Chapter Text
Crossing and Uncrossing Lines
There were a lot of reasons that Jacob Black was not my boyfriend.
First of all: I was nineteen and he was still sixteen (for the next few weeks, at least). That's illegal pretty much everywhere.
Second: Our relationship had started when I was in a really bad place, which sort of set the tone. We couldn't be more than friends then -- that would have ended in disaster -- so by the time I could maybe have handled something more the boundaries were already in place.
Third (and most important): I needed him too much to gamble on something that might not work. If we tried dating and it ended in disaster... I couldn't imagine life without Jacob as my best friend. I couldn't even think of it without tears pricking at my eyes. Maybe I wasn't such as mess anymore, but I still didn't want to rock the boat. I had no intention of risking the little bit of stability I'd finally managed to find.
The problem was, of course, that Jacob didn't feel the same way. Things had eased off after the Victoria situation had been handled (he'd mostly returned to his old laidback self once my life was no longer in danger), but he still wanted more than I did. He never said anything out loud. Most of the time he was the perfect best friend who got me to laugh when I was in a funk and took myself too seriously, or who made me feel useful and worthwhile when he'd need me for comfort after a terrible night of patrolling. But every now and then, just when I'd start to think that we were finally safe from complications, Jacob would... test the boundaries.
We'd be on the couch and he'd rest a hand on my thigh; we'd be at the beach and he'd tuck my hair behind my ears. These were things he did all the time, but it would be different in those moments. His touch would linger and he'd watch my reaction very, very closely, holding his breath. I made sure never to give him one, to pretend like I didn't know what he was doing (even though I knew he knew I knew), and the moment would end as quickly as it began. Until the next time he checked to see if anything had changed.
If I'd been a better person -- more assertive, less selfish, lots of other things maybe -- I'd have scaled back my friendship with Jacob long ago. I'd have put firmer limits on what we were allowed to be to each other as soon as I'd known about his unreciprocated attraction to me. I would have stopped the daily phone calls and the late night talks and the near constant physical contact. But I wasn't a better person, and I didn't do those things. I tried to justify it by telling myself that I'd always been clear with Jake about how I felt, and if he wanted to stay it wasn't my place to make those choices for him; that was crap, of course. I knew I wasn't doing enough to stop my best friend from pining for me, but I didn't want things to be any different, so I just feigned ignorance during those "testing the boundaries" moments and hoped that sooner or later someone else would catch his eye.
It was terrible. I was terrible. But the few times I'd even come close to apologizing Jacob had just laughed, said it was his problem, and found a way to get me to relax and focus on something else. Then things would go back to normal.
Until they didn't.
***
Most of the families on the reservation didn't celebrate Thanksgiving on principle. That being said my father and Billy were religious about the football games that fell on the fourth Thursday of November, and if there happened to be a lot of food at the same time they certainly didn't object. I made a ham dinner and four pies (pumpkin, apple, cherry, pecan) and figured that was good enough. I took a shower to get the sticky kitchen grime off of my body, and as I was putting on my underwear I heard a knock on my bedroom door. "Yeah?"
"Bells?" Charlie's voice. "I've got your mom on the phone. She wants to talk to you."
"Oh." I wrapped the towel back around my body and cracked the door open; my father passed me the cordless phone, keeping his eyes averted. We'd been living in the same house (with one bathroom) for eighteen months and he still blushed red whenever I was in a towel. "Thanks. Hey, Mom."
"Happy Thanksgiving, baby!" Renee sounded bubbly this morning -- well, afternoon in Jacksonville.
"Happy Thanksgiving," I replied, holding the phone in place with my shoulder as I looked for clothes. "How are you?"
"I'm wonderful. Phil's great, too. He might get traded to the Red Sox, can you believe it?"
"Really?" I was impressed in spite of myself. The Red Sox were one of the few teams I'd actually heard of. "He'd be playing for them?"
"No, but he'd be in their system, so he might get called up next September if Dustin Pedroia gets injured. Isn't that exciting?"
"Oh. Uh, yeah."
"Never mind about all that though, Bella. I miss you. I wish you were here."
"Yeah," I lied. "Me too." The truth was that the last few visits between my mother and I hadn't gone particularly well. Renee was of the belief that my hesitancy and somberness (still solidly in place even a year after his departure) could be fixed with shopping therapy and pedicures and episodes of The View. She still wanted me to be both her mother and 'one of the girls', but I wasn't up to that anymore. So I'd declined Renee's invitation to come back for Thanksgiving or Christmas; there never seemed to be any talk of her coming to see me.
"Did you get the package I sent you?"
