Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight.

The white pearls

Fallen on my sleeves with heart still full

We parted

I take them with me

As a memory of you

(Kokinshu)

She stared at the white-washed house with its red shingles, hydrangea bushes, and warm yellow lights with trepidation. It has been too long, she thought nervously, silently cursing herself for accepting the invitation at all. So what if it was an hour long cross-country phone call with Emily's soft caramel voice trickling nostalgia and guilt through the earpiece until all Bella felt was the wind of First Beach on her face, the rough sinewy feel of forest underbrush under her feet, and the scent of fresh cobbler waffling tauntingly about her. What if her heart did jolt when she first saw the number flashing obnoxiously on her screen: a dastard combination of a too-familiar area code followed by a strange string of ominous numbers. It didn't even matter that while mumbling distractedly to herself that "it's not Charlie" what her mind really wanted to say (and her heart screamed) was the name that had haunted her the first moment she saw his grinning face above an "Have you seen me?" ad. Bella remembered feeling a strange sense of irony as she stared at him smiling at her: a ray of sunshine smothered by grainy photo editing and muted black-and-white.

An eclipse.

"Well Jake, I guess you're right...one way or another." She had mumbled absent-mindedly.

"Of course." A smug voice replied somewhere from above, or behind, or within.

A short snort ballooned from somewhere below her stomach and burst forth in a strange boisterous guffaw. After that, the laughter came out in violent torrents, her whole body rendered epileptic from the force. She laughed at the irony of it all, laughed at the way her life is so unbelievably melodramatic, laughed at the pathetic tangle that three hearts can make of so many lives—she laughed until she doubled over in pain and collapsed onto Charlie's porch, hurling the entire contents of her stomach between her bruised knees. It was only later that she realized that the ad she was gripping moments before had slipped down while she lost her balance and now laid buried under her vomit, only the audacious print "Have you seen me?" still visible. An ugly epitaph too bold to be erased.

"Typical of you Bells. Break my heart, then throw up all over me. You sure know how to make it dramatic." The voice jested. Bella remembered opening her mouth to let out another raucous laugh, but only a ghost of a sound escaped her parched throat, a mutated noise that hovered somewhere between a moan and a whimper. It was then that Charlie scooped her up from her own pool of vomit, and the days started to bleed into one another, all eclipsed in a muted black-and-white.

No, none of that mattered now.

What does matter, however, is the fact that she spent almost four years convincing herself that she left her past behind that day she hugged Charlie goodbye in the dead of the night, left her ring along with the charm bracelet of a wolf and a heart in an envelope atop her desk, and sped down the Interstate. The crunch of concrete beneath her truck was the only real thing for her in the next three months. She let the roaring mechanical beast engulf her and trampled all that tied her to Forks, to love, and most importantly, to a Bella too weak, too vain, and too selfish to be trusted with anyone's heart, even her own. She finally settled in Boston as the truck sputtered to a stop in a nearby town one late night in October. It was as good a reason to stay as any, Bella decided as she sold her ancient road companion to a man looking for some scrap metal, all the while trying to fight the thought of a oil streaked boy who would have demanded that he could fix it, that it just needed new plugs or filter replacements or oil changes or whatever the hell that was needed for these things to work. No, there was no fixing of anything that night. Instead, she wandered down the deserted main street of a town called Randolph, settled in a small motel, took the bus to Boston the next day in a catatonic daze, and started her new life. Her new self.

Ever since then, she never spoke to or heard from anyone in La Push, the sanctuary that she so thoroughly destroyed and then purged herself of. Never, that is, until Emily called. That was 3 weeks ago, and somehow, between awkward conversations skirting around neutral topics like Boston's obsession with clam chowder and Emily's new flower garden, Bella had agreed to come back to La Push to attend a wedding, of all things. Damn Emily, her easy manners, and stealthily instilled guilt.

Bella cursed under her breath as a loud bang reverberated from inside the tiny bungalow waking her up from her reverie. She unconsciously took a few steps back to hide herself in the shadows casted by the late evening light, temporarily forgetting that she was in the presence of mythical creatures whose eyes can see through such flimsy disguise.

It seems lady luck is smiling down at her tonight, however, as whoever made that noise is already hastily retreating back to the party, as evident by the slam of a screen door.

