I know, I know. I've already got one story in the making, what's the point in working on another and causing myself even more stress?
I really haven't a clue. But the idea for this one wouldn't go away. Plus, I'm craving some EPOV.
And so: A Close Encounter of the Swan Kind.
"Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."
Forrest Gump
Today, kids, you get to read about:
The End of Life As I Know It
Hi, I'm Edward Cullen.
I'm going to tell you a story. It's a really bad story if you are me or if you are going through what I am going through. But if you aren't, then you'll probably love this story. You'll probably be rolling around laughing with tears streaming down your face.
Which my best friend Jasper Hale is doing right now.
"You are so FUCKED!"
Thanks. And, yes. I already know.
See, once upon a time, when I was seven years old, I saved a crayon. Well, some would say I stole it, namely Jasper, but I was a first grader, I didn't know any better. It belonged to the mean looking blonde who sat next to me in coloring.
It was a very nice crayon. He was a not so nice looking boy who liked to peel the paper labels off of his crayons and then chewed on them instead of coloring inside the lines, like me.
I had all my crayons laid out in front of me, sharpened and shining in alphabetical order. Apricot came before Fern (the color of my eyes apparently), and Silver came after Maroon. I had the specialty pack, with all the standard colors.
Blonde boy had a few miscellaneous colored specks of dirt that he insisted were "crayons". And then he had one ACTUAL crayon. A very nice crayon, as I've already said. It was very shiny and bright. It had "Electric Lime" printed proudly on its label. It was such a perfect crayon and I didn't want it to go to waste.
So, I took it upon myself to save the crayon. Or, at least, that's what I told myself I was doing. Saving it, that is.
So I did. And the blonde boy saw me. He got very angry when I told him that I didn't have it.
He called me a liar! At recess, too, of all times! The worst insult one seven year old boy could bestow upon another. I had to defend my honor. And we were on the playground after all.
Three teachers had to pull us apart we were tearing at each other so savagely.
They sent us huffing and puffing to the principal's office, where they came upon us ten minutes later with an "Electric Lime" crayon split in half and loudly proclaiming that they were each other's best friends. They called in our parents, but all we got was a bit of a tongue thrashing for fighting and "stealing" (whatever).
That's how I became friends with Jasper Hale.
That's also the day that Carlisle Cullen, single divorced dad of Edward Cullen, met Esme Hale, widowed mother of Jasper and Rosalie Hale.
I didn't know it then, but my life was on the fast track to becoming pathetic and miserable.
Well… not really the fast track, per se. I mean, it took a while for things to get to that point. Ten years in fact.
Which brings me to today, ten years after that fateful day. Jasper and I are still best friends. And our parents are getting married. So we'll be brothers too. Which would be great and all, you know.
If I wasn't madly in love with Jasper's older sister Rosalie Hale. Who will be my sister if Carlisle gets those step-parent adoption papers signed. I can't even call him Dad anymore. Not after this betrayal. Dad knows I love Rosalie; he knows I've fantasized about her for around a decade now. He knows.
And he's still marrying her mom.
I thought parents were supposed to put their children first, not their libido.
Jasper thinks it is so funny. He wouldn't be laughing so hard if his mom was marrying Alice's dad. No, he'd be the one in misery if that were the case. But Jasper's lucky. Alice has two happily married parents and her dad is really weird anyway. Esme, Jasper's mom, would never marry a former carnival fortune teller.
But she seems to have no problem with my dad.
I mean yeah, he's good looking for his age. And he's nice enough. And he's got a really good job as head surgeon at Fork's Hospital that pays pretty well. And we live in a pseudo-mansion.
And he can cook and speak fluent French, Czech, Italian, and German.
Other than that, he's not really much of a catch.
…..
DO YOU SEE MY DILEMMA?
Carlisle and Esme are so disgustingly gushy with each other. It makes me want to hurl. Jasper agrees with me, unless Alice is sitting in his lap (her preferred seat). Then he nods whenever she says "aw, they're so cute!" She says that a lot.
Rosalie isn't around much, sadly. She usually spends her time with that oaf of a boyfriend of hers, Emmett McCarty. What, you think I can't love her just because she's dating someone else?
