Boys With Girlfriends -- Chapter Three
Title: Boys With Girlfriends
Author: audreyii_fic
Fandom: Twilight (Team Jacob)
Rating: NC-17
Characters: Jacob, Bella, Edward (genderswap)
Genre: Romance/Humor/Angst
Warnings: Bad language and explicit sexuality.
banner courtesy of FatedFeathers
banner courtesy of blink_1nce
Summary: A boy gets dumped by a vampire and a wolfgirl tries to cheer him up. A genderswap rewrite of New Moon and Eclipse. ( Click here to start from the beginning.)
New Moon Scene Three:
but what's stranger still / is how something so small can keep you alive
Arcade Fire, "We Used To Wait"
The sound of pebbles hitting the glass pane wakes him up from a decidedly less-than-restful sleep. Lucas opens his eyes before he's really stopped dreaming and wonders why Mary's bothering to knock; then he remembers again that she's gone, so he rolls out of bed to find out who else would be at his window in the middle of the night.
It's Ruth.
Balanced in the tree.
"Hey," she says as he gapes. "Get out of the way, will ya?"
"What the hell are you doing up there?"
"Come on, move it, I'm not sure I can do this without breaking something."
"No! Get down before you kill yourself!"
"Fine, but don't say I didn't warn you." There's a series of quick, graceful, totally not Ruth-like movements, and then she's in his bedroom standing right in front of him. "That was cool," she says, looking pleased with herself.
Lucas glares at her. "I didn't say you could come in," he says acidly. He feels guilty the second her expression falls, but he's still not having any of this. He's taken enough shit.
"So you're pretty mad, huh."
"You think?"
He isn't mad. He is fucking pissed. And since Ruth is the last person in the world Lucas expected to make him feel like this, it's that much worse.
***
Yeah, he wasn't blind. Lucas knew Ruth had a little crush on him, and he was being a total dick for hanging around so much even after he knew, but he couldn't seem to give her up. Ruth was like the sun -- or like Prozac if he was feeling less sentimental. He suspected he ought to find some real Prozac... or recreational drugs... or start drinking heavily at the very least. Find another way to deal. A girl like Ruth didn't deserve to be some loser's medication.
But he kept going back anyway, sucked in by those grins and the way she tripped over her boots.
The bikes were every bit as great as Lucas had hoped. When he rode them he could practically hear Mary in his head yelling at him for being so reckless, and imagining that she would be as miserable as she'd made him was a fan-fucking-tastic feeling. When his head got stitched up there were parts of him that felt extremely pleased. Those were the parts that Ruth couldn't seem to make better. On the plus side they didn't seem to eat him up quite so much anymore, which felt good, which kept bringing him back to the Blacks' garage, which once again made him a dick.
Lucas was getting really good at the whole self-loathing thing. He thought it ought to be some kind of Olympic sport. He was pretty sure he'd get a gold medal, except it wouldn't make any sense to give out a gold medal in the Loser Olympics, because it might make you feel good about yourself and that would defeat the whole point.
And things had been made profoundly, epically worse by the fact that on the day of the bike crash he'd seen what Ruth Black looked like without her sweatshirt on. He'd come home from the hospital that night and, for the first time in a year, the girl in his dreams wasn't pale and glittering beneath him. She was brown and warm above him and laughed in his ear like she knew exactly what she was doing.
Lucas couldn't look Ruth in the eye for two days.
***
"Get out," Lucas says flatly. "Whatever you've got to say, go say it to Sam Uley."
Man, he fucking hates Sam Uley.
"You're the one I want to talk to." Ruth scoots past him and sits down on the edge of his bed. "Just for a few minutes, anyway, 'cause then I've gotta get back. I'm not even supposed to be here right now."
"Right." Lucas shoves the window wider because Ruth is sitting on his bed in cut off shorts and a guy's undershirt and no bra and giving him an imploring look and he wants her gone . "Don't let me keep you."
"Please don't be mad," she begs. "I know I was a total bitch this afternoon, and I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean any of it."
"Oh, well, that makes it all better." So she says one thing and then takes it back and expects him to be happy about it? Not fucking likely.
