AN: I don't own anything publicly recognisable. Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight and real people own themselves.
Chapter 4 BPOV
There was a spring in my step when I walked into the audition building on Monday morning and it wasn't just because I had spent the weekend with my brother. I didn't have to wake up early because the audition didn't start until 11 and so I had spent a good two hours on the phone with my boyfriend last night. Sue had called me Sunday afternoon to tell me that she had persuaded the studio to go with Edward, showing them the tape that she had shot when he had done his audition. However, no one would know until this weekend, so I couldn't say a single thing to anyone. Even Edward wouldn't get the call until probably Sunday. I was also a lot more excited about these auditions now that I knew the person worthy of the job would be getting it. I was finally happy that the film would be made the way it was meant to be and I was now just curious to know which two other actors they had chosen to read and what the other two would bring to the table. Today James was auditioning and I had to admit that I was just a little curious about the tabloid legend that was James Wilde. I wanted to see if he lived up to all the hype that surrounded him.
Alice met me in the kitchen, offering me a readymade cup of coffee. She had called me in the early hours of Sunday morning, but even though I had been awake, I let it go to answer phone. She was a little inebriated if the message was anything to go by and she was blabbering about the bar and Jasper and about how I was a huge 'party pooper' for not joining her and her group of friends. There was a lot of shouting and 'woohoo-ing' on the message, which amused me greatly whilst listening to it. Alice hadn't even hung up, she just sort of said bye and left her phone on anyway, meaning that I heard a lot of background chatter until my answer phone service finally cut it off ten minutes later.
"Thanks Alice," I said as I took the steaming mug of beige coloured liquid from her.
"Think of it as an apology for the message I left your answer phone on Saturday night," she explained, laughing.
I joined her, sitting down at the little table in the middle of the room. "You should really learn not to drink and dial."
"Ain't that the truth," she agreed solemnly, which made me laugh a little harder.
"You sounded like you had a good time anyway," I observed, knowing that it would lead to her talking about Saturday night without me having to ask a barrage of questions.
I was right and she spent the next twenty minutes telling me about Jasper, his bar and his friends. Apparently, she had found out that he was friends with Edward Cullen and they had spent a while laughing at what a small world it was. Alice was pretty smitten with Jasper. I saw it in the way her entire face lit up when she said his name and the way she smiled when she was recalling the things he said to her. Her happiness was infectious and even if I hadn't been in a good mood myself to begin with, I probably would have been after I had spoken to Alice.
Sue came to get us just as we were drying the cups that we had used her mood also rather light this morning. I guess everyone just needed the weekend to recuperate and put their best game faces on for the coming week. She led us all to a large room where several other people were setting up lights, putting out markers on the floor and generally setting some kind of scene. Hmm...I guess they were really taking these second auditions seriously. Shame really that it would all be pretty much for nothing seeing as the right guy had already been picked and hired, kind of. However, I knew there the studio had to keep up the pretences because if someone caught on to the fact that they weren't going to hire any of the other actors auditioning over these 5 days, they would be losing millions of dollars in a lawsuit. It was costing them a hell of a lot less to carry on with the charade.
I stood with the other actors and actresses, listening to everyone as they told each other what had happened the last two days of their lives. It was nice to see how quickly we had all become friends and some of the guys had even spent some time with each other over the weekend, hanging out away from this place. I wondered if Edward would fit in easily with this group of people, since he was coming into the cast much later than everyone else. Personally, I found him very easy to be with, but that was when we'd been by ourselves and there wasn't the pressure on him to fit in with an already established group.
The moment James Wilde entered the room, his presence was definitely felt. There was an audible gasp from different people around the room, followed by intense silence and finally the buzz of whispers as he walked from the doorway to the other side of the room where Sue was setting up her camera to record the auditions so she could peruse the scenes later. Walked was probably the wrong word to use actually because James didn't walk like normal people. Instead he sort of sauntered, as if the entire room was there just to watch him make his way across the floor. If everyone hadn't been staring at him, I would have called him arrogant and ridiculous. As it was, about 99.9% of the room had their eyes trained on him, unabashedly following his every movement as if they didn't work with famous people every day.
From looking at him, he certainly looked the part of Hollywood bad boy. He was wearing light denim jeans, ripped at several places and looking like they hadn't been washed in years. Of course he had probably paid several hundred dollars to have those jeans ripped in such an artful manner, but he would never admit that and no one would be able to prove it even if they cared to. His white T-shirt was simple and rather tight, showing off the planes of his muscles, which rippled underneath as he walked. He had walked in wearing shades and they were still sitting on his face even though he was now inside with the sun a distant memory. He had obviously not shaved for a good couple of days and his hair was artfully dishevelled, as if he had just rolled out of some supermodel's bed, which was probably exactly the case. Well, the bed part anyway. His hair had probably taken a good hour or so to do this morning – the amount of product in it would attest to that.
He spoke to Sue for a few moments and then turned to me, smiling when he caught my eye. I didn't like him already. He just stood on the other side of the room looking at me and smirking and all I really wanted to do was flip him off. I hated people like James who actually had talent, but choose to waste it because they bought into the entire celebrity lifestyle of sex drugs and rock 'n' roll. After a few moments, Sue stopped what she was doing and started walking over to us, James trailing along a couple of steps behind her, sunglasses still in place and his lips still twisted in a superior and amused expression.
