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fan fiction, will you still love me in december

Will You Still Love Me in December? - Part Three

Title: Will You Still Love Me in December? - Part 3
Author: Kathy-rindhoops
Rating: T
Category: Angst/Romance/Friendship
Pairing: Jacob/Bella
Summary: Sequel to “I Can Feel Our Hearts Beating As One”. Five years have passed since Jake and Bella reunited in San Francisco and Bella has returned to Washington for the Holidays. Will she rekindle her friendship with Jake despite the new complications in her life?




Part 3

Jacob was standing at the bar when she finally left the bathroom.

It had taken every ounce of courage to come out of the bathroom stall she had been standing in for nearly fifteen minutes. She kept Jacob in her line of sight as she approached him; she had no plan, no memorized script this time.

“Jake,” she announced with force as she stood behind him. “Can I buy us a drink? I think we need to talk,” she continued. He turned around, finally looking at her. He took his time in answering her.

“Fair enough,” he shrugged. Fair enough. The phrase had always bothered her. Wasn’t it the polite way of saying Sure, I’ll humor you—but just to get you to go away?

She stepped up to the bar, wrangling out her wallet from her handbag. “Two beers,” she ordered. “Beer, right?” she asked Jake, giving him a sidelong glance.

He returned her glance. Now that he was finally making eye contact with her, it was making her uncomfortable, like her legs might give out from under her. “Yeah, sure,” he answered. She pushed his frosty glass toward him, hoisting herself up on a barstool. She patted the stool next to her.

“Sit with me?” She tried to smile. In her peripheral vision, she noticed Embry was now slouched against the wall, his hat pulled over his eyes. “Listen,” she began, before Jacob could even settle in his seat, “it’s obvious you’re angry at me.”

He hunched over his glass of beer, rounding his shoulders out so much that she could hardly see his face. “What makes you think I’m angry,” he said complacently, not even a whisper of a question in his statement.

“You’re just treating me…different. It doesn’t seem like you,” she responded openly, leaning closer to his shoulder that stood as a barricade between them.

“Maybe I’m just like this now.” He pushed his hair out of his eyes, finally looking at her. In the dim light near the bar, she realized he had a thin scar just above his right eyebrow. The tendons in his neck were taut and tense, his jaw still clenched. He looked…menacing.

If she didn’t know him already, she probably would have been terrified of him. She instantly drew back into her own space, retreating.

“That can’t be true,” she insisted.

“Yeah, well, maybe it is,” he snorted. “A lot can happen in five years. You should know, right?”

The words stung. A huge air bubble caught in her throat as she swallowed her beer, burning all the way down. “Yeah, I do know,” she squeaked. “So are you angry with me because I, uh, married—“

She was interrupted before she could finish. “Let’s get this straight. I am not pissed off at you because you got married, or had a kid, or whatever.”

She stared at him in amazement, in disbelief. The bartender had now quit all attempt at looking busy, making no effort to hide the fact that he was eavesdropping. “You think you’re doing a pretty good job at pretending not to care, don’t you?” The words came out of her mouth like a weak accusation.

He lifted his glass high into the air as he gulped down the remainder of his beer. “Nah,” he answered as he slammed his glass down. “I don’t like pretending.” He shrugged, standing up from his seat. “I’ve gotta go now. See you on Christmas, Bella.”

She was stunned as she grasped her beer mug in both hands, still reeling from their brief conversation. Sure, a drink was a lame attempt as an olive branch, but even that hadn’t warmed him up at all. The bartender went back to drying glasses with a towel; the jukebox whirred in the background, the sound of pool balls clinking echoing throughout the room.

She felt like she had just run a marathon, exhausted and weak. She heard a few muffled moans off to her side. Embry. Jake had abandoned him in a drunken heap. Some friend!

“Embry,” she shouted down at the half passed-out man. “Do you need a ride home?” He looked up at her with bloodshot eyes.

“I need a chocolate milkshake,” he whimpered. He suddenly seemed very young and fragile. She felt her maternal instinct nudging in her gut as she helped him up to his feet. He swayed a bit, smacking his lips. “Where’s Jake?”

