A/N: Hello, doves. Thank you for waiting.
With the chaos that was his childhood home these days, it was a wonder Edward could think about anything extraneous, but he managed it. Though, under the circumstances, it was inescapable. The verbal gymnastics he had to do to get out of doing any errands around Forks were incredible.
Four days to Wedding Day, Edward nearly dropped into bed, exhausted from all the running around he was doing. Bella, looking similarly tired but equally stubborn, pulled out her laptop. She was determined to write at least a thousand words a day no matter what.
Edward sighed and hauled himself upright. After a few minutes, he positioned himself before Bella and began playing with her hair. She gave a small moan of contentment. She said the motion gave her pleasant tinglies. Edward, having grown up with two sisters, just liked to play with hair. He found the motion soothed him.
As per usual, Bella didn't have to be told what he needed soothing for. "So, here's what I don't get," she said.
"What's that?"
"Why all the subterfuge? The wheeling and dealing? I'd understand if it was only Rosalie trying to get you to get out there, but your parents are typically more understanding."
His hands stilled for a few seconds before he started gently untangling again. "They don't know."
She swiveled to face him. "Excuse me?"
He grimaced. "I never told them."
She blinked. "But...you moved away. They moved away for you."
"No." Giving up the fight, Edward clapped her shoulder. "Don't look at me a second, huh?"
She studied him for a long moment, but eventually, she turned. Edward was quiet for another few moments, working his fingers into her hair again. "The last time...when things went too far…" He had to swallow hard. "I ended up with a pretty bad concussion.
"I was awake, but I wasn't, you know? Like I could hear things, but they didn't always make sense for a while." His lips quirked up in a wry smile. "My mom, as you might imagine, was freaking out. I heard her first. Understood her first. She was scared, because when I talked it didn't make any sense.
"So my dad is giving her the clinical doctor answer, right? He was talking to her about what they had to be prepared for." Again, he swallowed. "He said I might not remember everything, but I think there won't be permanent problems."
Again, he fell silent. He wasn't proud of this part, but he also wasn't ashamed. He'd been no more than a child. He hadn't had a chance to find his voice, his strength, his perspective. His reality was limited to his tiny ass high school with its small-minded people.
"So when I could think well enough to answer all their questions, I lied. I told everyone it was just stupid ass boys-being-boys crap." He huffed. "It was so dumb. I mean, you know my parents. I knew, in my heart I knew, they would never hate me. They could never hate me for what I was. What I am. I knew that."
"But you'd just been pretty badly beaten for being what you are," Bella said quietly, reaching back to touch his knee.
"Yeah," he said, his tone raw. "Exactly that. I was just scared out of my mind. I was scared if I told my parents, everyone would know. Everyone." His breath shook. His lungs were too small tonight. "I thought it was my fault."
"What?" Bella craned her head back. "You mean that they were like that with you?"
He tilted her head gently forward. "Okay, up front, I did figure out it wasn't my fault, okay? I get it. Really, I get it."
"But?"
"But at the time...I almost couldn't blame them. See, the thing was, Garrett and I had a class together." He clenched a fist at his side, his cheek twitching. "I knew him, of course. I knew him like you know everyone in this town. He was newer than others. He'd moved here when we were all in sixth grade.
"We had a class together, and we had to do a group project." Again, he scoffed. "Jacob was in that class too." His heart twisted painfully. "I knew him better. Not best friends, but we'd had the occasional sleepover as children." He shook his head, dismissing that. "Anyway, by high school, Jacob was all about his group of friends who were from the reservation. His pack-and Garrett. So, I guess Garrett was the lackey, you know? Jacob basically dumped all his school work on him, so, on the project, it was just him and me." He leaned forward, resting his head against her hair. "You're a writer. I bet you can tell what happened next."
"Two teenage boys with teenage boy hormones. He's gay now, so I'd bet that he was giving off signals left and right, even if he didn't know it yet," she said.
"Yeah," Edward said with a laugh. He had been rewriting that particular scenario these last couple of days.