Ruth groans and flops back on the bed. That's... worse. But Lucas reminds himself that Sam Uley's probably seen her like that too, and that keeps him plenty angry. "Look," she says, "I really, really, really want to explain what's going on -- but I can't."
"You've got a boyfriend and you're too busy to hang out anymore. There. I explained it for you. Now go away."
Apparently he doesn't even have to actually date a girl to get dumped.
"Oh my God that is not even--" She runs her hands through her new, short hair, looking frustrated as all hell. "Okay," she says. She sits up, blows out a breath, and stares fixedly at the opposite wall. "Okay. Listen. Maybe if I-- Do you remember how I told you some stories once?"
He blinks. "Stories?"
"Yeah, the stories about the--" Then Ruth makes a strangled noise and grabs for her throat.
For panicked second Lucas forgets that he's pissed and holy shit is she choking to death? "Ruth? Oh fuck, wait, don't move--"
But she just waves him off, looking more annoyed than anything else. "Goddamn it," she growls, and for a second the sweet kid Lucas thought he knew looks dangerous. "I can't even tell you that much."
Lucas has no idea what's going on.
***
She told him about Sam a few days after her friend Embry stopped coming around. That didn't bother Lucas, since Embry along with Quil reminded him way too much of the snickering guys in middle-school shop class, but it seemed to really be getting to Ruth. He's hanging out with Sam Uley now, she'd said glumly as they walked along the beach.
Who's Sam Uley?
He's just this guy. Some kids follow him around like he's the fuckin' messiah or something. Now Embry won't talk to me anymore.
Oh. That sucks.
Uh-huh. And it's... they're being... ugh.
What?
Ruth had stopped and thrown rocks out in the waves, which Lucas did not join her at because he could tell that his rocks wouldn't go nearly as far as hers and seriously, weight-training, it needed to happen. Sam watches me, Ruth said finally. He watches me like some kind of creeper. His whole gang does. Embry too, now. It's really weird, and I don't like it.
That was Not Okay. Where does he live? Lucas had demanded furiously. I'm going to go kick the shit out of him.
Ruth laughed so hard she'd fallen on her ass in the sand. He guessed that was good because it meant she wasn't looking so downbeat, but it was also very insulting. Fine. Never mind, then.
Oh, c'mon, don't go all mopey on me. She'd thrown her arms around his knees, still giggling, and his already warm face got warmer. It's just that Sam's huge and he'd flatten you like a pancake. But it was a really cool offer.
Lucas had patted her head, but he'd stayed fairly sulky for the rest of the day. Some asshole was making Ruth uncomfortable and he'd offered to do the appropriately chivalrous thing, which was of course to beat the asshole up, and he'd gotten laughed at for it. Come on. Okay, he'd never been in a fight before... but it wasn't a complicated concept. Hit the other guy. Duck when he tries to hit you. There. Simple.
How big could Sam really be, anyhow?
***
"I'm not sure if you're aware of this," Lucas says, "but you're making absolutely no sense." It's two in the morning and he is too tired. "If you have something to say, then say it. Don't pull that girl-riddle crap."
One of the things he loves about Ruth is that she doesn't do the head games thing. Ruth just says what she thinks and doesn't expect him to guess the meaning behind it -- or at least she did until now, and that's fucking him up, because he really thought she was different. Which apparently goes to show just how much he sucks at judging girls.
Ruth grabs his arm and yanks him down to his knees in front of the bed and shit it hurts. He knew she was strong, but what the hell? Before he can demand an explanation, though, she cups his face and presses her forehead to his. Her hands are hot like coffee mugs. "Work with me," she murmurs. Her eyes are squeezed shut. "The stories. On First Beach. You can do this."
Getting seriously unnerved by this whole thing, Lucas tries to set aside his annoyance and focus. Ruth, stories, First Beach... oh. Right. "The Cold Ones," he says reluctantly. The first hint he'd gotten about Mary being a little more than just reclusive and on a weird diet. He should never have asked any of those stupid questions, or he wouldn't be in this mess now.
Which isn't entirely true. He'd already been half-way in love with Mary by then. He probably would've worshipped her even if he never found out about the vampire stuff, although admittedly it would've made the marble body thing a lot more weird.
