Ch.8 - Wily Tactics
“Oh god. It’s gotten worse.”
Jared turned back to look at Kyle, who was staring incredulously at his best friend waving off Sunny and Melanie as they exited the apartment. Jeb had been surprisingly generous in letting Jared keep Melanie out past the previous curfew of dawn and giving Jared the day off. But apparently he was just eager to make sure had a fun summer and thrilled that his handyman/roofer had taken on “Project Melanie” with such fervor. He hadn’t had any suspicions whatsoever.
Not that he needed to have any, Jared reminded himself. Because there was nothing going on.
“What are you talking about?” he asked, determined to look as innocent as possible.
“You know what I’m talking about,” Kyle said, roughly brushing past him to shut the door the girls had just walked out of. He turned around to see Jared looked dumbfounded and confused. “Yes, you do,” he said slowly, as if to a child. “And don’t pretend like you don’t.” He pointed his finger at him accusingly. “Your innocent act doesn’t work on me; and frankly, you suck at it.”
“Are you talking about Melanie?” Jared asked.
Kyle stared at him in disbelief. “No shit.”
“What about her?” Jared asked, folding his arms across his chest.
Kyle gawked, then turned around and headed into the kitchen. He grabbed a beer from the fridge and downed half of it.
“Slow down there, cowboy,” Jared said, coming to stand across from him on the tile floor. “You probably shouldn’t go to the fair drunk.” His smirk easily turned into a grin.
“My shift’s not till 5,” Kyle said. “It’s only 11 am.”
Jared raised his eyebrows, amused. “All the more reason.”
Kyle set the glass bottle on the table and fixed Jared with a look that vacillated between attempted intimidation and the air of wisdom.
“Just answer me this. What happened?”
Huh?” Jared’s brows furrowed in genuine confusion now.
“What happened? What changed? I know what didn’t change. You’re still into her. Still falling for her faster than a brick into water.” Jared opened his mouth to interject, but Kyle kept going. “But you’re not brooding anymore like you were the other day. You’re all googly-eyed now, and Melanie has definitely got stars in her eyes. So, something had to have happened. What was it?”
“If you’re asking…” Jared began carefully, “why I’m not,” he paused, trying to think of the right word; “moody, anymore, it’s because I apologized and she decided to give me the benefit of the doubt.”
Kyle stared at his friend, trying to decide if he was lying.
“Huh.” He thought that over. “Still doesn’t explain the googly eyes—”
Jared rolled his eyes. “I do not have googly—”
“Or her starry eyes.”
Jared started to form words, but suddenly hesitated. Whatever feelings he was trying to muddle through, he didn’t have the slightest idea about Melanie’s.
“Jeb wants Melanie to have a fun summer,” he explained. Even as he said it he knew what the implications might be. Kyle’s raised eyebrows and cheeky smirk said his thoughts better than any words ever could.
“Is that right?” Kyle asked, practically giddy. Jared glared at him. “And…” he cleared his throat, trying not to laugh. “He trusts you to show his niece a good time then?”
“Don’t,” Jared warned. “It’s not like that.”
“No?” Kyle laughed, lifting his beer to take another sip. “Why don’t you tell me what it’s like then,” he suggested, thoroughly enjoying himself now.
“It’s like,” Jared said slowly, as if to a child, “there was an old bike and car in the shed behind Jeb’s house, and he wants me to fix them up and show his niece how to use them.”
“Show her how to—” Kyle stopped, momentarily confused. “Didn’t say she was seventeen?”
Jared nodded, bracing himself for the multiple revelations that were about to hit his best friend.
“But…wouldn’t that mean she already has her driver’s license? She definitely has to know how to ride a bike. You learn how to do that when you’re a kid.” He smirked. “Sounds like good old Jebediah is trying to set you up with…” His voice trailed off and his smile faded when he saw Jared seriously shaking his head. “He doesn’t want you to be set up with…?”
“No,” Jared snapped. “Melanie doesn’t know how to drive a car or ride a bike. She’s lived in a big city her whole life, even when she studied abroad. There’s no need for those skills there. You take a cab or the subway or you walk.”
Kyle just stared at him for a long time, letting that information sink in. Then, without warning, he burst out laughing. It was not a gradual thing. The laughter was loud and obnoxious immediately. None of Jared’s scolding or yelling made it stop. It was completely out of control, and Kyle made no attempt to tame it.