“He left,” she answered, biting her lip. “Are you gonna puke?”

He cocked his head. “Maybe,” he answered, clutching his stomach.

In the car, she buckled his seatbelt for him. He was oddly silent, like he wasn’t sure exactly what was going on. “Just let me know if I need to pull over so you can throw up, okay?” He nodded, his eyes half-lidded.

They drove in silence for a while before he finally spoke. “Did you and Jake get in a fight?” His words were slurred and barely discernable.

“Kind of,” she answered candidly. “I think he’s pretty pissed off at me.”

Embry’s head rolled around on his neck. “He’s a good guy. He’s the best. He’s just, you know.” He stopped mid-sentence.

“He’s—?” She egged him on. “He’s what?”

“He jus’ got tired of waitin’ for you,” Embry finally continued. She stared out at the road ahead of her, mesmerized by the twin beams of light from the car moving across the road—it almost seemed like the road was moving instead, and the car was stationary—like a movie set. She turned west on the highway, the sound of the turn signal clicking loudly in her ear.

“Tired of waiting for me?” She parroted. Embry nodded loosely, his hat falling forward over his eyebrows.

“People can only wait—,“ he hiccupped, “—for so long.”

“Yeah,” she agreed softly.

She concentrated on driving. For a while, she thought Embry might have fallen asleep. He suddenly bolted upright in his seat, gaining his composure. “Stop me if you’ve heard this one before—a mandarin fell in love with a courtesan.”

She laughed lightly, expecting a joke.

He continued. “So the courtesan says to the mandarin, I will marry you if you spend one hundred nights waiting in my garden for me.”

“And—?” He had paused. “What’s the punch line?”

“So the mandarin, he waited. But on the ninety-ninth night, he picked up his stool, and left.”

She cocked her head in confusion. “What’s the joke? Is that all?”

“No joke,” he said gravely. “Just something I read.”

They finally entered La Push. She had to ask Embry for directions. She cursed silently as she realized taking Embry to his home also meant driving by Jacob’s house. She held her breath as they drove by. Her red truck wasn’t parked in front, indicating Jake hadn’t yet returned.

What am I, a stalker now? She felt like some masochistic voyeur as they drove by slowly, her breath held tightly in her chest.

She tried to walk Embry to his door, but he pushed her away, insisting he was fine. As he was positioned halfway out the passenger door, he turned to her and gave her a shaky thumbs-up.

“Good luck with life, Bella Swan,” he muttered. She still found it odd how much he liked to repeat her name, like it was amusing to him.

She drove home with a heavy heart.

***

It had been Charlie’s idea to go to the mall. He had insisted Max didn’t have enough presents from Santa, eyeing his small pile of wrapped gifts with concern. They’d been to twelve shops at the Port Angeles mall, consumed two soft pretzels from the food court, and had one emergency trip to the bathroom when Charlie had the brilliant plan of having Max visit Santa Claus.

The same muzak rendition of Holly Jolly Christmas belted out over the mall PA system for probably the fifth time since they arrived two hours ago. Charlie and Bella stood behind the red velvet rope at the Santa Claus compound, feigning enormous grins for the extremely terrified-looking Max, who was sitting on Santa’s lap.

“It’s Santa, Max!” Bella yelled from the sidelines like a soccer mom at her first game of the season. He looked at her, confused, as if to say who is this weird guy with the fake beard?

One of Santa’s elves, a bored-looking teen girl with braids and drawn-on freckles, swooped in with a Polaroid camera. “Smile,” she urged Max in a subsonic monotone. In response, Max’s eyes only widened further.

“Guess he doesn’t really get the concept of Santa yet, does he,” Charlie remarked.

“I think he might be scared by men with beards.” Santa’s elf shook out the Polaroid, then handed it to Bella hastily.

“What did you tell Santa you wanted for Christmas?” She asked Max, his tiny hand enveloped in her own. He looked up at her, still confused.

“Books—and a praying mantis,” he answered timidly. Charlie looked at her quizzically.

