Sorry I've been gone for so long. Thank you all for your patience!

We filed into Jake's house. I have no idea where his father was, but he was probably off with Bella's father, fishing and eating chips while talking about some really pointless thing.

Jacob decided to serve up some pie and cream puffs, and we all sat around the table, the only sound the forks clinking against plates and the sounds of people chewing. After a few moments of this comfortable silence, Jake decided to speak up.

"So, you guys, what's up?"

Sam's response: "Nothing much. You?"

Me: "Oh, just the usual. Thinking depressing thoughts, snarling viciously inwardly at everyone who's stupid, mainly someone who's sitting in this room and whose name starts with a J...You know, the usual."

Jake: "Oh, of course. And Emily, too, right? Although I'm sure you do your best to hide those from Sam, right?"

Sam stared at me. He was confused, yes. Me? I was angry. Angry at Jacob for revealing that. Angry at Jacob for ruining this perfect mood. But at the same time, I understood. You know, he's JAKE. He's very direct. It's not like he's going to sit there for hours on end and make small chitchat about the weather while this big topic is hanging in the air over us, waiting to be discovered and discussed to its full potential. No. Jake doesn't sit there and just take it. Jake does something. And in that way, I will say that Jake is much better than that stupid bloodsucker that that human girl is so madly in love with. That stupid leech would go and sit down for hours, days, weeks, months, YEARS even, just to get to a singular topic while discussing everything from agricultural gross national products of the country to elephant sex before getting to what he finally wanted to get to in the first place. You know, most people don't have that sort of time on their hands. And Jake likes to take care of things. (Somehow, the idea of Jacob talking intellectually about the topic of elephant sex just doesn't...appear to me at this current moment. But you never know. In a few years, Jake could be a professor at UC Berkeley and talking quite smartly about this very topic.)

Finally Sam spoke. "Is this true, Leah?"

I gazed at him evenly, my heart thumping in my chest. "Yeah. I guess so." I was quite proud of how steady my voice sounded.

And then, instead of yelling at me, he said, quietly and just the tiniest bit sadly, "Why, Leah, why? Why hide from me? Are you ashamed?"

I averted my eyes then, and said, "It's not that I'm ashamed of it, it's just...I'm jealous. I'm jealous that Emily could have you, I'm jealous that she is with you right now, I'm jealous that I can't be with you because she's with you. I....it's selfish, and I know that. I'm jealous of that. But I guess I'm not as jealous as I was before. Before I absolutely hated her and I wanted to do everything in my power to make her die, to eliminate her, to wipe her off the face of the planet so that I could have you back. Back then, I would have done absolutely anything to get you back. But now, I'm better. I don't need you as much anymore."

Sam sighed quietly, and then said, "I know you don't need me as much anymore. And I know that it's hard to not be jealous when someone you love gets together with someone else that you love right before your eyes. And you know what? I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, Leah. I shouldn't have done that to you. I shouldn't have done anything like that to you. You didn't deserve it. And...I know that this looks like I'm trying to move the blame away from myself, but...it was out of my control, Lee. I couldn't do anything about it. It was like Quil with Claire. He couldn't help it, and now he loves her like no other and he's probably planning to elope with her before she's a teenager so that he can impregnate her multiple times and they can have lots of little werehuman babies. It was like that...except without the werehuman babies."

Meanwhile, Jake, that schemer! was sitting at the head of the table, looking like he was holding court and occasionally nodding and "mm-hming" every once in a while. At the end of Sam's rather long speech, Jake piped up and said, "Well, that was nice. So, Leah, how does this make you feel?"

Okay. Cut. Excuse me. I just have to say something. My boyfriend Jake is many things. He is NOT, however, Dr. Phil or Oprah Winfrey or any other psychologist that goes on TV and asks these random pointless questions only to discover that the person is sexually retarded because they were sexually abused when they were little kids. Jake is NOT like that. And thankfully, that's a good thing. Probably one of the only good things about him. Okay. Back to the story now.

I eyed Jake rather distastefully, and then turned back to Sam and said, "Well, the part about Quil is true, but you hurt me, Sam. You hurt me."

Sam looked at me, then quietly smiled, and said, "I know, Leah. I know I hurt you. And...I guess what I'm trying to ask is...Forgive me?"

I grinned at that now, and responded, "Of course."

Unlike last time, there were no tears, no feelings of betrayal, no bad thoughts. And also unlike last time, Jake smiled and reached over the table to shake Sam's hand and then leaned back over to me to give me a hug. A hug to add the final dab of Neosporin so that the scar would fade away and leave a silky white mark on my heart.

Something I will always remember about that day is the cream puffs. They were the best cream puffs I had ever had in my life, and I remember wondering where Jake got them.

To this day, he's refused to tell me, but the one thing I remember about those delicious puffs besides the fact that they were sinfully tasty, was this:

The ivory white silk of the cream inside looked like my bedroom sheets. They looked like the bedroom sheets that Jake got me, well, us, for my birthday. The white sheets that looked like a new beginning, the white sheets that replaced the plaid ones of Sam's. The white sheets that reminded me of pillowy, soft Wonderbread.

The white sheets that looked perfectly alright in the lavender and blue room, the sheets that fit in perfectly with the brown furniture that looked like a darker version of peanut butter.

And so, in this room of Jake and mine's, everything was okay. The peanut butter and jelly sandwich was back. With a few slices of apple on the side.