Meet Me at the Borderline // Jacob X Edward

5: Silver Lining

It got easier as the weeks went by.

Jacob caught up on his sleep, and his appetite along with his personality returned slowly but surely. He visited the borderline less and less. Going from every day to a few days a week to only once a week. Every Wednesday.

Rebecca married. She left with her husband. Apparently, Hawaii was calling her name. Jacob theorises it was to get away from the shit show their life was turning out to be.

Rachel went to college. Good for her.

Sam stayed away from Jacob. Something happened with his girlfriend, Leah, and they split up.

Jacob still had his friends, though, which was a silver lining. He still found it difficult—knowing what was running through their veins, but Jacob disassociated himself from that part of him. He had been disassociating a lot, actually. But as his personality returned, and the more he ignored the storm brewing up their future, the less it happened.

He got by.

﹌﹌﹌

October passed, and the autumn season drew nearer to an end as November dragged on.

The rain was coming down heavily. The mud turned to sludge and dry crunchy leaves moistened to soggy mush.

Wednesday.

Jacob wasn't expecting anything. Nothing ever happened. But he waited. For ten minutes he waited. He prepared his muscles to move but only resulted in a twitch when a movement behind the sheen of downpour stopped him.

"Jacob," Edward said simply. Softly.

The two boys stood on their respective sides of the borderline. Ten feet apart from each other.

"You were gone," Jacob commented quietly. His soaking mop of dark hair hanging and sticking to the skin of his face. His coffee-brown eyes refused to meet supernatural amber.

"It's better if we stay away from each other. I'm sure your family explained why," Edward said. Not quite in reply to Jacob's underlying question.

"You said I needed to trust you..." he reminded Edward, who saw the pained image Jacob recalled in his mind of Sam's snout pushing Jacob away—hollering out to the young boy to trust what he say's. "Can I?"

Jacob had lost everything. His whole life had been a lie, and he couldn't trust anyone anymore. He could never be normal. He had no choice.

It was a simple enough question. Edward knew the answer, but he felt a deep need to lie to Jacob. To tell him, "Yes, you can." Give any pathetic attempt at dodging "No."

"I do not think I deserve your trust." It wasn't a lie.

"So they're right then?" Jacob snapped back. "What they said about you. Your family."

"...I try not to let them be right."

"Have they ever been right?" Jacob finally glimpsed between the drenched curtains of his hair to lock his uncertain eyes with Edward's.

Yes.

"...Jacob...You're only a kid. I can't-" Edward tried to ramble out but was quickly cut off.

"Tell me the truth! They said-..." Jacob looked back down. His fists clenched. "They said that one day...I'm probably going to grow up to be-..." His voice got caught in his throat. He swallowed down the lump and tried again, "be one of those...things...Like Sam. And that I was designed to-"