"Everyone this is James Wilde," she introduced unnecessarily. "James, this is the rest of the cast. This is Isabella Swan, Alice Brandon, Mike Newton, Tyler Crowley, Ben Cheney and Angela Webber. They're the ones you'll be doing most of your scenes with today and the rest of the film, if you get the part."
Everyone said their 'hello's' to him, but I just inclined my head in his direction, which he noted with an even wider, creepier grin. He made my skin crawl and I wasn't even anywhere near him yet. This was obviously going to be a long day – and it had started so well. I guess that would teach me to be in a good mood on a Monday morning. Sue was called away to another part of the room, leaving James with the rest of us so that we could 'get acquainted'. The way his eyes lit up when she said those words made me want to punch the guy in the face.
"Isabella Swan," he said first, turning his body towards me so that he blocked out everyone else.
I didn't bother to hide the eye roll that his actions inspired. "James Wilde."
"Now that we know who the other is, what do you say to a little one on one rehearsal time before we start reading with the rest of these...folks?" He punctuated the last part of his sentence with a casual and very dismissive hand gesture to indicate the rest of the cast. I saw Alice's face turn indignant over his shoulder. She was the only one really listening to our conversation; everyone else had formed smaller circles a little away from us and were having their own discussions.
"I would," I told him, my town saccharine and completely false. "But you see, I throw up a little in my mouth when I'm alone with slimy James Dean wannabe's, so I don't think that's such a good idea."
His eyes blazed and his face reddened in anger, but before he could say anything, Sue called for everyone to get ready for the first scene that we were doing that day. Interestingly enough, it was the scene that Edward had read when he auditioned for the part. It had been changed so that it was now written the way he had thought it should be and as I got ready for it, I wondered what James would bring to the scene. The music that was played at the beginning wasn't specified and as the lights dimmed and James started playing notes on the piano, I registered that what he was playing wasn't at all as affective at setting the scene as the piece that Edward had played.
James' portrayal of Robert was strong. He may have been an absolute creep, but he could act and had I not been part of this scene played to perfection already, I would have been very impressed. As it was, whilst I could appreciate that his performance was good, it wasn't great. It wasn't intensity that he was lacking because James definitely brought that, but when I looked at him, I still saw James Wilde playing the part of Robert Pattinson; I didn't just see Robert Pattinson. There was also the fact that he tried to slip me tongue twice during the kissing. The second time he did it during the first run through, I bit the tip of it a little and he hissed, but kept on going with the scene. It probably wouldn't have been noticed by anyone but Sue and had he actually done the same thing on set when we were really filming, she would have called cut and reamed him out. As it was, the fact that James didn't stop the scene was pretty impressive and had I not hated him, I would have been impressed.
The scene ended and we set up for the next, which I was not a part of. It was one of Rob and his friends as they discussed their up and coming tour and the songs they were in the process of writing. This next scene actually happened before the scene that we had just read. I was supposed to watch it, but instead I quietly sneaked out of the room and to the back of the building so that I could have a cigarette to take the taste of James from my mouth. I was taking my second puff when my cell phone rang.
I flipped it open without looking at the caller id. It was Jake. He had programmed a ring tone onto my phone for himself so that I'd always know it was him calling. The song he had chosen was 'our song'. It had been playing in the restaurant that we had our first date in and it had surprised the hell out of me when I realised that Jake actually remembered.
"Hey babe," I greeted when I flipped the phone open.
"Hey sweetie," Jake smiled into the phone. "How's the audition so far?"
I groaned and took another drag of my cigarette away from the phone – I didn't want Jake to hear me smoking. "The greatest mystery about James Wilde is why the hell he isn't serving time for sexual harassment." I announced venomously, exhaling the smoke as I did so.
Jake laughed loudly on the other end, so much so that I had to put the phone away from my ear so he didn't damage my ear drum. I used the opportunity to take another drag of the cigarette.
"What's he done?" He was still laughing a little as he asked this question.
"Well if the leering weren't enough to make me throw up in my mouth a little, his tongue in my mouth certainly would have pushed me over the edge."
Jake's laughter died immediately. "What?!"
"Chill out Jake," I told him, stubbing out the butt of my cigarette on the wall. "I bit him and I don't think he'll be doing it again anytime soon."
"Fucker!" Jake's hiss was filled with the same anger that had coursed through me when James' tongue decided to break free from his mouth. "I hope he doesn't get the part Bella."
I wanted to tell him that there was no way in hell James would get this part because I already knew who had it, but Jake wasn't supposed to know that and so I couldn't say anything. "Yeah, well me and you both." That was the only reply I could give him. "Listen hon, I have to get going. They're going to need me in the next scene. I'll call you when I finish 'kay?"
"Okay," Jake agreed. "If he gets too close again though, tell me and I'll fly down there and kick his sorry ass."
I rolled my eyes at Jake's over-dramatics. He was always threatening violence. "Okay. Talk to you in a while."
