There's Witches In Those Mountains

s i x

*****************AUTHOR'S NOTE*****************

Here's a link to a playlist that accompanies this entire story, updated DAILY.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/40fNHonHOnIPYwby75jhmH

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Lydia pulled Jacob into her bedroom and shut the door behind her. "Jacob, I'm so so sorry that you had to see that," she paced over to the bed and straightened the blanket so that it laid flat against the mattress. "Honestly, she and PawPaw had made jokes about you coming over and it being dangerous, but I had zero idea that she would react like that. I've never seen her break out in a sweat like that over anything."

Jacob sat down on her bed and sighed. "It's okay, those sort of things I'm used to."

She sat down at her desk and pulled her biology notebook out of her backpack. She opened the drawer beside her and pulled out a pillar candle and lit it. "You don't know MawMaw very well, though. She can tell when something isn't right. That's how she would warn me about the people I used to make friends with when I was little. She hadn't said anything about it in so long that I had no clue that she still had the ability to read someone's aura like that. It's frightening. Even I was scared watching her react that way, and I've lived with her pretty much my entire life."

Lydia heard Jacob let out a sigh, flipping open his notebook. "Well, at any rate, Lydia, it's not a big deal. I'm used to it."

She looked over at him. He gave her a weak smile. She could tell that he felt so hurt by what he was hearing, but it was a hurt that he knew all too well. If she was going to pursue a relationship with him, she had to get to know this boy on a personal level and stop trying to distance herself. At the very least, they could be close friends.

She rose from her chair and went over to sit beside him on her bed. "Now, let me see those notes you took today."

He smiled and flipped to the page about plasma membranes. She groaned on the inside about it, but nonetheless started scribbling down his notes.

She picked up her notebook and read a line from her page: "'The plasma membrane is selectively permeable; as in, it regulates flow of materials into or out of the cell. There are two portions of the membrane: the phospholipid bilayer and proteins.' Now, tell me, Jacob, how does this make any sort of sense?"

He smiled. "I'm not going to lie to you, I've taken this biology course for twenty years now. If you want, I've kept my notes from the last 20 years if you want to use them as your own."

Lydia pondered this to herself. She considered it cheating, but she had so much trouble with learning anything related to science. "You know what? Yeah, give me those notes. and maybe you can even tutor me a little."

He smiled. "I'm not sure about that, Lydia. That would require us to hang out more and exist on a basis that is more than professional."

"Jacob, I scrapped the idea of being nothing more than acquaintances a long time ago when you saw me naked. I was merely trying to protect myself and my identity. You can understand that, right?" He nodded. She continued, putting her hand on his knee. "I'm very attracted to you, Jacob. I don't know if it's because I truly feel like you're this attractive, or because you're playing some Jedi mind trick on me with your vampire powers, but I like you. A lot. But I don't want to move so fast with you just because I feel a certain way about you."

He leaned a little closer to her and for once she didn't fight it. "So, if I told her you that I really wanted to kiss you right now, you're saying you wouldn't want to kiss me back?"

Lydia gulped and shook her head. "That's not what I'm saying at all." She closed the gap between them and kissed him. His lips felt cool yet soft, like the rest of the his body was. He pulled away from her and lifted his hand up to caress her face. She blushed underneath his fingers.

"We really should slow things down, Jacob," Lydia offered. "Any relationship we have would be based on lust and nothing more, and frankly I want something I bit more emotional to it." She grabbed his hand and held it tight in hers. "You know what I mean?"

He nodded. "I really want to keep seeing you, Lydia."