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Bella chews at her bottom lip as a car whooshes by in the rain. The speed limit seems too generous now that she isn’t moving along with it, but in a rare bit of luck she managed to coast to a stop in an empty parking lot. Which probably used up her annual allotment of serendipity, and now she will be stuck out here forever.
The phone rings again. He could have the music turned up too loud or be in the shower. Or both, surrounded by clouds of steam and guitar solos instead of this cold March morning drizzle that’s tapping on the windshield of her truck. Bella’s stomach tightens at the thought, and then at the realization that she’s kind of imagining her best friend soapy and naked.
“Please pick up,” she says like he can hear her.
And, like he can, Jacob does.
“Hey, Bells.” His voice is warm and familiar, and she wants to cling to it for safety. “You’re late for your scheduled appointment.”
“You don’t have appointments. It’s not that kind of garage.”
“It could be.”
“Jake, the truck broke down. I’m on La Push Road.”
He laughs. “Shit. It couldn’t even make it here, huh?” Keys jingle in the background and she can hear a TV commercial crescendoing then fading as he moves through the house. “You’re pulled over somewhere safe?”
“Yeah. A parking lot.” Bella winces at the slight whine in her voice.
“Good job, honey. Stay in the cab, and keep it locked and your seat belt on. Any smoke from under the hood when it crapped out?”
“Not that I saw, but it’s raining.”
A door closes; his cell reception crackles but holds. “Are you past Three Rivers?”
“No.”
“Goodman? I can’t even think of where there’s a parking lot.”
“Not even. You know the recycling center?”
Jacob laughs again, harder. “So you drove for less than three miles, staying under thirty, and it died.”
“Basically,” she says. “Charlie’s at work and I don’t want to bother him.”
“Maybe just tell him we’ve got it under control before he finds your empty truck at the dump and flips out.”
Bella bites at her lip again. Of course when he puts it like that…
“Good idea.”
“See you in twenty.”
“Okay. Love you.” They say it sometimes, and it’s always light and lemonade-bright in her mouth.
“Yeah, love you too.”
And then she calls Charlie and waits.
The dreary weekend morning is quiet, and most people are probably sipping coffee at their kitchen tables and making stacks of pancakes, which is what she should also be doing instead of complicating Jacob’s life.
There’s still a week left at home before she needs to be back on campus, and Bella sort of assumed that she’d have her truck for all of it: errands for Charlie, a day with Angela. La Push in between. She’ll have to figure something else out.
Ahead, high beams flash and Bella grins. It’s going to be okay. Jacob fixes everything.
Last fall, he saved up and replaced the Rabbit and a scavenged Cavallier with a less boxy and much taller dark blue Ford Escape. Jacob whips it around and pulls in front of her, hazards already on.
Her phone rings.
“Hey,” he drawls. There’s a grin in his voice.
Bella rolls her eyes, hoping he can see it from his rearview.
“Please step into my office,” he says. “They’re not open yet, but I don’t love how close you are to the main entrance. Not like you could help that.”
“Okay.”
Bella does it fast, her heart racing with an exhilaration that’s disproportionate to how totally normal it is to climb into his passenger seat. Jacob’s car is warm and smells like him, and the music is low.
“Thanks.” Bella smiles over at him as she clicks her seat belt. Jacob looks like he rolled out of bed—tussled hair and sweatpants—and threw on a clean shirt and his boots in a hurry.
“Any time.”
“Were you sleeping?”
“Uh.” He runs his fingers through his shaggy hair. “Not really.” A Jeep drives by and Jacob checks his mirrors, then over his shoulder. “Gonna go take a look real quick. Be right back.”
He climbs out, his untied boots hanging open. Bella twists in her seat to watch him walk. Jacob does a thing where he scuffs his soles a little when he walks over grit or gravel, like he wants to hear the scratch, and she has never mentioned it to him because she loves that and doesn’t want him to get self conscious about it and stop.
Jacob pops the truck’s hood and leans in, wide shoulders moving as he reaches down to wiggle something in her engine.
Every time she comes home on a break, Bella has to re-learn him. He’s always taller and broader and funnier than she remembered, and being near him always feels more comfortable than it should. They don’t talk about how their hugs press and linger lately. Like the scuffing boots, Bella doesn’t want him to overthink it.
Any of it.