Finally, Jared just slapped him, effectively silencing him into shock.
“Don’t disrespect her like that,” he said. “She lives in a different part of the country, a different state, a different environment. Not every place is like Lakeland Valley, you know.”
Kyle recovered and took another swallow of his beer.
“Thank god for that,” he muttered, rubbing his cheek. He moved his beer from his lips to the side of his face. Jared said nothing about how the slap didn’t warrant a cold cure and Kyle didn’t defend himself for using one.
“Look,” he said, serious now. “Just so you know, I wasn’t poking fun at Melanie. I was laughing at you.”
“Me,” Jared repeated neutrally.
“Yeah,” Kyle laughed. “You.”
His eyebrows narrowed. “What about me?”
“Oh come on, don’t tell me you don’t see it,” Kyle said, exasperated.
Jared saw it, but he was not going to admit it.
“Okay.” Kyle put out his hand and ticked off the list on his fingers. “She’s from the city – which, really, is your biggest issue. Then there’s the age thing, which also should be giving you flashbacks. And now you’re being put in a situation where you have to interact with her one-on-one for your job.”
Jared wasn’t connecting the dots, but he was getting annoyed.
“Don’t make it sound like a chore,” he barked. “It’s not.”
“It wasn’t last time either.”
“Kyle,” he warned.
The dots were realigning.
“The only reason you like Melanie Stryder is because she reminds of Ellie Carlson and everything that happened with her. Only this time it’s reversed. This time you’re ten years older, not the young and naïve self the sixteen year old you was, who fell for a line.” Jared’s hands clenched into fists at his sides. “Look man, I get it,” Kyle continued, either oblivious or feeling the need to finish his argument. “The past can be messy, especially yours. Who wouldn’t want to recreate a mistake by creating an opportunity where they rewrite the ending? But guess what? You can’t. And if you insist on trying, you are going to break Melanie Stryder’s heart. It’s not fair. To either of you.”
Jared was not particularly the violent type, but he had never wanted to punch something as much as he wanted to punch Kyle’s right now. He made myself count to ten slowly before he opened his mouth to speak.
“There’s just one problem with your theory, Kyle.”
“Yeah? And what is that?” he asked casually, clearly not feeling threatened in the least.
“I’m not into Melanie,” he replied for what felt like the thousandth time. This time though, he actually sounded convincing. “Not as an Ellie replacement, who, by the way, I am not secretly hung up on still. What happened with her happened ten years ago. To be honest, I haven’t thought about her in years, regardless if the experience created some biased stereotypes I’ve stuck to for the most part since then.
And I don’t like Melanie for herself either. Not in the way you’ve been implying. And it’s really insulting that you have the nerve to compare her to probably the biggest mistake of my life. Melanie and Ellie have a few things in common with the circumstances they were in and how they got involved with me, but that’s it. Melanie is nothing like Ellie.”
“I didn’t say she was,” Kyle said, looking like he’d discovered some big treasure he was cautious to reveal. “Out of curiosity though, what is she like?”
“Why should I tell you?” Jared asked, oddly defensive. “You’ll just use it to prove I’m in love with her. Which I’m not. Ask Sunny if you want to know about Mel. Or talk to Melanie yourself. Find out what she’s like.” He sighed, frustrated. Even so much as to not correct his little nickname he’d subconsciously given Melanie. “I don’t know why you feel like you have to grill me over this anyway. Even if I did have feelings for her – which I don’t – I wouldn’t act on them. She’s leaving at the end of summer. Three months from now none of this will matter.”
Kyle stared at him for a long time, not saying anything.
“I’m pushing you,” he said, “because you’re in denial. You will not be able to save yourself or Melanie from whatever is bound to happen between the two of you if you can’t at least admit to yourself that there’s something there. You have to take action while you still have a somewhat clear head. Once you’ve fallen for her completely, logic will have no meaning.”
Jared sighed and went into the living room, collapsing onto a big chair. He put his hand to head, preparing for the pounding headache he was sure Kyle’s pestering would induce. He couldn’t believe how far south this conversation had gone. He had expected some teasing similar to earlier in the week, especially given that Kyle had finally picked up that Melanie fit all his stereotypes. But he never dreamed he would connect that to Ellie. Probably because he himself hadn’t made the connection. He’d buried his memories of her so far back that all he had was his feelings of bitterness created by a few key characteristics of her.
