First things first. This is a B/J ship. If you don't like Bella, or Jacob, don't read it. Simple as that. Second, I don't write much these days, so I am on my own here folks. Rusty, no beta, no pre-reader. Third. There is no posting schedule. Some chapters are done and will come fast, others will wait. I am writing for fun and to stretch my mind, and fingers again. I do this when I have time. Time is the keyword here.

So, to all my old and new readers, Welcome! This is just a fluffy bit of fun. Not much in this fic for tears or angst, only a cup or two. There will be, quite literally, fluffy bits of pink cotton candy clouds and fluff.

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Chapter 1: Deluge of Beer

"You sent him an invitation?" I stared at Edward in disbelief. Nothing had been sent out ... yet. Stacks of pristine white cards sat in their envelopes on the desk, half of them addressed, each carefully penned in Esme's beautiful hand, waiting to stamped and delivered in next week's mail. "How could you?" I asked.

"Why does it matter?" Edward asked, sounding indifferent to the situation. "I thought he should have a choice. You of all people ought to understand."

"A choice? Are you serious?" Anger filled me. For the first time in my life, I understood the meaning of seeing red. It didn't matter that I had planned to invite the Black's wedding anyway. What mattered was that it was my place to do it. It was my choice to make, not Edward's to give. The Black's were family. My family to put a fine point on it. Blood didn't matter.

I'd already caused the pack enough trouble. I wanted to handle it my own way. To hand carry an invitation to Billy and let him decide what to do. Instead, Edward had gone behind my back and now had the nerve to stand there looking passively smug.

"You already won me. We're getting married. Don't you think it's time for these childish games to stop?"

Edward was still, with only the hint of a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. It was then I fully comprehended how cruel a the nature of a vampire could be.

"You won't be mine until after we're married. Not until after I've changed you."

Then he walked away, hands in his pockets, whistling a tune as though he didn't have a care in the world. All I could do was sit there, stunned and angry. My heart ached for Jacob, and the misery I'd inadvertently caused. It seemed to be all my wedding was doing, causing pain all over the place. It had become the cause of my own.

The invitation debacle was the beginning of the end, but in truth, my relationship with Edward was already over. It had been ever since Jacob kissed me on the mountaintop.

-Bella August, 2006

oooOOOooo

Rain came down in buckets, causing the worn out wipers to work overtime across the windshield. There hadn't been a town for an over an hour; not a single sign of life anywhere. The needle on the gas gauge had been flirting with empty for the last twenty miles.

Only a birthday party for her father could have induced Bella Swan into driving back to Washington, and the nightmares it contained. Now, caught somewhere in the far western reaches of Montana, she wondered if it was really worth it.

It had been years since she'd last visited to Forks. Years she'd needed in order to grow, change and forget. Her hometown held too many ghosts, and not just metaphorically. Bella was more than familiar with the real monsters that go bump in the night-they were intimately acquainted. A cold, half-moon shaped scar decorating her wrist served as a daily, painful reminder of the not-so-distant past wherein magic of the supernatural held her life hostage.

"Damn it!" Rain lashed down angrily in heavy sheets. The winding highway had turned into a country road, and for miles there was nothing. Not a single sign of life anywhere, or so much as a road marker to tell where you were.

"Almighty father above, please, send me a sign, a smoke signal, an angel-anything to know I'm not going to die on some godforsaken piece of asphalt in the the middle of nowhere! I promise, I'll be good. I'll quit smoking and guzzling coffee. No more weekly drinks with Tia. Just please, please, please! Let there be a service station soon!"

Thunder rolled and boomed overhead, as though God were banging the gavel of judgement. Quite suddenly, a crack of lightning tore across the sky, tearing open the blackness in one wide, fiery finger to point the way. It lasted only moments, but long enough for Bella to see the shadowy outline of a town ahead.

