Vermilion

The moon was filtering through the blinds, illuminating the room I awoke in with blue light. The covers, black and gray pin stripe, were an ocean, smooth against my skin. Outlining mine, and another body beside me, and my eyes traveled up a tee-shirt clad chest, to a beautifully carved chin, thin, smooth lips, a nose, and then his eyes. Even in the dark, his eyes seemed to pierce through anything. The night, the moonlight, my soul. I felt my stomach and heart swell together with feeling.

“Are you alright?” Chris asked me, his hand warm against my cheek as his thumb brushed the skin.

“I will be.” I whispered, my voice full of air as a tear rolled down the bride of my nose, and closing my eyes, it dribbled down my eyelid and soaked into the pillow.

“What happened between you two?” He asked in my ear, his lips so close to mine. I shut my lids to try and hold it all in, to keep what has already fallen apart together. Like the stuffing of a stuffed animal, just spilling out of the confines of the animal, spilling all over the floor, and the animal is hugging it close to its deflated chest.

“Jacob had no right to be angry, because he told me that he didn’t love me anymore, maybe he never did. He can’t be mad at me for trying to move on…His anger just got out of hand, and he stormed off…I’m so sick of his shit.” I explained rather vaguely, not bothering with the true details of the situation. Bella’s child, Jacob’s never ending infatuation, almost phasing in front of me. I could remember seeing his body shake with fury.

“I’m so sorry, this may as well truly be my fault.” He pitied, his arms bringing me closer into him.

“No, Christipher. It’s not.” I said, almost pulling away to give him an incredulous look, but his arms kept me caged into him. I absolutely loved it.

His eyes bore into mine, a moment where everything slowed to a stop. All I could do was helplessly stare into his with an unnamable feeling washing over me. Time almost seemed to discontinue as I felt the life flow from his hands attached to my sides. Warmth flowing from him through the fabric of a tee-shirt he put me in.

“Christipher…” I breathed out, finding myself leaning closer to his face, moistening my lips with my tongue. I closed my eyes, waiting as my hands rested against his neck. Something fluttered in my stomach, in my heart, as I felt his soft lips touch mine.

It wasn’t long before I was totally emerged in a human being that wasn’t Jacob, somebody that seemed to send electricity through my veins just with their fingertips. His hands above his head and our fingers tangled together, I straddled him, our lips colliding. I breathed in sharply as we pulled away slightly, but his lips followed mine closely. I couldn’t feel anything else but him, and the way his toned chest felt against mine.

“Elaine, are you really sure about this?” He asked me, his hands traveling up my sides, my shirt traveling up with them. I inhaled another sharp breath, a gasp almost, and nodded my head, leaning into him.

Before we knew it, our souls had completely combined together, the spark from earlier bursting into a never ending finale of fireworks. I’d close my eyes as our bodies moved in rhythm and I’d see them, bursting in green, purple, red, white, blue. Shapes that drifted away in the night smoothing away into dawn.

**

When my eyes fluttered open, it was not the moon seeping in through the gaps between the blinds, but the pale sun that shined lines of light against the wall. Beside me there was no one, not the warm body I had slept with last night, but instead disheveled sheets, and I looked further beyond that to see a floor with cloths and other miscellaneous items strewn about. Everywhere. This was truly a boys room. Christipher’s room.

I removed the sheets from my body, feeling the long tee-shirt cling to my frame, realizing that neither my bra or my underwear was on my person right now. Stifling a laugh, a found them both just laying there where my feet touched the carpet beside the bed. Quickly I threw those on, but hesitated. If anyone was at home, they would gladly laugh at how I’m dressed right now. I’m stuck.

Faintly, I heard the sound of harsh whispered voices that bickered back and fourth behind the door, and in an attempt to eavesdrop I almost stubbed my toe. I put my ear to the door and concentrated, hearing things I wished I didn’t.

“What is wrong with you, Christipher! Someone who is related to us!”

“How could I have known? It felt right!”

“Your lucky your only her second cousin, anything other and there would be serious consequences.”

Wait.

Second cousin?

I…I just had sex…with my second cousin. My chest burst open with surprise and pain, like taking a kitchen knife and tearing a whole right threw that bone in the center. Reminding me of my nightmares, of the whole in my core that continues to grow bigger. There’s no ending to how vast it could become.

Without a care in the world, I struggled to lift open the window on the other side of his room to see the clouds puffy and gray shield the sun. I jump out, the tee-shirt lifting as I did, revealing my panties. But now, I just need to get home. To Billy. To Jacob. My bare feet splash against the mud on the side of the house, painting my skin brown from my toes to my ankle as I make a dash for the trail and the beach. The only way I know to escape.

I run as fast as I can, though my legs were shaking and my whole body convulsing along to the desperate sobs that my body is just so use to sporting. I can’t give an answer as to why that’s how my life is now, reduced to situations leaving me in self pity, leaving me running away from the problems that dump a bucket of tears upon me. Whatever that answer is I’m not so keen to finding it anymore, as I make a quick dash down the beach and passing my mother’s headstone, I’m reminded that I can’t stomach the answer as much as I can’t stomach spiders.

**

Jacob gazed in her eyes, his heart torn apart to desperate little pieces. What happened with Elaine, that was all a misunderstanding, and he didn’t know what came over him. Bella died. Became something immortal, like him, and it overwhelmed him at first. Then her saw her eyes, ones that resembled perfect replicas of her mother’s. A brown so warm. Without another glance to the child, Jacob was out of the Cullen’s house before one could whisper ‘why?’

**

My hands were wet as I touched moss clad trees wet from the rain last night, and my feet were completely drenched with mud and wet sand that my calves began to resemble that of the legs from a dining table. But I wasn’t paying attention to how dirty I was getting, or the goose bumps all over my skin from the lack of clothing. I didn’t care if any of the pack somehow running through this area would see my fucking underwear.

I couldn’t breathe right, my chest was hurting so damn bad that I needed to give up. My legs wouldn’t let me, something was pulling me, like that throb in my heart had come back. Like I needed that stupid asshole boy Jacob again, and that was the last thing I’d like to admit.

I gasped, “oh fuck.” Something had scrapped against my cheek, a branch perhaps. Never minding the searing sting that seemed to echo in every part of my body I entered the thick vegetated and forested part of the seaside, and came to view Billy’s house. The wooden steps sent an electric current running through me, swelling my body with warmth. I was home.

I couldn’t make it past the steps, my body just collapsed like a building blown and I ended up bruising myself on the outside. Falling and causing a cosmic collision with my body, soul, mind, to the floor. I opened my eyes, and I felt like three years were passing before my eyes. Moisture dripping from the tip of my nose, I mustered the strength to lift myself from the ground, the dirt covering all of me. Pulling away the strands of hair from my face I came eye to eye with someone that ended me too many times before.

“Jacob.” I breathed.

“Elaine.” I could see his Adam's apple move as he gulps. He seems astonished by my appearance, the tee-shirt, obviously not mine, and he understands. “You really believed that was true…the imprinting.” He wasn’t making any sense.

“He was my fucking second cousin, Jacob.”

Was it forever, or was I meant to breakdown at the sight of him, and the tragedy I considered my life?