After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably about thirty seconds, I decided one of us really needed to say something. And it should probably be me, since I was the one suddenly standing in his doorway. I was the one wedging myself awkwardly back into his life.

His black hair was longer than it had ever been, and as tradition would have it, he was shirtless, shoeless, dressed only in a pair of faded black jeans. I noted that he looked like he hadn't shaved that morning and almost giggled at the thought of Jacob shaving. Thankfully, I was pretty sure my face stayed as expressionless as his was. His black eyes were locked on mine. I swallowed and half wondered why I hadn't prepared an opening.

"So... you still look like a total hippie. More so, even." I smiled. "Is it like... a look, Jake?"

He blinked twice in quick succession and then his eyes flickered downwards. He smiled at the carpet.

Before I was aware he had even moved, I was swept up in his arms, the tips of my sneakers just barely brushing the floor. Once my mind caught up with my body, I pushed into the embrace with an easy enthusiasm that felt like coming home.

He was still so warm.

He pulled back, his hands resting on my upper arms. "Wow." he said simply, beaming down at me.

Before he could follow that up a phone rang somewhere behind him and he was gone.

"Can't you just move like a normal person?" I muttered under my breath. He was already talking to whoever called. "Everybody's got super-speed but me."

A tiny part of my mind couldn't help but follow a hurried conversation about... what? Sports? No. Cars, I think. Sports-cars? Female sports-cars? What?

Absently, I ran my hand along the top of the small IKEA bookcase directly to my right. The room was clean, but messy. There was stuff everywhere. I ran my fingers along the bumpy edge of a tall pile of rather battered spiral-back notebooks. Something caught on my nail. I pulled and it pulled with me. Tights. Expensive ones. And good old accident-prone Bella had laddered them. I turned around guiltily to see if Jacob had noticed.

Wait a minute, tights. I wrenched them out from behind the books and smirked to myself.

Just then, Jake covered the receiver with his left hand and glanced over at me. "Hey do you want something to drink?" he asked.

I didn't answer that. Smiling knowingly, I held up the tights, letting them dangle from one crooked finger. "You're seeing someone?"

"I guess." he replied non-committally.

"Well don't sound too enthusiastic," I teased, but he didn't hear me.

"Yeah ok sure." he spoke into the receiver. "Right."

While he talked, something equal parts wonderful and terrifying started to build in the back of my mind.

"Right, definitely. I gotta go, man. Yeah." Jacob hung up.

I felt my eyes narrow as the thought finally occurred to me. "Oh my God. Jake. Did you... imprint on someone?" I asked, a trace of awe in my voice. I thought I saw his eyes shine briefly (with excitement?) at my words.

He smiled and shook his head. "No, Bells. I told you that's not going to happen."

I rolled my eyes. "Because you're just so different from every other member of the pack?"

He just stared at me for a moment, then shrugged. "Anyway no. No imprinting. I just have a lot of sex with a lot of women." he announced, turning away and walking the three short steps to the other corner of the tiny dorm room.

"Ah." I said, then filled an awkward pause with something along the lines of "Jacob Black, werewolf Casanova."

He grinned and flipped open an ancient mini-fridge. "Well I do seem to get a lot of action these days." He turned back to face me. "Maybe it is a wolf thing."

I snorted. "Yeah, I can't imagine what else it could be" I blurted out, instantly regretting the commentary and snapping my eyes away from his dark broad planes of his bare shoulders.

He smiled slowly and took a step towards me, the open fridge forgotten. "Well I'm not usually half-naked when I meet people. They tend not to let you into bars without a shirt and shoes."

"Bars?" I asked, a little too incredulously, mostly for something to say. I qualified with "I mean, do you have a fake ID or something? You're not even 21 yet."

He laughed a little at that. "What, you think I get carded Bella?"

With a weak smile I looked over at the wall on my left, mostly for somewhere to look. "I guess not." My eyes flickered down and found the bed before darting back to his. Things had suddenly become, well, dangerous, for want of a better word. There were only two steps between us and I knew how fast he could move. I thought about backing up, but then decided to concentrate on just breathing and trying to smile innocuously, willing him not to charge on me. And he didn't. He just turned back to the fridge and pulled out two cans of soda.

He walked casually forward holding one out for me. "Sorry, it's cold. Not quite like old times."

I smiled fondly, lost for a second in the memory of those horrible, beautiful months in La Push, sheltered in Jacob's garage, drinking warm soda and fixing up bikes.

And then I was in his arms and he had charged and he was kissing me. The sudden shock of his burning mouth on mine made it impossible to form thoughts. His huge hands pressed firmly into my lower back, dragging my stomach against his and the warmth of his body seemed to radiate out all over me, covering every inch of me, even the parts he wasn't touching. This was far worse than the hug in the doorway and for a second I panicked that he might never stop and that I might never be able to stop him. But then he was stopping, or slowing at least. His lips peeled gently away and his arms relaxed enough for me to move mine.

"What the fuck, Jacob!" I punched him lightly in the arm - there was no point in self-harm when he wasn't really going to feel it anyway.

He stepped back and laughed - "What the fuck, Bella!" - and flopped back onto the bed, grinning. "Since when do you say 'fuck'? You were always more of a 'Holy crow' kind of girl."

There was so much condescension in his voice and face, like he'd somehow forgotten that I was the one who was older for God's sake. I tried to smile dryly. "Maybe since you started fucking a whole lot of girls?"

He smirked. "I never said I fucked them. Maybe we..." - he paused for effect - "... make love."