"That's right," Ruth encourages. "The Cold Ones. But there was more to it, right?" Lucas tries to shake his head, but she holds him firm. "C'mon, please, please oh please oh please remember, you've gotta be with me here, it'd be so much easier if..."
And, to Lucas' surprise and absolute horror, Ruth -- Ruth! -- starts to sniffle. "Oh my God," he sputters, "don't do that! Don't cry!"
"I'm not," Ruth says quickly. Except she hiccups as she does.
Holy shit.
***
And then, of course, he'd completely fucked up.
Lucas invited Ruth along to the movies because Lauren had caught him flat-footed and he'd agreed to go with her before he could think of an excuse. Lauren had been after him since about five minutes post-Mary-dumpage; since he spent all his time swinging wildly between being a depressive lump and a raging asshole, it was sort of weird, but then Mike told him that girls dig the brooding thing. Which seemed bizarre -- but then, what did Lucas know? Apparently not much.
Lauren got sick during the movie. Ruth hung out with him in the lobby and, out of nowhere, called him on his shit. You like me more than her.
Of course I do.
Uh-huh. But not just her, right? You like me most.
Lucas had realized where Ruth was going with this, and shit it was all his fault, she'd finally caught him checking her out -- which had to stop, even if she was legal in the state of Washington it was still skeevy, she'd only turned sixteen like three months ago -- and he did his best to backpedal. You're my best friend, Ruth. Like one of the guys.
To his shock, that bit of epic douchebaggery didn't do the trick. Listen, I know how bad you got fucked over. And it's okay that you're creeped out by dating now. But it's not like you're switching teams or anything, yeah?
No!
So, we're cool then. She'd taken his hand and threaded her fingers through his and looked at him like she'd skipped ahead to the end of the book. I'm not like that, she'd said. I'm not gonna hurt you. Girl Scout's honor.
Lucas had had to smile. You were a Girl Scout?
Nah, but it sounded good, didn't it?
It had sounded good, almost, but he'd pulled his hand free anyway and tried in a clumsy sort of way to explain that he didn't feel like that about her. And he didn't. Ruth was seriously great, and yeah he was starting to spend an unacceptable amount of time wondering if she'd stop wearing sweatshirts once it got warmer, but he knew what being in love felt like and that wasn't what was going on. But he'd obviously done a really bad job at the whole explaining thing -- probably because he'd never had to give that kind of speech before, since guys like him really didn't wind up with a lot of opportunities to turn down awesome girls with crushes -- because Ruth hadn't seemed fazed in the slightest.
Except after that she stopped calling. Then she ducked his calls, and had her dad make up some obviously bullshit excuse about having mono. She basically vanished from the face of the earth.
And Lucas discovered he had not, in fact, hit the bottom of the self-loathing barrel.
He was a Class-A jerk.
***
"Please stop," Lucas says desperately as Ruth wipes her eyes with her wrist and if Ruth is crying then things must have gone to hell in ways he can't even imagine. Maybe Sam and his gang are...
Wait. Shit.
"Okay. Listen. How about this. Why don't you clean yourself up and--" put on a shirt that he couldn't see through "--and get a couple of things together, and you and I will clear out for a little while."
"Clear out?" Ruth echoes.
"Yeah." He stands. "Look, you don't have to be with Sam if you don't want to be, and if he made you think that then, well, fuck him. We'll get out of here and when you're less freaked you can call your dad and maybe he can--"
But Ruth just smiles. Except it's not one one of her usually sunny smiles, it's a smirk that looks right with her haircut and the new angles of her face and he really, really doesn't like it. "Lucas," she says, "you're wrong. I do have to be with Sam."
"Fuck that."
"No, really. And, y'know, he's not as bad as I thought."
"You said he was a creeper!"
"I was wrong. It's not like that."
"Then what is it like? Jesus, Ruth, just tell me what the hell is going on!"
Instead of answering, she gets up from the bed and throws her arms around him. Lucas hugs her back automatically, but he doesn't feel any less confused, and her body is different than the last time he hugged her which is adding to the weirdness of the whole thing. "Sleep on it," she says. "Just sleep on it, and try and remember?"