I glanced at the box still sitting on my dresser. It had 'Macy's' printed on the side. "Yeah. Thanks, it's all really nice."
"...you don't like it."
"No, I do, really. It's just... well, I'm not used to wearing that kind of stuff, you know that."
"I know, baby, but you're all grown up. You're a woman now." If she started singing 'Sunrise, Sunset' I was going to hang up the phone. "If you look like one, you'll feel more like one, just wait and see. Did the dress fit?"
I pulled out the knee-length, long-sleeved sweater dress. It would probably fit around the waist, but it also had a scoop neck that dove down to reveal... nothing. "It's great, Mom, but I don't really have the right shape."
"That's the great thing about sweaters, they make it seem like you've got a big chest. I bet you look gorgeous in it. I saw the color and knew it was perfect for you."
"You saw 'brown' and knew it was perfect?"
"It's not brown, Bella, it's milk chocolate. And it matches your coloring. You should wear it today."
I rolled my eyes. "Mom, there's nothing to wear a dress for today. Dad and Billy and Jake and I are just going to sit in the living room and watch--"
"Oh, Jake's going to be there, is he?" My mother's voice turned sly, and I mentally kicked myself for mentioning Jacob's name. She hadn't failed to notice that he and I talked on the phone every day during my last visit and had immediately assumed the worst -- or the best, in her opinion. "Then you should definitely wear the dress."
"I've told you, it's not like that."
"Well, it could be, baby, if you just tried a little--"
"Mom. Stop." Ever since Renee had seen a picture of Jacob (during a horrifying incident in which she tried to friend him on Facebook) she had been under the mistaken impression that Jake just 'didn't see me like that' -- something that surely a little makeup and some sexy clothes would fix. It had never occurred to her that I might be the one enforcing the platonic boundaries... because surely no one would enforce platonic boundaries with a boy who looked like that. "Not everyone does the cougar thing," I muttered.
"Excuse me?"
"Nothing. Mom, I've got to go. I love you."
"I love you too, baby. You have a great Thanksgiving!"
I let out a sigh of relief as I hung up and tossed the phone on the bed, still holding onto the sweater dress. The fabric felt soft in my hands, I had to admit that much.
I held the dress to my body and glanced in the mirror. The brown -- sorry, milk chocolate -- did look kind of pretty against my ridiculously pale skin. Almost like there was warmth.
Oh, what the hell.
***
I realized my mistake almost as soon as Jacob walked in the front door. He'd started with his usual "Hi Bells" and sunny smile... then his gaze had dropped to my dress. The scoop-neck part of the dress specifically. He'd looked up again quickly, but I was already blushing. I could've just gone upstairs and changed clothes, but then it would have been really obvious that I'd noticed his reaction. Better to just play dumb.
So I sat on the floor of the living room in a Macy's milk-chocolate sweater dress for four hours, eating pie and joking around and watching football and pretending like I didn't notice my best friend sneaking glances down my front.
It was awkward.
During half-time I brought the dirty dishes to the kitchen. I dumped the plates into the sink and said sharply, "Don't even think about it."
When I turned around I saw Jacob behind me next to the table. He was pulling his hand back from the pecan pie, exactly as I'd known he would be. "What?" he said innocently.
"You were going to eat all the crust off," I said, wiping my hands on a dish towel.
"Was not!"
"Were so."
"But you don't like the crust, so what difference does it make?"
"Your dad likes the crust."
"I don't care so much about that."
"My dad likes the crust. And he's got a gun."
"I can take a hit." Jacob reached for the pie again. I dropped the towel and wedged my way between my best friend and the desserts. "Oh, c'mon, Bells, just one taste?"
"Nope." 'One taste' in Jacob's mind constituted four slices.
"Please?"
"Nope."
"Please?"
"Nope."
"Please?"
"Nope." I tried to shove him away from the table, my hands flat against his chest, and it went about as well as could be expected for a one hundred and ten pound girl pushing at a two hundred and fifty pound werewolf -- that is to say, Jacob didn't move an inch. He just grinned down at me from his ridiculous height. I glared back up at him. "You could at least pretend I have an effect," I grumbled.
Something in Jacob's expression flickered. "You always have an effect, Bells," he said, his voice suddenly serious. Then, so fast I almost missed it, he glanced down at my dress again.
Uh-oh.
Jacob was getting that look. The boundary-testing one. I schooled my expression into something friendly but neutral, prepared to ignore or gently rebuff whatever he decided to do, and thus keep things between us in the safe territory of plausible deniability.
The problem is, it's kind of hard to plausibly deny the intent behind a kiss.