Thinking of it now, he could see how Kyle’s sudden assumption did make logical sense. But he’d been completely honest when he said his past with Ellie had nothing whatsoever for what he might or might not feel for Melanie Stryder. The two women were polar opposites. If Melanie had in any way been close to how Ellie had acted and was, even at her deceptive finest, he wouldn’t have delivered an apology to her so quickly. He wouldn’t have been intrigued by her or even found her amusing. It would have been too hard to look past the similarities.
But he couldn’t tell Kyle any of that without him announcing once again that he had feelins for Melanie.
Which he didn’t.
“The way you talk about Melanie…” he shook his head wonderingly. “It’s like you’re convinced we’re inevitable. What makes you think that? Just from the way I look at her?”
Kyle lazily sauntered into the living room and sunk into a chair across from Jared, cradling his nearly empty bottle of beer in his lap.
“That’s part of it,” he admitted after awhile.
“And why is that significant?” Jared asked on a sigh. “How can you tell?” He hoped he sounded borderline sarcastic, not curious. He suspected he was failing.
“It’s the same way I looked at Jodi,” he said quietly.
Silence descended. Jared felt a heavy burden of guilt settling over him due to the unintended pain he’d brought onto his friend just now.
Jodi. The girl his best friend had met on the night he turned nineteen. He said he was in love with her within the week. She was still in high school then and he was attempting to maintain a C-average in the community college one town over. Two years later she was freshman at his school. He’d worked hard to raise his grade when he heard she was considering going there. They hadn’t spoken since the summer they first met, but he was convinced he was going to marry her. Two days after he graduated, he proposed and she said yes. A week before their rehearsal dinner, Jodi went messing. She was never found.
In the last three years, Kyle had gone back and forth between hoping she’d comeback and going on meaningless dates that always ended badly. He either would up talking about Jodi and how much he missed her or he got drunk first and became obnoxious.
Jodi was Kyle’s “the one”. Jared felt an unexpected excitement and warmth at the knowledge that his best friend was comparing his relationship to Jodi to his own feelings for Melanie. Then, the contradiction dawned on him.
“Wait.” He paused, thinking through his question before asking. “So…first you compare my impending relationship with Mel to Ellie, the woman who ruined my life, where you assume I could never really love Mel for herself I’d only be in it as an opportunity to heal myself or unknowingly take revenge on Ellie by replacing a bad memory with a good one. Then you compare how I must feel about Melanie to how you feel about Jodi, the love of your life, your soulmate, the person you shared with, from what I’ve seen, the purest love you’ve ever known, and really, in all existence.” He stopped again, letting his observations sink in. “There are two opposite comparisons,” he informed him. “You can’t really think both.” His heart twisted, intensely worried what Kyle’s next answer would be, and for the time being ignoring the danger alone in the fact that he was that worried, or worried at all.
“You can’t really think both,” he said. “Which one do you really?”
Kyle’s sullen, sad face slowly vanished to be replaced by a sneaky smirk which in no time at all became a full-fledged grin. Jared felt the dread whisper across his senses, though it was different from the feeling swallowing him whole only moments earlier. He knew before he opened his mouth what Kyle was going to say. He told himself he couldn’t have fallen into that trap. He couldn’t have.
But he had.
“I’m guessing…” Kyle began cheekily, “the one you’re desperately wishing I do. The one that made you so unexpectedly warm and fuzzy inside.”
Jared jumped out of his seat, grabbing Kyle’s beer bottle and stalking to the kitchen. He tried to ignore his friend’s second fit of laughter that had occurred since he arrived.
He failed.
Lifting the bottle to his lips, only to find all the liquor drained from it, he asked himself how he could have been so stupid. The assumptions were undeniable now. Kyle had pushed him to the point of admitting feelings he’d tried to ignore by not really making him admit to them at all. And if there was any doubt as to how he felt, it was squashed immediately when he saw Melanie and Sunny sitting, eating lunch across the street at an outdoor café. And his heart raced.
Damn, he thought, setting the glass bottle on the kitchen table, his eyes not turning away. The clink of the glass briefly blocked out the echoes of Kyle’s laughter one room away, but it did not quiet the sound of his heart beating loudly in his ears.
Damn.