"Okay..."
"I have to go." She starts to climb out the window. Lucas makes a protesting noise as she does, and then she pauses and looks back up at him. "Hey, waitta sec. Are you saying it would bug you if Sam was my boyfriend?"
He gapes at her. "Yes!"
Ruth grins, and this time it's one of her normal, sunny grins. "Sweet."
Then she's gone, and Lucas smacks his forehead as he realizes what he just said.
***
He didn't do well without her, which was a whole new level of bad that Lucas hadn't even wanted to contemplate. Without his combat-boot-tripping Prozac he sank back into total wallowing depression. He started thinking about Mary all the time again: what she was doing, if she was with someone else, if she missed him, if she was sorry. Maybe Mary was sorry. Maybe she'd come back and still be in love with him and beg his forgiveness and...
...and he'd tell her to fuck off.
Right.
He even thought about going out and trying to find their old hangout spot, that meadow where he'd seen her sparkle in the sunlight for the first time and known that she absolutely, completely owned him, just to kick things and maybe set a very well-contained fire. But that would have required getting up from the sofa. Proactivity had not been Lucas Swan's strong suit for the last several months. He probably would have remained stuck to the couch stewing in his own angst until graduation if Charlie hadn't mentioned that he'd seen Ruth in Forks -- and that she was with Sam Uley and looked pretty upset.
That got Lucas up in a big hurry.
When he pulled into her driveway, Ruth had come out of the house before he'd closed the door of the truck. Go away, she'd said.
Lucas hadn't been able to close his mouth. It was raining, and Ruth was soaked to the bone and wearing nothing but an ancient tank top and torn draw-string pants that didn't even hit mid-thigh, which made it easy to see that in two weeks she'd gotten taller and leaner and lost every soft edge. Her hair was gone. It looked like she'd hacked it off with kitchen shears.
He glanced down at her bare feet and said, Where are your boots?
I broke them. Her voice was absolutely emotionless and she wouldn't look him in the eye. You have to leave.
Hey, wait a minute--
Now, Lucas.
My dad says he saw you with Sam Uley. Is that what this is about? Ruth flinched, and Lucas felt like someone had punched him in the gut. But you said--
It doesn't matter what I said. We can't be friends anymore. Go home and don't come back. She walked right back into her house and slammed the door.
And fuck, he'd thought he was done with that kind of hurting.
***
When he wakes up Lucas still has no idea what's going on. He tried, he really did, but he's got nothing.
He decides to go to La Push anyway and do what he should have done in the first place.
Lucas parks the truck in the Blacks' front yard and sees a bunch of guys over by the tree line, which on one hand is good, because he'd thought he was going to have to wait for hours or go to the beach or something. On the other hand, it pisses him off even more that they're hanging around outside Ruth's house like they have any right to be there.
As he crosses across the yard, he almost turns around. These guys really are huge. There's four of them and they're all half a head taller and outweigh him by about eighty pounds and they've got to be on steroids or something because holy shit. Ruth was right, he's gonna be flattened like a pancake.
Still, it's too late now.
The guys look at him curiously as he marches up. "Which one of you is Sam?" he demands.
The biggest one steps forward. Figures. "All right," says Lucas, and he doesn't squeak, which is at least a good start. "You and me. Let's go."
"...What?"
Oh, yeah, he's about to die. "You heard me."
Most of them seem too stunned to speak, which is not surprising considering that the part of Lucas' consciousness that is watching this scene from the outside is too horrified even to berate him, but the one to Sam's right starts to laugh derisively.
So Lucas hits him instead. And it fucking hurts, holy shit who knew throwing a punch hurt all the way up to your fucking elbow ow ow ow ow--
Then the dude starts to shake.
Sam yells something... but Lucas has no idea what it is because the dude fucking explodes and before Lucas can even process what he's seeing Ruth streaks in out of nowhere and--
"This is bullshit," he says blankly as the two wolves fight and claw their way into the forest.
"You got that right," says one of the other guys, and when he claps Lucas on the back Lucas falls to his knees.
