Téméraire: A Rosalie Hale Fanfiction

CHAPTER V: BITTER SWEET SYMPHONY

 The days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months. Jules was proud to say she spent each one doing exactly as she liked, a million little mini-adventures melting off into a montage of memories she would not trade for the entire world.

Juliette Rowe had never been one for routines. In a town as mundane as Forks, Jules found she could nurture her impulsive nature to it's greatest potential. She would stick to herself during her mandatory school hours, the ones she grew to loathe with a burning passion. She would aim to finish off her homework during her lunch periods, sitting on her own at a table the other students soon learnt to evade, her self-claimed territory. The only person she ever really spoke to was Ella Hammond, who she shared most of her classes with and chose to partner up with in any classes that required as such. Ella had joined the volleyball team though, and so the two never ventured past the 'school friends' boundary.

Most days, Leah Clearwater and Sam Uley would pick her up from school in Sam's beat up Chevy Blazer, already prepped and ready for some grand adventure. They would spend their days hiking a trail through the Olympic forest, picnicking on cliffs, gathered around a campfire on First Beach with Rachel and Rebecca and all their friends. On the weekends the group of them would make trips to Port Angeles to go see a movie, or as far as Seattle for as harebrained a scheme as buying Chinese ingredients so Jules could cook more food for everyone.

Charlie Swan's house transformed from a lonely two-story bachelor pad to a bustling home often filled with teenagers and adults alike, coming and going as they pleased. Jules and Charlie grew into a close knit pair, the two coexisting in a rather informal relationship. Jules brought Charlie out of his shell as much as Charlie Swan possibly could, but she never pushed him to be more than he was-a boundary the Chief of Police appreciated. Instead, whenever Charlie worked a particularly draining case or seemed frustrated about his strained relationship with his daughter, Jules would be there for him with a fancy home cooked meal he could hardly pronounce and a beer and a coke, eating on the couch together watching a game. It was nice to have the companionship they both so desperately craved.

For Jules, it was the summer after her freshman year that things began to fall apart.

Her cousin Bella had stopped coming to Forks for the summer two years after Jules herself cut her visits, something Jules suspected to be a consequence of her own decision. This meant that she had to sit through Charlie squirming for a whole day over whether or not to bring up the issue before she finally had enough and forced him to tell her what was on his mind. Charlie had spent two weeks out of the last summer in California with Bella, a trip he intended to repeat. He extended an invitation to his niece- as did Bella through him as a proxy from their weekly phone calls. Jules suspected why- she had spent much of her youth serving as a buffer between the two awkward humans alongside her grandmother. She did not intend to keep up this tradition.

Jules had the perfect excuse. Leah and Sam had been taking her to driving lessons offered by Forks High, and she had her final test right in the middle of the proposed trip. Jules had also begun to work on restoring the truck her grandfather Geoff had left her in his will, a beloved '86 F150 short-bed that had deteriorated in the garage at the same pace his body had with his raging arthritis. Jules remembered sitting in the front seat on Charlie's lap trying to peer over the steering wheel at the stock shelves in the garage, pretending she was racing off as a child. She loved the truck, and she was determined to see it back to its glory days by the time she reached her senior year.

And so Charlie reluctantly agreed to let her crash at the Clearwater house on an air mattress in Leah's bedroom for the two weeks he would be away, and Jules felt good about her decision knowing Bella and her Uncle needed proper father-daughter bonding time without interference.