Chapter One – It's gonna be okay.
Meet Edward Cullen.
EPOV
I woke up to a thud.
That would be Emmett's clock hitting the wall. It was a daily occurrence in the condo. I really should have made him find his own place. I didn't have to be at work until nine, but once I woke up, sleep was unreachable until the sun had set.
Sometimes I hated my roommate.
Not that Emmett McCarty wasn't a good guy, he really was. It was only the fact that his job as a security guard in the nearby mall needed him there at six. As in six a.m. In the morning. This meant that each morning I would spend the time between five thirty and quarter after eight tossing and turning.
I really needed to read more. Maybe if I had a book it would make this more tolerable. I should have made Emmett make one more exception to his 'macho bachelor pad extravaganza' rule, and put in a bookshelf. At least I would have bought some books if there was a shelf staring at me all the time, waiting to be filled.
As I listened to the running water – which was causing a weird sound to come from the pipes, we'd need to get that checked out – I thought back to when we first bought the condo. Neither one of us had any financial difficulty (our fathers worked side by side as emergency room surgeons), but we had decided to room together. Recently I had found that this may not have been the best idea. Along with Emmett's painfully early start to the workday, he also had a tendency to host sleepovers. With women. Loud sleepovers, that often involved his bed banging against the wall at various hours of the night.
My first clue should have been the macho bachelor pad extravaganza idea. Emmett had clearly explained to me that this would apparently please the women – I had refrained from pointing out that if the women had already made it to the house, they probably didn't need to be pleased. The rule was that anything that wasn't considered macho was not allowed.
Naturally, the first thing I did was make sure there was room for a full-out Bose music system. I didn't open a music store because I didn't like music. The second thing I did was force Emmett to let me keep my piano – though he'd forced me to keep it in my room and out of sight. I was fine with that, I didn't want Emmett and one of his various partners doing the deed on something I would have to touch with my bare hands. My electric guitar and base were easily accepted, and were in fact allowed in plain view in the living room. He'd made it his goal to purchase the biggest amp that would fit in there, what with most of the space being taken up by our leather sofa (which was the full length of the long wall), our huge high-definition TV (his birthday present to himself), and the various game systems (all Emmett's, except the X-Box 360, which was mine). There wasn't even room for my stereo in there, so I set it up, surround-sound and all, in my room. Thank God I'd convinced him to give me the larger one.
The condo was actually fairly roomy (for downtown Seattle, at least). We had a fully functional kitchen, not that we used it to cook. Recently Emmett had been debating taking out the oven for another fridge. I had quickly pointed out that he had to cook his frozen pizzas somewhere, and that our parents often came to town to see us. It didn't matter which mom found out, both my mother Esme and his mother Ellen would have the exact same reaction. They'd throw a fit, then call the other, who would end up flying out and throwing a fit as well, before calling someone to take out the fridge and put in an oven. Cooking classes would probably ensue.
That wasn't the problem, though. I knew how to cook. I could cook well, according to my mother, who was tough to please. On the other hand, I was her son, and I'd heard stories of her eating eggshell cookies made by a much younger Edward and telling me they were divine.
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"Hey, man, I'm gone!" Emmett yelled, pounding on my door.
I groaned, and cursed at him, but he just left, laughing all the while.
I rolled out of my bed then, and headed into the kitchen to make coffee. If I was going to be up at the ungodly hour of quarter to six every weekday, I sure as hell might as well get myself hooked on coffee. I'd been working on forming my addiction for the past couple weeks, and as I poured the last of our Starbucks coffee stuff into the coffee maker and turned it on, I found myself thinking it actually smelled pretty good. I was going to need to either buy another tin or start hanging out at the place, though, if I was really going to start on this coffee thing. Actually, I was going to need to buy a tin anyways. Some people thought Emmett was always happy. These people had not met the man before coffee.
