Téméraire: A Rosalie Hale Fanfiction

CHAPTER XV: LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS

She lay in a particularly dense bed of grass somewhere deep in Bogachiel State Park, music flooding her mind as she cleared it of all thought and sense of being. The bubbles she blew out filled the air above her eyes, interrupting her view of the gloomy grey sky. If she tried hard enough, she could convince herself she had slipped through the cracks back to the sixties, a strange sense of nostalgia colouring every corner of her psychedelic daydream.

Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain, where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies. Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers, that grow so incredibly hiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

Her fingers moved lazily through the air, directing rainbow sheened bubbles to dance loops around one another like a conductor of an orchestra, her favourite trick. Round and round they moved, a swirling choreographed waltz of pretty, perfect bubbles.

Newspaper taxis appear on the shore, waiting to take you awaaaaay. Climb in the back with your head in the clouds and you're gone-

It should've been the perfect day, and yet, all good things had to come to an end.

The punctuated, repeated loud yowls interrupted the catchy chorus she had been waiting for, muffled but impossible to ignore. Her moment of serenity bursts just the same as the bubbles she had concentrated on keeping whole, splattering her with tiny specks of cold, soapy water. Her little childlike smile breaks into a disdainful scowl, nose crinkling up as the barely muffled sounds get louder. I should've gone camping alone.

Deciding enough was enough, Jules pulls herself up, eyes on the rocking tent on the other side of the unlit campfire from hers. She doesn't want to hear it, she doesn't even really want to approach it- but she knows it's what she must do as she pulls herself together and gets close enough they can hopefully hear her over themselves. "Hey?"

The rocking, graciously, ceases- but she wishes she kept her earphones in because she didn't need to hear their breathless pants. "I'm taking a hike off the river trail, if I'm not back by nightfall call someone."

She pivots to leave without waiting on a reply, picking up her pack and a water bottle and her notebook. Jules had a feeling they'd be waking up to sleeting rain come the morning, or sooner, but she doubted the lovebirds were going to tear themselves away from a chance for some privacy away from Leah's house that she shared with her family.

The mood has shifted now. There's a crooked, brittle line between disappointment and bitterness that cracks a little more every time her best friend convinces her that things have changed and proves they have not. Every time Leah notices the way her whole world spins around Sam and goes out of her way to spare some time for her best friend, only to somehow ruin it all over again. Jules knows she cannot blame Leah, cannot see her as something to own and to lose in the way she has so many others before. Sam was there first. Sam and Leah had been a package deal long before she had crossed their path, and it was not her place to feel as she did.

And so she trekked on through the deep gorge carved out by the loneliness only her best friend could cause within her. She wasn't in love with her best friend, her bitter jealousy was not possessive in nature. She did not picture herself at Leah's side as any more than the ever rarer moments the two shared alone, booming laughter in the night and an arm tossed roughly over her shoulders despite the way she towered over the pretty, tan girl. Secrets shared over a card game on the rickety back porch amongst the thick blanketing sound of crickets in the depths of summer, confessions they invested in one another like deposits in a bank vault. Leah Clearwater was easy, like the summer sun, like dripping ice cream and road trips in shitty cars that could stall at any given moment. Like blowing bubbles that glittered in the sunshine up above the cloud bank. And like the sun in Forks, she was temporary, she was brief, and she could not keep her to herself.