“He likes insects,” she explained.

“They have spiky legs!” Max squeaked with a sudden burst of enthusiasm. Both Charlie and Bella laughed, which immediately embarrassed him. He hid his face in the folds of Bella’s parka as they exited the mall.

She played absently with the radio dial as they idled in line to exit the mall parking lot, desperate to find a decent station, giving up when she realized every one was playing the same canned rotation of Christmas songs. She shivered, thinking of how cold Jacob had treated her the night prior.

Earlier that morning, at breakfast, Charlie had asked her, innocently enough, “How was Jake?”

“He’s fine,” she’d lied, offering no more details. And that was that. Charlie hadn’t brought it up since. He was good that way. But she couldn’t just tell her brain to shut off; it kept going back to Jake whether she wanted to or not.

She’d been visibly upset when she’d returned home the night before; thankful that Charlie was in bed when she crept in through the front door. As if the timing couldn’t have been worse, Eric had phoned her right as she had returned. She tried to tell him what had happened—a few years ago she had told Eric the very edited version of her history of Jake and Edward (leaving out, of course, the supernatural bits)—ending up, for the most part, unsuccessful.

“So this friend of yours, Jake, he doesn’t want to be your friend anymore?” Eric had asked the night before. She had been sitting at the kitchen table, her knees folded up underneath her.

“Right. I think he hates me,” she had answered, exasperated—her explanation of things sounded empty; bent and distorted into a self-serving half-truth. She kept hearing brief pauses, then exhaling—he was smoking. She didn’t have the strength to even yell at him about it.

“Fuck that guy,” he’d said with fervor, “you’re the bees knees.”

It isn’t that simple, she’d wanted to argue.

But it would have been useless. Things were always very black and white to Eric.

Everything still weighed heavily on her mind as she had tried to drift off to sleep the night before. She’d pulled Max’s warm body close to her own like he was her security blanket, her mind in a panic. In the darkness, her cheek pressed against the faded violet pillowcase of her youth, it had begun to make sense.

Either/or.

A logical, sane person would say that’s how love worked.

She’d been fooling herself to think she could exist in between the two, neither here nor there. Jacob had obviously chosen a side. She was the fool in this game, choosing to exist in limbo, anchored to the notion that she and Jacob shared some undying, unmarred adoration that would never be realized, yet never falter.

She had tried to cry again—and puzzling still—nothing came of it. The broken feeling she’d had all day was still present, like she was a machine that’d been taken apart, then put back together again with one piece missing.

I need to cry so I know what I’m feeling is real, she’d thought to herself.

While the pieces of the puzzle had begun to come together the night prior, in the muted daylight of Charlie’s car it had all but disappeared. She turned up the radio volume slightly, trying to blast whatever pondering away with the saccharine-sweet lyrics of holiday tunes.

Immediately upon their return home, Bella and Charlie went to work lugging out the musty, ragged-looking artificial Christmas tree from the attic. They worked together untangling a mammoth-sized ball of Christmas lights, muttering and cursing under their breath while Max unpacked the boxes of ornaments.

It was a pretty ugly sight when it was finally erected. She’d only spent a few Christmases at Charlie’s house; she’d forgotten how bizarre his collection of ornaments was. Most of them were hand-me-downs or thrift store finds. Several light bulbs had burnt out, leaving vacant spaces of darkness intermittently. And Max had only hung all the decorations in the bottom half of the tree.

Despite all that, the look of pure exhilaration across Max’s face made it all seem pretty magical.

She touched one of the ornaments lightly. It was an old photograph of her in kindergarten, smiling hugely, two teeth missing in the front. The frame was plastic spray-painted gold in the shape of a Christmas tree; across the back, written in red crayon it read:

Merry Xmas Daddy
Love,
Bella

“I made this for you?” Charlie joined her at her side.

“Yeah, you were six. You lived with me for six months that year while your mom was doing her teaching certification—you made this at daycare. You don’t remember?” She squinted, trying to recall any details. But they were fuzzy, just flashes of random images and sensations; nothing concrete.