I often joked about it to him after he'd had his fix on the weekends, calling him a bear just out of hibernation. He looked the part, too, with his curly hair, and huge build. Of course, as with most things, Emmett just laughed, and said I looked like a lion, always coming out of my room with my hair all messed up around my face like a mane.
'If I didn't know better, I'd say you had a girl in there,' he'd joked.
From my spot on the couch I heard the coffeemaker beep, signaling that the stuff was done. I grabbed my mug, which had a horrible picture of me on it, that I'd gotten from Emmett for Christmas. Apparently he'd dug through his "blackmail laptop" (a computer which he used only for porn and storing blackmail photos on. He hid it somewhere in the condo, and though I'd searched, I'd never actually found it before) to find the absolute worst pictures of everyone he knew, and then had them all put on mugs to give to said people, with a reminder attached saying that he still had copies saved (Merry Christmas..?). The mug was what had prompted my first search for the blackmail laptop, in an attempt to erase the picture from the Earth.
Filled with coffee, though, even the blackmail mug looked good to me. I must have been succeeding with my attempt at addiction.
Coffee in hand, I flopped down onto the couch, and reached a hand under it to pull out my own laptop. It wasn't hidden – that was simply the most convenient space for it. As I drank, I watched a youtube video. It was a channel where the guy would sit and basically explain the day-to-day news, but he would make it interesting. That way when I heard about it more seriously at a later date, I at least knew something basic. Also, there was this 'douchebag of the day' thing that was kind of amusing.
Having figured out what was going on in the world (kind of), I opened my e-mail inbox. Spam, spam, spam.. e-mail from Esme, spam, e-mail from.. "Rose"? Who was Rose?
Then it hit me. Great. It was Rosalie Hale. The one girl I'd ever dated seriously, though only to please Carlisle, who had set me up with her. What did she want?
Curiosity caused me to click that e-mail first. A quick read-through told me more than I wanted to know. Apparently she was moving to Seattle, and Esme had offered her a place with Emmett and I until she found her own space.
I made a mental note to flip out as Esme at a later date, and opened the e-mail from her.
Esme's e-mail basically said the same thing as Rosalie's, except much more casually, with one add-on at the end:
'P.S.: If I hear that she ended up sleeping on the couch, I will be very disappointed. Love, Mom.'
Love you too, Esme, I thought sarcastically, and then typed up a short note saying I got her message and would be in touch with Rosalie. Maybe she could share a room with Emmett, from what I remember, she was platinum blonde, apprenticing as a mechanic, and working part time as a model. Definitely his type.
The couch might be comfortable, but not that comfortable.
With a groan, I shut my laptop and stood. The stress was eating at me, and I figured that I needed a workout or something. Maybe a run, as the gym was probably closed at this hour of the morning. I still had a good three hours before I needed to be at the store, I could get in a good hour and a half, ad still have time to relax a bit before work.
I walked into my room, the coffee's effects starting to kick in, and dressed to go for a run. My running shirt was sitting in the laundry hamper, and I fished it out. It was a workout, it didn't matter if the shirt was clean. I pulled on shorts and shoes, and then began the routine search for my iPod shuffle.
My nano was always in my room, unless I was going out of town. I knew that for certain. It had pretty much every song I'd ever liked on it, and it's memory was completely full. The shuffle, on the other hand, was for the songs I was listening to at the moment, and my running music. I hadn't synced it in a while, though, so I knew it had my running tunes on it. It was just a matter of finding the damn tiny thing in the house.
After a good fifteen minutes of looking, I found it, and a few of my CD's that I hadn't been able to find recently, in Emmett's room. I'd have to ask him about that later. I grabbed my key, and locked the door behind me before threading it onto my shoelace and tying that shoe.
Then I was lost to the world. I was heading towards downtown at a brisk jog, music blaring and paying attention to nothing but breathing in and out. My muscles protested and protested. Then came the one moment that I lived my life for. The moment when my body fell into place, and suddenly nothing was telling me to stop, only to go. Go faster, go farther, just go.
My entire being screamed to just go until I disappeared from the Earth forever.
