Thank you SunflowerFran3759 for your awesome beta skills. If there are any mistakes, they're mine for adding things after her review.
Chapter 9
Life was a routine.
The same things over and over each day. The same demons haunting him and the same regrets playing again and again in his mind.
"I told you! I don't want to go visit Aunt Esme!" Edward shouted. His loud voice practically vibrating the pictures on the walls of his mother and of he in his younger years.
"She hasn't seen you in a long time. As your mother's sister, I think she would appreciate you visiting. She lost her too."
Edward muttered a few curse words to himself. "I know that, Dad, but I just don't feel like it."
Carlisle dug his hands into his blonde hair and pulled. "You've been acting strange, Edward. Your entire junior year has been troubled. First, you get suspended from school for fighting with Tyler during football practice like a goddamn kid, and then you go and leave the house for an entire weekend without telling me."
Edward sighed and began to pace around the living room. He tried to ignore that his younger sister, Alice, who was staring from the corner of the room.
He knew he was acting like an asshole.
But he couldn't help it.
"I guess I'm just going through a phase, you know? I'm a teenager after all. You could ground me or some shit. I'm just some dumb kid and one day I'll grow out of it."
"Edward, I don't need the sarcasm. You can stay here, I'm not going to force you to care about your mother's family," Carlisle said and ordered his daughter to wait for him in the car.
After they left, Edward sat in his room all alone. He blasted his loud rock music and ignored text messages from school friends.
Friends.
He almost laughed like a maniac all to himself.
He dreaded school. He dreaded talking to those people. He knew he was acting like a typical kid his age, but he didn't like any of them. He couldn't stand being around kids his own age. If he was honest with himself, he couldn't stand being around anyone at all.
He was going to end up living alone in the woods one day. He was convinced that he was going to live in a tent and hunt his own food, and maybe grow a beard.
He sighed when the four walls of his room became unbearable.
He walked through the woods, wiping the sweat from his forehead. It was a rare, hot day in Forks, finally making summer feel the way it was supposed to feel. He had spent the last year making a mess of things and hardly recognized himself. He hadn't visited his favorite place in the woods in months. He didn't feel it appropriate without the person that made it such a freeing experience.
No.
She wasn't home.
She was somewhere, being punished for doing a really stupid thing. The night he heard she had been taken by the cops, he ran to her house, but nobody was home and the station refused to let him see her.
She had been gone one year. He received letters from her, reading each one more than once. He grinned when she told him that she didn't have much paper, but she chose to use it writing to him. He wrote back each time with the freedom that a pen and paper provided. There was no hesitation or worry that he would say the wrong thing.
He sat on the ground and read the latest letter.
Edward,
As promised, I haven't gotten into a fight in weeks. The guards, especially the butchy one, keep smiling at me, telling me they always knew I was a good kid.
I call bullshit and I feel weird and gross being complimented. This is your fault, Cullen. You made me promise to be good so I could come back home.
You know they tell me I wouldn't have to be here if I hadn't punched and kicked that cop. I don't regret it. He was being a dick.
I'm sorry I never made it to watch Rambo II. I can't wait to watch it with you. You better not tell me what happens, or I'll have to kick your ass.
Sorry to hear about you going to the shrink. They make me talk to one here. She says I have a lot of 'pent up stress and anger.' I don't know what she's talking about.
I'm fine.
But who knows, maybe it'll help you. You've always been the smarter one. Don't be embarrassed about going to the shrink. Everyone goes through stuff. Some people are just cowards who hide it in the back of their minds until the day they explode or until they become cold and cynical.
Who wants to be that?
I'd rather be pained and feel human, than be some empty and a poor excuse of a person.
One time when I was little, my mom beat the shit out of me. I don't know remember why. I must have made a mess somewhere. I sobbed my eyes out. I remember her hands didn't hurt that much and afterward, I was fine, just a little bruised, but I cried my eyes out. I think I cried because I couldn't believe she would do that. My father, looking disinterested and annoyed as usual, turned to me and said, 'you cry too much, Isabella. Don't cry. Stop crying. Toughen up.' and walked away. He pissed me off so much that I cried even more, but I could breathe so much better afterward. My point is, let it out. No matter what others think. Don't let it suffocate you.
