"Then I'll be around," he said as his eyes slid closed.
"Jake . . . ," I started to whine.
"Hey, it's the least I can do - I offered eternal servitude, remember. I'm your slave for life."
"I don't want a slave!"
His eyes didn't open. "What do you want, Bella?"
"I want my friend Jacob - and I don't want him half-dead, hurting himself in some misguided attempt -"
He cut me off. "Look at it this way - I'm hoping I can track down a vampire I'm allowed to kill, okay?"
I didn't answer. He looked at me then, peeking at my reaction.
"Kidding, Bella."
I stared at the TV.
"So, any special plans next week? You're graduating. Wow. That's big." His voice turned flat, and his face, already drawn, looked downright haggard as his eyes closed again - not in exhaustion this time, but in denial. I realized that graduation still had a horrible significance for him, though my intentions were now disrupted.
"No special plans," I said carefully, hoping he would hear the reassurance in my words without a more detailed explanation. I didn't want to get into it now. For one thing, he didn't look up for any difficult conversations. For another, I knew he would read too much into my qualms. "Well, I do have to go to a graduation party. Mine." I made a disgusted sound. "Alice loves parties, and she's invited the whole town to her place the night of. It's going to be horrible."
His eyes opened as I spoke, and a relieved smile made his face look less worn. "I didn't get an invitation. I'm hurt," he teased.
"Consider yourself invited. It's supposedly my party, so I should be able to ask who I want."
"Thanks," he said sarcastically, his eyes slipping closed once more.
"I wish you would come," I said without any hope. "It would be more fun. For me, I mean."
"Sure, sure," he mumbled. "That would be very . . . wise . . ." His voice trailed off.
A few seconds later, he was snoring.
Poor Jacob. I studied his dreaming face, and liked what I saw. While he slept, every trace of defensiveness and bitterness disappeared and suddenly he was the boy who had been my very best friend before all the werewolf nonsense had gotten in the way. He looked so much younger. He looked like my Jacob.
I nestled into the couch to wait out his nap, hoping he would sleep for a while and make up some of what he'd lost. I flipped through channels, but there wasn't much on. I settled for a cooking show, knowing, as I watched, that I'd never put that much effort into Charlie's dinner. Jacob continued to snore, getting louder. I turned up the TV.
I was strangely relaxed, almost sleepy, too. This house felt safer than my own, probably because no one had ever come looking for me here. I curled up on the sofa and thought about taking a nap myself. Maybe I would have, but Jacob's snoring was impossible to tune out. So, instead of sleeping, I let my mind wander.
Finals were done, and most of them had been a cakewalk. Calculus, the one exception, was behind me, pass or fail. My high school education was over. And I didn't really know how I felt about that. I couldn't look at it objectively, tied up as it was with my human life being over.
I wondered how long Edward planned to use this "not because you're scared" excuse. I was going to have to put my foot down sometime.
If I were thinking practically, I knew it made more sense to ask Carlisle to change me the second I made it through the graduation line. Forks was becoming nearly as dangerous as a war zone. No, Forks was a war zone. Not to mention . . . it would be a good excuse to miss the graduation party. I smiled to myself as I thought of that most trivial of reasons for changing. Silly . . . yet still compelling.
But Edward was right - I wasn't quite ready yet.
And I didn't want to be practical. I wanted Edward to be the one. It wasn't a rational desire. I was sure that - about two seconds after someone actually bit me and the venom started burning through my veins - I really wouldn't care anymore who had done it. So it shouldn't make a difference.
It was hard to define, even to myself, why it mattered. There was just something about him being the one to make the choice - to want to keep me enough that he wouldn't just allow me to be changed, he would act to keep me. It was childish, but I liked the idea that his lips would be the last good thing I would feel. Even more embarrassingly, something I would never say aloud, I wanted his venom to poison my system. It would make me belong to him in a tangible, quantifiable way.
But I knew he was going to stick to his marriage scheme like glue - because a delay was what he was clearly after and it was working so far. I tried to imagine telling my parents that I was getting married this summer. Telling Angela and Ben and Mike. I couldn't. I couldn't think of the words to say. It would be easier to tell them I was becoming a vampire. And I was sure that at least my mother - were I to tell her every detail of the truth - would be more strenuously opposed to me getting married than to me a becoming vampire. I grimaced to myself as I imagined her horrified expression.
Then, for just a second, I saw that same odd vision of Edward and me on a porch swing, wearing clothes from another kind of world. A world where it would surprise no one if I wore his ring on my finger. A simpler place, where love was defined in simpler ways. One plus one equals two. . . .
Jacob snorted and rolled to his side. His arm swung off the back of the couch and pinned me against his body.
Holy crow, but he was heavy! And hot. It was sweltering after just a few seconds.
I tried to slide out from under his arm without waking him, but I had to shove a little bit, and when his arm fell off me, his eyes snapped open. He jumped to his feet, looking around anxiously.