A mile, maybe a little more, she thought, just as the needle wavered and dipped far below the empty marker, settling itself well beyond the orange no-man's land on the gauge. The town was so small it wasn't registering on the GPS, and with only a drop or two left in the tank, pulling over to check wasn't an option. Somewhere in the back of her head, her father's training kicked in, and the sound of his voice whispered in her ear. 'Drive for mileage. Take your foot off the gas when you go downhill, let it coast. Drop your speed a little. You'll get there five minutes late instead of being stranded on the side of the road.'

The Jeep was running on fumes when Bella crossed over the city limits, and the engine spluttered, giving a final wheeze as she turned into a dimly lit gas station. Blue Neon lit the window. 'E&D's Full Service & Repair'. The glow was just enough to cast light on a closed sign hanging on the door.

"Shit," Bella muttered, rubbing her hands over her face in frustration. "Great. Now what am I supposed to do?" As if God decided to answer, another bolt of lightning tore up the sky, illuminating a building across the street. Pabst and Old Style signs blinked in the windows, and in the parking lot was a couple of cars and one lone truck.

It was the truck which caught her attention. An old rusty red Chevy, much like the one Charlie had bought from Billy when she'd first moved back to Forks.

Faded memories of warm soda, the scent of peppermint and stale tobacco invaded her senses, sending a wave of calm across her heart. That old truck had been a talisman both literally and figuratively. The truck was one of the few places she'd always felt safe. A big old hunk of steel strong enough to take down a stitka spruce, ferry her safely back and forth from Forks to LaPush, and into all encompassing peace of Jacob Black's makeshift garage. Bella took it as a sign.

Somewhere inside that bar, there's help-or at least, maybe a can of gas.

Pulling her jacket over her head, Bella left the relative comfort of the Jeep to sprint across the street. She ran like the devil was chasing her, never pausing to consider that maybe he was. That part of her life was over, and she wasn't looking back. Fear didn't rule her these days, and now the crack of thunder was only that-nature's way of refreshing the earth-instead of reason for vampires to play-or hunt.

Twenty-seven years old and the same clumsiness that mapped her body with bruises as a youth reared its ugly head when she slipped, toppling sideways enough for the cell phone in her coat pocket to slip out, straight into a puddle.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!", she swore, pausing mid-stride to fish the soggy mess out of the water.

Soaked to the skin, and cold, Bella tore at the heavy door handle, thankful for the warmth when she stepped inside, along with the fact that it was still open. Trickles of water dripped from her hair, coursing down her back in tiny streams, carving their way into rivers across her skin, flowing down her arms, and into the cleavage of the tank top she wore. Bella had forgotten how icy the rain could be this far west. It was only the start of autumn, but the deeper she'd gotten into Montana, the cooler the air had become. The streets of Chicago had still been holding tight to summer when she locked up her apartment the day before. It was a balmy eighty-degrees that morning, warm enough to sip coffee on the balcony while watching joggers along the lakeshore.

I definitely didn't pack for the weather, she thought, knowing she'd have to stop somewhere in Port Angeles to pick up a few sweaters and an extra pair of jeans. Taking one step forward, the socks on her feet squished inside her shoes. Probably need some galoshes too.

Bella scanned the room without really taking in her surroundings. What she needed right now was a phone, or the bartender, whichever she could spot first. A couple of middle-aged men hovered around a green-felted pool table, and another sat at the long, black lacquered bar directly in front of her. The one at the bar glanced in her direction, tearing his eyes away from the flat screen mounted on the wall.

"Need some help, young lady?"

"Is there a payphone?" she asked, wondering if that was even possible in an age where everyone carried smartphones in their back pockets.

The man craned his neck, gesturing to a hallway just past the pool tables, with the word 'Restrooms' burned into a plank of wood hanging above it.

"Thanks," she tossed, squishing across the floor. She paused for a moment at the opening, eyes darting to the old silver and black phone hanging on the wall. The ladies room was just to the left of it. Feeling another drip slide down her back, she pushed open the door, hoping there was more than some dirty old towel on a roller to dry off with.