It happened so fast that I didn't have time to prepare myself. Jacob had never even tried to kiss me before, not really, but then there it was, his mouth on mine, his nose brushing against my cheek, his hands on the small of my back. His lips burned with the same insane fire as the rest of him, and they felt so different from the cold stone I'd known back then. The heat and the softness... was a totally new sensation.
I told myself it was curiosity that made me fist my fingers into Jacob's shirt and kiss him back.
His touch changed the moment I responded. I felt rather than heard his muffled groan against my mouth, and an instant later his lips were coaxing mine open; the slick heat of his tongue made my body throb and my toes curl with pleasure. His hands flattened on my back and pulled me flush against his frame. I found myself moving my hands to his shoulders so that I could press my chest more firmly against his, so that as much of him would be touching as much of me as possible. His teeth grazed my lower lip and my head was swimming and this felt so good...
Then Jacob's mouth left mine, and I let out the tiniest whimper of protest -- what was he doing, why was he stopping?! -- before he pressed his face to my throat, nibbling and nipping, his breath scotching my skin. I was positive that I was about to spontaneously combust. Acting on some animal instinct I rolled my hips into his, trying to find some relief for the ache rapidly building between my legs, and when I rubbed along something hot and hard I heard Jacob grunt against my neck. He stepped closer, his fingers tightening around my waist--
--and as my lower back knocked into the kitchen table, the pecan pie fell to the floor with a crash.
"Bella? You okay?"
Jacob pulled away with a whispered curse; out of the corner of my eye I saw him smoothing his shirt (which didn't help much) and adjusting himself (which didn't help at all). I just stared blankly at the broken pie plate and bits of crushed pecan covering the kitchen tile.
What just happened?
"Bella?"
"Yeah," I called back hoarsely. "Yeah, Dad, just... dropped a plate. Sorry."
"Need any help?"
"Naw, I'm helping, I've got it." Jacob's voice sounded bright and cheerful and happy and I could feel all the blood draining out of my face and I thought I might faint and then I was dashing out of the kitchen and up the stairs, stumbling over my own feet, slamming my bedroom door behind me as I yanked the sweater dress over my head and started looking desperately for something, anything else to wear. I found a pair of jeans, but I couldn't hold onto them, my hands were shaking too badly--
A knock at the door. "Bells?"
"Just a second!" My voice was at least an octave higher than normal. "I'm not dressed!"
"Uh, okay..."
A moment later I had on the jeans and an old t-shirt. I forced myself to take a few calming breaths, then opened the door. "Okay, so, time for pie?" I asked brightly.
Jacob's sunny grin faded as he took in my face, my clothes. He took a step forward and I immediately took a step backward; he hesitated, then walked me back into my room and closed the door behind himself. "All right," he said in a controlled voice, his face a mask. "Why not?"
I gulped. "What do you mean?"
"Bella, I've never pressured you." Jacob crossed his arms over his chest; someone who knew him less might mistake it for an intimidating gesture, but I knew better. I knew defensiveness when I saw it. "Not once. I've always known how you felt, just like you've always known how I felt, and I've never asked for an explanation from you, not this whole time. Right?"
I nodded, the air caught in my lungs. What had I done, what had I done, everything was ruined now--
"Well, I'm asking for one now. I want to know why not."
"But--"
"And don't tell me it's about him. It hasn't been about him for a long time, so don't tell me that. So just... be honest with me."
I drew a shaky breath. I didn't want to have this conversation. I wanted things to stay the same. But he was finally asking straight-out and I couldn't say no. "Jacob, I... I can't, all right? You're too important to me. You're more important to me than anyone." Why did he have to kiss me? Why did I have to kiss him back? Everything had been okay! "You're my best friend in the world, Jake, and I love you, you know that, I've told you that. And if we tried to... and it didn't work..." I swallowed past a lump in my throat. "I can't lose you. I can't risk losing you by... by trying to make this into something more than it is."
They were awful, selfish, cowardly words, but they were the truth all the same.
Jacob's face had grown steadily colder as I'd spoken. "So," he said finally, his voice like winter, "you're saying you love me too much to love me."
I couldn't speak, so I just nodded again.
"Well, that sounds like bullshit. What's the real reason?"
"What?" I said, stunned.
"C'mon, Bells, you can do better than that." Jacob smiled at me, his voice exuding the kind of bitterness I'd only heard from him a handful of times and none of them recently. My heart thudded painfully as I realized just how much I was hurting him. "Why am I only good enough to be your friend and not more? Is it 'cause I'm younger? 'Cause I'm not as smart as you? 'Cause I'm from the rez? Would you be ashamed or something?"