From one crazy to another,
Oh, and I miss you, too.
Tommy
He spat on the ground and continued walking until he found himself standing on La Push beach. His father told him that this was where they found his mother's body.
"It was never your fault," Carlisle had said.
Edward bitterly glared at the waves rushing over to the shore.
"You have to understand that it was an accident," Dr. Clarke said. He was an older man. The years of living the difficulties of life and years listening to others cry and vent about their own sorrows showed in each wrinkle on his face. "There was nothing you could have done. Sometimes things happen to us that are out of our control, but change our lives forever. You now have to adapt to a life without your mother, and that is a tough task to ask any child. But it's one you can accomplish along with your father and sister. One day it'll feel normal again. One day it won't hurt as much."
But that 'one day' didn't come soon enough. And when he was prescribed 'depression' medication, it led him to research, and for answers to questions he didn't know he had.
"Why is there a bottle of these damn pills in the house?" He asked his father that day. He could feel the anger and confusion as the bottle of old pills shook in his hand.
"They were your mothers. Where did you find them?"
"It doesn't matter! These are depression pills."
"Yes."
"Mom was depressed?"
Carlisle sighed and sadly looked at his son. "I thought you had figured that out already."
"I did, it's just …" Edward exhaled a broken breath. "I just don't understand why. Why was she sad? Didn't we make her happy?" Edward asked, feeling like a fool as tears pooled in his eyes. He could feel his hands shaking and the sharp pain in his chest.
He hated feeling so emotionally paralyzed.
"Edward, Son, calm down. Why don't you sit down before you have another episode? You and your sister were her reasons for living. There was just something in her mind that wouldn't let her snap out of her sadness. She didn't have the best life growing up and she started suffering from depression even before you were born. It just got worse, much worse throughout the years. You have nothing to do with that. I need you to know that, Son."
"Did she kill herself?" Edward cried.
Carlisle didn't answer, he reached for his son, but Edward pushed away sending a sharp pain to Carlisle's heart.
Edward knew his father was hurting. He could see it in his eyes, and his deep breaths proved he wasn't dealing with it as he once thought he was, but the anger was stronger than his consideration.
"Please, don't lie to me, Dad. Did Mom kill herself that day? Did she fucking give up on us?" Edward spat. "Did she leave us alone because life was too hard for her? How could she have been so selfish?"
He sobbed into his hands, falling onto his knees and letting the crippling pain take over. Carlisle fell next to him and took his son into his arms, letting him sob into his chest the way he used to do when he was a little boy.
"Son, please, it wasn't like that." Carlisle tried comforting him, but this wasn't the first time Edward had let his sorrow overcome himself. Each time, he tried his best to comfort him and let him know that it wasn't his fault. But Edward had always been a stubborn boy.
"Selfish, just like Tommy's mom.
She was selfish! I need her! Where is she? She left us all alone, Dad. Don't you hate her? Don't you hate her for leaving us?"
Carlisle cried into his son's hair as he rocked him back and forth, failing at saying the right things.
"I don't hate her, Son. I love her, even though I don't know what happened that day."
Edward pulled away from his arms and violently stood up. He looked down at his broken father and pointed his finger at him. "I need to know! I need it! You need to tell me!"
"It doesn't matter. It won't bring her back."
"I need to know!"
"I don't know if your mother killed herself!" Carlisle shouted. He took a deep breath to calm down. "Everything was much simpler when you were just a young boy. Now you're a young man that wants answers that I don't have. I'm sure it was an accident. She loved you both so much. She was trying to get better. That's why we would go to Port Angeles every week. We were seeing a therapist because she wanted to get better for you. She wanted to be a good mom for you. But I don't have the answer you want."
"I don't know. I don't want to fucking talk about it anymore!"
And that was the end of the conversation as Edward ran off to his room where he stayed for days, grieving for his mother all over again.
It had been weeks since then. He hardly spoke to his father and argued over stupid things with his sister. There were times he couldn't even look at her in the face. She angered him by just being around him.