"Okay Isabella Swan," Bella sternly spoke, imitating the tone her mother used on the rare occasion that Bella is the child and Renee is the adult. "You can do this. You are an adult, for God's sake! Just step in there, say congratulations, shake some hands, eat some grub, stick by Charlie's side, be inconspicuous for an hour or two, then leave! No big deal."

Bella sigh. No big deal…right, and Moby Dick was just another whale. She thought glumly.

After a few minutes, she was able to scrap up enough courage to take several determined steps through the tiny wooden gate and around the garden pathway to the back. Once she rounded the familiar wooden stairway, she could see that the party was in full swing.

The backyard was beautifully lit by strings of rice paper lantern weaving through handsome vines of forest pine and wildflowers. One impossibly huge wooden table occupied the far right side of the yard and boasted most, if not all, of Emily's (and some of Sue's, by the look of the homemade bread and quiches) delicious recipes. Two 3-tiered cake oozing with more kinds of berries than Bella can count is the centerpiece of the feast. The rest of the yard was littered with mismatched tables and chairs that, Bella deduced, came along with the guests. Sure enough, a quick scan revealed a jolly (and slightly red ) Charlie nursing a beer and a plate of spareribs while perching on their kitchen stool, animatedly chatting to Billy. Bella's eyes skipped over Billy's face as she scanned the rest of the crowd for other familiar but less painful pieces of the puzzle. Billy Black resides too close to the abyss that Bella have been carefully navigating around all these years. Facing him would only bring trouble. That was the precise reason why she refused to accompany Charlie earlier in the evening, as he had suggested, and made him promise that he would not tell anyone about her return. It was easy enough to get him to agree, since after all, he did not want to meet the ghosts lurking behind his daughter's carefully blank eyes and easy smile.

It seems Emily also kept her word about keeping Bella's return a secret. It was obvious that none of the mythical creatures milling about knew about her presence amongst them despite their keen senses. Everyone seems to be basking in the glow of the evening, too high on love, friendship, family, and laughter to notice a piece of their past nervously wrecking havoc on Emily's newly sprung daisies. Even if they did catch a whiff of a girl they knew a long time ago, they would have undoubtledly accounted it to the fact that Charlie was amongst them and it was probably the ghost of a wedding that almost happened that haunted their steps, not the real almost bride snooping around a porch corner.

Smoothing her dress for the hundredth time that evening, Bella drew a deep breath and stepped forward towards the crowd. Before she could greet anyone, however, her eyes snapped onto the sight of a familiar russet back standing not too far from the table where Sam Uley and Emily tended. He was leaning on one leg as the other tapped lightly to the music blasting from the house. He seemed to be in deep conversation with someone in front of him, his neck beaded with sweat from the uncharacteristically warm night (and the fact that he had to be fully dressed for the occasion, Bella guessed). When he threw back his head in laughter, Bella sucked in air violently at the shock of memories echoing through her body. Her breath quickened considerably as if her body was trying to make up for lost time by desperately stealing whatever mirth he was dispelling. Her eyes anchored on the hollow of his neck, the slope of his shoulder, the line down his back, and the way his fingers wound itself around paler, smaller hands as they rub hypnotic patterns inside colder palms. She drank it all in hungrily like a man gasping for salvation before crossing the Stix. Her whole body tingled with the torturous awareness of that russet warmth. Somewhere back in time, it had once belonged to her.

Belonged. Bella choked at her own thought. Belonged, because right now, the hand that he is holding is not hers.

Her eyes snapped to the offending hand and the person it belongs to. She vaguely registered cropped sandy hair and a wide smile before turning on her heels to run. Promises and new Bellas be damned, courage is a superfluous commodity in the face of imminent asphyxiation.

Before she could make it out of the gate, however, a pair of large warm hands gripped her arms firmly.

Too warm.

Bella tried to gasp, but she realized she had already stopped breathing some time ago. She yanked blindly, trying to free herself from the offending grip before she loses both her pathetic heart and her fragile dignity.

"Bella, stop." A voice sounded from behind her. Familiar, but not as painful.

It was then that she finally turned, and stared into the worried gaze of Embry Call.

"E-Embry?"

He smiled as she stopped struggling. "Yea, I figured you were going to kill yourself if you ran like that, and Emily would hate to have a corpse lying in her tomato patches."

Bella offered a weak smile.

"Besides, what happened to being an adult and staying inconspicuous?"