"Stop it. You know I don't--"
"If you don't, then what is it?" He inhaled slowly, and his black eyes raked down my body. "I know it's not because you don't want me."
Shit. He could smell how turned on I was -- no, had been. Those damn wolf senses! "You..." Heat radiated from my face; I probably looked like a tomato. This was humiliating. "Don't you do that. That's none of your business."
"It's not?" he said, cocky. "Sorry, I seem to remember causing it."
"Shut up!" I shouted. I was literally shivering with anger and embarrassment... so I said the most hurtful thing I could. "You weren't the one I was thinking about!"
A horrible silence followed my words. My eyes filled with tears, and I had to look away from the expression on Jacob's face before I broke down.
"Okay," he said finally. His voice was rough. "I'm-- I gotta go."
"Uh-huh."
A moment later, I heard Jacob calling into the living room that he was going to go hang out in town -- which meant he would be running back to La Push on all fours. It would have been nice to have that sort of release. I had to make do with sobbing into my pillow until I finally fell into an exhausted, restless sleep.
***
You have three unheard messages.
First message, sent November 26. 3:19 AM.
"Hey, Bells. I guess you're asleep. Uh... so, yeah. I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry. I should never have said any of that stuff and I didn't mean it. Well, I didn't mean most of it. And I know you were telling me the truth, I do, I just wasn't... I guess I thought... Anyway. Just wanted to say sorry. Bye."
End of message. Next message, sent November 30. 4:32 PM.
"Um... hi. You're still mad at me, huh. I hope you're... I don't know. I know I fucked up-- uh, screwed up. Sorry. About swearing, I mean. Sorry about the other stuff too though. Give me a call when you get this, or, you know, when you want to. If you want to. Bye."
End of message. Next message, sent December 5. 10:51 PM.
"Hi, Bella. I've got a Christmas present for you. I know it's early, but... yeah. I think you'll like it. If you want to stop over, I'll be here after school. Pretty much every day. I just... I miss you, honey. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please call me. Or come by. Even if it's just to tell me to leave you alone. Bye."
End of messages.
***
I hadn't ignored Jacob's phone calls to punish him. My anger hadn't lasted very long after he'd left; he'd tried to hurt me because he was hurting and no matter how much it had stung it wasn't like I didn't understand. After all, I'd turned around and done the exact same thing to him, hadn't I? And it wasn't as though we'd never fought before... though this fight was definitely on a whole new level.
No, the problem was... everything was messed up now.
I'd risen the morning after Thanksgiving determined to finally stop being so selfish and let Jacob go. I would do what I should have done months and months earlier: distance myself, scale things back, and give him the space to move on. Just rip off the band-aid. Then, after a suitable period of time -- maybe once we both had significant others or something -- we could try being friends again, only with new, impenetrable boundaries put in place. It was the right thing to do. For both of us.
I cried for a week.
Charlie came home from Billy's one evening with a worried report that Jacob looked like hell. He knew we'd fought of course, but he had no idea what about. "C'mon, Bells, call the kid. You guys always make up in the end." I'd had to turn off my cell and stuff it between my mattress and the box spring to keep myself from hitting Contact: Jake and instead curled on the mattress repeating to myself It's for the best it's for the best it's for the best it's for the best...
That night I had a nightmare about Jacob wrapping his arms around his midsection and I woke up screaming. Charlie came running into my room in a panic -- and his panic got worse when he realized it was a nightmare. I assured him (with gulping sobs) that it wasn't about him, it was just about, uh, giant flesh-eating space creatures, don't worry. After jokingly offering to check in my closet for monsters, Charlie went back to bed. I dug out my cell and had nearly pressed 'Send' before I remembered that Billy probably wouldn't appreciate being woken up at two in the morning by a ringing phone.
Face down in bed, I realized that was I was doing to Jake was too much like what Edw-- like what he had done to me. I couldn't just cut him out for his own good. It wasn't fair. But it also wasn't fair to continue on with our friendship being the way it was, wonderful except for all the effort it took to ignore the elephant in the room.
I finally realized that there was no way around it. I was going to have to date Jacob Black.
I tried not to hyperventilate into the pillows as I considered the predicament rationally. The whole point of not being with Jacob was to make sure nothing hurt our friendship. That wasn't working so well anymore. The situation was now such that not dating was more likely to ruin our relationship than dating. So the friendship would have to be turned into something new to keep it from being destroyed. If we continued to be friends we wouldn't be friends anymore; if we were more than friends the friendship might still be saved.
My head hurt.
***
I psyched myself up on the drive to La Push the next afternoon.
