I do not own Twilight. Shucks.
"Are we there yet?" Emmett Swan sighed. He adjusted the Chicago Cubs baseball cap covering his curly blonde mop and returned his hand to the steering wheel. He'd been driving for nearly twelve hours straight now and the final destination was no where in sight. The dotted white lines painted on the expressway were starting to blur, calling to him like seductive sirens, "Emmett, fall asleep." It didn't matter what the Driver's Ed manual said – engaging in light conversation and playing the radio did nothing to chase the sandman away when you kept passing the same billboards and rows of trees over and over again.
"Dude, what the fuck did I tell you about asking me that?" Edward Cullen, Emmett's younger brother by four years, snapped his jaw as he ground his words out. "Not again or I'll throw the rest of your Parliaments out the window."
"You better not."
"Then shut up. We'll get there when we get there." Spending three days in the car with your brother on a fifty-two hour trip to Washington wasn't exactly a picnic in Edward's book. In fact, Emmett's incessant questions were starting to annoy the hell out of him. He yanked the lever on the side of his seat and reclined backward. His eyes closed.
"Do you think we'll fit in?" Emmett asked. He drummed his hands on the steering wheel to relieve the nervous tension that was building in their black Mustang with each mile that drew them closer to Forks.
"Yeah," Edward answered without a second thought. He kept his eyes closed. "We just spent thirty bucks at the fucking Salvation Army to replace our old clothes, didn't we?" The resentment was evident in his words. Edward's old wardrobe had consisted of designer jeans, leather jackets, and a closet full of athletic shoes. He'd been especially partial to a pair of black and red high top Nikes, so much so in fact that he'd felt compelled to rip the employee working at Plato's Closet a new one for only giving him twenty bucks for the shoes when he traded them in – two hundred and twenty dollars less than they were worth.
"I'm not talking about how we look," Emmett shook his head. He took a brief glance down at his own new clothes. The stained gray sweatshirt and torn jeans were a far cry from the matching Nike sweatshirts and pants he used to wear. "I'm talking about us fitting in with other people. Forks is a small town. Our story is going to spread like wildfire if anyone ever gets a hold of it."
"We're Dominic and Jason Horvath. Our parents died in a car accident. We moved to Forks from Milwaukee because our grandmother lives in Seattle. That's the story we're going to tell, so get it straight."
"Do you really think that'll work?" Emmett rubbed his jaw and shot Edward a skeptical look. It was in his nature to worry as the older brother. "It seems too easy."
"Well, it's not. Get rid of that fucking Chicago Cubs cap and it will work."
Emmett glanced in the rear view mirror at the capital 'C' on his cap. The mischievous twinkle that usually illuminated his blue eyes vanished. He cleared his throat awkwardly to rid it of the hardening lump and pulled the cap down farther over his ears. "I'm not getting rid of it," he said softly. "Dad gave it to me."
Edward's eyes snapped open. "Sorry," he mumbled. He raked his fingers through his unruly bronze hair and sat up slowly. Emmett took his focus away from the road long enough to exchange a mutual pained look with his brother. Edward was first to break their eye contact. Whether it was to look at the billboard advertisement for a gentleman's club featuring a well-endowed woman in lacy lingerie or to avoid the piercing emotion in Emmett's eyes, he wasn't sure.
"But seriously, man," Emmett spoke up after a few minutes had passed. "How much longer 'til we reach Forks do you think?"
Edward slammed his fist on the window button next to him to make it go down. He snatched Emmett's Parliaments from the center console and hurled them out the window. Glancing in the side mirror, he chuckled to himself as he watched the thin white sticks dance around on the road. Emmett found the cigarette's performance to be less than amusing, and whacked Edward in the back of the head to prove it.
"Ow! What the hell?" Edward's hand shot up to soothe the throbbing spot. "That was fucking uncalled for."
"Tit for tat, little brother," Emmett smirked. "Oh, thank God." He pointed at the guiding green sign on the highway that read 'Forks, Washington. Next Exit' and double-checked over his shoulder before changing lanes. "Now where are we headed?
"Um...." Edward reached into his back pocket to retrieve a folded piece of white paper. "Meadowbrook Apartments. 1536...Uhh, It looks like Morman. No, Norman Drive, Apartment D," he squinted to read his own writing.
"Great," Emmett replied as he sped onto the exit ramp. "We just have one stop to make first..."
"Doh!"