“I really don’t remember at all… weird,” she mumbled.

“You and I were real pals back then,” her father continued, his eyes lost in the memory. “I even taught you how to play baseball.”

She recognized some shadow of sadness in his voice, buried underneath his usual smooth, mellow intonation. She leaned her head against his shoulder, silently comforting him. She forgot sometimes how much her and her father were alike—how much they both couldn’t utter their feelings properly, instead opting to keep them private. Renee has always called Charlie a still water that runs deep.

Eric called Bella mysterious. Sometimes he’d look at her, his brow furrowed. “You’re so mysterious,” he’d announce. She never could make sense of that—in her own mind, she didn’t seem mysterious at all. Sometimes he’d cling to her at night, his breath hot against her neck. “Tell me things,” he’d urge. She’d start going on about work gossip, about new recipes she wanted to try.

“No, tell me things,” He’d correct her before she’d get too far.

She still couldn’t figure out what things he wanted to hear.

“What happened?” Bella asked her father.

He paused for a beat. “You went back to Phoenix with your mom; after that I only got you for two weeks in the summer. It was just… not enough time.”

“Hmm,” she muttered, urging him to continue.

“And then I got you back, when you moved here.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’m glad I got you back,” he added softly.

She’d always thought of her escape from Phoenix nineteen years ago as solely for her mother’s benefit; now, she wondered—maybe she did it for Charlie, too.

Charlie grumbled suddenly. “Sorry Bells, but I need to do some paperwork for a bit. You mind?” She pulled away.

“No, not at all. Maybe Max and I will go somewhere,” she suggested. “I kind of wanted to drive around and look at some of my old haunts.”

Max swirled around her feet, still in amazement at the tree. “Want to go for a drive?” she asked Max, who nodded heavily.

Rain gently fell against the windshield as she drove slowly through town. Max kicked his feet around in his car seat, humming to himself. Newton’s Sporting Goods was bustling, the parking lot choked with cars and busy shoppers. She thought about stopping in for a moment, but hesitated, instead continuing on through downtown Forks toward her old High School.

It looked different compared to the school in her memory. A new sign on the school perimeter had been erected. Holiday Break, Classes Resume January 5. Go Spartans! She tapped the glass of her window, pointing at the school.

“Mommy used to go to school here,” she said to Max. She shuddered at the fact that she’d become so used to using third person around her son. It had come so naturally. She parked in the school lot, letting the engine idle, the same parking spot she had stood in when she had nearly been pummeled by Tyler Crowley’s van.

The day her life pretty much changed forever.

She expected to feel something, something monumental, but there was nothing.

Anxiety sat like a lump in her stomach as she turned out of the school parking lot. She headed north on Forks Avenue, her mind in a flurry, her heart thumping in her chest. Will I see it? Will I be able to recognize it? She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to spot the turn-off barely visible from the road. She realized she was driving well above the speed limit, somehow urged to move forward by some invisible force.

She almost missed the obscure turn-off, spotting it at the last possible second, veering off to the right. Max bounced around in his car seat in the back, screeching with excitement.

“Sorry Max, Mommy’s being a bad driver today,” she said to the rear-view mirror.

She kept driving, deep into the woods. The dirt road had probably once been clear, but was now blanketed in rotting leaves and debris.

And then there it was. Looming amongst trees, as ominous and terrifying as something from a horror movie.

The Cullen house.

It was in a severe state of disrepair. Moss crawled up the sides of the house, foliage overgrown and wild creeping up onto the porch. Several windows had been broken, stalagmites of glass sticking up violently from their frames. Her breath hitched, her limbs stiff. She suddenly felt like a vampire might, witnessing the years passing by—it looked like it had been a hundred years since anyone had been to this place.

She unbuckled Max from his car seat, lifting him out.

He looked confused, puzzled. “Where are we?” His look of confusion switched to fear.

“Don’t like this place,” he whispered.

A bird flapped its wings wildly in the foliage surrounding them, making her jump in surprise.