I snapped my phone shut and walked back into the audition room where the scene was still being played out. At the moment, James, Tyler and Alice were having a little jamming session in the middle of the street – or at least that was where they were supposed to be. Instead, they were sitting on chairs in a middle of a room with several people buzzing around them and a camera rolling. Not quite the same effect. Still, they were pretty good and James actually had a decent voice – shame about the rest of him. The song that they were playing was one of my favourites of all time, or it had been ever since I heard it. Rob's music never really appealed to me when he was still alive and releasing records, but that was probably down to the fact that I was only a kid back then and my definition of good music was whatever Disney happened to tell me. When I read the poem and found out that he had written it, I immediately listened to his songs and I fell in love with his music. He wrote things that just spoke to me, left me feeling a number of different things all at once and yet as if the world were simpler. His music, like his poem, left me with paradoxical feelings, but that was what made it better, what made it reach into the very core of you and grip onto your soul.
The rest of the morning went okay. Once James had gotten the message that I was not now, and never would be, interested, he kind of backed off a little. Not enough to give me my personal space when we were standing together between scenes, but enough so that no part of his body tried to make it inside mine again. That was a win right? And it wasn't like I was ever going to see him again after today. Thank god. We broke for lunch at 1:30 and I decided that I was going to take a walk – away from James Wilde. I hadn't really explored the area surrounding the building that I had spent the past three weeks of my life in, but I really could not stand any extra minutes with James practically breathing down my neck.
It was a gloriously sunny day in LA, but then again there wasn't really any other type of day around here. Even though I had never lived anywhere else and I did absolutely love the sun, I sometimes wished that we could experience seasons here. I absolutely loved the Spring – it was probably my most favourite time of the year, but I had only seen it a handful of times when I'd been on location or when I'd been travelling to promote a film. Really, I was a little pathetic. My life revolved around my work and even though I loved it, sometimes I did find myself wondering what else there was.
I found myself in a park that I never knew was even there without realising it for the first few moments. All of a sudden the city's noise dimmed and there was a spattering of green that was usually not evident in the urban jungle of Hollywood. The park was quiet and that was exactly how I wanted it; children were at school and their parents at work. I walked further into the park until I found myself walking into something which could have been described as a very small forest. The covering of the trees provided a welcome cooler environment, shading me from the harsh sunlight and making it seem as if I was somewhere other than LA. I followed the trail further and further into the trees, but when I found a small clearing to the left of the defined path, I strayed from it and sat in the middle of the greenery, legs crossed and revelling in the only sound around me being the breeze blowing through the leaves.
I don't know how long I stayed in exactly the same spot enjoying the calm in the middle of the city, but suddenly, the ruffling of the leaves was joined by heavy breathing and pounding footsteps. I was annoyed at my newfound peace being disrupted and turned around to find the source of the unwelcomed interruption. I saw a familiar flash of bronze hair a second before the footsteps slowed and my name was called out into the clearing.
"Bella?!"
It seemed like I was running into Edward Cullen everywhere – or he was literally running towards me. "Edward," I answered back, lifting my hand to give him a small wave.
"What are you doing here?" He was in front of me now, his face flushed from the running he was in the middle of before he spotted me. Beads of sweat were running down the sides of his face, to his neck and further under the T-shirt he was wearing.
"Well I was enjoying the peace and quiet until someone came barging through my clearing, heavy breathing and all."
He laughed, putting a hand through his slightly sweat-dampened hair, which glinted both red and gold in the sunlight. "Your clearing?" he asked indignantly, his lips pulled up into a small smile that was just a little off-centre. "I'm pretty sure you're in the middle of my daily running route."
I chuckled, not at all surprised that he ran on a daily basis. You didn't get to look like he did without working at it, no matter what every other actor and actress in Hollywood would have the general public believe. Alice had been right on the money when she had implied that she thought Edward Cullen was on a different level of handsome. I had noticed it the very first time I saw him, but it hadn't really sunk in until I saw him again the day after at the coffee shop. He wasn't traditionally good-looking, in my view, not the way Jake was, but the way his jaw was angled, the way his eyes were lit and the way his smile was just slightly off centre all came together to make up what was an admittedly breathtaking man.
"A running route?" I scoffed. "I had no idea you were so vain Mr. Cullen." I was well aware that I was talking to him as if I'd known him for years rather than for the total time of 2 hours, but I just found it extremely easy to do so. In fact, I was doing it without realising it the majority of the time.
"I'm not," he said, seeming a little confused with the direction I was taking. "I like running to think, you know? It's just a really good way to clear your mind."
I shook my head emphatically. "No, I don't know." I told him honestly, laughing. "I hate any form of exercise and I can't even imagine it ever being something I do to clear my mind."
"You don't know what you're missing," he assured me. "So, what were you doing here before I interrupted you with my unruly running?"
I shrugged. "I was just enjoying this place. I didn't know it was here and it's so beautiful here, so quiet."
He nodded, looking over my head to the clearing behind me. "Yeah, it's a little different from the rest of the city isn't it?"
"Just a little. How long have you been disrupting the peace here?"
"About 6 months," he answered, starting to walk to the middle of the stretch of grass that I had been sitting on before. "I found it a little after I moved here. I was looking for a place to run that didn't fill my lungs with pollution and I'd been getting fed up with the sand in my shoes when I did it on the beach."
"Yeah, I kinda hate the beach for that very reason myself." I agreed, walking faster to catch up with him; the guy had impossibly long legs.
He was now sitting in practically the same spot I had been occupying, looking up at me in an invitation for me to sit next to him, which I did. "You hate the beach? I thought you were a born and bred native?"
"And you know that about me how?" I asked, confused because I had never mentioned that I actually came from California to him before.