"You kissed him?" Bella asked.
"Ah, dial it back a notch, best seller. No, I didn't kiss him. I did, as I was getting on my bike to ride home one day, maybe, kind of, sort of, accidentally mumble that he was hot."
She giggled. "Oh, lord. Baby Edward with his baby Edward charms would have been a sight to see." She reached back again, stroking his hair once. "So he didn't react well."
Edward paused, replaying the scene for the millionth time, wondering if he remembered it wrong. "That was the thing. He reacted fine. He got all kinds of red, stumbled and stuttered and basically said, 'Uh. Oh. Um. Cool?' And he smiled at me." He tapped on the bed, his rhythm restless. "He smiled at me, but the next day was the first day the pack came at me. Jacob shoved me up against the locker and asked me what I thought I was doing, going all perverted on a guy in his own house.
"That was the kind of shit they yelled at me when they were pushing me around. That I made everything uncomfortable for him. That it was sick. He had to sit there next to me in class while I was thinking about touching him." Edward flexed his fingers. "And I did blame myself, because I did think about that."
"Because you were a horny fifteen-year-old kid," Bella said.
"Yes, but again, I didn't really understand what that meant at the time. I made sense, right? Like it makes sense that you might get sick thinking someone thought of you while they jerked off. I had thought of him that way."
"But now you know it's natural. I mean, fantasies are natural," Bella said, just checking.
"Yes." He took a deep breath. "In any event, it just so happened that Mom was thinking about accepting an offer that would move us far, far away from there. We didn't really move because of me. I didn't want to go back to school. Even though Jacob and the others-all but Garrett-got suspended. I had a really hard time. Panic attacks. They didn't know what to make of it. So it was the deciding factor, you know? Mom was probably going to take the project regardless, but that cemented it.
"Sometimes I think Dad has put it all together. When I came out, when I was in college, he tried to talk about it. Get some answers, I guess, but none of them knows exactly what happened. I don't know what they think. Rosalie always talks about my dramatics, because that's what she thought they were."
Bella huffed. "Yeah. Go figure."
After a minute of silence Bella turned around, and this time, Edward let her. She pushed lightly on his chest, and he lay back. She rested on her elbow, looking down on him, her long hair falling onto his chest. "I know your arrogant ass already knows this shit, but it bears repeating." She looked into his eyes. "You didn't deserve any of that. Nothing you did made it happen, and obviously, Garrett was a hypocritical little shithead."
Smiling more genuinely now, Edward reached up to caress Bella's cheek. She was pure love.
He sighed, dropping his hand down to the bed. "I'm not afraid of him. I'm not afraid of any of them."
"I know," she said.
"I just don't want to see them. Not any of them, and not Garrett, specifically."
"I know." She laid down, curling up against his side. "Not that many more days, Edward. Then you'll leave them behind for good, in this crappy little town, to live crappy little lives."
~0~
Of course, Edward's luck didn't run that way in this town.
He barely made it in the door in time for dinner, having been on one of his trips to Port Angeles and beyond. The lunch he'd ordered hadn't suited him, and he'd left most of it, so he was ravenous. Settling down at the table, he served himself a plate that easily rivaled Emmett's.
The others were talking about their days. Mostly, Edward was spaced out, thinking about a potential job offer that his assistant had e-mailed to him. He was going over proposal ideas in his head when Alice caught his attention.
"Guess what, Edward."
He quirked an eyebrow but didn't bother answering, too busy shoveling food in his mouth.
"Rose and I ran into an old friend of yours when we were out at lunch. Garrett something or other."
The bite of food he'd swallowed was suddenly a lump of coal. He could feel it scraping the walls of his throat and landing with a thud in the pit of his stomach. "Oh?" he said, as nonchalantly as possible.
"Garrett Damon?" Esme said, looking between her daughters and her son with concern. "Isn't he one of those boys who gave you trouble?"
Rosalie answered before Edward could. "No, Mom. Remember? Garrett was the one who didn't get suspended, because he never touched Edward."