This would be okay. Yeah, I'd never really thought of Jacob that way, but that was because I'd decided not to think of Jacob that way. It wasn't as though I didn't already love him. He was the best person I knew: sweet, funny, unfailingly kind, and the least selfish person I'd ever met (which made his feelings for me even more of a mystery).
And he was attractive. I mean, I wasn't dead. I saw the same eyes and muscles and smile that the other girls saw when they watched him walk by in the parking lot or the supermarket. Jacob was beautiful, no 'sort of' about it. Not the kind of beautiful he had been, where people stopped in their tracks; women just covertly followed Jacob out of the corners of their eyes. Looking at Jake felt less like you were being struck by lightning and more like you were made of melting chocolate.
The chemistry was there, too; maybe it was just that I'd never been kissed by someone with a pulse before, but I was pretty sure that my toes wouldn't have curled like that if Mike Newton had stuck his tongue down my throat. There had been other times, too, times when I'd let my guard down for a moment and it felt like Jacob's hand on my arm would light me on fire. Clearly our compatibility extended to that aspect of our relationship as well.
So... I was going to go accept an invitation to be the girlfriend of a gorgeous, funny, sweet, sexy guy who knew all the worst parts of me and still somehow thought I was worth having.
Okay. When I put it that way it didn't seem so bad.
It even sounded a little... exciting.
Jacob stepped out of the garage the minute I pulled into the Blacks' front yard; he must have heard the truck coming a mile away. As was usually the case when he was working on an engine, he wasn't wearing a shirt. For the first time I allowed myself look at his body that way. Wow.
His expression was wary as I stepped out of the cab, but it faded into open, unabashed relief as I smiled at him hesitantly. An instant later I was swept up in a bear hug, my feet six inches off the ground. "Hey, Bells," he murmured into my hair.
"Hey, Jake." Oh, yeah, I'd missed him. Two weeks was entirely too long to go without one of Jacob's hugs.
I relaxed for a moment, letting my face rest against the crook of his neck, and tried to think of this less as a hug and more as an embrace. It took a moment to let down my carefully cultivated guard, but once I did... I let myself feel how strong his arms were around my waist, how hard his chest was against my breasts, how warm his skin was against my cheek. I inhaled the scent of him. Jacob smelled like sweat and engine grease and strangely enough that was wonderful.
Okay. Yeah. I could do this. And not just because the alternative was losing him entirely. I could do this because he really smelled good.
It was a weird thought, but still...
Too soon, Jacob set me back down on the frozen earth. "I'm sorry," he said quickly. I winced as I took in his face; he looked like he hadn't had a good night's sleep in weeks. "I'm really, really, really sorry, Bella."
"Jake, I'm sorry too, it wasn't just you, I was--"
"No, it was my fault. I pushed, and then when you told me the truth like I asked I was a jerk about it. And I should never have said anything about, um..." He trailed off with a blush before swallowing. "That was really messed up. I'm sorry."
"Quit apologizing, Jake," I said firmly. "I mean, yeah, you were a jerk, but I was too. And I, uh... kind of want to talk to you about that."
"Can I give you your Christmas present first?"
"Um... sure." It was only December sixth... wasn't that a little early? But, hey, if it made Jake stop feeling so bad, I wasn't going to say no. Besides, it would give me another minute or two to get my thoughts together.
"Okay." Jacob took my cold hand in his warm one -- but instead of tugging me towards the garage like I expected, he gave me a deep, serious look. "We're friends," he said formally.
I furrowed my brow in confusion. "Well, yeah."
"No, I mean, we're friends. That's your Christmas present." Jake was still speaking very somberly, like he'd thought this out in detail. "I'm going to stop pushing, Bella. You're right -- it's not worth the risk. I got it this time. Your friendship is way more important to me than anything else. So -- no more line-blurring. You won't ever, ever have to worry about it again. I give you my word."
My mouth was open, and I couldn't remember how to close it.
Jake grinned then, his seriousness gone in a flash. "Of course, it's not your only present. I was thinking I might get you a copy of that Sunlight book. I bet you'll have fun correcting the grammar. You're weird like that."
"Uh... yeah," I said blankly. Once again, I was wondering what the hell had just happened.
Jacob's smile faded just a hair. "Um, Bells? This is okay, right? I mean, you believe me, don't you? Because I mean it. You were definitely right about all that stuff. It sucked not having my best friend for the last two weeks. So I'm serious about this."
I found myself nodding. "Yeah, yeah. Of course. Of course I believe you."
"Good." He cocked his head to the side. "So... what was it you wanted to say?"
"Oh. Um... nothing important."
Jacob led me into the house to warm up, and I felt really, really stupid for wanting to cry.