and became static fuzz. I watched my reflection in the mirror while Mel scolded me—my note had not been well-received—and tried to recognize the girl I saw.
I seemed smaller, somehow, my face narrower, the cheekbones more prominent. Despite Jack's comments on my health, I was well-fed, thanks to Mel. I'd put on weight in my arms—or maybe they just felt heavier. My shoulders were slumped in submission.
Jack watched from the couch, already in his Sunday best, smoking a pipe. He looked as though he were observing two animals in their natural habitat.
"We're gonna be late, ladies," he noted, looking up at the clock above the oven.
"Oh, Lord! Forgive me; I did what I could," Mel cried, throwing up her hands in surrender. "Get dressed, child; you're not going in those muddy overalls."
I stripped robotically, stopping short of tying my clothes to the wire around my ankle.
"Do you hear me?" Mel's voice cut through the fog. "Where is your mind, girl?"
I shook my head to clear it. Finally, I rested my forehead on Mel's shoulder, closing my eyes.
"I don't know," I breathed shakily.
"What's gotten into you?" She gasped, wrapping her arms around me.
Jack had run outside to start the car when he saw me undo the first button. Mel zipped up the shrunken white dress—now much too short, showing more leg than was appropriate for Sunday mass—and shooed me down the stairs.
"You missed blue moon gumbo," Jack commented on the drive to church.
"I asked you to save some for me," I replied.
"We shared it all with the neighbors," Mel stated matter-of-factly.
"Next time, then," I murmured, looking out the window.
"It only happens once in a blue moon, dear," Mel sighed. "I suppose I'll survive the heartache... eventually."
"Oh, baby, don't be—" Jack began.
"Don't 'baby' me, Mr. Peter," Mel said.
"But baby, I'm just sayin'—"
"What'd I just say?" She snapped.
"Something about Mr. Peter," I interjected.
"Stay outta this, Leah."
"I thought you were yelling at me."
"You're next, believe me," she threatened.
Jack came to a stop in the church lot. We had to park on the farthest part of the lawn and walk through all the cars. Mel set the pace, so by the time we reached the church, the bells were ringing, and Jack was panting.
There weren't any seats left, so we had to stand in the back with the rest of the stragglers. It was sweltering; they'd opened all the doors and windows and set up two fans to get a crosswind but only succeeded in pumping the hot, sticky air from outside through the stuffy church.
The whole parish felt the heat. Everyone was fanning themselves with their pamphlets. Even Mel removed her hat to dry the sweat pouring down her face. Jack had long abandoned his coat suit, rolling up the sleeves on his white, button-down shirt, his armpits drenched in sweat. I was grateful for the short, thin cotton dress, which was terrible for hiding boob sweat. My hair was like an oil slick, pulled off my neck in a messy French braid.
I couldn't help myself; I scanned the room for Noah.
I found him leaning in the doorway to the seminary garden, his tie undone and his shirt unbuttoned, fanning himself with a pamphlet. To my delight and horror, he was staring straight at me, his dimples on full display in a grin that would shame any Hollywood movie star.
My breath caught in my throat, and my stomach dropped.
My focus was off. I kept glancing over at him—memorizing the slant of his nose, the way his lips blossomed from his mouth, the one dimple that showed even when he wasn't smiling—and he kept meeting my gaze with those warm, chocolate-brown eyes, melting my resolve and making my knees feel wobbly.
While the preacher flicked sweat from his brow and rambled about loving thy neighbor, I recalled the boys' memories of their imprints. They'd always seemed like background characters in their heads, focused solely on their person, their imprint, their other half. I understood now why the girls glowed in those memories.
Noah was glowing, too, like my own personal sun on a day I rather it rained.
Suddenly, when my eyes flicked over to his spot, I found it empty. My head whipped around, trying to decide whether or not I'd hallucinated the whole thing before I heard his voice in my ear.
"Running late today, too, huh?"
My neck snapped towards his voice. He was leaning around one of the pillars of the entryway just behind my shoulder, his large hands spread out so I could see how long and strong his fingers looked.
I turned around. I had to shake myself out of it. There had to be a way out of this—some loophole, a caveat, something to make the burn disappear—and if there were, I would find it.
"What were you doin' in the outer fields this morning, anyway?" He whispered.
I felt his breath on the back of my neck like a caress. I glanced over to Mel and Jack, who were busy pulling on their collars and trying to mitigate the extent of sweat pouring from their faces. I took a hesitant step back and leaned against the other side of the pillar.