She and Max walked slowly up to the porch, hand-in-hand. “It’s not dangerous, honey—it’s perfectly safe. No need to be scared,” she reassured him. But she felt scared herself, despite her words. What am I afraid of? She thought to herself. What, like Edward is going to pop out from a dark corner? She shook her head in amusement at her ridiculous notions.

The door had been busted open. Probably by some bored local teens. Dirt and dried leaves scattered along the now-tarnished wood floors. She gasped as they entered what had used to be the living room. The furniture was even still there, now covered in white sheets. Another bird shrieked from along the rafters.

She walked carefully up the rickety staircase, Max huddled against her side. She held her breath tightly in her chest as she stepped into what had been Edward’s old room. She coughed, dust flying everywhere.

Unlike the rest of the house, the room was empty—like a tomb that had been ransacked.

She got the same creepy feeling that she’d had as she entered the house—like someone was watching. It gave her gooseflesh.

“Who lives here?” Max asked. He toddled ahead of her, pressing his small palms against the floor-to-ceiling windows. He lifted his hands immediately, leaving two perfect hand prints in the dust, like two halves of a heart separated by a thin line of smoke.

She gathered him close to her again. “Nobody,” she answered, pulling him away back in the hallway.

“What are you doing here?” She heard a voice boom from behind her. She clutched her hand to her heart, whirling around. For a second, she thought she might die from a heart attack.

It was Jake, wearing an expression of utter confusion, his face slumped into a scowl.

“Jesus!” she exclaimed, out of breath. “You scared the crap out of me.”

“Why are you here?” he asked again forcefully.

“I don’t know,” she said, throwing her hands up in the air. “Just felt like it? Why are you here?” Anger bubbled up inside her as she tried to throw back some of the venom he’d made her endure the night prior, but it came out sounding like a pathetic whimper.

“I followed you,” he admitted, softening his tone. “I was driving down Forks Avenue going the other way when I saw you come barreling down driving ninety miles an hour.”

She pulled Max’s hand into her own again. “Well, we were just leaving…I don’t know why I wanted to see this place.”

Jacob blocked the stairwell with his body. “I was on my way to come and see you.” In the daylight, his features softer than the night prior, he suddenly didn’t seem nearly as menacing. All the anger boiling in her stomach melted away in seeing his face—it almost seemed like the old Jake.

“Oh,” she said monotonously. “Why?”

He brushed his hair back, letting the strands slip through his fingers, his hair falling back around his face like a curtain. “I was a jerk last night,” he admitted.

She exhaled loudly. “Yeah, you don’t have to tell me that,” she huffed, shoving past him and down the stairs.

“Hey, at least introduce me to your kid!” He shouted after her as they stepped out onto the porch. She stopped short and turned around.

“Max, this is Jake,” she said, emotionless, appeasing him.

Jacob kneeled down in front of Max. “Hey Max,” he said. His face softened, the familiar Jacob Black smile replacing the hard mask she’d seen the night before. It made her heart stutter.

Max just stared. “Are you a giant?” He asked quietly, his eyes wide in amazement. Jake laughed heartily.

“No, I’m not a giant—I’m an old friend of your mom’s.”

“You are tall,” Max breathed. “Like a house!” He waved his tiny arms in the air to illustrate.

“So Max, your mom is kind of angry with me. Let’s say you tell her to forgive me—and then I’ll let you sit on my shoulders way up high. Deal?” He smiled hugely, deviously, revealing his usual blindingly white teeth.

Max looked up at his mother. “He’s sorry,” he gasped.

She rolled her eyes. “Fine, you’re forgiven.”

Jacob stood up, looking pleased with himself. “Thanks, buddy,” he said, giving Max a gentle high-five. “He looks just like you,” Jacob said to Bella, half smiling.

“Yeah, we get that a lot. Except for the eyes.”

He looked at her pensively. “What’s his name again?” He didn’t have to clarify. She knew whom he was asking about.

“Eric.”

“Ah-ha. Right. Eric. Last time I saw you, he didn’t have a name—he was just ‘nothing serious.’”