It's temporary. She'll grow out of her bizarre fascination with the Meat Head and she'll come running into my open arms. Or, at least, that's how I used to see it happening. Now I've got more than EmMutt to worry about. I've got adoption papers (which can be burnt) and a wedding (which shall be sabotaged) in my way.
I'm nothing if persistent. Jasper thinks I'm crazy. But what does he know?
I love Rosalie Hale. That has always been, sort of, and always will be, I think.
Yeah. I've got it all figured out (except for about 99 percent of it).
And also:
Chief Swan Has a Daughter?
Monday. I hate Monday. I despise Monday. Especially when Monday starts out with:
"Carlisle, dear, have you printed out the Save-the-Dates yet? And did you book the reception hall and church yet?"
"Of course I did, darling," he smoothers her with sloppy kisses and she giggles.
"Pancakes?" Alice chirps from Jasper's lap. I swear she was super glued there. And when the fuck did she get in the house? It's only seven thirty in the morning!
"No thanks." I grumble, my bad mood increasing by about ten degrees. I hate pancakes; they lie. I see no cake, and who even uses pans to cook those doughy pieces of shit nowadays anyway? We have one of those chef stove things, where it's a stainless steel surface that heats up and you can just throw food on there and watch it cook.
Like I said, Carlisle can cook. And he can cook like a pro. He'd be a chef if he wasn't a doctor. Stupid, talented, handsome, middle aged fathers- if he was ugly I wouldn't have this problem right now.
Well…
"And did you get a hold of Elizabeth yet? We still need her consent for me to adopt Edward-" Esme whispers that part and glances furtively at me. She must not realize that I have abnormally good hearing.
I also have my mother's newly changed phone number and address. I hired a private eye to track her down when I was fifteen because I was curious and going through one of those angst-ridden, pubescent phases of imagined abandonment. Well, maybe not so much imagined. Elizabeth did abandon Carlisle and I when I was about three years old.
She ran off to California to "find herself" and never came back.
Thank god.
According to the P.I., she was just a little bit off her rocker. She had a boozing problem after she left, and although she got it cleaned up by the time he found her, she was still a bit…eccentric. But I got her number and her new home address, which was in New Mexico.
Carlisle still thought she lived in California. And I burned all the Yellow Pages that listed my detective guy, in case Carlisle got the same idea I did.
The best part about all of this is that Esme and Carlisle decided that Esme would adopt me first, after consulting Elizabeth, and then Carlisle would adopt Rosalie and Jasper. Their dad died in a car accident when they were six, and his mother agreed to the adoption. Why they wanted to go through the hard adoption first was beyond me, but I encouraged it. And another thing?
They couldn't adopt until they got married. And they weren't getting married if they didn't have all the adoption papers on hand by the day of the ceremony.
Cue evil laugh.
"Edward!" Jasper yelled in my ear. I fell off my chair.
"What the fu-" I heard a tsk behind me, "-dge, Jasper?" He grinned at me and held out his hand, which I begrudgingly took. I brushed myself off and glared at him.
"You had that glassy eyed look on your face again. And we have to get to school." He pointed at the clock over the stove. I sighed. School. YAY.
Esme came towards us to kiss us goodbye or something and I stood stock still. Her lips brushed Jasper's cheek then mine. She smiled at us and patted our arms, pushing us towards the door as Carlisle came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.
Like I said. They. Were. Sickening.
We turned and rushed away from the gooey-ness oozing out of them and Esme's "Have a good day at school, boys! Oh stop it, Carlisle!" chased after us.
Once I was safely behind the wheel of my car and out of the driveway, I could no longer contain my shudder of disgust.
"It's so wrong," I croaked. Jasper, in the backseat, nodded with wide eyes before Alice tweaked his ear in reprimandation. He grimaced in pain.
"Oh, stop it! The both of you! I don't see why you don't think this is awesome. You guys have been best friends for god knows how long," she ignored our chiming of ten years, "and now you're going to be brothers. What's the problem?" She huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. Jasper chuckled.