I glanced up at him through my eyelashes, trying to appear innocent. "Sleeping," I mumbled in response.
I might've overdone it. His smile froze, hiding whatever reaction he was having, but his eyes became lazy and unfocused.
I turned my head back to face the preacher, pursing my lips.
You're not in love with him; you're not in love with him, I repeated like a mantra.
"Why were you sleeping all the way out there?" He suddenly insisted, his voice louder than before.
A woman in the pews turned her head at the interruption. Luckily, Jack and Mel had started melting against a different pillar farther away and didn't seem interested in anything other than panting off the heat.
"What's it to you, anyway?" I hissed back, feeling his gaze warm up my cheeks.
"I like to know whoever gets in my truck," he breathed. "Plus, it made me late, too. It's hotter standing in the back, I think," he added, fanning himself with a pamphlet again, blowing a few stray curls out of his face.
Briefly, I considered running. Screw the dress; it didn't fit anymore, anyway. I would move faster as a wolf. I'd run away before; I could do it again.
Then I was faced with the reality that no matter how far I ran or how fast I went, I could never outrun this problem; his eyes suddenly flashed up to mine, and he smiled a lopsided grin.
I sighed in frustration.
How could I not love this stranger?
"We got a pond in the back of the property," Noah whispered, leaning close and cupping his hand against my ear like we were five years old, sharing a juicy secret. "It's got a rope tied up to the branch of this big oak tree, and you can jump in on it—I think that's what I'll do after this."
"Why'd you tell me that?" I wondered, my eyebrows furrowing together.
"In case you wanted to come and cool off," he answered, his eyes slithering down to my bare shoulders and then back up.
"In the Garden of Eden," I heard the preacher announce in his 'let's-wrap-this-up' voice. "The devil came to Eve in the form of a snake."
I looked back towards the pulpit, where the preacher raised his hands above his head and closed his eyes.
"Lord," he addressed, "deliver me from the temptation of that serpent!"
There was a great round of applause and hollers of approval. I turned back to Noah, who was still waiting for a response.
The noise in the church had increased exponentially as the choir began singing, and people leaped to their feet, clapping along, celebrating the end of their time spent inside that sauna.
For the first time in church, I prayed.
Dear Lord, please don't make me love him.
The crowd milled into the garden for what I called "Gossip and Vittles."
At this point, I usually stole away into the neighboring field and watched from the branches of a large oak on the opposite side. Instead, I glued myself to Mel's hip and helped cut slices of upside-down cake for the people lining up at the food table.
Mel knew something was off. She kept giving me suspicious looks. After a few minutes, she took the knife away and had me pouring cups of lemonade—which, as anyone who drinks it will tell you, seems like a thirst-quenching idea until the very last gulp, when suddenly your mouth is drier than lizard skin. Maybe I was just bitter about being forced to love him—I refused to think his name—but the lemons weren't helping.
Did it really take an ancient magic curse to make me get over Sam?
It's not a curse, I heard the pack say in my head.
Shut up, I thought back at the voices that were not really there.
"Leah, Leah, stop!" Mel cut through my reverie just as the cup I poured into overflowed onto my hand.
"What's going on with you, girl?" Mel asked, placing a consoling hand on my shoulder and leading me to a shady doorway.
I pressed the back of my hand to my forehead. "I wasn't paying attention," I sighed as I wiped the sweat off my face, flicking little droplets on the ground.
"You haven't been paying attention all day," Mel whispered as if it were a secret. "Where did you go last night?"
"Nowhere."
"Don't 'nowhere,' me, little miss," Mel replied, standing up to her full height, barely reaching my elbow. "Where did you go last night?" She repeated, this time in a deep, grim tone that had me hesitating.
"I was in the woods," I finally said, hoping the half-truth was better than the whole truth, which would undoubtedly land me in a looney bin.
"The woods?" She asked, raising an eyebrow and placing a hand on her hip.
"I went camping," I lied, trying to edge myself back over to the snack table.
"On blue moon gumbo night?" Her voice edged up an octave.
"Not on purpose," I amended. "Well, it sorta came out of nowhere. I had to check in on my brother."
"So, you went to... the woods?" Her voice was still going higher.
"I was writing him a letter." It was plain that her mind wasn't able to connect the dots. She was coming up with her own answer, and I could see it wasn't good. "I think better out there."
She blinked, then smiled.
Oh, humans, I sighed to myself.
"I didn't know you had a brother," Mel noted, steering us back towards the food.
"Just one," I replied quickly, picking up the lemonade jug. "Quiet, now, I gotta focus."