***
Next: The Cliff Dive
Author: audreyii_fic
Fandom: Twilight (Team Jacob)
Rating: NC-17
Characters: Jacob, Bella, Edward (genderswap)
Genre: Romance/Humor/Angst
Warnings: Bad language and explicit sexuality.
banner courtesy of FatedFeathers
banner courtesy of blink_1nce
Summary: A boy gets dumped by a vampire and a wolfgirl tries to cheer him up. A genderswap rewrite of New Moon and Eclipse. ( Click here to start from the beginning.)
New Moon Scene Three:
but what's stranger still / is how something so small can keep you alive
Arcade Fire, "We Used To Wait"
The sound of pebbles hitting the glass pane wakes him up from a decidedly less-than-restful sleep. Lucas opens his eyes before he's really stopped dreaming and wonders why Mary's bothering to knock; then he remembers again that she's gone, so he rolls out of bed to find out who else would be at his window in the middle of the night.
It's Ruth.
Balanced in the tree.
"Hey," she says as he gapes. "Get out of the way, will ya?"
"What the hell are you doing up there?"
"Come on, move it, I'm not sure I can do this without breaking something."
"No! Get down before you kill yourself!"
"Fine, but don't say I didn't warn you." There's a series of quick, graceful, totally not Ruth-like movements, and then she's in his bedroom standing right in front of him. "That was cool," she says, looking pleased with herself.
Lucas glares at her. "I didn't say you could come in," he says acidly. He feels guilty the second her expression falls, but he's still not having any of this. He's taken enough shit.
"So you're pretty mad, huh."
"You think?"
He isn't mad. He is fucking pissed. And since Ruth is the last person in the world Lucas expected to make him feel like this, it's that much worse.
***
Yeah, he wasn't blind. Lucas knew Ruth had a little crush on him, and he was being a total dick for hanging around so much even after he knew, but he couldn't seem to give her up. Ruth was like the sun -- or like Prozac if he was feeling less sentimental. He suspected he ought to find some real Prozac... or recreational drugs... or start drinking heavily at the very least. Find another way to deal. A girl like Ruth didn't deserve to be some loser's medication.
But he kept going back anyway, sucked in by those grins and the way she tripped over her boots.
The bikes were every bit as great as Lucas had hoped. When he rode them he could practically hear Mary in his head yelling at him for being so reckless, and imagining that she would be as miserable as she'd made him was a fan-fucking-tastic feeling. When his head got stitched up there were parts of him that felt extremely pleased. Those were the parts that Ruth couldn't seem to make better. On the plus side they didn't seem to eat him up quite so much anymore, which felt good, which kept bringing him back to the Blacks' garage, which once again made him a dick.
Lucas was getting really good at the whole self-loathing thing. He thought it ought to be some kind of Olympic sport. He was pretty sure he'd get a gold medal, except it wouldn't make any sense to give out a gold medal in the Loser Olympics, because it might make you feel good about yourself and that would defeat the whole point.
And things had been made profoundly, epically worse by the fact that on the day of the bike crash he'd seen what Ruth Black looked like without her sweatshirt on. He'd come home from the hospital that night and, for the first time in a year, the girl in his dreams wasn't pale and glittering beneath him. She was brown and warm above him and laughed in his ear like she knew exactly what she was doing.
Lucas couldn't look Ruth in the eye for two days.
***
"Get out," Lucas says flatly. "Whatever you've got to say, go say it to Sam Uley."
Man, he fucking hates Sam Uley.
"You're the one I want to talk to." Ruth scoots past him and sits down on the edge of his bed. "Just for a few minutes, anyway, 'cause then I've gotta get back. I'm not even supposed to be here right now."
"Right." Lucas shoves the window wider because Ruth is sitting on his bed in cut off shorts and a guy's undershirt and no bra and giving him an imploring look and he wants her gone . "Don't let me keep you."
"Please don't be mad," she begs. "I know I was a total bitch this afternoon, and I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean any of it."
"Oh, well, that makes it all better." So she says one thing and then takes it back and expects him to be happy about it? Not fucking likely.
