The characters and story of Twilight lived in Stephenie Meyer's head long before I came along and read it. They belong to her. This story however, has lived in my head long before you read it and it belongs to me. I don't intend any copyright infringement and you better not either.
Love to my girls the ever name changing drunknessie, sugartits, kstewfangirl and agirlreckoning. If you know them you know why I love them so much.
Hello readers, old and new! I'm still on the high of passing that 1000 review milestone on FFN! I'm working out some ideas for an outtake, as well as working on some o/s contest entries! All that and I managed to get this update to you sooner than last week, we're making progress! Look how your reviews inspire me. :) :) :)
I'm sorry at how behind I am on posting here. I don't think any of you solely read the full updates here though, so I think I'm okay. I promise I'll try and get better about it.
From this burnout scene
Another time, another town
Another everything
But it's always back to you
~~Shattered, O.A.R.
Spring
~~EPOV~~
There was nothing like the flashing of a cursor on a blank page to make you feel more worthless. Well, other than spending hours writing, only to delete it all for the spewed monkey shit it was. I drummed my fingers against the mouse and moved to open the game of solitaire I had minimized. At least if I couldn't organize my thoughts, I could mindlessly sort cards for an hour.
I heard the doorbell and Rose's shoes slapping against the floor, and sighed. If I wasn't distracted enough already this would do me in. As much as I loved a historic home, the insulation was crap. I could hear every conversation that happened in any room of the house, and I really wasn't in the mood to listen to some blowhole debate Ferraris and Maseratis.
I pulled at the whiskers I hadn't bothered to shave from my chin and sighed. It was fucking useless. No matter how many times I tried, I couldn't get my brain to function outside of Masen. I'd been working on other novels the entire time I wrote the series, and not a single one of them amounted to shit.
I wanted a fucking drink. I glanced at the clock in the corner of the screen. Three p.m. That wasn't too early, was it? One of the tabs at the bottom blinked, email message. The fucking thing blinked every thirty seconds.
I went to my inbox and found a new message from my editor. The third book was due to hit shelves this summer and the early reviews were fucking stellar. Like, they actually had a hard time choosing some for the book jacket. The fourth and final book, thank fucking god, was the current noose they had around my neck. I wanted to be done with it so I could move on, but it didn't look like it was going to be that easy.
I knew I shouldn't be bitching. This was a fucking dream come true, or so they say. The film rights to the entire series was being negotiated. I was going to see my imagination portrayed on screen, and no one could understand why I was so god damn apprehensive about the whole thing.
I asked them all the same question, name for me one movie that's as good as the book it's based on. Not a single one could. I wasn't trying to say my books were the greatest thing ever, I wasn't that far up my own ass. If mediocre books made shit movies, a movie adaptation of a good one could only be worse.
Of course, everyone else who had their mouths around my dick argued that my books were fantastic, and that movies would only help the series - didn't get that I wasn't fishing for a fucking compliment in a sea of sycophants. On the flip side, a few Hollywood "insiders" were calling me a J.D. Salinger wannabe, thinking my shit was so epic, that film could not touch it. I just didn't want to be a fucking laughing stock, was that so hard to imagine?
Jasper got it. Thank god for that mother fucker. The way he worked out the contract was pretty gnarly. Gave me all sorts of rights so I'd have enough say that it wouldn't royally suck, and not too much say that I'd be making the damn thing myself.
Rose laughed and the voice downstairs deepened. She was over the fucking moon about this whole thing. I never understood why someone so obsessed with being a celebrity didn't just become a fucking actress. She wanted to be known, she wanted to be recognized. Get a fucking agent or pull a Paris Hilton, but for Jesus' sake, shut the fuck up about it.
Her own movie work had picked way up and she was getting what she wanted. We got fucking papped the other day sitting outside at lunch. The photog approached her after to ask "her companion's name" and when she bitch-eyed him, and answered "E.A. Cullen" he ended up asking me a ton of questions. She was thirty kinds of pissy after that, but I'm not sure if it was because he didn't recognize me, or once he did, he didn't care about her anymore. Either way, if she brings up that reality show bullshit again, I'm going to hit the fucking ceiling.
It was strange, the first fucking thing I thought when he snapped that photo was whether or not Bella would see it, and what she would think? If she even paid attention to that shit. Somehow, I thought she did, like it was a guilty little pleasure she'd be embarrassed to admit.