"Edward loves Rosalie, remember? And she's about to become Rosalie Cullen, but not in the way that he'd like her to." Alice rolled her eyes. I went ten over the speed limit in annoyance.
"You might want to slow down, Eddie. Chief Swan's on the prowl." I grinned mockingly but slowed down all the same. Chief Swan was a scary guy. He had a mustache. Only mafia lords and serial killers had mustaches.
"Did you know he has a daughter?" I nearly swerved into oncoming traffic at that one. Alice bounced around in her seat while Jasper and I shared an incredulous look.
"He has a daughter?"
"He had a wife?"
"Oh, knock it off. I bet he makes a great dad and husband." I wasn't inclined to agree. The mustache thing again.
"How old is his daughter?" I asked, just being curious. Alice smiled slyly.
"Seventeen. Our age. She's going to be at school today. Moved from Arizona last week and today's her first day." She glanced at me with a kind of… scheming glint in her eyes.
"I heard that she's really pretty. Gorgeous, in fact. Mike Newton saw her in his dad's store the other day and has been panting about "the hot piece of ass" to anyone who will listen to him." I grimace. Newton? That poor, poor girl.
"It's Newton. He thinks anything without a Y chromosome is hot." Too right, he does. He went out with Jessica Stanley. It doesn't get much nastier than that. And I know all about her nastiness, seeing as she stalks me on a day to day basis.
"Remember Stanley?" Jasper snickers, knowing full well I could never forget her. Sadly.
"Of course he does. She and every other single girl in Forks are slightly obsessed with him." Alice was right. Carlisle managed to pass on some of his good looks to me. And Elizabeth gave me the Fern eyes and brown-red hair. I don't know what fucking color it is; it was never in my standard crayon collection.
I really didn't think I was all that amazingly hot to cause so much adoration from the more insane population of Fork's females. I just saw an ordinary guy in the mirror.
Apparently, they saw something a lot different. Something that caused one or three of them to scale the side of my house and try to break in to my room to sexually assault me last year.
I shuddered. I've checked to make sure every window and door in the house is locked before bed every night since.
"Aw, poor Edward. Too schmexy for his own good." Jasper cackled at me and I gave him the finger.
"You don't think you'll be interested in the Swan girl, do you?" Alice again. She smiled evilly at me from the rearview mirror. I didn't answer. Didn't have to.
I love Rosalie. No Swan girl would change that. I think.
We pulled into the parking lot next to this mammoth, prehistoric, brick red truck that made me nervous to even look at. It looked fit to explode, or go on a murdering rampage. That red color looked disturbingly like blood.
"Um. Have you seen that…truck before?" Jasper said "truck" like he couldn't believe the metallic lump next to us belonged in that category. I didn't really either.
"No. Probably the new girl's." Alice said with a shrug. Then she pinned Jasper to the side of my car and started making out with him. I swallowed my gag reflex and turned to go inside. The sky, as usual, was a gray and cloudy blanket of gloom. Fucking Forks. How is anybody supposed to be happy in a town that is heliophobic?
I was glaring up at the sky and about ten feet from the door when I bumped into something really soft. My arms went out instinctively as the bumped thing started falling down. I caught a whiff of some kind of lemony scent. Then my arms were wrapped around the waist of a girl. Who was suddenly looking up at me.
With big, brown eyes and a really kissable looking mouth.
"Sorry," she breathed, her breath fanning my face she was so close. It smelled like oranges. I couldn't tear my eyes from those lips. The bottom one was fuller than the top. And it looked kind of juicy. I wanted to bite it.
Realizing that I was staring at her like some kind of creep, I kind of flinched away and set her on her feet to hide my embarrassment. I took a step back, mumbled "It's okay," and shuffled away before I could make an even bigger fool of my self. But I didn't shuffle fast enough to miss the blooming red of blood underneath her cheeks.
A blush like a rose. A ripe, dew strung rose. Big, Bambi eyes looked at me from underneath waves of chocolate hair as I forced myself to walk away.
I could still feel the warmth of her small palms gripping tightly to my shoulders.
I'd never seen her before. That must have been the Swan girl.
…
What the fuck just happened?
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