She settles back into her seat. Raindrops trail down the windows, but it’s slowing. Jacob’s car is perpetually clean inside, with narrow vacuum marks striping the carpeted footwells beneath spotless rubber mats that catch the muddy drips from shoes. A green pine tree air freshener dangles from the rearview mirror, and it’s old enough that Bella can’t smell the alleged Royal Pine even when she scratches her nail over the surface. But Jacob probably can. There’s no way it ever smelled better than him.
The wiper blades skitter across the windshield, and Bella turns down the speed so that the fine drizzle can accumulate for longer between swipes, like static fuzzing a screen.
She picks through the CDs lined up in the holder on the back of his visor. Most are mixes, covered in Sharpie and swapped among friends. One has distinctly feminine handwriting, with hearts dotting the i’s and rows of x’s all over the mirror-shine surface. Mixxx for Jake. Bella puts it back quickly, a burning feeling in the pit of her stomach. None of it means anything—the hearts or the burning or the hugs. She’s gone most of the year now, and things change. Besides, that could be anyone’s handwriting.
It’s her fault for prying.
Bella tucks her hands beneath her thighs so she won’t touch anything else. The glove box is the most tempting. Probably full of paperwork, maps, honey mustard packets, and a tire pressure gauge, if she knows him. And she does, mostly. Whatever else is different.
Jacob opens the door and folds himself inside. Drips of rain bead on his bare arms.
“Yeah, overheated,” he says. “You’ve definitely got a leak somewhere. It’ll take me a couple of days to fix it.”
Not the worst news.
“Thanks, Jake.”
“No problem.” He draws the seat belt’s shiny webbing across the expanse of his chest. The strap snaps taut to muscles moving under thin cotton. “I just need to grab some coolant, which I should’ve brought with me but whatever. That’ll get it to the garage. I can drive the truck back once we fill it if you don’t mind following me in this one.”
“Sure, yeah. I’m really sorry.”
“Shit happens. Not your fault.” Bella tries not to stare at his hand palming the steering wheel as he guides the Ford around a crumbling off-kilter concrete parking block, or the way he smoothly catches the turn signal lever with his fingers after. The blinker is a steady, mechanical ticking. “And look on the bright side. Maybe a garbage truck will hit it and we can get you something with airbags.”
"I love it," she pouts, like he hasn't brought up a very good point about automotive safety.
"And I love that you do."
Jacob pulls onto the road and his tires grip the damp asphalt like it’s dry, and the acceleration shoves Bella gently into the back of her seat. She loves how he drives, like he just enjoys making the engine work, and with a fondness for getting up to speed fast and staying steadily there. He’d probably know the road blindfolded, navigating every twist from memory.
Because of his height, Jacob sits far back with his arm outstretched to clutch the wheel, thick forearm flexing as he steers. His thigh moves when he switches from the gas to break around a curve in the road, and his sweatpants aren’t really tight but some things are impossible to miss.
Bella forces herself to look away. She’s just bored without any classes, and has been recently rescued, and Jacob smells like something to snuggle against while she sleeps in.
“Guess this is going to ruin all your wild spring break plans, huh?”
She snorts. “Yeah, Cancún will just have to wait for my senior year.”
“Well, it is raining, and I have a white t-shirt you could borrow.”
Bella swats at his arm. It’s solid muscle.
Jacob laughs. “No, you’re right. That’s fucked up. I’m old enough for the real deal anyway.”
It’s true. He’s been eighteen for months now, and even though Jacob has looked like he’s in his mid-twenties for years, it’s weird to think of him lifting a plastic cup of beer over a grinding crowd in a Cancún nightclub, or getting a lap dance in a Portland strip club. But he could absolutely do both of those things legally, and the tightening in her chest is just protectiveness.
“Kind of expensive though,” Bella points out.
“Really thoughtful of you to keep my budget in mind.”
“Your girlfriend probably wouldn’t like it either.”
He gives a short laugh. “Yeah, well if I had one, I’d take that into consideration. But I don’t, so.” He tips his hand on the steering wheel in a shrug.
Bella breathes out and relaxes in her seat.
Jacob glances over at her. “Wait, what made you say that?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you seeing someone?”
“No.”
“So what the hell.”
Bella picks at the frayed cuff of her hoodie. “I was just wondering.”
“Huh.”
They both let it rest. Mostly because she’s made everything tense, and this is exactly why Bella doesn’t talk about this with him.