He looked a little embarrassed as he answered. "Google."
My mouth dropped open and surprise and I think a look of pure panic may have crossed my face because he immediately looked worried and apologetic instead of just plain ashamed of his admission.
"I'm not stalking you or anything," he assured me quickly, backing away. "Rosalie looked you up after she met you. She's just like that. I'm really sorry. I told her not to, but she just...she can't be stopped."
My mind was still reeling from the fact that he knew things about me that I didn't tell him. I have always been an extremely private person and even though I was in this industry, I still did. It was important to me, not to have people who didn't know me know personal information about me. The fact that anyone could access information about me by just logging onto a computer freaked me out, but the fact that someone would actually do that freaked me out a lot more. Was I okay that the blond I had only met once had done that? No, I sure as hell wasn't. Was I okay that Edward knew things about me that I hadn't told him? Kind of and I found that immensely confusing. I mean it was a little strange, but I was fairly certain that Edward Cullen was not some obsessive stalker who would end up breaking into my home in the middle of the night to watch me sleep. If anything, I was more annoyed at the fact that the balance of information was not equal now.
"I promise you don't have to get a restraining order," he assured me, his face asking for me to understand.
I didn't say anything because I was trying to figure out why I wasn't angrier at him for knowing this stuff. I was a little angry at Rosalie because she shouldn't have invaded my privacy like that. She obviously didn't understand what it was like to live in the world that I did, constantly having to hide anything and everything if you didn't want it splashed all over a gossip magazine. If I had found out that anyone else had done this, even if it was their friend's fault, I would have gone insane. I would have shouted and screamed and threatened to call the police. I would not be sitting here more or less calmly, thinking about why I wasn't angry at this guy in front of me.
Edward was looking extremely anxious and a little defeated as I continued to stay silent. I didn't find my voice until he was getting up to leave, thinking that I wanted him as far away from me as possible. I guess that would be the most reasonable thing to do, but the reasonable me obviously left my body.
"Where did you move from?" My voice was too loud for the quiet in the clearing, but it made him stop walking away.
He looked back at me, confusion written all over his features. "New York," he answered, but it sounded like a question. I guess it was. He was asking me why I wasn't telling him to stay the hell away from me and not even think about coming to the next audition. I wanted to know that myself.
"You don't seem like you're from New York," I told him, willing for him to just come back and sit down."
He shook his head and walked back towards me, but didn't move to take a seat next to me. He was giving me space. "I'm not. You asked where I'd moved from."
I chuckled and rolled my eyes at his pedantic response. "Okay, Edward Cullen, where are you from?"
He smiled at me then for the first time since he had told me about the Googling, but he was still standing and a good foot away from me. "Chicago."
"A Mid-west boy?" I stood up, willing him to understand that I wasn't angry at him, that I didn't want him to feel uncomfortable around me. I didn't know what the hell I was doing and I didn't want to. I liked Edward. I felt as if we could be friends and that was a rare thing to find, for me anyway.
He looked down at me, his eyes questioning, but he didn't voice it. "The best kind."
I smiled at him and walked over to where he was standing. "So what brings you to the sunny shores of LA?" I thought I already knew the answer to my question because really there was only one reason someone would move to this particular part of California.
He shrugged. "The career choice I guess." Theory correct. "But sometimes I really don't know."
That was interesting. I guess my expression showed my confusion at his answer because he carried on talking without my having to say anything.
"Sometimes I don't know if it's worth the move," he explained. "I mean I want to do this, really give this whole acting thing a chance because I do love it, but this place...this life..."
I nodded. "Yeah, I know what you mean." I did know what he meant although he hadn't really voiced it. He didn't need to. I felt that way all the time, as if I was fighting a battle within myself. I wanted to be an actress, I wanted to make movies that meant something to people, but I didn't want the world that came with it. I was a simple, normal girl even though my experiences thus far have not exactly been all that normal. Sometimes I felt as if I was in the eye of a storm and I was more lost than I would ever admit to being. Somehow I saw that Edward got that and perhaps this was why I was so comfortable around him even though I didn't know him.
He looked at me for a few moments, as if he was trying to decide whether I really did know what he meant and as his eyes met mine, I was uncomfortable for the first time since I met him. I felt as if I was under his scrutiny and for some reason, I didn't want him to find me lacking in some way. Edward's gaze made me feel like I was revealing far more to him than I should be, than I wanted to be and it was taking everything I had to not squirm.
He broke eye contact first and turned his face to look at the trees beyond. "I don't suppose you've had lunch yet have you?"
I felt relief as I shook my head and he suggested that we go to the coffee shop for a bite to eat. I was agreeing without really thinking about whether or not I needed to get back to the audition building because I wasn't thinking about the building at all. I was just so glad that he had stopped trying to read me, because I was pretty sure that's what he was trying to do when he was looking at me like that – at least that's what I felt like he was doing. I followed him, my mind awhirl with questions about why I acted so differently around Edward Cullen. I didn't feel like myself when I was with him, yet I never felt so understood by someone I didn't really know. I felt so jarred by his presence, but yet I felt in utter ease. I didn't know what was happening, why this guy had me so jumbled up about myself.