Bella.
She was always there, lurking in the back of my mind. I wondered about her. What she was doing, how she was feeling, if she missed me.
I'd added her as a "friend" on my private Facebook page. The one reserved for people I actually wanted to talk to. But we didn't'. Talk, that was. It felt wrong to do it all out in the open and shit, like we were flouncing it in unknowing faces. It felt more fucked up to do it in private messages, like we were adulterous whores. Which we were.
I glanced over at the stack of books on the edge of my desk. They still smelled new. I picked one up and flipped it open, glancing over my bio inside. I wanted to send it to her. I wanted her to read it before the world could. I wanted her to see the way she'd influenced it, the places where I wrote us into the page.
I opened to the chapter where Masen meets his girl. I ran my fingers across the print feeling the ink beneath my skin. I traced each sentence looking for the hidden message beneath it, like secret Braille for a man who wasn't blind.
I searched for a pen on the desk and a sheet of stationary paper in the drawer. I knew I had some somewhere. In this age of digital communication I was an old fashioned fucker that liked to correspond with thought and effort whenever I could. Nowadays, most things couldn't wait for the ink to dry on the paper, for the letter to be put in a box and delivered later. Instant gratification had its usefulness, but there was something to be said for waiting.
I licked the tip of my pen before bringing it to the monogrammed paper, and quickly jotted what I was thinking before I thought it away and changed my mind. The paper was folded three times and slipped in the binding where I had been feeling the words, before I slipped the book in a padded envelope and marked the address across the front. Now, whether or not I had the nerve to send it would remain to be seen.
"What do you think, black or red?" Rose tapped her foot and shook the dresses at me.
I glanced up from my computer. I didn't have time for this.
"Black or red? Either."
"Edward! That's no help. They're entirely different dresses."
"What are they for?"
"That meeting I told you I have today. At the Ivy."
"What meeting?"
"You know…" she trailed off. I didn't.
"No?"
"I think the black. More professional." She backed out of the room and across the hall to the master bedroom.
There was something she wasn't telling me. I pushed off the desk and followed her.
"Rose. Where are you going?"
"The Ivy. Duh. I just said that. Remind me to pick you up some Ginkgo biloba."
"Funny. What the fuck are you up to?"
"You already said you wanted no part in it. So there you go."
My hands tore into my hair. "Rosalie Hale. Is this that fucking show again? Are you kidding me?"
"Come on. This is such a huge opportunity for me. I get your reservations, and I've been assured that they'll be handled. That's part of what today is. Going over some more specifics before any contracts are drafted."
I could not fucking believe she was still going forward with this, even after I said no. Where the fuck did she get off making choices about us while totally ignoring me?
"You are unbelievable," I stammered under my breath.
"Quit being such a baby about it. You're getting what you wanted. If I do this, you won't be featured on the show at all. You won't be filmed, I won't talk about you. The show is about my work life anyway, not my personal. You have nothing to worry about."
"Do you fucking even watch TV? No one gives a rat's ass about your work life. They want to see you lose it on an assistant, or fight with your boyfriend, or say something bizarrely stupid. That's the fucking point Rose, and if you don't realize that…"
"What? I'm stupid? You think I'm stupid?"
"I think you're being naive."
Rose flung both the dresses on the bed, and slammed the door to the bathroom. I did the only thing I knew how to do in times like these. I fucking booked it. I was out the door, and in my car with nothing but the shit in my pockets. I needed to drive. I needed the wind between my ears to clear some fucking space in my head.
I drove down the PCH until I found that little hole in the wall shake place I loved. It was cloudy today, cold, and no one else was stopping for ice cream. I ordered the peanut-butter banana concoction, and pulled out my phone. I stared at the screen for a minute, lighting a cigarette and perching near the cliff's edge. There was a sliver of beach below me dotted with weathered bungalows in the sand.
I scrolled through my contacts and hit his number. Jasper was just the dude to talk me down right now. He was older, wiser, and put up with my sister's shit, so he had to be doing something right. He answered on the first ring.
"To what do I owe this pleasure?"
"I don't know if I'd say that. You haven't heard me bitch yet." I sucked long on the cigarette and nodded at the shack as they called my name.
"What's up?"