Bella Swan rolled out of her lumpy twin bed and onto the floor with a dull thud. She stretched her limbs and yawned before curling back up onto her side. A sharp jab to her ribcage caused her to squeal and roll onto her back. She tentatively opened her eyes to take in the small size five foot and sparkly pink toe nails next to her face belonging to none other than her roommate Alice Brandon. Alice jabbed Bella in the ribs again with her big toe.
"Owwww! Cut it out, will you?"
"Then answer your phone!" Alice demanded. Her hands flew to her hips and her Blondie t-shirt rose up to reveal a pair of black boyshorts. "It's been vibrating nonstop for the past twenty minutes and it's keeping me up." She stormed back over to her bed and flopped down, pulling her sheets up snug around her neck so only her spiky black bob was visible.
Bella reluctantly sat up and pulled her phone off of the table next to her bed. She was on her feet and hurriedly moving about the room when she saw she had five missed calls from her boss.
"Shit! I forgot I picked up an extra shift today!" Bella stripped down and grabbed the first thing she saw, which happened to be a dirty pair of denim cut-offs and a white long-sleeved tee that was so stretched out, it hung off of her right shoulder like something from the nineteen eighties. "I gotta go, Alice! I'll see you tonight! Enjoy your day off!"
Alice murmured a goodbye and Bella grabbed her apartment keys and twirled them around her finger before shutting the bedroom door behind her. She and Alice had been living together for two years now, but had been best friends for much longer. Their hole in the wall apartment had one bedroom, one bathroom, and a living room. It wasn't Trump Towers by any means; it was the opposite. The apartments were specifically for people with a low-income. They weren't the "projects" technically, but they were pretty damn close. Drug trafficking, violence, and break-ins were weekly occurrences, and for two teenage girls living on their own, the living arrangement was more than a little dangerous.
Certainly neither girl would have chosen to live there, but neither girl had much of a choice. They'd both been dealt unfair hands and were forced to do whatever they could to make ends meet. For Alice, that meant using a fake ID and working as a waitress at The G-Spot, a gentleman's club in Port Angeles six days a week. She made decent tips wearing scraps of fabric and flirting with desperate perverted men in their fifties, but she was learning quite a bit about bartending and hoped that she would one day learn enough to get her a full-time position as a bartender elsewhere.
For Bella, doing whatever you could to make ends meet meant working at the local coffee shop five to seven days a week and cleaning offices downtown four nights a week. Most days, like today, she pulled a double shift.
Bella ran down the stairs into the apartment lobby and out the front door. She walked past the group of twelve and thirteen year old boys who were gathered outside, smoking cigarettes and deciding what to blow up with their homemade cherry bombs. She jogged past the tired old men sitting barefoot on their lawn, drinking beer and reliving the horrors they'd experienced in Vietnam. She sprinted past the junkies who were talking amongst themselves as they shook and sweat while they waited for their next fix. They whistled at Bella as she ran by and shouted crude remarks. It was all Bella could do not to raise her middle finger and tell them off, but she knew better. The one and only time she'd stood up for herself, she and Alice were jumped the following day by the girlfriends of the boys she'd told off.
When Bella reached the center of Forks, she continued running until she reached the convenience store. She knew she was late for work, but the very fact that she'd felt Alice's toe between her ribs so distinctly told her she wasn't eating enough. She burst into the convenience store, grabbed a small bag of gummy worms, and hopped into line. She glanced around the tall boy with the crazy hair in front of her to smile at Madge, the woman behind the counter. Madge didn't return Bella's smile - she never did - but deep down, Bella knew she appreciated her friendliness.
"Eight ninety-five," Madge barked. The masculinity in her voice was frightening, especially when taken into account with the tattoos up and down her arms and the gunshot wound on her bicep.
"Shit." The boy in front of Bella cursed. "Uh, how much is it without the gummy worms?"
"Seven ninety-five."
"Without the bottle of water?"
"Six fifty-two."
"Dammit. Uh..." The boy patted his back pockets for extra change. Bella sighed impatiently and checked her cell phone. She was twenty minutes late already, and the boy with the crazy hair was only adding minutes to her time. Bella dug deep into her pocket and tapped the boy on the shoulder. He whirled around immediately.
Bella was taken aback. The look in his emerald green eyes was menacing, yet he looked so completely frightened at the same time. Both emotions disappeared as quickly as they had appeared and confusion and wonder replaced. The boy lazily dragged his tongue across his bottom lip as he stared down at Bella, slightly cocking his head.