I was thankful that the blonde, Rosalie, was not there today because I sure as hell would have given her a piece of my mind, confused or not. Edward explained that she was a college student and was probably in a lecture at the moment and apologised once more about her snooping. I told him it was nothing, although really it was a huge thing, and he raised an eyebrow at me as if he knew I was lying. When I asked what she was studying, he shocked me to the core with his response. I think the shock showed on my face because he laughed and told me that Rosalie's chosen degree had that effect on everyone. I was a little embarrassed at my judgemental reaction to the revelation that she was studying Astro-physics because I had obviously judged her on appearance. When I first saw Rosalie, I had assumed she was an aspiring model, or actress or singer. Basically, I had assumed that like every other person in LA, she wanted to break into the entertainment industry and with the way she looked, I had thought that she wouldn't have any problems doing so. It had never occurred to me that she would be here without a single thought of being famous. It never crossed my mind that she would be doing something so...academic and I was thoroughly ashamed of myself.
I was also a little intimidated by the girl now and that did not happen to me. I wasn't intimidated by anyone. I had worked with some of the best people in my field before I was even considered an adult, but knowing that the stunning girl I had met briefly only a few days ago was not only that beautiful but incredibly smart as well made me feel inferior. I felt as if I had done nothing, achieved nothing with my life even though I knew that was absolutely not the case. It was a very disconcerting feeling for me and I felt even worse about myself because I had never thought I was so damn arrogant before. This day really had not turned out the way I thought it would.
EPOV
"So how did the two of you meet?" Bella asked me. She had been a little on the quiet side since we had left the clearing and at first I wondered whether she thought she was going to be seeing Rose at the coffee shop. I would have understood her hesitance at being in the same place as the girl who had Googled her because of simple curiosity. I was extremely surprised that she didn't run screaming from me when I told her that my friend had Googled her. However, she was still quiet after I assured her that Rosalie would not be there and I was questioning my impulse to invite her to lunch. I had just been so relieved that she didn't scream at me and run in the other direction that I wanted more time with her to prove that I wasn't a psycho. I was noticing a pattern in my interactions with Bella and I didn't exactly like it; I was always coming off like an obsessive stalker. It was a wonder she was speaking to me at all.
"Rose and I?" I asked, clarifying. "We met when I backpacked through Europe about 5 years ago. I worked in a pub in England that she frequented."
"You backpacked through Europe?" she asked, the surprise in her tone joined with incredulity.
"Yeah, did I not mention it the other day?"
She shook her head. "You just mentioned France."
I thought back to our conversation on Friday and realised that I had indeed only mentioned being in France because we had gotten on to another subject. "Oh, right. Yeah, well I graduated high school early and thought I'd experience the world a little. I think I was trying to find out what I wanted to do with my life. Find myself or something."
She smiled at that, her eyes showing understanding and a slight longing that I couldn't even begin to find deeper meaning to. I didn't know this girl. No matter how easy it was to talk to her, she was still a stranger. "And did you? Find yourself I mean?"
I looked at her for a moment, considering my answer. I, of course, hadn't really revealed the whole reason I went to Europe to find myself, but I wasn't going into that with her. I had come back from my travels a different person, yeah, but even now I didn't know if the different person was who I was or who I wanted to be. I still didn't even know if those were two different people, or just different sides of the same coin. "I guess I did, yeah." I told her, shrugging and dropping my head to look at my plate. I took a bite of my sandwich and refused to look back at her and I knew she didn't really believe me, but we didn't know each other and secrets weren't meant to be told to strangers.
After a few minutes of silence where we both ate our food and pretended like it wasn't awkward between us, the silence was broken by the shrill ringing of a cell phone. My phone was in my pocket on vibrate, meaning that I knew it wasn't mine. Instead, I saw Bella jump and pull her black cell out of the pocket of her jeans. She glanced down at the caller id and her brows furrowed in confusion.
"Alice?" she asked when she flipped the phone open. I turned my head to the side, looking out of the window, not wanting to listen in to what could be a private conversation.
"I'm eating lunch, why?" Bella asked. I couldn't help but hear her.
"Shit!" I looked around at her, my eyebrows raised in a silent question, but she shook her head and I took it to mean that she couldn't answer me right away. "I'll be back in like fifteen minutes Al. Just cover for me a little while."
I didn't know what the person on the other end of the line said in response to that, but after a while Bella sighed and said goodbye. Before I could even ask what was wrong, she was standing up, telling me that she had to go back to the audition building because they were supposed to have started reading the next scene ten minutes ago.
"I guess I'll see you Thursday then Bella," I said as she started walking away from the table that we had been sharing.
She turned back around and smiled at me. "Yeah. It was nice talking to you Edward, even if you did disturb my only sliver of peace and quiet."
I chuckled and waved goodbye, watching her walk out of the coffee shop and around the corner as I had done 3 days ago. There was something about Isabella Swan that always left me feeling confused. I could read her face so well, but there were several things she was keeping back, I was sure. The three times I had been in her company, I always left it feeling a little dazed and very confused, but I couldn't exactly say what I was confused about. I guess I was a little confused about her, but that was just a small part of the bewilderment really. I guess Rosalie is right, I think far too much.
*
I was on my way to meet Jasper at the gym when my cell rang on Tuesday morning. The number that flashed on my screen was a very familiar one, but one I had not seen in about two and a half years and I prayed to whichever deity was listening that it was a wrong number. No such luck.
"Mr. Cullen?" an unfamiliar female voice asked.