Ruth groans and flops back on the bed. That's... worse. But Lucas reminds himself that Sam Uley's probably seen her like that too, and that keeps him plenty angry. "Look," she says, "I really, really, really want to explain what's going on -- but I can't."
"You've got a boyfriend and you're too busy to hang out anymore. There. I explained it for you. Now go away."
Apparently he doesn't even have to actually date a girl to get dumped.
"Oh my God that is not even--" She runs her hands through her new, short hair, looking frustrated as all hell. "Okay," she says. She sits up, blows out a breath, and stares fixedly at the opposite wall. "Okay. Listen. Maybe if I-- Do you remember how I told you some stories once?"
He blinks. "Stories?"
"Yeah, the stories about the--" Then Ruth makes a strangled noise and grabs for her throat.
For panicked second Lucas forgets that he's pissed and holy shit is she choking to death? "Ruth? Oh fuck, wait, don't move--"
But she just waves him off, looking more annoyed than anything else. "Goddamn it," she growls, and for a second the sweet kid Lucas thought he knew looks dangerous. "I can't even tell you that much."
Lucas has no idea what's going on.
***
She told him about Sam a few days after her friend Embry stopped coming around. That didn't bother Lucas, since Embry along with Quil reminded him way too much of the snickering guys in middle-school shop class, but it seemed to really be getting to Ruth. He's hanging out with Sam Uley now, she'd said glumly as they walked along the beach.
Who's Sam Uley?
He's just this guy. Some kids follow him around like he's the fuckin' messiah or something. Now Embry won't talk to me anymore.
Oh. That sucks.
Uh-huh. And it's... they're being... ugh.
What?
Ruth had stopped and thrown rocks out in the waves, which Lucas did not join her at because he could tell that his rocks wouldn't go nearly as far as hers and seriously, weight-training, it needed to happen. Sam watches me, Ruth said finally. He watches me like some kind of creeper. His whole gang does. Embry too, now. It's really weird, and I don't like it.
That was Not Okay. Where does he live? Lucas had demanded furiously. I'm going to go kick the shit out of him.
Ruth laughed so hard she'd fallen on her ass in the sand. He guessed that was good because it meant she wasn't looking so downbeat, but it was also very insulting. Fine. Never mind, then.
Oh, c'mon, don't go all mopey on me. She'd thrown her arms around his knees, still giggling, and his already warm face got warmer. It's just that Sam's huge and he'd flatten you like a pancake. But it was a really cool offer.
Lucas had patted her head, but he'd stayed fairly sulky for the rest of the day. Some asshole was making Ruth uncomfortable and he'd offered to do the appropriately chivalrous thing, which was of course to beat the asshole up, and he'd gotten laughed at for it. Come on. Okay, he'd never been in a fight before... but it wasn't a complicated concept. Hit the other guy. Duck when he tries to hit you. There. Simple.
How big could Sam really be, anyhow?
***
"I'm not sure if you're aware of this," Lucas says, "but you're making absolutely no sense." It's two in the morning and he is too tired. "If you have something to say, then say it. Don't pull that girl-riddle crap."
One of the things he loves about Ruth is that she doesn't do the head games thing. Ruth just says what she thinks and doesn't expect him to guess the meaning behind it -- or at least she did until now, and that's fucking him up, because he really thought she was different. Which apparently goes to show just how much he sucks at judging girls.
Ruth grabs his arm and yanks him down to his knees in front of the bed and shit it hurts. He knew she was strong, but what the hell? Before he can demand an explanation, though, she cups his face and presses her forehead to his. Her hands are hot like coffee mugs. "Work with me," she murmurs. Her eyes are squeezed shut. "The stories. On First Beach. You can do this."
Getting seriously unnerved by this whole thing, Lucas tries to set aside his annoyance and focus. Ruth, stories, First Beach... oh. Right. "The Cold Ones," he says reluctantly. The first hint he'd gotten about Mary being a little more than just reclusive and on a weird diet. He should never have asked any of those stupid questions, or he wouldn't be in this mess now.
Which isn't entirely true. He'd already been half-way in love with Mary by then. He probably would've worshipped her even if he never found out about the vampire stuff, although admittedly it would've made the marble body thing a lot more weird.