Bella's eyes snapped to focus on Embry's face, her expression petrified in horror.

Embry chuckled again as he pulled her to the front porch, and handed her a can of soda.

She stared at his proffered hand like it held a poisonous fruit coaxed down by serpentine tongues. She wanted to scream at him for such a gesture; wanted to throw it back at him, and tore away from there before the black poison consumes her. But Bella is no longer a girl of red streaked anger, deep blues, and hysterical neons; she spent her time in Boston perfecting the art of pastels, and so after a second's pause, she painted her face in calm cornflower and thanked him for his consideration.

The fact that it was warm to the touch, however, was not something she was prepared for.

Somewhere inside Bella, an urn the color of deep warm russet crashed from sepulchral shelves and out spilled a garage, car oil, Bruce Springsteen, geography lessons, a wide infectious grin, and the sound of Bells, honey, Bells. Staring at Embry and his confused smile, Bella couldn't help but whimper silently that it was all so familiar, but yet so wrong.

"Relax, I didn't hear you from all the way back there. I was the last one out patrolling, and heard your little mantra on my way back." He explained, mistakenly attributing the quickly smothered whirls of panic in her eyes to the fact she might've unwittingly announced herself in an embarrassing way.

"Oh." Was all Bella managed as she toyed with her soda can, mentally sweeping away shards of broken pottery.

After a moment of silence where both seems to be lost as to what comes next, Embry nodded at the can in her hands and asked, "Want me to open that for you?"

She snapped out of her thoughts, and shook her head vehemently. "It's Pandora's." She stated, and then set the offending can down as far away from her as possible.

Embry knitted his eyebrows together and stared up at the sky, now a dark velvet. Bella took the opportunity to study his face. He must be 20 this year, she thought absent-mindedly. Embry Call has always been a bit on the lean side, and although the werewolf must pulse just as strongly beneath his light cocoa skin as any of the others, Bella never remembered him shaking in uncontrollable anger or keeping a careful mask of practiced serenity. He seems to possess a natural harmony that calmed even the beast roaring inside his veins. That, in addition to his unobtrusive demeanor, gave this boy a quiet mysterious grace that soothed Bella immensely.

"Pandora didn't know what was in the box."

Bella blinked, surprised that he was pondering about what she said after all that time.

"Well.." She mused. "I don't know what's back there either. " Except that he's holding another girl's hand. Bella finished silently, and grimaced inwardly at how juvenile it sounded.

Embry turned to look at her, his lips pursed together in thought as he contemplates her expression, several warring emotions flitted across his eyes. The sudden attention made her shift under his gaze.

"I'll say you know a thing or two if you showed up here with a present." He finally chose to say, gesturing at the forgotten powder blue package next to her.

"Yea, Emily invited me. Something about a wedding."

"Jared's and Kim's."

Bella nodded.

After that, both of them sat in companionable silence as Bella timed her heartbeat, willing it to return to normal. What she didn't know, however, was that the boy next to her was also concentrating on that same rhythmic sound, relief pooling inside him as a consequence of supernatural telepathy with a certain wolf whose paws once pounded through the forests of La Push and Forks to the rhythm of that same beat. A wolf that used to count down the days until the moment the rhythm stops, never suspecting that the pain would snap his heart strings first before the numbers ran out. It was the brotherhood of the pack that allowed Embry to learn the preciousness of that sound, the stain of a friend's love that lent him compassion to sit with the girl who brought down Atlas, and the ache of a fatherless childhood to know that pain is a blind raging demon more dangerous and persistent than any leech he had ever encountered. And this girl sitting next to him, with her carefully painted calmness and unopened soda, was fighting a monster of her own. He could never rage at her like Paul had those years Jacob was gone, nor could he quietly dread and mourn like Sam. For Embry, Bella Swan was just another human being, and to live (whether you are breathing or not), he learned, is to cause pain, to be in pain, and eventually, to let it go. So when he saw her silhouette from the forest, Embry knew that it was time to put to rest the monsters created years ago. It was time to let go.

After finishing up both his and her soda, Embry stood up abruptly, and headed back towards the side gate.

"Bella Swan," he called back, hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans, eyes watching the sky. "you're coming."

It wasn't a question, and something about that comforted her despite the imminent plunge into abyss. She brushed herself off surreptitiously, and trotted after Embry to catch up.