"It's Rose and that reality show again. She's going through with it."
The whole topic came up when Jasper and Alice visited after the conference a couple months ago. Rose sprung it on me when the four of us were out for dinner, and it was sad how obvious it was that it wasn't news to my sister. The whole trip to see us was a fucking farce to rope me into this hoopla.
Afterward, I made it clear as vodka to Rose that I wanted no part of this, and other than the occasional hint, she'd pretty much dropped it. That was why today had me keyed up like a hooker on meth. Based on how far along she was in the negotiations, she'd been doing shit behind my back.
I moaned to Jasper like the bitch that I was, and then sucked down on my milkshake while he was quiet for a minute.
"What has Rose always said? And I mean always, like it should be her epitaph."
I rolled my eyes. I knew what he was getting at. "They should have named Barbie, Rosalie Hale."
"Exactly. She's been gunning at being a household name since she could load the bullets. Wasn't that ambition something you loved about her?"
"Yeah. But shit, man. Now, it's like, at what cost? You know?"
"I do. To be frank, I never knew how you did it. I've always thought Rose inspired the saying that behind every smoking hot chick-"
"Is some guy putting up with her shit," I finished. "I know, I know."
"Is she still worth it?" He asked.
I stared out at the ocean that was the same ocean that engulfed me in Monterey each year. Just a couple hundred miles of shore, but it was like being on another planet.
"Fuck, Jaz. I just want to know what to do about the show. I can't get into all that shit."
"What about Bella?"
Fucker. He had to go there.
Jasper had kept pretty mum about the whole thing. Besides a few knowing looks and some passing comments, he hadn't said shit about what he'd figured out at the conference. I'd been scared out of my shorts about the car ride back to L.A. with him, but he was quiet. And here he was now, pulling her name out of the fucking blue sky, like we talked about her all the time.
"I don't follow."
"Don't play stupid, Edward. And quit acting like I am. You don't want to talk about you and Bella, fine. But don't pretend to me, or yourself, that whatever is going on with you two isn't fucking with your head right now."
He was right. Of course he was right. That's why I called the mother fucker in the first place. So he could slap me around.
"Alright, maybe it is," I said.
"No maybe about it, dumbass. You want to be with Rose, then be with Rose. If you don't, then don't. It's that easy."
"No, it isn't. Just because you and Alice are the fucking poster children for marital bliss, doesn't mean that everyone else just falls into it like that."
"Jesus fucking Christ. You think I don't know that? It once took me two years to break up with a chick. Two years from the day I decided I didn't want to be with her anymore, to the day I finally told her. But I was nineteen. We're not kids anymore. Shit is real now. You've got a ring on that girl's finger, if you don't want it there, then man the fuck up."
"God damn it. Fuck." I yelled at nothing and no one in particular.
Jasper waited until I was done. We said our goodbyes, and I grumbled a "thanks for nothing" which he just laughed off, like the smart ass bastard he was.
I downed the shake and ordered another. I chain smoked, I bounced my leg, I ran my hands through my hair. I picked at the fucking piece of dry skin that had been peeling off my lip for the last day and a half. When I finally grew a sack and ripped it off, it stung and bled in my mouth.
There was a family coming out of one of the cottages below. They were bundled up against the wind and fog, and their hands were full of buckets and shovels. They didn't look like the kind of people that lived there. The community was once a haven for the outcasts- artists, musicians, beats, poets, and hippies- they bared their asses to prohibition, segregation, and McCarthyism, built their homes from left over movie sets and lived like they were dying.
Now that little cove of non-conformity was a "quaint" vacation spot for suburbanites and WASPs. It was exactly what the original inhabitants were avoiding in the first place, only now their sweater sets matched their Blackberries instead of their Tupperware. I knew an old man who grew up in cottage number twelve. His parents made silent movies. He was born before there was sound on screen, and now he could watch live stream television from his pocket if he wanted.
His wife died last year. They'd been married longer than some people lived. His entire world revolved around her smile. In her last days, when she struggled for each breath and refused any machines, she used her last ounce of energy to speak to him. He said she squeezed his hands and whispered, "thanks for the best sixty-three years of my life." He still choked up every time he told that story, and I'll be damned if everyone else didn't too. To stand witness to love like that was a fucking gift.
"It's all you take with you, Eddie," he'd say. He called me Eddie, I hated it but I didn't correct him.