"That's right," Ruth encourages. "The Cold Ones. But there was more to it, right?" Lucas tries to shake his head, but she holds him firm. "C'mon, please, please oh please oh please remember, you've gotta be with me here, it'd be so much easier if..."
And, to Lucas' surprise and absolute horror, Ruth -- Ruth! -- starts to sniffle. "Oh my God," he sputters, "don't do that! Don't cry!"
"I'm not," Ruth says quickly. Except she hiccups as she does.
Holy shit.
***
And then, of course, he'd completely fucked up.
Lucas invited Ruth along to the movies because Lauren had caught him flat-footed and he'd agreed to go with her before he could think of an excuse. Lauren had been after him since about five minutes post-Mary-dumpage; since he spent all his time swinging wildly between being a depressive lump and a raging asshole, it was sort of weird, but then Mike told him that girls dig the brooding thing. Which seemed bizarre -- but then, what did Lucas know? Apparently not much.
Lauren got sick during the movie. Ruth hung out with him in the lobby and, out of nowhere, called him on his shit. You like me more than her.
Of course I do.
Uh-huh. But not just her, right? You like me most.
Lucas had realized where Ruth was going with this, and shit it was all his fault, she'd finally caught him checking her out -- which had to stop, even if she was legal in the state of Washington it was still skeevy, she'd only turned sixteen like three months ago -- and he did his best to backpedal. You're my best friend, Ruth. Like one of the guys.
To his shock, that bit of epic douchebaggery didn't do the trick. Listen, I know how bad you got fucked over. And it's okay that you're creeped out by dating now. But it's not like you're switching teams or anything, yeah?
No!
So, we're cool then. She'd taken his hand and threaded her fingers through his and looked at him like she'd skipped ahead to the end of the book. I'm not like that, she'd said. I'm not gonna hurt you. Girl Scout's honor.
Lucas had had to smile. You were a Girl Scout?
Nah, but it sounded good, didn't it?
It had sounded good, almost, but he'd pulled his hand free anyway and tried in a clumsy sort of way to explain that he didn't feel like that about her. And he didn't. Ruth was seriously great, and yeah he was starting to spend an unacceptable amount of time wondering if she'd stop wearing sweatshirts once it got warmer, but he knew what being in love felt like and that wasn't what was going on. But he'd obviously done a really bad job at the whole explaining thing -- probably because he'd never had to give that kind of speech before, since guys like him really didn't wind up with a lot of opportunities to turn down awesome girls with crushes -- because Ruth hadn't seemed fazed in the slightest.
Except after that she stopped calling. Then she ducked his calls, and had her dad make up some obviously bullshit excuse about having mono. She basically vanished from the face of the earth.
And Lucas discovered he had not, in fact, hit the bottom of the self-loathing barrel.
He was a Class-A jerk.
***
"Please stop," Lucas says desperately as Ruth wipes her eyes with her wrist and if Ruth is crying then things must have gone to hell in ways he can't even imagine. Maybe Sam and his gang are...
Wait. Shit.
"Okay. Listen. How about this. Why don't you clean yourself up and--" put on a shirt that he couldn't see through "--and get a couple of things together, and you and I will clear out for a little while."
"Clear out?" Ruth echoes.
"Yeah." He stands. "Look, you don't have to be with Sam if you don't want to be, and if he made you think that then, well, fuck him. We'll get out of here and when you're less freaked you can call your dad and maybe he can--"
But Ruth just smiles. Except it's not one one of her usually sunny smiles, it's a smirk that looks right with her haircut and the new angles of her face and he really, really doesn't like it. "Lucas," she says, "you're wrong. I do have to be with Sam."
"Fuck that."
"No, really. And, y'know, he's not as bad as I thought."
"You said he was a creeper!"
"I was wrong. It's not like that."
"Then what is it like? Jesus, Ruth, just tell me what the hell is going on!"
Instead of answering, she gets up from the bed and throws her arms around him. Lucas hugs her back automatically, but he doesn't feel any less confused, and her body is different than the last time he hugged her which is adding to the weirdness of the whole thing. "Sleep on it," she says. "Just sleep on it, and try and remember?"