Jared turned back to look at Kyle, who was staring incredulously at his best friend waving off Sunny and Melanie as they exited the apartment. Jeb had been surprisingly generous in letting Jared keep Melanie out past the previous curfew of dawn and giving Jared the day off. But apparently he was just eager to make sure had a fun summer and thrilled that his handyman/roofer had taken on “Project Melanie” with such fervor. He hadn’t had any suspicions whatsoever.
Not that he needed to have any, Jared reminded himself. Because there was nothing going on.
“What are you talking about?” he asked, determined to look as innocent as possible.
“You know what I’m talking about,” Kyle said, roughly brushing past him to shut the door the girls had just walked out of. He turned around to see Jared looked dumbfounded and confused. “Yes, you do,” he said slowly, as if to a child. “And don’t pretend like you don’t.” He pointed his finger at him accusingly. “Your innocent act doesn’t work on me; and frankly, you suck at it.”
“Are you talking about Melanie?” Jared asked.
Kyle stared at him in disbelief. “No shit.”
“What about her?” Jared asked, folding his arms across his chest.
Kyle gawked, then turned around and headed into the kitchen. He grabbed a beer from the fridge and downed half of it.
“Slow down there, cowboy,” Jared said, coming to stand across from him on the tile floor. “You probably shouldn’t go to the fair drunk.” His smirk easily turned into a grin.
“My shift’s not till 5,” Kyle said. “It’s only 11 am.”
Jared raised his eyebrows, amused. “All the more reason.”
Kyle set the glass bottle on the table and fixed Jared with a look that vacillated between attempted intimidation and the air of wisdom.
“Just answer me this. What happened?”
Huh?” Jared’s brows furrowed in genuine confusion now.
“What happened? What changed? I know what didn’t change. You’re still into her. Still falling for her faster than a brick into water.” Jared opened his mouth to interject, but Kyle kept going. “But you’re not brooding anymore like you were the other day. You’re all googly-eyed now, and Melanie has definitely got stars in her eyes. So, something had to have happened. What was it?”
“If you’re asking…” Jared began carefully, “why I’m not,” he paused, trying to think of the right word; “moody, anymore, it’s because I apologized and she decided to give me the benefit of the doubt.”
Kyle stared at his friend, trying to decide if he was lying.
“Huh.” He thought that over. “Still doesn’t explain the googly eyes—”
Jared rolled his eyes. “I do not have googly—”
“Or her starry eyes.”
Jared started to form words, but suddenly hesitated. Whatever feelings he was trying to muddle through, he didn’t have the slightest idea about Melanie’s.
“Jeb wants Melanie to have a fun summer,” he explained. Even as he said it he knew what the implications might be. Kyle’s raised eyebrows and cheeky smirk said his thoughts better than any words ever could.
“Is that right?” Kyle asked, practically giddy. Jared glared at him. “And…” he cleared his throat, trying not to laugh. “He trusts you to show his niece a good time then?”
“Don’t,” Jared warned. “It’s not like that.”
“No?” Kyle laughed, lifting his beer to take another sip. “Why don’t you tell me what it’s like then,” he suggested, thoroughly enjoying himself now.
“It’s like,” Jared said slowly, as if to a child, “there was an old bike and car in the shed behind Jeb’s house, and he wants me to fix them up and show his niece how to use them.”
“Show her how to—” Kyle stopped, momentarily confused. “Didn’t say she was seventeen?”
Jared nodded, bracing himself for the multiple revelations that were about to hit his best friend.
“But…wouldn’t that mean she already has her driver’s license? She definitely has to know how to ride a bike. You learn how to do that when you’re a kid.” He smirked. “Sounds like good old Jebediah is trying to set you up with…” His voice trailed off and his smile faded when he saw Jared seriously shaking his head. “He doesn’t want you to be set up with…?”
“No,” Jared snapped. “Melanie doesn’t know how to drive a car or ride a bike. She’s lived in a big city her whole life, even when she studied abroad. There’s no need for those skills there. You take a cab or the subway or you walk.”
Kyle just stared at him for a long time, letting that information sink in. Then, without warning, he burst out laughing. It was not a gradual thing. The laughter was loud and obnoxious immediately. None of Jared’s scolding or yelling made it stop. It was completely out of control, and Kyle made no attempt to tame it.
Finally, Jared just slapped him, effectively silencing him into shock.