If she’s being objective, Jacob is a catch. Capable, friendly, strong, funny. Helpful to a fault, and so easy to look at that she’s had no choice but to make peace with the fact that her best friend should be smoldering from a cologne ad or something. Otherwise Bella wouldn’t be able to talk to him without staring at his full lips, hoping to catch a glimpse of his tongue moving behind white teeth. Which she does still do, just not all the time.
But it’s always his warmth that gets her. Literal body heat, of course, but his openness and generosity are a calm sea that Bella has floated in for so long that it feels like solid ground. And how’s that fair?
“Why do I never end up helping you?” she asks.
“Because I don’t need it as often as you do.”
Bella lets out an offended burst of a laugh and mentally takes back half of the nice things she just thought about him.
“It’s true,” Jacob says. “You’re accident prone and have terrible luck. It’s not a personal failing or anything. Besides, you do help me. I’m still daydreaming about the chicken you made last week.”
“Seriously, Jake. What do you need?”
His eyes flick over to her, then back to the road. “That’s a very dangerous question, Bells.”
Maybe it is. Maybe that’s why she’s never asked it before. But now Bella really wants to know the answer. And more than that, she wants to make sure he gets it. The thought is hushed and slippery, like when she hugged him goodbye at the end of her winter break and she stood on the front porch and he’d been on the step below and they lined up, hips to hips and chest to chest. Bella tries not to think about them fitting together, about how she pressed her face to his neck and felt his pulse against the tip of her nose and smelled him in the fresh snowy air. She wants to give him what he needs because maybe she needs it too.
“You never let me pay you for working on my truck,” she says.
“Good thing, too. You’d probably be asking for your money back right now.”
“No, I know I don’t really take the best care of it,” Bella admits.
Like him. Reliable and always there. She takes both for granted, and it’s only in moments like these that clarity hits.
“Whatever. My best friend is not paying me for anything, okay?” Jacob says it with finality, like he gets to end the conversation.
Bella blames the swell of gratitude and a sudden, reckless impulse, but she reaches over and lays her hand on his thigh.
Jacob blows out a breath and tightens his grip on the wheel and doesn’t take his eyes off the road. Which is good because she would never be brave enough to do this if he was staring at her.
Slowly, after what feels like minutes but is probably only a few seconds of silence, he moves his leg closer, spreading wide in the driver’s seat. Even through his sweatpants, Jacob is warm, radiating and near, and pressure throbs so fast between her legs that it feels like a bruise. Bella inches her hand up.
“You better mean that,” he says.
In answer, she creeps her palm up even higher and brushes her fingers against the thick ridge that she thought was bunched up fabric but is actually—somehow—solid him underneath. The bruise pounds.
Jacob sucks in a warning inhale.
“If you’re fucking with me right now—”
“I’m not.”
She should just do it. She's already this far.
Bella cups him. Or tries to.
Jesus.
He makes a low sound and then presses his lips together like it escaped. Bella’s thoughts blur, heartbeat slamming through her. A car passes going around a bend, and she doesn’t care because this is happening and he needs to make that sound again but louder. Bella slides her fingers, feeling the already-straining outline of him.
Jacob’s hand wraps around her wrist, stopping her.
“You don’t owe me.”
It’s true; she doesn’t. That only makes Bella want to do it more.
“Can we pretend? Please.”
A long pause. Then, beneath her hand, he gives a hard pulse. “Yeah.”
Jacob rubs her against him, then releases her wrist and glances out the window to check for approaching cars. They’re alone, for the moment, and he reaches down to the front of his sweatpants and pulls his cock out.
Bella’s few remaining thoughts struggle to a stop. Bare skin and it’s big and they’re pretending. They’re pretending but the demand is so real, so fast, like this is how she always pays him back; she has to remember to breathe.
“Don’t make a fucking mess in my car,” he tells her.
There’s a rough, unspoken instruction: get him off. Make him come in here where anybody could see because if saving her is his job, then that’s hers. It’s the least she could do.
It should make her feel awful or used, even in a game, but there’s nothing in her right now but mindless want and tight need, and some kind of steady, bricked-up devotion that she’ll have to sort through later on her own.
Bella grips him, silky hot skin over taut hardness, and her fingers can’t wrap all the way around it. Jacob’s only reaction is a quick, instinctive shove into her hand. His eyes are locked on the road ahead, both hands on the wheel, and if she didn’t know any better, Bella would think he was indifferent.
