GODS AND MONSTERS ↝ P. LAHOTE

[4]

"Lark, sweetie, would you pull the garlic bread out of the oven for me?" Alicia's mother Elizabeth asked as she rolled the cookie dough into tiny balls to place on a tray.

"I'm on it," Lark said, grabbing an oven mitt and taking the tray filled with the bread from the oven, the smell beginning to waft through the Swan household.

"So tell me," Diane said with a smirk. "if we're in Charlie's house, why isn't he the one doing the cooking?"

"Last time Uncle Charlie tried to make pizza he almost burned the house down." Alicia chimed in. "And that was just the frozen kind from the grocery store."

"I'm more of the decorative sort!" Charlie chimed in from the living room, where he and Richie were hanging up a Seattle Mariners banner, with Marcus watching from a distance to make sure it was even. "But I can make a mean piece of toast."

Marcus's upbringing in northern Washington had impacted his choice of a favorite baseball team, the same as Diane's in Massachusetts had influenced hers. As they had children, the diehard baseball fans decided to compromise, with Tristan taking after his mother to become a Red Sox fan and Larkin taking after her father to cheer on the Mariners. As the teams were playing each other for one of the first games of the season, blue, green and silver dominated Charlie's household, save for a tiny space in the corner of the room decorated dark blue and red for Diane.

"When you don't burn it." Alicia corrected her uncle, rolling her eyes.

"Well, supper's ready." Elizabeth announced as Lark set the garlic bread tray next to the three pizzas, still steaming from their time in the oven. "Go on, girls." she said to Lark and Alicia. "You first."

Lark was the first to step forward, picking a paper plate off the top of the pile and moving down the line to grab two slices of pepperoni pizza as well as a piece of the garlic bread.

"Just in time, too." Marcus said as the woman on the television screen finished singing the Star Spangled Banner. "Let's play ball!"

"Lark, did your father ever tell you about the time we snuck into a Mariners game?" Charlie asked as the group gathered on the couch and chairs placed in the living room.

Lark shook her head, looking up at her father with a suspicious glance. "No, he didn't." she said, intrigued. "Care to elaborate?"

"Okay, so it was the summer after we finished high school." Richie explained. "The three of us, along with Billy, decided to do something crazy to celebrate. We wanted to go to that night's game, but it was all sold out."

"Lucky for us," Marcus chimed in. "I knew of a secret way in through a friend who used to work at the stadium. So we knew there was a secret door around the back. What we didn't know, however, and something you two impressionable children should keep in mind is that they have security cameras monitoring the door to keep riffraff like us from getting into the game without tickets."

"I mean I would assume so." Lark pointed out, staring at her father incredulously.

"What happened?" Alicia asked, leaning forward in anticipation.

"We tripped the alarm." Charlie said, shaking his head and being unable to suppress his smile. "So we ran for it."

"You ran back to the car?" Lark asked.

"No, we ran for the stadium." Marcus corrected her. "Even made it into the stands, too, before we ended up on their JumboTron, broadcasted all over the surrounding Seattle area."

"But the great part about that is that we didn't even have to tell our parents!" Richie exclaimed. "They'd already seen us on tv."

"Boy, Alli, were your grandparents disappointed." Charlie said with a loud chuckle.

Slowly the attention turned back to the game, as the partygoers were eager to see which team would come out victorious in the first few innings. Although, as the game moved into the top of the third, shouts from outside directed their attention, two voices of which Lark was familiar, and the third that she was not.

"What the...?" Charlie asked, standing up and crossing to the window to peek through the curtains. "What the hell?" he muttered before making a run for the front door and bolting outside.

"What's going on?" Alicia asked as she and Lark rose from the couch to peer out the window, where Bella was standing between two boys, trying to keep them away from one another.

One of them Lark instantly recognized as Jacob. The other, however, she wasn't familiar with. He had extremely fair skin and copper hair, and stood nearly as tall as Jacob, though he didn't quite reach the Quileute boy's hulking stature. Though, this newcomer seemed to look down at him, a menacing expression gracing his face.

"Who is that?" Lark whispered to Alicia as the two girls watched Charlie disrupt the conversation.

"Bella's boyfriend," Alicia explained, a frown etched on her face. "Edward Cullen."

"You don't seem too happy to see him." Lark noted, and her friend shrugged.

"His family has some old blood feud with Jacob's, apparently." she said, her eyes still on the exchange between Bella and the three men as Jacob turned from the group and climbed back onto his motorcycle and revved his engine before taking off. "God, I'll be hearing all about this from him tomorrow."

"What's it about?" Lark asked.

Alicia shrugged. "Beats me. I just know none of the Quileutes are very fond of the Cullens because of it."

Lark continued to stare out the window as Bella and Edward got into Edward's Volvo before bidding Billy goodbye and pulling out of the driveway. As soon as they were gone, Billy shook his head and headed back into the house, noticeably happier than he'd seemed earlier.

"What's the verdict, Chief?" Marcus asked.

Charlie sighed, suppressing a laugh. "Jacob kissed Bella."

"What?" Alicia blurted, an awestruck smile gracing her features.

"I've been waiting for that since Jacob was four years old," Charlie said, crossing his arms over his chest with an impressed grin. "I didn't think the kid actually had it in him."