He envied her.
She was doing so well. Nothing seemed to bother her while everything tormented him. She was brave enough to visit their mother's grave and talk about her in a pleasant way. But every time Alice would bring up their mother, he would get up and leave the room.
Edward sighed as he remembered how close he once was with his sister and missed her. He knew it had been his fault. He wondered how he could make it better. He wondered what the right words were that he could say to her.
But he didn't do or say the right thing. He was too obsessed with the idea that his mother had killed herself. He was angry that he would never know. He was angry at the possibility that she had done it on purpose, leaving him and his sister without a mother.
He hated the idea that she hadn't loved him the way she had sworn she did. The idea that she was selfish for leaving him clogged his mind and soul with bitterness.
He didn't dare ask Alice if she thought their mother had killed herself. He didn't want to hear her thoughts, and he was too hurt to even utter the words anyway. He hadn't even told Tommy of his suspicion.
Somehow, telling Tommy would make it very real.
"You want some pot?" Jacob asked as they sat outside his small house on the reservation.
Edward quickly took the small joint and shoved into his mouth.
The plant worked quickly, making him feel somber and making the colors of the forest sharper. The smells of nature, and the sounds of the rain hitting their surroundings, transported him to another place in his mind.
Some of the boys stopped by, accepting Jacob's offer of pot and booze. They were all distracted by Jacob's new piece of junk car and laughing at everything, letting the drugs take away reality for just a moment.
Edward stood up, stumbling a bit, following the moving colors of the trees and grass. He didn't hear anybody call his name. Nobody had noticed his absence and that was okay.
He walked for a few minutes, or hours—he wasn't sure. He wasn't sure what he was doing or where he was going. That seemed to be true of that moment and his life.
His brain had busied itself playing old images of his mother and his family while he ran his fingers over Tommy's letter repeatedly. They were old images of a time he had forgotten. They were images of a time when his mother hadn't let her sickness defeat her, and when he was just a kid back in Chicago. He remembered. He remembered his father telling him and Alice that they were moving to a small town in Washington because the distance from the city would help their mother feel better. He remembered his young self not understanding what this meant, but accepting it anyway.
There was a thumping pain in his chest, and he didn't know how to get rid of it. No one ever knew what to say. Nobody knew what to say to fix it.
Everyone except the short, tiny girl in baggy clothes and a blue baseball cap, walking at a high speed through the trees.
"Tommy?" Edward whispered to himself as he started running towards the girl.
She didn't seem to have heard him. She continued walking, but she had always been a bit clumsy, so it didn't take him long to catch up. He stopped in front of her and took a deep breath he didn't know he needed until his eyes took in her face.
It was her.
"Tommy? It is you!" He said, shocked by the sound of joy coming out of his body.
Without thinking, he pulled her into his arms for a tight hug. She gasped in shock, but a moment later, he felt her thin arms wrap around him as her small body mold into his. He closed his eyes and inhaled a deep breath. She smelled like the woods and like her shampoo. He smiled into her hair, not caring what the hug meant; he tried holding her for as long as possible.
She gently pulled away, biting town on her bottom lip.
He let his eyes take her in her appearance. She had changed so much. She was much taller, but so was he. She had always been shorter than him, and that hadn't changed. She was still slim, but there was just something different about her.
She looked more … like a girl.
Her long, brown, wavy hair reached her waist, but was still a mess, and her head was still covered with that stupid, blue baseball cap.
Her face hardly held any proof that she had once been a child. Her cheekbones were more noticeable, and her face was longer. No bruises, and he was thankful for that.
She also didn't wear that smirk she usually would have on her face when she saw him.
She looked at him with no emotion on her face, and an answered in a dry tone. "Hey, Cullen," she simply said and started to walk away.
"Hey, hold on up. I haven't seen you in a year, and you just say 'hey' to me?" He asked, feeling a little pissed off.
She rolled her eyes and pulled away from his hold. "I'm sorry if I'm acting rude, but I just need to get out of here," she muttered. "Don't you have some girl to screw or football game to practice for?" She asked.
"What the hell is your problem?"