“Don’t disrespect her like that,” he said. “She lives in a different part of the country, a different state, a different environment. Not every place is like Lakeland Valley, you know.”
Kyle recovered and took another swallow of his beer.
“Thank god for that,” he muttered, rubbing his cheek. He moved his beer from his lips to the side of his face. Jared said nothing about how the slap didn’t warrant a cold cure and Kyle didn’t defend himself for using one.
“Look,” he said, serious now. “Just so you know, I wasn’t poking fun at Melanie. I was laughing at you.”
“Me,” Jared repeated neutrally.
“Yeah,” Kyle laughed. “You.”
His eyebrows narrowed. “What about me?”
“Oh come on, don’t tell me you don’t see it,” Kyle said, exasperated.
Jared saw it, but he was not going to admit it.
“Okay.” Kyle put out his hand and ticked off the list on his fingers. “She’s from the city – which, really, is your biggest issue. Then there’s the age thing, which also should be giving you flashbacks. And now you’re being put in a situation where you have to interact with her one-on-one for your job.”
Jared wasn’t connecting the dots, but he was getting annoyed.
“Don’t make it sound like a chore,” he barked. “It’s not.”
“It wasn’t last time either.”
“Kyle,” he warned.
The dots were realigning.
“The only reason you like Melanie Stryder is because she reminds of Ellie Carlson and everything that happened with her. Only this time it’s reversed. This time you’re ten years older, not the young and naïve self the sixteen year old you was, who fell for a line.” Jared’s hands clenched into fists at his sides. “Look man, I get it,” Kyle continued, either oblivious or feeling the need to finish his argument. “The past can be messy, especially yours. Who wouldn’t want to recreate a mistake by creating an opportunity where they rewrite the ending? But guess what? You can’t. And if you insist on trying, you are going to break Melanie Stryder’s heart. It’s not fair. To either of you.”
Jared was not particularly the violent type, but he had never wanted to punch something as much as he wanted to punch Kyle’s right now. He made myself count to ten slowly before he opened his mouth to speak.
“There’s just one problem with your theory, Kyle.”
“Yeah? And what is that?” he asked casually, clearly not feeling threatened in the least.
“I’m not into Melanie,” he replied for what felt like the thousandth time. This time though, he actually sounded convincing. “Not as an Ellie replacement, who, by the way, I am not secretly hung up on still. What happened with her happened ten years ago. To be honest, I haven’t thought about her in years, regardless if the experience created some biased stereotypes I’ve stuck to for the most part since then.
And I don’t like Melanie for herself either. Not in the way you’ve been implying. And it’s really insulting that you have the nerve to compare her to probably the biggest mistake of my life. Melanie and Ellie have a few things in common with the circumstances they were in and how they got involved with me, but that’s it. Melanie is nothing like Ellie.”
“I didn’t say she was,” Kyle said, looking like he’d discovered some big treasure he was cautious to reveal. “Out of curiosity though, what is she like?”
“Why should I tell you?” Jared asked, oddly defensive. “You’ll just use it to prove I’m in love with her. Which I’m not. Ask Sunny if you want to know about Mel. Or talk to Melanie yourself. Find out what she’s like.” He sighed, frustrated. Even so much as to not correct his little nickname he’d subconsciously given Melanie. “I don’t know why you feel like you have to grill me over this anyway. Even if I did have feelings for her – which I don’t – I wouldn’t act on them. She’s leaving at the end of summer. Three months from now none of this will matter.”
Kyle stared at him for a long time, not saying anything.
“I’m pushing you,” he said, “because you’re in denial. You will not be able to save yourself or Melanie from whatever is bound to happen between the two of you if you can’t at least admit to yourself that there’s something there. You have to take action while you still have a somewhat clear head. Once you’ve fallen for her completely, logic will have no meaning.”
Jared sighed and went into the living room, collapsing onto a big chair. He put his hand to head, preparing for the pounding headache he was sure Kyle’s pestering would induce. He couldn’t believe how far south this conversation had gone. He had expected some teasing similar to earlier in the week, especially given that Kyle had finally picked up that Melanie fit all his stereotypes. But he never dreamed he would connect that to Ellie. Probably because he himself hadn’t made the connection. He’d buried his memories of her so far back that all he had was his feelings of bitterness created by a few key characteristics of her.