"The money, the memories, the things you've seen, by the time you're my age they're all gone. But the love, you don't forget that. It doesn't change."
No truer words, Felix. When that codger kicked the can the world would be that less wise.
I tossed my trash and stood up, stretching my arms above my head. It was late and I was cold. I drove back home without the clarity I'd been driving for. The house was mostly dark as I pulled into the garage. I found Rose on the couch watching a movie with the sound down low.
She didn't look at me as I came in, and I knew that I'd hurt her. Nobody could beat Rose at the stubborn game. She was part mule.
"If you love someone it doesn't matter what you want. You want for them more. Wonder if you're in love? Be willing to give something up. See if you care." Thank you Felix, you can shut up now.
I sat on the ottoman, blocking her view and stared at her until she looked at me. She raised her eyebrows and waited.
"I'm sorry I was a dick, and I'm sorry I took off," I said. "If this show is what you really want, then do it."
Her mouth opened but I went on.
"But there's one condition. I refuse to let strangers and the whole damn world into our life. You want to do the show, you need to get a new office or I'm getting a new house, no cameras allowed. Your choice."
"I canceled the meeting," she said after a pause. "It wasn't worth it if it would cost me you. That's too high a price." She reached for my hand and pressed it against her cheek.
"I shouldn't have asked that of you. You're working your ass off, this exposure is what you want. You deserve this. If you want it, do it."
"Do you really mean that?" She asked, the hope filling up her eyes.
"Yes. But I'm serious on the separate spaces. I won't settle for them just pretending I'm not here. I will literally not be here. So you choose. Is this your office or our home?"
"Is this your way of getting me to agree to buying that house in the hills you've been wetting your shorts over for the last three months?"
"No…maybe."
She was right. I'd wanted to get off the strip and up to the hills before the press tour and the film announcement. If there was ever a time to become more discreet, this was it. It was ironic how the price being paid was more exposure.
"I'll think about it," she said. "Now get the fuck out of my way. I need to restart this bitch back at the beginning."
So that was that. I gave something up and I cared. About what, I still wasn't sure.
I'd just survived a suit fitting, three meetings, and an interview over lunch. Tomorrow was my birthday, and the day after that summer and hell began. There would be coast to coast media blitz gallivanting, a book launch, the film announcement, and 3,700 engagements. It'd be Thanksgiving before I'd sleep.
I tucked my car into the garage, and wished her well before closing the door. My shit was already packed and waiting by the door for tomorrow morning's flight. All I needed to do now what stuff my face, scrub my pits, and belly flop on my bed.
I tossed my keys on the table near the door and listened for Rose. Her car was out front but it was silent in the half empty house. I stepped around the boxes in the foyer, and called her name up the stairs. It got colder the higher I climbed.
The door to the bedroom was shut and I could hear the sound of the fan, and blues playing behind the door. I cracked it open and looked inside.
Rose was on the bed wrapped in the comforter, sitting up and facing a stand up fan. The cold of the room shocked me, she must have had the thermostat as low as it could go.
"Rose? What are you doing?" I asked.
She didn't speak, she just shook her head. I stepped closer, slowly but deliberately, like you'd approach an animal you feared could strike.
"What's going on?" I knelt before her, the blank expression and the lack of tears alarmed me. When someone is jumping off a mental cliff there were usually some fucking tears.
"I'm not doing the show. I'm not."
"Okay. Um, that's fine. It was always your decision. Is that what made you so upset?"
"I'm not doing it," she said like she hadn't heard me. "I wanted to. But I can't let them in like that. I can't do this with the world watching."
"You can't do what, Rose? You're not making any sense. What can't you do?"
She dropped her chin and a tear ran down her cheek, then underneath it. I wiped it away with my thumb, and she looked at me.
"I can't do this," she said, her words heavy with emotion. Her emphasis hung in the air between us like a tightrope walker losing the grip on her umbrella.
For the first time I saw the sheet of paper in her hand, and my eyes scanned the words printed on it. The deeper they sunk into my brain, the sicker I felt. This changed everything. Fucking everything.
~~I'd love reviews more than you'd love to find out what was on that piece of paper.~~
(don't kill me for the cliffy? okay? I haven't done that in awhile to y'all. I've played nice for several chapters)
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