"Speaking," I answered, unsure whether I was the one that should be taking this phone call. Carlisle usually handled these things, but I guess he wasn't picking up or they would never have called me.
"Mr. Cullen I'm calling in regards to your mother," the voice informed me, as if it could have been about anything else. As far I knew there was no other member of my family in that place. I didn't even bother giving a response, but after a while, I think she got the message because she did carry on. "Your mother was involved in an incident in the early hours of this morning," she explained. "She's currently in hospital."
"What?!" I asked, a panicked feeling I associated with my childhood rising within me. "What kind of incident?"
"I'm afraid she tried to take her own life," the woman said, her voice quiet and full of sympathy.
I don't remember the rest of the conversation because all of a sudden, I was transported back to when I was thirteen and the first time my Mom harmed herself. I was the one who found her. I had gotten back from school to find my Mom on the kitchen floor, her right wrist leaking a red liquid that I didn't realise was blood until I say her still clawing at the skin with a steak knife. I had thought then that she was trying to kill herself, but it turned out that this was not the case. My mother had been diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 21 and this was not the first time that she had harmed herself. It turned out that Carlisle had found her in pretty much the same state about 6 months after Dad had left. I didn't know all this until I turned 16. All I was told when I was 13 was that my mother was extremely unwell and she would have to stay in hospital for a while. Carlisle was in college, but he returned home for a semester to look after me. When my Mom got back, she apologised and everything was fine for a while. It got worse again when I was 16 and this time there was no getting better. My Mom was committed for her own safety when I was 17, which was half the reason I went to the other side of the world.
I didn't remember calling Carlisle with the news, but somehow he was knocking on my door and we were calling airlines together trying to get a flight out to Maryland as soon as possible. Every time this happened with my Mom, I was transported back to being a helpless teenage boy watching his mother bleed to death in front of his eyes. I hated my inability to cope with these situations, whereas my brother seemed to know exactly what to do and what to say. I guess that's why he was the doctor and I was just some kid who made a living pretending to be someone else. Maybe I loved acting so much because the worlds that I was living in for those few weeks or months were always controlled. I always knew what was going to happen to the character I was playing and if I didn't like it, I knew that my real life was waiting just as soon as I finished. That was not the case for everyday life; if I didn't like what it had in store for me, I didn't have a choice but to live through it.
Rosalie called my cell as I was heading for O'Hare, worried about me. Apparently Carlisle had written her a note briefly telling her what had happened and where we were going, which I was glad about because I hadn't even thought about Rosalie. She knew about my Mom of course, but had never met her because I had never asked her to come with me on the occasions that I visited and she never pressed the issue. There were certain things that Rose and I knew not to press the other one on. I would never bring up the whole Royce King affair, or her parents and she would never mention mine. We may have known each other's deepest secrets, but it didn't mean that we talked over them in our spare time. We weren't that masochistic.
The plane ride was silent and anxious. I don't think Carlisle and I knew what to say to each other because frankly we had been through this situation and many situations like it too many times to have anything left to say. Instead we were both lost in our own memories and our own feelings of guilt. I knew it wasn't my fault that my mother was sick, knew that there was nothing I could do and that she was in the best place possible, but it didn't make it any better. It didn't make me feel better about the fact that I had to take a 3 hour plane ride to go and see my sick mother when I felt like I should be taking care of her. When I was younger I always promised myself that I wouldn't abandon her like my father had abandoned us all, but was I any better? I hadn't seen my Mom since I left New York, too caught up in my own life, too busy with things that weren't really that important in the long run. At least Carlisle was busy saving other people and trying to make the world a better place. What exactly was it that I was doing? Playing make believe? Sometimes I really wondered when the hell I would grow up.
"Don't," Carlisle admonished quietly about two hours into the journey.
"Don't what?"
He looked at me pointedly. "I know you Edward and I know that right now you're talking yourself into feeling guilty about this. It's not your fault and I can't even count how many times I've had to tell you the same thing through the years."
I sighed in frustration, but whether it was at myself or Carlisle, or the situation, I didn't know anymore. "I know Mom being sick isn't my fault Carlisle," I tell him honestly because really, I had accepted this years ago. "I just...I can't believe that I left her and for what?"
"To live your life Edward," Carlisle said, exasperation evident in his voice. "Do you honestly think that Mom would want you to put your life on hold for her forever? She always did everything she could to make sure that we followed our dreams."
"Yeah, exactly, sacrifice," I argued. "She gave everything for us Carlisle and I can't even take a plane ride to see her once in a while? What the hell kind of son am I?"
"You're a great son Ed," he told me fiercely. "You were there for her when you were only a kid yourself. You took the brunt of the burden when you were 16 and you tried your damned hardest to look after her. You cannot possibly think that you haven't done enough for her."
I didn't answer him because he would have just argued with me anyway. Had I done enough for my Mom? I didn't think so. If I had tried harder, done more when I was younger then she wouldn't be where she was now, surely? A part of me knew that it didn't work like that, that a kid couldn't possibly have coped with everything that happened then, but another part of me felt like I hadn't tried hard enough, I hadn't been strong enough. Carlisle always hated the way I shouldered our mother's illness, but there was absolutely nothing he could do to talk sense into me when I was like this, no matter how many times he tried and no matter how much sense he actually made.