"I just told you. I need to get out of here."
He pulled her to him by her arms. "So you're acting like an asshole towards me? How does that make sense, Swan? Let me look at you, shit. You didn't tell me you were coming back in your last letter, which I just got, by the way. I've missed your stupid face."
She sighed with a small hint of a smile and shook her head. "I'm sorry, dude. I really am. I'm just in a bad mood. It's my first day back home, and I couldn't stand being in that place for one, more minute. I don't even know where I'm going. I'm just walking straight, hoping to end up somewhere—anywhere but home."
"Well, you ended up here. With me," he said with a smirk. He could still feel the pot and booze in his system, but what he was feeling at that moment couldn't be a result of his drug-induced brain. "Do you wanna have a burger or something? We could go to Cora's Diner. I'll pay. Dad loves taking Alice and me there on Fridays since he doesn't know how to cook that well, so I know the whole menu. I recommend the cheeseburger."
That got him a small smile from her. It wasn't much, but it was something.
"Hasn't anybody ever told you that you talk too much, Cullen?"
He chuckled, and with her hand in his, led her to the 'promised land' of burgers and fries.
~Tommy~
He shoved fries into his mouth and looked over at Tommy to make sure she was enjoying it.
Her cheeks had ketchup stains, and her hands were covered in grease. He laughed, enjoying her eating and finding it incredibly hilarious. She flipped him the bird and continued devouring her burger.
They sat on top of a junk car by the diner as they ate their food. They faced the woods and every time they took a break from eating, they would stare out at the trees and the birds chirping around.
"Food in juvie sucks," she said. "I swear I will never eat powdered eggs again."
"I'm sorry you had to go there," he said, not knowing what else to say.
"Yeah, well, me too. I got my ass handed to me so much by these big ass girls. They hated white girls, and I'm as white as they come. Being there made me realize, I'm not that crazy. One girl would stick shit up her nose to get attention. There was one that was missing an arm, but she sure wouldn't let that get in her way of a good fight. But they all had daddy and mommy issues. Just like me." She laughed, but it didn't sound honest, it sounded sad. "But enough about me, Cullen. How's life? How's the arm? Did you tell them all I am the one that taught you everything you know?"
He smirked. "You wish you had, Swan." He threw a fry at her, earning a giggle from her. She threw it over to a bird on the ground. "I don't think I'm going to do football this year."
"Why is that?"
"I just don't care. I think I need to get my shit together, ya' know?"
"No, I don't. What's going on?"
He sighed. "I just need to find my mind. Sometimes it feels so messed up in therethat I start acting like someone else. I'm not myself. I'm not the person I want to be. You know?"
She nodded. "I think I do. The doc over at juvie said I was fucked up in the head. That it wasn't my fault, but maybe the adults around me." She sighed and threw another fry for the bird to eat. "I think we just need some time, Cullen. Soon enough we'll be adults, and we'll be free."
He looked down at the bird eating away at the fry. "I don't think we can run away from our minds, Swan. Memories can be cruel."
They sat in silence for another moment until he spoke again. "My dad told me my mom was sick. He told me my mom suffered from depression. I'm scared, you know? I'm scared to end up like her. I'm scared I'll end up in some depressed and fucked-up dream state."
"Don't be. You have me, Cullen. You have me to wake you up," she said with a smile on her lips.
"I guess you're right. Wake me up when we're older and wiser. Wake me up when our hearts are cold, and our lives aren't young anymore and have aged well—when we are no longer tragic, young souls, but adults, with old, cynical eyes. Then we'll laugh at those who dare have hope. Wake me up when this is over," he said with a smile.
"I promise I will, you stoned young poet you," she said.
He laughed so loudly that the bird, frightened, flew away, up, up, and up into the sky.
~Tommy~
Present Time
Edward had come home with a brand new house phone that had a working caller ID. He spends a few minutes plugging it in and fiddling with the settings.
Edward then works outside, picking up trash from the backyard and looking over his father's plants while laughing at the conversation between his Aunt Esme, Alice and Rosalie. They're drinking hot chocolate outside in the cool afternoon and enjoying each other's company while waiting for Carlisle to come back from the hospital.