“About last time, I…” her voice trailed off. Before she could continue, Max started dancing around, motioning that he was ready for his reward.

Jacob gave her a knowing glance. “Okay, ready for your ride?” Max nodded. Jake hoisted him over his shoulders as if he were lighter than a feather.

“Whoa,” Max screeched from Jake’s shoulders. “Look Mom!” He waved his arms around, like he was pretending to fly.

She eyed them both nervously. “Don’t drop my child,” she warned, a pained expression on her face.

“Relax,” Jake insisted. “I do this with my niece and nephew all the time.” He walked down the porch steps, Max still on his shoulders, stopping on the mossy earth below.

“Rachel’s kids?”

He nodded. “Yup. Ian and Lara.” She sat down on the porch steps, leaning into her knees.

“What made you decide to come and see me today?” She eyed him curiously.

“Well,” he began, leaning forward, “Embry called me.”

“And--?”

“We shared some words. About last night.”

“Are you gonna elaborate anymore?” She sighed, digging her heels into the wood beneath her feet.

“It was mostly incoherent; he called me at like two this morning. Man, I don’t know what you said to him last night, but he’s really in your corner now.”

“I barely said anything,” she insisted, confused.

“That’s Embry for you—he gets these theories.” Max dug his hands into Jacob’s hair, pulling on it.

She pushed herself off the steps. “Okay, I think he’s had enough. We should be getting back now, anyway.” He pulled Max off his shoulders and over his head, swinging him gently before setting him on the ground.

“I think we need to talk, Bella.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, staring her down. His tone was formal, business-like—conveying no emotion.

She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. “Not here. I don’t know why I came to this place. It gives me the creeps.”

Jake glanced toward the house. “They came back here, you know.”

Her mind went dizzy for a moment. “Who? The Cullens?”

He nodded. “Yeah, the little one—and Edward. They came back for a few days, about six years ago.”

“Why?” The question seemed so lost, dissolving instantly in the atmosphere.

“Who knows,” he shrugged. “All I know is that it sent the pack into a panic. Probably the most action they’ve had in years.”

“Is there even a pack anymore?” Her mind went back to last night and Embry’s celebration over getting another year older.

He shook his head gravely. “No. They’re all gone.”

She raised an eyebrow, puzzled. “You seem sad about that.”

His eyes brightened. “No, don’t get me wrong. It’s a good thing. It’s just kind of a reminder that… you know, I’m getting older. That I’m a relic.”

“Tell me about it,” she said as Max clung to her leg. “I have a walking, talking reminder of my age.” She eyed Max below her. “We really should get back to the house—he needs a nap before I miss my window of opportunity.”

He ducked his head in the window as she started the car. “Can I drop by later? Just for a bit.”

She bit her lip, weighing things over in her mind. “Sure. I’ll see you later—around eightish?”

He nodded, patting the door frame between them heartily. “Sounds good.”

As she pulled away, she looked in the rear view mirror as Jacob’s body became smaller and smaller, finally disappearing as she turned left onto the main road. She breathed a sigh of relief.

She squinted, desperate to think of Eric—thinking of his piercing blue eyes, his curly mop of sandy blonde hair, the way his facial hair grew in red, not blonde—suddenly, she felt like she couldn’t quite place the image of him, like he was someone she’d known a long, long time ago. She ransacked her mind, frantic to replicate the timbre of his voice, again, coming up blank.

Instead, with every image came up, it was instantly replaced by some recollection of Jake. His somber black eyes, his boyish half-smile, his husky, hollow voice. Sort of beautiful. But really—just beautiful.

Guilt overtook her like a raging fever.

As she drove down Forks road, the concrete road just a whirr in front of her, she remembered what she’d thought the night before.

Either/or.

Can’t have both.

Either I have some hope, and I will continue, or I have none, and I will renounce.

She shook her head. Neither option sounded appealing.

Either/or—that is how a rational, sane person would view this.

…But I’m not rational. Or sane.

I choose not to choose—instead, I’ll drift senselessly between the two.

I’ll continue.

She held her breath.