It wasn't much, just another bathroom, but it was neat and clean, with a roll of paper towels hanging next to the sink. Bella thanked her lucky stars, and stripped off her coat, tossing it over the hook on the door. Glimpsing herself in the mirror, she was shocked to see her bedraggled state. "I look like a circa eighties rock star, complete with bad hair," she noted, talking to herself, quickly scrubbing what was left of black eyeliner from her lashes.

By the time she'd finished, it felt like she'd wrung a gallon of water out of her hair and shirt. Bella hated to put it back on, but at least she was a little drier than when she'd started, not to mention neater. She debated on whether or not to put on some fresh mascara, knowing that in all likelihood she'd end up back out in the rain, with another couple of black eyes from it. Then again, she was going to have to sit in a strange bar, waiting only god knew how long for help. Might as well look halfway decent.

Armed with a handful of change she'd dug from the bottom of her purse, Bella marched out of the bathroom, hoping it was enough to make a call. It only took a minute to search the wrinkled yellow pages for a service station. There were only two in town, and one of them already had her Jeep parked in front of it.

The old man that had been perched at the bar brushed past her shoulder, and like the daughter of any good cop (or a girl who'd been chased by vampires too long), Bella watched him breeze a step past her, to stand at another door, cracked open at the end of the hallway. "Need any help down there?" he shouted.

"Nope, I got it," someone yelled back. Through the sliver of an opening, she could just make out a staircase.

"Went down there to get more beer ten minutes ago," the old man grumbled, as if doing so would make whoever was in the basement move faster. "Startin' to think he got lost."

With the receiver cradled on her shoulder, Bella dumped the quarters, nickels and dimes in the slot. She couldn't help but laugh, thinking about what Charlie would say to all this. First he'd talk about the good old days before everyone had a cell, and then he'd remind her how useless they were as soon as you dropped them or the battery died. After that, he'd reminisce about the days when making a call only cost a dime. For a second, Bella debated on calling her father collect, just so he'd get the thrill of having a good old fashioned laugh. Of course, he'd probably have the local sheriff on the line in a matter of minutes, the gas station opened and the oil on the Jeep checked. It would also ruin the surprise party his fishing buddies were throwing in honor of his fiftieth birthday.

Whatever thoughts she had of calling Charlie or either service station were short lived thanks to a violent crack of thunder outside. Electricity shot through the phone, causing Bella to scream in terror, and drop the receiver from her tingling hand. In that same moment, the lights flickered, then went out, plunging the entire bar into pitch black.

A footfall sounded behind her, and Bella whirled, arms covering her face to fend off who was in the hallway with her only to smack into something hard and heavy. The sound of a body and breaking glass hit the floor, and from somewhere in the building, the whir of a generator kicking in echoed off the walls.

When the lights came back on, Bella was on the floor, surrounded by broken bottles in a puddle of beer. In that second she knew, the lone attacker-or so she'd imagined-was nothing more than a bartender who had been busy pulling stock from the basement.

"Shit! Shit!" she cried, scrambling backward out of the foam. "I'm so sorry! It's all my fault-"

"Bells?"

At the sound of his voice, all the air left her lungs. It had been almost ten years since she'd last heard that name pass from his lips. Ten long years in which she'd wondered and dreamed about the boy who'd been her protector, her best friend. Bella closed her eyes and remembered.

When she opened them, a flood of warmth washed over her soul. Kneeling in front of her, knees drenched in beer, he stared back at her through the same big brown eyes she remembered so well. Eyes that told the story of a lifetime's worth of unwavering devotion, love and friendship.

Eyes full of amusement, dancing with laughter when a smile wider than the Grand Canyon spread across his lips. "Still clumsy I see."

"Jake, is it really you?"

"Yeah, it's me, Bells."

Without hesitation, she leapt forward, heedless of broken glass or dirty floors, to find herself enveloped in the strong arms of the one person who had sheltered her since youth. Except this time, it was she who initiated it.