Emmett arrives and gives his wife a kiss before he heads over to help Edward. "I still can't believe you were a troublemaker in high school," he says.
"Who told you I was?"
Emmett chuckles. "Don't tell her I told you, but it was Rosalie. She said you used to be very troubled when you were a teen. She says it's because of what happened to your mom. But you're so kind to your father and sister now, so it's hard to see it. Ya' know?"
Edward sighs and looks over at his sister. "I guess I'm trying to make it up to them. It wasn't their fault after all."
"I'm sure you don't have to make it up to them. When I lost my mother, it was hell, dude. I would go into this rage with everything around me. I'm sure I pissed some people off, but family always forgives."
"Yeah, you're right."
Both men continue working until the phone inside the house rings. Edward quickly rushes inside asking his sister to let him answer it.
He looks at the caller ID and doesn't recognize the number. He wonders if it's the same person that always calls. He or she hasn't called in days.
He answers. "Hello?" There is silence on the other line.
"Hello? Who is this? Are you the same person that is always calling my dad?" He waits for a response, but only hears breathing, and suddenly a quiet sob. "Are you okay? I know you're there."
Suddenly the line goes dead.
"Son, did you get an answer?" Carlisle asks.
Edward slowly looks at him in confusion and shakes his head. "No, but I got a number now. It looks like a Chicago area code," Edward says as he pulls out his phone.
"Hello?" A man answers on the other line.
"Hello? Who is this?"
"Excuse me? You called us."
"Us? Where am I calling?"
"Victor's."
"What's that?"
"Dude, it's a fucking bar. Why the hell are you calling us?"
"I received a call from this number."
"Well, you're insane because nobody uses the damn phone, but me, and I sure as hell didn't call you. So get over it."
The line goes dead.
"Who was it, Son?" Carlisle asks.
"A bar in Chicago," Edward says.
"I'm confused. Why are they calling me?"
Edward shrugs. "I'm more confused now, too."
"Well, whoever it is, I bet they'll stop now that you've told them off. You're quite the badass, Son," Carlisle said, and Edward laughs at the obvious sarcasm.
His father goes outside to join the rest of his family, leaving him still pondering over the phone call. He sighs, feeling frazzled and as if somehow the call from that Chicago bar has something to do with him.
~Tommy~
"I don't know why I believed you, Swan!" He shouted, looking down at the water. "This is stupid. How am I going to feel better by looking down at this death trap?"
"It's time to fucking face your fears!"
"But not like this! I don't want to be here!"
"Just look down there! You don't have to be scared, Edward."
"Please, can't we just do this another time?"
She sighed and pulled him back.
"Fine, but don't say I didn't try and help you."
He took a deep breath, glad to be away from the edge of the cliff. "And who is going to help you?" He asked.
She smiled and shook her head. "I don't need help, Cullen. I just need time to pass so I can leave everything behind."
"Am I going to be left behind too?"
"I think that would be impossible," she whispered and started to walk away.
"You always talk about how everything will be better in the future. Why can't it be better now?"
"Because, Cullen, things aren't that simple. We're still young and stupid. Be patient."
"You make no sense, Swan."
"One day you'll understand. You'll think back and say, 'hey, that Swan girl was right. Shit does get better.' And then you'll call me and thank me."
He laughed.
He took one last look at the edge of the cliff and sighed. When he looked back at her, he felt peace, and he wasn't frightened anymore. He knew it was only because she was there.
He was a coward.
"Maybe we can go back to the edge. I want to do this, Swan. I want to face it and tell it to fuck off."
"Don't push yourself, Cullen. You can be brave another day. You don't have to be tough around me. I know the truth."
"And what truth is that?"
"That you're human."
He smiled and followed her out of the woods.
Thank you for reading.
I know most of you are anxious for Tommy to show up in 'present time' and it's going to happen. I promise I'm not trying to drag it out, but the main point of this story is how these characters grew up and developed their relationship.
Let me know what you think in the review box! What do you think of Edward and Tommy's relationship now? Was it what you expected when you started reading this story?
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