We landed shortly after 5pm Eastern time and we were at the hospital for 6pm. Mom was in the Psychiatry unit, drugged up and bound just in case she harmed herself again. I hated seeing her like this; it was a scene that I had seen in my nightmares when I was 13 for three whole months and every now and again since then. She was in a private room and the silence was only broken by the beep of machines our breathing. I felt tears in my eyes and I looked at the wall over her head instead of down at her still body. I saw Carlisle go over by her bedside and stroke her hair from her forehead, whispering things to her that I couldn't decipher, whilst I was just trying not to break down beside her like a scared little boy wanting his Mommy to just wake up.
Carlisle looked up at me after ten minutes of just sitting with Mom, but I couldn't meet his eyes. He didn't say anything, but instead whispered something about talking to her doctors and left me in the room, knowing that I wouldn't be able to break down in front of him now, like I had so many times in our youth. I was much too prideful to have my older brother see me regress back to my 13 year-old self. It took me a further 5 minutes of steeling myself before I could go and sit by my mother's bedside and take her hand in mine, thinking back to the time she had done the same thing for me when I got appendicitis at the age of 8 and I'd been so scared to get the operation.
"Oh Mom," I cried out into the small room. I didn't have anything else to say. Everything that wanted to come out of my mouth had been said before; empty promises and useless questions. I felt like we were just going around in circles and I didn't know when the hell any of us would be able to get off. Instead, I just sat with her, telling her I loved her because that was the only thing that mattered, the only thing that I could never lie about and the only promise I would never break.
I was 16 when the situation with my Mom reached its height. Carlisle was in his third year of medical school at John Hopkins and I was busy navigating my way through life at your average American high school. Well, sort of. I may have been the perfect student by day, keeping a near perfect GPA, being captain of the baseball team and class president, but at night, I was coming apart at the seams. When I got home every night, homework was the last thing on my mind. The only thing that mattered when I walked through the doors of my childhood home was my Mom and looking after her. I was the only person making sure that she stayed on her medication and that she wasn't starting to hallucinate again. I thought I had been doing a good job because she hadn't tried anything since I caught her trying to swallow more pills than a pharmacy could hold six months ago. Sometimes, I would have to miss a couple of classes to keep her company, or to check on her, but I was managing and we were both okay.
I couldn't have been more wrong. I had thought that it was enough to have someone watch over her in the morning whilst I was at school and I would take over in the afternoon. I didn't imagine that the system would ever break down because I was never late and as far as I knew, the nurses that the agency sent were trust-worthy and professional. I didn't know that the temporary nurse, Lauren, who had been watching my Mom whilst Bree was on vacation, had popped out for an hour or so one day, leaving my Mom to find a place to hide her pretty white pills from me. From that day on, none of her medication was actually being taken. She would put it in her mouth, pretend to swallow it as I watched her, wait for me to leave and then spit it out to hide it.
I lived my life for three months completely oblivious to the fact that my mother was once again having conversations with people trying to convince her that she had poison in her body and the only way to get rid of it was to bleed it out – or something else to the same effect. It wasn't until I went to check on her one Tuesday night that that I found her in bed, blood seeping into the yellow sheets. I froze in the doorway, sure that I had actually fallen asleep downstairs and was having a nightmare. There was no way on this earth that this could be happening. I was so careful; I had been doing so well. My Mom was better now, she wasn't sick anymore. This couldn't actually be real.
I don't exactly know what happened after I found her there because I acted on autopilot, without thought or conscious decisions. The first real memory I have of that night that wasn't tinged with the sickening deep red that was leaking from my mother's arms was being in the hospital room with her after her operation. It was a scene much like the one I was in right now and the feelings were exactly the same. I had failed her again. No matter what I did, how old I was and how far I had come in my life, I would always fail the one person in the world that mattered most to me.
Carlisle came back twenty minutes after he had left, telling me that we should come back tomorrow when she was awake and more lucid. There wasn't any lasting damage because she had been stopped before she could do anything that could not be treated. She had some major burns to her hands and some cuts on her arms, but she was being treated for both the pain and the infection risk. The hospital staff didn't know too much about what had been happening in the psychiatric facility that our mother lived in, so Carlisle and I were going to be speaking with them first thing in the morning before we came back to visit her. We said our goodbyes, each kissing her on the forehead in much the same manner she used to do to us when we were younger.
*
It turned out that our mother hadn't been taking her meds for the past 18 weeks, but instead had been keeping a nice little pile of them under her bed, a trick that had used when she first went into the facility. I had a hard time not shouting at all the staff and telling them that that they needed to do their jobs better and really the only reason I didn't do it was because Carlisle would have been extremely pissed off at me had I run my mouth off. I thought it though and there were a few times that I made sarcastic comments about the fact that they had no idea what my mother had been up to, didn't notice any of the warning signs that meant she was close to the edge. I had been a kid all those years ago when I missed the signals, but these people were supposed to be professionals. It was what they were trained to do for crying out loud.
We got to the hospital just before lunch, but I hesitated before going into the building, something which Carlisle noticed.
"You okay?" he asked, stopping in front of me and turning around.
I shrugged. "I've been better."
He gave me a tight smile, but said nothing and just stood there, waiting for me to either take the next step or talk some more. I chose to do the latter, figuring that it was easier than having to go into the room and face my mother, not knowing whether or not she would be lucid enough to have a real conversation with.
"How do you handle it Carlisle?"
