Well done, Bill. It's barely even a hint on the radar during all this, that Lorena leans into the phone with a friendly, purring "Ça va, Sookie?" Sookie barely registers that, just stays with the filibuster, calling his name again and again. "Look at your life since I entered it: I've only caused you pain. I am death."

(I am Death. Never forget that. This is a story of Gods fucking men, and why it's not really ever okay. Part of her love for him and part of the story of first love is the fact that he swims in depths she can't even see and fathoms she can't sound; he's a black shape in the blackness, like all vampires. Nothing Bill says is ever a lie; he wouldn't allow it.)

"I will bring you only suffering. Our worlds are too different. Our natures too. We were doomed from the start." Of course she doesn't believe him, or any of this nonsense, because it's no more or less true than it was the day they met, and since then he's comforted her against it a thousand times: She's special. The rules don't apply to her, or to him: They are the one true thing. They break the rules and rewrite them, their love is so powerful. Every fear and nightmare, every part of Eric that nobody can touch and the real reason she can't trust him, coming true: "Believe what you want. You are no longer of concern to me. Do not try to find me. I do not wish to be found." And then just a dial tone.

Left alone with Alcide, numb and nearly barfing, Sookie wonders to herself what on earth that phone call was about. "I'm pretty sure it means he doesn't wanna see you anymore," Alcide helpfully suggests, and she's like, "Nothing of the sort! Clearly strange things are afoot at the Circle K. We gotta get twice as weird and twice as pissed and hurl ourselves twice as hard into twice as much danger! Hand me a knife! Or a cudgel! We're doing this shit bra-less!"

Because this is the last fucking thing Alcide needs to hear -- in fact, what we can't quite see yet is that letting go of Debbie is harder even than letting go of Bill, even after a month -- he sets about setting her straight, in a way that would drive her bats with anger if she could actually hear this on an emotional level and not as some logical puzzlement that she can filibuster her way out from under: "Maybe the man you love never existed except in your head? No matter how well you think you know somebody, they can still turn around and kick you right in the nut sack."