Writer in the Dark - J. HALE

65 - ᴀɴɴᴏᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴꜱ

"ARE YOU seriously telling me that I missed out on Bella fighting Jake?" Athena exclaimed as she drove down a partially winding road, with Luna sitting next to her.

"If you weren't so busy with Jas-" Luna burst into laughter as Athena started to pelt pokes into her arm, stopping the insinuation and uncomfortable for her topic immediately. "Okay okay! I get it," she laughed, moving as far as away from the driver's seat as she could.

She frowned, placing her hand back onto the steering wheel, "At least tell me it wasn't that good of a fight."

Luna chuckled, raising a brow as she looked out of the window. "No, it was pretty good. Very shouty, very dramatic and awfully cinematic," she replied, not even bothering to hinder the description for her benefit.

"Lucifer," she grumbled, annoyed to have missed such an event. "I can't believe he imprinted on a baby, that's messed up on so many levels."

"Tell me about it. I mean he was attracted to Bella because of her egg or whatever but surely that means he was somewhat attracted to Edward at the wedding, sperm wise," Luna sighed, taking her hair out of the pinned updo it had been in for the majority of the evening

Athena turned and started to laugh, imagining the absolute fury that Jake would feel within himself for being attracted to Edward. "I can see it now, Enemies to lovers arc with about one hundred and fifty thousand words, tonnes of angst and hatred," she laughed even harder and Luna soon joined in, the disturbing picture finding its way into her mind too.

"Oh I do love your writer mind," Luna laughed, jokingly hoping she never choose to actually write such a book. Though it would be a rather interesting read. "Anyway, why did you miss the fight? Did you give him the book?"

Athena sucked in a breath, the ghost of the smile that had been plastered on her face since the night before beginning to reoccur. "I did," she grinned, not bothering to turn her head as she answered.

"I take it went well then, given the fact that you haven't started throwing boulders down the hills as a way of catharsis," Luna chuckled.

She turned to her, eyes wide in outrage, "Lu! I told you that in confidence, it is not a thing you can use to make fun."

"I'm sorry, it's just hilarious to me," she shrugged as Athena looked back to the road, swerving out of the way of a bird on the edge.

"You cannot have an opinion until you try it out," Athena argued, deciding not to pay it any attention for once. The smile then returned as she created a plan in her mind, "Tell you what, next night out we're going to the top of a hill and you're going to throw rocks and then try and make fun of me."

Luna thought about it for a moment then shrugged as she made her decision, "Alright alright, bet."

-

Athena and Luna half stumbled into the Cullen house after both trying to walk in the door at the same time. It happened more often than anyone would think, given the heightened senses and tendency to notice the smaller things before they even happened. Athena just didn't care to notice if she was going to run into her, they had that type of friendship where those sorts of things would end in a barrel of laughs that made the slight humiliation of stumbling through a door bearable. "Please don't tell me you two figured out a way to get alcohol into your systems," Rosalie almost chuckled as she walked past.

Athena and luna, still both laughing, righted themselves and then shut the door behind them. "Us drinking would be absolute carnage," Luna laughed, the very image sending her into even more laughter.

"The inability to drink is both a blessing and a curse," Athena agreed as she pulled a comfy jumper that she had left on the bannister over her head.

"Hey maybe if you could drink you wouldn't have to th-"

"Another book!" she interrupted, a joyful grin spreading on her face.

"Awh come on! It's funny!" Luna laughed but Athena just ignored her, instead of walking up the stairs to try and find Jasper. She checked Alice's room first then she told her that he went into his room so she changed the direction of her travels there. She knocked briefly then poked her head around the side of the door, just as he looked up.

"Have fun?" he asked with a smile as she walked into the room, grabbing the bottom of her sleeve with her hand.

She smiled and nodded as she sat down next to him, briefly kissing his cheek "Plus Lu owes me two more books now," she grinned and let her gaze drift around the room, taking in the usual comforting sight of his room. Instead, her eyes forced on a book, cover faced down to the table yet she recognised it from a mile away. "Did you get to reading it?"

He nodded, "I did. It's... I don't even have the words."

She chuckled, brow rasing by an unmistakable degree, "Wow, didn't think I'd ever render you speechless Whitlock. "

It was his turn to raise a brow, finally not having to wonder whether she had pieced his actions together. "Ever wonder why I never talked to you on your first day at the school?"

Her eyes widened as she took in the information, a grin that she was forced to look down to the floor to hide pulling at her face. No matter how much she tried to smother it with her teeth or her lips it just wouldn't disappear. She forced herself to frown as she shook her head of the many swirling thoughts in her mind. Then she looked back up at him, trying not to fade away after seeing his slight smirk as she asked. "Did you like the ending?"

"It's annoying," he sighed.

"Apparently so," she laughed, having read that review thousands of times before. It felt different coming from him though, a defiant good different. "I just think it's a good assessment of life, their romance ended in tragedy and they only get to be near each other on eclipses."

With that, he picked up the book and flicked to the very back page. "Life is never perfect," he read off a little clear post-it that he had written on next to the final sentence of the book.

"Hang on," she paused, flicking through some of the pages of the book as her eyes lit up. She saw multitudes of these post-its, some with long writing, some with single words and others were just blank. She smiled, "You annotated it?"

"On post-its, I wanted to keep the book how you gave it to me. Just with some extras-" he was cut off by a soft kiss yet the intensity was something else.

"Can I read them?" she asked quietly, face still somewhat close to his after the kiss. He, without a second thought, handed her the book. She grinned as she took it, curling up in his arms before she turned to the very first page. As she began to read, Jasper placed an earbud in her ear and started playing her playlist through his iPod. She, after reading the notes on the first chapter, asked "What's the plain green ones for?"

"Times I saw you in the writing," he replied softly, looking into her eyes and watching as the all-consuming emotion that was so much more than happiness overtook her soul. She grinned widely, like before but this time she made absolutely no effort to bite it back. It showed her true feelings, feelings he didn't have to use his gift to sense.