But when she gives him a slow stroke, Jacob’s lips part.
“I really appreciate your help,” she says softly, working him. Like this isn’t for her, to see him coming undone in careful increments. To feel what she’s wondered about and finally know the thick, solid weight of it.
On the wheel, Jacob’s grasp twists a little, like it’s a throttle.
Bella speeds up, the glide of him under her grip, followed by the quiet hitch of his breath, tangled and blanket soft, as he tries to concentrate. The hand job is a distraction he’s tolerating. What she’s doing is dangerous, but the car hasn’t even wobbled and his eyes are scanning the road ahead and she can do this in secret.
It’s so surreal to hold him. Familiar places fly past the window, and she’s keeping her arm low so it’s not glaringly obvious that she’s jacking him off, but making Jacob feel good is its own high and nothing else really matters but the steady movement and the way he’s struggling to keep it together.
“You should let me do this for you all the time,” Bella says, still quiet. Still playing the game. “It’s fair.”
His mouth falls open, breath coming faster. Chest heaving. He’s getting close, like he drove out here already needing it, and maybe he did. For a second she thinks Jacob might beg, but then he sets his jaw.
“I said don’t fuck up my car, Bella.”
It’s a quick decision. They’re getting closer to his house anyway. Bella loops the sash of her seat belt behind her so it won’t restrict. Her wet Converses squeak against the mat protector as she leans over the center console.
And it’s him. He’s in her mouth, resting hot and clean on her tongue. The angle is awkward and their seats are too far apart, and Bella can’t get as much of him into her mouth as she wants to, so she just sucks on the tip and runs her lips over it and sweeps with her tongue. Faded scents of laundry detergent and soap swirl in the background, but all she can taste is him and the sweet-slippery drip of precum.
Jacob rocks into her mouth, shallow belt-tight thrusts, his hand settling steady on her back.
“Fuck. You’re gonna make me come.” His voice is rough, certain.
She’s soft with her lips, like a kiss, and Bella clamps her thighs together because, as much as she wants to watch his face, this is absolutely a feeling she’ll save for when she’s alone and aching.
Jacob’s fingers curl around the strap of her bra through her clothes and he pulls her closer and there’s one tight, unsteady exhale before he pulses hard on her tongue. His groans are open and loud, and sound like giving something up as much as they do getting it.
There’s so much in her mouth, flooding salty and fast. Bella swallows what she can but it keeps going, so she seals her lips tight to the pumping head and holds it until he stills and shudders.
Bella sits back and swallows the rest. A triumphant bit of smugness pulls at the corner of her mouth.
Jacob quickly snaps the waistband of his sweatpants back into place. Then he blinks like he just woke up and drops his head back against the headrest. “Holy shit.”
Bella turns to look out her window like nothing’s new and they’ve just been talking the whole way back. She smiles to herself. Along the sides of the road, the forest opens up and they don’t talk.
They can act like it was a joke if they need to, like she was just trying to make a point about fairness or feeling like she takes advantage of him. The only sound is the thumping of too-quiet music.
Bella glances over at Jacob, expecting a goofy, satisfied grin or maybe a disbelieving stare. Instead, his face is set, eyes darting sharp to his mirrors as he puts his blinker on and turns into the gravel driveway. It’s a stony expression and impossible to read. Bella’s stomach drops into a freefall plummet and he pulls around to the garage. If she just ruined everything they have, she will never forgive herself. Wouldn’t be the first time Bella has wanted too much, asked too soon, needed things she shouldn’t have. Why is she like this?
The dense band of trees that separates the garage from the house and the road is barely leafing out, but it’s full of cedars and pine with thick trunks and dripping branches.
Jacob throws the car into park at an angle behind it and stomps hard on the emergency break pedal, the keys swinging in the ignition, and he tears off his seat belt. Bella barely has time to unclip hers before Jacob rips her door open and pulls her out. The cold wind is a jolt of reality. She’s shoved up against the rain-soaked side door, shielded from view, and cold metal presses against her back, his radiating heat in front. He kisses her hard and fast, a shock of contact and leaning closeness and want before their tongues and lips are sliding like he needs to taste himself on her so he’ll believe it actually happened, and Bella tips her head back so he can get deeper. But Jacob tears his mouth away.
He’s fumbling with her jeans.