"Hey. Hi. How you doin'?" Bella asked. "You good? Sweet. Listen, I understand you have a couple of must need items here," she pointed to the gummy worms, bottle of water, pack of Parliaments, and Bic lighter on the checkout counter. "But since your math skills don't seem to be up to par, you're holding up the line. I need my gummy worms just as much as you do, so do me a favor and take this." She handed him a hot pink lighter and four dollars to cover the pack of Parliaments. "I'm trying to quit. If I don't have this burning a hole in my pocket, it'll be that much easier."
The boy's mouth dropped open. Speechless, he studied the items in his hand as though they were foreign objects. "Wow," he said finally and ran his fingers through his hair. "How did you know pink was my favorite color?"
"I guess it must just be your lucky day," Bella shrugged. It was then that she noticed what the boy was wearing. A black t-shirt with a Jack Daniels whiskey label on the front. There was jagged black stitching horizontally across the front where the label had detached itself from the fabric. Bella knew the shirt well. She'd mended the tears herself. She swallowed hard and looked away.
"It must be my lucky day," the stranger repeated and turned back around.
"Pink? Really?" Emmett held up the lighter Edward had gotten for him. He rolled his eyes as he flicked his thumb down and lit the cigarette in his mouth. "They didn't have blue or red? Hell, even purple would've been better than this shit." Emmett threw the Mustang into reverse and exited the convenience store parking lot. "I looked at the directions while you were inside, and I think our brand new home is less than five minutes away."
Edward was aware that Emmett was speaking, but his mind was beyond the realm of comprehension. His eyes were fixated out the window upon the girl who was exiting the store. She broke into a run immediately, clutching her purchased bag of gummy worms in her fist.
When Edward felt the gentle tap on his shoulder, his first thought was that he and Emmett had already been found. Forced on a plane back to Chicago, he and Emmett wouldn't even get a chance at a new life playing Dominic and Jason Horvath; they would be completely screwed. But when he saw the girl standing before him, he was utterly surprised.
She had long chocolate brown hair that was in perfect disarray. Some might call it messy or unbrushed, but to Edward, it was bedhead. Sexy, just-been-fucked-bedhead. Her cheeks even had the same rosy flush of an orgasm, and her shirt was hanging off of her shoulder for Christ's sake. Her dark purple bra strap was visible, and Edward's tongue darted out to moisten his bottom lip when he noticed it, in preparation for sliding the strap down her shoulder with his teeth.
Edward figured the girl would be good for nothing more than a long hard fuck, but when she opened her mouth, he felt his own mouth drop open. Sexy girl had a sassy mouth. The words she spoke gave off the same air of roughness that the burly cashier behind the counter did, but this girl was one hundred times better to look at. She had an "I-don't-give-a-fuck" attitude about her, as did Edward, so he knew first hand that when you emitted a persona like that, you most certainly did give a fuck. You gave too much of a fuck and that's why you were so bitter towards everyone. No one could tear down your walls if you never gave them a chance.
"Here we are, man," Emmett's voice pulled Edward from his thoughts. Emmett swung a narrow right turn into the parking lot of the apartment building. "Home sweet home."
Both boys sat in silence in the protective walls of the Mustang, staring up at their new home. The building was the size of a small two-story house and the brothers knew from the phone call they'd made earlier in the week that the building housed four different apartments total – two upstairs and two downstairs. The building itself was horrendous – white brick slab with colorful gang symbols and racial slurs spray painted on – and it was identical to the other buildings on the block. There was some green mossy substance clinging to the sides of the building, slowly crawling its way up like an infection, and the tiny yard was littered with beer cans and other garbage.
"Fuck you!" The shrill scream of an angry woman caused both Emmett and Edward to jump. They turned their heads to see a stick-skinny man and skeletal woman exiting a beat-up old Buick in the parking lot of the building next door. The woman was punching the chest of the man with all her might while he shoved her away with a closed fist.
"Shut up, you cunt!" The man shouted back. The woman screamed and slapped the man across the face. He grabbed a handful of her hair and gave her a push in the direction of the apartment building. "Stop being such a fucking bitch!" Once the woman stumbled into the building, the man snatched up a beer bottle from the ground and hurled it out into the parking lot to relieve his frustration. It hit the back of a parked Chevy, leaving a sizable dent. A satisfied smirk spread across his lips and he cracked his knuckles before entering the apartment.
"This car is going to get jacked." Edward said, voicing what both boys were thinking. He ran his fingertips along the leather interior as if he was saying a silent goodbye to the car.
"Yup."
What do we think ladies (and gents perhaps) ? Yay or nay?