"Okay..."
"I have to go." She starts to climb out the window. Lucas makes a protesting noise as she does, and then she pauses and looks back up at him. "Hey, waitta sec. Are you saying it would bug you if Sam was my boyfriend?"
He gapes at her. "Yes!"
Ruth grins, and this time it's one of her normal, sunny grins. "Sweet."
Then she's gone, and Lucas smacks his forehead as he realizes what he just said.
***
He didn't do well without her, which was a whole new level of bad that Lucas hadn't even wanted to contemplate. Without his combat-boot-tripping Prozac he sank back into total wallowing depression. He started thinking about Mary all the time again: what she was doing, if she was with someone else, if she missed him, if she was sorry. Maybe Mary was sorry. Maybe she'd come back and still be in love with him and beg his forgiveness and...
...and he'd tell her to fuck off.
Right.
He even thought about going out and trying to find their old hangout spot, that meadow where he'd seen her sparkle in the sunlight for the first time and known that she absolutely, completely owned him, just to kick things and maybe set a very well-contained fire. But that would have required getting up from the sofa. Proactivity had not been Lucas Swan's strong suit for the last several months. He probably would have remained stuck to the couch stewing in his own angst until graduation if Charlie hadn't mentioned that he'd seen Ruth in Forks -- and that she was with Sam Uley and looked pretty upset.
That got Lucas up in a big hurry.
When he pulled into her driveway, Ruth had come out of the house before he'd closed the door of the truck. Go away, she'd said.
Lucas hadn't been able to close his mouth. It was raining, and Ruth was soaked to the bone and wearing nothing but an ancient tank top and torn draw-string pants that didn't even hit mid-thigh, which made it easy to see that in two weeks she'd gotten taller and leaner and lost every soft edge. Her hair was gone. It looked like she'd hacked it off with kitchen shears.
He glanced down at her bare feet and said, Where are your boots?
I broke them. Her voice was absolutely emotionless and she wouldn't look him in the eye. You have to leave.
Hey, wait a minute--
Now, Lucas.
My dad says he saw you with Sam Uley. Is that what this is about? Ruth flinched, and Lucas felt like someone had punched him in the gut. But you said--
It doesn't matter what I said. We can't be friends anymore. Go home and don't come back. She walked right back into her house and slammed the door.
And fuck, he'd thought he was done with that kind of hurting.
***
When he wakes up Lucas still has no idea what's going on. He tried, he really did, but he's got nothing.
He decides to go to La Push anyway and do what he should have done in the first place.
Lucas parks the truck in the Blacks' front yard and sees a bunch of guys over by the tree line, which on one hand is good, because he'd thought he was going to have to wait for hours or go to the beach or something. On the other hand, it pisses him off even more that they're hanging around outside Ruth's house like they have any right to be there.
As he crosses across the yard, he almost turns around. These guys really are huge. There's four of them and they're all half a head taller and outweigh him by about eighty pounds and they've got to be on steroids or something because holy shit. Ruth was right, he's gonna be flattened like a pancake.
Still, it's too late now.
The guys look at him curiously as he marches up. "Which one of you is Sam?" he demands.
The biggest one steps forward. Figures. "All right," says Lucas, and he doesn't squeak, which is at least a good start. "You and me. Let's go."
"...What?"
Oh, yeah, he's about to die. "You heard me."
Most of them seem too stunned to speak, which is not surprising considering that the part of Lucas' consciousness that is watching this scene from the outside is too horrified even to berate him, but the one to Sam's right starts to laugh derisively.
So Lucas hits him instead. And it fucking hurts, holy shit who knew throwing a punch hurt all the way up to your fucking elbow ow ow ow ow--
Then the dude starts to shake.
Sam yells something... but Lucas has no idea what it is because the dude fucking explodes and before Lucas can even process what he's seeing Ruth streaks in out of nowhere and--
"This is bullshit," he says blankly as the two wolves fight and claw their way into the forest.
"You got that right," says one of the other guys, and when he claps Lucas on the back Lucas falls to his knees.
***
Next: The Cliff Dive