Mel grumbled a little but didn't argue it any further; the lemonade was already running low. We'd have to switch to Kool-Aid soon.
I'd purposefully lost track of Noah in the crowd. Still, my ears caught the slightest hint of his voice across the overgrown lawn.
"I'll grab the drinks, Mama."
I winced, spilling lemonade on an unsuspecting mother and her young child. I looked down at my hands, refusing to look away until—
"Thought I'd be seeing you here," he said, stopping before me.
Silently, I grabbed a cup and poured in as little lemonade as I dared before thrusting it his way.
He laughed throatily, heartily, like he didn't have a care in the world; I looked up just in time to see his ear-splitting grin before his eyes pulled me in.
Mel elbowed me. "Give the boy some more lemonade, Leah," she chided.
"Okay," I squeaked, trying to keep my hand from shaking. my fingers wanted to reach out and run through his curly brown hair.
I straightened out my back and looked back at Noah determinedly. I stared back at him, drinking in his teasing smirk, filled the cup to the rim, and handed it back to him so some of the sticky, bitter liquid fell onto his fingers.
"That's more like it," he laughed, then sucked his fingers clean.
I watched, my mouth watering.
"Noah!" Mel exclaimed, suddenly recognizing him. "It's been an age since I've seen you for a good meal," she greeted.
"You too, Mel Peter."
"Leah, this is Buck Ashwood's boy, Noah," she introduced us.
I held my hand out quickly, meeting his gaze. "Nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you, too," he murmured. The grin on his lips spread slowly into his dimples as he grabbed my hand, then it fell off in surprise as he pulled sharply away.
When our skin met, a current of hot electricity bolted down my spine. I watched how he shook his hand—like he'd slammed it in a car door—and knew he'd felt it, too.
"You're burnin' up," he spluttered. "Do you need to come into the shade or something—"
"I'm fine," I interrupted him.
He was human. So, so human. I heard it in his heartbeat—I could pick it out of a crowd already—in his breath, in his muscles stretched under his skin. Everything about him looked so right to me, driving me crazy. I needed something I could hold onto, anything that could make me hate him—at the very least, not like him—but I came up short.
He was a human beyond average, but I wasn't.
"Are you sure—"
"She runs hot," Mel explained. "Keep it moving, Noah; the line's getting long."
He shook his head as if to clear it. "See ya next week, then," he muttered, turning away.
I watched his back like there was a bullseye on it.
I spent the rest of the day preoccupied, overthinking why I hadn't just told him the truth outright, like Paul had done with Rachel. For one thing, there was no way for me to be in a normal relationship with him. I would always be holding him back; no matter where he went or what he did, I'd always be there as a dangerous tie to the supernatural world for him.
More than that, a part of me wanted to rebel against the imprint. All my life, things had been decided for me. The Cullens decided I would be a werewolf when they returned to Forks. Sam decided when we were no longer in love. The boys decided I was not one of them.
Above all, I didn't want an imprint to be what made me happy. The others had their lives turned around after imprinting, placing all the credit on their other half. A cute boy wouldn't bring my dad back, nor would he make me normal again. I needed to be whole on my own without having to give credit to a man, of all things.
After all, there were certain aspects of the problem I still had to think about. Why would whatever spirits rule the universe allow our pack to imprint if there wasn't a good reason for it? Bitterly, I dismissed the thought because that would mean the same spirits had made Sam break my heart and cut up Emily's face. It also meant that there was a reason for me entering and consequently breaking this poor boy's life, which I wouldn't accept.
But I couldn't leave Noah; I knew that much about the imprint voodoo. I also knew he could feel it, too, at least to an extent. And he was what Kim would've called "a major hottie."
I was stubborn enough to believe I wouldn't love him, but I knew better. The imprint made us anything they needed us to be; if it was a lover he needed, he'd eventually find it in me.
Giving into the imprint magic would be the path of least resistance, but if I didn't have a choice, I'd make it as conditional and fair as I could manage.
I decided to fall in love with him on my own terms, if at all. First, I'd make sure he was worth my time; then, I'd have to make sure he wasn't already in a relationship so I wouldn't be ruining anybody else's life; then, I would have to decide whether it was worth ruining his life.
I knew the answer would be no. His life wasn't decided for him, and it wouldn't need to be if he didn't want it to. But then I'd have to face the pain of an imprint's rejection, and if I did fall for him, it would hurt me more than Sam. And I'd run; though, honestly, I was getting tired of running.
Please, PLEASE don't make me love him, I prayed again.