You and Jacob had, at one point, been very good friends. Before, you and Jacob used to spend every weekend together, exploring the woods, no matter for familiar, trying out traditional Quilete recipes (trying being the key word), or just rotting in front of the TV until Billy called your dad to come and take you home for the night—on the nights you weren’t sleeping over.

When Bella had moved back to Forks, you’d listened to Jacob’s ramblings about her, and you’d witnessed as he became more and more enamoured by her. You were there for him to hang out with on the days she cancelled on him to spend time with her new boyfriend—though the days Bella ever even made plans with Jacob on at all had been steadily decreasing.

You’d been Jacob’s best friend since childhood. You knew all the old Quilete stories as well as Jacob did, even if you weren’t a part of the tribe by blood. You knew about Jacob’s dislike for Bella’s boyfriend, Edward, and you knew it wasn’t just because he was jealous of Edward (even though you could tell Jacob was, no matter how much he tried to deny it), but because Edward was a “bloodsucker” as Jacob liked to call him—a term used in the old Spirit Warrior stories from the history of the Quilete tribe.

You also knew that Jacob believed that Bella would get nothing more from being with the vampire than she would from being with him—that the only thing that would happen to her is that they would do just as their term implied, suck her blood.

Although it was a little discouraging that your best friend always talked about his other best friend, he still hung out with you, so you couldn’t really complain and be justified.

Then, Edward left Bella, and she went into an almost catatonic, depressed state, and Jacob practically left you hanging to send to all his awake time with Bella.

But you couldn’t be too harsh about it; Jacob finally had the girl he spent the last year dreaming about.

Contact between you and Jacob slowly diminished until there was nothing at all. At first, it had just been him not being at home when you went to hang out with him, then it turned to him not answering your calls, perhaps out of guilt for ghosting you, or he just simply didn’t want to talk to you, though you doubted that.

Jacob’s dream didn’t last very long, though, because some months later, Bella went and brought Edward back. Then another couple of months after that, Jacob and Bella had a fight where she said that it was Edward, and that it would always be Edward, leaving Jacob’s heart with a hole and shattered on the ground.

Since Jacob didn’t make an effort to spend time with you, you stopped trying too, but when Billy called and told you the essentials of what had happened, and the depression Jacob had fallen into, you didn’t waste a second driving down to the reservation.

Billy greeted you at the door of the red house in his wheelchair. He showed you to Jacob’s room with a grin and concerned expression, though you’d been here so many times you knew your way like your back pocket.

The Jacob you see lying in the bed that had once fit both of you but now didn’t even fit his whole body is not the Jacob you knew. Granted, phasing a couple months ago had made him grow another foot and put in enough muscle to rival Superman’s physique, but the Jacob you knew had never looked so beat down and sad before. He’d never skipped meals and laid in bed all day.

The Jacob you knew would turn around and beam up at you with a smile brighter than the sun.

This Jacob doesn’t even turn around to acknowledge your presence when you step into his room. Maybe he was pretending to be asleep so you’d go away, but you knew him better than that.