That much was true. He'd never laid a hand on Edward. Oh, he'd tripped him once or twice, but that was about it, physically.
"What about him?" he asked through gritted teeth. Beside him, Bella squeezed his knee.
"He talked about that, actually. The thing in high school," Alice said. "He said he'd heard recently you might hold a grudge."
Edward scoffed. "No shit," he muttered.
"It's time to let bygones be bygones," Rosalie said, stabbing her fork in Edward's direction. "We're all dumb little shits in high school."
Beside her, Emmett snorted and glanced at her with tenderness in his eyes. "I want to hear some dumbshit Rosalie stories. You always tell me you're perfect."
Her gaze softened. "I'm the exception, of course," she said with a haughty grin. Then, she turned back to Edward. "He seems like a really nice guy."
"Yeah, he's charming." Alice elbowed Edward playfully. "And hot. And he plays for your team."
Edward scoffed again, beyond speech. His heart had begun to pound a mile a minute.
"And guess what," Alice said, her eyes bright. "He actually lives in SoCal. Barely thirty minutes from you, Edward."
Edward pushed his plate away. The smell was beginning to nauseate him, and there was no way he was going to eat now. No, he already felt too sick to his stomach to even look at food. "What?" he managed.
"Yeah, he's been up here for a few months just like us," Rosalie said. "His mother died last year, and he's fixing up her house so he can sell it. We saw each other a lot in passing these last few months. We always waved, but today was the first time he came over to talk. I thought he was into Alice, but then I saw his tats." She pointed to the tattoo of the equality symbol Edward had on his wrist. "Same as yours-that one anyway. Same placement, too."
"Well, isn't that special," Edward said, irritated beyond words now.
Irritated and more than a little creeped out. He didn't like that Garrett had been talking about him.
"Don't be a bitch about it," Rosalie said. "Whatever he was like in high school, he's cool now, and I invited him to the wedding."
Edward's fist came down on the table in surprise. "You what?"
"Oh, for fuck's sake. You're an adult Edward. You can-"
"No. Uninvite him." He held his sister's eyes a beat. "I mean it, Rose. Unin-fucking-vite him. Are you fucking crazy?"
"Are you crazy? Are you really telling me what I can and can't do at my own wedding?"
"Can't you see you're making Edward miserable?" Bella asked, furious.
"That's practically his default setting the last few days," Rosalie said with a scoff. "What's different?"
"Rosalie, this person certainly can't mean much to you," Carlisle said, his voice calm as ever. "Yet it seems to matter a great deal to your brother."
Rosalie chuffed, half irritated, half chastened. "Look it's not like I even have his phone number. I just told him to drop by if he wanted." She looked to Edward. "I don't know why it's turning into so much drama."
Frustrated, Edward pushed back his chair. He took his plate and headed for the kitchen. Once there, he stood leaning up against the sink, staring out at the forest.
After a few seconds, he heard the sound of Bella's footfalls coming toward him.
"I'm giving him too much power, aren't I?" he asked softly when she put her hand to his back.
"Regardless, you shouldn't have to put up with it, Edward."
He just grunted, gnashing his teeth.
"Would it be so bad to let it happen?" he asked after another minute. "I do have questions."
She hesitated. "I think if you're going to confront him, you should do it before your sister's wedding. She's being an asshole about all this, but it'd be a dick move to cause a scene if you could have prevented it."
"Yeah," he said, his tone bitter. "A lot of things could have been prevented if Rose would have picked anywhere but Forks." He leaned forward on the sink. "And now he knows I live in the OC."
Bella rubbed his back. "If you go, let me go with you."
He nodded. "Yeah. I will."
But as of right then, he was conflicted. What to do.
A/N: So many thanks to the people who make my writing better-MyOnlyHeroin, Packey 2.0, songster, jessypt, and barburella.
We will finally meet Garrett next chapter. I think this will actually be 10 chapters.
SHUT UP, MINA!