Thinking of it now, he could see how Kyle’s sudden assumption did make logical sense. But he’d been completely honest when he said his past with Ellie had nothing whatsoever for what he might or might not feel for Melanie Stryder. The two women were polar opposites. If Melanie had in any way been close to how Ellie had acted and was, even at her deceptive finest, he wouldn’t have delivered an apology to her so quickly. He wouldn’t have been intrigued by her or even found her amusing. It would have been too hard to look past the similarities.
But he couldn’t tell Kyle any of that without him announcing once again that he had feelins for Melanie.
Which he didn’t.
“The way you talk about Melanie…” he shook his head wonderingly. “It’s like you’re convinced we’re inevitable. What makes you think that? Just from the way I look at her?”
Kyle lazily sauntered into the living room and sunk into a chair across from Jared, cradling his nearly empty bottle of beer in his lap.
“That’s part of it,” he admitted after awhile.
“And why is that significant?” Jared asked on a sigh. “How can you tell?” He hoped he sounded borderline sarcastic, not curious. He suspected he was failing.
“It’s the same way I looked at Jodi,” he said quietly.
Silence descended. Jared felt a heavy burden of guilt settling over him due to the unintended pain he’d brought onto his friend just now.
Jodi. The girl his best friend had met on the night he turned nineteen. He said he was in love with her within the week. She was still in high school then and he was attempting to maintain a C-average in the community college one town over. Two years later she was freshman at his school. He’d worked hard to raise his grade when he heard she was considering going there. They hadn’t spoken since the summer they first met, but he was convinced he was going to marry her. Two days after he graduated, he proposed and she said yes. A week before their rehearsal dinner, Jodi went messing. She was never found.
In the last three years, Kyle had gone back and forth between hoping she’d comeback and going on meaningless dates that always ended badly. He either would up talking about Jodi and how much he missed her or he got drunk first and became obnoxious.
Jodi was Kyle’s “the one”. Jared felt an unexpected excitement and warmth at the knowledge that his best friend was comparing his relationship to Jodi to his own feelings for Melanie. Then, the contradiction dawned on him.
“Wait.” He paused, thinking through his question before asking. “So…first you compare my impending relationship with Mel to Ellie, the woman who ruined my life, where you assume I could never really love Mel for herself I’d only be in it as an opportunity to heal myself or unknowingly take revenge on Ellie by replacing a bad memory with a good one. Then you compare how I must feel about Melanie to how you feel about Jodi, the love of your life, your soulmate, the person you shared with, from what I’ve seen, the purest love you’ve ever known, and really, in all existence.” He stopped again, letting his observations sink in. “There are two opposite comparisons,” he informed him. “You can’t really think both.” His heart twisted, intensely worried what Kyle’s next answer would be, and for the time being ignoring the danger alone in the fact that he was that worried, or worried at all.
“You can’t really think both,” he said. “Which one do you really?”
Kyle’s sullen, sad face slowly vanished to be replaced by a sneaky smirk which in no time at all became a full-fledged grin. Jared felt the dread whisper across his senses, though it was different from the feeling swallowing him whole only moments earlier. He knew before he opened his mouth what Kyle was going to say. He told himself he couldn’t have fallen into that trap. He couldn’t have.
But he had.
“I’m guessing…” Kyle began cheekily, “the one you’re desperately wishing I do. The one that made you so unexpectedly warm and fuzzy inside.”
Jared jumped out of his seat, grabbing Kyle’s beer bottle and stalking to the kitchen. He tried to ignore his friend’s second fit of laughter that had occurred since he arrived.
He failed.
Lifting the bottle to his lips, only to find all the liquor drained from it, he asked himself how he could have been so stupid. The assumptions were undeniable now. Kyle had pushed him to the point of admitting feelings he’d tried to ignore by not really making him admit to them at all. And if there was any doubt as to how he felt, it was squashed immediately when he saw Melanie and Sunny sitting, eating lunch across the street at an outdoor café. And his heart raced.
Damn, he thought, setting the glass bottle on the kitchen table, his eyes not turning away. The clink of the glass briefly blocked out the echoes of Kyle’s laughter one room away, but it did not quiet the sound of his heart beating loudly in his ears.
Damn.
Back to Running in the Sun - main page
Back to Books by Author page
Back to Stephanie Meyers page
Back to The Host page
Back to Books by Author page
Back to Stephanie Meyers page
Back to The Host page