“What the fuck, Bella?”
She lets her mouth hang open, panting for breath. He looks ruined and still hungry. The most beautiful she’s ever seen him.
“Sucking my dick like that while I’m driving?”
God, he’s cramming his hand down the front of her underwear and she’s going to explode, can’t keep her legs from shaking. She rolls her hips into his hot touch. His fingers sweep and she arches, her open mouth noiseless.
“You got this wet from a thank you blowjob?”
Bella nods and he swirls his heated fingers over her, learning her layout, brushing her clit. She sucks in a long breath and he does it again. Her hips snap forward into the teasing pressure, pressing harder. His eyes are on hers, and he’s a quick learner. Bella bites her lip against a moan.
“No, let me hear it. I didn’t keep us alive so you could stay quiet.”
Jacob pushes his fingers into her and she gasps loud, squeezing at the tightness. A low, approving groan rumbles through him. She bends her knees so he can get deeper, press the heel of his palm against her, move his fingers like he’s working something out of her. And then he is, and her panting gets faster and he’s pushing hard against her leg, crowding her back against the car to keep her standing.
He leans down, filthy mouth close to her ear.
“Swallowing my cum like it means anything. Get this on my fingers if you want to pay me.”
She breaks. A whole-body lock except for what’s clenching hard around him. He’s murmuring to her, telling her that he needs it and to keep going. But she’s barely there to hear anything, lost in a blanking, wringing release, a star-scattered burst that grips her in long, ruthless waves and finally, slowly, fades into a lazy Saturday morning slackness.
Bella blinks up at the cloud-softened sky, rain misting her face. Jacob slumps against the car, his fingers unmoving in her, the warmth soothing. They stay like that together, like they raced and tied and are catching their breath at the finish line.
“That was messed up of me,” she says finally. Everything’s clearer now.
“Which part?”
“The driving thing.”
“Yeah, super dangerous. But I’m the one who stayed on the gas,” Jacob says. “We’ll park next time.”
Next time. Next time they pretend that he only helps her if he gets something wet out of it. Loud in his backseat, quiet in his bed, rough in the garage, on her knees in her room.
Bella tightens at the thought, squeezing around his fingers.
“Yeah, good,” he murmurs. “Shit, it’s so good.”
The praise glows in her belly. Bella presses a kiss to his shoulder. As much as she wants to stay just like this for hours, there are more urgent issues. Starting with the fact that she is soaked.
“Jake, my back is freezing.”
“Okay. I’ll fix it. Give me a sec.”
Jacob withdraws his hand carefully, a slow-pulling glide. Spent and sensitive, she clings to it the whole way out.
He turns her around with his clean hand, flipping their positions, and lifts up the back of her shirt and the front of his and pulls her against him, skin to skin. The heat is incredible, and goosebumps prickle along her arms and legs at the contrast. Bella shudders a little, then relaxes.
She wants so much. So much more. And it’s safe to ask him for any of it. Whatever else she has shifted between them, some will be unchanged: Jacob will hold her just as tightly, laugh just as hard at her jokes, and give when he should take.
“Are we okay?” Bella asks. “Like, me and you.”
“Pretty sure we’ve never been better, but that’s probably your call.” Behind her, he licks his fingers like she’s cake batter and he gets to clean the bowl. Jacob groans, a low rumble, and he pulses behind her, hardening against her lower back. “Have you ever tasted this?”
Her cheeks burn. “Jake.”
His hand tightens on her hip. “Love it when you say my name.”
Bella shakes her head at him. How long has he wanted her like this? Thought about it, turning over details from their interactions, memorizing sounds she’s made and imagining ways of getting her to make more. It feels like the first real day of spring before a perfect summer that will last a long, long time. They should take the days slowly and let them stretch, as comfortable and effortless as a favorite pair of broken-in shoes.
“If it’s my call,” Bella says, “I think we’re fine.”
Jacob slides a slow hand up under the front of her shirt and gets his fingers beneath the band of her bra to brush along the underside of her breast. It feels soothingly normal, like they’ve always done it. “Yeah, let’s be fine.”
“I’m going to need a ride a few days this week.”
“You do realize that’s dirty talk to me now, right?”
“I’m counting on it.” She leans back against him and sighs. “This is really nice.”
“Mmm.” Jacob kisses the top of her head. “Costs extra.”
Bella’s laugh is free and easy.