He breathed out loudly and deeply, shaking his head. "I handle it because I have to Edward," he told me simply. "I don't know why you have this impression that I handle the situation with Mom better than you because I don't. Do you not think that I feel as sick as you do every time we have to walk into a hospital room and see her lying there hooked up to machines and knocked out?"
"It just always seems like you're on top of everything Carlisle," I argue back. "It's like you always know what to do and say and I just...I just want to know how to handle it better."
"I'm not on top of anything Ed," Carlisle admitted to me, his voice quiet. "You're not the only one lying awake at night wondering what he could have done to make this better. I'm a doctor and I know that Mom is in the best possible place for her and there is nothing more I could do and yet, I still feel like I've failed her."
I looked at him aghast. He had voiced exactly what I was feeling and for the first time in a long time I saw Carlisle as just a man. I have always idolised my older brother, probably because he took on the role of a paternal figure in my life so well after our father left. I always thought he could do no wrong and he was the perfect model of what it was to be a brother and a son. But now, here in the shadow of the hospital building, I saw my brother with all the worries and the insecurities that I had too and that made me feel better, like I wasn't so alone in all of this.
*
Mom was being served lunch when we arrived at her room. She looked up and smiled when we walked in and I was once again a little boy walking into my Mom's room looking for her to tell me that my nightmares weren't going to come true.
"Hello boys," she greeted in a rather hoarse voice from the tube that had been stuck down her throat mere hours ago.
"Hey Mom," Carlisle said, leaning down and kissing her on the cheek. I followed suit, sitting down on the opposite side of her bed from my older brother, wondering whether she would remember anything that happened before she woke up this morning.
She didn't say anything for the longest time and Carlisle and I just looked at each other, not knowing how to start a conversation with her. Usually, she remembered at least a little of everything that happened, but she would either pretend she didn't, or tell us that she didn't want to talk about it. Mom had told us several times that she always felt as if she were letting us down as a mother by being like this and it had absolutely broken my heart at the time, as I'm sure it broke Carlisle's. I wouldn't say that I would wish this illness on my Mom, but there wasn't a better mother in the world than she was and I wouldn't change her for the world. That was probably one of the reasons seeing her in the middle of a bad patch so hard for us, because we knew that it was in these moments that she felt unworthy of our love and that couldn't have been further from the truth.
"How are you boys doing these days?" she asked, her voice falsely light and cheerful, as if we weren't all sitting here because she had once again tried to kill herself.
"We're fine Mom," Carlisle answered. "We're more concerned with how you are."
She looked up at him from the patterns she was making with her mashed potatoes. "I'm feeling a little sore, but you boys didn't need to fly out all this way to come and see me."
I snorted rather loudly, ensuring that both of their heads were now turned towards my direction. "I think you trying to kill yourself necessitated mine and Carlisle's trip out Mom," I said bluntly. I hated when she pretended that there was nothing wrong with her and that she was just recovering from a silly cold, or something. Sometimes I could swear she didn't see the exact severity and seriousness of her condition. She didn't see, or didn't want to acknowledge it.
Carlisle glared at me, but I ignored him, keeping my eyes focused on my mother, who was now looking down at her tray once more. No one said anything for a few tense moments, but after a while my mother took a deep breath in and looked over at me, her green eyes exactly like the ones that stared back at me from a mirror. "I didn't try to kill myself Edward," she whispered. "You know that."
I shook my head. "No, I don't know that Mom," I argued, not heeding the steely gazes that Carlisle was shooting in my direction. I did not want to pretend that everything was alright. I wanted to know that I wasn't going to have the same phone call in a few months' time telling me exactly the same thing. "What I do know is that you keep not taking your medication even though you know what it does to you, so yeah, you might not have had the intention of killing yourself when you took all those pills, but I don't know that you didn't when you stopped taking your meds."
I was on my feet by the time I finished and my voice had risen far more than I had wanted it to. I just wanted to understand all of this and it frustrated the hell out of me that I didn't. All these years looking for answers and still coming up with nothing. It wasn't that I wanted to know why this was happening to my Mom because I knew that would never be answered. What I did want to know was why my Mom kept doing this to herself. It seemed as if she was knowingly stopping herself from living a somewhat normal life and she needed to face up to that fact so that she could get over it. If she was reliable in taking her medication, she wouldn't need to be in the facility at all. She could live in LA with me and I could look after her again like I had done when I was younger, like I wanted to now.
I left the room before I could say anything else. I couldn't be in there without losing my control. I was just so...angry and I didn't know who with anymore. Maybe I was angry at everyone and everything. This was a small fraction of what I had felt when I left the US at 17 and went travelling around the world. I was searching for meaning, searching for answers to questions I didn't know to ask. I had lost myself and perspective in my life when my mother first entered the Psychiatric facility. I didn't know what to do and so I ran as far away as I could get. Obviously now, I was pretty much doing the same thing; running. Would I ever stop?
AN: I have answered everyone's reviews I think, but thank you again. I'm not medically qualified, so if anything that is related to medicine is incorrect (which I'm pretty sure it will be), I apologise. The ultimate aim of this story is for Edward and Bella to be together because really that's the entire point of the series. However, they aren't there yet and there are several stories to tell, not just how they get to the end point. I just feel as if I should warn everyone in case you expect them to be together by the next few chapters. Sorry, but I hope you enjoy the journey anyway.