I rolled my eyes, more disgusted by the expression than anything else, and sat down on the edge of the bed. "You know, you're even more clever and funny than I remembered." I said, my tone sarcastic. And then I laid back on the bed next to him and giggled a little.

"So I'm guessing you like it here?"

"I'm guessing I do."

I turned towards him on my side, studying his profile. "And you don't miss Billy and Sam and all the guys too much?" I wondered, well aware of the inanity of my question.

"How much is too much?" he asked.

"Maybe even a little bit is too much. Sometimes." I said quietly.

He turned on his side to face me, smiling far too innocently. "What do you want from me Bells?" The smile was just inches from laughter. "Another cuddle?"

Oh my God. Oh my God.

I didn't need to say it out loud. I sat up abruptly, beyond irritated now and a little embarrassed. He laughed lightly.

After a moment he sat up, silently as always, but I could feel his weight shifting on the bed. "Hey" he said softly, and gently but firmly pulled me backwards and into his arms. Somehow it seemed silly to object, as though "Hey" was some kind of undeniably sensible argument for physical contact.

We lay in silence for a minute or two, feeling the mood change too rapidly. All of a sudden I was thinking of those dark moments I had spent in the water, so long ago now, when I had jumped off the cliff at La Push. When I hadn't been able to wait for him. For either of them. I could almost feel the thick, inevitable pull of the tide, completely in charge of my body, completely subduing my mind. I struggled to form a whisper against Jacob's chest.

"I'm still with him, you know."

"I know," he said quietly. And after a moment he added "You kind of stink, Bells."

I laughed softly and it hummed through his skin where my ear pressed against him.

"I'm sorry." I whispered sadly.

"It's cool, I'll just have to buy you some fancy french perfume for your birthday or something."

I laughed again, a little louder this time, and turned my face up to his chin. "No, I mean -"

"I know." He cut me off. "You're still alive. That'll do."

I didn't know what to say to that. I couldn't feel relief that my being alive soothed him, because I knew that it was still only a matter of time before I'd take that away from him too.

"Anyway, how could I not know" he said quietly, reaching down and taking my left hand in his. He twisted the gold band on my third finger gently.

The waves curled around me, swimming through my paralyzed mind, building my blood steadily into a heavy wall of sound that cut out abruptly when he spoke.

"Anyway I heard you're at Dartmouth? Do you get back to Forks often? What are you doing here? What courses are you taking?"

I noticed that he sandwiched the difficult question in between the other relatively simple ones. I sighed and ordered my replies a little more logically. "Dartmouth, yes, Forks, probably not as often as I should, majoring in Psychology and..." I hesitated, not even quite sure what the truth was. "And I'm here because we're here."

He squeezed my hand a little. "Oh. I thought maybe you missed me."

I swallowed. "Of course I missed you."

He was quiet for a moment, brought his other hand around and spread my left one out over both of his. Why were my fingers suddenly so interesting?

"So how the hell did you get into Dartmouth anyway?" he asked, just a little too incredulously.

"Uhhh... I'm a smart kid?" I replied in mock-annoyance.

"Yeah, yeah. So smart you could spend the whole of senior year running around with vampires and wolves and still ace finals. Bella's a geeeenius!" he teased.

"What?!" I exclaimed, wriggling around so we were lying facing each other. "I am. They turned me down at Mensa because they didn't want the other members to get a complex. Seriously."

He chuckled and pulled me into one of his violent hugs and I smiled. A proper, big, unguarded smile that he didn't get to see.

"So I'm a shrink-in-waiting. What are you taking?" I asked when he released me.

"I'm playing the field for now. History, philosophy, an introduction to the modern novel - "

"You're taking intro to the modern novel?"

"Sure, why not," he smiled nonchalantly. "I'm actually taking a course on French symbolist poetry too."

I just gaped at him. "Poetry, Jake? Really?"

He laughed at my open-mouthed stare. "Yes! Really." he replied. "In fact maybe I'm really into poetry. Maybe I always have been Bells." He grinned wickedly. "Maybe... I wrote tons and tons of angsty, miserable and like - " he laughed as he spoke " - erotic poetry about you when I was just a kid and it's all hidden under the floorboards under by bed back in La Push, just waiting to be made public in a posthumous biogr-"

"Oh my God stop it!" I hissed, pushing crossly at his left shoulder. He smirked.

"Cos you know Bella, the way things are going, I guess you'll still be around to enjoy all the attention when I'm dead famous and well, dead. And I'll be looking down at you. Pointing and laughing. Kind of like this." He pulled away from me to extend a mocking forefinger and laughed exaggeratedly.

I yanked the pillow out from under his head and started hitting him with it. Futile little feathered blows, that only made him laugh more.

"And they'll have readings of my early work. The Bella Swan years. And you'll go and sit up the back and like, weep discreetly."

"SHUT UP!" I laughed despite myself.

"Oh dark rose of my love
Who flowers in midni-

I shoved the pillow into his face and he ducked away, breathless with laughter.

"Caressing the hot molten core of my being
With your wil-"

I squealed and covered my ears, turning away from him in horror and he grabbed me and pulled me back against his body, his arms crossing securely over my stomach. I could feel his chest shaking a little as his mirth subsided.

His hot mouth brushed my earlobe, the same way as it had done so long ago, outside a tent in a clearing in a now-distant forest, in a now-distant world. "Don't worry Bella," he whispered, "I promise, never ever to write a soulful, angst-ridden, erotic love poem about you. Ok?" I could feel his lips curve into a smile.

My breath hitched and seemed to ripple through my body and then his. All I could do was echo him.

"Ok."