sharp tongues {Embry Call}

²⁸ Copernicus

'Oh',  Harper thinks, 'he's joking. Of course, he'd be joking.' She pauses, eyes darting between both of his, and feels like she should be holding her breath as if it would press pause on the moment. Just to give her some time to breathe and process whatever the hell Embry had just said. But she can't so Harper changes the subject.

"Has Sam been running you ragged again?" She asks in a somewhat quieter voice. A group of Forks kids enters and she waits a moment at the counter where he sits on a stool. She knows she'll have to get the menus and waters soon enough.

He hums but doesn't answer, finally breaking eye contact before his eyes drift to a table slightly behind him. At the table where he sat once upon a time ago, Jake and Quil had been across from him asking him about his feelings for Harper before the she-devil slid in next to him and with one touch entirely fast-tracked his entire wolf gene. Not just him but Jake and Quil too, they weren't expected to turn entirely at the end of junior year at the very least.

The vampire who had turned Sage and the predecessor to that awful red-headed beast that had been gallivanting the woods for months. He preferred Mina over the redhead greatly. But perhaps he was biased. She had brought him Harper and he was grateful for that.

A brush against his arm, cooler skin against his own has his nerves setting fire and his head snapping attention back to Harper. Her hair is pulled up today and he can see that gray streak from her ponytail. She's been growing it out, he notices.

"Yeah, a bit," Embry finally answers, eyes leaving her occasionally to look away nervously. She's assessing him again. She's been doing it more often and he wonders what she sees. He spends enough time looking in the mirror knowing the way his build had filled out but he's still one of the slimmer ones in the pack. Certainly not as muscular as Jake or Paul or god forbid Sam. Much closer in build to Seth who was still several years younger than him. He understands that his crooked nose (he broke in the tree climbing accident of '08) hadn't been fixed with the transformation and neither had the scar on his temple or the freckles spattered about his arms. He wondered if she noticed that he spent forever on his hair the days he saw her. That he spent longer in the bathroom and wrote down which smells she liked the best based on which ones he saw her with. How he tried to impress her and he wondered if it mattered considering the company of much bigger men around the house. If he could even call the gaggle of teenagers 'men'. He wonders if she cares.

Harper sighs, Embry's eyes shooting from the mugs stacked on the counter behind her to the girl herself. He watched her check that watch the one with the ran-through and creased leather wristband. "I get off in ten minutes after that I'm driving you to my house and while I do homework you are going to go to sleep. When you wake up we'll raid the leftovers in the fridge and watch a movie ."

He finds himself smiling. Oh, he thinks as his cheeks heat up. Harper cares. And as his mind relishes in what she's doing he finds himself asking incredulously, "There are leftovers?"

"A sweet potato pie with my name on it and a threat against any of those other idiots who touch it." Harper rolls her eyes but that soft smile on her face betrays any of it. She walks off without another word to grab those menus but offers a concerned look, lips pursing before nodding to herself. He leans his head against his hand and sighs to himself.

"Oh bro, you've got it so bad."

The voice jolted him out of his Harper-induced-haze/daydream, snapping to the other employee behind the counter.

Fucking Eli!

Embry's eyes narrow harshly before he shakes his head. Not his business. Eli isn't a bad person. And if Harper so does choose to spend her time around him it isn't his will to interfere with her relationships unless he believes them to be detrimental for any reason besides jealousy. (Fucking Sam's monologue after he phased when he saw Eli kissing Harper.)